14 ms·

Facewatch 'thief recognition' CCTV on trial in UK stores

51 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

GordonS 11y ago
> We later discover my thick-rimmed glasses are the problem. It's something easily fixed by adjusting the system settings, Simon tells me. Facial recognition is a hard problem; allowing for thick-rimmed glasses is not 'easily' fixed.
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  Good, corporations have been allowed to go too far with their surveillance.
- delinka 11y ago
  Well, you can't admit that to a reporter/the public...
fredley 11y ago
This does not scale. It might work for a few people in a population of thousands, but beyond that false positives are going to be a real problem.
- Already__Taken 11y ago
  It's not going to be great for having 1 robbery and nabbing the next person your cameras ID. But in this day and age were the police won't go out for burglary calls we might end up with person A identified in X surveillance system incidents over Y years. That's an interesting step forward even if it isn't damning.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    Is that really a step forward? When combined with the false positives issue, there could be a lot of harassment of innocents who accidentally fit a profile.
- bsenftner 11y ago
  I work in facial recognition. When you say it does not scale, how so? I have a system with 975K people in it, the US registered sex offenders database, and with a single quad core laptop a lookup takes about 8 seconds. With a server class 32+ core system the lookup is nearly real time. How does that not scale?
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    I assume he more meant accuracy at scale - if you have a large population how does the accuracy do? Do you wind up with many close samples or are things pretty good?
    - bsenftner 11y ago
      Pretty much all FR systems generate a list of matches, ranked from closest match on down. The size of the list is configurable. It is also industry standard NOT to use the list as an authority. Given a list of high matches (greater than 90%) a human can quickly filter out obvious false positives, and then the remaining are retained for further consideration. It is also industry standard NOT to rely on FR alone; combining FR with other measures reduces the ability for a false positive. The issue I find with FR is people expecting it to be some super technology, gleaming significant information from a dust spec. Its not like that. And the media is playing it up with unrealistic descriptions. Remember the original DOOM and it's quality of graphics? That is where FR is now. We've got a ways before the journalist hype is close to reality. And the mature technology will not be FR, but a comprehensive multiple biometric measuring system capturing far more than someone's face.
      - Retric 11y ago
        So, if you’re looking for 1% of a total population your false positive rate before human intervention is 99%. That's not useful for automated systems. Further, identical twins are going to show an image that would fool human verification making this questionable for many tasks even with human supervision. PS: Almost 1% of the population has an identical twin. (% of births is lower, but you get 2 twins.)
- popeshoe 11y ago
  This is clearly a play by the plastic surgery lobby to get people to have work done so they look less like known criminals.
- CodeCube 11y ago
  The problem of false positives can and will simply be farmed out to a mechanical turk type of process ... a farm of low-cost workers will simply review hits, and if there's any possibility that it's a match, it will be escalated up several levels until action is taken.
- a3n 11y ago
  If this was deployed in the US, I'd be concerned about being shot by the police because I was false-IDed as a violent criminal. Because in the US, it's become protect the police at all costs, including the cost of my life.
agd 11y ago
Widespread facial recognition is going to add a whole new slew of data for GCHQ/NSA to data mine. Not to mention advertisers tracking exactly where you walk in shopping malls and shops. From my understanding, UK law requires that you be informed if subject to facial recognition, but, analogous to online tracking/advertising, does not require your permission to begin it. Sigh, gets out my rimmed glasses
- mtmail 11y ago
  Would informing you be different from the 100s of "CCTV in operation" signs you walk past every day?
- CodeCube 11y ago
  The requirement to inform is easily met with a nice sign posted at every doorway saying, "smile, you're on camera (facial recognition)". It will easily be accepted by the masses who simply want to get in, buy their stuff, and get out.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  > Widespread facial recognition is going to add a whole new slew of data for GCHQ/NSA to data mine. Less than you think. We're all walking around with beacons in our pockets already. They already have the ability to "follow" a person to within a square mile, and that individual is far more knowable (i.e. less false positives) than facial recognition. Between IMEI spotting and license plate readers surrounding central London, they have a real time SimCity-esk map of the city. The facial recognition stuff might be the cherry on top, but it is hardly going to be a major gain. PS - And as far as I know they already have facial recognition cameras as most major tube stations.
pavel_lishin 11y ago
I wonder if the CV Dazzle[1] style will take off in the UK. Maybe we'll finally get the exact cyberpunk future promised us by Gibson, etc. [1] https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/
- bsenftner 11y ago
  No need to go that far: every system I'm aware of fails when there are no eyebrows. (I'm in the FR industry.)
  - fit2rule 11y ago
    Your eyebrows must be [<-------- this -------->] long to enter this store/view this content.
  - kozukumi 11y ago
    So Whoopi Goldberg might be some master thief and there is nothing that can be done?!
  - pavel_lishin 11y ago
    I feel like shaving off your eyebrows is actually going further than putting some make-up on.
- kmfrk 11y ago
  Like Tor and other security/privacy measures, it only really works when it's generally adopted; otherwise people in the style will stand out on their own.
  - rmc 11y ago
    I believe someone working on Tor (or similar privacy tool), said that a privacy system is only good if it's used by people to share photos of cats. If a tool is only used by shady people for shady means, then the tool itself (and use of it) is suspicious. But if it's used by many average people to do mundane things like sharing photos of cats, then subversives can use it too
falcolas 11y ago
So, how would a reformed thief go in to buy basic goods once this becomes more widespread? Do we no longer believe that someone can pay off their debt to society and become a useful member of said society?
- ddalex 11y ago
  Nope. Fuck them anyway, and fuck any twins of said thieves. Fuck them doppelgangers, and any person resembling them. And any false positives, for that matter. I, for one, welcome our precog overlords.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    So, no, you don't believe in someone being able to reform. The rest was not really necessary.
    - ddalex 11y ago
      The big, black one that breaths heavily, that's his father. The rest was not really necessary.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - PeterisP 11y ago
      Let's say that 90% people of thieves successfully reform and become honest people. Assuming that 1% or less of general population are thieves, it still would mean that a previously known thief has a 10% chance of being 'unreformed', and that they are a 10 times bigger risk than the average person; and it's not prohibited to use that information to safeguard yourself.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  We're talking here about thieves that hadn't been caught by the Police. Maybe the way to handle it could be that if you're a thief and had a change of heart, report to the local Police station and agree to serve your time in exchange for getting your face removed from the database.
a3n 11y ago
What happens to a face after it's in a database, or multiple databases, gets arrested, spends time in jail, and then goes straight? Will it be as impossible to get off these databases as it is to get off the no fly list?
- bsenftner 11y ago
  And that has nothing to do with FR and its technology. The contents of an FR database and getting items removed is purely human politics.
  - a3n 11y ago
    This technology, deployed, is without a doubt a political issue. Divorcing what we work on from how it's used is irresponsible. And I'm not saying don't develop technology, but we have to recognize and consider how it fits into society. We have to discuss. The Stasi recruiting human spies from among the general population was both a logistical question and a political issue. The NSA weakening encryption, or parking on backbones or datacenters, is a technology and a political issue. The political urge to inflict both kinds of spying is just that, a political one. As technology improves, it makes the job of spies and other criminals that much easier, increasing the spy's reach, and changing the character of society. The technology is fascinating, but it's not divorced from society. We're all swimming in the same soup.
- rmc 11y ago
  This is why the EU courts have a "right to be forgotten"
- DanBC 11y ago
  Possibly like the DNA database - really hard to get off. IIt's worse than just convicted criminals being stuck on the database though. A bunch of people are arrested, and have their photo and DNA taken and added to databases, but they're never tried and thus never convicted, but their details stay on the system unless they apply to have them removed. Here is a case from 2008 where two people went to court to get their details taken off: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm And here's an earlier quote from a stupid judge suggesting everyone should be on the database: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm
DannoHung 11y ago
I look forward to privacy conscious individuals taking steps: https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/
davnicwil 11y ago
I wonder if places using systems such as this will have to declare it plainly? If they do, seems like there might be some backlash, with people preferring not to go to businesses starting down the path of using this sort of tech and spending more time in those which could, but choose not to, use it. Assuming of course it doesn't end up just completely ubiquitous like web ads etc, the market could force tech like this into the high-risk margins, i.e. high-end jewellery shops etc, rather than it eventually popping up in every pub and high-street shop. I will say though, having written that, I do think it's likelier it'll just end up ubiquitous.
- rmc 11y ago
  > I wonder if places using systems such as this will have to declare it plainly? There is a lot of law about data protection in the UK & EU. So, yes.
- cjrp 11y ago
  Some pubs/clubs already require things like fingerprints to be taken before going in, it doesn't seem to stop people going there. If anything, something which is less effort for the customer (like the Facewatch system) would probably be preferred
  - davnicwil 11y ago
    It won't stop everyone, some people don't care, might be socially pressured to just going in anyway in a group, etc. But for customers who do care, it could actually work in the opposite way too. If a club wants to take your fingerprints, it's usually after you've already entered the place, having possibly queued, at a point where it's very annoying and socially awkward if in a group to about-turn and say "you know what, no, let's go elsewhere". If on the other hand there's a sign outside declaring "we use Facewatch here" then it's actually much easier for customers for whom that represents a problem to just continue walking past, and not be drawn in in the first place. It may be that simply not enough people care about having their biometric data read and stored in databases etc, or that it'll be so ubiquitous that there's no alternative but to go along with it. But like I say, it's possible, if either of these things isn't true, that the market will suppress technologies like these becoming 'just the way things are'. Again though, I honestly don't think that is likely looking at what's happened with web tracking, CCTV and the like. It's possible this, however, is a bit more 'in your face' (pun intended) and will spur a greater negative reaction in people.
rmc 11y ago
I wonder what the data protection implications of this are? I presume there are many. You're storing personal information on people, possibly transfering it to another businesses, analysing it and using it to make decisions....
pdkl95 11y ago
<span style="color: #FF2400">A</span>

51 points by SimplyUseless 11y ago

> We later discover my thick-rimmed glasses are the problem. It's something easily fixed by adjusting the system settings, Simon tells me. Facial recognition is a hard problem; allowing for thick-rimmed glasses is not 'easily' fixed.

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
Good, corporations have been allowed to go too far with their surveillance.
delinka 11y ago
Well, you can't admit that to a reporter/the public...

fredley 11y ago

This does not scale. It might work for a few people in a population of thousands, but beyond that false positives are going to be a real problem.

Already__Taken 11y ago
It's not going to be great for having 1 robbery and nabbing the next person your cameras ID. But in this day and age were the police won't go out for burglary calls we might end up with person A identified in X surveillance system incidents over Y years. That's an interesting step forward even if it isn't damning.
- SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
  Is that really a step forward? When combined with the false positives issue, there could be a lot of harassment of innocents who accidentally fit a profile.
bsenftner 11y ago
I work in facial recognition. When you say it does not scale, how so? I have a system with 975K people in it, the US registered sex offenders database, and with a single quad core laptop a lookup takes about 8 seconds. With a server class 32+ core system the lookup is nearly real time. How does that not scale?
- ultramancool 11y ago
  I assume he more meant accuracy at scale - if you have a large population how does the accuracy do? Do you wind up with many close samples or are things pretty good?
  - bsenftner 11y ago
    Pretty much all FR systems generate a list of matches, ranked from closest match on down. The size of the list is configurable. It is also industry standard NOT to use the list as an authority. Given a list of high matches (greater than 90%) a human can quickly filter out obvious false positives, and then the remaining are retained for further consideration. It is also industry standard NOT to rely on FR alone; combining FR with other measures reduces the ability for a false positive. The issue I find with FR is people expecting it to be some super technology, gleaming significant information from a dust spec. Its not like that. And the media is playing it up with unrealistic descriptions. Remember the original DOOM and it's quality of graphics? That is where FR is now. We've got a ways before the journalist hype is close to reality. And the mature technology will not be FR, but a comprehensive multiple biometric measuring system capturing far more than someone's face.
    - Retric 11y ago
      So, if you’re looking for 1% of a total population your false positive rate before human intervention is 99%. That's not useful for automated systems. Further, identical twins are going to show an image that would fool human verification making this questionable for many tasks even with human supervision. PS: Almost 1% of the population has an identical twin. (% of births is lower, but you get 2 twins.)
popeshoe 11y ago
This is clearly a play by the plastic surgery lobby to get people to have work done so they look less like known criminals.
CodeCube 11y ago
The problem of false positives can and will simply be farmed out to a mechanical turk type of process ... a farm of low-cost workers will simply review hits, and if there's any possibility that it's a match, it will be escalated up several levels until action is taken.
a3n 11y ago
If this was deployed in the US, I'd be concerned about being shot by the police because I was false-IDed as a violent criminal. Because in the US, it's become protect the police at all costs, including the cost of my life.

agd 11y ago

Widespread facial recognition is going to add a whole new slew of data for GCHQ/NSA to data mine. Not to mention advertisers tracking exactly where you walk in shopping malls and shops. From my understanding, UK law requires that you be informed if subject to facial recognition, but, analogous to online tracking/advertising, does not require your permission to begin it. Sigh, gets out my rimmed glasses

mtmail 11y ago
Would informing you be different from the 100s of "CCTV in operation" signs you walk past every day?
CodeCube 11y ago
The requirement to inform is easily met with a nice sign posted at every doorway saying, "smile, you're on camera (facial recognition)". It will easily be accepted by the masses who simply want to get in, buy their stuff, and get out.
Someone1234 11y ago
> Widespread facial recognition is going to add a whole new slew of data for GCHQ/NSA to data mine. Less than you think. We're all walking around with beacons in our pockets already. They already have the ability to "follow" a person to within a square mile, and that individual is far more knowable (i.e. less false positives) than facial recognition. Between IMEI spotting and license plate readers surrounding central London, they have a real time SimCity-esk map of the city. The facial recognition stuff might be the cherry on top, but it is hardly going to be a major gain. PS - And as far as I know they already have facial recognition cameras as most major tube stations.

pavel_lishin 11y ago

I wonder if the CV Dazzle[1] style will take off in the UK. Maybe we'll finally get the exact cyberpunk future promised us by Gibson, etc. [1] https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/

bsenftner 11y ago
No need to go that far: every system I'm aware of fails when there are no eyebrows. (I'm in the FR industry.)
- fit2rule 11y ago
  Your eyebrows must be [<-------- this -------->] long to enter this store/view this content.
- kozukumi 11y ago
  So Whoopi Goldberg might be some master thief and there is nothing that can be done?!
- pavel_lishin 11y ago
  I feel like shaving off your eyebrows is actually going further than putting some make-up on.
kmfrk 11y ago
Like Tor and other security/privacy measures, it only really works when it's generally adopted; otherwise people in the style will stand out on their own.
- rmc 11y ago
  I believe someone working on Tor (or similar privacy tool), said that a privacy system is only good if it's used by people to share photos of cats. If a tool is only used by shady people for shady means, then the tool itself (and use of it) is suspicious. But if it's used by many average people to do mundane things like sharing photos of cats, then subversives can use it too

falcolas 11y ago

So, how would a reformed thief go in to buy basic goods once this becomes more widespread? Do we no longer believe that someone can pay off their debt to society and become a useful member of said society?

ddalex 11y ago
Nope. Fuck them anyway, and fuck any twins of said thieves. Fuck them doppelgangers, and any person resembling them. And any false positives, for that matter. I, for one, welcome our precog overlords.
- falcolas 11y ago
  So, no, you don't believe in someone being able to reform. The rest was not really necessary.
  - ddalex 11y ago
    The big, black one that breaths heavily, that's his father. The rest was not really necessary.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - PeterisP 11y ago
    Let's say that 90% people of thieves successfully reform and become honest people. Assuming that 1% or less of general population are thieves, it still would mean that a previously known thief has a 10% chance of being 'unreformed', and that they are a 10 times bigger risk than the average person; and it's not prohibited to use that information to safeguard yourself.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
We're talking here about thieves that hadn't been caught by the Police. Maybe the way to handle it could be that if you're a thief and had a change of heart, report to the local Police station and agree to serve your time in exchange for getting your face removed from the database.

a3n 11y ago

What happens to a face after it's in a database, or multiple databases, gets arrested, spends time in jail, and then goes straight? Will it be as impossible to get off these databases as it is to get off the no fly list?

bsenftner 11y ago
And that has nothing to do with FR and its technology. The contents of an FR database and getting items removed is purely human politics.
- a3n 11y ago
  This technology, deployed, is without a doubt a political issue. Divorcing what we work on from how it's used is irresponsible. And I'm not saying don't develop technology, but we have to recognize and consider how it fits into society. We have to discuss. The Stasi recruiting human spies from among the general population was both a logistical question and a political issue. The NSA weakening encryption, or parking on backbones or datacenters, is a technology and a political issue. The political urge to inflict both kinds of spying is just that, a political one. As technology improves, it makes the job of spies and other criminals that much easier, increasing the spy's reach, and changing the character of society. The technology is fascinating, but it's not divorced from society. We're all swimming in the same soup.
rmc 11y ago
This is why the EU courts have a "right to be forgotten"
DanBC 11y ago
Possibly like the DNA database - really hard to get off. IIt's worse than just convicted criminals being stuck on the database though. A bunch of people are arrested, and have their photo and DNA taken and added to databases, but they're never tried and thus never convicted, but their details stay on the system unless they apply to have them removed. Here is a case from 2008 where two people went to court to get their details taken off: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7764069.stm And here's an earlier quote from a stupid judge suggesting everyone should be on the database: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6979138.stm

DannoHung 11y ago

I look forward to privacy conscious individuals taking steps: https://cvdazzle.com/ https://cvdazzle.com/

davnicwil 11y ago

I wonder if places using systems such as this will have to declare it plainly? If they do, seems like there might be some backlash, with people preferring not to go to businesses starting down the path of using this sort of tech and spending more time in those which could, but choose not to, use it. Assuming of course it doesn't end up just completely ubiquitous like web ads etc, the market could force tech like this into the high-risk margins, i.e. high-end jewellery shops etc, rather than it eventually popping up in every pub and high-street shop. I will say though, having written that, I do think it's likelier it'll just end up ubiquitous.

rmc 11y ago
> I wonder if places using systems such as this will have to declare it plainly? There is a lot of law about data protection in the UK & EU. So, yes.
cjrp 11y ago
Some pubs/clubs already require things like fingerprints to be taken before going in, it doesn't seem to stop people going there. If anything, something which is less effort for the customer (like the Facewatch system) would probably be preferred
- davnicwil 11y ago
  It won't stop everyone, some people don't care, might be socially pressured to just going in anyway in a group, etc. But for customers who do care, it could actually work in the opposite way too. If a club wants to take your fingerprints, it's usually after you've already entered the place, having possibly queued, at a point where it's very annoying and socially awkward if in a group to about-turn and say "you know what, no, let's go elsewhere". If on the other hand there's a sign outside declaring "we use Facewatch here" then it's actually much easier for customers for whom that represents a problem to just continue walking past, and not be drawn in in the first place. It may be that simply not enough people care about having their biometric data read and stored in databases etc, or that it'll be so ubiquitous that there's no alternative but to go along with it. But like I say, it's possible, if either of these things isn't true, that the market will suppress technologies like these becoming 'just the way things are'. Again though, I honestly don't think that is likely looking at what's happened with web tracking, CCTV and the like. It's possible this, however, is a bit more 'in your face' (pun intended) and will spur a greater negative reaction in people.

rmc 11y ago

I wonder what the data protection implications of this are? I presume there are many. You're storing personal information on people, possibly transfering it to another businesses, analysing it and using it to make decisions....

pdkl95 11y ago