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Chinese police don high-tech glasses to nab suspects
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoRemarkably close form factor to Glass, but definitely not something Google would be participating in. Glass Enterprise Edition is much sleeker, this has a much more boxed-off front. Looks like they may be using the same projector-style display as Glass, but it's covered so that an onlooker can't see if it's displaying anything or not. Fairly thick tether cable, seems thicker than you'd need for just power, unlikely it operates standalone. Could be like a USB-C cable, maybe, to run all the power, display, and camera data to another unit on her person?
- grondilu 9y agoNotice that the smart glasses tech is improving fast. Intel recently showcased a very convincing (according to a reporter) prototype called "Vaunt". One advantage is that it looks basically like a normal pair of glasses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnfwClgheF0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnfwClgheF0
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoI did see Vaunt! For someone who already wears prescription lenses, that looks fantastic. (And the camera was never a key perk of my Glass unit to me.) The biggest thing right now for me, is what software I can run on it, and how much control I have over that software. I've been fiddling with a Vufine, which I can connect to pretty much any HDMI feed. Very cool, though it's a fair bit larger and bulkier than the state of the art.
- grondilu 9y agoSince this thread is about an article mentioning Black Mirror, I am reminded of the episode "crocodile". It depicts a tech that allows insurance companies and law enforcement to tap into people's memory and extract images of what has been seen. Reading visual information from the mind is still far off, but if someday smart glasses become widespread, and assuming that they backlog their video input to the cloud or something, then for all intents and purposes, it'd be basically the same. A very significant fraction of the population already wear glasses, so it's not too far fetched to imagine that soon, everything we see will be logged somewhere.
- pjc50 9y ago> definitely not something Google would be participating in Not something Google would get to choose whether to participate in.
- mc32 9y agoI get why human rights orgs would want to speak against this technology, from a Western philosophy and law perspective. China does not have the same philosophical or legal lineage. They will have to find out on their own whether the cons outweigh the pros. Theoretically, if the system is not corrupted by misinformation (false or incomplete information), it has the potential to keep the streets free of wanted criminals --which is a noble goal. The question is whether keeping criminals off the streets will trample on innocent people's rights and if so whether the general Chinese public would accept that deal. That said, I can see this technology also taking off in some public areas in the West --ports of entry, for example. I also think human rights orgs also are concerned that China might show enough effective use of the tech that states outside Asia will want to at least trial it out.
- allthenews 9y agoDo you believe that the will of the Chinese Government is representative of the will of the Chinese citizenry?
- mc32 9y agoYes and no. By that I mean, I understand they don't have a political say. They don't get to "vote on the issues" like others might [the party makes those decisions]. At the same time, I would tend to think if you put the question to your Chinese on the street over there they will favor this technology (and its use) with a few conscientious objectors who will be few and far between.
- paulie_a 9y agoThat is probably due to a culture of fear
- allthenews 9y agoBecause overt conscientious objectors will have their social credit scores lowered. Do you not see the oppression? Does this not parallel the Soviet Union?
- 9y ago
- gruez 9y ago>the newest use of facial recognition technology that has drawn concerns among human rights groups why are they getting up in arms about this? networked cameras with facial recognition have been around for years. what's so different about mounting it on a police officer's head?
- akira2501 9y ago> what's so different about mounting it on a police officer's head? I'm not even mad at the implementation in general, the article implies that the officer first identifies a suspicious person and then engages the technology to make an identification. However, it's probably due to the fact that China is a country where your religion can get you arrested or kidnapped by the state.. so, it's still unsettling.
- gruez 9y agostill, it's not like they couldn't do it before, with security checkpoints and face recognition cameras everywhere.
- test1235 9y agoSo why bother with this new tech? Obviously so they can do it more.
- tracker1 9y agoThe use of such invasive practices is unsettling even in countries where such things aren't regular (now)... Politics change, and what is acceptable changes. Any technology or legal tool available to the government will eventually be used in the worst way imaginable.
- globuous 9y agoRob Lake's comment is pretty spot on (I'm taking the liberty to repost w/o his authorization): ""The app brings up the suspect’s vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address." Presumably version 2 of the app will also pop up the person's social credit score." That being said, this will definitely come to the west sooner or later. I mean, doesn't London already have cameras at every street corner for instance ?
- speeq 9y ago> I mean, doesn't London already have cameras at every street corner for instance ? I'm concerned about things like these in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#Provisions_of_the_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2017#Reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2017#React...
- guildenstern 9y agoMost cameras in the U.K. are privately owned and operated with no central system.
- rikkus 9y agoAfter watching various films where organisations are able to pull up feeds from cameras absolutely anywhere in the world, I'm wondering how long it will be before there's a mandatory internet connection and back door on all 'security' cameras sold.
- mtgx 9y agoThe backdoors are already there. Most surveillance cameras are sold with hardcoded user accounts.
- RepressedEmu 9y agoCheckout Shodan where you can look into thousands of cams around the world from parking garages, shops, and even baby cams.
- marcrosoft 9y agoLike Bitcoin, this type of technology will be used for good and bad. How can we use this to our advantage?
- jorblumesea 9y agoLeading the way in totalitarianism! One thing I'm glad the West is not a leader in... Just a http call away from "enemy of the state".
- sundvor 9y agoTFA: "The app brings up the (scanned person's) vital information, including name, ethnicity, gender and address (..), the address of the hotel where they are staying and information related to their internet usage." Wow. So just by looking at you, they can see how often you visit Hacker News - or what else. Scary as.
- nine_k 9y agoUsed VPN much? Tried to open suspicious sites? Issued suspicious search queries? A potential target for a harmonization effort.
- CodeSheikh 9y agoDo foreigners have to give biometric information such as finger prints, facial data to the Chinese airport authorities when they visit China? Anyone?
- null0pointer 9y agoI visited China on tourist visa in December (2017) and didn't have to give up any biometrics other than photos/videos from the cameras placed everywhere.
- paulie_a 9y agoSo yes you did via the photos
- blackoil 9y agoUS asks for photo/fingerprints while getting visa.
- liuw 9y agoEU and Britain, too.
- odiroot 9y agoI had my face scanned flying in to Beijing, then again all 10 of my fingerprints while crossing on foot from Hong Kong.
- contingencies 9y agoYes. You have always had to supply a photo for a Chinese visa. A fingerprint requirement was added recently (mid 2017 I believe) at all the Shenzhen/HK border points (ferry, 3x land crossings) but it sounds like it hasn't yet reached all the other airports/border crossings yet.
- Tech-Noir 9y agoIdea for a Black Mirror episode (from the past): In the future, people of the internet are unable to write about new technology without resorting to increasingly tiresome, lazy and spurious references to a popular British Twilight Zone remake.
- danschumann 9y agoI think we romanticize "being on the lamb". For the 99.999% of the time, if someone is a "wanted man", it's much better for society if he is apprehended. I don't see this as a threat. If, however, every innocent person were tracked, and crimes were generated based on observations ( like souped up red-light cameras for every imaginable crime ), and charges were created automatically ( and algorithmically ), that would suck. Or, it would make us realize most laws suck and we'd remove them.
- kristofferR 9y agoMost people in the US are wanted for stupid stuff, like not being able to pay their parking fines.
- DoreenMichele 9y agoIt gets worse: many are essentially wanted for being the wrong skin color. A lot of laws disproportionately impact people of color. AKA systemic racism. Downvoting it doesn't make it not true. See this article for example: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-theft-racial-justice https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-the...
- paulie_a 9y agoParking fines are generally on the car, not a person
- DoreenMichele 9y agoCitation? Because that doesn't fit my understanding.
- knowThySelfx 9y agoSo the car will pay the fine?
- paulie_a 9y ago
- drvdevd 9y agoIMO the most dystopian part of this technology will be, as usual, the failure modes.
- taherchhabra 9y agoI feel, once criminals realize this facial recognition thing, they will start using facemasks or some other new techniques
- vadimberman 9y agoGiven that some filters may throw the facial recognition off the scent, probably some kind of makeup or a combination of fake scars, different hairstyle, eye bags should be enough. I saw Facebook misidentifying siblings of different gender with a year difference in age. The bone structure of their faces is similar, all the rest is different.
- tsukikage 9y agoJust a beauty spot or two in suitably adversarial locations. https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08945 https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08945
- Bucephalus355 9y agoAll these reports have the feelings of small rumblings or rumors of purges and famines that leaked out of the Soviet Union in the 30’s. The dismissal of all of them due to China’s size and growth really strengthens the analogy too. Privacy is important because basically we all are, at least once a day, committing some kind of crime. I mean the definition for loitering is so broad that alone gets most people. The ad-tech companies of the world think they are criticized now, but they have no idea the judgment history will render for some of the attitudes and practices that have been promoted regarding data and privacy. Some of this stuff is as naive as Charles Lindbergh helping the Luftwaffe because he believed airplanes would connect all the peoples of the world and promote global peace. What is it with “connecting people” and really terrible ideas? All totalitarian governments, not being very innovative, have thrived off of inventions that have been developed elsewhere and have been bearable, and then mutated into unrecognizable monsters under them.
- meri_dian 9y agoYou yourself are admitting that terrible evil can be done by governments without any of the advanced technology that some fret over. It's not about the technology. It's about the will of the government. Think about all the horrendous evils rendered upon the citizenry of early nations and empires in the distant past. No advanced technology there. Just a twisted view of right and wrong. What this tells us is that regardless of what technology is available, a good government will do good, and an evil government will do evil. That really goes for any entity. You name it.
- hrktb 9y agoSure it’s about the will of the gorvening body. Then you’ll have to agree a good bunch of current western societies have governments willing to do evil or let evil be done for a reason or another. Nothing is black and white, but the current trends about how people are equaly treated and human life is valued is still in the darker greys in my opinion.
- Bucephalus355 9y agoOk you’re definitely right with the technology thing not being an issue to “govs killing lots of people”. Let me say that currently, because the technologies are new, not well understood, and not regulated by any kind of international treaty or norms (even national regulations sometimes) they can and will be abused in ways that are hard for other countries to protest against in a credible manner. In China during The Great Famine under Mao, 50 million people died. I know numbers and history can seem so distant, but that’s more than the number of people who died in WWI and near the low end of estimates for WWII (especially the early estimates). It was insanity on a level no society has ever perpetuated. A good example of this was that 40% of all structures were torn down during this period. Incredible. It’s all probably worse than we know too due to a lack of records and archives that individuals have access too. The National Book Award winner this year was about Russian totalitarianism called “The Future is History”. If this is true, the future is a much worse place for the Chinese people.
- meri_dian 9y agoGood, technology like this is good. Worrying about potential misuse of this technology is misplaced worry. Our concern is better placed on forming governments that will use this technology for the common good (whatever that is determined to be) than on the availability of the technology itself. It's not about the technology. It's about the will of the government. Think about all the horrendous evils rendered upon the citizenry of early nations and empires in the distant past. No advanced technology there. Just a twisted view of right and wrong. What this tells us is that regardless of what technology is available, a good government will do good, and an evil government will do evil. That really goes for any entity. You name it.
- dredmorbius 9y agoThere are technologies and programmes intended for good which have resulted in unambiguously bad outcomes. Good intentions are not enough.
- tanilama 9y agoGovernment is never good or bad. If government has a will, it can only be to preserve itself. That is why it is so important to hold it accountable, to align its objective with the will of the society. Weirdly, Chinese government is driven by the fear that it can be overthrown if the economy stops growing, thus it delegates so much focus to economic investment. With technology like this, they might, in one day, think they are no longer have such concern anymore.
- commandpaul 9y agoHas anyone played with Baidou`s Face Ai Products , I cant read Mandrin and The site is impossible to navigate with google transelate.@ http://ai.baidu.com/tech/face http://ai.baidu.com/tech/face Would really appreciate a pointer to a independent performance eval of the same .
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- shironineja 9y agoOK. Did you find these SDK? http://ai.baidu.com/sdk#bfr http://ai.baidu.com/sdk#bfr from there you will need to still sign-up via their free tier via dreaded portal for API key: https://console.bce.baidu.com/ai/?fromai=1#/ai/face/overview/index https://console.bce.baidu.com/ai/?fromai=1#/ai/face/overview... Apparently "立即注册" means "Sign up now"! So you will have to go through that and lovingly translate each field. If you right-click in Chrome and click Inspect on a textbox you will see they have English names for their control namess (like name="userName") ... lol.
- commandpaul 9y agoThanks !
- vadimberman 9y agoI'm sorry, I do not understand the alarmist tone. Yes, in many cases the uses of tech in China are disturbing (like the supposedly planned social credit system). But this case? It's the job of the police to find people. Facial recognition helps it (although, I suspect, it won't be as flawless as advertised). How is it functionally different from the recognition tech in airports? Because the cops look scarier?
- drawkbox 9y agoEven the police/government can contain bad actors, some might even like the cover. The problem is when access to private data goes beyond the need, probabilistically people will abuse it, especially people with an authoritarian slant that are tripping on the power.
- vadimberman 9y agoSo how is it different? The police can access files online anyway, it's just a matter of convenience. Most likely, the online databases are now accessible on mobiles.
- dredmorbius 9y agoMiss Pao's phenomenoscopic spectacles. (Neal Stephenson, Diamond Age)
- azurezyq 9y agoAccording to Chinese news for the same event, the vendor is http://www.llvision.com/ http://www.llvision.com/ The product and the logo look so similar to google glass though. Good product and use case from technical perspective.
- samdk 9y agoThis is very reminiscent of Charlie Stross' Halting State/Rule 34
- metaphorical 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho-Pass
- dalbasal 9y agoFace recognition exists, is becoming trivial and this has implications. I saw a demo of sorts about 6 years ago, and heard rumors of various research projects @ FB. Banner tracking in malls that link banner "views" to "conversions" using a camera armed cash registers. Hi-res cameras on streets that collect data like wildlife tracking collars. A stadium cam that can id all the people at a match. A smart building that knows who's inside it & where. Casino cams that dispatch cocktails waitresses to VIPs wherever they are. Casinos've been using face recognition since early days, for persona non grata identification. Coffee shop loyalty stamps. School attendance. Prison monitoring, with relationship graphs and ML conspiracy detection. Traffic Analytics.... There are a ton of applications, commercial, security, intelligence or general nosiness. IMO, the best way of thinking about face recognition is: Google Analytics will now work for physical reality. All this stuff just exists. FB (and many others) have an enormous, proprietary set of tagged photos. You could probably create your own set just scraping social media and google image search. Some applications don't even need it. Face recognition works. Cameras are high-res & cheap. The software is fast. Customers want it. It will happen. We (our generation) has not shown the political will (or competence) required to create new rights and limitations on power sufficient to moderate this kind of technology, thus far. The only thing preventing wide-scale & unlimited use is creepiness feelings and that is temporary. Putting the technology onto AR robocop glasses is just an illustrative way of demonstrating implications. If this is well implemented, every police force will want it in some form. Fugitives are needles-in-haystacks and I suspect this will turn up a ton of them. It's probably a genuinely useful police tool, unlike the dragnet digital snooping they do.
- rtpg 9y agoA bit of a strong idea, but what if we just outright say that face recognition is unethical? I have a hard time finding any use that is positive for society. Advertising and surveillance. Given that, what if we try to convince as many people as possible to not research this tech, nor work for any company working on this. You wouldn't work for a weapons manufacturer, maybe the same metrics need to be applied to adtech and all this other tracking stuff
- tmnvix 9y ago
- arkh 9y ago> The system is part of China’s efforts to build a digital surveillance system able to use a variety of biometric data — from photos and iris scans to fingerprints — to keep close tabs on the movements of the entire population. Currently in some country people pay to live in cities or neighborhood with better security theatre. I can imagine 50 years from now when you'll be recorded and traced everywhere people will pay for the privilege of living in closed neighborhood with no sensor inside.
- hmwhy 9y agoSerious question/statement looking for an answer here—I don’t understand why every time an article along the line of this gets attention it makes me wonder if anyone out there is working on two things: 1. Educating the general population how the latest technologies can/are being used to affect their privacy 2. Working hard to be an independent, trustworthy part that scrutinises the government I honestly don’t understand the general attitude of most of the comments on articles like this, particular when you are not living in a country where censorship is “okay”. In an ideal society (in my opinion) the government would act in the best interest of the society and the government is scrutinised by a well-informed population. This is certainly not what is happening in most, if not all, countries; but seeing some of the comments on HN repeatedly that don’t go beyond “scary as” or “this is not okay” is quite disappointing and makes me wonder where else I should look for reasonable opinions sometimes. Have we not learn anything from storeis about govermental mass surveillance programs in recent years? How about perhaps we should all sit down, think, and set standards for how to protect everyone while setting encforcabke standards for what is an isn’t okay?
- otaviokz 9y agoI think/believe there's lack of "external stimulus" for doing that. Unless you have a channel where a big part of the audience is both intelligent and independently thinking, your message get's no traction. Simple defences of this or that extreme get a lot of attention because anyone can understand that. Maybe it's time the average "above average brained citizen" grow up and start uniting. But then we all know what can happen to such groups, either being eradicated or hijacked by political interests. Sorry, I'm feeling very cynic today.
- coldcode 9y agoWhile the tech is interesting, I'd like to know the security of the backend system and the data access system. Poor security allowing it to be manipulated by others could make it a powerful tool for all sorts of criminals or foreign governments. Like Stalin said, its not who votes that matters, its who counts the votes. Likewise the recognition might be perfect but the data is fake.
- firebender6 9y agoWhy is this not evoking a stronger response from the public? Or globally? Mass surveillance has always been a troubling possibility with computer vision. I remember a client who approached us a few years ago to develop software to surveil his employees in departmental store (containing no particularly special commodity). To track his employees 24-7. We refused to take up the project. I can't believe we are on the way to implement to the same idea at this large a scale! No matter what the short term benefits are, I believe the long term effects are going to be very very unpleasant. Orwell's world doesn't seem too far off.