8 ms·

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

60 points by cyanbane 15y ago

antics 15y ago
Less concerned about privacy. More concerned about what this sort of thing means to juries. A lot of forensic "evidence" is not actually completely conclusive, but people seem to have a built-in notion of how solid, say, fingerprint and DNA analysis are. It's sometimes very hard to convince a jury that these things are not necessarily incriminating, which is very bad because on a surprisingly often basis they are not strong enough to warrant conviction. Facial recognition is also not completely foolproof, and while I applaud the idea that we should leverage technology to catch criminals who would otherwise go free, I personally am not willing to do so at the cost of innocent convictions. I recommend proceeding down this path cautiously.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  On the other hand, "CSI" has made juries expect hard scientific evidence of the sort presented on the show, which rarely if ever actually happens in real life. It's possible that juries will refuse to convict without a positive identification by this new system - which, like all projects, will probably be riddled with bugs, and be useless for awhile. On the gripping hand, you've got your false positives.
luu 15y ago
The only surprising thing about this is that it took so long for them to do it. I'd actually assumed that they were already doing this.
- mirkules 15y ago
  At the state level, there are some states that have already implemented facial recognition. I can tell you that even at the state level, integration was not easy. At a federal level, IAFIS is not limited by capability, but by sheer size of the database and the number of requests -- this only for fingerprint packets (I don't remember if they process palm data, but palm data definitely increases packet size significantly). The point is, sometimes we are mesmerized by prototypes and applications at a small scale, but when you increase the scale, development, integration, and deployment challenges (edit: and costs) increase exponentially.
- JoeAltmaier 15y ago
  They do on CSI all the time!
ben1040 15y ago
A few years ago I signed up for a NEXUS pass[1] and was background checked, fingerprinted, photographed, and had my iris scans taken. I can only assume that my information had to have been transferred to other databases such as this as well. [1] http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_prog/ http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_pro...
- oniTony 15y ago
  And soon you might be eligible to come up as a false-positive for all kinds of FBI lookups!
  - astrodust 15y ago
    One step closer to Brazil. If law enforcement didn't hold such blind faith in technology I'd be encouraged by this development. Instead you're likely to get nabbed for the crime of simply looking like a criminal.
naner 15y ago
Facebook's massive identity database with linked photos would be useful for this service.
- sixothree 15y ago
  Or even the driver license photo databases.
  - naner 15y ago
    Good call, I didn't even consider the most obvious. They'd likely have many fewer hoops to jump through to get at that data.
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  I wonder how difficult it would be to write an app that subtly distorts facial features in photographs, and pass every photo I upload through it. Is there a point where I would be recognizable to friends and family, and yet make algorithms choke? And if there is, I wonder what would happen when my grandchildren are looking through old photoalbums, and wondering why Grandpa looks a little weird in all of his photos.
  - schwit 15y ago
    Then they will arrest you for interfering with a law enforcement officer. Not that it will stick, but by the time you get it cleared up you are $100k in the hole from legal expenses and a message has been sent to anyone else thinking of doing the same.
    - pavel_lishin 15y ago
      I'd love to see which specific officer would be named in the warrant.
- mc32 15y ago
  A team up of FB with Polar Rose would have been pretty spectacular.
ck2 15y ago
Oh this will end well. Nah it will never be abused or have mission creep. Now the TSA will have a database to use on everyone while they wait in line for a bus, train or plane. You protested at OWS? No flying for you. Oh you false match a felon? No flying for you either. I wonder when they will just start grabbing people left and right off the street to do iris scans like the military does to the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- mc32 15y ago
  Isn't this at least arguably better than broadcasting a suspect's photo over the local news outlets --which is the current way of dealing with this information deficiency? It's not being used to convict people, it's used to identify a suspect who could end up being found guilty via normal procedure --but this does not bypass that procedure.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. It completely invalidates the assumption of innocence, which - as far as I am informed as an European - is part of the Constitution). Besides, as the grandparent mentioned, the potential for abuse is too high. Especially in the hands of a government who shows clear tendencies towards a police state - which most western ones do, including the US.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. So do I. Automating facial recognition seems preferable to broadcasting mugshots and perp walks. The technology already abounds in the private sector anyway; if you can take a photo with your phone and have Facebook or Picasa ID and tag the people in it, it's unrealistic to demand that law enforcement abstain from using technology available to teenagers.
      - slowpoke 15y ago
jsaxton86 15y ago
Does anyone have another source for this information?
zerostar07 15y ago
I thought it was called "facebook"[1]. [1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
cgs1019 15y ago
A billion dollar budget and 15 minute query times? What happened to the government having mindblowingly awesome tech?
- sp332 15y ago
  It can take days or weeks to get a result back from AFIS (fingerprint database). 15 minutes for a national face recognition system is mindblowingly awesome.
goodweeds 15y ago
Do you ever wonder why it is that as a nation, or a species, we have nothing more creative to do with our monetary and intellectual resources than to use them for the creation of weapons of war, or to create new means of imprisonment? Can't we do better?
- rick888 15y ago
  I wish we could, but the problem is there will always be new forms of criminals that need to be imprisoned and wars that need to be fought. What I want to know is why we need to have rapists, murderers, and criminals? Can't we do better as a species?
  - tricolon 15y ago
    > wars that need to be fought No war needs to be fought.
    - positr0n 15y ago
      No war? What would you have done if you were a leader of a European country at the onset of WWII? Just let Hitler come in and take everything? Or were you just referring to modern wars?
      - goodweeds 15y ago
        Invoking Godwin's law so early? Hitler's rise to power probably could have been prevented had the EU existed earlier, or had Ford's german subsidiary not built Hitler's armaments.
        positr0n 15y ago
        haha yes so sorry but it seemed like the best example. Well of course if you have power to change history you could avoid any war, but that doesn't seem like it answers my question.
    - 15y ago
amandalim89 15y ago
They should use a Facebook api to power their facial recognition search with the social information behind each face. Wouldn't that be powerful?
russell 15y ago
"if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems.", Thomas Bush. What utter crap. Everyone comes to the attention of law enforcement or some other govt. data collection agency. I was once booked into jail for driving without a license. I had one, just another state. My son was put in a mental hospital and booked into jail for assaulting an officer, because he had a violent reaction to a general anesthetic and the dentist called the police. Ever had a driver's license or a passport? Maybe they'll even collect student ids; protect the children and all that.

60 points by cyanbane 15y ago

Less concerned about privacy. More concerned about what this sort of thing means to juries. A lot of forensic "evidence" is not actually completely conclusive, but people seem to have a built-in notion of how solid, say, fingerprint and DNA analysis are. It's sometimes very hard to convince a jury that these things are not necessarily incriminating, which is very bad because on a surprisingly often basis they are not strong enough to warrant conviction. Facial recognition is also not completely foolproof, and while I applaud the idea that we should leverage technology to catch criminals who would otherwise go free, I personally am not willing to do so at the cost of innocent convictions. I recommend proceeding down this path cautiously.

pavel_lishin 15y ago
On the other hand, "CSI" has made juries expect hard scientific evidence of the sort presented on the show, which rarely if ever actually happens in real life. It's possible that juries will refuse to convict without a positive identification by this new system - which, like all projects, will probably be riddled with bugs, and be useless for awhile. On the gripping hand, you've got your false positives.

luu 15y ago

The only surprising thing about this is that it took so long for them to do it. I'd actually assumed that they were already doing this.

mirkules 15y ago
At the state level, there are some states that have already implemented facial recognition. I can tell you that even at the state level, integration was not easy. At a federal level, IAFIS is not limited by capability, but by sheer size of the database and the number of requests -- this only for fingerprint packets (I don't remember if they process palm data, but palm data definitely increases packet size significantly). The point is, sometimes we are mesmerized by prototypes and applications at a small scale, but when you increase the scale, development, integration, and deployment challenges (edit: and costs) increase exponentially.
JoeAltmaier 15y ago
They do on CSI all the time!

ben1040 15y ago

A few years ago I signed up for a NEXUS pass[1] and was background checked, fingerprinted, photographed, and had my iris scans taken. I can only assume that my information had to have been transferred to other databases such as this as well. [1] http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_prog/ http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_pro...

oniTony 15y ago
And soon you might be eligible to come up as a false-positive for all kinds of FBI lookups!
- astrodust 15y ago
  One step closer to Brazil. If law enforcement didn't hold such blind faith in technology I'd be encouraged by this development. Instead you're likely to get nabbed for the crime of simply looking like a criminal.

naner 15y ago

Facebook's massive identity database with linked photos would be useful for this service.

sixothree 15y ago
Or even the driver license photo databases.
- naner 15y ago
  Good call, I didn't even consider the most obvious. They'd likely have many fewer hoops to jump through to get at that data.
pavel_lishin 15y ago
I wonder how difficult it would be to write an app that subtly distorts facial features in photographs, and pass every photo I upload through it. Is there a point where I would be recognizable to friends and family, and yet make algorithms choke? And if there is, I wonder what would happen when my grandchildren are looking through old photoalbums, and wondering why Grandpa looks a little weird in all of his photos.
- schwit 15y ago
  Then they will arrest you for interfering with a law enforcement officer. Not that it will stick, but by the time you get it cleared up you are $100k in the hole from legal expenses and a message has been sent to anyone else thinking of doing the same.
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    I'd love to see which specific officer would be named in the warrant.
mc32 15y ago
A team up of FB with Polar Rose would have been pretty spectacular.

ck2 15y ago

Oh this will end well. Nah it will never be abused or have mission creep. Now the TSA will have a database to use on everyone while they wait in line for a bus, train or plane. You protested at OWS? No flying for you. Oh you false match a felon? No flying for you either. I wonder when they will just start grabbing people left and right off the street to do iris scans like the military does to the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

mc32 15y ago
Isn't this at least arguably better than broadcasting a suspect's photo over the local news outlets --which is the current way of dealing with this information deficiency? It's not being used to convict people, it's used to identify a suspect who could end up being found guilty via normal procedure --but this does not bypass that procedure.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. It completely invalidates the assumption of innocence, which - as far as I am informed as an European - is part of the Constitution). Besides, as the grandparent mentioned, the potential for abuse is too high. Especially in the hands of a government who shows clear tendencies towards a police state - which most western ones do, including the US.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. So do I. Automating facial recognition seems preferable to broadcasting mugshots and perp walks. The technology already abounds in the private sector anyway; if you can take a photo with your phone and have Facebook or Picasa ID and tag the people in it, it's unrealistic to demand that law enforcement abstain from using technology available to teenagers.
    - slowpoke 15y ago

jsaxton86 15y ago

Does anyone have another source for this information?

zerostar07 15y ago

I thought it was called "facebook"[1]. [1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...

cgs1019 15y ago

A billion dollar budget and 15 minute query times? What happened to the government having mindblowingly awesome tech?

sp332 15y ago
It can take days or weeks to get a result back from AFIS (fingerprint database). 15 minutes for a national face recognition system is mindblowingly awesome.

goodweeds 15y ago

Do you ever wonder why it is that as a nation, or a species, we have nothing more creative to do with our monetary and intellectual resources than to use them for the creation of weapons of war, or to create new means of imprisonment? Can't we do better?

rick888 15y ago
I wish we could, but the problem is there will always be new forms of criminals that need to be imprisoned and wars that need to be fought. What I want to know is why we need to have rapists, murderers, and criminals? Can't we do better as a species?
- tricolon 15y ago
  > wars that need to be fought No war needs to be fought.
  - positr0n 15y ago
    No war? What would you have done if you were a leader of a European country at the onset of WWII? Just let Hitler come in and take everything? Or were you just referring to modern wars?
    - goodweeds 15y ago
      Invoking Godwin's law so early? Hitler's rise to power probably could have been prevented had the EU existed earlier, or had Ford's german subsidiary not built Hitler's armaments.
      - positr0n 15y ago
        haha yes so sorry but it seemed like the best example. Well of course if you have power to change history you could avoid any war, but that doesn't seem like it answers my question.
  - 15y ago

amandalim89 15y ago

They should use a Facebook api to power their facial recognition search with the social information behind each face. Wouldn't that be powerful?

russell 15y ago

"if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems.", Thomas Bush. What utter crap. Everyone comes to the attention of law enforcement or some other govt. data collection agency. I was once booked into jail for driving without a license. I had one, just another state. My son was put in a mental hospital and booked into jail for assaulting an officer, because he had a violent reaction to a general anesthetic and the dentist called the police. Ever had a driver's license or a passport? Maybe they'll even collect student ids; protect the children and all that.