20 ms·

FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project

115 points by denzil_correa 14y ago

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>In addition to scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd. Reminds me of that one scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise boards a tram, only to have the cameras scan and identify his face and alert the authorities.
pstuart 14y ago
What a dilemma: I don't want dangerous people running around hurting people, and I don't trust the government to use such power responsibly.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  I'll take my chances with the "dangerous people," personally. There are, presumably, fewer of them, than there are government agents.
  - wtetzner 14y ago
    Also, there is likely overlap between "dangerous people" and government agents.
- eightbitman 14y ago
  How would you feel if you saw your child get murdered by a junkie?
  - biomechanica 14y ago
    What a ridiculous question. As an individual, yes, horrible and unforgivable is the response. However, I don't think giving up our rights because some "junkie" decided to murder a child is a good or necessary thing to do. What you're asking is to give up our rights for a single possible case of a person doing something horrible. No, we have a system that punishes that person already. We don't need to restrict peoples rights to prevent a rather uncommon thing from happening in the future. You can not stop a mentally ill person or a criminal from doing something horrible. If they are going to do it, then they will find a way to do it. The trick is to recognize the symptoms. Sometimes it is almost impossible to recognize it, but it is possible. Education can help in this case, too. But to track people who are innocent and basically call them potential criminals before any crime is committed, is asinine. What a ridiculous question.
sophacles 14y ago
I think this is a good argument for requiring all software purchased, and all technology developed, with public funds to be public domain and/or open source. A lot of people will believe that we should just kill the project and move on, but honestly, the tech is there, and we have all seen what happens with tech: it just keeps going. The functionality will be snuck in as an add on to some other software package anyway. This isn't to say we shouldn't kill the project -- just that this should be required as open. It won't undo any security/benefit gained from it, much like open crypto. It will however give us the voters the ability to actually provide input about what can/can't be done by the government.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I agree in some sense. This technology as a law enforcement tool is inevitable. I can't see a future in which every national government doesn't use it on some level. So making it open and promoting discussion about its limits is probably the way to go.
- mtgx 14y ago
  I agree with having all/most software developed with taxpayer money be open-sourced. It might even lower the total costs if others contribute to it.
  - malandrew 14y ago
    It also makes it remarkably easy to pick out the contractors who simply aren't up to par and are milking the government of money. Every software engineer can review their code and call out those of unacceptable quality and make sure they never get awarded another contract.
    - Evbn 14y ago
      If you support freedom, you would prefer incompetent contractors here.
- beambot 14y ago
  I don't understand your reasoning. You want to open source a $1B piece of facial recognition software so that _more_ agencies / NGOs / companies / individuals can track our movements? That sounds a little counter productive. At least the FBI (presumably) has accountability and oversight. Can you imagine trying to police abuses if deployed to every municipal law force and marketing agency in the country?
qwertzlcoatl 14y ago
I wonder if Facebook gets subsidies... It's an Orwellian paradise. And let's not forget Google too - they have Picasa, Google+, Android face unlocking...
- mdonahoe 14y ago
  The onion: the facebook as a cia op. http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...
johnohara 14y ago
This, on top of the $451,000,000 already spent on its Sentinel Case Management System. http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-applications/fbis-new-sentinel-system-exclusive-look/232800018 http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-applica...
personlurking 14y ago
If looked at from a distance, with the creation of globalization, (free) trading blocks, 'interdependence' (inter means 'to bury', mind you), we are becoming borderless and so the bad guys no longer reside in such-and-such country. The 'terrorist' is everywhere, the 'terrorist' is/could be you. Thus the idea is to let the gov't deal with it, to protect you against you. Btw, 'love' the argument that 'If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care?'
tjoff 14y ago
Widely available face recognition could potentially threat societies in cities. What would we gain from this? Targeted ads when walking in to your local store? Never having to tag another photo again? (that one is just awesome, but what else?) Personally this is a tech that I would gladly postpone as long as possible, or at least until the whole tech-thing has stabilized. Most governments still want and think it is within their right to censor internet and is as eager as ever to criminalize cryptography - do we want such immature governments to have this tool in their arsenal as well?
- corin_ 14y ago
  There are plenty of potential benefits, for example I flew home (to England) a couple of days ago and rather than queue for a while to have someone check my passport I was able to pop my passport onto a scanner then have the machine check my eyes to see if I am who I claim to be, which meant that in 30 seconds I was out the other side. Facial recognition could speed that up even further. You could get home and your front door would automatically unlock as you approach it, get into your car with genuine keyless entry rather than just the kind that means the keys are in your pocket, pop into Starbucks and be handed your regular drink (or something you ordered on a phone) by somebody who has never served you before, etc. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of arguments against this technology, and I'm not even saying that the good points will end up happening (there's plenty of technological improvements Starbucks could make with existing fairly basic technology already), just that it isn't hard to imagine more than just Facebook-style photo tagging.
  - AutoCorrect 14y ago
    retina scans have already been cracked - this is no security
    - corin_ 14y ago
      Personally I'm not too fussed about the success rate of checking who gets into the UK, while I do care about how long it takes me to get home from abroad, so... don't really mind whether it's good security or not.
pauljburke 14y ago
I have to admit I completely misread that as "FB launches..." and didn't think anything of it, other than that $1 billion was a bit excessive.
sit12 14y ago
What if my twin brother becomes a wanted criminal? Do I risk being jumped and stuffed into an unmarked white government van?
- dohko 14y ago
  Don't worry. Before you know it we'll also have DNA tracking. So you'll be easily distinguishable from your twin brother.
  - drcube 14y ago
    Not your identical twin...
    - enfilade 14y ago
      Eventually they'll be able to distinguish the minute differences in identical twins' epigenomes.
      - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
        Can that be the right word? Do you my their physiology?
        enfilade 14y ago
        In a sense, yes. Epigenome refers to the overall body of regulatory modifications made to DNA and the DNA storage mechanism. A lot of these modifications involve the attachment of small chemical groups to a distinct bit of DNA, or alternately the proteins which DNA is wrapped around while in storage, or a number of other possible mechanisms. Let's say your identical twin is known to be a 1-pack-a-day smoker (assume that the hypothetical panopticon has access to his history of credit card purchases). Assume that you, however, abstain from smoking and also avoid secondhand smoke. There will be certain modifications to your twin's genetic material which may be detectable in the next few decades. These modifications may allow the tracker to positively distinguish between you and your twin. Regarding your question -- smoking (or exercise, or severe depression, etc.) affects your physiology, which in turn may cause changes to your epigenome.
roc 14y ago
Here's to hoping facial camouflage paint/sticker solutions become fashionable.
toomuchcoffee 14y ago
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." 1984, Book 1, Chapter V
- starpilot 14y ago
  I read that book in high school too.
  - thornofmight 14y ago
    It's relevant.
    - malandrew 14y ago
      Yup, because this time it is facial recognition technology. What if it is mind-reading technology in 20 years time? If you don't draw the line in cement instead of sand at some point such as now with facial recognition technology, it will be redrawn over and over and over again. Given that several the hacker community here familiar with dystopian future literature accepts this as inevitable in many comments, suggests that a slippery slope argument is not in the least bit far fetched. If here there are people are accepting, then in other areas of society there are people actively arguing in favor of using facial recognition technology everywhere. Those same people will probably be arguing for equivalent of telescreens once something akin to them are invented.
      - grueful 14y ago
        There exist algorithms for estimating emotion from facial video. The accuracy is kind of hit or miss, but it's enough for "he's experiencing anxiety during the security search, he must be a terrorist."
mistercow 14y ago
>images of a person of interest from security cameras or public photos uploaded onto the internet could be compared against a national repository of images held by the FBI. An algorithm would perform an automatic search and return a list of potential hits for an officer to sort through and use as possible leads for an investigation. I feel like this is going to be the prosecutor's fallacy on steroids. Not only do you have the "cold hit" problem of DNA testing (but with way, way more false positives), but you'll end up with a defendant with near 100% odds of positive identification by the victim. Of course "looks like the perpetrator" and "positively identified by victim" almost entirely overlap as evidence, but it won't necessarily feel that way to a jury.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  Are false positives really such a problem? Most repeat criminals do it because they are dumb and/or impulsive. If you get 10 hits, you just send a cop around to ask each one if they did it. The one that says yes gets arrested. A major fraction of crimes can be solved this way. Many more can be solved by slapping surveillance robots on people and catching their next crime.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    Many cases will be like that yes. And if, as they say, the databases are limited to wanted persons or convicted felons, then the priors won't be terribly out of whack. But it's going to be way easier, PR-wise, to broaden a face database than it ever would have been to broaden a DNA database. It did not take long in the UK, for example, for the National DNA database to creep from "only convicted criminals" to "anyone arrested, even if they were never charged". And that's with people's DNA, which is pretty invasive to obtain. The government takes routinely takes pictures of people; there's no visceral moment of privacy invasion there. It would be easy for the database to expand to include a tremendous number of people, and then your false positive rate really is a problem. It stops even being a reliable way to narrow people down, because there just isn't that much variance in human faces, especially if you have to deal with low resolution and/or noisy data.
drcube 14y ago
I foresee ski masks being the fashion of the future.
- dohko 14y ago
  I wish it were that easy. By law you have to be identifiable in public, therefore you can't wear a mask that covers completely your face.
  - drcube 14y ago
    Which law is that? Plastic surgery will become more popular too.
    - ojiikun 14y ago
      The the state of Georgia there is just such a law: http://www.lawskills.com/code/ga/16/11/38/ http://www.lawskills.com/code/ga/16/11/38/ Interestingly, this occasionally sparks trouble with the police at geek/nerd conventions where costuming is popular.
  - moheeb 14y ago
    Highly doubtful. I'd know a lot of dead snowmobilers.
- drpgq 14y ago
  I'm a researcher at a face recognition company. Big sunglasses do a good job.
  - drcube 14y ago
    That's fantastic news! I wear those terribly unfashionable goggle-like sunglasses for old people that go over my prescription glasses. Looks like I'm safe for the near future. :)
nthj 14y ago
I give it a year or 3 before the government issues a secret order to Facebook to hand over all photos and photo tag records. Facebook already has the data required to match a huge number of faces with their names, addresses, likes, interests, political and religious leanings, and everything else. Sure, the project is just for known criminals now, but it'd be fairly straightforward to start tracking a large portion of the world.
- grandalf 14y ago
  Every year the number of things that constitute criminal acts increases...
- lurchpop 14y ago
  it's probably too hopeful to think they haven't already done that.
lectrick 14y ago
It's bad when Facebook does it, but the FBI… That's perfectly OK!
- ricardonunez 14y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. I'm wondering what Germany will use as an excuse to implement similar system after telling Facebook to destroy their database.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
We are never going to stop the technology being developed and used. And nor should we - the benefits can be enormous. But we must put in place legislation that prevents abuse - and I think it needs to be broad and overarching. I suggest 1. All monitoring of individuals / crowds in public and semi-public areas must be clearly notified, and the raw output of that monitoring must be made publically available within a short and reasonable time frame 2. All access to that raw feed and subsequent processed feeds by government officials must be audited and made available in raw form 3. Exceptions can only be made through warrants signed by civil courts Frankly, there are face recognition, laser scanners and more. Getting away with a crime in a public area will be almost impossible in 20 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that if only the police have access to that information, they will abuse it. Because they are good people mostly.
- hahainternet 14y ago
  There are similar laws already in place in some countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    Afaik the DPA is aimed at processing of data, specifically excludes that collected for security warranted or not, has no teeth to it, has no provision to force the publication of data held as a matter of course (opt in not opt out) and has afaik no case law regarding surveillance (it's mostly focused on internal data processing) we should assume that if I can see a camera I can go to surveillance.gov.UK enter my lat long, choose the camera from a list and see the raw feed - wave at it. And see who has acessed that feed in the past hour. If that os not a normal reflex for people waiting to catch thier train, or walking to the shops, then we have not got the right legislation
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Bruce Schneier: We're at a unique time in the history of surveillance: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Fifteen years ago, they weren't everywhere. Fifteen years from now, they'll be so small we won't be able to see them. Similarly, all the debates we've had about national ID cards will become moot as soon as these surveillance technologies are able to recognize us without us even knowing it. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scanning.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scannin... To me the implications are we have 15 years to make sure we know who is watching us and when.
- marvin 14y ago
  I think we will get a subculture or fashion for complicated facial jewelry or weird makeup patterns to confuse facial recognition algorithms. If cameras and facial recognition technology becomes as ubiquitous as some people are afraid of, I'm guessing that punk will rise again and take a principled stand against authority and privacy intrusions.
  - AutoCorrect 14y ago
    that Muslim veil is looking smarter and smarter all the time
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    It seems life is one step ahead as usual: http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-recognition-software.html http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-recognitio... But hiding your face is only part of the problem, your gait is also pretty unique, as is I suspect your smell, your etc etc. We need a generic catch all law to keep everyone honest. as I keep banging on about.
knightofmars 14y ago
This isn't a new hat. It is something already being used by police departments to identify suspects on video by comparing their facial attributes against records produced by analyzing driver's license photographs.
lucasjans 14y ago
I read the headline as "FB launches $1 billion face recognition project," might not be the actual headline but might as well be true!
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  That's old news: http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-recognition-technology-company-face-com/ http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-reco...
fredBuddemeyer 14y ago
i must wonder how many here realize what the aspirations of an ipo or even a corporate investment mean in this age. so many of us are working for what we disdain - without even realizing it. yet we are the same people that can make the most difference - if we see our responsibilities in a future determined by technological opportunity.
stevenjgarner 14y ago
So who is a "criminal"? The article does not clarify exactly what constitutes a criminal record? Just convictions? Felonies only? Or does it include simple misdemeanors such as speeding tickets? Or does it actually (most likely) include all arrests, including those that never result in convictions (where there is NO criminal record)?
logn 14y ago
I'm pretty sure that if our founding fathers were writing the Bill of Rights today there would be an amendment against dragnet electronic surveillance. It's too easy to turn into a panopticon, driven by people who like panopticons such as my mom with an attitude of: "I'm not doing anything wrong and it's worth it to protect against terrorists". Wait until they redefine what "wrong" is.
rorrr 14y ago
Can't wait for a few major politicians to get caught by these doing something illegal.
SolarNet 14y ago
Of course with a little makeup and hair styling you can prevent facial recognition software: http://cvdazzle.com/ http://cvdazzle.com/ I bet we will be seeing some interesting hairstyles, like those above, in counter culture after facial recognition software becomes pervasive.

115 points by denzil_correa 14y ago

>>In addition to scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd. Reminds me of that one scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise boards a tram, only to have the cameras scan and identify his face and alert the authorities.

pstuart 14y ago

What a dilemma: I don't want dangerous people running around hurting people, and I don't trust the government to use such power responsibly.

mindcrime 14y ago
I'll take my chances with the "dangerous people," personally. There are, presumably, fewer of them, than there are government agents.
- wtetzner 14y ago
  Also, there is likely overlap between "dangerous people" and government agents.
eightbitman 14y ago
How would you feel if you saw your child get murdered by a junkie?
- biomechanica 14y ago
  What a ridiculous question. As an individual, yes, horrible and unforgivable is the response. However, I don't think giving up our rights because some "junkie" decided to murder a child is a good or necessary thing to do. What you're asking is to give up our rights for a single possible case of a person doing something horrible. No, we have a system that punishes that person already. We don't need to restrict peoples rights to prevent a rather uncommon thing from happening in the future. You can not stop a mentally ill person or a criminal from doing something horrible. If they are going to do it, then they will find a way to do it. The trick is to recognize the symptoms. Sometimes it is almost impossible to recognize it, but it is possible. Education can help in this case, too. But to track people who are innocent and basically call them potential criminals before any crime is committed, is asinine. What a ridiculous question.

sophacles 14y ago

I think this is a good argument for requiring all software purchased, and all technology developed, with public funds to be public domain and/or open source. A lot of people will believe that we should just kill the project and move on, but honestly, the tech is there, and we have all seen what happens with tech: it just keeps going. The functionality will be snuck in as an add on to some other software package anyway. This isn't to say we shouldn't kill the project -- just that this should be required as open. It won't undo any security/benefit gained from it, much like open crypto. It will however give us the voters the ability to actually provide input about what can/can't be done by the government.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
I agree in some sense. This technology as a law enforcement tool is inevitable. I can't see a future in which every national government doesn't use it on some level. So making it open and promoting discussion about its limits is probably the way to go.
mtgx 14y ago
I agree with having all/most software developed with taxpayer money be open-sourced. It might even lower the total costs if others contribute to it.
- malandrew 14y ago
  It also makes it remarkably easy to pick out the contractors who simply aren't up to par and are milking the government of money. Every software engineer can review their code and call out those of unacceptable quality and make sure they never get awarded another contract.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    If you support freedom, you would prefer incompetent contractors here.
beambot 14y ago
I don't understand your reasoning. You want to open source a $1B piece of facial recognition software so that _more_ agencies / NGOs / companies / individuals can track our movements? That sounds a little counter productive. At least the FBI (presumably) has accountability and oversight. Can you imagine trying to police abuses if deployed to every municipal law force and marketing agency in the country?

qwertzlcoatl 14y ago

I wonder if Facebook gets subsidies... It's an Orwellian paradise. And let's not forget Google too - they have Picasa, Google+, Android face unlocking...

mdonahoe 14y ago
The onion: the facebook as a cia op. http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-cut-agencys-cos,19753/ http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...

johnohara 14y ago

This, on top of the $451,000,000 already spent on its Sentinel Case Management System. http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-applications/fbis-new-sentinel-system-exclusive-look/232800018 http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-applica...

personlurking 14y ago

If looked at from a distance, with the creation of globalization, (free) trading blocks, 'interdependence' (inter means 'to bury', mind you), we are becoming borderless and so the bad guys no longer reside in such-and-such country. The 'terrorist' is everywhere, the 'terrorist' is/could be you. Thus the idea is to let the gov't deal with it, to protect you against you. Btw, 'love' the argument that 'If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care?'

tjoff 14y ago

Widely available face recognition could potentially threat societies in cities. What would we gain from this? Targeted ads when walking in to your local store? Never having to tag another photo again? (that one is just awesome, but what else?) Personally this is a tech that I would gladly postpone as long as possible, or at least until the whole tech-thing has stabilized. Most governments still want and think it is within their right to censor internet and is as eager as ever to criminalize cryptography - do we want such immature governments to have this tool in their arsenal as well?

corin_ 14y ago
There are plenty of potential benefits, for example I flew home (to England) a couple of days ago and rather than queue for a while to have someone check my passport I was able to pop my passport onto a scanner then have the machine check my eyes to see if I am who I claim to be, which meant that in 30 seconds I was out the other side. Facial recognition could speed that up even further. You could get home and your front door would automatically unlock as you approach it, get into your car with genuine keyless entry rather than just the kind that means the keys are in your pocket, pop into Starbucks and be handed your regular drink (or something you ordered on a phone) by somebody who has never served you before, etc. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of arguments against this technology, and I'm not even saying that the good points will end up happening (there's plenty of technological improvements Starbucks could make with existing fairly basic technology already), just that it isn't hard to imagine more than just Facebook-style photo tagging.
- AutoCorrect 14y ago
  retina scans have already been cracked - this is no security
  - corin_ 14y ago
    Personally I'm not too fussed about the success rate of checking who gets into the UK, while I do care about how long it takes me to get home from abroad, so... don't really mind whether it's good security or not.

pauljburke 14y ago

I have to admit I completely misread that as "FB launches..." and didn't think anything of it, other than that $1 billion was a bit excessive.

sit12 14y ago

What if my twin brother becomes a wanted criminal? Do I risk being jumped and stuffed into an unmarked white government van?

dohko 14y ago
Don't worry. Before you know it we'll also have DNA tracking. So you'll be easily distinguishable from your twin brother.
- drcube 14y ago
  Not your identical twin...
  - enfilade 14y ago
    Eventually they'll be able to distinguish the minute differences in identical twins' epigenomes.
    - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
      Can that be the right word? Do you my their physiology?
      - enfilade 14y ago
        In a sense, yes. Epigenome refers to the overall body of regulatory modifications made to DNA and the DNA storage mechanism. A lot of these modifications involve the attachment of small chemical groups to a distinct bit of DNA, or alternately the proteins which DNA is wrapped around while in storage, or a number of other possible mechanisms. Let's say your identical twin is known to be a 1-pack-a-day smoker (assume that the hypothetical panopticon has access to his history of credit card purchases). Assume that you, however, abstain from smoking and also avoid secondhand smoke. There will be certain modifications to your twin's genetic material which may be detectable in the next few decades. These modifications may allow the tracker to positively distinguish between you and your twin. Regarding your question -- smoking (or exercise, or severe depression, etc.) affects your physiology, which in turn may cause changes to your epigenome.

roc 14y ago

Here's to hoping facial camouflage paint/sticker solutions become fashionable.

toomuchcoffee 14y ago

"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." 1984, Book 1, Chapter V

starpilot 14y ago
I read that book in high school too.
- thornofmight 14y ago
  It's relevant.
  - malandrew 14y ago
    Yup, because this time it is facial recognition technology. What if it is mind-reading technology in 20 years time? If you don't draw the line in cement instead of sand at some point such as now with facial recognition technology, it will be redrawn over and over and over again. Given that several the hacker community here familiar with dystopian future literature accepts this as inevitable in many comments, suggests that a slippery slope argument is not in the least bit far fetched. If here there are people are accepting, then in other areas of society there are people actively arguing in favor of using facial recognition technology everywhere. Those same people will probably be arguing for equivalent of telescreens once something akin to them are invented.
    - grueful 14y ago
      There exist algorithms for estimating emotion from facial video. The accuracy is kind of hit or miss, but it's enough for "he's experiencing anxiety during the security search, he must be a terrorist."

mistercow 14y ago

>images of a person of interest from security cameras or public photos uploaded onto the internet could be compared against a national repository of images held by the FBI. An algorithm would perform an automatic search and return a list of potential hits for an officer to sort through and use as possible leads for an investigation. I feel like this is going to be the prosecutor's fallacy on steroids. Not only do you have the "cold hit" problem of DNA testing (but with way, way more false positives), but you'll end up with a defendant with near 100% odds of positive identification by the victim. Of course "looks like the perpetrator" and "positively identified by victim" almost entirely overlap as evidence, but it won't necessarily feel that way to a jury.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago
Are false positives really such a problem? Most repeat criminals do it because they are dumb and/or impulsive. If you get 10 hits, you just send a cop around to ask each one if they did it. The one that says yes gets arrested. A major fraction of crimes can be solved this way. Many more can be solved by slapping surveillance robots on people and catching their next crime.
- mistercow 14y ago
  Many cases will be like that yes. And if, as they say, the databases are limited to wanted persons or convicted felons, then the priors won't be terribly out of whack. But it's going to be way easier, PR-wise, to broaden a face database than it ever would have been to broaden a DNA database. It did not take long in the UK, for example, for the National DNA database to creep from "only convicted criminals" to "anyone arrested, even if they were never charged". And that's with people's DNA, which is pretty invasive to obtain. The government takes routinely takes pictures of people; there's no visceral moment of privacy invasion there. It would be easy for the database to expand to include a tremendous number of people, and then your false positive rate really is a problem. It stops even being a reliable way to narrow people down, because there just isn't that much variance in human faces, especially if you have to deal with low resolution and/or noisy data.

drcube 14y ago

I foresee ski masks being the fashion of the future.

dohko 14y ago
I wish it were that easy. By law you have to be identifiable in public, therefore you can't wear a mask that covers completely your face.
- drcube 14y ago
  Which law is that? Plastic surgery will become more popular too.
  - ojiikun 14y ago
    The the state of Georgia there is just such a law: http://www.lawskills.com/code/ga/16/11/38/ http://www.lawskills.com/code/ga/16/11/38/ Interestingly, this occasionally sparks trouble with the police at geek/nerd conventions where costuming is popular.
- moheeb 14y ago
  Highly doubtful. I'd know a lot of dead snowmobilers.
drpgq 14y ago
I'm a researcher at a face recognition company. Big sunglasses do a good job.
- drcube 14y ago
  That's fantastic news! I wear those terribly unfashionable goggle-like sunglasses for old people that go over my prescription glasses. Looks like I'm safe for the near future. :)

nthj 14y ago

I give it a year or 3 before the government issues a secret order to Facebook to hand over all photos and photo tag records. Facebook already has the data required to match a huge number of faces with their names, addresses, likes, interests, political and religious leanings, and everything else. Sure, the project is just for known criminals now, but it'd be fairly straightforward to start tracking a large portion of the world.

grandalf 14y ago
Every year the number of things that constitute criminal acts increases...
lurchpop 14y ago
it's probably too hopeful to think they haven't already done that.

lectrick 14y ago

It's bad when Facebook does it, but the FBI… That's perfectly OK!

ricardonunez 14y ago
I was thinking the same thing. I'm wondering what Germany will use as an excuse to implement similar system after telling Facebook to destroy their database.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

We are never going to stop the technology being developed and used. And nor should we - the benefits can be enormous. But we must put in place legislation that prevents abuse - and I think it needs to be broad and overarching. I suggest 1. All monitoring of individuals / crowds in public and semi-public areas must be clearly notified, and the raw output of that monitoring must be made publically available within a short and reasonable time frame 2. All access to that raw feed and subsequent processed feeds by government officials must be audited and made available in raw form 3. Exceptions can only be made through warrants signed by civil courts Frankly, there are face recognition, laser scanners and more. Getting away with a crime in a public area will be almost impossible in 20 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that if only the police have access to that information, they will abuse it. Because they are good people mostly.

hahainternet 14y ago
There are similar laws already in place in some countries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Afaik the DPA is aimed at processing of data, specifically excludes that collected for security warranted or not, has no teeth to it, has no provision to force the publication of data held as a matter of course (opt in not opt out) and has afaik no case law regarding surveillance (it's mostly focused on internal data processing) we should assume that if I can see a camera I can go to surveillance.gov.UK enter my lat long, choose the camera from a list and see the raw feed - wave at it. And see who has acessed that feed in the past hour. If that os not a normal reflex for people waiting to catch thier train, or walking to the shops, then we have not got the right legislation

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

Bruce Schneier: We're at a unique time in the history of surveillance: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Fifteen years ago, they weren't everywhere. Fifteen years from now, they'll be so small we won't be able to see them. Similarly, all the debates we've had about national ID cards will become moot as soon as these surveillance technologies are able to recognize us without us even knowing it. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scanning.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scannin... To me the implications are we have 15 years to make sure we know who is watching us and when.

marvin 14y ago
I think we will get a subculture or fashion for complicated facial jewelry or weird makeup patterns to confuse facial recognition algorithms. If cameras and facial recognition technology becomes as ubiquitous as some people are afraid of, I'm guessing that punk will rise again and take a principled stand against authority and privacy intrusions.
- AutoCorrect 14y ago
  that Muslim veil is looking smarter and smarter all the time
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  It seems life is one step ahead as usual: http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-recognition-software.html http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-recognitio... But hiding your face is only part of the problem, your gait is also pretty unique, as is I suspect your smell, your etc etc. We need a generic catch all law to keep everyone honest. as I keep banging on about.

knightofmars 14y ago

This isn't a new hat. It is something already being used by police departments to identify suspects on video by comparing their facial attributes against records produced by analyzing driver's license photographs.

lucasjans 14y ago

I read the headline as "FB launches $1 billion face recognition project," might not be the actual headline but might as well be true!

WiseWeasel 14y ago
That's old news: http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-recognition-technology-company-face-com/ http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-reco...

fredBuddemeyer 14y ago

i must wonder how many here realize what the aspirations of an ipo or even a corporate investment mean in this age. so many of us are working for what we disdain - without even realizing it. yet we are the same people that can make the most difference - if we see our responsibilities in a future determined by technological opportunity.

stevenjgarner 14y ago

So who is a "criminal"? The article does not clarify exactly what constitutes a criminal record? Just convictions? Felonies only? Or does it include simple misdemeanors such as speeding tickets? Or does it actually (most likely) include all arrests, including those that never result in convictions (where there is NO criminal record)?

logn 14y ago

I'm pretty sure that if our founding fathers were writing the Bill of Rights today there would be an amendment against dragnet electronic surveillance. It's too easy to turn into a panopticon, driven by people who like panopticons such as my mom with an attitude of: "I'm not doing anything wrong and it's worth it to protect against terrorists". Wait until they redefine what "wrong" is.

rorrr 14y ago

Can't wait for a few major politicians to get caught by these doing something illegal.

SolarNet 14y ago

Of course with a little makeup and hair styling you can prevent facial recognition software: http://cvdazzle.com/ http://cvdazzle.com/ I bet we will be seeing some interesting hairstyles, like those above, in counter culture after facial recognition software becomes pervasive.