US Intelligence Wants To Radically Advance Facial Recognition Software 178
coondoggie writes "Identifying people from video streams or boatloads of images can be a daunting task for humans and computers. But a 4-year development program set to start in April 2014 known as Janus aims to develop software and algorithms that erase those problems and could radically alter the facial recognition world as we know it. Funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's 'high-risk, high-payoff research' group, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) Janus 'seeks to improve face recognition performance using representations developed from real-world video and images instead of from calibrated and constrained collections.'"
It's like (Score:5, Insightful)
absolutely nothing happened these past five months.
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...that situation when you shake hands with that guy from sales ... what's his name... well some face recognition sofware in my google glass that would wisper his name as a kind of soufleur could really come in handy.
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Sure have at it. The thing is though, even our old facial recognition system flags those people as terrorists so....
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Sure have at it. The thing is though, even our old facial recognition system flags those people as terrorists so....
Doesn't matter. They can't take action on it. And if everybody (or a lot of people anyway) did it, it would matter even less.
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Why let Hollywood decide what modern freedom fighters look like?
More like let Alan Moore (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore) decide what they look like as he was the comic book writer that wrote V for vendetta.
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Why let Hollywood decide what modern freedom fighters look like?
Hollywood didn't decide. PEOPLE decided they liked the idea.
Why not use a good idea, even if it came from Hollywood?
Use a Halloween mask for all I care. The idea is the same.
Re:It's like (Score:5, Insightful)
oh yea...
Snowden told us all something that we already knew, so nothing changed there.
Those of us who care, already knew. Those who didn't know, didn't care, or didn't want to know, or are too busy watching American Idol or Honey Boo Boo or whatever.
Re:It's like (Score:5, Insightful)
Snowden told us all something that we already knew, so nothing changed there.
Just to be clear, Snowden told us something we all suspected, perhaps even strongly suspected as in almost accepted truth. But Snowden revealed these things we suspected. Concrete and clear, no doubts left.
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Snowden told us all something that we already knew, so nothing changed there.
Just to be clear, Snowden told us something we all suspected, perhaps even strongly suspected as in almost accepted truth. But Snowden revealed these things we suspected. Concrete and clear, no doubts left.
Snowden told _all_ something _some_of_us_ suspected (with high probability). Before, mass surveillance was topic of only few and masses were ignoring us or calling us nuts. Now, masses are aware.
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How does that happen?
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Hey, who are those thugs on those motorcycles over there that just pulled up to the playground?
Nevermind, just ignore them and hope that they go away or don't bother us.
I'm still having fun building this sand castle.
Hey, they started taking pictures.
Don't look at them and maybe they will go away.
Besides, they haven't beat anyone up yet.
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In fairness, that is a fair concern, long term concerns often are pushed aside for short term needs.
I've had this conversation with my wife many times. She is a smart, educated professional who has a good grasp of complex topics. Her reply to the whole NSA thing?
"Well, I hope they at least catch the bad people with it, there isn't anything I can do about it."
I suspect many people have a gen
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Bill Binney pretty much let the cat out of the bag long before Snowden. It's just that he didn't leak documents so he got no press. Additionally, ECHELON hasn't been a secret for a long time. I find it humorous that anyone thought that somehow the internet was excluded, like it's some magical space where privacy is guaranteed. There's a lot of naivete out there.
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Nothing much did happen, other than a minor government holiday, Obamacare launched to a mess...
oh yea...
Snowden told us all something that we already knew, so nothing changed there.
Those of us who care, already knew. Those who didn't know, didn't care, or didn't want to know, or are too busy watching American Idol or Honey Boo Boo or whatever.
When I used to suggest that we were all being spied on, I was called paranoid or a conspiracy theorist. Nowadays I'm not. So that's changed, and frankly I appreciate it.
Here's where they got the udea (Score:2, Funny)
I think they saw this picture last week, and a little light bulb popped up in their little heads.
http://www.businessinsider.com/crazy-photo-appears-to-show-60-security-cameras-on-one-intersection-in-china-2013-11
NSA Man 1: "Did you see those 60 CCTV cameras on a Chinese junction?"
NSA Man 2: "What would happen if we could intercept all those IP CCTV camera feeds and stuck facial recognition on them. Then we could monitor all 300 million potential terrorists!"
NSA Man 1: "Wow that is so constitutional, I'm gla
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Nothing DID happen as far as the spies are concerned. Sure, there was some hubbub about how they're using their toys; but the toy buying budget has not been cut, so it's the right moment to buy more toys. Especially as Christmas is coming up.
Re:It's like (Score:5, Insightful)
absolutely nothing happened these past five months.
For those who cared about western society it proves is freedom is an illusion and democracy is a lie because when we gave up on diplomacy and waterboarded the first insurgent it proved our ideals weren't as strong as our military. This justifies the transition from covert to overt intelligence.
That's the nature of a Police State who has nothing to fear from the people.
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Or perhaps the more logical conclusion (assuming at least half a brain exists) is that no one actually gives a shit.
Everyone's still getting paid and laid, so no, no one gives a shit. Anyone who isn't getting paid or laid is a terrorist.
They do (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like absolutely no one can figure out how the hell we got here
While you may not be able to figure out what had happened, they sure do.
They had that planned all along, and they have greased all the palms that needed to be greased - from the politicians (from both sides of the aisle) to the corporate CEOs - that is how they got their PRISM (among all their many other_It's like absolutely no one can figure out how the hell we got here) schemes launched without anyone beating an eyelid.
Had it not because of a courageous squeeky wheel, ~ Edward Snowden, ~ they could have
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I really hope they don't murder president Elizabeth Warren, like they murdered JFK and Lincoln.
Not enough in the air? (Score:1)
What!? They were not using TV channels for development all this time?
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THEY WANT TO DO WHAT?! (Score:2)
is anyone else so incredibly surprised by this as i am? -_-
article modded down "DUH!"
In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sale of masks, hoodies and other feature obscuring items rose 1000%.
US Gov seeks to introduce a ban on all such items ASAP.
A spokesperson said basically, 'Think of all the children that can be saved from nasty people who hide their faces and scare the poor dears'.
A Patriot Act order closing to a website that identified the exact location of every facial recognition camera in the country was issued today
The Terrorist group 'Anonymous' started attacking the cameras themselves causing every picture that they sent to be changed into members of Congress, the house and senior Whitehouse staffers.
And so the war on freedom continues.
Is that a SWAT team I hear pulling up outside? Time to go...
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
That is British law already (Score:1)
Sad to say, it is already a crime in the UK to wear a facemask if a policeman asks you to remove it.
Jacqui Smith was such a people hating cow.
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"Sad to say, it is already a crime in the UK to wear a facemask if a policeman asks you to remove it."
Masked people were always feared.
I live in Continental Europe and we have regulations against wearing masks as well.
It's not a law but a local regulation just like when and where you are allowed to make a fire etc.but every single city has it.
It all dates from just after WWII, so it's not intended for any religious groups, since at that time there were none.
When I was young, the cops even bothered to check.
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Sadly, ani-mask laws will promptly stop this. I don't have too much time to dig up the laws but here are some articles:
Small Wikipedia article on the subject. Doesn't explain much but does have a few citation links. Canada along with the USA have such laws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_laws [wikipedia.org]
The NYPD then used it against Occupy protesters:
http://gothamist.com/2011/09/19/nypd_uses_law_from_1845_to_arrest_m.php#photo-1 [gothamist.com]
France also has similar laws:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering [wikipedia.org]
And in other news... (Score:2)
Water is wet and the sky is blue.
Re: And in other news... (Score:4, Informative)
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That's just what they want you to believe...
Not much need to worry (Score:2, Interesting)
I've worked with current facial recognition systems and they're absolutely junk. They can match mug shots with perfect lighting but that's about all. It's a very long way to being able to pick people out of some crappy live video stream.
Mind, I worked with whatever's publicly available; maybe the various big brother agencies have better stuff; i wouldn't bet on it though.
Re:Not much need to worry (Score:4, Interesting)
Every picture on Facebook is scanned by Interpol by facial recognition software. Yes even the guy in the background that didn't know you took the picture. Interpol you say? Yep, that's why this whole fake outrage over the NSA is all bunk. They all work together, and have been for decades, spying on each other then sharing the information to bypass privacy laws in each country.
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No citation + modded up = Idiots with mod points.
Transitioning from academic to real world ... (Score:5, Informative)
I've worked with current facial recognition systems and they're absolutely junk. They can match mug shots with perfect lighting but that's about all. It's a very long way to being able to pick people out of some crappy live video stream. Mind, I worked with whatever's publicly available; maybe the various big brother agencies have better stuff; i wouldn't bet on it though.
A while ago I did a little research in computer vision. From the summary it seems like nothing more than moving a project from an academic project to a real world project.
In the academic world it is perfectly acceptable to use carefully selected or crafted inputs (facial images in this case) to develop and evaluate your algorithms. You may have separate date sets for development and evaluation, however careful selection or crafting is OK to simplify the project and avoid issues/variables outside of the project's scope. In your particular mugshot example this would be using images of good resolution and good/predictable lighting. Dealing with low resolution and bad lighting would be an issue left to the next thesis or research grant or for commercialization.
Working with mugshots may be a fluke, the inputs happen to be carefully crafted like one might do in academic research. So it was relatively simple to transition to this niche real world application.
Moving to a general real world solution using images and video of questionable quality is an enormous jump in the level of difficulty. Perhaps too difficult. It may not be possible to recognize an individual. It may only be possible to offer a somewhat generalized characterization that a person my fit into. At least with the haphazardly placed cameras typically found on the streets and in shops today. Some places use very good and carefully positioned cameras to get decent images for automated facial recognition. For example Las Vegas casinos.
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In the academic world it is perfectly acceptable to use carefully selected or crafted inputs (facial images in this case) to develop and evaluate your algorithms. You may have separate date sets for development and evaluation, however careful selection or crafting is OK to simplify the project and avoid issues/variables outside of the project's scope.
As a CompSci academic, I am consistently shocked by the fact that we don't really consider the ethics our research. Some of the research, like the folks that are still interested in Chess playing algorithms, is pretty benign. Other research, like facial recognition, data mining, etc.... not so much. Case and point, there's a great Ted Talk [ted.com] by a researcher from Carnegie Mellon in which he demos an iPhone app (paired with some server-side software) his team wrote for using facial recognition to predict soci
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It is very true that trying to match a face from a real world camera (security camera or otherwise) is difficult. You end up with way too many possible matches. If you have standardized mug shots with good lighting it still gives you too many matches. The only place it works ok is when you want to compare the person attempting to get through the security door with the id stored in the system. On a one to one match it is 95% accurate. But when you try to match that to the millions of people in the mug shot d
Re:Not much need to worry (Score:5, Interesting)
Assume that it's 99.9% accurate for a given success rate (wildly optimistic) That is for every 1000 faces you show it 1 is incorrectly flagged as matching.
Suppose that you have a list of 100 people you are 'interested' in. If the system is in an airport with 200,000 people per day - you are going to get 20,000 incorrect matches a day.
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Erm, wow! /.er's can't even do basic maths now!?
99.9% of 200,000 is 200 NOT 20,000...
wow, I'm officially amazed, especially given the current +4 Interesting mod.
People wonder why we went AC.
Re:Not much need to worry (Score:4, Insightful)
That's 200 false matches to each of the 100 targets. 200*100 = 20000.
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Your math appears to be correct for one camera. But what if the cameras are everywhere, and the same people are passing in front of the cameras, and they correlate the results? They can increase their certainty and filter out many of the false positives. In addition, for airports, since they have a known list of travelers, they can use this information to reduce the false positives still more. Finally, they can introduce secondary technology such as a 3-D body scan like a Kinect to reduce error still mo
Re:Not much need to worry (Score:4, Insightful)
With multiple sources of information and technologies, the system becomes lucrative.
You will, however, get even more false positives. Which doesn't matter as long as the account balance for the scammers selling useless junk to gullible officials gets real positive.
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You (and one of the ACs) are making the assumption that the cameras make errors independently. But the cameras don't make the decision, the central server does. There's only one of those, and if the data it has on a target happens to look like a different person, it will flag the data from all of the cameras in the same way. The fact that they all agree doesn't reduce that component of the 0.1% error rate.
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They will simply fix the problems you and the GP mention.
Lighting? When you fly in to Japan they take a photo of your face in a well lit area, while at the same time taking your fingerprints. Expect airports to become very well lit in general.
False positives? Maybe for individual matches, but they will be making multiple match attempts against images of the same person captured multiple times from different angles by different cameras.
The government can change the rules of the game whenever it likes.
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I dunno man, the facial recognition in Picasa was actually fairly decent.
I'm not even going to lie, but generally I like to take pictures of the female form as they perform acts on camera for financial support, and generally even between various different poses, angles, lighting, camera quality, make-up, their system can find matches between those faces pretty god damn accurately. Dangerously good at it. It is scary.
Shame Picasa sucks now and corrupts its own database so much. What is this, the 90s? Fix
Americans (Score:1)
Get out now while you still can. Your only option seems to be to bleed your gov dry of all money since you are too big of pussies to do the right thing and execute every one of those corrupt sacks of shit, so tax deprivation seems to be your only hope. Do it now.
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You fuckers have been saying that for the past decade. Why should we leave? The corrupt sacks of shit are the ones who suck.
Mass emigration? Tax deprivation? You really really want a tax-starved former superpower with nukes to invade even more of the world to get its taxpayers back? Good luck with that plan. Hope your country is first, you fucking idiot.
Re:Americans (Score:4, Insightful)
The only real way to remove our current government would be if the military did it.
Which wouldn't be so bad, so long as they don't try to run it. Throw all the current leaders out, call for new elections in 6 months, it would be a start anyway.
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All it took for the Soviet Union was for it to vote itself out of existence.
Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
This is inevitable.
You need to continually track people's localized movements to reduce the total search space while obtaining multiple images of each person while they move; merging multiple images to get higher resolution images, over time (wind, rain, lipstic, changed hat, etc) all affect confidence, and then eventually match that to a known database of people.
Eventually, correlating time to location, credit card purchases, and cell phone, you'll have a perfect match. Your phone linked to email addresses will link your online identity and bam you get a full picture.
Of course, everyone who is not matched by this is a suspicious character since you're not in the database. Even sudden changes in appearance would signal suspicous behavior... why did you just put on a wig. Biggest trouble this database will have will be girls going to hair salons.
As someone from the US, you should eventually be in the database from birth. Anyone new, travelling from overseas will be suspicious. That doesnt mean its local to the US. With credit card databases, a few outsourced security firms and security cams globally monitored, you'll be tracked everywhere.
Who you meet for coffee, etc. Actually, that is the objective. Find who you meet for coffee.
Its going to happen because I can think about how to do this, so its possible.
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Its going to happen because I can think about how to do this, so its possible.
"Surely they wouldn't do that."
Man, it gets funnier and funnier saying that with a straight face.
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Who you meet for coffee, etc. Actually, that is the objective. Find who you meet for coffee.
Actually no. The objective is find where d'you get that coffee [newyorker.com].
Will not work. Period. (Score:5, Informative)
For similar reasons as described in https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/criminal_intent.html [schneier.com] it will not be usefull.
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Not necessarily. A high rate of false positives isn't so bad if you build up an oppressive totalitarian police state at the same time, one in which a myriad of intelligence agency employees investigate every positive match with the aid of targeted surveillance measures and tons of pre-existing data on file.
Re:Will not work. Period. (Score:5, Insightful)
Schneier's point can only be applied for cases in which the cost of a false positive is non-negligible compared to the benefit of a correct classification. E.g., if your test to identify a person infected with a lethal disease identifies all infected with a 100% success rate, but misidentifies 1% non-infected, and the treatment has a 2% chance of being lethal itself, this is a very bad test because you do not want to kill off 2% of the healthy population to treat a handful of sick people. If, however, the treatment is entirely innocuous, then you might consider the test to be a great one because it lets you cure everyone who is infected while not unduly burdening the larger healthy population. Or consider that you might have a very expensive secondary test which yields almost no false positives. If the first test is fast and cheap, then together you have an almost ideal system.
The federal government is largely chasing specters already -- how often do the TSA actually catch a terrorist? I doubt they mind too much about false-positives unless that number is totally extreme. Likely, they are interested in correlating this to other data. So, being flagged by itself is not a huge deal, although it might earn you a 'random screening'. But being flagged by facial recognition as someone on a watchlist, and being on a flight to Washington D.C., and having had someone in your hometown recently lookup terms related to assassination at a public library, and having a facebook profile with language indicating emotional stress could all wind up tied together by the government's surveillance program.
A good facial recognition system would be at least as useful as saying someone is 'wanted' on the evening news. But, as usual, the major question is whether we are going to tolerate the increasing formation of a big brother style government in order to reap these meager profits. (And, also as usual, the answer is probably yes.)
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how often do the TSA actually catch a terrorist?
As far as TSA information to the general public goes, the answer is exactly "never". As in, they haven't really caught anybody seriously trying to engage in terrorism, ever, over the entire 12 years the TSA has existed. They apparently have managed to nab some other criminals (smugglers, traffickers, etc), but not terrorists. They also apparently catch people with guns and other "prohibited items" about once or twice a day, but it's unclear if those people actually presented any kind of threat to anyone.
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I wonder if "smugglers" includes people trying to sneak an extra few ounces of shampoo on to the plane.
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For similar reasons as described in https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/criminal_intent.html [schneier.com] it will not be usefull.
It doesn't have to.
Money is being pocketed, and fear is being spread. It's all that needs to happen.
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For similar reasons as described in https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/05/criminal_intent.html [schneier.com] it will not be usefull.
If they can get the false positive rate down, and they have all the other data they could get (ie: a surveillance camera network similar to London's, access to GPS networks, cell phone tower data); they could solve that problem by correlating data. They know where you live from your voter registration, they know your cell phone was at that home tower heading to this other tower, therefore they can probably figure out whether you're the guy in the brown coat or not.
The trouble with that is that they don't ha
Isn't going to help I expect, but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Get Poser, or something similar, and start replacing the face picks of all your contacts with pics of poser models asses selected for a best match to the contact's ass. Remember to find an appropriate image for companies and agencies. I'm thinking a Hydra would be appropriate for the NSA, Medusa for the FBI, Mantis for the CIA, etc.
Bonus points for doing r/g stereo of the images, or 3d if the phone supports that directly.
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So every time I call someone, my ass is on the line?
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It's there ass on the line when you call, or they call you.
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:%s/there/their/g
ZZ
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXpTXZ2vhPk [youtube.com]
Yes, that's House before he was House.
Road House.
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Hey, considering that your phone is communicating your contact list through your cell phone carrier with Apple, Google or Microsoft (a couple of other possibilities of course, but pretty much all of them happening across your phone carrier data infrastructure) it's likely that your contact's pictures are already being indexed by the NSA.
US Intelligence (Score:1)
That seems contradictive.
Made my day. Just what we need. (Score:2)
Go, US Intelligence!
CV Dazzle! (Score:1)
Perhaps it's time to rund around like this [cvdazzle.com].
I'm considering it in earnest. Sheesh. To think that I'm paying taxes to support this is really revolting.
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I wonder if it would be possible to get tattooed with something that could have its color changed externally somehow (magnetic fields, RFID signals, specific light wavelengths?) so that you could dynamically create different patterns on your face and clear them when you want to.
Where this is headed (Score:5, Insightful)
The false positive problem is going to become a real nightmare for some unfortunate individuals accused of crimes based on incorrect identification by this system, especially if it gains enough traction in courts of law and enough precedent is established. You could also envision a scenario where certain unsavory types end up gaming the system to frame others for their crimes.
On one hand it's just a tool which can be used for good or ill. Unfortunately for the average citizen, law enforcement has a tendency to use all of the tools at its disposal against you in a court of law.
Re:Where this is headed (Score:5, Insightful)
The false positive problem is going to become a real nightmare for some unfortunate individuals accused of crimes based on incorrect identification by this system...
Actually, the larger problem will be non-false positives. Laws are designed, written, and passed based on an understanding that there are certain practical limits to enforcement due to the limited ability of the State to detect law breaking and to readily identify, track, and apprehend law breakers.
A great many laws which at current enforcement levels nobody has a problem with, suddenly become draconian, abusive, unrealistic, and arbitrary when enforcement nears 100%. Of course, with a system like this, selective enforcement for political/ideological/personal reasons is a certainty, particularly in light of all the recent revelations of current government abuses and criminal behavior surrounding the abuse of government power and the tools it has available.
A tool such as this is the wet-dream of a police state.
Strat
Re:Where this is headed (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they will look at the images. The problem arises because of the scale of the system: it can potentially sweep through tens of thousands of faces and do some cross-referencing of names and locations and oh look here it looks like someone who looks like so-and-so was at these places at these times and gee that's pretty compelling evidence because otherwise statistically it would be one hell of a coincidence that they weren't somehow involved in the crime, so likely they are guilty, when in fact it was nothing more than a coincidence. People have been convicted on much less. But, hell, in this society people seem to be OK with sending innocent people to jail as long as we get most of the bad ones (and as long as it isn't them).
You seem to underestimate the mercenary nature of US law enforcement. If they have you in their sights, they can and will use everything they have against you, both within and without a court of law. Just ask Aaron Swartz.
The problem with most geeks (Score:5, Insightful)
Is that when it comes to their work, they are essentially amoral. The likely use of a technology is secondary to the intellectual challenges posed by a scientific or engineering problem. The main thing is that a problem is "neat". Throw in a little bit of competition to get hearts racing and all managers have to do is sit back and wait for results. Thus we get crossbows, machine guns, nerve gas, nuclear warheads, smart bombs, mortgage-backed securities and surveillance systems. How many of the people who built these clevilish devices ever stopped to ask themselves: should I be doing this?. Maybe quite a few, but it still didn't stop most of them.
Sadly, I think this situation is unavoidable, for you always encounter the argument: "better that we build it before somebody else does". Which I suppose is a valid point: in this world it's either fuck or be fucked, and morality don't enter into it. If only I hadn't been raised on a steady diet of moral platitudes and stories of good triumphing over evil, I could be more at peace with this reality.
Re:The problem with most geeks (Score:4, Informative)
The main thing is that a problem is "neat".
And also money. I know some people who have gone to work for the MIC when they might have gone to work for something non-destructive except for the funding problems.
Sadly, I think this situation is unavoidable, for you always encounter the argument: "better that we build it before somebody else does". Which I suppose is a valid point
It's not. The 'arms race' towards ever more deadly weapons only serves offensive purposes. If you want to have a peaceful nation [antiwar.com] you need a massively distributed low-level capability, not a highly centralized high-level capability.
If only I hadn't been raised on a steady diet of moral platitudes
Perhaps more people need to be. The current ones here are OK with the government taking trillions of dollars from them and their progeny every year and funneling it to the war machine. Imagine if that money went instead to solving hunger, clean water, or clean energy problems. But, as long as you have psychopaths with unconquerable libido dominandi running things, that's not going to happen.
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Mod parent up. I don't see why so many geeks are like this. There are so many lucrative and technically fascinating things I could have done but didn't because they'd make the world a worse place. But most geeks sign up to help Facebook, DARPA & the MIC, the NSA without a second thought.
Some even lose any sense of morality and openly declare that they don't give a fuck because they're making so much sweet sexy money (standard MIC employee response).
I guess the sad truth is that geeks are just as likely
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... If only I hadn't been raised on a steady diet of moral platitudes and stories of good triumphing over evil, I could be more at peace with this reality.
It's called evolution. No morality involved.
The reason we as a species are so smart is because the best way to develop intelligence is to have an intelligent opponent--each other.
Competition never ends.
The only things that end are the entities that don't compete in the current environment very well.
Inevitble? It's already here.. (Score:1)
They already have a perfect baseline of your facial characteristics, just look at your drive's license, or "liquor ID card" (for those that lost their license) or even your passport (if you have one.) It makes the algorithms "so much more accurate!" or "very nearly fool proof!" (read both: sarcasm (for the coming election campaigns) and as reality.)
Sadly, I have a driver's license, three gun permits (3 different states with photo), a passport and more.
FB users.... you now have my permission to tag away in t
Breathe Deep (Score:2)
Inspiration (Score:1)
hey.. (Score:2)
waste of time (Score:2)
Anyone else... (Score:2)
Anyone else reading that as "US Has Radically Advanced Facial Recognition Software, Wants To Phase In Use In Unclassified Programs In 2014-2018"?
Or has my Snowden Cynicism gone too far?
Why Limit the Software to Faces? (Score:2)
Re:As expected (Score:4, Insightful)
Having better facials recognition seems like a great idea
The technology may be impressive, but the government must be stopped from using it to further violate people's privacy.
and i'ts not even usefull.
The ability to harass practically anyone will likely prove quite useful to the government.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
and i'ts not even usefull.
The ability to harass practically anyone will likely prove quite useful to the government.
Wow. And here I thought they had enough shit online tracking us today, along with the manipulative control to harass citizens (you won a free tax audit based on your party affiliation!) at the Federal level. What the hell was I thinking. Clearly the NSA budget is lacking. Yes, we need more of that. I'm sure that's the answer.
What's that? The average citizen unknowingly commits three felonies a day you say? And the government wants even more visibility into that? What could possibly go wrong?
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The average citizen unknowingly commits three felonies a day you say?
Normally I'd say [citation needed] but I did once when someone (probably the same goober) made that assertion and he pointed to a web page of people who were arrested for such things as importing stuff without paying duties, importing illegal shit like ivory, etc. NOT anything the average American could be charged with, and all of them laws that make sense (like ivory).
So instead I'll just say, what three felonies could I have committed to
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nsa isn't supposed to be finding common criminals.
they aren't doing that anyhow, except on random personal basis.
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nsa isn't supposed to be finding common criminals.
they aren't doing that anyhow, except on random personal basis.
And they aren't interested in finding terrorists (they got lots of leads far more explicit than their own intelligence for the Boston bombers and for 9/11 but were not interested in following up until after the fact).
They are out for securing their jobs. Curbing actual terrorism would be bad for that. It's more important to collect little dirt on senators, and little dirt on small fry and basically everyone that can be used for placating prosecutors and police by distributing selected scraps that they bec
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Is this a bad thing?
I don't think the technology itself is bad, but I also believe anyone with a brain knows it's going to be misused, and that's probably what people are afraid of.
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Is this a bad thing?
I don't think the technology itself is bad, but I also believe anyone with a brain knows it's going to be misused, and that's probably what people are afraid of.
The questions with any tech are whether it's abuses outweigh the uses. On most technology there's a lot of consensus -- ie: the fact that you can hammer either a nail or your sister's head does not mean hammers should be banned -- but on some -- like nuclear anything -- it's a lot trickier.
In the long-term facial recognition will probably end up on the "hammer" side. Most people already carry a little doohickey that can pinpoint their location to within a few hundred feet, drive a vehicle that's registered
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The questions with any tech are whether it's abuses outweigh the uses.
I don't think the technology itself should be banned, but as I said, the government's use of it will be the real problem.
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You could say the same thing about a fork
Perhaps you should try to understand what I'm saying before you spew forth such things. A fork is wildly different from technology that will, in all likelihood, be used to aid in the violation of people's rights; history tells me it's an inevitability.
I also did not suggest a ban on the technology itself. I would not mind severely limiting the government's use of it, though.
We shouldn't fear potential abuse
I think that's an absolutely absurd statement. When talking about whether a government should have a certain power or not, I think it is very important to take into account how likely it is to abuse that power, how easy it is to abuse it, and how much it could be used to infringe upon people's liberties.
We should fear a lack of moderation and oversight.
We've all already seen how the government's oversight works; it simply doesn't.
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The software is named after the god Janus who was two faced. Both literally and figuratively.
Nomen est omen.
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Anyone know a passage in the bible that talks about obscuring your face positively? I think it's time for me to found a church.