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.
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: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.
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.
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.
Re:It's like (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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: And why ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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 accomplished EVEN MORE !
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.)
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: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.
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: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.
Re:Not much need to worry (Score:4, Insightful)
That's 200 false matches to each of the 100 targets. 200*100 = 20000.
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.
Re:It's like (Score:2, 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.
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.
Re:They do (Score:2, Insightful)
I really hope they don't murder president Elizabeth Warren, like they murdered JFK and Lincoln.
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: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.