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United States Technology

Homeland Security Worries Covid-19 Masks Are Breaking Facial Recognition, Leaked Document Shows (theintercept.com) 111

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
While doctors and politicians still struggle to convince Americans to take the barest of precautions against Covid-19 by wearing a mask, the Department of Homeland Security has an opposite concern, according to an "intelligence note" found among the BlueLeaks trove of law enforcement documents: Masks are breaking police facial recognition. From a report: The rapid global spread and persistent threat of the coronavirus has presented an obvious roadblock to facial recognition's similar global expansion. Suddenly everyone is covering their faces. Even in ideal conditions, facial recognition technologies often struggle with accuracy and have a particularly dismal track record when it comes to identifying faces that aren't white or male. Some municipalities, startled by the civil liberties implications of inaccurate and opaque software in the hands of unaccountable and overly aggressive police, have begun banning facial recognition software outright. But the global pandemic may have inadvertently provided a privacy fix of its own -- or for police, a brand new crisis. A Homeland Security intelligence note dated May 22 expresses this law enforcement anxiety, as public health wisdom clashes with the prerogatives of local and federal police who increasingly rely on artificial intelligence tools.

The bulletin, drafted by the DHS Intelligence Enterprise Counterterrorism Mission Center in conjunction with a variety of other agencies, including Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "examines the potential impacts that widespread use of protective masks could have on security operations that incorporate face recognition systems -- such as video cameras, image processing hardware and software, and image recognition algorithms -- to monitor public spaces during the ongoing Covid-19 public health emergency and in the months after the pandemic subsides." The Minnesota Fusion Center, a post-9/11 intelligence agency that is part of a controversial national network, distributed the notice on May 26, as protests were forming over the killing of George Floyd. In the weeks that followed, the center actively monitored the protests and pushed the narrative that law enforcement was under attack. Email logs included in the BlueLeaks archive show that the note was also sent to city and state government officials and private security officers in Colorado and, inexplicably, to a hospital and a community college.
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Homeland Security Worries Covid-19 Masks Are Breaking Facial Recognition, Leaked Document Shows More

Homeland Security Worries Covid-19 Masks Are Breaking Facial Recognition, Leaked Document Shows

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  • have a particularly dismal track record when it comes to identifying faces that aren't white or male.

    Come on, this is an utter lie.

    They can pretty accurately identify faces of any race or gender.

    In fact there are pretty accurate models that can even determine what gender a face is... including recent apps that transform male faces into female faces (and I think vice versa).

    there may be some individual models that have been trained improperly, but that is NOT the same as saying the technology itself cannot i

    • have a particularly dismal track record when it comes to identifying faces that aren't white or male.

      Come on, this is an utter lie.

      They can pretty accurately identify faces of any race or gender.

      In fact there are pretty accurate models that can even determine what gender a face is... including recent apps that transform male faces into female faces (and I think vice versa).

      there may be some individual models that have been trained improperly, but that is NOT the same as saying the technology itself cannot identify non-white or non-male faces... your own racism is showing with that statement.

      Yes, if you stare directly into the camera FR systems are pretty accurate. The accuracy falls steeply the moment the angles are anything less than optimal. These Homeland Security bozos have ambitions to accurately identify, track and monitor every citizen at all times from every angle using every available security camera 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and 52.1429 weeks out of the year. Y'know as one does in 'the land of the free' and all that. Or to paraphrase Reginald D. Hunter: "to fight the dystopia

      • It's called the panopticon, and takes facial recognition, vehicle license plate tracking, and other items and feeds it into a dynamic database where a government person could type in your name and see where you are.

        With crappy controls, it will be trivial for government to spy on politican enemies, seeing who they talk to, and so on, which is information that is forbidden to them.

        This is the same reason "metadata" on who you call should require warrant, too.

        • The death of cash will offset decreasing facial recognition.

          Coronavirus is making 'follow the money' easier. While mourning the temporary reduction in facial recognition, law enforcement will be laughing all the way to the bank. Track and trace.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Entirely depends on the vendor. Some are quite good no matter the race, and some suck uniformly (Fatherland Security tends to contract with the latter for some reason. Low bid?)

        Now if they were willing to work with **competent** vendors masks wouldn't be so much of a problem.
        https://slashdot.org/story/20/... [slashdot.org]

        Hanwang Vice President Huang Lei says the system's recognition rate reached about 95% when people wore a mask . . .

      • . There have been numerous stories even on Slashdot about the dismal performance facial recognition systems

        I already stated some models were wrong, I was talking about the technology itself.

        It's all about the training data. There are accurate models that have been properly trained, what is uncommon is the badly trained ones. It's not like this is a big secret, anyone knows this is needed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          They just happen to all be badly trained, right?

          Why do treat technology like it's a religion?

          • They just happen to all be badly trained, right?

            No, they are mostly well trained at this point. Unlike dev learning models, you apparently cannot learn new things. What a shame for your future prospects.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by narcc ( 412956 )

              This really reminds me of when you were defending Apple's touch id even after it was shown to be just as vulnerable to a copied finger print as every other finger print scanner.

              You have this bizarre view of technology. It's like you really believe that we're a generation ahead of where we are. It's very odd.

              I do have a grad cert in machine learning I did just last year with UC. I can say with some level of authority that the tech isn't quite where you think it is. I won't further pick, because the othe

    • Not true at ALL. You are demonstrably wrong.

      There are many stories of cops literally arresting someone based on facial recognition software identifying a black man that is clearly and obviously NOT the man in the video. Do a basic google search and you find cases that prove you are wrong:

      https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]

      Look at how the software works at this twitter feed:
      https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg... [twitter.com]

      Facial Software is designed to learn how to do it's job. You create the general concept that have it

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      They can pretty accurately identify faces of any race or gender.

      Tell that to the SECOND black man false arrested in Chicago for a crime he didn't commit. Hell, the people didn't even LOOK the same if you used your Mk. 1 Eyeball to compare the suspect against the person identified

      Making stupidly bad errors decreases trust in the system by everyone. It also makes the cops look like idiots because they went through all the trouble to get a warrant and everything and at no point did someone take 30 seconds to a

  • The HSA has never caught a terrorist, with or without facial recognition.

    One of my takeaways from the Covid crisis is that banks are a bunch of lames. They don't want you to wear a hat or sunglasses into a bank, let alone a mask, because you might be trying to disguise your identity. Now they require that you wear a mask when you come in to handle pieces of paper with them, and civilization hasn't ground to a halt, and banks are still viable businesses. But I bet they'll go right back to "if we can't see yo

    • Let's see...wear a mask and we have to worry about being robbed and having money stolen. Don't wear a mask and we have to worry about killing a bunch of our customers.

      Gee, can't imagine why they relaxed those rules.

      Heck, where I live, I can get beers to go from a restaurant. I couldn't do that before, either.

      • Heck, where I live, I can get beers to go from a restaurant. I couldn't do that before, either.

        That's my point. There's numerous changes that have been made for very good reasons, and society hasn't collapsed — but they sure had a hard-on for anyone who broke those laws before.

        I sure hope that not everything goes back to "normal" when Covid is over.

  • OMG what if Clearview doesn't work??!?

    • They use this as a reason to push for backdoors even harder. We are going dark from both ends!

      We are way past 'innocent until proven guilty'. The government treats everyone as guilty at all times unless we can prove them innocent. What is the government so afraid of? Why are the people the enemy?

      • "Going dark" is racist. Better would be "going blind."

        • I hope you are not serious. When you turn out the lights at night are you blind or is it dark? Dark means lacking light or void of light - as in the light from the Sun or the light from a light bulb. My comments have nothing to do with humans or the color of anyone's skin.

          Beyond what I said above, I'm simply reusing the same words used by the FBI to describe the what they perceive as a problem:
          https://www.fbi.gov/news/testi... [fbi.gov]

          Fuck you for calling me a racist. Nothing in my comments refers to humans in a

          • Since the "going dark" phrase was from the FBI, my comment is a criticism of them, not of you. Notice my comment did not refer to you, but only to the phrase.

            • Its clearly a reference to vision and visible light level. The reference has nothing whatsoever to do with race or racism. Using the word 'dark' to describe light levels is in no way racist. You've taken political correctness way too far and that is wrong. I'm offended by your jump to shout 'racism'. Calling 'racism' on my comment associates me with racism, which is bullshit and makes you an asshole.

              FWIW - I think the 'going dark' problem is a bullshit straw man, complete over-reach. Our devices hold

              • In the 1960's we had something called a "black power cord". Today it is called an "appliance cord". I look upon that as progress away from terminology that promotes racial stereotypes. Similarly, I advocate "going blind" instead of "going dark". It conveys the sentiment you expressed: "Not blind, just not enough visible light to see."

                In the 1960s nobody in the White community thought "black power cord" was racist either.

                • "going blind" conveys a permanent loss of vision. "Going dark" conveys a more temporary situation, where light would allow one to see. Blind means sightless while dark means lacking light. When the sun sets at night I am not going blind, its getting dark. Likewise the FBI isn't blind to the presence of data, they just can't see what is in the data.

                  Why does everything have to be about race?

                  When I look at the Sun or look into the night sky I do not see race. Its not about good and bad. Its not about dem

                  • "going blind" conveys a permanent loss of vision. "Going dark" conveys a more temporary situation, where light would allow one to see. Blind means sightless while dark means lacking light. When the sun sets at night I am not going blind, its getting dark. Likewise the FBI isn't blind to the presence of data, they just can't see what is in the data.

                    I think the meaning behind the FBI's phrase is that they are losing the ability to see what is in the data. If no backdoor is provided, they feel that they will lose this ability completely. I think "going blind" conveys this idea without racial overtones.

                    Perhaps I am being over-sensitive. I was certainly accused of over-sensitivity when I objected to "black power cord" in the 1960s.

                • Let me guess, all of the following publications, and specifically their authors, are all racist or using racist words, right?

                  https://www.aclu.org/issues/pr... [aclu.org]
                  https://www.eff.org/pages/face... [eff.org]
                  https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]
                  https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24... [npr.org]
                  https://www.wired.com/story/be... [wired.com]
                  https://qz.com/1205604/if-your... [qz.com]
                  https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
                  https://gizmodo.com/can-we-mak... [gizmodo.com]

                  Any and everyone that talks about the subject is racist or using racist terminology, right?
                  There is racism everywhere you l

                  • Let me guess, all of the following publications, and specifically their authors, are all racist or using racist words, right?

                    https://www.aclu.org/issues/pr... [aclu.org] https://www.eff.org/pages/face... [eff.org] https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com] https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24... [npr.org] https://www.wired.com/story/be... [wired.com] https://qz.com/1205604/if-your... [qz.com] https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com] https://gizmodo.com/can-we-mak... [gizmodo.com]

                    Any and everyone that talks about the subject is racist or using racist terminology, right? There is racism everywhere you look at all times, right?

                    What is your solution, other than banning everyday words and trying to force correct-speak on others?

                    Should I say that AI facial recognition has an issue with blind skin or more blind skin?

                    Should we avoid discussing the subject because we might trigger your sensitivity?

                    When reporting on a problem that has racial roots, of course racial words are required. More generally, any discussion of race involves racial words. However, we should avoid racial words when the subject of discussion is not racial. The FBI had no racial intent when they complained about "going dark" and so that is a place where language can be improved. Another is the concept of master and slave in the context of asymmetric multiprocessing. Depending on the implementation, better words could be "boot

                    • So we should go with 'blind skin' instead of 'dark skin'? I know when I say 'dark skin' that I'm referring to lots of shades other than what one might call 'black'.

                    • So we should go with 'blind skin' instead of 'dark skin'? I know when I say 'dark skin' that I'm referring to lots of shades other than what one might call 'black'.

                      "Dark skin" is fine if you are talking about skin, but context is important. "Darky" has been used as a put-down, whereas "Facial recognition algorithms have higher error rates for people with dark skin." is not.

                    • Your list of what is acceptable use and what is not acceptable is completely arbitrary. "Going dark" referring to light levels = racist, "dark skin" = acceptable. No one said 'darky' or 'black' but you. You're right context is important and it would make no sense for the FBI's 'going dark' problem to be about moving toward a certain skin tone. You've got the context wrong.

                    • Just because it makes no sense doesn't make the choice of language acceptable. I think the FBI should be saying "going blind" instead of "going dark".

  • Remember (Score:2, Troll)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 )

    When you wear a mask the terrorists win!

    • government has been on a winning streak as long as I can remember

      • government has been on a winning streak as long as I can remember

        If this is winning, then I am "Tired of winning." I guess Donny was right?
        First time for everything, I guess.

  • Oh no, so sad. Too bad. Thoughts and prayers.

    • Whenever I see "Thoughts and prayers" that means the person probably isn't thinking and never prays, just preys.

      Related to your sig.
      Can I choose laziness twice? :D

      P.S. Do people even use ASCII smileys anymore?
      That is a movie I want to see, not the emoji one.

  • Waah waah waah (Score:3)

    by kschendel ( 644489 ) on Friday July 17, 2020 @10:57AM (#60299725) Homepage

    So they're worried about not being able to use a tool that is unreliable? "Facial recognition is crap but we want to use it because it's easy, and now we can't, waaaaaahhhh" What's wrong with this picture?

    And we can argue whether the technology is unreliable or the training is crap, but it all comes down to the same thing. It's barely usable even as a first cut filter. Let the TSA stick to their traditional useless security theater.

    • They don't care if it works or not.

      They only care that they can no longer say "we just need some more money and it'll work, honest!".

      It's not going to work, ever, not in a land where wearing masks in public is accepted as a perfectly normal thing to do..

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        China disagrees. This is from March.

        https://slashdot.org/story/20/... [slashdot.org]
        Hanwang Vice President Huang Lei says the system's recognition rate reached about 95% when people wore a mask . . .

        Fatherland Security's problem is that they only want to work with certain politically favored vendors. If the campaign donations don't go into the right pocket then no contract for you!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gtall ( 79522 )

        I think you have misdiagnosed the problem. Rather, I think this is what happens when the uneducated get put into positions of power because some other uneducated person put them there. I'll let you guess where that upward chain ends.

        This has happened throughout industry and government. Talented and experienced people with science and engineering backgrounds are pushed aside so the dorks you met in high school who had difficulty tying their shoelaces could be hired. They know nothing, the do not want to know

  • Widespread facial recognition is a component of a broken society. When facial recognition breaks, then society is the better for it.

    If I had a button in my hand that eliminated facial recognition, I'd keep pressing it until my fingers no longer worked, just to be sure the job was done. Then I'd switch hands...

  • wearing a mask isn't a precaution against covid19, viruses will go right through it. Seems to reduce transmission when worn by infected person but you're not helping yourself wearing one.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Then fucking wear one you inconsiderate asshole.

    • Seems to reduce transmission when worn by infected person but you're not helping yourself wearing one.

      Correct. You're helping others by wearing one.

      This is a big stumbling block for most self-centered westerners to understand.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      That's why we want everyone to wear them

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      but you're not helping yourself wearing one

      Unless you are a health care worker or first responder. Then it's "Puleeeze give us your masks!" Particularly the N95 ones, which our shop has by the pallet load for dust mitigation.

      This is why the CDC can't be trusted. I understand their reasoning. But lying to people as a going in policy was just stupid.

      • Sigh.

        N95 masks were developed for industry and work pretty well at filtering. They've been used in coal mines and the like. They work so well that doctors became interested in these masks and they developed medical-grade N95 masks.

        The masks you have on your pallet are not medical-grade N95 masks.

        One entertaining thing is that most commercial N95 masks have a little outlet to help you exhale. This makes perfect sense when you're working in a coal mine--you're more worried about breathing in coal dust than

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          The masks you have on your pallet are not medical-grade N95 masks.

          Are you certain? The spec sheet in the box says: "Recommended Application - Airborne Biological Particles" and "Market - Defense, Homeland Security"

          One entertaining thing is that most commercial N95 masks have a little outlet to help you exhale.

          These have no such valves.

          (a) if you're at home, you don't need a mask

          Nobody stays home all the time (unless they are high risk). You go out less often and need fewer masks. But you still need masks.

          and (b) they were afraid of stupid people running out and buying all the masks.

          Didn't work. People figured that the were being lied to, ran out and bought all the masks.

          Our boss said that the DoD didn't want us to slide on our contracts. And their people suggested that we wear masks whe

    • Sweden had no mask mandate, school closing or lockdown their covid cases and deaths are almost zero now as they have reached herd immunity. Total percapita deaths are less than countries like UK and Spain which made all these precautions. What is the better approach?
      https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

      • And now, let's compare that to Denmark, a more directly comparable nation, which did do the whole lockdown bit: https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        Look again, Sweden is number 7 in the world for deaths per capita.

        UK has been a complete cock-up, the advice given has been poor and people here are selfish idiots is why we have a high death rate.

        UK govt is only now thinking about making masks mandatory in some public places beyond transport. This is after they decided to open pubs restaurants etc, turns out that drunk people aren't good at social distancing, who would of guessed that!

        Countries with high tourism tended to get hit first and worst, Sweden i

        • The English doctors all failed math: https://www.bbc.com/news/healt... [bbc.com]

          In England, Covid has a 100% death rate. Even if you die 100 years after contracting it, you are counted as having died of Covid.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

            Two things here, one - the article implies that people who die 28 days after having tested positive for covid19 didn't die of covid10, wrong because death from covid19 isn't instant, it can and often does take several weeks before the person dies.

            Which brings us to point two - other countries may be falsely under-reporting COVID-19 deaths because they had the disease for over 28 days.

            If you look at the article again you'll see that only single digit percentage of people counted as COVID19 deaths had the dis

        • There is nothing to look at, they are done with the virus while minimizing economic damage. Basically everything done in US has been a waste or harmful.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      Holy carp, do you always make sweeping generalizations about things you apparently know absolutely nothing about? You must be quite entertaining at parties.

      Of course a virus can go through a mask. Do you know what **doesn't** go through the masks (much)? The water droplets that the virus travels in, they get deposited on the mask and the water evaporates leaving the viruses behind stuck to the fabric. Viruses don't spread by floating alone through the air like pollen, they need to be transported. You a

    • Yes, viruses are small enough to pass through the masks most often used by the general public. However, the virus doesn't generally cross the distance by itself--it hitches a ride on aerosols of saliva. And the masks can stop a large fraction of those aerosols. It's been empirically demonstrated that masks help enormously in preventing the transmission of covid19.

    • You are correct that the primary function of the mask is to protect others from your possibly asymptomatic or presymtomatic infection, by blocking droplets that you emit while breathing or speaking.

      You are incorrect that there's no protection for yourself. VIruses don't float around by themselves, and even if that were to happen, getting one or two is of little consequence. It's when you get a load of them on droplets or aerosols that you have a good chance of developing an infection, and the masks do hel

      • haven't seen any peer reviewed evidence of protection for the mask wearer ever. You're funny talking about one or two, you're talking about straining a muddy creek with a chick wire fence, utterly useless. Mask wearers get the virus left and right.

  • ...to wear a mask.
  • Hey... My pussy gets so wet, look at .... Wanna come inside? >> kutt.it/PMaEQc

  • Only would the DHS be more interested in using broken Facial Recognition then keeping the mass populace Healthy.
    **Facepalm**

    What's that about priorities and Security Theater again? /s

  • Isn't that something!
    Going forward people have a license to wear masks in public "for my health and safety" and to tell public authorities that don't like it to suck their balls.

  • I've been asked for my ID (to scan) several times, but not to see my face. Since they're just polling numbers for pseudoephedrine and my teen's medicine, you would think we could just use an authenticated mail service to get a 3 month supply.

    Let's keep America distracted with freedom to not wear face masks instead of people knowing that PATRIOT isn't a description :(

    lots of stuff is backwards
  • "Federal study confirms racial bias of many facial-recognition systems, casts doubt on their expanding use. [...] Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy." https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
  • Oh no no no, we can't possibly go back to the days when law enforcement had to (shocking!!!) actually do some real investigative work to catch the Bad Guys! They might actually work up a sweat, and burn off all those expensive doughnuts they spent so many long hours chowing down on! Oh, the horror!

    FUCK THE SURVEILLANCE STATE.
    Just sayin'.

  • So anyway, if you want to really stick it to the libs, wear a mask which will help fend off the 5G waves and prevent them from causing autism in your as yet conceived child.

    Wearing a mask also helps to increase CO2 in the atmosphere because after being stuck all day behind the mask, the gas, if it hasn't already killed you, will float ever skyward and tear a new hole in the ozone to prove, once and for all, climate change is fake.

  • Fuck the fascists and their facial recognition

  • Finally, a reason to support wearing otherwise useless masks.

    • The masks are not useless. They provide quite good protection against everything else: TB, Flu, Rhinoviruses...

  • If the anti-mask conspiracy theorists caught on that masks are fooling face recognition, every alt-righter would be wearing a burqa tomorrow morning.

  • so they are good for something.

  • All this talk about masks and pigmentation and whatnot messing up facial recognition is just smoke and mirrors. The ubiquitous mask wearing just gives the systems better data to learn to recognize people based on partially covered faces.
  • From now on, all masks will have an RFID chip in them to identify the wearer.

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