FBI launches face recognition project
September 10, 2012
Next Generation Identification (credit: FBI)
As part of an update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has begun rolling out facial recognition to identify criminals, New Scientist reports.
It will form part of the bureau’s long-awaited, $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) program, which will also add biometrics such as iris scans, DNA analysis, and voice identification to the toolkit. A handful of states began uploading their photos as part of a pilot program this February and it is expected to be rolled out nationwide by 2014.
Applications include tracking a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd and comparing images of a person of interest (from security cameras or public photos uploaded onto the Internet) 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.
The FBI’s Jerome Pender told the Senate in July that the searchable photo database used in the pilot studies only includes mugshots of known criminals. But it’s unclear from the NGI’s privacy statement whether that will remain the case once the entire system is up and running or if civilian photos might be added, says attorney Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Tests in 2010 showed that the best algorithms can pick someone out in a pool of 1.6 million mugshots 92 per cent of the time. It’s possible to match a mugshot to a photo of a person who isn’t looking at the camera too. Algorithms such as one developed by Marios Savvides’s lab at Carnegie Mellon can analyse features of a front and side view set of mugshots, create a 3D model of the face, rotate it as much as 70 degrees to match the angle of the face in the photo, and then match the new 2D image with a fairly high degree of accuracy.
Of course, it is easier to match up posed images and the FBI has already partnered with issuers of state drivers’ licenses for photo comparison. Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union urges caution: “Once you start plugging this into the FBI database, it becomes tantamount to a national photographic database.”
Comments (25)
by Lance
The construction of the panopticon is underway. In it everthing you do, say, and think will be under SURVEILLANCE, and not just out in public places, or public buildings, or on the Internet, or in your car, but ANYTIME, ANYWHERE. (Gee, where have I heard that saying before?) Those who created this technology, and who use this technology to do their jobs for the government/corporate/media empire, will have immense power over everything you do, what you say, and especially what you think. In many respects this is already the case. For instance, those who don’t believe the official “story” surrounding the events of 9/11, are FEARFUL of what the government can/will do to them should they speak out and gain any large measure of popular acceptance. Additionally, the corporations and media have immense power too. To the non-believers in the 9/11 “story” they appear to be complicit in maintaining the governments “story”, and that includes the major Internet news outlets. This also makes people who don’t believe their “story” FEARFUL of what the corporations and media can do to them, i.e., deny them a job, destroy their character, discredit them, label them, etc.. My question to all of you is, isn’t this a form of control, or even a form of terrorism?
by SpottedMarley
i guess its time to bring back wearing veils
by Mwicker21
That won’t work for long. Everything you do can be looked at as a fingerprint. Not only your physical appearance and speech patterns but also your gait, your routine, etc. The way you walk is very signature of who you are. The subtle movements that make it up could supplement everything else known about you as composite criteria with likely a 99%+ accuracy of accurate identification. Also if you consider how incredible of a sense of smell some animals have you can expect that technology will be able to analyze smell in a similar and streamlined manner. Being able to track people will likely be easiest that way because it won’t be very expensive and the hardware won’t have to be installed in that many areas because scent travels quite a distance. Advanced AI pattern recognition plus sufficient infrastructure plus our current condition which allows people to be tried without one present coupled with the US government equals total KGB-like control of dissenters.
by Bri
Those are pictures of the illegal aliens. You know scientology MIB outer space aliens!!
by eldras
Unless we merge with machines or else successfully build safe, containable Superintelliegnce (like in Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ or his ‘I Robot’), robot attacks on humans may be inevitable.
What clear foresight Asimov had. Playing with infinite possibilities is the first step to narrowing by impossibilities into accurate predictions we can plan round.
Gvmts have changed the world completely by their directives, like charting the seas, the space race, the computer, the internet and world world web.
They follow their immediate requirements but the need for futurists is massive.
One wrong step and the human and any transhuman era is over.
by Panopticon
Here’s what the future looks like: crime prevention based on people’s looks.
Far fetched?
It will recognize an individual’s potential to be a criminal. It will figure out what’s common in all the mugshots in the system and calculate the match percentage. Also, take a look at all sorts of national extremists and vandals. Notice a pattern in their looks?
Cams could send an alert if there’s a group of people, say more than 2, who exceed the threshold and with high percentage belong to the class of a potential criminal even if they aren’t yet in the database. A great percentage of them will be.
Also the media and fashion world would get alerted if people they look for in their productions are found in the crowd. They could look for similar looking people, people playing a part when young, models, etc.
Here’s what the future looks like: crime prevention based on people’s looks.
Far fetched?
It will recognize an individual’s potential to be a criminal. It will figure out what’s common in all the mugshots in the system and calculate the match percentage. Also, take a look at all sorts of national extremists and vandals. Notice a pattern in their looks?
Cams could send an alert if there’s a group of people, say more than 2, who exceed the threshold and with high percentage belong to the class of a potential criminal even if they aren’t yet in the database. A great percentage of them will be.
Also the media and fashion world would get alerted if people they look for in their productions are found in the crowd. They could look for similar looking people, people playing a part when young, models, etc.
You’re just a bunch of pixels fed to an algorithm.
by seeker
wow when I’m looking on above pictures they remind me some kind of aliens rather than human – any conspiracy theory here … ? :)
by Marcos Marin
Alien? It’s a baby, my friend.
Conspiracy? You decide.
by Robin Hood
It’s all good and fine until the powers that be steer in the direction of corruption and use this technology in the creation of a 1984 like state of existence.
by SG
“it’s unclear from the NGI’s privacy statement whether that will remain the case once the entire system is up and running or if civilian photos might be added”
Look, a nod to the naive. :)
by Marc
The person who trades freedom for security deserves neither.
by Geffrard
just by living in a society alone you have already traded a portion of your freedom for security. so don’t you think the real question here should be what portion of ‘freedom trade’ that you should never exceed for the sake of security?
by MrFriendly
Wow…I welcome it. I’ll give up some privacy for more security, any day.
It’s really amazing the software that’s out there that can actually stitch together multiple photographs into a 3D object or scene.
by Chris P. Kareem
I agree 100%, MrFriendly. I think the government should be tapping all of our phones to make sure we’re not terrorists. I’ll give up some privacy for more security, any day.
by 0dei
I agree 100%, MrFriendly. I think the government should tap all of our phones and monitor our conversations to make sure we’re not terrorists. I’ll give up some privacy for more security, any day.
by Gabriel
“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.” – Benjamin Franklin
by MrFriendly
Yes, I’ll take phone tapping over car bombs.
You guys need to go live in Afghanistan or Iraq for a few months…if you survive, come back and tell me how awful phone tapping and facial recognition systems are…
I’m sure you’re likely paranoid of the “military industrial complex,” too. Yeah…the CIA and the military are totally out to get you, for sure. It couldn’t possibly be jihadists. No way. It’s your own nation!
Oh, and NASA faked the lunar landings, right? Yeah. Conspiracies abound.
Go live in the middle east for a while.
by Mr.X
I had an aquintance that thought JUST like you.He called himself “Nationalsozialist.” But he changed his mind later.
Concerning the middle east: Just because some other place is bad, does not mean you have to worsen yours. Considering the state of your economy and the enormous amount of dollars going into your military one should start to wonder.
A democracy needs questioning citizens, who keep the state in check.If you give too much freedom to the state, it will use that freedom to gain even more might and will never give it up without fighting.In the long run you will lose YOUR freedoms, and then your security (hm hm, something like that was said by B.Franklin).Maybe you learned to trust authority blindly, but history shows that this is not a smart choice.
And can you guarantee that these systems (mentioned in the article), once in place, won’t be used to get rid of “unwanted subjects”?
Anyway, why do you want to associate such thought with conspiracy theories?Is that practice intellectually honest? Do you feel better now, after you showed your intellectual prowess?
Have a nice day ;)
by MrFriendly
1) National security measures have never negatively affected my life. 9/11 did – profoundly, nearly ending it.
2) If I have to choose between this theoretical loss of “freedom” because of advanced intelligence-collecting technology, and the increased risk of death due to terrorism, I’ll happily select the former. In actuality, I’m most likely to lose a bit of privacy, which I’ve already lost, to some degree, from simply using the internet.
3) Your argument suffers from the slippery-slope fallacy. You speak as if it is nearly guaranteed that this technology and its use will eventually rob us of personal liberties. Nonsense. Every democratic nation must achieve a certain level of balance, without migrating to extremes. Any sort of technology can be misused, and the checks and balances in the United States can and will ensure that the worst case scenario of its misuse will not happen. If that weren’t the case, then by now, the many thousands of law enforcement officers would have long since enslaved the nation with the weapons that they openly carry. You’re worried about facial recognition…
4) You mention democracy, as if I stated that we should blindly follow and trust authority. I did not. I stated that I’m willing to give up some privacy, as you and I both do when we log onto the internet.
5) Unwanted subjects? If the CIA wanted me dead, I would be dead. If any government official in any nation – democratic or not – wanted a citizen dead, they could easily make it happen. You don’t need this type of technology to do so. Again, checks and balances at work.
6) Following your slippery slope argument to its very illogical and dystopian conclusion IS a form of conspiracy theory: “And can you guarantee that these systems (mentioned in the article), once in place, won’t be used to get rid of “unwanted subjects”?” Sounds an awful lot like a conspiracy, to me…The US government is plotting to take us down!
How about you worry less about my intellectual capacity, and worry more with getting that silly, tinfoil hat off of your head. It wouldn’t hurt for you to shower and get a job, either.
Oh, but wait…I’m sorry, the feds might be putting something in your water supply to sap your freedoms and control your mind. After all, they’re in complete control of our utilities. Scratch that idea.
by Gabriel
Excellent post Mr.Friendly, happy that you clarified on your words which I can agree with — I’ve actually had this discussion with people quite recently….about this so-called fear of losing privacy…people don’t understand that, essentially, we have no privacy already: we live in a small, social world that is getting more smaller and more social overtime….this is a good thing. The only way to actually have the sort of privacy people talk about sometimes, is if you were to live “off-the-grid”…and I can’t imagine what kind of happiness or life you can truly attain from something like that, unless that truly was your thing.
Kind of funny how worries over privacy are actually here of all places because, in Kurzweil’s vision anyway, the lines between people will be so negligible that their will inheritly be no privacy whatsoever…what else can you say when people can merge with eachothers thinking and possess all sorts of God-like abilites that further our capabilities and links to eachother?
Government abuse is an issue, no doubts there…the people must be as vigilant just as much as the Feds…however, I can understand how annoying it is for people to talk about “privacy” in the sense that they actually essentially feel they have some. i know it can seem like a hard thing to come to terms with….but again — this world is the one we will in and we’ve gotten so much by it becoming smaller and more social and that’s only going to continue…and in the grand scheme of things, all the more better for it.
by Mr.X
Nice to see you guys think being rude towards others is excellent.
Who said I talked about privacy?Who said everyone here agrees with everything Mr.Kurzweil believes?
If this kind of talk is allowed here, I ask if I can reciprocate (but it won’t be looking good, since you my opponent seems to lack any wit)?
by Gabriel
Peter Diamandis said this at one time — that we will become this “inter-connected part of the human race”, and when we are that connected and that capable, that the idea of going back the way you were and living off the grid…back to one biological brain and body, no longer merging with everywhere else, no longer having those God-like abilities (essentially, ironically, how we are right now)….it will be an unbearably lonely thought.
Personally, I find being that connected and that capable to be welcoming…more welcoming that superficial grandiose sense of privacy that I never really had in the first place.
by Mr.X
Maybe you have heard the term strawman?
by Mr.X
1.So you aren’t trying to be objective.
2.Maybe you should learn statistics etc and look up this incredibly high risk to die because of terrorism.Tell me, do you any society in which granting government these rights and similiar tools did not lead to the abuse of the latter?
3.First, I am not worried, since I have no business in your country.Second, what you are saying is not true, your society isn’t exactly the pinaccle of freedom.
4.You said others who just expressed their suspicions towards authority should go live in the middle East.How am I to understand this?
5.Again, I do not believe in your checks and balances.
6,Hm.How do you explain the fact that your president can order you dead without second guessing?
Where I live, people have been kidnapped by your government,So yes, I do not trust it.It’s historical track record (just like any other country) is not that great eather.Lincoln voted into office without a single southern vote, south forced to stay in the union.Military actions against larborers in the great depression.
Again, I probably know more about science than you, so stop referencing conspiracy theories.The fact that you, despite all the idiosyncracies of my English, did not even notice that I am no compatriot of yours, speaks volumes about your intellect.
Anyway, I have no need to be insulted by some self-rightous idiot.
Worrying about your intellectual capacity amounts to fantasizing, since there is none.Maybe you should stop ad-hominen attacks on those with whom you disagree, it only reinforces your tendency of emotionaly asserting your beliefs without checking them.
Have a nice day;)
Ps: Showering and getting a job?Seriously, stop these insults, boy.
by steve
Thank you for expanding on your earlier post, and confirming my suspicion that you are indeed a moron.