
Facial recognition false positives lead to license revocations in Massachusetts  - ilamont
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/07/17/man_sues_registry_after_license_mistakenly_revoked/
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yaakov34
The article tries to make it sound like this is some kind of a computer-age
cyber-problem, but in fact, any face recognition technology, including the Mk.
1 human eyeball and brain, is going to have a certain false positive rate.
Actually, the article says the pictures are already reviewed by humans before
it's decided there is a match.

The real problem, in fact the only problem in my opinion, is the "guilty until
proven innocent" approach of the state. They are sending letters which state
that the license has already been revoked! If they sent a letter saying "we
strongly suspect fraud, you must verify your identity in 30 days", I would not
have a problem with that, as long as they have a decent match.

Instead, we get talk about how "driving is a privilege". Guess what - working
for the state is also a privilege, and people who abuse the citizens who pay
their salaries should lose it.

~~~
harshpotatoes
I think in this situation, more arguements should be made that driving is not
a privilege, it is an unfortunate necessity of modern life. What percentage of
Americans could work without a car?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Don't most Americans live in cities, now? Dallas has awful public
transportation, but hypothetically, you could use it to get to work - it would
just turn your 30-60 minute commute into a 2.5 hour adventure.

~~~
sheffield
Public transportation would be faster, more effective and comfortable then
cars if more people used it.

~~~
danssig
I disagree. In Switzerland they have some of the best public transport in the
world and I still tend to chose car fairly often. Public transport has the
advantage that you can do something (e.g. watch movies, read books, etc.)
while traveling while in a car that time is thrown in the trash.

But the problem is that public transport goes _near_ where lots of people want
to go but doesn't go where any _person_ actually wants to go. This means
further traveling time after the public transport bit is finished. And
probably connections as well. This means, for me, that public transport takes
about twice as long to get anywhere.

In my opinion the future is robot controlled cars. All the benefit of public
transport with none of the inefficiencies, etc. Public transport is just an
intermediate step.

~~~
sesqu
The best thing about public transport in cities is that you don't need parking
space. Hunting for parking space can easily take more time than you save by
getting directly to your destination, and public parking can be quite
expensive.

That said, many offices have reserved parking, which fixes this - though that
real estate is valuable.

~~~
danssig
Well if my idea comes to fruition the automatic car service would only need
parking for "overflow" cars when not in use. Some percentage of the system
would always be in use so the cars would only not be in use when they were
being repaired/upgraded/whatever.

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m3koval
If I am not misinterpreting the article and, "his driving privileges were
returned...after 10 days..." is the time between receiving the letter and
having his name cleared, I am impressed that the government moved that
quickly. Most of the interactions I've witnessed with the DMV, albiet not
nearly as serious, have taken an order of magnitude longer to clear up.

That being said, it is ridiculous for the state to revoke a drivers license
with no warning. This situation could have been avoided if the state merely
gave the alleged fraudsters a few weeks to present the required documentation
before revoking the license.

Overall, I found this to be the most concerning quote in the article:

“A driver’s license is not a matter of civil rights. It’s not a right. It’s a
privilege," she said. “Yes, it is an inconvenience [to have to clear your
name], but lots of people have their identities stolen, and that’s an
inconvenience, too."

With this mentality, who knows what future "inconveniences" await Pennsylvania
residents in the name of security...

~~~
Anechoic
_If I am not misinterpreting the article and, "his driving privileges were
returned...after 10 days..." is the time between receiving the letter and
having his name cleared, I am impressed that the government moved that
quickly._

You probably right that 10 days is "quick" for a government, but ten days is a
long time to be without a license if your work requires a valid license.

Similarly, the eleven day notice (well less considering mail travel time) is
BS. I travel a lot for business and two+ week trips are not out of the
ordinary. There should be at least 30 day notice.

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a-priori
At 1500 suspension letters per day, 365 days per year (optimistic...), 1000
false positives per year is a 0.1% false positive rate.

I think that's a fairly good rate if a false positive only meant that a
_human_ had to verify a person's identity, but not low enough to warrant
automatically suspending a person's license.

~~~
tedunangst
"The software then displays licenses with similar-looking photographs - those
with two or more images that have a high score for being the same person.
Registry analysts review the licenses and check..."

A human did verify the false positives.

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parrisj
Part of this problem is their using software L1. L1 has terrible performance
but their EULA states that you can't refer to them by name in Academic papers.
So their always refereed to anonymously as the"Commercial Competitor".

~~~
jackpirate
This sounds fishy. IANAL, but what would be the possible repercussions of
mentioning their name? Having your license revoked seems like the maximum
possible punishment, and would this really stop a tenured professor?

~~~
parrisj
I'm not sure of all the details. I recently organized a face detection
competition. And we included a couple of commercial face detectors for
comparison. My boss informed me that since we purchased them under an
education discount program we had to refer to them as "Commercial
Competitors".

My view might be slightly skewed since the basis of the competition was to
make it hard (low light, noise, occlusion, pose, atmospheric blur) and the
commercial competitors are trained on easier datasets (close range, well lit,
uniform pose and expression). While L1's system would perform better on
driver's license images false positives are going to occur in any system. So
when it flags a person it should be regarded as something fishy might be going
on instead the oracle says this person is a terrorist who buys alcohol for
teens, lock him away!

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techiferous
"We send out 1,500 suspension letters every day."

Assuming a single person does not receive multiple suspension letters, and
estimating the number of business days in a year to be 250, that's 375,000
drivers receiving letters per year.

Using 4,645,705 as the number of drivers in Massachusetts[1], 0.8% of drivers
get suspended per year. That seems high.

[1] Source: [http://www.statemaster.com/graph/trn_lic_dri_tot_num-
transpo...](http://www.statemaster.com/graph/trn_lic_dri_tot_num-
transportation-licensed-drivers-total-number)

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cheez
> An antiterrorism computerized facial recognition system that scans a
> database of millions of state driver’s license images had picked his as a
> possible fraud.

> Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases
> that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say.

That's a lotta terrorists.

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paulgerhardt
So while it appears Massachusetts does collect fingerprints, from this article
it would seem that the software does not or is not very effective at cross
referencing them with photographs.

Similar case from 1903: [http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/04/29/mistaken-
identity-2...](http://www.futilitycloset.com/2011/04/29/mistaken-identity-2/)
which "became a strong argument in favor of the new science of
fingerprinting."

~~~
Anechoic
_So while it appears Massachusetts does collect fingerprints_

For driver's licenses? Not as far as I know - I've never been fingerprinted
for a MA license.

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joe_the_user
The problem is similar blood tests. Even a seeming small false-positive rate
can result in massive disruption to the lives of many people. Run a "99.9%"
accurate test on a million-person database - if a false-positive isn't just an
annoyance but screws up a person's life, you've screwed up the lives of 1,000
people.

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ldar15
FTA: Registrar Rachel Krapielian said that protecting the public far outweighs
any inconvenience Gass or anyone else might experience.

“A driver’s license is not a matter of civil rights. It’s not a right. It’s a
privilege,’’ she said. “Yes, it is an inconvenience [to have to clear your
name], but lots of people have their identities stolen, and that’s an
inconvenience, too."

This person is why I'm a libertarian.

~~~
to3m
If the driving licence were a right, on what basis would this be the case? Do
you think this would bring down the cost of driving? If so, why?

I'm having a hard time believing that this kind of deregulation would be
helpful, but maybe it would? Perhaps if private road providers were more
common, there would be a wider range of options. Can't see that flying
though... people seem to like to drive without paying for the road at point of
use...

~~~
smashing
People are driving on the road paid for by their taxes. And freedom of travel
by automobile is a liberty not a right because it can be taken away, as this
article appears to document, unjustly or in criminal matters, justly.

~~~
ldar15
Both life and liberty are rights which may be forfeit by criminal action.
Simply because the justice system can revoke your life does not make your life
a privilege as Ms Krapielian would have us believe.

The simple fact of the government paving all public thoroughfares does not
somehow mean that it is now a privilege to walk upon them or drive on them.

~~~
smashing
I don't know who Krapielian is. Rachel Kaprielian(1) was the one who made the
statements: "There are mistakes that can be made." and the real jewel "Yes, it
is an inconvenience [to have to clear your name], but lots of people have
their identities stolen, and that’s an inconvenience, too."

(1) <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rachel-kaprielian/4/787/564>

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derleth
For a nontrivial number of people, saying that "driving is a privilege, not a
right" is equivalent to saying "being able to remain employed is a privilege,
not a right".

What's the right way to deal with this?

~~~
mcherm
Speak to your state legislators. Ask for a rule mandating an opportunity to
present evidence to an impartial adjudicator before any license suspension.

~~~
ruby_on_rails
Or you can not waste you time and do what will actually result in the required
change: Either make a campaign contribution to a person or persons capable or
changing the law or have a lobby group do it for you at a similarly
significant cost to you. Even if you manage to outbid the private contractors
this year (which is highly unlikely), do you seriously think you can out bid
the largest defense contractors year after year, while they are busy raking in
$14.5 billion every year from the 37 other states participating?

That is the only "legal" way to change laws in the US.

Or we can call that battle what it is: lost. Spend your time and effort (and
money) and go invest in those security contractors so that you will have a
nest egg waiting if ever you are out of work as a result of losing you license
for 2weeks+.

Or to put another way: "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" is all
conditional upon what matters to people with money and power and which methods
they use to ensure they continue to have money and power.

