
FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project   - denzil_correa
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528804.200-fbi-launches-1-billion-face-recognition-project.html
======
toomuchcoffee
_"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any
public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give
you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering
to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of
having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your
face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in
Newspeak: facecrime..."_

1984, Book 1, Chapter V

~~~
kapitalx
I wonder if one could get away with vandalizing cameras as protected speech. I
would certainly start wearing makeup:
<http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20003431-1.html>

~~~
falcolas
A bit more concrete information on how to defeat facial recognition:

<http://cvdazzle.com/>

~~~
fein
I know this is a shot in the dark, as you linked the site, so I don't know how
in depth you may have dived into the issue:

> Partially obscure the nose-bridge are: The region where the nose, eyes, and
> forehead intersect is a key facial feature.

Wouldn't a big pair of aviators, or any sunglasses, pretty much take care of
this?

~~~
Evbn
This is explicitly discussed on the linked page.

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sophacles
I think this is a good argument for requiring all software purchased, and all
technology developed, with public funds to be public domain and/or open
source.

A lot of people will believe that we should just kill the project and move on,
but honestly, the tech is there, and we have all seen what happens with tech:
it just keeps going. The functionality will be snuck in as an add on to some
other software package anyway.

This isn't to say we shouldn't kill the project -- just that this should be
required as open. It won't undo any security/benefit gained from it, much like
open crypto. It will however give us the voters the ability to actually
provide input about what can/can't be done by the government.

~~~
beambot
I don't understand your reasoning.

You want to open source a $1B piece of facial recognition software so that
_more_ agencies / NGOs / companies / individuals can track our movements? That
sounds a little counter productive. At least the FBI (presumably) has
accountability and oversight. Can you imagine trying to police abuses if
deployed to every municipal law force and marketing agency in the country?

~~~
cracell
But if it was open source and we knew exactly what it was capable of it would
be easier to pass legislature that restricts it and makes certain uses of it
illegal.

This stuff is coming one way or another and wouldn't you rather it be properly
legislated? And that we as the public could know their capabilities?

~~~
nir
That legislation would only apply to entities following the law, though.

~~~
yequalsx
Let's apply your comment to a law against murder. Doesn't have much relevance
does it? Your comment isn't germane.

Laws always apply to the people to whom they are written to apply to. It is
true that some people don't follow some laws. Presumably violating the law
carries some penalty if caught. This does not affect whether or not said law
is efficacious or needed.

~~~
rhino42
He may be pointing at organizations such as the TSA, which seem to have carte
blanche nowadays.

------
lifeisstillgood
Bruce Schneier:

 _We're at a unique time in the history of surveillance: the cameras are
everywhere, and we can still see them. Fifteen years ago, they weren't
everywhere. Fifteen years from now, they'll be so small we won't be able to
see them. Similarly, all the debates we've had about national ID cards will
become moot as soon as these surveillance technologies are able to recognize
us without us even knowing it._

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scannin...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/07/remote_scanning.html)

To me the implications are we have 15 years to make sure we know who is
watching us and when.

~~~
marvin
I think we will get a subculture or fashion for complicated facial jewelry or
weird makeup patterns to confuse facial recognition algorithms. If cameras and
facial recognition technology becomes as ubiquitous as some people are afraid
of, I'm guessing that punk will rise again and take a principled stand against
authority and privacy intrusions.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
It seems life is one step ahead as usual:

[http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-
recognitio...](http://www.securitynewsdaily.com/1441-beat-facial-recognition-
software.html)

But hiding your face is only part of the problem, your gait is also pretty
unique, as is I suspect your smell, your etc etc.

We need a generic catch all law to keep everyone honest. as I keep banging on
about.

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lifeisstillgood
We are never going to stop the technology being developed _and_ used. And nor
should we - the benefits can be enormous.

But we _must_ put in place legislation that prevents abuse - and I think it
needs to be broad and overarching.

I suggest

    
    
      1. All monitoring of individuals / crowds in public 
      and semi-public areas must be clearly notified, and 
      the raw output of that monitoring must be made 
      publically available within a short and reasonable time   
      frame
    
      2. All access to that raw feed and subsequent 
      processed feeds by government officials must be 
      audited and made available in raw form
    
      3. Exceptions can only be made through warrants 
      signed by civil courts
    

Frankly, there are face recognition, laser scanners and more. Getting away
with a crime in a public area will be almost impossible in 20 years. That's
the good news. The bad news is that if only the police have access to that
information, they _will_ abuse it. Because they are good people mostly.

~~~
hahainternet
There are similar laws already in place in some countries:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1998>

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Afaik the DPA is aimed at processing of data, specifically excludes that
collected for security warranted or not, has no teeth to it, has no provision
to force the publication of data held as a matter of course (opt in not opt
out) and has afaik no case law regarding surveillance (it's mostly focused on
internal data processing)

we should assume that if I can see a camera I can go to surveillance.gov.UK
enter my lat long, choose the camera from a list and see the raw feed - wave
at it. And see who has acessed that feed in the past hour.

If that os not a normal reflex for people waiting to catch thier train, or
walking to the shops, then we have not got the right legislation

------
enraged_camel
>>In addition to scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated
that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd.

Reminds me of that one scene from Minority Report where Tom Cruise boards a
tram, only to have the cameras scan and identify his face and alert the
authorities.

------
nthj
I give it a year or 3 before the government issues a secret order to Facebook
to hand over all photos and photo tag records. Facebook already has the data
required to match a huge number of faces with their names, addresses, likes,
interests, political and religious leanings, and everything else.

Sure, the project is just for known criminals now, but it'd be fairly
straightforward to start tracking a large portion of the world.

~~~
grandalf
Every year the number of things that constitute criminal acts increases...

------
pstuart
What a dilemma: I don't want dangerous people running around hurting people,
and I don't trust the government to use such power responsibly.

~~~
mindcrime
I'll take my chances with the "dangerous people," personally. There are,
presumably, fewer of them, than there are government agents.

~~~
wtetzner
Also, there is likely overlap between "dangerous people" and government
agents.

------
tjoff
Widely available face recognition could potentially threat societies in
cities.

What would we gain from this? Targeted ads when walking in to your local
store? Never having to tag another photo again? (that one is just awesome, but
what else?)

Personally this is a tech that I would gladly postpone as long as possible, or
at least until the whole tech-thing has stabilized. Most governments still
want and think it is within their right to censor internet and is as eager as
ever to criminalize cryptography - do we want such immature governments to
have this tool in their arsenal as well?

~~~
corin_
There are plenty of potential benefits, for example I flew home (to England) a
couple of days ago and rather than queue for a while to have someone check my
passport I was able to pop my passport onto a scanner then have the machine
check my eyes to see if I am who I claim to be, which meant that in 30 seconds
I was out the other side. Facial recognition could speed that up even further.

You could get home and your front door would automatically unlock as you
approach it, get into your car with genuine keyless entry rather than just the
kind that means the keys are in your pocket, pop into Starbucks and be handed
your regular drink (or something you ordered on a phone) by somebody who has
never served you before, etc.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of arguments against this technology, and
I'm not even saying that the good points will end up happening (there's plenty
of technological improvements Starbucks could make with existing fairly basic
technology already), just that it isn't hard to imagine more than just
Facebook-style photo tagging.

~~~
AutoCorrect
retina scans have already been cracked - this is no security

~~~
corin_
Personally I'm not too fussed about the success rate of checking who gets into
the UK, while I do care about how long it takes me to get home from abroad,
so... don't really mind whether it's good security or not.

------
mistercow
>images of a person of interest from security cameras or public photos
uploaded onto the internet could be compared 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.

I feel like this is going to be the prosecutor's fallacy on steroids. Not only
do you have the "cold hit" problem of DNA testing (but with way, way more
false positives), but you'll end up with a defendant with near 100% odds of
positive identification by the victim. Of course "looks like the perpetrator"
and "positively identified by victim" almost entirely overlap as evidence, but
it won't necessarily _feel_ that way to a jury.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Are false positives really such a problem? Most repeat criminals do it because
they are dumb and/or impulsive. If you get 10 hits, you just send a cop around
to ask each one if they did it. The one that says yes gets arrested. A major
fraction of crimes can be solved this way. Many more can be solved by slapping
surveillance robots on people and catching their next crime.

~~~
mistercow
Many cases will be like that yes. And if, as they say, the databases are
limited to wanted persons or convicted felons, then the priors won't be
terribly out of whack. But it's going to be way easier, PR-wise, to broaden a
face database than it ever would have been to broaden a DNA database. It did
not take long in the UK, for example, for the National DNA database to creep
from "only convicted criminals" to "anyone arrested, even if they were never
charged".

And that's with people's _DNA_ , which is pretty invasive to obtain. The
government takes routinely takes pictures of people; there's no visceral
moment of privacy invasion there. It would be easy for the database to expand
to include a tremendous number of people, and then your false positive rate
really is a problem. It stops even being a reliable way to narrow people down,
because there just isn't that much variance in human faces, especially if you
have to deal with low resolution and/or noisy data.

------
logn
I'm pretty sure that if our founding fathers were writing the Bill of Rights
today there would be an amendment against dragnet electronic surveillance.
It's too easy to turn into a panopticon, driven by people who like panopticons
such as my mom with an attitude of: "I'm not doing anything wrong and it's
worth it to protect against terrorists". Wait until they redefine what "wrong"
is.

------
pauljburke
I have to admit I completely misread that as "FB launches..." and didn't think
anything of it, other than that $1 billion was a bit excessive.

------
qwertzlcoatl
I wonder if Facebook gets subsidies... It's an Orwellian paradise.

And let's not forget Google too - they have Picasa, Google+, Android face
unlocking...

~~~
mdonahoe
The onion: the facebook as a cia op.

[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-
dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-cos,19753/)

------
personlurking
If looked at from a distance, with the creation of globalization, (free)
trading blocks, 'interdependence' (inter means 'to bury', mind you), we are
becoming borderless and so the bad guys no longer reside in such-and-such
country. The 'terrorist' is everywhere, the 'terrorist' is/could be you. Thus
the idea is to let the gov't deal with it, to protect you against you.

Btw, 'love' the argument that 'If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I
care?'

------
stevenjgarner
So who is a "criminal"? The article does not clarify exactly what constitutes
a criminal record? Just convictions? Felonies only? Or does it include simple
misdemeanors such as speeding tickets? Or does it actually (most likely)
include all arrests, including those that never result in convictions (where
there is NO criminal record)?

------
fredBuddemeyer
i must wonder how many here realize what the aspirations of an ipo or even a
corporate investment mean in this age. so many of us are working for what we
disdain - without even realizing it. yet we are the same people that can make
the most difference - if we see our responsibilities in a future determined by
technological opportunity.

------
sit12
What if my twin brother becomes a wanted criminal? Do I risk being jumped and
stuffed into an unmarked white government van?

~~~
dohko
Don't worry. Before you know it we'll also have DNA tracking. So you'll be
easily distinguishable from your twin brother.

~~~
drcube
Not your identical twin...

~~~
enfilade
Eventually they'll be able to distinguish the minute differences in identical
twins' epigenomes.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Can that be the right word? Do you my their physiology?

~~~
enfilade
In a sense, yes. Epigenome refers to the overall body of regulatory
modifications made to DNA and the DNA storage mechanism. A lot of these
modifications involve the attachment of small chemical groups to a distinct
bit of DNA, or alternately the proteins which DNA is wrapped around while in
storage, or a number of other possible mechanisms.

Let's say your identical twin is known to be a 1-pack-a-day smoker (assume
that the hypothetical panopticon has access to his history of credit card
purchases). Assume that you, however, abstain from smoking and also avoid
secondhand smoke.

There will be certain modifications to your twin's genetic material which may
be detectable in the next few decades. These modifications may allow the
tracker to positively distinguish between you and your twin.

Regarding your question -- smoking (or exercise, or severe depression, etc.)
affects your physiology, which in turn may cause changes to your epigenome.

------
SolarNet
Of course with a little makeup and hair styling you can prevent facial
recognition software: <http://cvdazzle.com/>

I bet we will be seeing some interesting hairstyles, like those above, in
counter culture after facial recognition software becomes pervasive.

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johnohara
This, on top of the $451,000,000 already spent on its Sentinel Case Management
System.

[http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-
applica...](http://www.informationweek.com/government/enterprise-
applications/fbis-new-sentinel-system-exclusive-look/232800018)

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knightofmars
This isn't a new hat. It is something already being used by police departments
to identify suspects on video by comparing their facial attributes against
records produced by analyzing driver's license photographs.

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roc
Here's to hoping facial camouflage paint/sticker solutions become fashionable.

------
lectrick
It's bad when Facebook does it, but the FBI… That's perfectly OK!

~~~
ricardonunez
I was thinking the same thing. I'm wondering what Germany will use as an
excuse to implement similar system after telling Facebook to destroy their
database.

------
lucasjans
I read the headline as "FB launches $1 billion face recognition project,"
might not be the actual headline but might as well be true!

~~~
WiseWeasel
That's old news:

[http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-
reco...](http://allthingsd.com/20120618/facebook-acquires-facial-recognition-
technology-company-face-com/)

------
drcube
I foresee ski masks being the fashion of the future.

~~~
dohko
I wish it were that easy. By law you have to be identifiable in public,
therefore you can't wear a mask that covers completely your face.

~~~
drcube
Which law is that?

Plastic surgery will become more popular too.

~~~
ojiikun
The the state of Georgia there is just such a law:

<http://www.lawskills.com/code/ga/16/11/38/>

Interestingly, this occasionally sparks trouble with the police at geek/nerd
conventions where costuming is popular.

------
rorrr
Can't wait for a few major politicians to get caught by these doing something
illegal.

