
Chinese Researchers Invent New Police Car That Can Scan Faces - mc_manus
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/03/26/chinese-researchers-invent-new-police-car-that-can-scan-criminals-faces/
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lowglow
Hot new style tips for the summer, y'all!

[https://cvdazzle.com/](https://cvdazzle.com/)

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ma2rten
Does this work with modern deep learning based face detection?

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therobot24
i'm pretty sure it only works against Viola-Jones

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ansgri
The generalizing power of deep convolutional neural nets is much greater, but
(1) it doesn't really matter if you don't have anything similar in your
training dataset, and (0) CNNs are used for face _recognition_, and for it you
still have to detect face first. And in detection, VJ is still king.

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therobot24
Granted my domain of knowledge is more aligned with the recognition side, i'm
pretty sure Viola-Jones has been replaced as 'king' with more robust
approaches to detection. Here is a paper published just last year in CVPR:

[http://www.cv-
foundation.org/openaccess/content_cvpr_2015/pa...](http://www.cv-
foundation.org/openaccess/content_cvpr_2015/papers/Li_A_Convolutional_Neural_2015_CVPR_paper.pdf)

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Cypher
I've been working on an idea for a while, autonomous police cars. They'll spot
a criminal, pick them up and drive them to jail. It could save billions!

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psbp
Sounds like my stupid (brilliant?) idea, an autonomous car lift. Travel
under/around speeding or otherwise criminal drivers, travel at the same speed
and pick the vehicle up (from the frame, not the wheels).

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frogpelt
Then what?

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pc86
Crush the car.

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fintler
My Hungarian is a bit rusty. Do they actively scan faces? ... or is it an on-
demand thing?

If it's on-demand, police in the US have already been doing it for a while
now:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/us/facial-recognition-
soft...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/us/facial-recognition-software-
moves-from-overseas-wars-to-local-police.html)

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MagnumOpus
It is just a university research group presenting a development prototype for
a police car - so it's not likely something that will be on the roads anytime
soon (though the Hungarian article speculates that this would "come in handy
for the september G20 meeting in Tsengdu and could be introduced there").

Their prototype can "automatically scan all faces in a sixty meter circle
around the car" and be able to reconcile it with lists of suspects, even at
speeds of 120km/h. It is also able to recognize and store all number plates
visible around the cop car.

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pmalynin
The Machine [1] is getting ever closer.

[1] From Person of Interest.

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outside1234
Is this how the Burka comes into fashion worldwide? :)

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therobot24
probably a niqab over a burka

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alkonaut
Surprised this isn't already a thing in production. Police cars have had
automatic license plate detection coupled to databases of known stolen cars
etc. for many years. Likewise cars have had pedestrian detection cameras for a
few years.

All the technical bits are there, and I can't imagine it would be a difficult
issue legislation/privacy-wise.

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omarforgotpwd
You can imagine a future where criminals need to get plastic surgery to avoid
capture. Kind of like minority report

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gr3yh47
>You can imagine a future where criminals, journalists, and political
dissidents need to get plastic surgery to avoid disappearance.

ftfy

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kochthesecond
My first thought as well :/

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fludlight
> Szép világ lenne, de erre minden bizonnyal még több évtizedet kell várnunk.

> (A beautiful world it would be, but we will have to wait decades.)

It seems that the current generation of Hungarian journalists has forgotten
the lessons of overzealous policing during the bad old days from the late
1930s to the early 1990s.

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mciancia
Reminds me of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hazuw0ghjXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hazuw0ghjXc)

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exabrial
Heh, after living in China for 5 weeks in the zhejiang province, I think theyd
be better off if the attached this to mopeds :D

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jcyw
oh wow. like a real time streetview monitoring the society?

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mc_manus
Seems like it, the captured photos (in 360 degrees) will be compared within
milliseconds with the list of the wanted criminals in the central database.
Even when the car is moving with 120 kmph.

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mikeash
What's the false positive rate? I have a feeling that the base rate fallacy is
going to make this technology far too interesting.

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avs733
Not exactly a technical answer...

does the Chinese government really care? I ask because this is the type of
thing that only enters a conversation when 'effectiveness'/'accuracy' becomes
a discussion down the line. I doubt that China gives a s __* frankly, which
makes this even scarier...the data used to show it works will like be bad by
design.

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Shengbo
There's an English article on WSJ.[1]

[1][http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/03/26/chinese-
resear...](http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/03/26/chinese-researchers-
invent-new-police-car-that-can-scan-criminals-faces/)

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dang
Thanks. We changed to that, minus the word "criminals" in the WSJ title;
presumably the thing scans non-criminal faces as well.

The submitted URL was [http://24.hu/tech/2016/04/04/a-kinai-rendorautok-
nemsokara-m...](http://24.hu/tech/2016/04/04/a-kinai-rendorautok-nemsokara-
mar-arcokat-is-kepesek-lesznek-felismerni/). Submitters: please submit stories
in English. Hungarian is a magnificent language from a magnificent language
family, but HN is an English-language site.

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mc_manus
Thank you for your kind clarification, will do in the future.

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agent008t
But surely, if you're ﻿a criminal, then you'll probably take measures to
ensure your face doesn't get scanned/recognized? So this is either a measure
to intimidate law-abiding citizens into staying docile, or just a corruption
scheme to appropriate the funds from the budget (subcontract the development
of this technology to a corporation run by one of your friends).

