IP: Fw: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of Face Recognition in Tampa

[David Farber <dfarber () earthlink net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Barry Steinhardt <BSteinhardt () aclu org>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 15:27:36 
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of Face
  Recognition in Tampa

Dave,

The use of the biometric facial recognition technology, along with video 
surveillance on the streets of Tampa, Florida is an overhyped failure that 
has been seemingly abandoned by police officials, according to a report 
released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

System logs obtained by the ACLU through Florida's open-records law show 
that the system never identified even a single individual contained in the 
department's database of photographs. And in response to the ACLU's queries 
about the small number of system logs, the department has acknowledged that 
the software -- originally deployed last June, 2001 -- has not been 
actively used since August.

The report  entitled "Drawing a Blank : The Failure of Face Recognition in 
Tampa",  can be found at http://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy/drawing_blank.pdf.

Our announcement can be found at http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n010302a.html.

Barry Steinhardt






Sent from Dave's Blackberry.

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