FC: Colorado will map all drivers' faces into "3D" database

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

It's becoming difficult to keep up with camera-surveillance news. A sampling:

"Smile for the camera"
July 5, 2001
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Jul-05-Thu-2001/opinion/16467201.html

"England turning into a surveillance state"
July 4, 2001
http://www0.mercurycenter.com/business/top/031893.htm

"Liberty founders on fear"
July 4, 2001
http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/index.ssf?/columns/hall/13ba805.html

"Peeping Super Hit in Vid Plot"
July 4, 2001
http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-07-04/News_and_Views/Crime_File/a-117194.asp

"Police cameras scan for criminals"
July 4, 2001
http://www.civic.com/civic/articles/2001/0702/web-tampa-07-03-01.asp

"New crime-fighting camera raises issue of privacy vs. safety"
July 4, 2001
http://www.dallasnews.com/national/410189_camera_04nat.A.html

"Tampa police test face recognition cameras on city streets"
July 2, 2001
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02213.html

"Legal update: Toiletcam decision, cybersquatting, Jailcam"
June 18, 2001
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02152.html

Still more:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=cameras

---

From: "Mick Williams" <mickwilliams () visto com>
Subject: Re: FC: More on Feds, Raelian cloning lab, and trying to stifle 
research
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2001 15:09:44 -0700
X-Mailer: Visto
To: declan () well com
cc: politech () politechbot com

Declan,

Here is a story from the Denver Post Politech readers might find of 
interest in the "face Recognition" debate:

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11%257E57823,00.html

Colorado will be taking pictures of people when they get drivers licenses 
and use face recognition to compare them with mug shots.

It states they are buying the technology and equipment from Polaroid.

I am recommending to my listeners to simply do not do any business or 
tourisim with the state of Colorado, The City of Tampa, Florida, Polaroid 
or anyone else who thinks they wish to implement this system or make a 
profit from it.

Cheers,

Mick Williams

Mick Williams' Cyber Line: The Planet Is Listening.

http://www.cyber-line.com

[Also see this related Denver Post story: 
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1002,11%257E57823,00.html --DBM]

***********

Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 08:47:38 -0700
To: cypherpunks () lne com
From: Tim May <tcmay () got net>
Subject: RE: Tampa using cameras to scan for wanted faces--
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

At 3:09 PM +0200 7/5/01, Eugene Leitl wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, David Honig wrote:
>
> >  Parking tickets?  Go to the local cop/FBI site, download the
> >  *Wanted* pix, fab a mask, have fun.
>
> Hmm. It might work for the current generation of cams, but not for stuff
> which actually measures the face topography. And, of course, you can't
> hide the other biometrics. It seems, even plastic surgery has its limits.

The archives, or a search engine, will turn up many past discussions we've 
had of face recognition and biometrics.

One of the interesting things is that _ear shape_ is one of the best 
correlation features.

Of course, to measure ear shape the camera has to have a good view, 
unobscured and at close enough range to get a decent number of 
pixels.  (This makes sense, that ear shape would be a good metric. I've 
been noticing the variations in ear shapes since I heard about this scheme. 
Also, I can imagine the various conformal transformations--different angles 
of view, for example--preserve certain relationships well.)

I can believe some kind of automated face recognition is being done with 
points of entry, such as international airport arrival points, but I find 
it hard to swallow that "crowd shots" from overhead cameras can do anything 
meaningful.

The Tampa action may be mostly social engineering: "We're watching you!"

--Tim May


--
Timothy C. May         tcmay () got net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns

***********

Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2001 18:36:38 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Eugene Leitl <Eugene.Leitl () lrz uni-muenchen de>
To: Tim May <tcmay () got net>
Cc: <cypherpunks () lne com>
Subject: RE: Tampa using cameras to scan for wanted faces--

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote:

> One of the interesting things is that _ear shape_ is one of the best
> correlation features.

There are a billion: skin pigmentation as seen in NIR illumination (my, do
you look spotty), NIR laser scanning of body features (MEMS mirror
galvanometers), including millimeter wave which penetrates clothing (in
development still), voice fingerprint, person-specific word patterns
(Echelon is surely using these on targeted emails), gait and mannerisms
(not even in development, but sure to arrive some day).

The only way to avoid radiating a fingerprint is to use anonymized
teleoperated hardware as meatspace proxy. And of course you can outlaw
these, unless teleoperated robotics becomes very common in the next few
decades (possible, but I'm not counting on it).

> Of course, to measure ear shape the camera has to have a good view,
> unobscured and at close enough range to get a decent number of
> pixels.  (This makes sense, that ear shape would be a good metric.

Sure there are limitations to the current state of technology. The
biometrics are of lousy quality, take seconds to compute on a ~GHz CPU,
and are not generated in an embedded device.

Nevertheless, imaging technology makes good progress with embedding DSP
cores and using hybrid architectures based on silicon retina technologies
as pioneered by Mead.  Because this is machine vision used on moving
objects, it can tolerate dead pixels, allowing you to boost resolution
(Information in a 640x480 30 fps is sure limited, but with CMOS tech like
http://www.foveon.net/tech_f16.html and tolerance of ~5% dead pixels
multimegapixel sensors plus active optics for tracking and feature
extraction with parallel DSP cores integrated into the sensor you capture
a lot of info, and process it in situ, too). As soon as the devices become
sufficiently cheap you can integrate them into virtually anything
(installation costs typically dwarf hardware costs), including street
signs (OCR to read license plates is almost mature), lanterns, copers'
wearables, etc.

The extracted biometric alone is tiny, and can be readily transmitted
using even current paltry 9.6 kBps wireless modems.

> I've been noticing the variations in ear shapes since I heard about
> this scheme. Also, I can imagine the various conformal
> transformations--different angles of view, for example--preserve
> certain relationships well.)
>
> I can believe some kind of automated face recognition is being done
> with points of entry, such as international airport arrival points,
> but I find it hard to swallow that "crowd shots" from overhead
> cameras can do anything meaningful.

With current tech the error rate is still high, but it's for real. The
hardware is going to become better due to Moore alone, including silicon
retina dedicated hardware, the economies of scale will apply, and of
course the software will get better, so the capabilities will be ramping
up very rapidly over the next few years.

> The Tampa action may be mostly social engineering: "We're watching you!"

Wehret den Anfaengen. The capabilities are still mostly vapour, and the
coverage still spotty, but exponential processes have their
counterintuitive dynamics. Twenty years more of those, and you'll be very,
very surprised.

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/";>leitl</a>
______________________________________________________________
ICBMTO  : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204
57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3

***********




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