Face Recognition

1 | P a g e

FORUM 4: Exploring Public Perceptions of Facial Recognition Technology

SAMPLE OF RECENT MEDIA COVERAGE ABOUT FACIAL RECOGNITION

Facial Recognition Evolves to 3D, ForensicaGPS Unveiled May 30, 2012 Military and Law Enforcement agencies around the world can now rely on advanced technology to identify suspects from a low-resolution photo or video surveillance. Animetrics, a developer of advanced 3D facial recognition and identity management solutions, today introduced ForensicaGPS, a revolutionary facial recognition technology. The newly introduced facial recognition technology converts low-resolution 2D facial images from a digital photo or video frame into a 3D image, thus making it the only biometric solution of its kind which also produces results with a higher level of speed and accuracy. The patented technology is unique for the reason that the image quality enhancement tool converts photos and video frames of a person’s face into “ID ready” images including facial pose correction, which makes it easier to identify suspects. To develop this software, Animetrics teamed with DataworksPlus and BI2 Technologies (both providers of law enforcement technology solutions providers) to deliver ForensicaGPS to police and sheriff’s departments in the U.S. On an international scale, Animetrics will install ForensicaGPS in police departments in Germany and Switzerland and across the Middle East including Qatar, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Defenseworld.net spoke to Animetrics President and CEO Paul Schuepp about ForensicaGPS and the advanced tools that were used to develop it. “For more accurate identity matching, ForensicaGPS can analyze and compare up to five images of a suspect. Its special forensic tools allow metric analysis of face similarity scoring, as well as 2D or 3D visualization of facial structure, geometry and texture. The software’s precise comparative analysis includes identifying features such as scars, moles, tattoos and distance measurements between facial features”.

2 | P a g e


With target customers such as the U.S Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Military, and Law Enforcement Agencies, ForensicaGPS has been tested in several real-world scenarios and has been successful in “quickly, efficiently and accurately compare, analyze and ultimately verify digital facial images from grainy surveillance photos or videos where a suspect’s face is often shielded or distorted”.

Facial Recognition Software Unveiled in Grand Rapids May 21, 2012

GRAND RAPIDS (WZZM) - Most of us are a little indecisive when it comes to ordering at a restaurant or trying a new product, so some businesses hope to make the decision for you.

More and more are turning to facial recognition software, and a Grand Rapids tech company is one of the first in the world to install biometric scanning in the use of real time marketing triggers.

Nexus Digital Signage recently started advertising on LCD screens in businesses across the area, and just last week, owner Scott Sandburg and tech consultant Jordan Verburg installed their facial recognition software inside the store of their first client, Curtis Cleaners.

The second a customer walks through their doors, the mini camera on top of the store's TV spots him or her.

Customers can't see it.

What the camera immediately looks for is eyes, ears, and a nose.

Next, it looks for textures.

"It can tell a man from a woman by dark hair on the face, like a goatee," said Verburg.

Verburg says women stand out because females tend to have higher cheekbones and smoother skin than males.

After a week using the software, Andy Curtis says says it's revealed some interesting facts about the demographics of his customers.

"There was a big jump in clientele from 4 to 6 in the evenings and it's 75 percent male, so that's interesting," said Andy Curtis.

Verberug can pull up all sorts of stats -- sex, age, buying preference, etc.

3 | P a g e


"It's telling what kind of clothes are coming in, what kind of specials we should run, if we should target men more or women more," said Curtis.

The specials will soon start to show up on his digital screen inside and outside of the store.

"People are stuck here for five minutes sometimes in the afternoon, so it's something to drag their attention to our store and hopefully get them in the door," he said.

So how effective could this turn out to be?

Sandberg says similar software has shown big payoffs in the restaurant industry already.

Say Verburg walked into a McDonalds with a digital menu board and a camera in place.

It immediately determines his demographic.

"He's a 30-year-old male, we know that 30-year-old males just love the Premium Angus Burger. That's what this screen is going to change to," said Sandburg.

So while he might have ordered a regular cheeseburger, he spent say...

"Nine dollars on the Double Cheeseburger Angus Burger, and that has created 400 percent more gross revenue for McDonalds," said Sandburg.

Sandburg says his technology follows all seven privacy laws of the U.S. Constitution.

Facebook Facial Recognition: A New Take on it Via the Klik App By Ed Oswald, May 10, 2012

Just when you thought you were safe from Facebook’s facial recognition software, there’s a new app in town using the social networking site to tag photos automatically. It’s called Klik, and is every bit as creepy as the facial recognition software that Facebook tried to use.

Available for the iPad and iPhone, Klik connects to your Facebook profile and scans the pictures of your tagged friends. Klik will then auto-detect the faces using that tagging information, and does so in real time when taking pictures from the app or from pictures in your photo library on your iDevices. To use Klik, you need a Facebook account, and iOS 4.3 or above.

4 | P a g e


In my own tests, I found the facial recognition to be creepily accurate, although the photo needs to be pretty clear and the faces in the image pointed at the camera for best results.

When Klik cannot match the face to a friend, it asks for the user to tag that person. In the live picture-taking option, a question mark appears above the person’s head with an option to help Klik ‘learn’ the face. The learning feature is not available when using pictures from your photo library, which forced me to tag those photos manually. That negated the app’s niftiness.

Once the picture is taken and the people tagged, Klik gives the option to add filters to the picture like Instagram does, as well as the option to add the names of tagged people on the photo itself. In addition to Facebook, users can share photos publicly on Klik’s website, through Twitter, and by e-mail.

Maybe Useful, But Still Creepy

Klik is a cool app, but has the same privacy concerns as Facebook’s facial recognition does. It is not clear what the app does with tag data from detected faces, and whether or not it stores this information: If it does, that may be too invasive for some. Klik also combs through you and your friend’s photos. While you may have no problem with what it does here, chances are that one of your friends does.

I do think the app has a place for frequent Facebook photographers and taggers. It makes a tedious process a fairly simple one. At the same time, some people don’t want anybody but friends going through their Facebook information, and we must respect that.

North Dakota using facial-recognition software when taking driver’s license photos By Sam Benshoof, May 6, 2012

FARGO – Before Randy Wilson stepped in front of the camera at the DMV last Thursday, he was told to remove his glasses for his driver’s license photo.

Wilson, from Fargo, didn’t think much of it. He figured it was probably because the camera’s flash might cause a glare in the photo.

As it turns out, though, it’s a little bit more complicated than that.

5 | P a g e


For the last two years, North Dakota has been using facial-recognition software as a way to prevent driver’s license fraud. Drivers like Wilson are asked to remove their glasses because the frames make it difficult for the software to identify a face.

While the concept might seem like something out of a science fiction novel, it’s actually pretty basic, said Glenn Jackson, director of the Driver’s License Division of the Department of Transportation.

The goal of the program, Jackson said, is to prevent a person from having more than one license. The software compares a new driver’s license photo with old photos in the database to make sure that a driver isn’t in the system under a different name.

“We’re just striving to make sure that in our driver’s license database, there’s only one license per person,” he said.

Jackson wasn’t sure exactly how North Dakota was affected by identification fraud prior to the implementation of the program, but nationally identity fraud cost Americans more than $1.5 billion in 2011, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

“We didn’t know, do we have a problem or not?” Jackson said. “So, we thought the best thing was to put in a program that can identify fraud, and we can ensure going forward that we do not have that problem.”

Jackson cited 30-some cases of fraud in North Dakota caught by the system in the past two years where someone has tried to have more than one driver’s license.

In those cases, a report is then forwarded to the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation for follow-up, Jackson said.

As a result, several people have ended up in jail, and several others are currently being pursued with federal fraud charges, he said.

The software’s not entirely foolproof. There are cases, Jackson said, such as with twins or family members, when the system flags photos as being a match even when they are not the same person.

When that happens though, a review of the driver’s record and signature is usually enough to determine the identity of that person, he said.

Because of potential privacy concerns related to the program, only the DOT has access to the more than 1 million photos used by the software.

“We’re always concerned with privacy,” Jackson said. “The photo in the photo database is, by state statute, not public. It’s not something people can access.”

6 | P a g e


In addition to North Dakota, Jackson estimated that more than 35 other states, including Minnesota, use similar facial recognition software to combat fraud.

Minnesota doesn’t check real-time photos like North Dakota. Instead, the Department of Public Safety in St. Paul has been in the process of reviewing nearly 11 million photos from a 2008 database, according to Driver’s Services Director Joan Kopcinski.

So instead of checking new photos when a driver comes in to renew their license, Minnesota is basing its fraud investigations on the photos already in the database.

“It’s based on historical data and historical pictures,” she said.

There are plans, though, for Minnesota to eventually implement a system similar to North Dakota’s.

“North Dakota is ahead of the game in the one-to-one match,” Kopcinski said. “We hope to get there soon.”

Though North Dakota’s program has been in place for two years, Jackson admits that it’s probably not something people know about until they actually go in to the DMV.

That’s how it was for Wilson last week, who was surprised, but not concerned, to find out about it.

“I have no problem with it,” he said, as he waited for his license to be printed. “I’m not running from anyone; I have nothing to hide.”

“This is the age we live in,” he added. “You gotta live it.”

Face off By Lezette Engelbrecht, May 4, 2012

Always struggling to put a face to a name? Soon, facial recognition technology (FRT) may be able to do the job for you. Except, advanced recognition systems won't only match faces to names, but to their identity numbers, personal details, purchasing behavior and banking information, too. All without the face in question being aware of it.

Much attention was focused on the potential of FRTs last year, following a report released by Carnegie Mellon University, which suggested facial recognition, paired with social media profiles, could spell the death of privacy. In future, goes the theory, anyone with a smartphone and an Internet connection would

7 | P a g e


be able to accurately identify someone simply by snapping their picture and cross-referencing it with publically available online data.

"When we share tagged photos of ourselves online, it becomes possible for others to link our face to our names in situations where we would normally expect anonymity," said lead researcher Alessandro Acquisti.

In a world where massive volumes of data are being collected through a growing number of interconnected channels, it's getting far easier for criminals to unearth detailed personal information. Facial recognition could significantly increase the risk of identity theft, by allowing people to be traced through something that cannot be password-protected or kept out of sight.

As online privacy company Abine states in a Federal Trade Commission document: “Think of your personal information – name, photos, birth date, address, usernames, e-mail addresses, family members and more – as pieces of a puzzle. The more pieces a cyber criminal has, the closer he is to solving the puzzle. Facial recognition software is a tool that can put all these pieces together.”

These kinds of facial recognition services are already emerging, and while many are still in developing stages, they offer a glimpse of a far less private future.

Swedish company The Astonishing Tribe (recently bought by Research In Motion), for example, has developed a smartphone app called Recognizr, which works on the concept of 'augmented ID'. It enables users to identify individuals, and see their social media connections and contact details, simply by pointing their phones at them. The app does, however, require both users to subscribe.

Another service, Face.com, provides the Photo Finder and Photo Tagger applications on Facebook, which scan public photos in a user's social network and suggests tags for faces. The apps do this for billions of photos monthly, linking them directly to available social networking information.

The common requirement for FRT services is a database of photos within which to search for matches. This may have been an obstacle previously, but since Facebook created the world's largest photo repository, with over 300 million photos uploaded every day, the chances of finding a match are better than ever.

SensePost security analyst Glenn Wilkinson notes that no other individual body has this kind of data available, both in terms of number of photographs per individual and photos across geographic borders. "An estimated 75 billion photos have been uploaded to Facebook since it was set up.”

At present, facial recognition tagging is a default feature on Facebook, meaning that while users can disable it in their privacy settings, many may be unaware it's there in the first place. Even if the function

8 | P a g e


is disabled, a user's information and images remain on Facebook's servers, so the potential to link their face and personal data remains.

Despite these developments, Wilkinson says facial recognition is an area where humans still have a significant advantage over even the most advanced computers. “The technology is still fairly immature – put on a hat, or grow a beard, for example, and you'll fool the machine.”

But he adds that combining facial recognition with other biometric characteristics or identifying objects such as cellphones and RFID tags could improve its success.

Bevan Lane, director at Infosec Consulting, adds that once FTRs get more sophisticated, this need for complementary identifiers could fall away. “Tracking wouldn't have to rely on a device like a cellphone anymore, but simply the person's face. Potentially, you could be tagged and traced wherever a camera is installed, such as walking in a mall, on a highway, or in an airport.”

Faces in places

Another technology adding fuel to the surveillance fire is location-based services, which, when combined with FRT, could lead to the holy marketing trinity of person, preference and place.

Real-life implementations of the technology are already taking place in social contexts. SceneTap, for example, automatically and anonymously collects real-time information about the gender, age and number of people entering a venue. This can inform venue owners about who their customers are and enable them to advertise events using criteria like male-female ratios.

There is also enormous potential when it comes to targeted marketing and discriminatory pricing. Here's the scenario: Jane walks into the store and has her face scanned as she enters. Based on her photo and online networks, the system can tell she's a 30-year-old female who plays competitive sport and has several dogs. And that it's her good friend's birthday tomorrow. Cue a series of in-store promotions that draw her attention to a special on hockey sticks, a new brand of dog food, and a scarf in her friend's favourite color.

Security expert Frans Lategan says that while FRT is not yet at the point of tying real-world marketing to one's Google searches, billboards could be customized according to how long someone looks at the ad, where they look, and their estimated age and gender.

“I think this will only become more invasive and probably not limited to real-time only. Geotagged photos coupled with facial recognition could create an almost complete history of any person's movements from other people's publicly disclosed photos.

“Anonymity in public places will probably no longer be possible, especially when combined with micro cells for cellphones, e-tags, number plate recognition, tire pressure sensors, RFID cards, and so forth.”

9 | P a g e


However, Mark Eardley, owner of Eardley & Associates, argues that using FRTs in consumer applications is “pie in the sky”. “I think this is far more likely to be fingerprint-based rather than anything to do with facial recognition and similarly peripheral technologies.”

State of control

Besides its social impacts, FRT is also making waves as an identification tool for security and law enforcement purposes, as well as access control.

Accurate facial recognition could, for example, help authorities spot criminals or missing persons in a crowd, and prevent dangerous individuals from boarding mass transport carriers like trains and planes.

Similar to analyzing fingerprints, an FRT system could scan someone's 'faceprint' (a digitally recorded representation of their face) and positively identify them based on their facial features. Law enforcement bodies could check faces against databases of known criminals or other information repositories.

Practical applications of the technology haven't always proved successful, however. Last year, facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport, in the UK, were temporarily put out of service after a husband and wife walked through the scanners with swapped passports. This followed another FR security scare a year earlier.

Eardley believes facial recognition technology is something of a non-starter as an identification tool. “It's one of a clutch of biometric technologies that are in their infancy, and just like any infant, it has been born into a very harsh and competitive environment. It will probably not survive beyond childhood.”

He says FRT, along with other recognition technologies such as iris, voice, vein, gait (the way someone walks) and even ear-physiognomy, is peripheral to fingerprints, which will continue to be the mainstay of biometrics. “There are too many variables within facial recognition, such as varying light and temperature conditions.”

Wilkinson says surveillance states and state-sponsored data mining are two contexts where facial recognition may become an area of concern. “London has more CCTV cameras per unit area than anywhere else in the world, with an estimated 1.85 million in the whole UK. Many developed nations are heading in a similar way.”

He points to initiatives like the US government's post-9/11 Total Information Awareness program, which sought to incorporate data from numerous sources, under the guise of national security. While the project has been disbanded, government surveillance projects continue, and private organizations are introducing similar services.

“Private data mining organizations could sell a product to governments that incorporates all aspects of citizens' lives – a plethora of state records combined with a database of images incorporated into a mass surveillance CCTV system.”

10 | P a g e


He adds, however, that automated facial recognition is still a long way off, mainly because most countries have small databases of existing images to compare photos to, as well as the high number of false positives generated by existing FRTs.

Hype vs. reality

While the potential and reality of facial recognition may still be worlds apart, its combination with other identifying technologies does conjure up significant privacy concerns.

Infosec Consulting's Lane says citizens' rights will have to be taken into account as FRTs become more pervasive. ”Privacy legislation is going to have to force some sort of opt-in process or jamming/protection mechanism. At the moment, if you are not registered, then it's not an issue, but this will change once they access national databases.”

Eardley says it comes down to whether people want their identities to be more securely handled than they are now. “For example, anyone can use your Internet banking username and password to access your accounts, and the same is pretty much true of all our payment cards. Compared to the status quo, I'd argue that biometrics offer us more, rather than less, in terms of security and identity protection.”

Lategan adds that it's become extremely difficult to prevent one's face being recorded publically. Avoiding this would mean “not having any photos of yourself identified on the Internet; not carrying a cellphone; not geotagging your photos; and not having a Facebook or other social network profile...In short, it is probably no longer feasible, though not yet impossible”.

Lategan believes facial recognition technologies will become increasingly invasive until there is a pushback from society. “At that point, the technology might become more low-key, but the genie cannot be put back in the bottle.”

Facial recognition possible key to murder mystery By David E. Malloy, April 24, 2012

IRONTON -- Lawrence County officials are hoping facial recognition can help solve a more than 30-year-old murder mystery that some people call "the belle in the well."

Lawrence County Sheriff Jeff Lawless said County Coroner Kurt Hofmann sent off the skull of a woman found in 1981 in a well along Greasy Ridge about eight months ago for facial recognition. The facial reconstruction should be available Thursday afternoon, Lawless said Monday.

11 | P a g e


"The body was found with notable injuries," Lawless said. "It was a homicide. It had been in the well a year or more. We're doing this in the hopes that someone can identify her."

Authorities also have done DNA testing, but those results are still pending, he said.

A clay reconstruction has been done to give authorities an idea of what the victim looked like, said Bill Nenni, an investigator for the coroner's office.

Facial recognition technology would update airport and military security By Martin Barillas, April 20, 2012

AOptix, a developer of advanced optical technologies and products based in California, announced that Morpho, a high-technology company of the Safran group, has become an AOptix strategic partner in the area of biometric technology. With this agreement, AOptix products, including the combined face capture and iris recognition system, InSight Duo, will be integrated into Morpho’s solutions offered to countries around the world to check the identities of persons crossing their borders on land, sea and air.

Morpho provides advanced solutions for border control, detection, identity management, criminal justice, and secure biometric access. “For years, we have respected AOptix’s commitment to innovation in enhancing iris usability in biometric identification systems. The match between our two companies is natural as we unite to offer biometric solutions for a vast array of applications,” says Bernard Didier, Senior VP, Technology & Strategy at Morpho. “Combining the knowledge and expertise of our two companies in iris and facial recognition solutions will offer tremendous benefits in security and time savings for governments, airports, airlines and the traveling public.”

According to an April 20 press release, AOptix solutions already process tens of thousands of biometric transactions per day in the aviation security and immigration control applications, and have helped to transform the biometrics market. “Morpho has always been on the leading edge of biometric identity solutions for border control and aviation security,” says Dale Bastian, Vice President of Sales at AOptix “It has an impressive global organization, and will be a key partner for AOptix as we deploy our systems in high throughput applications around the world.”

12 | P a g e


AOptix and Morpho are demonstrating their automated authentication and identification technology at the Passenger Terminal Expo in Vienna, Austria, April 18-20, 2012. Airports and border crossing points are becoming increasingly more concerned, and sophisticated, at using various technologies to recognize terrorists and potential terrorists. Whole-body scanners, metal detectors, and ‘sniffing’ devices that recognize explosive materials, are among the tools used.

Biometrics refers to technologies that recognize individual human traits, such as: fingerprints, retinas, distance between pupils. There are a number of companies in several countries working on technologies utilizing recognition applications. Already in Europe, some airports (such as the Schiphol airport in the Netherlands) use biometric technology to recognize passengers through iris scans.

Investors are avidly looking at facial recognition that can be used, for example, for images posted at Facebook. Viewdle.com is among companies offering facial recognition for smartphones, for example. Applications of biometrics and facial recognition are not limited to military and law enforcement applications.

A U.S. firm based in Maryland has been offering similarly sophisticated technology to the U.S. and Israeli military that could transform the modern battlefield. Based in Frederick MD, ACAGI Inc. has what it calls an Image Acquisition and Exploitation Camera System that will allow troops to identify enemies and friendlies at a glance through an eyepiece attached to a helmet or assault rifle. Facial recognition technology recognizes the face of those captured on camera, and can identify people by the distance between the pupils of their eyes. This information is then downloaded into a database of known criminals, terrorists, and enemies and alerts the trooper wielding the recognition system and the weapon of a match, based on an immense database.

Peter Spatharis, the CEO of ACAGI – who served in the Greek army and has been long involved in both defense and telecommunications is confident that the system can be of great utility to law enforcement and defense. The IAECS software, produced by an undisclosed outside company, maps nearly 30 points on the human face, such as the distance between the eyes, creating an equation that is compared with those in the database. If the system does not find a match, it stores that person's biometrics (dubbed "marking and tagging") for future reference. "This is always a problem -- you walk into a village, and who have you seen before?" said Spatharis, an engineer and mathematician. "In this war on terror you don't know who your friends are, who your enemies are. There are no units; it's everywhere and nowhere."

The ACAGI system cannot be used to scan entire crowds and pick out known terrorists, but the user can point the camera at an individual and see any matches in the database on the small lens near his or her eye in real-time.

The entire system, including the battery, central processing unit, camera and eyepiece, is portable, weighing less than 7 pounds and able to fit inside a small pouch. The cost for the system varies. Options for the ACAGI system include a built-in Global Positioning System (GPS), speech recognition and 3-D sound recognition. Experts in the field of facial biometrics note that three factors: pose, illumination and expression, must be taken into account. The best recognition is obtained when the subject in the lens is

13 | P a g e


directly facing the camera with the eyes open, and with even illumination on the face. A neutral expression is also best. The age of the stored photo on the database and the distance between the camera and subject are also important factors. "In the real word it's not as precise or as reliable as the TV industry has portrayed it," Spatharis told local media.

The Defense Department now greatly relies on biometric systems to replace traditional locks and keys in theatre in Iraq and Afghanistan, even while real-time facial biometrics in warzone security systems (current systems require analysis of video footage to be done after-the-fact), are not now being deployed. Comparison of the photographs of known terrorists with persons being held for interrogation can take up valuable time in the field.

Secure I.D. cards embedded with facial photographs, fingerprints, iris scans and other information now screen people entering U.S. military installations, thus offering a measure of security. Even so, biometrics are not foolproof and do not replace military diligence. In 2007, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive device that killed eight people in the dining hall of Iraq's parliament in Baghdad’s heavily guarded Green Zone, home to the U.S. Embassy and the Iraqi government. Unfortunately, on that day the security scanner at the Green Zone's entrance was not operational.

Face recognition software at businesses raising privacy, safety concerns By Michelle Tuzee, April 16, 2012

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- It's Friday night, you walk into a new bar. They check your I.D., but that's not all they may be checking. A growing number of businesses are setting up cameras linked to facial recognition software.

It's not just bars. Some malls are also testing the technology.

"It's helpful to businesses who want to know who their customers are," said Rafe Needleman, CNET.com's editor-at-large. "They will recognize your age or your gender, so if you walk up to a display wall at a retail establishment or mall & and if you're a mid-40s White guy, maybe they'll give you an ad for a BMW. If you're a woman, 20s, maybe you'll get an ad for something else."

Experts think it's only a matter of time before stores start using technology that not only recognizes you, but tracks your spending habits, too.

14 | P a g e


"When you walk in a store, it might know who you are just when you walk in and give you deals based on your past purchases," Needleman said.

Privacy is one of the biggest concerns the Federal Trade Commission has with this technology. A recent study at Carnegie Mellon University illustrates why.

Mark Eichorn of the FTC says they took photos from a dating website where people were anonymous or using pseudonyms, and they also got information from a social networking site where they had in the people's real names. Using facial recognition technology, they were able to identify a lot of those users who were anonymous on the dating site.

Some bars feed information mined from facial recognition software to consumer sites like SceneTap, a company that collects real-time data from bars.

"What's being used right now are apps that will look at a biz - say a bar - and see how many men versus women there are, or their ages, so you can see what the scene is like at the bar," Needleman said.

It's not just a privacy issue, but a safety issue as well. The FTC is worried about where the technology can take us.

"Is it a notice and consent model like we have online? Are there places it shouldn't be permitted, like in bathrooms?" Eichorn said.

Until it's regulated, concerns over biometric identification sound more like reality than sci-fi.

"It's not out of the question that 10 years from now we'll walk down the street and people will be wearing camouflage so they're not picked up by facial recognition trackers all over the place," Needleman said.

The FTC said they're concerned with numerous other privacy aspects, like using the technology to gauge a consumer's emotional reaction to ad without their permission, for example.

The FTC is currently soliciting feedback to help put together recommendations for businesses to follow.

Face recognition could catch bad avatars By Jacob Aron, April 11, 2012

A POLICE car rolls up to a house where the doors and windows are smashed in, rooms are ransacked and numerous high-value items are missing. Calming the home-owner, an officer begins to investigate:

15 | P a g e


"Did you see the person who did it?" The shaken victim replies: "Yes, he had massive purple dreadlocks, green lips and was dressed like Michael Jackson."

Such an unusual perpetrator would be easy to identify in the physical realm, but this break-in took place in a virtual world, where odd-looking avatars are the norm. It may sound like an odd crime, but Japanese police have previously arrested virtual muggers, and the FBI has investigated casinos based in the virtual world of Second Life.

Virtual crimes will become more common as we venture more and more into these worlds, says computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy. To prevent this, multinational defense firm Raytheon, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, has a patent pending on fusing a person's real biometrics with their 3D avatar, so you know for sure who you are speaking to in a digital world.

Yampolskiy and colleagues at the Cyber-Security Lab at the University of Louisville in Kentucky are going one step further: they are developing the field of artificial biometrics, or "artimetrics". Similar to human biometrics, artimetrics would serve to authenticate and identify non-biological agents such as avatars, physical robots or even chatbots (see "Spot the bad bot").

In Second Life, avatars are easily identified by their username, meaning police can just ask San Francisco-based Linden Labs, which runs the virtual world, to look up a particular user. But what happens when virtual worlds start running on peer-to-peer networks, leaving no central authority to appeal to? Then there would be no way of linking an avatar username to a human user.

Yampolskiy and colleagues have developed facial recognition techniques specifically tailored to avatars, since current algorithms only work on humans. "Not all avatars are human looking, and even with those that are humanoid there is a huge diversity of color," Yampolskiy says, so his software uses those colors to improve avatar recognition.

The team also investigated matching a human face to an avatar generated from that face - previous studies show that avatars often resemble their owners. Combining their color-based technique with existing facial recognition software produced the best results, suggesting it might be possible to track someone between the physical and virtual worlds. They will present the work at the Defense, Security, and Sensing conference in Baltimore, Maryland, this month.

Yampolskiy also plans to develop recognition algorithms for robots. He says that autonomous robots may one day - at least in Japan - become ubiquitous enough to require identification of their own, separate from humans.

Artimetrics probably have no immediately useful applications, says Tony Mansfield, a biometrics specialist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory in London. He says it is unlikely that virtual worlds or robots will ever become completely decentralized, which means companies should still be able to provide unique identifiers, rendering Yampolskiy's approach unnecessary. "This should be as easy as identifying a barcode, rather than as hard as biometrics," he says.

16 | P a g e


Intel facial recognition retail marketing now in Oregon By Joe Smith, April 10, 2012

PORTLAND -- The next time you're at the mall, your face could be the target of high technology that notes your gender, your age and what you might be interested in buying. If you're a retailer, it's about really knowing your audience, the motivation behind what's called Audience Impression Metrics, or AIM The facial recognition technology using an optic sensor, was developed at Intel. They've been working with companies and advertisers to literally focus on, and target customers.

AIM is being used at some malls in New York, San Francisco and Chicago. It's also now being tested at the Rose Garden and one area mall could be using it by summer. At a mall, the software can tell how long a person is looking at a digital kiosk. It can tell if the person is a man or women, and their approximate age. With that knowledge, specific ads will pop-up or perhaps an ad targeted to a sale at the mall. It's been used in other part of the world for years, but was just introduced in the United States last October. It takes just one tenth of a second to figure out a person’s profile. "And say, if it's three adult males looking at the digital sign maybe you'd change it to an adult male type of advertisement, maybe a BMW ad," said Bill Colson, director of digital signage services for Intel. For those people concerned about privacy, Colson said no information is stored or used for other purposes. He said it only uses the facial recognition to determine what might appeal to a person at that moment.

17 | P a g e


Suprema aims for Sci-Fi quality facial recognition April 4, 2012

Suprema has announced the release of FaceStation, a product it says will take facial recognition into

levels of recognition and ease of use only seen in science fiction movies.

FaceStation is an IP based biometric access control terminal featuring facial recognition. Suprema says

that conventional face recognition technology contains inherent weak points brought by lighting

intensity and pose variation. FaceStation's face recognition technology claims to overcome such weak

points with advanced algorithm and its patented adaptive IR illumination technology. This technology is

claimed to enable face image extraction process robust to various lighting conditions while achieving an

impressive matching speed.

FaceStation also features live face detection technology by analyzing eye context from extracted images

which distinguishes actual human face objects from imitated face images.

"FaceStation will open whole new generation of face recognition, defying preconceived limitations in

face authentication while delivering innovative features to meet growing expectations from markets,"

said Young Moon, Vice President at Suprema.

The device provides auto detection mode with proximity sensor and customizable hot keys for various

time attendance functions.

In addition, it offers comprehensive communication interfaces and relays. It allows flexible system

design with TCP/IP, 2-channel RS485, RS232, USB and Wiegand interfaces. It also has multiple in/out

ports, and for further expansion, optional external relay unit is available.

18 | P a g e


Google Has a 'Killer App' Waiting in the Wings - By Anton Wahlman, April 9, 2012

We've all seen Google's (GOOG) April 4 video, posted on Google+, depicting some of the potential uses for the Google eyeglasses that are in development.

Google employees received some form of demo in conjunction with this video.

The potential uses for augmented-reality eyeglasses are almost endless. Some of them are depicted in the video, and they are all praiseworthy. One can assume that our military already is using glasses with some of these capabilities, presumably at an astronomical cost that is still well worth it.

That said, I believe there will be a killer app that lifts these glasses to must-have prominence.

The key will be people. Things are just that: thing. In contrast, for most people, there is nothing as interesting as ... other people. Ultimately, it is people who make and lose money, people who are heroes or villains, and people who are either bystanders or prime movers in advancing humanity. People are nosier about other people than they are about things.

A person's ID contains a treasure trove of useful information when connected to the relevant databases, and the first link to those databases often occurs through a Google search. Every time we see a person, the amount of obtainable data is enormous. This works well if we already know how to ID this person. Everyone can do some decent research if simply given a little bit of time in front of a computer of some sort.

The problem is that in the real world we meet new people all the time, but we don't have time to research them before we need to decide how, if at all, we should spend time with them.

Whether in business or social situations, it happens to people almost every day. It might be someone trying to sell you something or someone you meet in a bar. You will want to know what this person's business reputation is, or whether this person has spent time behind bars for doing something creepy.

When you don't have a person's name, the key to identifying them becomes facial recognition. We all know how facial recognition works at Web sites such as Picasa and Facebook.

Every day, millions of people tag photos, voluntarily building a gold mine of information for anyone who needs to quickly identify everyone in society.

19 | P a g e


We often think of the FBI or CIA as being the organizations that need to have such information. But now we are only small step away from empowering everyone who can afford a pair of Google augmented-reality eyeglasses tied via Bluetooth to a smartphone.

There are three main steps for Google to make these eyeglasses into the must-have gadget of all time:

1. The glasses must be available in a wide variety of styles so that it's not apparent they're augmented-reality devices. If people recognized them as such, a societal panic would ensue: "Hey, stop looking at me with those glasses, or I will smack you to the ground!"

Coming up with multiple attractive styles is not easy. These glasses must contain a decent battery and Bluetooth connection. This is a key area where I fear Google may fail, by being overeager to bring a not fully realized product to market. Witness Google TV 1.0 two years ago.

2. Facial recognition must be good. It is obviously impossible to get very close to a 100% match in a mobile setting. Capturing someone's face from an angle, when that person is wearing a hat, talking or moving his or her head, is not easy.

Nobody will demand or require a 99% match in fluid conditions. However, if you're sitting across the table from someone in a job interview, in a bar or at a cafe and you have a fairly stationary "fix" you should expect a fairly fast "match" that will yield whatever information is available on the Internet about that person.

3. There must be some useful and immediate information available as a result of the facial recognition. I think Google already has a good start here today. All you need to do is to click on "Images" in your Google search toolbar, and you will have a match, depending on how famous the person is and how common the name is. I imagine that we remain in the infancy of matching faces to database information. It is in perfecting this nexus of databases (the hard info with the faces) where Google should excel.

Let's give one example of how the Google augmented-reality eyeglasses would be used in practice, with facial recognition: Woman meets a man in the bar. Within seconds, she wants to decide whether the conversation should go beyond pleasantries. The man sounds charming, but five seconds later the Google eyeglasses have a lock.

He mentioned his Aston Martin Rapide, but it's registered to some woman who doesn't appear to be his mother.

He mentioned that he likes kids, but not in the way you might appreciate: Two years ago a newspaper in a different state published an article about him being a convicted sex offender.

You get the point. That conversation was probably ended rather quickly, thanks to Google's augmented-reality eyeglasses.

20 | P a g e


Privacy concerns will immediately fly to the top. Keep in mind that the fundamental privacy is only as good as the underlying databases. These glasses only enable the quickest identification of a person so as to match the person with publicly available data. Other than the tool -- the glasses -- the only new "glue" will be the matching of the faces with the data. Surely trying to fight this trend will be like trying to prevent water from running downhill.

Imagine if civilians and authorities alike were using these kinds of glasses with this information before 9/11. Could the horror have been averted?

So when will Google make these augmented-reality glasses available? I have no idea, but it seems possible that Google will provide some form of further public demonstration in conjunction with its annual i/o developer conference from June 27 to June 29.

That said, I hope Google doesn't actually make the product available until they have passed the "Steve Jobs perfection test" (i.e., that they don't release the product until it works flawlessly).

Once these glasses have become available and assuming they don't suffer from the Google 1.0 syndrome, they should become a huge success. Who wouldn't want to know almost anything about people around them, simply by looking at them? Scary, nosy, disarming ... it has the potential to change everything in our social relations more than any other product in history.

Price? Again, I have no idea, but it seems reasonable that at least in the earliest days this kind of product could easily command $500-$1,000.

Competition? A lot of people could make the glasses. Cellular phone makers such as Apple (AAPL), Nokia (NOK), Samsung, perhaps Microsoft (MSFT). Most likely, some crude variant has been in production by military contractors for years.

Compatibility? Google likely will make it available to connect with Android smartphones and tablets first. Why be in a hurry to become compatible with Apple, Microsoft, and Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry? This has the greatest probability of driving sales of Android. Perhaps Google would say that it would be compatible with Apple, Microsoft and BlackBerry "in the future." In the meantime, everyone would run out and buy Android. Bye-bye, smartphone and tablet competition.

Google's advantage comes in the form of owning Picasa and its dominant position in cataloging and cross-referencing seemingly all information in society. That's why Google is the company most likely to succeed with marketing augmented-reality eyeglasses right now. Unless they hurry a product to market before it's perfected, that is.

21 | P a g e


New Surveillance System Identifies Your Face By Searching Through 36 Million Images Per Second By David Hill April 2, 2012

Privacy advocates, brace yourselves – the search capabilities of the latest surveillance technology is nightmare fuel. Hitachi Kokusai Electric recently demonstrated the development of a surveillance camera system capable of searching through 36 million images per second to match a person’s face taken from a mobile phone or captured by surveillance. While the minimum resolution required for a match is 40 x 40 pixels, the facial recognition software allows a variance in the position of the person’s head, such that someone can be turned away from the camera horizontally or vertically by 30 degrees and it can still make a match. Furthermore, the software identifies faces in surveillance video as it is recorded, meaning that users can immediately watch before and after recorded footage from the time point.

This means that the biggest barrier in video surveillance, which is watching hours of video to find what you want, is gone.

The power of the search capabilities is in the algorithms that group similar faces together. When a search is conducted, results are immediately shown as thumbnails, and selecting a thumbnail pulls up the stored footage for review. Because the search results are displayed as a grid, mistaken identifications can be ruled out quickly or verified by pulling up the entire video for more information.

The scenarios that this system could be useful for are endless. The police, for instance, could find individuals from old surveillance video or pick them out of large crowds, whether they are suspects or people who’ve been kidnapped. Or if a retail customer is caught stealing something on camera, the system could pull up footage from each time the customer has been in the store to identify other thefts that went unnoticed.

The company, which specializes in video cameras for the imaging, medical, and security markets, states that the system is ideally suited for large-scale customers, such as law enforcement agencies, transportation centers, and retail centers. The system will be released in the next fiscal year presumably customized to specific customer’s needs. Interested parties have to contact the company directly, which is probably wise in order to control whose hands it ends up in. And this means

22 | P a g e


that soon, the only thing that’s going to be anonymous anymore are the agencies and organizations using the software.

While this news should make anyone concerned about privacy shudder, it really was only a matter of time before something like this was developed. Likewise, it means that competing systems will follow until systems like this are common. So it will be up to legislators to define how the technology can be used legally as with other surveillance systems, like license-plate recognition cameras.

Fake ID holders beware: facial recognition service Face.com can now detect your age By Sarah Mitroff, March 29, 2012

Facial-recognition platform Face.com could foil the plans of all those under-age kids looking to score some booze. Fake IDs might not fool anyone for much longer, because Face.com claims its new application programming interface (API) can be used to detect a person’s age by scanning a photo.

With its facial recognition system, Face.com has built two Facebook apps that can scan photos and tag them for you. The company also offers an API for developers to use its facial recognition technology in the apps they build.

Its latest update to the API can scan a photo and supposedly determine a person’s minimum age, maximum age, and estimated age. It might not be spot-on accurate, but it could get close enough to determine your age group.

“Instead of trying to define what makes a person young or old, we provide our algorithms with a ton of data and the system can reverse engineer what makes someone young or old,” Face.com chief executive Gil Hirsch told VentureBeat in an interview. ”We use the general structure of a face to determine age. As humans, our features are either heightened or soften depending on the age. Kids have round, soft faces and as we age, we have elongated faces.”

The algorithms also take wrinkles, facial smoothness, and other telling age signs into account to place each scanned face into a general age group. The accuracy, Hirsch told me, is determined by how old a person looks, not necessarily how old they actually are. The API also provides a confidence level on

23 | P a g e


how well it could determine the age, based on image quality and how the person looks in photo, i.e. if they are turned to one side or are making a strange face.

“Adults are much harder to figure out [their age], especially celebrities. On average, humans are much better at detecting ages than machines,” said Hirsch.

The hope is to build the technology into apps that restrict or tailor content based on age. For example the API could be built into a Netflix app, scan a child’s face when they open the app, determine they’re too young to watch The Hangover, and block it. Or — and this is where the tech could get futuristic and creepy — a display with a camera could scan someone’s face when they walk into a store and deliver ads based on their age.

In addition to the age-detection feature, Face.com says it has updated its API with 30 percent better facial recognition accuracy and new recognition algorithms. The updates were announced Thursday and the API is available for any developer to use.

One developer has already used the API to build app called Age Meter, which is available in the Apple App Store. On its iTunes page, the entertainment-purposes-only app shows pictures of Justin Bieber and Barack Obama with approximate ages above their photos.

Other companies in this space include Cognitec, with its FaceVACS software development kit, and Bayometric, which offers FaceIt Face Recognition. Google has also developed facial-recognition technology for Android 4.0 and Apple applied for a facial recognition patent last year.

The technology behind scanning someone’s picture, or even their face, to figure out their age still needs to be developed for complete accuracy. But, the day when bouncers and liquor store cashiers can use an app to scan a fake ID’s holder’s face, determine that they are younger than the legal drinking age, and refuse to sell them wine coolers may not be too far off.

Facial recognition's privacy problem By Ryan Clary, March 28, 2012

Once the stuff of sci-fi and spy flicks, facial recognition technology has evolved into a concrete reality touching nearly everyone on the planet.

The technology figures prominently in post-9/11 security. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, 93 countries now issue passports containing the bearer’s biometric facial data. A number of U.S. states use facial recognition to prevent individuals from obtaining multiple driver licenses under

24 | P a g e


different names. And law enforcement agencies successfully use it to identify criminals from video footage.

In the pre-Google, pre-cloud computing era, the technology required for these facial recognition systems was exclusively in the hands of the governments and organizations that deployed them. Flash-forward ten-years and the technology is available off the shelf, biometric databases are booming and the personal information of millions of people is freely available in the cloud.

These new circumstances have prompted the International Biometrics and Identification Association (IBIA), a trade association promoting the appropriate use of identity and security technology, to raise the red flag on an impending “perfect storm.”

The IBIA warns that this perfect storm may destroy the barrier separating our online and offline identities, altering our notions of what constitutes privacy in today’s connected world.

Identification in moments

Imagine a scenario in which anyone with a mobile device could capture an image from a distance and use facial recognition software to identify the individual and access a wealth of personal information that they or others, have uploaded over the years. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have already done it.

In August a team led by Carnegie Mellon Professor Alessandro Acquisti reported that they had successfully combined three technologies accessible to anyone–a commercially available face recognition tool, cloud computing and public information from social network sites such as Facebook–to identify individuals online and in the physical world.

In their first experiment, Acquisti’s team was able to scan profiles on a popular online dating site and identify users–protected under pseudonyms–based on their photo. In another experiment, the team used the technology to identify individuals on the campus based on their Facebook profile photos. A third experiment found the researchers identifying students’ Social Security numbers and predicting their personal interests using a photo of the subject’s face.

“The results foreshadow a future when we all may be recognizable on the street–not just by friends or government agencies using sophisticated devices–but by anyone with a smart phone and Internet connection,” said the researchers.

This is possible now because of exponentially increased accessibility, according to the IBIA. Identification databases were once small and tightly controlled, but today anyone with the right computer program can build massive databases using the billions of identity-tagged photos openly available online.

25 | P a g e


Another new point of access is the digital camera. According to IBIA, when facial recognition was first invented twenty years ago, digital photography was exclusive, expensive, time consuming and certainly not within the reach of the average citizen. Today it’s a standard feature on most cell phones and inexpensive point and shoot models are everywhere.

This has made it much easier for users to create and upload the digital images necessary to form facial recognition databases. Smart phones are particularly problematic in that their connectivity enables users to seamlessly take and upload digital photos. Increasingly powerful processors also enable smart phones to run complex applications such as facial recognition, says IBIA.

IBIA also points to the improved speed and accuracy of algorithms. According to independent measurements by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, facial recognition algorithms are one hundred times more accurate and up to one million times faster than past systems. Improvements have also made modern systems less reliant on precise facial placement and controlled lighting for accurate operation.

These improvements have led facial recognition out of the lab and on the road to pervasive use in the real world. In response to this summer’s riots in the UK, police turned to facial recognition to identify looters caught on camera. Police ran these images against a face-matching database that Scotland Yard constructed in preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

On the same front, a cadre of so-called digilantes formed a Google Group to use Face.com’s facial recognition API to identify rioters. The group produced no clear results and disbanded in August, but it was successful in demonstrating that the technology is accessible to average citizens.

Adding the social networks

In order to “help make tagging your friends easier,” Facebook added an app that automatically identifies other Facebook users in uploaded photos. It prompts users to tag others based on the app’s suggestion. Each time a photo is uploaded to Facebook with your name attached, this “Tag Suggest” app gathers data from the photo and learns how to better identify you in future uploads.

Although Tag Suggest is a default setting on many profiles, users can turn it off through their privacy settings. Still the ability for Facebook to recognize you and build on its biometric database is preserved.

Since its debut in June, Tag Suggest has been rolled out in most of the countries represented on Facebook, but not all are happy about it. In November, Germany’s data protection agency announced its intention to file suit against Facebook over Tag Suggest.

The agency claims that Facebook compiled its massive facial recognition database without the prior knowledge or consent of millions of users, resulting in a wholesale invasion of privacy. At this time no lawsuit has been filed.

26 | P a g e


What can be done?

Aside from legal action, there are a few steps that can be taken to protect individual privacy. According to IBIA, banning the technology is a “desperate act” and ultimately futile. As IBIA report author Joseph Atick points out, past attempts to stifle useful technologies have been unsuccessful, and facial recognition is too vital a security tool to throw out with the bathwater.

Atick argues we must begin by changing the way we look at identity-tagged images in the cloud. These, Atick says, must be treated like any other personal identity information and should be subject to the same protections as social security numbers, financial data and health care records. Accordingly, any security breach on an image site should be countered with equal severity.

Additionally, Web sites hosting identity-tagged images should set up protections against software that aims to harvest images for the creation of databases.

Finally, Atick advocates for a warning system to alert consumers uploading images that the photos could be used for facial recognition. In this way, the consumer is given the chance to “opt-in” to sharing such information, rather than do so unknowingly.

The moment of convergence for this “perfect storm” has not yet arrived, according to the IBIA report–but it is inevitable. In order to reach the level of widespread privacy invasion suggested by the Carnegie Mellon research, the technology still requires additional refinement, as suggested by the failure of the Google digilantes.

Thus IBIA says there is still time for the facial recognition industry to establish self-regulatory measures to protect individual privacy while allowing the technology to serve as a valuable security resource.

FTC examines facial recognition

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking public comments on facial recognition technology and the privacy and security implications raised by its increased use.

The FTC held public workshop to address commercial applications of facial detection and recognition technologies at the close of 2011. Participants explored current uses, future uses, benefits and potential privacy and security concerns.

Facial detection and recognition technologies have been adopted in a range of new contexts, ranging from online social networks such as Facebook and Google+, to digital signs and mobile apps. The increased use has raised a variety of privacy concerns.

The FTC collected public comments on issues raised at the workshop, including but not limited to:

27 | P a g e


What are the privacy and security concerns surrounding the adoption of these technologies, and how do they vary depending on how the technologies are implemented? Are there special considerations that should be given for the use of these technologies on or by populations that may be particularly vulnerable, such as children? *What are best practices for providing consumers with notice and choice regarding the use of these technologies? Are there situations where notice and choice are not necessary? By contrast, are there contexts or places where these technologies should not be deployed, even with notice and choice? What are best practices for developing and deploying these technologies in a way that protects consumer privacy?

A report is likely though no timeline has been published.

You consent to a search if a camera sees you? Facial Recognition vs. 4th Amendment March 22, 2012

If you go outside or into a building where there are security cameras and potential surveillance via facial recognition technology, have you automatically waived your Fourth Amendment rights and consented to a search? The government may use that reasoning to strike a 'balance' between privacy and security in regard to facial recognition tracking.

When you go outside or go to other public places such as a bank or a mall, have you automatically given up your Fourth Amendment rights and consented to a search? When it comes to tracking you via facial recognition technology, what if the government or other law enforcement were to use that argument, that by simply being in a place where there are security cameras, you waived your Fourth Amendment rights and consented to a search?

The FBI and DOD sponsored a legal series about the U.S. government using facial recognition; the latest forum was titled "Striking the Balance - A Government Approach to Facial Recognition Privacy and Civil Liberties." Whenever the word 'balance' is used, privacy and civil liberties are usually about to be kicked in the name of 'security.' When it comes to surveillance via facial recognition technology, federal law enforcement, intelligence personnel and national security agencies are looking into the "gaps in legal/policy authority that may result in privacy and civil liberties vulnerabilities if left unaddressed."

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) Senior Fellow Peter Swire, also a law professor at Ohio State University, spoke about "Facial Recognition by the Government: Privacy and Civil Liberties Issues." Since using "one's facial image, with or without knowledge or consent," can identify and be used to track a person "an inherent tension exists between privacy and facial recognition." The forum was to "examine where the appropriate balance lies between crime and terrorism prevention using facial recognition and robust privacy safeguards." Swire started with two different perspectives about facial recognition, according to FPF.

28 | P a g e


1) It has always been legal to observe people in public, and facial recognition technology is simply making this easier.

2) Facial recognition technology allows an unprecedented ability to surveil and track people, and this information could be stored indefinitely and correlated with other personal information.

Although "observing a person in public has traditionally not required a warrant," Professor Swire pointed out Fourth Amendment rights figure heavily into the constitutional issues impacting facial recognition tracking. Swire said the Supreme Court's GPS tracking decision "may dramatically impact privacy by requiring law enforcement agents to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on suspects in public, something law enforcement has never had to do. However, the fourth amendment contains a consent exception; if an individual consents to a search, a warrant is not required. Professor Swire pointed out that some might argue that individuals consent to going outside or to other public places (i.e. a bank or mall) where security cameras are present."

When the U.S. Supreme Court [PDF] ruled on U.S. vs. Jones GPS tracking, Justice Sotomayor made a strong case for updating our Fourth Amendment laws to protect privacy in this digital age. Sotomayor, in discussing GPS tracking, wrote, "by making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to track-may 'alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society'."

Professor Swire referenced Justice Sotomayor's worries "that constant surveillance by the government could chill free speech and free association." Constant biometric surveillance such as facial recognition technology may also "lead to discrimination." Just because something is legal does not mean it should be done, he advised the government. How should intelligence agencies "determine whether or not a surveillance program is a good idea?" Swire suggested using the New York Times test: "if the program was detailed on the front page of the New York Times, would the public reaction be negative or positive?"

Other government agencies who spoke about facial recognition surveillance and privacy included the FBI, OMB, DoD, and DHS. "They are all in the same boat," one government official said. "A big facial recognition privacy mishap by one government agency would tarnish legitimate facial recognition programs in every other agency."

The idea that anyone who goes out in public has, by default, given up all Fourth Amendment privacy protection and "consented" to a search is as ludicrous as suggesting that everyone who has a cell phone has automatically consented to law enforcement accessing cell phone location data without a warrant.

29 | P a g e


The EFF, ACLU, and CDT recently submitted court papers [PDF] arguing that the government needs to prove probable cause and obtain a warrant before being granted cell site location information.

On a warrantless surveillance side note, the FBI claims the Supreme Court ruling has caused a hardship for the agency. The U.S. v. Jones decision "will inhibit our ability to use this in a number of surveillances where it has been tremendously beneficial," FBI Director Robert Mueller testified before the House Appropriations Committee. "We have a number of people in the United States whom we could not indict, there is not probable cause to indict them or to arrest them who present a threat of terrorism. ... [They] may be up on the Internet, may have purchased a gun, but have taken no particular steps to take a terrorist act."

When the government bemoans the need to heed constitutional rights, no matter the type of tracking, if there is no probable cause for a warrant then that's too boo hoo bad.

NYPD uses Facebook and facial recognition program to arrest suspect March 20, 2012

Last week in Queens, New York, a man involved in a barbershop shooting was on the run after he allegedly came into a local barbershop with a sawed-off shotgun and fired a round into the back a 39-year-old’s head.

But he never thought his Facebook picture would help bring him to justice.

The New York police department had no leads on the suspect until the victim's brother came forward with only a nickname of the alleged gunman, “Armani.”

The victim’s brother told police he may be able to locate a photo of the shooter online.

“We let him log into Facebook,” Sgt. Michael Ackerman told The New York Post.

“Lo and behold, he comes up with a picture of both [suspects] standing next to each other at a party.” Ackerman added.

30 | P a g e


The Facebook picture was processed at the Real Time Crime Center in Manhattan which runs the information across a database of billions of mug shots, names and nicknames.

Within minutes the system found a match.

A day after the attempted the murder, Jordan Rodriguez was arrested for the shooting in nearby Brooklyn.

According to reports, the 37-year-old had an extensive criminal record including 12 other run-ins with the law.

“It’s phenomenal, our leads were shut down … I don’t even know if we’d have him identified yet,” Sgt. Ackerman said about the case.

Law enforcement is calling this case the first of its kind in the US and they believe The Real Time Crime Center is at the forefront of using technology for bringing criminals to justice.

Although the victim was shot in the back of the head the bullets grazed his skull only requiring stitches.

Rodriguez has been charged with attempted murder, criminal possession of a weapon and felony assault. The second individual involved in the shooting is still on the run.

According to PoliceOne.com, the facial recognition software, ProChart, is a part of ongoing effort of the NYPD “to improve crime-fighting effectiveness for serious crimes by taking advantage of latest technologies to mine the vast amount of data collected by the department, unlocking the patterns and trends within.”

With “Prochart, police analysts are able to view hidden and indirect relationships between incidents and offenders across all New York boroughs, increasing the overall intelligence picture and enabling NYPD to share and act upon the information,” the website said.

According to the site, within seconds the software can detect connections in the data.

The site also claims Prochart’s ability to incorporate all types of media including pictures and images of a specific house, car or person, including CCTV footage of suspects, can be incorporated into charts to ensure maximum results.

The ability for the command center to be able to link up to CCTV cameras has many privacy buffs in an uproar. Many skeptics believe the ability of the crime center could be easily abused and confirms Big Brother is alive and well.

Documents

Face Recognition