Public Facial Recognition Is Making Gains In Surveillance 128
dryriver writes in with a link to a Times story about the U.S. government's capabilities when it comes to facial recognition. "The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project. The Department of Homeland Security tested a crowd-scanning project called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System — or BOSS — last fall after two years of government-financed development. Although the system is not ready for use, researchers say they are making significant advances. That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used. There have been stabs for over a decade at building a system that would help match faces in a crowd with names on a watch list — whether in searching for terrorism suspects at high-profile events like a presidential inaugural parade, looking for criminal fugitives in places like Times Square or identifying card cheats in crowded casinos."
You mean like this? (Score:5, Informative)
I think the article and DHS are a few years behind the curve on this. See these guys:
http://www.nicta.com.au/media/previous_releases3/2012_media_releases/australian_face_recognition_technology_wins_major_international_ict_award [nicta.com.au]
Also, there are a couple of live systems out there that I've heard about in airports. They could add facial recognition, but mainly they're used for object detection.
Re:Old News (Score:5, Informative)
even older news! I saw the anglo-dutch company Logica demonstrate this [logica.co.uk] at a PSV Eindhoven football (soccer) match where it picked a dozen volunteers (who were photo'd before the match) out of the 20,000 strong crowd using the stadiums own crappy cctv footage - this was in the early to mid 2000's. It wasn't perfect but was above 90%.
Sadly, the UK is way ahead when it comes to CCTV technology.