Is the World Ready For Facial Recognition On Google Glass? 469
An anonymous reader writes "Since the first demonstration of the plausible future abilities of Google Glass, instant facial recognition has been one of the most exciting ideas in the pipeline. According the the development group Facial Network, the time for real-time facial recognition through Google Glass is coming a lot sooner than we originally expected. This isn't an app developed by Google, it's a 3rd party developer group — they've gone and done it first!"
The application is not on the Play store due to the ban on facial recognition. It performs real time recognition, and pulls information from public databases. The authors intend to allow people to opt-out of the recognition database.
Time to start putting make-up on (Score:5, Interesting)
How to Beat Facial-Recognition Software [technewsdaily.com]
Re:As an organiser of events. (Score:4, Interesting)
If it clearly says on the tickets and a sign by the entrance (for instance) "No video/audio recordings" or some such, you are of course free to attempt to circumvent our request. We are of course free to remove your ass from the premise if we catch you ; ). As an addendum I would personally do everything to avoid harming a visitor or his / her belongings, but some security or even artists or fellow guests might take offence, so it's also for your own protection that I would discourage it.
Re:As an organiser of events. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know, I think the technology will be very interesting going forward. Not sure what the technical term would be, but as a memory assistant / aid it would be great, especially if you have a disability or otherwise diminished memory capacity.
Imagine having 24/7 audio/video recordings for the last day/month/year/life. The video feeds could be automatically marked whenever you have encountered somebody through facial recognition. Voice could be automatically transcribed and then indexed for search. Hell in the future object recognition may get to the point where it's fast and cheap enough to be applied to a video library of your day/month/year/life.
You've been given some complex instructions, and you've forgotten what to do? Ohh, XXXX told me that around lunch yesterday - with marked up content from facial recognition you can jump to your conversation or you could just search your RL transcript.
You've forgotten your keys? With object recognition you can simply search for the last time you saw (on your video feed) your keys.
The flip side is obviously the issue of privacy. There are legitimate concerns about how the information could be used against the individual, their family and their friends by other people, government and corporations. There are so many potential ways for such footage to be abused to the detriment of the recorder.
Either way, the next 10-20 years will be interesting.
Re:Yes! Please! (Score:5, Interesting)
Try working in a school. I long ago stopped trying to track the number of times I catch some student destroying school property. There's nothing I can do: I can't identify them, they know well enough to lie if asked for a name, they all refuse to wear their name badges*, and if confronted they run away. Staff are forbidden from ever making any sort of physical contact with a student (As this could result in the student making a claim of assault and suing the school), so they can get away with just about anything so long as they aren't in sight of a teacher who can recognise them. There are two thousand-odd students, I can't memorise every face!
*The girls in particular have some strange phobia about letting anyone see their photograph, as they all consider it hideous.
How bulglary helpers :) (Score:5, Interesting)
1. goto the airport check for people which take a long distance flight
2. check a few names
3. lookup facebook&co to get an idea whether they live alone or not
4. search the local phone book (or similar) to check where they live
5. drive over to their home and rob the place if no one is there
note:
step 1. could be replaced with a static camera
step 2.-4. could be replaced with a script
Also monitoring someones home with a static camera (could also be mounted on a drone) should make it really easy to create a general schedule plan for when which people regularly come and go -> no more man power intensive stake outs! :)
Face recognition has so many nice applications, can't imagine anything going really wrong. :D
blinders are effective in low light (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone know if those LED baseball caps really work? What about a can of spray paint, aimed at the Glass-hole?
This looks promising, it's an IR based 'camera blinder' that hides your face:
http://www.slashgear.com/surveillance-cam-blinder-2010369/ [slashgear.com]
Dunno how effective it is against different camera types and it does require you to wear a dumb-ass headband but it looks like a promising concept.
I've been playing around with various IR LED types, such as this one [ebay.com], at a couple wavelengths, and I found that in darkness and twilight, you need only very few to become a huge blob of ghostly light, but in good lighting conditions, a good camera like an Axis P3367 [axis.com] and even some of the crappy webcams I tried will see them as merely little points of red light. So I'll integrate a bunch in my backpack's straps and on it's surface, to at least get that commute, including subways etc.. covered, but with little hope of completeness.
So the real challenge may be: can we build a device that automates lens detection, focuses a small laser on the lens in question, and keeps it there while both the lens and the wearer of the countermeasure laser move along. +1 for a switch that will briefly increase laser power to burning strength. As in using a 2W Laser diode [ebay.com] at low power. Capability :-)
Re:are google glass users ready for... (Score:3, Interesting)
If there won't be a consensus that wearing something like Google Glass with even just the potential for facial recognition or other data extraction is unacceptable, then most people will just have to live with it. There are however people who can and will evade this surveillance, simply by owning everywhere they go. Private, gated communities, holiday resorts, beaches, theaters, clubs, boutiques and wherever else the privacy conscious rich flock will forbid this intrusion. The rich and famous have plenty experience in this, as people are already openly trying to invade their privacy at any opportunity. So this will be one more divider between the plebs and the wealthy.
Re:Ready or not (Score:2, Interesting)
How about letting us opt in to the database?
No one would opt in so it's not a good idea.
Anyway there's good ways to do this, for example ID the person IF they are in one's contacts. I have lousy memory. Of course I know my friends, but in places are a conference I meet lots of people that I eventually find the next year or whatever, they ring a bell and I know we even talked for a bit but I can't remember their names. I don't think it's too intrusive since I've met them and they told me their names that Glass reminds me - maybe even some extra info, such as "You know them from Google I/O 2012.".
By the way, to all the idiots saying they would punch me if I was wearing Glass close to them: First, eventually you will be outnumbered. Second, the fact that you would hit someone for no reason other than you don't like what they might be doing says a lot about you. And third, things might go wrong for you, Glass is hands free so I'm likely to return the punch.
Re:Ready or not (Score:5, Interesting)
This will make redundant all those claims of "I value my privacy that's why I am not on Facebook." Well you are now.
This is definitely not a good thing. OTOH, someone should develop a small projector that will project ads onto my forehead, so I can turn it on when a 'glasser' comes up to me. Yeah annoy the crap out of them, and/or hopefully get my image blocked, and/or earn some ad revenue. Yay, win/win.
Re:are google glass users ready for... (Score:3, Interesting)
Gun nuts are like tweeny boys waiting for their bits to grow.
I agree with this - and I often think exactly the same when reading pro-gun posts on Slashdot.
I can recognize that there are advantages to allowing gun ownership. Unfortunately, the gun proponents often sound like the real reason that they want a gun is that they're really, really hoping that they will get the chance to shoot someone dead.
Re:are google glass users ready for... (Score:5, Interesting)
The minute you use physical force against someone, deadly force is a legal response.
(Concealed Weapons Permit instructor here)
Bullshit. There is no state in the the US which permits use of deadly force in retaliation for a punch, nor even to prevent less than deadly force being used. Deadly force is only justifiable to prevent the use of deadly force, plus a few select other violent felonies (e.g. rape).
If you shoot someone for punching you in the face, you'd better hope that you can convince the jury you had a reasonable fear that they were going to follow up by beating you to death. Personally, I expect (and hope) that you fail to convince the jury.
Re:are google glass users ready for... (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, my friend who is a former LEO who shot someone in the line of duty and is now a criminal defense attorney who has defended civilians who have shot and killed others in self defense, is the primary source of my opinion, backed up by statements from officials at the Utah Bureau of Criminal Investigations, who specifically covered these issues in my instructor training course.
Keep in mind that in many states (such as my current state of residence, Colorado), the only thing that is required for instructor certification is an NRA certificate, and the NRA instructor course is all about teaching target shooting and doesn't address the legalities of self-defense at all. So many CCW instructors, unless they've taken the initiative to personally study these issues or consulted with someone else who has, aren't really any more informed on this topic than any other random person.