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Facial Recognition Could Be Coming To Police Body Cameras (defenseone.com) 180

schwit1 quotes a report from Defense One: Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn't recognize you, the body camera on his chest eventually just might. Device-maker Motorola will work with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build "real-time learning for a person of interest search" on products such as the Si500 body camera for police, the firm announced Monday. Italian-born neuroscientist and Neurala founder Massimiliano Versace has created patent-pending image recognition and machine learning technology. It's similar to other machine learning methods but far more scalable, so a device carried by that cop on his shoulder can learn to recognize shapes and -- potentially faces -- as quickly and reliably as a much larger and more powerful computer. It works by mimicking the mammalian brain, rather than the way computers have worked traditionally.

Versace's research was funded, in part, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA under a program called SyNAPSE. In a 2010 paper for IEEE Spectrum, he describes the breakthrough. Basically, a tiny constellation of processors do the work of different parts of the brain -- which is sometimes called neuromorphic computation -- or "computation that can be divided up between hardware that processes like the body of a neuron and hardware that processes the way dendrites and axons do." Versace's research shows that AIs can learn in that environment using a lot less code.

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Facial Recognition Could Be Coming To Police Body Cameras

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  • No it won't (Score:3, Insightful)

    by redcliffe ( 466773 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @06:03AM (#54831581) Homepage Journal

    Because they never have them turned on - it would make them accountable for their deliberate law breaking.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Chrisq ( 894406 )

      Because they never have them turned on - it would make them accountable for their deliberate law breaking.

      Unless they introduce AI to recognise police brutality and turn the camera off

    • Re:No it won't (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hudson@nospAM.icloud.com> on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @07:52AM (#54831847) Journal

      How about a body cam with no off switch? Or a drone to follow them around all day and catch everything, because these killings happen in public? Or just post a bounty for the first camera to capture a police shooting? That should have a bit of a deterrent value.

      Either that, or everyone is going to have to start wearing body cams.

      • Re:No it won't (Score:4, Insightful)

        by redcliffe ( 466773 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @08:06AM (#54831903) Homepage Journal

        Police unions and associations will never allow that.

        • Re:No it won't (Score:4, Interesting)

          by BarbaraHudson ( 3785311 ) <barbara.jane.hudson@nospAM.icloud.com> on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @09:31AM (#54832297) Journal

          They can't stop the offering of a bounty for those capturing police wrongdoing on video.

          Use their "do you have something to hide?" right back at them.

        • Police unions and associations will never allow that.

          Yep....they don't want to be filmed going "pee-pee".

          • Yep....they don't want to be filmed going "pee-pee".

            Presumably it would provide concrete (if not hard) evidence that cops are overcompensating for their minuscule genitals.

          • Police unions and associations will never allow that.

            Yep....they don't want to be filmed going "pee-pee".

            A valid point. You can't make them without off-switches.

            You could however make it policy that not having your cam turned on without a valid excuse (such as going to the toilet) could be subject to a fine.

          • If you have extraordinary powers under law you should be subject to extraordinary scrutiny. They should deal with it. I'd be ok with paying them more to compensate for no privacy.

      • Either that, or everyone is going to have to start wearing body cams.

        which will simply "go missing" after the cops assassinate you

        • by gnick ( 1211984 )

          Either that, or everyone is going to have to start wearing body cams.

          which will simply "go missing" after the cops assassinate you

          Hopefully deleting the recorded video is more complicated than "accidentally" losing the camera.

          • Live streaming to "da cloud", with read/copy access by family and friends. Cops are going to turn everyone into glassholes [nypost.com].
          • Hopefully deleting the recorded video is more complicated than "accidentally" losing the camera.

            If the camera goes into the river, or into a hole, or into an electronics recycling shredder, it doesn't matter how complicated deleting the video is. The only thing that might help you is livestreaming.

            • by gnick ( 1211984 )

              Hopefully deleting the recorded video is more complicated than "accidentally" losing the camera.

              If the camera goes into the river, or into a hole, or into an electronics recycling shredder, it doesn't matter how complicated deleting the video is. The only thing that might help you is livestreaming.

              If I record a video with my webcam, I can toss the camera into a river, then a hole, then in an electronics shredder and not lose a second of video. "Livestreaming," I think implies that somebody is watching. That's unnecessary. Just don't attach the storage to the camera.

              • "Livestreaming," I think implies that somebody is watching.

                Well, it doesn't. It means they could be.

                That's unnecessary. Just don't attach the storage to the camera.

                If you mean carrying it on your person, that won't help. If you mean streaming it live (and not later) then that's what I said, and perhaps you could try to see your way to agreeing with me without trying to disagree with me.

                • by gnick ( 1211984 )

                  That's unnecessary. Just don't attach the storage to the camera.

                  If you mean carrying it on your person, that won't help. If you mean streaming it live (and not later) then that's what I said, and perhaps you could try to see your way to agreeing with me without trying to disagree with me.

                  Not trying to be disagreeable, just saying that livestreaming is unnecessary. Adding the ability to watch the video while it's being recorded doesn't add to its preservability unless somebody is watching and recording. In which case, why not just recording? When I said storage should be detached from the camera, I was trying to imply that it wouldn't be carried "on person." Moving the storage by 12 inches doesn't accomplish much. Having primary storage in the squad car with only temporary fall-back storage

    • Better feature than face recognition: remove the on/off switch.
      • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

        the police in my city are required to turn on body cam any time they are running lights/siren as well as any time they respond to a call. The only scenario that would fall out of that scope is if a crime were to happen right in front of them without foreknowledge and their reaction required an immediate response whereby its reasonable to conclude that such a reaction is a trained and automatic response whereby stopping to process thoughts like 'turn on body cam, draw weapon' etc are unrealistic.

        I've persona

        • I'm not at all saying that most officers are trigger-happy (although it is apparent that some are). The way I see it, the camera is as much for the officer's protection as the public's. If someone does get harmed/killed and the officer is doing their job appropriately then everyone will see that. Not to mention the training benefits - "hey this situation went really badly, what can we learn from this" Why take chances - leave it on all the time. (ps - thank you for your service)
    • Want to be sure that the cameras don't get switched off? Just pass a new law that says that in any case where the body cam was off or the video went "missing" the suspect's testimony will be taken as true and the officer won't be allowed to testify.

      One possible upside to adding facial recognition to the cameras is it may make more police forces want to use them.

    • Let me explain how these things work, and what MAY of happened. The car dash cam comes on when you flip on the lights/siren. It's automatic. It can be turned on manually, but typically it isn't needed unless you instigate a traffic stop. The body cams, are activated when you get out of the car. It's like a habit, you don't even know you turned them on, it's an automatic thing. Now, from what I've been able to read, the two officers involved, rolled up on this report of an assault, NON CODE. They had jus
      • The first duty of police should be to protect the citizens, not protect themselves. This guy should die in jail after thinking about what he did for a very long time.

  • Cool (Score:5, Funny)

    by cerberusss ( 660701 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @06:16AM (#54831601) Journal

    I can already picture the scene. We're getting some sort of hybrid human/cam cop. The body cam will give constant instructions.

    Cop at side of road: *holds up his hand*
    You: *brake, roll down window*
    You: "Uh hi officer"
    Cop: "Hi, nothing to worry about, but I just wanted to tell you that your left brake lig"
    Body cam: "SUSPECT RECOGNIZED"
    Cop: *covers body cam* "Sorry, sometimes it malfunctions"
    Body cam in muffled voice: "SUSPECT NAME C. R. IMINAL, HIGHLY DANGEROUS SHOOT ON SIGHT, CERTAINTY INTERVAL AT LEAST 83 PERCENT"
    Cop: "Sir, please step out of the car" *unholsters*
    You: "I'm just on my way to pick up the kid from daycare"
    Body cam: "KILL KILL KILL"

  • by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @06:31AM (#54831635)
    Before facial recognition: - the guy reminds me a pic from the station, not sure that's him though, let's check first
    After facial recognition: - the camera says that's him and he's dangerous, shoot!
    • Isn't that a bit of the problem already though? I mean it isn't unheard of for someone to get shot because the police thought they looked like a suspect. Sounds to me the biggest change is whether it's a human or a computer making the assertion, and how accurate/reliable those assumptions might be.
      • I have terrible facial recognition personally. (Probably linked to my aphantasia).

        I frequently have people walking up to me and talking to me, and I have no clue who the hell they are or why I know them. It's a pain in the rear. If I were a cop, I've no doubt I'd trust the computer's facial recognition better than I would my own.

  • Cops make ID errors all the time. Facial recognition is not perfect and depends on lots of things. So what happens when the camera reports a false positive? Will that include a liklihood estimate? Will the procedures be standardized?
    • >So what happens when the camera reports a false positive?

      They stop and question you. They check your ID. Depending on who it thinks you are, possibly after putting cuffs on you.

      And - after the first innocent person is harassed to the edge of sanity and sues - they eventually stop using the cameras as anything but a small portion of their decision-making process.

      • And - after the first innocent person is harassed to the edge of sanity and sues - they eventually stop using the cameras as anything but a small portion of their decision-making process.

        The police are already harassing many people past the point of sanity, but they're not being forced to change their decision-making process (brown? open fire!) now. What makes you think they'd be forced to change their decision-making process in that case?

  • The "birthday paradox" causes facial recognition to report matches far far more often that you expect. Assume you have 1000 crooks pictures. Instead of 1 change in100 of an error and 1 comparison when you scan a person, it's 1 chance of an error in 100 on _1000_ comparisons. That makes one out of every 10 people you scan show up as a crook, whether they are or not.

    The german federal security service and my emplyer tried this a long time ago, but no matter how good the recognition got, there were thousand

    • What do you think the upper bound of accuracy is for each comparison?

      Your average human might "know" 1,000 people, but I doubt they have more than a 2-3% failure rate, skewing to the higher end for people they don't see often. If you factor in the probability of a particular individual being in an area, things can be tightened up as well. (Potentially offsetting location probability against likelihood that someone is trying to conceal their identity.)

      Facial recognition can only really work as part of a big

  • by Hussman32 ( 751772 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2017 @10:10AM (#54832541)

    So as soon as they implement this, they'll have everyone's image who has a valid driver's license, and be able to reference them quickly.

    Then they'll know the arrest record and everything else attached to your permanent record, which may be good or bad for you.

    Cue Orwellian comments, some of which are justified.

    • by e3m4n ( 947977 )

      no the photo database is Facebook. Thats why they and google combined, had more Oval Office meetings with Obummer than all other lobbyist, advisors, and corporations combined. Did you really think it was so Obummer could update his profile status to 'its complicated' ? Facebook gets people to voluntarily upload countless images (not just a single face-on DMV photo) to the database and by way of 'tagging' profiles to the pictures can eventually determine which recurring images belong to which people.

  • I believe its already been deemed a violation of the 4th amendment that protects against illegal search, for a cop to randomly stop someone and take fingerprints to run against a database. They will most likely see this as an extension of the same thing. Its one thing for a human to recognize someone from a stack of APBs or sketches. Its entirely different for AI to perform facial recognition. Even wearing a disguise the AI can identify the correct person with an alarmingly high rate of accuracy. Forcing s

  • I think it would be a popular product

  • Unlike the case in Minneapolis, responding to a 911 call about a potential incident in progress, presumably with a gun drawn in the car (never a good idea), and they STILL didn't turn on their cameras.

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