FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20111007_6100.php?oref=topstory

by cyanbane • 15 years ago

60 63 15 years ago

luu• 15 years ago

The only surprising thing about this is that it took so long for them to do it. I'd actually assumed that they were already doing this.

mirkules• 15 years ago

At the state level, there are some states that have already implemented facial recognition. I can tell you that even at the state level, integration was not easy. At a federal level, IAFIS is not limited by capability, but by sheer size of the database and the number of requests -- this only for fingerprint packets (I don't remember if they process palm data, but palm data definitely increases packet size significantly).

The point is, sometimes we are mesmerized by prototypes and applications at a small scale, but when you increase the scale, development, integration, and deployment challenges (edit: and costs) increase exponentially.

JoeAltmaier• 15 years ago

They do on CSI all the time!

ben1040• 15 years ago

A few years ago I signed up for a NEXUS pass[1] and was background checked, fingerprinted, photographed, and had my iris scans taken. I can only assume that my information had to have been transferred to other databases such as this as well.

[1] http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/trusted_traveler/nexus_pro...

oniTony• 15 years ago

And soon you might be eligible to come up as a false-positive for all kinds of FBI lookups!

astrodust• 15 years ago

One step closer to Brazil.

If law enforcement didn't hold such blind faith in technology I'd be encouraged by this development. Instead you're likely to get nabbed for the crime of simply looking like a criminal.

naner2• 15 years ago

Facebook's massive identity database with linked photos would be useful for this service.

sixothree• 15 years ago

Or even the driver license photo databases.

naner2• 15 years ago

Good call, I didn't even consider the most obvious. They'd likely have many fewer hoops to jump through to get at that data.

pavel_lishin3• 15 years ago

I wonder how difficult it would be to write an app that subtly distorts facial features in photographs, and pass every photo I upload through it.

Is there a point where I would be recognizable to friends and family, and yet make algorithms choke?

And if there is, I wonder what would happen when my grandchildren are looking through old photoalbums, and wondering why Grandpa looks a little weird in all of his photos.

schwit• 15 years ago

Then they will arrest you for interfering with a law enforcement officer. Not that it will stick, but by the time you get it cleared up you are $100k in the hole from legal expenses and a message has been sent to anyone else thinking of doing the same.

mc322• 15 years ago

A team up of FB with Polar Rose would have been pretty spectacular.

sp3323• 15 years ago

I'm pretty sure various law enforcement agencies already have access to Facebook's data.

Edit: downvotes? FB provides law enforcement with step-by-step instructions on getting this information. https://www.eff.org/node/58178

ck22• 15 years ago

Oh this will end well. Nah it will never be abused or have mission creep.

Now the TSA will have a database to use on everyone while they wait in line for a bus, train or plane.

You protested at OWS? No flying for you. Oh you false match a felon? No flying for you either.

I wonder when they will just start grabbing people left and right off the street to do iris scans like the military does to the locals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

mc322• 15 years ago

Isn't this at least arguably better than broadcasting a suspect's photo over the local news outlets --which is the current way of dealing with this information deficiency?

It's not being used to convict people, it's used to identify a suspect who could end up being found guilty via normal procedure --but this does not bypass that procedure.

slowpoke4• 15 years ago

I'm very sorry, but I heavily object to the notion that we should treat everyone like criminals. It completely invalidates the assumption of innocence, which - as far as I am informed as an European - is part of the Constitution).

Besides, as the grandparent mentioned, the potential for abuse is too high. Especially in the hands of a government who shows clear tendencies towards a police state - which most western ones do, including the US.

DennisP• 15 years ago

Broadcasting a suspect's photo is only done when there's a newsworthy story about a crime. Automated face recognition can be done routinely on a much vaster scale.

antics7• 15 years ago

IMO, that's super myopic. When intelligence agencies do something visible to the American public that causes any sort of discussion, it forces what they are doing (which is usually supposed to be secret) into the spotlight, which makes them generally more accountable. They do not like to do their job with people looking over their shoulder; they typically avoid this wherever possible. Besides that:

* Even on a very good day, the government is demonstrably bad at deploying new technology, especially at scale.

* Especially when that scale involves training any personnel at all.

* Especially when people are wary of that technology anyway.

* Especially when they are deploying suspicious technology in a visible arena.

* Especially when this technology will be observing US persons.

It doesn't look like it from the outside, but there is a lot of politics and bureaucracy in deploying a system like this, not just internally, but also from places like politicians.

In my experience, people who have never been around an organization like the FBI seem to have a naive view of what is possible. My recommendation is to critically evaluate anything that anyone tells you about what goes on in such places.

suking• 15 years ago

Like The Patriot Act? Yah - that hasn't been abused at all - nope.

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

I think that's being a little too naive. Let's face it. The trend is turning USA into a police state. How isn't that not clear by now? Every other day they add new stuff like this, or breach more privacy or expand TSA in other areas, and so on.

mahyarm• 15 years ago

US Airports don't seem especially bad at deploying xray scanners.

grout• 15 years ago

"US persons" is a term of art. Who do you work for?

naz• 15 years ago

So what you are saying is that it is ... a slippery slope?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

antics7• 15 years ago

Less concerned about privacy. More concerned about what this sort of thing means to juries.

A lot of forensic "evidence" is not actually completely conclusive, but people seem to have a built-in notion of how solid, say, fingerprint and DNA analysis are. It's sometimes very hard to convince a jury that these things are not necessarily incriminating, which is very bad because on a surprisingly often basis they are not strong enough to warrant conviction.

Facial recognition is also not completely foolproof, and while I applaud the idea that we should leverage technology to catch criminals who would otherwise go free, I personally am not willing to do so at the cost of innocent convictions. I recommend proceeding down this path cautiously.

pavel_lishin3• 15 years ago

On the other hand, "CSI" has made juries expect hard scientific evidence of the sort presented on the show, which rarely if ever actually happens in real life. It's possible that juries will refuse to convict without a positive identification by this new system - which, like all projects, will probably be riddled with bugs, and be useless for awhile.

On the gripping hand, you've got your false positives.

jsaxton86• 15 years ago

Does anyone have another source for this information?

zerostar07• 15 years ago

I thought it was called "facebook"[1].

[1] http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatic...

cgs1019• 15 years ago

A billion dollar budget and 15 minute query times? What happened to the government having mindblowingly awesome tech?

sp3323• 15 years ago

It can take days or weeks to get a result back from AFIS (fingerprint database). 15 minutes for a national face recognition system is mindblowingly awesome.

goodweeds3• 15 years ago

Do you ever wonder why it is that as a nation, or a species, we have nothing more creative to do with our monetary and intellectual resources than to use them for the creation of weapons of war, or to create new means of imprisonment?

Can't we do better?

rick8883• 15 years ago

I wish we could, but the problem is there will always be new forms of criminals that need to be imprisoned and wars that need to be fought.

What I want to know is why we need to have rapists, murderers, and criminals? Can't we do better as a species?

tricolon• 15 years ago

> wars that need to be fought

No war needs to be fought.

goodweeds3• 15 years ago

I don't know what the rest of the world is like, but in the US prisons are just another economic opportunity. When there's money to be made off of incarceration, there's money to be made by increasing crime.

Cases of rape and murder could be quelled substantially through better economic opportunities and greater access to healthcare, including abortions. Bad men usually had bad upbringings.

We probably can do better as a species, but we need to address all of the issues of the human condition with compassion, research, and empathy, not with guns and cages.

amandalim89• 15 years ago

They should use a Facebook api to power their facial recognition search with the social information behind each face. Wouldn't that be powerful?

russell• 15 years ago

"if you don't come to the attention of law enforcement you don't have anything to fear from these systems.", Thomas Bush.

What utter crap. Everyone comes to the attention of law enforcement or some other govt. data collection agency. I was once booked into jail for driving without a license. I had one, just another state. My son was put in a mental hospital and booked into jail for assaulting an officer, because he had a violent reaction to a general anesthetic and the dentist called the police. Ever had a driver's license or a passport? Maybe they'll even collect student ids; protect the children and all that.

FBI to launch nationwide facial recognition service

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