Amazing
"...accurately identify completely obscured faces using recognition systems trained on only a handful of well lit photos."
So, if I wear a thick black bag on my head, it can still recognise my face?
Scientists have found a way to accurately identify completely obscured faces using recognition systems trained on only a handful of well-lit photos. The work by Seong Joon Oh, Rodrigo Benenson, Mario Fritz, and Bernt Schiele of Max Planck Institute in Saarbrücken, Germany, finds faces can be recognised with up to 91.5 per cent …
"So, if I wear a thick black bag on my head, it can still recognise my face?"
Yes. With an accuracy between 14.7% and 91.5%, depending on the quality of the picture used to identify a person AND of the quality of the pictures and additional data used to train the system.
Just skimmed the paper from the PDF-link in the article (must read it properly over the weekend), quite interesting. What puzzled me at first was the 'face recognition' - it doesn't just look at your face, i.e. uses portrait pictures. The training phase uses any kind of picture - portrait, full body, part of a scene/crowd, etc and also any extra data that might come with the picture like tagging. The recognition phase also works with any kind of picture.
Which explains it; if I know someone quite well I can recognize them without being able to see their face from the way they walk etc. Plus I factor in other data on a non-conscious level, like would I expect too see person X at location Y at that time etc.
The system described is used to identify persons across social networks via the pictures posted - even if their faces are blurred or blacked out. I can see this working with live feeds from CCTV cameras as well. In a way those are also tagged (location, date, time). Combined with a database of pictures and additional data like, say, roaming profiles, age, height, known associates, etc your shades & fake beard won't cut it.
can recognize them without being able to see their face from the way they walk etc. Plus I factor in other data
OK. So rather than a handkerchief over my face, I need a motorcycle helmet, egg boxes under my outer clothing, shoe inserts to fake my height, different in each shoe to give me a limp and unnatural gait, to take a different route to work each day, and avoid my mates?
HaHa! Theresa May, your Cheltenham Stasi won't be tracking me!
Which explains it; if I know someone quite well I can recognize them without being able to see their face from the way they walk etc. Plus I factor in other data on a non-conscious level, like would I expect too see person X at location Y at that time etc.
And when you get it wrong (everyone has been mistaken for someone else at some point in their lives) you and the other person laugh it off.
Try that with the security services when they come a-knockin' on the strength of a computer-enhanced photograph.
"Boffins' blur-busting face recognition can ID you with one bad photo
Scientists have found a way to accurately identify completely obscured faces using recognition systems trained on only a handful of well lit photos."
A bit contradictory, no?
"Accuracy sharply falls when imperfect training images are used. The team introduced black colour into the images dropping performance to 14.7 per cent
recognition accuracy of our system is 12× higher than chance level."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YPcRoPFnZo
So, to surmise, still shit, but better than it used to be?
I often call modern living of the masses , living in an open jail.
We're tagged ,our positions known , our data under surveillance and every day we loose freedoms.
This prison needs no walls .. they know what we do , think , look for , search , call , people we know , who they know, what they do ,our relationships with them and where we are at all times .
We are all prisoners .
"Privacy Implications of Social Media"
There is no privacy on Social Media. Zero, Zilch, None.
Don't post those selfies and then commit a crime. You will get busted by the Thought Police.
I am so glad that I have no presence on social media. Before anyone asks, 'what have you got to hide?', the answer is my effing life. Most of what I do is of no, repeat no interest to anyone. Why should I to use an El Reg word, 'embiggen' it up and hope that other poor sods find it interesting.
As for keeping in contact my family, many of them are reducing their presence of Facebook etc because of the dangers we all know about and most of you choose to ignore.
We email each other and have a family blog site that even Google does not know about and even if it did, it can't index it with their bots.
" Before anyone asks, 'what have you got to hide?', the answer is my effing life. Most of what I do is of no, repeat no interest to anyone."
To all those idiots who ask that question, I always ask them in return - Have you got curtains or blinds in your windows at home and if so , why? You've got nothing to hide, right?
Privacy in real life and privacy on line are no different. I have no identified photos of me online (though I may well be in the background in miscellanious holiday snaps) and I hope to keep it that way. Even if Facebook or some other silicon valley giant squid does have my a picture with me in it, at least they can't identify me. Obviously the government can, but thats unavoidable. But there's no reason to let a private company do it too just so they can make money from cross correlation of various aspects of my life such as where I've been and who my friends are.
"To all those idiots who ask that question, I always ask them in return - Have you got curtains or blinds in your windows at home and if so , why? You've got nothing to hide, right?"
I answer, "Yes. My body, on account of indecent exposure laws. Since the visibility of my body by the public is a criminal matter, I'm kinda forced into it."
"No it isn't. Not in the UK anyway. Public exposure is not the same as being visible naked in your own home."
Now this is where the law in theory and practice differ. Technically you may be naked in your home (as indeed you may be outside of it) but practically you'll be nicked, charged and convicted if anyone complains.
Interesting that the system requires a handful of well lit photos so it's probably not used for looking for terrorists (who are unlikely to allow well lit photos of themselves to be published), but is eminently useable for keeping the oppressed masses (ie, the general population) under control.
For argument's sake...
You're down the pub with some mates, and a photo is snapped, you decide to go home, but lend your brother your jacket (it's a cold night) and your mates and him are later caught on CCTV doing something inappropriate with a traffic cone.
This system is likely to say it's you with the traffic cone.
Good enough for flooding you with Ads (road maintenance equipment, alcoholic support organisations...), but should NEVER be accepted as "beyond reasonable doubt" in a court of law. Of course, not being used in courts won't stop the security services using it when targeting drones.
Depends how alike you and your brother look.
My little bro is three years younger than me, but there was a period in our twenties where not only did other people get us mixed up, but we can only tell each other apart in photos by our clothes. ("I don't remember going there, oh wait a minute that's not my coat").
If humans can make a mistake, then computers can as well, only faster and more efficiently.
That is literally how the law works at times.
I recently read the Steam (online PC games store) is about to ban people if they gift a game, and the person they gave to uses hacks. This is to prevent hackers from making fake accounts and gifting out stolen/cheap games to easily hack on a second account (thus avoiding a ban on the first).
The solution is like a shotgun to remove a flea. :/
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One more step towards the inevitable swarms of government micro-video-drones so small and quiet that you won't be able to tell them apart from insects. At that point all privacy is lost.
Mankind has, what, 20 or 30 years to sort out how society operates, how we all get along, how we govern ourselves properly once and for all, or it's all over and a hellish situation awaits us all as an all powerful global dictatorship rules over all we see and do. No possibility to dissent or organise a fight against them, the odds stacked overwhelmingly and comprehensively against us.
Sounds a bit grim and pessimistic, I admit, but when the tools they need become available, there's no turning back so I don't believe I'm worrying for nothing. I do hope I'm wrong! Maybe a push back against this will happen violently just in time, as we realise just how serious the danger is. I'd welcome constructive opinions on this....
"One more step towards the inevitable swarms of government micro-video-drones so small and quiet that you won't be able to tell them apart from insects. At that point all privacy is lost."
Tell me. Who gets to sort out all the millions of videos such a system would inevitably generate? What about bandwidth concerns (given there's a physical limit for wireless bandwidth)? How would it deal with jammers, especailly flying jammers disguised as birds (there are plenty of bird species that put insects on their diet)? Or people start taking to making EMP emitters?
"Tell me. Who gets to sort out all the millions of videos such a system would inevitably generate?"
The Computer does. The Computer is your friend, citizen.
I am sorry, citizen, but this information is currently placed at Security Clearance VIOLET. Reading any of the above words without appropriate security clearance is considered treason. Please proceed directly to your nearest available Termination Booth. Thank you for your cooperation. Have a nice daycycle!
Use of these systems are for protection and safety; which trumps privacy in nearly every instance when you're out in public or on commercial property.
Don't get shocked when you find out there is a database of facial recognition data which is shared among those who use these applications. Las Vegas casinos have been doing this for years now.
In most cities, mug shots of criminals are posted and these pictures are available to download and put into facial recognition systems. So, if you commit a crime in Nowhereville, Idaho you could set off bells and whistles when entering a store in another part of the country.
You can bet your life, facial recognition will start to be used when you go in for a job interview. So, you think it's bad now... you have no idea.
Not sure if Adair and I are on the same track here... but...
... whoTF cares about this tech? As law enforcement and marketing dept are both focused because of the "spawn of satan" (one *for one *against... theoretically (lol)) isn't this just another way of dehumanizing, and both with the next logically forseeable step towards abuse by control freaks? I, for one, reject your attempts to make me buy XYZ product from an XYZ sponsored dealer and stop altering the traffic lights in front of me so I spend extra time in front of that 1 zillion watt LED flashing advert...
I call bullshit on this one; if as they say this kind of tech is already out there, given the numbers of security cameras around, solved crime figures would be much higher. How many times have reported crimes with video footage remained unsolved even when the faces are not that obscured? Or is it that none of these criminals have social media lives and have never had a mug shot taken?