Chinese-style mass facial recognition scanning now in UK

[jandl100]

Who knew?
Not me.

I mean, OK, I expect the dastardly Chinese totalitarian state to get up to these things, but good ol' Blighty?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...tial-criminals

https://futurism.com/welsh-police-fa...are-incorrect/

[walpurgis]

Next time you're hauled away in handcuffs for no apparent reason, you'll know why.

[struth]

yup, if you farted in a lift, 30 years ago, causing mass panic, there is a better than 90% chance someone else will get nicked for it

[jandl100]

OK, so they were 33 years late.

[walpurgis]

I believe they've been using this at sea ports and airports for a while.

[jandl100]

So do we sleep easier in our beds knowing that the bad people are having a harder time of it?
Or do we spend restless nights waiting for the front door to burst open and a SWAT team come charging in cos you vaguely resemble some mass murderer?

[walpurgis]

It'll probably be used as an excuse to justify less policing.

[User211]

It isn't surprising as OpenCV and other libraries allow object tracking, ANPR, face detection and recognition to be incorporated into software applications with some degree of ease.

Given decent quality source files (mugshots) and video input, some algorithms are better than humans at face recognition. But that's the problem, the need for high quality input, and it all falls over when trying to recognise faces from small images with little detail i.e. crowd scenes.

A high quality camera getting close ups on a single file turnstile gate should do pretty well, though.

[Edward]

I'm deeply concerned about the civil liberties aspect of such technology and am concerned that various public bodies (and indeed private bodies) will increasingly use the 'security' aspect to keep rolling out such tech. And then once they start linking up the data that is collected with other datasets it becomes easier for all our movements being tracked - just so that they have it for possible investigations down the road. Already internet service providers (ISPs) have to collect and retain one years data of our online movements, it is easy to see how the increasing authoritarian impulse will dictate that all CCTV data will need to be retained. And then add facial recognition to CCTV and you have a truly Orwellian world.

Even now large shopping malls routinely collect data provided freely, but not knowingly, by all shoppers who have a smartphone. These are tracked using standard wifi and 4g tech and each phone is uniquely identified for footfall movements via the phone's unique MAC (Media Access Control) code. Join that data up with government and ISP data and we have even more reasons to be justifiably paranoid.

And I don't buy the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" line.

[User211]

BWV (Body Worn Video) is now in use by the Police, who upload it on a daily basis to a database. So be nice to Mr PC Copper.