Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECTs:Face Scanners The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Friday, August 17, 2001 Table of Contents 01. Face Scanners 02. Concerned 03. Supportive *01 Face Scanners Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter. This week we wanted to talk about biometrics, in particular, the new technology of "facial recognition". Facial recognition works by surveillance cameras scanning people’s faces into images. Algorithms from the scanned images then measure facial features. It uses things like the distances and angles between points (mouth, nostrils, eyes) on the face. This produces a faceprint. This faceprint can then be compared against a computerized database to recognize a specific individual. Facial recognition is becoming increasingly common; it is being used for admission to facilities and computers. The gaming industry and check cashing companies are using it to reduce fraud. Many of you may have read about how this new technology was used at the Super Bowl in Tampa. Now the Tampa police are using this technology to automatically scan the faces of people walking through the streets of Ybor City a Historic Landmark District. Should we be concerned about the use of this technology? *02 Concerned (1984) I think we should be concerned. "Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty four hours a day under the eyes of the police." George Orwell-1984 When police start using this type of technology on public streets, our right to privacy is in serious danger. If the images are checked against a database of wanted criminals and then deleted if not matched, that might be all right. But what if the data was saved and the databases interconnected? It could create a tremendous surveillance system. It could provide the owners of the database the ability to track your movement, not just for that day, but also from the day the system was created. They could track you and everyone you associated with over any period of time. Big Brother would then, beyond any doubt, be watching our every move. The police state of Orwell’s 1984 offered it’s society a greater level of personal security and the end of crime. The price of this security was their freedom. This is too high a price tag for me. This innovation could help our society in many ways, but we should not be blind to it dangers. Remember the Red scare of the fifties? Imagine how Senator Joe McCarthy could have utilized this tool to purge our country of his imagined threat. If you have any thoughts on this subject or any ideas that could be helpful to the others in this group send them to me (Chuck Arning) at chuck@inter800.com *03 Supportive The face is already a globally accepted convention as a means of verifying identity. It is relied upon by both governments and private institutions. With over two billion faces in worldwide circulation, it can safely be said that the face is the most widely distributed official identity token in the world. Biometrics offers improvements in both speed and accuracy over traditional methods of face recognition. The cost savings over visual inspection appear in the replacement of human labor. Biometrics also provides more accuracy than visual inspection and thus reduces indentity fraud. E-commerce, for example, requires strong user identification. Networks can only authenticate terminals, cards and PIN numbers. They can not authenticate actual human users, as PINs and cards can be stolen or manipulated. Police regularly use mug shots to look for criminals. At large events such as the Super Bowl, police frequently scan the crowd using binoculars. Biometrics simply provides a much more efficient method of performing this task. Granted, this technology could be dangerous if used inappropriately, but this is true of just about any technology, no? Police officers currently carry firearms, mace and batons, items which I view as much more potentially dangerous than surveillance, but does that mean that I should fear they will use them unjustly? The use of surveillance cameras in Tampa was challenged and found acceptable by the Supreme Court. The Court stated that government action constitutes a search when it invades a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, but the court also found that a person does not have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to physical characteristics that are constantly exposed to the public. In other words, what is anyone's expectation of privacy while in full view of the general public? When I defend the use of this technology, I think of back to events that may have been prevented had this been available. The Munich Olympic Games massacre, the bombing of the Atlanta Games in 96 and the Oklahoma City bombing come to mind. Of equal, if not greater improtance, this technology could be used to find missing children. I would gladly relinquish a small part of my "privacy" to address these more pressing issues. George Paul (george@inter800.com) Thanks for taking to time to review our newsletter for this week. If you know of anyone that might benefit from receiving this newsletter, send them to (http://www.inter800.com/news800/ ) where they can subscribe. All Contents Copyright ©1995-2001 The Internet 800 Directory Subscribe To The Newsletter: |