«Breaking News» Being able to walk around without being tracked by facial recognition could be a thing of the past

Walking around without being constantly identified by AI could soon be a thing of the past, top legislative experts have warned.

The use of facial recognition software could signal the end of civil liberties, if the law doesn't change to match the advancements made in technology. 

Software could soon be adopted by both private and public bodies to constantly track you in public and you may not even know it.

This is of particular concern given that the technology has previously been shown by scientists to misidentify women and women of colour. 

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Many facial recognition systems are being trained using millions of online photos uploaded by everyday people and, more often than not, the photos are being taken without users' consent 

 Shop owners, for example, are already using software to track shoplifters, and soon could be sharing this across a much broader network of databases.

Such easy adoption of the technology has triggered privacy alarms in experts who say it's a clear breach of privacy and something needs change in the legislation.

Neema Singh Guliani, the American Civil Liberties Union's senior legislative counsel, warned on the dangers of the technology. 

She said: 'Unless we really rein in this technology, there's a risk that what we enjoy every day - the ability to walk around anonymous, without fearing that you're being tracked and identified - could be a thing of the past.' 

Jennifer Lynch, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation also said:  'So far, we haven't been able to convince our legislators that this is a big problem and will be an even larger problem in the future'. 

'The time is now to regulate this technology before it becomes embedded in our everyday lives.'    

The warning comes as tech giants ranging from Amazon to Microsoft have also  faced growing scrutiny from human rights and privacy advocates over their facial recognition software. 

Amazon, in particular, has dealt with pushback over its decision to sell its 'Rekognition' software to government agencies.   

Scientists at MIT also found Rekognition misidentified females and darker-skinned females, raising serious concerns about the bias and discrimination as well as public safety. 

By comparison, the software made no errors when it tried to identify pale-skinned men. 

The proliferation of content supplied to social networking sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube and others has made it that much easier for researchers to find data for their studies. 

HOW DOES FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY WORK?

Facial recognition software works by matching real time images to a previous photograph of a person. 

Each face has approximately 80 unique nodal points across the eyes, nose, cheeky and mouth which distinguish one person from another. 

A digital video camera measures the distance between various points on the human face, such as the width of the nose, depth of the eye sockets, distance between the eyes and shape of the jawline.

A different smart surveillance system (pictured) can scan 2 billion faces within seconds has been revealed in China. The system connects to millions of CCTV cameras and uses artificial intelligence to pick out targets. The military is working on applying a similar version of this with AI to track people across the country 

This produces a unique numerical code that can then be linked with a matching code gleaned from a previous photograph.

A facial recognition system used by officials in China connects to millions of CCTV cameras and uses artificial intelligence to pick out targets.

Experts believe that facial recognition technology will soon overtake fingerprint technology as the most effective way to identify people. 

The proliferation of content supplied to social networking sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube and others has made it that much easier for researchers to find data for their studies.   

Many facial recognition systems are being trained using millions of online photos uploaded by everyday people and, more often than not, the photos are being taken without users' consent, an NBC News investigation has found. 

In one worrying case, IBM scraped almost a million photos from unsuspecting users on Flickr to build its facial recognition database.  

However, only academic or corporate research groups can request access to the Diversity in Faces database, according to NBC News. 

The proliferation of content supplied to social networking sites like Facebook, Google, YouTube and others has made it that much easier for researchers to find data for their studies. This has led to many users' photographs being scraped by researchers without their consent 

The website was only able to view the contents of IBM's database after obtaining it from a source. 

Once the photos are collected, they're then tagged by age, measurements of facial attributes, skin tone, gender and other characteristics. 

Many photographers were surprised to find their photos had been to train IBM's algorithms. 

'None of the people I photographed had any idea their images were being used in this way,' Greg Peverill-Conti, who had 700 of his photos used in the dataset, told NBC News at the time. 

In one case, IBM scraped almost a million photos from unsuspecting users on Flickr to build its facial recognition database. The photos were then tagged for certain attributes (pictured)

'It seems a little sketchy that IBM can use these pictures without saying anything to anybody.'

IBM defended the database, saying that it helps ensure fairness in facial recognition technology and promised to protect 'the privacy of individuals.' 

'Individuals can opt-out of this dataset,' the spokesperson added.   

IBM told NBC News it would assist anyone who wanted their photos removed from the training dataset. 

Despite this, NBC News found that it was almost impossible for users to prevent their photos from being used. 

To request for removal, photographers have to email IBM with links of each photo they want taken down. 

But the contents of the database aren't publicly available, so it's extremely difficult for photographers to know which of their photos have been swept up in the database. 

Even celebrities are using the technology to avoid stalkers.

Taylor Swift fans were reportedly surveiled with facial recognition technology without their knowledge at one of her concerts in a bid to track her stalkers.

Those who attended the concert at the Rose Bowl in California on May 18 had their photos taken when they looked at a kiosk screen showing footage of the singer rehearsing, Rolling Stone reports.

Their photographs were reportedly sent to a 'command post' in Nashville and cross-referenced against images in a database of hundreds of Swift's known stalkers, Mike Downing, chief security officer at Oak View Group, an advisory board for concert venues, told the magazine.

CAN AI JUDGE IF YOU HAVE THE FACE OF A CRIMINAL?

A controversial paper investigated whether a computer could detect if a human could be a criminal, by analysing their facial features.

The 2016 study involved 1,856 faces of Chinese men aged 18 to 55, which were 'controlled' to account for 'race, gender, age and facial expressions.'

730 of the photos belonged to criminals – although the images were not mugshots.

Last year, a controversial paper was released which investigated whether a computer could detect if a human could be a criminal, by analysing their facial features. The results suggest that people with smaller mouths, curvier upper lips and closer-set eyes (pictured top), are more likely to be criminals

The images were fed into a machine learning algorithm, which used four different methods (classifiers) of analysing facial features, to infer criminality.

The researchers write: 'All four classifiers perform consistently well and produce evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic.

'Also, we find some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle.'

 

Link hienalouca.com

https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/21/being-able-to-walk-around-without-being-tracked-by-facial-recognition-could-be-a-thing-of-the-past/
Main photo article Walking around without being constantly identified by AI could soon be a thing of the past, top legislative experts have warned.
The use of facial recognition software could signal the end of civil liberties, if the law doesn’t change to match the advancements made in technology. 
Software ...

It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.

Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.

Dianne Reeves US News HienaLouca





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