Darin Thompson's List: Facial Regognition

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  A facial recognition device is one that views an image or video of a person and compares it to one that is in the database. It does this by comparing structure, shape and proportions of the face; distance between the eyes, nose, mouth and jaw; upper outlines of the eye sockets; the sides of the mouth; location of the nose and eyes; and the area surrounding the check bones.

• "FACE recognition is 'now'," declared Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in a testimony before the US Senate in July.

                      

  It certainly seems that way. As part of an update to the national fingerprint database, the FBI has begun rolling out facial recognition to identify criminals.
• It will form part of the bureau's long-awaited, $1 billion Next Generation Identification (NGI) programme, which will also add biometrics such as iris scans, DNA analysis and voice identification to the toolkit. A handful of states began uploading their photos as part of a pilot programme this February and it is expected to be rolled out nationwide by 2014. In addition to scanning mugshots for a match, FBI officials have indicated that they are keen to track a suspect by picking out their face in a crowd.
• Ideally, such technological advancements will allow law enforcement to identify criminals more accurately and lead to quicker arrests. But privacy advocates are worried by the broad scope of the FBI's plans. They are concerned that people with no criminal record who are caught on camera alongside a person of interest could end up in a federal database, or be subject to unwarranted surveillance.

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• The U.S. Congress may need to pass legislation that limits the way government agencies and private companies use facial recognition technology to identify people, a U.S. senator said Wednesday
• There are currently no U.S. laws limiting government agencies or private companies from using facial recognition, witnesses said

• This Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) addresses the establishment of biometric interoperability between the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS)/Next Generation Identification (NGI) of the Department of Justice (DOJ)/Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) Program.¹

• Here, statisticians are compiling vast amounts of data from law enforcement into a series of regular reports detailing the state of crime in communities across the country. The world’s largest repository of criminal fingerprints and history records is being searched in a flash by investigators and police professionals working to catch crooks and terrorists. State-of-the-art technologies built to ensure the timely and legal purchase of weapons are instantly returning results to gun shops nationwide.

• In an unexpected twist against the rising tide of image-capturing technologies, an engineer has created glasses that thwart facial recognition scanners. Tokyo’s National Institute of Informatics Professor Isao Echizen’s “Privacy Visor” emits an infrared light source that reportedly confuses facial recognition software.
• Last week, designer Adam Harvey launched a line of “Stealth Wear” for what he jokingly referred to as the “fashionably paranoid market.”