Posted on 08/21/2003 2:04:58 PM PDT by demlosers
MIAMI, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Police thought facial recognition software could be a great way to spot criminals or missing children in crowds. Civil rights activists deplored it as "Big Brother" on the street.
Now police in Tampa, Florida, are removing the software, which is linked to street surveillance cameras, from the Ybor City entertainment district after the 2-year-old scheme, the first such deployment in the United States, failed to produce any arrests.
City Police Chief Bennie Holder said on Wednesday the department had decided not to renew its annual agreement with Identix Inc. IDNX.O on using the company's Facial Recognition Software.
"While the software proved reliable in testing, there have been no positive identifications or arrests attributed to the software," the department said in a statement.
Civil rights groups hailed the move. When Tampa installed the software in June 2001, they denounced it as an intrusion that went beyond simple surveillance cameras because it ran images past a police database and sought to match faces with criminals or missing people in the database.
"We're pleased they've decided to go ahead and remove the face recognition technology," Darlene Williams, who heads the Tampa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said on Thursday. "Before, every person who walked down the street was subjected to an electronic police line-up without their consent."
Police spokesman Bob Guidara said the decision to end the test program -- which was paid for by the company -- was based on the fact it had not produced results, not on the privacy issues. He declined to comment on whether the lack of results was the fault of the software or the database used.
Meir Kahtan, a spokesman for Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Identix, said in a brief statement: "Identix has always stated that this technology requires safeguards and that as a society we need to be comfortable with its use."
"We are comfortable with their (the Tampa police) decision," he said.
Identix is a security technology company with products including fingerprint readers and other identity technology. The face recognition product is used in a similar form in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is also used in the London district of Newham and in Birmingham, England.
The surveillance cameras in Ybor City, in place since 1997, will remain.
"I have this policeman friend who has a photographic memory. Just show him a mug shot and he'll remember the face and can pick the perp out of a line-up every time. There is no limit to the number of mug shots he can remember. I'll bet over the years he has seen at least 30,000 pictures and remembers them all."
Question: if we station this mythical policeman at the corner of Ybor and Main, are we violating anyone's civil rights? If we put a policeman who can't remember what he ate for breakfast on the same corner, would it make a difference?
If we replace our memory giant with a video camera and stick him in front of the monitor looking for faces he remembers, would it make a difference? Finally, if we replace the cop with a software program that could perform the same recognition "trick," would that make a difference? Would the memory skill of the officer be a defense?
Technology is not always bad for technology's sake just as it isn't always good. If you have a problem with the policeman on the corner looking for bad guys then I can only assume that the rights of criminals are foremost in your priorities. You also need to ask yourself if your reaction to the face recognition software is based on a real concern for civil rights. Consider that contemporary society has been conditioned to automatically react to surveillance by saying "Orwell, 1984, big brother is watching." Remember all that emphasis on the book in school? Or can you come up with a supported argument that tells us how face recognition software crosses a constitutional line?
Remember, the software does not make an arrest, it doesn't scan a license plate and issue a ticket, it doesn't hit you with a goo gun to freeze you in place until a cop arrives. It is a tool to alert a human police officer to investigate a possible suspect and to use his or her own judgment before making an arrest. I don't mind the face recognition cameras but I do mind the stop light cams.
Where is the information about how the software actually failed? Were there human-initiated arrests of known felons that were in the 30,000 picture database (mentioned in another article but isn't this also a significant fact to be reported) but were not detected by the software? Did a review of video tape show that a missing person walked right past the camera without being recognized? Did the city place images of test subjects into the system and have them walk through the area at random intervals without detection? Are we told that the presence of the system was well publicised and maybe the people with mug shots on file simply chose not to party in Ybor city? Or did the city simply say that it was a cost / benefit decision that had little to do with the actual effectiveness of the system?
Crime was down 90 percent while the camera was down! What a piece of poop!
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