UK, the world’s most surveilled state, begins using automated face recognition to catch criminals

[Reefa]

Police in the UK have become one of the first major police forces to deploy automated facial recognition technology to catch criminals. The British police will be using NEC’s NeoFace technology, which can match faces from crime scene photos or videos against a database of images in just a few seconds. Combined with the highest density of CCTV cameras of any country in the world, police body-worn cameras that are constantly recording, and a CSI-like smartphone and tablet app that allows for face and fingerprint matching in the field, it is rather hard to be a criminal in the UK nowadays.

Most modern police forces, including the FBI, have some kind of computerized face-matching system — but it involves laboriously looking through dozens of potential matches manually. NEC’s NeoFace, which was released last year and has since been deployed by a few police forces, is fully automated, highly accurate, and very fast. The FBI isn’t far behind with its own automated Next-Generation Identification (NGI) system, which has been slowly rolling out over the last couple of years (it’s expected to turn on fully this summer). The NGI database, containing millions of fingerprints, faces, and other biometric records, will eventually be shared with all federal, state, and local police forces in the US.

Some happy British police, using NeoFace. Amusingly the NeoFace app appears to be running in the Windows 8 Metro interface.

NEC’s NeoFace and the FBI’s NGI both work in roughly the same way. The most important thing is that you need a big database of images to begin with — which, fortunately, the police is in possession of. The software goes through each of these images (potentially millions of them) and encodes them into specially tagged and formatted files. These files don’t store image data, but rather biometric data — the distance between the eyes, the length of the nose, etc. Many of these images will already be associated with a criminal’s police record, but that’s not a requirement. Later, to find a match, the investigator simply feeds a new image into the system — a photo, a still from a crime scene video — and the same encoding/tagging process occurs. It is then a very quick process to compare the biometric markers from the new image against the entire database.

In the case of NeoFace, there are also a couple of companion apps. NeoFace Watch watches surveillance footage, constantly picking faces out of a crowd — and then storing those faces in a database, or matching them against a predefined watch list. NeoFace Smart ID is a smartphone and tablet app that allows for the real-time collection and identification of fingerprints, faces, voices, and other identifiable data at crime scenes.

NEC’s NeoFace Smart ID facial recognition companion app for smartphones and tablets

Utopia or dystopia?

As we noted at the beginning of the story, with around 6 million CCTV cameras — or one camera per 10 citizens — the UK has been called the world’s most surveilled state. Earlier in the year, British police also started wearing body cameras, which are very effective at collecting evidence in call outs and public order incidents. Couple this with its existing database of criminal mugshots, and some judicious scanning of public Facebook profiles (which link your face to your name), and you can see how the police now have a lot of facial data to work with.

Andy Ramsay, one of the UK police officers using the NeoFace tech, said: “We have over ninety-thousand photos on our system and Neo-Face can compare someone’s image against our complete databases in seconds. Besides the speed it’s also impressive because it can even find family members related to the person we’re trying to identify.” Yes, if you look somewhat like your dad (i.e. you have the same nose or brow or lips) then NeoFace will probably throw up a potential match.

The obvious upside to facial recognition tech is that it’s becoming increasingly hard to be a criminal. With 6 million CCTV cameras in the UK, there’s a really good chance that you’ll get spotted trying to mug someone or break into a house — and then you’re just a few seconds away from being automatically identified by some software.

The downside, of course, is that any expectation of privacy is quickly evaporating. The standard refrain from governments, intelligence agencies, and the police, of course, is that good people have nothing to hide — but it’s really not that simple. With CCTV and facial recognition and license plate readers and NSA wire taps and even wearable computers like Google Glass, the concept of privacy is being rapidly eviscerated from our lives.

When we know that we’re being watched and judged, we behave differently — we conform. Governments love this, of course — a docile population is an easy-to-rule population. But it’s not even conformity that most scares me — it’s the terrifying thought of what happens if these mass tools of surveillance are controlled by nefarious actors. In the hands of a good police, surveillance is a great way of reducing crime — but in the hands of an oppressive government or megacorporation, omnipresent surveillance is how society becomes dystopic, just like 1984.

Source

[Cramsdeath]

This is pretty cool!

I like the idea generally, if you have nothing to hide why be afraid? It also could be used to find lost people, I would think people would pay a lot of money to have a picture fed through this system to find family members and such - Of course there is cause for concern in regards to privacy, but it'll just be the case of getting used to it - As Humans we're hard coded not to like things like this because cameras are like predators, constantly watching you, just turns out the predator has a new intelligence.

[windowsvistas]

it's scary to see that our privacy would be no more.

[Sonar]

time to wear masks when we leave our houses.

sorry did i just find a flaw?

[jimbojet2011]

Instead of talking about privacy we can better talk about the safity of the people in the world

"Don't do the crime if you can't do the time"

[CODYQX4]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4

[The Owl]

Our privacy Laws are a lot more effective in the UK than ANYWHERE else in the world IMHO and bear in mind I have lived / worked in many countrys including yours, as many have said fortunately we do not suffer the paranoia that seems prevalent in the US, mind you with the likes of "Homeland Security" I don't blame you.

[CODYQX4]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4

[The Owl]

before they built the New GCHQ My first wifes mother lived about 200 yds from the main gate of the old one, and during my military career I visited there several times, the only people that need to worry are those breaking terrorist laws or pornography laws and IMHO GOOD

[The Owl]

look here

http://www.cheltenham4u.co.uk/benhall_gchq.asp?area=Benhall%2C+The+Reddings

over on the right as you scroll down is the old building.

Or Go to Google Maps and type in Sainsburys Prior's Road, Cheltenham, UK then zoom in a bit and change to Satellite View the building site at the rear of Sainsburys is where the old build was. and as I said 200 yds from the gate

[CODYQX4]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4

[The Owl]

I would hate to see what they think of me then, but I never ever will use torrents there are far better ways to stay below the rardar

[CODYQX4]

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Edited April 28, 2019 by CODYQX4

[knowledge-Spammer]

its good and bad but in the uk everyday your on cam just going to shop your be on cam

[Cramsdeath]

The Wonderful thing about CCTV is why would somebody look at it unless they need to? People are very lazy by nature, If I was to break into a building without causing any disturb or damage, going in and doing what I needed to do then leaving, they would never see it (Providing the CCTV doesn't activate and report on out of hours detections).

Got a phone with a front facing camera? Got a phone with GPS? Even turn on the data connection on your phone? Not to mention the microphone in your phone, these features can all be remotely activated, how about a computer with a webcam? We are all walking surveillance machines - Because nobody ever reads terms of service for Apps they download, or phone contracts or even phone manufacturer setup disclaimers (Click to agree) I'm sure somewhere in the 400 page long disclaimer there will be a loophole to remotely access your phone witout prior consent.

There was a hoax recently if you remember where the mobile app 'Talking Angela' was said to be the front end for a paedophile ring where it would activate the front camera while the end user was in the app (The target audience was children) - The idea is the same with any application - Just think - When you install the Facebook application you give permissions for camera and microphone use.

Not every camera is a government camera - They can request footage but the CCTV system doesn't belong to them.
The nature of our modern world comes with surveillance - If being watched upsets you, buy a mobile phone which is purely for calls and texts, No GPS, No Data and only use it in emergencies,
Erase yourself from the internet, modify your physical appearance, empty your bank accounts, pay everything in cash and get a sudo ID so you can turn into Joe Bloggs of 123 fake street, but even then Joe Bloggs will be being watched, you would have to make a new identity every day to stay in privacy.