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FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

washingtonpost.com

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Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#71

Post by iteriteratedone »

DanBC wrote: post #23
metaphor wrote: post #15

This line caught my attention: > The FBI said its system is 86 percent accurate at finding the right person if a search is able to generate a list of 50 possible matches, according to the GAO. But the FBI has not tested its system’s accuracy under conditions that are closer to normal, such as when a facial search returns only a few possible matches. What the GAO study[1] actually said: > However, we found that the te…

But also, no-one understands percentages. WaPo should really present this information as a probability tree or an icon array chart.

But their readers dont understand correct methods. The readers dont see any difference between the current way and what you are suggesting. This is a uniquely hacker news read of the story.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#72

Post by digsy »

sunebeck wrote: post #59
ma2rten wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accuracy depends on the dataset like you point out. It's a hard task to find a person among all driver license photos in the US.

Anecdotally, FindFace found my Russian friend's VK.com profile (amongst many millions of such profiles) as the number one hit after I took a picture of her in a bar and submitted it to their face recognition service.

I think your example is different to this scenario as your friend will have submitted many pics to VK so they have decent training set for her face.

Whereas the DMV only has 1 picture of a suspect so it will result in more false positives.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#73

Post by Spooky23 »

xmichael999 wrote: post #7

I don't know too much about facial recognition technology (I work more in the ALPR space), but I know enough to tell you that a single photo is not enough to train the software to do anything useful. Either they were sold a dream by a company making bogus claims, or they just don't give a shit about false postives in the slightest and they use it as justification to randomly stop and search people. There was an artic…

I didn’t read the story carefully because of the paywall, but it depends on what the searches are doing and what the sources are.

Several states have had success in identifying people with multiple drivers licenses using facial recognition systems on their photosets. Of course they are using DMV photos that are taken in a consistent way.

FBI or ICE could very well have a feed of identification photos from foreign countries that are close enough to get good success.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#74

Post by hedora »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #19

Sensible regulations around what the government can do/not do in regards to things like facial recognition tech seems like it’s becoming more and more necessary. I am far more worried about privacy invasions/abuse by the government than I am by private companies that seem to get all the press (ie facebook). For the simple reason that 1) facebook can’t arrest me 2) facebook has no incentive other than targeting me wit…

For all intents and purposes, the government has a superset of the data gathered by the big tech firms.

In particular, they have to turn this data over to law enforcement by law.

Separately, law enforcement routinely breaks the law and steals the backend databases these companies gather.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#76

Post by RaceWon »

JetSpiegel wrote: post #60
RaceWon wrote: post #50

Imagine a USA where the citizens are no longer armed, and the 1st Amendment has been cannibalized by the passing of various "hate speech" laws that only serve the interests of the current elected... and then imagine trying to redress a Government gone full Orwellian. Just sayin.

How is this particular development relevant? The US government still has nukes, SSN, etc etc etc. This particular reading of the 2nd Amendment seems to have been frozen in time since the drafting of the Constitution.

> How is this particular development relevant?

Well God forbid it ever comes to that, but there's probably 60 Million people with guns here, and most own more than one... so basically a gun for every man, woman and child; its a formidable defense against tyranny. I mean it's not like we won in Viet Nam, to name one armed conflict that didn't go our way.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#77

Post by dlgeek »

gizmoduck wrote: post #47
_iyig wrote: post #33

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S. I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using t…

> When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. False. Until the observer effect occurs, I - essentially - do not exist but as a record in a database. Someone who knows me, my car, or has the ability to ascertain who I am from identifiers on the vehicle, is able to collapse that sense of privacy but, until that happens, I am just one of the many of the nameless mass. In that, I have p…

> False. Tinted windows which obscure the driver's view is illegal. It's perfectly legal for you to have a high iridescent finish on the outside of your tint, which will obstruct the outside view of the driver (in sunlight).

That's not true. Most states have a limit on reflectiveness. I checked Alabama and Wyoming (first and last alphabetically), and both specifically limit you to no more than 20% reflectivity by statute.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#78

Post by RaceWon »

identity0 wrote: post #56
RaceWon wrote: post #50

Imagine a USA where the citizens are no longer armed, and the 1st Amendment has been cannibalized by the passing of various "hate speech" laws that only serve the interests of the current elected... and then imagine trying to redress a Government gone full Orwellian. Just sayin.

What you're describing is literally the UK right now.

> What you're describing is literally the UK right now.

That's what I understand... and that is Exactly why I posted my original comment.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#79

Post by xmichael999 »

bko wrote: post #34
xmichael999 wrote: post #7

I don't know too much about facial recognition technology (I work more in the ALPR space), but I know enough to tell you that a single photo is not enough to train the software to do anything useful. Either they were sold a dream by a company making bogus claims, or they just don't give a shit about false postives in the slightest and they use it as justification to randomly stop and search people. There was an artic…

A single picture is surprisingly effective in recognizing that person in another photo. I've been playing around with a python wrapper on dlib's facial recognition [0] and it's astonishing how it can identify people from just one photo. It's not like other machine learning methods that include training a classifier or even fine tuning a classifier. It works by encoding the persons face to a 128 dimension vector and t…

These libs assume the angle is the same, i.e. square shot of the face. Cameras mounted up high are completely useless with these types of libs. Unless the tech. exists to magically rerender a front face shot so you can image how it would look from 12 - 20 feed raised up, this doesn't work.

Re: FBI, ICE using state driver’s license photos for facial-recognition searches

#80

Post by toast0 »

_iyig wrote: post #33

Fairness of the U.S. immigration system aside, what is wrong in principle with law enforcement using driver’s license photos to uphold and enforce the law? When you drive on public roads, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Tinted windows which obscure the driver’s face are, to the best of my knowledge, illegal in most of the U.S. I would be much more concerned if law enforcement were, for example, using t…

Law enforcement doesn't get a blanket right to all government data.

If drivers licensing agencies are allowing my records to be used against my interests (being returned as a potential match is certainly against my interest), it makes me consider the value of being a licensed driver.

I consider anything that encourages unlicensed driving to be a big problem -- unlicensed drivers are likely to be less well trained and less safe on the road, and are less likely to have evidence of financial responsibility (eg insurance) and may not be able to pay a judgement, and likely will drive unlicensed vehicles as well, so may be very difficult to track down in case of a hit and run.

Fundamentally --- drivers have consented to their photos being collected for a specific purpose, and using it for other purposes against the interest of the driver is a big problem.

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