Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

ipvm.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 101 posts

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#41

Post by k-mcgrady »

ck2 wrote: post #28
unvs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the curfew had been lifted moments before he went outside for a cigarette - at least that's what's been reported over and over and over.

So the curfew actually prevented earlier discovery of the younger brother, interesting.

You can't state that as fact either. It's possible the lock down and house to house search left the suspect with no other choice but to find a hiding place and stay there. If residents remained on the streets it's possible he could have slipped away.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#42

Post by securingsincity »

emiliobumachar wrote: post #34
jpalomaki wrote: post #20

I can understand that recording live footage with very high quality is a problem, but how about capturing quality stills to complement the video with lower quality.

Someone with knowledge of cameras please either correct or endorse this, but I think the largest price/quality tradeoff in any camera happens at the lens choice, and given a cheap lens, the stills can't be much better than the video.

certainly the lens and sensor are the biggest trade offs with price these would have the biggest impact with image clarity and the amount of light taken in to take the image.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#43

Post by runarb »

nwh wrote: post #15
marknutter wrote: post #13

How hard would it be to throw off facial recognition by simply wearing very high quality makeup and prosthetics to alter your facial appearance (ala hollywood movies)? If I were the boston bombers, I would have first learned how to make myself look completely different. It's unbelievable to me that these guys didn't realize they'd be captured on tons of cameras that day.

If you wore Mission Impossible style masks, there's no reason why the facial recognition would be able to pick you up from underneath. You might alert the suspicion of people around you more though, as they don't ever seem to be perfect.

What if you wore something like this: http://www.spfxmasks.com/ourmasks.php ?

One should be able to blend in, and make video surveillance pretty useless...

Edit: Did work for this robbers: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192115/Robbers-disg...

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#44

Post by pdevr »

jhonovich wrote: post #12

I am the author of the referenced article. The problem is matching surveillance camera images (like from Lord & Taylor's) is impossible because of the steep down tilt angle of the cameras plus their low resolution. Smartphone images could be a little better as the angle is more head on and the resolution is higher. However, even those images tended to be in a wide field of view which means low pixel density, hurting…

Thank you for the article.

In a real life scenario, surveillance camera images are all you will get to work with, most likely. So maybe, the focus should be on figuring a way out to recognize individuals based on images taken at those angles. Is there any progress in this regard?

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#45

Post by ams6110 »

yk wrote: post #31
melling wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is surveillance video not HD? Shouldn't this quality be almost a commodity by now? How different are these cameras than what you get in, say the latest Samsung Galaxy S4, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S4

Surveillance cameras are typically bought and then forgotten. So the new ones are probably HD, but you get a collection of cameras between HD and Betamax if you look at the cameras that are actually in use.

And for outdoor cameras, how often do the lenses get cleaned? I'd think that in a city center, with lots of car exhaust, etc. they'd be pretty dusty/greasy in just a few months. HD won't help much if there's a film of diesel exhaust soot on the lens.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#46

Post by tripzilch »

melling wrote: post #27
jhonovich wrote: post #12

I am the author of the referenced article. The problem is matching surveillance camera images (like from Lord & Taylor's) is impossible because of the steep down tilt angle of the cameras plus their low resolution. Smartphone images could be a little better as the angle is more head on and the resolution is higher. However, even those images tended to be in a wide field of view which means low pixel density, hurting…

Why is surveillance video not HD? Shouldn't this quality be almost a commodity by now? How different are these cameras than what you get in, say the latest Samsung Galaxy S4, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S4

Probably because the cost of surveillance cameras is more than just the cost of the resolution or storage. the ones that hang outside need to be weather proof and vandalism proof. they were probably bought as part of a large and expensive system, intended to be paid off over 10-15 years[0], to replace all those cameras whenever more resolution becomes available, is probably quite expensive, regardless of how cheap the actual camera is. It's a lot of cameras, in a lot of hard-to-reach places, with expensive reinforced casings, and would the output format of the cameras be compatible with the old system?

OTOH, I do actually see more and more HD (or relatively high def) surveillance footage. It all depends on how when the security system was installed, I guess. Also smaller businesses can afford a shorter turnaround for these things, as well as not having the handicap of a head-start[1].

[0] actually I'm guessing those lifetime spans, it seems a bit much? but I also can't see anyone signing off on a security system that's expected to be replaced in 5 years. good thing my job isn't facility management ... :P

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_handicap_of_a_head_s... , how odd, is there no common English phrase for this law?

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#47

Post by kevincennis »

ck2 wrote: post #23

Not just facial recognition, the "terror watch list" failed (after a warning from Russia about the older brother) lack of background checks on the AR15s they owned failed, the secured perimeter failed (the teenager was outside of it) the city lockdown failed (the guy smoking the cigarette outside when he saw the blood was technically violating the lockdown). In the end it was mostly dumb luck, dumb criminals, and the…

It seems disingenuous to say that facial recognition failed. As far as I can tell, all the images we had of these suspects were either very low-resolution, taken from angles, or both. Seems plausible that law enforcement didn't have any good candidate images from which to run a facial recognition search.

> In the end it was mostly dumb luck

What? Painstaking police work went in to getting images of these suspects, and the release of those photos are almost certainly what led to Thursday's events and, ultimately, the killing and capture of the suspects.

> the city lockdown failed (the guy smoking the cigarette outside when he saw the blood was technically violating the lockdown)

Firstly, the lockdown is what forced suspect #2 to hide out in a boat instead of fleeing the area. Secondly, and less importantly, the guy smoking a cigarette wasn't violating the lockdown. It had ended prior to him going outside.

Was there luck involved? Of course. But there was also tremendous work done by a number of law enforcement agencies - without which, the suspects may never have been killed and captured.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#48

Post by speednoise »

marknutter wrote: post #13

How hard would it be to throw off facial recognition by simply wearing very high quality makeup and prosthetics to alter your facial appearance (ala hollywood movies)? If I were the boston bombers, I would have first learned how to make myself look completely different. It's unbelievable to me that these guys didn't realize they'd be captured on tons of cameras that day.

Easier than you may think: http://cvdazzle.com/

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#49

Post by tokenadult »

datr wrote: post #36
ck2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talking about the scanners and technology (and failures) didn't "homeland security" give millions to metro police departments around the country to get their communication encrypted? I vaguely remember reading about that a couple years ago. I wonder where that money went if that is accurate. https://www.google.com/search?q=%22federal+grant%22+%22encry...

I've wanted to ask about this since seeing the Boston police channel available on the internet. In the UK all the channels are encrypted making it virtually impossible for a civilian to listen in. Is it simply financial reasons that the USA doesn't do this?

Is it simply financial reasons that the USA doesn't do this?

Surely not only financial reasons. In the United States, consumer purchase of inexpensive radios that pick up police communication frequencies has been commonplace since the early 1970s (when I first owned one). I remember a Hacker News thread a year or two ago in which a European was surprised that a news report including the name of a person arrested (not tried and convicted, but just arrested) was permitted in the United States. Our historical sense in the United States is that police operations and arrests should be largely in public view, reportable by the news media and observable by the public. Different societies come up with different trade-offs on this issue, in law and in custom, but in the United States arrest records are public (and routinely reported, although often with some time lag, in local weekly newspapers) and police radio activity can be monitored by many private citizens. It was noteworthy this last week that the Boston police make more use of Twitter than many urban police departments, but the general degree of openness observed in the police response to the marathon bombings is fairly typical of the United States.

Post reply on HN