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

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#51

Post by sehugg »

aashaykumar92 wrote: post #2

When the FBI released the photos of the two suspects, I kept wondering, "Why do they need the publics help when I'm sure there is facial recognition software to help match the suspects' faces?" Well I guess this article somewhat answers this, but I am still in disbelief that our government does not have better software. For how long it took to discover their names, the two suspects had TOO much time to escape. They h…

What's wrong with needing the public's help? The public did a great job in providing critical evidence.

Maybe instead of more intrusive surveillance we find more ways for the public to participate. Maybe we uphold the public's right to take pictures and video in "sensitive areas". Etc.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#52

Post by tripzilch »

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.

I think that is right (I can't claim much specific knowledge on camera lenses though), it used to be especially bad with the whole "megapixel wars" a few years back. Pixel resolution increased, but image clarity didn't, and you would get much better images on old low-megapixel cameras with relatively high-end lenses than with a cheap but new camera of approx 4-8x the resolution in pixels.

However, nowadays I am quite amazed by the picture quality of the average smartphone camera. So maybe something changed? Still, we're talking about better lenses/quality than smartphone photos. They may be sharp, but that comes from the advantage of being up close and coming in huge numbers.

And in addition to the lens, there's a lot of other expensive parts in a security system, that may need to be replaced or reconfigured because it is all integrated with the current low-res cameras. The bigger such a system is, the more expensive it becomes to change it all up when better tech has come around, even if the new parts are relatively cheap by themselves.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#53

Post by apawloski »

securingsincity wrote: post #38
afarrell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the lockdown was voluntary, though with strong community pressure to comply. But yes, multiple subsystems failed in the police response. If you listened to police scanners, you also heard that they had some trouble identifying streets correctly, or keeping their mics off when not talking. But police response protocols are one human system that definitely needs to be able to work in the face of multiple subs…

to be fair if you live in Massachusetts you would know, all of the streets are not marked as you would expect in other areas. If there are street signs at intersection often times only one of the streets is marked.

There's no way to ask this without sounding snarky, but: why?

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#54

Post by jameshart »

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?

Speculating from the perspective of a Brit in Boston, it may be to do with the fact that police organization in the US is much more fragmented and federated - rolling out compatible radio encryption equipment, handling key management etc. across multiple police forces would be much more complicated, financially, logistically and politically. On the operation in Boston on Friday, you will doubtless have heard of the involvement of the FBI, ATF, Massachusetts state police, city of Boston police department, Watertown police, MIT campus police, transit police... cops from all the surrounding towns were also involved in the lockdown. In the UK this would all have been handled by one constabulary, possibly with support from specialists from the Metropolitan police, and with fundamentally common funding and control structures from the UK Home Office, whereas all those different police organizations in the US are responsible to different funding and governing authorities.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#55

Post by jameshart »

afarrell wrote: post #25
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…

Actually, the lockdown was voluntary, though with strong community pressure to comply. But yes, multiple subsystems failed in the police response. If you listened to police scanners, you also heard that they had some trouble identifying streets correctly, or keeping their mics off when not talking. But police response protocols are one human system that definitely needs to be able to work in the face of multiple subs…

The order to close businesses was pretty broadly heeded, and with no workplaces, shops, daycares or school programs to go to the voluntary 'shelter in place' situation became pretty mandatory, even for people outside the lockdown but working in the Boston area.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#56

Post by brk »

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.

Not exactly.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that most security cameras are not setup for capture of facial details (or license plates for that matter).

Most security cameras are setup for general overview shots, with around 10-20ppf (pixels per foot), whereas good detail starts at around 80ppf (meaning that you'd need 4x as many cameras in most areas to start to get something approaching an image quality that you could use for reliable facial recognition.

On top of that there is the storage factor. A "common" camera in a new deployment is a 1080p (2.1 Megapixel) camera. If this is set to record good quality images 24/7, it consumes about 60GB of storage per day. Various tricks like "record on motion", etc. can reduce this to maybe 10GB/day, at the risk of potentially missing key evidence or having gaps in the recording.

Lenses are important, but it's not that hard to find a lens with sufficient resolution for these cameras. A good lens rated at 2+ megapixels is around $70-$120 (depending on various factors), and a good outdoor camera (including lens) can be had for $500-$1200. Big price ranges, yes, but not to the point that the lenses are the limiting factor budget-wise.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#57

Post by brk »

mrkmcknz wrote: post #7

Does anyone have detailed knowledge of startups in this space? I know of Lambda labs but I personally haven't use their solution post Face.com.

There are a few, though less than you might think. Lots of general progress has been made in terms of facial detection algorithms, but there are almost no "general" security camera deployments that are setup to capture sufficient detail to get a good face match.

There are not enough events like this in open places that drive requirements for facial recognition use. Limited cases (airports, casinos, etc.) more frequently have cameras setup to get good straight-on high-res facial shots, but almost no typical outdoor area is covered that way.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#58

Post by brk »

astar wrote: post #33

Facial recognition is still treated like some magical technology, like the "zoom in, enhance" feature much mocked about on TV crime shows. I bet Facebook's technology is ahead of law enforcement's in terms of data, algorithm, and refinement, and yet it still stumbles on pretty obvious faces (if you have the default auto-tag feature left on)

Correct, and you're talking about cases where you might have literally 500,000+ pixels on a face (close-up shot from an 8MP camera).

The average cctv shot will have around 200-1000 pixels on the entire face, if you're lucky.

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#59

Post by ck2 »

kevincennis wrote: post #47
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, an…

The brothers didn't leave the area, didn't go into hiding and were able to kill a campus officer and hijack a car, all without police finding them for a week.

It was mostly dumb luck. It's not like they were hiding!

Oh, and http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/03/27/hanover-police-trying-...

Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing

#60

Post by logn »

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…

Also, our Internet surveillance dragnet failed too.

I guess when you create a panopticon you're relying more on psychology than surveillance.

Post reply on HN