Why did it fail? That, to me, is the most interesting unanswered question.
Because facial recognition is a very difficult problem.
Surely all you need to do is start an agile startup and throw some Ruby on Rails at the problem?
Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
91–100 of 101 posts
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#92Not 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…
> In the end it was mostly dumb luck
Flamebait. Anything people point out, you just define as luck. Luck that LEO found evidence, had pictures of the perps, etc.
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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-...
Where do you get a week from? It was 3 days.
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#94Earlier 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…
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...
Yep and no one could use the new radios.
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#95Earlier 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…
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...
Yep and no one could use the new radios.
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#96How 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.
Or just wear sunglasses or greasy sunscreen...
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#97Not 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…
According to Cambridge Police, neither brother had a gun permit:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2013/04/21/ma...
Massachusetts does in fact have an assault weapon ban in place (similar to the 1994 Federal AWB), although you can get modified/MA-compliant versions of many "assault weapons" such as the AR-15/AK that are legal, however you are limited to a 10 round magazine. They would have needed a Class-A LTC to even contemplate owning such a weapon -- this involves fingerprints, a full background check, references and a "letter of purpose" along with permission from your local police chief to get.
However, the younger brother was too young to get a permit, the older brother was in fact not a US citizen and was here on a green card and thus is ineligible for a gun permit. Having said that, even if he was a US citizen his previous arrest for domestic assault would've rendered him ineligible for/and or revoked an existing LTC-A had he had one.
I have not seen anything yet reported as to what kind of long gun(s) they had or where they got them. The FBI warned agents responding to Watertown on Thursday night that they had "fully automatic AK47s" [along with grenades/dynamite and IEDs]. It is my understanding that they only recovered two handguns at the scene of the firefight in Watertown and one handgun and a long gun were found on the boat after the final surrender [aside from the IEDs scattered over Watertown].
It is interesting that despite the incredible firepower the brothers had access to (handguns, long gun(s), multiple IEDs), that when there's someone shooting back, the brothers plans were pretty much shut down and the loss of life/injury was very minimal considering the circumstances.
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#98My big questions is why were the suspects faces in the database? Why would a 19 year old, never done anything face be in the facial recognition database?
Best random guess: Something related to him being an alien and becoming a naturalized citizen
Actually, figured it out:
Dzhokhar had a Massachusetts driver’s license, and those pictures go into a facial recognition database.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/inside...
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#99I 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…
Matching surveillance camera images is always possible no matter how bad the image quality is. The only matter is how many false positives show up. Facial recognition algorithms always give their best matching candidates, with thresholds to skip those not quite matching ones. Your article makes it sound like no such results were produced at all, which is unlikely how recognition is supposed to work.
First of all, almost any facial surveillance system would simply reject images like those from Lord & Taylor's. The pixel density is simply too low to even attempt plus the downtilt would also likely trigger a rejection. That's how facial recognition does work in practice.
Even if the system would allow it, not only would false positives be enormous, you'd probably miss the match as well (false negative).
Re: Facial Recognition Failed in Boston Bombing
#100The problem is that any non-perfect automated system will wrongly convict so many civilians as being terrorists that nobody will trust it anymore. Let's say that you want to catch terrorists creeping around in your airport. To do this, you have a magic camera that, when it takes a picture of a civilian, compares it to a picture of a known terrorist. If they're in fact the same person, it will flag security over. Let'…
This is a completely different situation; there are 2 people we have pictures of that we know are terrorists; we have a database of suspected terrorists; had we found 100 matches in that database, with one of them being the right one, it would have narrowed the investigation considerably. It was the perfect situation for AFR, had AFR either been more advanced, or the pictures been more amenable to current AFR technology.