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Saturday, May 12, 2018

Real-Time Facial Recognition Is Available, But Will U.S. Police Buy It?

You've seen it in the movies for years: Security cameras find a face in a crowd, and — Enhance! — a computer comes up with a name. In real life, facial recognition was too error-prone to work that quickly, especially with live video streams.

But now the Hollywood fantasy is coming true.

Facial recognition accuracy rates have jumped dramatically in the last couple of years, making it feasible to monitor live video. China recently announced real-time facial recognition covering "16 provinces, cities and autonomous regions," and similar systems are being tried in Russia, India and even the United Kingdom.

"I've been in this industry since the mid-2000s, and I've never seen people gravitate toward face recognition like the past two years," says Benji Hutchinson, a vice president with NEC Corporation of America, a major supplier of the systems. "It's night and day."

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aquiring DNA from a subject without touching the subject is also available.It looks like a courtroom scanner,but more narrow.I don't consider the choice to pass on such technology to be a good thing.

lmclain said...

China is going big on this.
Which one of you brainless cheerleaders (who have never done, or ever will do, anything wrong) thinks it won't lead to camera's and mic's in your house, at the end of your driveway and on every storefront, toll booth, government office, and anywhere you go?
We are in trouble when we build a society constantly trying to improve the ability of the police and authorities to watch us, listen to us, track our every move and sooner or later, start punishing, fining, taxing, or imprisoning us.
China's doing it. So is Britain. Must be good, huh?
Keep cheering.