Facial Recognition Gone Wrong 375
An anonymous reader writes "John H. Gass hadn't had a traffic ticket in years, so the Natick resident was surprised this spring when he received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles informing him to cease driving because his license had been revoked. It turned out Gass was flagged because he looks like another driver, not because his image was being used to create a fake identity. His driving privileges were returned but, he alleges in a lawsuit, only after 10 days of bureaucratic wrangling to prove he is who he says he is. And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity. Massachusetts began using the software after receiving a $1.5 million grant from the US Department of Homeland Security as part of an effort to prevent terrorism, reduce fraud, and improve the reliability and accuracy of personal identification documents that states issue."
Re:Urg. (Score:2, Interesting)
Coffee needs to brew faster...
great stuff [ineedcoffee.com] :)
Bayesian statistics (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a company that develops neural network software which is used for face recognition on a number of airports. The problem we've had over and over again is that government officials and airport security personnel have great difficulty understanding some elementary statistics.
Let me give you an example. One version of the software offers 99.99% accuracy (symmetrical true positive and true negative), a number that always seems very impressive to various officials.
What they don't understand and what we have to remind them all the time is that they need to take into account the large number of faces that are scanned by the software and that a 0.01% false positive rate isn't something you can ignore.
For instance in a large airport that has say a million people getting scanned yearly it means that 100 people will be incorrectly flagged by the system. The prior probability that a traveler is a 'person of interest' is less than 1/100,000. Plugging the number into Bayes' theorem you get that when the system flags a passenger, the probability that the passenger was actually a person of interest is around 9%.
The officials typically only listen to the 99.99% figure and ignore the reality of the relatively large numbers of false positives when dealing with huge numbers of people. Subsequently they treat the people the systems flag much worse than they would if they realized that the probability of a 'catch' being correct was less than 10%. We've done our best to try to educate them but usually they don't want to listen as it's an uncomfortable truth and it's much more convenient to say that the system has an accuracy of 99.99%.
Re:I've got nothing to hide (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried explaining the TSA mess to my sister and mother this weekend. They said it sounded terrific that they were checking elderly people with diapers and making wheel chaired bound people prove they needed a wheelchair.
Mother: "We'll be safer."
Sister: "I have nothing to hide."
Me:"Terrorists have announced plans to start trying to hide bombs surgically implanted in their skin."
Mother: "So... they have to perform surgery mid-flight to blow themselves up? *laugh*"
Me: "Remote detonation. First time they catch someone attempting this the TSA will start requiring medical records if they see an operation scar."
Sister: "So what? I got nothing to hide. In fact, I think it is a good idea for them to have our medical records to make sure our flights are safe."
They are the first to Google people, gossip, etc. My sister has been caught looking at homes with binoculars at night. When a family friend joking texted her saying he could see her at night you'd be surprised how fast her translucent curtains were replaced with thick drapes. Some people don't care about privacy until it affects them.
tear him for his bad verses (Score:1, Interesting)
Third Citizen
Your name, sir, truly.
CINNA THE POET
Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen
Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.
CINNA THE POET
I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen
Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
CINNA THE POET
I am not Cinna the conspirator.
Fourth Citizen
It is no matter, his name's Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.
Third Citizen
Tear him, tear him! Come, brands ho! fire-brands:
to Brutus', to Cassius'; burn all: some to Decius'
house, and some to Casca's; some to Ligarius': away, go!
Exeunt
- from Julius Ceasar
Re:Guilty until proven innocent (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that some people need to make masks that look just like Kaprielian, and probably her boss, and some of the local senators, and get "caught" by some of these cameras doing something that results in automatic suspension of a license. Then we'll see how long the "It's just inconvenient" attitude lasts.
In Michigan several years ago they passed a law that allowed a policeman to cut up your driving license right in front of you if you were caught driving drunk. That law was struck down as being unconstitutional, because even though the cop was right there and could smell the alcohol on your breath and hear your slurred speech, a cop is not judge and jury; you still have a right to due process under the law. If that was unconstitutional, I can't see how this isn't as well.