China is now 99.8% sure you're you, thanks to world's-best facial recognition wares Chinese researchers have developed a facial recognition system that can pick faces from a crowd with 99.8 percent accuracy from 91 angles. The platform can distinguish between identical twins, unravel layers of makeup and still identify an individual if they've packed on or shed kilos. Researcher Zhou Xi of the Chinese …
Plus, if it has to be at an exact angle, even one of 91, the odds of it working are infinitesimal.
Best guess what that was supposed to mean is -45° to 45°, i.e. a 90° arc in the front. But maybe they're considering more than one axis (i.e. pitch and/or roll as well as yaw), in witch case it becomes totally mysterious again.
Not much need to limit the angles - just put the right kind of little flashing lights on the cameras and people will naturally tend to look/glance at the swooshy lights at least once (e.g. as seen at Gatwick recently). Anyone not looking is very likely making a concerted effort to repress their natural instincts, thus making them appear somewhat suspicious.
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Begging one's pardon, but given the definition of "identical", one would think that monozygotic twins are physically indistinguishable from each other barring personal choices of hairstyle, makeup, etc. But if they wear their hair and makeup the same way, their faces should be nigh-impossible to tell apart. Otherwise, they're not identical, eh?
Shock news!
It's not just to do with how they wear their hair etc. There are constant changes in environment, causing trauma and (more frequently) genes to be switched on (or off). This leads to the differences that allow identical twins to be distinguished by those who know them well.
Favourite fact regarding foetal alcohol syndrome: identical twins can be born with one suffering FAS and the other not. You'd have thought one womb would be as close to an identical environment as possible, but no...
"Favourite fact regarding foetal alcohol syndrome: identical twins can be born with one suffering FAS and the other not. You'd have thought one womb would be as close to an identical environment as possible, but no..."
IINM FAS is epigenetic and so can be a crapshoot. Fingerprints are epigenetic, too, that's why fingerprints differ even among identical twins. There's a hypothesis that it's the same way with sexual orientation. Thus why some identical twins diverge in spite of identical genes and upbringing.
Epigenetic variation of course require some cause. This is the (tiny, indistinguishable) differences in environment.
Identical environments are only identical at a macroscopic level. We never thought this was important (actually, probably never thought about it is more accurate) prior to realising that genetic regulation happens.
"The systems already in place at arrival points work by matching Aussie or Kiwi passports against a stored photo and dramatically cut down on Customs wait times, much to this correspondent's delight."
No, it's in place at immigration; you still have to go through the much longer wait to speak to the nice customs officials. 1.5 hours for that last time. Shudder.
"The systems already in place ... dramatically cut down on [immigration] wait times, much to this correspondent's delight."
Not that I'd noticed. Rather the opposite. Immigration wait times are noticebly longer now than they were back when immigration used to just look at your face, and at your passport, and then stamp the passport.
Perhaps he didn't phrase it correctly - "dramatically cut down on Customs wait times - now that some folks with the biometric passports get stuck in the automatic-immigration queue where someone invariably hasn't read the pre-conditions for using that queue and cannot use the machine for whatever reason, thus reducing the main queue-size to see a fleshy customs operative"
I can see it here.
After use of the latest technology, extensive police investigation and brave witness testimony, we have identified him from biometric data and DNA, we are 100% sure he is the one responsible for a range of misdemeanour’s.
He has been proven guilty in a court of law and now waits his punishment.
Mr Blogs as you are an illegal immigrant who is working in the dark economy paying no taxes and observing no laws I am forced to pass on you the highest penalty open to this court.
Tsk, tsk ,tsk!
Now on your way.
Is that legal under US law?
And that figure is impressive (I though facial recog got about 50% right in US casinos, which was why the FBI dumped it's facial recog project after decades).
So 99.8% accurate.
Only 100 000 people being mis identifed then.
Not to worry. A little trip to the Miistry of Love will show they are guilty of something.
Yeah but then you become "a disguised person", the most dodgiest kind of person. It might even trigger the independent thought alarm.
Eventually the database will get so big, that any adult not immediately recognised will be deemed someone up to no good and will flag an alert.
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Time to point out that the folks that claimed that this technology was working reliably about 15 years ago were lying.
JeffyPooh's Law: Any idiotic fanboy false claims about the capabilities of some newfangled technology eventually becomes true. But they're still liars at the time.
"Can it scan faces through a burka...? That is surely the benchmark..."
Probably if their records contain enough details about eyes (the one part of the face that remains visible even with a burqa). And anything that covers more than a burqa would probably be flagged as suspicious just for that reason.
"The systems already in place at arrival points work by matching Aussie or Kiwi passports against a stored photo and dramatically cut down on Customs wait times, much to this correspondent's delight. ®"
Since 9/11 the gouvernments of the world have a carte blanche in introducing ever finest methods of infiltrating the privacy of their people in the name of "War Against Terrorism". 9/11 is just such a sweet cover up for what every governement wants: Total control of their people. The Londoners don´t mind being observed by every step they take in the City. "I´ve nothing to hide, so i don´t mind" ... giving my privacy away. Only ... the world has been changed by NSA and their fellows. One is a suspect of everything bad until ... well, one cannot proof oneself not guilty of anything anymore. To Whom? One is guilty per se. The very moment my daughter passed the airport scan she has become a suspect for life, whatever about. She ever will be. But Hey! It " cut down on Customs wait times" . Al Qauida and NSA: One , Rest of the World: Nil
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