1.1 Taylor Swift using Facial Recognition for Safety
The world is familiar with Swift and her number of known stalkers but did you know Taylor fought them off using facial recognition? According to Rolling Stone, during her shows, images taken from kiosks (stand-alone booth to take pictures and other services) were sent back to a command post, back in Nashville where they cross-referenced a database of people who had been identified as potential stalkers who’ve harmed the pop star in previous stadiums and concerts using facial recognition.
This system uses biometrics to map facial features from a photograph or video and then compares the information with a database of known faces to find a match hence can effectively help verify personal identity, yes-Face Detection!
Breaking down the science behind biometric symmetry, in about 100 words!
1.2 Facial recognition can identify people by measuring distinguishable features on the face
1.3 Key Facial Features for Detection
Step 1. A picture of your face (more specifically your features) is captured from a photo or video. In crowds, your face will be captured and appear alone.
Step 2. Since the geometry of your face will be read by the software, it identifies facial landmarks which are key to distinguishing your face. Your facial signature will be the final result.
Step 3. Mathematical formulas (Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), Artificial Neural Network (ANN), and LBPH is one of the easiest face recognition algorithms while eigenfaces can also be built for individual faces) will be compared to a database of known faces. It’s been observed that at least 117 million Americans have images of their faces in one or more police databases.
Well, the FBI has had access to 412 million facial images for searches as of May 2019.
Step 4. When a determination is found, your faceprint matches an image in a facial recognition system database.
How does it capture and store the FRT?
This type of technology uses the digital imaging of a user’s physical appearance (usually the face) to create a profile that is stored in a private database.
The system will remain dormant until a future input matches the stored image, which will trigger a predetermined response.
So it's designed to mirror the way people view and remember new acquaintances, for example by their ruby red hair or emerald green eyes!
Same way, a facial recognition platform creates a digital ‘memory’ and stores it as a profile. It can then allocate, update the profile every time there is a match between a received input and the benchmark profile, or image.
Unlike human memory, the technology leverages sophisticated algorithms (aforementioned) and creates a numerical basis for each unique profile. Specific dimensions are generated, and the more dimensions a system receives, the more accurate the profile’s uniqueness will be, but also the more efficient the system becomes at identifying exact matches.
1.4 Dependence on Lighting for capturing
One of the methods to develop an easier approach for facial identification is by using “gradients” to replace the image and emphasize the details most relevant to face recognition, and every pixel is replaced with a lighting representation, showing how the pixel’s brightness compares to the surrounding pixels, making it easier to identify the same face throughout multiple forms of lighting. But in the case of “projection” with photos being projected either on a 2D or 3D, you don’t need an image taken under ideal lighting conditions in order to achieve great precision.
What countries have to say about Facial Recognition?
Europe: Their top data protection supervisor seeks to ban facial recognition in public as of 23rd April 2021, this proposal included a partial ban on law enforcement's use of remote biometric surveillance technologies in communal places.
Asia: A survey by Beijing Institute (5th Jan 2021) indicates growing pushback against facial recognition in China, logging nearly every single citizen in the country, with a vast network of cameras working across the country.
USA: There is no federal law governing the use of facial recognition technology in the United States, but several states enabled law enforcement to run searches, matching people’s photos against IDs and driver’s licenses. On 11th Feb 2021, the US Govt applied facial recognition to airport security to identify and register visitors. Some countries are further ahead of the curve than others, face recognition technology in India is used in order to prevent ATM fraud. The U.S.has applied facial recognition to airport security in order to identify and register visitors; several states enabled law enforcement to run FRT (Facial Recognition Technology) searches, to match people’s images against IDs.
Thanks to Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, Snapchat, Coca-Cola, and others, billions of photos of people’s faces have been scraped together into massive image datasets out on the internet.
Why?
They are used to train deep neural networks (NN- a set of algorithms used to recognize relationships in given data sets by mimicking the way the human brain operates) to detect and recognize faces.
So now you know your face is out there for analysis and fact-findings! Read on.
Mitigation
Other than a plethora of advantages such as increasing security, providing greater convenience with reduced time, removing bias from stop and search, faster processing and integration with other technologies; there is still room for the scope of error and some systems fail to protect data, one possible solution to secure your network is by using a secure router that can, in turn, help protect your facial image but there’s no God’s eye or such to fear but a holistic cyber safety package is definitely worth considering for protecting your online privacy and security.
Conclusion
The future of facial recognition looks incredibly promising. This tech will continue to grow and pave the way for massive revenue potential soon; schools, universities, and hospitals may be close behind. Not only is it being used as a “surveillance tool” but Russia too has embraced the technology; in Moscow, video cameras scan the streets for “people of interest”, sounds quite thoughtful but though there are still problems with consistent levels of accuracy and privacy issues, we are still leaps and bounds ahead. And besides that, the further we leap, the closer we get to developing the non-existent God’s eye.
By: Jane Carolyn
(Content Writer Manager, WCSF)
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References: 1.https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/what-is-facial-recognition 2.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/29/what-is-facial-recognition-and-how-sinister-is-it
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