Georgia To Roll Out Tens Of Thousands Of CCTV Cameras With Real-Time Facial Recognition Capabilities
from the are-you-a-sheep-or-a-goat? dept
Surveillance using CCTV cameras is old hat these days, even for locations outside the world's CCTV capital, London. But there's an important step-change taking place in the sector, as operators move from simply observing and recording, to analyzing video feeds automatically using facial recognition software. Techdirt has written about this area a few times, but these examples have all been fairly small-scale and exploratory. News from Georgia -- the one in the Caucasus, not the State -- shows that things are moving fast in this field:
NEC Corporation today announced that it has provided an advanced surveillance system for cities utilizing facial recognition to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, in cooperation with Capital Systems LLC, a leading system developer. The system began operation in June of this year, and works in combination with 400 CCTV surveillance cameras installed in Georgia's major cities, including the capital, Tbilisi.
The system utilizes NeoFace Watch, NEC's real-time facial recognition software for video, featuring the world's highest recognition precision. It checks images captured by CCTV cameras against pictures of suspects and others registered in a watch list, making it possible to identify figures rapidly and accurately.
This system was introduced as part of Georgia's "Safe City, Safe Region, Safe Country" program aiming to improve public safety. Georgia also plans to install tens of thousands of additional cameras nationwide in the future.
It's not clear whether those tens of thousands of CCTV systems will all be equipped with real-time facial recognition, or only some of them. But even the immediate roll out of facial recognition to 400 CCTV cameras is substantial, especially for a country with fewer than four million inhabitants. It's hard not to see this as a test-bed for other, much bigger countries, which will doubtless be watching Georgia's experience with interest. Some have already started their own trials: ZDNet reports that at least two of Australia's police forces -- the Northern Territory Police and South Australia Police -- have 100s of CCTV cameras with real-time facial recognition features. There's also a small-scale trial employing vehicle-mounted cameras with similar capabilities being conducted by UK police in Wales. All of the examples mentioned here use the NeoFace Watch system from NEC, which the company claims is able to process multiple camera feeds, and to extract and match thousands of faces per minute.
NEC also emphasizes that its product is "suitable for the detection of both undesirables and VIPs." That's an important point. CCTV systems are currently fairly egalitarian, spying on and recording everyone equally. But the addition of facial recognition allows a crowd's sheep and goats to be distinguished, and then dealt with appropriately. While beefy security guards preemptively -- and discreetly -- remove the "undesirables" who might lower the tone of a venue, exquisite hospitality experts can meet and greet the VIPs as they approach. One of the unexpected results of adding facial recognition to CCTV is that it brings out the "servile" in "surveillance".
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Filed Under: cctv, face recognition, georgia, privacy, surveillance
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Re:
Are murderers desirable to you?
How about pedo's, are they desirable?
Yes I know that the real aim is to build everything into a single class ripe for abuse by also calling someone that uses foul language as also being 'undesirable' but this is what people are asking for.
People ask and want their governments to remove their liberty for safety and security. It is just how humans are. Yes they whine about the loss of liberty but like this one guy once said.
“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”
(Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers, No. 8.)
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Yes, but what I am saying is that the desire for protection and giving up liberties we ask for is what created that problem for the general people.
Sometimes you have to walk it forward so people can see how it ties back.
I used murders and pedo's as an example because people do not like to defend their rights. Which establishes a precedent where government can easily begin to erode liberty and directly gather more power.
I hope you are understanding my aim here.
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murderers and pedos
And yet you're already generalizing.
There's pedophiles who like other chronophiles, are attracted to people not their age.
And then there are those guilty of child sexual assault, who have committed a crime.
If murderers are undesirable, are those who think about murder also undesirable? Are Agatha Christie enthusiasts undesirable?
It's very easy to slip towards premature prosecution.
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You left out libs and dems!
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Aug 2017 @ 7:55am is correct about this: the partisan divide in America is becoming so acute that libs and dems are already considered undesirable in some places — and vice versa.
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False Positives
I suspect they haven't solved the false-positives problem yet, that a lot of people just look alike, and it's going to take a high resolution of discernment to tell them apart.
Are we going to sweep away people who happen to look like undesirables?
So far our law enforcement officers have been eager to use false positives as an excuse to harrass the innocent. False positives from computer algorithms doubly so.
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Re: False Positives
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Re: Re: Re: False Positives
Shoot first for any / no reason and then kill / jail anyone else who objects with impunity.
Sadly, most people can't realize that, and fall for the "you only get rights if you are Politically Correct" BS.
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Re: Re: False Positives
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Re: False Positives
Sucks if you have an evil twin.
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Hmm makes you wonder how soon it will be before laughing Man will show up on these monitoring systems?
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Georgia needs to get a new name
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Re: Georgia needs to get a new name
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I wonder…
under the heaviest surveillance, and that in a surveillance
state they can be picked off at the whim of whoever is in
power the moment they become his or her political rivals? ;]
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New Parable
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aND THE JOBS IN THIS COUNTRY??
Insted of paying 1000 Men to monitor a Citizenship..
You get 4 Guys watching cameras..
Waiting for the compter to POP UP and tell you IT FOUND SOMEONE..
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Re: aND THE JOBS IN THIS COUNTRY??
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