Will The London Riots Be The Turning Point For Facial Recognition As A Crime …
August 10, 2011 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Digital vigilantes discuss legal issues around identifying rioters using facial recognition technology
If you riot, social media will be used to track you down. That is no longer a surprise to anyone. A new twist in social media surveillance work following the London riots, though, may be the use of facial recognition technology to identify those involved.
After the riots in Vancouver earlier this year, following a Stanley Cup loss, a Canadian insurance corporation volunteered the use of its drivers’ photos database should authorities wish to use facial recognition technology to identify and charge rioters. A spokesperson from the Vancouver Police Department tells me that the agency, while aware of the technology, ultimately decided not to use it.
“We are aware of the technology but have not used it in the investigation that is currently underway. We have many investigative avenues and tools that we are putting into use currently that are working well to advance the investigation,” Constable Lindsey Houghton tells me.
Web vigilantes are doing their best to make sure facial recognition technology gets a fair shake in the London riots, though. Just last week, researchers established that off-the-shelf facial recognition technology mixed with Facebook’s vast database of photos linked to people’s real identities can lead to fairly reliable identification of complete strangers. Digital crime-fighters plan to use the same techniques the researchers used to identify students at Carnegie Mellon University to identify English rioters. On a Google group called London Riots Facial Recognition, a bunch of technophiles are discussing using Face.com’s facial recognition API to create a Facebook app that will identify ne’er-do-wells in London.
After getting media attention, the Google Group members have made their group private, but here’s a screenshot (above at right) of the members discussing the legal issues around identifying those involved…
As Jerry Brito notes at Techland, they’re far from the only digital vigilantes (digilantes?) trying to identify law-breakers involved in rioting in London following the shooting of a 29-year-old man. (Note to Jimmy Wales: Judging from the number of vigilantes working for free on post-riot criminal identification, I suspect Wikipedia may be losing contributors because those who like to work for free on the Internet are starting to prefer digital superhero work to encyclopedia entries.) But this group’s proposal to use facial recognition tools to do their work is a new twist in crowdsourced criminal identification. And it raises the question of whether London authorities, unlike Vancouver’s, will harness the power of facial recognition technology in their investigations of the weekend’s looting and rioting.
The London police have already started posting stills from surveillance cameras on their Flickr account, asking for help in identifying suspects. Relying on technology instead of community tips seems like the next logical step for the surveillance-friendly city famed for its Ring of Steel security system. Of course, that depends on a reliable source of photos linked to identity. Like, say, that in the hands of the English variant of the Department of Motor Vehicles (The Department of Bangers?).
Advice for rioters: “Do think about changing your appearance”
As the Google Group planning to apply facial recognition to photos from the riot notes, the technology is not foolproof. One Massachusetts driver’s face caused him a serious headache because anti-fraud facial recognition technology thought he was someone else, leading to his driver’s license being automatically suspended.
Rioters are preparing themselves for the coming social-media-assisted who-dun-it. A flyer being distributed in London offers advice to rioters, including telling them to get rid of any clothes or distinctive jewelry they wore to make it harder to confirm their identities based on riot photos. Good luck with that, rioters. While ‘jumpers’ are easily discarded, faces are not.
