Computer "eyes" are now up to such tasks as watching for fugitives in airline terminals and other busy locations. A sophisticated face-recognition system that placed first in recent Army competitive trials has been given the added ability to pick out faces in noisy or chaotic "street" environments.
The new Mugspot software module developed at the University of Southern California automatically analyzes video images, looking for passers-by. When it finds them, it picks out the heads in the images and then tracks the heads for as long as they remain in the camera's field ...
"This face-recognition software, developed at USC and the University of Bochum, Germany, and now in commercial use for clients such as Germany's Deutsche Bank, is robust enough to make identifications from less-than-perfect face views. It can also often see through such impediments to identification as mustaches, beards, changed hair styles and glasses – even sunglasses."
Take note of that date. As well as being a technology with many commercial applications, artificial-intelligence software such as FRS is of great use to the military and intelligence communities. It is not at all atypical for technology with military and intelligence applications to exist for 10, 20, even 30 or more years before reaching the commercial market (if at all). The entire dynamic of identity disguise at public demonstrations must be reevaluated in the light of FRS, and that reevaluation must be backdated considerably. The calculus has changed. Those of you who still wonder why political activists might want to conceal their identity need only to read history. Start with COINTELPRO. Even a cursory perusal will set you straight. As recently as last at year's political conventions, the arbitrary, preemptive arrests of those who the state sees as leaders of dissent illustrated the enormous threat to liberty that FRS represents when it is in the wrong hands. And make no mistake about it, it is in the wrong hands.
FRS programs mimic the way that the human brain recognizes a face. They electronically analyze the distances between various parts, or landmarks, of the face. Every face has its own distinct pattern, so the information enables the programs to distinguish one individual from another. Facial landmarks are on distinctive structures, such as the eye sockets, the bridge of the nose or the cheekbones. Facelt, one of Mugspot's competitors, defines the face as having 60 landmarks. According to its developers, Facelt takes only 14 of these landmarks to reconstruct an individual's distinctive facial pattern.
Since FRS software makes such effective use of bone structure, a ski mask or bandanna probably won't defeat it. If it can see through a beard and sunglasses, how much good do you think a rag over your face is going to do? A loose, rubber mask may spoof FRS, but don't bet your freedom, or even your life, on it. No one who takes an active role in organizing public dissent is safe from the withering gaze of techno-repression. Toss Echelon, Carnivore, Prosecutor's Management Information System (or PROMIS), and High-Definition TV into the mix, and it's a whole new world. Now days, anyone who does more with his political convictions than grumble into his beer is, of necessity, forced to consider his or her personal life to be an open book. People's opinions, appearance, and even location, is a matter of record. These records can be cross matched, sometimes with life-altering results.