"Why Facial Recognition Software Didn't Immediately Identify The Bombing Suspects"

[applegrove]

Why Facial Recognition Software Didn't Immediately Identify The Bombing Suspects

by Adam Taylor at Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/facial-recognition-fails-in-boston-2013-4

"SNIP.......................................


One problem for facial recognition technology was likely the image quality of the CCTV images. According to CNBC, the standard for accurate facial recognition is 90 pixels of resolution between the two eyes of the pictured person, and the images released by the FBI on Thursday were about 12 pixels between the two eyes.

Jim Albers, senior vice president of MorphoTrust, a group that supplies facial recognition software to law enforcement officials, says that with a good photo source the software can have just a 0.1% fail rate.

"The limitations are physics", Albers told Business Insider, explaining that the physical location of the CCTV cameras that caught the images of the Tsarnaev brothers appears to be in a position that created problems (what he referred to as "pose" and "illumination&quot with the image. That the suspects were wearing hats, and in the case of the older brother, sunglasses was likely a hindrance too.

Even with advanced "pre-processing" on the images, Albers reasoned that investigators probably only found a low-probability match — not enough to act on.


.....................................SNIP"

[Bannakaffalatta]

1. and maybe

it was bogus in the first place?

[Cirque du So-What]

2. What is 'it?'

The video images? The evidence that these two did it? The video imaging technology itself?

[longship]

3. Because TV crime dramas are not reality.

I love MI-5 on PBS via the BBC -- in the UK it's called Spooks -- as much as anybody. But these TV shows are entertainment, not reality. I have never watched Person of Interest but I understand that it exploits the same basic plot line, omnipotent technology to get the bad guys.

But it's fiction. The writers have to stretch things to move the plot forward.

Of course, there is no reliable face recognition software. It is a really fucking difficult task for a computer, which does not have even a hope to duplicate the human visual cortext in recognizing faces. It's what the human brain does. If we were baboons or chimpanzees, we'd probably be trying to engineer butt recognition software. (Really -- it's been studied... Don't ask me why, but that was the result.)

[dkf]

4. NCIS makes it look too easy.