In UK: Barred from Grocery Stores by Face Recognition / In US, Used by TSA

 Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition,    By The New York Times,    June 30, 2023

A facial recognition system alerts Simon Mackenzie, a QD Stores security guard near London, when someone on a shoplifting watchlist has entered.

No longer just the purview of government agencies, facial recognition is increasingly being deployed to identify shoplifters, problematic customers, and legal adversaries.

Credit: Suzie Howell/The New York Times

The use of facial recognition by private businesses in the U.K. is on the rise, with close to 400 retailers in Britain using Facewatch to alert them to return visits by shoplifters, problem customers, and legal adversaries.

For a monthly cost starting at £250 pounds (US$320), the system allows retailers to upload images of alleged offenders from security footage, adding them to a watchlist shared among nearby stores.

Facewatch, which licenses Real Networks and Amazon's facial recognition software, checks people's biometric information as they walk into the store against a database of flagged individuals and sends smartphone alerts to retailers if there is a match.

Big Brother Watch's Madeleine Stone said Facewatch is "normalizing airport-style security checks for everyday activities like buying a pint of milk."

From The New York Times

View Full Article 

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The TSA will use facial recognition in over 400 airports

The agency claims 97% effectiveness in its 25-airport pilot program so far.

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

TSA Demonstrates Biometrics And Identity Management Program

The TSA will expand its facial recognition program to over 400 airports.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will expand its facial recognition program to around 430 US airports over the next several years following what it calls “extremely promising” results in its pilot program, according to Fast Company. The agency reportedly said its program yielded 97% effective results across all demographics, including those with dark skin. The program is currently in use in 25 airports.

As pointed out in Fast Company’s story, a 97% effectiveness rate across more than two million airline passengers per day means that, for over 60,000 of those people, the biometrics won’t work properly if it’s used in every airport in the country.

At the moment, the pilot program is officially voluntary. It uses 1:1 matching — that is, it compares your face in the moment against your government-issued ID like a driver’s license or a passport. The TSA says that data is immediately overwritten when the next passenger moves up, and that at the end of the day, no images are saved. ... 

Banning Your Enemies

 Intriguing play, enemies, or some lesser or even arbitrary qualification?  Note is different than making a mistaken identification.   Is a safety based ban OK? 

Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner's Enemies

The New York Times,  Kashmir Hill; Corey Kilgannon, December 23, 2022

MSG Entertainment has put lawyers who represent people suing it on an “exclusion list,” using facial-recognition technology to keep them out of Madison Square Garden and other venues it owns in New York City. A city law introduced last year requires commercial establishments to notify customers when biometric technologies are in use. Signs at MSG venues inform patrons that the technology is in place “to ensure the safety of everyone.” High-tech surveillance by government is already common in the city. Its Police Department, for example, uses facial recognition and drones. But MSG's use of technology crosses a line, say critics. Said the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Adam Schwartz, “It raises the question of what's going to come next. Will companies use facial recognition to keep out all the people who have picketed the business or criticized them online with a negative Yelp review?"

Full article.

Facial Recognition Technology Scans Your Ear

 First I have seen of this approach, reasonable.

Facial Recognition Technology Scans Your Ear

UGA Today, Olivia Randall, December 8, 2022

University of Georgia (UGA) scientists have created an ear recognition system that can authenticate individuals with up to 97.25% accuracy. The researchers said ear shapes are unique to an individual, and for the most part they remain unchanged by age. UGA's Thirimachos Bourlai said the ear recognition software operates similarly to facial recognition, capturing and saving multiple ear scans for authentication. The software uses an ear recognition algorithm to assess and ascertain if the scans are suitable for automated matching. The researchers tested the software's tolerance for busy images by evaluating several models, using ear images distorted by noise factors like varying blurriness, brightness, and contrast. ... '

Italy Bans Facial, Non Policing Related AI

The breadth of this is interesting, more strict than EU it seems?

Italy Outlaws Facial Recognition Tech, Except to Fight Crime

Reuters

By Elvira Pollina; Federico Maccioni, November 14, 2022

Italy has banned the use of facial recognition technology and "smart glasses," except when such technologies play a role in judicial investigations or the fight against crime. The country's Data Protection Agency issued a rebuke to two municipalities experimenting with the technologies, and said facial recognition systems using biometric data will not be allowed until a specific law is adopted, or at least until the end of next year. Under EU and Italian law, the processing of personal data by public bodies using video devices is generally allowed on public interest grounds, and when linked to the activity of public authorities. However, the agency noted, municipalities that want to use such devices will have to secure "urban security" agreements with central government representatives.

In Reuters

Face Recognition Struggles to Recognize Us After Five Years

Useful indication of how this changes

Face Recognition Struggles to Recognize Us After Five Years

New Scientist

Matthew Sparkes, August 24, 2022

A test designed by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's Marcel Grimmer and colleagues found that facial recognition algorithms start running into difficulty identifying people after they have aged five years. The researchers used open-source alternatives to face recognition tools used by police and smartphone manufacturers, as well as artificial intelligence-generated images of 50,000 humans aged synthetically. Grimmer said the tools' accuracy declined continuously from the point the reference image was captured. The algorithms used to age faces synthetically from reference images also proved more effective when the target was between 20 and 40 years, compared to children and older adults. The implication is that new photos may be needed more often to maintain accuracy and security. ..... ' 

Clearview Facial Recognition for Schools

 But they could be used to detect who is approaching/entering a school and flag potential threats.   Current errors in their operation can be improved. 

ACM TECHNEWS

Clearview AI's Facial Recognition Tool Coming to Apps, Schools

By Reuters  May 31, 2022

Clearview AI said it is expanding sales of its facial recognition software to companies outside of law enforcement.

Regulatory probes are threatening Clearview's business from helping police identify people using social media images, while the settlement of an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit bans sales of this capability to corporate clients.

Clearview's new private-sector service matches people to ID photos and other data collected with subjects' consent, in order to authenticate identities for physical or digital access. Colombian application-based lending startup Vaale said it would use Clearview to match selfies to user-uploaded ID photos, while Clearview's Hoan Ton-That said a U.S. vendor of visitor management systems to schools also had signed up.

Clearview claims training its facial recognition software on public images mitigates racial bias and other errors, but ACLU lawyer Nathan Freed Wessler called using illegally harvested data to develop such algorithms inappropriate.

From Reuters   

Clearview and Facial Recognition.

 Remain intrigued by facial recognition. consider the similarity of its emergence to fingerprint techniques.  A comparison is useful. Can having enough data ultimately remove error? 

Why Facial Recognition Technology Has an Uncertain Future with Small Business.  Clearview AI's co-founder Hoan Ton-That recently defended his startup's use of controversial facial recognition software.

BY STEVEN I. WEISS, SENIOR STAFF WRITER

@STEVENIWEISS in Inc.

If you're skeptical about whether your company will ever use facial recognition technology as a business tool, you're not alone. Perhaps the most prominent facial recognition technology provider in the world, Clearview AI, has attracted significant criticism and raised ethical concerns even as it has been used by law enforcement.  

In a live interview with the Washington Post last week, New York-based Clearview AI's co-founder and CEO Hoan Ton-That addressed questions about the ethical and legal implications of his software, which became first known to many Americans when a billionaire used it to identify his daughter's dinner date, and for the involvement of far-right individuals in the creation of the company. Pressed on questions about the legal and ethical choices his firm has made while creating a searchable database of 20 billion facial images, Ton-That repeatedly brought up examples where the use cases of Clearview AI's technology would look better in the public eye, mentioning its use in helping catch criminals in child pornography and child abuse cases. Ton-That also pointed to the use of Clearview AI's technology by the Ukrainian government to identify dead Russian soldiers, for notifying their families of their passing.

While Clearview AI has some 20 billion facial images to feed its current product, the dataset is being used only by governments so far. "There's no non-governmental use of this dataset at this time," Ton-That said, adding that "we've developed as prototypes different versions of our technology for retail and banking."

Article continues after video. .... 

Testing Clearview Face Recognition

Would expect such methods to ultimately be well calibrated and put to common use.

Clearview AI Does Well in Another Round of Facial Recognition Accuracy Tests

By The New York Times, November 24, 2021

After Clearview AI scraped billions of photos from the public web — from websites including Instagram, Venmo and LinkedIn — to create a facial recognition tool for law enforcement authorities, many concerns were raised about the company and its norm-breaking tool. Beyond the privacy implications and legality of what Clearview AI had done, there were questions about whether the tool worked as advertised: Could the company actually find one particular person's face out of a database of billions?

Clearview AI's app was in the hands of law enforcement agencies for years before its accuracy was tested by an impartial third party. Now, after two rounds of federal testing in the last month, the accuracy of the tool is no longer a prime concern.

In results announced on Monday, Clearview, which is based in New York, placed among the top 10 out of nearly 100 facial recognition vendors in a federal test intended to reveal which tools are best at finding the right face while looking through photos of millions of people. Clearview performed less well in another version of the test, which simulates using facial recognition for providing access to buildings, such as verifying that someone is an employee.

From The New York Times

View Full Article  

Moscow Implements Metro Facial Recognition

Expect parts of the world without these 'fears' to quickly implement many kinds of such  recognition systems, for greater efficiency. 

Privacy Fears as Moscow Metro Rolls Out Facial Recognition Pay System   By The Guardian (U.K.), October 20, 2021

A man entering the turnstile of the Moscow metro, which uses the Face Pay facial recognition system.

The Moscow authorities expect up to 15% of metro passengers will use Face Pay regularly in the next three years. They said the system would quicken the flow of people, particularly at peak times.

Privacy activists warn the Moscow metro's just-launched cashless, cardless, and phoneless Face Pay facial recognition payment system constitutes a sinister move by Russia to monitor and control its people.

Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin said passengers must connect their photo, bank card, and metro card to Face Pay via the metro's mobile application, and city authorities said passengers' data will be "securely encrypted."

Stanislav Shakirov with digital rights activist group Roskomsvoboda said, "We are moving closer to authoritarian countries like China that have mastered facial technology. The Moscow metro is a government institution and all the data can end up in the hands of the security servies."

From The Guardian (U.K.)

View Full Article  

Pocket Identity Revisit

Unless something like face identity fails, as mentioned here previously.

The Identity in Everyone's Pocket   By Phil Vachon

Communications of the ACM, January 2021, Vol. 64 No. 1, Pages 46-55

Most every technology practitioner has a smartphone of some sort. Around the world cellular connectivity is more ubiquitous than clean, running water. With their smartphones, owners can do their banking, interact with their local government, shop for day-to-day essentials, or simply keep in touch with their loved ones around the globe.

It's this ubiquity that introduces interesting security challenges and opportunities. Not even 10 years ago, a concept like biometric authentication was a novelty, reserved only for specialized applications in government and the financial services industry. Today you would be hard-pressed to find users who have not had the experience of unlocking their phones with a fingerprint, or more recently by simply looking at the display. But there is more to the picture than meets the (camera's) eye: Deep beneath layers of glitzy user interfaces, there is a world of secure processors, hardware-backed key storage, and user-identity management that drives this deceptively simple capability.

Newer phones use these security features in many different ways and combinations. As with any security technology, however, using a feature incorrectly can create a false sense of security. As such, many app developers and service providers today do not use any of the secure identity-management facilities that modern phones offer. For those of you who fall into this camp, this article is meant to leave you with ideas about how to bring a hardware-backed and biometrics-based concept of user identity into your ecosystem.

The goal is simple: Make it as hard as possible for attackers to steal credentials and use them at their leisure. Let's even make it difficult for users to clone their own credentials to share with other users. In addition to this protection, let's ensure that adding extra factors such as biometric authentication provides a stronger assurance of who the user is. Bringing keys and other secrets closer and closer to something that is physically attached to the user provides a stronger assurance of the identity of the user who just authenticated to the device.

Back to Top

What Is a Digital Identity?  .... '

Master Faces can Bypass Authentication

Looks to be a dangerous authentication bypass on a now common security method using GAN methods.

‘Master Faces’ That Can Bypass Over 40% Of Facial ID Authentication Systems mmUpdated 2 days ago on August 4, 2021By Martin Anderson

Researchers from Israel have developed a neural network capable of generating ‘master’ faces – facial images that are each capable of impersonating multiple IDs. The work suggests that it’s possible to generate such ‘master keys’ for more than 40% of the population using only 9 faces synthesized by the StyleGAN Generative Adversarial Network (GAN), via three leading face recognition systems.

The paper  is a collaboration between the Blavatnik School of Computer Science and the school of Electrical Engineering, both at Tel Aviv..... ' 

EU to Constrain Certain AI Uses?

To be expected reaction from EU regulators.

Facial Recognition, Other 'Risky' AI Set for Constraints in EU

Bloomberg, Natalia Drozdiak, April 21, 2021

The European Commission has proposed new rules constraining the use of facial recognition and other artificial intelligence applications, and threatening fines for companies that fail to comply. The rules would apply to companies that, among other things, exploit vulnerable groups, deploy subliminal techniques, or score people’s social behavior. The use of real-time remote biometric identification systems by law enforcement also would be prohibited unless used specifically to prevent a terror attack, find missing children, or for other public security emergencies. Other high-risk applications, including for self-driving cars and in employment or asylum decisions, would have to undergo checks of their systems before deployment. The proposed rules need to be approved by the European Parliament and by individual member-states before they could become law.   ... " 

Where did Those Images come From?

Worked on an image recognition problem that could have used this approach to determine where certain images where coming from, either to validate them, or to determine which needed to be removed after attribution.   Only reflects images that have posted through flicker, which is limiting, but indicative.  Potential cleansing and risk analysis step. 

Here's a Way to Learn If Facial Recognition Systems Used Your Photos  By The New York Times, February 5, 2021

Part of a mosaic of about 50,000 images from the MegaFace dataset, which includes over 3.5 million.

A new online tool lets people search many image collections to see if their old photos were used to train facial recognition systems.

The Exposing.AI online tool lets people search image collections for old photos of themselves, in order to learn if such images were used to train facial recognition systems. The tool matches images from the Flickr online photo-sharing service, locating photos if users already have a way of pointing to them online, for example via an Internet address.

People can search only for images posted to Flickr, using a Flickr username, tag, or Internet address that can identify those pictures. The New York Times was able to use the tool to find photos that Exposing.AI indicated were used in facial recognition datasets.

From The New York Times   View Full Article - May Require Paid Subscription

Intel Launches on-device Facial Recognition

So could most any device recognize us?   Bias considerations depend on usage modes.    

Intel launches RealSense ID for on-device facial recognition   By Kyle Wiggers  @Kyle_L_Wiggers  in VentureBeat,  January 6, 2021 

Intel today launched the newest addition to RealSense, its product range of depth and tracking technologies designed to give machines depth perception capabilities. Called RealSense ID, it’s an on-device solution that combines an active depth sensor with a machine learning model to perform facial authentication.

But numerous studies and VentureBeat’s own analyses of public benchmark data have shown facial recognition algorithms are susceptible to various biases. One issue is that the datasets used to train the algorithms skew white and male. IBM found that 81% of people in the three face-image collections most widely cited in academic studies have lighter-colored skin. Academics have found that photographic technology and techniques can also favor lighter skin, including everything from sepia-tinged film to low-contrast digital cameras. As a result, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, and others have self-imposed moratoriums on the sale of facial recognition systems.

In response to this and other criticism, Intel says RealSense ID, which starts at $99 and will launch in Q1 2021, has built-in anti-spoofing technology to protect against false entry attempts using photographs, videos, or masks. The company also says it has a “one-in-1-million” false acceptance rate and processes facial images locally, encrypting user data, and is activated through “user awareness.” In other words, it won’t authenticate unless prompted by a preregistered user.

Intel claims RealSense ID adapts to users as physical features like facial hair and glasses change over time and works in various lighting conditions for people “with a wide range of heights or complexions.”... " 

Singapore Using Facial Recognition Broadly

  Note the focused use, and the automatic disposal of the data after 30 days.   Is this sufficient to sufficiently suppress misuse?   Once again,  it is inevitable that such methods will be used broadly. 

 In Singapore, Facial Recognition Getting Woven Into Everyday Life  from ACM

Singaporeans will be able to access government and other services through a facial recognition feature in its SingPass national identity program.

SingPass Face Verification lets users securely log in to their government services accounts at public kiosks and on home computers, tablets, and mobile phones just using their faces. Singapore's Government Technology Agency said the data collected via facial recognition is "purpose-driven," solely for a specific transaction, and deleted after 30 days.

The technology allegedly prevents login attempts using photos, masks, and deepfakes, as well as repelling replay attacks, which use a recording of a person's face to attempt authentication.  ... " 

Banning Facial Recognition

What I have been thinking.  Specifically, not generally accountable.   Even if the major players stop doing this, others quickly will.

Bans on Facial Recognition Are Naïve. Hold Law Enforcement Accountable for Its Abuse
by Osonde A. Osoba and Douglas Yeung

June 17, 2020

The use of facial recognition technology has become a new target in the fight against racism and brutality in law enforcement. Last week, IBM announced it was leaving the facial recognition business altogether, and its CEO questioned whether it was an appropriate tool for law enforcement. Within days, Microsoft and Amazon each announced that they would—at least temporarily—prohibit law enforcement agencies from using their facial recognition software. The Justice in Policing Act, also introduced in Congress last week, would specifically ban facial recognition analysis of officers' body camera footage.

Facial recognition technologies—with the assumptions of their developers embedded in their code—often perform poorly at recognizing women, older people, and those with darker skin. There's little question that these flaws exist. But banning facial recognition isn't necessarily the best response. ...

Scan Uses Wrinkles, Spots

Was surprised that this was not more often commonly done,  but perhaps it was as part of an overall facial scan?

AI algorithm identifies age of faces in photos using wrinkles, spots  by Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum in Techxplore

An algorithm developed by neuroinformatics engineers in Bochum estimates age and ethnic origin as exactly as humans do. The researchers are not yet sure which features it interprets.

A person's aging process is accompanied by such tell-tale signs on their face as wrinkles, furrows, and spots. Researchers from the Institute for Neural Computation at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) have developed an algorithm that interprets these features very reliably. The RUB team published its report in the journal Machine Learning from May 2020. ... "

Clearview AI Stops Selling to Private Companies

Seems the basic capabilities are still out there, well known, and are likely in the short term likely to be more sloppily done.  And will now be in the hands of government.   So what is the result?

Clearview AI Has Promised To Cancel All Relationships With Private Companies
Facing numerous lawsuits, the New York startup said it "is cancelling the accounts of every customer who was not either associated with law enforcement or some other federal, state, or local government department, office, or agency.”  ... '

 Ryan Mac Buzz,Feed News Reporter
Caroline Haskins, BuzzFeed News Reporter
Logan McDonald

Can Algorithms Recognized a Masked Face?

Now having worn a mask at times now in public.  I would guess, not well at all.  The makers of such recognition systems seem to scrambling.    In the recent past we might have thought it is a suspicious thing to do at at all.   I remember the first time I put one on, thinking, do I look like a robber? But now as the near normal?

How Well Can Algorithms Recognize Your Masked Face? in Wired.

Makers of facial-recognition technology scramble to adapt to a world where people routinely cover their faces to avoid spreading disease. 

  Facial Recognition Algorithms from Los Angeles startup TrueFace are good enough that the US Air Force uses them to speed security checks at base entrances. But CEO Shaun Moore says he’s facing a new question: How good is TrueFace’s technology when people are wearing face masks?

“It’s something we don’t know yet because it’s not been deployed in that environment,” Moore says. His engineers are testing their technology on masked faces and are hurriedly gathering images of masked faces to tune their machine-learning algorithms for pandemic times.  ... "

Airport Facial Recognition

More examples of regulating facial recognition in new contexts.

ACLU is suing the US gov for blocking airport facial recognition probe
By Ryan Daws Editor at TechForge Media.  

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the US government for blocking a probe into the use of facial recognition in airports.

Homeland Security announced in December that it was ditching plans to scan the faces of every person arriving at airports in favour of those who are not US or permanent residents.... "