http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-recognition-system-ngi-640/

Jim Harper, director of information policy at the Cato Institute, adds to NextGov that investigators pair facial recognition technology with publically available social networks in order to build bigger profiles. Facial recognition "is more accurate with a Google or a Facebook, because they will have anywhere from a half-dozen to a dozen pictures of an individual, whereas I imagine the FBI has one or two mug shots," he says. When these files are then fed to law enforcement agencies on local, federal and international levels, intelligence databases that include everything from close-ups of eyeballs and irises to online interests could be shared among offices.

In his own testimony, Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alessandro Acquisti said to Sen. Franken, “the convergence of face recognition, online social networks and data mining has made it possible to use publicly available data and inexpensive technologies to produce sensitive inferences merely starting from an anonymous face.”

“Face recognition, like other information technologies, can be source of both benefits and costs to society and its individual members,” Prof. Acquisti added. “However, the combination of face recognition, social networks data and data mining can significant undermine our current notions and expectations of privacy and anonymity.”

With the latest report suggesting the NGI program is now a reality in America, though, it might be too late to try and keep the FBI from interfering with seemingly every aspect of life in the US, both private and public. As of July 18, 2012, the FBI reports, “The NGI program … is on scope, on schedule, on cost, and 60 percent deployed.”

Getting scary here.

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/03/facial-recognit.php


Hitachi Kokusai Electric is the company behind the super surveillance system. Their software can take just about any image — whether from a smart phone, videotape or camera and use it in a search. The software searches algorithmically for a match — able to recognize faces with up to 30 degrees of deviation and at various angles. The face only needs to be at least 40 pixels by 40 pixels for a search.

A person of interest is then searched against a database of images already collected. An airport for example could create a database of faces based on footage of people passing through a terminal over any given period of time. Or a shopping center could do the same.

A person who is of interest to surveillance professionals at those locations could then take an image of the individual and search the database to determine patterns of behavior or a more complete picture of what they may look like.

The technology is impressive and in the context of fighting or solving crimes it seems like a valuable tool. Other potential positives are looking for lost people — those who might have dementia, children separated from parents or perhaps quickly identifying survivors of disasters.

In TV shows, detectives search a database of faces at lightning speed to make a match to a photo or video footage — something that a new high performance camera and software system has made reality. It can capture a face and then search up to 36 million faces in one second to find a match in selected databases.

Many in large urban cities like London are already used to that, with cameras on virtually every corner.

But imagine a scenario where facial recognition data is combined with the increasing use of drones and satellites. Huge databases could be built for all kind of monitoring.

Would activities such as the Arab Spring have occurred if people were afraid of being identified and prosecuted? Would people in our own country be as willing to participate in peaceful protests?

I wonder how many fleeing felons will get nailed because they use Farcebook and Twatter to share their pictures and secrets with the whole world.

There is an NSA MACHINE CALLED ECHELON that has copies of all electronic information sent worldwide. The Information Age has really helped them to snoop on us. BIG BROTHER. We need to read 1984 by George Orwell

The draft, which remains under review and could change, seeks to implement a key provision in a cybersecurity bill that failed to advance in the Senate last month, the officials said. The administration is contemplating using an executive order because it isn’t clear Congress would pass a cybersecurity bill.
 
The draft calls for the Department of Homeland Security to create a council that would work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish the cybersecurity standards, the officials said.
 
While the program contemplated in the draft order would be voluntary, the Homeland Security Department would require companies participating in it to submit reports describing how they are protecting their networks, the official said.
 
The lack of incentives and the requirement for reports could undermine the willingness of companies to participate in the program, the official added.
 
John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said on Aug. 8 the administration would consider taking executive action to protect computer networks.
 
“If the Congress is not going to act on something like this, then the president wants to make sure that we’re doing everything possible,” Brennan said.

Since we live on the internet and does alot of activities on a network, all those things are necessary. The major thing is that, it should not be use for any nefarious act(although it is inevitable).

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Just this morning, my facebook account was ''locked'' and I was asked to identify some faces on my friends list before they could unlock my account.

It is now clear to me what they are on about. They will start locking accounts and demand you identify certain faces for their security database.

While some chase squirrels with legs, pound yam with hand and tap palm wine these developed folks are busy coming up with seemingly unthinkable ideas.
I hope INEC is watching and getting Inspiration for 'Almighty' 2015. That mockery of a Electronic voter registration of 2011 shouldn't repeat itself again when folks are coming up with pattern recognition algorithm capable of pin pointing mere facial pattern from a pool of over 30 million reference face in realtime-like manner.

We all need to know that all forms of electronic communication is monitored even when you are offline they spy on you and can even activate your webcam remotely and take pictures.

Google the FLAME VIRUS and find out what they have made

We may have no choice but to live our lives in this new World Order, that is why Sanusi is praised for starting the cashless move in the country but due to the internet we can at least know their plans even though we cannot fight it.

I read this frightening news on the radio this morning, bad business for social media sites... Less pictures on the internet now...

WOW . . this is fantastic news.

citizenisb: We all need to know that all forms of electronic communication is monitored even when you are offline they spy on you and can even activate your webcam remotely and take pictures.

Google the FLAME VIRUS and find out what they have made

There is no need to get overly paranoid . . this is good news unless you are a criminal or have something to hide. Then my first question would be what in the world have you been doing on the internet in the first place?

manny4life: I read this frightening news on the radio this morning, bad business for social media sites... Less pictures on the internet now...

less pictures or not, the one picture on your facebook profile is enough to get your facial index mark. Atleast you operate a bank account actively? Even your waec or jamb. So don't bother since you not into any criminal activities and If yes, you in for a very long thing.

Kobojunkie: WOW . . this is fantastic news.

There is no need to get overly paranoid . . this is good news unless you are a criminal or have something to hide. Then my first question would be what in the world have you been doing on the internet in the first place?

How about dissing GEJ over and over again. I'm sure he would find this technology useful, no?

We need to be careful what we do online!!