Tampa's crowd-scanning software misses crooks (and being removed)

[Nambe]

MIAMI, Florida (Reuters)

Police thought facial recognition software could be a great way to spot criminals or missing children in crowds. Civil rights activists deplored it as "Big Brother" on the street.

Now police in Tampa, Florida, are removing the software, which is linked to street surveillance cameras, from the Ybor City entertainment district after the 2-year- old scheme, the first such deployment in the United States, failed to produce any arrests.

City Police Chief Bennie Holder said Wednesday the department had decided not to renew its annual agreement with Identix Inc. on using the company's Facial Recognition Software. ---

"We're pleased they've decided to go ahead and remove the face recognition technology," Darlene Williams, who heads the Tampa branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Thursday. "Before, every person who walked down the street was subjected to an electronic police line-up without their consent." ---

[niyad]

1. about time

as a former resident of tampa, I made it a point NOT to go, or take my guests to, Ybor City, once those pernicious cameras were placed. Big Brother was indeed watching, and I refused to participate. Wonder how many tourist dollars they lost over this?

[newyawker99]

7. Hi niyad!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[yellowcanine]

2. Doubt if it will deter Asscraft

Just like the "Star Wars" technology, the fact that it doesn't work won't deter the Bushies from throwing some more taxpayer money down that rathole as well. Coming soon to an airport near you.

[GAspnes]

3. someone was sold a bill of goods

Face-recognition is one of the very hardest AI tasks. A collossal amount of brain tissue is devoted to storing, comparing and recognizing faces. It's one of the things that humans (and many animals, within their species) do very, very well. No one should have believed that Pentium 4's running a few vector abstraction routines could discern anything from the kind of pictures you get off a 320x200 pixel camera imaging a face from 30 feet away at a 50 degree vertical angle.

The best visual recognition software still can't tell the continuous white line separating your lane and the shoulder from a sunlit tree 30' beyond the shoulder. (more than one test car has gone off the road chasing that kind of artifact.)

I'm not in the least surprised that this stuff failed, and failed spectacularly.

[KeepItReal]

4. Did it come with a money-back guarantee?

Let me guess....no??

[Ouabache]

5. Maybe it was nabbing too many Enron inside traders

and other crooked, fat-cat, corporate donors to Bu$hco...

[GAspnes]

6. now THAT's a software bug I can live with

I love it!

[Ouabache]

9. Maybe it was only nabbing Jebbie's kids and wife ?

It could probably pick Noelle's ugly mug out of a crowd with that look she has of feeling no pain. Probably spotted his wife smuggling in more jewelry from overseas, and id'ed his horny-toad son for nailing another under-age gf in a jeep in the grocery store parking lot...

Just more of my guesses. :evilgrin:

[SideshowScott]

8. Meanwhile here in Virginia Beach.......

They have no intention of takeing them down even though they have not caught ONE person with them to my knowlage. A waste of our taxpayer dollars to create an orwellian city..
But ive been living here for a while now and this place is a very badly run city..