Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Intel patents face recognition algorithm for phones.

Speaking of ubiquitous surveillance:

Face recognition for your phone or Google Glasses. Or drone, or random camera stuck to a wall, or whatever.

Intel recently filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a new technology method of real-time facial detection using an image or video of the subject taken by a mobile device.

Intel Korea research engineer Wooju Ryu describes the face detection method in the U.S. Patent Application No. 20140341430, titled "Method and Device for Detecting Face, and Non-Transitory Computer-Readable Recording Medium for Executing the Method".

That's not all they're doing.

Intel continues to make a strong push into the biometric and wearable technology market through a series of developments and partnerships, such creating a new developer's platform for the Internet of Things, a sector that is closely related to wearable technology.

One gets the feeling that these keeners who toil in the bowels of Intel haven't given even a second's thought to what can happen if the Internet Of Things is being run by somebody mean. Smart people can be the dumbest bastards sometimes, it just kills me.

The Phantom

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

East Asia isn't exactly a hotbed of American-style libertarian thought, you may have noticed.

Anonymous said...

Hey Phantom -they gotta have a way to positively ID the subject of a drone strike doncha know ;-)

---Occam

The Phantom said...

Hi Occam.

You laugh, but that's not far off the mark. I'm pretty sure They, meaning police forces and federal ninja types, would really really love to have a way to scan a crowd and pick out particular people in it.

Even better, imagine getting a list of names containing every person at a particular demonstration just by putting up a couple of cameras. OPP has a camera van that goes to every uproar at Caledonia. Wouldn't it be sweet for those guys if they could tag everybody in the crowd and then go around for a "chat" a couple days later?

Its not much good for caztching "terrorists", but its hell on jets for suppressing civil unrest.

Anonymous said...

Occam -

Uhh, I wasn't kidding Phantom ;-)

But yeah , I've worked on communications tech which was very similar, and for some reason we had feds hovering over our shoulders almost routinely - for what we felt was a seemingly innocuous consumer app - we were young and stupid and unaware of the psychopathy that runs rampant in the fed control structure.

Not a doubt in my mind this will end up using domestic consumer comm devices/systems as targeting systems for remote weapons attack or political persecution.

Remember the tightest commie tyrannies all have snowy climates. Happy new year , enjoy the commie climate ;-)

The Phantom said...

I think the feds are a problem, true enough.

But consider how its going to be when stores, banks, even gas stations and 7/11 can do a face-ID on you and access a database with: your credit score, credit cards history, bank balance, mortgage, car payments, internet surfing history and so forth, all balled together into a nice handy form so they can know what to sell you.

Nightmare.

I'll be wearing Groucho Marx nose glasses over a balaclava, or possibly a burkha with odd sized lumps under it to obsure my outline for the cameras. Turns out general body measurements and gait patterns are almost as good as facial recognition for identifying people.