Talk about bad PR for Google Glass. Already, the article has been amended with the notice '(This version of the story has been corrected to change headline to show recognition database software developed by police not Google)'. I don't imagine Google will be advertising this use case if they ever do a keynote on Glass again.
Dubai's laws are atrocious. It's trivial to become implicated. Severe imprisonment of citizens and unwitting travelers alike is the primary reason to stay out and not support Dubai's economy. Only an illusion of legal modernity exists through <i>wealth</i>. Google Glass with facial recognition is an excellent fit.
Fortunately this is happening in an undemocratic country and not coming with the typical terrorism / save-the-children propaganda. I hope we soon can hear about the benefits Google glas will have for example on enforcing Dubai's stand on homosexuality:<p><i>In keeping with traditional Islamic morality, both Federal and Emirate law prohibit homosexuality and cross-dressing with punishment ranging from long prison sentences, deportation, for foreigners, and the death penalty.</i> (1)<p>(1) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Dubai" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Dubai</a>
I've mentioned this before else where, but Dubai doesn't need this because crime is so low compared to most countries that the only reason it may be used is solely for publicity. In majority parts of the city, you can still walk around at night and not be as worried as you would in other cities.<p>Hence, it makes me want to throw out the idea of how effective this facial recognition really is. If your sole reason is marketing, you won't care much for effective use of said tech.
Good. Scream as much as you want about facial recognition software; it doesn't give them any capabilities they didn't already have and if they do _anything_ with it it will eventually mess up and they will be eviscerated in court. What I'm more interested in is that all of these officers are now wearing cameras and sending an always-on video stream to home base. It's a trivial step to demand that that stream be saved.
How would this even work? Glass with the camera on has a battery life of about an hour. They could power it externally, but then it gets too hot, slows down and gives a warning message. Add in the CPU load of facial recognition and I just don't think Glass is up to the job.
I'd like to ignore the privacy aspect. I want to discuss the false positive problem.<p>Is the technology reliable to have a low false positive rate? Probably face recognition is good enough to classify the photograph of your friends in Facebook, and the friends of your friends. It has to choose a person in a set of ~100.<p>What happens when someone is falsely identified? Is the suspect released after a ID check or he is moved to the police station to a full check?<p>Can this be a proxy for racial profiling? There was a horror story about a face recognition software that didn't detect someone with black skin. This can have the reverse problem. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM</a>
It sounds sophisticated to a layman, but I have doubts over its practicality.<p>For example, how will the system overcome image noise introduced by traditional dressing, such as the keffiyeh and hijab? I'm no expert, but have played around with haar face detection, and eigen/fisher face recognition. My experience was that factors like face position, facial adornments (caps, spectacles, moustaches, etc) and ambient lighting had significant effects on accuracy.<p>There was also the reported failure of face recognition in the Boston marathon bombing investigation [1].<p>[1]: <a href="http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/23/facial-recognition-identify-boston-bombing-suspects/" rel="nofollow">http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/04/23/facial-recognitio...</a>
Source: lived in Dubai for 2.5 years.<p>This is a combination of Dubai's two greatest past times: spectacle and surveillance, so naturally they will implement this as quickly as possible, paying top dollar to contractors to make it work.<p>I'm sorry if this sounds jaded, but I lived this for 2.5 years, running projects whose sole purpose was pomp and circumstance for various Emiratis who have virtually unlimited (debt funded) budgets.<p>To all those saying it won't work because {{technical reason}} you're probably right, but it won't stop them from overpaying to do so.<p>Some more examples of this:<p>* They have a road toll system called Salik, which is like EZ Pass gone amuck. There are numerous tolls and each give the police the ability to track any car to a small area. So ther is very little auto crime.<p>* There are speed cameras about every 10km, which residents speed up and speed down to "obey" the speed limit. So to whomever was talking about high speed chases: they don't happen. They just wait for the criminal to stop, know exactly where he is, and then apprehend him.<p>* Most projects I worked on had a whole component about being "the best", "the biggest", "the tallest" where we would have to show why {{costly technology}} is the best in the world. There was no definition of "the best" beyond just claiming something.<p>* In my apartment building, there were cameras from outside my door to the carpark in the basement. And they were regularly watched. I know this because the door man would make it a habit of hitting the elevator button for me when I was about a meter away from the elevator, having seen me from CC cameras far below<p>* To those talking about how burqas and hijabs will make this technology impossible: most folks there don't wear traditional, national dress. 87% of the country are westerners who stay there for an average of 2 years and leave. Westerners and low-wage workers are who they want to track anyway.<p>* All internet is filtered by "du" and "Etisalat" (think ATT and Verizon) - by order of the state. But they don't maintain a common block list, so some websites work on du, some on Etisalat.<p>* There are large articles on this, but basically the UAE compelled Blackberry to allow them to install backdoors so that the government could circumvent secure communication (this was back when Blackberry was dominant).<p>And there are many more.<p>I'm not saying other countries don't have these problems. I'm more just listing these things out to show that this is exactly the kind of project that Dubai would love - high technology, spectacle, and above all controlling.
Wouldn't be Facebook the best DB provider at this point in time?<p>This is a state-level deal and FB has the most advanced face recognition software IIRC (I've read about this some months ago online), there's tons of $$$ to be made in the field.
>>Last year Dubai announced it would supply its police with $400,000 Lamborghini sports cars for use at major tourist sites. Dubai's deputy police chief said the vehicles were in keeping with the Gulf capital's image.<p>Lamborghinis are fashion or do they have specific functions being part of police scheme of things?
Always worth bringing up the CV Dazzle research project when you talk about globally available facial recognition.<p><a href="http://cvdazzle.com/" rel="nofollow">http://cvdazzle.com/</a>
I don't understand why Google has banned face recognition apps on Glass.<p>It seems to me that putting that technology in the hands of everyone would make more sense than restricting it to a few.
I find it funny that everyone in the west allows their grandmas to have an opinion while dubai doesn't fuck around and let smart people make the best decisions for their society.