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U.S. agency: Pandemic masks thwarting face recognition tech:
Having a tough time recognizing your neighbors behind their pandemic masks? Computers are finding it more difficult, too.
A preliminary study published by a U.S. agency on Monday found that even the best commercial facial recognition systems have error rates as high as 50% when trying to identify masked faces.
The mask problem is why Apple earlier this year made it easier for iPhone owners to unlock their phones without Face ID. It could also be thwarting attempts by authorities to identify individual people at Black Lives Matter protests and other gatherings.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology says it is launching an investigation to better understand how facial recognition performs on covered faces. Its preliminary study examined only those algorithms created before the pandemic, but its next step is to look at how accuracy could improve as commercial providers adapt their technology to an era when so many people are wearing masks.
Some companies, including those that work with law enforcement, have tried to tailor their face-scanning algorithms to focus on people's eyes and eyebrows.
NIST, which is a part of the Commerce Department, is working with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security's science office to study the problem.
Aww, I feel so bad for the little guy! Perhaps we can help out by training up a neural net to correlate masked and unmasked photos.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 28 2020, @10:06PM (2 children)
Facial recognition software sucks, no matter how you look at it. In the hands of the police, it sucks basketballs through garden hoses. No empathy, no sympathy, not even much of a care here. Scrap the software. Cops don't seem to like doing cop work anymore. They can get off their asses, and get out into the 'hood, and do real police work. Might even work some of the lard off of their asses when they do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:33AM (1 child)
I had a dream once where I woke up in the 70s/80s and the mob and organized crime decided, hell if we can't beat em let's join em. Fast forward a few decades later, cops aren't doing real cop work anymore. They still have to show some cop results though, so they'll look at the easiest way to do to that - of course their real job is doing the shit that they always do, i.e. extortion and racketeering, etc.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday July 29 2020, @06:42PM
Whatever do you mean? The cops around here are dutifully stopping and ticketing (only) the out of towners who roll through here, while any time they can, as completely humanitarian gestures, they pick up those who might walk into town on one side, and give them a free lift right to the other side along with entirely appropriate... uh... encouragement... to continue in that same direction — even if they smell bad.
I resent your implication that cops should have to do anything else, sir. My second shall call on you for a session of gummy bears at dawn. We'll see then who is doing their job, or not!
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On censorship and repression:
Sweeping the trash under the bed just means
you don't know what's festering under there.
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