John H. Gass hadn’t had a traffic ticket in years, so the Natick resident was surprised this spring when he received a letter from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles informing him to cease driving because his license had been revoked.
And apparently, he has company. Last year, the facial recognition system picked out more than 1,000 cases that resulted in State Police investigations, officials say. And some of those people are guilty of nothing more than looking like someone else. Not all go through the long process that Gass says he endured, but each must visit the Registry with proof of their identity.
Does President Obama even know what Janet Napolitano has spawned in her agency?
This must be rough on DHS.
Coming us with a technology that makes all the same while making us all unique.
As an old friend of mine used to say: Fuck em where they breathe..
I wonder what the error rate is? With a “perfect picture” and a perfect data base, I assume it is near perfect. But things are not perfect.
How about this system: face gets tagged as a possible violation so send a notice to the citizen with this info. Ask the citizen to stop driving or to AFFIRM the system photo is in error. If found later to be driving illegally, after notice, and after Affirming falsely==THEN take the license away for a period or a fine or whatever works.
Seems to be a nice balance of the equities/costs and so forth. Animby will claim its entrapment, but you can’t satisfy everyone. Who “should” be served? The honest, or the mob?
Yea, verily.
“Soul brother without the soul.”///// Best all week. (sic)
Total BS!!!!
# 30 chris,
“This isn’t anything new. In statistics, it’s called the “base rate fallacy” and it applies in other domains as well. For example, even highly accurate medical tests are useless as diagnostic tools if the incidence of the disease is rare in the general population. Terrorist attacks are also rare, any “test” is going to result in an endless stream of false alarms. ”
Huh, if the incidence of the disease is rare, really? I can see how you can believe that given your obvious limited knowledge and experience.
Let examine one example, of a system that is far more complex and yet very successful with a well know, (given most people are healthy) low base rate fallacy”.
The system has been around for eons, it called …. an animals immune system. The immune system can be a powerful model for understanding and improving computer security. There is an excellent article the explores the analogy, starting with a description of early work at discovering “peptides” for computer systems in the form of sequences of system calls, and moving on to the implications of immunology for secure systems design.
You can review the Article Abstract in the link.
As many may know, normally the immune system’s army of white blood cells helps protect the body from harmful substances, called antigens. Examples of antigens include bacteria, viruses, toxins, cancer cells, and blood or tissues from another person or species. The immune system produces antibodies that destroy these harmful substances.
HOWEVER; like big Sis Napolitano (a female Napoleon) thinking, in patients with an AUTOIMMUNE DISORDER (think Homeland Security Face Recognition Program), the immune system can’t tell the difference between healthy body tissue and antigens. The result is an immune response that destroys normal body tissues. This response is a hypersensitivity reaction similar to the response in allergies.
There are more than 80 different types of autoimmune disorders, most are relatively rare, but; are becoming more frequent in our society.
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis
Pernicious anemia
Addison’s disease
Type I diabetes
Rheumatoid arthritis
Systemic lupus erythematosus
Dermatomyositis
Sjogren syndrome
Lupus erythematosus
Multiple sclerosis
Myasthenia gravis
Reactive arthritis
Grave’s disease
Celiac disease – sprue (gluten sensitive enteropathy)
Stop complaining –
This makes it easier for bureaucrats to free up time for holidays & junkets on your dime.
Cause any more problems – and we’ll revoke yours too.
Arguing by analogy isn’t even infotainment.
Its just retarded.
Argue the ISSUE.
# 37 bobbo, the best infotainment has to offer
And what was the ISSUE I was addressing and what was my augment exactly?
Do you even know? Obviously not!!! Go back to sleep!
ummm, that the statistical anomolies in facial recognition were the same as the bodies auto immune system?
Ha, ha–and you didn’t even draw the analogy to connect the point you were trying to make.
Retarded.
Who is that man in the picture?
Another terror program brought to the people of America by the nuts running the government.
And who needs to be afraid? The citizens!
# 39 bobbo, the best infotainment has to offer,
“Retarded”, coming from you that’s a very high complement.
I don’t expect you to get it and yet you avoided my original question: And what was the ISSUE I was addressing and what was my augment exactly?
Pls call me what you will, I will only revel in knowing where you come from.
OK noname. I will call a draw. If you think arguing by analogy is a valid approach, then have at it. If my quick by memory summary wasn’t close enough for your liking==thats the very problem with using an analogy. Unless it is VERY tight, people take different meanings from it==just as they should/will/must BECAUSE it is an analogy. Making sense by permitting people to see what the analogy has in common with the principle. Hard for that to work when many have have too little book learning to understand either, much less make the analogy?
The base rate fallacy can be illuminated by watching macrophages eat any and all bodies identified as foreign because…….because…..you know sometimes the macrophages make mistakes too?
Is that your analysis Bunky?
Wherea a macrophage when I need one?
Ha, ha.===Argue the issue. cost per test. Cost per testing on false positives. Costs avoided by accurate positives. THAT is the issue. You know—like depositing a check in the bank.
Pearls before swine.
#35
I gave a related example and you gave an unrelated example.
From the thread article “New York detected roughly 3,500 instances of possible fraud, resulting in 600 arrests since a system was adopted in 2010.”
So it’s right 17% of the time. Sure, I’m being unkind. Maybe cops couldn’t track down people the system correctly flagged. It could also be that the system returns a ton more which are then given to human analysts.
This is starting to sound like a lot of effort to prevent some kids from buying booze. Maybe there are… national security implications. If so, then my Bruce Schneier link in #30 is pretty topical, wouldn’t you say?
The idea that a very good recognition system will ALWAYS generate more false positives AND false negatives than true positives (actual baddies) ought to be troubling. Especially so when the people that check your papers get to act like assholes.
I’m sure you’ve dealt with someone operating a computer who is POSITIVE of something because the machine says so, but which logic says is obviously untrue. Maybe the DMV has a higher class of professionals?
#6 Dallas and #19 Animby Deval Patrick is the current governor. The system was installed in 2006 when the governor was…wait for it…Mitt Romney.
Bobbo – I think you are trying to entrap ME! Shame on you. I see no entrapment here. I do see a witch hunt.
I also see something of a fallacy in the approach. You scan drivers’ licenses with facial recog software to find terrorists. One must logically assume they already have a baseline database of photographs of terrorists. So, if they already know who the terrorists are, why do they need to scan DLs?
The truth is, this has nothing to do with terrorism but is just one more fascist state tool to turn every US citizen into a criminal.
#29 Skeptic
“Every time I see Napolitano…”
That photo shows her moving in for the famous TSA Tit Twist.
This is what happens when you don’t follow your business model!
If Homeland Security would simply re read the instructions, it says Star of David arm bands and tattoos only. There’s no mention of facial recognition programs
noname,
After considering, I’m doubly sure this is the same type of problem. I was wrong in #44 in one respect: a near perfect system testing for a very small population is going to return very few false negatives. If the target population is very small a 99% system is going to return almost no false negatives.
This is essentially sifting a few million people looking for a few hundred people. In the process a few thousand people get bothered.
SMALL little fact for most of you..
That FEW STATES..
correlate Death and BIRTH records.
# 49 chris,
I agree with you.
If bright minds working the problem can’t design a system with an acceptably low alpha level, 99.999% false positive protection; then, they shouldn’t implement it.
In the least, the onus shouldn’t be on the flagged person to AGAIN prove their identity; the onus should reside with the government to indeed validate and prove with additional investigation the system indeed made a correct match!
Law enforcement’s excuse “no system is perfect” is in no way an excuse to not go the extra mile and validate the results before suspending someones drivers license while sitting behind a desk!
If that proves to be too much of a burden for the law enforcement, then maybe they shouldn’t be using a bogus system in the first place.
# 43 bobbo, the best infotainment has to offer,
“Pearls before swine.” If that’s how you feel then you are a fool for dropping continuously your “Pearls”.
Are you a fool?
If it was me, I’d run right back and pick up and pocket them glorious pearls. But that’s me.
# 51 noname said, “the onus shouldn’t be on the flagged person to AGAIN prove their identity”
I agree with you there. If the idea is to confirm identity the first step might be to confirm the address. How? Send them a letter to the registered address. The letter would then politely inform the suspect … errr ,,, citizen that there appears to be some confusion of their identity. “Please present )whatever sort of ID they are requiring) to any law enforcement officer for re-validation. You have 30 days to accomplish this and return this letter.” You call the police and ask them to stop by your home or work at their convenience. They examine your documents and countersign your letter. Send it back in and all is well. Or another cop comes to visit with handcuffs. Still, final cost? A few tens of dollars for paper, postage and some minutes of civil servants’ time.
But, as has been mentioned above, a guilty until proven innocent approach is a lot easier so citizens be damned.
noname–whaaaa? You don’t get the analogy???
BWHAAAAAHHAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Case closed.
and Animby—I offered an even less invasive program. Why you bringing the police into this?
bobbo, libertarianism fails when its touchstone values become DOGMA
What analogy don’t I get?
# 54 bobbo, “Why you bringing the police into this?”
Only because you know they won’t accept anything less. Plus, they’re ubiquitous. You don’t have to take half a day off work and drive across town to wait in line just to be told they only handle this matter on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Friday. I’d be happy to replace “cops” with a long list of minor functionaries – right down to the lowest of the low, ie notaries, bobbos and animbys. In that order.
>> Dallas said, on July 18th, 2011 at 12:07 pm
>> This drivers license thing + $2M for Planned Parenthood’s baby killing is all I can take from this negro’s administration.
Wow, the racists got unleashed on this story.
Ye haw, y’all.
>> noname said, on July 18th, 2011 at 9:16 pm
>> If bright minds working the problem can’t design a system with an acceptably low alpha level, 99.999% false positive protection;
I’m curious. What current systems in our society have a 99.999% positive rating?
Even the primitive stuff, like hammers or wax paper, have a higher failure rate than that.
#55–noname==……ok. Pearls before swine is a metaphor for not wasting your time giving good advice to people who won’t heed it or understand it. Its a rewording of a biblical passage about putting your faith before philistines. Understood that way, there is nothing to go back and pickup. This treats the allusion as concrete, taken too literally.
If the above is correct, to the degree it is correct, but even if its totally wrong by my response, what we see is that playing with/arguing with metaphors and similes, both a form of analogy all too easily leads to failure to communicate JUST AS YOU DID by using your analogy of statistical shortcoming to the human immune system===what that connection was, and my pearl to you: arguing by analogy is never good, stick to the issue.
You accept that advice or not. There is nothing to go back and pick up just another example of the color, hue, and shape of the pearl.
Animby–such a vivid and accurate recollection of the DMV. Will you forever be perambulating foreign shores?