A new test by the ACLU demonstrates these limitations
The American Civil Liberties Union recently tested Amazon’s facial recognition tech — and the results were less than favorable. To test the system’s accuracy, the faces of all 535 members of congress were scanned against 25,000 public mugshots, through Amazon’s open Rekognition API. Although none of the members of Congress were in any of these mugshot lineup, Amazon’s system nevertheless generated 28 false matches. The ACLU claims this raises some particularly serious concerns about Rekognition’s use by law enforcement and in the legal and medical world.
“An identification — whether accurate or not — could cost people their freedom or even their lives,” the group said in an accompanying statement. “Congress must take these threats seriously, hit the brakes, and enact a moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition.” (ACLU)
According to The Verge, an “Amazon spokesperson attributed the results to poor calibration.” However this does not necessarily account for the results. Amazon’s system currently operates with the default confidence threshold of just 80 percent. Yet Amazon claims it recommends at the very least a 95 percent threshold for situations such as medicine and law enforcement where relying on a machine to ID someone could cost them their freedom, life, or worse.
“While 80% confidence is an acceptable threshold for photos of hot dogs, chairs, animals, or other social media use cases,” the representative said, “it wouldn’t be appropriate for identifying individuals with a reasonable level of certainty.” (ACLU) Even still, the Rekognition suite does nothing to affect that recommendation during the process of setting it up, and there is of course little to nothing to prevent law enforcement agencies from using the default setting of 80 percent.
In May of this year, this tech came into the limelight when the ACLU report was able to show the system being in use by a number of LEO agencies including the police of Orlando, Florida. It is sold as a part of Amazon’s Web Services cloud, and is quite inexpensive with a costs as low as less than just 12 dollars a month for the entire department.
Furthermore, this test demonstrated a continuing problem of many facial recognition systems, which have historically had considerably difficulty in accurately identifying both women and non-white minorities. Of the 28 false matches, 11 involved black members of congress, although they make up just around 20 percent of the whole of congress itself. Some other systems fair even worse. With the system used by the London Metro Police force producing as many as 49 false matches for every legitimate hit, which then necessitates a manual and time and resource consuming search though these false-positives.
Ostensibly, facial recognition IDs would be confirmed through multiple human sources before an arrest would be made, though many say that even checking faces violates privacy rights. Worse still, it is not hard to imagine a situation where an officer sees a false match that leads him to believe the potential arrestee could be armed and dangerous, and also plant ideas about the person before even really investigating, changing the outcome of a routine stop from routine, to possibly violent, even deadly.
Security Technology of South Texas works with analytics and facial recognition video surveillance in its projects, and are experts in integrating, understanding, and sourcing only the best tech to get your job done, at a price you can feel good about. Let us show you the difference between a local, responsive, company that strives for only excellence and client satisfaction versus the kind of experience we have all come to expect from the detached, hard to reach, and inferior service and installations inherent to the juggernauts of the security industry.
Please contact us through email at admin@gostst.com on our website or via phone at 210-446-4863 24/7
Sources: ACLcomU, Verge.com, Amazon.
Exploring Mass Notification Systems for Campuses
/in Access Control, Education /by Evan YoungmanMass notification systems have already been present on college campuses for a number of years. But these systems often either failed to respond quickly enough or to reach a majority of those on campus. Myriad threats, from active shooter situations, protests turned violent, and even outbreaks of diseases are present in these large institutions. These events require a school to arm itself with the technology to quickly communicate with large numbers of people to prevent loss of life. Here we will look at some current solutions campuses are employing in an effort to be proactive against shootings and other violence.
Because campuses can vary in size from small community colleges to massive military academies, it is important that a mass notification system be able to segment alerts based on location. Something going on a thousand acres across campus may not be relevant to the entire school. Having a hybrid system with at least some hosted in the cloud allows for scaling of the response system rapidly. So called “message fatigue” can prevent people from viewing these alerts, which makes it even more important to target based on location of the incident. In smaller campuses, it may be useful to expand the alerts to non-emergency messages about class cancellations or buildings closing. This is a balancing act the school must engage in to fit their needs.
Using SaaS and cloud based options will reduce Total Cost of Ownership by eliminating on-site hardware, maintenance, staffing, and other dedicated infrastructure. Most modern systems now work in this way. Of course, with any large system you must anticipate malicious activity and aim to thwart it. Data encryption “at-rest and in-transit”, using top tier data centers, recipient pin codes, and other features are must haves. An attacker could otherwise compromise the system and issue false alerts or even alerts designed to distract from some planned event such as a mass shooting or on campus riot. The vendor used should basically have uptime 100 percent of the time with support across all platforms, mobile and otherwise. Integrating security into a mass alert system will likely require a team of IT professionals, but not as many as would be needed without cloud hosting.
The design of the messaging itself is up to the school. Separate sets of protocols for emergencies versus simple announcements will make the difference between a useful system and a nuisance. The end user will need to be able to distinguish between alerts quickly, which can be achieved through emergency tones associated with the messages. Finally, you should be able to assign users different levels of access throughout the system within your IT team. Malicious individuals can and often do originate from the “inside”.
Security Technology of South Texas is happy to offer custom designed systems such as this from the ground up or integrated into existing infrastructure, where possible. We are available 24/7 at admin@gostst.com on our website or via phone at 210-446-4863.
Source: Campus Security Magazine
Unparalleled Public Surveillance in China
/in Security General, STST News /by Evan YoungmanMost people are familiar with the idea that China is an up and coming world superpower. This may or may not be the case, as the Chinese government has a history of lying about their renewable energy progress and GDP, among many other statistics they have been caught outright fabricating. Regardless, it is plain to see at least in the major urban centers, that China is no longer a “developing nation” technologically speaking, even if its current tyrannical government employs political ideology as broken as the Soviet Union. Here we will take a look at the dark side of surveillance technology, which when manufactured for an oppressive state can create terrifying science fiction esque dystopian realities for its citizens.
To start, China has a truly massive drone surveillance program. Recently, they have even developed a type of drone which from the ground is almost indistinguishable from a bird. The drones even flap their wings instead of being fixed wing or outfitted with rotors. Alongside a fleet of regular drones, it is no surprise that China brags it now has the entire city of Beijing under video surveillance. Add to this the saturation of city streets with analytics capable cameras and it is safe as a Chinese citizen to assume you are being watched any time you step outside, and indeed even in your own home through cameras in televisions and phones. This is due to the fact that Chinese manufactured electronics are notorious for coming stocked with spyware and malware from the beginning.
What is China doing with this massive amount of data, including that which they collect on essentially every Chinese internet user? They use it to determine what they call a “social credit” score. This is a score of a person’s overall “social value” and it is compiled from everything from your internet search history to whether or not you jaywalk in the city. In Chinese cities, facial recognition software identifies every person, car or bike and reports its behaviors in traffic. Black marks on your record can come from everything you can imagine, from your use of alcohol to whether or not you purchase “too many” video games. All of this data is tied to your face and therefore your identity. Those with poor scores are restricted from many mundane activities, from buying plane tickets to sending your child to private school. In fact, there are already around 15 million Chinese who have found themselves on the wrong side of this largely computer controlled list. And because these decisions are the product of a computer system, there is nothing in the way of due process or appeal.
Perhaps the most horrifying reality of mass surveillance in China is the way that it is used to suppress dissent and identify “non trustworthy persons”. Within the last few months, a young woman was imprisoned for simply uploading a video of her splashing ink on Xi Jianping, the Chinese leader. Many westerners are not aware of the fact that even an act as harmless as this can and does lead to hundreds of thousands imprisoned in re-education camps and even locked away in psychiatric wards where their minds are often destroyed with heavy psychotropic drugs until they have had their personalities remolded to fit the narrative of the state. These gross abuses of power go largely unchecked, as China has a permanent seat on the UN human rights council. If this isn’t enough reason to avoid Chinese security products, I do not know what is.
Due to the presence of malware on Chinese made security goods, Security Technology of South Texas does not use these products in our projects. Anything we integrate into access control and surveillance systems is made by companies with no ownership or ties to any state, which is a good thing when you know the abuses of power associated with these Chinese products. These facts stand as an example of the kinds of misuse of surveillance and facial recognition technology that exist in some countries, and as a warning to the people of any free nation.
Security Technology of South Texas is happy to offer custom designed systems such as this from the ground up or integrated into existing infrastructure, where possible. We are available 24/7 at admin@gostst.com on our website or via phone at 210-446-4863.
Avigilon Analytics
/in Access Control, Business Security /by Evan YoungmanAvigilon is a Vancouver based security equipment designer and manufacturer, perhaps most well known for the software they have developed to analyze raw video data, with no input other than the pixels streamed through an HD camera setup. “Open Video Management” using what they term “Self-Learning” video analytics is the cornerstone of any modern video analytics solution. The company also manufactures several lines of high quality HD cameras and access control gear, but it is not a requirement that all equipment be from Avigilon. Avigilon analytics is performed on-site with a proprietary set of hardware and software, and is effectively limited only by the quality of the video input.
What does this all mean for the consumer? For the residential market, there is not much application, and most home owners would see the cost as extraordinary, considering the increasingly cheap residential offerings from mainstream security integrators. It is also generally not necessary to run such extensive analytics in a residential setting. What Avigilon’s video analytics are particularly useful for are larger, enterprise-scale security operations, such as car lots, schools, and highly trafficked gates. This is something our company has considerable experience with, both in installing and integrating with other cameras and access control systems, as well as servicing and maintaining this type of equipment.
For example, let’s look at our most popular security solution featuring Avigilon; car dealerships. Avigilon’s analytics recognize a car versus some other object and distinguishes between a person and an animal or some other moving object which is not a security threat. The degree to which any software is actually “self-learning” is certainly up for debate, though the type of software underpinning these analytics systems is similar in structure to the kind of predictive software used by Google, Amazon, or Facebook to predict future purchases and analyze behaviors. The idea is that the software is able to self-code within the limited scope of object detection and threat discernment. This implies that each individual system that is integrated with Avigilon analytics will be slightly different over time for each installation in order to better perform in that particular setting.
Security Technology of South Texas is well versed in customizing analytics solutions to each customer based on their concerns and security needs. As we move into the future, analytics will become a de facto component of any competent access control and video surveillance installation, as it is able to reduce or eliminate false alarms, the traditional bane of functional, digital security.
Security Technology of South Texas is happy to offer custom designed systems such as this from the ground up or integrated into existing infrastructure, where possible. We are available 24/7 at admin@gostst.com on our website or via phone at 210-446-4863.
Sources: Avigilon.com
The Uses and Limits of Amazon’s “Rekogntion” Facial Recognition Software
/in Access Control, Business Security, Smart Security /by Evan YoungmanA new test by the ACLU demonstrates these limitations
The American Civil Liberties Union recently tested Amazon’s facial recognition tech — and the results were less than favorable. To test the system’s accuracy, the faces of all 535 members of congress were scanned against 25,000 public mugshots, through Amazon’s open Rekognition API. Although none of the members of Congress were in any of these mugshot lineup, Amazon’s system nevertheless generated 28 false matches. The ACLU claims this raises some particularly serious concerns about Rekognition’s use by law enforcement and in the legal and medical world.
“An identification — whether accurate or not — could cost people their freedom or even their lives,” the group said in an accompanying statement. “Congress must take these threats seriously, hit the brakes, and enact a moratorium on law enforcement use of face recognition.” (ACLU)
According to The Verge, an “Amazon spokesperson attributed the results to poor calibration.” However this does not necessarily account for the results. Amazon’s system currently operates with the default confidence threshold of just 80 percent. Yet Amazon claims it recommends at the very least a 95 percent threshold for situations such as medicine and law enforcement where relying on a machine to ID someone could cost them their freedom, life, or worse.
“While 80% confidence is an acceptable threshold for photos of hot dogs, chairs, animals, or other social media use cases,” the representative said, “it wouldn’t be appropriate for identifying individuals with a reasonable level of certainty.” (ACLU) Even still, the Rekognition suite does nothing to affect that recommendation during the process of setting it up, and there is of course little to nothing to prevent law enforcement agencies from using the default setting of 80 percent.
In May of this year, this tech came into the limelight when the ACLU report was able to show the system being in use by a number of LEO agencies including the police of Orlando, Florida. It is sold as a part of Amazon’s Web Services cloud, and is quite inexpensive with a costs as low as less than just 12 dollars a month for the entire department.
Furthermore, this test demonstrated a continuing problem of many facial recognition systems, which have historically had considerably difficulty in accurately identifying both women and non-white minorities. Of the 28 false matches, 11 involved black members of congress, although they make up just around 20 percent of the whole of congress itself. Some other systems fair even worse. With the system used by the London Metro Police force producing as many as 49 false matches for every legitimate hit, which then necessitates a manual and time and resource consuming search though these false-positives.
Ostensibly, facial recognition IDs would be confirmed through multiple human sources before an arrest would be made, though many say that even checking faces violates privacy rights. Worse still, it is not hard to imagine a situation where an officer sees a false match that leads him to believe the potential arrestee could be armed and dangerous, and also plant ideas about the person before even really investigating, changing the outcome of a routine stop from routine, to possibly violent, even deadly.
Security Technology of South Texas works with analytics and facial recognition video surveillance in its projects, and are experts in integrating, understanding, and sourcing only the best tech to get your job done, at a price you can feel good about. Let us show you the difference between a local, responsive, company that strives for only excellence and client satisfaction versus the kind of experience we have all come to expect from the detached, hard to reach, and inferior service and installations inherent to the juggernauts of the security industry.
Please contact us through email at admin@gostst.com on our website or via phone at 210-446-4863 24/7
Sources: ACLcomU, Verge.com, Amazon.