Reading 1

Unit 3- reading 1

Page 34

Looking for bad guys at the big game

When the super bowl came to Tampa Florida in 2001, football players and coaches were not the only people on camera. Every fan was of interest to security officials who use tiny hard-to-see cameras to capture a shot of each person who passed through the stadium gates.

The organizers of any huge sporting event have to anticipate trouble and try to stop it before it starts. Security officials at Tampa’s Raymond James stadium hope to do so by using machines that recognize faces. Each face seen by the gate mounted cameras was compared to the data in local and federal law enforcement computer systems. The data included photos of people previously arrested for stealing causing fights and other illegal activities.

A similar set of automatic eyes routinely surveys the crowds at the main road ground in Manchester England the home stadium for the Manchester city soccer team. If a fans picture matches one in the database, security officials could closely monitor him or her and perhaps even make an arrest.

Invasion of privacy?

Not everyone thinks this kind of surveillance is a good thing. In the United States it has stirred some controversy about possible threats to the privacy rights of individuals. People being captured on camera were not told their pictures were being taken. None of them gave permission.

The technology has not been proven to be reliable. What if the system points out an innocent person as a criminal by mistake? At a very basic level it simply makes many people angry to think of a society in which the authorities spy on people wherever they go.

Security officials say the face-recognition fr systems great benefits justify any small inconvenience. Banks, shopping malls and government buildings are already equipped with security cameras and no one has a problem with that. Why complain about the systems used at Raymond James stadium and the main road ground?

Biometrics

One big difference is that system like the one used at the super bowl involves biometric technology. It analyzes facial characteristics the features of the face to establish a person’s identity. A biometric system undertakes not just to display or record an event but to instantly identify the people involved in it.

The difference in types of systems is illustrated by another camera system in Tampa, this one in Ybor city, an entertainment district adjacent to down town Tampa. At first cameras mounted on the district’s utility poles monitored the streets for fights drug deals and other crimes. The police might see a crime as it was happening or use the video to help in any consequent in vestigations.

Then Tampa modified those cameras to link directly to the police department’s own database. This made them true biometric tools. Instead of humans analyzing a video to see who was depicted machines did the identifying. Computers will do similar analyses of the crowds at soccer’s world cup tournament in Brazil in 2014.

Brazil’s system will be even more advanced however with cameras that are worn like glasses by the police. And that feed into a database of more than 13 million faces. Advocates of biometric systems say this makes the system more scientific.

Computers can compare exact measurements of facial features in order to make matches. Opponents of such systems object. They argue that machines are easily fooled by such simple devices as hats, new hairstyles or glasses. Humans are a lot better at recognizing individuals they say then computer systems are.