Facial Recognition Finds A Purpose... And It's Advertising, Not Surveillance

from the i-spy-you,-i-advertise-to-you dept

After 9/11, there was all sorts of talk about how there would be a boom in the markets for security and surveillance technology, with facial recognition technology seen as a key area. That sounded great... except for the simple fact that the technology doesn't work. Various tests of the technology for security purposes found that it not only didn't catch any criminals, but it couldn't even catch the control "tester" criminals. Basically, the technology isn't good at seeing someone walk by and identifying exactly who it is -- which is necessary for such security purposes. However, if you dial back the requirements, the technology is probably at least decent for recognizing if someone is male or female, young or old. That's why we see it being used for age verification in Japan, and now it's starting to get used for customized billboards around the world. The billboards include small hidden cameras that try to determine general demographic, and then the billboard will play a video add targeted to you. It's not quite Minority Report where the ads are perfectly targeted -- but unlike in using the technology to search for terrorists, these billboards don't need to be quite as exact. And, of course, the other benefit to all of this is that the billboard companies (in theory) get a better idea of who's actually looking at the billboard -- something that companies have struggled with for years.

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Crowdsourcing Law Enforcement

from the first-10-callers-to-identify-this-fugitive... dept

In a move that seems calculated to evoke the film adaptation of 1984, the FBI has announced a plan to begin using some 150 Clear Channel digital billboards in major American cities to show national security alerts, information about recent crimes, and photographs of fugitive criminals and missing persons, all with real-time updates.

A pilot billboard in Philadelphia has already helped to capture several wanted criminals, and a spokesman for the outdoor advertising industry suggests that these kinds of publicity tactics can be as useful at demoralizing criminals as they are at generating tips:

"What law enforcement tells us is it contributes to an environment where the criminal feels they have no where to go. A lot of times they end up just giving up."

In a way, the surprising thing is that law enforcement officials hadn't previously taken such visible steps to make use of the distributed eyes and ears of ordinary citizens. The problem, of course, is that publicity can also generate lots of time-consuming false leads. An advertisement currently ubiquitous on New York subways applauds the thousands of New Yorkers who phoned in reports of suspicious packages in the past year. But since we haven't heard reports of thousands of bombs recovered on the A train, it seems safe to surmise that the noise-to-signal ratio on such tips is quite high. As for national security alerts, our experience with color-coded national security warnings, and the attendant spectacle of panicked citizens mobbing Home Depot for plastic sheeting and duct tape, suggest that the Bureau might be well advised to exercise a bit of circumspection about those real-time updates.

Julian Sanchez is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Julian Sanchez and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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