MassPrivateIRichland, Washington – Hockey fans at the season opener of the Tri-City Americans will have a chance to help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security improve its facial recognition capabilities.
Video will be taped by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at the Sept. 21 game in a portion of the Toyota Center in Kennewick.
It is planned to be used by the U.S. government to test the capabilities of facial recognition software that is available or in the prototype stage.
Eventually, state-of-the-art facial recognition technologies could be used to identify terrorists and criminals in public areas, according to the national lab in Richland. The Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate works to make technology available to agencies ranging from local police offices to the U.S. Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
PNNL previously has collected video at the Toyota Center for work with the Department of Homeland Security. But past video either has not captured members of the public or has been too low resolution to identify faces.
Hockey fans who don’t want to be on the video will be given options to avoid the cameras.(won’t that flag them as “suspicious” by law enforcement)
Spy cameras on street corners and in public places, could be used to monitor the movements of Americans who are not suspected of a crime.
No video will be shot in the arena and signs will be set up in the corridors around the arena to direct people to areas without cameras. PNNL staff will be available to answer questions.
PNNL has purchased 46 seats at the arena to make sure walking areas are clear for those who don’t want their video captured, said PNNL engineer Marcia Kimura. Information explaining the project also has been mailed to season ticket holders.
“If they didn’t want to be videotaped, they could very easily not be videotaped,” said Nick Lombardo, a PNNL project manager.
Critics of how surveillance powers are increasingly being abused in light of the plethora of recent NSA scandals probably won’t see facial recognition technology being in the best interests of those who still value privacy.
The federal government is making progress on developing a surveillance system that would pair computers with video cameras to scan crowds and automatically identify people by their faces, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with researchers working on the project.
The Department of Homeland Security tested a crowd-scanning project called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System — or BOSS — last fall after two years of government-financed development. Although the system is not ready for use, researchers say they are making significant advances. That alarms privacy advocates, who say that now is the time for the government to establish oversight rules and limits on how it will someday be used.
DHS’s ‘Biometric Optical Surveillance System (BOSS)’ has no in-built privacy safeguards and that databases of facial profiles may not be limited to just criminals and terrorists.
“Based on the documents that we received, that’s an educated guess or a speculation and not a certainty that’s what DHS intends to do,” said EPIC’s Julia Horowitz
It is strongly suspected that facial recognition cameras are already being used to track people around major cities as part of the Trapwire surveillance program, details of which were leaked last year.
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/09/12/2570354/tri-city-hockey-crowds-to-be-taped.html
http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-to-test-face-scanning-cameras-at-tri-city-hockey-game.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/21/us/facial-scanning-is-making-gains-in-surveillance.html?_r=0
DHS’s biometric Biometric Optical Surveillance System or BOSS should concern every American:
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/08/dhs-biometric-crowd-scanning-project.html
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http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2013/09/dhs-begins-using-facial-recognition.html
Our government will fall long before this technology actually works, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it.