Week+Ten


 * March 16, 2009 - Guest - Joseph Ferenbok

- Previously very racist notion of taking pictures of Asian people because they were believed to all look the same. - In the past we would have been very opposed to having our pictures on ID cards. - Now it is considered the norm.

21st Century - 2000: FRVT - 2003: ICAO adopts the face as the primary biometrics for global air travel - 2004: Real ID act - 2008: Photo card act - 2009: EDL/face.com - 2010: ePassort/Recognizer **

- Database for potential repeat offenders with pictures of criminals. - What good is it to have suicide bombers in a registry for potential repeat offenders when they will likely be dead after their first offense.

- Why would the aviation agency use faces to identify someone? - People can be surveyed without their knowing. It is possible for cameras to capture an image of a persons face without them being aware, whereas a person knows when they are giving a finger print, iris scan, DNA sample, etc.

- When you see a photograph, most of the interaction is localized. - The person looking is present.

Google StreetView is an example of surveillance today. - Google StreetView is taking measures to attempt to hide peoples faces or license plates by blurring them out. This technology is not completely accurate. (Example in lecture was of the horse's face blurred out, but the people in the carriage were not blurred).

People can assume that they are seen on camera over 300 times a day.

Machines can now store identities and create profiles through surveillance.

What is the problem with teaching computers to recognize faces? - Alice and Wonderland example - "The face is what one goes by, generally" - 'That's just what I complain of,' 'Your face is the same as everybody has - the two eyes, so - '(marking their place in the air with his thumb) 'nose in the middle, mouth under. It's always the same. Now if you had the two eyes on the same side of the nose, for instance - or the mouth at the top - that would be some help.'"

- Why do we keep using faces to identify people? A persons iris is much more unique.

Alberta Border Agency - Merge of Biometrics and Surveillance. - In the future we will have "Smart Cameras". These cameras will be able to track people from one location to the next and between cameras.

- Biometrics: used in the process of individuation of human beings. - Machine-assisted systems (including all of the hardware, software, firmware, and the supporting information management and retrieval infrastructure). - Based on surrogates (or images). - Of physical and/or behavioral

Now welfare cases use more intense ways of identifying people to prevent "double-dipping"

"Your face is not a bar-code" - Weight gain/loss, surgery - all can affect your identity.

Biometric travel documents - Smart Borders - ICAO - US-Visit - US + Candian Biometric Passport - EU biometric ID

Fundamental problem with faces and biometrics: - Biometrics can never be 100% because computers can not accurately compare two different images. They can only recognize identical images - even if you take a picture of the same person, same place, same lighting condition, but on a different day - computers will have difficulty comparing the two.

HCI - Human Computer Interaction > Authentication>Identification - Theory states that computers will be able to understand what humans mean.

- Since 2008, LCD screens are becoming popular in retail stores. Some of these screens have cameras that record who you are and how long you looked at the product. - Reward programs like Air Miles record your shopping habits.

- We don't know who is using images of our face or how they are using them.

If you store images, there is the potential to link things to it in the future.

Video Analytics - Algorithms integrated with video and called Intelligent Video Software systems

In the process of identifying a face there are multiple steps: Face segmentation Face detection Face tracking Face localization (precise) Face Classification, Face Identification, Facial Expression Recognition, Face Memorization

ID (Re) Design - Conceptualize privacy as an individual's right to information self-determination

Design problem - How can identification practices and tokens be redesigned with both security and privacy in mind?

If your identity is disputed, it is your responsibility to prove otherwise. Computer databases are trusted by officials over individuals word-of-mouth.

Two important questions: - Do you match our records? - Are you the right person to get social benefit?

EDL Enhanced Drivers License that sends images to the border when you cross. RFID chips can be read from 10 meters away. People do not know they are being scanned.

*ADDED: First Part of lecture where the history of surveillance is discussed*
Identifying Faces: -One way of linking bodies to records -Other ways include: fingerprints, seals/crests, names, signatures, etc. -using pictures on identity is a rather modern concept…used to think that this is a racially limiting method of identification -a lot of attitudes we have of faces are rooted in slavery and racism

The Face: -is the practice of using representations of faces as documents of identity

The Modern story of identifying faces: -representing identity using images of faces has drawn out history in western culture -eg. Caesar did not really look like representations of them…more important not to represent the specific individual but the power of the face and the authority of that representation

15th Century -(re)invention of oil painting à linseed oil with pigments allows artists to get realistic faces thru painting -invention of canvas -unprecedented realistic representation eg.1432 Jan Van Eyck -for the first time you can paint realistic representations of people and b/c of canvas, could carry and transport them -initial use of portraiture was to represent people of official rank….would send pictures of proposed spouses to other -have a change in the way faces are being used -portraits now become portable -moving a mosaic on a wall to show somebody in the next country is more difficult than thru canvas

17th century -faces linked to bodies during times of plague for administration statistics and access control to resources à to help count -every individual has to report to a specific window to be seen/counted/measured -why would you want to appear in front of window? -tied the giving of food to # of ppl who were at the windows -identified people with their faces -the practice itself was a kind of technology by linking faces to bodies…a record

18th century -faces linked to bodies and internal states (physiognomy) -invention of the silhouette and popularization of it -resulted in lots of faces being marketed and shared with people -in this time, a preacher out of northern Germanic states, Lavater à Patron of modern physiognomy, said that maybe there is a systematic way of learning who we are out of our faces -certain facial features associated with certain characteristics of a persons inner state -tradition of equating how one looked with ones inner state -Lavater believed that faces are not linked to arbitrary things but who we are and our internal soul…the way a face is shaped is by the soul pushing out and the environment pushing in and in the middle we have what we look like -begin to have this concept that people who look criminal have certain features -stereotypes of what criminals look like -Lavater’s arguments are still being felt today -when Lavater published his works, 144 reprints of his texts, captured imagination of early pioneers like Gaulten, Alphonse Bertillon, all whom were working on this problem of identification -we know incorporate the profile shot of criminals b/c he argued that was the best way to get a facial feature of the face

19th century -identification for slavery and social ills (criminals. Insanity. And prostitution) -seen as negative way of portraying people, stripping down of paintings and into a mechanical, soulless way of representing people -at the very onset, images of faces are only used in criminality -started taking pictures of criminals hoping they could identify them -why is it important to identify people in the 19th century? -huge industrialization during this period -more people in cities, but also more crime as a result -what British government does at the turn of the century = punish those who are repeat offenders more strictly than first time offenders -problem à how would you know who is a repeat offender? Unless you have a way of matching identities, would not be able to know who was a repeat offender -use of photograph as way to document, identify and link bodies with criminal activities -had huge galleries that displayed images of people who were criminals, to show people what criminals look like -linked to racism b/c many of these criminal images were of people not from the dominant class -used to mark borders à 1892 Geary Act introduces photographs as records of identity for Chinese Immigrants -anyone from China needed to bring documents with them at all times to prove that they were legal residents -justification they had at the time was that all Chinese look alike so we need photographs to prove that these are legitimate immigrants to the US

Criminality, physiognomy and categorical photography -Gaulton -spent a good portion of his life trying to keep up with his cousin -categorical photography à from Lavator’s work -superimposed images of people onto one negative to generalize types -of his 102 patents, the only thing that he really ended up being known for was the father of Eugenics -the reason he tried so hard is b/c his cousin was Darwin

Alphonse Bertillon à French detective -system of archiving and record keeping -up until this point there was no way to do so -what he did was he developed a 37 point system where you could measure 37 parts of the body -faithfully archive photographs and find who people are -this system was cumbersome but introduced a system of filing photographs

20th century -system of recording faces seen as a bad thing, associated with criminals and the insane -associated with prostitutes, ethnic cleansing 1914: US calls for photographs to be added to travel documents after spy was executed in Britain (he was executed for passing secrets to the Germans while in Britain on a US passport) -by the end of this declared everyone needs photograph on passport b/c they “prove” who they are 1920: League of Nations adopts new global passport system that specifically requires the inclusion of a photo of the bearer 1940: Nazi’s use Galton’s “Jewish Type” for genocide

-after WWI, passport becomes new regime to identify people -1992 Japan becomes the first to digitize the image on passport -Malaysia issues the EPassport, with microprocessor embedded -there is this enrolment of historic precedent, prior frames, from oil paintings to photography to digitization of faces