facial recognition technology

Cognitec Unveils Real Time Face Detection Camera

The FaceVACS-VideoScan C5 camera from Cognitec. Germany-based facial recognition technology developer Cognitec has unveiled a new video camera featuring a built-in facial recognition system. The FaceVACS-VideoScan C5 camera is an IP video camera that offers high image quality over low bandwidth. The video camera’s face biometrics technology employs gapless, real-time face detection and tracking, and produces lossless video streams for each face that it detects.

Skepticism About Alipay Facial Recognition Rises

Face Recognition
In the wake of Alipay’s announcement that it is going to use facial recognition technology for user authentication in mobile payments, some are starting to ask if that kind of security is really enough. Dan Moren, in particular, says he has found a flaw in the system in a new Popular Science article.

Netatmo Welcome Camera Recognizes Faces, Alerts You When Kids Get Home

Netatmo introduced an innovative home monitoring camera at CES 2015 in Las Vegas. The Netatmo Welcome features facial recognition technology and can alert users when each family member arrives home and if a stranger enters the house. Netatmo is best known for Weather Station,

Brooklyn White Flags: Five Teen Suspects Being Searched In Brooklyn Bridge Security Breach

Mysterious White Flags Fly on Brooklyn Bridge — Police were searching Wednesday for a skateboard-toting youth and four pals after being spotted crossing the Brooklyn Bridge just 20 minutes before its flags were stolen. After the mysterious appearance of two high-flying white flags fluttering atop the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City raised speculations Tuesday […]

Scapegoating Face Recognition Technology As Privacy Wormhole Doesn’t Solve Anything

Facial recognition technology is facing a blitz of negative media with wormhole-like theories that this technology results in mass surveillance, destroys anonymity, and will forever change the way people behave in public. Advocates of this theory are calling for federal privacy regulation that will give a face a right of privacy it has never had […]

Cognitec Upgrades FaceVACS Video Scan Biometric

Face recognition technology provider Cognitec Systems has released its latest version of FaceVACS-VideoScan. Now available in version 5.2, the technology that allows for real-time face recognition in live video streams includes the latest facial biometric algorithm B8, as well as major system upgrades. The upgrades are a response to the growing number of use cases […]

Coca-Cola Is Using Face-Recognition Technology On Vending Machines In Australia To Sell More Drinks

Coke is trialing biometrics and facial recognition technology to increase its drink sales in Australia. Teaming up with creative agency TKM9, Coca-Cola Amatil is trialing 50 interactive fridges across Australia which can serve ad campaigns, collect sales data, and detect customer interaction via a clear LED digital screen on the front door and a camera. […]

Why Facial Recognition Isn’t The Way of the Future…Yet

It’s the how the future is meant to be, isn’t it? The good guys need to find a bad guy in a crowd of people, so they start scanning the environment with a camera that is equipped with facial recognition technology. Seconds later, they scan a face that’s a positive match with an entry in […]

Facial Recognition Market – Global Research Report, Size, Share And Forecast, 2013-2019

Facial recognition technology as a biometric security measure has gained significant traction in recent years driven by growth in security measures around the globe which itself is propelled by rise in incidents of crime and terrorism. The components of facial recognition market include hardware, software, and services. Software utilized in this industry include modeling, database, […]

Missouri Courthouse Becomes Test Site For Facial Recognition Security Program

By JENNIFER S. MANN St Louis Post-Dispatch Updated: 2014-02-24T13:02:56Z February 24 By JENNIFER S. MANN St. Louis Post-Dispatch ST. LOUIS — It took three minutes for James Palmer to make it from the entrance of an Arkansas courthouse to the chambers of the judge he intended to kill. Dressed in a long coat that hid two handguns and a rifle, Palmer went undetected on Sept. 13, 2011 — until he started firing. A secretary was injured in the leg, but the judge was at home that day. Palmer fired more than 70 rounds before dying in a firefight with officers. St. Louis judges considered such a scenario in approving a pilot program for security at the Carnahan Courthouse downtown that brings a new twist to law enforcement’s emerging use of facial recognition technology. Unlike programs that have alarmed civil libertarians for snapping pictures of people to run through giant databases of mugshots and arrest records, what’s being done here is much more targeted. If a judge or prosecutor knows of a particular threat — someone such as Palmer, for example, who was angry at the judge over divorce and custody issues — that individual’s photograph is put into a computer system. It sends an alert if that person is spotted by cameras at the courthouse entrances. A group of current and retired St. Louis police officers developed the technology over eight years and recently formed a company, Blue Line Security Solutions, to market it. The St. Louis Circuit Court […]

As Facial Regulation Technology Is Poised For Everyday Life, Regulators Express Concern

Lexology author: Camille Calman Recent news stories have highlighted the negative privacy implications of facial recognition technology. For example, a new app for Google Glass will pair facial recognition with data from social media and dating sites, allowing users to instantly see personal information about strangers they pass on the street. (Though Google does not permit facial recognition software to be used on its Google Glass platform, the app could be used on jailbroken Google Glass devices.)  Forbes  reports that Senator Al Franken has written to the app developer to express deep concern and ask it to delay the app’s launch, or at least require people to opt in before their data is displayed to others. Meanwhile, the  New York Times  reports that some retail stores and airports already use facial recognition technology, and other such uses are on the way. The Times quotes Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, as saying, “This is another reason that we need omnibus privacy legislation.” On Feb. 6, 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Department of Commerce, held the first in a series of meetings about the commercial use of facial recognition technology. The more than 120 attendees included representatives from business, advertising, and government as well as privacy advocates.  Seven additional meetings  are scheduled between February and June of this year. The NTIA hopes that the meetings will lead to a voluntary code of conduct. It’s clear that facial recognition involves a […]

Facial Recognition Is Taking Form in 2014

If facial recognition or other biometric technologies had been integrated into the cards (credit, debit, store-issued cards), then the Target data breach last December might not have wreaked havoc, because a person other than the card holder would not be able to use the stolen cards at stores and online purchases are often shipped to the card holder’s home address. A silver lining is that the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) now applies facial recognition technology, even though the applied technology has some restrictions. For example, I was told not to smile when having my photo taken at the DMV office in Newark, NJ. Facial recognition, which utilizes the statistical features of face images to recognize people, is the most common way for human beings to recognize each other. If computers could recognize humans equally well, many problems could be solved. We may struggle with remembering various passwords for our accounts or leave our ID cards at home, but we always bring our face with us. The expected trend for personal and cyber security is that more and more organizations will deploy facial recognition technology to safeguard our accounts and credit cards as we get ever more connected to the wired and wireless networks. Indeed, facial verification will replace the passcodes on our smartphones and tablets (iOS and Android). Facial image search will augment text search on Internet portals, such as Facebook, YouTube, as well as Google. If by means of facial and pattern recognition a gun were able […]

‘Soft’ Biometric Cameras Are Watching: Govt. Intelligence Hopes To Use Cameras To Recognize People By The Shape Of Their Ears

Facial Recognition Research Intensifies Research on facial recognition technology is being stepped up to include ‘soft’ biometrics, such as using ears as a unique element of identificaiton. (Photo: Igor Stevanovic / Rhonda J. Miller) Facial recognition has become an increasingly common element in security surveillance, enabling identification of faces in images taken from a distance and in a crowd. But facial recognition is just a step along the way to more and better identification techniques being sought by the U.S. government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).  The agency has challenged top research teams to revolutionize how machines recognize people with a competition announced Nov. 8, according to New Scientist magazine.  Like Us on Facebook The announcement on the IARPA website, dated Nov. 8 said, “Intelligence analysts often rely on facial images to assist in establishing the identity of an individual, but the sheer volume of possibly relevant video and photographs can be daunting.  While automated face recognition tools can assist analysts in this task, current tools perform best on well-posed, frontal facial photos taken for identification purposes…IARPA seeks dramatic improvements in unconstrained face recognition by funding rigorous, high-quality research drawing on a variety of fields to develop novel representations to encode the shape, texture, and dynamics of a face and new ways to use these techniques for faster and more accurate search and retrieval.” The typical approach requires sorting through frame after frame of camera footage to find ones that offer a good chance for identification, then to […]

CMU Facial Recognition Technology Could Be Future For Catching Criminals

(Photo Credit: KDKA) PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Much like fingerprints, our faces are unique – no two exactly alike. As human beings, we see the differences, but what can a computer see? In the movie “Minority Report,” cameras in a shopping mall recognize Tom Cruise’s character and ads speak directly to him. While that’s fiction, new technology at Carnegie Mellon University is not. Inside the CyLab Biometrics Center at CMU, is a drone that’s programmed to seek out faces. It wants to take your picture. And in the next room, is something they’re working on for the Department of Defense. The camera the drone uses can see someone’s eye form a distance and then the system checks to see if that person has been entered into its database – or is a possible security risk. But the center’s director Mario Savvides showed us something remarkable. They started by taking a picture of KDKA’s David Highfield and adding it to their computer. “First step, we analyze the face to extract 79 landmarks,” said Savvides. It mapped out his face and then determined that he’s male and Caucasian. It’s similar to the fictional mapping seen on many TV shows, where detectives compare faces. But at CMU, from a single picture of Highfield looking straight forward, “We are able to show if we can generate a 3-D model of your face from that single 2-D photo,” Savvides said. The computer is able to figure out what he looks like form a variety of […]

FBI Exploring New Facial And Behavioral Recognition From Surveillance Cameras

(Before It’s News) B4INREMOTE-aHR0cDovLzIuYnAuYmxvZ3Nwb3QuY29tLy1kcU4zZmMtcW0zSS9VbnZ1bTYxeWlwSS9BQUFBQUFBQVZuOC83NXFBd2tNN0xIUS9zMjAwL0NDVFYtY2FtZXJhLW9uLXBvbGUtMzAweDIwMC5qcGc= image credit: freefotouk/Flickr Madison Ruppert Activist Post The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is reportedly considering new video analytic software that would enable identification of suspects in videos and still imagery based on both facial and behavioral recognition. This type of technology has been under development for quite a while, with a patent awarded for behavioral recognition software last year. Indeed, it has been said that the future of CCTV is in the field of behavioral recognition and so-called “remote biometrics.” However, the system that the FBI is working on could also scan footage against records of objects and places in addition to people, in order to detect possible suspects and their location. “The FBI is currently undertaking a major issue study of video and digital image processing and video/digital image analytic capabilities to identify current capabilities, assess gaps, and develop a roadmap for the FBI’s future video analytics architecture,” the bureau stated in a contracting notice published on Oct. 30. Contractors are to submit written proposals by Nov. 13 and up to 30 vendors will be invited to present their technology at FBI headquarters on Dec. 11. Unlike the facial recognition systems that are increasingly being rolled out across the United States with the FBI’s help , this technology would analyze backgrounds. The Department of Homeland Security, meanwhile, is funding research on more accurate long-distance facial recognition technology . The new technology would compute “the degree of similarity among pedestrians, graffiti designs, buildings in […]

Grocery Store Shelves Could Soon Watch While You Shop

Supermarket Decision Supermarket giant Mondelēz  International is developing “smart shelves” to identify consumers’ age and gender while tracking their shopping habits.  The company (formerly Kraft Foods), which makes Oreos, Trident gum, Wheat Thins, and a host of other snack foods, wants to use the technology —  expected to be on supermarket shelves by 2015 —  to better target their advertising, The Wall Street Journal’s Clint Boulton reports .  “When people walk by, it’s a missed opportunity,” Mondelēz CIO Mark Dajani told the Journal. “We must know how the consumer behaves in the store.” Here’s how the technology would work: Sensors would be placed in the aisles where Mondelēz  products are displayed. Using facial recognition technology provided by Microsoft’s Kinect , the devices would identify the age and gender of consumers perusing the aisles and track which people are most likely to purchase certain products. The data collected would be sent to Mondelēz  in real-time. “Knowing that a consumer is showing interest in the product gives us the opportunity to engage with them real-time,”  Mondelez spokeswoman Valerie Moens said in an e-mailed statement. The company plans to use the d ata collected to better target its advertising and discount offers to the groups most likely to buy certain products. The technology could also be used to alert the grocer when it’s time to reorder certain products. The sensors would not collect any photos, video or other personal information regarding consumers, according to Moens. “Privacy is of utmost importance, so Smart […]

FTC To Scrutinize New Facebook Facial Recognition Feature

U.S. officials will examine changes to Facebook Inc’s privacy policy to determine whether they violate a 2011 agreement with federal regulators, a Federal Trade Commission spokesman confirmed Wednesday after certain changes drew fire from privacy advocates. Much of the criticism has focused on a proposed “Tag Suggest” feature that would use facial recognition technology to […]

NEC Participates In ISAF Security 2013

NEC Corporation today announced its participation in ISAF Security 2013, one of the most comprehensive security exhibitions in Turkey and the Middle East region, from 19 to 22 September 2013 at Istanbul Expo Centre, Turkey. NEC will showcase a range of Public Safety Solutions at stand A850, Hall 9, including: 1.Facial Recognition Technology NEC’s facial […]

Video Surveillance, Facial Recognition Technology, and the Law

Omnipresent video surveillance and facial recognition technology have staked a new frontier in the American legal system, as local communities, state officials, and even the U.S. Supreme Court consider questions about surveillance, technology, and privacy. Ohio law enforcement has been using facial recognition technology to match driver’s license photos and surveillance footage for months, without […]