facial recognition systems

TRX
July 24, 2013
91:
@13:
No, I don't think that picking people out by their appearance will work, there will be too many people who look just like him.
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There are fewer faces than people.

I know of two people who look enough like me to fool close friends. One is Hassan Nasrullah, leader of the Hezbollah. The other is a disc jockey in California, who not only has my face, he also has the same name and was born in the same town in the same month. If my mother wasn't dead, I'd ask her if she was *really sure* she didn't deliver twins.

The US Feds started installing their first facial-recognition systems in some airports and bus stations back in the late 1980s. I don't know how pervasive the system is now, but I'm always leery of a false positive when I have business in a Federal area.

As for Prince Wossname and a panopticon society... what is he going to be doing that no other child, teen, or young adult isn't going to do? And in a few years, he'll just another celebrity of thousands. Sure, he'll probably have some followers, but for the most part, I expect he'll be lost in the noise.

TRX
July 27, 2013
201:
That, and if you want to take pictures of things that move.

The time from pressing the button to the shutter snapping was below my threshold of perception. Alas, I've yet to use digital camera that responds that quickly. I've taken a lot of high-resolution digital shots of where drag cars were sitting a few tenths of a second ago... empty race track and a bit of tire smoke.