FACIAL RECOGNITION SYSTEM

Questions:
The task in groups.
1. Watch the video and read the text. Prepare a brief summary of all the main
aspects mentioned.
https://www.wired.com/story/hard-ban-facial-recognition-tech-iphone/

The article discusses the implications of Apple's decision to ban facial recognition
technology on its new iPhone lineup, citing privacy concerns as the main driver behind the
move. It highlights the potential for misuse of facial recognition technology by governments,
law enforcement agencies, and tech companies, citing several cases of abuse and bias in the
past. The article also discusses the limitations of facial recognition technology and the
potential forfalse positives and negatives, raising concerns about its accuracy and reliability.
Overall, the article emphasizes the need for greater regulation and oversight of facial
recognition technology to ensure that it is used responsibly and ethically.
2. Try to answer the questions and include your answers in the summary part.
 What are the pluses and minuses of Facial Recognition System?
The pluses of facial recognition systems are their ability to identify individuals in crowded
public places without their cooperation, but the minuses include their lower reliability and
efficiency compared to other biometric techniques, their high false acceptance and rejection
rates, and their sensitivity to factors such as facial expressions, viewing angles, and image
resolution. Data privacy is also a major concern with the storage of biometric data.
 Which idea is closer to you? Present your arguments.
o A constant surveillance state is not that bad if we are more secure with it.
o It is not worth it to sacrifice personal freedom over constant surveillance and
security.
o “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is completely true:
everything should be public, how else could we achieve true security?

It is important to consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of a constant surveillance

state. On the one hand, surveillance can potentially increase public safety and prevent crimes.
On the other hand, constant surveillance can be seen as a violation of personal privacy and
can lead to abuse of power. Ultimately, any decision to implement a constant surveillance
state should be made with careful consideration of the potential consequences and the need to
balance security with individual freedom and liberty.

Facial recognition system

A facial recognition system is a technology capable of identifying or verifying a person
from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. There are multiple methods in
which facial recognition systems work, but in general, they work by comparing
selected facial features from given image with faces within a database. It is also described as
a Biometric Artificial Intelligence based application that can uniquely identify a person by
analysing patterns based on the person's facial textures and shape.
While initially a form of computer application, it has seen wider uses in recent times on
mobile platforms and in other forms of technology, such as robotics. It is typically used as
access control in security systems and can be compared to other biometrics such
as fingerprint or eye iris recognition systems. Although the accuracy of facial recognition
system as a biometric technology is lower than iris recognition and fingerprint recognition, it
is widely adopted due to its contactless and non-invasive process. Recently, it has also
become popular as a commercial identification and marketing tool. Other applications include
advanced human-computer interaction, video surveillance, automatic indexing of images, and
video database, among others.

Techniques for face acquisition

Essentially, the process of face recognition is performed in two steps. The first
involves feature extraction and selection and the second is the classification of objects. Later
developments introduced varying technologies to the procedure. Some of the most notable
include the following techniques:
Traditional
Some face recognition algorithms identify facial features by extracting landmarks, or
features, from an image of the subject's face. For example, an algorithm may analyse the
relative position, size, and/or shape of the eyes, nose, cheekbones, and jaw. These features are
then used to search for other images with matching features.
Other algorithms normalize a gallery of face images and then compress the face data, only
saving the data in the image that is useful for face recognition. A probe image is then
compared with the face data. One of the earliest successful systems is based on template
matching techniques applied to a set of salient facial features, providing a sort of compressed
face representation.
Recognition algorithms can be divided into two main approaches: geometric, which looks at
distinguishing features, or photometric, which is a statistical approach that distils an image
into values and compares the values with templates to eliminate variances. Some classify
these algorithms into two broad categories: holistic and feature-based models. The former
attempts to recognize the face in its entirety while the feature-based subdivide into
components such as according to features and analyse each as well as its spatial location with
respect to other features.
Popular recognition algorithms include principal component analysis using eigenfaces, linear
discriminant analysis, elastic bunch graph matching using the Fisher face algorithm,
the hidden Markov model, the multilinear subspace learning using tensor representation, and
the neuronal motivated dynamic link matching.
3-Dimensional recognition
Three-dimensional face recognition technique uses 3D sensors to capture information about
the shape of a face. This information is then used to identify distinctive features on the
surface of a face, such as the contour of the eye sockets, nose, and chin.
One advantage of 3D face recognition is that it is not affected by changes in lighting like
other techniques. It can also identify a face from a range of viewing angles, including a
profile view. Three-dimensional data points from a face vastly improve the precision of face
recognition. 3D research is enhanced by the development of sophisticated sensors that do a
better job of capturing 3D face imagery. The sensors work by projecting structured light onto
the face. Up to a dozen or more of these image sensors can be placed on the same CMOS
chip—each sensor captures a different part of the spectrum.
Even a perfect 3D matching technique could be sensitive to expressions. For that goal a group
at the Technion applied tools from metric geometry to treat expressions as isometries.
A new method is to introduce a way to capture a 3D picture by using three tracking cameras
that point at different angles; one camera will be pointing at the front of the subject, second
one to the side, and third one at an angle. All these cameras will work together so it can track
a subject's face in real time and be able to face detect and recognize.
Skin texture analysis
Another emerging trend uses the visual details of the skin, as captured in standard digital or
scanned images. This technique, called Skin Texture Analysis, turns the unique lines,
patterns, and spots apparent in a person's skin into a mathematical space.
Surface Texture Analysis works much the same way facial recognition does. A picture is
taken of a patch of skin, called a skin print. That patch is then broken up into smaller blocks.
Using algorithms to turn the patch into a mathematical, measurable space, the system will
then distinguish any lines, pores and the actual skin texture. It can identify the contrast
between identical pairs, which are not yet possible using facial recognition software alone.
Tests have shown that with the addition of skin texture analysis, performance in recognizing
faces can increase 20 to 25 percent.
Facial recognition combining different techniques.
As every method has its advantages and disadvantages, technology companies have
amalgamated the traditional, 3D recognition and Skin Textual Analysis, to create recognition
systems that have higher rates of success.
Combined techniques have an advantage over other systems. It is relatively insensitive to
changes in expression, including blinking, frowning or smiling and has the ability to
compensate for moustache or beard growth and the appearance of eyeglasses. The system is
also uniform with respect to race and gender.
Thermal cameras
A different form of taking input data for face recognition is by using thermal cameras, by this
procedure the cameras will only detect the shape of the head and it will ignore the subject
accessories such as glasses, hats, or makeup. Unlike conventional cameras, thermal cameras
can capture facial imagery even in low-light and night-time conditions without using a flash
and exposing the position of the camera. However, a problem with using thermal pictures for
face recognition is that the databases for face recognition is limited. Diego Socolinsky and
Andrea Selinger (2004) research the use of thermal face recognition in real life and operation
sceneries, and at the same time build a new database of thermal face images. The research
uses low-sensitive, low-resolution ferroelectric electrics sensors that can acquire long-wave
thermal infrared (LWIR). The results show that a fusion of LWIR and regular visual cameras
has greater results in outdoor probes. Indoor results show that visual has a 97.05% accuracy,
while LWIR has 93.93%, and the fusion has 98.40%, however on the outdoor proves visual
has 67.06%, LWIR 83.03%, and fusion has 89.02%. The study used 240 subjects over a
period of 10 weeks to create a new database. The data was collected on sunny, rainy, and
cloudy days.
In 2018, researchers from the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) developed a technique
that would allow them to match facial imagery obtained using a thermal camera with those in
databases that were captured using a conventional camera. This approach utilized artificial
intelligence and machine learning to allow researchers to visibly compare conventional and
thermal facial imagery. Known as a cross-spectrum synthesis method due to how it bridges
facial recognition from two different imaging modalities, this method synthesize a single
image by analysing multiple facial regions and details. It consists of a non-linear regression
model that maps a specific thermal image into a corresponding visible facial image and an
optimization issue that projects the latent projection back into the image space.
ARL scientists have noted that the approach works by combining global information (i.e.
features across the entire face) with local information (i.e. features regarding the eyes, nose,
and mouth). In addition to enhancing the discriminability of the synthesized image, the facial
recognition system can be used to transform a thermal face signature into a refined visible
image of a face. According to performance tests conducted at ARL, researchers found that the
multi-region cross-spectrum synthesis model demonstrated a performance improvement of
about 30% over baseline methods and about 5% over state-of-the-art methods. It has also
been tested for landmark detection for thermal images.

Application
Social media platforms have adopted facial recognition capabilities to diversify their
functionalities to attract a wider user base amidst stiff competition from different
applications.
Founded in 2013, Looksery went on to raise money for its face modification app on
Kickstarter. After successful crowdfunding, Looksery launched in October 2014. The
application allows video chat with others through a special filter for faces that modifies the
look of users. While there is image augmenting applications such as FaceTune and
Perfect365, they are limited to static images, whereas Looksery allowed augmented reality to
live videos. In late 2015, Snapchat purchased Looksery, which would then become its
landmark lenses function.
Snapchat's animated lenses, which used facial recognition technology, revolutionized and
redefined the selfie, by allowing users to add filters to change the way they look. The
selection of filters changes every day, some examples include one that makes users look like
an old and wrinkled version of themselves, one that airbrushes their skin, and one that places
a virtual flower crown on top of their head. The dog filter is the most popular filter that
helped propel the continual success of Snapchat, with popular celebrities such as Gigi
Hadid, Kim Kardashian and the likes regularly posting videos of themselves with the dog
filter.
DeepFace is a deep learning facial recognition system created by a research group
at Facebook. It identifies human faces in digital images. It employs a nine-layer neural
net with over 120 million connection weights, and was trained on four million images
uploaded by Facebook users. The system is said to be 97% accurate, compared to 85% for the
FBI's Next Generation Identification system. One of the creators of the software, Yaniv
Taigman, came to Facebook via their acquisition of Face.com.
ID verification
The emerging use of facial recognition is in the use of ID verification services. Many
companies and others are working in the market now to provide these services to banks,
ICOs, and other e-businesses.
Face ID
Apple introduced Face ID on the flagship iPhone X as a biometric authentication successor to
the Touch ID, a fingerprint based system. Face ID has a facial recognition sensor that consists
of two parts: a "Romeo" module that projects more than 30,000 infrared dots onto the user's
face, and a "Juliet" module that reads the pattern. The pattern is sent to a local "Secure
Enclave" in the device's central processing unit (CPU) to confirm a match with the phone
owner's face. The facial pattern is not accessible by Apple. The system will not work with
eyes closed, to prevent unauthorized access.
The technology learns from changes in a user's appearance, and therefore works with hats,
scarves, glasses, and many sunglasses, beard and makeup.
It also works in the dark. This is done by using a "Flood Illuminator", which is a dedicated
infrared flash that throws out invisible infrared light onto the user's face to properly read the
30,000 facial points.

Advantages and disadvantages

Compared to other biometric systems
One key advantage of a facial recognition system that it can person mass identification as it
does not require the cooperation of the test subject to work. Properly designed systems
installed in airports, multiplexes, and other public places can identify individuals among the
crowd, without passers-by even being aware of the system.
However, as compared to other biometric techniques, face recognition may not be most
reliable and efficient. Quality measures are very important in facial recognition systems as
large degrees of variations are possible in face images. Factors such as illumination,
expression, pose and noise during face capture can affect the performance of facial
recognition systems. Among all biometric systems, facial recognition has the highest false
acceptance and rejection rates, thus questions have been raised on the effectiveness of face
recognition software in cases of railway and airport security.
Weaknesses
Ralph Gross, a researcher at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute in 2008, describes one
obstacle related to the viewing angle of the face: "Face recognition has been getting pretty
good at full frontal faces and 20 degrees off, but as soon as you go towards profile, there've
been problems. „Besides the pose variations, low-resolution face images are also very hard to
recognize. This is one of the main obstacles of face recognition in surveillance systems.
Face recognition is less effective if facial expressions vary. A big smile can render the system
less effective. For instance: Canada, in 2009, allowed only neutral facial expressions in
passport photos.
There is also inconstancy in the datasets used by researchers. Researchers may use anywhere
from several subjects to scores of subjects and a few hundred images to thousands of images.
It is important for researchers to make available the datasets they used to each other or have
at least a standard dataset.
Data privacy is the main concern when it comes to storing biometrics data in companies. Data
stores about face or biometrics can be accessed by the third party if not stored properly or
hacked. In the Techworld, Parris adds (2017), “Hackers will already be looking to replicate
people's faces to trick facial recognition systems, but the technology has proved harder to
hack than fingerprint or voice recognition technology in the past.”
Ineffectiveness
Critics of the technology complain that the London Borough of Newham scheme has, as of
2004, never recognized a single criminal, despite several criminals in the system's database
living in the Borough and the system has been running for several years. "Not once, as far as
the police know, has Newham's automatic face recognition system spotted a live target. „This
information seems to conflict with claims that the system was credited with a 34% reduction
in crime (hence why it was rolled out to Birmingham also).However it can be explained by
the notion that when the public is regularly told that they are under constant video
surveillance with advanced face recognition technology, this fear alone can reduce the crime
rate, whether the face recognition system technically works or does not. This has been the
basis for several other face recognition based security systems, where the technology itself
does not work particularly well but the user's perception of the technology does.
An experiment in 2002 by the local police department in Tampa, Florida, had similarly
disappointing results.
A system at Boston's Logan Airport was shut down in 2003 after failing to make any matches
during a two-year test period.
In 2014, Facebook stated that in a standardized two-option facial recognition test, its online
system scored 97.25% accuracy, compared to the human benchmark of 97.5%.
In 2018, a report by the civil liberties and rights campaigning organisation Big Brother
Watch revealed that two UK police forces, South Wales Police and the Metropolitan Police,
were using live facial recognition at public events and in public spaces, in September 2019,
South Wales Police use of facial recognition was ruled lawful.
Systems are often advertised as having accuracy near 100%; this is misleading as the studies
often use much smaller sample sizes than would be necessary for large scale applications.
Because facial recognition is not completely accurate, it creates a list of potential matches. A
human operator must then look through these potential matches and studies show the
operators pick the correct match out of the list only about half the time. This causes the issue
of targeting the wrong suspect.

Controversies
Privacy violations
Civil rights right organizations and privacy campaigners such as the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, Big Brother Watch and the ACLUexpress concern that privacy is being
compromised by the use of surveillance technologies. Some fear that it could lead to a
“total surveillance society,” with the government and other authorities having the ability to
know the whereabouts and activities of all citizens around the clock. This knowledge has
been, is being, and could continue to be deployed to prevent the lawful exercise of rights of
citizens to criticize those in office, specific government policies or corporate practices. Many
centralized power structures with such surveillance capabilities have abused their privileged
access to maintain control of the political and economic apparatus, and to curtail populist
reforms.
Face recognition can be used not just to identify an individual, but also to unearth other
personal data associated with an individual – such as other photos featuring the individual,
blog posts, social networking profiles, Internet behaviour, travel patterns, etc. – all through
facial features alone. Concerns have been raised over who would have access to the
knowledge of one's whereabouts and people with them at any given time. Moreover,
individuals have limited ability to avoid or thwart face recognition tracking unless they hide
their faces. This fundamentally changes the dynamic of day-to-day privacy by enabling any
marketer, government agency, or random stranger to secretly collect the identities and
associated personal information of any individual captured by the face recognition system.
Consumers may not understand or be aware of what their data is being used for, which denies
them the ability to consent to how their personal information gets shared.
Face recognition was used in Russia to harass women allegedly involved in online
pornography. In Russia there is an app 'FindFace' which can identify faces with about 70%
accuracy using the social media app called VK. This app would not be possible in other
countries which do not use VK as their social media platform photos are not stored the same
way as with VK.
In July 2012, a hearing was held before the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the
Law of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, to address issues surrounding
what face recognition technology means for privacy and civil liberties.
In 2014, the National Telecommunications and Information Association (NTIA) began a
multi-stakeholder process to engage privacy advocates and industry representatives to
establish guidelines regarding the use of face recognition technology by private companies.
In June 2015, privacy advocates left the bargaining table over what they felt was an impasse
based on the industry representatives being unwilling to agree to consent requirements for the
collection of face recognition data. The NTIA and industry representatives continued without
the privacy representatives, and draft rules are expected to be presented in the spring of 2016.
In July 2015, the United States Government Accountability Office conducted a Report to the
Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, Committee on the
Judiciary, U.S. Senate. The report discussed facial recognition technology's commercial uses,
privacy issues, and the applicable federal law. It states that previously, issues concerning
facial recognition technology were discussed and represent the need for updated federal
privacy laws that continually match the degree and impact of advanced technologies. Also,
some industry, government, and private organizations are in the process of developing, or
have developed, "voluntary privacy guidelines". These guidelines vary between the groups,
but overall aim to gain consent and inform citizens of the intended use of facial recognition
technology. This helps counteract the privacy issues that arise when citizens are unaware of
where their personal, privacy data gets put to use as the report indicates as a prevalent issue.
The largest concern with the development of biometric technology, and more specifically
facial recognition has to do with privacy. The rise in facial recognition technologies has led
people to be concerned that large companies, such as Google or Apple, or even Government
agencies will be using it for mass surveillance of the public. Regardless of whether or not
they have committed a crime, in general people do not wish to have their every action
watched or track. People tend to believe that, since we live in a free society, we should be
able to go out in public without the fear of being identified and surveilled. People worry that
with the rising prevalence of facial recognition, they will begin to lose their anonymity.
Facebook Deep Face
Social media web sites such as Facebook have very large numbers of photographs of people,
annotated with names. This represents a database which may be abused by governments for
face recognition purposes. Facebook's DeepFace has become the subject of several class
action lawsuits under the Biometric Information Privacy Act, with claims alleging that
Facebook is collecting and storing face recognition data of its users without obtaining
informed consent, in direct violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act. The most
recent case was dismissed in January 2016 because the court lacked jurisdiction. Therefore, it
is still unclear if the Biometric Information Privacy Act will be effective in protecting
biometric data privacy rights.
In December 2017, Facebook rolled out a new feature that notifies a user when someone
uploads a photo that includes what Facebook thinks is their face, even if they are not tagged.
Facebook has attempted to frame the new functionality in a positive light, amidst prior
backlashes. Facebook's head of privacy, Rob Sherman, addressed this new feature as one that
gives people more control over their photos online. “We’ve thought about this as a really
empowering feature,” he says. “There may be photos that exist that you don’t know about.”
Imperfect technology in law enforcement
All over the world, law enforcement agencies have begun using facial recognition software to
aid in the identifying of criminals. For example, the Chinese police force were able to
identify twenty-five wanted suspects using facial recognition equipment at the Qingdao
International Beer Festival, one of which had been on the run for 10 years. The equipment
works by recording a 15-second video clip and taking multiple snapshots of the subject. That
data is compared and analysed with images from the police department's database and within
20 minutes, the subject can be identified with a 98.1% accuracy.
It is still contested as to whether or not facial recognition technology works less accurately on
people of colour. One study by Joy Buolamwini (MIT Media Lab) and Timnit Gebru
(Microsoft Research) found that the error rate for gender recognition for women of colour
within three commercial facial recognition systems ranged from 23.8% to 36%, whereas for
lighter-skinned men it was between 0.0 and 1.6%. Overall accuracy rates for identifying men
(91.9%) were higher than for women (79.4%), and none of the systems accommodated a non-
binary understanding of gender. However, another study showed that several commercial
facial recognition software sold to law enforcement offices around the country had a lower
false non-match rate for black people than for white people.
Experts fear that the new technology may actually be hurting the communities the police
claims they are trying to protect. It is considered an imperfect biometric, and in a study
conducted by Georgetown University researcher Clare Garvie, she concluded that "there’s no
consensus in the scientific community that it provides a positive identification of somebody.”
It is believed that with such large margins of error in this technology, both legal advocates
and facial recognition software companies say that the technology should only supply a
portion of the case – no evidence that can lead to an arrest of an individual.
The lack of regulations holding facial recognition technology companies to requirements of
racially biased testing can be a significant flaw in the adoption of use in law
enforcement. Cyber Extruder, a company that markets itself to law enforcement said that they
had not performed testing or research on bias in their software. Cyber Extruder did note that
some skin colours are more difficult for the software to recognize with current limitations of
the technology. “Just as individuals with very dark skin are hard to identify with high
significance via facial recognition, individuals with very pale skin are the same,” said Blake
Senftner, a senior software engineer at Cyber Extruder.
In 2018, the Scottish government created a code of practice which dealt with privacy issues
and won praise of the Open Rights Group.
Facial recognition technology market worth a staggering $4.6bn in 2019 - and set to grow by
another 25% over next 9 years.
In May 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to prohibit police and other
government agencies from using facial recognition technology, making San Francisco the
first U.S. city to ban this practice.

Anti-facial recognition systems

In January 2013 Japanese researchers from the National Institute of Informatics created
'privacy visor' glasses that use nearly infrared light to make the face underneath it
unrecognizable to face recognition software. The latest version uses a titanium frame, light-
reflective material and a mask which uses angles and patterns to disrupt facial recognition
technology through both absorbing and bouncing back light sources. In December 2016 a
form of anti-CCTV and facial recognition sunglasses called 'reflectacles' were invented by a
custom-spectacle-craftsman based in Chicago named Scott Urban. They reflect infrared and,
optionally, visible light which makes the users face a white blur to cameras.
Another method to protect from facial recognition systems are specific haircuts and make-up
patterns that prevent the used algorithms to detect a face, known as computer vision dazzle.
Incidentally, the makeup styles popular with Juggalos can also protect against facial
recognition.