Footsteps, Pressure Sensors, and AI: The Next Step in Airport Security
eetimes.com
eetimes.com
This is one of those modalities (gait, keystrokes, tone of voice) that gets rediscovered every few years, shown to be waaay worse than e.g. iris recognition and forgotten until somebody else picks it up again.
Back when I was doing my thesis(liveness detection based on pupil dilation) there existed a system that could scan multiple irises from a distance of up to 6 metres. I assume these kind of systems have only gotten better since then.
Holy %}^##
I thought that was Minority Report BS - it's actually possible?!
Here's how they did it: they had a few decent cameras zoomed and focused so that their fields of view formed a skewed line crossing the path the subjects walked.
You only need a 300x150 image of the whole eye to perform decent iris recognition, so an eye covering 10% of a given camera's field of view was usually large enough.
But that was in 2012 - I imagine they've made some improvements.
i honestly don't see any alternatives, despite the enormous implications
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days#Simila...
"Publish the terabytes of footage you're recording, and market it so we know where to find it, or... or... we'll do something!"
Seems to be working so far as a threat.
Look this is a new world, just as the one where "sending children to work down mines and in factories is bad" or "dumping pollutants in rivers is bad". The laws took time to exist and time to get teeth and time to get enforced - but they feel natural now.
Just wait
If you are rich and can afford custom optics and a large-ish array of sensors (think of Kepler's camera back, more rectangular and much smaller), you could capture different sensors independently to get different sections of a larger panorama separately, identify which ones hold high-enough res irises and pipe them through your recognition plumbing. Knowing all irises are within a certain range of heights make the problem a lot simpler WRT positioning the camera, the optics and the sensor array.
The iris is constantly slightly changing its size, so with such contact lenses you can expect to be suspect no 1.
Colored contacts don't fool it.
Oh monty python has this covered... (Here)[https://youtu.be/iV2ViNJFZC8]
As I read the article I keep asking myself what motivates these people to do such research --- they're basically contributing to the erosion of personal freedom and privacy. It's scary.
People make a lot of noise about freedom, etc, but paying the mortgage tends to trump all.
To the folks downvoting this objective fact: I suggest you take a look at your ability to rationally discuss things that upset you before spending much more time on the internet.
Most of the most awful atrocities in history fit that pattern, from Ceasar in Gaul forward.
That all gets very philosophical though, and most people can recognize a good balance of freedom and are watchful of security paranoia stepping up and curtailing that balance.
But here's the problem. This isn't actually security. Security is the straw man. This is power masquerading as security. Nobody is becoming significantly safer thanks to these overreaches of surveillance in any way that really matters. The likelihood of falling victim to a failure of airport security is outrageously low, and these security firms are taking advantage of our inability to accurately assess risk when it comes to things like this.
It's just a palatable proving-ground for total social surveillance tech. That's what the real benefit here is.
I think it's better that it's public research rather than some private R&D. Public knowledge never hurts in my opinion.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Makes my blood boil
Chavez High is ringed with gravel walkways. I like to keep a couple handsful of rocks in my shoulder-bag, just in case. I silently passed Darryl ten or fifteen pointy little bastards and we both loaded our shoes.
- Cory Doctorrow, Little Brother: https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.pdfI read the whole story in one sitting.
Plus I'm pretty sure you could develop "adversorial shoes" for this...
Meh.
That said, this seems like just one of many potential id methods that would comprise a larger system (facial recognition, fingerprinting, etc).
Add/remove some weight from your non-wheeled luggage.
It's certainly less invasive but you have to ask how effective it can possibly be when it's known about. It's a lot harder to fake your fingerprints and retina than to walk at a different speed.
If you were a highly funded individual you could also quite easily acquire one of these systems and practice to fool it.
I don't see how this could be used as a effective security system but maybe someone could enlighten me.
Even a busy airport mostly already has information about who should be where.
And ... I don't drink but many people do drink at airports. Everything with your walk changes after a beer or two.
And women in heals.
>>> the process is non-intrusive for the individual
Yes... until I get pulled over for questioning because my walking pattern doesn't match my last walking pattern. TSA is already security theater. If our missteps will result in bad reviews, that theatre is now a security ballet. If you want to make your flight, remember to hit your mark.
- Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
I concur that I should have mentioned that... I thought it was just a cheeky play on the topic :)
Yes, they do, but not merely in the direct way.
If the government fears its civilians and becomes a police state, the terrorists succeed.
We’re trying to swat flies with World War 2 armies. The US has been in a war state for so long there is no actual condition that will result in victory, and we have undermined the institutions of civil government with no tangible benefit.
They even mention this sort of problem near the end of the article, where they mention it would be a good way to pickup cognitive or physical decline. This controlled use would be a much better use of the technology, but grab fewer headlines.
Does it identify me as someone else?
Someone compared it to wearing the One Ring. You may be invisible to your friends, but you shine bright as the sun to the Nazgûl.
Unless it's adopted by a significant percentage of the population, it's only a tool to draw added scrutiny. Much like when I tried to board a plane with an excessively comfortable sweater and was patted down.
According to the register, a Mr. Nakamura from the Treaties Bureau and a Dr. Willis, sir.
Get me the video records of their entrance.
Again. In infrared this time.
One thousand, one; one thousand, two; one thousand, three.
Now get the records of the pressure sensors for basement parking stalls B8 and B7.
Major, this is Togusa, Code 09.
What's up?
Does that Nakamura guy have a special-order cyborg body?
No, there aren't any cyborgs in Section 6. They don't even ship them to serve overseas because they're too hard to maintain. There's diplomatic considerations too.
Then, even if the other guy that was with him is a cyborg, the two of them together couldn't weigh over 1,000 pounds.
Ah, you checked the pressure sensors in the parking structure, didn't you?
Right, but neither man looks like the type to drive himself. The security cameras show only two people. But remember how sensitive the sensors on the entrance doors are? They took a full three seconds longer than usual to close after the two went in. And it's illegal to use therm-optics inside government facilities.
It's a serious violation of the National Security Act. Section 6 must be up to something. Are you ready?
With my trusty Matever, anytime.
- Ghost in the Shell 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_in_the_Shell_(1995_film) Transporting a listed programmer out of the country violates our arms export treaty.
I don't think the IBMers had any special conditions imposed on them.
Ok, some more from Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, fully off topic but hey I'm getting pretty fired up, I'm going to watch both movies again really soon... The movies are so timeless because they don't focus on exact tech, they focus on the philosophical implications of the tech, it keeps them highly relevant.
Scene 9: Golden Sky (In a vehicle flying across the remains of a city)
Batou: "This is one of the largest cities in the Kureal Islands, it was once prosperous, originally built to be one of the most important information centers in the Far East. See those towers? This city was really something. But its dubious sovereignty has made it the ideal haven for multi-nationals cooperations and the criminal elements that feed off their spoils. It's now a lawless zone, beyond the reach of the e-police. Reminds me of the line, 'What the body creates, is as much an expression of DNA as the body itself.'"
Togusa: "Doesn't that apply to beaver dams and spider webs as well?"
Batou: "If the essence of life is information that is carried in DNA, then society and civilisation are just collossal memory storage systems, and a metropolis is simply a sprawling external memory."
Togusa: "As it says in the bible. 'How great is the sum of all thy thoughts. If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand.'"
Batou: "Psalms 139, Old Testament. The way you spontaneous spout these ancient exotic references, I'd say your own external memory's pretty twisted."
Togusa: "Look who's talking."
Speaker: "Sorry to interrupt, but we're about to fly over Locus Solus. I'm changing the route just for you, so take a good look."
Speaker: "So much for the free tour. Now prepare for landing."
Togusa: "'His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced / Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks'"
Batou: "Now you're quoting Milton, but we are not Satan."
I think your conclusion is correct in the sense that the Japanese use tech enthusiastically, but very wrong in the assumption that the reason is that they just view it as a tool. If anything, they seem to anthropomorphize a lot more than Westerners. I once attended a lecture by a Japanese professor researching robotics who basically seemed to live by the idea that if his robots looked and appeared to behave human enough, they would magically "be" human. It made it look like the anthropomorphization of robots its perfectly normal even on academic levels over there. Also, note how until Boston Dynamics, the majority of (research) robots that resemble humans or animals came from Japan.
But paradoxically, I think the reason is that they view tech less like a tool - all things have spirits in Japanese Shintoism, right? Perhaps therein lies the paradox: maybe due to this, the idea of AI becoming self-aware is less scary - objects are already treated as having a "spirit" anyway!
I think the story of Roujin Z contains a very interesting example of this[0]. An old man becomes (unwilling) part of an experiment for robots designed to take care of the elderly. The robot then becomes a rampaging AI, which turns out to be because it's secretly a government experiment for re-arming Japan. Due to uploading the voice of the wife deceased of the old man, the AI also takes on the persona and becomes a caring (but still rampaging) AI.
Let me emphasize: only the old lady's voice is uploaded - which important because it implies anthropomorphized magical thinking: like Zhang's dragon coming to life when he gave it eyes[1], giving the AI the voice of a sweet old lady magically made it a sweet old lady.
So if we go back to generalising, I think the difference is that Westerners fear tech, with stories of AI turning against us, while Japanese people consider it a potential new friend. Making them much more enthusiastic about new technology.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roujin_Z
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Sengyou (yes, I know, China is not Japan)
As for "Asimov's Three Laws gone wrong", Asimov himself created the Three Laws because he thought Frankenstein had been retold too many times and wanted to write stories about robots blending into human society rather than attempting to overthrow it (and imagined interesting new failure modes of these robots in the process!).