Facial Recognition Glasses | China’s Answer To Individual Surveillance
Highlights:
- Railway police have begun using facial-recognition eyewear to catch criminals.
- In tests the glasses identified faces within 100 milliseconds.
- Seven people have been arrested for a range of previous crimes, and another 26 were banned from travel.
- China has been ramping up its use of facial-recognition technology as it moves toward a nationwide database that can recognize any citizen within three seconds.
Chinese police are using special dark sunglasses equipped with facial recognition technology to spot criminal suspects.
The glasses, which are being worn by police at a bustling train station in ahead of the Chinese New Year travel rush, are connected to a focal database which contains subtle details of criminal records.
The glasses automate the process of identifying passersby, in seconds and without unparalleled accuracy. When the wearer looks in someone’s direction, the attached camera takes precise measurements of the width and depth of a face before comparing it to a database of identified individuals.
Police at the Zhengzhou East Railway Station have arrested seven people who were suspected of being involved in kidnapping and hit-and-run cases during an operation which began last week, media reported.
They have also held another 26 people who were using fake identification cards.
Read Also: Apple Pencil Stylus | Writing In Mid Air Soon To Be A Reality
China is deploying new technologies to monitor people in ways that would unnerve many in the West. Facial recognition has been rolled out in many aspects of every day life in the country, where there are few concerns over privacy.
The technology is being used to gain entry to university dormitories and workplaces, withdraw cash from ATM machines and even buy a KFC.
Beijing-based LLVision Technology Co. has developed the devices. The company produces wearable video cameras as well and while it sells those to anyone, it’s vetting buyers for its facial recognition devices. And, for now, it isn’t selling them to consumers. LLVision says that in tests, the system was able to pick out individuals from a database of 10,000 people and it could do so in 100 milliseconds.
Get The Latest Tech News Updates Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, & Linkedin
