> On Fri, 2 Feb 2001, Darryl Shannon wrote:
>
> > I'm sure most of you have heard of the stunt the FBI tried at the
> > Superbowl. Cameras took pictures of the fans sitting in the bleachers,
> > while a computer system compared those faces to mug shots of wanted
> > criminals. Well, the search turned up no matches, no one was arrested.
> >
> > But, it seems that the technology is here to do this kind of thing,
> > even if the bugs haven't quite been worked out. Attach the mug-shot
> > database to every police surveilance camera on every streetcorner, and
> > suddenly it's a lot harder for known criminals to move about.
> >
> > So...was this a good idea or a bad idea? Fascism creeping in, or just
> > an advanced form of cops recognizing the perp they brought in last
> > month? Any changes you'd like to see made?
This sounds like an idea put into practice I think last year somewhere in the
IIRC UK. I can't remember where exactly anymore. But the system consisting of
street cameras and some software for feature recognition was tuned to
recognise known trouble makers and alerts the surveillance team.
Sonja
