On 8/14/2014 11:24 AM, Share Long sharelon...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]
wrote:
Richard, maybe they're gonna skip the national identity card step and
go straight to implant chips!
>
Maybe, but the government would have to form a special agency to do
that, so for now as long as you don't apply for a U.S. passport you
probably won't have a chip with your name on it.
>
On Thursday, August 14, 2014 11:19 AM, "'Richard J. Williams'
pundits...@gmail.com [FairfieldLife]" <FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
wrote:
On 8/14/2014 1:34 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
<mailto:turquoi...@yahoo.com> [FairfieldLife] wrote:
All biometric facial recognition searches use a simplified
hierarchical algorithm to "sort out" non-matches and reduce the
search set so that it's as small as possible.
>
Congratulations! You now have a /Dutch National Identity Card/ - we
don't have those in the U.S. yet. Go figure.
According to what I've read, they probably got most of your personal
information from the chip on your biometric U.S. passport that uses
smart card technology embedded in the front or back cover, or center
page, of your paper document.
"There is no true national identity card in the United States of
America..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_documents_in_the_United_States
>
Plus, in this case, it's not as if they were trying to match my face
to *all* faces, just a small subset of known terrorist and criminal
faces. Still, I was impressed that my guvmint guy had his search
results before we got back to his desk.
I figure that the scifi-like machine I sat at was hooked up on the
back end to an array of parallel supercomputers designed to process
these tasks alone, and thus optimized to produce reliable results, fast.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From:* "Bhairitu noozg...@sbcglobal.net
<mailto:noozg...@sbcglobal.net> [FairfieldLife]"
<FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com> <mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
*To:* FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com
<mailto:FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com>
*Sent:* Wednesday, August 13, 2014 10:56 PM
*Subject:* Re: [FairfieldLife] Biometrics
I suspect the matching process works more like this: your face is
categorized by certain general features. Thus the search doesn't
bother with faces on file that don't match that category and just
searches on ones that do and possibly filter out sub categories that
don't match too. Thus leaving a few possibilities which didn't
match. Much more efficient.
On 08/13/2014 12:09 PM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com
<mailto:turquoi...@yahoo.com> [FairfieldLife] wrote:
I had an odd experience today. I know that there is a lot of talk
and paranoia on the Internet these days about how much guvmints know
about us, and whether they should know that much, but it's never
really concerned me because I've always assumed that I was too
boring for any guvmint to become interested in enough to want to
track me.
Well, it turns out I was right. I can officially tell you that I am
on no "watchlists" maintained by any major guvmint, for any reason
whatsoever.
I know this because today I had to go to the Immigration Dept. to
get my Dutch resident ID card renewed. In the past it's been mainly
a formality -- take a new photo, get a new card, outa there. But
this time, they told me I'd have to report first to "Biometrics." So
I did, waited for a bit, and then a *remarkably* nice guvmint
official verified that my renewal papers had arrived in the mail and
then walked me into the Biometrics Room. I know that's what it was
called because there was a sign over the door that said this. :-)
He sat me down at one of two science fiction-inspired machines, on
which I had to first look into the screen while it took my photo,
and then allow it to take my fingerprints and sign my signature.
Electronically, of course -- no muss, no fuss. I was finished in a
little over a minute and then he walked me back to his desk and
looked at the results on his own computer monitor.
He said, "That looks OK...no red flags," and then said my new ID
would be ready in about a week. But he really *was* a remarkably
nice guvmint official, so I told him I worked with computers and was
curious about this "Biometrics" thang and asked him to explain it to
me. He did, even showing me his computer screen occasionally so I
could see what he did.
It was spooky. The moment that scifi machine took my photo, the
biometrics of my face were instantly recorded and compared against
all known databases of "bad faces," those presumably belonging to
terrorists or known criminals. My fingerprints and signature got the
same electronic scrutiny. All in the time it took for me to walk
back to this guy's cubicle.
Fortunately, I got no "red flags," and so my new ID card is in the
mail. But I can't help but wonder what would have happened if my
pleasing but aging face had had similar biometrics to the face of a
known terrorist. I suspect that if that had happened, I would be in
a cell somewhere, and wouldn't be writing this. :-)
Anyway, this was a very science fiction movie day for me. I got to
find out first-hand that a lot of that "science fiction stuff" we
see on TV and in movies isn't fiction. In less than two minutes, the
Dutch guvmint scanned all my "biometrics" and decided that I was
cool to renew as a resident. I can't help but be impressed by the
tech behind that, even if as a computer scientist I know how
terribly badly it could have gone if one of the Dutch programmers
who built this system was a fuckup.
