Roger Hui wrote: |The problem is easily solved if there is a web search |that accepts an image as input. I would be surprised |if no spy agency has this capability, or if Google is not |already working on it.
"Live" face recognition has been going on (and improving) for quite a number of years. As I recall, shortly after 9/11 security teams were telephotographically scanning all of the stadium attendees at games such as the Superbowl with multiple cameras during the progress of the game, looking for suspected terrorists, criminals, and such, matching against face databases. I believe there are a number of books on the topic. By the way, note that Google has a "labor-saving" approach to creating an improved image database: all of us have the opportunity to better tag the images (which means improved searchability). It would seem child's play today to automatically impose "standard" facial templates (consisting of hundreds of interconnected triangles) on their thousands/millions of photographic faces, create an ID database, and then someday provide a user input (uploading a photo) that can likewise be triangulated and matched against that database. Of course, one could always ask, why would Google ever do anything like that, unless it was a secret/hidden arm of some clandestine government agency? ;-) Harvey ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
