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Abstract:
Recently face recognition is attracting much attention in the society of network multimedia information access. Areas such as network security, content indexing and retrieval, and video compression benefits from face recognition technology because "people" are the center of attention in a lot of video. Network access control via face recognition not only makes hackers virtually impossible to steal one's "password", but also increases the user-friendliness in human-computer interaction. Indexing and/or retrieving video data based on the appearances of particular persons will be useful for users such as news reporters, political scientists, and moviegoers. For the applications of videophone and teleconferencing, the assistance of face recognition also provides a more efficient coding scheme. In this paper, we give an introductory course of this new information processing technology. The paper shows the readers the generic framework for the face recognition system, and the variants that are frequently encountered by the face recognizer. Several famous face recognition algorithms, such as eigenfaces and neural networks, will also be explained.
Introduction:
In today's networked world, the need to maintain the security of information or physical property is becoming both increasingly important and increasingly difficult. From time to time we hear about the crimes of credit card fraud, computer breaking’s by hackers, or security breaches in a company or government building. In the year 1998, sophisticated cyber crooks
caused well over US $100 million in losses (Reuters, 1999).In most of these crimes, the criminals were taking advantage of a fundamental flaw in the conventional access control systems: the systems do not grant access by "who we are", but by "what we have", such as ID cards, keys, passwords, PIN numbers, or mother's maiden name. None of these means are really define us. Rather, they merely are means to authenticate us. It goes without saying that if someone steals, duplicates, or acquires these identity means, he or she will be able to access our data or our personal property any time they want. Recently, technology became available to allow verification of "true" individual identity. This technology is based in a field called "biometrics". Biometric access control are automated methods of verifying or recognizing the identity of a living person on the basis of some physiological characteristics, such as fingerprints or facial features, or some aspects of the person's behavior, like his/her handwriting style or keystroke patterns. Since biometric systems identify a person by biological characteristics, they are difficult to forge. Among the various biometric ID methods, the physiological methods (fingerprint, face, DNA) are more stable than methods in behavioral category (keystroke, voice print). The reason is that physiological features are often non-alterable except by severe injury. The behavioral patterns, on the other hand, may fluctuate due to stress, fatigue, or illness. How-ever, behavioral IDs have the advantage of being non-intrusiveness. People are more comfortable signing their names or speaking to a microphone than placing their eyes before a scanner or giving a drop of blood for DNA sequencing. Face recognition is one of the few biometric methods that possess the merits of both high accuracy and low intrusiveness. It has the accuracy of a physiological approach without being intrusive.
Aim of the System:
The main objective of the report is to bridge the divide between a purely technical and a purely socio-political analysis of FRT. On the one side, there is a huge technical literature on algorithm development, grand challenges, vendor tests, etc., that talks in detail about the technical capabilities and features of FRT but does not really connect well with the challenges of real world installations, actual user requirements, or the background considerations that are relevant to situations in which these systems are embedded (social expectations, conventions, goals, etc.). On the other side, there is what one might describe as the “soft” social science literature of policy makers, media scholars, ethicists, privacy advocates, etc., which talks quite generally about biometrics and FRT, outlining the potential socio-political dangers of the technology. This literature often fails to get into relevant technical details and often takes for granted that the goals of biometrics and FRT are both achievable and largely Orwellian. Bridging these two literatures—indeed, points of view—is very important as FRT increasingly moves from the research laboratory into the world of socio-political concerns and practices. We intend this report to be a general and accessible account of FRT for informed readers. It is not a “state of the art” report on FRT. Although we have sought to provide sufficient detail in the account of the underlying technologies to serve as a foundation for our functional, moral, and political assessments, the technical description is not intended to be comprehensive.Nor is it a comprehensive socio-political analysis.Indeed, for a proper, informed debate on the socio-political implications of FRT, more detailed and publicly accessible in-situ studies are needed. The report should provide a sound basis from which to develop such in-situ studies. The report instead attempts to straddle the technical and the socio-political points of view without oversimplifying either.
Application scenarios for facial recognition systems (FRS):
The London Borough of Newham, in the UK, previously trialled a facial recognition system built into their borough-wide CCTV system.The German Federal Police use a facial recognition system to allow voluntary subscribers to pass fully automated border controls at Frankfurt Rhein-Main international airport. Subscribers need to be European Union or Swiss citizens.[citation needed] Since 2005 the German Federal Criminal Police Office offers centralized facial recognition on mugshot images for all German police agencies. Recognition systems are also used by casinos to catch card counters and other blacklisted individuals.The Australian Customs Service has an automated border processing system called SmartGate that uses facial recognition. The system compares the face of the individual with the image in the e-passport microchip, certifying that the holder of the passport is the rightful owner.Pennsylvania Justice Network searches crime scene photographs and CCTV footage in the mugshot database of previous arrests. A number of cold cases have been resolved since the system became operational in 2005. Other law enforcement agencies in the USA and abroad use arrest mugshot databases in their forensic investigative work.U.S. Department of State operates one of the largest face recognition systems in the world with over 75 million photographs that is actively used for visa processing.
In addition to being used for security systems, authorities have found a number of other applications for facial recognition systems. While earlier post 9/11 deployments were well publicized trials, more recent deployments are rarely written about due to their covert nature.At Super Bowl XXXV in January 2001, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used Identix' facial recognition software, FaceIt, to search for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event(it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants).In the 2000 presidential election, the Mexican government employed facial recognition software to prevent voter fraud. Some individuals had been registering to vote under several different names, in an attempt to place multiple votes. By comparing new facial images to those already in the voter database, authorities were able to reduce duplicate registrations.Similar technologies are being used in the United States to prevent people from obtaining fake identification cards and driver’s licenses.There are also a number of potential uses for facial recognition that are currently being developed. For example, the technology could be used as a security measure at ATM’s; instead of using a bank card or personal identification number, the ATM would capture an image of your face, and compare it to your photo in the bank database to confirm your identity. This same concept could also be applied to computers; by using a webcam to capture a digital image of yourself, your face could replace your password as a means to log-in.As part of the investigation of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann the British police are calling on visitors to the Ocean Club Resort, Praia da Luz in Portugal or the surrounding areas in the two weeks leading up to the child's disappearance on Thursday 3 May 2007 to provide copies of any photographs of people taken during their stay, in an attempt to identify the abductor using a biometric facial recognition application.Also, in addition to biometric usages, modern digital cameras often incorporate a facial detection system that allows the camera to focus and measure exposure on the face of the subject, thus guaranteeing a focused portrait of the person being photographed. Some cameras, in addition, incorporate a smile shutter, or take automatically a second picture if someone closed their eyes during exposure