On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, Tim May wrote:

One of the interesting things is that _ear shape_ is one of the best correlation features.

There are a billion: skin pigmentation as seen in NIR illumination (my, do you look spotty), NIR laser scanning of body features (MEMS mirror galvanometers), including millimeter wave which penetrates clothing (in development still), voice fingerprint, person-specific word patterns (Echelon is surely using these on targeted emails), gait and mannerisms (not even in development, but sure to arrive some day). The only way to avoid radiating a fingerprint is to use anonymized teleoperated hardware as meatspace proxy. And of course you can outlaw these, unless teleoperated robotics becomes very common in the next few decades (possible, but I'm not counting on it).

Of course, to measure ear shape the camera has to have a good view, unobscured and at close enough range to get a decent number of pixels. (This makes sense, that ear shape would be a good metric.

Sure there are limitations to the current state of technology. The biometrics are of lousy quality, take seconds to compute on a ~GHz CPU, and are not generated in an embedded device. Nevertheless, imaging technology makes good progress with embedding DSP cores and using hybrid architectures based on silicon retina technologies as pioneered by Mead. Because this is machine vision used on moving objects, it can tolerate dead pixels, allowing you to boost resolution (Information in a 640x480 30 fps is sure limited, but with CMOS tech like http://www.foveon.net/tech_f16.html and tolerance of ~5% dead pixels multimegapixel sensors plus active optics for tracking and feature extraction with parallel DSP cores integrated into the sensor you capture a lot of info, and process it in situ, too). As soon as the devices become sufficiently cheap you can integrate them into virtually anything (installation costs typically dwarf hardware costs), including street signs (OCR to read license plates is almost mature), lanterns, copers' wearables, etc. The extracted biometric alone is tiny, and can be readily transmitted using even current paltry 9.6 kBps wireless modems.

I've been noticing the variations in ear shapes since I heard about this scheme. Also, I can imagine the various conformal transformations--different angles of view, for example--preserve certain relationships well.)

I can believe some kind of automated face recognition is being done with points of entry, such as international airport arrival points, but I find it hard to swallow that "crowd shots" from overhead cameras can do anything meaningful.

With current tech the error rate is still high, but it's for real. The hardware is going to become better due to Moore alone, including silicon retina dedicated hardware, the economies of scale will apply, and of course the software will get better, so the capabilities will be ramping up very rapidly over the next few years.

The Tampa action may be mostly social engineering: "We're watching you!"

Wehret den Anfaengen. The capabilities are still mostly vapour, and the coverage still spotty, but exponential processes have their counterintuitive dynamics. Twenty years more of those, and you'll be very, very surprised. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204/">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO : N48 10'07'' E011 33'53'' http://www.lrz.de/~ui22204 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3

On Thu, 5 Jul 2001, petro wrote:

Maybe it's time to market a line of Privacy Ear Jewelry. Shouldn't be hard with a couple piercing here, and some funny lumps there to distort the profile enough.

If you need a reason for more extensive covering of your lobes, just embed a cell phone and/or other funky electronic gear. Gives you compliance to laws mandating hands-free operation, as well. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front