Penso che il passaggio che dovrebbe attirare la nostra attenzione è quello che riguarda la scarsa accuracy dei sistemi di riconoscimento facciale: "To test the facial recognition attributes, the investigator provided a photo of him to a seller. The search returned 238 images of people (male and female) with a similar look from 140 cameras, along with a list of addresses and times they were caught on camera. (…) As for the accuracy of the results, none of the photos returned were of the investigator. However, the facial features were similar to the input and the system assessed a similarity of 67%." La spiegazione addotta dal giornalista per questa performance subottimale sarebbe "the limited number of cameras connected to the face recognition algorithm". Un'alta spiegazione (spesso ignorata dai giornalisti sempre pronti a credere alla hype dell'IA e per questo poco attenti ai veri pericoli di quest'ultima) è contenuta in un buon reportage pubblicato dal New York Times nel luglio 2018: questi sistemi di sorveglianza dei massa non sono affatto automatizzati e si basano su battaglioni di micro-lavoratori che trattano "a mano" milioni di video, ritagliano silouhettes di passanti, taggano individui, riempiono databases e annotando dati: "The system remains more of a digital patchwork than an all-seeing technological network. Many files still aren’t digitized, and others are on mismatched spreadsheets that can’t be easily reconciled. Systems that police hope will someday be powered by A.I. are currently run by teams of people sorting through photos and data the old-fashioned way." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/business/china-surveillance-technology.ht... Cionondimeno le minacce legate alla diffusione delle telecamere di sorveglianza munite di riconosciemento facciale non devono essere minimizzate. La mitizzazione delle IA fa di queste tecnologie dei potenti deterrenti psicologici e espedienti disciplinari. "The whole point", spiega un esperto intervistato dal New York Times, "is that people don’t know if they’re being monitored, and that uncertainty makes people more obedient." Ogni azione di lotta contro l'onnipotenza presunta di queste tecnologie, comincia dal riconoscimento della loro natura fittizia. Se le IA sono fatte di uomini e donne che addestrano, controllano, impersonano dei sistemi fintamente automatici, è dalla loro presa di coscienza di partecipare a un sistema distopico e inumano che deve cominiciare ogni attività di contestazione radicale. Cheers, ---a ----- Mail original ----- De: "Alberto Cammozzo" <ac+nexa@zeromx.net> À: "nexa" <nexa@server-nexa.polito.it> Envoyé: Dimanche 8 Décembre 2019 11:22:13 Objet: [nexa] Moscow Cops Sell Access to City CCTV, Facial Recognition Data La notizia è diffusa da MBK Media, outlet anti-Putin di Mikhail Khodorkovsky e ripresa in inglese dall'aggregatore lituano Meduza.io <https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/moscow-cops-sell-access-to-ci...> Anyone with a little money can buy access to Moscow's surveillance system of tens of thousands of cameras along and check footage stored over the previous five days. Sellers on forums and messenger groups that trade illegal data also provide facial recognition lookup services. City-wide surveillance To ensure safety in the city, there are over 175,000 CCTV cameras in Moscow, most of them installed at entrances and more than 4,000 present in crowded places. Back in 2017, the mayor's office in Moscow stated that facial recognition technology integrated with Russia's police databases had been activated and it was pulling data from 3,000 cameras. The plan was to link the rest of the video surveillance to the facial recognition system. The city's website says that the video surveillance system can be accessed by "employees of federal government bodies, the Moscow Mayor and their authorized officials, law enforcement and executive authorities." "Restricted" access Investigative media outlet MBKh Media found that access to this technology and the live streams is being sold on underground forums and chat rooms. Andrey Kaganskikh, the journalist that did the investigation says that the sellers are law enforcement individuals as well as government bureaucrats that can log into the Integrated Center for Data Processing and Storage (YTKD), the very system that keeps the data from cameras in Moscow. Whoever wants to check the live stream from a camera receives a unique link to the City CCTV System that connects to all public cameras in Moscow. The URL works for five days, Kaganskikh says. This is the same period mentioned on the city's CCTV section for storing footage from crowded places, shops, and courtyards. Data from educational organizations is saved for 30 days. Furthermore, government officials or police officers sell their login credentials to the system to provide unlimited access to all cameras. The price of admission is 30,000 rubles ($470), according to Kaganskikh. To test the facial recognition attributes, the investigator provided a photo of him to a seller. The search returned 238 images of people (male and female) with a similar look from 140 cameras, along with a list of addresses and times they were caught on camera. "We managed to find the cameras from the file at the indicated addresses - their angles coincided with the pictures, the camera indices and the camera indices from the open registry also coincided" - Andrey Kaganskikh Among the metadata available for each photo there was a label indicating if the person was regularly seen by that camera or if they were spotted for the first time. As for the accuracy of the results, none of the photos returned were of the investigator. However, the facial features were similar to the input and the system assessed a similarity of 67%. Kaganskikh says in a video report that the poor results may be explained by the limited number of cameras connected to the face recognition algorithm. The investigator says that the sellers he'd been in contact with told him that the police have free access to this technology. No justification, such as a warrant for a legal investigation, is required to run a search. Finding the sellers is not difficult, either. Apparently, the forums are indexed by search engines, so their content is easy to discover. This type of access is popular with private detectives, scammers, or individuals that trade surveillance services. _______________________________________________ nexa mailing list nexa@server-nexa.polito.it https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa