Security systems that do more – a lot more

Picture this scenario. You’re in a public place but in a not-so-nice neighborhood. You’re alone and perhaps it’s after dark. Not unreasonably, you feel unsafe. But then you spot a figure of law-keeping authority. Either a police car on patrol, or (something not at all common any more) a cop on the beat. You feel relieved and safer.

Now change the scenario. Same place, same sense of unease, but now what you see is not a flesh and blood officer, but a security camera surveying the scene. Let’s assume you know for certain that somewhere at the other end of the network, a cop or security guard is watching over you. Help could be on the way if needed. You still feel a little safer (though perhaps not as much as before).

Now change the scene one more time. Same camera, but now you happen to know that there is no human security guard at the other end at all. There’s nothing but software: a sophisticated, tireless, full featured program that can detect all number of dangerous events. It can send help just as fast (or faster!) than that sleepy security guy could anyway, right?

This is one of our possible futures, and it’s not at all unlikely. The science of face recognition is probably a lot more sophisticated than most people realize. Software can now ‘read’ human faces and interpret expressions and behavior to an incredible degree. Programs can detect a smile, of course, but also distinguish between a smile of amusement (lips turned up symmetrically) and a smirk (asymmetrical lips, squinted eyes). They can see more than we can too, even measuring pulse rates and other vital signs, undetectable to the human eye.

Behaviors and actions have been mapped and programmed as well. Security programs can recognize all kinds of suspicious events: a package left behind, a car cruising past the same spot multiple times, etc. Makers of these programs tout the classic advantage that software has over humans: tireless, never gets distracted, can work around the clock, not subject to whim or prejudice, etc. And did I mention that it’s so much less costly?

The applications are being tested in hospitals too: trained on high risk patients they can detect someone about to fall out of bed, or even a doctor who fails to wash her hands after an examination. It’s hard to argue with the potential benefits. Some speculate that Medicare/Medicaid will penalize hospitals that fail to take advantage of the technology, once it’s widely available. The New York Times has reported on the technology and its benefits.

Yet there is always a downside. The increasingly ubiquitous (and often hidden) cameras that surround us invite the use and misuse of this technology. Marketers are already trialing it to measure shopper behavior or reaction to commercials or exposure to other products, like films. So far the use has only been with the consent of those studied, but the risk has to be acknowledged that all of this may be done secretly.

As I’ve said before, if someone can do it, someone will do it. Google purposely left face recognition out of its Goggles service, because uploading face photos (perhaps taken secretly) in search of a match on the web, was one controversy that Google wisely steered clear of. But others may not be so scrupulous.

There’s more too. Almost three years ago, the Washington Post reported on the evolution of what they called ‘advanced video analytics systems’. The Post speculated that “police may soon be able to monitor suspicious brain activity from a distance as well. New neurotechnology soon may be able to detect a person who is particularly nervous, in possession of guilty knowledge or, in the more distant future, to detect a person thinking, ‘Only one hour until the bomb explodes.’"

The early versions of these systems are not on the drawing boards – they’re on the shelves. One such system that’s available today is Perceptrak from a company called Cernium. This category of software has it’s pedigree in research originally started by DARPA: the goal, according to the Post, is nothing short of the ability to read minds at a distance.

A lot to think about. Our futures may be an uneasy mix of the relief and security we enjoy from the benefits of technology serving to keep us safer – and the worry we may rightly feel about where and how (and by whom) that technology is being used.