Big Brother cashes in: Biometrics industry sees profit growth in surveillance camera proliferation

As the Texas Department of Public Safety and the House Defense Affairs Committee plot ways to create a statewide database of biometric facial recognition data on Texas drivers and ID card holders, the biometrics industry plots how to merge facial recogntion technology with closed circuit surveillance camera systems (CCTV) in the "next two to three years," reports Jason Tan, writing in A&S Magazine out of Tapei.

A few Grits readers have expressed to me privately they thought I was going "overboard" or "too far" to predict that surveillance cameras might be used with facial recognition data to track individuals as they went about their daily lives. But Tan, who follows the biometrics industry closely, doesn't think so. He writes:

Indeed, the revolution of the industry is underway with the participation of CCTV vendors.

“Facial recognition is an interesting technology. It was introduced along with the development of CCTVs,” commented Jison Hsu, biometric solutions division manager of PenPower Technology Ltd. It is a Taiwan-based company offering recognition technologies including handwriting, voice, facial recognition, as well as wireless communication.

“Nowadays, surveillance cameras can be everywhere. People are starting to change their mindset that although cameras do invade their privacy to a certain level, they have become a part of everyday lives for better security,” he claimed.

As surveillance cameras at the streets, buildings and public places become more prevalent, people will get used to being watched at all times. This will spur the growth of facial recognition solutions as people are more at ease with them.

“The combination of facial recognition with CCTVs will definitely be the future trend,” Hsu stated.

Once surveillance cameras are in place (I'm talking to you, Houston!), biometric facial recognition systems can be added on later, or they will be able to soon.

Cognitec (a German biometrics firm) seconded, adding that facial recognition can be integrated in existing video surveillance application and supports security officers with hint about suspect persons that are previously enrolled. “This is the most challenging face recognition technology application and still at the very beginning,” an official said. ...

[Surveillance camera system] makers encounter numerous obstacles when exploring the market. The issues to be resolved are the existing problems of CCTVs: hardware, data storage, compression technologies, transmission speed and picture-capturing under various lighting conditions. To cite an example, CCTV players have been working hard to capture images under extremely dim lighting environment in recent two years.

However, facial recognition will be a valuable add-on feature to CCTVs. It is an extra intelligent function that says the system will be able to capture human faces and even identify the faces, he added.

Furthermore, CCTV solutions will become more powerful with the integration of facial biometrics. For instance, it will stop recording when no human are present within the cameras’ viewing areas, and will record at a slower speed simultaneously, thus cutting down data storage in return.

To his understanding, not every CCTV vendor has jumped into the biometric rush. They might have sensed the trend, and started to treat it as a long-term investment and do not expect fast adoption.

“But facial recognition functionality will set them apart from others who do not have this intelligence,” Hsu cautioned, advising CCTV and biometric-solution providers to form synergies to complement each other for the research and development.

Tan writes that facial recognition technology appeals to government users for mass security projects because it's the only biometric data that the individual does not have to give consent in order to access the information.

Compared to other forms of biometric applications such as fingerprint, iris recognition, or palm recognition, facial recognition is the only one that requires no contact with sensors at all.

The problem is, even though DPS and certain legislators are gung ho to install these facial recognition systems, they don't really work yet. Tan writes,

However, “biometric-based recognition technologies inevitably have certain limitations,” Hsu noted. Compared to fingerprint--its more established biometric counterpart, the facial technology still has some distance to catch up with.

“The first applications for tracing wanted faces were unfortunately not very successful to this date. But the input from an automatic facial recognition system is always a helpful support for any kind of video surveillance system as facial technology offers intelligent tracking,” added Kuip.

Currently there is a great interest from airports in the use of facial recognition for both access control and video surveillance. One example of a situation in which it would be useful is passenger recognition at the moment of exiting an airplane. These passengers would then be traced again when appearing at the airport customs a while later.

However, the technology is not reliable enough yet for such applications at the moment.

All of which brings Texas back to the question: is facial recognition technology really the best way to spend the $22.5 million in the asset forfeiture fund?

Limited government my ass

The Dallas News says 3,000 bills will be filed at the Texas Legislature before the March 11 bill filing deadline. The Texas Legislature meets for 140 days every two years.

Off topic amusement

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. This is one of 21 life-sized murals of saints going up in a Hindu temple in Irving. Check out the article and the rest of the pictures from the Dallas Morning News.

Vallabhacharya
by Mrugank Joshi

Houston Chronicle remembers Martin Elfant

The Houston Chronicle had a nice obituary for long-time ACLU member Martin Elfant. My condolences to his son Bruce, a Travis County Constable, and Martin's family and friends. In other sad news, memorial services for Texas Inmate Family Association founder Stuart DeLuca were held yesterday.

Martin Elfant
via the Houston Chronicle

Enforcing transparency at the district clerk

Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman Terry Keel has an excellent idea: Fines for counties that don't make search warrant affidavits public.

I'd reported when I returned from Palestine, TX, in October that the district clerk in Anderson County refused to give me copies of the search warrant affidavits involving the cases of 72 people arrested in a Tulia-style drug task force sting. Similarly, Dave Mann of the Texas Observer wrote that the district clerk and District Attorney Doug Lowe "wouldn't release copies of the search warrants executed in seizing evidence."

Chairman Keel has filed House Bill 47 that would fine a county $1,000 each time they refused to release a search warrant affidavit. That would really have helped in Palestine. I understand at least four searches were conducted as part of the 72 person sweep, likely more. Anderson County has already turned me down once, and Dave Mann twice, so that's a minimum of $12,000 in fines the DA would have racked up.

Here's my only concern. Once a DA like Mr. Lowe has ordered the district clerk not to release the affidavits (I was told in Palestine they couldn't give them to me without his permission, which I could not obtain), the fine will be a fait accompli, and there will be no further incentive for the county to turn the records over promptly without a court order. Counties would have greater incentive to release that information immediately if the fines were levied at $1,000 per day. That would send the message that they can't withhold the information under any circumstances, and avoid DAs making cost-benefit analyses about whether it's worth $1,000 to improperly conceal information.

For more on the Palestine case, see Dave Mann's Texas Observer article, The Usual Suspects.

Connecting the dots

Let me get this straight. The Texas Department of Public Safety has identified $22.5 million in asset forfeiture funds that it says Texas should use for a new database of biometric facial recognition data on drivers. But the Texas House of Representatives already resoundingly rejected that idea in a 111-26 vote in 2003. So why not spend the $22.5 million to expand drug courts, which more or less everybody thinks is a good idea?

Ann thinks that'd be a good solution.

Does Not Compute

Two anomalous reports: Taser to increase power of stun guns, and a large settlement in an Indiana Taser death case. The jailer in case is being charged with serveral criminal counts including battery with a "deadly weapon."

The devices were in the news in Texas after several deaths and examples of improper use. Austin PD, in particular, appears to overuse the devices. The Houston City Council recently agreed to purchase 3,700 Tasers for their officers.

So if Tasers already are deadly weapons, and the company plans to double the length of time the electric charge is delivered, at what point does the non-lethal label just fly out the window? Taser's investors already have sued the company because Taser allegedly misled the public about the safety of its product. Can we trust this new product is safe?

Via TalkLeft and Kemplog

'It's a nitpicky case'

Thanks to Kuff for sharing this Houston Press article by Scott Nowell on the arrest of Houston prison rights activist Frank Dewey. His case highlights the absurd dilemmas facing homeless people obligated to comply with Texas' sex offender registration laws. In a lot of cases, the laws are so onerous that full-blown compliance isn't a real option. Nobody thinks Dewey was any risk to the public whatsoever:

"He wasn't trying to hide -- we knew where to find him," says [Precinct 6 Constable] Trevino. "It's a nitpicky case, but we don't have a choice. It's not up to us to make a judgment call."

Is it okay to make completely unworkable laws, then penalize offenders for not properly complying? Is it more okay if the offenders in question are folks we're not supposed to like very much? Or has the web of restrictions on sex offenders now reached the point of absurdity?

"It's the very essence of overbroad legislation," says prosecutor Charles Thompson. "There are a bunch of different ways in that code you can fail to register as a sex offender. It's a very technical set of regulations."

At a minimum, surely, the law should change to acknowledge special circumstances of the indigent, especially since the law supplies a long list of various jobs in which registered sex offenders cannot work. As Dewey's lawyer, Sean Buckley, pointed out:

"The problem is that he remains a homeless person without any resources," says Buckley. "You can't just tell a guy not to be homeless."

What deterrent?

In light of Texas' two executions scheduled next week, here' s an interesting fact-bite: even though Texas executes more murderers than the next half dozen states combined, Texas' murder rate went up 8.6 % statewide from 2002 to 2003 alone. Overall, violent crime declined slightly over that period, according to the new Texas correctional population projections (pdf) by the Legislative Budget Board that I'm just starting to go through, but not much.

That's consistent with other information I've seen. Ann cites stats from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the agency that operates Texas prisons: "Texas' incarceration rate has been 51% higher than the national average, but in spite of that the crime rate has been 24% higher than the national average." Meanwhile, the prisons are bursting at the seams, and will be officially overcrowded after March. Texas is on a path to incarcerate nearly 15,000 more people each year by 2010, if current trends continue, said LBB. About 77,000 new inmates entered Texas prisons last year alone, most for non-violent offenses.

All this supposedly in an effort to keep us safe. But given the evidence one must ask, where's the deterrent?

Cool

Livebloggers from Ex Post and the Blakely Blog are writing up the Columbia University conference on state criminal sentencing issues. A mitzvah for those of us who can't afford conference fees or New York hotel rates. Via Doc Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy.

TN chief terminated for failure to cover up task force theft?

Was the chief of police in Bradford, Tennessee fired for failing to cover up a drug task force officer's misdeeds?

1. Task force officer steals radio from impounded car.
2. Mayor tells chief it should be handled as an internal matter.
   
3. Police chief lets local sheriff investigate independently.
4. Officer is forced to resign to avoid prosecution.
5. Mayor fires chief for not handling the matter internally.

Sounds like it to me.

Booming Biometric Budgets Bane of DPS Boondoggle

If the Texas Department of Public Safety wants to play Big Brother, they have to figure out how to pay for it. The Texas Legislative Budget Board Staff Performance Review (go here to view the massive PDF file) evaluates funding options for the Texas Department of Public Safety push to add biometric identifiers to the information collected by DPS from drivers license and ID card applicants.

The Department of Public Safety has requested funding in fiscal years 2006 and 2007 for five homeland security related Exceptional Items ... an Emergency Vehicle Operations Course, an In-Car Computer Project, the Criminal Intelligence Bureau's Texas Security Alert and Analysis Center, a Driver's License Reengineering Project, and a Driver's License Image Verification System.

That last item, the "image verification system," is the euphemism for the drivers license biometrics proposal that went down in flames on a 111-26 vote during the 78th Texas Legislature. (I need to look into the specifics of this "Texas Security Alert and Analysis Center," too.) In 2003, DPS proposed that Texas drivers and ID card holders should be required to give up facial recognition data plus all ten fingerprints. LBB didn't mention the political controversy around the biometrics proposal, but merely discussed possible funding sources to pay for it.

DPS proposes spending $65.7 million total on these items -- $43.2 million from State Highway Fund 6, and $22.5 million in asset forfeiture funds the feds share from drug cases.

That said, LBB doesn't seem to envision DPS getting money for these "exceptional items" through the next Texas budget. Since 9/11, Texas' policy has been to pass through as much federal homeland security funding as possible to local government, but to fund DPS' proposals, that would probably have to change:

The state may retain up to 20 percent of National Homeland Security Grants for States and Urban Area Security Initiative Grants for its own purposes, as well as 3 percent for administration, for a total estimated amount of $54.6 million for the 2006-07 biennium. In fiscal year 2004, the Texas Engineering Extension Service distributed 98 percent of all National Homeland Security Grants for States to local jurisdictions.

The Department of Public Safety and the Texas Engineering Extension Service should examine whether homeland security related Exceptional Item requests for the 2006-07 biennium could be funded with Federal Funds.

Great Britain right now is debating the substance of how their own biometric ID system will work when they start putting that data on their proposed national ID card. Spy Blog has a fine post that shows how the ambitions of governement data collectors would moot any sensible budgetary limits. Vendor driven proposals are massively driving up costs. A commenter adds that costs for such a system might grow exponentially once it's in place, plus require massive ongoing investment to keep the databases useful and up to date. Bottom line, vendors' lobbyists, not security needs, are driving the train: "Thanks to the extra technical complexity which the Government is piling onto the scheme, Information Technology hardware, software and consultancy suppliers could potentially make a fortune."

Like Texas, the Brits hope to include not just facial recognition technology but all ten fingerprints and a variety of other identifying information in their smart card system. But the government's greed for so much data could doom the project. Here's the functional problem identified by Spy Blog:

You simply cannot fit

• The digitised image of a "head and shoulders" photograph, to comply with the ICAO machine readable travel document standards
  
• The facial recognition reference point "minutiae" maps of such a "head and shoulders" photograph,
  
• The digitised fingerprint reference point "minutiae" maps of 10 fingers/thumbs
  
• The two iris scan codes
  
• The digitised image of a pen and ink handwritten signature
  
• The speed/pressure reference point "minutiae" maps of digtal pressure pad and stylus signature
  
• Any necessary smart card internal cryptographic checksums, digital signatures, certificate revocation lists etc.

into the standard 16Kb or 32Kb of tamper resistant memory of standard Smart Cards which are on the market from the likes of the market leaders such as Schlumberger/Ataxo or GEMPlus or Giesecke and Devrient (none of which are British companies).

It may not even be possible to do this with 64Kb or 128Kb Smart Cards.

Spy Blog predicts that the insistence on including so much data will create the same workability problems that have plagued the European Union biometric visas, which last month were deemed "not technically feasible."

I'll guarantee DPS hasn't worked out such problems yet -- they have to revamp their entire drivers license system to make it work, and haven't even started -- so the cost figures cited by LBB are almost certainly low-balled.

See more Grits coverage of biometrics issues here.

'A state sponsored suicide'

Carrie says James Porter's execution earlier this month was a "state-sponsored suicide." He'd dropped all his appeals and asked to be executed. I think she's right.

Texas plans two more executions next week. Troy Kunkle is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, January 25, while George Jones is scheduled to die on Thursday the 27th. Here's the whole grim schedule through March. The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty presently has e-action alerts regarding both these men's cases here.

The end of strict construction?

I must admit I've always been a bit befuddled by critiques of liberal activist judges. After all, I live in Texas. Most of my adult life, a good number of our judges have looked like Sharon Keller, Priscilla Owen and Alberto Gonzalez. The typical approach for appellate judges in this state is to choose the preferred policy outcome ahead of time - no liability for insurance companies, execute retarded people -- then manufacture some cockamamy argument to support it, to hell with the facts.

At least we're not alone. The Legal Reader quotes a gem of an Indiana Supreme Court opinion showing that, whether the liberal activist label was ever justified, today it's conservative judicial activism that's in vogue. Here's the court's ridiculous argument for refusing to allow recognition of gay marriages legally performed in other states:

when same-sex couples have sex, it can't cause accidental pregnancies. Indeed, when a same-sex couple wants to have a child, they have to make a concerted effort to have one, such as through adoption, assisted reproductive technology, or a surrogate. By making such a concerted effort, these couples have already demonstrated a strong commitment to having and raising children, so there is no need for the state's marriage laws to provide any extra encouragement.

The blogger's one-liner summary of the opinion's logic is spot on:

Indiana affords the benefits of marriage to heterosexuals because of their tendency to accidentally produce unwanted children, but denies these benefits to gays and lesbians because they tend to have children only when they really, really want them.

Read the opinion (pdf) for yourself, if you like. Honest, serious people, arguing in good faith, can disagree over whether gay people should be allowed to marry. Personally, I think it's a civil rights question. But if judges are going to manufacture such flimsy, spurious so-called legal arguments to support their positions, let's at least not pretend it's strict construction.

UPDATE: Indiana's Kemplog has more.

Probation includes jail time for police shooter

After a jury recommended probation, Houston District Judge Mary Lou Keel ordered that the officer convicted this week of shooting an unarmed 14-year old in the head spend 60 days in jail, in addition to nearly 10 years probation. Via TalkLeft.

Drug task forces on the ropes

Drug task forces are scaling back staff or looking for new money all over the country in the wake of cuts to the federal "Byrne grant" program.

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee recently recommended getting rid of Texas' entire drug task force system.

Booker leeway used to extend sentences in Texas

Doc Berman thinks Texas federal District Judge Randy Crane likely overstepped his authority when he used his new discretion to treat federal sentencing guidelines optionally to extend the sentences of three officials convicted of taking bribes. In most instances, judges tend to use the new discretion to sentence offenders less harshly. Berman and others believe that constitutional due process restrictions prevent the judge from using the new ruling that way.

If you're an attorney wondering how the Booker case will affect your clients in federal court (it doesn't affect Texas state cases), Berman's Sentencing Law and Policy Blog is borderline obsessed with the subject. Just start at the top and keep scrolling.

UPDATE: CrimProf blog points to this ABA web conferencing opportunity for attorneys to learn more about Booker. Perhaps Judge Crane might want to log on.

Coleman received restorative justice

Rev. Charles Kiker of Tulia Friends of Justice left these comments in the post below regarding the outcome of Tom Coleman's perjury trial. The Amarillo Globe News claimed that any more punishment than probation would have been a "miscarriage of justice." I wanted to make sure Grits readers saw what he has to say.

I am no fan, nor defender, of Tom Coleman. I don't feel jail time would have been a "miscarriage of justice," but I do feel justice was served. Tom got a stiff sentence, a 7 year prison sentence suspended for 10 years--no alcohol, no guns, can't leave Ellis County without his probation officer's permission, a $7,500 restitution payment to Swisher County; he can never again work as a police officer. Now that one's good for Tom, and good for all of us!

Jail time for Tom would have been revenge for the jail time the Tulia defendants served. Our justice system really shouldn't be about revenge, but it is. A nicer word is retribution, but it means about the same thing.

Our justice system is based on retributive justice. Biblical justice is restorative justice, making things right. Tom's sentence approached restorative justice. In retributive justice, the model our system is based on, Tom should have served time.

Tom's victims received a miscarriage of retributive justice. Tom got restorative justice in a retributive system. And that ain't right!

(Not) frequently (enough) asked questions

Ann's FAQ at Solutions for Texas on the state's prison options is a must read for anyone thinking about Texas' prison overpopulation crisis. She's provided answers to all the right questions about the justice system:

• Which sentencing policies reduce crime the most?
• Is crime down because more people are in prison?
• Too many felonies - too many felons
• How much does Texas spend on treatment and diversion programs that work?
• What is probation or "community supervision"?
• Is probation easy? How long are probation terms?
• What barriers do felons have to face in Texas?
• What is the effect of incarceration on children?
• Can Texas change?

Far from the usual conventional wisdom found in so-called FAQs, Ann has delved into the core concerns surrounding Texas' prison overpopulation crisis, bringing together a tremendous amount of research and insider background about the system that's not available anywhere else on the web.

The section of the site entitled "Library" also is brimming with useful information. Check it out.

The Lord despiseth not his prisoners

For the Lord heareth the poor and despiseth not his prisoners.
Psalm 69:33

Huntsville, Texas is home to the state's main prison facility. So it's fitting that this article appeared in the Huntsville Item yesterday about Restorative Justice Ministries, Texas' largest prison ministries network.

"The old 'tough, Texas Justice,' it doesn't work," said Bill Kleiber, administrative assistant for Restorative Justice Ministries. "We favor smart justice. What we do here is we help victims of crime, ex-offenders, offenders and corrections officers, pretty much anyone who is touched by incarceration."

That's a bold message to take into a small town filled with prison guards, and an especially important messenger. Not a lot of folks know about the fine, mostly low-key work of Restorative Justice Ministries, but this article gives a taste:

Restorative Justice Ministries was started 12 years ago by its current director, Emmett Solomon.

"I've been called to this ministry my whole life," said Solomon, former head chaplain for the state's prison system. "We initially were advocating prison ministry. Now we are not so much about prison ministry as we are about after-care ministry."

Emmett feels incarceration is being overused in Texas and it is having detrimental results for both families and society.

"Every time that a prisoner gets locked up a family goes into crisis," Solomon said. "As a result, we are unraveling the fabric of our society at the lowest levels, and we are creating what could be a permanent underclass.

Our system is aiding in that process."

Emmett's a conservative religious Republican, and there are a lot of issues on which he and I don't see eye to eye. But his concern for "family values" is more than a campaign slogan, and as a prison chaplain, he's witnessed the real impact of incarceration on families. He deserves a lot of credit for following his heart on these issues, even when it led him to question the tough on crime orthodoxy.

Emmett's aide, Bill Kleiber, is worried about how prison degrades inmates' ability to exercise personal responsibility. He sees RJM as a vehicle for correcting that.

"We are mentally damaged when we come out of prison. We are not allowed to think. We are not allowed to make any kind of decisions. The only decision I got to make was maybe what book I was going to read. Then they dump us out here with no preparation and say, 'Here's the free world, man! Here's some money,' and I don't even know how to handle this money," he said. "A lot of people ask us, 'Why are you wasting your time with those guys? They're only gonna go back in a couple of months.' But given half a chance, over 70 percent of ex-offenders never go back to prison."

RJM connects hundreds of church-based prison ministries statewide. Very few lay people have the first-hand knowledge of incarceration issues in Texas that the religious prison ministries do. I hope, as the 79th Legislature progresses, our elected leaders will look to them for solutions to the overincarceration question.