A Colorado university professor took thousands of photos of students and faculty without their knowledge as part of to improve facial recognition software for the U.S. military.
As , for several days back in 2012 and 2013, positioned a camera on a window ledge. He then took continuous photos of pedestrians on a particular stretch of sidewalk on the campus below.
Boult is a professor of innovation and security at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. The U.S. Navy funded his research to improve long range facial recognition capabilities.
鈥淲e were looking at making algorithms that understood the issues of blur,鈥� said Boult. 鈥淏ecause as you go through the atmosphere things get blurry.鈥�
Since it鈥檚 a university, some of the same people passed by the camera regularly. And Boult could use these matching photos to improve the algorithm overall.
Denise Mayes with the is not impressed.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 know that there鈥檚 been consensus on whether or not facial recognition technology is a good thing,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 not sold.鈥�
Mayes worries about the privacy issue when it comes to this technology. She's also concerned about the people who ended up in Boult's dataset.
But Boult said this technology is already too entrenched to pull back.
鈥淚f we as researchers don鈥檛 make facial recognition better,鈥� Boult said, 鈥渢hen we increase the chance that the system will misidentify people and then cause other violations of people鈥檚 rights.鈥�
As for his research methods, he said his study was conducted in a public space where there is no inherent right to privacy. And he said he worked hard to protect the people he photographed. He waited five years to release the data to other researchers and even then, under strict license parameters. He said no names or identities were ever gathered or shared without permission.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUER in Salt Lake City, and KRCC and 糖心vlog传媒 in Colorado.
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