IP: High-tech Anti-crime Computer Unveiled

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

From: Jan <igniting@flash.net>
Subject: IP: High-tech Anti-crime Computer Unveiled
Date: Sun, 18 Oct 1998 20:10:22 -0500
To: Ignition-Point <ignition-point@majordomo.pobox.com>

<center>The Associated Press

</center>

	LONDON --  An "intelligent" computer system that uses closed circuit
television to match faces in a crowd to mug shots of criminals is likely
to become London's latest weapon against crime.  

	Scotland Yard and a local council have installed the $100,000 CCTV
system for a trial in Newham, a poor district in London's East End.  

	Newspapers reported Thursday that the computer system, called Mandrake,
is linked to 144 CCTV's in shopping centers, railway stations and car
parks.  Mandrake can scan up to 150 faces at a time and compare them with
a database of criminal mug shots stored on a computer at council
headquarters.  

	If Mandrake makes a match between a face in the crowd and a criminal's
mug shot, the computer alerts a monitoring team in the town hall, which
alerts the police. 

 

	Civil liberties groups said they were alarmed by the new system, but
police defended its use.  


	"The only people entered on to the system will be convicted criminals
who, through our intelligence, we believe are habitually committing
crimes in the area,"  The Daily Mail quoted police Chief Superintendent
Dave Armond saying.  "If people are not committing crimes, they have
nothing to fear, but if they are among the small minority who are, the
message is, 'We are watching out for you'.  

	The newspaper reported that the police will initially use the system to
concentrate on catching robbery suspects.  However, in the future it
could be used to search crowds for hooligans who stir up trouble at
soccer matches.  

	CCTV's developer, Software and Systems International, said the system is
accurate enough to identify people hiding behind makeup or eyeglasses. 
Even growing a beard won't help, the company said.  

	Britain has 150,000 closed circuit TV cameras.  Although most Britons
are used to the devices, civil liberties groups oppose the cameras and
the facial matching.  

	"The accuracy of facial matching like this is limited.  You only need a
handful of photographs of celebrities to see how different the same
people can look in different pictures," the Mail quoted Liz Parratt,
spokeswoman for the civil rights group liberty, as saying.  "Even if you
did have a system which worked, it would have to be regulated very
carefully to protect people's privacy."



Transcribed by Ryan Wright from Sunday, Oct 18, 1998, Star Telegram, Fort
Worth Texas, Section A page 19



 ******=========================================*****

"Among the elementary measures the American Soviet government

 will adopt to further the cultural revolution are...

 [a] National Department of Education...the studies will be

 revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and

 other features of the bourgeois ideology. The students will

 be taught the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism,

 internationalism and the general ethics of the

 new Socialist society."

     - William Z. Foster,

       Toward Soviet America, 1932


"...Stage III...would proceed to a point where no state would

have the military power to challenge the progressively 

strengthened U.N. peace force...

The manufacture of armaments would be prohibited...

All other armaments would be destroyed..." 

    -Department of State publication number 7277



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