A future where the police can scan a crowded public square, a packed lobby, or busy street corner and pick out a perpetrator is close at hand — police in Brazil are about to start employing a device known as the ‘Robocop’ visor, thanks to its similarity to the cyborg cop’s sensor, in an effort to fight crime. The device transmits information back to a central computer database that uses facial recognition software to scan for wanted criminals in real time.
Smart Planet explains how the visor works:
the high-tech eyewear uses a tiny built-in camera to accurately scan faces in virtually any setting, even large crowds. The visual information is instantly transmitted to a computer database where it’s cross-checked with mugshots and other images of criminals kept on file. If there’s a positive identification, a red light hidden inside the glasses flashes to alert the officer that he might have to move in and apprehend the suspect.
The software analyzes 46,000 different points on the subject’s face, and “can scan up to 400 faces a second as long as the people are within 164 feet of the police officer. The settings can also be adjusted to scan faces further away — up to 12 miles — by slowing down the scanning rate.”
As of now, the visors will be employed mostly in Rio de Janeiro’s slums, where crime is the worst, and the authorities and citizens alike are desperate to end the problem. But there will no doubt be privacy concerns raised if these visors see widespread use — these are precisely the kind of gadgets that deeply disturb some while simultaneously enthusing others about the future of technology. Surely there’s room for authoritarian exploitation here, and our dystopia-saturated minds will likely be quick to imagine the scenarios put forward in the 1984s, Minority Reports, and, yes, Robocops out there.
But, if folks like David Brin are right, we’re already living in a society that’s overwhelmingly monitored — by security cameras, information services, etc — and that the best recourse is to simply demand better transparency from the institutions that will make use of such visors. In other words, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to stop the march of such technology — so we’re going to have to embrace it in entirely new ways to defend our freedoms.
