DailyPost 3036
WHAT FACIAL RECOGNITION CAN DO TO THE POLICE?
The creation and expansion of railways in the second half of the 19th century and in the first decades in the 20th century, provided a solid framework of transportation to this country. In a similar vein, but in radically disorganised manner, CCTVs appeared on the scene around two decades back, to bring video surveillance to reality, and be a force multiplier for the already stretched police forces in the country. From raw video footage to be monitored to a variety of video analytics; some being very specialised and effective, if used correctly, with the right domain knowledge, has been a giant leap. The progress henceforth added new night vision cameras too.
From visual monitoring and post mortem analytics, the capability to react and respond in real time got added to this system. Today we are at the cusp of another great revolution, of AI enabled video monitoring and video analytics in real time and the tech to compute humongous video data. Today you can even converse with a video.The multimodal LLMs are creating an unknown dimensions to video. Two areas in video analytics which have really hit the roof as far as the public domain is concerned are facial recognition and automated number plate recognition.
As CCTV came in as tech logistical infrastructure, there was no inbuilt scope for incremental improvement with the corresponding tech and requirement changes, Large parts of CCTV networks were found languishing for lack of Annual Maintenance Contract, AMC, which means they are there only for namesake. Large number of times we hear of CCTVs not working. Facial recognition as a tool, could have done wonders, if it was designed in that manner. Even today we don’t have facial recognition software running on most of the cameras, which could have been used for a variety of purposes. Bereft of it, it is just a video footage that is being recorded.
It becomes a back breaking exercise to shuffle through hundreds and thousands of hours of video footage, to come to some conclusion, if you are successful. Time is of utmost importance in any investigation. Let’s illustrate the utility of facial recognition in the light of the attack on Saif Ali Khan. The entry to building using FR is adding another worthwhile layer of security. Now with the face of the accused known, it would have been able to find if the same person had visited earlier also. With functional FR all across the network, the face of the accused can be flashed, and the system would throw up results based on requirements. Imagine what a faces database can deliver to the police? It will have the potential to provide unimaginable tech leads. With AI getting commonplace we should not miss the facial recognition wave. How we adapt technology as per our problem statement is exactly the amount technology would deliver to us.
FACIAL RECOGNITION IN A MULTIFACETED MANNER HAS THE POTENTIAL TO TRANSFORM POLICING, WAY BEYOND WHAT THE VIDEO EAGLES ARE DELIVERING TODAY.
Sanjay Sahay