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                Date: 1998-10-15
                 
                 
                UK: Digitales Affenhaus eingeweiht
                
                 
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      q/depesche  98.10.15/1 
updating      98.10.14/2 
			  98.8.30/1 
 
UK: Digitales Affenhaus eingeweiht 
 
140 fixe Kameras und 11 mobile Einheiten werden, wie im  
August berichtet, den Londoner Stadtteil East Ham ab sofort  
in ein digitales Affenhaus verwandeln. Die Kameras werden  
über das Mandrake-System verbunden sein,  einer  
Datenbank mit den biometrischen Daten von straffällig  
gewordenen Personen.  
 
Das System hat nach Angaben der Hersteller eine Fehlerrate  
von 20 Prozent. Woraus geschlossen muss, dass jeder  
Fünfte unschuldig in die Mühlen des Überwachungsstaats  
geraten wird. 
 
 
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 October 13, 1998 A revolutionary surveillance system that  
can pin-point known criminals as they walk along in a crowd  
is being put to the test in a London borough. 
 
The Mandrake face recognition system will seek out 'target  
faces' in the closed circuit television (CCTV) footage in the  
Newham area from Wednesday. 
 
Councillor Ian Corbett said the decision to go ahead with the  
£60,000 six-month trial was made in response to the  
concerns of local residents. 
.... 
But fears of innocent people being identified by mistake have  
lead civil liberties groups to condemn the system and call for  
it to be tightly regulated. 
... 
Newham has a network of 140 street cameras as well as 11  
mobile camera units. 
Images beamed into the council's security centre in East  
Ham will be compared with a database of target faces  
supplied by police. 
The system can isolate the targets from the crowds of people  
appearing on CCTV. When a match is made the computer  
highlights the target and sounds an alarm. 
An operator then checks the image and decides if it is  
necessary to contact the police. 
... 
Mandrake is the first identification system to be able to work  
from moving pictures. It has been designed by Software  
Systems International which has been concentrating on  
identification systems for several years. 
.... 
"The ability to capture a moving face is quite a new innovation  
and makes a lot of difference to being able to work with  
things like CCTV," Software Systems marketing manager  
Pat Oldcorn said. 
... 
It is the risk of error that has the civil liberties group Liberty  
most concerned. 
 
"The accuracy of facial mapping is very limited," campaigns  
manager Liz Parratt said. 
"For example, you need only to look at a handful of photos of  
celebrities to see how different the same people can look in  
different photos." 
"The claim that those who have nothing to hide have nothing  
to fear is rubbish. What the police call an 80% success rate  
is what we would call a one in five chance of a mistake." 
.... 
A reduction in the crime rate in Newham over the next six  
months will persuade the Labour-dominated council to  
continue with the system. 
 
full text 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_191000/191692.st
                   
m 
 
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edited by  
published on: 1998-10-15 
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