Told you.

But you wouldn't believe me.

Get used to living in a Police State, serfs.

Oh, and Dazzle face paint, which looks cool for games, defeats the facial recognition programs we're using to load the databases with.

Thanks for writing about this, Brendan.

The NYT is correct to dismiss this as bullshit. The state of the art in machine vision isn't even close to being able to reliably pick terrorists or terrorist activity out of a crowd, and even if it could, the counter measures required to beat it are as trivial as growing or shaving a beard.

If there's a story here, it's that a bunch of former CIA guys are trying to use their connections in government and 911 hysteria to sell the Feds technology that doesn't (and likely never will) work as advertised.

Just because it has a false positive rate near 50 percent doesn't mean it won't be rolled out nationwide.

Heck, the TSA can't even stop 4 out of 5 training attempts by "terrorists" - and they continue to do their "work" uninterrupted.

Because Americans like to live in Fear.

Every time I go to Central Cinema that damn Bobby Vee song ends up stuck in my head for days.

The fact that there are other for-profit web outlets publishing shameless conspiracy-theorist bait doesn't mean you yourself aren't publishing paranoid-conspiracy-theorist bait.

What's this..?

I dunno, looks like 100,000 people in a park selling illegal drugs.

Sheeze...did the software register that?!!

Nah...check the zipcode. Seattle. That auto-switches the filters to off...

They're not illegal or here. Or won't be.

Software has to adapt, @7.

One of the points is to create predictive databases to pick up unusual things. Like someone walking with a weapon across pedestrian flow during a game event. Humans are better at spotting such patterns, as are dogs and pigs, but computers don't get tired or want to get paid a reasonable amount.

Thank you for being one of the few writers at The Stranger willing to cover issues like this, Brendan.

We all know Constant, for one, is far too busy to pay any attention to something like this, what with his duties to the Obama Re-Election Campaign and all.

The seriousness of a civil liberties threat can be gauged by the seriousness with which Will in Seattle takes it. While it would be funny to see Will trying to evade detection with Dazzle face paint (as long as he didn't come within 50 yards of you personally, as always), the real scandal here is that there is an entire industry, several of them, actually, built up around scamming the US government's security apparatus with bad systems that doesn't work.

I'm sure that somewhere right now a company is earning hundreds of millions to train dogs with psychic powers, or to record the music coming out of your car stereo from satellites, or to detect the radiation levels of caffe latte.

Any suggestions for where to target PRA requests to get more detail about Seattle's involvement in the Trapwire trial?

Tech exists y'all - read it here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/no…

Tech exists y'all - read it here: http://www.networkworld.com/community/no…