NSA's Application of Threat Detection for Unidentified Stimuli

I have always been interested in the idea of facial recognition, how it works in both the human perspective and how it can be applied in this day and age with the technology we have. I came across an article talking about the NSA and their use of Facial Recognition. By using the internet, the NSA is able to download hundreds of millions of images which they can use to cross-reference and then successfully create recognizable patterns through complicated algorithms. This correlated mostly with me with the research talk done in class “Familiar novel discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli”. In this study, the experimenter was studying the ability for the brain to (quickly) correlate recognizable images and non-recognizable images (demonstrated with the use of famous people’s images) and how they may or may not stir up a defense mechanism (they are seen threatening).

                It’s interesting that the brain is already working at a capacity at which the memory can store recognizable images to the point of subconscious recall. At the same time, programs are finally reaching this level of technological advancement which can attain such a degree of information at a reasonable pace. The conclusion of the experiment with the brains recall process correlated to a human evolutionary idea which the brain is able to connect ideas or emotions connected to certain information given, which can then lead to a determination of response. This information can actually be useful to the study of the NSA’s use of facial images for facial recognition because it means that it is no longer necessary for images to be complete frontal and high resolution pictures to work with an algorithm to make their recognition software more capable. Instead a more specific algorithm, which through deeper study of the brain and more intense coding, can mimic the operations of the brain at its natural level and thus make the program more useful on less “desirable” but easier to attain images.

                Billions of dollars from the government and private sector is already flowing into projects such as these relating to facial recognition, so although the level of expertise needed to make the application of the study to this new software is incredibly high, the funding is present and the results and uses of this application is extremely necessary in this time and age.

Resources:

Cleary, A. M., Ryals, A. J., Nomi, J. S. (2013). Intuitively detecting what is hidden within a visual mask: Familiar novel discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli. Memory and Cognition, 41(7), 989-999.

Risen, James, and Laura Poitras. "N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images." The New York Times. The New York Times, 31 May 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.