Facial recognition startup to cover Moscow’s CCTV network

The Guardian reports that Russian facial recognition company FindFace is finalizing a deal with Moscow city government covering the city’s network of 150,000 CCTV cameras.

If a crime is committed, the mugshots of anyone in the area can be fed into the system and matched with photographs of wanted lists, court records, and even social networks.

FindFace launched in March and has about 500,000 users. The FindFace service was designed for users of the largest Russian social network “Vkontakte” and is based on face recognition technology developed by N-Tech.Lab.

According to reports, the start-up processed almost 3 million searches in its first two months. The FindFace algorithm allows quick searches in big data sets. “Three million searches in a database of nearly 1 billion photographs: that’s hundreds of trillions of comparisons, and all on four normal servers. With this algorithm, you can search through a billion photographs in less than a second from a normal computer,”co-founder Alexander Kabakov told the Guardian.

The app gives users the most likely match and the ten most similar matches to the uploaded portrait.

In April it was reported that the FindFace app was being used in Russia to identify and intimidate woman who have appeared in pornographic films or have advertised on prostitution and escort services website.

Article Topics

big data  |  biometrics  |  cctv  |  criminal ID  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  Russia  |  surveillance