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WINCE,
curl a lip, raise an eyebrow or pump your fist in the air
while watching the Olympics in
Beijing
this August and one of the half-a-million surveillance
cameras employed for the Games would likely catch the
action.
So says
Stan Z. Li, whose cutting-edge face-recognition
technology, ubiquitously called Made in China, is featured
in Discovery Channel’s ‘Ultimate Olympics: Hi Tech Games’,
a show which features the various people and organizations
in China and other countries around the world that are
involved in organizing the Beijing Olympics.
China
is relying on its vast video-surveillance network—as many
as 500,000 cameras covering Beijing—to ensure the security
of the centuries-old athletic competition.
PROFESSOR Stan Z. Li of the
National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition in China
demonstrates how cutting-edge face-recognition technology
would be used to secure the Beijing Olympics in August. -- PHOTO
SUPPLIED BY DISCOVERY CHANNEL
“Olympic
authorities are concerned about possible terrorist risks.
These should be avoided,” the 50-year-old Li told
journalists from four Asian countries via a phone patch
weeks before his face was beamed on cable television.
Li, a
professor at the Beijing-based National Laboratory of
Pattern Recognition, explained that face-recognition
technology promises to do that and more.
Applications for tickets to the Beijing Olympics have hit
4.5 million as of the first week of January. A statement
quoted 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Ticketing Center deputy
head Rong Jun saying this is double the actual amount of
tickets (1.8 million) allotted for the second phase of
ticket sales.
This
ticket allocation excludes the millions of tourists
expected from other parts of the world (around 2.5 million
visitors, including 500,000 foreigners), as well as the
athletes from more than a hundred countries with their own
entourages.
While Li
said he couldn’t provide more details on the security
preparations and arrangements, he nevertheless claims that
face-recognition technology is a major component in
ensuring the People’s Republic of China, a communist-led
country of more than one billion people, wouldn’t lose
face come August.
Face
recognition, or the ability of a computer to automatically
match the features of a human face from its stored set of
data, was a security system hatched, according to Li, more
than three decades ago.
A set of
codes commands the computer to compare features of a human
face—distance between the eyes, shape of cheekbones, moles
or lip size—with what is stored in its database.
Usually,
the data is captured via a camera, like those inside
automated teller machines (ATMs), according to Li.
People who
look into the camera, he said, are the cooperative users
and the easiest to surveil.
In the
Beijing Olympics, Li said most of these “cooperative”
users are holders of tickets registered to their face, the
face in the photograph they sent to the preregistration
office.
As cited
in Rule 8 of the 21-rule ticket- ordering conditions of
purchase, buyers for attendance in the opening and closing
ceremonies are required to “submit their photos…and only
the person themselves will be allowed to enter the
stadium.”
“Persons
who do not submit photos pursuant to the submission terms
and rules will be deemed as automatically waiving the
tickets they had booked and the payment will be refunded,”
said the official ticketing web site of the Games.
“Every
ticket will be associated with the person’s face only.
Only the holder [owner] can hold the ticket,” Li said.
He claims
their database can store 10 million faces, and within less
than two seconds, match a face to the subject viewed by
the camera.
Likewise,
Li said the technology they’ve put in place would allow
surveillance cameras to automatically estimate crowd
density, track a lost or unclaimed bag in the airport and
identify and an “unusual number of crowd gathering.”
Such
crowds are classified by Li’s team as “noncooperative
users” or those who are unaware they are under the
camera’s watch.
“We can’t
disclose the sites of these cameras, for security
purposes. What I can say is they’re hidden and won’t make
you feel inconvenient,” Li said, making deft reference to
the lost-of-privacy issues which has hounded the
technology.
A Xinhua
News Agency report in 2006 has reportedly said, however,
that some of these cameras would be installed at stadium
entrances.
Li
admitted that the technology running the cameras would be
able to identify someone catalogued in the police database
even if they wear heavy makeup.
Xinhua has
reported that as early as that year, China has begun
compiling a database of “hooligans” they suspect may cause
violence in the games.
Pricey
space
FOR
Filipinos wanting to go to
Beijing
for the Olympics, though, the main concern is not security
but the availability of hotel rooms and the price of
accommodation.
“Most of
the inquiries for travel to the Games are on space, where
to stay, especially the week before the opening
ceremonies,” Brion, managing director of Cordym Tours &
Travel Inc., said in a phone interview.
According
to Brion, Cordym, which buys international
tour-destination packages, reported last year that a room
within Beijing has soared to about $800 a night.
“I
wouldn’t be surprised if it’s more than that today,” he
said adding that some are hoping the price range would
move lower as the Games’s opening draws near.
Beijing
Sihe Hotel, for example, now offers 8100RMB ($1,090 or
P43,927) a night for its VIP suite room between August 7
to August 24. It was offered for just $187 beginning June
1 last year up to January 5.
The web
site of The Peninsula Beijing, on the other hand, still
offers $396.66 (RMB2,850) for its standard room.
However,
Brion said, the space that local tour operators may get
could be like broken teeth: bungi-bungi.
Bamboo
Garden Hotel
Beijing,
for example, said all its rooms—standard twin, suite,
deluxe and VIP—are already fully booked the whole month of
August.
Still,
Brion surmises Philippine-based tour operators would still
target Filipinos traveling as a family, and foreign
individual travelers (FITs) who would stay in Beijing
after the opening ceremonies.
“As I see
it,
China’s
not worried with attracting lesser numbers of FITs because
their domestic tourists alone would suffice,” Brion said.
He also
emphasized that security has never been an issue with
Filipino travelers. “We’re steeped in travel security
protocols,” Brion said.
Filipinos
are also steeped in cash, as the Philippine peso gained
nearly 20 percent against the greenback since last year.
More than
half a million Filipinos reportedly traveled to China and
Hong Kong last year.
They were
part of the more than a quarter of a billion tourists who
flew to the communist-led country of 1.3 billion in 2007.
Perhaps
Li’s 500,000 or so surveillance cameras wouldn’t be much
of a bother for these Filipino tourists anyway, privacy
concerns and all. With the popularity of local TV’s Pinoy
Big Brother, the Olympic experience would probably just
feel like a bigger Bahay ni Kuya in Beijing.
(‘Ultimate Olympics: Hi Tech Games’ premieres on Discovery
Channel on February 24, at 9 p.m., and encores on February
25 at 2 a.m., 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.; also on March 1 at 2 p.m.
and March 2 at 2 p.m.) | 
