Scarface predictive policing deployed at mines
Information Certainty: Documented
Deployment Purpose: Surveillance
| Summary |
|---|
| Bidvest Protea Coin, a South African security company, has deployed a high grade system for the tracking of suspect persons at mines around the country. The system is termed 'Scarface' and consists of an algorithm for identifying 'early' signs of transgression. It uses facial recognition and appears to be connected to other criminal databases. It can be described as predictive policing to the extent that it makes a claim to the early identification of the 'signs' of suspicious individuals, aiming to prevent crime before it occurs. It also claims not to rely on the intervention of a person (user) to make an analysis. It appears the system may not be limited only to mines and may serve as the bedrock for a general predictive policing system. |
Products and Institutions:
| Product Deployed | Bidvest Protea Coin Scarface |
|---|---|
| Institutions ⠉ | Bidvest Protea Coin |
| Datasets | Unknown Dataset 0160 |
| Search software |
Status and Events:
| Status | Ongoing |
|---|---|
| Events | Start (21 June 2022, Documented, , No description) |
| Start Date | |
| End Date |
Users:
| Involved Entities | Unknown Institution 0092 |
|---|---|
| Managed by | Bidvest Protea Coin |
| Used by |
Location:
| City | Pretoria |
|---|---|
| Country ⠉ | South Africa |
Description[ ]
A security company has deployed a high grade system to predict and track suspect individuals at mines around South Africa.
The Bidvest Protea Coin group has provided further details about the advanced facial recognition technology it’s using to track and catch criminals in South Africa – a system known as ‘Scarface’. Scarface is a platform that uses advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to help security teams identify what it refers to as ‘persons of interest’. The group said that the technology was originally developed as an early warning system that could identify potential threats and prevent assets or criminal attacks before they happened. “Since we know that crime often involves scouting, which takes place over a period, Scarface stops that process at the early stages before it matures with detailed and often classified information, by allowing early detection and/or apprehension of transgressors. Overall the system provides increased risk mitigation through a proactive approach to suspect identification.” The technology is fully autonomous and requires no user intervention to function as a recognition platform 1
But in order to work as intended, it needs access to a database of biometric information. An accurate database. It’s already got one, of a sort. It’s used to detect the presence of known illegal miners, or zama zamas, in some areas of South Africa. This, coupled with high-resolution cameras and the autonomous Scarface system, lets the group identify if there’s a ‘person of interest’ in the area. The system is apparently quick, and accurate — though accuracy rates aren’t mentioned. Still, it’s great… until it isn’t. The company doesn’t explain how it will deal with false positives, where it gets its facial data from, how broadly the program will roll out, and how the data collected will be managed. Because, yes, non-criminal facial data will probably be collected by, or be resident in, Project Scarface 2
On the Bidvest Protea Coin website, its monitoring centres are described as follows, suggesting they merge the centre with other efforts to identify individuals on the basis of security concerns.
Our state of the Art SAIDSA approved Control centre based in centurion, is operated by highly trained Surveillance Controllers 24 hours of every day. They remotely monitor all our customers security and related systems which include, beams, alarms, electric fencing, sensors, CCTV cameras, and Access control systems which extend to remote exit/entry management and biometric and facial recognition verification. Once an alarm condition has been positively verified or a threat has been detected, our response procedures are activated to ensure quick and appropriate action is taken and that the correct people and parties are notified immediately depending on the circumstances. The Bidvest Protea Coin control centre makes use of a physical security information management platform (PSIM) which is able to receives alerts, alarms and information from numerous different systems thus converging multiple events, incidents and intelligence from different systems onto one platform. The system has embedded rules and leaves nothing to chance, so all controllers are automatically guided through the correct processes based on the nature of the incident/alert or task. The software platform has the built in intelligence (AI) to analyse and predict. It is also open and scalable making it easy to accommodate the pace and ever changing requirements demanded from the Technological revolution we find ourselves in 3
References
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- ^ "This South African security company is using a tool called ‘Scarface’ to track people – how it works". (2022) <https://businesstech.co.za/news/technology/598848/this-south-african-security-company-is-using-a-tool-called-scarface-to-track-people-how-it-works/>
- ^ "Scarface is watching you - How the South African facial recognition system works - StuffSA". (2022) <https://stuff.co.za/2022/06/22/scarface-is-watching-you-how-the-south-african-facial-recognition-system-works/> Accessed: 2022-12-06
- ^ "Surveillance & Off Site Monitoring". (2022) <https://www.proteacoin.co.za/services/off-site-monitoring/> Accessed: 2022-12-07