* FERET overview
John Paul Jones, July, 2001
FERET, a Department of Defense project initiated in 1993 and
completed in early 1998, entailed the disbursment of public
funds into three main areas: 1) research grants to
universities; 2) development grants to private corporations
that used the publicly funded research to implement the
technology; 3) government-sponsored testing wherein the
publicly funded but privately owned corporations competed
for development grants. Thus, from start to finish, the face
scan technology appears to have be funded primarily with
tax-payer money and designed to meet criteria established by
the federal government. Once developed, the technology was
primarilly bought--again with tax-payer money--by state and
federal government agencies of the United States, as well as
foreign governments, e.g., China, interested in the control
and tracking technology.
The Department of Defense is now scurying to improve the
existing face scan technology through a 50 million dollar
extravaganza of compassion and control called the HumanID
project. Once again, the DoD is funding university research
with the goal of identifying people 500 feet from a sensor
in a variety of lighting and background situations,
according to Wired Magazine, March 14, 2001, which fact can
be verified by visiting the Department of Defense
CounterDrug Technology Development Program Office web site,
where you can read about the new Facial Recognition Vendor
Test 2000. The following corporations submitted systems for
evaluation in the FRVT 2000: Banque-Tec International Pty
Limited C-Vis Computer Vision and Automation GmbH, eTrue
(formerly Miros), Lau Technologies, Visionics Corporation.
(Note: That this technology was purchased primarilly with
tax-payer money can be verified by looking at the list of
Viisage and Visionic Corporation's first customers, as of
01/20/2000:
U.S. Federal and State agencies:
NSA, DoD, INS, DARPA, NIJ (National Institute of Justice)
Army Research Labs, ARKANSAS, MASSACHUSETS, FLORIDA, NEW
MEXICO, CONNETICUT, ILLINOIS, WISCONSIN, ARIZONA,
NEW JERSEY
Foreign Governments:
Communist China
Eastern Europe
Philipines
Isreali Ministry of Defense (MOD)
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