The Daily Habit: News
11:59 pm
Wipe That Stupid Look off Your Face. No More Smiling for Photo IDs- You know how most of the time the goverment can pretty much do what they please, even if it totally screws you over? It’s like every decision they make jams you and everybody else up like a mother with no end in sight. But, every once in a while they can do something to make up for the fluckovers and put a smile on lots of faces. Telling these happy-go-lucky weirdos they can’t shoot a goofy smile in a driver’s license photo is one of them.
Stopping driver’s license fraud is no joke, at least to those who aren’t sitting at home making fake ids: Four states are ordering people to wipe those stupid grins off their faces in their license photos and get with the program. Neutral facial expressions are required at departments of motor vehicles (DMVs) in Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia. That means you can’t smile or make ridiculous faces. The serious poses are urged by DMVs that have installed high-tech software that compares a new license photo with others that have already been shot, even fake ones done in a college dorm. When a new photo seems to match an existing one, the software triggers an alarm that someone may be stealing somebody’s private shit on the internet.
But there’s a monkeywrench in the technology: a person’s goofy grin. “Face-recognition software can fail to match two photos of the same person if facial expressions are different in pictures , says Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Takeo Kanade. “If you save a smile, like when you have a good buzz, it saves one way. But if you save a grin from reading joke on men’s men stall then another save. Two stupid grins but neither are the same” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-25-licenses_N.htm?se=yahoorefer).
A total of 31 states do computerized matching of driver’s license photos and three others are considering it, but a few just don’t want the headaches when a bunch of weirdos start piling in the dmvs to take new driver’s license photos, though they could use the extra change. Most say their software matches faces regardless of expressions, but others know that’s just a line to sell the equipment to politicians who are on the take on every level. Then the money and favors fly into the party members’ pockets and the tax payers are stuck footing the bill. So, just wipe that stupid look off your face and say cheese for the camera. That will be $75, please.
