IPVM attended the IFSEC show for the first time this year.
The Chinese took over the show, centered on Hikvision, flanked by Dahua, Huawei and a legion of other Chinese manufacturers.
IFSEC is much smaller than ISC West, with about 50% fewer exhibitors and notable large absences, making it most comparable to ASIS, though without ASIS educational component but with significant more traffic.
In this report we cover:
Chinese Front and Center
Hikvision Long Booth
Dahua Confused And Surprised
Face Recognition
GDPR / ICO Complaint Against Show
Booth Centered Around a Bar
Celebrity AI
Live Hacking a Fingerprint Lock
Avigilon Big Advertising Spend
Huawei "Care More"
Dahua - AI Adding Value?
UK Startup Hardware Developer / Manufacturer
EU Made Positioning Cameras
Hikvision Flashlight Camera
Interesting People Detector Demo
Stands Grouped By Segment
Access Control Stand Video
Hikvision Parking Space Detector
Competitor to Ambarella and Huawei / Hisilicon
Live Attacks
Live Drones
LTS In the UK
Show Me How?
Education at IFSEC
Certified Techs
IFSEC Competitor - The Security Event
ASIS Competitor
Hanwha Marketing Shirt Move
Axis Marketing
Show In A Mall
Bosch Invests In Facial Recognition
Pansonic Disappearing
3 Big No Shows (At least)
Impressive Keynote Area
Milestone Regular
Genetec Surrounded
Huawei Software Defined Cameras
Huawei: Who's Axis?
Face++ Showing
FLIR racecar
Anixter's PSIM Displayed
Owl gimmick
Happiness analytics
UK Built Servers
Milestone / Hikvision Servers
Steps All Over
Mobotix Moves to Varifocal, IR and PTZs
Worst Wireless
Chinese companies were front and center, with literally most prominently showing off facial recognition.
Hikvision has, by far, the largest booth, it is extremely long as this walk-through video shows:
Dahua had basically the same booth and same marketing slogan from ISC West:
This time, Dahua displayed various people as being 'surprised' or 'confused'. Judge the accuracy for yourself:
Does Dahua do any QA? Does anyone at Dahua check these things and say 'hey this does not look right'? This is a $3 billion revenue company with 6,000 'engineers'. It's amazing what happens when the PRC government blocks out foreign companies in a space.
Also, Dahua's clothing recognition regularly mistook someone's skin color for their clothing color, as in the example below:
Also, note, in the example above, within 2 seconds, Dahua switches from saying the person has blue slacks to brown ones and from not having a bag to having one.
(Note: We masked out the face since it is not relevant to the example/analysis and was rather close up.)
The images below show a sample of the sheer number of companies using biometrics at IFSEC 2018:
Here is something different. UK manufacturing has been overwhelmingly replaced with OEMing or Chinese brands.
One UK startup, Bluebox Video has designed, developed and is manufacturing their own streaming video walls. Below is a picture of their CTO, James Doolin, who said he designed the PCB board shown in the center himself, next to 24 Full HD cameras output from their BB appliance:
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More to come on day 2 and 3. If you have requests, make them here.
One big topic we are tracking - GDPR and facial recognition - easily 20 booths had facial recognition, even random companies. Question - does this violate GDPR? If not, why not? If yes, what to do? We've asked this question formally to show management and will post that, if they respond. Anyone with thoughts?
Walk in front of a random booth that is advertising facial recognition analytics, stop and ask that they produce all video content of you so that it may be disposed of.
stop and ask that they produce all video content of you so that it may be disposed of.
Good one! I am trying to determine how much time they have to respond. They might simply say, "We'll dispose of it at the end of the show." Anyone know how the process works? I am checking with Charles on our side.
Under the GDPR, you should be able to do this: article 15gives data subjects a right to their own data, article 17 a clear right to be forgotten.
However, the company running the booth does not have to comply immediately - as stated inarticle 12, they have one month to respond and can extend that an additional two months if more time is needed. (So three months total.) They also have a right to ask for additional information so that your request can be fulfilled.
And while the GDPR demands a response to the request, that doesn't mean the request must be fulfilled. According to article 12 again, if the request is too vague and the end user “is not in a position to identify the data subject” it is not obligated to comply.
Companies can also deny or charge fees for requests that are “manifestly unfounded or excessive.” Finally, end users are also not obligated to comply if the data was collected in the public interest.
Very informative information about the details of GDPR. Seems as though it's a lot of empty threats and sabre rattling where, if you look closely, then it actually is worthless. I'm sure it will be held onto in order to slap a massive fine on some huge company, but from the 10 lines above I see where it can be completely ignored.
I don't know that, however we noted in our GDPR guide that this caused a potential loophole:
"Since most video surveillance data is kept for less than a month, this means many requests for video surveillance data will likely be impossible. The one month period is also a potential loophole that end users can exploit to deny information requests. Exploiting such a loophole may be risky since it could be interpreted as violating the spirit of the GDPR, but that has not stopped some we have spoken to from saying they plan on using it."
There are some companies do analytics in the cloud, see our Directory of VSaaS / Cloud Video Surveillance Providers. And I am sure there are more coming, e.g., Dahua and Hikvision are marketing, developing and/or releasing cloud AI? How soon it is available overseas I don't know.
Very few drones at the show, added a picture in the day 2 post with the drone area.
"Muli camera edge plus cloud offerings" Can you elaborate? You mean multiple imagers with edge analytics?
As for facial recognition on the edge, I think most companies are doing it server side. There's at least 1 Hikvsion camera with Intel Movidious that is edge based, available in some regions, not available in others (e.g., US). In general, I think you're much safer with non-edge facial recognition, given the processing power and options available.
That's a good question. I did not see any robots though I was not particularly looking for them. Searching through the IFSEC exhibitor list for some notable names (Knightscope, Cobalt, SMP, Sharp, etc.) returned no exhibitors. There is also no category for robots in the list filters.
I guess my question is more about the specifics of GDPR. Maybe Charles could answer. How does GDPR square with the idea that in public there is no reasonable expectation of privacy from surveillance?
Hi Daniel, good question! So first of all, the "does this violate GDPR?" question was referring to firms touting facial recognition. Facial recognition, as a form of biometric data, is considered one of the highly sensitive "special categories of personal data" under article 9 of the GDPR. Processing this is generally prohibited by the GDPR with important exceptions.
The main exception which would apply to these vendors would likely be, as explained in our GDPR guide, what the GDPR calls "reasons of substantial public interest." That means things like crime prevention and law enforcement.
So these vendors could sell facial recognition equipment to UK police and still be abiding by the GDPR. It's also possible that facial recognition used by private actors for specific reasons deemed to be of "substantial public interest" (like catching known shoplifters) would also be GDPR-compliant.
As to the broader question of how the GDPR squares with ubiquitous surveillance, I think it does an OK job of it. As seen in my first comment, the actual process of obtaining your own data, for example, takes quite some time and is not an automatic process which is going to flood businesses with ridiculous requests they must comply with.
Because the GDPR itself is actually pretty vague - it contains no references to any particular industry, like video surveillance or social media - a lot depends on how it's interpreted and then how strictly it's implemented.
I noticed one VMS at ifsec named Videonetics showcasing their VMS with AI and deep learning as standard.
How good is the product?
They claim to have airports and a large slice of the Indian market and many major awards for the system?
Have you guys at IPVM tested the product, I am interested in AI and deep learning part of the VMS over standard VMS that require you to buy additional modules or third-party applications for the same functionality.
As usual I reluctantly attended and said a few Hellos - mostly talked about the England game the day before and put on my blinkers as I strolled through the stands.
Had an update on Avigilon which I think we’ll start to offer, had an interesting conversation with DeDrone and Senstar and left feeling it was actually productive.
Bars are a growing trend in booths but this is the biggest bar we have seen. The benefit is that even if you do not want to talk about products, you can sit down, have a drink and socialize with them. Waste of space or a good idea?
I've been to so many trade shows full of nothing but Hikua rebrands lately that the only value left in the show is these little bars. One can only stop by so many booths showing off their OEM'd "products" that match the "products" in every other manufacturer's booth. Even former greats are increasingly glorified label printing or camera reskinning companies.
Hanwha does not fall under the OEM/label printing so this criticism is not leveled at them.
The real issue is these bars may pose a temptation for recovering alcoholics. As such someone in such a scenario may not step into the booth.
LTS in UK is actually a franchised company and owned by local British. Those Asian ladies in the booth are from LTS's Chinese headquarter(Brovision) and they're kinda competing with LTS UK because the HQ feels those British guys didn't aggressively approach customers like their China coworkers.
Aggressive seems to be LTS's forte here in the US. It wasn't until I tracked down their local head in Miami did they finally stop telemarketing me. They were calling me sometimes twice a week, and never headed requests to stop calling.