Little Brother (Gait Recognition Cameras in Schools) | Database of Machine Vision in Art, Games and Narratives

Brief description

Marcus's high school has installed gait recognition cameras to identify and track students who leave the classroom or the school without permission. These replaced facial recognition cameras, which had been ruled unconstitutional.

Marcus tricks the cameras by putting gravel in his shoes to change the way he walks. Later in the book, he has sprained his ankle, and opts not to add gravel to his shoes to fool gait recognition cameras in the city because his foot is sprained, which also alters his gait.

Cory Doctorow, the author, describes gait recognition in some detail in keeping with his didactic aim of teaching young readers to repurpose technology and fight surveillance and control.

Pull Quotes

I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my gait even and measured for the gait-recognition cameras. These had been installed only a year before, and I loved them for their sheer idiocy. Beforehand, we’d had face-recognition cameras covering nearly every public space in school, but a court ruled that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lot of other paranoid school administrators had spent our textbook dollars on these idiot cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person’s walk from another. Yeah, right.

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother (p. 6). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

There are a lot of people who walk kind of like you. What’s more, it’s easy not to walk kind of like you—just take one shoe off. Of course, you’ll always walk like you-with-one-shoe-off in that case, so the cameras will eventually figure out that it’s still you. Which is why I prefer to inject a little randomness into my attacks on gait-recognition: I put a handful of gravel into each shoe. Cheap and effective, and no two steps are the same. Plus you get a great reflexology foot massage in the process. (I kid. Reflexology is about as scientifically useful as gait-recognition.)

The cameras used to set off an alert every time someone they didn’t recognize stepped onto campus. This did not work. The alarm went off every ten minutes. When the mailman came by. When a parent dropped in. When the groundspeople went to work fixing up the basketball court. When a student showed up wearing new shoes. So now it just tries to keep track of who’s where, when. If someone leaves by the school gates during classes, their gait is checked to see

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother (p. 11). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

I went fast to Mr. Benson’s office. Cameras filmed me as I went. My gait was recorded. The arphids in my student ID broadcast my identity to sensors in the hallway. It was like being in jail.

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother (p. 203). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

“Put these pebbles in your shoes before you put them on—”

“It’s okay. I sprained my foot. No gait recognition program will spot me now.”

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother (p. 306). Macmillan. Kindle Edition.