Archive
‘Soft’ biometrics is the new way to monitor people
CAMERAS are strewn around our environment, catching glimpses of our faces everywhere we go, yet even the best facial recognition technology still has a hard time picking us out of the crowd.
So the US government’s Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) has called for a new approach. The agency announced a contest on 8 November, challenging teams of the country’s top researchers to revolutionise how machines recognise people. Those entering the competition already know that conventional facial recognition won’t cut it.
The usual approach to identifying people is to sift through camera footage frame by frame, find a few that offer the best chance of an ID, and then attempt to match them to a database of known images. Ideally, this will mean the subject is Read more…
Robots to Patrol Cities by 2040
Robots will be patrolling cities by 2040 according to Professor Noel Sharkey, who predicts their tasks will include asking for ID, tasering and arresting suspects as well as crowd control.
Image: DARPA
In an article entitled 2084: Big robot is watching you, Sharkey, a robotics professor at the University of Sheffield, forecasts a world in which the jobs of surveillance, security and law enforcement have largely been handed over to artificial intelligence.
WIthin the next 30 years, Sharkey asserts that, “Humanoid walking robots would be more in use for crowd control at games, strikes and riots. Robots will patrol city centres and trouble spots where fights are likely to break out.”
“Robots will have reasonable speech perception and be able to ask questions and respond to answers. What is your ID number? What are you doing here? Move along. They may work in teams of tracked robots with non-lethal weapons (e.g. Tasers or nets) and be on call for Read more…
1974 PSA Warned Of High Tech Surveillance State For Behavior Control
By Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
Truthstream Media
“A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality.” -Elias Canetti, Nobel Laureate in literature
As more and more information is released via National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden, many Americans drifting through each day blissfully unaware of what country they really live in have had the curtain pulled back just enough to be fed their first spoonful of reality…it’s a bitter taste.
The clip below is of a public service message warning the public on the growing use of technology and surveillance by government and corporations (though who can really tell the difference these days) to control our lives.
Sure, you say. We know all about that. Snowden has conclusively shown us with leaked documentation what our government is doing to us.
Ah. But the film was not made last week or even last decade; it was filmed in 1974.
Watch and listen. No, really listen. This message isn’t just to warn us about the coming technological surveillance state itself, but how its construct is to Read more…
FBI pressures Internet providers to install surveillance software
CNET has learned the FBI has developed custom “port reader” software to intercept Internet metadata in real time. And, in some cases, it wants to force Internet providers to use the software.
FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C.
(Credit: Getty Images)
The U.S. government is quietly pressuring telecommunications providers to install eavesdropping technology deep inside companies’ internal networks to facilitate surveillance efforts.
FBI officials have been sparring with carriers, a process that has on occasion included threats of contempt of court, in a bid to deploy government-provided software capable of intercepting and analyzing entire communications streams. The FBI’s legal position during these discussions is that the software’s real-time interception of metadata is authorized under the Patriot Act.
Attempts by the FBI to install what it internally refers to as “port reader” software, which have not been previously disclosed, were Read more…
Facing up to the law: increasing surveillance raises privacy concerns
I spy the use of facial recognition systems by law enforcement agencies is becoming more widespread. Illustration: Sam Bennett
ABOUT 15,000 people have had images of their faces captured on an Australian Federal Police database in its first year of operation, igniting fears that the rise of facial recognition systems will lead to CCTV cameras being installed on every street corner.
The database includes pictures of alleged criminals who may not know their images are on file.
The AFP say facial recognition may eventually be considered as credible as fingerprints, but images on their database are not being shared with state police forces. Sharing images on a national database could be possible by 2015.
The president of Australian Councils for Civil Liberties, Terry O’Gorman, said it was troubling that technologies such as facial and number plate recognition had become so widespread and there appeared to be no independent monitoring of the impacts on privacy.
The justification for widespread CCTV has also been questioned, with a report by police in London, the most spied-upon city in the world, showing that only one crime was solved per 1000 cameras.
An AFP forensic and data centres biometrics co-ordinator, Simon Walsh, said international agencies were Read more…
Disney World’s RFID Tracking Bracelets Are A Slippery Slope, Warns Privacy Advocate
Image: http://disneyparks.disney.go.com
Disney wants to show you a whole new world, but not everyone is feeling the love.
On Monday, the Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) announced an ambitious plan to transform the visitor experience at its Disney World Resort near Orlando, Fla. The MyMagic+ program, which will roll out this spring, combines an interactive website and mobile app with an all-purpose electronic bracelet that acts as a guest’s room key, theme-park ticket and payment account all rolled into one. The bracelets, dubbed MagicBands, will also track which rides visitors use, which characters they interact with, where they go and what they buy within the park.
The bracelets monitor behavior with radio-frequency identification technology, or RFID, a wireless tracking system that transfers data from tiny tags attached to objects. RFID has long been used to track product inventory in various industries, but it has become increasingly invasive over the last decade, with tags being implanted in I.D. badges, transit cards and even passports.
In a blog post, Tom Staggs, chairman of Disney Parks and Resorts, stated that Read more…
Big Brother or peeping tom? UK installs CCTV in school bathrooms, changing rooms
AFP Photo / Jacques Demarthon
Over 200 UK state schools have installed cameras in bathrooms and changing rooms to monitor students, a recent surveillance survey reported. British parents will likely be shocked by the study’s findings.
The survey is based on a freedom of information request conducted by Big Brother Watch, an anti-surveillance activist group. The group said they were shaken by the results, which was much higher and more extensive than expected.
The report “will come as a shock to many parents”, Nick Pickles, Director of Big Brother Watch said. “Schools need to come clean about why they are using these cameras and what is happening to the footage”.
– 47,806 cameras used in 2,107 schools
– 207 schools have 825 cameras in changing rooms and bathrooms
– 90% of schools use CCTV cameras
– 54 UK schools have 1 camera or more per 15 pupils
– 106,710 CCTV cameras estimated in high schools and academies in England, Scotland and Wales
A total of 825 cameras were installed in Read more…
Is Privacy Dead? 4 Government and Private Entities Conspiring to Track Everything You Do Online and Off
Americans’ personal privacy is being crushed by the rise of a four-headed corporate-state surveillance system. The four “heads” are: federal government agencies; state and local law enforcement entities; telecoms, web sites & Internet “apps” companies; and private data aggregators (sometimes referred to as commercial data warehouses).
Conventional analysis treats these four domains of data gathering as separate and distinct; government agencies focus on security issues and corporate entities are concerned with commerce. Some overlap can be expected as, for example, in case of a terrorist attack or an online banking fraud. In both cases, an actual crime occurred.
But what happens when the boundary separating or restricting corporate-state collaboration, e.g., an exceptional crime-fighting incident, erodes and becomes the taken-for-granted operating environment, the new normal? Perhaps most troubling, what happens when the traditional safeguards offered by “watchdog” courts or regulatory organizations no longer seem to matter? What does it say that the entities designed to Read more…
New Microchip Knows Your Location To Within Centimeters
Forget a chip in your forehead – the ‘mark of the beast’ is the cell phone
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
The development of a new microchip for cell phones that knows the user’s location to within a few centimeters confirms the fact that contrary to biblical fears about mandatory implantable microchips, people have willingly exchanged their privacy for convenience and that the cell phone itself is the de facto “mark of the beast”.
“Broadcom has just rolled out a chip for smart phones that promises to indicate location ultra-precisely, possibly within a few centimeters, vertically and horizontally, indoors and out,” reports MIT Technology Review.
“In theory, the new chip can even determine what floor of a building you’re on, thanks to its ability to integrate information from the atmospheric pressure sensor on many models of Android phones. The company calls abilities like this “ubiquitous navigation,” and the idea is that it will enable a new kind of e-commerce predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product, and can offer you coupons at that instant.”
Over 82% of Americans own cell phones, with around half of these being smart phones. In the near future, the majority of Americans will own smart phones that will have the ability to track their location down to a few centimeters.
With the effort to legally establish surveillance drones as a legitimate tool in domestic law enforcement, authorities could save a lot of time and money by simply requesting cell phone companies provide real-time tracking of suspects via their smart phones.
Indeed, Apple, Google and Microsoft have all been caught secretly tracking the physical locations of their users and Read more…
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