The Globe and Mail: Watching you, watching me:
An overview of some research by Dr. Vertegaal at the Human Media Laboratory at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. One commercial spinoff is the eyeBox by Xuluk:
The company’s first product is the $799 (U.S.) eyeBox, a USB digital camera that senses when people are looking at it, and that can be used to control programs through head and eye movements. It also plans to bring eye-contact sensors to market that can be stuck to an object to detect whether someone is looking at it. Dr. Vertegaal says potential uses include psychological experiments or safety provisions, such as ensuring a machine is being monitored or a driver is alert.
The device could have other uses too, such as recording the interaction between people — say, a police officer’s contact with citizens or suspects. And Dr. Vertegaal is talking to researchers about using the eyeBlog to help treat autism, a developmental disorder affecting social interaction and communication. People with autism have difficulty making eye contact with others, he says, and an eyeBlog could track their ability to do so.
The eyeBlog is just one of the projects under way at the Human Media Lab. In another project called the Attentive Cubicle, an overhead camera observes the movements of people sitting in adjoining cubicles. If both turn to face the partition that divides the cubicles, the normally opaque divider becomes transparent (it uses privacy glass, based on liquid-crystal technology) and their headsets shut off to allow them to talk. “You could say,” Dr. Vertegaal says, “we’re trying to develop more sociable computers.”
rshah Vendors
The NYTimes now covers the story:
The Times story has lots of gory details:
“Well, you’ll see basically everything,” said Bill Scannell, a privacy advocate and technology consultant. “It shows nipples. It shows the clear outline of genitals.”
Thwarting body-scanning technology would be simple, he argues. Because of concerns about radiation, body scanners are designed not to penetrate the skin. All that’s needed is someone heavily overweight to go through the system, he said. I won’t quote him directly on the details; suffice it to say he posits that a weapon or explosives pack could be tucked into flabby body folds that won’t be penetrated by the scanner.
However, the paper does not mention that TSA is aware of the security risks and there are software strategies for minimizing this as I noted in my earlier post.
Updated with picture from CNet
rshah Uncategorized
From the Wash Times
A story on the role of federal grants for city surveillance cameras.
New York City has the largest and oldest system, with more than 7,000 public and private surveillance cameras. Baltimore, Chicago and New Orleans are installing camera surveillance networks with federal homeland security dollars.
Chicago financed its 2,250 cameras with a $5.1 million grant and is adding more cameras over the next two years with another $48 million first-responder grant. The cameras, which cost up to $60,000 each, are controlled remotely by police to zoom and rotate, and are equipped with night vision.
In 2004, homeland security funds bought $193 million worth of surveillance cameras. Similar “physical security enhancement equipment” for large cities is to be used primarily for ports, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Marc Short. “I can’t imagine a more logical expenditure of funds,” he said.
Maryland is spending $1.3 million in federal grants for a camera system that will expand to Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford and Howard counties. Washington has a camera system, but it is turned on only for major events or during emergencies, said Melissa Ngo, staff counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
rshah General
From Public Eye:
A story on a new police headquarters on CT from The Hour Online:
Under the surveillance system, virtually every square inch of the roughly 60,000 square-foot building is monitored, except bathrooms, showers and private offices. Cameras in prison cells have a special feature that blurs out the area where prisoners use toilets.
rshah Uncategorized
From Philadelphia’s WPVI.com: Smart Cameras:
I haven’t looked at the video yet (its Friday night), but I think
they will show a demo of the smart cameras in operation.
A few weeks back, Philadelphia police started testing so-called smart cameras. They wanted to know. Deputy Commissioner Charles Brennan/PHILADELPHIA: “Is the camera smart enough to alert us if something goes wrong? IBM said, ‘You know what it may be.’”
With the help of those experts from IBM and a couple of actors, Action News re-created one of the city’s most notorious unsolved crimes, only this time a camera was keeping an eye on the area where a female jogger was pulled off the path as the suspect tried to sexually assault her. We watched the re-enactment on a P-C miles away at police headquarters.
The smart camera is programmed to alert police to suspicious activity along the jogging trail. The programmer highlighted the danger zone. As our actor grabbed the woman, an alarm sounded and the computer instantly saved the video of what happened seconds before and several seconds after. Peter Toro/Network Architect: “The instant they hit this zone. It’ll cause a trigger. So let’s see what happens. There you go, okay.”
Behind the art museum, a similar camera is at work. Only that camera alerts police and starts recording when someone stands near a car for too long. It’s an attempt to try and catch people breaking into cars. No one has to watch the monitor 24/7. The camera signals the alert and saves the video on its own.
rshah General
Appian Technology’s Talon ANPR will be used at the LA Airport according to SecurityPark.net. The contract involves:
The Talon ANPR system will be used to monitor and control vehicle movements in restricted areas at the extensive LAX complex. The system will comprise of multiple number plate readers (known as I STAR) scanning eight traffic lanes. A central processing computer will then cross reference recognised license plates against an authorised vehicle database. When unauthorised vehicles are detected the Talon system will generate an alarm which automatically alerts police and security staff.
According to Appian’s web site, Talon uses a neural network recognition engine instead of a template based Optical Character recognition system. This results in greater accuracy, other features:
High accuracy – typical performance in excess of 97%
High speed vehicle plate recognition – in excess of 195 kph
24 hour/365 day ‘all weather’ capability
International number plate reading capability
Automatic positive database matching and system alarms
Operates on any industry standard PC platform
Vehicle and Number Plate Image Output and Archiving
rshah ALPR
From silicon.com:
Here are the results of a study by the the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute. Part of the study examines the role of video surveillance in the workplace:
Fifty-one per cent of the companies surveyed use video monitoring to counter theft, violence and sabotage, up from 33 per cent in 2001. “The number of companies that use video surveillance to track employees’ on-the-job performance has also increased,” the report said, “with 10 per cent now videotaping selected job categories and six per cent videotaping all employees.” Among companies that videotape workers, 85 per cent notify employees of the practice, the report said.
rshah Uncategorized
From White Rose:
A story in USA Today about a new camera using backscattering which reveals a person’s nude body, see picture below. It should be made very clear that TSA knows of the privacy risks with backscattering Xrays. It also knows how to use software to address the privacy concerns. Examples of software techniques include:
Color enhancement of threats
Image obfuscation
Magnifying and clarify threats
Threats positioned on 3-D animated model
Threats positioned on 2-D “stick figure”
Outline Extraction
Feature Extraction
rshah Uncategorized
From Smart Mobs:
The City of Chicago now has a free browsable database of crimes reported in Chicago. With RSS feeds for every policy beat and every city block! It even uses Google as a mapping interface.
Wow!
This is a great example of how IT can be enabling for citizens while serving to increase transparency of the government. However, note that while the data comes from the Chicago police, the web page is run by an individual, Adrian Holovaty, and the information he uses is there because of the Citizen ICAM. Essentially this data arose out of a project for the police officers, which they later made publicly accessible.
rshah Chicago
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