9 replies to this topic

[RyanS]

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Google's first search engine let people search by typing text onto a Web page. Next came queries spoken over the phone.

On Monday, Google announced the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph.

The experimental search-by-sight feature, called Google Goggles, has a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what's been uploaded, said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering. It can recognize books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more.

"It is our goal to be able to identify any image," he said. "It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query."

However, the feature is still in Google Labs to deal with the "nascent nature of computer vision" and with the service's present shortcomings. "Google Goggles works well on certain types of objects in certain categories," he said.

Google Goggles was one of the big announcements at an event at the Computer History Museum here to tout the future of Google search. The company also showed off real-time search results and translation of a spoken phrase from English to Spanish using a mobile phone.

"It could be we are really at the cusp of an entirely new computing era," Gundotra said, with "devices that can understand our own speech, help us understand others, and augment our own sight by helping us see further."

Offering one real-world example of the service in action, Gundotra said that when a guest came by for dinner, he snapped a photo of a wine bottle she gave him to assess its merits. The result--"hints of apricot and hibiscus blossom"--went far beyond his expertise, but that didn't stop him from sharing the opinion over dinner.

He also demonstrated Google Goggles to take a photo of the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan, a landmark tourists may recognize even if they can't read Japanese. The uploaded photo returned a description of the shrine on his mobile phone.

Although the service can recognize faces, since faces are among the billions of images in the database, it doesn't right now, Gundotra said.

"For this product, we made the decision not to do facial recognition," Gundotra said.

"We still want to work on the issues of user opt-in and control. We have the technology to do the underlying face recognition, but we decided to delay that until safeguards are in place."

Source: CNN

[AlucardHS]

Skynet is at it again !!!

Now lets think about this for a minute. All Skynet has to do is make a similar program just for the feds and police. And all they would have to do is drive around with a camera on the car and let the system pick out people with records to arrest.

[zalternate]

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Skynet is at it again !!!

Now lets think about this for a minute. All Skynet has to do is make a similar program just for the feds and police. And all they would have to do is drive around with a camera on the car and let the system pick out people with records to arrest.

We already have that in British Columbia. Well technically it's for making sure that you do not have multiple drivers licenses under assumed names, by analyzing facial features on every drivers license in the 'digital' picture system. Just being used on the computer system and supposedly not on the streets,,,yet.
It is now 'verboten' to smile for drivers license picture. Or mugshot is a better term.

But recently there was that government worker who had a government job under an assumed name(two drivers licenses) and had a bunch of social services documents of various people at home. He was under an assumed name as the government worker. It took 7 months before the government/police even did anything.

That movie "Idiocracy" had everyone bar coded on their wrists and scanners placed about the city.

We even have license plate scanners as well. 'Officially' for the new automated troll bridges. A 3% false read rate. Just pay the 4 bucks without bitching thats it's an error or lose your insurance. What an awesome system.
Some countries require a picture of the driver to go with the license plate to ensure the proper person got the traffic ticket or troll ticket. And I can't post what some kids are doing to frack other people up.


Some ad signs in malls were supposed to read your expression or sex and offer instant ad's.



http://www.wired.com...s/2002/05/52563

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Airport Face Scanner Failed
Julia Scheeres Email 05.16.2002

Facial recognition technology tested at the Palm Beach International Airport had a dismal failure rate, according to preliminary results from a pilot program at the facility.

The system failed to correctly identify airport employees 53 percent of the time, according to test data that was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under Florida's open records law.

"The preliminary results at the Palm Beach International Airport confirm that the use of facial recognition technology is simply ineffective and of no value," said Randall Marshall, legal director of the state ACLU chapter.

The manufacturer of the system, Visionics, said the results were poor because their product was not used correctly.

Ever since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, face scanning technology has been touted by manufacturers as the perfect device for recognizing terrorists in airports. In theory, the systems use surveillance cameras to scan crowds for bad guys and sound an alarm when a match is made between a live person and the system's database of known criminals.

The Palm Beach airport tried Visionics' FaceIt system, which snaps photographs of passersby using a security camera and breaks down their facial features into a numeric code that is matched against the photograph database.

The month-long test compared 15 employees against a database containing the mug shots of 250 airport workers, said airport spokeswoman Lisa De La Rionda, who declined to comment on the quality of the system.

"They never made promises to us about how successful the system would be," she said, stressing that it was tested free of charge.

But the ACLU said the study was done under optimal conditions and still exhibited fatal flaws. Out of 958 attempts to match the 15 test employees' faces to the database, the system succeeded only 455 times.

The Tampa police department has also been testing the FaceIt system over the last six months, and the technology has yet to make a match with a database of known criminals.

"The system could be serving as a deterrent for criminal activity ... we still believe in its potential for law enforcement," said police department spokeswoman Katie Hughes.

The airport trial found that the photographs included in the database had to be good quality to avoid false alarms and ensure successful matches. Head motion, indirect lighting, sunglasses and eyeglasses also flummoxed the system.

The finicky nature of the software was previously documented by Internet privacy and security consultant Richard Smith. Last fall, Smith analyzed the FaceIt software and found a 50 percent failure rate as he adjusted for variables such as face angle and hats.

"If you adjusted everything just right you could get OK results," he said.

Visionics, whose face scanning systems are being tested at four U.S. airports, bristled at the ACLU's conclusions.

"The decision makers will not be reading a report from the ACLU, they'll be looking at the real data," said Visionics spokesman Meir Kahtan.

He said that similar tests at the Dallas-Fort Worth and Boston Logan airports showed a 90 percent success rate and insisted that the poor results at the Palm Beach International airport were due to incorrect lighting. Results for the other pilot programs were not immediately available.  

And the more recent breakthroughs.
http://www.digitalwo...al_twins_apart/

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 Biometric face scanner tells identical twins apart
Should Homer Simpson ever try to smuggle his unqualified identical twin brother into work in his stead, a new biometric identification system that will be used to secure nuclear plants is sure to prompt a “D’oh!” or seven.

The technology, which comes from a Japanese firm called Sagawa Advance, is sufficiently accurate to be able to tell identical twins apart – a massive advance on current technologies, which famously can’t tell Jessica Alba from a plank of wood. Oh, wait…

Anyway, Sagawa’s thing uses an infrared scanner to analyse 40,000 data points on a face before comparing the details against a database of people it already knows. If there’s no match then access to power plants, medical factories and other sensitive areas is easily denied.

Sagawa plans to sell the scanner and database computer set for ¥6 million ($60,000) later this year, with a view to shifting 40 units in its first twelve months.
 

http://www.google.co...r&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

[tommie gorman]

Just nuts I say. And at one time I thought Canada would be safe from that a bit longer. Looks like your gonna surpass us in big brother crap. Safe from what or whom though? And who really are the criminals?

[zalternate]

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Just nuts I say. And at one time I thought Canada would be safe from that a bit longer. Looks like your gonna surpass us in big brother crap. Safe from what or whom though? And who really are the criminals?

Read a story earlier today(can't find the link) on how Law enforcement in North America or maybe the World, is using places like FaceBook and Myspace, etc. to collect all sorts of information on people(without a warrant too).   So with just having a picture of someone and submitting it to the Web Search engines, you might find all sorts of stuff that you couldn't find with just a name.

I think it was England who are photographing license plates automatically and if a 'watched' license plate shows up on the system, the police are automatically sent to detain the operator.

America has Homeland Insecurity.
Canada has the excuse of, "For our safety".  Lame that the excuse is and people don't bitch about it enough. But how many people are afraid of going to jail? Too damn many are afraid.

And join in the Fun in Feb. 2010(Olympics).   Our Native Brothers are pizzed off, as well, and may get some International attention, like some other organizations might.     3 billions dollars minimum, plus up to another 1 billion doesn't sit very good for people who are having stuff taken away from them(loss of government program funding).  
Even the RCMP(police) are starting to bitch about being stretched thin, due to having to send many officers to BC,,,, for security.    But our army will be there to stop any hooligans.    Blam. Blam.  

[tommie gorman]

You have a point, how often do you hear folks whine about their security when they are the ones on facebook and myspace. 

And they are allowed to breed. No I did not do any of those. I do not even upload pics to the internet. Just a few here in the pic section.

[mudmanc4]

It is not news that these viral social sites collect data, just red there privacy statement about affiliates and what they may do. btw, an affiliate can be a subsidiary of any entity. They updated recently to a more interesting bit of info.

As for data collection, it has been going on since algorski invented the interwebs 

[Conuck]

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As for data collection, it has been going on since algorski invented the interwebs 

Almost spit my coffee out when I read this!

[zalternate]

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It is not news that these viral social sites collect data, just red there privacy statement about affiliates and what they may do. btw, an affiliate can be a subsidiary of any entity. They updated recently to a more interesting bit of info.

As for data collection, it has been going on since algorski invented the interwebs  

Reminds me of Incredimail. It's not spyware according to the site(spyware to them is a third party and not in house), but read the below and make up your own mind. And the privacy agreement takes a second click to get to the real privacy agreement. Not like they are trying to hide it.
Aggregate data collection still contains an ID number to differentiate your data from others data, otherwise you have a big mess that is not useful at all.


http://www.incredima...fullprivacy.asp

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THE SERVICE


Except as expressly described herein, IncrediMail will not collect or maintain any information about the Messages Users send through the Service, including the addresses to whom Messages are sent and the content of the Messages.

GENERAL USAGE PATTERNS
IncrediMail may gather information related generally to Users' use of the Software, Service, and Site including without limitation:

The number of Messages that a User sends;
The number of Messages that are read;
What elements of the Service are most often used;
User log-in dates and time; and
Message size data.

This information, which will only be collected and maintained in aggregate, anonymous form, will be used to, among other things:
Provide IncrediMail with a better understanding of how Users use the Service and the various features thereof;
Help IncrediMail to create and provide new services and offerings to Users; and
Conduct and publish aggregate, anonymous, market research results.

COMPUTER SETTINGS
IncrediMail may collect settings, technical and other information from Users' computers, such as a computer's operating system, IncrediMail and browser versions used, connectivity, various communication parameters and other information related to the operation and interaction of the Software, subject to the provisions herein. This information will neither contain nor be linked to any personally identifiable information.  

In other words, "we don't read your email", but everything else is open season.

[tommie gorman]

Incredimail is fun though if you have the bandwidth for it.  I still don't.