Cameras have grown smarter in recent years — better able to recognize faces at close distances, and pick up on strange behavior from a little farther out. Go in through an out door, or leave a suspicious package behind on a train platform, for example, and you’ll be spotted, quick.
But figuring out what a group of people is doing, or being able to ID a face within that group, that takes brains today’s digital video software still doesn’t have. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is hoping a new research grant can begin to change that.
SOCOM just gave Colorado Springs-based Securics, Inc. a $100,000 grant to start developing programs for “Monitoring of Crowd Activities.” The idea is to train cameras to find faces from afar, and to “develop new algorithms explicitly for crowd management, rather than building on the traditional intelligent video surveillance algorithms that are focused on isolated targets.” Oh, and by the way: this should all happen in a small, self-contained system that takes up barely any power at all — 7 watts, maybe.
Securics will start small, looking at algorithms for a crowd’s “vertical motion energy,” like a group of people “pumping its fists, or raising signs,” says company chief Terry Boult.
There will also be some comparisons to how much activity is usually in the area. “If normally, on Tuesdays, there are only three people on this corner, and now there are 50, maybe there’s a problem,” Boult adds.
In addition, Securics will build on the work it did for Darpa, as part of the agency’s “Human ID at a Distance” program. Boult says the company developed for Darpa software to identify faces from 100 to 200 feet away. The SOCOM effort, he hopes, will far surpass that.
Cameras to Comb Crowds
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The tale of Big Brother always seemed like something that could never happen in America.
When we had to read that in school it was held up to represent the type of government made up by greedy evil creatures.
A Fascist/Totalitarian state that crushed it’s citizens and forced them into rigid roles like the former USSR.
Remember this folks it came into existence under the stewardship of the republican party, the party that is purportedly against big government. They voted their agendas and ramrodded them into existance.
We never thought it could happen.. we always thought in the end the leaders of our nation were men of honor and would protect the principles underlying the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, it appears we thought wrong. Orwell just had the date wrong.
Yes, because a camera designed to watch for terrorists is a threat to our liberties. Whatever.
Personally, I think it’s a waste of money. No camera is ever going to be able to tell the difference between a terrorist planting a bomb in a subway and a homeless guy urinating on the wall.
I suppose the most use we could get out of it is if the algorithm directed a human observer to look at the area more closely.
The screams of “1984!!!” have gotten a little old.
Yeah, sure Phoenix. I’m sure that catching the murderer of some mexican gardener in southeast DC is gonna maintain the power of the elite. You are smoking some serious rat poison, man. I used to live in DC. NO ONE GOES TO SOUTHEAST, EVER! EVER EVER EVER! There’s no reason to go. There’s nothing there except poverty and murderers.
If the Soviet Union had used this technology to control its internal population, would you similarly dismiss it as harmless and without political content? The elite has interests, and they control the development and deployment of technology, just as the Soviet government had interests and used the means at its disposal to defend them. We are no exception in this country.
I suggest broadening your view and looking beyond the individual crime to the interests of the system that creates the conditions for the crime and that then benefits from the imprisonment of the criminal.
It seems a silly thing to me, though, if you are saying that the US has an elite class with no agenda of its own. It would be the first time in human history if true.
Curious, by the way, your contradictory, yet emphatic statement that “NO ONE GOES TO SOUTHEAST, EVER! EVER EVER EVER! There’s no reason to go. There’s nothing there except poverty and murderers.” This strikes me as a colonizer’s statement. Clearly someone must go there, at least the people who live there. Why do they live there? And why is there so much poverty there? And why is DC putting cameras in these poor neighborhoods? There is a connection, I assure you, and it isn’t the benefit of the poor who live there.
Brain: the shrill cries of ‘we need to defend ourselves’ make little sense when applied to the issue addressed in this article.
Crowd control has nothing to do with catching terrorists and everything to do with controlling a part of your populace.
If you choose to ignore the whole picture then you fall prey to what earlier patriots warned of…
And if you find 1984 dated then try on A Brave New World. Personally I doubt that you have much familiarity with the novel, or you would at least have noted the similarities. But that’s just my opinion based on your response.
Perhaps you could point out how the current situation diverges politically from those possited in the book?
I read about half of Brave New World. It sucked.
PI: My bad, man. I merged two articles I was reading at the same time into one (that’s what I get for reading in spare moments when I’m at work). They’ve set up gunshot detectors in SE DC so they can quickly respond to gunshots. I somehow merged these two articles together in my brain when I responded to you.
Face Recognition software has a looooong way to go.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/10/25/1353221.shtml
Face recognition tech needs to be stopped now if we value a free society. We would do well to tear down the cameras and the Shotspotters, too, while we’re at it. There are other ways to stop murders that don’t involve violating all our basic rights and controlling and tracking everyone and everything. We could start with an equitable redistribution of wealth and power, for instance.
The problem with an equal redistribution of wealth is that SOMEBODY has to do the redistributing. There’s gotta be one group who has the power to take the property of others and redistribute it. Then they have to KEEP power so that no one becomes too wealthy, or too powerful.
That’s not the only way redistribution of wealth has to happen. I agree that redistribution through the state is not generally a good way to do it (although sometimes it is better than nothing). That’s how we do it in the US, partly, although most of it goes up to the top rather than down to the bottom. Further, the system of private property redistributes wealth from the bottom to the top, as well, through surplus value.
A good example of redistribution of wealth that doesn’t require a state would be expropriation of businesses and homes by tenants and workers. All we have to do is turn the bosses and the landlords out. Redistribution happens with the transfer of ownership. After that, it’s really just coordination. No state needed.
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Remember this folks it came into existence under the stewardship of the republican party, the party that is purportedly against big government. They voted their agendas and ramrodded them into existance.
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