WebProNews

Tag: CCTV

  • Using Drones To Spy on Google, Facebook Headquarters

    Who watches the watchers? What about the Internet giants like Google and Facebook, companies that, thanks to their loose play with user privacy, have reams of information about the habits of their users? Who watches these guys? Judging by the title of the article, you are perhaps thinking of government entities using military drone aircraft to do so, and while there’s validity to that, I’m referring more to private citizens? Do any of you keep an eye on these tech giants using the technology that’s available to you?

    In other words, have you ever used a drone camera to fly around and take film of one of Google’s or Facebook’s headquarters sites located around the world? Considering the lack of video floating around YouTube, the answer is probably “no,” and with that in mind, perhaps we should be more like filmaker Caroline Campbell and her partner, visual artist Nina McGowan. As part of Dublin’s “Hack The City” project, which invites “citizens of Dublin to take control and adopt a hacker mindset to bend, tweak and mash-up Dublin’s existing urban systems – rethinking the city from the ground up.”

    Part of this project includes using the drones to, according to Campbell, “democratise surveillance.” Considering the United Kingdom’s love of CCTV for surveillance of the public, the project seems very fitting, especially in a projecting looking to actively hack an urban system. Their portion of the project involved using a drone camera to film public spaces in Dublin. Wired UK’s article has more:

    …They then took to the skies of Dublin over a six-week period to capture a new perspective of the city. In addition to exploring some of the empty houses left over from the property boom — ghost buildings — the duo paid a visit to the headquarters of Facebook and Google.

    Keeping to public spaces they flew the drone up alongside the buildings, allowing the camera to peer into the offices. Campbell explains: “Our argument is that Facebook has no expectation of privacy as their founder Mark Zuckerberg at one stage said privacy was no longer a social norm.”

    “The security guards were very aggressive. They made up lies about us crashing the drone into their windows and said we were disturbing their employees,” said Campbell. “We feel that it is no more intrusive than something like Google Street View.”

    The video in question:

  • New Japanese Facial Recognition Software Is Powerful, Scary

    Big brother alert!!! For those of you who don’t like the idea of CCTV monitoring your every move, the details a recent software breakthrough by Hitachi Kokusai Electric will probably make you soil your undergarments, or at least never leave the house without a mask. How does the idea of facial recognition software that can scan 36 million faces in one second sound? How about not only can the software scan that many different faces in such little time, but being able to actively index them as well?

    Scared yet?

    As pointed out by GeekOSystem.com, the applications for such software are naturally aimed at surveillance programs, ones that monitor a large number of people at a given time. Think sporting events, shopping malls, and public transportation hubs. Leading the article is a video that details the software, and shows the various applications its capable of. Let’s just say recognizing and storing these faces is only the beginning.

    Scanned faces can then be searched for in other footage, allowing the watchers to monitor the selected person’s activity, provided there’s additional footage of them available. GeekOSystem’s take on the application of such software is even more revealing:

    Once you have a face identified with the system, you can click the thumbnail and receive a wealth of search results, including every other clip the identified individual is in. This allows you to pick out someone sketchy in one scene and immediately see where they were before and after, plus it also allows you to upload a suitable photo and then use the system to see if the person is, or isn’t, in the area. That is, so long as they’ve glanced towards a camera.

    This sounds like something the British Government would wholly embrace.

  • State Media Targets Baidu Over Counterfeit Drug Ads

    Chinese search giant Baidu may be in trouble.  China Central Television (CCTV) – which is state-owned and easily the country’s largest broadcaster – has accused the company of allowing sites that deal in counterfeit drugs to buy ads.

    As explained by Reuters this morning, "CCTV reported on Sunday that Baidu and other search engines had profited from promoting three websites offering counterfeit drugs that had duped more than 3,000 people in China."

    Then here are a couple more important details: "In 2008, CCTV aired a similar expose on Baidu selling links to unlicensed medical sites with unproven claims for their products. . . .  As a result of the scandal, Baidu had overhauled its operations and sacked staff involved."

    And it looks like the situation is starting to deteriorate this time, too.  Baidu’s stock has already fallen 3.89 percent on the stock market this morning, even though the Dow’s up 0.43 percent, the Nasdaq’s up 0.57 percent, and Google’s up 0.06 percent.

    (Google doesn’t at this point appear to be part of the "other search engines" group, by the way.)

    It should be interesting to see how the case proceeds, then.  This could give Google at least a slight temporary advantage, making the American company look like a safer alternative to Chinese searchers.