Sunday, November 16, 2008

There seems to be a pattern here...

So this time I'm reading about cutting edge surveillance techniques used to analyze video for susppicious behavior...
Human gaits, for example, can provide a lot of information about people’s intentions. At the American Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, a team of gait analysts and psychologists led by Frank Morelli study video, much of it conveniently posted on the internet by insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq. They use special object-recognition software to lock onto particular features of a video recording (a person’s knees or elbow joints, for example) and follow them around. Correlating those movements with consequences, such as the throwing of a bomb, allows them to develop computer models that link posture and consequence reasonably reliably. The system can, for example, pick out a person in a crowd who is carrying a concealed package with the weight of a large explosives belt. According to Mr Morelli, the army plans to deploy the system at military checkpoints, on vehicles and at embassy perimeters. [More]
And I realize what this department really is:



Of course, maybe I'm making fun of it because the actual goings-on in our surveillance research is gosh-darn creepy. (Read the linked article for starters)

It seems God is not the only one watching us.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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