Face Recognition and Privacy
Face Detection 
Face matching 
Face identification 
Identity verification 
all from http://tagmenot.info/content/face-recognition-and-privacy
advertising: “The Nikon S60. Detects up to 12 faces.” – count them…
http://www.rachelhulin.com/blog/2009/11/the-nikon-s60-detects-up-to-12-faces.html
http://www.stopp-indect.info/?page_id=2 (in English)
http://www.stopp-indect.info/?page_id=2&lang=de (German)
There’s a new round of Wikileaks disclosures. Hurray! This time they are revealing internal documents from surveillance companies from around the world. If you want to know what’s possible, and where to get it from (if you have some spare change), check out http://wikileaks.org/the-spyfiles.html
As a starting point, you might want to have a look at what a local company, DigiTask, the makers of the much maligned and ridiculed Staatstrojaner (see our post from October 11) have on offer. I like the look of the WiFi interceptor! http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/list/company-name/digitask.html
P.S. wow, this is a lot of information. Haven’t heard that term before: “Offensive Security”. Used as a euphemism for actively intruding into a system in order to insert a trojan/spyware.
German government malware reverse-engineered by the CCC shown to be incompatible with the constitution. And very badly coded.
Here’s the CCC’s press release, with some juicy details:
http://www.ccc.de/system/uploads/76/original/staatstrojaner-report23.pdf
And some more insight:
http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=b06e60e0
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung’s original article
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/chaos-computer-club-der-deutsche-staatstrojaner-wurde-geknackt-11486538.html
Update: a PDF of the Feuilleton pages with the funky source code.
“Der gefährlichste Abschnitt der Spionagesoftware auf fünf Seiten: ein Text, den wir nicht verstehen – und der doch unser Leben bestimmt.”
Performative Lecture by Jordan Crandall (2010)
Start: 03.02.2011 20:00
End: 03.02.2011 22:30
Location: Auditorium
In a modern, calculative world, the techniques of tracking are steadily increasing everywhere. Augmented by algorithmic procedures and analytics, they have been incorporated into distributed network systems, augmented by new sensing and locationing technologies, and embedded into all manner of mobile devices, urban structures and environments. As the urban realm is understood through the spatialization of algorithmic operations, with all phenomena converted, standardized, and rendered interoperable within calculative architectures and procedures, it is endowed with cognitive and agential abilities – able to track, sense and respond to phenomena with a degree of autonomy – in ways that complicate conventional ontological distinctions and political orientations. This essay offers new formats of analysis for these calculative practices and the agential and ontological status of new hybrid urban entities that they register and engender. The key analytical tool and structuring principle introduced is that of “program” – an organizing and standardizing practice that moves beyond algorithmic-based understandings. The challenge is to grasp what “program” registers and demands within the calculative paradigm of tracking, while at the same time understanding how this can be opened up, made flexible, the struggle for its terms resituated. From this basis, a politics of program can be oriented around the constitution of the event.
Delimination of Life – Affective Bodies and Biomedia (Keynote Conversation, Track 3)
2011-02-06 17:30 h – 18:30 h
Auditorium
Delimination of Life – Affective Bodies and Biomedia
Keynote-Conversation (Track 3)
Participants: Marie-Luise Angerer (at/de), Mark Hansen (us)
Moderation: Jens Hauser (fr/de)
Today we are experiencing a shifting moment in the concept of the human. Affect as a crucial modality of the human organism, of human existence, has moved to the centre of media theory, philosophy and aesthetics. The new quality of live media and networks, that is, the hybridisation and increasing biologisation of communication technologies, create a biomedial environment in which the body no longer seems to be the basis of perception. Rather, we are experiencing the deterritorialisation of our entire sphere of affective and emotional relationships. What concept and understanding of the body is required in todays immediated digital culture?
In this keynote conversation Marie-Luise Angerer and Mark Hansen will focus on these virtual qualities of the body discussing the affective dimension our bodies experience and adapt to digital environments.
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 26, 2010
The Electronic Privacy Information Center is demanding that Big Sis spill the beans on street scanners as part of a FOIA request that seeks to unveil the truth behind Homeland Security’s hundreds of roaming backscatter devices that are now radiating Americans in their homes and vehicles at internal checkpoints in the name of “safety”.
http://www.infowars.com/big-sis-street-scanners-target-of-foia-request/
surveillance and self-surveillance are belonging to the actual setup of understanding and acting public space, intimacy and (tele-)communication, not only between individuals, but also between situations and “formats” of/for space.
The figurative idea of Surveillant Architectures coined by artist Julia Scher, is (maybe?) not just referring to the imperative that,
if you want to “understand” – explore, discuss, maybe practice – surveillance, then you have to “think on” or to “argue with” architecture/s,
but much more that there is a kind of (post historic?) perspective on the issues of public space, intimacy, questioning the privatization of spaces, the publicity of privacy, the defensible attitude of semi-public spaces, the generalized practice of “doing” public opinion – making opinions and preferences public -:
all this could be asked to declare itself as surveillance-related, in a surveillant perspective.
VIRTUAL_GROUP is inviting you to participate in the upcoming broadcast
TUE NOV 30th at 18 CET (17UTC)
WED DEC 1st at 11 CET (10 UTC)
http://www.livestream.com/virtual_group
Professor Wafaa Bilal, who works at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ photography and imaging department, is causing a stir because of his artistic experiment raises privacy concerns.Bilal, who has a countdown on his website for the project – dubbed 3rdI – will have images from the camera broadcast live from the back of his head to an exhibit in a museum in Qatar scheduled to open in December.
The camera, which will be the size of a thumbnail, will be attached using a method similar to piercing, according to The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to Bilal’s colleagues familiar with the project.
Bilal will have the camera in his head for a year, and it will take pictures in one-minute intervals.
What will museum visitors see? Well, that depends on Bilal’s travels, which is where the controversy comes in. Questions have been raised as to whether he will have the camera on while he teaches at NYU and whether students’ privacy may be invaded. NYU is looking into the issue.
“As a school of the arts, a school whose mission is to educate artists, we place a high value on his right to free expression in his creative work as an artist, and take that principle very seriously,” NYU Spokesman John Beckman said in a statement. “But as a school of the arts, we also take seriously the privacy issues his project raises, its impact on our students and the importance of preserving trust in the pedagogical relationship between a faculty member and students.
“There have been numerous conversations since Professor Bilal informed us of his project as we sought to find the right balance; we think they have been constructive and productive. We continue to discuss with him the right mechanism to ensure that his camera will not take pictures in NYU buildings.”
This isn’t the first time the Iraqi artist’s experiments have caught people’s attention.
His work “Domestic Tension,” where he stood in front of a paintball gun and allowed people to shoot him over the Internet 24/7, caused widespread buzz online.
His controversial video game piece, “Virtual Jihadi,” ended with a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. Bilal hacked a video game and put an avatar of himself in the game and then appeared as a suicide-bomber hunting Former President George W. Bush.
source: CNN online