*waves to a fellow KC’er…
What I mean by 4D, is a database that stores virtual “snapshots” of time periods. For instance, take a place that is visited heavily each year like Times Square in NY. If you take a random array of photos from say, 1999 to the year 2007, and sort them by time periods of say 1 month, you should be able to get near 100% imagery coverage of the entire square each month, just in photos found on the internet alone. Once such datasets are created, there is more than enough facial recognition technology to sort through each data set to identify persons. That could be done in either an “active” mode, where you’re looking for an individual person, or a passive mode, where the system tries to identify as many people in the imagery as possible. Then, once it has as many people identified as possible, it might begin to search other governmental databases (DMV, social security, criminal, etc..) to draw as many connections between people as possible.
What’s the point though? Who cares if the system finds out that Jim was at the same university as Heather, and they two of them happened to be in Times Square within a week of eachother? Well, I don’t know. But, what if the two of them also happened to be in San Francisco a month earlier at the Golden Gate Bridge? A system like this could work out these connections.
I work in two fields, the 3D one that everyone here enjoys, and Geographic Informations Systems and Remote Sensing. In the GIS/RS world, we have temporal imagery databases (4D), and specialize in cross referencing data in order to produce information. Data mining, such as what I believe facebook is, is not particularily useful by itself, unless there is a process in place which can produce information from all the data. In the GIS/RS fields, we reference different data sources such as private databases, governmental sensor systems (like satellites, weather sensors, etc..) in order to get something meaningful out of all the data.
So, check this out: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=times+square&m=text. That search produced 138,653 results. Not all will be useful, but a good number will be.
And everything I’ve said so far only applies to still imagery. Once you throw in video that’s another, much larger, bag of cats. If you decompose the video to frames, all of a sudden your potential data sets just got much larger.
Actually what schroeder says is really interesting in a Phillip K. Dick sort of way. So you have this online database of images that connect to each other stitch together and then eventually they can identify people. But then it could take all of your online postings, web searches, purchases. Could you be tracked at all times? Unless you are wearing a hat.
while we’re on the Philip K Dick/conspiracy side of things:
I thought ‘remote sensing’ was that cia sponsored esp thing from the 60s where operatives tried to project themselves into enemy missile silos
there’s been some tv documentaries about it in the UK by Jon Ronson that include a hefty dose of all round weirdness and paranoia
here in London our public transport can theoretically track our movements via our personal travelcard - though they deny that ability right now
Yes, that’s also called remote sensing. But in the GIS/RS field it refers to remote sensors like satellites, etc. A good example are the LandSat, or Modis (http://aqua.nasa.gov/science/images\_data.php) satellites. What they do is image the earth in a series of wavelengths (also called Bands), in the case of LandSat, there are 8 bands (including one panchromatic 15m resolution, and 2 thermal bands). By combining the data in a number of ways, you can extract valuable environmental information such as geologic structures, forest health, map urban sprawl, analyze suspended particulates, trace/track oil spills, observe sea height, and sea surface temperature, etc…
As far as the transit passes go, here in Vancouver BC they are using the paper type with the magnetic strip on the back. What the strip does (from the user’s perspective), is tells the machine-reader at the front of the bus whether your pass is still valid or not. BUT it is also extremely likely, that Translink (our local authority), is encoding each pass with an anonymous random ID as well, in order to track the user (anonymously) through the transit network. The readers likely store the ID number, time the user got on the bus, and how much time remained on the pass. Back at Translink they could use such data to analyze the average distance a transit user will cover in the time that one pass covers (usually 90 minutes I think), or which bus routes experience heavy continuous loading from other bus routes, etc… This sort of anonymous data can help them plan their routes better or reorganize bus schedules to work better for the users.
Ok, since you guys started it, here’s another big brother item to obsess over. CLICK
:lol: thought you meant big brother the TV show. And was thinking “well this thread just hit rock bottom”
Thanks for the explanation on 4d Schoeder, makes a bit more sense now. Is it actually being used by authorities to track crims? I reckon that hand-puppet bush should use it to find Bin Laden, although I recall seeing mr elusive a while back on that Eminem video so maybe they should speak to Slim first..
DaForce - I agree, Big Brother is rubbish. In the UK its gone from being a show where the very first contestants came onboard with no expectations and just for the experience, to this years show where in the first week one of the chicks said ‘if i get voted out in the first week will i still get a magazine deal?’ -
I nearly threw my tv out the window!
didn’t you know: Big Brother tv is part of the conspiracy to have the entire population turned into unquestioning media consuming robotzombies (cf Karl Marx and his views on religion)
schroeder - I was kinda pulling your leg about remote sensing - interesting field to be in
Schroder - From the first few posts, I thought this was going to be a typical empty argument about conspiracy theories (I love them and all, but discussions about them get stale), but ive gotta say, thats proper fucking interesting.
Should really include morbid in there too - you backed that up very well.
Back on topic - I used myspace a lot about 3 years ago when it was still unknown and you could get dates with incredibly cool girls out of it, but its become a massive cireclejerk now so I only use it to stay in touch with old mates/people I know from clubs.
You know. I think rendering can be unhealthy to the mind. You guys need a little exercise or something.
Well ill armwrestle you if your up for it!