Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Let's Hear It For The Vague Blur!
Widespread video surveillance has been a great boon - well, to someone, since studies in Great Britain show that there is virtually no significant reduction in crime in heavily surveilled neighborhoods.
The real problem is finding people (enough of them!) and paying them to watch all these cameras to search for wrong-doing.
The video-analysis company 3VR has built up a database of every last license plate, vehicle and face that is encountered by video cameras in its network and sounds the alarm if it sees a suspect anywhere.
As it turns out, there seem to be people who don't like being constantly photographed every minute of their lives, and 3VR's engineers have come up with an interesting gimmick to help maintain the privacy of people who are being constantly photographed without their knowledge or consent.
This system uses the same algorithms that pick out faces and license plates; it then blurs the faces and vehicles that are not in their database of suspicious persons.
(3VR Security blur the innocent software)
Of course, if you later become a suspicious "person of interest," security guards can "unlock" your image to reveal your real, sharp-featured self under the blur.
(Scramble suit video from A Scanner Darkly)
This is a marvelously inverted perversion of Philip K. Dick's scramble suit from his 1977 novel A Scanner Darkly. In the story, a police informant could become anonymous by wearing "a superthin shroudlike membrane..." - a scramble suit.
In any case, the wearer of a scramble suit was Everyman and in every combination (up to combinations of a million and a half sub-bits) during the course of each hour. Hence, any description of him - or her - was meaningless.
(Read more about PKD's scramble suit)
In the 3VR privacy surveillance picture, everyone who is innocent becomes anonymized; only the presumed guilty have their own real identity and face.
As PKD would say, "Let's hear it for the vague blur!"
Via Wired.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 6/16/2008)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 3 )
Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")
Chameleon Personalized Privacy Protection Mask
'...the Virtual Epiphantic Identity Lustre.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.
Spherical Police Robot Rolls In China
'Rand could effectively be in several places at once...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1981.
Vietnam To Have Full Biometric Transparency
'inscriptions too small to be seen with the naked eye; microscopic data...' - Eric Frank Russell, 1939.
Simple Way To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'... designed to foil facial recognition systems.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Darpa 'Defiant' Unmanned Autonomous Ship
'There was no wheel, and no steersman!'
What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots?
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
Fine-Tune Your Infinite Book The Way You Want It
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...'
SpiRobs Soft Spiral Robotic Arm
'Beware the long, flexible, glittering tentacles...'
Holland Factory 3D Printing 500 Tons Of Steak Per Month
'...I don’t understand technical things — tell me, does it ever feel anything?"
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
