The Follower: Using open cameras and AI to find how an Instagram photo is taken
driesdepoorter.be
driesdepoorter.be
https://radiolab.org/episodes/update-eye-sky
The company in question:
https://www.amazon.com/Eyes-Sky-Secret-Gorgon-Stare-ebook/dp...
All of these are good illustrations of the idea that by putting multiple data sources together, even "anonymous" data sets can be de-anonymized surprisingly easily.
It's quite interesting to think about how relevant the themes being discussed in that show are ever present today.
Too late.
NTechLab scraped vk.com (Facebook-like Russian social network) profile photos and were running a public website "FindFace" that allowed to find profiles by photo of a face. They provide services to Russian government, e.g. it's used to find people from protests. Also FindFace was used to find and harass webcam models.
https://www.businessinsider.com/intel-spacex-philip-morris-l...
> Intel, SpaceX, Philip Morris, and dozens of other US companies were in a leaked database of users for a Russian facial recognition company
> The NTech Lab user list, which was shared with Insider by an anonymous source, includes more than 1,100 entries, with businesses and government agencies from more than 60 countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FindFace
> In 2017, NtechLab face recognition algorithms were built into the Moscow city video surveillance system operated by the Moscow Department of Information Technology . The system uses the database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to find correspondences to it on video. The alleged use of the system is the search for criminals and the fight against terrorism.
> In 2022, NTechLab was accused of assisting the Russian and Belarus government by tracking thousands of political activists which led to their unconstitutional detentions and arrests.
> In 2016, FindFace generated controversy because it was once used to deanonymize Russian pornography actresses and alleged prostitutes. These efforts were organized by users of a Russian imageboard Dvach who claimed that women in the sex industry are “corrupt and deceptive”, according to Global Voices. In addition, FindFace has been characterized as a major step in the erosion of anonymity.
https://about.fb.com/news/2021/11/update-on-use-of-face-reco...
That's different than LOCATING random people through their photos though. This post is directly Mission Impossible kinda spy stuff.
I think it would be really good educational material. Showing the silly dance that is performed removes all the glamour from the result, and might help alleviating the bad psychological effects that glamour is causing
Their followers know it’s an act, that’s what they’re there for.
I was actually hoping to see real juicy stuff (maybe reflectors? Or them smoking something after?) but all seemed pretty tame to be honest.
No, it's like saying that revealing pornography is a studio act will cause them to see how little it resembles a normal, pleasurable sex act, and that they may decide afterwards not to hold it up as a standard of comparison for their own sex lives. You've added the part about "turning away viewers." People know movies take a lot of production and love them for it. They don't judge themselves for not being able to fly, or outrun an explosion.
Some of the magic was taken away when I learned that certain scenes a movie I liked required dozens of takes: it felt too mechanical/industrial and went against my romantic notions of how art is made. This is not far off from the pose-repose-inspect cycle you noted, but has a much larger supporting crew (and budget) and far longer hours.
How you stitch each of those together into a seamless ever-changing story *is* the magic, especially when you know how it's done.
Everything happens in tiny almost imperceptible 1/24th of a second steps, and yet eye-blink instant can make the difference between you believing a scene and not believing it.
Next time you watch a film or a TV programme, try to see how the trick is done. Watch for how people are positioned so that their eyelines cross when they're talking. Watch how when you cut from one shot to another, there's a movement in the shot that you leave, that matches the shot that you enter. This fools you into not "seeing the join". As you turn your head to look around you blink subconsciously, so your brain is used to dealing with cutting between scenes. How you do that to tell a story is a phenomenally powerful and beautiful art.
Unfortunately, it is a lesser magic to the one I naively believed in: that of genius directors who have fully-formed visions they bring on screen, and world class actors who need 2 or 3 takes tops. It was all very idealized, and in my defense, I was very young.
Now I enjoy deconstructing tools of trade on some movies on a second watch: paying attention to camera angles, composition, color grading and sound. The only thing I regret is learning about the Wilhelm scream, because it always destroys my suspension of disbelief, and I hear it more often than I'd like.
Well actually he probably added the bounding boxes. DDG result for "Dublin Temple Bar livestream": https://www.earthcam.com/world/ireland/dublin/?cam=templebar
Traffic cameras are publicly available in London. The first thing I used to do when coming to the office each morning was to look myself up in the traffic cameras along my journey (historic footage is also publicly available).
Remember that this is still 2022. People think there's no privacy anymore, but in a few decades we are going to look back and wish we could go back. Of course these are public spaces where privacy has never _truly_ existed, but having cameras transmitting your every step to anyone with internet access is chilling.
Edit: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/nyc-cardstand-earthcam...
OMG that's the most terrifying thing I have seen in ages.
Amazing, innovative, tipping-point-sign, but still, terrifying
How many involuntary social media photo and video backgrounds do you think someone living in NYC or SF is identifiable in every day? I would venture to guess, enough to track a lot of their life. The only thing I see stopping anyone from making this site today is the challenges in scraping large quantities of public data from social media sites. Once you have the data, the rest seems like a solved problem.
https://www.datasciencecentral.com/sunglasses-and-face-mask-...
The real problem is things like gait recognition. Most people already cover some or all of their hips, legs, feet, etc.... But it's hard to hide the way that you walk, regardless of what clothing you wear. And even if you can fake it for a short period of time, it's hard to be consistent about how you fake it over a long period of time.
When you can accurately identify the person who is completely covered head to toe, then it becomes a lot harder to hide.
You really cannot expect any privacy outside anywhere, cameras are basically everywhere now, possibly broadcasting the information to the world.
Like a clock that shows you what percentage of your life is over.
It's just another piece of evidence that we really are living in dystopian times.
To detect faux-lean people you can understand that the angle shot has evolved to being from a low angle to the ground
And also wearing black should immediately be a flag for further scrutiny
It is the first suggestion for slimming attire and it is for the optical illusion for their own confidence and having other people want to engage with them
As if there is some awareness that everyone stopped saying anything about it but still aren’t personally interested
now we also have low angle shots, taken by another person or at an angled mirror, producing the slimming effect
remain discerning!
Is the code for this project or similar projects available on Github?
The unstated implications of all this are unsettling.
There is no expectation of privacy in public. This just drives it home.
knowing that the three letter agencies can do this same forensics to catch $badGuy is somewhat comforting that at least it can do the function it was meant. preventing everyone else from doing the same is where the wheels fall off the bus. it's another one of those situations where the intended purpose gets shoved to the side with unconsidered purposes becoming the norm which makes $tech look evil.
"AI" --> OpenCV --> Histogram of oriented gradients (algorithm for pedestrian detection)
Depending on the application, you could lower the bitrate significantly during times of low motion or low detail (such as at night). You could also drop the framerate.
I've found that when the scene is static, without panning, and no wind blowing leaves on trees, you can compress really well. I have a Wyze outdoor cam looking at the front yard that does 1080p at a little less than 1 mbps.
I’d go so far as saying, hand wringing over government surveillance has served as a smokescreen over the proliferation of private surveillance.
Not that i want to advocate for government surveillance, just that, in my experience, people who worry so much about it seemed to have entirely missed how much private companies have expanded into public space.
You could also the reverse and find social media posts from the CCTV footage, to capture some passerby's face at a higher resolution.
We are living in dystopian times.
Do not track is now a lift style.
But you dont have social media so you wouldnt know