Entries Tagged "cameras"

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New Harry Potter Book Leaked on BitTorrent

It’s online: digital photographs of every page are available on BitTorrent.

I’ve been fielding press calls on this, mostly from reporters asking me what the publisher could have done differently. Honestly, I don’t think it was possible to keep the book under wraps. There are millions of copies of the book headed to all four corners of the globe. There are simply too many people who must be trusted in order for the security to hold. And all it takes is one untrustworthy person—one truck driver, one bookstore owner, one warehouse worker—to leak the book.

But conversely, I don’t think the publishers should care. Anyone fan-crazed enough to read digital photographs of the pages a few days before the real copy comes out is also someone who is going to buy a real copy. And anyone who will read the digital photographs instead of the real book would have borrowed a copy from a friend. My guess is that the publishers will lose zero sales, and that the pre-release will simply increase the press frenzy.

I’m kind of amazed the book hadn’t leaked sooner.

And, of course, it is inevitable that we’ll get ASCII copies of the book post-publication, for all of you who want to read it on your PDA.

EDITED TO ADD (7/18): I was interviewed for “Future Tense” on this story.

EDITED TO ADD (7/20): This article outlines some of the security measures the publisher took with the manuscript.

EDITED TO ADD (7/25): The camera has a unique serial number embedded in each of the digital photos which might be used to track the author. Just another example of how we leave electronic footprints everywhere we go.

EDITED TO ADD (8/15): Here is a much more comprehensive analysis of who the leaker is:

  • The photographer is Caucasian.
  • The photographer is probably not married (no wedding ring on left hand).
  • The photographer is likely male. In the first few photos, the ring finger appears to be longer than the index finger. This is called the 2D:4D ratio and a lower ratio is symptomatic a high level of testosterone, suggesting a male. However, there is no clear shot of the fingers layed out, so this is not conclusive.
  • Although cameras are usually designed for right-handed use, the photographer uses his left hand to pin down the book. This suggests that the photographer is right handed. (I’ve seen southpaws try to do this sort of thing, and they usually hold the camera in an odd way with their left hand.) However, this too is not conclusive.
  • The photographer’s hand looks young—possibly a teenager or young adult.

Much, much more in the link.

Posted on July 17, 2007 at 4:38 PM • View Comments

Surveillance Cameras that Obscure Faces

From Technology Review:

A camera developed by computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, would obscure, with an oval, the faces of people who appear on surveillance videos. These so-called respectful cameras, which are still in the research phase, could be used for day-to-day surveillance applications and would allow for the privacy oval to be removed from a given set of footage in the event of an investigation.

An interesting privacy-enhancing technology.

Posted on June 26, 2007 at 7:41 AM • View Comments

Direct Marketing Meets Wholesale Surveillance

A $100K National Science Foundation grant to Geosemble Technologies, Inc.

SBIR Phase I: Exploiting High-Resolution Imagery, Geospatial Data, and Online Sources to Automatically Identify Direct Marketing Leads

Abstract: This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will conduct a feasibility study to demonstrate that by combining currently available high-resolution imagery, geospatial data (e.g., parcel data or structure data), and other related online data sources (e.g., property tax data or census data), it is possible to automatically generate highly targeted direct marketing leads for a variety of markets. The plan is to approach this problem by (1) aligning existing geospatial sources with the high-resolution imagery in order to determine the exact location and determine the address of the parcels seen in the imagery, (2) extracting the relevant features from the imagery to provide appropriate leads, such as determining the presence or absence of a swimming pool, the type of roofing materials used, or what types of cars are parked in the driveway, and (3) bringing in other sources of data, such as property tax assessment data to provide additional context.

The primary focus of the phase I project will be to demonstrate the use of machine learning technology for identifying features in high-resolution imagery that can be used for direct marketing. High-resolution aerial imagery is now being widely collected and is available for low cost or in some cases is even free. The challenges are to first to align parcel data with the high resolution imagery to identify the exact address and boundaries of a property, and second to develop feature extraction techniques that can exploit the contextual information to accurately identify novel features, such as roofs, cars, pools, landscaping, etc., that can be used for direct marketing. The ability to accurately identify features in imagery and then relate them to specific properties as well as related sources of information will allow a targeted direct marketing product to be built. The end users of this product will be companies seeking to market products directly to residential consumers. This includes product and services relating to home improvement, both exterior and interior, as well as those products relating to residents of the home, that can be gleaned from imagery available for the parcel in question. This is a large market and includes everyone from home improvement stores to roofing companies, construction companies, automobile dealers, tree trimmers, landscapers, and pool construction companies. Beyond direct marketing, the technology can also be used for other applications that combine imagery, geospatial data, and structured information. For example, it could used for mosquito abatement, which is important to stop the spread of West Nile Virus, by identifying large pools of stagnant water, associating those hazards with the appropriate address, and then mailing abatement notifications to the residents.

Posted on June 19, 2007 at 3:52 PM • View Comments

License Plate Cloning

It’s a growing problem in the UK:

“There are different levels of cloning. There is the simple cloning, just stealing a plate to drive into say the Congestion Charge zone or evade a speed camera.

“It ranges up to a higher level which is the car criminal who wants to sell on a stolen car.”

Tony Bullock’s car was cloned even though his plates were not physically stolen, and he was threatened with prosecution after “his” car was repeatedly caught speeding in Leicester.

He said: “It was horrendous. You are guilty until you can prove you’re not. It’s the first time that I’ve thought that English law is on its head.”

Metropolitan Police Federation chairman Glen Smyth said the problem has grown because of the amount of camera-based enforcement of traffic offences, which relies on computer records on who owns which car.

Posted on June 11, 2007 at 1:52 PM • View Comments

How Australian Authorities Respond to Potential Terrorists

Watch the video of how the Australian authorities react when someone—dressed either as an American or Arab tourist—films the Sydney Harbor Bridge and a nuclear reactor.

The synopsis: The Arab is intercepted within three minutes both times, while the U.S. tourist is given instructions on how to get inside the nuclear facility.

Moral for terrorists: dress like an American.

By the way, Lucas Heights is a research reactor. It produces medical isotopes and performs research, and doesn’t produce power.

Posted on April 24, 2007 at 7:12 AM • View Comments

Cameras "Predict" Crimes

New developments from surveillance-camera-happy England:

The £7,000 device, nicknamed “the Bug”, consists of a ring of eight cameras scanning in all directions. It uses software to detect whether anybody is walking or loitering in a way that marks them out from the crowd. A ninth camera then zooms in to follow them if it thinks they are behaving suspiciously.

[…]

“The camera picks up on unusual movement, zooms in on someone and gathers evidence from a face and clothing, acting as a 24-hour operator without someone having to be there,” said Jason Butler, head of CCTV at Luton borough council. “We have kids with Asbos telling us they hate the thing because it follows them wherever they go.”

This is interesting. It moves us further along the continuum into thoughtcrimes, but near as I can tell, the system just collects evidence on people it thinks suspicious, just in case. Assuming the data is erased immediately after, it’s much less invasive than actually accosting someone for thoughtcrime; the costs for false alarms is minimal.

I doubt it works nearly as well as the article claims, but that’s likely to change in 5 to 10 years. For example, there’s a lot of research being done in the area of microfacial expressions to detect lying and other thoughts. This is the sort of technological advance that we need to be talking about in terms of security, privacy, and liberty.

Posted on April 19, 2007 at 6:20 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.