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3-D Surveillance Technology
scubacuda writes "According to this Technology Review article, a new surveillance technology called Video Flashlight melds 3-D models from background scenes. This "tweening process" allows security persononnel to fly around a subject such as a pedestrian, getting a detailed look without jumping between widely separated views."
That's just flat out cool.
This is a direct descendant of the technique used in the Matrix.
From the rumormill, this technique will be used in the Matrix 2 to create even better effects than was done previously.
I have been pwned because my
If you can't see all of someone how the hell are you supposed to get a 3d model of them! Admitedly you could assume that their symetrical or something, but that is usually a bad assumption. And who is to say that the dimension you can't see isn't normal. Like a person who is 5'7" and three feet wide but whose depth is normal. Their side veiw would imply a normal 5'7" person.
I remember a court case where some politician was reported in the paper to have been with a prostitute.
Later on some late night talk show they got footage of him just walking along to some one and talking to them.
Then they used software like this to place him on a different background going over to a prostitute.
It was so convincing he took them to court for making it.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
I can foresee a bright future for this technology in the pr0n industry... Combine it with a VR helmet, and you're on the way to re-enact some cool scenes from Strange Days!
-- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
It's kinda scary that the reporter is, in a sense, selling us on this aspect of the ever more frightening reach of surveillance into our lives by tying it in so heavily with one of the coolest films of recent years, The Matrix.
While the film itself was pretty damn cool, we should bear in mind that the world it depicted would be pretty damn shit to actually live in.
Yeah, I know they say that they are using multiple cameras and just using tweening to fill in gaps between frames, but when you start sticking little stuff in, how do you know what's real and what's not?
Made me think of the character in Stranger in a Strange Land, can't remember her name, but she was a trained witness of some sort and would not testify, for example that a house was white on all sides unless she had seen all sides of the house and then she wouldn't testify that the sides of the house she could no longer see had stayed white. Granted, that's a little extreme, but the average Joe is gonna believe what he sees is true, and this is mucking with that truth just a little bit. If this is used in court, is an expert going to be able to testify that only certain parts were added? Wouldn't that seem a little odd to a jury, "Hi, we're going to show you a videotape of something that happened and you're going to have to take it as gospel...AFTER we tell you that we added a few little bits to it."?
Course, I'm paranoid, if someone tells me they mucked with it a little bit, I'm gonna assume they added exactly what they wanted me to see...
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
what's the deal with the word 'tweening' ?
is interpolation too big of a word for the average person? why does the word 'tweening exist' ?
i hate the word.
cause we all know that the security guys viewing this would be looking at the woman in the red dress.
How any new technology designed for surveillance can be described as "flat out cool".
It's a neat idea, but I don't think it will be as useful as one might hope. Anything in the computer image would still have to have a direct line of sight to a camera. It sounds like a great tool, but remember computers can't do *everything*
I predict this will be the most effective new technology for promoting security - incorporating the detail and accuracy of security cameras and flawlessness of image based modeling. It makes me feel liberated knowing that I can live my life unrestrained by fear of malicious criminals.
But perhaps it's about leaving your mark on the world, the real world. Cows might be happy but, essentially, we've redirected them from their destiny to serve our ends.
I'm not saying that there is a specific point to life but, getting very minimalistic about it, you could say that our "purpose" is to pass on our genes in the ongoing dance of evolution. If we are not at least partially in control of our destinies we no longer get to participate in that, the continuance of our lines.
It's not so much a question of Steak vs. Goop but what you do with your goop.
This has already been in use for years!
Its been featured in countless movies, along with the systems that can "enhance" fine detail out of 4 pixels of NTSC video.
Didn't they use this feature in the super bowl a couple of years ago? Of course, you still need one camera to expose each angles, usually at least 3, and a hoss computer to build the 3D model. If i recall, it wasn't as Matrix-esqe as we'd like it to have been, (though that's mostly a limitation of camera and computing power).
Aside from all that, what's the point. If a guy looks suspicious, and you have 3 cameras able to pick him up, flip the camera view -- is that too much harder than rolling a jog dial?
First, a sensible editorial from the Vancouver Sun.
Second, some words from the Canadian privacy commissioner, in which he comes down on video surveillance.
Third, the cameras are ruled illegal.
Canada has a privacy commissioner who is independent of the government and police and who has one overriding concern above all else: ensuring that the constitutional privacy rights of the Canadian public are respected.
In the past, he's also prevented the government from creating a super database that merges all information from all sources -- police, medical, political, taxation, etc -- into one system. So ruled because it would make it far too easy for the various branches of government to look at data they shouldn't have access to.
Thank goodness Canada's got the foresight and commonsense to have an independent commissioner!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Considering that Slashdot has gotten a significant number of its articles this week from the MIT Technology Review, wouldn't it just be easier for readers to pickup a copy of that magazine?
the security guards here can see right through you.
Isn't this like that they were using in Enemy of The State to try to see what was dropped in Will Smith's bag by that guy that was later killed on the road?
Tibbon
tibbon.com
This "tweening process"... hmmmmmm
Computer added images, surely thats not CONCLUSIVE PROOF? as the image was rendered by the computer and not ACTUALLY there? Basically its an educated guess, not fact?
Could this stand up? or be questioned?
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Going to the link coincided with receiving a spam. Could be coincidence, could be just my machine, but the source of the page starts with:
function isEmail(emailAddress)
{
var EmailOk = true;
var AtSym = emailAddress.indexOf('@');
var Period = emailAddress.lastIndexOf('.');
var Space = emailAddress.indexOf(' ');
var Length = emailAddress.length - 1;
if ((AtSym
I don't read javascript but this looks like a parser to me.
-Happy
I'm sorry, but any footage that is interpolated or derived from existing frames cannot be admissible in court. It should be considered as speculation. If it isn't then we have some serious problems.
:)
I'm all for the added benefits to pr0n, though....
moto411.com
When are they going to bundle the software with X10 cameras? Like many geeks, I got a box full of them ready to use, so there is a market. All mine were purchased prior to the pop-unders and the voyeur ads, if anyone cares.
What a bunch of misleading hype! This article tries to scare all the Chicken Littles out there into beleiving that once again the sky is falling. (Remember the last time the sky fell on Jan 1,Y2K) The story insinuates that "big brother" will soon be counting the hairs in our nostrils by simply interpolating the images picked up by a few traffic cameras placed around town. The key here is that it takes HUNDREDS of cameras to perform this feat and these cameras need to be networked together at high speed before being processed or "tweened" if you prefer. An istallation of this sort would run a round $1 million bucks per city block for the initial installation alone. 'Guess were safe for now. Don't get me wrong, I love the technology, I just feel bad for the Chicken Littles who will beleive it and then never leave their (hen) house anymore.
From the last paragraph of the article:
But early versions have already been installed at U.S. Army Intelligence headquarters and are under consideration for New York City's three airports--perhaps bringing us all a step closer to living inside the Matrix.
If by "living inside the Matrix" you mean living in a world where our every action is monitored by technology then, yes, we are getting closer to that.
I don't doubt that this thing has legitimate uses, but I'm not about to jump up and praise every single development in survelance technology. I think Big Brother's eyes are allready a little too sharp, and I'd rather see them make improvements on how they apply their technology. There was no technical reason for intellegence to miss plans for Sept. 11th, and no array of videocameras etc. would have helped. The problems were organizational, and I don't think sufficient improvements have been made in that area.
Bottom line: you get watched, the terrorists go unnoticed.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Let's face it. Security is a friggin' boring job. I know people who have done it. About the only thing that keeps it from driving the people doing it completely insane with boredom is the benefit of zooming in the cameras on women with lots of cleavage showing.
So you can imagine how this software will be abused.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Check out this paper by Chen and Williams. In this work done back at Apple in '93 they describe how to create intermediate camera angles from multiple static images.
Of course, the capacity to fly around the scene in real time had to wait until computers got a lot faster.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Sounds like they want to get spectator mode like in Counter Strike. Right-click to jump between people walking around, and you can move the mouse to change the angle you're looking at him with...
At least that what it sounds like to me...
I'm surprised nobody else has compared this to the "Esper" device used in Blade Runner, which allowed Deckard to "see around corners" in static images. Though, to be fair, I can't think of any *possible* way this could be done using only one image - unless the machine was extrapolating from extremely subtle shadows and reflections on other objects on the picture. Even then you'd get a very crude image of unseen objects at best.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I remember a scene from Enemy of the State where the evil NSA geek takes a shot of Will Smith's shopping bag captured from a lingerie store security camera, and rotates it in 3D, filling in information as he goes along. I was like, "this is soo much bullshit. Typical Jerry Bruckheimer film - junk science all the way."
Well, I guess it wasn't totally bullshit. However, if I find out that the DNA pattern of an ideal brunette can be modeled using only one package of M&Ms, I'll have to shoot myself...
sure 1984 passed. but we are getting closer to it.
what is nailchipper?
I thought it was pretty neat when a football program would do replays of a scene using multiple cameras and "swing" you around a stadium to a better viewing angle. I think it was Fox Sports that did this, but I'm not sure.
Another thought: One can estimate that there are three or four phone numbers for every man woman and child (home/work/cell/fax/modem/etc.). How many cameras per person will we have within 10 years as we move to a surveillance-oriented society?
-ez
I could imagine designing a quake map based on real building layout.
Cameras could overlay real images onto the model.
Security guards would then pay more attention to their surroundings if they were playing a game of quake in the area (model / map)
Quake players are sensitive to movement.
you're all paranoid about being watched, aren't you?
The Sarnoff corporation has more information available on their homepage, including a downloadable video clip of the the flashlight in action; available here.
When the movie "Outbreak" and its CG F/X with choppers hit the screens, I remember thinking "Wow, you can't tell what's real and what's not anymore. You really cannot tell the difference between a CG scene and a real one. I wonder how long it will take before news studios start using this to fabricate stories."
Upon which a friend of mine replied, "What makes you think they don't already?"
This could have some really awesome uses in Teleimmersion and Virtual Reality.
:)
Think about the last videoconference you attended: it was probably a far cry from being face to face. Adding simple stereo vision to that probably would not do much for interacting with your peers. However, a system like the following might change things.
Here's what I'd propose, if I could build my "dream system":
Set up the following:
*Two conference rooms equipped with the cameras mentioned in the article
*Optical See-through HMDs that the users would wear
*A very fast network connection between the two locations
*Software to make it work.
This way, individuals in disparate locations could walk around, talk to each other, and do everything but shake hands. Actually, get one of these and that might even be possible
You would also somehow do a similar trick with the audio to enable "private" conversations between individuals sitting next to each other.
This could be the first really useful immersive application. Think about how much travel time would be saved.
Any thoughts?
Yep, in that movie they use this 3D tech to pan around a shopping bag to see what it contains. But this would never work in reality...
For Christ sake
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The incessant augmentation of police state powers is NOT a cool thing at all.
The way a lot of people around /. talk about these things, it's pretty clear that they don't ever expect to be the object of these new 'toys'. I find the complacent, pseudo-cool, abstract discussion of these matters to be almost as scary as this police state 'apparatus'.
Tell me people: just when do the warning bells go off in your heads (the 'crime' issue is always meant to sidetrack your critical reasoning powers, BTW)?
EON condensed matter distributed-computing project.