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What Are You Looking At?
Ensign Stinky writes "The NYTimes has a story, with some spooky-cool pictures, about software to extract exactly what image a person is seeing with their eyes, just from the reflection on their cornea. You can see even a wider image than the subject and tell what they're specifically focusing on. It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.' Remind anyone of that scene in the movie 'Wild Wild West' where they extract the last thing the dead guy saw?"
It's too bad the coolest tech is immediately subverted for evil. The possible applications listed include 'surveillance cameras that spot suspicious behavior.'
Hey guys, like much of the popular sci-fi literature will illustrate, its not what you might be looking at or visually or cognitvely attending to or even thinking.......its what you actively do with those thoughts or attentions. Prosecuting folks for visual attention to things that stand out (like items folks covet such as that rather nice looking Porsche below and outside my window) will be fruitless. Same goes for prosecuting "thoughtcrimes". However, cheating on exams.......could be more easily documented I suppose.....
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this kind of reminds me of the photograph analyzer in blade runner. i wonder if the scene in the movie would be considered prior art if a similiar machine or process were developed today.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Because there are people that naturally paranoid enough to look at everyone coming towards them. Which is kinda ironic, the more paranoid you are, the more reason to be paranoid.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
I strongly doubt any archival photo negatives or digital replicas have the quality or the resolution to be able to do work like this.
In the realm of digital photos, I seriously doubt the 3 pixels representing the eye of a world leader from a 640x480 image would be enough to reconstruct a reflection from.
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
You know how sometimes you can stare at something and not realize it? That's me and my daft self most of the time. So... even though you look you don't see, right? No one can prove you actually noticed it.
The article indicates that this technology may one day be used in high-end surveillance systems or (further down the road) in retail stores where retailers track what you look at the most.
I wonder if an evidence extracted using this technology can be used in a court of law. Specifically, if this technology can say, "Yes, you were picking out the face of our undercover cop in the crowd whom you thought was your dealer", versus "No, you were just sort of looking over the crowd but not at anyone particular." On one hand, the judge could admit the evidence since it was not extracted by coercion or by torture (you may not even be aware that you were under surveillance). But the judge could also throw it out based on privacy laws and "unreasonable search and seisure".
Just the ones that are darting from person to person, or back and forth looking for cops.
Or scanning the crowd looking for someone they're meeting. What, exactly, about "darting eyes" indicates criminal or suspicious behavior?
Sounds kinda nifty to me. As far as the surveillance part, they won't learn that much from me. Guys look at breasts a LOT. Wow. Newsflash.
They won't just know that guys look at breasts a lot. They will know whose breasts you were looking at. Big difference.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
I'm constantly scanning crowds and examining people, looking for criminal activity or precursors to such activity. Does that make me a bad guy?
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
I think the idea is that the computers operating the cameras would determine suspicious behavior, not requiring human intervention.
Those suspicious behaviour detecting algorithms are made by humans you know. I don't think computers evolved a sense of morallity yet.
I guess the solution is to just invest in some highly polarized wrap around sun glasses.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I find the statements about "we can go back to old pictures of JFK and see what he was looking at" to be questionable at best.
You need a LOT of pixels of the eye itself from which to reconstruct an image. Now, look at how much of a given normal picture the eyes of a person represent.
You *might* be able to reconstruct where the person is looking. You probably aren't going to have enough pixels to reconstruct what they saw.
To do that level of imaging you are going to need a picture of the person's eye at high resolution.
So the government spy cameras will have to zoom in on your eyes - call it about a 500 to one zoom. They will have to track your eyes as you move about.
And yes, if you wear sunglasses you can defeat this.
Now, what this WOULD be very useful for would be in combinatino with a head mounted display - since the display device has to subtend a large angle as viewed from the eye, the display device must have a good view of the eye. So combining the display device with an imaging device would allow the system to see what you at what you are looking, so you now have a pointing device. Theoretically, a wink or slow-blink could be a "select" operation.
Now, if they could get the focus point of the eye, they could REALLY make an interesting system - if you are focusing past the image, they could mute it - reduce the brightness, possibly even reduce the amount of information (iconify apps, reduce update rates, show only "critical" items, etc.) When they detect you've shifted focus to bring the display into focus, brighten up. Think of looking through a dirty windshield, then shifting focus to the dirt on the glass.
www.eFax.com are spammers
There is no way you can tell what the person is mentally processing by virtue of the fact that a particular image happened to be reflected in their eye. All you can reasonably conclude is that they were facing in a particular direction. What if, for example, someone was merely staring into space, with their thoughts wandering between and betwixt something completely unrelated? Isn't that what we call daydreaming? What rational conclusion could you you possibly draw in a situation like this, and how could you refute someone's claim to the contrary?
Well now if there's actually a camera there that happens to take a high resolution photo of an eyewitness, wouldn't it be much more likely that the actual incident gets photographed. You don't really need eyewitnesses so much if there's actually photos of a scene. On the off chance that there happens to be a camera around, and on the slight possibility that the photographer ignores whatever event is going on and just snaps high quality photos of people's eyes then by all means this could be a revolutionary tool. Sure.
Vote Quimby.
"Our security cameras showed that you spent twenty six minutes and eighteen seconds staring directly at Ms. Jones' chest in the last month alone. I'm afraid we're going to have to let you go before she files a sexual harassment complaint with the board. Have a nice day."
Even better, what about people like me (who are colorblind) or those with Opsoclonus (Eyes vibrate back and forth rapidly)?
Truly colorblind people lack the fovea. It's the massive cluster of cones near the center of your retina. When you "focus your eyes on something" you are actually setting it so the image of what you are looking at lands on your fovea. I on the other hand, tend to look over people's shoulder's when talking to them or even near 90 degrees away. This is cause I have a much better detail recognition when people aren't directly in front of me. I've trained myself to look at faces and such when on the job because it's more comforting for the other person.
People with Opsoclonus have eyes that vibrate left to right rapidly. They have aa tendancy to need to tilt their head sideways when focusing and have a tough time keeping focused. It can get severe enough that their head starts twitching as well to counter act the process. I had 2 friends in college that had this problem as well.
On either set of people (and colorblind is much more common) this tech would be rather useless.
-Ab
Nothing fails quite like prayer.
Since film has a grain size, the picture gets divided into pretty small elements. It ain't "pixels", but it pretty much boils down to the same thing.
For example, if a murderer/kidnapper takes pictures/video of their victims they could possibly use the images in the victim's eyes to trace where they are, who killed them and who was in the room... Especially since the corneas capture more of the room than what the eye is looking at.
This technology is awesome for law enforcement and solving old crimes where photographs/video were invovled.
I hope someone runs with this.
Hadesan