Video Surveillance Tech Detects Abnormal Activity

Repton writes with news of a company, Behavioral Recognition Systems, that has received 16 patents on a new video surveillance application that can convert video images into machine-readable language, and then analyze them for anomalies that suggest suspicious behavior in the camera's field of view. The software can 'recognize' up to 300 objects and establish a baseline of activity. It should go on sale in September. "...the BRS Labs technology will likely create a fair number of false positives, [the CEO] concedes. 'We think a three-to-one ratio of alerts to actual events is what the market will accept,' he says. 'We could be wrong.'"

Comments

Re:One out of four ain't bad

[oodaloop]

Well, you obviously know much more about what's going on than I do. I just work in Iraq as an intelligence analyst...what do you do again?

The terrorists we've arrested are largely foreigners, so it's tough for me to accept them as "patriots". They indiscrimantly kill innocent Iraqis, which is the big reason behind the Anbar awakening. There have also been several that I know of that showed up in Iraq and realized it was all a mistake: the U.S. was doing the right thing, and the violence was due to Sunni vs Shia strife. It's a shame we don't get their stories out more.

U.S. troops in Iraq, including snipers, wear what we call "uniforms". Terrorists don't. Rules of Armed Conflict recognize combatants that wear uniforms. Is that clear enough of a distinction for you?

And let's not forget why the U.N. didn't approve the invasion. French officials were on the take in the Oil for Food program and France was selling MRBMs, which were forbidden under the UN resolutions it was approving. We were NEVER going to get their approval, or the approval of the numerous other countries participating in the corrupt Oil for Food program. Iraq violated over 20 U.N. resolutions with no repurcussions in sight, freely murdered their own people with chemical weapons, sponsored terrorist groups for over 20 yeas, and somehow Bush ended up the bad guy for taking a stand, actually doing something about it, and stopping it all.

And BTW, Congress voted overwhelmingly to support the president in sending troops to Iraq. Only in your vivid imagination is Bush responsible for everything you see bad in the world.

Re:One out of four ain't bad

[oodaloop]

All very good points. The U.S. public is largely unaware of what is going on here, but the governement is not to blame IMHO. The Public Affairs Office (PAO) issues hundreds of press releases a day (in fact, an unclassified summary of every single operation is written up every single day and sent to the PAO for release), however reporters are mostly only interested in casualties and deaths. Schools getting built are accurately reported and issued to the media but go unreported. Every report on something positive ends with how many soldiers died that day. Yes, there are startingly few outright critical reports in the mainstream media of the war, but I think that is mostly due to reporters tryig to stay in good graces with the White House so they continue to get leaked information, scoops, etc. They still paint the war as negatively as possible. The truely telling things about the war are never found in the press, like the fact there are 10 out of 18 provinces now under Iraqi Provincial Control (with another 6 on schedule to be turned over by the end of 2008), or the total number of foriegn fighters coming through Syria (where almost all foriegn fighters come through) every month is 50-60. These figures do not support the Iraq-as-Vietnam unwinable perpetual quagmire picture they want to paint, and are never reported. As such, I think the subtle bias in reporting is much more damaging than an outright stinging critique. This way, people have no idea the positions they hold are based on distorted information.

As for being involved, I think it's time we leave. Either things will get better, or more likely I think, Iran and Al Qaeda will both claim victory (in different ways, and perhaps not publicly) and end up fighting each other for control of Iraq. Let them.