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Demo of EU's Planned "INDECT" Hints At Massive Data Mining, Little Privacy

Posted by timothy on from the greater-good-strikes-back dept.

Ronald Dumsfeld writes "Wikinews puts together some of the details around the EU's five-year-plan called Project INDECT, and brings attention to a leaked 'sales-pitch' video: 'An unreleased promotional video for INDECT located on YouTube is shown to the right. The simplified example of the system in operation shows a file of documents with a visible INDECT-titled cover stolen from an office and exchanged in a car park. How the police are alerted to the document theft is unclear in the video; as a "threat," it would be the INDECT system's job to predict it. Throughout the video use of CCTV equipment, facial recognition, number plate reading, and aerial surveillance give friend-or-foe information with an overlaid map to authorities. The police proactively use this information to coordinate locating, pursing, and capturing the document recipient. The file of documents is retrieved, and the recipient roughly detained.'"

5 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Enhance by slifox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whenever I see facial recognition enhancement, I think of this:

    http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1156

    Turns out... it's theoretically impossible!

    Seriously, this video plays like a bad science ficition movie... they say "let us monitor everything and we'll magically know when crimes are committed," without saying exactly *how* they plan on sorting through the incredible amount of data and coming up with "crime X being committed right now" in a timely manner.

    1. Re:Enhance by stephanruby · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It doesn't matter if the damn thing works or not because eventually it will.

      Actually, it doesn't matter if the damn thing works or not, because even if it doesn't -- it can still make your life a living hell.

      But I agree with you, eventually it will work, if newspapers have mastered fortune-telling and horoscopes technology, it means it's just a matter of time before the government gets it as well.

  2. Ministry of Everything by bmo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Guys....

    The book 1984 was not meant to be a *manual*

    Thanks.

  3. Re:For totalitarian government everywhere by Krneki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I bet there is a chance we will see something like this in the US and not Cuba.

    --
    Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  4. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion