Big Brother state is now obvious to everyone

[steppewar]

When stuff like this is reported in the mainstream press surely everyone should catch on to the Orwellian Agenda, or am I overestimating the masses brain power?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1035361/Big-Brother-database-recording-calls-texts-e-mails-ruin-British-way-life.html

[empyblessing]

Yeah, you lost. Police state won. Congrats on your slavery.

[magnus]

i read an article in a Norwegian newspaper about Benjamin Males an art student....he has build a camera that can observe what kind of rase you are....it's called RTS -2 (racial targeting system) ...He build it to make people aware of them.......he is concern that we don't protest against them....so he took it to the extreme....

[real6]

He must have got beat up by a child and is stuck in a white world!!! CAUSE HE STILL SEES WHITE FROM THE BEATINGS!!!

Racist ass!!!


Having graduated from Imperial College in 2006 with First Class honours in Mechanical Engineering (MEng), Benjamin joined the Design Products Course at the Royal College of Art. Born in 1982 in Croydon, South London, Benjamin Males has received several awards and scholarships for engineering and design including the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award and the Royal Commission of the Exhibition of 1851 Industrial Design Studentship.

Benjamin graduated from the RCA with an MA in 2008 and applies an advanced knowledge of the physical world to create works that enhance, interact with and explore the human condition.

A CV is available here



http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148370/cctv_camera_identifies_people_by_race.html


CCTV Camera Identifies People by Race

Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service
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Monday, July 14, 2008 9:10 AM PDT

The eye of tech-artist Benjamin Males' custom-made surveillance camera is engineered for a black and white world.

Black and white people, that is.

Males, 25, a mechanical engineer who recently graduated with a master's degree from London's Royal College of Art, wrote the software for a camera that determines a person's race.

The RTS-2 (Racial Targeting System) is essentially an automated racial-profiling tool, one that governments and police have not dared touch due to privacy and human-rights concerns, even though the technical capabilities already exist.

However, Males built the camera in an attempt to raise awareness of such issues among the public, which often appears oblivious to how frequently it is surveyed by CCTV (closed-circuit television) due to the prevalence of the cameras, especially in the U.K.

Surveillance cameras "have a significant effect on our lives and civil liberties," Males said. "We, as the public, aren't really in a position to discuss them or critique them because they are developed behind closed doors."

Males bought the CCTV camera on eBay's auction site. He wrote the software for the program in C++, in part using the Open Source Computer Vision Library from Intel, a library of programming functions that can be used in applications where computers use vision.

Males built a motor for the camera, so when it detects a face, it moves as the person does. Males intended that people who are targeted by the camera have some indication they're being monitored.

The camera supplies an image of a person's face via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) cable to a laptop. The software then takes a color sample of a person's nose and cheeks, and the pixel values are averaged to come up with an approximate determination of the person's race, Males said. The output is shown as a percentage, such as 90.3 percent white, 9.7 percent black. Those percentages are a mathematical representation of the way a person's skin has been sampled and classified by the computer.

All of the RTS-2's components run on batteries, and the setup is portable. Males has taken it to places such as Covent Garden and Kensington High Street in London, both areas busy with tourists and shoppers. Nearly every one who passed by either didn't notice the camera or barely paid attention, a finding that shows how people are quite used to being monitored, Males said.

Males later mashed the color samples from people's faces together into one big color swatch, creating a collage of the skin tones seen in a neighborhood. The London neighborhood of Brixton - the scene of violent race riots in 1981 - was "very brown and quite white." The collage for Kensington High Street, an affluent area in the West End, showed "rich oranges and terracotta," Males said.

Males has also displayed the RTS-2 in Japan and at London's Royal College of Art as an art installation called "The Target Project."

When the device is displayed in a more controlled environment, people are more curious. Males said he was asked why he would create a racial classification device and what he would do if a government asked him to develop the system further.

The second question is irrelevant: The technology already exists, and it's much more refined, Males said.

"The device isn't that sophisticated," Males said. "This software exists at a much more sophisticated and dangerous level in the commercial world. You can buy facial-recognition technology that looks at features and tries to match people."

But using automated tools such as CCTV to target people by race raises questions about ethnic profiling, which some experts argue puts a person's race as a forefront consideration in wrongdoing, even before suspicious actions have been observed.

After the July 2005 terrorist bombings in London, many Asians complained of increased police scrutiny and aggression in their communities, merely since some attackers were Asian. The issue caused heightened tensions between Asians and police, which could have potentially hurt the police's chance to collect valuable intelligence from sources within those communities.

"Personally, I think there's a place for these kinds of technologies," Males said. "Technology has a role to play in our security and safety, but there needs to be proper discussion. There needs to be a bit more openness."

[freespark]

Some replies to that article...

Given their track record, would you trust the Government with information like this? What's the betting that all of this data will be stored on a CD or laptop that is subsequently lost?

- Rich Baxter, Newcastle, UK, 15/7/2008 15:07

---------------------
Goodness, they lose CD's, laptops containing secret information and now they want to invade our privacy completely so anyone a bit clued up could have a field day with all the information they can obtain.

Big Brother move over I want to get out of the loony bin.

- Joanna, Waltham Abbey, 15/7/2008 15:23
---------------------

What's so ridiculous is that the targets for these investigations won't be affected. They will simply open phone and email accounts, use them once and discard them.

- Paul, Wellingborough, UK, 15/7/2008 15:30
---------------------
Available in a briefcase left on a train near you!

- Steve, Yarm, 15/7/2008 15:30

---------------------
I am all for measures to reduce crime and terrorism, however this Government is losing the plot. This information will only be of use after an event, as it would take too long to go through everything. Secondly it would be open to abuse by local authorities, as has already been seen by authorities using terrorism surveillance powers against individuals in cases such as school catchments areas etc.

- Martin, Bath UK, 15/7/2008 15:37

---------------------
I am OK with this snoop as I have nothing to hide. But, and a big but, what idiots would be in control? In every government department there must be those who would find this information worth a fortune, and for this reason I would not trust them as far as I could throw them. Besides, it is a blatant abuse of our human rights, and the human rights brigade would also be making money via the UK tax payers. No it won't work and I hope our spineless MPs have the guts to stop this before it starts. Perhaps if we have the knowledge of snooping we could do much better in snooping on those in the UK who are making demands on the UK systems of benefits, free health and medication, and tax dodgers, that could save the UK taxpayers' money for a change.

- JS, Seaton Devon, 15/7/2008 15:39

-------------------
This surely cannot be allowed to proceed. Such information gathering is a very frightening prospect and is exactly what the Stasi were up. If this is what Britain has finally come too, there is something dangerously wrong with our society, if we have become a nation which needs to be monitored in such a fashion, then we have lost so much. It's a very big slap in the face for anyone who has ever stood up for our freedom, for the so-called government to even contemplate this is a disgrace, and evidence that they have simply rolled over to so many extremists and criminal elements, that they can see no other way of attempting to control them than by controlling everyone. Soon we will have paid informants in our workplaces scribbling down notes on conversations.

- Michael, Edinburgh, 15/7/2008 15:40

-----------------------
Such uses, are a total waste of taxpayers' money, using it to set up a stupid database, when the money could be used, to subsidise food and fuel bills. All projects that are wasting taxpayers' money should be stopped, and ploughed back into keeping food prices, and fuel prices down, until the country gets back on its feet. And all government officials should have their incomes reduced to an acceptable level. And no one should be allowed earn more than £100,000 in any year who works in the public sector, till the country is stable again. Any one accepting more is just stealing from the people of England, no matter which way you look at it.

- D Walmsley, Leeds, 15/7/2008 16:03
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BRRRRRRRRRRRRRINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG the alrm bells are going off and the people are awaking....slowly, slowly, but they are getting there!!

[real6]

His Myspace...

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=308910961

Facebook...

http://www.facebook.com/people/Benjamin_Males/222402049


http://p10.hostingprod.com/@spyblog.org.uk/mt41/mt-search.cgi?tag=Benjamin%20Males&IncludeBlogs=1&IncludeBlogs=1


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/REAL6/Misc/rcctv_case_300.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/REAL6/Misc/rcctv_park_300.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/REAL6/Misc/rcctv_camera_300.jpg



One of our very first thoughts, upon learning that Facial Recognition image processing was actually being deployed on the streets of London, in the Borough of Newham, was that if the system had any success at all in picking out individual faces from a crowd, then it would not be difficult to use such a system to racially classify people by skin colour.

Polymath Engineer and Artist Benjamin Males has succeeded in raising ethical questions about the desirability of such uses of the technology, by demonstrating that it can be done, nowadays, reasonably cheaply, using open source image processing software and a professional CCTV camera.

Target Project (2008) - Benjamin Males


RTS-2 is a racial targeting system. A fully portable real-time image processing platform, RTS-2 has the ability to automatically find and follow faces and then analyse and store their race data.

The project illustrates the potential use (misuse?) of surveillance and automatic analysis technologies and exists to critique and raise questions concerning our experiences of them.

RTS-2 will be shown and demonstrated at part 2 of the Royal College of Art Graduation show from 25th June to 5th July. Other outcomes from the project, including a device that measures and stores weight data will also be shown and demonstrated.

Benjamin Males is a graduating student from Platform 11 of the prestigious Design Products course at the Royal College of Art in London. Having graduated from Imperial College in 2006 with First Class honours in Mechanical Engineering (MEng), Benjamin applies an advanced knowledge of the physical world to create works that explore our relationship with the technologies that surround us.

High resolution images are available on request.

http://www.benjaminmales.com/
http://www.designproductsrca.com/platforms/platform-11/
http://www.rca.ac.uk/pages/news/events_343.html

rcctv_case_300.jpg

rcctv_park_300.jpg

rcctv_camera._300.jpg

When he demonstrated this working art installation in Japan recently, he was asked whether or not it could pick out Koreans from from ethnic Japanese.

His work demonstrates vividly, that the visible camera electro optics are only part of a modern Surveillance Camera system and the technology already exists which could easily be used for racially discriminatory "security" monitoring or harassment of ethnic minorities.

[particlezen]

The 'elite' are engineering this 'awakening' though...

Why?

[largejack]

According to peoples' comment, or those that are printed of course, (I know none of mine are, well at least the last time I looked) most people think it is some kind New Labour agenda only. Again Problem_reaction-solution, you blame the party in power for wanting an Orwellian state, you prevent the masses knowing the real truth, hence not printing comments like mine that say the picture is much bigger, and then they offer the solution, a Conservative government that everyone will love and trust, and allow even more of their freedoms to seep into the sewers.:mad:

Here we see the David Davis and mainstream media approach in evidence again.