AJays Webcams

I was doing some casual reading through news and information sites, and happend upon Bob Browns Open Source Ministry site. He had an interesting blog about Web Cam Security.
Normally, I would have heard about what he was talking about in his blog through my news feeds and other feeds, however, the news about the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and the FBI specifically using face recognition and anomaly recognition software with public web cams to determine if something has happened based upon whether there are many fewer people or many more people in the scene than statistically expected caught me off guard.
(see PDF) The way it caught me off guard was not so much that it was a suprise to me that the FBI does this kind of thing as much as the time they spent researching it and using funds for it, when that money could have been spent more resourcefully. It’s like these federal grants you hear about where in Alaska they wanted to build this $315 million bridge that connected a town of 8900 to an island of 50 inhabitants saving a 7 minute ferry ride.
The money ( Tax payers Dollars) can and should be spent more effectively.

I digress…, This is wasted money in DHS & the FBI, when they could take what ever they spent on that study, and put more personel on the streets with their ears to the ground. It was said in the last few years by Bob Baer and Greg Treverton, former case officers for the CIA that while technology is good, it does not replace people in the field, and that the FBI’s main job is to basically be a law enforcement operation and do forensics, and do investigations of crimes. But they’re not supposed to be out there poking around groups that might break the law.

Anyhow, I got a little deep with this subject, however, I think the FBI needs to focus on their primary mission, and leave the face recognition and anomaly recognition software to other departments that specialize in that field.

Ok…, guess I can expect a black sedan to pull up in front of the house tomorrow, if carnivore is secretly still in action.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 17th, 2007 at 2:34 am and is filed under A Most Recent Post--->, Axis Cams, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.