Reading Your Emails

So you know you typically get a message when you log on your computer at work that there is “no expectation of privacy.”

Meaning…you’re on the corporate network and so remember that you can be monitored. 

Well we all read that warning and sort of know it by heart.

But do you really think that someone is watching you.

Well be assured that they are!

Talking to one of my colleagues and friends recently and this is what happened.

He had to fire one of his senior guys. 

And I asked him why?

He said:

“Because he was dead wood.”

I asked what he meant as this was a senior person in the organization that was being let go.

So he said:

“Well I read the last few days of his emails on his account and he was doing absolutely nothing!”

And I was like hmm, that’s amazing that you actually go into his account and read his stuff.

Yeah, I know it’s not really his employees–the guy is at work–but still it’s his email account that he uses, seriously.

So it’s not just some corporate spooks sitting in the bowls of the building in a darkened security operations center behind a lot of cool looking screens monitoring your accounts for suspicious activity.

It’s your management too that can logon and see and read your stuff, whenever.

So this guy that was fired wasn’t just dead wood, he was actually dead meat. 

“Smile you’re on camera” in more ways then one.

So if you decide to write some juicy emails today or save some salacious files on “your” computer or on the network, the expectation surely is that they are being read–you can take that to your privacy bank. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Camera Of Life

So this open-door market has no workers there.

Someone comes in to stock the shelves periodically, and that’s it!

It’s completely automated of workers, and only has this automated kiosk for check-out. 

As you shop, there are cameras watching you, so you don’t steal anything. 

Then you go to the checkout and like in other stores, you scan you items and pay with your credit card, but the difference is that it’s without anyone else around at all.

Can you imagine someone would leave there business and there is no one watching you, except the cameras.

You’re on your honor system. 

Just think how much money the owner saves by not having to stand there or hire someone to stand there all day. 

He can have 10 or 100 or 1,000 of these stores and no daily labor to pay for. 

Talk about people losing their jobs to automation and robotics!

So even if someone does steal 1 or 2 things, it’s a minor loss to the owner compared to paying someone to stand there and check people out all day (salary, benefits, payroll taxes, workers comp insurance, and more). 

What if the camera isn’t even real and it’s just a dark cone, so you are just left to think that you’re being surveilled…another savings for the owner. 

Now imagine if we all internalized this thought in life that we were under the watchful eye of our Maker, and everyone would do the right thing even when no one else was there watching. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Exercise It Dirty

So these ladies and gents are exercising underground in the Metro tunnel. 

They have grabbed the banister underneath and are doing pullups. 

However, the tunnels are really ick!

Often a sheltering place for the unfortunate, homeless, and sick trying to get out with their belongings from the cold or rainy weather. 

And the smell of urine is not uncommon even with the CCTV cameras at either end, 

Nice to workout and toughen up, but this is more than a share of morning wash up or hand sanitizer can deal with. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

 

Security, In The Blink Of An Eye

Very short, but cool video of this spooky kinetic art that I took today.

It is by artist, Tim Tate and it’s called The Guardian.

We talked about putting this right in front of the door when you walk into the house.

Keeping an eye on things:

1) G-d

2) Spirits of our ancestors

3) Guards

4) Smith and Wesson 

5) Dogs very hungry

6) Gates, doors, and other barriers

7) Surveillance cameras

8) Sensors and alarms

9) Traps and tripwires

10) This cool art piece

Hope you enjoy! 😉

Crooked x 2

First, some beautiful flowers from Washington, D.C.

Thought these were awesome, even though the gardner did a little bit of a crooked job here.

And when it comes to crooked, I overheard a funny story in the locker room the other day.

These school students were talking about getting caught stealing something in a local store.

One says that he got spotted on the surveillance cameras and that they even have facial recognition now, but he’s okay on that because he was wearing a cap.

Another kid in the group says “why didn’t you just tell them you didn’t know you couldn’t take it!”

Some very sophisticated crooks we got here. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

What Did The Cereal Box Say To The BMW?

This family had just come out of Costco loaded with groceries.

They are heading to the garage to pack it into their car.

A BMW comes racing through the garage and runs over one of these mega Costco cereal boxes.

The car keeps going with the cereal box being dragged underneath.

The family runs through the garage and cuts off the BMW waving and yelling for him to stop.

He skids across the double-yellow line and stops blocking both sides of the road.

The man who lost his cereal bends under the front of the BMW to try to extricate the cereal.

The box is so Costco big, it barely can come out.

The man’s family looks on from the side.

Finally, he wiggles the box this way and that and gets the cereal box out from under the BMW.

The driver is standing there sort of bewildered by the whole thing.

If the cereal box could talk, I think it’d beg for a better ending than this.

Too often, as we go through life, we mow other people down who are in our way.

Thank G-d, this was just a box of cereal and not the man’s child or wife that had been run over and dragged.

I wondered how degrading it must have felt for this poor guy to be bending down in the street to get the box out, while the driver simply looks on in an uncaring disdain.

I almost thought for a moment, the driver was going to either just keep going or when he got out wallop the other guy for hassling him to get his cereal.

People can be strange that way and you never know what is going to happen next.

It is good that other people can be around with smartphone cameras and video, so that people don’t feel that they can just behave indiscriminately and obscurely.

In the end, no one should think they are all that–and have the right to uncaringly run over others’ persons or things.

We are all frail humans and G-d is always there with a very big, high megapixel smartphone recording it all for judgement day. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Sony, From Hipster to Nerd

Gone are the days when Sony made innovative products like the Walkman and great products like televisions that you willingly paid top dollar for.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek (18-24 February 2013) reports on Sony that “after eight years of losses in the TV business, it projects a $215 million profit this year–only after selling its New York headquarter for $1.1 billion.”

LA Times reported last May that Sony announced its largest ever loss for year-end March 31, 2012 of $5.6 billion, nearly double its prior-year loss of $3.2 billion. They also announced layoffs for 10,000 employees.

Sony is reorganizing and shedding businesses (displays, chemicals, etc.) and according to Bloomberg looking to generate 70% of sales and 85% of profit from just 3 remaining businesses–cameras, smartphones/tablets, and gaming.

However, Sony has lost its way…

Maybe it started in the 80’s when Sony lost out in VCR (videocassette recorder) format wars with its Betamax to VHS, and it continues today with a lack of innovation in the mobile technology marketplace. Anybody want to buy a Sony Ericsson phone? Ah, no!

Additionally, if you have ever been to a Sony retail store–probably not–they are a truly sad imitation of Apple and virtually nobody is in there. Hello–echo.

Sony is not only losing the technology war, the retail war, and the market share (it has only 4.5% of the phone market according to the Wall Street Journal) and earnings war, but also the branding war and they have just become plain uncool.

Sony’s products have names that are unrecognizable, unpronounceable, or just plain alphabet soup.

Do you want to buy a MacBook or a Vaio, iPhone or Xperia, Kindle Fire or PRST, a Sharp Elite or XBR, an Xbox 360 or a PS4?

The answer is obvious to everyone but Sony. 😉

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire

To catch a terrorist, you have to think like a terrorist or at least be able to get behind their lies and deception.

Terrorist want to gain entry, surveil their targets, plan their attack, assemble their weapons and tactics, avoid their pursuers, and execute maximum human, economic, and political damage.

To succeed, terrorists have to use lies and deceit to make their way through all the obstacles that the good guys put up.

Wired Magazine (February 2013) addresses some new interrogation technology being tested by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to catch the lies and the liars.

First of all, “people are really good at lying, and it’s incredibly hard to tell when we’re doing it.”

Moreover, most people “lie 10 times a day,” so it is routine and comes naturally to them.

In terms of detecting lies, we are not very good at it–in fact, we’re just better than chance–able to tell when someone is lying only 54% of the time.
Apparently, even with polygraph exams–their success is dependent more on the experience and finesse of the examiner and less on the polygraph tool.

However, with new research and development, DHS has come up with an automated interrogator–that enhances the success of catching a liar by combining multiple detection technologies.

The “interrogator bot” has three different sensors in use by the Embodied Avatar Kiosk.

– Infrared camera–“records eye movements and pupil dilation at up to 250 times per second–the stress of lying tends to cause the pupils to dilate”

– High-definition video camera–“captures fidgets such as shrugging, nodding, and scratching, which tend to increase during a deceptive statement”

– Microphone–“collects vocal data, because lies often come with minute changes in pitch” as well as “hesitation, changes in tempo and intonation, and spoken errors”

In the future, a additional sensors may be added for:

– Weight-sensing platform–to “measure leg and foot shifts or toe scrunches”

– 3-D camera–to “track the movements of a person’s entire body”

Aside from getting better deception-detection results from multiplying the sensing techniques, the interrogation kiosk benefits from communicating in multiple languages and being “consistent, tireless, and susceptible to neither persuasion not bribery.”

Another very cool feature being tested is tan interrogation avatar that actually resembles the person being interrogated using a camera and morphing software and making it look uncanny and “disturbing” at the same time–this can be quite familiar, disarming and unnerving.

By aggregating data points from many types of sensors and using behavioral analysis as a first line of defense followed by human questioning of those found to be lying, homeland security can proverbially light a fire under the pants of would be infiltrators and terrorists–and catch them before they make it to their next target. 😉

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Cosmic Jans)

Hiding Yourself In Plain Sight

I remember hearing that sometimes the best way to hide is in plain sight–just where no one would think to look.

Now there is a new clothing line being introduced by Adam Harvey for Stealth Wear that hides you using your own clothes.

According to Slate (11 January 2013), the clothing line is envisioned to have:

– Anti-drone hoodies and scarfs: These will be made with special metalized material that can shield you from things like drone thermal imaging technology, and I would imagine could also help against facial recognition along the lines of a prior project CVDazzle that uses face-painting and hair styling for concealment.

– XX-shirts: These cover your upper body and can shield you from x-rays. I wonder how this will impact TSA scanning at airports?

– Pocket-blocks: A cell phone pouch made from “signal attenuating material” to prevent tracking and interception.

Don’t confuse this stealth wear clothing line with a Canadian company called StealthWear that makes a different type of protective clothing–padding for jackets, forearms, shoulders, torso, and so on for those working in “aggressive educational environments.”

The new Stealth Wear, however, is a concept for a high-tech fashion line designed to provide counter surveillance and more personal privacy–in this sense, it’s really the anti Big Brother.

With more and more cameras, imaging machines, facial recognition, drones, and other surveillance tools out there–I suppose it is not surprising to see a cultural backlash in terms of everyday surveillance protection clothing coming to the fore. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

From Adventure Photography to Lifelogging

Felix Baumgartner jumped from a helium-filled balloon lifted space capsule, one week ago today, to set a skydiving record from 24 miles up and reaching the speed of 834 miles per hour.

On Felix’s helmet was a GoPro video camera to capture this memorable event.

GoPro is the leader in wearable, waterproof, shockproof videocameras and has an especially strong market in action and extreme sports.

Their newest helmet-mounted camera is the HD HERO3 (available 17 October 2012), and it continues the significant trend to ever smaller, lighter, and more powerful cameras technology.

I like this video they put out showing the high resolution and exciting video taken while doing activities from surfing to mountain climbing, deep sea diving, flying, kayaking, and more.

I have a feeling that these cameras are going to make a leap from capturing adventure photography to being used for lifelogging and lifejournaling–where people capture major life events on a wearable camera, and in some extreme cases–they try to capture virtually their whole life!

As someone who has blogged now, thank G-d, for 5 1/4 years, I greatly value the ability to capture important events, share, and potentially influence–and lifelogging with discrete, wearable camera technology can take this even further. 

Of course, with this technology, we need the ability to search, discover, and access the truly memorable moment–those that are meaningful to you and can have a deep and lasting impact on others–and let’s face it, despite the rise of Reality TV, most of life is not quite a Kardashian moment. 😉

It sort of reminds me of the Wendy’s commercial, where the old lady asks from a fictitious competitor, “where’s the beef?” With lifelogging, blogging, or other capture and sharing technologies, the beef had better be there (people’s time is valuable)!

There are billions of people to reach–capture, reflect, share…in writing and with pictures–then truly, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”