"There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met." - TSA

The Transportation Security Administration is planning to expand its facial recognition scanners to more than 400 airports, an agency official said...

The CAT-2 units are currently deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide, and will expand to more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years,” the TSA official said...

During a discussion at the South by Southwest festival in March 2023, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said “eventually we will get to the point where we will require biometrics across the board because it is much more effective and much more efficient.” more

Why Casinos Are Spying on Their Ultra-Rich Clients

An integral part of how the casino lavishes services on its members is by monitoring their movements on the premises — with the help of facial-recognition cameras in recent years.

Of the 400 cameras in the building, 10 are linked to a face-scanning system. Whenever a member enters the building or one of its private gambling rooms, staff get pinged on their phones.

Clients, for their part, accept this Orwellian scrutiny as necessary to enhance their experience. “It’s the expectation,” says Ryan Best, the surveillance and security manager at the casino who set up its facial-recognition system up in 2018. 

Several luxury hotels in nearby Mayfair have recently introduced similar systems to alert everyone to arriving VIPs, he says. more

FutureWatch – The Eyes Have IT

One of the more interesting aspects of Technical Surveillance Countermeasures (TSCM), or sweeping for bugs, is looking into the future. Seemingly an exercise in entertainment at first glance, looking forward has a serious purpose—staying ahead of the bad guys, not one step behind (as some TSCM’ers seem to be proud to say). Smart contact lens technology caught my eye for this episode of FutureWatch.

Taking a look at “future vision” we see… more

While we don’t have smart contact lenses yet, we do have X-ray vision.

Phones, Cameras, Cardkeys - What Will Track You Next?

Thanks to a new system developed at EPFL, building owners can detect the number of occupants and track their movement using sensors installed on floor slabs. This novel approach could be particularly useful for enhancing safety in retirement homes or managing buildings' energy use more efficiently...

Scientists at ENAC's Applied Computing and Mechanics Laboratory (IMAC), headed by Professor Ian Smith, have developed an alternative approach.  

"By installing sensors in a building's floor slabs, we can measure the vibrations created by footsteps. That lets us calculate the number of people in the building as well as where they are located and their trajectory," says Slah Drira, the IMAC Ph.D. student who completed his thesis on this topic.

To each his own gait...

"The signals our sensors record can vary considerably depending on the person's anatomy, walking speed, shoe type, health and mood," says Drira.

His method uses advanced algorithms—or more specifically, support vector machines—to classify the signals recorded by the sensors. Some interpretation strategies were inspired by the convolutional neural networks often employed in pixel-based image recognition, and can identify the footstep characteristics of specific occupants. more

How Not to be Seen - Evading CCTV Surveillance

It's theoretically possible to become invisible to cameras. But can it catch on? 



Right now, you're more than likely spending the vast majority of your time at home. Someday, however, we will all be able to leave the house once again and emerge, blinking, into society to work, travel, eat, play, and congregate in all of humanity's many bustling crowds.

The world, when we eventually enter it again, is waiting for us with millions of digital eyes—cameras, everywhere, owned by governments and private entities alike. Pretty much every state out there has some entity collecting license plate data from millions of cars—parked or on the road—every day. Meanwhile all kinds of cameras—from police to airlines, retailers, and your neighbors' doorbells—are watching you every time you step outside, and unscrupulous parties are offering facial recognition services with any footage they get their hands on.

In short, it's not great out there if you're a person who cares about privacy, and it's likely to keep getting worse. In the long run, pressure on state and federal regulators to enact and enforce laws that can limit the collection and use of such data is likely to be the most efficient way to effect change. But in the shorter term, individuals have a conundrum before them: can you go out and exist in the world without being seen?

Bottom line as of now...
All of the digital simulations run on the cloak worked with 100-percent effectiveness, he added. But in the real world, "the reliability degrades." The tech has room for improvement.

"How good can they get? Right now I think we're still at the prototype stage," he told Ars. "You can produce these things that, when you wear them in some situations, they work. It's just not reliable enough that I would tell people, you know, you can put this on and reliably evade surveillance." more

Face Masks v. Facial Recognition - China has it Covered

Hanwang, the facial-recognition company that has placed 2 million of its cameras at entrance gates across the world, started preparing for the coronavirus in early January.

Huang Lei, the company’s chief technical officer, said that even before the new virus was widely known about, he had begun to get requests...to update its software to recognize nurses wearing masks...

The company now says its masked facial recognition program has reached 95 percent accuracy in lab tests, and even claims that it is more accurate in real life, where its cameras take multiple photos of a person if the first attempt to identify them fails. more

FutureWatch - Mind Reading - Thought to Speech

Scientists are reporting that they have developed a virtual prosthetic voice, a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth.

“It’s formidable work, and it moves us up another level toward restoring speech” by decoding brain signals, said Dr. Anthony Ritaccio, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not a member of the research group. more

Mind reading is a topic we keep an eye on here, as it's the future of eavesdropping. ~Kevin

FutureWatch: Tooth Bugs

Sonitus Technologies, creators of the Sonitus Sensory Interface Platform, is enabling real-time wireless communications and monitoring of physiological information of users in the most challenging defense, security and commercial environments.

The company’s initial sensory platform-based solution is Molar Mic, a novel personal communications device that snaps-easily to the back teeth of a user and creates an entirely new audio interface.

By creating a new audio path (bone conduction), it eliminates the need for ear pieces, microphones and wires on a user’s head.

Incorporating a miniaturized microphone and receiver into a dime-sized mouthpiece, Molar Mic sustains unbroken two-way voice connectivity in communications networks critical to personal safety and performance across defense, public safety, aerospace, power, oil & gas, and professional applications.

Molar Mic is in its final field testing with the US Air Force. more

Facial Recognition Technology – Not Ready for PRIME Time

Amazon.com’s facial recognition tools incorrectly identified Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and 27 other members of Congress as people arrested for a crime during a test commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, the watchdog said Thursday...Amazon’s so-called Rekognition technology — already in use at law-enforcement agencies in Oregon and Orlando — is hampered by inaccuracies... more

Security Scrapbook Flashback to 2008.

Scientists Develop Tiny Tooth-Mounted Sensors That Can Track...

...what you eat!

Monitoring in real time what happens in and around our bodies can be invaluable in the context of health care or clinical studies, but not so easy to do. That could soon change thanks to new, miniaturized sensors developed by researchers at the Tufts University School of Engineering that, when mounted directly on a tooth and communicating wirelessly with a mobile device, can transmit information on glucose, salt and alcohol intake...

Tufts engineers sought a more adoptable technology and developed a sensor with a mere 2mm x 2mm footprint that can flexibly conform and bond to the irregular surface of a tooth. In a similar fashion to the way a toll is collected on a highway, the sensors transmit their data wirelessly in response to an incoming radio-frequency signal. more

Just in case you were disappointed that this was not a story about a mysterious tooth implant...

You Are Never a Stranger in Our City - Facial Recognition Street Cams

Nvidia has partnered with AI developer AnyVision to create facial recognition technology for "smart cities" around the world. The two companies will work to install automatic facial recognition into CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance cameras.

AnyVision claims the technology enables cameras that can continuously scan for faces 24/7, automatically identifying and tracking individuals within a large crowd with 99% accuracy.

Algorithms working with human monitors can then compare the faces identified against a database of known terrorists or criminals.

The company also says it's committed to protecting the personal data that CCTV cameras collect.

So... is this technology terrifying, and possibly everything Orwell warned us about? Absolutely.

But it could also save thousands of lives. The technology could be useful not only for catching at-large criminals, but also for quickly identifying suspects, and tracking down individuals who have gone missing. more

You may recall, this has been tried before and its comeback was predicted here in 2008.

FutureWatch: After 51 Years MasterCard Boots Signatures

Mastercard Inc. is doing away with a rule requiring merchants to get signatures for transactions made with its credit and debit cards in the United States and Canada.

Announced early Thursday, Mastercard’s rule change goes into effect April 13, 2018, allowing issuers, merchants, and processors time to make adjustments, though merchants can adopt the change sooner, Mastercard says. Mastercard also issued a bulletin about the matter Wednesday afternoon. The new rule does not affect interchange, and applies only to point-of-sale transactions.

A majority of consumers believe that it would be easier to pay and that checkout lines would move faster if they didn’t have to sign for purchases, Mastercard says. more

So, why drop a 51 year old signature security requirement?

Mastercard announced that it’s adding fingerprint scanners to its “next generation” cards in order to safely verify the cardholder’s identity whenever they’re making in-store purchases. more

Spy Chip Implants - Common Complaint - Best handled with an X-ray

United Kingdom-based NRI (A Non-Resident Indian is a citizen of India who holds an Indian passport and has temporarily emigrated to another country for six months or more...) who claims ‘spying chips’ were installed in his body would be examined at Jalandhar’s Army hospital after the Ministry of Home Affairs forwarded his plea requesting their removal to the Punjab government.

Harinder Pal Singh, who returned from the UK three years ago, claimed British police had installed chips in his body for spying...

Narrating his bizarre-sounding story... “I went to UK in 1987 at the age of 15 with my grandmom. One day, I was sleeping in my room and some plainclothes policemen made me unconscious and got instruments installed in my body.”

“In 1996, my nearly four-year-old daughter died in an accident, which was changed into murder. I was convicted for it and sentenced to 15 years. After completing my jail term on February 13, 2013, I was deported,’’ he claimed. more

Bionic Ear Comes with Wireless Microphone and Control App

Soundhawk is an ear-worn "smart listening system," which the company is very careful to describe as ... well, anything but a hearing aid...

There are two parts: the "scoop" (that's it on the right, above) which is the listening device that you put in your ear, and the "wireless mic," which you can (optionally) place near someone who's talking to you in a noisy environment. The wireless mic can either rest on a table or clip onto something like a shirt or jacket. And you can easily switch between modes using one of the buttons on the earpiece. Using the scoop alone, the audio enhancement is quite good.

...it all connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy. The companion app lets you choose among four different listening modes (indoors, outdoors, driving and restaurants), each of which you can customize for brighter or fuller audio, as well as the level of the boost. There's also an output volume control.

There's also the potential for some serious eavesdropping here, if you tuned the settings for that... our closed-door simulations allowed us to understand faint whispers from across a bedroom. The next time you're whispering a secret to a friend, watch out for people wearing Soundhawks in the area. They might be able to hear you. more

Why do I mention it?
So you will know what you're up against.

Translation: Make an Artificial Brain That Can Think Like a Spy.... then make us a zillion of them.

A secretive United States intelligence organization has organized a conference to find firms capable of creating computer algorithms that learn in a similar manner to the human brain...

The July 17 conference in College Park, Maryland, gives prospective companies time to deliver presentations and slide shows of their existing research.

IARPA says it is involved in "high-payoff research programs to tackle some of the most difficult challenges of the agencies and disciplines in the intelligence community".

It undertakes research for more than a dozen organizations, including the Pentagon, the CIA and the National Security Agency. (more)

Firstcall Chair - The New Cone of Silence

‘Firstcall’ chair is designed to keep your personal conversation from escaping out while its doughnut like backrest is inclined in such a way so as to hide your face.


Developed by Dutch designer Ruud van Wier in collaboration with manufacturer Easy NoiseControl, the ‘Firstcall’ chair is made in a recognizable shape of a classic old phone. It has sound-absorbing upholstery to block surrounding noise ensuring you can concentrate despite being surrounded by people.


The design of the First Call phone chair is directed to short calls. It is therefore not chosen an easy chair where you can doze or not to stand out. Suitable locations include offices, waiting rooms, showrooms, shops, and public places such as airports or scholarships.


The chair is available in 32 colors across the Firstcall retails at Easy NoiseControl for €2,900 (or around $3,970). (more) (more)

New Tiny Ultrasound Camera Sees What's in Your Heart ...really

Developed by a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the device consists of a 1.5-mm-wide disc-shaped head, from which trails 13 tiny joined cables. The idea is that it will be inserted into a patient's coronary blood vessels or heart, snaking its way through while being pushed or pulled from outside the body via an integrated 430-micron-wide guide wire, all the while using the cables to transmit ultrasound imagery.

Its head is built around a single silicon chip, which is equipped with a dual-ring array of 56 ultrasound transmit elements and 48 receive elements. Much of the processing of the ultrasound data is performed onboard the chip itself, meaning that less information has to carried outside the body – this is why it requires no more than 13 cables, allowing its consolidated "umbilical cord" to stay skinny and flexible enough to easily move through blood vessels. (more)

FutureWatch: When Light Bulbs Become Eyeballs

Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures. But they probably will not realize that the light fixtures are the backbone of a system that is watching them. 

Using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal, the light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff...

Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, described the potential for misuse as “terrifying.” ...

The light fixtures are outfitted with special chips and connect to sensors, cameras and one another over a wireless network. Data that is collected — say, a particular car pulling up to the terminal — can then be mined and analyzed for a broad range of applications...

“No one really wanted the smartphone 20 years ago because they didn’t know they could have it,” said Fred Maxik, founder and chief technology officer of Lighting Science Group, which manufactures LEDs. “And I think the same is true of lighting today: No one knows what lighting is going to be capable of.” (more)

The Littlest Eavesdropper

A new computer chip invented by researchers from Columbia University allows scientists to "listen in" on bacteria, as they exchange information between individual cells. Integrated circuit (IC) technology allows biologists to record images from the bacteria, as well as "listen in" to what they are saying. (more)

...and, on the other end of the spectrum...

Scientists can now spy on whales from space.
There are two ways of looking at this story. One is as a triumph of new technology: Using high-resolution satellites, scientists can identify and track whales without disturbing them in any way. The other is as a tale of space voyeurism: Scientists are spying on whales from the sky. And not just spying on whales — spying on whales while there was a good chance the whales were doing it. (more)

Totally Invasive Video Surveillance Can Be Good For You

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now approved a device for use after an incomplete procedure (colonoscopy) that is minimally invasive and can achieve similar imaging results to a colonoscopy. PillCam Colon is a pill-sized camera that is swallowed and passes through a patient's gastrointestinal tract.

The device itself is a pill-sized video camera measuring 12 x 33 mm (0.47 x 1.3 in) that captures color video from both of its ends at 4 or 35 frames per second. An LED provides the necessary illumination for image capture and, once swallowed by the patient, it wirelessly relays footage to a recording device worn by the patient for approximately 10 hours. (more)