Student Thwarts Facial Recognition Software

"CV Dazzle" is based on the original camouflage from WWI and targets automated face detection and recognition systems by altering the contrast and spatial relationship of key facial features.



By Adam Harvey; more info at cvdazzle.com. (Thanks, Ben! Note: looks like you have to cut your bangs funny, too.)

Political Art Month: July, 2011

The theme's just been announced by Gene Elder of the MUD Underground: Homeland Aesthetics.

H*ll, yeah – less "security theater"; more real theater! (And other arts.)



Speaking of security theater . . .



But wait'll DHS greases them!

Homeland Security – Psyops on US?

We now have two reported instances of trolling traced to Homeland Security IP addresses:

Homeland Security Trolling We Won’t Fly Blog (comments on a blog re- TSA's illegal scannings and gropings).

Racist Web Posts Traced to Homeland Security (comments on a local newspaper article re- detention of Mexican immigrants).

Future Attribute Screening Technology

No joke. More at Wikipedia.

Meanwhile . . . .

Trying to keep track of ongoing as well as more recent disasters, I found myself remembering these images, which some of you may have missed (click on the images for larger versions).

They were finally made available in 2005 after a series of F.O.I.A. requests and a lawsuit charging the Pentagon with failing to comply with the Act. When the Pentagon finally complied, the faces were blacked out (the Pentagon claimed it needed to "conceal identifiable personal information of military personnel involved in the homecoming ceremonies.")

The resulting images are eerily eloquent and complex, perhaps exemplifying what Matt McCormick has called "subconscious art."

More photos and info at the National Security Archive.

Artist Jill Magid's "Authority to Remove" Is Removed by Dutch Authorities

Magid specializes in exploring issues of surveillance, privacy, secrecy, and what's inside vs. outside.

E.g., for Evidence Locker (multimedia installation with video, "Reading Room," and other components, ca. 2007), she staged performances in front of London surveillance cameras. She then "submit[ed] 31 Subject Access Request Forms – the legal document necessary to outline to the police details of how and when an 'incident' occurred" – and used the resulting footage to create the video component of the installation.

When a recent exhibition of Magid's latest project, called "Authority to Remove," closed at Tate Modern, Dutch authorities removed and sealed much of the work included in the show – work the Dutch Secret Service had originally commissioned – thus consummating the work.

Dutch law requires that a small portion of the construction budgets for public buildings be devoted to commissioning new art. The Dutch Secret Service had commissioned Magid to make some, and had cooperated with her proposal to interview agents about their personal lives.

In the course of her commission, she produced her "first novel," a book based on her interviews of 18 agents. Although she masked their identities by calling all the men "Vincent" and all the women "Miranda," "[t]he agency found her work quite challenging and dangerous . . . ." The agency ultimately agreed to allow the text to be exhibited just once, and only with some 40% of the text whited out; it also required Magid to agree that upon the show's closing, the book and her notes would be sealed and archived in the same manner as the notes of a retiring agent.

Magid is publishing the prologue and epilogue of her original text under the title, Becoming Tarden (click on the pic below for a more legible image), the entirety of which can be found online here.

In her epilogue, she quotes her agency "advisor":

How far can they go to erase your experience? . . . Besides conducting surgery on your brain, how can they succeed? You cannot be the same person after this assignment; it has profoundly affected you and altered your perception of the world. How can they remove that?

How far, indeed – here's hoping Magid has, unlike Lombardi, placed copies with a reliable friend.

From artdaily and The WSJ here and here; and see a nice slide show at The WSJ here.

Magid's site is here.; she's represented by Yvon Lambert.

Hacker Broke into Homeland Security Phone System and Made 400 Calls

The illegal activity was caught by Sprint, which apparently thought it odd when $12,000 in calls to the Middle East from FEMA (now part of the Department of Homeland Security) were racked up over a weekend.

According to the Canadian Press via Yahoo, " [t]his type of hacking is very low-tech and 'old school,' said John Jackson, a St. Louis-based security consultant."

The identity of the hacker remains unknown. The system vulnerability "' . . . enables unauthorized individuals anywhere in the world to communicate via compromised U.S. phone systems in a way that is difficult to trace,' according to a department information bulletin from June 3, 2003" [emphasis supplied].

Police Plan to Track Every Vehicle that Enters Manhattan

Via cryptogon (thanks, Ben!) Like, wow, that "Ring of Steel" really helped London prevent the 7-7-05 bombings.

All Air Passengers to Be Fingerprinted

According to the U.K.'s Telegraph, all international and domestic passengers leaving Terminal 5 of London's Heathrow Airport will soon be subjected to mandatory fingerprinting. The biometric check is also scheduled to be introduced at other London terminals.

"Dr. Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, [said,] '[t]here is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.

"'I grew up in a society where you only fingerprinted people if you suspected them of being criminals. . . . There will also be a suspicion that this is the thin end of the wedge, that we are being softened up by making fingerprinting seem normal in the run-up to things like ID cards.'

"Simon Davies, of campaign group Privacy International, [said,] ' . . . the experience in the US has shown that the information can only be used retrospectively, not in real time, as it takes so long to match a fingerprint to the one held on the database. I think once again we are seeing the introduction of technology whose benefits are illusory.'"

Related post here ("Big Brother Has Biometric Data on You").

UPDATE: A British company called ThruVision has developed a camera that can see through clothing to reveal what's in or under people's pockets from 80 feet away. It's called the T5000, and detects different materials based on the different signatures of Terahertz waves, or "T-rays," they emit. More at Gizmodo.

US Feds Ordered "Assassination City" Police to STOP Screening for Weapons at Obama Rally

Per The Fort Worth Star Telegram, "[s]ecurity details at Barack Obama's rally [in Dallas, Texas] Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

"The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

* * *

"Several Dallas police officers said it worried them that the arena was packed with people who got in without even a cursory inspection.

"They spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event."

You can't even get into the Dallas Museum of Art without having your bag inspected.