Given that going viral on the Internet is often cyclical, it should come as no surprise that an app that made its debut in 2017 has once again surged in popularity. FaceApp applies various transformations to the image of any face, but the option that ages facial features has been especially popular. However, the fun has been accompanied by controversy; since biometric systems are replacing access passwords, is it wise to freely offer up our image and our personal data? The truth is that today the face is ceasing to be as non-transferable as it used to be, and in just a few years it could be more hackable than the password of a lifetime.
Our countenance is the most recognisable key to social relationships. We might have doubts when hearing a voice on the phone, but never when looking at the face of a familiar person. In the 1960s, a handful of pioneering researchers began training computers to recognise human faces, although it was not until the 1990s that this technology really began to take off. Facial recognition algorithms have improved to such an extent that since 1993 their error rate has been halved every two years. When it comes to recognising unfamiliar faces in laboratory experiments, today’s systems outperform human capabilities.
Nowadays these systems are among the most widespread applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Every day, our laptops, smartphones and tablets greet us by name as they recognise our facial features, but at the same time, the uses of this technology have set off alarm bells over invasion of privacy concerns. In China, the world leader in facial recognition systems, the introduction of this technology associated with surveillance cameras to identify even pedestrians has been viewed by the West as another step towards the Big Brother dystopia, the eye of the all-watching state, as George Orwell portrayed in 1984.
The government would never target innocent citizens much less whistleblowers, journalists or activists who are “inconvenient”, right? No history of heinous wrong-doing — right?
Computerized analyses of acoustically anomalous vocal patterns are being used as biomarkers for predictive, prediagnostic, and efficient management of individual biological form and function. To da…
Early this morning, I was asked this question at Quora. It’s a pretty basic request of network administrators, including parents, schools and anyone who administers a public, sensitive or legally exposed WiFi hot spot.
Is there a quick and easy way to view, log, or otherwise monitor the web sites visited by people on your home or office network?
Yes. It’s free and and it is pretty easy to do.
It gets a bit trickier, if the individual on your network is using a VPN service that they have configured on their device.[1] A VPN does not stop you from logging their browsing, but all of their activity will point to the VPN address instead of the site that they are actually visiting. In that case, there is another way to monitor their activity. See note #1, below.
Before getting into this, I should mention that I believe that using covert methods to monitor a family member’s online activity is a terrible method of parenting. In my opinion, there are better ways to deal with the issue—parenting techniques that don’t undermine trust as they deal with safety.
I can think of at least three methods for logging the websites that people on your network visit. In the explanation below, we will focus on #2. For more information, dig into the notes at the bottom of this answer.
You can either…
Configure your router to store logs of visited IP addresses [2]
Set your router to use the DNS server at opendns.com, instead of the default server offered by your internet service provider. This involves a simple setting available in all routers. (Replace default DNS server addresses with 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)
You can set up a proxy which redirects web traffic to one of the computers in your house or a third-party service. This is how the monitoring software for parents and custodial services monitor or block web traffic.
In the remainder of this quick tutorial, we focus on method #2..
Once you configure your router to use the two DNS servers at OpenDNS.com, create a free account on their web site. Then, enable the logging feature. It not only shows you visited domains, it maps them into actual domain names and subdomains—making it easy to search, sort or analyze traffic.
You can download a spreadsheets and sort by number of visits or by the domains visited. Logs are maintained for only two weeks. So, if you wish to maintain a history, you will need to visit OpenDNS and download them regularly. (Check their user forum. Someone has created a safe, single-line DOS command that downloads these activity logs to your PC).
[1] VPN, Onion Routing and Encryption
If an individual in your home or office is using a Virtual Private Network [VPN], they are effectively covering their tracks with method #3, above. You can see their connection to the VPN service, but that service is either trusted to destroy logs of visited web sites, or anonymize traffic, by routing it through a chain of users that have no way to back-trace and identify the requester’s address.
Since their traffic originates on your network, there are other things you can do to monitor their activities. For example, if they are not using end-to-end encryption, you can use method #3 yourself, to route data in and out through your own PC or service.
[2] Logging the IP address or domain of visited web sites is not a feature of all routers. I have three recent model routers — and only one of them has a feature to log traffic in and out of the network.
[3] OpenDNS cannot discriminate the individual device in your home or office that has accessed websites that it logs. The logs include the traffic for all HTTP access that originates through your internet service subscription.
But some remarkable feature of OpenDNS (other than it being completely free):
a) It speeds up your overall internet experience noticeably! Like Google’s free DNS service, it is more robust and more redundant than the default DNS settings recommended by your internet service provider.
b) It maps every IP address into a domain name. So when you log in to check your logs and statistics, you don’t need to figure what the numbers mean. You view a list that makes sense. You can even search for certain words or web sites.
c) It permits you to block websites based on a very rich set of 100 criteria, including violence, adult content, hate speech, etc.
d) It offers graphs of your network access including overall volume. An example is shown here:
While more people and places are switching to energy-saving LED light bulbs, a California company has found a way to turn them into smart networks that can collect and feed data. However, the new technological opportunities are also raising privacy concerns, reports CBS News’ Bill Whitaker.
For example, should you find yourself in terminal “B” at Newark airport, look up. Those aren’t just new lights. They’re smart lights — a sophisticated array of LED fixtures with built-in sensors and cameras connected over a wireless network. They monitor security and the flow of foot traffic.
“Newark’s primarily interested in energy saving,” said Hugh Martin, president of Sensity, the Silicon Valley company that developed the smart lights at Newark and also a parking garage in San Jose.
Biometrics is defined as the measurement of life signs. One of the main aims of current security research is to acquire biometric data of sufficient detail and reliability for verification or identification of individuals.
A newly developed electric-field sensing technology with unprecedented sensitivity and noise immunity can passively acquire physiological signals in an electrically noisy environment.
The NSA is working on a computer system that can predict what people are thinking.
“Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL. The system can answer the question, ‘What does X think about Y?’”
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) focuses public attention on emerging civil liberties, privacy, First Amendment issues and works to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.
