Lip Reading Surveillance Cameras To Stop Terror

“Read my lips….” used to be a figurative saying. Now the British government is considering taking it literally by adding lip reading technology to some of the four million or so surveillance cameras in order identify terrorists and criminals by watching what everyone says.

Electronic Design is reporting that the Home Office is interested in a project being pursued by a senior lecturer in computer vision at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England:
Computer-based lip-reading technology would help video surveillance systems spot people planning a crime or terror attack by literally watching suspects’ lips for clues. Once it finds someone speaking certain key words or sentences, the system would automatically send an alert message to a central console, mobile phone, or other communications device. Police or security agents could then be dispatched to the scene to question the individual.

Of course as with all these Big Brother surveillance moves it cannot be selectively applied and everyone will be subjected to it.

The automatic devices bring to mind the heart-chilling scene in “2001: A Space Odyssey” when HAL (the intelligent computer) tells Dave that, despite all the precautions taken, he knows Dave was planning to disconnect him because he can read lips.

Imagine a place where you cannot step out of your front door and have a conversation with someone without it being monitored. Imagine a place where if you say something considered by the authorities to be suspicious a team of agents is dispatched to your location to detain and question you. Does that sound like a free country?

Click here for a list of technologies the UK dictatorship want to implement.

Government Report: future strategic context

A British government Ministry of Defence report outlines a nightmare future society in which the population are forced to accept brain chips, immigration and urbanization ravages communities, class warfare ensues, and biological and neutron weapons are used to combat overpopulation.

Since every deliberate action of government and industry is working to realize this future, we should look at this as a strategy plan rather than a warning of things to come.

The report hypothesizes what the world will be like in under 30 years and is an “analysis of the key risks and shocks” the planet is likely to face. It’s predictions include;

- The development of neutron weapons that destroy living organs but not buildings and “make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world.” Such weapons would be dispersed by means of unmanned vehicles, leading to “application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues.”

- Within 30 years implanted brain chips as standard for all citizens in developed nations.

- A mass revolt on behalf of the middle classes of the developed world in opposition to rampant immigration, an urban under-class and the deterioration of social order.

- The revival of Marxism as a replacement for religion in an increasingly morally relativist age.

- Unchecked globalization that effectively ends the nation state and leads to wars based on territorial belief systems rather than country against country.

- A sharp decline in the population of white Europeans but an 81% increase in the population of sub-Saharan Africa and that of Middle Eastern countries by 132%.

- Endemic unemployment, instability and threat to the social order as a result of population increase.

- The emergence of a “terrorist coalition,” an alliance of belief systems that oppose the state, from environmentalists to “ultra-nationalists” and remnants of religious groups.

Rest of the article here.

Red planet heating up

By Julie Steenhuysen for Reuters News.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Earth’s dusty neighbor Mars is grappling with its own form of climate change as fluctuating solar radiation is kicking up dust and winds that may be melting the planet’s southern polar ice cap, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers have been watching the changing face of Mars for years, studying slight differences in the brightness and darkness of its surface.

These changes in brightness have been generally attributed to the presence of dust, but until now their effect on wind circulation and climate has not been clear.

NASA scientist Lori Fenton and colleagues, reporting this week in the journal Nature, now believe variations in radiation from the surface of Mars are fueling strong winds that stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

By studying changes in light reflected from the surface of Mars — a measure known as an object’s albedo — they predict the red planet has warmed by around 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.65 degree Celsius) from the 1970s to the 1990s, which may in part have caused the recent retreat of the southern polar ice cap.

On earth, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation which can affect global climate. This a phenomenon is known as the greenhouse effect. Fossil fuel emissions add to the problem.

On Mars, it’s the red-tinged dust.

Fenton’s team compared thermal maps gathered from NASA’s Viking mission in the 1970s with maps gathered more than two decades later by the Global Surveyor.

They saw that large swaths of the surface have darkened or brightened over the past three decades.

These albedo changes strengthened winds, picking up and circulating dust, creating a vicious cycle that is warming the planet.

“Our results suggests that documented albedo changes affect recent climate change and large-scale weather patterns on Mars,” Fenton’s team wrote.

They believe changes in albedo should be an important part of future studies on atmosphere and climate change.

I think Al Gore should fly to the Red Planet and impose a global carbon tax on the Martians, and while he is at it, he can tax the Sun for heating up the solar system.