The script

Look at the CCTV signs. Which of them seem real signs and which look like a fake?

What helped you decide? What ideas do both types try to communicate?

Are you worried about being watched and filmed without knowing of it?

What could be the negative aspects of being watched and filmed?

Do you have a Facebook account or an account at any other social network site?

Do you place a lot of photographs of you and a lot of information about you on your web-pages?

CCTV surveillance and social network websites: what could be the connection between them? Give your ideas. You can use some of the words in the vocabulary box.

Watch the video about recent developments in the CCTV technology and see if you idea is close to the idea in the video.

Watch the video again and match the speakers with the ideas.

Read the script and check your ideas.

Try to give the Russian equivalents to the highlighted words in the script, or, if it is possible, give an English language explanation.

The script

These days, pictures of you could end up virtually anywhere – online, thanks to candid snapshots and social networks, or in a database somewhere, thanks to security and surveillance cameras. Well here at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh researchers are testing facial recognition technologies and discover that there are both positives and negatives to having your mug out there.

This is Ralf Gross, the cooperator of an experimental mobile app that could allow its users to simply snap a photo of a strangers’ face on the street, to find out that person’s name, address, and even social security number. The mobile app works from accessing a database of images and information he’s collected from Facebook.

- So we take an image from the smartphone of your face and one of face recognition algorithms that compares your face against images on Facebook and if it finds a match, takes the information from your profile, most notably, date of birth and your homestead, and runs it through an algorithm which can predict your social security number from that information. So many people might not know this, but until very recently social security numbers were assigned using a fixed algorithm, determined entirely by your date of birth, and your state of birth.

And mister Gross <…>, said the software brings us one step closer to both being able to confirm the identity of a familiar face in the street as well as it being easier for criminals to access your private accounts.

- You can predict something pretty sensitive about a person simply starting from their face. The story we are trying to tell, um, is indeed of a future getting closer and closer to us, where any stranger in the street could look at you and infer sensitive information about you.

- I think one of the biggest concerns I have about the facial recognition software is that it can be deployed in a way where you have no sense of how it’s being used, or whether it’s being used or not.

Although hundreds of millions of users have voluntarily submitted private information to Facebook, there are government-run databases where individual’s personal details are stored without them ever being aware of it. Students and researchers at Carnegie Sci Lab are looking at ways facial recognition software could be used by the police and military.

- So – what is this exactly? This is a… like a toy that anybody can buy, but you’ve modified it in certain way?

- Yes. This is a very cheap alternative unmanned aerial vehicle, where you can use autonomous programs to follow a person’s face and react to the pattern of their movement.

- It's always following around.

- Yeah. Exactly.

- And it’s doing that through this camera and some software that you guys have created.

- Yes.

- So right now the camera – it’s in this drone – it’s able to follow me as I move around, it’s trying to see my eyes, that’s the important thing, so that it knows it’s my face... it’s backed off a little bit, o-ouh… here it comes…

- All we want is to have a multitude of these drones to be able to find a bunch of subjects, and use that to go through the databases determining if these subjects are targets of our <….>, criminals… anybody you’re looking for…

- I’m ready for it to say “take me to your leader” at any moment.

- It’s kind of <…> for walking back in time to a world where there were a lot fewer people and we all lived in much smaller communities, where you could never be anonymous in public – it didn’t exist. Um, so in some ways, ironically, we might be… we might be coming full circle… <...> really good example is “Minority Report”.

The Tom Cruise film depicted a futuristic world where individual’s desires were known and targeted.

- I summarize - it looks a little like Robocop if I may say?

- Awesome!

- What is this for exactly?

- So what I have here is basically… It’s a USB webcam, so this is basically a USB cable that goes connects to the portable computer right here, I would just go on to webcam capturing images and running a face detection software detecting faces and I would be just sending those faces to a matcher on a different server to identify who that person we’re looking at is. What can we do so we can have a wearable solution so we can detect faces, do recognition, maybe think of what next generation law enforcement may look like.

- Conceiving that it’s making our streets safer it becomes a really interesting debate over values and we actually think maybe we need pass laws and head back on that surveillance.

- Identified. Welcome, Daniel

1. Меня больше всего беспокоит, что современная российская школа не стимулирует ученика использовать свое воображение.
2. Я расчитывал выиграть музыкальный центр, но получил только переносной магнитофон.
3. Если внимательно проанализирвать то, как менялся климат на протяжении столетий, видно, что потепление, скорее всего не связано с деятельностью человека.
4. Сейчас люди старшего поколения абсолютно не в курсе того, какой прогресс произошел в развитии технологий в сфере коммуникации.
5. Принцесса так никогда и не вышла замуж, так как не удалось найти для нее подходящей пары.
6. Весь вечер просидел над сочинением без малейшего представления о том, с чего начать.
7. Для контроля за выборами было установленно и задействовано несколько тысяч веб-камер, но все без толку.
8. До самого последнего времени в России действовали очень традиционные стереотипы в отношении мужского и женского, но сейчас ситуция меняется.
9. Домашнее обучение имеет как положительные моменты, так и серьезные недостатки: такие как отсутствие необходимости находить общий язык со сверстниками.
10. При проверке теста, экзаменатор просто сличает ответы ученика с ответами в инструкции. Это тупая работа.

Поиск по сайту: