HELP!

[green_amber]

There is currently a car advert going which flashes up "Everyone is caught on camera 300 times a day" or something like -- then we get foootage of the car.. then we get "Give them something worth watching."

It's a wonderful example of the quasi-positive or at least make-the-most-of-it attitude the British public has developed towards ubiquitous CCTV surveillance.

I NEEEED this advert - pref as a downoad but at least stills. - Can anyone help? Anyone remember what car it was advertising?? I can't get anywhere on Google with this info..

It's just PERFECT for a wonderful looking interdisciplinary conference I've just seen! where people are asked to give a paper on surveillance of any kind associated with an image..

EDIT: No ones been any bloody good but I saw it again and it's for Peugeot!!

Comments

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Just as an aside I was in the Urbis museum in Manchester last year (worth a look if you're in that part of the world) and they had an exhibition on surveillance. At one point you can sit in front of a camera and it tries to match you against all the CCTV shots that have been taken as you wander round the museum.

None of the ones it said had me on did. Either I'm so obscure that I don't register on security cameras or I was wearing enough grey and black to match the environment ;P

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Probably neither - this just proves a rather little known fact among the general public , namely that automated (not manual) matching of photos and video is incredibly hard - even the best systems going get thrown easily by different angles of face, shadows, and by differences in the lighting of background. This is why we're now not allowed to smile in passport photos.. My pal Michael works in this area and he's convinced me automated matching isn't in fact a threat to privacy (which doesn't explain why they still try to do it at airports..)

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was at York in the late 80s there was an open-day demo that was supposed to be able to recognise faces by neural nets.

It was unable to distinguist between one bald lecturer and a sheet of white card, and between one of our Kenyan research students and the camera being switched off.

I wasn't terribly impressed. ;)

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Hey I remember that system TOO!!!! I think we used it in HCI!

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

Face it, you're me in slingbacks. ;P

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I think it's another "revenue stream" for the Passport Office. I had to rush down to Peterborough to get my current passport in a hurry (business trip that in the end didn't happen); as well as having to pay nearly twice as much as I would if I could wait, they rejected my first set of photos (face in the wrong place) and my second set (reflections in my glasses). Of course, the Photo-Me machine at the back of Peterborough passport office charges a quid more per set than any other once I've seen...

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be attributed to simple moneygrubbing shittyness ;)

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

That's really harsh, especially when you consider the extent to which the Passport Agency have reinvented themselves.

[blue-condition.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but there is no way a passport can be construed as "value for money", and things are only going to get worse as ID comes in. (Anyone remember that job ad surliminal posted for the ID Überlord, one of whose objectives was to explore other business opportunities? ;))

Passports are a ripoff, as with so many agencies operating in a pseudo-market.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

It's not a threat to privacy yet, but of course at some point they'll sort out the technology. At which point everyone will say 'it's a threat to privacy' and Big Brother will say 'nonsense, we've been doing it for years'. Anyway, we all believed in detector vans, ho ho ho.

Meanwhile, the people trying to solve this should look at capcha recognition, which is demonstrating that the best way to do incredibly good, widely distributed AI research is to base your capcha on an unsolved AI problem. So if they changed the capcha to 'spot surliminal from this lineup' they'd be automatching people in no time.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

I tried one of these; it tagged me as Steve Jobs and Hillary Clinton as Chelsea, her daughter!

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Must have been that orange turtleneck you were wearing.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Looks more like a t-shirt to me. (http://orangemike.livejournal.com/2005/09/06/)