Newest Video Analytics Technique 鈥淧roduct Recognition鈥� Aims to Judge You By What You Wear
I blogged recently about video analytics, the attempt to build intelligence into video surveillance so that cameras can not only record our every move in public, but also in some respects understand what they are seeing. Now comes word of the latest twist in this effort: 鈥減roduct recognition.鈥� As Technology Review , a startup called Graymatics
has developed software that can automatically identify specific products in visual media鈥攁 pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses in a music video, say, or the Banana Republic shirt your friend is wearing in a holiday photo鈥�. the company's executives showed off software that can quickly identify items in videos and photos and then match these with the same or a similar product for sale through various online retailers and marketplaces.
As one example, the software matched the sunglasses worn by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in an image accompanying a news article about the movie stars to similar pairs available on Amazon. A reader online who hovered a cursor over the object would see the tagged link for the product鈥�.
The software learns by scanning product images available on the Web. It then recognizes objects in images or videos and uses algorithms to break them down into almost two dozen attributes like color, shape, and even texture. Finally, it finds the closest matches in a database of products, such as a feed of Amazon or eBay's stock, or on specific retailers' sites.
Discussion of this technology here is centered on advertising as in the above scenario, but it鈥檚 not hard to imagine other applications for product recognition.
The technology could be used not just to let us get more information about products, but to allow companies to get more information about us. If the technology proves effective and reliable at detecting the brand of clothing one is wearing, that could reveal a lot about a person. Human beings have been differentiating themselves by clothing for thousands of years; as this suggests, clothing and product choices reveal things about our gender, age, geography, lifestyle, and behavior. Not only that, but with modern big data techniques, it鈥檚 likely that our clothing choices could reveal many more correlations, such as our income, education, ethnicity, and preferences of all kinds.
Who would apply these analyses? Social networks like Facebook possess enormous stores of photographs posted by their users. The technology could also be applied of course to any other photographs appearing online (blogs, Flickr, news stories, etc.). And perhaps even more significantly, it could also be applied to surveillance cameras.
Imagine this scenario: you walk into a furniture store. A surveillance camera captures your image and applies product recognition. Based on the price and brand of your purse, briefcase, pants, jacket, and shoes, a computer decides in a flash that you are most likely white, middle aged, with a medium-low income and education. It makes guesses not only about your buying power but also about your lifestyle and tastes in music and much else. Right or wrong, this information is passed along to salesmen, security guards and managers and determines how you are treated. Face recognition is also applied so that if you return on another day, their product-based profile can be refined based on subsequent outfits. The store might even enter into a partnership with other establishments to capture your image across different contexts on different days to really pin you down. (Or more likely, a third-party company might emerge that will do this.) Soon, the reality of this system begins to sink in and people start to become very aware and self-conscious about what they wear and the products that they carry.
Fanciful? Perhaps, but in the years I've been at the 老澳门开奖结果 I've seen many 鈥渇ar-fetched鈥� surveillance scenarios become real. If there鈥檚 money to be made doing this, a company will do it. In fact, Graymatics, the company behind this technology, already offers a product on its site called 鈥淚nterestInsights鈩⑩�� that promises 鈥渄eep understanding of user interests via content associations.鈥� I don鈥檛 know what that means but it sure sounds like something close to what I鈥檓 talking about.
If this kind of system doesn't come about, it will be for one of two reasons: because the economics don鈥檛 make sense鈥攐r because it's been rendered unnecessary because we're tracked through so many other 尘别补苍蝉鈥�
Whether or not this particular product succeeds, the technology is just another reminder that computers鈥� ability to understand what they are seeing is surely going to rise to amazing levels in coming years. We are facing a tsunami of artificial intelligence techniques that will be applied to tracking and sifting and sorting us in coming years, and as a society we need to decide whether we鈥檙e going to sit back, or act to preserve our privacy values through good public policies.
Learn More 老澳门开奖结果 the Issues on This Page
-
Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban老澳门开奖结果 and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON 鈥� Today, the 老澳门开奖结果, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok鈥檚 challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will 鈥渟hutter one of America鈥檚 most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.鈥� 鈥淭he Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,鈥漵aid Patrick Toomey, deputy director of 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 National Security Project. 鈥淭he Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.鈥� The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law鈥檚 profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court鈥檚 decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users鈥� First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government鈥檚 ban on TikTok as a vindication of users鈥� First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign 鈥減ropaganda.鈥� But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its 鈥渕otivating ideology鈥� or 鈥減erspective,鈥� and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. 鈥淭he government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,鈥� said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. 鈥淭he Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit鈥檚 erroneous ruling.鈥� Finally, the brief underscores that the government can鈥檛 impose this type of sweeping ban unless it鈥檚 necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government鈥檚 invocation of 鈥渘ational security鈥� as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. 鈥淩estricting citizens鈥� access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,鈥� said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 鈥淚t would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.鈥� You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
老澳门开奖结果 Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia老澳门开奖结果 Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON 鈥� The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, 老澳门开奖结果 and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 National Security Project: 鈥淲hile this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We鈥檙e profoundly frustrated that the administration didn鈥檛 take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.鈥� -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. 鈥� Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government鈥檚 case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man鈥檚 Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. 鈥� This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 case, his claims challenging the government鈥檚 detention of him would fail. 鈥淩eviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we鈥檙e heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,鈥� said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the 老澳门开奖结果鈥檚 Center for Democracy. 鈥淭he government鈥檚 arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi鈥檚 detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.鈥� In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court鈥檚 ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. 鈥淢r. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,鈥� said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. 鈥淗e cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.鈥� Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the 老澳门开奖结果, the University of Chicago Law School鈥檚 Immigrants鈥� Rights Clinic, the 老澳门开奖结果 of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.