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This newsletter is available online by
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The News In Review newsletter is a service
provided
by Understand The Times that
is a compilation of the news articles
previously posted
on our site . Understand The Times does not
endorse these events but rather is
showing the church the current events.
The
purpose of posting these articles is to warn the church of deception from a
Biblical perspective.
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November 3 - Mind's Eye Surveillance To Watch, Identify And Predict Human Behavior From Video
Article: Miscellaneous
If a person holding a gun were to walk up to
you, what might you think would happen next? Researchers from Carnegie
Mellon have created intelligent software
that will identify human activities in videos and then predict what might
happen next. It should come as little surprise that
the spookily named 'Mind's Eye' program is
sponsored by DARPA's Information Innovation Office.
"A truly 'smart' camera would be able to describe with words everything it
sees and reason about what it cannot see," said DARPA.
The Mind's Eye software
"will compare the video motion to actions it's already
been trained to recognize (such as walk, jump, and stand) and identify
patterns of actions such as pick up and carry. The software examines these
patterns to infer what the person in the video is doing. It also makes
predictions about what is likely to happen next and can guess at activities
that might be obscured or occur off-camera."
Carnegie Mellon University's National Robotics
Engineering Center explained the image below as: "The Mind's Eye program
will automate video analysis - recognizing
current behavior, interpolating actions that occur off-camera, and
predicting future behavior." The next step is to make the 'Cognitive Engine'
even smarter.
According to the report "Using Ontologies in
a Cognitive-Grounded System: Automatic Action Recognition in Video
Surveillance", the researchers "plan to
extend the system functionalities in order to support a wider range of
action verbs and run tests on a large video dataset."
DARPA explained, "In the first 18 months of the program,
Mind's Eye demonstrated fundamentally new
capabilities in visual intelligence, including the ability of automated
systems to recognize actions they had never seen, describe observed events
using simple text messages, and flag anomalous behaviors."
Let's hope the researchers get it right
because when added to social media
surveillance helping the government read your mind and future TSA plans to
track all 'daily travels to work, grocery store and social events', the
future surveillance society world could have a very Orwellian no-privacy
flavor.
Read Full Article....
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November 1 - One month until they regulate the Internet
Article: One World Government
Better enjoy Facebook while you can. A
U.N.-sponsored conference next month in Dubai
will propose new regulations and restrictions for the Internet, which critics
say will censor free speech, levy tariffs on e-commerce, and even force
companies to clean up their "e-waste" and make gadgets that are better for the
environment.
Terry Kramer, the chief U.S.
envoy to the conference, says the
United States is against sanctions and believes management of the
Internet by one central organization goes against free speech.
"[Doing nothing] would not be a terrible outcome
at all," Kramer said recently. "We
need to avoid suffocating the Internet space through well-meaning
but overly prescriptive proposals that would seek to control
content."
The World Conference on International
Telecommunications (WCIT-12) is the first such
meeting since those guidelines were created, and businesses are taking it
seriously: U.S. delegates will include representatives from AT&T, Cisco,
Facebook, GoDaddy, and dozens more.
Josh King, an attorney with
legal advice site Avvo.com, said the ITU will make stronger
proposals at a 2015 conference in Dubai. For now,
the goal is to restructure so the
telecommunication companies in each country have more control over
what is on the Internet.
"The open, multi-stakeholder approach that has led to the
massive growth of the Internet over the last 15 years [would] be
replaced with a system of top-down, international regulation,"
he told FoxNews.com.
Handley told FoxNews.com that
it is likely some of the proposals at WCIT will be enacted over the next five
years. What were formerly considered rough guidelines will become more precise
governances, she said.
Vivek Mohan, a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy
School and a former Microsoft attorney, says
the talks should be taken seriously, even if there might not be any short-term
impact. "This is a fight
for life for the ITU. If they don't assert authority and jurisdiction, they will
become irrelevant," he told FoxNews.com.
Read Full Article....
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November 2 - UN Representative Calls For Establishing A 'World Capital'--In Islamic Istanbul
Article: One World Government
The world needs a global capital and it should
be the capital of Islamic Turkey, Istanbul, according to a UN
special representative. Richard Falk, the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, wrote a Nov.
1, 2012, opinion piece for the controversial al Jazeera English site
calling for a "global capital"
because of integration "by markets, by globally constituted
battlefields, by changing geopolitical patterns."
While Turkey is a
longstanding U.S. ally and a member of NATO,
its nearly 80 million population is 99.8 percent Muslim,
according to the CIA Factbook.. Its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan has had several run-ins
with Israel over access to Gaza. In March, he urged Israel
to "stop the brutal attack against Palestinians and stop the
massacre and bloodshed."
The U.S. Embassy
in Turkey sent out an "emergency
message" for U.S. citizens in September warning of "a planned
anti-American march/protest" in Istanbul. The march was tied to
protests against the YouTube video claimed by critics to be
anti-Islamic. "The Department of State strongly recommends avoiding
the march/protest location as well as any other large crowds that
may gather in Istanbul to protest against the controversial video
that has created other demonstrations throughout the world,"
explained the warning.
Falk recommended what al Jazeera called a
"modest proposal" that should move the world past "the persisting
tendency is to view the hierarchy of global cities from a
West-centric perspective: London, New York, Paris, Los Angeles
placed in the first rank." Along with his UN
duties, he is the Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of
International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished
Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara.
Read Full Article....
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November 5 - Baltimore announces city-wide surveillance roll out that records passenger conversations on city buses
Article: Miscellaneous
The surveillance society
continues to grow unabated, as the city of
Baltimore becomes the latest governmental entity to trample civil rights in the
name of "public safety."
According to the Baltimore
Sun, city officials have now authorized the
recording of private conversations on public buses "to investigate crimes,
accidents and poor customer service." Marked with signs to alert passengers that
open mics are picking up every word they say, the first 10 buses with the new
surveillance equipment began operation towards the end of October. Eventually,
officials say they will expand the program to 340 buses, or about half the
fleet, by next summer.
The paper said
the audio surveillance will be incorporated into the video surveillance systems
already on board the buses (no plausible explanations on how an audio capability
is supposed to enhance video surveillance, either).
"We want to make sure people feel safe, and this builds up our arsenal of tools
to keep our patrons safe," said Ralign Wells,
the Maryland Transit Administration chief. "The audio
completes the information package for investigators and responders."
"People don't want or need to have their private
conversations recorded by MTA as a condition of riding a bus,"
Rocah told the paper. "A significant number
of people have no viable alternative to riding a bus, and they should not be
forced to give up their privacy rights."
As reported by the Sun,
"Video is a critical tool for investigators
sorting out the details of an incident, but when witnesses walk away, are
reluctant to cooperate or give conflicting accounts, an audio recording can fill
in missing information," McCollum said. Translation:
Police will now be able to force city
residents to get involved in criminal investigations, even if they would
otherwise choose not to for, say, personal safety reasons (no word on whether
police are prepared to provide such unwilling witnesses 24/7 protection for as
long as necessary).
Read Full Article....
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We hope the Weekly News In Review has been a
blessing to you.
Sincerely,
Roger Oakland
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