Planet Sillicon

Those scanners

By blog on May. 17, 2010.

I felt the need to write about them again…

It’s interesting to see what can happen when these things are ill-used. We’ve had them for a while, but in America they’re only just starting to use them around the country. Two incidents so far have caught my eye, and make me think serious adjustment needs to be made.

In the Miami international airport, the technicians who are to view the images produced by the scanners were being trained to use the machine, and to do that, one of them had to step into the machine for the other’s to view the image. This lead to the supervisor of the fellow who stepped into the scanner made a comment to this fellow’s colleagues about the poor man’s small genitals. This lead to his co-workers griefing him for at least a month, every day, until he took a police baton to one of them in the car park.

Some news articles suggest the poor guy has been sacked, other’s that he’s on suspension pending an investigation, and that an investigation into the co-worker’s actions will also be going ahead. It’s no wonder why he didn’t report the issue when his damn supervisor started the whole trouble.

The other incident is closer to home, with a Manchester security guard telling his fellow female security guard that he ‘loved those gigantic tits’ after she inadvertently walked through one of the scanners. That man’s been issued with a warning by the police, but quite frankly, I don’t think that’s enough.

In both cases we’re seeing people who are entirely far too irresponsible being given access to very private information. The co-workers in Miami and the idiotic security guard in Manchester all give further credence to the idea that these scanners are completely messed up.

The only way that this can work, in my opinion, is if the UK and the US adopt the same scanning software implemented by the Dutch which eradicates the need for human eyes to view the images. The software ‘looks’ for anything that’s suspicious and then alerts those who need to know, but no person is viewing the images.

This is the only fair way in which these scanners can be implemented, in my opinion.

Worth it?

By blog on Jan. 18, 2010.

Is security worth invasion of personal privacy? Interesting subject whichever view you take, in my opinion.

Basically, a while back I saw this news article on the BBC News site for the so called ‘naked scanner’. Basically there’s a scanner that’s being tried in various airports here in the UK which takes a complete image of a person in an x-ray sort of format. The contentiousness rises out of the fact that it produces a clear image of the entire person, regardless of clothing, as if they were naked. Some people feel that this is an extreme invasion of their personal privacy, whilst others are happy to be scanned if it means safer air travel.

I personally feel that safer air travel is worth it, because the image will be destroyed afterwards – there’s no way to store them – and I don’t think the person viewing all these pictures is going to care one bit about seeing a hazy negative looking image of thousands of people a day. The airports using the scanners are implementing them in replacement of regular metal detectors and/or being patted down, so some people do prefer to be scanned rather than go through all of that. On the other hand, it is getting to be extremely invasive to go anywhere, anymore, and making it seem less worth it to travel.

Many Brits seem to find security invasive and offensive, with many being angered by CCTV camera systems and the like, and to be fair, we do have more of them per capita than any other country in the world, and that’s pretty hefty. There’s both good and bad about all of these security measures, same with GPS vehicle tracking, but I tend to see the up side to those more than the down.

I heartily dislike this RFID tracking business that companies are trying to implement, as this is not a security measure but as a means for companies to track who’s buying what, and that I don’t agree with. It’s a viable option if it helps maintain safety for everyone, not if it only helps people to make money.

Serious Problem

By blog on Aug. 15, 2009.

I’ve got a serious problem with this new odd-ball Family Intervention Project scheme, and now I’m going to rant about it.

I’m ranting about the ludicrous amount of CCTV networks being employed in Britain, which have been shown to be of little value in diminishing the rising rates of violent crime. Now, what are we using these things for if not to deter criminals? Where is this going wrong? It’s mind boggling that the country can have 20% of all the CCTV cameras in the world pointed at it’s own citizens, and yet violent crime rates are still going up!? Are we not proving that CCTV systems aren’t all they’re cracked up to be?

There are even growing numbers of CCTV cameras being employed by civilians… I just think that maybe it’s time to settle down. For instance, the former residence of George Orwell, author of 1984 – when the notion of Big Brother was first coined as such – had no less that 32 CCTV cameras installed by the government within a 200 yard radius. That number goes up tremendously if one counts the privately owned CCTV cameras in the neighbourhood, of which there are hundreds. Now, doesn’t that just sound a little crazy to you?

Another thing that has gotten me of late is this Children’s Minister Ed Balls’ idea of putting CCTV cameras into private homes, after the parents have signed ‘behaviour contracts’, to ensure that the children are going to bed early, eating balanced meals, and doing their homework. These families being ones that have had any dealings with social services before. But the odd thing to me is they keep being referred to as ‘anti-social’ as if that’s the worst thing in the world. Balls states that ‘Over 120,000 young people have been saved from getting involved in or being the victims of crime’, and I have to ask, where the hell did you pull that figure from? I can guess, and it ain’t pretty! But then the article goes on to say that around 128,000 children have been aided by this programme, which suggests that ol’ Ed thinks that all these kids would be now violent thugs, if not for their programme.

It’s scary, too, that if these families don’t come up to snuff, if they fail one of their surprise inspections, the parents could face jail, and the children could face youth hostels. Doesn’t that seem absurd to you? If you can stand the craziness, here’s a link to the official description of the programme listed on the Home Office’s website.

Bloggers around the world seem to be shocked and appalled by this strategy… it will be interesting to see what happens.

Had to chat with the neighbour again

By blog on Jul. 19, 2009.

I had to chat with the neighbour again, you know the one I mentioned earlier this week, the oddball one that goes on and on about security measures? Well today I had the fun of listening to her talk about crazy conspiracy theories…

For instance, today she stopped me at my letterbox, and noticed that I had my cordless phone in the pocket of my dressing gown, because I was expecting a call. She then spent the next FIVE MINUTES without a word from me talking about the difference in security measures of regular telephones and cordless telephones. Can you imagine how unlikely anyone out there who has the know-how would give a rats ass what this lady was saying over the phone? Enough to connect into the right frequency of her particular handset? I think she has a better chance of being struck by lightning than having someone that interested in what she is saying to other people on the phone.

I was so tempted to tell her that ‘The Panasonic KX are bugged by the government’ but I thought that wouldn’t be very nice, or fair to her mental health. She started going on again about how I should get call logging, did I get it yet? Well I should have it by now, what was I waiting for, we talked about it days ago… I told her flat out I wasn’t going to get it, I didn’t see the need. She just looked at me like I was a little crazy, and left it at that, though did drop hints about it, really, really obvious hints. She told me how cheap her call logging was because her telecoms companies knew that people really wanted it so they were dropping the price on it… I don’t think that’s true in any way, but anyway.

Goodness, I think I am going to get a robot to go out and collect the mail. This would work for two reasons, one, she probably wouldn’t talk to it, and two, if she did, it’s a heartless robot, she can’t fault it for not stopping to chat.