- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Who wants to be a millionaire
by mattd 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Bin laden demolitions has authorised me to offer you a once in a lifetime deal. 1million dollars untracable digital cash will be paid to an account/s of your choice for enough intelligence to proceed with further superpower implosions. Insider info preffered but not essential,leave packet online in freenet transient node...

5 6

Domestic Surveillance: stills from video
by Dynamite Bob 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

[Reformatted for legibility. Please take the few moments required to ensure materials submitted are readable. KMSelf] http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-000080591oct09.story?c… Still images can be derived from many video frames with better resolution than you think. BOSTON -- Like so many Americans, Steve Hill was appalled when he saw newspaper reprints of two World Trade Center terrorists as they passed through airport security the morning of Sept. 11. The sight of Mohamed Atta and Waleed M. Alshehri as captured on a video camera in Portland, Maine, was shocking enough. But Hill had another, deeply visceral reaction. "Professional pride," he explained. "I saw these rotten-looking images in the newspaper, and thought, 'We can do better.' " So he called the Boston FBI and offered to install--for free--his company's software that clarifies visual images. Salient Stills is a small start-up, and when shareholders and directors winced at about $20,000 worth of corporate altruism, Hill reminded them that, since the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans have opened their hearts and their pocketbooks. Hill figured Salient could at least pony up their pixels. "So many people in the country right now are feeling, 'I could go beat up those terrorists,' " Hill said. "It was sort of the same idea." The weapon the 10-person enterprise supplied the local FBI is a technique for clarifying moving images from videotape. Reproduced as still photographs, video images tend to be grainy. Subtleties vanish. Facial features and details such as license plate imprints are hard to distinguish. "Many years ago"--in 1990, Laura Teodosio said--the challenge of transforming a moving medium into a still image with precise resolution became the subject of her master's thesis at MIT. Working at the university's famed Media Lab--where advanced technology finds practical applications--Teodosio developed a software system she called videoFOCUS. Its purpose was "temporal condensation," essentially squeezing a series of moving images into a legible print. Her signature effort was a glorious portrait of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, sawing away at a concert, yet absolutely still in Teodosio's finished image. She also produced a clear likeness of pitcher Roger Clemens with his legendary fastball streaming sequentially overhead. Neither endeavor seemed destined for widespread appreciation. "But as it turned out, there was a side effect," said Teodosio, 37. "We wound up getting video frames that were higher quality than the original." The 3-year-old company's name was taken from Teodosio's thesis, which posited that "you take the salient features from each frame" to create a more cohesive image. Newspapers were Salient's first target audience. Teodosio's product was born under the aegis of a group called "news and the future," MIT techies seeking novel avenues to interact with news information. Though USA Today and the New York Times snapped up a Salient system that enhanced the translation of video images to still photos, others were uncomfortable because the process involves combining pixels--tiny dots that make up any image on film or videotape--from several sequential frames. The word "composite" strikes fear in the souls of media purists. But Salient CEO Hill, a 52-year-old former book publisher, persevered, noting that "every camera is moving, even if it is affixed to a tripod." His firm's technology--in use on a trial basis at the Los Angeles Times--captures common information from consecutive frames and "basically cleans up the dust," he said. From news environments Salient made an unexpected transition into the world of security, Hill said. Every day, he said, most Americans unknowingly are videotaped a dozen times or more. Video cameras whir at banks, rental car agencies, convenience stores and, of course, airports. But many mothers would not recognize their own children from the soupy images that result. The video cameras function mainly as deterrents, Hill said. Late in June, however, the video system in a Boston pharmacy recorded a prescription drug theft. The incident, one in a series of synthetic opiate robberies that have plagued the area in recent months, received wide attention. Hill contacted the Boston police and offered to help refine the blurry images of the man seen stealing OxyContin, a powerful painkiller. A spokesman for Police Commissioner Paul Evans confirmed that the department is using the Salient technology. Hill said his company also has sold the process to the Singapore defense force, and to the Carabinieri, Italy's paramilitary national police force. Boston FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz would not comment about whether the Salient technology is in use at headquarters here. But at Salient--a "little private company" valued at $12 million to $15 million--Hill said the decision to help what he playfully called "an unnamed federal agency" stemmed from President Bush's entreaty to all Americans to aid in the investigation of the attacks. That plea, Hill said, may have had special resonance in Boston, where terrorists boarded the two planes that crashed into the twin towers. "I definitely think we're feeling real guilt here," he said. "We let them through. They were hanging around here. They figured it was easy pickings here, and they were right." The Portland airport security video is almost incidental to the investigation at this point, Hill said. Both terrorists are dead. "But they have a lot of different images of a lot of different things. There's a lot going on. I can say this: The federal agency is devoting an enormous amount of resources to this process."

3 3

[FYI] Dutch Government wants to regulate strong cryptography
by mean-green＠hushmail.com 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

1 0

There was a day when we would call it kidnapping,
by An Metet 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

>Story on US role in kidnapping Moslems, and how this may have motivated >Al Qaeda's blowback. No mention of (since ruled illegal by US >courts) kidnapping of mexican physician by DEA goons. Now they'll be fortunate if all we do is kidnap & interrogate them.

1 0

Re: Let's Attack The Irish White Christian Terroroists...
by Steve Mynott 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

"Tolan Blundell" <tolan(a)citipages.net> writes: > The bombing in Omagh was attributed to the 'Real IRA' a breakaway group who > I believe are generally considered to be more hard line than IRA. > > As far as I understand it they are not the same organisation. What you mean by the IRA is probably the Provisional IRA. The Official IRA (Marxist and known as the "stickies") itself has been defunct since the early 1970s and PIRA was formed by hardliners leaving OIRA. The Real IRA has been formed by hardliners leaving PIRA. If history repeats itself then most people will probably end up refering to RIRA as IRA anyway, since the distinction between these organisations will probably be of little interest to the family of someone killed. (There are another republician terrorist groups such as the INLA as well) -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk i never think of the future. it comes soon enough. --albert einstein

3 2

Re: Anthrax Case Number Three
by Tabla bin Rasa 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

At 02:08 PM 10/9/01 -0700, mmotyka(a)lsil.com wrote: >Maybe this was an improvised attack made necessary after access to crop >dusters became more difficult. I hope this represents the limit of their >skills. They still have to try out their chemistry skills. No bathrooms in BART stations, now. Terrorists won.

3 2

re: Paper tigers (was: Re: Anthrax Case Number Three)
by keyser-soze＠hushmail.com 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

At 02:52 PM 10/9/2001 -0700, Eric Cordian wrote: jet writes: >> CNN was reporting the tests were negative around 1130am pst. >> They also reported that the FBI had interviewed and cleared the >> intern. CNN claims they have also interviewed the intern and believe >> him not to be involved. >The Jennifer Lopez love letter with the "white soapy substance" has also been exonerated. >This is beginning to look more and more like a natural occurrence. Perhaps they were sorting goat hides in the mailroom. :/ Looks like you were right once again.

1 0

Re: Any Reason I Should NOT Killfile Choate?
by An Metet 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Incognitor inquired: > Does he ever post anything worthwhile? Yeah, actually, despite all the pain in the ass stuff he posts, sometimes he posts some good URLS. And I hope this doesn't encourage him, because half the time he posts old shit. And half the time he posts totally worthtless shit. But now and again he sends an URL that is pretty interesting, so, although his opinions are mostly absurd, I've always stopped myself from killfiling him. And I've got a list of killfiled people who I can't even remember who or why.

1 0

Does he ever post anything worthwhile?
by mmotyka＠lsil.com 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Sure. He watches lots of stuff and occasionally a link leads somewhere interesting but the true value is in the humor of such classics as the grounding and shielding thread from 1 or 2 years ago. Priceless.

1 0

NATO Bails Out USA
by John Young 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

DoD has announced that NATO is sending five AWACS to help protect the skies of military-poor USA. Now is this a variation on the UKUSA helping each other avoid violating domestic law against homeland spying and fast disappearing posse comitatus?

1 0