Personal privacy is being threatened as Internet users increasingly provide information about themselves on social networking sites, which can be collected and analyzed by computers to create a picture of a person’s identity. “Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Harold Abelson. “In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.” Although users can implement privacy controls on most Internet sites, researchers say that is rarely enough to protect privacy. For example, University of Texas professor Viatly Shmatikov and Stanford University researcher Arvind Narayanan were able to identify more than 30 percent of users of both Twitter and Flickr, even thought the accounts had been stripped of identifying information like account names and email addresses. At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported they could accurately predict the Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003–nearly 5 million people. “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public–because increasingly, it is,” says Cornell University professor Jon Kleinberg.
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Researchers at Aberystwyth University and the University of Bradford have developed a thermal-imaging scanner that can reveal the physical signs of guilt, such as minute fluctuations in blood flow and temperature. The researchers say the system, called Real-Time Dynamic Passive Profiling, could be used to identify smugglers or terrorists at border control points. “This new technology is based on the modeling of facial expressions, eye movement, and pupil changes in both the visual and thermal domains,” says Aberystwyth professor Reyer Zwiggelaar. “In the future, it could have many uses, because it tells us how people are really feeling.” The researchers plan to test the system at U.K. ports and airports next month. “We aim to automatically analyze people’s facial expressions and eye movements in response to a series of questions through video images and computer-based intelligent algorithms,” says Bradford professor Hassan Ugail.
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European researchers have developed HERMES, a software surveillance system that automatically detects human motion, behavior, and facial expressions; generates a running commentary of what is happening; and virtually re-enacts events. HERMES consists of a scalable, flexible platform, which integrates software components that can detect events in real time and describe them semantically. The HERMES tracking technology functions like a human watching the same scene, making predictions about where a target is heading and reacting to other unusual events. The system can track people as they walk across a city with a combination of static cameras and pan-tilt-zoom cameras. Generating semantic information from video has led to the development of a tool that creates a virtual three-dimensional representation of the scene. “The virtual graphical representation of the footage is generated in near real time and can be displayed alongside the actual video stream,” says Universitat Autonoma senior researcher Andrew Bagdanov.
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Andy Johnson, a professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory, is developing ultra-high-speed connections paired with high-definition video collaboration. Johnson says the technology is similar to commercial video phone services, but is more reliable, larger, and has a much clearer display. A stable, high-resolution video connection could change how people consult with doctors, auto mechanics diagnose cars, or businesspeople hold meetings, he says. The technology pairs life-sized display screens with near-instant Internet connections. “That gives us a much higher resolution interaction, and could make it much easier for remote groups to work together,” Johnson says. However, the system will require the United States to upgrade its Internet infrastructure with fiber-optic cables to increase access speeds.
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Google Labs has recently developed or acquired several new application and tool prototypes. For example, Aardvark is a social search tool that can find answers to users’ questions by asking people in their networks. Users can access Aardvark via the Web, instant messenger programs, Twitter, and iPhone applications. Google’s Public Data Explorer aims to make datasets easy to communicate and explore. The tool enables users to preview how the information in datasets has changed over time. Gesture search is a tool specifically for Android phones designed to help users quickly find a contact or application from all the items stored in the phone by drawing a letter of the alphabet on the touchscreen, which eliminates the need to rely on the keyboard for search purposes. Google Reader Play is a way to browse articles, blogs, and other items on the Web. The program identifies the most interesting pages on the Internet using the recommended items feed in Reader. Follow Finder is the first Twitter tool that Google has released. The tool analyzes public social graph information on Twitter to find people a user might want to follow.
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A group of businesses, police, and government organizations in Great Britain have launched the Cyber Security Challenge UK as part of an effort to improve cybersecurity in the country. Challenge participants will take tests on how to defend networks and identify security vulnerabilities in Web site code, among other things, to determine whether they have the skills needed for a career in cybersecurity. Those who pass the tests will then undergo head-to-head challenges. Participants who do well on the challenges may then be eligible to receive training and scholarships so that they can further develop their cybersecurity skills. The launch of the Cyber Security Challenge UK comes in the wake of the release of a report from the House of Lords that found that future wars will increasingly involve cyberattacks. The report also criticized other European nations for not doing enough to boost cybersecurity.
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National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have developed a “dimmer switch” for a superconducting circuit that links a quantum bit and a quantum resonant cavity, known as a bus, which could be used to store and transport information in quantum computers. The researchers say the device can tune interactions between these components and could help accelerate the development of a practical quantum computer. The advance could allow researchers to control the interactions between many circuit elements. The NIST switch is the first to produce predictable quantum behavior over time with the controllable exchange of an individual microwave photon between a qubit and a bus. “We have three different elements all working together, coherently, and without losing a lot of energy,” says Colorado University-Boulder’s Michael Allman, who performed the experiments with NIST physicist Ray Simmonds.
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The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) demonstrated the possibilities of high-performance research and education networks at the recent spring Internet2 meeting using a videoconference that connected attendees to the former Homestake Gold Mine near Lead, S.D. The mine is a possible site for the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Lab (DUSEL), where physicists, biologists, and geologists could conduct research regarding matter, energy, and the Earth. DUSEL experiments would generate large volumes of data that could be distributed to researchers around the world, says South Dakota Board of Regents’ Claude Garelik. He noted that live videoconference links are not new to the education community. “High definition is new technology to the industry, but we have been doing videoconferencing for a long time.” DUSEL would be an interdisciplinary science lab created to study basic questions of modern science, such as the nature of dark matter and energy. NSF is evaluating design options for large-scale DUSEL facilities and construction could begin by 2014, says University of California, Berkeley’s Kevin Lesko.
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University of Southern California (USC) graduate students recently demonstrated new communication and digital media tools at the annual Annenberg Graduate Fellows Symposium. USC’s Logan Olson and Joseph Osborn displayed an application that enables musicians to layer sound tracks by intersecting hand-drawn lines on Microsoft’s Surface display and control the volume by drawing an arc across any combination of tracks. Another application allows the user to design and rearrange flow charts and other diagrams to use during brainstorming meetings and presentations. USC’s Bryan Jaycox developed SolidSpace, a glove that lets wearers feel distant objects through pressure on their fingers. Transmitters on the glove emit radio waves and measure the distance of objects by the time it takes for the waves to bounce back. The glove is part of a group of projects called Redesigning Perception, which includes augmented reality goggles that map additional information onto objects in a room and an audio device that lets users hear sounds outside the range of human perception.
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The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) annual report details innovations developed by federal labs and private-sector organizations. Eleven federal agencies have laboratory operations that engage in research and development work with organizations in industry, academia, the nonprofit sector, and state and local governments on improvement projects. Collaboration between federal laboratories and other organizations was on the rise and resulted in technology that benefited various business sectors, according to the report. NIST developed software called Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES), which includes environmental and economical performance data for more than 230 construction projects and is designed to reduce complex technical content about building materials. Another project involved researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Agriculture Research Service, which designed the BeadChip, a chip that examines cattle’s genetic makeup to create higher quality beef and dairy products.
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