Think Globally, Act Locally?


Keen readers of the blog will recall how I contacted the National Cyber Security Centre to see if their co-respondent Laura was real, and not a bot. They got back to say that she was, and I hope I've caused no offence there. They must have a sense of humour too, because they assigned my query case no '1234'.

But it led me on to GCHQ, the UK de-crypt and monitoring service... Dang, I just gave it away! But they are oft posing teasers online in the effort to recruit the next Alan Turing, and I figured it would be fun to see how long it would take them to crack one of our own block-locks.

Instead I discovered a local initiative in the form of four unis, whose vision is:

  1. To facilitate high-quality and impactful research in and across a wide range of disciplines relevant to UK national security challenges.
  2. To build relationships with stakeholders across the North West and throughout the region, including government, industry, and civil society, to identify opportunities to develop new products and services, and enhance the productivity and security of existing provision.
  3. To develop and deliver accessible and inclusive skills and apprenticeship provision, to support access to opportunities within the digital and data security sectors for citizens in the North West.
  4. To engage with communities, stakeholders and the wider public to inform, explain and educate on issues of trust and security.

This looks right up my street, so I ping them a mail in the hope they may be interested in pursuing some researches on our behalf.

There are two. reasons for this. One is that at uni I could not think of a dissertation subject at all, whereas later in life as so often happens I could devise any number.

The second though is that our AI-generated face supplier promises 10,000 free faces to anyone engaged in research for a mere mention, and when I said I was tenured at the University of Life they offered me ~ which I'm still grateful for ~ fifteen.

One of the things that keeps me awake at night is that regular exposure to AI faces might have people growing fond of them, the way we all had an invisible friend at one time... although my one left me for a poltergeist in my mid-thirties.

Popular posts from this blog

Indian Takeaway

The Digi Yatra facial ID system is being rolled out at Indian airports and though it does not eliminate a boarding pass as reported by the Financial Times, it does eliminate the need to corroborate identities at the gate prior boarding. Users are required to upload a selfie, yet in one survey 30% of them did so without knowing what they were signing up for... which critics suggest is the means by which they could be tracked everywhere and anywhere by the government. My takeaway from this is that to implement a system that involves recognising other people whom you might know ideally involves uploads of the same kind to assemble a bespoke database. Whether it will happen in my lifetime, or indeed at all, is debatable. Unless.
Read more

Digital Commoner

Image
Am not one to obsess over stats, but feedback from the Digital Commons is of special interest to one graduate of geography like myself, as it makes for a snapshot of a kind that prior the internet would barely have been possible. Looking then at a variety of papers and bearing in mind some have had a head start, it is interesting to note that pictures are still worth a thousand words. Of the half-dozen airframes I may have circulated by which means we might be elevated by super-sized drones, the one appearing here has proven by far the most popular... and the only one downloaded by commercial helicopter (and bizarrely, access platform) manufacturers. The runner-up meanwhile is a paper describing how people we might recognise might also be used as a means of secure access to computer systems. Yes, we all recognise Ronald McDonald, but would I recognise your grandmother? The spread around the world reflects our common cultures too. For instance in the US two downloads in San Fran and...
Read more

AI or Ay Ay?

Image
Without the assistance of AI or good old-fashioned Google Lens, can you tell the two apart? Well they are in fact the same Yin Qi who heads up nascent facial ID company MEGVII: https://global.faceid.com/technology/face-recognition-liveness ... except that the portrait on the left is from Tatler magazine and that on the right the South China Morning Post. No prizes for guessing which features on the company website, however, and a relief knowing the guy is at least thirty-six and not fresh out of high-school. Good though that interest in identity theft (and faces) spans the globe.
Read more