Quoting Russell Coker (russell@coker.com.au):
Firstly while I think that the IEEE meeting in question is interesting and worth attending, I've booked in for the WEHI Immunology Discovery Tour and the SecTalks Melbourne Meetup on that day, both of which are more interesting to me. But if medical research and computer security aren't interesting to you then the IEEE lecture in question seems worth attending.
On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 01:38:43 AM Rick Moen via luv-talk wrote:
Everyone appears to be rah-rah about how successful this is going to be in every possible application, if not today in year n, then surely in year n+1 -- and indeed in some applications it works well enough. However, when I heard that DHS [USA Department of Homeland Security] seriously expected to use automated facial recognition as the reason to detain Bad People in airports and elsewhere (the 'FAST program' - Future Attribute Screening Technology, started in 2012), I thought 'Guys, you've never heard of the base rate fallacy, have you?'
Or, to put it another way, DHS is yet another institution needing to learn Bayes's Theorem.
The DHS is entirely based on cowardice, it wouldn't exist if the world was run by valorous people.
US Department of Homeland Security is an umbrella under which all of these were gathered in 2002: o Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS): Agency that processes the application for citizenship or residency of tens of thousands per year. My father doubtless spoke with INS when he immigrated with his family from Norway around 1933. INS also at first included U.S. Border Patrol at its creation in the early 20th C., which was shifted among numerous Federal departments before being put under DHS in 2002. o U.S. Customs Service: Collected import tarriffs and performed other selected border security duties. o Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service: Worked with other agencies to protect U.S. agriculture from invasive pests and diseases. o Federal Protective Service: Provided law enforcement and security services to U.S. Federal buildings, courthouses, and other properties. o Transportation Security Administration: oversees security for highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, pipelines and ports. o United States Coast Guard: maritime homeland security, maritime law enforcement (MLE), search and rescue (SAR), marine environmental protection (MEP), the maintenance of river, intracoastal and offshore aids to navigation (ATON). o United States Secret Service: Federal law enforcement agency investigating and preventing financial crimes, including counterfeit U.S. currency, U.S. treasury securities, and investigation of major fraud. Also handles safety of current and former national leaders and their families, such as the President, past Presidents, Vice Presidents, presidential candidates, visiting heads of state, and foreign embassies. o Federal Emergency Management Agency: Coordinates response to any natural disaster that has occurred in the United States and that overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. o National Protection and Programs Directorate: Has mission to reduce and eliminate threats to the USA's critical physical and cyber infrastructure. I cannot help noticing, Russell, that when people on the Internet start moralistically preaching and ranting, they tend to switch their brains pretty much entirely off. Thus my catchphrase in tongue-in-cheek praise of such postings: 'It's easier than thinking!'