Dartmouth Study of Backyard Photo supposedly confirms authenticity

[Drew Phipps]

So that tree might be a mimosa tree, the leaves look like this:



However, in winter, the pretty pink flowers turn into ugly brown seed pods:



none of which I see in that backyard photo of BG Brown. Guess I'll drive around for the next couple months looking at mimosa trees...

[Brian Castle]

Dang. I'm a n00b, and here's what happens for me: I look at the BYP, and I start laughing.

The very first thing I see (and comment on), is, "that's not Oswald's chin".

And then, when I start looking, I raise the magnification on the image, and sure enough there's the little telltale edit line.

And then I stop. That's enough. I don't need any more evidence.

So like, I haven't bothered to seek out and read the "expert paper" from Farid. This case has plenty of experts blowing smoke up my butt. I'm a computer graphics guy going way back though, so if anyone starts believing Mr Farid then I'll take the time to go look at his paper.

It's interesting that Roscoe White supposedly ended up with one of the BYP's though. That part is interesting.

[David Josephs]

Dang. I'm a n00b, and here's what happens for me: I look at the BYP, and I start laughing.

The very first thing I see (and comment on), is, "that's not Oswald's chin".

And then, when I start looking, I raise the magnification on the image, and sure enough there's the little telltale edit line.

And then I stop. That's enough. I don't need any more evidence.

So like, I haven't bothered to seek out and read the "expert paper" from Farid. This case has plenty of experts blowing smoke up my butt. I'm a computer graphics guy going way back though, so if anyone starts believing Mr Farid then I'll take the time to go look at his paper.

It's interesting that Roscoe White supposedly ended up with one of the BYP's though. That part is interesting.

Both White and Stovall had the 133-C image Brian.

And there there is no need to waste your time with that junk science backed by a readily apparent agenda.

They brought the images/negatives in on Saturday the 23rd at about 4pm.

Mr. LIEBELER - Did the FBI or any other investigatory agency of the Government ever show you a picture of the rifle that was supposed to have been used to assassinate the President?
Mr. PAINE - They asked me at first, the first night of the assassination if I could locate, identify the place where Lee was standing when he was holding this rifle and some, the picture on the cover of Life.

How could they show him the LIFE photo Friday night?

[Drew Phipps]

Hani Farid is back in the news. If you have forgotten, he's the Dartmouth professor what claimed his mathematical 3D model proved that the BYP are real. According to Tom Scully, he works for the FBI and also takes money from rich warmongers, and Bill Gates. Tom has been proved correct on the Bill Gates aspect of Farid's career: "Microsoft-Funded Professor Builds Software to Fight Terrorism."


http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docI...L8I73808N5


This time, he has developed software that allows websites to automatically remove content without human intervention. "The software, unveiled Friday, would allow websites such as Facebook Inc. to automatically catch flagged content and remove it or prevent it from being uploaded." When asked about the free speech aspect of his software on NPR radio today, he said his software is "agnostic" on what content is being prohibited, and that it is the owners of the networks or websites who will determine for themselves what should be automatically removed. He also said deleting the content is not a freedom of speech issue because the companies have the right to dictate what's suitable. "We allow them to do it fast, accurately, automatically," he said. Microsoft provided the funding to build the software but has no stake in it, Farid said, adding that he and the CEP own the intellectual property.


Sounds great, until the government uses it to ban, say, Sanders' supporters passing videos of speeches, or 9/11 documentaries, or perhaps just posts from Albert.

[Albert Doyle]

I'm surprised about them even asking about the free speech aspects.



If taken correctly American media is not a protest over the Constitutional violations they pretend to be criticizing but informing the public of the next loss they are
going to have to get used to.



American exceptionalists have neutralized Constitutional rights by making everything private and then saying private interest have a right to 'dictate' their own standards...You can strip people of their rights this way and make a billion dollars at it at the same time.

[Magda Hassan]

Hani Farid is back in the news. If you have forgotten, he's the Dartmouth professor what claimed his mathematical 3D model proved that the BYP are real.

How could we forget.

This time, he has developed software that allows websites to automatically remove content without human intervention. "The software, unveiled Friday, would allow websites such as Facebook Inc. to automatically catch flagged content and remove it or prevent it from being uploaded." When asked about the free speech aspect of his software on NPR radio today, he said his software is "agnostic" on what content is being prohibited, and that it is the owners of the networks or websites who will determine for themselves what should be automatically removed.

We know how this is going to turn out because we know who runs the media and who wants to control it all and the web.

He also said deleting the content is not a freedom of speech issue because the companies have the right to dictate what's suitable. "We allow them to do it fast, accurately, automatically," he said. Microsoft provided the funding to build the software but has no stake in it, Farid said, adding that he and the CEP own the intellectual property.

And they will pay well for it too.

Sounds great, until the government uses it to ban, say, Sanders' supporters passing videos of speeches, or 9/11 documentaries, or perhaps just posts from Albert.

Exactly.
(and we wont be getting one here)

[Albert Doyle]

Most of the functions of that software are probably already being handled by a public that self-regulates and doesn't care anyway.

[Drew Phipps]

Hany Farid is going to rescue civilization from Daesh.


How The War On Child Porn Is Helping Us Fight ISIS Propaganda

A maverick computer scientist explains how the lessons of one internet fight are applicable to another.

07/07/2016 10:28 pm ET

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/figh...ef=science


How can the U.S. fight the spread of Islamic State propaganda? The militant group's infamous videos of beheadings, violence and torture have a dangerous allure for would-be radicals, and they proliferate over social media in a way that can make containment seem hopeless. But fighting extremist content online need not be very complicated, according to Dr. Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College. "We don't need to develop software that determines whether a video is jihadist," Farid recently told The Huffington Post. "Most of the ISIS videos in circulation are reposts of content someone has already flagged as problematic." "We can easily remove that redistributed content," he went on, "which makes a huge dent in their propaganda's influence."


Farid is referring to a technique called "hashing," which he pioneered nearly a decade ago while battling a different but equally vile online scourge: child pornography. Hashing involves scanning the unique digital fingerprint, or "hash," of a video or photo, making it easy to find instances of that content and remove it. Last month, it was reported that Facebook and YouTube might start using this technique to automatically scour extremist content from their platforms. If they do, they will be taking a page from Farid's book. In 2008 and 2009, Farid developed PhotoDNA, a hashing software that helped identify and remove images of child porn from the internet. Microsoft funded PhotoDNA, and according to Farid, it's still used by companies like Facebook and Twitter today.


Now, Farid is adapting his software to fight the threat of ISIS propaganda. He has partnered with the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit think tank, which is maintaining a database of extremist media. When a photo or video is flagged as extremist propaganda on a platform like Facebook, its hash is entered in the CEP database.


[B]The worst of the worst'[/B]

As Farid finalizes the software, he's keeping a close eye on the tech industry's changing attitudes toward extremist content. He said the debate today reminds him strongly of a decade earlier, when Silicon Valley effected a major crackdown on child porn amid public pressure. "What I'm hearing from tech companies is eerily similar to what they were saying 10 years ago," Farid said. Then as now, he said, the federal government was urging the tech sector to act. Then as now, the First Amendment was keeping the government from imposing stricter regulations itself. In 2006, then Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez spurred the creation of the Technology Coalition, a group of big-name tech firms aimed at battling child pornography. (The group included Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, which now owns The Huffington Post.) Likewise, in December 2015, President Barack Obama called on tech companies to step up in the fight against ISIS recruitment propaganda.


In both cases, Farid said, there was a focus on the "worst of the worst," meaning the most graphic and problematic content. For child porn, this meant images that depicted children under 12 engaging in sexually explicit acts. On the counter-extremism front, this means explicit videos of beheadings, physical torture and graphic violence. "This is low-hanging fruit," Farid said. "A beheading video violates the terms of service of every tech company in the world." Farid is quick to emphasize that just because we can never completely wipe out the problem of extremist propaganda, it doesn't mean we should stop chipping away at it. ISIS propaganda videos only seem like an unprecedented threat, he said. But they fit into an existing category, and there's some precedent for how to deal with them.
"We've quite literally done this before," he said. "Flagging and removing the very worst content is a modest step, but it puts a significant dent in the problem."


The parallels between the present day and the previous decade are striking, Farid said. When PhotoDNA launched, Microsoft was the first adopter, followed by Facebook in 2011, Twitter in 2012 and Google in 2013. Google was the most resistant to the idea of content moderation, citing privacy concerns, according to Farid. This time around, Microsoft again was an early supporter of anti-propaganda efforts, funding Farid's lab with $100,000. And Facebook was the first big company to meet with him about the software, in February of this year. The main challenge in adapting PhotoDNA to combat today's extremist content is the rise of videos, which are more complex and exist in more variations than static photos. There are about 24 still images in every second of a video, which makes Farid's task that much harder.


[B]A slippery slope?[/B]

Although Farid maintains that his work amounts to a "very modest step," hashing software in general has raised questions about privacy. "There's a valid concern about overreach," Vivek Krishnamurthy, assistant director of Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, told HuffPost. "Just because a video is flagged, it doesn't mean there are no conditions under which it should circulate, like as part of a news report, or a parody." "Plus, as with other algorithms, the question is, is the tech working correctly?" he went on. "We don't know enough about how these technologies [like hashing] really work."


Still, Krishnamurthy acknowledged that the government is in a tough position. Militant propaganda is a genuine national security concern, and it can't be ignored. "Under the First Amendment, it's very difficult for the government to tell anyone to take down anything," Krishnamurthy said. "But YouTube and Facebook are not the government." The government, however, seems to approve of the current course of action. "We welcome the launch of initiatives such as the Counter Extremism Project's National Office for Reporting Extremism (NORex) that enables companies to address terrorist activity on their platforms," Lisa Monaco of the Department of Homeland Security told The Washington Post last month.

[Albert Doyle]

Once you see this at this phase you can assume it is already a done deal as far as "conspiracy theorists".


The public is brain dead and won't even notice the difference.