Video Analysis: Do Some Advanced Systems Have Better Marketing Than Technology?
October 16, 2023
![Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[2]](https://arnoldit.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t2-19.gif "Vea4_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_t[2]")
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
I am tempted to list some of the policeware and intelware companies which tout video analysis capabilities. If we narrow our focus to Israel, there are a number of companies which offer software and systems that can make sense of video data. Years ago, I attended a briefing and the company (which I will not name) showed that its system could zip through a 90 minute video of a soccer (football) match and identify the fouls and the goals. Like most demonstrations, the system worked perfectly. In actual real world situations, the system did not work. Video footage is a problem, but there are companies which assert their developers’ confection.
Aggressive bunnies get through the farmer’s fence. The smart surveillance cameras emit a faint beep. The bunnies are having a great time. The farmer? Not so much. Thank you, MidJourney. You do a nice bunny.
Here’s the results of the query “video analysis Israel.” Notice that I am not including the name of a company nor a specific country. Google returned ads and video thumbnails and this result:
The cited article is from Israel21c 2013 write up “Israel’s Top 12 Video Surveillance Advances.” The cited article reports as actual factual:
Combing such vast amounts of material [from the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013] would have taken months, or even years in the past, but with new video analytics technologies developed by Israel’s BriefCam, according to the publication IsraelDefense, it took authorities just a few days to identify and track Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarneav, the two main suspects in the attack which killed three, and wounded 183. Within five days one of the terrorists was dead, the other arrested after a 22-hour manhunt.
BriefCam is now owned by Canon, the Japanese camera maker. Imagine the technical advances in the last 10 years.
I don’t know if Israel had a BriefCam system at its disposal in the last six months. My understanding is that the Israel Defense Force and related entities have facial recognition systems. These can work on still pictures as well as digital video.
Why is this important?
The information in the San Francisco Chronicle article “Hamas Practiced in Plain Sight, Posting Video of Mock Attack Weeks Before Border Breach” asserts:
A slickly produced two-minute propaganda video posted to social media by Hamas on Sept. 12 shows fighters using explosives to blast through a replica of the border gate, sweep in on pickup trucks and then move building by building through a full-scale reconstruction of an Israeli town, firing automatic weapons at human-silhouetted paper targets. The Islamic militant group’s live-fire exercise dubbed operation “Strong Pillar” also had militants in body armor and combat fatigues carrying out operations that included the destruction of mock-ups of the wall’s concrete towers and a communications antenna, just as they would do for real in the deadly attack last Saturday.
If social media monitoring systems worked, the video should have been flagged and routed to the IDF. If the video analysis and facial recognition systems worked, an alert to a human analyst could have sparked a closer look. It appears that neither of these software-intermediated actions took place and found their way to a human analyst skilled in figuring out what the message payload of the video was. Who found the video? Based on the tag line to the cited article, the information was located by reporters for the Associated Press.
What magical research powers did the AP have? None as it turns out. The article reports:
The Associated Press reviewed more than 100 videos Hamas released over the last year, primarily through the social media app Telegram. Using satellite imagery, the AP was able to verify key details, as well as identify five sites Hamas used to practice shooting and blowing holes in Israel’s border defenses. The AP matched the location of the mocked-up settlement from the Sept 12 video to a patch of desert outside Al-Mawasi, a Palestinian town on the southern coast of the Gaza Strip. A large sign in Hebrew and Arabic at the gate says “Horesh Yaron,” the name of a controversial Israeli settlement in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.
I don’t want to be overly critical of tools like BriefCam or any other company. I do want to offer several observations from my underground office in rural Kentucky:
- The Hamas attack was discernable via humans who were paying attention. Were people in the IDF and related agencies paying attention? Apparently something threw a wrench in a highly-visible, aggressively marketed intelligence capability, right?
- What about home grown video and facial recognition systems? Yes, what about them. My hunch is that the marketing collateral asserts some impressive capabilities. What is tough to overlook is that for whatever reason (human or digital), the bunny got through the fence and did damage to some precious, fragile organic material.
- Are other policeware and intelware vendors putting emphasis on marketing instead of technical capabilities? My experience over the last half century says, “When sales slow down and the competition heats up, marketing takes precedence over the actual product.”
Net net: Is it time for certification of cyber security technology? Is it time for an external audit of intelligence operations? The answer to both questions, I think, is, “Are you crazy?”
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2023
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