An innovative method for human height estimation combining video images and 3D laser scanning

Digitalization has increased the number of video surveillance systems that sometimes capture crime images. Traditional methods of human height estimation use projective geometry. However, sometimes they cannot be used because the video camera surveillance system is not available or has been moved and there are no reference lines on the frame. Scientific studies have developed a new method for human height estimation using 3D laser scanning. This model necessarily requires a series of approximations, which increase the final measurement error. To overcome this problem, in the present study, images of a subject are projected directly on the 3D model, estimating the height of the subject. This article describes the methodological approach adopted through the analysis of a real case study in a controlled environment executed by Carabinieri Forensic Investigation Department (Italy). The aim is to obtain a human anthropometric measure derived from frames extracted from the videos associated with the digital survey of the framed area obtained with 3D laser scanning and point cloud analysis. The result is the height estimation of five subjects filmed by a camera obtained through the combination of 2D images extracted by a DVR/surveillance systems with 3D laser scanning. Results show that most estimated measurements are less than the real measurement of the subject; it also depends on the posture of the subject while walking. Furthermore, results shows the differences between the real height and the estimated height with a statistical approach.     

Introduction to “charting,tracking, and mapping: new technologies,labor, and surveillance”

Advances in information technologies over the last two decades have offered the promise of revolutionizing workplaces and other settings by expanding the capabilities of individuals working in various professions. Enabled by high-speed computing systems and marked by an intensification of command and control properties, new technologies have expanded, and in some cases intentionally surpassed, the scope of the senses. Technologies such as drones, surveillance cameras, and airport and border security systems promise the seemingly infinite catchment and infinitesimal account of human actions, while computer processing software provides real-time data on large-scale transactional processes occurring in monetary systems and security markets. Charting, tracking, and mapping functions open up new vistas for quantifying social behaviors and detecting misbehaviors, creating new frontiers for criminal justice, the military, and economic activity. The papers in this special issue reveal the processes guiding the rapid transformation and flexible adaptation of institutional structures, economic and financial systems, and threat surveillance and military/police mobilization in the near future.     

The labor of surveillance and bureaucratized killing: new subjectivities of military drone operators

As the military's armed surveillance drones have become the iconic weapon of the early twenty-first century, they have also introduced radical transformations in the traditional labor of those who operate them – the pilots, crew, analysts, and commanders. In so doing, these transformations have engendered new kinds of subjectivity, with new ways of experiencing the work of surveillance and killing. This paper investigates the nature of these new subjectivities, how they are constructed through new technologies that combine surveillance with remote agency, the bureaucratization of killing, and the psychological implications for operators. It examines how scientific management strategies from Taylorism to business process re-engineering have contributed to reconstituting the subjectivity of drone pilots and sensor operators through decomposing their labor practices and reconstituting them within professionalized careers and technological systems of supervision and management. It also looks at how the decisions to use lethal force are themselves decomposed and distributed among individuals designated as responsible agents within the chain-of-command. In light of the creation of these new subjectivities, the paper examines the psychological stress experienced by those who occupy these new subject positions through an examination of several recent military studies, journalistic accounts, and a recent short film based upon an interview with a drone pilot, Omer Fast's 5,000 Feet is the Best (2011).     

The cultural labor of surveillance: video forensics,computational objectivity,and the production of visual evidence

This essay argues that the status of video evidence as an index of real events—a sign or representation that offers a direct, empirical connection to material reality—is the result of an intentional process of production. This process involves the repurposing of new technologies borrowed from the domain of creative media production in order to transform a chaotic field of raw surveillance video into useable evidence. In addition to the exchange in technologies, an unavoidable epistemological and interpretive exchange takes place between evidentiary uses of surveillance video on the one hand, and the now prevalent forms of surveillant narration found in both fictional and reality-based storytelling. But despite this exchange in meanings and technical systems, considerable effort has gone in to establish formal standards for the evidentiary uses of surveillance video that distinguish the discovery of video evidence from the production of creative content. Building on Daston and Gallison's historical study of the prevailing “epistemic virtues” that have defined objectivity over time, I argue that what we see emerging in the field of forensic video analysis, as a means of establishing its scientific and legal status, is a commitment to a new epistemic virtue of “computational objectivity.”     

Theorising Power and Resistance among “Travellers”

This paper (re-)examines the literature on Traveller communities in the United Kingdom by combining parts of Michel Foucault's and Michel de Certeau's theoretical legacies. Following an ethnographic summary, I demonstrate the relevance of Foucault and Certeau for a critical understanding of the Travellers’ structural predicaments and ideological resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I argue that Foucault's outline of modern power, surveillance and classification sheds new light on the impact of social control agencies and the implementation of legislative changes, such as the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, on (semi-)nomadic and/or self-employed groups. The implications of more recent legal developments are discussed as symptoms of postmodernity and the further ideological marginalisation of “non-consuming nomads”. I then argue that some of Certeau's key concepts, including the “strategies/tactics” distinction, illuminate the Travellers’ modalities of resistance and symbolisms of difference. Completing a two-way dynamic between theory and data, the article also shows that existing empirical material on Travellers highlights some of the weaknesses in Foucault's and Certeau's respective thought. Finally, I turn to Foucault's “analytics” to account for intra-group power and resistance, and hence to challenge the common portrayal of Foucault as a “theorist of domination” in juxtaposition to Certeau as a “theorist of subversion”.     

Bodies,Materials, Practice: Habiting Space and the Representational Limits of Latour's Semiotics of Assemblies

This article identifies an emerging interest in actor-network theory (ANT) within spatial studies and its significance to social semiotics. It questions the usefulness of borrowing ANT for spatial analyses, arguing that ANT is a representational theory of knowledge rooted in a Chomskyan theory of competence and that this produces an impoverished conception of practice within spatial production. To illustrate this contention, a letter describing the Elliott household in 1860s Adelaide is examined as a programme for visiting the Elliott home. A comparison is then made between Latour's programme and Lefebvre's dialectic of spatial production. It is noted that the constituent elements of the programme, association and substitution, are analogous to Lefebvre's concepts of representations of space and representational spaces, respectively. However, since the programme does not offer any corresponding third element to match spatial practice, an ANT-informed interpretation of spatiality is criticised for bifurcating competence from performance and universalising a particular competence.     

Post-9/11 counterterrorism in popular culture: the spectacle and reception of The Bourne Ultimatum and 24

This article examines the representation of counterterrorism in contemporary film and television and surveys its reception among active online audiences. Contemporary counterterrorism fiction like The Bourne Ultimatum (2007 The Bourne ultimatum. 2007. Film. Directed by Paul Greengrass. Produced by Doug Liman, Henry Morrison and Jeffrey M. Weiner. USA.  [Google Scholar]; Film. Directed by Paul Greengrass) and the TV series 24 (2001–2010; Television series. Created by Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow), present viewers with conventional hero-driven narratives wrapped in a spectacle of high-tech surveillance technologies. As counterterrorism is an inherently covert exercise, the widespread popularity of these Hollywood franchises raises questions about how the public understands the capabilities and ethics of counterterrorism. These questions are addressed through an analysis of the generic and aesthetic features of the texts along with a survey of audience responses on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).     

Dot-PPA-ELISA对猪丹毒的免疫监测及抗体保护效价的测定

用猪瘟、猪肺疫、猪丹毒三联疫苗和猪丹毒 1a、2型氢氧化铝吸附甲醛灭活疫苗分别免疫断奶仔猪 ,采用Dot PPA ELISA监测免疫猪血清抗体变化。结果 ,弱毒疫苗免疫后第 7d猪丹毒血清抗体效价开始升高 ,第 2～ 3周达最高值 ;灭活疫苗免疫后第 3～ 4周抗体效价达最高值 ,且灭活疫苗免疫猪的抗体水平明显高于三联疫苗免疫猪。免疫 6周后 ,用C4 30 0 4 (1a型 )、C4 3179(1b型 )和C4 3 12 (2型 ) 3株不同血清型的猪丹毒混合强毒同时对不同抗体效价的免疫猪和对照猪进行了皮肤内接种攻毒 ,并根据其皮肤和体温反应确定 1∶32为猪能抵抗混合强毒攻击的抗体保护效价。经对 4 4头 5 0～ 6 0日龄未免疫的断奶仔猪血清检测 ,其抗体效价在 1∶32以下的猪占88.36 % ,2 78头免疫猪血清的抗体效价在 1∶32或以上的猪占 92 .81%。表明Dot PPA ELISA适用于猪群猪丹毒的免疫监测和免疫力测定。     

Human Rights Watch v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Victim Status,Extraterritoriality and the Search for Principled Reasoning

In Human Rights Watch v Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office the UK Investigatory Powers Tribunal found that the relevant standard of ‘victim status’ that applies in secret surveillance cases consists in a potential risk of being subjected to surveillance and that the European Convention on Human Rights does not apply to the surveillance of individuals who reside outside of the UK. This note argues that the Tribunal's finding regarding the victim status of the applicants was sound but that the underlying reasoning was not. It concludes that the Tribunal's finding on extraterritoriality is unsatisfactory and that its engagement with the European Court of Human Rights case law on the matter lacked depth. Finally, the note considers the defects of the Human Rights Watch case, and the case law on extraterritoriality more generally, against the backdrop of the place of principled reasoning in human rights adjudication.