Please join: Bosch and Security Products

Topic: IP Video for Small- to Mid-sized Systems

Date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Time: 2 PM (EST) 11 AM (PST)

Register Today at:

http://click.1105info.com/?qs=188efa80140a2577e0dd09d7e6b65c3dbd3e5aa668be7895389fe3d47700aa7d805c656315f1b31b

Overview:

With declining prices and rapid technology advancement, IP video surveillance is experiencing remarkable growth. The possibilities for system design are nearly endless with a wide range of available HD cameras and numerous options for recording, viewing and managing video including access via mobile devices.

Looking for advice on ways to design systems that will meet the specific needs and requirements of the end user? This webinar will provide tips for putting together IP video systems, covering a range of sizes and complexity.

Attend this webinar to learn about:

  Combining IP cameras with on-board storage and free viewing software for simple, affordable surveillance   Using mobile devices for high resolution video playback within limited bandwidth connections   Choosing plug and play video management with appliances that feature a complete  system-in-a-box  design   Recording video direct to iSCSI storage to eliminate the need for network video recorders

About the Speakers:

Cheryl Bard and Christopher Johnston are product marketing managers for Bosch Security Systems, Inc. responsible for educating the market on surveillance technologies for systems of all sizes. Their extensive knowledge of IP system design can help you find the best mix of technologies for all of your video projects.

A Q&A session will be held during the last 15 minutes of the Webinar.

Date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Time: 2 PM (EST) 11 AM (PST)

Register Today at:

http://click.1105info.com/?qs=188efa80140a2577e0dd09d7e6b65c3dbd3e5aa668be7895389fe3d47700aa7d805c656315f1b31b

Date: Thursday, June 6, 2013
Registration: 11:30AM
Meeting: 12:00PM
Location: PSEG Building 80 Park Plaza Newark, NJ

The cost for this event is $25.00 which can be made by PayPal.

We also now accept credit cards at the meeting.

This FREE webinar is sponsored by Panasonic
CPTED for the Modern Security Professional
May 15, 2013 @ noon Eastern U.S.
60 minutes

Applying the principles of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) is very effective in protecting assets as well as drastically improving the quality-of-life experience in work and living environments. Get a quick refresher on the principles, practices, and strategies of CPTED and review how they can be applied to all building types, risk threat vulnerability assessments, and critical infrastructure protection.

Contributor

Randall I. Atlas, Ph.D., AIA, CPP
President, Atlas Safety & Security Design Inc.
Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Dr. Atlas, America’s only architect / criminologist, is a nationally recognized trainer and author on CPTED. He authored the book 21st Century Security and CPTED in 2008, and the 2nd Edition in 2013. Dr. Atlas received his Doctorate of Criminology from Florida State University, a Masters in Architecture from the University of Illinois, and a Bachelor of Criminal Justice degree from University of South Florida. He is a registered architect in Florida, and nationally accredited with the National Council Architectural Registration Board. Dr. Atlas is past chairman of the ASIS Security Architecture and Engineering Council, and an appointed member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Premises Security Committee, which developed the new NFPA 730/731 premises security standards and guidelines. He is a committee member of the American Society of Testing Materials (ASTM) F33 on Corrections and Detention Facilities, and the ASTM E54 Homeland Security Committee.

Sponsored by

The Statue of Liberty is getting a facelift, though the changes aren’t only cosmetic. An upgraded “state of the art” security system will help keep Lady Liberty safe when it reopens soon. But what does the system entail, and could it involve a controversial new face-recognition technology that can detect visitors’ ethnicity from a distance? I tried to find out—and a New York surveillance company tried to stop me.

Face recognition was first implemented at the Statue of Liberty in 2002 as part of an attempt to spot suspected terrorists whose mug shots were stored on a federal database. At the time, the initiative was lambasted by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it was so ineffective that “Osama Bin Laden himself” could easily dodge it.

But the technology has advanced since then: Late last year, trade magazine Police Product Insight reported that a trial of the latest face-recognition software was being planned at the Statue of Liberty for the end of 2012 to “help law enforcement and intelligence agencies spot suspicious activity.” New York surveillance camera contractor Total Recall Corp. was quoted as having told the magazine that it was set for trial at the famed tourist attraction software called FaceVACS, made by German firm Cognitec. FaceVACS, Cognitec boasts in marketing materials, can guess ethnicity based on a person’s skin color, flag suspects on watch lists, estimate the age of a person, detect gender, “track” faces in real time, and help identify suspects if they have tried to evade detection by putting on glasses, growing a beard, or changing their hairstyle. Some versions of face-recognition software used today remain ineffective, as investigators found in the aftermath of the Boston bombings. But Cognitec claims its latest technology has a far higher accuracy rating—and is certainly more advanced than the earlier versions of face-recognition software, like the kind used at the Statue of Liberty back in 2002. (It is not clear whether the face-recognition technology remained in use at the statue after 2002.)

Liberty Island took such a severe battering during Sandy that it has stayed closed to the public ever since—thwarting the prospect of a pilot of the new software. But the statue, which attracts more than 3 million visitors annually according to estimates, is finally due to open again on July 4. In March, Statue of Liberty superintendent Dave Luchsinger told me that plans were underway to install an upgraded surveillance system in time for the reopening. “We are moving forward with the proposal that Total Recall has come up with,” he said, adding that “[new] systems are going in, and I know they are state of the art.” When it came to my questions about face recognition, though, things started to get murky. Was that particular project back on track? “We do work with Cognitec, but right now because of what happened with Sandy it put a lot of different pilots that we are doing on hold,” Peter Millius, Total Recall’s director of business development, said in a phone call. “It’s still months away, and the facial recognition right now is not going to be part of this phase.” Then, he put me on hold and came back a few minutes later with a different position—insisting that the face-recognition project had in fact been “vetoed” by the Park Police and adding that I was “not authorized” to write about it.

That was weird, but it soon got weirder. About an hour after I spoke with Total Recall, an email from Cognitec landed in my inbox. It was from the company’s marketing manager, Elke Oberg, who had just one day earlier told me in a phone interview that “yes, they are going to try out our technology there” in response to questions about a face-recognition pilot at the statue. Now, Oberg had sent a letter ordering me to “refrain from publishing any information about the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” It said that I had “false information,” that the project had been “cancelled,” and that if I wrote about it, there would be “legal action.” Total Recall then separately sent me an almost identical letter—warning me not to write “any information about Total Recall and the Statue of Liberty or the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” Both companies declined further requests for comment, and Millius at Total Recall even threatened to take legal action against me personally if I continued to “harass” him with additional questions.

Linda Friar, a National Park Service spokeswoman, confirmed that the procurement process for security screening equipment is ongoing, but she refused to comment on whether the camera surveillance system inside the statue was being upgraded on the grounds that it was “sensitive information.” So will there be a trial of new face-recognition software—or did the Park Police “cancel” or “veto” this? It would probably be easier to squeeze blood from a stone than to obtain answers to those questions. “I’m not going to show my hand as far as what security technologies we have,” Greg Norman, Park Police captain at Liberty Island, said in a brief phone interview.

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“Making the transition from Public Sector to Private Sector”

A special presentation  for active duty or recently separated law enforcement or military pprofessionals.

May 8th, 11:00 a.m. to Noon at the Jacob Javits Center

Followed by a free Networking Luncheon from Noon to 2:00 p.m. for both Military and Law Enforcement

Reserve May 8 and 9 of 2013 and join us in NYC for the annual ASIS NYC Chapter Security Conference and Trade Show presented in conjunction with ASIS International Headquarters at the Jacob Javits Convention Center. Pre-register for the FREE Exhibit Hall now at: www.asisnyc.org.

ASIS 23rd New York City Security Conference and Expo

While, as the reader comments show, there may be objections to having a machine grade college essays, the annexed news story demonstrates how automated  biometrics are rapidly become a part of the human condition.

It seems to me that a valid argument can be made that the systems described by the annexed article are, at least in part,  biometric systems.  I am using biometrics in its broad, original sense, rather than in the narrow sense of identifying a person in ways that distinguish him from all other persons. However, it may also be that the process of taking the test also provides enough identity-relevant information to distinguish this test taker from all others — thereby foiling an effort to have a person take a test in the name of another person.

In most human interactions, identity is a component of the interaction.  Is this the person he claims to be?  Is this a man or a woman? Is this a child or an adult? Is this a citizen, an authorized visitor or something else?  Is this a person.

Once identity is adequately established, the interaction may be simple or complex.  Simple is in the nature of yes or no or multiple choice, which the machine is programmed to present and then act upon the response.  A variation on that is the telephone moderation device that tries to figure our what department you ought be connected to.

Then, there is the more free-form exchange, where the speaker or writer comments in a way that might be called an essay, i.e., a series of phrases that ask informational assistance or, perhaps, that provide information.  If the essay is prompted by question that narrows the field under discussion, the machine at least has the benefit of a context against which it can judge the essay.  Q. Can I help you with travel directions within Manhattan? A. Yes  Q. Where would you like to go?  A. Times Square  or A. Nearest hospital or A. City Hall.

We move into the next level, when the answer to the question is “My mother’s house”. There the machine might get hung up looking for a location or business that has that name or that closely approximates that name. Or, it might instantly react as a human would – Q. Where does your mother live?

From there, it can escalate to every increasing levels of complexity, including inquiries and comments that are not limited in nature.

As the conversation becomes more complex and less anticipated, it seems to me that we will truly have a biometric analysis occurring by the machine, as it seeks to have a meeting of the minds with humans.

HJB

<nyt_headline version=”1.0″>New Test for Computers: Grading Essays at College Level

Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

EdX, a nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will release automated software that uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers.

<nyt_byline>By JOHN MARKOFF

Published: April 4, 2013 – NY Times

<nyt_text><nyt_correction_top>Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program.

And then, instead of being done with that exam, imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try to improve your grade.

EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

The new service will bring the educational consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education. Although automated grading systems for multiple-choice and true-false tests are now widespread, the use of artificial intelligence technology to grade essay answers has not yet received widespread endorsement by educators and has many critics.

Anant Agarwal, an electrical engineer who is president of EdX, predicted that the instant-grading software would be a useful pedagogical tool, enabling students to take tests and write essays over and over and improve the quality of their answers. He said the technology would offer distinct advantages over the traditional classroom system, where students often wait days or weeks for grades.

“There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback,” Mr. Agarwal said. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback.”

But skeptics say the automated system is no match for live teachers. One longtime critic, Les Perelman, has drawn national attention several times for crafting nonsense essays that have fooled software grading programs into giving high marks. He has also been highly critical of studies that purport to show that the software compares well to human graders.

“My first and greatest objection to the research is that they did not have any valid statistical test comparing the software directly to human graders,” said Mr. Perelman, a retired director of writing and current researcher at M.I.T.

He is among a group of educators who last month began circulating a petition opposing automated assessment software. The group, which calls itself Professionals Against Machine Scoring Of Student Essays In High-Stakes Assessment, has collected nearly 2,000 signatures, including some from luminaries like Noam Chomsky.

“Let’s face the realities of automatic essay scoring,” the group’s statement reads in part. “Computers cannot ‘read.’ They cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication: accuracy, reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others.”

But EdX expects its software to be adopted widely by schools and universities. EdX offers free online classes from Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley; this fall, it will add classes from Wellesley, Georgetown and the University of Texas. In all, 12 universities participate in EdX, which offers certificates for course completion and has said that it plans to continue to expand next year, including adding international schools.

The EdX assessment tool requires human teachers, or graders, to first grade 100 essays or essay questions. The system then uses a variety of machine-learning techniques to train itself to be able to grade any number of essay or answers automatically and almost instantaneously.

The software will assign a grade depending on the scoring system created by the teacher, whether it is a letter grade or numerical rank. It will also provide general feedback, like telling a student whether an answer was on topic or not.

Dr. Agarwal said he believed that the software was nearing the capability of human grading.

“This is machine learning and there is a long way to go, but it’s good enough and the upside is huge,” he said. “We found that the quality of the grading is similar to the variation you find from instructor to instructor.”

EdX is not the first to use automated assessment technology, which dates to early mainframe computers in the 1960s. There are now a range of companies offering commercial programs to grade written test answers, and four states — Louisiana, North Dakota, Utah and West Virginia — are using some form of the technology in secondary schools. A fifth, Indiana, has experimented with it. In some cases the software is used as a “second reader,” to check the reliability of the human graders.

But the growing influence of the EdX consortium to set standards is likely to give the technology a boost. On Tuesday, Stanford announced that it would work with EdX to develop a joint educational system that will incorporate the automated assessment technology.

Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity, recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create massively open online courses, or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because of the value of instant feedback.

“It allows students to get immediate feedback on their work, so that learning turns into a game, with students naturally gravitating toward resubmitting the work until they get it right,” said Daphne Koller, a computer scientist and a founder of Coursera.

Last year the Hewlett Foundation, a grant-making organization set up by one of the Hewlett-Packard founders and his wife, sponsored two $100,000 prizes aimed at improving software that grades essays and short answers. More than 150 teams entered each category. A winner of one of the Hewlett contests, Vik Paruchuri, was hired by EdX to help design its assessment software.

“One of our focuses is to help kids learn how to think critically,” said Victor Vuchic, a program officer at the Hewlett Foundation. “It’s probably impossible to do that with multiple-choice tests. The challenge is that this requires human graders, and so they cost a lot more and they take a lot more time.”

Mark D. Shermis, a professor at the University of Akron in Ohio, supervised the Hewlett Foundation’s contest on automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experiment. In his view, the technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.

With increasingly large class sizes, it is impossible for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing assignments, he said. Plus, he noted, critics of the technology have tended to come from the nation’s best universities, where the level of pedagogy is much better than at most schools.

“Often they come from very prestigious institutions where, in fact, they do a much better job of providing feedback than a machine ever could,” Dr. Shermis said. “There seems to be a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world.”

Retailers Track Employee Thefts in Vast Databases

<nyt_byline>By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

Published: April 2, 2013 – NY Times

<nyt_text><nyt_correction_top>Facing a wave of employee theft, retailers across the country have helped amass vast databases of workers accused of stealing and are using that information to keep employees from working again in the industry.

The repositories of information, like First Advantage Corporation’s Esteem database, often contain scant details about suspected thefts and routinely do not involve criminal charges. Still, the information can be enough to scuttle a job candidate’s chances.

Some of the employees, who submit written statements after being questioned by store security officers, have no idea that they admitted committing a theft or that the information will remain in databases, according to interviews with consumer lawyers, regulators and employees.

The databases, which have tens of thousands of subscribers and are used by major retailers like Target, CVS and Family Dollar, are aimed at combating employee theft, which accounts for a large swath of missing merchandise. The latest figures available, from 2011, put the loss at about 44 percent of missing merchandise, valued at about $15 billion, according to a trade group, the National Retail Federation.

Retailers “don’t want to take a chance on hiring somebody that they might have a problem with,” said Richard Mellor, the federation’s vice president for loss prevention.

But the databases, which are legal, are facing scrutiny from labor lawyers and federal regulators, who worry they are so sweeping that innocent employees can be harmed. The lawyers say workers are often coerced into confessing, sometimes when they have done nothing wrong, without understanding that they will be branded as thieves.

The Federal Trade Commission has fielded complaints about the databases and is examining whether they comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal law aimed at curbing inaccurate consumer information and giving consumers more control, said Anthony Rodriguez, a staff lawyer at the agency.

Screening for suspected episodes of shoplifting is one part of a background check, as companies scour for evidence of criminal convictions or sex-offender registration. Almost all retailers perform background checks, according to a 2011 survey from the federation. But some background-check companies are wary of the theft admissions, which retailers submit to the databases.

“That is not a product that we sell, because I think it’s a product fraught with risk and inefficiency,” said William Greenblatt, the chief executive of the background-check company Sterling Infosystems.

Federal authorities have zeroed in on background-check data. Last summer, the F.T.C. settled charges with HireRight, which provides a retail-theft database along with other types of screenings. Among the accusations, the agency said that some records were inaccurate and that the firm made it too difficult for consumers to dispute claims.

LexisNexis agreed last week to pay $13.5 million to settle a class-action suit on behalf of 31,000 people that accused the firm of violating consumer protection laws by selling background checks to debt collectors. The company did not admit wrongdoing.

As the economic recovery limps forward, consumer lawyers say, the consequences of the retail theft databases’ can be particularly devastating. With so many job applicants, employers have little incentive to hire someone with a tarnished background.

Since the recession, lawsuits have proliferated against the companies that operate retail theft databases, like LexisNexis, which owned Esteem until this year, HireRight and GIS, according to a review of court records. In the last year, the nature of the lawsuits has changed, too, as lawyers try to build class-action cases. HireRight did not return calls for comment, and the other firms declined to comment.

Stores carefully train loss-prevention officers to ensure the admissions are accurate, Mr. Mellor said, and the databases reverify information. But with an inaccurate statement, he said, “your options for getting it out of a database are slim.” Some retailers are moving away from the databases. Home Depot, which just stopped using Esteem, said the decision followed a general review of “systems and services.”

For Keesha Goode, $34.97 in missing merchandise was enough to destroy her future in retailing.

Ms. Goode, 28, was a clerk at the discount store Forman Mills in 2008, when she was accused of not ringing up a former employee’s purchases. During a nearly two-hour examination, Ms. Goode, who maintains her innocence, said she had agreed to write out a statement because she worried she would be sent to jail.

In looping cursive, she said her accusers were trying to make her out as a liar, adding, “I was just doing my job.” Ms. Goode was immediately fired, and was asked to pay back the $34.97. She had no idea, she said, that the statement would go into a shared database.

She received a letter from Dollar General alerting her that she had been turned down for a job partly because of her listing in Esteem, and a copy of the report showed that she had a “verified admission” for “theft of merchandise.” She wrote LexisNexis, “I was accused of not reporting on a former employee who was stealing merchandise, but I did not steal anything myself.”

The company responded that it had reinvestigated and “verified” the accuracy of the information. Ms. Goode, who now works at a halfway house, has a lawsuit pending against LexisNexis, accusing the company of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Forman Mills and Dollar General did not respond to requests for comment. LexisNexis has moved to toss out the lawsuit, arguing that the company abided by the law, according to court filings.

As in Ms. Goode’s case, the admission statements are typically obtained by a store’s security force. Employees are often willing to say anything to ward off what can feel like an interrogation, the lawyers say. Another problem: the employee is informally accused and ultimately deprived of the protections, like due process, that a suspect would receive in a police precinct, for example. Lawyers also say that admission forms do not typically warn employees that it will go on their record.

“We’re not talking about a criminal record, which either is there or is not there — it’s an admission statement which is being provided by an employer,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a lawyer at Langer, Grogan & Diver who represents Ms. Goode.

Such statements may contain no outright admission of guilt, like one submitted after Kyra Moore, then a CVS employee, was accused of stealing: “picked up socks left them at the checkout and never came back to buy them,” it read. When Ms. Moore later applied for a job at Rite Aid, she was deemed “noncompetitive.” She is suing Esteem.

CVS, noting that it is not a defendant in this lawsuit, said that many retail companies used Esteem “to report and share information about employees who have admitted to theft from their employers,” and that CVS only sent written theft admissions to Esteem.

Still, lawyers say those admissions can be problematic. The database is “a secret blacklist,” Mr. Ackelsberg said. “The employees don’t know about it until they have already been hurt.”

Guest Speaker- Lori Hennon-Bell

Vice President and Chief Security Officer
Global Security
Prudential Financial

Lori Hennon-Bell is vice president and chief security officer of Global Security at Prudential Financial, responsible for the safety and security of Prudential’s employees, stakeholders and

property throughout the United States and worldwide. Hennon-Bell joined Prudential in August 2005 after retiring from a 25-year career with the New Jersey State Police where she served at various road stations, the Training Bureau, Human Resource

Management Bureau, Patrol Support Bureau, and the Division Staff Section where she was promoted through the ranks and attained Lieutenant Colonel and assigned as the Deputy Superintendent of

Administration in 2002. In 2004, New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and Colonel Joseph R. Fuentes announced the creation

of the new State Police Homeland Security Branch within the state police, tapping LTC Lori Hennon-Bell to lead this new initiative. This new command was comprised of over 550 troopers and

another 500 civilians and served as the front line prevention and response arm for the state of New Jersey in combating terrorism.

Hennon-Bell has an undergraduate degree from Thomas Edison State College, a graduate degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, is a state Certified Public Manager, has completed numerous leadership and management certificate programs including, Northwestern University’s 10 week School of Staff and Command and the Executive Management Program, ISMA Security Executive Leadership Program, The Drug Enforcement Administrations Leadership Program, United States Secret Service Executive Protection Program in Washington, D.C., to name a few.

The cost for this event is $35.00 which can be made by PayPal by going to our web site at: www.asisnnj.org.

We also now accept credit cards at the meeting.