Canada On Way To Brave New World Of Surveillance

Since arriving from his native Romania in 1985, he has taught at the University of Ottawa where, in 2004, he was named a university research chair. Now, he's on the cutting edge of an emerging brave new world. Last week, a team he heads received $2 million from Ontario to develop and commercialize new surveillance technologies for such public spaces as airports, school campuses and shopping malls. Within five years, Petriu expects to be able to provide software for a smart system that will, in real time, analyze data from a range of sensors and monitoring devices -- including video, audio, infrared, biological and radiation -- to help police zero in on people bent on doing harm. Petriu dismisses the privacy and civil liberties concerns his research raises. "Unfortunately, too much unchecked liberty is abused by other persons," he says. When it comes to protecting civil liberties, Petriu has more faith in machines than humans. "A machine has no race, no colour, no bias -- only the biases that you put there, but you can correct them," he says. ... http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=c66fff5b-177f-4105-b03b-9f6af6032dd3&k=8028

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