Sony Xperia Eye could thrust AI-based ‘lifelogging’ into the limelight

Lifelogging cameras, despite having been floating around in various R&D labs for well over a decade and inspiring many a strange and wonderful science fiction tale, have categorically failed to take hold in the mainstream. Now Sony is stepping up to the plate to have another crack at this concept with the Xperia Eye.

Before diving in the Xperia Eye, let’s take a quick survey of the lifelogging genre to throw into better relief the advantages Sony is hoping to bring to the table. Lifelogging, for those new to the concept, is the process of using technology to track personal data generated by our own behavioral activities. In its most ubiquitous form, lifelogging consists of recording health and fitness metrics. This is part of what’s been termed the quantified self-movement, the bulwark of which is formed by many popular smartphone apps such as Health Tracker and Under Armour Record. Lifelogging cameras take this a step further, adding a visual record to the layer cake of data that represents one’s unfolding life experience.

Lifelogging cameras have been touted on the basis of capturing important visual moments that one would otherwise miss if only possessed of a conventional camera, such as the gleeful exclamation spilling from a child when they glimpse a surprise birthday cake. And this is where Sony thinks they might have arrived at a means of improving upon the previous offerings. Rather than generate terabytes of superfluous photos and video footage, they have equipped their camera with forms of AI such as face recognition and voice detection, such that it selectively records the moments most likely to be significant to the individual. We have reported on similar developments before involving scene recognition by artificial intelligence, and it’s likely that Sony is using similar technology in their Xperia Eye.

Despite these kind of software breakthroughs, the Xperia Eye will still have to contend with a host of problems, the most significant being the lack of a really compelling use case. For most users, the inconvenience of wearing a camera 24/7 outweighs the benefits of capturing that one interesting photo or phrase that might occur during the course of a day. Rather than fancy voice-recognizing AI, Sony may be better served by taking a page from science fiction to promote the use of their device. In The Final Cut, a 2004 sci-fi thriller, Robin Williams plays a man who is responsible for curating video montages taken from a lifelogging device and forming a highlight reel of one’s life. Given the millennial generation’s penchant for selfies, a fast and easy method for both creating and sharing such a highlight reel might be the magic bullet necessary to take a device like Xperia Eye to prime time.

But science fiction also warns of a dark side to lifelogging and one we should probably heed before going gaga over video selfies. I will call this the Too Much Truth Dilemma, and it’s most clearly spelled out in an episode from Black Mirror, in which a husband and wife see the fabric of their lives gradually unravel thanks to the small disturbing truths they learn about each other from their lifelogging devices.

It turns out nature has already equipped us with a kind of lifelogging device in the form of our long and short term memories, which are in most cases curated to help us remain stable and happy individuals. Start examining our experiences in too much detail through the unapologetic lens of the lifelogging camera, and we may find that the truth is a poor substitute for fiction.

Apple may design its own servers to avoid government snooping

We’ve known for roughly two years the US government has programs devoted to intercepting computer hardware mid-shipment. These programs are used to insert backdoors or spyware deep into a system’s firmware before it even arrives at its destination. A new report claims Apple is looking into building its own servers as a way to thwart this type of insertion.

The Information (currently offline as of this writing) reported yesterday that:

Apple has long suspected that servers it ordered from the traditional supply chain were intercepted during shipping, with additional chips and firmware added to them by unknown third parties in order to make them vulnerable to infiltration, according to a person familiar with the matter. At one point, Apple even assigned people to take photographs of motherboards and annotate the function of each chip, explaining why it was supposed to be there. Building its own servers with motherboards it designed would be the most surefire way for Apple to prevent unauthorized snooping via extra chips.

Security isn’t Apple’s only motivation — the company has expressed unhappiness with Amazon Web Services and, according to VentureBeat, is working on a plan to build its own in-house data centers and software to run them. Currently, services like iTunes are mostly outsourced to other providers like Amazon or Microsoft’s competing Azure. Apple is far from the first company to take steps like this; Google publicly announced it would begin encrypting all data that travels through its data centers after information leaked that the NSA had tapped undersea cables to spy on Google’s data centers from the inside, where data was once unencrypted.

Whether or not this approach can actually lock out groups like the NSA is an incredibly difficult question. Apple could contract with companies like Foxconn to build hardware to its own specifications, but there’s no guarantee that the NSA wouldn’t find a different method of penetrating Apple’s security. A government agency that’s gone to the trouble of building infrastructure to intercept, bug, and re-ship network equipment and servers is obviously one that’s willing to spend top dollar to guarantee results. Apple can make the game more difficult, certainly, but can it close the loopholes altogether?

This rumor isn’t going to be well-received by the government, which has already indicated it believes Apple’s behavior is just shy of treasonous in various court filings related to the San Bernardino shooting. Building its own data centers and designing its own hardware from the ground up, at least partly for the express purpose of locking the government out, isn’t going to sit well with the folks in Washington.

Up to this point, the battle over encryption has largely been waged behind the scenes. The White House has declined to push for any legislation that would actually ban encryption or formally require companies to cooperate with the government in turning over keys and access. One likely reason for this state of affairs is that government agencies feel reasonably assured that they can get the data they want without the battle public legislation would spark. If government agencies start feeling less sure of their own ability to compel cooperation or access information at will, this fight could go more public than it has to date. The technology sector would ferociously oppose such legislative fiat (assuming Congress was willing to consider it in the first place), but whether that opposition would be sufficient to sway the final outcome is another unknown.

Both Republicans and Democrats have given great deference to the NSA, FBI, and their claims that warrantless wiretaps and mass surveillance are required if the American people are to be kept safe. Apple, however, isn’t alone in its efforts. Last year, Cisco’s security chief announced it purposefully shipped to fake locations to keep the NSA from targeting and intercepting its hardware.

John McAfee offers to unlock killer's iPhone for FBI

Anti-virus software creator John McAfee has said he will break the encryption on an iPhone that belonged to San Bernardino killer Syed Farook.

Mr McAfee made the offer to the FBI in an article published by Business Insider.

Apple has refused to comply with a court order asking it to unlock the device, dividing opinion over whether the firm should be compelled to do so.

Mr McAfee said he and his team would take on the task "free of charge".

The offer came as Mr McAfee continues his campaign as a US presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party.

"It will take us three weeks," he claimed in his article.

Security expert Graham Cluley told the BBC he was sceptical of Mr McAfee's claims.

"The iPhone is notoriously difficult to hack compared to other devices," he said.

'Dead men's tales'

For instance, Mr Cluley cast doubts on Mr McAfee's idea that he could use "social engineering" to work out the pass-code of Farook's locked iPhone.

This is a process by which hackers try to find out login credentials by tricking people into giving them away.

"In a nutshell, dead men tell no tales," said Mr Cluley. "Good luck to Mr McAfee trying to socially engineer a corpse into revealing its pass-code."

"The FBI isn't interested anyway, they want to set a precedent that there shouldn't be locks they can't break," he added.

In his article, Mr McAfee stated that he was keen to unlock the device because he didn't want Apple to be forced to implement a "back door" - a method by which security services could access data on encrypted devices.

Chief executive of Apple Tim Cook had previously said in a statement that the firm did not want to co-operate.

He argued that introducing a back door would make all iPhones vulnerable to hacking by criminals.

'I would eat shoe'

Mr McAfee believes that it would be possible to retrieve data from the phone by other means - though he did not give many details of how it would be done.

"I would eat my shoe on the Neil Cavuto [television] show if we could not break the encryption on the San Bernardino phone," he added.

Some, including the Australian Children's eSafety Commissioner who spoke to tech website ZDNet, have said that Apple would not necessarily have to introduce a back door, but that the firm is only being asked to provide access to a single device.

Tech firms' support

Other tech firms have rallied behind Apple's following a few days of debate over how it should respond to the FBI's request.

Google boss Sundar Pichai had already expressed his support for Mr Cook and yesterday chief executive of Twitter Jack Dorsey added his approval via a tweet.

In a statement, Facebook said it condemned terrorism and had solidarity with the victims of terror, but would continue its policy of opposing requests to diminish security.

"We will continue to fight aggressively against requirements for companies to weaken the security of their systems," it said.

"These demands would create a chilling precedent and obstruct companies' efforts to secure their products."