IP: Interesting and useful (but a little scary) software program

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: PBradfield () aol com
> Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 16:05:18 EST
> Subject: Interesting and useful  (but a little scary) software program
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> X-Mailer: AOL 6.0 for Windows US sub 10539
>
> Dear Dave,
>
> I was at a "First Tuesday" meeting in Washington DC this week and learned 
> about a product called TextOre that gave me pause.  From what I learned, 
> TextOre can quickly search through text (of any language) and look for 
> concepts and ideas (not just words) and locate them.
>
> What gave me pause about it was that governments could use this product 
> for good and for evil.   (The emcee of the event said that his law firm 
> had used TextOre to save them much money with Lexus/Nexus.)  I asked the 
> president of the company about a government such as China using it to 
> track dissidents that are communicating on the Internet and he blinked and 
> said, "We wouldn't sell it to them."   yeah, right. But what about our own 
> government???       I didn't ask him that question since he looked annoyed 
> by my first question.   Their web site is textore.net.
>
> I am not trying to be paranoid.  Just aware of what technology is bringing 
> us.
>
> There was another company (Aurora Biometrics) that had a pretty good 
> facial recognition program that could be used for security access.  It 
> could tell the difference from a picture and a actual head.   It worked 
> fairly quickly.   Aurora's product was selected as the "most likely to 
> succeed" product shown that night (out of 10 presentations).
>
> Just thought you might want to know.
>
> Thanks for the IP updates.
> Phil Bradfield, Ph. D.
> VP - Tailored Lighting Inc.
> www.solux.net


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