#Face Recognition System In Delhi | I Security System

[isecuritysystem]

Face Recognition System In Delhi | I Security System

In recent years, the need for advanced security solutions has grown rapidly in urban centers, and Delhi is no exception. As crime rates, identity fraud, and security threats continue to evolve, businesses, housing societies, and government institutions are increasingly investing in next-gen surveillance technologies. One such innovation is the Face Recognition System In Delhi, which has transformed how we approach security and access control. I Security System, a leading name in smart surveillance and biometric solutions, is at the forefront of this transformation.

[newstfionline]

Monday, April 26, 2021

California ponders slow growth future (AP) In 1962, when California’s population of more than 17 million surpassed New York’s, Gov. Pat Brown celebrated by declaring a state holiday. In the coming days, when the U.S. Census Bureau is expected to release the state’s latest head count, there probably will be no celebrations. Over the past decade, California’s average annual population growth rate slipped to 0.06%—lower than at any time since at least 1900. The state is facing the prospect of losing a U.S. House seat for the first time in its history, while political rivals Texas and Florida add more residents and political clout. The reality behind the slowed growth isn’t complicated. Experts point to three major factors: declining birth rates; a long-standing trend of fewer people moving in from other states than leaving; and a drop in international immigration, particularly from Asia, which has made up for people moving to other states. California is in the throes of a yearslong housing crisis as building fails to keep up with demand, forcing more people onto the streets and making home ownership unattainable for many. The state has the nation’s highest poverty rate when housing is taken into account. Its water resources are consistently taxed, and the state has spent more than half of the past decade in drought. Freeways are jammed as more people move to the suburbs, and worsening wildfires are destroying homes and communities.

Armenians Celebrate Biden’s Genocide Declaration as Furious Turkey Summons US Ambassador (Newsweek) Armenia celebrated President Joe Biden’s recognition of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide on Saturday, as Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador and strongly condemned the move. In acknowledging of the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide, Biden went further than his predecessors in the White House after years of careful language on the issue. The move risks fracturing America’s relationship with Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally and NATO partner. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan sent Biden a letter praising his statement. Meanwhile, officials in Turkey quickly denounced Biden’s remarks and summoned the US Ambassador to Ankara. In a statement, Turkey said its foreign minister, Sedat Onal, has told ambassador David Satterfield that Biden’s remarks caused “wounds in ties that will be hard to repair.” Onal also reportedly told Satterfield that Turkey “rejected it, found it unacceptable and condemned in the strongest terms.”

Ahead of Geneva talks, Cypriots march for peace (Reuters) Thousands of Cypriots from both sides of a dividing line splitting their island marched for peace on Saturday, ahead of informal talks in Geneva next week on the future of negotiations. With some holding olive branches, people walked in the bright spring sunshine around the medieval walls circling the capital, Nicosia. The United Nations has called for informal talks of parties in the Cyprus dispute in Geneva on April 27-29, in an attempt to look for a way forward in resuming peace talks that collapsed in mid-2017. Prospects for progress appear slim, with each side sticking to their respective positions. Greek Cypriots say Cyprus should be reunited under a federal umbrella, citing relevant United Nations resolutions. The newly-elected Turkish Cypriot leader has called for a two-state resolution. Cyprus was split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup, though the seeds of separation were sown earlier, when a power-sharing administration crumbled in violence in 1963, just three years after independence from Britain.

World’s Biggest Covid Crisis Threatens Modi’s Grip on India (Bloomberg) As India recorded more than 234,000 new Covid-19 infections last Saturday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an election rally in the West Bengal town of Asansol and tweeted: “I’ve never seen such huge crowds.” The second wave of the coronavirus has since grown into a tsunami. India is now the global coronavirus hotspot, setting records for the world’s highest number of daily cases. Images of hospitals overflowing with the sick and dying are flooding social media, as medical staff and the public alike make desperate appeals for oxygen supplies. The political and financial capitals of New Delhi and Mumbai are in lockdown, with only the sound of ambulance sirens punctuating the quiet, but there’s a growing chorus of blame directed at Modi over his government’s handling of the pandemic. “At this crucial time he is fighting for votes and not against Covid,” said Panchanan Maharana, a community activist from the state of Odisha, who previously supported Modi’s policies but will now look for alternative parties to back. “He is failing to deliver—he should stop talking and focus on saving people’s lives and livelihoods.” Modi is seen by many as a polarizing leader whose brand of nationalism that promotes the dominance of Hindus has appalled and enraptured the nation. Whether the pandemic will dent his appeal remains unclear.

ASEAN leaders tell Myanmar coup general to end killings (AP) Southeast Asian leaders demanded an immediate end to killings and the release of political detainees in Myanmar in an emergency summit Saturday with its top general and coup leader who, according to Malaysia’s prime minister, did not reject them outright. The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations also told Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing during the two-hour talks in Jakarta that a dialogue between contending parties in Myanmar should immediately start, with the help of ASEAN envoys. Daily shootings by police and soldiers since the Feb. 1 coup have killed more than 700 mostly peaceful protesters and bystanders, according to several independent tallies. The messages conveyed to Min Aung Hlaing were unusually blunt and could be seen as a breach of the conservative 10-nation bloc’s bedrock principle forbidding member states from interfering in each other’s affairs. But Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said that policy should not lead to inaction if a domestic situation “jeopardizes the peace, security, and stability of ASEAN and the wider region” and there is international clamor for resolute action.

Sunken missing Indonesian submarine found broken into pieces (Reuters) A missing Indonesian submarine has been found, broken into at least three parts, at the bottom of the Bali Sea, army and navy officials said on Sunday, as the president sent condolences to relatives of the 53 crew. Navy chief of staff Yudo Margono said the crew were not to blame for the accident and that the submarine did not experience a blackout, blaming “forces of nature”. A sonar scan on Saturday detected the submarine at 850 metres (2,790 feet), far beyond the Nanggala’s diving range.

At least 82 die in Baghdad COVID hospital fire (Reuters) A fire sparked by an oxygen tank explosion killed at least 82 people and injured 110 at a hospital in Baghdad that had been equipped to house COVID-19 patients, an Interior Ministry spokesman said on Sunday. “We urgently need to review safety measures at all hospitals to prevent such a painful incident from happening in future,” spokesman Khalid al-Muhanna told state television, announcing the toll.

Struggling to stay afloat during the pandemic, people turn to strangers online for help (Washington Post) The pandemic has been disastrous for millions of families across the United States. Roughly 8.5 million jobs have not returned since February 2020. Meanwhile, more than 564,000 people have died of the coronavirus, and 100,000 small businesses closed permanently in just the first three months of the crisis. The government has provided help, including through multiple relief packages that sent out three rounds of stimulus checks and extended unemployment benefits. But for many people it hasn’t been enough—or come quickly enough—to avoid eviction, put food on the table and cover a growing pile of monthly bills. Enter crowdfunding, which has taken off more than ever in the past year as a way to supplement income. Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause—or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020—a 150 percent increase over 2019. But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses. As pandemic fatigue worsens, it’s getting hard to raise cash for basic expenses this way. Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. “I saw a whole bunch of zeros,” he said. Crowdfunding still tends to work best when people have a compelling story to tell.

Older people are the one group egalitarians discriminate against (Quartz) Young people have always been critical of their elders. What’s noteworthy about the way millennials and Zoomers talk about Baby Boomers today isn’t their disdain but its particulars: They resent the older generation because they feel shortchanged, deprived of promising futures. Gen Z, for example, famously channeled their frustration with the generation they hold responsible for issues like climate change and wealth inequality into the simple, sarcastic meme “OK boomer.” Vaccines aside, these economic frustrations are grounded in reality. At the same time, younger people’s systemic objections to the distribution of wealth and power in the US can wind up curdling into ageism. A new paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, highlights the importance of guarding against this bias. Over 80% of Americans between the ages of 50 and 80 say they experience ageism in their everyday lives, according to a 2020 poll from the University of Michigan. “I think many people overlook ageism as a form of prejudice in American society,” says Ashley Martin, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University, who co-authored the paper with Michael North, an assistant professor at New York University. “It is often overlooked as an “ism” altogether, not only being condoned but often even promoted.” The paper identifies a surprising link between ageism and egalitarianism. The more participants in the study supported the principle of equality for all, the more likely they were to be biased against older people.

[seriousbusinessforhumans]

When you meet Kavitha Kuruganti, she may ask you to draw a farmer. In fact, go ahead draw a farmer anyway.

Now give yourself a big fat zero if you drew a moustachioed turban-toting man. If you drew a woman farmer, well done.

Most people think of that typical image when they think farmers, but about 9.75 crore women are into farming. A fact that was very evident at the Kisan Mukti March in November 2018, which Kavitha helped organise as part of the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee.

When over one lakh farmers walked all the way to Delhi, asking for their rights and better prices, many of them were women, and even children.

'We have strength, you can't ignore us,' Kavitha said about the farmers' message at the rally. 'We will be heard. That's one way of putting yourself squarely on the national agenda.

Kavitha worked on two Bills they're hoping to pass in Parliament on farmers. While drafting the Bill, Kavitha referred to farmers as 'she'.

'It goes to some advisor in the Lok Sabha secretariat, and it comes back with everything converted to 'he',' said Kavitha, who hits find-and-replace to change it back to ‘she'.

So if the Bills get passed, the official lexicon will actually have ‘she'. Whether it does get passed remains to be seen.

Many battles

Farmers in India face many challenges:

• Climate change and the vagaries of the monsoon

• Expensive seeds

• Poor soil quality

• Pests and the challenges of using pesticides that may be harmful as well

• Price fluctuations in the market

• Back-breaking work

• Challenges of getting credit

As a result of these challenges, many farmers actually grow food at a net loss.

The sad truth is that often farmers who grow our food don't have enough food or money to feed their own families!You may have read of the very high number of farmer suicides in different parts of the country over the last few years.

Even when food prices are high, as happened with the price of onions in 2019, often it was the middleman who was making the money and the farmers earned very little.

There are many laws in India about the use of genetically modified (GM) seeds for cultivation. Certain kinds are approved by the government and some are not.

GM seeds are often more expensive and farmers have to pay hefty prices each year to use them. At the same time, some of them have better yields, so farmers prefer to use them.

There are also some unregulated GM seeds being used in India, which may lead to crop loss.

GM seeds are supposed to be pest-resistant, but sometimes are not, leading to ruined harvests, as happened with the cotton crop in 2018.

Historically, says Kavitha, farming as a profession, across the country, was held high in terms of its social status:

It is a profession which is supposed to make you your own raja or king, whereas every other profession is about naukri-chakri, jobs.

But now we've come to a state where you don't get fair prices, you are getting indebted and you still have your sense of honour, and every time somebody asks you for repayment publicly you feel shamed and blamed for no real reason.

India has 24 per cent of the world's malnourished people, 30 per cent of the children under five have stunted growth (this is the highest percentage in the world).

Ironically, at the same time, obesity is fast becoming a nationwide problem. According to a story in IndiaSpend, ‘about 42 per cent of India's land area is facing drought.'

Given the hard work and low incomes, it is not surprising then that more and more children of farmers want to do jobs other than farming.

However, when profitable alternative models of farming and marketing are introduced, young people who have left their villages are coming back to farm.

What Kavitha does

Kavitha is part of the Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA). This is a network of many people and organisations across 20 Indian states that works on food security and farming issues.

This means that she works with many different groups of people, but all have common goals: securing better incomes for farming households and making sure that people have access to safe and nutritious food.

According to a study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), farming just isn't a profitable career option. But without farmers, there is no food.

Kavitha works closely with farmers to help them make more money now and in the near and distant future.

Her focus is on food security -- which is basically defined as nutritious food being available, accessible, and affordable for people.

Kavitha also campaigns for safe food -- free from pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMO).

She was part of the group that stopped BT brinjal --  a genetically modified species -- from being grown in India, and is now fighting GM mustard as well.

Kavitha is a founder-member of Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch (Forum for Women Farmers' Rights), that works on getting recognition for women farmers.

She has also been a member of many government bodies, as well as an alternative public distribution system in the 1990s, where millets such as jowar and bajra seeds and grains were distributed to farmers to make them self-sufficient in food production.

For instance, she worked in Telangana to look at a model for ecologically sustainable farming, with the Deccan Development Society (DDS). In fact, it was working with the DDS in her college days that inspired her to work in this area.

Kavitha was very impressed with the women at DDS who were keepers of traditional knowledge -- from seed banks to millet farming techniques.

‘These women are great teachers and a great inspiration. There's no way you couldn't have got hooked,' said Kavitha

Some of the areas that the DDS works in are promoting crop diversity, land rights for Dalit women, millet-based farming systems and helping create seed banks run by women.

They use sustainable farming, which means practices that do not involve industrial chemicals and GMOs. Farm land is cultivated with diverse crops that reduce soil depletion and better water management practices are employed.

One of the core elements of sustainable farming is seed diversity.

Seed banks are crucial because they store diverse species of traditional seeds.

Kavitha sees infusing once again a sense of dignity to the profession, as an important part of her work. She believes it's important to understand what goes into producing a grain of food.

She helps educate people that farmers need to be afforded respect, and that we should not complain about food prices: ‘You have to be exposed to farming, even if not in a practical sense. You've got to visit farmers. Only that will build a sense of appreciation around what effort it takes.'

Several members of ASHA ensure that farmers who pioneer good practices are recognised for their efforts in different ways.

They then become resource persons to spread information about these practices, such as seed conservation, or agro-ecological agriculture.

They also work for the rights of farmers.

What about climate change?

When it comes to climate variables, farmers are at its mercy. And on the other end of the spectrum, agriculture is one of the biggest climate culprits.

By making agriculture more sustainable and farmers more aware, Kavitha wants to make agriculture more resilient as well:

In so many ways, humankind is beyond redemption. To that extent, it is all right that we really are at that tipping point.

But having said that, you realize, that while you are getting phased out, the ones who suffer the most are the ones who are disadvantaged. That feels unacceptable.

Food democracy

Food democracy means people have the right to safe, nutritious food that has been justly produced. To ensure the fulfilment of this right, people have come together many times in history to protect seeds, water, soil and demand that farmers' rights be protected as well.

A challenge to democracy in this case is the privatization of seeds. It's really simple, seeds disperse and that's how we get food.

But now companies across the world are patenting seeds that they're tweaking genetically. And that means, once the seed is out in the world, in the name of disease resistance or drought resistance, the company will have a monopoly on its supply and sales, and can charge whatever it wants for it.

Genetically modified seeds and the privatization of seeds are perhaps one of the most hotly discussed subjects in food security.

Kavitha believes in the democratisation of science and technology. So when the government decided to allow BT brinjal to be cultivated in India, she was part of the group that used science communication effectively to stop it from happening.

‘In the GM debate, we got scientists to talk to one another, to show that there is no one science, and that there can be dissent in science,' she said.

Kavitha's firm that the BT brinjal moratorium (a temporary prohibition of an activity) was a win for the collective voices that protested: 'I think more than ever, people in the business of wanting to change the world for the better have to realize that you can't do it alone. That it requires collective efforts.

'Until you forge close connections and become a tangible force, you are not likely to change things, because what you are pitting yourself against are powerful forces.'

Not a farming family, yet...

Kavitha's family were not farmers.

But before every meal, her grandmother would put a bit of each dish, along with a drop of ghee, on a silver plate, take it to the courtyard and put it in a flower pot: 'It was to give it back to ‘bhoodevi' in a little patch of soil.

This kind of thanks giving to nature, a sense of gratitude that you've given me things free of cost and that I have to take care of you, which farmers seem to have... and a sense of gratitude that the rest of the food eaters used to have encapsulated in ‘annadatasukhibhava' (let the provider of the food be happy and blessed).

'I think both have gone missing.

'I don't know where we began to lose this.'

Kavitha is a food activist but she hates to cook. She wakes up in the morning at 6.15 am and cooks the entire day's meal along with her sister.

She doesn't even mind if her food isn't piping hot, because she's working or travelling for work through the day.

Kavitha started working in the area of food security because she was inspired by some of the women she met at DDS while doing her master's degree in communication at the Central University of Hyderabad. And she continues to be inspired by the communities she meets in the course of her work.

What can you do?

You can be a safe food advocate.

• If you meet a farmer, thank them. They grow your food and without food, there's nada.

• Don't waste food. Think of creative ways to use leftovers.

• Find out where your food has come from -- read labels to see how many natural and synthetic ingredients went into its making. Talk to the grocery store staff or your vegetable vendor. See how far has it travelled to reach your home.

• Celebrate food diversity -- don't eat the same food every day. Try millets and cook dishes like ragi dosa or foxtail upma. Stir fry a strange looking vegetable that you've never eaten before.

More champions working on food security

The founder of Navdanya, Vandana Shiva stands for seed sovereignty and food security. An agro-ecologist, she is one of the most vocal people against genetically modified seeds and their corporatization.

An organic farmer, Sangita Sharma is one of India's seed guardians. The founding trustee of Annadana, a not-for-profit that works on conserving India's diverse seed heritage, she has been recognized as the Jewel of Karnataka for her work on farmer rights and seed conservation.

A food and trade policy analyst, Devinder Sharma is an award-winning Indian journalist and researcher. He's active on Twitter where he talks a lot about food politics.

Jean Dreze, a Belgian-born Indian economist and food activist, is our go-to person to decode food security policies and understand issues of drought and livelihood insecurity.

Award-winning journalist and teacher, P Sainath has written widely about India's agrarian crisis, including the best-selling Everybody Loves A Good Drought. He started the People's Archive of Rural India to ‘capture the everyday lives of everyday people -- their labour, languages, livelihoods, arts, crafts and many other aspects of rural India.'

Excerpted from 10 Indian Champions Who Are Fighting To Save The Planet by Radha Rangarajan and Bijal Vachharajani, with the kind permission of the publishers, Duckbill Books and Penguin Random House India.

[payalk]

Covid triggers spike in demand for security apps for gated societies

New Delhi: As Indian cities fight to keep the pandemic at bay, technology-based apartment security apps have got a shot in the arm, as they help gated enclaves manage the crisis digitally.

From managing essential supplies to monitoring visitors, including domestic help, apps such as MyGate, NoBrokerHood, Adda and others have onboarded new societies and seen a sharp spike in adoption across the country.

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Bengaluru-based MyGate, one of the first movers in this space, has grown aggressively on the back of the covid crisis.

“In January, the MyGate app was being used across 6,000 gated communities, but thanks to the pandemic, we have been adding 1,500 societies every month and by the end of September, we will be in 12,000 societies across 100 cities in India," said Abhishek Kumar, co-founder and chief operating officer, MyGate.

Kumar said that currently the MyGate app is being used in 2 million homes across 10,000 societies in tier I and tier II cities.

Pre-covid, MyGate was in 40 cities but post-covid, the app has been able to spread across India to tier II cities such as Patna, Valsad, Nashik, Guwahati, Asansol etc. as societies want to digitize the security and visitor management system.

General Atlantic-backed real estate portal NoBroker’s NoBrokerHood app has also seen a jump in numbers. From about 1,000 societies pre-covid, the app is being used in about 5,000 societies currently across the six cities of Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad and Gurgaon.

During the pandemic, NoBroker built multiple features in the app related to the disease. The covid tracker feature in NoBrokerHood gives details of the containment zones near a society. So, in case a domestic help or a driver are coming from containment zones near the society, residents will be alerted and can choose to deny entry to them. The app is also integrated with the government’s Aarogya Setu app that determines risk status of a visitor or domestic help. Other safety measures include touchless entry with face recognition, temperature checks for visitors, mandating masks for all and live patrolling with live tracker.

Sources: https://www.livemint.com/technology/tech-news/covid-triggers-spike-in-demand-for-security-apps-for-gated-enclaves-11599474698745.html

[fiinovationopportunity]

Fiinovation CSR - The Business Ethics of Corporate Social Responsibility

The corporate social responsibility positively impacts profitability, competitiveness, and sustainability, and the study of business ethics has to lead to the development of various principles that are the foundation of good, ethical business practices. The main finding reveals that fulfilling CSR has a significantly positive impact on firm performance. Good firm performance helps to achieve a goal to improve financial performance. The implication suggests that a firm could serve as a good corporate citizen, while in the meantime showing an exceptional firm performance. The business ethics evolves into corporate social responsibility, which now has become a major issue in the Business Environment. Many corporations looking at topics like purpose, ethics, societal impact, and CSR as a critical point to their business and part of their foundation, Companies doing the right thing not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it’s helpful for their business reputation or good business. In the pursuit of increasing firm value, corporate operation, however, may result in the issues of business ethics and morality. This mistake has done by many corporations.  Due to this people are no longer satisfied with the passive behavior of an ethical firm.  Business ethics concentrates on analyzing the problems in business activities from the perspective of morality and ethics.

Fiinovation changes the definition of Business ethics of corporate social responsibility. The main aim is to bring dispersal of knowledge among the public in general or to take initiative for the development of the society and also they ensure social impact through philanthropic and CSR investments of individuals and corporates. They are working in sectors like education, environment, health, sports, livelihood, and any other area of relevance and aim at inclusive growth. Fiinovation CEO has been honored by many awards under the “most promising business leader of Asia award” and every award function Dr. Soumitra Chakraborty said “ I feel humbled by the recognition. The recognition further strengthens mine and my team’s resolve to converts challenges into opportunities and for building a better sustainable world”.

Fiinovation talks about many major problems such as waste management, rain harvesting, open defecation, disaster management, rural tourism, how to achieve universal health coverage in India, affirmation action and CSR for promoting livelihood for women, how to redefine CSR sector, gender equality, how CSR makes your startups most impactful, survival on streets, drugs impact on health, manual scavenging, CSR for agriculture development, antenatal care, female participation in agriculture in India.

Fiinovation team always focuses on how their Fiinovation CSR activities make impactful for developing nation India. They mainly focus on social problems. Fiinovation believes action speaks louder than words. They have mentioned their work in Fiinovation Blogs that explains how solving social problems is their first responsibility.

 Purpose of CSR and Business Ethics:

 The concept of business ethics is similar to that of corporate social responsibility (CSR), their difference is between scope and definition. corporate social responsibility is defined as corporate behavior associated with the fulfillment of business ethics. In fact, there is a causal relationship between business ethics and corporate social responsibility. corporate social responsibility is more broadly extended to corporate obligations and commitments toward the benefits of society and Business ethics determined the acceptable standards of business behaviors. CSR helps corporations to improve their corporate image so as to help corporate sales as well as firm performance. The main finding reveals that fulfilling corporate social responsibility is equivalent to making a socially responsible investment, thus enhancing firm performance. Business ethics are one of the most important aspects of long term success, such as building a good reputation, building good strategies for finance.

 Principles of Business Ethics:

 1.    Compassion: “I take care of my people” slogan is very important in corporation field. It shows how corporations take care of their employees, customers, stakeholders, creditors, and suppliers.  It also means that I will represent their best interests up the management chain and work towards ensuring that they are treated fairly by “the system”. Compassion is a necessary component of effective leadership.

2.    Confidentiality: Confidentiality is the most important point in business etiquette because failure to properly secure and protect confidential business information can lead to the loss of business/clients. Confidential workplace information is divided into three categories: employee information, management information, and business information.

3.    Fidelity: Fidelity is a principle of devotion to duty. Duties may arise from law, contract, or implicit business relationship. It is a two-way process with researchers needing to trust research participants as much as participants need to trust researchers.

4.    Golden Rule: It means that you would not take advantage of someone or lie to get ahead because you would not want others to do that to you.

5.    Honesty: It means telling the truth even if the truth is ugly.

6.    Integrity: Integrity is a state of mind and is not situational. Every successful leader said "Leaders with integrity are not afraid to face the truth. This is called the reality principle.

7.    Privacy: Privacy is also about freedom of action.

8.    Respect: It means regard for dignity of self and others.

Innovative Financial Advisors Pvt Ltd (Fiinovation), is a leading research and advisory firm that offers expertise in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability domain. Fiinovation family bridges the gap between the NGO and the companies and gives proper guidance to invest in the CSR activities which will benefit the society. They primarily focus on practice areas like health, education, livelihood skills, and environment. Fiinovation CSR activities are appreciated by many corporates and the Fiinovation news about their latest projects is also covered by well-known media channels like ANI News and economic times. In February 2017 Fiinovation and Uflex Ltd jointly awarded for Best Environment-Friendly Projects and the title of the project was  Natural resource conservation & optimization of ecosystem services’’. We can contact Fiinovation through their social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin as they keep transparency about their work.

Following are the Links:

Fiinovation Facebook

Fiinovation Twitter

Fiinovation Linkedin

Fiinovation Delhi NGO address: 24/30, Ground Floor, Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase III New Delhi – 110020, Delhi, India

[batq3techstuff]

Facial Recognition: Balancing Security vs. Privacy

Airports across the globe are increasingly leveraging facial recognition technology to verify and authenticate passengers. But some privacy advocates have raised concerns, especially in India, where several airports are ramping up facial recognition programs.

The technology has been introduced in recent years at some airports in the U.S., U.K., Japan, Dubai and elsewhere. In India, several airports - including those in Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad - is now rolling out the technology for use by passengers on a voluntary basis.

Some privacy experts in India express strong concerns that the nation lacks privacy regulations that would impose penalties for the misuse of the biometric data by the government or private industry.

"The biggest challenge is ensuring data privacy of the passengers, as the data garnered through biometrics is vulnerable and can be commercially exploited and sold if there is not tighter security controls and it's not governed appropriately," says Rahul Sharma, country president, India, at the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

A major concern is that facial recognition data gathered at airports might be used by the government for research or offered for sale for use by private industry without passengers' permission, says Brian Brackeen, CEO at Kairos, a Singapore-based software company.

Given the potential impact of artificial intelligence, including facial recognition, on society, Alan Woodward, a computer science professor at the University of Surrey, says the time for robust public debate is now.

"I personally think there should be a much greater public discussion about the use of AI in a variety of fields: law enforcement, medicine, transportation and many others," he says. "Each has safety implications and that at the very least should cause scrutiny."

Indian Airport Activity

Certain airports in India, including those in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Delhi, have begun the process of authenticating passengers voluntarily through facial recognition, which is part of their digital transformation journey. Airports in Pune, Kolkata and Cochin are the next in line for this technology.

The initiative of implementing facial recognition at India's airports, known as the Digi Yatra Policy, is overseen by the Ministry of Civil Aviation, which says its goal is to offer air passengers a "seamless, hassle-free and paperless journey experience."

The Digi Yatra Policy states that once passengers submit official proof of identification, an image of their face is scanned. "If the passenger chooses to register through Aadhaar, then images of their face and iris are captured and matched with their Aadhaar biometrics," says Suresh M. Khadakbhavi, CISO at Bangalore International Airport. "Once confirmed, the passenger receives a 72-character token number from Unique Identification Authority of India. This token gets stored on the passenger's profile."

Nandita Mathur, chief strategy officer and head of engineering, at Q3 Technologies, a biometric facial recognition solutions provider, says the technology has undergone vast improvements.

"We first capture full-attention images of persons whom we are going to recognize through facial recognition system," she explains. "A database is then created with face encodings of the images [128 landmark points are used for face encodings]."

With real-time video stream, frames are captured and are ingested in a machine learning algorithm, Mathur says. "In every frame, the algorithm recognizes faces and extracts individual face images for further analysis," she says.

Khadakbhav, the airport CISO, says the Digi Yatra program is designed keeping in mind the fundamentals of privacy.

"The data is stored with airports only until a certain time, post which the data gets purged out of the system," he says. "As airport operator, we will not store your data but the profile gets stored in a Digi Yatra central platform, which is secure platform."

The Global Scenario

In the United States, Delta Airlines launched an end-to-end to biometric terminal leveraging facial recognition for international departures at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson Airline in November 2018, the airline says.

Facial recognition projects are in various stages at airports in San Jose, California; Orlando, Florida; Miami, Los Angeles and New York among others, according to Business Traveller.

Tokyo Narita Airport aims to introduce facial recognition in spring of 2020, according to a report in Japan Times. Facial scans will be captured at a self-service kiosk.

In Qatar, Hamad International Airport is introducing an end-to-end biometric system, while Dubai International has been working with Emirates on a "smart tunnel," Business Traveller reports.

"Our approach to identity management is unique and holistic, in that we foresee widescale deployment of biometric capability across both mandated and voluntary passenger touch points while addressing customer data privacy concerns in line with relevant local and international regulations," Badr Mohamed al-Meer, COO at Hamad International Airport, told the news media last month.

The International Air Transport Association says some 71 percent of airlines and 77 percent of airports worldwide are investing in a biometrics program.

"Biometric recognition using the One ID concept modernizes the airport experience for passengers and improves the efficiency and security of identification processes," IATA Director General and CEO Alexandre de Juniac tells Business Traveller. "Using global standards for digital identity and data exchange will move us a big step closer to a hassle-free airport experience for passengers."

Privacy Concerns

But privacy advocates say the use of facial recognition technology at airports raises serious concerns.

"Facial recognition presents numerous challenges in today's context in India, primarily because this technology can violate people's right to privacy," says Pavan Duggal, cybersecurity advocate and chairman of International Commission on Cybersecurity Law. "Right now, there is no legal framework that regulates or enables the use of facial recognition," Duggal tells Indian news media outlet News18.

But India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had earlier stated that in the absence of any law around data protection, data will be regulated according to Section 43A of the Information Technology Act, 2008. It states that a "body corporate" will pay compensation up to Rs 5 crore ($705,000) when it is "negligent in implementing and maintaining reasonable security practices and procedures and thereby causes wrongful loss or wrongful gain to any person."

Sharma of the IAPP points out, however, that "this applies only to private companies. What happens if the government is at fault? We definitely need a better and more evolved law which takes into account all stakeholders involved."

Civil Liberties Issues

Facial recognition poses a potential threat to basic civil liberties, privacy advocates argue.

"People don't expect to have their identity, their location, and who they associate with logged every time they step outside and walk down the street," says Matt Cagle, an attorney for the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. "That's the kind of world that automated face surveillance would usher in," he tells the Los Angeles Times.

Khadakbhavi, the CISO at Bangalore International Airport, offers this response: "Of course a law around privacy will give more confidence to users and keep away privacy concerns. But for now, we are confident of the security measures we have implemented."

Facial recognition data is encrypted and only temporarily stored, he notes. The Bangalore airport has implemented a series of security measures to ensure proper implementation of the technology as well as sanctity of data. Khadakbhav explains the security measures taken to safeguard data in the platform: "The data is stored in a way that a hacker will not get name and phone number of a passenger together. Also, only certified devices can have access to data." So far, only Air Vistara has agreed to participate in government's Digi Yatra facial recognition program.

Source URL : https://www.databreachtoday.com/facial-recognition-balancing-security-vs-privacy-a-13145

[rightsinexile]

Chin refugees to UNHCR: Don’t revoke refugee status, continue international protection

Jayashree Narayanan is a Journalist and Assistant Editor at Delhi Post. She can be reached on twitter. This piece was originally published by the Delhi Post on 21 January 2019.

Demanding an extension of their refugee status and for a repeal of the decision of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to revoke international protection which was announced in June 2018, Chin refugees in Delhi staged a peaceful demonstration in front of the UN refugee agency’s office recently.

Recall that UNHCR earlier stated, “Chin refugees from Myanmar do not need international protection any more as the situation in Chin State is now stable and secure”. It meant that Chins approaching UNHCR for renewing their refugee card will be provided individual counselling, and offered two options.

First was the extension of the existing refugee cards till 31 December 2019. This meant that they will cease to be under UNHCR’s protection from 1 January 2020 and their cards would no longer be renewed. Second option was that individuals may request for a notification interview if they feel they are still in need for protection, leading UNHCR to then issue a letter confirming their refugee status. Subsequently, a final decision in such cases was to be made within two months’ time and “Based on the final decision, the status will automatically cease and the UNHCR document will no longer be extended, or refugee status confirmed along with further card renewal”.

The first round of notification interviews with the Chins were conducted on 21 December 2018.

“For those who have completed the individual cessation interview and opted for option number 2 under the given procedure, the UNHCR should extend the Refugee Status Card and not demand a second interview,” Remmawi, President, Chin Refugees Committee (CRC) told Delhi Post.

Mostly Christians, the Chin refugees have been fleeing Myanmar under the National League for Democracy (NLD) Government which has been trying to make Buddhism the state religion which reportedly led to their persecution on religious grounds. Even following the 1988 declaration of Martial Law, many refugees have also fled the state complaining of sexual assault, arbitrary arrests and repression by security forces.

With the conflict between the Arakan Army (AA) and Burmese military in Chin State ensuing, and with no permanent ceasefire agreement between Chin National Front (CNF) and Burmese Military, refugees, human rights activists and organisations state that “without disarmament and security sector reform, this ceasefire will remain tentative”.

“Myanmar remains a country that is still plagued by political instability and insecurity. Despite a change in leadership inside Myanmar in early 2016, violent clashes across the country have persisted,” Evan Jones, Programme Coordinator, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) told Delhi Post referring to the recent fighting between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Army.

In addition, in August 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingyas fled Myanmar’s Northern Rakhine State for safety in neighbouring Bangladesh. “Whilst the Chins are from a different ethnic group and face different protection concerns, the fact remains that large parts of Myanmar are unsafe. Sending Chin refugees back to a country that has been widely criticised for having committed crimes against humanity and genocide is incredibly troubling,” added Jones.

Ravi Nair, Executive Director, South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre told Delhi Post, “Clearly, UNHCR in India and Malaysia are bad in law and in violation of human rights and moral and ethical behaviour. In fact, UNHCR is in violation of its own guidelines on consent before any repatriation process. United Nations Human Rights Council 2018 report clearly states that conditions in Myanmar are not conducive with the clashes going on. There is no guarantee of getting their land back which they left behind. Even there is no guarantee for their lives.”

More than 300 refugees from Chin State took part in the protest representing around 3,000 Chin refugees in Delhi who are registered with the UNHCR and have been issued refugee cards. However, the number remains contested as there are many living in the city without UNHCR assistance especially in some colonies of West Delhi.

“We, the Chin refugee community in New Delhi, strongly oppose the decision of the UNHCR to cease international protection for Chin refugees. We believe this is a procedure for forced repatriation. We assert that conditions are not yet in place for a safe and dignified return as required under international refugee law,” read the statement from the CRC in New Delhi.

“When we heard the UNHCR notification on 13 June 2018, it was shocking for us. It said that our refugee status would end as of 31 December 2019. But there is no guarantee of safety for us. To date, there has been no official letter nor public statement from the neither civilian nor military government stating that Chin refugees are welcome and are safe to return to Myanmar and Chin State,” Remmawi told Delhi Post.

“The decision by some Chin refugees to protest out the front of UNHCR clearly highlights a genuine fear by many refugees to return to Chin State. This is further illustrated by the fact that the vast majority of Chin refugees have also decided to challenge UNHCR’s declaration that Chin State is safe and that they are no longer in need of international protection,” stressed Jones.

Among the demands, the refugees state that UN refugee cards should not be revoked under any circumstances. Further, they state that international protection for Chin refugees should continue. “If the UNHCR is ceasing international protection for Chin refugees, it should be the duty of the UNHCR to negotiate with the Indian Government for local integration and the full protection of Chin refugees and the UNHCR should negotiate the guaranteed safety of the Chin refugees from the Government of India once UNHCR cards are revoked under the cessation procedures,” the statement read.

They say that it is time to consider various issues including their security and livelihood.

Until and unless the UNHCR can provide official declarations from both factions of the Myanmar government, “guaranteeing safe and dignified return of the Chin refugees”, the refugees state that “they collectively opposed to [sic] any coerced return to our country of origin”.

“If we want, we can go back on our own. They should not urge us to go back when the situation is not yet right without basic security and livelihood,” Remmawi further told Delhi Post.

“I strongly oppose the decision of the UNHCR to cease international protection for Chin refugees. From the official statement of the Chin refugees and analysing the present situation in Myanmar, the conditions for safe and dignified return as required under international refugee law. On what grounds did the UN then take away their refugee status?” asked a concerned Human Rights Activist, Ubais Sainulabdeen, further requesting UNHCR to review the decision to cease the international protection of Chin refugees.

The refugees’ community members say that Myanmar is still far from becoming a federal union where ethnic people are free to pursue their self-determination, nor is it governed by the civilian government due to constitutional restrictions. “Until and unless the 2008 Constitution is amended, we the Chin refugees still fear return,” they say referring to the Burmese Military which drafted the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar that retained military control over powerful administrative departments and security sectors including the Ministry of Defence, the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Border Affairs.

Emphasising that the Chin community is fearful of a return to Myanmar “at this time”, Jones told Delhi Post, “Given that many Chin refugees have lived outside of their homeland for many years, it is entirely understandable that they may have a reluctance to return. As such, the UNHCR should be doing everything in their power to openly engage with the community in an efficient and transparent manner to address their concerns.”

Another issue highlighted by the refugees is that many of the Chin refugees’ children will not be able to continue their schooling in Myanmar due to the non-recognition of education certificates achieved in foreign education systems as according to the Myanmar Government’s rules and regulations, those who have foreign school certificates will not be accepted back into the education system of Myanmar.

“Moreover, there are many Chin students who have completed school, university and even the master’s level education in New Delhi but their degrees and certificates will be of no use in Myanmar,” they say, further adding that they fear returning back as “there is no future for them in Myanmar” and many of the young and talented students have suffered and spent time, money and energy to obtain a degree for the betterment of their future (in Delhi).

“The UNHCR should design structured plans to strategise and negotiate with the Myanmar government to accept our current certificates to enable both schooling and the pursuit of employment within government departments,” says the refugee, stating that there have been no clarifications on this issue and the UNHCR can’t ignore “such crucial, long-term concerns”.

As of now, there is no information on plans for reintegration of the Chin refugees into Myanmar.

“The Government and the UNHCR have provided no information on plans for reintegration. So far, there is no information from the government regarding this issue. Most of the Chin refugees do not possess anything in Chin State,” they stated.

Though UNHCR has stated that it would be giving USD 200 financial assistance for the return back to Myanmar, the protestors point out that “this sum of money will only cover travel expenses and not in any way provide the kind of platform necessary for us to seek housing, land, education, health expenses or employment in a country that will not aid this process”.

“At first, they mentioned that they will give us only USD 200, nothing more or nothing less and that USD 200 will be given to us only when we return and reach Chin State which is not even enough for our travelling. But again, on the next meeting, they said they will provide us more for transportation and food. This is different from what they said earlier. UNHCR have changed back their words and are now saying that they will provide additional financial support as well,” Remmawi told Delhi Post.

“The USD 200 expenses is a joke! It is like they are ‘conniving with complicity’. This raises a range of questions including if they are increasing illegal entries into Myanmar by only giving that,” opined Nair.

He says that in hindsight, it seems to be a “cost-cutting exercise” on the part of UNHCR. “At least in Malaysia, there is no hurry. The Indian Government has also not issued any public statement on this. The Chins have been small in number and have been docile. Then, why is this being done? This, therefore, seems to be a cost-cutting exercise on behalf of UNHCR because of refugee fatigue arising out of the ongoing crisis in Europe and North America,” Nair told Delhi Post.

It is pertinent to note that one of the main demands of the Chin refugees is the protection from the UNHCR as well as the renewal of UNHCR cards and not financial assistance.

“Following on from the notifications to the refugee community, it is anticipated that UNHCR will begin conducting refugee status determination interviews (for those that challenge UNHCR’s initial assessment) in March 2019.”

Keeping it in mind, APRRN calls for UNHCR to increase their engagement with refugee communities in Delhi and to listen to the concerns of affected populations; for UNHCR to publicly make available up-to-date country of origin information to refugees, affected communities and all other stakeholders. Jones said, “This should provide in-depth analysis as to the current situation in Chin State; for UNHCR to ensure that Chin refugees and all other refugee populations are not forced to return to their home country against their will and for UNHCR to closely engage with the Myanmar government to work towards addressing the root causes for displacement. Only then will Chin refugees be able to return in safety and in dignity.”

[dailykhaleej]

‘We are Khans, we are corona-warriors’: Muslim family of doctors at frontline of COVID-19 fight in India

Dr Mehboob Khan together with his spouse Dr Shahana and daughter Dr Rashika Khan being felicitated at their residence in Indian Airways Colony, Hyderabad. Picture Credit score: Equipped

Hyderabad: At nighttime and miserable occasions of coronavirus and communal hatred here’s a silver lining.

As Dr Mahboob Khan, together with two different doctors in his family — his spouse and daughter — entered their colony in Begumpet, Hyderabad, after a tiring day of attending to coronavirus sufferers in totally different authorities hospitals throughout the town, they have been in for a pleasing shock. A big quantity of their neighbours and colony residents had lined up exterior their residence, showering them with flower petals and applause. They have been there to say “Thank you” to a family that was combating towards an invisible enemy at an awesome private danger.

“People from all communities came forward to felicitate us and appreciate our role. That is the beauty of India”, Khan advised DailyKhaleej.

Rajinder, president of Indian Airways Colony Welfare Affiliation that was main the well-wishers, hailed the Khans as a family of “super heroes”.

“These are the real heroes fighting the deadly COVID-19 virus from the front. We are here to salute you,” Rajinder stated as folks lined as much as current bouquets and shawls.

Raghuram Reddy, one other resident, wished to hug Dr Khan had there been no social-distancing restriction. “They deserve every bit of this recognition. This is a brave family fighting for all of us”.

At a time when the menace of the coronavirus pandemic has seen a virulent and lethal marketing campaign of communal hatred towards Muslims and organised propaganda has been unleashed by some folks to stigmatise a complete group — following the Tableeghi Jamat episode in Delhi — the Khan family’s story has caught the creativeness of a typical man and a minister alike.

Khan advised DailyKhaleej: “For us, it was by no means a few Hindu or a Muslim. Everyone was a affected person and we at all times labored like skilled doctors to avoid wasting lives.” Picture Credit score: Equipped

Although it’s unhappy to see how some parts in society are making an attempt to provide a spiritual and communal color to the pandemic, Dr Khan stated he or his family by no means confronted any such slur. “In our case, people from all communities came forward to felicitate us and appreciate our efforts. That is the beauty of India,” he stated.

“For us, it was never about a Hindu or a Muslim. Everybody was a patient and we always worked like professional doctors to save lives. The prayers of a recovered person is all that matters to us”, he stated.

Propaganda falling flat

“Some people initially tried to project a particular community as the villain, but later, most of them realised that no particular group or religion could be responsible. If initially there were more Muslim patients, later, we also had patients from other communities and across all religions. That is how the propaganda fell flat.”

Dr Mahboob Khan, the superintendent and administrative head of a premier authorities chest hospital in Hyderabad, has spent the very best half of the final two months in protecting gear, operating from ward to ward, motivating and inspiring his colleagues and different workers members, mobilising the assets at hand and dealing and praying to avoid wasting each single affected person coming to his hospital.

Thus far, 400 instances of coronavirus have been reported in his hospital, with 300 of them being admitted there. All however two have been discharged after restoration and there have been no deaths to date.

His spouse, 48-year-old Dr Shahana, is the assistant professor at Gandhi Hospital in one other half of the town. Gandhi Hospital serves because the nodal establishment in the fight towards coronavirus.

Nonetheless, it’s the youngest and third physician in the family, the feisty daughter Rashika, a house-surgeon, who has made the story extra inspiring. She had her baptism by fireplace as she began her medical profession on March 26, in the thick of the pandemic. At Gandhi Hospital, Dr Rashika’s very first day at work was in a ward for coronavirus sufferers. “I was not afraid. I rather felt proud to get this opportunity to fight and save lives,” stated Dr Rashika. “May be it is in my blood. Both my parents are an example for me,” she added.

The Kerala mannequin

56-year outdated Dr Mahboob Khan has accomplished 25 years in service and the state authorities has used his wealthy expertise as a pulmonologist in charting out a method to counter the virus outbreak in the state. He was half of the workforce that the Authorities of Telangana had despatched to Kerala to check how the state had efficiently handled the primary three coronavirus sufferers and the way it was coping with the disaster. He got here again motivated and energised. “Kerala has always been far ahead of the other states in our country. Their three-tier health-care system and the well-oiled state machinery played a major role in this success. They have fought against COVID-19 the same way as they had faced other calamities, including the floods in the past”, noticed Dr Khan.

Again residence in Hyderabad, as the primary case of coronavirus was reported in the state on March 1, Dr Khan and his workforce was ready with a plan. 
“Initially, there were apprehensions among my staff members about their personal safety. However, after counselling sessions and assurances that they would be fully taken care of, they wholeheartedly joined in the efforts. Our focus was to save the lives of the people. In the end, what mattered was the result and the blessings of the patients”, stated Dr Khan.

He stated, the fightback was attainable, due to the advance measures undertaken by the Authorities of Telangana, with Chief Minister Okay. Chandrasekhar Rao main the fight from the entrance. “The government alerted us to the threat well in advance and sufficient resources were made available. Isolation wards were opened on a war footing with all the necessary equipment, including personal protective equipment (PPE),” he added. “Very soon, the fear and uncertainty among the health workers gave way to positive energy. Within four-five days, our staff members were fully geared up and mentally ready to fight back.”

For Dr Shahana, it’s ‘double duty’ as a health care provider and homemaker. Her 72-year outdated mom Azimunnisa additionally wants her care and a focus as she is diabetic and has hypertension. “These are stressful times and one has to face it,” Dr Shahana stated with a smile. With three doctors at residence and one other one in the making in the shape of their youngest son Rehaan, COVID-19 was certain to dominate all dialog at residence.

Private security

With so many doctors, nurses and health-care employees everywhere in the world falling sufferer to the lethal virus, did private security and safety ever fear them?

“As doctors, for us, the risk is always part of the game and we go out every morning with confidence and a prayer. We are aware of what is happening elsewhere, but there is no fear in our minds. Our extended families are concerned. Fortunately, most of them are doctors too. They cautioned us, but never discouraged us from working in the wards with coronavirus patients,” Dr Khan defined.

Who else, however a health care provider

In quite a few Indian cities, there have been cases of neighbours objecting to doctors and health-care employees staying in their residences and even residence house owners have requested such tenants to vacate their residences. The worry of an infection has led to the stigmatisation of a complete career, so to talk. 
“Fortunately, we did not have any such bitter experience in our colony where educated people and professionals live. Initially, there were some doubts, but gradually they realised the importance of the work we were doing. They realised that after all, only doctors can lead the fight against this threat and treat people. Who else can do it? So, gradually people started inquiring about our well-being. In fact, respect and support have gone up for us now.”

Nonetheless, for the Khans, the most important motivation has come from senior state minister Okay. Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), who has hailed them as his “heroes”.

“Today, I have not one but three ‘Citizen Heroes’, all from the same family”, KTR, the Minister for Municipal Administration, tweeted. “Unmindful of their own safety, Dr Mahboob Khan, his wife Dr Shahana Khan and daughter Dr Rashika Khan have dedicated themselves to fight Coronavirus at Gandhi, Chest and Koranti hospitals. Kudos to you guys,” he stated in his tweet.

“That was a very important recognition”, a beaming Dr Mahboob Khan stated. “We are thankful to the minister for the recognition. The local media was also very positive and it boosted our morale.”

Khans are fairly optimistic and hopeful concerning the future. “There isn’t any doubt we will win towards this enemy and shortly the state of affairs will change. Time is the most important healer. India will come out stronger from this disaster. However for now, we have to put up a united fight and all people ought to do his or her bit. We are popping out to fight for you, so that you please keep at residence. Strictly keep social distancing to win this conflict, is the message that the Khans have for folks.

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[robertbryantblog]

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[isecuritysystem]

Face Recognition System In Delhi | I Security System

In today’s world, security has taken center stage in both personal and professional environments. Whether it’s safeguarding residential areas, corporate offices, or public spaces, modern technology plays a crucial role in protecting lives and assets. Among the leading innovations transforming surveillance and access control is the face recognition system in Delhi, a smart and contactless solution rapidly gaining popularity. At the forefront of this technological revolution is I Security System, a trusted name in providing state-of-the-art security solutions across the capital.

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Hillary Clinton won’t rule out presidential campaign (Washington Post)​​ Hillary Clinton on Tuesday declined to rule out launching a future presidential campaign after her two failed bids, saying “many, many, many people” were pressuring her to enter the race. “I, as I say, never, never, never say never,” the former secretary of State said on BBC Radio 5 Live. “I will certainly tell you, I’m under enormous pressure from many, many, many people to think about it.”​

Court rules against warrantless searches of phones, laptops (AP) A federal court in Boston has ruled that warrantless U.S. government searches of the phones and laptops of international travelers at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. Tuesday’s ruling in U.S. District Court came in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The ACLU describes the searches as “fishing expeditions.” They say border officers must now demonstrate individualized suspicion of contraband before they can search a traveler’s electronic device.

Despite ‘wonderful’ meeting, Trump and Erdogan fail to resolve conflicts (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday pushed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to walk away from the purchase of a Russian missile defense system, calling it a “very serious challenge” to bilateral ties, even though he described a meeting between the two leaders as “wonderful.” But both leaders fell short of explaining in concrete terms how they would overcome the mounting differences they have on numerous issues, from Erdogan’s incursion in Syria against America’s Kurdish allies to Turkey’s purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system.

Spanish king visits Cuba (Foreign Policy) King Felipe became the first Spanish monarch to make a state visit to Cuba when he and his wife Letizia arrived in Havana on Tuesday. The trip coincides with the capital’s 500th anniversary and it comes as Europe continues to normalize relations with Cuba’s one-party regime--though some Cuban dissidents and Spanish politicians have criticized the visit.

Bolivia’s declared interim president faces challenges (AP) Bolivia’s newly declared interim president, until now a second-tier lawmaker, faces the challenge of winning recognition, stabilizing the nation and quickly organizing national elections at a time of bloody political disputes that pushed the nation’s first indigenous leader to fly into self-exile in Mexico after 14 years in power. A sense of normalcy returned to the capital on Wednesday, a day after Jeanine Añez claimed the presidency after higher-ranking successors to the post resigned. Most roadblocks set up by ousted president Evo Morales’ foes were removed and public transportation resumed in La Paz, which has been rocked by weeks of protests.

Spain’s election aftermath (Foreign Policy) After the second general election of the year, the ruling Socialist Party quickly reached a preliminary coalition deal with the left-wing Podemos party--despite months of disagreements between the two parties after the April election. The two parties won 155 seats combined--slightly fewer than in April--and they are still short of the 176 seats needed for a parliamentary majority, meaning they will need to partner with smaller parties or rely on the abstention of rivals when they seek a vote on a new government. Meanwhile, the far-right Vox party more than doubled its April showing, taking 52 seats in parliament.

Afghan Official Says Presidential Poll Results Delayed Again (AP) An Afghan official says the results of the country’s presidential election held nearly two months ago are being delayed once again.

Schools Closed in New Delhi as Air Quality Dips Further (AP) Schools in India’s capital are shut after air quality plunged to a severe category for the third consecutive day, enveloping New Delhi in a thick gray haze of noxious air.

China Launches New Crackdown on Chemical Safety (Reuters) China’s cabinet will begin a nationwide safety crackdown on its massive chemical industry after an official investigation into a deadly plant blast that killed 78 people and injured dozens more in March.

Chinese, other students flee Hong Kong as violence worsens (AP) University students from mainland China and Taiwan are fleeing Hong Kong, while those from three Scandinavian countries have been moved or urged to leave as college campuses become the latest battleground in the city’s 5-month-long anti-government unrest. Marine police used a boat Wednesday to help a group of mainland students leave the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which remained barricaded by demonstrators after violent clashes with police on Tuesday. Authorities announced that primary and secondary school classes would be suspended Thursday as clashes turn increasingly violent.

Japanese Emperor to Spend Night With Goddess in Last Major Accession Rite (Reuters) Japanese Emperor Naruhito will be ushered into a dark wooden hall on Thursday night to celebrate his last major accession rite after becoming emperor this spring: spending the night with a goddess.

Protests flare again in Lebanon, with one killed (Foreign Policy) After Lebanon’s President Michel Aoun called for anti-government demonstrators to stay out of the streets or risk catastrophe, protests flared again on Tuesday. At least one protester was killed by security forces in the first such shooting since the protests began nearly four weeks ago. The incident is likely to further inflame tensions, as activists seek to bring the country to a standstill and push out Lebanon’s political elite. Meanwhile, the union representing Lebanon’s bank staff has called for a general strike to continue today over concerns for employee safety as fears of a run on the banks rise.

Israel, Islamic Jihad Cease Fire After Heavy Gaza Fighting (AP) Israel and the militant Islamic Jihad group in Gaza reached a cease-fire on Thursday to end the heaviest Gaza fighting in months that killed at least 34 Palestinians, including three women and eight children, and paralyzed parts of Israel.

[dorcasrempel]

The gift of light, through science and service

Pawan Sinha, a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, first met Poonam when the girl was 13 years old. She lived in a remote village far from the urban bustle of Delhi, the second most-populous city in India. Poonam had grown up among lush trees and straw-thatched roofs and white cows with pointy horns grazing languidly along the dirt-packed road. But she had never seen any of it. Like many of the patients Sinha has worked with since he began Project Prakash, Poonam had been blind since birth due to dense cataracts, a treatable form of blindness more often seen in elderly patients.

Project Prakash, from the Sanskrit word for light, is a nonprofit organization that provides surgeries to congenitally blind children in India, and observes them during recovery to track the development of sight in the brain. Volunteers from Project Prakash travel to remote villages with limited access to health care to screen blind children and, if they are eligible, enroll them in the program.

Sinha first conceived of Project Prakash in 2002 while visiting his father in Delhi. He encountered two young siblings, living in poverty on the city streets, both blinded by treatable cataracts.

“This opened my eyes to the pervasiveness of childhood blindness in India, and more broadly in the developing world,” says Sinha. “Many children have treatable forms of blindness, but they stay blind because of lack of access to medical facilities, lack of knowledge of treatment options, and lack of financial resources to pursue medical care. These children languish in their blindness and lead difficult lives with little education, almost no prospects for employment and sadly, in many cases they die very young.”

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Volunteers transported Poonam from her village to Dr. Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital in Delhi, where, after a full examination, she received cataract removal surgery. The very next day, the bandages came off. During Poonam’s post-operative check-up, the caregiver held up her fingers both close to her face and from a distance and asked how many. Poonam answered correctly. She could see.

“The name Prakash reflects our immediate goal to bring light into the lives of children who suffer from blindness,” says Sinha. “In meeting this humanitarian need, as a neuroscientist I realized we had an scientific opportunity. With surgery, we can transition a child from blindness to sight in less than an hour and from the very moment the child’s bandages are removed, you have a ringside seat into the process of visual development.”

The call to action

According to data collected by Project Prakash, current estimates suggest that between 200,000 and 700,000 children suffer from potentially treatable forms of blindness, such as cataracts or corneal opacities. Only 50 percent of these children are expected to survive into adulthood, and many suffer physical or sexual abuse at some point in their lives.

Compelled to act, Sinha quickly realized he wanted to create a lasting impact beyond a one-time donation to cover the cost of cataract surgeries for individual children. From the perspective of a vision researcher, Sinha felt he was in a unique position to tackle this problem on a larger scale. He recognized an opportunity for synergy between this profound humanitarian need and a longstanding neuroscientific question he was interested in as a researcher. It would also address a common problem that arises when studying visual development.

“Until now, almost all the approaches we had to observe visual development happening in real-time was by working with infants, and they are notoriously difficult to work with experimentally,” says Sinha. “Not only are they unable to follow instructions or report out, their brains have many developmental processes progressing simultaneously, so it is hard to isolate one from the others. Visual development proceeds very rapidly, so we have a very short window to work with before infants become very sophisticated visual perceivers.”

And that is one of the key scientific benefits of Project Prakash. Older blind children, like Poonam and the kids Sinha met while visiting with his father, have physiologically mature brains, but have not yet been exposed to patterns in the visual world. This makes it much easier to identify the processes of visual development as they unfold as part of the follow-up care. Using functional MRI data acquired from post-operative Prakash patients imaged at various points throughout their recovery, Sinha and the rest of the Project Prakash team observe how a child’s brain incorporates new information into existing structural and functional organization. These studies then inform Sinha’s MIT lab work on computational models of visual learning.

Prakash patients range from children as young as 6 to young adults in their mid-20s; if a young person presents to the Project Prakash team with a treatable form of blindness, they won’t be turned away. A few days after surgery, children begin visual acuity tests using the standard eye charts anyone with glasses would be familiar with. While no child winds up with perfect vision, patients gain significant functional vision, and Project Prakash provides glasses to correct their sight further.

After securing an initial round of funding from the National Institutes of Health, Sinha officially launched Project Prakash with three of his students in 2004. Since then, Sinha has added 20 team members and together they have provided 500 surgeries and 43,000 ophthalmic screenings to children in need.

A ringside seat

Since Sinha established Project Prakash, the humanitarian work has become inextricably linked to the work in his research laboratory at MIT. Many of his lab members are also involved with Project Prakash and pursue a number of research questions related to data gathered from its patients. Typically, the research team travels to India twice a year to volunteer with the humanitarian efforts of the program, interact with the patients, and of course, to gather data.

Conventional wisdom in childhood blindness suggests that older children should not see significant gains post-surgery, since their brain’s visual machinery should be set. However, in one of his first key scientific findings enabled by Project Prakash, Sinha found that even young adults can make significant gains in visual function after surgical intervention.

Members of the Sinha laboratory at MIT have also found new avenues of research probing the development of different visual skills in the Prakash children. For example, Sruti Raja, a research associate in the Sinha laboratory, is working on a project that looks at sensitivity to visual motion before and after surgery. Another ongoing study, led by Sharon Gilad-Gutnick, a staff research scientist in Sinha’s lab and Project Prakash team member, looks at how patients learn to translate what they see into drawings.

“How are they able to recognize and then copy or draw from memory basic shapes?” says Gilad-Gutnick, who has worked with Sinha since she was an undergraduate. “What does that tell us about their internal representation of these shapes, and of objects in general? We are looking at that as a function of time after sight onset.”

Another study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct. 30, details how some Prakash patients struggle with the task of recognizing faces. Newborn babies have notoriously bad eyesight, with an average visual acuity of 20/600. According to the American Optometric Association, good visual acuity refers to the ability to see sharply and clearly. Normal visual acuity is referred to as 20/20 vision, which means that you can see patterns as clearly at 20 feet as an average person at the same distance. In this paper, the researchers hypothesize that poor eyesight has an important function in infant visual development, acting as a visual low-pass filter. The filter induces the brain to develop visual processing strategies that emphasize the gestalt rather than local details, or as Sinha describes it, the ‘forest from the trees.”

The Project Prakash patients miss out on this benefit of poor initial acuity, which leads to difficulty organizing and recognizing the spatial relationships of distinct faces. In the paper, Sinha and the team refer to this as the high-initial acuity (HIA) hypothesis. To test this hypothesis, Sinha’s research team used a deep learning algorithm designed to mimic the many layers of the human visual system. They fed the algorithm series of images simulating different visual learning scenarios, from only blurred images to only high resolution images to a mix of the two. The series that led to the most robust recognition performance began with blurred images and progressively increased in resolution — echoing the progression in normal human development and consistent with the HIA hypothesis.

These results have significant clinical implications. Post-operative outcomes for cases of congenital cataracts can potentially be improved by blurring visual stimuli to mimic the acuity of a newborn. By gradually increasing the resolution of visual stimuli, the regimen may provide the Prakash children’s brains the inducement to encode larger scale structures in images and improve subsequent recognition performance.

While the Project Prakash children are a unique subset of individuals, lessons learned from them can be applied to brain development in general. The work reported in the PNAS paper illustrates how studies of newly sighted children can inform our thinking of normal visual development, and also guide the creation of more powerful computational strategies for visual recognition.

“We are essentially providing a possible answer to why normal visual development unfolds in the way that it does,” Sinha says. “It’s not just a limitation imposed upon us by immaturity of the retina, but it might actually have adaptive value.”

Looking beyond vision, this idea could potentially provide insight into auditory development as well; the muffling of sound by the amniotic sac may have adaptive significance akin to the blurring of images in early development.

Looking ahead

While Sinha appreciates the opportunity to tackle these scientific questions, he doesn’t lose sight of the transformative impact Project Prakash has on real lives. In the days following Poonam’s surgery, Project Prakash staff watched her blossom as she healed. She created artwork, she made up dance moves with her caregiving team, and she even took it upon herself to lead another blind patient receiving care at the hospital around the hallways. In addition to this newfound sense of independence and self-confidence, Poonam’s follow-up exams showed a marked improvement in visual abilities.

Poonam’s outcome was not an outlier for Project Prakash participants. Even though the speed of healing and level of visual acuity varies from patient to patient, most report significant improvement both to their vision and their quality of life. Sinha and his team surveyed a group of 60 patients and their families to gauge how their experience participating in Project Prakash improved their sense of independence, their ability to perform in school, and their relationships with friends, family and their communities.

“Across all of these dimensions, they reported big gains, and both patients and their families are uniformly ecstatic about the outcomes of the treatment, says Sinha. “When you take a step back to look at the whole picture, we have made a relatively small contribution by providing this routine surgery. But the consequence of that surgery is so profound for the child and for their family that the families think of us as more. It’s incredibly rewarding.”

But Prakash patients and their families are not the only ones who have been impacted by this work.

“In general, scientific research can be very frustrating, ambiguous and at times, difficult. But when you get to work so closely with children in need and you get to have that real-world impact in addition to pursuing these interesting questions, the motivation is huge,” says Gilad-Gutnik. “As scientists, I think we need to find more ways to work at this intersection of basic science and humanitarian need, and I think that neuroscience and the study of behavior presents a lot of unique opportunities to do that.”

Looking ahead, Project Prakash aims to improve patient outcomes even further through their newest initiative: a year-long residential educational program where patients who have fallen behind in school due to their visual impairment can receive specialized instruction, bringing them to an age-appropriate grade level before integrating them in local schools. They also intend to track how learning and education affects brain structure.

For Sinha, though his experience with Project Prakash has led to many immeasurably meaningful moments, meeting the Prakash patient named Poonam and following her success through the program hit especially close to home. His older sister was a doctor before her untimely death at age 25, and she was one of Sinha’s main sources of inspiration when he established Project Prakash. Her name was also Poonam.

“We are all shaped by the people we meet, and especially by the ones we admire,” says Sinha. “Seeing my sister’s devotion as a doctor to helping those in need, even at great cost to her own health, affected me greatly. Project Prakash is a small tribute to her memory, and the future of many more Poonams.”

The gift of light, through science and service syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[bulutolsamya-blog]

China Gains on the U.S. in the Artificial Intelligence Arms Race

Last year, for example, Microsoft researchers proclaimed that the company had created software capable of matching human skills in understanding speech. Continue reading the main storyAlthough they boasted that they had outperformed their United States competitors, a well-known A.I. researcher who leads a Silicon Valley laboratory for the Chinese web services company Baidu gently taunted Microsoft, noting that Baidu had achieved similar accuracy with the Chinese language two years earlier. That, in a nutshell, is the challenge the United States faces as it embarks on a new military strategy founded on the assumption of its continued superiority in technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence. First announced last year by Ashton B. Carter, President Barack Obamas defense secretary, the Third Offset strategy provides a formula for maintaining a military advantage in the face of a renewed rivalry with China and Russia. Well into the 1960s, the United States held a military advantage based on technological leadership in nuclear weapons. In the 1970s, that perceived lead shifted to smart weapons, based on brand-new Silicon Valley technologies like computer chips. Now, the nations leaders plan on retaining that military advantage with a significant commitment to artificial intelligence and robotic weapons. But the global technology balance of power is shifting. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the United States carefully guarded its advantage. It led the world in computer and material science technology, and it jealously hoarded its leadership with military secrecy and export controls. In the late 1980s, the emergence of the inexpensive and universally available microchip upended the Pentagons ability to control technological progress. Now, rather than trickling down from military and advanced corporate laboratories, todays new technologies increasingly come from consumer electronics firms. Put simply, the companies that make the fastest computers are the same ones that put things under our Christmas trees. As consumer electronics manufacturing has moved to Asia, both Chinese companies and the nations government laboratories are making major investments in artificial intelligence. The advance of the Chinese was underscored last month when Qi Lu, a veteran Microsoft artificial intelligence specialist, left the company to become chief operating officer at Baidu, where he will oversee the companys ambitious plan to become a global leader in A.I. Continue reading the main storyAnd last year, Tencent, developer of the mobile app WeChat, a Facebook competitor, created an artificial intelligence research laboratory and began investing in United States-based A.I. companies. Rapid Chinese progress has touched off a debate in the United States between military strategists and technologists over whether the Chinese are merely imitating advances or are engaged in independent innovation that will soon overtake the United States in the field. The Chinese leadership is increasingly thinking about how to ensure they are competitive in the next wave of technologies, said Adam Segal, a specialist in emerging technologies and national security at the Council on Foreign Relations. In August, the state-run China Daily reported that the country had embarked on the development of a cruise missile system with a high level of artificial intelligence. The new system appears to be a response to a missile the United States Navy is expected to deploy in 2018 to counter growing Chinese military influence in the Pacific. Known as the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or L.R.A.S.M., it is described as a semiautonomous weapon. According to the Pentagon, this means that though targets are chosen by human soldiers, the missile uses artificial intelligence technology to avoid defenses and make final targeting decisions. The new Chinese weapon typifies a strategy known as remote warfare, said John Arquilla, a military strategist at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, Calif. The idea is to build large fleets of small ships that deploy missiles, to attack an enemy with larger ships, like aircraft carriers. They are making their machines more creative, he said. A little bit of automation gives the machines a tremendous boost. Whether or not the Chinese will quickly catch the United States in artificial intelligence and robotics technologies is a matter of intense discussion and disagreement in the United States. Continue reading the main storyAndrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu, said the United States may be too myopic and self-confident to understand the speed of the Chinese competition. There are many occasions of something being simultaneously invented in China and elsewhere, or being invented first in China and then later making it overseas, he said. But then U.S. media reports only on the U.S. version. This leads to a misperception of those ideas having been first invented in the U.S. Photo

Robert O. Work, left, the deputy secretary of defense, with James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, center, and Marcel Lettre, under secretary of defense for intelligence, in November. Mr. Work is trying to bring artificial intelligence to the battlefield. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times A key example of Chinese progress that goes largely unreported in the United States is Iflytek, an artificial intelligence company that has focused on speech recognition and understanding natural language. The company has won international competitions both in speech synthesis and in translation between Chinese- and English-language texts. The company, which Chinese technologists said has a close relationship with the government for development of surveillance technology, said it is working with the Ministry of Science and Technology on a Humanoid Answering Robot. Our goal is to send the machine to attend the college entrance examination, and to be admitted by key national universities in the near future, said Qingfeng Liu, Iflyteks chief executive. The speed of the Chinese technologists, compared to United States and European artificial intelligence developers, is noteworthy. Last April, Gansha Wu, then the director of Intels laboratory in China, left his post and began assembling a team of researchers from Intel and Google to build a self-driving car company. Last month, the company, Uisee Technology, met its goal taking a demonstration to the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas after just nine months of work. The A.I. technologies, including machine vision, sensor fusion, planning and control, on our car are completely home-brewed, Mr. Wu said. We wrote every line by ourselves. Their first vehicle is intended for controlled environments like college and corporate campuses, with the ultimate goal of designing a shared fleet of autonomous taxis. The United States view of Chinas advance may be starting to change. Last October, a White House report on artificial intelligence included several footnotes suggesting that China is now publishing more research than scholars here. Continue reading the main storyStill, some scientists say the quantity of academic papers does not tell us much about innovation. And there are indications that China has only recently begun to make A.I. a priority in its military systems. I think while China is definitely making progress in A.I. systems, it is nowhere close to matching the U.S., said Abhijit Singh, a former Indian military officer who is now a naval weapons analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. Chinese researchers who are directly involved in artificial intelligence work in China have a very different view. It is indisputable that Chinese authors are a significant force in A.I., and their position has been increasing drastically in the past five years, said Kai-Fu Lee, a Taiwanese-born artificial intelligence researcher who played a key role in establishing both Microsofts and Googles China-based research laboratories. Mr. Lee, now a venture capitalist who invests in both China and the United States, acknowledged that the United States is still the global leader but believes that the gap has drastically narrowed. His firm, Sinovation Ventures, has recently raised $675 million to invest in A.I. both in the United States and in China. Using a chess analogy, he said, we might say that grandmasters are still largely North American, but Chinese occupy increasingly greater portions of the master-level A.I. scientists. What is not in dispute is that the close ties between Silicon Valley and China both in terms of investment and research, and the open nature of much of the American A.I. research community, has made the most advanced technology easily available to China. In addition to setting up research outposts such as Baidus Silicon Valley A.I. Laboratory, Chinese citizens, including government employees, routinely audit Stanford University artificial intelligence courses. Continue reading the main storyOne Stanford professor, Richard Socher, said it was easy to spot the Chinese nationals because after the first few weeks, his students would often skip class, choosing instead to view videos of the lectures. The Chinese auditors, on the other hand, would continue to attend, taking their seats at the front of the classroom. Artificial intelligence is only one part of the tech frontier where China is advancing rapidly. Last year, China also brought the worlds fastest supercomputer, the Sunway TaihuLight, online, supplanting another Chinese model that had been the worlds fastest. The new supercomputer is thought to be part of a broader Chinese push to begin driving innovation, a shift from its role as a manufacturing hub for components and devices designed in the United States and elsewhere. In a reflection of the desire to become a center of innovation, the processors in the new computer are of a native Chinese design. The earlier supercomputer, the Tianhe 2, was powered by Intels Xeon processors; after it came online, the United States banned further export of the chips to China, in hopes of limiting the Chinese push into supercomputing. The new supercomputer, like similar machines anywhere in the world, has a variety of uses, and does not by itself represent a direct military challenge. It can be used to model climate change situations, for instance, or to perform analysis of large data sets. But similar advances in high-performance computing being made by the Chinese could be used to push ahead with machine-learning research, which would have military applications, along with more typical defense functions, such as simulating nuclear weapons tests or breaking the encryption used by adversaries. Moreover, while there appear to be relatively cozy relationships between the Chinese government and commercial technology efforts, the same cannot be said about the United States. The Pentagon recently restarted its beachhead in Silicon Valley, known as the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental facility, or DIUx. It is an attempt to rethink bureaucratic United States government contracting practices in terms of the faster and more fluid style of Silicon Valley. The government has not yet undone the damage to its relationship with the Valley brought about by Edward J. Snowdens revelations about the National Security Agencys surveillance practices. Many Silicon Valley firms remain hesitant to be seen as working too closely with the Pentagon out of fear of losing access to Chinas market. There are smaller companies, the companies who sort of decided that theyre going to be in the defense business, like a Palantir, said Peter W. Singer, an expert in the future of war at New America, a think tank in Washington, referring to the Palo Alto, Calif., start-up founded in part by the venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But if youre thinking about the big, iconic tech companies, they cant become defense contractors and still expect to get access to the Chinese market. Those concerns are real for Silicon Valley. No one sort of overtly says that, because the Pentagon cant say its about China, and the tech companies cant, Mr. Singer said. But its there in the background. Continue reading the main story

[martechadvisor-blog]

Building Blocks: Siddhartha Bhattacharya, VP Global Marketing at Kodak Alaris talks Marketing Tech

1. Could you tell me a little about yourself and how you came to be the VP of Global Marketing at Kodak Alaris?

As Vice President of Global Marketing for Kodak Alaris’ Information Management (IM) division, I lead a worldwide team responsible for successfully bringing products, solutions and services to market and clearly communicating Kodak Alaris’ value proposition to customers, partners and employees. I am passionate about building a customer centric worldwide marketing team and leading the transformation and implementation of a new digital marketing strategy.

We are going through an exciting time here at Kodak Alaris Information Management. The key for Kodak Alaris is to build a new value proposition around harnessing the value of data. The company is in the midst of huge shifts with regards to accelerating growth in key segments of the market such as Financial Services, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Government and IT. We have invested in new sales and marketing programs as well as new channels and service centers to drive disruptive growth. We are focused on providing total solutions which are inclusive of hardware, software and services. The company has launched campaigns which are based on how users can make the journey from data (bits and bytes), to information, to intelligence.

Prior to joining Kodak Alaris, I served as global marketing director for the Office MFP and Solutions business for Xerox Corporation. I am a certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and hold a master’s degree in international economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and an MBA in marketing from Rochester Institute of Technology. I reside in Rochester, NY with my wife and two children and am an avid follower of cricket!

2. Are you happy with the buy-in for Marketing Technology that exists at Kodak Alaris? Do you think the investments being made are adequate or could be more?

I am pleased with the investment we are making in MarTech.

The ever-increasing flood of data and how we manage it is one of the biggest challenges facing businesses in the 21st century, but it is also one of the greatest opportunities

At Kodak Alaris Information Management, we are investing heavily in people, processes and technologies across many functions, including Marketing. This includes a brand new website for our IM division using state-of-the-art web design platforms and tools that allow us to better tailor our content to the specific needs of our customers and prospects. A lot of what was on our website previously was OK but not great. It didn’t give visitors the most “warm and fuzzy" feeling, which is important because studies have shown that customers are now 60-70% of the way through their buying journey before they even talk to a sales rep. Google is the first place they go, and we have tried to focus on what people are searching for beyond document scanning and information capture. People are searching for ways to solve business process challenges in areas like mailroom automation, forms processing, records management, accounts payable processing, and customer onboarding. All of these areas are now represented on our website. Prospects can connect with us during the purchasing processes, and we will connect them with the right partners to support them in these areas.

In addition, Kodak Alaris’ new campaign around distributed capture will target both end users and partners through which we are going to target key customers in the financial services, insurance, IT, and government markets through campaigns in social media and other areas. Distributed capture is characterized by transactional scanning applications that are geared toward business process improvement at the point where documents and information enter the organization. Companies over the years have been moving capture processes for business documents from back office mail rooms to branches, to departments and now down to the office worker’s desk.

For BPOs, many of which utilize Kodak Alaris’ higher volume scanners, we have launched a new campaign with the theme of “Redefining Science.” Much of the success that BPOs have historically enjoyed has been related to providing a reliable service but, like everyone else, they are now dealing with larger market trends like cloud and mobile. Their customers are looking to them for new services in these areas, and we’d like to help them transition from where they are now to being mobile and cloud ready.

3. What is the key problem you are attempting to solve with marketing technology implementation – could be 360 customer view, better customer experiences, crafting better journeys, full circle attribution?

Marketing Technology implementation for us has been around the establishment of a new CRM System to collect and analyze global customer and sales pipeline information; a global Partner Relationship Management portal to better onboard, collaborate and manage relationships with our partners; a new Marketing Automation platform that allows us to have two-way communications with our customers, run digital marketing campaigns and participate across the new buyer journey.

The key business problems we are attempting to solve (and around which our new marketing narrative is built) is the concept of making sense out of data chaos. We believe that we have a larger purpose than selling document scanners and that we have a tremendous opportunity to help customers navigate digital transformation. People talk a lot about Big Data. 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the past two years. We want to communicate that our reason for existence at Kodak Alaris IM is to harness the value of that data. We are uniquely positioned to accomplish this through a combination of our science, technology, services, and partner ecosystem. Data management and big data initiatives have been buzzworthy subjects for years. But,

for most organizations, big data remains just - a big pile of data. Unless companies extract meaning from the chaos, they miss opportunities to grow

Here are 5 areas where digital transformation produces quick wins:

Mailroom: When your mailroom is equipped with seamlessly automated workflows to rapidly manage data, alongside reliable exception handling capabilities, the impact on the top line is powerful. Employees have more time to focus on core job functions, and time-critical documents move at the speed of business.

Customer Onboarding: Customer onboarding powered by digitized processes lead to increased customer satisfaction, and even higher life-time value from your customers.

Accounts Payable: When extra insight makes Accounts Payable more intelligent and automated, your suppliers can serve you at the right time for your needs, and your market responsiveness sails forward. All while your staff turns their focus to the future projects that will move your business forward.

Forms Processing: Well-architected workflows for form recognition, information extraction and quality assurance remove bottlenecks to success. When done right, it’s a quick win.

Records Management: Digital records management offers many advantages over paper solutions, not the least of which is the ability to synchronize information, increase security and quickly access critical documents.

Ultimately, however, it’s no secret that Digital Transformation is valuable. The secret is how. There is a distinct need for businesses to analyze more of their data in order to derive insight.

4. What are some of the challenges your team faces from a technology & integration perspective?

Some of the MarTech platforms and tools are quick and easy to get started using. This is especially true of subscription services for standard platforms. Other MarTech applications require more complex integrations and implementations. It’s important for us to consider how the platforms interact – can they be tied together to ease the marketer’s prospect’s experience and coordinate data and activities? And it’s important to establish which platforms and tools to use for which types of activities. Last but not least is the learning curve for our marketers/users. Some platforms involve more training while others are easy to use right away.  We want our teams to start using the new tools right away to establish good new user habits.

5. What is your take on the massive explosion of MarTech cos across so many categories? Do you feel spoilt for choice or is it just more of a chore to evaluate additional options?

We do feel spoilt for choice. The good news is that there is a platform or a tool for pretty much whatever we need to do. It does take a bit of work to find the right solution in the crowd – either for our company size or the type of marketing activities we have planned or that integrates with our existing tools – but the good news is that there are plenty of options.

6. What is the one area of investment you'd like to make in the immediate future from a marketing tech perspective?

We have made pretty significant investments in the past two years already – web CMS, MAP, CRM, PRM, DAM, social tools. In the immediate future we’ll work on getting through the learning curve to make sure the tools work for us and work together. We will likely add niche solutions in the future to fill in gaps or add efficiencies or tie platforms/tools together.

7. Build your own stack or buy into a pre-built martech cloud - what team are you on?

We have taken a build-our-own-stack approach but made sure to keep an eye on interoperability where we could. A pre-built martech cloud would be great – better integration, faster set up – but it would have meant a lot of implementation work and new processes at once, with a wider learning curve. Build-as-we-go allows us to get comfortable with each tool/platform before we add the next one. I’m not sure there is a right answer, just what works best for each company given their circumstances.

8. Could you share for our readers, an infographic, list or description depicting your marketing stack (various marketing software products or platforms your team uses or subscribes to)?

Marketo is our global marketing automation platform. Marketo helps us streamline, automate and measure marketing tasks and workflows so we can increase operational efficiency and grow revenue faster.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables us to create, develop, enhance and manage interactions with current and prospective customers. A great CRM solution drives higher customer lifetime value (CLTV) by empowering companies to get closer to customers.

We use Cision to identify journalists, bloggers and social media influencers who can help spread our message about leveraging digital transformation to capture growth. Cision helps us monitor media coverage and measure the impact of our PR campaigns.

Sprout Social is a valuable tool for scheduling social media posts, monitoring and joining online conversations, and measuring social media results.

Our Digital Asset Management tool is Picturepark. We use this platform as an internal system-of-record to share official marketing assets between marketing departments and agencies. We also use it to make marketing assets available to our channel partners (resellers, distributors, ISVs, etc.).

Our website is built on Sitecore CMS. We are in the process of redesigning the site with our customers’ research needs and buying journey in mind.

Connect with Siddhartha

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

[isecuritysystem]

Face Recognition System In Delhi I ISecurity System

The Face Recognition System In Delhi Offered By ISecurity System is an advanced biometric security solution designed to enhance access control and improve security management for businesses and organizations. Using cutting-edge facial recognition technology, the system accurately identifies individuals based on unique facial features, providing a secure and efficient method for authentication.

This system is ideal for a range of applications, including employee attendance, access control, and surveillance. It eliminates the need for traditional methods like passwords, cards, or PINs, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and increasing overall security. With its high accuracy rate, the Face Recognition System can scan and verify faces in real-time, even in challenging lighting conditions or with partial facial obscuration. To Know More-https://www.isecuritysystem.in/