US spy agency trials live video recognition to spot terrorists

A new surveillance technology will allow for the immediate, automatic detection of suspicious behaviour in live video feeds. The research project, led by the IARPA unit at the U.S. Office of National Intelligence, proposes a recognition system dubbed Deep Intermodal Video Analytics (DIVA), which is able to scour through multiple live video streams and pick out potential criminal and terror activities. Describing the project, IARPA officials noted: 'The DIVA program will produce a common framework and software prototype for activity detection, person/object detection and recognition across a multi-camera network. The impact will be the development of tools for forensic analysis, as well as real-time alerting for user-defined threat scenarios.' The technology is designed to pore through video surveillance and other incoming camera footage to search for new threats, as well as to identify individuals and objects already flagged by the authorities as posing a danger.