I recently had the opportunity to help run a stand at one of the Science Museum in London, Lates sessions with some colleagues.

The topic of the table was “Privacy vs National Security”. This was a drop in table to provoke discussion around this topic. The main point of this topic was to engage with the general public and understand their view points whilst discussing things in the news and the consequences that happen.

The brief was “Where does privacy start and end? How do you protect privacy and also provide national security? How do you monitor the bad guy? What do you think?”

The discussions ranged from the recent stories around the facial recognition cameras at Kings Cross, London to GDPR Post Brexit and is Alexa listening to everything I am doing?. A wide range of discussions. The discussions were going on and engaging that we still discussing as we dismantled the stand and left the Museum. the topics covered were discussed at length and I will write some future blog posts on some of these.

As well as the discussion I had a Raspberry Pi 4 and a USB Camera running Tensorflow and OpenCV to perform a level of people recognition displaying on a large screen in the Museum. This also helped generate conversation on the night and bring people onto the stand.

By the end of the evening we really did have a Night at the Museum, but without the exhibits coming to life.

If you are in London on a last Wednesday of the month I recommend that you visit the Lates sessions at the Museum. Book early as spaces do go quickly.

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/see-and-do/lates

If you have any thoughts on the topic, please add comments on this post.