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Homeland Security Wants to Spy on 4 Square Miles at Once
It’s not just for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars anymore. The Department of Homeland Security is interested in a camera package that can peek in on almost four square miles of (constitutionally protected) American territory for long, long stretches of time.
Homeland Security doesn’t have a particular system in mind. Right now, it’s just soliciting “industry feedback” on what a formal call for such a “Wide Area Surveillance System” might look like. But it’s the latest indication of how powerful military surveillance technology, developed to find foreign insurgents and terrorists, is migrating to the home front.
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s interested in a system that can see between five to 10 square kilometers — that’s between two and four square miles, roughly the size of Brooklyn, New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood — in its “persistent mode.” By “persistent,” it means the cameras should stare at the area in question for an unspecified number of hours to collect what the military likes to call “pattern of life” data — that is, what “normal” activity looks like for a given area. Persistence typically depends on Read more…
IBM Thinks Minds Will Control Machines Within 5 Years
Japan's Honda Research Institute and precision-equipment manufacturer Shimadzu demonstrated a mind-boggling technology that lets humans control a robot through thought alone -- thus taking pesky button-pressing, voice commands and remote controls out of the equation. 2009
This is the VOA Special English Technology Report.
Controlling a device with your mind. Powering your home with the energy of your own activities. These are two of the developments that experts at IBM think will become reality within the next five years.
The technology company has released its latest “5 in 5” report. The experts think people will soon be able to control many electronic devices simply by using their minds. Scientists at IBM and other companies are researching ways to do this in a field of science known as bioinformatics.
They say people will soon have a way to just think about calling or e-mailing someone in order to make it happen. Bernie Meyerson is IBM’s vice president of innovation.
BERNIE MEYERSON: “[It’s a] simple ability to command a system to do something for you without actually doing or saying anything, literally thinking and having something happen as a result that’s accurate. Something with really deep capability so that a person, for instance, a quadriplegic, a paraplegic can actually utilize brainwaves to make things happen and basically run their own lives independently.”
Another prediction is a way for people to Read more…
Eyes on the Street: How Traffic Surveillance Invades Your Privacy
Credit: DreamstimeIs it cutting-edge, or just downright creepy? Surveillance technology is increasingly being implemented in municipalities across the country. But while such gadgets aim to curtail crime and decrease traffic accidents, some people are wondering about the costs to both town budgets and privacy.
“Overall, we wonder if the costs will outweigh the benefits,” said Jay Stanley, a Washington, D.C.-based senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Policy and Technology Project.
Such technology, which includes everything from neighborhood video cameras, red-light cameras and, most recently, parking-space sensors, is popping up faster than mushrooms in a shady forest.
“Over the last several years, traffic-centric surveillance applications Read more…
High-tech devices leave users vulnerable to spies
Spy technology is now available to the average person who wants to glean cellphone information, read private emails and track someone’s location using global positioning systems. And increasingly, experts say, the technologies are being used by spouses and partners to track, harass and stalk.
“Technology has just exploded. It’s so sophisticated now, and it’s very easy to utilize these different technologies to keep tabs on a person and find out where they’re going,” said Gina Pfund, chief assistant prosecutor of the Domestic Violence Unit in Passaic County, N.J.
The person watching or listening is often a family member and frequently a suspicious or controlling partner. They have scanned Facebook pages, viewed online Web-browsing histories, and examined cellphone records for proof. But some take it a step further, planting Read more…
We’re Watching You: Surveillance Expansion In the Land of the Free is Unprecedented In Human History
Have you ever heard of a Yottabyte? To put this number into perspective consider the size of a terabyte, which is about the size of a typical modern hard drive. It can hold roughly 100 high definition DVD’s.
A yottabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 terabytes – or over 1 trillion terabytes of information.
This is important because according to a recent report from Politico, the National Security Agency (NSA), which is the security apparatus responsible for monitoring electronic communications across the globe, is building a new data warehousing center in Utah at the cost of $2 billion dollars. It will be housed in a one million square foot complex and be capable of storing at least one yottabyte of data.
We pointed out the various ways that the U.S. government is monitoring Read more…
Police Can Track Your Cell in Real Time
Source: WCTV
In a case more interesting for its look at the state of modern tracking technology and the brave new world we all live in than for its legal ramifications, a Florida appeals court said Wednesday the police didn’t violate a drug dealer’s rights when they used his cell phone to pinpoint his whereabouts as he drove across the state.
While the legal outcome of the case may catch some people off guard (any idea how close the government can get to your cell phone with GPS?), the legal issue breaks no new ground. The question in the case has already been answered by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal said the Read more…
GPS Jammers In Action
North Korean mobile jammers
Futuristic ‘airships’ planned for North
A British manufacturer hopes to build a fleet of airships for Yellowknife’s Discovery Air to supply remote communities and enterprises in the North, the two companies say.
The futuristic giant blimps from Hybrid Air Vehicles would cost $40 million each, Discovery Air Innovations, a Quebec-based subsidiary of Discovery Air, announced after signing a tentative deal with HAV.
The aircraft use a mix of non-flammable helium and air power to fly and can land on almost any surface, HAV says on its website.
They’ll be able to carry up to Read more…
Tiny Military Surveillance Robot
China tests first helicopter gunship
Less than a month following reports that Pakistan allowed China to view the remains of the top-secret stealth helicopter that SEAL Team 6 left behind at the bin Laden compound, China has begun combat testing of its first home-made helicopter gunship. ITN News on the growing military power’s publicity stunt to unveil the aircraft:
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