Aftermath News

The agency’s National Cyber Range for cyberwar simulation would be similar to Star Trek’s holodeck or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse.

InformationWeek | May 8, 2008

By Thomas Claburn

Police officers practice their firearm skills on a shooting range, so why shouldn’t government computer security experts have the same kind of training ground?

In other words, Darpa wants to build something along the lines of The Matrix, Star Trek’s holodeck, or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse to test cyberwar strategies and drill cyberwarriors.

That’s not to say Darpa is aiming for a visually immersive world to entertain people; rather, it wants a place to pit hackers against simulated machines.

Darpa’s interest in such matters reflects a growing U.S. government and military commitment to develop more sophisticated cyberwar capabilities. A major reason for this is that other countries, such as China, are pursuing similar goals.

“The NCR will become a National resource for testing unclassified and classified cyber programs,” Darpa’s announcement explains. “Government and Government-sponsored Test Organizations (TO) authorized to conduct cyber testing will coordinate with the NCR performer for range time and resources. …The NCR will support multiple, simultaneous, segmented tests and testbeds. At the completion of the test the NCR will sanitize and de-allocate the testbed resources, thus absorbing them back into the range.”

The NCR aims to provide the ability to replicate military, government, and commercial IT systems and infrastructure; to monitor and manage events; and to analyze, collect, and present test data.

The NCR should be able to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” to provide “realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces,” and to “accelerate and decelerate relative test time.”

With any luck, human frailties won’t manifest themselves in the form of a ballooning budget as the NCR takes shape.

Old-Thinker News | May 4, 2008

By Daniel Taylor

In July of 1994 the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) produced the paper titled Revolution In Military Affairs And Conflict Short Of War that uncannily forecasted the future in a “hypothetical future history” written in the year 2010.

Computer generated insurgents claim responsibility for attacks that U.S. forces carry out, pharmaceutical drugs are used as a part of national security strategy, “attitude shaping campaigns” are directed against the American people, traditional boundaries between military and law enforcement are abolished, subliminal conditioning is used in combination with propaganda, and bioelectric tags are implanted in citizens. By 2010 the revolutionaries’ goals were met.

All of this will likely sound eerily familiar to followers of current events, or for that matter anyone who lived to see the events of September 11th 2001, its resulting wars, and its truly “revolutionary” effects in the reorganization of government and law. The Bush administration’s signature legislation, the Patriot Act, has infringed on multiple sections of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. Posse Comitatus, which has protected Americans from the military engaging in domestic law enforcement since 1807 was reversed when the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 was passed last year.

The Neoconservatives reign in the United States holds striking similarities to the scenario outlined in the 1994 SSI report. Interestingly, the document clearly stated that, “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the other Third World caricatures of the Soviet Union are perfect opponents for a RMA-type [Revolution in Military Affairs] military.”

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Science Daily | Apr 29, 2008

Scientists at the department of Applied Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered a method for remote sensing of the physiological and emotional state of human beings.

The researchers believe the discovery could theoretically help remotely monitor medical patients, evaluate athletic performance, diagnose disease and remotely sense the level of excitation – which could have significant implications for technology in the biomedical engineering, anti-terror and security technology fields.

The key is in the surprising shape of human sweat ducts. Professors Yuri Feldman and Aharon Agranat together with Dr. Alexander Puzenko, Dr. Andreas Caduff and PhD student Paul Ben-Ishai have discovered that the human skin is structured as an array of minute antennas that operate in the “Sub Terahertz” frequency range.

This discovery is based on investigations of the internal layers of the skin that were undertaken using a new imaging technique called “Optical Coherent Tomography”. Images produced by this technique revealed that the sweat ducts, which are the tubes that lead the sweat from the sweat gland to the surface of the skin, are shaped as tiny coils. Similar helical structures with much larger dimensions have been used widely in as antennas in wireless communication systems. This made the investigators consider the possibility that the sweat ducts could behave like tiny helical antennas as well.

In a series of experiments, the team measured the electromagnetic radiation reflected from the palm skin at the frequency range between 75GHz and 110GHz. It was found that the level of the reflected intensity depends strongly on the level of activity of the perspiration system. In particular, it was found that the reflected signal is very different if measured in a subject that was relaxed, and if measured in a subject following intense physical activity.

In a second set of measurements it was found that during the period of return to the relaxed state, the reflected signal was strongly correlated with changes in the blood pressure and the pulse rate that were measured simultaneously.

The initial results of the research were published last week in the prestigious scientific journal The Physical Review Letters. The publication aroused significant interest among scientists, physicians and science writers.

The researchers emphasize however, that the research is still in its initial stages and as they “sail in unsheltered water” it will take some time before the full significance of the research is understood and its technological potential is fully evaluated.

The invention has been patented and commercialized by Yissum, the technology transfer company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Predictive programming: Government agents release swarms of robotic spiders which jump onto the faces of innocent citizens forcing them to endure retinal scans in the movie Minority Report.

Daily Mail | May 4, 2008

By DANIEL COCHLIN

It may have seemed like just another improbable scene from a Hollywood sci-fi flick – Tom Cruise battling against an army of robotic spiders intent on hunting him down.

But the storyline from Minority Report may not be quite as far fetched as it sounds.

British defence giant BAE Systems is creating a series of tiny electronic spiders, insects and snakes that could become the eyes and ears of soldiers on the battlefield, helping to save thousands of lives.

Plans for a robot that can crawl like a spider are ‘well developed’

Prototypes could be on the front line by the end of the year, scuttling into potential danger areas such as booby-trapped buildings or enemy hideouts to relay images back to troops safely positioned nearby.

Soldiers will carry the robots into combat and use a small tracked vehicle to transport them closer to their targets.

Then they would swarm into the building and relay images back to the soldiers’ hand-held or wrist-mounted computers, warning them of any threats inside.

BAE Systems has just signed a £19million contract to develop the robots for the US Army.

Researchers hope they will eventually create machines that can fly like a butterfly

Plans for a creature that can crawl like a spider are said to be well developed, and researchers eventually hope to be able to create creatures that can slither like a snake or fly like a dragonfly.

While some of the creatures will be fitted with small cameras, others will be equipped with sensors that will be able to detect the presence of chemical, biological or radioactive weapons.

A computer-generated video from BAE Systems shows the tiny invaders being released by a soldier, before scouting out a suspect building, which is finally blown up by ground forces.

BAE Systems scientists from the UK and America plan an army of the electronic bugs, and have ambitions to equip every front-line soldier with them.

Programme manager Steve Scalera was inspired by the way creatures use their senses to detect danger.

“What we are doing is providing an enhanced awareness for soldiers, basically an extension to their eyes and ears,” he said.

“The creatures have external sensors. They can be tossed out into a building or a cave or even a pile of rubble and then send images back to the troops.

“The idea is to get a number of these working together – some tiny, some maybe up to a foot in length, and all going into a building together carrying out different tasks. Eventually we hope to have animals flying and slithering.

“The five-year programme has just started but we could have them with soldiers within six months, and then continue to develop the concept as the project goes along.”

Despite the high-tech gadgetry involved, BAE Systems insists once production is in full swing, each bug will cost no more than £100 to produce.

The Ministry of Defence declined to comment.

Related

Minority Report: A Dystopic Vision
When government agents search for Anderton, they release swarms of tiny, robotic “spiders” which leap onto the faces of innocent citizens and force them to endure retinal scans.

This village, built for urban warfare training during the Cold War, will host teams of ground-based and aerial robots hunting for snipers, bombs, and other threats (Image: MoD)

New Scientist | Apr 29, 2008

English village to be invaded in spybot competition

By Ceri Perkins

A village in south-west England will shortly be swarming with robots competing to show off their surveillance skills.

The event is the UK Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) answer to the US DARPA Grand Challenge that set robotic cars against one another to encourage advances in autonomous vehicles.

The MoD Grand Challenge is instead designed to boost development of teams of small robots able to scout out hidden dangers in hostile urban areas.

Over 10 days in August, 11 teams of robots will compete to locate and identify four different threats hidden around a mock East German village used for urban warfare training, at Copehill Down, Wiltshire (see image, top right).

The robots must find snipers, armed vehicles, armed foot soldiers, and improvised explosive devices hidden around the village, and relay a real-time picture of what is happening back to a command post.

Urban hazards

The robots will need to negotiate the complexity of an urban environment to find the threats. Hazards include unfamiliar terrain and buildings, trees, near-invisible overhead wires and other urban clutter.

Teams will earn points based on how many threats they locate in one hour, and how autonomous they are. For example, a team will lose points if they use remote control to direct their vehicles at any stage of the trial.

The teams that score highest will be rewarded with the potential of a lucrative contract with the MoD, which hopes to see the best ideas rapidly developed to the point they can be deployed by UK forces in places such as Afghanistan and southern Iraq.

“We are in no doubt that this is a difficult challenge,” says Grand Challenge programme leader, Andy Wallace.

Software control

Of the 23 initial entries from teams made up of private companies and universities, 11 were selected to take part in the final, with six thought promising enough to receive MoD funding.

One funded team, the Stellar Consortium, uses two aerial robots and one ground-based one.

A 3m wing-span unmanned air vehicle (UAV) will fly 65 metres above the village and use cameras to gather wide-area surveillance used by software to direct a smaller, 1m UAV flying at 20 metres, and an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV), (see image, middle right).

Those two vehicles use thermal, visual, and radar sensors to make more detailed observations that can be reported back to the base station.

“Physically, the vehicles all have to be launched by someone,” explains Julia Richardson, Director of Stellar Research, “but after that, the mission-planning software hosted at the ground station takes full control.”

Owl swarm

A team called Swarm Systems uses more robots. “We need to gather as much sensory information as possible,” says team leader Stephen Crampton, “so we’re using eight vehicles. And we’re going by air because it gives you more viewing angles.”

Dubbed “Owls”, their battery-powered, Frisbee-sized vehicles weigh under a kilogram and have four small propellers (see image, right). Able to hover and dart like birds, they are GPS-guided and communicate with one another, and the base station, using Wi-Fi. Each Owl carries a trio of 5 megapixel cameras.

“Without giving too much away, the processing power on board each of these vehicles is pretty impressive,” adds Crampton. “They could run full-blown Windows Vista.”

User-friendly tech

A third team, Silicon Valley, has opted to rely less heavily on autonomous vehicles. They have used off-the-shelf technology for the hardware as much as possible, and focused more development onto image recognition and analysis software.

“If you can automate that part, then you have a useful tool,” explains team leader, Norman Gregory. “What we intend to do is deploy various platforms, depending on what the scenario is.”

The team will use a mixture of ground and air-based vehicles, although the team is not yet releasing the exact details. The main ground vehicle is the size of a ride-on lawnmower (see image, bottom right) and can be GPS-guided or remotely directed by a human.

Big Brother: Lollipop sticks will have in-built cameras to capture any problems. Some lollipop men and women will use headcams to capture drivers’ rage.

Daily Mail | May 1, 2008

Robo-pop: Lollipop ladies get hi-tech cameras in their headgear and sticks to combat road rage

By CHRIS BROOKE

Many of them face abuse and aggression from drivers every day.

But lollipop men and women have been given a new weapon against reckless or angry motorists.

Video cameras are being built into their lollipop poles.

The cameras are visible so it is hoped they will act a deterrent.

If not, their time-coded footage can used as evidence against offenders.

Around 1,400 incidents were reported to councils last year and dozens of lollipop staff needed hospital treatment after being hit by cars.

They - and the children they are shepherding across roads - are often abused and sworn at.

Drivers also hoot, rev their car engines, drive too close and too fast, or ignore a request to stop altogether.

A number of councils, including Dudley in the Midlands and Kirklees in West Yorkshire, have bought the camera poles, which are being rotated around “lollipop rage” hotspots.

“It’s unbelievable that we have to take this action, but the lives of children are at risk from increasing numbers of drivers,” said David Sparks of the Local Government Association’s transport board.

“Drivers are so selfish that they are willing to put lives at risk by refusing to stop for 30 seconds at a school crossing.

“Councils will do everything in their power to stamp this out. Abuse and intimidation of lollipop men and women who are carrying out a vital service to the community will also not be tolerated.

“Motorists need to be made aware that they are committing a criminal offence and we hope this new technology will prove an effective deterrent.”

Under the law, a lollipop patrol should be obeyed in the same way as a traffic light.

Failure to stop for one could mean a fine of up to £1,000 and three penalty points.

Don Mac-Dougall, road safety officer at Dudley council, said offenders who escaped prosecution could now be taken to court.

“Only a handful of incidents each year end up in prosecutions because it’s usually just one person’s word against another,” he said.

“The video evidence will obviously provide much stronger evidence, although we are hoping it will be a deterrent rather than anything else.”

Kirklees councillor David Hall said: “Our patrols do a fantastic job looking after the safety of children.

“These lollipops will give the patrols peace of mind when stepping into the road.”

The camera poles, costing £890, have been developed by Oxfordshire-based company Routesafe.

An armored personnel carrier was on display at the police equipment trade show in Beijing.

With the slogan “dress to kill” on their black T-shirts, top executives from Magnum of Britain showed off their latest police boots.

NY Times | Apr 26, 2008

At Trade Show, China’s Police Shop for the West’s Latest

By KEITH BRADSHER

BEIJING — For the Chinese police agency boss who thought he had everything, the police equipment trade show here was a chance to scrutinize the latest offerings from manufacturers around the world for secretly copying computer hard drives, suppressing riots or collecting video surveillance of public streets.

China’s crackdown in Tibet after violent protests there has set off strong criticism from human rights groups and confrontations in several countries between police officers and demonstrators during the Olympic torch relay. But here in China, the world’s fastest-growing market for security and crime-control equipment, it is business as usual between Western multinationals and Chinese police agencies.

At the recent China International Exhibition on Police Equipment here, sponsored by the Ministry of Public Security, DuPont had a large exhibit promoting Kevlar bulletproof fabric for riot police use. Motorola was selling police radio systems as well as wireless systems for transmitting vast quantities of video surveillance data.

And with the slogan “dress to kill” on their black T-shirts, top executives from Magnum of Britain showed off their latest police boots. “Chinese police deserve the best — Magnum protects the protectors,” said Paul Brooks, the company’s president, in a speech to police officials.

The most intriguing device offered at the show to senior Chinese security agency officials was the Image Masster RoadMasster, a powerful computer system that swiftly copies computer hard drives without leaving any trace and comes concealed in its own color-coordinated briefcase.

Gonen Ravid, the chief executive of the device’s manufacturer, Intelligent Computer Solutions in Chatsworth, Calif., said that the company sells exactly the same equipment in the same briefcases to the Pentagon for use in Iraq, and to the Central Intelligence Agency and other Western intelligence agencies for use around the world.

No company in China makes similar equipment, he said. “The U.S.,” he said, “is still leading with this.”

Full Story

Wired | Apr 21, 2008

By Sharon Weinberger

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is funding a number of technologies that tap into the brain’s ability to detect threats before the conscious mind is able to process the information. Already, there is Pentagon-sponsored work on using the brain’s pattern detection capabilities for enhanced goggles and super-fast satellite imagery analysis. What happens, however, when the Pentagon ultimately uses this enhanced capability for targeting weapons?

This question has led Stephen White to write a fascinating article exploring the implications of a soldiers’ legal culpability for weapons that may someday tap into this “pre-conscious” brain activity. Like the Minority Report notion of “pre-crime,” where someone is convicted for contemplating a criminal act they haven’t yet acted upon, this article raises the intriguing question of whether a soldier could be convicted for the mistake made by a pre-conscious brain wave.

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Washington Post | Apr 15, 2008

By Nita Farahany

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets caught because his brain gave him away.

Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report,” it’s not science fiction: We’re not so far from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

It’s a question we should be asking as the federal government invests millions in emerging technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity.

Consider Cernium Corp.’s “Perceptrak” video surveillance and monitoring system, recently installed by Johns Hopkins University. This technology grew out of a project funded by the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense to develop intelligent video analytics systems. Unlike simple video cameras, Perceptrak integrates video cameras with an intelligent computer video. It uses algorithms to analyze streaming video and detect suspicious activities, such as people loitering in a secure area. Since installing Perceptrak, Johns Hopkins has reported a 25 percent reduction in crime.

That’s only the beginning. Neurotechnology soon may be able to detect a person who is particularly nervous, in possession of guilty knowledge or, eventually, to detect a person thinking, “Only one hour until the bomb explodes. …”

In 2002, the Electronic Privacy Information Center reported that NASA was developing brain monitoring devices for airports and was seeking to use noninvasive sensors in passenger gates to collect the electronic signals emitted by passengers’ brains. Scientists scoffed at the reports.

But that same year, scientists at the University of Sussex in England adapted the same technology they had been using to detect heart rates at distances of up to 1 meter to remotely detect changes in the brain.

But don’t panic: The government can’t read our minds — yet. So far, these tools simply measure changes in the brain; they don’t detect thoughts and intentions.

Scientists, though, are hard at work trying to decode how those signals relate to mental states such as perception and intention. Different EEG frequencies, for example, have been associated with emotional states such as fear, anger, joy and sorrow and different cognitive states such as a person’s level of alertness.

Early researchers have claimed high accuracy at detecting deception. But there’s a problem: Most brain-based lie-detection tests assume lying should result in more brain activity than truth-telling because lying involves more cognition. So these lie-detection methods may fail in sociopaths or in individuals who believe in the falsehood they’re telling.

The very fact that the government is banking on its future potential raises myriad questions. Imagine, for example, a police officer approaching a suspect based on Perceptrak’s “unusual activity” detection. Equipped with remote neural-detection technology, the officer asks her a few questions, and the detection device deems her responses to be deceptive. Will this be enough evidence for an arrest? Can it be used to convict a person of intent to commit a crime?

Americans have been willing to tolerate significant new security measures and greater encroachments on civil liberties after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Could reports of significant crime reduction be enough to justify the use of pre-crime technology? Could remote neural monitoring together with intelligent video analytics have prevented those tragedies? And if they could, should they be allowed to?

These are just some of the questions we must ask as we balance scientific advances and the promise of enhanced safety against a loss of liberty. And we must do it now, while our voices still matter.

Bad, Bad Idea: The Anti-Hijacking Safety Bracelet

Wired | Apr 18, 2008

By Dave Demerjian

This is the worst air travel security idea I’ve heard of in a long time.
A Canadian company called Lamperd Less Lethal is promoting the EMD Safety Bracelet. It’s equipped with electro muscular disruption technology, which effectively short-circuits the central nervous system. Zap someone and they’ll be completely immobile for several minutes.

The technology isn’t new — cops and security guards have been using it for years in tasers. What’s new is the marketing approach. Lamperd is hawking the EMD bracelet as the ideal tool for fighting terrorists intent on taking over an airplane.

And they’re doing so with a blatantly exploitive promotional video.

Airline Security - EMD Safety Bracelet

You can watch the five minute video, which has gotten more than 33,000 hits at YouTube, but I’ll spare you the trouble by recapping its most egregious claims.

• The video starts with unnecessary footage of 9/11, mugshots of terrorists and a deep-voiced, somber narrator explaining that current airport security equipment doesn’t work. Why? Because it’s operated by TSA employees who make minimum wage — and you know what that means.

• The narrator goes on to say that the next line of defense, armed Federal Air Marshals, also is no good because their aim is so bad that they’ll blow a hole in the fuselage before they actually hit a hijacker.

• That leaves no choice but to equip pilots and cabin crew with EMD safety bracelets, which passengers would have to put on before boarding. When threatened by a highjacker, a flight attendant would transmit an EMD pulse at the terrorist, reducing him to a trembling mass of Jello. The terrorist gets tied up, the plane lands safely and the world is a better place.

Beyond preying on people’s fears and insulting our intelligence, Lamperd is selling a product that’s a horrible idea in the first place. Do you really want those bracelets on your flight? If hijackers get their hands the transmitter, they’ll zap anyone standing in their way. Who’s to say that in the chaos of an emergency a crew member will have time to identify the threat, activate the correct bracelet and fire the EMD pulse before the terrorist has control of the plane?
And then there’s the possibility of random craziness. What if a flight attendant loses her cookies and zaps a passenger who wants to keep the whole can of CranApple juice? What about drunk passengers? Do you want the lush in 36D getting his hands on what is essentially a bracelet-mounted stun gun?

Lamperd claims on their website that the company is doing brisk business, so brisk that they’ll hire back all their laid-off employees. But I don’t think it’s the safety bracelet that’s flying off the shelves — the airlines I spoke to claim to have never heard of the product, and Ann Davis of the TSA says the agency has no plans to deploy the bracelets. The company’s CEO Barry Lamperd didn’t want to talk the first time I called and wasn’t available the second time.

Lamperd Less Lethal’s tagline is “Keeping the Situation Under Control.” I think “Exploiting People’s Fear and Making a Bad Situation Worse” might be more appropriate.