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I like the jump on the bandwagon name change from "Total" to "Terrorist"
for DARPA's Terrorism Information Awareness program
(formerly "Total Information Awareness")

Reading these pages will put you on the Dept. of Homeland Security's watch-list almost
as quickly as Howard Dean's Stop Ashcroft Petition

1) How about a large array of solar arrays in orbit above the planet. They could soak up pure sunlight, and fire it down to the earth in the form of a laser at ground-bound solar arrays waiting for bursts of light. Of course there would be drawbacks: Birds flying through the beams would be vaporised, as well as any aircraft which accidentally strayed off course, and there's always the chance that something might hit a satellite, shifting its aim to target a busload of nuns.

2) Combine power generation with them space elevators we keep hearing about. Aren't those supposed to generate some huge amount of static electricity? You know, giant metallic strand kilometers in length, raking the sky all the way up to zero atmosphere... Why not harness it? I have no idea how we'd get the power back down to the ground, but hey. I'm just a kook.

3) Um... geothermal taps at active volcanoes? Not necessarily a *smart* investment, but it's hot, and we know how to get electricity from hot dirt.

4) Electroactive polymers. If we can find a way to manufacture these little pads inexpensively, then why not have them running under sidewalks, highways, stairs, bowling alleys, basketball courts, train tracks, treadmills, carpets (especially at your local all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet)... They *have* to be pretty resilient if the military is planning to stick them in troops' boots. Every time a car rolls by or a pudgy fellow trundles over to get a fifth bowl of kung-pao chicken, you'd be getting something out of it.

5) Put great big magnets on top of cars, and run large coils of wire around all highways. Okay, that was stupid.

6) Attach generators to doors. All doors. Turnstyles.

7) If only there were a way to safely transmit power. Wouldn't it be great to have all of the icky nuclear power plants to the moon and just have them send the energy home? Maybe something with quantum-entangled pairs of stuff? Like have one member on the moon being jiggled like a maraca by a nuclear furnace and the other half on Earth having its quantum-jiggles somehow harnessed for its energy?

Probably not, huh?

No, the next step is this, from the folks who brought you TIA, the Policy Analysis Market... and the Internet. (If it's down, try the Google cache instead.

Remainder of my .sig: be the majority of voters.

Very interesting, here it is reformated:

I'm part of a group that put a proposal in for LifeLog. This project seems like a good tie-in. More info on LifeLog: DARPA page

Please see the following articles if you are interested in reading what others have to say about it:

* CBS News: A Diary That Never Sleeps

* Geek.com: DARPA looking to record lives of interested parties

* The Oregonian: Step into one man's world, as recorded by the Pentagon's planned LifeLog

* Timesunion: Your diary's got nothing on LifeLog

This is strange !! This webpage disappeared today.... probably slashdot effect caused it or maybe they decided to back out and take it down !!

Now I know that they update their website frequently !!

After all, all we need is food shelter and water. Most of those we can make for ourselves, today at least...

You could replace your wife with a baby making robot

Seriously if that's the scariest 'robot future' you can dream up you should read more distopian fiction. Child-bearing is not a job to be replaced by a machine, it's a biological function. Sure the caesararian section may be performed by a robot, and the baby's first breath-inducing smack may be administered by machine, but the job of raising the child will still be up to you and your partner.

Now here's something scary for you.

This is the science behind it

Here's DARPA's FutureMAP website which explains a little more about the idea than the article did. Note that this is a follow-up to a previous, similar program.

Here's DARPA's FutureMAP website which explains a little more about the idea than the article did. Note that this is a follow-up to a previous, similar program.

We have to do a lot better than Hyperion did. 300km, not one. And faster.

We're looking for a few good people. Hard work, no pay, some risk, a chance for a fraction of the prize. See our current openings.

We're in Silicon Valley. We have funding, a shop in an industrial park in Redwood City, a vehicle under construction, and six people. We need about six more.

Oh, I am sure there are a few fellows over here that probably would. :-)

SA introduces an error, but it's not undetectable if you have a reference station in the vicinity. This two-station Differential GPS (DGPS) approach is pretty much essential for any precision work such as earth moving, and these systems are quite common these days.

The autonomous vehicle technology described in the article is not very interesting compared to something happening stateside, the DARPA Grand Challenge. On March 13th, 2004, vehicles will set out on a race from a point near Los Angeles and head for Las Vegas, completely under autonomous control. They must also carry sufficient intelligence to avoid collisions and obstacles, and they need to move fast! Visit the DARPA Grand Challenge site for more information. This competition is pretty much open to all, and the prize is $1 million. Watch for my team's entry, it will be the one with a plush Tux the Penguin strapped in the driver's seat!

Yes... and there are probably lots of exploits that never get published, just used. Now do you want your government relying on this software to store data such as the Total Information Awareness Program, for example? (Oh, I see they renamed it...)

Would you want your business to rely on it? I find it utterly astounding that so many PHB's still think its a good idea. A German beaurocrat who was pitching open source insightfully quipped, "'Security through obscurity' is the model of yesterday. The model of the future is 'Security through transparency'". Thats a paraphrase, and I'm too lazy to look it up. Great point, though. Maybe this new vulnerability will lead to another "slammer" worm...

DARPA is also funding a research project that eventually hopes to create software that is self-aware. I believe this was posted previously on /. article here This might also tie into the Genoa II and Sensit projects. There are many projects with similar aims funded by darpa.

Ok, I didn't feel like copy and pasting the link from the above comment everytime I wanted to go to the site so I translated it.

The above post refers to this site.

Both articles point to the official DARPA CTS site ... the only difference is one points to the FAQ instead of the main site.

An Executive Summary of TIA released by DARPA is available here. An explanation and overview of TIA, again by DARPA, can be found here.

An Executive Summary of TIA released by DARPA is available here. An explanation and overview of TIA, again by DARPA, can be found here.

... my brother is the DARPA project manager for the Segway stuff. In fact, it was his idea to explore the uses of Segway as an autonomous robot. He bought a couple dozen and spread them around to various universities, etc.

He's been doing distributed robotics and autonomous robots for years. He's also in charge of MARS, another USC robotics project. Some pretty wild stuff!

To stop counterfeit bills, not to stop anonymous cash transactions. You honestly think someone is going to setup a database and link all
of the bills against your CITIZEN.USER_PK1 unique ID number just to make sure you can't be anonymous?

Fuck you.

The name and concept is supposed to be a spin of the Government's TIA (Terrorist Information Awareness) program that spys on citizens for terrorist activity. More information on TIA is available at DARPA and a story that Wired ran.

DARPA Develops Urban Surveillance System

Develops Urban Surveillance System

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.

The project's centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.

Scientists and privacy experts are concerned about the potential impact of the emerging DARPA technologies if they are applied to civilians by commercial or government agencies outside the Pentagon.



DARPA Develops Urban Surveillance System

DARPA contracting document: http://dtsn.darpa.mil/ixo/solicitations/CTS/file/B AA_03-15_CTS_PIP.pdf

Congratulations, you got the joke in the article! -> "add a Webcam to the top and John Poindexter's vision of Total Information Awareness can be a reality in your home or office!""

Interesting to note is that #3, #6, and #8 are all linux clusters. All three of which are at Livermore.

Cray's X1 also debuted, but it was much lower @112. However, it ought to be noted, that the examples out so far are only 60 processors at tops. As soon as the money gets ponied up, prolly at ORNL, they'll be waaaay up towards the top. My guess is, if all goes as planned, they'll be at #15 by year's end.

What I find exciting these days is actually the High Productivity Computing Systems Effort, the Blue Planet or Blue Gene. These are a little ways off from being on the Top500 list yet though. :D

I do wish there were more SC companies doing hardware development in the US. I love Cray, but a single vendor smacks of eggs in one backet syndrome...So, geeks, if ya wanna start a startup with a design, go for it...Betcha the NSA (aka Cthuhlu of HPC) would be happy to sponsor ya...;)

I have always said that KGB agents must have wept when they realised the information your typical marketing or credit card company have on the american citizen.

But credit card companies don't employ people with guns and badges that can kick in your door and take you to a holding cell without a reason--and thats the difference!

The biggest threat TIA offers the American public is, if you've read the Detailed report to congress, they decide who, when, and where to attack Americans-to protect you and me-Americans.

That algorithm is so fundamentally broken as to be practically useless for anything but as an aid in simple searches. Why anyone would use soundex in a mission critical application designed to positively identify individuals is beyond me. What, was the 'No Fly' database written by 1st year comp sci major or something? Sheesh.

Hey, wanna make a good living in these uncertain economic times? Come up with a better alternative and propose it to DARPA. There is actually some very cool research going on that is funded by DARPA in terms of biometrics and database centric comp sci.

• The Training Superiority Program seeks to transform military training by providing continuously-available, on-demand mission-level training for all forces at all echelons.

This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.

Also, the Linguistic Data Consortium sent their catalog update out yesterday. As usual, there are no new corpi of people attempting to read a language as they are acquiring it, at any age.

and no doubt make an appropriate entry into your Total Information Awareness database file

Dear Citizen,

That should now read Terrorism Information Awareness.

Sincerely,

Someone who's currently employed under a TIA contract

No, that's still called TIA. Only instead of Total Information Awareness it's now Terrorism Information Awareness. Apparently some people (Democrats) were concerned that Tom Delay might use the system to track down fugitive souls who still thought there was a separation between the states and the federal government. Silly Dems! Such a system could only be used for good...just like gator! In fact, both systems gather information about people and use it for nefarious purposes...

Well, this is the fucking Pentagon (your department of war on other countries) that wants to have a complete database of every tiny little thing about American citizens.

Heh. You have no idea what you're talking about. From DARPA's own TIA page:

The goal of the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists - and decipher their plans - and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts.

I also urge you to read question 5 from the FAQ:

Is DARPA developng a domestic surveillance capability to create dossiers on each and every American?

No. The goal of the TIA program is to develop information technologies that will provide important capabilities to detect foreign terrorist threats before they attack Americans.

So DARPA specifically denies your assertion. Now you may think DARPA is lying... But lacking proof, you might as well joing the Area 51/cattle mutilation crowd. Assuming you haven't already.

Q

Well, this is the fucking Pentagon (your department of war on other countries) that wants to have a complete database of every tiny little thing about American citizens.

Heh. You have no idea what you're talking about. From DARPA's own TIA page:

The goal of the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists - and decipher their plans - and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts.

I also urge you to read question 5 from the FAQ:

Is DARPA developng a domestic surveillance capability to create dossiers on each and every American?

No. The goal of the TIA program is to develop information technologies that will provide important capabilities to detect foreign terrorist threats before they attack Americans.

So DARPA specifically denies your assertion. Now you may think DARPA is lying... But lacking proof, you might as well joing the Area 51/cattle mutilation crowd. Assuming you haven't already.

Q

instead of moaning about how long it is taking to get mono up and running, you should be helping.

I would love to work on an awesome project like mono if I had the time. Right now I have a full-time job, I've been hacking on my own project for 2+ years, and I'm working on another little side project. Beleive me, it's not like I sit on the couch every night wondering when the mono-team will get their asses in gear:)

This year's one day seminar on Integrating Speech Technology in Language Learning has been cancelled. The InSTIL seminar was all that had been left of what was once a funded U.S. research program to use speech recognition to help people learn to read. However, over the past few years the budget of the Interagency Educational Research Initiative has been slashed and the Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnership program has been ZEROED. The IERI and LAAP programs were created to deal with DARPA funding deficencies, but DARPA has not taken up the slack for speech recognition in language instruction. Fewer U.S. polyglots will have a far greater impact on intelligence-gathering efforts than bandaids like Project Babylon or any of the DARPA advanced speech recognition programs can possibly provide. Please join me in asking John Poindexter and his advisory board and NIST to help get this vital funding back in the budget.

No - that's US mail, with Total Information Awareness

Bush, the closest thing to fascist we've ever had.

Just remember what it was like 3 years ago: Economy was good, we had jobs, the President was brokering peace between Israel and Palestine, and our biggest worry was that the President had consentual sex with his adult intern. Oh my.

Today: Economy is crashing, > 6% unemployment
rate is common in urban areas across the country, we're in a questionable and bloody war for oil, the same people who bolstered Saddam into power are in control today, Israel and Palestine aren't even on the map, the Bush administration is silencing political critics, and the government wants to investigate your private life to make sure you are not a terrorist, headed by Big Brother himself.

So much has been lost in just 3 years.

But you've just made their point: if so, why isn't CANADA funding them instead of a USA organization?

Because Canada has better things to worry about than Total Information Awareness. The closest thing that we have is universal identification cards on the way, but it's possible that we're going to end up with a centrist/leftist coalition next term and it'll be put to the side for a while.

Obviously someone who's contracted to DARPA

The register is reporting about it now in a funny story showing what DARPA did with te money: a SELF-HEALING MINEFIELD.

The man in charge of DARPA infosec is Dr. Douglas Maughan DARPA/ITO. Write an email to dmaughan@darpa.mil and ask him politely why he decided to drop funding for this project. The timing of the announcement suggests that it is related to the pro-peace comments made by one of the project's members.

actually - i dont think lobbying is it. DARPA provides a lot (and I do mean a LOT) of money for projects that eventually releases OSS code. Even ReiserFS (a russian company at that!) is a recipient of DARPA funding.

CHATS, is one such program specifically for OSS, which is where Reiser's funding comes from. TIA, believe it or not, will be generating OSS code in the next few years, assuming privacy extremists let it get off the ground.

It's new to me, I use google.

The fact that they think they will be able to take users away from google by (or while) tracking their browsing habits is a bit far fetched to me.
And It's not anonymous if you are logged in to yahoo. Unless you log out, disable cookies, reboot your ISP connection until you have a new IP, then perform your search.
The funny thing is I wasn't a Tin Foil Hat wearing privacy nut until my government decided they wanted to Track everyone's online habits And Hold them completely waiving Habeus Corpus

And Buffy will marry me, don't mock my love.

First, they learn something about the threat to their own privacy. Second, one can present the dilemma to them: If you're asked to work on it, especially in the current job market, would you do it?

The teacher can also add that this is a concrete, current issue that is reality and not some fake problem. (I know this since I am exactly in this position.)

2: Far fewer informants (20% of the Iraqi population is estimated to be a paid informant for a secret police agency).

Please report to the nearest reeducation center within 24 hours. You do not need to bring anything.

Bush, the closest thing to fascist we've ever had.

Just remember what it was like 3 years ago: Economy was good, we had jobs, the President was brokering peace between Israel and Palestine, and our biggest worry was that the President had consentual sex with his adult intern. Oh my.

Today: Economy is crashing, > 6% unemployment rate is common in urban areas across the country, we're in a questionable and bloody war for oil, the same people who bolstered Saddam into power are in control today, Israel and Palestine aren't even on the map, the Bush administration is silencing political critics, and the government wants to investigate your private life to make sure you are not a terrorist, headed by Big Brother himself.

So much has been lost in just 3 years.

This sounds to me very much like what Poindexter is doing/wants to do with DARPA and their various projects. Check out the TIA (Total Information Awareness) programme in particular, if you haven't heard about it yet.

This is old news, but somehow those things manage to remain fairly hidden, and just resurface once in a while. Esp. when America is at war, and people are just focused on Iraq news.

This sounds to me very much like what Poindexter is doing/wants to do with DARPA and their various projects. Check out the TIA (Total Information Awareness) programme in particular, if you haven't heard about it yet.

This is old news, but somehow those things manage to remain fairly hidden, and just resurface once in a while. Esp. when America is at war, and people are just focused on Iraq news.

auto-aim in some systems-- part of the recent effort of the DoD to install autonomous or semi-autonomous systems to reduce the number of personnel in a given system, in order to minimize error and reduce maintenance costs.

The Patriot missile system, for example, can be set to one of three levels: manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic. In semi-automatic mode, it detects and assesses inbound targets and tells the operator, who decides what to do. In fully automatic, it detects, assesses, and engages inbound targets without the operator's help. As one might imagine, it is very fast in fully automatic mode.

Another auto-aim system is the Phalanx Close In Weapons System, designed to protect Navy ships from incoming missiles, planes, and high speed boats. It's been mentioned on slashdot many times before. The CIWS has a fully automatic radar system and an attached 20mm gatling gun as a last line of defense so incoming threats can't overwhelm the limited human capacity of the ship, and was deployed in 1977.

So far one of the only auto-aim technologies for ground troops is the TLOS, which detects the enemy's optical devices, like sniper scopes and laser designators, so the foot soldier can engage them faster than if he were searching with the naked eye. But this technology will no doubt be implemented on a wider scale in the next decade when the digital battlefield becomes mainstream. I would look more along the lines of Tactical Mobile Robotics to find auto-aim technologies. See Raptor, basically a sentry that never sleeps. Also, DARPA has a lot of autonomous technology projects in the works.

...Ignoring all the anti-american bullshit in your message...

OK...!!?? I think there is a misunderstood here and your attack really pissed me off..

This wasn't anti-american but simply stating the fact that the American army is the most technological advance fighting force in human history. Take a look at The Objective Individual Combat Weapon (OICW) for yourself and tell me that this is not the weapon of "The Predator" (from the 1987 movie of the same name). ;)

If you think that I was referring to the fact that the Predator in the movie is a cold blooded barbarian assassin then I want state that even if I think that the real marines are technologically closer to the alien in the movie Predator, Sadam and is troops are the cold blooded barbarian assassins.

For the parallel with OGC in counter-strike just look the results of the battle of Najaf. Iraqis dead 1000, Alliance troops dead 0. I think it is obvious that the Iraqis are doomed and can't win. Like if you play a game in counter-strike against a team that use OGC it is obvious that you are doomed and can't win.

So now that this is clear do someone else want to report me to John Poindexter at the Information Awareness Office or why not just call me a terrorist because I use P2P?

Metamaterials are engineered composites that exhibit superior properties not observed in the constituent materials or nature.

From DARPA

The DARPA Information Awareness Office (IAO) will imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate, and transition information technologies, components, and prototype closed-loop information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness that is useful for preemption, national security warning, and national security decision making. (my emphasis)