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Sensors Gone Wild

Posted by timothy on from the ubiquity-is-everywhere dept.

tulanian writes "forbes.com has an interesting article on networked, intelligent sensors. It mentions an experiment done by DARPA where several dozen magnetic sensors were scattered along a road and passing vehicles could be identified by their magnetic signatures."

14 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Is this good? by bobtheprophet · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Eventually large swaths of the earth will communicate with the digital realm using millions of miniature sensors.
    Sounds like 1984 to me...the privacy issues here are a serious concern.
    --
    Don't give me none of this "nature theme" business.
  2. it gets worse... by Obliterous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    a very MINOR operation by the car manufacturers could give each automobile a distinct magnetic signature, similar to a magnetic VIN. I dont think I'd want them able to track My driving habits...

    1. Re:it gets worse... by wkitchen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I dont think I'd want them able to track My driving habits...
      More important than my driving habits, I wouldn't want them tracking when/where I go. And no, I don't have anything evil I want to hide. It's just that it's none of their business what churches, political events, social events, etc. that people attend. That may not be their intent, but the potential for abuse bothers me.
    2. Re:it gets worse... by jeremyacole · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I dont think I'd want them able to track My driving habits...

      You think that they can't already track you? You do realize that you drive around in a car with a unique identifier on it already - the license plate. There are cameras up all over the city, even in small cities these days. If "they" really wanted to track you, they could.

      Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but the average public these days just doesn't realize how much of their life is being recorded into some database.
  3. Hertz, et al? by sprlmnl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't anyone remember the article about the car rental companies monitoring the GPS systems they had installed? Going too fast? Going to Mexico? Going to an anti-anything rally?

    When will someone get around to inventing the 'cone of silence' so we can have our privacy back?!

  4. Sounds cool... but.... by Joe5678 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The sensors sound pretty cool from the article, they mention the military wants to scatter them over a battlefield so they can collect info about where the enemy is, but I wonder how hard it would be for the enemy to just jam the network, or send out a bunch of bogus data into it.

  5. Your Tinfoil Hat Will Protect You. by DaedalusLogic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Don't worry... the tinfoil hat you're wearing will keep you from being sensed. All sensors can be fooled... Some systems of sensors are just a little better than others... You just need to know what they measure and send them crappy information.

  6. Sociologists and legal people by czarneki · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The implications of this are so huge that we need to get sociologists and legal people thinking about this early," says Roger T. Howe, the director of the Sensor & Actuator Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

    Yes, people are always calling for laws and regulation before the technology has worked itself out. But tt shouldn't work that way. The technology needs to get its fingers everywhere and become popular before we can think about legal and social issues sensibly. Otherwise we are just speculating wildly and choking off the possibility of genuine innovation. (witness the unfortunate too-early regulation of digital music).

    I, for one, am at the same time terrified and excited by the idea of sensors everywhere, communicating wirelessly and powering themselves from ambient heat. I have no idea what kind of applications will come of it, but I don't want any regulation until it's "too late."

    1. Re:Sociologists and legal people by NoData · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Technology moves at a pace that is far, far faster than social change. If we wait until a technology is adopted to consider its social and political ramifications, the damage will be long done--and, in fact, the next phase of that technology will already be well into development.

      I sympathize with your concerns that pre-emptive regulation strangles innovation. However, I think the problem lies with the entire approach our society has in dealing with technology. Our society is issue-driven, and deals with issues rather than values. "What is our digital music policy? What is our wire tapping policy? What is our copy protection policy?"...etc.

      Instead, we need to formulate a majority expression of our core values regarding matters that have become salient in light of modern technology. Really, I think these boil down to two major domains: Privacy and intellectual property*.

      What makes our Constitution so flexibile and adaptive is that it broadly sets out a scaffolding of societal values (at least the Bill of Rights does). But, besides some tangential language in the 4th, there's nothing explicit on privacy. And certainly, IP could never have been anticipated.

      I think our societal norms on what constitutes privacy and IP are right now in a state of extreme flux. Once these crystalize, I think much of the debate concerning the legitimacy of many technologies will become moot. For better or worse.

      *(OK, there's a 3rd domain: Biological engineering...but this one invokes religion, and so is at a whole other level of complexity. Way, way off from being settled).

  7. two quick thoughts by JimBobJoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First, I've always wondered if cars did indeed emit some type of unique magnetic signature. Because if they did, I would make a sensor to detect the precise signature emitted by the Ford Crown Victoria with the police package, which is drived by the vast majority of police departments in North America (well at least in my state. Add two or three more cars and you got 90% of the police car types.)

    Then I would sell em as police detectors. :-)

    Second thought, I'm particularly in love with this

    "Omron is about to market a system that lets your car recognize you using your fingerprint."

    Since we know that fingerprint devices are not that hard to fool...all ya have to do is dust the car you wanna steal for fingerprints (assuming that the owner of the car has indeed touched their car barehanded at some point in time) and do the elmer's glue thing. I'm excited.

  8. Some random thoughts by coryboehne · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, from the article:

    The net is relegated to a small screen and a keyboard. This will detect who you are and where you are.

    Is this a Good Thing? I know that it could be used for some very good things, such as instant identity verification, missing & lost persons (the list goes on... I'll spare you) But it seems really, really, really, Big Brotherish, and I'm not so prone to like that very much....

    Some new sensors are getting so small--some are invisible to the naked eye--that they will be able to run on 100 microwatts.

    Great! So not only can we be watched incessantly, we won't even be able to know IF we're being watched...

    At the 100-microwatt level they could gather energy from ambient heat and photovoltaic cells, says Stephen Senturia, a specialist in microsystems at MIT. His colleagues are working on making chips so small that they can power themselves, like watches that need only the kinetic energy generated by movements of the wearer's wrist.

    ok, most thought provoking idea in this comment coming right up...

    At what point is something sentient and self supporting enough to be considered life? I know that this is relying on a backbone of support, but really, this single feature is actually very interesting if you really think about it. It is capable of sensing it's environment, it's self supporting... has a definate life span... hmmm.. this is really somewhat one the edge of being electronic and creeping towards being alive...

    Just my crazy thoughts, but I think this is something we all need to watch carefully, both for the positive aspects of it, and also to be sure (as sure as we can be anyhow) that this is not being used as just another minon of Big Brother... Of course a small amount of Big Brotherism is really quite acceptable, and if used properly this technology could really be a sign of great things to come... I just hope it is used in a way that we would all approve of...

  9. Luckily Magnetic Signatures are Infallable by DrSkwid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    cos you can't buy magnets anywhere

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  10. This is a stretch by Raiford · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Not much information in the article to conclude any kind of real concern. Use of the term magnetic signature conjures up the idea that every vehicle will have a unique signature that can be identified down to the make, model and last oil change. I don't think so. It is hard enough to extract detailed signature information from radar returns detailed enough to determine distinct vehicle classes (requires fancy imaging and such). I find it hard to believe that the perturbation in some magnetic flux density would reveal a high information content.

    --
    "player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
  11. Spoofing by Vess+V. · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seems like you can aler your car's magnetic signature by putting a couple of slabs of sheet metal in the trunk. (Or for that matter... a couple of giant industrial magnets.)

    Am I wrong?