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Sensor Networks For Surveillance And Security
gpmap writes "Small Times has an article on the coming age of all-pervasive sensor networks that will feed information of all sorts to monitoring networks. Technology advances have generated intense interest in sensor networks: 'the magic words are surveillance and security.' The Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) hosted the second Information Processing in Sensor Networks workshop this week amid anticipation of significant funding grants from the National Science Foundation. Most believe miniaturization, whether through conventional methods, MEMS or nanotech, will drive the spread of sensor networks. But plenty of issues need working through, on the hardware, software and social fronts."
In two words: Information leaks.
It's been demonstrated that you can predict, to a high degree of likelyhood, when a military strike is about to happen by counting how many pizzas are delivered to the Pentagon.
It's somewhat like the before-mentioned leaky abstraction concept, but applied to information.
It's going to get alot worse long before it gets better. Those who believe that true privacy is possible in the future are delusional.
For a well though-out article on the subject, try reading this Wired article that
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Other unanswered questions involve how companies will filter the data generated by large networks of sensors...
Leaving aside the other interesting bits of the article ("Videocams 1 sq.mm large? I'll crush them under my sandaled feet!"), this unanswered question is actually very, very important. For far too long both military* and non-military intelligence has focused far to much on gathering information and far to little on actually going thru it and learning from it. During WWII and the early part of the cold war each and every bit of gathered intelligence was a treasure, troughtly analysed and carfully matched with what other bits of intelligence that was gathered before, letting the analysers build up a pretty complete picture (so good in fact, that towards the end of that war the allies often knew better than the germans where the german troops were). But as we got better at collecting information, through ELINT, satelites and such, we 'drowned' in the sheer amount of information... succumbing to the idea that seeing something was as good as knowing what we saw (hint; it isn't). So I sure hope someone out there figures out a way to both filter and interprent the information they may gather with this - otherwise it is useless.
*) Come to think of it, the idea to 'sow' enemy territory with a sensornetwork like this before and during an attack might be quite usefull - if they don't figure out a way to jam it off course.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
How are these sensors powered? From reading the article I would assume that they draw there power from a central battery of sorts.
And why would you want a sensor network in your bedroom? I am thinking they are something like a bunch of small video cameras... No?
Sorry, but you have really displayed complete ignorance of the topic in question. Of course, as soon as anything mildly related to privacy is posted here, immediate paranoia sets in. Sensor networks have a very broad range of applications, from monitoring temperatures in chemical engineering experiments to collecting ecosystem data. Enhanced security services are only one possible use for the technology, and a fairly mundane one at that.
A common argument used here against legal acts such as the DMCA is that they unfairly blame the technology rather than those who misuse it. I don't see how your comment is any different. Personally I believe that sensor networks will provide many research opportunities and genuinely useful applications in the next few years. If organisations misuse one aspect of the technology for surveilance, then obviously those responsible should be held accountable. However, branding an entire field of research as being "unacceptable" is not particularly acceptable either.
We could root out all the criminals, misfits, homeless, and other undesirables.
We could create a new service under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security.
We'll call it the S.S., and it can use double lightning bolts for its insignia. Wouldn't that be lovely?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Ben Franklin
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Perhaps it would be nice to move away from wild, unfounded speculation and Sci-fi references to discuss how these things are used in the real world. Last summer I worked at a research station where we set up a network of these things to remotely monitor ground-nesting birds in their burrows. Privacy of the birds aside, these are great tools for scientific observation in sensitive areas -- observer effect is minimized, cost is minimized, and you can monitor many different locations constantly, without having to check them again every day. If you're wondering what the limitations of these systems are, powering them is a big one. The motes run on battery power, so the size of the battery puts a restriction on both the size of the mote and the amount of time it can run before it needs to be replaced (and the site needs to be disturbed). And size is important too, as they are not yet quite small or cheap enough to throw one in every locker room (despite what you may have heard).
However I hope that in the future as our first world societies incorporate these technologies we don't become overly dependent upon them. We're going to become increasingly susceptible to terrorist type attacks in the future and imagine the havoc that could be wrought on a society completely dependent on electronics and nanotech by a few well placed EMP bombs.
Back to the stone ages, Baghdad-style riots, bludgeoning your neighbour to get that last sack of rice and so on.
I found the article's comment about the need for the NSF to motivate standards in wireless sensor networks to be strange, since the IEEE 802.15.4 standard is due to be published any day now (the final draft is alread for sale at the IEEE online store). The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed for low cost, very low power consumption wireless sensor networks; it has a raw over-the-air data rate of 250 kb/s, operates in the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band, and can support peer-to-peer multihop (so-called "mesh") networks with device duty cycles below 3 ppm.
The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is being used by the ZigBee Alliance, an organization of more than 50 large and small companies, to establish networking and application profile interoperability standards, much like Wi-fi has done with IEEE 802.11. The ZigBee Alliance will have a session open to the public at its next meeting, in Berlin June 3.
The IEEE 1451.5 wireless sensor standard, which will standardize sensor discovery and data formatting, is at an earlier stage of development; proposals are now being presented.
With all this activity, it's not clear to me just what the NSF is expecting to standardize.