Slashdot Mirror
DARPA Developing 'Combat Zones That See'
t0rnt0pieces writes "DARPA 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 city. Officials claim that the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas, but police, scientists and privacy experts say the technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans. Combined with other technologies, such as software that scans databases of everyday transactions and personal records worldwide, the government would have a reasonably good idea of where everyone is most of the time. Read the news story and the contracting document."
Didn't DARPA invent the internet? So, let's start on IPv6 and give every object an IP address and a WiFi connectivity, and call it Secure Social Security or something like that. Problem solved!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
A network of cameras track our movements and trigger enevlopes demanding money on our doorsteps if we dare cross the red lines !
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
The Truman Show?
This is a step up from the idea the local police force has of tagging first their cars then pushing to haev every car tagged with wireless devices that identify the vehicels throughout the city on a wireless network. The idea being they can interface with GPS and mapping software to help them identify problems with traffic and criminal acts. They are pushing it in terms of National Securty, and claim that it will not be used as an invasion of privacy as if nothing illegal is happening, then they won't be looking.
So I guess the officials can also tell us why the hell overseas cities should provide the camera installation for US troops to fight there more easily?
To install the cameras you usually need to control the city and to control a city in a military operations requires some fighting before. Looks like a perfect Catch22 to me.
The trends in the government toward an Orwellian society sinerely worry me. Ashcroft and Bush have exploited 9/11 in order to pass many new laws that curb the openness of American society. They do all this under the guise of "national security" -- and yet we are not any more secure -- the non-partisan Council of Foreign Relations recently put out a report, saying that "Nearly two years after 9/11, the United States is drastically underfunding local emergency responders and remains dangerously unprepared to handle a catastrophic attack on American soil, particularly one involving chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-impact conventional weapons. If the nation does not take immediate steps to better identify and address the urgent needs of emergency responders, the next terrorist incident could be even more devastating than 9/11."
Our state of government is corrupt. Politicians are being bribed left and right in order to allow the big-media to consolidate even more, in order to pass DMCA type legislation, and in order to pass acts such as the PATRIOT Act, which should have been named the Big Brother Act. They are even creating Orwellian agencies such as the Total Information Awareness program (renamed to the Terrorism Information Awareness system, in hopes that this would help them fool the public on its purposes).
This is a farce. We need a new leader who will restore American values to this country. I personally think Howard Dean is our best chance at restoring this country to what it was (a good example of what he stands for is in his speech titled "The Great American Restoration", but in all honestly, almost anyone would be preferable to the anti-American Bush cabal.
That's what I refer to this as.
The following story is second hand; I make no claims as to its absolute veracity. Now, that being said:
Several years ago, it became feasible to use many, many cameras to monitor the movement of cars via their license plates. Long before the Brits deployed one of these systems to control traffic in the core of London, Burma (aka Myanmar, one of the more oppressive regimes out there) dropped a decent amount of cash to acquire a traffic management system for their own country.
Except Burma doesn't actually have traffic to manage. At least not vehicular...show up to a protest, though, and all that automatic, large scale image capture, compare...capture...becomes really interesting.
Welcome to the Burmese Traffic Problem.
--Dan
www.doxpara.com
I think I am basically screwed. It is already starting to feel like that.
I think this is going to be the real debate of the 21 st century.
where am I going to go on those occasions when I really want to crawl out of my own skin. And there are other times when I want to go where there is nobody else but me.
That is my innate desire, so the temptation will always be there ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Ah yes, the good old "Only the guilty need fear" argument, shame its a fiction.
Around the world we have countless examples of restrictions made in the name of national security actually being used against the country's own citizens. East Germany, Russia, China, most of the old communist countries and so on.
The actions of the Stasi and the KGB were all justified by the excuse of "National Security".
I just get all the same kind of socks. takes out that pesky having to "match" them thing. they all look the same, so they ALL match!!! =D
A few radical folks decided that King George III had to go. That was treason and some of them were hanged (Nathan Hale).
At the time that the radicals decided that British rule had to go, all those radicals had to do was step out behind the barn and look around to see if they were being overheard by the King's forces. That would be impossible under this proposal.
There is a well established legal right to engage in this kind of discourse - but this proposal eliminates (chills) the right of the people to peacably assemble (even if they want to plot the overthrow of the current government - perhaps by ballot / constitutional convention / impeachment / or just running Ralph Nader again). US. Const. 1st Amend.
In his speech "The Great American Restoration", Howard Dean spoke of how he wanted to restore America's values to the government, and I'm sure his thoughts would be of interest to you:
"But there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration. The President's group of narrow-minded ideological advisors are undermining our nation's greatness in the world. They have embraced a form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.
"This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.
"In doing so they would throw aside our nation's role as the inspirational leader of the world the beacon of hope and justice in the interests of humankind. And instead, they would present our face to the world as a dominant power prepared to push aside any nation with which we do not agree.
"Our foreign and military policies must be about America leading the world, not America against the world."
However, for some reason, the U.S. is still considered by many here to be the Micorsoft-of-the-World. Why is that?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Do you use credit cards, debit cards, cash point card ?
Use a mobile phone, use it lots ?
Any one of the above can be used to track you.
Use store cards, reward cards (don't know if you get these in the US, but most the big supermarkets in the UK have these), combined together with you credit/debit card records a reasonable profile of you could be put together.
Technology is cool, with live by tech, we die for tech, but the same technology also traps us in an observable, trackable society.
As a transplanted (25 years) Vermonter, I'll have to give Howard Dean a mixed review.
On the positive side, the guy tends to be a fiscal conservative, and can be BLUNT. I can't say if its an exact quote, but I seem to remember him using words like "irresponsible" and "idiotic" to describe members of the legislature, and those were members of his own party. It's about time we had someone in the Oval Office capable of being both direct and subtle.
On the negative side, there were some oddities about how Act 60 got through for school funding, and we're still fighting those battles. Vermont still has a lot of tension between business and environment, growth and quality-of-life.
As for Civil Unions, I guess I have to take the "so conservative I look liberal" stance and say, "My bedroom is none of your business, and your bedroom is none of mine!"
Dean is a bit of an autocrat, and has some difficulty working with a legislature. I count that as somewhat positive, because I don't like my government to do too much. As a hard line middle-of-the-roader, I tend to prefer Democrats in office because there IS more contention, and less gets done. With sufficient concentration of power, Republicans are too efficient and too much gets done. Much as they decry 'activist government', that's what we've got now.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
"U.S. is still considered by many here to be the Micorsoft-of-the-World"
Britain plays the SCO Role...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
To quote a great American patriot, Benjamin Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
The United States was formed in order to create a government for the people, not against them. Our people are honorable citizens, not potential terrorist suspects. This trend toward an Orwellian society goes against all American values.
Is it not time to stop slagging off new technology for the bad things that could be done with it and rather, try to put forwards some realistic approaches to how a modern civ. is going to deal with new technology in the future
- i.e. make some laws/guidelines that are slightly more future-proof than the ones we currently have.
I would much rather see someone talking about solutions that deal with the possible creation of some extremely serious technology.
AND UK/USA. It is illegal under both our laws for the security services to spy on civilians. So we spy on yours, you spy on ours, data exchanged, all nice and legal.
And what's with this "how long until it is used on American soil?" attitude? Are you the only people on the world who are allowed to have privacy or something? Do you see a breach of someones civil liberties in some random country as "OK", provided Americans aren't affected? What's with that attitude?
Already, I am way too swamped with information I can't process it all, and many businesses I have to deal with ( insurance companies and anything to do with retirement investments ) know this and send me reams and reams of meaningless data.
Ever tried to read those phone-book prospectus they send? Or tried to understand whats really covered in that insurance policy? Or know what you should do with those proxies?
So somehow the government is going to collect and store all this data on all of us. How many of us will be needed to snoop on the rest of us? How many of us will be actually earning our keep, rather than coercing (taxing) it away from someone else? Will our economy, already crumbling from the effects of our inefficiency, absorb yet more non-productive loading? We are already running a helluva national debt. I know we think Joe Taxpayer is going to somehow foot the bill for this whole thing, but I get the idea we are kinda in for a surprise similar to the one some astronauts got when they tried to push some overstressed things beyond their limit. Once the infrastructure collapses, we may have to start off at a very low level again. What scares me is that it seems to me that technology has outpaced our means of maintaining it without a sophisticated infrastructure in place to do so. Given the resources of a machine shop, could you produce anything you needed to keep cars running?
I have large areas of my life in collapse already from not "making time" to pay due diligence to numerous busyworks. ( I put "making time" in quotes, because I really can't make time, I only can divert it from something else. ) - I simply can't see where we as a public can afford all this busywork trying to keep tabs on everybody else.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I knew as soon as I read your comment that you'd get lots of responses, and you have, but none that I've read so far have given you the correct answer, IMHO.
I'm sure that in 1937, all the German people thought their government was the greatest thing on the planet. I'm sure that even the Jews didn't really think they had anything to worry about, after all, they weren't breaking any laws. Within a few year, though, Hitler made sure that laws were created that the Jews, just by being Jewish, were breaking. According to Hitler, that made them a threat to his country, and they had to separated. Since some of the resisted, they had to disposed of. It's a harsh truth, but as far as Hitler was concerned, everything he was doing was perfectly acceptable. The Jews, before the late 30's, didn't think anything was wrong... obviously they were mistaken.
Just because you're not breaking any laws now doesn't mean you won't next week, next month, or next year. We have a government that has the power to create laws. The only thing the general population can do is protest, but in the end, the only way the politicians will regret what they do is if they're not re-elected, which in the worst case (Senators) can be 6 years later (I'll also mention that in the original Constitution, Senators weren't supposed to be elected, but rather chosen by the State Legislature). Even if a new law was drafted and passed that would require (insert your ethnic group here) to register in the middle of the desert in Nevada, realistically, there's nothing you could do about it for the next few years, until the sponsors of the bill were up for re-election.
The Bill of Rights was based on certain God-given (not Government-given) rights, such as the freedom of speech, press, religion, etc. One of the rights that isn't specifically mentioned is the Freedom of a certain amount of Privacy. Where I go on vacation is my choice, and I feel it's a matter of privacy. If I decide to go to Mount Rushmore alone, and not tell anybody about it, I don't want anybody else to know. That's my choice, and it's a freedom I expect from living in a country where the national anthem says "Land of the Free". Free to do what? To have the government track my movements, wherever I go? Is that what the Founding Fathers thought when they left England? "Gee, General Washington, I think we should create a government that can monitor and oppress its people whenever it wants with almost no possibility of retribution." I somehow doubt it.
The fact that we're discussing what freedoms and liberties are violated by the government tracking our movements tells me that people have forgotten why this country was founded in the first place. This country was founded so people could make lives for themselves doing whatever they chose, as long as they didn't deprive someone else of their freedoms. The government was created for the sole purpose of protecting people from deprivation of property and violence. The government was the friend of the people 200 years ago, but now is an entity to be looked upon with fear and apprehension. The "values" of "diversity" and "equal" rights are responsible. People that work for a living now have up to 40% of their earnings taken away and given to people that don't work for a living. Credit is given to people based on the color of their skins. "Equal rights" is a joke now, only funny to those that get things handed to them. To everyone else, it's a threat of violence or incarceration.
The people of this country need to seriously look at what their country has become, then we need to fix it.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
..privacy experts say the technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.
So being Enlgish I'd be like completely invisible? Cool.
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Well, I don't understand the guy's concerns. This DARPA effort is just the application of current technology to a traditional warzone necessity. Any nation with the same technical capabilities would, and will, do the same.
Slashdot runs this kind of stuff under a "rights" rubric just as a piece of scaremongering to drum up traffic. It is nothing less than bush league tabload sensationalism (which, come to think of it, is what Slashdot has sunk to these days.) Sadly, it seems to get a lot of credence in the "Ashamed to be Born in the West" crowd.
The U.S. can't and shouldn't lead if that means kowtowing to the racist and extremist views that are endemic and most of the world. If the rest of the world finally gets the gumption to eliminate its own racist and manipulative dictators and potentates, then they can democratize themselves and join the 21st century. Until then, they pose a threat to democracies everywhere, including the U.S. Why would any state seek to lead nations whose very existence threaten it?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Sure. How about civil disobedience? That's widely considered one of the most important civil liberties we enjoy. I imagine it would have been a lot harder for civil-rights activists to peacefully assemble if a system like DARPA's had been in place in the '50s and '60s, constantly monitoring the "ringleaders" as they went about their business. Or imagine you lived during Prohibition, going out every night and in so doing quietly giving the finger to the 18th Amendment. When you leave your favorite speakeasy, would you rather take your chances with a cop happening upon you on the sidewalk, or a system of cameras recording your drunken stumblings to be used as evidence against you at a later date? I know what I'd rather put up with.
How about sharing a joint with your buddies on a week-long camping trip in the middle of a national forest? Not your thing? Not urban enough? Then how about enjoying a glass of wine one fine summer night in the park (open container of alcohol, a ticketable offense)? Still not your thing? OK, have you ever jaywalked in your life?
The concern is that the system described in the article would make it a lot harder to get away with these things. Yes, these acts are illegal, but I think most people value the wiggle room the law affords in such cases. Look up "reasonable expectation of privacy" on Google, and consider the ways it would be constricted if DARPA's urban surveillance system were turned on Americans.
And at the risk of sounding like one of those "knee-jerk" civil libertarians, I have to say that your argument could be used to excuse invasions of privacy I doubt even you would tolerate. For instance, if you're not performing any illegal acts in the bedroom with your S.O., why wouldn't you let the FBI install a camera in the ceiling fan to make sure? (Until last week, you are aware, certain expressions of sodomy, including oral sex, were against the law in certain states.)
I think my point got kind of lost somewhere in there, but hopefully you'll understand what I'm getting at.
yours