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Sensor Networks for NBC Threats
Nerdsville writes "Planet Analog have an article describing research into a nationwide sensor network that could provide a real-time early-warning system for chemical, biological and nuclear threats across the US.
Researchers plan to use microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology to create accurate biological and chemical sensors. Linked in an Internet-like peer-to-peer network spanning wireless, wired and satellite links."
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Like that godawful Will and Grace show?
A P2P network eh? Now what are the xxAA going to bash, when they can't claim P2P is evil?
we come in peace / shoot to kill
is that Friends will continue for many, many years.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Nukes give out a big flash of light which will tell you when they've hit. You should then remember to duck and cover. The mushroom cloud should help to warn those outside the range of the flash.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I read the headline and thought, "Hmmm... So they're going to sensor CBS and ABC for threats against NBC. Or maybe they'll be sensoring NBC for threats against the others."
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
If it could warn us when NBC is about to put on one of its cheesy shows it would be worth it.
a real-time early-warning system for chemical, biological and nuclear threats
Next time they should order the words the same as in the acronym (Nuclear, Biological, Chemical) so those of us who are not terrorism experts can stop wondering why the peacock network poses such a threat to our well being.
I'd like a sensor that sniffs the RIAA and update me via MSN!!
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Must-See threats!
* Please do not read my signature.
it doesn't work. it's more of a powerpoint idea. best and worst thing about government work.. you don't ever have to do anything.
It seems to me that a terrorist could use this system to cause panic without ever using the agents on a large scale. They could just get some agents to deploy a very small amount at different sensors they identified throughout a metro area and that would cause enough panic to disrupt what they want to disrupt.
How do they plan on concealing this?
Terrorist will use use something else that governments aren't looking for. For example the US was ready for an invasion by planes missiles etc... but on Sept. 11, the terrorists used something nobody expected.
I think the different governments should spend more money on trying to understand the causes of terrorism, and try to eliminate it at the source (which one could argue they already do with the war on terrorism).
You'll notice the article only mentions airborne threat... What about water ?
CBRN
t -really-means-afterwards department, aka the LNMUANAAFWIRMA dept.
Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear.
From the let's-not-make-up-a-new-acronym-and-forget-what-i
I can see it now: the 10 o'clock news reports that we've had the 3rd false nuclear threat, as sensors read a 69.69% jump in radiation levels at 4:20 this afternoon.... yeah, right!
stuff |
If it could warn us when NBC is about to put on one of its cheesy shows it would be worth it.
That's already done -- the network has agreed to limit crappy shows, they now will only air on days ending in "y"
--
When I first saw this I thought it might having something to do with protecting us from more Reality shows ....
Maybe not.
The Anti-Blog
For some reason, I read the title as Censor NBC Networks for Threat
Like you wanted us to censor the NBC TV network and then blackmail them or something.
It's... News for Nerds! Stuff that Matters! La-de-da-de-da-DE-da!
Unless, of course, Planet Analog are a hive mind. Then it would be grammatically correct.
No shit. As they're ordered now it would be CBN, and then we'd have to weather a storm of jokes about Christian Broadcasting Network instead of the current storm of jokes about National Broadcast Corporation.
From what I've learned a long time ago in the army one of the biggest issues with NBC is that even if you get an alert in a lot of cases you're just in time to let people know they should have put on their suit and masks allready.
So I wonder what a network like that could contribute.
(I say I'm wondering, not that it can't be done... Any suggestions?).
Where will American paranoia stop?
Probably when government funding will.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I can see it now: thousands of people fleeing the subway when a sensor trips because someone lit up a cigarette underneath one. Now every ignores it when a real NBC attack comes around, just like the tsunami early warning systems in the pacific.
This IS a gov't project, and this one is only getting funding because of people who watch the news too much and are becoming exactly what terrorists want: afraid.
Also, politicians are aching to to jump on the "spend money on homeland security" bandwagon. 2004 is just around the corner . .
-n
i keep hearing about stuff like this since 9/11. has anyone actually seen some interesting new sensors, or is it all hype ?
Would it kill you to explain an abbreviation that most people are unfamiliar with?
That reminds me of the "GSW" (Gun Shot Wound) that doctors use. Guess which one takes longer to say (more syllables)?
Stop clinging to acronyms as esoteric bravado.
Acutally, the alarm will go off when "Friends" actually returns to being a watchable show. Don't worry, it will never happen...
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
How much is it going to cost? How many attacks have there been in the US since 9/11? None. Nada. Zip.
While the Federal government spends billions of dollars on anti-terrorism, homeland security, tax-cuts-for-the-rich (TM) and un-necessary wars, ordinary people are losing their jobs, have no decent health care and are suffering for inadequate funding of schools. This is progrsss?
CBN? That'd have to be the CowboyNeal threat.
Gotta watchout for that one.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
I am no way suggesting that all Muslims believe as these fundamentalists do. This is a relatively small (compared to the number of Muslims worldwide) but very vocal and active group of people I am talking about here.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
No wonder there are so many responses that are joking about the NBC television network. What does NBC mean here? I thought I knew acronyms, but not this one.
While NBC is in the title, it is not in the story description, nor is it in the actual article. I'm guessing it is Nuclear something, but I do not know.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The cause is not radical Islamic fundamentalism per se but rather organized religion as a whole. Islam is just an extension of a much larger problem. Is my experience nearly all religions have promoted violence against someone or something that did not conform to its' belief system.
Sure, create a lot of warning systems and defence systems. Everyone feels safe.
Than continue with stupid foreign policy.
Everybody happy, including the no-brainers in politics.
" Sure, create a lot of warning systems and defence systems. Everyone feels safe."
There are no defence systems in this country, except for de fence who tries to sell you de stolen goods.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I mean, he'd carry in nuclear, bilogical, and chemical weapons in to the studio in his pants every day. When the pants came off, the sensors went wild.
Now, of course he causes problems with the CBS sensors. His Cardiac Bypass Shunt cause all kinds of problems.
Aren't acronyms fun?
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Not scared? You should be.
For those who haven't seen the movie Dogma (all twelve of you), I recommend you rent it tonight.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
On /. CBN is CowboyNeal.
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
...NBC are innofensive compared to MSNBC!
Read this and use your common sense and don't panic.
chemical, biological and nuclear
The way they've got it written it acronyms out to CBN threats, which to me reads CowBoy Neal Threats. this is scary stuff man.
So, you're saying that a group of radicals with weapons are dangerous? Were you expecting a fucking medal for that blinding flash of the obvious?
I submit that religion is besides the point, that some people are ready to die for anything, that religion is not the problem, merely the excuse. It is the focus of idiocy, both from radicals like Osama to idiots like GW Bush.
I have to post this as AC because the american audience here will murder my karma! American christian fundamentalists have the same insane beliefs, and bloodlust for infidels. As do Israeli Jewish fundamentalists. The only difference is that Islamic militaries are considered terrorists by americans, and american and israeli terrorists are considered millitaries by americans. It is all perspective. And yes Israeli soldiers and American soldiers quite often kill civillians without apology. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not defending terrorist actions(on any side) , I am quite against all these warlard puritans and zealots.
As September 11 2000 showed us, the most effective way of killing people is large and obvious amounts of energy (kinetic, potential, chemical). The NBC available to terrorists - dirty rather than fission, agents that can effect only a small area and number of people - are minor in comparison. Their primary effect is to create panic out of proportion to the actual effect.
Sure, release Sarin in a subway station, you'll kill some people. But have a detector that screams "Sarin attack! Sarin attack!" and you'll kill just as many, perhaps more, in the stampede to get out.
And if it turns out that the sensor was triggered by a new type of cologne? Well, we've just done the terrorists' job for them.
As a further thought, how do you field test these things? Test them in the lab with real agents, sure. Test them in the field with harmless agents that produce the same effect (and hope that nobody finds out what those are), but how do you know with any confidence that you can actually detect a genuine attack in the field? False positives in a military situation aren't so bad - all that will happen is that the grunts will turn on the overpressure systems or put on their NBC suits, but in a civilian situation? We've seen what happens when large numbers of people panic in a small area. Deploying these in cities seems to me like a big gamble to take, for little potential reward, when the costs of false positives are so high.
I'm not suggesting that we do nothing, but I am suggesting that reaction (which includes "preemptive strikes" against people that already hate us) isn't the way to go. Perhaps we could devote some of this energy to dealing with the causes of terrorism rather than the symptoms.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Funny that you don't see attacks against other countries who have similar beliefs to America, i.e. Canada.
A lot of recent terrorist activities have been targetted at one country and one country alone. The United States. What is so different about their beliefs from those of others that has put them under the proverbial microscope?
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
If it could warn us when NBC is about to put on one of its cheesy shows it would be worth it.
:)
Agreed. If only there were some kind of publication available at newsstands that could give out this kind of information. *cough*cough*.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Linked in an Internet-like peer-to-peer network
Watch out! The RIAA will undoubtedly try to shut it down.
The worst and third worst terrorist attacks in recent American history were carried out by radical Islamic fundamentalists, yes. The second and fourth worst ... well, I don't think Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph had spent much time listening to the imams. Pretty much all fundamentalism is bad, mmmkay?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
... is to spread terror. I think you are right, it could be used to spread terror and fear, which is exactly the object of terrorism (as I see it)...
I know it's offtopic, but things are running 80% offtopic so far...members of the NBC network. And this is before the recent deregulation that one of the FCC's own condemns. (pdf)
From my point of view, civilian casualties are a regrettable side effect of war. I think the difference here is that while civilians are killed on both sides, only one side is specifically targeting them.
And for the record, anyone who picks up a weapon or straps on a bomb with the intent to use it/them ceases to be an innocent civilian.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What specifically happened on September 11th in the year 2000?
I know something really big happened one year later on Sept 11 2001, but I'm not aware of what happened in 2000
I hope these devices aren't just sitting out on the internet, but that the government sets up a seperate secure network for all the sensors.
The last thing we need is some [dipshit|terrorist|*] cracking the network and causing mayhem by tricking the system into thinking there are attacks all over the place.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I work at the Labs, right down the hall from these guys. I play soccer with a man named Panos Datskos. He recently finished building a cantilever based electronic nose that has the potential to detect a single molecule. Datskos is working on a "universal" sensor that shares many of the same processes of a gas chromatograph to identify any substance. As described in the article, it uses very basic technology (a CD laser). It's also very compact, the size and shape of a discman. The coolest thing about the technology is that it functions in the ambient environment. It does not, like most laboratory equipment, require a vacuum, extreme temperatures, or special shock absorbance to reduce vibration. This is the kind of device that they'll be deploying to airports, I believe.
while (!sleep){
sheep++;
}
Based on this story
right here, this would be illegal since its P2P.
Jerks.
This space for rent.
It's probably a mix of things. You'll find that these groups use the religion more as a unifying factor to recruit people from various different parts of the world (with what else, besides religion, will you unite Western Africans, South East Asians, Arabs, etc., to fight under the same banner?).
They don't kill because "we don't believe in their religion". Religion is a tool through which to kill, but their reasons are different. And I'd be willing to bet that the leadership's motives are very different from the motives of those they recruit. The recruits may believe the religious fluff, but the reason they want to believe it is what's important.
Don't listen the spiel they spit out. There is something else that resonates with those few thousand (out of about 800 million Muslims, I think the figure was) that makes them willing to give their lives. Religion only makes it easier for them to do it.
I found some photos of the devices.
--Just the place for a snark!
Ann Coulter said:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"
Thank God Christian Fundamentalists are nothing like those bastard Islamic ones...
Two things - first, a decent sensor device made to detect specific things (like sarin, soman, etc, which are all chemically similar) won't be tripping on a cigarette. Pattern won't match.
Second, that's the advantage of having a network - in addition to spacial information, you get redundancy. If there are a few sensors in the area, they can back each other up.
Sensor networks like these are getting better all the time. Unfortunately, too often the scientists/engineers making them spend too much time creating the device and not enough time on the back-end signal processing that provides error correction and greater accuracy, not to mention false-positive protection.
Put it this way - if I made a sensor network, it would not confuse a cigarette for a threat. And hopefully, the people making this one work similarly.
Also, I was interested by something in the article:
The goal for all the government efforts, perhaps three to five years out, is to deploy a highly accurate yet low-cost network of sensors "that in a couple of minutes could tell you if an agent is present, in what concentration and something about the agent. But the technology for that doesn't really exist yet."
Yes it does. We can do it now. :P So it remains to be seen whether what is deployed is really state-of-the-art (or even state of 5 years ago, really).
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
False.
From Oh Lucy! - You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin To Do by From the Wilderness From http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/AVE_STE.htmlIt is beyond dispute now that Bush lied when he said the government had no idea this could happen. They had plenty of idea. This kind of idea had been speculated about for years.
Female Prison Rape in NY
Christian Broadcasting Network
Is that the Al Jazeera of the U.S.?
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
You want to know what the next terrorist will be like? Read up about the DC sniper case a few months back. Now imagine 20 snipers armed with rifles, and RPGs fanning out accross the nation. Yeah, eventually they'll be found and shot (martyred), but the terror it would cause both before and after (how do you know there aren't more?) would be immeasurable. How can you prevent it from happening? Well you can't, but that won't stop your leaders from turning the US into a police state because of it.
Heh heh, I'm from Ohio and CBN makes me think Canadian Broadcasting Network.
It sounds like a movie I saw:
Censor Networks target CBN threat. Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
(Blame Canada!)
Researchers plan to use microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and nanotechnology to create accurate biological and chemical sensors. Linked in an Internet-like peer-to-peer network spanning wireless, wired and satellite links.
Sadly, though. If ever we are attacked the first thing that will happen is that the creators of these "P2P networks" will be sent to jail as these nanobots illegally load data to the P2P networks.
"Wired news has an article about a new bill that would make it a felony to upload a file to a P2P network."
Does this strike anyone else as "Skynet" in the making?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
Exactly what is the purprose of the "Flamebait" moderation? Is it to hide posts that are intended simply to get people mad and produce predictable responses? That's already covered by the "Troll" moderation.
So the only conclusion I can come to is that the purpose of the "Flamebait" moderation is to hide posts that moderators simply disagree with. Might I remind you that silencing opinions that differ from the majority is the very difinition of fascism.
Whether you disagree with me or not, I think it's fair to say my post generated a genuinely positive discussion, not simply flame.
I thank those who chose to engage me in an honest debate. To those who anonymously (and cowardly, I might add) sought instead to silence my dissenting opinion, shame on you!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I didn't realize that abortion clinic bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Did they also organize the Oklahoma City bombing?
Terrorists come in all shapes, sizes, and colors (the purple ones are tasty). Unless that is recognized and dealt with this so called "War on Terrorism" is going to be just another buzzword-laden travesty of what it should be, much like the "War on Drugs".
It is very important to understand the cause of the problem so that in trying to solve it, we dont create a larger one. My gut feeling based on my reading is that, unfortunately, the seeds of a larger problem have already been planted.
Because if it's a peer-to-peer network and they upload a file, they'll be federal criminals!
AIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!
-Pete
At first I thought this was a real time system to send out bleeps during TV shows. How come we do not have a system to warn us about:
Anthrax Birds Cancer ???
Underpants Panties Noams ??
Congressmen Businessmen Stupidity ??
or crazy rich people from Autrallia: FOX ?
Affiliate "Networks" and "NBC," and read "Sensor" as "Censor," assuming that the government was trying to censor networks like NBC? (And was anyone else... not surprised?)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Chalk it up to a difference in usage of collective nouns.
So, would the feds' use of this network violate the new Conyers-Berman anti-P2P bill?
It might calm some people to know that such a system is in place to detect certain terror-inducing chemical attacks or bioweapons, but it may not actually detect anything.
I'd rather think that Ossama was a strategic master than someone taking all his ideas from the CIA. Some people just take the fun out of everything.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So what does your system make of mass food poisioning from a popular Taco Bell bad bean batch in Manhatan? Would airborn botulism trigger anything? It would be a bad day to ride the subway, but an evacuation might be overkill.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In the event of an actual nuclear attack, millions of sensors could cry out at once, "Duck and cover!" Ah yes, I feel better already.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
No THAT's Fox News.
Actually, while we're making fun of CBN and Fox News, I'd like to point out that Al Jazeera is actually acknowledged as being pretty fair. Sure, it shows stories from an Arab, Middle-Eastern perspective, but the don't just lie or make things up, and it's not just a propaganda network. They've often reported truthful things even though it upset the Arab population. In fact, I'd almost say that Al-Jazeera is MORE fair than Fox News.
I am surprised that the CIA, FBI, NSA and SPCA always get upset about NBC weapons. Why should a terrorist who is intent on killing huge amounts of people always have to think like a second rate hollywood scriptwriter? 19 Highjackers killled many people with box cutters, some flight training and a good portion of fanaticism. Timothy McVeigh killed more than a hundred people with a truckload of fertiliser, some easily available bomb manuals and training provided by your friendly US Army, incidentaly putting him in the same boat as Osama and co.
If someone fanatic enough to kill many people wants to do so, he doesn't need exotic weapons. All he needs is some fellow travellers and either readily available chemicals, such as Cyanide or some freely available rifles. If he wanted to bring down an airliner, him and his buddies would only have to take sufficient pot shots at a starting jumbo loaded with people and fuel.
Tackling the source of terrorism, and I don't mean bombing and invading foreign countries, would bring more that spending millions on high tech gadgetry that wouldn't detect any threat until it was too late anyway.
You guys are missing the most damning evidence of all: In 1994, a group of islamic terrorists tried the exact same stunt by attempting to crash an Air France 747 into the eiffel tower! They were only stopped because the pilot managed to persuade them that it was neccesary to stop for fuel, and the plane was stormed on the ground.
More info.
There already exists a (-1, Predictable) moderation in Slash; it's called (-1, Redundant). For more detailed information, please read my guide to moderation "reasons".
Will I retire or break 10K?
You were confused. Therefore, NBC TV has a case. In fact, I read somewhere that NBC had to threaten trademark action against CNN and Fox News in order to get them to switch from the "NBC" abbreviation to "WMD" for "weapons of mass destruction".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Good point, but I would say that the state-of-the-art is a damn sight better that 70's vintage stuff, though spoofing will always be a problem. Also, here we have the advantage of looking for truly foreign substances, like sarin. So people can put a bucket of piss next to the sensor all day, I can still smell sarin. And not many things smell like sarin. ;)
The point is that distributed, coherent, reliable sensor networks are in practice a lot harder to implement than theory would suggest.
Trust me, I know - I'm not dealing with tehory, but with practice. It certainly isn't easy, but by training the thing effectively and using some clever signal-processing techniques, false positives can be greatly reduced. Also, using a variety of very different sensors means that someone would have to spoof all the sensors - meaning that every sensor would have to believe the spoofing agent smelled like the target. For that to occur, they'd have to be almost identical. And there are VERY few nonlethal compounds that smell like sarin, and none of them occur naturally.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Troll, you're new at this aren't you? It's gonna take something more clever than that to get me going.
What always amuses me about these fearmongering projects is that they're useless, and demonstrably so to the point of having been demonstrated.
One: these projects won't save lives; if the poison's been deployed, the 'early warning' isn't going to save those in the line of fir^H^H^H the mist. And as soon as those people drop, the authorities will have a clue something's up.
Two: bacteriological and chemical attacks are notoriously ineffective. The gas attacks in WWI show this, as do the acts of that cult in Japan (who tried on numerous occasions to use B/C's , but always failed miserably...except in one case, the subway, but that was an enclosed space) and even what 'Chemical Ali' supposedly did. Fact is that to do damage you need to drench the area and hope the weather helps you a lot. And even then fatalities is severly limited.
So what such a sensor net really is, is an attempt to gain some money from post 9/11 fears. FDR saw it coming when he warned of the military-industrial complex.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
How about a bell that rings any time one of our corporations, or their subsidiary government agencies, gives somebody one more reason to hate the US?
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
there not using W2k3 to run it or we're in big trouble.
That's true, I think my job's a bit easier - when you're dealing with chemical agents, *nothing* will look like sarin to 20 different sensors. On the other hand, you're right, there's no way to distinguish between a real radiation source hundreds of yeards away vs. a cancer patient sitting on the source. Maybe if you have a network you can triangulate? Still tough.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Beware, you've committed a thoughtcrime and will soon be taken up by the Department of HS without notice or warning. Thanks you and remember, Big Brother is your friend.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
That's because you're a jaded american fallen into the propaganda your gov't feeds you. Canada had forces in Afghanistan and were in every conflict providing support. They just don't make war the focus of their country. When they are done with the job, they leave. Never lingering like a festering wound causing numerous more casualties.
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
Only if it is a biohazard...
Wasn't it Atomic, Bio., Chem. before?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck