Slashdot Mirror
New Radar Sees Through Walls
artemis67 writes "A small Israeli company has developed a radar system that uses ultra-wideband technology to produce three-dimensional pictures of the space behind a wall from a distance of up to 20 meters. The pictures, which reportedly resemble those produced by ultrasound, are relatively high-resolution and are produced in real time. Wow, it sounds like the potential benefits of this device are huge, saving lives of soldiers, firemen, or police; the potential for privacy invasion, however, is similarly large."
Isn't this similar to the terahertz imaging previously discussed? Also seen here and here?
The material the wall is made out of has a marked impact on the permeability of EM waves. And the frequency you select to get through the wall may pass straight through your intended target of viewing as well.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Can't see through aluminium foil, if it is truly Al.
My guess is that within 10 years we will see new homes / apartments boasting of how they form Faraday cages, to prevent all kinds of remote monitoring.
Just as long as it lets me see where this pipe/conduit/wire goes in my wall. (And where the studs are...)
Or looky here, we've got termites in this wall.
So when does the hand-held consumer version of this come out?
Typically I like to run against the government grain simply because I don't believe Big Brother is a good concept. Overhead always causes problems: greed, graft, bribes, special interests, unaccountability. Ask the Soviet Union about it. Ask Afghanistan about it. Ask Cuba about it. Heck, ask Saddam Hussein about it. I'm sure he'll gladly point out that any overhead power is a ripe field for exploitation.
So we have this ping-pong match of people who hold the government in dreamy-eyed awe and people who see only the ill uses of governmental power. Somewhere in between lies the truth. Sometimes Big Brother gets it right, sometimes Big Brother gets it for himself. The only real way to eliminate the problem is to turn Big Brother into little Brother or even microscopic Brother. That's a fine and dandy solution but Big Brother writes too many paychecks, makes too many people feel warm fuzzy and comfortable, and keeps too many bankers and politicians living a very easy luxurious life.
As for prisoner abuse that's a touchy subject. I've heard that some of the fellows who were stacked up on each other were being disciplined for attempting to start an exercise yard riot. Some of the people who were blindfolded and threatened with dogs were guilty of assaulting prison guards or officials. Certainly there are some legitimate cases of abuse but, all in all, every society has it. The Taliban had it, it happens in Paris and Amsterdam, the British _definitely_ have some neat B&D equipment, and American civilian police are caught abusing and bullying citizens all the time.
There is the hypocrisy to address. Well, crap, that's just part of life. I don't like it anymore than anyone else. The US likes to strut around the world and point fingers and meddle in affairs and tell everyone else how to run their nations when, in all reality, the US gov't isn't doing such a hot, fair, honest, or kind job within its own borders. Once again it's the Big Brother syndrome. The only way to fix it is to turn Big Brother into little Brother or even microscopic Brother. And, again, there are too many paychecks, too many leeches, too many bleeding hearts (who don't have what it takes to do something on their own but like to bleed with someone else's money), and too many comfortable and wealthy politicians, bankers, brokers, and attorneys.
So what of this "see through walls" technology? What if it is used by the local police someday to scan each and every house as they drive slowly down the block? Unless we can fix the Big Brother problem there's absolutely no sense in working yourself into a froth over the obligatory abuses that come from Big Brother.
Personally I'd like to get rid of Big Brother. I'm an advocate of small efficient government just like I'm an advocate of small efficient software. But just like Microsoft, Big Brother has a monopoly on the field and plenty of loyal (or at least contractually trapped) followers.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
It seems odd to me that the same people who can follow that the DMCA is problematic because it bans the tools not the abuses of the tools can't make the connection when its non-computing related.
Peering through neighbours walls (with this technology or drilling peepholes) is the offence. Would you argue that drills should be regulated because they could be used this way ?
If anything the main reason to regulate it is likely to be because long exposures to low levels of radio frequency radiation seems to do bad things to human beings so operating one might require training, care and exposure limits.
I'd also disagree its just a military tool. It has clear civilian usages including earthquake searches (because it can visualise spaces not just people so gives more info) and even boring stuff like inspecting buildings. Having had a large hole hacked in my house to see if a crack was structural I can certainly appreciate the civilian value of having tools to inspect it effectively without the mess, and the dust, and the redecorating.
that would love this one.
The Diary of Anne Frank would have been a lot shorter, though.
Have they illegalized Jammers for this yet?
If not, someone send me the frequency specs, i'll be able to whip one up pretty quick.
As would any serious criminal equipment supplier, after they are illegalized...yet one more way to make sure everyone is a criminal, or can easily be proven to be one.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
I use one quite a bit. The ground-penetrating radar is probably not much different than this device in physical principles. That means it is subject to the same problems as my GPR:
1) high clay content can wash out any signal,
2) metallic objects (aluminum foil has been mentioned) can render the device useless, and
3) too many objects can interfere.
There have been numerous examples posted here where you just spring a few moving decoys around the building and now the operator on the outside has just as much valuable information as they had without the $20KUSD device attached to their arm.
This thing is a boat anchor.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
If they have a low-res recording of you building a bomb, your defense attorney can reasonably argue that the blob the jury sees could be doing anything. I doubt such images would ever even be considered admissible by the courts if they were of such low quality.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
The sad part is that's where things were back in the late 90s when things were rapidly improving for the Palestinian people, many Palestinian expatriots were considering returning and reinvesting in the economy and a lasting peace seemed around the corner. Can you tell me, for 10 points please, who ended that possibility? Was it Sharon? Was it Bush? Was it Clinton? No. It was the Palestinians who brought this on themselves when they started the Al Aqsa Intifada, and used as justification Sharon's daring to visit a site in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount.
I hate to see the terminology of liberalism and peace hijacked by Palestinian warmongers and bought into whole hog by so many American liberals because they hear words like "genocide" and "war crimes" being bandied about.
I have met several former Israeli soldiers, by the way, and none of them were people who wanted to our would ever take part in killing innocent civilians knowingly. They shot because they were fired upon or because they caught somebody planting a bomb. I won't say that nobody innocent gets killed, surely it happens, but you need to look at who is choosing to keep making the area a war zone and who started the Al Aqsa Intifada in the first place and who perpetuates it - it's surely not the Israeli government, with a populace that overwhelmingly wants a peaceful solution with the Palestinians. Look at the people whose financial interests and power are tied up with keeping the fighting going - like Hamas, which would lose its political power and fundraising abilities in the rest of the Arab world with a peace settlement. Look at Arafat who clings to his autocracy and apparently fears the creation of a stable, economically solvent democracy for the Palestinian people.
The most shameful part is that I have to post this anonymously because experience has taught me that the liberal forces on Slashdot have bought into this twisting of liberal terminology so much that to post reasonable, moderate discourse on this issue invariably gets you moderated into oblivion. And that is a particularly sad statement.
Fortunately, the authors of the US Constitution believed, as I do, that it's "good enough" to let some people who commit crimes get acquitted if the government can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they're guilty, to ensure that not a single innocent person is convicted.
The real problem is that our law schools produce people who can, as Socrates was accused of doing, make the weaker argument appear to be the stronger, and convince juries to convict people who not only aren't guilty beyond any reasonable doubt, but who are later proven beyond any doubt whatsoever to be not guilty when new evidence or new techniques of analyzing evidence are used. Just having one person on death row exonerated by DNA evidence shows that the system is horribly broken.
Of course, the sort of "strict constructionists" who believe that the government should never, ever, even think of overstepping the authority granted to it in the Constitution are, ironically, the exact same people who think it's a "technicality" when an alleged criminal is set free because the Constitution includes specific provisions to protect the People from abuse by the government.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
"John" was suspected of growing Marijuana in his attic with intent to sell. The police tried to get a warrant to search John's house, but they hadn't established enough probable cause to get a judge to sign the warrant, even with John's house under surveilance(sp?).
The police then used an Infrared camera to look "inside" John's house (without a warrant) to see what he was up to. They saw the heat coming of the growing lights illuminating what appeared to be a small forest of Home Grown. The police return to the Judge with this evidence. The judge signs the warrant, John's house is searched, the weed is found, and John is arrested.
In a pre-trial hearing, John's lawyer challenged the legality of the search, on the grounds that the police effectively "searched behind closed doors" by using the infrared camera without a search warrant.
Unfortunately, I can't remember for the life of me what the judge ruled on this motion, but it is very similar to what we're dealing with here. Essentially, it deals with what is considered 'plain sight' for an officer. It is accepted that an officer can use what he sees in his depth of vision as evidence. If you allow a policeman into your house, and he sees drugs lying in open on the table, you sure as hell will be arrested. But that same officer has no right to start opening drawers in your house looking for drugs. IR and Sonic technology "blur the line" on what is plain sight, and what is an intrusive search.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Even without range issues, I don't think that would really work that well. For example, suppose they had done that in 1963 along the Kennedy motorcade route. They would have found out someone was in the book depository. The problem is that someone being in the book depository is not suspicious. Without a lot more resolution than it sounds like this technology provides, you wouldn't be able to tell a sniper from anyone else.
Sure, there might be some cases where it would work, such as when the sniper is someplace that no one should be, but thinking about most assasinations by sniper, the sniper is usually someplace where you'd expect to find people.
This thing comes from Israel - meaning it was designed to make killing Palestinians easier.