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Cell Phone Radiation Detectors Proposed to Protect Against Nukes
crosshatch brings us news out of Purdue University, where researchers are developing a radiation detection system that would rely on sensors within cell phones to locate and track potentially hazardous material. From the Purdue news service:
"Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. 'The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually,' Fischbach said. 'The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.'"
The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say someone mumbles the word "nuclear", while walking down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the individual passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.
The things giving us cancer will detect things that will give us cancer? All right, I'll take twenty!
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Is the government going to subsidize the placement of these things in cellphones? It's the tragedy of the commons, that no one is going to want to pay for a more expensive cell phone because it will detect radiation, if it's in everyone's phone. And if the government pays for it, that means it's paid for by taxes. So one way or another, we're going to be paying for this...
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
There -are- other, legal, sources of radiation, especially in the scientific community. This is a horrible idea that passes the costs on to the end user for no benefit and oodles of false positives. What could go wrong?
this would only set a precedent for even more intrusive sensing. like say chemical sensors. then we might as well jump the gun and add firearm shot detectors. maybe the shot detection could even be integrated into the existing mic to save money. but we promise not to listen to anything more interesting than loud bangs. yeah, this is a great idea, for me to poop on.
The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually
Riiiiiiight - So how long until we hear about a wave of people erroneously "rendered" for "interrogation" in a "friendly", human-rights-respecting country like Jordan, because their own cell phones turned them in following medical tests involving the use of radioisotopes?
Hey congress, grow a pair. We the People do not want this bullshit. Bush won't sign a budget that includes criteria for troop withdrawal - Fine, cut off funding for the war. Bush won't sign a FISA extension that doesn't include immunity for the telecomms - Fine, don't extend the damned thing! Stop with the security theater, please - The actors suck and the popcorn went stale four years ago.
This would be an additional cost of exactly how much? They don't say. Whatever the cost may happen to be, it is surely nonzero. This feature is unlikely to be favored by the market, so the companies making the phones won't want to include it. It might even necessitate reduced functionality. Therefore, this would require a government mandate. What penalty would there be for failure to comply? How intrusive would they have to be to make sure this came to pass? How much would this cost our government? Us? How would all these things affect the market?
Now to the important part. Would it really work? If it did, how easy would it be to hack the system? Mandated communication equals easy virus spread? How many false alarms? Would it promote overconfidence and lax insecurity?
Is this a good idea? I'm not sure. If it prevented a nuclear explosion in a major city that would obviously be a great thing, but what if it made us fail to do so? What if it takes funds that could have been used for more effective measures, and wastes it? There are too many questions about this.
So, is it impractical?
It's basically a Wiki nuke detector (but without human intervention). Can you trust the data? No. Could terrorists get 100 cell phones and fake a nuke being transported? Yes. Could they then generate enough fake data so that the gubmint ignores the real nuke heading towards the White House? Yes. (Have TPTB not seen 'How To Steal A Million' - or like me were they too busy gawping at Audrey Hepburn?)
If the detectors are that cheap and small that they can squeeze them into cellphones, just stick them into street lights and then (assuming the terrorists dont have access to cranes and ladders) you have a bit more trust in your data.
Sensor networks are a great idea for some things, but maybe not this one...
How long before it detects "hazardous materials" such as drugs ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
so my cellphone will have a direct line of contact with a... government agency that will... collect my information.. time of day... places I've been... all in the name of... *drums rolling, what could possibly go wrong, I've got nothing to hide*... seCuRitY...
yes, you see this will happen ONLY if the radiation detector fires up an event, NEVER EVER before... the government agency in charge will make sure of that...
what a jolly happy world we are living in, turn every single one of us into a government agent (stooge). Later on the grid will be expanded to keep track of criminals that might be passing us by (for example child molesters in case your morality standards haven't crumbled to the floor yet and are still putting up a fight, you surely wouldn't like little children getting hurt because of some ACLU ridiculous claims on privacy, would you?)... carry on citizens, carry on, nothing to see here...the future is going to be bright and spectacular...
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
I think one of the most amazing things about Slashdot is how people can always find a way to somehow start ranting about Bush and Iraq, no matter what the subject is.
Often it is treated with radioactive seeds implanted into the prostate. A substantial number of men receive this treatment (implantation of tiny seed sized radioactive bits into the prostate that kills the cancer), which will raise the specificity of said detectors to near useless. I guess we'll see a lot of "nukes" on their way to the early bird special diners, and 4 pm movies.
Some young women are treated with Iodine 125 to treat overactive thyroids. "Ok now the bomb is headed to The Gap, no - now it's going to Forever 21."
..........FULL STOP.
As nuclear material arranged into any kind of bomb is amazingly rare outside the military, this scheme would fail because false positives will vastly out number actual bombs detected. Testing for very rare events is always problematic when the reaction to the event has to be immediate and probably very expensive.
This is obviously an excuse to track people's movements, before the RDIF chips get planted in everyone's ass. The "counter-terrorism" bit is the same excuse they've always used.
And who will pay for this equipment in the phone? Will the government subsidize the phones? Where will the sensors fit in ever-smaller cellphones?
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
"We have to start thinking like we're a society under attack, because we are."
Society is always under attack, both from within and from without. The first thing you have to decide before doing something to protect 'society', is establish whether the method will in itself change (therefore 'attack') the very society you are trying to protect. Constantly adding a means to 'look over your shoulder' will change a society from a free and relaxed society to a paranoid and controlled society.
"Just because the bastards haven't been able to mount a serious threat within the US borders since 9/11 doesn't mean they wouldn't like to"
Gifted with our imagination, we can come up with an infinite amount of ways we can be harmed, but simply saying it is possible is not justification for any level of measure against it. Careful consideration has to be given to the risk of the threat against the negative aspects of the protective measures.
"Its probably just a matter of time until these yahoos do get their hands on a nuke. This would be just the thing to stop them in their tracks."
Speculation. And if this system was put into place, would it be fool proof. If a group was organised enough to get a nuke, manage to smuggle it to the country of destination, I would suspect they would be organised enough to come up with a way to hide it (lead casing perhaps?)
"Try imagining the alternative, such as maybe your own neighbourhood looking like the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way out to the horizon. If not your own neighbourhood, how about your friend's neighbourhood, or your relatives neighbourhood? Is that OK? I say it is not."
Again, just because you imagine an awful thing, does not justify any level of preventive measures. I can imagine a mass alien invasion, but I don't think that warrants issuing all citizens with rocket launchers. I do not have enough information to properly evaluate the cost/risks for either of these events, and I see no evidence that you do either.
"I'm sitting in Kuwait on the way out of Iraq after working a science and tech advisor job to the US military in counter-IED work. Take my word, the enemy is smart, capable, and desireous of wiping us off the face of the earth if they can. They take the most innocuous materials and figure out ways to kill you with it. If they get their hands on a nuke, and we don't have proper countermeasures, a whale of a lot of Americans will die, and if not you, at least several people you know and some you care about."
We cannot verify your position, so better to stick to the facts. SO far, the evidence has been that the 'enemy' is generally badly organised and stupid, and most of the 'smart' attack vectors have been thought up by western security 'experts' and generally are argued to be implausible (liquid bombs on planes for example).
By the way - I am neither for or against this idea (it 'feels' wrong to me, but like I say, I don't have enough info to make a sound judgement), but I am against the whole 'this is good because terrorism is bad' line of argument. Yes, it can be argued the other side 'this is bad because freedom is good' is just as bad, but would you rather your default position was one of paranoia or one of freedom?
Fill the country with radiation detectors like this and you'll get so many false alarms that the system will become a joke. The man walking down the street who had radiotherapy yesterday, the woman who keeps her grandfather's WW2 glowing radium watch in her handbag, the building made from that particular granite that's rich in radioactives. And let's not forget all the smoke detectors that use radioisotopes, or all the hospitals and labs with sources.
It's a radioactive world out there, and that is the only thing such a system would tell us.
We'd also learn the usual responses of the security forces when they get something wrong is brutality, coverup and smearing.
The answer to finding hypothetical terrorist nukes is proper human intelligence on the ground, not mass surveillance where false positives outnumber the real thing by orders of magnitude. That's just hiding the needle you're looking for in a much much bigger needle stack.
Couple thoughts - firstly, I'm paranoid enough that my phone knows where I am, and now you're going to tell me that it's going to tell the government regularly AND THAT'S A KNOWN FEATURE?!?!
However, more logically... the more specific to given isotopes you make the sensors, the more expensive they will become. And if the terrorist group knows that our defense network allows isotope x but not y, don't you think they might work with y - even if it isn't as potent or immediately possible?
Think about this. Radioactivity exists around all of us. Tritum in watches, MRI machines (and for that matter healthcare in general), industrial sites, etc etc etc. Placarded vehicles that might be legally transporting something. You're going to tell me that there will be an effective system set up to take in the millions of false hits, screen them for the ones that might really be something, and then plot that against the map - nationwide in real time?
Not every threat is nuclear, also. I'm personally more frightened of simple biological weapons - not the fancy "weaponized anthrax", but good ol smallpox and the easier ones to work with. Even a good outbreak of flu can kill thousands without trying very hard and swamp medical systems / healthcare resources, which will in turn kill more. Nuclear just creates a good snapshot for the media.
I wish there was a choice that said "Factually Wrong -1" when I mod.
Since this new hardware has no commercial value, there's no incentive in including it in new cellphones, so they'd have to become a legal requirement. Once this precedent has been set with radiation detectors, what's next? Chemical sensors to detect drug labs? GPS for even-more-automated speeding tickets? Continuous audio streaming from every cellphone microphone so the TLA agencies can run voice recognition and speech-to-text conversion, etc.?
Also, when will it become a crime not to have your Personal Surveillance Device with you?
While there are lots of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that involve radioactivity of some sort, MRI is not one of them.
What is the point in advertising this thing? It is completely useless once it becomes public knowledge.
I'm sorry to engage in US bashing (as little offence as possible intended) but it seems that the plan is to impress the terrorists with all your amazing technology, so that they just give up.
Effective combat against terrorism requires two things: (a) working to eliminate the root cause and (b) in the mean time having as much intelligence as possible to stop yourself getting blown up.
You don't see the Israeli's advertising their latest and greatest.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
No wonder you think that the tag is overused. In this scenario, you completely underestimate the effects of law enforcement with an itchy trigger finger. It took much less than a false nuke alarm to get innocent people shot to death this way.
If you can do this with radiation, why not also include other types of detectors. What about cocaine detectors, linked to your neighborhood police department swat team, ready to swoosh in at the slightest hint of malfeasance? Or alcohol vapor detectors that pick up drunk people moving at 55mph? And keep the criminals from tampering with the phones by making it a crime too. Foolproof!
It may sound crazy, but the cops would LOVE to have this type of technology available to them. And it will only take a couple more terrorist attacks before we give it to them.
1. Thank you for the correcting the spelling mistake.
2. I'm glad you brought this up, radioactive materials do not release Sieverts. They do release Beta partials, Alpha partials, Gamma radiation and other fission fragments.
You are also correct in pointing out that a Sievert usually refers to the amount of damage done to a single gram of your body by these partials. If evey gram in your body is exposed to 1 Sievert, then it is correct to say you received a "whole body dose" of 1 Sievert. Furthermore if 25 people each receive 1 Sievert (whole body) then the population is said to have received 25 Sieverts. The linear Hypothesis states that for every 25 Sieverts in a population there will be one cancer death (in addition to the 20% given mortality rate of cancer). Forgive me for not clarifying at first.
Your numbers are a little off but you have the right idea, a 25 Sievert dose will kill one man in less then an hour; in fact 25 Sieverts is more then sufficient to kill several people. Exposure to 3 Sieverts is commonly referred to as "LD50", giving the person a 50% chance of dieing. People rarely survive a whole body dose of 10 Sieverts. The linear hypothesis does not apply when the dose is large enough to kill from radiation sickness.