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Monitoring Weapons Bans With Social Media
Harperdog writes "Kirk Bansak has a great article outlining a coming revolution in non-proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and bio-weapons, courtesy of smart phones and social media. Early theory on arms control foresaw 'inspection by the people' as a promising method for preventing evasion of arms control and disarmament obligations and serves as a starting point for understanding 'social verification.' As Rose Gottemoeller recently stated: '[Cell phone-based] sensors would allow citizens to contribute to detecting potential treaty violations, and could build a bridge to a stronger private-public partnership in the realm of treaty verification.'"
Better than the TSA raping us.
It would show people when they are being x-ray'd.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Doing something untoward? Give lots of falsified negative readings in your area to give the impression to observers that nothing is wrong.
And it's a great way to get your ass killed or thrown into prison if you do it in the wrong country. It's also a great way to get shitty intelligence from fake reports of WMD's. Hell, even in the U.S., whistleblowers are VERY rarely thanked (usually it costs you your job at the very least). How do you think some guy downloading the "Monitor My Country's WMD Activity" app will be treated in the third world?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Let me see you try to ban THAT!!!
...countries and violated and continue to violate the non-proliferation
treaty, or those that turn a blind eye towards some of those that do.
The problem is not a technical one. It's a political one.
No citizen, in any country, without some form of security clearance has access to the sort of information that would make this worthwhile. Once they have the security clearance, passing on any of this information promptly becomes illegal .......
Do people really still think that weapons can be un-invented?
How many Joe Schmoe's do you know walking around Area 51 with their cell phones out?
It was called Wikileaks, and governments weren't too happy about it.
I think I saw this in a movie once. Maybe we should ask Morgan Freeman how he feels about it?
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
They paid half the population to spy on the other. The whole reason for having arms is to depose a tyrannical government.
Nukes don't kill people, people kill people. If we ban certain countries from getting nukes, they're going to get nukes anyway. All that bans on nuclear weapons do is prevent law-abiding countries from getting their own nuclear deterrents, so only the bad guys end up armed. The world will be a lot safer with more nukes, not less. Nukes keep people safer. In fact everyone should carry them as their patriotic duty.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
What kind of sensors in cell phones? Are they talking about sniffing out nukes? Are we aware of the sensors in our cell phones? Or are we to be used like some cheesy Batman plot, with some agency/entity sniffing at our phones? Why stop there? Let's sniff out drugs, firearms, etc. Once all of that is gone, then we can work on people's attitudes, we can detect anger management problems. If you use the wrong language, it will know.
I am a minimalist when it comes to this kind of use of technology. Sure it sounds all fine and dandy for now, but it never goes away and the problem that it was created for will. That leaves an irresistible tool in the wrong hands each and every time. It doesn't go away, and there is always some asshole improving it.
And of course this only sets us up for a major problem if an A.I. gets off it's reservation. Think Skynet, sure we can laugh now, but are we not building up to something like that or even something more fucked up? Nobody listens to the "crazy guy" until it's way too late. I was bitching about weather pattern changes and the threat of global warming back in the 80s. It's not so fucking funny now is it?
Take the Red Pill.
When countries trying to violate their disarment treaties do secret development in the middle of the main street.
Now, if they did somehow try to hide it in military/restricted instalations, that would make this proposal senseless. But evil war-mongering, rearming tyrants would not do that, wouldn't they?
Why can't
Lets imagine Let’s imagine an hypothetical country that wants to invade another country that is suspected of developing and manufacturing weapons. All they will need with this system would be some hacking to “verify” that this other country (let’s call it Iraq) has chemical, biological and nuculear weapons (If they are real or not is an entirely different matter)
this idea is surely being fronted by those who fear nuclear radiation more than anything in the world, including killer bees, since no practical means of chemical, bioweapon or explosive detection is likely to fit into such a package. In order to be practical it must be able to discern isotopes. It will be manufactured by people who cannot even place the volume control buttons sensibly, or add 'features' like turning volume down silences the ringer completely. So keys in the pocket will flood the sensor network with jangling false alarms. Not to mention state actors who would routinely (and cheaply) flood the network with bogus readings to ensure that any meaningful data is lost in noise. Swallow a radiation marker for a medical scan and get your house raided for WMDs. Definitely time to change cell providers.