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Cell Phones As a Dirty Bomb Detection Network
First time accepted submitter iinventstuff writes "The Idaho National Laboratory has built a dirty bomb detection network out of cell phones. Camera phones operate by detecting photons and storing them as a picture. The INL discovered that high energy photons from radiological sources distort the image in ways detectable through image processing. KSL TV reports that the INL's mobile app detects radiation sources and then reports positive 'hits' to a central server. Terrorists deploying a dirty bomb will inevitably pass by people carrying cell phones. By crowdsourcing cell phones, the INL has created a potentially very large, inexpensive, and randomly mobile radiation detection grid."
now with improved citizen tracking
"Yep, that guy! Over there! Jump him, he's a terrorist!"
"Who me? I just got my thyroid irradiated, give me a break."
Talk about adding insult to injury.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Back in January 2008, slashdot user mike449 mentioned using the camera to do this: http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=429956&cid=22180470
The person next to you on the bus could be highly radioactive for a day.
It will trigger detectors. Also not great if you're pregnant, but the NRC says OK.
.....and created an excuse for the government to permanently monitor people's cellphones in the name of the "war of terrorism".
..a highly ingenious way to warn us about something that has close to a zero chance of happening. I guess it's like the rest of Homeland Security's efforts, just without the ingenious part.
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
in a movie, like Superman III?
andy
If you're going to crowdsource this, I think you'd find a more-receptive initial population by rolling it out in areas where mapping radiation is likely to have actual practical uses, rather than trumpeting the effectively-zero risk of terrorism.
Say, the neighborhoods of Chernobyl, areas of Kazakhstan or Siberia around former Soviet nuclear sites, or... Fukushima?
Accurately mapping radioactivity is applicable to real life now, no need to resort to FUD about theoretical dirty bombs.
If it had been for helping the IRS to gather auditing info, then you'd be hollering on why it wasn't released earlier
Isn't this going to be the next Instagram filter? Give your photos that post apocalypse grainy look?
Back in January 2008, slashdot user mike449 mentioned using the camera to do this: http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=429956&cid=22180470
He should have patented the idea.
That the data from all those cameras, location+image, is constantly being streamed to a secure government facility where the data will only be used for good, right?
And people are concerned about Google Glass?
Yes, it's an interesting idea, but it has some problems!
But the carriers would probably love it, as someone would have to pay for all the bandwidth used -- certainly not gonna be a freebie on the carrier -- an opportunity for a government mandated fee, perhaps?
Idea -- check sources (e.g. 137Cs) are pretty cheap. Attach them to the outsides of public transit, pigeons, anything that moves around. The more the merrier.
Good work! Now slashdot is as helpful to society then reddit or 4chan.
So if this were both widely deployed and effective it would just force these hypothetical dirty bomb enthusiasts to line the bomb container with lead. Lead which would become toxic shrapnel on detonation. The potential for many false positives has already been mentioned, but this system could be easily defeated by a thin lead lining. Lead lining has the further benefit of shielding a non-suicidal bomber from his own radiation.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Does mike449 work for the Idaho National Laboratory?
I cannot believe in the year 2013 I am still seeing the myth of the "dirty bomb" being perpetuated. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/oct/15/broadcasting.bbc
Too late: http://gammapix.com/corporate/about "The patent-protected GammaPix (TM) technology (U.S. Patent Nos. 7,391,028 and 7,737,410 plus foreign filings) has been under development since 2002 with over $2.5 million in government support." http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7391028 and patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7737410 were from applications filed on Feb. 28, 2005.
I don't think so, he says he currently lives in Phoenix: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3017561&cid=40835691
He could still work there, but just phoens it in.
Will say that govenrment gets access to everyone's cell phones so they can "fight terror." It's for our own safety. We should all be thankful Uncle Sam is looking out for us.
*sigh
so beta, alpha and neutron emitters, is there an app for that?
My phone doesn't have a camera!
And my camera doesn't have a phone.
Have gnu, will travel.
...That having all these distributed and location-tracked radiation detectors monitored by authorities (I have serious doubts about the government/DHS allowing anything like full and complete public access to the hit-location data) makes this effectively a very powerful tool for tracking individuals/objects/papers/etc of interest to the authorities by simply "tagging", in any number of ways and methods, whatever they want to track with a radioactive substance...liquid, powder, spray, dart, added to food/drink, etc etc.
No wrapping one's head in a damp towel. Better get your ass to Mars!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
If they are talking about enough users having this running to be effective, then they are talking about a tremendous number of users basically setting their phones to drain their batteries out as-fast-as-possible. What are the electricity costs of such an endeavor? Significant, I'd wager.
And the number of false-positives that would be generated would be huge, I'd imagine.
From everything I've read about dirty bombs, their radiological damage is negligible...it's all about creating panic.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
Dissolve the radioactive material in acid. That will make it water soluble, then spray it with compressed air, or spread the liquid droplets with a conventional explosive.
The idea that one cannot weaponize a dirty bomb comes from the difficulty of reducing a solid chunk of metal to fine dust.
Probably couldn't afford the lawyers. Or they don't believe in patents.
As someone who designs camera phones, we're well aware of this phenomenon but we're not going to spend precious power telling the user there might be a radiological source nearby. Chances are it'll be a hospital.
The INL project started in ~2005, but it was only recently announced.
Also known as a chemotherapy patient detector. I know if I was getting chemo, I wouldn't mind getting tackled by the police every other day because of the slight radioactivity.
"I was assuming the parent poster wasn't so much a terrorist as a mischievous prankster"
How do you tell the difference? A dirty bomb is mostly a weapon of mass distraction. The response is likely what shuts down an important area, rather than the actual danger.
Doing it with a sizable number of relatively harmless sources spread out over a block or two will keep them guessing what the danger and scope is for a bit, even if each one isn't particularly dangerous. It doesn't have the extended clean up phase, but they still have to evacuate, check people as they exit, and then determine what the devil is going on. It also gets a lot of attention.
The individuals who placed them can just claim it was a prank that got out of hand. You'll probably still get jailed, but it'd be hard to justify a life term for it.
At the same time, AQAP, for example issues a claim of responsibility. No one is really sure what the straight of it is. More confusion, disruption and doubt.
Maybe they can still link those who placed the sources to a higher level group, but it's still a lot easier to recruit pranksters than hard core murderers.
You can also use several of this sort of incident to get people to stop reacting to it (alert fatigue), and then release something that initially looks similar to the detectors but is really much more dangerous.
This will force Al-Qaeda to clean up their act.
When a Kosmos satellite with some plutonium aboard smeared itself over a few hundred miles of Canada the cleanup operation went more smoothly than anyone ever expected. It turns out that detection from the air works well, even with 1970s technology.
Didn't the Department of Energy do a study and found that if a dirty bomb went off, the worst of it would actually be the initial (conventional) explosion and ensuing panic? Essentially dirty bombs are equivalent to the boogy man
Didn't they cover this in the first Batman movie?
I read that having a radition detector is illegal in New York City (like wearing body armor on school grounds...)
Does this make every camera phone in New York illegal?
There have been andriod apps in the market place for years converting your phones cmos camera into a real life working decently accurate geiger counter easily able to pick up background. If you go looking take care to avoid the joke apps.
While this is all really cool and interesting mcgivering of technology dirty bombs don't actually exist because they are pointless.
Plutonium and uranium are alpha emitters. Alphas won't get through a sheet of cardboard. A gamma ray detector won't pick up anything. This won't detect an atomic bomb.
This is only useful for detecting radioactive waste, miscellaneous medical and industrial radiation sources out of their casings, and X-ray machines.
The fine article does mention Fukushima.
It is readily available from chemical supply stores. It's used in biology experiments to make DNA fluorescent, but is very very dangerous because it cross-links your DNA. If you get any on your skin, you've got instant cancer.
While I'm all for doing my civic duty, I'm not sure people would be too happy about an app that, I'm guessing, would leave your camera on all the time, and phone home data using your bandwidth. (But would be fascinating to the the resulting croudsourced 'radiation map'...we'd probably find out a few things that govt and private institutions had forgotten about, or had hoped been forgotten.)
Anyway, my though was, would this work with the enormous number of suveillance cameras deployed by the authorities? 'Free' information with none of the power consumption and privacy concerns. Static network, of course, but they should be in the places that bombers would be targetting anyway, no?
IIRC they only found a small fraction of the material. And it wasn't just "some plutonium" like one of NASA's RTGs, it was a full fission reactor core. There are several more of them still up in orbit... for now.
now we just need to wait for someone to finally build the world's first dirty bomb.
My cell phone's battery life is bad enough as it is. I don't need another background app sucking down juice and sending data over my pay per byte plan. Give me a tax credit or give me free a free wireless plan with a non-subsidized phone and we can talk.
I still have to say it... ... Batman did it first.
Thanks to jrincayc for the links. We've had GammaPix apps on Android for the past year and iOS for several months. Glad to see that INL is working on applications now, too. We also have demos with state police, first responders, mass transit systems, and sporting events ongoing and scheduled for June. Also look for new app releases (free and paid on Andriod and iOS) as well as a new free Android app called GammaAlert that runs in the background and provides continuous crowdsourced radiation monitoring. If you can't tell, I'm a GammaPix developer :)
And for what it is worth, Radiation Detection and Measurement, 3rd Ed, 2000 by Glenn Knoll, mentions: "[A] smaller subset of devices with similar properties, often called scientific CCDs, have emerged in the 1990s as extremely useful sensors for radiation detection and imaging. They have found widespread use in the tracking or imaging of high-energy minimum ionizing particles. CCDs have also become a somewhat more complex but viable alternative to lithium-drift silicon detectors for routine X-ray spectroscopy, especially at low energies. "
Whether he could have patented it depends on how non-obvious using a commodity CMOS camera for this instead of a scientific CCD camera is.