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EU Considering Sensors In Sewers To Detect Bomb-Makers
Nerval's Lobster writes "Security agencies in Europe have found a whole new way to identify and approach bombmakers and other potentially dangerous radicals. The only problem with the approach is that it stinks. Literally. Researchers in a European-Union funded project called Emphasis are developing chemical sensors that can be embedded in networks of underground sewage tunnels to sniff the air and phone home at the first hint of chemical residue from the manufacture of bombs. Using remote sensors might be effective because the liquid- and gas byproducts of bomb production – and manufacture of many drugs as well – leak, seep or are poured into sinks and toilets to get rid of the evidence, according to Hans Onnerud, an analytical chemist with the Swedish Defense Research Agency. With such a catchall underneath the city streets, and the chemical wherewithal to identify which smells belong to bombs or drugs and which belong to other things, it should be possible to keep a close watch on development of dangerous materials in a city without invading the homes of residents, Onnerud added. In fact, if sewer-sniffing technology had been in place in 2005, British authorities might have had a much easier time tracing the location of the bombers, or even detecting them ahead of time and stopping the London subway bomb attack that killed 54 people. Fumes from the bombs used in those attacks, which were assembled in a house in Leeds that had been turned into a compact bomb factory, were strong enough to kill plants in the garden. It's extremely likely they would have been detectable from the sewer as well, Onnerud said in a statement announcing Emphasis. The sensors developed for Emphasis are designed to detect chemical reagents produced by the breakdown of chemicals in bombs. Each sensor is a 10-centimeter-long electrode that can be submersed in sewer wastewater to look for ions of the right configuration."
Bomb attacks are so rare, wouldnâ(TM)t it be cheaper to compensate bomb victims after the fact than include expensive bomb-sniffing equipment in infrastructure upgrades up and down the land?
Oh look, a noninvasive and effective approach to preventing bombings; It's almost as someone competent got hired.
Dear Sir, We were monitoring the sewer and it seems your daughter is pregnant. We checked the DNA and it is that kid you don't like. We only know you don't like him because the NSA shares information with us. On the side are ads for abortion clinics, diaper services, gun shops, and obstetricians provided by WalMart. BTW you need to check your cholesterol.
It's hard to compensate you when you're dead, or one of your loved ones is crippled and you're going to need special care for them for the rest of their life.
Whether the cost is justified for a project like this is something you'd have to weigh up in light of both what that cost would actually be and how effectively it could detect real threats.
Still, at least this seems like an idea that might have some genuine merit in protecting people from these kinds of attacks and with minimal intrusion into everyone's daily lives under normal conditions. For that alone, it seems like an improvement on many previous ideas.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'll give you bomb ingredients; Thai food, Mexican food,Barbeque, habanero sauce and IPA. I'll melt your damn sensors and curl your nails back. Stay the hell outa' th' sewer. Figures this is a "governmental" bright idea....
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Well with smart meters accurate enough to tell when you are watching TV and what, Now with these sensors knowing what you are flushing down the toilet How about some environment monitors so they know what we exhale ...
Its getting pretty creepy
Just another way to line a crony's pockets in the name of fighting terrorism.
Very sorry we killed your child and your dog during our raid sir, false positives are a tragedy but we can't let the terrorists and drug dealers win can we? Next time don't flush that expired cough syrup and prescription drugs, call our chemical disposal unit for the proper forms first, and if you have anymore kids be sure to teach them to lay face down on the floor and pray when unknown people break in in the middle of the night instead of screaming and crying!
What they say it will be used for: sniffing for bomb materials
What it will be used for: sniffing for illegal drugs
First they'll put a probe in each neighborhood. Then they'll put a probe in the sewer for each street. Then they'll put a probe in the individual drains from every house. Then when they detect cocaine, you'll get a ticket in the mail.
You know, this brave new world is a lot less Brave New World than we thought it would be...
...each home already has products which can form a bomb.
A year later: No one wants to move around the sewer system install sensors and those sensors only give general info. It would be cheaper and less of a hassle for you (no need to search an entire block, just one house) if we moved the sensors to the connection between your house and the sewer system.
A year later: It's cost prohibitive to get at all those underground house connections. All new drains will be required to have the sensors embedded within them. Don't worry, expected battery life is 5 years. Results shows people replace their drains every 5 years anyway. Also the tech has gotten smaller, so we're adding carbon monoxide and gas sensors. For your safety, police/fireman will be notified if those sensors are triggered.
A few months later: The carbon monoxide sensor saved a bunch of school kids. All drains will be required to have these sensors. You must add them to your home.
This is just great! Pour a few bags of fertilizer down the drain by his house... next stop, my local IT competitor's shop...
These bomb and drug makers will just use a bucket and dump it down the sewer across town. What a waste of time and money.
Explosives are largely made of the same shit that occurs naturally. Ammonia, nitrates, oils, peroxides. This stuff is everywhere. It's gonna be false alarms like a mofo.
And yet, at the same time, there are plenty of non-standard oxidizers that no reasonable detector would expect...
And then there's non-redox explosives, which are all pretty much unique and have about nothing in common by which to detect them.
So the whole idea of an explosives-detector is pretty much asinine.
Seems the market for "things that theoretically could have happened to you but we maybe spent enough to have stopped" is unlimited.
I don't know about the UK, but where in the supposedly religious U.S. are all the people who should be saying, "Actually, we -aren't- afraid to die, even if the odds of dying from terrorists -were- higher than from slipping in the bathtub, so stop billing us for the protection racket"?
Smells like a shit idea.
So, the bomb makers just conduct their business in a house in the countryside that uses a septic tank instead of connecting to a sewer system. That's a lot of money and effort and false confidence that can be circumnavigated with great ease. Now, if they'd done this without telling anyone then they might have had an edge... Idiots.
> Using remote sensors might be effective because the liquid- and gas byproducts of bomb production â" and manufacture of many drugs as well
lets be frank about what this is really about
Spending it on ROAD SAFETY !! Better BANG !! for the pound !!
Shoot! I came in here to say something just like that.
will my grandma's chilli set the detectors of?
Ammonium nitrate. Common fertilizer. Weapon of choice for terrorists, as it is easily available in large quantities and can be easily processed into a form suitable for use as an explosive. Whenever you read about a car bomb, it was probably this stuff.
So every time you fertilize your garden and some rain falls, it'll set off the alarm.
People undergoing radiotherapy also excrete high enough levels of radiation to pose some hazard to other people. So their toilets will be detected as dirty bomb factories.
So when your ex wants to go to the bathroom one last time before she leaves... kick her out immediately!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That has little to do with violating people's rights/privacy
Of course it does. For society to function at all, some degree of invasion of privacy is necessary. You can't hold fair elections without knowing who's allowed to vote. You can't raise taxes according to some objective standards without knowing enough about people's personal finances to establish how much tax they will be charged. More vaguely, but certainly no less practically, you can't plan civil functions like transportation and healthcare without surprisingly detailed data about what real people do in their lives.
Trying to preserve absolute privacy, in the sense that no-one knows anything about you, is a futile battle. It can't work, and even if it did, you'd hate the results.
What we should be doing is looking firstly at the extent to which any given data about someone is useful for some other specific person/organisation to have for some legitimate purpose -- if not, that person/organisation doesn't need to have the data at all. If so, we need reasonable safeguards to prevent data that was collected for the use of one party for one legitimate purpose then being redirected for use by other parties and/or for other purposes.
I personally believe that this will be one of the defining challenges of the next 10-20 years. Our understanding of why privacy is important and of what constitutes privacy need to evolve. Modern technology allows an unprecedented degree of data collection and processing that has enormous potential to affect all our lives, for better or for worse. But that technology is ethically neutral, as all technology is. What matters is how we use it, and that is a matter of what is socially acceptable, and that is an area that could benefit from a lot more healthy and informed debate than it seems to be getting so far.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Of course it does.
Stop going off on long, irrelevant tangents about things I never even said. I'm not going to read that.
Ignorance is a choice
Disagree. You're using your hypothesis to prove your conclusion. It's a common logical fallacy: all known societies engage in invasion of privacy, ergo, society must engage in invasion of privacy, or it is not a society.
I am John Hurt.
Indeed it is. You can't compromise on fundamental freedoms.
Of course you can. Basic rights and freedoms, things we would consider well worth defending in isolation, come into conflict all the time. The difficult questions, whether in ethics or as practical matters of law, are very often difficult precisely because there is no answer that does not diminish some right or freedom we value even as it defends something else we choose to value more. And not everyone agrees with which rights and freedoms are the most valuable.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/08/22/2225225/drug-testing-entire-cities-at-once
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I hate to be rude, but what makes you thing they will stop in the sewers? Soon, the "smart sewer meters" will get smaller, more numerous, and closer and closer to your point connection. A bit more, and the probes could get more "personal". For your own good, of course. And your family's. While the intestinator tech is straightened out. Until then, they'll use those probes they ordered from the Aliens, recently delivered, who were all this time just doing field testing for their marketing and product development department.
How were my specific examples (knowing who can vote so you can hold elections and knowing enough about financial status to apply taxation objectively) using a hypothesis to prove a conclusion? What alternative do you propose in those cases that does not necessarily imply some degree of invasion of privacy? Or are you suggesting that we don't really need fair elections or any taxation at all? If so, that's a very different debate to the one I think we're having here.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
It does rise the question, imo, of whether or not a society can be a society without that invasion of privacy. But, of course, we would be going beyond the scope of this story.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Can't wait for the new mandatory toilet seat belts, it will surely save many lives. If not well, some got richer with/through another political scam.
Right... where will the money come from?
I though so...
Why dont we build trash cans which analyze all the trashes thrown in there? Then we could catch terrorist based on their shop receipts, old books they dont want to read, maybe what kind of food they eat and so on.
This is idiotic, what bomb maker is going to dump anything down a drain the second they even suspect that a few areas are going to have these kinds of sensors installed. They'll simply dump it out in the countryside or bury it in the back yard. On top of that with all of the crap people dump down drains I have to imagine that false positives are going to be commonplace. And as others have mentioned while "bomb detection" is the claimed objective drugs/alcohol/pharmaceuticals are going to be the actual target of any such sensor net with a healthy profit margin for the defense contractor subsidiaries designing/installing said net.
How will they locate these things?
Even at every block there may be hundreds or thousands of apartments; who flushed it?
Is the required toilet-cam next?
Without an agreed upon definition of privacy this is a fairly futile discussion.
I have always wondered if there is maybe someone "down the pipe" to admire the quality of the log I just flushed. Now I know there is. Awesome.
Uncle Jed's can be pretty explosive.
Can't we just find a way to pension people like this off, or give them jobs cleaning pay phones or something? It would be a much better use of public money.
Game this system for political game or other profit, particularly if their sewer systems are like a lot of those here in the United States - CSO or Combined Sewer Overflow, or further, storm drains and sewage go to the very same place.
Where I live they just recently finished four miles of underground tunnels to store the CSO. So in order to track what's going in they'd have to put a sensor near each outflow from each home and building. But being the storm drains are pretty close - its all moot.
But just imagine the fun you could have - you'd send the entirety of public safety into an absolute snit at the behest of your enemies.
The whole reason why we flush is to get rid of bombs.
For some time I've believed that as DNA analysis improves, becomes cheaper, and becomes more scalable, we will see governments locate missing people/wanted criminals with DNA collected from the sewer.
For a targeted search, I envision "robot" crawlers with DNA sampling/classification systems being deployed where multiple sewer lines enter the treatment plant. When one of them finds a trace of the targeted individual's DNA, all the robots consolidate and crawl "upstream" from that point to the next set(s) of branches. This process continues until one of the robots is sitting under the sewage pouring from a single house/apartment block.
Another strategy is to put detectors at all sewage treatment plants and look for signatures of wanted people from a nationwide list. Once a treatment plant identifies, perhaps with multiple high quality hits over a few days, a specific high value individual, the smaller and more targeted search with robots crawling upstream would begin to narrow down the exact location of the targeted person.
Of course, this will cause "individuals of interest" to move more often -- but every move increases the risk of them being caught so the objective might still be achieved if all it does is keep wanted individuals on the move.
The technology is not there yet (the concentration of a targeted individual's cells, such as those sloughed off from the intestinal walls, is so low, I don't think we can economically wade through all the other cells to run across the interesting one(s)). But, perhaps in thirty years...
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I could see this being useful if they bundled it with other sensors for detecting when sewage is blocked. Doing it purely for security reasons however would be a complete waste of time.
In your heart, you know they really did sing "Cosmonaut"...
Throw all the bmb mkrs in the sewers and then we could celebrate life on earth.
In other news.. if the Atom bomb had been built earlier then it may have stopped world war one instead. Or how about if we knew Concorde tyres were going to explode we would have grounded them. Stop trying to big up your stupid anti-whatever device by saying "But it would DEFINITELY have stopped this mass tragedy" - I doubt this technology is infallible.
Interestingly, in some societies, taxing everyone a set amount was good enough. Taxing goods purchased suffices also without the need to invade privacy. As for voting, isn't voluntarily registering to vote a surrender of that privacy which cannot be considered an invasion or affront to it? I mean if John Idiot declines to vote, then what is the purpose of invading his privacy to vote?
The problem here is not invasion of privacy per se, but unrestricted invasion of privacy. What you mentioned might be convincing enough to allow an infrequent invasion or even consideration to give up certain aspects of privacy. But does it translate into losing all privacy to the government for whatever it considers a legitimate function? Should all citizens be required to turn in finger prints and DNA samples because it might be used someday to catch a criminal? Should the government go into your bedroom to understand your health issues in contrast to the amount of protected and unprotected sex you have or don't have?
It seemed that you were condoning all invasions of privacy because you found a few instances where it might be appropriate. I think that is the objectionable part in contention.
GP had quite good points and it would be nice if /. patrons responded with brains instead of jerking knee or in some cases asshole as replacement for thought device.
Ignorance is indeed a choice.
But combine it with the War on Drugs, and it might be unimaginably profitable. Drug test the sewers, and do asset forfeiture on everything upstream.
And fill them with carbon dioxide. That will solve two problems at once:
1. Rats and other pests.
2. Any potential intruders.
Just use the exhaust from a local power plant or heating plant and flood that into the sewer system.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Seems like an overkill solution considering that the problem never occurred.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I'd say sniffing for bombs is just the excuse, as some people have already mentioned, there are way better directions to invest money into saving more lives, so part of this is a sweet contract for someone to profit on. But that is missing the point.
Those sensors can SNIFF FOR ANYTHING, which is yet another way to breach into the privacy of people for personal information that can be exploited for political, financial or whatever other purposes. And the best thing - like with most other surveillance scams - it is the people who end up paying for the gear needed to spy on them.
As for bomb makers, I guess they can just go out into the wild, pack all their gear in a minibus or something, go somewhere far away from their home or whatever base of operation, and do the dirty work there, even if by some miracle the chemical trace is sniffed, there is no way to associate a random remote location with the bomber identity.
reuse! recycle!
Implement responsible waste polcies. Like the rest of the industry is supposed to do!
Don't forget to pour some fuel oil down the drain as a chaser.
You know, technically, you haven't committed any crime when you do that, have you. You didn't actually make any explosives, but it seems like if these sensors even worked at all, they would alert to this combination.
If you have committed a crime depends on where you are. Around here fuel oil is a hazardous waste and it is illegal to put it into the sewage system - it needs to be taken to a waste station.
Well, yeah, ok, but its a minor crime compared to making a bomb.
How was this post written?
"What they say it testament be old for"
"Sniffing for dud materials"
"What it present be victimised for"
"felonius"
"opening they'll put a examine in apiece neighbourhood"
"examine"
"put a research in the individual drains"
"ticket in the communication"
"you cognize"
"stouthearted" (what the fuck?)
"new class is a lot little gamey new group"
Some kind of translation software?
This tech will be used to track illegal drug consumption no more than five years after it is installed. With the right kind of sensors deployed in large numbers, surveillance organizations will be able to do spatially-resolved urinalysis on the people who use the instrumented sewers. Basis for prediction: see recent revelations about NSA. Technology + no transparent oversight = use of that tech for whatever it can do, not limited to what it should do.
It seemed that you were condoning all invasions of privacy because you found a few instances where it might be appropriate. I think that is the objectionable part in contention.
I apologise if I gave that impression. I am not intending to argue that position at all. In fact, my personal stance seems very similar to yours (starting where you wrote, "The problem here is not invasion of privacy per se, but unrestricted invasion of privacy.").
I had hoped that this would be clear from my repeated references throughout this discussion to questions of degree and to the need to control the reuse of data by other parties or for other purposes than those for which it might originally have been collected legitimately. I'm very sorry if that wasn't the case.
The only point I'm trying to make regarding compulsory collection of data by governments is that I think in practice some level of invasion of privacy is inevitable, and indeed desirable, for our society to function effectively. I agree that in theory we could move to a radically different form of government and government funding, but I think is not going to happen any time soon, so for now we need a fair (in the objective sense of being published and equally applicable to all citizens) set of rules for running that government and for providing resources to it. I think this inevitably requires some basic information about those citizens, for example to ensure that elections can be (and are seen to be) properly representative, even if not everyone chooses to exercise their right to vote.
Personally, I have no problem with governments collecting information for that kind of purpose. I think it's in everyone's interests, and it's possible to have information about who has a right to vote without using it for any other purpose. Things get more controversial when you start repurposing that information. For example, in the UK, the electoral roll is also used for various identity checking purposes, for identifying candidates for jury duty in courts, and for fundraising by local authorities who sell the contents of the roll to marketing organisations. The degree to which these reuses of that information are acceptable is a far more interesting debate to me than whether we should have a compulsory electoral registration process every year that requires everyone to confirm who is eligible to vote in their household.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
1) Sewers are not a nice environment for sensors. What's the lifespan and what are the O&M costs? There are a lot of sensors that don't cut it in sewers. Plus, if you need power, you are sending crews to trade out batteries a lot, or you have a capital project that involves carving up a street to place ducts.
2) Chemicals tend to arrive in pulses (think about it), so you need to put sensors in and wait. Tracing stuff upstream takes a long time and consistent behavior on the part of people dumping the chemicals. Hundreds of miles of pipe and a branch every block. Doesn't matter what your search algorithm is, the answer is a lot of time.
I KNEW it!!! The bastards are going to hit us with shit-bombs!
GP had quite good points
Be that as it may, it had nothing to do with what I said.
Ignorance is a choice
Don't let the NSA get read of this. They will be be scooping up all the sheets of toilet paper you use to check for secret writing.
Trollbot practicing for a Turing test?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The problem is, that most people today who die of bomb strikes, die from drone bombers' bombs. Not home made bombs.
How would this stop drone bombers?
so it's expensive, who cares, so were the pyramids.
Seeing as the July 2005 underground bombing was a false-flag operation, it would have been easier to just check the bombers diaries ..
The NSA has been quietly sniffing your buttholes for years now and this is the first you're hearing of it?