heck, all they have to do is show up with badges, cow an operator, and get the switch log file on a flash card which includes all local and international calls that went thru the switch. no entry in the log and noone the wiser.
So, since the phone data is garbled, "evidence of a potential theat" is merely your understanding of the callers' identities. But, under this 'less invasive' plan, intelligence agents can still request to tap the line when they beleive one of the callers is an enemy.
So everything is the same, except now we've got to wait 3 weeks for some redundant FISA warrant, then another 3 weeks for an overworked defense employee to decrypt our data.
Pardon me, but to do a wiretap, under current regs, you have 3 DAYS to notify the FISA courts AFTER you start tapping.
They usually approve within six to eight hours.
Let's deal with the reality of counter-terrorism (I served and have experience), not the fake War On Terror FUD that we can't do our jobs. We can do our jobs, you just want to remove our Consitutional Rights that we fought for back when King George wanted us to be serfs.
and overheard your private state-to-state calls when they were put on speaker.
if it bounced off a satellite or went thru a transoceanic cable (hi, Hawaii!), we intercepted it.
I'm just saying that invasive phone searches, legal or otherwise, were happening back in the 80s.
That said, my gut feel, based on when I had clearance (note I don't give specifics), is that the rabbit hole goes way deeper since the current Admin came into power.
Dig deeper my friend - you took the blue pill and the red pill is the right one.
oh. I always wondered why it was MRI, when everyone in Biochem calls it NMR.
That explains a lot.
I wonder if makeup in the post-WWII era was named for nuclear properties, like Cobalt Blue eyeshadow and Proton Red lipstick and Neutron Grey powder...
They regulate the manufacture of the laser devices, and inspect them at the factory, and in FDA labs to ensure that they adhere to regulations concerning energy emissions, wavelengths, etc. They do not inspect them on site. The only devices FDA inspects on site are like medical devices, etc., that are permanently installed into medical facilities to which the public is directly exposed. (X-ray machines, etc.)
So what if they were attached to mutated sea bass, which are edible, and the nanobots were inside the mutated sea bass with lasers on their heads? Would that count?
I agree. Many backups never get tested for restore capability, and then fail when you try to restore the data.
We discussed how we keep a lot of human subject interview/examination forms on paper, and when discussing the use of electronic forms, realized that much of the advantages of paper were:
a. you can copy it easily b. it doesn't have any format changes every year or so c. by being human-readable, we can always infer what someone meant to write d. you can write explanations or notes on the forms if anything is unclear e. it scares people less if you write on paper instead of stare at a computer screen while talking with them.
The same thing goes for tape - sure, maybe we can recover from it, but have we actually tried to recover data written for an IBM System/36 recently?
I mean, here at the UW, everyone just backs up onto secondary disks.
Technically, tape has a 100 year archival lifespan, but that assumes that we still have the technology to read it. In fact, we recently had a hard drive crash that was so old we couldn't recover any data from it, as we couldn't find the software or head to try to recover it.
Naturally, having it on tape does mean it has a longer theoretical life, in that backing up onto CDs or DVDs, which only have 5-10 year max lifespans in standard conditions, for archival purposes is not safe, but by that point even the data formats have changed.
but isn't this based on the concept that the materials that the FDA regulates, e.g. agricultural products and such, are by nature not only highly transportable (as in not a building) but easily salable and may be transhipped when persons move from one state to the next, even inside their bodies?
I know there are exemptions for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms - and also for Native American reservations.
Nanotech that could/might cross the boundary into people thus could easily cross state borders and are thus eligible for FDA regulation, no?
IANAL, but I took Business Law in grade 10, like my son is next year.
Keep in mind there is a current trend for cosmetics and supplements to use the word "nano" in front of all thing marketing-speak. The concern from this trend is from having the particles penetrate the subdermal layer and travel throughout the body.
Hmmm. That sounds like a Good Thing. I can't tell you how irritated I get at all those fake "nanotechnology microabrasion dermal adhesion makeup" ads I see.
If it scares off the "fake" nanotechnology and only leaves behind the "real" nanotechnology, I can live with that.
And the same is true for medical equipment, which is one of the big reasons your out of pocket expense for a simple MRI session is several thousand dollars.
Actually, one of the problems is that we, as medical consumers, can ask for and pay for MRI sessions, and order genetics testing for incredibly rare diseases we don't have, and then when the predicatable false positive rate is higher than the disease rate (many of the tested for diseases have an incidence level of less than 1 in 10,000 but the false positive rate on the tests is frequently around 1 in 1000, or 10 times as many false positives as there are true positives), sue.
Which wastes a heck of a lot of medical resources.
Although seeing an image of the actual plaque clogging your arteries does apparently cause patients to have a twenty times higher rate of compliance with medically-prescribed diets for patients with artery-clogging plaque that could be treated more effectively with changes in diet than with medications.
So, how to balance it... well, that's why we discuss such things, and why any such potential regulations or model legislation has an input period.
I'm sorry the image of nanobots, smoking cigars and carrying firearms, surrounded by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms just makes me picture this:
BATF: "Come out with your hands up, nanobots!"
Nanos: "Not until you give us some booze, coppers!"
Unless someone finds a way to put nanotechnology in what has been used as the mother of all catchalls in Article I, section 8, "To regulate Commerce... among the several states", I don't see much that the Congress of the USA can legislate about in nanotechnology.
One would presume that companies creating nanotechnology expect to sell them in states other than the one in which they are based, thus creating commerce between states in the sale of nanotechnology.
But, you raise a good point. To avoid the regulation, you merely need sell your non-motile nanotechnology for use only within your firm's state, and ensure that it won't be shipped or moved to another state. So, if you sell clothes with nanotechnology, just make sure it self-destructs when people wearing it cross the state line... hmmm, I think I'll vacation at the California border this year...
Want an opinion from a bioethicist? Flip a coin. Their opinions have little to do with fact and more to do with which arguments sound convincing. At least, this is my experience after taking a bioethics course taught by a professor who wrote bioethics policy for Clinton in one weekend while he was still a grad student--make it up as you go along, and as long as it sounds convincing, people will believe you are an expert.
Actually, your comment is fairly accurate. We were discussing this in Medical Genetics Journal Club this morning, in fact, and one of my bosses, a dual MD/PhD who has presented a number of bioethics papers and seminars, was describing entire sections that have not been investigated in depth at all, and that the whole bioethics field is - sadly - still in its infancy in many fields that one would have suspected it would have been further ahead in.
In point of fact, many new fields are totally lacking in people with doctorates or masters in the underlying field/technology, but who are creating public policy or presenting bioethics papers, talks, and books on those fields/technologies nonetheless.
However, the lack of a long history of such people in nanotechnology does not imply that we therefore should expect it to remain unregulated just because we don't have any properly trained nanotechnology bioethicists available to comment on it, especially those with experience in the underlying technology.
One does what one can with the tools at hand. That's what posting the link to the article is about - pointing out that possible discussions on regulation are about to occur or may occur, so that people who may work in the field can wake up and smell the nano-caffiene and participate in the inevitable regulatory discussion.
Would you rather we pretended nothing was going to happen and then you wake up four years later to find Congress has passed and enacted regulatory laws without your input and thought?
Just get them to start using guns and smoking tobacco.
Then the FDA won't be allowed to regulate them.
Of course, I'm not sure what impact gun-toting cigar-smoking nanobots would have, but it would sure help the miniaturized saloon and spitoon industries...
The nanotechnology the article refers to is primary nanoparticles added directly to food and drugs, so it seems reasonable that the FDA might oversee this area. For instance, if they're putting nanoparticles into sunscreen or cosmetics made with Titanium or Zinc, then it seems reasonable that the FDA would make sure those are safe.
This could also apply to nanotechnology as used in clothing, which by virtue of its usage has close skin contact with humans, and, were it mobile nanotech (not all nanotech is mobile), could cross over into the human wearing it.
On the other hand, it's highly unlikely that chimpanzees or our other simian brethren or sistren need to worry - they can wear nanotech clothes to their heart's content, basking in their libertarian wonderland of unregulated splendor.
Hey, what's that zipper doing growing out of Curious George's head, anyway?
Exactly. We tend to forget what happened in the early 1950s when the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry created a large quantity of wonder drugs, and in the then pro-business no-regulatory environment, we ended up with some rather horrific problems, as in thalidomide babies and such.
Another good source for information is here at the University of Washington, at the Center for Nanotechnology, which holds various informative seminars on campus, some of which are podcast.
I know, I've sat in on about twenty nanotechnology seminars at the UW over the past six months.
My point is, this is a real news story, the FDA has been asked by multiple groups to investigate nanotechnology for those products which may - or may not - be able to cross over into humans.
Until they research it, they won't know if it's possible, and - if so - what safeguards or regulations are or should be necessary.
At that point, after input from bioethicists - and I've attended a few panels and seminars on bioethics, as well as journal clubs - recommendations would be made and model legislation would be drafted.
At that point, slashdotters would be able to publicly comment on any such proposed legislation.
It's like when autos were invented - there were no traffic rules for a long time. Then, once they reached a certain level, people created regulations concerning driving, driving ages, rules of the road, railroad crossings, brakes, horns, and so on.
Since we now have more than 100 nanotechnology patents, it's likely we are - in fact - at that point where we need to investigate whether or not we need regulations - and, if so, at what level. Perhaps we need such regulation at the creation side, perhaps at the manufacturing side, perhaps on the consumer side. We don't know yet.
As the article clearly states, based on US and Australian precedents, the FDA has a clear legal requirement based on their successful regulation of suntan lotion.
No, I am not making that up. It's in the article in the Washington Post.
This is probably going to end up as an excellent way to make sure that no one bothers to do nanotechnology research in the United States.
I doubt it. Bill Gates just endowed a giant building here at the UW in Seattle, and a lot of the funding is coming from private endowments by American citizens.
We have to realize that, even if the US were to not regulate it, the likelihood of the EU regulating nanotechnology is very high, and thus most of the world market would be forced to comply.
and ask for a trillion more a year, to regulate and enforce limits on a fast breaking technology, but only when done in the USA, meaning everyone cutting edge, or sloppy, or lazy, or with imperfect tools, starts working outside the USA, blunting the edge of this countries technological advantage a little more
I'm sorry, but contrary to any statements you may have heard from the White House, the cold hard truth is that federal funding of scientific research, even in malaria, has gone down each year in this Administration.
Blaming the FDA for wanting to regulate a technology that impacts humans is not likely to be a long-term strategy for success - the first time one of the nanobots designed to "repair cow stomach infections" invades a human host and alters the human stomach to the correct norms for a bovine, will be the day the entire industry gets sued.
The FDA is there for a reason, even if it's not doing a very good job of it.
Seriously, though, how do you get past the Final Boss Marketer without buying something?
The trick is to keep your wallet in your left hand, hand it towards him, when he takes the bills out (ka-ching sound), you get the exit doors open - right then, toss the frag grenades behind you over your shoulder (eight-second delay), use the autoload shotgun on the FBM, put your wallet back in your pocket, then use your left hand to Search For Money on his bloody corpse - usually you get all the bills back, sometimes you get a bonus amount depending on how good a shot you are.
Then sprint for the doors and roll to the right, so the blasts won't get you. Don't go to the left, they have the Product Display area and I always end up clipping a table and sprawling and then the grenade blast either gets me or I take about 50 percent wounds.
Slashdot Mirror
heck, all they have to do is show up with badges, cow an operator, and get the switch log file on a flash card which includes all local and international calls that went thru the switch. no entry in the log and noone the wiser.
So, since the phone data is garbled, "evidence of a potential theat" is merely your understanding of the callers' identities. But, under this 'less invasive' plan, intelligence agents can still request to tap the line when they beleive one of the callers is an enemy.
So everything is the same, except now we've got to wait 3 weeks for some redundant FISA warrant, then another 3 weeks for an overworked defense employee to decrypt our data.
Pardon me, but to do a wiretap, under current regs, you have 3 DAYS to notify the FISA courts AFTER you start tapping.
They usually approve within six to eight hours.
Let's deal with the reality of counter-terrorism (I served and have experience), not the fake War On Terror FUD that we can't do our jobs. We can do our jobs, you just want to remove our Consitutional Rights that we fought for back when King George wanted us to be serfs.
and overheard your private state-to-state calls when they were put on speaker.
if it bounced off a satellite or went thru a transoceanic cable (hi, Hawaii!), we intercepted it.
I'm just saying that invasive phone searches, legal or otherwise, were happening back in the 80s.
That said, my gut feel, based on when I had clearance (note I don't give specifics), is that the rabbit hole goes way deeper since the current Admin came into power.
Dig deeper my friend - you took the blue pill and the red pill is the right one.
but we're too busy blowing things up or swinging on vines to register our protests.
oh. I always wondered why it was MRI, when everyone in Biochem calls it NMR.
...
That explains a lot.
I wonder if makeup in the post-WWII era was named for nuclear properties, like Cobalt Blue eyeshadow and Proton Red lipstick and Neutron Grey powder
They regulate the manufacture of the laser devices, and inspect them at the factory, and in FDA labs to ensure that they adhere to regulations concerning energy emissions, wavelengths, etc. They do not inspect them on site. The only devices FDA inspects on site are like medical devices, etc., that are permanently installed into medical facilities to which the public is directly exposed. (X-ray machines, etc.)
So what if they were attached to mutated sea bass, which are edible, and the nanobots were inside the mutated sea bass with lasers on their heads? Would that count?
I think it's a band, like the Fuzzy Nipples or Waiting For Godot.
I use flash cards. Cheap, store 1 GB on a tiny device, plug in to any USB port.
OK, I have an external HD for backup, but seriously, most of my data archive just gets shoved on my key ring.
Haven't used tape in more than a decade.
I agree. Many backups never get tested for restore capability, and then fail when you try to restore the data.
We discussed how we keep a lot of human subject interview/examination forms on paper, and when discussing the use of electronic forms, realized that much of the advantages of paper were:
a. you can copy it easily
b. it doesn't have any format changes every year or so
c. by being human-readable, we can always infer what someone meant to write
d. you can write explanations or notes on the forms if anything is unclear
e. it scares people less if you write on paper instead of stare at a computer screen while talking with them.
The same thing goes for tape - sure, maybe we can recover from it, but have we actually tried to recover data written for an IBM System/36 recently?
I mean, here at the UW, everyone just backs up onto secondary disks.
Technically, tape has a 100 year archival lifespan, but that assumes that we still have the technology to read it. In fact, we recently had a hard drive crash that was so old we couldn't recover any data from it, as we couldn't find the software or head to try to recover it.
Naturally, having it on tape does mean it has a longer theoretical life, in that backing up onto CDs or DVDs, which only have 5-10 year max lifespans in standard conditions, for archival purposes is not safe, but by that point even the data formats have changed.
but isn't this based on the concept that the materials that the FDA regulates, e.g. agricultural products and such, are by nature not only highly transportable (as in not a building) but easily salable and may be transhipped when persons move from one state to the next, even inside their bodies?
I know there are exemptions for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms - and also for Native American reservations.
Nanotech that could/might cross the boundary into people thus could easily cross state borders and are thus eligible for FDA regulation, no?
IANAL, but I took Business Law in grade 10, like my son is next year.
Keep in mind there is a current trend for cosmetics and supplements to use the word "nano" in front of all thing marketing-speak. The concern from this trend is from having the particles penetrate the subdermal layer and travel throughout the body.
Hmmm. That sounds like a Good Thing. I can't tell you how irritated I get at all those fake "nanotechnology microabrasion dermal adhesion makeup" ads I see.
If it scares off the "fake" nanotechnology and only leaves behind the "real" nanotechnology, I can live with that.
And the same is true for medical equipment, which is one of the big reasons your out of pocket expense for a simple MRI session is several thousand dollars.
... well, that's why we discuss such things, and why any such potential regulations or model legislation has an input period.
Actually, one of the problems is that we, as medical consumers, can ask for and pay for MRI sessions, and order genetics testing for incredibly rare diseases we don't have, and then when the predicatable false positive rate is higher than the disease rate (many of the tested for diseases have an incidence level of less than 1 in 10,000 but the false positive rate on the tests is frequently around 1 in 1000, or 10 times as many false positives as there are true positives), sue.
Which wastes a heck of a lot of medical resources.
Although seeing an image of the actual plaque clogging your arteries does apparently cause patients to have a twenty times higher rate of compliance with medically-prescribed diets for patients with artery-clogging plaque that could be treated more effectively with changes in diet than with medications.
So, how to balance it
I'm sorry the image of nanobots, smoking cigars and carrying firearms, surrounded by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms just makes me picture this:
BATF: "Come out with your hands up, nanobots!"
Nanos: "Not until you give us some booze, coppers!"
BATF: "um, ok, now what do we do?"
But it would keep the FDA away from them.
Unless someone finds a way to put nanotechnology in what has been used as the mother of all catchalls in Article I, section 8, "To regulate Commerce ... among the several states", I don't see much that the Congress of the USA can legislate about in nanotechnology.
... hmmm, I think I'll vacation at the California border this year ...
One would presume that companies creating nanotechnology expect to sell them in states other than the one in which they are based, thus creating commerce between states in the sale of nanotechnology.
But, you raise a good point. To avoid the regulation, you merely need sell your non-motile nanotechnology for use only within your firm's state, and ensure that it won't be shipped or moved to another state. So, if you sell clothes with nanotechnology, just make sure it self-destructs when people wearing it cross the state line
Want an opinion from a bioethicist? Flip a coin. Their opinions have little to do with fact and more to do with which arguments sound convincing. At least, this is my experience after taking a bioethics course taught by a professor who wrote bioethics policy for Clinton in one weekend while he was still a grad student--make it up as you go along, and as long as it sounds convincing, people will believe you are an expert.
Actually, your comment is fairly accurate. We were discussing this in Medical Genetics Journal Club this morning, in fact, and one of my bosses, a dual MD/PhD who has presented a number of bioethics papers and seminars, was describing entire sections that have not been investigated in depth at all, and that the whole bioethics field is - sadly - still in its infancy in many fields that one would have suspected it would have been further ahead in.
In point of fact, many new fields are totally lacking in people with doctorates or masters in the underlying field/technology, but who are creating public policy or presenting bioethics papers, talks, and books on those fields/technologies nonetheless.
However, the lack of a long history of such people in nanotechnology does not imply that we therefore should expect it to remain unregulated just because we don't have any properly trained nanotechnology bioethicists available to comment on it, especially those with experience in the underlying technology.
One does what one can with the tools at hand. That's what posting the link to the article is about - pointing out that possible discussions on regulation are about to occur or may occur, so that people who may work in the field can wake up and smell the nano-caffiene and participate in the inevitable regulatory discussion.
Would you rather we pretended nothing was going to happen and then you wake up four years later to find Congress has passed and enacted regulatory laws without your input and thought?
Just get them to start using guns and smoking tobacco.
...
Then the FDA won't be allowed to regulate them.
Of course, I'm not sure what impact gun-toting cigar-smoking nanobots would have, but it would sure help the miniaturized saloon and spitoon industries
Products FDA Regulates ...
...
Radiation-Emitting Products
Cell Phones, Lasers, Microwaves...
Hmmm. So, if I equip my nanobots with lasers, are you saying the FDA would regulate them?
They'd have to catch them first
The nanotechnology the article refers to is primary nanoparticles added directly to food and drugs, so it seems reasonable that the FDA might oversee this area. For instance, if they're putting nanoparticles into sunscreen or cosmetics made with Titanium or Zinc, then it seems reasonable that the FDA would make sure those are safe.
This could also apply to nanotechnology as used in clothing, which by virtue of its usage has close skin contact with humans, and, were it mobile nanotech (not all nanotech is mobile), could cross over into the human wearing it.
On the other hand, it's highly unlikely that chimpanzees or our other simian brethren or sistren need to worry - they can wear nanotech clothes to their heart's content, basking in their libertarian wonderland of unregulated splendor.
Hey, what's that zipper doing growing out of Curious George's head, anyway?
Exactly. We tend to forget what happened in the early 1950s when the burgeoning pharmaceutical industry created a large quantity of wonder drugs, and in the then pro-business no-regulatory environment, we ended up with some rather horrific problems, as in thalidomide babies and such.
Another good source for information is here at the University of Washington, at the Center for Nanotechnology, which holds various informative seminars on campus, some of which are podcast.
I know, I've sat in on about twenty nanotechnology seminars at the UW over the past six months.
My point is, this is a real news story, the FDA has been asked by multiple groups to investigate nanotechnology for those products which may - or may not - be able to cross over into humans.
Until they research it, they won't know if it's possible, and - if so - what safeguards or regulations are or should be necessary.
At that point, after input from bioethicists - and I've attended a few panels and seminars on bioethics, as well as journal clubs - recommendations would be made and model legislation would be drafted.
At that point, slashdotters would be able to publicly comment on any such proposed legislation.
It's like when autos were invented - there were no traffic rules for a long time. Then, once they reached a certain level, people created regulations concerning driving, driving ages, rules of the road, railroad crossings, brakes, horns, and so on.
Since we now have more than 100 nanotechnology patents, it's likely we are - in fact - at that point where we need to investigate whether or not we need regulations - and, if so, at what level. Perhaps we need such regulation at the creation side, perhaps at the manufacturing side, perhaps on the consumer side. We don't know yet.
As the article clearly states, based on US and Australian precedents, the FDA has a clear legal requirement based on their successful regulation of suntan lotion.
No, I am not making that up. It's in the article in the Washington Post.
This is probably going to end up as an excellent way to make sure that no one bothers to do nanotechnology research in the United States.
I doubt it. Bill Gates just endowed a giant building here at the UW in Seattle, and a lot of the funding is coming from private endowments by American citizens.
We have to realize that, even if the US were to not regulate it, the likelihood of the EU regulating nanotechnology is very high, and thus most of the world market would be forced to comply.
and ask for a trillion more a year, to regulate and enforce limits on a fast breaking technology, but only when done in the USA, meaning everyone cutting edge, or sloppy, or lazy, or with imperfect tools, starts working outside the USA, blunting the edge of this countries technological advantage a little more
I'm sorry, but contrary to any statements you may have heard from the White House, the cold hard truth is that federal funding of scientific research, even in malaria, has gone down each year in this Administration.
Blaming the FDA for wanting to regulate a technology that impacts humans is not likely to be a long-term strategy for success - the first time one of the nanobots designed to "repair cow stomach infections" invades a human host and alters the human stomach to the correct norms for a bovine, will be the day the entire industry gets sued.
The FDA is there for a reason, even if it's not doing a very good job of it.
Seriously, though, how do you get past the Final Boss Marketer without buying something?
The trick is to keep your wallet in your left hand, hand it towards him, when he takes the bills out (ka-ching sound), you get the exit doors open - right then, toss the frag grenades behind you over your shoulder (eight-second delay), use the autoload shotgun on the FBM, put your wallet back in your pocket, then use your left hand to Search For Money on his bloody corpse - usually you get all the bills back, sometimes you get a bonus amount depending on how good a shot you are.
Then sprint for the doors and roll to the right, so the blasts won't get you. Don't go to the left, they have the Product Display area and I always end up clipping a table and sprawling and then the grenade blast either gets me or I take about 50 percent wounds.