DARPA Developing 'Combat Zones That See' 333
t0rnt0pieces writes "DARPA is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a city. Officials claim that the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas, but police, scientists and privacy experts say the technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans. Combined with other technologies, such as software that scans databases of everyday transactions and personal records worldwide, the government would have a reasonably good idea of where everyone is most of the time. Read the news story and the contracting document."
sounds like... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wireless tracking (Score:3, Interesting)
The Burmese Traffic Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The following story is second hand; I make no claims as to its absolute veracity. Now, that being said:
Several years ago, it became feasible to use many, many cameras to monitor the movement of cars via their license plates. Long before the Brits deployed one of these systems to control traffic in the core of London, Burma (aka Myanmar, one of the more oppressive regimes out there) dropped a decent amount of cash to acquire a traffic management system for their own country.
Except Burma doesn't actually have traffic to manage. At least not vehicular...show up to a protest, though, and all that automatic, large scale image capture, compare...capture...becomes really interesting.
Welcome to the Burmese Traffic Problem.
--Dan
www.doxpara.com
Not safe in the physical world, nor in the Abstrac (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I am basically screwed. It is already starting to feel like that.
I think this is going to be the real debate of the 21 st century.
where am I going to go on those occasions when I really want to crawl out of my own skin. And there are other times when I want to go where there is nobody else but me.
That is my innate desire, so the temptation will always be there ...
Re:That sounds a bit strange to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:spy r us (Score:5, Interesting)
In his speech "The Great American Restoration" [deanforamerica.com], Howard Dean spoke of how he wanted to restore America's values to the government, and I'm sure his thoughts would be of interest to you:
"But there is a fundamental difference between the defense of our nation and the doctrine of preemptive war espoused by this administration. The President's group of narrow-minded ideological advisors are undermining our nation's greatness in the world. They have embraced a form of unilateralism that is even more dangerous than isolationism.
"This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.
"In doing so they would throw aside our nation's role as the inspirational leader of the world the beacon of hope and justice in the interests of humankind. And instead, they would present our face to the world as a dominant power prepared to push aside any nation with which we do not agree.
"Our foreign and military policies must be about America leading the world, not America against the world."
But I thought the U.S. was bad! (Score:5, Interesting)
However, for some reason, the U.S. is still considered by many here to be the Micorsoft-of-the-World. Why is that?
Aussie police too (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why not give everything an IP address (Score:2, Interesting)
a IPv6 address looks like this:
1080:0:0:0:8:800:200C:417A a unicast address
FF01:0:0:0:0:0:0:43 a multicast address
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1 the loopback address
0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 the unspecified addresses
(check out RFC 1884 for moe examples)
Re:That sounds a bit strange to me (Score:5, Interesting)
So I guess the officials can also tell us why the hell overseas cities should provide the camera installation for US troops to fight there more easily?
Obviously they won't, which is why the article states 'In the second phase, at least 100 cameras would be installed in 12 hours to support "military operations in an urban terrain."'
To install the cameras you usually need to control the city and to control a city in a military operations requires some fighting before. Looks like a perfect Catch22 to me.
Um, no.
"Securing the perimeter" is the step that usually comes after reaching the objective. This is a perimeter security step. Nothing in the article indicates that this is seen as a way of entering the city, more as a way of controlling it once it is held.
Personally, I predict that the next step will be the moral equivalent of dog pod grids, where aerial surveillance vehicles (smaller than the predator, essentially disposable as necessary) will carry the cameras in with the troops and provide extended perimeter security, thus shrinking that 12-hour setup window. Imagine how much harder it would be today to sneak up on Bagram Air Base and drop a few mortars rounds in if there were a few predator drones constantly circling randomly around and detecting movement.
Howard Dean for President (Score:5, Interesting)
On the positive side, the guy tends to be a fiscal conservative, and can be BLUNT. I can't say if its an exact quote, but I seem to remember him using words like "irresponsible" and "idiotic" to describe members of the legislature, and those were members of his own party. It's about time we had someone in the Oval Office capable of being both direct and subtle.
On the negative side, there were some oddities about how Act 60 got through for school funding, and we're still fighting those battles. Vermont still has a lot of tension between business and environment, growth and quality-of-life.
As for Civil Unions, I guess I have to take the "so conservative I look liberal" stance and say, "My bedroom is none of your business, and your bedroom is none of mine!"
Dean is a bit of an autocrat, and has some difficulty working with a legislature. I count that as somewhat positive, because I don't like my government to do too much. As a hard line middle-of-the-roader, I tend to prefer Democrats in office because there IS more contention, and less gets done. With sufficient concentration of power, Republicans are too efficient and too much gets done. Much as they decry 'activist government', that's what we've got now.
Re:But I thought the U.S. was bad! (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy. Your raving lunatics have better publicity people than our ones.
After all if Ashcroft can lose an election to a dead man and still end up running America (Rumsfeld does the rest of the World), what chance do the likes of David Blunkett [number-10.gov.uk] stand? I never thought I'd live long enough to think of Michael 'something of the night' Howard as preferable to the alternative, but somehow New Labour manages to be completely superficial and at the same time violently creepy and deeply oppressive.
New Labour has all the moral certainty of the Bush White House with none of the convictions (in all senses); it's as if central government has been given a make-over by branding experts trained by Kim Jong Il.
At the moment the big argument here boils down to 'would the Prime Minister lie?' Bearing in mind he's a: a politician, and b: has a pretty good track record of telling untruths, that's a dumb question. But anyone who questions it, (say the BBC), is being given the entire Hate Week treatment.
They've taken the worst bits of Thatcherism (and there were plenty of those) and the unpleasant bits of Labour and welded them into something so unholy that Victor von Frankenstein would be asking Igor to hold off on the brain while he thinks it through. Even the name - New Labour smacks of superficiality - give them time and it will be NuLab (now with 55% Conservatism!), or just The Party.
The more I see of Blunkett and his power-mongering control-freakery, the more I'm convinced that he sees '1984' as an inspirational work. Perhaps Blair 'n Blunkett are going to commemorate Orwell's centenary by making sure his greatest work becomes reality?
Best wishes,
Mike, Airstrip One, Oceania.
Re:dangerous trends... (Score:3, Interesting)
Free your mind.
Re:The Real Question (Score:3, Interesting)
It is the responsibility of the GOVERNED to deal with these issues. If the people of another country (or the government of another country) want to do this type of thing, that's fine by me. Who am I to tell another how to govern themselves?
In short, I don't consider a breach of someone elses civil liberties as 'OK'.. but at the same time, I have no reason to be concerned with that either. My job, as a governed member of society, is to be vigilante in ensuring that MY civil liberties are not breached. I can only offer empathy and support to those in other places.
Before the anti-american bashers in the crowd go nuts, I recognize that the United States does have this habit of getting involved in other peoples civil liberties. That's not something I support (along with a large percentage of the actual citizens here)..