Sensing Technology As Open Source's New Frontier

destinyland writes "Christine Peterson coined the term 'open source.' Now she's proposing the same collaborative sharing approach to sensing technology 'to improve both security and the environment, while preserving — even strengthening — privacy, freedom, and civil liberties...' The Open Source Sensing initiative welcomes individuals and organizations, and warns that 'We have a short window of opportunity for guiding this technology to protect both our security *and* our privacy.' Peterson says that in the long term, 'open source defensive technologies will likely be the only ones capable of keeping up with rapidly-advancing offensive technologies, just as open source software is faster at addressing computer viruses today.' And the EFF's Brad Templeton warns that 'Cheap, ubiquitous sensing has the potential to turn the worlds of privacy and civil rights upside-down... It's not enough for governments to watch people; people have to watch governments.' His solution? 'Learning from the bottom-up approaches of the open source community.'

Nuclear WMD Sensing?

[eldavojohn]

The proposal lists detection of nuclear WMDs via neutrons and gamma rays ... the proposal itself also correctly notes that places like NYC are trying to ban Geiger counters [slashdot.org] and probably wouldn't be too keen on this sort of data being opened up to the masses. So you find out your neighborhood has an irregular--perhaps even mildly dangerous--amount of radioactive activity. Watch the lawsuits roll in ...

The proposal itself stays away from video and on their site they talk about who would have release rights to this video, I'm not sure why the EFF is commenting on that. It looks like they want to stay away from somone/group grabbing all the video and putting it up on YouTube to make the street in front of your house a public spectacle.

Re:I propose...

[mcgrew]

PS: ban lobbies too, while we're at it! Let's give democracy a shot for a change.

I'd go two steps farther.

1. Make it a felony to contribute to any candidate one isn't eligible to vote for. This would pretty much stop all lobbying from corporations, unions, and other organizations. The CEO of a company could still contribute to his own senatorial and congressional candidates, but only the ones he's allowed to vote for. Why should Bill gates have any say on Illinois politicians? Or ADM's exec have any say in Oregon's politics?
2. Make it a felony to contribute to more than one candidate for any election. Face it, a grand for the Repub abd another grand for the Dem, and no matter which candidate loses, the briber/contributor wins. Contributing to more than one candidate in any given race is an ill-disguised bribe, and it should be a felony.