EU Considering Sensors In Sewers To Detect Bomb-Makers 219
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."
Re:And later (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That might be a bit of a stretch, but OTOH detecting traces of THC or other drugs like that might not be outside the scope of this sort of project, and may not correlate with the average persons idea of a free society.
Re:Unimaginable wasting of money (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
This, but not for reasons of financial cost. The price of living in a free society is that occasionally someone is going to get pissed off at the world and blow up spectators at a marathon or take a gun to a classroom of kiddies. It would be great if we could stop this, but if the only way of stopping it is to take away your freedom and allow the government to spy on its people then maybe the price is too high. And from a financial point of view, maybe the money would be better spent on education and help for people who need it.
That said, this sounds like a cool idea from a technical point of view. I'm conflicted.
False positives. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:And later (Score:5, Interesting)
GATTACA. BTW, we checked your DNA and you have too many SNP's and will not be allowed to procreate as it would be a burden on the state. Also it would be the obvious creep of scope. Cold Cases with DNA and no match. It will happen.
It's always about privacy, but what *is* privacy? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:You can't compensate the dead (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. In the choice between retiring the military early with golf-course careers and spending the money on healthcare, or rolling with a super police state, I favor the former.
Re:A surprising turn of events (Score:5, Interesting)
Good chemical debunk, this is a physically (laughably) impractical as well.
The sewer network for our city of 23,000 with some heavy industry, generates around two miliion gallons of flow a day. There are ~1100 manholes, but thirty main branches where one would definitely want $ensors, that would narrow it down to several hundred houses. Flow takes from 15 minutes to 10 hours to travel down these branches. In this hostile environment of liquid and floating and suspended solid it is difficult to keep even mechanical flow monitors operational (we don't bother), the thought of a sensor that requires immersion and direct contact cracks me up. The thought that these subterranean sensors need 24x7 radio links makes me hoot 'n holler.
Okay... (wiping eyes)... so branch number five sounds an alarm. What do you do now?? You need to systematically place MORE sensors at all upstream branch points and wait for another positive. Then finally after several of these iterations you are down to one city block and have to stick a sensor on a camera in the upstream manhole and roll it slowly down the line until you hit a positive again. Then try to figure out which house the tap is for, it's not always obvious and we often need to pour dye to be sure.
So the perps would need to be really cooperative and pour lots of it out at regular intervals for days to assist this tracing process as city workers slowly and visibly converge on their neighborhood.
BUT HOLD ON. If some really clever roboticist could make an autonomous sewer walking spider that could crawl through 6 inch pipes (with roots and other obstructions) and maintain radio contact, which is a real bitch down there, then we'd have the beginnings of something.
Sometimes it takes an infinite amount of money and time to implement a Clever Idea. But it's worth the wait.
Re:It's always about privacy, but what *is* privac (Score:4, Interesting)
Without an agreed upon definition of privacy this is a fairly futile discussion.