Technofascism blog

via Telegraph.

Every WiFi wireless router – the device that links most computer owners to the internet – in every home has been entered into a Google database.

The information was collected by radio aerials on their Street View cars, which have now photographed almost every home in the country.

The data is then used on Google’s Maps for Mobile application to locate mobile phones such as iPhones in order for users to access information relevant to the area such as restaurants, cinemas, theatres, shops and hotels.

The project had remained secret until an inquiry in Germany earlier this month in which Google was forced to admit that it “mistakenly” downloaded data packets, which may have included fragments of emails and other data, from unsecured wireless networks where they were not protected by a password.

Google points out that other companies have already mapped wireless networks, notably a company called Skyhook Wireless which has a contract with Apple, manufacturers of the iPhone.

Google say the information, which lists the networks’ MAC (Media Access Control) address and SSID (Service Set-ID) number, but not their house number, is publicly available because the wireless network signals extend beyond the property in which they are located.

Google has now suspended the use of Street View cars across the world – but their work in Britain is already complete.

They said last week that they had not notified data protection authorities because “we did not think it was necessary” but they added: “It’s clear with hindsight that greater transparency would have been better.”

A number of authorities, including those in Britain and the US, have asked Google to retain the downloaded emails pending a full inquiry but it is unclear what their obligations are concerning the WiFi data.

Privacy campaigners claim that there has been a breakdown in regulation.

A spokesman for Privacy International said: “The ghost of Street View continues to haunt Google.

“We think it will historically be viewed as a horrendous breach of law and something which a better regulator with a better understanding of the issues and the technology would never have allowed to happen.

“There should be a parliamentary inquiry which should question Google and finally get it to explain what it is up to both technically and commercially.

“The idea that it can log everyone’s wi-fi details because it is all ‘public’ is a bogus argument. It is bogus because of the question of scale and the question of integration with other information which would amount to a huge breach of our privacy.”

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner’s Office said: “We are aware that the collection of information by Google Street View cars has raised a number of issues which we are considering.

“All organisations that process personal information must comply with the requirements of the Data Protection Act.

“Organisations are only permitted to collect data for a specific purpose. Similarly, organisations must only retain data for as long as necessary.

“If we find evidence of significant wrongdoing, we will of course investigate and consider what action should be taken.”

If I had to sum up this talk given at Arizona State University in one sentence it would be: A madman’s insane rambling to other madmen in a mad world.

via Security Management.

05/24/2010 – The current pace of technological innovation inside the U.S. military could mean a future in which cyborg insects track the movement of private citizens and humans communicate telepathically, finally putting an end to the belief in real privacy, a scientist hypothesized today.

“Whether you want to have your insects robotic or cyborg, that’s up to you,” said Braden Allenby, the founding chair of the Consortium on Emerging Technologies, Military Operations, and National Security at Arizona State University. “I’m sure we’ll develop both types.”

Allenby’s gaze into the future of military technology and its domestic implications came as part of a panel for an event called “Warring Futures” put on by the New America Foundation, Slate.com, and Arizona State University. The panel—which also included author Robert Wright, a New America senior fellow, and Daniel Sarewitz, co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University—discussed what type of blowback ordinary Americans can expect when science fiction-like military technologies used on the battlefield migrate home in consumer applications or inspire others to bring the war to the United States.

Robotic and cyborg insects could have a dramatic impact in counterinsurgency operations.

“It not only gives you better intelligence, but it allows you to reduce collateral damage,” Allenby said, noting civilian deaths help terrorists recruit new members. It’s also an incredibly powerful surveillance tool because the military can police hostile areas without putting service members in danger.

The technology, however, won’t remain on foreign battlefields for long, creating multiple privacy and civil liberties issues for the American public, although Allenby quipped privacy is an antiquated notion that no longer exists.

“Most of you have no privacy,” he said. “You think you do, that’s probably more dangerous then knowing that you don’t. So this may be a benefit.”

Throwing out hypotheticals, Allenby sees a future where news organizations could harness the power of robotic insects to track the dealings of politicians they don’t like.

Allenby even forecasts a day when humans, with the aid of technology, can communicate telepathically. Militarily this means soldiers that can communicate silently and securely during covert missions and a soldier more and more integrated with weapons technology. But the unintended consequences of such a technology, Allenby said, could eventually mean hackable thoughts and the inability of humans to shield their innermost thoughts from others.

And having the power to read each other’s thoughts wouldn’t just upset social norms, it could significantly alter human communication away from the spoken and written word. “Again remember this is a hypothetical, but it is not an impossible hypothetical,” Allenby said. “It’s just going to take us a couple years to get there.”

Robert Wright commented that Americans may have already seen blowback from military technology when an alleged homegrown terrorist tried to detonate a car bomb in New York City almost a month ago, noting media reports that Faisal Shahzad’s motivation was to avenge drone attacks in Pakistan.

“Is there something about this particular kind of deployment of force—remotely deployed force that poses no risk to us that plays especially well into the narrative of terrorist recruiters?,” asked Wright.

Wright noted that drone attacks reinforce Muslim perceptions that the U.S. military “kills people as if they are insects.” He also argued the upside of drone attacks may outweigh the downside associated with them.

“Drone attacks may explain both the motivation of the Times Square bomber and why he was so unsuccessful,” Wright said. “It may be that they are so disrupted over there in Pakistan that they can’t do a good job of orchestrating force.”

Lately, I’ve heard many talking heads in the news media suggesting that the only way to stop the BP oil leak might be to detonate a nuclear bomb under the leak site.

Before they consider that option, they might want to watch this video of Dr. Gregory Ryskin, Professor of Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University.  In the video, Dr. Ryskin explains how a prehistoric methane gas explosion could explain the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, a mysterious period in Earth history where 95% of all species went extinct.

Given that the amount of methane gas that is leaking from the BP spill site is at least equal to the amount of oil, it would lead one to believe that there is a huge underground pocket of methane gas buried there.  Now, if Dr. Ryskin’s theory is correct, not only would detonating a nuclear bomb near that underground methane pocket end the oil spill, it might end all life on Earth as well.

by Tony Rodriguez
TechnoFascismBlog.com

“It will save lives”, or so the argument goes. Sending a robot warrior onto the battlefield instead of humans seems like the logical next step in a world moving toward greater efficiency and automation. Everyone seems in love with this new technological trend of automated devastation: from the corporations that will profit from the sale of them; to the military leaders who admire the increased killing power of the robotic drones.

As I write this, in 2010, fully autonomous killer robots are still in the early trial phase, when scientists are still working out the bugs and lawyers are still clambering over liability issues. However, according to recent estimates there are at least 6000 robots at some level of autonomous operation in active deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

According to an article in Military Aerospace, former U.S. Air Force (USAF) Chief of Staff General T. Michael Moseley said, “We’ve moved from using UAVs primarily in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance roles before Operation Iraqi Freedom, to a true hunter-killer role with the Reaper.” Currently, the U.S. Air Force’s fleet stands at 195 Predators and 28 Reapers.

As the armed forces rapidly move toward greater use of these robotic warriors, one can only wonder what this horrific automated battlefield will look like twenty years from now. Fortunately for us, there is no need to speculate about the future role of killer robots. We have only to look at one of the military’s playbooks for the development and deployment of robotic systems: the “2009 Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap” released by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The main point that can be gleaned from a careful reading of this Roadmap is not if the front-line military will be composed almost entirely of automated, killer robots but when. And we don’t have to wonder too long about when either, for this document gives the answer to that question too: by about 2034 — if everything goes according to plan.

The DoD Roadmap paints a frightening picture of a fully-autonomous army of self-maintaining combat robots whose mission endurance is measured in years:

As autonomy progresses from teleoperation, to semi-autonomy, and finally full autonomy, mission endurance will need to keep pace. The more a system is capable of doing without operator intervention, the longer it can execute on its own. The predicted performance envelope expects that as autonomy increases, so too will the call for increased mission endurance.

Today, mission endurance is measured in hours. In the future, it will be desirable for unmanned systems to conduct their missions in durations measured in days, weeks, months, and feasibly years. This is a key, desirable attribute as manned tasks are always constrained by the human body’s need for food and sleep.

As autonomous behavior increases in sophistication and mission endurance increases to months, the need for self-diagnostics and self-repair becomes evident.

In order to extend the mission endurance of combat robots, the Roadmap recommends that Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGVs) might in some strange way become part of the ecosystem and, according to the DoD document, “live off the land.”

The ability to use bio-mass would allow an unmanned system to increase its mission endurance and increase its covert advantages by “living off the land.” The ideal bio-mass reactor would allow the unmanned systems to convert prepared food stuffs as well as raw foods and natural bio-mass.

Apparently, in their attempt to extend the mission life of these new techno-hitmen from hours to years, the architects of destruction have decided to mimic natural predators and decided that after a human being is maimed or killed they might as well be eaten for sustenance.

Amazingly, according to the Roadmap, the UGVs will have mammal-like curiosity and agility as well:

While UAS may fly in and around urban settings, and UUVs and USVs may operate in and around ports and marinas, UGVs will be the predominant vehicles expected to conduct missions within buildings, tunnels, and through city streets. This requires that UGVs be able to operate in Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied areas, traverse stairs, deal with elevators, open doors, and possibly even open windows, desk and file drawers, and cupboards, etc. In addition to the challenge of navigating and traversing within buildings, UGVs will need to navigate within and through city streets that will be busy with traffic and pedestrians. Urban streets also mean UGVs will have to contend with curbs, trash, water drains, etc.

Of course, as stated in the Roadmap document, this planned level of full automation presents a problem for the multitude of currently employed US military personnel:

Creation of substantive autonomous systems/platforms within each domain will create resourcing and leadership challenges for all the Services, while challenging their respective Warfighter cultures as well. The automating of the actual operation/fighting of platforms will decrease the need for people to crew them …

Culturally, there will be stresses from the potentially significant decrease in the combatant jobs of each Service, e.g. Infantry for the Army, pilots for the Air Force, etc. and the attendant reduction in numbers of the main focus of each Service, i.e. the combatants.

The recommendation of the Roadmap is that even though there will be “vocal and forceful” resistance to the adoption of fully-autonomous robots, “these pockets of resistance need to be addressed and eliminated, for the overall good of the Joint Force.”

The Combatant Commands, their components, and the individual Services have embraced unmanned systems philosophically because they are a capability multiplier and can reduce risk to personnel. However, when the procurement of unmanned systems threaten manned systems budgets or career paths of manned systems operators, the manned systems invariably win out due to vocal and forceful remonstrations by the threatened communities. Unmanned systems offer as yet largely unseen operational capabilities, and these pockets of resistance need to be addressed and eliminated, for the overall good of the Joint Force.

But don’t expect for a minute that these hunter-killer devices are going to be restricted to attacking rogue individuals in nations at the far corners of the earth. The memo states quite succinctly: “The goal is to achieve transparent flight operations in the NAS. (national airspace)”.

There are various systems, both on and off board, and policy changes being explored to allow incremental access to the civil airspace system.

It’s not hard to understand the principle reasons for the military’s love of killer robots? They have many advantages over a wildly uncontrollable human soldier: 1) they are expendable, without nasty repercussions from surviving family members; 2) they are controllable, they will not flinch in executing whatever orders are given no matter how repulsive they would be to a human soldier; and most importantly 3) they are expensive, they will only be available to the upper echelons of the global society.

But one could ask, why does the military really need automated unmanned ground robots which can “climb stairs, deal with elevators, open doors, and possibly even open windows, desk and file drawers, and cupboards, etc.”? I hazard to guess that it’s because the designers of these systems know very well that the enemies they will finally contend with will not be large, organized armies from “developed” nations. No, the enemy they are preparing to fight are the small groups of rogue individuals who understand what is finally happening and will not stand for it. These will be the future terrorists. And, like something out of the Terminator movie, they anticipate that these last pockets of rebellious individuals will hide from the hunter-killers in mostly urban areas. If everything goes according to the plans of the Roadmap, the last elements of rebellion will be rooted out so that the coming totalitarian technocracy can fully emerge.

via The West Australian.

Teachers are calling for surveillance cameras to be installed in all high schools to help stem a rising tide of violence.

State School Teachers Union members at Morley Senior High School want the Education Department to place at least five video surveillance cameras in all district and senior high schools.

Their appeal, which is on the agenda for the union’s State council meeting in two weeks, says cameras would improve staff safety and may also make students feel more secure.

“One camera should be in the main teacher” carpark and another at the main student drop-off point,” the agenda motion says. “They would help to monitor bullying behaviour and help students to be more aware of the need for them to be accountable for their own behaviour.”

The number of suspensions for violent or disruptive behaviour increased 13 per cent last year to more than 27,325. The main reason for suspensions was for physical assault or intimidation of other students.

SSTU president Anne Gisborne said the motion was likely to be backed by many of the teachers at the council.

“People are getting increasingly anxious about inappropriate behaviour, not just from students but from people from outside the school,” she said.

Ms Gisborne said some might see cameras as an invasion of personal privacy but they would not be used within school buildings.

WA Secondary School Executives Association president Rob Nairn said use of surveillance cameras should be considered if they were found to be effective in deterring antisocial behaviour.

“I think we should use the technology where appropriate,” he said. “You certainly wouldn’t have them in classrooms. That’s overkill.”

The Education Department said it had no plans to install cameras in every school. Security head John Marapodi said 57 schools had closed-circuit television cameras.

These schools had a high degree of wilful damage and they were not designed to monitor students during the school day.

via Telegraph.

via American Thinker Blog.

I thought this might be one of those bills where someone has misread the language and interpreted what the legislation is supposed to do incorrectly.

Nope. Rep. Kind of Wisconsin has introduced legislation that he proudly proclaims will track the body mass index (BMI) of your child from age 2-18:

A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are. States receiving federal grants provided for in the bill would be required to annually track the Body Mass Index of all children ages 2 through 18. The grant-receiving states would be required to mandate that all health care providers in the state determine the Body Mass Index of all their patients in the 2-to-18 age bracket and then report that information to the state government. The state government, in turn, would be required to report the information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for analysis.

The Healthy Choices Act–introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee–would establish and fund a wide range of programs and regulations aimed at reducing obesity rates by such means as putting nutritional labels on the front of food products, subsidizing businesses that provide fresh fruits and vegetables, and collecting BMI measurements of patients and counseling those that are overweight or obese.

I wonder if that “counseling” will be mandatory? No matter. When Nanny says jump, you ask “How high, Nanny?” If government wants information that is absolutely none of their business, they are going to coerce states into giving it to them.

And don’t you love this defense of such an intrusive law?

“The provision relates to all children in states that accept grants under the bill,” a spokesperson for Rep. Kind told CNSNews.com. “However, it is important to note that no one is forced to come in for a doctor’s visit to get their BMI tested. BMI will be taken at times when the child makes an otherwise scheduled doctor’s visit.”

Not “forced,” but not voluntary either. Nice distinction if you can get away with making it.

Whenever government gets involved in “tracking” anything about children, the alarm bells should go off. Interfering in child raising is about as intrusive as any government can get when it comes to curtailing freedom.

Sounds like the logical next step to me…

via DailyTech – IBM Patent Application Describes “Intelligent” Stop Lights That Turn Off Cars.

IBM patent goes Big Brother

Running red lights and failure to stop leads to untold numbers of traffic accidents around the world. Sitting at a red light with cars idling also burns fuel that really isn’t needed.

IBM has filed a patent application that outlines a system that would turn the motors of a car off at a traffic light to conserve fuel.

Few will take issue with green technology that conserves fuel, saves them money, and reduces pollution. However, there is a dark side to the patent application that privacy advocates will not like.

The system IBM is proposing has to have access to the engine of the vehicles at the light to stop the engine. With access to the engine, the traffic lights can not only stop the engine of a driver’s car, but it can also determine the duration that the engine is stopped and then when the light is over it can start the motors of the cars up in sequential order so the first cars at the light get to go first. The system would use GPS data to know where vehicles were located at the light.

The patent application reads:

Vehicle fuel consumption is a major component of global energy consumption. With increasing vehicle usage, there may be more traffic and longer wait times at traffic signals e.g., at a traffic intersection or a railway crossing. Fuel may be wasted when drivers keep their vehicles running while waiting for the traffic signal to turn “green” or waiting for a train to pass at a railway crossing. Most drivers may not switch off their engines in these situations. Drivers who do switch off their engines may do so inefficiently. For example, a driver may switch off the engine, only to start it up a short time later. In such cases, more fuel may be consumed in restarting the engine. Some traffic signals may have clocks that indicate remaining durations before the signals change. However, drivers in vehicles waiting at the back of the queue may not be able to view the clock.

There are other aspects of this technology that the patent application doesn’t spell out. For instance, this system would make it impossible for a driver to run a red light.

There could also be safety issues to a system such as this. For instance, what if a driver had a medical emergency and the light turned off the car making it impossible to reach a hospital. The system would require software and hardware be installed on vehicles at an unknown cost.

Transhumanist and human cloning proponent, Dr. Richard Seed, spells out the techno-religion program quite nicely:  They’ll become gods…or they’ll wipe out anyone who resists.  Somehow, I don’t have confidence that the world will be exactly a peaceful, cheery wonderland when Dr Seed and his ilk do finally succeed at becoming gods.

Like something out of a nightmare, the creepy Little Dog Robot easily navigates over a rough terrain.  It’ll be interesting to see the militarized version of this new Darpa Demon.  Maybe soon we’ll see entire swarms of these things crawl over a “battlefield”?