Posts Tagged ‘surveillance’
Lockheed’s SAMARAI Monocopter Makes Its Public, Neon-Lit Debut
, Lockheed Martin finally put its drone on display at AUVSI’s drone extravaganza in D.C. this week, for the first time flying it before a public audience as PopSci and everyone else in the air demo area looked on in awe. After all, the thing has just one rapidly rotating wing--it doesn’t really look like it can stay aloft by itself. Seeing, however, is believing.
The name (it’s not a typo) is actually derived from samara, or maple seeds, on which the monocopter design is based. Those seeds, sporting a single wing-like accessory, spiral from their branches and spin their way through the air--a natural development that allows maples to disperse their seeds more widely.
Lockheed’s version is a bit bigger (but sill weighs less than half a pound) and noisier, as you’ll see below. It also packs a camera that remarkably is able to maintain a steady view in one direction, demonstrating its eventual ISR potential (that camera also can turn 360 degrees with no gimbal). If you turn up your sound, you can hear Lockheed’s own Kingsley Fregene, principal investigator for SAMARAI, explaining how it works. What he didn’t explain to us is how he knew that adding a couple of neon lights to the bottom would make this demo so much cooler.
Every Six Hours, the NSA Gathers as Much Data as Is Stored in the Entire Library of Congress
That data includes transcripts of phone calls and in-house discussions, video and audio surveillance, and a massive amount of photography. "The volume of data they're pulling in is huge," said John V. Parachini, director of the Intelligence Policy Center at RAND. "One criticism we might make of our [intelligence] community is that we're collection-obsessed — we pull in everything — and we don't spend enough time or money to try and understand what do we have and how can we act upon it."
NSA's budget is not disclosed by law, but we'd imagine it would awfully expensive and difficult to even listen to such vast quantities of data, let alone analyze it intelligently. They mostly listen for keywords now--bits that don't make sense (and thus might be code), certain red-flag words (like, well, "bomb," which seems kind of unsubtle but I guess we're talking about terrorists here and of course it's possible there are intricacies of language that are missing in translation), and any conversation between principals like bin Laden. Still, next time you're aghast at how much space the entire series of Blue Planet takes on your hard drive, just be glad you're not the NSA.
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The German-American Tadpole Blimp Re-Emerges on the Way to Army Flight Testing
The drone dirigible’s segmented design, crafted by Germany’s TAO Technologies, is aimed at resisting the push, pull, and twist of air currents. It also boasts a unique “Fuelgas” system that runs the blimp’s engines on a fuel mixture with the same density as atmospheric air, keeping the aircraft’s buoyancy the same as it burns off its fuel supply (this trick is actually not new, but was devised in the 1930s during the ).
in Germany in 2009, the STS-111/Argus One system is intended for deployment as a surveillance and communications relay drone, but the company (companies?) behind it haven’t been exactly on the up and up. Several name changes, deals, and at least one SEC probe have kept the blimp off the radar for going on two years now.
But one $300,000 civil penalty later, the Argus One appears back on track. Army testing will commence this summer, barring anymore unforeseen setbacks, an extension of the military's with airships. Video of a 2008 prototype test is below.
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Your iPhone Keeps a Secret Log of Everywhere You Go, Security Experts Find
No other phone stores this information in this way
This could theoretically be useful for anyone interested in knowing where an iPhone owner spends his or her time — advertisers, employers, spouses, parents.
“Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements,” according to researcher Pete Warden.
To be clear, such a snoop would need access to your phone or computer and a way to extract and refine the data. It is not sent to Apple nor any third parties, as far as the researchers can tell — it’s just stored on an individual user’s devices. But it is apparently not very difficult to extract the location data from a user's computer.
Warden and Alasdair Allan say they tried to find similar location tracking code on Android phones, but could not find anything. “We haven't come across any instances of other phone manufacturers doing this,” Warden tells the Guardian.
Given Google’s penchant for location tracking and , the alarm is perhaps surprising — Google’s lets users see their friends on a map, for instance. But Latitude requires that users actively choose to track their location information; in this case, the user is unaware of the data collection. The Guardian reports that Apple did not comment on why the file was created or whether it could be disabled. If you upgrade to a new phone, the file is transferred to that next-generation device, which the researchers say means the data collection is not accidental.
Warden — who has previously worked for Apple — and Allan created their own app that finds the hidden file among the stored backup files on a Mac and turns it into a map. If you don’t care to visualize your travels, Warden explains on his website.
The researchers believe the location data is obtained by triangulating the phone’s position against the closest cell phone towers, which uses less battery power than GPS. It also explains why some of the data is incorrect, as triangulation is much less precise than GPS. But the data is still alarmingly accurate, tracking your history as an iPhone owner through the months and years. Forgot that you took that trip to Boston last summer? Your iPhone didn't.
It’s not clear how this information would be used, but there are several possible explanations, including targeted mobile advertising, synchronization for location-based networks like FourSquare, understanding commuter habits, and so on.
Allan found the file while the pair were working on how to visualize mobile data, having already collaborated on other data-visualization projects including a radiation map for Japan. At first the researchers weren’t sure what it was, Warden explains on his website.
“After we dug further and visualized the extracted data, it became clear that there was a scary amount of detail on our movements,” he writes.
There is no real way to disable this logging at the moment, though you can encrypt your data to make it harder to read once it's synced to your computer. This is a big enough problem that we expect Apple will respond at some point, so we'll keep you updated if and when that happens.
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Gallery: Airships Rise (Again)
The next generation of dirigibles takes flight
The Next Generation of Dirigibles Takes Flight
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A Hexacopter That Sees Motion and Hears Breathing, Even Through Walls
The remote-controlled mini-copter can travel long distances while carrying out a variety of surveillance tasks, including recording video in both day and night-vision formats. But its ability to see through reinforced concrete walls with a narrow-beam of multi-gigahertz radio waves in real time is what should have the hunted--whoever they may be--shaking in their bunkers.
The Phoenix40-A can land on top of a building and scan it for a human presence, or it can do so on the fly. It can also generate the layout of a multi-story building, relaying the information back to law enforcement or troops before they proceed into a structure. The little bot can even help locate land mines, be they hostile or simply leftover unexploded ordnance from some past conflict.
But though the U.S. Army contributed to its development, it’s not all tactical tasks and military surveillance for the little Phoenix40-A. A fast, nimble hexacopter that doesn’t need to touch down for extended periods could be a critical tool during search and rescue operations after disasters like the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The bot could travel over large swaths of impassable territory to search for signs of life, helping lead rescuers directly to those in need of aid when the clock is ticking.
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