Mon, Sep 24 2007
OH, BUT WE WOULD *NEVER* USE THIS FOR EVIL....
How easy would it be to convert the payload in a NAV to deliver a bioagent? Where does all this fingerprint and retinal scanning-at-a-distance information get stored? How is it used? By whom? Are there, somewhere in the bowels of some DHS database, satellite closeup pics of me sunbathing naked on my deck? Big fucking brother, we are here...
Tech wonders on homeland security horizon
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans are facing a brave new world of post-September 11 technology marvels that could soon find their way into billions of dollars of projected homeland security spending.
Gee-whiz know-how -- from swarms of tiny airborne sensors to ever-sharper satellite imagery -- is being developed by companies chasing potentially lucrative federal, state and local deals to address 21st-century security threats.
Already in use are such things as infrared cameras with built-in brains that capture license plate images and match them in milliseconds to police records of vehicles of interest to the authorities.
Such license plate recognition systems, fixed and mobile, already are stopping criminals in cars in New York City, Washington D.C. and 23 states, according to Mark Windover, president of Remington ELSAG Law Enforcement Systems, which is marketing its product to 250 U.S. police agencies.
"Seventy percent of all criminal activity can be tied to a vehicle," he said. "Had to get there, had to go home."
Remington ELSAG says its algorithms -- which turn images into data in the blink of an eye -- could guard airports, military bases and other federal facilities as well as crack down on the drug trade, robberies and other crime hinging on stolen cars.
In other surveillance developments, the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, is defending a plan to make broader use of eyes in the sky that, until now, have mostly fed military and scientific needs.
"The use of geospatial information from military intelligence satellites may turn out to be a valuable tool in protecting the homeland," Democrats on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this month.
But they voiced privacy and civil liberties concerns about the scheduled October 1 launch of the National Applications Office, a clearing house for expanded output of imagery to police, border security and other law-enforcement outfits.
"We are so concerned that, as the department's authorizing committee, we are calling for a moratorium on the program until the many constitutional, legal and organizational questions it raises are answered," Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and colleagues wrote on September 6.
SATELLITES, TINY AERIAL VEHICLES
DigitalGlobe, a potential beneficiary of stepped-up demand for such products, launched a satellite this week that can daily collect up to 750,000 square kilometers of imagery able to pick out suitcase-sized objects. The WorldView-1 satellite is part of a U.S. program, dubbed NextView, designed to give government customers priority access.
Many of the gizmos under development will be pitched first and foremost to the Pentagon, which is increasingly trying to keep tabs on foes in urban and other hard-to-monitor settings.
Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier by contract value, is working on a keychain-sized, remote-controlled aerial vehicle designed to collect and transmit data with military and homeland security uses.
Resembling the seed of a silver maple tree, the single-winged device would pack a tiny two-stage rocket thruster along with telemetry, communications, navigation, imaging sensors and a power source.
The nano air vehicle, or NAV, is designed to carry interchangeable payload modules -- the size of an aspirin tablet. It could be used for chemical and biological detection or finding a "needle in a haystack," according to Ned Allen, chief scientist at Lockheed's fabled Skunk Works research arm.
Released in organized swarms to fly low over a disaster area, the NAV sensors could detect human body heat and signs of breathing, Allen said.
"The NAV swarm can pinpoint the location of survivors, send the data back to the first responders and help concentrate rescue operations where they are most likely to be successful," he said in an e-mail interview.
Meanwhile, Boeing Co (BA.N) is leading the technology segment of a multiyear plan to secure U.S. borders that includes database and intelligence analysis systems.
Projected by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to cost as much as $8.8 billion over the next six years, the system also features ground-based and tower-mounted sensors, cameras and radar plus high-speed communications, command and control equipment and devices that detect tunnels.
Airport screening is another area that could be transformed within 10 years, using scanning wizardry to pinpoint a suspected security threat through biometrics -- based on one or more physical or behavioral traits.
"We can read fingerprints from about five meters .... all 10 prints," said Bruce Walker, vice president of homeland security for Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N). "We can also do an iris scan at the same distance."Mon, Sep 24 2007
HEAD OF U.N. BEGS NATIONS TO TAKE ACTION
Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, says unless all nations take action, global climate change will be the end of civilization in our children's lifetime.
(Link below opens a video browser)
Dude, that is just sooo not right - we have simply GOT to quit shitting where we sleep! George FUCKING Bush, stop letting your buddies crap in our bed!
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UN chief urges immediate climate action
UNITED NATIONS, Associated Press - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told an unprecedented summit on climate change Monday that "the time for doubt has passed" and a breakthrough is needed in global talks to sharply reduce emissions of global-warming gases.
"The U.N. climate process is the appropriate forum for negotiating global action," Ban told assembled presidents and premiers, an apparent caution against what some see as a U.S. effort to open a separate negotiating track.
The U.N. chief also addressed a chief U.S. objection to negotiated limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, that it will be too damaging to the American economy.
"Inaction now will prove the costliest action of all in the long term," Ban said.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in another summit-opening speech, told the international delegates U.S. states are taking action.
While the Bush administration has resisted emissions caps, California's Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature have approved a law requiring the state's industries to reduce greenhouse gases by an estimated 25 percent by 2020. Other U.S. states, in various ways, are moving to follow California's lead.
"California is moving the United States beyond debate and doubt to action," Schwarzenegger said. "What we are doing is changing the dynamic."
The one-day meeting, with more than 80 national leaders among some 150 participants, also was scheduled to hear from Al Gore, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other international figures.
U.N. chief Ban organized the summit to build political momentum toward launching negotiations later this year for deep cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and other manmade gases blamed for global warming.
President Bush, who has long opposed such negotiated limits on "greenhouse gases," wasn't participating in the day's meetings but was to attend a small dinner Monday evening, a gathering of key players hosted by Ban.
Rather than accept treaty obligations, Bush has urged industry to cut emissions voluntarily, and emphasizes research on clean-energy technology as one answer.
On Thursday and Friday, Bush will host his own two-day climate meeting, limited to 16 "major emitter" countries. It's the first in a series of U.S.-sponsored climate gatherings.
Many environmentalists fear the separate U.S. "track," which will involve China and India, may undercut the global U.N. negotiating process. But some hope it eventually helps draw those two big developing nations and others into a new, U.N.-negotiated emissions regime.
Speaking to a technology session at Monday's U.N. conference, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the administration views the Washington sessions "as the first in a series of meetings to support and help advance the ongoing U.N. discussion."
This first-ever U.N. climate summit looked ahead to December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, when the Europeans, Japanese and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions-reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
The 1997 Kyoto pact, which the U.S. rejects, requires 36 industrial nations to reduce heat-trapping gases emitted by power plants and other industrial, agricultural and transportation sources by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Advocates say a breakthrough is needed at Bali — almost certainly requiring a change in the U.S. position — to ensure an uninterrupted transition from Kyoto to a new, deeper-cutting regime.
To try to spur global negotiations, the European Union has committed to reduce emissions by at least an additional 20 percent by 2020.
In comments clearly directed at the U.S., long the biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told Monday's summit that "all the developed countries and the largest emitters" must commit to a 50 percent reduction by 2050. Sarkozy, speaking for the EU, also said the U.N. negotiating process is the only "efficient and legitimate framework."
Bush has objected that Kyoto-style mandates would damage the U.S. economy, and says they should have been imposed on fast-growing poorer countries, such as China and India, as well as on developed nations.
The U.N. summit follows a series of reports by a U.N. scientific network that warned of temperatures rising by several degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and of a drastically changed planet from rising seas, drought and other factors, unless nations rein in greenhouse gases.
The U.N.-sponsored scientists reported global average temperatures over the past 100 years rose 1.3 degrees, and the planet's sea levels rose 6.6 inches, as oceans expanded from warmth and from the runoff of melting land ice.
Just last week, U.S. scientists reported that warmer temperatures this summer had shrunk the Arctic Ocean's ice cap to a record-low size.
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