cloakers.org

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  • Blurry Surveillance Has Results Against Criminals

    This is just the beginning – it is pretty rare for any technology to be restricted unless the military wants it that way. So now the future we have glimpsed in movies like Enemy of the State and TV series like Person of Interest is starting to come real.

    Blurry imagery isn’t very useful on its own – but when you combine it with other sources of info and a timeline, suddenly all the pieces can fit together well enough to place a person in a situation.

    Shooter and victim were just a pair of pixels, dark specks on a gray streetscape. Hair color, bullet wounds, even the weapon were not visible in the series of pictures taken from an airplane flying two miles above.

    But what the images revealed — to a degree impossible just a few years ago — was location, mapped over time. Second by second, they showed a gang assembling, blocking off access points, sending the shooter to meet his target and taking flight after the body hit the pavement. When the report reached police, it included a picture of the blue stucco building into which the killer ultimately retreated, at last beyond the view of the powerful camera overhead.

    …He said regular flights over the most dangerous parts of Washington — combined with publicity about how much police could see — would make a significant dent in the number of burglaries, robberies and murders. His 192-megapixel cameras would spot as many as 50 crimes per six-hour flight, he estimated, providing police with a continuous stream of images covering more than a third of the city.

    Another example:

    During one of the company’s demonstration flights over Dayton in 2012, police got reports of an attempted robbery at a bookstore and shots fired at a Subway sandwich shop. The cameras revealed a single car moving between the two locations.

    By reviewing the images frame by frame, analysts were able to help police piece together a larger story: A man had left a residential neighborhood at midday and attempted to rob the bookstore, but fled when somebody hit an alarm. Then he drove to Subway, where the owner pulled a gun and chased him off. His next stop was a Family Dollar Store, where the man paused for several minutes. He soon returned home, after a short stop at a gas station where a video camera captured an image of his face.

    A few hours later, after the surveillance flight ended, the Family Dollar Store was robbed. Police used the detailed map of the man’s movements, along with other evidence from the crime scenes, to arrest him for all three crimes.

    [Source: Washington Post]

  • The Black Box Building

    I envisage that somewhere in the world, once Big Brother truly kicks in, it will be legally possible to do this:

    • Have a large building, perhaps the size of a city block and several stories high
    • Shield the external walls and roof to the max
    • Have dozens of entrances and exits
    • Hundreds of data connections, encrypted as much as possible
    • Cash to enter, no ID or questions asked – like an internet cafe on steroids

    The idea being that even though the authorities might be able to track you to a specific location, they can not connect you to the data connections of the building – because it is so large and busy.

    It would be like a brothel from current days – you might be seen going in, but nobody can prove what you got up to. Except the Black Box Building has no witnesses looking over your shoulder.

    The only downside – you need to inherently trust the people who run it. And anyone can be bought.

    I suspect that if the idea takes off, as long as you use one of the lesser BBBs, and the authorities aren’t especially interested in you, and it has no high-profile clients – you might be OK.

    But the real Cloakers will avoid digital altogether.

  • Mini-Super Microphones Ready to Deploy

    As if it wasn’t bad enough that spy cameras have been miniaturised…

    Surveillance footage tends to be silent, because of the difficulties aiming a microphone, pinpointing where the action is, and reducing background noise. A new product not only solves all of those problems, it is also the size of a matchstick…

    …a Dutch acoustics firm, Microflown Technologies, has developed a matchstick-sized sensor that can pinpoint and record a target’s conversation from a distance.

    Known as an acoustic vector sensor, Microflown’s sensor measures the movement of air, disturbed by sound waves, to almost instantly locate where a sound originated. It can then identify the noise, and, if required, transmit it live to waiting ears. [New Scientist, 29 Sept 2013]

    Basically, when the sensor hears something, it can zoom in on it and listen. Combine that with video cameras and software, and you have surveillance 2.0.

    The range is currently 20-25 meters, so you won’t see it…

  • Underground Railroad

    The first Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses used by black slaves in 19th century USA. It enabled as many as 30,000 slaves to escape to Canada.

    According to Wikipedia:

    The escape network was not literally underground nor a railroad. It was figuratively “underground” in the sense of being an underground resistance. It was known as a “railroad” by way of the use of rail terminology in the code. The Underground Railroad consisted of meeting points, secret routes, transportation, and safe houses, and assistance provided by abolitionist sympathizers. Individuals were often organized in small, independent groups; this helped to maintain secrecy because individuals knew some connecting “stations” along the route but knew few details of their immediate area. Escaped slaves would move north along the route from one way station to the next. “Conductors” on the railroad came from various backgrounds and included free-born blacks, white abolitionists, former slaves (either escaped or manumitted), and Native Americans.

    Back in those days, being black and travelling under your own steam was met with unwanted attention. In the near future, any of us could be in a situation where it would be safer to travel incognito. I envisage a new Underground Railroad for Cloakers.

    It would be operated, as in the 1800s, by sympathizers and those who are above suspicion. With technology that can identify and track faces and vehicles, this will mean hitching a ride within vehicles that are on their regular journeys:

    • Commuters
    • Long-haul trucks
    • Trains (perhaps freight trains, like modern-day Hobos)

    Transfer stations could be:

    • Countryside
    • Train passing loops
    • Places of work
    • Truck stops
    • Park and Ride car parks

    A key factor that could ensure success (in setting up the network) is that travelling in such a way would probably not be illegal – not for a long time anyway.

  • Brazil to bypass US Internet

    Following on from the Edward Snowden leaks about NSA spying, Brazil have announced measures that will protect the online privacy of their citizens and government. Read the full story at SFGate, or these snippets:

    President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

    Brazilians rank No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube.

    While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.

    Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping.

    Rousseff is urging Brazil’s Congress to compel Facebook, Google and all companies to store data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA.

    The most likely result is that governments around the world will decide to do their own spying, now that it has been pseudo-legitimized by the USA. However, if Brazil starts to fracture the global network, that will open the way for a “dark web” to operate, as well as a “safe web”.

    Ultimately there are only two ways to go. You either have everything inter-connected with little chance of true privacy, or you have partitions that cannot communicate with each other.

    It is great that Brazil might get their own email service, but any emails sent to the USA will still be spied upon.

  • Miniature Surveillance

    Miniature Surveillance is definitely on its way. The long-term trend is for devices to become more powerful, with longer lasting batteries, and multiple means of communicating data. The wars that will emerge are:

    • Government vs citizens – where the ability for regular citizens to be able to tell if they are being monitored diminishes, and government spying increases
    • Government vs criminals – secret monitoring will become illegal, but that won’t stop criminals. Just like internet criminals have become skilled at getting away with their crimes, so it will happen in the real world.
    • Government vs government – it will be the Cold War all over again…

    The key to all this will be a tech battle revolving around the detectability of bugs. While they might be cheap enough to deploy en masse, they will be useless unless their data can be accessed. They might be too small to see, but airwaves can be monitored.

    Anyway, here are two devices that are paving the way:

    A computer that measures just one (1) cubic millimeter. In that tiny space it has squeezed:

    • a radio with integrated antennas
    • a battery
    • enough memory to run software programs as well as store data
    • two processors: 1 general purpose and 1 dedicated to power management (such as effectively using solar energy)
    • an imager (the equivalent of a 96 x96-pixel camera)
    • a solar cell
    • a temperature sensor

    All the ingredients you need for spying (although you would prefer a higher-spec camera), although in this instance the device will be implanted in the eyes of glaucoma patients. More at the University of Michigan.

    Mobee is a robotic insect.It weighs just 80mg, has a wingspan of 3cm, and its wings beat at 120hz.

    These are the first flying devices of this size, and so far are limited by available technology:

    The prototypes are still tethered by a very thin power cable because there are no off-the-shelf solutions for energy storage that are small enough to be mounted on the robot’s body. High energy-density fuel cells must be developed before the RoboBees will be able to fly with much independence.
    More at Harvard, video at YouTube.

    It will only be a matter of time before these little robot insects are flying under their own power, observing and communicating. Possibly swarming. In the future any open window might be a risk.

  • NSA Surveillance and You

    Mental Floss have put together an excellent list of the ways the US government is known to be spying on the communications of private individuals.

    The information is “based on the public statements of the former director of the National Security Agency, Justice Department attorneys, and others involved in NSA operations—as well as confidential information provided to the authors and verified independently by officials..”

    So take the list to mean the bare minimum. But also keep in mind that, officially:

    • “only three dozen or so people inside the NSA have the authority to read the content of FISA-derived material, all of which is now subject to a warrant”

    If the government intercepted and read every communication that mention “Al Qaeda” or “bomb”, they would need many thousands of staff. So there’s no need to be too paranoid. Here’s my summary of the ways you are likely to catch the eye of the NSA:

    • you actually are a terrorist, or know one
    • if you regularly call people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen – or email people living in countries that are terrorist havens
    • your IP address is associated with bad guys – they may have spoofed it, randomly
    • if you are a lawyer working for bad guys (!)
    • you are connected in some way with defense secrets
    • you have worked in or near a war zone
    • your premises are shared with bad guys – like the same office building

    Perhaps the most interesting possibility on the list is this one:

    If you are of Arab descent and attend a mosque whose imam was linked through degrees of association with Islamic charities considered to be supporters of terrorism, NSA computers probably analyzed metadata from your telephone communications and e-mail.

    Just about everything else on the list is an automated process. There’s no way the NSA knows who visits a mosque unless they spy on the mosque and follow those who come and go. And then find out your phone number and email address…

    I would treat mosque-goers as an example, rather than unique. If you are associated with a group that the government has any suspicions about, you could be spied on. That could be anything like anarchists, communists, gun nuts, survivalists and religious fundamentalists.

  • 3D Printed Guns Have Arrived

    The weapon, called “the Liberator” — a homage to cheap pistols distributed by the Allies in France during World War II — is printed on a Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer. It consists of 16 parts, 15 of which are 3D-printed. The last part — the firing pin — is a simple nail, found in any hardware store.
    [Source: Mashable]

    It fired a real bullet.

    The plans for the gun were available online for a short while, and by the time the Feds asked Cody Wilson to remove them, the files had spread throughout the web.

    Clearly it is not a great gun. It blew apart in testing when they tried a rifle cartridge in it, and being made from plastic it won’t have the durability of metal. Also, how good are plastic bullets? At this stage we don’t know… And is it easy to aim?

    As a first-of-its-kind it is pretty successful, and it is only a matter of time before high quality guns can be printed on $100 3D printers. Nails will never be made illegal, and there are many things that can be used as makeshift bullets.

    I can’t see it as being a problem. People who really want guns seem to have no trouble getting them – in America anyway. And if you can’t get a gun, you can certainly get a knife, machete, crossbow or pick axe. It is unlikely that we will see an increase in crime because of this development.

    Maybe they will be useful in 3rd world countries?

    Cloakers should be careful not to ever download anything related to criminal activities. A CAD file for a plastic gun downloaded today could be used as evidence against you, or your integrity, in the future.

  • Another Internet – Just For Robots

    I found this over at Mega Robot News:

    RoboEarth, launched last week, has been created by the European RoboEarth Project, which describes it as “a giant network and database repository where robots can share information and learn from each other about their behavior and their environment.”

    … Another big aspect is the sharing of real time data, especially from sensors that will be embedded in everything. A police robot can check with local sensors to see where a criminal on the run has fled to… It’s too early to tell if they will use RoboEarth for this.

    This is from the official RoboEarth web site:

    But what if robots could learn from their past experiences? And what if they could share their new-found knowledge instantaneously with their peers?

    These are not hypothetical questions. Rapid development of sensor and networking technology is now enabling researchers to collect vast amounts of sensor data, and new data-mining tools are being developed to extract meaningful patterns.

    Sounds like spying and reporting to me. I can imagine a world where surveillance cameras have intelligence – and as soon as they spot something that seems unlawful or unwanted, they can communicate with other robotic entities to fix the problem. Robocop anyone?

  • High School Students Tracked with RFID

    Yet again we see tracking and surveillance technology being used because good people have nothing to hide.

    One area that is set for growth is kid tracking – after all it is the responsibility of parents, guardians and pseudo-guardians (like school teachers) to always know the whereabouts of their children. So start with kids, then apply the same technology to employees, then to citizens.

    A district court judge for Bexar County, Texas, has granted a temporary restraining order to prevent Northside Independent School District from removing a Hernandez from John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy because she refused to wear a name badge designed to use a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip to track students’ precise location on school property, the Hernandez’s attorneys announced today.

    …“Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry. These ‘Student Locator’ programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government,” Whitehead warned.

    [Source: CNS News]

    Of course it makes sense to keep an eye on school kids. But technology should only be deployed where there is a clear benefit to a widespread problem – not just because we can.