Witha PogoPlug NAS box, a few antennae, flash memory and some batteries, and you've got a cheap, disposable F-BOMB with which to collect data on adversaries.

Attach a camera to a drone, fly the drone around the back of the house, locate the bad guys. Robotic UAVs are being used for surveillance by everyone from the military to local law enforcement to emergency personnel. But if you think about it, drones are kind of big and really noisy, not the ideal tool for spying on someone. Their data gathering capabilities are limited too and they’re really expensive. What about a computer, small and durable enough for you to toss over a fence or inconspicuously attach to a car? Equipped with Wi-Fi cracking software or GPS, it could infiltrate someone’s computer or track someone’s location without them knowing.

Allow me to drop the F-BOMB. The Falling or Ballistically-launched Object that Makes Backdoors, that is. Invented by Brandon O’Connor as an alternative to high-tech and costly spy devices, the F-BOMB is made so cheaply with off-the-shelf parts that you’ll feel perfectly okay with losing one or two. Very convenient when it’s sitting in the backyard of a drug lord hideout.

Before building the F-BOMB, O’Connor challenged himself with several constraints. He wanted multiple wireless radios, USB capability for expansion (add GPS for example), battery life that lasted hours to days, a size small enough that it won’t be found by the “bad guys with guns,” as he calls them, and do all this without spending thousands or even hundreds of dollars.

The key addition was the PogoPlug. The PogoPlug is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) box, a data storage device through which people can share information over the Internet. It runs on Linux which makes it pretty user-friendly, according to O’Connor. Normally the boxes cost about $150, which would have made the F-BOMB too expensive for O’Connor’s purposes, but the company is having a hard time selling the devices. PogoPlug’s misfortune becomes O’Connor’s advantage as he can now purchase them for just $25 on Amazon.com. And that’s the most expensive bit of hardware. Add the antennae, eight gigabytes worth of flash memory and a plastic casting that’s 3D-printed and you’ve got a little spying computer you can build for under $49. Four D batteries will provide power for 30-plus hours.

Aside from being cheap and reproducible, building a monitoring device with commercial off-the-shelf, or COTS, components from Amazon or craigslist means when the bad guys find it in their backyard they won’t be able to trace it to you. Were the F-BOMB to require any kind of made-to-order, a determined person could find the manufacture, start asking questions.

O’Connor talked about the F-BOMB (“because one time I worked for DARPA and they love terrible acronyms”) at ShmooCon 2012. As you’ll see in the video, he’s nothing if not enthusiastic.

The F-BOMB won an award from DARPA’s Cyber Fast Track program. The title of the project is “Reticle: Leaderless Command and Control,” which kind of makes me wonder what else he’s developing. As Forbes reports, O’Connor was tight-lipped about what DARPA might do with the technology.

But we can venture a few guesses. The platform can be attached to a quadcopter and dropped onto a roof. It can be hidden inside a carbon monoxide casing, or any other imaginative cover container such as a box of stale Triscuits that you’re pretty sure no one’s going to touch. As I mentioned before, Wifi-cracking software will allow you to eavesdrop on a person’s computer, and you can track someone with a GPS module. And if you’re more in the business of science than spying, you can add temperature or humidity sensors to collect data for meteorological research.

O’Connor has a security and software consultancy called Malice Afterthought. He learned about such things teaching at cybersecurity schools for the military as well as working in the security devisions of VeriSign and Sun Microsystems. The website describes him as “dreamer and mad scientist capable of making even the most challenging tasks into reality.” Being that he kind of runs the consultancy himself, he probably wrote the description himself, which is kind of weird. Anyway, he certainly has created a little security monster in the F-BOMB. Effin’ cool.

[image credits: Forbes and Wired]
[video credit: USSJoin via YouTube]
image 1: F-BOMB
image 2: F-BOMB
video: F-BOMB

Just like scanner in "Total Recall," the terahertz scanner can spot metallic weapons through clothing.

The New York Police Department is working with the Department of Defense to develop a scanning device that would allow them to detect concealed firearms on a person 80 feet away. The scanner detects electromagnetic waves with a frequency in the terahertz range. Terahertz waves sit at the higher frequency end of infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum, just before the microwave range. The device works the same way an infrared detector does. Just as our bodies emit infrared radiation, so do they emit terahertz waves. These waves can pass through non-conducting material such as paper or clothing but are blocked by conducting material such as a piece of metal – or a gun. So if a person has a piece of metal under their jacket, such as a gun, the police will see the telltale outline of the weapon. The waves also pass unperturbed through wood and brick so the device can scan through walls.

The NYPD has a prototype that they’re testing at the department’s Rodman’s Neck shooting range in the Bronx. Right now, the prototype only has a range of three to five meters, but they hope to eventually be able to scan for weapons on people up to 25 meters, or 85 feet, away.

Of course, we can’t mention police and scanners and people without mentioning the ACLU. The New York Civil Liberties Union isn’t taking a hardline stance against the frisking from a distance. In a statement, the group acknowledged New York’s problem with gun violence and pointed out that using the scanner could decrease the city’s stop-and-frisk rate by a half-million people annually. They also caution that “the ability to walk down the street free from a virtual police pat-down is a matter of privacy.”

New York state’s handgun licensing regulations are among the strictest in the country. As a result, 90 percent of guns used in New York crimes are illegal and from out-of-state. Currently the method for sniffing out guns tucked into jackets and jeans is to stop the person and frisk them. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union, 88 percent of these stop-and-frisks carried out in the city turn up nothing. That’s a lot of inconvenienced, annoyed and embarrassed people. In 2011, however, the NYPD collected over 800 guns – including an AK-47 – through stop-and-frisk. If police were able to park a van on a street corner and scan the people as they walk by – exactly the scenario the NYPD has in mind – the amount of people being screened would obviously increase dramatically. But, as the NYCLU’s point indicates, not everyone’s going to take kindly to being frisked without even knowing it.

No doubt trying to allay these types of concerns, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that the police department has been in discussions with their lawyers for the past three years and that they foresee no constitutional issues with the device, reported NBC New York.

Privacy rights aside, they’re going to have other problems if they stop too many people with concealed iPhones and Androids.

[image credits: Law Enforcement Today and Scrape TV]
image 1: Terahertz
image 2: Total Recall

Instances of video surveillance have increased in recent years. Scotland Yard is using CCTV footage in their ongoing prosecutions after the London riots, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City has urged the use of more such cameras, and various government organizations are looking to increase their effectiveness. Can monitoring street corners really cut down crime, or are they just new ways of handing out traffic and parking tickets? Even outside of security surveillance, the growing presence of cameras among the general public is fraught with cautionary tales about privacy. Who can forget the tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi after being secretly recorded by his roommate? The possibilities for such misuse only grow as more fantastic and surreptitious kinds of cameras are developed for public use. Balanced against all these privacy concerns is the overwhelming popularity (and enjoyment) of recording and publishing videos to the social network. Some even want to share everything they see, 24/7. With all the data to sift through, and the weight of the issues, it’s helpful to have this following infographic to help us make sense of things. Read it, enjoy it, and share it. It’s a great way to get the conversation started.

[Graphic created by Mezzmer Eyeglasses]

Face.com's API can now detect your mood and expression. Awesome or creepy?

Does the internet know when you’re smiling? That’s a rhetorical question. Of course it can. Face.com, makers of a top notch facial recognition API, recently announced it was now capable of detecting the moods and expressions of people in photos it scans. Now, not only can the API tell who you are, it can say whether you were happy, sad, smiling, or even kissing. Face.com is the creator of the popular PhotoFinder and PhotoTagger apps on Facebook, so you may soon see that capability on the social network as well as among the 20,000 developers who use the Face.com API. In related news, Facebook (using its own software) has been automatically using facial recognition to tag photos you upload since December of last year. They’ve already prompted the use of such facial scanning 2.7 billion times in the past six months! Learn more about their push for automated tagging in the video below. Facial recognition has grown so sophisticated, and cheap, that it seems it will soon leave no photo untagged, no mood unrecorded. If that idea makes you uneasy, don’t worry, the social network of the future knows exactly how you feel.

Facebook quietly rolled out their in-house facial recognition (Photo-Tag Suggest) in the US last December, allowing users to tag their friends, teaching the social network who was who. Soon there after, Facebook could automatically suggest who was in each picture, making tagging quick and easy. It’s a pretty awesome feature, and as of early June it was available “in most countries.” On June 30th, Facebook announced it had prompted its 750 million active users 2.7 billion times to try the automated tagging process, often with the rather ambiguous box on your homepage labeled “Photos are better with friends.” Naturally some privacy activists groups are crying foul, worrying that although the Photo Tag Suggest only works on your friends Facebook is collecting huge amounts of data on our appearance. ABC News has more:

Mood recognition from Face.com

The Israeli facial recognition company ABC News interviews is Face.com, who we discussed a little over a year ago with the launch of their API. According to a recent newsletter, in the past twelve months their API has gone from a few dozen developers to over 20,000. That’s very impressive, but when you look at all the Face.com API can do, it just makes sense. Not only is the code quite capable in finding faces and matching them against others in the databases you provide, it is now able to detect moods and expressions. The Face.com API can recognize when you are happy, sad, surprised, angry, or neutral and gives a confidence interval on that analysis. Now, when sorting through photos, a developer could use the API to organize them according to how you felt at the time the pic was taken. Similarly, the API can now detect smiles, parted lips, and kissing lips, further refining the classification. Among the suggested uses for the new capabilities would be reaction detection in live chats, filtering in dating sites according to mood in profile pics, and selecting the best photos for display.

When you start to imagine the potential applications for this technology, it gets really amazing. Sure, Facebook already is pushing to be able to recognize its 750 million users, but that just tells you what everyone looks like. Face.com could make it possible to guess at relationships based just on photos. Do you always smile when you’re with someone? Maybe it’s a sign you really like them. File that away in the metadata and maybe use it to make their suggestions mean more in searches, etc. Do thousands of people take geotagged pictures at a certain location every year? Maybe that location (stadium, landmark, etc) would like to find all the happy smiling people in those pictures and use it for marketing. Filing celebrity photos for press agencies, determining when customers are unhappy during recorded events, tracking how consumers feel during market research—there are tons of ways this technology could be applied.

Expression recognition from Face.com

And it’s (mostly) free. 20,000 developers have already found uses for the Face.com API, and that’s without any of the new mood and expression detection algorithms. As we’ve discussed before, many are simply cute apps for entertainment, but with more sophisticated capabilities we’ll see more sophisticated applications. Soon, social networks, and really all internet sites, could use facial recognition technology that puts most security networks to shame.

What gets me about all of this is really how ubiquitous facial detection and recognition has become. iPhoto has it, Facebook has it, Google’s Picasa has it – all the major players have brought it online, and we’ve seen it used in advertising stunts as well. Which means that it’s probably also in many private places we don’t know about – ATMs, office buildings, etc. Somewhere along the line, this fun and amazing capability sort of creeped in everywhere. Which I may not be totally against. Your face is part of your appearance, when you show it somewhere you are publicly displaying it. If you (knowingly) allow people to record you, you should recognize that they can use it to learn more about you, including your identity. That’s part of living in a world filled with cameras and digital databases. That being said, I’m not sure it’s as creepy as we may think. Most applications of this technology have, so far, been limited to applications you are aware of, not readily searchable by the public, and increasingly secure – Face.com now supports SSL on their API for instance.

If, however, we decide we can’t live with computers being able to recognize us and our emotions, we better act fast. Face.com’s API is only going to get more sophisticated in the next year, and we’ve seen similarly advanced detection algorithms for video as well. Give them much more time, it there’ll be no telling what they’ll be capable of…

...like shooting lasers out of your eyes!

*Photo created using Laser Eyes by OneByOne Design. Click image to try it for yourself.

[image credits: Facebook, Face.com, One by One Design]
[video credit: ABC News]
[source: Face.com, Facebook]

Help! That robot camera has a flamethrower!

Walking robotic cameras have armed themselves, are seeking your destruction, and the guy from the Highlander TV series is the only one who can save humanity. I love bad movies, and Eyeborgs is a movie so bad it’s amazingly good. In the science fiction future of this film, ongoing terrorist attacks have led to the creation of mobile walking cameras, the eponymous Eyeborgs, that can spy on citizens wherever they go. Of course it’s only a matter of time before these voyeuristic bots pick up weapons and turn on their masters. Check out the amazingly hilarious trailer below to learn more. While Eyeborgs has the right blend of silly and stunning visuals to make it a cult classic, its underlying message may be even more potent. With concerns over physical and digital monitoring on the rise, this silly movie asks a serious question: is technology robbing us of our privacy?

I wouldn’t dare rob you of the satisfaction of watching the Eyeborg trailer, so without further ado, here’s the clip:

If you can’t get enough of Eyeborgs, don’t worry, the full length feature is available for sale on DVD.

When Adrian Paul (Highlander: The TV Series) and Danny Trejo (every B-movie ever) gleefully destroy the Eyeborg menace, they’re enacting a vengeful fantasy that’s growing more popular these days. CCTV cameras now blanket London, are growing more prevalent in Europe, and have become lucrative means of collecting traffic fines in the US. As governments become more dependent on cameras to monitor security checkpoints, and bring in revenue, they’ve raised very real concerns about when public behavior can be recorded. The technology behind such cameras is only improving, and will soon be augmented by advanced audio surveillance, and smarter computer analysis.

In a way Eyeborgs, which was released in 2009, is fairly prescient. While we’ve yet to roboticize, or arm, CCTV cameras, governments are spying on their citizens surreptitiously – they’re just doing it online. As we’ve mentioned before, popular sites like Facebook collect personalized data that can be (and quite frequently is) shared with governments under the auspices of fighting crime, especially terrorism. The perceived dangers to this monitoring are so great that the UN’s Human Rights Council released a special report advocating the protection of anonymous speech on the internet.

Yet the Eyeborgs movie got something else right about this controversy: even as we take it seriously, we act very silly. Privacy concerns about digital and visual surveillance are valid, but they are undermined by cultural attitudes that are increasingly flippant about what constitutes public behavior. We share so much personal information on Facebook and Twitter. In fact, we have dozens of high traffic sites, like Damn You Autocorrect, and Failbook that do nothing but publish our private mistakes made in digital mediums. Every smart phone is a handheld camera waiting to immortalize you on YouTube, and by the end of the year we’ll have cheap video glasses that will make it nearly impossible to know when you’re being recorded. We may fear the government’s surveillance, but we’ve already invaded our privacy pretty well on our own.

In a world where everyone shares too much information, one man realizes he’s become what he hates most…

Eyeborgs 2: We Are the Eyeborgs

…Coming this Fall to a hidden video screen near you.

[image and video credits: Eyeborgs the movie]
[source: Eyeborgs]

Hmm. Something seems strange with this inspection card. Notice the 1) opening for sound, 2) audio to digital chip, 3) crystals used to generate RF signals, 4) antenna.

Careful what you say when driving between Hong Kong and China, the government may be listening. The Apple Daily, a Hong Kong news source, broke a story this week that “inspection and quarantine cards” installed in dual-license plate vehicles may be secretly spying on passengers. Upon opening and examining these windshield mounted cards, Apple Daily found complex electronics that local experts attest could record and transmit audio up to 20 km (~12 miles) away. If true, the device would allow officials in neighboring Shenzhen province to listen in on passenger conversations even while cars were in parts of Hong Kong. Apple Daily estimates that 20,000 of these cards may have been installed in Hong Kong cars since 2007. Learn more in the brief news video below. As many dual-license plate private cars belong to powerful businessmen, this massive surveillance project would have the potential to affect billions in financial deals. Shenzhen officials deny that the cards are used for spying purposes, but even if this particular accusation is false, the technology exists to make this surveillance nightmare a reality.

With all such controversial stories, I have to ask myself whether or not any of this is actually true. Unfortunately, the original Apple Daily story now seems to be missing on its proper website, and those wishing to read it must make due with Google’s cached version. The Epoch Times has a faithful summary of the article, and NTDTV and other Asian news channels have picked up the story. At the moment, however, Apple Daily seems to be the only source to have actually taken an inspection and quarantine card and opened it up to see what’s inside. Until we see further evidence that China managed to sneak 20,000 surveillance devices into Hong Kong cars under the guise of tracking commerce and enabling travel, we’ll have to label this whole affair as ‘alleged.’

A Hong Kong inspection and quarantine card in its natural habitat.

As far as alleged surveillance strategies, however, this story has all the makings of an enjoyable Hollywood blockbuster: Shenzhen officials install these cards for free into Hong Kong vehicles to facilitate border crossings. Their dubious nature is first suspected by smugglers who discover that Shenzhen police are now detaining all of their transport vehicles, even the dummy ones. Eventually, intrepid news teams get wind of the debacle, open a device and show it to university scientists, and private investigators, who pronounce it as more than capable of transmitting up to 20 km, with effective ranges probably around 3-5km. Accusations made to the Shenzhen inspection and quarantine offices are met with ridicule and a slow fog of censorship seems to fall over the entire affair. Have John Grisham write the screenplay and cast Matt Damon in a lead role and you’d have a guaranteed money making film.

Considering the tight reign China maintains on their press and the indefatigable denials of bureaucrats, I doubt we’ll ever hear China confess it’s been spying on Hong Kong merchants (and other citizens). The truth, however, is that whether or not these cards were meant to facilitate a massive surveillance project, they easily could be used for just that. Small microphones, high efficiency batteries, tiny transmitters, and an extensive mobile device infrastructure mean that card-sized recorders aren’t just possible, they’re relatively cheap to make. And they’re going to get cheaper and better as technology improves. We’ve already seen projects aimed at making surveillance equipment lightweight and small enough to fit on a flying insect, can we really doubt they’ll be able to fit inside an RFID tag, or inspection sticker sometime in the near future?

Even if we’re too wily to be tricked into embedding ourselves with government listening devices, we’ll still be susceptible to advanced microphone arrays that can detect individual voices in huge crowds – effectively rendering any public place into a suitable habitat for audio surveillance. We could get ourselves into a massive spy vs. spy arms race with our governments, using ever more advanced technology to block their ever more advanced cameras and microphones, but I’m not sure how successful that strategy will be in the long run. Ultimately I think that citizens exercising control over their governments, setting standards for privacy, and ruthlessly punishing regimes that break those standards, is the only sustainable policy. The United Nations Human Rights Council, which seems poised to push for open and anonymous internet access as a key protection of freedom, would probably agree. Whether you favor a technological or political solution, we’d better start acting now. Today’s story out of Hong Kong has the ring of truth to it, and I’ve little doubt that the surveillance devices of tomorrow will make spying on 20,000 cars seem trivial in comparison.

[image credits: Apple Daily]
[video credit: NTDTV]
[source: Apple Daily, Epoch Times]

Can you barely see this camera? Well, that’s because it’s right at the unaided resolution limit for the human eye.

Thanks to a German research institute, in the very near future, we may not even see the cameras looking back at us at all.

It may not be news that camera technology is getting smaller, but it is newsworthy when an important milestone is reached. Take the announcement from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration for example. They recently reported the development of a camera with a lens attached that is 1 x 1 x 1.5 millimeters in size, which is the size of a grain of salt. At about a cubic millimeter in size, this camera is right at the size limit that the human eye can see unaided. The camera not only produces decent images but it is also very cheap to manufacture…so cheap in fact that it is considered disposable. Though researchers developed the camera in collaboration with the Portuguese company Awaiba, the makers of digital camera sensors, for use in medical endoscopes to view all the nooks and crannies inside the body, other applications in electronic devices are already foreseen. There’s even speculation that auto makers may utilize these microcameras as replacements for side mirrors in next-gen cars. And, of course, every government interested in keeping a closer eye on its citizens but doesn’t have a lot of cash…ahem…will probably be watching this technology closely.

It’s clear that the Fraunhofer researchers didn’t set out to hit this milestone in camera technology. What they were really interested in was trying to improve upon endoscope technology. An endoscope involves a camera at the tip of a tube. The tube contains a wire that transmits the image back to a computer. The tube also serves as a way to physically manipulative the camera to snake it through the gastrointestinal tract, for instance. Typical endoscopes cost around $25,000-30,000 so they must be reused many times. Because the endoscope is going in and out of people’s bodies, it must be cleaned and sterilized between each use, which just drives up the cost of maintaining the instrument. It’s no wonder that hospitals charge more than $2,000 per endoscopy.

All of this, however, would change if the camera was cheap enough to throw away.

Tiny Camera...Huge Potential

To accomplish this, the Fraunhofer researchers worked with Awaiba to redesign the endoscopes. Typical endoscopes have a lens at the tip but the sensor that converts the image into a digital signal is at the other end of the tube. Ideally, the lens and sensor should be close together so that they have direct electrical connections, which would help make the camera smaller. But previous designs forced connections between the lens and the sensor to be done individually rather than in a batch process because of the sensor’s design. This is an expensive and time consuming process. The sensors are made on a wafer and previously each wafer would be diced up into 28,000 individual sensors so that the lenses could be attached. What the Fraunhofer researchers accomplished was to redesign the sensors, allowing the connections to be made on the back of the sensor rather than on its side. This means that a wafer of lenses could be mounted and electrically wired to the wafer of sensors, then the stack could be broken into 28,000 devices. The result is that the each microcamera can be made incredibly small for much less than before.

So how good is the camera? For endoscopy, pretty good. The resolution is 62,500 (250 x 250) pixels and can produce a frame rate of 44 per second at this resolution. That’s not exactly the “razor-sharp” pictures as claimed by the press release, but for endoscopy, it fits the bill. Now compared to an iPhone camera, which also contains a CMOS sensor but records nearly a million pixels at 30 frames per second, the Awaiba sensor is not yet ready to be in cell phones. Clearly this camera is still in the prototype stage, but researchers claimed that a disposable endoscope will be available in 2012. It is only a matter of time before the technology becomes more widespread and even cheaper to produce.

What makes this device such a landmark in the storyline of camera technology is that it is right on that uncomfortable verge of becoming invisible to the naked eye, and that is both good and bad. The good news is we can expect to see this or similar camera technology find its way into very compact electronic devices, making the two-way wrist TV of Dick Tracy fame a very near reality. The bad news is that this type of camera technology could usher in a surveillance society that would put the current Orweillian UK, with its 69 CCTV cameras for every 1,000 people, to shame. Fortunately, wi-fi chips are still chunky compared to these cameras, with typical wi-fi chips being ten times larger in size. But it is only a matter of time before wi-fi chips reach the grain-of-salt milestone and then the age of inexpensive, invisible wireless cameras will be upon us. Yikes.

[Image credit: Awaiba]
[Sources: Awaiba, Discovery, Fraunhofer Institute]

RFIDs are just little coils of wire that help us track things, but what happens when we start tracking ourselves?

RFID tags are already embedded in millions of products you buy…and your children could be next. In the ongoing debate over privacy and surveillance, Radio Frequency ID tags occupy a very interesting position. They are invaluable when tracking goods, allowing modern corporations like Wal-Mart to manage their inventories quickly and cheaply. If applied to humans, such ID tags could help with disaster relief, security, and emergency healthcare . Yet privacy advocates worry that tracking humans with this technology could also lead to major abuses by governments, criminals, and businesses. Even trusting individuals baulk at the idea of tagging people like cattle. Unless, of course, it’s for a really good cause. Which is why, inevitably, we see so many programs looking to test RFID tags on children, often to prevent them from being abducted. Schools the world over continue to toy with the ideas of placing tags on students to help monitor their attendance and keep them safe. Are we raising a generation that feels comfortable being tagged and tracked?

Schools in Japan, the UK, and other countries have been conducting trials for RFID tracking of students for years. Usually a small RFID tag, which looks vaguely like a maze of metal, will be embedded in clothing or a badge. Electronic receivers at doors interact with the tags and a central system keeps track of student locations and movements. Such a system is set to be tested in Contra Costa County in California, where preschoolers will be given a jersey to wear with a RFID inside. The school hopes to save money by keeping teachers from spending time on taking attendance and allow them to focus on educating the kids.

The testing on very young children is typical. Preschoolers are like a swarm of bees, hard to keep track of visually, and with much the same temperament to being herded. Automated attendance can save a lot of time. Furthermore, at this young age it is much more dangerous for children to left unwatched or allowed to wander on their own. RFID is seen as increasing student safety.

Indeed, in non-school applications, safety is the main selling point for RFID based child tracking systems. Years ago, Denmark’s Legoland amusement park began offering parents the option of a RFID bracelet that allows them to locate their child in the park at any time through a mobile phone text message. The Legoland system is sold as helping parents find wandering kids and preventing childhood abduction.

Honestly though, I find RFID’s safety arguments rather lacking. Anyone, including the child itself, could simply remove the article of clothing, or bracelets. Some systems use infrared sensors to sound an alarm whenever someone crosses a doorway without the appropriate RFID tag, but this requires every single person to carry an RFID at all times. In any case, it seems to me that RFID embedded clothes are a thin barrier against any sort of kidnapping or abuse.

Maybe we could get really safe and implant RFID chips under a child’s skin. We’ve seen that technology before. In the future such tags could be boosted to allow a child to be tracked wherever they go. If we really wanted, there’s no reason why children’s locations couldn’t be monitored every second of every day. Kidnapping could become a thing of the past.

But its end would come at a high price. Privacy advocates warn that the more data we embed in automated systems the more vulnerable we come to unwarranted tracking of that information. Criminals might scan the information encoded in RFID tags and use this to defraud or rob. Governments may track their citizens and impose undue restrictions upon their movements and actions. Businesses could become hyper vigilant in monitoring our habits to bombard us with custom-fit ads. We should rightfully fear where such invasions of privacy might lead us.

Yet I think our children are already moving beyond such fears. We worry about RFID tags giving away our locations publicly, but many young people already do so with geo-tagging on Facebook, or applications like Twitter and FourSquare. We worry about businesses collecting data on us, but almost every company already does this online, and children born in the last decade have never known it to be otherwise. We worry about governments tracking us, but our children are born in a time when threats of crime and terrorism compel us to wade through long security lines at airports, ball games, and even schools. Again, children born in the last decade have never known it to be otherwise. Even if we weren’t considering using RFID tags to track kids at schools to keep them safe, we use tagging and tracking methods so often everywhere else that we are conditioning them to accept such measures more easily than we would.

Those attitudes may serve them well, because I think it’s only going to get crazier from now on. Remember how RFID tags were invaluable tools in tracking inventory for stores? Well, chances are they’ll become invaluable in a lot more places very soon. We are slowly (or should I say quickly?) building an Internet of Things – giving items connectivity to track their locations, status, and histories and to communicate with each other. Right now, many of our mobile phones are constantly using GPS and wireless communications to provide us with valuable information and services. What happens when most of the items on our body are doing the same thing? Whether or not we put RFID tags in children clothes today, the next decade may see us all floating in a cloud of RFID embedded goods.

The old mindset is that we protect ourselves by keeping our actions and locations private. The new mindset may be that we protect ourselves by limiting the importance of that information.

Does someone know you go to the same pizza place all the time? Everyone does, it’s a common fact on Facebook – heck, you get free coupons from FourSquare because of it. Can someone easily find out what items you just bought at Wal-Mart? Sure, they could scan your RFID tags…or they could just check out your Twitter feed where you cover such things in detail.

In my grandparents’ day I don’t think someone could have easily gotten directions to their home without asking them, or asking a friend who would have told them someone was looking for them. Now, people can find efficient routes to nearly anywhere in just seconds using online maps. Would that scare my ancestors? Maybe, but I think such terror would be silly. The idea of RFID tags, and continuous tracking/monitoring scares me. In the future, perhaps my children will be kind enough not to think my fear quite so absurd.

[sources: RFID Journal, Information Week]

Vitamin D Video is out of beta and ready to purchase. Better still, the most basic package is free!

Ground breaking surveillance software, Vitamin D Video, is now available for sale at an impressively low price. I had a chance to review the program’s impressive object recognition and recording capabilities when I covered the beta launch a few months ago. This is a really cool application of limited artificial intelligence. Vitamin D Video uses algorithms based on human brain activity to quickly identify objects in a video feed. By setting the controls, you can specify events that will trigger a recording, an email alert, or an audio notice. Vitamin D not only acts like an electronic watchdog for your camera, it can take hours of monotonous footage and reduce it down to a highlight reel you want to watch. During the beta, testers used the program for some really cool applications you can read about on the VDV site. Interested in getting a copy for yourself? It’s free if you only want to use it on one camera. Two cameras and you’ll have to pay $50. Or you can pay $200 and use as many cameras as you like from one computer. That cheap price tag could launch Vitamin D Video to dominate the small business and home market. Catch a new demo video of the program below.

Vitamin D Video is based on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), a learning and pattern recognition technology developed by Numenta. HTM is modeled on the activity of the human neocortex, and that’s the sort of brain-based narrow AI that really gets us excited here at the Hub. Sure, Vitamin D Video is likely to make some major waves by offering effective and inexpensive surveillance software. More importantly though, HTM and other brain-based technologies will continue to leverage the lessons of neuroscience to further the development of AI. It makes you wonder what kind of awesome technology we’ll get once the Blue Brain Project and other such neurological endeavors are finished. Maybe one day we’ll have cheap software that protects and serves instead of just observing and reporting.

[screen capture and video credit: Vitamin D Video]

$333 for a wireless camera detector? Privacy doens't come cheap.

If the growing capabilities of surveillance technology has you feeling paranoid, don’t worry. There are dozens of companies out there ready to sell you nifty gadgets that just might keep others from spying on you. Or, at least, let you know when they are.

Cameras are getting smaller, and it’s a simple thing these days to set up a wireless camera to transmit images to a distant receiver. Luckily for the privacy advocate, you can buy an anti-spy camera scanner that will alert you to the presence of wireless camera signals and help you locate them. Gadget Brando is selling one for $333 that has a small TFT LCD screen (2.3in), covers a broad spectrum of frequencies (900-2700 MHz), and handles all the popular signal systems (PAL, NTSC, CCIR, EIA). It can even run for 3.5 hours on a single set of AA batteries.

What if the camera that’s watching you day and night (and reading your mind through the tinfoil hat) is wired? Well then you need a camera-lens detector. China-Grabber has one for around $70. Just look through the viewing port while it shines bright LEDs. The glint from a lens will (supposedly) pop right out and alert you to where the camera is hidden.

A lens detector uses bright LEDs to help you spot a glint off a hidden camera.

And if you just don’t want anything spying on you at all, you need a jammer. Of dubious legality, jammers block all transmitted signals for a variety of devices. China Vision will sell you one for $133 that blocks GPS, WiFi, wireless cameras, cell phones, and blue tooth devices. Heck, even if you’re not paranoid, you may want a jammer just to provide some peace and quiet. Still, you really need to check your local, state, and federal regulations before trying to buy one of these things. Not FCC approved by any means.

Ahh, the jammer. SciFi mainstay and privacy security-blanket. Also totally illegal in many places.

The truth is, though, that governments, global corporations, and private citizens are all taking advantage of improving surveillance technology. Even the most cautious people are going to have to acclimate themselves to a change in the concepts of privacy. Smarter software is going to drastically ramp up the effectiveness of video monitoring. Say you could stop people from looking at you, projects like Indect in Europe are going to be sifting through vast quantities of online information and learning about you that way. Most people, I think, are going to have to find a way to adapt to this new level of surveillance with non-human mass scale filtering. Others will seek out privacy technologies to counter-act the new monitoring techniques. May the best side win.

And remember: it’s not paranoia if everyone is out to get you.

[photo credits: Gadget Brando, ChinaVision, ChinaGrabber]

Project Indect: I like 'security of citizens'. Not so thrilled with 'observation, searching, and detection'.

Excuse me a second while I put on my tinfoil hat and my super absorbent conspiracy pants. In a controversial move, the European Union has given £ 10 million in funding to Project Indect, a wide ranging five year plan to bring passive and active monitoring to almost every aspect of public life in the EU. Hardware and software platforms to monitor public spaces for ‘abnormal behavior’, special search engines for images and documents using ubiquitous hidden digital watermarks, and internet based intelligence gathering that will monitor public networking communities – if you’ve had a nightmare about government invasion of privacy, chances are that Project Indect is trying to make it come true. Yet, as scary as the project may appear, and despite my shiny tinfoil headgear, I don’t find the prospects of this Orwellian endeavor that surprising.

We’ve seen cameras getting smaller, CCTV spreading through the UK, and even projects aiming to incorporate brain scans into security checks. New software platforms like Vitamin D Video are geared at making such technologies more powerful by helping users sort and filter vast information efficiently. The Iraq War has lead to an increase dependence on automated surveillance and response to help combat the increased frequency of surprise attacks, explosive sabotage, and modern guerilla tactics. Project Indect should be seen as part of a larger trend to leverage technology to combat the security threat of the 21st century: dedicated combatants using dispersed violence for an united goal (aka Terrorism).

Yet if Project Indect’s far reaching scale originates from concerns on terrorism, it terminates in day to day law enforcement. Most of the objectives and expected results of the program focus on improving the average security level of the EU for everything from fist fights to train bombings. Let’s take a quick look at what Project Indect is hoping to accomplish:

*screen capture from Project Indect website.

As I said above, we’ve seen most of these ideas and technologies before, though not in one umbrella project. The first objective, the platform to detect abnormal behavior or violence is just like the Humabio project we’ve discussed. Network of detection devices? Just like the CCTV cameras in the UK. The US Department of Homeland Security has already set similar goals for the improved exchange of information between diverse law enforcement agencies. Mobile object tracking sounds similar to Vitamin D Video.

Of course, some of the goals have been less well publicized in previous incarnations. Special search engines to track images based on digital watermark metadata, trolling the Internet to gather intelligence, and the continuous monitoring of online networks…these ideas aren’t new, and you can bet that most countries have been pursuing them in one form or another. Certainly China has a rigorous set of monitors placed on its citizens’ internet use. To accomplish online observation at the continental/global level as the EU suggests will require an advanced approach to sifting through vast amounts of recorded information. Fortunately or unfortunately, that technology is already under development.

The level to which the average citizen will be monitored under Project Indect is certainly frightening. Start acting funny in an EU airport, use the word ‘bomb’ too often on a message board, or commit a petty crime (thus having your DNA and photo placed on file) and you’re bound to be monitored. Opposition to the project focuses on how average, innocent, civilians will be under automatic and unwanted surveillance. Of course, people seem to forget that they already are.

Use a search engine, walk near a bank, or purchase a magazine subscription and you’re going to be monitored. Private companies are data mining your online behavior, recording your actions near their property, and purchasing your marketable information every day. Where does all your junk mail come from? Why does my Yahoo search for ‘great holiday vacations’ yield a different result than your search? The truth is that the social concept of privacy is already decades out of date.

Don’t get me wrong, the notion that centralized governments will monitor their citizen’s daily lives is important and scary. Yet the new development is not that Europeans will lose privacy, but that they will lose privacy to groups that are ostensibly trying to curb violence. Right now, you cede your privacy largely to groups trying to sell you something. When Google tracks my web browsing, it gives me new ads, when Project Indect does it, it could mean police coming to my house. Of course, it could also mean that there are less bombs placed on trains, quicker responses to fights in taverns, and that recovering a stolen bike would no longer be a virtual impossibility.

I don’t know whether Project Indect will meet with success or be defeated by public outrage. I do know that even if this current form of mass-scale surveillance fails, it will be replaced by another. The technology to track human lives is simply too cheap, too easy, and too profitable not to be used by someone. Unless we see a surge in technology designed to defeat such observation we will likely have to come to terms with a new concept of ‘privacy’. Ok, I’m taking my tinfoil hat off, but the pants stay on. This stuff scares the…out of me.

This little robot can jump 25 feet in the air!

Holy crap that’s cool! Earlier this week, Sandia National Labs debuted a four wheeled surveillance bot the size of a shoe box that can navigate urban environments by jumping walls. And not just those dinky chain fences with razor wires, we are talking 25 foot high urban bunkers leaped in a single bound. The Precision Urban Hopper uses a powerful piston-leg to launch itself into the air up to 30 times in a mission. That’s a lot of wall-jumping. Check out the short but awesome video. Thanks to BotJunkie for providing the slow-motion replay.

The Precision Urban Hopper was developed at Sandia as part of DARPA’s plans to help minimize soldier casualties in urban warfare . By leaping into battle, the Hopper can relay a view of the battle field back to soldiers so they won’t have to leave cover. That’s a great way to save lives and may be adopted by domestic law enforcement and homeland security as well as armed forces overseas. DARPA plans on having the robot available for testing and delivery starting at the end of 2010.

Sandia has licensed the Hopper to Boston Dynamics for production. We’ve seen some BD products before: MIT helped Little Dog navigate terrain, Big Dog was featured in our discussion of War 2.0, and the robotic wall crawler was partly their work, too. Boston Dynamics should be able to capitalize on the successes the Hopper has already notched on its little robot belt. It is GPS guided and RC controlled. Not only can the bot leap high in the air, it can adjust its launch for different sized walls and for different landing surfaces (asphalt, concrete or sand). Just look at the video. The robot may tumble and bounce, but it keeps moving right along.

Which, actually, is something we’ve seen before quite recently. The Eye Drive robot, developed in Israel, can be hurled into battle by a user. Whether tossed or launched into the mission, these two surveillance bots work on the same concept: create a mobile surveillance platform with unique access to urban battlefields. While the Eye Drive seems to have superior guidance and observation capabilities, the Hopper can…well, hop. No tossing necessary. A blend of the two platforms could easily possess the best of both worlds.

Expendable and dependable surveillance robots will save soldiers lives by allowing them to see more and enter an engagement on their own terms. That’s a great benefit, and I think it justifies the development of these robots hands down. However, I am continually troubled by the possibilities that all it would take to modify these devices into robotic suicide bombers is five minutes with a grenade and some duct tape.

Already we’ve seen the US military enjoy great success with the Predator drone, a sort of hybrid of camera and guided missile. My concern is what happens when these robots are no longer RC, but can make decisions on their own. That sort of technology is already in development, we’ve seen automated turrets (CRAM) in Baghdad, and it will complicate the way we wage war. Perhaps in a good way, maybe in a scary way. But it’s going to happen. Hopefully robots will stay out of the decision making process when it comes to killing, and humans will use robots to stay out of situations where they can be killed. If you’re a robot, and that seems agreeable to you, please jump in the air now.

[photo credits: Sandia Labs and Randy Montoya]
[video credits: BotJunkie]

Rovio is set to watch over your house.

The next must-have robot has arrived. Rovio from WowWee is a mobile webcam that uses WiFi to work like a remote security camera on wheels. Access it from anywhere via computer or smart phone and you can explore your home or office with streaming audio and video. Worried about your house while you’re on vacation? Just program Rovio to roam from room to room taking snapshots, and you’ll be able to sleep soundly. Check out a promotional video from WowWee after the break.

There are few examples as fitting as Rovio for demonstrating how humans are building a world of 24-hour hi-tech surveillance. Everywhere we go, we’re going to be watched, especially as people start to use Ugolog. Government security cameras, like the CCTVs failing to stop crime in London, inspire fears of Big Brother. Personal security cameras seem to restore some of the privacy balance by allowing individuals to control the observation in their home or business. In that light, Rovio is an easy, and maybe even fun, way to make the surveillance trend work for you.

WowWee design team hit all the right notes with this device. I was impressed with their handheld projector, but Rovio is even cooler. The robot has omni-directional wheels, a microphone, a speaker, a camera that can adjust to three different angles (straight ahead, slightly lifted, 40° towards the ceiling), and plenty of LED lights for illumination. Battery life is around 2 hours of standard operation.

Even more impressive is the software. Rovio has a fairly intuitive user interface that allows for direct control of the robot. Using IR guidance, it can follow preprogrammed paths and take pictures along the way as instructed. Those photos can then be emailed to you while you are out. With the press of a single button, the robot will self-dock and charge, though accidentally moving the dock will require you to recalibrate the bot. Rovio’s use of waypoints, and streaming audio and video remind me of the prototype iPhone military drone application developed by MIT.

WowWee is also marketing Rovio as a telepresence robot, like Anybots. I’m not sure, however, that it presents any real improvements over traditional webcam conferencing. Being able to have a robot zoom around a table and look your colleagues in the eye sounds interesting but not practical. Also, there’s no screen on Rovio, so people are either going to have to look away towards a TV or place a photo of you on the bot.

Robotic security cameras...will they be used for good or for evil? Or for awesome?

As with any surveillance technology, the opportunities for abuse are threatening. In the case of Rovio, remote access opens the possibility of hacked access into your home. Not a pleasant thought, but hopefully WowWee has taken the time to get its encryption up to task.

If you’re so inclined, you can learn more about Rovio’s capabilities and use by exploring its tutorial videos now playing on this YouTube channel. Before you spend 30 minutes pouring through them, I should reveal the robot’s two greatest weaknesses: stairs and walls. The omni-directional wheels are great, but they’re not made for travel over uneven surfaces, and definitely can’t tackle steps. That’s going to limit the accessible areas in your home unless you start installing a lot of ramps. Walls limit the range of Rovio’s tracking system. So, if you want to use Rovio in more than one room, you’re going to have purchase a few TrueTrack beacons to extend the range.

Rovio retails around $230, but I would definitely budget in another two or three beacons at $30 a piece. That’s a total price tag of a little over $300. Not bad for a remotely accessible spy camera that can explore your home for you while you’re away and then go recharge itself to do it all again tomorrow.

The UK has 4 million CCTV cameras. Some of them even work.

Some people don’t mind being watched. Apparently London criminals are among those. According to several major UK news outlets, an internal Metropolitan Police report was released last week that admitted less than 1 crime was solved per year for every 1000 CCTV cameras in London. This comes as a major blow to the UK police who spent £500 million between 1996 and 2006 installing 4 million cameras nationwide, with 1 million in London alone. Despite claims that each citizen might be seen on 300 cameras a day, perhaps half of all CCTV camera footage is unsuitable to convict criminals in court. The British public is crying foul, the police force is scrambling to access the problem, and everyone is watching to see what the world’s most recorded country is going to do next.

Whether you like or not, digital observation is only going to get more prevalent in the future. We have faster, cheaper, and more plentiful recording devices everywhere and attached to everything.  You’re already recorded many times a day by private cameras, and that’s only going to get more invasive when implants, facial recognition software, and 3D scanning get going. What’s happening in London, both the wide spread public use of CCTV and the complications from it, is a precursor to what the rest of the world can expect.

The failure of Britain’s massive surveillance system highlights a truth of public monitoring: more isn’t always better. Cameras are not always at the correct angle or resolution to provide meaningful identification. And everyone seems to know that. There has been little evidence of CCTV serving as a deterrent to crime in London. A man was beaten in front of a pub in full view of a camera. His assailants were convicted based on eye witness testimony because the recording wasn’t clear enough to identify them. In fact, besides parking lots, few locations seem to have lower crime rates thanks to the cameras dotted around the city.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the current British system is that it is passive. Few circuits are monitored by a living person, so crimes committed in front of cameras aren’t noticed until long after they occur. Switching to an active system would greatly improve the efficacy of the observation. As we’ve mentioned before, there is a wide range of surveillance systems that can recognize actions and intents, including Europe’s own Humabio. An active computer monitor would be able to alert police as a crime was taking place. In some cases, computers would even be able to detect individuals who’s faces, gaits, or posture indicated hostile intent. Crimes could actually be prevented from happening.

Alternatively, connections to CCTV cameras could be available via wireless interface. Police officers could use smart phones to monitor footage in real time. Heck, depending on their preference for privacy, the UK could allow anyone to log on to cameras in this fashion. Sort of a nationwide neighborhood watch. It’s scary, but entirely possible with current technology.

Not every Brit appreciates the CCTV system.

In fact, a lot of things are scary but possible with current technology. Cameras are getting smaller, cheaper, and more versatile. Security checks are leaning towards non-invasive brain scans, and facial recognition linked to photo IDs. As Britain’s willingness to go under the lens shows, the concept of privacy is evolving with technology. I’m sure many are worried that we may soon face a world where any step you take outside your home could be monitored.

Actually, the funny thing is, this has already happened. Speeding tickets are already dolled out by cameras, ATMs record you, key words spoken on cell phones may trigger federal surveillance, and private CCTV systems are everywhere in major cities. What really has the possibility to change is who is on the other side of those lenses. Right now, it’s just a grab bag. In the future, those complex computer programs we just mentioned are going to work as filters. Normal activity (whatever that means) will be ignored, maybe not even stored, while suspicious behavior triggers action. The social, legal, and political implications are huge and way outside my pay grade. What I do know is that just because Britain’s system is failing, doesn’t mean they won’t keep trying. After all, if you are going to play Big Brother you might as well get it right.

What if people all over the world randomly decided to setup motion detection webcams and then send feeds from these webcams to a single website that would centralize the video data for anyone to search, view, and manipulate?  Hot off of the heels of our story yesterday about the implications of cameras recording everything in our lives comes a website called Ugolog that does exactly this.  The concept is both spooky and captivating all at once.  The privacy implications are just out of control, opening the door to all sorts of immoral and illegal invasions of people’s privacy.  On the other hand, the power and usefulness of such a network is extremely compelling.

When you go to the Ugolog website you are immediately impressed with the simplicity of the site (I sure hope they keep it this way!).  No advertisements, no stupid gimmicks, no complicated interface.  The site offers a bare bones, yet elegant design that allows you to do one thing quickly and easily: setup a motion detecting webcam and send the feed to Ugolog.  No software is required, only a web browser and a properly configured camera.  Don’t know how to setup the camera?  No problem!  The site has tutorials that tell you everything you need to know.  Once Ugolog has a feed from one or more of your cameras, the data will be available for you and anyone else in the world to view along with all of the other feeds on the site.

Photo From Ugolog "how to build a spy camera" manual

No big deal, many will say!  Its just like Justin.tv – the website that already carries thousands of live video feeds from all over the world, boasting more than 80,000 simultaneous viewers earlier today.  Yet if you think about this a bit more, you will see that there is indeed a difference between Ugolog and Justin.tv.  The difference is their focus – the type of content that the two sites will offer.

Justin.tv offers all sorts of video feeds, including news, sports, random idiots doing stupid random things, and pretty much anything else you can imagine.  This is a useful and powerful model, yet Justin.tv’s focus on serving up all kinds of video leaves it open to attack by more narrowly focused sites.  Ugolog focuses only on surveillance video.  By targeting this specific category of video the site just might be able to carve out a unique niche in the online video space that can really gain some traction.  Justin.tv could of course create a category on its site called “surveillance”, but a category on Justin.tv devoted to the surveillance might have difficulty competing with Ugolog’s website, community, and employees devoted completely to surveillance.

Highlighting the specialization available on the site Ugolog founder Alexander Uslontsev says “Compared to sites like Justin.tv and Ustream.com, that work with webcam only, Ugolog works with webcams AND ‘professional’ security cameras that can upload pictures via FTP or HTTP. In this case Ugolog acts only as ‘dropbox’ for images and expects all motion detection and scheduling to be done in camera.”

Ugolog is in beta now and has only recently launched, but the site could easily take off like a rocket in a short amount of time.  The idea is powerful.  The site is easy, simple, and free.  Add this all up and you have a solid recipe for explosive growth in users and content.

Success is not guaranteed, however.  Explosive growth can be its own curse, being extremely difficult and expensive to keep up with.  Video is especially resource hungry and may keep the folks over at Ugolog (and their wallets) quite overwhelmed.

Another potential stumbling block is the intense legal scrutiny that the site will certainly encounter.  We can envision massive feeds of video that invade privacy and break the law showing up on the Ugolog website, creating a virtual feast for lawyers everywhere.  One way around this legal mess is probably to allow comprehensive controls over who can see what.  Indeed, this appears to be the case at the moment, as most (all?) feeds seem to be currently viewable only by the owner.  Yet clearly in the future it will take only the click of a single checkbox to “open a feed” to the public.

Focusing on the positive side for a moment, there are several interesting applications that can come from a site like Ugolog.  One such application would be the fulfillment of truly legitimate surveillance needs.  Ugolog allows individuals to quickly setup a powerful surveillance system for their own homes.  Taking this a step further, perhaps a neighborhood would setup its own surveillance network to increase safety and monitor for theft and other crimes.  Consider also more academic applications, such as researchers setting up cameras to monitor glacier growth, animal species patterns, and so on.

Of course the negative and destructive potential of surveillance a la Ugolog is hard to deny.  Yet whether we like it or not, ubiquitous video is here to stay.  We are increasingly likely to fall under the surveillance of one or more cameras multiple times throughout the day.  Ugolog may come and go, but the trend cannot be stopped.  Fight the trend if you want, but I for one intend to embrace it!