Detecting Bombs

British engineers have taken inspiration from dolphins for a new type of radar that could help detect roadside bombs more easily.

The device sends out two pulses instead of one, mimicking how dolphins pinpoint their prey.

The twin inverted pulse radar (TWIPR) can distinguish between the electronics at the heart of an explosive and other "clutter" such as pipes or nails.

The radar device has been developed by a team led by Prof Tim Leighton, of the University of Southampton, and scientists from University College, London.

Prof Leighton took his inspiration from the way dolphins are able to process their sonar signals to pinpoint prey in bubbly water.

Some dolphins blow bubble nets around schools of fish to force them to cluster together.

Their sonar would not work if they could not distinguish the fish from the bubbles.

He wanted to see if the same technique would work with radio waves, and so developed a system that also sent out pulses in pairs.

Traditional radar typically sends out just one pulse.

The device his team came up with was just 2cm in size and cost less than £1 to put together.

The second pulse has the reverse polarity of the first.

This means that if it hits an electronic device, it turns the pulse into a positive, which in turn gives off a very strong signal.

In tests the team applied the radar pulses to an antenna typical of the circuitry used in explosive devices, which was surrounded by "clutter" metals.

The antenna showed up 100,000 times more powerfully than the other metal "clutter".

Such a device could also be extremely helpful in finding surveillance device as well as bombs, the team said.

It could even help locate people buried after an avalanche or earthquake by detecting their mobile phones.

"Such technology could also be extended to other radiations, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and light detection and ranging (Lidar)... offering the possibility of early fire detection systems," said Prof Leighton.

Gary Kemp, program director at technology consultancy Cambridge Consultants, said that the system "shows promise".

He said: "We continue to take inspiration from the many animal super-senses found in nature, whether from the sophisticated echolocation techniques used by bats and cetaceans or the remarkable chemical detection ability of dogs and bees.

"Any technology that increases the probability of detecting IEDs [improvised explosive device] or buried earthquake victims while reducing false alarms will undoubtedly save lives," he added.

Taking Action

British Prime Minister David Cameron said recently that his government was likely to act to stop newspapers publishing of what he called damaging leaks from former U.S. intelligence operative Edward Snowden (below) unless they began to behave more responsibly.

"If they (newspapers) don't demonstrate some social responsibility it will be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act," Cameron told parliament, saying Britain's Guardian newspaper had "gone on" to print damaging material after initially agreeing to destroy other sensitive data.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist responsible for the bulk of these stories about the NSA leaks, called the move "repressive."  "In repressive Britain, it's political officials who dictate what can and cannot be published," he wrote on Twitter.

re·pres·sive means:

adjective: repressive

(esp. of a social or political system) inhibiting or restraining the freedom of a person or group of people.  For example, "a repressive regime."

Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part in the political life of a society. Political repression is sometimes used synonymous with the term political discrimination (also known as politicism). It often is manifested through discriminatory policies, such as human rights violations, surveillance abuse, police brutality, imprisonment, involuntary settlement, stripping of citizen's rights, lustration and violent action or terror such as the murder, summary executions, torture, forced disappearance and other extrajudicial punishment of political activists, dissidents, or general population. BUT, is this what Mr. Greenwald is talking about?  I doubt it… As a reporter, Mr. Greenwald et al want to be able to write about anything they deem to be in the interest of the general public no matter what the unintended consequences of their actions might be…   And that my friends, is something altogether different than responsible journalism, in my humble opinion. Throughout the course of history, at least in the books that I have read, the general public is not ready nor are they prepared to hear or understand or fully appreciate the sensitivity of the truth even though there are a few that are…  and, therein lies the problem. Teach the general public to understand before you throw them to the wolves of fear, confusion, and outrage.  So many of the general public just want to be left alone and told what to do like what was depicted in The Matrix, comfortable with their pointless lives, their pointless needs and wants, and their beliefs that it will all continue because it was always meant to be this way. They (We) don’t want   your TRUTHS…

Gathering Information

Microsoft Corp worked closely with U.S. intelligence services to help them intercept users' communications, including letting the National Security Agency circumvent email encryption, the Guardian reported on Thursday.

Citing top-secret documents provided by former U.S. spy contractor Edward Snowden, the UK newspaper said Microsoft worked with the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the NSA to ease access via Prism - an intelligence-gathering program uncovered by the Guardian last month - to cloud storage service SkyDrive.

Microsoft also helped the Prism program collect video and audio of conversations conducted via Skype, Microsoft's online chat service, the newspaper added.

Microsoft had previously said it did not provide the NSA direct access to users' information. On Thursday, it repeated that it provides customer data only in response to lawful government requests.

"To be clear, Microsoft does not provide any government with blanket or direct access to SkyDrive, Outlook.com, Skype or any Microsoft product," the company said in a statement on its website.

Facebook Inc, Google Inc and Microsoft had all publicly urged U.S. authorities to allow them to reveal the number and scope of the surveillance requests after documents leaked to the Washington Post and the Guardian suggested they had given the government "direct access" to their computers as part of the NSA's Prism program.

PRISM is a clandestine mass electronic surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.  PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN.

PRISM began in 2007 in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act.  The program is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Its existence was leaked five years later by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew and included what he characterized as "dangerous" and "criminal" activities.  The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013.

A document included in the leak indicated that PRISM was "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports." The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls on an ongoing daily basis.

Whistleblowing

 

 

Edward Snowden (who calls himself a whistleblower) is meeting with representatives from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Transparency International at the airport in Moscow where he has been staying to discuss his next steps forward.

In an email published by Human Rights Watch, the former intelligence agency contractor – whose revelations to the Guardian about US surveillance have caused controversy around the world – also suggests he will make a “brief statement” to the groups. Reuters said Snowden had emailed them separately to say that the meeting would be closed to the press but that the whistleblower would speak to the media later.

The meeting is due to take place at 5pm Moscow time (2pm in London/9am in New York) in Sheremetyevo airport and we’ll be publishing as many details as we can live here.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty said they had received an email from Snowden setting out how he felt the US government was conducting an “unlawful campaign … to deny my right to seek and enjoy ... asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.

Tonya Lokshina of Human Rights Watch posted the email in full on Facebook. In the email he also thanks all the countries that have offered him support and asylum and offers to visit each one. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua have offered him asylum. Venezuela’s foreign minister said yesterday the country had not yet received a reply to its offer. It is still unclear whether he would be able to leave the airport to take up any of these offers. The Kremlin said the whistleblower withdrew a request for asylum in Russia after Vladimir Putin said he would be welcome only if he stopped "his work aimed at bringing harm" to the United States – ”as strange as that sounds coming from my mouth."

More Americans now think Edward Snowden did the wrong thing in releasing classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

According to the new poll, 38 percent of Americans think that Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, did the wrong thing, while 33 percent said he did the right thing. Still, 29 percent of Americans remain unsure about Snowden's actions.

Another HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted just after Snowden revealed his identity publicly found that 38 percent said Snowden did the right thing and only 35 percent said he did the wrong thing.

A whistleblower is a person who exposes misconduct, alleged dishonest or illegal activity occurring in an organization. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation of a law, rule, regulation and/or a direct threat to public interest, such as fraud, health and safety violations, and corruption.

One of the first laws that protected whistleblowers was the 1863 United States False Claims Act (revised in 1986), which tried to combat fraud by suppliers of the United States government during the Civil War.

Whistleblowers frequently face reprisal, sometimes at the hands of the organization or group which they have accused, sometimes from related organizations, and sometimes under law.

Questions about the legitimacy of whistle blowing, the moral responsibility of whistle blowing, and the appraisal of the institutions of whistle blowing are part of the field of political ethics.

Losing the Future

because of education or the lack thereof.                   



A week ago today (3-20-12) on CBS This Morning, Condoleezza Rice (former Secretary of State) was their guest and she spoke about how our poor education system is jeopardizing our national security.

WASHINGTON — The nation's security and economic prosperity are at risk if America's schools don't improve, warns a task force led by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein, the former chancellor of New York City's school system.

The task force reported that, 75 percent of young adults don't qualify to serve in the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records or inadequate levels of education. That's in part because 1 in 4 students fails to graduate from high school in four years, and a high school diploma or the equivalent is needed to join the military. But another 30 percent of high school graduates don't do well enough in math, science and English on an aptitude test to serve in the military. 

If this is not bad enough, the report continues with, …too many Americans are deficient in both global awareness and knowledge that is "essential for understanding America's allies and its adversaries, leaving large swaths of the population unprepared also threatens to divide Americans and undermines the country's cohesion, confidence, and ability to serve as a global leader."

"I don't think people have really thought about the national security implications and the inability to have people who speak the requisite languages who can staff a volunteer military, the kind of morale and human conviction you need to hold a country together. I don't think people have thought about it in those terms," Klein said . . . 

Click to enlarge

while Rice stated, "The rest of the world is not sitting by while we, in a rather deliberate fashion, reform the education system.”  And, if our education system continues operating as it is currently operating, it will not yield enough graduates who will have the pre-requisite knowledge to help us fight cyber crimes which robs businesses of billions of dollars annually.

 As an lifelong educator, this news is very disturbing to say the least.  Over the years, I have seen a gradual decline in adult education but also in the foundation knowledge of the adult student.  It was first brought to my attention when I moved to Greeneville, TN to work for Walters State Community College and volunteered to teach a class on quality to Junior Achievement students at one of the local high schools. 

What I heard from several of the students was appalling and while experience took place over 20 years ago, it revolved around the following: 

“. . .  just tell me what I need to know for the ‘A’ and I’ll memorize it and give it back to you . . .   ‘A’s’ will get me into the best colleges and that will get me the best jobs . . .  and all of that has nothing to do with what I’ve learned or know . . .”