Tag Archives: Monitoring

You're never too old to be a cyborg

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Cyborg candidate. Photo: CC/Julie Kertesz

Cyborg candidate. Photo: CC/Julie Kertesz

Great news for geezers: Docs in NYC recently concluded that even the elderly can benefit from cochlear implant surgery.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d be the first in line for this procedure, after seeing the frustration my older friends and relatives have experienced with hearing aids. (Already, at 41, I am certain I have left much of my own hearing behind at hundreds of clubs and heavy metal concerts. Whenever I drop my six-year-old, Maeve, at her grammar school “cafetorium,” the din makes it hard to hear even the person in front of me.)

But companies such as Cambridge Consultants are proposing that implant makers piggy-back wireless monitoring systems onto their products. That will effectively make anyone with a pacemaker or a cochlear implant a wireless, internet-connected entity–part of the “Internet of Things.”

The National Institute on Aging estimates that about one-third of Americans between ages 65 and 74 have hearing difficulty – and that number increases to 50 percent in people 85 and older. In about 10% of the elderly, the impairment is so severe that conventional hearing aids provide little benefit. The inability to communicate interferes greatly with daily living and can lead to cognitive impairment, personality changes, depression, reduced functional status and social isolation.

via NYU Langone Medical Center study shows that cochlear implant surgery is safe for the elderly.

Kill your phone

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Apple and Google aim to track users’ phones with GPS and W-Fi trangulation.

Photo: CC/husin.sani

Google’s new service, Latitude, lets people spy on each other, by tracking their target’ GPS receivers. Now Apple is rumored to be adding Wi-Fi triangulation to the Mac OS.

OS X Snow Leopard to get WiFi triangulation, more multitouch control? – SlashGear

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard could introduce WiFi triangulation, used to estimate geographical location, in a crossover of the technology from the iPhone to the MacBook range. The system- which is part of the CoreLocation framework in the iPhone SDK – will presumably be used to give general location information to navigation software such as Google Maps, as the first-generation iPhone did to compensate for its lack of true GPS.

Human-computer interfaces: Device tracks free-hand movements

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The point is that it’s contactless. (Photo: Gesturetek.)

From my Boston Globe column this week, another step toward into the “contactless” future.

Humans hardly touch each other as it is. (We’re being taught that touching is a “high-risk” behavior.) Machines have become an intermediary.

Now, you don’t have to touch the machine:

Think Minority Report: A new device from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Gesturetek lets you point at any screen to manipulate images and objects, just as Tom Cruise did in the mesmerizing film adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story.

Gesturetek’s AirPoint System requires no tracking glove or remote control, as many tracking systems do. The company envisions its camera-based technology in hands-free (and thus germ-free) ATMs, and other contactless applications.

Also: Zoombak will track your wayward pooch with a combination of GPS and cell tower proximity readings–said to be better than using either technique on its own.

Dog, trackedZoombak alerts you when its water-resistant gadget, hanging from your dog’s collar, crosses over the boundaries you designate around your home. The service signals you via text message or e-mail of the escape.

Zoombak also offers a slightly more expensive car locator kit for tracking teens and the other high-risk drivers in your family.

Muni Wi-Fi sinking under mishandling and corruption

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Very proud: Former Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff (pictured here in 2004) now works for the Wi-Fi consultancy she hired on behalf of the city.

As city officials from San Francisco and Philadelphia head to the consultancy they hired with taxpayer dollars, Earthlink is pulling its plans to provide free and cheap wireless internet access to some cities, saying they are asking too much.

This article (link, below) does an excellent job describing the cities’ poor planning. But it does not mention the company that may be responsible for much of this mess: Civitium.

Civitium is the consultancy now employing San Francisco’s former deputy CIO Denise Brady, and Philadelphia’s former CIO Dianah Neff. The cities paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Civitium’s advise, before each of these officials left their posts to join the company.

clipped from abcnews.go.com
Municipal Wi-Fi Faces Financial Hurdles
Huff informed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that EarthLink was rescinding a proposal to cover the estimated $14 million to $17 million cost of building the city’s Wi-Fi network.
Had the San Francisco system been built, EarthLink planned to charge about $20 per month for Wi-Fi access that would have been three to four times faster than a free service subsidized by ads sold by Google Inc.

Chips are for kids: Failing tech rag reaches for RFID dollars

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Hate arphids? Then you must hate babies, according to PC magazine columnist Lance Ulanoff.

Ulanoff made it clear this week to potential RFID advertisers that he is in their camp. In a short piece, he decries arfid opponents as “moaning about privacy and First Amendment implications” associated with the VeriChip subcutaneous arfid implant for humans.

Ulanoff says that America’s 4 million newborns each year should be chipped, so they can be tracked by Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. And he parrots VeriChip’s bogus argument that the chip will prevent tragic child abductions.

The truth is that hospitals are doing an excellent job preventing abductions without the use of permanent, implantable chips that have not undergone longterm testing in humans.

The American Academy of Pediatrics calls the risk of any newborn being abducted virtually nonexistent.

As a parent myself, I find it difficult to imagine another parent being a sucker for VeriChip’s “someone might steal your baby” pitch.

Ziff-Davis has a long history shilling for technology advertisers. For a time, the company was owned by the Japanese computer catalogue publisher Softbank.

And many years before that, in 1938, Ziff-Davis purchased the early science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, which is credited with “inventing” flying saucers in its pages. William B. Ziff, Jr. inherited the company from his father in 1953. Many Ziff-Davis executives joked that Ziff, Jr., who abandoned his philosophical studies in Germany to run the company, “could see the future.”

I quite writing product reviews for several Ziff Davis publications a decade ago, after telling editors there that I refused to delete my criticisms of products from potential advertisers.

clipped from www.pcmag.com
RFID has been a boon to corporations with large retail outlets, inventory rooms, warehouses, and more.
Yet it seems all I hear is moaning about the privacy and First Amendment implications. This is growing tiresome, and it’s time to set people straight.
RFID chips are a good idea. RFID chips that can help locate people and objects are a better idea. RFID chips implanted in pets and people are the best idea of all. Let me illustrate how committed I am to this idea.

Urban wireless to serve intel and PSYOP forces

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nettdroid.jpg
The government needs more nodes: Various agencies want to seed cities with wireless networking devices (image from a DOD document).

Despite the high costs and unproven social benefits for municipal broadband, dozens of U.S. cities are ignoring laws banning anti-competitive practices and getting into the internet business.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense is planning to build robots that configure themselves into ad hoc wireless networks within urban areas.

City mayors claim they want to provide free and low-cost Wi-Fi access to the poor and attract business travelers. Defense planners say they need to have broadband capabilities in urban war zones.

But rather than closing the “digital divide” (which many academics admit is being exaggerated), or providing a redundant service to traveling salesmen, it appears that officials aim to seize control of internet communications and track individuals in urban areas.

Military and law enforcement agencies will also use the wireless networks to stage “hard PSYOP” attacks against a brain-chipped populace, according to historian and commentator Alan Watt, who specializes in secret societies and government intelligence operations.

Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Providence, R.I. are among the cities partnering with private companies and the federal government to set up public broadband internet access. Providence used Homeland Security funds to construct a network for police, which may be made available to the public at a later date.

None of the cities are expected to turn a profit anytime soon. Nor are the poor likely to benefit from the projects.

Subscribers to Philly’s “Wireless Philadelphia” service, for example, will pay up to 73 percent more than the rate promised to them two years ago.

“(Philadelphia) presented dangerously inaccurate estimates and figures for the costs and revenue” for its wireless network, according to a recent analysis by students at Harvard Law School. Continue reading →

Crackdown on cameras in New York

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Try and stop him: Videographer Flux Rostrum is among the independent journalists that New York City officials want to bar from 9/11 protests this year. Photo: Mark Baard

Virtually unenforceable, bans on video- and filmmakers do have a chilling effect. But the message from city hall this year is, “if you are an independent journalist, don’t come to New York on 9/11/07.” Some 9/11 truthers are counting on tens of thousands to protest with their already ubiquitous mobile phone cameras and camcorders.

clipped from www.nytimes.com
The New York Times

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June 29, 2007

City May Seek Permit and Insurance for Many Kinds of Public Photography
Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks.New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.

Now, it's psyops for your Second Life

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More than one way to skin a cat: Users of the Sentient World Simulation can use graphs, charts and even alternate reality avatars to visualize their information.

U.S defense, intel and homeland security officials are constructing a parallel world, on a computer, which the agencies will use to test propaganda messages and military strategies.

Called the Sentient World Simulation, the program uses AI routines based upon the psychological theories of Marty Seligman, among others. (Seligman introduced the theory of “learned helplessness” in the 1960s, after shocking beagles until they cowered, urinating, on the bottom of their cages.)

Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

The sim will feature an AR avatar for each person in the real world, based upon data collected about us from government records and the internet.

The Defense Department is already running sims of Iraq and Afghanistan, China and dozens of other countries, as it prepares for a future of house-to-house urban warfare.

Here’s a link (below) to my story about the Sentient World Simulation at The Register:

clipped from www.theregister.com
Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale
Sim Strife
By Mark Baard
Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.”SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”

Google's gone evil with street views

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What a bummer. Googler users are ogling shots like this one, from a residential neighborhood in San Francisco.

Google says its new, ground-level street views (reportedly taken from atop dusty old vans cruising city streets) will be a boon for tourism and local businesses in major cities.

But Google’s point-by-point photos, shaped into navigable 3D panoramas for internet consumption, also cover residential neighborhoods.

The company tells AFP (clip and excerpt, below) it is only taking its photos from public property, which is splitting hairs.

Photographing people in public places is legal in the United States, the AFP story points out. But photographing non-newsworthy people in their homes and private spaces, and in embarrassing moments, crosses a line.

clipped from rawstory.com
“What Google does is not illegal, but irresponsible,” said Rebecca Jeschke of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a US non-profit group dedicated to defending Internet freedom and privacy.”Google Street View technology has been an intrusion of privacy to many people captured in their pictures. They could have waited until they developed technology that would allow them to obscure peoples’ faces.”

Tech Lab: Fun with arfid implants

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eyearfid.jpg

For external use only. But if you do inject this, I’d love to hear from you.

This week in the Boston Globe’s  Tech Lab, I take a closer look at an RFID experimentation kit available for $100 at ThinkGeek.

The kit is packed with arfids such as this one (pictured above), which you can implant under your skin, despite the stern warnings that come in the kit.

Arfids are being used in everything from credit cards to state-issued IDs. The radio transponders are highly vulnerable to hacking and surreptitious readers, which bandits and terrorists can use snag your credit card number, or peg you as the sole American in a Beirut café, for example.