Tag Archives: Surveillance

$125 for state behavior surveillance system

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Photo: Caitlin B/Flickr CC

Photo: Caitlin B/Flickr CC

The government wants to know what makes masses eat and smoke so much.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with Recovery Act dollars, is looking for plans that will “change the environment in which eating, tobacco use, and physical activity occur, and impact population groups rather than individuals.”

Any proposal must be crafted toward changing group behavior, rather than helping individuals, according to the grant announcement:

State Supplemental Funding for Healthy Communities, Tobacco Control. Diabetes Prevention and Control. and Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

via Grants.gov – Find Grant Opportunities – Opportunity Synopsis.

Infodemiology: Public health at the "granular" level

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Photo: Mike Burns. Flickr/CC

Photo: Mike Burns. Flickr/CC

Epidemiology used to rely on aggregated data, reports gathered from public health clinics and hospitals, VA hospitals and military bases.

But with individuals so eagerly coughing-up their intimate details to Google and Facebook, scrubbing health data (presuming that’s what government scientists *want* to do) will be impractical, the feds will tell us.

If you actually come down with the flu, and the doctors want to know who you’ve been in physical contact with, your trusty cellphone could soon tell them.

And someday, scientists hope, this “infodemiology” might help forecast and track a flu epidemic the way experts monitor the weather.

via Smart Mobs » Blog Archive » Hoping sick mob will blog.

Facebook meets RFID in marketers' dreams

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Technologists and marketers are getting excited at the prospect of tying individuals to retail items, through social networking and RFID tags.

This tech blogger (excerpt and link, below) says, “applying collective intelligence to sensor data will be a rich vein of opportunity in the coming years.”

The opportunities he’s talking about, I suspect, are for corporations and governments.

Let’s face it, a ‘smart’ RFID chip on a bottle of wine – one that knows its production and travel history, its temperature, its price relative to similar bottles of wine, etc – will beat human hacking anytime. But, as the report rightly notes, don’t expect that level of automation via RFID any time soon. Our recent post examining the current state of RFID clearly showed that it’s years away.

via Web Squared: When Web 2.0 Meets Internet of Things.

Synchronicities strike the rails

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Here’s one for Loren Coleman (The Copycat Effect) and the synchromystics. I’ve noticed several reports of collisions in the heavy and light-rail industries since May 28–and one intense, and fictitious scene, in Caprica, which appeared online earlier this year, in promos for the new series.

The Disney Monorail crash killed a 21-year old man who was raised in Disney’s planned community, Celebration.

Picture 1 Photo: WFTV-9

Washington, DC, Metro train collision. AP photoNewton, Mass. Green Line derailment. AP Photo

Photos (clockwise from top left): Early scene from the Caprica pilot; Washington, DC, Metro crash; Green Line crash, Newton, Mass., May 28; the Disney Monorail crash.

WASHINGTON – At least two people are dead and nine people are injured after a Metro Red Line train derailed and collided with another Metro train, officials say.

The six-car train derailed and then collided with another train between the Takoma Park and Fort Totten stations around 5 p.m. Monday, trapping several passengers.

via 2 dead after Metro train derailment, collision – wtop.com.

White-coated clods released flu

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Photo: CC/KJ

Photo: CC/-Kj.

If the swine flu pandemic originated in a lab, it would not be the first:

The study in The New England Journal of Medicine said: ‘Careful study of the genetic origin of the (1977) virus showed that it was closely related to a 1950 strain, but dissimilar to influenza ‘A’ (H1N1) strains from both 1947 and 1957.

‘This finding suggested that the 1977 outbreak strain has been preserved since 1950. The re-emergence was probably an accidental release from a laboratory source.’

via Swine flu pandemic caused by “accidental leak” from laboratory « Aftermath News.

Queen Beatrix wants to read your meter

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Not sure if I trust them. Photo: CC/The Green Part of Ireland

Not sure if I trust them. Photo: CC/The Green Part of Ireland

A recently proposed Dutch law would make it an “economic crime” to refuse a smart meter.

The Irish Greens are also high on the wireless technology, which allows utilities to peer into your home, and determine how much electricity you are using to power individual items.

And now, in the United States, T-Mobile will soon be baking its SIM cards into smart meters from the spooky-sounding company, Echelon.

Echelon’s Networked Energy Services System (Ness) includes meters that can read your water and gas consumption, too. And some Echelon meters emit alarms when your credit with your utility, or state, runs short.

More about Echelon (the corporation), and the elite pedigree of its investors, in my next post.

Here’s a bit of that Dutch story:

I hope the debate on smart metering will not grow silent because of a small and unclear victory in our First Chamber. We need to critically watch the developments in respect of smart metering and urge research into less intrusive alternatives such as in-home displays, specified energy bills, and the use of statistical and anonymised data.

via No to mandatory smart metering does not equal privacy! « Weblog Law & Technology.

Twit tweet of the day: Raise taxes to pay bus drivers

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This, Id pay extra for. Photo: CC/Joe Philipson

This, I'd pay extra for. Photo: CC/Joe Philipson

A Harvard Law blogger pats herself on the back, for Tweeting the fuzz about a jackass bus driver, who was texting-while-driving:

I tweeted as follows:

8:50AM headed to #MIT6 just missed getting photo of driver on #1 texting while bus moving. MBTA not on Twitter!! Maybe @Boston_Police care?

And some while later, the Boston Police answered:

thanks – will forward to T.

Now that is the just the kind of civic participation instant gratification elation the Twit-o-sphere is made for.

They also thoughtfully advised me on the proper use of their Twitter:

Thank you for following the Boston Police(beta). We monitor @ replies, but in case of emergency, always phone 911.

But the Harvard law blogger loses me here (emphasis mine):

Kudos to the Tweeting Boston Police, and Mass voters, please support increasing the gas tax to fund more better and more responsive mass transit.

via Media Re:public » Blog Archive » What Twitter is good for.

found at UniversalHub

Of course, throwing money at mass transit will only get us more, lousy, mass transit.

Another suggestion: Give taxpayers big, fat, dollar-for-dollar, tax rebate checks, specifically as a “reward” (as perverse as that sounds) for buying Smart cars ==>

Another note: I enjoyed seeing “civic participation” used in this context: a success story for ubiquitous computing, as a surveillance tool.

Cyberspies Penetrate U.S. Power Grid, Leave Software That Could Disrupt System – Presidential Politics | Political News – FOXNews.com

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Photo: CC/Ian Muttoo

Photo: CC/Ian Muttoo

This shock story, generated by HomeSec — that baddies are trying to disrupt the country’s power grids  — turns out not to be such a shocker, after all.

The U.S. has uncovered evidence that cyberspies, most likely from China and Russia, have penetrated the U.S. power grid and left behind software that could be activated to disrupt American infrastructure, FOX News confirmed Wednesday.

via Cyberspies Penetrate U.S. Power Grid, Leave Software That Could Disrupt System – Presidential Politics | Political News – FOXNews.com.

Now, Time reports that cyber terrorists could only take down a section of the nation’s power supply at a time.

Of course, that”s not going to stop the government from plowing billions into  so-called smart-grid infrastructures (with built-in surveillance technologies that will  mind each of us on the grid).

As we continue to discover, as technologies (think RFID and GPS, for example) grow smarter, the risks they pose to privacy also increase.

Airport face scanners ‘cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder’ « Aftermath News

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Another “not ready for prime time” technology proving useless. Aftermath’s got it:

At the moment the technology is only being used on British and European travelers on “high risk” flights but it is planned to extend the technology to almost all non-European Union citizens by the end of 2010.

via Airport face scanners ‘cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder’ « Aftermath News.

Street justice for Google Street Views

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A London motorist in this video (below) tailgates some poor sap driving a Google Street Views car, which has a 360-degree camera setup mounted on its roof.

In case you missed the original story, a group of Brits reportedly ran a Google Street Views car out of their neighborhood.