July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Dewayne-Net] Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight A new way of identifying metal and explosives could provide a valuable tool in the fight against terrorism. Airport security has become big business following the terrorist attacks in the US. A system that detects both metal and non-metallic weapons using terahertz light has been developed by technology firm TeraView. It could make passenger screening at airports more effective and quicker, say experts. Safe to humans Dr Ruth Woodward, an independent scientific adviser for terahertz consultancy firm HT Consultants, said the technology could provide one of the most innovative ways of dealing with security threats. "It presents a positive step forward, although the economic benefits are yet to be determined," she told BBC News Online. Terahertz light sits between microwave and infrared on the electro-magnetic spectrum. It has a number of properties that can be harnessed to screen passengers. Unlike X-ray, it is perfectly safe to use on people. It can pass through clothing, paper and plastics to detect metal, ceramic or plastic weapons. And it can identify explosives by reading their characteristic spectral 'fingerprints'. Magic wand TeraView is a firm looking at ways of exploiting terahertz light. It is developing a handheld security wand that could be used by airport security guards to pass over the body of passengers. It is expected that the product will be available for commercial use within two years, following a trial at an as yet unspecified airport. The firm is partnering with detection equipment firm Smiths Detection on the project. The terahertz 'wand' will be attached to a box which will bleep when suspicious objects are found. Eventually the firm also hopes to make a walk-through portal that uses the same techniques as the wand to scan passengers. "The big challenge for airports is to keep the passengers happy and provide a high level of security," said Dr Mike Kemp, the vice-president of TeraView. "What we are trying to do with terahertz light is create something that is more automatic and reduces the dependence on the sharp-eyed operator," he said. Turning to technology The technology is not likely to replace current methods of scanning, rather will sit alongside them, he explained. And there is no substitute for old-fashioned human alertness. "Any technology, whether it is new or old, is only there to complement commonsense," said Dr Woodward. Following the September 11 attacks, airport security has taken on a new-found urgency. "Many companies are looking at new technologies that can offer substantially increased security," said Chris Yates, aviation security editor at Jane's Transport. A system that blows air at passengers to detect explosives is under trial at Terminal One of Manchester airport. And several US airports are testing technology that can virtually undress passengers to detect any suspicious items. This has caused uproar from civil liberty organisations in the US and led to some modification to allow passengers a degree of modesty. "Basically the most sensitive areas of the body have been blocked out," said Mr Yates. Terahertz light is the last unexplored frontier of the radio wave and light spectrum. and can be also be utilised in a variety of ways such as medical imaging. Story from BBC NEWS: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3833275.stm> Published: 2004/07/08 08:05:37 GMT Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net> Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[IP] Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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UAV: the fly's a spy
by Eugen Leitl 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10059596 The fly's a spy Nov 1st 2007 >From The Economist print edition A new type of flying machine is watching you Onera JUST below a half-opened garage door a tiny device can be seen at the feet of someone lurking in the shadows. It looks like a blue dragonfly. Then its miniature wings begin to flap as it slips under the door and darts along the street. After rising through the air it stops to hover outside the window of a building several storeys high. There is an opening on the roof, and it slips inside. As it flits from room to room its video-camera b eyeb transmits pictures to a screen on a remote-control unit strapped to the wrist of its clandestine operator. This is not a scene from a James Bond film, in which 007 tests a new device from b Qb, but an animated video produced by Onera, France's national aerospace centre, to explain REMANTA, a project to develop the technologies needed for miniature robotic aircraft. More bug-like flying devices are being developed in other research laboratories around the world. A few are already small enough to be carried in a briefcase; others are the size of a jet fighter and need a runway for take-off. Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. They are being operated by groups as diverse as police, surveyors and archaeologists. A UAV helped firemen track the blaze that recently ravaged southern California. The most immediate advantage of a UAV is cost: operating even a small helicopter can cost $1,000 an hour or more, but the bill for a drone is a fraction of that. However, the growing use of UAVs is causing a number of concerns. The first is safety. Last month America's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed its first-ever investigation into an unmanned-aircraft accident. Pilot error was blamed for the crash in Arizona in April 2006 of a 4,500kg (10,000lb) Predator B, a type of UAV used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was being operated by Customs and Border Protection when its engine was accidentally turned off by the team piloting it from a control room at an army base. No one was hurt, but the NTSB issued 22 recommendations to address what Mark Rosenker, its chairman, described as b a wide range of safety issues involving the civilian use of unmanned aircraft.b The second concern is privacy. UAVs can peek much more easily and cheaply than satellites and fixed cameras can. Although it is possible to peer into someone's back garden with Google Earth, the images are not b livebbsome are years old. Live satellite images can be impaired by clouds and darkness. A UAV, however, is more flexible. It can get closer to its target, move to new locations faster and hover almost silently above a property or outside a window. And the tiny ones that are coming will be able to fly inside buildings. Before long paparazzi will put cameras in them to snatch pictures of celebrities. Unmanned aircraft have been around almost as long as powered flight. In the first world war they were used as flying bombs and by the second as radio-controlled targets and for reconnaissance missions. In Afghanistan and Iraq they have also been fitted with missiles. In more recent years the development of unmanned aircraft has become a process of technological democratisation. Lightweight construction materials, engines, microelectronics, signal-processing equipment and navigation by global-positioning satellites (GPS), are all getting more sophisticated, smaller and cheaper. As a result, so have UAVs. Flown from afar A Predator, including ground equipment, costs around $8m. It is capable of operating in harsh conditions for more than a day. Even though a Predator may be flying over a remote part of Iraq, it is more than likely being controlled by pilots working in shifts and sitting in front of a video screen thousands of miles away at an air force base in America. Smaller, lighter and simpler UAV reconnaissance systems are being developed for troops in the field. These can be hand-launched, which reduces the need for remote-control piloting skills. Landings can be as simple as cutting the engine once the UAV has returned from its pre-programmed mission, at which point it flutters down to earth on a parachute. Some hovering types can land automatically. One such device is made by Microdrones, a German company. Their flying machine looks like a small flying saucer with four rotor blades on stubby arms. It is not much bigger than the laptop computer used to program its flight and monitor what it is looking at. It can stooge around for about 20 minutes carrying video and infra-red cameras. Some police forces have started to try it out. Earlier this year British bobbies used one to keep an eye on a music festival, busting people for drug offences and catching others breaking into cars. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which operates more than a dozen helicopters, has experimented with a foldaway UAV. It has wings and an electric engine, and can be assembled in minutes for hand-launching. It has a flight time of around 70 minutes. At around $30,000 all in, it is a lot cheaper than another new helicopter at around $3m. Scientists are using UAVs to help with experiments. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego flew a fleet of them in stacked formation over the Maldives in the Indian Ocean last year. They were collecting air samples simultaneously from different altitudes for research into the effects of global warming. In time, UAVs are likely to be employed for all sorts of jobs for which the use of an aircraft big enough to carry a pilot would be too dangerous, impractical or too expensive. Surveyors, for instance, could use a hovering UAV to inspect the walls of a tall building in a crowded city. A television station could use one to show traffic conditions. And as with all new technologies, unmanned vehicles will have uses that have not yet been imagined. Already, the technology is so easily available that you can build a basic UAV for around $1,000 from model-aircraft parts, the innards of a GPS unit and a Lego Mindstorms robotics kitbjust as Chris Anderson has done. Mr Anderson, the editor of WIRED magazine, has set up a website for other DIY-makers of low-cost UAVs. Not surprisingly aviation officials are watching things closely. b We have just entered a new era, and we have got to be concerned about protecting persons and property,b says Nicholas Sabatini, who is in charge of aviation safety at America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As the difference between sophisticated model aircraft equipped with auto-pilot systems and cameras and commercial UAVs blurs, the FAA is reconsidering its guidelines for model-flyers. At the moment these basically amount to keeping unmanned planes in sight at all times and away from people, buildings and other aircraft. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority is working with various industry groups to see what new rules may be needed. As a spokesman points out, UAVs will range from large jet-powered machines capable of flying across the Atlantic to tiny devices, so regulations will vary too depending on their size, weight and speed. Below a certain size, unmanned aircraft could be impossible to regulate. Nor would regulation do much to remove a chilling worry: that a UAV could be used as a weapon, to carry explosives or a biological agent. Blown away The smallest UAVS are the most intriguing because they will be able to fly in places where it was never thought aircraft could venture. Just how small might these machines be? The REMANTA bug has a total wingspan of less than 15cm (six inches). It flies by flapping its wings a bit like an insect. This means it needs less power than helicopter-type rotors and should be better able to withstand being blown off-course by wind, says AgnC(s Luc-Bouhali, a member of the project team. Such a device can fly and be controlled remotely, but it could not yet conduct a mission like that portrayed in Onera's video. b Today, that is a dream,b admits Ms Luc-Bouhali. But the team is working on it. Miniaturising power sources and sensors, and fitting REMANTA with systems to operate semi-autonomously in order to avoid obstacles such as walls are the main areas of future research and development. Such concerns also occupy researchers at Harvard University. They are working on a fly-like robot which weighs only 60 milligrams (0.002 ounces) and has a wingspan of just three centimetresbabout the size of a real fly and so most unlikely to be noticed. This means going beyond scaling down existing components, like electric motors, and trying entirely new manufacturing processes. The Harvard b fly-botb has flown, but so far only on a tether from which it gets external power. A different approach is being tried by a team at Britain's Portsmouth University working with a company called ANT Scientific. Next summer the group will enter a robotics competition to be held at a British army urban-warfare training centre. The Portsmouth team is working on a UAV small enough to fit on a hand. Charlie Barker-Wyatt, a member of the university group, says all he can reveal about the device is that it contains sensors, can remain airborne for about 15 minutes, has a range of 500 metres and flies like a b hovering and spinning frisbeeb. Such tiny devices are of less concern to safety officials than bigger UAVs that would cause damage if they hit an aeroplane or crashed to the ground. Until now UAVs have mostly been confined to conflict zones, no-go military areas or remote places. Some operate under the same guidelines as for model aircraft. But they are not welcome in b controlledb airspace, where manned aircraft fly under air-traffic control. The FAA's Mr Sabatini says his agency does not want to stifle their development, but insists it must at the same time maintain safety standards. This means larger UAVs could be considered b experimentalb aircraft and allowed to operate in closely controlled circumstances. But until they have some ability reliably to detect and avoid other aircraft they will have to keep clear of controlled airspace. Some bigger systems operate like manned aircraft even in remote areas. The b pilotsb of the Predator that crashed in Arizona were in contact with air-traffic controllers. But NTSB officials were still concerned about UAVs being flown too much like a computer game rather than as they would be if their pilots were on board. Strict operating conditions for bigger UAVs might suit aviation firms, which are used to regulation and face competition from unmanned aircraft. Evergreen, a big aerospace group based in Oregon, has set up a UAV operation within its helicopter division. It offers relatively large and sophisticated systems for use in long-range operations, like checking on oil rigs, search and rescue, and wildlife monitoring. Medium-sized systems might also have to be regulated, especially if used commercially. In the case of the smallest UAVs, the genie is already out of the bottle. When such devices are so small they might not even be noticed it would prove extremely difficult to regulate their use. Unmanned aircraft will become more common, but how they swarm will depend on how safely they are used and how people react to the invasion of privacy. Some UAV missions may not be very welcome at all. b It smacks of Big Brother if every time you look up there's a bug looking at you,b reckons the FAA's Mr Sabatini. Time to buy a good fly swat, perhaps. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[WIKILEAKS] Nuclear accident in Iran may lay behind mystery resignation
by Wikileaks Press Office 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

WIKILEAKS NOTE Thu Jul 16 23:03:02 GST 2009 "Nuclear accident in Iran may lay behind mystery resignation" Two weeks ago, a source associated with Iran's nuclear programme confidentially told WikiLeaks of a serious, recent, concealed nuclear accident at Natanz. Natanz is the primary location of Iran's nuclear enrichment program. We have reason to believe the source was credible however contact with this source has been lost. We would not normally mention such an incident without additional confirmation, however according to Iranian media and the BBC, today the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh has resigned under mysterious circumstances. According to reports, the resignation was tendered around 20 days ago. Contact: wl-iran(a)ljsf.org +-------------------------------------------------- | Why you receive this mail and what to do with it: | | You are receiving this mail because you were invited to | the Wikileaks Press Release list run by the transparency group Sunshine Press. | | Releases ensure you are aware, before the rest of the world, | of significant geopolitical and other disclosures released | by Wikileaks, an international platform for the first release of | of classified, confidential or censored materials of political, | diplomatic, ethical or historical interest. | | We rely on you to distribute the content of this mail to your | community, industry, press and regulators, to defend us in your | country and to invite people of integrity and commitment via | via https://lists.riseup.net/www/subscribe/wl-press | | Our materials range from secret Guantanamo documents to political | assassinations to confidential reports of children's hospital | corruption, and have spawned tens of thousands of press articles, | many reforms and changed electoral outcomes. | | Releases average one per week but can be higher or lower depending on | events. You can easily set the frequency to monthly or change your | subscription via https://lists.riseup.net/www/sendpasswd/ | | If you know people that have access to sensitive documents of public | interest, tell them about us. We have an unbroken record of protecting | sensitive sources and defeating censorship attacks from all corners of the globe. | See https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Submissions | | If you are about to release an investigative report or article, we can release the | underlaying source material concurrently to substantiate the allegations, | draw attention away from the true source, deflect legal or censorship | attacks and promote secondary investigations and public awareness. | | Live bank-grade encrypted chat to the office is available via | https://secure.wikileaks.org/chat/irc2.cgi (multiple languages spoken) | | Inquiries for speaking engagements, comment, interventions, | investigations, source-protection and censorship consultations | may be addressed to http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Contact | | If you are serious about analysis, translation, | legal, coding, network, financial or other contributions, please contact | us via: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks:Contact | | See http://wikileaks.org for all other information and | https://secure.wikileaks.org for secure access. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[Dewayne-Net] Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight A new way of identifying metal and explosives could provide a valuable tool in the fight against terrorism. Airport security has become big business following the terrorist attacks in the US. A system that detects both metal and non-metallic weapons using terahertz light has been developed by technology firm TeraView. It could make passenger screening at airports more effective and quicker, say experts. Safe to humans Dr Ruth Woodward, an independent scientific adviser for terahertz consultancy firm HT Consultants, said the technology could provide one of the most innovative ways of dealing with security threats. "It presents a positive step forward, although the economic benefits are yet to be determined," she told BBC News Online. Terahertz light sits between microwave and infrared on the electro-magnetic spectrum. It has a number of properties that can be harnessed to screen passengers. Unlike X-ray, it is perfectly safe to use on people. It can pass through clothing, paper and plastics to detect metal, ceramic or plastic weapons. And it can identify explosives by reading their characteristic spectral 'fingerprints'. Magic wand TeraView is a firm looking at ways of exploiting terahertz light. It is developing a handheld security wand that could be used by airport security guards to pass over the body of passengers. It is expected that the product will be available for commercial use within two years, following a trial at an as yet unspecified airport. The firm is partnering with detection equipment firm Smiths Detection on the project. The terahertz 'wand' will be attached to a box which will bleep when suspicious objects are found. Eventually the firm also hopes to make a walk-through portal that uses the same techniques as the wand to scan passengers. "The big challenge for airports is to keep the passengers happy and provide a high level of security," said Dr Mike Kemp, the vice-president of TeraView. "What we are trying to do with terahertz light is create something that is more automatic and reduces the dependence on the sharp-eyed operator," he said. Turning to technology The technology is not likely to replace current methods of scanning, rather will sit alongside them, he explained. And there is no substitute for old-fashioned human alertness. "Any technology, whether it is new or old, is only there to complement commonsense," said Dr Woodward. Following the September 11 attacks, airport security has taken on a new-found urgency. "Many companies are looking at new technologies that can offer substantially increased security," said Chris Yates, aviation security editor at Jane's Transport. A system that blows air at passengers to detect explosives is under trial at Terminal One of Manchester airport. And several US airports are testing technology that can virtually undress passengers to detect any suspicious items. This has caused uproar from civil liberty organisations in the US and led to some modification to allow passengers a degree of modesty. "Basically the most sensitive areas of the body have been blocked out," said Mr Yates. Terahertz light is the last unexplored frontier of the radio wave and light spectrum. and can be also be utilised in a variety of ways such as medical imaging. Story from BBC NEWS: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/3833275.stm> Published: 2004/07/08 08:05:37 GMT Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net> Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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[IP] Hi-tech rays to aid terror fight
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

1 0

UAV: the fly's a spy
by Eugen Leitl 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10059596 The fly's a spy Nov 1st 2007 >From The Economist print edition A new type of flying machine is watching you Onera JUST below a half-opened garage door a tiny device can be seen at the feet of someone lurking in the shadows. It looks like a blue dragonfly. Then its miniature wings begin to flap as it slips under the door and darts along the street. After rising through the air it stops to hover outside the window of a building several storeys high. There is an opening on the roof, and it slips inside. As it flits from room to room its video-camera b eyeb transmits pictures to a screen on a remote-control unit strapped to the wrist of its clandestine operator. This is not a scene from a James Bond film, in which 007 tests a new device from b Qb, but an animated video produced by Onera, France's national aerospace centre, to explain REMANTA, a project to develop the technologies needed for miniature robotic aircraft. More bug-like flying devices are being developed in other research laboratories around the world. A few are already small enough to be carried in a briefcase; others are the size of a jet fighter and need a runway for take-off. Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. They are being operated by groups as diverse as police, surveyors and archaeologists. A UAV helped firemen track the blaze that recently ravaged southern California. The most immediate advantage of a UAV is cost: operating even a small helicopter can cost $1,000 an hour or more, but the bill for a drone is a fraction of that. However, the growing use of UAVs is causing a number of concerns. The first is safety. Last month America's National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed its first-ever investigation into an unmanned-aircraft accident. Pilot error was blamed for the crash in Arizona in April 2006 of a 4,500kg (10,000lb) Predator B, a type of UAV used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was being operated by Customs and Border Protection when its engine was accidentally turned off by the team piloting it from a control room at an army base. No one was hurt, but the NTSB issued 22 recommendations to address what Mark Rosenker, its chairman, described as b a wide range of safety issues involving the civilian use of unmanned aircraft.b The second concern is privacy. UAVs can peek much more easily and cheaply than satellites and fixed cameras can. Although it is possible to peer into someone's back garden with Google Earth, the images are not b livebbsome are years old. Live satellite images can be impaired by clouds and darkness. A UAV, however, is more flexible. It can get closer to its target, move to new locations faster and hover almost silently above a property or outside a window. And the tiny ones that are coming will be able to fly inside buildings. Before long paparazzi will put cameras in them to snatch pictures of celebrities. Unmanned aircraft have been around almost as long as powered flight. In the first world war they were used as flying bombs and by the second as radio-controlled targets and for reconnaissance missions. In Afghanistan and Iraq they have also been fitted with missiles. In more recent years the development of unmanned aircraft has become a process of technological democratisation. Lightweight construction materials, engines, microelectronics, signal-processing equipment and navigation by global-positioning satellites (GPS), are all getting more sophisticated, smaller and cheaper. As a result, so have UAVs. Flown from afar A Predator, including ground equipment, costs around $8m. It is capable of operating in harsh conditions for more than a day. Even though a Predator may be flying over a remote part of Iraq, it is more than likely being controlled by pilots working in shifts and sitting in front of a video screen thousands of miles away at an air force base in America. Smaller, lighter and simpler UAV reconnaissance systems are being developed for troops in the field. These can be hand-launched, which reduces the need for remote-control piloting skills. Landings can be as simple as cutting the engine once the UAV has returned from its pre-programmed mission, at which point it flutters down to earth on a parachute. Some hovering types can land automatically. One such device is made by Microdrones, a German company. Their flying machine looks like a small flying saucer with four rotor blades on stubby arms. It is not much bigger than the laptop computer used to program its flight and monitor what it is looking at. It can stooge around for about 20 minutes carrying video and infra-red cameras. Some police forces have started to try it out. Earlier this year British bobbies used one to keep an eye on a music festival, busting people for drug offences and catching others breaking into cars. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, which operates more than a dozen helicopters, has experimented with a foldaway UAV. It has wings and an electric engine, and can be assembled in minutes for hand-launching. It has a flight time of around 70 minutes. At around $30,000 all in, it is a lot cheaper than another new helicopter at around $3m. Scientists are using UAVs to help with experiments. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego flew a fleet of them in stacked formation over the Maldives in the Indian Ocean last year. They were collecting air samples simultaneously from different altitudes for research into the effects of global warming. In time, UAVs are likely to be employed for all sorts of jobs for which the use of an aircraft big enough to carry a pilot would be too dangerous, impractical or too expensive. Surveyors, for instance, could use a hovering UAV to inspect the walls of a tall building in a crowded city. A television station could use one to show traffic conditions. And as with all new technologies, unmanned vehicles will have uses that have not yet been imagined. Already, the technology is so easily available that you can build a basic UAV for around $1,000 from model-aircraft parts, the innards of a GPS unit and a Lego Mindstorms robotics kitbjust as Chris Anderson has done. Mr Anderson, the editor of WIRED magazine, has set up a website for other DIY-makers of low-cost UAVs. Not surprisingly aviation officials are watching things closely. b We have just entered a new era, and we have got to be concerned about protecting persons and property,b says Nicholas Sabatini, who is in charge of aviation safety at America's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As the difference between sophisticated model aircraft equipped with auto-pilot systems and cameras and commercial UAVs blurs, the FAA is reconsidering its guidelines for model-flyers. At the moment these basically amount to keeping unmanned planes in sight at all times and away from people, buildings and other aircraft. Britain's Civil Aviation Authority is working with various industry groups to see what new rules may be needed. As a spokesman points out, UAVs will range from large jet-powered machines capable of flying across the Atlantic to tiny devices, so regulations will vary too depending on their size, weight and speed. Below a certain size, unmanned aircraft could be impossible to regulate. Nor would regulation do much to remove a chilling worry: that a UAV could be used as a weapon, to carry explosives or a biological agent. Blown away The smallest UAVS are the most intriguing because they will be able to fly in places where it was never thought aircraft could venture. Just how small might these machines be? The REMANTA bug has a total wingspan of less than 15cm (six inches). It flies by flapping its wings a bit like an insect. This means it needs less power than helicopter-type rotors and should be better able to withstand being blown off-course by wind, says AgnC(s Luc-Bouhali, a member of the project team. Such a device can fly and be controlled remotely, but it could not yet conduct a mission like that portrayed in Onera's video. b Today, that is a dream,b admits Ms Luc-Bouhali. But the team is working on it. Miniaturising power sources and sensors, and fitting REMANTA with systems to operate semi-autonomously in order to avoid obstacles such as walls are the main areas of future research and development. Such concerns also occupy researchers at Harvard University. They are working on a fly-like robot which weighs only 60 milligrams (0.002 ounces) and has a wingspan of just three centimetresbabout the size of a real fly and so most unlikely to be noticed. This means going beyond scaling down existing components, like electric motors, and trying entirely new manufacturing processes. The Harvard b fly-botb has flown, but so far only on a tether from which it gets external power. A different approach is being tried by a team at Britain's Portsmouth University working with a company called ANT Scientific. Next summer the group will enter a robotics competition to be held at a British army urban-warfare training centre. The Portsmouth team is working on a UAV small enough to fit on a hand. Charlie Barker-Wyatt, a member of the university group, says all he can reveal about the device is that it contains sensors, can remain airborne for about 15 minutes, has a range of 500 metres and flies like a b hovering and spinning frisbeeb. Such tiny devices are of less concern to safety officials than bigger UAVs that would cause damage if they hit an aeroplane or crashed to the ground. Until now UAVs have mostly been confined to conflict zones, no-go military areas or remote places. Some operate under the same guidelines as for model aircraft. But they are not welcome in b controlledb airspace, where manned aircraft fly under air-traffic control. The FAA's Mr Sabatini says his agency does not want to stifle their development, but insists it must at the same time maintain safety standards. This means larger UAVs could be considered b experimentalb aircraft and allowed to operate in closely controlled circumstances. But until they have some ability reliably to detect and avoid other aircraft they will have to keep clear of controlled airspace. Some bigger systems operate like manned aircraft even in remote areas. The b pilotsb of the Predator that crashed in Arizona were in contact with air-traffic controllers. But NTSB officials were still concerned about UAVs being flown too much like a computer game rather than as they would be if their pilots were on board. Strict operating conditions for bigger UAVs might suit aviation firms, which are used to regulation and face competition from unmanned aircraft. Evergreen, a big aerospace group based in Oregon, has set up a UAV operation within its helicopter division. It offers relatively large and sophisticated systems for use in long-range operations, like checking on oil rigs, search and rescue, and wildlife monitoring. Medium-sized systems might also have to be regulated, especially if used commercially. In the case of the smallest UAVs, the genie is already out of the bottle. When such devices are so small they might not even be noticed it would prove extremely difficult to regulate their use. Unmanned aircraft will become more common, but how they swarm will depend on how safely they are used and how people react to the invasion of privacy. Some UAV missions may not be very welcome at all. b It smacks of Big Brother if every time you look up there's a bug looking at you,b reckons the FAA's Mr Sabatini. Time to buy a good fly swat, perhaps. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [liberationtech] Images of Blocking in Different Countries?
by liberationtech＠lewman.us 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 02:55:33PM +0800, crates(a)oneotaslopes.org wrote 14K bytes in 386 lines about: : As far as I can tell, China doesn't "keyword-filter" in the sense most : people think of that phrase. That is, the Great Firewall isn't inspecting : all the text which flows through it, failing to deliver any web pages which : have offending words. The filtering is of two main types: China does lots of things in various ways. Best educated guesses as to why this is so are around lack of coordination internally and they like to try new things to see how much under- or over-blocking happens. What's been interesting is that I ran an IPv6-only host for the past year and queried all sorts of banned terms and known-blocked sites without issue. It seems China only focuses on IPv4 right now. When Huawei, Cisco, ZTE, and others have an IPv6 firewalling solution, I'm sure the censorship will expand to include IPv6 as well. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x6B4D6475 _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. You may ask for a reminder here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Los Angeles Times: Robert Heinlein's future may be past
by R.A. Hettinga 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

<http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca- heinlein9dec09,0,1217973,print.story?coll=la-books-headlines> http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca- heinlein9dec09,0,6886058.story?coll=la-books-headlines From the Los Angeles Times Books & authors Robert Heinlein's future may be past He was one of the greats of golden-age science fiction, but his legacy polarizes today's readers. By Scott Timberg Los Angeles Times Staff Writer December 9, 2007 He was a onetime utopian socialist who became an assertive right- winger, a libertarian nudist with a military-hardware fetish, a cold warrior who penned an Age of Aquarius sensation with a hero who preached free love. He won admiration from Ronald Reagan, who enlisted his ideas in his "Star Wars" missile shield, and Charles Manson, who was captured with the novel "Stranger in a Strange Land" in his backpack. He predicted the European Union and invented the water bed. But Robert A. Heinlein, the California-based science-fiction writer who stood over the midcentury decades like a colossus, casts a different kind of shadow now, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, as his archives, held by UC Santa Cruz, are being placed online, making his work even more accessible to scholars and fans. Most of his work is in print, but opinions vary wildly about how important a writer Heinlein was: He's both a life-changing inspiration and a "dinosaur" who exerts less cultural presence than, say, Philip K. Dick, the drug-addled oddball who was a footnote during the field's golden age. Heinlein, who in life was a divisive figure, has become, in death, a polarizing one and even something of a punch line. "When an emerging science-fiction writer's work earns him comparisons to Robert A. Heinlein," Dave Itzkoff begins a 2006 New York Times review, "should he take them as a compliment?" As the literary and academic worlds open to science-fiction and genre writing, Heinlein lacks the cachet of J.G. Ballard, Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson and others. Films based on Dick's books, good and bad, keep coming. But Heinlein's film adaptations, in the last half century, since 1950's "Destination Moon," culminated in 1997's "Starship Troopers," widely disliked by his fan base. Non-SF writer William Burroughs probably has more influence inside the genre's literary wing than Heinlein, who won four Hugos (the award voted by the fans), sold millions of copies, and was termed the field's most significant writer since H.G. Wells. "His rabid fan base is graying," said Annalee Newitz, who writes about science fiction for Wired and Gawker. "To literary readers, the books look cheesy, sexist in a hairy-chest, gold-chain kind of way. His stuff hasn't stood the test of time," because of characters' windy speechifying and their frontier optimism. "Here at the store I actively resist promoting him, because he was a fascist," said Charles Hauther, the science fiction buyer at Skylight Books. "People don't seem to talk about him anymore. I haven't had a conversation about Heinlein in a long time." Still, hard-core admirers remain: David Silver, the Venice-based president of the 800-member Heinlein Society, discovered the author's work as a boy in the '50s and said he rereads about four dozen of Heinlein's books every year. And Heinlein's following shows up in unexpected places: He's the hero of numerous astronauts, Silicon Valley types and those seeking to privatize space travel. He isn't just their favorite writer; he set them on their life's course. He generated public enthusiasm for the space race, inspired the genre called "military science fiction." Tom Clancy, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and countless libertarians are fans. A crater on Mars is named for him. Tom Disch, author of the respected critical study "The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of," said Heinlein's early work was often brilliant. "His great misfortune is the people who like him: It's often old- fashioned, cantankerous, right-wing chest-beaters. He was a better writer than that would suggest. He had a gift for startling notions." 'He was the enemy' THERE are plenty of reasons for the polarized feelings over Heinlein, who was born in Missouri, attended the U.S. Naval Academy, left the military after a bout of tuberculosis and spent several decades in L.A. and Santa Cruz. After campaigning for Upton Sinclair and running for the California Assembly, he dominated the pulp magazines, broke into the Saturday Evening Post and became the first science fictionist to land on the New York Times bestseller list. Some of the divisiveness around Heinlein comes from a battle that redrew the field profoundly over politics and gender. In the '40s and '50s, science fiction's "golden age," there were three faces on the genre's Mt. Rushmore: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Heinlein. His books are far more likely than the others' to have the word "controversial" in their jacket copy. "He was the enemy," recalled Disch, who was an emerging novelist in the "new wave" of the 1960s. Those writers, often liberal or radical, aimed to move away from pulp space operas and toward literature, from tales of physics to stories about psychology and sexuality and drugs. There were more female writers, and the men exhibited a feminist consciousness that diverged sharply from the golden age, in which women were usually sex objects, foils to rugged male heroes or absent altogether. Even "Stranger," with its countercultural following and endless debates about alternative sexuality -- it's one of several of his books to dramatize group marriages -- enrages feminists these days. "It's like the sexist model of hippie life," said Newitz. " 'We're all liberated, but the women still get the coffee.' " Though he became a symbol of all that was backward to the new wavers, some cite him as a major influence. "He was the enemy -- yes," said Samuel R. Delany, a leader of the '60s insurgence who is also black and gay. "But he was the enemy to be bested at his own game. We took his rhetorical tricks, his ways of dramatizing an argument, and then used them to dramatize arguments he would have hated." Despite a backlash of masculine, hard-science-driven work in the early Reagan era, the new wave effectively won the war when cyberpunk and its variations became the dominant strains over the last few decades. "He was certainly temporarily defeated by that generation," said Newitz. "But we're really going through a renaissance of space opera" in movies and television and books by writers such as Iain M. Banks and Ken MacLeod, who lean as far to the left as Heinlein did to the right. "Any form goes through phases, and we're seeing a backlash against cyberpunk. We're sick of implants. We want to go to another galaxy. This new generation is writing stuff that's more literary and more relevant to issues we're grappling with as a culture." The core of his following FOR years, the intellectually ambitious novels of the 1960s, especially "Stranger in a Strange Land," about a spiritually and sexually messianic Martian-born human, and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress," which concerns a free-market revolt by prisoners on the moon, were considered Heinlein's great work. These books still have followings; "Moon" sits in the International Space Station library. But the bestselling "Stranger," which Kurt Vonnegut Jr. reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review in 1990 when it was reissued in an expanded edition, now reads like a long-winded relic of the '60s, philosophy for junior high kids. Meanwhile, the books aimed squarely at a youth audience, the "juveniles" of the '40s and '50s, such as "Red Planet" and "Orphans in the Sky," have seen their stars rise. "There's always this Heinlein character pontificating," said Junot Dmaz, who immersed himself in the books as background for his recent novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." "I never liked that. And he always cut that down in his juveniles. He was so much more humane" in those books." "One of my favorites was 'Have Space Suit Spacesuit -- Will Travel.' I used to have dreams about that book." George Slusser, who's taught science fiction at UC Riverside for 25 years and sees Heinlein as reflecting many currents of American literature, concedes that many of the late books are self-indulgent and solipsistic. But his students continue to respond to Heinlein's juveniles, especially science students. "Have Space Suit -- Will Travel," said Slusser, "is like 'Huckleberry Finn' redone, even though the title is silly and it involves a kid getting a space suit by saving box tops." L.A. writer M.G. Lord loves the juveniles and credits their strong, self-reliant females with making her a feminist. The tendency of Heinlein heroines to use initials led young Mary Grace to do the same. But Heinlein's adult books are not as good, she said, and some written during and after the sexual revolution are disturbing, including "Friday," in which a heroine falls in love with her rapist. "The minute he could make his sexual fantasies explicit it was, 'Oh, gross!' " The serious books, especially those he wrote in the two decades before his death in 1988, seem culturally out of step. "I don't see any of his novels as being especially relevant for my students in the 21st century," said H. Bruce Franklin, a Rutgers professor and author of "Robert Heinlein: America as Science Fiction." Heinlein's gift was to catch the zeitgeist. "That's what made him so successful, but it makes his work seem dated." As space travel has moved from its Cold War centrality to the margins, his work has dated further. In short, Franklin said, the future doesn't look as he predicted it would. Still, even detractors see his shadow. "The idea of combining a space opera about the military with a soap opera about sex is a pretty cool thing," said Newitz. "Film directors are still wrapping their heads around that. "Maybe there will be a Heinlein renaissance," she offered. "But I sure hope not."

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Boulder Tech report on low-resource routing attacks on Tor
by Paul Syverson 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The following are some comments on the Univ. Colorado at Boulder tech report "Low-Resource Routing Attacks Against Anonymous Systems" that has been getting lots of press and other web attention lately and been somewhat discussed on this list. It is only today that I have managed to find time to sit down and read the paper. The nutshell for people that don't want to read the details below: A good paper. It does _not_ show Tor to be broken. (Nor did it ever claim to. I only state that because of some of what has appeared in the blagnpress, which to their credit, the authors tried to curtail.) It is a nice contribution, especially in showing the limitations of the current approach to entry guard selection. Overstates its novelty over prior work, which is really unnecessary because it makes valuable contributions of its own (and which is more or less my fault not theirs, cf. below). More details: This is a nice piece of work. Its greatest contribution is in directing attacks on entry guards. In the theory and simulation work in which such ideas were introduced by Wright et al. they were introduced (as "helper nodes") to reduce vulnerability. As a recent addition to Tor, the nature of defense they provide but also the possible risks from how they are used in actual implementation and deployment needed to be explored. It was understood from the start that there is something of a tradeoff in introducing them. It was realized that profiling without entry guards was in practice trivial enough that the additional risk of adding entry guards and thus simplifying and enhancing profiling for anyone who unfortunately had an adversary guard node was clearly worth it. I don't think this paper changes that. However, by attacking the guard selection process itself, the research forces us to examine it more closely. What they did was apply techniques that Lasse and I developed in "Locating Hidden Services" to ordinary client circuits. Though we had said this would be straightforward to do, we didn't actually do it. Because we were focused on the deployed Tor network we could not pursue this sort of attack there. We were also focused primarily on what could be accomplished with a single hostile node. This limits to cases of either a hostile website (as in Murdoch and Danezis and as mentioned on p. 10 of this tech report) or a hostile client and a hidden service, which is what we reported on. Deploying a Tor network on PlanetLab and using synthetically generated data removes some of the "in the wild" reality from the results. But, by accepting this limitation, it allowed them to obtain data at all about Tor circuits for ordinary use (not hidden services). Much in the practicality spirit of onion routing. The experimental networks were more than an order of magnituded smaller than the current deployed Tor network. One cannot be sure something will scale until actually trying it, but in this case there is no reason to doubt it does scale. Still if we take the 9 percent figure given by the authors as an arbitrary line at which attacks become significant, that is still almost a hundred nodes in the current network. At about twice the entire size of the experimental networks that were set up this starts to be a bit more than low-resource. Still one could do quite a bit with less than 9 percent. Also, as a counter to my own point, see "On the countermeasures" below. On prior work: Before I start noting all the things that the authors didn't properly cite, I should observer that they first contacted me about their work way back in last October and have cc'd me on correspondence with Roger, who did read their work and respond to them. If these are indeed omissions and oversights in their paper, then it is my fault because they gave me plenty of opportunity to comment before it hit the interblag. I just didn't squeeze in the time before now. I already mentioned that the basic techniques are similar to what was in my paper with Lasse Xverlier, "Locating Hidden Servers". The authors say that they think theirs is "the first approach capable of [compromising anonymity] before the client starts to transmit any payload data". I believe that the code we ran would be entirely able to do this. We mentioned it only briefly in passing in our paper, and we didn't actually do it. The authors of this report did. They also say they have introduced the idea of nodes falsely reporting bandwidth and uptime. As they note this is central to the way their basic attack works. As they do not note, this was explicitly used by Lasse and me in our attacks. I quote from our paper, "Alice's server node will report a false higher uptime and the maximum network bandwidth to the directory server in order for other nodes to trust it for their circuits. This is still possible as there is (yet) no method for keeping reliable track of uptime at the different servers." They also introduce the idea of selective path disruption to speed up attacks by dropping circuits, because that will cause more circuits to be built. This was also part of our attacks albeit since we controlled the client connecting to the hidden service, it could be done there. The statement that the algorithm for choosing entry guards was "implemented to protect the first hop of a circuit by using what are believed to be more reliable and trustworthy nodes" is false. Using more reliable nodes was seen as sensible because it should minimize the number of entry guards a client uses, which is the whole point. Nobody thought that this made them more trustworthy. In fact the general threat of adversaries running reliable nodes (in both onion routing and mixnets) to attract more traffic is well recognized. On the threat model. While the design document does use the c^2/n^2 basic result from "Towards an Analysis of Onion Routing Security" as a starting point. This was not thought to be accurate once we had substantial deployment and was acknowledged as such. Cf., "Challenges in deploying low-latency anonymity" http://www.onion-router.net/Publications.html#challenges On the countermeasures: Rather than discuss all of them in detail in an already overly long post, I'll just note that I think they may help against an adversary that has only several hundred to a few thousand dollars in resources. The authors note that they are considering just that case, and it is certainly worthwhile to see what it takes to mount an attack and what works against a low resource adversary. That was also part of our motivation to show what could be done with a single bad node. But, an adversary that has a few tens of thousands of dollars can simply run many reliable high bandwidth nodes and thus mount the attack invulnerable to any countermeasure against lying. Michael Gersten noted the threat of this attack in a separate context in a post to this list yesterday (March 6). And it has long been recognized as a potential threat to Tor in general. I have begun to look at countermeasures that should work unless the adversary owns major hunks of the network, e.g., social network based, but will not get into that further here. More than you wanted to read. Hope it was useful anyway. aloha, Paul ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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