Tag: technology

Colorado Will Replace Cops With Drones for Some 911 Calls

Instead of dispatching an officer each time, several Colorado police departments may soon dispatch a drone to respond to certain 911 calls. While the proposal has promise, it also raises uncomfortable questions about privacy.

As Shelly Bradbury reported this week in The Denver Post, “A handful of local law enforcement agencies are considering using drones as first responders—that is, sending them in response to 911 calls—as police departments across Colorado continue to widely embrace the use of the remote-controlled flying machines.”

Bradbury quotes Arapahoe County Sheriff Jeremiah Gates saying, “This really is the future of law enforcement at some point, whether we like it or not.” She notes that while there are currently no official plans in place, “Gates envisions a world where a drone is dispatched to a call about a broken traffic light or a suspicious vehicle instead of a sheriff’s deputy, allowing actual deputies to prioritize more pressing calls for help.”

The Denver Police Department—whose then-chief in 2013 called the use of drones by police “controversial” and said that “constitutionally there are a lot of unanswered questions about how they can be used”—is also starting a program, buying several drones over the next year that can eventually function as first responders.

In addition to Denver and Arapahoe County, Bradbury lists numerous Colorado law enforcement agencies that also have drone programs, including the Colorado State Patrol, which has 24 drones, and the Commerce City Police Department, which has eight drones and 12 pilots for a city of around 62,000 people and plans to begin using them for 911 response within a year.

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Rights Groups Join Fight Against Racially Biased Facial Recognition Tech

There is a small but growing lobby made up of people who have been wrongly arrested as a result of facial recognition technology. Among them is Robert Williams, an American who was handcuffed in front of his family in 2020 after police facial recognition misidentified him as a suspect in a federal larceny case.

Williams is now calling for police forces in Ireland to scrap their plans to deploy the biometric tech. In comments made at an event in Dublin hosted by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) and issued in a release, Williams points to the risk that comes with using tools that are prone to misidentify people of color.

“Federal studies have shown that facial recognition systems misidentify Asian and Black people up to 100 times more often than white people,” Williams says. “In America, we’re trying to undo the harms that FRT has already done. Here in Ireland, you have an opportunity not to introduce it in the first place. I hope your government will listen to experiences like mine and think twice before bringing FRT into policing.”

Williams refers to a 2019 report from NIST, which has since been updated, showing that some algorithms were 10 to 100 times more likely to misidentify a Black or East Asian than a white face. Not all of the algorithms evaluated are in commercial production, however, and others were found to have imperceptible differences in performance between demographics, prompting NIST Biometric Standards and Testing Lead Patrick Grother to urge those implementing facial recognition to be specific in evaluating bias.

Williams’ statement on the U.S. could also be debated, given the uptake of facial recognition technology by law enforcement agencies across the country. And while it is true that Irish police could still decide to pass on facial recognition, it is unlikely. The government is in the process of drafting legislation that would give Gardaí access to FRT. And police in the neighboring UK have embraced facial recognition with aplomb.

Nor is it merely an island thing. Police in Sweden are currently pushing against the limits of the still-fresh AI Act with plans to deploy 1:N facial recognition in public spaces. And Canadian police recently contracted Idemia to provide facial recognition services.

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OPTICAL ENGINEERS INVENT ULTRA-THIN COATING THAT TURNS ORDINARY GLASSES INTO HIGH-EFFICIENCY NIGHT VISION GOGGLES

A team of scientists has created an ultra-thin coating that can provide high-efficiency night vision to any glass surface, including ordinary reading glasses. Designed using something called a non-local metasurface, the plastic-wrap-thin coating also lets through all of the visible light, allowing users to see perfectly during daytime or at night.

Some previous efforts using a non-local metasurface to create a night vision coating have shown limited success. However, those efforts have suffered from severely limited image quality. The inventors of this newest coating say they have broken through that barrier, resulting in a high-definition image visible light image that could rival the infrared to visible light up-conversion rates of bulkier, more complex night vision systems already in commercial use today.

“People have said that high-efficiency up-conversion of infrared to visible is impossible because of the amount of information not collected due to the angular loss that is inherent in non-local metasurfaces,” explained Laura Valencia Molina, a researcher from the Australian National University’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems (TMOS). “We overcome these limitations and experimentally demonstrate high-efficiency image up-conversion.”

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LAPD expo shows latest in less-than-lethal police robots, devices

The Los Angeles Police Department hosted an expo on Thursday that demonstrated the future of non-lethal policing.

Some 70 vendors came to the police academy to demonstrate robots, advanced Tasers and other devices that can de-escalate dangerous situations without the use of deadly force.

The robots were available in two-legged humanoid versions as well as four-legged canine simulators.

“What this individual has the capability of doing is they have full range of motion,” said Michael Plaskin, whose company Alchera X develops police robots. “They can go ahead and communicate. They have the technology to raise their hands and walk around and be able to deter and detract from another individual.”

The LAPD and other law enforcement agencies were shopping around here seeing what’s available. The Police Commission has to approve major LAPD equipment purchases.

The LAPD is looking into less than lethal equipment to reduce the number of fatal officer-involved shootings

“We’re having more and more incidents with people suffering from mental illness,” said LAPD Capt. Christopher Zine. “Also people that are addicted to drugs and alcohol. So using effective less-lethal options gets us to effectively de-escalate the situation. And that’s our goal. We’ve been de-escalating for as long as I can remember. And we’re gonna continue to do so.”

One of the less lethal options on display was the latest in Taser guns. The Taser 10 carries up to 10 cartridges.

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What’s Next For Battlefield America? Israel’s High-Tech Military Tactics Point The Way

“I did not know Israel was capturing or recording my face. [But Israel has] been watching us for years from the sky with their drones. They have been watching us gardening and going to schools and kissing our wives. I feel like I have been watched for so long.”

– Mosab Abu Toha, Palestinian poet

If you want a glimpse of the next stage of America’s transformation into a police state, look no further than how Israel – a long-time recipient of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid from the U.S. – uses its high-tech military tactics, surveillance and weaponry to advance its authoritarian agenda.

Military checkpoints. Wall-to-wall mass surveillance. Predictive policing. Aerial surveillance that tracks your movements wherever you go and whatever you do. AI-powered facial recognition and biometric programs carried out with the knowledge or consent of those targeted by it. Cyber-intelligence. Detention centers. Brutal interrogation tactics. Weaponized drones. Combat robots.

We’ve already seen many of these military tactics and technologies deployed on American soil and used against the populace, especially along the border regions, a testament to the heavy influence Israel’s military-industrial complex has had on U.S. policing.

Indeed, Israel has become one of the largest developers and exporters of military weapons and technologies of oppression worldwide.

Journalist Antony Loewenstein has warned that Pegasus, one of Israel’s most invasive pieces of spyware, which allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone and get all the information from that phone, has become a favorite tool of oppressive regimes around the world. The FBI and NYPD have also been recipients of the surveillance technology which promises to turn any “target’s smartphone into an intelligence gold mine.”

Yet it’s not just military weapons that Israel is exporting. They’re also helping to transform local police agencies into extensions of the military.

According to The Intercept, thousands of American law enforcement officers frequently travel for training to Israel, “one of the few countries where policing and militarism are even more deeply intertwined than they are here,” as part of an ongoing exchange program that largely flies under the radar of public scrutiny.

A 2018 investigative report concluded that imported military techniques by way of these exchange programs that allow police to study in Israel have changed American policing for the worse. “Upon their return, U.S. law enforcement delegates implement practices learned from Israel’s use of invasive surveillance, blatant racial profiling, and repressive force against dissent,” the report states. “Rather than promoting security for all, these programs facilitate an exchange of methods in state violence and control that endanger us all.”

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House Bill Pulls Plug on Biden’s AI Censorship R&D Funding

A House bill seeks to stop the Biden Administration from continuing to spend taxpayer money to fund development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that will censor online content the government wants to dismiss as “disinformation.”

H.R. 8519, sponsored by more than two dozen House Republicans, is an 83-word bill defunding the federal government’s online censorship research:

A BILL

To prohibit the obligation or expenditure of Federal funds for disinformation research grants, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. PROHIBITION.

No Federal funds may be obligated or expended by any Federal department or agency for the following:

(1) Disinformation research grants.

(2) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace grants.

(3) Programs within the National Science Foundation’s Track F: Trust and Authenticity in Communications Systems.

NSF’s Track F program is identified as a grave threat to online free speech in a report by the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The report details specific examples of how the program spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund development of ways AI can be used to censor online speech.

“As the distributor of multi-million-dollar grants, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is a key player in the ‘censorship industrial complex,’” the report says:

“In recent years, under the guise of combatting so-called misinformation, NSF has been funding AI-driven tools and other new technologies that can be used to censor or propagandize online speech.”

As the report explains, the Biden Administration’s program is actually a purveyor of disinformation (emphasis added):

“In March 2021, NSF introduced Track F: Trust & Authenticity in CommunicationSystems, allocating $21 million to the program. For Track F, NSF solicited proposals to address the manipulation or ‘unanticipated negative effects’ of communication systems—a departure from the Convergence Accelerator program’s other, more concrete research topics.

“The euphemistic ‘trust and authenticity in communication systems,’ in fact, means combatting so-called ‘misinformation,’ i.e., censorship. In an early draft solicitation, NSF indicated that Track F projects will ‘address issues of trust and authenticity in communication systems, including predicting, preventing, detecting, correcting, and mitigating the spread of inaccurate information that harms people and society.’ As NSF’s Track F program manager, Michael Pozmantier, explained more plainly in a June 2021 email, Track F isthe NSF ‘Accelerator track focused on combatting mis/disinformation.’”

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Pentagon’s AI office awards Palantir a contract to create a data-sharing ecosystem

The Department of Defense’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office, or CDAO, leveraged its marketplace for fast-tracking the acquisition of innovative technologies to award Silicon Valley-based Palantir a contract to develop a data-sharing ecosystem — a tool that will help the Pentagon with its connect-everything initiative.

CDAO announced last Thursday that the ecosystem — known as Open Data and Applications Government-owned Interoperable Repositories, or Open DAGIR — will enable the Department of Defense to scale its use of data, analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities through greater collaboration with private sector partners. 

Palantir said it received a $33 million prototype Other Transaction award from CDAO “to rapidly and securely onboard third-party vendor and government capabilities into the government-owned, Palantir-operated data environment to meet priority combatant command digital needs.”

The contract was awarded through CDAO’s Tradewinds Solution Marketplace, which allows private firms of all sizes to pitch DOD their AI, machine learning and data capabilities through five minute infomercial-style videos. Once companies are accepted into the marketplace, Pentagon components can search the platform to view videos of solutions from industry partners. Companies, in turn, are able to access post-competition, readily awardable contracts. 

Bonnie Evangelista, CDAO’s acting deputy for acquisition directorate, told Nextgov/FCW earlier this year that the platform can significantly shorten the time it takes for companies to receive DOD contracts.

During a NetApp conference on Tuesday, CDAO Director of Procurement Quentin McCoy said Palantir’s use of the Tradewinds marketplace allowed it to receive the award for Open DAGIR in 30 days. 

“It’s a sort of healthy prototype,” McCoy said about the Open DAGIR solution Palantir will provide, noting that “it’s going to allow industry and government to ingest data together and share and bring in third-party vendors to do this action.”

DOD said it will initially use Open DAGIR to support its Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control — or CJADC2 — initiative that is designed to promote interoperability across disparate military environments. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced in February that CDAO had achieved “the minimum viable capability” of the information-sharing network.

CDAO is also planning to use its ongoing Global Information Dominance Experiments, or GIDE, to determine whether any additional capabilities should be added to the Open DAGIR ecosystem. GIDE is designed, in part, to help inform the Pentagon’s use of emerging technologies to support its CJADC2 initiative. 

The GIDE series — created by U.S. Northern Command and relaunched by CDAO last year — tests out AI and data analytics tools to determine how they can be used for military decisionmaking. The department finished its GIDE 9 iteration in March. 

McCoy said CDAO is planning to hold several industry days in the next few months, including one scheduled for mid-July, in preparation for the office’s next GIDE iteration. 

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America’s Cold War Doomsday Satellite

When most people think about drama surrounding the launch of a nuclear weapon, they usually think about some sort of tense face-off between two officers who don’t agree on whether or not to launch, often spurred by some sort of garbled message or unforeseen circumstance that leaves those orders in doubt. But in reality, this is actually the least dramatic portion of the entire exercise. American nuclear missile crews, regardless of which leg of the nuclear triad they fall under, train ceaselessly to execute the orders to launch under any circumstances. If the codes match…missiles fly. What *does* keep nuclear planners up at night is how to make sure the shooters end up getting the orders to fire in the first place.  

Early in the Cold War, new and maturing technologies in warfare and communications led to some interesting ideas about how to get launch orders to alert crews no matter what. Simply put, communications underpinned the entire credibility of the nuclear deterrent. The Pentagon needed a way to make absolutely sure that no matter what happened to its command and control infrastructure during the opening of a nuclear exchange, the president’s orders would be delivered. In the end, they decided that the best way to launch a bunch of missiles and set bombers flying was to launch a missile capable of delivering those commands. That missile was the AN/DRC 8 Emergency Rocket Communications System or ERCS.

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U-2 Retirement Reprieve Emerges In Proposed Defense Spending Bill

Members of Congress are moving to prevent the U.S. Air Force from retiring its fleet of iconic U-2 Dragon Lady spy planes. The Pentagon approved a waiver last year that had cleared the way for the service to begin divesting the high-flying Cold War-era jets, which The War Zone was first to report. The Air Force’s current plan is to divest the last of the U-2s in 2026 and supplant them with a mix of still largely undefined space-based and other capabilities, which is widely believed to include a classified stealthy high-altitude drone.

The House Appropriations Committee released a draft of the annual defense spending bill for the upcoming 2025 Fiscal Year earlier today. It includes a provision that, should the bill become law, would explicitly and without exception prevent “funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act” from being “used to divest or prepare to divest any U-2 aircraft.”

As of the start of Fiscal Year 2024, the Air Force had 31 U-2s in its inventory, including a trio of two-seat TU-2S trainers.

Until last year, the Air Force had been blocked from retiring any U-2s by provisions in annual defense policy bills, or National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA), enacted in previous fiscal years. However, the earlier legislation had included a path to proceeding with retiring the venerable spy planes if the Pentagon could certify that certain stipulations had been met. Chief among these was the insistence that the resulting capability gap would be filled in a cost-effective manner. You can read more about this here.

“On October 30, 2023, the Secretary of Defense [Lloyd Austin] signed a waiver to divest the U-2 Dragon Lady in accordance with language in the FY 2021 NDAA waiver requirement. In signing the waiver, Secretary of Defense certified combatant commands will continue to be able to accomplish their missions at acceptable levels of risk,” an annual force structure report the Pentagon released in April further explains. “The ability to win future high-end conflicts requires accepting short-term risks by divesting legacy ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconniassance] assets that offer limited capability against peer and near-peer threats. The USAF will fleet-divest the remaining 31 U-2 aircraft starting October 1, 2026.”

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Scientists Used CRISPR Gene Editing to Make Chickens Resist Bird Flu — Here’s What Happened

Scientists who used the gene-editing technology CRISPR to create chickens resistant to avian influenza also showed how quickly a dangerous bird flu could mutate from laboratory chickens to humans, critics of a new study in the journal Nature Communications told The Defender.

The authors of the study, led by researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, altered the genetic code of 10 chickens to make them resistant to a bird-flu virus and then exposed them to the virus.

They also included 10 chickens in the study that were not genetically altered. All 10 chickens not genetically altered got sick when they were exposed to the virus. Only one of the genetically altered chickens got sick with the bird flu.

Altering a species’ DNA “promises a new way to make permanent changes in the disease resistance of an animal,” University of Edinburgh embryologist Mike McGrew, Ph.D., an author of the study, said at an Oct. 5 news briefing announcing the peer-reviewed research.

“This can be passed down through all the gene-edited animals, to all the offspring.”

According to the study, “Chickens genetically resistant to avian influenza could prevent future outbreaks. … Breeding for resistance and resilience to disease has significant potential in farmed poultry,” freeing farmers from routinely having to vaccinate birds.

But Jonathan Latham, executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, who has a master’s degree in crop genetics and a Ph.D. in virology, told The Defender,

“The experiments were ultimately a failure of ‘the operation was a success but the patient died’ variety.”

When the 10 genetically altered chickens were exposed to a much higher dose of bird flu — more in line with what the chickens could be exposed to in nature or a factory farm setting — five of the 10 chickens developed the flu.

Virus samples collected from the infected, genetically altered birds showed the virus had made several mutations that seemed to allow it to bind to the ANP32A protein to replicate in the chickens, the study reported.

The virus also mutated a workaround to bind to two other related proteins for replication.

Worse yet, according to Latham, mutations also helped the virus replicate more efficiently in human cells.

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