Tag: technology

How silent signals from your phone could be recording and tracking you

Aside from networking, companies use ultrasonic signals (or beacons) to gather information about users. That could include monitoring television viewing and web browsing habits, tracking users across multiple devices, or determining a shopper’s precise location within a store.

They use this information to send alerts that are relevant to your surroundings – such as a welcome message when you enter a museum or letting you know about a sale when you pass by a particular store.

But since this technology records sound – even if temporarily – it could constitute a breach of privacy. An analysis of various Australian regulations covering listening devices and surveillance reveals a legal grey area in relation to ultrasonic beacons.

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Joe Biden Wants to Restrict Free Speech and Make Building Firearms at Home Illegal

In order to save the Republic, President-Elect Joe Biden wants to stop people from having general access to computer files related to the 3D printing of firearms. According to Biden’s website, he “will stop the proliferation of these so-called ‘ghost-guns’ by passing legislation requiring that purchasers of gun kits or 3D printing code pass a federal background check.” Biden also plans to reverse President Trump’s move to prevent the U.S. State Department from blocking gun file code from being available on the internet.

FPC opposes restraints on Free Speech, and Code is Free Speech. Like words on a page, code is an encapsulation of ideas, and the restriction of the possession and sharing of code is a violation of the First Amendment. The files that Biden wants to restrict may be held, exchanged, or published for a multitude of reasons such as political protest, to encourage technological development, or yes, for the purpose of homebuilding firearms, an activity which has never been federally illegal. By requiring background checks or licensing before acquisition of these files, Biden would be instituting a prior restraint on the exercise of a Constitutional right.

Not only does Joe Biden want to restrict the exercise of Free Speech, but he also wants to ban the home-building of firearms, an activity that traces back to the founding of the nation. He wants to do this two ways: first, by restricting access to the files required for fused deposition modeling (aka 3D printing), and by preventing the purchase of firearms components online. American history is rich with stories of individuals building their own firearms, from colonists and woodsmen building the Kentucky Rifle, to a young John Moses Browning toiling in his father’s shop.

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NASA scientists achieve long-distance ‘quantum teleportation’ over 27 miles for the first time – paving the way for unhackable networks that transfer data faster than the speed of light

Scientists have demonstrated long-distance ‘quantum teleportation’ – the instant transfer of units of quantum information known as qubits – for the first time. 

The qubits were transferred faster than the speed of light over a distance of 27 miles, laying the foundations for a quantum internet service, which could one day revolutionise computing.

Quantum communication systems are faster and more secure than regular networks because they use photons rather than computer code, which can be hacked.  

But their development relies on cutting-edge scientific theory which transforms our understanding of how computers work. 

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DHS Works to Improve Biometric Scanning of Masked Faces

Perhaps the most-worn accessories of 2020, face masks mark an unexpected new constant in people’s lives providing necessary protection against COVID-19—but they’re also known to pose some trouble for contemporary facial recognition systems. 

The Homeland Security Department, one of the government’s biggest biometrics systems users, is now steering research to confront the complexities limiting existing technology and help push forward tools to safely verify people’s identities at security checkpoints in a pandemic.    

Initial results from one recent effort “are actually quite promising,” according to Arun Vemury, director of DHS’ Biometric and Identity Technology Center. 

“We’re getting to the point with this technology, where at least from the preliminary results, it looks like there’s some combinations of biometric acquisition systems, the camera systems and the matching algorithms—when you combine them together, you could match eight or nine out of 10 people without asking them to remove their masks,” Vemury told Nextgov during a recent interview. “This means that for the vast majority of people in airports, they might not have to remove their masks anymore to even go through the security checks, and we could do a really good job of still matching them. So, I think it’s very promising from that perspective. Is it 100%? Is it perfect? No. But it reduces the number of people who potentially have to take their masks off.”

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Emails Show Navy’s ‘UFO’ Patents Went Through Significant Internal Review, Resulted In A Demo

The War Zone continues to dig into the bizarre U.S. Navy patents authored by enigmatic inventor Dr. Salvatore Pais and the seemingly unusual circumstances of their approval by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As part of our investigation, we recently obtained a tranche of internal emails from Naval Air Systems Command, or NAVAIR, which appear to have been sent between Pais and personnel in different NAVAIR offices. While the Navy’s exotic energy production patents remain as mysterious as ever, these emails add to the backstory surrounding the inventions of Salvatore Pais and suggest that the patents went through a more rigorous internal evaluation process than was previously known. The emails also seem to indicate that the research program that emanated from the patents did in fact result in an experimental demonstration of some sort.

Last year, the publication of several unusual patents assigned to the U.S. Navy raised eyebrows due to the seemingly radical and unconventional claims found within them. These patents included bizarre technologies such as a “high temperature superconductor,” a “high frequency gravitational wave generator,” a force field-like “electromagnetic field generator,” a “plasma compression fusion device,” and a hybrid aerospace/underwater craft featuring an “inertial mass reduction device.” They truly sound like the stuff of science fiction and seem to describe the theoretical building blocks of a craft with UFO-like performance.

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Another “Pre-Crime” AI System Claims It Can Predict Who Will Share Disinformation Before It’s Published

We previously have covered the many weighty claims made by the progenitors of A.I. algorithms who claim that their technology can stop crime before it happens. Similar predictive A.I. is increasingly being used to stop the spread of misinformation, disinformation and general “fake news” by analyzing trends in behavior and language used across social media.

However, as we’ve also covered, these systems have more often that not failed quite spectacularly, as many artificial intelligence experts and mathematicians have highlighted. One expert in particular — Uri Gal, Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, at the University of Sydney, Australia — noted that from what he has seen so far, these systems are “no better at telling the future than a crystal ball.”

Please keep this in mind as you look at the latest lofty pronouncements from the University of Sheffield below. Nevertheless, we should also be aware that — similar their real-world counterparts in street-level pre-crime — these systems most likely will be rolled out across social media (if they haven’t been already) regardless, until further exposure of their inherent flaws, biases and their own disinformation is revealed.

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An AI just helped an Air Force pilot fly a U-2 spy plane during a simulated missile strike

The Air Force has taken a giant step toward creating an artificial intelligence system that would never in a million years turn on humanity – unlike the “Skynet” nemesis in the first two Terminator movies, which are the only ones that count.

Recently, an artificial intelligence algorithm named ARTUµ — possibly a reference to Star Wars’ R2D2 — performed tasks on a U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane that are normally done by humans, the Air Force announced on Wednesday.

“After takeoff, the sensor control was positively handed-off to ARTUµ who then manipulated the sensor, based off insight previously learned from over a half-million computer simulated training iterations,” according to a news release from the humans who run the Air Force — for now. “The pilot and AI successfully teamed to share the sensor and achieve the mission objectives.”

The algorithm used the plane’s tactical navigation as an Air Force major whose callsign is “Vudu” flew the U-2, which was assigned to the 9th Reconnaissance Wing, Beale Air Force Base, California, the news release says.

In short: Man and machine successfully flew a reconnaissance mission during a simulated missile strike.

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France Says It’s Developing Bionic Supersoldiers Because “Everyone Else Is Doing It”

A report published last Tuesday by the French Military Ethics Committee has indicated that the country has begun to develop technology for bionically enhanced soldiers. The report discussed conditions in which devices like implants can be used to improve soldier performance on the battlefield.

“Human beings have long sought ways to increase their physical or cognitive abilities in order to fight wars. Possible advances could ultimately lead to capacity enhancements being introduced into soldiers’ bodies,” the report said, according to the BBC.

The report said that maintaining clear ethical lines would be important in the development of bionic soldiers. The report called for eugenic or genetic applications of the technology to be banned, as well as anything “that could jeopardise the soldier’s integration into society or return to civilian life”.

The country’s military leaders believe that it is necessary to develop this technology because not doing so would allow other countries to get ahead and gain a military advantage.

In a speech last week, Defence Minister Florence Parly, said that the country’s military doesn’t plan on developing anything extremely “invasive” right away, but said that this could be an option in the future because other countries will be pushing the technology as far as they can.

“We must face the facts. Not everyone shares our scruples and we must be prepared for whatever the future holds,” Parly said.

Parly went on to promise that the French government would seek to find a balance, and will find “ways to maintain our operational superiority without turning our backs on our values.”

Parly also pointed out that similar technologies, such as neural implants, have already been introduced to civilian fields without much controversy.

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Big Brother in Disguise: The Rise of a New, Technological World Order

“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984

It had the potential for disaster.

Early in the morning of Monday, December 15, 2020, Google suffered a major worldwide outage in which all of its internet-connected services crashed, including Nest, Google Calendar, Gmail, Docs, Hangouts, Maps, Meet and YouTube.

The outage only lasted an hour, but it was a chilling reminder of how reliant the world has become on internet-connected technologies to do everything from unlocking doors and turning up the heat to accessing work files, sending emails and making phone calls.

A year earlier, a Google outage resulted in Nest users being unable to access their Nest thermostats, Nest smart locks, and Nest cameras. As Fast Company reports, “This essentially meant that because of a cloud storage outage, people were prevented from getting inside their homes, using their AC, and monitoring their babies.”

Welcome to the Matrix.

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