Desktops need not be boring

I collected a few items for desktops/cubicle living to while away the hours. Most of these came from ThinkGeek.com. Most were in stock when I put this together, but I’m sure if it’s out of stock, a little googling can find one, if you REALLY have to have it. So have fun, lighten up your life, and think happy….

Bel Occhio by Pablo
by Pablo

The Bel Occhio by Pablo is an outstanding multi-positional and dimmable Halogen spotlight that looks like it’s from another galaxy, particularly when illuminated in a darkened room. The direction of the beam of light from the cylinder is adjusted by repositioning the outer globe on the base. Pablo, founded in 1993 by Venezuelan – born Pablo Pardo, designs and manufactures innovative lighting and home accessories characterized by uncompromising devotion to simplicity and utility.

Compare at $450.00 Our Price: $360.00

Item# as Selected: 20683, Price as Selected: $360.00

http://www.lumens.com/lumens/product.asp?s_id=0&pf_id=PAAAIAGANNNFBKCP

Stonehenge on your desk

August 11th, 2007 Posted by Brown Baron

Published in Misc. Gadgets

Do you have a plain looking desk? Want to dress it up? How about putting Stonehenge on your desk? This do it yourself Stonehenge kit is guaranteed to make your desktop the envy of your officemates. The largest stone is 1.5″ tall, which means the whole set will fit in nicely with all the other junk on your desk. The set comes with 16 stone replicas, a puzzle map/base, and 1 Mini Book.

You know you want one.

http://www.gadgetchamp.com/2007/08/11/desktop-stonehenge/

Mini Megaliths

In the year 10,000 BC, aliens from Uranus landed on Earth. They didn’t find anyone cool to talk to, so they just added graffiti to the countryside and left. That graffiti is Stonehenge. Since that time, druids and scientists have tried to provide meaning to the awe inspiring stones, but have never riddled out the true message. We have. How? We can’t tell you. What does Stonehenge really say? That, we can tell you. It says… “WTF?” in Uranean.

This kit will help you spread the joys of an extraterrestrial WTF? to your home or office. The largest stone is about 1.5″ tall, so that the entire structure can neatly surround your coffee mug. But how will I know which stones go where?, you ask. Simple, we reply with a smile, there is a puzzle/map/Stonehenge base which is included. All the stones are numbered, so it’s real easy to assemble properly. You also get a little book with tons of information on what scientists think Stonehenge was all about – but know you’ll know the truth.

The Set includes: 16 stone replicas, puzzle map/base, and 1 Mini Book. Perfect for Spinal Tap dioramas, too.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/8eed/

In This Office, You’re The Boss

Two new sets: Corporate Zombies and IT Department!

Finally, the drudgery of corporate life has been captured in a play set for adults! Bob, Joe, Ted, and Ann spend eight hours a day, five days a week, at tiny desks in tiny cubicles in a giant room packed with countless similar cubicles in a giant building filled with countless similar rooms.

Bob, Ted, Ann, and Joe each come with one 2-3/4″ posable plastic figure and all the necessary plastic parts to build a classic corporate cube: four walls, desk, chair, file cabinet, in/out box, phone, and computer. Comes with a sticker sheet of decor for your cube, complete with graphs, charts, screens for the computer and pithy office posters. Also includes a job title sticker sheet so you can create a convoluted and meaningless position for your employee (how about Level C Systems Associate? Or Senior Accounting Coordinator?). Each additional set comes with the figures noted, plus character specific accessories.

Choose Between 10 Different Sets! (see additional images for visuals). Build your own corporate labryinth one cube at a time!

The Cubes

• Bob – Comes with Bob (employee #021871138), generic cubicle playset and accessories, and stickers.

• Ted – Comes with Ted (employee #000272319), generic cubicle playset and accessories, and stickers.

• Ann – Comes with Ann (employee #004967751), generic cubicle playset and accessories, and stickers.

• Joe – Comes with Joe (employee #003992461), generic cubicle playset and accessories, and stickers.

• IT Department – Comes with Tim, cubicle, server, captain’s chair, stickers, and more IT accessories.

• Corporate Zombies – Comes with four zombies and accessories. Glow in the dark!

• Expansion Set – Comes with four additional figures (Jim, Jan, Sue, & Dan) each with unique accessories.

• Copy Center – Comes with Art, the copy center playset, and playset specific accessories.

• Delivery Man – Comes with Sam, a hand truck, and a special delivery package.

• Sensitivity Trainer – Comes with Eve, easel, and “sensitive” visual aids.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/722a/

USB Webcam Rocket Launcher

Price: $59.99

Awesome-osity:

Shoot while you Chat

Where would we be without Instant Messaging? It lets us stay in contact and chat with friends all over the world (especially delightful during work hours). But sometimes the urge to reach out a shoot someone is unbearable. And that’s where the USB MSN Missile Launcher comes in. Don’t be content with sharing images, jokes, and assorted links with your friends – it’s time to share missiles!

You’ll have your USB MSN Missile Launcher set up within minutes and that’s when the fun begins. For you see, as you chat you and your buddies can control each other’s launcher. And since each USB MSN Missile Launcher has an integrated webcam (which can be used as just a webcam if you haven’t any buddies), you’ll know exactly when you are aimed at your buddy’s head. Then fire away! The only downside is that your buddy can do the same to you! The upside is, you can always retaliate by turning your buddy’s USM MSN Missile Launcher to face the door of his office and peg his boss in the gut when he/she comes to lecture your buddy about using IM for non-work-related matters. Ah the joys of progress . . . and revenge.

USB MSN Missile Launcher

• Includes: USB MSN Missile Launcher, 3 Foam Darts, Target, Software, Instructions
• Features:
  • Aim and fire at targets using the built-in webcam and MSN Messenger.
  • Take control over your buddy’s missile launcher and shoot them!
  • Missile Launcher can pan left and right and tilt up and down.
  • Sound effects (from your computer) when you launch your buddy’s missiles.
  • Can also be used as just a webcam.
• USB Cord Length: 3 feet
• Range: 15 feet
• Software Compatibility: Windows XP/2000/Vista

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/a1c2/

Rollerscape – Roller Coaster Construction

Price: $29.99

Customer Action Shot!

A Finely Engineered Desktop Rollercoaster Construction Set!

If at some point in your life you never dreamt of designing roller coasters, then you must be an acrophobe. If you are an acrophobe, then we have the perfect toy for you. If you aren’t an acrophobe, and don’t currently design roller coasters for cash, then we also have the perfect toy for you. Rollerscape – The Marble Rollercoaster! Simply design and build your desktop roller coaster using the included construction pieces, snap on the tracks wherever you like, and then begin the testing phase by taking one of the included marbles for a joy ride. Did the marble make it through without the Fall Of Death (FOD)? If so, you need to make your design more challenging. Try and include some loops and steep drops for impact. The sky is the limit! And so long as your marbles aren’t acrophobes you can safely enjoy their ride.

Your choice of advanced or advanced sets (that is, you have no choice). The advanced set has 194 pieces and is compatible with any other Rollerscape set you might have laying around. The image on this page features a piece that is approximately 22 inches tall.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/6a7c/

Japanese Star Wars Lightsaber Desk Lamp

Price: $19.99

Please Select… Luke Skywalker $19.99 Darth Vader $19.99

May the Force be… with your Stapler

At the ThinkGeek office we mainly prefer to practice the dark side of the force. Hey… don’t judge. The dark side has a lot of advantages. It’s easy to pull-off since you just have to get angry and give-in to your base instincts like revenge and jealousy. We find it handy for offensive attacks during overly-long office meetings. Plus the costumes are just way cooler. However there are some amongst us who prefer the light side of course. Those weak individuals are hard to spot… except Yoda does seem to hang out in those lower employee’s offices quite a bit.

Fortunately we’ve devised a genius way to determine office force alliances for sure. Each employee places one of these nifty glowing Lightsaber Desk Lamps next to their red stapler… those paying allegiance to the powerful dark side can choose the red Vader lamp. While weaklings on their moral high-horses can sport the green Luke lamp. Of course they’re always some employees who have to be obnoxious and swing both ways by placing one of each lightsaber lamp color on their desk. But those nameless employees often find that their mouse has been replaced with Wookie dung while they were busy hitting on Princess Leia.

Product Features

• Mini Glowing Desk Lamps look like Star Wars Lightsabers
• Choose from the Red Darth Vader saber, or the Green Luke Skywalker saber
• Imported from Japan
• Officially Licensed Star Wars Collectable
• Requires 2 AAA batteries (not included)
• Each Lightsaber Stands 16″ High

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/97b9/

Hydrodynamic Building Set

Price: $89.99

Awesome-osity:

Let the Water Flow!

Water is everywhere. It covers 71% of the Earth’s surface and composes about 112% of the human body. Gaining control over water would be an awesome super power, but for now we are stuck with using science to master water. Good thing someone invented this Hydrodynamic Building Set. It makes science fun again. But this kit isn’t a simple connect the dots – you have to do some thinking! Why? Read on!

The instruction manual shows you how the girders connect, how to build the various tanks, and some rendered images of completed projects – but not step-by-step. Your entire model gets built up from the bottom of the carrying case, which acts as the water reservoir and also has a special footing to be the structure’s foundation. Level by level, you build your support frame and add your tanks. Then connect all the tubes, add in the valves, and turn on the electric pump. If you’ve done it right, you’ll have an awesome construction everyone will marvel at (a little food coloring helps). Fail and you’re all wet – quite probably literally.

And Kids: Build something with this kit for a Science Fair Project and you are guaranteed to win (this guarantee not guaranteed)!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/91e4/

Screaming Monkey Slingshot

Price: $6.99

Customer Action Shot!

Super Simian to the Rescue!

Legend tells of a hero not born unto this world, but destined to change forever the course of human existence. A hero so grand that all past legends will turn to dust in the wake of his greatness. This is not that hero. This is, however, the next best thing: a monkey with a cape and a mask. Because nothing says power like a cape and a mask.

This monkey has a secret – there are pockets in the monkey’s hands. Slip your fingers in, pull back his hind legs, and his arms will stretch to a crazy length with the magic of rubber! You can just feel the potential energy coursing through the monkey’s imaginary veins. Let fly and you will be treated to a wondrous sight. The monkey will scream with delight when jolted. So, if the launch is hard enough, you’ll get a scream of power in mid air; or if the landing is hard, you’ll get a scream of protest as gravity does its work. Or, you fling like a master, you’ll get a double-dose of monkey justice (i.e. noise).

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/8f00/

Marshmallow Assault Rifle

List Price: $39.99

You Save: 62.5%

Our Price: $14.99

Mallow in the Hull!!!

Listen up, maggots. There’s a war going on out there, and it’s a war we plan to win. That’s why we’re outfitting our soldiers (i.e. you) with the confectionery weapon to end all confectionery weapons. This is some serious sugary firepower, so you better listen and listen good. Now, get your Marshmallow Assault Rifle in your hands, you gum-chewing cow patties, and check out the features with us.

First, you’ll notice two different barrels. The bottom barrel shoots mini marshmallows and should be used for cover and strafing fire. It is your main weapon – learn to love it. The magazine holds up to 12 mini marshmallows and is very easy to reload quickly. The top barrel will hold one regular sized marshmallow at a time. It is your grenade launcher, and you’ll know when you need it. With the Marshmallow Assault Rifle, a lotta luck, and some good soldiering you might just survive to fight another day. Oh, and if you get hungry out there in the field, you can just eat your extra ammo.

Dimensions: approx. 18.75″ long. Power blast the big marshmallow 20 feet away while rapid firing the mini marshmallows at closer targets.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/warfare/9bcb/

LED Jellyfish Mood Lamp

Price: $49.99

Customer Action Shot!

Dancing Desktop Jellies

Blackbeard was just about the most ruthless pirate ever. His management style was unique, to say the least. If one of his crew misbehaved, he would drop them in a large tank full of jellyfish and delight as the jewels he kept at the bottom of the tank reflected different colors into the ballet of agony that played out before him. According to the infamous pirate’s diaries, it really calmed his nerves, too. Wow. Well, while we don’t recommend all that for your office, there is something we can take from this story: colorful jellyfish are relaxing.

This desktop tank holds three jellyfish which “swim” around the tank (thanks to a gently contrived current). In the top of the tank are 6 bright LEDs, which let you set the mood. You can either have them blend softly from one color to the next, or stop on your favorite color. Either way, the jellies are happy to frolic in their kaleidoscopic, quiet menace. And if one of your subordinates ever acts up, just remind him or her about the Blackbeard story…and let them know there’s room in your jellyfish tank for a hand or two. Sometimes threats are all you need. Arrrgh.

Note: If you are having any troubles getting your jellies to swim about properly, remember to add just a few drops of liquid dish soap to the water as per the instructions. It’s the part that makes the magic happen. Thanks!

LED Jellyfish Mood Lamp

• Lifelike jellyfish movement
• 6 bright LEDs – cycle through colors or select your favorite one
• Includes: Tank, 3 Jellyfish, Power cord (110V), and Instructions
• Dimensions: 7″ x 10″ x 4.5″ (with 3″ long jellyfish)

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/9a8c/

Desktop Carnivorous Plant Set

Price: $22.99

Customer Action Shot!

Little Desktop Of Horrors…

Here at ThinkGeek, we truly understand you have needs. Especially at work where minutes often last hours and hours become days. You need to be entertained, you don’t want your neurons to prematurely atrophy. You crave stimulation. You crave a Carnivorous desktop plant set. Perfect for the casual office worker who delights in watching insects slowly meet their makers as they are painfully digested by an engaging variety of meat-sucking flora. Nothing quite like it.

So what’s our recommendation? Grab a set and grow your own collection of feared and famous carnivorous plants. This deluxe set has seeds from over ten varieties of carnivorous plants! Watch these fascinating plants grow into bug-eating monsters and delight in creating your own authentic bog with the included peat planting mix, blue Swamp Rocks, three Bog Buddies and full color decals. This rare and unusual collection of carnivorous plants will flourish for years in this specially designed terrarium with proper care…

Each Complete Kit Includes:
• Growing Dome
• Planting Mixture
• Carnivorous Seed Pack:
  • Venus Fly Trap
  • Yellow Trumpet
  • Hooded Pitcher Plant
  • Purple Pitcher Plant
  • Pale Trumpet
  • Temperate Sundew Plants
  • Cobra Lilies
• 3 Photo Decals
• 3 Bog Buddies
• Swamp Rocks
• Instructions and Information Manual

NOTE: Unlike Insta-Pets(TM)like Sea Monkeys or Triops, your carnivorous plant set will take several weeks to get started. But have patience friends, the blood-curdling plant-on-insect action will be worth the wait! We guarantee it or pay us double!

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/76c9/

USB R/C Mini Car w/Garage

Price: $29.99

Make a left at the stapler…

Every morning you do the same thing. You get up, brush your teeth (hopefully), get dressed, and drive to work. You sit looking at the same cars and the same tired faces also participating in the great morning commute. You get to work and sit at your desk, a new day of the same old sh…stuff. Wouldn’t you just love, for once, to drive during the week and not hit traffic? Well, now you can – right on your own desk – with the USB R/C Mini Car w/Garage.

Just plug the garage into your USB port, load up the software, and give the car about 10 minutes to charge (inside its garage). Once it’s done, open the garage door and drive the car out using your keyboard’s arrow keys. And if that pesky coffee mug gets in the way again, hit the space bar to honk your horn. But really, there isn’t any traffic on your desk, so you should enjoy a wonderfully relaxing drive. Take a right at the coffee mug, then a left at the stapler, and cruise on to Funsville (population: you).

USB R/C Mini Car w/Garage

• Garage Dimensions: 5″ x 3″ x 3″
• Car Dimensions: 3.5″ x 1.75″ x 1.5″
• Includes: Car, Garage/Charger, Software (Windows only), Instructions, and Sticker Sheet

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/966d/

Palmsize R/C Helicopter

Price: $29.99 – $49.99

Save $9.99 on Two Copters
Choose “Red/Silver 2-Pack” from the drop-down to buy two Copters (one of each channel) and fly with a friend.

Choice: Please Select… Silver (Chan 2) $29.99 Red (Chan 1) $29.99 Red/Silver 2-Pack $49.99

Customer Action Shot!

Tiny Copter Attack!

We just can’t seem to get enough of tiny R/C helicopters. They’re taking the ThinkGeek office by storm… swarming and amusing the office dogs. Buzzing delightfully as we procrastinate on our TPS reports. Even the robotic monkeys are impressed at the tiny size and amazing technology. These mini copters can take off from your hand and circle your desk as your co-workers gape in amazement. Full control allows you to hover and turn left or right as your copter moves slowly forward. Two different channels let you to fly with a friend. But practice-up on your aviation skills if you hope to challenge the expert pilots at ThinkGeek.

Important Note
You will have to practice your flying before you can do as well as we do in the video. Keep the following in mind: You can adjust the forward speed of the copter by twisting the tail slightly right or left before flight (see the instructions). Right turns are wider than left turns due to the dynamics of the rotor. Luckily for you the Palmsize R/C Helicopter is forgiving on crashes.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/rc/934c/

Smart Mass Thinking Putty

Price: $9.99

Choice: Please Select… Solar Blue $9.99 Atomic Bronze $9.99 Oil Slick $9.99 Dark Matter $9.99 Atmosphere $9.99 Alien Ooze $9.99 Martian Sea $9.99 Twilight $9.99 Sunburst $9.99

Customer Action Shot!

The Thinking Persons Putty

The Ultimate Stress Reduction office toy is here. Of course you remember playing with putty as a kid. Welp, this ain’t your kids putty. Adult sized, and as feature-rich as your favorite Operating System, the Smart Mass putty from ThinkGeek makes living life fun all over again. Like to fidget while sitting in front of the monitor? Enjoy being the envy of all those who surround you? Trying to make an impression on that new coder down the hall? Smart Mass putty will help…

But ThinkGeek, What Will My Smart Mass Really Do ??

• It Bounces!
• It Stretches, Contorts & Squishes !
• It lifts comics! (as any self-respecting putty would)
• It Shears & Tears ! (learn how!)
• It Even Shatters !!! (learn why!)
• It Drips From Ceilings (learn how!)

But ThinkGeek, Can I Achieve World Domination With My Smart Mass?

• Yes. Of course. All ThinkGeek products may be used to help you achieve World Domination.

Our Smart Mass putty is just too much fun. Find out for yourselves how magically enticing and addictive playing with putty really is. As you find more and more ways to get creative with your putty, you’ll, well, find more ways to get creative with everything! It’s simply that stimulating!

Your choice of either:

• Sunburst (new!) – A Hypercolor! Heat sensitive putty. Jumpstart your day with some sunshine! Vibrant orange shifts into an awakening yellow with the touch of your hands or warmth from your coffee mug. Starts out Orange.
• Twilight (new!) – A Hypercolor! Heat sensitive putty. Just as an evening sky melts into the dark of night, this putty’s deep purple color disappears with a touch to reveal a fluorescent blue complexion.
• Martian Sea – A color shifter that swirls deep clay reds and orange with a yellow to green sheen depending on the light.
• Dark Matter – A swirling mass of matte black. Your very own personal, warpable, black hole. Has magnetic properties: pull out a thin strand of dark matter and hold it near a magnet!
• Solar Blue – A very soothing and energetic, vibrant blue. Intoxicating. Cosmically rapturous…
• Oil Slick – A color shifter, Oil slick will look different in different lighting. From golds and yellow to pinks and emerald greens all swirling intelligently…
• Atomic Bronze – Lustrous comes to mind. Atomic bronze sparkles and commands attention. Your very own precious metal. Looks similar to Martian Sea, but has a much more metallic sheen to it.
• Atmosphere – Another color shifter. Atmosphere will morph into Cerulean highlights and features rich deep purples. A veritable alien, breathing, living atmosphere…
• Alien Ooze (glows!) – Military grade phosphors power this extremely powerful glowing mass. Charges in light or through UV sources. Amazingly bright when glowing. Ghost like when not performing…

Each tin arrives with an adult sized one fifth of a pound of Smart Mass putty. Wow. The putty is non-toxic and doesn’t leave any gooey residue! Get tins for everybody in the office and at home lest you may find yours missing…

Note: – Your Smart Mass may seem like it has a mind of its own occasionally. That’s because it does. And when not being used, your Smart Mass putty prefers to live in its comfortable tin where it can best plot World Domination Schemes.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/5ac8/

Nabaztag Wifi Smart Rabbit

Price: $179.99

Customer Action Shot!

This bunny likes to nibble on WiFi

Nabaztag/tag with built-in microphone now available…

So you are probably wondering if a rabbit can really be “smart”? Well this bunny can teach you tai chi, read your e-mail, report the weather or stock market, pull RSS feeds and tell you the time. We’d say that’s pretty smart – but he’s also got personality. Nabaztag can move his ears, play music, talk and whistle, and his body can show off hundreds of colors and special patterns of light. Sometimes he will even have his own random things to say, as long as you can put up with his moods!

Okay, so Nabaztag is smart and has personality – but what about interpersonal skills? Can he relate well to you and other rabbits? Well, Nabaztag can marry another rabbit – that’s right – copying the other rabbit’s movements, sounds and lights. Move your Nabaztag’s ears and its spouse’s will too. And as far as friendship, Nabaztag can let you know when you have a new e-mail, read you today’s headlines or give you his opinion of the previous week. But be careful because he is uncompromising – if he thinks that he didn’t receive enough messages he might be unhappy.

And that’s just the beginning, because the world of Nabaztag is expanding all the time. Before long this brainy bunny will be able to receive traffic updates, alert you when you have SMS messages, tell you if your train is running late and broadcast ‘Nabcasts’ from fellow subscribers. The possibilities are truly endless.

• Nabaztag is easily configured and customized through a Web browser
• Free and subscription services available [see list]
• Receives messages sent from the web or via e-mail
• Can optionally receive delayed messages (use as a reminder)
• Ears move, body lights up, talks, plays music and more
• Works with Wi-fi (802.11 b or g)
• Dimensions: 9″ x 5.3″ x 5.3″ (23cm x 13.5cm x 13.5cm) with ears
• Includes: Nabaztag, power adapter, quickstart manual
• Now available! Nabaztag/tag – featuring a built-in microphone so you can talk to Nabaztag [details]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/8301/

Mini Pet Cactus

Price: $1.99 – $8.99

Customer Action Shot!

Pocket Plant

Virtual pets are fun, but sometimes they can be a virtual pain in the virtual backside. You have to virtually feed them and virtually play with them. And yes, they virtually love you, but it’s just not the same as real love. But one has to admit, most virtual pets are easy to carry around, whereas most real pets either won’t fit in your pocket (like a dog) or wouldn’t survive in your pocket (like a trout). We have the solution: the Mini Pet Cactus.

The Mini Pet Cactus will love you unconditionally. All you have to do it is water it once a month for about a minute (instructions on packaging). Each cactus comes with a strap to attach to your jacket, cell phone, etc., so you can take it with you everywhere. Nothing says fun like talking to your cactus in a public place – until security asks you to leave, that is. Want to display your new pet at home or in the office? Try the Mini Pet Cactus Stand (sold separately). It has an adhesive back to attach to a wall, your monitor, your forehead, etc. The Mini Pet Cactus is waiting to be adopted…by you!

Dimensions: Pet Cactus: 1.75″ tall; Stand Height: 4.5″

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/japanfan/84b2/

AntWorks – Space Age Ant Habitat

Price: $29.99

Choice: Please Select… Blue Gel w/LEDs $29.99 Red Gel w/LED $29.99

Customer Action Shot!

A Space-Age Habitat For Antkind

Fascinating creatures ants. Sure you hate to see them in your socks or making a B-line for that pizza crust crumb you forgot to sweep up at the local LAN party. But let’s give credit where credit is due. Ants are amazing. Ants can lift up to 20x their body weight! They have two stomachs and three eyes! They also have uncanny communication skills and amazing abilities to work together to achieve a common goal.

This miraculous gel, derived from a NASA Space experiment, serves as both habitat and nutrition for your ants – allowing you to watch in awe as they turn a brick of aqua-blue gel into a fascinating colony of tunnels. Never before have you been so capable of watching these awesome creatures at work.

Consider Ants a pest? Think again. As Sun Tzu stated, ‘Know Thy Enemy’. And what better way to know them then in this totally enclosed space age aquarium. Ants are perhaps the most populous creatures on the face of planet earth, with at least ten thousand species and countless trillions of individual ants. Bring them indoors today with Antworks!

• AntWorks is based on a 2003 NASA Space Shuttle experiment to study animal life in space and test how ants successfully tunnel in microgravity.
• The AntWorks Gel (Non Toxic) is complete with nutrients to promote healthy growth in the new colony.
• Watch ants live, work and tunnel in the nutritious and non-toxic gel as they create series upon series of intricate tunnels.
• The included LED illuminator acts as your Antworks base and when plugged in will shine four bright blue LEDs up through your turquoise gel. The ultimate nightlight is upon us! (120v).
• Easy to care for – Ants need NO food or water.
• Case is 6.5″x 5.5″x 1.25″
• Choose between Red (for evil minion ants) and blue (for space marine ants) gels.

Each ‘Antworks’ Includes:

• Case and gel
• Magnifying glass
• Four blue LEDs embedded in base.
• Ant catching/tunnel starting tool
• Instruction booklet with interesting facts about ants.
• ANTS ARE NOT INCLUDED! However, there is a form included where you can order some ants for delivery via mail. But why bother? Just set out some potato chips in the kitchen and voila! Instant ant colony!

Sanity not included when you choose to knowingly bring Ants into your home. However, observing them in a natural habitat should bring you closer to nature than playing Doom 3.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/6fd6/

The Amazing Desktop Dinosaur Plant

Price: $7.99

Customer Action Shot!

A Pre-historic Evergreen That Just Won’t Die

This one-of-a-kind plant has lived on the Earth for over 290 million years and has the ability to “come back to life” (much like the undead) over and over again for hundreds of years! Simply place this seemingly dead ball of foliage in water and within hours it transforms into a vibrant green blood-sucking evergreen. Ok, we are kidding about the blood-sucking part. It’s still amazing though! It’s also great for lazy folks since you can forget to water your Dinosaur plant whenever you want! It will simply dry up and hibernate for up to fifty years and will spring to life every time it is given water.

Some Interesting Tidbits about your Dinosaur Plant:

During the Carboniferous period these plants used to grow over 120 feet tall (bigger than a T-rex)

When dry it curls up into a tight ball so that the wind can easily roll it to a new location or cubicle, hopefully closer to moisture.

Retains 3% of its water when it is dehydrated.

Grows to be about 4″

Enjoys life so much it survived the Ice AgeKit includes:

Live Dinosaur Plant

Bag of genuine Volcanic Lava Rock

Display Bowl

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/8039/

Atomic Food Containers

Price: $8.99

Eat and Glow

Do people bully you in the workplace and steal your lunch? Are you tired of losing your food in the communal fridge? Do you forget often how long stuff has been in said fridge? Are you a cool dude(tte)? If your answer to all these questions is 17, have we got a set of food containers for you! Each one is as special as you are (and possibly as radioactive!)

You’ll get three containers of different size (400ml, 600ml, and 1000ml) which each nestle into each other for easy storage. Also, each top has a dial so you can set the date you put the container into the cold wasteland of your office fridge. That way, you will know how old the hairy pasta is, and won’t have to guess. Each dial also has a special setting called “vent” which opens up a little vent to vent ventable gasses (just like our underpants, but that’s a story for another time). Buy them now and safeguard your lunch for years to come.

Each container is microwave and dishwasher safe.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/9468/

Rock Climbing Light

Designed to resemble a rock climbing man (apparently) the design of this light appeals to us as we can imagine a host of them placed in random patterns on a wall with great effect.

Constructed from polished zinc and coming complete with two meters of cable (but without a bulb (!)), this rather funky and somewhat geeky light is sure to add a great ‘designer’ ambience to any room and at diminutive cost.

The Wall Climbing Light retails at £19.99 /$40

http://nexus404.com/Blog/2007/04/27/cool-wall-climbing-light/

1.3 Megapixel USB Digital Microscope

Price: $349.99

Zoom in on stuff – up to 200X

Higher resolution microscope produces fantastic images!

This 1.3 Megapixel Digital Microscope allows you to capture some higher resolution images and video and display them on your PC using a simple USB connection. View specimens collected around the house, backyard, your desk, or the fridge. Look at the micro-printing on a dollar bill or examine the traces on your motherboard. This microscope provides you an easy way to zoom in on a wide variety of objects to satisfy your curiosity of the world around you. Ever wondered what lint looks like or the mold growing on your week-old bagels? Now you can find out.

Simple plug and play operation with included software that allows you to magnify objects and view them on your PC up to 200X and take snapshots and time-lapse movies. You can also manipulate images with drawing and painting tools. The microscope is detachable from the stand to allow you to get closer to large objects.

• Handheld digital microscope with stand
• Great for industrial inspection, science education, forensics, printing, textile, printed circuit board (PCB) inspection, jewelers, hobbyists, tinkerers, crime scene investigation, medical, serial number identification, quality control, parts assembly
• Resolution: 1280 x 1024 (1.3M)
• Magnification: 10 ~ 50X, 200X Continuous Optical zoom
• Built-in LEDs for illumination (8 LEDs)
• LED on/off controlled by software
• Interface: USB 2.0
• Frame rate: up to 30fps
• Dimension: 10cm (h) x 3.2cm (dia)
• Weight: 0.2 lb (90g)
• Includes: Microscope, Microscope stand, DinoCapture Software (Windows 98SE/ME/2000/XP, Vista, Mac OS9, OSX)
• One year warranty
• Model AM-411T
• If you encounter a software error during install, please download the latest software here

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/9955/

Mandylion Password Manager

Price: $49.99

Single w/ Cradle $49.99

Military-grade password protection!

Unfortunately, we all have to deal with modern life’s little cyber-burden, the password. Some of us do so by simply re-using an old password when the system asks you to change it. Other times we use the same password but just add the month at the end. Some people even resort to keeping their passwords written on yellow stickey notes or in their wallet. None of these options, however, is very effective for protecting your valuable data. Instead, we would like to present a superior solution brought to you compliments of the US Military.

The Mandylion Password Manager is a secure, convenient and cost-effective device built specifically for generating and protecting your passwords. Tested and matured for 3 years in real warfare environments, it is now available for commercial use. Built as a small keyring device, it can securely manage up to 50 logins, safe combinations, security codes, etc. that can be individually generated to meet the composition requirements of any login policy. Passwords can be any length up to 14 characters or namespaces. It can create passwords based on your settings for various criteria (such as length, alpha-numeric, special characters, etc.) and prompt you to change your passwords at preset time intervals (90 days, 1 year, etc.) Also, all data is stored in permanent memory, so it is unaffected by battery life or loss of power. Tamper-resistant features have been employed both inside and out, making the device a superior choice to storing passwords on your PDA, PC or worse, writing them down.

Using the device is very easy. There are 5 buttons used for navigation and data entry. The device is activated by entering a unique button sequence that is user-defined. Totally self-contained and air-gapped from any system, passwords are viewed on the token’s LCD display which has a limited viewing angle to prevent shoulder surfing. There are also user-defined lockout settings, including a self-destruct feature for high risk scenarios. The device will also indicate failed activation attempts (with a “Tampered” message displayed upon successful activation.) Included Policy Master software makes describing the login policy (length, expiration, composition) for each login record and configuring the token a snap. The token does the rest.

This little unit has been designed to meet U.S. Military standards for secure creation and management of passwords (use authorized under Army Regulation 25-2 IA.) This device helps creates a strong security policy for your work environment (so naturally you can brag to the boss about it) and provides cost savings in the form of reduced help desk support and password changing downtime. When used for personal password management the personal password manager eliminates having to remember all those annoying passwords and usernames.

Has these great features.

• Manages up to 50 login records simultaneously
• Generates cryptographically strong passwords
• Complies with all DoD, Govt. & Industry Password Security Policies
• Multiple tamper-resistant features and lockout alarms
• Manages Root and Group passwords
• Cradle connection via USB
• Kit containing: token, a configuration cradle, Policy Master Configuration Software (Windows only)
• Device and software not Mac compatible (sorry)
• Dimensions: Approx. 2.5″ x 1.5″ x .375″ (65mm x 45mm x 10mm)
• Takes a CR2032 battery (replaceable)
• One-year warranty

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/security/91a2/

Glow Brick

Price: $29.99

Please Select… Blue $29.99 Green $29.99

A light bulb with a special glow!

Yep – it’s a glow-in-the-dark light bulb trapped inside a solid acrylic brick. The Glow Brick recharges from energy in natural sunlight during the day and glows at night. Not only that, it is actually made with a real light bulb! That’s right.

The glow-in-the-dark* pigment is trapped inside a real light bulb (just like the ones you have at home). Then the light bulb is encased in a solid block of Acrylic resin. The mysterious optical effect is caused by light diffracting in the tiny space between the glass of the light bulb and the resin – this space forms when the resin shrinks by a tiny amount during the production process. The polished surface gives a jewel like quality to the object. In a darkened room, or at night, the Glow Brick comes to life with a tranquil and subtle glow emanating from the pigment inside the light bulb. Size is 3.3″ x 3.3″ x 5″

*The technical term for the glow-in-the-dark is “photoluminescence” this is a process in which energy absorbed by a substance is released relatively slowly in the form of light.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/lights/9b60/

And not necessarily in any way a desktop device, but simply a must-have one:

MySky GPS Star Tracker

Price: $399.99

Twinkle, twinkle, little star. I finally figured out what you are.

Only once in a blue moon* throughout the history of consumer tech comes a product so nifty you are convinced it cannot be real. Then you quickly glance over to your calendar and realize it’s not April 1st. “Damn!” you think to yourself, while reaching for your wallet and mumbling under your breath “Curse you ThinkGeek, curse you!” Packed with the latest in gadgetry including built-in GPS, LCD screen, magnetic north sensors, electronic accelerometers, & complex circuitry,the MySky is far from vaporwear. It’s a hi-tech virtual tour guide to your starry skies. Point, shoot, get smarter.

But ThinkGeek, What Does the MySky Really Do?
Glad you asked. Take the MySky out of its package, plug in some batteries, go outside, preferably at night although even when you can’t see them, the stars are still there during the day. Now let the MySky figure out its location and time via GPS. There are three different basic modes to using the night sky – Identify, Find, & Guided Tour. In ‘Identify’ Mode, the default, you will be presented with a real time LCD view of the night sky, complete with constellations. Simply point it to the object of choice in the real sky, and shoot. It will identify! You can also take a ‘Guided Tour’ of the best objects available to you at the moment based on your location, date & time. Finally, if you want to locate a specific object (planet, comet, galaxy, etc.) – you can navigate through the menus, select the item and your MySky will point out its location in the real sky.

Specifications:
• Sights – Illuminated red sights to easily point to objects
• Object Database – Database of over 30,000 celestial objects (planets, stars, nebulae, galaxies & more)
• LCD – 480 x 234 pixel full color display
• Audio – 500+ Audio/Multi-media presentations by NPR Stardate personality, Sandy Wood. Including interesting science facts, mythology, folklore, and astrophotography.
• Earphones – Comfortable high-fidelity ear buds included for audio
• Storage – 256 Megabyte SD card (included)
• GPS – 12 channel GPS receiver
• Orientation – Magnetic north sensors
• Positioning – Electronic accelerometers to determine tilt/pointing
• Night Vision – Optional mode to display screen entirely in red to protect your night vision.
• Compatibility – Can optionally control any Meade computerized telescope.
• Upgradeable – Software upgradeable from meade.com
• Power save features – Advanced power saving features to extend battery life
• Batteries – 4 AA batteries required (not included)
• Battery Life – Up to 6 hours (normal use)
• Instructions – Includes onboard video instructions that are optional for first time use. Also includes a printed instruction manual and quickstart guide along with a CDROM that includes Planetarium software (Windows 98/XP).
• Dimensions – Approximately 9″ x 2.5″ x 7″
• Death Ray Mode – Unlock this mode and you may optionally target planets for annihilation..**

* We probably should have said ‘Blue Giant’ here. Oh well.
** Sorry, this feature is being re-constructed. Don’t blame us, blame the rebel alliance.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/956a/

Sun and Moon Jars

Price: $34.99

Choice: Please Select… Sun Jar $34.99 Moon Jar $34.99

Customer Action Shot!

Jam jars store jam, these jars store sunshine!

Captured inside the Sun and Moon Jars are a highly efficient solar cell, a rechargeable battery and low energy LED lamps. When the jar is placed in direct sunlight the solar cell creates an electrical current that charges the battery over a few hours. This energy is then used at night to power the three LED lamps inside the jar.

The light is diffused by the frosted jar and give the appearance of sunlight emitting from the sun or a cool moon glow (warm colored LED lights are used to give a more natural and warm light). You may have noticed that there is no switch on the Sun Jar – in fact there are no visible controls at all – but there is a clever light sensor inside that automatically activates the LEDs when it gets dark or the lights are turned out! (There is an override switch inside the lid to turn off the light at night and conserve battery life.)

Mason jars are not only beautiful but by their very nature they are water tight – so the Sun Jar can happily be left outside in any weather conditions. A perfect garden light or night light for a child’s bedroom. The Sun Jar needs DIRECT sunshine to work! Leave the Sun Jar outside or in a sunny window in direct sunlight for several hours to charge, (electric light indoors is not bright enough!). The Sun and Moon Jars use a standard AA rechargeable battery, which is replaceable.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/994a/

So, happy desktop/cubicle living, as well as a few fun things for the home (office!)

WordPress.com Tags: Office, cubicle toys, toys, technology, lighting, astronomy, geek

The Panopticon Singularity

By Charles Stross [with NOTES and additions from my own research to update]

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/panopticon-essay.html

---

Author’s note: This essay was originally commissioned by Alex Steffen for the projected 111st issue of Whole Earth Review, which was to focus on the Singularity. Sadly, WER effectively ceased publication with issue 110, and (the shorter, WER-edited version of) this article is not among the content you can find on their web site. I’m therefore releasing this draft.

I originally wrote this in early 2002. I have not updated the content significantly — I think it provides a useful historical context — but have checked and, where necessary, modified the URLs. Where I have made additions to the text, they are noted.

---

The 18th century utopian philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon was a prison; a circle of cells with windows facing inwards, towards a tower, wherein jailers could look out and inspect the prisoners at any time, unseen by their subjects.

Though originally proposed as a humane experiment in penal reform in 1785, Bentham’s idea has eerie resonances today. One of the risks of the technologies that may give rise to a singularity is that they may also permit the construction of a Panopticon society — a police state characterised by omniscient surveillance and mechanical law enforcement.

Note that I am not using the term “panopticon singularity” in the same sense as Vinge’s Singularity (which describes the emergence of strongly superhuman intelligence through either artificial intelligence breakthroughs or progress in augmenting human intelligence), but in a new sense: the emergence of a situation in which human behaviour is deterministically governed by processes outside human control. (To give an example: currently it is illegal to smoke cannabis, but many people do so. After a panopticon singularity, it will not only be illegal but impossible.) The development of a panopticon singularity does not preclude the development of a Vingean singularity; indeed, one may potentiate (or suppress) the other. I would also like to note that the idea has been discussed in fictional form by Vinge. [A Deepness in the Sky - a Zones of Thought book]

Moore’s Law states that the price of integrated circuitry falls exponentially over time. The tools of surveillance today are based on integrated circuits: unlike the grim secret policemen of the 20th century’s totalitarian regimes they’re getting cheaper, so that an intelligence agency with a fixed budget can hope to expand the breadth of its surveillance rapidly. In the wake of the events of September 11th, 2001, the inevitable calls for something to be done have segued into criticism of the west’s intelligence apparatus: and like all bureaucratic agencies, their response to a failure is to redouble their efforts in the same direction as before. (If at first you don’t succeed, try harder.)

It is worth noting that while the effectiveness of human-based surveillance organizations is dependent on the number of people involved — and indeed may grow more slowly than the work force, due to the overheads of coordinating and administering the organization — systems of mechanised surveillance may well increase in efficiency as a power function of the number of deployed monitoring points. (For example: if you attempt to monitor a single email server, you can only sample the traffic from those users whose correspondence flows through it, but if you can monitor the mail servers of the largest ISPs you can monitor virtually everything without needing to monitor all the email client systems. Almost all traffic flows between two mail servers, and most traffic flows through just a few major ISPs at some point.) Moreover, it may be possible to expand an automated surveillance network indefinitely by simply adding machines, whereas it is difficult to expand a human organization beyond a certain point without having knock-on effects on the macroeconomic scale (e.g. by sucking up a significant proportion of the labour force).

Here’s a shopping-list of ten technologies for the police state of the next decade, and estimates of when they’ll be available. Of necessity, the emphasis is on the UK — but it could happen where you live, too: and the prognosis for the next twenty years is much scarier.

Smart cameras

Availability: today.

The UK leads the world in closed circuit surveillance of public places, with over two [2004: four] million cameras watching sixty million people. Cameras are cheaper than cops, and act as a force multiplier, letting one officer watch dozens of locations. They can see in the dark, too. But today’s cameras are limited. The panopticon state will want cheaper cameras: powered by solar panels and networked using high-bandwidth wireless technology so that they can be installed easily, small so that they’re unobtrusive, and equipped with on-board image analysis software. A pilot study in the London borough of Lambeth is already using face recognition software running on computers monitoring the camera network to alert officers when known troublemakers appear on the streets. Tomorrow’s smart cameras will ignore boring scenes and focus on locations where suspicious activities are occuring.

(Experience suggests that cameras don’t reduce crime — they just move it to places where there’s no surveillance, or displace it into types of crime that aren’t readily visible. So the logical response of the crime-fighting bureaucracy is to install more cameras …)

NOTE:

Here is information from the site of the leading manufacturer of the software that deals with the problems of CCTV:

First:

The CCTV Problem

“Closed Circuit Television cameras (CCTV) have always been crucial in supplying surveillance and security in the fight against crime.

However, all too often, CCTV has been reduced to a retrospective, forensic role; examining what went wrong and helping investigators in the aftermath of a crime.

The efficiency of CCTV systems is further blighted by the inability of the operator to pick up all the information that is being displayed.

Studies show, “After 12 minutes of continuous video monitoring an operator will often miss up to 45% of screen activity. After 22 minutes of viewing, up to 95% is overlooked.” (Security Oz, Oct / Nov 2002)” http://www.ipsotek.com/html/cctv.php

THEN:

“The Ipsotek Visual Intelligence Suite™ is the premier software package for pro-active surveillance of high-risk environments.

The Visual Intelligence Suite™ features flexible behavioural algorithms which are used for a variety of applications where human operators struggle to keep track of risks and threats as they arise:

• Border Security
• Suspect Packages
• Counter-terrorism
• Abandoned Vehicles
• Site Security
• ATM Surfing / PIN theft
• Prostitution & Kerb Crawling
• Graffiti
• Vandalism
• Abnormal Motion of Cars/People
• Muggings
• Anti-Social Behaviour
• Unauthorised Plant Removal
• Unauthorised Maintenance
• Disaster Recovery Site Protection
• Art Galleries & High Value Retail Items
• Critical Infrastructure Protection
• Platform Suicide
• Overcrowding, Vector Analysis
• Retail Fraud
• Iconic Buildings
• Trackside Intrusion

Please follow the links for further analysis of intrusion, suspect packages, loitering & overcrowding. – (so following them leads to:)

Intrusion

“Many competitors offer simple intrusion alerts based on motion detection, but the VI suite goes much further. Multiple areas of interest can be set within a single field-of-view and can be customised according to their sensitivity or interest.

Again, the instant replay feature allows the attendant security personnel to review and appropriate the correct response at the touch of a button.

Continual refinement of the video algorithms and an understanding of the depth of perception has virtually eliminated false positives from birds, paper bags, stray dogs or any other unwanted foreign intrusion.”

Suspect Packages

“Ipsotek’s Visual Intelligence Platform has unrivalled abandoned package detection rates due to the background learning nature of the software

It can recognise abandoned packages, secreted away under benches or partially hidden behind pillars, regardless of the levels of footfall interference. The instant alert replay feature allows the attendant operator to identify the culprit and take appropriate action, at the touch of a screen.

The ability to recognise stationary objects that are not part of the background can also be used to highlight collapsed or unconscious persons as well as illegally parked vehicles. This is just one example of how the flexibility inherent in Ipsotek’s algorithms allows the software to focus on the problems that have been identified.”

Loitering

“Loitering is the term used to describe a person standing around without any obvious purpose. This behaviour is often displayed by prostitutes, drug dealers, muggers ad PIN surfers ( card fraud experts)

There is also strong evidence to suggest that those intent on committing suicide by jumping onto the subway tracks will wait until several trains have passed before finally plucking up courage to commit the act.

The Visual Intelligence Platform™ can recognise loitering regardless of changeable ambient light conditions or overcrowding.”

Overcrowding / Congestion

“Overcrowding can be a serious threat to life. With sports stadiums boasting ever larger capacities and the continued popularity and growth of festivals, the ability to monitor and control crowds is becoming ever more crucial if we are to avoid a repeat occurrence of some of the tragic disasters of the past.

Ipsotek’s Vector Analysis algorithms can track individual movements within the crowded scenes, displaying them motion trends and thereby allowing operators to predicts where pressure will be greatest and react accordingly.

Vector Analysis also highlights discrepancies from the expected motion trends. Ticket touts and pickpockets thrive in dense, moving crowds; working against the flow, allowing them to gain maximum exposure to others in the shortest possible amount of time.”

NOW, back to the Ipsotek site:

“The Visual Intelligence Platform™ detects unusual activity by recognising behavioural patterns pre-programmed into the computer’s memory. Once any of the selected behaviour pattern is detected, the computer notifies CCTV operators, staff or management to the potential threat using visual and audio alerts. The technology then instantly reverses and replays the incident at the touch of a screen for users to examine.

It is at the discretion of the attendant operator to then take the appropriate action.

Unlike many other ‘real-time’ solutions offered on the market, Ipsotek can work equally effectively under ambient light conditions. Thus Ipsotek software is ideally suited to application in both indoor and outdoor environments, regardless of inclement weather or natural light variations.”

See demos at: http://www.ipsotek.com/html/demos.php

http://www.ipsotek.com/html/ipsotek.php

NOTE:

“British citizens live under the most intense surveillance on this planet. By the millennium’s dawn, there was one CCTV camera for every 14 people in the UK; work in a major city, and it’s likely you’ll be filmed at least 300 times per day. In the face of flawed technology and political duplicity, Gordon Brown’s cabinet is pressing ahead with plans to introduce identity cards which will be compulsory in all but name. This country already has the largest DNA database in the world (four million files) and our personal telephone records could soon be available to more than 650 governmental bodies. Prudence or paranoia? Novacon 37’s programme stared into Today, recalled the Past and extrapolated the Britain of Tomorrow.” http://www.novacon37.org.uk/

Peer to peer surveillance networks

Availability: 1-5 years.

Today’s camera networks are hard-wired and static. But cameras and wireless technology are already converging in the shape of smartphones. Soon, surveillance cameras will take on much of the monitoring tasks that today require Police control centres: using gait analysis and face recognition to pick up suspects, handing off surveillance between cameras as suspects move around, using other cameras as wireless routers to avoid network congestion and dead zones. The ability to tap into home webcams, private security cameras, and Neighbourhood Watch schemes will extend coverage out of public spaces and into the private realm. Many British cities already require retail establishments to install CCTV: the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2001) gives the Police the right to demand access to electronic data — including camera feeds. Ultimately the panopticon society needs cameras to be as common as street lights.

(Looking on the bright side: London Transport is experimenting with smart cameras that can identify potential suicides on underground train platforms by their movement patterns, which differ from those of commuters. So p2p surveillance cameras will help the trains run on time …)

NOTE:

“Camera software, dubbed Cromatica, is being developed at London’s Kingston University to help improve security on public transport systems but it could be used on a wider scale.

It works by detecting differences in the images shown on the screen.

For example, background changes indicate a crowd of people and possible congestion. If there is a lot of movement in the images, it could indicate a fight.”

Preventing suicide

“It could detect unattended bags, people who are loitering or even predict if someone is going to commit suicide by throwing themselves on the track,” said its inventor Dr Sergio Velastin.”

From above link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1953770.stm

See also: http://www.325collective.com/social-control_surveillance_capital.html

AND, lest you think this is purely U.K.:

“All Things Considered, October 26, 2007 · Chicago already has an elaborate network of surveillance cameras to detect crime — 560 cameras with plans to install 100 more.

Now, the city is teaming with IBM to launch what is being billed as the most advanced video security network in the United States: a system that could be programmed to recognize and warn authorities of suspicious behavior, such as a backpack left in a park or the same truck circling a high-rise several times.

IBM’s Roger Rehayem says smart cameras using analytic software can send out alerts for vehicles of certain colors, models and makes. And if a camera is positioned right, it can pick out license plates or even recognize faces….

Chicago officials say they’re not completely sold yet on the smart surveillance technology. They say visual and audio advancements, such as gunshot recognition, just haven’t been perfected enough yet to justify the cost of installing smart surveillance cameras citywide.” http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15673544

ALSO:

“Triggered Response

Dec 8, 2005, By Jim McKay

The sound of gunshots in high-crime neighborhoods may or may not move residents to call 911. In some neighborhoods, the sound of gunfire is unfortunately part of the landscape, and when they do call, residents can’t always be sure where the sound came from.
So what if the gunshot automatically triggered a 911 call, and captured video of the shooter? Police in Chicago are hoping to curb gun violence with technology that does just that.
The technology — Smart Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification (SENTRI) — recognizes the sound of a gunshot within a two-block radius, pinpoints the location of the shot with a surveillance camera, focuses on the location, and in less than 1 second, places a 911 call.
The goal is to use the devices to prevent homicides in areas known for gang activity and gun violence.
Continued Vigilance
Chicago successfully deployed 53 surveillance cameras over the years, and has deployed the gunshot-recognition technology in about one-third of those. The cameras, by themselves, were credited with reducing the city’s 2004 crime rate to its lowest level since 1965 — sexual assault is down 5 percent from the previous year, robbery is down 8 percent, aggravated assault is down 5 percent, and total violent crime is down 7 percent — and it is hoped the SENTRI system will provide even more ammunition against crime.” http://www.govtech.com/gt/97507

AND:

The Sentri Solution: A New Age in Law Enforcement:

“Safety Dynamics specializes in the use of smart sensors for threat recognition and localization. Safety Dynamics is currently selling and supporting a system for law enforcement called SENTRI (Sensor Enabled Neural Threat Recognition and Identification). The system is a breakthrough technology that recognizes gunshots and explosions and sends range and bearing details to cameras which can then locate the source of the event.”http://www.safetydynamics.net/products.html

So, it is here, now.

Gait analysis

Availability: now to 5 years.

Ever since the first slow-motion film footage, it’s been clear that people and animals move their limbs in unique ways — ways that depend on the relative dimensions of the underlying bone structure. Computer recognition of human faces has proven to be difficult and unreliable, and it’s prone to disguise: it’s much harder to change the length of your legs or the way you walk.

Researchers at Imperial College, London, and elsewhere have been working on using gait analysis as a tool for remote biometric identification of individuals, by deriving a unique gait signature from video footage of their movement.

(When gait analysis collides with ubiquitous peer-to-peer smart cameras, expect bank robbers to start wearing long skirts.)

NOTE:

See the paper on “People Detection and Recognition using Gait for Automated Visual Surveillance by Imed Bouchrika and M S Nixon, University of Southampton, UK, presented at The Institute of Engineering and Technology at a conference on Crime and Security in London, 13-14th June, 2006: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~lmg/IETConf_VisualSurveillPeopleRecogGait.pdf

So, this is here, now.

Terahertz radar

Availability: 2-8 years.

Very short wavelength radio waves can be tuned to penetrate some solid and semi-solid surfaces (such as clothing or drywall), and return much higher resolution images than conventional radar. A lot of work is going into domesticating this frequency range, with funding by NIST focussing in particular on developing lightweight short-range radar systems. Terahertz radar can pick up concealed hard objects — such as a gun or a knife worn under outer clothing — at a range of several metres; when it arrives, it’ll provide the panopticon society’s enforcers with something close to Superman’s X-ray vision.

(If they can see through walls, why bother with a search warrant?)

NOTE: See the same conference as above: “Advances in Through Wall Radar for Search, Rescue and Security Applications by Hugh Burchett, Imaging Detection and Tracking Group Leader, Cambridge Consultants, UK, presented at The Institute of Engineering and Technology at a conference on Crime and Security in London, 13-14th June, 2006: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~lmg/IETConf_ThroughWallRadar.pdf

ALSO:

Physical optics modelling of millimetre-wave personnel scanners

Pattern Recognition Letters, Volume 27 , Issue 15 (November 2006),
Special issue on vision for crime detection and prevention, Pages: 1852 – 1862 by Beatriz Grafulla-González, Katia Lebart, and Andrew R. Harvey

“We describe the physical-optics modelling of a millimetre-wave imaging system intended to enable automated detection of threats hidden under clothes. This paper outlines the theoretical basis of the formation of millimetre-wave images and provides the model of the simulated imaging system. Results of simulated images are presented and the validation with real ones is carried out. Finally, we present a brief study of the potential materials to be classified in this system.” abstract http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1226520.1226532

ALSO:

“Is it possible to screen everyone that enters­—or exits—your facility, without screeching your operations to a virtual halt? Do you know what your visitors, customers, patrons, constituents and staff may be hiding without stopping and questioning each one? Would you like an easier way to know who to search or where to look?

The BIS-WDS^® GEN 2…

• Provides standoff threat detection without requiring subjects to stand still
• Detects concealed objects in as little as 0.5 second
• Presents a full-body area at the 10-foot optimal focal point
• Does not image specific body details, eliminating personal privacy issues
• Transmits no radiation or energy of any kind
• Integrates seamlessly with ancillary devices, enabling remote operation and event traps

Plus it can be…

• Monitored remotely
• In real time
• Without requiring cooperation
• Without a physical pat down

Can you see what they’re hiding? The BIS-WDS^® GEN 2 Can!” http://www.brijot.com/products/index.php

“See what you’re missing!
Some locations—like airports and other critical transportation hubs, have already invested in security screening technologies like X-ray machines, metal detectors, and added security staff.
But those technologies can’t see explosive materials, liquids and gels, or thick packets of currency. GEN 2 can be integrated into your existing security strategy, and by imaging subjects in motion, it can be used to direct subjects into secondary screening lanes for further investigation, focusing security efforts and eliminating profiling or ineffective random screening.” http://www.brijot.com/applicationsmarketsolutions/airport-and-transportation.php

“Stem the tide of product shrinkage!
Loss prevention personnel will find the GEN 2 invaluable in identifying hidden objects exiting a facility. The system can image metals, wood, electronic devices, bottles of liquor… even fresh or frozen foods! Managers and security personnel can pat down employees virtually without physical contact. Event logging functionality records the detection, providing ideal documentation in the event of an employee termination or theft prosecution.” http://www.brijot.com/applicationsmarketsolutions/lossprevention.php

“Proven Results –
Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization (OLETC)
The GEN 2 system received positive, top-line results from its operational assessment trial of the GEN 2 Object Detection and People Screening System performed by the Office of Law Enforcement Technology Commercialization (OLETC) during a pilot trial at the Baltimore Police Department Headquarters Building. The results confirm state of the art screening technology characterized by advance capabilities beyond those offered by more traditional screening options such as metal detectors.
View full report details click here (link to white paper).” http://www.brijot.com/deploymentsandtrials/deployments.php

This is here now, and has been used in the U.S.

Celldar

Availability: 3-10 years.

Cellphones emit microwave radiation at similar wavelengths to radar systems. Celldar is a passive radar system that listens to the signals reflected by cellphone emitters. When a solid object passes between a transmitter and a cellphone it reduces the signal strength at a receiver.

Celldar was originally designed as a military system that would use reflected cellphone emissions to locate aircraft passing above the protected area. However, by correlating signal strength across a wide number of cellular transceivers (both base stations and phone handsets) in real time it should be possible to build up a picture of what objects are in the vicinity. Subtract the known locations of buildings, and you’ve got a system that can place any inhabited area under radar surveillance — by telephone. (As Rodney King demonstrated, we can already be tracked by cellphone. Now the panopticon society can place us under radar surveillance by phone. And as phones exchange data at ever higher bandwidth, the frequencies will shorten towards the terahertz range. Nude phone calling will take on an entirely different meaning …)

NOTE:
“CELLDAR™

“The CELLDAR™ passive radar system is now under joint development by ourselves and BAE Systems and is the world’s first passive radar to use cell phone basestation signals.” http://www.roke.co.uk/skills/radar/

OR:

“The Missouri Department of Transportation has begun anonymously monitoring cell phone signals as a high-tech way of tracking vehicle speeds and warning motorists of traffic jams. The goal is for motorists to get real-time traffic information over the Internet or road signs.

Privacy concerns have slowed down the Missouri project – the largest of its kind nationally – which was supposed to have been deployed statewide by summer 2006 under a contract with Markham, Canada-based Delcan Corp.” http://www.dailywireless.org/2007/09/21/celldar-monitoring-traffic-via-cell-radiation/

Ubiquitous RFID ‘dust’

Availability: 1-5 years.

Radio Frequency ID chips are used for tagging commercial produce. Unlike today’s simple anti-shoplifting tags in books and CD’s, the next generation will be cheap (costing one or two cents each), tiny (sand-grain sized), and smart enough to uniquely identify any individual manufactured product, by serial number as well as type and vendor. They can be embedded in plastic, wood, food, or fabric, and by remotely interrogating the RFID chips in your clothing or posessions the panopticon society’s agencies can tell a lot about you — like, what you’re reading, what you just ate, and maybe where you’ve been if they get cheap enough to scatter like dust. More insidiously, because each copy of a manufactured item will be uniquely identifiable, they’ll be able to tell not only what you’re reading, but where you bought it. RFID chips are injectable, too, so you won’t be able to misplace your identity by accident.

(And if the panopticon police don’t like the books you’re reading or the DVDs you’re watching, maybe they can use your tag fingerprint to order up a new you?)

NOTE:

In order to be use-friendly, one of the manufacturers of RDIF launched this site: http://www.discoverrfid.org/

And there is a Journal devoted to it: http://www.rfidjournal.com/

And the next generation IS here:

“Hitachi Develops World’s Smallest RFID Chip”
October 26, 2007 – Sarah Gingichashvili, The Future of Things (TOFT)

“The Japanese giant Hitachi has developed the world’s smallest and thinnest Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip. Measuring only 0.15 x 0.15 millimeters in size and 7.5 micrometers thick, the wireless chip is a smaller version of the previous record holder – Hitachi’s 0.4 x 0.4 mm “Micro-Chip”.

Miniature RFID chips may also have advanced military applications such as smartdust. Smartdust is the concept of wireless MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) sensors that can detect anything from light and temperature to vibrations. Using a large amount of sensors is not a new concept – the U.S. military experimented with this idea already during the Vietnam War (Operation Igloo White). While the older sensors were relatively large and only somewhat effective, Professor Christopher Pister from UC Berkeley suggested in 2001 to create a new type of micro sensor that could theoretically be as small as a grain of sand. Research into this idea is ongoing and is being funded by DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). What was only a theoretical concept in 2001 has now become a reality with the latest development by Hitachi, and could find its way to intelligence agencies across the world.

RFID chips are also a source for increasing controversy surrounding issues of privacy. An RFID chip can be used to track the location of unsuspecting individuals who have bought products that include RFID tags in their package. Having miniature cheap RFID chips, such as those developed by Hitachi, implanted inside anything we buy might make many people feel very uncomfortable. However, big businesses believe that consumers’ fears are dwarfed by the benefits of RFID chips, which include reduced theft, digital real time inventory, and better information on consumer shopping habits.” http://www.tfot.info/news/1032/hitachi-develops-worlds-smallest-rfid-chip.html

Trusted computing and Digital Rights Management

Availability: now-5 years.

Trusted Computing doesn’t mean computers you can trust: it means computers that intellectual property corporations can trust. Microsoft’s Palladium software (due in a future Windows release [2004: due in Windows Longhorn, renamed to NGSCB]) and Intel’s TPCA architecture are both components of a trusted computing platform. The purpose of trusted computing is to enforce Digital Rights Management — that is, to allow information providers to control what you do with the information, not to protect your rights.

Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a Palladium platform, but which you won’t be able to copy. Microsoft will be able to lease you software that stops working if you forget to pay the rental. Want to cut and paste a paragraph from your physics text book into that essay you’re writing? DRM enforced by TCPA will prevent you (and snitch to the publisher’s copyright lawyers). Essentially, TPCA will install a secret policeman into every microprocessor. PCs stop being general purpose machines and turn into Windows on the panopticon state. It’s not about mere legal copyright protection; as Professor Lawrence Lessig points out, the rights that software and media companies want to reserve go far beyond their legal rights under copyright law.

If the trusted computing folks get their way, to ensure control they’ll need to pass legislation to outlaw alternative media. Jaron Lanier predicts that today’s microphones, speakers and camcorders could become contraband; and in case this sounds outlandish and paranoid, the US senate has seen more than one bill, (most prominent among them, the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act) that would require DRM interlocks in all analog-to-digital conversion electronics in order to prevent illicit copying.

(Presumably he wasn’t thinking of aircraft instrumentation, cardiac monitors, or machine tools at the time, but under the proposed law they would need copy-prevention interlocks as well … )

WIKI says about DRM and TCPA and Palladium:

“The Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB), formerly known as Palladium, is a software architecture designed by Microsoft which is expected to implement parts of the controversial “Trusted Computing” concept on future versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. NGSCB is part of Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing initiative. Microsoft’s stated aim for NGSCB is to increase the security and privacy of computer users, but critics assert that the technology will not only fail to solve the majority of contemporary IT security problems, but also result in an increase in vendor lock-in and thus a reduction in competition in the IT marketplace.

NGSCB relies on hardware technology designed by members of the Trusted Computing Group (TCG), which provides a number of security-related features, including fast random number generation, a secure cryptographic co-processor, and the ability to hold cryptographic keys in a manner that makes them extremely difficult to retrieve, even to the machine’s owner. It is this latter ability that makes remote attestation of the hardware and software configuration of an NGSCB-enabled computer possible, and to which the opponents of the scheme chiefly object. Several computer manufacturers are selling computers with the Trusted Platform Module chip, notably the Dell OptiPlex GX620.”

“NGSCB and Trusted Computing can be used to intentionally and arbitrarily lock certain users out from use of certain files, products and services, for example to lock out users of a competing product, potentially leading to severe vendor lock-in. This is analogous to a contemporary problem in which many businesses feel compelled to purchase and use Microsoft Word in order to be compatible with associates who use that software. Today this problem is partially solved by products such as OpenOffice.org which provide limited compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats. Under NGSCB, if Microsoft Word were to encrypt documents it produced, no other application would be able to decrypt them, regardless of its ability to read the underlying file format.”

“When originally announced, NGSCB was expected to be part of the then next major version of the Windows Operating System, Windows Vista (then known as Longhorn). However, in May 2004, Microsoft was reported to have shelved the NGSCB project. This was quickly denied by Microsoft who released a press release stating that they were instead “revisiting” their plans. The majority of features of NGSCB are now not expected to be available until well after the release of Windows Vista. However, Vista includes “BitLocker“, which can make use of a Trusted Platform Module chip to facilitate secure startup and full-drive encryption. TPMs are already integrated in many systems using Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors or AMD’s Athlon 64 processors using the AM2 socket.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next-Generation_Secure_Computing_Base

FROM windows itself:

“Our first delivery on the vision is a hardware based security feature in Longhorn [Vista] called Secure Startup. Secure Startup utilizes a Trusted Platform Module (TPM 1.2) to improve PC security and it meets some of the most critical requirements we heard from our customers-specifically, the capability to ensure that the PC running Longhorn starts in a known-good state, as well as protection of data from unauthorized access through full volume encryption.

Subsequent to Secure Startup, Microsoft will be focused on continuing to build other aspects of the NGSCB vision. These will complement Secure Startup to enable a broad range of new secure computing solutions. The technical specifications, timing and delivery vehicles are TBD.” http://www.microsoft.com/resources/ngscb/default.mspx

Cognitive radio

Availability: now-10 years.

Radio waves can travel through one another without interacting. Radio ‘interference’ happens when radio transceivers use dumb encoding schemes that don’t let multiple channels share the same wavelength: interference is a side-effect of poor design, not a fundamental limit on wireless communications.

With fast microprocessors it’s possible to decode any radio-frequency signal on the fly in software, by performing Fourier analysis on the raw signal rather than by using hard-wired circuitry. Software radios can be reconfigured on the fly to use new encoding schemes or frequencies. Some such encoding schemes work to avoid interference; so-called cognitive radio transcievers take account of other transmitters in the neighbourhood and negotiate with them to allocate each system a free frequency. (The 802.11 wireless networking protocols are one early example of this in action.) SR doesn’t sound like a tool of the panopticon society until you put them together with celldar and TCPA. Cellphones and computers are on a collision course. If the PC becomes a phone, and every computer comes with a built-in secret policeman _and_ can be configured in software, the panopticon’s power becomes enormous: remote interrogation of RFID dust in your vicinity will let the authorities know who you’re associating with, reconfiguration of phones into celldar receivers will let them see what you’re doing, and plain old-fashioned bugging will let them listen in. If they can be bothered.

(Invest in tinfoil hat manufacturers; it’s the future of headgear!)

NOTE:

Scientific American Magazine – March, 2006

Cognitive Radio

“Engineers are now working to bring that kind of flexible operating intelligence to future radios, cell phones and other wireless communications devices. During the coming decade, cognitive radio technology should enable nearly any wireless system to locate and link to any locally available unused radio spectrum to best serve the consumer. Employing adaptive software, these smart devices could reconfigure their communications functions to meet the demands of the transmission network or the user.

Cognitive radio technology will know what to do based on prior experience. On the morning drive to work, for instance, it would measure the propagation characteristics, signal strength and transmission quality of the different bands as it rides along with you. The cognitive radio unit would thus build an internal database that defines how it should best operate in different places and at specific times of day. In contrast, the frequency bands and transmission protocol parameters of current wireless systems have been mostly fixed.” http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000C7B72-2374-13F6-A37483414B7F0000

Lab-on-a-chip chemical analysers

Availability: now-5 years.

Microtechnology, unlike nanotechnology, is here today. By building motors, gears, pumps, and instruments onto silicon wafers using the same lithographic techniques that are used for making microcircuitry, engineers are making it possible to build extremely small — and cheap — analytical laboratories. Devices under development include gas chromatography analysers, mass spectroscopes, flow cytometers, and a portable DNA analyser small enough to fit in a briefcase. The panopticon society is lavish with its technologies: what today would occupy a Police department’s forensic lab, will tomorrow fit into a box the size of a palmtop computer.

(And they won’t have to send that urine sample to a lab in order to work out that you were in the same room as somebody who smoked a joint two weeks ago.)

SEE:

https://www-eng.llnl.gov/mic_nano/mic_nano.html

http://www.mitsi.com/

and here’s one from the above company:

“The Miniature DVR with built in color pinhole camera, battery, and monitor with video motion and sound activation. Ideal for Investigations in hospitals, offices, retail or hotel rooms – anywhere you need to be in and out quickly. Options available such as external camera connection, body worn and network connection shown in MD-2000 model below.”

OR from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL):

“A dime-sized amplifier makes fiber-optic communications faster and clearer. A portable DNA analyzer helps detect and identify organisms in the field, including human remains and biological warfare agents. A tiny gripper inserted in a blood vessel treats aneurysms in the brain to ward off potential strokes. What do these technologies have in common? Each one is smaller than any comparable product, opening up a host of new applications. And each originated in Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Microtechnology Center.” https://www.llnl.gov/str/Mariella.html

Data mining

Availability: -5 years to +10 years

Total Information Awareness. Department of Homeland Security. NSA. ECHELON. This article was emailed to Whole Earth Review’s staff; by including these keywords it almost certainly caught the attention of ECHELON, the data mining operation run by the NSA and its associated intelligence agencies. ECHELON has monitored all internet, telephone, fax, telex, and radio traffic for years, hoovering up the data. But analysing electronic intelligence is like trying to drink water from a firehose; the problem is identifying relevant information, because for every Al Qaida operative discussing the next bomb plot, a million internet denizens are speculating and gossiping about the same topic. And if the infoglut seems bad now, wait until your every walk down the high street generates megabytes of tracking data. The Department of Homeland Security is just one of the most obvious agencies trying to tackle the information surplus generated by the embryonic panopticon society. The techniques they propose to use entail linking up access to a variety of public and private databases, from credit rating agencies and the INS to library lending records, ISP email and web server logs, and anything else they can get their hands on. The idea is to spot terrorists and wrongdoers pre-emptively by detecting patterns of suspicious behaviour.

The trouble is, data mining by cross-linking databases can generate false inferences. Imagine your HMO with access to your web browsing records. Your sister asks you to find her some books about living with AIDS, to pass on to a friend; you go look on Amazon.com, researching the topic, and all the HMO knows is that you’re looking for help on living with AIDS. And how does the Department of Homeland Society know whether I’m planning a terrorist act … or doing my research before writing a novel about a terrorist incident? To make matters worse, many databases contain corrupt information, either by accident or malice. The more combinations of possible corrupt data you scan, the more errors creep into your analysis. But to combat these problems, the Office of Information Awareness is proposing to develop new analytical techniques that track connections between people — where they shop, how they travel, who they know — in the hope that if they throw enough data at the problem the errors will go away.

(Guess they think they need the panopticon surveillance system, then. After all, if data mining never worked in the past, obviously you can make it work by throwing more data at it …)

The pressure to adopt these technologies springs from our existing political discourse as we struggle to confront ill-defined threats. We live in a dangerous world: widespread use of high technology means that individuals can take actions that are disruptive out of all proportion to their numbers. Human nature being what it is, we want to be safe: the promise of a high-tech surveillance “fix” that will identify terrorists or malefactors before they hurt us is a great lure.

But acts of mass terror exist at one end of a scale that begins with the parking ticket, the taping of a CD for personal use in a Walkman, a possibly-defamatory statement about a colleague sent in private email to a friend, a mistakenly ommitted cash receipt when compiling the annual tax return … the list is endless, and to a police authority with absolute knowledge and a robotic compulsion to Enforce The Law, we would all, ultimately, be found guilty of something.

This brings up a first major point: legislators do not pass laws in the expectation that everybody who violates them will automatically be caught and punished. Rather, they often pass new laws in order to send a message — to their voters (that they’re doing something about their concerns) and to the criminals (that if caught they will be dealt with harshly). There is a well-known presumption that criminals are acting rationally (in the economic sense) and their behaviour is influenced by the perceived reward for a successful crime, and both the risk and severity of punishment. This theory is implicitly taken into account by legislators when they draft legislation, because in our current state of affairs most crimes go undetected and unreported. A panopticon singularity would completely invalidate these assumptions.

Furthermore: many old laws are retained despite widespread unpopularity, because a vocal minority support them. An estimated 30 percent of the British population have smoked cannabis, currently an offense carrying a maximum penalty of 6 months’ imprisonment (despite rumours of its decriminalization), and an absolute majority of under-50’s supports decriminalization, but advocating a “soft on drugs” line was perceived as political suicide until very recently because roughly 25% of the population were strongly opposed.

Some old laws, which may not match current social norms, are retained because it is easier to ignore them than to repeal them. In Massachusetts, the crime of fornication — any sex act with someone you’re not married to — carries a 3 month prison sentence. Many towns, states, and countries have archaic laws still on the books that dictate what people must wear, how they must behave, and things they must do — laws which have fallen into disuse, and which are inappropriate to enforce. (There’s one town in Texas where since the 19th century it has been illegal for women to wear patent leather shoes, lest a male see something unmentionable reflected in them; and in London, until 1998 all taxis were required to carry a bale of hay in case their horse needed a quick bite to eat. Diesel and petrol powered cabs included.)

These laws, and others like them, highlight the fact that with a few exceptions (mostly major felonies) our legal systems were not designed with universal enforcement in mind. But universal enforcement is exactly what we’ll get if these surveillance technologies come together to produce a panopticon singularity.

A second important side-effect of panopticon surveillance is the chilling effect it exerts on otherwise lawful activities. If you believe your activities on the net are being monitored for signs of terrorist intent, would you dare do the research to write that thriller? Nobody (with any common sense) cracks a joke in the waiting line at airport security — we’re all afraid of attracting the unwelcome attention of people in uniform with no sense of humour whatsoever. Now imagine the straitjacket policing of aviation security extended into every aspect of daily life, with unblinking and remorseless surveillance of everything you do and say. Worse: imagine that the enforcers are machines, tireless and efficient and incapable of turning a blind eye.

Surveillance need not even stop at our skin; the ability to monitor our speech and track our biological signs (for example: pulse, pupillary dilation, or possibly hormone and neurotransmitter levels) may lead to attempts to monitor thoughts as well as deeds. What starts with attempts to identify paedophile predators before they strike may end with discrimination against people believed to be at risk of “addictive behaviour” — howsoever that might be defined — or of harbouring anti-social attitudes.

We are all criminals, if you dig far enough: we’ve broken the speed limit, forgotten to file official papers in time, made false statements (often because we misremembered some fact), failed to pay for services, and so on. These are minor offenses — relatively few of us are deliberate criminals. But even if we aren’t active felons we are all potential criminals, and a case can be — and is being — made for keeping us all under surveillance, all the time.

A Panopticon Singularity is the logical outcome if the burgeoning technologies of the singularity are funneled into automating law enforcement. Previous police states were limited by manpower, but the panopticon singularity substitutes technology, and ultimately replaces human conscience with a brilliant but merciless prosthesis.

If a panopticon singularity emerges, you’d be well advised to stay away from Massachusetts if you and your partner aren’t married. Don’t think about smoking a joint unless you want to see the inside of one of the labour camps where over 50% of the population sooner or later go. Don’t jaywalk, chew gum in public, smoke, exceed the speed limit, stand in front of fire exit routes, or wear clothing that violates the city dress code (passed on the nod in 1892, and never repealed because everybody knew nobody would enforce it and it would take up valuable legislative time). You won’t be able to watch those old DVD’s of ‘Friends’ you copied during the naughty oughties because if you stick them in your player it’ll call the copyright police on you. You’d better not spend too much time at the bar, or your insurance premiums will rocket and your boss might ask you to undergo therapy. You might be able to read a library book or play a round of a computer game, but your computer will be counting the words you read and monitoring your pulse so that it can bill you for the excitement it has delivered.

And don’t think you can escape by going and living in a log cabin in the middle of nowhere. It is in the nature of every police state that the most heinous offense of all is attempting to escape from it. And after all, if you’re innocent, why are you trying to hide?” http://www.antipope.org/charlie/rant/panopticon-essay.html

TO ADD TO THIS:

“The Ambiguous Panopticon: Foucault and the Codes of Cyberspace” by Mark Winokur, from ctheory.net

“David Lyon’s The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society — contains a lengthy discussion of the way in which panopticism is defined by “uncertainty as a means of subordination” (in other words by how the authoritarian gaze is unverifiable), his discussion of panopticism per se is largely concerned with the various data-collecting agencies that use the Internet to exert an external coercion on the individual, not with how such authority is internalized: ‘The prison-like society, where invisible observers track our digital footprints, does indeed seem panoptic.’ A little less often, scholars are interested in the ways that the Net limits our ability to think outside the Net, in other words in questions about discourse and discipline.”

From the footnotes: David Lyon, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 1994, p. 65.

“An even more recent book states the case more baldly: “[W]e have every reason to believe that cyberspace, left to itself, will not fulfill the promise of freedom. Left to itself, cyberspace will become a perfect tool of control” (Lawrence Lessig, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, NY: Basic Books, 2000, pp. 5-6).”

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=371#_ednref4

AND check out the articles in the Surveillance and Society’s “Foucault and Panopticism Revisited” issue of their Journal: http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/journalv1i3.htm

AND check out this article on some recent comments on the Panopticon Society and what is happening in Britain with ID cards and iris scans, etc.:http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2007061046.php

AND read “Who is watching you?” by Deborah Pierce, Seattle Press On-line, http://archive.seattlepressonline.com/article-9464.html

AND for more from the Correctional News, CN Nov/Dec 06, Facility of the Month Nov/Dec 2006:

” A Centrifugal Force: A Round Addition in El Paso County, Colo., Updates a Historic Design”

” Each of the tower’s three floors contains a control room and an additional mezzanine level for extra bed space, giving the facility the appearance of having six floors.

“It’s based on the concentric ring theory,” says Greg Gulliksen, project architect. “The hub is the central control area in the middle; the next ring out is a circulation area around the control room; the next ring out is the dayroom; and the last ring contains the sleeping areas and the shower and toilet area.”

Each ward contains nine dormitory-style sleeping bays where inmates are grouped together without doors or bars. Each bay contains eight bunk beds and eight lockers.”

http://www.correctionalnews.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=88327817A39E494AA4A426AF092D33D2

AND I saved the best for last:

The NYPD Panopticon Imprisons Harlem”, November 27, 2006, David W. Boles’ Urban Semiotic

“The Panopticon — a prison so built radially that a guard at a central position can see all the prisoners – is also known as the infamous and ever-vigilant Foucauldian unblinking eye of authority watching every move a prisoner makes while remaining rough and ready to strike punishment as often as needed, has come to the streets of Harlem as “Sky Watch.”

The Sky Watch, about two stories tall, consists of a booth for a cop that stands atop a tower that collapses when the officer is ready to leave.

The booth, which gives the cop a line of sight from 20 feet up, has four cameras, a high-powered spotlight and various sensors. The digital cameras, which continue recording when the booth is unstaffed, save the video to a hard drive.

The units, which cost from $40,000 to $100,000 apiece, are also being used by the U.S. Border Patrol and cops in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas and Fort Worth.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the department has leased one or two of the devices and hopes to eventually have five.

Since they’re moveable, they’re more flexible than fixed cameras.

One tower was installed about three weeks ago at 129th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard in Harlem – drawing cheers and jeers.

What does this mean for the innocent residents of Harlem who now live in an open-air prison?

Here’s a traditional prison Panopticon where a central watchtower sits at the center of the structure surrounded by prisoners in their cells. The prisoners cannot see the watchtower but sunlight pouring through outer windowed cell walls shows all movement of the prisoners in shadow to the unblinking Panopticonic eye:

[Several tiers of inmates in this round cell block at Stateville Prison near Joliet, Illinois, are easily visible from the guard tower in the middle.]

Here’s the Harlem Sky Watch box in action — have you ever seen an uglier obelisk wannabe? — where the sentry tower becomes the center tower of the Panopticon while the buildings and apartments surrounding it become the windowed prison cells from which there is no escape from the unblinking eye of punishment:

A watched cauldron never boils, but an observed populace ultimately overthrows its gaoler.

Just who are being protected in Harlem and just who are being watched?

The unblinking eye of authority stings us all from the NYPD Harlem Panopticon and we are all made more guilty because of it ominous presence.” http://urbansemiotic.com/2006/11/27/the-nypd-panopticon-imprisons-harlem/

SO, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU!

No more sunbathing – is privacy dead?

This came home to me a few days ago when my 14 yr. old daughter had me watch it – she showed me the street we live on, and crystal clear views of our house, our driveway, the ladder leaning on the fence, and even my Chevy Cavalier that had been totaled. The picture was taken last summer, but it was eerie to “drive” up and down your street, the street of my ex (and my ex-house), and even up to the gates of my ex’s mother’s gated community – even though the gates were open, they apparently can’t enter such a place. It was rather unsettling – just like the satellite images I saw when I placed our address in the search bar – a friend from Germany could identify it by the parking lot behind out fence, the car in front, etc. And what if I had been sunbathing – not a pretty sight at my age and weight, but I have the “illusion”, the operative word here, of complete privacy in my backyard, surrounded by 6-ft fences. Now I wouldn’t go top-less, but I still wouldn’t want anyone to see me in a bathing suit, or similar revealing apparel! So here is the story behind this, first from my local news:

GOOGLE PUTS PICTURES OF YOUR HOUSE ONLINE

04:10 PM MST on Saturday, February 16, 2008

KTVB.COM

See how it works

BOISE – If you live in Ada County, chances are a truck loaded with computers and camera gear has roamed past your house snapping pictures as it goes along.

Google launched its Street View service last May to a few select cities – and now the program has hit the Treasure Valley. A vehicle went slowly down many streets in Ada County, methodically taking pictures and recording the precise location of the image.

Engineers at Google take all the images and data and translate it to an easy-to-use overlay on the company’s popular Google Maps site.

The Boise images became available on Tuesday, along with Albany, NY, Salt Lake City, UT, Juneau, AK, Kansas City, KS, Milwaukee, WI, San Antonio, TX, Raleigh, NC and Manchester, NH. The latest cities bring the count to 33.

The photos appear to have been taken this summer – with lush green grass and full trees.

Users can even scroll from photo to photo, giving the sensation they are walking down the street.

Most areas in Boise, Eagle, Star, Meridian, Garden City and Kuna are covered – though there are sizable gaps in southeast and northwest Boise, and a few spotty areas mixed in.

Some are concerned about privacy and Google told the New York Times that it allows a user to request an image be removed. Google also noted to the newspaper that it only features imagery taken on public property.

Click over to Google Maps. Once there, type in Boise, ID – and click the “Street View” button in the upper right hand side of the map. You can type in an address, or use the map to navigate to a location – then click the Street View link. Click and drag the photos to move around.”

http://www.ktvb.com/sharedcontent/newslink/thumbnail/ktvb/087/googlemaps_3181-t240.jpg

Picture of car and camera

Now all are NOT happy in the land of Googleville:

Get ready for your close-up

Google’s acclaimed, criticized Street View bears down on Boston

By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff / December 11, 2007

Google Inc.’s controversial Street View feature, which offers 360-degree, street-level images of urban life so clear that passersby often can be identified, is set to make its Boston debut this morning.

Starting at around 10 a.m., Internet users who click on the “Street View” box on Google Maps (maps.google.com), will be able to peek at images from streets in Boston and surrounding communities. The views were stitched together from images taken by Google employees over the past year from cars and vans equipped with cameras.

The feature, which already captures street scenes in 15 cities across the country, has become popular among people planning vacations, searching for shops or restaurants, or checking out landmarks such as Wrigley Field in Chicago or the Empire State Building in New York. But it drew howls of protests from privacy advocates when it was launched last May in San Francisco, where people complained about everything from photos of recognizable men entering adult bookstores to an image of a cat in a window.

“We take privacy concerns seriously,” said Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps. “All these images are taken on public streets. It’s exactly what you could see walking down the street.”

But while Google has developed technology that can obscure faces and license plate numbers in Street View images, the Mountain View, Calif., company has said it will blur faces and plate numbers only in countries where it is required to do so, not in the United States.

Street View’s rollout in Boston is part of a larger debut of the feature today in eight more cities, including Providence, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Paul. Google officials yesterday said they could not specify which Boston or suburban streets would be visible. The service covers only certain streets and neighborhoods in the cites where it’s now available, although in some locations, such as San Francisco, the majority of streets have been photographed. Google plans eventually to extend Street View to cities and towns of all sizes worldwide.

Google is also introducing a “mashup” service today that will enable Internet users to import Street View panoramas from particular streets or neighborhoods to their own websites or blogs. The service is intended to make it easier for people to use Street View to recommend sights, locate coffee shops, or design cyber-walking tours.

While those might be legitimate uses of Street View, the feature also has the potential to be used for more questionable pursuits, such as compiling digital dossiers on individuals, critics warned.

“As Google gets closer and closer to its stated goal of indexing all the world’s information, more and more issues arise,” said John G. Palfrey Jr., executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. “In the privacy realm, Google is asking people for a lot of trust. The ball is really in Google’s court to prove they’re not going to violate people’s privacy.”

A sample of Google’s Street View feature. The company says it will not blur faces and plate numbers in its US street images.

Other companies also have released products in the drive-by image space, including EveryScape Inc. in Waltham and Povo Inc. in Boston. EveryScape moved up its launch to the same day as Google’s to capitalize on the publicity generated by the larger company.

Street View does what it’s intended to do very well,” said Jim Schoonmaker, the EveryScape chief executive. “But they’re focused on streets. We’ve been up and down ski mountains, on beaches, and in and out of businesses like restaurants and dental offices.”

Images from Street View and similar services are not live. They capture a point in time when sections of city streets were photographed, typically over a period of months, by small teams of Google employees driving in company cars with roof-mounted cameras equipped with global positioning technology that digitally matches the images with their locations on a map. The company hopes to refresh its images to document changing streets, but its highest priority has been expanding to new cities, Chau said.

Internet users visiting Street View are shown a map of the United States and can click on icons shaped like cameras to view cities Google has photographed. From there, they can type in a street address or call up blue-outlined streets to view images that can be rotated and zoomed in.

Google, in refusing to blur faces in US cities, has faced a chorus of critics in cities already catalogued in Street View, such as San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, who have called on the company to install technology that will make people pictured more anonymous. One of Street View’s critics, Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest group focusing on technology issues, was photographed on Street View smoking on his way to work in San Francisco.

“That was of concern to me because not all of my family knew I smoked,” Bankston said. Google ultimately removed the image at his request, but Bankston said the incident demonstrated the potential for worse abuse if other people were photographed going to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, health clinics for sensitive procedures, or other places that could compromise their privacy. He said he felt the Google feature was part of an ominous trend that included people taking pictures of others with camera phones and posting them on the Internet.

http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/12/11/get_ready_for_your_close_up/

Protests accompany Google’s expansion of Street View

By Robert Weisman, The Boston Globe, December 11, 2007

Despite protests from privacy advocates, Google on Tuesday introduced its Street View feature for eight more U.S. cities, offering 360-degree, street-level images of urban life so clear that passers-by often can be identified.

The feature is available on Google Maps, which had captured street scenes in 15 American cities before the expansion Tuesday.

It has become popular among people planning vacations, searching for shops or restaurants, or checking out landmarks.

But it drew protests from privacy advocates when it was introduced in May in San Francisco, where people complained about everything from the clear photos of men entering adult bookstores to an image of a cat in a window.

“We take privacy concerns seriously,” said Stephen Chau, product manager for Google Maps. “All these images are taken on public streets. It’s exactly what you could see walking down the street.”

The views were stitched together from images taken by Google employees over the past year from cars and vans equipped with cameras. But while Google has developed technology that can obscure faces and license plate numbers in Street View images, the company has said it will blur those images only in countries where it is required to do so, not in the United States.

The eight new cities are Boston; Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas, Indianapolis; Detroit; Minneapolis; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Providence, Rhode Island. The service covers only certain streets and neighborhoods in the cites where it is available, although in some cities, like San Francisco, the majority of streets have been photographed.

Google said it would extend Street View to cities and towns of all sizes worldwide.

Google is also introducing a “mashup” service Tuesday that would enable Internet users to import Street View panoramas from particular streets or neighborhoods to their own Web sites or blogs. The service is intended to make it easier for people to use Street View to recommend sights, locate coffee shops, or design virtual walking tours.

Critics warn that while those might be legitimate uses of Street View, the feature also has the potential to be used for more questionable pursuits, like compiling digital dossiers on individuals.

“As Google gets closer and closer to its stated goal of indexing all the world’s information, more and more issues arise,” said John Palfrey Jr., executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. “In the privacy realm, Google is asking people for a lot of trust. The ball is really in Google’s court to prove they’re not going to violate people’s privacy.”

Images from Street View and similar services are not live. They capture a point in time when sections of city streets were photographed, typically over a period of months. Small teams of Google employees take the pictures from vehicles with roof-mounted cameras equipped with global positioning technology that digitally match the images with their locations on a map. The company hopes to refresh its images to document changing streets, but its highest priority has been expanding to new cities, Chau said.

Internet users visiting Street View are shown a map of the United States and can click on icons shaped like cameras to view cities Google has photographed. From there, they can type in a street address or call up blue-outlined streets to view images that can be rotated and zoomed in.

Google, in refusing to blur faces of individuals in U.S. cities, has faced a chorus of critics in cities already catalogued in Street View, including New York, and Chicago, who have called on the company to install technology that makes people pictured more anonymous.

One of Street View’s critics, Kevin Bankston, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a public interest group focusing on technology issues, was photographed on Street View smoking on his way to work in San Francisco.

“That was of concern to me because not all of my family knew I smoked,” Bankston said.

Google ultimately removed the image at his request, but Bankston said the incident demonstrated the potential for worse abuse if other people were photographed going to Alcoholic Anonymous meetings, health clinics for sensitive procedures, or other places that could compromise their privacy. He said he felt the Google feature was part of an ominous trend that included people taking pictures of others with camera phones and posting them on the Internet.

“Rather than a Big Brother scenario, we’re looking at a Little Brother scenario where more and more of us are surveilling each other,” Bankston warned. “That is a trend that is fraught with a level of privacy risk that we as a society have not yet come to grips with.”

Google’s Chau, however, said that while Street View critics have been vocal, the company has received no more than a couple of dozen requests from people seeking to remove pictures of themselves since the Street View feature was launched last spring.

“This hasn’t been a big concern among our users,” he said. “The biggest complaint is the service isn’t available in their city yet.” http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/11/technology/street.php?page=1

GOOGLE COMES TO TOWN, ALONG WITH SOME PRIVACY CONCERNS

2/1/08 by Stu Woo, Brown Daily Herald

Minsuk Kim ‘08, seen here on Google Street View, walks down Williams Street with a friend. Media Credit: Courtesy of Google, Inc.

One day last fall, Minsuk Kim ‘08 put on a teal sweater, gray pants and black shoes. He and a friend then walked east on Williams Street, around the corner from Kim’s apartment.Kim doesn’t recall this particular incident. But Google does.

On Dec. 11, the search engine giant introduced a service called “Street View” to Providence. The feature, integrated with the popular Google Maps, allows Internet users to get a panoramic view of most Providence street addresses.

Google says that Street View is a practical tool allowing users to, say, see if parking is available around an address or to find the name of a business they passed by. But critics complain the product is invasive and smacks of “Big Brother,” since Street View takes such clear photos – many of which include distinguishable shots of unsuspecting passersby.

Like Kim, who didn’t notice anyone or anything photographing him. He didn’t even know his likeness was on Street View until a friend sent him a text message over winter break, telling him to check out Williams Street.

So Kim went online. There he was, walking toward either his friend’s house or a liquor store, he says. He laughed when he saw the image, which was clear enough for any acquaintance to recognize him.

“I just think it’s funny,” Kim says. “I also wasn’t doing anything incriminating, but I could see how it could be a problem.”

“Don’t Be Evil”

When Google first introduced Street View last May, the Mountain View, Calif., company imagined it as a way to further “understand the world through images.”

“With Street View, you can virtually explore city neighborhoods by viewing and navigating within 360-degree scenes of street-level imagery,” wrote Stephen Chau, Street View’s product manager, in a Google blog entry introducing the tool. “It feels as if you’re walking down the street!”

With Street View, which debuted in five cities and is now in 23, Google introduced a technology that seemed unfathomable just a few years ago. Though Amazon.com and other companies have attempted similar projects, Street View is by far the most advanced, since it seamlessly stitches images together to create a virtual street.

Google uses regular cars, equipped with “imaging technology,” to collect images and location data as they drive down public streets, wrote Elaine Filadelfo, a Google spokeswoman, in an e-mail. Filadelfo added that the vehicles have the “Google Maps” logo on them.

Street View is simple to use. Users enter a street address in Google Maps and, if the feature is enabled for that particular location, click “Street View.” They will then see a panoramic shot of that location and can virtually move up or down a street using the arrow buttons.

Filadelfo wrote that Street View images are usually a couple of months to a year old when they are uploaded. Google plans to update its Street View images in the future, she added, and is currently working on adding high-definition photos in a “wide variety of cities.”

Those high-definition photos may not sit well with critics who say Street View already intrudes too much on individual rights. Though the product breaks no laws for the most part – after all, the images are shot from public property – it raises serious ethical questions, says Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group.

“Something like Google Street View really is the first step in a feeling that we’re being recorded in everything we do,” Jeschke says. “Generally, we can expect a certain amount of anonymity (in public places). This shows a real change to that, and that’s disturbing.”

Street View can be potentially embarrassing. When the feature debuted last year, bloggers posted some of their favorite images: of sunbathers, of people entering or leaving strip clubs and even one of a man who appears to be breaking into a house.

“You shouldn’t have to think about whether or not you’re on camera when you’re going to the doctor or perhaps going to drug treatment,” Jeschke says. She adds that a journalist found a Street View image of Kevin Bankston, one of Jeschke’s co-workers, smoking, “a habit that he’s not proud of.”

Bankston, a lawyer for the EFF, has urged Google to make it easier for people to remove photos of themselves on Street View. Jeschke says this still doesn’t totally solve the problem, since most people wouldn’t know where they would have been photographed. She believes Google should make it a priority to blur faces or remove people from photographs. The company should have the technology to do that, she says, since it has the “best programmers in the country.”

Filadelfo wrote that Google “takes privacy very seriously.” The company has set up a simple, online process that allows clearly-identified individuals to request that their photos be removed.

Google, whose informal corporate motto is “Don’t Be Evil,” currently doesn’t have any plans to automatically blur faces in Street View, Filadelfo wrote, though she added that the laws may “vary by country to abide by local laws and cultural norms.” Social networking blog Mashable.com reported on Nov. 30 that Street View will blur all faces and license plates in its European version when it launches.” http://media.www.browndailyherald.com/media/storage/paper472/news/2008/02/01/Features/Google.Comes.To.Town.Along.With.Some.Privacy.Concerns-3183023.shtml

And From Wikipedia:

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps introduced in 2007 that provides 360° panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched on May 25, 2007, only five cities were included. It has since expanded to 23 cities, and includes the suburbs of many, and in some cases, other nearby cities.Google Street View, when operated, displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile, and can be navigated using either the arrow keys on the keyboard or by using the mouse to click on arrows displayed on the screen. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles. Lines that are displayed along the street that is shown indicate the direction followed by that street.”

“This feature of Google has raised privacy concerns, with views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, and other activities. Google maintains that the photos were taken from public property. Before launching the service, Google removed photos of domestic violence shelters, and allows users to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove. The process for requesting that an image be removed is not trivial. Images of potential break-ins, sunbathers and individuals entering adult bookstores have, for example, remained active and these images have been widely republished.

In Europe, the creation of Google Street View may not be legal in all places. While the laws vary from country to country, many countries in Europe have laws prohibiting the unconsented filming of an individual on public property for the purpose of public display.

Google has delayed the release of its street views of Washington, D.C. and other nearby areas of Virginia and Maryland (including Baltimore) out of concern from the United States Department of Homeland Security that some of the images taken may be of security-sensitive areas.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Street_View

Google Fails Privacy Study, Criticizes Watchdog Group

By Luke O’Brien, June 11, 2007

When Privacy International, a UK-based watchdog group, released a study on Friday ranking the privacy practices of major internet companies, Google may already have known it would wind up dead last, saddled with an overall “hostile to privacy” rating that took into account Google’s data retention policies and recent purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick. Privacy International, for its part, already knew that ranking Google last and below a company such as Microsoft would cause a backlash:

“We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google’s approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations. While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy. This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google’s product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google’s market dominance and the sheer size of its user base. Google’s status in the ranking is also due to its aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies and techniques.

The view that Google “opens up” information through a range of attractive and advanced tools does not exempt the company from demonstrating responsible leadership in privacy. Google’s increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user’s life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook. Neither of these elements has been demonstrated. Rather, we have witnessed an attitude to privacy within Google that at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent. These dynamics do not pervade other major players such as Microsoft or eBay, both of which have made notable improvements to the corporate ethos on privacy issues.”

Of course, the watchdog group was right. Google immediately cried foul, claiming that Privacy International has a conflict of interest because one of its board members works for Microsoft. Privacy International responded yesterday with an open letter to Google, explaining its position. (the member of its 70-person board in question has been working with Privacy International for six years before taking a job with Microsoft, at which time he offered to resign from PI.)

Does Google have a legitimate beef or do its actions, as PI suggests, “stem from sour grapes that [it] achieved the lowest ranking amongst the Internet giants?” Decide for yourself.”

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/google_fails_pr.html

A Race to the Bottom:
Privacy Ranking of Internet Service Companies

A Consultation report

“Why Google?

We are aware that the decision to place Google at the bottom of the ranking is likely to be controversial, but throughout our research we have found numerous deficiencies and hostilities in Google’s approach to privacy that go well beyond those of other organizations. While a number of companies share some of these negative elements, none comes close to achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy. This is in part due to the diversity and specificity of Google’s product range and the ability of the company to share extracted data between these tools, and in part it is due to Google’s market dominance and the sheer size of its user base. Google’s status in the ranking is also due to its aggressive use of invasive or potentially invasive technologies and techniques.

The view that Google “opens up” information through a range of attractive and advanced tools does not exempt the company from demonstrating responsible leadership in privacy. Google’s increasing ability to deep-drill into the minutiae of a user’s life and lifestyle choices must in our view be coupled with well defined and mature user controls and an equally mature privacy outlook. Neither of these elements has been demonstrated. Rather, we have witnessed an attitude to privacy within Google that at its most blatant is hostile, and at its most benign is ambivalent. These dynamics do not pervade other major players such as Microsoft or eBay, both of which have made notable improvements to the corporate ethos on privacy issues.

In the closing days of our research we received a copy of supplemental material relating to a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission concerning the pending merger between Google and DoubleClick. This material, submitted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and coupled with a submission to the FTC from the New York State Consumer Protection Board, provided additional weight for our assessment that Google has created the most onerous privacy environment on the Internet. The Board expressed concern that these profiles expose consumers to the risk of disclosure of their data to third-parties, as well as public disclosure as evidence in litigation or through data breaches. The EPIC submission set out a detailed analysis of Google’s existing data practices, most of which fell well short of the standard that consumers might expect. During the course of our research the Article 29 Working Group of European privacy regulators also expressed concern at the scale of Google’s activities, and requested detailed information from the company.

In summary, Google’s specific privacy failures include, but are by no means limited to:

• Google account holders that regularly use even a few of Google’s services must accept that the company retains a large quantity of information about that user, often for an unstated or indefinite length of time, without clear limitation on subsequent use or disclosure, and without an opportunity to delete or withdraw personal data even if the user wishes to terminate the service.
• Google maintains records of all search strings and the associated IP-addresses and time stamps for at least 18 to 24 months and does not provide users with an expungement option. While it is true that many US based companies have not yet established a time frame for retention, there is a prevailing view amongst privacy experts that 18 to 24 months is unacceptable, and possibly unlawful in many parts of the world.
• Google has access to additional personal information, including hobbies, employment, address, and phone number, contained within user profiles in Orkut. Google often maintains these records even after a user has deleted his profile or removed information from Orkut.
• Google collects all search results entered through Google Toolbar and identifies all Google Toolbar users with a unique cookie that allows Google to track the user’s web movement.17 Google does not indicate how long the information collected through Google Toolbar is retained, nor does it offer users a data expungement option in connection with the service.
• Google fails to follow generally accepted privacy practices such as the OECD Privacy Guidelines and elements of EU data protection law. As detailed in the EPIC complaint, Google also fails to adopted additional privacy provisions with respect to specific Google services.
• Google logs search queries in a manner that makes them personally identifiable but fails to provide users with the ability to edit or otherwise expunge records of their previous searches.
• Google fails to give users access to log information generated through their interaction with Google Maps, Google Video, Google Talk, Google Reader, Blogger and other services.”

http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-553961

REQUEST FOR URBAN STREET SIGHTINGS: Submit and Vote on the Best Urban Images Captured by New Google Maps Tool

By Ryan Singel, May 30, 2007

Google’s new Street View, a new Google Maps feature that uses vehicle-cameras to take 360-degree street level views of major urban areas, captured all sorts of urban ephemera in the process from tabbies in windows to red light runners.

Help Wired News capture the best inadvertent urban snapshots. Submit and vote on your favorite urban scenes — be they citizens flaunting the laws or hot dog vendors rocking a sweet style. You can find some inspiration and examples here, New York shots here, and the well named streetviewr.com has some good links, too.”

“Maybe the guy just forgot his keys. Or he’s practicing for the free climbing contest. Hey, is that a lockpicking set dangling out of his pocket?”

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/05/request_for_urb.html

Domestic Access to Spy Imagery Expands

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, February 12, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — “A plan to use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law-enforcement missions is moving forward after being delayed for months because of privacy and civil liberties concerns.

The charter and legal framework for an office within the Homeland Security Department that would use overhead and mapping imagery from existing satellites is in the final stage of completion, according to a department official who requested anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly about it….

Domestic agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Interior Department have had access to this satellite imagery for years for scientific research, to assist in response to natural disasters like hurricanes and fires, and to map out vulnerabilities during a major public event like the Super Bowl. Since 1974 the requests have been made through the federal interagency group, the Civil Applications Committee.

These types of uses will continue when the Homeland Security Department oversees the program and becomes the clearinghouse for these requests. But the availability of satellite images will be expanded to other agencies to support the homeland security mission. The details of how law enforcement agencies could use the images during investigations would be determined in the future after legal and policy questions have been resolved, the official said.

It is possible that in the future an agency might request infrared imaging of what is inside a house, for instance a methamphetamine laboratory, and this could raise constitutional issues. In these instances, law enforcement agencies would still have to go through the normal process of obtaining a warrant and satisfying all the legal requirements. The National Applications Office also would require that all the laws are observed when using new imaging technology….”

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gM4mwPQcU0j446qIew8P7ZmifwNgD8UP4GG03

GOOGLE’S STREET VIEW UPSETS PRIVACY ADVOCATES

By Josh Gerstein, Staff Reporter of the Sun June 13, 2007

Google’s new Street View service, which allows users to pull up street-level, 360-degree photos of addresses in major urban areas, is cool and more than a little creepy, but is it legal?

The Web site’s high-tech photo vans have captured and posted shots of a pair of scantily clad sunbathers on Stanford’s campus, a man entering an adult bookstore, and a woman’s thong underwear being exposed as she climbed into a truck.

Privacy advocates are in an uproar over the service, but Google and its defenders have declared confidently that the firm is in the clear because anyone has the right to publish photos taken from public streets.

“The images in Street View are lawful. The Street View feature only contains imagery gathered on public property,” a spokeswoman for Google, Megan Quinn, said in a statement sent by e-mail to the Sun. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”

Legal experts say there is no hard-and-fast legal rule that blesses all public photography. “Privacy laws vary from state to state, but there have been instances where legal liability was found even for photos taken in public,” an attorney urging changes to Street View, Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said.”

Usually, people doing things in public, even foolish or embarrassing things, are deemed to have waived their privacy rights. The situation becomes more complicated, though, when a person is put in an embarrassing position through no fault of his or her own. Crime or accident victims often feel violated by news photos, but courts almost always throw out suits over such episodes on the grounds that the images were newsworthy. Even when news value is debatable, judges tend to side with the press.

However, the woman whose so-called whale tail was posted by Google for all to see was not part of any newsworthy event. The episode is almost identical to one of the best-known cases punishing a newspaper for a photo that invaded privacy. In 1961, an Alabama woman, Flora Graham, was visiting a county fair’s funhouse with her young sons when air jets blew her dress up, exposing her panties. Unfortunately for Ms. Graham, a photographer snapped a shot at that very moment and the image showed up on the local newspaper’s front page.

A jury gave Ms. Graham $4,166 for her anguish, and the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the verdict. “One who is part of a public scene may lawfully be photographed as an incidental part of that scene in his ordinary status,” the court wrote. “Where the status he expects to occupy is changed without his volition to a status embarrassing to an ordinary person of reasonable sensitivity, then he should not be deemed to have forfeited his right to be protected from an indecent and vulgar intrusion of his right of privacy merely because misfortune overtakes him in a public place.”

Of course, four decades later, social mores and technology have changed. “Anything done almost anywhere can be captured as an image on someone’s cell phone and uploaded to the Internet,” the dean of the University of Richmond law school, Rodney Smolla, said. “That genie can’t be put back in the bottle. I think the law would be reluctant to fight against it.”

Still, just last year, a lawyer for Lindsay Lohan, cited the funhouse case while threatening a gossip Web site with legal action over a photo in which one of the actress’s nipples was exposed. “Just because a wardrobe malfunction occurred and Ms. Lohan’s right breast was inadvertently and very briefly revealed and someone was able to photograph her in this intrusive manner without her consent or knowledge does not justify or legitimize publication or display of the photo or justify this violation of Ms. Lohan’s right of privacy at a most basic level,” the attorney, Martin Singer, wrote.

Google does offer a link to request removal of inappropriate Street View photos. The thong shot is no longer on the Web giant’s site, though it is now readily available elsewhere, which makes its deletion from Google of little moment. “The privacy harm may very well have occurred by the time you are aware of it and ask that it be taken down,” Mr. Bankston said. “We would have preferred that Google develop some technology to obscure the pedestrians in Street View before debuting it.”

http://www.nysun.com/article/56475

Now it’s up to you to decide if this is helpful, interesting, or a step towards “Big Brother.” It all depends on the usage.

Turning the tide – Gibson’s SF in the 80’s – trendy or visionary?

I picked up a copy of “Burning Chrome” by William Gibson, a collection of his short stories published in 1986. It has a preface by Bruce Sterling that is quite interesting, and gives a view into what he felt was Gibson’s impetus to revitalization of a stagnant genre. Gibson is one of the “creators” of the cyberpunk genre.

Examples of cyberpunk in movies includes Blade Runner, The Matrix, A Scanner Darkly, and the anime classic “Ghost in the Shell” which I watched for the first time last night. It was god, but I didn’t see it now as anything revolutionary or visionary as the cover said it to be.

For information on cyberpunk, Gibson, etc, see these Wiki sites. They might help give a background for this post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cyberpunk_works

And in the Wikipedia article on Gibson comes this:

“Lawrence Person, writing in his ‘Notes Toward a Postcyberpunk Manifesto’ (1998) identified the novel as ‘the archetypal cyberpunk work,’ and in 2005, Time magazine included it in their list of 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, claiming that ‘[t]here is no way to overstate how radical [Neuromancer] was when it first appeared.’ According to literary critic Larry McCafferty, the auspiciousness of the novel was in its originality of vision, exhilarating prose, and technological similes and metaphors. He described the concept of the matrix as a place where ‘data dance with human consciousness … human memory is literalized and mechanized … multi-national information systems mutate and breed into startling new structures whose beauty and complexity are unimaginable, mystical, and above all nonhuman.’”

Later, the article brings Gibson up to the 21st century, showing he wasn’t just an eighties phenom:

“After ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties,’ Gibson began to adopt a more realist style of writing, with continuous narratives—’speculative fiction of the very recent past.’ Critic John Clute has interpreted this approach by Gibson as the recognition that traditional science fiction is no longer possible ‘in a world lacking coherent “nows’”to continue from’, characterizing it as ‘SF for the new century.’ Gibson’s novels ‘Pattern Recognition’ (2003), and Spook Country (2007), were both set in the same contemporary universe—’more or less the same one we live in now’—and put Gibson’s work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time…”

His cultural significance is noted as:

“In his early short fiction, Gibson is credited by Rapatzikou in ‘The Literary Encyclopedia’ with effectively renovating Science Fiction, a genre at that time considered widely ‘insignificant,’ influencing by means of the postmodern aesthetic of his writing the development of new perspectives in science fiction studies. In the words of filmmaker Marianne Trench, Gibson’s visions ’struck sparks in the real world’ and ‘determined the way people thought and talked’ to an extent unprecedented in science fiction literature. The publication of ‘Neuromancer’ (1984) hit a cultural nerve, causing Larry McCafferty to credit Gibson with virtually launching the cyberpunk movement, as ‘the one major writer who is original and gifted to make the whole movement seem original and gifted.’”

“His early novels were, according to The Observer, ’seized upon by the emerging slacker and hacker generation as a kind of road map’. Through Gibson’s novels, words like ‘cyberspace,’ ‘netsurfing,’ ‘ICE,’ ‘jacking in,’ and ‘neural implants,’ entered popular usage, as did concepts such as net consciousness, virtual interaction and ‘the matrix.’ In ‘Burning Chrome’ (1982) [of which this post takes much of it's material], ” he coined the term ‘cyberspace’ referring to the “mass consensual hallucination” of computer networks. Through its use in ‘Neuromancer,’ the term gained such recognition that it became the de facto term for the World Wide Web during the 1990s. Artist Dike Blair has commented that Gibson’s ‘terse descriptive phrases capture the moods which surround technologies, rather than their engineering.’”

“In ‘Neuromanceer,’ Gibson first used the term ‘matrix’ to refer to the visualised Internet, two years after the nascent Internet was formed in the early 1980s from the computer networks of the 1970s. In this conception of the ‘matrix,’ he predicted a worldwide communications network eleven years before the origin of the World Wide Web, although related notions had been described elsewhere. At the time of writing ‘Burning Chrome,’ Gibson ‘had a hunch that [the Internet] would change things, in the same way that the ubiquity of the automobile changed things.’ In 1995, he identified the advent, evolution and growth of the Internet as ‘one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century,’ a new kind of civilization that is—in terms of significance—on a par with the birth of cities, and in 2000 predicted it would lead to the death of the nation state. [Something yet to see, but it's early days yet].

Observers contend that Gibson’s influence on the development of the Web reached beyond prediction; he is widely credited with creating an iconography for the information age.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson [cites have been omitted for ease of reading and can be found on the Wiki page cited.]

I’m quoting parts of the Preface to “Burning Chrome” (by Bruce Sterling, another cyberpunk author and who with Gibson, in the “Difference Engine,” created “steampunk.” ) in this post, as I try and look at the state of SF in the 80s, when I wasn’t reading it, and had turned away, and as I nowlook forward into my present journey back to the genre.

The beginning Preface of “Burning Chrome” starts out:

“If poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, science-fiction writers are its court jesters…. We can play with Big Ideas, because the garish motley of our pulp origins make us seem harmless.

And SF writers have every opportunity to kick up our heels – we have influence without responsibility. Very few feel obligated to take us seriously, yet our ideas permeate the culture, bubbling along invisibly, like background radiation.

Yet the sad truth of the matter is that SF has not been much fun of late. All forms of pop culture go through doldrums; they catch cold when society sneezes. If SF in the late Seventies was confused, self-involved, and stale, it was scarcely a cause for wonder.

But William Gibson is one of our best harbinger’s of things to come … His amazing first novel, ‘Neuromancer,’ which swept the field’s awards in 1985, showed Gibson’s unparalleled ability to pinpoint social nerves. The effect was galvanic, helping to wake the genre from it’s dogmatic slumbers. Roused from its hibernation, SF is lurching from its cave into the bright sublight of the modern zeitgeist. And we are lean and hungry and not in the best of tempers. From now on things are going to be different.”

Now I quit reading SF, coincidentally (or NOT?) right about the late 70s. I began to feel that the Masters, esp. Heinlein and Clarke, which were about all I read, were going in odd, self-indulgent paths, and I fled the scene, so to speak. Was the late 70s stale, and if so, did Gibson help in refreshing it?

The self-indulgence of those late 70s left me so “bereft,” that I jumped ship, and did not return until a few years ago – a gap of about 25 years. So would Gibson back then have pulled me in? I’m not sure, reading his work now, whether I would have been ready for such a polar shift in reality. Maybe I would have been more ready for the cyberpunk than I am at a stodgy age 50?

“The Gernsback Continuum,” shows him consciously drawing a bead on the shambling figure of the SF tradition. It’s a devastating refutation of ’scientifiction in its guise as narrow technolatry. We see here a writer who knows his roots and is gearing up for a radical reformation.”

Did he do that? Do those of you who recall his work from the ’80s, and those who have consciously, or unconsciously, absorbed the changes, felt that stirring of a paradigm shift in SF?

“Gibson hit his stride with the Sprawl series: ‘Johnny Mnemonic,’ [one of my fav SF movies] ‘New Rose Hotel, and the incredible ‘Burning Chrome’ ….[and] showed a level of imagination that effectively upped the ante for the entire genre…

The triumph of these pieces was their brilliant, self-consistent evocation of a credible future. It is hard to estimate the
difficulty of this effort, which is one that many SF writers have been ducking for years. This intellectual failing accounts for the ominous proliferation of postapocalypse stories, sword-and-sorcery fantasies, and those everpresent space operas in which galactic empires slip conveniently back into barbarism [a pet peeve of mine - the fall back]. All these sub-genres are products of the writers’ urgent necessity to avoid tangling with a realistic future.”

How do you feel about this – do you feel that a consistent realistic future IS the way to go – I for one love space operas, but prefer they stay in a nice high-tech future. And I don’t mind the occ. postapocalyptic story, but there was a proliferation back in the late 70s.

“But in the Sprawl stories we see a future that is recognizably and painstakingly drawn from the modern condition. It is multi-faceted, sophisticated, global in its view. It derives from a new set of starting points: not from the shop-worn formula of robots, spaceships, and the modern miracle of atomic energy, but from cybernetics, biotech, and the communications web – to name a few.”

So, for those of you (me) who like our spaceships, what do you think? I s the “formula” shopworn? And is his dystopian future what is really wanted/needed?

“Gibson’s extrapolative techniques are those of classic hard SF, but his demonstration of them is pure New Wave. Rather than the usual passionless techies and rock-ribbed Competent Men of hardSF, his characters are a pirate’s crew of losers, hustlers, spin-offs, cast-offs, and lunatics. We see his future from the belly up, as it is lived, not merely dry speculation.”

Now, I for one have read some of his work, Idoru being one of them, and didn’t quite like it, although I haven’t given up on him (obviously – I got this SS set), but I want, as I’ve said before, characters that I can root for, not characters I dislike – that has been a problem for me in many a novel – “Undertow,” which I came to love because of it’s notes of astonishing brilliance, was the first E. Bear book without likable characters, unless you counted the aliens, who were far “better” than their human counterparts. So I’m not sure the underbelly is necessary, or even a preferred method of SF.

…”Big Science in this world is not a source of quaint Mr. Wizard marvels [you may have to be my age to get that bit], but an omnipresent, all-permeating definitive force. It is a sheet of mutating radiation pouring wildly up an exponential slope.

These stories paint an instantly recognizable portrait of the modern predicament. Gibson’s extrapolations show, with exaggerated clarity, the hidden bulk of the iceberg of social change. This iceberg now glides with sinister majesty across the surface of the late twentieth century, but its proportions are vast and dark.

Many SF writers, faced with this lurking monster, have flung up their hands and predicted shipwreck. Though no-one could accuse Gibson of Pollyannaism, he has avoided this easy way out. This is another distinguishing mark of the emergent new school of Eighties SF: its boredom with the Apocalypse. Gibson wastes little time shaking his
finger or wringing his hands. He keeps his eyes unflinchingly open…”

How about it – although growing up with the Apocalypse (drills in school), and “On the Beach” – the seminal work, along with “Alas, Babylon,” there wasn’t much on the horizon except “The Postman,” which I loved (so sue me). But is this/was this, the wave that broke the “slumber” and self-indulgence of the 70s and brought us into the new age of SF? Is Gibson that prominent? Is this merely self- indulgent 80s crap wrapped up in “we are SO out there” commentary? Or has there been a polar shift again with Stross, Vinge, and post-singularity work? I do find that SF does tend to have “trends.”
Right now it’s all sort of post-singularity stuff – they read, they liked, they co-opted, and ran with it. But isn’t there also room for good old fashioned stuff like Karen Traviss’ Wess’har, K.K. Rusch’s Retrieval Artist series, Reynold’s space-operas, E. Bear’s Jenny Casey trilogy – somewhat dystopian in scope, and set in a realistic future, but without the low-life pond-scum that Sterling seems to think is the hallmark of the New Age. Have we moved beyond this New Age? Is Gibson now redundant, less a creative visionary, and more a part of the 80s scene?

“Another sign that shows Gibson as part of a growing new consensus in SF: the ease with which he collaborates with other writers.”

I seem to recall collaborations in earlier works in the 60s and 70s, but is that a thing of rarity, or is Sterling merely commenting on how seamless it now appears?

“In Gibson we hear the sound of a decade that has finally found it’s own voice. He is not a table-pounding revolutionary, but a practical, hands-on retrofitter. He is opening the stale corridors of the genre to the fresh air of new data: eighties culture, with its strange, growing integration of technology and fashion….

SF has survived a long winter on its stored body fat. Gibson, along with a broad wave of inventive, ambitious new writers, has prodded the genre awake and sent it out on recce for a fresh diet. And it’s bound to do us all a power of good.”

End of quotes.

So, what do y’all think? Is this just self-indulgent 80’s “visions,” or is it really a fresh insight: a look at a stale genre, and the influence of one writer (and others) on refitting it for a new generation? What do you younger readers feel? Are the classics so dated? Is Gibson and his cronies the start of something new, or is he merely a “phase” that we went through, as Sterling pointed out that the genre does, periodically going through the doldrums and shaking itself up? Have we reshaken ourselves again, or are we still in the Gibsoneque self-indulgent “underbelly”? Is Vinge and his work an outgrowth/extension of Gibson’s cyberpunk view, or a new world view of the future?

Is there still room in the genre, as I think, for space operas, aliens, and “cool” stuff, or are we doomed to pigeonhole ourselves again, as we did in the 70s, with Vinge style worlds? Have we learned nothing from our growing pains? Are we narrowing our future vision too far – or do you feel that this “style” is the way to open eyes? Having been busy working and starting a family in the late 80s, I can’t really say anything about that decade. I was too self- absorbed in making my personal life work to look to the far future. Now, as I bask on the cusp of senior citizenry, I have time to be self-indulgent and look back, wonder at the changes, and whether they actually mean anything at all, or are they truly effects of
generations passing through.

I am curious as to what others think of the trends of SF, where we are now, where we might be heading. I realize this is a lot of “thought”, but you all are “big boys” (and girls) who can parse out a sentence about it. I think we could all benefit from a deeper look and some insights into the genre we all love. Is HardSF Gibson, or he is merely one facet, either dated, or still relevant? Who IS relevant, if he isn’t?