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Scary new Big Brother tech

cusm

16:31 / 14.11.02

In case you haven't heard of the new plans of the Information Awareness Office, here's an article about it.

But what's really got me bringing this to the lab is some of the projects they are proposing. Have a look at Genoa II from the IAO website. Among the project goals:

Develop tools for cognitive amplification by extending the ability of software to model current states, estimate plausible futures, support formal risk analysis, and provide for automated option planning. Supporting technology includes the use of intelligent agents, cognitive machine intelligence, associative memory, neural networks, pattern matching, Bayesian inference networks, and biologically inspired algorithms.

Cognitive machine intelligence. That's the one that really gets me. Check out the other projects for more like this. It reads like a cyberpunk novel.

w1rebaby

16:53 / 14.11.02

It sounds like the syllabus from my degree course. No, seriously, it does. I think they've just been buzzword-plundering.

The whole IAO mission statement is an amazing example of mixing management-speak, military euphemism and jargon to create something with maximum obfuscation potential...

Lurid Archive

18:16 / 14.11.02

Gotta agree with fridge. They want you to think they are giving birth to cyberpunk. I'm sure they want to, as well. I just doubt very much if they can.

Yagg

21:15 / 14.11.02

Good GOD! What is up with that logo? What nutbar thought THAT was a good idea? I'd laugh at it if I wasn't frightened of it.

Linus Dunce

22:16 / 14.11.02

Can't see the sites from here. Paranoia ...

bjacques

08:36 / 15.11.02

If any of you are in Amsterdam the next month, be sure to check out
world-information.org's exhibition about exactly this sort of thing. I
was helping out with the opening night last night. The show is all about
surveillance technologies and their ubiquity, and a few countermeasures.

I think there's something about brainwave mapping too.

The Monkey

20:08 / 15.11.02

The operative word here is "develop" and what a word it is. I haved opined at length about the general scamminess of military budjeting and outsourced R&D, but put short just understand that on paper these projects always pitched BIG...and the politicians at the top of the military hierarchy have just the right combo of paranoia and lack of critical thinking/science skills (not to mention the occasional does of bribe-induced self-interest) to buy pretty much anything.

Linus Dunce

15:47 / 16.11.02

Nope, still can't see DARPA pages.

Just a thought -- did Gary McKinnon use the UK ISP, NTL to do his dirty deeds? Anyone else on them?

unheimlich manoeuvre

23:54 / 22.08.03

... and then there's Smart Dust. The particles of dust that could be watching you.
call me paranoid but this is DARPA funded "autonomous sensing and communication in a cubic millimeter"

w1rebaby

02:01 / 23.08.03

I was actually talking to someone last weekend about that. It's mostly being sold as something for tracking consumer products for inventory purposes, though who will want to buy products with microtransmitters in them, I don't know.

We talked about intelligence applications but, being the pair of cynics that we are, came to the conclusion that selling it to the USG would be a great way to get loads of funding, and a great way to make sure that it was never used. I mean, these people really aren't that high tech, and intelligence workers are also pretty conservative.

Salamander

17:15 / 23.08.03

I dunno, I understand politico-military jargon and it sounds like they intend to eventually use implants, being a government agency they would have the freedoms to do such things. I give them about 10 years to start wide spread use of non-implant cybernetic technology in the field by agents. Probably 20 until the implants come, maybe sooner. The microtransmitters are being pushed by private corperations as a means of tracking goods and for maintaining customer preferance records, like in radio shack when they collect your info, a situation which is much more dire.

grant

19:38 / 06.12.06

The FBI can turn on your cell phone remotely and use it as a listening device.

Court papers say.

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