[iwar] [fc:Spotting.Evil]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-27 21:35:09


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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 21:35:09 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Spotting.Evil]
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Spotting Evil 
Scott Woolley, Forbes Magazine, 10.15.01

New technology may well be able to pick terrorists out in a crowd and
create a record of their movements--and yours, too. 

An arsenal of new weapons will stoke America's military onslaught to
retaliate for the attacks that toppled the World Trade Center and
damaged the Pentagon--weapons that also may be turned on our own people. 

These weapons aren't for killing the enemy but for shadowing
him--identifying terrorists, tracking their movements, eavesdropping on
their phone calls and cracking their e-mail.  It won't take a Manhattan
Project to create these tools; many of them exist now, right out of
Mission: Impossible. 

Facial recognition software can match your mug against a database of bad
guys.  Iris-scanning cameras make sure you're the real, living thing by
checking the pulse inside your eyeball.  Little Brother will be
watching: Tiny high-resolution digital cameras will become ubiquitous as
prices fall below $100.  Flying ten miles high, a new unmanned spy plane
will capture moving images never before possible (see p.  52).  At
airport check-ins, breakthrough "sniffing" technology will detect
explosives in traces as tiny as billionths of a gram. 

For decades the job of surveillance was hindered by practical, economic
and legal limitations.  In the new century technology is rapidly razing
the first two hurdles; now terrorism is helping remove the last.  That
alarms civil libertarians and privacy advocates.  They rightly worry
that, as we embrace intrusive monitoring tools to hound the hundreds who
might be plotting terrorist attacks, millions of Americans will lose
another layer of the right to be left alone. 

This "war," if it escalates to that scale, will necessarily include
maneuvers at home, putting citizens in the line of fire and within
earshot of electronic snooping.  The U.S.  must make difficult
decisions: How much privacy should we give up to prevent a new round of
terror, and what must be done to ensure things don't go too far? It is
now feasible to equip everyone with a unique "smart card" that tracks
where they have been, grants entry to guarded areas and bars them from
others.  But would you want a law that forces you to carry a card at all
times?

"Once you create these tools, it's very tempting to use them," says
Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law professor.  "Once the information
exists, it's very hard to say you can't access it because that wasn't
its intended use."

Surveillance technology, once it is installed for public safety
purposes, quickly infiltrates other parts of our lives.  Iris scanning
was first developed for identification, a harmless role; in a creepy
twist, a firm called Iritech in San Jose, Calif.  has just released a
device that scans the eye to detect recent drug use.  It claims 95%
accuracy.  Last month Panasonic unveiled the Authenticam, a PC camera
that uses iris-ID. 

In May US Airways supplemented the use of ID tags at the Charlotte, N.C. 
airport and installed iris scanners that can, from 1 foot away and in a
fraction of a second, confirm a pilot's identity.  In one test, an iris
scanner from Iridian, of Moorestown, N.J., matched 2.7 million records
to photographs without an error.  It even distinguished between
identical twins--their genes are the same, but their irises aren't. 

In the corporate sector hundreds of employers already use omnipresent
cameras, motion sensors and smart ID cards--an infrastructure that could
be easily converted to serve antiterrorist purposes.  Biometric ID
methods are being built into digital cameras, and as costs fall they
will proliferate into every nook and cranny of America.  That is why, as
the stock market hemorrhaged when trading resumed after the tragedy, the
share price of Viisage, a maker of facial-recognition software, more
than doubled, the biggest gainer of any stock that grim day.  Visionics,
a rival, rose 93%. 

Earlier this year cameras in the Ybor City section of Tampa scanned
crowds in a business district.  Software from Visionics of Jersey City,
N.J.  picks out human faces, locates key features and calculates the
dimensions of a person's skull.  The software matches "face prints"
against a database of millions in less than a second.  Gaining weight or
getting a nose job won't fool the system, Visionics claims, because
skull dimensions don't change.  New software recognizes faces in a crowd
even if they are in profile or tilted up at a 45-degree angle. 

Better image-sensing chips are giving newer cameras an almost humanlike
ability to track people and objects as they pass the field of vision.  A
new chip from Pyramid Vision Technology of Princeton, N.J.  lets cameras
identify moving objects and keep them in razor-sharp focus.  In three
years new chips costing less than $20 will capture magazine-quality
photographs. 

New video-processing chips, meanwhile, let agents merge images from
infrared cameras with regular video.  That would let a camera record
your face as you pass security, match the mug to the FBI's Most Wanted
list and highlight the cold steel barrel of the pistol in your
waistband. 

Even camera networks already in use could become surveillance outposts. 
In Toronto 130 cameras on bridges and skyscrapers watch city streets,
providing video of traffic snarls and accidents.  A local station,
CityTV, recently aired a lighthearted live shot of a couple frolicking
in the fountain in front of City Hall as newsroom staff panned, tilted
and zoomed in. 

"If it was a family member of yours, we'd be close enough so you would
say, 'That looks like my dad,'" says Stephen Hurlbut, a CityTV vice
president.  Great--unless the woman Dad is frolicking with isn't Mom. 
If legal authorities ever ask to see such footage, CityTV would hand it
over "if the community was under attack," he says. 

Other advances grow out of massive improvements in cost, quality and
ease of use.  A year ago a high-end digital camera cost $150; today it
costs $79, and the cheapest sell for $19.  Wiring them to a recorder is
still a hassle, but new wireless chips will soon take care of that and
add only $10 to the cost.  Creative Labs, a digital camera maker, now
also bundles motion-detection features into its software, letting a PC
control multiple cameras and zoom in on a suspect's face. 

Buyers largely were in crime-prone businesses like minimarts, says Bryan
Lagarde, who runs a New Orleans surveillance supply company.  Now
customers want to watch over coal mines, construction sites, private
yachts, neighborhood bars, even forests.  This will expand with
thousands, perhaps one day millions, of new Webcams.  The rugged $7,000
ConstructionCam from EarthCam of Hackensack, N.J.  has a heater,
defroster, fan and windshield wiper for the lens, letting guards monitor
from afar as it gazes down on construction sites, corporate entrances
and the like in all weather, 24/7. 

As costs fall, local governments will find more intensive monitoring to
be easily affordable.  Cities from New York to San Diego to San
Francisco now monitor public spaces and intersections with cameras. 

In Redwood City, Calif.  the cops go one step better--microphones spread
around town instantly triangulate the location of gunshots.  Los
Angeles' sheriff's department has already installed a similar setup, and
Glendale, Ariz.'s police will follow suit this winter. 

Courts haven't discouraged such efforts.  In San Diego citizens hired
lawyers to fight a system that issued $271 tickets when cameras
installed by Lockheed Martin caught them running red lights.  (Lockheed
footed the bill for installing the cameras, then got a cut for each
ticket paid.) In August a trial judge ruled it was constitutional.  The
courts' basic attitude has been that people in public spaces have no
reasonable expectation of privacy, so taking their pictures in those
spaces is permissible, says Harvard Law's Jonathan Zittrain. 

Privacy in the home is trickier--for now.  In Florence, Ore.  police
used thermal imaging to "see" into the home of a drug suspect,
pinpointing heat lamps used to grow marijuana.  In June the U.S. 
Supreme Court threw out the conviction and worried about leaving
citizens "at the mercy" of technology "that could discern all human
activity in the home." The vote: 5-4.  Left unclear: whether the same
protections apply to what's in your pockets as you stroll down the
street. 

Even people in the snoop business fret that their gear could be taken
too far.  "But as technology responds to this national emergency," says
Visionics Chief Joseph Atick, "the slippery-slope argument is
theoretical.  The terrorism is real."

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:51 PDT