Idea: Using MIT’s FlyFire
Via BldgBlog
Among other things, if you made these nodes emit non-visible parts of the spectrum, you could have giant floating stealth interfaces for presenting information that could rapidly dissolve as necessary. Kind of like the exploding secret note of the past but for a larger collective trying to accomplish shifting missions.
What’s really exciting about this is that its a flying, decentralized, mobile platform. If you have these things recharge directly from power lines, then you end up with a persistent swarm. Then it’s just a matter of what sensors and accessories you equip it with.
GPS Jammers in the Wild
The “jammers” put out radio signals at the same frequency at the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, overwhelming the timing signal that in-car devices use to plot their position. That means a tracker device built into a lorry with a valuable load, or a car with an anti-theft GPS device which should report its position if stolen, cannot distinguish the correct GPS signal.
“It disappears from the radar,” said Professor David Last, of the University of Wales at Bangor, who has been a police expert witness in a number of cases over the past 18 months in which GPS jammers have been seized.
Some German drivers are also believed to use such jammers to try to evade GPS-based road charging, which was introduced for trucks in 2005. There have also been robberies in Russia where such jammers have been used against both GPS systems and mobile phones on lorries to prevent the driver from contacting the authorities.
More on Dadkhah
Turns out, Lara M. Dadkhah is employed by Booz Allen. Via Hillman Foundation-
We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown. Ms. Dadkhah only recently took a job at Booz Allen. We tend not to mention the names of companies — as it can run the risk of seeming self-promotional. I thought it was sufficient to have the author say, as she did high up in the piece, that “While I am employed by a defense consulting company, my research and opinions on air support are my own.” It’s worth underscoring that Ms. Dadkhah’s research regarding close air support came entirely from her doctoral research, and that these are issues she has written about over the the last couple years for Small Wars.
Mark has it on good authority that there’s no ill intent here, and I’ll go with his gut, but, to be fair, this is precisely what we didn’t want to see – Dadkhah’s working for one of the biggest defense industry corporations in the world that has a long history of pushing heavy airpower, whether we need it or not.
Glenn Greewald has more.
In the Calgary Herald
Much thanks to Kris Kotarski for the .
In addition to the stuff Kris mentions, what was really interesting about this attack was the way the information stream played out. Average folks did a lot of the heavy investigative work, very very quickly. Although the Austin American Statesman did great work, major media pretty much failed. (MSNBC was actually spreading a lot of disinformation)
Anyway, there’s a lot of work to be done making information flows from international crises richer and delivered more efficiently. Especially as we hurtle into this kind of future.
Idea: UrbanEscape Personal Security Sensor
Design Affairs has a very cool flashlight concept. Essentially, it’s a navigation tool. It would be incredibly useful in a crisis situation. Particularly in concert with a sense/stage based adaptive environment.
I’d love to work with these guys on getting a prototype together for that intent. Think of it as a modern version of mace on a keychain, but as a sensor and tool. Hit a button, and it geotags a Tweet alarm of a crisis, it also downloads relevant, useful information, such as evacuation routes (compiled by a staff in an operations center somewhere from more complex intelligence).
(Thanks A.)