Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.
July 8th, 2012Via: New York Times:
Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a pilot flies his plane from a padded chair, using a joystick and throttle, as his partner, the “sensor operator,” focuses on the grainy images moving across a video screen, directing missiles to their targets with a laser.
Holloman sits on almost 60,000 acres of desert badlands, near jagged hills that are frosted with snow for several months of the year — a perfect training ground for pilots who will fly Predators and Reapers over the similarly hostile terrain of Afghanistan. When I visited the base earlier this year with a small group of reporters, we were taken into a command post where a large flat-screen television was broadcasting a video feed from a drone flying overhead. It took a few seconds to figure out exactly what we were looking at. A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.
“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.
Drone Hijacking? That’s Just the Start of GPS Troubles
July 7th, 2012Via: Wired:
On the evening of June 19, a group of researchers from the University of Texas successfully hijacked a civilian drone at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico during a test organized by the Department of Homeland Security.
The drone, an Adaptive Flight Hornet Mini, was hovering at around 60 feet, locked into a predetermined position guided by GPS. Then, with a device that cost around $1,000 and the help of sophisticated software that took four years to develop, the researchers sent a radio signal from a hilltop one kilometer away. In security lingo, they carried out a spoofing attack.
“We fooled the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) into thinking that it was rising straight up,” says Todd Humphreys, assistant professor at the Radionavigation Laboratory at the University of Texas.
Deceiving the drone’s GPS receiver, they changed its perceived coordinates. To compensate, the small copter dove straight down, thinking it was returning to its programmed position. If not for a safety pilot intervening before the drone hit the ground, it would have crashed.
But for Humphreys playing the part of an evil genius in a thriller movie, everything worked exactly to plan. “It was beautiful,” he tells Danger Room.
…
What’s worse, the experiment at White Sands shows that drone-jacking is “just the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger security issue we have in this country,” according to Logan Scott, a GPS industry consultant who has worked for defense giants like Lockheed Martin.
In other words, it’s not only about drones, it’s GPS in general that is not safe.
…
“The core problem is that we’ve got a GPS infrastructure which is based on a security architecture out of the 1970s,” Scott tells Danger Room. “From a security point of view, if you look at GPS’s current status, is more or less equivalent to operating computers without firewalls, with no basic checks.”
The British Airways ‘Know Me’ System
July 7th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
British Airways staff will be able to identify customers by using a new computer system that searches Google to find images of them.
Cabin crew and staff at check–in desks and first–class lounges will be equipped with technology to help them meet and greet selected travellers.
The aim is to give the airline a more personal touch when serving important passengers, such as chief executives of financial companies, who may not be instantly recognisable by British Airways employees.
The carrier already identifies such passengers on each flight but until now staff would not have known what they looked like until they checked in. Now they will be able to approach such clients proactively.
BA says the “Know Me” system will enable staff “to put a face to the name before the customer sets foot in the airport”.
Research Credit: almaverdad2
Swarms of Maple Seed Drones
July 6th, 2012Via: Talking Points Memo:
Imagine a cheap, tiny, hovering aerial drone capable of being launched with the flick of a person’s wrist and able to provide manipulable 360-degree surveillance views.
It’s real, it’s inspired by maple seeds, and the company behind it, Lockheed Martin, envisions a future in which swarms of the new drones can be deployed at a fraction of the cost and with greater capabilities than drones being used today by the military and other agencies.
“Think about dropping a thousand of these out of an aircraft,” said Bill Borgia, head of Lockheed Martin’s Intelligent Robotics Lab, in a phone interview with TPM, “Think about the wide area over which one collect imagery. Instead of sending one or two expensive, highly valuable aircraft like we do today, you could send thousands of these inexpensive aircraft, and they are almost expendable.”
Drought Hits 56 Percent of Continental U.S.; ‘Significant Toll’ on Crops
July 6th, 2012Via: MSNBC:
The prolonged heat across the Midwest has not only set temperature records, it is also expanding and intensifying drought conditions — and relief isn’t on the horizon for most areas, the National Weather Service reported Thursday.
Drought conditions are present in 56 percent of the continental U.S., according to the weekly Drought Monitor.
That’s the most in the 12 years that the data have been compiled, topping the previous record of 55 percent set on Aug. 26, 2003. It’s also up five percentage points from the previous week.
The Bank of England Told Us To Do It, Claims Barclays
July 5th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England encouraged Barclays to try to lower interest rates after coming under pressure from senior members of the last Labour government, documents have disclosed.
A memo published by Barclays suggested that Paul Tucker gave a hint to Bob Diamond, the bank’s chief executive, in 2008 that the rate it was claiming to be paying to borrow money from other banks could be lowered.
His suggestion followed questions from “senior figures within Whitehall” about why Barclays was having to pay so much interest on its borrowings, the memo states.
Barclays and other banks have been accused of artificially manipulating the Libor rate, which is used to set the borrowing costs for millions of consumers, businesses and investors, by falsely stating how much they were paying to borrow money.
The bank claimed yesterday that one of its most senior executives cut the Libor rate only at the height of the credit crisis after intervention from the Bank of England.
The memo, written on Oct 29, 2008, by Mr Diamond and circulated to two other senior bank officials, said: “Mr Tucker reiterated that he had received calls from a number of senior figures within Whitehall to question why Barclays was always toward the top end of the Libor pricing.”
Job Insecurity: It’s the Disease of the 21st Century
July 5th, 2012Via: Alternet:
Remember Dilbert, the mid-level, white-collar Cubicle Guy of the ’90s who could never seem to get ahead? In the 21st century, his position looks almost enviable.
He has been replaced by Waiting-For-the-Other-Shoe-to-Drop Man.
Across America, freaked-out employees are coping with sweat-drenched nights and heart-pounding days. They’re reaching for the Xanax and piling on the work of two or three people. They’re running the risk of short-term collapse and long-term disease.
The hell created by three grinding years of 8 percent-plus unemployment brings us plenty of stories of what people suffer when they lose their jobs. But what about the untold millions who live in chronic fear that tomorrow’s paycheck will be their last?
Research shows that the purgatory of job insecurity may be even worse for you than unemployment. And it’s turning the American Dream into a sleepwalking nightmare. From young temporary workers to middle-aged career veterans, Americans are being pushed to their physical and psychological limits in what has the makings of a major national public health crisis.
Three NSA Whistleblowers Back EFF’s Lawsuit Over Government’s Massive Spying Program
July 5th, 2012Via: Electronic Frontier Foundation:
San Francisco – Three whistleblowers – all former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) – have come forward to give evidence in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF’s) lawsuit against the government’s illegal mass surveillance program, Jewel v. NSA.
In a motion filed today, the three former intelligence analysts confirm that the NSA has, or is in the process of obtaining, the capability to seize and store most electronic communications passing through its U.S. intercept centers, such as the “secret room” at the AT&T facility in San Francisco first disclosed by retired AT&T technician Mark Klein in early 2006.
“For years, government lawyers have been arguing that our case is too secret for the courts to consider, despite the mounting confirmation of widespread mass illegal surveillance of ordinary people,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “Now we have three former NSA officials confirming the basic facts. Neither the Constitution nor federal law allow the government to collect massive amounts of communications and data of innocent Americans and fish around in it in case it might find something interesting. This kind of power is too easily abused. We’re extremely pleased that more whistleblowers have come forward to help end this massive spying program.”
The three former NSA employees with declarations in EFF’s brief are William E. Binney, Thomas A. Drake, and J. Kirk Wiebe. All were targets of a federal investigation into leaks to the New York Times that sparked the initial news coverage about the warrantless wiretapping program. Binney and Wiebe were formally cleared of charges and Drake had those charges against him dropped.
Research Credit: cgroove69
Women Could Delay Menopause Indefinitely with Ovary Transplant
July 5th, 2012Or, the women can have it all crowd could figure out that they’re on a hamster wheel designed by vampire states to extract taxes from them while their children suffer the consequences.
Via: Telegraph:
A technique to remove pieces of ovary, store it for decades and then replace it with delicate surgery could effectively put a woman’s menopause ‘on ice’, doctors said.
The only thing preventing them from having babies into their old age would be their physical ability to carry a pregnancy, they said.
The controversial notion would allow career women peace of mind with a fertility insurance policy so they can find a partner, settle down and become financially secure before starting a family.
By delaying the menopause they could also avoid the increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease that come with the end of their fertile life but may raise the risk of breast and womb cancer.
U.S. Adds Forces in Persian Gulf
July 4th, 2012Via: New York Times:
The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates.
