Privacy Concerns

It looks like an ordinary baseball cap. But when you put it on, the cap detects and analyzes the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals from your brain. It can even tell you if you’re getting too sleepy when driving based on your brain wave patterns. Similar technology could also allow you to control home electronics such as TVs, computers, and air conditioners, all by just thinking about them.

In 2004, when Bush administration officials unveiled a project to provide every American with an electronic health record by 2014, they pledged to put privacy and security first. But the discovery in April of stolen health records containing sensitive medical information about U.S. patients on a computer server in Malaysia controlled by cyber criminals indicates such records so far do not pass the privacy and security test.

This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.

n 2005, Microsoft launched a Location Finder as part of its Live Maps service. The application examined the networks a person was connected to, cross checked his IP address, and then predicted where the person was on a map. It was far from 100 percent accurate, but when it was right, it was ever-so-slightly terrifying. Coupling a person's location with 3D aerial map views, it showed the person a picture of the building he was sitting in with a big "X" on top of it -- giving him the simultaneous sensation of being the CIA agent locating a target, the target expecting an incoming cruise missile, and the viewer of a sophisticated, futuristic spy-movie.

We live in a different world than we did before September 11, 2001. We are more aware of our vulnerabilities, more appreciative of our freedoms and more understanding that we are personally responsible for the safety of our families, our neighbors and our nation.

Emery Martin is a man on a mission. The 23 year-old resident of Brooklyn has spearheaded the Neighborhood Network Watch, a grassroots group advocating the monitoring by volunteers of open Wi-Fi networks "to make sure that terrorists may not be using your own home network to plan the next attack on our nation or your very own community".

Dozens of state and local intelligence fusion centers operating nationwide are having difficulties juggling the multiple information systems that provide them with data, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Forty-three fusion centers were operational as of September and another 15 are in development. They have been created since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with a goal of advancing information-sharing among law enforcement authorities to improve domestic counterterrorism intelligence.

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets nabbed immediately because his brain has given him away. Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 movie "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise and based on a Philip K. Dick novel, I'm not talking about science fiction here; it turns out we're not so far away from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

Aurora Flight Sciences announced today that it has been awarded a contract to develop a radical new aircraft that can stay aloft for up to five years. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) made the award under a program known as "Vulture."