Ever wonder if someone is watching you and you have no idea who it is? Ever think that your safe in your own home? Thanks to Darpa the Defense Department's way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for "external sensing deep inside buildings." The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: "reverse the adversaries' advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness. They would be able to see a full blueprint of the building and also track people inside these buildings. These bluepritnts are not limited to electrical, plumbing, and ventilation systems.
Darpa's research uses a kind of radar to scan structures. The problem is not sending the radio frequency (RF) energy in. It's making sense of the data produced from all the reflected signals that come back. The system also must filter a large amount of RF propagation in the form of randomly reflected signals. Although radar technologies exist that can track people in adjacent rooms, it is much more difficult to map an entire building.
5 comments:
This technology being created by Defense Department seems as revolutionary as the radar back in WWII. However, this technology suffers the same conflict that sonar had when it was first introduced and that is correctly interpreting the data that is being mirrored back to the machine. Although sonar only used single sound waves, the countless radiowaves being reflected continously by every stub and moving object in the building is far more complex than any technology being used today. Especially since this technology is meant to provide real-time updates to track/monitor moving objects inside the building. This new technology will surely help the military as they infiltrate buildings or other areas to give active intel of possible hostile situations. This technology can surely help the government keep terrorists and criminals at bay, the only price is your privacy.
Dan,
whether or not you realize it, we, as US citizens, gave up our rights to privacy after the 9/11/01 attacks. I would love for someone to blog about this. I suspect most of us are completely unaware of how little privacy we actually have...
This is definitely a "scary" advancement and thought in technology. I understand the military applications and stragetic advantages this would give the U.S. over her enemies, but the where does it end? Unless there is laws and regulations controling technologies like this it won't be long before were in a 1984 type situation. Even if there were laws passed, who whould stop them from doing it anyway? Atleast as of now, Americans are not the most recorded people in the world, that luxury belongs to Britian, London to be specific.
This is going to help us a lot in the future for our safety. Personally i would pick safety over privacy any day, even if i didn't like mrs billig said we gave up our right to privacy already anyway. I believe that if Darpa actually follows through with this every important building like the pentagon, grand central, and the white house will all have this equiped. This defenses mechanism is created for military purposes and for warfighting in urban areas but i think it will evolve beyond warfighting and into everyday peoples houses.
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