Human Nature: Science, Technology, and Life.

Cell Blocks

If you've ever seen a TV cop show, you know you're entitled to one phone call after you're busted. But that was before you could get unlimited, unmonitored calls from a cell phone chucked over a prison fence. Want to call your lawyer? The employees in your still-thriving drug business? A hit man to take out that witness who's scheduled to testify against you? The getaway driver you've hired to complete your escape? Thanks to prepaid, concealable, untraceable mobile communication devices, it's no problem.

Check out the latest numbers. Cell phones confiscated in federal prisons last year: more than 1,600. In Mississippi state prisons: more than 1,800. In California: more than 2,800.

Yesterday the Senate held a hearing to debate what to do about this. The bill on the table would authorize jamming of cell-phone signals in prisons. The wireless carriers' association, CTIA, showed up to testify against it. You can find good writeups and overviews from Matthew Lasar at Ars Technica, Ryan Singer at Wired's Epicenter, and Chloe Albanesius at PC Magazine.

The industry's argument is that jamming could disrupt legitimate cell-phone use, including cops and firefighters, whereas more sophisticated methods would nail just the bad guys. I'm skeptical of the first argument but interested in the second. Cell phones in prison, like IEDs in war and submersibles in drug-running, are part of a technology arms race. You can't win such races with sheer force, killing civilians or causing other collateral damage. You need precision.

Steve Largent, CTIA's president, proposed two alternatives to jamming. First,

With cell detection systems, prison administrators and correctional officers can detect, locate, and confiscate unauthorized wireless devices found in a correctional environment. Confiscated wireless devices can provider correctional authorities and law enforcement with call records, address information, and even photographs that can assist in disciplinary actions and criminal prosecutions. Alternatively, once illicit devices have been detected, prison officials and law enforcement may decide to leave them in place and arrange to monitor them in accordance with the wiretap statutes.

Second,

another promising technological solution to this problem involves the use of managed access. This approach enables a corrections facility to manage wireless access in a controlled area, such as a prison. Managed access would restrict communications on the commercial wireless networks to only a subset of allowed users (also known as a "white-list"). Other users are blocked from the commercial system access in the area.

I like both ideas. But are they ready to deploy? Largent told the committee:

Just last week, CTIA convened a day-long meeting involving North American vendors of cell detection and managed access solutions and engineers from a number of CTIA's carrier members to discuss potential solutions to this issue. We hope our efforts will put the industry in a position to trial alternative solutions in partnership with various states ...

Good for you, CTIA. But I don't believe for a minute that you'd be working hard on these alternatives if you weren't facing the threat of federally authorized jamming. And this is one reason why I'm not a pure libertarian. Can technology help the good guys stay ahead in the cell-phone arms race? Yes. Is industry better than government at coming up with creative, pinpoint solutions? Yes. Will industry do this without the threat of clumsy, burdensome government intervention? No.

So thank you, senators, for applying the heat. And don't forget the same lesson as you're legislating health care reform. Government-run alternatives don't always have to outperform private industry. They just have to scare it.

Collective Drug Surveillance

Does surveillance of individual drug abuse bother you? How would you feel if the surveillance were collective?

Thanks to increasingly sophisticated detection methods, we can now track drug abuse city by city, simply by monitoring the air and water. Here's a report flagged in Human Nature two years ago:

The test ... seeks out evidence of illicit drug abuse in drug residues and metabolites excreted in urine and flushed toward municipal sewage treatment plants. ... Preliminary tests conducted in 10 U.S. cities show the method can simultaneously quantify methamphetamine and metabolites of cocaine and marijuana and legal drugs such as methadone, oxycodone, and ephedrine. ... "Because our method can provide data in real time, we anticipate it might be used to help law officials undertaking surveillance to make intervention or prevention decisions or to decide where to allocate resources. ..."

Last year, Italian scientists found ways to detect metabolites for cocaine in the Po River, giving law enforcement officials more accurate estimates on cocaine use in the area. The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy has obtained samples from a dozen different waterways in an effort to assess illegal drug use, as well.

And here's an update posted Wednesday by Agence France Presse:

Spanish scientists have detected the presence of cocaine in the air of Madrid and Barcelona. ... The scientists looked for 17 components in five different types of illegal drugs—cocaine, amphetamines, opiates, cannabinoids and lysergic acid. The results revealed cocaine is the predominant drug in the air of the two cities, the CSIC institute said. ... The study is the result of the first use of a new method for the detection of drugs in the air. ...

Such mass sampling can reveal behavioral trends, as the AFP report notes:

The scientists also reported a higher concentration [of drugs in the air] during the weekend, "suggesting higher consumption this time."

... while at the same time "preserving the anonymity of individuals," according to water surveillance experts.

I don't see a problem with this. In fact, it strikes me as a welcome alternative to more intrusive detection methods. Do any of you libertarians disagree?

Swine Flu and Heat Scanners

Six years ago, when Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome swept the world, governments bought thermal image scanners and set them up at airports. The idea was to spot overheated travelers and check them for fever before they infected others. Now the machines are being deployed again, this time to catch swine flu. But dozens of thermal imagers in Canada and Australia are sitting unused. ...

SARS and bird flu weren't the last plagues to spread across our planet. This flu won't be the last, either. Fortunately, all these viruses have one thing in common: fever. For now, late as it is, that heat signature is our best shot at catching them. Let's use it.

More here.

Naked Body Scanners, Continued

The naked body scanners are taking over.

When we first checked in on them two years ago, the scanners, which see through clothing, were being deployed at a single airport. ... TSA assured us that the scanners would be used only as a "voluntary alternative" to "a more invasive physical pat-down during secondary screening." Only a few passengers, the ones selected for extra scrutiny, would face the scanners. The rest of us could walk through the metal detectors and board our planes.

Surprise! TSA has revised its position. Everyone will face the see-through machines. Anyone who objects will "undergo metal detector screening and a pat-down." Show us your body, or we'll feel you up.

More here.

Remote-Controlled Repo

Car dealers can now disable your vehicle via satellite if you miss a payment. Is that a bad thing?

Jonathan Welsh explains the technology in the Wall Street Journal. It consists of a "disabler" wired into your ignition, plus an optional "satellite-based locator" that can help repo men find the car. Don Lavoie, president of a company that markets the devices, says sales were up 25 percent last year and are on track to double this year.

Sounds like Big Brother, right? Welsh reports that

consumer-advocacy groups such as the Consumer Federation of America say the devices represent a disturbing new layer of surveillance. ... John Van Alst, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, calls the practice of remote disabling "electronic repossession" and says it represents a kind of intimidation, as well as creating extra hassles for people who are already financially strapped. "These devices are effective because of the threat they represent," says Mr. Van Alst.

Car dealers and disabler makers answer these charges in three ways. First, you owe them money. If you don't pay it, they have the right to deprive you of what you were paying for. Your car should be like your cell phone: If you stop paying, it stops working.

I like this argument. It's simple. Cars, like phones, can now be wirelessly connected. Why should they be treated differently? No quid, no quo.

Second, when a dealer knows he can shut down your car if you don't pay, he's more willing to let you drive the car off the lot. According to Welsh: "In the past, many dealers weren't willing to take the risk of extending credit to certain customers. But Mr. Lavoie and dealers who have installed his company's disabler say more buyers do pay on time when they have the devices in their cars." As a result, the technology "helps a broader range of customers qualify for loans."

Lavoie is right. This is what too many civil libertarians fail to appreciate about remote surveillance and control: The ability to exert power from a distance reduces the need to exert it up close. And the ability to exert it in the future reduces the need to exert it now. I can let you drive this car off the lot right now because I know that if you don't pay as promised, I can shut it off.

One driver likens her disabler to "those ankle bracelets they put on you when you've done something bad." It's an instructive analogy. GPS ankle bracelets are an alternative to confinement. If we can track you and detain you, we don't have to keep you locked up. The longer the leash, the greater your freedom.

Third, the disabler industry says its technology "helps financially strapped customers change their ways for the better." Lavoie calls it "a behavior-modification method."

Behavior modification? You're going to put a remote-controlled disabler in my car to make me a better person?

If the dealers and device makers were serious about that, you'd have reason to be frightened. Fortunately, they aren't. They don't care whether you're a good person. They don't care whether you kick your dog, cheat on your spouse, or steal from your employer. The only thing they care about is getting your payment on time. That's the beauty of capitalism: It keeps invasive technology in the hands of people who, aside from their self-interest, lack motivation to mess with your life. When the people behind the satellites start caring about your character, that's when it's time to freak out.

Inhuman Revenue Service

It's a tough time to be a mayor or governor. Budgets are tight, tax hikes are unpopular, and you can't easily hire cops and parking enforcement officers to hand out more tickets. Fortunately, there's a way to increase citations and revenue without adding to your payroll: traffic cameras.

William Bulkeley documents the trend in the Wall Street Journal:

Suppliers estimate that there are now slightly over 3,000 red-light and speed cameras in operation in the U.S., up from about 2,500 a year ago. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says that at the end of last year, 345 U.S. jurisdictions were using red-light cameras, up from 243 in 2007 and 155 in 2006. One traffic-cam seller, Arizona-based American Traffic Solutions Inc., recently reported it had installed its 1,000th camera, with 500 more under contract in 140 cities and towns. Rival Redflex Holdings Ltd. says it had 1,494 cameras in operation in 21 states at the end of 2008, and expects to top 1,700 by the end of this year.

Cities say they're putting up these cameras to protect the public. But the Journal points out that this effect isn't clear:

Some research indicates they may increase rear-end collisions as drivers slam on their brakes when they see posted camera notices. A 2005 Federal Highway Administration study of six cities' red-light cameras concluded there was a "modest" economic benefit because a reduction in side crashes due to less red-light running offset the higher costs of more rear-end crashes.

If the safety rationale isn't compelling, what's behind the camera trend? Look at the first case Bulkeley cites:

The village of Schaumburg, Ill., installed a camera at Woodfield Mall last November to film cars that were running red lights, then used the footage to issue citations. Results were astonishing. The town issued $1 million in fines in just three months.

And what did the camera do for safety? It "mainly snared those who didn't come to a full stop before turning right on red," Bulkeley reports. Not exactly a vital public service, except for the money.

Elsewhere, the financial rationale is explicit. "Last June, Arizona added a provision for speed cams on highways to its budget bill, with an anticipated $90 million in fines expected to help balance the budget," Bulkeley notes. And get this:

[A] study in last month's Journal of Law and Economics concluded that, as many motorists have long suspected, "governments use traffic tickets as a means of generating revenue." The authors ... studied 14 years of traffic-ticket data from 96 counties in North Carolina. They found that when local-government revenue declines, police issue more tickets in the following year.

Oh, and one more thing: The cameras "are operated by for-profit companies that typically make around $5,000 per camera each month." It's a surveillance-industrial complex.

I can't claim to be impartial on this subject. In the last few years, I've paid around $400 for tickets issued by traffic cameras—way more than I've paid for tickets issued by human officers. Most of that total came from three tickets issued by the same camera for the same infraction in a two-week period. If a human officer had ticketed me the first time, my wife and I would have realized we'd broken the law, wised up, and driven that stretch of road more carefully. Instead, the traffic camera quietly collected photos, and the government didn't send us any tickets—which is what finally alerted us to the violations—until we'd repeated the mistake three times.

I'm not proud of breaking the law. But I'm not stupid, either. By using inconspicuous surveillance and delaying notification, the government traded public safety for revenue.

Big Brother is watching you. And when he needs cash, he watches that much more closely.

Heaven’s Wrath

Big news from Pakistan: The government there is becoming a partner in our remote-controlled assassination campaign. Here's the deal: They'll let us kill our enemies on their soil if we'll use the same drones to kill their enemies, too.

Officially, Pakistan continues to object to the drone strikes. We just hit two more targets yesterday, prompting Pakistan's Foreign Office to declare that "these attacks are counterproductive and we hope that as a result of the policy review in Washington, we would have some positive outcome."

That's a pretty funny protest, since today's Wall Street Journal brings this news:

U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials are drawing up a fresh list of terrorist targets for Predator drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, part of a U.S. review of the drone program, according to officials involved. Pakistani officials are seeking to broaden the scope of the program to target extremists who have carried out attacks against Pakistanis, a move they say could win domestic support. ...

Already, the campaign has apparently stepped up attacks on the network of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who is believed to be behind the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was [current President] Zardari's wife. In the fourth of a series of recent attacks targeting Mr. Mehsud's network, a drone attack Wednesday killed at least eight militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border, according to two Pakistani officials. The intensified campaign could help win domestic support for the strikes because it shows that the drone attacks are targeting direct threats to Pakistan, said a Pakistani official.

To put it crudely, we seem to be renting out the drones. Since President Obama took office, the drones have been slaughtering Mehsud's fighters. Apparently, we're doing this to satisfy Zardari's government. And it's not clear whether the satisfaction is political or personal. Do the hits on Mehsud really generate "domestic support" for the drone strikes? Does the average Pakistani conclude that the CIA's killing machines aren't so bad after all? Or does the "domestic support" consist of Zardari? Are we buying his support by sending our drones to avenge his wife's death?

It's almost Shakespearean. But since we're in the 21st century instead of the 16th, we seal our pact with the king by sending machines, not human assassins, to bring heaven's wrath on the warlord who slew his beloved. And this time, the wrath really does come from heaven. Put yourself in Zardari's shoes. You're being offered the chance to destroy your enemy with a power unknown to history's greatest kings and generals: a bloodless, all-seeing airborne hunting party. Would you refuse?

And if you were Obama, would you refuse to wield this power? No way. According to the Journal, Obama has "concluded that the drones have been an effective weapon," and his aides are now "examining ways to reduce the time it takes between identifying a target and when the Predators fire—now less than 45 minutes." And in a curious coincidence, the U.S. also just announced a $5 million reward for "information leading to the arrest or location of Mehsud" and another warlord.

Something tells me there won't be an arrest. Location will be enough.

Drones Are for Sissies

From time to time, Human Nature checks in on the man-vs.-machine war experiment that's going on halfway around the world in Pakistan. It's like a video game, except real people are being killed. Al-Qaida and the Taliban are fielding human fighters. The United States is fielding remote-controlled unmanned aircraft armed with missiles. American generals and defense planners are watching this war to find out how much an unmanned force can accomplish. The less blood we have to risk and shed, particularly against an enemy who thrives on body bags and terror, the safer we'll be at home and abroad.

So, who's winning: the jihadis or the joysticks? Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times brings us a fresh update. Here's an analysis of his report and other stories filed in the last week, explaining the most important developments and why they matter.

1. How many strikes and kills? Since Aug. 31, there have been 38 Predator strikes, killing 9 "senior" al-Qaida leaders and many lower-level fighters. And that's not counting conventional airstrikes based on hot intelligence from the drones.

2. Why the increase? We stopped asking Pakistan for permission before striking. This has three effects: Strikes don't get vetoed, they don't get delayed till the intelligence (e.g., about who's in the compound) is cold, and the targets don't get tipped off by friends in the Pakistani government.

3. Where do the drones fly from? This has been a politically explosive question lately. Miller says the CIA Predators "take off and land at military airstrips in Pakistan."

4. Can they see through walls? Not literally, but in effect, yes. They're "outfitted with additional intelligence gear that has enabled the CIA to confirm the identities of targets even when they are inside buildings and can't be seen through the Predator's lens." If true, this is a huge development. It means the men have nowhere to hide from the machines.

5. Do the joystick pilots understand real combat? I've raised this question before, on the theory that killing real people from a faraway drone console can look too much like a video game. The CIA is mum about its people. But Christopher Drew of the New York Times reports that the Air Force "has begun training officers as drone pilots who have had little or no experience flying conventional planes."

6. Why is Pakistan tolerating the strikes? "Because the CIA has expanded its targeting to include militant groups that threaten the government," Miller reports. To that extent, the machines have become Pakistan's allies. If true, this is another big development. The Pakistan war experiment isn't just technological. It's political. It's a test of whether the drones can inflict military damage without triggering too much anti-Americanism. By buying off the host government with hits on its enemies, we're buying time to keep hitting our own enemies there. Politically, it's hard to imagine a manned U.S. force getting away with what the drones have done.

7. What are the drones' psychological effects? Among other things, the Pakistan experiment is testing how a war waged by machines affects the morale of their human adversaries. U.S. officials tell Miller that the militants, hounded and pounded by the drones, "have begun turning violently on one another out of confusion and distrust." One official says that al-Qaida operatives are "wondering who's next," that they're "hunting down people who they think are responsible" for exposing them to the drones, and that "people are showing up dead or disappearing." Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times adds that in northwest Pakistan, "[s]ome locals have given up drinking Lipton tea, out of a growing conviction that the [CIA] is using the tea bags as homing beacons for its pilotless planes."

On the other hand, Mazzetti reports many Pakistanis think that the drones "reveal the fears of Americans to take casualties"—that we're "sending robots to do a man's job." He cites P.W. Singer's book Wired for War, in which Muslim insurgents "said that America's reliance on drone weapons is a sign that the United States is afraid to sacrifice troops in combat."

I'm not buying this. I'm not buying the U.S. spin that the drones are reducing al-Qaida to fratricide. And I'm sure not buying this jihadi propaganda about the glory of sacrifice. Sacrifice is for suckers. Even terrorists know that. That's why, as Drew reports, our ostensibly cowardly drone operators are watching this:

On a recent day, at 1:15 p.m. in Tucson—1:15 the next morning in Afghanistan—a pilot and sensor operator were staring at gray-toned video from the Predator's infrared camera. ... The crew was scanning a road, looking for ... signs of anyone planting improvised explosive devices or lying in wait for a convoy. ... "We spend 70 to 80 percent of our time doing this, just scanning roads," said the pilot. ...

In short, our people are hiding behind lethal gizmos watching your people plant lethal gizmos and hide. Your people don't intend to be there when the bombs go off any more than ours do. So if we're sissies, so are you.

8. Obama's plans? "Because of its success, the Obama administration is set to continue the accelerated campaign," Miller reports. The New York Times' David Singer and Eric Schmitt add that Obama is thinking of extending the strikes deeper into Pakistan:

The extensive missile strikes being carried out by [CIA]-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas. ... But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.

Broadening the war in Pakistan is hugely dangerous. But if we do it, the safest force to send in isn't the Marines, Green Berets, or stealth fighters. It's the drones.

Iran's Drones

What's more unsettling than U.S. military planes flying over Iraq with nobody inside them?

Iranian military planes doing the same thing.

Last Thursday, Danger Room reported that according to its sources, American planes had shot down an Iranian drone in Iraqi airspace. Yesterday, the United States confirmed it. We and our friends are no longer the only nations flying remote-controlled vehicles over other countries. Instead of looking down on the enemy through the eyes of unmanned aircraft, our military personnel will increasingly find themselves on the wrong end of the camera—and eventually the missile.

The United States claims that the Iranian drone shot down on Feb. 25 spent more than an hour in Iraqi airspace and was "well inside Iraqi territory." Depending on whom you believe, it was 10, 12, 25, or 80 miles inside Iraq. One theory is that the drone was spying on a camp full of Iranian dissidents (or, to put it less nicely, terrorists). Another is that it was looking for routes to smuggle weapons into Iraq. It was unarmed and relatively unsophisticated, with a range of 90 miles (which means it almost certainly didn't go 80 miles into Iraq) and an altitude limit of 14,000 feet.

The incident raises at least three questions. First: How many other drones does Iran have, and what can they do? According to Danger Room:

In 2007, Iran said it built a drone with a range of 420 miles. In February, Iran's deputy defense minister claimed its latest UAV could now fly as far as 600 miles. ... Iran often exaggerates what its weapons can do. But, if this drone really can stay in the air for for that long, the Washington Times notes, "it could soar over every U.S. military installation, diplomatic mission or country of interest in the Middle East."

Today's Los Angeles Times adds:

Iran has been developing unmanned aviation technologies, displaying drone aircraft during military parades and incorporating them into war games along its eastern and western borders in recent years. In December, Iran said it had developed a new generation of "spy drones" that provide real-time surveillance over enemy terrain. And last month an Iranian air force officer told media Iran had created drones with a range of 1,200 miles.

The distance from Iran to Tel Aviv is about 600 miles.

Second: Who else has drones? We know, for example, that Israel, Georgia, and Pakistan have them. Iran's ability to produce them means that Iranian-affiliated miscreants will be deploying them, too. Danger Room notes:

Iran has supplied Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, with both models [its Ababil and Misrad drones]. Misrad drones flew reconnaissance missions in both November 2004 and April 2005. Then, in 2006, during Hezbollah's war with Israel, the group operated both Misrads and Ababils over Israel's skies. At least one was shot down by Israeli fighter jets.

Third: How will the proliferation of drones affect future wars? The emerging ability of our adversaries to do to us what we've been doing to them—invade, spy, and eventually kill without risking any personnel—is a huge problem. The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan since President Obama took office is now up to six, with a casualty count exceeding 100. Imagine somebody doing that to us.

On the other hand, nobody died in the Feb. 25 incident. According to the U.S. military, before firing, our forces confirmed that "no collateral damage would result from a shoot-down." In fact, we knew more than that. We knew we wouldn't be killing any military personnel, either, since the drone's pilot was in Iran. That made it easier to shoot down the drone without triggering a political confrontation and blowing up diplomatic efforts with Iran. It's been three weeks since the incident, and Iran still hasn't mentioned it in public. If tomorrow's spy aircraft can be shot down without spilling blood and starting wars, that's not such a bad thing.

Drones and Spies

How are humans and unmanned vehicles getting along in our experimental robot proxy war in Pakistan? Pretty well. Yesterday's New York Times revealed more about collaborations between U.S. drones and Pakistani ground forces. A few highlights:

1. Pakistanis on the ground are spotting targets for the drones.

"The intelligence sharing has really improved in the past few months," said Talat Masood, a retired army general. ... Intelligence from Pakistani informants has been used to bolster the accuracy of missile strikes from remotely piloted Predator and Reaper aircraft against the militants in the tribal areas, officials from both countries say. More than 30 attacks by the aircraft have been conducted since last August, most of them after President Zardari took office in September. A senior American military official said that 9 of 20 senior Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan had been killed by those strikes.

2. The drones are tracking targets for Pakistanis on the ground.

The C.I.A. helped [Pakistani] commandos track the Saudi militant linked to Al Qaeda, Zabi al-Taifi, for more than a week before the Pakistani forces surrounded his safe house in the Khyber Agency. The Pakistanis seized him, along with seven Pakistani and Afghan insurgents, in a dawn raid on Jan. 22, with a remotely piloted C.I.A. plane hovering overhead and personnel from the C.I.A. and Pakistan's main spy service closely monitoring the mission, a senior Pakistani officer involved in the operation said.

3. Pakistan is tracking the drones. Its agents know their whereabouts in real time.

In addition, a small team of Pakistani air defense controllers working in the United States Embassy in Islamabad ensures that Pakistani F-16 fighter-bombers conducting missions against militants in the tribal areas do not mistakenly hit remotely piloted American aircraft flying in the same area or a small number of C.I.A. operatives on the ground, a second senior Pakistani officer said.

4. Reliance on drones is protecting American but not Pakistani troops. This is the chief strategic problem exposed by the war. We can hit the enemy from an unmanned aerial vehicle with impunity. But the enemy can retaliate against our ally on the ground, thereby putting pressure on the alliance. According to the Times, "Pakistani Army officers say the American strikes draw retaliation against Pakistani troops in the tribal areas, whose convoys and bases are bombed or attacked with rockets after each United States missile strike."

Human Nature's interest in the Pakistan conflict is all about its experimental lessons in unmanned warfare. Toward that end, two of the key factors to watch are 1) the ability of manned and unmanned forces to work together and 2) the enemy's ability to punish manned forces for damage inflicted by unmanned forces. We'll keep watching both.

Spying With Google Earth

The picture, taken from directly overhead, shows an airfield in Pakistan. It looks like a video frame from one of the American killer drones that have been hunting Taliban and al-Qaida fighters there. But that can't be: The drones are right there in the frame, sitting on the ground. So who took the picture?

A plain old commercial satellite, apparently. The image was freely available on Google Earth until Wednesday ...

More here.

LoJack for People

The companies that brought you tracking devices for stolen cars and lost animals have found a new market: tracking human beings.

Radio tracking devices, as Philip Shishkin notes in the Wall Street Journal, were initially placed on endangered animals. More recently, LoJack has installed them in more than 7 million vehicles to foil theft. Some 2,000 to 3,000 police departments have receivers to pick up signals from the devices. Why not extend that network to track people?

In fact, two companies have already put radio monitors on 18,000 people with Alzheimer's or brain injuries. Now LoJack is joining the market in a big way. Yesterday, the company announced a "diversification strategy" to "track and rescue people at risk of wandering, including those with Alzheimer's, autism, Down syndrome and dementia."

The Alzheimer's market looks pretty lucrative. LoJack anticipates up to 16 million Alzheimer's patients by 2050, most of whom wander away at some point. But the company also notes that "autism, which is the fastest growing developmental disability that now afflicts one in every 150 babies born, can also cause children to wander." In fact, LoJack aims to address the whole range of potential wanderers. According to CEO Ronald Waters, "This offering is a natural extension of LoJack's family of products and services and takes our solutions beyond ‘getting the bad guys' off the streets to now protecting those afflicted with cognitive disorders."

Who's going to have the receivers to track all these people? "Law enforcement/public safety agencies," says Lojack. And who's going to buy the devices and put them on the people who will wear them? You can't expect a cognitively disordered person to take that kind of initiative herself. As an Illinois sheriff points out to Shishkin, "The people who need the technology are often too embarrassed to ask for it."

There's no question that these devices save lives. Without them, some people will wander off, get lost, and die. And if your family can't track you, they might resort to keeping you indoors so you don't wander. But "cognitive disorders" can also become an expanding rationale for putting more and more people under constant police surveillance. In the spirit of mutual tracking, let's keep an eye on it.

Slate V: Beware Everlasting Jellyfish!

The Underworld

Two weeks ago, when Israel was pounding Gaza, we looked at technical options for blocking or detecting the tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle arms from Egypt. The list ranged from walls to moats to sensors to periodic bombing. The idea was to offer Israel ways to cut off the flow of weapons without having to continue its military campaign.

Israel then halted its invasion, based on a memorandum of understanding in which the United States pledged, among other things, to "provide logistical and technical assistance and to train and equip regional security forces in counter-smuggling tactics." It was pretty obvious who the "regional security forces" were, given that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was already in Egypt.

So what's happened since then? Who's doing what about the tunnels? And can a tunnel, of all things, bring peace to the Middle East?

For now, Israel is still bombing the Gaza tunnels. On Sunday, Israel hit six of them, ostensibly retaliating for rockets launched from Gaza. Here's a photo of one bombed site, taken yesterday. It gives you a rough idea of how much—and how little—damage was inflicted.

The most interesting thing about the bombing is Israel's efforts to avoid killing anyone in or around the tunnels. According to the AP, "Palestinians said residents near the Egypt-Gaza border received calls after nightfall Sunday from the Israeli military advising them to leave" before the tunnel bombings. The recorded message said: "Everybody who is near any place used for terror or weapon storage facility or tunnels, should evacuate the area immediately." Then Israeli planes sent sonic booms through the area, alerting tunnel workers, who proceeded to get out before the planes dropped their bombs. "No casualties were reported from any of the bombings," says the AP.

Will bombing solve the tunnel problem? No. Last week, the commander of Israel's air force admitted, "If we hit them today, they'll open again tomorrow and they'll be dug in the future, too." The Israeli military thinks weapons shipments to Gaza should be intercepted at sea or in the Egyptian desert before they get to the tunnels. But U.S. envoy George Mitchell says the best way to close the tunnels might be to open Gaza's borders above ground: "To be successful in preventing the illicit traffic of arms into Gaza, there must be a mechanism to allow the flow of legal goods."

Mitchell is right. Opening the borders won't stop Hamas from seeking weapons. But it'll ease the economic necessity that currently drives Gazans of all persuasions to dig and maintain underground channels to Egypt. Then we can isolate and target those who work for Hamas and its arms network.

That's where technology comes in. The United States and Egypt, apparently spurred by a U.S. financial-aid requirement and the Jan. 16 agreement with Israel, are trying some of the high-tech options we discussed a couple of weeks ago. Reuters says Egypt began "installing cameras and motion sensors" along its Gaza border on Jan. 29, assisted by "joint U.S., French and German expertise." The system, designed to detect tunnel excavation, is being networked by cables that will run "from south of Rafah to the Mediterranean coast." AP has a more explicit report. Citing an Egyptian official, it says U.S. Army engineers are installing ground-penetrating radar.

I'll be surprised if that works. As we explained last month, ground-penetrating radar can't see below 50 feet of earth, and the Egypt-to-Gaza tunnels run deeper than that. That's why GPR lost its deterrent value along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, the New York Times reported yesterday,

Despite huge enforcement actions on both sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican marijuana trade is more robust—and brazen—than ever, law enforcement officials say. Mexican drug cartels routinely transported industrial-size loads of marijuana in 2008, excavating new tunnels and adopting tactics like ramp-assisted smuggling to get their cargoes across undetected.

In Gaza, tunnels have proved so effective and resilient that Israel is becoming infatuated with them. Yesterday, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak, the guy in charge of bombing them, proposed to connect Gaza to the West Bank via—you guessed it—an underground corridor. "The preferred way to do it would be to dig a tunnel that would be under Israeli sovereignty, but under totally free and unobstructed use by Palestinians," Barak explained. He even has a specific route in mind.

Why run the corridor underground? To avoid disturbing or threatening the surface. Israelis and Palestinians could cross paths without seeing one another. Palestine would be connected without bisecting Israel. That's what's really emerging from the tunnel industry: a three-dimensional way of thinking about land. You build your walls and station your soldiers above ground; we go down 60 feet and dig past you. We demand access to the West Bank; you tell us we can't go through Israel, but we can go under it. In a region where land is scarce and fiercely contested, the third dimension, the one beneath our feet, was bound to become part of the problem. Maybe it can be part of the solution.

Tyranny and Technology

What's worse than an 11^th-century theocracy running a 21^st-century country? A theocracy that enforces its edicts with the help of 21^st-century technology.

The country is Iran; the religion is fundamentalist Islam; the technology is cell phone cameras. The report comes from an Iranian newspaper, Vatan-e-Emrooz, via the Associated Press:

The first mixed soccer game—females vs. males—since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to swift punishment Monday, as an Iranian soccer club said it had suspended three officials involved and handed out fines of up to $5,000. Iran's strict Islamic rules ban any physical contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are even banned from attending soccer games when male teams play. ... [The club] said its disciplinary committee suspended two officials for a year while a third was suspended for six months.

How were the women's libbers behind this outrage caught? Allah be praised, by modern handheld electronics.

The officials—a coach and two managers—first denied the game took place, but video clips on cell phones of the game were used as evidence against them, the daily newspaper reported.

For much of the past century, there's been a running debate over whether economic liberalization leads to political liberalization. Then the globalization and democratization of communications technology were supposed to help. Last year, President Bush authorized exports of cell phones to Cuba, thinking this would loosen the regime's grip. "If the Cuban people can be trusted with mobile phones, they should be trusted to speak freely in public," he argued.

It's a nice thought. But as the Iranian case illustrates, democratized technology can be used just as easily to enforce tyranny as to challenge it. Devices won't point us in the right direction. We'll have to be the ones who point them.

Closing the Gaza Tunnels

Gaza is riddled with tunnels. Some are for smuggling; others are for transporting weapons; others are for hiding or ambushing Israeli troops. The crucial passageways—400 to 600, by recent estimates—run from Gaza to Egypt, circumventing the closed border. That's how Hamas gets parts and material for the missiles it fires into Israel. Any deal to end the current fighting has to include "an effective blockading" of that border, "with supervision and follow-ups," according to Israel's prime minister. To stop the war—and to keep it stopped—you have to figure out how to stop the tunnels.

But how? Here are some of the options.

More here.

Bush on “Over-the-Wall” Drones

I went to see President Bush's farewell chat with the American Enterprise Institute yesterday. It was an unusually frank conversation: He actually admitted mistakes. In fact, he wandered so far off-message that when he was asked about defense spending, he started talking about specific weapons systems, and pretty soon he said this:

Our soldiers are carrying unbelievably new technologies, using Predators to use over-the-wall intelligence to be able to have better battlefield awareness.

Over-the-wall intelligence? I've searched DefenseLink, and I don't see that term or anything like it. I do, however, see "through-the-wall surveillance," associated with the Air Force Research Laboratory. And the last time I checked, walls tended to be associated with roofs. So one way or another, the Predators have to see through something.

Is Bush possibly blabbing about the technology cryptically described by Bob Woodward and others? The ability of U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles to identify and track human targets "even when they are inside buildings"? If so, the convergence sketched here two months ago—unmanned vehicles that can see through walls—is indeed upon us.

By the way, as of this week's hit in North Waziristan, the number of U.S.  drone missile strikes in Pakistan this year is approaching 30, and the body count is over 200.

Arresting Development

The latest encroachment of DNA testing: No conviction, or even prosecution, necessary. From Spencer Hsu in the Washington Post:

Immigration and civil liberties groups condemned a new U.S. government policy to collect DNA samples from all noncitizens detained by authorities and all people arrested for federal crimes. The new Justice Department rule, published Wednesday and effective Jan. 9, dramatically expands a federal law enforcement database of genetic identifiers, which is now limited to storing information about convicted criminals and arrestees from 13 states.

This comes after the U.K. launched a similar plan and got smacked down by European judges:

This month, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that a British policy to collect fingerprints and DNA of all criminal suspects, including those later deemed innocent, violated privacy rights.

If anyone here thinks the U.S. Supreme Court will take a similar line, I've got a few large automobile manufacturers to sell you.

Eyes and Ears

A week ago, when we last checked in on the drone war in Pakistan, the news wasn't good. Insurgents had bombed a Pakistani hotel and a security checkpoint, apparently in retaliation for drone strikes on them. The Pakistani government, in turn, was asking the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, to call off the drones. Petraeus said he'd listen. It looked as though the United States might buckle.

Then Petraeus went to Afghanistan and praised the drones. "It is hugely important that three of 20 extremist leaders have been killed in recent months," he told the AP. And on Friday, the Pakistanis got their answer. A drone attack killed another dozen suspected militants at a Taliban commanders' house.

The machines have now racked up more than 100 kills in Pakistan since August. Petraeus has been lobbied, and Barack Obama has been elected, but the drone strikes go on.

How is Pakistan greeting this aggression? Is it threatening to fight? Hardly. Yesterday the country's president told the AP, "We feel that the strikes are an intrusion on our sovereignty, which are not appreciated by the people at large, and the first aspect of this war is to win the hearts and mind of the people."

"Feel"? "Not appreciated"? It's hard to come up with weaker language than that. The real message seems to be: Do what you must, but try not to give us political trouble.

From that standpoint, drones are a lot less harmful than the alternatives. The biggest popular anti-American protests in Pakistan recently were triggered not by drones but by a U.S. ground incursion. Likewise, in Afghanistan, recent politically incendiary mass killings of civilians have been inflicted (accidentally) by human operators on the scene. Yes, the drones have killed some Pakistani civilians. But not nearly as many, it appears, as Pakistani forces have killed in their own clumsy campaign against the insurgents.

Why do the drones have a better record of minimizing mistakes? For one thing, they don't have to make quick decisions. They can hover, watch, and wait. The intelligence they collect can be sifted and weighed by multiple supervisors before reaching a decision to fire. And in Pakistan, they seem to have an additional asset: human sources on the ground. The Washington Post explains:

Brig. Gen. Mahmood Shah, former longtime head of [Pakistani] government security in the tribal areas, said the missile attacks have become noticeably more precise, leading some to believe that local tribesmen in the border areas are supplying the U.S. military with better information about targets. Shah said rumors about so-called U.S. spies among the tribes have fed paranoia about the possibility that signaling devices have been deployed in area villages. Tribesmen have lately made a habit of sweeping the areas around their homes for such devices, he said. "They're not sitting outside in their compounds anymore because they are afraid that they will be struck by these missiles," Shah said.

All this time, I've been looking for technological answers to the mystery of the drones' precision, their increasing ability to find the bad guys. But maybe the answer isn't machines. Maybe it's people.

And if it's people, then the bad guys don't have to fight the machines. They can do what they already know how to do: kill some people and intimidate the rest. That seems to be what they're trying. A day after Friday's drone strike, Agence France-Presse reported:

Taliban militants killed two Afghan men Saturday in Pakistan's restive tribal belt after accusing them of spying for US-led forces. ... The executions were the latest in a string of similar killings and come a day after a suspected US drone fired missiles and destroyed an Al-Qaeda sanctuary in North Waziristan, killing 14. ... Executions routinely follow suspected US missile strikes against militant targets in Pakistan, which officials say are often conducted on intelligence provided by paid local informants.

According to the AP, the two bodies were thrown onto a road, each pinned with a note that said, "See the fate of this man. He was an American spy."

Were the men really spies? If so, were they scouting targets for the drones? I don't know. But for the last three months, somebody's been doing a heck of a job finding the bad guys in northwest Pakistan. Maybe, as U.S. military sources have let on, it's the drones themselves. Or maybe that's the cover story for what's still the world's greatest enemy-detection device: the human being.

Robot Proxy War Update

I can't keep up with the drone war in Pakistan.

This morning, I posted a piece on the evolution of the Pakistan border conflict into the world's first robot proxy war. There have been so many drone strikes along that border in the last four weeks that when I linked to the reports on all of them, it felt like-pardon the reverse metaphor-overkill.

Now it turns out I missed one. The machines' body count is now 20 higher, thanks to a strike last night. It's the 19th drone attack since August. According to an update this morning on the New York Times Web site, the strike occurred 20 miles inside Pakistan and took out two Taliban commanders who have launched raids on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

How good are the drones? According to the Times, one of the targeted commanders "was believed to have been visiting the compound ... to pay his respects to the families of those killed in an American drone strike on Friday" in a different location. The machines find and kill you, and then, when your boss shows up somewhere else to console your relatives, the machines are waiting for him there, too.

Down the road, we should all be scared of what this technology can do. But for now, I'm enjoying our ability to find and kill these guys without putting boots on the ground.

Now, about those other 18 casualties ...

Evolving Predators

Is this technology for real? If so, what is it? Since the government isn't telling, I poked around a bit and asked readers for ideas.

Here are some possible leads. First, Slate reader mark_925 flags a list posted Friday on Aviation Week's Ares blog. The list includes several technologies that have improved U.S. efficiency at hunting and killing adversaries in Iraq. They include:

1. Communications intercept sensors "so sensitive that they can pick up the low-power emissions of handheld cell phones."
2. A targeting system called NCCT, which "instantaneously links the intelligence taken from several aircraft, ships or UAVs at once to locate, identify and target electronic emissions, including communications, and associate them with air, ground and sea radar targets."
3. An "IDM communications module" that links communications signals to visible sources, such as cars.
4. Software that facilitates "change detection" from spy aircraft.
5. Helmet sights that immediately translate a physically viewed object into spatial coordinates that enable fast targeting and destruction.

Second: Walter Pincus of the Washington Post flags an article in the U.S. military journal Joint Force Quarterly, written by the general who, as of today, is replacing David Petraeus as commander of multinational forces in Iraq. It credits the upturn in Iraq in part to a "surge of ... full motion video (FMV) assets." Early in the war, "Commanders were rarely allocated more than an hour of FMV a week," says the article. "Since 2003-2004, FMV within the corps has increased tenfold. ... Today, the corps can count on daily support from at least 12 FMV systems," and each brigade combat team "has an organic tactical UAV platoon that provides 18 hours of FMV coverage a day." Drones are dramatically improving military performance, not by doing the killing themselves, but by providing instant, on-demand customized intelligence to ground forces.

Third: Pincus reports that last week, a Senate subcommittee appropriated $750 million for "intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance initiatives." This compounds a $1.3 billion shift of money to ISR programs, approved by the Pentagon in July. According to Defense News, the programs include:

1. "$262.6 million to buy digital data links for Raven UAVs, data links and laser designators for Hunter unmanned aircraft, and various improvements for other unmanned aircraft."
2. "$168.5 million to buy eight Medium Altitude Reconnaissance and Surveillance airborne systems, including with $52 million for three new Constant Hawk airborne surveillance and target acquisition systems."
3. "$17 million to extend a contract for Scan Eagle UAV services, $15 million to buy a new Northrop Grumman-made Global Hawk UAV and associated gear and services, $26 million to purchase four Boeing-made Scan Eagles."
4. Imaging systems and "sensor packages" for the Air Force.

So there are some possible clues to the recent turnaround in Iraq and the more recent escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan: more UAV deployment and video, faster integration of UAV data into ground operations, more acute communications sensors, and instant targeting data on visible objects. Some combination of these technologies might account for the key breakthrough attributed to the devices now being deployed to Afghanistan: nonvisual identification and tracking of targets. Or not.

Over to you, Danger Room.