Cell Phone Radiation Detectors Proposed to Protect Against Nukes

crosshatch brings us news out of Purdue University, where researchers are developing a radiation detection system that would rely on sensors within cell phones to locate and track potentially hazardous material. From the Purdue news service: "Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. 'The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually,' Fischbach said. 'The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say a car is transporting radioactive material for a bomb, and that car is driving down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the car passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.'"

Or, you know, radioactive thoughts...

The collective action of the sensors, combined with the software analysis, detects the source. Say someone mumbles the word "nuclear", while walking down Meridian Street in Indianapolis or Fifth Avenue in New York. As the individual passes people, their cell phones individually would send signals to a command center, allowing authorities to track the source.

So...

The things giving us cancer will detect things that will give us cancer? All right, I'll take twenty!

And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

Often it is treated with radioactive seeds implanted into the prostate. A substantial number of men receive this treatment (implantation of tiny seed sized radioactive bits into the prostate that kills the cancer), which will raise the specificity of said detectors to near useless. I guess we'll see a lot of "nukes" on their way to the early bird special diners, and 4 pm movies.

Some young women are treated with Iodine 125 to treat overactive thyroids. "Ok now the bomb is headed to The Gap, no - now it's going to Forever 21."

Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

Just train the software to ignore signals that regularly enter the restroom, then!

Regular comfort breaks are a feature of both prostrate cancer and the lack of a Y chromosone, so these signals should be fairly easy to classify and filter :P

Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

This kind of thing is already happening with existing anti-terrorist radiation detectors, e.g.:

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/03/nuclear_terrori.html [schneier.com]

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20041221/ai_n14588366 [findarticles.com]

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn3150 [newscientist.com]

Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

Radionuclides give off unique spectral signatures. I-131 looks different from Tc-99m (another common medical isotope) which looks different from cobalt-60 (an industrial isotope) which looks different from uranium. I imagine they're using small wafers of cadmium-zinc-telluride (CZT), which has the ability to do this spectral segregation, but TFA didn't say. Does anyone know?

Having it determine what isotope it's looking at would drastically reduce the number of false hits you might get. It probably WOULDN'T alarm on that truck of bananas ... or that medical patient you're standing next to who's lit up like a light bulb full of iodine. CZT has a pretty poor collection efficiency -- it's very small and it certainly doesn't stop every piece of radiation you throw at it -- but it looks like they're trying sheer numbers (millions of cell phones) to overcome that.

My question is, what does this do to battery life? It takes energy to power up the CZT crystal, and all the necessary electronics (multichannel analyzer, preamplifier, HV supply, etc.). That's a cost most consumers aren't willing to put up with.

Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

'Having it determine what isotope it's looking at would drastically reduce the number of false hits you might get.'

On the other hand, if anyone tries to make a 'dirty bomb' they'll probably use common medical or industrial isotopes. And a dirty bomb attack is much more likely than a terrorist nuclear weapon.

Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer?

The terrorists will simply get a bigger bang for the buck with conventional explosives.

And they get an even bigger bang for their buck by scaring us to defend ourselves. By constantly changing, from crashing planes to anthrax in the mail to dirty bombs to chemicals in our water supply to heat seeking missiles aimed at planes, we are spending untold amounts to defend ourselves.

Makes me wonder how much it would cost to not have the world hate us. Stop funding Israel (whether you're for or against it, how many lives should we lose supporting a religious war?), remove our bases from sensitive areas, and stop parking our aircraft carriers off the coasts of hostile countries. Maybe we could spend some of that money fixing our health care problems, preventing car crashes, researching alternative energy, or *gasp* paying down our debt.

Great

There -are- other, legal, sources of radiation, especially in the scientific community. This is a horrible idea that passes the costs on to the end user for no benefit and oodles of false positives. What could go wrong?

Bad Idea

this would only set a precedent for even more intrusive sensing. like say chemical sensors. then we might as well jump the gun and add firearm shot detectors. maybe the shot detection could even be integrated into the existing mic to save money. but we promise not to listen to anything more interesting than loud bangs. yeah, this is a great idea, for me to poop on.

Re:Bad Idea

First they came for the nukes, and I did not speak out, because I did not have nukes...

And these things *always* protect civil liberties

The sensors don't really perform the detection task individually

Riiiiiiight - So how long until we hear about a wave of people erroneously "rendered" for "interrogation" in a "friendly", human-rights-respecting country like Jordan, because their own cell phones turned them in following medical tests involving the use of radioisotopes?

Hey congress, grow a pair. We the People do not want this bullshit. Bush won't sign a budget that includes criteria for troop withdrawal - Fine, cut off funding for the war. Bush won't sign a FISA extension that doesn't include immunity for the telecomms - Fine, don't extend the damned thing! Stop with the security theater, please - The actors suck and the popcorn went stale four years ago.

Re:And these things *always* protect civil liberti

How long before it detects "hazardous materials" such as drugs ?

Re:And these things *always* protect civil liberti

I think one of the most amazing things about Slashdot is how people can always find a way to somehow start ranting about Bush and Iraq, no matter what the subject is.

Impractical?

This would be an additional cost of exactly how much? They don't say. Whatever the cost may happen to be, it is surely nonzero. This feature is unlikely to be favored by the market, so the companies making the phones won't want to include it. It might even necessitate reduced functionality. Therefore, this would require a government mandate. What penalty would there be for failure to comply? How intrusive would they have to be to make sure this came to pass? How much would this cost our government? Us? How would all these things affect the market?

Now to the important part. Would it really work? If it did, how easy would it be to hack the system? Mandated communication equals easy virus spread? How many false alarms? Would it promote overconfidence and lax insecurity?

Is this a good idea? I'm not sure. If it prevented a nuclear explosion in a major city that would obviously be a great thing, but what if it made us fail to do so? What if it takes funds that could have been used for more effective measures, and wastes it? There are too many questions about this.

So, is it impractical?

Wikinuke?

It's basically a Wiki nuke detector (but without human intervention). Can you trust the data? No. Could terrorists get 100 cell phones and fake a nuke being transported? Yes. Could they then generate enough fake data so that the gubmint ignores the real nuke heading towards the White House? Yes. (Have TPTB not seen 'How To Steal A Million' - or like me were they too busy gawping at Audrey Hepburn?)

If the detectors are that cheap and small that they can squeeze them into cellphones, just stick them into street lights and then (assuming the terrorists dont have access to cranes and ladders) you have a bit more trust in your data.

Sensor networks are a great idea for some things, but maybe not this one...

Re:

If the detectors are that cheap and small that they can squeeze them into cellphones, just stick them into street lights and then (assuming the terrorists dont have access to cranes and ladders) you have a bit more trust in your data.

You are overlooking a small detail here: If you put it in streetlights, it is no longer the consumer who is paying for your scheme...

what could possibly go wrong?

so my cellphone will have a direct line of contact with a... government agency that will... collect my information.. time of day... places I've been... all in the name of... *drums rolling, what could possibly go wrong, I've got nothing to hide*... seCuRitY...

yes, you see this will happen ONLY if the radiation detector fires up an event, NEVER EVER before... the government agency in charge will make sure of that...

what a jolly happy world we are living in, turn every single one of us into a government agent (stooge). Later on the grid will be expanded to keep track of criminals that might be passing us by (for example child molesters in case your morality standards haven't crumbled to the floor yet and are still putting up a fight, you surely wouldn't like little children getting hurt because of some ACLU ridiculous claims on privacy, would you?)... carry on citizens, carry on, nothing to see here...the future is going to be bright and spectacular...

Won't work

As nuclear material arranged into any kind of bomb is amazingly rare outside the military, this scheme would fail because false positives will vastly out number actual bombs detected. Testing for very rare events is always problematic when the reaction to the event has to be immediate and probably very expensive.

Obvious excuse

This is obviously an excuse to track people's movements, before the RDIF chips get planted in everyone's ass. The "counter-terrorism" bit is the same excuse they've always used.

And who will pay for this equipment in the phone? Will the government subsidize the phones? Where will the sensors fit in ever-smaller cellphones?

False Positives

Fill the country with radiation detectors like this and you'll get so many false alarms that the system will become a joke. The man walking down the street who had radiotherapy yesterday, the woman who keeps her grandfather's WW2 glowing radium watch in her handbag, the building made from that particular granite that's rich in radioactives. And let's not forget all the smoke detectors that use radioisotopes, or all the hospitals and labs with sources.

It's a radioactive world out there, and that is the only thing such a system would tell us.

We'd also learn the usual responses of the security forces when they get something wrong is brutality, coverup and smearing.

The answer to finding hypothetical terrorist nukes is proper human intelligence on the ground, not mass surveillance where false positives outnumber the real thing by orders of magnitude. That's just hiding the needle you're looking for in a much much bigger needle stack.

False Positive vs Expensive Detectors

Couple thoughts - firstly, I'm paranoid enough that my phone knows where I am, and now you're going to tell me that it's going to tell the government regularly AND THAT'S A KNOWN FEATURE?!?!

However, more logically... the more specific to given isotopes you make the sensors, the more expensive they will become. And if the terrorist group knows that our defense network allows isotope x but not y, don't you think they might work with y - even if it isn't as potent or immediately possible?

Think about this. Radioactivity exists around all of us. Tritum in watches, MRI machines (and for that matter healthcare in general), industrial sites, etc etc etc. Placarded vehicles that might be legally transporting something. You're going to tell me that there will be an effective system set up to take in the millions of false hits, screen them for the ones that might really be something, and then plot that against the map - nationwide in real time?

Not every threat is nuclear, also. I'm personally more frightened of simple biological weapons - not the fancy "weaponized anthrax", but good ol smallpox and the easier ones to work with. Even a good outbreak of flu can kill thousands without trying very hard and swamp medical systems / healthcare resources, which will in turn kill more. Nuclear just creates a good snapshot for the media.

What's next?

Since this new hardware has no commercial value, there's no incentive in including it in new cellphones, so they'd have to become a legal requirement. Once this precedent has been set with radiation detectors, what's next? Chemical sensors to detect drug labs? GPS for even-more-automated speeding tickets? Continuous audio streaming from every cellphone microphone so the TLA agencies can run voice recognition and speech-to-text conversion, etc.?

Also, when will it become a crime not to have your Personal Surveillance Device with you?

Re:Who's going to pay?

Sorry, but I'd be more concerned about the cost and battery drainage. The odds of being killed by a terrorist is infinitely smaller than car accidents or treatable diseases. I'd much rather see the government try to fix one of those problems rather than detecting nuclear material with cell phones.

Re:Easy to Knock A Good Thing

"We have to start thinking like we're a society under attack, because we are."

Society is always under attack, both from within and from without. The first thing you have to decide before doing something to protect 'society', is establish whether the method will in itself change (therefore 'attack') the very society you are trying to protect. Constantly adding a means to 'look over your shoulder' will change a society from a free and relaxed society to a paranoid and controlled society.

"Just because the bastards haven't been able to mount a serious threat within the US borders since 9/11 doesn't mean they wouldn't like to"

Gifted with our imagination, we can come up with an infinite amount of ways we can be harmed, but simply saying it is possible is not justification for any level of measure against it. Careful consideration has to be given to the risk of the threat against the negative aspects of the protective measures.

"Its probably just a matter of time until these yahoos do get their hands on a nuke. This would be just the thing to stop them in their tracks."

Speculation. And if this system was put into place, would it be fool proof. If a group was organised enough to get a nuke, manage to smuggle it to the country of destination, I would suspect they would be organised enough to come up with a way to hide it (lead casing perhaps?)

"Try imagining the alternative, such as maybe your own neighbourhood looking like the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all the way out to the horizon. If not your own neighbourhood, how about your friend's neighbourhood, or your relatives neighbourhood? Is that OK? I say it is not."

Again, just because you imagine an awful thing, does not justify any level of preventive measures. I can imagine a mass alien invasion, but I don't think that warrants issuing all citizens with rocket launchers. I do not have enough information to properly evaluate the cost/risks for either of these events, and I see no evidence that you do either.

"I'm sitting in Kuwait on the way out of Iraq after working a science and tech advisor job to the US military in counter-IED work. Take my word, the enemy is smart, capable, and desireous of wiping us off the face of the earth if they can. They take the most innocuous materials and figure out ways to kill you with it. If they get their hands on a nuke, and we don't have proper countermeasures, a whale of a lot of Americans will die, and if not you, at least several people you know and some you care about."

We cannot verify your position, so better to stick to the facts. SO far, the evidence has been that the 'enemy' is generally badly organised and stupid, and most of the 'smart' attack vectors have been thought up by western security 'experts' and generally are argued to be implausible (liquid bombs on planes for example).

By the way - I am neither for or against this idea (it 'feels' wrong to me, but like I say, I don't have enough info to make a sound judgement), but I am against the whole 'this is good because terrorism is bad' line of argument. Yes, it can be argued the other side 'this is bad because freedom is good' is just as bad, but would you rather your default position was one of paranoia or one of freedom?