Cell Phone Radiation Detectors Proposed to Protect Against Nukes 238
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... (Score:5, Funny)
Darn (Score:2)
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So... (Score:5, Funny)
And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer? (Score:5, Interesting)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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Of course then the Terrorist's first job will be to kidnap a couple of these people so they can take them along with the "shipment".
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It will be triggered by most smoke detectors out there. Depending on the type or the model they contain either Polonium or Thorium.
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paragraph 163) Do not eat the smoke detector.
Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Well, as long as nobody invents radioactivity shielding, we'll be safe. Oh wait...
If I was a terrorist, I'd consider shipping it to a major port via private boat or cargo container. Plenty of room for shielding.
Oh well.
At least the politicians are wasting our tax dollars^W^W^W^Wdoing something to protect us, so we should be happy, right?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning [wikipedia.org]
This grotesque method may well have been chosen to instill fear into others with similar sympathies to Litvinenko, though more conventional poisons would have been equally effective a
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Re:And for those with Prostrate/thyroid cancer? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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So radiation detectors, are they going to send out helicopters to meet incoming merchant ships, so teams with mobile detectors and diving equipment can check for nukes whilst those ships are at least still 30 kilometres out to sea, or don't they give a rats about coastal cities like New York etc. Or is it really just all bull shit in order to acce
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You mean like Switzerland?
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My question is how they will get this in the phone...
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The detector part cant use too much.
Slight decrease in life by the transmitting part. Probably insignificant.
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The point of such systems, AFAIK, is not to detect "the source", it is to detect unusual patterns. A single radioactive seed will not register as anything more than a spec, but a consistent set of reports from the same location will raise attention.
Camping? (Score:2)
On the hunting trip they will find I have several firearms
Hate to nitpick again, but ... (Score:2)
1. The unit is called "Sievert"
2. Sieverts are expressed in J/kg, i.e. energy absorbed per unit of mass. Radioactive substances cannot "release" Sieverts.
According to the linear hypothesis you will have one cancer death per 25 Seaverts uniformly distributed across a population.
Sieverts cannot be "distributed across a population", because the unit itself is already expressed in "energy per unit of mass". 1 Sv is already enough
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Note to self: Invest in rubber glove industry.
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Who's going to pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who's going to pay? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Geek Sell (Score:2)
Just market it as a tricorder, and every rabid Star Trek fan will buy one.
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the good part! It's a tricorder (Score:2)
That's the good part -- how often are you going to need to detect nuclear weapons in your life? BUT, having a phone with a variety of sensors that can scan for stuff I'm interested in? That's way more like it. Done right, with the right competition behind it, this could be the first step t
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about all the radioactive waste that gets dumped by mistake:
Radioactive fuel rod found in scrapyard [bbc.co.uk]
Thai's complain on radioactive waste [radlab.nl]
Nuclear free local authorities [nuclearpolicy.info]
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Right, because the Men In Black are going to roll blindly on any signal they get, without bothering to look it up on google maps first to see if it's a hospital radiology lab or a suspected terrorist safe house that the FBI's been watching for the past three months.
Bad Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here's one link of many you can find through Google. http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65802 [wired.com]
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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We need to push back on every intrusion, no matter how small, into our daily lives by government. If they want to test the effectiveness of such programs, I'm all for the legislators that vote it in to be the test bed. Let all senators and congressmen and their staff be the test bed, oh, and the whitehouse staff also. When these people are being tracked by commercial entities and the results displayed for all to see, then maybe we'll see the real reasons for it in the first place.
Yes, I just
And these things *always* protect civil liberties (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And these things *always* protect civil liberti (Score:3, Insightful)
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Follow the money. DHS research funds come from the executive budget, which means...
Anyone?
Right! Bush.
We can blame Bush for so much because he oversees so much. The War on Drugs? Bush -> FDA -> DEA -> multi-year sentences for simple posession. Air travel dying due to the nuissance factor? Bush -> DHS -> TSA -> g
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This cellphone spying program is the direct result of fear-mongering brought by the same Administration which hunts for weapons of Mass Destruction everywhere.
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Too bad. We'd be better off if he did.
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Which makes me wonder... If it does come to that, who will stop the new American Reich when it comes to power? The United States arguably had its Reichstag Fire six years ago....
Impractical? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Not just nukes.. (Score:2)
Wikinuke? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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What about places without streetlights, they often dont have enough cars/cellphone coverage to support this sort of thing.
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On one hand, the network itself is a great idea. On the other, what central place would it report to? The Wiki concept is great precisely because the momentum of masses of people prevents (or is supposed to prevent) abuse.
But if this involves making cell-phones connect directly to Homeland Security... no thank you.
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With this, I think this is a veiled excuse to start spying on everyone. Heck, there is a natural background radiation. I can see them setting the sensitivity high enough to signal the DHS every time there's so much as a single tick on the "geiger counter". That's a perfect nationwide tracking system.
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Sensor networks are a great idea for some things, but maybe not this one...
I had my sci-fi wierd tech thought for the moment. You combine a GPS + Cellphone + large media storage device + small scale tricorder + camera + a central government database to dump the results. Wait. I
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It's basically a Wiki nuke detector
Not really. It's not supposed to detect nuclear weapons, it's supposed to detect someone spreading around nuclear material.
Could terrorists get 100 cell phones and fake a nuke being transported? Yes.
Hard to say. In a real system you'd get a hell of a lot of "no signal" responses from actual detectors, to the 100 "saw a signal" responses. You'd think this would certainly create a stir, and prompt further action.. But I'd hope nothing more than sending out some guys with
High school terrorists (think of the children) (Score:2)
Very handy to show the classic experiments, such as showing a condensation-trail, or letting a geiger counter go wild.
Nowadays, highschool classes are filled with mobile phones, probably more phones than persons. It'd be interresting to see something like
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Hopefully if these things ever come about (unlikely) then their threshold would be set high enough th
False positives? (Score:2)
So if normal phones are used for this, what's stopping terrorists from decoding the signal they send and putting timed devices in bins all the way down a street? Set them off, watch the response teams flock to that location, and then attack on the other side of the city.
Isn't there a security law that states something along the lines of "always consider how a security measure can be abused"?
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These sort of weaknesses needs to be worked out before this sort of stuff is deployed. Because, as of now, all it takes is one kid with a sense of humor.
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Fake a few radiation sightings, gauge response times, then start staging them and set a few quasi-claymores timed to go off just as authorities would arrive.
How much extra terror can you inflict on people, when the specialists, trained to deal with terror problems, start getting killed in grisly and interesting new ways? I am sure these guys, seemingly creative enough to be the first to use civilian passenger craft as guided missiles, will come up with something
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Or attempt to kill the specialist response team which shows up.
Isn't there a security law that states something along the lines of "always consider how a security measure can be abused"?
There might well be for security professionals. T
OK, then how about modular sensors? (Score:2)
Global positioning? (Score:2)
I think they mean that some phones can find their position relative to a network they are connected to. I doubt the same devices can tell your location in the middle of the pacific.
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Ok, so a very few high-end phones equipped with GPS receivers that happen to be outside long enough to pick up a suitable constellation and get a lock might be able to do it, then?
False alarms? Revealing of classified information? (Score:2)
Will it go off when one of those unmarked white trucks that's used for discreet transport of nuclear waste goes by? How about when the big research hospital gets a shipment of isotopes for cancer treatment? How about shipments of nuclear weapons by the military?
It's quite possible that such a system might reveal
Except for a throwaway (Score:2)
It doesn't, however, say how it can tell the difference between a terrorist's "suitcase nuclear weapon" and a legitimate nuclear weapon being shipped by the military.
what could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Sensitivity (Score:2)
Obvious excuse (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Terrible news for.. (Score:2)
if he's a hero ... (Score:2)
I like the sound of this (Score:2)
False Positives (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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If you have a system like this running, the hypothetical bad guys will know about it and will take action to prevent detection. The innocent, who know less about radiation will, in contrast, be setting off false positives all the time. After all, someone walking around
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You only need lead if whatever you are using is a gamma emitter. Both alpha and beta radiation is stopped by "tinfoil". A phone case painted with metal paint would probably be all the shielding you'd need.
If you have a system like this running, the hypothetical bad
Farts (Score:2)
I fart a lot.
I sure hope (Score:2)
False Positive vs Expensive Detectors (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Hate to nitpick, but ... (Score:3, Informative)
While there are lots of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures that involve radioactivity of some sort, MRI is not one of them.
and MRI. (Score:2)
Oh, the basic glitches in the ointment (Score:2)
What's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, when will it become a crime not to have your Personal Surveillance Device with you?
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Effective Deterrent (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry to engage in US bashing (as little offence as possible intended) but it seems that the plan is to impress the terrorists with all your amazing technology, so that they just give up.
Effective combat against terrorism requires two things: (a) working to eliminate the root cause and (b) in the mean time having as much intelligence as possible to stop yourself getting blown up.
You don't see the Israeli's advertising their latest and greatest.
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This is a University marketing department pushing the latest accomplishment of one of their faculty in order to flash it around in a bid for more money from similar programs. This isn't adopted technology, this isn't an official "government technology", it's not really even a practical technology. It's just a researcher/university that wanted their name in the paper and an accomplishment under their belt.
Yet more money to the 'security' industry (Score:2)
We are doing the terrorists' work for them, they just need to chuck an occasional stone at the security hornets nest and a whole new buzzing starts.
This is complete over reaction - look at how much money is being spent; look at how many people have died. Pound for pound better to
Won't work (Score:2)
Using the built-in camera? (Score:2)
Cell phones don't have GPS ... (Score:2)
"Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators"
GPS works with satellites. My cell phone's pretty good, but it doesn't receive satellite signals.
Cell phone triangulation has nothing to do with GPS; if they got this basic fact wrong, its no wonder the idea seems as interesting as shit on a stick for lunch.
I've got a better idea - outfit cell phones with "bullshit lie detector" software, and every time a politician says something that's a lie, all the cellphones in the vicinity play BU
Why stop at just radiation? (Score:2, Insightful)
It may sound crazy, but the cops would LOVE to have this type of technology available to them. And it will only take a co
Bananas! Alert! (Score:2)
Camera? Who Needs a Camera? (Score:2)
One question - will it stop my calls from being dropped? No? Maybe you guys should fix that FIRST!
Smaller, not Bigger (Score:2)
the end of the amateur scientists (Score:2)
Re:Easy to Knock A Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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The advantage seems, to me, minute. Making it sligthly easier to track movements of certain kinds of materials ?
How ? Install 300 MILLION radiation-detectors, a centralised system for collecting the sensor-data. A sophisticated program for analysing the data and find "suspicious" activity among the millions of false alarms. Sending information on the whe
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No wonder you think that the tag is overused. In this scenario, you completely underestimate the effects of law enforcement with an itchy trigger finger. It took much less than a false nuke alarm to get innocent people shot to death this way.