Henrik.fohns

At SXSW, little faith in government to solve world problems. The post Techies to Washington: Anything You Can Do We Can Do Better appeared first on WIRED.

Spændingen stiger. Den trængte politimand med skurken lige i hælene, smider en jernstump langt væk, for at narre skurken til at følge lyden, væk fra ham selv. En scene fra en klassisk filmkrimi, men det er billedet, jeg får, hvad angår hele balladen om genindførelse af sessionslogning, som ellers blev afskaffet i 2014 som følge af en afgørelse hos EU-domstolen.

Politiledelsen er præget af jurister uden basal viden om it-perspektiver, hæmmet af egen konservatisme og arrogance.

Sessionslogning er jernstangen, der får vores opmærksomhed væk fra det grundlæggende problem, hvad angår forebyggelse af terrorangreb og anden kriminalitet. Det problem er politiets centrale it-systemer, der i årtier været i skandaløs dårlig forfatning. Politiledelsen er præget af jurister uden basal viden om it-perspektiver, hæmmet af egen konservatisme og arrogance. Det er i hvert fald indtrykket udfra.

Ligeså synes problemstillingen at gå hele vejen op igennem systemet, igennem ministeriet, siden det gang på gang er op til ydre kræfter at få afsløret, hvor horribelt det står til ikke blot med politisystemerne effektivitet, men også med sikkerheden. Derfor fortsætter skandalen.

Mordet for et år siden

Politiets it-systemer repræsenterer i 2016-målestok topmålet af amatørisme, når det gælder om støtte til at opklare og forebygge. Seneste blev det for alvor demonstreret i kølvandet på drabet ved Krudttønden for et år siden. Myndighederne havde allerede længe haft data om gerningsmandens radikalisering, men fulgte tilsyneladende ikke op. Og hos Version2 kan man læse, hvorledes datarod gjorde det umuligt at få identificeret og tjekket overvågningskameraer lynhurtigt for gerningsmandens videre færden.

Men tys, tys. Lyt i stedet til, hvor justitsminister Søren Pind, Dansk Folkeparti og Politiforbundet vil have os til at se hen. Sessionslogning, tilmed i en så skærpet version, som kun science fiction-forfattere skriver om, mens diktatorer og efterlevne fra DDR’s Stasi må nøjes med våde drømme over.

Politiet har mobilltelefoni-logningen på plads via mobiloperatørerne, men nu skal logningen af vores færden på internettet igen i gang og tilmed intensiveres. Der bliver ikke længere en slags stikprøvekontrol. Hver session skal gemmes, om du besøger et websted, om du sender en mail, om du taler via Skype eller kommunikere via Facebook.

Rent mel i posen?

Budskabet fra Søren Pind og Dansk Folkeparti er dette: ”Du kan vel ikke være imod at give politiet bedre mulighed for at forebygge terrorisme, vel? Eller har du selv noget at skjule?”.

Borgernes opmærksomhed skal væk fra det faktum, at venstre hånd hos politiet ikke varsles om, hvad højre hånd gør.

Borgernes opmærksomhed skal væk fra det faktum, at venstre hånd hos politiet ikke varsles om, hvad højre hånd gør. Opmærksomheden skal væk fra, at udfald i systemerne jævnligt bevirker tab af vigtige indberetninger, væk fra at bøvl med it-systemerne dagligt æder politifolks tid til absolut ingen nytte.

Opmærksomheden skal væk fra, at politifolk stadig manuelt skal genindtaste, hvad vi andre anmeldte digitalt, væk fra idiotien i, at efterforskeren ikke har mulighed for at søge frit, på tværs af data, i såkaldt fritekst i Polsas, selv om Google for os andre for længst har gjort sådanne søgninger til hverdag for os andre.

Derfor er det også helt grotesk, når DF kræver 2.000 flere ansatte i politiet, i stedet for at tage fat om problemets rod. Lige så grotesk er det, når formanden for Politiforbundet, Claus Oxfeldt i samme artikel i Altinget udtaler, ”at flere betjente er det eneste rigtige svar på at fremtidssikre politiet.”

Stakkels politifolk – hvad de må plages med

Hvor elendigt det står til, kunne man i 2015 læse i magasinet Dansk Politi, der havde temanummer om it-problemerne. Version2 bringer et resumé.

De adspurgte politifolk spilder hver især i gennemsnit 45 minutter dagligt på elendigheden.

De adspurgte politifolk spilder hver især i gennemsnit 45 minutter dagligt på elendigheden. Der fortælles også om problemerne med opfølgning og opklaring på tværs af politikredse. Nyetilkomne oplysninger registreres godt nok:

”Men for det første opdager efterforskeren sjældent, at der er kommet nye spor i vedkommendes sag, da systemet ikke “advarer” om det, og han/hun sidder jo ikke og ser på gamle sager. For det andet skal jeg skrive under på sagen, og vi har endnu ikke fået en digital signatur i politiet.”

Uansvarlig politik

Men du som borger skal ikke tænke på det, ikke tænke over, hvor uansvarligt politiet og justitsministeriet har forvaltet opgaven med at sikre samfundet de bedst mulige værktøjer til forebyggelse og opklaring.

Politiets ”hjerne”, det skandaløse Polsas, er fra 1990’erne (kravs-specifikationerne sandsynligvis defineret i 80’erne). Moderniseringen i form af det nye system, Polsag, var en total fiasko til over en halv milliard kroner og skrottet i 2012. Ude i horisonten lokkes nu med ”Polaris” til omkring årsskiftet mellem 2017 og 2018.

Alvorlige konsekvenser

Hvilke opklaringer, er vi gået glip af? Hvilke forbrydelser blev ikke forebygget, selv om data måtte have gjort det muligt? Hvilket data er endt i den blå luft? Hvor meget overarbejde, og hvor mange sygemeldinger er it-systemernes benspænd skyld i?

Hvorfor står politiets it-problemerne ikke allerhøjest på dagsordenen, når det gælder landets og borgernes sikkerhed, hos justitsministeriets Djøf’er og hos Folketingets 179 medlemmer?

Bare tænk på, hvis ministeriernes DJØF’er i dag skulle nøjes med regneark udtænkt efter behov i 1980’ene.

Bare tænk på, hvis ministeriernes Djøf’er i dag skulle nøjes med regneark udtænkt efter behov i 1980’erne. Hvilket ramaskrig der ville lyde ledsaget af krav om tidssvarende regneark.

I stedet smides larmende jernstange i relation til politiet, PET og FET, alle stemplet ”forebyggelse af terrorisme”, og alle er løsninger, der batter som en skrædder i helvede, når fundamentet er tæt på ikke eksisterende.

Godt nok er det kun Venstre og DF, der kræver en sessionslogningslov, men hvis Socialdemokratiet følger trop, hvilket ikke skulle undre mig partiets dårlige it-forståelse taget i betragtning, så nytter det ikke at de øvrige partier har meldt ud, at de er imod.

Gratis omgang

Appetitten hos V, DF og måske S kan være endnu større, fordi der er tale om en gratis omgang – ikke noget med hundredevis af millioner der går fra ”børn og de gamle”.

Regningen for sessionslogning tørres i første ombæring af på dem, der gør, at vi andre kan gå på nettet, fra teleselskaber til hoteller og cafeer. Der er set en pris på omkring 1 milliard kroner for at få genetableret ordningen.

I sidste ende ved vi, at regningen ender hos dig og mig, og den er ikke blot i kroner og ører. Den kommer også i form af øget overvågning

I sidste ende ved vi, at regningen ender hos dig og mig, og den er ikke blot i kroner og ører. Den kommer også i form af øget overvågning, tabt ret til privatliv, større risiko for at blive offer for et tilfældigt, uheldigt datasammenfald.

Den forrige omgang med sessionslogning, fra 2007-2014, gav ikke resultater, der er værd at tale om, omend der ses dårlige forsøg derpå.

Gigantisk høstak, mikroskopisk nål

Hele tesen om, at hvis politiet bare får fyldt hallerne med data, så giver det bingo – den tese abonnerer “magten” på, lige fra amerikanske NSA til Dansk Folkeparti, der tilmed vil have registre over alle borgeres DNA og alle borgeres fingeraftryk.

Men tesen holder ikke, fortæller uafhængige sikkerhedseksperter. Jeg har set det beskrevet som, at høstakken bare bliver gigantisk stor, så ”nålen” bliver endnu sværere at finde. Sådan finder man ikke terrorister, og i de allerfleste tilfælde har myndighederne i forvejen kendt til gerningsmændene. Muligheden for at få en dommerkendelse til overvågning af netop de personers færden på nettet er mulig. Alligevel fejler myndighederne gang på gang.

Eksperterne anbefaler god gammel, stædigt målrettet efterforskning. Det forudsætter imidlertid, at it-støtten er på et professionelt niveau.

An anonymous reader writes: Uber offices in Amsterdam have been raided by Dutch authorities, as reported by several local media sources (Google translation of original in Dutch). This follows intimidatory deterrence practices earlier in The Netherlands, with Uber drivers being fined in the past months, and fresh allegations that the company would act as a "criminal organization" by offering a platform for taxi rides without license (read: without the authorities earning money from the practice). Time for tech companies to consider moving their European offices elsewhere? Uber's lawyers must be incredibly busy. Proposed regulations in London would effectively end the company's service there, while the mayor of Rio de Janeiro said he would ban Uber's operations outright. They're receiving mixed messages from Australia — just a day after running afoul of regulations in New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory is moving to legalize it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

There are uncountable laws of physics and engineering that govern the launch of a rocket. But there’s one that supersedes them all: Ultimately, stuff will blow up. Always has, always will.

Elon Musk had never come face to face with that rule before — at least not in space travel — but Sunday morning he did in a very big way, when his Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned Dragon cargo vehicle exploded just two and a half minutes after launch. The rocket came undone before its first stage had even shut down and separated, blowing itself to pieces and auguring into the Atlantic just off the Cape Canaveral coast.

NASA, as NASA does, framed the failure as clinically as possible, describing it as a “non-nominal” liftoff, though launch commentator George Diller was more direct. “The vehicle has broken up,” he declared. Musk himself was more candid, if a little oblique:

But the most poignant and most apt response came from astronaut Scott Kelly, currently completing the third month of his marathon year aboard the International Space Station:

And so space is—very, very hard, and it’s the International Space Station (ISS) that has recently been paying the price. In April, a Russian Progress cargo vehicle carrying thousands of pounds of equipment and supplies reached orbit but spun out of control and eventually plunged back through the atmosphere, incinerating itself and its cargo. In October 2014, an Antares rocket—built by Musk’s cargo competitor Orbital Sciences—exploded just six seconds off the pad.

But it’s the SpaceX explosion that will prove the most costly. The key piece of cargo the now-destroyed Dragon was carrying was the first of a pair of International Docking Adapters (IDA) that was supposed to connect to the station’s Harmony module and serve as the attachment node for private crew vehicles that are scheduled to begin flying in 2017. Two companies won the contracts to build the new craft—SpaceX, which is modifying its Dragon craft to make it habitable; and Boeing, which is building a new vehicle dubbed the CDT-100. Boeing built the lost IDA as well, but both companies are designing their craft to be compatible with it.

How big a setback this will be to the future of station operations is not clear. The current three-person crew—which will increase to six when the next expedition launches from Kazakhstan in July—is in no danger of running out of essential supplies like food, water and breathable oxygen. But luxuries like personal packages from family members and perishables like fresh fruit can make it aboard only as often as the cargo runs succeed.

The docking adapter is another matter, however. One of the biggest action items on the astronauts’ to-do-list for the next few months is reconfiguring ISS’s various modules to ready the station for the new crew vehicles. Kelly and soon-to-arrive crewmate Kjell Lindgren will be embarking on their first spacewalks to help get that job done. Without the IDA, however, the work can only proceed so far.

Worse, the Obama White House and NASA itself have bet their space reps on NASA’s ability to make a smooth transition to private suppliers for trips to low Earth orbit, freeing the space agency to focus on unmanned missions to the planets and, eventually, manned trips to deep space. Serial failures by Orbital Sciences and SpaceX do not do much to boost confidence in that plan.

Geopolitics play a role too. American leverage in the increasingly strained relationship between Washington and Moscow has not been helped by the fact that, since the grounding of the shuttles, the U.S. has been entirely dependent on the Russian Soyuz rocket to carry astronauts to space.

In response to the U.S. and European measures to clamp down on Russian banking and overseas assets in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin snarkily Tweeted, “After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest to the USA to bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline.”

Rogozin was bluffing. Russia charges the U.S. more than $70 million per seat for trips on the Soyuz and a cash-poor Kremlin is not inclined to say no to the ready pocket money. But it was galling at least for the U.S., and nobody in Washington or at NASA wants America’s dependency on the Russians to go on any longer than it absolutely has to go.

That, however, is for tomorrow. Today, Musk, who is experiencing his first major launch failure, must dig into his telemetry and the remains of his rocket and see what in the world went wrong. He’s not the first to have to conduct such a post-flight autopsy and he won’t be the last. Space is always hard—and on some days it’s too hard.

LOS ANGELES — What's the best virtual reality input? Some say traditional game controllers are the way to go and Oculus is working on its futuristic Oculus Touch, but the startup Manus thinks wireless gloves are the way to go.

The company showed off a prototype of its wireless VR gloves, which are also called Manus, at E3 in Los AngelesMashable had a chance to try them on and see if they're really the future of VR input.

The developer kit model I tried on consisted of a pair of black gloves with a little black box containing motion sensors for hand movement tracking attached on top of them. Individual fingers are tracked through flexible sensors inside of the gloves. After putting the black gloves on, I also had to slip a yellow and green cover over each glove; Manus reps told me they're necessary for positional tracking. Read more...

More about Vr, Virtual Reality, Tech, Gadgets, and Manus

Trods ønsket om øget bevilling stemmer Enhedslisten ja til en finanslov, der indeholder nedskæringer af Datatilsynet.

An international team of researchers has combined semiconductor nanorods and carbon nanotubes to create a wireless, light-sensitive, flexible film that could potentially act in the place of a damaged retina.

When they tested it with a chick retina that normally doesn’t respond to light, they found that the film absorbed light, sparking neuronal activity.

Patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), for example, could potentially benefit from such a device, the researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Centers for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and Newcastle University say. AMD usually affects people age 60 or older who have damage to a specific part of the retina, limiting their vision.

The scientists published their research in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

The authors acknowledge funding from the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology, the European Research Council, and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

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Abstract of Semiconductor Nanorod–Carbon Nanotube Biomimetic Films for Wire-Free Photostimulation of Blind Retinas

We report the development of a semiconductor nanorod-carbon nanotube based platform for wire-free, light induced retina stimulation. A plasma polymerized acrylic acid midlayer was used to achieve covalent conjugation of semiconductor nanorods directly onto neuro-adhesive, three-dimensional carbon nanotube surfaces. Photocurrent, photovoltage, and fluorescence lifetime measurements validate efficient charge transfer between the nanorods and the carbon nanotube films. Successful stimulation of a light-insensitive chick retina suggests the potential use of this novel platform in future artificial retina applications.

University of Washington electrical engineers have developed a way to automatically track people across moving and still cameras by using an algorithm that trains the networked cameras to learn one another’s differences. The cameras first identify a person in a video frame, then follow that same person across multiple camera views.

“Tracking humans automatically across cameras in a three-dimensional space is new,” said lead researcher Jenq-Neng Hwang, a UW professor of electrical engineering. “As the cameras talk to each other, we are able to describe the real world in a more dynamic sense.”

Hwang and his research team presented their results last month in Qingdao, China, at the Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

With the new technology, a car with a mounted GPS display could take video of a scene, then identify and track humans and overlay them on a virtual 3D map on the display. The UW researchers are developing this to work in real time, which could track a specific person who is dodging the police.

Real-time tracking by Google Earth

“Our idea is to enable the dynamic visualization of the realistic situation of humans walking on the road and sidewalks, so eventually people can see the animated version of the real-time dynamics of city streets on a platform like Google Earth,” Hwang said.

Hwang’s research team in the past decade has developed a way for video cameras — from the most basic models to high-end devices – to talk to each other as they record different places in a common location.

The problem with tracking a human across cameras of non-overlapping fields of view is that a person’s appearance can vary dramatically in each video because of different perspectives, angles and color hues produced by different cameras.

The researchers overcame this by building a link between the cameras. Cameras first record for a couple of minutes to gather training data, systematically calculating the differences in color, texture and angle between a pair of cameras for a number of people who walk into the frames in a fully unsupervised manner without human intervention.

After this calibration period, an algorithm automatically applies those differences between cameras and can pick out the same people across multiple frames, effectively tracking them without needing to see their faces.

The research team has tested the ability of static and moving cameras to detect and track pedestrians on the UW campus in multiple scenarios. In one experiment, graduate students mounted cameras in their cars to gather data, then applied the algorithms to successfully pick out humans and follow them in a three-dimensional space.

Robot and drone-based tracking

They also installed the tracking system on cameras placed inside a robot and a flying drone, allowing the robot and drone to follow a person, even when the instruments came across obstacles that blocked the person from view.

The linking technology can be used anywhere, as long as the cameras can talk over a wireless network and upload data to the cloud.

The researchers say this detailed visual record could be useful for security and surveillance, monitoring for unusual behavior or tracking a moving suspect. But it also tells store owners and business proprietors useful information and statistics about consumers’ moving patterns.

A store owner could, for example, use a tracking system to watch a shopper’s movements in the store, taking note of her interests. Then, a coupon or deal for a particular product could be displayed on a nearby screen or pushed to the shopper’s phone.

Or a government could track terrorists (or other persons of interest).

The research was funded by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea and the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.

University of Washington | Cameras talk to each other to track pedestrians

Enemy of the State Showreel from Filament Post on Vimeo

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Abstract of Driving Recorder Based On-Road Pedestrian Tracking Using Visual SLAM and Constrained Multiple-Kernel

The proposed system systematically detects the pedestrians from recorded video frames and tracks the pedestrians in the V-SLAM inferred 3-D space via a tracking-by-detection scheme. In order to efficiently associate the detected pedestrian frame-by-frame, we propose a novel tracking framework, combining the Constrained Multiple-Kernel (CMK) tracking and the estimated 3-D (depth) information, to globally optimize the data association between consecutive frames. By taking advantage of the appearance model and 3-D information, the proposed system not only achieves high effectiveness but also well handles occlusion in the tracking. Experimental results show the favorable performance of the proposed system which efficiently tracks on-road pedestrian in a moving camera equipped on a driving vehicle.

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Abstract of Fully Unsupervised Learning of Camera Link Models for Tracking Humans Across Nonoverlapping Cameras

A multiple-camera tracking system that tracks humans across cameras with nonoverlapping views is proposed in this paper. The systematically estimated camera link model, including transition time distribution, brightness transfer function, region mapping matrix, region matching weights, and feature fusion weights, is utilized to facilitate consistently labeling the tracked humans. The system is divided into two stages: in the training stage, based on an unsupervised scheme, we formulate the estimation of the camera link model as an optimization problem, in which temporal features, holistic color features, region color features, and region texture features are jointly considered. The deterministic annealing is applied to effectively search the optimal model solutions. The unsupervised learning scheme tolerates the presence of outliers in the training data well. In the testing stage, the systematic integration of multiple cues from the above features enables us to perform an effective reidentification. The camera link model can be continuously updated during tracking in the testing stage to adapt the changes of the environment. Several simulations and comparative studies demonstrate the superiority of our proposed estimation method to the others. Moreover, the complete system has been tested in a small-scale real-world camera network scenario.

(Credit: White House)

In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, U.S. President Barack Obama noted that “Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.

“Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.

“There are things we can do, right now, to accelerate this trend. Last year, we created our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio. A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.

There’s no reason this can’t happen in other towns. So tonight, I’m announcing the launch of three more of these manufacturing hubs, where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defense and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs. And I ask this Congress to help create a network of fifteen of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America.”

rtoz writes with a quick bite from rtoz.org about Google's latest news about Project Glass: "Google has released video preview of its forthcoming Google Glass wearable headset, providing a fresh, and more realistic look at the device's user interface. Based on the demo, Google Glass will allow users to receive and execute onscreen directions, send voice-controlled messages, and search the web through speech. The UI also includes voice-controlled photos, and suggests that the device will offer onscreen translation support. And, it looks like the Google Glass will be water-resistant. Google has previously said it is aiming to launch Glass by early 2014, though it is already pushing out developer editions priced at $1,500." They're looking for developers, but only if you're hip enough.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter BetterThanCaesar writes "The Swedish Pirate Party and their ISP Serious Tubes have received a letter from 'The Rights Alliance' (formerly Antipiratbyrån, The Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), demanding they cease supplying Internet access to The Pirate Bay. Referring to the final sentence on the four Pirate Bay profiles, they threaten with legal action if access is not removed by February 26. On her blog, party leader Anna Troberg calls the letter 'extortion,' pointing out that (translated from Swedish) '[i]t is not illegal to provide The Pirate Bay with Internet access. There is no list of illegal sites that ISPs cannot provide access to.' (google translation to English)." The letter sent (in Swedish). Update: 02/20 14:58 GMT by U L : richie2000 notes that hosting isn't quite right; they're just routing traffic to TPB: "We're not hosting TPB, we're just routing traffic to them. Just like an ISP. Serious Tubes routes traffic to the Pirate Party, so they're even more removed. But, last night, Portlane, one of the ISPs that routes traffic to Serious Tubes, was pressured into cutting their transit to ST, even if they were just a provider to a provider to a provider to TPB."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.