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Today's Topics:
1. NASA Fears Dust Storm Could Doom Mars Rovers (Greg Williams)
2. Charting the $480 billion US spectrum giveaway (George Antunes)
3. What if Murdoch Doesn't Get Dow Jones? (George Antunes)
4. Card Sharks to Battle Computer at Poker (George Antunes)
5. Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern (George Antunes)
6. IPhone Didn't Cause Duke Power Outages (George Antunes)
7. Launch of Japan Moon Probe Postponed (George Antunes)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 04:25:54 -0400
From: Greg Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] NASA Fears Dust Storm Could Doom Mars Rovers
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
NASA Fears Dust Storm Could Doom Mars Rovers
By Dave Mosher
Staff Writer
posted: 20 July 2007
12:14 pm ET
http://www.space.com/news/070720_rover_dust.html
Updated 2:05 p.m. ET.
A raging dust storm on Mars has cut power to NASA's twin rovers to
dangerously low levels, threatening an end to the mission.
The rovers were slated to operate for only 3 months but have been on
Mars more than 3 years, so mission officials have had ample time to
ponder their eventual silencing.
The storm presents perhaps the rover team's biggest challenge, NASA said
in a statement today. Scientists said the storm, which has been brewing
for nearly a month, is blocking around 85 to 90 percent of all sunlight
to the surface.
The rovers, Opportunity and Spirit, rely on sunlight to charge their
solar panels, and one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or
even disabled by the limited solar power, officials said.
SPACE.com reported the storm's fresh severity earlier today.
The forecast
Scientists fear the storms might continue for several days or weeks. If
the sunlight is further slashed for an extended period, the rovers will
not be able to generate enough power to keep warm and operate at all,
even in a near-dormant state, the statement said.
The rovers use electric heaters to keep vital core electronics from
becoming too cold.
"We're rooting for our rovers to survive these storms, but they were
never designed for conditions this intense," said Alan Stern, associate
administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Steve Squyres of Cornell University, who is the lead scientist of the
Mars Exploration Rover Project, said the direct sunlight to the rovers
is at an all-time low.
"To give you a sense of the 'thickness' of the dust, the brightness of
the sun as viewed from the surface is now down to less than 1 percent of
what it would be with a perfectly transparent atmosphere," Squyres said.
"Of course, Mars never has a perfectly transparent atmosphere, but the
sun is still very faint."
The rovers' scientific operations were stopped Wednesday.
"This is, I think, one of the most significant challenges we've faced
over this entire mission," Squyres told SPACE.com today. "The nature of
the risk is well understood, but the magnitude of the risk is not. We
simply don't know what's going to happen next."
Martian weather is unpredictable, in part because there are few
monitoring instruments and no formal weather forecasting agency as on Earth.
"Whatever we do, though, the problem is not going to get much better
rapidly," Squyres said. "I think that we have a good chance. If Mars
really wants to kill these vehicles it can, but we have a lot of things
working in our favor."
The cold facts
If the rovers expend too much energy, they may be unable to warm their
electronics and prevent circuit-snapping temperatures.
Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity's
solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per
day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust reduced
the panels' daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team
suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic
arm, cameras and other site-inspection instruments.
On Tuesday, July 17, the output from Opportunity's solar panels dropped
to 148 watt hours, the lowest point for either rover. On Wednesday, the
output dropped even lower, to 128 watt hours.
Mark Lemmon, a planetary scientist at Texas A&M University and member of
the rover team, said Opportunity is consuming 130 watt hours per martian
day in its "sleep mode." If the negative balance continues without a
break, Lemmon explained, the rover may malfunction in a matter of weeks.
"Even with a 10-20 watt hour gap, we'd have a healthy rover for over a
week," Lemmon said in a telephone interview. "We've never been in
situation where we've been in any imminent danger of a battery
depleting, but it's possible."
NASA engineers are working to protect the rovers, especially
Opportunity, which is experiencing the brunt of the dust storm. The
rovers are showing robust survival characteristics. Spirit, in a
location where the storm is currently less severe, has been instructed
to conserve battery power by limiting its activities.
"We are taking more aggressive action with both rovers than we needed
before," said John Callas, project manager for the twin rovers at NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Hanging on
By Opportunity's 1,236th Martian day, which ended Tuesday, driving and
all science observations had already been suspended. The rover still
used more energy than its solar panels could generate on that day,
drawing down its battery.
"The only thing left to cut were some of the communication sessions,"
Callas said.
To minimize further the amount of energy Opportunity is using, mission
controllers sent commands on Wednesday, July 18, instructing the rover
to refrain from communicating with Earth on Thursday and Friday. This is
the first time either of the rovers has been told to skip communications
for a day or more in order to conserve energy.
Since the onset of the storms, engineers have said a similar storm could
be weathered by NASA's next Mars mission, a robotic lander. Human
missions to Mars, a plan for the distant future, would be challenged
greatly by storms like this, officials say.
Even if either of the rovers do malfunction, Lemmon explained all would
not be lost.
"This is a really good scientific opportunity to understand how dust
storms on Mars work, how they dissipate and how the dust moves around
inside them," he said. "I think we'll be able to use the information
we're getting now to look ahead to future mission to Mars."
--
Greg Williams
K4HSM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.twiar.org
http://www.etskywarn.net
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 16:43:30 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Charting the $480 billion US spectrum giveaway
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
Charting the $480 billion US spectrum giveaway
By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
July 19, 2007 - 01:36PM CT
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070719-charting-the-480-billion-us-spectrum-giveaway.html
Critics of US spectrum policy will have plenty of ammunition for their
howitzers after reading the new working paper (PDF) from J.H. Snider of the
New America Foundation. Snider heads up the Wireless Future Program at New
America, and his paper offers an inside look at the sometimes-dirty world
of spectrum lobbying, which Snider characterizes as responsible for a $480
billion giveaway from the public treasury.
The giveaway in question comes after Congress passed legislation in 1993
requiring the FCC to hold auctions for future spectrum licenses, a move
that was itself prompted by a massive giveaway of prime spectrum in the
late 1980s. Using the high end of his estimate (which ranges from $140 to
$480 billion), Snider observes that the giveaway in question amounted to
"more than 90 percent of the value of spectrum usage rights [the
government] has assigned from 1993 through the present."
The giveaway that Snider's talking about isn't a massive grant of free
spectrum to corporate interests; instead, it's something much more subtle
and far more difficult for the public to understand. To understand why
Snider considers this a "giveaway," let's first look at the difference
between the amount of money the government has actually received for
licenses since 1993 and the amount of money that such licenses are worth.
The FCC has taken in no more than $40 billion from auction licenses in the
last 15 years, but Snider digs into SEC filings from the companies that own
such licenses. These companies are required to estimate the value of these
assets each year; in 2006, the major television and radio broadcasters,
along with the major local phone companies, estimated that the value of
their spectrum was $177 billion for the licenses in question (and this may
be low, given Snider's own calculations). Where did the $140 billion
difference come from? Snider argues that it did not come from the "changing
conditions of supply and demand." Instead, it tended to come from the ways
that licenses were modified after they were issued, almost always in favor
of the license owner.
This is where spectrum lobbyists enter the picture. They generally follow a
four-step program to secure lucrative rights to spectrum: 1) create a
problem, 2) outline a solution complete with a "public interest" promise,
3) secure a license and increased negotiating power against the government,
and 4) exploit that enhanced power to renegotiate the terms of the license.
The "public interest" pitches are predictable, usually involving variations
on the terms "public safety," "free TV," "universal broadband,"
"educational programming," etc.
Snider doesn't say it, but this sounds a bit like the current pitch for
reduced-price 700MHz spectrum by Frontline Wireless, which is itself backed
by a former FCC Commissioner and wants to help serve "public safety."
Once a company has a license in hand, it's difficult for the federal
government to get it back and easier for the company to convince the FCC to
broaden the initial terms of the license without requiring any more money.
Snider outlines a whole host of strategies that lobbyists use?the spilled
milk strategy, the technobabble strategy, the go-slow strategy, the
Louisiana Purchase strategy?and this part of the report actually makes the
most interesting reading (it also contains the best titles).
Even if the giveaway numbers are less than Snider's lowest estimate, he
points out that they would still be huge. "If Representative Jefferson can
be indicted for accepting bribes of less than $1 million," he writes, "and
an average citizen can be thrown in jail for attempting to walk out of a
government building with a decrepit chair worth five dollars, then surely a
giveaway of public assets of at least $10 billion deserves careful public
scrutiny to ensure that the conditions that cause it do not persist."
There are a host of things that can be done to clean up the situation. New
rules to track changes to spectrum rights can help, as can rules that would
limit the revolving door between the FCC and industry. Such reforms "will
be very difficult and require leadership at the highest levels," Snider
says, and he ends the report by calling for leaders "with the vision and
courage to make it happen." Any takers up in Washington?
------------------------
Those who are interested can download the 52 page report as a pdf file
The Art of Spectrum Lobbying
America's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to
Prevent it from Recurring
By J.H. Snider, New America Foundation
http://www.newamerica.net/files/WorkingPaper19_SpectrumGiveaway_Snider.pdf
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:00:41 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] What if Murdoch Doesn't Get Dow Jones?
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
What if Murdoch Doesn't Get Dow Jones?
Associated Press
Saturday July 21, 12:48 AM EDT
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt_top.jsp?news_id=ap-d8qgp14g0&;
NEW YORK (AP) ? Just a few weeks ago, it seemed inevitable to many on Wall
Street and in the media industry that Rupert Murdoch would prevail in his
campaign to add Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, to
the media empire he has spent a lifetime building. But with the sudden
departure of a director in protest of the deal with News Corp. and more
signs of dissent in the family that controls Dow Jones, that outcome seems
less assured now as the monthslong process comes to a head.
The endgame for Dow Jones begins on Monday, when the controlling
shareholders of the company, the Bancroft family, will receive a briefing
on the outline of a $5 billion deal that Dow Jones' board signed off on
Tuesday evening. They are expected to decide the fate of the company within
a few days after that.
Predicting which way the Bancrofts will lean has become increasingly
difficult ? so much so that Murdoch himself told The Associated Press last
week at a media conference in Sun Valley, Idaho that the Bancrofts "keep
changing their minds."
The family has been concerned about accounts of corporate interference at
other Murdoch-owned newspapers, and demanded assurances that the newsroom
of the Journal, which has been under the family's control since 1902, would
be free of corporate meddling. Murdoch says those concerns are unfounded.
Anti-Murdoch sentiment among Bancroft family members is sure to be fanned
by the abrupt departure late Thursday of Dieter von Holtzbrinck as a
director of Dow Jones.
In a tersely worded resignation letter, von Holtzbrinck, whose family
controls a prominent publishing company in Germany, including the leading
business daily there, said that while Murdoch's offer is "very generous in
financial terms," von Holtzbrinck is "very worried" that Dow Jones'
journalism will suffer under Murdoch.
Even though Dow Jones' board signed off on Murdoch's proposal without von
Holtzbrinck ? he was reported to have abstained from the vote ? there are
other signs of trouble for Murdoch's bid.
At that same board meeting Tuesday night, Leslie Hill, a director who is
also a Bancroft family member, also reportedly abstained, and fellow
director and relative Christopher Bancroft left the meeting early.
All of which raises the question of what would happen if the deal falls
apart. The Bancrofts could either kill the deal themselves by promising to
vote against it or show such tepid support that News Corp. could walk away
rather than risk a nasty shareholder fight later.
The first consequence of a failed deal would surely be a sharp decline in
the shares of Dow Jones, most likely to around the mid-$30s level they had
been trading at prior to Murdoch's $60-per-share offer becoming public in
early May.
Investors are increasingly accounting for the risk of the deal failing,
sending Dow Jones shares steadily below Murdoch's offering price since late
June.
After cresting at $61.76 on June 5, Dow Jones shares have fallen more than
10 percent, losing 40 cents to $55 Friday amid a broader downturn in the
market.
A collapse in Dow Jones' stock in turn would leave a lot of shareholders
unhappy, which could lead to the possibility of shareholder lawsuits.
However, given that investors already knew full well that the company has
controlling shareholders, it's not clear that there's much they can do to
legally challenge a decision not to sell the company.
"I'm sure the board is following their fiduciary duty by considering the
offer," said Espen Eckbo, professor at the Tuck School of Business at
Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. "But ultimately when you have a
controlling shareholder, they will decide yes or no."
The Bancrofts own 25 percent of the company but control 64 percent of the
shareholder vote through supervoting shares.
"You cannot by law take away the control of votes," said Eckbo, who is also
the founding director of the Center for Corporate Governance at the Tuck
school. "They own the votes ... and that's something you need to know when
you buy the shares."
A union representing Journal reporters and some Bancroft family members
have sought to drum up alternatives to Murdoch's offer, but so far none
have yet to gain serious traction. In late June Pearson PLC abandoned
exploratory talks to combine its Financial Times newspaper with Dow Jones
and General Electric Co.'s CNBC.
Internet entrepreneur Brad Greenspan also met with Dow Jones negotiators
along with California supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, but the board wound up
endorsing Murdoch's plan. Late Friday, Greenspan put out a press release
detailing a proposal that would involve, in part, lending Bancroft family
members up to $600 million to buy out members who wanted to sell out. Dow
Jones had no comment, and a Bancroft family spokesman declined comment.
Without Murdoch's considerable financial resources and global reach, Dow
Jones would have to go it alone as it tries to stem the deep losses of
print advertising confronted by newspaper publishers everywhere while
simultaneously trying to build up its electronic businesses such as
WSJ.com, MarketWatch.com and its Factiva online news database.
Dow Jones Newswires also faces a threat by the combination of two major
competitors in real-time financial news, Thomson Corp. and Reuters Group
PLC. Initial word about that deal leaked out just days after the Bancrofts
initially rebuffed Murdoch in early May.
Murdoch has promised to invest in the Journal's operations, particularly
its online and overseas brands as well as its Washington coverage, with the
goal of building an even bigger brand for the company and also going up
against The New York Times for national readers at home as well as overseas
business readers of the Financial Times, owned by Pearson PLC of the United
Kingdom.
Like other newspapers, Dow Jones is trying to move beyond the printed page
and bring its brand name to other media such as TV, online video and other
forms of Web-based news. Part of Murdoch's plan for Dow Jones involves
tapping its resources to help build a business-themed cable news channel to
compete with General Electric Co.'s highly profitable CNBC.
Murdoch has already proved his mettle in going up against established media
players, creating the Fox News Channel which eventually surpassed CNN,
owned by Time Warner Inc., in the general news category.
But by announcing last week a firm start date for the Fox Business Network
on Oct. 15, News Corp. is indicating that it is moving ahead with its own
plans ? with or without Dow Jones.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:13:10 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Card Sharks to Battle Computer at Poker
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED],
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Card Sharks to Battle Computer at Poker
Jul 21, 2007 12:22 PM (ET)
By MATT CRENSON
Associated Press
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070721/D8QH36C00.html
NEW YORK (AP) - Poker champion Phil Laak has a good chance of winning when
he sits down this week to play 2,000 hands of Texas Hold'em - against a
computer.
It may be the last chance he gets. Computers have gotten a lot better at
poker in recent years; they're good enough now to challenge top
professionals like Laak, who won the World Poker Tour invitational in 2004.
But it's only a matter of time before the machines take a commanding lead
in the war for poker supremacy. Just as they already have in backgammon,
checkers and chess, computers are expected to surpass even the best human
poker players within a decade. They can already beat virtually any amateur
player.
"This match is extremely important, because it's the first time there's
going to be a man-machine event where there's going to be a scientific
component," said University of Alberta computing science professor Jonathan
Schaeffer.
The Canadian university's games research group is considered the best of
its kind in the world. After defeating an Alberta-designed program several
years ago, Laak was so impressed that he estimated his edge at a mere 5
percent. He figures he would have lost if the researchers hadn't let him
examine the programming code and practice against the machine ahead of time.
"This robot is going to do just fine," Laak predicted.
The Alberta researchers have endowed the $50,000 contest with an ingenious
design, making this the first man-machine contest to eliminate the luck of
the draw as much as possible.
Laak will play with a partner, fellow pro Ali Eslami. The two will be in
separate rooms, and their games will be mirror images of one another, with
Eslami getting the cards that the computer received in its hands against
Laak, and vice versa.
That way, a lousy hand for one human player will result in a
correspondingly strong hand for his partner in the other room. At the end
of the tournament the chips of both humans will be added together and
compared to the computer's.
The two-day contest, beginning Monday, takes place not at a casino, but at
the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence in Vancouver, British Columbia. Researchers in the field have
taken an increasing interest in poker over the past few years because one
of the biggest problems they face is how to deal with uncertainty and
incomplete information.
"You don't have perfect information about what state the game is in, and
particularly what cards your opponent has in his hand," said Dana S. Nau, a
professor of computer science at the University of Maryland in College
Park. "That means when an opponent does something, you can't be sure why."
As a result, it is much harder for computer programmers to teach computers
to play poker than other games. In chess, checkers and backgammon, every
contest starts the same way, then evolves through an enormous, but finite,
number of possible states according to a consistent set of rules. With
enough computing power, a computer could simply build a tree with a branch
representing every possible future move in the game, then choose the one
that leads most directly to victory.
That's essentially the strategy IBM's Deep Blue computer used to defeat
chess champion Gary Kasparov in their famous 1997 match. No computer can
calculate every single possible move in a chess game, but today's best
chess programs can see an astounding 18 moves ahead.
Yet poker involves not just myriad possibilities but uncertainty, both
about what cards the opponent is holding and more importantly, how he is
going to play them.
"It's mandatory for you to understand how the other guy approaches the
game. This is critical information in poker, and it's not true of any of
these other games that we've studied in academia," said Darse Billings, a
recent Alberta Ph.D. who has worked on the robot for 15 years - except for
a three-year break to play poker professionally.
The game-tree approach doesn't work in poker because in many situations
there is no one best move. There isn't even a best strategy. A top-notch
player adapts his play over time, exploiting his opponent's behavior. He
bluffs against the timid and proceeds cautiously when players who only
raise on the strongest hands are betting the limit. He learns how to vary
his own strategy so others can't take advantage of him.
That kind of insight is very hard to program into a computer. You can't
just give the machine some rules to follow, because any reasonably
competent human player will quickly intuit what the computer is going to do
in various situations.
"What makes poker interesting is that there is not a magic recipe,"
Schaeffer said.
In fact, the simplest poker-playing programs fail because they are just a
recipe, a set of rules telling the computer what to do based on the
strength of its hand. A savvy opponent can soon gauge what cards the
computer is holding based on how aggressively it is betting.
That's how Laak was able to defeat a program called Poker Probot in a
contest two years ago in Las Vegas. As the match progressed Laak correctly
intuited that the computer was playing a consistently aggressive game, and
capitalized on that observation by adapting his own play.
Programmers can eliminate some of that weakness with game theory, a branch
of mathematics pioneered by John von Neumann, who also helped develop the
hydrogen bomb. In 1950 mathematician John Nash, whose life inspired the
movie "A Brilliant Mind," showed that in certain games there is a set of
strategies such that every player's return is maximized and no player would
benefit from switching to a different strategy.
In the simple game "Rock, Paper, Scissors," for example, the best strategy
is to randomly select each of the options an equal proportion of the time.
If any player diverted from that strategy by following a pattern or
favoring one option over, the others would soon notice and adapt their own
play to take advantage of it.
Texas Hold 'em is a little more complicated than "Rock, Paper, Scissors,"
but Nash's math still applies. With game theory, computers know to vary
their play so an opponent has a hard time figuring out whether they are
bluffing or employing some other strategy.
But game theory has inherent limits. In Nash equilibrium terms, success
doesn't mean winning - it means not losing.
"You basically compute a formula that can at least break even in the long
run, no matter what your opponent does," Billings said.
That's about where the best poker programs are today. Though the best game
theory-based programs can usually hold their own against world-class human
poker players, they aren't good enough to win big consistently.
Squeezing that extra bit of performance out of a computer requires
combining the sheer mathematical power of game theory with the ability to
observe an opponent's play and adapt to it. Many legendary poker players do
that by being experts of human nature. They quickly learn the tics,
gestures and other "tells" that reveal exactly what another player is up to.
A computer can't detect those, but it can keep track of how an opponent
plays the game. It can observe how often an opponent tries to bluff with a
weak hand, and how often she folds. Then the computer can take that
information and incorporate it into the calculations that guide its own game.
"The notion of forming some sort of model of what another player is like
... is a really important problem," Nau said.
Computer scientists are only just beginning to incorporate that ability
into their programs; days before their contest with Laak and Eslami, the
University of Alberta researchers are still trying to tweak their program's
adaptive elements. Billings will say only this about what the humans have
in store: "They will be guaranteed to be seeing a lot of different styles."
Even so, Laak and Eslami are top-notch players with a deep understanding of
poker's mathematical fundamentals. They should be able to keep up with the
computer - this time.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:43:39 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Microchip Implants Raise Privacy Concern
Jul 21, 2007 12:19 PM (ET)
By TODD LEWAN
Associated Press
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070721/D8QH34P80.html
CityWatcher.com, a provider of surveillance equipment, attracted little
notice itself - until a year ago, when two of its employees had
glass-encapsulated microchips with miniature antennas embedded in their
forearms.
The "chipping" of two workers with RFIDs - radio frequency identification
tags as long as two grains of rice, as thick as a toothpick - was merely a
way of restricting access to vaults that held sensitive data and images for
police departments, a layer of security beyond key cards and clearance
codes, the company said.
"To protect high-end secure data, you use more sophisticated techniques,"
Sean Darks, chief executive of the Cincinnati-based company, said. He
compared chip implants to retina scans or fingerprinting. "There's a reader
outside the door; you walk up to the reader, put your arm under it, and it
opens the door."
Innocuous? Maybe.
But the news that Americans had, for the first time, been injected with
electronic identifiers to perform their jobs fired up a debate over the
proliferation of ever-more-precise tracking technologies and their ability
to erode privacy in the digital age.
To some, the microchip was a wondrous invention - a high-tech helper that
could increase security at nuclear plants and military bases, help
authorities identify wandering Alzheimer's patients, allow consumers to buy
their groceries, literally, with the wave of a chipped hand.
To others, the notion of tagging people was Orwellian, a departure from
centuries of history and tradition in which people had the right to go and
do as they pleased, without being tracked, unless they were harming someone
else.
Chipping, these critics said, might start with Alzheimer's patients or Army
Rangers, but would eventually be suggested for convicts, then parolees,
then sex offenders, then illegal aliens - until one day, a majority of
Americans, falling into one category or another, would find themselves
electronically tagged.
The concept of making all things traceable isn't alien to Americans. Thirty
years ago, the first electronic tags were fixed to the ears of cattle, to
permit ranchers to track a herd's reproductive and eating habits. In the
1990s, millions of chips were implanted in livestock, fish, dogs, cats,
even racehorses.
Microchips are now fixed to car windshields as toll-paying devices, on
"contactless" payment cards (Chase's "Blink," or MasterCard's "PayPass").
They're embedded in Michelin tires, library books, passports, work
uniforms, luggage, and, unbeknownst to many consumers, on a host of
individual items, from Hewlett Packard printers to Sanyo TVs, at Wal-Mart
and Best Buy.
But CityWatcher.com employees weren't appliances or pets: They were people
made scannable.
"It was scary that a government contractor that specialized in putting
surveillance cameras on city streets was the first to incorporate this
technology in the workplace," says Liz McIntyre, co-author of "Spychips:
How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID."
Darks, the CityWatcher.com executive, dismissed his critics, noting that he
and his employees had volunteered to be chip-injected. Any suggestion that
a sinister, Big-Brother-like campaign was afoot, he said, was hogwash.
"You would think that we were going around putting chips in people by
force," he told a reporter, "and that's not the case at all."
Yet, within days of the company's announcement, civil libertarians and
Christian conservatives joined to excoriate the microchip's implantation in
people.
RFID, they warned, would soon enable the government to "frisk" citizens
electronically - an invisible, undetectable search performed by readers
posted at "hotspots" along roadsides and in pedestrian areas. It might even
be used to squeal on employees while they worked; time spent at the water
cooler, in the bathroom, in a designated smoking area could one day be
broadcast, recorded and compiled in off-limits, company databases.
"Ultimately," says Katherine Albrecht, a privacy advocate who specializes
in consumer education and RFID technology, "the fear is that the government
or your employer might someday say, 'Take a chip or starve.'"
Some Christian critics saw the implants as the fulfillment of a biblical
prophecy that describes an age of evil in which humans are forced to take
the "Mark of the Beast" on their bodies, to buy or sell anything.
Gary Wohlscheid, president of These Last Days Ministries, a Roman Catholic
group in Lowell, Mich., put together a Web site that linked the implantable
microchips to the apocalyptic prophecy in the book of Revelation.
"The Bible tells us that God's wrath will come to those who take the Mark
of the Beast," he says. Those who refuse to accept the Satanic chip "will
be saved," Wohlscheid offers in a comforting tone.
---
In post-9/11 America, electronic surveillance comes in myriad forms: in a
gas station's video camera; in a cell phone tucked inside a teen's back
pocket; in a radio tag attached to a supermarket shopping cart; in a
Porsche automobile equipped with a LoJack anti-theft device.
"We're really on the verge of creating a surveillance society in America,
where every movement, every action - some would even claim, our very
thoughts - will be tracked, monitored, recorded and correlated," says Barry
Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Program at the American
Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.
RFID, in Steinhardt's opinion, "could play a pivotal role in creating that
surveillance society."
In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon
computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data
stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.
Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local
anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge hypodermic needle injects the
chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and
the shoulder.
"It feels just like getting a vaccine - a bit of pressure, no specific
pain," says John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center in Boston.
He got chipped two years ago, "so that if I was ever in an accident, and
arrived unconscious or incoherent at an emergency ward, doctors could
identify me and access my medical history quickly." (A chipped person's
medical profile can be continuously updated, since the information is
stored on a database accessed via the Internet.)
Halamka thinks of his microchip as another technology with practical value,
like his BlackBerry. But it's also clear, he says, that there are
consequences to having an implanted identifier.
"My friends have commented to me that I'm 'marked' for life, that I've lost
my anonymity. And to be honest, I think they're right."
Indeed, as microchip proponents and detractors readily agree, Americans'
mistrust of microchips and technologies like RFID runs deep. Many wonder:
Do the current chips have global positioning transceivers that would allow
the government to pinpoint a person's exact location, 24-7? (No; the
technology doesn't yet exist.)
But could a tech-savvy stalker rig scanners to video cameras and film
somebody each time they entered or left the house? (Quite easily, though
not cheaply. Currently, readers cost $300 and up.)
How about thieves? Could they make their own readers, aim them at
unsuspecting individuals, and surreptitiously pluck people's IDs out of
their arms? (Yes. There's even a name for it - "spoofing.")
What's the average lifespan of a microchip? (About 10-15 years.) What if
you get tired of it before then - can it be easily, painlessly removed?
(Short answer: No.)
Presently, Steinhardt and other privacy advocates view the tagging of
identity documents - passports, drivers licenses and the like - as a more
pressing threat to Americans' privacy than the chipping of people.
Equipping hospitals, doctors' offices, police stations and government
agencies with readers will be costly, training staff will take time, and,
he says, "people are going to be too squeamish about having an RFID chip
inserted into their arms, or wherever."
But that wasn't the case in March 2004, when the Baja Beach Club in
Barcelona, Spain - a nightclub catering to the body-aware, under-25 crowd -
began holding "Implant Nights."
In a white lab coat, with hypodermic in latex-gloved hand, a company
chipper wandered through the throng of the clubbers and clubbettes,
anesthetizing the arms of consenting party goers, then injecting them with
microchips.
The payoff?
Injectees would thereafter be able to breeze past bouncers and entrance
lines, magically open doors to VIP lounges, and pay for drinks without cash
or credit cards. The ID number on the VIP chip was linked to the user's
financial accounts and stored in the club's computers.
After being chipped himself, club owner Conrad K. Chase declared that chip
implants were hardly a big deal to his patrons, since "almost everybody has
piercings, tattoos or silicone."
VIP chipping soon spread to the Baja Beach Club in Rotterdam, Holland, the
Bar Soba in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Amika nightclub in Miami Beach, Fla.
That same year, Mexico's attorney general, Rafael Macedo, made an
announcement that thrilled chip proponents and chilled privacy advocates:
He and 18 members of his staff had been microchipped as a way to limit
access to a sensitive records room, whose door unlocked when a "portal
reader" scanned the chips.
But did this make Mexican security airtight?
Hardly, says Jonathan Westhues, an independent security researcher in
Cambridge, Mass. He concocted an "emulator," a hand-held device that cloned
the implantable microchip electronically. With a team of computer-security
experts, he demonstrated - on television - how easy it was to snag data off
a chip.
Explains Adam Stubblefield, a Johns Hopkins researcher who joined the team:
"You pass within a foot of a chipped person, copy the chip's code, then
with a push of the button, replay the same ID number to any reader. You
essentially assume the person's identity."
The company that makes implantable microchips for humans, VeriChip Corp.
(CHIP), of Delray Beach, Fla., concedes the point - even as it markets its
radio tag and its portal scanner as imperatives for high-security
buildings, such as nuclear power plants.
"To grab information from radio frequency products with a scanning device
is not hard to do," Scott Silverman, the company's chief executive, says.
However, "the chip itself only contains a unique, 16-digit identification
number. The relevant information is stored on a database."
Even so, he insists, it's harder to clone a VeriChip than it would be to
steal someone's key card and use it to enter secure areas.
VeriChip Corp., whose parent company has been selling radio tags for
animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 microchips worldwide, of
which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. More than one-tenth of
those have been in the U.S., generating "nominal revenues," the company
acknowledged in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing in February.
Although in five years VeriChip Corp. has yet to turn a profit, it has been
investing heavily - up to $2 million a quarter - to create new markets.
The company's present push: tagging of "high-risk" patients - diabetics and
people with heart conditions or Alzheimer's disease.
In an emergency, hospital staff could wave a reader over a patient's arm,
get an ID number, and then, via the Internet, enter a company database and
pull up the person's identity and medical history.
To doctors, a "starter kit" - complete with 10 hypodermic syringes, 10
VeriChips and a reader - costs $1,400. To patients, a microchip implant
means a $200, out-of-pocket expense to their physician. Presently, chip
implants aren't covered by insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid.
For almost two years, the company has been offering hospitals free
scanners, but acceptance has been limited. According to the company's most
recent SEC quarterly filing, 515 hospitals have pledged to take part in the
VeriMed network, yet only 100 have actually been equipped and trained to
use the system.
Some wonder why they should abandon noninvasive tags such as MedicAlert, a
low-tech bracelet that warns paramedics if patients have serious allergies
or a chronic medical condition.
"Having these things under your skin instead of in your back pocket - it's
just not clear to me why it's worth the inconvenience," says Westhues.
Silverman responds that an implanted chip is "guaranteed to be with you.
It's not a medical arm bracelet that you can take off if you don't like the
way it looks..."
In fact, microchips can be removed from the body - but it's not like
removing a splinter.
The capsules can migrate around the body or bury themselves deep in the
arm. When that happens, a sensor X-ray and monitors are needed to locate
the chip, and a plastic surgeon must cut away scar tissue that forms around
the chip.
The relative permanence is a big reason why Marc Rotenberg, of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suspicious about the motives of
the company, which charges an annual fee to keep clients' records.
The company charges $20 a year for customers to keep a "one-pager" on its
database - a record of blood type, allergies, medications, driver's license
data and living-will directives. For $80 a year, it will keep an
individual's full medical history.
---
In recent times, there have been rumors on Wall Street, and elsewhere, of
the potential uses for RFID in humans: the chipping of U.S. soldiers, of
inmates, or of migrant workers, to name a few.
To date, none of this has happened.
But a large-scale chipping plan that was proposed illustrates the stakes,
pro and con.
In mid-May, a protest outside the Alzheimer's Community Care Center in West
Palm Beach, Fla., drew attention to a two-year study in which 200
Alzheimer's patients, along with their caregivers, were to receive chip
implants. Parents, children and elderly people decried the plan, with signs
and placards.
"Chipping People Is Wrong" and "People Are Not Pets," the signs read. And:
"Stop VeriChip."
Ironically, the media attention sent VeriChip's stock soaring 27 percent in
one day.
"VeriChip offers technology that is absolutely bursting with potential,"
wrote blogger Gary E. Sattler, of the AOL site Bloggingstocks, even as he
recognized privacy concerns.
Albrecht, the RFID critic who organized the demonstration, raises similar
concerns on her AntiChips.com Web site.
"Is it appropriate to use the most vulnerable members of society for
invasive medical research? Should the company be allowed to implant
microchips into people whose mental impairments mean they cannot give fully
informed consent?"
Mary Barnes, the care center's chief executive, counters that both the
patients and their legal guardians must consent to the implants before
receiving them. And the chips, she says, could be invaluable in identifying
lost patients - for instance, if a hurricane strikes Florida.
That, of course, assumes that the Internet would be accessible in a killer
storm. VeriChip Corp. acknowledged in an SEC filing that its "database may
not function properly" in such circumstances.
As the polemic heats up, legislators are increasingly being drawn into the
fray. Two states, Wisconsin and North Dakota, recently passed laws
prohibiting the forced implantation of microchips in humans. Others - Ohio,
Oklahoma, Colorado and Florida - are studying similar legislation.
In May, Oklahoma legislators were debating a bill that would have
authorized microchip implants in people imprisoned for violent crimes. Many
felt it would be a good way to monitor felons once released from prison.
But other lawmakers raised concerns. Rep. John Wright worried, "Apparently,
we're going to permanently put the mark on these people."
Rep. Ed Cannaday found the forced microchipping of inmates "invasive ... We
are going down that slippery slope."
In the end, lawmakers sent the bill back to committee for more work.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 18:59:39 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] IPhone Didn't Cause Duke Power Outages
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Duke: IPhone Didn't Cause Power Outages
Associated Press
Jul 20, 2007 8:34 PM (ET)
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070721/D8QGL9QO0.html
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A problem with Duke University's wireless network
caused outages at the school, officials said Friday, exonerating the
initial suspect, Apple Inc.'s new iPhone.
"A particular set of conditions made the Duke wireless network experience
some minor and temporary disruptions in service," Duke spokeswoman Tracy
Futhey said in a written statement posted on the university's Web site.
"Those conditions involve our deployment of a very large Cisco-based
wireless network that supports multiple network protocols."
San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco Inc. said it worked with Duke and Apple this
week to identify the network issue that was causing the problem. Elizabeth
McNichols, a Cisco spokeswoman, declined to be more specific, and officials
at Duke did not immediately return a message seeking additional comment.
"Cisco has provided a fix that has been applied to Duke's network and the
problem has not occurred since," the company said in a written statement.
The school's Wi-Fi wireless network had jammed nine times for spans of
about 10 minutes, and a review of network traffic led Duke's technology
team to iPhone users.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple released the iPhone, its first cell phone, at
the end of June. The phones retail for $499 to $599 and combine cell phone
capability with a media player and Wi-Fi access.
---
On the Net:
Apple Inc.: http://www.apple.com/
Duke University: http://www.duke.edu/
Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) (CSCO): http://www.cisco.com
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Sat, 21 Jul 2007 19:01:10 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Launch of Japan Moon Probe Postponed
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Launch of Japan Moon Probe Postponed
Associated Press
Jul 21, 2007 1:17 AM (ET)
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20070721/D8QGPEBO0.html
TOKYO (AP) - Japan's space agency said the mid-August launch of its lunar
orbiter will be postponed due to a technical glitch, delivering another
setback to the much-delayed probe.
The Selenological and Engineering Explorer - or SELENE - probe was to have
been launched aboard one of the space program's mainstay H-2A rockets on
August 17, JAXA, as the agency is called, said in a statement issued Friday.
However, during an inspection it was discovered that some components were
improperly installed on the two smaller satellites that accompany the main
orbiter, JAXA said.
The components will be replaced and a new launch date announced once it has
been determined, it said.
The $264 million SELENE is already four years behind schedule. Japan
launched a moon probe in 1990, but that was a flyby mission, unlike SELENE,
which is intended to orbit the moon.
It canceled another moon shot, LUNAR-A, that was to have been launched in
2004 but had been repeatedly postponed due to mechanical and fiscal problems.
JAXA says the SELENE project is the largest lunar mission since the U.S.
Apollo program.
It involves placing the main satellite in orbit at an altitude of about 60
miles and deploying the two smaller satellites in polar orbits. Researchers
will use data gathered by the probes to study the moon's origin and evolution.
The main orbiter will remain in position for about a year.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
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End of Medianews Digest, Vol 331, Issue 1
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