5 Homeland Security ‘Bots Coming to Spy on You (If They Aren’t Already)

5 Homeland Security ‘Bots Coming to Spy on You (If They Aren’t Already)
BY ROBERT BECKHUSEN
02.08.13
6:29 AM
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It's been 10 years since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) started up operations. During that decade, DHS has moved to the forefront of funding and deploying the robots and drones that could be coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

DHS funds research and development for surveillance robots. It provides grant money by the hundreds of thousands to police agencies to buy their own. And sometimes it's bought and deployed robots -- for their skies, the ground and the waters -- of its own, usually concentrated along the border. It's not clear how many of those robots police operate, and law enforcement isn't by any means the only domestic market for the 'bots. But the trend lines point toward more robotic spy tools for law enforcement in more places -- with more DHS cash.

But it's not going to be simple. The Federal Aviation Administration is cautious about opening the skies to unmanned vehicles -- so much so that Congress and the Obama administration ordered it to ease up on restrictions by 2015. But not all spy robots fly. DHS is also developing robots that resemble fish, and deploys tunnel-bots deep into drug-smuggling tunnels along the border.

Here are five examples.

Above:
1.) Predator B

Unarmed Predator surveillance drones inside the United States have had a rocky history. The Department of Homeland Security's sub-agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has flown them off-and-on along the U.S.-Mexico border since 2004. Flights were suspended in 2006 after one of them crashed in Arizona, and drone flights were suspended again in 2010 after a Predator lost communications with its operators. At one point, drone boosters in Congress allocated funding for more drones than CBP had people to fly them.

How things have changed. In the past two years, DHS expanded Predator flights into the Caribbean to hunt for drug traffickers, and has taken to using the drones in an ad-hoc program to help out local police agencies, such as during a June 2011 standoff between SWAT officers and alleged cattle rustlers in Washington state. The drones have been used more broadly than that, reportedly assisting in police investigations from the Midwest to Texas. DHS has also gotten around to expanding its drone fleet. In November, DHS was revealed to be planning to expand its inventory of 10 Predators to 24, and isconstructing a testing ground for small surveillance drones at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

But in the years to come, the Predator is likely to have a numerically more marginal role as more law enforcement agencies join the drone bandwagon -- it's exceedingly likely the Predator will remain an exclusive item for the federal government. That is, a federal government putting the machines to work snooping on domestic turf.

Photo: Customs and Border Protection




2.) BIOSwimmer

Catch it if you can. In September, the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate premiered a prototype of its tuna-shaped robot called BIOSwimmer, developed by Boston Engineering Corporation. The concept revolves around eventually deploying the swimming robot to use in port security operations, and could prove to have several advantages over human divers. For one, it can get into tighter spaces, and can work in areas that have been contaminated with oil or other hazardous chemicals that could pose a risk to human health. But mainly, it's designed to inspect ships and "flooded bilges and tanks, and hard to reach areas such as steerage, propulsion and sea chests," noted a DHS statement.

The flapping motion is also designed to reduce power consumption, and the robot itself is designed with the intention of its sensors being easily swapped out between missions. There's no public timeline for when it's expected to be deployed, if it makes it that far -- the tuna 'bot is still an experimental design. But it's generally a good idea to start on a small scale.

Photo: Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate

3.) ShadowHawk
In a way, the trials of the ShadowHawk represent why police drones remain limited, at least for the time being. The Department of Homeland Security handed $220,000 to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department -- just north of Houston, Texas -- for one of these 50-pound helicopter drones in 2011. Aside from a mishap in which developer Vanguard Defense Industries crashed a ShadowHawk into the department's armored SWAT vehicle during a photo-op, it seemed like a great idea. The drone has a maximum speed of 55 miles per hour, a range of 15 miles, and a turbine engine powered by jet fuel that can keep it in the air for more than an hour. For surveillance, it can be equipped with a Sony FCB EX-1020 camera or a Photon 320 thermal imaging camera, and in theory would've allowed the county's law enforcement to cease relying on over-worked and tight-budgeted agencies in Houston for aircraft.

In theory, that is. Actually using the drone is another question. The FAA has only granted Montgomery County authorization to train with the drone over a one-mile-wide piece of rural land in the county's northwest corner -- away from the county's built-up suburbs to the south -- and not for actual police work.The drone is also too heavy, exceeding the 25-pound limit for domestic drones set by the FAA. (The limit was 4.4 pounds until a 2012 agreement between the Justice Department and the FAA bumped it up.) That had the chief deputy in the county fuming. The deputy, William McDaniel, argued to the House Homeland Security Committee (.pdf) last summer that the FAA should be removed from overseeing and approving drone operations in the United States, "other than the regular, routine review of agency flight operations to insure [sic] flight safety rules are being followed." That doesn't sound too likely, which means Montgomery County might have ended up with a brick for a drone -- at a cost of more than 200 K's in DHS money.




4.) Versatrax 150

The past decade has seen a big build-up in border security under Homeland Security's watch, including a doubling of Border Patrol agents and hundreds of miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. But to keep their wares flowing, the drug cartels in Mexico have turned to an inventive tactic: digging more and more tunnels deep underground. Then in 2008, the DHS tunnel task force -- a joint team of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the DEA -- got its hands on a Versatrax 150 crawler-bot, designed by Canadian robotics firm Inuktun.

But the Versatrax wasn't first intended to be used for border security -- it's a pipe inspection robot more commonly used by sewage and water workers. The machine is waterproof, has a 500-foot tether cable and can travel at a rate of 30 feet per minute. A high-resolution camera can rotate in all directions, and the robot itself can squeeze through an opening as small as six inches in diameter. Border tunnels can also be dangerous places, at the risk of collapse and even booby-trapped -- with no telling who's inside or what weapons they may be carrying. The Versatrax was designed for sludging its way through sewer tunnels, so it's not that big of a leap.

Photo: Jason Thomas Fritz/Wired




5.) Draganflyer X6

The Draganflyer X6 mini-helicopter is perhaps the first police drone to see regular active use inside the United States by a local police agency. In July 2010, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office in western Colorado used funding from the Department of Homeland Security to buy one of the machines, while also becoming one of the first police agencies for the FAA to authorize using the drones for police work. Weighing about four and a half pounds, the X6 can only stay in the air under its own power for about 20 minutes, but can travel at 30 miles per hour -- allowing it to travel about six miles in one go. The drone packs either a Panasonic DMC-ZS20 camera or an infra-red thermal imaging camera, and can transmit video (when it's not recording) in real-time back to an operator. The camera is stabilized against vibration, and a sensor head made of carbon fiber contains the gyros, accelerometers, GPS receiver and a barometric pressure sensor to keep it in the air. Mostly, the sheriff's office claims it uses the drones to map out crime scenes and traffic accidents, although the office claims (.pdf) it's been used to help a SWAT team track an armed suspect, and photograph a minor airplane crash.

Meanwhile, the DHS provided more than $80,000 to the Seattle Police Department for a pair of X6 drones. The department claims it intends to use the drone for criminal investigations and search-and-rescue operations. But Seattle hasn't yet been approved by the FAA to use them in actual police work beyond training officers in how to fly it, and it hasn't made it this far without objections from civil libertarians. On Feb. 4, Seattle City Councilman Bruce Harrell proposed legislation to prohibit the department using its drones for "general surveillance" -- that is, spying on anything or anyone other than an individual suspect with a warrant.

Photo: Mesa County Sheriff's Office

Why Do Certain Songs Give You Goosebumps?

Why Do Certain Songs Give You Goosebumps?
SOURCE: NME

Anyone who claims to know exactly why you and I love listening music is lying. It helps get through daily life sure, but how and why does it make us feel better? Humans have been listening to music for as long as we have been writing. The oldest examples of musical instruments are in excess of 40,000 years old, which gives us a problem – the evidence for how we came to love music is lost in time.

Faced with this dilemma scientists attack the puzzle from the other direction; they search the minds of modern humans for clues as to why we love music. One of the most recent clues came from a brain study of probably the most intense physical and emotional musical experience that exists – the chill.

This phenomenon goes by many names including goosebumps, thrills, shivers, frisson and even ‘skin orgasms’. Not everyone has experienced a musical chill but if you have had one then you will recognise the description; the hairs on the back of your neck and arms may stand to attention and a wave of nerves may whisk its way up your spine causing your head and/or torso to tick/convulse.

The musical chill response is involuntary. You can’t experience it in the absence of the trigger music and most people claim it is reliable, strong and impossible to control. Why does certain music give us chills? And what does this tell us about why we love music? Valarie Salimpoor and her colleagues from McGill (Canada) set out to examine real time brain responses of people as they were experiencing musical chills. The first thing that they discovered is that there is probably no magic formula for a musical chill, other than the fact that they often coincide with a sudden change in the music, such as the entry of a singer or a flip in harmony. Each volunteer was asked to bring in their own ‘chill music’ and the selection included jazz, classical, techno, rock and popular music, including Led Zeppelin, Tiesto and Rodriguez.

The researchers found activation in an ancient, centrally based brain system called the dopaminergic reward pathway; structures associated with pathway, such as the striatum and nucleus accumbens, were flushed with the brain-pleasing neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’ just before and during musical chills. This reward brain response is associated with motivation and addiction.

We typically experience this type of brain response to biologically rewarding stimuli; things that help us survive, like sex and high fat foods. Modern music does not really help us survive so it is effectively piggy-backing on this reward brain system. This system can also get hijacked by chemicals that modify mood. On the face of it therefore, this part of your brain reacts to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

The researchers found activation in an ancient, centrally based brain system called the dopaminergic reward pathway; structures associated with pathway, such as the striatum and nucleus accumbens, were flushed with the brain-pleasing neurotransmitter ‘dopamine’ just before and during musical chills. This reward brain response is associated with motivation and addiction.

We typically experience this type of brain response to biologically rewarding stimuli; things that help us survive, like sex and high fat foods. Modern music does not really help us survive so it is effectively piggy-backing on this reward brain system. This system can also get hijacked by chemicals that modify mood. On the face of it therefore, this part of your brain reacts to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things? Studying how adorable animals can turn us aggressive

Why Do We Want To Squeeze Cute Things?
Studying how adorable animals can turn us aggressive
By Shaunacy Ferro 01.24.2013 at 3:45 pm


Egbert Don't you just want to pinch his little hamster cheeks? Keith Pomakis via Wikimedia Commons

Seeing something cute actually does bring out aggression in us, according to a paper presented at Society for Personality and Social Psychology's annual meeting in New Orleans last Friday.

Researchers found 109 people to look at pictures of animals -- cute, funny and "neutral" photos of fluffy, fluffy puppies. The lucky participants then rated how they felt about the pictures: whether they agreed with the statement like "I just can't handle it!" (or perhaps "It's so fluffy I want to die!" whether they made them want to squeeze something or whether they were suddenly seized with the impulse to say something like "grr!" The cuter the animal, the more aggressive the response.

The study's researchers, led by Rebecca Dyer, a graduate student in psychology at Yale University, dubs the phenomenon "cute aggression."

"We think it's about high positive-affect, an approach orientation and almost a sense of lost control," she said. It's so adorable, it drives you crazy.

But for the sake of thoroughness, researchers did a second experiment to test whether the aggression was simply verbal, or whether people really did want to act out in response to wide-eyed kittens and cherubic babies. Volunteers were given bubble wrap and told they could pop as much of it as they wanted.

When faced with a slideshow of cute animals, people popped 120 bubbles, whereas people watching the funny and neutral slideshows popped 80 and 100 bubbles respectively.

Dyer's suggests that one reason we have so much pent-up aggression over cute pictures is that seeing something cute, like a baby, drives us to want to take care of it. But we can't reach through a photograph to cuddle it, so we get frustrated -- and then aggressive.

Another possibility is that it's just too much of a good thing -- sometimes we portray an onslaught of positive emotion in a negative way, like when you're so happy you cry. Dyer speculates that giving positive emotions a negative spin might help us regulate that high energy.

So the next time an aunt moves in to pinch your cheeks, just think -- you can't help being cute. And if there are any follow up studies, I'd happily volunteer to look at some puppies -- kittens and bunnies are within my expertise, too.

[LiveScience]

Quotes of the Day Photos

Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot

Insight: Evidence grows for narcolepsy link to GSK swine flu shot
By Kate Kelland, Health and Science Correspondent, Reuters
Jan. 22, 2013 12:03AM PST

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Emelie is plagued by hallucinations and nightmares. When she wakes up, she's often paralyzed, unable to breathe properly or call for help. During the day she can barely stay awake, and often misses school or having fun with friends. She is only 14, but at times she has wondered if her life is worth living.

Emelie is one of around 800 children in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe who developed narcolepsy, an incurable sleep disorder, after being immunized with the Pandemrix H1N1 swine flu vaccine made by British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline in 2009.

Finland, Norway, Ireland and France have seen spikes in narcolepsy cases, too, and people familiar with the results of a soon-to-be-published study in Britain have told Reuters it will show a similar pattern in children there.

Their fate, coping with an illness that all but destroys normal life, is developing into what the health official who coordinated Sweden's vaccination campaign calls a "medical tragedy" that will demand rising scientific and medical attention.

Europe's drugs regulator has ruled Pandemrix should no longer be used in people aged under 20. The chief medical officer at GSK's vaccines division, Norman Begg, says his firm views the issue extremely seriously and is "absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of this", but adds there is not yet enough data or evidence to suggest a causal link.

Others - including Emmanuel Mignot, one of the world's leading experts on narcolepsy, who is being funded by GSK to investigate further - agree more research is needed but say the evidence is already clearly pointing in one direction.

"There's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that Pandemrix increased the occurrence of narcolepsy onset in children in some countries - and probably in most countries," says Mignot, a specialist in the sleep disorder at Stanford University in the United States.

30 MILLION RECEIVED PANDEMRIX

In total, the GSK shot was given to more than 30 million people in 47 countries during the 2009-2010 H1N1 swine flu pandemic. Because it contains an adjuvant, or booster, it was not used in the United States because drug regulators there are wary of adjuvanted vaccines.

GSK says 795 people across Europe have reported developing narcolepsy since the vaccine's use began in 2009.

Questions about how the narcolepsy cases are linked to Pandemrix, what the triggers and biological mechanisms might have been, and whether there might be a genetic susceptibility are currently the subject of deep scientific investigation.

But experts on all sides are wary. Rare adverse reactions can swiftly develop into "vaccine scares" that spiral out of proportion and cast what one of Europe's top flu experts calls a "long shadow" over public confidence in vaccines that control potential killers like measles and polio.

"No-one wants to be the next Wakefield," said Mignot, referring to the now discredited British doctor Andrew Wakefield who sparked a decades-long backlash against the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) shot with false claims of links to autism.

With the narcolepsy studies, there is no suggestion that the findings are the work of one rogue doctor.

Independent teams of scientists have published peer-reviewed studies from Sweden, Finland and Ireland showing the risk of developing narcolepsy after the 2009-2010 immunization campaign was between seven and 13 times higher for children who had Pandemrix than for their unvaccinated peers.

"We really do want to get to the bottom of this. It's not in anyone's interests if there is a safety issue that needs to be addressed," said GSK's Begg.

LIFE CHANGED

Emelie's parents, Charles and Marie Olsson, say she was a top student who loved playing the piano, taking tennis lessons, creating art and having fun with friends. But her life started to change in early 2010, a few months after she had Pandemrix. In the spring of 2010, they noticed she was often tired, needing to sleep when she came home from school.

But it wasn't until May, when she began collapsing at school, that it became clear something serious was happening.

As well as the life-limiting bouts of daytime sleepiness, narcolepsy brings nightmares, hallucinations, sleep paralysis and episodes of cataplexy - when strong emotions trigger a sudden and dramatic loss of muscle strength.

In Emelie's case, having fun is the emotional trigger. "I can't laugh or joke about with my friends anymore, because when I do I get cataplexies and collapse," she said in an interview at her home in the Swedish capital.

Narcolepsy is estimated to affect between 200 and 500 people per million and is a lifelong condition. It has no known cure and scientists don't really know what causes it. But they do know patients have a deficit of a brain neurotransmitter called orexin, also known as hypocretin, which regulates wakefulness.

Research has found that some people are born with a variant in a gene known as HLA that means they have low hypocretin, making them more susceptible to narcolepsy. Around 25 percent of Europeans are thought to have this genetic vulnerability.

When results of Emelie's hypocretin test came back in November last year, it showed she had 15 percent of the normal amount, typical of heavy narcolepsy with cataplexy.

The seriousness of her strange new illness has forced her to contemplate life far more than many other young teens: "In the beginning I didn't really want to live any more, but now I have learned to handle things better," she said.

TRIGGERS?

Scientists investigating these cases are looking in detail at Pandemrix's adjuvant, called AS03, for clues.

Some suggest AS03, or maybe its boosting effect, or even the H1N1 flu itself, may have triggered the onset of narcolepsy in those who have the susceptible HLA gene variant.

Angus Nicoll, a flu expert at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), says genes may well play a part, but don't tell the whole story.

"Yes, there's a genetic predisposition to this condition, but that alone cannot explain these cases," he said. "There was also something to do with receiving this specific vaccination. Whether it was the vaccine plus the genetic disposition alone or a third factor as well - like another infection - we simply do not know yet."

GSK is funding a study in Canada, where its adjuvanted vaccine Arepanrix, similar to Pandemrix, was used during the 2009-2010 pandemic. The study won't be completed until 2014, and some experts fear it may not shed much light since the vaccines were similar but not precisely the same.

It all leaves this investigation with far more questions than answers, and a lot more research ahead.

WAS IT WORTH IT?

In his glass-topped office building overlooking the Maria Magdalena church in Stockholm, Goran Stiernstedt, a doctor turned public health official, has spent many difficult hours going over what happened in his country during the swine flu pandemic, wondering if things should have been different.

"The big question is was it worth it? And retrospectively I have to say it was not," he told Reuters in an interview.

Being a wealthy country, Sweden was at the front of the queue for pandemic vaccines. It got Pandemrix from GSK almost as soon as it was available, and a nationwide campaign got uptake of the vaccine to 59 percent, meaning around 5 million people got the shot.

Stiernstedt, director for health and social care at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, helped coordinate the vaccination campaign across Sweden's 21 regions.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the 2009-2010 pandemic killed 18,500 people, although a study last year said that total might be up to 15 times higher.

While estimates vary, Stiernstedt says Sweden's mass vaccination saved between 30 and 60 people from swine flu death. Yet since the pandemic ended, more than 200 cases of narcolepsy have been reported in Sweden.

With hindsight, this risk-benefit balance is unacceptable. "This is a medical tragedy," he said. "Hundreds of young people have had their lives almost destroyed."

PANDEMICS ARE EMERGENCIES

Yet the problem with risk-benefit analyses is that they often look radically different when the world is facing a pandemic with the potential to wipe out millions than they do when it has emerged relatively unscathed from one, like H1N1, which turned out to be much milder than first feared.

David Salisbury, the British government's director of immunization, says "therein lies the risk, and the difficulty, of working in public health" when a viral emergency hits.

"In the event of a severe pandemic, the risk of death is far higher than the risk of narcolepsy," he told Reuters. "If we spent longer developing and testing the vaccine on very large numbers of people and waited to see whether any of them developed narcolepsy, much of the population might be dead."

Pandemrix was authorized by European drug regulators using a so-called "mock-up procedure" that allows a vaccine to be authorized ahead of a possible pandemic using another flu strain. In Pandemrix's case, the substitute was H5N1 bird flu.

When the WHO declared a pandemic, GSK replaced the mock-up's strain with the pandemic-causing H1N1 strain to form Pandemrix.

GSK says the final H1N1 version was tested in trials involving around 3,600 patients, including children, adolescents, adults and the elderly, before it was rolled out.

The ECDC's Nicoll says early warning systems that give a more accurate analysis of a flu strain's threat are the best way to minimize risks of this kind of tragedy happening in future.

Salisbury agrees, and says progress towards a universal flu vaccine - one that wouldn't need last-minute changes made when a new strain emerged - would cuts risks further.

"Ideally, we would have a better vaccine that would work against all strains of influenza and we wouldn't need to worry about this ever again," he said. "But that's a long way off."

With scientists facing years of investigation and research, Emelie just wants to make the best of her life.

She reluctantly accepts that to do so, she needs a cocktail of drugs to try to control the narcolepsy symptoms. The stimulant Ritalin and the sleeping pill Sobril are prescribed for Emelie's daytime sleepiness and night terrors. Then there's Prozac to try to stabilize her and limit her cataplexies.

"That's one of the things that makes me feel most uncomfortable," she explains. "Before I got this condition I didn't take any pills, and now I have to take lots - maybe for the rest of my life. It's not good to take so many medicines, especially when you know they have side effects."

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Will Waterman)

The Madness of Excellence (Video)

Jane Goodall Comments on Bigfoot (2002)

Transcript of Dr. Jane Goodall's Comments on NPR Regarding Sasquatch

On Friday, September 27, 2002, during National Public Radio's (NPR) Talk of the Nation: Science Friday with Ira Flatow, Dr. Jane Goodall made a striking comment on her strong beliefs that large "undiscovered" primates, such as the Yeti or Sasquatch, do indeed exist.

The following is a transcript of the relevant portion of the program:

Dr. Goodall: As for the other, you're talking about a yeti or bigfoot or sasquatch.

Ira Flatow: Is that what he's talking about?

Dr. Goodall: Yes, it is and ...

Ira Flatow: Is that the message I'm missing here?

Dr. Goodall: I think that's the message you're missing and ...

Ira Flatow: (To the caller) Is that right?

Caller: Pretty much.

Ira Flatow: (Laughing) I'm out of the loop. Go ahead.

Dr. Goodall: Well now, you'll be amazed when I tell you that I'm sure that they exist.

Ira Flatow: You are?

Dr. Goodall: Yeah. I've talked to so many Native Americans who all describe the same sounds, two who have seen them. I've probably got about, oh, thirty books that have come from different parts of the world, from China from, from all over the place, and there was a little tiny snippet in the newspaper just last week which says that British scientists have found what they believed to be a yeti hair and that the scientists in the Natural History Museum in London couldn't identify it as any known animal.

Ira Flatow: Wow.

Dr. Goodall: That was just a wee bit in the newspaper and, obviously, we have to hear a little bit more about that.

Ira Flatow: Well, in this age of DNA, if you find a hair there might be some cells on it.

Dr. Goodall: Well, there will be and I'm sure that's what they've examined and they don't match up. That's what my little tiny snippet says. They don't match up with DNA cells from known animals, so -- apes.

Ira Flatow: Did you always have this belief that there., that they, that they existed?

Dr. Goodall: Well, I'm a romantic, so I always wanted them to exist. (Chuckles.)

Ira Flatow: (To the caller) Alright?

Caller: Thank you.

Ira Flatow: Thanks for calling. (To Goodall) Well, how do you go looking for them? I mean, people have been looking, right? It's not like, or has this just been, since we don't really believe they can exist, we really haven't really made a serious search.

Dr. Goodall: Well, there are people looking. There are very ardent groups in Russia, and they have published a whole lot of stuff about what they've seen. Of course, the big, the big criticism of all this is, "Where is the body?" You know, why isn't there a body? I can't answer that, and maybe they don't exist, but I want them to.