Argus Panoptes is the name of a giant of Greek mythology who had a hundred eyes and who was said to be “all-seeing”. What an appropriate name for DARPA’s latest wide area monitoring system, described as the “next generation of surveillance”. When mounted on a drone, ARGUS (which stands for Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging [...]
The new generation of HDTV’s and cable receivers sold to the public contain features that are not very publicized by tech companies: Cameras, mics and sensors that have the ability of recording everything that is happening in the living room. Not unlike the telescreens in George Orwell’s novel 1984, TV’s will soon be able [...]
The NSA is building an enormous spy center, probably the biggest ever, in Bluffdale Utah. When construction is completed in 2013, the heavily fortified $2 billion facility will encompass 1 million square feet, including four 25,000-square-foot areas to house endless rows of high-powered servers. The center will be fed data collected by the agency’s eavesdropping [...]
New technologies are making the work of CIA Director David Petraeus a whole lot easier. According to him, the advent of wireless and web-connected devices has caused citizens to bug their own home, effectively allowing the spy agency to collect a wealth of information with great ease. If that wasn’t enough, people now readily share [...]
Japanese researchers have developed a gun that can silence people in mid-sentence. The Speech-Jamming gun can effectively jam the words of speakers who are over 100 feet away simply by pointing its visor at them. While countless jokes can be made about that gun (i.e. “I could use that on my wife” or “It was [...]
Already used by the US Army in war-zones such as Afghanistan, unmanned drones are about to be used by police departments, border patrols and even power companies. These remote-controlled planes can be equipped with high powered cameras, heat sensors and even weapons (they have been used to kill “terrorists” in the Middle-East) to track, monitor [...]
The very anticipated operating system Windows 8 will have a feature that was never found on PC’s before: A kill switch that can remotely delete software and edit code without the user’s permission. Although Microsoft claims the switch would only be used for software that is downloaded from its app store, no official policies clearly [...]
The dystopian nightmare described in George Orwell’s novel 1984 took place in London, UK. This very city is today one of the most heavily monitored places in the world, using a record number of cameras and the most advanced surveillance technology to keep track of its citizens. Reuters now reports that the CCTV system of [...]
The company named Illuminating Concepts (can’t make that up), backed by the Department of Homeland Security, has launched its new product called Intellistreets. It is street lights equipped with a speaker system, motion sensors, video cameras, mics and other crap nobody wants. Remotely controlled using Wi-Fi technology, these street lights have some interesting advantages such [...]
When they say “perception is reality”, they are wrong.
