Another Cell Phone Tracking Discovery

Late last week, researchers at the University of Minnesota revealed they had discovered another unique way to track cell phone location.  Using techniques and equipment available to the general public for about $60, the approach leverages the following concept:

By simply calling the target's mobile number and monitoring the network's radio signals as it locates the phone, the attacker can quickly confirm if the person is located in what's known as the LAC, or Location Area Code. Attackers can use the same technique to determine if the target is within close proximity to a given base station within the LAC.

For more on this development, the following recent articles may be of interest: 

• Phone Network Vulnerability Reveals Location Information, Researchers Find - Minnesota Public Radio
• Your Mobile Phone Could Have a Leak - Minneapolis Star Tribune
• Location Tracking of GSM Cellphones: Now Easier (and Cheaper) Than Ever - ars technica  (includes a link to the research paper on this subject)

Comment: Once again, here's proof that location driven technology has gotten ahead of policy.  In the hands of law enforcement, this technique could be a tool for good.  In the hands of criminals, this technique could be a tool for evil.

Google's HUD Glasses

Long a fixture of military aircraft, and now some commercial aircraft, a "Heads Up Display", or HUD, is a system that displays navigation and situational awareness information for an aircraft on the windshield in front of the pilot.  This approach to flight management enhances safety and situational awareness for aircrew by allowing them to simultaneously monitor aircraft performance, navigation and visual positioning during critical phases of flight such as landing in bad weather.  On Tuesday, February 21, 2012, the New York Times reported Google's X Team has been working on a project that will place a GPS driven virtual world onto the lenses of a pair of Oakley style sunglasses by the end of the year.  Effectively, anyone who wants a personal HUD, can have one for between $250 and $600.  To learn more, click here.


Comment:  The potential for the Emergency Response Sector is endless.  Sure enough, the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T) has been working on a similar concept.  However, since it IS the Department of Homeland Security, they get to have a longer acronym: Helmet Embedded Conformal Augmented Display (HECAD).  Go here to learn more.

Bird Flu Research is Too Dangerous to Publish - For Now

As previously mentioned on this website (see links below), late last year researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, were able to create a mutated version of the H5N1 virus commonly known as "bird flu".  Of concern, the mutation facilitated the airborne human-to-human transmission of a pathogen that, to date, has had a mortality rate of 60%.   Then, when it was announced the teams were planning to disclose their findings and methods in Nature and Science magazines so others could easily duplicate their work, a firestorm of controversy followed focusing on the research's potential use for terrorism.

In an effort to address the dual issues of "right to publish" and potential use of bird flu research for terrorism, last week a meeting sponsored by the World Health Organization (WHO) was held in Geneva, Switzerland.  Findings of the meeting were released immediately:

"... consensus that delayed publication of the entire manuscripts would have more public health benefit than urgently partially publishing."

To learn more about the twists and turns associated with this situation, use the links below:

• Reuters background piece on the meeting, click here,
• Full WHO announcement per meeting findings, click here
• Washington Post coverage of the WHO announcement, click here
• LA Times piece on how the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) wants to be involved in future decisions on research publication, click here
• Wisconsin State Journal article on lab security concerns at UW-Madison, click here  

Comment: Obviously, the themes of censorship and terrorism make this series of events a hot topic in the press.  There is, however, an underlying issue - the nation and world have failed to prepare for pandemic influenza by fully leveraging a technology that already exists: geospatial.  For more, see:

• Bird Flu: It's Time to Think Geospatially!
• Terrorism Concern: Scientists Ask to Withhold "Bird Flu" Data   
• Satellite Images to Combat Avian Flu

The LA Police Department "War Room"

Earlier this month, CBS News in Los Angeles (LA) did a piece on the LA Police Department's Real-Time Analysis Critical Response Center (RACR).   Touted as a model for police departments across the nation, the facility features an impressive range of capabilities.  RACR operates as part of the LA EOC that was opened in August of 2009.  You can learn more about this facility by:

• Reading a background story provided by CBS News Los Angeles: click here
• Taking a tour of RACR by way of an excellent You Tube Video: click here
• Reading the city's information piece on the EOC: click here

Comment: On May 1, 2007, the LAPD experienced one of its worst days when a protest march terminating in MacArthur Park started becoming disorganized and chaotic.  With neither the LAPD command or crowd control elements having any meaningful form of real-time situational awareness, the situation then quickly spiraled completely out of control.  When the dust eventually settled on that day, the city found itself paying out over $13.0 million to settle claims for excessive use of force by the deployed officers.  Consequently, it is little wonder why LA is now home to this state of the art facility.  It's the reality of that old saying, "You can pay me now, or pay me a whole bunch more later....."  From the looks of the information available about RACR, it's pretty apparent LA is serious about using the technology that's available now, to keep from paying big bills later.

Save a Heart With Your Cell Phone

The concept is simple.  Various organizations have made Automated External Defibrillators (AED) available, but no one has mapped out where they are all located.  Consequently, that potential life-saving location information is not available for use on modern smartphones.  The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine is out to change that in Philadelphia with its "My Heart Map Challenge".  Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) 2009 red balloon challenge, here's how the program works:

Armed with a free app installed on their mobile phones, contest participants will snap pictures of the lifesaving devices -- which are used to restore cardiac arrest victims' hearts to their normal rhythm – wherever they find them in public places around the city. Participants will use the app to geotag the photos with their location and details about the device like its manufacturer. Then, they'll send them to the research team via the app itself or the project's web site. The data collected will be used to create an updated app linking locations of all public AEDs in the city with a person's GPS coordinates to help them locate the nearest AED during an emergency.

The person or team that finds the most AEDs during the month long contest, wins $10,000.

• To read the news release on this effort, click here.
• To go to the My Heart Map Challenge website, click here.

Comment: There's only one word for this effort: Brilliant!  

  

National Pipeline Mapping System

As a result of the San Bruno, CA pipeline explosion of 2010, a great deal of reflection has been taking place about pipeline safety and the Emergency Services Sector's (ESS) ability to respond to these types of incidents.  Unfortunately, one of the issues that has come to light is paper field notes and drawings created many years ago during original construction, may not have been accurately converted into modern electronic geospatial databases (See: Pipelines, Black Swans, and Data Governance).  Additionally, because of various access issues, many police and fire departments have been responding to pipeline incidents with only basic understanding of what's in a particular pipe and how it's routed. 

In an effort to focus the firefighter community's attention on this issue and what can be done about it, Firefighternation.com recently ran an extensive article entitled: "Pipeline Emergency Planning & Response Tools".  Featured in the article is the National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS), a system which provides geospatial data about the nation's pipeline systems on three different levels: public sector, responder, and government agency.  To read more about these capabilities, go here. 

Alternately, click here to proceed directly to the National Pipeline Mapping System.

 

Comment: Although the online viewer is as basic as it gets, a really nice feature of the system is the ability to quickly generate point of contact information for pipeline operators by political boundary or zip code. 

UAV (Drone) Mania

EXTRA-EXTRA:

READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

In the weeks after the U.S. Congress passed a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding bill with a provision for the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV's)/drones in U.S. airspace (see: Commercial Drones to be Added to U.S. Airspace), there has been a flood of topic related information released in the industry and commercial media.  So much so, the only way to comprehend the fast pace of developments and degree of attention is to view some of them as a "Sunday paper".  So here we go:

Photo: senseFly

Swinglet CAM: It's the "Autonomous Airborne Imaging and Mapping Sensor in a Suitcase".  For a visit to the senseFly website to learn all about this one - click here.

 Photo: New York Times

Drones For Hire: A New York Times video showing how the real estate business in Southern California has been using drones to promote home sales.  To watch - click here. 

Drone Shot Down - By Hunters: Hunters armed with guns, versus an animal rights group armed with a light weight UAV - guess who won.  To read the article - click here.

Photo: Wikipedia

Drones: Who Is Watching You?  An ABC News Nightline piece that explores the privacy and safety issues that lie ahead with the impending boom in UAV technology use.  To view - click here (sorry, there is no way around the 30 second advertisement at start of the clip).

U.S. Drones In the Skies Over Syria: It's a humanitarian disaster, and it's being watched from the sky.  To learn more - click here.


Comment: The impending UAV/drone invasion of the skies is one of the most pronounced ways in which the Geospatial Revolution is going to be visible to most Americans.  The trends above, taken together with developments like the ability to locally produce UAV's on a mass scale using 3D printers, means a Titanic paradigm shift is underway.  Airborne imagery that once took years and bucket loads of money to obtain, will soon be available from platforms that can provide real-time collection for very low cost.  Those in the geospatial community and Emergency Services Sector with their heads down on this issue, are going to be left behind to their own detriment.

NOAA Satellites Helped Save 207 Last Year

Last year, satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) materially contributed to rescue operations that saved 207 individuals from life-threatening circumstances in the United States and surrounding waters.  This NOAA system of satellites known as Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking System (SARSAT) operates as part of the much larger international COSPAS-SARSAT system headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Operationally, this constellation of satellites picks up the locations of emergency beacon distress signals and then relays that information to responders.  Since 1982, the COSPAS-SARSAT system has been used in more than 30,000 rescues around the world.  To learn more, go here.


Comment: As noted on NOAA's SARAT information page, because these satellites pin-point the location of a soul in peril, they take the "search" out of Search and Rescue (SAR)!

Smartphone Navigation for the Visually Impaired

Photo: KARE11.com

Within the past year, researchers have been demonstrating some promising new ways to help the visually impaired navigate based on technologies originally developed for the greater geospatial community.  One of these efforts is hand-held sonar.  Another is leveraging the diverse and powerful capabilities inherently available in modern smartphones. 

Within this last area of research, the University of Minnesota Center for Transporation Studies has been hard at work on a system that seamlessly integrates multiple smartphone features such as GPS, Wi-Fi, and digital compass to provide visually impaired pedestrians with enhanced safety at street intersections.  To learn more about this development, use the links below:

• Smartphone Research Aims to Help Visually Impaired Pedestrians (University of Minnesota)

• U of M Researchers Tap Into Smartphones to Help Visually Impaired  (KARE 11 News)

Comment: This is a fabulous use of technology that overcomes the issue in the past of the visually impaired having to carry multiple bulky systems to achieve the same results.  For more on this point, consider comments of Dr. Joshua Miele in a 5:00 minute video produced by baycitizen.org.

...Down goes LightSquared, down goes LightSquared, down goes LightSquared...

Photo: Sports Illustrated

After more than a year in the boxing ring, LightSquared has just experienced a series of knock-out punches that have put it on the mat for the final time.  First came the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) release of three reports on February 14, 2012.  These reports clearly show, "...LightSquared's original and modified plans for its proposed mobile network would cause harmful interference to many GPS receivers."  This development was quickly followed by a Federal Communication Commission (FCC) news release which stated:

NTIA, the federal agency that coordinates spectrum uses for the military and other federal government entities, has now concluded that there is no practical way to mitigate potential interference at this time.  Consequently, the Commission will not lift the prohibition on LightSquared. The International Bureau of the Commission is proposing to (1) vacate the Conditional Waiver Order, and (2) suspend indefinitely LightSquared’s Ancillary Terrestrial Component authority to an extent consistent with the NTIA letter. A Public Notice seeking comment on NTIA’s conclusions and on these proposals will be released tomorrow.

In essence, the above verbiage means LightSquared's efforts to use its assigned spectrum, with its current design, is dead.  And true to its word, on February 15, 2012, the FCC began the formal process of rescinding LightSquared's conditional waiver to operate. 

For a more expansive review of the story behind this now defunct threat to GPS, click the link below to read an article from the New York Times:

Loss of a Wireless Dream Caps a Fast Fall From Grace

Additional information is also available on this blog at:

• LightSquared: Round 14 - Here We Go
• LightSquared - Down for the Count
• The LightSquared Fight Card

Comment: Defeated boxers are always looking for their next opportunity for redemption.  Expect no less from LightSquared.  Until that happens - here's the call for this bout, by the one and only Howard Cosell.