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Archive for the ‘terrorism’ category: Page 10

Aug 15, 2017

The Government Must Review What Bioresearch Journals Publish

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, health, internet, security, terrorism

It’s getting too easy to create dangerous viruses. The upcoming national biodefense strategy should ensure that scientific journals don’t help terrorists learn how.

The news that researchers have recreated an extinct cousin to the smallpox virus using only commercially available technology and items purchased over the Internet renews concerns that bioterrorists could do the same if detailed information about the methods were published. Here’s the problem: scientific journals are geared toward publication, often without sufficient understanding of the public-security risks. We need a better system to ensure that information that could help bad actors stays unpublished.

It took David Evans’ team of scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, about six months and $100,000 to recreate the horsepox virus, a close relative of the smallpox virus that killed perhaps 300 million people in the 20th century before it was eradicated in 1980. In a summary of the research, the World Health Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research wrote that “recreation of such viral genomes did not require exceptional biochemical knowledge or skills, significant funds, or significant time.”

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Jul 1, 2017

Misunderstanding Terrorism — With Marc Sageman | Radio Cafe

Posted by in categories: big data, counterterrorism, governance, government, information science, policy, terrorism

There is a radio edit (about one half hour) and an unabridged version (about one hour long).

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Jun 5, 2017

“We prefer not to get our bad news from CNN…” M

Posted by in category: terrorism

Over the weekend in London we had a terrorist attack near London Bridge Station.

Everyday tourists are constantly uploading images onto social media and are often on the scene before First Responders and are unaware how events are going to unfold.

(after the incident images are uploaded to police / fire /insurance databases as in the London incident …please help our police by uploading any images of the London Bridge incident at http://www.ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk ).

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May 12, 2017

These Cells Are Engineered to Be Controlled by a Smartphone

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics, terrorism

To Dr. Mark Gomelsky, a professor at the University of Wyoming, genetically engineered therapeutic cells are like troops on a mission.

The first act is training. Using genetic editing tools such as CRISPR, scientists can “train” a patient’s own cells to specifically recognize and attack a variety of enemies, including rogue tumor soldiers and HIV terrorists.

Then comes the incursion. Engineered cells are surgically implanted to the target site, where they’re left to immediately carry out the mission. The problem, says Gomelsky, is adding a command center “that could coordinate their activities in real time according to the developing situation,” such as telling cells when to activate and when to stop.

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Feb 4, 2017

Pioneering brain –scanning technology could allow scientists to read people’s minds

Posted by in categories: neuroscience, terrorism

More mind reading technology and this time they can tell us if the person scanned is thinking about murder.


Brain scans could soon read minds and single out potential criminals before they commit any crimes, researchers claim.

Other uses of functional magnetic resonance imaging could include lie detectors in courtrooms, and anti-terrorist screening.

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Jan 10, 2017

Pentagon Seeks A More Powerful Social Media Monitoring Machine

Posted by in categories: government, military, terrorism

This is one of those situations that I often get conflicted over. Yes, it’s good to keep people safe; however, at what cost is too much? As, one person’s interpretation of a bad web site is not the same for others. Such as when Nelson Mandela led the whole anti-apartheid movement he was considered then a terrorist. And, the 1960s when Dr. King fought for real equal rights for all people; he was deemed by US government a terrorist. And, neither one of these situations where anything like ISIS today. So, it is a very tricky situation; and hope the courts can help us ensure things are legally done the right way.


DARPA is soliciting software that distinguishes between anti-American slogans and true intent to kill on a global scale.

MILITARY

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Dec 27, 2016

Does the Unabomber Have a More Realistic Sense of Today’s Existential Risks?

Posted by in categories: existential risks, security, terrorism

A version of this piece appears on the Sociological Imagination website

Twenty years ago Theodore Kaczynski, a Harvard-trained maths prodigy obsessed with technology’s destruction of nature, was given eight consecutive life sentences for sending letter bombs in the US post which killed three people and injured 23 others. Generally known as the ‘Unabomber’, he remains in a supermax prison in Colorado to this day.

It is perhaps easy to forget the sway that the Unabomber held on American society in the mid-1990s. Kaczynski managed to get a 35,000 word manifesto called ‘Industrial Society and Its Future’ published in both The New York Times and The Washington Post. It is arguably the most famous and influential statement of neo-Luddite philosophy and politics to this day. Now he is back with a new book, Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How.

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Dec 21, 2016

Presidential candidate suggests microchips for Syrian refugees

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, geopolitics, terrorism, transhumanism

In light of the recent attacks in Europe, the search for terrorists, and the ongoing refugee/immigration issues, I still support considering this idea of implants. In fact, so long as the Middle East is in strife, and large amounts of refugees are created, and fundamental religiosity thrives, I’m certain some type of tracking technology implementation in the developed world is inevitable over the next 2–15 years for refugees and some immigrants. Such technology broadly remains the humanitarian thing to do (read the article!), while still protecting the public and national interests.

https://www.cnet.com/news/presidential-candidate-suggests-mi…-refugees/ #transhumanism #Germany #terrorism #immigration


The question of allowing Syrian refugees in to the United States has created a political firestorm in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and one Presidential candidate proposes a novel, high-tech solution, but it’s also likely to make plenty of Americans uncomfortable.

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Dec 16, 2016

Why the United Nations Must Move Forward With a Killer Robots Ban

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, terrorism

The reason I have been motivated to do this is simple. If we don’t get a ban in place, there will be an arms race. And the end point of this race will look much like the dystopian future painted by Hollywood movies like The Terminator.

Even before this end point, such weapons will likely fall into the hands of terrorists and rogue nations. These people will have no qualms about removing any safeguards. Or using them against us.

And it won’t simply be robots fighting robots. Conflicts today are asymmetric. It will mostly be robots against humans. So unlike what some robot experts might claim, many of those humans will be innocent civilians.

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Dec 6, 2016

Advanced Radioactive Threat Detection System Completes First Large-Scale Citywide Test

Posted by in categories: genetics, mobile phones, terrorism

The following press release was written and and published by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and originally published on their website. Click here to see the original version of this post.

On a recent sunny fall day in the nation’s capital, several hundred volunteers—each toting a backpack containing smartphone-sized radiation detectors—walked for hours around the National Mall searching for clues in a “whodunit” scavenger hunt to locate a geneticist who’d been mysteriously abducted. The geneticist and his abduction were fictitious. But the challenge this scavenger hunt was designed to address is real: The need to detect even small quantities of radioactive material that terrorists might try to bring into an urban area with the intent of detonating a “dirty bomb,” or worse. By getting volunteers to walk all day looking for clues, the DARPA-sponsored exercise provided the largest test yet of DARPA’s SIGMA program, which is developing networked sensors that can provide dynamic, real-time radiation detection over large urban areas.

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