Government Study Uses Off-Duty Police to Collect Blood, Saliva Samples at Checkpoints
by Melissa Melton
Activist Post
Nov 20, 2013
Drivers were randomly stopped yesterday at a police roadblock in Fort Worth, Texas, herded into a parking lot and asked to take DNA tests — to give blood samples, have their cheeks swabbed, and take Breathalyzer tests.
According to the local Dallas Forth Worth NBC affiliate, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set the whole thing up with government contractors who used off-duty Forth Worth Police Officers to help facilitate an $8 million government research study “aimed at determining the number of drunken or drug-impaired drivers”.
Although the set up was supposedly voluntary and anonymous, people who were driving on that Fort Worth road told NBC it didn’t feel voluntary at all.
“It just doesn’t seem right that you can be forced off the road when you’re not doing anything wrong,” said Kim Cope, who said she was on her lunch break when she was forced to pull over at the roadblock on Beach Street in North Fort Worth.
[…]
“I gestured to the guy in front that I just wanted to go straight, but he wouldn’t let me and forced me into a parking spot,” she said.
Once parked, she couldn’t believe what she was asked next. “They were asking for cheek swabs,” she said. “They would give $10 for that. Also, if you let them take your blood, they would pay you $50 for that.” At the very least, she said, they wanted to test her breath for alcohol.
She said she felt trapped. “I finally did the Breathalyzer test just because I thought that would be the easiest way to leave,” she said, adding she received no money.
This government “study” will take place over the next three years in 30 U.S. cities across the nation.
VIDEO — BREAKING NEWS: M FLARE — 7 DEC 2013
YouTube —drkstrong
Dec 7, 2013
BREAKING NEWS: M FLARE — 7 DEC 2013
(BEST SEEN, FULL SCREEN!)
VIDEO — Drone Drops Tobacco Over Prison Fence For a Friend
Mark Dice
Dec 7, 2013
Drone Used to Drop Tobacco To Friend in Prison
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US Navy submarine fires drone from underwater
RT
Published time: December 06, 2013 03:03
Time-lapse photography shows the launch of a drone from the submerged submarine USS Providence. (Photo: NAVSEA-AUTEC)
The US Navy has successfully launched an unmanned aerial system from a fully submerged submarine, marking the successful completion of a nearly six year long program designed to further the Navy’s drone capabilities.
The fuel-cell powered, completely electric unmanned aerial system (UAS) was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) with funding assistance provided by the Department of Defense Rapid Reaction Technology Office and the SwampWorks innovation program.
Engineers used a launch system known as ‘Sea Robin’ (first developed to launch tomahawk missiles from submarines) to fire what is known as the eXperimental Fuel Cell Unmanned Aerial System, or XFC UAS. The UAS surfaced before rocketing through the air for several hours, broadcasting the entire mission via live video to commanders watching from a nearby base.
“This six-year effort represents the best in collaboration of a Navy laboratory and industry to produce a technology that meets the needs of the special operations community,” Dr. Warren Schultz, program developer and manager at NRL, said in a press release. “The creativity and resourcefulness brought to the project by a unique team of scientists and engineers represents an unprecedented shift in UAV propulsion and launch systems.”
The Navy’s announcement Thursday comes as the public is questioning the very future of drones. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced this week that he hopes the company will eventually deliver packages throughout the United States by using drones rather than traditional ground and air delivery services. The mere mention of such a plan was enough to cause a commotion, with columnists and lawmakers alike warning against such a plan.
Moreover, upcoming regulations by the FAA on the domestic use of drones are expected to include major restrictions and limit the use of UAV’s weighing up to 55 pounds.
This crime-predicting robot aims to patrol our streets by 2015
StratRisks
Dec 6, 2013
A scene in the 2004 film “I, Robot” involves an army of rogue NS-5 humanoids establishing a curfew and imprisoning the citizens of Chicago, circa 2035, inside their homes. That’s not how Knightscope envisions the coming day of deputized bots.
In its far less frightful future, friendly R2-D2 lookalikes patrol our streets, school hallways, and company campuses to keep us safe and put real-time data to good use. Instead of the Asimov-inspired NS-5, Knightscope, a Silicon Valley-based robotics company, is developing the K5.
Officially dubbed the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, the 300-pound, 5-foot-tall mobile robot will be equipped with nighttime video cameras, thermal imaging capabilities, and license plate recognition skills. It will be able to function autonomously for select operations, but more significantly, its software will provide crime prediction that’s reminiscent, the company claims, of the “precog” plot point of “Minority Report.”
“It can see, hear, feel, and smell and it will roam around autonomously 24/7,” said CEO William Santana Li, a former Ford Motor executive, in an interview with CNET.
At the moment, the K5 is only a prototype, and Knightscope next year will launch a beta program with select partners. But the company is shooting to have the K5 fully deployed by 2015 on a machine-as-a-service business model, meaning clients would pay by the hour for a monthly bill, based on 40-hour weeks, of $1,000. The hourly rate of $6.25 means the cost of the K5 would be competitive with the wages of many a low-wage human security guard.
Servicing and monitoring of the bots will depend on client needs, Li said, with either Knightscope or the customer employing someone to manage the bots full-time.
Crime prediction is one of the more eye-popping features of the K5, but the bot is also packed to the gills with cutting-edge surveillance technology. It has LIDAR mapping — a technique using lasers to analyze reflected light — to aid its autonomous movement. “It takes in data from a 3D real-time map that it creates and combines that with differential GPS and some proximity sensors and does a probabilistic analysis to figure out exactly where it should be going on its own,” Li explained.
It also has behavioral analysis capabilities and enough camera, audio, and other sensor technology to pump out 90 terabytes of data a year per unit. Down the line, the K5 will be equipped with facial recognition and even the ability to sniff out emanations from chemical and biological weapons, as well as airborne pathogens. It will be able to travel up to 18 mph, and later models will include the ability to maneuver curbs and other terrain.
The K5 will not be armed. Still, teens with late-night bot-tipping ambitions had best beware, lest their hijinks be recorded for posterity, and possible prosecution. Li said that messing with a Knightscope bot — which would be difficult given its weight — will have serious ramifications, as would tampering with any other form of security equipment on private property.
Still, the most sci-fi of all its features, the crime prediction algorithms, do sound too good to be true. And to be more precise, the K5 won’t be so much predicting crime as much as it will be analyzing multiple data points simultaneously and knowing when a situation may be on the precipice of becoming dangerous.
“Predicting crime is being deployed today, but it’s unfortunately using a lot of historical data,” Li explained. “What doesn’t exist in that algorithm is real-time on-site data. So if you actually had data that was fresh, that was actually from the location you’re trying to analyze, it would make that algorithm much more robust.” Li noted that the main goal of the crime prediction algorithms and autonomous function is to be able to push out an alert early with that kind of data, as well as aid the K5 in knowing when to charge itself and what time of day or night is optimal for uploading and downloading data in a specific environment.
[h/t: MediaMonarchy]
Study: Just 30 Minutes of Cell Phone Exposure Affects Brain Activity
Conscious Life News
Dec 2, 2013
Elizabeth Renter | Naturalsociety | Dec 2nd 2013
A new study published in Clinical Neurophysiology suggests it doesn’t take years or even months of exposure for cell phone radiation to (negatively) alter our brains—it only takes minutes. The phones used in this double-blind, crossover, randomized study emitted LTE radiation, or the LTE technology so popular in “fourth generation” (4G) phones, the phones everyone clamors for.
The researchers exposed the right ears of 18 study participants to LTE radio frequency radiation. In just 30 minutes, they observed changes in brain activity. The radiation levels were within legal limits and the phone was always kept 1 cm from the ear.
Brain activity was measured using MRIs twice during a resting state, once after LTE exposure, and once after being exposed to “sham” exposure or a control. Both the right and left hemispheres of the brain were affected by the radiation.
Though this certainly isn’t the first study to examine how cells phones and electromagnetic frequencies alter regions of the brain, this is the first study to be carried out on LTE technology, the “fastest developing mobile system technology ever,” according to Global Mobile Suppliers Association. And the U.S. is the largest market for LTE in the world. More than half of the 91 million LTE subscribers around the world in March 2013 were in the U.S.
What do these changes in brain activity mean? We don’t know that yet, but previous studies have linked such cell phone radiation to sperm damage, weakened bones, increased “genetic stress”, cellular damage, and certainly brain cancer. Some have suggested it can lead to autism and Alzheimer’s disease in the long term.
Whether you have the latest LTE technology or an old flip-phone, you can minimize your exposure to cell phone radiation by:
- Never holding the phone up to your head
- Using the speaker instead
- Not sleeping with your phone next to you
- Shutting it off while not in use
- Investing in radiation protection
Cell phones have changed the way many of us live. We are more connected now than ever before, but these little devices have distanced us in unimaginable ways. Add to that the potential health effects of cell phone radiation and it makes you wonder if we were better off before.
With emerging technology such as LTE, we are introducing things into our lives before we fully understand how they work and all of their potential effects. By the time we really understand their long-term effects, it could be too late.
Large-scale trial of driverless cars to begin on public roads
by Chris Knapan
Telegraph
Dec 2, 2013
Volvo is planning to put 100 driverless cars on the streets of Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2017
Volvo is to introduce 100 driverless cars on to public roads as part of the world’s first large-scale autonomous driving pilot.
The cars will drive in normal, everyday road conditions, surrounded by pedestrians and other traffic, and will even be able to self-park, as the Swedish car-maker (which is now under Chinese ownership) attempts to demonstrate the benefits, including improved safety and efficiency, of self-driving cars.
Volvo is working alongside the Swedish Transport Administration, The Swedish Transport Agency, Lindholmen Science Park and the City of Gotehenburg, with the goal of placing both it and Sweden as leaders in the development of future mobility.
As part of the trial, driverless cars will also be able to park themselves
Called “Drive Me – Self-driving cars for sustainable mobility”, the pilot scheme gets underway next year with customer research and further development of current technology. The cars themselves won’t appear until 2017, when they will drive on about 30 miles of public road in and around Gothenburg, described as “typical commuter arteries” that include motorway conditions and frequent queues.
[h/t: JG Vibes]
PN 