Imagine! - A World of Drone Wars, Weather Weapons and Nano-Tech Spies

Imagine a world where a silent Reaper drone flies overhead in the darkness high above some foreign land. It's pilot sitting comfortably in daylight some many thousands of miles away in Hancock Air Base near Syracuse in front of his monitor, watching that foreign land drift by from high above in infrared. The target acquired a squeeze on his PlayStation trigger releases a small pod from beneath the Reaper which falls rapidly then is slowed by the deployment of a small black parachute. The pod drifts to the ground outside the target town and on hitting the dirt splits open. A swarm of tiny bio-nan insects burst out from the pod; a merging of nano-tech machine and biological Bee.

The swarm immediately appear on the pilots distant monitor and he reaches for the control that will direct them to their target deep inside the town. His monitor now displays the lead nanoBee's image of the world in addition to that from the Reaper drone, allowing him to maneuver the Bees through the dark streets of the town to a small house behind high compound walls. A group of people out walking notice the insects flying by but think nothing of it. Meanwhile packed in the nanoBees pollen sacks is a pheromone virus programmed to illicit a specific set of behaviors within what will soon be their human hosts.

The swarm splits into multiple groups and quickly finds multiple entry points into the house and via heat signatures visible from the Reaper drones surveillance cameras the remote pilot sends them into close proximity to the human targets. When within 3 feet of the target the nanoBees release their invisible payload into the air and quickly depart the scene.

The targets start to argue and quarrel among themselves. Voices are raised, guns are raised... they shoot each other!

You might think this is a nice science fiction story, or at least the beginnings of one, but its not! It's highly probable that this kind of thing is happening right now in Pakistan or Yemen or anywhere else that the CIA and US Government decide that they want to carry out their 'War on Terror'. We have all heard about the Reapers and the guided bombs, the 'targeted killings' or assassinations carried out using drones in and over supposedly sovereign nations. But they are pretty indiscriminate, lead to lots of bad press when civilians become 'collateral damage'. But the only story we would hear, if we heard one at all, would be of terrorists killing each other given the above scenario. What if the payload was something more sinister, a nano-tech virus that killed perhaps or just some plain old chemical or biological weaponry?

Scary science-fiction?, conspiracy theory mumbo jumbo? well believe me these nanoBees or 'cyborg insects' actually do exist and have already been used for surveillance, possibly a lot more. I know, I have seen them.

As far back as the 70's the CIA was developing micro-UAVs in the form of Dragonflies - see this 2007 Wired article for more info. Micro-UAVs and bio-nan Hi-MEMS have become increasingly sophisticated over the last 40 years. They are a here and now reality in 2011 and in use in the AFPAK theater among other places, including for domestic surveillance.

Well my post of yesterday must have touched a nerve as today I lost my job, out-of-the-blue! No way I can prove they were related but I'm expecting the disruptive patterns I unleashed with my first nano-tech/scalar weapons post - and no doubt this follow-up too - to get worse before they get better.

I'll keep you posted on any further developments and stay tuned for more on this fascinating and clearly sensitive subject!

In the meantime check out Killer Drones Take The Place of War on Truthout

Like Frogs In Boiling Water (The Age of Surveillance - Part 1)

I know a thing or two about surveillance and about technology. I have been a senior IT executive for over twenty years and spent the last three years working for the NZ Army, where I was Director of Knowledge & Information. I was also Project Manager for their future focused Land C4ISR Programme - technology in the 'operational theatre', whether that be at home or abroad..

C4ISR stands for Computers, Communications, Command & Control, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance... quite a mouthful, eh? Well that's why the military is riddled with acronyms and everyone speaks in a sort of TLA code, but I digress.

Part of my role in Force Development and part of the role of the Battle Labs we ran was to look at an evaluate new technologies for the C4ISR capability so I was exposed to some of the latest military and civilian technology in this area. Believe me the capabilities of this stuff are scary especially when applied to the 'Homeland Security' arena and directed at the 'domestic' population, in other words the civilain populations of the very countries who are utilising this stuff. And, by the way, making big bucks selling it to other governments around the world.

Now I can't tell you all I know about the latest Surveillance tech or I would have to shoot you :-) but I just wanted to put into context some of the stuff I will be writing about in my blogs and let you know that I'm not just 'talking out of my backside' I have actually worked in this arena for the NZ Defence Force and with the allied powers of the 'Anglosphere' for the last three years.

So hopefully now that I've 'come out' this can provide some context as I delve deeper in forthcoming blogs into the issues of surveillance, electronic warfare and the brave new world of digital identities, transparency and the pervasive tracking of the online and offline activity of individuals and groups.

We are all just grist for the intelligence analysis mill and this throws up a whole lot of questions and issues, especially in regard to our concepts of privacy and freedom and some of the underlying principles our western civilisation is supposed to be built apon.

Do we live in a democracy? Do we live in a Panopticon prison with no visible walls? Do we really have any privacy or freedom in the brave new electronic age?

So in future blogs I will be examining some of these questions in an attempt to raise the profile of these issues and stimulate debate.

For to long now we have been like the proverbial Frog in the slowly warming water... if we are not careful we will boil to death because we just don't notice the change in temperature. Perhaps we need to get out before its to late.

The Panopticon and Permanent War

I had to lift my camera high above the fence that cordons off Parliament Square to get this shot. Notice the ubiquitous surveillance camera on top of the buildings tower?
Britain is the most surveilled nation in the world with the average Londoner being photographed 400+ times a day. In this age of high resolution colour images, face recognition software and integrated tracking systems its a scary thought.
This remarkable invasion of privacy has become the norm in our post 9-11 society where you can never really escape from the cameras except way out in the countryside. "So if you have nothing to hide whats the problem" you may say. Or 'It makes us safer and protects us from terrorism". Really? - that all kind of depends on the watchers being fair and never making mistakes doesn't it? and just whose definition of terrorism are we quoting here? My big concern is Who watches the watchers? ... this whole big brother thing is just far to open to abuse and misuse.

Having been in local and central government for the last few years, albeit in New Zealand not the UK, my biggest concern are the careless bureaucrats and the state machine which just churns on regardless and can easily destroy peoples lives through mistakes and false profiling for example.

The potential for abuse in this 'Panopticon' Grid we live in is not the only fear, IMHO the potential for cock-up and incompetance far outweighs the potentail for conspiracy or deliberate acts of abuse.

So you don't have to be paranoid to live here, but it helps! because they really are watching you... everywhere and all the time.

Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon is now a reality and we already live in a Police State that is in a permanent state of war, where we are the controlled proles kept quiet by the opium of consumerism and celebrity culture. Does that sound familiar?

A Country At War

Its sometimes easy to forget we live in a country at War... in fact a country fighting at least two wars; in Afghanistan and Libya, not to mention Iraq - but then no one ever talks about that anymore.

While walking around the centre of British power at Westminster and Whitehall yesterday I was struck by the barriers and Police and general feeling of a country at war, despite the usual throngs of tourists and Londoners going about their daily business.

Opposite the Houses of Parliament, Parliament Square is now closed and surrounded by high fences and security guards. Winston Churchill still walks there and his imposing statue stands just a few feet away from the signs, shacks and tents of the anti-war protestors who have been relegated to the pavement between the closed off park in the square and one of the busiest roads in London. It was hard to get across to them as all the traffic lights to get across to Parliament Square had been removed

The tourists walk past on the other side of the road like the proverbial Levite in the Bible story. I guess they have closed off the square and removed the ability to cross to it to discourage the protestors; make it so hard for them they will just want to go home.

But do we notice the protesters gathered in the square closest to our centre of power? Do we notice their suppression? No, but we do notice the Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square, the Bahrainis at the Pearl Roundabout, the Syrians, the Libyans.

So just why did we attack Libya but not Bahrain or Syria for surely there are innocent civilians dieing there at the hands of their government.

It was just such a interesting juxtaposition. Churchill striding high across the Square the ubiquitous surveillance camera high on the building behind him and right next door the shacks and tents of the anti-war protesters; cowed and quiet amidst all the noise of the city and the click of tourist cameras pointing the other way.

To Stop War The People Must Stop

But they didn't they just kept walking blindly by