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Date Published: 26/10/2001
Author: Rob Edwards Flying mini-surveillance computers the size of a grain of sand. Science fiction? No – the US military’s latest project. Rob Edwards opens the doors on the era of ‘total surveillance’.
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‘To see a world in a grain of sand’, was how William Blake expressed his wonder at nature 200 years ago. Now, thanks to some American hi-tech military research, the poet’s image may be turned into something infinitely more sinister.
Funded by the Pentagon, scientists of the University of California at Berkeley are developing an intelligent surveillance sensor no larger than a grain of sand. Designed to spy on enemies of the US, it is called ‘smart dust’, and could be with us in less than a few months.
The idea is that small, remote-controlled planes will sprinkle clouds of smart dust behind enemy lines. The dust, each particle packed with state-of-the-art miniaturised electronics, will then use laser technology to relay vital information about troop and tank movements back to commanders in the field.
The worry is that smart dust could also be used for more nefarious activities. It could be used to spy on citizens, to pry into people’s personal lives and to control ‘troublesome’ protesters. It could make the state and large corporations, who already monitor most of our movements on CCTV, a much more powerful Big Brother.
Kris Pister, the ebullient head of the development team at Berkeley, acknowledges that his technology has its ‘dark side’. Nevertheless, he is confident that it will bring more rewards than harm, and so is enthusiastically forging ahead. ‘I believe that the benefits will far, far outweigh the drawbacks,’ he argues, ‘but I’m hardly unbiased.’
Smart dust is the logical product of the ever-decreasing size of electronic equipment. It is now quite possible to harness the processing power of an IBM desktop computer of 15 years ago in a matchbox-sized machine.
The Berkeley researchers have already built a prototype micro-sensor the size of a pea. Two etched silicon chips less than five millimetres across incorporate an optical receiver and transmitter, as well as a simple digital controller. They have shown that the signals it sends can be detected 21km away across San Francisco Bay.
By July 2001, they say they will have a functional sensor with two-way communication within a cubic millimetre – the size of a sand grain. Such a ‘mote’ of silicon, including a low-power receiver, converter, controller and transmitter, will be driven by a tiny array of solar cells.
Pister, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley, insists that all the individual parts work and it’s just a question of putting them together correctly. If all goes well, he hopes soon to be able to move to the next stage: making the dust even smarter by attaching tiny wings and enabling it to ‘swarm’ in pursuit of a common goal, much like a swarm of bees.
The work is being funded for three years by a grant of $1.2 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the US Department of Defense. As well as spying on battlefield
movements, the hope is that smart dust could also track transport links, help verify arms treaties and trace chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
These are some of the beneficial uses, Pister contends, which could be accompanied by a host of other helpful civil applications. By 2010, he predicts that micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS, will make possible ten-cent radios, one-dollar three-colour laser projectors and sensors that will scream when anyone tries to remove valuables from your house.
Sand-sized devices will tell you if your baby stops breathing, fine-tune your central heating and guide you through busy traffic to a parking space. In 2020 tiny sensors implanted around your body will warn you when you are about to come down with a heart attack, cancer, or the flu. ‘MEMS sensors will be everywhere, and sensing virtually everything. Scavenging power from sunlight, vibration, thermal gradients and background radio frequencies, sensor motes will be immortal, self-contained, single-chip computers with sensing, communications, and power supply built in,’ Pister forecasts.
‘Entirely solid state, and with no natural decay processes, they may well survive the human race. Descendants of dolphins may mine them from the arctic ice and marvel at this technology from our extinct civilisation.’
He dismisses fears that such long-lived items could cause an environmental hazard, either by contaminating air and water or poisoning people. ‘Even in my wildest imagination I don’t think that we’ll produce enough smart dust to bother anyone,’ he claims.
Environmental scientists would disagree – but even they would probably worry more about the implications for civil liberties.
‘This is a technology of total surveillance,’ comments Richard Sclove from the Loka Institute, in Amherst, Massachusetts, which investigates the social impact of
new technology.
‘I have no doubt that there will be plenty of benign and wonderful applications of this technology, but it’s easier to imagine the lousy ones. The CIA and the National Security Administration would love to get their hands on this, and there’s no way to control what they do with it.’
Control is the key issue for the British civil liberties expert, Clive Norris, a senior lecturer in criminology at the University of Hull.
‘It’s not that the technology itself is bad, but the way it is used,’ he observes. ‘That depends on to what extent it will be applied in civil situations, and how this will be controlled.’
But Pister is not much concerned about state surveillance. 'I’m much more worried about how societies will adapt to the idea that anyone can put a sensor on anyone else, and with some level
of effort track their every move, record their every conversation, possibly even record video of their interactions with others. Will we get to the point where people are bored by videos on the internet of public figures having sex?’
The coverage that smart dust has received in the US has made him cynical about newspapers and television, too. ‘You can have a lot of fun with smart dust in the media,’ he says. ‘I’ve been vilified as the bringer of Huxley’s 1984 and worse, and the subject of unjustified praise. Hoo baby, I love the media.’
Whatever Pister’s technological skills might be, nightmarish prophecies of the future are clearly not his forte. Aldous Huxley, of course, wrote Brave New World, while George Orwell was the author of 1984. When his mistake was pointed out, Pister bared his soul. ‘How incredibly embarrassing. I am hardly worth trusting at this point, am I? If only you could have witnessed my self-flagellation when I saw my blunder. Orwell’s 1984 is the vision that most people are afraid of.’
Rob Edwards is a consultant for New Scientist and environment editor of the Sunday Herald.
For more information visit: www-bsac.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/
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