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Big Brother is watching you Google

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

BEN GRABOW

The Internet search phenomenon, a brand name that is both noun and verb, is closely watched. But it’s not the NSA or the CIA who’s browsing your history. It’s Google itself.

Yes, Google is watching you Google, and they’ve been watching as long as you’ve been Googling.

Google knows when you’ve been sleeping, Google knows when you’re awake, and Google has filters that discern between bad and good, if you want to be good for goodness’s sake. Google knows where you shop and what you read. Google remembers that time you thought you had lupus.

In reality, Google knows these things about your computer, not necessarily about you. They track the sites your computer visits by logging your IP address and your cookies (not your Oreos, but I’m sure they’re working on it). And by now this is pretty much common knowledge. At the very least, it’s readily available in their privacy policy. Go ahead, Google it.

Google has, however, recently reached a new level of watchfulness. And as anyone who has a Google email account will tell you, it’s kind of creepy.

But let’s back up a second. If I know that Google’s watching every keystroke, and I know that Google is storing that information, why would I want an email account provided by the All-Seeing Eye? Simple. I really like Google.

This is a site that bases its popularity on simplicity and results. The interface is intuitive and clean, the advertisements are small and unobtrusive, and I always find exactly what I’m looking for. I have used Google so much and to such great effect that Googling has become a way of life. Coworkers seek out my Googling abilities. My Google-Fu is strong.

So naturally, I wanted a Gmail account. But even I was unprepared for the true power of Google.

Basically, it works like this: A friend invites you to Gmail. You happily join and add a sixth email address to your collection. After sending a few emails, you begin to notice that the small, unobtrusive advertisements in the margins seem to be based upon emails you have just sent. It’s as if someone was reading your email and using that information to sell you on organic lupus treatments.

But it doesn’t stop there. Once you’ve signed in, your Google searches are tracked to that account. Suddenly there’s a name and, if you’ve uploaded a picture, a face to that search. It’s scary enough in its own right, but even more frightening in the hands of a website with satellite images of your porch.

Of course, Google is not alone in this kind of online surveillance. In fact, virtually every site with a sign-on or search engine is tracking your visit. The difference is, the other sites aren’t as transparent about it. And the other sites don’t offer up the resulting research as ads for you to ignore.

It’s getting to the point where Google will not only know exactly what you’re looking for, it will know before you do. First your email, and then your mind. So don’t be surprised when the next advertisements show up before you’ve typed a word.

And if you plan to find instructions for a tinfoil hat, please, use Yahoo!

(Ben Grabow writes for the young, the urban, and the easily amused. Contact him at thinlyread(at)gmail.com.)

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RFID Everywhere

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

Simon Usborne

Early versions were developed by Allied forces to identify Second World War fighter planes. Later, Soviet spies used them to build covert listening devices. Now, more than 60 years on, you might not even know that these tiny radio-transmitting microchips exist, but they feature in everything from cows to car keys.

And, as new advances make them microscopically small and as cheap as, well, chips, they are being used in even more ways - for example, as implants in tickets for the Beijing Olympics, which went on sale this month. Soon, they could be embedded in footballs, photos and even knee joints.

The idea behind the technology, called RFID (radio frequency identification) chips, is simple. An antenna is coupled with a silicon memory chip that can store information such as names, addresses or serial numbers, built into a plastic tag. When it comes within range of a reader, it draws enough power from the radio field to return the information stored on the chip. That can be checked against a database to track a consignment of tea, let you into your office, verify that duty has been paid on your pack of cigarettes, or ensure that money is taken off your Oyster card account.

Radio waves are hardly hi-tech. In the 1970s, the US Department of Defense used smart labels to track shipments of nuclear material. The civilian world soon caught up and tags began appearing in office access cards, clipped to cows’ ears to help farmers track cattle, and on car windscreens for automatic road toll payment.

But the challenge today has been to develop tags small enough to embed in everyday objects, and cheap enough to be disposable. In 2003, the Japanese electronics firm Hitachi launched the Mu-chip, which did away with the bulky metal insulating rings required by older tags in favour of thin layers of silicon dioxide. At just 0.16mm square and 7.5 microns thick, the Mu-chip is small enough to get lost in a teaspoon of sugar. In February, Hitachi released pictures of a new prototype in which the chip is dwarfed by salt crystals.

This remarkable shrinking act is opening the door to a whole new world of chipping opportunities. Tiny tags embedded in paper tickets for the Beijing Olympics will make it almost impossible for counterfeiters to make good copies. The European Central Bank has expressed an interest in using the technology to chip banknotes. And, last month, the Government announced plans to tag cigarette packs to allow customs officials to determine whether duty has been paid.

But it’s in retail that the technology takes off. In 2003, Wal-Mart became the first supermarket chain to use tags to track pallets and crates through the supply chain. In some stores, RFID stickers are turning up on high-value, easily pocketed items such as CDs, DVDs and packs of razor blades.

This summer, Marks & Spencer will start tagging suits at 120 UK stores. The labels will do the same job as a bar code at the checkout, but will also improve distribution; “smart” shelves will know when stocks are running low.

A future where every box of eggs and pint of milk comes with a microchip is being predicted. “It will happen,” says Raghu Das, the chief executive of IDTechEx, an independent RFID consultancy firm in Cambridge. “But we think that day is decades away because it’s harder to justify the cost of tagging low-cost items. It’s just too expensive to start putting silicon chips on every piece of throwaway packaging.”

The price of tags for consumer goods is falling fast, but at 13p apiece, they are still too expensive to use on individual cucumbers and tomatoes. Fast-forward 10 years, and IDTechEx estimates that each chip will cost a quarter of a penny. In 2017, global demand will be an estimated 670 billion tags, compared with a 1.7 billion this year.

But RFID technology will have moved on by then, Das says. “The most exciting development is printed electronics. Bar codes are great because they are virtually free - you only pay the cost of the ink. We see RFID going the same way; one day you will print a tag on the side of a product.”

One reason why retail chips can be cheap is their tiny memories. Marks & Spencer’s suit tags only store 64 bits of data - just enough for a serial number - but technicians at Hewlett-Packard’s Bristol lab have developed a tag, called a Memory Spot, which can store 60,000 times as much data in a chip the size of pencil tip. The chip, which has half a megabyte of memory, works at a higher frequency, so it can be read at a blistering 10 megabits per second - 10 times faster than a mobile-phone Bluetooth link. But, instead of beaming the data over several metres, like many RFID tags, the Memory Spot can only be read from a distance of 1.5mm.

Even so, Ed McDonnell, Memory Spot project manager at HP Labs, says the chip will take RFID technology to a new level. He says: “It will allow us to give a kind of electronic personality to any object.” HP envisages a future where photo printers can load an audio file, video clip or digital version of the print on to blank chips embedded in photo paper.

“Say you’re at a party and you want to capture the atmosphere in a photo. You could put a sound clip on to a memory spot and play it back with a reader to really enhance the memories of the occasion,” McDonnell says. HP hopes to persuade mobile phone- and PDA-makers to enable their products to read the Memory Spot.

With the potential for tags to find their way into so many of our belongings, the rise of RFID has alarmed privacy groups, who say that smart labels are yet another face of Big Brother. They fear that RFID “spychips” could trample consumer privacy by allowing retailers to gather unprecedented amounts of information about activity in their stores and link it to databases.

More worrying is the possibility that governments, organisations or would-be thieves could monitor people’s belongings via chips the individual might not even be aware of. As one American politician put it at a 2003 Senate hearing on the matter: “How would you like it if your underwear was reporting on your whereabouts?”

But Das cautions against scaremongering. He says: “RFID seems like a scary tool but we can already be tracked via our mobile phones. We put up with it because it’s useful and I think the same will be true for tagging. RFID has benefits that nobody seems to be demonstrating.

“For example, a hospital in Chicago puts tags on pill bottles and gives elderly or partially sighted patients a talking reader. They hold it up to the bottle and it tells them when to take them, or if it’s the wrong time of day. That’s an incredible service, and it’s just one example of how the technology could revolutionise our lives.”

Chips with everything…

SMART FRIDGES

Unsure if you need milk? Text your fridge to find out what’s left and when it expires. Need dinner ideas? Your fridge will e-mail you recipes based on what you have. If anything runs low, it will add it to your shopping list. A new Samsung prototype, with an RFID reader, will scan things in and out automatically.

SMART HOSPITALS

Some US patients already carry their medical records in chipped bracelets. Kodak has made an ingestible RFID tag that stops working when exposed to gastric acid, giving details about the digestive system. Chips in hip or knee replacements couldwarn when a new one is needed. Chips on pills could let nurses ensure they are swallowed.

SMART ARMS

VIP guests at a bar in Barcelona don’t need to have their names on the list or ID to get in, or indeed cards or cash. The Baja Beach Club offers an RFID tag, which is implanted in the arm. The chip, developed by VeriChip Corporation, links to an online guest list and bar tab. It is also used in hospitals and as a security pass.

SMART BALLS

Football authorities have long considered electronic systems to determine whether the ball crosses the goal line. Adidas has developed a chipped ball that causes the referee’s watch to beep if it passes readers in the goalposts. Similar chips in shin pads could perfect offside decisions. The Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, has said he expects a system to be up and running in time for this December’s World Club Championship.

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Civil servant guilty over Bush-Blair memo leak

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

Press Association

A civil servant was today found guilty today of breaching the Official Secrets Act after he leaked an “extremely sensitive” memo detailing talks on Iraq between George Bush and Tony Blair.

The Cabinet Office communications officer David Keogh passed the four-page document to Leo O’Connor, a researcher for the anti-war Labour MP Anthony Clarke.

An Old Bailey jury is still considering a further charge against Keogh and a similar single count against Mr O’Connor.

The contents of the document were considered so explosive that much of the trial was held behind closed doors so the public could not hear them.

Keogh, who believed the memo exposed Mr Bush as a “madman”, hoped it could be used to raise questions in the House of Commons and also wanted it to be passed on to the US presidential candidate John Kerry.

Mr O’Connor placed it in Mr Clarke’s constituency papers and the MP handed it in to Downing Street. An investigation was launched, leading to the London trial.

The researcher told the jury he left the memo for his boss so that he would return it to the appropriate authorities. Keogh, Mr O’Connor and Mr Clarke had all been members of a now-defunct political dining club in Northampton, where they all lived.

A jury today found Keogh, 50, guilty of making a damaging disclosure under the Official Secrets Act. After taking the verdict, the judge gave a majority direction to the jury on the outstanding charges.

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July 7 bomber’s widow held in anti-terror raid

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

James Sturcke and agencies

The widow of the July 7 suicide bomber, Mohammed Sidique Khan, was among four people arrested in a series of anti-terror raids today.

Hasina Patel, 29, was arrested in a two-storey mid-terrace house on Dale Street, Thornhill Lees, Dewsbury, police sources said.

It is understood that among the three males arrested was a man from Tempest Road in Leeds - the same street where the July 7 Aldgate bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, lived.

Another man, aged 30, was also arrested in West Yorkshire along with a 22-year-old man in Birmingham.

Police were seen leaving and entering the Dale Street property, where the curtains were closed and a red Vauxhall was parked in the driveway.

Police officers were also seen in unmarked cars outside the three-bedroom housing association house.

The property was one of five houses in West Yorkshire - two in Dewsbury, two in Beeston and one in Batley - and two flats in Birmingham cordoned off and searched by police.

Unarmed officers carried out the raids, which were connected to the July 7 2005 London bombings, in which 52 people were killed.

The arrests took place just after 7am today and the four people detained were taken to a central London police station to be interviewed by anti-terror officers.

They are being held on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism, under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The arrests were made by the Met’s counter-terrorism command and counter-terrorism units from the West Yorkshire and West Midlands forces.

“Since July 7 2005, when 52 people were murdered, detectives have continued to pursue many lines of inquiry both here in the UK and overseas,” the Met said. “This remains a painstaking investigation with a substantial amount of information being analysed and investigated.

“As we have said previously, we are determined to follow the evidence wherever it takes us to identify any other person who may have been involved, in any way, in the terrorist attacks.”

A Met spokesman reissued an appeal for information about how the bombers - Khan, Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussein - were motivated and financed.

“We need to know who else, apart from the bombers, knew what they were planning. Did anyone encourage them? Did anyone help them with money or accommodation?” the spokesman said.

West Yorkshire police said neighbourhood officers were meeting local people to keep them updated and informed about activity in their areas and to reassure the wider community.

“We would like to thank people for their understanding and support at this time and would ask that it continues,” the force said in a statement. “Although we are legally limited in how much we can say, we will share as much information as we can with those living in the vicinity and with the wider community.

“As usual, local neighbourhood policing teams are on patrol in the areas and we would ask anyone with concerns to speak directly to them.”

Officers said they did not believe any of the premises being searched in West Yorkshire contained anything that could be a threat to the local community.

In Beeston, police officers were patrolling the streets. On Tempest Road, close to Tanweer’s family home, an officer guarded the front door of an address while another stood guard in the back garden.

West Midlands police said the 22-year-old man was arrested at 7.25am in the Selly Oak area of Birmingham and a full forensic search was being conducted at a house in the Handsworth area of the city.

In the Selly Oak area of Birmingham, police stood guard at a student hall of residence believed to be the location of one of the raids.

A police lorry took away a silver Peugeot 307 from the Victoria Hall block of flats on Grange Road.

“A police presence will be visible at this location for a number of days,” a statement said. Two other addresses were being searched in Selly Oak.

Last month, the first three people to be charged in connection with the London attacks appeared via video link before a judge at the Old Bailey. Mohammed Shakil, 30, Sadeer Saleem, 26, and Waheed Ali, 23, of Beeston, Leeds, are accused of conspiring with the four bombers to cause explosions.

There has been criticism of both the police and the security services over their handling of the July 7 attacks.

Last week, it emerged that two of the bombers, Khan and Tanweer, had been filmed by British security officials more than a year before the July 7 bombings on three London tube trains and a London bus.

They were filmed meeting two men at a service station on the M1. The details emerged after the conviction of five men for planning a separate attack. Two of the London bombers were acquaintances of the convicted plotters.

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Study suggests cancer risk from depleted uranium

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

James Randerson

Depleted uranium, which is used in armour-piercing ammunition, causes widespread damage to DNA which could lead to lung cancer, according to a study of the metal’s effects on human lung cells. The study adds to growing evidence that DU causes health problems on battlefields long after hostilities have ceased.

DU is a byproduct of uranium refinement for nuclear power. It is much less radioactive than other uranium isotopes, and its high density - twice that of lead - makes it useful for armour and armour piercing shells. It has been used in conflicts including Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq and there have been increasing concerns about the health effects of DU dust left on the battlefield. In November, the Ministry of Defence was forced to counteract claims that apparent increases in cancers and birth defects among Iraqis in southern Iraq were due to DU in weapons.

Now researchers at the University of Southern Maine have shown that DU damages DNA in human lung cells. The team, led by John Pierce Wise, exposed cultures of the cells to uranium compounds at different concentrations.

The compounds caused breaks in the chromosomes within cells and stopped them from growing and dividing healthily. “These data suggest that exposure to particulate DU may pose a significant [DNA damage] risk and could possibly result in lung cancer,” the team wrote in the journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Previous studies have shown that uranium miners are at higher risk of lung cancer, but this has often been put down to the fact that miners are also exposed to radon, another cancer-causing chemical.

Prof Wise said it is too early to say whether DU causes lung cancer in people exposed on the battlefield because the disease takes several decades to develop.

“Our data suggest that it should be monitored as the potential risk is there,” he said.

Prof Wise and his team believe that microscopic particles of dust created during the explosion of a DU weapon stay on the battlefield and can be breathed in by soldiers and people returning after the conflict.

Once they are lodged in the lung even low levels of radioactivity would damage DNA in cells close by. “The real question is whether the level of exposure is sufficient to cause health effects. The answer to that question is still unclear,” he said, adding that there has as yet been little research on the effects of DU on civilians in combat zones. “Funding for DU studies is very sparse and so defining the disadvantages is hard,” he added.

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