Beware the spy in the sky: After those Street View snoopers, Google and Apple use planes that can film you sunbathing in your back garden

Software giants will use military-grade cameras to take powerful satellite images

By Vanessa Allen

Spy planes able to photograph sunbathers in their back gardens are being deployed by Google and Apple.

The U.S. technology giants are racing to produce aerial maps so detailed they can show up objects just four inches wide.

But campaigners say the technology is a sinister development that brings the surveillance society a step closer.

Google admits it has already sent planes over cities while Apple has acquired a firm using spy-in-the-sky technology that has been tested on at least 20 locations, including London.

Apple’s military-grade cameras are understood to be so powerful they could potentially see into homes through skylights and windows. The technology is similar to that used by intelligence agencies in identifying terrorist targets in Afghanistan.

Google will use its spy planes to help create 3D maps with much more detail than its satellite-derived Google Earth images.

Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, warned that privacy risked being sacrificed in a commercial ‘race to the bottom’.

‘The next generation of maps is taking us over the garden fence,’ he warned. ‘You won’t be able to sunbathe in your garden without worrying about an Apple or Google plane buzzing overhead taking pictures.’

He said householders should be asked for their consent before images of their homes go online. Apple is expected to unveil its new mapping applications for its iPhone and other devices today – along with privacy safeguards. Its 3D maps will reportedly show for the first time the sides of tall buildings, such as the Big Ben clock tower.

Google expects by the end of the year to have 3D coverage of towns and cities with a combined population of 300million. It has not revealed any locations so far.

Current 3D mapping technology relies on aerial images taken at a much lower resolution than the technology Apple is thought to be using. This means that when users ‘zoom in’, details tend to be lost because of the poor image quality.

Google ran into trouble when it emerged that its Street View cars, which gathered ground-level panoramic photographs for Google Maps, had also harvested personal data from household wifi networks.

Emails, text messages, photographs and documents were taken from unsecured wifi networks all around Britain.

Google claimed it was a mistake even though a senior manager was warned as early as 2007 that the extra information was being captured. Around one in four home networks is thought to be unsecured because they lack password protection.

Little has been revealed about the technology involved in the spy planes used to capture the aerial images.

But they are thought to be able to photograph around 40 square miles every hour, suggesting they would be flying too quickly and at too great a height to access domestic wifi networks.

Like Google Maps, the resulting images would not be streamed live to computers but would provide a snapshot image of the moment the camera passed by.

Google pixellates faces and car number plates but faced criticism after its service showed one recognisable man leaving a sex shop and another being sick in the street.

Amie Stepanovich, of the Electronic Privacy Information Centre in America, said she believed Apple and Google would be forced to blur out homes in the same way Street View pixellates faces.

She said: ‘With satellite images, privacy is built in because you can’t zoom down into a garden. Homeowners need to be asked to opt in to show their property in high definition – otherwise it should be blurred out.’

Apple has previously used Google for its mapping services but last year it emerged it had bought C3 Technologies, a 3D mapping company that uses technology developed by Saab AB, the aerospace and defence company.

At the time C3 had already mapped 20 cities and it is believed to have added more with Apple’s backing. Its photographs have been shot from 1,600ft and one C3 executive described it as ‘Google on steroids’.

There are already 3D maps available online for most big city centres, but the images are often low resolution, meaning they are of little use for navigation and users cannot zoom in on detail.

Critics have argued that Apple and Google will face a backlash if they offer detailed 3D mapping of residential areas in suburbs and rural locations.

BBC is developing 3D radio

Engineers at the BBC are developing new technology to broadcast radio and television programmes with three-dimensional sound.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

Three-dimensional television may only just have arrived, but engineers at the BBC are already working on the next step - 3D radio.

Researchers at the corporation's technology unit, BBC R&D, have been developing acoustics that can trick the listener into believing they are really at events such as concerts with sound coming from every direction - even above and below.

The technology could bring new vigour to the BBC's long-established sound effects department, allowing its experts to fool audiences into hearing an object rising or falling.

The engineers claim that the new technology should allow consumers to receive 3D sound from their existing radio and television speakers.

Frank Melchior, lead technologist for audio with BBC R&D, said: "We want to deliver a new experience to the audience that gives them more immersion and involvement in the content.

"We also have to make sure we are flexible enough in the delivery of this content. It has to sound OK on headphones as well as on speakers."

It is not the first time the BBC has claimed to have made such a breakthrough. Last year, Radio 4's Today programme ran an April Fools' Day demonstration of 3D radio, asking listeners to hold their hands in front of their faces to get the effect.

The joke, as it turns out, was based in fact. A research paper from BBC R&D reveals hopes for 3D audio which will trick the brain into hearing sound from above and below in addition to the left, right, front and back that are usual with existing stereo or surround-sound audio on radio and TV.

Engineers have tested the new technology with recordings of the Last Night of the Proms, a concert by the rock band Elbow, and a radio play of the Wizard of Oz.

Anthony Churnside, who co-authored the BBC R&D research paper, said: "There are a number of ways to create 3D sound. There are psychoacoustic tricks that can make you perceive sound from above and below.

"With the Wizard of Oz we concentrated on a couple of scenes including the tornado when it takes the house away. Suddenly we had mooing cows thrown up into the air, and the wind could be all around you. With 3D sound you have every direction to play with so you can be really quite creative.

"For an orchestra or a live event, the majority of the sounds come from the stage in front of you, but the sense of immersion comes from the sound bouncing off the roof and the walls."

BBC engineers have been testing different technologies including one called ambisonics, in which the audio is recorded using microphones at different locations.

The soundtracks are broadcast simultaneously, with advances in the computational power of hi-fi equipment and televisions allowing the signals to be decoded and configured to suit each listener's speaker set-up.

Mr Churnside said: "The final solution will probably be a hybrid of the technologies so that we can record, produce, broadcast and listen to the audio in the most flexible way."

The 3D audio could eventually help to enhance 3D television broadcasting, which is expected to increase after the first episode of David Attenborough's Kingdom of Plants was broadcast in 3D by Sky earlier this month.

Latest viruses could mean ‘end of world as we know it,’ says man who discovered Flame

Eugene Kaspersky: We’re at the mercy of cyberterrorists, armed with weapons more serious than any previous IT security threat

By David Shamah

The Flame virus, whose existence was announced several weeks ago by Eugene Kaspersky, is not just any old virus. It’s so sophisticated that it represents a new level of cyber threat, one that could be “the beginning of the end of the [interconnected] world as we know it,” Kaspersky said at a press conference Wednesday. “I have nightmares about it.”

Information security expert Kaspersky, whose team of researchers uncovered Flame’s existence, was a featured speaker at Wednesday’s second annual cyber-security conference sponsored by the Tel Aviv University’s Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology and Security. The conference comes at a time when interest in cybersecurity is at a peak, as a result of speculation about who was behind the Flame attack and the earlier Stuxnet virus attack that is thought to have damaged, or at least delayed, progress by Iran on its nuclear program.

Also speaking at the conference were a host of top security and government officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Israel Space Agency chairman Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin, and others.

While many companies — including Kaspersky’s — advertise sundry solutions for computer viruses and Trojans, they won’t help when it comes to Flame and other still undiscovered viruses of similar or even greater strength that are likely out there, he said. “Right now we have no way to defend against these global attacks.”

The term “cyber-war” is used by many to describe the situation, but that term — which implies that there are two equal, known enemies duking it out — is outmoded, he said. “With today’s attacks, you are clueless about who did it or when they will strike again. It’s not cyber-war, but cyberterrorism.”

Flame, which has stealthily stolen large chunks of data during the months or perhaps years it has been on the loose, is especially scary because of its many sophisticated tools, said Kaspersky. Besides being able to quickly replicate itself on networks and break up data into very small segments, making it almost impossible to trace as it is sent onwards, the virus has many unique features. “It can of course be spread very quickly via a disk-on-key, when one is plugged into a network,” but in addition, it can use bluetooth, wifi, and other communications protocols to propagate, he said.

The Russian-born Kaspersky, 46, whose company is the world’s largest privately held vendor of software security products, described the process by which his team discovered Flame, saying that he got interested in the matter when he heard that Iran had actually accused his company of designing the attack tool. “We thought that maybe our internal system was compromised, so we conducted a thorough investigation.”

It was this investigation, which entailed contacts with IT personnel in Iran itself, that yielded the data on Flame. “Dealing with what we discovered was too big a job for a company,” so Kaspersky took what he knew to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, which was just as shocked as he was. “We worked out an arrangement where we would gather the data, and they would take care of the other issues.”

Data-gathering is a technical issue, not a political one, Kaspersky said, so he could not speculate on who invented Flame, or why. But anyone and everyone is a suspect. “There are many countries with hackers and experts who are sophisticated enough to pull something like this off.”

The US, Israel, China, and Russia are on that list, but so is Romania, “which has many talented hackers.”

But even countries without a staff of their own could kidnap the scientists they need or hire “hacktivists” to do their dirty work, and there is no shortage of willing and capable people, Kaspersky said.

Still, any country thinking of stockpiling cyber-weapons of these magnitudes should think twice, Kaspersky said, as they have a way of getting out of control.

“It’s like biological weapons; when you set one off in one place, it affects many others.” Cyber-weapons of the magnitude of Flame are just as destructive. “The world is just so interconnected today, and the viruses that attack one power plant puts them all at risk,” Kaspersky said.

Governments must work together to, for example, order a complete rewrite of software for essential systems to protect them against attacks — “there are still many systems out there using MS-DOS,” Kaspersky said — to agreeing to pool information and act jointly when an attack occurs.

The alternative, Kaspersky said, is a world in which cyberterrorists have a free hand – something like the world in the movie Die Hard 4 (also known as Live Free or Die Hard). That movie’s plot involves hackers causing blackouts, blowing up government buildings, and trying to shut down America’s computer system.

“We at Kaspersky Labs have been aware for a long time that such a scenario was possible, but until that movie came out in 2007, we forbade anyone inside the organization from using the term ‘cyber-terrorist.’ Now that the cat is out of the bag, we routinely use that word to describe what is going on.”

He, and other researchers like him, are hard at work coming up with the solutions as the problems arise. What’s at stake, he said, is nothing less “than life as we know it today. Let’s hope and pray we can keep the cyber world safe for our kids and grandkids.”

Mass Transit Cameras Spot Bad Guys, No Human Judgment Required

 A new camera system for San Francisco's MUNI system will use algorithms and machine learning to track and monitor commuters. Can computer programs predict bad guys... and what will they be looking for?

By Neal Ungerleider

A new breed of security cameras can supposedly detect terrorism and crime without a human judgment call--and mass transit agencies are shelling out big bucks for the product. San Francisco's Municipal Transit Authority, which oversees the city's MUNI trains, has signed a contract with security firm BRS Labs to deploy cameras to 12 subway stations that use algorithms and machine learning techniques to spot anomalous behavior.

BRS Labs is a security firm that provides behavior recognition software for video surveillance. The company's clients include government, tourist attractions, military bases, and private industry; BRS's software issues real-time text alerts when cameras detect strange behavior. Servers connected to security cameras observe locations for weeks at a time and then establish a baseline of “normal” behavior based on this timespan; anomalous activities afterwards (loitering, abandoned packages, abnormally high/low numbers of passengers) trigger an alert. No tripwires or programming of initial parameters are required.

According to a publicly available product bid, the San Francisco MUNI project will include up to 22 connected cameras at each train station; video monitoring will be conducted by train control, MUNI Metro East facility, and in-station personnel. The video systems will build memories of observed behavior patterns that mature with time; the systems, in the bid's words, “[have] the capability to learn from what [they] observe.”

In an interview with Fast Company, BRS Labs President John Frazzini said that the company's AIsight behavior recognition product relies on 11 patents related to computer vision technology and surveillance imagery. BRS's patents primarily deal with the intersection between computer vision and machine learning; video footage grabbed by MUNI cameras will be automatically translated into code for real-time processing. Clips of anomalous activity are dispatched to MUNI employees automatically; SMS text message alerts are also sent to staffers' mobile phones.

The post-9/11 emphasis on “homeland security” and anti-terrorism efforts has resulted in a gold rush of surveillance contracts from mass transit agencies and public institutions nationwide. While large mass transit agencies such as New York's MTA and Chicago's CTA have been cagey about their counter-terrorism efforts, trade show presentations and chatter in industry publications have given a basic idea of what is happening. Apart from machine learning-based video surveillance, subway security has also taken on wackier (and scarier) aspects: The Homeland Security Department has publicly announced their plans to release bacteria into Boston T tunnels this summer in order to test new biological weapon detectors deployed throughout the subway system.

The same technology that's being deployed in San Francisco's subway is also intended for the global market. BRS, which is based in Houston, has overseas offices in London, Sao Paulo, and Barcelona. BRS Labs' AISight product is primarily intended for use in counter-terrorism efforts. AISight's software algorithm has limited success in detecting in-station muggings or subway perverts, two issues of much more immediate interest to mass transit ridership than terrorist attacks.

Another unique aspect of BRS's product is the fact that it heavily relies on timestamps and time recognition. Behavior and objects are coded according to the times of day or days of the week in which they most frequently occur; the velocity, acceleration, and path of customers passing through a station are analyzed as well. Spatial anomalies and classification anomalies are taken into account as well.

One worrying--or appealing to budget-minded clients--aspect of BRS's product is the fact that their software product sharply reduces the need for human camera maintenance. The algorithms behind AISight compensate for lighting changes, shaky images, and poor bandwidth. Between the automated evaluation of “anomalies” and their software-based maintenance process, the need for human supervision for effective software operation sharply declines.

BRS's promotional literature promises that their software product can accurately detect loitering in unusual places at train stations, abandoned objects, and “tailgating” at entrances.

Verified customers of BRS's system beyond the SFMTA include the City of Houston, Boeing, the Louisiana Port Commission, the City of Birmingham (AL), and security contractors for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Publicly available documents indicate that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is deploying BRS's technology for a pilot project at the World Trade Center as well. Fast Company is based at the World Trade Center complex.