By Katie Drummond
Your cell phone can already tell you where to find the nearest
Starbucks or the most convenient subway station. But it might soon be
smart enough to alert you to a toxic bio-threat during your morning
commute or coffee break, thanks to a new plan from the Department of
Homeland Security.
[wired.com] The last time we heard about cell phones and terrorism, it was an appeal from the NYPD to shut off cell communication during an attack. Now, Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate
want to use cell phones to detect the very threats that might be
coordinated using wireless chit-chat. Their new program, called
‘Cell-All,’ would embed inexpensive, chemical-sniffing microchips into
cellular telephones. If a dangerous level of air-based toxin is
detected, the phone would issue a warning ring (or vibration) to alert
the owner — while also sending a message to a centralized military
monitoring station.
And since the vast majority of Americans carry cell phones wherever
they go, the program would use aggregated reports of toxin detection
within a small area. If hundreds of cell phones in one location start
flooding the alert system, the military knows they’ve got a serious
threat to contend with. Detection, transmission and analysis would take
around 60 seconds, according to a press release from the Directorate.
Given that terrorist attacks are usually launched in highly
populated areas — subways, malls, office buildings — the idea of
crowd-sourcing the detection of bio-terror threats makes a lot of
sense, and using a built-in cell-phone app would give the military the
ability to detect threats in every corner of the country.
Except that, for now, the program’s manager is describing the initiative as “opt-in.”
“Privacy is as important as technology,” Stephen Dennis said. “After
all, for Cell-All to succeed, people must be comfortable enough to turn
it on in the first place.”
That’s good news for privacy zealots and conspiracy theorists, but
bad news for the program’s potential effectiveness, given that
crowd-sourced intelligence depends on knowing that there’s a crowd to
be sourced in the first place.
The Directorate is already in research and development talks with
Apple, IG, Qualcomm and Samsung, and anticipate having 40 different
cell phone prototypes within a year.
Source: http://www.wired.com
