[LINK] global police: "It's definitely moving more toward policework, "

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of Kim Holburn
> Sent: Tuesday, 3 May 2011 9:37 PM
> To: Link list
> Subject: [LINK] global police: "It's definitely moving more 
> toward policework, "
> 
> 
> For those of you who don't think this is about the US 
> exporting their police style SWAT teams to the rest of the 
> world here's an article (with some link related high tech 
> doohickies as well).
> 
> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/csi-bin-laden-commando
> s-use-thumb-eye-scans-to-track-terrorists/
> 
> >The 
> > latest version, developed by a company called Crossmatch, 
> is known as 
> > SEEK II, and it came out last year. It weighs less than 4 
> pounds, and 
> > its ability to send information back to the FBI database is 
> > "wham-bam," even from low-connectivity areas.
> > 
> > To pull that off, SEEK II has built-in wireless capability and 
> > optional 3G to push or pull biometric info from the 
> database. If that 
> > doesn't work, USB ports connect SEEK to other computers. The device 
> > runs on Windows XP.
> > <SNIP>

Dunno Kim, it seems pretty low tech to me. 
(Possibly an updated version of.... [1])

Hell, in 1998, we had a prototype on the test bench called a PCD that
used WiFi then CDMA/GSM with a fallback to Analogue, a 6 MHz datachannel
(at UHF) and last but not least Iridium.
Five chipsets, three coil antennas and two stub antennas, it was ugly,
(we borrowed the 3Com Palm pilot comms adapter for the analogue to
Digital conversions) but hell, it seemed a hell of a lot more advanced
in the comms department than the latest US "state of art" ET Call home
device.

It seems to me the US developers could take a leaf out of Winston the
Pidgeons MO. 
After all, interception on a sim card attached to a pidgeon leg is a lot
harder to do unobserved than a 3G mobile phone connection.

If that's the best the US can do, I think aussie technology has them
beat.
The wham bam portion is merely advanced compression algorythms and both
fingerprints and DNA can be sent as co-ordinates and not bitmaps.
(Fingerprints are X,Y & Z)

But we have learnt that publicity usually gets the votes.
The more you shout about how great and (borrowing an eBayism) extremely
rare something is the more likely someone is gunna want to buy it.

I think the Australian Protection Agencies could do a lot better with a
home grown version.

(Besides- you really have to read about the mess that the FBI 10 MB per
fingerprint database is to understand why that it isnt what you would
call a success story.)

[1]
http://www.iphoneappindex.com/2009/01/29/are-your-fingerprints-in-the-fb
i-database/

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