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The photo above is, according to the BBC, an extremely rare photo of Barack Obama inside his top secret tent. The tent is an example of a mobile secure area also known as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, "designed to allow officials to have top secret discussions on the move." In fact, the BBC reports, "they are one of the safest places in the world to have a conversation."
This particular SCIF has been set up in the middle of a hotel room in Brazil—you can see the carpet pattern on the floor. Obama was on a pre-arranged trip to Brazil when airstrikes in Libya began on Saturday, and needed a secure facility from which to talk to his Secretaries of State and Defense, as well as fellow coalition leaders.
While the tent material looks like fairly standard blue tarpaulin, it is actually completely soundproof, windowless, and "made from a secret material which is designed to keep emissions in and listening devices out." The BBC quotes Phil Lago, whose company, Command Consulting Group, regularly supplies SCIFs to government agencies, who explains that a "ring of electronic waves" ensures that only signals from an encrypted satellite phone can get in and out.
Apparently, the President never travels without his SCIF, which is surprisingly portable. According to Lago, "You can usually fit them into two large foot lockers and that's most of the equipment you need."
The exact specifications of these mobile security pods are top secret, and for most of us, this photo will be the closest we ever get to a SCIF. James Bond, eat your heart out!
Image: Barack Obama and advisers inside his SCIF, via the BBC; story via @bldgblog
Andrew Blum has a short piece up at the Atlantic today about the geography of "internet choke points," and the threat of a "kill switch" that would allow countries (like Egypt) to turn off the internet on a national scale.
After all, Blum writes, "it's worth remembering that the Internet is a physical network," with physical vulnerabilities. "It matters who controls the nodes." Indeed, he adds, "what's often forgotten is that those networks actually have to physically connect—one router to another—often through something as simple and tangible as a yellow-jacketed fiber-optic cable. It's safe to suspect a network engineer in Egypt had a few of them dangling in his hands last night.
Blum specifically refers to a high-security building in Miami owned by Terremark; it is "the physical meeting point for more than 160 networks from around the world," and thus just one example of what Blum calls an internet "choke point." These international networks "meet there because of the building's excellent security, its redundant power systems, and its thick concrete walls, designed to survive a category 5 hurricane. But above all, they meet there because the building is 'carrier-neutral.' It's a Switzerland of the Internet, an unallied territory where competing networks can connect to each other."
But, as he points out, this neutrality is by no means guaranteed—and is even now subject to change.
The Stuxnet worm, which has reportedly been successfully targeted at Iranian nuclear plants, is being widely reported as originating from a government agency or well-funded source with political intent. The CEO of Kaspersky Lab, however, says that, whilst there is insufficient evidence to point the finger of blame at anyone yet, the worm represents a new age in cyber warfare.
According to Eugene Kaspersky, the veteran CEO of the Russian-headquartered IT security vendor, Stuxnet is backed by a well-funded, highly skilled attack team with intimate knowledge of SCADA technology.
And, he says, his research team believe this type of attack could only be conducted with nation-state support and backing.
"I think that this is the turning point, this is the time when we got to a really new world, because in the past there were just cybercriminals, now I am afraid it is the time of cyberterrorism, cyberweapons and cyberwars", he said.
Speaking at the Kaspersky security symposium in Munich late last week, the founder of Kaspersky Labs said that Stuxnet represents the opening of a Pandora's Box.
"This malicious program was not designed to steal money, send spam or grab personal data. This piece of malware was designed to sabotage plants, to damage industrial systems", he explained.
"I am afraid this is the beginning of a new world. Twenty years ago we were faced with cybervandals, ten years ago we were faced with cybercriminals, I am afraid now it is a new era of cyberwars and cyberterrorism."
Researchers at Kaspersky Lab say they have independently discovered that the worm exploited four separate zero-day vulnerabilities.
"Our analysts reported three of these new vulnerabilities directly to Microsoft and co-ordinated closely with the vendor during the creation and release of software fixes", the Kaspersky Lab founder told his audience.
In addition to exploiting four zero-day vulnerabilities, Kaspersky claims that Stuxnet also used two valid certificates (from Realtek and JMicron), which has helped to keep the malware under the radar for quite a long period of time.
The worm's ultimate aim, he said, was to access Simatic WinCC SCADA, used as industrial control systems that monitor and control industrial, infrastructure, or facility-based processes.
Eugene Kaspersky's comments were backed up by David Jacoby, his senior security researcher, who told his audience that no operating system is now safe from hackers, even if "some believe certain systems are better equipped to fend off attacks than others".
Reporting on the symposium for ITPro, writer Tom Brewster quoted Jacoby as saying that the reality is that all systems have their flaws which hackers will attempt to exploit and – despite some people's belief Linux and Mac users are safer – all are vulnerable."
"It doesn't really matter what you use", he said, noting that there is no such thing as a secure operating system.
As a result of this, Jacoby argued that firms need to have the total package to protect their systems, from the right technology and anti-virus to local hardening and stronger resource segmentation to prevent spreading infections.
Security legend Paul Kocher talks about the attitudes shaping Congress's latest tech misstep.
If the Internet ever does something unfriendly to the national security interests of the United States, what if the president of said Union could pick up a cold war-era style phone - or maybe whip out an iPhone pre-loaded with a custom "kill the internet" app - and order that it be shut down?
That's what activists are saying is one potential outcome of the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. The so-called "Internet Kill Switch" is not actually an outcome of that bill, by the way - some commentators have compared this meme to the "death panels" myth that almost derailed the healthcare bill.
But the fact remains that the president has broad power under the 1934 Telecommunications Act to restrict "wire communications" during a time of war - and that includes the Internet. So even under existing laws, an off switch for the United States' most important information conduit is, in theory at least, only one over-eager lawmaker in chief away from reality.
Paul Kocher, current CEO of Cryptography Research, is a legend in the field of security - one of the engineers behind SSL 3.0 and an innovator in a host of other areas. Recently I interviewed him on the subject; here's what he had to say about the so-called "Internet Kill Switch."
"It's a Rorschach blot."
"On one level it's, absurd, and on others it's impractical and frightening. It's a Rorschach blot.
When you build something that will shut down a massively critical piece of infrastructure that people have tried to make reliable, that's a more frightening prospect than anything that could have inspired such a defense."
"It's a very blunt weapon."
"Networks like internet are critical for a lot of tasks - if you ever flipped a switch on that, you'd cause tremendous amounts of harm. It's unclear you'd get any particular benefit from doing that."
"Maybe I'm being cynical, but my read on the rationale [for the Internet Kill Switch] is that it's a fear of technology."
"The idea that people can kill the technology if they wish to makes people feel reassured that the technology won't go rogue in some way. If you had an army of robots walking around you'd like to have switch to turn them off - people still have that concept of the Internet."
"I can guarantee every teenage hacker will try to figure out how to trigger it."
[Ed. It goes without saying that Paul was once one of those teenage hackers, and knows whereof he speaks.]
"If I want my name in the paper, or to have an effect that's bad on the world, it's hard to think of something more perfectly designed for that kind of use."
Attemps to degrade the quality of civilian GPS signals shows that disabling communications networks hurts the good guys more than it hurts the bad guys.
"The whole GPS infrastructure is built with a mechanism where they can degrade the quality of location measurements. It's designed so they could have the military have more accurate GPS units than civilians.
But it turned out the military ended up using civilain GPS receivers because they're cheaper. They ended up disabling the degradation capability because the harm caused to the U.S. military exceeds the benefit to the folks they're fighting."
"Stopping a Denial of Service attack by shutting down the Internet is like trying to stop a small explosion by triggering a much larger one."
"You could conceivably come up with ways to bring down the entire Internet, by playing games with BGP protocol or bringing down the entire DNS archicecture. But you can't stop a pinpointed attack with this.... If you had a kill switch you'd either shut down entire internet or achieve nothing.
"The question this comes down to is, 'Is there some scenario where one would really want to bring the entire internet down?'"
"Everybody working from home: gone. Everybody's [VoIP] phone connection: gone. Everybody's website: gone. That's the only binary choice you can really achieve with this."
For technical as well as political reasons, no bill with anything resembling an "Internet Kill Switch" will ever be signed into law.
"If Congress decrees electrons have positive charge and gravity goes in the other direction, it doesn't mean it's possible to achieve those things.... But the reality is that if something like that came close to passing there would be a tremendous outcry.
"The government has had some misleading experience with this area, with telephone switches where there are requirements that there be backdoors so law enforcement can do wiretaps and eavesdrop on calls. But there's a lot more homogeneity in telephone infrastructure than within the packet-switched internet infrastructure.
The way things usually go is that is a parole board has to deliberate over a convicted person's past crimes and their behavior to determine if they are fit for release from prison. Now, a college professor says that computers could fulfill this role with greater accuracy.
"This system can forecast which inmates will kill again," says University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Berk. "With the help of years of computer data, I can separate the really bad guys being released from the people who probably won't re-offend."
His computer system is actually being used already in probation departments in Philadelphia and Baltimore, though right now it's flagging potential problematic convicts rather than deciding who should stay and who should get released from prison.
The computers make decisions based on models that are built for each criminal, taking in factors such as age, the nature of the crime and other details such as the murder weapon used. The more information the computers have, the better its chances of determining whether someone would kill again as it matches that profile up against what is statistically likely to happen historically.
Pre-Cogs, anyone? The trio of living computers from Minority Report, pictured above, were tasked with knowing when a crime would be committed while it was still a thought in someone's mind.
In some countries, people have been able to pay for stuff using their smartphones for a while now. When they go to vending machines or store counters in some countries all the buyer has to do is swipe their phone to pay. Here in the US credit card payment systems using smartphones are not available.
AT&T and Verizon are looking to change that though. The wireless carriers are planning to work together to bring smartphones to market that can work as a credit card. The two rival carriers are working together on a plan Bloomberg reports the carriers hope will rival MasterCard and Visa.
T-Mobile is also part of the scheme to replace credit cards with smartphones. The payment system would reportedly run charges through the Discover network. If the plan works Discover could move up from fourth place in the ranks of credit card company size.
A nice walk, spoiled (by utterly pointless signage). Image by Kate Gordon Roger, Morayshire
The Manifesto Club is an organisation that campaigns against the hyperregulation of everyday life and the increased threat to public freedoms. Their new book, Attention Please, is a collection of photographs that document the use of prescriptive safety signage that, far from alerting people to imminent danger, merely highlights the absurd policing of ordinary people doing ordinary things...
This printed version of the original Attention Please online gallery (that began in 2007) includes a selection of pictures of "pseudo-safety signage", as the Manifesto Club's Josie Appleton writes in her introduction.
The book, designed by St Pierre & Miquelon, features images of cones surrounding innocuous tree stumps, yellow 'privacy zones' outside cashpoints, and the countless site-specific warning signs that can really, really annoy (not to mention impinge upon a nice view).
Take the following picture of some presumably long-aged gravetones in a cemetery in Tooting, London, for example:
Not content with erecting a tasteful blue plastic fence around a (admittedly headless) statue, Lambeth council alert all passing visitors – not to mention mourners – that some of the traditionally static blocks of marble and sandstone may, in fact, cause harm:
Images by Timandra Harkness, Tooting, London
Check out exactly what's being cornered-off in these examples of some decidedly over-zealous fencing:
Image by Simon Elvins, Latitude Festival, Suffolk
A patch of bare earth. But it is on a slight incline. Careful now.
Image by Simon Elvins, Lisbon
Image by Dan Shadbolt, Highgate, London
Amusing as these images and most of the ones in the book are; the Manifesto Club's point is far from a joke.
They believe that the hundreds of instances where signage no longer signifies a significant risk are, in themselves, detrimental to public life, particulary to our enjoyment of public space.
Image by Ryan Ras, Hyde Park, London
Walk down any high street (and this is in no way unique to the UK) and the proliferation of ugly, unnecessary and patronising safety signs is overwhelming.
You don't have to look hard for example either – the stripey tape, the orange cones and lines of yellow paint can make an appearance in the most innocuous of places.
Can you spot the steps in this picture of the entrance to a Leeds University building? (Clue: they're just behind the trees).
Image by Mark Harrop, Leeds University
Safe banking, thanks to an ATM PRIVACY AREA. Image by Josie Appleton, Brighton
But, worryingly, as Appleton states in her introduction, what's happening more and more is that "caution [is being] integrated into design itself."
Next time you're on a new Virgin train, check the carriage doors from the inside. Each one has multiple day-glo stripes and built-in warning lights. Safety first, or just excessive?
In this case, far from being council busy bodies who need to rein in their use of signage, it's designers who have the opportunity to stop the spread of this virulent visual disease.
Image by Matthew Barnes, Southwark, London
This one, however, can stay.
Attention Please is published and distributed by Manifesto Club and is available to buy, here, for £12 (plus p&p). The book is edited and designed by Josie Appleton and the design group, St Pierre & Miquelon.
Regulations, privacy and security concerns, and other issues could hold back developments.
By Kevin Bullis
Smarter meter: Possible strategies for reducing energy consumption rely on devices that can send and receive information from utilities and communicate wirelessly with appliances.
Credit: Kevin Bullis, Technology Review
A smarter electricity grid could fundamentally change the way people pay for and manage their electricity use. In theory, the technology could help reduce demand, save money, and improve reliability and efficiency. But implementing the necessary changes will be difficult, according to experts attending a symposium on the smart grid at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY, this week. They expect resistance from regulators and consumers alike, citing the complexity of the proposed system as well as concerns about privacy and security.
The smart grid will incorporate new networking technology, including sensors and controls that make it possible to monitor electricity use in real time and make automatic changes that reduce energy waste. Furthermore, grid operators should be able to instantly detect problems that could lead to cascading outages, like the ones that cut power to the northeastern United States in 2003. And the technology ought to allow energy companies to incorporate more intermittent, renewable sources of electricity, such as wind turbines, by keeping the grid stable in the face of minute-by-minute changes in output.
For consumers, the smart grid could also mean radical changes in the way they pay for electricity. Instead of a flat rate, they could be charged much more at times of high demand, encouraging them to reduce their energy use during these periods. Companies such as GE are developing refrigerators, dryers, and other appliances that can automatically respond to signals from the utility, shutting off or reducing energy consumption to allow consumers to avoid paying the peak prices. Such strategies could allow utilities to put off building new transmission lines and generators to meet peak demand--savings that could be important as proposed regulations on carbon dioxide emissions force them to switch to more expensive sources of electricity.
But the necessary changes could prove difficult for consumers to adjust to, says Garry Brown, chairman of the New York State Public Service Commission, a utility regulator. Industrial and commercial electricity customers already have variable electricity rates that change with the time of day, but "they have the ability and expertise and wherewithal to figure out what to do with this," Brown says. "They have a manager that spends their life trying to react to it." Ordinary consumers don't have that advantage. Indeed, in the 1990s the New York state legislature blocked mandatory variable pricing amid concerns about the impact it could have on customers who couldn't avoid peak prices, such as people who must use electric-powered medical equipment around the clock. We have to be "slow and cautious," about introducing the technology, Brown says.
The grid upgrade may also face resistance from regulators because some of the benefits are difficult to measure. Regulators are responsible for ensuring that utilities make wise investments that restrain the price of electricity. But improved efficiency and reliability can't easily be quantified, says Bryan Olnick, a senior director at the major utility Florida Power and Light. He says that regulators need to start considering long-term societal benefits in addition to electricity costs. Ultimately, regulators will need proof that the systems can deliver the promised benefits, which is why there are now smart-grid demonstration projects in places including Boulder, CO; Maui; and Miami.
Beyond the challenge of measuring results, the smart grid raises questions about national security, says Bob Gilligan, GE's vice president for transmission and distribution. "We hear a lot of concerns about cyberterrorism and attacks on our energy infrastructure," he says. "As we talk about bringing more technology into the grid, providing more connections to the energy infrastructure, there are escalating concerns about protecting that infrastructure."
Gilligan adds that the technology raises serious privacy concerns as well. "The major concern is that folks don't want to be inundated with telemarketing calls associated with their usage behavior," he says. "There's also some concern about what they're doing being known minute by minute."
The massive amount of data generated by smart-grid technology could itself pose a practical problem. Right now, a utility with five million meters has about 30,000 devices for monitoring the grid. As the smart grid develops, that number could increase a thousandfold, with each device conveying a thousand times as much information as one of its counterparts does now, says Erik Udstuen, a general manager at GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms. Though so much data may be difficult to process, it could also create opportunities for entrepreneurs to develop new monitoring applications, especially if open standards are developed.
Consumers needn't brace themselves for changes right away; it could take a decade to implement variable pricing. Meanwhile, the grid can be improved in ways that won't affect customers directly, such as reducing the amount of energy wasted in getting power from generators to consumers: 7 to 10 percent is often lost, and that figure can reach 20 or 30 percent during periods of peak demand. Meanwhile, smart meters and appliances that allow variable pricing will cost billions to develop and could take a decade to install.
Eventually, however, the smart grid could make the supply of electricity more efficient and reliable, and it could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by promoting renewable technologies and reducing overall power consumption. "In the long run," says James Gallagher, a senior vice president at the New York City Development Corp, "it will lead to lower rates."
Discovered via the breathless Bryan Finoki of Subtopia and his epic feral version of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is Sinnoveg, a France-based tree nursery and horticulture research center specializing in “securitizing sites, goods and persons by a concept of anti-intrusion security integrated into the environment.” As described, this “natural concept is based on planting of a hedge of thorny plants, weaved into each other and into metallic elements of reinforcement.”
According to Agence France-Presse, the company has planted “vegetation barriers around a nuclear research centre outside Paris, a juvenile detention centre, train stations and airports.” And now, they want to take their patented shrubs to Baghdad's Green Zone and replacing its “vast network of concrete blast walls with terrorist-proof trees and bushes.”
To make the vege-walls more secure, “traditional barbed wire, tyre spikes, sensors and even metal barriers can be placed within the hedges - an invisible back-up layer of security sure to surprise any potential suicide bomber.”
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations.
This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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