Thursday, February 09, 2006
More Surveillance Puts Strain on Carriers
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, retired Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Michael Warren saw that many phone and Internet companies would need help meeting an expected jump in law-enforcement requests for customer calling and email information.
His prediction proved correct. Mr. Warren formed a company that won business from telecom, cable and Internet-service providers around the U.S. Last year, he sold the business for an undisclosed amount.
"There's been a significant increase in demand and pressure on companies for providing records, tracing calls and wiretapping," said Mr. Warren, now a vice president for fiduciary services at NeuStar Inc. of Sterling, Va., which bought his company. "That's led to a great deal of strain on carriers."
Often overlooked amid the controversy over the legality of the Bush administration's eavesdropping without warrants is a huge increase in recent years in the number of wiretaps conducted with court approval. Smaller telecom companies in particular have sought help from outsiders in order to comply with the court-ordered subpoenas, touching off a scramble among third parties to meet the demand for assistance.
VeriSign Inc., the communications company in Mountain View, Calif., that manages the Internet's .com and .net domain-name suffixes, entered the assistance business after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. SS8 Networks Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based company, in 2001 morphed its business into one that helps others deal with law-enforcement requests, after starting as an Internet-phone-equipment company a couple of years earlier.
The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44% to 1,710, according to the latest annual report from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The vast bulk of the wiretaps related to drug and racketeering investigations, according to the report. But terrorism and other national-security investigations also helped drive the increase, according to security experts and service providers.
CenturyTel Inc., a fixed-line phone company and Internet-service provider based in Monroe, La., serving 2.5 million customers, received about 1,500 subpoenas and court orders for customer data last year, said Stacey Goff, CenturyTel's chief legal counsel.
Almost 20% of those related to national-security matters, about double the percentage of such requests from a year earlier, he said. The overall number of requests from law enforcement for customer information has nearly doubled from about five years ago, Mr. Goff added.
"A few years ago it was drugs and divorces, that was it," said Mr. Goff. "Now, we're getting requests on more-sensitive matters."
Companies assisting carriers handling the increased law-enforcement demands typically sell software that simplifies the process of reviewing tens of thousands of phone-call records. Some third parties also provide assistance by setting up in-house compliance procedures, interacting with law-enforcement agencies and providing access to networks for wiretaps.
Smaller telecom, cable and Internet companies generally haven't received requests from the National Security Agency, the super-sensitive U.S. intelligence-gathering arm, for customer data without warrants, officials at smaller companies say. Such NSA requests -- which are at the core of the domestic eavesdropping debate -- have been aimed at large international telecom companies, which tend to handle government and law-enforcement matters in-house.
Big telecom companies in the U.S. were required under the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act to install equipment to help law enforcement keep up with advances in technology, such as the rise of cellular, the switch to digital technology from analog and new features such as call forwarding.
Now, Internet providers must also comply with the act. The Patriot Act, passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took matters a step further, giving law-enforcement agencies powers to monitor individuals and all the ways they communicate, rather than being limited to a specific communication device.
Government surveillance has intensified even more heavily overseas, particularly in Europe. Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers.
To make it easier for authorities to monitor traffic, some also require registering with identification before buying telephone calling cards or using cybercafes.
source:http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113945527128569215-ap0UyM9HXxWBrOiAX0msQpD4xsw_20070209.html?mod=blogs
Super Vision Sans Bionics
Before he became an inventor and businessman, Ron Blum was a practicing opthalmologist. About twice a year, he would encounter a patient whose eyesight was better than 20/20. Such cases of super vision were a phenomenon that Blum and the science of opthalmology couldn't explain.
"I would just say to the person: Consider yourself blessed," says Blum. "I never would have believed that I would be running a company 20 years later that was developing a product that could give supervision to anyone."
That company, PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia, just won a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to refine its "supervision" technology, which Blum claims could double the quality of a person's eyesight. "Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly," he says.
At the heart of PixelOptics' technology are tiny, electronically-controlled pixels embedded within a traditional eyeglass lens. Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer -- a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision -- and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.
Traditional glasses correct lower-order aberrations like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatisms. PixelOptics' lenses handle higher-order aberrations that are much more difficult to detect and correct.
Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person's eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light.
Software reads the scattered beam and creates a map of the patient's eye, including tiny abnormalities such as bumps, growths and valleys. The pixelated eyeglass lens is then tuned to refract light in a way that corrects for those high-level aberrations.
Blum hopes to have a working prototype within a year that is built to military specifications.
Other researchers are even closer to selling lenses based on adaptive optics. Ophthonix in San Diego has already sold thousands of the lenses in California, and expects to roll out its product soon. Andreas Dreher, the company's CEO, says the lenses won't likely improve vision beyond 20/20, but they provide better contrast and less double vision than traditional lenses. In studies the company conducted, drivers using the lenses could identify a pedestrian three-tenths of a second sooner than when wearing conventional lenses.
"The response from customers is that they can see better," says CEO Andreas Dreher, who questions the practicality of PixelOptics' aim of improving vision beyond 20/20. "Nobody has begged us to let them see a road sign two miles earlier."
Blum agrees that improving upon 20/20 vision isn't an end in itself. But people likely can't conceive of the results they might get with his company's technology. For example, slight changes in lighting and air pressure can trigger pixels to reprogram, powered by a computer built into the spectacle frames.
"Most higher-order abnormalities impact vision only under certain conditions," he says. "We can adjust dynamically to those conditions, which makes a big difference in your ability to see."
source:http://www.wired.com/news/technology/1,70181-0.html
Sharks' Sixth Sense Related to Human Genes
The same genes that give sharks their sixth sense and allow them to detect electrical signals are also responsible for the development of head and facial features in humans, a new study suggests.
The finding supports the idea that the early sea creatures which eventually evolved into humans could also sense electricity before they emerged onto land.
The study, led by Martin Cohn and his lab at the University of Florida, is detailed in the current issue of the journal Evolution & Development.
Sixth sense
Sharks have a network of special cells that can detect electricity, called electroreceptors, in their heads. They use them for hunting and navigation.
This sense is so developed that sharks can find fish hiding under sand by honing in on the weak electrical signals emitted by their twitching muscles.
The researchers examined embryos of the lesser spotted catshark. Using molecular tests, they found two independent genetic markers of neural crest cells in the sharks' electroreceptors. Neural crest cells are embryonic cells that pinch off early in development to form a variety of structures. In humans, these cells contribute to the formation of facial bones and teeth, among other things.
The finding suggests that neural crest cells migrate from the sharks' brains to various regions of the head, where they develop into electroreceptors.
Glenn Northcutt, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study, said the finding was interesting, but that more studies are needed before a direct link between neural crest cells and electroreceptors can be established.
"It still requires a definitive experiment, where the developing neural crest cells are marked with dye, the embryo develops and the dye clearly shows up in the electroreceptors," Northcutt said.
In the new study, the researchers found snippets of genetic material associated with neural crest cells in the electroreceptors. They did not dye the neural crest cells and trace their development.
Our electrical ancestors
Scientists think that all primitive animals with backbones, including the early ancestors of humans, could sense electricity. As they evolved, mammals, reptiles, birds and most fish lost the ability. Today, only sharks and a few other marine species, such as sturgeons and lampreys, can sense electricity.
"Our fishy ancestors had the anatomy for it," said study team member James Albert, a biologist from the University of Louisiana.
The ability to sense electrical signals is useful in aquatic environments because water is so conductive. On land, however, the sense is useless.
"Air doesn't conduct electricity as well," Albert said. "When it happens, it's called a lightning bolt and you don't need special receptors to sense it."
The development of the electroreceptors is believed to mirror the development of the lateral line, a sense organ in fish that allows them to detect motion in surrounding water. Similar processes are thought also to be involved in the development of the inner ear, the organs which help humans keep their balance.
The electroceptors are also believed to behind many sharks' ability to detect changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Other studies indicate that like sailors, sharks can also navigate by celestial cues.
Scientists think that these two abilities are what allow some sharks to swim straight lines across vast distances of featureless ocean. One recent study found that a great white shark, nicknamed Nicole, swam nearly 7,000 miles between South Africa and Australia in just under 100 days.
Sharks Everywhere: Vote for Your Favorite Great White Shark Sets Ocean-Crossing Record Without Sharks, Food Chain Crumbles The Myth of Tsunami Survivors' Sixth SenseVisit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Amazing Images, Image Galleries, Interactive Features, Trivia and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!
source:http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060207/sc_space/sharkssixthsenserelatedtohumangenes&printer=1;_ylt=A9FJqZ4Lf.tD9E8ANwL737YB;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
