Holograms Help Protect Super Bowl 287
Apache4857 writes to tell us CNet is reporting that Homeland Security agents monitoring the Superbowl will be doing so in 3D. Using streams from two cameras, the LifeVision 3D system is able to project images onto a 20-inch screen that is equipped with a depth tube. This depth tube makes images appear to rise 30 inches off the screen and sink 30 inches into the screen allowing real world volumes and distances to be displayed accurately. Using this system security officials will be able to search sidewalks, monitor faces, and even peer under vehicles.
But still... (Score:5, Insightful)
(i know hologram sounds cool, but you cannot call any crap that has some stereoscopic view that way)
What a profitable use of funds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Best,
Paul
Cost (Score:4, Insightful)
Under vehicles, ya right (Score:4, Insightful)
Gosh, how terribly impressive! (Score:5, Insightful)
Net result in security: nil.
Bruce Schneier has some excellent things to say about "security" measures that defend against movie-plot threats. If you don't read Crypto-Gram yet, go sign yourself up, and learn how counter-intuitive reality can be.
(You might also think about how little you should trust your own intuition, and then deduce things about people who boast of theirs... but I don't want to interfere with domestic political matters :)
Corporate Welfare (Score:2, Insightful)
Tell me again... why do taxpayer dollars have to pay for security at this game? Let the NFL pay for their own damn security. Or is the NFL technically a "foreign country"?
Scant on details (Score:3, Insightful)
Best
Paul
Protecting an obvious target (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Corporate Welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Because tax-paying Americans are the vast majority of those attending the Super Bowl, which is held here on our homeland, in the United States of America.
Put another way, if there is an emergency at your local shopping mall, it's the local taxpayer-supported police and fire departments that will come to help. The mall rent-a-cops are only there as first responders and as a first line of defense. The local taxpayer-supported agencies do all of the real work, including booking/charging teenage petty theft.
Terrorists obviously want to attack the Superbowl (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh, the irony... (Score:4, Insightful)
You think if the average person knew that they were using hologram like TVs to moniter the Super Bowl they would reject its use? That is down right silly. The Super Bowl is a big and obvious target. It is a target being attended by thousands and watched by hundreds of millions. Any terrorist worth his salt would hit the Super Bowl if they had the ability.
We accept cameras in banks because they are obvious targets for criminals. You honestly believe that people would not accept monitoring an even larger target with a significantly higher capacity for the loss of human life?
Really people. Just think before you post something silly like this. I imagine that everyone walking into the Super Bowl realizes that they are going to be on a camera, and I imagine that a super majority of them are glad that police, cameras, and all other manner of monitoring devices are trying to pick through the crowd to find the one crazy nut job with a bomb and a need to get some air time. If you believe otherwise, you are deeply out of touch with reality.
Re:oh, the irony... (Score:2, Insightful)
Then they're idiots, because that one crazy nut job with the bomb would be hiding in plain sight with a bomb in his jacket and looking indistinguishable to a camera because it's January. And even if someone finds him or stops him to look under his jacket, no matter where he goes, he's always surrounded by dozens of people. When the cop puts his hand on him, they're all gone.
If you haven't caught him by the time he gets to the building, you lose.
Obviously I'm not discouraging security, 'cause you need that there anyway, but if anyone feels that the security presence has any hope of actually saving a life, they're just being silly.
Peering under anything doubtful. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are not going to see the undercarriage of a car, or of a skirt-donning femme. As Stevie Wonder put it, you can't turn nothing into something... Without some vantage point from a camera actually on the ground looking up, you can infer nothing and cannot create the image of the underside of the target.
This sounds like a severe case of security theater (or budding fascism depending on how you see it).
Re:Protecting an obvious target (Score:5, Insightful)
Attacks don't follow the media; the media follows the attacks. If they happen to be in the same place at the same time, it's just more convenient for both of them. If anything, this would be the day to go the capitol building or something, just because security's all scrabling over the game.
Re:Gosh, how terribly impressive! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Free PR = They gave it to them to use for free (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm almost certain that it is sitting there, turned off... with 3 beers sitting on it.
Bad Analogy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:oh, the irony... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your description of the Superbowl as a 'target' belies the extent to which you have swallowed hook line and sinker the philosophy of defensive fear. If "terrorists" want to do the Superbowl then they will do the Superbowl, and it will happen by some hideously clever, unexpected and audacious method that no amount of vigillance could have prevented. You and I and every other intelligent man and woman alive know this to be a truth.
This same argument could be used to point to all policing as being worthless. Why bother having police when you and I both know to be truth that the criminals will find some way to avoid the police?
It is a bullshit argument.
There is a will out there by someone to blow something up in the Super Bowl. If you think your average Iraq insurgent who is more then willing to blow himself up in a crowd of Iraqi Shiites praying in a Mosque wouldn't think twice about blowing himself up in the middle of the Super Bowl, you are delusional. This isn't paranoia, this is a simple reality. There are those out there that would inflict harm upon US civilians (rightly or wrongly) if they had the means. The point is that they don't have the means. Simply crossing from Iraq to the US undetected with explosives enough to do damage puts this well out of the capacity of most insurgents. If there was no security set up to prevent such things, they would simply send a crate of explosives, jump in an air plane, and fly over. It isn't good morality that keeps these people from doing so. They just simply don't have the means to cross between countries armed without raising red flags.
In order to prevent such attacks, you need to make the means of attacking as difficult as possible. Certainly you can't stop everything, but you can set the bar so high as to turn off all but the most dedicated and will organized. The means of making such an attack improbable starts at monitering the people and material that enter the nation. The final obstacle of course is Super Bowl security.
Now, that isn't to say that there is NO means of attack, simply that the means of attack has been made exponentially harder. Instead of shipping over explosive via freight and people via airplane, loading everyone up with a suicide vest, and simply walking in, they need to devise an increasingly more complex and risky plan. They need to some how illicitly get people and materials into the nation. Once inside the nation, they need to find a method of delivery to get it past security. At each barrier erected, they need to take more extreme actions to achieve their ends. In this case, they probably would not ship explosives in as the barrier to shipping in explosives is too high, to traceable, and too risky. They might try and make a homemade bomb. For that they would need to ship in a bomb expert and potentially raise red flags buying materials. They would then need a delivery method. Simply walking in is a near impossibility, especially if they want live television coverage. They might instead opt to rent a light plain to deliver the explosives. In doing this they need to forge identities, learn to fly, load the explosives, take off without arousing suspicion, and enter restricted air space. Finally, they need to devise some method of detonation that might or might not work. Further, this attack would be less effective because of the limited amount of explosives they could deliver. If they were simply allowed to ship people from wherever they wanted and enter into the stadium as they pleased, they could merrily bring over dozens of armed people.
Re:Gosh, how terribly impressive! (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's no point patching XP; any real hacker will just discover a new exploit."
"Why bathe? I'm just going to get dirty again!"
"No point saving this money when I'm just going to spend it eventually anyway!"
I mean really, when you get down to it, the only thing police do is clean up after crimes; they almost never prevent them. We could save tons of money if we just abolished law enforcement.
It's impossible to prevent every eventuality, but if you can reasonably implement measures to stop or deter most of the obvious ones, there's no reason not to. Conversely, it doesn't make sense to pour resources into preventing unlikely attacks. Should we set up a grid underground to prevent someone from tunneling in? Equip the stadium with rotary blades in case it needs to make a quick getaway? With finite resources, you have to apply them toward preventing the most obvious scenarios, and then work your way toward less the less likely/feasible options. And unless security is priceless to you, you quickly reach the point of diminishing returns. The whole reason people are upset about the PATRIOT Act, NSA spying, etc. is because they believe it's too high of a price to pay for security. But apparently you disagree.
Re:Protecting an obvious target (Score:1, Insightful)
If your goal is to kill Americans, get it viewed live by an American audience, and have Americans feel effected, FIFA is roughly the last thing I would target. I doubt the average American even knows what FIFA is, muchless watches it. Targeting an international event that almost all nations of the world except the US follows seems like a pretty stupid way to make a statement about American actions in the Middle East. That is like blowing up a hunk of the Great Wall in China to protest European colonialism in Africa. It is a really, really, really stupid idea.
Re:I must be wasting my time... (Score:2, Insightful)
I am an open minded person and I do not start fights - I just finish them when I have to. It's not like we go around just pulling the trigger at a whim, there's a little thing called Rules Of Engagement we have to follow. The people who get killed by Americans are either considered hostiles (clearly defined in RoE) or very unfortunate collateral damage.
Violence is not always the answer, but sometimes it is the only answer your adversaries will understand. How do you explain to a Jihadist who is willing to kill himself, because he believes unshakably that he will go to paradise, not to fight against you? "Oh we're sorry, we won't be a big mean antagonist anymore." ? You say that, he levels his AK-47 at your face, and you tell me...what is YOUR course of action? I agree with your point being anti-war when there is no need for war - but I will defend my family and friends tooth and nail. Thou Shalt Not Murder.
One reason to hate us, we're the richest and we're the superpower. People hate the popular. Jealousy rears its ugly head. Sure America has its flaws, there is no question there.
Peering under cars? (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny how the article linked says NOTHING AT ALL about peering under cars. So, is it a sensationalist submitted headline? Something the editor made up and added? A line from a different article? What?
Re:Terrorists strike military targets (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Terror defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
need for realism (Score:2, Insightful)
Let me explain.
I had a house that seemed to be a burglar magnet. It had lots of windows and outbuildings and was on a couple of acres, and there were open fields across the road and behind me, and on one side there was a church (on the corner). So there was relatively little chance any neighbors would see and report suspicious activity. Anyway, first most of the easily pawned tools and equipment was stolen out of the garage, and the back door into the house was busted, but nothing stolen from inside. Later a window frame and all was pried off the house, still there was not much worth stealing.
I did get paranoid and considered alarm systems, survelliance, traps, beefing up all the doors and windows, etc. I did put some lights and a stereo on timers, and did make sure that the easiest ways in had locks and latches as much as possible. I had a couple of girls living with me at the time and they were somewhat scared that someone would break in while they were there and rape or kidnap them. I even missed some work trying to mix up the pattern of visible vehicles in the driveway.
Realizing that the over reaction to the perceived threat was becoming worse than the actual risk I did go two weeks without locking the front door when I was at work. In my mind I had to imagine that the cost of replacing another door and frame was more than the value of anything left to steal. That two weeks was weird, but had the desired effect on me to get back into a more realistic mode of thinking, keeping me from getting into a pathologically paranoid pattern of behavior. End result there was no more burglaries, the burglars were either never coming back anyway, or came back without damaging or stealing anything.
Another time I was working on a ragtop convertible for a friend of my mother. The guy that owned it was afraid someone would steal his radio and locked the doors, but that only resulted in the top being cut adding to the cost of replacing the radio. While I was working on it I had the radio out anyway, but left a couple of old junk 8-track tape players sitting inside, first one, then another when the first one disappeared. Nothing else was stolen, and no need to replace the top.
Anyway, when analyzing the utility of a response to a percieved threat, one needs to rationally determine whether the obvious reaction, has any real benefit. Often enough what seems like the most apparent solution can easily become part of the problem.
One more example that I have heard of, but not from personal experience. Wireless cameras. You know, the one X10 promotes, and similar, also baby monitors. Seems like if you can monitor the hallway, side of the house, other rooms, without getting up that you might somehow be more secure by being aware of something you ordinarily would not be able to see, right? No! Apparently there are lots of burglars that use portable receivers, and when they pick up a signal from one of those cameras they get first of all the information that here lives someone with something worth protecting. Second, they get at the least a camera to steal and take to the pawnshop. Third, they can monitor whether any one is home. And best of all, they know that if you have money to waste on cameras, then you probably have lots of other stuff that they can steal.
Common sense often is only just common usually, and rarely is it really sensible.
Re:Terrorists strike military targets (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the WTC was OBVIOUSLY military/government/industrial. Oh yes. You'll probably try to say that you consider it "industrial," but that's not technically correct. A better way to categorize the companies located there would be "commercial." You see, "industrial" would refer to companies that provide infrastructure (Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, etc.) for the military and the government. However, from what I understand, the World Trade Center housed mostly financial institutions that in and of themselves were not causing great harm to the world at large, and have no real link to the government or military. Terrorists DO target civilians. They do it to cause terror (funny how that works, eh?).
So bombing military/government/industrial targets would turn public opinion their way? Hell, from what I've seen in other comments here, bombing a football game would turn (geek) public opinion towards them. That's neither here nor there, however. As I mentioned above, terrorists work by inciting terror. What do you think would happen if the millions of people worldwide who were watching this "stupid football game" suddenly saw the thousands of people in the stadium get blown sky high? I'm thinking there'd be more than a few terrorized souls out there... Sound like something that terrorists would like? If it doesn't, you're not paying attention.
Being formally at war would require them to be formally recognized as a nation/state. This is not the case. We are not "formally" at war until Osama declares himself the Grand High Poobah of Terrorstan in Exile and the U.S. acknowledges Terrorstan as a legitimate nation. Since the chances of this happening are nigh unto zero, we cannot claim that we are "formally at war." As author Gore Vidal put it (and I'm paraphrasing here, as I'm quoting from memory off of a comment made on the History Channel's recent special on Abraham Lincoln): "The war on terror is a metaphor. It's like saying you're waging a war on dandruff."
Also (and more importantly), note that we were not at war (formally or otherwise) at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
So that's why they attacked us? Because we invaded them, bombed them, etc? It's funny, but I don't recall that happening until after 9/11. Yes, I'll grant you that no football team has done any of that and our military/government has. I'm not defending the actions taken on our behalf, but the fact that the football teams in question are innocent has no bearing on whether or not the game gets attacked. The fact that thousands upon thousands of Americans are all gathered in one spot is key. And on top of that, millions more people are focused directly on that one spot. I'm sure the janitors in the WTC never invaded/bombed/exploited the terrorists, either, but the terrorists killed them right alongside everyone else. Think about it.
WTF? (Score: -1, Offtopic)