Sg2009wc:sensing

From She's Geeky Wiki

Title: Open Source Sensing: Can we have both privacy and safety?

Session: 2-C Bay Area Jan 2009

Convener: Chris Peterson

Notes Taker: Laura Trippi

Attendees

Notes:

Presentation (with some discussion)

Ubiquitous sensors are coming

• what will they detect? everything motion, temperature, anything humans can detect will be detected

Is there another way to detect besides invading ("weapons of mass destruction")

If the geeks of the world had been paying attention to electronic voting we would have nipped the e-voting issue in the bud

Molecular level: Nano tech : can detect a single molecule Nano tech-based monitoring

Sewer monitoring has begun:

• at the municipal level now
• but could come right into the house
• say they were detecting drug molecules in the Computer History Museum -- then what? would make conferences like this impossible

Sensitive enough sensors:

Things worth detecting:

• explosives, chemicals, nukes: today
• bio-weapons: in early stages
• nano weapons: later

A real problem: fear + poor WMD data == big mistakes

Drives huge amounts of surveillance

In software / tech communities: Debates transparency vs privacy

Govt doesn't care

• tasked to protect us and they take that seriously

So, we can say: we have a better idea

Is there a bottom up approach to this problem?

• physical security: track the problem not the people
• decentralized
• minimal
• voluntary/privatized...

Who can figure out whether and how to collect public sensing data? Us.

Incomplete