Locational wireless and social media-based surveillance

The number of smartphones and tablets as well as the volume of traffic generated by these devices has been growing constantly over the past decade and this growth is predicted to continue at an increasing rate over the next five years. Numerous native features built into contemporary smart devices enable highly accurate digital fingerprinting techniques. Furthermore, software developers have been taking advantage of locational capabilities of these devices by building applications and social media services that enable convenient sharing of information tied to geographical locations. Mass online sharing resulted in a large volume of locational and personal data being publicly available for extraction. A number of researchers have used this opportunity to design and build tools for a variety of uses – both respectable and nefarious. Furthermore, due to the peculiarities of the IEEE 802.11 specification, wireless-enabled smart devices disclose a number of attributes, which can be observed via passive monitoring. These attributes coupled with the information that can be extracted using social media APIs present an opportunity for research into locational surveillance, device fingerprinting and device user identification techniques. This paper presents an in-progress research study and details the findings to date

The impact and penetration of location-based services

Since the invention of digital technology, its development has followed an entrenched path ofminiaturisation and decentralisation with increasing focus on individual and niche applications. Computerhardware has moved from remote centres to desktop and hand held devices whilst being embedded invarious material infrastructures. Software has followed the same course. The entire process has convergedon a path where various analogue devices have become digital and are increasingly being embedded inmachines at the smallest scale. In a parallel but essential development, there has been a convergence ofcomputers with communications ensuring that the delivery and interaction mechanisms for computersoftware is now focused on networks of individuals, not simply through the desktop, but in mobilecontexts. Various inert media such as fixed television is becoming more flexible as computers and visualmedia are becoming one.With such massive convergence and miniaturisation, new software and new applications define the cuttingedge. As computers are being increasingly tailored to individual niches, then new digital services areemerging, many of which represent applications which hitherto did not exist or at best were rarely focusedon a mass market. Location based services form one such application and in this paper, we will bothspeculate on and make some initial predictions of the geographical extent to which such services willpenetrate different markets. We define such services in detail below but suffice it to say at this stage thatsuch functions involve the delivery of traditional services using digital media and telecommunications.High profile applications are now being focused on hand held devices, typically involving information onproduct location and entertainment but wider applications involve fixed installations on the desktop whereservices are delivered through traditional fixed infrastructure. Both wire and wireless applications definethis domain. The market for such services is inevitably volatile and unpredictable at this early stage but wewill attempt here to provide some rudimentary estimates of what might happen in the next five to tenyears.The ?network society? which has developed through this convergence, is, according to Castells (1989,2000) changing and re-structuring the material basis of society such that information has come todominate wealth creation in a way that information is both a raw material of production and an outcome ofproduction as a tradable commodity. This has been fuelled by the way technology has expanded followingMoore?s Law and by fundamental changes in the way telecommunications, finance, insurance, utilitiesand so on is being regulated. Location based services are becoming an integral part of this fabric and thesereflect yet another convergence between geographic information systems, global positioning systems, andsatellite remote sensing. The first geographical information system, CGIS, was developed as part of theCanada Land Inventory in 1965 and the acronym ?GIS? was introduced in 1970. 1971 saw the firstcommercial satellite, LANDSAT-1. The 1970s also saw prototypes of ISDN and mobile telephone and theintroduction of TCP/IP as the dominant network protocol. The 1980s saw the IBM XT (1982) and thebeginning of de-regulation in the US, Europe and Japan of key sectors within the economy. Finally in the 1990s, we saw the introduction of the World Wide Web and the ubiquitous pervasion of business andrecreation of networked PC?s, the Internet, mobile communications and the growing use of GPS forlocational positioning and GIS for the organisation and visualisation of spatial data. By the end of the 20thcentury, the number of mobile telephone users had reached 700 million worldwide. The increasingmobility of individuals, the anticipated availability of broadband communications for mobile devices andthe growing volumes of location specific information available in databases will inevitably lead to thedemand for services that will deliver location related information to individuals on the move. Suchlocation based services (LBS) although in a very early stage of development, are likely to play anincreasingly important part in the development of social structures and business in the coming decades.In this paper we begin by defining location based services within the context we have just sketched. Wethen develop a simple model of the market for location-based services developing the standard non-linearsaturation model of market penetration. We illustrate this for mobile devices, namely mobile phones in thefollowing sections and then we develop an analysis of different geographical regimes which arecharacterised by different growth rates and income levels worldwide. This leads us to speculate on theextent to which location based services are beginning to take off and penetrate the market. We concludewith scenarios for future growth through the analogy of GIS and mobile penetration

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

RV Sonne Cruise 200, 11 Jan-11 Mar 2009. Jakarta - Jakarta

All plate boundaries are divided into segments - pieces of fault that are distinct from oneanother, either separated by gaps or with different orientations. The maximum size of anearthquake on a fault system is controlled by the degree to which the propagating rupture cancross the boundaries between such segments. A large earthquake may rupture a whole segmentof plate boundary, but a great earthquake usually ruptures more than one segment at once.The December 26th 2004 MW 9.3 earthquake and the March 28th 2005 MW 8.7 earthquakeruptured, respectively, 1200–1300 km and 300–400 km of the subduction boundary betweenthe Indian-Australian plate and the Burman and Sumatra blocks. Rupture in the 2004 eventstarted at the southern end of the fault segment, and propagated northwards. The observationthat the slip did not propagate significantly southwards in December 2004, even though themagnitude of slip was high at the southern end of the rupture strongly suggests a barrier at thatplace. Maximum slip in the March 2005 earthquake occurred within ~100 km of the barrierbetween the 2004 and 2005 ruptures, confirming both the physical importance of the barrier,and the loading of the March 2005 rupture zone by the December 2004 earthquake.The Sumatran Segmentation Project, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council(NERC), aims to characterise the boundaries between these great earthquakes (in terms of bothsubduction zone structure at scales of 101-104 m and rock physical properties), record seismicactivity, improve and link earthquake slip distribution to the structure of the subduction zoneand to determine the sedimentological record of great earthquakes (both recent and historic)along this part of the margin. The Project is focussed on the areas around two earthquakesegment boundaries: Segment Boundary 1 (SB1) between the 2004 and 2005 ruptures atSimeulue Island, and SB2 between the 2005 and smaller 1935 ruptures between Nias and theBatu Islands.Cruise SO200 is the third of three cruises which will provide a combined geophysical andgeological dataset in the source regions of the 2004 and 2005 subduction zone earthquakes.SO200 was divided into two Legs. Leg 1 (SO200-1), Jakarta to Jakarta between January 22ndand February 22nd, was composed of three main operations: longterm deployment OBSretrieval, TOBI sidescan sonar survey and coring. Leg 2 (SO200-2), Jakarta to Jakarta betweenFebruary 23rd and March 11th, was composed of two main operations: Multichannel seismicreflection (MCS) profiles and heatflow probe transects