SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The organization Citizens Against Government Waste reports that federal government agencies are setting up roadblocks that could prevent the US from winning the global race to 5G.
[...] The Departments of Commerce, Defense, Education, and Transportation have filed objections to various proposals by the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) to repurpose federal spectrum for 5G, all of which will slow down progress and effectively give an advantage to other countries like China.
Not only have the four federal agencies lost sight of the importance of achieving 5G dominance, they are also choosing to ignore a 2012 law that authorized clearing certain portions of federal spectrum to allow the FCC to re-allocate and auction it for commercial use. Indeed, they are making some absurd claims about what will happen if they no longer have the use of some or all of their spectrum. The Department of Commerce has said that relinquishing spectrum used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric would cost lives because it would reduce the ability to forecast the weather; the Department of Defense is hiding behind national security and refusing to share anything; the Department of Education is claiming that children will lose access to educational spectrum while the current use of that spectrum is under the FCC's scrutiny for possible abuse; and the Department of Transportation (DOT) is also talking about how the use of spectrum under its control would save lives.
The DOT-held spectrum at 5.9 GHz was allocated to the department in 2009 to be used solely for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), which has to date has been deployed in very few vehicles. Advocates for retaining the spectrum at DOT are now promoting a different technology that has yet to be adequately tested and may not be widely available for 8-10 years. At the same time, proven technology that increases passenger safety being used in vehicles today includes automatic emergency braking, backup cameras, blind-spot warning, electronic stability control, forward collision warning, lane departure warning and lane keeping systems, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), rear automatic braking, and rear cross-traffic alerts. These systems are radar or laser-based, meaning they have been developed without the need for the 5.9 GHz spectrum.
LINK: https://www.cagw.org/thewastewatcher/federal-spectrum-turf-war-could-hand-5g-victory-china
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:46AM (2 children)
In terms of tracking, it's already too late.
Why?
Think of satellites. In 1984, it was well known that license plates could be read by US entities, via satellite. Further, they could ... once acquired, track people via satellite.
That was *thirty five* years ago. 35 years!!!! Think on that. THIRTY FIVE YEARS.
Now, it is known such satellites can see through cloud, and at night. And since greater detail isn't really required, what comes next? Greater scope. So for starters, I'm going to say that every single inch of US soil is monitored 24x7 by satellite. In other words, top-down camera surveillance is already 100%, and has been for probably at least 15 years.
And it is very easy to re-acquire a person after they've been in a building for a while Gait tracking (you didn't think the chinese thought of that first, did you?), size/weight/gender of person. So, even if you enter a building, certainly you'll be re-linked to your ID soon after emergence. Even if it takes 20 minutes to re-link "you with you", they merely have to go back through stored video to track you back to the start.
The only limits here, is storage space... and if anyone has it, it's the US government.
So:
- 100% coverage to .2m at least, night, day, through clouds
- continual recording and storing of the entire US at that fidelity
- computerized tracking of every single person, constantly re-linking lost entities
- immense storage and computational power
I'd say the biggest limit is computational power. But if anyone can throw money at such things, it's the US gov. And really, even if tracking 300M + people is a problem, computationally, you can still store everything, and then track ONE person back through time.
So stop worrying about street cameras. They're only for municipalities to track you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25 2019, @11:16PM (1 child)
Then why do police have such a hard time finding criminals ?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 25 2019, @11:40PM
Local police don't get access to classified information obtained from a secret satellite?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]