Stuff

    Subscribe to our newsletter

    What's Hot
    Xiaomi 12

    At least one of Xiaomi’s flagship 12-series devices coming to South Africa on 8 July

    July 1, 2022
    Vodacom

    Vodacom spends R460 million on expanding coverage in Limpopo

    July 1, 2022
    Top Five Tablets

    Stuff’s Top Five Tablets (at the moment)

    July 1, 2022
    Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube SoundCloud
    Trending
    • At least one of Xiaomi’s flagship 12-series devices coming to South Africa on 8 July
    • Vodacom spends R460 million on expanding coverage in Limpopo
    • Stuff’s Top Five Tablets (at the moment)
    • Google’s South African domain went down briefly. But it’s back up, crisis averted
    • Niantic’s Campfire is a Pokémon Go social media app (with more to follow)
    • 2022 Ford EcoSport Titanium review – Outdone by its cheaper siblings
    • How recycling and reforestation are advanced with 4IR Tech
    • Samsung reportedly working on a cheaper range of folding smartphones
    Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube
    Stuff Stuff
    • News
      • App News
      • Business News
      • Camera News
      • Gaming News
      • Headphone News
      • Industry News
      • Internet News
      • Laptops News
      • Motoring News
      • Other Tech News
      • Phone News
      • Tablet News
      • Technology News
      • TV News
      • Wearables News
    • Reviews
      • Camera Reviews
      • Car Reviews
      • Featured Reviews
      • Game Reviews
      • Headphone Reviews
      • Laptop Reviews
      • Other Tech Reviews
      • Phone Reviews
      • Tablet Reviews
      • Wearables Reviews
    • Columns
    • Stuff Guides
    • Podcasts & Videos
      • Videos
      • Stuffed
      • Stuffing Around
      • Tech Byte
      • T2S2
    • Win
    • Subscribe
      • Print
      • Digital
        • Google Play
        • iTunes
        • Download
        • Zinio
    • Stuff Shop
      • Shop Now
      • My Account
      • Downloads
    • Contact Us
      • Get In Touch
      • Advertise
    0 Shopping Cart
    Stuff
    Home » Stuff Guides » Nine former DARPA surveillance technologies now in everyday use by the public sector
    News

    Nine former DARPA surveillance technologies now in everyday use by the public sector

    Brett VenterBy Brett VenterMarch 25, 2022No Comments7 Mins Read
    DARPA Surveillance Projects
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email

    DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) frequently does all sorts of impressive — and terrifying — military things. But not every project is a winner. Or talked about. There were several technologies envisaged by the American government in the early 2000s. DARPA was supposed to work on the feasibility of these, as part of something called the Information Awareness Office (IAO).

    The objective for these projects, given it was George Bush, Jr’s fledgling War on Oil-Containing Countries Terror™, was largely surveillance. And while the Information Awareness Office was officially canned after a year of existence, many of the technologies explored by the division actually made it into existence. The catch? They were officially developed by the private sector.

    Babylon

    Not to be confused with Project Babylon (which involves space-guns for Saddam Hussein), DARPA’s Babylon will seem very familiar today. In 2001, the project was intended to create a universal translator of sorts. The original idea was very much focused on America’s venture onto the Middle East (for various reasons that end in ‘oil’). The project was abandoned because it was 2002 and it just wasn’t possible to do this sort of thing yet. But while “deployment of speech and translation technologies on portable platforms in a military/diplomatic context” was abandoned, the actual technology wasn’t. It’s around today, as Google Translate. It doesn’t have the military focus that Babylon had (that we know of) but it functions almost as planned when it was first envisioned.

    Communicator

    assistants conceptDARPA had a similar spoken-word program running at the same time as Babylon. Called Communicator, it hoped to create “multi-modal speech-enabled dialog systems with advanced conversational capabilities”. To translate it out of edumacated jargon, the agency wanted to create a speech-based system for soldiers to communicate with computers. Now, this one wasn’t explicitly created for America’s Afghanistan war. At least, since the project was in existence in 2000, it better not have been. Still, the project fell under IAO’s purview and actually got a fair way into development, being tested in the field. But you might be more familiar with Communicator in a much more modern context. Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, and basically any other voice control system is DARPA’s initiative, independently developed and sold to the world.

    EARS

    EARS, otherwise known as Effective Affordable Reusable Speech-to-text, is an example of Exactly What It Says on the Tin. DARPA was looking for a way to easily turn speech into text, going as far as to test English, Chinese (we assume it was Mandarin), and Arabic examples. Because war reasons, as far as the languages go. EARS lives on in projects by Google, Microsoft, and an entire dictation industry. It comes standard on a whole collection of common devices (like anything that runs Windows 10 or 11). It’s still prone to making mistakes, no matter how clearly you make your speech.

    EELD

    EELD stands for Evidence Extraction and Link Discovery. The point was to automatically extract information from various online sources and compile it into a single descriptive bundle of information. The initial idea was to build profiles on potential threats, but we can’t seem to find out much about how far the project got. Or when it ended. But the technology certainly exists today in the real world. Facebook recently caught it in the neck over so-called shadow profiles. These are profiles of a specific person inferred by who or what they interact with online, without any direct tracking taking place. Sounds awfully familiar…

    Genisys

    Genisys was a program intended to create “…technology for integrating terrorist threat databases and other information sources to support effective intelligence analysis aimed at preventing terrorist attacks on the citizens, institutions, and property of the United States”. It aimed to do this by making databases more effective and easy to use. Besides being the most boring project with a semi-nefarious purpose on DARPA’s list, it’s also survived well into the modern era. Modern data centres, including those owned by Equinix, China Telecom, CyrusOne, and a host of others, all conform to the original definition outlined by the developmental military institution.

    Project Genoa II

    Project Genoa II, later known as Topsail, was the successor to Genoa. Genoa II focused on “…providing means with which computers, software agents, policy makers, and field operatives could collaborate”. There is a range of technologies that fit this bill in the modern era. Most of Microsoft’s collaboration software is a suitable match. Google Docs, when paired with predictive assistance, also conforms to this definition. And there might be a properly military application as well. Work on Genoa II was shifted from DARPA to the Advanced Research and Development Agency. ARPA was renamed the Disruptive Technology Office, before being merged with the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) in 2007. There’s no sign that Genoa II was ever abandoned.

    Human ID at a Distance

    Law-enforcement facial recognitionAnother unimaginatively named surveillance technology, Human ID at a Distance planned to identify humans. At a distance. Its goal was to use a combination of biometric factors to identify people at a distance of up to 150 metres. Those factors? That would be gait recognition, a technology that isn’t really used outside of government and law enforcement. Other factors included iris recognition, which was in vogue in smartphones from about 2015 until the rise of facial recognition. And the other major one was facial recognition, which anyone who owns a moderately-priced smartphone currently volunteers to use on a daily basis. But don’t worry, your facial biometrics are safe with the people you’ve handed it to. Promise. /s

    TIDES

    TIDES stands for Translingual Information Detection, Extraction, and Summarization. We opted for the acronym here because the next one… the next one is a doozy. TIDES isn’t all that nasty. It’s another audio technology, not unlike EARS or Communicator. This one was focused mostly on creating brief, intelligible summaries from foreign languages that the user was completely unfamiliar with. There isn’t a direct analogue to this one floating around in the real world at present, but auto-translation applications can perform largely similar functions. The only thing missing is the ‘Summarization’ part of the whole equation.

    Total Information Awareness

    This was the big one. The ambitious one. The one that would have heralded American supremacy over all enemies, ever. Thoughtcrime would have been eliminated, the ‘war’ would have been won in record time, and all you had to do was hand over everything you’ll ever do and ever will for analysis. Total Information Awareness (TIA) was the end goal of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office. Yes, the logo at the top of the page is completely real. So is the motto — “Knowledge is Power.” It hoped to bring all of the technologies above under a single banner, using that to monitor every person in the United States. All of their personal information would be collected in a single, searchable location where it could be dissected and assessed.

    The office was eventually defunded, due to fears of the mass surveillance it would enable. There are only a handful of entities on the planet who currently come close to fitting the definition of the Total Information Awareness program. The prime mover, in part because it’s fairly open about its data collection, is none other than Meta. Google runs a close second for the information it holds about people around the world. TIA entailed access to “…personal e-mails, social networks, credit card records, phone calls, medical records, and numerous other sources, without any requirement for a search warrant.” Sounds like most major Big Data players. Closer to home, medical aid and insurance provider Discovery may fit the bill the best.

    DARPA Facebook featured Google military
    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Tumblr Email
    Brett Venter

      Related Posts

      Xiaomi 12

      At least one of Xiaomi’s flagship 12-series devices coming to South Africa on 8 July

      July 1, 2022
      Vodacom

      Vodacom spends R460 million on expanding coverage in Limpopo

      July 1, 2022
      Top Five Tablets

      Stuff’s Top Five Tablets (at the moment)

      July 1, 2022

      Leave A Reply Cancel Reply

      In The Mag
      Stuff June-July 2022 Latest Issue

      In This Issue – The Outdoors (June-July 2022) Issue

      By Brett VenterMay 30, 20221

      Once again, we are asking you to check out a new issue of Stuff Magazine.…

      2021 Wish List
      wish list Stuff Wish List 2021

      Stuff Wish List: for the tech impaired

      By Duncan PikeDecember 22, 20210

      Are you from the time before being glued to a smartphone was considered normal? Here’s…

      Wishlist DIY Stuff tech

      Stuff Wish List: for the DIY Diehard

      December 21, 2021
      Wish List Gearhead

      Stuff Wish List: For the petrol-soaked gearhead

      December 20, 2021
      outsiders

      Stuff Wish List: for the Outsiders

      December 17, 2021

      Latest Video

      Sonos

      SONOS Roam SL unboxing by Toby Shapshak

      March 30, 2022
      Mini Cooper

      The Mini Cooper SE Electric with Toby Shapshak

      March 18, 2022
      MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbox Six Extraction Edition unboxing

      MSI Crosshair 15 Rainbox Six Extraction Edition unboxing

      March 16, 2022
      Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra Unboxing

      Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra unboxing with Toby Shapshak

      March 16, 2022
      Contact

      South Africa's Consumer Tech News Hub

      General: [email protected]
      Subscriptions: [email protected] or 087 353 1291
      Editorial: 072 735 2614
      Sales: 083 375 2418

      Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube SoundCloud

      Subscribe to Updates

      • Terms and Conditions
      • Privacy & POPI
      • My account
      © 2022 Stuff Group. Designed by Chronon.

      Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.