Fingerprinting RFID Chips
This research centers on looking at the radio characteristics of individual RFID chips and creating a "fingerprint." It makes sense; fingerprinting individual radios based on their transmission characteristics is as old as WW II. But while the research centers on using this as an anti-counterfeiting measure, I think it would much more likely be used as an identification and surveillance tool. Even if the communications is fully encrypted, this technology could be used to uniquely identify the chip.

Cyberwarfare Policy
National Journal has an excellent article on cyberwar policy. I agree with the author's comments on The Atlantic blog: Would the United States ever use a more devastating weapon, perhaps shutting off the lights in an adversary nation? The answer is, almost certainly no, not unless America were attacked first. To understand why, forget about the cyber dimension for a moment. Imagine that some foreign military had flown over a power substation and Brazil and dropped a bomb on it, deprivin

The Psychology of Being Scammed
This is a very interesting paper: "

Friday Squid Blogging: Two Squid T-Shirts
From the Feed Store.

Fear and Public Perception
This 1996 interview with psychiatrist Robert DuPont was part of a Frontline program called "Nuclear Reaction." He's talking about the role fear plays in the perception of nuclear power. It's a lot of the sorts of things I say, but particularly interesting is this bit on familiarity and how it reduces fear: You see, we sited these plants away from metropolitan areas to "protect the public" from the dangers of nuclear power. What we did when we did that was move the plants away from the people, so they became unfamiliar. Th