It goes by the name of Hashima, or Gunkanjima ("Battleship Island"), or even "The Dead Island", since it inspired the water-locked cyberterrorist HQ in Skyfall. As you can now see for yourself, courtesy of Google Street View, it's a very a real place off the coast of Japan's Nagasaki Peninsula, and it's even lonelier than its fictional counterpart in the Bond film (which wasn't actually filmed there). There are no tourist offices or giant Oedipus Complexes, as far as we can see, just long stretches of overgrown roads and collapsing apartment blocks that once housed 5,000 people, before they abandoned the island in 1974 following the demise of its coal industry. It took a Google employee two hours to map the place and preserve its crumbling visage for posterity using a special backpack, but don't be surprised if you want to leave it after just a few minutes.
Your secrets are safe with nobody if you haven't planned ahead to pass them along after you've left earth. It's smart to think about how to share vital information after your vital signs have stopped. The security experts at Stack Exchange are here to help.
I want to make sure that after I die, someone gets vital information from me (like the password to my bank account), but I don't want anyone to be able to get that information as long as I'm alive. Once I die, I only want a particular person to be able to get the information. How would I go about that?
See the original question.
Don't Trust a Purely Automated Solution - Answered by Adnan
A little more than a year ago, I was in a situation where I feared for my life. I gave this some thought and here's what I did: I made a video recording containing everything I wanted people to know after I die, then I stored the video in a TrueCrypt volume and gave two copies to my two most trusted friends, and the password to my father and my then-girlfriend. I told my dad and my then-girlfriend not to share the password with anybody, and told my trusted friends to share the file only with my dad and my then-girlfriend, and only after I die or after I'm reasonably believed to be dead (due to the nature of the danger, a sudden disappearance was a likely possibility).
The effectiveness of this arrangement comes from my trust in those people?a trust that has been built over many years. I've chosen this arrangement because I couldn't trust a purely automated solution. For example, I set up a Dead Man's Switch message that contained trivial to low-profile information, but at the time, there was a possibility that I'd disappear for weeks or months after which I could still be alive. In that period the Switch would have been activated.
Another solution is to hire a lawyer, draft your will, give him the password, and instruct him to share it only in the case of your death. This way, your password is safe by the power of the law (your lawyer can't breach the confidentiality, and even if he did, the files are with other people). Your lawyer has no access to the information, and your loved ones will get the password after your death.
Google's Inactive Account Manager - Answered by davidwebster48
Google has set up a service called ""Inactive Account Manager" which lets you specify certain trusted people who will get access to your account if it is inactive for a certain amount of time (for example, if you're dead). The inactivity period can be set anywhere from 3-18 months.
Safe Deposit - Answered by petiepooo
I'd suggest using a safe deposit box. There are clear guidelines of who can enter your safe deposit box upon your death and what can be removed under specific conditions. Take an index card, write down a long random password along with instructions on how to use it, all on one side, fold it in half (hiding the password), then write the intended recipient's name and any privacy warnings on the outside. Finally, run the folded card through a laminator. Write a will specifying who your executor should be (they will have access to your safe deposit box by court order), and specify in your will how the password cards should be handled.
Then, for each recipient, either give them the file to be decrypted, or let them know how they can retrieve it. Or specify that in the will or inside of the laminated card. I'd be wary of physical media (eg. a CD-ROM in the safe deposit box), as they're only readable for a few years. Even things like USB flash drives will eventually start losing bits. Plus, the USB standard will eventually be superseded. If you're committed to occasionally verifying the file's integrity and accessibility, then a USB drive in the safe deposit box might work. You may consider storing the encrypted file online, if you can find somewhere with long-term, guaranteed accessibility.
Just don't make it so complicated the recipient can't retrieve it when the time comes. I'd also be wary of asymmetrical encryption (eg. PGP) as it adds unneeded complexity, and keys can have expiration dates. That said, PGP and GnuPG have a symmetrical encryption option if you want to steer clear of WinZip or similar. 7-zip would also be a good choice, as it's free, open, and easily available.
Disagree with the answers above? Find more answers or leave your own at the original post. See more questions like this at IT Security, the Stack Exchange site for questions and answers about protection of assets from threats and vulnerabilities. And of course, feel free to ask a question yourself.
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council brought Iraq one step closer on Thursday to ending United Nations sanctions imposed on Baghdad more than two decades ago after former President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait In 1990.
The 15-member council unanimously agreed that the issue of missing Kuwaiti people, property and archives should be dealt with under Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter - which urges countries to peacefully resolve any conflicts - instead of Chapter 7.
Chapter 7 of the charter allows the Security Council to authorize actions ranging from sanctions to military intervention if states do not abide by council demands.
The move by the council is a significant political boost for Baghdad as it struggles to restore its international standing a decade after a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam in 2003.
The Security Council resolution recognized "the importance of Iraq achieving international standing equal to that which it held prior to (1990)." U.S.-led troops drove Iraq out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War.
"This is a new beginning for the relations between our two neighborly and brotherly countries," Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters after the vote. "This is an example for other countries also to resolve their disputes and differences through peaceful means."
The only issues linked to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait that remain under Chapter 7 are an arms embargo and Baghdad's payment of $52 billion in compensation to Kuwait, diplomats say. Iraq still owes $11 billion and has said it expects to pay by 2015.
There are still a range of Chapter 7 issues imposed on Baghdad after Saddam's ouster in 2003, diplomats say, including the freeze and return of Saddam-era assets and trade ban on stolen Iraqi cultural property.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recommended that the U.N. political mission in Iraq should take responsibility for facilitating the search for missing Kuwaitis, or their remains, property and the country's national archives.
(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Vicki Allen)
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Low-power Wi-Fi signal tracks movement -- even behind wallsPublic release date: 28-Jun-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sarah McDonnell s_mcd@mit.edu 617-253-8923 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
'Wi-Vi' is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The comic-book hero Superman uses his X-ray vision to spot bad guys lurking behind walls and other objects. Now we could all have X-ray vision, thanks to researchers at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
Researchers have long attempted to build a device capable of seeing people through walls. However, previous efforts to develop such a system have involved the use of expensive and bulky radar technology that uses a part of the electromagnetic spectrum only available to the military.
Now a system being developed by Dina Katabi, a professor in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and her graduate student Fadel Adib, could give all of us the ability to spot people in different rooms using low-cost Wi-Fi technology. "We wanted to create a device that is low-power, portable and simple enough for anyone to use, to give people the ability to see through walls and closed doors," Katabi says.
The system, called "Wi-Vi," is based on a concept similar to radar and sonar imaging. But in contrast to radar and sonar, it transmits a low-power Wi-Fi signal and uses its reflections to track moving humans. It can do so even if the humans are in closed rooms or hiding behind a wall.
As a Wi-Fi signal is transmitted at a wall, a portion of the signal penetrates through it, reflecting off any humans on the other side. However, only a tiny fraction of the signal makes it through to the other room, with the rest being reflected by the wall, or by other objects. "So we had to come up with a technology that could cancel out all these other reflections, and keep only those from the moving human body," Katabi says.
Motion detector
To do this, the system uses two transmit antennas and a single receiver. The two antennas transmit almost identical signals, except that the signal from the second receiver is the inverse of the first. As a result, the two signals interfere with each other in such a way as to cancel each other out. Since any static objects that the signals hit including the wall create identical reflections, they too are cancelled out by this nulling effect.
In this way, only those reflections that change between the two signals, such as those from a moving object, arrive back at the receiver, Adib says. "So, if the person moves behind the wall, all reflections from static objects are cancelled out, and the only thing registered by the device is the moving human."
Once the system has cancelled out all of the reflections from static objects, it can then concentrate on tracking the person as he or she moves around the room. Most previous attempts to track moving targets through walls have done so using an array of spaced antennas, which each capture the signal reflected off a person moving through the environment. But this would be too expensive and bulky for use in a handheld device.
So instead Wi-Vi uses just one receiver. As the person moves through the room, his or her distance from the receiver changes, meaning the time it takes for the reflected signal to make its way back to the receiver changes too. The system then uses this information to calculate where the person is at any one time.
Possible uses in disaster recovery, personal safety, gaming
Wi-Vi, being presented at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong in August, could be used to help search-and-rescue teams to find survivors trapped in rubble after an earthquake, say, or to allow police officers to identify the number and movement of criminals within a building to avoid walking into an ambush.
It could also be used as a personal safety device, Katabi says: "If you are walking at night and you have the feeling that someone is following you, then you could use it to check if there is someone behind the fence or behind a corner."
The device can also detect gestures or movements by a person standing behind a wall, such as a wave of the arm, Katabi says. This would allow it to be used as a gesture-based interface for controlling lighting or appliances within the home, such as turning off the lights in another room with a wave of the arm.
Unlike today's interactive gaming devices, where users must stay in front of the console and its camera at all times, users could still interact with the system while in another room, for example. This could open up the possibility of more complex and interesting games, Katabi says.
###
Written by Helen Knight, MIT News Office
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Global Thermostat's pilot plant in Menlo Park, Calif., pulls carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. The next challenge is to find uses for the captured gas.
Courtesy of Global Thermostat
Every year, people add 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels. That's contributing to climate change. A few scientists have been dreaming about ways to pull some of that CO2 out of the air, but face stiff skepticism and major hurdles. This is the story of one scientist who's pressing ahead.
Peter Eisenberger is a distinguished professor of earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University. Earlier in his career, he ran the university's famed Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and founded Columbia's Earth Institute. He was never one of those scientists who tinkered into the night on inventions. But he realized he didn't need to be.
"If you looked at knowledge as a commodity, we had generated this enormous amount of knowledge and we hadn't even begun to think of the many ways we could apply it," Eisenberger says. He decided he'd settle on a problem he wanted to solve and then dive into the pool of knowledge for existing technologies that could help him.
He started looking for a way to pull carbon dioxide right out of the air. "And it turned out the best device already exists," he says. "It's called a monolith. That is the same type of instrument that's in the catalytic converter in your car. It cleans up your exhaust."
Eisenberger's monoliths grab carbon dioxide from the air and release it again when you heat them up.
He teamed up with a colleague at Columbia, Graciela Chichilnisky, and formed a company to develop the idea. Global Thermostat got seed money from Edgar Bronfman, Jr. ? CEO of Warner Music Group and the former CEO of Seagram's, his family's business.
The company has built two pilot plants at SRI International in Menlo Park, Calif. But of course there are big issues to solve: What do you do with the carbon dioxide once you've captured it, and how do you make money?
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," says Peter Eisenberger, co-founder of Global Thermostat, a firm that's building a device to pull carbon dioxide from the air.
Chris Schmauch/Global Thermostat
"So we then we looked for ways to monetize CO2 and found that lots of people wanted to use CO2 as a feedstock to make a valuable product," Eisenberger says.
Growers pipe carbon dioxide into greenhouses. Oil companies pump it underground to help them squeeze out more oil. Soda companies use it to put bubbles in their drinks. These are mostly small-scale applications.
Maybe someday Eisenberger could get paid to clean up the atmosphere by sucking out the CO2 and burying it underground, though there's no market for that now.
But using carbon dioxide to make fuel could someday be big. So Eisenberger's first project involves using CO2 to feed algae that churn out biofuel.
"Our first demonstration plant is being erected right now down in Daphne, Alabama, with an algae company called Algae Systems, which sits on Mobile Bay," Eisenberger says. "They'll be floating their algae in plastic bags on the top of the water. We'll be piping in CO2 that we pull out of the air, and the sun will do the rest."
Of course, this one project will have zero effect on how much carbon dioxide is in the earth's atmosphere. But Eisenberger has much grander ambitions.
"I believe we have something that's economically viable, so our company will be successful," he says. "But I'm really in this because I want to contribute to a long term solution that the world needs."
Eisenberger says if he can open the door to capturing carbon dioxide from the air ? and make the process cheap enough ? someday we could actually slow down, or possibly even reverse, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Robert Socolow at Princeton University started hearing a buzz about this technology a few years back.
"It's catchy," Socolow admits. "It's attractive conceptually that one could basically pour carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for the next several decades and pull it out later and everything would be fine." But the appeal of the idea also worried him ? people might use the mere prospect of this technology as an excuse not to act.
So Socolow spearheaded a critique of the technique, on behalf of the American Physical Society.
Socolow's panel concluded that the technology would be hopelessly expensive, costing $600 for every ton of carbon dioxide it drew out of the air. And the scale would also be huge. In order to capture the emissions would waft into the air from a single coal-fired power plant, you'd need to build a structure 20 miles long and 30 feet high. "It's like the Great Wall of China," Socolow says.
The committee concluded that it would make a lot more sense to cut down on emissions first ? make our cars, homes and factories more efficient. Panel members also said it makes much more sense to capture carbon dioxide directly from smokestacks, where it's concentrated, instead of from the air.
Socolow says, maybe someday we'll have our emissions under control, and then we might need to remove some of the carbon dioxide that's already in the air with a capture technology. But, in his view, that's a long way away. "I locate it in the 22nd century," he says. In other words, this might be a good project for Eisenberger's great-great-great grandchildren.
Researchers currently working on carbon dioxide capture technologies say the American Physical Society critique has made it much harder for them to raise money. Klaus Lackner at Columbia University says he was turned down for a government grant. David Keith at Harvard and the University of Calgary says he struggled to get funding for his small company.
"It's a very powerful report from a very credible group of people, and it may well help to kill us and other efforts," Keith says.
Proponents of air-capture technologies say some of the panel's conclusions are just plain wrong ? especially the estimated cost of $600 per ton.
"We have had third party reports, independent people, evaluating our technology, and it's under $50 a ton," Eisenberger says. He hasn't actually demonstrated that cost yet, and he agrees that nobody should take his word for it. But he's stopped arguing with his critics.
"I'm just going to go do it," he says. "And doing it or not ? that's the answer."
Pursuing a big idea takes some hard-headedness and thick skin.
"If they don't tell you you're crazy, you're not doing something worthwhile," Eisenberger says. "Because what you do when you innovate is you disturb the existing order."
Fortunately, this won't be an academic argument forever. "That's the beauty of science. The people that take the time to come into the lab and see it working and do their own evaluation of the cost and the performance, they know it's not crazy."
If the researchers pursuing this technology can really make it inexpensive to draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, Eisenberger says it could be a game-changer.
We could start producing fuels with the carbon dioxide that's already in the air, instead of unearthing more fossil fuels. This won't happen quickly, though.
"The energy infrastructure of the world is $55 trillion," Eisenberger says. So a technology to replace that is "not like a new Google app."
Still, human societies have made such transitions before. "They just don't happen in a day," Eisenberger says. "But they happen."
There's certainly no guarantee that capturing carbon dioxide from the air would ever become a big enough enterprise to make a difference to Earth's climate. But it won't even be put to the test unless people like Eisenberger give it a try.
LONDON (Reuters) - The government promised on Thursday to upgrade roads and carry out what it said was the biggest rail investment in more than 100 years in a strategy to get the economy growing while keeping spending tight.
A day after Chancellor George Osborne announced the latest round of budget cuts, his deputy, Danny Alexander, detailed 100 billion pounds in capital investment plans, calling them "the most comprehensive, ambitious and long-lasting" ever.
Britain's economy is still struggling to generate growth to help narrow one of Europe's biggest budget deficits. Living standards suffered their biggest drop in a generation at the start of 2013, data showed on Thursday.
Alexander said 28 billion pounds would be spent by the government on improving roads from 2014 to 2020 - including enough cash to resurface 21,000 miles - and that it would support 30 billion pounds in rail investments.
A long-awaited announcement of a guaranteed electricity price for renewable energy investors was aimed at making investments in technologies such as wind power and biomass more attractive and less risky to private operators.
The government also announced a guarantee to help build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in the south-west of England, for which French utility group EDF won planning permission in March.
The overall spending plan put some flesh on the bones of 300 billion pounds in capital spending commitments set out until 2020. Thursday's announcement was not a new injection of cash; the significance was in the details of where it would be spent.
The Conservative party, which dominates the ruling coalition, wants to persuade voters it is not just focused on spending cuts as it prepares for the 2015 general election. Its tough austerity drive has been criticised by the International Monetary Fund while two of the three main credit rating agencies have downgraded Britain's prized triple-A status.
Leading economic think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies said the capital spending plans showed net public sector investment falling as a percentage of gross domestic product, from 1.6 percent in 2014/15 to 1.5 percent in 2015/16 and dropping further thereafter.
"We are hardly entering a new era of massive infrastructure investment," said IFS Director Paul Johnson.
The government's plans also accounted for 15 billion pounds income from the sale of assets such as its portfolio of student loans as well as unused land and property.
PRIVATE INVESTMENT
Much of Thursday's announcement was aimed at drawing in private sector investment, a key tenet of Conservative plans to get maximum economic benefit out of scarce public cash.
But it did not clear up doubts about how quickly Britain could start to get new projects up and running.
"The construction industry and the broader economy will be disappointed in today's announcement as we will only see an economic boost when the shovels hit the ground on these projects," said Nick Prior, head of infrastructure at business advisory firm Deloitte.
The opposition Labour party, which has called for more short-term spending to revive the economy but has been wary about committing itself to increased borrowing, said no investment had been brought forward to 2013 or 2014.
"When is the government going to pull its finger out and actually start to build some of these things?" said Chris Leslie, a Labour spokesman for economic issues.
The government also promised an injection of 3 billion pounds into building new affordable housing - enough, it said, for 165,000 new homes - along with a 12-year rent guarantee to encourage private housing associations to build new projects.
Alexander said 16 billion pounds from 2015 onwards had been earmarked for rail expenditure, including the government's flagship high-speed rail project, designed to improve links between London, the Midlands and the north of the country.
On Wednesday, Britain's transport secretary said the cost of the rail project had risen by almost 10 billion pounds, highlighting the pitfalls of long-term capital projects.
(Additional reporting by William Schomberg and Rosalba O'Brien Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
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Public release date: 28-Jun-2013
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