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Check out the Newsweek article here!

We’re going to look at things on a more national scale this week in the Digital Domain. I was reading a recent Newsweek article by Benjamin Sutherland about radiation detection, specifically to locate and prevent terrorist dirty bombs.

The article opens by explaining the cost of currently available equipment used to process radiation, costing as much as $27,000 for the models used in China during the Olympic Games this summer. These models functioned similarly to walk-through metal detectors, in that they can only be employed at choke points, such as entrances and exits. The obvious limits of this system demand a new way of processing radiation.

Sutherland explains that a research team at Purdue University has developed a computer chip which can serve as a miniature detection device, and when produced in mass quantities can cost as little as $50 per chip. The team explains that these chips will be small enough to fit into a cell phone.

The strength of this project is wholly dependent on support from the wireless phone community. The more phones with these chips, the stronger and more accurate a signal. Purdue is already lobbying Congress to require mobile phone providers to include this technology in every phone.

The box-office record shattering film The Dark Knight used an eerily similar technique for apprehending The Joker. Batman hacked every wireless phone in Gotham and turned them into microphones to triangulate a signal on the elusive villain. Morgan Freeman’s character, Lucius Fox, realizes the potential of this project and argues that this omnipotence is too much power for anyone to have.

The tangent is there to illustrate a point. Though a chip in each cell phone would only act on collecting information on dangerous gamma radiation emitted from potentially nuclear weapons, this is a potentially slippery slope. The prospect of being required by the Government to carry around a bomb-sniffing device everywhere is a slightly distressing one.

Sutherland explains that proposals are open for a cash or discount incentive for people willing to get a phone with the chip in it. Though the project’s success is very dependent on a large number of phone chips in order to triangulate a stronger and more accurate signal, an opt-in may still present many Americans the opportunity to take a stronger role in national security without the Big Brother grip. This has me a little ambiguous towards the project.