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Pentagon to implement global DVR-like surveillance?
The Pentagon's Defense Science Board released a report suggesting a pervasive system to observe and record activity in urban areas and hard-to-monitor settings across the globe -- in other words, they'd like to TiVo the entire planet for playback (or at least as much of it as they can for intelligence gathering purposes). The study mentions DVR-like technology that would be used to "run recorded time backwards to help identify and locate even low-level enemy forces," referencing the types of threats U.S. forces encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan. The proposal also seeks to minimize the use of human personnel, and instead, employ various autonomous monitoring methods, from tiny environmental data-collecting sensors to unmanned aerial vehicles. So basically, the plan is to keep a hawk eye on all areas of concern -- up to tens of thousands of square kilometers with targets as specific as an individual person, object, or activity. No word on if, or when, the military might be rolling this out. [Via Slashdot] Read - ReutersRead - Wired
More networks suing Cablevision over networked DVR
Trouble is brewing in TV land, and the stakes couldn't be higher for consumers, as a lawsuit filed by many of your favorite content providers against industry giant Cablevision could determine the future of networked DVR services. Two Time Warner networks (disclaimer: Engadget's parent company's parent company's parent company is Time Warner), CNN and Cartoon Network, have joined Disney, Universal, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox in fighting Cablevision's plan to offer subscribers the option of recording their programming to the company's servers, arguing that allowing at-will remote access to stored content constitutes a re-transmission, and therefore violates copyright agreements. What makes Time Warner's entry into the fray particularly interesting is the fact that another one of its divisions, Time Warner Cable, has publicly expressed interest in the concept of networked DVR, meaning that either outcome of the lawsuit would be potentially beneficial to the company. Way to go guys, you can never go wrong playing both sides of the fence.
