Des #cités_antiques en #Amazonie | CNRS Le journal
▻https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/des-cites-antiques-en-amazonie
La vallée d’#Upano se situe dans la région amazonienne du piémont andin. Elle est insérée entre deux cordillères et mesure une centaine de kilomètres de long sur une vingtaine de large. Elle est surplombée par le #volcan_Sangay, en état constant d’éruption depuis des décennies et dont les rejets rendent la région particulièrement fertile. Les agriculteurs locaux m’ont dit qu’ils obtenaient trois récoltes de maïs par an, c’est énorme !
[…] Nous avons identifié et fouillé des plateformes en terre qui servaient à isoler des bâtiments du sol humide, ainsi que des places, des chemins et des routes. La première occupation de la vallée commence environ en 500 avant notre ère pour durer jusqu’en 400-600 de notre ère.
[…] La vallée d’Upano a abrité de véritables cités, densément peuplées et conçues en damier en pleine #forêt_tropicale. Leur réseau est incroyablement complexe, avec des rues, des chemins vers les rivières, des routes primaires et secondaires… Les grands axes sont parfaitement rectilignes, faisant jusqu’à treize mètres de large, et traversent la vallée en faisant fi de son relief naturel. Ils coupent aussi bien des ravins que des élévations. Un tel réseau réclame une véritable #planification, ce qui montre que les différentes implantations de la vallée sont contemporaines.
L’insistance à passer outre tous les obstacles, alors qu’il serait souvent plus simple de les contourner, suggère fortement que ces routes avaient une fonction symbolique. Elles peuvent avoir été un moyen d’imprimer dans le sol les relations entre voisins, et servir à des processions et des visites ritualisées, comme on peut encore le voir dans les villages annulaires du haut Xingu en Amazonie brésilienne.
Certaines plateformes sont encore plus hautes, jusqu’à dix mètres. Ici, pas de soubassements d’habitations, mais on suppose que ces espaces étaient plutôt consacrés à des cérémonies collectives. De tels systèmes urbains ont été découverts chez les Mayas du Guatemala ou à Teotihuacan, au Mexique. La grande différence est qu’il n’y a pas de constructions en pierre dans l’Upano. En plus, il n’y a aucun site semblable en Amazonie précolombienne, y compris au Brésil.
[…] Leur culture disparaît brusquement après un millénaire, autour de 400-600, sachant qu’il n’y avait alors pas d’écriture dans la région.
[…] J’ai une hypothèse, hélas non confirmée, sur cette disparition. Les fouilles ont montré, au-dessus des derniers niveaux d’habitation, plusieurs couches noires qui évoquent des éruptions volcaniques. Mais, les datations ne correspondent à aucun évènement suffisamment catastrophique pour faire fuir tout le monde. C’est peut-être une série d’éruptions plus petites, mais plus nombreuses, qui a fini par décourager les habitants, ou alors une #crise_climatique. Ils auraient alors pu partir vers le sud, au Pérou, où l’on retrouve des céramiques similaires à celles d’Upano. Seule une société spécialisée et stratifiée a pu construire un réseau aussi vaste et complexe que dans la vallée d’Upano. Or, on sait que les sociétés urbanisées et hiérarchisées sont moins résilientes aux aléas climatiques. Peut-être que cette civilisation a tout simplement implosé au profit d’un retour à une organisation tribale et forestière. Nous n’avons pas d’explication ferme à proposer pour le moment. Mais, la recherche se poursuit…
]]>How the Pandemic Turned Refugees Into ‘Guinea Pigs’ for Surveillance Tech
An interview with Dr. Petra Molnar, who spent 2020 investigating the use of drones, facial recognition, and lidar on refugees
The coronavirus pandemic unleashed a new era in surveillance technology, and arguably no group has felt this more acutely than refugees. Even before the pandemic, refugees were subjected to contact tracing, drone and LIDAR tracking, and facial recognition en masse. Since the pandemic, it’s only gotten worse. For a microcosm of how bad the pandemic has been for refugees — both in terms of civil liberties and suffering under the virus — look no further than Greece.
Greek refugee camps are among the largest in Europe, and they are overpopulated, with scarce access to water, food, and basic necessities, and under constant surveillance. Researchers say that many of the surveillance techniques and technologies — especially experimental, rudimentary, and low-cost ones — used to corral refugees around the world were often tested in these camps first.
“Certain communities already marginalized, disenfranchised are being used as guinea pigs, but the concern is that all of these technologies will be rolled out against the broader population and normalized,” says Petra Molnar, Associate Director of the Refugee Law Lab, York University.
Molnar traveled to the Greek refugee camps on Lesbos in 2020 as part of a fact-finding project with the advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi). She arrived right after the Moria camp — the largest in Europe at the time — burned down and forced the relocation of thousands of refugees. Since her visit, she has been concerned about the rise of authoritarian technology and how it might be used against the powerless.
With the pandemic still raging and states more desperate than ever to contain it, it seemed a good time to discuss the uses and implications of surveillance in the refugee camps. Molnar, who is still in Greece and plans to continue visiting the camps once the nation’s second lockdown lifts, spoke to OneZero about the kinds of surveillance technology she saw deployed there, and what the future holds — particularly with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Molnar says, adding “that they’ve been using Greece as a testing ground for all sorts of aerial surveillance technology.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
OneZero: What kinds of surveillance practices and technologies did you see in the camps?
Petra Molnar: I went to Lesbos in September, right after the Moria camp burned down and thousands of people were displaced and sent to a new camp. We were essentially witnessing the birth of the Kara Tepes camp, a new containment center, and talked to the people about surveillance, and also how this particular tragedy was being used as a new excuse to bring more technology, more surveillance. The [Greek] government is… basically weaponizing Covid to use it as an excuse to lock the camps down and make it impossible to do any research.
When you are in Lesbos, it is very clear that it is a testing ground, in the sense that the use of tech is quite rudimentary — we are not talking about thermal cameras, iris scans, anything like that, but there’s an increase in the appetite of the Greek government to explore the use of it, particularly when they try to control large groups of people and also large groups coming from the Aegean. It’s very early days for a lot of these technologies, but everything points to the fact that Greece is Europe’s testing ground.
They are talking about bringing biometric control to the camps, but we know for example that the Hellenic Coast Guard has a drone that they have been using for self-promotion, propaganda, and they’ve now been using it to follow specific people as they are leaving and entering the camp. I’m not sure if the use of drones was restricted to following refugees once they left the camps, but with the lockdown, it was impossible to verify. [OneZero had access to a local source who confirmed that drones are also being used inside the camps to monitor refugees during lockdown.]
Also, people can come and go to buy things at stores, but they have to sign in and out at the gate, and we don’t know how they are going to use such data and for what purposes.
Surveillance has been used on refugees long before the pandemic — in what ways have refugees been treated as guinea pigs for the policies and technologies we’re seeing deployed more widely now? And what are some of the worst examples of authoritarian technologies being deployed against refugees in Europe?
The most egregious examples that we’ve been seeing are that ill-fated pilot projects — A.I. lie detectors and risk scorings which were essentially trying to use facial recognition and facial expressions’ micro-targeting to determine whether a person was more likely than others to lie at the border. Luckily, that technology was debunked and also generated a lot of debate around the ethics and human rights implications of using something like that.
Technologies such as voice printing have been used in Germany to try to track a person’s country of origin or their ethnicity, facial recognition made its way into the new Migration’s Pact, and Greece is thinking about automating the triage of refugees, so there’s an appetite at the EU level and globally to use this tech. I think 2021 will be very interesting as more resources are being diverted to these types of tech.
We saw, right when the pandemic started, that migration data used for population modeling became kind of co-opted and used to try and model flows of Covid. And this is very problematic because they are assuming that the mobile population, people on the move, and refugees are more likely to be bringing in Covid and diseases — but the numbers don’t bear out. We are also seeing the gathering of vast amounts of data for all these databases that Europe is using or will be using for a variety of border enforcement and policing in general.
The concern is that fear’s being weaponized around the pandemic and technologies such as mobile tracking and data collection are being used as ways to control people. It is also broader, it deals with a kind of discourse around migration, on limiting people’s rights to move. Our concern is that it’ll open the door to further, broader rollout of this kind of tech against the general population.
What are some of the most invasive technologies you’ve seen? And are you worried these authoritarian technologies will continue to expand, and not just in refugee camps?
In Greece, the most invasive technologies being used now would probably be drones and unpiloted surveillance technologies, because it’s a really easy way to dehumanize that kind of area where people are crossing, coming from Turkey, trying to claim asylum. There’s also the appetite to try facial recognition technology.
It shows just how dangerous these technologies can be both because they facilitate pushbacks, border enforcement, and throwing people away, and it really plays into this kind of idea of instead of humane responses you’d hope to happen when you see a boat in distress in the Aegean or the Mediterranean, now entities are turning towards drones and the whole kind of surveillance apparatus. It highlights how the humanity in this process has been lost.
And the normalization of it all. Now it is so normal to use drones — everything is about policing Europe’s shore, Greece being a shield, to normalize the use of invasive surveillance tech. A lot of us are worried with talks of expanding the scope of action, mandate, and powers of Frontex [the European Border and Coast Guard Agency] and its utter lack of accountability — it is crystal clear that entities like Frontex are going to do Europe’s dirty work.
There’s a particular framing applied when governments and companies talk about migrants and refugees, often linking them to ISIS and using careless terms and phrases to discuss serious issues. Our concern is that this kind of use of technology is going to become more advanced and more efficient.
What is happening with regard to contact tracing apps — have there been cases where the technology was forced on refugees?
I’ve heard about the possibility of refugees being tracked through their phones, but I couldn’t confirm. I prefer not to interact with the state through my phone, but that’s a privilege I have, a choice I can make. If you’re living in a refugee camp your options are much more constrained. Often people in the camps feel they are compelled to give access to their phones, to give their phone numbers, etc. And then there are concerns that tracking is being done. It’s really hard to track the tracking; it is not clear what’s being done.
Aside from contact tracing, there’s the concern with the Wi-Fi connection provided in the camps. There’s often just one connection or one specific place where Wi-Fi works and people need to be connected to their families, spouses, friends, or get access to information through their phones, sometimes their only lifeline. It’s a difficult situation because, on the one hand, people are worried about privacy and surveillance, but on the other, you want to call your family, your spouse, and you can only do that through Wi-Fi and people feel they need to be connected. They have to rely on what’s available, but there’s a concern that because it’s provided by the authorities, no one knows exactly what’s being collected and how they are being watched and surveilled.
How do we fight this surveillance creep?
That’s the hard question. I think one of the ways that we can fight some of this is knowledge. Knowing what is happening, sharing resources among different communities, having a broader understanding of the systemic way this is playing out, and using such knowledge generated by the community itself to push for regulation and governance when it comes to these particular uses of technologies.
We call for a moratorium or abolition of all high-risk technology in and around the border because right now we don’t have a governance mechanism in place or integrated regional or international way to regulate these uses of tech.
Meanwhile, we have in the EU a General Data Protection Law, a very strong tool to protect data and data sharing, but it doesn’t really touch on surveillance, automation, A.I., so the law is really far behind.
One of the ways to fight A.I. is to make policymakers understand the real harm that these technologies have. We are talking about ways that discrimination and inequality are reinforced by this kind of tech, and how damaging they are to people.
We are trying to highlight this systemic approach to see it as an interconnected system in which all of these technologies play a part in this increasingly draconian way that migration management is being done.
▻https://onezero.medium.com/how-the-pandemic-turned-refugees-into-guinea-pigs-for-surveillance-t
#réfugiés #cobaye #surveillance #technologie #pandémie #covid-19 #coroanvirus #LIDAR #drones #reconnaissance_faciale #Grèce #camps_de_réfugiés #Lesbos #Moria #European_Digital_Rights (#EDRi) #surveillance_aérienne #complexe_militaro-industriel #Kara_Tepes #weaponization #biométrie #IA #intelligence_artificielle #détecteurs_de_mensonges #empreinte_vocale #tri #catégorisation #donneés #base_de_données #contrôle #technologies_autoritaires #déshumanisation #normalisation #Frontex #wifi #internet #smartphone #frontières
ping @etraces
Online Map Leads Archaeologist to Maya Discovery
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/08/science/archaeology-lidar-maya.html
But #lidar maps are expensive. Takeshi Inomata, an archaeologist at the University of Arizona, recently spent $62,000 on a map that covered 35 square miles, and even was deeply discounted. So he was thrilled last year when he made a major discovery using a lidar map he had found online, in the #public_domain, entirely for free.
]]>Lasers Reveal 60,000 Ancient Maya Structures in Guatemala - HISTORY
▻https://www.history.com/news/ancient-maya-structures-guatemala-lasers
The largest-ever survey of a region from the Maya civilization has located over 60,000 previously unknown structures in northern Guatemala. The survey, conducted with the help of lasers, challenges long-held assumptions that this area was poorly connected and sparsely populated.
The structures researchers identified include farms, houses and defensive fortifications, as well as 60 miles of causeways, roads and canals connecting large cities across the civilization’s central lowlands. Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who uses satellite technology, had this reaction on Twitter when preliminary images became public: “This is HOLY [expletive] territory.” (Parcak was not involved with this study).
The ancient Maya civilization stretched from southern Mexico down to Guatemala and Belize, flourishing between 1000 B.C. and 1500 A.D. The recent study focused on 830 square miles of the #Maya Biosphere Reserve in Petén, #Guatemala. Scientists used a laser technology called #lidar, or light detection and ranging, to penetrate the thick tree canopies in the area and discover archaeological remains beneath them.
]]>Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology ...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/7795179
Vigilante engineer stops Waymo from patenting key lidar technology
Eric Swildens had no dog in the fight other than intellectual curiosity. Article word count: 1218
HN Discussion: ▻https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18118641 Posted by sonnyblarney (karma: 2141) Post stats: Points: 148 - Comments: 28 - 2018-10-02T03:36:52Z
#HackerNews #engineer #from #key #lidar #patenting #stops #technology #vigilante #waymo
Article content:
[1]Article intro image
A lone engineer has succeeded in doing what Uberʼs top lawyers and expert witnesses could not—overturning most of a foundational patent covering arch-rival Waymoʼs lidar laser ranging devices.
Following a surprise left-field complaint by Eric Swildens, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has [2]rejected all but three of 56 (...)
]]>La biomasse forestière au laser - Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD)
▻http://www.ird.fr/toute-l-actualite/actualites/actualites-generales/la-biomasse-forestiere-au-laser
L’estimation de la #biomasse contenue dans les #forêts tropicales pourrait connaître une véritable révolution technologique. Une nouvelle méthode, développée et expérimentée par des scientifiques en Afrique centrale 1, permet en effet de la mesurer sans abattre d’arbre. « Nous utilisons un scanner #laser pour évaluer la quantité précise de #carbone séquestré dans le tronc, les branches et le feuillage », explique l’écologue spécialiste de télédétection Nicolas Barbier, co-auteur d’une récente étude sur le sujet 2.
]]>See the Strange, Beautiful Landscapes Revealed by Lasers
▻https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/maps-lidar-washington-state-laser-scanning-geology
If you were to strip a forest of all its vegetation, what would you see? To find out, Washington state’s government is using airplanes equipped with LIDAR technology to scan the state’s heavily-forested ground. What’s being revealed beneath the trees is a spectacular and strange landscape of hidden geology. Old landslides, abandoned river channels, ancient lava flows, and the tracks of glaciers are suddenly visible in stark relief.
After the devastating Oso landslide in 2014 that killed 43 people in a small town 50 miles outside of Seattle, Washington’s Geological Survey decided to use LIDAR to get a better handle on the state’s geologic hazards. LIDAR, which stands for “light detection and ranging,” works by sending laser light pulses toward a target and measuring the amount of time it takes for those pulses to return. Some of the light is reflected off the tops of trees, and some manages to filter through the trees to be reflected back by the ground. By using just the light reflected from the lowest point, the ground is revealed.
Le fondateur d’Oculus revient avec une technologie de surveillance des frontières
▻http://www.01net.com/actualites/le-fondateur-d-oculus-revient-avec-une-technologie-de-surveillance-des-fronti
Palmer Luckey se lance dans une nouvelle entreprise : développer un système de surveillance des frontières et des zones sensibles grâce à des capteurs et des radars Lidar. Quelques mois après avoir « quitté » Facebook, Palmer Luckey, fondateur d’Oculus, a créé une nouvelle start-up dans un domaine où on ne l’attendait pas forcément : la défense. Le New York Times rapporte qu’on y développe une technologie de surveillance qui pourrait être déployée aux frontières et autour des bases (...)
]]>Oculus Founder Plots a Comeback With a Virtual Border Wall
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/business/oculus-palmer-luckey-new-start-up.html
Palmer Freeman Luckey was the kind of wunderkind Silicon Valley venerates. When he was just 21, he made an overnight fortune selling his start-up, a company called Oculus VR that made virtual-reality gear, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. But the success story took a sideways turn this year when Mr. Luckey was pressured to leave Facebook months after news spread that he had secretly donated to an organization dedicated to spreading anti-Hillary Clinton internet memes. While Mr. Luckey (...)
]]>SNCF Lidar
▻http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=6053ba048c3c406ca85af7f02f3dc647
]]>BBC News - Nokia Maps digitises streets to battle Google’s threat
►http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20497719
By Leo Kelion Technology reporter
Nokia smells an opportunity. Maps have become one of the most closely-watched battlegrounds in tech after a user-backlash led Apple to apologise for the quality of its iOS6 Maps update.
The Finnish firm quickly capitalised by beating Google to the release of an app in Apple’s iPhone and iPad store.
Giving away a product that cost millions of dollars to create to owners of a rival’s products might seem like an odd business decision, but behind it lies a critical point.
If Nokia’s 25-year-old mapping business is to survive the evolution from dedicated sat-nav systems to smart devices it needs to secure as much feedback data as it can.
That means attempting to woo smartphone and tablet users with a series of innovations.
]]>