The Future Internet - Infrastructure for future surveillance?

Good day All,

I happened to be reading an article today on Space X's recent rocket launch with its payload of new satellites destined for orbit. The cargo that peaked my interest was Canadian Space Agency CASSIOPE satellite and in particular the CASCADES module.

Here is a link and a excerpt from that article:

Elon Musk’s commercial space company, SpaceX, has just launched a Falcon 9 rocket into orbit carrying a Canadian Space Agency satellite, CASSIOPE. Part of the satellite’s payload is Cascade, a prototype for a super-fast space-borne file-transfer system—a kind of digital courier service.
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The idea behind Cascade is that companies, governments and agencies increasingly need to get very large digital data packages, weighing several tens of gigabytes, across the world fast—and the internet isn’t up to the task. In the first quarter of this year, according to Akamai (pdf, p. 4), the global average internet connection speed was 3.1 megabits per second (Mbps). At that rate a 100-gigabyte (GB) file would take nearly 72 hours to transfer. The highest average speed was 14.2 Mbps in South Korea.

Link

So I read this and thought cool, could we be looking at the future of digital communication? A possible alternative to physical infrastructure like fiber optic lines? Grant it, the article details that this module will primarily service companies and governments, but I could easily see this technology expanding to the realm of public use. Then i thought with all the developments are current monitoring and surveillance practices conducted by governments, companies and private interests, could we be looking at means to better capture the information they are willing to cover up and lie to the public about?

Remember, Canada is believed to participate in domestic and foreign surveillance along with the UK, US and Australia.

Here is a bit more information on the CASCADES module from Canadian Space Agency website:

ascade

The communications technology demonstrator payload, entitled Cascade, serves as the second mission payload. Cascade is providing a 'proof of concept' design for a high volume store-and-forward data communications operational concept.

Like a courier in the sky, Cascade's operational concept is to pick up very large digital data files and deliver them to almost any destination in the world.

www.asc-csa.gc.ca...

Now this is all speculation and by no means am I suggesting that we are facing the brink of a digital revolution, but pending this proof of concept, I can easily envision a federally controlled satellite providing the global connectivity at the speeds required for our developing world, while maintaining a level of transparency with respect to our private information and have the ability to beam it to any part of the world possibly far easier than current means allow for.

Now this technology seems to be designed for the transfer of large data packages rather then allow for streaming, someone else may be able to clarify, but in my opinion this technology would have several valuable uses where time and expedience is of critical importance.

I could see response teams being able to instantly pull Gigabytes worth of surveillance video, emails and logs at the push of a button, to list one of many possible uses.

Now i could have placed this thread in the Science and Technology board, but decided to include the thoughts i had upon reading the article, which just so happen to be of a conspiratorial nature.

So what do you think? Are we looking at the development of the future technological infrastructure that could possibility allow for extinction of online privacy and further enhance monitoring capabilities or, will this just be future tech that allows for greater convenience for governments, corporations and eventually the public?

Here is the video of the satellite launch. Watch and wonder if this satellite is the beginning of a future where your children and your grand children future liberties are being oppressed.....not to be melodramatic or anything

reply to post by MDDoxs


The internet may be accessed from space, but it isn't in space.



hardwiredclouds.com...

reply to post by AfterInfinity


Discussions on "What the internet is" can spiral into some interesting philosophical debates, but essentially its the inter-connectivity between digital devices either via physical lines or the wireless cloud.

However, to allow for the transfer of data, you need a system in place to connect you to each machine out in the world.

My reasoning is, that a new system that could be designed and implemented could make it easier for the capture of private data by essentially changing the base infrastructure.

Your post was very vague so i may have missed your point.

This new system will allow for the transmission of data very quickly due to the fact it is based in space and will have greater lines of site.

reply to post by MDDoxs


Oh, i forgot to add some additional support for my position.

A lot of my suspicions stem from the engineering/design firm appointed by the Canadian Space Agency, MDA Corporation

Now this company has a interesting scope of products and services:

-Space robotics, satellite information and payload systems
- Earth observation, airborne, surveillance, intelligence, and environmental monitoring
-Radar and optical satellite imagery, and, remote sensing
-Mapping products
-Advanced research and development services for government, defense and commercial customers
-Robotic surgery research via its NeuroArm development program
-Real estate information products

Interesting resume for a company contracted to build a data transfer system


LINK TO MDA CORP WEBPAGE, with a nice big picture of a drone on it

Information Systems

MDA's Information Systems are typically turnkey solutions developed around proprietary and purchased technologies and services, tailored to the individual requirements of our military, civilian, and commercial customers.

Our extensive capabilities in program management, business engineering, systems engineering, hardware and software development, systems integration, and ongoing support services allow us to offer our customer complete systems and service solutions that meet their often demanding operational requirements.

I think you made quite a catch here! How many people even pay attention to launches these days, let alone what is on-board and then what packages are on the units being sent up? Nice work!

I think the satellite net aspect has some real potential. Real good..or Real bad. Depends on how they use it I guess. The bandwidth allows incredible things and the only downside of satellite internet/communications is lag time on signal travel. I used Satellite back when it first came out and it was a hybrid of a dish down and dial up modem for the up side. The neat thing was...it wasn't matured either. So it could be tricked into opening multiple full power connections at once by download accelerators. Talk about eyes bugging out to see download speeds go from 20mbps to 50-100 mbps (not connection..data flow rate on the download) 10 years ago. The majority of Colleges didn't even have those speeds....

I can only imagine what the full potential is now on this satellite where 'pedal to the floor while wishing for more' is the whole design and purpose of it. Wow.... I could play some nice online games with that ...if it weren't for the ping delay. lol

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Hey Wrabbit,

Thank you for the reply. This system has been claimed to possible provide up to 1000mbps download speeds. The implications for these download speeds alone would be of great convenience to many parties.

This would also include the agency that wants to see what Wrabbit was doing in X location and downloads all the video surveillance in the area in seconds to see.

Furthermore, if this system becomes the basis for a new system of inter connectivity, the government would have complete access and we would have inadvertently bound ourselves to this system.

reply to post by MDDoxs


Do you know if this is supposed to integrate into or compliment Internet II or is it running above and separate from it? This sounds magnitudes faster, but wouldn't be able to be truly global without a whole constellation of geo-sync'ed satellites like GPS, right? So it has to be the Super-Add-on to tie into something else, doesn't it?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


I believe if this passes trial runs then it will be implemented as a separate system to work in conjunction with what ever other medium exists.

Additionally, the technology seems confined to sending singular, large packets of data as opposed to streaming it at high speeds. So geo- sync may not be required beyond the initial contact.