Josh,

Thank you very much for forwarding this very interesting article! I am hoping, however, that this incredible new technology will evaporate some time very early on the morning of April 2nd.

Jeff Gibson
Anchor Pub Society of Homeland Birdwatchers
Everett Wa

> Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 05:09:28 -0700
> From: xjoshx at gmail.com
> To: tweeters at u.washington.edu
> Subject: [Tweeters] Fwd: New DNA Sensing RADAR Technology Could Revolutionize The War On Terror and Bird Watching - Yahoo! News
>
> I just saw this article pop up on my news feed. Incredible to say the least!!!
>
> Josh Adams
> Lynnwood, WA
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: <mailbot at yahoo.com>
> Date: Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 5:08 AM
> Subject: New DNA Sensing RADAR Technology Could Revolutionize The War
> On Terror and Bird Watching
> To: xjoshx at gmail.com
>
> ?Sparrows, lots of sparrows.? The words are spoken by David Iconia, a
> government contractor for the NSA
> who is staring down at a laptop with a screen full of color coded
> names, not dissimilar to the screen an
> aircraft controller would spend their day looking at. David is on the
> forefront of a until recently secret
> government project with the goal of protecting highly vulnerable
> targets from known terror suspects, but
> today his job has brought him to an unnamed tract of government land
> on the outskirts of Washington, DC
> looking for birds.
>
> The project started ten years ago, when NSA researchers discovered
> that, using a series of microbursts of
> high frequency radiation in specific series, they could detect certain
> patterns in the deoxyribonucleic
> acid that exists in all living organisms. The acid, better known as
> DNA, contains the genetic instructions
> that exist in all living organisms and the technology could,
> researchers theorized, be used to
> differentiate and detect specific individuals remotely. Although not
> technically that similar to RADAR,
> the technology in shorthand was referred to as DNA RADAR or DRADAR and
> the name stuck. In a country still
> reeling from the September 11th terror attacks, it didn?t take a lot
> of imagination to think of uses this
> could have to safeguard the country, and the Bush administration
> quickly funneled almost $30 billion
> dollars into the program.
>
> Over the last decade researchers worked tirelessly to get the
> technology accurate enough to recognize
> specific human beings in a large crowd of people, but the logistics
> involved in retrieving hundreds of DNA
> samples from volunteers with top secret clearances to train the
> machine and then assemble said volunteers
> for testing proved to be daunting.
>
> That?s where the birds come in. Over the past two centuries, museums
> have amassed incredible quantities of
> mounted specimens (known as ?skins?) in their collections. This made
> collecting DNA samples for the most
> common species in a given test area trivial. Once the samples were
> entered, scientists were able to take
> their DRADAR systems, now portable enough to fit in the back of a
> small SUV, into the field to test their
> effectiveness. Initially they could only detect the differences
> between individuals with large
> differences, such as ducks, sparrows and crows. ?We had to do a lot of
> fine tuning, which really helped us
> begin to pinpoint which individuals came from which species, but
> eventually we realized that nobody on the
> team knew enough about birds to ensure that what the screens were
> telling us was correct.?
>
> That?s where Richard Grousman came in. Richard has been a bird watcher
> for almost 30 years and currently
> works for Cornell University?s Lab of Ornithology. He spent 15 years
> as an NSA researcher before moving
> into bird research which gave him the necessary background in
> classified research to join the team. ?When
> I showed up they didn?t know a Warbler from a Kinglet, much less a
> Swamp Sparrow from a Song Sparrow,?
> Richard laughs. ?They could detect the birds, but they didn?t know if
> what they were detecting was
> correct. So I get paid by the government to bird.?
>
> David looks through the jumble of text on the rough map of the terrain
> in front of us. In a sea of blue
> there?s one lone red icon moving slowly. That?s Richard, roughly 50
> yards away from us, invisible in the
> thick brush. David zooms in on the spot and clicks on a blue icon.
> ?Song sparrow, about 5 yards north of
> you,? he radios. ?Hit,? comes the reply back and a nearby colleague
> types the result into a database. ?It
> took a long, long time to get the sparrows.? The radio rings out
> again, ?I have a small flock of birds
> moving from northwest to southeast about 15 yards in front of me.?
> David zooms frantically to find what
> the bird watcher is reporting. ?I see a Carolina Chickadee, and
> White-Breasted Nuthatch and also?, he
> trails off. ?Hit and hit, but there?s one more species with them.?
> David looks frustrated. ?I know it?s a
> woodpecker, Downy or Hairy, but it can?t tell which one.? He clicks a
> few keys and the system seems to
> pause for a minute before the text goes bold. ?Hairy Woodpecker,? he
> radios. After a minute the reply
> comes back, ?hit.?
>
> If they can get the technology sensitive enough to detect not only
> humans, but specific humans, it could
> be the biggest military breakthrough since radar was originally
> perfected during World War 2. ?The
> Pentagon wants this bad. Imagine an army of drones flying at 40,000
> feet above the Middle East, searching
> for the DNA of known terror suspects. If we?d had this before we would
> have taken out Bin Laden ten years
> earlier.? The DRADAR unit can already detect a handful of the
> researchers in the field tests, but the
> difference between detecting a species and an individual of that
> species is very significant. ?The
> resolution just isn?t there yet. We can almost do it with individual
> birds, but humans have proven to be a
> lot harder,? says Iconia. ?I think we?ll get there, it?s just going to
> take some more effort,? he suggests.
>
> In the meantime, they continue to test on birds. ?It?s a birder?s
> dream come true,? declares Grousman. ?We
> took it to the beach last fall during shorebird migration. Shorebirds
> are very tough to identify for even
> seasoned birders, but the DRADAR had no issues. There were about
> 15,000 birds out in the tide flats and we
> could identify almost every one. As a birder it drove me nuts. There
> were several rare birds, a Little
> Stint and a Ruff,? continues the bird watcher. ?Those are birds from
> Europe that end up here on accident
> only every few years. I couldn?t tell anyone about them, or even that
> I was there. It drove me nuts!? he
> says with a laugh.
>
> With the unprecedented amount of research and data being generated on
> bird DNA, the program may have a
> long-lasting effect on ornithology. ?We?ve never had these resources
> before, it?s been really exciting,?
> says Grousman. ?They were really confused why all these unknown birds
> they were finding turned out to be
> simply common Crows. It turned out that there was a lot of significant
> differences in Crows genetically
> that nobody had noticed until now. Everyone just assumed that in most
> parts of North America one Crow was
> the same as the others, but that?s not the case. We have three
> different subspecies where we are now that
> nobody knew existed until now. They don?t interbreed at all, but
> because they look the same with the human
> eye everyone just assumed they were the same.? Grousman is working on
> a research paper to present to the
> American Ornithologists Union, the governing body of North American
> bird taxonomy, that, if accepted,
> could balloon the number of recognized Crow Species in the United
> States from the current 3 up to as many
> as 27. ?Bird watchers in the Northwest have been trying to figure out
> if they have one crow species or two
> for over a century, but when we did field tests in the area last year
> I found four just in one small area.
> Unfortunately you need one of our devices to tell the difference.?
>
> Just when, or if, the devices will every reach the point of consumers
> is still up in the air, but the
> researchers think it could happen in the next decade. ?We could shrink
> it down to a size that would fit in
> your hands right now, it?d just be pricey,? say Grousman. ?I don?t
> know when birders will be able to buy
> one, but I?ll be the first in line.?
>
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