As if warfare weren’t already creepy enough, BAE Systems, a British defense company, has released a promotional video of robotic spiders, dragonflies and snakes it is developing to aid soldiers in combat zones. The robotic creatures are being funded by a $38 million contract with the U.S. Army that is part of a massive, and costly, effort to modernize the weaponry of the armed forces. The robots will slither and crawl around corners, into caves, and through booby-trapped streets, sending images back to screens in a command center or to a screen mounted on a soldiers wrist.

The purpose is to “extend the warfighter’s senses and reach, providing operational capabilities that would otherwise be costly, impossible, or deadly to achieve,” says Joseph Mait, MAST cooperative agreement manager for the Army Research Laboratory.

Other remote controlled devices are in the works as well, such as the unmanned drones that are currently used for bombing raids and reconnaissance. The hope is that using these robots will cut down on the number of casualties suffered by U.S. forces, and possibly civilians, while improving the accuracy of missile attacks and raids. However the potential for misuse of these robots, such as spying on citizens or other governments, is straight out of some sci-fi movie.

In any case we hope we never see one of these little creatures on our windowsill. [Source: Daily Mail UK]

Promotional video shows a ‘bug’ being sent into a danger zone in a special vehicle

“What we are doing is providing an enhanced awareness for soldiers, basically an extension to their eyes and ears,” he said.

“The creatures have external sensors. They can be tossed out into a building or a cave or even a pile of rubble and then send images back to the troops.

Pictures from the bug are beamed back to the operator, allowing the target to be blown up

“The idea is to get a number of these working together – some tiny, some maybe up to a foot in length, and all going into a building together carrying out different tasks. Eventually we hope to have animals flying and slithering.

“The five-year programme has just started but we could have them with soldiers within six months, and then continue to develop the concept as the project goes along.”

Despite the high-tech gadgetry involved, BAE Systems insists once production is in full swing, each bug will cost no more than £100 to produce.

The FBI sent a national security letter, or NSL, to the Internet Archive in November and included a gag order barring site founder Brewster Kahle from talking to anyone other than his lawyers about the request. Kahle, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to challenge the subpoena, arguing that the NSL program is unconstitutional, and the FBI withdrew the NSL on April 22.

The settlement between the FBI and the Internet Archive allowed Kahle to break the gag order, a standard part of an NSL request. The Internet Archive’s challenge of the NSL is only the third case that the ACLU is aware of in which an NSL has been challenged in court, said Melissa Goodman an attorney for the civil liberties group’s National Security Project.

Quoting from Brewster’s official press release:

“The free flow of information is at the heart of every library’s work. That’s why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI’s power to issue NSLs to America’s libraries,” said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. “While it’s never easy standing up to the government — particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone — I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong. I’m grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands.”

See related posts on Wired, CNET, InfoWorld, ZDNet Government, The Register, Computerworld, WebGuild

Internet Archive founder and digital librarian Brewster Kahle

(Credit: Internet Archive)