IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 64

seems an obvious next step. One
example might be to harvest all the
smartphone sensor data from willing participants in one major urban
area, and to investigate the sensitivity, clutter, and signal to noise properties of the distributed network
as applied to, say, seismic sensing. This is a non-trivial endeavor
but as discussed above the Quake
Catcher Network provides an existing implementation of a very similar system.
A particularly important aspect
of PTM analysis is to consider the
mechanisms by which the PTM
community can perform internal
quality checks on data, on analysis
products, and on interpretations.
will the PTM community selforganize and require some kind of
peer review, for example? An adaptive PTM system could even modify
the data collection rate and mode
depending on the sensor's reported
location, in the context of other
information being reported in the
PTM network.

should play in facilitating public
data access, both within and outside their national borders.

Summer Tokash for editing help
with the manuscript.

Closing Thoughts

People, Policy, and
Governments: The Outermost
PTM Interface Layer

Christopher Stubbs is the Samuel C.
Moncher Professor of Physics and
of Astronomy, 17 Oxford Street,
Harvard University, Cambridge MA
02138; stubbs@physics.harvard.edu.
Sidney Drell is a Physics Professor, emeritus, and Senior Fellow
at the Hoover Institution, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA 94305;
drell@slac.stanford.edu.

[1] International Panel on Fissile Materials,
IPFM Global Fissile Material Report 2009:
A Path to Nuclear Disarmament, 2009, ch. 9;
http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_
down/gfmr09.pdf.
[2] r.B. Mitchell, "Identifying undeclared nuclear sites: Contributions from nontraditional
sources"; http://www.ipfmlibrary.org/mit98.
pdf, accessed Oct. 15, 2013.
[3] M. Crowley and A. Persbo, "The role of
non-governmental organizations in the monitoring and verification of international arms
control and disarmament agreements," in
Thinking Outside the Box in Multilateral Disarmament and Arms Control Negotiations, J.
Borrieand V. Martin randin, Eds. Geneva,
Switzerland: United Nations Institute for Disarmament research (UNIDIr), 2006; http://
www.unidir.ch/pdf/articles/pdf-art2588.pdf.
[4] D. Deiseroth, "Societal verification: The
wave of the future," in Verification Yearbook
2000, T. Findaly, Ed. London, U.K.: Vertic,
2000, p. 265.
[5] r. Gottemoeller, Acting Under-Secretary
of State for Arms Control and International
Security, Arms Control in the Information
Age, remarks at Moscow State Institute of International relations, 2012; http://www.state.
gov/t/us/187159.htm.
[6] S. D. Drell and r. Jeanloz, "Nuclear deterrence in a world without nuclear weapons" in
Deterrence: Its Past and Future, G. P. Shultz,
S. D. Drell, and J. E. Goodby, Eds.Stanford,
CA: Hoover Inst. Press, 2011.
[7] S. D. Drell and C. Stubbs, "realizing the
full potential of the open skies treaty," Arms
Control Today, vol. 41, July/Aug. 2011.
[8] r.L. Craft and T.J. Draelos, Authentication
of Data for Monitoring a Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty, Sandia document SAND96-1601,
1996; http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/
purl/249279-lzOBut/webviewable/249279.pdf.
[9] G.J. Simmons, "How to insure that data acquired to verify treaty compliance are trustworthy,"
Proc. IEEE, vol. 76, no. 5, May 1988.
[10] E. Cochran, et al., IEEE Instrumentation
and Measurement Mag., vol.12, no.8, 2009.
See also http://qcn.stanford.edu/.
[11] J. C. Tang,et al., "reflecting on the DArPA red Balloon Challenge," Commun. ACM ,
vol. 54, no.4, Apr. 2011.
[12] M.J. raddick, et al., "Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the motivations of citizen science volunteers,"
Astronomy Education Review, vol. 9, no. 1,
p. 010103, 2010; http://arxiv.org/abs/0909.2925.
[13] "Stars in their eyes: An armchair astronomer discovers something very odd," Economist, June 26, 2008; http://www.economist.
com/node/11614176?source=hptextfeature&st
ory_id=11614176.

There are a number of interesting
unresolved public policy elements
in the PTM concept, including
issues of privacy and individual
rights. The interactions between a
technologically empowered public
and their governments are undergoing rapid change, as evidenced
by recent events in the Arab world.
It is difficult to predict how the
citizens of the world will access,
assess, and exploit both data and
analyses that pertain to international agreements.
It is also interesting to contemplate the appropriate role that
enlightened governments could or

Given the rapid rate of innovation
in information technology, and
with ever-evolving capability for
both the acquisition and the analysis of large data sets, we see the
PTM technical prospects as promising. However, we are also aware
of the diplomatic and political
obstacles between stating policy
goals and actually implementing
the technical framework needed for
achieving them. without political
strength at home, courage among
the global partners, and international organizations with the power
and will to legitimize appropriate
actions, Public Technical Means
and societal monitoring will be of
little, if any, value no matter how
revealing the data they provide to
supplement National and Shared
Technical Means.

Author Information

Acknowledgment
C.S. is grateful to the Hoover Institution for the Annenberg Visiting
Fellow appointment under which
this work was carried out. we also
thank Jesse Lawrence and Angela
Chung of Stanford University for
informative conversations about
the Quake Catcher network, and

References

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

wINTEr 2013

http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_ http://www.ipfmlibrary.org/mit98 http://http:// http://www.unidir.ch/pdf/articles/pdf-art2588.pdf http://www.state http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/ http://qcn.stanford.edu/ http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0909.2925 http://www.economist

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