This may have some use against script-kiddies, bot-nets and similarly non-sophisticated adversaries. It is worse than nothing against other adversaries, as it creates a false sense of security.

I guess they have never heard of smaller batteries or (for multi-cell cases) step-up converters. It is quite simple to, say, take a 6 cell battery pack and convert one cell to a step-up regulator and retain one cell. Gives you 4 cells (i.e. stainless-steel containers) to fill with whatever you like. The same effect can be had by using smaller batteries than originally in the pack.

Indeed. If they automatize things, we will at least have consistent low quality...

I do not know what the reviews for the paper were. I only know it got into a well-known "Tier-I" conference. I do know my 10-Minute assessment was right, because more than a year later, the authors (minus the first one) had their follow-up paper where they basically admitted all defects and scientific misconduct by the first author. And I do know nothing happened to anyone. This was "mainstream-research", the conference is large and well-known.

That would be exceedingly stupid. The real problem is that the US paid this guy and thereby demonstrated that it does not have "friends", just servants and victims. That is not an attitude that is compatible with being a member of the modern world.

I think what is missing is that a) more reviewer actually need to be experts and practicing scientists and b) doing good reviews needs to get you scientific reputation rewards. At the moment,investing time in reviewing well is a losing game for those doing it.

I agree that good reviews do not need to be binary. You can also "accept if this is fixed", "rewrite as an 'idea' paper", "publish in a different field", "make it a poster", etc. But all that takes time and real understanding.

That would work if the NSA would be hacking devices anywhere. They do not do that. Not because of any ethical concerns or because they cannot, but in order to protect their tools and methods. Whenever they hack something, they risk losing the vulnerability used. As vulnerabilities are expensive and not in unlimited supply, they cannot use them for minor things such as a sensor point somewhere.

Use TOR and select an US exit-relay. Very simple to do, for example with the TOR-browser bundle. Start, select "verify TOR", select Altlas, select new identity, if the exit-relay is not in the US. Repeat until US exit relay is obtained.

But be aware that using TOR puts you into the NSA's "extremist" database...

One very common scenario for knowingly faked "results" is this: PhD Student has his/her funding running out and gets set an ultimatum (explicitly or implicitly). PhD student fakes something, sometimes looking pretty good at first glance. Advisor is too stupid, lazy or full of him/herself to notice. Paper gets published because advisor is "respected" in the community.

I have seen this happening quite a few times, including one case where all authors, except the first one (the PhD student), wrote what was basically a retraction a year later. But did anything happen to these people? No. The PhD student still has his PhD, despite his results being essentially worthless. The other authors still have their reputation. The faked publications were not retracted. I did recognize the fake in 10 Minutes by numerous inconsistent things and numbers that did not add up and did not make sense at all. None of the reviewers apparently did. Just when people tried to reproduce the results and failed were some question asked. But as I said, no consequences for blatant scientific misconduct by several people. For me, this nearly cost me my PhD as my advisor was not even capable of understanding the fake after I explained it to him in detail and somehow though they were doing something vastly superior to my work. While the low-point of my scientific work, it made me understand that most so-called "scientists" do not qualify for that distinction.

There are some islands of honest and competent conferences and reviewers, but they are usually in not very well known events. All that is mainstream, "Tier-I" conferences and Journals are fundamentally corrupt. I mostly left research for the same reason, but I occasionally still publish something these days. The difference is that I publish if I have something good and interesting, not when some stupid research administrator thinks I should have more papers. And I publish in a venue where I respect the people running the conference even if that gives a lot less scientific "reputation".

Peer review works if the people doing the review are honest and competent. Both aspects have been in sharp decline, not only in the biomedical field. These days, positions for Professors and PhD students are more often than not filled with people that can simulate competence and that have no or little personal ethics whatsoever. They will form groups that accept any and all papers from each other and reject anything from others. Anything original also generally has a high chance of getting rejected, unless the reviewers know and like the authors. The peer-review system is so broken and corrupt that it has just stopped working as the quality of the "researchers" forming it is way too often abysmally bad. (And forget about "anonymous reviews". The in-group has all the Tech-Reports from their friends and can recognize all papers written by them.)

This is not a new phenomenon, it seems to just be getting worse again. But remember that Shannon had trouble publishing his "Theory of Information", because no reviewer understood it or was willing to invest time for something new.

Inserting a localizer signal using ultra-wide band would be very, very simple. These are basically very brief spike signals at "random" times that you cannot measure unless you know the cryptographically generated sequence in advance. They look like low-level noise to most equipment. But as soon as you know the sequence and look for it, they become glaringly obvious.

So maybe "inserting the sensors" is the wrong idea and "inserting the UWB localizer beacons" is more what they will be doing.

I don't doubt they have data. I just doubt they have the precision required and the clock-sync required that the NSA needs for precise targeting. Also, the respective literature goes into looking at disturbances as well (large AC starting, that kind of thing) and these may not even be visible at the utility-end, as the net has very low impedance there. I also expect that the NSA wants real-time capability as they will want to vector in drone strikes.

But yes, for very rough after-the-fact localization, the data may already be available.