When Mita bought her new iPhone, she had opted-in to the "citizen-scientist" program. Her smartphone was continually monitoring and storing data from built-in motion sensors, from the GPS receiver, and from the newly developed MEMS Krypton and CO2 gas sensors. Yes, buying the new "green" iPhone had cost a bit more, but Mita wanted to do something to support the new carbon emissions treaty and the president's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Only 10 percent of smartphone buyers had chosen this more expensive option, but that still amounted to hundreds of thousands of verification sensors in Mita's country alone.
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Mita set the phone down on a bench as she rested on her weekend stroll through the park in her small town. The "verification app" she had running in the background was continually assessing the data stream from the smartphone's sensors, searching for anomalous events. On this particular morning the sensor suite showed a combination of measurements that departed significantly from the historical norm for this time and location. In fact, the accelerometer registered a jolt that was consistent with an earthquake -- or perhaps an underground nuclear test. Mita's smartphone reported this anomaly to the international public verification clearinghouse, and transmitted the buffered time history of measurements, along with time and location tags.
Within a few seconds the clearinghouse had determined that there were 83 other public verification sensing nodes in the area around Mita with the sensitivity to detect such a tremor. The clearinghouse software first validated and then reviewed each of the datasets. A coherent joint analysis of all the accelerometer data from the surrounding area was inconsistent with the seismic signature of an underground nuclear test. So, the clearinghouse designated this as a likely false alarm and automatically sent an email to Mita, thanking her for her ongoing support of the public treaty verification program and summarizing the alert and its resolution.
Verification -- the process of ensuring that countries comply with treaties -- often poses one of the highest hurdles to international agreements. Particularly when it comes to matters of national security, it is essential to be able to ensure that the other side is not secretly developing new threats by cheating. In the past, the foundation of such efforts has been what are known as "National Technical Means" -- that is, spy satellites and other intelligence tools that governments use to keep an eye on the world, in addition to trained spies.
But the digital age is changing that. The increase in data volume, ever-improving connectivity, and the relentless evolution towards ubiquitous sensors in cell phones and other devices affords new opportunities for concerned citizens to participate in solving some of the thorniest health and security issues of our time. In the very near future, anyone with a cell phone will be able to serve as a weapons inspector.
The data gathered by NTM are typically held as highly-classified information, available only to professional intelligence analysts. Often, NTM are complemented by other verification tools, like onsite inspections. So, for example, the United States will verify Russia's compliance with New START, the treaty that reduces the size of each country's nuclear arsenal, not only by watching its military bases and such from above, but also through a series of arranged visits to look for behavior that might suggest the Russians are keeping more weapons than they should.
Verifying compliance with some treaties also relies on "Shared Technical Means," or STM -- instruments and the data they produce that are shared among participating nations and with verification organizations, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency. For example, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans nuclear explosions, is verified in part by the International Monitoring System, a network of some 250 sensors located around the world. Data from these systems are shared among participating nations, but access is typically controlled by governments, even if the information is unclassified.
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