• As violence engulfs Juárez, American companies adopt defensive measure

    American companies relocated their manufacturing and assembly facilities to Juárez, just across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, to benefit from the cheap labor costs in one of Mexico’s most business-friendly cities; now, as drug-related crime has engulfed the city, these companies are erecting fences, increasing security in factories, and encouraging employees to commute in carpools; managers have gone through kidnapping simulations; some drive to work in convoys for added security

  • TSA general aviation manager says new LASP due this fall

    Two years ago the TSA proposed strict security measures for general aviation’s larger planes; this Large Aircraft Security Program (LASP) generated more than 9,000 negative comments and was ridiculed as being written by people with no knowledge of general and corporate aviation; TSA now says it seeks “a less adversarial relationship with the industry,” that a proposal for more limited security measures will be out in the fall for public comments

  • Experts say smart meters are vulnerable to hacking

    In the United States alone, more than eight million smart meters have been deployed by electric utilities and nearly sixty million should be in place by 2020; security experts are worried that this rush to deployment of smart meters ignores serious security vulnerabilities: the interactivity which makes smart meters so attractive also makes them vulnerable to hackers, because each meter essentially is a computer connected to a vast network

  • Moscow explosions: a small blip or long-term drag on the Russian economy?

    The terrorism behind the Moscow subway explosions could become an economic drag on the Russian economy if it changes perceptions of security risks in Russia; research shows that a sustained low-level terror campaign can raise long-term security concerns and hurt economic growth more than even a very dramatic single event: the 9/11 terror attacks punctured America’s sense of domestic security in a single day, but nevertheless, a year after the attacks, the U.S. economy was growing again; on the other hand, two decades of Basque terrorist activity in Spain — activity which caused far fewer fatalities than 9/11 — created a 10 percent drop in per capita gross domestic product in that area of Spain

  • Thermo Fisher Scientific granted two U.S. patents for radiation detection instruments

    Thermo Scientific RadEye PRD will help border guards, customs agents, or counterterrorism teams detect radiation sources more effectively than conventional personal detectors

  • U.S. companies increasingly worried about security in Mexico

    U.S. companies in Mexico are increasingly worried about security and many are reconsidering future investments as drug war killings spiral out of control; Mexican foreign direct investment plunged 51 percent last year to $11.4 billion

  • Day of trained sniffing bees is here

    The bee’s discreet sense of smell, equivalent to a dog’s, is being exploited as a much cheaper way to detect various odors in the environment; a U.K. company is now training bees to sniff out explosives and land mines — but also to identify diseases and cancers in people and animals, detect rapidly spreading bacteria in food, and identify dry rot in buildings

  • U.S. Navy interested in laser warfare

    A big attraction of the free-electron laser (FEL) is the ability to adjust its output wavelength to improve transmission through the thick, moist air at sea; other laser weapons emit at fixed wavelengths; also, the laser is electrically powered, so it can recharge quickly, potentially allowing for repeat bursts of fire

  • Top U.S. cyber official: cyber threat poses existential threat to U.S.

    Senior Obama administration official: “I am convinced that given enough time, motivation and funding, a determined adversary will always — always — be able to penetrate a targeted system”; as a result: “The cyber threat can be an existential threat — meaning it can challenge our country’s very existence, or significantly alter our nation’s potential”

  • iPhone, IE8, Firefox, and Safari easily hacked at Pwn2Own contest

    Hackers gathered for an annual contest in Vancouver demonstrate easy hacking of iPhone and all major browsers; a non-jailbroken iPhone was also hacked and its SMS database stolen; security measures taken by Firefox, Safari, and IE8 no match for hackers

  • First U.S. WiMAX handset launched (or: re-launched)

    Two standards compete for 4G supremacy — WiMax and LTE; Sprint is bringing out the EVO, the first 4G telephone operable in America; Sprint admits, though, that it sees LTE as the larger of the two 4G standards; the decision to come out with a WiMax handset has to do with the fact that WiMax networks are here and expanding, and Sprint did not want to wait

  • Mexico violence boom to armored car industry

    The deteriorating situation in Mexico and the growing drug-related violence there have been a boon to the armored car industry; the CEO of Ogden, Utah-based International Armoring Corp. says that over the past eighteen months, the company’s sales of armored passenger vehicles to corporations along the U.S.-Mexico border have increased over 300 percent

  • First: Private security guards shoot and kill a Somali pirate

    More and more ships sailing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden hire private security guards for protection; on Tuesday, private security guards on a Panamanian-flagged cargo ship shot and killed a Somali pirate; the killed pirate was part of a group of pirates using high-speed skiffs controlled by a mother ship

  • Premier IT technology show offers glimpse at intense rivalry among manufacturers of new gadgets

    Terrorists and criminals equip themselves with the latest technology, and law enforcement must keep pace; the Federal Office Systems Exposition, a major information technology event which opened on Tuesday and closes today, shows that the future is intense in the evolving cyberspace rivalry among manufacturers and battles against crime and terrorist threats; a balanced view offered by speakers on different panels suggested that for every device displayed to counter crime and defeat terrorism there would be risk of new products falling into the wrong hands and challenging the main concepts behind the invention

  • Airport sensor detects explosives hidden in the body

    Smiths Detection says that the 16HR-LD model of its B-Scan technology can see everything; the machine’s low-dose security technology is able to see all internal body cavities for the detection of concealed threatening objects, such as bombs and detonators