• Hillard Heintze security firm branching out to consult police departments, cities

    A Chicago-based security consulting firm, founded by a former Chicago Police superintendent and a retired chief of the Secret Service in Chicago, was named by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s fastest-growing companies; last week the firm announced it would add law enforcement consulting to the services it offered clients

  • More counties join Secure Communities

    Across the United States, 135 jurisdictions in 17 states have joined DHS’s (and DOJ’s) Secure Communities project; Secure Communities offers local jurisdiction an information-sharing capability: if an individual is arrested, his or her fingerprint information will now be simultaneously checked against both FBI criminal history records and the biometrics-based immigration records maintained by DHS, meaning that both criminal and immigration records of all local arrestees will be checked

  • ACLU blasts Michigan prosecutors for bioterrorism charge against HIV-positive man

    Prosecutors in Michigan are charging an HIV-positive man with violating the state’s bioterrorism law for biting his neighbors during an altercation; the ACLU claims the statute behind the state’s bioterrorism law was not intended to cover an HIV-person biting another person; prosecutors charged the man with assault and later added a bioterrorism charge on claims he was trying to use the virus as a weapon

  • Russia builds stealth navy

    Russia is turning part of its navy into a stealth navy; the project uses stealth technology to reduce the ship’s secondary radar field, as well as its acoustic, infrared, magnetic, and visual signatures; two corvettes have already been floated, and Russia plans to have up to thirty vessels of this class

  • Home and business security systems grow in popularity

    There are two misconceptions regarding the installation of security systems to protect your business or home: that these systems are very expensive, and that they are a hassle to use; once people realize that this is not the case, they also find out that these systems have additional advantages: they can protect from other hazards, including fire and carbon monoxide poisoning; and protecting one’s assets by installing a security system might save money on insurance

  • 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

  • Michigan-based militia violent plot investigation included undercover FBI agent

    The Michigan-based Hutaree group planned to kill a large number of law enforcement officers by mimicking the manner in which IEDs are used in Iran and Afghanistan against American soldiers; the purpose was to trigger a wide-spread, violent revolt against the U.S. government; some of information about the group’s violent plans came from an undercover FBI agent

  • Cutting-edge laser technology for crime labs developed by FIU research team

    Determining the precise composition of a substance with LIBS can provide important evidence in legal proceedings. Trace elemental analysis for comparisons of glass, paint chips, soils, paper, ink on paper, and metal fragments has been shown to be highly effective; the instrumentation required for this kind of analysis in forensic comparisons, however, has been beyond the reach of many forensic laboratories; researchers at Florida International University offers a solution

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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

  • Indian military plans to use world's hottest pepper in weapons

    If you did not know, Scoville units are a universally accepted measure of chili hotness; the Indian bhut jolokia, from the Assam region, is by far the world’s hottest pepper; researchers at the University of Mexico found that the bhut jolokia reached over one million Scoville heat units (SHUs); the world’s next hottest pepper, the Red Savina Habenero, clocks in at a tame 577,000 Scoville units; the Indian Army is planning to use the bhut jolokia in stun grenades

  • DARPA wants to use ISO containers for operational flexibility, self-building floating bases

    The likely tasks for navies today include humanitarian assistance and disaster relief or “maritime domain awareness and interdiction operations” — that is, detecting and stopping such activities as piracy and smuggling of weapons, drugs, sanctions-busting cargoes; traditional naval methods call for large numbers of scarce, expensive, specialized warships which may not always be much use for such missions; DARPA looks into using ISO containers and intermodal transport system to deliver flexible operational capability from unmodified commercial containerships

  • Top 10 crime-fighting technologies, II

    Today’s criminals avail themselves of the latest technological innovations in order to stay one step ahead of the law; fortunately, technological advances help law enforcement balance the criminals’ arsenals and keep societies safer than otherwise would be the case