• Privacy advocates: fusion centers threat to civil liberties

    U.S. intelligence fusion centers — in which federal, state, and local authorities collaborate in collecting, analyzing, vetting, and disseminating intelligence to first responders on the ground in an effort to disrupt terrorist or criminal activity — have grown dramatically since 9/11: DHS now recognizes 70 such centers, and they engage 800,000 state and local law enforcement officers; privacy advocates worry

  • U.K. Tories charge government's legal dodge over Comms database debate

    The U.K. government last year revealed plans for creating a massive central database of e-mail, Web browsing, telephone, and social networking data; U.K. law mandates that such a database be approved by parliament; Tories charge that the government is using the European rules obliging data retention by ISPs — rules which come into effect today — to begin assembling this centralized system, or its prototype

  • Swimming pool game inspires robot detection

    Researchers use the Marco Polo game to solve a complex problem — how to create a system that allows robots not only to “sense” a moving target, but intercept it

  • NSA may offer "billions" for a solution allowing eavesdropping on Skype

    Skype continues to be a major problem for government listening agencies, whether intelligence agencies tracking terrorists or the police trying to listen in on criminals; rumor has it that NSA is willing to pay handsomely for a Skype-code-breaking solution

  • Trend: Manned-unmanned UAVs for battle, domestic surveillance

    In both military and domestic missions, there are situations in which UAVs are preferable, and other situations in which manned aircraft are preferable (or even required); the solution: manned UAVs

  • BriefCam launches CCTV video synopsis technology

    Video synopsis technology allows one day of surveillance camera footage to be condensed into a few minutes, thus allowing security personnel to focus on evens that require attention while reducing costs

  • Square root bias and airport security screening

    Say someone from profiled Group P is 16 times more likely to be a terrorist than someone from the average Group A; using the square root bias, people from Group P should be screened only four times more often then people in Group A (4 is the square root of 16); this reduces the number of people from Group P who are subjected to repeated screenings from 16 to 4 — but it still screens people from Group P more than the average person

  • Random checks as effective as terrorist profiling

    Profiling is a waste of time and resources in security screening; the problem is that too much time is spent repeatedly screening members of the profiled group who are not actually terrorists,

  • India to see a large, broad growth in expenditures on domestic security

    A series of terrorist attacks, culminating in the coordinated attack in Mumbai last month, convinced both government and industry in India that more security — much more security — is required to cope with mounting threats to domestic peace; business opportunities abound for companies in IT security, biometric, surveillance, detection, situational awareness, and more

  • U.K. government grants itself even more data sharing power

    A U.K. government proposal debated in Parliament this week would increase the ability of different government arms to share data

  • Here they go again: China demands access to Western computer security

    Another crisis in U.S.-China trade relations looms, as China, again, is about to introduce rules which would allow Chinese companies to steal Western industrial secrets, and would allow the Chinese government more tightly to monitor what the Chinese people say and read

  • EU considers allowing police to place Trojans on suspects' computers

    Remote searches of suspects’ computers could become a mainstay of cybercrime investigations under a new EU strategy announced last week

  • France drops security database over privacy fears

    Criticized for ignoring serious privacy concerns, the French government scraps — for now — the implementation of massive data base; data base was to include information about French men and women as young as 13 years of age and include information on people’s health and sexual orientation

  • Raytheon reaches 300th RAID system

    A Raytheon’s milestone: The Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) system provides surveillance support for use in both war and peacetime; the U.S. army now has three hundred of them

  • Canadian universities study the two sides of the Internet

    Terrorists and hackers use the Internet to spread their nefarious programs; some governments use the Internet to spy on their citizens; Dalhousie is working on a way to spot criminal behavior, while U Toronto keeps censors at bay halfway around the globe