• Microchip-sized digital camera for surveillance

    In today’s minicams, the image sensors and support circuitry are on separate microchips, and most of the power goes on communication between the chips; Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena has squeezed all the components of a camera onto one low-power chip

  • RFID market to reach $5.56 billion by end of 2009

    In 2008, the average price per RFID tag was $1.13; the total value of tags being sold in 2008 was $2.23 billion; this figure will increase to $5.56 billion in 2009

  • Products block unauthorized RFID reading of contactless cards

    More and more countries and organizations move toward adopting RFID-enabled, biometric e-IDs — driver’s licenses, passports, national IDs, and more; trouble is, these e-documents are susceptible to digital pickpocketing; a U.K. company offers solutions

  • Elbit, GD create UAS Dynamics

    The military UAV market is becoming more lucrative; Elbit, maker of the popular Skylark and Hermes UAV lines, create a joint venture with General Dynamics to sell UAVs based on Elbit’s designs; company intends to compete with General Atomics’ Predator

  • DARPA looks for inertial-nav to be embedded in smart boot's heel

    DARPA is funding the development of smart shoes: soldiers and first responders will be equipped with shoes with embedded inertial navigation sensor; sensor will help in keeping track of soldiers, special operatives, and first responders in harsh environments

  • U.K. information commissioner: data collection trend will be reversed

    Richard Thomas, the outgoing U.K. information commissioner: “If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it does not make sense to make the haystack bigger”

  • U.S.-Pakistan cooperate in UAV campaign, but it is a qualified cooperation

    The United States offered to give Pakistan a much larger amount of imagery, including real-time video feeds and communications intercepts gleaned by remotely piloted aircraft; information about the UAVs’ operating patterns, blind spots, and takeoff and landing locations is not shared for fear that elements inside the Pakistani intelligence and military would leak it to the insurgents

  • Greece bans Google Street View mapping service

    The Greek government bans Google from gathering detailed, street-level images within the country for a planned expansion of the company’s panoramic Street View mapping service; government wants assurances about privacy issues

  • Boeing's takes X-45C out of storage, renames it Phantom Ray

    The proposed 2010 U.S. defense budget is historic at least in one respect: for the first time, the U.S. Air Force will be buying more unmanned flying systems than manned ones; Boeing takes its X-45C unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) out of storage and renames it Phantom Ray; it will be completed and readied for flight by the end of 2010, and will be suitable for missions including ISR, SEAD, electronic attack, hunter/killer, and autonomous aerial refueling

  • Start-up offers technology to stop spread of communicable diseases

    Israeli start-up CartaSense has a monitoring technology — a tag that integrates a sensor, battery, micro controller, non-volatile memory, and a radio frequency circuit that transmits to a control unit — that allows farmers to know each animal’s vital statistics

  • Dutch police uses unmanned mini-helicopter to sniff out cannabis

    Police in the noerthwest region of the Netherlands asked their engineers to design an unmanned helicopter to hover over the region and sniff out traces of weed smell in the air samples it collects; new methods does not require a warrant to enter buildings

  • U.K. moves forward with comprehensive eavesdropping scheme

    The U.K. government announced last week that it was abandoning the plan to create a centralized super-database in which the personal information of Britons will be kept — but a £1 billion intelligence gathering project is moving forward; the scheme will monitor all all e-mails, Web site visits, and social networking sessions in Britain

  • Al-Qaeda plea deal details communication methods

    Last week Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri entered a plea deal in Illinois in which he admitted to entering the United States on 10 September 2001 in order to form a sleeper cell for future terrorist activities; plea details Al-Qaeda’s communication methods

  • Blast-proof CCTV tested by DHS's S&T

    CCTVs help the police identify terrorists who perpetrate an attack; trouble is, the blast set by the terrorists may destroy the camera and its video; there are two solutions: the more expensive one is a real-time streaming-video CCTV which sends images back to HQ until the moment the camera is destroyed; the cheaper alternative is an indestructible video CCTV

  • Drug cartels now use ultralight aircraft to smuggle drug into U.S.

    The drug cartels south of the U.S. border have a new weapon in their arsenal: Ultralight aircraft; these ultralights can carry up to 300 pounds of narcotics