• BP accused of trying to buy the silence of scientists on spill

    BP is accused of trying to buy the silence of leading scientists: the company offering scientists and researchers lucrative contracts to participate in developing restoration plan for the Gulf after the oil spill — but: the scientists are not allowed to publish the research they do for the oil giant; they are also not allowed to speak about the data for at least three years or until the government gives final approval for the company’s restoration plan for the whole of the Gulf; the company would not allow scientists to take total control of the data or the freedom to make those data available to other scientists and subject to peer review; in the case of the University of South Alabama, BP offered to sign up the entire marine sciences department

  • Dell to replace server parts infected with virus

    Dell says W32.Spybot worm was found in replacement motherboards, and that it will replace infected parts with clean motherboards; the company says it is unaware of any attacks as result of infections

  • The revival of CLEAR's Registered Traveler program

    In 2003, Steven Brill, founder of Court TV and American Lawyer magazine, founded Verified Identity Pass and used it to launch the CLEAR program at Orlando International Airport; the program made it possible for pre-registered travelers to skip security checks at airports; the initial 8,000 travelers enrolled in 2003, and the service would grow to nearly 260,000 paying customers in a matter of five years; CLEAR went belly up in 2009, and its assets were bought by Algood Holdings, which relaunched the program; “Same brand, same logo, different company,” says CEO Caryn Seidman Becker

  • U.K. removes lead contractor Raytheon from e-Borders program

    The U.K. hits out at Raytheon, removing the company from the £1.2 billion e-Borders program; the immigration minister Damian Green said earlier today that the program was running at least twelve months late and that Raytheon had been in breach of contract since July last year; Home Office says it has “no confidence” in the company; Raytheon was the lead contractor of the Trusted Borders consortium, which won a £650 million deal in 2007 to build the e-Borders system; other members of the consortium, including Serco, Detica, Accenture, and Qinetiq will keep their contracts; Raytheon was responsible for systems integration, travel services, and overall project management

  • U.S. chemical industry comes out swinging against new Senate plant security bill

    Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) introduced a 107-page chemical plant safety bill which goes further than a similar bill — HR-2868 — approved by the House last November; Lautenberg’s bill requires the highest-risk facilities replace the most toxic and volatile chemicals they use with inherently safer technology (IST); it also set a provision, known as private right of action (PRA), which would allow citizens to file suit in federal court against DHS to force enforcement against a specific facility, and would allow private citizen petitions to DHS to demand federal investigation of suspected security shortcomings at particular sites

  • Dell warns of hardware trojan

    Computer maker Dell is warning that some of its server motherboards have been delivered to customers carrying an unwanted extra: computer malware; it could be confirmation that the “hardware trojans” long posited by some security experts are indeed a real threat; the Pentagon is spending millions on research designed to ensure it can trust the microchips in critical systems, especially those made outside the United States

  • Watchkeeper surveillance drone "can see footprints through cloud"

    Thales UK’s Watchkeeper surveillance UAV is fitted with radar so sensitive, according to its makers, that it can detect not only individual people moving about on the ground — but even the footprints they leave in the dirt; Watchkeeper is a modified version of the Israeli Hermes 450 with added French and British bits and pieces

  • Raytheon-Navy team zaps UAV targets out of the sky with laser

    Four UAVs were engaged and destroyed using the Navy’s Laser Weapon System (LaWS), guided by Raytheon’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System sensor technologies; in separate news, Boeing recently took delivery of the beam-director assembly for the U.S. Army-s High Energy Laser Technology Demonstrator (HEL TD) program, moving the system a step closer to its 2011 testing schedule

  • Safran in Talks to acquire most of L-1 Identity Solutions Inc.

    Paris-based Safran SA is exploring the acquisition of Connecticut-based L-1 Identity Solution; L-1 is likely to be split up, with another buyer acquiring a separate unit that sells consulting services to U.S. intelligence agencies; L-1 had a stock market value of about $670 million as of last Thursday; L-1’s CEO, Robert LaPenta, formed the company after serving as president and chief financial officer of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. from 1997 to 2005; LaPenta helped start L-3 with co-founder Frank Lanza after both men left Lockheed Martin Corp

  • Facial-recognition solution offers surveillance new edge

    When the new facial-recognition solution finds a match in a database for someone who may be on a watch list, the client may be notified in multiple ways, including text message or e-mail alerts; biographical information such as criminal records are added and the images and made available to the client from any Web browser, including Web-ready mobile phones

  • Here's looking at you: Tokyo digital billboards scan passers-by

    Billboards in Tokyo “look” at passers by, identify their age and gender, and then flash advertisements which are tailored to these people; a consortium of eleven railway companies launched the one-year pilot project last month, and has set up twenty-seven of the high-tech advertising displays in subway commuter stations around Tokyo

  • Armed escorts to accompany New Mexico livestock inspectors

    Beginning on 26 July, armed deputies will accompany inspectors to the scales in a corridor that stretches southwest from Interstate 10 at Las Cruces to the New Mexico-Arizona border, along Luna, Hidalgo, and Grant counties; the sense of insecurity among ranchers along the border has increased since the highly-publicized 27 March murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz

  • California homeland security market as large as the entire U.S. aviation security market

    New report about the homeland security market in the United States finds that DHS’s spending account for only 18.3 percent of the total homeland security spending in the United States; the combined state and local market share leads the field with 23.7 percent, with the Department of Defense coming in second with 22.5 percent; California’s FY2009 homeland security market was nearly as large as the entire U.S. aviation security market

  • DHS IG: flawed assumptions about technology, poor contractor oversight plague SBInet

    DHS’s inspector general says the trouble-plagued SBInet program rested on faulty assumptions about technology — assumptions which led both to technology failures and inadequate monitoring by DHS; the SBI program officials stated that the initial assumption that commercial off-the-shelf technology would be available to cover SBInet needs, serving as a basis for determining staffing requirements, ultimately proved to be wrong”; also, officials failed to ensure that one milestone was properly completed before progressing to the next phase, increasing the risk of significant rework and associated project delays; the future of SBInet is unclear, as earlier this year DHS secretary Janet Napolitano froze spending and ordered an assessment of the program to determine if it should continue

  • "Bulletproof custard" liquid armor better than a Kevlar vest

    Materials scientists combined a shear-thickening liquid with traditional Kevlar to make a bulletproof material that absorbs the force of a bullet strike by becoming thicker and stickier; its molecules lock together more tightly when it is struck, the scientists explained — they described it as “bulletproof custard”