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U.K. examines surveillance plan's £2 billion price tag
The U.K. coalition government has revived the sweeping digital surveillance program which had been abandoned by the previous Labor government — but the government said it is looking closely at the price tag, estimated at £2 billion, and that new figures will be released in November; industry sources had all along maintained that the original £2 billion estimate was unrealistically low; the government’s move means that they were correct, or that the scheme is being scaled back
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Police, SAS train for Mumbai-style attack in U.K.
Commandos of Britain’s elite Special Air Squadron(SAS) are reportedly conducting a series of counter-terrorism exercises to train the country’s police to foil 2008 Mumbai-style attacks on England; police armed response units are being given more powerful weapons; the job of the police would be to contain the situation while the job of the SAS (Special Air Service), if called upon, would be to resolve it
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Showcasing Israeli homeland security technology
Next week’s Homeland Security International Conference in Tel Aviv will showcase Israel’s homeland security technology; Israel is already the world’s third-largest exporter of defense technology; in homeland security technology, it is among the Top 10 exporting countries; Brazil, India, Mexico, and Thailand, among others, are markets opening up for Israeli homeland security products
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Pentagon: dogs better than technology at bomb detection
The most sophisticated detectors the Pentagon came up with tend to locate only 50 percent of IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq; when soldiers are accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs, this number goes up to 80 percent; the Pentagon now spends less money on IED detection and more money on drones to find those planting IEDs, radio jammers to disrupt the frequencies used to detonate the bombs, and lots of aerial sensors to scan bomb-heavy areas
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Ohio plans statewide camera network for first responders
Following the example of Alabama and its Virtual Alabama project, Ohio will electronically link thousands of cameras watching over roads, schools, and even employee break rooms, giving emergency personnel in Ohio unprecedented surveillance capacity
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DARPA-funded new engine brings flying car closer
DARPA awards Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne a $1 million contract to develop its EnduroCORE engine, which the company says offers “a high power-to-weight ratio comparable to gas turbines”; the engine will bring the Transformer TX flying car closer to reality
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Canada's search and rescue capabilities in peril
A report about Canada’s search and rescue capabilities says these capabilities have been weakened because the government cannot recruit and retain staff; private sector is recruiting away flight engineers, and the number of flight engineers will drop to a critical level across the country in less than a year
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U.S. to sell Saudis $60 billion in arms
The United States has agreed to sell Saudi Arabia $60 billion of arms, including helicopters and jets; this is the most lucrative single arms deal in U.S. history and could support 75,000 jobs; the Saudis could buy up to 84 new F-15 fighters and upgrade 70 more older models. The F-15s, made by McDonnell Douglas, will not be outfitted with long-range weapons in deference to Israeli concerns. The Saudis would also purchase 70 Boeing-made AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters, 72 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters (Sikorsky), 36 AH-6i light attack helicopters (Boeing), and 12 MD-530F light training helicopters (McDonnell Douglas); Israel will not object
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Maneuverable bullet to enhance sniper accuracy
Snipers have to contend with disruptions such as changing winds, muzzle velocity dispersions, and round-to-round variations; Teledyne, with funding from DARPA, offers a solution in the form of the first-ever guided small-caliber .50 bullet
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President Clinton lost nuclear "biscuit" for a couple of months
The nuclear “football” is a heavy metal briefcase containing the communication information and nuclear release codes which allow the president to launch nuclear weapons against an adversary; the football is carried by a military aide who is never more than a few steps away from the president; before the order can be processed by the military, however, the president must be positively identified by using a special code issued on a plastic card, nicknamed the “biscuit”; the biscuit is often carried by the president himself — in his shirt or breast pocket; a new book charges that President Clinton misplaced the nuclear biscuit for a few months — and that the loss was discovered only when he was asked to produce it so it could be updated; President Carter, too, mishandled the biscuit: he left the card with the launch codes in a suit sent to the dry cleaner
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Revolutionary forensic fingerprinting technique also detects corrosion
Two years ago, Dr. John Bond at the University of Leicester developed a revolutionary method for identifying fingerprints on brass bullet casings, even after they have been wiped clean; now, Bond has applied the same technique to industry by developing a simple, handheld device which can measure corrosion on machine parts
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Illegal immigration into U.S. continues to decline
The Border Patrol made about 463,000 arrests during the federal government’s fiscal year that ended 30 September, down from 556,032 the previous twelve months; this marks the fifth straight year of declines; the Border Patrol arrests are down 72 percent from nearly 1.7 million arrested in 2000; the agency typically makes about 97 percent of its arrests along the 1,952-mile border with Mexico
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Spray DNA lowers crime
Several business establishment in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam have been using a new tool to fight robberies: spray DNA; the McDonald’s branch near city hall, for example, has a small orange box near the exit, which, when triggered by an employee (the protocol for secretly activating the system: removing a 10 Euro bill from a special bill clip kept behind the counter), both sprays the culprit with odorless, invisible synthetic DNA and alerts the local police; the company making the spray DNA also makes crayon DNA which companies can use to mark computers and other valuable office equipment
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Spray-on skin to be commercialized
Sheffield, U.K.-based Altrika set to produce a spray version of its Cryoskin donor skin cell product that can be applied in hospitals outside of a sterile surgical environment in order to reduce treatment time; the spray would be stored in individual doses so the right number of skin cells can be selected once the wound is assessed; the cells would then be thawed as the patient is being prepared
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Sector Report for Tuesday, 19 October 2010: Emergency / Police / Mil.
This report contains the following stories.
Plus 1 additional story.
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.