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Police can now get information from water-logged phones
Mobile phones are a vital part of police investigations these days — the second thing a cop checks a body for, after checking for a wallet; if the phone has been dropped into water (or if the dead body with the phone on it is in the water), retrieving phone information is much more difficult; a British company offers law enforcement a solution for water-logged phones
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App developed to find crooks
University of Nebraska researchers are developing an app for iPhone and Droid which will allow police to locate sex offenders, parolees, known gang members, and people with arrest warrants; the Nebraska team is planning to combine police GIS and GPS data into a program that would instantly create maps tailored to officers’ specific locations
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Debate intensifies over warrantless GPS tracking devices
A-20 year old student took his car for a routine oil change — and the mechanic servicing the car found a GPS device attached to it; the two took the device off; FBI agents visited the student two days later, demanding the return of their property; debate intensifies about whether or not GPS devices can be used to track people with a warrant issued by a court
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Technology helps find missing persons
Project LifeSaver provides tracking bracelets to caregiver of people with certain medical conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, or traumatic brain injury, that make them more vulnerable to becoming lost
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Mexican cartels' assassins operate in Arizona
Drug smuggling gangs in Mexico have sent well-armed assassins, or sicarios, into Arizona to locate and kill bandits who are ambushing and stealing loads of cocaine, marijuana, and heroin headed to buyers in the United States; the drug cartels have posted scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills surrounding the Vekol Valley smuggling corridor; says the country sheriff: “They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has—- This is going on here in Arizona. This is 70 to 80 miles from the border — 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States”
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NIST data enabling evacuation planning of high-rise buildings
NIST researchers made video recordings of evacuation drills in stairwells at nine buildings ranging in height from six to sixty-two stories tall; the drills are part of a wide-ranging study to track the movement of people on stairs during high-rise building evacuation; the data sets created will ensure that architects, engineers, emergency planners, and others involved in building design have a strong technical basis for safer, more cost-effective building evacuations
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Unease grows about China's rare Earth elements monopoly
Rare Earth elements are quite abundant in the Earth’s crust, but environmental concerns and aggressive subsidies by China’s government to Chinese manufacturers have led to a Chinese near-monopoly: 90 percent of the world’s rare Earth elements are now being mined and processed in China; growing unease with this Chinese dominance has led to renewed efforts around the world to develop alternatives to rare Earth elements, and find environmentally sound ways to mine them
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Collaborators sought for emergency communications network demo
NIST and NTIA are seeking partners in the telecommunications industry to help create a demonstration broadband communications network for the U.S. emergency services agencies; the demonstration network will provide a common site for manufacturers, carriers, and public safety agencies to test and evaluate advanced broadband communications equipment and software tailored specifically to the needs of emergency first responders
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Uniform bomb suits standard being developed
Several federal agencies are now working with first responders to create the first nationwide standard for minimum bomb suit performance requirements; having a standard will give some assurance of quality to DHS and other agencies that award grants to bomb squads for equipment purchases; if the standard is adopted, DHS will change its grants process to ensure awards are spent on bomb suits that meet the requirements
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DARPA seeks self-aiming, one-shot sniper rifle
Lockheed Martin awarded $6.9 million to develop a sniper rifle to operate over a range of visibilities, atmospheric turbulence, scintillation, and environmental conditions; the company’s objective is to deliver fifteen field-testable and hardened prototype systems by October 2011
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Satellite images show Hezbollah training in Syria missile base
Syria’s Assad has been presenting himself to Europe and the United States as a peace-seeker, but he continues to maintain his strategic alliance with Iran and Hezbollah; Google Earth photos show Scuds at base near Damascus, and also show Hezbollah militants being trained in maintaining and firing the missiles
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Initial tests for buried victims rescue device completed
New victim detection device has been developed as part of a project aiming to enable people to be found quickly from under collapsed buildings or from natural elements like mud or snow; the detection device could literally be a lifeline for victims of future earthquakes, landslides, or terrorist attacks
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Inverted prisms make ray guns practical
Lasers can be powerful weapons — they can take down an aircraft at long ranges and in unstable conditions, for instance; they are hampered, though, by power and size limits, so they are not yet widely used by the military; Lockheed Martin says it has a solution
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Cole's legacy: a different U.S. Navy
The terrorist bomb attack on the destroyer Cole on 12 October 2000 was a watershed moment in modern Navy history; it was also a wake-up call on the need for better force protection, damage-control training, intelligence sharing, shipboard equipment, and mass-casualty response
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Russia's inflatable military
Russia is building inflatable weapons which, to an enemy radar or satellite imagery, appear like real weapons; they are easy to transport and quick to deploy — and they cost far less to produce then real weapons
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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.