• As violence engulfs Juárez, American companies adopt defensive measure

    American companies relocated their manufacturing and assembly facilities to Juárez, just across the U.S. border from El Paso, Texas, to benefit from the cheap labor costs in one of Mexico’s most business-friendly cities; now, as drug-related crime has engulfed the city, these companies are erecting fences, increasing security in factories, and encouraging employees to commute in carpools; managers have gone through kidnapping simulations; some drive to work in convoys for added security

  • Michigan-based militia violent plot investigation included undercover FBI agent

    The Michigan-based Hutaree group planned to kill a large number of law enforcement officers by mimicking the manner in which IEDs are used in Iran and Afghanistan against American soldiers; the purpose was to trigger a wide-spread, violent revolt against the U.S. government; some of information about the group’s violent plans came from an undercover FBI agent

  • Cutting-edge laser technology for crime labs developed by FIU research team

    Determining the precise composition of a substance with LIBS can provide important evidence in legal proceedings. Trace elemental analysis for comparisons of glass, paint chips, soils, paper, ink on paper, and metal fragments has been shown to be highly effective; the instrumentation required for this kind of analysis in forensic comparisons, however, has been beyond the reach of many forensic laboratories; researchers at Florida International University offers a solution

  • U.S. Navy interested in laser warfare

    A big attraction of the free-electron laser (FEL) is the ability to adjust its output wavelength to improve transmission through the thick, moist air at sea; other laser weapons emit at fixed wavelengths; also, the laser is electrically powered, so it can recharge quickly, potentially allowing for repeat bursts of fire

  • First U.S. WiMAX handset launched (or: re-launched)

    Two standards compete for 4G supremacy — WiMax and LTE; Sprint is bringing out the EVO, the first 4G telephone operable in America; Sprint admits, though, that it sees LTE as the larger of the two 4G standards; the decision to come out with a WiMax handset has to do with the fact that WiMax networks are here and expanding, and Sprint did not want to wait

  • Mexico violence boom to armored car industry

    The deteriorating situation in Mexico and the growing drug-related violence there have been a boon to the armored car industry; the CEO of Ogden, Utah-based International Armoring Corp. says that over the past eighteen months, the company’s sales of armored passenger vehicles to corporations along the U.S.-Mexico border have increased over 300 percent

  • Premier IT technology show offers glimpse at intense rivalry among manufacturers of new gadgets

    Terrorists and criminals equip themselves with the latest technology, and law enforcement must keep pace; the Federal Office Systems Exposition, a major information technology event which opened on Tuesday and closes today, shows that the future is intense in the evolving cyberspace rivalry among manufacturers and battles against crime and terrorist threats; a balanced view offered by speakers on different panels suggested that for every device displayed to counter crime and defeat terrorism there would be risk of new products falling into the wrong hands and challenging the main concepts behind the invention

  • Indian military plans to use world's hottest pepper in weapons

    If you did not know, Scoville units are a universally accepted measure of chili hotness; the Indian bhut jolokia, from the Assam region, is by far the world’s hottest pepper; researchers at the University of Mexico found that the bhut jolokia reached over one million Scoville heat units (SHUs); the world’s next hottest pepper, the Red Savina Habenero, clocks in at a tame 577,000 Scoville units; the Indian Army is planning to use the bhut jolokia in stun grenades

  • DARPA wants to use ISO containers for operational flexibility, self-building floating bases

    The likely tasks for navies today include humanitarian assistance and disaster relief or “maritime domain awareness and interdiction operations” — that is, detecting and stopping such activities as piracy and smuggling of weapons, drugs, sanctions-busting cargoes; traditional naval methods call for large numbers of scarce, expensive, specialized warships which may not always be much use for such missions; DARPA looks into using ISO containers and intermodal transport system to deliver flexible operational capability from unmodified commercial containerships

  • Top 10 crime-fighting technologies, II

    Today’s criminals avail themselves of the latest technological innovations in order to stay one step ahead of the law; fortunately, technological advances help law enforcement balance the criminals’ arsenals and keep societies safer than otherwise would be the case

  • Top 10 crime-fighting technologies, I

    Today’s criminals avail themselves of the latest technological innovations in order to stay one step ahead of the law; fortunately, technological advances help law enforcement balance the criminals’ arsenals and keep societies safer than otherwise would be the case

  • Nuclear Medical Center established for early detection of injuries

    The Israeli military uses a new technology which allows early detection of injuries sustained by soldiers better than any other diagnostic tests; the system uses a new nuclear medicine system, which includes a new nuclear camera; the new camera has a sensitivity of 100 percent for diagnosing stress fractures, enabling the diagnosis of an injury already at the stage of a minor fracture and prevents it from worsening

  • UAVs help CBP agents keep an eye on the border (when there are no clouds)

    The U.S. Customs and Border Protection currently operate six UAVs: there are three Predators in Arizona, two in North Dakota, and one is being tested for maritime anti-narcotics duty in Cape Canaveral, Florida; proponents say that supporters say that despite the high price tag — the Predator’s camera alone can cost more than $2 million — it is worth it

  • Florida's new fingerprint technology helps law enforcement

    Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrests 3,000 people every day; checking their fingerprints against Florida’s bank of 16.5 million prints on file was becoming a problem; a new FALCON fingerprinting system, installed at a cost of $7.4 million and in use since last June, has solved these problems

  • Backlog at Baltimore crime lab a concern

    The Baltimore Police Department’s crime lab has a backlog of thousands of analysis requests — roughly 3,100 cases for testing bodily fluids, 3,000 cases for drug analysis, and more than 400 cases for DNA analysis; lab delays caused high-profile trial delays, spike in dropped drug cases