• Fingerprint sharing through Secure Communities led to deportation of 47,000

    As of 3 August, 3, 494 U.S. counties and local and state agencies in 27 states were using the Secure Communities program to share fingerprints from jail bookings; from October 2008 through June 2010, 46,929 people identified through Secure Communities were removed from the U.S.; of those, 12,293 were considered non-criminals; one immigration advocate says: “ICE has pulled a bait and switch, with local law enforcement spending more time and resources facilitating the deportations of bus boys and gardeners than murderers and rapists and at considerable cost to local community policing strategies, making us all less safe”

  • Surge in counterfeit items in Pentagon's supplies

    The U.S. Defense Department’s supply chain is vulnerable to the infiltration of counterfeit parts, potentially jeopardizing the lives of American soldiers; government investigators examined 387 companies and organizations which supply the U.S. Department of Defense, and found 39 percent of these companies and organizations encountered counterfeit electronics during the four-year period 2005-8; the number of counterfeit incidents grew from 3,868 in 2005 to 9,356 in 2008

  • B-2 Stealth bomber engineer convicted of selling stealth technology to China

    A federal jury convicted a former B-2 stealth bomber engineer of helping China design a stealth cruise missile; the case is one of a series of major prosecutions targeting Chinese spying on the United States; in March, Chinese-born engineer Dongfan “Greg” Chung was sentenced to more than fifteen years in prison after he was convicted of six counts of economic espionage; investigators learned about Chung while probing Chi Mak, a defense contractor engineer convicted in 2007 of conspiracy to export U.S. defense technology to China; Mak was sentenced to twenty-four years in prison in 2008

  • More police departments use predictive analysis to predict where crime will occur

    The Chicago Police Department is teaming with a local university to develop a system that predicts where crime will occur; the policing approach, called predictive analytics, has gained momentum in recent years as law enforcement agencies have recognized that some types of crime follow patterns that can be predicted by software

  • Brite-Strike's LED-technology gloves saving officers' lives

    The Massachusetts company’s new product aims to help save officers’ lives: it is a pair of tactical, fingerless gloves that have a translucent, reflective, plastic octagonal stop sign on the palm, into which Brite-Strike puts a high-power LED that flashes with a range of up to a quarter of a mile; on the back of the glove are reflective translucent green strips, with two LEDs

  • Boston police using Twitter to nab bad guys

    After a flasher on Boston T Red Line was caught thanks to a passenger’s tweet, the MBTA is showing a genuine commitment to using social media, creating an official Twitter home page to serve as a public tip line; the transit cops are also creating a system which will allow riders to send tips (and photos) via text messages directly to the authorities

  • Indoor locator device for firefighter, first responders on the horizon

    After several years of research and slow, halting progress, development of an indoor locator device to be worn by firefighters and other emergency response personnel could reach the production stage next year

  • FBI agent says Mexican drug cartels more violent than al Qaeda

    An FBI Web page quoted an agent calling Mexico’s drug cartels more violent than al Qaeda; the quote, from an unidentified senior agent based in El Paso, Texas, says, “We think al Qaeda is bad, but they’ve got nothing on the cartels”; the FBI says the quote was taken out of context

  • Mexican drug cartel offers $1 million for Sheriff Arpaio's head

    Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is well-known for creating a tent city jail in the Arizona desert, providing pink underwear for inmates, and bragging that he spends more to feed his dog than a prisoner in his jail; on 29 July, the day parts of Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070, went into effect, Arpaio was in the news for another reason: there was a price put on his head

  • Russian researcher: Moscow's heat wave the result of secret U.S. "climate weapon"

    It has been unusually hot in Russia this summer, and a Russian researcher asks whether this heat wave is the result of a secret U.S.“climate weapon”; the author writes that “climate weapons may be reaching their target capacity and may be used to provoke droughts, erase crops, and induce various anomalous phenomena in certain countries”

  • Foreign firms have largely escaped the worst of Mexico violence, so far

    Foreign companies have so far escaped the worst of a rising tide of crime in Mexico; if they can be shielded from violence, foreign companies are likely to focus on the virtues of doing business in Mexico, such as low labor costs, proximity to the American consumer, and favorable trade treatment

  • License plate readers help police nab criminals

    Six Ohio law agencies are set to deploy Automated License Plate Readers; these devices can scan thousands of license plates per day with the purpose of flagging down license plates that have already been entered into a database because of felony warrants, expired plates, stolen vehicles, or various other crimes

  • Detroit public schools outsource security

    Detroit Public Schools (DPS) fired all of its 226 security officers Friday and hired a private company to provide in-school security; the move will save the district an estimated $5.5 million through a one-year contract

  • Cholera spreads in flood-ravaged Pakistan

    With stagnant water throughout Pakistan, water-borne diseases such as gastroenteritis, malaria, and typhoid, now threaten the nation; there are reports of diarrhoea and cholera among the hundreds of thousands left homeless, and food and drinking water are in short supply

  • High-tech opportunities of lab-produced silk

    Tougher than a bullet-proof vest yet synonymous with beauty and luxury, silk fibers are a masterpiece of nature whose remarkable properties have yet to be fully replicated in the laboratory; thanks to their amazing mechanical properties as well as their looks, silk fibers have been important materials in textiles, medical sutures, and even armor for 5,000 years; Tufts researchers are getting close to producing silk in the lab