• Ambulance radios in London do not work in the rain

    Ambulances in London have a problem: ambulance crews often working without radios especially in heavy rain when their radios seem to have reception problems; ambulance panic buttons either did not work, or did not elicit any response when set off by staff; Airwave, the Airwave system is getting a £39 million upgrade in time for the 2012 London Olympics

  • New counter-IED approach: flying car

    California based company offers a solution to the vexing IED problem: a car flying car; if soldiers find themselves in a tactical situation requiring a quick escape, they can flip a switch and the car just shoots up in the air; in April DARPA invited engineers to dream up a flying car — for the initial design of which it allocated $54 million — to give the military an “unprecedented capability to avoid traditional and asymmetrical threats while avoiding road obstructions” through vertical takeoff and landing

  • U.K. government scraps stop-and-search anti-terror police power

    The U.K. Home Office announced it would limit Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 which allowed the police to stop and search anyone for no reason; from now on, members of public can only be stopped if officers “reasonably suspect” they are terrorists; the policy change comes after the January ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Section 44 violated the right to respect for private life

  • The number of incidents of lasers being flashed into aircraft rises sharply; federal, state prosecutors respond

    The number of incidents of lasers being flashed into aircraft has risen steadily in the past five years — from 283 cases reported to the FAA nationwide in 2005 to 1,476 incidents last year; studies have supported pilots’ reports that bright external lights can cause a flare in the goggles pilots wear, temporarily impairing sight; a laser beam hitting the eyes of a pilot who does not wear goggles may cause temporarily blindness and disorientation; as ever-cheaper lasers have made their way into ever-more hands, federal and local prosecutors have picked up the pace of criminal cases; in many cases, the prosecution uses the Patriot Act, which include a provision about deliberately interfering with the pilot of an airplane or “mass transportation vehicle” with reckless disregard for human safety

  • 7/7 London bombings: "The rules of the game have changed"

    Two weeks after the 7 July attacks, the then prime minister, Tony Blair, called a press conference at which he warned: “Let no one be in doubt. The rules of the game have changed”; he outlined twelve new measures that aimed to transform the landscape of British counterterrorism; together, they were intended to offer a greater degree of collective security; each came at considerable cost to the liberties of both individuals and groups of people; the controversial Terrorism Act 2006 passed after the 7 July bombings has led to increased arrests and convictions

  • Report: Terrorism in Britain "mostly home grown"

    New study finds that that 69 percent of terrorist offenses in the United Kingdom were perpetrated by individuals holding British nationality; 46 percent of offenders had their origins in south Asia including 28 percent who had Pakistani heritage; 31 percent had attended university and 10 percent were still students when they were arrested; 35 percent were unemployed and living on benefits

  • Keeping water clean by using sound to filter bacterial spores

    Acoustic trapping can remove bacterial spores from water, according to a new set of experiments funded by the U.S. Army; the idea is to allow the water to flow through a cavity in which a transducer sets up an acoustic standing wave

  • U.K. will regulate license number plate recognition cameras more tightly

    There are 4,000 automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras in the United Kingdom, logging more than 10 million vehicles every day; since the launch of the ANPR network in 2006, the government has accumulated 7.6 billion images; these images include details of number plates and the date, time, and place of capture — and, often, the picture of the driver and passengers; the Home Secretary has called for tighter regulation of the ANPRs, and also for limiting access to the image database; ministers will consider how long these records can be held (the current limit is two years); seventy-two ANPR cameras in Birmingham will soon be removed after it emerged that their installation, in areas with large Muslim populations, had been funded through a Home Office counter-terrorism fund

  • Hand-held scanner checks 100 databases -- in one second

    Army guards at Fort Sam Houston are using a hand-held identity detector that taps information from more than 100 databases — in one second; the manufacturer says that the use of the device has resulted in 60,000 arrests since the start of 2004; Senator Schumer wants TSA to use the device at airports

  • New electronic fiber make smarter fabric a reality

    A soft, flexible fiber with a 1,000 times more capacitance than a co-axial cable could lead to smarter textiles; these smart fabrics could sense their environment, store, transmit, and process information — as well as harvest and store the energy necessary to do all this

  • Florida implements ICE's Secure Communities program

    The United States DHS has deported 30,700 illegal aliens with level 1, 2, or 3 crimes in their past; of these, 1,800 illegal aliens have been removed from Florida; as Florida implements the Secure Communities program, the expectation is that the number of deportees will increase

  • Omiperception and MaxVision to join forces

    Partnership between two companies will enhance marketing offering; ruggedized portable computer adds facial recognition biometrics to allow law enforcement, first responders to collect and process biometric and other relevant in-the-field information

  • Scotland Yard: U.K. proposed budget Cuts "will increase terrorism risk"

    The U.K. government wants the Scotland Yard to find £150 million in savings as part of “eye-watering” Treasury budget cuts; the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, says these cuts cannot be made without increasing the risk of a terrorist attack

  • Lawmakers, DHS look for new border security technologies, fresh approach

    With SBInet likely to be cancelled (one lawmaker notes that at the current pace of deployment, SBInet would take 323 years to deploy across the 2,000-mile Southwest border — to say nothing of the effectiveness of the project’s technology), the search is on for new border security technologies; DHS is ramping up a program that will explore new public and private sector technologies that could be deployed along the border ; there are plans to develop a system that will link information systems of state, local, and tribal law enforcement entities along the border with those at DHS and the Justice Department; enhance analytic capabilities of fusion centers; and establish a suspicious activities reporting program

  • South Africa bracing itself for post World Cup violence

    South Africa is bracing itself for a wave of bloody violence after the World Cup as police numbers are scaled down and anger toward foreigners increases among the country’s poorest; the government hoped to make money on the tournament, but the very small number of non-South Africans who braved the trip means the country will lose hundreds of millions of dollars