• Identifying disaster victims: Looking at teeth to determine victims' age at time of death

    In disasters which claim many victims as well as in an unsolved homicide case, looking at victims’ teeth to determine how old they were at the time of death would help in identifying them; age determination of unknown human bodies is important in the setting of a crime investigation or a mass disaster, because the age at death, birth date, and year of death, as well as gender, can guide investigators to the correct identity among a large number of possible matches

  • BAE and Portendo join forces on IED detector

    The device aims a laser beam at a particular area suspected to hide an IED; the reflected light is collected by the apparatus and is analyzed using a Raman scattering method, which provides a unique molecular signature which can be compared against an explosives database; Raman spectroscopy has long been thought to hold promise for such applications, but it typically provides a very weak signal; until now

  • Mexican executives up security after former senator disappears

    Diego Fernandez de Cevallos, a Mexican lawyer and 1994 presidential candidate, had been taken forcibly from his ranch in Queretaro state on 15 May and never heard from since; one business leader says: “With a person of this stature falling victim to this kind of circumstance, the sense of vulnerability increases for everyone in society and we all become more worried”; drug-trafficker turf wars and kidnapping gangs have elevated the cost of doing business and hurt Mexico’s ability to attract foreign investment

  • Smartphone remote wiping feature thwarts secret service, law enforcement

    Smartphones such as Blackberry and iPhone offer a remote-wipe feature: if your phone is lost or stolen, you can remotely erase all the data stored on the phone; this feature protects one’s privacy, but it also allow the accomplices of criminals and terrorists captured by law enforcement remotely to erase all incriminating and intelligence-relevant data from the suspect’s phone before the police can access it

  • DARPA looking for automated insider threat spotter

    The U.S. National Counterintelligence Strategy asserts that “Trusted insiders — are targeting the US information infrastructure for exploitation, disruption, and potential destruction”; DARPA, the Pentagon research arm, is soliciting idea for technology which will automatically spot — and eliminate — insider threat to U.S. information infrastructure

  • Israel buys advanced commando transport

    All of Iran’s nuclear weapons-related facilities can be destroyed from the air, but in some cases — for example, labs and design offices located in densely populated areas — special forces may be preferable in order to avoid civilian casualties; commandos would also be useful if leaders of the Iranian program — nuclear scientists and members of the Revolutionary Guard — were targeted for assassination in order to deal the Iranian program an even heavier blow; Israel buys an advanced version of the C-130J, which has been modified for special operation missions

  • U.S. Air Force shifts 30,000 troops to "cyberwar front lines"

    The USAF has assigned 30,000 to cyberwarfare specialties; 3,000 will become cyberspace officers; Brigadier David Cotton, director of cyberspace transformation, says about the new specialty: “It’s not just spray paint, it’s a new mindset”

  • U.S. Army's XM25 smart grenade launcher described as "game changer"

    New smart grenade launcher described as a “game changer”; the XM25 can fire 25mm rounds that explode at any distance set by a soldier, effective at a range of up to 700 meters; the 14-pound, $25,000 gun can fire rounds in just seconds, it could replace the need to call in fire missions, artillery, or air strikes in some situations, which can take anywhere from several minutes to an hour to arrive

  • Russians say they are developing new weapon for space defense

    Russia says it is deploying a “fundamentally new weapon” to ward off future threats from space; Russian brigadier says that “In the near future we will have to perform the task of protecting Moscow from space-based threats,” adding that he hoped the potential protection would be enough and it would not actually have to be used

  • Cheonan destroyed by North Korean torpedoes

    Traces of explosives collected from the wreckage of a sunken South Korean naval ship and the sea bed have been found to be identical in composition to those used in North Korean torpedoes; investigators found a powerful bomb ingredient, known as RDX, in the wreckage; ship was destroyed by an underwater “non-contact” explosion, typical of an advanced torpedo design

  • Chinese nationals convicted of illegally exporting military technology to China

    The Chinese broad campaign of stealing U.S. military and commercial technology intensifies, but so does the rate of conviction of Chinese and American nationals who are the foot soldiers in this campaign; two Chinese nationals are convicted in Massachusetts for illegally delivering to China electronics components used in military radar and electronic warfare

  • Growing calls for rethinking Miranda rights for terrorism suspects

    Attorney General Eric Holder: “I think we have to give serious consideration to at least modifying that public-safety exception [to the Miranda protections]; [the administration and congress need] to come up with a proposal that is both constitutional, but that is also relevant to our times and the threats that we now face”

  • Personal cell phone data of millions of Mexicans for sale at Mexico flea market

    The Mexican government decreed that all Mexicans must register their cell phones; Mexicans, familiar with the thorough corruption and ineffectiveness of the Mexican state, were worried that the personal information would be stolen or misused; they were right: weeks after millions of Mexicans registered their phones, their personal data became available for sale for a few thousand dollars at Mexico City’s wild Tepito flea market; the treasure trove of data also included lists of police officers with their photographs; in a country seized by the fear of kidnapping and held hostage by violent crime bosses, having this personal information on open display seemed tantamount to a death sentence, or, at the minimum, a magnet for trouble

  • Rise in immigration may help explain drop in violent crimes

    Contrary to public perception, increased immigration into the United States contributes to a decline in violent crime; new study of crimes rates in 459 American cities with populations of at least 50,000 shows that cities that experienced greater growth in immigrant or new-immigrant populations between 1990 and 2000 also demonstrate sharper decreases in homicide and robbery; the research finds that, controlling for a variety of other factors, growth in the new immigrant population was responsible, on average, for 9.3 percent of the decline in homicide rates, and that growth in total immigration was, on average, responsible for 22.2 percent of the decrease in robbery rates

  • Engineers to enhance crane-mounted cargo scanning system

    VeriTainer, a venture-backed specialist in crane-based radiation detection technology for scanning shipping containers, enters into a three-and-a-half years, $4 million n R&D agreement with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to enhance the gamma and neutron detection sensitivity of the company’s radiation scanners