• Councils use CCTV to collect £3 million in “ghost” parking tickets every year

    More and more councils in the United Kingdom use CCTVs to issue automatic tickets for parking violations; throughout England, 265 local authorities collected £328 million in parking fines last year — more than three times as much as speed cameras raked in; motoring groups argue these “ghost tickets” are unfair because motorists do not know they had been fined until afterward, it is more difficult to check signs and mount an appeal

  • Court finds Taser use by police officer during traffic stop was “excessive force”

    In what legal scholars describe as a landmark ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit could set the first broad judicial standards for the use of Tasers; the case involves a California police officer who tased a passive driver during a routine traffic stop in 2005; the court found that the facts of the case clearly show that the driver was never a threat to the officer

  • Collecting – and interpreting -- sensor data

    The U.S. military is relying an ever-greater number of cameras and sensors to collect information; there is a need to turn this mountain of data feeds into usable information for soldiers; Virginia-based Samoff offers its TerraSight product as a solution

  • Robotic cockroaches to help military, law enforcement

    Cockroaches can run fast, turn on a dime, move easily over rough terrain, and react to perturbations faster than a nerve impulse can travel; running cockroach robots could serve valuable roles in difficult jobs, such as military operations, law enforcement, or space exploration. Related technology might also be applied to improve the function of prosthetic limbs for amputees, or serve other needs

  • U.S. Army emphasizes new body armor

    The U.S. Army wants better armor for its soldiers; weight has long been an issue with the body armor the Pentagon issues to troops, and the Pentagon has signed an $18.6-million contract with KDH Defense Systems to send 57,000 new, lighter plate carriers to Afghanistan to decrease the load soldiers carry

  • Israel's military avatar: Robots on the battlefield, II

    With self-detonating grenades, thinking bullets and robot warriors, humans on the frontline could soon be a thing of the past; Israel’s military industries develop robotic systems to aid soldiers in the field, but also to ward off threats from afar

  • Israel's military avatar: Robots on the battlefield, I

    With self-detonating grenades, thinking bullets and robot warriors, humans on the frontline could soon be a thing of the past When armies clash in the not-too-distant future, remotely operated robotic weapons will fight the enemy on land, in the air, and at sea, without a human soldier anywhere on the battlefield. The first robotic systems are already being used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and other armies across the world, and only budgetary constraints seem to be keeping science fiction from becoming reality.

  • Delays in delivery of bunker-busting weapons to U.S. Air Force

    The 14-ton steel pencil – aka God’s Rods — is the ideal weapon for destroying Iran’s underground nuclear weapons facilities; marrying the bunker-busting ordnance to the bat-winged B-2 Spirit Stealth bomber would mean a smaller strike force and fewer casualties in the event of a military action against Iran; it is reported that there are delays in delivering the bombs

  • New radio system is working “flawlessly”

    When the switch was flipped Tuesday morning on Kandiyohi County’s, Minnesota, new 800-megahertz radio system, emergency personnel had no idea the unique technology would be put to such quick use.

  • Drone security questions raised years ago

    Questions about the security of drone communications were raised years ago; in 2004, U.S. officials raised concerns about Russia and China intercepting and manipulating video from drone aircraft, but the military believed it was facing more pressing issues; officers at the time were not concerned about communications being intercepted in Iraq or Afghanistan because they believed militants were technically unsophisticated.

  • U.S. Army working to encrypt UAV video feeds

    The Army is scrambling to secure the live video feeds from its UAVs from being intercepted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan; Raven drones will be retrofitted with encryption technology as early as this month; the U.S. Air Force has known for more than a decade that the live video feeds from its unmanned aerial vehicles can be intercepted by the enemy but opted not to do anything about it until this year.

  • Safer ride: Lockheed ,A-V deliver vehicle-mounted anti-IED devices

    IEDs kill more U.S. and coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan than any other weapon used by militants; Lockheed Martin received a $940 million contract to produce a counter-IED jamming device, and the first of these vehicle-mounted systems are being delivered to the theater.

  • Handheld touch screen device may lead to mobile fingerprint ID

    The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team wanted to replace the 20-pound rugged laptop plus fingerprint scanner their hostage rescue teams lug around with a smaller and lighter device; NIST researchers develop one

  • DHS investigates counterfeit operation

    DHS suspects that there is a connection between the sale of counterfeit clothing and funding of terrorist actitivites; the Fresno police raids a clothing store in Fresno, California, and confiscated half a million dollars worth of phony designer jeans, T-shirts, handbags,
    and shoes.

  • HIV-as-terrorism case draws national attention

    Two Michigan neighbors got into a fight, and one of them bit the other; when prosecutors learned from a TV report that the man who bit his neighbor was HIV positive, they added the charge of bioterrorism to the charges of assault and assault with intent to maim; prosecutors say the new charge is based on a 2004 Michigan law, passed in the wake of 9/11, which speaks of “possession or use of a harmful device,” and they point to a Michigan Court of Appeal’s ruling that HIV-infected blood was a “harmful biological substance” under Michigan law.