• Mexican drug cartels employ more foot soldiers than Mexican army

    Mexico is spinning out of control; narco-terrorists have infiltrated the Mexican government, creating a shadow regime that complicates efforts to contain and destroy the drug cartels; Mexico ranks behind only Pakistan and Iran as a top U.S. national security concern — but above Afghanistan and Iraq

  • Consumer-driven face recognition changes public debate

    New photo programs from Apple and Google include revolutionary face-spotting technology; trouble is, Google’s Picasa would allow tagged photos from all its Picasa users to create a global database matching photos to e-mail addresses

  • NSA gains support for cyber security role

    New Director of national Intelligence tells Congress DHS not up to task

  • Barry Manilow as the ultimate weapon

    Two small cities — one in Australia, the other in New Zealand — found the perfect solution for hundreds of unruly youth who roam the cities’ malls, covering walls with graffiti, and disrupting commerce: Piping Barry Manilow’s music through the mall district

  • India's private security companies flourish

    As a result of the Mumbai attacks, the Indian private security industry has been growing by leaps and bounds; already the country’s private security force numbers 5 million, 1.3 million more than India’s police forces

  • German high-tech sector holds up

    Turnover in German-made IT, telecommunications, and digital consumer electronics will hold steady at about €145 billion — still, the German high-tech industry would perform worse than the global high-tech sector as a whole, which is expected to boost sales about 3 percent to €2.416 trillion

  • British government to boost investment in science

    Gordon Brown: “Science alone gives us hope” that we can eliminate poverty, tackle climate change, and mitigate the impact of disease around the world

  • San Diego State builds radiation detection system

    New Immersive Visualization Center on the campus of San Diego State collaborates with the university’s Homeland Security Program to build, and then demonstrate, gamma radiation detection perimeter system

  • Historic sample of bomb-grade plutonium discovered

    Scientists stumble upon, then identify, the oldest batch of weapon-grade plutonium; methods used in identification can help in anti-proliferation efforts

  • India: Pakistani Army colonel was involved in Mumbai attacks

    Using information partly supplied by the FBI, Indian police says the ten Islamist militants who rampaged through Mumbai spoke to their handlers in Pakistan during the attacks via mobile phones connected to Callphonex, an Internet telephony provider based in New Jersey; communication was facilitated by Col. Saadat Ullah of Pakistan Army’s Special Communications Organization (SCO), an offshoot of the signals corps

  • President's proposed 2010 budget shows DHS priorities

    Proposed budget increase DHS budget by 6 percent; priorities include cyber security, helping TSA screen travelers, increase bomb disposal and counter-IED capabilities, border security, emergency response

  • Schneier: Perverse incentives drive bad security decisions

    Many security-related decisions are less than optimal because those who have to make the decisions face perverse incentives; in the post-9/11 era, we have to make sure the incentives driving security decisions are the right incentives

  • Intelligence, law enforcement face another hurdle: encrypted VoIP

    The intelligence community and law enforcement already are concerned about the difficult they have eavesdropping in Skype communications; a U.K. start-up is going to make life more difficult for them by encryption VoIP communications and concealing more conversations

  • EU may investigate VoIP eavesdropping

    Italian anti-crime authorities have asked the EU to look into regulating VoIP communication encryption; the Italian authorities presented evidence that crime rings and prostitution networks use Skype for the specific purpose of frustrating police investigators

  • Iran launches plutonium path to the bomb

    Iran makes an important — if symbolic — step toward joining the nuclear weapon club; the Busher plant will allow Iran to produce bombs from plutonium, in addition to bombs made from uranium enriched at a facility at Natanz