• Debate over safety of taser-proof vests

    A U.S. body-armor company is selling taser-proof vests to police units; some argue that the vests make officers less safe because taser-toting bad guys would now aim for the officer’s head; the response: this is like arguing that bullet-proof vests make officer less safe because the bad guy would aim for the head

  • TSA meets initial screening cargo goal

    Congress has mandated through the 9/11 law that 50 percent of cargo on passenger carrying aircraft be screened by February 2009 and 100 percent of cargo be screened by August 2010; TSA says it currently screens all cargo on narrow body, passenger-carrying aircraft; these account for more than 90 percent of all passenger carrying aircraft in the United States

  • Unsettling lack of security at Level 4 Biosafety Labs

    Biosafety labs (BSLs) handle the world’s most dangerous agents and diseases; only BSL-4 labs can work with agents for which no cure or treatment exists; there are five BSL-4 labs in the United States, and GAO conducted a study of these labs’ perimeter security; you are not going to like what the GAO found

  • FBI worried about increased cyber crime

    Head of the FBI cyber division says the number of victims of cyber crime, and the cost of that crime, are increasing; moreover, as many as two dozen countries have taken an “aggressive interest” in penetrating the networks of U.S. companies and government agencies

  • Chertoff urges industry to invest in cybersecurity

    About 85 percent of the U.S. critical infrastructure is owned and operated by private industry; DHS secretary Chertoff says this fact makes cybersecurity a shared responsibility between government and the corporations that control most computer networks

  • Chertoff says there will be no Big Brother approach to Internet security

    Earlier this year Director of U.S. National Intelligence Mike McConnell said the government would require broad powers to monitor all Internet traffic in order to secure the U.S. critical information infrastructure; Chertoff outlines a more modest approach

  • Body-armor manufacturer settles with U.S. Justice Department

    The U.S. Justice Department charged that a body armor manufacturer knowingly used Zylon fiber in body army it sold to the federal government and local law enforcement; Zylon fiber degrades quickly and is not suitable for ballistic use

  • New DHS network still has problems

    HSIN was launched in 2004 to provide a secure, Internet-based system to share terrorism information with federal, state, and local agencies and the private sector, but ran into problems; last year DHS decided to replace it with a new system, but that one, too, has problems

  • ISF annual congress in Barcelona, 16-18 November

    More than 500 IT security leaders will meet in Barcelona in November for the ISF 19th annual congress

  • EU moves on data breach notification law

    Security professionals debate the recommendations of independent research to introduce tough European data breach and security regulations

  • U.K. security services push for expanded surveillance power

    U.K. security services are pushing for a massive expansion of electronic surveillance in the United Kingdom, in the face of opposition from the Treasury and the Cabinet Office

  • New surveillance program will use military satellites to cover U.S.

    President Bush signed bill which allows the National Applications Office (NAO) to begin operating a stringently limited version of a program which would turn military spy satellites on the United States, sharing imagery with other federal, state, and local government agencies

  • U.S. government to take counterterrorism local

    The federal government says local police efforts to record and share activities that could be related to terrorism are critical to the government’s counterterrorism effort; the creation and coordination of a uniform system of reporting among thousands of jurisdictions is a problem, though

  • Security experts call for improved public communications

    Experts say the next president needs to ensure that public warnings are based on solid information and that the federal government sends out messages out of an urgent need, not because it wants to distract the public

  • SA police to buy mini-UAVs

    South Africa is host to the 2010 Soccer World Cup; in preparation, the SA police is buying mini-UAVs and integrating them into the force; the UAV — Kiwit — is carried in a suitcase, weighs 3.5 kg, and can be assembled by a single person in five minutes