• U.S. terror watch list streamlined, updated instantaneously

    Now a single tip about a terror link will be enough for inclusion in the watch list for U.S. security officials, who have also evolved a quicker system to share the database of potential terrorists among screening agencies; a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said that officials have now “effectively in a broad stroke lowered the bar for inclusion” in the list; the new criteria have led to only modest growth in the list, which stands at 440,000 people, about 5 percent more than last year; also, instead of sending data once a night to the Terrorist Screening Center’s watch list, which can take hours, the new system should be able to update the watch list almost instantly as names are entered

  • PatriotApp allows citizens to alert feds

    A new iPhone app — the PatriotApp — allows people to report criminal or suspicious activity to several federal agencies, including the FBI, EPA, CDC, and GAO, the office responsible for investigating public funds; it also includes RSS feeds for the FBI’s Most Wanted list, and the Department of Homeland Security’s threat level, and allows people to report workplace harassment and discrimination

  • Canada introduces legislation to fight crime in today's high-tech world

    The Canadian government has reintroduced two bills that would provide law enforcement and national security agencies with up-to-date tools to fight crimes such as gang- and terrorism-related offences and child sexual exploitation; the proposed legislation would provide law enforcement agencies with new, specialized investigative powers to help them take action against Internet child sexual exploitation, disrupt on-line organized crime activity and prevent terrorism

  • U.K. examines surveillance plan's £2 billion price tag

    The U.K. coalition government has revived the sweeping digital surveillance program which had been abandoned by the previous Labor government — but the government said it is looking closely at the price tag, estimated at £2 billion, and that new figures will be released in November; industry sources had all along maintained that the original £2 billion estimate was unrealistically low; the government’s move means that they were correct, or that the scheme is being scaled back

  • U.K. revives sweeping digital surveillance scheme

    The U.K. government has revived a sweeping surveillance scheme killed by its Labor predecessor last December; the scheme will require that every e-mail, phone call, and Web site visit be recorded and stored, allowing the security and police authorities to track every phone call, e-mail, text message, and Web site visit made by the public if they argue it is needed to tackle crime or terrorism; the information will include who is contacting whom, when, and where — and which Web sites are visited, but not the content of the conversations or messages

  • DARPA awards additional $11 million for video search technology

    As a result of advancements in intelligence gathering technologies (think UAVs), the U.S. military and intelligence community have been accumulating video archives over the past decade which make YouTube look puny; it is not only the number of pictures, but their quality: mere HD movies and TV are small and tightly compressed compared to the high resolution, full-motion imagery which pours in like an avalanche from every Predator or Reaper drone — and dozens of these surveillance drones are airborne above southwest Asia every minute of every day; DARPA is looking for an effective, automated video search technology

  • Indian government: Google, Skype will follow BlackBerry in being forced to open networks

    The Indian government, in a meeting last month with representatives of network operators and Internet service providers, said that after RIM was forced to open BlackBerry-based communication to government eavesdropping, Google and Skype would be asked to do the same — or face bans on some of their services in India; It is unlikely that the Indian government is interested in Google’s search business, but about twenty million Indians are active on Google’s social networking service, Orkut, which encourages them to communicate with each other over Google Talk

  • Conflict between governments' need to know and secure comms intensifies

    The tensions between the desire of government authorities to use every tool available to them to detect and prevent crime — and acts of terrorism, on the one hand, and technologies which offer privacy to businesses and individuals, on the other hand, is not new; the skirmishes between BlackBerry — and, soon, Google and Skype — and the governments of India, Saudi Arabia, and UAE are but the latest round in this decades-old conflict

  • Deep judicial disagreements over increased police use of GPS surveillance

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on 6 August overturned a drug-trafficking conviction because the police, without a warrant, placed a GPS tracking device on the suspect’s car; the decision contradicted decisions in three similar GPS-related cases by appellate panels in Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco; there are fierce judicial disagreements on the issue: Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who oppose GPS surveillance without a warrant, writes that “Prolonged surveillance reveals types of information not revealed by short-term surveillance, such as what a person does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble;” Judge Richard Posner, who says warrants are not necessary for GPS surveillance, says that the Fourth Amendment “cannot sensibly be read to mean that police shall be no more efficient in the 21st century than they were in the 18th”; Chief Judge Alex Kozinski characterized the GPS tracking as “creepy and un-American” and contended its capabilities handed “the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives”

  • U.S. Army to buy additional explosive disposal robots

    Boeing, iRobot receive a follow-on order for 94 additional explosive disposal ground robots, bringing to total number of robots the U.S. Army has ordered to 323; the robot has the ability to perform reconnaissance during extremely hazardous explosive disposal missions involving unexploded ordnance and improvised explosive devices

  • Wikileaks case exposes security vulnerabilities of the digital age

    Massive leak of documents to Wikileaks highlights the security challenges of the digital age, when gigabytes of stolen data can be shared in one click; the digital communications revolution, while bringing huge benefits to society overall, also raised security concerns; the proliferation of digital media and social software is going to increase the risks of similar leaks happening; one expert says: the Pentagon, like any organization, is going to have “bad actors” — insiders who turn against their employer — “but now it’s a lot easier for them to do things like this”

  • Sophisticated crime software helps police predict violent offences

    Minority Report”-style technology being tested by two British forces following success in the United States; the system, known as CRUSH (Criminal Reduction Utilizing Statistical History) evaluates patterns of past and present incidents, then combines the information with a range of data including crime reports, intelligence briefings, offender behavior profiles, and even weather forecasts

  • U.S. military to adopt NFL's instant replay technology

    U.S. Air Force drones collected roughly 1,800 hours of video a month in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009, nearly three times as much video than in 2007; sifting through this growing mountain of information is difficult, so the military wants to use the same instant replay technology used in professional football games; after all, U.S. broadcasters handle 70,000 hours daily of video

  • London police train private security guards to report suspicious behavior

    Private security guards in London are trained by the police to be on the look out for — and report — suspicious behavior; this behavior includes individuals making sketches near buildings, taking photographs and recording video footage, even if they appear to be legitimate tourists; stateside, LAPD. officers are already required to fill out a suspicious activity report when they observe one of more than forty different types of behavior; categories include taking photographs or video “with no apparent aesthetic value”

  • 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