Intelligence gathering / analysis

Dennis Blair ousts ONI Inspector General
Last November, the Inspector General (IG) at the U.S. Office of National Intelligence issued a report in which he highlighted ongoing problems inside ONI and the intelligence community, including poor communication, turf battles, incompatible computer systems, and mission confusion; last Friday, Dennis Blair, director of ONI, fired the IG
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Swimming pool game inspires robot detection
Researchers use the Marco Polo game to solve a complex problem — how to create a system that allows robots not only to “sense” a moving target, but intercept it
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NSA may offer "billions" for a solution allowing eavesdropping on Skype
Skype continues to be a major problem for government listening agencies, whether intelligence agencies tracking terrorists or the police trying to listen in on criminals; rumor has it that NSA is willing to pay handsomely for a Skype-code-breaking solution
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Trend: Manned-unmanned UAVs for battle, domestic surveillance
In both military and domestic missions, there are situations in which UAVs are preferable, and other situations in which manned aircraft are preferable (or even required); the solution: manned UAVs
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BriefCam launches CCTV video synopsis technology
Video synopsis technology allows one day of surveillance camera footage to be condensed into a few minutes, thus allowing security personnel to focus on evens that require attention while reducing costs
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Square root bias and airport security screening
Say someone from profiled Group P is 16 times more likely to be a terrorist than someone from the average Group A; using the square root bias, people from Group P should be screened only four times more often then people in Group A (4 is the square root of 16); this reduces the number of people from Group P who are subjected to repeated screenings from 16 to 4 — but it still screens people from Group P more than the average person
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Random checks as effective as terrorist profiling
Profiling is a waste of time and resources in security screening; the problem is that too much time is spent repeatedly screening members of the profiled group who are not actually terrorists,
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India to see a large, broad growth in expenditures on domestic security
A series of terrorist attacks, culminating in the coordinated attack in Mumbai last month, convinced both government and industry in India that more security — much more security — is required to cope with mounting threats to domestic peace; business opportunities abound for companies in IT security, biometric, surveillance, detection, situational awareness, and more
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Here they go again: China demands access to Western computer security
Another crisis in U.S.-China trade relations looms, as China, again, is about to introduce rules which would allow Chinese companies to steal Western industrial secrets, and would allow the Chinese government more tightly to monitor what the Chinese people say and read
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U.K. government grants itself even more data sharing power
A U.K. government proposal debated in Parliament this week would increase the ability of different government arms to share data
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EU considers allowing police to place Trojans on suspects' computers
Remote searches of suspects’ computers could become a mainstay of cybercrime investigations under a new EU strategy announced last week
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France drops security database over privacy fears
Criticized for ignoring serious privacy concerns, the French government scraps — for now — the implementation of massive data base; data base was to include information about French men and women as young as 13 years of age and include information on people’s health and sexual orientation
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Raytheon reaches 300th RAID system
A Raytheon’s milestone: The Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment (RAID) system provides surveillance support for use in both war and peacetime; the U.S. army now has three hundred of them
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Canadian universities study the two sides of the Internet
Terrorists and hackers use the Internet to spread their nefarious programs; some governments use the Internet to spy on their citizens; Dalhousie is working on a way to spot criminal behavior, while U Toronto keeps censors at bay halfway around the globe
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U.K. pauses before implementing sweeping surveillance scheme
The U.K. government said it wanted to give law enforcement sweeping power to collect electronic data as a measure to prevent terrorism; the government now says it will engage in consultations to make sure citizens’ privacy is not violated
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