• European Court of Human Rights Confirms: Weakening Encryption Violates Fundamental Rights

    In a milestone judgment—Podchasov v. Russia—the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that weakening of encryption can lead to general and indiscriminate surveillance of the communications of all users and violates the human right to privacy.

  • Science Fiction Meets Reality: New Technique Overcome Obstructed Views

    Using a single photograph, researchers created an algorithm that computes highly accurate, full-color three-dimensional reconstructions of areas behind obstacles – a concept that can not only help prevent car crashes, but help law enforcement experts in hostage situations, search-and-rescue and strategic military efforts.

  • Charting the Future of Maritime Security

    The United States is a maritime nation surrounded by 95,000 miles of shoreline. Changes in economics, geopolitics, society, demography, or other factors, pose varied and evolving threats to the country’s maritime space – its waterways, ports of entry, and coastline borders.

  • Police Departments Are Turning to AI to Sift Through Millions of Hours of Unreviewed Body-Cam Footage

    Body camera video equivalent to 25 million copies of “Barbie” is collected but rarely reviewed. Some cities are looking to new technology to examine this stockpile of footage to identify problematic officers and patterns of behavior.

  • How Chicago Became an Unlikely Leader in Body-Camera Transparency

    The city has a long history of brutal, violent policing, but its latest approach to body-worn cameras and police oversight could serve as a national model.

  • The Hidden Cost of Being Branded a Terrorist by the U.S. Government

    The FBI credits its Terror Watchlist with keeping the country safe, but critics point to the experience of thousands of innocent American Muslims who were swept up by a screening system, and then found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare as they tried to clear their names. The watchlist currently contains nearly two million names, of which about 15,000 are U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

  • Leveraging Artificial Intelligence in Explosives, Narcotic Detection

    DHS S&T is applying emerging technologies in the development of artificial intelligence / machine learning technologies – and searching for ways to use these technologies to identify dangerous compounds, like those found in explosives and narcotics.

  • Utah Supreme Court Upholds Right to Refuse to Tell Cops Your Passcode

    The Utah Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors violated a defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when they presented testimony about his refusal to give police the passcode to his cell phone. The Utah court’s opinion is the latest in a thicket of state supreme court opinions dealing with whether law enforcement agents can compel suspects to disclose or enter their passwords.

  • What if Law Enforcement Could ‘See’ Through Walls?

    New technology allows law enforcement to easily and safely identify whether any individuals are inside a room when direct line-of-sight is not an option. This is especially critical when conducting breaching operations, searching for trafficked individuals or in potential hostage situations, where the device gives responders precious intelligence and situational awareness while reducing the risk of physical harm to themselves.

  • Preparing U.S., Partners for Radiological Response

    After the September 11th attacks, security professionals worried that terrorists might detonate a “dirty bomb” – an explosive device enhanced with radiological source materials. Responders for this type of event had to be trained.

  • EFF to Supreme Court: Fifth Amendment Protects People from Being Forced to Enter or Hand Over Cell Phone Passcodes to the Police

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) last week asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling undermining Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination and find that constitutional safeguards prevent police from forcing people to provide or use passcodes for their cell phones so officers can access the tremendous amount of private information on phones.

  • Forensic Science Method for Firearm Identification Is Flawed

    Like fingerprints, a firearm’s discarded shell casings have unique markings. This allows forensic experts to compare casings from a crime scene with those from a suspect’s gun. Finding and reporting a mismatch can help free the innocent, just as a match can incriminate the guilty. But a new study reveals mismatches are more likely than matches to be reported as “inconclusive” in cartridge-case comparisons.

  • Striving for a More Secure World

    PNNL experts work with international partners to tackle cross-border biological and chemical threats. PNNL’s border security focus can be traced to the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. U.S. policy makers became concerned about the security of nuclear material in the newly independent states of the former U.S.S.R.

  • AI Bots Are Helping 911 Dispatchers with Their Workload

    In the middle of a storm, 911 call centers often find themselves inundated with reports of fallen trees, flooded roads and panicked residents. Every call matters, but with multiple reports of the same incident pouring in, the pressure on emergency services can become overwhelming. Amid the chaos, a technological ally has emerged: artificial intelligence. AI is quietly revolutionizing non-emergency calls in 911 dispatch centers.

  • “Surveillance: From Vision to Data” Explores History of Surveillance

    The term surveillance may suggest images of high-tech cameras or George Orwell’s ever-watching Big Brother, but surveillance involves more than watching and being watched. To understand surveillance and its consequences, look to data: who collects it, what information is compiled, how it is interpreted, and ultimately, why it matters.