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RAND: Organized crime, terrorists embrace film piracy
New RAND report says that organized crime and terrorists turn to film piracy for financing their activities; in Malaysia, a pirated DVD costs 70 cents to make and sells on a corner in London for $9, more than 1,000 percent markup
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Designing the world's first purpose-built law enforcement vehicle
Yellow Jackets researchers help an Atlanta-based start-up design the world’s first vehicle designed specifically to meet the patrol needs of law enforcement agencies
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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
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Edged weapon defenses in extremely close proximity
Defending against an edged weapon is always difficult — even more so in small and confined spaces such as elevators or bathrooms; often injury cannot be avoided, only minimized
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Arresting me softly: NYPD to use Velcro handcuffs on kids
NYPD approves Velcro handcuffs for use on unruly children; cuffs are gentler than the steel model, and safer than Taser guns
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U.S. Army, law enforcement agencies, working on EMP grenades
Electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, has been typically associated with high-altitude nuclear explosions — explosions which disable electronic devices hundreds of miles away from the explosion; militaries and law enforcement want a hand-grenade-size EMP device for use in war and crime-fighting
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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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U.S. faces lethal combination of transnational terrorism and criminal gangs
Sometime in the near future a lethal combination of transnational terrorism and criminal gangs is going to cross the U.S. border in force
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More bad news for Taser guns: They raise deaths in custody
University of California-San Francisco study finds that sudden death of people held by California police increased sixfold in the first year after police departments there began using Taser stun guns
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Tampa authorities use a new Super Bowl security system
The system uses a software program called E-SPONDER, which is built into Microsoft Surface, a tabletop, touch-screen display
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The long view
Why Was Pacific Northwest Home to So Many Serial Killers?
Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, George Russell, Israel Keyes, and Robert Lee Yates were serial killers who grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the shadow of smelters which spewed plumes of lead, arsenic, and cadmium into the air. As a young man, Charles Manson spent ten years at a nearby prison, where lead has seeped into the soil. The idea of a correlation between early exposure to lead and higher crime rates is not new. Fraser doesn’t explicitly support the lead-crime hypothesis, but in a nimble, haunting narrative, she argues that the connections between an unfettered pollution and violent crime warrant scrutiny.