• Experts: White House consumer privacy plan seriously flawed

    Last week the White House announced its Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which would give consumers the right to exercise control over what personal data is collected and how it is used; an expert says more than thirty years of experience with control-based laws has demonstrated that they don’t work and they don’t protect consumer privacy

  • House grills DHS for monitoring Twitter, Facebook

    Earlier this year reports surfaced that DHS had awarded General Dynamic an $11 million contract to engage in monitoring of social networks; members of both parties including blasted DHS officials for potentially violating the First Amendment and collecting information on citizens engaged in protected political speech

  • FBI seeks system to monitor social networking sites

    The FBI, seeking to monitor conversations on social networks like Facebook and Twitter, recently placed a request for information from technology companies to develop a system capable of automatically sifting through the torrents of “publicly available” data for keywords relating to terrorism, crime, and other matters of national security

  • GPS shoe helps track seniors with Alzheimer’s

    For $300 consumers in the United States can now purchase a pair of GPS-enabled shoes to keep track of dementia-suffering senior citizens; after purchasing the shoes, buyers will have the ability to set up a monitoring service to locate lost family members who have Alzheimer’s disease

  • FBI limits GPS tracking following Supreme Court case

    Following the recent Supreme Court ruling that required law enforcement agencies to have a warrant before they could use GPS tracking devices on a suspect, the FBI has begun scaling back on its use of electronic surveillance

  • Thermal imaging proves useful for police

    With the help of sophisticated new thermal imaging systems police officers around the United States have been able to apprehend criminals and locate car crash victims in perfect darkness without a hitch

  • State Department expands use of drones in Iraq

    With the U.S. military out of Iraq, the State Department has taken to operating a small fleet of unarmed surveillance drones to protect American personnel, which has resulted in sharp criticism from the Iraqi government who say the unmanned craft are an insult to Iraqi sovereignty

  • Bipartisan panel calls for local emphasis in DHS intelligence

    A new report by a bipartisan group of security experts argues that DHS should shift its intelligence gathering efforts away from foreign enemies and focus on local threats by working with law enforcement agencies and the private sector to secure critical infrastructure, the border, and cities from domestic threats

  • Helping UAVs to land safely in an emergency

    One obstacle to the wider use of UAVs in domestic missions such as law enforcement is the fact that UAV flight plans are set pre-flight, and if something goes wrong and they need to land they have no way to determining where the safest landing spot is; in most cases they just drop; engineers are developing a system which will allow UAVs sense and avoid other traffic and determine appropriate landing spots should the need arise

  • Open-source searches help solve cold cases

    Two detectives receive the LexisNexis One Step Closer award for effectively using searches of open or third-party information sources to solve cold cases

  • CBP receives its ninth UAV

    CBP announced it has received its fourth Predator-B UAV to be used for patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border; CBP can now deploy its unmanned aircraft from the eastern tip of California across the common Mexican land borders of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas

  • U.S. Army to deploy VTOL UAV

    The U.S. Army is developing a helicopter-like, VTOL (vertical-take-off-and-landing) UAS (unmanned aircraft system) with a DARPA-sponsored ARGUS wide-area surveillance sensor suite designed to beam back information and images of the surrounding terrain

  • WikiLeaks “Spyfiles” reveal covert surveillance industry

    Earlier this month WikiLeaks launched its latest campaign, releasing hundreds of documents that reveal the extent of sophisticated surveillance technology that has been used by both oppressive rulers and Western democracies; the more than 287 files expose the work of roughly 160 companies operating in twenty-five countries and their concerted effort to market technology that allow governments or law enforcement agencies to track and monitor individuals

  • ACLU questions police tracking of cell phones

    Civil rights advocates are increasingly uneasy with law enforcement agencies increasing use of cell phone triangulation to pinpoint an individual’s location; earlier this year, thirty-four ACLU affiliates from across the country filed open records requests from local law enforcement agencies requesting information on how authorities are tracking cell phones

  • A UAV that uses wind power as a bird does

    An engineering Ph.D. students wins prizes for the design of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — dubbed Green Falcon II — which would be powered by the sun and wind; “While all airplanes mimic the shape of birds, the Green Falcon II will literally use the wind to power its movement, just as a bird would,” the young inventor says