• Police camera use puts focus on privacy in public

    South Portland, Maine, police is using automated license plate recognition CCTV which targets traffic scofflaws — but it is connected to a centralized databank which helps the policy pick up people who are wanted on warrants and other potential offenders; supporters say new license-plate recognition technology will improve the safety

  • UK.gov dismisses Tory claims U.K. cyberspace is not well defended

    On Friday, the U.K. Conservative Party unveiled its national security plans, charging that the current Labor government has left U.K. cyberspace defenseless; the government dismissed the Tory claims, saying that many of the proposals in the Conservative Party’s plan are already being implemented

  • Tories say they will set up a permanent “War Cabinet”

    The Conservative Party is favored to win the next general elections in Britain, which will be held before the summer; on Friday the party’s leader, David Cameron, set out the party’s national security plan, emphasizing cybersecurity

  • Computer spots behavior patterns

    New cognitive computational system recognizes and predicts human behavior; applications for the system could include intelligent surveillance and accident prevention

  • China and India pursue anti-satellite kill technology

    The space arms race accelerates, as China and India announced the development of hit-to-kill anti-satellite weapons; the United States has been developing this technology for years – but since the U.S. military and economy are much more dependent on satellites, the United States becomes more vulnerable as more countries acquire anti-satellite capabilities

  • Councils use CCTV to collect £3 million in “ghost” parking tickets every year

    More and more councils in the United Kingdom use CCTVs to issue automatic tickets for parking violations; throughout England, 265 local authorities collected £328 million in parking fines last year — more than three times as much as speed cameras raked in; motoring groups argue these “ghost tickets” are unfair because motorists do not know they had been fined until afterward, it is more difficult to check signs and mount an appeal

  • A first: UND offers degree program in UAV piloting

    The number of unmanned aircraft systems has jumped from a fleet of about 50 vehicles nine years ago to more than 2,400 in use today; these UAVs need trained operators to operate them, and the University of North Dakota offers the first-in-the-U.S. degree program in UAV piloting

  • Asia to drive growth of CCTV market

    A string of terrorist attacks in India, Indonesia, and Pakistan has driven governments and private organizations in Asian countries to invest more in security; CCTV manufacturers will benefit from this trend

  • Collecting – and interpreting -- sensor data

    The U.S. military is relying an ever-greater number of cameras and sensors to collect information; there is a need to turn this mountain of data feeds into usable information for soldiers; Virginia-based Samoff offers its TerraSight product as a solution

  • Thermal imaging enters the mainstream

    FLIR guides thermal imaging into the mainstream; FLIR, a leading thermal imaging equipment manufacturer, helps the trend by lowering its price point; a residential thermal imaging camera can now be purchased for $3,500

  • Tadpole-shaped dirigible to help in communication, surveillance missions

    Florida company shows unmanned dirigible which will fly at 65,000 and 70,000
    feet; the “Stratellite” will use similar technology to the that used by the
    Graf Zeppelin in the 1930s; homeland security applications include vessel
    tracking and cargo container surveillance; littoral (shore-proximate)
    surveillance for ports, waterways, coastal trails, and urban environments;
    ancillary border surveillance activity, and more

  • Feeling Software’s solution helps manage multi-camera security and surveillance

    Whether a company operates 50 or 5,000 cameras, Feeling Software’s Omnipresence makes it simple to understand every video feed in the surveillance system at a glance; with advanced camera navigation, each individual feed is used to automatically generate the bigger security picture.

  • Drone security questions raised years ago

    Questions about the security of drone communications were raised years ago; in 2004, U.S. officials raised concerns about Russia and China intercepting and manipulating video from drone aircraft, but the military believed it was facing more pressing issues; officers at the time were not concerned about communications being intercepted in Iraq or Afghanistan because they believed militants were technically unsophisticated.

  • U.S. Army working to encrypt UAV video feeds

    The Army is scrambling to secure the live video feeds from its UAVs from being intercepted by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan; Raven drones will be retrofitted with encryption technology as early as this month; the U.S. Air Force has known for more than a decade that the live video feeds from its unmanned aerial vehicles can be intercepted by the enemy but opted not to do anything about it until this year.

  • Pentagon says U.S. fixed drones hacked by Iraqi insurgents

    Iraqi insurgents, using a $25.95 off-the-shelf commercial application, were able to intercept communication between U.S. surveillance UAVs and the UAVs’ command center; the hacking was discovered when the U.S. military found files of intercepted drone video feeds on laptops of captured militants; U.S. soldiers discovered “days and days and hours and hours of proof,” one U.S. officer said; the same hacking technique is known to have been employed in Afghanistan; the U.S. government has known about the UAV communication flaw since the 1990s, but assumed its adversaries would not be able to take advantage of it.