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Court: use of GPS to track criminals requires warrant
The New York State’s supreme court ruled that the police cannot use GPS to track a criminal suspect without a warrant; majority decision said: “the use of these powerful devices presents a significant and, to our minds, unacceptable risk of abuse”
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Microchip-sized digital camera for surveillance
In today’s minicams, the image sensors and support circuitry are on separate microchips, and most of the power goes on communication between the chips; Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena has squeezed all the components of a camera onto one low-power chip
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RFID market to reach $5.56 billion by end of 2009
In 2008, the average price per RFID tag was $1.13; the total value of tags being sold in 2008 was $2.23 billion; this figure will increase to $5.56 billion in 2009
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Products block unauthorized RFID reading of contactless cards
More and more countries and organizations move toward adopting RFID-enabled, biometric e-IDs — driver’s licenses, passports, national IDs, and more; trouble is, these e-documents are susceptible to digital pickpocketing; a U.K. company offers solutions
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Elbit, GD create UAS Dynamics
The military UAV market is becoming more lucrative; Elbit, maker of the popular Skylark and Hermes UAV lines, create a joint venture with General Dynamics to sell UAVs based on Elbit’s designs; company intends to compete with General Atomics’ Predator
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DARPA looks for inertial-nav to be embedded in smart boot's heel
DARPA is funding the development of smart shoes: soldiers and first responders will be equipped with shoes with embedded inertial navigation sensor; sensor will help in keeping track of soldiers, special operatives, and first responders in harsh environments
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U.K. information commissioner: data collection trend will be reversed
Richard Thomas, the outgoing U.K. information commissioner: “If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it does not make sense to make the haystack bigger”
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U.S.-Pakistan cooperate in UAV campaign, but it is a qualified cooperation
The United States offered to give Pakistan a much larger amount of imagery, including real-time video feeds and communications intercepts gleaned by remotely piloted aircraft; information about the UAVs’ operating patterns, blind spots, and takeoff and landing locations is not shared for fear that elements inside the Pakistani intelligence and military would leak it to the insurgents
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Greece bans Google Street View mapping service
The Greek government bans Google from gathering detailed, street-level images within the country for a planned expansion of the company’s panoramic Street View mapping service; government wants assurances about privacy issues
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Boeing's takes X-45C out of storage, renames it Phantom Ray
The proposed 2010 U.S. defense budget is historic at least in one respect: for the first time, the U.S. Air Force will be buying more unmanned flying systems than manned ones; Boeing takes its X-45C unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) out of storage and renames it Phantom Ray; it will be completed and readied for flight by the end of 2010, and will be suitable for missions including ISR, SEAD, electronic attack, hunter/killer, and autonomous aerial refueling
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Start-up offers technology to stop spread of communicable diseases
Israeli start-up CartaSense has a monitoring technology — a tag that integrates a sensor, battery, micro controller, non-volatile memory, and a radio frequency circuit that transmits to a control unit — that allows farmers to know each animal’s vital statistics
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Dutch police uses unmanned mini-helicopter to sniff out cannabis
Police in the noerthwest region of the Netherlands asked their engineers to design an unmanned helicopter to hover over the region and sniff out traces of weed smell in the air samples it collects; new methods does not require a warrant to enter buildings
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U.K. moves forward with comprehensive eavesdropping scheme
The U.K. government announced last week that it was abandoning the plan to create a centralized super-database in which the personal information of Britons will be kept — but a £1 billion intelligence gathering project is moving forward; the scheme will monitor all all e-mails, Web site visits, and social networking sessions in Britain
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Al-Qaeda plea deal details communication methods
Last week Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri entered a plea deal in Illinois in which he admitted to entering the United States on 10 September 2001 in order to form a sleeper cell for future terrorist activities; plea details Al-Qaeda’s communication methods
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Blast-proof CCTV tested by DHS's S&T
CCTVs help the police identify terrorists who perpetrate an attack; trouble is, the blast set by the terrorists may destroy the camera and its video; there are two solutions: the more expensive one is a real-time streaming-video CCTV which sends images back to HQ until the moment the camera is destroyed; the cheaper alternative is an indestructible video CCTV
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More headlines
The long view
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.