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Technology companies help governments augment surveillance capabilities
Technology companies have often been criticized for assisting governments in what many see as unwarranted intrusion, most notably in China; such criticism notwithstanding, these companies find rich business opportunities in the growing surveillance market
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Prisons of the future: High-rise structures, smart cards for inmates
Israel is building new prisons based on new concepts: High-rise structures which will deter escapes (how many prisoners will risk a jump from the tenth floor?), and smart cards which will allow inmates to roam unescorted — but monitored
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Robot aircraft rides thermal currents to save fuel
Soaring birds use thermal air currents to keep them aloft for hours and save energy; the same principle is now being applied to UAVs
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Team Stellar wins U.K. MoD's Grand Challenge
The U.K. Ministry of Defense holds a competition to determine the best autonomous robots that can identify, monitor, and report military threats faced by U.K. troops; Team Stellar, comprising several technology-savvy companies, wins
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Unmanned helicopter to aid in search and rescue
The UAVs will search for people in isolated regions, monitor large-area disasters such as floods or forest fires, sample gas emissions over industrial disaster sites, and act as a communication platform when the regular infrastructure is down
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U.K. Grand Challenge mini-vehicle competition held this weekend
Eleven teams made it to the final of the U.K. Ministry of Defense mini-vehicle competition, aiming to promote devising highly autonomous vehicles capable of identifying threats that are being encountered by U.K. troops on overseas operations
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China deploys vast, pervasive surveillance system for Games -- and beyond
The Chinese government has installed about 300,000 cameras in Beijing and set up a network to spy on its citizens and foreigners; cabs are equipped with hidden recording devices; many hotel rooms have one-way mirrors; Mao-era practice of neighborhood watches revives
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Thales chooses e2v for Sentinel-3 Earth observation satellite
Sentinel-3 will be used to study sea surface topography, sea, and land surface temperature, ocean color, and land color with a high level of accuracy
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Military contractors move aggressively into civil security
BAE’s acquisition of Detica, a company with a large portfolio of British civil IT contracts, exemplifies the EU policy of encouraging military firms to use their knowledge of homeland security; civil libertarians are worried
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Boeing chooses Qinetiq for Vulture program
Vulture is a pseudo-satellite system aiming to provide operational advantages in terms of persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications
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RFID readers installed along U.S. borders
Today the first Border Patrol RFID readers go into use at El Paso, Texas, border crossing; during the next two months many more RFID readers will be installed in order to speed up traffic across borders
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A different picture of CCTV
U.K. company says technology, in addition to providing security, can also analyze customer behavior and lead to increase in sales
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U.K. UAV competition
The U.K. Ministry of Defence is holding its Grand Challenge, which calls for the design of a platform with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, monitor, and report a comprehensive range of military threats in an urban environment
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Cyber cafes to be monitored in India
Indian police places biometric systems and CCTV in more than 150 cyber cafes in order to catch cyber criminals in the act
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NASA's UAV helps fight California wild fires
Fire crews are fighting more than 1,700 blazes that have blackened 829,000 acres of California this fire season; they need all the help they can get — and NASA extends such help by lending the state a modified Predator UAV
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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.