• Somali pirates benefit from a global network of informers

    During the past fifteen years many Somalis have left the country in search of work; many found jobs in major European and Middle eastern ports; some of them now serve as eyes and ears for the pirates back home, providing information about ships’ cargo, routes, and security on board

  • Cruise passengers flown to Dubai to avoid pirates

    The owners of the German cruise ship Columbus decided on a new way to deal with piracy off the coast of Somalia: The 246 passengers were flown to Dubai to await the ship — and the ship itself, with but a skeletal crew, sail at top speed through the dangerous waters of the Gulf of Aden, hoping to avoid being raided by pirates

  • UAV to patrol U.S. northern border in January

    The first UAV is expected to begin patrolling the U.S.-Canada border in January

  • U.S. to restrict laptop searches at border

    Laptops contain e-mails, pictures, financial documents, and more; searching them may offer law enforcement officials far more revealing pictures of travelers than suitcase inspections at airports might yield

  • Briefly noted

    Feds get high marks for aviation security efforts…. Newest U.S. missile detection satellite may be failing… QinetIQ North America in $58 million TALON contract… Measuring effectiveness of emergency response

  • Germany reconsiders millimeter wave scanners

    Last month the European Parliament banned the use of millimeter wave scanner at European airports because the scanners’ sensitivity allow security personnel to see anatomically correct nude images of passengers; Germany wants to revisit the issue

  • Making facial recognition technology more effective

    Facial recognition technology holds the promise of identifying individuals in a crowd — and from distance; in real-world environments, however, the task becomes difficult, if not impossible, when the systems acquire poor facial images; NIST researchers offer a solution

  • Immigration Alert: Employing immigrants during economic slowdown

    There are important employer obligations to consider when employing immigrants during an economic downturn

  • Briefly noted

    Napolitano offers Obama pragmatic take on immigration… Microsoft, ESRI to help improve DHS operations… Inbox: Brits baying for blood over ID

  • IMO calls on UN to take tougher action on piracy

    The International Maritime Organizations urges countries with the naval capacity to do so “to take part actively in the fight against piracy and armed robbery against ships”

  • TSA, American Airlines launch paperless boarding

    Paperless boarding pass will allow passengers to receive boarding passes electronically on their cell phones or PDAs

  • Flexible, flapping flying machines may be on the horizon

    Rigid wings and rotors have made aircraft very successful; nature, however, prefers flexible, flapping flying structures — just look at birds; indeed, the most efficient and acrobatic airfoils in nature are the flexible wings of the bat; Brown University researchers want to adopt the bat’s approach to flying for human use

  • Grappling with the pirate problem

    The Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Gulf of Aden, are among the most sensitive choke points in global commerce; trouble is, the stable, the comparatively wealthy Southeast Asian countries that line the Malacca Strait have committed their naval and coastal forces to stamping out hijackings and piracy, but the Gulf of Aden is bordered by poor or dysfunctional countries like Djibouti, Yemen, and particularly Somalia

  • Briefly noted

    Raytheon awarded contract for exploratory nuclear detection research… Navies may get tougher on piracy after tanker seizure… U.S. donates nuclear detection equipment to Nigeria

  • Thruvision offers T-ray security scanner

    Terahertz radiation offer the promise of effective scanning of passengers without revealing anatomically correct images of their bodies