• New upgrades will make full-body scanners less privacy-offensive

    New software upgrade to full-body scanners would replace the images of a passenger’s naked body with an avatar and alert authorities to a potential hidden threat, eliminating the need to keep an employee in a remote room

  • NYPD commissioner: tighter security needed at Trailways bus depot

    During the past decade, a New York man stole more than 150 buses from an unsecured Trailway bus depot in Hoboken New Jersey; the doors were open, the key were left in the ignition, and he just drove off the lot, using the coaches for everything from fast-food runs to jaunts to North Carolina; he was finally collared last week after he stole a bus, drove to Manhattan, and took a group of flight attendants to Kennedy Airport

  • Obama proposes ambitious $50 billion infrastructure program

    President Barack Obama unveiled an ambitious 6-year infrastructure investment program; its goals include building or repairing 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of rail lines, and 150 miles of airplane runways; the plan also includes a new air-traffic-control system designed to reduce flight delays, and an “infrastructure bank” that will help determine the worthiest projects

  • Transportation industry eager for more details of infrastructure plan

    The White House released an information sheet that tells in broad strokes how the administration plans to use the money but did not say how much it will spend on different transportation segments or how soon it will ask Congress for the money; industry groups want to know

  • Lasers will protect helicopters from heat-seeking missiles

    A Michigan company using off-the-shelf telecommunications fiber optics to develop rugged and portable mid-infrared supercontinuum lasers that could blind heat-seeking weapons from a distance of 1.8 miles away; the technology will be used to protect combat helicopters from heat-seeking missiles

  • Pakistani military delegation cancels U.S. talks over stringent security checks

    A high-level Pakistani military delegation has cancelled a visit to the United States after members of an earlier delegation, which came to the United States to visit the U.S. military’s Central Command (CENTCOM), were subjected to stringent — the Pakistanis say “unwarranted” — security checks at Dulles International Airport

  • U.S. Navy buys sensor system from FLIR to protect ships from terrorist attacks

    U.S. Navy ship systems designers needed electro-optical sensor systems for the Shipboard Protection System (SPS), which helps protect Navy surface vessels from terrorist attacks while moored to piers, at anchor, or during restricted maneuvering; they found their solution from Wilsonville, Oregon-based FLIR Systems

  • FAA: Nigeria meets Category 1 aviation safety rating

    FAA announces that Nigeria is now in compliance with international safety standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO); with the IASA Category 1 rating, Nigerian air carriers may now apply to operate to the United States with their own aircraft

  • Skeletal scans could be newest screening technique

    The adult skeleton has 206 bones; size, shape, density, and joint structure make each skeleton slightly different; throw in an extra lumbar vertebrae or extra rib — which some people have — as well as previously broken bones, implants, screws, and other identifying characteristics, and the signatures become even more individual

  • Securing the global supply chain is daunting task

    The global supply chain consists of 140 million shipping containers; the United States has 12,000 miles of coastline, making it hard to funnel cargo through a limited number of entrances; currently, security officials inspect only 6 percent of all cargo coming into the United States; one security experts says: “If you double that, we still have a long way to go— If you triple that, we still have a long way to go”

  • Railroads do not let HAZMAT teams know what is on train

    Lethal chemicals roll through the backyards of cities and towns without the knowledge of these towns; residents; railroads do not share information about the schedule and contents of HAZMAT cargo with these towns’ emergency services, so the services cannot prepare for catastrophe; if chlorine or ammonia were to escape from a punctured tanker — in an accident or derailment — it would form a toxic cloud; a compromised 90-ton rail car of chlorine could create a plume fifteen miles long by five miles wide; the U.S. railroad industry transported some 75,000 tank cars of toxic inhalants nationwide in 2009

  • Rescue 21 bolsters Coast Guard's search-and-rescue capablilities

    Rescue 21 is already covering portions of the U.S. coastline and, as of last week, officially includes the coasts of Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and the upper Chesapeake Bay

  • New airline safety worry: lithium-ion batteries

    In January, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed stricter rules for companies that ship lithium batteries in cargo holds; lithium-battery experts, security analysts, and flight attendants wonder whether stricter rules are also needed in airline passenger cabins to prevent fires or worse: a possible attempt by a terrorist to bring down a plane by rigging a large number of batteries together to start a fire; right now, there is no limit to how many small lithium-ion batteries a passenger can carry aboard a flight; a materials scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory says that even a single cellphone battery could start a fire: “A smart terrorist can start fires with these things…. Any energy-storage device packs a lot of energy in a small space and can be used for good or evil”

  • The last romantic: student who breached airport security to kiss girlfriend fined $3,000

    A Rutgers University graduate student who breached Newark Airport’s security to kiss his girlfriend is fined $3,000 by TSA; the breach, committed after a guard left his post, shut down Terminal C for six hours, stranded 16,000 passengers, delayed 100 flights, and canceled 27 others

  • 3D, interactive X-ray to offer dramatic improvement in security scans

    The latest X-ray scanners can glean information about the atomic or molecular weight of a substance, and so help distinguish between materials, but the results are crude; the best they can manage is to show metal objects in one color, organic materials in another, and everything else in a third color; a new technique — called kinetic depth effect X-ray imaging, or KDEX — builds up a 3D image of the object which can be rotated and viewed from a wide range of angles