• DHS rejects Texas county border fence idea

    Cameron County’s, Texas, proposed to build miles of combined border wall and levee along the border’s southernmost point; DHS rejects proposal, saying it is not feasible

  • NASA awards general aviation technology prizes

    NASA wants to encourage innovations that would lead to aircraft that are safer, more affordable, easier to fly and also have less of a negative impact on the environment and on the communities that surround airports

  • European rail freight transport to double by 2030

    The use of European rail for freight transport will double by 2030; use of intermodal traffic to grow much more; increased continental trade and congested roads drive freight to rail

  • Drug smugglers now use minisubs; terrorists may use them, too

    Colombian drug smugglers now use “semi-submersibles” to smuggle drugs into the United States; counterterrorism officials fear that what drug runners now use to deliver cocaine, terrorists could one day use to sneak personnel or massive weapons into the United States

  • Verified Identity Pass gets back to RT business

    TSA suspended company from the Registered Traveler program after one of its computer, containing the personal details of 33,000 customers who had registered for the program, was lost; lap top was recovered and handed over to TSA for forensic review; company now allowed to register passengers

  • TSA keeps list of people who forgot driver's licnese, passport at home

    TSA began storing the information in late June, tracking many people who said they had forgotten their driver’s license or passport at home; the database has 16,500 records; agency says it is changing its policy on the list

  • Amtrak purchased additional Sabre 4000 from Smiths Detection

    Rail operator buys additional hand-held IMS detection devices better to detect and identify explosives, narcotics, chemical warfare agents, and toxic industrial chemicals on trains and in stations

  • QRSciences Holdings acquires Spectrum San Diego

    The acquisition will boost QRSciences’ product offering of security related applications including the detection of explosives and narcotics, metal detection and imaging

  • TSA to expand regulation of private aviation

    TSA plans to regualte, for the first time, the 15,000 private planes now flying with no security rules; these planes use a network of 4,700 small airports which themselves are only lightly monitored for security

  • Judge imposes gag order on Boston subway hackers

    Three MIT students hacked smartcards used by the Boston subway system; they were planning to make a presentation about the hacking at this weekend Defcon event in Las Vegas — but a U.S. district judge imposed a gag rule on them

  • UTD students place 2nd in Robotic submarine competition

    Students’ 11th-hour changes help propel team to top Ranks in underwater challenge

  • Microchips in e-passports easily forged

    Dutch researcher uses his own software, a publicly available programming code, a £40 card reader, and two £10 RFID chips to clone and manipulate two passport chips to a point at which they were ready to be planted inside fake or stolen paper passports; the altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports; the researcher took less than an hour to alter the chips

  • Agreement reached over border fence on U Texas campus

    Part of the U.S.-Mexico border fence would have cut across the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College; the university and DHS reached a compromise — but the university must finish building its proposed border protection solution by the end of the year

  • Self-healing wire to bolster avaiation safety

    In 1996 an explosion downed TWA flight 800 off the shore of Long Island, killing all 230 passengers and crew; University of Dayton researcher who identified a plausible cause of the explosion has developed a self-healing wire designed such explosions in the future

  • TSA may fine airlines over mistaken terrorist IDs

    The ACLU says there are one million names on the DHS terrorist watch list, while TSA says there are only 400,000; whatever the exact figure is, TSA wants to make sure that the airlines do not misidentify innocent passengers as terrorists, and threatens to sue airlines which do so