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ImmigrationIllegal immigration to the U.S. dropped sharply since 2007
Between March 2000 and March 2005, 850,000 illegal immigrants entered the United States annually; between March 2007 and March 2009, the number dropped to 300,000 annually; the flow of Mexicans, who represent 60 percent of all illegal immigrants in the United States, plummeted to 150,000 annually during the 2007-9 period, compared with the annual average of 500,000 during the 2000-5 period; experts say that the slowing economy and bleak job market for low-skill workers, not tighter border security, have played the biggest role in the drop in illegal entrants
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Biometrics -- facial recognitionIdentifying faces in a crowd in real-time
U.K. company develops a face recognition technology that can recognize individual faces in a crowd -- and do so in seconds, even when they are moving, at a wide angle, or in poor light; the system captures and analyzes images and compares them to a database, and alerts security personnel if a match is made
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Law-enforcement technologyTracking technology may make incarceration a thing of the past
The United States is facing a prison problem: there are many people in prisons -- more than two million, a population the size of Houston; here is an idea: how about releasing most of them so they can lead productive lives -- but make them wear something like the ExacuTrack from Anderson, Indiana-based BI Incorporated: the combination ankle bracelet and GPS transponder keeps real-time tabs on those who wear the gear, making sure they do what they are supposed to do and stay away from places where the state does not want them
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DARPA seeking ideas for insider threat detection
The recent WikiLeaks exposure was a big embarrassment for the U.S. Department of Defense, supposedly one of the more secure organizations in the United States; in response, DFARPA is soliciting ideas for a surveillance system which will "greatly increase the accuracy, rate and speed with which insider threats are detected and impede the ability of adversaries to operate undetected within government and military interest networks"
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U.S. nuclear power plants bolster defenses against cyberattacks
The threat to digital systems at the U.S. nuclear power plants is considerable -- especially for new nuclear power facilities that would be built in the United States and throughout the world, as control rooms would employ digital systems to operate the plants; these state-of-the-art instruments and systems make them targets for hackers
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Need for digital security spurs growth of cyber security field
The growing need for digital security has made the shortage of cyber security professionals in the United States even more apparent, and the U.S. government is now engaged in a campaign to train, hire, and retain thousands of cyber professionals; the private sector is doing its share, too: Raytheon initiated the MathMovesU program in 2005, to inspire middle school students to consider math, science, and engineering education and careers; Raytheon awards more than $2 million annually in scholarships and grants to students, teachers, and schools nationwide
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Quantum encryptionCommercial quantum cryptography vulnerable to attack
Quantum cryptography is one of the most secure known means of transmitting data; in fact, it is often described as "unbreakable" because it relies on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle -- observation causes perturbation: if a third party does intercept a quantum signal, this very interception changes the encryption key, making the tampering apparent to parties at both ends; researchers, though, developed and tested a technique exploiting imperfections in quantum cryptography systems to implement an attack
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China syndromeChinese government funds research based on stolen U.S. trade secrets
Chinese national, Kexue Huang, charged with economic espionage involving theft of trade secrets from Dow AgroSciences, a leading U.S. agricultural company; Huang published an article without Dow's authorization through Hunan Normal University (HNU) in China, which contained Dow trade secrets; the article was based on work supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an agency of the Chinese government
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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
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Planetary securityStudy: dinosaurs killed off by more than one asteroid impact
The scientific consensus about the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago -- along with more than half of other species then alive on Earth -- is that an asteroid hit at Chicxulub in the Gulf of Mexico, creating a crater more than 180 km across and sending tons of smoke and soot into the atmosphere; scientists now say that the Chicxulub impact began the process of killing off the dinosaurs, but that the coup de grace occurred two to five thousand years later, with an asteroid impact in the Boltysh crater in the Ukraine
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Climate conundrumDramatic climate change is unpredictable
Scientists examine two models to explain climate change; one scenario is like a seesaw that has tipped to one side; if sufficient weight is placed on the other side the seesaw will tip -- the climate will change from one state to another (an ice age, or warmer climate as is the case today); in the other model, the climate is like a ball in a trench, which represents one climate state; the ball is continuously pushed by chaos-dynamical fluctuations, and the turmoil in the climate system may finally push the ball over into the other trench, which represents a different climate state
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Pentagon shifts $1 billion from WMD-defense efforts to vaccine development
The Obama administration has shifted more than $1 billion out of its nuclear, biological, and chemical defense programs to underwrite a new White House priority on vaccine development and production to combat disease pandemics; Defense Department projects under the budget-cutting ax include the development and acquisition of biological and chemical detection systems; gear to decontaminate skin and equipment after exposure; systems to coordinate military operations in a chem-bio environment; and protective clothing for military personnel entering toxic areas, the document indicates
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RoboticsCarnegie Mellon launches robotics start-up
Carnegie Robotics LLC will partner with Carnegie Mellon to manufacture robotic components and systems; startup to create products based on technology from CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center
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Secure communicationIndia gives BlackBerry reprieve, saying Google, Skype are next
BlackBerry users in India have received a 60-day reprieve: RIM has offered the Indian government a solution to interception issue (the Indian government wants to have the ability to intercept BlackBerry communications), and the government says it will examine the offer during the next two months; the government also said that services offered by Google and Skype are next, but unlike BlackBerry, Skype and Google Talk are both encrypted end-to-end, so intercepting communications is extremely difficult
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DARPA awards additional $11 million for video search technology
As a result of advancements in intelligence gathering technologies (think UAVs), the U.S. military and intelligence community have been accumulating video archives over the past decade which make YouTube look puny; it is not only the number of pictures, but their quality: mere HD movies and TV are small and tightly compressed compared to the high resolution, full-motion imagery which pours in like an avalanche from every Predator or Reaper drone -- and dozens of these surveillance drones are airborne above southwest Asia every minute of every day; DARPA is looking for an effective, automated video search technology
More Headlines
The Long View
Intel-McAfee dealIntel wants security built directly into silicon
A consensus is emerging that the main reason for Intel's acquisition of McAfee is that Intel wants to build directly into its hardware the kind of security features more traditionally provided by software like McAfee's
Cybersecurity businessThe reason for Intel's acquisition of McAfee
The merger between the two companies takes place ahead of the release in 2011 of new -- and as yet undisclosed -- products developed by a joint venture the two companies have operated in the past eighteen months; those undisclosed products may be part of the reason why Intel decided to purchase McAfee instead of extending or expanding the two companies' joint venture; says one analyst: "If what came out of that joint venture was revolutionary it could be that Intel wanted to lock that [intellectual property] down"
Immigration matters // by David B. PalinskyArizona SB 1070: What exactly does the United States object to?
District Court Judge Susan Bolton's 28 July 2010 decision granting, in part, the Obama administration's motion for preliminary injunction against Arizona's new immigration law, raised two questions: "Isn’t the State of Arizona merely attempting to enforce existing federal immigration law?" and "What exactly does the Obama Administration object to?" The answer to the first question is a resounding "No": SB 1070 goes much further than existing federal immigration law in seeking to regulate the presence of foreign nationals -- primarily Mexican nationals -- on U.S. soil; the answer to the second question is much more complex
TrendToward a national strategy for online identification
President Obama has launched an ambitious project -- National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace -- the primary goal of which is to build a cybersecurity-based identity management vision and strategy that addresses privacy and civil liberties interests, leveraging privacy-enhancing technologies for the nation; offline, there are already dozens of identification technologies in play that go beyond the simplicity of Social Security numbers, birth certificates, drivers licenses, and passports; these include smart cards, mobile phones, biometrics -- but they do not follow a consistent standard; this, too, may soon change
Explosives car in Mexican drug war the beginning of a trend
Security experts fear that last Thursday car bombing in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, is the beginning of deadly trend which will see a weapon used regularly --and effectively -- by insurgents and militants in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere soon making its presence felt on the streets of Mexico
Top 10 smart surveillance systems from Israel
Video surveillance systems have become an important tool in enabling authorities to trace criminals and terrorists; Israel is one of the leading players in the field of intelligent surveillance; here is a list of the Top 10 video security technologies from Israel; these companies offer solutions that range from "seeing" through walls to reducing twenty-four hours of video to a few (indexed) minutes to detecting subtle changes in the landscape to offering high-resolution under-water images, and much more
AnalysisCunning Iran wins again // By Ben Frankel
Last weekend the leaders of Brazil, Turkey, and Iran reached an agreement which is similar to the one the IAEA offered Iran last October; Iran would ship to another country 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium, and in return would receive nuclear fuel for its research reactor; without a complete and verifiable stop to Iran's aggressive enrichment activities, especially a stop to its effort to enrich uranium to 20 percent, the IAEA proposal would have achieved, and last weekend's deal will achieve, only one thing: merely delay the inevitable -- Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons -- and not even delay it by much (months, not years); to suggest otherwise is to whistle past the graveyard
