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German court says EU phone, e-mail data retention policy must be changed
In 2006 the EU approved a law requiring phone and e-mail providers to hold customer data for six months in case the data is needed by law enforcement; a German Federal Constitution Court called the law "inadmissable" and ruled that changes would be needed to limit its scope
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Attensity shows data analyzer based on the company's broader approach to unstructured data analysis
Attensity applies its broad approach to unstructured data analysis to the analysis of customers' preferences and wishes; the company's solutions are helpful to intelligence and law enforcement organizations in connecting the dots gleaned from vast amounts of information
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UK.gov dismisses Tory claims U.K. cyberspace is not well defended
On Friday, the U.K. Conservative Party unveiled its national security plans, charging that the current Labor government has left U.K. cyberspace defenseless; the government dismissed the Tory claims, saying that many of the proposals in the Conservative Party’s plan are already being implemented
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Tories say they will set up a permanent “War Cabinet”
The Conservative Party is favored to win the next general elections in Britain, which will be held before the summer; on Friday the party’s leader, David Cameron, set out the party’s national security plan, emphasizing cybersecurity
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Michigan in cyber-security partnership with DHS
Michigan will deploy EINSTEIN 1, the DHS-run cyber security system which all federal agencies are required to use; EINSTEIN 1 automates the collection and analysis of computer network security information from participating agency and government networks to help analysts identify and combat malicious cyber-activity
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MIT researchers develop a smart anchor which mimics the razor clam
The razor clam is about seven inches long by an inch wide, but it can dig into the ocean floor at a rate of about a centimeter a second; researchers also say that in a measure of anchoring force, or how hard you pull before an anchor rips out of the soil compared to the energy required to embed the anchor, razor clams beat everything, including the best anchors, by at least a factor of 10
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U.S. Navy's PANDA technology to detect "deviant" ships
There are tens of thousands of ships on the high seas every day, carrying millions of containers, entering and leaving hundreds of ports in dozens of countries; monitoring this vast amount of traffic to make sure that none of the containers is carrying WMDs is humanly impossible; Lockheed Martin has developed the PANDA Maritime Domain Awareness program to help the U.S. Navy and intelligence community keep a closer eye on the global maritime traffic
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U.S. intelligence community invests in firm that that monitors blogs, Tweets
In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA, puts money into a company that specializes in monitoring social media; move seen is part of a broader trend within the U.S. intelligence community to get better at using "open source intelligence"
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AnalysisRevelations about Iran's facility raise questions about U.S. intelligence
Both the 2003 "slam dunk" assertion about Iraq's WMDs, and the 2007 NIE's conclusion that Iran had "halted" its nuclear weapons work, were absurdities; we should worry about the fact that they came to the surface -- and influenced policy
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Company in the newsShotSpotter, Inc. says its technology saves lives
The Mountain View, California-based company says that in the first half of 2009 its technology saved the lives of 57 gunshot victims; this represents a 138 percent increase from the first half of 2008
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Age of surveillanceChina says it has installed 2.75 million CCTVs since 2003
Government plans to expand the surveillance system into the largely neglected countryside, and marry it to a face recognition database
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Age of surveillanceU.K. authorities made more than 500,000 surveillance requests last year
U.K. police, councils, and the intelligence services made about 1,500 surveillance requests every day last year; this is the annual equivalent to one in every 78 people being targeted
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NSA to build $2 billion data center in Utah
The NSA major data center -- in Fort Meade, Maryland -- has maxed out the capacity of the Baltimore area power grid; the super-secret agency is building a second data center in San Antonio, Texas, and has revealed plans to build a third center -- a mammoth, 65 MW, $1.93 billion in Camp Williams, Utah
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Navy seeks ultimate battlefield surveillance
Office of Naval Research seeks to automate sensor networks to give commanders a better understanding of a battlespace; the agency last week issued a broad area announcement seeking concepts for the system, which would task surveillance assets so they focus autonomously on areas of interest
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U.K. government to give up on massive Internet snoop scheme
The Home Office admits that its IMP (Interception Modernization Program) -- the cost of which was to be £2 billion over ten years -- cannot be realized because the technology does not yet exist
The Long View
DARPA seeks deep-learning AI to cope with flood of information
The growing use of UAVs to loiter over enemy territory and send images and streaming videos back to HQ has created a glut of information; DARPA seeks a better, deeper, and more layered artificial intelligence to help the intelligence community cope with the avalanche of information coming in
TrendIndia to see a large, broad growth in expenditures on domestic security
A series of terrorist attacks, culminating in the coordinated attack in Mumbai last month, convinced both government and industry in India that more security -- much more security -- is required to cope with mounting threats to domestic peace; business opportunities abound for companies in IT security, biometric, surveillance, detection, situational awareness, and more
U.K. government grants itself even more data sharing power
A U.K. government proposal debated in Parliament this week would increase the ability of different government arms to share data
