Posts Tagged technology

The All-Seeing Blimp

The US Army has recently become interested in long term battlefield surveillance. One of the results of this is a blimp called LEMV (Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle).

From Defense Industry Daily:

The rise of modern terrorism, sharply increasing costs to recruit and equip professional soldiers, and issues of energy security, are forcing 2 imperatives on modern armies. Modern militaries need to be able to watch wide areas for very long periods of time. Not just minutes, or even hours any more, but days if necessary. The second imperative, beyond the need for that persistent, unblinking stare up high in the air, is the need to field aerial platforms whose operating costs won’t bankrupt the budget.

 

Video from New Jersey test flight Aug 8th, 2012:

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Computer Virus: Reveton Ransomware

Reveton Ransomware

A new Internet virus is holding computers hostage across the United States and beyond.
– FBI, This Week

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New Malware Goes After Financial Information

CNET reports on the new Gauss malware tool:

Gauss has unique characteristics relative to other malware. Kaspersky said it found Gauss following the discovery of Flame. The International Telecommunications Union has started an effort to identify emerging cyberthreats and mitigate them before they spread.

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Pistol Pay Allows Online Gun Transactions

Pistol Pay is another company that is attempting to be the PayPal of the gun world. Let’s hope they succeed.

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FBI Briefs Congress on New ID Tech and How It Affects Citizen’s Privacy

CJIS Executive Briefs Congress on Next Generation Identification Initiative

July 18, 2012

Jerome Pender, deputy assistant director of our Criminal Justice Information Services Division, updated members of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law on the status of the Bureau’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) program.

 

What Facial Recognition Technology Means for Privacy and Civil Liberties

Jerome M. Pender , Deputy Assistant Director, Criminal Justice Information Services Division , Federal Bureau of Investigation , Statement Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law

– Washington, D.C.

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New Military GPS

From Defense Industry Daily:

The DAGR system provides a Precise Positioning System, using a hand-held, dual-frequency, lightweight receiver of less than one pound that incorporates the next generation, tamper-resistant Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) “SAASM” (Selective Availability Anti-Spoofing Module) security module.

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Shrimp Is Inspiration For New Body Armor Design

From Gizmag:

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Woman Ordered To Give Up Password

From Wired.com:

The authorities seized the Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating alleged mortgage fraud. Ruling that the woman’s Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination would not be breached, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop.

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Interview: Black Ops Veteran Talks Video Games And The Real World

[Gamasutra’s Leigh Alexander talks to a Black Ops combat veteran about his new book of gunfight tactics, the interest he’s received from gamers — and his thoughts on how games and the real world relate.]

The advertising campaign for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops shows a bunch of everyday folks toting arms around a gray warscape, firing rocket launchers at helicopters and storming blasted edifices, guns in hand. “There’s a soldier in all of us,” it promises.”

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31439/Interview_Black_Ops_Veteran_Talks_Video_Games_And_The_Real_World.php

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GunSafe iPhone App

Defense Review has a nice review of a new iPhone app that logs all the information for all your firearms.

GunSafe allows you to securely load, store, and categorize information on every firearm they own. You can load the weapon’s make, model, serial number, purchase/transfer location, date of purchase/transfer, purchase price, and provide notes on it. You can also store a photo of the weapon.

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SOCOM Wants Android Devices

SOCOM wants to use Google’s Android devices instead of developing a proprietary system:

From Danger Room:

SOCOM calls it the Tactical Situational Awareness Application Suite, or TactSA, and it has to work in low-connectivity areas — the middle-of-nowhere places you’d expect to send the military’s most elite troops. It’s got to be peer-to-peer, encrypted “at the application level” and able to recover from “network outages and substantial packet loss.”

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Electronic Frontier Foundation Needs Your Support!

Dear Friend of Digital Freedom,

In 1990, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) took an unprecedented stand for technology users’ civil liberties by suing the Secret Service for seizing and damaging Steve Jackson Games’ computers. Twenty years later, EFF remains passionately engaged in protecting civil liberties at the forefront of technology. In 2010, EFF rose to meet new challenges and secured new freedoms for users everywhere.

In 2010:

Innovation

EFF won the exemption that made it legal to “jailbreak” smartphones to unlock their full potential;

Transparency

EFF taught users how to take control of their privacy on social networks;

Fair Use

EFF made it possible – for the first time in history – for artists and educators to excerpt from DVDs without fear of breaking the law;

Free Speech

EFF defended political bloggers and peer-to-peer users from copyright “trolls” bullying them into bogus legal settlements;

Privacy

EFF conducted groundbreaking research on privacy and security, and used the findings to lobby for improved user protections; and

Free Speech icon

EFF collaborated with local groups throughout the world to advance privacy and free expression through technology.

These victories were only possible thanks to donations from individuals like you. Charity Navigator, a leading evaluator of non-profit efficiency, has given EFF its highest rating — we make each and every contribution count in the fight for freedom on the electronic frontier.

Choose to support digital freedom and secure your civil liberties today with a year-end gift to EFF.

Donate Today!

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Using powerful technology, U.S. authorities intercept telephone calls in Mexico resulting in spectacular arrests

“Washington, D.C. – Investigations by United States federal authorities included the monitoring of telephone calls of Mexican drug cartels, according to The Washington Post.

Using powerful, modern technology, U.S. authorities have been able to intercept telephone calls in Mexico that resulted in spectacular arrests such as that of Jesus Quinonez Marquez, Prosecutor General of Baja California, who was an operative in a narcotics ring. Quinonez was known as “El Rinon,” and he was arrested by the FBI last July in San Diego, California in an investigation that resulted in criminal charges against 42 more people.

Besides Quinonez, 34 other suspects were detained in the United States and 8 more are fugitives.”

http://m3report.wordpress.com/

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Mexico: Drug Cartels using internet social media, and Government proposals to fight it

“What we do know is that drug cartels don’t merely depend on anonymous websites … they are quite capable of publishing that information online – and anonymously – themselves. In fact, according to the the blog “Last of the Dodos,” the Gulf Cartel even temporarily had its own official YouTube channel. (The account was quickly suspended.)

Mexican officials also say that drug cartels are using Twitter and Facebook to avoid military raids and police checkpoints. In the border town of Reynosa, where fighting between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel has been the most intense, a Facebook message that warned of an upcoming shootout caused the entire city, including schools and shops, to shut down. (The predicted shootout never did take place.)

Mexican politicians have responded by proposing a law that would give them power to block websites that facilitate the breaking of the law. It would also make illegal the publishing of information that helps anyone break the law or avoid the police.

In practice, the law could provide the government a handy excuse to censor legitimate information that helps hold government officials accountable.”

http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2010/10/citizen-journalism-and-drug-trafficking.html

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Citizen Journalists: Courage in Mexico

“A few months ago a blogger and student from the prestigious Tec de Monterrey university penned her account of a nearby shootout between soldiers and drug traffickers that left two graduate students dead. She describes in her blog post how she used Twitter to post her observations and to stay up to date with information from others.
What we don’t know is why she stuck around; what compelled her to report, cell phone in hand, when she was clearly putting her life at risk. But what we do know is that she is hardly alone. Regular citizens are becoming increasingly involved in the reporting, distribution, and analysis of information related to organized crime, drug trafficking, and public security.

Read the rest of this entry »

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