Corruption

Trump's greed threatens a crucial post-Watergate reform

...Post-Watergate catharsis was the historic legislation passed by the Congress and signed into law by president Jimmy Carter in 1977, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, that for the first time explicitly outlawed bribery of foreign officials and also required companies operating abroad to maintain detailed records of their transactions. The anti-bribery provisions of the legislation make it unlawful for a US person, and certain foreign issuers of securities, to make a payment to a foreign official for the purpose of obtaining or retaining business for or with, or directing business to, any person. Since 1998, in accordance with the anti-bribery convention of the OECD, they also apply to foreign firms and persons who take any act in furtherance of such a corrupt payment while in the United States.

The fallout from events in the US saw the issue of bribery and corruption in international business transactions feature prominently in the news, the shock waves reaching far beyond the United States. The bold move by the Carter administration represented the first occasion on which a government had implemented such provisions, and was the first tentative step taken towards an international approach to anti-corruption.

"It's just so unfair that American companies aren't allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas," Trump said, according to the book. "We're going to change that."

The President, the authors go on to explain, was frustrated with the law "ostensibly because it restricted his industry buddies or his own company's executives from paying off foreign governments in faraway lands".

Communication security

Rich and famous turn to ‘personal cyber security’ to protect phones

Wealthy individuals are scrambling to lock down their privacy in the wake of the alleged hack of Jeff Bezos’ iPhone, as personal cyber security experts warn that the rich and famous are increasingly becoming the target of sophisticated cyber criminals.  Several groups offering bespoke cyber security services to wealthy individuals told the Financial Times that they had received calls from panicked clients seeking advice, after a report last week alleged that Amazon founder Mr Bezos was hacked by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in 2018 through messaging service WhatsApp.  Where traditionally hackers have tended to attempt to steal sensitive data from big corporations, experts note a “significant” rise in costly and disruptive cyber attacks on celebrities, executives and politicians over the past year.

Innovations & technologies

BAE Systems wins DARPA contract to develop mixed-signal electronics

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded a contract to BAE Systems to build the next generation of mixed-signal electronics.

Under the $8m contract, BAE Systems FAST Labs research and development team will design and develop wafer-scale technology on a silicon foundry platform in collaboration with programme foundries.

The technology could enable new Department of Defense (DoD) applications, including high capacity, robust communications, radars and precision sensors.

Furthermore, it can lead to solutions that improve situational awareness and survivability for troops.

DARPA created the Technologies for Mixed mode Ultra Scaled Integrated Circuits (T-MUSIC) programme to enable disruptive radio frequency (RF) mixed-mode technologies with the development of RF analogue electronics integrated with advanced digital electronics on the same wafer.

Outer space

Two satellites just avoided a head-on smash: How close did they come to disaster?

It appears we have missed another close call between two satellites—but how close did we really come to a catastrophic event in space?

It all began with a series of tweets from LeoLabs, a company that uses radar to track satellites and debris in space. It predicted that two obsolete satellites orbiting Earth had a one in 100 chance of an almost direct head-on collision at 9:39am AEST on 30 January, with potentially devastating consequences.

LeoLabs estimated that the satellites could pass within 15-30m of one another. Neither satellite could be controlled or moved. All we could do was watch whatever unfolded above us.

Collisions in space can be disastrous and can send high-speed debris in all directions. This endangers other satellites, future launches, and especially crewed space missions.

National security threat

Why China is a bigger threat than the Soviet Union

For reasons of politics, economics, and military power, the Chinese Communist Party now poses a greater threat to U.S. security than the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.

The similarities between those two behemoths are obvious.

Both nations rooted their power in authoritarian control over the people and in devotion to party supremacy, and both viewed America's submission as a prerequisite for their ultimate success, but most of the threat similarities end there. In large part, that's because communist China has a far better strategy than the Soviet Union. Where Moscow sought to dominate its adversaries, Beijing seeks first to co-opt and then dominate them. Where the Soviet Union relied on ramshackle KGB efforts to steal Western technology, China matches domestic hackers to academic infiltrators. Where the Soviet military tried to overmatch NATO with mass, Xi Jinping fragments our alliances and targets our defensive weak points.

Let's consider the political, economic, and military elements in turn.

Beijing's ideology takes the center in what might be described as warped communism. The Standing Committee believes that the party is supreme and China is destined for global hegemony, but it's flexible about how to get there. Xi's inner circle is happy to make foreign nations rich if that will earn their loyalty. We see the patronage-cronyism side of things in Africa and Asia, where China has invested hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects. This has facilitated webs of pro-Beijing political corruption, but the most striking example of this Chinese gambit is found in the West.

Missile defense

New Air Force technology aims to stop nuclear attacks faster

The Air Force and industry are taking new technical steps to quickly alert commanders in the event that the U.S. comes under nuclear attack, by increasing the time window with which decision-makers have to both defend and potentially retaliate.

This includes using emerging software and hardware technologies and new architecture to, among other things, migrate time-sensitive targeting data to the cloud, increase network resiliency and better connect space, air and ground nodes into a fast, seamless integrated threat analysis system. The current work, which includes new technical methods of engineering communications nodes within a broad network, is part of an overall Pentagon strategy to improve missile warning systems as quickly as new technology emerges.

Part of this effort involves a recent $197 million deal between the Air Force and Raytheon to advance an emerging system called FORGE (Future Operationally Resilient Ground Enterprise). The Raytheon system helps architect the technical apparatus to gather, store, safeguard and network missile-attack related sensor information. It involves synchronizing fixed ground terminals with other nodes such as air and space assets; it also leverages cloud technology. In effect, when Spaced-Based Infrared sensors (SBIR) detect the heat and light signature of an enemy missile launch, the data is then networked to key ground sites and passed to the appropriate decision-makers - such as the President.

Facial recognition

Remember FindFace? The Russian Facial Recognition Company Just Turned On A Massive, Multimillion-Dollar Moscow Surveillance System

Built on several tens of thousands of cameras and what's claimed to be one of the most advanced facial recognition systems on the planet, Moscow has been quietly switching on a massive surveillance project this month.

The software that's helping monitor all those faces is FindFace, the product of NtechLab, a company that some reports claimed would bring "an end to anonymity" with its FindFace app. Launched in the mid-2010s, it allowed users to take a picture of someone and match their face to their to social media profiles on Russian site Vkontakte (VK).

Since then, NtechLab shut down the consumer app and pivoted to government surveillance, this week revealing it’s being paid at least $3.2 million for deploying its tools across the Russian capital. The initial news was broken in Russian media on Tuesday. 

Mass surveillance

These activists use makeup to defy mass surveillance

Anyone who happened to be loitering in the London borough of Greenwich on the evening of 16 January may have spotted a strange sight. Ten or so individuals, faces daubed in brightly painted patterns, winding their way in complete silence through rain-slicked streets, passing the borough’s sleek residential new-builds and empty redevelopment sites.

But this wasn’t some London-based subset of juggalos. This was the monthly outing of the Dazzle Club, a collective of artists using anti-facial recognition paint and choreographed walks to explore surveillance and public space in the 21st century. And I was along for the ride.

The Dazzle Club is a relatively new project, albeit one that’s already attracted an intense amount of interest, thanks to sitting at a particularly hot-button intersection of art, politics and activism. It’s a collaboration between two different collectives and formed by four founding artists, Emily Roderick, Georgina Rowlands, Anna Hart and Evie Price. As a duo, Emily and Georgina focus on performance-based work and curation questioning surveillance politics and cyber-feminist theory under the name Yoke Collective. Anna and Evie represent Air, a more sprawling group of artists who explore existence in the everyday and the concept of being ‘public’.

Border security

Longest-ever border smuggling tunnel found stretching between Tijuana and San Diego, officials say

U.S. authorities discovered the longest smuggling tunnel ever found along the southwest border.

The tunnel originates in Tijuana, Mexico, near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry and extends a total of 4,309 feet long -- more than three-quarters of a mile. The next longest tunnel in the U.S., discovered in San Diego in 2014, was 2,966 feet long.

"While subterranean tunnels are not a new occurrence along the California-Mexico border, the sophistication and length of this particular tunnel demonstrates the time-consuming efforts transnational criminal organizations will undertake to facilitate cross-border smuggling,” Cardell Morant, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) San Diego, said in a press release. The investigation that led to the discovery spanned many years and involved various agencies.

Health security

Coronavirus: How are patients treated?

The virus, so far called 2019-nCoV, is known to have killed 170 people in China and infected more than 7,000. It has also spread to 16 other countries.

It's a newly identified member of the coronavirus family - common infections which cause cold-like symptoms, a fever, coughing and respiratory problems.

Many people who get this new virus will only suffer mild symptoms, and most are expected to make a full recovery.

But like Sars (also a coronavirus) and influenza, this new one appears to pose a particular risk for elderly people and those with pre-existing illnesses.

There is no cure, in the same way that there is no cure for the common cold.

Nuclear security

Deployment of new US nuclear warhead on submarine a dangerous step, critics say

The US has deployed its first low-yield Trident nuclear warhead on a submarine that is currently patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, it has been reported, in what arms control advocates warn is a dangerous step towards making a nuclear launch more likely.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, the USS Tennessee – which left port in Georgia at the end of last year – is the first submarine to go on patrol armed with the W76-2 warhead, commissioned by Donald Trump two years ago.

US to loosen nuclear weapons constraints and develop more 'usable' warheads

 

Read more

It has an explosive yield of five kilotons, a third of the power of the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima and considerably lower than the 90- and 455-kiloton warheads on other US submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

The Trump administration’s nuclear posture review (NPR) in February 2018, portrays this warhead as a counter to a perceived Russian threat to use its own “tactical” nuclear weapons to win a quick victory on the battlefield.

Advocates of W76-2 argued that the US had no effective deterrent against Russian tactical weapons because Moscow assumed Washington would not risk using the overwhelming power of its intercontinental ballistic missiles in response, for fear of escalating from a regional conflict to a civilian-destroying war.

Nuclear security

Fourth Spy at Los Alamos Knew A-Bomb’s Inner Secrets

Last fall, a pair of historians revealed that yet another Soviet spy, code named Godsend, had infiltrated the Los Alamos laboratory where the world’s first atom bomb was built. But they were unable to discern the secrets he gave Moscow or the nature of his work.

However, the lab recently declassified and released documents detailing the spy’s highly specialized employment and likely atomic thefts, potentially recasting a mundane espionage case as one of history’s most damaging.

It turns out that the spy, whose real name was Oscar Seborer, had an intimate understanding of the bomb’s inner workings. His knowledge most likely surpassed that of the three previously known Soviet spies at Los Alamos, and played a crucial role in Moscow’s ability to quickly replicate the complex device. In 1949, four years after the Americans tested the bomb, the Soviets detonated a knockoff, abruptly ending Washington’s monopoly on nuclear weapons.

Communication security

Spies v MPs on Huawei deal: MI5, MI6 and GCHQ tell Boris Johnson to press ahead with Chinese 5G deal despite US pleas... as PM's own backbenchers urge him to plug on the tech project

Britain's intelligence chiefs will come together today to tell Boris Johnson that Huawei should be allowed to build part of the UK’s 5G network.

Senior representatives from MI5, MI6, GCHQ and the National Cyber Security Centre will dismiss fears that our sovereignty would be under threat from the Chinese firm, sources said.

The Prime Minister is expected to grant Huawei limited access to the network. 

But the move will be met by a backlash from the Prime Minister’s own MPs, who say it will give China the ability to spy on British citizens and sabotage critical infrastructure.

It also risks upsetting our security relationship with the US, which has for months been lobbying Britain to exclude the firm. 

The Prime Minister will hear from the spy chiefs at a meeting of the National Security Council before he makes an announcement.

Speaking last night, Mr Johnson said the decision would be a ‘strategic win’ for Britain and consumers deserved access to ‘fantastic technology’.

Privacy security

Bipartisan legislation could curtail long-running National Security Agency data collection efforts.

A bipartisan cadre of lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced legislation that would reform the 9/11-era authorities used by the intelligence community to access Americans’ phone records and other domestic communications.

The Safeguarding Americans’ Private Records Act would narrow Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which provided the National Security Agency and sister intelligence agencies sweeping information-gathering authorities following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. According to lawmakers, the bill would end the phone surveillance program that would ensnare Americans’ phone records and prohibit the warrantless collection of location data. The bill would reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adding transparency to secretive court processes that decide whether to surveil individuals.

While previous presidential administrations and Congresses have continually renewed the authorities, privacy advocates have voiced increasing opposition to the authorities, which allow for records and data to be vacuumed up without a warrant. The program was first exposed by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Corruption

Edward Snowden: Trump has created a global playbook to attack those revealing uncomfortable truths

On Tuesday, Brazilian federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Glenn Greenwald, the Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and founding editor at the Intercept Brazil, for his explosive reporting on corruption at the very highest levels of Brazil’s government.

The public importance of these stories was staggering. For example, one of the revelations exposed how a well-known judge named Sergio Moro had rigged a trial to jail the country’s most popular political figure in the run-up to the presidential election, clearing a path to victory for Jair Bolsonaro, who then promptly rewarded Moro with control of the Ministry of Justice and Public Security.

Given this context, it’s understandable why a significant portion of Brazilian politicians — including even some aligned with the disgraced Bolsonaro regime — have chosen to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with press freedom organizations in denouncing these preposterous “cybercrime” charges as an act of political repression.

Communication security

One Small Fix Would Curb Stingray Surveillance

Law enforcement in the United States, international spies, and criminals have all used (and abused) the surveillance tools known as "stingrays" for more than a decade. The devices can track people's locations and even eavesdrop on their calls, all thanks to weaknesses in the cellular network. Today, researchers are detailing a way to stop them—if only telecoms would listen.

Stingrays derive their power by pretending to be cell towers, tricking nearby devices into connecting to them instead of the real thing. The same vulnerabilities that enable that behavior could also be used to, say, spoof emergency alerts on a large scale. At the USENIX Enigma security conference in San Francisco on Monday, research engineer Yomna Nasser will detail those fundamental flaws and suggest how they could finally get fixed.

"The point of my talk is to try and explain the root cause behind all these types of attacks, which is basically the lack of authentication when phones are first trying to find a tower to connect to," Nasser says. "If something looks like a cell tower, they will connect; that’s just a consequence of how cell network technology was designed decades ago. And it's really hard to redesign things to do security really well—the lack of authentication problem still exists in 5G."

Facial recognition

Government privacy watchdog under pressure to recommend facial recognition ban

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), an independent agency, is coming under increasing pressure to recommend the federal government stop using facial recognition.

Forty groups, led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, sent a letter Monday to the agency calling for the suspension of facial recognition systems "pending further review."

“The rapid and unregulated deployment of facial recognition poses a direct threat to ‘the precious liberties that are vital to our way of life,'" the advocacy groups wrote.

The PCLOB "has a unique responsibility, set out in statute, to assess technologies and polices that impact the privacy of Americans after 9-11 and to make recommendations to the President and executive branch," they wrote.

The agency, created in 2004, advises the administration on privacy issues.

Spy work

Spies Like AI: The Future of Artificial Intelligence for the US Intelligence Community

America’s intelligence collectors are already using AI in ways big and small, to scan the news for dangerous developments, send alerts to ships about rapidly changing conditions, and speed up the NSA’s regulatory compliance efforts. But before the IC can use AI to its full potential, it must be hardened against attack. The humans who use it — analysts, policy-makers and leaders — must better understand how advanced AI systems reach their conclusions.

Dean Souleles is working to put AI into practice at different points across the U.S. intelligence community, in line with the ODNI’s year-old strategy. The chief technology advisor to the principal deputy to the Director of National Intelligence wasn’t allowed to discuss everything that he’s doing, but he could talk about a few examples.

At the Intelligence Community’s Open Source Enterprise, AI is performing a role that used to belong to human readers and translators at CIA’s Open Source Center: combing through news articles from around the world to monitor trends, geopolitical developments, and potential crises in real-time.

Nuclear security

Memo to Mr. Trump: This nuclear treaty with Russia will make you a winner!

Memo to President Donald Trump:

You have the historic opportunity to make the greatest deal with Russia, and all it requires is a big beautiful signature.

You want a cap on nuclear weapons, and the New START treaty is just that. But the treaty will expire in 2021 unless you act to save it. Here are five reasons why you should extend the New START treaty in 2020.

1. It will help you get reelected. Polls show that at least 66 percent of Trump voters in every single state support treaty extension.

2. It will save the United States billions of dollars. If the treaty expires, the United States will have to spend more money gathering information about Russia’s nuclear weapons.

3. Since the first START treaty was signed in 1991, Russia’s nuclear arsenal has declined dramatically. Meanwhile America’s nuclear capability has made tremendous progress and, thanks to you, the United States is making the greatest weapons ever made. Lock in the US advantage!

4. China’s nuclear arsenal is so, so tiny, it’s not worth including them in a treaty. It’s minuscule. They’ll never have a nuclear button as big as yours.

Intuition

Russian scientists have learned to find people with a developed intuition

A report on this topic was presented by the staff of the IBMP. The research proposed to evaluate the personality characteristics of potential candidates in cosmonauts by using new technologies. With the latter you can get a complete idea of the type of human thinking.

Scientists have developed a method of assessing the presence of intuition after the study, which was attended by the children of 9-11 years. The experiments allowed the researchers to exclude effects on the brain hormonal factors. Children were asked questions they didn’t know the exact answers, but at the same time was aware of what is said to them by adults. In the process of research, scientists have learned to identify participants with well-developed intuition.

It is noted that such people are able to solve complex problems using a heuristic method. It is based on auxiliary techniques and flanking maneuvers. Intuition is manifested as assumptions, and the latter depend on the already existing experience, according to the portal PlanetToday.

Defense industry

The state of UK Defence – BAE Systems and MBDA

UK defence is oft cited as the ‘shining light’ in British manufacturing, and if that’s true then BAE Systems and MBDA are flames on either end of the same candle emitting an extraordinary glow.

BAE Systems is a British multinational defence, security and aerospace company with a particular focus on land, air and seacraft. MBDA is a European developer and manufacturer of missiles, and the result of a guided-missile division merger between Airbus, Leonardo, and BAE Systems in 2001. Both manufacturers are also engaged in supply for the commercial and military electronics market.

In October 2019, The Manufacturer was shown around BAE Systems’ Portsmouth site, and MBDA’s Bolton facility.

After passing through a strict and highly choreographed verification process, our BAE Systems tour guide was Jon Penny, head of manufacturing, supply chain and operational services, who kicked things off with a ‘deep dive’ into the layered threat deterrents BAE Systems provides within the underwater domain.

Displayed on the factory floor, in a variety of sizes, each of them sleek and black, was a series of torpedoes each bearing a different and devastating payload – from the smaller Kingfisher model, cut lengthways to showcase the fuse, expulsion charge and submunition; to the heavyweight Spearfish torpedo deployed on Royal Navy submarines.

Defense industry

China has world's second-largest arms industry, think tank estimates

Newly available data suggests that China is the world’s second-biggest arms producer, behind the United States and ahead of Russia, a leading conflict and armaments think-tank said on Monday.

A lack of transparency means the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has excluded China from its annual global rankings of arms makers, but it said credible financial information had become available for four major companies.

The data, covering the period from 2015 to 2017, allowed it to compile what it called the most comprehensive picture of Chinese companies’ weapons production to date.

“With the increase of available data on these companies, it is now possible to develop reasonably reliable estimates of the scale of the Chinese arms industry,” the institute said.

The four companies had combined estimated arms sales of $54.1 billion for 2017, it said, which would put them among the top 20 arms producers in the world.

Innovations & technologies

These are the world's most innovative countries. The US isn't even in the top 5.

Germany has broken South Korea's six-year reign as the "the most innovative nation in the world," according to the latest Bloomberg Innovation Index. The US ranked ninth, while China came in 15th.

A total of 60 nations are included in the index, which is compiled using criteria including research and development spending, manufacturing capability, and concentration of high-tech public companies.

Innovation was a hot topic this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as the political, academic, and business elite discussed technological solutions to the current climate crisis.

Germany secured first place because of its positive ratings in patent activity, high-tech density, and value-added manufacturing. South Korea, on the other hand, recorded a slump in productivity, pushing it down to second place.

Defense procurement

A group of sham companies sold the US Navy $2.7 million worth of nothing

...Michael Kitrel, 42, was charged this week with conspiracy to commit larceny of government money. His alleged crimes were part of a larger $2.7 million scheme involving two Navy lieutenants and a senior chief petty officer who are already serving punishments for their roles in the brazen operation.

“The potential damage from procurement fraud extends well beyond financial losses,” explains a 2018 report from the Department of Defense (pdf). “This crime poses a serious threat to the DoD’s ability to achieve its objectives and can undermine the safety and operational readiness of the warfighter.”

Between 2013 and 2017, the department gave more than 15 million contracts (pdf) to companies that had been indicted, fined, or convicted of fraud, valued at more than $334 billion, according to the DoD’s own data. It was only a slight improvement over the period between 2001 and 2010, when the department awarded more than $1.1 trillion worth of contracts (pdf) to companies that had been found guilty of fraud against the government. Some recent frauds, as first reported by Quartz, have included vendors selling the Navy Chinese-made ballistic vests and helmets that were labeled as having been manufactured in America, and shipping hundreds of counterfeit radio antennas to the Navy SEALs.

Defense spending

Why Does the U.S. Spend So Much on Defense?


To put U.S. military spending in context, it is useful to compare what it spends to that of others. In fiscal 2018, the Defense Department’s budget of $649 billion — not even counting the contingency fund — was larger than the combined spending of the next seven largest militaries: $609 billion (China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, UK, Germany).

As large as the DOD budget is, the total amount spent by the United States on national security is actually much higher. The largest chunk outside DOD is spent by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which cares for former troops injured in past conflicts and funds the pensions of military retirees. The VA spent $201 billion in 2019, topping $200 million for the first time but not the last; the 2020 request was $220.2 billion. Adding the VA’s budget brings total national-security spending to $887 billion.

America’s nuclear weapons and naval reactors are maintained not by the Pentagon by the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which also works to counter proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Adding NNSA’s $15.2 billion makes the total $902.2 billion.

It would be remiss not to include the intelligence community, or IC, though this can be a little complicated. The Director of National Intelligence makes public the combined unclassified budgets of the 17 agencies that make up the community. In 2019, that was $81.7 billion.

Innovations & technologies

This British Army tank comes equipped with X-ray vision

The British Army unveiled a tank concept this month that comes equipped with advanced technologies that could make even Superman blush.

The “Streetfighter II” was put to the test during training exercises in early January that were designed to evaluate combat efficiency of joint armor and infantry operations in urban settings. And while the armored behemoth is supplemented with elements reminiscent of its predecessors, the Streetfighter II employs a new feature that could dramatically enhance the capabilities of tracks and accompanying infantry.

The IronVision X-ray system, made by the Israel-based Elbit Systems, enables tankers to see a full 360 degrees of their vehicle’s exterior without opening a single hatch. The added protection is welcome in urban environments where enemies have substantial cover and can take advantage of a vehicle’s blind spots.

The innovative tech comes with a network of both infrared and electro-optical cameras, coined “situational awareness cameras,” that are distributed around the tank’s hull. The camera network then transmits real-time imagery in high resolution and full color, day or night, into IronVision’s high-tech display in the tanker’s helmet visor. The IronVision visor contains a tracking mechanism that transmits visual data based on the tanker’s line-of-sight and head position.

Forensics

Covert Mass Screening Technology Empowers Security Teams

Screening large, populated, and vulnerable areas has always been a challenge for law enforcement and security teams. Where once the zenith of screening technology was security checkpoints, metal detectors, and maybe an X-ray scanner that would require hundreds or even thousands of people to go through one by one, companies like the Cypriot Apstec or the Canadian Patriot One Technologies are working to revolutionize public screening to make it quick, convenient, and thorough. 

Similar to the Apstec’s Human Security Radar, Patriot One’s PATSCAN solution is all about public safety and threat detection. The solution allows for people to go on with their day without having to go through a security checkpoint, being pat down, or being questioned. The PATSCAN system could be covert and unnoticable, allowing people to pass by without even knowing that they are currently being scanned. 

The system can pick up weapons, whether they are concealed or not, and it generates an alarm. The system’s powered by AI and machine learning to recognize weapons and explosives.

“Unfortunately security are having to respond to an attack in progress,” said Martin Cronin, CEO of Patriot One in an interview to Techrepublic.com. “The idea about being able to do this covert detection is to be preemptive and to prevent attacks from happening.”

Airport security

On the Way to Shorter Security Scanning Lines?

A new research offers safer and more effective airport security scanning that could work to decrease waiting times. The research follows the alarming results of an internal investigation led by the TSA (US Transportation Security Administration) in 2015, that demonstrated that in 95% of trials, undercover investigators could sneak in mock explosives or banned weapons via the tested security checkpoints.

The research initiated by Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland offers a solution for safer and faster airport security scanners that will reduce the security scan time from 10 seconds to less than a tenth of a second, by cutting data processing time. The research will employ ground-breaking radar technology, image processing algorithms and deep learning schemes, according to airport-technology.com.

The research received the £1m Leverhulme Research Leadership Award. The team leader, Dr Okan Yurduseven, from the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, stated that the award “will allow us to create technology that is fully electronic, rather than manually operated, and this will allow the scanners to process the images in real-time. We think the entire scan process should be completed in less than a tenth of a second.”

Spy work

A new satellite to produce imagery for the intelligence community

Capella released the design for its new Sequoia satellite design Jan. 21, giving observers a first look at the new satellite the company plans to use to provide synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Unlike traditional satellite imagery produced with optical sensors, which can be degraded or denied by adverse lighting conditions or weather, SAR uses radar to provide imagery day or night, regardless of the weather or cloud cover. Additionally, SAR sensors can provide data on material properties, moisture content, precise movements, and elevation, meaning that SAR can be used to build 3D recreations of a given geographical area.

Both the Air Force and the NRO have awarded contracts to Capella. The Air Force wants to use SAR for virtual reality software, missile defense and developing predictive intelligence to foresee foreign threats, awarding a contract to the company in November. Meanwhile, the NRO issued a commercial study contract the company in December as part of its efforts to diversify what types of imagery the agency purchases from commercial companies.