Conflict & Security archives

• 29 December 2006
  "A security researcher has a devised a novel attack on online anonymity systems in which he literally takes a computer's temperature over the internet. The attack uses a phenomenon called 'clock skew' -- the tendency for the precise clocks in modern computers to drift off of the correct time at slightly different rates, which can be affected by heat. 'When a crystal is manufactured, it has a clock skew, and it's different for each crystal (throughout its) lifetime,' explains Steven J. Murdoch, a Cambridge University researcher who discussed his work at the Chaos Communications Congress on Thursday. Last year UCLA Ph.D. student Tadayoshi Kohno showed that clock skew can be used to identify computers on the internet, by charting the timestamps in a machine's traffic." Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 December 2006
  "The tussle between computer security companies trying to protect your PC and the bad guys that try to compromise it is often characterised as an arms race. Sometimes the security companies have the upper hand as they develop and deploy novel techniques to spot and stop malicious software of all stripes. And sometimes, such as in 2006, the bad guys are on top. And nowhere has this been more apparent than in the realm of that old favourite - spam. In the closing months of 2006 spam volumes jumped enormously. According to e-mail filtering firm Postini, spam volumes increased by 73% in the three months to December. '92.6% of all e-mail messages are spam,' said Dan Druker, spokesman for Postini. 'That's the highest it's ever been.' Other e-mail security specialists have not reported such big leaps in junk mail volumes, but all say that they are seeing more spam than ever before. '" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 27 December 2006
  "Hi-tech criminals are looking forward to the consumer release of Windows Vista, say security experts. Vista will be the big event in computer security in 2007, say experts and add that it will have a profound effect on both sides of the security world. Many organised crime gangs are already tearing the new version of Windows apart looking for ways to exploit its weaknesses, say some. Others are expecting to see Vista attacked soon after it debuts. While Microsoft's business customers have been able to buy Vista since 30 November, consumers are being forced to wait until late January 2007 to get their hands on the next version of the Windows operating system. Microsoft has said that the whole development process of the operating system has been run with better security in mind. Within Vista are several technologies that could stop many people falling victim to the most common sorts of malicious attack, said Kevin Hogan, director of security operations at Symantec. In particular, he said, the way Vista handles user accounts will limit the freedom malicious programs have to run and install themselves surreptitiously. '" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 26 December 2006
  "Zapping buried landmines with powerful sound waves and listening to them vibrate could reveal their location, say US researchers who have developed an acoustic sensor system capable of spotting hidden landmines from a distance. Reliable methods of detecting mines and other unexploded ordinance are desperately needed in many places around the world. '26,000 people are either killed or maimed by mines each year,' says Robert Haupt, an MIT researcher who built the array. 'The majority are civilians and more than half of them are under the age of 16.' Handheld metal detectors are by far the most common tools for detecting buried mines. But the detectors have a limited range and so can miss mines that are deeply buried. And plastic mines, which were specifically devised to elude metal detectors, go unnoticed. In addition, metal detectors work only over short ranges and so can only be used by minesweepers inside a mine field which puts them at risk.'" Learn more at the New Scientist.

• 22 December 2006
  "Earlier this year net giants Google and Yahoo came under fire from Human Rights Watch and Reporters Sans Frontieres, for their activities in China. But is the criticism warranted? In 2003 the Chinese police who had been monitoring message boards, blogs and personal emails, asked for the sign up account details of two anonymous bloggers. These were handed over by Yahoo China to the Chinese Government. More than 57 Chinese people have been arrested as result of discussing democracy on the internet, say Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch, a New York based campaign group, says a line has been crossed. 'Google, Yahoo and Microsoft no longer carry out the censorship for the Chinese government,' says Asia Director, Brad Adams, 'they are the censor.'" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 21 December 2006
  "The accumulation of mountains of electronic waste in Nigeria - increasingly the world's PC dumping ground - has so alarmed the country's government that there is now a national committee to deal with the problem. Up to 50 million tonnes of old PCs are thrown away each year on waste dumps where they pose a pollution threat to the environment and to people. Legislation exists that should prohibit the simple sending of old PCs to be dumped - but the problem is that Nigeria's booming second-hand computer industry gives ample scope for computer waste to be smuggled in. Most used machines are not tested for functionality before they are exported to Nigeria, and according to John Oboro, assistant general secretary of the dealers' association Capdan, there are far more bad computers coming in than good." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 20 December 2006
  "On Thursday, Kevin Poulsen, senior editor for Wired News, noted in his blog, a milestone in the number of records that have been compromised in data breaches since the ChoicePoint breach nearly two years ago: “Rapid-fire announcements this week by U.C.L.A. (800,000 records) and Aetna (130,000) moved the total to the threshold, when Boeing revealed yesterday that a laptop recently stolen from an employee’s car contained names, Social Security numbers and other data on 382,000 current and former employees of the aerospace giant — bringing the total to a grim 100,152,801 records (as of this post). One might at least hope that the thief in the Boeing incident was simply after the laptop, rather than the data. And the Aetna case, well, that data was stored on backup tapes that were in a lockbox, which thieves lifted — along with DVD players, cash and other items —in a routine burglary. But in the incident involving the University of California, Los Angeles, announced last Tuesday, there was really no question about the motive and the quarry. A hacker, or hackers, had been entering the restricted database — which contained the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and other private information of current and former students and faculty —for over a year before the breach was discovered." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 19 December 2006
  "The exotic murder-by-polonium of the former K.G.B. spy Alexander Litvinenko has embroiled Russia, Britain and Germany in a diplomatic scuffle and a hunt for more traces of the lethal substance. But it also throws into question most of the previous analyses of 'dirty bombs,' terrorist attacks using radioactive isotopes wrapped in explosives (or using other dispersion techniques) to spread radioactive material in crowded areas. Essentially all analysts, myself included, played down the possibility of using alpha radiation — fast-moving helium nuclei ejected during the radioactive decay of certain isotopes, such as of polonium 210, the substance that killed Mr. Litvinenko — as a source of dirty bombs. Dirty bombs based on gamma emitters, analysts have learned, can’t kill very many people. Mr. Litvinenko’s death tells us that 'smoky bombs' based on alpha emitters very well could." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 18 December 2006
  "It's very likely that when you call 911 from your cell phone in an emergency, the operator on the other end won't automatically know your location. This is despite the fact that most U.S. mobile phone companies have met a Federal Communications Commission mandate to provide location information to 911 operators for millions of wireless subscribers. After years of work, the wireless phone industry is still a long way from full deployment of what is known as enhanced 911 service, or E911. With the exception of only a few companies, wireless carriers have met obligations set forth by the FCC to get their networks and phones ready to provide the service to 95 percent of their subscribers." Learn more at News.com.

• 15 December 2006
  "While most U.S. cities are blanketed with advanced cell phone service at least four times over, huge patches of rural America still don't have cell phone coverage. What's more, the problem could get worse before it gets better when rules requiring carriers to offer older, analog service expire early in 2008. The Federal Communications Commission in 2002 gave the mobile phone industry five years to transition their networks from analog technology to digital technology. Starting in February 2008, cell phone companies will no longer be required to offer analog service. Cell phone operators have made tremendous strides in their network deployments...But economic realities have meant that some remote areas of the country that have only analog service today may not have any service until carriers can fully upgrade their networks to digital technology." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 December 2006
  "Security expert Bruce Schneier has highlighted privacy concerns around the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, a technology that lets people track time and other statistics while running. He drew attention to a demonstration by researchers at the University of Washington of a surveillance system that automatically tracks people through the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, which consists of a wireless sensor that fits into Nike+ Air Zoom Moire sneakers and a small white receiver that plugs in to an iPod Nano. 'Basically, the kit contains a transmitter that you stick in your sneakers and a receiver you attach to your iPod. This allows you to track things like time, distance, pace and calories burned. Pretty clever. However, it turns out that the transmitter in your sneaker can be read up to 60 feet away.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 13 December 2006
  "Computer hackers will open a new front in the multi-billion pound "cyberwar" in 2007, targeting mobile phones, instant messaging and community Web sites such as MySpace, security experts predict. As people grow wise to email scams, criminal gangs will find new ways to commit online fraud, sell fake goods or steal corporate secrets. 'The attacks are becoming more sophisticated,' said Dave Rand of Internet security firm Trend Micro. 'It's all about making money. And they're making a lot of it,' he told Reuters. In 2007, hackers will be scouring social networking sites such as MySpace to gather information for more focused attacks on people's computers. 'It is definitely an area that is ripe for more exploitation by malware (malicious software),' said Ed English, Trend Micro's Chief Technology Officer for anti-spyware." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 12 December 2006
  "Melody Millett was shocked when her car loan company asked her if she was the wife of Abundio Perez, who had applied for 26 credit cards, financed several cars and taken out a home mortgage using a Social Security number belonging to her actual husband. Beyond her shock, Melody Millett was angry. Five months earlier, the Milletts had subscribed to a $79.99-a-year service from Equifax, a big financial data warehouse, that promised to monitor any access to her credit records. But it never reported the credit activity that might have signaled that they were victims of identity theft. 'I feel like the whole thing is a sham,' said Melody Millett, a 37-year-old information-technology manager from Overland Park, Kansas. 'You feel completely violated because here are the people who know the industry. They hold all the data.' The services, she contends, are oversold." Learn more at News.com.

• 11 December 2006
  "The founder of PayPal competitor e-gold has grown tired of the government characterizing his business as a haven for money launderers, terrorists, child pornographers and credit card thieves. So a year after the Department of Justice raided his offices, Douglas Jackson, president of Gold and Silver Reserve, which operates e-gold, has been wading deep into his customer transaction logs to identify and fight back against people who misuse his system. In the last month, he's blocked about 2,000 accounts from his system, and he's voluntarily turned over detailed account and transaction histories to federal law enforcement. In the process, Jackson says he's exposed an illicit and previously invisible economic underground. E-gold is a privately issued digital currency backed by real gold and silver stored in banks in Europe and Dubai. Jackson says about 1,000 new e-gold accounts are opened daily, and the system processes between 50,000 and 100,000 transactions a day." Learn more in Wired News.

• 8 December 2006
  "All cargo sent by container ships to the United States from three ports — in Pakistan, Honduras and Southampton, England — will be scanned for hidden nuclear weapons or components starting next year under a federal antiterrorist program that some in Congress want to see mandated worldwide. The program, called the Secure Freight Initiative, will require United States-bound containers before departure to pass through both a radiation detection machine and an X-ray device, a combination intended to find bomb-making materials that have intentionally been shielded. It will cost a total of $60 million to set up the system in Pakistan, Honduras and Southampton, as well to begin scanning at least some United States-bound traffic from Korea, Singapore and Oman, officials said. The cost will be split by the Departments of Homeland Security and Energy, they said." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 7 December 2006
  "A newly revealed system that has been assigning terrorism scores to Americans traveling into or out of the country for the past five years is not merely invasive, privacy advocates charge, it's an illegal violation of limits Congress has placed on the Department of Homeland Security for the last three years. The Identity Project, founded by online rights pioneer John Gilmore, filed official objections to the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, on Monday, calling the program clearly illegal. The comment cited a little-known provision in the 2007 Homeland Security funding bill prohibiting government agencies from developing algorithms that assign risk scores to travelers not on government watchlists." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 December 2006
  "Hearing from a lot of new friends lately? You know, the ones that write “It’s me, Esmeralda,” and tip you off to an obscure stock that is 'poised to explode' or a great deal on prescription drugs. You’re not the only one. Spam is back — in e-mail in-boxes and on everyone’s minds. In the last six months, the problem has gotten measurably worse. Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet. Much of that flood is made up of a nettlesome new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors that look for telltale phrases. Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day, Ironport says." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 5 December 2006
  "The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you've been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards -- and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. You've just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq -- even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects. According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force's Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games. The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves." Learn more in Wired News.

• 4 December 2006
  "When Matthew Burton arrived at the Defense Intelligence Agency in January 2003, he was excited about getting to his computer. Burton, who was then 22, had long been interested in international relations: he had studied Russian politics and interned at the U.S. consulate in Ukraine, helping to speed refugee applications of politically persecuted Ukrainians. But he was also a big high-tech geek fluent in Web-page engineering, and he spent hours every day chatting online with friends and updating his own blog. When he was hired by the D.I.A., he told me recently, his mind boggled at the futuristic, secret spy technology he would get to play with: search engines that can read minds, he figured. Desktop video conferencing with colleagues around the world. If the everyday Internet was so awesome, just imagine how much better the spy tools would be." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 1 December 2006
  "The U.S. government warned of a possible Internet attack on U.S. stock market and banking Web sites from a radical Muslim group, but officials said the threat was unconfirmed and seemed to pose no immediate danger. The notice was issued Thursday to the U.S. cyber security industry after officials saw a posting on a 'Jihadist Web site' calling for an attack on U.S. Internet-based stock market and banking sites in December, said Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke. There is no information corroborating the threat, Knocke said, adding that the alert was issued 'as a routine matter and out of an abundance of caution. There is no immediate threat to our homeland at this time.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 November 2006
  "Sensitive data sent using VoIP is vulnerable to attack because call centres are failing to secure their networks robustly enough, according to new research. Customers' private details could be easily hacked into using the wiretapping method with a staggering 7 out of 10 calls open to attack, said security company Scanit, which audited data transfer at various busy call centres and service providers. It found lax security for networks at call centres which deal with thousands of calls from around the world and was able to pick up data that included tone-dial PIN numbers used to access phone banking services." Learn more in the Register.

• 29 November 2006
  "The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent, it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run his communist nation. Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants. But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 28 November 2006
  "Scientists at a U.S. weapons laboratory say they have trained bees to sniff out explosives in a project they say could have far-reaching applications for U.S. homeland security and the Iraq war. Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico said they trained honeybees to stick out their proboscis -- the tube they use to feed on nectar -- when they smell explosives in anything from cars and roadside bombs to belts similar to those used by suicide bombers. Researchers in the program, dubbed the Stealthy Insect Sensor Project, published their findings Monday. By exposing the insects to the odor of explosives followed by a sugar water reward, researchers said they trained bees to recognize substances ranging from dynamite and C-4 plastic explosives to the Howitzer propellant grains used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 27 November 2006
  "Criminal gangs using hijacked computers are behind a surge in unwanted e-mails peddling sex, drugs and stock tips. The number of 'spam' messages has tripled since June and now accounts for as many as nine out of 10 e-mails sent worldwide, according to U.S. email security company Postini. As Christmas approaches, the daily trawl through in-boxes clogged with offers of fake Viagra, loans and sex aids is tipped to take even longer. 'E-mail systems are overloaded or melting down trying to keep up with all the spam,' said Dan Druker, a vice president at Postini. His company has detected 7 billion spam e-mails worldwide in November compared to 2.5 billion in June. Spam in Britain has risen by 50 percent in the last two months alone, according to Internet security company SurfControl." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 22 November 2006
  "Drivers who get stopped by the police could have their fingerprints taken at the roadside, under a new plan to help officers check people's identities. A hand-held device being tested by 10 forces in England and Wales is linked to a database of 6.5m prints. Police say they will save time because people will no longer have to go to the station to prove their identity. Officers promise prints will not be kept on file but concerns have been raised about civil liberties. Bedfordshire are the first force to use the equipment, which is being distributed among the forces in Essex, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, North Wales, Northamptonshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire, as well as to British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police, over the next two months." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 21 November 2006
  "At a place called Arak in the desert southwest of Tehran, behind barbed wire and antiaircraft guns, Iran is building a heavy-water nuclear reactor. The government says it will produce radioactive isotopes for medical treatments. As an unavoidable byproduct, it will also make plutonium, one of the primary fuels for atom bombs. At the International Atomic Energy Agency, inspectors are trying to make sure that Tehran never uses its nuclear infrastructure to make weapons. Indeed, for just that reason, the agency’s board has repeatedly called on the Iranians to abandon the Arak reactor. Yet when the board meets this week in Vienna, it will consider an Iranian request for technical help in safely completing the reactor, which is to go online as soon as 2009." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 November 2006
  "Israel is using nanotechnology to try to create a robot no bigger than a hornet that would be able to chase, photograph and kill its targets, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday. The flying robot, nicknamed the 'bionic hornet,' would be able to navigate its way down narrow alleyways to target otherwise unreachable enemies such as rocket launchers, the daily Yedioth Ahronoth said. It is one of several weapons being developed by scientists to combat militants, it said. Others include super gloves that would give the user the strength of a 'bionic man' and miniature sensors to detect suicide bombers." Learn more at News.com.

• 16 November 2006
  "World oil production will not begin to fall for at least another 24 years, contrary to doomsday theories that supply is already in terminal decline, a prominent energy consulting group said Tuesday. Cambridge Energy Research Associates said in a report that the world has some 3.74 trillion barrels of oil left -- enough to last 122 years at current consumption rates and triple the amount estimated by 'peak oil' theorists. The world consumes nearly 85 million barrels of oil per day, with the United States using about a quarter of that, according to the Department of Energy. 'Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges with delivering liquid fuels to meet the needs of growing economies,' said Peter Jackson, director of oil industry activity for Cambridge, a Massachusetts-based consultant to the oil, natural gas and electric power industries." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 15 November 2006
  "A U.K. law has been passed that makes it an offense to launch denial-of-service attacks, which experts had previously called 'a legal gray area.' Among the provisions of the Police and Justice Bill 2006, which gained Royal Assent on Wednesday, is a clause that makes it an offense to impair the operation of any computer system. Other clauses prohibit preventing or hindering access to a program or data held on a computer, or impairing the operation of any program or data held on a computer. The maximum penalty for such cybercrimes has also been increased from 5 years to 10 years. The law that attempted previously to deal with this area of computer crime was the Computer Misuse Act 1990 (CMA), which was drafted before widespread use of the Internet began." Learn more at News.com.

• 14 November 2006
  "Gmail's popularity may be viral, but the e-mail software is not a virus — despite a Microsoft alert. From late last week until Sunday night, the Windows Live OneCare security software incorrectly flagged the Google e-mail service as a threat. A warning popped up when OneCare users opened the Gmail website, telling them that their systems were infected with a virus called 'BAT/BWG.A.' 'This was a limited false positive issue with our anti-virus protection,' a Microsoft representative said Monday. 'After we became aware of the issue, we released a new anti-virus signature that resolved the issue for our customers on Sunday evening.' The problem started last week, when Google made some changes to its Gmail website, Microsoft said. The software maker is reviewing its procedures and processes in order to minimize the occurrence of further false positives, the Microsoft representative said." Learn more in USA Today.

• 13 November 2006
  "In the five years since his divorce, Eric Wagenhauser had moved on with his life. He had remarried and was sharing custody of the three children from his first marriage. Then, last year, Mr. Wagenhauser discovered a new wrinkle on American divorce: his former wife had used the children’s Social Security numbers to apply for nine credit cards in their names. She obtained two. Mr. Wagenhauser’s ordeal over the next year, which involved police departments in two Texas counties, banks, credit bureaus and the Social Security Administration, is familiar to many identity theft victims — the crime often begins at home." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 10 November 2006
  "At First, it looked like typical network congestion. So the system administrators weren't too concerned when TypePad blogs and LiveJournal social networks flickered like a light bulb in a faulty socket. But 15 minutes later, at 4 pm on May 2, 2006, the sites went dark, and so did the mood at Six Apart, the company that owns them. In the blink of an eye, 10 million blogs and online communities disappeared. "It looked like the servers had freaked out," CEO Barak Berkowitz recalls. Flash floods of data thundered into one network port, stopped inexplicably, then reappeared to overwhelm another. The engineers pored over logs, desperately looking for a cause. After an agonizing hunt, they found it: a distributed denial-of-service attack, or DDoS. Six Apart's servers had been inundated with so many requests that the machines couldn't possibly process them all. It was the digital equivalent of filling a fish tank with a fire hose." Learn more in Wired.

• 9 November 2006
  "Google on Tuesday inadvertently sent the Kama Sutra e-mail worm to the 50,000 subscribers of a Google Video e-mail group. Three postings were made Tuesday evening to an e-mail list that sends out postings to the Google Video blog. 'Some of these posts may have contained a virus called W32/Kapser.A@mm--a mass-mailing worm,' Google said in a note on its Web site apologizing for the incident. W32/Kapser.A is better known as the Kama Sutra worm. Some antivirus companies raised an alarm about the threat in February, but it ultimately shriveled. Kama Sutra was designed to overwrite files on infected computers on a specific date. However, the worm, which spread under the guise of pornographic content, caused virtually no damage." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 November 2006
  "The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders named 13 countries on Tuesday as the worst culprits for online censorship, singling out China, Cuba, Iran and North Korea among others. Also on the list are Belarus, Egypt, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. An online protest was ending at 5 a.m. Wednesday EST. 'No one should ever be prevented from posting news online or writing a blog,' said the Paris-based group, Reporters Sans Frontieres in French, which taps more than 100 journalists who are 'keeping us informed.' Worldwide, 61 people, 52 in China, are in prison for posting what the countries claimed was "subversive" content, the reporters' group said in its annual report." Learn more in the International Herald Tribune.

• 7 November 2006
  "A surge in 'phishing' in the first half of 2006 has produced a sharp rise in the amount of money being lost to online banking fraud. Phishing involves using fake websites to lure people into revealing their bank account numbers. The number of recorded incidents rose 16-fold to 5,059, said the Association of Payment Clearing Services (APACS). That led to a 55% rise in losses from online fraud against banks, reaching £23m in the first half of 2006. However, the amount of money lost to credit and debit card fraud fell again. Apacs said this was due to the continued impact of the new chip-and-pin cards. Plastic card fraud in the first half of 2006 was down 5% on a year ago, at £209m, with losses due to cards that were stolen in the post being more than halved. 'These latest fraud figures show that the industry's efforts are making their mark,' said Sandra Quinn of Apacs." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 6 November 2006
  "The U.S. Air Force said Thursday it was setting up what could become a new four-star command to fight in cyberspace, where officials say the United States has already come under attack from China among others. 'The aim is to develop a major command that stands alongside Air Force Space Command and Air Combat Command as the provider of forces that the President, combatant commanders and the American people can rely on for preserving the freedom of access and commerce, in air, space and now cyberspace,' Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told an industry conference. The Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana-based 8th Air Force -- already home to about 25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense -- will house the fledgling Cyberspace Command, Wynne said." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 November 2006
  "Last week Christopher Soghoian created a Fake Boarding Pass Generator website, allowing anyone to create a fake Northwest Airlines boarding pass: any name, airport, date, flight. This action got him visited by the FBI, who later came back, smashed open his front door, and seized his computers and other belongings. It resulted in calls for his arrest -- the most visible by Rep. Edward Markey (D-Massachusetts) -- who has since recanted. And it's gotten him more publicity than he ever dreamed of. All for demonstrating a known and obvious vulnerability in airport security involving boarding passes and IDs. This vulnerability is nothing new. There was an article on CSOonline from February 2006. There was an article on Slate from February 2005. Sen. Chuck Schumer spoke about it as well." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 November 2006
  "A Morocco-born computer virus that crashed the Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT border screening system last year first passed though the backbone network of the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement bureau, according to newly released documents on the incident. The documents were released by court order, following a yearlong battle by Wired News to obtain the pages under the Freedom of Information Act. They provide the first official acknowledgement that DHS erred by deliberately leaving more than 1,300 sensitive US-VISIT workstations vulnerable to attack, even as it mounted an all-out effort to patch routine desktop computers against the virulent Zotob worm. US-VISIT is a hodgepodge of older databases maintained by various government agencies, tied to a national network of workstations with biometric readers installed at airports and other U.S. points of entry." Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 November 2006
  "The story seems simple enough. An outside privacy and security advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security penned a tough report concluding the government should not use chips that can be read remotely in identification documents. But the report remains stuck in draft mode, even as new identification cards with the chips are being announced. Jim Harper, a Cato Institute fellow who serves on the committee and who recently published a book on identification called Identity Crisis, thinks he knows why the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee report on the use of Radio Frequency Identification devices for human identification never made it out of the draft stage. 'The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report,' Harper said. 'There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 26 October 2006
  "In November 2004, during the second battle of Fallujah, an American uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) - a robot plane - located a mortar battery that had been hampering the US operation to retake the town.The mortar's position was logged by the UAV's operator, who was sitting at his desk in Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas, thousands of miles away. Using the internet, the operator contacted the operator of another armed UAV at a desk in central command ("Centcom") - a safe area away from the theatre of war, with centres in Kuwait, Qutar or Iraq. The two operators swapped information on the mortar in a secure internet chat room, guiding the armed drone to its position to destroy the mortar and its crew. According to Lieutenant General John Sattler, commander of the coalition forces at the battle, it was a proving ground for the use of remote vehicles." Learn more in the Guardian.

• 25 October 2006
  "Malicious remote control software continues to be one of the biggest threats to Windows PCs, according to a new Microsoft security report. More than 43,000 new variants of such insidious software were found in the first half of 2006, making them the most active category of malicious software, Microsoft said in a Security Intelligence Report published Monday. In June Microsoft also flagged zombies as the most prevalent threat to Windows PCs. 'Attackers, with financial gain in mind, are clearly concentrating a significant amount of development focus on this category of malware,' Microsoft said in the report. Of 4 million Windows PCs found to be infected with some kind of malicious software in the first half of this year, about 2 million were running malicious remote control software, Microsoft said." Learn more at News.com.

• 24 October 2006
  "Flip a switch and make something disappear? It's been the stuff of science fiction for decades. Now, two Duke University scientists and their colleagues have built the world's first device to render an object invisible. At least, it's invisible to microwaves. But researchers say the work demonstrates that, in principle, objects could be made to disappear from radar, cameras, and other detection devices. The trick? A new class of engineered substances called metamaterials. These materials could someday add muscle to microscopes, reduce the size and increase the capability of radar, sonar, and other remote-sensing devices, and cloak or shield objects, researchers add. The rudimentary microwave cloaking device was reported in Friday's edition of the electronic journal Science Express." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 23 October 2006
  "They call it the 'Johnny Carson attack,' for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope. Tom Heydt-Benjamin tapped an envelope against a black plastic box connected to his computer. Within moments, the screen showed a garbled string of characters that included this: fu/kevine, along with some numbers. Mr. Heydt-Benjamin then ripped open the envelope. Inside was a credit card, fresh from the issuing bank. The card bore the name of Kevin E. Fu, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was standing nearby. The card number and expiration date matched those numbers on the screen. The demonstration revealed potential security and privacy holes in a new generation of credit cards." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 20 October 2006
  "Web-based maps are handy for keeping tabs on weather and traffic, so why not for disease outbreaks, too? The new Healthmap website digests information from a variety of sources ranging from the World Health Organization to Google News and plots the spread of about 50 diseases on a continually updated global map. It was developed as a side project by two staffers at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program in Boston -- physician John Brownstein and software developer Clark Freifeld. While working on a state-funded program to track disease outbreaks in Massachusetts, the two discovered some inconsistencies in how information is reported. Some sources, such as ProMed-mail, provide very specific data that is verified by medical experts, but the process can be lengthy. At the other extreme, newspaper articles and blog entries come out far more quickly, but they are more likely to contain errors such as unconfirmed reports about avian flu infections in a country." Learn more in Wired News.

• 19 October 2006
  "One in three people write down computer passwords, undermining their security, and companies should look to more advanced methods, including biometrics, to ensure their systems are safe, a new study shows. A study released Tuesday by global research firms Nucleus Research and KnowledgeStorm found companies' attempts to tighten information technology (IT) security by regularly changing passwords and making them more complex by adding numbers as well as letters had no impact on security. Staff still had a tendency to jot down passwords for systems designed by such firms as McAfee and CA, Inc., on a piece of paper or in a text file on a PC or mobile device." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 18 October 2006
  "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will urge the countries of northeast Asia to create a strict system of radiation monitoring and inspections to prevent North Korea from smuggling nuclear materials into or out of the country, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. But in what appears to be an effort to cajole China to enforce the new United Nations sanctions against North Korea aggressively, the United States will ask the countries to focus their efforts on conducting inspections in their own territories, including ports, and on suspicious ships, trucks and aircraft rather than every piece of cargo." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 17 October 2006
  "Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday. 'We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet,' Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police. 'They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,' Chertoff said. 'Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.'" Learn more in News.com.

• 16 October 2006
  "High-tech crooks are hijacking online brokerage accounts by using spyware and operating from remote locations, sometimes in Eastern Europe, U.S. market regulators said on Friday. The computer 'incursions' are a growing problem, said Walter Ricciardi, deputy enforcement director at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 'It's something we're very concerned about,' he said in remarks at a legal conference in Washington. About 25 percent of U.S. retail stock trades are made by online investors through roughly 10 million online accounts, according to brokerages regulator NASD. Crooks will load a victim's computer or a public PC with a spy program to monitor a user's activities and capture vital information, such as account numbers and passwords." Learn more in News.com.

• 13 October 2006
  "Widespread worms, viruses or Trojan horses spammed to millions of mailboxes are typically not a grave concern anymore, security experts said at the Virus Bulletin conference here Thursday. Instead, especially for organizations, targeted Trojan horses have become the nightmare scenario, they said. "Targeted Trojan horses are still a tiny amount of the overall threat landscape, but it is what the top corporations worry about most," said Vincent Weafer, a senior director at Symantec Security Response. 'This is what they stay up at night worried about.' The stealthy attacks install keystroke-logging or screen-scraping software, and they are used for industrial espionage and other financially motivated crimes, experts said." Learn more at News.com.

• 12 October 2006
  "A cellphone that automatically disables itself when separated from its owner for too long is to be launched by Japan's leading mobile telephone operator, NTT DoCoMo. The company announced details of the new P903i handset on Thursday. It is designed to prevent unauthorised usage if the phone becomes lost or stolen. Made by Panasonic, the handset will be sold with a wireless ID card that fits inside a wallet or handbag and lets the phone detect when its owner moves more than a few metres away. 'Once the signal between the two objects stops transmitting, because they are too far apart, the telephone blocks itself,' a Panasonic spokesman told AFP. It also comes with a fingerprint reader and voiceprint identification capability." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 11 October 2006
  "It isn't over yet, but 2006 is already a record year when it comes to security vulnerabilities. There is, however, a silver lining: A smaller chunk of the flaws are high risk. Last year, researchers at Internet Security Systems identified 5,195 vulnerabilities in software. On Monday, the count for this year stood at 5,450, according to the Atlanta-based company's survey, and the projected total for the whole of the year is almost 7,500 bugs. 'Three-quarters through the year, 2006 is looking to be a huge jump in terms of security vulnerabilities,' said Gunter Ollmann, director of X-Force, the research and development group at ISS." Learn more in News.com.

• 10 October 2006
  "The US has issued a new national space policy that reflects a more aggressive and unilateral stance than the previous version issued a decade ago by former president Bill Clinton. 'There is definitely a difference in approach and mentality,' says Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington DC, US. The earlier statement said US operations should be 'consistent with treaty obligations'. But the new one, issued on Friday, flat-out rejects new agreements that would limit the US testing or use of military equipment in space. The new version also uses stronger language to assert that the US can defend its spacecraft, echoing an air force push for 'space superiority' made in 2004. The new policy states the US has the right 'to protect its space capabilities, respond to interference, and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 6 October 2006
  "It was the nightmare many had been expecting. Five years ago, hard on the heels of 9/11, someone sent anthrax spores through the US mail to journalists and politicians. Five people died, and at least 17 more got sick. The culprit was never caught. This relatively unsophisticated attack confirmed fears, already growing in the US, that with a bit more effort a determined bioterrorist could spread disease and mayhem across the nation. To combat the threat, the Bush administration launched an unprecedented biodefence effort. To date it has spent $44 billion - three-quarters of it aimed at protecting civilians - on new organisations, training, and buying existing remedies such as the classic smallpox vaccine. Has this massive spending made Americans any safer? According to experts at the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh, the answer is no." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 5 October 2006
  "The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge's ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers. The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest." Learn more in Wired News.

• 4 October 2006
  "A consortium of major universities, using Homeland Security Department money, is developing software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas. Such a 'sentiment analysis' is intended to identify potential threats to the nation, security officials said. Researchers at institutions including Cornell, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Utah intend to test the system on hundreds of articles published in 2001 and 2002 on topics like President Bush’s use of the term 'axis of evil,' the handling of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and the coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 3 October 2006
  "North Korea is to conduct a nuclear test 'in the future', the foreign ministry said in a statement. The move would 'bolster' the country's self-defence in the face of US military hostility, official agency KCNA said. Pyongyang has faced mounting international pressure over its nuclear programme, and in July was condemned by the UN for test-launching missiles. The news has been condemned by the US, Japan, South Korea and Russia - all members of the six-nation talks. The US state department said any nuclear test would further isolate the North Korean regime and said the US would work with allies to discourage 'such a reckless action.'" Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 2 October 2006
  "By now, millions of anthrax vaccine shots developed through cutting-edge genetic engineering were supposed to be filling a new national stockpile of biodefense drugs. Instead, five years after anthrax attacks left five dead, sickened 17 and panicked the country, the nearly $1 billion contract awarded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to a tiny and struggling San Francisco Bay Area biotechnology company is plagued with misfortune and delays. Delivery has been put off until at least 2008 -- and maybe later -- while the government and VaxGen trade barbs over who is at fault. The dispute has further tarnished Project Bioshield, a government program that has alienated many potential biodefense contractors." Learn more in Wired News.

• 29 September 2006
  "Hewlett-Packard employed a commercial service that tracks e-mail paths to bug a file sent to a CNET News.com reporter, an HP investigator said Thursday. HP investigators used the services of ReadNotify.com to trace an e-mail sent to reporter Dawn Kawamoto in an attempt to uncover her source in a media link, Fred Adler, an HP security employee, said during testimony before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee. Adler's testimony, for the first time since the HP boardroom drama erupted, specified how the company bugged the e-mail it sent to Kawamoto. Moreover, Adler said that it's still company practice to use e-mail bugs in certain cases." Learn more in News.com.

• 28 September 2006
  "For a few hours a day, Steven Peisner calls strangers across the USA — sometimes at night — and reads to them their Social Security numbers and credit card data. Though many recipients immediately suspect he is an ID thief, Peisner's intent is just the opposite: He is a digital whistle-blower. 'My motivation is to be a good citizen and put a dent in (fraudulent e-mail) phishing scams,' says Peisner, president of SellitSafe.com, which provides anti-phishing services for online merchants. He works closely with law enforcement and computer-security experts." Learn more in USA Today.

• 27 September 2006
  "The European Central Bank (ECB) knew the US was conducting a secret probe of the world's private financial records without official oversight but failed to tell privacy authorities. The central banks of the G10 countries might also be implicated in the scandal because they were told about the US snooping of transactions conducted by their indigenous firms five years ago when, in the wake of 9/11, the US Treasury first started poring through the world's financial transactions in search of terrorist financiers. The European Parliament has called on the ECB to state officially what it knew about the controversial intelligence operation in a hearing on 4 October." Learn more in the Register.

• 26 September 2006
  "In the past, virus writers seeking fame and attention wrote their malicious programs to spread as quickly and broadly as possible, boasting to colleagues when they manage to cripple hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide in a matter of hours. But now, many writers are driven by money instead. They write code to turn the computers of unsuspecting individuals into 'botnets'— networks for spreading junk e-mail or stealing financial data from others. Security experts find that some are even taking measures to make sure their programs don't spread too quickly or too broadly, lest they get detected and blocked." Learn more in USA Today.

• 25 September 2006
  "Home computer users are now the favourite targets of hi-tech criminals, reveals research. The report by security firm Symantec found that cyber criminals are targeting home PC owners because they are the easiest to catch out. It saw an 81% rise in phishing messages which attempt to trick people into handing over personal details. Another study by a banking industry body shows many home users do not take basic steps to stay safe online. Criminals typically use bogus or booby-trapped e-mail messages to lure people into handing over banking details. Symantec's bi-annual Internet Threat Report said that more than 157,000 unique phishing messages were sent during the first six months of 2006." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 22 September 2006
  "Republicans on a key congressional committee on Wednesday approved legislation they described as a necessary rewrite to electronic surveillance law but attacked by Democrats, civil libertarians and technology advocacy groups as flawed and unconstitutional. In a 20-16 vote mostly along party lines, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee backed an amended version of the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act of 2006, a Republican-sponsored measure introduced in July. Two Republicans and all 14 Democrats present rejected the proposal. 'This legislation is a priority for the president and critical to our national efforts to detect and disrupt acts of terrorism before they occur,' said Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, who co-sponsored the controversial bill." Learn more at News.com.

• 21 September 2006
  "The future of Internet freedom is being decided in Asian cyberspace, and judging by recent trends and developments, that future looks increasingly dim. Past hopes that an unfettered Internet would empower lots of little information-driven democratic uprisings have more recently been met and systematically squashed by a number of censorious Asian governments. China's highly restrictive state-run firewall - which significantly is built into all levels of the country's Internet infrastructure, from routers, to Internet service providers, to e-mail and in chat rooms - is fast emerging as the region's cyberspace censorship and surveillance model of choice." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 20 September 2006
  "The nation's airports face a looming crisis in their ability to screen checked luggage for bombs that will require billions of dollars to avert, a new report ordered by Congress says. Many airports have too few screeners and use slow, labor-intensive bomb detectors that are being overwhelmed by increasing passenger traffic, the study says. The report criticizes how bomb detectors were installed in airports after 9/11. Because of a tight deadline, 'many if not most of the implementations were suboptimal,' it says. The van-sized machines clog terminals and operate so slowly that flights are sometimes held up or bags don't make it onto their flights, airport officials say. Those problems will worsen unless luggage scanners are replaced at most U.S. airports with faster machines that are part of baggage-conveyor systems." Learn more in USA Today.

• 19 September 2006
  "Despite the California attorney general's assertion that he has enough evidence to press charges against people inside and outside Hewlett-Packard, a criminal case may be hard to prosecute, legal specialists say. The California prosecutors are still collecting evidence and have filed no charges. But they think people hired by HP or a string of subcontractors used fraudulent means to gain access to phone records, thereby violating some or all of four state statutes, Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said Monday. Those laws are being used to go after people who the prosecutors believe pretended to be someone else to get private phone records, a practice known as pretexting. HP has acknowledged that the method was used in an investigation of news leaks from its board. Records of directors, employees and reporters were obtained." Learn more in News.com.

• 18 September 2006
  "The last of the anthrax-laced letters was still making its way through the mail in late 2001 when top Bush administration officials reached an obvious conclusion: the nation desperately needed to expand its medical stockpile to prepare for another biological attack. The result was Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion effort to exploit the country’s top medical and scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new drugs and vaccines for a host of threats. 'We will rally the great promise of American science and innovation to confront the greatest danger of our time,' President Bush said in starting the program. But the project, critics say, has largely failed to deliver. So far, only a small fraction of the anticipated remedies are available. Drug companies have waited months, if not years, for government agencies to decide which treatments they want and in what quantities." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 15 September 2006
  "Can people really tell what I search for over the Internet? You may be searching from the privacy of your home, but when it comes to just about anything online, there's no guarantee of privacy. Your Internet service provider may know about the controversial group you just researched. Your search engine may know about the divorce you're contemplating. And if you're surfing from work, your boss may know about the disease you just looked up. Some advice from Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and privacy advocate: 'Assume that everything you put into those search engines is being saved and might be handed out to somebody, someday, perhaps linked to your identity.'" Learn more at CNN.com.

• 14 September 2006
  "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday sustained more bashing of its cybersecurity efforts from politicians and government auditors. In what has become a familiar refrain, a chorus of Republicans and Democrats--all from the U.S. House of Representatives panel on telecommunications and the Internet--urged the agency to get its act together and appoint a long-awaited cybersecurity czar. Then, at a sparsely attended afternoon hearing here, members of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security panel grilled department officials about shortcomings in the Homeland Security Information Network, which was intended to ease sharing of counterterrorism information among federal, state and local investigators." Learn more at News.com.

• 13 September 2006
  "Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush's domestic wiretapping program Wednesday amid a sustained White House campaign to give the administration broad authority to monitor, interrogate and prosecute terrorism suspects. While refusing to give the president a blank check to prosecute the war on terrorism, Republicans in the Senate Judiciary Committee kept to the White House's condition that a bill giving legal status to the surveillance program pass unamended. By voice vote and roll calls, Republicans defeated Democratic amendments to insert a one-year expiration date into the bill and require the National Security Agency to report more often to Congress on the standards for its domestic surveillance program." Learn more in USA Today.

• 12 September 2006
  "Having a common enemy brings out the best in men, a new study has shown. Psychologists created an economics game, asking groups of volunteers to decide whether to keep money for themselves or invest in a group fund. The men in the study were much kinder to groupmates if they thought that other groups were competing with them. The findings, reported at the British Association's Science Festival, may help explain the evolutionary roots of men's interest and behaviour in war. 'One of the things that distances us from many other species is that males actually co-operate with each other,' said Professor Mark van Vugt, of the University of Kent." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 11 September 2006
  "Second Life, the fast-growing online site where hundreds of thousands of people play out fantasy lives online, has suffered a computer security breach that exposed the real-world personal data of its users. Linden Lab, the San Francisco-based company behind the Second Life site, said in a letter to its 650,000 users this weekend that its customer database, including names, addresses, passwords and some credit card data, had been compromised. All users -- or residents in Second Life parlance -- are being required to request a new password. Some 286,000 residents have used the site in the past 60 days, according to a count on the home page. 'While we realize this is an inconvenience for residents, we believe it's the safest course of action,' Cory Ondrejka, the chief technology officer of Linden Lab said in the message to Second Life customers released late on Friday. Second Life is a three-dimensional software world on the Web inhabited by animated characters that users design for themselves to interact with other participants." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 8 September 2006
  "Climate change is 'potentially the most serious threat there has ever been' to security and prosperity, according to Britain's new climate ambassador. In an article for the BBC News website - his first since taking the post in June - John Ashton says climate change must be tackled 'whatever it costs'. He argues that the costs of not solving it will inevitably be larger. Environmentalists welcomed Mr Ashton's appointment, but warned the UK position is undermined by its rising emissions. Greenhouse gas production is increasing in virtually every country, and it is this that Mr Ashton believes makes climate change a real and urgent threat in Britain and around the globe." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 7 September 2006
  "Many more white children use the internet than do Hispanic and black students, a reminder that going online is hardly a way of life for everyone. Two of every three white students — 67 percent — use the internet, but less than half of blacks and Hispanics do, according to federal data released Tuesday. For Hispanics the figure is 44 percent; for blacks, it's 47 percent. 'This creates incredible barriers for minorities,' said Mark Lloyd, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and an analyst on how communications influence civil rights. Not using the internet 'narrows their ability to even think about the kind of work they can be doing,' Lloyd said. 'It doesn't prepare them for a world in which they're going to be expected to know how to do these things.' The new data come from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Education Department. They are based on a national survey of households in 2003." Learn more in Wired News.

• 6 September 2006
  "Microchips similar to those used to pay highway tolls and enter an office building with a swipe card can also help you assemble an ensemble. Need a dress shirt to match that new red plaid tie you got for your birthday? BLEEP! Or how about a "smart shelf" that catalogues your DVD collection or tells you whether you have the ingredients necessary to make chocolate chip cookies? Or a suitcase that alerts you when you forget to pack your toothbrush? These are some of the already-possible applications for RFID, radio frequency identification, a technology that is quickly becoming a part of our every day lives. Katherine Albrecht, author of Spychips, said anything that tracks certain items or stores data could be used to compromise security or invade a person's privacy by identifying, without their knowledge, what they are carrying in their purse or have in their living room. 'People could walk around with RFID readers and find out what you paid for your clothing and what is in your bag,' she said. 'That's pretty invasive.'" Learn more in USA Today.

• 5 September 2006
  "Software that claimed to provide increased privacy whilst surfing the web has been criticised by computer experts and the blogging community. The application Browzar has been branded "adware" by many because it directs web searches to online adverts. Some technical experts also say Browzar, which claims to leave no trail of webpages visited, does not work. Browzar's developers say they are examining the feedback but strongly deny that it is adware. Mr Ajaz Ahmed, founder of internet service provider Freeserve and the man behind Browzar, told the BBC News website that he thought people were misusing the term. 'This is not adware at all,' he said. 'Like every search engine, Browzar has sponsored advertising.' Adware is typically a piece of software that generates advertising on a user's computer. Learn more at BBC.com.

• 1 September 2006
  "The married man's girlfriend sent a text message to his cell phone: His wife was getting suspicious. Perhaps they should cool it for a few days. 'So,' she wrote, 'I'll talk to u next week.' 'You want a break from me? Then fine,' he wrote back. Later, the married man bought a new phone. He sold his old one on eBay, at Internet auction, for $290. The guys who bought it now know his secret. The married man had followed the directions in his phone's manual to erase all his information, including lurid exchanges with his lover. But it wasn't enough. Selling your old phone once you upgrade to a fancier model can be like handing over your diaries. All sorts of sensitive information pile up inside our cell phones, and deleting it may be more difficult than you think." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 31 August 2006
  "Personal data, including credit card information, of thousands of AT&T customers was stolen by hackers over the weekend, the company reported late Tuesday. The breach, which affected customers who purchased DSL equipment through AT&T's (Charts) Web store was discovered within hours and the online store was shut down immediately, said AT&T in a press release. AT&T said it was sending notifications to nearly 19,000 customers, and that it would pay for credit monitoring services for the affected customers. 'We recognize that there is an active market for illegally obtained personal information. We are committed to both protecting our customers' privacy and to weeding out and punishing the violators,' said Priscilla Hill- Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T, in a statement." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 August 2006
  "That ear-piercing ring you hear in a restaurant might not be somebody who forgot to set their cell phone to vibrate. A new service called Mobile Manager, from Synchronica, can remotely make a Windows Mobile-based handset emit an 'annoying and embarrassing high-pitched wail,' so it can be found after it has been stolen or misplaced. Synchronica is a U.K.-based vendor of mobile-device management tools that aims to help victims of cell phone theft to strike back, according to a company statement sent Monday. Thousands of mobile phones are stolen every month, according to Synchronica. If these are smart phones, they can contain sensitive information such as e-mail messages and computer files, potentially causing embarrassing data leaks." Learn more in News.com.

• 29 August 2006
  "Microsoft technology that protects digital files from copyright infringement has been breached, according to reports. A program called Fairuse4wm has been posted on the net and is apparently capable of breaching Microsoft's Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. It could spell problems for internet music shops, potentially enabling users to download unlimited files. However, an analyst said Microsoft was probably working to 'close the hole'. DRM is used to control people's access to digital data. It is commonly employed on music downloading sites to restrict the use of music purchased and downloaded online to ensure copyright is not infringed. Many internet stores offer files for use on a Windows Media platform wrapped in Microsoft's DRM technology." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 28 August 2006
  "A man was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for launching a computer attack that hit tens of thousands of computers, including some belonging to the Department of Defense, a Seattle hospital and a California school district. Christopher Maxwell, 21, of Vacaville, California, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. He pleaded guilty in May to federal charges of conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer and conspiracy to commit computer fraud. U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman said the crime showed 'incredible self-centeredness' with little regard for the impact on others. She said the prison time was needed as 'deterrence for all those youth out there who are squirreled away in their basements hacking.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 25 August 2006
  "Potential bomb attacks on aircraft could be more easily detected thanks to a new test for hydrogen peroxide, one of the liquids that have sparked dramatic security clampdowns at airports around the world. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, US, say that a test they developed to help diagnose diseases in the human body could be adapted to detect the chemical precursors of homemade explosives. UK authorities recently uncovered an alleged plot to blow up aircraft using homemade explosives produced on board using chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide. Similar homemade explosives were used in the London subway bombings last year, which killed over 50 people." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 24 August 2006
  "Life-saving operations on soldiers in combat zones could become possible thanks to a portable robotic surgeon that allows doctors to perform surgery on the battlefield without endangering themselves. Surgical robots that can be operated remotely are already used in some civilian hospitals. These include a system called "da Vinci" made by US company Intuitive Surgical, and another system called ZEUS, made by US firm Computer Motion. However, these existing systems are large and cumbersome, taking up much of an operating room. Now Blake Hannaford and colleagues at the University of Washington, in Seattle, US, have come up with a system small enough to travel with troops into combat zones in the back of an armoured vehicle." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 23 August 2006
  "When Tommy Thompson stood down as US health secretary in 2004, he delivered a stark warning. 'I, for the life of me, cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply, because it is so easy to do,' he said. Why was he so worried? Is 'agro-terrorism' - attacking farming or the food supply - really so easy? The only reported case in the US happened more than two decades ago in 1984, when a cult poisoned salad bars at a number of restaurants in Oregon. Forty people were taken to hospital, no-one died. Mr Thompson had probably been listening to academics like Larry Wein, of Stanford University, who studies terrorist attacks that could kill more than 100,000 people." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 22 August 2006
  "Last month, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to bolster U.S. port defenses with radiation scanners. The program, primarily aimed at detecting nukes smuggled by terrorists in shipping containers, will cost an estimated $1.15 billion, but won't be completed until 2011. Here on the San Francisco Bay, a group of do-it-yourself volunteer researchers are not waiting for the mushroom cloud. They say they are close to perfecting a portable device that could do much the same thing right now, for total out-of-pocket costs of about $12,000." Learn more in Wired News.

• 21 August 2006
  "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced a new public service campaign Monday that will warn teenage girls against posting information on the Internet that could put them at risk of attack by child predators. 'Every day, these predators are looking for someone to hurt,' Gonzales said at the 18th annual Crimes Against Children Conference in Dallas. 'Every day, we must educate parents and children about the threat.' About 2,700 law enforcement officials from around the world are attending the conference, which runs through Thursday." Learn more in USA Today.

• 18 August 2006
  "The Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping on Amercians' telephone and internet communications is unconstitutional and must stop immediately, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The ruling is the first court order barring the National Security Agency's ambitious domestic surveillance activities, which have spurred a string of lawsuits against the government and telecommunications companies around the country. It also marks a serious blow to the administration's sweeping interpretation of executive authority under the Constitution, a stance that's riled politicians and legal scholars alike. Detroit U.S. District Court judge Anna Diggs Taylor, presiding over an ACLU challenge to the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program", rejected the government's assertion that the state secrets privilege prevents any review of the NSA surveillance." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 August 2006
  "The arrests and release of five young Arab-American men who bought hundreds of cellphones in the Midwest show broader concerns about wireless technology in an era of global terrorism. Nearly as cheap as the mundane box cutter and potentially just as dangerous, cellphones have become a tool of choice for those wanting to stay a step ahead of government wiretappers as well as for insurgents triggering bombs. Reselling them on the black market also has become a way of funding illicit activities. In the Michigan case, local prosecutors backed off charges that one target for possible attack may have been the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge connecting the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan." Learn more in USA Today.

• 16 August 2006
  "All too familiar with hackers looking to exploit security flaws in its software, Microsoft Corp. warned video game developers Monday that their PC games are now a target for criminals. Popular massively multiplayer online games, such as 'World of Warcraft,' have created a market for valuable game identities loaded with gold or other hard-earned forms of in-game currency that can be used to buy new weapons, magic spells or other trappings to advance within the game. Using malware or software designed to infiltrate a computer system, hackers steal account information for users of MMO games and then sell off virtual gold, weapons and other items for real money." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 15 August 2006
  "Phil Zimmermann gave free e-mail encryption to the world more than a decade ago in the form of software called Pretty Good Privacy. Now Zimmermann, who became an instant Internet hero in part because of a threat of federal prosecution for much of the 1990s, is trying to bring the same kind of encrypted security to Internet phone calls. Last year, Zimmermann announced software called Zfone, which wraps voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an additional layer of security. Today, Zimmermann is busy trying to convince VoIP makers to glue Zfone into their own products and announced the first licensing deal this week. 'The architecture matters,' Zimmermann, who is self-funding Zfone, said in an interview at the recent Defcon hacker convention here. 'This is a different way of doing it and it's better.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 14 August 2006
  "It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills -- morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves. Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done. Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil. There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes he knows the cause, but he cannot convince anyone caring for him that the military's new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick." Learn more in Wired.

• 10 August 2006
  "Nearly one in 10 people believe they have fallen victim to identity fraud, according to a survey. People aged under 30 are most prone to falling victim because they are the poorest at protecting personal details, the survey suggests. Two-thirds in these groups admitted to giving a PIN or bank details to friends and family and 28% did not know a utility bill could be used in ID crime. The poll of 2,200 adults by YouGov was commissioned by energy firm Npower. The survey revealed widespread ignorance over how to combat identity fraud. About eight out of 10 people surveyed among the under-30s age group did not know what their credit rating was. Moving house was pinpointed as a particularly dangerous time, as far as falling victim to identity theft is concerned." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 9 August 2006
  "Scientists have discovered a new method for detecting deadly pathogens like Anthrax or smallpox almost immediately after they've been released into the air. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said this week that they've developed a so-called nanowire bar-code system that could one day be used to create portable, quick-acting sensors designed to identify hundreds of airborne pathogens within minutes. 'If there is an outbreak, we want to know in a fast, efficient manner what agent has infiltrated the room,' said Jeffrey Tok, a scientist in LLNL's biosecurity and nanosciences lab and the lead researcher on the development." Learn more at News.com.

• 8 August 2006
  "If there are two technologies that have shaped the life I lead today, they’re jets and nets. Affordable airfare lets me go where the action is – wherever adventure beckons, necessity compels, or duty calls – without having to establish residency anywhere. And the Internet lets me do business and stay in touch no matter where I find myself. Cheap flights and ubiquitous worldwide communications are the stuff of globalization. Ready travel lets people oppressed at home taste the joys of free society, while the Net exposes them to the ideas and customs underpinning that social order. The effect is viral, spreading liberal values and economic growth to benighted dictatorships and hopeless pits of poverty. So it’s difficult to grasp that these two innovations might also be an imminent menace to Western civilization. Yet that’s the counterintuitive thesis of UK rear admiral Chris Parry, a Falklands vet, former commander of HMS Fearless, and the British military’s go-to guy for identifying emerging threats." Learn more in Wired.

• 7 August 2006
  "Pundits and political junkies may have put blogs on the map. But now individuals all over the planet are using new blogging tools to share gritty, uncensored information. 'If you see a car bomb blast, your first thought is not to go to an Internet cafe and start blogging,' said digital media expert Erik Sundelof. But almost everywhere in the world, cell phones are available, with the ability to send text, photos, even video of such events instantly, he said. Sundelof is the creator of 'Lebanon-Israel Conflict Via Cell Phones,' a blog that is different from the tens of thousands of web logs sharing facts, opinions, pictures and often unfettered anger about events in the Middle East and elsewhere. The text and images he's publishing about the Lebanon-Israel conflict are sent from mobile phones, not from computers. 'What this is really creating is a way for normal people to tell their perspective,' said Sundelof, who is working in the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in California." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 4 August 2006
  "Incoming college students are hearing the usual warnings this summer about the dangers of everything from alcohol to credit card debt. But many are also getting lectured on a new topic -- the risks of Internet postings, particularly on popular social networking sites such as Facebook. From large public schools such as Western Kentucky to smaller private ones like Birmingham-Southern and Smith, colleges around the country have revamped their orientation talks to students and parents to include online behavior. Others, Susquehanna University and Washington University in St. Louis among them, have new role-playing skits on the topic that students will watch and then break into smaller groups to discuss. Facebook, geared toward college students and boasting 7.5 million registered users, is a particular focus. But students are also hearing stories about those who came to regret postings to other online venues." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 August 2006
  "A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year. The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy. 'The whole passport design is totally brain damaged,' Grunwald says. 'From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all.' Grunwald plans to demonstrate the cloning technique Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. The United States has led the charge for global e-passports because authorities say the chip, which is digitally signed by the issuing country, will help them distinguish between official documents and forged ones." Learn more in Wired News.

• 2 August 2006
  "'This is very scary for a lot of people,' says Rob McLay, gesturing at a computer screen that displays a bleak cityscape. 'If you want to stop, say, "Stop."' Bobby Meadors, 27, listens, nodding. He's a baby-faced Navy medic from Memphis, Tennessee, with a soft southern accent. For several weeks during 2003, he drove an ambulance in southern Iraq and treated injured soldiers. Now he’s getting ready to go back – virtually. First, though, McLay asks Meadors to talk about his time in Iraq. 'We did nightly ops up and down the coast,' Meadors says. 'It was pretty antsy. I totally thought we were going to get RPG’d.' McLay’s face is empathetic. He’s a Navy psychiatrist with both a PhD in neuroscience and a medical degree...Meadors removes his headset and smiles grimly. He has just experienced a small sampling of a treatment that might soon be used to help thousands of GIs recover from their experience in Iraq." Learn more in Wired.

• 1 August 2006
  "The Bush administration has asked a federal appeals court to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of illegally opening its communication networks to surveillance by the National Security Agency. Permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit to proceed would endanger national security and possibly expose classified information, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a legal brief filed on Monday. The administration also nominated Laurence Silberman, a federal appeals court judge in Washington, D.C., to serve as an expert in this case. A former deputy attorney general, Silberman was appointed by President Reagan and serves on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. The brief is a response to a July 20 ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco, who surprised lawsuit watchers by saying there are 'sufficient' grounds to let the lawsuit continue." Learn more at News.com.

• 31 July 2006
  "Web 2.0 is causing a splash as it stretches the boundaries of what Web sites can do. But in the rush to add features, security has become an afterthought, experts say. The buzz around the new technology echoes the '90s Internet boom--complete with pricey conferences, plenty of start-ups, and innovative companies like MySpace.com and Writely being snapped up for big bucks. And the sense of deja vu goes even further for some experts. Just as in the early days of desktop software, they say, the development momentum is all about features--and protections are being neglected. 'We're continuing to make the same mistakes by putting security last,' said Billy Hoffman, lead engineer at Web security specialist SPI Dynamics. 'People are buying into this hype and throwing together ideas for Web applications, but they are not thinking about security, and they are not realizing how badly they are exposing their users.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 28 July 2006
  "The US has passed legislation which controls what website operators are allowed to put in their site meta tags. The law bans the use of words which might lead anyone to obscene content. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is named after a six-year-old who was abducted in 1981 and killed. His parents have since dedicated their lives to protecting children from child predators. The law contains meta tag controls which were rejected when proposed as part of another law, the Stop Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Youth (SAFETY) Act. The SAFETY Act was not passed by legislators." Learn more in the Register.

• 27 July 2006
  "In January 2004, Stuart Romm traveled to Las Vegas to attend a training seminar for his new employer. Then, on Feb. 1, Romm continued the business trip by boarding a flight to Kelowna, British Columbia. Romm was denied entry by the Canadian authorities because of his criminal history. When he returned to the Seattle-Tacoma airport, he was interviewed by two agents of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division. They asked to search his laptop, and Romm agreed. Agent Camille Sugrue would later testify that she used the 'EnCase' software to do a forensic analysis of Romm's hard drive. During the trial, Romm's attorney asked that the evidence from the border search be suppressed." Learn more at News.com.

• 26 July 2006
  "Eight in 10 cities say their emergency responders still can't communicate with each other or area towns, 44% have not created or updated their evacuation plans, and nearly three-quarters say they're not prepared to handle a flu pandemic outbreak. A survey of 183 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors set to be released today paints a grim picture of the nation's disaster preparedness nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks and nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina. 'Does the public want to hear this? I don't think so,' says Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Michael Guido, a Republican and head of the mayors' group. He says cities need more money from Washington but also must do more on their own — sign mutual-aid agreements with area towns, plan to share equipment in emergencies and line up companies ahead of time for tasks such as debris removal." Learn more in USA Today.

• 25 July 2006
  "Shoppers browsing online for new designer sunglasses or that ultrathin cellphone have a new temptation: a speedy-looking blue shopping-cart icon offering to whisk them to a purchase. Last month, Google, by far the most popular way to find things on the Internet (it processes about 45 percent of all searches), added Google Checkout to its burgeoning list of related products. By signing up, shoppers can quickly and painlessly (at least until the bill arrives!) click to buy anything where they see the Google Checkout shopping-cart symbol without entering their credit-card number or other information. Consumers can also keep track of what they've bought anywhere online in one place. But [some] worry that Google, in particular, is beginning to accumulate a tremendous amount of personal and financial data on consumers." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 24 July 2006
  "Teens looking to hook up with a friend on the popular web community MySpace may bump into an unexpected buddy: the U.S. Marine Corps. So far, over 12,000 web surfers have signed on as friends of the Corps in response to the latest military recruiting tactic. Other military branches may follow. MySpace.Com, the internet's most popular social networking site with over 94 million registered users, has helped redefine the way a generation communicates. Users, many in their teens and 20s, post personal profiles and accumulate lists of friends and contacts with common interests. The Marine Corps MySpace profile -- featuring streaming video of barking drill sergeants, fresh recruits enduring boot camp and Marines storming beaches -- underscores the growing importance of the internet to advertisers as a medium for reaching America's youth." Learn more in Wired News.

• 21 July 2006
  "In a landmark ruling Thursday, a federal judge forcefully refused to dismiss a civil liberties group's lawsuit against AT&T for its alleged complicity in widespread warrantless government surveillance, despite the government's argument that the suit could reveal state secrets -- a rarely used claim that nearly always terminates a lawsuit. In a 72-page written ruling, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker rejected the government's argument that merely allowing the case to proceed would cause critical harm to U.S. national security. The decision marks a significant victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and puts a rare limitation on the reach of the president's "state secrets privilege" to sweep alleged illegal government activities under the cloak of national security. Walker found that the program was not a secret since 'public disclosures by the government and AT&T indicate that AT&T is assisting the government to implement some kind of surveillance program.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 20 July 2006
  "U.S. intelligence agencies have invested millions of dollars since 9/11 on computer programs that search through financial, communications, travel and other personal records of people in the USA and around the world for connections to terrorism, according to public records and security experts.The software is designed to find links between terrorism suspects and previously unknown people; track the international flow of money, operatives and materials; and search for clues in the worldwide communications over phone lines, wireless connections and Internet links. Industry officials, government reports and contracting records do not say specifically how much the CIA and Pentagon have spent to develop, purchase and upgrade such data-mining programs, because that information is classified." Learn more in USA Today.

• 19 July 2006
  "President Bush personally sidetracked an internal Justice Department probe into the warrantless domestic surveillance program earlier this year, even as other Justice officials were assigned to defend the program in court and investigate who may have leaked information about it to the news media, according to administration officials and documents released Tuesday. Raising new questions about the administration's accountability for secret anti-terrorism programs, the White House acknowledged Tuesday that Bush withheld security clearances that attorneys within the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility said they needed to investigate whether department lawyers had acted properly in approving and overseeing the controversial spy program run by the National Security Agency." Learn more in the LA Times.

• 18 July 2006
  "The days when car thieves and cat burglars could cover their tracks just by donning a pair of gloves may be over. An experimental Justice Department program has police departments collecting DNA evidence in nonviolent crimes for the first time, so a single stray hair can lock up a casual sneak thief. Until recently, DNA evidence was used almost solely to investigate violent offenses such as murders or rapes -- CSI kinds of stuff. The Department of Justice hopes to expand that focus. As part of a five-year, $1 billion White House initiative, the department has launched an 18-month program in five major cities to get cops to apply CSI-style DNA-analysis techniques to routine crimes." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 July 2006
  "Critics of the Bush administration’s program for wiretapping without warrants said Friday that they would fight a new White House agreement to let a secret court decide the constitutionality of the operation, and the compromise plan failed to deter lawmakers from offering up competing proposals of their own. The agreement, completed Thursday by Senator Arlen Specter after negotiations with the White House, drew immediate scrutiny in Washington, as politicians, national security lawyers and civil rights advocates debated its impact and legal nuances." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 14 July 2006
  "Four years ago, a former FBI project manager lamented the state of the agency's primitive electronic case-management system. 'There's no mouse; there's no icon,' the official told the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2002, according to a recent government report. 'There's no year 2000 look to it. It's all very keyboard-intensive.' Not much has changed since then. According to recent reports, a string of managerial blunders, financial indiscretions and assorted snags have accompanied efforts to modernize the agency's computer systems. A former government contractor assigned to an earlier incarnation of the upgrades was sentenced Thursday to three years of probation, six months' home detention and $20,000 in restitution after pleading guilty in March to 'exceeding authorized access' to FBI records, the agency said." Learn more at News.com.

• 13 July 2006
  "Northrop Grumman forecast Wednesday a potential "very large" market for a laser-based system it has developed to shield airports and other installations from rockets, ballistic missiles and other threats. Los Angeles-based Northrop said it had already pitched the system, called Skyguard, to Israel, which worked with the company and the Army to develop the technology. Northrop also is pushing Skyguard - described as capable of generating a shield five kilometers in radius - to each of the armed services and the Department of Homeland Security, company executives told a news briefing. Setting up a protective 'bubble' around a typical airport might cost $25 million to $30 million once enough systems were installed, said Mike McVey, vice president of directed energy systems at Northrop's Space Technology business unit." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 12 July 2006
  "When the Scottish economic development agency injected about $9 million into the biotechnology company Cyclacel last October, the country’s enterprise minister explained that 'there could not be a more important company for Scotland’s future.' But only two months later, this flag-bearer for Scottish biotechnology said it would move its headquarters to Short Hills, N.J., and merge with a publicly traded American company. Cyclacel executives say there was no slight intended to Scotland. 'The issue was one of access to the capital markets of the United States,' Spiro Rombotis, Cyclacel’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. Only American investors, he said, could supply the tens of millions of dollars needed to carry the company’s cancer drugs through clinical trials. Cyclacel is not alone among European biotechnology companies that consider their science second to none, while conceding the superiority of American financial markets." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 11 July 2006
  "The search for land mines is not something done in haste. Nor, as it turns out, is the search for new technology that could be used to find mines. Despite a lot of promises about high-tech advances, people working in land mine clearance are using technology that hasn't changed dramatically since the Second World War. And a lot of them say that--given the risks of using technology that's still in its shakeout period--they'd just as soon stick with the tried-and-true. 'We need more of what we know works, rather than new technologies," said Noel Mulliner, technology coordinator for the U.N. Mine Action Service. 'New technology is not going to get into the field fast enough. We want more of the simple stuff.' Land mines are a serious problem in many countries, from postconflict places like Bosnia to simmering trouble spots such as Afghanistan and Sri Lanka." Learn more in News.com.

• 10 July 2006
  "Every month seems to bring another episode of sensitive personal information escaping into the wild because a corporate or government laptop computer is lost or stolen. A common response is a lot of hand-wringing over how the data should have been encrypted. But some key questions usually go unanswered. Why is so much private data allowed to be on laptops to begin with? What do people do all day that compels them to tote around records on, say, 26 million Americans, the staggering number seen in the recent Veterans Affairs case? 'It's pure laziness. There's actually no excuse for it,' said Avivah Litan, a security analyst for Gartner 'There's no good business reason for it.' Litan advocates a few simple steps: Organizations should keep sensitive information only on secure, centralized servers. Workers can access the data from PCs in the office or over private internet connections." Learn more in Wired News.

• 7 July 2006
  "In reality, piracy is flourishing from Sumatra to Somalia, and today's pirates are far from the lovable rogues who populate swashbuckling movies like the new Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."There's nothing romantic about piracy," said Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, the director of the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), based in London, England. 'These are ruthless people who are heavily armed and prey on people that are weaker than them.' IMB is a division of the Paris, France-based International Chamber of Commerce, which combats all types of business-related crime and malpractice. According to IMB, pirate attacks around the world tripled in the decade between 1993 and 2003." Learn more in National Geographic.

• 6 July 2006
  "Trident nuclear warheads damaged in a vehicle pile-up or a plane crash could partially detonate and deliver a lethal radiation dose, according to a newly declassified report from the UK Ministry of Defence obtained by New Scientist. The MoD has also revealed that an attack by terrorists on a nuclear weapons convoy could produce an even more disastrous outcome. "The consequences of such an incident are likely to be considerable loss of life," says a senior MoD official. Trident warheads are regularly transported to weapons facilities in the US and the UK, where they are inspected to make sure that ageing materials don't render them unreliable or unstable. The MoD has always insisted that an accidental nuclear explosion could not happen in transit, because a warhead's plutonium core must be compressed symmetrically by conventional explosives. Bombs are designed to be 'single point safe' so a knock at a single point should not trigger all the explosives around the core." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 5 July 2006
  "A network of compact surveillance sensors could soon be monitoring the US power grid. Sensors attached to electricity pylons would spot problems like bad weather or damage caused by terrorist attacks and automatically re-route around trouble spots. Electricity companies already measure the load on power lines to spot problems and divert power around them. But the wireless sensor network under development at Iowa State University, US, will provide firms with much more detailed information, project leader Arun Somani told New Scientist. 'Every pole will have a small box attached, around the size of your cellphone,' he says. 'As well as having a small camera, it will also detect movement, temperature, humidity and monitor the power in the lines.' The sensor boxes will connect to one another using wireless links, and will feed information on what is happening on the grid back to a central control station." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 3 July 2006
  "China is tightening controls on blogs and search engines to block material deemed subversive or immoral, the government said Friday. The announcement comes amid a media crackdown by President Hu Jintao's government, with Web sites being shut down and journalists jailed. 'As more and more illegal and unhealthy information spreads through the blog and search engine, we will take effective measures to put the BBS, blog and search engine under control,' said Cai Wu, director of the Information Office of China's Cabinet, quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency. China encourages Internet use for business and education, but tries to block access to material deemed obscene or politically dangerous. It has the world's second-biggest Internet user population after the United States, with 111 million people online." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 30 June 2006
  "Sure, it looks like the giant death ray from Goldeneye. And sure, the same technology could someday help blast satellites out of orbit. But for now, the US Air Force’s Starfire Optical Range, perched on a hill in the New Mexico desert, is just trying to take some good pictures. Really. Hot and cold pockets of air change the speed of light as it moves through the atmosphere. That makes stars appear to twinkle and creates a major challenge for researchers trying to get a clear view of objects in space. Starfire’s answer: Shoot a laser 56 miles into the mesosphere and measure the distortion. Then adjust the laser’s mirrors until the beam is back in focus. Whatever optical tweaks correct the beam will also focus a telescope. The images from Starfire are 40 times sharper than uncorrected pics." Learn more in Wired News.

• 29 June 2006
  "The idea that economics has anything to do with computer security is relatively new. Ross Anderson and I seem to have stumbled upon the idea independently. He, in his brilliant article from 2001, "Why Information Security Is Hard -- An Economic Perspective", and me in various essays and presentations from that same period. WEIS began a year later at the University of California at Berkeley and has grown ever since. It's the only workshop where technologists get together with economists and lawyers and try to understand the problems of computer security. And economics has a lot to teach computer security. We generally think of computer security as a problem of technology, but often systems fail because of misplaced economic incentives: The people who could protect a system are not the ones who suffer the costs of failure." Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 June 2006
  "'The right to be let alone,' Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once said, is 'the right most valued by civilized men.' That right seems under renewed attack today in a world where personal records are stored digitally and can be obtained by those clever enough to hack in or by simply grabbing a laptop computer. Nearly every day, a new headline tells of Americans' private information being stolen by criminals or combed through by government agencies seeking terrorists. What's the outlook for privacy? It's probably going to get worse before it gets better, some experts say. But new protections, mostly enacted at the state level, are helping. Congress may finally get into the act as early as this week, though consumer advocates say new federal laws may actually weaken privacy protections, depending on how they are worded." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 27 June 2006
  "For years, the U.S. military has wanted a plane that could loiter just outside enemy territory for more than a dozen hours and, on command, hurtle toward a target faster than the speed of sound. And then level it. But aircraft that excel at subsonic flight are inefficient at Mach speeds, and vice versa. The answer is Switchblade, an unmanned, shape-changing plane concept under development by Northrop Grumman. When completed (target date: 2020), it will cruise with its 200-foot-long wing perpendicular to its engines like a normal airplane. But just before the craft breaks the sound barrier, its single wing will swivel around 60 degrees (hence the name) so that one end points forward and the other back. This oblique configuration redistributes the shock waves that pile up in front of a plane at Mach speeds and cause drag. When the Switchblade returns to subsonic speeds, the wing will rotate back to perpendicular." Learn more in Popular Science.

• 23 June 2006
  "Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 22 June 2006
  "Web surfers in China frustrated by censorship in search engines are increasingly turning to a little-known Internet browser with a big following in the Middle Kingdom. Maxthon, a browser made by a tiny Beijing company of the same name, has attracted millions of users in China for functionality that can funnel traffic through a Web proxy and circumvent government controls on information in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Baidu.com and other popular sites or Internet service providers in that country. From China, the browser has caught on in Europe, and now somewhat in the United States thanks to an appearance with Microsoft at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this year--though it's still largely unknown stateside." Learn more at News.com.

• 21 June 2006
  "In a dimly lit room on the outskirts of this bustling city, 11 budding hackers are working intently on breaking into the files of a large corporation, having already hacked into the company's main computer server. Now in possession of almost unfettered access, they rapidly type commands on their keyboards, preparing to troll through the server's files for passwords, confidential documents, and financial records. The group's work could bring the company to its knees - if this were a real hack. But the company isfictitious, and the wannabe cyber-thieves are actually all computer security professionals. They're here to take part in an eight-day course that teaches them the tools and techniques that hackers would use to get into the systems they are trying to protect." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 20 June 2006
  "North Korea may be a poor country, but it has some of the most developed missile systems in the world. Not even years of near-economic collapse, famine and hunger have hampered the country's missile-development programs, which are meant both as a preemptive defense - to scare off potential attackers - and for export. Over the years, North Korea has earned substantial revenue from the sale of missiles, and missile components and technology. It is widely believed that the sale of missiles is the financial source for the country's nuclear program, which is the reason United States and other Western countries are eager to stop North Korean missile exports." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 19 June 2006
  "On a cold night last October, police stormed a West London apartment and found Younis Tsouli at his computer, allegedly building a Web page with the title 'You Bomb It.' Initially, the raid seemed relatively routine, one of about 1,000 arrests made under Britain's terrorism act during the last five years. The more eye-popping evidence was allegedly found in the London-area homes of two accused co-conspirators: a DVD manual on making suicide bomb vests, a note with the heading 'Welcome to Jihad,' material on beheadings, a recipe for rocket fuel, and a note with the formula 'hospital = attack.' But as investigators sifted through computer disk information the picture that emerged was dramatic. Police had apparently stumbled on the man suspected of being the most hunted cyber-extremist in the world." Learn more in the Toronto Star.

• 16 June 2006
  "Peter Garfinkel, 41, asked for a divorce from his wife of six years, Lori Garfinkel, 38, in March 2001. They had separated earlier that month, and Lori remained in the marital home with three children under 3 years old. After her husband started court proceedings for a divorce, Lori Garfinkel filed a counterclaim alleging the following: transmission of sexual disease, negligent infliction of emotional distress, intentional infliction of emotional distress and wiretapping. The wiretapping charges are what make this unfortunate case relevant to Police Blotter. During the trial in state court, the judge dismissed Lori's claims related to sexual disease and emotional distress. But Peter admitted to 'wiretapping' Lori's computer." Learn more in News.com's Police Blotter.

• 15 June 2006
  "The American International Group, one of the world's largest insurers, said Wednesday that a burglar stole computer equipment in March from one of its Midwest offices that contained personal information on 930,000 people. Chris Winans, a spokesman for AIG, said none of the information had been put to use in any way, 'as far as we know.' The information was from employees of companies seeking corporate health insurance. Winans said the data had been on a computer server and protected by a password. It consisted of names and Social Security numbers--sometimes together, sometimes separately--and, in some cases, fragments of medical information. The information was provided to AIG by 690 insurance brokers seeking quotes for coverage on special high levels of health insurance for employees of companies around the country." Learn more in News.com.

• 14 June 2006
  "If you are worried about a thief stealing your identity, it's not your wallet that needs guarding -- it's your state and local governments. That's the alarm Betty 'BJ' Ostergren, the self-proclaimed Virginia Watchdog, has been sounding for the past four years from her rural Virginia home. Sitting at her computer, she shows us with just a click of the mouse she can find Social Security numbers, birthdates, bank loans and even digitized signatures that a clever thief could easily manipulate onto official-looking documents. Everything anyone would need to steal your identity is right online, put there by local and state government agencies. 'And it is so easy,' she said during a recent demonstration for CNN." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 13 June 2006
  "A computer virus that targets the popular file-sharing program Winny isn't the most destructive bug or even the most widespread. But it's the most talked about in Japan as it generates headline after headline, month after month. The malware, called Antinny, finds random files on Winny users' PCs and makes them available on the file-sharing network. So far, the data leaked have been varied and plentiful: passwords for restricted areas at airports, police investigations, customer information, sales reports, staff lists. The constantly updated virus seems to have spared no one -- airlines, local police forces, mobile phone companies, the National Defense Agency. Even an antivirus software manufacturer has suffered." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 12 June 2006
  "Critics of the government's domestic surveillance program claim it violates the rights of free speech and privacy. The Bush administration says it is necessary and legal. Both sides were in court Monday to argue the constitutionality of the program, with the American Civil Liberties Union seeking an immediate halt to warrantless wiretapping. The Bush administration has asked U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to dismiss the lawsuit, saying litigation would jeopardize state secrets. The administration has acknowledged eavesdropping on Americans' international communications without first seeking court approval. President Bush has said the eavesdropping is legal because of a congressional resolution passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism." Learn more in Wired News.

• 9 June 2006
  "Expensive cellphones are disappearing around the world every minute - snatched out of hands, picked from pockets, forgotten in taxis. But now, for the amateur detectives among us, there is software that, for $8, can tell you who stole your phone and help you hunt them down. Until recently, all you could do was ensure that no one else used the phone by reporting its serial number and blocking it, either through your operator or a site like www.immobilise.com...But Micro Technologies, a software firm based near Mumbai, has done just that. For $8, you can download the Lost Mobile Tracking Solution from www.microtechnologies.net to your phone. The company supports a raft of advanced Nokia phones, as well as two from Samsung and two from Panasonic, according to its Web site." Learn more in the International Herald Tribune.

• 8 June 2006
  "Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin acknowledged the dominant Internet company has compromised its principles by accommodating Chinese censorship demands. He said Google is wrestling to make the deal work before deciding whether to reverse course. Meeting Tuesday with reporters, Brin said Google had agreed to the censorship demands only after Chinese authorities blocked its service in that country. Google's rivals accommodated the same demands, which Brin described as 'a set of rules that we weren't comfortable with,' without international criticism, he said. Brin also addressed Internet users' expectations of privacy in an era of increased government surveillance." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 June 2006
  "Verisign, the intrepid Web security giant, issued an ominous warning in December. It predicted an imminent invasion by a worm called Sober, which would infect networks worldwide and clog up the Internet. It would be timed to coincide with the 87th anniversary of the founding of the Nazi party. Other firms joined in a chorus of worry, offering an abundance of soundbites for news outlets. Then in January dozens more reports, similarly circulated by security firms, warned that an e-mailed virus called Kama Sutra would ruin PCs from Seattle to Sri Lanka. Neither outbreak ever occurred...Vincent Weafer, who runs the security response division at Symantec, the world's largest seller of antivirus software, concedes both threats were duds and that his rivals overhyped them." Learn more at Forbes.com.

• 6 June 2006
  "Big Brother is not only watching but he is also reading your e-mail. According to a new study, about a third of big companies in the United States and Britain hire employees to read and analyze outbound e-mail as they seek to guard against legal, financial or regulatory risk. More than a third of U.S. companies surveyed also said their business was hurt by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information in the past 12 months, according to the annual study from a company specializing in protecting corporate e-mail at large businesses. 'What folks are concerned about is confidential or sensitive information that is going out,' said Gary Steele, chief executive of Cupertino, California-based Proofpoint Inc., which conducted the study along with Forrester Research." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 5 June 2006
  "The world may be teetering on the edge of a worrisome new phase in the sixty-year-old age of atomic weapons. North Korea now has the bomb, probably. Iran may seek nuclear devices of its own. India's stockpile of weapons-grade fissile material could soon grow larger - thanks to a controversial new treaty with the US. Meanwhile, efforts to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty have stagnated. Last year's NPT review conference fell apart amid international bickering. Will nukes now become must-haves for more nations? Asked for their worst-case scenario, experts say there could be 10 new members of the nuclear club by 2015." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 2 June 2006
  "According to cyber-security experts, the terror attacks of 11 September and 7 July could be seen as mere staging posts compared to the havoc and devastation that might be unleashed if terrorists turn their focus from the physical to the digital world. Scott Borg, the director and chief economist of the US Cyber Consequences Unit (CCU), a Department of Homeland Security advisory group, believes that attacks on computer networks are poised to escalate to full-scale disasters that could bring down companies and kill people. He warns that intelligence "chatter" increasingly points to possible criminal or terrorist plans to destroy physical infrastructure, such as power grids. Al-Qa'ida, he stresses, is becoming capable of carrying out such attacks." Learn more in the Independent.

• 1 June 2006
  "The attorney general and the FBI director have asked the nation's leading Internet service companies to keep a variety of customer information and other data for two years, much longer than the companies do now, the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday. Companies have varying policies regarding what information is kept and for how long. One thing the Justice Department wants is some type of subscriber information, such as the Internet address assigned to a person when logging on to a service provider, according to two sources familiar with a meeting that was held last week between the government and the Internet companies. The online industry is expected to strongly oppose any request to retain these types of records because of privacy concerns for their customers." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 31 May 2006
  "A 2004 deal between the European Union and the United States that would allow transfers of passenger data records has been deemed illegal by the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg. The judgement follows six pleas by the European Parliament around the exchange of the data, called Passenger Name Records (PNR). The deal was struck two years ago between the European Commission and the United States government despite opposition by the European Parliament. Airlines were forced to release data originally deemed private under European law, or face revocation of landing rights within the United States." Learn more at News.com.

• 30 May 2006
  "Security forces in tanks and on foot took up positions around Kabul yesterday to stop a repeat of deadly anti-foreigner riots -- the most widespread violence in the city since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. On Monday people marched on the presidential palace and rioters smashed police guard boxes, set fire to cars and ransacked buildings. The violence erupted after a convoy of US military vehicles rammed into a rush-hour traffic jam, hitting several civilian cars. Up to eight people were killed in the crash and subsequent fighting...'Who is ruining our city? We are very, very sad,' said shopkeeper Zalmai Mohammed, 25, near a hotel that had smashed windows and looted shops." Read more at Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun.

• 26 May 2006
  "There was no legal reason for Tariq Aziz, Saddam Hussein's longtime foreign minister, to testify at the despot's trial, as he did Wednesday. Aziz was not in the Shiite village of Dujail in July 1982 when would-be assassins fired at the tyrant's convoy. Nor was he there when Saddam's men took revenge, massacring hundreds of men and boys of the village. But whether it was to protect his family or pilfered assets, Aziz felt compelled to re-enact his old role as Saddam's loyal flatterer, a silver-tongued consigliere who showed the courtroom that he still can call his old boss a 'man of the law' with a straight face. Ludicrous as his performance was, Aziz served a useful purpose. He reminded Iraqis and the rest of the world just how vicious and cynical Saddam's republic of fear was." Read the Boston Globe's editorial at Paris' International Herald Tribune.

• 25 May 2006
  "'How can defeat in one war suppress for so long Japan's samurai spirit?' intoned George Liska, a European-born American theorist of international politics. Yet Japan's current diplomatic rift with China over historical justice - Japan's inability to bring satisfactory closure to the memory of empire and war - propagates a nebulous image of lurking virulent nationalism...Japan is in the midst of a grand social transformation. Political manners, economic rules, patterns of everyday life and international relations are all in flux. The last time Japan saw change of great magnitude was after the defeat in World War II by US design. This time there is no blueprint, and the Japanese are groping for a vision. What do the Japanese want?" Hikari Agakimi comments at the Asia Times.

• 24 May 2006
  "Six world powers searched for common ground Wednesday on rewarding Iran if it gives up uranium enrichment, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Tehran to 'lift the cloud of uncertainty' about its nuclear program. Among the issues at a meeting in London grouping the five U.N. Security Council nations and Germany was a compromise proposal for possible sanctions against Iran should it refuse to halt uranium enrichment, diplomats said. The compromise - which would drop the automatic threat of military action if Iran remains defiant - is part of a proposed basket of incentives meant to entice Iran to give up the activity, a possible pathway to nuclear arms. It also spells out the penalties if it does not. It is meant to get support both from Russia and China, which fiercely oppose any suggestion of force in pressuring Iran." Read more at Forbes.

• 23 May 2006
  "With the increase in politically motivated crimes threatening to lead to a new divide between Eastern and Western Germany, the government said Monday that it was stepping up an education program in schools to prevent young people from drifting into extremist movements. 'The schools must become more involved in explaining the different forms of extremism and do everything possible to fight against extremism and anti- Semitism in all its forms,' said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. 'We also need cooperation from civil society groups to deal with the problem.' Schäuble was presenting the annual report of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the federal domestic intelligence service that monitors all forms of extremism, espionage, sabotage and Islamism. The 330-page report showed a 27 percent rise in politically motivated crimes by far-right groups, with an increase from 12,051 in 2004 to 15,361 last year. Over the same period, the number of neo-Nazis in Germany rose by 300 to 4,100 and the number of far-right extremists preparing to engage in violence rose by 400 to 10,400." Learn more in International Herald Tribune.

• 22 May 2006
  "Worries about Microsoft Word attachments in emails have surfaced with the news that hackers have begun to exploit a zero-day vulnerability in Word 2003 using a new Trojan horse virus. The seriousness is compounded by the fact that a fix from Microsoft could be more than three weeks away. Anti-virus vendor Symantec raised an alert on Friday about the Word 2003 vulnerability and the fact that hackers were on the march trying to get control of PCs running the current version of the Microsoft word processor. According to Symantec, opening email attachment that looks like a word document actually opens an executable Trojan horse program, called Trojan.Mdropper.H, which in turn gives a hacker access to the user's system. According to Microsoft, a fix for the vulnerability is on its way. However, the earliest date that Microsoft has committed to so far is June 13, leaving hackers a significant Window of opportunity to try and hit their vulnerable targets." Learn more in IT Wire.

• 18 May 2006
  "The equipment that technician Mark Klein learned was installed in the National Security Agency's "secret room" inside AT&T's San Francisco switching office isn't some sinister Big Brother box designed solely to help governments eavesdrop on citizens' internet communications. Rather, it's a powerful commercial network-analysis product with all sorts of valuable uses for network operators. It just happens to be capable of doing things that make it one of the best internet spy tools around. 'Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,' says Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California, company." Learn more in Wired News.

• 17 May 2006
  "Seconds after she announces her presence in an online chat room, the girl is besieged by a half-dozen men who want to know more about her. The edgy online banter is taking place in an AOL chat room ostensibly for women who like older men, but known as a forum for men who want to make contact with girls. The supposed 13-year-old in this case, though, is not a child, but an undercover FBI agent who is working out of the bureau's main child pornography unit in a suburban Washington office park. The demonstration for an Associated Press reporter was intended to show off the FBI's growing effort to fight child pornography, which has yielded increases of more than 2000% in arrests and 350% in federal prosecutions over 10 years." Learn more in USA Today.

• 16 May 2006
  "The promise of blasting thrill-seeking tourists into space is fueling an unprecedented rush to build snazzy commercial spaceports. The Federal Aviation Administration is reviewing proposals from New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas to be gateways for private space travel. Depending on how environmental reviews and other requirements go, approval could come as early as this year and the sites could be ferrying space tourists soon after. The current spaceport boom recalls the mid-1990s, when the first spaceport fad generated hype but no real construction. Finally, technology may have caught up with starry-eyed plans. Aerospace designer Burt Rutan, who is building a commercial spaceship fleet for British space tourism operator Virgin Galactic, recently expressed his amazement at the flurry of proposals." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 15 May 2006
  "A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil. In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission. He said the work the agency did after hurricanes Rita and Katrina was the best he'd seen an intelligence agency do in his 42 years in the spy business. 'This was kind of a direct payback to the taxpayers for the investment made in this agency over the years, even though in its original design it was intended for foreign intelligence purposes,' Clapper said in a Thursday interview with The Associated Press. Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet." Learn more in Wired News.

• 12 May 2006
  "DNA from a crime scene cannot always be matched to a known individual in a database, but forensic investigators could identify close relatives. To date, the controversial method has been tried in a small number of cases, sometimes to dramatic effect. But the technique has the potential to be used much more widely, three US experts argue in the journal Science. As DNA databases expand, policy makers need to consider the method's ethical and legal dimensions, they warn. All humans have some genetic similarity, but close relatives have particular similarity because of their shared ancestry...Familial searching was crucial to police solving the 1988 murder of 16-year-old Lynette White in Cardiff, UK. A search of the National DNA Database for a rare gene variant found in a specimen recovered from the crime scene identified a 14-year-old boy with a similar genetic profile." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 11 May 2006
  "Congressional Democrats demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a report that the government secretly collected records of ordinary Americans' phone calls to build a database of every call made within the country. 'It is our government, it's not one party's government. It's America's government. Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing,' said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth telephone companies began turning over records of tens of millions of their customers' phone calls to the National Security Agency program shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 10 May 2006
  "Former National Security Agency director Bobby Ray Inman lashed out at the Bush administration Monday night over its continued use of warrantless domestic wiretaps, making him one of the highest-ranking former intelligence officials to criticize the program in public, analysts say. 'This activity is not authorized,' Inman said, as part of a panel discussion on eavesdropping that was sponsored by The New York Public Library. The Bush administration 'need(s) to get away from the idea that they can continue doing it.'..In 1978, Inman helped spearhead the effort to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which makes it illegal to eavesdrop on American citizens without court approval." Learn more in Wired News.

• 9 May 2006
  "Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written a letter to President Bush in a bid to ease global tensions, Iranian officials said Monday. This is the first such direct, high-level public communication between the two countries since Islamic revolutionaries took over the US Embassy in 1979. The letter, which mentions Iran's contentious nuclear program, comes during a week when the US is trying to marshal key United Nations Security Council foreign ministers for a resolution that would compel Iran to suspend uranium enrichment - with the implied threat of sanctions and military enforcement." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 8 May 2006
  "It was the scandal that rocked the internet. A seemingly worthless painting sold on eBay in early 2000 for $135,805 -- all because buyers believed it might be the work of the 20th-century abstract painter Richard Diebenkorn. It wasn't. Nor was the story behind the painting true. In fact, Sacramento, California, lawyer Kenneth Walton had forged the suspiciously Diebenkorn-esque signature, which appeared in an auction photograph, and concocted the hokey yarn about finding it at a garage sale some years back. Some of the highest bids, it turned out, came not from serious art-buyers but from Walton's eBay business partner, Ken Fetterman." Learn more in Wired News.

• 5 May 2006
  "James Van Bokkelen is about to be robbed. A wealthy software entrepreneur, Van Bokkelen will be the latest victim of some punk with a laptop. But this won't be an email scam or bank account hack. A skinny 23-year-old named Jonathan Westhues plans to use a cheap, homemade USB device to swipe the office key out of Van Bokkelen's back pocket. 'I just need to bump into James and get my hand within a few inches of him,'...As Van Bokkelen approaches from the parking lot, Westhues brushes past him. A coil of copper wire flashes briefly in Westhues' palm, then disappears. The card contains an RFID sensor chip, which emits a short burst of radio waves when activated by the reader next to Sandstorm's door." Learn more in Wired News.

• 4 May 2006
  "It's been the curse of the USS Enterprise and the Klingons' favoured weapon. But back on Earth, mathematicians claim to have worked out how to make a cloaking device to render objects invisible. An outline for the device is described in a scientific paper published today in which the authors reveal how objects placed close to a material called a superlens appear to vanish. Even in the world of science fiction, the technology is not perfect, and nor is the device proposed by Graeme Milton at Utah University and Nicolae-Alexandru Nicorovici at Sydney University of Technology. According to their calculations, the device would only work at certain frequencies of light, and only if the object is within close range of the superlens." Learn more in the Guardian.

• 3 May 2006
  "Police know that most crimes are committed by repeat offenders, so a staple of police work is identifying patterns that link crimes together and deduce the results to specific individuals. This becomes difficult when analysts look at thousands of cases each year. Though the human brain excels at identifying patterns, it can succumb to information overload. Chicago Police Department crime analysts sometimes look at 100 cases a week, sifting through hundreds of data elements trying to unravel patterns that might lead to a break. It requires a lot of legwork and some luck. However, police brass hope a new neural network system will take some chance out of the equation, and add more of a scientific formula to solving crimes." Learn more in Government Technology Magazine.

• 2 May 2006
  "When the government told a court Friday that it wanted a class-action lawsuit regarding the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on Americans dismissed, its lawyers wielded one of the most powerful legal tools available to the executive branch -- the state secrets privilege. That privilege allows the government to tell a judge that a civil case may expose information detrimental to national security, and to ask that testimony or documents be hidden or a lawsuit dismissed. That extraordinary executive power was established in English common law and upheld in a 1953 Supreme Court case involving the fatal crash of a secret bomber." Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 May 2006
  "Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy. In many ways, what has unfolded in the past three days resembles cold-war deception and brinkmanship, with some decidedly new twists for a very different nuclear age. As in the early days of the cold war, both sides have tried to write the rules on the fly, using every tool available — from American threats of sanctions to Iranian threats to cut off oil." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 28 April 2006
  "At first it seemed to be nothing more than a routine, if damaging, case of counterfeiting in a country where faking it has become an industry. Reports filtering back to the Tokyo headquarters of the Japanese electronics giant NEC in mid-2004 alerted managers that pirated keyboards and recordable CD and DVD discs bearing the company's brand were on sale in retail outlets in Beijing and Hong Kong. Like hundreds, if not thousands, of manufacturers now locked in a war of attrition with intellectual property thieves in China, the company hired an investigator to track down the pirates. After two years and thousands of hours of investigation the company said it had uncovered something far more ambitious than clandestine workshops turning out inferior copies of NEC products. The pirates were faking the entire company." Learn more in the International Herald Tribune.

• 27 April 2006
  "What if you could one day unlock your door or access your bank account by simply 'thinking' your password? Too far out? Perhaps not. Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, are exploring the possibility of a biometric security device that will use a person's thoughts to authenticate her or his identity. Their idea of utilizing brain-wave signatures as 'pass-thoughts' is based on the premise that brain waves are unique to each individual. Even when thinking of the same thing, the brain's measurable electrical impulses vary slightly from person to person. Some researchers believe the difference might just be enough to create a system that allows you to log in with your thoughts." Learn more in Wired News.

• 26 April 2006
  "Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has said his country is ready to share its nuclear technology with other nations. Ayatollah Khamenei made the offer during a meeting with visiting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemned the comments. Earlier, Iran's top nuclear negotiator threatened to suspend co-operation with the UN's nuclear watchdog if Teheran faced sanctions over its nuclear work. The UN Security Council has set a deadline of 28 April for Iran to freeze its programme of uranium enrichment, which has been the focus of concerns that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 25 April 2006
  "In their quest to create the super warrior of the future, some military researchers aren't focusing on organs like muscles or hearts. They're looking at tongues. By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish. Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition envision their work giving Army Rangers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy SEALs to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater -- turning sci-fi into reality. The device, known as 'Brain Port,' was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 24 April 2006
  "At the height of his powers, Jeanson James Ancheta felt unstoppable. From his home in Downey, Calif., the then-19-year-old high school dropout controlled thousands of compromised PCs, or ‘bots,’ that helped him earn enough cash in 2004 and 2005 to drive a souped-up 1993 BMW and spend $600 a week on new clothes and car parts. He once bragged to a protégé that hacking Internet-connected PCs was ‘easy, like slicing cheese,’ court records show. But Ancheta got caught. In the first case of its kind, he pleaded guilty in January to federal charges of hijacking hundreds of thousands of computers and selling access to others to spread spam and launch Web attacks. In separate cases, federal authorities last August also assisted in the arrest of Farid Essebar, 18, of Morocco, and last month indicted Christopher Maxwell, 19, of Vacaville, Calif., on suspicion of similar activities. The arrests underscore an ominous shift in the struggle to keep the Internet secure." Learn more in USA Today.

• 21 April 2006
  "Watch out Fido — your days on the force may be numbered. Out for your job are Lola and Espejo, two whiskered, red-eyed rats that police in Colombia are training to sniff out bombs and land mines. The two rodents are part of an experimental six-rat squadron that police are preparing for dangerous missions to defuse the more than 100,000 land mines that litter Colombia's countryside after four decades of war between the government and leftist rebels. Unlike dogs, rats weighing less than half a pound each and 'don't trigger any explosions when they walk on a mine,' said Col. Javier Cifuentes, director of the Sibate police academy, where basic training is taking place." Learn more in USA Today.

• 20 April 2006
  "California was the first state to pass a law requiring companies that keep personal data to disclose when that data is lost or stolen. Since then, many states have followed suit. Now Congress is debating federal legislation that would do the same thing nationwide. Except that it won't do the same thing: The federal bill has become so watered down that it won't be very effective. I would still be in favor of it -- a poor federal law is better than none -- if it didn't also pre-empt more-effective state laws, which makes it a net loss. Identity theft is the fastest-growing area of crime. It's badly named -- your identity is the one thing that cannot be stolen -- and is better thought of as fraud by impersonation." Learn more in Wired News.

• 19 April 2006
  "Familiar faces could take the place of complex and hard-to-remember computer passwords, if a security system developed in the US takes off. Instead of requiring users to remember a string of letters and numbers before granting access to a computer, the new system asks them to pick out a pre-agreed set of faces from several grids of other faces. The system has been developed by a company called Passfaces, based in Maryland, US. A string of randomly selected faces is hard for an attacker to guess but easy for a user to remember, the company says." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 18 April 2006
  "The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. SCO's decision to welcome Iran into its fold constitutes a political statement. Conceivably, SCO would now proceed to adopt a common position on the Iran nuclear issue at its summit meeting June 15. The SCO, an Intergovernmental organization whose working languages are Chinese and Russian, was founded in Shanghai on June 15, 2001 by China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 17 April 2006
  "It's just the news that hardworking taxpayers want to see in their inbox: an update on their refund from the Internal Revenue Service. But instead of clicking on that e-mail's links, federal officials advise you to hit the delete key. That's because dozens of scams, known as 'phishing' schemes, are making the rounds, poised to steal your personal information. 'This phishing scheme is exploding,' said IRS Commissioner Mark Everson. 'Last year we got wind of seven different kinds of schemes. That was in all of 2005. This year we've already seen 65.' Even the commissioner of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance got one of the phishing e-mails -- on his government computer." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 14 April 2006
  "Spurred by the risks from roadside bombs and terrorist ambushes, the military is aggressively seeking to replace troops with battlefield robots, including new versions armed with machine guns. 'There was a time just a few years ago when we almost had to beg people to try an unmanned ground vehicle,' says Marine Col. Terry Griffin, manager of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office in Huntsville, Ala. 'We don't have to beg anymore.' Although the Pentagon initially focused on aircraft, such as the Predator drone, now new ground- and sea-based robots are being developed and tested, military records show. Already in Iraq and Afghanistan are hundreds of small robots to help bomb squads examine or disarm explosives from a safe distance. That's because of the continuing toll caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which have been become the largest killer of U.S. troops." Learn more in USA Today.

• 13 April 2006
  "The next generation of weapons in the U.S. arsenal could be straight out of science fiction: laser beams and heat rays. And they could be ready for action before you know it. By the end of this year, the Air Force plans to conduct a first, fully loaded test flight of its Airborne Laser, a jumbo jet packed with gear designed to shoot down enemy missiles half a world away, at the speed of light. The ABL also packs a megawatt-class punch--it's not exactly your garden-variety laser pointer. For ground troops and embassy guards, meanwhile, a Humvee-mountable device with the nondescript name of Active Denial System is being put through its paces. The ADS would provide a nonlethal form of crowd control, using millimeter waves (a cousin of microwaves) to cause an intense--but noninjurious--burning sensation meant to encourage people to flee." Learn more at News.com.

• 11 April 2006
  "A San Francisco finance manager stopped in at a Mission District cafe and was tapping on his laptop as he enjoyed his coffee just before noon on a Thursday. Suddenly, he was under siege. 'I looked up, and I saw this guy leaning into me as if he was asking a question,' he said. 'I leaned forward, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone fiddling with the computer cord. I tried to stand up, and as I stepped back, he stabbed me in the chest.' The attack marked a violent turn in a wave of crime that has hit the city -- the 'hot spots' frequented by wireless laptop users are becoming hot spots for laptop robberies." Learn more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• 10 April 2006
  "Research shows that playing violent video games can make you think other people are out to get you. Dr Sonya Brady, of the University of California San Francisco, and Professor Karen Matthews, of the University of Pittsburgh, say their study shows that young men are more likely to see others' attitudes toward them as hostile if they have just played a violent game. 'You're kind of on the lookout for other people being rude to you,' Dr Brady said. Dr Brady and Professor Matthews had a group of 100 male undergraduates aged 18 to 21 play one of two popular video games." Learn more in ABC News.com.

• 7 April 2006
  "Western defense analysts are skeptical of Iranian claims to have developed new high-tech weapons equal to or even surpassing in capability those available to the world's leading military powers. In annual war games that started in the Persian Gulf last week, the Iranians say they have tested an underwater sonar-evading missile capable of going 375km/h - three or four times as fast as conventional torpedoes. They also claim to have test-fired a multiple-warhead missile that can almost entirely evade radar. Military analysts say they don't have enough hard information to form a definitive view of the latest Iranian claims, but say they cannot be rejected out of hand." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 6 April 2006
  "Cybercriminals are increasingly fighting each other, as well as antivirus vendors, in pursuit of illegal gain, Kaspersky Lab has warned. The antivirus provider said Tuesday that as profits from cybercrime grew in 2005, criminals increasingly tried to prevent antivirus providers from developing protection against the latest threats. 'Honeypots,' or lightly protected systems set up to collect samples of malicious software for antivirus companies, were a prime target, Kaspersky said. Criminals can use legions of compromised 'zombie' computers, called 'botnets,' to bombard honeypot networks with data to hinder or stop them working, according to Kaspersky's 'Malware Evolution: 2005, Part 2' report, published Monday. 'If the bad guys are aware of a network that looks suspicious because it's too unprotected--to lure bad code--they can take steps like launching (distributed denial-of-service) attacks against that honeypot network.'" Read more at ZDNet News.

• 3 April 2006
  "You've probably never met Sergey Kozerev, a former student at the State University of Technology and Design in St. Petersburg, Russia, but it's possible that he's mugged you. In the online world, he operates under the pseudonym Zo0mer, according to American investigators, and he smugly hawks all manner of stolen consumer information alongside dozens of other peddlers at a Web site he helps manage. 'My prices are lowers then most of other vendors have and I will deliver them in real time,' reads a typically fractured Zo0mer post. But however deserving those caught in this most recent sweep might be, the fact remains that in the transnational, Internet-driven market for stolen financial and consumer data, some thieves are simply easier to nab than others." Learn more at News.com.

• 30 March 2006
  "Piloted remotely from a Nevada air base half a world away or by soldiers on the scene, unmanned aircraft have become so indispensable in Iraq and in the war on terror that by next year the U.S. could be spending nearly seven times more on the vehicles than it did before the 9/11 attacks. The aircraft were heavily used after last month's bombing of a mosque in Samarra, Iraq, highlighting how prevalent they have become for a military thirsty for vehicles that can drop bombs or hover over targets without risking pilots' lives. When Iraq erupted in ethnic violence after the February 22 attack on the sacred mosque, the planes lingered over trouble spots so officials could used the crafts' video cameras to see where crowds were gathering." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 29 March 2006
  "Intergalactic radio signals from quasars could emerge as an exotic but effective new tool for securing terrestrial communications against eavesdropping. Japanese scientists have come up with a method for encrypting messages using the distant astronomical objects, which emit radio waves and are thought to be powered by black holes. Ken Umeno and colleagues at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Tokyo propose using the powerful radio signals emitted by quasars to lock and unlock digital communications in a secure fashion." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 28 March 2006
  "Undercover congressional investigators successfully smuggled into the United States enough radioactive material to make two dirty bombs, even after it set off alarms on radiation detectors installed at border checkpoints, a new report says. The test, conducted in December by the Government Accountability Office, demonstrated the mixed progress by the Department of Homeland Security, among other U.S. agencies, in trying to prevent terrorists from smuggling radioactive material into the United States. About 60 percent of all containerized commercial goods entering the United States by truck or ship and 77 percent of all private cars are now screened for radioactive material." Learn more in the International Herald Tribune.

• 27 March 2006
  "The National Security Agency could have legally monitored ordinarily confidential communications between doctors and patients or attorneys and their clients, the Justice Department said Friday of its controversial warrantless surveillance program. Responding to questions from Congress, the department also said that it sees no prohibition to using information collected under the NSA's program in court. 'Because collecting foreign intelligence information without a warrant does not violate the Fourth Amendment and because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is lawful, there appears to be no legal barrier against introducing this evidence in a criminal prosecution,' the department said." Learn more in Wired News.

• 24 March 2006
  "I have a religious belief in the power of ideas propelled by entrepreneurial energy," declares Vinod Khosla. Coming from some businessmen such talk might sound self-serving or plain nutty. But Mr Khosla helped to found Sun Microsystems, a company that pioneered such essential bits of internet technology as network servers and Java, a programming language. He then made his name and his fortune as a partner at Kleiner Perkins, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm famous for its early investments in AOL, Amazon, Compaq and Google. His eyes have now turned towards a new target—the oil industry." Read about Mr. Khosla's proposal at Britain's Economist.

• 23 March 2006
  "Seven men accused of planning al Qaeda-linked terrorist attacks in Britain discussed several possible targets including a nightclub in London, and one of the plotters had tried to obtain an atomic bomb, a prosecutor told a court Wednesday. David Waters, outlining the prosecution case for a second day, said nothing came of the group's interest in an atomic bomb. He said defendant Salahuddin Amin had been asked by an acquaintance in Britain to contact a man named Abu Annis about obtaining a radioisotope bomb. 'Amin did so via the Internet and Abu Annis said they had made contact with the Russian mafia in Belgium and from the mafia they were trying to buy this bomb,' Waters said." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 22 March 2006
  "Lawmakers in Iowa are proposing a special "passport" meant to protect victims of identity theft against false criminal action and credit charges. The 'Identity Theft Passport' will be a card or certificate that victims of identity fraud can show to police or creditors to help demonstrate their innocence, Tom Sands, a state representative of the Iowa House and supporter of the proposal, said in an e-mail interview Tuesday. 'I am a banker, when I am not in the legislature, and have witnessed the results of stolen identity,' Sands said. 'I continue to see and hear about Internet frauds that try to get information to steal a person's identity, so it only seems identity theft will become a greater problem.'" Learn more at News.com.

• 21 March 2006
  "Microsoft said Monday it will initiate more than 100 legal proceedings against online fraudsters in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, in a move to stem the growth of phishing attacks on the Internet. Phishing has become a growing problem on the Internet. Typically, criminals send misleading URLs by email or other means to users and coax them to click on the links in the hope of getting them to part with sensitive financial or personal information. The lawsuits are part of a Microsoft program called the Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative that will coordinate and expand the company’s anti-phishing efforts worldwide. Microsoft will file the lawsuits over the next three months. The software giant has already initiated 53 of the legal actions, Neil Holloway, president of Microsoft Europe, Middle East, and Africa, said at a technology debate in Brussels." Learn more in the Red Herring.

• 20 March 2006
  "After her two-day visit to Indonesia this week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Australia on Thursday for a three-day official visit - her first since her appointment. Although she has a busy schedule with many official meetings, press conferences and speeches, her main and most crucial business is to participate at the inaugural ministerial-level trilateral security dialogue with two of the United States' closest and most trusted allies in the Pacific - Australia and Japan. This ministerial-level meeting has drawn the attention of political leaders and analysts across the Asia-Pacific region. Many view the new 'triple alliance' with suspicion. There is a concern that this might be the beginning of a new Cold War-type alliance in which China is cast as the adversary." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 17 March 2006
  "A new variety of unusually powerful Internet attacks can overwhelm popular Web sites and disrupt e-mails by exploiting the computers that help manage global Internet traffic, according to security researchers. First detected late last year, the new attacks direct such massive amounts of spurious data against victim computers that even flagship technology companies could not cope. In one of the early cases examined, the unknown assailant apparently seized control of an Internet name server in South Africa and deliberately corrupted its contents. Name servers are specialized computers that help direct Internet traffic to its destinations." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 16 March 2006
  "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we detect when someone is lying? Just as the space program seemed to be just the thing for combating communism during the Cold War, lie detection looks like just what we need in the fight against terrorism. The popular press, including Wired magazine, has been pretty optimistic that a high-tech replacement for the archaic and mistrusted polygraph machine is coming soon. Last weekend, Stanford Law School hosted a workshop called 'Reading Minds: Lie Detection, Neuroscience, Law and Society,' where attendees took a closer look at the technology -- a look that suggests we're still light years away." Learn more in Wired News.

• 15 March 2006
  "A group of European computer researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to insert a software virus into radio frequency identification tags, part of a microchip-based tracking technology in growing use in commercial and security applications. In a paper to be presented today at an academic computing conference in Pisa, Italy, the researchers plan to demonstrate how it is possible to infect a tiny portion of memory in the chip, which can hold as little as 128 characters of information. Until now, most computer security experts have discounted the possibility of using such tags, known as RFID chips, to spread a computer virus because of the tiny amount of memory on the chips. The tracking systems are intended to improve the accuracy and lower the cost of tracking goods in supply chains, warehouses and stores. Radio tags store far more data about a product than bar codes and can be read more quickly. They have even been injected into pets and livestock for identification." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 14 March 2006
  "Bullies are increasingly using the internet to terrorise teenagers outside of school, a survey suggests. More than 10% of UK teenagers said they had been bullied online, while 24% knew a victim, the MSN/YouGov survey found. The increasing popularity of instant messaging services and e-mail among children means bullies can now reach their targets at all hours. Up to half of parents are unaware about online bullying, the survey of 518 children and parents said. Changes in the way teenagers socialise both at school and away from the playground have been reflected in new forms of bullying, the MSN report showed." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 13 March 2006
  "The identities of 2,600 CIA employees and the locations of two dozen of the agency's covert workplaces in the United States can be found easily through Internet searches, according to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper obtained the information from data providers who charge fees for access to public records and reported on its findings in Sunday editions. It did not publish the identities or other details on its searches, citing concern it could endanger the CIA employees. Not all of the 2,653 people the newspaper said it could identify as CIA employees were supposed to be covert, an issue raised in the Justice Department investigation of whether someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to reporters in 2003." Learn more in USA Today.

• 10 March 2006
  "In the post-9/11 world, there's much focus on connecting the dots. Many believe data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn't tenable for that purpose. We're not trading privacy for security; we're giving up privacy and getting no security in return. Most people first learned about data mining in November 2002, when news broke about a massive government data mining program called Total Information Awareness. The basic idea was as audacious as it was repellent: suck up as much data as possible about everyone, sift through it with massive computers, and investigate patterns that might indicate terrorist plots." Bruce Schneier makes that case that that data mining will not make us more secure in Wired News.

• 9 March 2006
  "When police raided a London mosque three years ago in their pursuit of a radical Islamic preacher, they found forged passports, laminating equipment, and bundles of cash. The haul, details of which were only recently made public, speaks volumes about a remarkable evolution in the funding of terrorism. What was once a global network financed by elusive donors and administered by Al Qaeda 'fund- managers' has now fragmented into a constellation of franchises that sustain themselves primarily through crime. This, experts say, is partly a result of the vigorous multinational effort since 9/11 to break up the Al Qaeda network and stanch the cash flows that sustained terror attacks. But it's also due to the reduced cost of mounting terror attacks, they say." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 8 March 2006
  "He can find George Bush senior's social security number and Leonardo DiCaprio's mother's maiden name in under 15 seconds, and led the FBI on a three-year manhunt as he hacked his way into the world's biggest firms. 'Computer terrorist' Kevin Mitnick is one of the world's most famous computer hackers and became a cause celebre after breaking into networks and stealing software at companies including Sun Microsystems and Motorola. Now Mitnick, from the United States, travels the world teaching companies how to guard against people just like him. He argues that while sophisticated technology can help keep networks clean from viruses, it is useless if hackers can con a company's employees into handing over passwords by posing, for example, as colleagues." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 7 March 2006
  "A serious rift emerged Monday when Russia split with the United States and Europe over Iran's nuclear program after the Russians floated a last-minute proposal to allow Iran to make small quantities of nuclear fuel, according to European officials. The reports of the proposal prompted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to call Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and according to an administration official who was briefed on the conversation, 'she said the United States cannot support this.' Ms. Rice's call came after Dr. ElBaradei suggested to reporters that the standoff with Iran could be resolved in a week or so, apparently an allusion to the Russian proposal." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 6 March 2006
  "MySpace.com, the online virtual community run by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., will soon screen how its 60 million members use the Web site in an effort to prevent crime, the company's chief executive said Thursday. He discussed the enhanced security plan in an interview, several hours after federal authorities announced the arrests of two men charged with using MySpace to arrange illegal sexual encounters with minors. MySpace Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe declined to discuss the arrests or say how specifically the new security technology will work. The company will give details in an announcement in the coming weeks, he said. DeWolfe said he's also in the midst of recruiting an executive to spearhead the company's security and safety education programs." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 3 March 2006
  "Strategic analysts often regard China's extraordinary rise as a direct challenge to the primacy of the United States as the sole global superpower. But sometimes lost in the debate about the pros and cons of China's emergence is the political and economic significance of India's concomitant rise onto the global scene. A Pentagon strategy report issued in January clearly identified China as the greatest potential threat to the US military. Certainly a new Cold War revolving around US-China strategic rivalry would be bad news for the rest of Asia, let alone the world. But it is just as likely that China will pursue its regional interests peacefully, as it has over the past decade, and that a warming trend between China and India will pay huge dividends for Asian security and economic development." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 2 March 2006
  "Imagine getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour. We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark's brain. Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling...More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks' natural ability to glide quietly through the water." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 1 March 2006
  "For more than a year, Bruce Gagnon strongly suspected he and his family were being spied on, but he didn't have any evidence, and he didn't know who might be behind it. An Air Force veteran, Gagnon is one of the most prominent activists in the world concerned with space weapons. He directs the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space from a small office in Maine. Still, he was caught off guard when the American Civil Liberties Union called and told him it had uncovered court documents revealing that NASA and the U.S. Air Force were secretly monitoring him. 'We're a small organization with meager resources,' said Gagnon. 'They feel threatened by us? That tells us something.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 28 February 2006
  "Most people who use e-mail now know enough to be on guard against 'phishing' messages that pretend to be from a bank or business but are actually attempts to steal passwords and other personal information. But there is evidence that among global cybercriminals, phishing may already be passé. In some countries, like Brazil, it has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con — the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks. These programs are often hidden inside other software and then infect the machine, putting them in the category of malicious programs known as Trojan horses, or just Trojans." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 27 February 2006
  "A small group of National Security Agency officials slipped into Silicon Valley on one of the agency's periodic technology shopping expeditions this month. On the wish list, according to several venture capitalists who met with the officials, were an array of technologies that underlie the fierce debate over the Bush administration's anti-terrorist eavesdropping program: computerized systems that reveal connections between seemingly innocuous and unrelated pieces of information. The tools they were looking for are new, but their application would fall under the well-established practice of data mining." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 24 February 2006
  "The European Union has given the final thumbs-up to a controversial data retention directive. The legislation, which the EU says is necessary to help fight terrorism and organized crime, was passed by justice ministers in Brussels on Tuesday. Internet service providers and fixed-line and mobile operators will now be forced to keep details of their customers' communications for up to two years. Information including the date, destination and duration of communications will be stored and made available to law enforcement authorities for between six and 24 months, although the content of such communications will not be recorded. Service providers will have to bear the costs of the storage themselves." Learn more at News.com.

• 23 February 2006
  "The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye. You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: 'Identification is completed.' Welcome to Park Avenue Elementary School. Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day. Privacy and safety experts — as well as locals — are divided over the use of such technologies. But as more school districts make safety a priority after 9/11, many say such biometric devices could become standard issue." Learn more in USA Today.

• 22 February 2006
  "Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study. It is not perfect, but could be an important investigative tool when combined with other intelligence. The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname, and may help prioritise inquiries. Details of the research from the University of Leicester, UK, appear in the latest edition of Current Biology. The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males. It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 21 February 2006
  "When Stacey Turmel placed an order online with Davida, an English motorcycle accessory company, she was looking for protective gear with style and comfort. But after plunking down $255 for a two-tone Deluxe Jet helmet, she found herself dragged into the shadowy world of global jihad. Turmel, a St. Petersburg lawyer, has learned that she was among several Davida customers whose personal and credit information was placed on a public Web site - 3asfh.net. The site, hosted temporarily by a Tampa-based Web-hosting company, has been used to exchange information on hacking by people waging war in the name of Islam. 'It was scary to find out that jihadis had my personal information,' Turmel said.'" Learn more in the Tampa Tribune.

• 20 February 2006
  "Even as the U.S. government is embroiled in a debate over the legality of wiretapping, the fastest-growing technology for Internet calls appears to have the potential to make eavesdropping a thing of the past. Skype, the Internet calling service recently acquired by eBay Inc., provides free voice calls and instant messaging between users. Unlike other Internet voice services, Skype calls are encrypted — encoded using complex mathematical operations. That apparently makes them impossible to snoop on, though the company leaves the issue somewhat open to question." Learn more at MSNBC.com.

• 17 February 2006
  "Identity theft and online bank fraud were the unofficial themes of the 2006 RSA Conference, a massive security confab where Bill Gates came to announce the imminent death of the password and vendors filled the exhibition halls with iPod giveaways and promises that their product could stop everything from spam and malware to hackers and typos. Thanks to a California law known as SB 1386 that requires companies to disclose sensitive data leaks to California consumers, companies like ChoicePoint and shoe retailer DSW became poster children for corporate negligence last year after mishandling sensitive data." Learn more in Wired News.

• 16 February 2006
  "The Bush administration, frustrated by Iranian defiance over its nuclear program, proposed Wednesday to spend $85 million to promote political change inside Iran by subsidizing dissident groups, unions, student fellowships and television and radio broadcasts. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, announcing a request for the money at a Senate hearing, said the administration had worked out a way to circumvent American laws barring financial relations with Iran to allow some money to go directly to groups promoting change inside the country. 'We are going to begin a new effort to support the aspirations of the Iranian people,' Ms. Rice said at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. 'We will use this money to develop support networks for Iranian reformers, political dissidents and human rights activists.'" Learn more in the New York Times.

• 15 February 2006
  "It didn't get much publicity, but an anti-stalking bill passed by Congress recently makes it a federal crime to 'annoy' someone over the Internet. And that's really beginning to bug some people. 'It's a stupid law that has slipped in under the radar,' says Clinton Fein, a San Francisco-based artist who runs annoy.com, a website that he says offers 'unique and irreverent' commentary on politics and culture. 'Who says what's officially annoying? Is that a business we really want our government to be in?' The law makes it a crime to anonymously 'annoy, abuse, threaten or harass' another person over the Internet. Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington inserted the provision into legislation that reauthorized the federal Violence Against Women Act." Learn more in USA Today.

• 14 February 2006
  "Looking for love on the Internet on Valentine's Day? Better watch out for the crook who will steal your cash as well as your heart, according to the government. The Office of Fair Trading issued a warning on Tuesday about the dangers of online dating scams, where criminals use dating agency Web sites or chat rooms to find potential victims. 'The Internet has opened up a new and exciting way to meet your potential life partner and, although the vast majority of those who sign up to an online dating agency are genuine, some scam artists are out to trap the unwary,' the OFT said. The scammers take time to build up a relationship with their online victims and convince them it is true romance. They then suggest a meeting as a natural progression -- but the catch is they need cash in order to make this happen." Learn more at CNN.com.

• 13 February 2006
  "Vital US infrastructure including power grids and banking systems have been put under simulated attack in a week-long security exercise called Cyber Storm. The war game drew in 115 agencies from the FBI and CIA to the Red Cross, the Department of Homeland Security said. IT companies and state and foreign governments also played a role in responding to the mock attacks. The exercise had given the US 'an excellent opportunity to enhance our nation's cyber security,' the US said. 'Cyber security is critical to protecting our nation's infrastructure,' George Foresman of the Department of Homeland Security added in a statement. The US has been accused of being unprepared for a determined attack by hackers." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 10 February 2006
  "Agents operating a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program may have inadvertently spied on the e-mails and phone calls of Americans with no ties to terrorists, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday. Gonzales stressed that the program is 'narrowly focused' and that adequate steps are taken to protect privacy, though he said he was unable to describe such procedures because of the program's classified nature. The admissions came as part of the first of what will likely be several public hearings before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. A full slate of Democrats and Republicans rotated 10-minute stints questioning Gonzales, the day's sole witness, about the secret eavesdropping program.quot; Learn more at News.com.

• 8 February 2006
  "For the past week I've been tracking my girlfriend through her mobile phone. I can see exactly where she is, at any time of day or night, within 150 yards, as long as her phone is on. It has been very interesting to find out about her day. Now I'm going to tell you how I did it. First, though, I ought to point out, that my girlfriend is a journalist, that I had her permission ('in principle ...') and that this was all in the name of science, bagging a Pulitzer and paying the school fees. You have nothing to worry about, or at least not from me. But back to business. First I had to get hold of her phone. It wasn't difficult. We live together and she has no reason not to trust me, so she often leaves it lying around. And, after all, I only needed it for five minutes." Learn more in the Guardian.

• 7 February 2006
  "Electronic passports have driven technological improvements in biometrics and will pave the way for greater commercial use of it in 2006, IT services company Unisys predicted. 'Traveler security is driving the adoption of biometrics much faster than commercial pressures would have,' Terry Hartmann, director of secure identification and biometrics at Unisys, said in a statement. 'Now that the concept has been proven in a public context, this will pave the way for the adoption of biometrics by the commercial sector,' Hartmann added." Learn more at News.com.

• 6 February 2006
  "The Pentagon has formed a team of nuclear experts to analyze the fallout from a terrorist nuclear attack on American soil in an effort to identify the attackers, officials have said. The team, which can draw on hundreds of federal experts, uses such tools as robots that gather radioactive debris and sensitive gear to detect the origins of a device, whether a true atomic weapon or a so-called dirty bomb, that uses ordinary explosives to spew radioactivity. The objective is to determine quickly who exploded the device and where it came from, in part to clarify the options to strike back, the officials said. The government also hopes that terrorists will be less likely to use a nuclear device if they know that it can be traced. Michael K. Evenson, associate director for operations at the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which directs the team, said the program began operating last year." Learn more in the New York Times.

• 3 February 2006
  "Sara Ahmad's voice quavers slightly as she recalls the summer evening nearly 18 months ago when her older brother, Babar, an IT professional, came over for dinner. The following day Ms. Ahmad answered a knock at the door to find two policemen standing outside on her leafy suburban street. 'They said he'd been arrested on a extradition request to the US,' recalls Ahmad, a doctor. 'I was completely shocked.' Their dinner together was the last time she's seen her brother. Charged with running websites hosted in the US that promoted and supported Islamic militancy, Mr. Ahmad is still in British custody. He has appealed the extradition order and Britain's High Court will hear the case on Feb. 20." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 2 February 2006
  "Sometime around dawn on the first day of the 1991 Gulf War, Ted Molczan was woken by a mysterious phone call. Molczan had been up until 3:30 am in his Toronto apartment, riveted by the televised images of Tomahawk missiles raining down on Baghdad, so he was groggy when the phone rang. A male voice with a thick accent said: 'I know you're involved in satellite tracking. I'm interested in doing a trade.' The caller offered Molczan information on the orbiting patterns of a constellation of eight US satellites. In exchange, he wanted to know the orbits for the CIA's KH-11 'Keyhole' satellites - from space they can discern an object as small as a softball, and they were sending US forces hi-res digital imagery of Iraq and Kuwait." Learn more in Wired News.

• 1 February 2006
  "The life sciences are developing so quickly that a watch list of dangerous pathogens and toxins is useless in fighting the threat of bioterrorism, says a new report from the US National Academy of Sciences. The report, on 'next generation' bioterrorism, was requested by the US government. It concludes that intelligence agencies are too focused on specific lists of bacteria and viruses, and are not aware of emerging threats. Focusing on the list of about 60 'select agents', such as the smallpox virus and botulism toxin, might simply divert resources from newer and more dangerous threats, such as RNA interference, synthetic biology or nanotechnology." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 31 January 2006
  "There has always been a China 'threat'. It began with the 1950-53 Korean civil war, which initially had nothing to do with China. Indeed, if any outside power was involved in North Korea's attack on its rival government in the South, it was the Soviet Union, not China. The communist regime in Beijing had just come to power after a protracted civil war with the rival Kuomintang (KMT) regime. Its troops were being moved to the south of the country, far from Korea, in preparation for the final attack on the KMT enemy, which had fled to Taiwan...And so it continues to the present day. With the alleged Soviet threat to Japan having evaporated, we now have an army of Japanese and US hawks - Foreign Minister Taro Aso included - ramping up China as an alleged threat to Japan and the Far East." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 30 January 2006
  "Even just a few years ago, lawyers in corporate lawsuits sometimes agreed not to poke around in their opponents' e-mails. Instead they'd confine themselves to paper memos and other documents on file as they pursued evidence. Now, however, with so much work done via e-mail, instant messaging and other online platforms, 'nothing's in the file cabinets anymore,' said Michele Lange, staff attorney for legal technologies at Kroll Ontrack. Instead, the memos, presentations and other scraps of corporate intelligence are increasingly finding their way into vast 'electronic discovery' centers like the one Kroll Ontrack operates here near Minneapolis." Learn more in Wired News.

• 27 January 2006
  "A top priority of the United States government is to prevent a determined terrorist from crossing the US- Mexico border. It is also becoming a primary mission for Mexico - and the first place it's focusing on is the 375-mile, desolate stretch of land that abuts Arizona. In addition to sharing intelligence and cooperating on investigations with its US counterparts in Arizona, Mexico last year set up three checkpoints along known human-smuggling routes on its side of the border and plans to add two more. Between August and December, Mexican officials stopped 1,277 non-Mexicans from crossing into Arizona, according to a Mexican government report obtained by the Monitor. The report shows that most of the OTMs came from Central and South America, but seven are listed as Iraqis." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 26 January 2006
  "John Petruzzi had a job that, until recently, few people would envy. As director of enterprise security at Constellation Energy, Petruzzi is the go-to guy whenever regulators request e-mail records from the $12.5 billion Baltimore utility and energy wholesaler. For years, Petruzzi has spent more than his fair share of weekends and long nights at the office, combing through terabytes of data on e-mail servers. 'We're talking about large amounts of data: millions of e-mails over a three-to-six-month period among hundreds of employees,' Petruzzi said. 'It has been a rather arduous process, obviously. I had teams that worked days on end.' Similar complaints are spurring software entrepreneurs who focus on easing this kind of sleuthing." Learn more at News.com.

• 25 January 2006
  "Spammers adapt quickly. One day they're sending out mortgage leads using a computer server in Shanghai. The next day, they're sending pitches for Viagra using a zombie PC in Detroit. It's all part of their efforts to avoid getting caught, and to trick ISPs' spam filters into letting their messages through. Spam exterminators know this cat-and-mouse game all too well. Nonetheless, they say that 2005 was a good year in the fight against spam...But in the anti-spam world, there is barely time to rest on your laurels. Reps at several ISPs whom I spoke with say they are gearing up for new challenges in 2006, when they expect spammers to grow more sinister." Learn more in PC World.

• 24 January 2006
  "A flurry of data breaches at major corporations late last year seemed to confirm a growing consensus among computer-security experts that 2005 was the worst year yet for such transgressions. Incidents at Marriott International, Ford Motor Company, and ABN Amro Mortgage Group served as eerie reminders to CIOs that they could be the next victims of thieves looking to poach Social Security and credit-card numbers, or of business-process breakdowns that cause sensitive information to fall into the wrong hands. Most CIOs will tell you that getting hacked is inevitable. But there is getting hacked, and then there is getting sacked. As the volume of information increases and criminals grow more brazen, the chances of companies suffering a worst-case scenario seem less remote every day." Learn more in Newsfactor.

• 23 January 2006
  "In the past, intercepting communications meant just that — copying a telegram mid-route, steaming open an envelope or attaching alligator clips to the copper wires that connected every telephone in the world. But the old ways of communicating are heading into the sunset like the Pony Express and being replaced by phone calls, instant messages, e-mail and more that are converted into digital data before they gallop across the Internet and other advanced networks. This constant interchange of massive amounts of data, converging into speeding bitstreams on common pipes, is both a blessing and a curse for eavesdroppers. It's easier than ever to access wholesale feeds of data. But such work is also more controversial than traditional wiretapping." Learn more in USA Today.

• 20 January 2006
  "With the news that student millionaire Alex Tew has been targeted by blackmailers, the thorny issue of how to deal with denial-of-service attacks is back in the headlines. Mr Tew's Million Dollar homepage, which sells pixels as advertising space, was brought down by a massive distributed denial-of-service attack launched after he refused to pay a $5,000 demand from blackmailers. His venture is the latest in a long line of websites to fall foul of the net criminals who recruit so-called zombie PCs from around the world and use their net addresses to deluge sites with data. According to security firm CipherTrust, any high profile website is ripe for this sort of cyber-crime, largely due to the ease with which attacks can be launched." Learn more at the BBC.com.

• 19 January 2006
  "A high-tech prison is opening this week where inmates wear electronic wristbands that track their every movement and guards monitor cells using emotion-recognition software. Authorities are convinced the jail in Lelystad — quickly dubbed 'the Big Brother Prison' by the local press — represents the future of correctional facilities: cheap and efficient, without coddling criminals or violating their fundamental rights. Detainees will be kept in six-man dormitory cells. They will do their own cooking, washing and organize their own daytime schedules via a touch-screen monitor at the foot of their beds. Prisoners have limited choices for their activities — electives include drug education classes and exercise — and they are locked in their cells at night." Learn more in USA Today.

• 18 January 2006
  "By the 2010s, Korea is expecting to see robots assisting police and the military, patrolling the neighborhoods and going on recon missions on the battlefield. The Center for Intelligent Robots on Monday said the state-backed agency plans to check the feasibility of security robots by convening a 40-member planning committee late this week. ' If the robots prove to be viable technically and commercially, we will be able to begin developing them late next year,' said Lee Ho-gil, head of the center. When completed, the outdoor security robots will be able to make their night watch rounds and even chase criminals, according to Lee. The government also seeks to build combat robots. They will take the shape of a dog or a horse, with six or eight legs or wheels." Learn more in the Korea Times.

• 17 January 2006
  "To many privacy geeks, it's the holy grail -- a totally anonymous and secure computer so easy to use you can hand it to your grandmother and send her off on her own to the local Starbucks. That was the guiding principle for the members of kaos.theory security research when they set out to put a secure crypto-heavy operating systems on a bootable CD: a disc that would offer the masses the same level of privacy available to security professionals, but with an easy user interface. It's a difficult problem, entailing a great deal of attention to both security details and usability issues. The group finally unveiled their finished product at the Shmoo Con hacker conference here Saturday, with mixed results." Learn more in Wired News.

• 16 January 2006
  "The U.S. Navy is field-testing a new short-range communications device called LightSpeed that could soon let sailors talk securely up to two miles away -- just by looking at each other. The device uses infrared, similar to that of a television remote control, to transmit audio and visual information. To overcome range limits, LightSpeed connects to ordinary binoculars and uses the optical lenses to amplify the signals. Then soldiers on either end can simply plug headphones and a microphone into their binoculars to talk to one another. 'Out of the right eye there is an invisible beam that goes out and the LED is the same LEDs that you have in your remote control,' said Leo Volfson, president of Torrey Pines Logic, the company that makes LightSpeed. 'If the user on the other side has a similar device he will be able to talk to you or pass data.'" Learn more in Wired News.

• 13 January 2006
  "Within a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity. The room is a 'doomsday vault' designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world's crops. It is being built to safeguard the world's food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. 'If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet,' says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust." Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 12 January 2006
  "There is a new breed of weaponry fast approaching—and at the speed of light no less. They are labeled 'directed-energy weapons' and may well signal a revolution in military hardware—perhaps more so than the atomic bomb. Directed-energy weapons take the form of lasers, high-powered microwaves, and particle beams. Their adoption for ground, air, sea, and space warfare depends not only on using the electromagnetic spectrum, but also upon favorable political and budgetary wavelengths too. After more than two decades of research, the United States is on the verge of deploying a new generation of weapons that discharge beams of energy, such as the Airborne Laser, the Active Denial System, as well as the Tactical High Energy Laser." Learn more at Space.com.

• 11 January 2006
  "First there was closed-circuit TV. Then speed cameras. Then DNA profiling, plans for ID cards, and cellphone data storage. In March, Britain will enhance its reputation as the surveillance capital of the West with a global first: recording the movements of all cars on the road and storing the data for at least two years. It's a network of thousands of cameras harnessed to software that can read car license plates, check them against a central database, and alert police to suspected criminals or terrorists. Police chiefs are thrilled at the technology, arguing it will provide an unrivaled crime-fighting tool that will also aid antiterror efforts." Learn more in the Christian Science Monitor.

• 10 January 2006
  "Why has the United States been failing to persuade Russia to take a tough line on Iran's nuclear program? As the administration of President George W Bush insists on taking the issue to the United Nations Security Council should Tehran fail to resume negotiations on limiting its nuclear ability, Russia continues to engage openly with Iran. Both US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the acting assistant secretary of state for arms control, Stephen Rademaker, have been rebuffed by Moscow. Even the call by Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad for Israel to be 'wiped off the map' does not seem to have made Russia move closer to the US position." Learn more in the Asia Times.

• 9 January 2006
  "The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official. Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often. And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company." Learn more in the Chicago Sun-Times.

• 6 January 2006
  "The US Department of Defense has revealed plans to develop a lie detector that can be used without the subject knowing they are being assessed. The Remote Personnel Assessment (RPA) device will also be used to pinpoint fighters hiding in a combat zone, or even to spot signs of stress that might mark someone out as a terrorist or suicide bomber. In a call for proposals on a DoD website, contractors are being given until 13 January to suggest ways to develop the RPA, which will use microwave or laser beams reflected off a subject's skin to assess various physiological parameters without the need for wires or skin contacts. The device will train a beam on "moving and non-cooperative subjects", the DoD proposal says, and use the reflected signal to calculate their pulse, respiration rate and changes in electrical conductance, known as the 'galvanic skin response'". Learn more in the New Scientist.

• 5 January 2006
  "A Group of German privacy hackers have come up with a portable device that can wipe a passive RFID-Tag permanently. While it is known that RFID tags could be wiped, it usually took some fairly cumbersome microwave gear to get the job done, and the result could damage whatever the tag was installed on. But, according to the group’s website here, two developers have managed to make a functioning prototype and produce plans that everyone can use to build their own RFID-Zapper. The site says that RFID-Tags are likely to further threaten and compromise the privacy of consumers. Currently it is possible to send an RFID-Tag to sleep, but the privacy group feels that this is bad because it can be can be reactivated without your knowledge." Learn more in the Inquirer.

• 4 January 2006
  "A suspected militant raid on one of India's top science universities has confirmed fears that the country's booming information technology sector could be a new target for terror groups, officials and analysts said. A professor was shot dead and four other people were wounded last week when an unidentified gunman drove on to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus in the southern city of Bangalore, India's tech capital, and opened indiscriminate fire from an automatic rifle outside a conference hall. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack on what security experts said is a 'soft target'. But the nature of the attack - the use of a Kalashnikov rifle to open fire randomly and the recovery of unexploded grenades and cartridges from the site - points to anti-Indian Islamist militant groups, they said." Learn more in the Syndey Morning Herald.

• 3 January 2006
  "Computer security experts were grappling with the threat of a new weakness in Microsoft’s Windows operating system that could put hundreds of millions of PCs at risk of infection by spyware or viruses. The news marks the latest security setback for Microsoft, the world’s biggest software company, whose Windows operating system is a favourite target for hackers. 'The potential [security threat] is huge,' said Mikko Hyppönen, chief research officer at F-Secure, an antivirus company. 'It's probably bigger than for any other vulnerability we've seen. Any version of Windows is vulnerable right now.' The flaw, which allows hackers to infect computers using programs maliciously inserted into seemingly innocuous image files, was first discovered last week." Learn more in the Financial Times.

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