“Open the doors, We have the right to know!”
The journalists of Reporters Without Borders are demanding access to administrative detention centres and invite their European colleagues to join the campaign launched today entitled „Open Access: Open the doors, We have the right to know!” The initiative, launched by European Alternatives and Migreurop together with a coalition of immigrants’ rights groups, is aimed at […]
Global spending on drones to reach $11.3bn in 10 yrs
They are deadly, hard to detect and fast becoming one of the most sought-after weapons in the air defence industry. Global demand for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones, is heating up as armed forces invest in new systems to boost their ability to carry out reconnaissance and strikes without putting soldiers‘ lives […]
GIS used increasingly to aid in public safety
Reginald Johnson Friday is the closing day of another successful Esri Federal GIS Conference here in the District of Columbia. The conference has always managed to bring together government executives, GIS professionals and managers, along with representatives of nongovernmental entities, but some might not thing about geographic information systems being used to fight crime. In […]
Predictive Policing with Big Data
Police Departments nationwide have been using data and statistics to drive policing since the 90s in an approach founded by the NYPD named CompStat was credited with dramatic reductions in crime and increases in efficiency. CompStat, a process and philosophy rather than a single technology or software, uses databases and GIS to record and track criminal and […]
Is Writing Style Sufficient to Deanonymize Material Posted Online?
I have a new paper appearing at IEEE S&P with Hristo Paskov, Neil Gong, John Bethencourt, Emil Stefanov, Richard Shin and Dawn Song on Internet-scale authorship identification based on stylometry, i.e., analysis of writing style. Stylometric identification exploits the fact that we all have a ‘fingerprint’ based on our stylistic choices and idiosyncrasies with the written […]
Spy Tech Companies & Their Authoritarian Customers, Part II: Trovicor and Area SpA
This is the second part in an EFF series. Part I, on UK-based FinFisher and France-based Amesys, can be read here On Sunday, CNN reported that dozens of activists in Syria have had their computers infected with malware that allows supporters of dictator Bashar al-Assad to spy on their every move. The virus, according to […]
UK: Military reserves called up for Games
Britain is planning a massive Olympics security exercise this week centering on a mock emergency on the London subway system — a test that evokes uncomfortable reminders of the deadliest attack on the city since World War II. The security test announced Monday envisions that an emergency takes place on the busiest days of the […]
UK: Phone and email records to be stored in new spy plan
Details of every phone call and text message, email traffic and websites visited online are to be stored in a series of vast databases under new Government anti-terror plans. By David Barrett Landline and mobile phone companies and broadband providers will be ordered to store the data for a year and make it available to […]
UK-France declaration on security and defence
New declaration agreed at the UK-France Summit. UK-France declaration 1. At the Lancaster House Summit, we took the historic decision to raise our defence and security cooperation to unprecedented levels. We took this decision because we are natural partners in security and defence and our countries share values, global interests and responsibilities. We signed two treaties, […]
Australia: Police spy on web, phone usage with no warrants
Philip Dorling LAW enforcement and government departments are accessing vast quantities of phone and internet usage data without warrants, prompting warnings from the Greens of a growing “surveillance state“ and calls by privacy groups for tighter controls. Figures released by the federal Attorney-General’s Department show that federal and state government agencies accessed telecommunications data and […]
FBI seeks social media data mining tool
FBI request for social media app The FBI says the system is only meant to monitor publicly available information and would not focus on specific individuals or groups but on words related to criminal activity. The FBI says the system is only meant to monitor publicly available information and would not focus on specific individuals […]
Canada: Police to see web hits under new spying law
Jason Magder The Conservative government plans to introduce this week a law that would allow police to better monitor web-surfing habits of Canadians and to track them with electronic surveillance. The law would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to install equipment that would allow them to monitor and preserve the Internet surfing activities of their […]
LBS+LIMS: A Useful Combo
Pravin Prashant Indian mobile operators are moving fast on LBS (location based services) which was not the case a couple of months ago. Large operators like Reliance, Tata, Vodafone, Idea, and Videocon have already floated RFP and are in a hurry to meet the deadline set by the Ministry of Communications IT. Some operators are […]
Zambian Law Enforcement Officers Train to Implement Counter Trafficking Law
IOM has conducted a training of trainers (ToT) for law enforcement officers in Zambia, using a newly developed handbook on the country’s 2008 Anti-Human Trafficking Act. The five-day training, held at the National Police Training College in the capital Lusaka was designed to provide participants with the necessary skills to train other law enforcement officers […]
Heron UAV Demonstrates Anti-Smuggling Monitoring Capabilities For the EU
Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) Heron Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) was recently demonstrated successfully and according to the plan, this time in Greece, as part of a demonstration held by the European Union (EU) agency, Frontex. During the demonstration a number of IAI payloads were employed successfully to detect potential targets, for monitoring anti-smuggling and other […]
LAPD Pioneers High-Tech Crime-Fighting ‘War Room’
LOS ANGELES — The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck. “We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We […]
France: Convictions stand, shorter sentences on appeal for Vincennes detention centre fire
On 13 January 2012 in the Paris appeal court, the presiding judge in the appeal involving six of the ten detainees in the Vincennes detention centre (CRA, centre de rétention administrative) who were convicted on 17 March 2010 in connection with a fire that burned down the CRA on 22 June 2008 read the ruling […]
CCTV police officer ‚chased himself‘ after being mistaken for burglar
An undercover police officer „chased himself round the streets“ for 20 minutes after a CCTV operator mistook him for suspect. By Andrew Hough The junior officer, who has not been named, was monitoring an area hit by a series of burglaries in an unnamed market town in the country’s south. As the probationary officer from […]
Predictive tools help police map crime before it happens
In recent years geographical information systems have becoming increasingly popular with law enforcement agencies, helping to predict crime hotspots, burglaries, and other incidents In recent years geographical information systems have becoming increasingly popular with law enforcement agencies, helping to predict crime hotspots, burglaries, and other incidents. With amateur meth labs popping up across the country […]
A Letter to the Families of the Accused
Letter to the mothers, wives, children and families of the Somali men in prison in Hamburg, Germany. We write this letter although you don’t know us and we don’t know you. We write to you because we got to know these 10 boys and men on trial, whom you have been missing for two years. […]