Is anyone really surprised to discover that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the 23-year-old Detroit bomber, was involved in radical Islamic politics while a student in London? For the sad truth is that we now live in a country where we appear to be more concerned with defending the rights of radical extremists to express themselves than protecting the rights of ordinary, law-abiding citizens to live in peace and security.

They seem to have a variety of issues these days ...

High-tech, full-body scanning machines are already in use at a handful of airports, but they may become more common as security officials around the world respond to the attempted attack on an airliner on Christmas Day. The Netherlands announced Wednesday that the scanners would be used for all flights heading from Amsterdam's airport to the United States, and an official in Nigeria later said that country planned to buy full-body scanners too. What exactly are these machines, and how do they work? What are the drawbacks to using these types of scans? Here are some questions and answers about the devices.

"Although the Secure and Elite Privacy units are no longer on sale, there are a number of these secure USB drives in active use by public and private sector organisations - who's going to tell them their supposedly secure drives are hackable?", he said.

Hmmm ...

Norman Siegel, a long-time civil libertarian, says he supports full-body scans at airports. The scanners see through clothing and show an outline of the body. Siegel says federal officials have told him sensitive areas such as the genitals can be blurred and plastic explosives will still show up on the scan. He supports this technology as a choice over what he considers more invasive -- physical pat-downs.

After the first thousand or so, I can't picture a screener even noticing what a person looks like in the scan ...

The response to the attempted firebombing of a Detroit-bound aircraft shows that the American government, news media, and public have yet to develop an understanding of how terrorism works and where the greatest terrorist threats are to be found.

They might want to start by developing an understanding of how security works ... maybe by clicking on the link to the video to the right ...

We asked some transportation experts: what is the biggest hole in airline security now? What’s possible in terms of tightening security without unduly clogging up air travel?

An understandable kneejerk reaction is to say that no price is too high to pay for saving lives. But a moment’s reflection suggests that isn’t true. For instance, let’s say that we could reduce terrorist attacks on airplanes to zero by subjecting every passenger to a strip and body cavity search, and having all baggage searched by hand. Most people would still conclude that the benefit isn’t worth the cost in resources, lost time, dignity, and privacy. 

Don't probe me, bro ...

By the way, Volokh is one of those sites that you should be studying regularly ...

Footage shot by an amateur cameraman shows a crowd of people descending on a gallows where two men -- Esmail Fathi-Zadeh and Mohammad Esfandiarpoor, reportedly both convicted bank robbers -- are being hanged. Protesters rush the gallows and hold up the men, preventing them from choking to death, until someone manages to cut them down. Then gunshots can be heard, and the crowd flees as security officers rush the area.

Interesting state of affairs in Iran at this time. I hope we're helping the protesters, or at least not hindering them ...

If employees at the TSA (or the Corps of Engineers) see that there are no career consequences for dramatic and/or catastrophic screwups (for the latter, see New Orleans, 2005), they will have learned a regrettable lesson: there is no price to be paid for failure. In that direction lies more failure.

So desu, ne ...

“This is theoretically possible but practically unlikely,” said Claire Cranton, an association spokeswoman. She said no one else had broken the code since its adoption. “What he is doing would be illegal in Britain and the United States. To do this while supposedly being concerned about privacy is beyond me.” Some security experts disagreed. While the disclosure does not by itself threaten the security of voice data, one analyst said companies and governmental organizations should take the same steps to ensure the security of their wireless conversations as they do with antivirus software for computer files.

If he was able to compromise the whole scheme (and it looks like he was) then he is correct that it is long-since time to abandon that particular scheme. It's never good enough to be 'a little bit' ahead ...

An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others. Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.

Criminy ...

Police say that the home invasion victim was sleeping in his apartment, on the 1400 block of Telshor Drive, when two intruders broke in and advanced on him.  The sound of the home invaders' entry is said to have awoken the victim, at which point he grabbed his handgun and fired in self defense.  One of the suspected intruders, who police have only described as a Hispanic male in his 20's, was reportedly found dead at the scene.  Police are said to be seeking a second suspect, and the burglary victim was unharmed.

Some good news ...

“With backscatter, when you scan, you’d see a silhouette of the body,” said Laird, president of Nevada-based Laird & Associates, who advises airlines and governments about aviation security. “You could see whatever was on the outside of the body, on the surface of the body or anything sewn into the lining of your coat. It would show up as kind of a gray mass.” He shrugs off privacy complaints. “I believe we have to give up some rights for the safety of everybody,” he said. “It’s a real nerve that you touch when you mention that.”

First: liberty is the result of good security and not something that you can trade for it,  and second: I'd rather walk through a backscatter machine than have a stranger fondle my junk, which is what you have today ...

Incidentally, I took an early morning flight on Delta today from Latin America to the US, among the first international flights subject to a TSA security directive issued this morning. The pre-boarding procedues included the most invasive hand pat-down I've ever had, and a long line of guys with gloves at the gate, going through everyone's hand luggage in more detail than I've ever experienced.

It would make more sense to have a new rule that every passenger can just reach out and slap the nearest screener to make sure he/she is awake ... that might have resulted in this guy not getting on the plane in the first place ...

Passenger Schuringa, who was sitting on the opposite side of the plane to the man, said he did not hesitate to act when he realised something was not right. “Suddenly we heard a bang and then there was smoke and fire and I just knew this is a terrorist attack. “I didn’t hesitate a moment, just wanted to stop it with whatever I can do.”

Make that man an American ...

Understand this: In the eyes of the Law, the gun is Lethal Force. Not ‘Stopping Force’–Lethal Force. Shoot someone, and it doesn’t matter to the Law that you just wanted to stop them; you have still employed Lethal Force. Deliberately shoot to wound, it won’t matter; you have still employed Lethal Force. (Shooting to wound isn’t guaranteed to just wound, either; people regularly die after being wounded in the arms or legs.)

Always worth repeating ...

India won her independence in 1947, but our Government still took 12 years to formulate the new Arms Act, 1959 which was further supplemented by Arms Act Rules of 1962. Although a little better than Arms Act of 1878,unfortunately,the new Arms Act of 1962 did not show any sign of Government of Independent India trusting its Citizens. While the new legislation gave vast arbitrary powers to the "Licensing Authorities", to ensure that procurement of Arms License remains a distant fruit for citizens where as the concept of Prohibited and Non-Prohibited bore/calibers remained intact. This concept was used by the British to ensure that the military supply of Ammunition does not find its way to Indians especially freedom fighters as they did not trust Indians who formed major percentage of serving personnel in their Army and Law Enforcement Units.

The difference between a citizen and a subject is the possession of firearms ...

Flight 253 round-up

“Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has been briefed on the incident aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and is closely monitoring the situation,” said the statement released by DHS Press Secretary Sara Kuban.

Let’s start with the fact that there is no screening system or requirement in place at international airports that will detect explosives. If the preliminary reports that the Nigerian brought firecrackers on the plane that’s not surprising at all. Fireworks normally do not contain any metal and will pass undetected through any of the walk thru metal detectors used throughout the world. Here we are 8 years after the 9-11 attacks and we still employ security detection systems incapable of detecting explosives.

The official said some of the measures might be noticeable to the traveling public, while others would be unseen. They would likely include increased personnel, bomb-sniffing dogs and increased "behavioral detection" methods employed by screeners.

Douglas R. Laird, former security director for Northwest Airlines, said he has advocated for years that airports switch from X-rays and metal detectors to full-body scans -- a move that would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more, but that he insists would help prevent terrorist attempts like the one reported Christmas Day. "If you don't use a body scan, you don't know what the person has under his clothing," said Laird, who helmed Northwest security from 1989 to 1995. He is now president of Nevada-based Laird & Assoc. and advises airlines and governments about airport security issues. "We've talked about this for 20 years. I hate to say it, but you get what you pay for."

According to the Coast Guard, the maritime security zone includes a portion of Kailua Bay, beginning at Kapoho Point and extending westward to the shoreline at Namala Place, near the Castles surf spot. The zone also includes the adjacent Kawainui Channel beginning at Kapoho Point to a point 85 yards mauka of the North Kalaheo Avenue Bridge. Yellow buoys will be placed on the water so mariners can see the zone, officials said.

Melbourne Airport has received instructions from the Australian government to boost security checks tomorrow, said a spokesman, Damian Tkalec. Taiwan has imposed an additional security check of passengers and carry-on items at boarding gates for U.S. flights from the island’s international airports, Liu Chang-hui, spokesman for the Aviation Police Office, said

Now might be a good time to take all the money being spent on identification and behavioral detection and shift it to body scanning and bomb-sniffing dogs ...

"The filming of anyone, including employees, is not something that is unheard of in the industry," McLain said. "But to do it in a changing room and bathroom is totally unprecedented and it could border on criminal activity." The retailer's "Security and Privacy" policy states that at "some stores and clubs [Walmart] may record your presence on security monitors for safety and security purposes," according to court documents. 

Sounds like a 'failure to adequately supervise' to me, and very expensive ...

Several thugs tried to drag a woman off a Queens subway train Thursday night, but she fought back and fatally stabbed one of her tormenters before fleeing on another train, police said. The large group of men - perhaps as many as eight - surrounded the woman outside a chicken restaurant above the 21st St.-Queensbridge station about 9 p.m., police and a witness said.

Gotta love it ...

A five-month long investigation by the Government Accountability Office determined that the inadvertent publication of a 267 page document describing U.S. civilian nuclear research facilities caused no damage to national security and did not require any remedial security measures at the cited facilities.  Yet surprisingly, even though its publication had no adverse consequences at all, GAO endorsed the claim that the document was “sensitive” and recommended that rigorous new procedures be adopted to prevent public disclosure of such information in the future.

That is kind of odd ...

The blue colours indicate a negative variation in gravity - places where Earth's tug is a little less. Simply put, if you were to take some bathroom scales to these locations you would weigh fractionally more in red places and weigh less in blue ones.

As 2009 draws to a close some are saying good riddance. To say 2009 was an active year for security breaches would be quite an understatement. The number of personal records exposed skyrocketed to 220 million records this year, compared with 35 million in 2008. 2009 saw historically high levels of security breaches, worms and malware attacks; let's hope the next decade isn't more of the same. Here is a list of my favorite security breaches of 2009.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing a computer-security breach targeting Citigroup Inc. that resulted in a theft of tens of millions of dollars by computer hackers who appear linked to a Russian cyber gang, according to government officials.

A company controlled by the Chinese government has withdrawn its bid to buy majority control of a small Nevada gold mining operation after Obama administration officials, pointing to a nearby Navy air station, raised national security concerns about the deal, Eric Lipton writes in The New York Times. The decision by the company, Northwest Nonferrous International Investment Company, averts a showdown over its proposed $26 million purchase of a 51 percent stake in the Firstgold Corporation. The Treasury Department was prepared on Monday to recommend that President Obama block the sale.

But the Pentagon assumed that foes in the Middle East wouldn't be smart enough to figure this out, and underestimated how quickly the technology to tap in to the feeds would advance, becoming cheaper and widely available. The problems were not fixed, and more and more of these relatively open systems were deployed. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when we "assume" our enemies are dumb (they make something out of "u" and "me."). Using a $26 software package called Skygrabber, originally designed to allow customers to download movies and songs off the Internet (none of them pirated, of course), insurgents were able to tap into the various U.S. military video feeds, The Wall Street Journal reported. U.S. forces became aware of it after they captured a Shiite militia member in Iraq, whose laptop had files of the pirated footage saved on it.

I imagine that the folks that were offering the stuff for sale weren't acknowledging the vulnerability ...

An $8 million renovation of the Golf Mill Shopping Center, which added a 12-screen theatre, a 500-seat food court, a health club and a new children’s play area, may have significantly improved patrons’ shopping experience, but neglected to account for security improvements.

What else is new ...?

'I can't believe people are questioning the attack just because they think Berlusconi wasn't bleeding properly or enough.'

People should be questioning it just because he's a politician ...

Wow, two of my very favourite geek things are coming together: Star Trek and the brilliant Mythbusters (pauses to don his hat and stroke beard in Adam Savage pose). SciFi Wire notes that the geek-tastic Mythbusters is going to test an invention from a classic Star Trek episode, where a desperate Kirk is in the now traditional rocky desert scene for a battle, in this case against the much stronger Gorn. As most of you will know, I’m sure, Kirk searches for materials to improvise a weapon after the alien who kidnapped him and the Gorn captain tell him there are sufficient materials scattered around to use.

Their dreams became reality in 1954 when the first-nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, was built. This type of sub-surface vessel was the first true submarine because all previous submarines had to surface after hours underwater to restore its electric power and re-supply its air, which actually made these vessels submersibles and not true submarines. During its first voyage, the nautilus traveled underwater for about 1,380 nautical miles from New London, Connecticut, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The submarines’ second voyage made history when it transited from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to Portland, England, where the Nautilus became the first underwater vessel to travel across the North Pole.

Interesting ...

He defended security at the camp but said no-one could have ever imagined thieves seizing the gate's sign. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a leading Jewish human rights group, urged Poland to intensify its investigation and bring the thieves to justice. "The Arbeit Macht Frei sign has become the defining symbol of the Holocaust, because everyone knew that this was not a place where work makes you free, but it was the place where millions of men, women, and children were brought for one purpose only – to be murdered," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the centre's founder and dean.

Security personnel need to be able to think like the people they are securing against or there can be no success ...

A security guard was shot and killed in an Oakland store Saturday night, police said. The shooting happened at 7:02 p.m. in the AutoZone store on International Boulevard, according to police. The guard was rushed to a hospital and pronounced dead at 8:08 p.m.

Today's the day, every day ...

The businessman jailed for attacking a robber who had held his family hostage in their home says he makes no apology for the injuries the thief suffered, even though the man was left with a fractured skull and brain damage. The case has raised an important question: at exactly what point does justifiable selfdefence becomes unjustified and bloody revenge? Munir Hussain, 53, will spend Christmas in prison after being sentenced to 2½ years in prison last week for the attack on Walid Salem, a career criminal and one of three men who threatened to kill his family in a late-night ambush last year. 

Hmmm ... one can only assume that this is more of GB's assault on decency ...

In a formal written opinion, the panel gave the go-ahead to a lawyer to let clients view and retrieve their own files. Committee members said the plan, as sketched out for them in an inquiry from the attorney, did not run afoul of existing ethics rules about what lawyers must do to safeguard client information. But the committee cautioned that their approval was based on the kind of security the lawyer promised to set up, both in encrypting the files and taking other methods to preclude unauthorized “hacking.” And the panel also said that the attorney has the obligation to “conduct periodic reviews to ensure that security precautions in place remain reasonable as technology progresses.”

This assumes that the client accessing the material is capable of maintaining security while accessing, which,  even if not in jail, it seems very unlikely that they will be able to ...

Aunt Jane round-up

Since the weekend, the death toll has been mounting rapidly: Of 71 homicides reported so far this month, 24 took place on Tuesday and Wednesday. Many recent victims were men in their 20s, though the youngest was 14 and the oldest appeared to be close to 60, authorities said.

As drug gangs clashed across Tijuana this week, a San Diego mother of two lost her life in the crossfire. Yajaira Orozco was shot in the head when assailants sprayed gunfire inside a seafood restaurant where she was sharing a meal with her husband.

Scientists witnessed the eruption of the deepest underwater volcano and caught the event on film.

This is a really interesting video, but there doesn't seem to be any way to get a sense of how big it is ...

Tuxedo Officer in Charge Sergeant John Norton and Officers Doug Russell and Michael Eichengreen patrolled the Tuxedo Train Station during the Tuesday morning rush hour advising commuters to be alert to suspicious activity, distribute flyers and display a law enforcement presence. “It’s to show force and to prevent” said Norton.

The question becomes "Show force to whom?" ...

To simulate a real-world situation, they used test systems running slightly-outdated Windows XP SP3, Internet Explorer 7, and Adobe Acrobat Reader 8. Other system elements such as Flash and Java were also left somewhat unpatched. Each product was installed on a separate physical test system and rolled back to a default clean state before each test. A "control" system was left unprotected to aid in analysis. For each threat, the researchers directed all of the systems to the same URL at the same time and observed their behavior.

Cute ...

Kahn says that the video information loses its value so rapidly that the military may have decided it wasn’t worth the effort to encrypt it. “Even if it were a feed off a drone with attack capabilities, and even if the bad guys saw that the drone was flying over where they were at that moment, they wouldn’t have the chance to respond before the missile was fired,” he says.

Many of you will be hitting the road this holiday season to visit family, so I consulted my dad, Tom McKay, and asked him what supplies he thinks every man should keep in his car. Here’s his suggested list.

Never hurts to reiterate ...

Use of capital punishment by states continues its steady decline, with fewer death sentences handed down in 2009 than any year since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.

Hmmm ... might be all the recent death row exonerations ...

A submersible robot witnessed the eruption during an underwater expedition in May near Samoa. The volcano, which was erupting with bright red magma bubbles and smoke-like clouds of sulphur, is about 1200m beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. "It was an underwater Fourth of July," said Bob Embley, a marine geologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in a news release. "Since the water pressure at that depth suppresses the violence of the volcano's explosions, we could get the underwater robot within feet of the active eruption."

Some cool pics ...

Cassini scientists had been looking for the glint, also known as a specular reflection, since the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn in 2004. But Titan's northern hemisphere, which has more lakes than the southern hemisphere, has been veiled in winter darkness. The sun only began to directly illuminate the northern lakes recently as it approached the equinox of August 2009, the start of spring in the northern hemisphere. Titan's hazy atmosphere also blocked out reflections of sunlight in most wavelengths. This serendipitous image was captured on July 8, 2009, using Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time," said space scientist Larry Lyons of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), a member of the team that made the discovery. "These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras." The collisions occur on such a vast scale that isolated observers on Earth -- with limited fields of view -- had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.

Interesting ...

But those early units were “fielded so fast that it was done with an unencrypted signal. It could be both intercepted (e.g. hacked into) and jammed,” e-mails an Air Force officer with knowledge of the program. In a presentation last month before a conference of the Army Aviation Association of America, a military official noted that the current ROVER terminal “receives only unencrypted L, C, S, Ku [satellite] bands.” So the same security breach that allowed insurgent to use satellite dishes and $26 software to intercept drone feeds can be used the tap into the video transmissions of any plane.

It seems fairly unlikely that being able to tap the feed would be helpful without a lot of additional capabilities. You would be hard-pressed to even evacuate a site in the time you would have between the time the plane gets close enough for you to pick up its feed and the time it would be punching your ticket ...

The lawmakers intend to propose the ban in the state legislative session that begins next month. The legislation, called the Aaron Sullivan Public Safety and Police Protection Bill, would prohibit the sale of such weapons to private citizens and require current owners to pass background checks. It is named for Aaron Sullivan, 18, who was fatally shot last July in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood, allegedly with an assault-style weapon.

It's very important to disarm the law-abiding to protect the police from armed criminals ...

Aunt Jane round-up

Five people are dead following an assault late Tuesday by hooded gunmen who burst into a seafood restaurant in the Otay Mesa section of the city.

The wave of violence in Tijuana continues taking lives all around the city. Nine more people were killed in violent attacks Wednesday morning, raising December’s total so far to 70 and nearly 600 for the year to date.

A Mexican navy official says alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran Leyva has been killed in shootout. The official says Beltran Leyva and three other suspected members of his cartel were killed in a shootout with sailors at an apartment complex in the city of Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City. He says a fourth suspect committed suicide during the confrontation.

Our series "Border Battle" continues with a story about alleged torture. Three dozen Tijuana police officers accuse the city’s police chiefs, and soldiers in the Mexican Army of using torture to try to force them to confess their ties to organized crime. Tijuana's police Chief Julian Leyzaola is on a crusade to rid his force of corruption.

Perhaps to the British Columbia government and VPD, the solution then is to increase “the perception of safety” instead of actually doing something to address the real underlying issues of crime. Installed cameras may not be effective crime fighters as proven across party lines in London, but then again, it is well demonstrated by actions here that it is all too often perception, and perception only, that is the lodestone of public servants. Some citizens no doubt will feel secure knowing the cameras are installed, however misguided that is proven to be. The very citizens whom advocate surveillance should remember that the descent down the slippery slope of Orwellian observed society will not be abated once this concept is embraced, even through inaction. The future of Canadians will hold no line of personal freedom nor will any right to privacy be safe or guaranteed. The proposed action of government monitoring cameras and the intrusion they represent to the population speak directly against our Charter of Rights, its founding principles and the future freedoms of our children.

The hacker tool, dubbed DECAF, is designed to counteract the Computer Online Forensic Evidence Extractor, aka COFEE. The latter is that run from a script. Microsoft combined the programs into a portable tool that can be used by law enforcement agents in the field before they bring a computer back to their forensic lab. The script runs on a USB stick that agents plug into the machine.a suite of 150 bundled, off-the-shelf forensic tools. The tools scan files and gather information about activities performed on the machine, such as where the user surfed on the internet or what files were downloaded.

Regardless of which side of this equation you're on, it's a struggle to keep up ...

When the two groups met on the street, things turned ugly. The PA discovered that, if the CINN won 'the debate', sunlight would be blocked, and solar power would be doomed. Conversely, the CINN discovered that, if the PA won, their hopes for an orbital parasol would be out the window. Amid howls and screams of 'liar', 'cretin', 'energy whore', 'denialist', 'scum', 'freak', and, inexplicably, 'polar bear', they fell upon each other in an orgy of unsurpassed violence. Arterial blood flew in crimson arcs through the wintry air, with a background of grunts and groans, as the marchers struggled to reach each others' vitals with improvised weapons, or even bare hands, punctuated by the occasional ululating scream that so often precedes a violent death.

I was about half way through this before I realized it was comedy ...

If three people are coming around a corner 10 feet from you and all you have is a bolt-action rifle, you are in trouble. I prefer a semiautomatic pistol, a .45 — you can fire three shots in three seconds, and it’s light on your body. Some guys wear it on their torso, but I like it strapped to my upper thigh. You’ll want a silencer, too. That way you don’t have to grab anybody and knife them. The last thing a sniper needs is to have his hide site compromised by a pack of feral dogs or a nosy bad guy or two.

We're not in the prisoner-takin' bidness ...

It was the third body found hanging from a bridge in Tijuana in the last two months. Tijuana is just across the border from San Diego and has faced an upsurge in drug-cartel violence in recent years.

Hmmm ...

Not only are security contractors cost efficient, but also they have a large pool of able-bodied applicants. Military personnel who are in the combat arms branch often do not have the skills necessary to successfully transition into the civilian world. If they enter the military straight out of high school or if they lack a high school degree, then when they leave the military they simply lack the advanced degrees to compete with their civilian counterparts, especially during a highly competitive recession. The military does not teach derivatives, stock options and year-end budgets.

Today, full-system encryption in software is both feasible and practical -- although how practical will depend on the workload involved. But it's not a security silver bullet, much as it might seem to be from the outside. It can, and does, add a layer of protection that greatly reduces the risk of data compromise in the event hardware is lost or stolen. But that protection depends entirely on how it's implemented, and whether or not the user's been educated in the way an encrypted system works.

Those individuals who criticize a crime victim’s self defense actions often argue that the crime victim didn’t need to defend themselves with deadly force.  As part of their argument, those individuals will generally suggest that the attacking criminal wasn’t (yet) a deadly threat, and that the shooting of the criminal by the victim was therefore improper.  Firstly, I would note that not every state requires that there be a threat to one’s life before deadly force may be used. However, even assuming that a “deadly threat” really is the threshold at which it becomes proper to shoot the criminal in self defense, the argument is still deeply flawed.

The only folks that make arguments like those described in the article are the folks that have never been in the situation or have ulterior motives ...

As most people know, Mexico is in the middle of a drug war. The unprecedented bloodshed is a result of turf battles between drug cartels, as well as rivalries within cartels. The turf in question is usually one of two places: a highly valued drug trafficking corridor into the United States, also known as a plaza, and cities or towns where drugs are brought into Mexico from outside the country.

I had a discussion recently with friends about the various depictions of space combat in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books. We have the fighter-plane engagements of Star Wars, the subdued, two-dimensional naval combat in Star Trek, the Newtonian planes of Battlestar Galactica, the staggeringly furious energy exchanges of the combat wasps in Peter Hamilton’s books, and the use of antimatter rocket engines themselves as weapons in other sci-fi. But suppose we get out there, go terraform Mars, and the Martian colonists actually revolt. Or suppose we encounter hostile aliens. How would space combat actually go?

Hmmm ... thought provoking ...

An Israei scientist, Moshe Stern, may have licked the problem. Based on Soviet technology, Stern's company, C.En. Ltd, has found a way to stuff hydrogen into lightweight glass tubes. BAM, the German Federal Institute for Materials Research & Testing, last month announced the results of two years of testing Stern's product: "The lightweight storage and safety factors give the technology a huge commercial potential for a whole range of industries." "Glass has proven to have three times the storage capacity at only a third of the weight of steel containers that are now commonly used for hydrogen storage, and it's far cheaper," says C.En's chief scientist Dan Eliezer. There are other potential commerical applications, but the dream of a practical hydrogen-powered car is the most alluring, for foes of Islamism and foes of global warming alike.

Interesting ...

"I think it sends the message that while we appreciate security guards and security companies, they will be held accountable if they overreact to circumstance such as this. They have to keep in bounds of the law and they can't overreact. That's why we have the Montgomery Police Department," Williams added.

I wonder if he meant that the way it came out. Too bad for the guard, though. SGs never think that they will end up in prison over a routine take-down, but it can certainly happen ...

Comcast just announced that it has completed its digital conversion in Washington and begun encrypting premium cable channels. That ends a complicated transition that began late last year and forced "expanded basic" customers to add conversion devices to all their TVs.

Hmmm, it's nice to know that encryption can be done on that scale, but I wonder how long it will take to be compromised on a wide scale. It's seems unlikely that they are using a different key for each box ...

The Ministry of Defence still do not appear to have implemented their own Action Plan for securing laptop computers etc.

This seems to happen a LOT to the BritGov guys ...

Ever since the NASA/ESA Cassini spacecraft started orbiting the gas giant Saturn, in 2004, experts have noticed something very peculiar about one of its moons, called Iapetus. The celestial body appeared to have two faces. On one, it was very bright, as viewed with the probe's cameras, whereas the second was a lot darker. Astronomers have had a hard time explaining the difference, but now new data from Cassini has helped them clear out the mystery, and come up with an explanation for the moon's two faces. 

Interesting ... and a cool pic, too.

A Times Square bloodbath was narrowly avoided because the machine-pistol-toting thug who fired at a cop flipped the gun on its side like a character out of a rap video, causing the weapon to jam after two shots, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

This reminds me: There's nothing funnier than seeing a young ruffian that's wearing his pants belted below his buttocks try to run from the police ...

But security guard Ivan Shaq Ramos, who lost two jobs as a result of the video, said the real story is what happened inside the club in the early morning hours of Nov. 28.

The real story is that the video is probably going to cost your former employer (and  maybe you) a lot of money because you and your associates allowed your egos to take the reigns from your professionalism. You can be a solid pro for years but if the few-second lapse is caught on video, that will be seconds that you are judged on ...

The solution that I found was on Lifehacker.com and was written by Gina Tripani. She recommended using a password system. You start out with a 6 or 8 or 10 character core that you will remember. Whatever works for you is fine. A combination of letters and numbers is preferred. Even a word followed by numbers that mean something to you is fine. So, say 1234qwer is your 8 character core. (I know it looks random, but look at your keyboard to find where I got that character core) That core will be used everywhere. But what will make it unique, is adding letters at every different Web site. Take the first two vowels in the domain name of the Web site and add them to the beginning of your core and take the first two consonants and add them to the end of your core. For example, I will use Amazon.com, a fairly popular online retailer. With this system, your password for Amazon.com would become aa1234qwermz. I took the first two vowels in Amazon.com, aa, added the core in the middle, 1234qwer, and the first two consonants in Amazon.com, mz, to the end. That left me with aa1234qwermz, a strong password and a very easy system to remember at every Web site. You can change the system to whatever works best for you. If you want to use the first three consonants and the last vowel or last two consonants and first three vowels, that is fine. Just pick a system and a core and you are good to go. There will be some exceptions. Some Web sites require a certain number of characters and that may not conform to your system. Or they may require just numbers, but the vast majority of Web sites will work with this system.

Sounds quite workable ...

Check Point Software has launched Check Point Full Disk Encryption for Mac OS X 10.6. The software offers encryption and pre-boot authentication utilities. The entire range of drive data is encrypted, including the operating system, temporary files and even erased files. The software offers compliance with security certifications such as FIPS 140-2, Common Criteria EAL4 and BITS.

That's the way to have it, OS and up ...

Another Georgia Tech student was robbed at gunpoint last Friday. There was an armed home invasion last week, and there has been more than one bank robbery inside the school zone at Georgia Tech in the last few months. This happens in spite of the fact that Georgia makes it a felony to carry a weapon inside of a "school safety zone," with ten years in prison as a penalty. The only people obeying this law are the victims of armed predators. The criminals have figured out where the low risk, soft targets are located.

Surprise, surprise ...

The Royal Navy has four of these Vanguard class boats and one always has to be cruising the depths to provide a "continuous at-sea deterrent", the argument being that a weapon based on land would be too vulnerable to a surprise attack.

It would be better if they weren't becoming such totalitarians ...

If the U.S. Senate can reconcile its own approach to data breach notification legislation with DATA, a new federal standard will emerge. If signed into law by President Barack Obama, a federal data breach ¬law would pre-empt the jumbled mass of dozens of state laws. "You'd be better served by federal legislation if the federal legislation has teeth and doesn't pre-empt the state's law," said California state senator Joe Simitian, speaking to executive editor Scot Petersen in September. "If there was a meaningful standard at the national level, I think many states would be happy to accept it."

Hmmm ...

Several lawmakers are asking Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano to examine if any legal remedies are available to stop Web sites from reposting a recently leaked Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security manual. In a letter addressed to Secretary Napolitano on Wednesday, members from the House Committee on Homeland Security expressed concerns over the "repeated reposting" of the security manual on multiple Web sites and asked her to clarify if the sites could be compelled to take it down.

Perhaps you could come up with a security program that isn't dependent on secrecy ...

Two months before the opening of the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, Canadian security officials said Wednesday they are on pace to deploy about 15,000 police, private security and military personnel as part of an extensive security effort expected to cost nearly $1 billion.

If you can't Secure them for a reasonable amount of money, it might be a good idea to take a pass until thing get a little more sane ...

The suit states an intruder gained access to the unidentified student's home in Bruin Hills on Dec. 5, 2008, forcibly sexually assaulted her and Belmont security did not arrive until several minutes after the assailant fled the scene. A year later, Metro police have made no arrests in the case, but there are now claims that Belmont failed to provide adequate security and safety by failing to provide adequate door locks and security personnel to patrol and monitor residential facilities, according to the lawsuit.

No doubt her own security measures were more than adequate ...

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Tuesday that "common sense" indicates terrorists may try to disrupt the murder trials of accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants just blocks from the epicenter of the terror attacks. Kelly told USA TODAY the security costs of holding the trials has soared "way beyond" the estimate of at least $75 million that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., gave at a Senate hearing last month. "We certainly can't do it alone," he said.

You might want to hire some competent help. It just isn't that big of a job ...

"This shocking breach undercuts the public's confidence in the security procedures at our airports," said Senator Susan Collins, R-Me., ranking Republican member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "On the day before the Senate Homeland Security Committee's hearing on terrorist travel, it is alarming to learn that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted its own security manual on the Internet." 

It's worth noting that if the program effectively precluded the possibility of getting on a plane with the means to interfere with the flight, there wouldn't be any reason to keep it a secret. Beyond that, Sonny Barger pointed out years ago that three people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead ...

33-year-old Jeremy Paul Olson was charged with fourth-degree assault and disorderly conduct after the tomatoes he threw from the second floor rotunda missed Palin by ten feet and struck two Bloomington Police officers providing security.

I know, it's fun, but don't do it ...

“The Government stated that it does not in fact seek the password for the encrypted hard drive, but requires Boucher to produce the contents of his encrypted hard drive in an unencrypted format by opening the drive before the grand jury.”

Hmmm ... Truecrypt ...

On Dec. 6, 2008, the Athens police's murder of 15-year-old anarchist Alexandros Grigoropoulos sparked a broad social uprising that raged all month, has been simmering ever since, and is now flaring up again. Before the killing, Greece was already a heavily polarized country. On one side, anarchists strongly influenced workers and youth, maintaining entire "free neighborhoods," such as Exarcheia in Athens, where Alexandros was shot. On the other side, there was a far right-wing government, and police - including the one who shot Alexandros - who were often members or supporters of fascist organizations like Golden Dawn.

Hmmm ... must have forgotten what Cyprus was like in the 60s ...

Nor is there a lack of self-professed “experts” willing to render truly bad advice. Odds are you have heard this one: “If you shoot ‘em outside, drag ‘em inside before you call the cops.” (I’ve even heard a cop say that.) In the era of modern forensics, this advice will doom you to explaining why a trail of DNA (not to mention a host of other forensic evidence) says you are lying.

Sincere study is called for in such serious matters ...

He said that preventing violence during the election season is the more immediate concern than whether to extend the imposition of martial law in Maguindanao, where an election-related massacre happened a couple of weeks ago. There is “no need to extend” the 60-day martial law period, he said, because the AFP appears like it will be able to accomplish within the prescribed period its work of arresting the suspects and the alleged armed men of the Ampatuan clan, as well as tracing their weapons.

Hmmm, they appear to have gone off the deep end for some reason ...

Is terrorism an effective tool for achieving political goals? Yes, up to a point, according a new paper.

I guess it depends on what the goals are. I suspect that nein-won-won was intended to show us that they could mess with us, too. If you can call that a political goal I would say that terrorism was an effective tool for achieving it. I think that all the curtailment of liberties and general inconvenience at the point of an implied gun that we put up with is more of a reflection of our collective ignorance and laziness than evidence of the efficacy of terrorism ...

He warned that the authorities could not end the protests with the arrests of students because one in 20 Iranians were university students, several opposition sites reported. “They are asking us to forget about the election results as though people are concerned only about the elections,” he said. “How can we make them understand that this is not the issue? It is not about who the president is or is not; the issue is that they have sold out a great nation.”

Note to Israel: Don't waste bombs on Iranian Universities, they are on your side (at least for the nonce) ...

The wasp spray, they told her, can shoot up to twenty feet away and is a lot more accurate, while with the pepper spray, they have to get too close to you and could overpower you. The wasp spray temporarily blinds an attacker until they get to the hospital for an antidote. She keeps a can on her desk in the office and it doesn’t attract attention from people like a can of pepper spray would. She also keeps one nearby at home for home protection. Thought this was interesting and might be of use.

I think I'd like a little more data before I buy off on this ...

The suborbital SpaceShipTwo is powered by a hybrid rocket motor, with strap-in accommodations going for $200,000 a seat. Some 250 Virgin Galactic astronauts-in-training have already reserved tickets, according to the group's website.

Hmmm ... cheap at twice the price ...

With a new batch of students preparing to pack their luggage for a spring semester abroad, it's the right time to look at ongoing international issues and recent run-ins Americans have had overseas. From the extremes (like an arrest) to the less extreme (like a slight illness), here's what you need to know to stay out of trouble on your semester abroad.

It's a good idea to speak the language fairly well, too ...

Colorado State University's Board of Governors has voted to ban all guns on campus, falling in line with nearly every major college nationwide in prohibiting concealed weapons. The board voted 7-0 Friday to outlaw firearms — concealed or not — on its campuses in Fort Collins and Pueblo. Currently, the two campuses are among only a handful in the nation where concealed weapons are lawful with a permit.

Need to get rid of them before someone gets seriously hurt or killed ... the Board of Regents, that is ...

Gunmen ambushed two teenage brothers as they returned home from doing laundry, shooting and killing a 16-year-old boy and injuring his brother, police said. Antonio Nunez Jr. was killed instantly and his brother was hit in the hip during the attack around 11 p.m. Friday, police said. The boys' 39-year-old uncle, who was visiting their mother, also was shot. The boys appear to be good kids who attended Mass with their mother earlier Friday evening, said Oakland Police Sgt. Jim Rullamas. "As far as we know they didn't do anything to provoke this," Rullamas said.

Toronto Police homicide investigators speculate the four "friends" may have unknowingly walked into an ambush when they entered the south stairwell on the 15th floor of 30 Falstaff Ave., near Jane St. and Hwy. 401, late Thursday night. Once the trap was sprung and bullets began to fly, the victims would have had nowhere to run or hide. "They may have walked into something," Det.-Sgt. Gary Giroux said yesterday. "It was a very focused attack on these individuals." 

The rest of the article sounds like they're trying to convince the other 'friends' that they aren't considered accomplices of the 'Judas'-variety. Uhhh, aren't guns outlawed in Toronto ...?

A spokesman for the peacekeeping force in Darfur says gunmen have killed three Rwandan soldiers in an ambush in the western Sudanese region. Kemal Saiki says the ambush took place Friday near a market and a government checkpoint in the northern town of Saraf Umra. Saiki says the force fired back, wounding an assailant, but the attackers escaped.

Sacramento Police Department spokesman Sgt. Norm Leong said the 43-year-old man was patrolling the grounds of the Sara Lee Bakery at 3231 6th Avenue around 2:28 a.m. when he was physically attacked by an unknown number of suspects who fled the scene.

Today's the day, every day ...

Well, most of them will. Flash drives from IronKey will survive those mishaps and more. Last year a fan posted a video showing an IronKey surviving its encounter with a Bobcat (the mini-bulldozer, not the feline) and another of a competitor failing the same test. IronKey Inc. got into the game with "Special Ops" videos. One shows the device still working after being crushed by a 6,000-pound Land Rover; another demonstrates it surviving repeated machine washing and drying. This thing takes a beating! 

Cool ...

If, for example, the mayor of one of the most polarizing cities in the United States is violently attacked, nobody is going to say, "Yeah, but we saved $5,000 in police overtime." Ross Mirkarimi is pushing legislation that would require officials to repay security costs for time spent campaigning or on other unofficial business. 

If you're going to ever pay for the mayor's, or any other politician's, security, you should pay for it the entire time that they're in office. The fact that a mayor or governor would need security is certainly troubling, though ...

An Arizona man who spent nearly three years in prison for justifiably shooting a man in self-defense is now free and clear of all guilt in his case. This week the Arizona Supreme Court let stand the state appellate court’s decision to overturn Harold Fish’s second-degree murder conviction. The National Rifle Association provided assistance in this case. NRA’s Office of General Counsel advised Fish’s defense counsel, and the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund provided financial aid for Fish’s defense. 

Congratulations ...

Two Japanese destroyers belonging to the Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) collided in the Pacific Ocean during an anti-piracy exercise on Friday morning, local media reported, citing the MSDF. Nobody was hurt in the collision and the ships sustained little damage. 

Oopsy daisy ...

Aunt Jane roundup

Baja California Gov. José Guadalupe Osuna Millan has lobbied for a scaleback in the inspection process, but President Felipe Calderon -- needing to show progress in his three-year offensive against drug cartels -- calls the measures a necessary sacrifice. More than 1,000 people have been killed in Tijuana since 2008 -- many with guns obtained in the United States.

Gunmen shot and killed a former police commander and opposition politician in his office in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, officials said. Lawyer Eleuterio Cachu Ortiz, who was shot three times in the head, was the fourth current or former police official to be killed in the past two days.

He mentioned in the email that the facebook site has become gigantic over time and that is why it has been decided to cease the regional networks totally. The facebook site will get a simplified privacy control model where the users will be able to pool content from their friends only. A feature will also be incorporated that will allow the facebook members to check who are watching the content uploaded or created by them. Some settings will be merged for simplified operations.

Now Dawn is guided by some of the most proficient interplanetary fliers this side of Pluto, but the reality is that accidental impacts are exceedingly unlikely. Space is big, and as plentiful as asteroids are, the distances between them are tremendous. After crossing the threshold of the belt earlier this month, Dawn will travel 7.7 astronomical units (AU), or nearly 1.2 billion kilometers (almost 720 million miles), to its July 2011 rendezvous with Vesta. Yet in all that time, and across all that distance, the closest the probe will come to a catalogued asteroid is 1.0 million kilometers (greater than 600 thousand miles), or more than 2.5 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Interesting ...

Passware Kit Forensic 9.5 recovers encryption keys for hard disks, secure Technology and BitLocker. the way that this software work is by scanning HD image searching for cryptographic keys and decrypt the image to make it in a clear file. Now the Software is available in several versions and there is a mobile version that gives user the ability to have it on a USB stick and use it directly on the desired machine without leaving any trace on it. This is not all because this tool also offers 8 different password recovery attacks (Dictionary , Brute-force, Xieva , Known Password/Part , Previous Passwords, Decryptum, SureZip , Join Attacks, and Append Attacks) these 8 types gives the user a way to customize the desired attack according to the type of file and available information so it reduces the Time of operation.

Hmmm ...

Suppose you decide to protect one of your documents from prying eyes. First, you create an encrypted copy using an encryption application. Then, you “wipe” (or “secure-delete”) the original document, which consists of overwriting it several times and deleting it. (This is necessary, because if you just deleted the document without overwriting it, all the data that was in the file would physically remain on the disk until it got overwritten by other data. See question above for an explanation of how file deletion works.) Ordinarily, this would render the original, unencrypted document irretrievable. However, if the original file was stored on a volume protected by the Volume Shadow Copy service and it was there when a restore point was created, the original file will be retrievable using Previous versions. All you need to do is right-click the containing folder, click Restore previous versions, open a snapshot, and, lo and behold, you’ll see the original file that you tried so hard to delete! The reason wiping the file doesn’t help, of course, is that before the file’s blocks get overwritten, VSC will save them to the shadow copy. It doesn’t matter how many times you overwrite the file, the shadow copy will still be there, safely stored on a hidden volume.

(via Bruce)

The Army Times reported on Tuesday that "ill-disciplined private security guards escorting supply convoys to coalition bases are wreaking havoc as they pass through western Kandahar province ... and undermining coalition efforts to bring a greater sense of security to the Afghan people, particularly because the locals associate the contractors with the coalition."

Bad Security turns everything it touches into 'FAIL'.

What makes this newsworthy is that the students are for keeping the current policy. Student-government spokesman Matt Strauch was surprised.  He said "I honestly thought students would be against guns on campus, and we just haven’t heard that. The majority of the comments we’ve received from students is that they are in support of having concealed-carry remain permitted on campus."   Indeed, from the comments on the first article I have found on this issue, the students understand perfectly what the issues are.  They know that disarming legal carriers will leave them more vulnerable than they are now.  They know that in a crisis such as happened at Virginia Tech, their best hope for stopping the killing is a normal person who is also armed on site with them. As one commenter put it, "An armed campus is a polite campus."

Gotta love it ...

London's High Court ruled against the British government on Tuesday over the use of secret evidence to deny terrorism suspects bail in what campaigners called an "historic" judgement. The government expressed disappointment at the "unhelpful" verdict, handed down over the case brought by two men suspected of terrorism-related activities, saying it would make it harder to keep the country safe. The court ruled that a person could not be denied bail solely on the basis of secret evidence.

Probably a case of too little, too late, but it's nice to hear anyway ...

Surveillance footage from Lowe’s Home Improvement in Lincolnton revealed two men purchasing the items needed to make the bomb just hours before the explosion, according to Sgt. Matt Painter with the Lincolnton Police Department.

So, are these the men most likely to have done it, or merely the men least able to defend themselves against the charges ...

The next time you head to the Ward County Courthouse, you may notice a new security process. Tuesday the Ward County commissioners voted to add a bypass lane for courthouse employees. The three to two vote in favor of the new policy comes after a recommendation by the courthouse security committee to institute a bypass for workers. Members of the general public will still have to go through the screening process each time they enter the courthouse.

Sounds like three out of five commissioners have lost sight of right and wrong ...

The six-week-long sniper's course was previously considered one of the last 'male bastions' in the army, but, according to the Ma'ariv daily, 13 of the 16 participants in the last round of training were women. The daily reported that women snipers stationed on the border between Israel and the Sinai peninsula recently prevented a half a tonne of drugs from entering Israel, when they took out two drug smugglers from a distance of one kilometre.

Cool ...

Aunt Jane roundup

MEXICO CITY – Six people died and two more were wounded in a series of violent incidents in the Mexican states of Baja California, Guerrero and Chihuahua, while a grenade attack on a police post caused damage but no injuries, officials said on Wednesday.

And

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration says Mexican authorities discovered an incomplete tunnel that extends into San Diego and is equipped with a lift system, ventilation and lighting. The DEA said Wednesday that the tunnel runs nearly 1,000 feet from its entry in Tijuana, Mexico, including 860 feet into the United States. There is no exit on the U.S. side.

That said, the survey also reveals that a licensed London taxi, of the 'black cab' variety, is one of the safest places you can lose a mobile phone in the UK. Apparently some 80% of the cabbies which took part said that owners were reunited with phones after the driver found them and handed them into the lost property service. Lose a mobile phone in the back of a New York taxi and, a parallel survey suggests, the chance of you getting it back drops to 66%. It's not all good news for Londoners though, a similar survey three years ago reported that you had a 96% chance of getting your lost property back, so it looks like cabbies are getting less honest as the recession bites.

Conditioning yourself to always put your phone or whatever back in its holder and not laying it wherever is convenient will also go a long way toward preventing your losing it ...

Momentum generated by photons, could cause the solar craft to accelerate continuously, eventually up to unprecedented speeds. The Planetary Society website states these speeds could be 5 to 10 times greater than those of chemical rockets. One of the co-founders of the organization indicated that number in the future could be nearly 100,000 mph.

Cool ...

The International Space Station, which was crowded last week with 12 astronauts onboard, is set to go down to a crew of two Tuesday. Seven astronauts departed the station Nov. 25 on the space shuttle Atlantis, and now three more station residents are set to undock from the orbital outpost Monday at 10:56 p.m. EST (0356 GMT Tuesday) to land their Russian Soyuz spacecraft at 2:16 a.m. EST (0716 GMT) Tuesday in Kazakhstan.

Interesting ...

A shooting involving the Mexican Army and suspected gang members took place Monday morning one block away from Tijuana City Hall. A car chase ended with the crash of a gold Chevy Suburban and left a police officer injured.

The four Seattle-cops were armed, and it didn't stop them from being shot. The "if-only everyone-were-armed" argument was crazy and reckless before this. Now it's been proven beyond a doubt to be absolutely ridiculous. Time to retire that one for good, Handgun Nation. Re-staging Tombstone, Ariz., circa 1889 is an irrational, wild fantasy at best.

Yeah, they definitely would have been better off unarmed ...

ANCHORAGE - Anchorage police have arrested a 16-year-old boy in connection with two pipe bombs and an improvised grenade allegedly found in his backpack at his home. The unnamed youth has been charged with one count of misconduct involving weapons, third degree, and misconduct involving a controlled substance, sixth degree, police said.

What? No terrorism charges ... Anchorage po-po must value their credibility more than some others we've seen lately ...

Bouncers at Jay-Z's 40/40 nightclub in Atlantic City, N.J. are facing assault charges after a video documenting the beating of two club patrons surfaced on YouTube. The video records events on the night of Saturday, Nov. 28 and shows a group of at least nine security guards repeatedly kicking and punching 26-year-old Tyrell Durant and 25-year-old Leonard Clark of Neptune, N.J. in the club's parking lot.

Hmmm ... unfortunate video ... no Security happening on it ...

OTTAWA - An unmarked OPP cruiser that was stolen overnight near Cornwall has been found but the gun, ammunition and pepper spray that were in the trunk is gone.

DETROIT (WXYZ) - The Detroit Police Department is asking for the public's help to locate an unmarked police car that was stolen on Detroit's east side.

Is it just me or have there been a lot of these lately ...?

Tijuana's public security spokesman says a fleet of brand new patrol cars has been burned in a Molotov cocktail attack. Ernesto Alvarez says the 28 vehicles were hit in the predawn attack at a Mazda dealership. Six were destroyed, the rest damaged but possibly reparable.

Here is a tutorial on how easy it is to crack an encryption that is not properly designed. For this tutorial, We are going to work with a really simple and weak algorithm - XECryption.

Interesting exercise ...

Of course I believe the TSA is being honest about its procedures. However, how many of us trust anyone with  naked images of ourselves? Aside from the violations to basic civil rights being argued in Congress, what security measures are in place to make sure there are absolutely no copies made? (Any basic smartphone can take screenshots.) Also will the “remotely located security officer” also be monitored to make sure they aren’t doing anything inappropriate?

There's a lot to be said for making it a felony for a TSA agent to take or allow to be taken and type of photo, etc. but even absent that, this is the only really effective method of ensuring that passengers don't have the MEANS of interfering with a flight. All the ID and profiling is foolish and utterly unnecessary if the passengers don't have the means to interfere ...

You often hear of travel guides telling you about things that you must do or see when you are in Vegas but we’re taking a different track here. Here is list of Ten Things You Should NOT DO in Vegas.

Arrive on vacation, depart on probation ...

Developed by the state-funded Agency for Defense Development, the K-11 consists of a semi-automatic 20mm smart grenade launcher, an under-slung assault rifle firing a standard 5.56mm NATO round, and a top-mounted computer-assisted sighting system with integrated rangefinder and thermal infrared night vision capabilities. 

I wonder if it works after you drop it ...

The first of class Astute nuclear powered attack submarine left BAE Systems’ shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness for the first stage of sea trials designed to prove its capability as the most formidable vessel of its kind ever operated by the Royal Navy.

I wish they were less totalitarianism-oriented these days ...

Also ...

The third Type-214 submarine was named after Ahn Jung-geun, a Korean independence fighter who assassinated Japan's first resident general, Hirobumi Ito, in 1909 in retaliation for Japan's annexation of Korea. The diesel-electric submarine, built by Hyundai Heavy Industries under technical cooperation with Germany's Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), is expected to play a key role in sea denial to North Korean and other hostile forces, and anti-submarine warfare, Navy officials said.