Israel is extending its Jericho III missile's range, developing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities and expanding its nuclear-tipped cruise missile enabled submarine fleet, The Guardian, quoting an independent committee report, said Monday.[ynetnews.com]

However, this wiretap arrangement doesn’t apply to the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES), which provides service for business customers and operates at a higher level of encryption. In fact, RIM maintains that it doesn’t even have the keys to encrypted emails on the BES, which is part of the reason this service is popular among corporate users.[pcmag.com]

The big story last week was the capture and summary execution of Libya’s strongman and self-styled African King of Kings, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. As I watched the gruesome footage of Gaddafi’s humiliation and death, at the hands of a baying mob, I was reminded of the words of Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States, who said that “The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know.” History is full of examples of self-assured and near mythical despots coming to an ignominious and brutal end. Let us consider a few random examples to illustrate the point.[monitor.co.ug]

Hundreds of people cowered for about two hours inside a shopping mall in this resort town Saturday while security forces traded sporadic gunfire with armed men in the parking lot and then searched stores for suspects.[washingtonpost.com]

"I'm not going to take anything off the table," House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., said on Thursday during an event at the American Enterprise Institute. However, "I do think that we've made rather significant reductions in our nuclear force, and I would be reluctant to go further."[nationaljournal.com]

Until they become unambiguously compromised, the nuke subs are probably the scariest weapons in our arsenal. No enemy wants his whole society reduced to a smoking glass crater ...

Also ...

Russia has successfully fired an intercontinental ballistic missile from a submerged submarine, military officials said.[upi.com]

And furthermore ...

To establish a secure link while remaining 100 metres underwater, submarines could transmit photons of laser light to satellites, for retransmission to base. With the key exchanged, the submarine could then communicate via laser pulses with guaranteed security.[newscientist.com]

A little How to: Encryption action from PC world ...

Russian shipyards are refusing to build submarines for the Russian Navy. This is the result of the government trying to rein in rapidly rising prices charged for military equipment. Actually, this is part of a larger battle against corruption, or suspected corruption, in Russian defense procurement. The situation has put the Defense Ministry in a difficult position.[strategypage.com]

Hmmm ... things are tight all over ...

The warning stems from an incident Thursday night. Police say a middle-aged woman was assaulted and robbed near a south Minneapolis Cub Foods. A witness, with a permit to carry, saw the incident, chased the attacker, and fired off at least one shot killing the suspect.[kare11.com]

Video included

This is an example of a robbery that would have gone a whole new direction if the vic had been minimally armed and ready to go. The perp had his back completely turned to the vic for a very long time ...

The United States dismantled the oldest nuclear bomb in its Cold War arsenal -- and one of the most powerful it ever built -- on Tuesday as part of President Barack Obama's nuclear security policy.[reuters.com]

As of today, Startpage, by Ixquick, the "world's most private search engine," automatically encrypts ALL searches. Startpage was the first search engine to offer SSL encryption in 2009, and today it again breaks new ground by making SSL encryption the default.[marketwatch.com]

Cool pics included

Now the conflict is over we can reveal British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Triumph had been stationed beneath the waves off Libya – and firing missiles.[mirror.co.uk]

Police took the gun from Martinez-Rodriguez and later interviewed him. He told police he worked as a securiity guard during the party at the Oasis Banquet Hall with five other security officers. He told police he fired his handgun in the air after hearing several gunshots from the parking lot.[ktvn.com]

Shooting over people's heads is a really bad idea ...

"When the People's Daily conducted an online poll on whether people would help a senior citizen who had fallen in the street, more than 80 per cent of those tallied said that they would not help out of fear they would be blamed and saddled with damages."[cbc.ca]

You know your judicial system is a mess when this happens ...

After discontinuing a security feature that let cardholders generate a one-time use number for transactions last month, Discover Financial Services did an about-face and reinstated its Secure Online Account Numbers program.[moneyland.time.com]

I'm surprised that all the CC issuers aren't embracing this ...

Google is rolling out default end-to-end encryption to people who use the site to seek for images, news and general webpages, a change that will better protect search queries and results from eavesdroppers.[theregister.co.uk]

Seems unlikely to protect you from Google's eavesdropping ...

China says the Dalai Lama’s support for Buddhist clerics who set themselves on fire to protest Chinese rule is a type of terrorism in disguise.[washingtonpost.com]

That's credible ...

A new study from McCann-Erickson has found that people around the globe are more worried about loss of personal privacy than they are about most other issues, including rising terrorism, climate change and the growing number of pandemics. The only thing that worries them more is the possibility of another global financial crisis.[mediapost.com]

Security researchers on Tuesday issued a warning about a virus, dubbed Duqu, that's similar in nature to the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian critical infrastructure last year.[pcmag.com]

IT security experts have long loved totroll through hacker forums to gather intelligence on emergingthreats and even (as in the ill-fated case of HBGaryFederalCEO Aaron Barr) try to profile the hackers themselves. Butas a report from IT security firm Imperva shows, many of theso-called hacker portals out there are more hangouts for newbie hackers(and possibly a few budding FBI informants) looking at how to getstarted in the game.[arstechnica.com]

Travelers say the questions typically focus on where they are headed, for how long and the purpose of the trip. More probing questions include whether carry-on bags have liquids or why the traveler is holding so much cash.

If a traveler doesn't have the wherewithal to interfere with a flight, where they're going, for how long and their purpose are totally irrelevant as are there intentions or any other consideration.

Video included - but you may wish you hadn't watched

This is really, really messed up ...

The encryption level prevents even government entities from accessing the information. “RIM cannot accommodate any request for a copy of a customer's encryption key, since at no time does RIM, or any wireless network operator or any third party, ever possess a copy of the key.”[greeleygazette.com]

I sure would have felt a lot better about this statement if they had made it loud and often while they were 'in talks' with these governments over the last few years ...

Video included

While Rayon McIntosh, the McDonald's cashier who was arrested after beating two unruly customers with a metal rod at the West 3rd Street joint, was charged with felony assault and criminal possession of a weapon, many people seemed to support his reaction.[gothamist.com]

Unfortunately, in most states the fact that they provoked you doesn't grant you permission to pound them into paste ...

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war, despite ongoing concerns about its security forces and the potential for instability.[usatoday.com]

If we actually do this, I believe it will go a long ways toward convincing the 'good' folks over there (if there are any, and it stands to reason that there are) that we really do intend to liberate and then leave ...

The recriminations spread into the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who faced warnings that he had only emboldened Hamas by giving so much for so little.[telegraph.co.uk]

Sounds like a rather heinous slap to Hamas, if you asked me ...

More than 10 hours later, they had pulled off one of Brazil's biggest bank heists -- emptying out more than 100 safe-deposit boxes for a multimillion-dollar bounty of rubies, Colombian emeralds, antique Rolex watches and cash.[reuters.com]

Hackers successfully broke into 93,000 accounts at Sony over the last few days, once again impacting users of the Sony Entertainment Network, PlayStation Network (PSN) and Sony Online Entertainment services.[nakedsecurity.sophos.com]

Under the proposed legislation, a court must presume a person (the property owner or lawful occupant) was justified in killing an intruder, regardless of whether the property owner reasonably believed the force was necessary to defend against imminent death or substantial harm.[wisbar.com]

"Good Dynamics is a platform that allows application developers to easily secure their apps on mobile devices without having to become security experts."[pcworld.com]

Video included

Thieves pretending to sell gold are caught on camera as they quietly switch out a bag of real gold worth thousands of dollars for a bag of fake gold worth nothing.[thedenverchannel.com]

There are lessons here, the main one being that people are planning to exploit every mistake you make ...

Many large-scale entertainment venues and other places that drawlarge crowds in Las Vegas and beyond use armed security guards. But the DGE and state Attorney General's Office must study the issue before taking the next step, Gilbert said.

What's to study. Vegas had pervasive armed Security, moved away from it, realized that it wasn't cost effective, and then move back. Apparently, it's okay for the scumbags to have guns in AC ...

The attack, developed by researchers at Germany's Ruhr University, takes about seven hours to recover the secret key protecting the Mifare DESFire MF3ICD40. The hack leaves no trace that the card has been compromised, and requires equipment costing $3,000.[theregister.co.uk]

Cool pics included

The latest state-of-the-art hunter-killer submarine set to join the Royal Navy, HMS Ambush, has successfully completed her first dive.[dailymail.co.uk]

Video included

The clerk that went to the right has some astonishingly large wallendas ...

If you follow the news, you probably know what happened to Sony PlayStation Network. In which case you also know why companies need to implement solid encryption solutions.[tmcnet.com]

The storage device connects to your computer via USB 3.0 port and has a data rate of up to 5 Gbps making it perfect for lots of photos and video backups. The drive inside the unit uses 256-bit AES full disk encryption as well.[slashgear.com]

Pics included

The 600-ton Fateh is among semi-heavy submarines belonging to Iran's Army which will probably been used to carry out coastal missions along with other submarines, including Ghadir, Fars news agency reported on Wednesday.[presstv.com]

They're probably OK as long as you don't have any western subs hunting you ...

An American mother and her son were two of four people shot to death in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico on Tuesday.[ibtimes.com]

HTC held true to its promise to look into the security vulnerability that surfaced over the weekend, an apparent glitch that allows any app requesting internet access to take a peek at a user account information, GPS location, system logs, and other potentially private data. While HTC assured us that user data isn't at risk of being harmed by its own software, a third party malware app could exploit the security flaw and cause some trouble. The outfit is already building a patch, and will ship it out in an over the air update after a short testing period with its carrier partners.[engadget.com]

Hmmm, they're being refreshingly up-front about the whole thing ...

Russian software vendor Elcomsoft has released a product that it says can crack BlackBerry smartphone passwords, if the BlackBerry owner has enabled a media-card encryption security setting.[fudzilla.com]

Fans initially were searched with security wands as they entered the stadium Sunday. But with big lines backing up, a team spokesman says the Packers and local police decided 30 minutes before kickoff to go back to their previous system of pat-downs.[boston.com]

In news that will no doubt be of great concern to owners of HTC smartphones, a security team is claiming to have uncovered a "massive security vulnerability" in HTC Android devices that allows any application with Internet access to gain access to private data, including user accounts, email addresses, GPS location, text message data and phone numbers. The vulnerability is said to affect HTC smartphones running the latest version of HTC's software, including the EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt, and others.[gizmag.com]

Mexican schools appear increasingly vulnerable to the country's drug violence, with five human heads dumped outside one school and threats of a grenade attack on another in the past week alone.[AFP]

It's just a matter of time until this is happening in San Diego or Phoenix if we don't knock it off ...

All of the products tested included the ability to remotely wipe personal data from a lost or stolen phone. The report states that "None of the products deleted all of the data irretrievably in the remote wipe test. In all cases it was possible to recover photos, music, documents and so on from the external storage card, even using a free program." Another potential problem occured when the security software accomplished its remote data wipe by resetting the phone's state to factory defaults. Admittedly, doing so wiped out personal data, but it also wiped out all apps, including the security app itself. After this step you could no longer track the phone's location.[pcmag.com]

 Hmmm ... troubling ...

79% of businesses rated as PCI-compliant fell out of compliance over the course of the year. In other words, their information security and risk management practices got worse.[informationweek.com]

State RCW 9A.16.110 – the only law like it anywhere in the country – provides reimbursement for anyone who must defend himself or herself in court after having to defend themselves against a violent crime and winding up facing criminal charges. Simply put, people subjected to prosecution for having acted in self-defense should not be financially penalized.[examiner.com]

You would think that Democrats would be leery about trying to undo this even under the guise of cost-cutting. No one is going to buy that as the reason for it.

Something has gone terribly wrong on the plant floor at ACME Specialty Chemical International Inc.[pcworld.com]

INL is probably a good place for this work to be done. They have a long history of being at the forefront of high-tech matters ...

“The 9- and 5-year-old boys were playing in the driveway when he called them over, while their mother was sitting inside a parked car,” Benton said. “Before Pochervina could speak to them, she asked him what he wanted and he said he ‘was going to ask if they’d seen someone wearing a Michael Myers ‘Halloween’ mask.’”[heraldnews.suntimes.com]

Video included

They prey on the kindness of strangers, creating a diversion that involves a man or woman in trouble and then ripping off the people who come to their aid or get stuck behind them.[myfoxspokane.com]

You should have your valuables in your front pockets or secured inside your bag if you're going to be in crowds ...