police"Texas to Create Online Border Patrol System"
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (CA) (06/05/06)
Operation Rio Grande, which uses law enforcement officers in Texas to help secure the state's border with Mexico, will receive $20 million in funding from the state of Texas over the next two years. This funding will help pay for an online-based border watch program in which images from high-tech surveillance cameras along the border can be viewed over the Internet. "By leveraging advanced video technology and the power of the World Wide Web, and with an increased financial commitment from the state of Texas, we can make our border stronger and our nation safer," said Perry. The $20 million will also help pay for body armor, night vision goggles, four-wheel drive vehicles, and overtime for officers. Perry criticized the federal government for not doing enough to protect the southern border, explaining that he is requesting an additional $100 million from the state to keep Operation Rio Grande operational until the federal government fulfills its border security responsibilities. http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_3899580
"Cameras to Keep Eye on Immigration"
Los Angeles Times (06/04/06); Marosi, Richard
High-tech infrared surveillance cameras capable of spotting people up to five miles away in darkness or daylight have become a crucial element in the effort to secure the United States' border with Mexico. The cameras have caused a large decline in the number of illegal border crossings at several border towns in southeastern Arizona. National Guard soldiers viewing images from the cameras can guide U.S. Border Patrol agents to the locations of illegal immigrants who are crossing the border or hiding in bushes. With the use of a control stick and the push of a few buttons, the views provided by the cameras are easy to control and change. High-tech cameras will soon be introduced along a six-mile stretch of the border in the San Diego area. In the town of Douglas, Ariz., more than a dozen surveillance camera towers watch over the town and the surrounding desert from a height of 60 feet. The cameras have helped produce a significant drop in the number of border apprehensions in the Douglas area--from 262,000 in 2000 to 71,000 in 2005.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/06/04/cameras_keep_eye_on_immigration/
"Report Faults Rescue Effort After Attacks in London"
New York Times (06/06/06) P. A8; Lyall, Sarah
There were many individual acts of incredible bravery among emergency personnel who responded to the July 7, 2005, London bombings, but the overall response effort was marred by communications problems, a lack of key equipment, delays in response, and ineffective care for the wounded, according to a highly critical report released Monday. The report from the July 7 Review Committee of the London Assembly concludes that the most serious problem was that fire fighters, police, and medical responders were unable to coordinate their response efforts because they were using different radio systems. Also, a shortage of communications equipment left first responders on the streets of London unable to communicate with responders in the subway below, forcing some to turn to cell phones, which performed erratically. London officials said that the communications problems have been addressed since the bombings. One of the report's key recommendations is that emergency services work more closely to coordinate their efforts so that if one emergency service declares a major attack, the others quickly do the same, increasing the overall response time. The report notes that there was a "complete absence of planning" for attending to the wounded and interviewing witnesses, including the collection of witnesses' contact information. In the event of another subway attack, emergency personnel should immediately be deployed to the subway stations at either end of the stricken train, the report recommends.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/06/world/europe/06britain.html
"City Police to Send Residents Electronic Crime Alerts"
Boston Globe (06/02/06); Samuels, Adrienne P.
Boston police officials report that a new crime alert system called CitizenObserver.com will inform local citizens about crimes committed in their communities via e-mail. Police officials are hopeful that the system will facilitate more community involvement, which could help officers fight rising crime in the area. Citizens will be able to use the system to provide information to investigators. Some other U.S. cities have implemented the technology. CitizenObserver.com is currently undergoing technology trials in three local police districts--Dorchester, Roxbury, and South Boston. The system, which reportedly cost just $1,475 to implement, will eventually expand to cover the entire city. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/06/02/city_police_to_send_residents_electronic_crime_alerts/
"Peru Gets Computers Into Squad Cars"
La Salle News Tribune (06/05/06); Sage, Tom
The Peru Police Department obtained two Panasonic CF-29 Toughbooks through an Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority match grant that paid all but $3,240.50 of the $12,962 total cost. The two computers were purchased for placement in two city squad cars. The Toughbooks are connected to a wireless network that allows officers to conduct information searches of the state police database. However, officers must first obtain certification from the Law Enforcement Agency Data System before they can use the technology. The Toughbooks' features include illumination of the computer screen during nighttime and a touch screen for facilitating faster use.
http://www.newstrib.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=20653&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=207&S=1
"Speedy Tickets: Technology Simplifies Procedure For Police"
Lawrence Journal-World (KS) (06/05/06); Lawhorn, Chad
New technology may be able to help Lawrence, Kan., police officers write tickets with the use of bar code scanners and portable printers. The system is being pushed by the city's Municipal Court, which is paying the approximately $100,000 cost. An officer will be able to scan the magnetic strip on the back of a driver's license, which puts all the information from the license into an electronic document. The traditional way to write tickets generally takes about four minutes, while the new process will take about one minute. Officers will now be able to keep a better eye motorists and passengers. "You know, 99.9 percent of the time, it is going to be a general citizen who is in the vehicle, and they won't cause you any problems," says Sgt. Dan Ward with the Lawrence Police Department. "But you can't take the risk of not coming home to your family." Municipal Court manager Vicky Stanwix says the system will allow her staff to spend more time seeking payments for unpaid parking tickets and fines. The new system is already in one patrol car and is expected to be in about a half-dozen more cars within one month.
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2006/jun/05/speedy_tickets_technology_simplifies_procedure_pol/
"State Corrections Officials Work to Track Down Sex Offenders"
Stevens Point Journal (Wis.) (06/02/06) P. 1A; Thornton, Patrick
The Department of Corrections is getting help from retired law enforcement officers, global positioning satellite (GPS) technology, and an Internet database in an effort to catch several of Wisconsin's unregistered sex offenders. Gov. Jim Doyle started the project this past September and found more than 600 offenders as a result. The state wants to send a message to the offenders who have not registered, according to Department of Corrections Secretary Matt Frank. The state boasts about 5,000 offenders in prison and 5,000 more are on supervised release, but several of them who are supposed to be registered are not. "Those are the people we are really focusing on," says Frank. "When a sex offender lives in anonymity, the likelihood for problems increases." Gov. Doyle has allocated money to increase the number of offenders who will be monitored using GPS software. More than 225 offenders will have to wear bracelets by the end of the year.
"Fairview Police Department Receives Auto Theft Tracking Devices"
Tennessean (06/01/06); Stephens, Nancy
LoJack has provided three Stolen Vehicle Recovery Computers to the Fairview, Tenn., Police Department to aid in the retrieval of stolen automobiles in the area. The computers track vehicles that have a LoJack anti-theft device inside by using wireless radio-frequency technology. The computers enjoy a 90 percent retrieval success rate. Three Fairview police officers recently obtained training on the computers and theft deterrent tools through the state's homeland security office. Officers from 18 other local and regional law enforcement divisions also took part. The LoJack initiative also involves the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's Data System. According to police officer Phil Jarosz, "the equipment, installation, and service is totally free. It doesn't cost the city, the department, or the citizens anything." The LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery System is compatible with a variety of vehicles such as cars and dump trucks that carry a small wireless radio frequency transceiver. After a person reports a stolen vehicle to the police, the computer compares the vehicle identification number to those in the LoJack system. If a match is authenticated the LoJack device turns on and issues inaudible radio signals from the radio transceiver. Police cruisers featuring LoJack equipment can track these signals.
http://www.fairviewobserver.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060601/MTCN0601/306010113/1322/MTCN06
"Police Take Steps to Fill Gaps in Radio Coverage"
Baltimore Sun Online (06/01/06); Shields, Nick
As they communicate through radio calls, police officers in Baltimore County, Md., often experience "dead zones" in which their radios lose signals. In an effort to counter such problems the Baltimore County Police Department has purchased more than $500,000 in new equipment over the past two years. A total of 156 new mobile radios have been acquired that measure about 9 inches long and are primarily installed underneath cruisers' dashboard. Each mobile radio cost about $3,900, says Cpl. Michael Hill, who also serves as a spokesman. The mounted mobile radios feature 15 watts to 30 watts of power, while the portable radios carried by officers have 3 watts of power, he says. County leaders say that when a problem with signals is encountered, it is referred to the FCC. Prior to entering a dead spot, a police officer might notify a police dispatch official about his or her whereabouts, so another officer could be sent to that area if necessary. County officials say the problem occurs most frequently near the perimeters of the coverage areas of the county's eight radio transmission towers. Police radio signals might also become weak when strong outside radio signals are on frequencies adjacent to public safety frequencies. In Anne Arundel County, the number of transmission towers was boosted from four to seven, says police spokesman Lt. David D. Waltemeyer Jr. The county hopes to have a total of 10 transmission towers by the end of 2006, which is likely to increase the coverage rate to 97 percent, Waltemeyer said.
"Perry Plan Would Fight Immigration With Border Cameras"
El Paso Times (TX) (06/02/06) P. 1A; Grissom, Brandi
On June 1, Texas Gov. Rick Perry discussed two strategies designed to thwart the entry of illegal aliens into the state. The $5 million Virtual Border Watch Program involves the placing of hundreds of surveillance cameras on the properties of private citizens who live or farm near the border with Mexico. Camera footage would be accessible though the Internet so residents could inform law enforcement if they see any suspicious activity. Perry said the entire cost would be paid for by the state and that the first cameras were likely to launch transmission within a month. He also said the cameras would be placed in high-crime areas and would feature night vision. A 1-800 number will allow people to report incidents to policing agencies. Perry also announced an expansion of the Operation Rio Grande project that comprises multiple agencies and facilitates data swapping among border police. Perry pledged to distribute $20 million to sheriffs' departments and police departments lying within 100 miles of the border to fund more equipment, technology, and overtime pay. He added that he would request the state Legislature to endorse an extra $100 million for Operation Rio Grande in 2007 so that more personnel could be "on the ground." http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_3889505
"Internet Firms Told to Keep Records on Customers Longer"
Washington Post (06/02/06) P. D5; Sherman, Mark
Internet companies have been instructed by leading law enforcement officials to hold onto customer records for a longer period of time in order to help in investigations of terrorism and child pornography, and a meeting between industry representatives and Justice Department officials to discuss the issue is scheduled for today. Privacy concerns were raised by ISP executives a week earlier at a conference with FBI director Robert Mueller III and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, where the issue of longer record retention was first brought up, according to Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand on Thursday. Gonzales has said that some child pornography investigations have been hampered because Internet firms do not keep records long enough. Brand said Gonzales has not yet decided how to move forward and that the Justice Department would give privacy consideration. She insisted that whatever proposal is presented would not mandate the preservation of customers' communications content. The information would be held by the companies, and could be acquired by the government through legal channels. No sweeping requirements exist for preservation of data, though federal authorities can request the maintenance of records for as long as half a year if there is suspicion of criminal activity. Google made an official statement that "Any proposals related to data require careful review and must balance the legitimate interests of individual users, law enforcement agencies and Internet companies."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/01/AR2006060102216.html
"GPS Tracking Leads to Megan's Law Arrest"
Associated Press (05/31/06)
Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking technology has enabled New Jersey police to arrest a sex offender under Megan's law, which requires sex offenders to register with police when changing residences. Thomas Ziniewicz allegedly moved in with his girlfriend without notifying local police. The case is the first in which the technology led to an arrest of a sex offender under Megan's Law. GPS technology showed that Ziniewicz spent 21 days at his new residence. Ziniewicz was previously convicted of sexually assaulting two young girls, one younger than 13. New Jersey's 200-plus sex offenders considered to have the highest risk for recidivism are required to wear GPS bracelets. http://www.ap.org
"Government, Internet Firms in Talks Over Browsing Data"
Washington Post (06/03/06) P. D3; Ahrens, Frank
The U.S. Justice Department and FBI are holding discussions with leading companies in the Internet field to convince companies to retain data on Web surfing for possible use in child pornography and terrorism cases. Google, Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft, and others are involved in the negotiations, and Microsoft has stated that the issue of consumer Internet privacy and retaining data is best seen as a balance of privacy and law enforcement concerns. The Justice Department and FBI may seek legislation from Congress requiring data retention. They hope to base their request on a potential industry consensus solution outlined in these ongoing negotiations. However, in the first meeting between the Justice Department and the companies, government officials were stern in their demands. The second meeting featured more of a dialogue. Internet companies are wary of changing the current process so drastically that it degrades consumer privacy on the Internet. Currently ISPs and Internet companies refer possible illegal activity online, such as viewing child pornography, to law enforcement officials. Officials then must return with a warrant or subpoena to obtain Web surfing records. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201610.html
"Police Putting Cameras in Patrol Cars"
Birmingham News (AL) (05/31/06) Vol. 119, No. 79, P. 1SC; Daniels, Malcomb
The Alabaster, Ala., Police Department has begun equipping police cruisers with cameras that tape roadside stops and other vehicles traveling roadways. Six of the department's new cruisers have the technology, which stores footage on a laptop computer. The cameras are part of the DigitalPatroller System offered by Integrian of North Carolina. The cameras can provide clear evidence of the behavior of officers and suspects during all traffic stops, but are perhaps most useful in DUI cases. Alabaster Police Capt. Curtis Rigney indicated that the department will equip each new police car with the cameras, which cost $6,000 each. The use of the hard drive makes the cumbersome process of handling and storing tapes of incidents obsolete. http://www.bhamnews.com
"Finding Computer Files Hidden in Plain Sight"
Ames Laboratory (05/24/06)
While criminals or terrorists are likely to arouse the suspicion of government agents by sending encrypted files over email, software programs now enable a practice known as steganography, where files are hidden within other files, such as photographic images. Researchers at Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory have been exploring the emerging discipline of detecting those hidden files, or steganalysis. JPEG files and other electronic images are perfect for concealing such files because they can be found by the thousands in any given computer and can be emailed by anyone or found all across Web. With the aid of steganographic, or stego, techniques, users can make slight alterations to the color values of an image to conceal the bits of data that comprise a secret file, or payload, that can represent anything from unlawful financial transactions to child pornography. "We're taking very simple stego techniques and trying to find statistical measures that we can use to distinguish an innocent image from one that has hidden data," said Clifford Bergman, professor of mathematics at ISU. "One of the reasons we're focusing on images is there's lots of 'room' within a digital image to hide data. You can fiddle with them quite a bit and visually a person can't see the difference." Ones and zeros can represent the payload file, which the stego program compares to the ones and zeros of the image file's pixel values. The recipient can then retrieve the secret file by decrypting and reconstructing the payload's data string. The researchers are developing a system known as an artificial neural net (ANN) to help review and detect hidden files within images. They trained the ANN with a database of "clean" images and then altered them using stego techniques to greatly expand the database and provide a basis for comparison. The ANN identified 92 percent of the stego images in preliminary tests, while only flagging 10 percent of clean images, and the researchers hope to refine it further. http://www.external.ameslab.gov/final/News/2006rel/Steganalysis.htm
"Data Mining: The New Weapon in the War on Terrorism?"
Federal Computer Week (05/29/06) Vol. 20, No. 17, P. 38; Sternstein, Aliya
The data-mining technology needed to support a massive government initiative to ferret out terrorists through analysis of phone records will be costly and computationally intensive, and could compromise the privacy of ordinary U.S. citizens. While it is uncertain if the government is actually using data-mining techniques to sift through the tens of millions of records it has collected from Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T, it would need supercomputers comparable to IBM's Blue Gene to derive meaningful information from a dataset so large, says Nathan Hoskin of Planning Systems. Hoskin estimates that such a system would cost between $20 million and $50 million. To effectively mine the data, the system would use clustering algorithms to focus on relationships between similar data, link analysis to find connections between disparate data, and rule mining to find patterns within the data. Privacy advocates warn that giving the government unfettered access to citizens' phone records, even in the name of fighting terrorism, could lead to a host of civil rights violations without ever producing a lead. Critics have compared the possible data-mining initiative to the aborted Total Information Awareness program envisioned by the Defense Department to preemptively combat terrorist attacks by analyzing patterns within a huge repository of electronic data. Data-mining experts say that even if the phone companies are not turning over customers' personal identifying information such as names and street addresses, the government could easily retrieve that information from other databases and services. While data mining does not go as far as wiretapping, privacy advocates warn that the threat is very real. "Listening to the content of calls is more intrusive, but nobody should underestimate the privacy invasion that's involved in tracing who's talking to whom," said the ACLU's Jay Stanley, adding that mining records of phone calls for terrorists is inefficient and tantamount to labeling the entire U.S. population as suspects. http://www.fcw.com/article94641-05-29-06-Print
"Paving the Way"
Law Enforcement Technology (05/06) P. 74; Brehler, Joseph
The Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information Systems (CLEMIS) has provided law enforcement agencies based in southeast Michigan with an effective database system for fighting crime. CLEMIS, which is operated by the Department of Information Technology for Oakland County, Mich., originated as a batch reporting system in 1968. However, CLEMIS has evolved into a complex information sharing system that offers computer aided dispatch (CAD) with geographical information system (GIS) support, a records management system, mobile/MDC data communications, prisoner processing, and training services. The broadened capabilities of the system are based on standards set by the Michigan Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN) organization. The CLEMIS Advisory Committee oversees data security concerns, support of application development, and other tasks related to the information system. CLEMIS obtained $17.6 million from the 1999 COPS MORE Technology Grant that enabled financing of both technology and resources. Participants save money by pooling their funding into a single system. CLEMIS, which also has backup system, provides officers with an enhanced opportunity to identify suspects that have allegedly committed crimes in any of the participants' territories. http://www.officer.com/magazines/let/
"Safety First"
American City & County (05/06) Vol. 121, No. 5, P. 44; Settles, Craig
Cities and counties across the country are using citywide WiFi networks not just to provide free Internet access to residents, but to help support law enforcement as well. New Orleans is one city that has benefited from using WiFi technology to assist law enforcement. After New Orleans began using a video surveillance system over a WiFi network in 2004, the murder rate in the neighborhoods where the system was installed dropped by 58 percent, according to the city's CIO Greg Meffert. Similar reductions were seen in other types of violent crime, he added. Other cities are also using WiFi technology to assist police officers in the field. Oklahoma City, for example, is testing a network this month that was originally planned to allow police to complete reports in the field and access mug shots and centralized records. However, officials are considering expanding its use to geographic information systems to automatically route fire trucks around hazards or direct fire fighters to hydrants with the highest water pressure. The system may eventually include a VoIP system with universal phone numbers and message routing for police officers to improve communications with residents. http://americancityandcounty.com/mag/government_safety_first_2/index.html
September 28th
hpettus
August 28th
August 24th
August 17th
kathrynleann
August 7th
yugozugzwang
July 2nd
June 18th
Geekity14
whatethelsays
freakofnature
jimshields
June 17th
soapboxtop
May 27th
ontheway
