Security by Robot

Bob the security robot (left) moves around at the G4S Technology offices in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.

It may look more like the robot from 'Lost in Space' than the terrifying droids in 'Terminator', but this machine could be the future of fighting crime.

Bob, the first robotic security guard in the UK, is the latest recruit employed by G4S to help secure its headquarters in Gloucestershire.

When the metal minder spots something out of place, he stores the information on his internal hard-drive and quickly reports it to his human counterparts.

The autonomous android can even speak to his colleagues, ask for help when he gets stuck, and plug himself in to charge when his battery runs low.

The blue machine is part of a £7.2 million ($12.2 million) robot pilot project by the University of Birmingham to get robots in offices around the world.

"Bob is not about replacing our security officers; the security officers are at the point of use," said G4S spokesman Stewart Angell.  "They are able to make incisive, very, very quick decisions about changes in the environment.  Bob is a complimentary activity that can do guard tours over a period of time overnight or during the day, but also pick up on some of the low level activities that the guard doesn't necessary need to be involved in."

Bob knows the floor plan of the office in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, and rolls from room to room, scanning and filming in 3D.

If he spots something has changed since his last visit, he analyses it and sends the information to a real security guard.  

Using cameras and scanners he is able to create a map of his surrounding area, plotting the location of desks and chairs, as well as detecting people moving, and learning how the environment changes. 

Dr Nick Hawes, from the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham, said: 

"Current robots aren't very good with their hands, or able to manipulate objects, however Bob is good at driving around and monitoring objects, so is perfect for a job in security as a night or day watchman where he can monitor what is going on in his immediate surroundings."

Assassination Program

The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. 

Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.

The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.

In one tactic, the NSA “geolocates” the SIM card or handset of a suspected terrorist’s mobile phone, enabling the CIA and U.S. military to conduct night raids and drone strikes to kill or capture the individual in possession of the device.

The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.

One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. 

Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

Some top Taliban leaders, knowing of the NSA’s targeting method, have purposely and randomly distributed SIM cards among their units in order to elude their trackers. 

“They would do things like go to meetings, take all their SIM cards out, put them in a bag, mix them up, and everybody gets a different SIM card when they leave,” the former drone operator says. “That’s how they confuse us.”     Read More:

Stealth Submarine

Russia has launched its new state-of-the-art Novorossiysk submarine, which set sail from a St Petersburg shipyard to become the first of six diesel-electric stealth subs delivered to the Russian Black Sea fleet in the next two years.

The Novorossiysk belongs to the Varshavyanka-class (Project 636), which is characterized by advanced stealth technology, making it virtually undetectable when submerged.

“Our potential opponents call it the ‘Black Hole’ due to the very low noise emission and visibility of the submarine,” Konstantin Tabachny, captain of the Novorossiysk, told Channel One TV. “To be undetectable is the main quality for a submarine. And this whole project really fits its purpose.”

The construction of the Novorossiysk at St Petersburg’s Admiralty Shipyards took over three years, beginning in August 2010.

Construction was also started on two other Varshavyanka-class vessels – the Rostov-on-Don sub in November 2011 and the Stary Oskol in August 2012. 

Armed with 18 torpedoes and eight surface-to-air missiles, they have an extended combat range and can strike land, surface and underwater targets.

The Novorossiysk and other subs of its class can reach a speed of 20 knots (37 kilometers per hour). 

With a cruising range of 400 miles on electric propulsion and max submission of 300 meters, the vessels have the ability to patrol for up to 45 days with a crew of 52 people onboard.   

The Varshavyanka-class subs will be tasked with patrolling Russia’s maritime borders and protecting Black Sea coastal territories.

The Novorossiysk will be deployed in its namesake port of Novorossiysk, on the Black Sea.  

The sub will make the two-month journey to its home port under its own power, said Rear Admiral Victor Bursuk, the deputy commander of the Russian Navy.

Middle East Hackers

When Israel's military chief delivered a high-profile speech this month outlining the greatest threats his country might face in the future, he listed computer sabotage as a top concern, warning a sophisticated cyberattack could one day bring the nation to a standstill.

Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was not speaking empty words. Exactly one month before his address, a major artery in Israel's national road network in the northern city of Haifa was shut down because of a cyberattack, cybersecurity experts tell The Associated Press, knocking key operations out of commission two days in a row and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity because the breach of security was a classified matter, said a Trojan horse attack targeted the security camera system in the Carmel Tunnels toll road on Sept. 8. A Trojan horse is a malicious computer program that users unknowingly install that can give hackers complete control over their systems.

The attack caused an immediate 20-minute lockdown of the roadway. The next day, the expert said, it shut down the roadway again during morning rush hour. It remained shut for eight hours, causing massive congestion.

The expert said investigators believe the attack was the work of unknown, sophisticated hackers, similar to the Anonymous hacking group that led attacks on Israeli websites in April. He said investigators determined it was not sophisticated enough to be the work of an enemy government like Iran.

The expert said Israel's National Cyber Bureau, a two-year-old classified body that reports to the prime minister, was aware of the incident. The bureau declined comment, while Carmelton, the company that oversees the toll road, blamed a "communication glitch" for the mishap.

While Israel is a frequent target of hackers, the tunnel is the most high-profile landmark known to have been attacked. It is a major thoroughfare for Israel's third-largest city, and the city is looking to turn the tunnel into a public shelter in case of emergency, highlighting its importance.

To read more, click here…

Brazilian Wisdom

Brazil is considering ways to make local use of the internet less dependent on US-based services, following leaks about Washington's cyberspy operations.

The South American nation has suggested forcing internet firms to open data centers in Brazil, which would be used to store locally generated material.

It is also pursuing a plan to build a new internet cable.  The project would offer a way for data to bypass the US.

Brazil's President, Dilma Rousseff, has postponed a state visit to Washington after allegations that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had targeted her emails and phone calls.

It has also been alleged that the NSA hacked state-run oil company Petrobras and intercepted billions of emails and calls to Brazilians.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has previously defended the NSA's actions, saying they were necessary to combat terrorism.

"Brazil and other countries will understand exactly what we are doing, why and how - and we will work together to make sure that whatever is done is done in a way that respects our friends and our partners," he said last month on a visit to the country.

Brazil's IT policy secretary Virgilio Almeida has suggested that internet firms would have to operate data centers in the country, which would make them subject to local privacy laws.

Her decision to cancel (or officially, to postpone) the Washington visit will be seized upon by some as an act of petty nationalism.

Some Brazilian business leaders, worried by the precarious economic climate, will question the wisdom of antagonizing such an important business.

But the political pressure was greater still. There was fury in Brazil, not only at the revelation that the president's own conversations and communications may have been spied upon by the NSA but that US interests were allegedly involved in blatant economic espionage against major Brazilian interests, including Petrobras.

Dilma Rousseff will have been aware of the feelings of ordinary Brazilians had her Washington trip gone ahead.

The perception here in Brazil is that the Obama administration has yet to give an adequate response or an apology.

In addition, he said, the government might move to ensure that its own data about tax information and other sensitive subjects would be stored locally rather than in the cloud.

Last week a Brazilian official specifically named Facebook, Google and Microsoft as examples of companies that would have to change their practices, according to a report by the Reuters news agency.

The three companies are among those that have acknowledged handing over data about "national security matters" after legally binding requests from the US authorities.  Read more:

OMG... It's a Breast Bomb!

Security has been beefed up after intelligence al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on airlines flying out of London Heathrow Airport is on high terror alert amid fears women suicide bombers are ready to strike with ­explosives concealed in breast implants.

Security checks have been beefed up after “credible” intelligence that al-Qaeda is plotting attacks on airlines flying out of London.

One staff member said: “There are genuine fears over this.

"We have been told to pay particular attention to females who may have concealed hidden explosives in their breasts.

“This is particularly difficult for us to pick up but we are on a very high state of alert.

“It’s led to long queues here at Heathrow – much longer than usual at this time of the year.

“But because it’s the summer holiday season, no one has complained.”

Al-Qaeda’s chief bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri is understood to have developed the method of foiling airport scanners by concealing ­explosives in an implant or bodily cavity.

It is also feared there is no shortage of ­volunteers willing to take part in an atrocity after hundreds of extremists recently escaped from prison in Pakistan.

Explosives expert Andy Oppenheimer said: “There is a great fear that al-Qaeda are planning on using internal devices to try and get through airport scanners.

"These explosives could be in breast implants.”

Another specialist, who asked not to be named, said breast implant bombs could be set off by injecting another liquid.

The expert added: “Both are very difficult to pick up with current technology and they are petrified al-Qaeda are a step ahead here.

“It’s pretty top secret and potentially very grisly and ghastly.”

Independent security analyst Paul Beaver said: “There are currently deeply serious concerns over body cavities and implants of all kinds – including breast implants – being used to hide explosives.

"It is taking longer to get through Heathrow and other airports in Europe and North America because of these fears.

“They are taking longer to screen people and there is definitely some sort of profiling going on.

“The general alert state remains the same in the UK but overseas, the recent Pakistan prison breakouts and foiled attacks in Yemen are raising fears of a new jihadist wave of violence.”

Terrorists are believed to be plotting attacks with the explosive pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN.

It is also feared they may have ­developed an undetectable liquid explosive that could be soaked into clothing.

For a suicide bomber sat in a window seat it would take only a relatively small blast to blow a lethal hole in a plane’s fuselage.

Mr Beaver added: “The terrorist is getting clever, but so are detection methods.

“The fact we know about the new methods suggests there are detection and counter-measure options.

“Implant bombs are a one-way ticket anyway so the suicide bomber won’t care what the trigger might be.

"It would have to be simple and straightforward – perhaps electrical.”

Forgers Know No Boundaries

A museum in China has a problem. It seems to have a few fakes in its vast collection. Well, as many as 40,000. Everything it owns may be nothing more than a mass of crude forgeries.

Wei Yingjun, a consultant to the Jibaozhai Museum in Jizhou, about 150 miles south of Beijing, insists the situation is not that bad. He is "quite positive" that 80 or even more pieces out of tens of thousands in the museum are authentic. 

Beijing Museum

In spite of this sterling defence, regional authorities in Hebei province have closed the museum amid a national scandal driven by some very free speech on China's internet. One online satirist suggested it should reopen as a museum of fakes – "If you can't be the best, why not be the worst?"

Maybe that's a good idea. All museums have a couple of fakes in their collections. Sometimes they own up to them, sometimes they put any dubious artifacts in a dark storeroom – and sometimes they don't know. But a collection that its accusers claim is entirely inauthentic is in its way a masterpiece of museology.

It's not like Jibaozhai is a small museum – it has 12 vast halls and cost 60 million Yuan (about £6m) to build, opening its doors in 2010 during a culture boom that is seeing about 100 museums open every year across China. Unfortunately, it's hard to fill that many museums, and China also has a prolific faking industry. Art factories export low-cost fake Rembrandt and Van Goghs, while antique shops are full of eye-fooling replicas of classical Chinese art.

In one of his provocative works, Ai Weiwei smashes what appears to be a priceless historic vase. He is drawing attention to modern China's uneasy relationship to its long cultural past. This is a land with a continuous art tradition going back to prehistoric times – yet this creative past was severed from the present by the revolution of the 20th century. Surely the demand for museums across China reflects a desire to reconnect with a great heritage. The museum of fakes may be an absurd side-effect. But the angry and precise criticism that exposed it is a triumph of citizenship.

US Security Fallout

Neelie Kroes (below), European commissioner for digital matters, who said: 'If I were an American cloud provider, I would be quite frustrated with my government right now.'

European businesses are likely to abandon the services of American internet providers because of the National Security Agency surveillance scandal, the European commission has warned.

Neelie Kroes (left), the commission vice-president who speaks on digital affairs, predicted that providers of cloud services, which allow users to store and access data on remote servers, could suffer significant loss of business if clients fear the security of their material is under threat.

The warning came as it appeared that the Americans and the Europeans were to start investigating alleged breaches of data privacy in the EU as well as US intelligence and espionage practices.

Despite threats from France to delay long-awaited EU-US negotiations on a new transatlantic free trade pact, scheduled to open in Washington on Monday, EU ambassadors in Brussels reached a consensus on Thursday to go ahead with the talks.

They could not yet agree, however, on how to respond to a US offer of parallel talks on the NSA scandal, the Prism and Tempora programmes and issues of more traditional espionage arising from reports of how US agencies bugged and tapped the offices and embassies of the EU and several member states.

Dalia Grybauskaitė, the president of Lithuania, said on Thursday that she was not seeking an apology from the Americans. Lithuania takes over the rotating six-month EU presidency this week.

While no decision had yet been taken, she said she hoped the EU-US talks on electronic surveillance would also be launched on Monday and run concurrently. Since much of the alleged US hovering up of telephone and internet traffic in Europe is assumed to amount to commercial and industrial espionage, the two parallel sets of talks will affect one another.      Read more: 

FEELING SAFE

Security SNAFU’s

of 2012

The year started off with the FBI raiding the cloud file-sharing and storage Megaupload site, based in Hong Kong and founded by 38-year-old New Zealand resident Kim Dotcom, on content piracy charges to the tune of $175 million. And that action, supported by the U.S industries which hailed it as bringing down a big fish that was devouring their intellectual property, has triggered a year's worth of lawsuits and retributions from all even remotely involved.

For February, right in the midst of a conference call the FBI was having with its agents and law-enforcement officials overseas at Scotland Yard, cybercriminals hacked their way into the phone conversation, recorded it and posted it online. The conversation was about hackers facing charges in the U.K. The group Anonymous took credit for the intercepted call. The FBI said it appeared likely the cybercriminals may have hacked into a law-enforcement official's email to get the information for the conference call dial-in.

Then in March, at least 228,000 Social Security numbers were exposed in a March 30 breach involving a Medicaid server at the Utah Department of Health, according to officials from the Utah Department of Technology Services and Utah Department of Health, which theorized that attacks from Eastern Europe bypassed security controls because of configuration errors. In May, Utah CIO Steven Fletcher resigned because of it.

In April, The Federal Communication Commission fined Google $25,000, asserting the search-engine giant impeded an investigation into how Google collected data while taking photos for its Street View mapping feature. The FCC maintained in a report that Google "deliberately impeded and delayed" the investigation for months by not responding to requests for information and documents.

As far as the month of May was concerned, hackers claimed to have breached the systems of the Belgian credit provider Elantis and threatened to publish confidential customer information if the bank did not make an extortion payment of $197,000. Elantis confirmed the data breach but said the bank will not give in to extortion threats.

In June, The University of Nebraska in Lincoln acknowledged a data breach that exposed information of more than 654,000 files of personal information on students and employees, plus parents and university alumni. The information was stolen from the Nebraska Student Information Systems database; a student is the suspected culprit.

Now,

let’s take a look

 at the

second half

of the year.

July witnessed Symantec inadvertently crippled a large number of Windows XP machines when it shipped customers a defective update to its antivirus software. The security firm acknowledged the problem that impacted users of its Endpoint Protection software.

In  August, Knight Capital Group said electronic-trading glitches in its system caused wild price swings in dozens of stocks and would likely result in a $440 million loss to the brokerage firm, one of the biggest players in the U.S. stock market. The New York Stock Exchange canceled trades in six stocks that experienced the most pronounced price swings of more than 30% of their opening price one morning.

As far as September was concerned, websites of broadcaster Al Jazeera were knocked offline as its Domain Name Servers were attacked. A group called Al-Rashedon claimed responsibility, displaying a Syrian flag and large red stamp reading "Hack."

In October, typically the month for mischief, hackers again grabbed 300,000 records from Northwest Florida State College computer systems, including names, Social Security numbers and bank routing numbers of students, teachers, staff and retirees, the school disclosed, saying the data breach apparently occurred between May and September, resulting in the identify theft of at least 50 employees.

For November, Twitter sent notices of an attempted hijacking to China-based foreign journalist and analysts just hours before apologizing for resetting the passwords of more users than necessary in a recent break-in of accounts. Twitter provided no details on the hacking but some, including Voice of America, speculated it may have been a censorship crackdown associated with China's Communist Party.

And, so far in December, secret information on counter-terrorism shared among foreign governments may have been compromised in a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for Switzerland's intelligence service, known as the NDB. According to news reports, Swiss authorities said the IT technician, arrested last summer for alleged data theft, apparently downloaded terabytes of classified intelligence material onto portable hard drives, and carried them out in a backpack.  To read about all the SNAFUS

BOY,

DO I NOW

FEEL

REALLY  SAFE!

Protective Custody

It has been over 10 years since a foreign country invaded the sovereign soil of The United States, and that incursion is still referred to as 9/11.  It was potently humiliating but humbling to know that Arab Extremists could penetrate our security and defenses. 

And, even though we have resurrected a monument to that invasion and conduct solemn remembrances of that day, for the most part, most Americans go about their daily routines as if it never happened at all.  I am sure much has been written and will be written about America’s ability to disengage itself , that invasion of our privacy, especially among those who do not live in New York City; in fact, I would venture to say that the farther one lives from New York City, the quicker the memory fades about that day.

Is this how we survive or is this how we refuse to admit that we are vulnerable?  It seems almost impossible that with our military superiority in all areas (air, land, & sea) that this could ever happen again.  Our internal homeland security systems and US Coast Guard protecting our shores really nails down reasons for us to feel so safe.  However, it is not as simple as that.

 

click to enlarge

On June 27, a plane carrying Wen Jiabao made a “technical” stop on the island of Terceira, in the Azores. Following an official greeting by Alamo Meneses, the regional secretary of environment of the sea, the Chinese premier spent four hours touring the remote Portuguese outpost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Wen’s Terceira walkabout, which followed a four-nation visit to South America, largely escaped notice at the time, but alarm bells should have immediately gone off in Washington and in European capitals. For one thing, Wen’s last official stop on the trip was Santiago, the capital of Chile. Flights from Chile to China normally cross the Pacific, not the Atlantic, so there was no reason for his plane to be near the Azores. Moreover, those who visit the Azores generally favor other islands in the out-of-the-way chain.

 

This story was reported by Gordon G. Chang on November 5, 2012 3:00 A.M., in an article entitled:  Red Flag Over the Atlantic China is angling to take over a U.S. airbase in the Azores. The article continues below:

 

If China controlled the base, the Atlantic would no longer be secure. From the 10,865-foot runway on the northeast edge of the island, Chinese planes could patrol the northern and central portions of the Atlantic and thereby cut air and sea traffic between the U.S. and Europe. Beijing would also be able to deny access to the nearby Mediterranean Sea.

 

And China could target the American homeland. Lajes is less than 2,300 miles from New York, shorter than the distance between Pearl Harbor and Los Angeles.

The Lajes airbase is home to the USAF’s 65th Air Base Wing, which supports American and NATO aircraft transiting the Atlantic, and it hosts various other American military units. The airbase, rarely used by the US is shared with Portugal and is currently under consideration for closure due to the current economic situation facing the United States. 

Gordon Chang points out that, in recent years, Beijing has identified Portugal as its entry point into Europe, and Chinese officials now know their way to Lisbon. It is in this context that the Portuguese are already thinking about the planned closure of Lajes Field. They don’t want to invite the Chinese in, but they have quietly indicated they will have no choice if the U.S. Air Force decides to leave the base.

 

home base:  Lajes, Azores

Now, while I admittedly do not know much about military strategy, I do know that if China puts an air force base in the Atlantic, the United States and all its inhabitants will immediately and unequivocally be threatened by the military and economic might of China and that our military can no longer guarantee our protection.