According to the British Times (timesonline.co.uk) Burma’s ruling junta has currently started a new strategy to obtain information on opposition activists in order to end the pro-democracy demonstrations.

During the weekend Burmese police and diplomats entered UN offices in Rangoon and demanded hard drives from its computers which contain information that could identify key members of the opposition movement. In lack of a better option, UN staff spent much of the weekend deleting information.

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Apparently drug traffickers increasingly make use of “old” methods of smuggling drugs hidden in goods. As a result of improved methods for drug detection within human bodies (e.g. the new total body scan) drug traffickers feel forced to go back to hiding drugs in goods such as barstools, secret departments ingeniously build into suitcases etc.

According to the Cargo-Harc team (een team consisting of Dutch Border Police, customs and the Dutch Tax Office) drug traffickers try more and more inventive non-bodily methods in order to prevent detection. Unfortunately for the drug trafficking industry tools for detection of hidden drugs other than in human bodies has also developed greatly.

So, what does this tell us? Obviously the new methods are effective. Will the resulting loss of privacy be worth it after all?

Source: ANP 8 October 2007

I recently started to use RSS feeds (yes I am a late adapter) and the are really great, here is something that caught my eye on the BBC feed which I had to share:  Apparently A former US intercontinental ballistic missile base is up for sale on eBay. You get the whole deal with a network of underground tunnels and silos, but no nuclear warheads for only $1.5m.:
 

The Silent Guardian is the latest non violent weapon which will make people run away without killing them. The Silent Guardian protection system according to the makers at Raytheon is a revolutionary less-than-lethal directed energy application that employs millimeter wave technology to repel individuals or crowds without causing injury. When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. Being in the vicinity of the ray is not barable beyond a few seconds and basically you will start running. lees verder…

The Colbert Report on Blackwater

Lets talk about outsourcing security and some core tasks of the military. In a recent point of view, the HCSS With the rise of Blackwater to become officially part of the ‘total force’ concept, the US government has effectively outsourced part of its army’s core-business. Ulrich Mans and Rem Korteweg estimate that about 100,000 contractors are currently deployed across the entire military spectum.
I was hoping that mister outsourcing could shed some light on this matter. To be continued……

The European commission is rightly worried about the levels of corruption in the new EU member states. Corruption undermines the rule of law and the way government relates to citizens. Criminal and terrorist organizations are only able to operate when there is a transition possible from the illegal to the legal, corruption facilitates this process. They are able to pay for specialists within and outside the government to perform illegal services. 

Bribes are one of the most successful ways to get around the law. In a growing European Union with more border land vulnerable to the trafficking of illegal goods one should start to worry about the government officials monitoring the border and make sure that anti corruption measures are put in place. 

The BBC noted that search site Google has called on governments and business to agree a basic set of global privacy rules. “Without global standards the health of the internet was at risk”, said the firm’s privacy chief Peter Fleischer told during a UN agency conference last week. Noting that “Every time a person uses a credit card their information may cross six or seven national boundaries”

Funny! The rights group Privacy International rated the search giant as “hostile” to privacy in a report ranking web firms by how they handle personal data in June this year….While since May this year there have been roumors that the EU would investigate Googles actions in light of the EU privacy laws.

Additionally, Google chose to  agree with the Chinese government on the censorship of its search engine for Chinese citizens: Google’s China service blocks politically sensitive material to comply with Chinese censorship rules. this impedes privacy in a different way. The economist came out with a very good analysis last week stating that we have to make sure that we trus google like we trust banks in holing our information and taking care of it……..what happened to its mission: Don’t be evil!

Following the attacks on schoolchilderen and the resulting feeling of insecurity in American High Schools two concerned fathers have recently lauchend a new kind of bag for schoolkids. The ‘my child’s bag’ had a normal size and looks like a normal bag (http://www.mychildspack.com/)

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