Fingerprints are considered to be among the most personal of information, and fingerprint databases created and proposed in the name of national security have generated much debate. Recently, “Server in the Sky” — a proposed international database of the fingerprints of suspected criminals and terrorists to be shared among the U.S., U.K. and Canada — has ignited a firestorm of controversy. As have cavalier comments by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that fingerprints aren’t “personal data.”

Fingerprint Registry in Housing Bill - OpenMarket.org

Jimmy Hall for msnbc.com

U.S. troops in Afghanistan this month will receive a new tool that the Pentagon says will help them root out potential terrorists — a hand-held lie detector.

New U.S. weapon: Hand-held lie detector - Terrorism- msnbc.com

A recently declassified US Army report on the biological effects of non-lethal weapons reveals outlandish plans for “ray gun” devices, which would cause artificial fevers or beam voices into people’s heads.

The report titled “Bioeffects Of Selected Nonlethal Weapons” was released under the US Freedom of Information Act and is available on this website (pdf). The DoD has confirmed to New Scientist that it released the documents, which detail five different “maturing non-lethal technologies” using microwaves, lasers and sound.

Released by US Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade, Maryland, US, the 1998 report gives an overview of what was then the state of the art in directed energy weapons for crowd control and other applications.

US Army toyed with telepathic ray gun - tech - 21 March 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain’s most senior police forensics expert.

Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said a debate was needed on how far Britain should go in identifying potential offenders, given that some experts believe it is possible to identify future offending traits in children as young as five.

Put young children on DNA list, urge police | Society | The Observer

Posted by Cory Doctorow, March 15, 2008 3:27 AM | permalink

Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels, this shot of the fingerprint reader at Walt Disney World’s turnstiles. These machines (which, I’m told, capture the shape of your fingertip instead of your fingerprint itself) are used to keep Disney World customers from sharing or re-selling their admission tickets, and are part of a general and growing police-state climate at the parks that includes routine bag-searches at each park entrance.Read Entire Post Here: Fingertip biometrics at Disney turnstiles: the Mouse does its bit for the police state - Boing Boing

Argentina has been having a huge UFO boom, with 64 reported sightings in 2008 alone. And some of the UFO photos have become remarkably detailed, showing things like insignia and little fins. Thanks to digital cameras (and maybe Photoshop) people are able to create much, much more believable evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles zooming over Buenos Aires. But is the truth out there? Click through for more photos, and some details of the sightings.

Ufos: Alien Swarms Descend On Camera-Happy Argentina

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com — Update

By Kevin PoulsenMarch 11, 2008

A new web service that lets users rate and comment on the uniformed police officers in their community is scrambling to restore service Tuesday, after hosting company GoDaddy unceremonious pulled-the-plug on the site in the wake of outrage from criticism-leery cops.

Visitors to RateMyCop.com on Tuesday were redirected to a GoDaddy page reading, “Oops!!!”, which urged the site owner to contact GoDaddy to find out why the company pulled the plug.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he’d been shut down for “suspicious activity.”

GoDaddy Silences Police-Watchdog Site RateMyCop.com — Update | Threat Level from Wired.com

A Brief History Of Time Machines - Forbes.com
The dream of time traveling, to the past or future, is probably as old as the human imagination. When H.G. Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, he called it a “scientific romance” because no one knew whether time travel was possible.

Bracewell Probes: Part One
Lately much speculation has trended away from the “classic” SETI paradigm and into the domain of hypothetical ET devices such as self-replicating spacecraft and automated communications platforms (an idea proposed by astronomer Ronald Bracewell in his book “The Galactic Club”).

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

“What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment,” Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. “I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that.”

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier — Congress Reacts | Threat Level from Wired.com