Current iris scanning systems require a person to stand still and look directly into a digital camera from close range.

A new covert iris scanner, developed by Sarnoff Labs in New Jersey, US, will instead use an array of compact, high resolution cameras to scan people's irises as they walk towards a checkpoint, without them even knowing it.

In addition to eventual use in identification, this technology will allow governments and corporations to use your own eyeballs in the same way as browser cookies (albeit these will be harder to clear from the cache).

Learn more at New Scientist or read the full patent application.

Philips would like to take advantage of Multimedia Home Platform -- the technology behind interactive television in many countries around the world -- to add flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over and to disable the fast forward control while they are playing.

Philips' realizes that implementation of this patent may be "greatly resented by viewers" but suggests that the system could offer viewers the chance to pay a fee interactively to go back to skipping adverts. Wow, thanks.

See the source article at New Scientist and the patent.

WEAPONS designed to fire "electric bullets" into crowds are being developed for police and border protection agencies in the US. The Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, has launched an "innovative less-lethal devices for law enforcement" programme to radically expand the capabilities of electric shock weapons.

The programme aims to develop wireless weapons that can be used over greater distances in spaces such as "an auditorium, a city street or a sports stadium".On impact, the device sticks to the target and delivers an 80,000-volt shock for 7 seconds, using a pulsed delivery similar to that used by Tasers. Further shocks can be triggered via remote control.

Learn more about this and other HSARPA tasty treats in US shoots ahead in stun gun design at NewScientist and in
Homeland Security Orders Modern Version of Jules Verne's Leyden Ball at LiveScience.

VOLUNTEERS taking part in tests of the Pentagon's "less-lethal" microwave weapon were banned from wearing glasses or contact lenses due to safety fears. The precautions raise concerns about how safe the Active Denial System (ADS) weapon would be if used in real crowd-control situations.

The ADS fires a 95-gigahertz microwave beam, which is supposed to heat skin and to cause pain but no physical damage (New Scientist, 27 October 2001, p 26). Little information about its effects has been released, but details of tests in 2003 and 2004 were revealed after Edward Hammond, director of the US Sunshine Project - an organisation campaigning against the use of biological and non-lethal weapons - requested them under the Freedom of Information Act.

The ADS weapon's beam causes pain within 2 to 3 seconds and it becomes intolerable after less than 5 seconds. People's reflex responses to the pain is expected to force them to move out of the beam before their skin can be burnt. One person suffered a burn in a previous test when the beam was accidentally used on the wrong power setting.

The US marines and police are both working on portable versions, and the US air force is building a system for controlling riots from the air.

Read the full Details of US microwave-weapon tests revealed article at New Scientist

The US military is funding development of a weapon that delivers a bout of excruciating pain from up to 2 kilometres away. Intended for use against rioters, it is meant to leave victims unharmed. But pain researchers are furious that work aimed at controlling pain has been used to develop a weapon. And they fear that the technology will be used for torture.

One document, a research contract between the Office of Naval Research and the University of Florida in Gainsville, US, is entitled "Sensory consequences of electromagnetic pulses emitted by laser induced plasmas".

It concerns so-called Pulsed Energy Projectiles (PEPs), which fire a laser pulse that generates a burst of expanding plasma when it hits something solid, like a person (New Scientist print edition, 12 October 2002). The weapon, destined for use in 2007, could literally knock rioters off their feet.

The contract, heavily censored before release, asks researchers to look for "optimal pulse parameters to evoke peak nociceptor activation" - in other words, cause the maximum pain possible. Studies on cells grown in the lab will identify how much pain can be inflicted on someone before causing injury or death.

See the complete Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon article at New Scientist.

EU justice ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday took further steps on controversial proposals to retain data about telephone calls and e-mails as part of an overall fight against crime and terrorism.

The new proposals, which were originally pushed by the UK and France amongst others, were prompted by the terrorist attacks in Madrid earlier this year as well as the September 2001 attacks in the US, and are expected to be in place by 2005.

The Dutch EU presidency gave member states two options: that service operators retain the information that they would gather anyway for commercial purposes or go beyond that to keep a list of specific data – as yet to be defined.

Despite opposition by Germany and others for data privacy reasons, the second option has been chosen.

Original article and Consultation Document on Traffic Data Retention available for further information.

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.

The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.”

What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was unaware—was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.

This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified.

Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints—aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show broadcast on CBS— were brought by the PTC, according to the FCC analysis dated Oct. 1. (The agency last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year; the Super Bowl broadcast accounted for over 540,000, according to commissioners’ statements.)

The prominent role played by the PTC has raised concerns among critics of the FCC’s crackdown on indecency. “It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio,” said Jonathan Rintels, president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists’ advocacy group.

PTC officials disagree.

Full story at MediaWeek

Internet pornography is the new crack cocaine, leading to addiction, misogyny, pedophilia, boob jobs and erectile dysfunction, according to clinicians and researchers testifying before a U.S. Senate committee Thursday.

Witnesses before the Senate Commerce Committee's Science, Technology and Space Subcommittee spared no superlative in their description of the negative effects of pornography.

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, called porn the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today."

"The internet is a perfect drug delivery system because you are anonymous, aroused and have role models for these behaviors," Layden said. "To have drug pumped into your house 24/7, free, and children know how to use it better than grown-ups know how to use it -- it's a perfect delivery system if we want to have a whole generation of young addicts who will never have the drug out of their mind."

Pornography addicts have a more difficult time recovering from their addiction than cocaine addicts, since coke users can get the drug out of their system, but pornographic images stay in the brain forever, Layden said.

Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and advisor to the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality echoed Layden's concern about the internet and the somatic effects of pornography.

"Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance," Satinover said. "That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can't do, in effect."


The full article is available here at Wired

Fans of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday have launched an advertising blitz pushing for a constitutional change to allow foreign-born citizens to become United States (US) president.

A group dubbed "Amend For Arnold," put together by a supporter of the Austrian-born movie star who helped bankroll his rise to power in California one year ago, launched a series of television ads in the Golden State.

"You cannot choose the land of your birth. You can choose the land you love," said mutual fund manager Lissa Morgenthaler-Jones in the advertisement, which aired on California cable TV stations beginning Monday.

Full iol.co.za article here.