Tag: technology

The inventor of taser and the body cam wants to put them on drones

Rick Smith, whose inventions changed the way millions of people understand modern policing, now wants to send them to war.

Smith invented the Taser, the stun gun that is often the first thing police officers reach for when things get tense. As public concern mounted that cops were maybe a bit too eager to tase people, Smith invented the police-worn body camera, which has become a staple of U.S. police departments and plays a starring role in our national conversation about police reform.

So what’s next? Smith says AI and robotics will dramatically change how police departments do what they do. They could also reshape the American way of war.

Smith’s company, Axon, is already using machine learning on body camera footage. The company has access to huge amounts of body-camera video because police departments pay Axon to host it on Microsoft Azure. “Basically every big department you can think of, NYPD, LA, Chicago, D.C., we host all their data in the cloud for them,” Smith said during the recent AUSA conference in Washington, D.C.

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The VPN Empire Built By Intelligence Agents

For many people, a VPN is accepted as being their best bet for protecting their data and online privacy. While cyber security is certainly a concern for them, most VPN users aren’t exactly adept when it comes to information technology. Like any consumer, they typically err on the side of using a trusted name within the industry. In many ways, ExpressVPN is that standard-bearer. Since it began in 2009, ExpressVPN has signed up millions of users for its service under the promise that it does everything from encrypting data on their internet browser to masking their IP address in order to protect users against hackers and government surveillance.

What most of the 3 million users who currently use ExpressVPN probably weren’t aware of when they signed up is that the service proves the point that hackers and government surveillance aren’t mutually exclusive. On September 13th, ExpressVPN was sold to the Israeli-based company Kape Technologies in a $936 million cash and stock purchase. This acquisition added ExpressVPN to a catalog including several other VPN providers acquired by Kape Technologies since 2017. The acquiring company touted its purchase as being integral to defining the next generation in its fight for online privacy. However, the centralization the VPN services Kape Technologies owns and an examination of its history reveals the company’s efforts to undermine that very cause as a distributor of malware with ties to US and Israeli intelligence operations.

Kape Technologies was founded in 2011 by partners Koby Menachemi and Shmueli Ahdut under the name CrossRider. Early in its origins, CrossRider did not bill itself as a cyber security company. Instead, the focus of the company was on web browsing and advertising technologies. Just 20 months after its founding, the tech start-up with $2 million in working capital was purchased by Israeli tech billionaire Teddy Sagi for $37 million. Menachemi and Ahdut would stay on at the company as its CEO and CTO following the purchase. With the injection of capital that Sagi’s purchase put into the company, CrossRider pivoted its operations to change the scope of its outlook toward cyber security. In 2017, CrossRider cemented that change of direction when it purchased CyberGhost VPN for $10.4 million. Upon its acquisition of the Romanian-based VPN, CrossRider rebranded itself as Kape Technologies.

While CrossRider’s rebrand appeared to be a common tactic by a company marking a shift in its outlook as it made its first foray into cyber security, the basis of the change was rooted in a much different motive. By the time CrossRider had acquired CyberGhost VPN, the adware programs the company designed had been exposed as hacking tools. By attaching its adware to third party downloads, CrossRider was able to install potentially unwanted programs which attached to web browsers as spyware. Microsoft, Symantec MalwareBytes, and other cyber security websites categorized CrossRider’s malware program Crossid as a browser hijacker which collected user information such as browser information to IP addresses in order to monetize data for its value in targeted ad campaigns. With the CrossRider name being attached to this malicious spyware, the company was putting its newest VPN asset in jeopardy. In order to avoid losing users of CyberGhostVPN, rebranding to Kape Technologies was a measure designed to obfuscate the companies history as an entity producing malware programs which were antithetical to the interest of data security. The rebrand proved to effectuate the new image the company sought as it would go on to acquire additional VPN services years before its 2021 purchase of ExpressVPN. In 2018, Kape Technologies acquired Zenmate for $5.5 million and then Private Internet Access for $95 million in 2019.

With its growing portfolio, Kape Technologies had become increasingly more visible. Its umbrella of ownership centralizing multiple VPNs was a red flag for many who placed value in cyber security. Under growing scrutiny, the concerning origins of the company’s founders came to light. It was revealed that Koby Menachemi, Kape Technologies co-founder and former CEO, began his career in information technologies while serving in the Israeli Defense Forces. Menachemi worked as a developer in the Israeli Intelligence Corps under Unit 8200. That division of the IDF was responsible for collecting signal intelligence and data decryption. Its alumni are estimated to have founded over 1,000 tech startups. Companies founded by former operatives of Unit 8200 include Waze, Elbit Systems, and slews of other startups who have since been acquired by the likes of Kodak, PayPal, Facebook, and Microsoft.

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This Dystopian Riot Control Truck Is the Vehicle of the Future

We all want to believe that the future is filled with amazing technology, the end of disease, interplanetary travel, and a thriving environment. But the good folks at Bozena Security Systems know that the future is made of armored plating and riot gear.

The new and improved Bozena Riot can handle any and all duties when one needs to put down an uprising. At full functionality, it has three components: a carrier, a 3000 kg adjustable shield, and a water trailer. Two water cannons can send protesters flying from the front or the rear and if that doesn’t do the trick, you can always fire up the high-pressure tear gas gun.

But how would a driver handle all of these features and be able to see what the hell they are doing, you might ask. Well, CCTV cameras make sure that eyes are everywhere and this very nifty interior control panel puts all the options at one’s fingertips.

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Military Is Developing ‘Cognitive Warfare’ Weapons

Western governments in the NATO military alliance are developing tactics of “cognitive warfare,” using the supposed threats of China and Russia to justify waging a “battle for your brain” in the “human domain,” to “make everyone a weapon.”

NATO is developing new forms of warfare to wage a “battle for the brain,” as the military alliance put it.

The US-led NATO military cartel has tested novel modes of hybrid warfare against its self-declared adversaries, including economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, and psychological warfare.

Now, NATO is spinning out an entirely new kind of combat it has branded cognitive warfare. Described as the “weaponization of brain sciences,” the new method involves “hacking the individual” by exploiting “the vulnerabilities of the human brain” in order to implement more sophisticated “social engineering.”

Until recently, NATO had divided war into five different operational domains: air, land, sea, space, and cyber. But with its development of cognitive warfare strategies, the military alliance is discussing a new, sixth level: the “human domain.”

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Government Eyes In the Sky

In August 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek revealed the existence of a pilot program being operated by the Baltimore Police Department in which small manned aircraft circled over the city all day, using cameras to continuously photograph a 32-square-mile area and giving police the ability to retroactively track any vehicle or pedestrian within that area. It was the ultimate Big Brother “eye in the sky”—and yet the Baltimore police had not notified the public or even the mayor or city council about the program. Revelation of the secret program generated a storm of controversy, and eventually it was put on hold—though in December 2019, the city’s police commissioner announced that the program would be revived.

The technology behind the Baltimore program involves pointing multiple cameras toward the ground and stitching those images together into a single, larger photograph. It also uses computers to automatically correct for the changing camera angles of the circling planes as well as factors such as topographic variances and lens distortion.

The result is a surveillance system of enormous power, able to reconstruct the movements of all visible vehicles and pedestrians across a city—where they start and finish each journey and the paths they take in between. It can allow tracking of a great proportion of people’s movements throughout a city.

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Oh Great They’re Putting Guns On Robodogs Now

So hey they’ve started mounting sniper rifles on robodogs, which is great news for anyone who was hoping they’d start mounting sniper rifles on robodogs.

At an exhibit booth in the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting and exhibition, Ghost Robotics (the military-friendly competitor to the better-known Boston Dynamics) proudly showed off a weapon that is designed to attach to its quadruped bots made by a company called SWORD Defense Systems.

“The SWORD Defense Systems Special Purpose Unmanned Rifle (SPUR) was specifically designed to offer precision fire from unmanned platforms such as the Ghost Robotics Vision-60 quadruped,” SWORD proclaims on its website. “Chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor allows for precision fire out to 1200m, the SPUR can similarly utilize 7.62×51 NATO cartridge for ammunition availability. Due to its highly capable sensors the SPUR can operate in a magnitude of conditions, both day and night. The SWORD Defense Systems SPUR is the future of unmanned weapon systems, and that future is now.”

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National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Tracks Everything

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency published the agency’s data strategy Oct. 6, outlining its plans to transform and improve the way data is created, managed and shared in order to maintain dominance in the delivery of geospatial intelligence.

“It is essential that we take all actions necessary to sustain our advantage in GEOINT — and that includes managing our data as a key strategic asset,’’ stated NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Sharp in the data strategy. “With the holistic enterprise approach mapped out within this new data strategy, NGA sets forth a path for leading the way and staying ahead of our competitors.’’

The NGA Data Strategy 2021, a 28-page public document, includes both strategic goals and courses of action for the agency as it continues to chart a secure and innovative path forward while facing increasing amounts of data, risk and competition.

Aligned to the agency’s Moonshot effort to “deliver trusted GEOINT with the speed, accuracy and precision required,’’ the strategy calls for the accelerated, shared and trusted use of data to help NGA better deliver on its mandates and show the way.

The plan, created as a companion document to the NGA Technology Strategy published in 2020, already has played an integral role in the agency’s recent adoption of a new data governance structure to provide a coordinated framework for data policies and stewardship.

The data strategy, combined with the established collaborative data governance program, guides the agency’s push to close the gap between current and future capabilities by accelerating developments in four significant focus areas: making data easily accessible, improving data reusability, improving cross-domain efficiencies and enabling next-generation GEOINT.

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Company That Routes Billions of Text Messages Quietly Says It Was Hacked

A company that is a critical part of the global telecommunications infrastructure used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and several others around the world such as Vodafone and China Mobile, quietly disclosed that hackers were inside its systems for years, impacting more than 200 of its clients and potentially millions of cellphone users worldwide. 

The company, Syniverse, revealed in a filing dated September 27 with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission that an unknown “individual or organization gained unauthorized access to databases within its network on several occasions, and that login information allowing access to or from its Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) environment was compromised for approximately 235 of its customers.”

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