Still images courtesy American Science and Engineering, Inc.
While debate continues in the United States over whether whole-body imagers now being used at airports to detect weapons violate privacy rights and even create potential health risks, manufacturers of the technology are opening deeper opportunities for themselves elsewhere that could make the controversial machines an even bigger part of everyday life.
A Coast Guard helicopter refuels during the response to Haiti’s January earthquake. Image by Petty Officer 2nd Class Etta Smith.
The Coast Guard since 2005 has dedicated fewer and fewer resources to environmental protection, one of its myriad responsibilities that includes preventing oil spills like the BP catastrophe now making history in the Gulf of Mexico.
In journalism school, our professors were fond of reminding us that perspective is essential. It’s not always enough to simply report that tens of thousands of people had their lives upended by a tornado in south-central Oklahoma.
How many is 15,000 or 26,000 or 367,000 people? Maybe there’s a sports stadium in the newspaper’s coverage area and readers would better understand the story if they knew the storm’s survivors could fill every seat plus the skyboxes.
It wasn't a lead story when scientists from the University of California at San Francisco first publicly expressed their unease earlier this year about the possible negative health effects caused by full-body airport scanners now being used across the United States to stop explosives from making it onto jet airliners.
Image: North American Aerospace Defense Command
It’s one of the most powerful addictions formed by government since the Sept. 11 hijackings. Blooming in every corner of the country are high-tech command facilities for fighting terrorism, battling crime linked to national security, coordinating disaster responses, enhancing infrastructure protection and more. The desire for them is insatiable, and Congress seems ever the enabler.
Authorities in Maryland plan to collect data on motorists using automated license-plate
scanners and centrally store it at a police intelligence fusion center where law enforcement specialists analyze and share sensitive information about criminal and terrorist threats.
Few stories about the state of Arizona could possibly command more attention right now than its passage of a bill that directs police officers to determine the immigration status of people they come into contact with and suspect of being in the country illegally.
Former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton (right) during a meeting in 2009. Flickr image courtesy ericrichardson.
