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Parking fine appeal panel planned

There are 26,000 private car parks in the UK

A new independent appeals panel to stop motorists from being unfairly fined by unscrupulous private car parking companies is to be established.

Transport minister Sadiq Khan said self-regulation was not working and the government needed to step in.

Currently there is little regulation of the private car parking industry and no independent adjudicator.

Drivers have complained of a lack of accountability, heavy-handed tactics and threats of county court judgements.

One driver who received a parking ticket was Tracey Tremlett, who was targeted after visiting a drive-in restaurant twice in 41 days.

She told BBC Breakfast: “They said I had actually overstayed my period by 60,235 minutes, I couldn't believe it. They threatened me with a county court judgement.

“It was quite scary to have it through the post in the beginning, knowing I hadn't done anything. I really didn’t know what to do.”

There are 26,000 permanent private car parks in the UK. Most complaints come from people fined on these sites, but there are now calls for reform of the entire private parking industry.

The AA said it believed the industry was “running amok”.

Paul Waters from the organisation explained: “It’s really rapidly growing; they are trying to extort more and more sums from people. Enforcement is quite heavy-handed, in the night and in the day. They target people through number plate-reading cameras.

Ms Tremlett was threatened with a county court judgement

“People sometimes do not even know there are restrictions in force and they get a penalty in the post later.”

The British Parking Association represents private firms and only its members can access the DVLA database to trace vehicle owners and send out fines. Even it admits a more robust system is needed.

Its chief executive Patrick Troy said: “There is no law which requires operators of car parks to abide by any kind of code of practice.

“That is why we have introduced a code of practice for our members and they are required to comply with that code as a condition of their membership. We are calling on the government to look at this and to consider regulating car parks.”

Mr Khan said it was clearly time for the government to step in:

“What the current bill going through parliament is saying is that there will now be hopefully be an independent complaints mechanism available so people who are aggrieved can make a complaint to an independent appeals panel.”

The AA welcomed the move but said it hoped the complicated legislation would get through parliament before the election, or motorists would continue to be victims of unscrupulous operators.

via BBC News – Parking fine appeal panel planned.

Source: Latest Gadgets, Date: 16 December 2009

Berkeley Varitronics Systems is going to launch a hand-held cell phone detector known as the Bloodhound. The device is able to perform

Bloodhound

 various functions such as scanning real-time for unauthorized cell phone activity penitentiary facilities, it is able to identify the exact location of the person who is calling.

Nowadays the problem of contraband cell phones really exists. It is note an easy task to detect the location as well as confiscate contraband cell phones even if monitoring sensors, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and drug and bomb dogs will at hand. Moreover, cell phone jamming is not so helpful in this very problem, for that reason the Bloodhound cell phone detector was created.

It is very beneficial as it can identify a cell phone within a correctional facility the device does not have to intervene in citizens’ or public safety communications.

The Bloodhound was created to trace and locate contraband cell phones. It involved a high speed scanning multi-band receiver harnessed to a DF-Direction Finding Antenna that lets security officers to detect the RF energy. The device has a special algorithm that is able to trigger on to a cell phone if it is active.

It also has such feature as headphone jack with a progressive audible alert tone and an accompanying vibrator that help notify security officers of cell phone activity.

Source: Morning Star, Date: 30 December 2009

The rapid growth in mobile phone use in prisons is as dangerous as giving inmates firearms and puts prisoners, the public and prison staff in danger, the Prison Officers Association (POA) has warned.

The union blamed government “penny pinching” and a lack of will by the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) for an astonishing 350 per cent rise in the number of phones and SIM cards confiscated in prisons since 2006.

Of the 8,099 items confiscated in 2008, 388 were found in high-security prisons – nearly double the number found two years ago.

And the provision of mobile phones in prisons has become a highly lucrative industry in its own right with inmates reportedly paying thousands to borrow a device.

Tory security spokeswoman Baroness Neville-Jones seized the opportunity to stoke fears that mobile phones in prisons are facilitating terrorist activity.

She said: “In 2007 a convicted al-Qaida supporter was caught using a mobile phone to build a website from inside a high-security prison.

“You would have thought that the authorities would have got their act together after that, yet there are now more mobile phones found in high-security prisons than there were then.

“This spreads extremist ideology and is a threat to our security.”

But Justice Secretary Jack Straw hit back and accused the Tories of “cheap propaganda” to grab headlines.

“Instead, the Tories need to say which bits of our strategy they disagree with, what more they would do and how they would fund any extra measures as a result,” he said.

But the POA said a simple solution has been available for some time in mobile phone jamming equipment.

The “jammers” have drawn strong resistance by mobile phone networks which claim the technology would hinder their service, even though they have been successfully adopted in several countries including France.

POA national secretary Colin Moses urged the government to stop “penny pinching” and move immediately to eradicate mobile phones from prisons.

He said: “Mobile phones in prison are as dangerous as firearms.

“And the reduction in search policies is a cost-cutting exercise by NOMS which puts everyone in danger.

“Mobile phones could be blocked with the correct investment and with a tightening of searching in and out of prisons.”

Source: Prison Planet, Date: 8 January 2010

Naked body scanners are being readied to go mobile and scan you on the street, at football games and any other event where masses of people are congregated, according to a leaked paper written by Dutch authorities.

As we have been warning all along, the tyranny now being metered out at airports was always intended to be rolled out onto the streets, with mobile metal detectors already being stationed at various transport hubs in the UK in the name of stopping knife crime.

Now Dutch police have announced that they are developing a mobile scanner that will “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons”.

According to a confidential document, “The scanner could first be used as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas. The mobile detector would enable the search to be carried out more quickly and would only be used on people suspected of carrying concealed weapons,” reports Dutch News.nl.

The device would also be used from a distance on groups of people “and mass scans on crowds at events such as football matches.”

“The biggest challenge is making it portable and ensuring it can carry out a scan in seconds,” Giampiero Gerini, a professor at Eindhoven University, told the paper.

The aim is to develop and deploy the device within three years. With police in major American and British cities already carrying out random searches of innocent people under routinely abused terrorism laws, mobile scanners are likely to be added to their arsenal, especially if people have been trained to accept their use as routine in airports.

Three years ago, leaked documents out of the Home Office revealed that authorities in the UK were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.

“The questions are when is this a useful addition to security and when does it become unduly intrusive and worrying to the public?” said Professor Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert.

Since everything that we see being installed at the airports is now gradually being introduced on the streets, how long will it be before mind-reading devices that scan individuals for behavioral psychology, now being discussed for use in airports, are stationed on every major street corner?

The technologies now being prepared not just for the airport, but for our everyday lives, are far more frightening and technologically advanced than anything George Orwell wrote about in 1984. Unless we stand up in unison and say enough is enough, our world will become a literal hi-tech prison grid characterized by a caste system of slaves and controllers.

Source: News 9, Date: 15 December 2009

A 20-year-old man led officers on a chase Friday after a homeowner spotted him leaving her home with clothing, Midwest City police said.

Dale Erwin Lewis Jr., 20, of Oklahoma City, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree burglary and attempting to elude police. He also has an outstanding warrant in Oklahoma County on suspicion of robbery with a firearm and concealing stolen property.

Police said a mother and her baby had just arrived home to a house in the 600 block of Frolich Drive at about 10:45 a.m. when she spotted a strange vehicle in her driveway. Rachel Flint drove by slowly and saw Lewis come out of the house carrying clothing.

“As I was pulling up, I was talking to my dad on my cell phone and saw someone walk up to the door,” said Flint.

According to police, Lewis got into an older-model Cadillac and left the area. The woman followed the suspect and gave 911 dispatchers pertinent information.

“Do you know who these people are,” the 911 dispatcher said.

“Nope, never seen them before,” Flint said on the tape. “When I went by, I tried to look away so he wouldn’t know I was onto him. I’m on Reno, following him, yes.”

The dispatcher said she had officers on the way and didn’t offer advice whether Flint should continue to follow the man. She decided to keep following him until police finally caught up.

“I want you to pull over and stop,” the 911 dispatcher said.

Police officers were able to catch up to Lewis in the 300 block of South Westminster Road.

An officer tried to stop Lewis, and a pursuit began. Dash-cam video showed Lewis disregarding a four-way stop at the intersection of Westminster Road and Southeast 15th Street and continue south at a high rate of speed, police said.

Police used a tactical maneuver to stop the vehicle.

Lewis lost control of the Cadillac in the 1700 block of Westminster Road and careened across both lanes of traffic, sliding into a utility pole. He was trapped and injured in the crash.

None of the officers were hurt nor were any of the police vehicles.

Lewis was taken to Presbyterian Hospital in Oklahoma City with a broken collarbone.

“Our victim did a fantastic job,” said Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes. “Doing the right thing, not getting involved but getting involved enough to let us know the suspect, description, tag number and direction of the car.”

“I wasn’t even angry,” Flint said. “I just wanted him caught.”

Source: Evening Standard, Date: 8 January 2010

The cost of security at the London Olympics could more than double to £2 billion, the Standard has learnt.

Tougher anti-terrorist measures to protect the 2012 Games are expected to send the security bill soaring above its current £838 million budget.

Ministers have been warned that the budget – revised three years ago after the 2005 London bombings – is already insufficient to cover a heightened terror threat.

Senior sources told the Standard that the extra measures could bring the total security bill to more than £2 billion.

Such measures may have to include deterrents to a cyber-attack on the 2012 organising committee and tougher controls around the Olympic park and training camps for at-risk teams such as the United States and Israel.

The revelation comes alongside calls for full body scanners to be introduced to the Olympic Park.

Opposition MPs say the Government will “bury” the extra costs until after the general election to avoid a breach of the £9.3billion budget.

They claim the costs will be hidden within the budget of the Home Office, which is responsible for security at 2012 but not responsible for the Olympic budget, which comes under the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Ministers denied such a move but refused to be drawn on details of the security measures.

The issue was raised by Lord Patten in a Lords Olympics debate this week. He said: “The most difficult challenge is achieving a balance between security concerns and ensuring that spectators can enjoy the competitions in an open and friendly atmosphere.

“That our UK security task in 2012 is both formidable and likely to rise in cost is self-evident in what has been done in the run-up to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver which has seen a fivefold budget increase.”

Lord Patten, who advises the British Olympic Association, warned of possible cyber attacks which would cripple ticketing, transport and hotel booking systems. He called on Games chiefs to consider whole-body scanners for 10,000 workers and 70,000 volunteers at the Olympic Park in addition to existing hand and eye biometric scans.

The 600-acre Olympic Park must be protected against infiltration by terrorists planting explosive devices ahead of the Games, Lord Patten said.

The Home Office today said security would be delivered within the current budget, made up of £600million with a £238million contingency fund.

Source: CBS, Date: 7 January 2010

As the European Union continues to debate whether or not to widely implement controversial full-scale body scanners at airports, Italy and the U.K. have already installed such devices.

Source: AlterNet, by Daniel Tencer, Raw Story., Date: 24 September 2008

Amid the media furor over the attempted Christmas Day attacks and a renewed political focus on enhancing airport security, attention is turning to a technological advancement that will have civil rights activists — or, for that matter, anyone with a secret –seriously worried: Mind-reading machines.

“As far-fetched as that sounds, systems that aim to get inside an evildoer’s head are among the proposals floated by security experts thinking beyond the X-ray machines and metal detectors used on millions of passengers and bags each year,” AP’s Michael Tarm reports.

Tarm focuses on an Israeli company called WeCU Technologies (as in “we see you”), which is building a system that would turn airport waiting areas into arenas for Pavlovian behavioral tests:

The system … projects images onto airport screens, such as symbols associated with a certain terrorist group or some other image only a would-be terrorist would recognize, company CEO Ehud Givon said.

The logic is that people can’t help reacting, even if only subtly, to familiar images that suddenly appear in unfamiliar places. If you strolled through an airport and saw a picture of your mother, Givon explained, you couldn’t help but respond.

The reaction could be a darting of the eyes, an increased heartbeat, a nervous twitch or faster breathing, he said. The WeCU system would use humans to do some of the observing but would rely mostly on hidden cameras or sensors that can detect a slight rise in body temperature and heart rate.

Homeland Security officials have long been keen on Israeli counter-terror technologies, given the country’s extensive experience with terrorism and its reputation for having some of the most effective security systems in the world.

According to numerous news reports, WeCU has received two grants, from the US Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security, for their research. Raw Story was unable to determine how much money WeCU received from the US government, but regulatory filings show the company spent at least $60,000 on lobbying in Washington in 2006 and 2007.

WeCU has already developed a prototype model of the mind-reading technology, which, according to an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has already been demonstrated to government security officials in the US, Germany and Israel. It was evidently from that demonstration that US agencies decided to fund the project.

“It sounds like science fiction,” WeCU CEO Ehud Givon told the Jerusalem Post. “But I can assure you that the technology is very real. We have accuracy rates that are higher than 95 percent.”

Supporters of mind-reading technology argue that it would reduce waiting lines at security checkpoints and reduce the hassle for travelers. But the risks to personal privacy inherent in mind-reading technologies are self-evident. AP reports:

Some critics have expressed horror at the approach, calling it Orwellian and akin to “brain fingerprinting.”

For civil libertarians, attempting to read a person’s thoughts comes uncomfortably close to the future world depicted in the movie “Minority Report,” where a policeman played by Tom Cruise targets people for “pre-crimes,” or merely thinking about breaking the law.

WeCU’s technology is by no means the only mind-reading security system in development today. Another Israeli company, Suspect Detection Systems, has developed a technology that reads a person’s “hostile intent” by measuring bodily responses, through the person’s hand, while being asked questions. That system was field-tested at the Knoxville, Tennessee, airport last summer.

Between 2005 and 2006, SDS received $460,000 in grants from the TSA and the science directorate of Homeland Security.

The company appears to have ramped up its public relations in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt.

“A simple five minute automated interrogation during the Visa application process, or at the airport security checkpoint, would have most assuredly exposed the evil intention of Christmas terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he ever boarded,” SDS CEO Shabtai Shoval said in a press release.

But while these methods are still in development, other behavior-detection technologies, that have less to do directly with reading minds, are on the cusp of being ready for deployment. The Department of Homeland Security has given the green light to FAST, or Future Attribute Screening Technology, which uses a combination of biometric scanners to measure a person’s pulse, breathing, pupil dilation and other signals that can determine “hostile intent.”

While FAST isn’t quite as intrusive as the WeCU system, it appears to be much closer to implementation, with field testing of the $20-million technology set to begin in 2011.

Source: The Sun, Date: 24 September 2008

A SECURITY scanner that reads your mind is being tested in US airports.
The Malintent system looks for non-verbal clues to predict if a person wants to cause harm to other passengers.

It uses a series of sensors and scans to detect temperature, heart rate and respiration as passengers walk through an archway – and could also cut airport queues.

But the system raises serious privacy concerns as it catalogues a person’s vital signs for non-medical reasons and could be seen as invasive.

The system is the brainchild of the cutting-edge US Human Factors division and is part of a mobile laboratory called Future Attribute Screening Technology (Fast).

Reactions

Bob Burns, Malintent’s project leader, said: “If you focus on looking at the person, you don’t have to worry about detecting the (terrorist) device itself.”

He added the scanner was unbiased and non-judgmental.

“It does not predict who you are and make a judgment, it only provides an assessment in situations,” he said.

“It analyses you against baseline stats when you walk in the door, it measures reactions and variations when you approach and go through the portal.”

Mr Burns also addressed the privacy concerns and said that once the person passed through the Fast portal, the records were “dumped”.

“The information is not maintained – it doesn’t track who you are,” he said.

The team will also be adding equipment that reads body movements, called “illustrative and emblem cues” because people “move in reaction to what they are thinking, more or less based on the context of the situation,” Mr Burns said.

Fast may also incorporate biological, radiological and explosive detection, but for now the primary focus is on identifying and isolating potential human threats.

The system is also designed to be able to distinguish between a rushed, stressed and sweaty passenger, and a terrorist.

The experimental system was tested on 144 people in Maryland last week and exact results have not been released.

But Jay Cohen, undersecretary for science and technology administration, told Fox News the experiment was a “home run”.

While the 144 test subjects thought they were passing through an entrance way, they were actually being screened as they passed through a series of sensors.

The Department of Homeland Security also selected a group of 23 subjects who were each given a “disruptive device” to carry through the portal. Unlike the others, they were conscious they were on a mission.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/1729821/Mind-reading-airport-security.html#ixzz0c7Ex3RMs

Source: Herts Advertiser, Date: 7 January 2010

HAZARDOUS driving conditions are likely as the snow continues to fall in the St Albans District.

In anticipation of a drop in temperature to minus seven degrees centigrade, Hertfordshire Highways is urging motorists to reduce their speed and restrict travel to essential journeys.

Overnight gritting and ploughing runs across Herts helped to keep the county moving during this morning’s rush hour and executive member for highways and transport Stuart Pile confirmed that more gritters will be sent out today.

But Cllr Pile said that the freezing cold conditions may affect how effective the grit will be: “Temperatures need to be around freezing for grit to work so our concern at the moment is that temperatures are going to get so low that salt won’t make any difference to the condition of the road.”

He added: “If you do have to drive, please leave plenty of room between you and the vehicle in front, steer and brake very gently and reduce your overall speed.”

In addition to ploughing, Hertfordshire Highways and St Albans district council have also started to clear priority pavements including those in town centres and around hospitals.

Salt bins will not be restocked until Herts Highways has further information on the salt situation nationally