Shanghai Daily is reporting that the Chinese government is planning to require prepaid cell phone users to register their identity in an effort to fight cell phone-related crimes and fraud.

From the article –

CHINA may soon require more than 200 million prepaid cell phone users to register with mobile operators by showing their identity documents, the Ministry of Information Industry said yesterday.

The “real identity” policy, which has been effective in Shanghai since September last year, would require new handset buyers nationwide to produce identity documents before they’re given a phone.

“We hope to issue the regulations on mobile card registration by the end of this year,” said Wang Lijian, a ministry spokesman. He declined to reveal details about the policy.

The new regulation would be the latest move in the nation’s fight against unsolicited advertisements, fake educational certificates and bank fraud via short messages.

Except in Shanghai, China’s residents can obtain mobile phone service without providing personal details if they chose prepaid card services, making it difficult to capture those involved in phone-related scams.

Source: ID plan for cell phone cards

The Council of Middlesbrough, England has set up a system of public surveillance system of security cameras that watch people and also reprimand and yell at people who are causing trouble or engaging in criminal activity.

From thewest.com -

“It is like a public humiliation in a way, but it means that the person won’t do it again,” Cr Barry Coppinger said. “The voice addresses the person who is littering, for example, directly by saying, ‘Could the person in the green jacket please pick that up’.”

Mr Coppinger hopes the talking cameras, which cost £50,000 ($125,000) to set up, will act as a deterrent to troublemakers. He said feedback had been encouraging since they were installed last month.

The warnings are given by camera operators at a command centre.

Source: thewest.com

MSNBC is reporting that bounty hunter Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman has been arrested along with two co-stars from his TV show today on charges of illegal detention and conspiracy in an alleged kidnapping in Mexico three years ago.

From the article -

Chapman, 53, his son Leland Chapman, and associate Timothy Chapman were taken into custody in an operation involving 15 officers, said Mark Hanohano, U.S. Marshal for the district of Hawaii. They did not resist arrest, he said.

“All three were very compliant,” Hanohano said. “It went down without incident.”

The charges stem from Chapman’s capture of Max Factor heir Andrew Luster on June 18, 2003 in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Chapman’s capture of Luster, a serial rapist, catapulted the bounty hunter to fame and led to the reality series on the A&E channel.

We all wish the best for ‘Dog’ the Bounty Hunter and his family during this trying time and hope for a speedy resolution to these charges in their favor. Evidently, the hypocritical Mexican government and authorities get angry when real justice is delivered by an American bounty hunter within their borders.

Source: MSNBC.com

Reuters News is reporting on a new US government security policy that will collect prints on all ten fingers of foreign visitors entering the United States.

From the article –

The United States now collects the prints of only the two index fingers of foreign visitors. But it will gather prints of all their fingers and thumbs by the end of 2008, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, said.

“We will be able to run everybody’s fingerprints against latent fingerprints that we are collecting all over the world in terrorist safe houses, off of bomb fragments that terrorists build, or in battlefields where terrorists wage war,” Chertoff said in a speech at Georgetown University.

The department will install new 10-fingerprint reading devices at borders and airports in two years time as it transfers from the two-print system criticized for being incompatible with the FBI’s 10-print databases.

In an article that shows just how small the world has become with networked technology, the Liverpool Echo reports on a Dallas, Texas man, who reported a crime to local police that he was witnessing on a live web cam that was located in Liverpool, England.

An Internet user in America caught a gang of thieves raiding a Liverpool store red handed as he logged on to webcam sites.

The man was sitting at his computer in Dallas, Texas, when he clicked on to a live camera link for the Mathew Street website.

Expecting to see pictures of the city’s famous Beatles quarter, he was astonished to see three intruders breaking into Blacks outdoor sports store.

He watched as they propped a ladder on the wall outside the store and smashed a window on Button Street to clamber inside.

Despite being 4,590 miles away across the Atlantic, the conscientious American immediately telephoned Merseyside police to report the crime.

Thanks to his diligence, officers were waiting for the crooks and nabbed them as they tried to escape in a getaway car.

Today, Insp Damian Walsh of Merseyside police told the ECHO: “We were amazed when we were informed the person who reported the offence lived in the USA.

“But it showed how vital our camera system is to reduce and prevent offences.”

You can read the entire article @ Nicked on the net.

This technology is right on time with the new security and terrorism concerns over liquid explosives. CIO.com is reporting on a new technology that can tell the difference between harmless liquids ( like shampoos and sports drinks ) and liquid explosives.

From the article –

You may think your new shampoo is “the bomb,” but to an airport security guard looking at it under X-ray machine, it may look like an actual bomb.

However, a company in Virginia has technology that can help airport security screeners tell if a container of liquid is an explosive as it passes through airport X-ray machines.

Guardian Technologies International is in talks with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to use its PinPoint image analysis software in conjunction with airport X-ray machines to tell the difference between explosives and organic items such as shampoo, clothes and food in carry-on baggage, according to a company executive.

The technology could be good news for airport passengers who are unhappy that new TSA regulations mandate they are no longer allowed to bring liquid items, including shampoo, water and perfume, onto airplanes. The move came Thursday after U.K. officials arrested individuals they believed to be part of a terrorist plot to bring liquid explosives onto a plane to assemble a bomb.

You can read the entire article @ Software Detects Difference Between Shampoo, Explosives.

Someone should hire Katja Base as a skip tracer. The AP is reporting on this mother of 6, who used some street smarts, detective and investigative skills to track down some teen pranksters that vandalized her house.

As a result of her amateur detective work, 6 teenagers are now facing vandalism charges.

You can read the AP article @ Toilet paper vandals nabbed by sleuth mom.

Here is an interesting example of how a modern software program like Adobe PhotoShop has built in a crime prevention feature that helps to stop the counterfeiting of money. Adobe uses a currency-detection algorithm to prevent the use of their Photoshop graphical editing software for printing of currency images with a popup window that alerts the user “This application does not support the printing of banknote images”.

You can read more on this subject and view some example images @ Faking It.

San Diego County has made available to the public a freely searchable mapping system that allows users to search for regional crimes in San Diego County. Users can search crimes by neighborhood, address, zip code, date and time.

The crime mapping search collects information from all law enforcement agencies from all of San Diego County, CA. Law enforcement information on almost all criminal activity from murders to traffic violations is included online. The database is updated weekly by regional law enforcement agencies in San Diego County.

You can search the crime tracker mapping system @ San Diego Crime Maps.

The BBC is reporting on a proposal that would place web cameras along the Texas-Mexico border and allow anyone with an internet connection to monitor illegal immigration ‘hot spots’ from anywhere in the world and report sightings to authorities.

From the article –

A US state is to enlist web users in its fight against illegal immigration by offering live surveillance footage of the Mexican border on the internet.

The plan will allow web users worldwide to watch Texas’ border with Mexico and phone the authorities if they spot any apparently illegal crossings.

Texas Governor Rick Perry said the cameras would focus on “hot-spots and common routes” used to enter the US.

You can read the entire article on the BBC web site @ Web users to ‘patrol’ US border.