Whatta fun couple! "It's party time!" (fabadabaZap)

Lisa Cohen, 28, garnered media attention when she released tapes in March of her former fiance, Lee County Sheriff's Cpl. Michael DeTar, using a Taser on party guests.

Cohen pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges lessened from two felony charges against DeTar — eavesdropping and disrupting computer services for an authorized user. She pleaded guilty to stalking, making a false report and criminal mischief above $200.

Today...
...the Cape Coral woman who allegedly brought a gun into the Lee County Justice Center in March, pleaded no contest today to a misdemeanor charge of possession of a firearm in a restricted area. (more)
Extra Credit...
Tired of Tupperware?
Taser Parties - A Shocking Success (more)

Security Oddballs - Airplane Trap Door and More

Some security inventions are truly useful and will undoubtedly save lives, whereas others are so bizarre that one wonders how in the world they got patented. This list is about the latter...
Behold the Top 10 Strangest Anti-Terrorism Patents! (more)

The New Jersey Ninja
Officials in Barnegat briefly locked down five schools in the township Wednesday because... a librarian said a man dressed as a ninja, carrying a large sword, was running through the woods... the man (a camp counselor) wearing a karate gi, was carrying a plastic sword and was attending a party at a local middle school. (more)

"Don't have a karate gi?
How about a nice tie?"
The Walking Timebomb Tie
"This is our first in a series of 'Concealed Weapons' neckties. They are each double printed - a more subtle graphic is on the front only giving a slight clue to a more "loaded" graphic hidden on the back. The second image is concealed on the reverse until the wearer pulls it out for show and tell - or keeps it a secret to his/her self." (more)

George Carlin on Airport Security (Not safe for work.)

Unbreakable Fighting Umbrella Splits Watermelons, Defends Presidents
The entourage of the Philippine president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has an unusual secret weapon. Her security team defends the head of the government with umbrellas. Not ordinary umbrellas, but unbreakable fighting umbrellas. Watch the video to see the combat-brolly in action, and marvel as Thomas Kurz ("the world's foremost expert on flexibility training") viciously splits a watermelon in two. (more) (more)

The Case of the Telepathic Ray Gun, or...

..."Does that ringing in my ears bother you?"
via Discovery.com
I know some of you may not want to believe this, but the U.S. government may well already have the ability to beam secret commands to you through the fillings in your teeth. Well, not exactly. But close. A recently declassified 1998 U.S. Army report, “Bioeffects of Selected Nonlethal Weapons,” describes government plans for a microwave weapon that would transmit voice communication that seems to emanate from within a human target’s own brain. (It was obtained and posted on the Web by Freedom From Covert Harassment & Surveillance, a Cincinnati-based organization that advocates on behalf of people who believe they are being stalked and subjected to “electromagnetic harassment.”)

To quote the report:
Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent upon the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person’s head.

This is possible because of something called the Microwave Auditory Effect, which was first discovered during World War II, when people working in the vicinity of radar transponders complained of hearing strange clicking noises that other people nearby didn’t notice. The effect is caused by thermal expansion of the region around the cochlea. In the 1960s, neuroscientist Allan H. Frey, who was the first to publish research on the effect, was able to induce it in human subjects with pulsed microwaves from a transmitter 100 meters away.

It’s unclear just how far the government’s microwave auditory research and development efforts have progressed since 1993, when the report was written... (more)

"I reprogrammed a car fob, Mr. Cheney. Now I control you."

by Chris Soghoian...
A team of respected security researchers known for their work hacking RFID radio chips have turned their attention to pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators.

The researchers will present their paper, "Pacemakers and Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators: Software Radio Attacks and Zero-Power Defenses," during the "Attacks" session of the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, one of the most prestigious conferences for the computer security field...

By reading between the lines (millions of remotely implanted medical devices, able to administer electrical shocks to the heart, can be controlled remotely from distances up to 5 feet, designed by people who know nothing about security), it is easy to predict the gigantic media storm that this paper will cause when the full details (and a YouTube video of a demo, no doubt) are made public. (more)

Spy Guns

The world's most impressive collection of spy guns
on one web page.

Avi Abrams' site "Dark Roasted Blend - Weird & wonderful things" is a container of visual vitamins for your mind. Pop a few every day. Creative juices will flood your soul. Bookmark darkroastedblond.com with an arc welder.

Ever wonder what the future will bring?

Ever consider that today was somebody else's future?

What were they thinking about us?

Were they correct?

David Szondy knows.
You will find him here.
Take all the 'tours'.
You will never see your future the same again.

Need a daily dose to make you feel superior to your ancestors? Visit Ephemeral Isle.

Arthur C. Clark Predicts - E-Bomb in 2010

"Looking back on the appalling 21st century from our vantage point, 500 years later, it sometimes seems incredible that the human race could have survived such a time of troubles. The moment of greatest danger can now be pinpointed precisely--the year 2010.

Fifty years earlier, the chief threat seemed to be from thermonuclear weapons; however, these could be manufactured only by wealthy nations possessing both vast financial resources and a high level of technology.

Then, suddenly and totally unexpectedly, the situation was transformed by the invention of the Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb. The origin of this terrifying device is unknown: Like most concepts whose time has come, it was probably invented independently in a number of places. However, the first public account appeared in the September 2001 issue of Popular Mechanics under this dramatic headline:
E-BOMB: In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400." (more)

Hummm... Time to buy a horses and a farm next to a river. You'll need the land for crops, horses for transportation and cultivation and water for power.

Laser Beam Eavesdropping

Laser beam eavesdropping...
Here is a subject that pops up every few years, grabs the press and public by the nostrils, hitches them to the paranoia pony and drags them around kicking and screaming with fear and delight.

We built an LBE to put client fears into perspective when the subject urped up in the 80's. You can read all about it here.

Another experimenter has published an admirable update here.

Movie versions about LBEs may be seen here and here.

Bottom line...
Technically, a lot of fun and very impressive ...in-the-lab.
Realistically, this is not an eavesdropping threat for most people. Relax.

How to remotely disable security cameras nondestructively from quite a distance…

Cell Phone Activated DIY CCTV Camera Blinding Project - from c-h-a-o-s.com

"It’s no secret. A lot of my inspiration comes from movies and for quite some time I have become more and more annoyed by Hollywood's sometimes rather silly solutions for an agent to shut down security cameras in order to remain undetected: e.g. blowing up the nearby power-plant or rigging up gadgets in sewers, where they can be detected by renovation workers and the sorts. If you blow something up or otherwise break it, your counterpart will immediately know it is sabotage and rule out a simple technical malfunction.

Another thing that got me to write this article is the abundant usage of surveillance cameras everywhere which makes me want to burst the bubble about security of surveillance cameras by exposing their weakness. Switching point of view will also often lead to improvement…" (more)

Alternate Universe TSCM Instrumentation?

"The P'gaackan Discombobulator''
by Kaden

"Welcome to Eccentric Genius...I'm Kaden;
I'm responsible.
More or less.

I build antiques from ...er ...somewhere else. A parallel universe where Leonardo Da Vinci, John Cleese and Jimmy Neutron spend every Tuesday night playing poker with Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian era 'gentleman inventor' still toils diligently in his potting shed laboratory."

He builds other cool stuff, too.

Steam Punk, Old Funk, New Junk...

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(more) ...Ray-Guns rock.