Airports Want to Return to Private Screeners; Hackers Cost Three Out of Four Companies; Al Qaeda May Poison U.S. Water; Pentagon Tries to Capture Experience for Robots

Airports Want to Return to Private Screeners

Just months after the federal government took over screening at security checkpoints, airports across the country are starting to show interest in returning to an airport security system handled by the private sector, according to a story in today’s Washington Post. The Post reports that airports want more control over the staffing of security personnel, as airline service tends to change rapidly and a federal workforce does not have the reputation for doing so.

Hackers Cost Three Out of Four Companies

The eighth annual Computer Crime and Security Survey from the Computer Security Institute (CSI), produced with the San Francisco FBI’s Computer Intrusion Squad, found that 75 per cent of the 530 survey respondents reported financial losses from hack attacks, according to a story on VNUnet. The story reports that CSI found that 78 per cent of respondents cited their internet connection, rather than their internal systems (36 per cent), as a frequent point of attack.

Al Qaeda May Poison U.S. Water

An Arabic-language magazine quotes a senior member of Al Qaeda as raising the possibility that the group might poison US water supplies, according to a story in today’s Boston Globe. The Globe reports that the speculation is based on e-mail correspondence that Al-Majalla conducted with Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj, whom the magazine identified as a senior member of Al Qaeda.

Pentagon Tries to Capture Experience for Robots

A Pentagon project hopes to capture everything a person sees, says and hears, as part of an effort to create smarter robots, according to a story in the New York Times. The Times reports that the goal of the project, called LifeLog, is to create a searchable database of human lives, to promote artificial intelligence, and create technology would that would advance a new class of systems able to reason in a number of ways, learn from experience and respond to surprises.