Desert watch

In this recent report on Friday's failed militant attack on Saudi oil facilities, there was an interesting, almost parenthetical comment regarding security measures.

Friday's assault suggested the militants were adopting the tactics of insurgents in neighboring Iraq, who have repeatedly targeted the oil industry. The Saudis have installed image-recognition devices along their desert border with Iraq to prevent miliants from crossing.

I presume that the image-recognition devices are equipped with infrared in order to detect night crossing attempts.

Neighborhood watch

China may move into mass biometric scanning, as it has recently approved a multi-camera face recognition system

The invention, developed by Su Guangda, an Electronic Engineering Department professor with Beijing-based Tsinghua University, has been approved by a panel of experts from the Ministry of Public Security...
Excelling at capturing moving facial images and featuring a multi-camera technology to lower the error for mismatching, the system will be used in public places, such as airports, post offices, customs entrances and even residential communities, in the near future...
"It has a superior advantage compared with fingerprint identification because the country doesn't have a fingerprint database for the general public," said Su.

Residential communities?

Ports of concern

Congress is up in arms over the acquisition of six US port operations by a Dubai company, fearing homeland security could be compromised.

Lawmakers are upset that [Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation], which runs 100 ports in 19 countries, is being purchased by [Dubai Ports] World with the approval of the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a 12-member panel chaired by Treasury Secretary John Snow and comprised of members of the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Commerce and Homeland Security.
P&O currently runs commercial operations in the ports of New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Miami.

I can't help wondering if they've even caught wind of a planned spaceport in the UAE.

The commercial spaceport would be based in Ras Al-Khaimah near the southern end of the Persian Gulf, and the UAE government has made an initial investment of $30 million, the Arlington, Virginia-based company [Space Adventures] said in a statement...
The agreement between Space Adventures and the Texas-based venture capital firm Prodea would help finance suborbital vehicles being designed and built by the Russian aerospace firm Myasishchev Design Bureau.