Category Archives: Technology

Legal, Science, Scotland, Society, Technology

Forensic Science: Scientists will bring an end to unsolved crime

FORENSICS

SCOTLAND’S top forensics scientist has predicted it will be virtually impossible to get away with a crime within a generation due to advances in DNA technology.

The director of forensic services at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA), Tom Nelson, said rapid improvements made it more likely that criminals would always be found out.

. Related DNA Phenotyping…

He said the SPA was looking at ’12 cold cases’ in which modern techniques were being used to analyse old evidence in an effort to bring offenders to justice.

New methods mean DNA traces can be found on clothing and other materials even when there is no blood – something that would have been impossible in the past.

Mr Nelson said one of the guiding principles of forensic science is ‘every contact leaves a trace’.

He said: ‘We may be recovering material at the moment which doesn’t necessarily allow us to detect an individual but, as science develops in the next 15 years, that will become possible – science is always moving on.’

Mr Nelson said the challenge for police forensics experts was to ‘throw everything that we have in our toolbox’ at securing genetic samples from crime scenes.

He said that thanks to improvements in DNA analysis ‘an individual may commit a crime and think they have got away with it for a number of years, but I believe that individual will be detected’.

The SPA’s current caseload features 12 cold cases, stretching back up to 20 years, in which forensic investigators are analysing evidence to gauge whether new breakthroughs are possible.

Mr Nelson pointed to forensics work which contributed to the conviction of nine members of a gang who were jailed for a total of 87 years in January for drug and gun offences.

Their crimes included the ‘merciless’ torture of a man over a cocaine debt and an arsenal of weapons hidden in a car. A report by Mr Nelson revealed that more than 200 DNA samples were recovered from seized firearms. More than 1,000 DNA samples and 1,000 fingerprints were recovered from various scenes.

The results of these tests identified all of the initial suspects in the case and uncovered an additional six people that were not initially linked to the group until the forensic results were provided.

Mr Nelson’s report states: ‘Criminals should be aware that they cannot escape without leaving traces of material at the scene of their crime.’

Modern forensic techniques include DNA 24, a profile kit which targets 24 parts of a person’s DNA, whereas in the past it was only possible to look at 11 areas.

However, the daughter of a former police officer, who was wrongly accused of perjury when a fingerprint found at a murder scene in 1997 was mistakenly identified as hers, questioned the SPA’s confidence in forensic science.

He said: ‘While forensics has come a long way, they still perpetuate this fiction of perfection which is not true – rubbish in, rubbish out. Human error in the collection of forensic evidence and in its analysis is still a contributor to miscarriages of justice.’

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Britain, Business, Government, Technology, United States

Probity needed over GKN bid

GKN’s TAKEOVER BID

ALL TOO OFTEN it is price which determines the outcome of mergers and takeovers. Share registers are now global and, once the proverbial train has departed, City traders and hedge fund managers hitch calculated risks and profit handsomely.

Notwithstanding, there have been several bid approaches where robust industrial and strategic- defence policies have prevailed. Examples include the proposed Airbus deal with BAE Systems, the Pfizer skirmish with Astrazeneca, the Deutsche Boerse ‘merger of equals’ with the London Stock Exchange, and the approach for Unilever by Kraft-Heinz. The key to shooting down these transactions were robust company boards, and strict regulatory and political responses.

The House of Commons business select committee may be up to its neck picking over the carcass of Carillion, but it would be a dereliction of duty if it now allowed GKN, Britain’s only world-class car components manufacturer, to fall into the hands of financially driven Melrose which has little of the same commitment to British research and development and manufacturing.

The country cannot allow manufacturing know-how to vanish into uncertain hands at the very moment when Britain is looking to new global markets post-Brexit. At least the defence select committee is preparing to ask some serious questions about aerospace.

GKN may not be a top Ministry of Defence contractor, but it does important work on the Typhoon fighter jet and is a strategic partner with the US (including work on the Lockheed Martin F-35 joint-strike fighter destined for Britain’s new aircraft carriers).

In the civilian sector, Airbus regards GKN as a vital supplier for wing components, to the point that the company’s chief executive, Tom Enders, says he would not favour GKN falling into the hands of a financially driven and predatory bidder.

Aerospace, along with pharmaceuticals, finance and high-tech, is a sector of the UK economy where there are industrial clusters and genuine competitive advantage. Allowing that to be whipped away would be enormously detrimental.

The biggest concern about a Melrose takeover is for GKN’s driveline (driveshaft) technology and its advanced work in Abingdon on e-drive, a vital component for next generation electric cars already embraced by manufacturers including Volvo.

The UK car components industry was greatly denuded by the experiences of the late 20th century, but, as the industry has risen phoenix-like from the ashes, GKN emerged as a world-class player willing to invest in the new drive technologies.

It would be an act of industrial sabotage if Melrose were to get its hands on driveline and e-drive and sell the technology to the highest bidders in France, Germany or China. We only have to look at the recent takeover by Vauxhall by Peugeot owners PSA and the threat to the Ellesmere Port plant to understand how ruinous that would be. The Unite union recognises this, and so does an industrialist of the stature of Sir Richard Lapthorne.

The business select committee has a sacred duty to properly scrutinise what the impact of a hostile Melrose deal would be. Allowing the future of GKN to be settled by global investors, with no loyalties to British technology and jobs, would be unconscionable.

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Britain, Government, Internet, Society, Technology

The Home Office unveils new technology that detects hate content

INTERNET & ONLINE ACTIVITY

Home Office steps up fight against terror content with new technology.

INTERNET giants will have little excuse for allowing extremist propaganda on their websites after the Home Office unveiled new technology to detect hate content.

Web firms have been told to increase efforts to remove terror-related posts after the UK was hit by attacks in London and Manchester last year. All had an “online component”, the Home Office said.

Now the UK Government has revealed advanced technology that aims to automatically detect extremist and hateful videos and content before they become publicly available online.

Tests have shown the £600,000 tool can identify 94 per cent of the entire content in Islamic State propaganda videos. The breakthrough came as a Home Office analysis revealed IS supporters used more than 400 separate online platforms to pump out propaganda last year.

The Home Office said it would share the technology with firms to combat the abuse of their platforms. Home Secretary Amber Rudd welcomed the development as she visited San Francisco for talks with technology giants. She said: “Those who commit terror attacks on our streets are increasingly influenced by what they see online. I hope this new technology the Home Office has helped develop can support others to go further and faster.”

Using ‘advanced machine learning’, the technology analyses terror videos to pick out ‘subtle signals’ and determine whether it is IS related propaganda or something else, such as a news report. The systems can be adapted to look for other violent extremist content.

The chief executive of ASI Data Science, Marc Warner, whose firm developed the new model, said major organisations such as Google and Facebook could not “solve this problem alone”.

 

YET, we all know that no amount of moral pressure has so far made Facebook, Google and Twitter remove the deluge of hate-filled extremism, sick trolling and other disturbing extreme content that pollutes their sites. Hit them in their pockets and they might just begin to change their ways.

It is promising that large scale multiconglomerate companies such as the Anglo-Dutch company Unilever is threatening to pull all advertising from the three internet giants if they don’t clamp down on this filth. Unilever – which has a £6.8billion-a-year marketing budget – is thoroughly sick of seeing its products being placed next to terrorist propaganda or sexualised images of children and has decided enough is enough.

Other big firms – notably Procter and Gamble – are making similar threats. We should sincerely hope many more will follow.

All we ever hear from the tech giants are weasel words. They say they take down extremist or illegal material as soon as they are alerted to it, but this is demonstrably untrue. And why should they have to be alerted, rather than policing this kind of content themselves?

The Home Office has now unveiled a new system that can automatically detect 94 per cent of Islamic State propaganda on the web. Is it really beyond multibillion pound corporations that specialise in technology to do the same – or even better? They have run out of excuses.

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