(fox19)
Cars may soon be able to tell you if you are fit to drive after a night out on the town.

New technology can prevent drivers from starting their cars if they are drunk.

"When you breathe, that gets pumped inside the modules," Bud Zaouk of QinetiQ North America, the company who produces the sensors, said.

At this point, the device looks a bit like a high school science experiment. But in the future it could save thousands of lives each year by preventing drunk driving.

"I always call it the seatbelt of our generation. This is the single best opportunity to save lives," Zaouk said.

The sensor is called 'DADSS' or Driver Alcohol Detection System for Safety. QinetiQ is carrying out a research project, in conjunction with the federal government, to determine if the technology can be honed to a fine enough point that the public will accept it...
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(myfoxphoenix)
The use of predator drones has revolutionized surveillance overseas and along both U.S. borders. Now local law enforcement hope the extra eyes in the skies will keep the public safer.

When you think about drones, you might think about large unmanned aircraft flying high above their targets, often costing millions of dollars to build.

A new generation of drones is hitting the market, often about the size of a kite and a fraction of the cost of other surveillance methods such as helicopters.

The T-Hawk is only about 17 pounds.

The defense company Honeywell, which is based in Phoenix, makes the T-Hawk and is marketing it to police departments around the U.S...
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(kdvr)
Denver Police say they're training taxi drivers to be "first responders" and alert law enforcement of any suspicious activity they see while working their routes in the city.

Police say the four major taxi companies in the city are participating in a program that is being called "Taxis on Patrol." KUSA-TV reports that as many as 1,200 drivers will be trained to participate. The cabs in the program will have a "Taxis on Patrol" design.

Police Cmdr. Tony Lopez says the initiative's goal is to make the city safer...
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(huffingtonpost)
Your phone is a covert spy device, secretly listening to and recording everything you say -- or at least, it could be, according to new research that has uncovered a smartphone hack affecting both Androids and iPhones.

The auto-answer feature installed on most smartphones can be hacked to transform the phone into a listening machine, based on research by Ralf-Philipp Weinmann that shows a way hackers can break into the phone's baseband processor--which sends and receives radio signals on the cellular network--by exploiting bugs in the firmware of its radio chips...
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(wsvn)
A new piece of technology may soon be coming to South Florida, but is already raising concerns from residents.

The Miami-Dade Police Department recently finalized a deal to buy a drone, which is an unmanned plane equipped with cameras. Drones have been used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan in the war against terror.

Many residents are concerned that the new technology will violate their privacy.

MDPD purchased a drone named T-hawk from defense firm Honeywell to assist with the department's Special Response Team's operations. The 20-pound drone can fly for 40 minutes, reach heights of 10,500 feet and cruise in the air at 46 miles an hour. "It gives us a good opportunity to have an eye up there. Not a surveilling eye, not a spying eye. Let's make the distinction. A surveilling eye to help us to do the things we need to do, honestly, to keep people safe," said Miami-Dade Police Director James Loftus.

The ACLU is one of the organizations that is concerned about the drone that may soon be coming to Miami-Dade County. Howard Simon, the executive director of the ACLU of Florida approves of the drones but also advocates strict regulation of the drones. "Technology: there's no reason not to embrace technology if it makes the streets safer, if it helps the police. The concern is, though, that every new technology also has within it the capacity to threaten people's privacy," he said...
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