Halifax police intend to step up camera surveillance in public places, the city’s police chief said Tuesday.

Chief Frank Beazley said Halifax Regional Police officers will be using portable digital equipment in the near future to record images at "hot spots" in the municipality and public gatherings like rock concerts.

With hard drives hitting 2 TB, our dual-layer DVD burners are starting to look mighty limited. While Blu-ray Disc burners will be making their way into high-end computers soon, it won’t be long until even 50 GB seems puny.

Researchers from Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology claims to have developed an optical recording technique that it says can place a a theoretical 1.6 TB on a DVD-sized disc. This is done by adding extra dimensions to the recording surface.

If you’re planning to buy alcohol in the near future, and prefer not to have your mugshot made available to the local police, best to stock up now. Because, buried deep within the debate around the s.31 of the Policing and Crime Bill are provisions that will allow the Secretary of State to instruct your local corner shop - or pub - to install CCTV and retain pictures of anyone buying alcohol for at least 60 days. Said pics will, of course, be available to the police on request.

It is not wholly clear what the purpose of this measure would be. Over the last few years, the government has pursued a two-pronged attack on what it sees as the evils of under-age drinking.

Info: Home Office plans to force CCTV on shops and pubs

Researchers have developed a breakthrough storage technology capable of squeezing the contents of 250 DVDs onto a disk the size of a quarter.

The technique involves using the self-assembly properties of chemically dissimilar polymer chains to array themselves into ludicrously dense but perfectly regular formations.

Working with co-lead investigator Thomas Russell of UMass Amherst, Ting Xu of the University of California at Berkeley was able to create defect-free arrays with cell sizes as small as three nanometers.

Three-nanometer domains could theoretically create storage densities of 10 terabytes per square inch. Compare that density to the record 803 gigabytes per square inch achieved in rarified testing of perpendicular magnetic recording technology at TDK's labs, and this new technique has the potential for increasing storage densities by 12.5 times over that record.

Info: Storage breakthrough could bust density record

Seagate Technology on Friday confirmed a firmware problem that caused some of its hard drives to fail.

Customers have been flooding tech forums, including Seagate's own community forums, with failure reports of Seagate's 1-TB Barracuda 7200.11 drive. The complaints follow by about two months problems found with Seagate's 1.5-TB Barracuda 7200.11 drive, which randomly froze, according to tech site Tom's Hardware.

In an e-mailed statement, Seagate said it had "isolated a potential firmware issue" in certain products, including some Barracuda 7200.11 drives and related drive lines based on the same platform. The products had been manufactured through December and also include the Barracuda ES.2 SATA and DiamondMax 22 drives. More than two dozen drives are affected.

Info: Seagate Barracuda hard drives plagued by failures

But he won't get that chance. They carried off the security videotapes with the candy bars.

"Cleaned out," Beckstrom said. "It's that simple, and the rest of us can just drop dead for all they care."

The moonlit heist a few weeks ago hit him hard enough that it killed his business. He let his nine employees go after he opened his doors for one last time in late December to try to sell the sparse inventory that remained.

Seldom is a business hit with a one-time theft bad enough to bankrupt it, but Beckstrom and many other retailers in Utah are now more vulnerable to that possibility.

Info: Retail thefts soaring as the economy slides

Emmy Lou Thorp, of Topeka, was shocked when she saw $3,000 in unauthorized charges on her checking account, because she had never lost her debit card.

The thief used her card number to make 24 purchases over a three-week period in November and December.

A Topeka police officer said it is possible the criminal could have been a bad employee who compromised her debit card number when she made a purchase.

Thorp, 76, is a victim of one of the fastest growing crimes in the country — identity theft and financial fraud.

Info: Fraud, ID theft rising crimes

(12-23) 17:35 PST -- Some Bay Area cities are dealing with an increase in shoplifting, a trend that police and security experts believe is linked to tough economic times prompting people to steal items out of need as well as greed.

Richmond police have been arresting women taking diapers or baby clothes, in addition to the typical thieves interested in iPods and video games, said Officer Victor Vaca, who has been assigned to Hilltop Mall in Richmond for three years.

"We're getting older shoplifters, mothers with their children stealing day-to-day necessities," Vaca said. "In the past, people were more likely to steal luxury items like jewelry and electronics."

Info: Shoplifting on the rise as economy stumbles

At first glance, it didn’t seem like a case of employee theft.

But the employee had apparently visited unauthorized websites. A lot of websites. The investigation finally showed that the employee had spent literally hundreds of hours in front of the computer not working.

The private investigator working on the case, Mark Cayer, says it’s probably typical of the loss of productivity and income employers suffer every year from the disappearance of merchandise, damaged equipment, time spent on non-company business, fraudulent benefit claims and, yes, taking cash from the till.

Info: Private investigators offer tips on thwarting employee theft

ST. LOUIS - Some employees steal. It's always been that way. But there are signs, nationally and locally, that the economic pinch may be making it worse.

A woman took more than $39,000 from her Sunset Hills employer. A man used a Pine Lawn boss's money to gas personal vehicles. Department store clerks improperly redeemed coupons for free merchandise in south St. Louis County.

There are a few workers at stores and restaurants everywhere who let friends take goods for free, or keep money meant for the company's account.

Officials say times of economic stress may make it easier to submit to temptations on the job.

Info: Economy may be leading employees to steal

In the wake of the recession, more businesses are facing a growing financial threat: employee theft. New research shows that employers are seeing an increase in internal crimes, ranging from fictitious sales transactions and illegal kickbacks to the theft of office equipment and retail products meant for sale to customers.
 
Tim BowerEmployers suspect that workers are pilfering from them to cope with financial difficulties at home or in anticipation of being laid off.

What's more, it's often the most trusted workers who are committing the thefts.

Info: Businesses Say Theft by Their Workers Is Up

The current economic downturn has led to an upturn in workplace theft, especially in large organizations, according to a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity. The study, released on December 11, found that 27 percent of respondents in large companies—those with 10,000 or more employees—said crime in the workplace has risen during the current economic crisis, while 15 percent of all respondents, regardless of company size, reported the same.

Info: Employee theft rising, companies say

It’s no secret that when the economy tanks, retail crime goes up. Especially when it comes to crimes such as shoplifting, returns fraud and use of stolen credit cards.

This recession is no exception: According to the Retail Industry Leaders Association’s 2008 Current Crime Trends Survey, retail crimes are trending up and will likely continue to increase through the rest of 2009.

Info: Retail Crime Up Thanks to Down Economy

It is possible for a business to loose more to employee theft, than to shoplifting, burglary, and robbery combined. Below are some of the ways in which employees can steal from a business:

Info: Internal Theft Prevention - from Vancouver Police Dept.

If your company has more than five employees, chances are you were the victim of internal fraud last year. Bribery, conflict of interest, false statements, embezzlement. How can you tell if you have a fraudster on the inside — and how can you keep your assets safe from now on?

Info: How to tell if fraud is happening in your company