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  • Key Steps and 5 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Travel Technology Vendor for Building an Online Travel Agency

    Key Steps and 5 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Travel Technology Vendor for Building an Online Travel Agency

    Overview

    For building an online travel Agency, the travel agent must consolidate end-to-end project requirements (what are the expectations), keeping the business plan in mind and key benefits expected before deciding on the best travel technology company keeping in view the B2B travel platform and B2C travel platform and online travel companies.

    In the era of digital transformation, it is imperative to ensure that the travel technology vendor company chosen offers robust, scalable, flexible, and feature-rich online travel agency software to support the vision of the business for building an online travel agency. It must also consolidate all activities/functionalities of best online travel agency into a seamlessly single centralized cloud based platform and integrate it with supplier’s/channel partners in real time to facilitatesrobust travel technology solutions The integration of customized APIs to build successful versatile and highly customizable multispecialty online travel management System software managed by travel technology vendor must facilitate streamlining and optimizing corporate travel management systemensuring business sustainability, operational efficiency, accuracy, enhances customer experience, expand market reach, meets the requirement of evolving travel business and provide cutting edge over the completion.

    Key Steps When Building an Online Travel Agency

    • Identify your business model and target audience.

    Determine the features expected in the Online Travel Agency Software application to be designed/procured with an eye on futuristic requirement and technology.  Identify the segments where you wish to be present in the internet spectrum keeping the growth plan in mind– Business to business, business to customer or a combination of both What is going to identify your Uniqueness? Focus on reservation for Flight or accommodation, complete package or multi-service offerings. Identify if you wish to be a regional player or a global player. Identify the must have feature list – API integrations for GDSs, payment gateways, and supplier management tools. or Online Travel Portal Development for customers.

  • FBI Director, Transportation Secretary Investigating Charlotte Stabbing Murder

    FBI Director, Transportation Secretary Investigating Charlotte Stabbing Murder

    Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

    Ahead of President Trump’s comments, the FBI and Transportation Department have both signaled that federal officials will investigate the fatal stabbing death of a Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina after video footage of the incident was released last week.

    Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote on Monday night that the agency “will be investigating Charlotte over its failure to protect Iryna Zarutska,” referring to the victim in the stabbing murder.

    “If mayors can’t keep their trains and buses safe, they don’t deserve the taxpayers’ money,” Duffy added on X.

    “Murders on public transit like that of Iryna Zarutska should never be allowed to happen again.”

    At the same time, FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that the bureau was continuing to investigate the incident.

    “The FBI has been investigating the Charlotte train murder from day one. Stay tuned,” Patel wrote on Monday evening on X.

    Patel did not provide other details about the nature of the investigation.

    Critics say the death of Zarutska, 23, could have been prevented, and they’re blaming officials for failing to keep a man with a history of mental illness, arrests, and erratic behavior off the streets before he killed her.

    On Monday, President Donald Trump wrote on social media that “Criminals like this need to be LOCKED UP.”

    The suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, had served time in prison, been briefly committed for schizophrenia, and was arrested earlier this year after repeatedly calling 911 from a hospital, according to court records.

    Zarutska had come to the United States to escape the war in Ukraine, relatives wrote in a GoFundMe post and in an obituary, describing her as determined to build a safer life.

    Video footage of the incident shows the moments leading up to the stabbing death on a Charlotte Area Transit System light-rail train.

    Zarutska is seen wearing a baseball cap, sitting on the train in front of Brown as she scrolls on the phone before Brown pulls out a knife and stabs her from behind.

    The two did not appear to have any interaction beforehand.

    The footage doesn’t show the stabbing, cutting away to when Brown is seen walking on the light-rail line covered in blood.

    Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, issued a statement on X on Saturday about the video showing the moments before the woman’s death.

    “The video of the heartbreaking attack that took Iryna Zarutska’s life is now public. I want to thank our media partners and community members who have chosen not to repost or share the footage out of respect for Iryna’s family,” Lyles wrote.

    “This was a senseless and tragic loss. My prayers remain with her loved ones as they continue to grieve through an unimaginable time.”

    Brown was arrested at the scene and charged with first-degree murder, officials said in a statement last month. Court records show he had cycled through the criminal justice system for more than a decade, with 14 prior cases in Mecklenburg County, including serving five years for robbery with a dangerous weapon.

    On Monday, Duffy said his office would conduct an investigation into the issue, warning that his department could withhold funding to municipalities if public safety isn’t made a priority.

    “Your federal tax dollars go to fund a lot of these transit systems across the country,” Duffy told Fox News in an interview on Monday.

    “And we have to look at them and say, ‘Well, maybe it’s appropriate that we start pulling some of that money back because I don’t think the American taxpayer wants to pay for the homelessness and criminal element that harm little 23-year-old girls like this who are going home from work.’”

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  • Obama Judge Orders Dismantling Of Alligator Alcatraz, Relocation Of Detainees

    Obama Judge Orders Dismantling Of Alligator Alcatraz, Relocation Of Detainees

    A federal judge has ordered the dismantling of major components of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the detention center for illegal immigrants recently built in the Florida Everglades. Judge Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami also ruled that no new detainees may be brought to the facility, and current detainees must be relocated within 60 days.  

    At its heart, the Thursday-night ruling has nothing to do with the management of illegal immigrants. The lawsuit that led to the decision was filed the Center for Biological Diversity, the Miccosukee Tribe and Friends of the Everglades, with the three organizations accusing federal agencies and Miami-Dade County of violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Specifically, Williams sided with the plaintiffs in concluding that the building of Alligator Alcatraz proceeded without the environmental review required by NEPA. 

    Seen here on July 4, the “Alligator Alcatraz” detention facility is about 40 miles west of Miami and 60 miles east of Naples. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

    “[Defendants] consulted with no stakeholders or experts and did not evaluation of the environmental risks,” wrote the 68-year-old Williams, who was appointed by President Obama in 2011. “There weren’t ‘deficiencies’ in the agency’s process. There was no process.” Williams pointed to “a myriad of risks” to the Everglades environment, including wastewater discharge and rain runoff.  

    Florida’s Division of Emergency Management appealed the ruling almost immediately after it was released. Florida and the Trump administration had argued there was no environmental impact to consider, because there was already an airstrip on the site before they turned it into Alligator Alcatraz. The judge, however, said the transformation of the site was on a scale that dramatically changed the environmental implications. The new lighting, for example, reduced the Florida panther’s habitat by 2,000 acres. “The project creates irreparable harm in the form of habitat loss and increased mortality to endangered species in the area,” wrote Williams.

    Judge Kathleen Williams graduated from Duke University and University of Miami School of Law

    In a statement issued after the ruling, Paul Schwiep, who represented Friends of the Everglades and Center for Biological Diversity, offered his own depiction of the project:

    “The state and federal government paved over 20 acres of open land, built a parking lot for 1,200 cars and 3,000 detainees, placed miles of fencing and high-intensity lighting on site and moved thousands of detainees and contractors onto land in the heart of the Big Cypress National Preserve, all in flagrant violation of environmental law.”

    Williams said Florida and the federal government “offered little to no evidence” as to why the facility had to be built in the Everglades. “[It’s] apparent …that in their haste to construct the detention camp, the state did not consider alternative locations.” Florida had argued that the facility is purely a state enterprise, exempting it from NEPA’s environmental-review provisions. Williams, however, said the facility falls under NEPA because it operates with federal funding and direction” 

    President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem toured Alligator Alcatraz on July 1 (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds AFP via Getty and People)

    Though it’s a preliminary injunction as the case is further litigated, Williams set a 60-day deadline for Florida and the feds to remove current detainees and to start dismantling critical features of the facility, including fencing, lighting and power generators. A temporary restraining order issued on Aug 7 had already prohibited additional construction, including filling, paving and installation of new lighting and other infrastructure.  

    Alligator Alcatraz is the first state-run facility that houses people detained by the federal government. Several other Republican-led states have moved toward creating their own versions, complete with similarly creative nicknames. Earlier this month, Indiana announced it had made an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security to add 1,000 beds for illegal immigrants at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill — calling it the “Speedway Slammer.” On Tuesday, Nebraska announced plans for a “Cornhusker Clink.” 

    “This ruling affirms what we argued in court — that the government can’t just build something in the middle of the Everglades and the Big Cypress preserve with no environmental review, and no public input,” said Tania Galloni, managing attorney for the Florida office of Earthjustice. Ahead of the ruling, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sounded pessimistic about his prospects: “It’s pretty clear we’re in front of a judge who is not going to give us a fair shake on this.”

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  • Finland’s war on fake news starts in schools. AI could make that a lot harder

    Finland’s war on fake news starts in schools. AI could make that a lot harder

    While Finnish students learn how to discern fact from fiction online, media literacy experts say AI-specific training should be guaranteed going forward.

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    In a Finnish classroom full of children under six earlier this year, a teacher suggested writing a story as a group using a new online tool – artificial intelligence (AI). 
    With the teacher’s help, the children decided the genre (horror), the story’s plot, and the characters to include. 

    The teacher wrote all of the children’s suggestions into a prompt for an AI system. It not only generated the text, but also some images to illustrate the horror story – to the delight and surprise of the kids, according to an AI literacy expert who watched the exercise.
    The story exercise is one way the Nordic country, which lands at the top of an index tracking resilience to fake news across Europe, is starting to teach its youngest citizens how to interact with AI.
    Media literacy creates a public that is “both critically and digitally literate,” making it easier for them to assess information they encounter online, according to the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO).
    For decades, media literacy and critical thinking skills have been ingrained in Finnish schools, from math to history and science courses. But Finland’s education experts say the country is still trying to figure out how to integrate AI into their curricula.
    “The students need skills to understand AI and understand how it works,” Nina Penttinen, counsellor of education at the Finnish National Agency for Education, told Euronews Next. “In schools, they need to produce texts without AI”. 

    Media literacy as a life skill

    Finland started teaching its citizens about media literacy in the 1970s, focusing back then on how to interpret radio and TV programmes, experts told Euronews Next. 
    The most recent curriculum update in 2014 – coincidently, just months after Russia illegally annexed Crimea, prompting a flurry of disinformation in Finland and nearby countries –  brought the world of social media and smartphones into the fold. 
    The curriculum works around a concept called “multiliteracy,” the idea that understanding, evaluating, and analysing different sources of information is a skill for life and not an individual course that children can take.
    The curriculum is complemented by approximately 100 different organisations that promote media literacy throughout the country. They also contribute teaching materials to classrooms, according to the Finnish National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI). 

    Related

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    In their system, children as young as three start to understand the digital environment by researching some images or sounds that they find funny. 
    By ages seven or eight, children start to receive guidance from their teachers about whether the information they find online is reliable or not. 
    A couple years later, students who are nine or 10 begin learning how to put together research, with emphasis placed on which perspectives they are selecting and which they could be leaving out. 
    Leo Pekkala, KAVI’s deputy director, said teachers might explain in math class how algorithms work and how they’re made. 

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    Ultimately, Penttinen said it’s up to the teachers to decide how to integrate critical thinking into their subjects and lessons and to evaluate whether students are meeting expectations.
    Pekkala said their approach appears to be working, citing the  limited success of disinformation campaigns in Finland.
    Most people “seem to recognise really well” that it is malicious, he said.
    “There were certain international conspiracy theories [during the COVID-19 pandemic] that were also spread in Finland, but they never kind of spread very largely and people recognised them rather easily and there was discussion that, yeah, that’s absurd,” Pekkala said. 

    Literacy skills will help with AI, experts say

    Deepfakes are one AI-related challenge in the classroom. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) defines deepfakes as videos or images that synthesise media by either superimposing human features onto another body or manipulating sounds to generate a realistic video. 
    This year, high-profile deepfake scams have targeted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto, and several celebrities, including Taylor Swift and Joe Rogan, whose voices were used to promote a scam that promised people government funds.

    The surface technology [of AI] which is developing at high speed, doesn’t take away the need for basic critical understanding of how media works.

    Leo Pekkala

    Deputy Director, Finnish National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI)

    This material is “very, very difficult to separate from real material,” Pekkala said. 
    The hope is that students will be able to use the skills they learned in school to identify that content in an AI-generated video could potentially be “off”. To confirm that suspicion, students would check another source to verify whether that video was truthful or not. 
    “The surface technology [of AI] which is developing at high speed, doesn’t take away the need for basic critical understanding of how media works,” Pekkala added. 

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    Italy pilots AI in schools looking to boost tech-based learning

    Children will also learn some signs that a video, picture, or audio clip is fake, for example if it generates a “really emotional reaction,” Penttinen added. 
    Despite the risks, she added that children need to learn “how AI works and [how] the companies are developing it”.

    ‘It’s a huge task ahead of us’

    Kari Kivinen, an education outreach expert for the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights (EUIPO), said Finnish teachers are already changing how they work with AI in the classroom.
    That could include asking for handwritten assignments in class instead of online essays or specifying that AI can be used for tasks like brainstorming, but not for a final assignment. He cited the teacher’s horror story exercise as a way to introduce young children to AI.
    The government introduced some AI guidelines, including recommendations for early education teachers, earlier this year.
    The document suggests that teachers disclose how and when they use AI in their own work and to tell their students what errors and biases could come from its use. 

    The AI tools have been developing so fast that the education systems have not been able to follow it sufficiently so far

    Kari Kivinen

    Education Outreach Expert, European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights (EUIPO)

    Pettinen pointed to some flaws in the guidelines, saying that because they are not baked into the curriculum, schools and teachers may not adopt them. A curriculum-wide review typically happens every 10 years, she added, but it has not yet started. 
    Kivinen said he is working on a joint AI literacy framework for the European Union and other developed countries, which could provide some more guidance. 

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    The framework, to be published in early 2026, will provide guidelines for how students should use AI, how to communicate that they are using AI, and how to get more reliable results from AI. 
    Eventually, it aims to eventually measure the AI skills of 15-year-olds in 100 countries, he added. He said the AI literacy framework is “aligned with the Finnish approach”. 
    “[AI use is] not only a Finnish problem, it’s a problem all over Europe and the world at this moment,” Kivinen said. “The AI tools have been developing so fast that the education systems have not been able to follow it sufficiently so far”.
    “It’s a huge task ahead of us”.

  • Here's the tech powering ICE's deportation crackdown

    Here's the tech powering ICE's deportation crackdown

    President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during last year’s presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. 

    In his first eight months in office, that promise turned into around 350,000 deportations, a figure that includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (around 200,000), Customs and Border Protection (more than 132,000), and almost 18,000 self-deportations, according to CNN.  

    ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass deportation campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented immigrants. To aid its efforts, the ICE has at its disposal several technologies capable of identifying and surveilling individuals and communities.

    Here is a recap of some of the technology that ICE has in its digital arsenal. 

    Clearview AI facial recognition

    Clearview AI is perhaps the most well-known facial recognition company today. For years, the company promised to be able to identify any face by searching through a large database of photos it had scraped from the internet. 

    On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE has signed a contract with the company to support its law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers.” 

    According to a government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million. 

    ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI in the last couple of years. In September 2024, the agency purchased “forensic software” from the company, a deal worth $1.1 million. The year before, ICE paid Clearview AI nearly $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”

    Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment. 

    Contact Us

    Do you have more information about ICE and the technology it uses? We would love to learn how this affects you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

    Paragon phone spyware

    In September 2024, ICE signed a contract worth $2 million with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order,” putting the contract under review to make sure it complied with an executive order on the government’s use of commercial spyware. 

    Because of that order, for nearly a year, the contract remained in limbo. Then, last week, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, effectively reactivating the contract. 

    At this point, it’s unclear what’s the status of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in practice. 

    The records entry from last week said that the contract with Parago is for “a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.” Practically speaking, unless the hardware installation and training were done last year, it may take some time for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and running.

    It’s also unclear if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, an agency whose investigations are not limited to immigration, but also cover online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.

    Paragon has long tried to portray itself as an “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, and now has to decide if it’s ethical to work with Trump’s ICE. A lot has happened to Paragon in the last year. In December, American private equity giant AE Industrial purchased Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity company Red Lattice, according to Israeli tech news site Calcalist.

    In a sign that the merger may have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were referred to RedLattice’s new vice president of marketing and communications Jennifer Iras. 

    RedLattice’s Iras did not respond to a request for comment for this article, nor for last week’s article.

    In the last few months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spyware scandal in Italy, where the government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon cut ties with Italy’s intelligence agencies. 

    For years, ICE has used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. 

    In 2022, two non-profits obtained documents via Freedom of Information Act requests, which revealed that ICE performed more than 1.2 million searches over seven months using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check the background information of migrants.   

    A year later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate migrants before they even committed a crime, a program that a critic said enabled “mass surveillance.”

    According to public records, LexisNexis currently provides ICE “with a law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations.” 

    This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service. 

    LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman told TechCrunch that ICE has used the company’s product “data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations.”

    “Our commitment is to support the responsible and ethical use of data, in full compliance with laws and regulations, and for the protection of all residents of the United States,” said Richman, who added that LexisNexis “partners with more than 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies across the United States to advance public safety and security.” 

    Surveillance giant Palantir

    Data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The biggest contract, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called “Investigative Case Management,” or ICM.

    The contract for ICM goes back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million deal with Palantir. The Peter Thiel-founded company’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. 

    Earlier this year, 404 Media, which has reported extensively on the technology powering Trump’s deportation efforts, and particularly Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed details of how the ICM database works. The tech news site reported that it saw a recent version of the database, which allows ICE to filter people based on their immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more. 

    404 Media cited “a source familiar with the database,” who said it is made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of data and that it can build reports that show, for example, people who are on a specific type of visa who came into the country at a specific port of entry, who came from a specific country, and who have a specific hair color (or any number of hundreds of data points).” 

    The tool, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial enough that sources within the company leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki where Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE. 

    Palantir is also developing a tool called “ImmigrationOS,” according to a contract worth $30 million revealed by Business Insider. ImmigrationOS is said to be designed to streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” give “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visa, according to a document first reported on by Wired.

  • DOGE-Led Audit To Put 400,000 Pentagon Contracts Under Scrutiny

    DOGE-Led Audit To Put 400,000 Pentagon Contracts Under Scrutiny

    Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson recently told reporters that a small team from the Department of Government Efficiency is moving quickly and continuing to influence major bureaucratic reforms.

    “DOGE work at the department is not going to stop — that is absolutely for certain,” Wilson recently told reporters.

    Even though other DOGE teams at various federal agencies have already been wound down or have completed their missions, cutting waste and fraud in the Department of Defense is paramount to overhauling that agency, which commands an annual budget of $850 billion.

    New details from Bloomberg suggest that the DoD DOGE team will review more than 400,000 open contracts and grants for “additional savings” in fiscal 2026 and later. The goal is simple: identify waste, cut costs, and redirect “savings” into other programs via congressional approval. 

    The DOGE.gov database indicates about 600 canceled or adjusted defense contracts, totaling more than $20 billion in claimed savings. 

    A Pentagon spokesperson told Bloomberg that DoD’s DOGE team has trimmed “over $15 billion in total contract spending to date.” 

    “Reforming the antiquated defense acquisition processes is a long-recognized problem that has received bipartisan support, and we are taking swift action to fix it at the President’s direction,” Wilson told Bloomberg.

    The Pentagon views DOGE as a multi-year, multi-layered strategy aimed at reforming defense acquisitions, which have long been criticized as bloated and inefficient. 

    Do we need to explain more? 

    By the way, we’ve pointed out how the Pentagon is shifting its priorities, including the defense firms Goldman says investors should own on the pivot.

    DOGE’s contract cancellations at the DoD spurred Goldman analyst Noah Poponak to “reiterate our cautious view of the Gov’t IT & Services sector, and are Sell rated on BAH, CACI, SAIC, and VVX; Neutral on LDOS and AMTM; Buy rated on PSN.” 

    Washington-based American Enterprise Institute analyst Todd Harrison pointed out, “The only way they will be able to get through reviewing 400,000 contracts over the next year is to use some sort of automated generic algorithm.”

    “A thoughtful review of each contract, the work it supports, and the alternatives available would require hours or days of work for each individual contract, and DOGE is not staffed for that,” Harrison said. 

    Wonder if DOGE DoD team will call up ‘Big Balls’ for this task… 

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