Briefly noted

Napolitano offers Obama pragmatic take on immigration

If Arizona governor Janet Napolitano becomes the new secretary of homeland security, this centrist Democrat could have the opportunity to institute nationwide reforms to address continuing problems with illegal immigration and border security. These reforms could grow out of the policies and programs that Napolitano has tested in her 15 years of public service in a state that is ground zero in America’s struggle to control its borders.

Microsoft, ESRI to help improve DHS operations

Microsoft Corp. and ESRI together are collaborating to help DHS to protect citizens, prevent and solve crimes, and enable counter-terrorism through software. The newly formed collaboration will combine capabilities from both organizations in geospatial and collaborative technologies, and will result in advanced intelligence for state and local data fusion centers and emergency operations centers. An intended product of this collaboration is the FusionX Appliance, a baseline IT architecture for fusion centers, which will provide users with advanced collaboration and geospatial intelligence capabilities by combining the power of ESRI’s ArcGIS Server Advanced Enterprise with the collaboration capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

Inbox: Brits baying for blood over ID

This week in silicon.com mail box: This week, ID cards in the United Kingdom were in the news yet again, this time with readers commenting on a story claiming the public is not scared of biometrics — just the loss of personal info. Also getting a lot of attention was a story concerning the Lords asking whether there is any need for the super commons database. Lastly, a silicon.com exclusive interview with Ray Kurzweil prompted readers to reach for their keyboards.