News
The World Customs Organization (WCO) has announced the launch of the Iris application. Iris is a new and innovative tool which acts as an ''aggregator'' for all types of open source Customs information.
The application utilizes Web-crawlers to search the Internet for news items and presents this information in a graphic-style world map in real-time. The system also allows for the storing of the ''hits'' on a specific database where they will be available for intelligence experts and other operational front-line Customs staff for further analysis.
Iris also allows the WCO to push out information about major Customs seizures which have been reported to the WCO Customs Enforcement Network (CEN) database or to the Global Shield application (seizure information itself will not be reported, but a notice about a seizure will be displayed).
