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ON LAND, IN THE AIR AND ON THE SEA SSI MEANS SECURITY.
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January 2009 |
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Your Bi-monthly Homeland Security News Source
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A Rare Peek at Homeland Security's Files on Travelers
Sean O'Neill
 The oversize white envelope bore the blue logo of the Department of Homeland Security. Inside, I found 20 photocopies of the government's records on my international travels. Every overseas trip I've taken since 2001 was noted.
I had requested the files after I had heard that the government tracks "passenger activity." Starting in the mid-1990s, many airlines handed over passenger records. Since 2002, the government has mandated that the commercial airlines deliver this information routinely and electronically.
A passenger record typically includes the name of the person traveling, the name of the person who submitted the information while arranging the trip, and details about how the ticket was bought, according to documents published by the Department of Homeland Security.
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Somalis in U.S. Draw FBI Attention
Sara A. Carter
War at home seen as lure
 The FBI is expanding contacts with Somali immigrant communities in the U.S., especially in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, fearing that terrorists are recruiting young men for suicide missions in their homeland.
FBI Special Agent E.K. Wilson, spokesman for the Twin Cities FBI field office, described the effort as community outreach. Many members of the Somali community are concerned over disappearances, he said.
Officials would not provide the exact number of missing, but about 20 men in their late teens and early 20s have disappeared in recent months and are thought to have joined Islamist rebels who are on the verge of overthrowing the U.S.- and U.N.-backed government in Somalia.
Read On...
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Government Intelligence Is Way Behind
L. Gordon Crovitz
 As we mark the anniversary of 9/11, it's worth reviewing how quickly the U.S. has closed intelligence gaps in the past and how far we have to go today. In a similar period after the Nazis started World War II, the U.S. broke the German communications code, invented radar, and developed and dropped the nuclear bomb. The war to gain the information upper hand over terrorists is taking longer - perhaps too long.
Ironically, the government's last great innovation in information technology was the network that became the Internet. The Web has revolutionized civilian life, but not so for the intelligence agencies. Still plagued by old-fashioned giant IT projects, government intelligence agencies stockpile silos of unshared data in a large bureaucratic structure more suited to a predigital era.
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Homeland Security Forecasts 5-year Threat Picture
By Eileen Sullivan
 WASHINGTON (AP) - The terrorism threat to the United States over the next five years will be driven by instability in the Middle East and Africa, persistent challenges to border security and increasing Internet savvy, says a new intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press.
Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks are considered the most dangerous threats that could be carried out against the U.S.
But those threats are also the most unlikely because it is so difficult for al-Qaida and similar groups to acquire the materials needed to carry out such plots, according to the internal Homeland Security Threat Assessment for the years 2008-2013.
Read on...
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Neo-Nazi Had How-to for Assassins: FBI
By Stewart Bell
Seized In Search; Charged with plotting to kill Ottawa lawyer
 FBI agents found a how-to manual for assassins when they searched the apartment of a U. S. neo-Nazi charged with threatening to kill an Ottawa lawyer, documents show.
The book, Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, was seized during the court-approved Oct. 17, 2008, search of Bill White's apartment in Roanoke, Va., says an FBI property report.
A grand jury indicted Mr. White on Dec. 11 for allegedly threatening five people including Canadian Richard Warman, whose campaign against Internet hate speech has angered right-wing extremists.
Read On...
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Group of Organizations Sues Chertoff over E-Verify
By Michael Hardy
Acco rding to the complaint, filed Dec. 23 in the U.S. District Court for Maryland's southern division, the legislation that created E-Verify does not allow thegovernment to require contractors to participate in the program.
.A group of organizations has filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that challenges the legality of requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to use the Homeland Security Department's E-Verify system. The system's purpose is to identify people who are not legally eligible to work in the United States.
The organizations include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Associated Builders and Contractors, Society for Human Resource Management, American Council on International Personnel and the HR Policy Association.
Read on... |
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UT Professor Refines Art of Looking Behind Walls
By Dan Zehr
Doppler radar technology being adapted to identify hidden objects, watch people surreptitiously.
 Hao Ling can see through walls.
His X-ray vision is a little blurry right now, but he's sharpening it with the help of a team of researchers at the University of Texas.
Ling, an electrical engineering professor at UT, is one of handful of experts nationwide researching radar technologies that eventually could help soldiers, police and rescue workers locate human movement on the other side of walls or inside crumbled buildings.
His latest project is funded by a National Science Foundation program aimed at developing fresh ways to combat roadside bombs and other terrorist activity.
Ling and his team at UT are researching ways to take Doppler radar technology - the same basic systems meteorologists use to track storms - and put it to work identifying people as they move around in places the naked eye can't see. The goal is to transform waves the radar produces into understandable images of whoever is behind the wall.
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Counter Terror Expo is a leading counter terrorism conference, workshop and exhibition event. Held annually in London, Counter Terror Expo brings the world's leading terrorism experts together with other specialist practitioners and systems suppliers for two full days of informed debate, designed to facilitate an open exchange of views and drive forward solutions to counter the threat faced from international terrorism.
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The Fort Dix Verdict: A Victory for Pre-emptive Prosecutions
By Amanda Ripley.....
Te chnically, the verdict Monday in the Fort Dix terrorism case - in which five defendants were accused of plotting to attack the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey - was mixed. After deliberating for six days, the jury at Federal District Court in Camden, N.J., acquitted the defendants of attempted murder but found them guilty of conspiring to murder members of the U.S. military. "It shows that the portrait that was painted by the U.S. Attorney as a slam dunk case was not accurate," said Rocco Cipparone Jr., one of the defense attorneys.
But in truth the verdict is a significant victory for the federal government, and not just because the conspiracy conviction is likely to put the men away for life, when U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler sentences them in April. It proves that the government can convince a jury to support the idea of pre-emptively prosecuting terrorism cases - a risky strategy that has yielded mixed results in the past.
Read on...
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US Cybersecurity Defences Fail to Thwart Mock Cyberattack
By John Leyden
Pants meet ankles
 Critical US electronic systems have failed to withstand a simulated cyberattack.
Participants in a recent cyber-warfare exercise told Reuters that the exercise highlighted problems in leadership, communications and readiness. The two-day exercise brought together 230 government agencies, private firms and other participants. Participants were split into two groups - attackers and defenders - before each developed tactics for attacking and defending critical infrastructure systems, such as those controlling banking, telecommunications and utilities.
Read On...
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Feds Consider Searches of Terrorism Blogs
By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department may soon start scouring the Internet to find blogs and message boards that terrorists use to plan attacks in the USA.
The effort comes as researchers are seeing terrorists increasingly use the Internet to plan bombings, recruit members and spread propaganda. "Blogging and message boards have played a substantial role in allowing communication among those who would do the United States harm," the department said in a recent notice.
Homeland Security officials are looking for companies to search the Internet for postings "in near to real-time which precede" an attack, particularly a bombing. Bombings are "of great concern" because terrorists can easily get materials and make an improvised-explosive device (IED), the department said.
Read on...
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The scope of this training is to teach SWAT team members how to conduct an operation with the special characteristics peculiar to terrorist incidents and accomplish the mission, whether there are hostages involved, IED's, booby traps, or suicide terrorists with maximum safety for: citizens, team members and surrounding assets. By nature, the operation may become more similar to a military operation because, as mentioned above, this is a criminal act with a strategic goal. It is part of an ideological struggle against a state or population and may be carried out by a professional team of well equipped terrorist subjects.
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