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ON LAND, IN THE AIR AND ON THE SEA SSI MEANS SECURITY.
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October Mid-Month 2009 |
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Your Bi-monthly Homeland Security News Source |
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Upcoming Events
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Mexico's Ferocious Zetas Cartel Reigns Through Fear
By John Burnett
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration considers Los Zetas to be the most dangerous drug-trafficking organization in Mexico. Its members earned a reputation as super-gangsters adept at paramilitary-style ambushes and bold jailbreaks.
On the Texas-Mexico border, the Zetas are mythic, their crimes chronicled in the media and memorialized in narco-ballads.
They are the most feared, most emulated criminals in Mexico.
"They are a formidable criminal organization," says Anthony Placido, the DEA's chief of intelligence. "They're heavily armed with .50-caliber sniper rifles and heavy military-grade ordnance."
Read on... |
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Make your agency or company a key player in our country's homeland security: An opportunity to sponsor the USA's most prestigious Counter Terror Conference in its 5th year!
If your agency or company would like to partner with SSI in bringing an international group of Counter Terror Experts to your agency or company, you can earn valuable discounts for your personnel!
Please contact us Immediately! Call 305-302-2790. |
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At the U.N., Terrorism Pays
by Ehud Barak
This week the United Nation's Human Rights Council produced a 600-page report alleging that Israel carried out war crimes in Gaza. The Goldstone Report-named for its chief investigator Richard Goldstone-also asserts that Israel's motives for its operation against Hamas nine months ago were purely political. I am outraged by these accusations. Let me explain why.
It is the duty of every nation to defend itself. This is a basic obligation that all responsible governments owe their citizens. Israel is no different.
After enduring eight years of ongoing rocket fire-in which 12,000 missiles were launched against our cities, and after all diplomatic efforts to stop this barrage failed-it was my duty as defense minister to do something about it. It's as simple and self-evident as the right to self-defense.
While such logic eluded Mr. Goldstone and his team, it was crystal clear to the thousands of Israeli children living in southern Israel who had to study, play, eat and sleep while being preoccupied about the distance to the nearest bomb shelter. When I accompanied then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on his visit to the shelled city of Sderot, he said "If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing." Too bad the Human Rights Council wasn't listening.
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Electronic Border Control
By Elizabeth Goitein
 Suppose you're returning home from a vacation in Cancun. A customs agent asks you to open your suitcase so he can check its contents. So far, so good.
Now, the agent asks you to log on to your laptop so he can read your e-mails and personal files and examine which Web sites you've visited. He makes a copy of your hard drive so the government can comb through its contents. You've done nothing to give the agent any cause for suspicion.
That can't be legal - can it?
Until recently, it would not have been allowed. Long-standing customs directives prohibited agents from reading travelers' personal documents unless they reasonably suspected them to be merchandise or evidence of illegal activity.
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Train Hard - Play Hard!
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.
For more information on hosting an SSI SWAT Counter Terrorism Course at your agency, please contact Sol Bradman at (305) 302-2790.
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Spanish police arrest woman terror suspect wanted in connection with ETA bombs planted in Majorca From Mail Foreign Service
A woman wanted for questioning over a bombing capaign on Majorca this summer has been arrested in France.
Terror suspect Joanes Larretxea Mendiola, 29, was arrested with one of Spain's most wanted terrorists, Iurgi Mendinueta Mintegi, an alleged chief of Basque separatist group ETA.
Heavily-armed French police swooped on Larretxea Mendiola near Montpelier as she drove to an explosives den in a stolen car with false numberplates. She was armed and carrying false ID.
The pair were being held today at a police station in the city ahead of their transfer to the French capital.
Spanish Development Minister Jose Blanco said today: 'Our congratulations go out to the Spanish security forces and the French government for their co-operation. This shows that through co-operation and pressure, we can end terrorism.'
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Threat of Multi-Agency Attacks on United States Increasing, Experts Warn
By Tara Bannow
 Nothing seemed out of the ordinary the morning Massoud Amin stood before top U.S. officials warning about the threat of catastrophic attacks.
But the meeting, held less than a mile from the Pentagon, was cut short when cell phones and beepers rattled with news that two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers , one had hit the Pentagon and another was missing. Amin, director of the University of Minnesota Technological Leadership Institute (TLI), immediately worried about the nation's electrical, cyber and energy infrastructure, all of which could have been the next victims.
"A determined, multi-pronged attack on these systems can cause many troubles for our nation," he said, "an economic impact as well as on our security and quality of life."
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 Homeland1.com is revolutionizing the way in which the homeland security community finds relevant news, identifies important training information, interacts with each other and researches product purchases. It is becoming the most comprehensive and trusted online destination for industry personnel and aspiring professionals alike. |
Hackers Split into 2 Worlds By Bridget Carey
The world of hackers is kind of like the "Star Wars" universe: There's a light side and a dark side of cracking computers. Hundreds of hackers on the side of good, known as ethical hackers, gathered at the 14th Hacker Halted global conference recently to discuss strategies to thwart cyberterror.  Ethical hackers understand how to hack a system in order to better protect against attacks or to know where the vulnerabilities are in a program. "A good defense is a good offense," said Sean Arries, a security engineer at information technology infrastructure services firm Terremark Worldwide Inc. "If you understand your opponent and you understand how the attacker is going to attack you, then it makes it a lot easier for you to defend yourself."
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Nerve Gas Detection in a Fraction of a Second
From Royal Society of Chemistry
A new molecule that detects and destroys lethal nerve gases has been developed by researchers in the US. It is hoped that the research will help develop new early-warning systems against chemical weapon attacks, and possibly give rise to an effective antidote.
Originally developed during the lead up to the second world war, organophosphorus  nerve gases such as sarin, tabun and soban are odourless and colourless - and exposure to even a small amount can be fatal within minutes. Despite being outlawed by chemical weapons conventions in the 1990s, their relatively straightforward chemical structure means they could conceivably be deployed by terrorist organisations, the most dramatic example of this being the attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
Working with safer mimics of the nerve agents, Julius Rebek's team at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, designed a pincer-like molecule containing a hydroxy oxime group. The compound has several advantages over previous chemical sensors - being more sensitive and easier to deploy in the field, while still being extremely reactive and taking only milliseconds to detect the gas.
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In the Lab, Cooking Up Bomb Detectors
by Bob Drogin
At the Transportation Security Laboratory, chemists, physicists and engineers dream up ways a weapon might be slipped onto a plane, then figure out how to stop it. It's part science, part James Bond.
Reporting from Atlantic City, N.J. - Eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the front line in America's war on terrorism runs through a little-known federal laboratory where engineer Nelson Carey holds what appears to be a bratwurst in a bun.
"This is a Semtex sausage," said Carey, as he pinched the pink plastic explosive long favored by terrorist groups.
On his table lies a green Teletubby doll stuffed with C-4 military explosives, a leather sandal with a high-explosive shoe insert, an Entenmann's cake covered in an explosive compound that looks like white frosting, and other deadly devices Carey and his colleagues have built. None have detonators, so they are safe.
"We let our imaginations go wild," Carey said. "The types of improvised explosive devices are endless." Read On... |
New Product from SSI: BlastSax®
Security Solutions International is proud to introduce BlastSax® TMD (Transportable Mitigation Device). The patent pending BlastSax® devices are engineered for the military, private industry and public safety to save lives in the field during wartime, training, industrial construction and homeland terrorist attacks. BlastSax® are extremely lightweight, portable and always ready to deploy in seconds.
When dry, each is less than 1 lb. They activate in less than three minutes with water and deploy to a 50 lbs blast absorbing cushion. BlastSax® can provide protection against incendiary devices and can stop a variety of firearm rounds.
In addition to suppressing shock waves from an explosion, BlastSax® can assist in containing the flash, smoke and most importantly the fragmentation or "frag". A unique feature that was engineered into BlastSax® is its capability to "capture" and "cool" hot frag pieces to assist in forensic analysis for a more complete reconstruction of the device.
BlastSax® can assist to:
- Reduce demand on resources
- Considerably reduce blasts
- Contain blast frag pieces and contaminants
- Save lives & protect property from blasts or flood water (see FloodSax®)
Learn More... |
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Critical Infrastucure Projects Need Upgraded Emergency Plans
Today's smart-grid and critical infrastructure projects represent significant expense and exposure to risk and require dedicated planning. Project plans should show that utility project managers have carefully considered how the loss or compromise of any new system will affect both system operations and the security of the power system and consumers served. 
Utilities in compliance with today's guidelines for vulnerability and risk assessment and emergency response planning will have adopted viable plans to cover vital areas of technology, utility systems and business continuity. However, as utilities add new critical infrastructure and people to manage and maintain it, the viability of existing plans can come into question when utilities are exposed to damaging events. It follows that plans should exist to help ensure that any new and significant additions to infrastructure are recovered in a timely and safe manner under the NIPP, Critical Infrastructure/Key Resources (CI/KR) guidelines.
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U.S. Can't Trace Foreign Visitors on Expired Visas By James C. McKinley Jr and Julia Preston
 Eight years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and despite repeated mandates from Congress, the United States still has no reliable system for verifying that foreign visitors have left the country.
New concern was focused on that security loophole last week, when Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year-old Jordanian who had overstayed his tourist visa, was accused in court of plotting to blow up a Dallas skyscraper.
Last year alone, 2.9 million foreign visitors on temporary visas like Mr. Smadi's checked in to the country but never officially checked out, immigration officials said. While officials say they have no way to confirm it, they suspect that several hundred thousand of them overstayed their visas.
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Sincerely, Security Solutions International | |
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786-573-3999 Office, 786-573-2090 Fax
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