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April 2010 |
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Your Bi-monthly Homeland Security News Source
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Upcoming Events
Register Now & Save $$$
 SSI's GSA Approved Programs CLICK HERE!
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SSI's Global Security Workshop - May 7-15, 2010 - Tel Aviv, Israel
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Select SSI Courses approved for Academic Credit through Saint Leo University:
Now Available: The Counter Terrorist eZINE! CLICK HERE!
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The United States is in the midst of numerous terror related issues such as:
- American housewife calls herself Jihad Jane
- Crude IED found in wheelchair in Harlem Train Station
- Christmas Day Underwear Bombing
- Chicago Businessman charged with planning the attacks in Mumbai
- Denver man charged with terror plot
It is now more than ever that homeland security professionals at the local level must be armed with the skills and knowledge to protect us.
SSI has courses already scheduled in 2010 to provide this knowledge:
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"When you need to see under, over, around or through a barrier"
Call for more information on our UNDERDOOR SCOPE (413) 562-3606.
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Future hostilities to begin with cyber attacks, NATO official says
by William Welsh
Many nations now have cyber attack capabilities.
Some members of the strategic community believe that cyber attacks will now serve the same role in starting hostilities as air campaigns played in past conflicts, reports Julian Hale at Defense Systems.
James Shea, NATO's director for policy and planning, made the statement March 22 at a Security and  Defense Agenda debate hosted by the organization in Brussels. Cyber attacks are very effective for about 36 hours, after which security patches rapidly reduce their effectiveness, according to NATO officials.
Approximately 120 countries (there are 192 member states in United Nations) now have or are in the process of developing offensive cyber capabilities, Shea said, who observed that the cyber realm now forms a fifth dimension of warfare after space, sea, land and air.
As military forces increasingly depend on software-driven systems, they are making themselves increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks, Shea said, noting that NATO suffers about 100 attacks each day.
Other speakers participating in the debate observed that the United States and Europe need to work together on cyber defense and that it is important to maintain spending on security technologies even in an economic downturn.
Putting things in perspective is important, Shea said. In this regard, the cyber threat should not be overhyped because it is in no way equal to the peril posed by weapons of mass destruction.
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LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER - ONLY 4 SPACES REMAINING
SSI's Global Security Workshop An intensive advanced workshop for the Homeland Security Professional
Tel Aviv, Israel - May 7-15th, 2010
BEST TRAINING - BEST TIME - BEST EXPERIENCE
Don't Run Out of Time! - Opportunity of a Lifetime!
BEST TRAINING - 15 missions and more than 300 participants means you can't go wrong. When it comes to taking US qualified professionals to visit Israel, and show them what Israel has had to do to protect itself, SSI is the leader.
Now, register for May's exciting Global Security Workshop which aims to take the best of the experience gained during the past 15 missions and add some features that will make this an even better training experience:
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Find out about how to respond to multi casualty incidents
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Learn how Israel has had to deal with the threat of non-conventional attacks and how to translate those lessons for the USA
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Think about how populations need to be evacuated during man-made and natural disasters
And still learn about the things that matter most - how to protect our homeland against attacks.
BEST TIME - There's never been a better time to visit this sometimes conflicted region - it is safer than ever!
BEST EXPERIENCE - Expand your knowledge and grow your resume while also taking in some of the world's oldest, most beautiful and significant sites!
Register Now and get bonus participation in the optional extra day - an undeniably unfortgetable trip to the lowest point on Earth, the Dead Sea visiting Massada, the desert fortress.
BEST TRAINING - BEST TIME - BEST EXPERIENCE
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NO COST - NO OBLIGATION Test & Evaluation Program.
Mention Code CT09 for FREE Shipping
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Now Available through SSI:
Special 25% discount for subscribers to The Counter Terrorist
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Staving off gangs, USC protects students with video patrols
By Leischen Stelter
Protecting students on an urban campus is always challenging, but when a university faces high levels of crime, including gang activity, ensuring safety requires more than a standard policing approach.
During a policy symposium hosted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police held here on March  23, the day before the start of ISC West, Chief Carey Drayton from the University of Southern California discussed the university's strategy to reduce crime by employing a proactive strategy to stop crime before it occurs, using officers to virtually patrol an area using video cameras.
"USC has a reputation as being a high-crime neighborhood," Drayton said. "The main core of campus didn't have high crime, but there are six active gangs in that area where students traverse on regular basis." The university police patrol a campus boundary of 226 acres, but have a response area of 1,414 due to a memorandum of understanding with the LAPD.
Drayton needed to find a way to monitor and protect the more than 13,000 students who live off campus and travel those high-risk areas. But he said it was challenging convincing administration that there was a problem. "When we talk to LAPD, they tell us we have safest grid in south LA and from their perspective we don't have problems," he said. "Our 61 robberies a year don't compare to the 14,000 that they have going on."
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REGISTRATION - FREE OF CHARGE
Are you looking for ways to improve the collaboration and operation at a fusion center, a public safety or law enforcement agency? If the answer is yes, join this webinar hosted by The Counter Terrorist Magazine to learn how Fusion Core Solution, jointly developed by Microsoft and ESRI, can help you improve operations with workflow management, information sharing, and geospatial intelligence technologies.
Join the conversation with a panel of Fusion Core Solution pilots from Washington State Fusion Center, Utah State Information and Analysis Center, and Miami Dade Police Department. Learn how Fusion Core Solution helps them effectively collect and manage the intake of vital information and intelligence; organizes, analyzes, and distills that information into relevant, meaningful, and actionable intelligence (connecting the dots), and facilitate successful and secure information sharing with internal and external partners for prevention, preparation and response.
*Registration is complimentary, and qualified participants will receive a certificate of attendance after the webinar. Attendees will receive a FREE EZINE Subscription to The Counter Terrorist Magazine.
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Mexico drug hitmen terrorize towns on U.S. border
by Julian Cardona
Mexican drug hitmen are shooting up houses and terrorizing remote farming towns on the U.S. border, forcing residents to flee, as they try to secure key trafficking routes into the United States.
In the latest flare-up of border drug violence, masked, heavily-armed men are torching homes, firing on shops and businesses and have killed at least three local politicians in a cluster of towns near the deadly drug war city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas.
Residents in the cotton and alfalfa-growing town of El Porvenir say dozens of people have been killed this year. Local police have fled and many residents are seeking asylum in Texas or crossing the border to stay with relatives, they say.
"Here, everyone is afraid. We are seeing so many killings," said a woman in El Porvenir, across the border from the Texan town of Fort Hancock, declining to give her name.
President Felipe Calderon has staked his political future on reining in the drug killings that worry investors, tourists and Washington. He has sent 8,000 soldiers and federal police to the Ciudad Juarez area alone to try to defeat the cartels.
But the area outside the city's manufacturing zone, known as the Juarez Valley, is rapidly becoming a no-man's land where despite an army presence, people are abandoning towns and politicians are too scared to campaign for local elections in July. Journalists rarely venture into the area.
Residents say a rumor that drug gangs have given people living in El Porvenir two months to leave or be killed has left the town in a state of psychosis. Schools are half-empty, businesses are shuttered and houses, farmland and family cars stand abandoned in the scorching hot cinder-block town.
Troops manned checkpoints around El Porvenir on Thursday.
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Click HERE for More Information.
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F.B.I. Creates Crime-Fighting Web Site Focuses on Bank Robbers
by C.J. Hughes
Bank robberies may be down from a recent peak, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation is nevertheless making a push to track down suspects, enlisting the public's help through a new Web site.
The site, called BanditTracker NorthEast, features images of robbers in New Jersey and New York culled from security cameras over the past few years.
In a modern take on the "wanted" notices adorning post office walls, the site also includes information about the suspects in question, like their heights, races and builds. Telephone numbers are provided so people can call if they think they know the whereabouts of a suspect.
In the past, it took F.B.I. agents a few days to prepare these types of posters and similar announcements about bank robberies. With that lag, information was sometimes not mentioned on a local newscast because the story had been deemed old, said F.B.I. agents who unveiled the site on Wednesday at a federal office building in Lower Manhattan.
Now, because images can be posted online within hours of the crime, possibly even from a bank that is robbed, it means agents might be able to arrest robbers still making their getaways.
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Essex authorities unveil county's upgraded emergency command center
By Phillip Read
Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura, his officers and many of the county's 22 police chiefs gathered in West Orange this week for the unveiling of the county's relocated Office of Emergency Management.
In this tucked away locale behind the Codey Arena, large wall-mounted LCD televisions flashed images  from news channels and rows of tables with laptops and phones stood poised for action.
Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, high-profile cases are now to be tackled from this larger, more centrally located spot than the old operations headquarters on Lincoln Avenue in Orange.
"This is the nerve center," Fontoura said Wednesday.
The facility has already had a dress-rehearsal.
In the aftermath of the shooting of off-duty Fairfield police officer Gerald Veneziano in what was described as a road-rage incident turned ugly, the nerve center was bustling for 10 days.
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DHS has completed incident planning for a Moscow-like explosive attack
by Jacob Goodwin
DHS has identified 15 hypothetical terrorist attack scenarios, but has completed the incident planning work on only one of those scenarios - referred to as "Terrorist Use of Explosives" - which happens to be the scenario that so-called "Black Widow" female Chechnyan suicide bombers appear to have followed when they detonated explosives in two subway stations in Moscow during the morning rush hour on March 29.
In a report entitled, DHS' Progress in Federal Incident Management Planning, the department's inspector  general summarized 15 different modes of attack that could occur, and assessed the progress by DHS in developing the strategic guidance statement, strategic plan, concept plan and operations plan for coping with each type of potential attack.
The only scenario for which all four plans have been completed by DHS envisions a situation in which "members of a terrorist organization have carried out a multi-pronged attack using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) at a large urban entertainment / sports venue," according to the IG's report, which was completed last month. "Three suicide bombers detonated their devices, killing and injuring some people and sending the rest of the large crowd into a frantic rush to the exits, where they are met by the detonation of a large vehicle bomb. Similar detonations also occur near a crowded transportation concourse...."
DHS developed its incident plans for this scenario, No. 12 on its roster, between March 2008 and September 2009. Considerable planning work remains to be completed on all 14 other threat scenarios, the IG report indicates.
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Drones may be sent soon to help with border security, Napolitano says
By Christy Hoppe
The federal government may soon send unmanned aircraft to scour West Texas and the state's coastal waters in an effort to boost border security, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a letter to the governor sent Friday.
 Perry had formally requested the assistance a week ago. The need also was underscored in a phone call that Democratic nominee Bill White had with Napolitano on Thursday.
Homeland Security has six drones and is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to get the necessary clearance to begin flying over Texas, Napolitano wrote.
Before operations start, ground control stations, pilots, sensor operators and maintenance support have to be allocated. She said that the governor would be kept apprised of the progress.
"This is encouraging news, and we are hopeful that this technology and additional federal resources will be deployed to Texas as soon as possible," said Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger.
Perry has complained that the federal government has not done enough to secure the border, especially in light of escalating drug violence in Mexico border towns.
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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.
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The Rise of Jihad Wannabes
By Asra Q. Nomani
The Rise of the Walter Mitty radical.
The "Jihad Jane" phenomenon-with the recent arrest of two blonde American women converts on terrorism charges-raises serious national-security issues. But it's also the latest evidence of the rise of a dangerous  cultural manifestation: the "jihadi wannabe," the disgruntled, disaffected, lonely, and bored sociopath for whom holy war has become a sort of alternative fantasy life. In some circles, waving the flag of militant Islam has become the latest expression of countercultural subversiveness. Forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman, a terrorism expert and former CIA case officer, calls it "jihadi cool." American Muslim lawyer Arsalan Iftikhar dubs these folks "jang bangers"-where jihad meets "gang bangers."
To me, as an American Muslim challenging extremist interpretations of Islam, it's especially troubling. Converts, such as the two American women arrested-Colleen LaRose and Jamie Paulin-Ramirez-represent one market for jihadi fantasies. Some of the most notorious have included westerners jailed in connection with various jihad movements: "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh; "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid; "Dirty Bomber" Jose Padilla; and "Twentieth Hijacker" Zacarias Moussaoui. Often, jihadi wannabes try to out-Muslim Muslims. Take the case of Yvonne Ridley, a British journalist who converted to Islam after being captured by the Taliban crossing into Afghanistan after 9/11. She has become so hard core in her adherence to fundamentalist teachings that she refused to shake the hand of leading Egyptian Muslim cleric Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi when she met him in early 2006. Tantawi, who died earlier this month, scolded her, asking, What kind of Islam are they teaching you in Europe?
Muslims raised in America often seem focused on trying to prove they haven't sold out to secularism even though they have grown up in the West. They include Major Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, and the five young men from Northern Virginia who jetted to Pakistan to fight the jihad, according to charges just filed against them by the government of Pakistan.
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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.
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
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Learn More...
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Iraq PM Maliki vows to challenge election result
From BBC
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has vowed to contest the results of parliamentary elections that saw former PM Iyad Allawi win by only two seats.
Speaking on national TV, Mr Maliki said he would challenge the count through what he described as a "legal process".
 Mr Allawi's secular Iraqiya bloc won 91 of parliament's 325 seats. Mr Maliki's State of Law won 89 seats, followed by the Iraqi National Alliance on 70.
Earlier, UN envoy to Iraq Ad Melkert said the election had been credible. He also called on all parties to accept the outcome.
The sentiment was echoed by US Ambassador Christopher Hill and the top US commander in Iraq, Gen Ray Odierno, who said they supported the conclusions of election observers that there had been no evidence of widespread or serious fraud during the 7 March poll.
A credible election was seen as crucial in helping to stabilise Iraq before the planned withdrawal of US combat troops by the end of August.
Sectarian violence erupted as politicians took months to form a government after the last parliamentary election in 2005.
On Friday, at least 42 people were killed in twin bombings near a restaurant in the town of Khalis, 80km (50 miles) north of Baghdad.
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Join the author's of Muslim Mafia, Dave Gaubatz, at the central event in the First Responder calendar - SSI's 5th Annual Homeland Security Professionals Conference in Las Vegas, NV - October 25-29, 2010.
Dave son's, Chris Gaubatz, infiltrated CAIR's inner sanctum, and worked undercover as David Marshall, a converted and devoted follower of the Muslim religion. Chris discovers incredibly disturbing information: Which politicians are given money by CAIR. How Capitol Hill staffers are strategically placed by CAIR.
Participants will also have the opportunity to network with fellow professionals and over 10 experts in the field presenting on key topics, including Evolution of Mass Hostage Siege Tactics, Protecting Large Gatherings from Sporting Events to Casinos, The Attack in Mumbai India, Psychological Impact and Implications to the First Responder Community, among others. The Exhibit Hall will showcase the latest technologies to all participants. Systems, tools and equipments used to prepare and react to any incident will be on display and ready for testing on site.
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Counter Terror Expo, the leading global event for counter terrorism and specialist security solutions for the public and private sector.
300+ exhibitors, 85 leading international conference speakers and 90+ free to attend workshops.
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Moscow fears 'war unleashed on its streets'
by Nic Robertson
A change in tactics among Chechnya's militants is threatening to bring their nationalist fight to the heart of Russia's cities, terrorism analysts fear.
The warning came as Russian investigators said they believed Chechen rebels were responsible for  Monday's twin suicide bombings in Moscow's subway network that killed at least 39 people.
The Russia-Chechnya conflict dates back nearly 20 years, with Chechens having laid claim to land in the Caucasus Mountains region. Thousands have been killed and 500,000 Chechen people have been displaced from the fighting. The area is located in the North Caucasus region of Russia between the Black and Caspian seas.
For the last five years the war has been largely fought in the Caucasus but, according to terrorism analyst Chris Hunter, the tide has been turning against the rebels. "They don't have the same sort of supply chain they used to have," he said, adding that pressure from the Russian military had taken its toll.
Now there are suspicions that Doku Umarov, the 45-year-old self-styled emir of the Russian North Caucasus, is taking the battle into Russia itself.
Until now Umarov, a veteran of Chechnya's nationalist fight with Russia, has been against killing civilians. He was critical of the Beslan attack in which Chechen rebels took 1,200 people as hostages at a school in Beslan in 2004.
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Security Solutions International |
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For further information:
Security Solutions International,
13155 SW 134th Street STE 204,
Miami, FL 33186
866-573-3999 Office, 866-573-2090 Fax
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