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International News
Pakistan Arrests Suspected Mastermind of Mumbai Attacks
(Washington Post)
“Pakistani authorities arrested a suspected ringleader of last month’s deadly attacks in Mumbai along with several others in a raid in the Himalayan territory of Kashmir,” reports the Washington Post. [View article]
India Overhauls Security and Intelligence Agencies (Denver Post; Government Technology) “India announced a massive overhaul of its security and intelligence agencies Thursday,” reports the Associated Press. “… the government will move to create a national investigative agency, beef up coastal security forces, better train local police and strengthen anti-terror laws.” India is also taking “a fresh look at not just its security agencies, but also how to tighten state control on communications networks, where, the country’s security agencies believe, loopholes exist,” reports Government Technology. “Measures include formulation of [policies] to monitor and intercept satellite phone communications and Blackberry services, as well as imposing some restrictions on Google Earth that, as India sees it, exposes the details of the country’s ‘sensitive’ military and scientific establishments such as nuclear power plants.”
[View AP article] [View Govt. Tech article]
Police Foiled Earlier Plot Against Mumbai
(New York Times)
“The Indian police foiled an attempt to destroy landmarks and wreak havoc in Mumbai early this year, breaking up a cell of Pakistani and Indian men who were directed by the same two Pakistan-based militant leaders they have accused of organizing last week’s devastating attacks,” reports the New York Times. “… The foiled plot also involved Lashkar-e-Taiba.”
[View article]
Pakistan Bans Charity Linked to Mumbai Attacks (Denver Post) “Pakistan detained the leaders of a charity [Jamat-ud-Dawa] linked to militants suspected in the Mumbai attacks, banned the group and ordered its assets frozen Thursday … a day after it was declared a front for terrorists by the United Nations, subject to U.N. sanctions including an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo,” reports the Associated Press.
[View article]
China and India Hold Antiterror Exercises (Window of China) “Chinese and Indian armies started a comprehensive anti-terrorism military drill in south India’s Belgaum district Thursday evening,” reports the Xinhua News Agency. “It’s the third and also the last stage of the joint anti-terrorism military training between the two sides from Dec. 6 to 12.”
[View article]
Cholera Spreads Beyond Zimbabwe (Washington Post) “Millions have fled” Zimbabwe, “where sewage and health-care systems are nearly defunct and food is scarce,” reports the Washington Post. Cholera (see last week’s newsletter) has spread into South Africa and “surfaced in Botswana and Mozambique. Zambia, to the north [of Zimbabwe], is screening for symptoms at border posts.”
[View article]
| Piracy: Serious or Overstated Threat? (U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings) “What makes piracy work?” asks Virginia Lunsford, associate professor of history at the Naval Academy, in Proceedings. “… pirates can do serious damage with what seem to be unformidable naval assets” and “it is ultimately the support system … that determines the success of piracy.” However, “capturing the bad guys may be the easy part,” write Commander James Kraska and Captain Brian Wilson of the U.S. Navy Judge Advocates General’s Corps. “… Effectively responding to this threat requires a comprehensive approach that encompasses political, military, financial, and legal support for operations, logistics, investigations, and prosecutions.” But “it is too easy to confuse piracy with water-borne terrorist acts,” writes Commander John Patch, U.S. Navy (retired). Modern piracy “is nothing more than high-seas criminal activity, better addressed by law enforcement agencies than warships.”
[View Lunsford article] [View Kraska & Wilson article] [View Patch article]
How to Stop Pirates (New York Times) “Are the Somali pirates [see the Nov. 21 newsletter] ordinary criminals, or a quasi-military force?” asks Douglas R. Burgess, Jr., author of The Pirates’ Pact, in the New York Times. “… In theory, any nation can shoulder the burden of prosecution” but “prosecuting pirates puts enormous strain on a country’s legal system.” Roman law “defined piracy as a crime against civilization itself” and “this recognition of piracy’s unique threat was the cornerstone of international law for more than 2,000 years.… a new, shared legal definition that would recognize the link between piracy and terrorism” would allow pirates to be tried in the International Court, following the 1970s precedent of the United Nations declaring airliner piracy to be “aerial piracy.”
[View commentary]
Israel Guards Borders With Auto-Kill Zones (Wired) Israel’s “Sentry Tech towers are basically remote weapons stations, stuck on stop of silos,” writes Wired “Danger Room” blogger Noah Shachtman. The remotely operated machine guns on the towers “create 1500-meter deep ‘automated kill zones’ along the Gaza border.”
[View article]
National News
Senate Report Blames Bush Administration for Detainee Abuse (Washington Post) A bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report released yesterday “says that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials are directly responsible for abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and charges that decisions by those officials led to serious offenses against prisoners in Iraq and elsewhere,” according to the Washington Post.
[View article] [View report]
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Crisis in Emergency Care Continues (MSNBC; New York Times) “The nation’s emergency care system is ‘a ticking time bomb,’ with demand far outstripping the capacity of hospital emergency departments already crippled by a widespread shortage of doctors and nurses, according to a national report on the state of emergency medicine … by the American College of Emergency Physicians,” report MSNBC and NBC News. The doctors “gave the nation a D- grade for Americans’ access to emergency care, saying the emergency care system was ‘fraught with significant challenges and under more stress than ever before.’”
(See the Oct. 24, Jan. 18, and Jan. 4 newsletters.) Furthermore, “as increasing numbers of the unemployed and uninsured turn to the nation’s emergency rooms as a medical last resort, doctors warn that the centers—many already overburdened—could have even more trouble handling the heart attacks, broken bones and other traumas that define their core mission,” reports the New York Times, citing the American College of Emergency Physicians.
[View MSNBC article] [View Times article] [View report (2.97MB PDF)]
‘Rapid’ Deportation Program Moves Slowly
(USA Today)
Under the Rapid Repatriation program, “states could flush their prisons early of nonviolent immigrant convicts while helping the federal government close the books on potentially thousands of pending deportations,” reports the Associated Press. “… Nearly four months have passed since Rhode Island became the first state to sign up for the program, which allows certain nonviolent immigrants to get out of prison early on the condition they never return to the United States. But the state has yet to finish creating a way to find such inmates in the prison system. And prison officials say the first deportations are months away.… To participate in Rapid REPAT, an inmate must have been sentenced for certain nonviolent criminal offenses such as car theft, drunken driving, drug possession or attempted burglary. The inmates must also be eligible for parole and be facing a final order of deportation from an immigration judge.”
[View article]
U.S.-Run Iraqi Detention Centers Have No System to Determine Guilt or Innocence
(Washington Post)
“U.S. officials in Iraq have turned prisons once described as training camps for would-be insurgents into something more closely resembling American-style vocational schools,” reports the Washington Post. “Religious and technical training are offered to detainees, who are allowed to visit with relatives through teleconferencing calls. But the recently approved U.S.-Iraqi security agreement will soon require the American military to release the 16,000 Iraqi detainees … or refer them to the nation’s courts.… a complicated joint effort is underway to determine which of the men are safe to release and which may be insurgents. ‘Most of the people they detain are innocent,’ said Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi.”
[View article]
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Economic Crisis May Slam Disaster Readiness
(MSNBC)
“The United States is still underprepared for a major disaster such as a biological attack or a pandemic and the current economic crisis could make things worse,” says a report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, according to Reuters. The report found that “federal funding for state and local preparedness has been cut more than 25 percent compared to 2005 budgets, while at the same time state and local officials are being asked to do more.”
[View article]
[View report (2.6MB PDF)]
Blackwater Security Guards Charged With Manslaughter
(Washington Post)
Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Monday against “six Blackwater Worldwide security guards” for a shooting “in a busy Baghdad square last year” of “unarmed Iraqi civilians that killed at least 14 and wounded 20,” reports the Washington Post. (See the Sep. 21, 2007, newsletter.) “… Five of the guards were charged with 14 counts of voluntary manslaughter, 20 counts of attempting to commit manslaughter and one count of using a firearm during a crime of violence. A sixth guard pleaded guilty on Friday, in U.S. District Court in Washington [DC], to voluntary manslaughter and attempting to commit manslaughter.” [View article]
Cybersecurity Is a Major National Security Problem
The Center for Strategic and International Studies Commission on Cybersecurity for the 44th Presidency has released its final report, stating that cybersecurity is one of the major national security problems facing the United States and recommending a comprehensive national security strategy that embraces both the domestic and international aspects of cybersecurity.
[View announcement]
[View report (824KB PDF)]
United Nations News
‘Collective Resistance’ Needed to Fight Terror, Says Ban Ki-Moon The United Nations must head up a cohesive global drive to tackle the scourge of terrorism, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the Security Council Tuesday. “The best response to a corrosive, malevolent ideology is a strong assertion of collective resistance,” he said. As an independent and impartial universal organization, “the United Nations has a responsibility to lead the international community’s efforts to confront this menace, which no cause or grievance can justify.” [View press release]
U.N. Places Sanctions on Alleged Lashkar Members (CNN) The United Nations Security Council’s al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee “has designated as terrorists four men believed to be members of the Lashkar e-Tayyiba (LeT) terrorist group suspected of masterminding last month’s deadly attacks in Mumbai,” reports CNN: “group leader Muhammad Saeed, chief of operations Zakir Rehman Lakhvi, finance chief Haji Muhammad Ashraf and financier Mahmoud Mohammad Ahmed Bahaziq. Bahaziq was also a former leader of the group in Saudi Arabia. Individuals and groups on the list are subject to an assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.”
[View article]
DHS News
3,000 TWIC Applicants’ Data Lost (Government Computer News) “About 3,000 transportation workers who applied for their new Homeland Security Department-sponsored identification cards have had their application data ‘irretrievably lost’ from the cards’ database,” reports Government Computer News, citing House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson. “Some of the workers whose data disappeared from the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) database are not able to enter their work areas because they lack the proper identification, Thompson wrote Dec. 4 in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.”
[View article] [View Focus on TWIC]
Commission Faults DHS Cyber-Security (Wired) “The government’s latest cyber-security efforts are too wrapped in secrecy and its privacy assessments downplay citizens’ interest in the privacy of their IP addresses,” according to the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board, writes Wired “Threat Level” blogger Ryan Singel. “At issue is a Homeland Security anti-hacking system known as EINSTEIN, software which monitors traffic into and out of government networks in order to detect abnormal use.”
[View article]
Identity Theft and Illegal Immigrant Cleaners Tarnish DHS
(Washington Post; Boston Globe; Washington Times) Some of the “employees for a Maryland cleaning company” who cleaned Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff’s house “turned out to be illegal immigrants,” reports the Washington Post. And “Lorraine Henderson, the Boston area port director for the Customs and Border Protection Division of the US Department of Homeland Security” was arrested December 5 “on charges that she repeatedly hired undocumented immigrants to clean her Salem condominium,” reports the Boston Globe. And
“a former FEMA worker”—Robert G. Davis, of Washington, DC—“who stole the identities of disaster victims to go on shopping sprees … has been sentenced to more than five years in federal prison … and was ordered to pay $48,765.80 in restitution,” reports the Associated Press. “… He pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft.… Davis stole the identities of more than 200 people while working at several mortgage companies and with natural-disaster victims while at the Federal Emergency Management Agency from December 2003 to November 2007. About 30 of those people had given their information to FEMA as part of their applications for disaster relief.”
[View Post article] [View Globe article] [View AP article]
Homeland Security USA in Prime Time (Washington Post) A “reality television show”—Homeland Security USA—“debuts Jan. 6 on ABC,” writes Washington Post “Federal Eye” blogger Ed O’Keefe. “… the show will highlight the main missions of the department’s 218,000 employees.”
[View article]
New Rule Allows Permanent Residency for Nonimmigrant Victims of Human Trafficking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday announced an interim final rule
that will allow “T” and “U” non-immigrants to adjust their status and become lawful permanent residents. The rule implements the provisions of the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act
of 2000.
[View press release]
Other Federal News
Pentagon Solicits More Foreign Recruits
(Boston Globe)
“The Pentagon announced [December 5] that it will recruit as many as 1,000 foreigners living in the United States on temporary visas—including to study or work—in an unprecedented effort to fill critical shortages of medical personnel and foreign-language specialists,” reports the Boston Globe. “The year-long experiment, approved by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, was determined ‘vital to the national interest’ at a time when the military is meeting its overall quotas but lacks sufficient numbers of doctors and nurses to treat wounded troops and needs more troops with foreign-language skills to help navigate diverse cultures.”
[View article]
Obama Picks James L. Jones to Head National Security Council
(Washington Times)
“President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to head the National Security Council” is James L. Jones, a former commander in the Marine Corps and a former NATO supreme allied commander, reports the Washington Times. Obama’s selection of Jones “has been widely praised and respected by much of the foreign policy establishment.”
[View article]
State and Local News
Suspicious Letters Sent to Governors (MSNBC) “Suspicious letters containing powdery substances addressed to governors were intercepted in at least six states on Monday”—“Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana and Rhode Island,” reports the Associated Press. “They disrupted state governments in a few of the states, forcing some evacuations and testing for workers who might have been exposed.” Preliminary tests showed that the powder was not harmful.
[View article]
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| Metro photo by Larry Levine |
Washington Metro Warns Passengers of Van Driver With TB The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has been notifying customers who may have come in contact with a MetroAccess driver who tested positive for tuberculosis and is undergoing treatment. MetroAccess is a custom service for passengers with special needs. Health departments in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC, have been contacting those who may need to be evaluated for tuberculosis.
[View article]
Illinois Posts Preparedness Guide for Seniors and Disabled (Government Technology) Illinois has published “a new comprehensive preparedness guide for senior citizens, people with physical limitations and those with other special needs” to help them stay safe in “a disaster or emergency,” reports Government Technology. Emergency Preparedness Tips for Those with Functional Needs “also contains guidelines for preparing a disaster supply kit, a cut-out emergency health information card, contact information for agencies providing services to special needs people, and a copy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency/American Red Cross Guide, Preparing for Disasters for People with Disabilities and other Special Needs.”
[View article] [View guidebook]
Private-Sector News
Asian Businesses Skimp on Disaster Recovery Testing (Malaysia Star) Symantec’s new “survey results found that businesses in Asia” and around the Pacific “are not testing their” disaster recovery “plans frequently enough in order to finetune what they have in place, which in turn could prove disastrous in the event of disaster or attack,” reports the Malaysia Star. “The fourth IT Disaster Recovery survey polled 300 IT professionals from organisations of 500 or more employees with” disaster recovery plans. “According to Ong Kah Wooi, Symantec Malaysia technical consultant (pre-sales), companies fear [that] frequent system testing could disrupt their [clients’] operations.”
[View article]
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New Upcoming Events
(After four weeks, events are moved to the Upcoming Events page)
Globalization, Movement of Pathogens (and Their Hosts) and the Revised International Health Regulations (December 16-17; Washington, DC) This conference, sponsored by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, will explore historical approaches to infectious disease identification and containment, natural and human-mediated pathways of pathogen and vector movement, the ecology of invasive species relevant to infectious diseases, public health and economic threats associated with invasive species, national and international policies concerning border biosecurity, and opportunities to prevent and contain biological introductions and thereby the burden of emerging infectious diseases.
[View event website]
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(January 27-28; Arlington, VA) With the Association of American Railroads, the American Public Transportation Association, the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, and the Railway Supply Institute, Railway Age presents this forum to address topics such as state compacts, passenger and baggage screening, fusion centers, tunnel operations, tracking and tracing technology, resilience, and not-in-my-backyard activism. [View event website]
(January 27-28; Arlington, VA) MarineLog’s Maritime & Port Security 2009 Conference & Expo will examine the “scan every box” container security requirement, the terrorism threat to ports and
shipping, piracy off the Horn of Africa, new technologies, and more.
[View event website]
(February 9-11; Washington, DC) The conference will bring together developers, users, and decision makers to discuss chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear protection, detection, and defense in the homeland, as well as information sharing and medical countermeasures.
[View event website]
(March 2-9; Miami) This conference will present biometric objectives and proven methods, processes, and approaches for achieving
results from biometric initiatives. Presentations will cover biometric applications and best
practices in government, telecommunications,
border control, law enforcement, healthcare, and more.
[View event website]
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Calls for Papers
TIEMS 2009 (June 9-11; Istanbul, Turkey) The International Emergency Management Society’s 16th annual conference will address global cooperation in emergency management, geographic information systems in emergency management, terrorism and security, critical infrastructures, emergencies and the media, psychological aspects of disasters, health emergencies and response, and more. The deadline for submitting abstracts is December 31.
[View call for papers (290KB PDF)]
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