International News

EU and U.S. Plan New Counterterror Regime (London Guardian) “European governments and the Obama administration [on Monday] outlined aims for a new joint regime for combating terrorism based on common principles that would make it impossible to run detention camps such as Guantánamo Bay or secretly abduct suspects in the operations known as extraordinary rendition,” reports the Guardian. “A joint statement, issued by European foreign ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg, cleared the last hurdles for up to 50 Guantánamo detainees to be accommodated in [European Union] countries.” [View article]

EU Extends Antipiracy Mission, Sees ‘Serious Threat’ (Bloomberg) “The European Union extended its anti-piracy mission off the coast of Somalia by 12 months,” saying that “its fleet will patrol the waters along the Horn of Africa until December 2010, working alongside warships from NATO and countries such as Russia and China,” reports Bloomberg. (See the Statistics of the Week.) [View article]

Dutch Courts Rarely Convict Terror Suspects (Rotterdam, Holland, NRC Handelsblad) “Fewer than one in four suspects arrested on terrorism charges in the Netherlands since September 11, 2001, were later convicted,” reports the NRC. “… As of late 2008, prosecutors had dealt with 113 cases of suspected terrorism. Only 27 of those led to a conviction, and some of those resulted in an acquittal on appeal.… at least 153 people were arrested … twenty were convicted, 22 were acquitted and almost two thirds (88) were released without being prosecuted.” [View article]

ETA Jailbreak Blocked, Weapons Cache Found (Typically Spanish) After Spanish “security forces foiled a jailbreak plan to free three ETA prisoners from prison in Huelva” this past weekend, an “arms cache was discovered in Pindères,” according to Typically Spanish. It “contained 13 firearms with ammunition and 150 blank vehicle registration plates ready for stamping,” plus “more than 180 kilos of bomb-making equipment, including chemicals, detonators and cord, and timers.” [View article]

Six Italians Charged in Plot to Attack G8 Meeting (ANSA) “Six Italians were arrested” on June 11 for “plotting to attack Group of Eight [industrial nations] summit facilities” next month, reports Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata, an Italian news agency. “… Five have been taken to prison and one, reportedly found with a bomb, was placed under house arrest because of his age.” [View article]

Al-Qaeda Fleeing Pakistan for Horn of Africa? (CNN) “Al Qaeda operatives are leaving the battle zones along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and heading for Somalia and Yemen, where they have set up training camps, according to U.S. intelligence officials,” reports CNN. [View article]

Iranian Election Disputed (Washington Post) “Opposition leaders” have been ”marching again in the streets of Tehran … each day since [June 13], when the Interior Ministry declared that results from Friday’s balloting showed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected in a landslide,” reports the Washington Post. In response, “Iran’s elite Guardian Council, a 12-member panel of senior Islamic clergy and jurists who are investigating allegations of fraud in last week’s election results, Thursday invited the four candidates for president to a special meeting [tomorrow] to review their concerns.” [View article]

Iranian Opposition Groups Launch Cyber-Attacks (Wired) “More and more of Iran’s pro-government websites are under assault, as opposition forces launch web attacks on the Tehran regime’s online propaganda arms,” writes Wired “Danger Room” blogger Noah Shachtman. “Iranian democracy activists” got an assist from “Anonymous Iran … a collaboration between The Pirate Bay—operators of the world’s largest torrent site, convicted in April of copyright infringement—and Anonymous, the prankster collective” that fights Scientology, wrote Shachtman in another blog entry. “The new site offers tips on how to navigate online in private, upload files through the Iranian firewall, find the best activist Tweeters, and launch attacks on pro-government websites.” (See the Quote of the Week.) [View cyber-attack blog] [View Anonymous blog]

U.S. and Italy Arrest Phone Hackers Who Funded Terrorists (Wall Street Journal) “U.S. and Italian authorities” have “arrested a group of hackers and conspirators who allegedly stole from phone companies around the world,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “… three suspects, who live in the Philippines, are accused of providing Pakistani nationals in Italy with access to stolen phone lines. The same company that was used to pay the three hackers also financed the communications of terrorists in last year’s Mumbai attacks.” [View article]

American Indians Defend Northern Border Rights (United Press International) “American Indian citizens living in both” the United States and Canada “say their rights are being squeezed by ever tightening security rules,” reports UPI. “… Members of the National Congress of American Indians said that new crossing rules negatively impact on their rights to ‘free passage’ between the two countries. Under new requirements laid out by the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, part of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, anyone wishing to enter the United States at any entry point must now carry a passport or other machine-readable identity card. Until the end of 2007, Canadians and Americans merely had to make an oral declaration of citizenship to a customs officer.” [View article]

U.S. and Mexico Sign Border Security Agreement (Sacramento [CA] Business Journal) The United States and Mexico on Monday “signed an agreement intended to strengthen border security in both the U.S. and Mexico and facilitate the flow of legal travel and trade,” reports the Sacramento Business Journal. “… The agreement calls for increased cooperation in information sharing and customs clearance” and “builds upon the Declaration of Principles and Bilateral Strategic Plan” of 2007. [View article]

Maori Passport Scam Hits New Zealand (New Zealand Herald) “Police are investigating a self-styled Maori sovereignty group which is running a fake passport scam,” reports the New Zealand Herald. “Pacific Island people have been caught in the racket, with families paying $500 for bogus documents purporting to show they have been ‘adopted’ and are under the protection of the group. They apparently believe the documents give them legal rights to stay in New Zealand, or at least carry some weight with immigration authorities, but the man behind the scam has admitted they are meaningless.” [View article]

Britain Issues Guidance for Communicating With Communities About Counterterrorism The British Home Office has issued a general guide for communicating counter-terrorism messages with community audiences but notes that, because “this is a sensitive area, we must continue to listen to our audiences to understand the impact of our communications.” [View press release] [View guidance (176KB PDF)]

European Court Rules Against Freezing Abu Qatada’s Assets (London Telegraph) Abu “Qatada, described as ‘Osama bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe,’ had his funds frozen after a UN Security Council resolution which alleged he was connected to al-Qaeda,” reports the Telegraph. (See the Feb. 20 newsletter.) “But the European Court of First Instance has ruled that” the action “breached the preacher’s ‘fundamental rights, in particular, rights of defence, the right to effective judicial review and the right to property.’” [View article]

China and Singapore Hold Joint Antiterror Exercise (Window of China) “China and Singapore are conducting a joint anti-terrorism training exercise in Guilin in the southwest Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region” through June 26, reports the Xinhua News Agency. Cooperation-2009 “involves 61 soldiers and officers of the People’s Liberation Army and 61 of their Singapore counterparts.” It simulates “an attempt by international terrorists to attack an expo using radioactive contaminants, biological and chemical weapons.” [View article]

New this week in the Journal of Homeland Security In Freedom’s Unsteady March: America’s Role in Building Arab Democracy, Tamara Cofman Wittes challenges the failure of the Bush administration to advance its democracy agenda and the inability of incumbent Arab states to accommodate the rising needs and aspirations of their citizens. At stake is world stability in the face of an unsustainable status quo and seismic forces of social change. James E. McGinley reviews the book.

National News

Immigration Courtrooms Backlogged (New York Times) “Nearly three years after the Justice Department found that the nation’s immigration courts were seriously overburdened and recommended hiring 40 new judges, only a few hirings have taken place and the case backlog is at its highest point in a decade,” reports the New York Times, citing a report by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which “found that the shortage of judges had contributed to a 19 percent increase in the backlog of cases since 2006 and a 23 percent increase in the time it takes to resolve them.… Last year the immigration courts received 351,477 cases,” and “186,342 cases were pending in the immigration courts at the end of the 2008 fiscal year.” [View article]

First Batch of Swine Flu Vaccine Produced; in U.S., Schoolchildren May Get It First (MSNBC) “Swiss pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said [last] Friday it has successfully produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine,” reports the Associated Press. “… the World Health Organization … says drugmakers will likely have vaccines approved and ready for sale after September.” In the United States, “schoolchildren may be first in line for swine flu vaccine this fall,” reports a later AP story. Small children but not schoolchildren were on the initial top-priority list. (See the May 29 newsletter.) [View vaccine article] [View children article]

State and Local News

Four in New York Plead Guilty to Supporting Tamil Tigers Last week in Brooklyn, defendants Karunakaran Kandasamy, Pratheepan Thavaraja, Murugesu Vinayagamoorthy, and Vijayshanthar Patpanathan pled guilty to, among other crimes, conspiring to provide material support to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a designated foreign terrorist organization. [View FBI press release]

Phone Failure Complicates Vermont Nuclear Drill (Burlington [VT] Free Press) “A drill aimed at gauging emergency preparedness in the area around Vermont Yankee nuclear plant got a reality check when a telephone line failed,” limiting “calls to Brattleboro’s municipal building and [hampering] Vermont Emergency Management in Waterbury and an incident field Office in Dummerston from communicating with Brattleboro,” reports the Free Press. But “Brattleboro Town Manager Barbara Sondag says the glitch … was an eye-opener because it allowed emergency responders to practice situations in which they have limited communication.” [View article]

Most States Lack Disaster Standards for Schools and Day Care Save the Children’s report “The Disaster Decade: Lessons Unlearned for the United States” says that only seven states—Arkansas, Maryland, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Alabama and Vermont—meet Save the Children’s standards for evacuation and relocation, family reunification, plans for special-needs children, and multi-hazard plans at child-care facilities and schools. [View press release] [View report (912KB PDF)]

Two Virginia Airports Deploy Computer-Aided Dispatching Ronald Reagan Washington National and Washington Dulles International airports (both in Virginia) have deployed an Intergraph computer-aided dispatching system to improve safety and security. By integrating multiple security systems, it expedites dispatching of emergency assistance. [View press release]

DHS News

DHS Allocates $1.8 Billion in Preparedness Grants The Federal Emergency Management Agency has allocated nearly $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2009 preparedness grants to help states, urban areas, tribal governments, and nonprofit agencies improve protection, prevention, response, and recovery capabilities. The grants fund the State Homeland Security Program, the Urban Areas Security Initiative, the Metropolitan Medical Response System, Citizen Corps, the State Homeland Security Program Tribal, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, and the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program. [View press release]

Eagle Horizon Exercise Tests Federal Continuity of Operations The Homeland Security Department, coordinating with the White House, on Wednesday conducted the annual Eagle Horizon exercise to test federal departments’ and agencies’ continuity-of-operations plans. The exercise is mandatory for all executive branch departments and agencies. [View press release]

DHS Starts Weblog In addition to its Leadership Journal, the Homeland Security Department has started “The Blog @ Homeland Security,” with news highlights, the Secretary’s events, and public events. [View blog] [View Leadership Journal]

Other Federal News

Guantánamo Prisoner Ghailani Goes to Trial in New York (Reuters) On Tuesday, “Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since 2006, pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges of conspiring in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 224 people,” reports Reuters. He is “the first detainee from Guantanamo Bay … to stand trial in a U.S. civilian court.” [View article]

Padilla Can Sue Justice Dept. Attorney, Judge Rules (Fox News) Convicted terrorist Jose Padilla “can sue a former Bush administration lawyer for drafting the legal theories that led to his alleged torture, ruled … U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White of San Francisco,” reports the Associated Press. Padilla filed suit against “senior Justice Department official John Yoo,” who “wrote memos on interrogation, detention and presidential powers for the department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003.” Padilla “claims he was tortured while being held nearly four years as a” suspect. [View article]

Pass ID to Replace Real ID (Washington Post) “Yielding to a rebellion by states that refused to pay for it, the Obama administration is moving to scale back” Real ID, replacing it with Pass ID, which “would be cheaper, less rigorous and partly funded by federal grants,” reports the Washington Post. Pass ID would still require a “digital photograph, signature and machine-readable features.” [View article]

Federal Agencies Make ‘Uneven Progress’ in Pandemic Planning, Says GAO The Government Accountability Office “surveyed the 24 agencies employing nearly all federal workers to gain an overview of governmentwide pandemic influenza preparedness efforts and found that a wide range of pandemic planning activities are under way.” But “several agencies had yet to identify essential functions during a pandemic that cannot be performed remotely.” GAO closely studied three “occupations—correctional workers, production staff disbursing federal checks, and air traffic controllers”—and found that the Bureau of Prisons and the Treasury Department had plans but that “air traffic control management facilities … had not yet developed facility pandemic plans or incorporated pandemic plans into their all-hazards contingency plans.” [View GAO summary]

Pentagon Revises Exam That Labeled Protests ‘Terrorism’ (Fox News) “The Pentagon has removed a controversial question from its anti-terrorism training exam that labeled ‘protests’ a form of ‘low-level terrorism,’ calling the question ‘poorly worded,’” reports Fox News. “A Pentagon spokesman said the question failed to make clear the difference between illegal violent demonstrations and constitutionally protected peaceful protests.” [View article]

United Nations News

Ban Ki-moon Urges WMD Disarmament UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on June 13 launched the “WMD—We Must Disarm” campaign, beginning a 100-day countdown to the 2009 United Nations International Day of Peace, September 21, which this year focuses on nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. Ban and others will raise awareness of the need to eliminate nuclear weapons by issuing a daily message, via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, email, and radio. [View UN press release]

Private-Sector News

USAID Helps Outsource U.S. Jobs to Philippine Muslims (Yahoo! News) “The US Agency for International Development through its Growth with Equity in Mindanao (GEM) programme has teamed up with a business process outsourcing firm … in a novel venture to train and employ youths in” the Muslim stronghold of Mindanao, reports Agence France-Presse. “The rationale is to teach them English and hire them for backroom jobs outsourced by American firms seeking to cut operational costs at home. Those behind the scheme hope that with more money and improved living standards, many will be weaned away from violence and contribute to developing a region racked by 40 years of insurgency.” [View article]

Dual-Benefit Solutions

Continuity-of-Operation Plans Have Non-Emergency Benefits (Federal Computer Week) “Especially during times of shrinking [information technology] budgets, technology managers are looking for ways to protect their resources in an emergency without paying for idle capacity that doesn’t contribute to daily operations,” reports Federal Computer Week. “IT managers and consultants say that with the right IT architectures in place, organizations can safely see their COOP resources perform multiple roles.… One of the most common ways of achieving dual goals is to modify traditional COOP data-center configurations. The time-tested approach is to support an active production facility with a backup failover site dedicated to COOP and activated only during an emergency. Now organizations can vary that theme by distributing everyday workloads between the two sites.” [View article]

Pentagon Wants Cyborg Insects to Detect Chemicals (Wired) “The Pentagon has handed researchers at Agiltron Corporation a contract to implant larvae with ‘high sensitivity micromechanical chemical sensors’ that run on electric power collected with an embedded ‘electromagnetic harvester,’” writes Wired “Danger Room” blogger Katie Drummond. “… the Pentagon is also backing research into an insect-mounted device powered by fuel cells … the military wants to hook them up with their own wireless network … project proposals reference ‘civilian and defense applications.’” [View blog]

Dual-benefit news archive

New Upcoming Events (Events are listed for four weeks; after that, they are still on the Upcoming Events page) CBRN Resilience 2009 (July 8-9; London) This conference will cover chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents and such aspects as initial response, decontamination, restoration and recovery, and business continuity. [View event website] Northern Border Highway Carrier Conference (August 19; Buffalo, NY) The conference will cover Free and Secure Trade, sealing, the Automated Commercial Environment and E-manifest, highway carrier minimum-security criteria, validation and revalidation of a highway carrier, activities of Partners in Protection and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, and more topics specifically for northern border highway carriers. Attendance is limited to people representing highway carriers certified by the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. [View event website] (September 22-24; Tampa, FL) Supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Security Agency, the conference and expo focus on biometric technologies for homeland security, identity management, border crossing, electronic commerce, and other applications in 2½ days of presentations, seminars, and panel discussions with the participation of internationally recognized experts in biometric technologies, system and application developers, information technology business strategists, and government and commercial officers. [View event website]