DHS News

Disputed E-Verify Rules in Effect (NextGov) “A coalition of business groups continued to wage a legal battle [Monday] as a government mandate took effect requiring federal contractors to verify the immigration status of employees working on government projects,” reports CongressDaily. “After months of delay, the Homeland Security Department implemented a rule requiring most federal contractors and subcontractors to use its E-Verify system to prove [that] employees working on government projects are legally in the country. The path to implementing the mandate cleared [on Sep. 4] when the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Maryland refused to grant a business coalition led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce an emergency injunction that would prevent the rule from taking effect.” [View article]

Border Patrol photo

Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative Exceeds DHS’s Expectations (NextGov; USA Today) The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative “to track citizens of countries that border the United States as they enter and leave the states by land and sea has surpassed” the expectations of the Homeland Security Department, reports NextGov. “… three months after” the initiative began at land and sea ports, “compliance remains steady at 95.6 percent nationwide.” The system “cut the number of documents accepted at land and sea borders from hundreds down to six,” and 23% “of all documents presented are enabled with radio frequency identification technology,” allowing “border agents to verify a traveler’s identity by electronically matching an ID number stored on the RFID chip with biographical information in a secure database.” But “the number of people crossing the northern and southern land borders into the USA has dropped sharply since” the initiative took effect, reports USA Today. “… Along both borders, traffic was down 12.5%,” although Customs and Border Protection “officials say the change has made border crossings safer and more efficient and isn’t to blame for declining numbers.” [View NextGov article] [View USA Today article]

The Information DHS Stores About International Travelers (Security Management) Customs and Border Protection “stores a surprising amount of personal information on international travelers underneath its Automated Targeting System,” reports Security Management, citing the Philosecurity blog. Travelers “can expect this information to be collected and stored by DHS”: credit card data, the Internet Protocol address of the computer used to make reservations, itinerary, phone numbers, name, birth date, passport number, and more. [View article] [View Philosecurity blog]

DHS Sponsors Preparedness Training for Public Assembly Places The Homeland Security Department has contracted with the International Association of Assembly Managers to deliver intensive training in safety and security protocols for emergency preparedness, crises communication, and introduction to a free risk self-assessment and benchmarking tool that promote readiness for a broad range of hazard scenarios at places of public assembly such as stadiums and arenas. [View press release]

DHS Breaks Ground on New HQ (Government Executive) “The Homeland Security Department on Wednesday held a ceremonial groundbreaking for its new headquarters at the former Saint Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast Washington [DC],” reports Government Executive. “The renovation of the former psychiatric institution is the largest federal building project since the Pentagon was built, and will house nearly 14,000 DHS employees.” [View article]

Girl Scouts Work With Citizen Corps and Offer Preparedness Patch The Homeland Security Department’s Citizen Corps and Girl Scouts of the USA are working together to advance community preparedness nationwide and motivate young women to become community leaders in emergency management and response. In a new program developed by the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Girls Scouts can earn a preparedness patch to wear on their uniforms by identifying and preparing for potential emergencies, learning about local alerts and warning systems, and engaging in community service. [View press release]

Other Federal News

FCC Assesses Its Emergency Preparedness (Radio Ink) The Federal Communications Commission “has released a report on its ability to respond in natural disasters, terrorist attacks, public health emergencies, and other events,” reports Radio Ink. “… The report, while concluding that the FCC is prepared to keep essential communications open in an emergency, found that the commission could improve its planning and response in the areas of education and training, outreach and collaborations, emergency operations and alerts, and network analysis.” [View article] [View report (683KB PDF)]

Anti-Flu Drugs Not for Prevention, Says CDC (Washington Post; CNN) Doctors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday “issued new guidelines for … Tamiflu and Relenza,” which “should only be used to treat people who are sick and at high risk for complications,” reports the Post. Guidance issued in May “didn’t rule out sometimes using the drugs to stop swine flu’s spread and prevent illness even in children who had no symptoms.” The CDC also said “that health care providers could consider simply watching for flu symptoms in some individuals rather than prescribing preventive antiviral drugs right away if a person has been exposed to the flu,” reports CNN. [View Post article] [View CNN article]

International News

A. Q. Khan Helped Iran’s Nuclear Research (Washington Post) “The creator of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program [A. Q. Khan] boasted … that he and other senior Pakistani officials, eager to see Iran develop nuclear weapons, years ago guided that country to a proven network of suppliers and helped advance its covert efforts,” reports the Washington Post. (See the book review of Allah’s Bomb in the Journal of Homeland Security, June 2008.) [View article]

Uganda Captures 1995 Massacre Leader (Reuters AlertNet) “The Ugandan military” has “captured a feared senior rebel from the Lord’s Resistance Army”—Okot Atiak—“who is accused of leading the massacre of 250 villagers,” reports Reuters. [View article]

Three Convicted in 2006 Airliner Bombing Plot (BBC) “Three men have been found guilty of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes flying from London to America with home-made liquid bombs,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “A Woolwich Crown Court jury convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as drinks. Four other men were found not guilty of involvement in the suicide bomb plot. The arrests in August 2006 caused chaos to international aviation and prompted the current restrictions on liquids.” [View article]

British Neo-Nazi Jailed for Plotting Terror (MSN) “A neo-Nazi”—Neil Lewington—“who was about to launch a racist terror campaign on the streets of Britain has been jailed indefinitely,” reports the Press Association. “… Police discovered a bomb factory in his bedroom,” along with Neo-Nazi material and videos about “his far-right heroes, Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and Soho nail bomber David Copeland.” [View article]

600-lb Bomb Found Planted in Northern Ireland (London Times) “A huge bomb has been defused by Army explosives experts in south Armagh on the Irish border,” reports the Times. “… Army experts estimate that the device contained in the region of 600lb of home-made explosives.” [View article]

Obama Offers Antiterrorism Aid to Yemen (Washington Times) “The White House’s top counterterrorism official, John Brennan, has hand-delivered a letter from President Obama to the president of Yemen [Ali Abdullah Saleh], highlighting U.S. concerns over al Qaeda’s recent expansion in the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden,” reports the Washington Times. “In the letter, which was delivered Sunday, Mr. Obama sought to coordinate terrorism fighting efforts while offering the impoverished Arab nation additional U.S. aid.” [View article]

Mexico City Jet Hijacking Ends Quickly, Without Harm (Dallas Morning News) “A Bolivian religious fanatic”—José Flores—“briefly hijacked a jetliner as it landed in Mexico City on Wednesday,” reports the Associated Press. “… All passengers and crew members were released unharmed. The Bible-carrying hijacker used a juice can he said was a bomb to hold 103 passengers and crew members on the tarmac for more than an hour. Masked police stormed the aircraft with their guns drawn and escorted several handcuffed men away without firing a shot. Police said later that there was only one hijacker.” Flores “told investigators he hijacked Aeromexico Flight 576 after a divine revelation, noting that Wednesday’s date—9-9-09—is the satanic number 666 turned upside down.” [View article]

Terrorists Hit Softer Targets, Says Stratfor (Phoenix Arizona Republic) “Terrorists are aiming for hotels and other easier-to-hit targets as security measures at military and government facilities continue to improve, says” Stratfor, “a global intelligence company,” according to the Associated Press. “… the number of attacks on hotels has more than doubled since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 when compared with the eight years before. Injuries and deaths caused by those attacks have increased six times over the same comparison period.” [View article]

Canadian Air Passengers Keep Their Shoes On (Toronto Globe and Mail) “Canada’s airport security agency has issued a bulletin to front-line officers instructing them they cannot require domestic or international passengers to doff footwear before walking through metal detectors,” reports the Canadian Press. “… however, officers can still order passengers heading for the United States to remove their shoes,” and “if a hand-held metal detector signals an alarm for shoes after the walk through, a passenger can be required to remove footwear for examination.” [View article]

Locals and Retired Agents Hunt bin Laden (London Times) “The hunt for Osama bin Laden … has essentially been outsourced by the US to a network of Pashtun spies run by the Pakistani intelligence services,” reports the Times. But now the Central Intelligence Agency “is bringing back CIA retirees—a group known as The Cadre.” Yet “there has not been one credible lead on bin Laden in years. His nickname among some CIA hunters is Elvis because of all the bogus and fanciful sightings.” [View article]

Jakarta Students and Teachers Asked to Watch for Terrorists (Jakarta [Indonesia] Post) “Authorities brought together around 1,000 teachers and high school students from all over the city on Wednesday, to brief them about the terror threats still lingering in the capital,” reports the Post. They “have been asked to be more vigilant and keep an eye out for terrorists recruiting youths into their cells.” [View article]

National News

Health Workers Under Pressure to Get Flu Shots (Washington Post) “Tens of thousands of health care workers who typically avoid flu shots are under more pressure than ever to get vaccinated as hospitals and clinics prepare for a spike in swine flu cases this fall and winter,” reports the Associated Press. “Roughly half of health workers skip the immunizations, raising two concerns: If doctors and nurses get sick, who will treat what could be millions of Americans reeling from seasonal or swine flu? And could infected health workers make things worse by spreading flu to patients? New York, the first state to be hard-hit by swine flu, is requiring all health workers to get immunized against both types of flu. Other states are weighing whether to follow suit.” [View article]

Social Media Give Emergency Managers Insight About Public Perceptions (Government Technology) “Social media can be an information source about the public,” writes Jeannette Sutton in Government Technology, drawing “from research on three cases: the Virginia Tech shooting, the Southern California wildfires of 2007, and the 2008 Democratic National Convention.” Social media have “provided one of the first opportunities to observe how people interpret information from authorities.… Even information that’s perceived to be chatter, misinformation or rumor can lead to a greater awareness of what’s happening on the ground because it gives emergency managers insight into people’s interpretations of warnings and other risk messages. Risk communicators now have the opportunity to craft messages based on how people respond to them. They can observe the public communicating about shared information, and new information can be pushed out to correct inaccuracies.” [View article]

Northcom Should Involve Partners and States More in Exercises, Says GAO U.S. Northern Command’s exercise program “to test preparedness to perform its homeland defense and civil support missions.… faces challenges in involving states in the planning, conduct, and assessment of its exercises,” reports the Government Accountability Office. Although 19 “federal agencies and organizations and 17 states and the District of Columbia have participated in one or more of the seven large-scale exercises that NORTHCOM has conducted … NORTHCOM officials lack experience dealing with states and do not have a consistent process for including states in exercises. Without such a process, NORTHCOM increases the risk that its exercises will not provide benefits for all participants, impact the seamless exercise of all levels of government, and potentially affect NORTHCOM’s ability to provide civil support capabilities.” [View GAO summary]

State and Local News

Earth Liberation Front Sabotages Washington State Radio Towers (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) “Two radio station towers near Seattle that have generated intense local opposition were toppled early [September 4] in an act of sabotage that bore the initials of the radical Earth Liberation Front,” reports the Associated Press. “The towers for KRKO-AM—one of which was 349 feet tall—were torn down because of health and environmental concerns, according to … the North American ELF Press Office,” which claimed that ELF was responsible. [View article] [View ELF site]

9/11 Museum Seeks Stories and Images (New York Times) The National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum launched its website yesterday (see the Website of the Week) “with its collection of citizen journalism of the tragedy and is appealing for more 9/11 stories from all over the world,” reports the Associated Press. “… The site has photographs, video and audio recollections by professional photographers, fleeing trade center workers and witnesses who recorded what they saw with cell phone and digital cameras.… Some of the submissions already are on display at the 9/11 Memorial Preview Site, opened last month near ground zero as a temporary exhibit … The memorial is expected to open on the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011, and the museum a year later.” [View article]

Former New York Cop Teaches Synagogue Self-Defense (New York Post) “The International Security Coalition of Clergy” offers “a 100-hour course for synagogue self-defense,” reports the Post. The founder, Rabbi Gary Moscowitz, “boasts a black belt in karate, teaches martial arts and was an NYPD cop for nine years.” [View article]

Nevada Compiles Emergency Plans for 3,000 Sites (Las Vegas Sun) “A Las Vegas consulting firm”—Urban Environmental Research—“has been tapped by the Department of Homeland Security to better prepare first responders for disasters of any kind by compiling detailed emergency response plans for more than 3,000 sites statewide that have been deemed critical to Nevada’s economy and infrastructure,” reports the Sun. “The vulnerability assessments that” the company “is doing evaluate floor plans, utility lines, shutoff valves, evacuation routes, hazardous material storage location and other factors, then combine all the information into a Web-based format that is instantly available to police, firefighters, paramedics or any other emergency responders.” [View article]

Public-Private Partnership Prepared Denver for Democratic Convention (Security Management) “The Denver Public-Private Partnership … gave the police and the private sector 12 months to coordinate efforts and prepare for” last year’s Democratic Convention, reports Security Management. “… another public-private effort, the Colorado Emergency Preparedness Partnership,” worked to fill the “gap between what businesses would do and what the public-safety sector would do” in a disaster. Part of the answer was the Business Emergency Operations Center—“a secure, virtual, invitation-based online forum where subscribers could receive instant alerts from the” Emergency Operations Center. The “core of the [convention’s] information-sharing apparatus was a highly secure law-enforcement-only forum where local, state, and federal officials shared sensitive intelligence.” Necessary information was communicated to the Colorado Emergency Preparedness Partnership and the business and security forums in the Business Emergency Operations Center. The partnership overcame a “communication hurdle between the public and private sectors” and “reached out to DHS to provide relevant training to private-sector security officers, with no cost to the participants.” [View article]

NJ Alert Uses Email and Text Messages (Newark, NJ, Star-Ledger) “New Jersey residents can sign up for emergency alerts … involving hurricanes, evacuations or terrorist attacks … via email or text message through” a service called NJ Alert, reports the Star-Ledger. The service is “provided to the state for free by Professor Robert Statica at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.… New Jersey currently uses radio broadcasts to announce emergencies.” [View article]

Photo courtesy of Steve Dunham

United Nations News

Intl. Atomic Energy Agency Removes Radioactive Material From Lebanon The International Atomic Energy Agency last month removed 36 Cobalt-60 sources were from an unused agricultural irradiator in Lebanon and transported them to safe, secure storage in Russia. Cobalt-60 can kill an exposed person within minutes. “If it was stolen it could cause a lot of damage,” said the IAEA’S Robin Heard. [View press release]

‘New York Declaration’ Pledges Best Practices to Fight Piracy Representatives from the United States, Japan, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Singapore, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland on Wednesday signed the New York Declaration, a commitment to best management practices to avoid, deter or delay acts of piracy. [View press release]

Private-Sector News

Facebook Helps Govt. Agencies Set Up Outreach Sites (Federal Computer Week) “The popular social-networking service Facebook has introduced a page designed to help agencies set up and best use their own Facebook outreach pages,” reports Federal Computer Week. “… The site offers a list of agency pages, best practices guides, links to more information and updates of what is going on with government Facebook pages. So far, 23 federal agencies have set up Facebook sites.” [View article] [View Facebook Govt. page]

New Upcoming Events (Events are listed for four weeks; after that, they are still on the Upcoming Events page) Global Conflict & Terrorism Trends (September 14; Washington, DC) The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism and the Center for International Development and Conflict Management will host this panel presentation and discussion. [View event website] National After Action Workshop on a Federal Public Health Emergency: The Novel Influenza A H1N1 Epidemic of Spring 2009 (September 21-22; Los Angeles) The University of California–Los Angeles Center for Public Health and Disasters is convening this workshop to review the key actions taken as this epidemic unfolded, seeking to identify those strategies that were effective and those that could have been handled differently. Those attending can interact with colleagues from all levels of the response and participate in working sessions to help identify gaps to be addressed in future national disease outbreaks. [View event website] Keeping the World Working During the H1N1 Pandemic (September 22-23; Minneapolis) The theme of this conference is “Protecting Employee Health, Critical Operations, and Customer Relations.” Pandemic response experts in the public and private sectors who know their business and are ready to act will convene to tackle with candor, urgency, and practicality how to brace their enterprises for the months ahead. [View event website] Advances in BioDetection Technologies (October 9; London) The conference will cover topics such as anthrax detection, fluorescent imaging, rapid diagnostics of infectious agents, field diagnosis of diseases, and nucleic acid testing. [View event website] Symposium VII (November 9-11; Colorado Springs) This year’s theme is “Homeland Defense and Security in Transition: Threats. Priorities. Initiatives.” Among the topics covered will be evolving international threats, border security, nuclear threats, and new educational programs. [View event website] (November 17-19; New Orleans) This emergency planning and response conference will focus on the challenges, trends, and solutions that affect the energy industry, regulatory community, and responders. Companies from throughout the oil and chemical spill, maritime security, and marine salvage industries will attend, along with key professionals and decision makers from throughout the Gulf Coast. [View event website] (February 3-5; New Orleans) This event will bring together professionals, academics, nonprofit and for-profit organizations, consultants, emergency managers, and transportation planners to discuss evacuation planning for cities and regions across the United States. [View event website] Cyber Security—Legal and Policy Issues for National Security, Law Enforcement and Private Industry (March 18-19; San Antonio) This conference is designed for the Defense and Homeland Security departments, corporate security managers, law enforcement, and the business community to receive critical information on the full range of legal and policy issues related to cyber-security. [View course website]

Calls for Papers (February 3-5; New Orleans) This event will bring together professionals, academics, nonprofit and for-profit organizations, consultants, emergency managers, and transportation planners to discuss evacuation planning for cities and regions across the United States. Papers are welcome on topics such as evacuation policy, carless and vulnerable populations, nuclear power plants, communications and human behavior, legal issues, evacuation modeling, and issues for first responders and voluntary organizations. Abstracts are due by September 30. [View event website] 4th International Conference on Digital Society (February 10-15, 2010; St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles) The conference, sponsored by the International Academy, Research and Industry Association, will cover a large spectrum of topics related to advanced networking, applications, and systems technologies in a digital society. Among the topics for which the conference is soliciting presentations is “Homeland Security and Public Records.” The deadline for submitting a full paper is October 5. [View call for papers] ASIS International 9th European Security Conference (April 18-21, 2010; Lisbon, Portugal) This event focuses on up-to-the-minute solutions and security management issues affecting European and global businesses, attracting more than 500 high-level professionals and business leaders from around the globe. The submission deadline is October 10. [View call for papers] Advances in Reactor Physics to Power the Nuclear Renaissance (May 9-14; Pittsburgh) Among the topics for which the conference is soliciting presentations is nuclear techniques for non-proliferation and homeland security. The deadline for submission of full papers is October 31. [View call for papers (344KB PDF)] ASIS International 56th Annual Seminar and Exhibits (October 12-15, 2010; Dallas) The American Society for Industrial Security International is soliciting presentations from knowledgeable and articulate subject matter expert willing to share their insights and real-world experience at next year’s conference. The submission deadline is March 1. [View call for papers]