DHS News

DHS Arrests Led to 241 Convictions—of DHS Personnel (Security Management) A new report by DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner describes “the crimes” that DHS “employees and contractors were convicted of in fiscal year 2009,” reports Security Management. (See the Statistics of the Week.) “… The 24-page report, however, recounts only a chosen few crimes listed by the DHS agency in which they occurred. Many of the anecdotal summaries of convictions described general corruption, particularly at the U.S. border.” View article • View report (342KB PDF)

US-CERT: Uncertain Effectiveness, Says Inspector General (NextGov) The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team “‘does not have the appropriate enforcement authority to ensure that agencies comply with mitigation guidance concerning threats and vulnerabilities,’ said Richard Skinner, inspector general at DHS, in his testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee” on Wednesday, reports NextGov. DHS “doesn’t have the power to compel agencies to fix known security vulnerabilities in their computer systems, a problem that keeps them vulnerable to cyberattacks, representatives from watchdog groups inside and outside the department said.” View article • View testimony (91KB PDF) • [View Focus on US-CERT]

TSA Seeks Improved Algorithms for Its Whole-Body Scanners (Government Security News) The Transportation Security Administration “has issued a broad agency announcement in search of an organization that can develop ‘automatic target recognition’ algorithms that could enable state-of-the-art whole body scanners to reliably detect ‘liquid, bulk and weapons threats on individuals’ and alert TSA security officers to these ‘anomalies,’” reports Government Security News. “… full proposals are due by July 30.” View article

Other Federal News

E-Passport Manufacturing Moving to America (Federal News Radio) “The key electronic components for millions of American e-Passports … have been put together inside a little-known factory in Ayutthaya [Thailand] for the past four years,” reports the Center for Public Integrity. “… The U.S. Government Printing Office, the agency charged with producing the new e-Passports, has been warned repeatedly since 2006 by its own security officer that the Thai manufacturing site posed a ‘potential long term risk to the [U.S. government’s] interests,’ according to inspection reports obtained by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News.… GPO’s inspector general found [that] the agency lacks security plans and procedures for ensuring that blank e-Passports—and their highly sought technologies—remain safe from terrorists, foreign spies, counterfeiters and other bad actors as they wind through an unwieldy manufacturing process that spans the globe and includes 60 different suppliers.” But the Thai “operations have been moved from that location to Minnesota,” Steve LeBlanc, Managing Director for Security & Intelligent Documents at the GPO, told Federal News Radio. Or at least 80% of the operations have. “By the end of the summer 100% of that operation … will be made in the United States.” View CPI article • View radio article

EPIC Fail in El Paso, TX (Washington Post) “The El Paso Intelligence Center, launched in 1974 to identify drug traffickers south of the border, is all but a complete bust, the Justice Department’s Inspector General reported Tuesday,” according to Post “SpyTalk” columnist Jeff Stein. “The 86-page report was a virtual laundry list of seemingly intractable problems at the border intelligence post.… Some 21 agencies provide staff to EPIC.” View article • View Justice Dept. report (1.8MB PDF)

Justice Dept. Agrees to Investigate Use of National Security Letters (Government Executive) “The Justice Department’s inspector general [Glenn Fine] has agreed to investigate how the government is using domestic surveillance powers under the USA PATRIOT Act,” reports CongressDaily. Fine said “that his office plans to review special court orders forcing businesses to turn over records and to look at the use of national security letters, which are demands for information without a court order.” View article

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Arar Case (Wired) “The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to review the dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the government by a Canadian citizen”—Maher Arar—“who, under suspicion of being connected to Al Qaeda, was sent by U.S. authorities to be tortured in Syria,” writes Wired “Threat Level” blogger Ryan Singel. (See the June 13, 2008, newsletter.) The “Obama administration … argues that the doctrine of ‘State Secrets’ precludes allowing any judge to review the materials that led John Ashcroft’s Justice Department to send Arar to Syria.” View blog

International News

Report Faults British Army in 1972 Bloody Sunday Massacre (BBC) “The Bloody Sunday killings were unjustified and unjustifiable, the Prime Minster [David Cameron] has said,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “Thirteen marchers were shot dead on 30 January 1972 in Londonderry [Northern Ireland] when British paratroopers opened fire on crowds at a civil rights demonstration. Fourteen others were wounded, one later died. The Saville Report is heavily critical of the Army and found that soldiers fired the first shot.” View article • View Saville report

War in Afghanistan Has Made Britain Safer, Says Prime Minister (Defence Management) “The war in Afghanistan has made Britain a safer country by reducing the threat from al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, … the Prime Minister has announced … in Parliament,” reports Defence Management. View article

400,000 Displaced in Kyrgyzstan (BBC) The United Nations “says that the number of people displaced by unrest in southern Kyrgyzstan has reached 400,000,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “About 300,000 people have fled their homes, while another 75,000-100,000 people—not counting children—are thought to have taken refuge in Uzbekistan.” The International Committee of the Red Cross “has described the situation as an ‘immense crisis.’” View article

11 Thai Protesters Charged With Terrorism (Yahoo! News) “Eleven leaders of bloody, anti-government protests could face the death penalty after being charged Tuesday with terrorism during the worst political upheaval in modern Thai history,” reports the Associated Press. “The Criminal Court denied bail for the 11 who were taken to a Bangkok prison after being charged with committing, threatening to commit and supporting terrorist acts” during “weeks of clashes between so-called Red Shirt protesters and security forces in which nearly 90 people were killed and more than 1,400 injured.” (See the May 28 newsletter.) View article

Dutch Court Jails Five Somali Men for Piracy (BBC) “A Dutch court has sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe,” reports the British Broadcasting Corporation. “The men were convicted in Rotterdam of attacking a Dutch Antilles–flagged ship, the Samanyolu. They were arrested last year when their high-speed boat was intercepted by a Danish frigate.” View article

Militants Use Malaysia as Terror Base, Says Domestic Security Minister (AsiaOne News) “Foreign militants are using mainly Muslim Malaysia as a base to beef up their violent struggle and recruit new members, … Hishammuddin Hussein, in charge of domestic security,” said, according to Agence France-Presse. “… Islamic and non-Islamic militant groups operating in the country.… were using Malaysia to carry out financial transactions, information sharing and recruitment of new members, he said.” View article

Italy’s Nuclear Waste Is Vulnerable to Terrorists, Says Foundation Report (Kitchener, Ontario, Record) “Italy’s dumps of nuclear waste and other radioactive material are vulnerable to terrorists and should be kept under strict security, a terrorism report released Monday … by a private Italian foundation” (ICSA) said, according to the Canadian Press. “Italy has a dozen sites where radioactive material is temporarily stocked.” The nuclear plants, closed in 1987, “produced 55,000 cubic meters of waste. There is also 2,000 cubic meters of other radioactive material coming from health and medical products.” View article

American on No-Fly List Stranded in Egypt (New York Times) “For six weeks,” a Virginia man, Yahya Wehelie, “has been in limbo in the Egyptian capital,” reports the Times. He “spent 18 months in Yemen”—“Wehelie studied computer science at Lebanese International University in Sana, the Yemeni capital, he said”—“before heading home.” The F.B.I. “stopped him while he was changing planes in Cairo” and “told him he was on the no-fly list … When he offered to fly home handcuffed and flanked by air marshals, Mr. Wehelie said, F.B.I. agents turned him down.” (See the Quote of the Week.) View article

American Goes on Solo Hunt for bin Laden (Reuters) “An American man [Gary Faulkner] accused of trying to sneak into Afghanistan to hunt down and kill al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden has been detained by authorities in Pakistan,” reports Reuters. He “was caught … near the border of Afghanistan’s Nuristan province carrying a dagger, pistol and night vision goggles.” One of his brothers said “that Gary Faulkner was in Pakistan legally and had been there six times on a ‘mission’ to kill bin Laden.” View article

Marsaxlokk Gets Megaport Nuclear-Detection Aid The United States and the Republic of Malta have signed an agreement to begin a cooperative effort to detect, deter, and interdict illicit smuggling of nuclear and other radioactive material. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration will work with the Maltese Customs Administration and other government agencies in Malta to install radiation detection equipment and associated infrastructure at the port of Marsaxlokk under the Megaports Initiative. “Marsaxlokk is Malta’s largest fishing village accommodating 250 registered fishing vessels,” according to the EuroResort website. View Energy Dept. press release • View EuroResort Marsaxlokk website

Boyd Conspirator Arrested in Kosovo (Fox News) Bajram Asllani was arrested in Kosovo yesterday, “charged with providing material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people abroad,” reports the Associated Press. He “was named in an April criminal complaint … accusing him of being part of a conspiracy” that includes “Daniel Patrick Boyd and two of his sons, all U.S. citizens.” (See the July 31, 2009, newsletter.) View article

American Arrested in Paraguay on Terror Charges (Philadelphia Inquirer) Moussa Ali Hamdan—a former New Jersey resident—“indicted by federal authorities last year over his alleged role in what officials called a U.S.-based Hezbollah terror cell was arrested in Paraguay on Tuesday and faces extradition to the United States,” reports the Inquirer. Hamdan is “a native of Lebanon” and “naturalized U.S. citizen.” View article

State and Local News

Newburgh Plot Takedown: Exemplary or Entrapment? (New York Times) “Four Muslim converts from Newburgh, N.Y., were charged last year with planning to bomb Bronx synagogues and shoot down military planes” (see the May 22, 2009, newsletter), but “an investigator’s report [suggests] that the men … were incapable of carrying out a complex attack without the informer,” reports the Times. “… The prosecutors … have said the investigation was ‘exemplary law enforcement work,’” but “‘the degree to which the government seems to have led on the defendants is much more aggressive than we have seen in other cases,’ said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, which tracks terrorism prosecutions,” and “the case could define when a permissible sting operation becomes illegal entrapment.” View article

Flash Flood Warnings Didn’t Reach Arkansas Campers (WJLA-TV, Washington, DC) “Before a wall of water swept through a narrow gorge in the Ouachita Mountains,” killing 20 people last week, “worried forecasters sent warnings four times in a single hour to advise of the potential for flash flooding,” reports the Associated Press. “But those warnings, issued in the middle of the night, never reached vacationing families in a remote campground in the floodwaters’ path. The camp had no ranger on-site, no cell phone service and no sirens, and deputies at the nearest sheriff’s departments were at least an hour’s drive away.” View article

New Settlement for Ground Zero Workers (New York Times) “Lawyers for [New York City] and about 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers who say their health was damaged at ground zero announced [on June 10] that they had negotiated a new, $712 million settlement to replace one that a federal judge rejected three months ago,” reports the Times. (See the March 26 newsletter.) View article

NJ Institute Focuses on Workable Homeland Security Technology (Newark, NJ, Star-Ledger) Research at the New Jersey Homeland Security Technology Systems Center (see the Website of the Week) of the New Jersey Institute of Technology “ranges from software for tracing the phone- and internet-usage patterns of home-grown terrorists—which recently helped police track down Faisal Shahzad, charged as the would-be Times Square bomber—to massive blimps designed to hover 12 miles above the Earth, sending back detailed scans of grids covering 500,000 square miles,” reports the Star-Ledger. “… The role of the center is to take existing research and develop workable prototypes.” View article

New York Bridge Employees Trained to Spot Suspicious Behavior (Middletown, NY, Mid-Hudson News Network) “Employees from the New York [State] Bridge Authority are being trained to spot and report any suspicious behavior on or around spans crossing the Hudson River,” reports the Mid-Hudson News Network. “… Employees who work on [the] authority’s five spans are being trained to spot the seven signs [that] a bridge may be targeted by terrorist.” View article

National News

GPS Is Inadequate for Pinpointing 911 Wireless Callers (Homeland Security Today) Public safety answering points that “answer 9-1-1 wireless calls believe that Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is proving ineffective for locating E-911 callers in indoor and urban environments, according to a new study,” titled “[Public Safety Answering Point] Challenges in Using GPS to Locate 9-1-1 Calls From Cell Phones,” reports Homeland Security Today. “A wide majority of 90% of [public safety answering points] surveyed in the study … reported inadequate coverage [indoors] where the GPS signal, which requires a clear line of sight to the sky, is often obstructed by the steel and concrete of the buildings the cell phone caller is in or near.… some calls made from inside vehicles have the same” line-of-sight problems. View article • View study web page

Cooperation of Immigrant Communities to Avert Disaster This new research brief by the Institute of Homeland Security Solutions notes that disaster preparedness and crime prevention programs mostly focus on native, usually English-speaking, populations when they address minorities, and it examines the sociological determinants of immigrants’ levels of trust and sociocognitive processes that influence immigrants’ willingness and ability to cooperate. View research brief (222KB PDF)

Private-Sector News

CenterPoint Zimmer Will Replace Kansas City Nuclear Parts Plant (Kansas City Star) “The federal government signed a lease Monday with” CenterPoint Zimmer LLC—“the developer of a new Honeywell nuclear weapons parts plant,” reports the Star. It will replace an obsolete facility that “supplies 85 percent of the non-nuclear parts that go into a typical nuclear weapon.” (See the Dec. 4, 2009, newsletter.) View article

Education & Training The HOMELAND SECURITY STUDIES AND ANALYSIS INSTITUTE lists these education and training programs as a service to readers who may be interested; it does not endorse them or their courses. New education listings are posted for four weeks. Hazmat Tank Car Training (August 30–September 3, Johnson City, TN; September 8-10, Morristown, TN) Norfolk Southern and DuPont will sponsor multiple classes using railcars and focusing on hazardous materials in tank cars, tank car safety, and safety working near tracks, followed by an emergency response exercise on each Friday. View course website (September 13-16; Washington, DC) This training for security and identity professionals presents the latest plans, solutions, and requirements for identity credentials to help attendees move to an integrated system and achieve results. It includes four pre-conference and post-conference workshops on identity management. View event website

New Upcoming Events (Events are listed for four weeks; after that, they are still on the Upcoming Events page) Networking to Critical Infrastructure Information Owners and Mission Operators to Share and Exchange Within and Across Boundaries (July 13; College Park, MD) This forum will discuss various perspectives on how the public and private industry organizations within each of the 18 critical infrastructure sectors can actively exchange information, rather than be isolated to information within their sector. This forum is designed to create a networking opportunity for public- and private-sector stakeholders interested in issues establishing accessibility to public safety and critical infrastructure information. View event website Disaster Planning for Hospitals (August 11-12; Washington, DC) This conference focuses on disaster planning trends along with strategies and solutions to help hospitals effectively prepare their facilities for the challenges a disaster brings. The conference will demonstrate how to create an effective disaster plan and manage the logistical and financial recovery. View event website 2nd International Swine Flu Conference and Workshop (August 18-20; Washington, DC) This event will present a bird’s-eye view of the global H1N1 situation, fresh updates from hard-to-reach country experts, how organizations can prepare for a pandemic, contacts with key agencies, and firsthand best practices from top organizations to create solid business continuity plans. View event website Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals National Conference (September 12-15; Atlanta) This conference will bring together professionals from across wide-ranging disciplines, both domestic and international, to give new perspectives and discuss the most pressing issues facing environmental, health, safety, and security professionals, including the newest regulations, advances, and technologies. View event website (September 15; Reading, England) This conference discusses the core elements of business resilience—business continuity, crisis communications, security, health and safety, and sustainability—to help strengthen the resilience and competitive advantage of British public limited companies by improving the resilience of the supply chain. View event website Kansas Emergency Management Assn. Annual Conference (September 15-17; Topeka, KS) The conference provides a forum for current trends, topics, and the latest tools and technology in emergency management and homeland security and to increase partnerships and networking among members. Sessions encourage stakeholders at all levels of government, the private sector, public health, and related professions to exchange ideas on collaborating to protect lives and property from disaster. View event website (September 20-23; Toulouse, France) This conference presents the latest research in infrared, electro-optical remote sensing, imaging, and more, bridging the divide between fundamental optical science and the application of the underpinning technologies in advanced security and defense systems. View event website Opportunity and Risk in Brazil (December 6-7; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) This Chief Security Officer Roundtable Latin America Summit will address the security challenges facing Brazil as it prepares to host the 2014 Fédération Internationale de Football Association World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, and it will give senior corporate security executives from around the world a chance to discover new business and professional opportunities, exchange best practices, and interact to build or strengthen professional relationships. View event website

Calls for Papers (Calls for papers are listed for four weeks; after that, they are still on the Calls for Papers page) Infrastructure and Regional Resilience 2010 Conference (December 8-9; Dallas) This year’s theme is “Innovation and Leadership for Infrastructure Resilience.” The conference welcomes papers on innovative projects and technologies, research and development initiatives, and creative strategies and lessons learned that have enhanced infrastructure and regional security, safety, and resilience. Drafts are due by July 31. View call for papers