DHS News

DHS photo

FEMA Credit Cards Used for Improper Purchases (Homeland Security Today) “Poor oversight of government credit cards intended for disaster response at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allow for abuse of the cards, as shown by about [a] quarter of a million dollars in improper purchases, the inspector general” of the Homeland Security Department reported on June 24, according to Homeland Security Today. The Inspector General concluded “that FEMA could better control these purchases by consolidating communications policies and procedures for their use, improve preventive controls for bad purchases; and work with DHS and card provider JP Morgan Chase to ensure [that] appropriate disaster purchases remain tax-free. FEMA generally concurred with the recommendations and vowed to plug gaps in purchasing oversight.” View article • View report (1.5MB PDF)

DHS Has Gaps in Efforts to Prevent Nuclear Smuggling, Says GAO The Homeland Security Department “has made significant progress in both deploying radiation detection equipment and developing procedures to scan cargo and conveyances entering the United States through fixed land and sea ports of entry for nuclear and radiological materials,” reports the Government Accountability Office. And while DHS scans nearly 100% “of the cargo and conveyances entering the United States through land borders and major seaports, it has made less progress scanning for radiation (1) in railcars entering the United States from Canada and Mexico; (2) in international air cargo; and (3) for international commercial aviation aircraft, passengers, or baggage.” Other gaps in DHS efforts to prevent nuclear smuggling “include land border areas between ports of entry into the United States, international general aviation, and small maritime craft such as recreational boats and commercial fishing vessels.” View GAO summary

TSA Needs a Contingency Plan for Screening Air Cargo, Says GAO The Transportation Security Administration faces “challenges in developing and implementing a system to screen 100 percent of domestic air cargo, and it is questionable, based on reported screening rates, whether 100 percent of such cargo will be screened by August 2010 [as mandated by law] without impeding the flow of commerce,” reports the Government Accountability Office. “… In addition, the agency has not determined how it will eventually meet the screening mandate as it applies to inbound [international] cargo.” View GAO summary

CBP Wireless Manager Gets GSA Excellence Award U.S. Customs and Border Protection Wireless Program Manager Rebel McFetridge received the 2010 General Services Administration Interagency Management Council Award for Individual Technical Excellence for her role in implementing the Telecom Expense Management program at her agency. View CBP press release

State and Local News

Puerto Rico Voids Birth Certificates (MSNBC) Puerto Rico, in response to massive thefts of identity documents, has decided “to void every Puerto Rican birth certificate as of July 1 and require about 5 million people—including 1.4 million on the U.S. mainland—to reapply for new ones with security features,” reports the Associated Press. “New birth certificates will be issued starting July 1, and all old birth certificates will be annulled by Sept. 30.” But “untold numbers of passports, driver’s licenses and other documents issued to holders of false birth certificates are still valid.” View article

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Agencies Adopt Social Media But Mostly Without a Plan (Emergency Management) “In June 2009, the Gulf States Regional Center for Public Safety Innovations” surveyed “more than 500 departments concerning the use of social media” and found that “few are laying out specific plans and recommendations for implementation,” reports Emergency Management. Some agencies have gone as far as limited implementation: “deciding who will run the site, creating policies, educating internal staff and public officials, setting up the accounts (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and deciding what information should be posted.” Others have begun “encouraging community involvement.” But “public safety as a whole has not given the community the outlet or paths to send” on-scene information during an emergency. View article

Hundreds Join Chicagoland Counterterror Transit Drill (Progressive Railroading) During the June 24 “morning and evening commutes, Amtrak and Metra police, Transportation Security Administration officials and law enforcement officers from more than 100 federal, state, local and rail police agencies took part in an expanded counterterrorism and incident response capabilities exercise,” reports Progressive Railroading. (Metra is a Chicago-area commuter train operation.) “Participants were deployed at more than 100 passenger rail stations in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. The exercise was part of Operation ALERTS, or Allied Law Enforcement for Rail and Transit Security, a coordinated effort involving activities such as heightened station patrols, increased security presence on trains, explosives detection canine sweeps and random passenger bag inspections at unannounced locations.” View article

Banned FEMA Trailers Used by Oil Spill Cleanup Workers (New York Times) Some of the “trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people who had lost their homes” in Hurricane Katrina but were banned because of “high levels of formaldehyde … [see the Aug. 8, 2008, newsletter] are getting a second life … as living quarters for workers involved with the cleanup of the oil spill” on the Gulf coast, reports the Times. “Even though federal regulators have said the trailers are not to be used for housing,” some workers have “bought them so they could be together with their wives and children after work.” View article

Private-Sector News

U.S. Companies Buy Terrorism Insurance as Prices Decline (Yahoo! Canada) U.S. “companies of all sizes and across all industries continued to purchase terrorism coverage” in 2009 as “median premium rates declined,” according to Marsh, a global insurance broker and risk advisor. (See the Statistics of the Week.) View press release • View report

National News

40 Million Doses of Swine Flu Vaccine Expire (New Orleans Times-Picayune) “A whopping 40 million doses of swine flu vaccine expired on Wednesday, June 30, and will be destroyed, an amount that is believed to be a record loss of flu vaccine,” reports the Associated Press. “… About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused.” View article

‘Aging and Top-Down Attentional Control in Visual Search’ This new research brief from the Institute of Homeland Security Solutions notes that “many visual tasks, such as airport baggage screening, rely heavily on the ability to accurately and efficiently search for and detect target items amongst distractors.… previous research suggests that the efficiency of visual search varies significantly as a function of increasing adult age,” and “research is needed that investigates the potential contributions of both adult age and top-down attentional control.” View research brief (619KB PDF)

International News

UK, France, and Germany Use Torture Intel, Says Human Rights Watch (EU Observer) “France, Germany and the United Kingdom … acquire foreign intelligence for security and police matters from countries that routinely use torture to obtain information, a report issued on Monday (28 June) by Human Rights Watch says,” according to the EU Observer. “The use of torture intelligence in the fight against terrorism by France, Germany, and the UK damages the credibility of the European Union, as” it contradicts the “EU’s anti-torture guidelines, the … report [“No Questions Asked”] reads.” View article • View report

Taliban Rule Out Negotiations With Nato (BBC) “The Taliban in Afghanistan have told the BBC that there is no question of their entering into any kind of negotiations with Nato forces. It comes after US commanders and the British army chief of staff, Gen David Richards, suggested that it might be useful to talk to the Taliban. The Taliban statement is uncompromising, almost contemptuous. They believe they are winning the war, and cannot see why they should help Nato by talking to them.” (See the April 23 newsletter.) View article

How Should the U.S. Define Success in Afghanistan? (Foreign Affairs) “Since 2001, the West has tried to build a strong centralized government in Afghanistan,” write Stephen Biddle, Fotini Christia, and J. Alexander Thier in Foreign Affairs. “But such an approach fits poorly with the country’s history and political culture. The most realistic and acceptable alternative models of governance are decentralized democracy and a system of internal mixed sovereignty.” View article

150 Iraqis Assassinated Since March Elections (New York Times) “Some 150 politicians, civil servants, tribal chiefs, police officers, Sunni clerics and members of Awakening Councils have been assassinated throughout Iraq since the election—bloodshed apparently aimed at heightening turmoil in the power vacuum created by more than three months without a national government,” reports the Times. View article

Chinese Researchers Create Catastrophic Risk Model (Homeland Security Today) “Researchers in China have developed a new environmental catastrophe risk assessment model, which has implications for predicting risk for both natural and man-made environmental disasters in the United States,” reports Homeland Security Today. “… the new model combines both domain knowledge and previous data to construct a robust network, thereby allowing it to more accurately assess the risk posed by disasters.” It uses a Bayesian network, “a graphical model that shows dependencies among all variables, shows the probability of relationships among variables, and allows the user to combine background knowledge with available data, while accounting for missing data.” View article

What Is the Organization of the Islamic Conference? Comprising 57 “nations spread over four continents, the” 40-year-old Organization of the Islamic Conference “is the second largest international body after the UN, and is aimed at protecting Muslim interests worldwide,” writes Toni Johnson of the Council on Foreign Relations. Some see the Islamic Conference as “ineffectual, but they also note its tremendous potential for addressing the issues facing Muslims.” View article

Dual-Benefit Solutions

Dual-benefit news archive

Southern Command Uses ‘All Partners Access Network’ to Coordinate Disaster Relief (Emergency Management) U.S. Southern Command set up the All Partners Access Network the day after the Haiti earthquake “to help coordinate disaster relief efforts of more than 300 government and nongovernmental organizations,” reports Emergency Management. “Using blogs, wikis, online chat, forums, calendars and file-sharing capabilities, [the network] and information from other tools—such as the open source Sahana disaster management system—connected people in need with those who could provide assistance.” However, the network faced obstacles, too: limited bandwidth and responders who were unaware of the network. An obstacle to its use in the United States is that the network “operates outside the Incident Command System.” 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. (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 Transcaer Whistle Stop Tour (September 20, Mobile, AL; September 21, McIntosh, AL; September 22, Selma, AL; September 23, Jasper, AL; September 24, Muscle Shoals, AL) This event increases community understanding of the importance of emergency planning and hands-on training. Demonstrations and presentations focus on rail, truck, and chemical-specific information. The tour helps emergency responders to dialog about transportation topics such as tank car recognition and managing a hazmat incident. View event brochure Rail Tank Car Responder Training (November 16-17; Oakland, CA) This half-day training sponsored by Transcaer and Dow Chemical focuses on rail tank car anatomy and leak mitigation. 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 Australasian Hazards Management Conference (August 10-13; Wellington, New Zealand) This conference for emergency managers, planners, risk assessors, asset and utility managers, natural hazards researchers, and scientists provides a forum to discuss the integration of hazard information into effective risk management. Among the topics to be discussed: applying hazard information to best-practice planning, developing effective warning systems, improved response and recovery from events, and creating resilient communities through integrating science into practice. 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 4th National Bio-Threat Conference (December 7-9; New Orleans) This conference will provide a forum for dialogue among government, industry, academia, and first responders to address critical issues in environmental sampling and bio-detection as well as special focus sessions on biosurveillance and microbial forensics. 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