Dual-Benefit Solutions

NASA Signs Technology Agreement With DHS The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Homeland Security have signed a memorandum of understanding to apply joint expertise and technologies to improve national and homeland security and develop complex systems designed to protect the nation. They will coordinate evaluation of existing technologies, accelerate promising technologies, undertake joint research and development, share resources and personnel, and work with the private sector and other public agencies in joint programs. The agencies will share information, use available government resources, and promote best practices. [View article]

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Federal News

Bush Rebuts 9/11 Commission Complaints “The President has worked to address the recommendations of the commission,” asserts a White House statement issued Monday. “… the Administration has taken action on 37 of the Commission’s 39 recommendations that apply to the Executive Branch.” [View statement]

U.S. Signs UN Protocol Against Trafficking in Human Persons “In conjunction with the international day for the abolition of slavery, the United States joined 94 other countries in becoming an official party to the protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children,” Gillian Milovanovic, U.S. Ambassador to Macedonia, announced Wednesday in Skopje, Macedonia, at the Regional Cooperation in Combating Illicit Trafficking conference. [View press release]

FEMA Will Distribute Funds Raised by 9/11 Heroes Stamp Emergency relief personnel who have been permanently physically disabled in the line of duty, or who are the personal representatives of emergency relief personnel killed in the line of duty, may apply for benefits under the 9/11 Heroes Stamp Act of 2001. More than $10 million was raised by sale of the stamps, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency expects to distribute grants of $10,000 each to eligible claimants. Inquiries may be submitted by calling 866-887-9107 toll free or by email at FEMA-HeroesStamp@dhs.gov. [View announcement] [Download application]

Federal Govt. Begins Pandemic Planning With States Noting that communities will be on the front lines of any effort to stop or contain a pandemic, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt on Monday convened senior state and local officials to establish an integrated federal-state influenza-pandemic planning process. Officials from every U.S. state and territory, Puerto Rico, and tribal governments participated. The officials were advised to plan broadly. [View press release]

NRC and States Require Increased Controls on Certain Radioactive Materials The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and state regulators have issued legally binding requirements to licensees to implement increased controls over radioactive materials in certain “quantities of concern.” The requirements are the first part of a cooperative effort between the NRC and the 33 Agreement States to improve controls of radioactive materials that could be of use to terrorists. The effort is consistent with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Code of Conduct for the Safety and Security of Radioactive Materials. [View press release]

New DHS Center of Excellence to Study Disaster Preparation and Response Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore will lead a consortium studying how the nation can best prepare for and respond to large-scale incidents and disasters. The Department of Homeland Security expects to provide the university and its partners with $15 million over the next three years to fund the Center for the Study of High Consequence Event Preparedness and Response. The center will study deterrence, prevention, preparedness, and response, including risk assessment, decision making, infrastructure integrity, surge capacity, and sensor networks, particularly interactions of networks and the need to use models and simulations. [View press release]

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National News

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U.S. Unprepared for Attack, 9/11 Panel Says (ABC News) “The former Sept. 11 commission is giving Congress and the White House poor marks on protecting the U.S. against an inevitable terror attack because of their failure to enact several strong security measures,” reports the Associated Press. “The 10-member panel, equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, … say the government deserves ‘more F’s than A’s’ in responding to their 41 suggested changes.” [View article]

Air Marshal Kills Passenger After Plane Lands in Miami (USA Today; ABC News) “Federal air marshals fired on a passenger for the first time in U.S. history Wednesday and killed a Florida man who falsely claimed to have a bomb in his backpack shortly after boarding a jet in Miami,” reports USA Today. “Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old home-improvement store worker, bolted from a jet on the ground after he was confronted by two air marshals, then was shot on the jetway.… No explosives were found on Alpizar’s body or in his bag.” “Federal law enforcement sources told ABC News they had been on the alert for a possible shoe bomber.” [View USA Today article] [View ABC News article]

Unfriendly Eyes Follow Air Marshals (Chicago Tribune) “Ever since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, air marshals and airline pilots have reported instances to federal authorities in which individuals behaving suspiciously appeared to be evaluating onboard security, according to congressional testimony,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “It is believed that terrorists continue to fly on commercial airlines to and within the U.S. to look for weak links in layers of the still-evolving aviation security system.” [View article]

Rice Says U.S. Bans Torture but It May Happen (New York Times) “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she can give no guarantee that terrorism detainees won’t be abused again despite what she called the United States’ clear rules against torture,” reports the Associated Press. “… She offered assurances, however, that any abuses would be investigated and violators punished. ‘That is the only promise we can make,’ Rice said.… Rice has refused to answer directly whether the United States keeps terrorist suspects in detention centers that violate European legal and human rights guarantees.” [View article]

Secretary Rice’s Rendition (New York Times) The U.S. practice of extraordinary rendition has increased “since 9/11 and [has] violated international law by sending suspects to places where it knows they will be tortured,” states an editorial in the New York Times. According to the new German chancellor, Angela Merkel, Rice “acknowledged privately that the United States … [mistakenly] abducted a German citizen … who says he was sent to Afghanistan and mistreated for five months.… Rice said Monday that rendition had been used to lock up some really dangerous bad guys” who “were charged in courts, put on trial, convicted and sentenced. That’s what most American think when they hear talk about ‘bringing the terrorists to justice’--not predawn abductions, blindfolded prisoners on plane rides and years of torture in distant lands without any public reckoning.” [View editorial]

Congress Strikes Deal on Patriot Act (Los Angeles Times) “House and Senate negotiators reached agreement [Thursday] to extend key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that were due to expire Dec. 31,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The agreement would make permanent 14 of 16 provisions. Two provisions--the so-called ‘library’ provision, which allows the FBI broad leeway to subpoena business records in intelligence and terrorism cases, and a ‘roving’ wiretap provision that allows law enforcement to tap any phone a suspected terrorist uses--would expire in four years.” [View article]

Women of al-Qaeda (MSNBC) Recent incidents of women suicide bombers associated with al-Qaeda have “U.S. officials worr[ied] that the plague will move still farther, with women suicide bombers carrying out attacks in Western Europe or the United States,” reports Newsweek. Experts think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s “strategy is to create images of horror,” and to flout the expected terrorist profiling, as well as to goad men into action. The need for more “recruits could also reflect a movement that is expanding, or aiming to expand, in both size and scope.” In the tight bonds of family, many widows, sisters, and daughters marry the slain terrorists’ “jihadist relatives. Although these networks appear isolated, they could form the enduring core of Al Qaeda in the future, or a new incarnation of it.” The fear of women suicide bombers may make American soldiers in Iraq become “more suspicious about women, particularly pregnant women,” and force them “to search women meticulously,” provoking “traditional Muslim societies … [into] popular anger.” [View article]

Trust for America’s Health: Ready or Not? 2005 The Trust for America’s Health on Tuesday released its third annual study of preparedness for major health emergencies, finding that both federal and state efforts must be accelerated in order to adequately protect the American people. In the two-part report, the federal government received a grade of D+ for post-9/11 public health emergency preparedness, and over half of the states garnered a score of 5 or less out of 10 possible points for key indicators of health emergency preparedness, such as capabilities to test for chemical and biological threats and hospital surge capacity to care for patients in a mass emergency. [View press release] [View complete report]

Four-Year Scandal of the 9/11 Billions (New York Daily News) What was done with the $21.4 billion federal aid to help New York City rebuild? asks the Daily News. The first installment in the newspaper’s investigation revealed that “major elements of the aid process were procedurally flawed--from the determination of how much money was supposedly needed, to how it was distributed, to how it was actually spent and ultimately, to how little oversight there was over the spending.… Because the amount of money was established before the scope of the need was determined, Congress had to guess how best to distribute the funds among federal agencies,” and, in consequence, the money went to “pork-barrel spending” projects. [View article]

Blast in Pakistan Kills al-Qaeda Commander (Washington Post) “The killing of an al Qaeda commander in a U.S.-led operation in a remote corner of Pakistan marks an advance in the struggle to locate and eliminate the network’s leadership, which has managed to replenish its ranks after suffering key losses in recent years, counterterrorism officials and experts said,” according to the Washington Post. “… Hamza Rabia, a top operational planner for al Qaeda, was killed [on 1 December] in an explosion in a tribal area along the border with Afghanistan.… ‘It’s a success story, but al Qaeda has turned into a multi-headed hydra: you chop off one head and another head takes its place,’ said Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist on al Qaeda at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm. ‘It’s a good thing they got him, but I’m sure there are others in the wings who are ready to play a similar role.’” [View article]

Cruise Ships Rethink Security (New York Times) “The armed attack on the Seabourn Spirit off Somalia on Nov. 5 has the cruise industry checking its bearings on security,” reports the New York Times, although the International Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce website says that cruise ship attacks are rare. “Maritime security experts say cruise ships do not make good targets because they carry too many people and are not easy to board.” But “according to Kim E. Peterson, president of SeaSecure, … high-profile vessels are ideal terrorism marks, and … the Seabourn incident may have been terrorism rather than piracy.” The Office of Naval Intelligence Violence at Sea “publishes a weekly diary of maritime threats at pollux.nss.nima.mil, as does the International Maritime Bureau.” [View article]

Federal Flaw Database Commits to Grading System (SecurityFocus) “A federal database of software vulnerabilities funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided on a common method of ranking flaw severity and has assigned scores to the more than 13,000 vulnerabilities currently contained in its database,” reports SecurityFocus. “… The National Vulnerability Database, unveiled in August, completed its conversion over to the Common Vulnerability Scoring System, an industry initiative aimed at standardizing the severity rankings of flaws.” The system “gives vulnerabilities a base score based on their severity, a temporal score that measures the current danger--which could be lessened by a widely available patch, for example--and an environmental score that measures an organization’s reliance on the vulnerable systems.” [View article]

Comcare Develops a System to Track Disaster Victims (Government Health IT) The Comcare Emergency Response Alliance, a nonprofit organization, “is developing a set of requirements for patient tracking systems for use in disasters,” reports Government Health IT. Comcare expects to issue the final version this month. The requirements “would then be available to any community or organization aiming to develop or acquire a tracking system.” [View article]

Networked Citizens Build a Better Emergency Broadcast System (Wired) “The Emergency Digital Information Service … aggregates weather alerts, natural disaster information, and other official warnings into a common database, then makes them available through multiple media: pager, email, the Web, and digital radio broadcast,” reports Wired. The “warnings are picked up by television newsrooms, local police, school principals, building management firms--anybody who wants them--the system injects massive redundancy into the public warning system and ensures that any serious news will immediately be bouncing around multiple communication channels.” [View article]

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International News

Iraqi Insurgents Kill U.S. Hostage (Reuters) “An Islamic insurgent group said on Thursday it had killed a U.S. hostage,” a “security consultant, identified as Ronald Schulz, because the U.S. government had not met its demands, which included freeing all Iraqi prisoners,” reports Reuters. [View article]

Britain’s Law Lords Rule Against Use of Torture Evidence (London Times) “Information which may have been obtained by foreign states using torture cannot be used as evidence against suspects in secret UK terror tribunals, the Law Lords ruled” yesterday, reports the Times. “A panel of seven Law Lords unanimously agreed to allow the appeal by eight detainees held without charge on suspicion of involvement in terrorism against a controversial Court of Appeal judgment in August last year. By a two-to-one majority, the appeal judges had ruled that if the evidence was obtained under torture by agents of another country with no involvement by the UK, it was usable and there was no obligation by the Government to inquire about its origins.” [View article]

More Random Searches for Passengers at U.S. Airports (Reuters) “Air travelers in the United States will soon be allowed to carry small scissors and tools on planes, but they will face more random security searches as part of an effort to thwart potential terrorists, the Transportation Security Administration chief said [last] Friday,” reports Reuters. “TSA Director Kip Hawley announced the changes, which go into effect on December 22, as part of a series of new procedures that focus more on detecting explosives at airports.” TSA had originally banned the items “to sharply limit the number of items viewed as potential weapons that could be carried on board an airplane. But Hawley said the mindset had changed.… ‘Our goal is to establish flexible protocols based on risk, so that terrorists cannot use the predictability of our security measures to their advantage when planning an attack,’ he said.” The new plan allows “small scissors with blades less than four inches long and tools like screwdrivers that are less than seven inches will be allowed. But box cutters, crowbars and hammers will still be banned.” [View article] [View TSA announcement]

Ukraine Faces Bird Flu Emergency (Financial Times) “Ukraine on Sunday began combating what appeared to be the biggest outbreak yet in Europe of the deadly strain of bird flu, after more than 2,000 domestic birds died in a remote region of the Crimean peninsula,” reports the Financial Times. “President Viktor Yushchenko declared a state of emergency in five villages on Saturday after the agriculture ministry said it had identified the H5 subtype of bird flu virus. Officials enforced a quarantine and began culling and burning the villages’ birds.” Tests on the virus are being conducted in Britain and Italy. [View article]

Tens of Thousands Mistakenly Matched to Terrorist Watch Lists (CNet News) “About 30,000 airline passengers have discovered since last November that their names were mistakenly matched with those appearing on” the Transportation Security Administration’s watch list, reports CNet News. “… Jim Kennedy, director of the Transportation Security Administration’s redress office, revealed the errors at a quarterly meeting” of “the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.” [View article]

Obscure al-Qaeda Chemist Worries Experts (Yahoo! News) The “elusive Egyptian chemist Midhat Mursi was said to be exploring” chemical warfare for al-Qaeda “when last seen, brewing up deadly compounds and gassing dogs in Afghanistan,” reports the Associated Press. The “FBI and other U.S. agencies are interested enough in Mursi to have posted a $5 million reward this year for his capture.… computer files uncovered by reporters in Afghanistan showed that by 1999 [Mursi] referred to as Abu Khabab … was working to develop chemical and biological weapons in Afghanistan.” Mursi is also “suspected of having helped train suicide bombers who attacked the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen.” [View article]

Saudi King Says Extremists Have Hijacked Islam (Lebanon Daily Star) During the Organization of the Islamic Conference, “Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah appealed to Muslim leaders on Wednesday to unite and tackle extremists who he said have hijacked their religion,” reports the Daily Star. Abdullah told the conference--“the world’s biggest Muslim body--in the holy city of Mecca” that “the world’s 1 billion Muslims were weak and divided, a description echoed by other leaders.… U.S. critics have blamed the kingdom’s strict Wahhabi school of Islam for fostering extremism but Saudi officials say they are tackling the militants through a tough security crackdown and a campaign to win over militant sympathizers.” [View article]

Japanese Doctors Study Avian Flu in Vietnam (Tokyo Asahi Shimbun) “A Japanese medical institution will send doctors to Vietnam, the country hardest hit by avian flu, to prepare a high-tech system that will increase Japan’s ability to handle human infections of the virus,” reports Asahi. “Under the project, doctors” from the International Medical Center of Japan “will conduct medical examinations on bird-flu patients in Vietnam, and images of the process will be available in Japan over the Internet.… patients infected with a new strain of influenza will be taken to the” medical center. [View article]

Philippines Bans Poultry From British Columbia, Canada (Calgary [Alberta] Herald) “The Philippines has banned the importation of birds and poultry products from British Columbia after a strain of the bird flu virus was reportedly discovered there,” according to the Canadian Press. “… The ban covers domestic and wild birds, day-old chicks, eggs and semen, according to the Department of Agriculture,” which will suspend the “processing of import and quarantine permits and confiscate all shipments of poultry and poultry products from the province already in the country. Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States have temporarily halted poultry imports from” British Columbia as well. [View article]

Explosives Detection Software Passes Test at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport (BusinessWire) Guardian Technologies International’s PinPoint software is the first explosives-detection software technology to be successfully tested in a real-world situation at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, reports BusinessWire. PinPoint “detects all possible concealed threats in both checked and carry-on luggage.” [View press release]

U.S. Border Agents Play High-Tech Game (Melbourne, Australia, Age) The U.S. Border Patrol’s Laredo, TX, headquarters “is an example both of the effective use of high-tech equipment and the monumental task of maintaining control of an endless stream of goods and people pouring across the border,” reports Reuters. The Border Patrol uses heat-sensing cameras, motion detectors, X-ray systems, drones, night-vision goggles, and helicopters. “It is as high-tech as it gets. ‘Nowhere else along the border is there a control room and a system like this,’ said chief John Montoya.” But some of the equipment is “15 years old, prone to malfunction and averse to high humidity.” [View article]

Police Probing Why Two Officers Didn’t Shoot at Netanya Suicide Bomber (Jerusalem Haaretz) “Sharon District police investigators are conducting a probe to ascertain why the two police officers who spotted the suicide bomber outside the Netanya mall on Monday failed to use their weapons to apprehend him,” reports Haaretz. “An initial inquiry … has revealed that despite the fact that the two spotted the suspect, repeatedly called on him to stop to no avail, mounted a chase, and even noticed his hand going into his suspicious-looking bag, they failed to draw their weapons.” One officer said “that the two had hesitated to open fire in the event that it were to emerge that the man was hearing impaired and had not heard their calls to stop.” [View article]

Anti-Terror Laws Rammed Through Australian Parliament (Melbourne, Australia, Age) “Controversial anti-terror laws which will allow police to detain terror suspects without charge were … rammed through Parliament” on Tuesday, reports the Age. “The Government cut short debate on the laws to enable them to pass the Senate in the last sitting week of the year.” The bill “will allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 14 days without charge, place suspects on control orders for up to 12 months and impose a seven-year jail term for sedition. The Law Council of Australia vowed to monitor the use of the laws to ensure they were not abused by those in power.” [View article]

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State and Local News

Border Patrol Beefs Up Arizona Forces (Arizona Republic) “The Border Patrol will send 643 new agents to Arizona by next October, an increase of about 22 percent that federal officials say will help slow the tide of illegal immigration,” reports the Arizona Republic. That “would give Arizona more than 3,500 agents, more than a quarter of the Border Patrol’s entire force. Last year, more than half of the 1.2 million arrests the Border Patrol made were in Arizona. In all, there will be 1,700 new agents added and be deployed to California, Texas and New Mexico, bringing the total number to nearly 13,000.” [View article]

Connecticut Communications Break Down During Bomb Scare (Boston Globe) “Connecticut homeland security officials were not informed until more than two hours after a series of bomb threats prompted the evacuation and shutdown of the state’s 45 courthouses, authorities acknowledged Monday,” reports the Associated Press. “Neither police nor Gov. M. Jodi Rell’s office--which received one of the bomb threats at 10 a.m.--had informed the security agency by noon, leaving top officials to learn about the evacuations from reporters.… Public Safety Commissioner Leonard Boyle said [that last] Friday’s scare fell between the cracks because it was more than a routine occurrence but did not rise to the level of a statewide emergency.” [View article]

Kentucky Lands Grant to Protect Bingo Halls From Terrorists (WKYT-TV, Lexington, KY) “Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money,” reports the Associated Press. “The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming. The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.” [View article]

Denver Federal Center Reviews Bus Route’s ID Policy (Denver Post) “The federal security chief responsible for requiring public-bus passengers to show identification before entering the Denver Federal Center said [on 1 December] that the policy is under review in the wake of the arrest of a 50-year-old woman who refused to produce her ID,” reports the Denver Post. “Deborah Davis, riding” a Regional Transportation District “bus that goes through the federal campus, refused to show her driver’s license at a security checkpoint and was arrested by federal authorities, an incident that has raised questions about the constitutionality of the requirement. Steve Schaad, Rocky Mountain regional director for Federal Protective Services, … said the bus route through the federal center, which houses federal-records archives and other federal offices, presents a unique circumstance.” Davis’s lawyer “called the ID requirement public ‘obedience training’ that appears to have no legitimate security purpose.” [View article]

Most Missouri Fire Depts. Fail to Register (Branson, MO, Daily News) “An overwhelming majority of Missouri fire departments have failed to register with the state fire marshal, causing concern about the state’s ability to coordinate a response to a large-scale incident,” reports the Associated Press. “Local fire departments are supposed to submit their contact information, a list of their equipment and a description of their personnel capabilities each year. But for 2005, just 132 departments--out of an estimated 700 to 1,000 statewide--have complied with the registration law.” [View article]

North Carolina Drill Simulates Ferry Under Attack (New Bern, NC, Sun Journal) “Local, state and federal officials coordinated an effort to halt a” simulated “terrorist strike on a North Carolina ferry.… as part of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security exercise,” reports the Sun Journal. “… U.S. Coast Guard personnel participated in the exercise along with the N.C. Department of Transportation’s ferry division, the N.C. Division of Emergency Management, county emergency services and local” emergency medical services personnel. The scenario began with a takeover “of the ferry by mock terrorists,” who boarded in an oversize pickup “carrying four 55-gallon drums of explosives.” [View article]

Operation Linebacker Will Bolster Security on Texas Border (San Antonio Business Journal) Texas is awarding “$6 million worth of grants to strengthen security along the” border with Mexico, reports the San Antonio Business Journal. Operation Linebacker was developed by the Texas Border Sheriffs’ Association “to provide added manpower, specialized equipment and planning resources to law enforcement in 16 counties.” [View article]

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Private-Sector News

SAIC Opens CBRNE Test Center (Baltimore Business Journal) Science Applications International Corp. has opened a “testing facility for chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive systems being developed to guard domestically against terrorist attacks,” reports the Baltimore Business Journal. “… along with two high-tech subsidiaries,” the facility in Edgewood, MD, “will account for more than 800 high-tech jobs in and around Aberdeen Proving Ground.” [View article]

How Homeland Security Became Big Business (Wired) The “homeland security industrial complex” is “a world where doomsday scenarios double as marketing pitches, patriotism mingles with capitalism, and the spoils go to whoever can placate a skittish society,” reports Wired. An article entitled “Fear, Inc.” describes “how homeland security became the biggest market opportunity since the dotcom boom.” [View article]

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Upcoming Events

February

Airport Security Planning Courses for General Aviation (13-14 February, Columbus, OH) Ohio University and Robinson Aviation will hold two courses for general aviation facilities. For further information, please visit www.ohiou.edu/gasecurity/. [View course website]

5th Annual Critical Infrastructure Resilience & Infrastructure Security for the Built Environment Congress & Expo (15-17 February 2006; Washington, DC) This event will bring together government and industry officials from around the world to discuss and formulate solutions to protect the homeland. Issues such as physical security, cyber-security, standards, interoperability, biometrics, threat and vulnerability assessments, research and development efforts, and first responder requirements will be discussed. [View conference website]

March

Radiological Device and Nuclear Event Symposium (7–9 March; Richmond, VA) The symposium will be a forum for government and industry to discuss radiological and nuclear threat materials, their specific hazards, and capabilities for detection, protection, decontamination, and medical response; present results from recent Defense Dept. and Homeland Security Dept. research and development studies; display new equipment, software, algorithms, and procedures for dealing with radiological and nuclear incidents. Contact Joseph Roehl at (540) 729-3927 or jroehl@scentczar.com. [View conference website]

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