Homeland Security News

Emergency Management reports:

One day something large and very bad will happen in Los Angeles. That’s a given. With training and preparation, emergency managers will be ready to respond on that day. What comes next, however, is a topic seldom discussed.

Whether in advance of a crisis or in the wake of a disaster, long-term planning is both vital and often overlooked. How will the community survive and thrive 10 years down the road, or 20 years?

“The thing about that kind of recovery is the fact that it is so big. It is so difficult for people to wrap their heads around, thinking of everybody that is involved and what their role is going to be,” said Ryan Rockabrand, program specialist in the Office of Emergency Management for Los Angeles County.

And yet the work must be done. How does long-term planning happen? It starts with partnership-building, encompasses economic revitalization and ultimately keeps a community viable....

The Naval Post Graduate School has released the following current and timely research on gun violence in schools:

Abstract:

Gun violence in America must be addressed at the highest levels of society. Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech were attacks on the very fabric of America. School shootings represent attacks on our nations’ future.

A public health approach to gun violence focuses on prevention. Public safety professionals, educators and community leaders are squandering opportunities to prevent horrific acts of extreme violence. Preparedness is derived by planning, which is critical to mobilizing resources when needed. Rational public policy can work. Sensible gun legislation, which is accessible through a public health approach to gun violence, neither marginalizes nor stigmatizes any one group.

University administrators must fully engage the entire arsenal of resources available to confront this pernicious threat. The ...

The Atlantic Wire reports:

Now that we\'ve all had to time to digest the story of the American \"spy\" arrested in Moscow, everyone seems to agree that it\'s really bizarre and more than a little bit fishy… A headline like \"CIA Agent Arrested in Moscow\" conjures up images of an elaborate spy movie, of course, but the actual pictures of the arrest and the evidence being presented conjure up images of a really terrible spy movie that doesn\'t have much of a plot.

According to Russia\'s security agency, the FSB, U.S. embassy secretary Ryan Fogle was arrested this week while going to meet a potential source he was recruiting as a double agent. He did this while wearing one really poor-fitting wig under a baseball cap and (for some unknown reason) while carrying another bad wig in his bag. He was also carrying a compass. In Moscow, that would seem unnecessary in the age of GPS-enabled cell phones, but Fogle\'s cell phone also looks like it was made in 2001�...

Excerpts from the Wall Street Journal’s article by Dr Adrian Raine, Professor of Criminology, Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania:

“The field of neurocriminology—using neuroscience to understand and prevent crime—is revolutionizing our understanding of what drives \"bad\" behavior. More than 100 studies of twins and adopted children have confirmed that about half of the variance in aggressive and antisocial behavior can be attributed to genetics…
 
Brain-imaging techniques are identifying physical deformations and functional abnormalities that predispose some individuals to violence. In one recent study, brain scans correctly predicted which inmates in a New Mexico prison were most likely to commit another crime after release. Nor is the story exclusively genetic: A poor environment can change the early brain and make for antisocial behavior later in life.

Most people are still deeply uncomfortable with th...

By: Maggie Clark, Stateline on April 22, 2013

…Since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have used federal grants to buy surveillance cameras for areas across the country plagued by crime or potentially targeted for terrorism. A surely outdated count from 2007 said downtown Boston was watched by a network of at least 147 police surveillance cameras. On the marathon route, it’s likely that most businesses have surveillance cameras, along with every ATM and red-light traffic device with a license plate reader. Not to mention every spectator with a camera phone.

Combing through video evidence is the new standard in dealing with crime in public, says Grant Fredericks, a forensic video analyst who teaches forensic video technique at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va.

“Video holds more evidence than any other source: more than DNA, crime-scene analysis or eyewitness testimony,” Fredericks said. “There are people sitting at home with key ...

… three weeks after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) granted “trusted traveler” status to Saudi Arabia, CNS News has published a report revealing the number of Saudi students living in the United States has increased fivefold since Sept. 11, 2001.

The comparatively light scrutiny Saudi nationals receive when attempting to enter the U.S. is cause for concern.

According to the report, there were 5,579 Saudi nationals enrolled in U.S. colleges at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. Last year, there were 34,139.

The Presidential infatuation with Saudi Arabia transcends political parties; George W. Bush was slammed post-9/11 for targeting Iraq while holding out on any sort of condemnation of Saudi extremism. Bush was President for most of the period between 2001 and 2012, and much of the influx happened under his watch. But the Saudi number has taken off under Barack Obama; it jumped from 22,704 to 34,139 — a 50.4 percent incre...

… According to the Massachusetts Standing Committee on Multiple Casualty Incident Planning and Evaluation’s Emergency Medical Care Advisory Board, a multiple casualty incident (MCI) is defined as “one in which the number of people killed or injured in a single incident is large enough to strain or overwhelm the resources of local EMS providers.” In urban areas, such as Boston, there are significant resources to address the day-to-day pre-hospital needs of the city. However, special events like the Boston Marathon can strain resources and personnel.

Contingency planning is essential for the worst-case scenario. All indications are that the response in Boston appeared well planned and well executed.  Police, fire, EMS and even the Massachusetts National Guard responded to and stabilized the incident quickly and decisively. This does not occur without well developed policy, operational plans and exercises to ensure that responders understand their role and that a...

NBC News Reports:

The U.S. Navy announced Monday that it is preparing to deploy a new weapon that can disable a hostile boat and even destroy a surveillance drone overhead — all without dispensing any expensive ammunition.

It is the Navy\'s Laser Weapons System (LaWS), a laser mounted on a ship that is so strong it can ignite a drone, sending it crashing and burning to earth in mere moments.
The USS Ponce, an amphibious transport docking ship, will be the first Navy vessel to deploy with the LaWS, officials announced Monday.
The new laser will be installed on the Ponce over the next year and operational in summer 2014. The Ponce is now based in the Fifth Fleet area, which covers the Persian Gulf and the Horn of Africa.
… A defense official also stressed that the laser will not have full capability to take down a larger target for a decade or so.
Despite speculation the laser is deploying to the Fifth Fleet to warn Iran, a U.S...

By Gerald Baron: Crisis and emergency communication strategies

The status of the Joint Information Center as a means of coordinating emergency public information has been uncertain ever since May, 2010. That\'s when the White House threw out 20 years of rules, regulations, plans and training in the Gulf oil spill, throwing BP the responsible party out of the JIC and instituting ESF 15, the construct of the National Response Plan, in its place. The idea of a company or Responsible Party (RP), playing any sort of meaningful role in public communication about a major event such as an oil spill seemed destroyed.

This was confirmed by the actions of the EPA in the July, 2010 Enbridge Michigan spill, where the EPA included every agency participating in its list of Unified Command participants, except Enbridge who was actually serving as the Incident Commander. The EPA then directed the government communications without any involvement of Enbridge. Similarly, the ...

…………a privately-held, American-owned contract security services company based in Atlanta, Georgia.

SecurAmerica provides a wide range of security services to clients in a wide range of industries including government, private sector and medical facilities. In addition, SecurAmerica produces SECURALERT publications which can be found on their website.
The April Edition of SecurAlert covers Emergency Preparedness
 Property owners, building managers and security personnel have a tremendous responsibility to protect life and property when a disaster strikes but, most importantly, they need to prepare in advance for such an event in order to maximize the success of a property’s response and minimize any negative impact associated with an emergency.

This month’s SecurAlert will focus on the three primary phases of emergency preparedness – Prevention, Response and Recovery. Each of the three phases has subsets that contribute to c...

A March 21 report by the deputy mayor for public safety claimed a Washington, D.C. ambulance and 2 medic units were within a 4-mile radius of an officer that was struck and severely injured March 5, but did not respond to the scene. The report alleges the fire stations failed to properly monitor for emergency calls.

As fellow officers frantically shouted for an ambulance the evening of March 5, a paramedic with a fire engine tended to the police officer who had been run over by a car and had massive, crushing injuries to his lower body. Almost 20 minutes later, an ambulance from Prince George\'s County arrived.

Ambulance 15 was in its fire station on 14th Street SE -- four miles from the crash scene -- when one of the crew claimed he closed the lip on the computer, not realizing he\'d logged off the automated dispatching system for almost an hour, according to the report.

Seven employees are being disciplined for failing to follow protocols, t...

The former chief scientist at a Kentucky defense contractor has been sentenced to a year in prison for buying pirated software from Russian and Chinese hackers and using it to design components for military helicopters.

Wronald Best, 55, of Owensboro, Kentucky, purchased the modeling and design software, with a retail value of more than US$2.3 million, for use at his job with MPD, a manufacturer of military and law enforcement equipment, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

… Best told special agents that he used the software to conduct simulations on components MPD was designing for use in military helicopters, including the Black Hawk helicopter and the presidential helicopter fleet, commonly referred to as Marine One, the Department of Justice said. Other projects on which Best used cracked software included designing Patriot missile components, police radars and breath analysis equipment widely used by American police departments.

Best w...

The United States is bolstering the countrys missile defense after a series of explicit nuclear threats from North Korea. The Pentagon will announce Monday that it is deploying fourteen additional ground-based interceptors at missile silos in Alaska and California.

Fox News reports that the additional interceptors on the West Coast would bring the total number of interceptors to forty-four, a number which was part of the ballistic missile defense plan of the Bush administration.

James Miller, undersecretary of defense for policy, last week offered a window into the administrations thinking when, in a speech to the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. shortly after North Korea publicly threatened a preemptive nuclear strike on the United States. He said: North Koreas shrill public pronouncements underscore the need for the U.S. to continue to take prudent steps to defeat any future North Korean ICBM.

A couple of days later, announcing the compl...

Federal prosecutors announced Wednesday a deal to have the worlds largest engineering firm, CH2M Hill, pay $18.5 million to resolve criminal and civil violations arising from a scheme to overbill taxpayers through time-card fraud at the Hanford nuclear site.

CH2M Hill contracted with the U.S. Department of Energy between 1999 and 2008 to manage and clean 177 underground storage tanks that hold radioactive and hazardous waste at Hanford, which produced plutonium during World War II and the Cold War.

The fraud came as a result of employees for a CH2M Hill subsidiary – CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc. – overstating the number of hours they worked. Company officials acknowledged, as part of the settlement, that certain members of its management staff condoned the practice and furthered the fraud by submitting inflated claims for hours to the Department of Energy, U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby said in a news release.

The fraud allegations came to light...

The Obama administration planned on giving Samira Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy and women-rights activist, an award – she and eight other women were selected to receive the International Women of Courage award from Michelle Obama in a White House ceremony today — but decided to put the whole thing on hold after it has emerged that Ibrahim sent crudely anti-Semitic and anti-American messages to her Twitter followers.

Fox News reports, that Ibrahim who is currently in the United States, said her account was hacked, though the comments under question have been sent to her followers over several months. State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the activist has categorically denied authorship.

The Weekly Standard offers a sample of Ibrahim crude anti-Semitism: On 18 July 2012, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed a Hezbollah suicide bombing attack, Ibrahim jubilantly tweeted: An explosion on a bus carryin...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) yesterday announced that the prohibition against carrying knives on board would soon be lifted.

The new measure would mean that starting 25 April, passengers going through U.S. airports can bring on board Swiss Army-type knives — specifically, ones with blades no longer than 2.36 inches.

TSA would also allow other items banned since 9/11, such as lacrosse sticks, ski poles, and small, souvenir baseball bats.

Fox News notes that even under the new measure, box-cutter type knives used by the 9/11 hijackers are still prohibited. Razors as well as knives with molded grips also are still banned.

To read the article in its entirety, see: Homeland Security News Wire, http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20130306-tsa-would-allow-knives-on-planes-beginning-25-april

While drones have been deployed in many military actions, domestic drone deployment in the United States faces opposition on several fronts. Many in the public view drones as overly invasive or machines of war, as demonstrated by the legislative acts of many states, capped off by Seattles recent decision to scrap the police departments drone program.

Many in the public safety community argue that privacy concerns over drones may be keeping the public from seeing the true potential the unmanned aircraft could offer, especially in emergency management and response.

Law enforcement could use drones to gain better situational awareness and keep officers and civilians safe during dangerous operations like drug busts or hostage situations. Firefighters could use them to scout wildfires, or identify hidden hot spots in structure fires. Rescue teams could save trapped or missing people in areas that helicopters can’t reach. In the right hands, drones could make th...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has collected white papers for solutions that can identify the nature and source of materials used in an attack with chemical threat agents and thus attribute them to specific perpetrators.

The DHS S&T Directorate has about $2 million to spend on chemical agent attribution in fiscal year 2013. It anticipated beginning negotiations for awards to develop attribution solutions around May 13. The directorate could make six to 12 awards in support of the Chemical Forensics Program, the department said.

As part of the effort to deter criminal and terrorist chemical attacks and strengthen the law enforcement response to such an act, Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 22, a classified document dealing with domestic chemical defense, was issued, the BAA explained. An unclassified portion of this document addresses attribution as a means of identifying the nature and source of materials, the perpetrators and t...

The long-delayed cleanup of the nation\'s most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.

The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

Gov. Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.

The tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in the 1940s, is known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in 1995 when all liquids that could be pumped out of it were removed.

Inslee said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing liquids since all Hanfor...

On Tuesday, Feb. 12, President Obama signed an executive order on cybersecurity -- an order that aims to increase cyber defenses of our nations critical infrastructure, improve information sharing about cyberthreats between the public and private sectors, and establish a framework of cybersecurity best practices.

There has been talk of such an order since August 2012, following the Cybersecurity Acts failure to pass in Congress. Obama signaled he may invoke his power of executive order to pass similar legislation, and on Sept. 19, 2012, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the executive order on cybersecurity was close to completion.  

According to The New York Times, the order will allow companies that oversee infrastructure such as dams, electrical grids and financial institutions to join an experimental program that provides real-time reports about cyberthreats. Companies will also be given advice to follow to prevent attacks. The execut...

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), newly appointed chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee has made a commitment to address poor DHS management. The departments dysfunctional management ... continues to hinder security operations and costs taxpayers billions of dollars in waste, he said.

Dysfunctional management specifically has occupied much of McCauls attention in recent months. On June 7, he introduced -- along with Reps. William Keating (D-Mass.) and Billy Long (R-Mo.) -- a bill, known as the DHS Accountability Act (HR 5913), to set up an independent panel to study the management structure of capabilities of DHS and submit to Congress recommendations to make management more effective and efficient. The panel also was to seek ways to streamline DHS practices and programs.

The House passed the bill by voice vote on Nov. 27 and sent it to the Senate, where it was referred to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Senate ...

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport once again leads the nation in the number of guns confiscated at security checkpoints. The number reached 100 in 2012, and that concerns some travelers.

The Transportation Security Administration confirmed that 100 handguns were confiscated in 2012 at the airport. Spokesman Jonathan Allen said that compares to 69 guns that agents found in 2011. Several notable people have been arrested after, police say, they tried to take their firearms through checkpoints.

The arrests include Chick-fil-A executive Sheryl Rexrode and Harold Duncan, a member of the rap group Travis Porter. Several people arrested said they forgot their guns were in their bags.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Airport was next on the list, with 75 guns confiscated this year. The TSA reports 1,500 firearms were found at all the nation\'s airports combined this year. That is an increase from the 1,300 guns found last year, they said.

...

The time is fast approaching when anybody with a few thousand dollars to invest in the new line of 3D printers -- printers that can use a digital model of an object and print solid 3D prototypes with moving parts -- can design and manufacture their own guns.
 
Actually, that time has already arrived, and at least one lawmaker is worried about the ability of security screeners to detect the unassembled plastic parts of weapons produced by 3D printing as they move through security checkpoints, such as those at airports and sensitive facilities.

Despite the soul searching that the nation is currently undergoing in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. that killed 20 children, a group of college students in Texas have pushed forward with a project to test fire a rifle similar to the one used in the Newtown shootings that was partially made with components that were printed from a 3D printer. They posted a video of their test o...

On December 31, 2012 the National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) granted CHS-V, accreditation to the The American Board for Certification in Homeland Security®, for demonstrating compliance with the NCCA Standards for the Accreditation of Certification Programs. NCCA is the accrediting body of the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (formerly the National Organization for Competency Assurance). The NCCA Standards were created in 1977 and updated in 2003 to ensure certification programs adhere to modern standards of practice for the certification industry.  ABCHS joins an elite group of more than 100 organizations representing over 250 programs that have received and maintained NCCA accreditation. More information on the NCCA is available online at www.credentialingexcellence.org/ncca or by calling 202-367-1165.

In 2003 the United States decided to install radiation detection equipment in 100 large ports around the world, and train local personnel in using the equipment, so that ship containers could be scanned for nuclear material before the ship left for the United States.

So far, equipment has been deployed in forty-two ports; after GAO criticism of the quality of the scanning equipment and of lack of coordination between two similar container scanning programs, the National Nuclear Security Administrations 2013 budget will be cut by 85 percent, and further installations will be canceled

The administration plans on cutting back funds for installing nuclear and radiation detection equipment in overseas mega-ports. The plan was for the detection devices to scan shipping containers headed to the United States.

WND reports that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) planned on installing radiation and nuclear detection equipment at 100 lar...