Congress

  • DisastersNew law allows mobilizing reservists to respond to natural disasters

    Except for a crisis involving a weapon of mass destruction, the U.S. military reserves historically have been prohibited from providing a homeland disaster response; new authority in this year’s Defense Department authorization act changes that

  • AppropriationsHomeland Security appropriations bill passes Senate subcommittee

    The bill provides $45.2 billion in discretionary spending — $1 billion below fiscal year 2012; , among the measure’s highlights: $8.9 billion in discretionary spending for the Coast Guard, $6.1 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), and $16.9 million for cyber education; it also includes a provision adjusting the criteria used to determine whether Community Disaster Loans provided after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are eligible for cancellation

  • BioterrorismCongress considering biodefense measure

    H.R. 2356, the WMD Prevention and Preparedness Act of 2011, will soon be debated before four different House committees, before going to the Senate to be debated further – all this four years after a congressionally mandated commission defined bioterrorism as a grave threat to the United States; critics charge that the reason is the unwieldy and dysfunctional manner in which Congress oversees DHS: currently there are 108 congressional committees and subcommittees with oversight responsibilities for different parts of DHS

  • TerrorismLawmakers call for adding the Haqqani Network to U.S. terror-group list

    A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers are calling for the Obama administration to add the Haqqani Network to the U.S. list of terrorist organizations; the administration is not quick to move on the issue of designation because of the on-going U.S.-Pakistan-Taliban negotiations about the future of post-withdrawal Afghanistan, but the military drone attacks on Haqqani targets is continuing unabated

  • CybersecurityDueling legislation over cybersecurity regulations

     

    Attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure may bring about a Katrina-like situation: no electricity, no fresh water, limited traffic control, severely curtailed emergency response, and more; about 85 percent of U.S. critical infrastructure is privately owned; two different cybersecurity bills in Congress envision different solutions to U.S. infrastructure’s cyber vulnerability

  • Cyber attacksNYC cyberattack simulation to spur Senate cybersecurity legislation

    Last Wednesday, in an attempt to bolster support for cybersecurity legislation, the White House staged a mock cyberattack on New York City’s power supply for the Senate

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  • Internet freedomExperts: SOPA, PROTECT IP will stifle creativity, diminish free speech

    Legal experts say that Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are to intellectual property what the Communications Decency Act was to “indecent” online material — an incredibly powerful, blunt instrument that would drastically diminish free speech

  • Transportation caucusCongressional transportation security caucus formed

    On Thursday members of the House Homeland Security Committee announced that they were starting a “Transportation Security Caucus”

  • CybersecurityCongressional approval of cybersecurity bill looks promising

    Amid the partisan acrimony of the budget battles on Capitol Hill, the Obama administration and the Senate have made promising efforts to pass a sweeping cybersecurity bill in a rare show of bipartisan agreement; the bill is now at the top of the Senate’s agenda, and Senator Harry Reid (D – Nevada), the majority leader, said he plans to bring the bill to the floor during the first working session of 2012

  • Border securityEnvironmentalists in arms over border decision

    Yesterday, House Natural Resources Committee 26-17 vote to approve H.R. 1505, the National Security and Federal Lands Protection Act; the proposed legislation would waive thirty-six environmental and other laws for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol activities on public lands within 100 miles of U.S. borders; environmentalists are angry

  • Aviation securityHouse considers industry advisory group for TSA

    House lawmakers are currently considering a bill that would create an industry advisory panel for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on aviation matters

  • Biometric Consortium Conference & Expo 2011Predicting race and ethnicity from irises now possible

    Conventional wisdom holds that irises, like fingerprints, are unique to each individual and have little similarities between ethnic groups or gender, but a groundbreaking new study indicates that biometric scanners can actually predict race and gender based on iris texture alone; the study’s findings are important in that it opens new avenues for research that previously were not thought possible

  • Disasters"No containment" for Texas wildfires

    Currently there is no end in sight for the wildfires that are raging out of control in central Texas, despite the best efforts of firefighters to contain the conflagrations; “There’s no containment right now,” said the director of the Texas Forest Service; high winds from Tropical Storm Lee, a severe drought, and a lack of rain have fueled the fire and made it nearly impossible to control

  • Securing non-profitsDHS awards $19 million to nonprofits for security

    On Tuesday DHS announced that it had awarded nearly $19 million to nonprofit organizations around the country that are considered to be at high risk of terrorist attack.

  • TerrorismU.S. agencies are still struggling with information sharing

    It is nearly ten years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and U.S. intelligence agencies are still struggling to strengthen the information sharing networks that proved broken that September day; according to the latest CRS report, “there remain many institutional and procedural issues that complicate cooperation between the two sets of agencies”