• Alabama wants to teach you how to deal with active-shooter situations

    The Alabama Department of Homeland Security (ADHS) has paid for a series of billboards, informing the public there is a video on how to deal with an active shooter situation in a work place or other public settings.

  • Making military wireless networks more robust

    DARPA’s Wireless Network Defense program seeks to develop new technologies to help make wireless networks more resilient to unforeseen scenarios and malicious compromise.

  • Obama wants U.S. to influence debate over global drone rules

    President Barack Obama wants the United States to help formulate  global guidelines for the use of drones, especially as other countries, led by China, have begun to invest in their own drone fleets.

  • Widely used FBI surveillance method ruled unconstitutional

    A national security letters (NSLs) is an administrative subpoena which allows the FBI to ask Internet companies and communication service providers to turn over subscriber information on American customers, while prohibiting the providers from informing these customers that their personal information has been turned over to the FBI. Since the 9/11 attacks, the bureau has issued an average of 50,000 NSLs a year. A federal judge in California says this is “rendering the statute impermissibly overbroad.”

  • U.S. cancels final phase of European missile defense system

    Faced with sequestration-imposed budget cuts, the Pentagon cancels the fourth and final phase of the U.S. European missile defense system. The money made available by the decision would be used to fund the deployment of fourteen additional missile interceptors in Alaska to increase U.S. defense against North Korea’s missile threat. The Pentagon said that the first three phases of the defensive missile deployment in Europe, when completed in 2018, would provide coverage of all of NATO members.

  • Fighting gun restrictions on the international scene

    The National Rifle Association (NRA) has taken its campaign against measures aiming to tighten gun control to the international level. The organization has been leading a campaign fight a UN treaty designed to restrict the flow of arms to conflict zones. The treaty is likely to pass, but the NRA appears to have enough support in the Senate to prevent ratification.

  • Was Mexican border firefight killing 40 real?

    By Lee Maril

    It would seem that drug violence only stops at the Mexican border in the imaginations of Washington politicians. On example: Mexican journalists, because of fear for their own lives and the safety of their families, are increasingly reluctant to cover drug cartels’ violence and mayhem. What has occurred in recent months is that American reporters located in American border cities also have stopped reporting on drug-related violence across the border for the same reasons as their Mexican counterparts.

  • U.S. to bolster missile defense to meet North Korean threat

    The United States is bolstering the country’s 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.

  • Questions raised about Iron Dome success

    MIT professor Ted Postol is at it again: in 1992 he successfully challenged the claims made by the United States, Israel, and Raytheon about the effectiveness of the Patriot missiles in intercepting Iraqi SCUD missiles fired at Israel, and now he is raising similar questions about the accuracy of claims made about the effectiveness of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system during the 10-day Israel-Hamas war last November, a war code-named Pillar of Defense.

  • Gun manufacturers take action against states which passed tough gun laws

    Gun manufacturers are starting to push back against strict gun laws in some states by refusing to sell their products to law enforcement agencies in these states, or to employees of these agencies. So far, more than 110 specialty manufacturers of firearms have joined the movement, which calls itself the Firearm Equality Movement.

  • Proposed Utah law would bar the feds from regulating guns in the state

    Responding to post-Sandy Hook initiatives to tighten gun regulations, lawmakers in twenty-five states are pushing bills which would give their states the sole right to regulate firearms within the state. Utah has now joined this group of states.

  • ACLU looks into the use of military technology by local law-enforcement

    Affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union in twenty-three difference states have filed more than 255 requests for public records in order to determine how many local police departments are using federally subsidized military technology and tactics – technology and tactics which have that have traditionally been used on battlefields overseas such as, most recently, in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

  • U.S. arms sales, security partnerships to suffer as a result of sequestration cuts

    One area where sequestration-mandated budget cuts will be felt sooner rather than later is U.S. support for foreign militaries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Training and security partnership engagements with allies will likely decline as well as the Defense Department must now operate with a $46 billion cut in its budget for fiscal 2013.

  • NIST offers forensic science education and training Webcasts

    The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is offering three upcoming educational and skills-building events — two workshops followed by a conference — for forensic science professionals. All of the events will be free to attend and viewable via live Webcasts.

  • U.S. military “unprepared” for cyberattacks by “top-tier,” cyber-capable adversary: Pentagon

    A new Pentagon study concludes that the U.S. military is unprepared for a full-scale cyber-conflict with a top-tier, cyber-capable adversary. The report says the United States must increase its offensive cyberwarfare capabilities, and that the U.S. intelligence agencies must invest more resources in obtaining information about other countries’ cyberwar capabilities and plans. The report says that the United States must maintain the threat of a nuclear strike as a deterrent to a major cyberattack by other countries. The report warns that the Pentagon cannot be confident its military computer systems and communication networks are not compromised because many of the components of these systems and networks are made in countries which pose the main cyberthreat to U.S. national security.