• Social sites’ privacy practices “seriously deficient”

    The privacy management of sixteen popular social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter, is “seriously deficient,” according to a new study. Researchers found a disconnect between privacy statements and the site’s actual privacy controls.

  • U.S. to help protect private companies from malicious cyberattacks

    The U.S. government said it will help protect private companies from cyber attacks. DHS secretary Janet Napolitano said a system is being developed which will monitor Internet traffic directed to critical infrastructure businesses and block attacks on software programs.

  • Ricin can kill, but there are more potent bioterror weapons

    Ricin was in the headlines a few weeks ago, when envelopes containing the poison were mailed to President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and a Mississippi judge. The threat from ricin is low, however, because ricin cannot poison someone through contact with the skin. To be poisoned, an individual would have to ingest or inhale traces of the poison.

  • U.S. technology industry working hard to shape immigration bill

    The U.S. technology industry is generally happy with the Senate immigration reform bill which is currently under review, but some of provisions in the bill are not to the liking of the industry, and lobbyists working on its behalf are now trying to remove them.

  • Senate passes water resources bill, funding flood control projects

    Several projects for the Army Corps of Engineers will now be expedited under a bi-partisan Senate legislation passed last Wednesday. The authors of the bill hope the legislation will move the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection project forward. The project goal is to install a series of levees, locks, and other systems through the Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, which will protect about 200,000 people from storm surges like the ones Hurricane Katrina caused.

  • Leak exposed valuable informant, jeopardized counter-terrorism efforts

    Discussing the Justice Department’s effort to obtain telephone records of several AP journalists, sources close to the case say that the leak was deemed exceedingly egregious because it exposed an informant working for the U.K. and U.S. intelligence services, and who was able to achieve what other informants had not: the trust of the terrorists.

  • Senate panel considering, and voting on, nearly 300 amendments to immigration bill

    The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering, and voting on, each of the nearly 300 amendments to the immigration overhaul bill. An amendment offered by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), which would require DHS to transfer all student visa information to border patrol agents at all 329 ports of entry into the United States, was approved unanimously.

  • Panel's draft bill shields DHS funds

    A house panel introduced a bill last week that will protect DHS from budget cuts facing other domestic agencies under the house’s budget plan. This will allow the department to hire 1,600 new agents at Customs and Border Patrol agency, replace cuts to local and state governments, boost spending on cybersecurity, and abandon cuts to the Coast Guard.

  • Cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure: analysis of initial comments

    On 12 February 2013 President Obama issued the “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity” executive order, which called for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to work with industry to develop a voluntary framework to reduce cybersecurity risks to the nation’s critical infrastructure, which includes power, water, communication, and other critical systems.

  • FBI defends handling of Boston bombing, admits FBI-CBP miscommunication

    FBI director Robert Mueller yesterday defended the way his agency handled the Russian request that the FBI pay attention to Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the months before the 15 April attack on the Boston Marathon. The two key junctures: following the FBI’s March 2011 investigation of Tamerlan, an investigation which found no ties between him and terrorism, the FBI twice, in September and October 2011, asked the Russian security services for more information about why the Russians suspected Tameraln, so the FBI could dig more deeply, but the Russians never responded. Still, the FBI went ahead and placed Tameraln’s name on a low-level watch list, which meant that his travel was tracked. The CBP Boston office, however, took no action in response to two FBI’s electronic messages – from January and June 2012 — about Tsarnaev’s travel to Russia.

  • FAA gave bonuses to employees while flights were delayed or canceled

    Internal FAA documents show that in early February, while passengers got stranded at airports across the country because sequester-mandated cuts in the FAA budget which led the agency to furlough air-traffic controllers, FAA employees received bonuses for their performance on the job.

  • Mathematical models can be used to detect, disrupt terror networks

    Can math models of gaming strategies be used to detect terrorism networks? Researchers say that the answer is yes. The researchers describe a mathematical model to disrupt flow of information in a complex real-world network, such as a terrorist organization, using minimal resources.

  • Canadian government finally deports terrorist

    After a 26-year long legal battle, Canada two weeks ago deported a Palestinian terrorist who attacked an El Al plane in Athens in 1968. He entered Canada with a false passport, but his identity was quickly discovered. The main point of contention was where should Issa Mohammad, the terrorist, be deported to: he was a Palestinian, but there is no Palestinian state to accept him. The Lebanese government finally agreed to take him, and he was deported

  • Israel warns Assad: if you attack Israel, you “risk forfeiting [your] regime”

    Israel has issued a highly unusual public warning to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The warning, couched in no uncertain terms, consists of two parts: First, if Syria and Iran again try to ship game-changing weapon system to Hezbollah, Israel will destroy these shipments, as it has already done three times, on 30 January, 3 May, and 5 May. Second, if Syria retaliated against Israel in the wake of such attacks, Israel would inflict crippling blows on the Assad regime and force Assad from power.

  • Nigeria launches “massive” military campaign against Islamists

    One day after the president of Nigeria said that Islamist terrorists, who now control parts of northeast Nigeria, have declared war on Nigeria, the Nigerian military has deployed thousands of troops to three states in the country’s northeast to reassert the government control over the area.