Dutch researcher uses his own software, a publicly available programming code, a £40 card reader, and two £10 RFID chips to clone and manipulate two passport chips to a point at which they were ready to be planted inside fake or stolen paper passports; the altered chips were then passed as genuine by passport reader software used by the UN agency that sets standards for e-passports; the researcher took less than an hour to alter the chips

The ACLU says there are one million names on the DHS terrorist watch list, while TSA says there are only 400,000; whatever the exact figure is, TSA wants to make sure that the airlines do not misidentify innocent passengers as terrorists, and threatens to sue airlines which do so

Today the first Border Patrol RFID readers go into use at El Paso, Texas, border crossing; during the next two months many more RFID readers will be installed in order to speed up traffic across borders

ACLU claims terrorist watch list reached one million names; launches online watch list complaint form

The San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area is part of the U.S.-Mexico border, and all agree that the area’s ecosystem is particularly delicate; DHS wants to build a fence there, but environmentalists object

Even advocates admit that E-Verify — the electronic matching of employees’ Social Security Numbers to the data base at the Social Security Administration — is only 94 percent accurate, but they argue that the benefits outweigh any imperfections—

UT systems files motions in court last week asking that the court demand that DHS comply with a March settlement detailing how the fence would be built on part of the UT-Brownsville campus

Perceptions to the contrary notwithstanding, the United States remains the world’s undisputed leader in science and technology; the key factor enabling U.S. science and engineering workforce to grow: inflow of foreign students, scientists, and engineers

U.S. trade with Mexico has more than quadrupled in the past 15 years from $81 million in 1993 to nearly $350 billion in 2007; projected to reach at least 10 times that number by 2020, Mexico is the fastest-growing U.S. trade partner; nearly 80 percent of the trade between the United States and Mexico is transported via roads or rail; in Texas alone, that equates to 3.1 million inbound and 2.7 million outbound trucks each year; General Barry McCaffrey says it is possible to bolster security while accommodating growing trade