• Senate subcommittee approves about $15 billion to bolster border activity

    Measure allocates $3.57 billion for 20,370 border patrol agents, with 17,000 based on the U.S. Southwest border, more than double the agents in 2004; about $20 million would go toward counter-drug initiatives for southbound operations lanes, personnel, and equipment to stop the outbound flow of weapons and currency used in the drug trade; $20.5 million for one additional unmanned aircraft system and support equipment; the bill include $9 billion for the Coast Guard

  • Bioterrorism experts criticize cuts in BioShield to pay for teacher retention

    In order to find funds which would prevent teacher layoffs, House Democrats craft an appropriations bill which takes $2 billion from a bioterrorism emergency program; security experts criticize what they call a lack of foresight

  • IT security accounts for largest share of homeland security spending

    Aviation security may be more visible than IT security, but a new research says that the former accounts for only 4.6 of the homeland security market, while the latter accounts for 23 percent; public and private homeland security spending will grow from $69 billion 2010 to $85 billion by 2014

  • Scotland Yard: U.K. proposed budget Cuts "will increase terrorism risk"

    The U.K. government wants the Scotland Yard to find £150 million in savings as part of “eye-watering” Treasury budget cuts; the assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, says these cuts cannot be made without increasing the risk of a terrorist attack

  • U.S. gives $2 billion to solar energy companies

    The Obama administration awarded nearly $2 billion to two solar energy companies for three large solar energy projects — in Arizona, Indiana, and Colorado; the projects will create more than 3,000 jobs, power 70,000 homes, and produce millions of solar panels each year

  • California city votes to disband police force

    In a cost-cutting measure, the city of San Carlos, California, has voted to dissolve its police force and to begin the steps to outsource the job of law enforcement to the San Mateo County sheriff’s office as a cost-cutting measure

  • All earmarks in 2011 homeland security spending bill go to Democrats -- save one

    There are nearly $70 million worth of earmarks in the proposed $43.9 billion Homeland Security spending bill for 2011; all the earmarks went to Democrats — save one (won by Republican Rep. Joseph Coe of Louisiana); both the number of homeland security earmarks and their total value in dollars are down in the 2011 budget compared to the 2010 budget

  • U.K. government slashes police's cybercrime budget by 30 percent

    When on the opposition benches, Tory MP James Brokenshire (Old Bexley & Sidcup) said: “if you don’t prioritize cybercrime you compromise national cyber-security”; he is now a junior Home Office minister, presiding over a 30 percent cut in the cybercrime budget of the U.K. national police; security experts, industry, and academics are not happy

  • Senate panel rejects Pentagon counter-IED group $400 million emergency funding request

    Senate panel denies Pentagon’s counter-IED group a $400 million emergency request; lawmakers say that counter-IED organization has misused funds allocated to it — among other things, to hire private contractors in Iraq to hunt down insurgents; senators also criticized the group for planning to use emergency funds to fund long term projects such as airships and UAV radar

  • Growth in U.S. regulatory spending continues

    Since 2000, the U.S. annual budget outlays for regulatory activities increased by more than 75 percent; one example: the fiscal 2011 budget calls for more than $59 billion dollars to be spend on homeland security — this is the largest federal regulatory budget to date

  • Pentagon directs basic research funds to applied projects, says report

    The U.S. Department of Defense has a $13.5 billion science and technology budget; about $1.9 billion — 15 percent of the total — is set aside for basic research; new study found that many of the projects funded under the basic research budget did not meet the definition of basic research used by the Pentagon

  • U.S. allocates $790 million for infrastructure and preparedness

    DHS announces $790 million in infrastructure and preparedness grants; the grants include $253.4 million to protect critical transit infrastructure from terrorism — in addition to $150 million in transit security grants provided by the Recovery Act (1, 2), for a total of $403.4 million

  • DHS may have short-changed New York, Chicago in allocating USAI funds

    New methodology applied to DHS budget allocation shows that New York and Chicago received too little in Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) from 2005 to 2009, relative to the terrorism risk they faced, while the Los Angeles-Long Beach area received too much; if DHS were to follow the research methodology, New York City would have received anywhere between $15 to $92 million more in UASI funding in 2009

  • Map offers details of DHS grant money disbursement since 9/11

    The federal government — and, since 2003, DHS — have disbursed more than $30 billion in grants to states and localities since the 9/11 attacks; now you can see where each dollar went, and what states and localities did with the money they received; most of the money was used for homeland security-related projects; an uncomfortably large amount, though, was used in a way not as directly related to securing the home front

  • APTA seeks public transportation security funding

    A recent survey of U.S. public transit systems identifies $6.4 billion in security needs; Federal funding provided in FY2010 for public transportation security totaled only $253 million; industry group urges Congress to allocate at least $1.1 billion in the FY2011 budget for ground transportation security