• CIA forms taskforce to assess fallout from 250,000 leaked U.S. cables

    The CIA has formed a task force to assess the impact of 250,000 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables; the group will scour the released documents to survey damage caused by the disclosures; the name of the task force is WikiLeaks Task Force, or WTF for short; WTF is more commonly associated with the Facebook and Twitter profiles of teenagers, where the acronyms stand for three words used to express extreme disbelief or annoyance

  • Millions allowed into U.S. without proper border documents

    The inspector general for DHS estimated this week that about 3.6 million people a year were still passing through customs without the required documents — passports or other hard-to-forge identification cards — and that about half of those were coming through the border crossings in Texas

  • State-federal tensions on immigration issues continue

    Governor David Patterson of New York has pardoned six immigrants facing deportation because, he says, deportation is unjustified in their cases; “[immigration officials] may take no account of the New York State criminal justice decisions, but I do,” he said; the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the first of two controversial Arizona immigration law; this law was signed by then governor Janet Napolitano, now DHS secretary in the administration which is challenging the law in court

  • Senate to ratify New START pact today

    The New START pact passed a key procedural hurdle on Tuesday when the Senate voted to bring the weapons pact between the United States and Russia to the floor of the Senate for a final vote, which is likely to be held today, Wednesday; the Senate voted 67-28 to pass a cloture motion, seemingly enough to assure final ratification; eleven Republicans joined with fifty-six Democrats to pass the cloture motion; it will take sixty-seven votes to ratify the New START pact; even if the U.S. arsenal is reduced by 30 percent, as stipulated in New START, the United States would still have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads; there are signs that these aging systems need refurbishing and modernization — and the $80 billion over ten years earmarked for this purpose is a good investment

  • Carjackings, violence to increase in wake of Mexico prison break

    Close to 200 drug dealers, murderers, and human traffickers broke out of a Nuevo Laredo prison — probably with the help of guards who were bribed or threatened; members of the Zetas were behind the prison break, and they are expanding their influence in cities close to the U.S. border; intelligence analysts say that the breakout means that we should expect more violence in cities within the Zetas-dominated areas

  • U.S. kill vehicle missile defense weapon fails test

    The U.S. Missile Defense Agency has suffered another failure in a live test conducted last week over the Pacific; the first part of the test — detecting and tracking the “enemy” missile by the Sea Based X-band Radar — went well; the second part — getting an Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) to place itself in the path of the oncoming missile warhead and destroying it — did not work; the Ground Based Interceptor (GBI) triple-stage rocket is the most capable tool in the U.S. Missile Defense Agency’s armory, but its test record is spotty at best

  • Augmented GPS system can transmit emergency information around U.S.

    Commercial global positioning systems (GPS) like those dispensing driving directions in cars can provide reliable location information to within twenty feet, while an augmented system used primarily by the Coast Guard for navigation is even more accurate; researchers say that the augmented system, called Differential GPS or DGPS, can also be used to concurrently transmit emergency messages or other relevant data for use by DHS or other government agencies

  • Rhode Island prison deploys new inmate eye scanners

    This summer a Rhode Island prison inmate was able to walk out of prison by posing as another inmate who was up for parole; the state Department of Corrections has deployed an eye scanner in the prison that checks inmates’ eyes to ensure identity

  • 2010's world weather extremes: quakes, floods, blizzards

    Earthquakes, heat waves, floods, volcanoes, super typhoons, blizzards, landslides, and droughts killed at least a quarter million people in 2010 — the deadliest year in more than a generation; more people were killed worldwide by natural disasters in 2010 than have been killed in terrorism attacks in the past forty years combined; disasters from the Earth, such as earthquakes and volcanoes “are pretty much constant,” said Andreas Schraft, vice president of catastrophic perils for the Geneva-based insurance giant Swiss Re. “All the change that’s made is man-made.”

  • WikiLeaks: Yemen radioactive stocks "easy al-Qaeda target"

    Yemeni official told U.S. diplomats that the lone sentry standing watch at Yemen’s national atomic energy commission (NAEC) storage facility had been removed from his post, and that the facility’s only closed circuit TV security camera had broken down six months previously and was never fixed; “Very little now stands between the bad guys and Yemen’s nuclear material,” the official warned, in a cable dated 9 January this year sent from the Sana’a embassy to the CIA, the FBI, and the department of homeland security; when told of the Yemeni nuclear storage problem, Matthew Bunn, a Harvard University nuclear terrorism expert, said: “Holy cow. That’s a big source. If dispersed by terrorists it could make a very nasty dirty bomb capable of contaminating a wide area”

  • White House held up regulation to stop gun flow to Mexico

    Tens of thousands of semi-automatic rifles are smuggled from the United States to Mexico every year, increasing the level of violence of the war among the drug cartels and creating a situation in which the cartels often out-gun the Mexican police and military; on Friday, the ATF published an emergency proposal in the Federal Register; the proposal requires dealers to report to the ATF anytime they make two or more sales over a 5-day period of semiautomatic rifles that have a caliber greater than .22 and a detachable magazine; it would be valid for six months; Justice wanted the proposal to be placed in the Register in the summer, but the White House held it up — some say because of election considerations

  • Critics: Trusted Traveler will allow Mexican cartels to bypass airport security

    Two weeks ago DHS announced plans the roll out of Trusted Traveler program with Mexico; under the program, Mexicans who have undergone background checks and are deemed low security risks will be able to fly into major U.S. cities and breeze through customs without being questioned by U.S. Customs agents; critics say Mexico’s drug cartels will quickly learn how to exploit loopholes in the plan by recruiting Mexicans with clean backgrounds to attain trusted traveler status, and then use them to smuggle drugs and other contraband into the United States; Mexican citizens are already eligible for expedited land border crossings through another trusted traveler program, Secure Electronic Network for Travelers Rapid Inspection (SENTRI); last week, two SENTRI trusted travelers were caught trying to bring contraband across the border into the U.S. through the SENTRI-only express border passage

  • More companies shun Mexico as violence spirals

    Growing numbers of companies are deciding to limit their investments in Mexico because of spiraling drug-related violence in one of the world’s most important emerging markets; Mexico continues to lure foreign investment with its low wages, location next to the United States, and the advantages of the North American Free Trade Agreement; for some companies, particularly those that do not yet have operations south of the border, the violence has become daunting

  • Software enables swifter justice

    A system from the Eagan, Minnesota, company Intertech speeds the process of filing criminal complaints, eliminating steps that used to require paper; this summer, it received approval for its eCharging Web-based system, which cuts down on the time to process the complaints because officials sign off electronically through a password or fingerprint reader

  • Measuring carbon monoxide levels in bloodstream at the scene

    Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and nonirritating toxic gas that can cause severe health problems or even death; communities in western Massachusetts use DHS grants to buy specialized devices that can quickly measure the level of carbon monoxide in a person’s bloodstream at a fire scene