• 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

  • Industrial espionage puts German companies, jobs at risk

    Companies failing to protect themselves from external attack risk losing their competitive edge; in the information age, the threat of industrial espionage is all too real, with thousands of jobs at stake in Germany

  • Lebanon: alleged Israeli spy had access to "most significant segment" of cell phone network

    Lebanon arrested a high-level employee of one of the two Lebanese mobile phone networks, saying he has been working for Israeli intelligence since 1996; the authorities say he may have planted monitoring devices allowing the Israelis to tap directly into the Alfa network, one of the two major cell phone companies operating in Lebanon

  • 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

  • GSA scraps proposed anti-terrorism training site on Maryland's Eastern Shore

    The administration planned to invest $70 million in building one of the U.S. largest anti-terrorism training center near the town of Ruthsburg on Maryland’s East Shore; stiff opposition from local residents, environmentalists, and Republican in Congress convinced the General Services Administration to scrap the plan

  • Law enforcement disrupted eleven plots against NYC since 9/11

    Since the 9/11 attacks, New York police and the U.S. intelligence services have disrupted eleven plots against New York City

  • Preventing on-land spills by reducing pipeline accidents

    Three thousand companies operate more than 2.5 million miles of pipeline carrying flammable and dangerous fuels, such as natural gas and diesel, across the United States to U.S. homes and businesses; with tens of thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico every day, lawmakers want to ensuring that what happened off the Gulf Coast does not occur somewhere inside the United States

  • Calls in Canada for better protection against fertilizer bomb threat

    The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers wants a comprehensive plan of action to prevent agricultural supplies such as fertilizers from becoming tools of terrorists; the association calls for an “integrated crop input security protocol” for Canada’s 1,500 agri-retail sites; this plan would include perimeter fencing, surveillance and alarm devices, lighting, locks, software, and staff training in various security techniques, at retail outlets; estimated cost: $100 million

  • Iran takes a major step toward bomb

    Iran has publicly admitted that it has taken a major step toward building nuclear weapons: enriching uranium to 20 percent; the Brazil-Turkey-Iran deal of two months ago was supposed to address this issue: Iran would deliver to Turkey 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium and, in return, would receive sufficient amounts of uranium enriched to 20 percent to operate a small research reactor; Iran did not wait for the ink to dry on its signature on the deal before violating it

  • Emergent sells anthrax vaccine to U.S. allies

    European countries, worried about bioterror attacks, are working on a plan to stock vaccines regionally — a Baltic stockpile, a Nordic stockpile, and so on would help in covering countries that have not expressed a desire to form their own stockpiles; a Maryland-based companies is providing these European countries with anthrax vaccine

  • North Carolina prepares for bioterrorism, epidemics

    North Carolina universities and state and federal agencies create the new North Carolina Bio-Preparedness Collaborative; the idea is to use computers to link all the disparate forms of data collected by various agencies quickly to root out indicators of new disease, or food-borne illness, or, in a worst-case scenario, an attack of bio-terrorism

  • TSA looks for commercial software to manage Secure Flight

    Managing the long — very long — No Fly and Terror Watch lists is not a simple task; TSA is looking to purchase commercial software to help manage its Secure Flight program which checks the information airlines collect about passengers against DHS terrorist watch lists

  • Bill seeks to bolster U.S. ability to fight bioterror

    Bill calls for bolstering U.S. defenses against future bioterror attacks requiring the director of national intelligence to produce and administer a National Intelligence Strategy for Countering the Threat from WMD, which would be created in consultation with the homeland security secretary as well as other relevant agencies

  • Lawmakers to combine cybersecurity bills

    Reforming the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and defining the role of the White House and other agencies are common themes in the many cybersecurity bills now circulating on the Hill

  • Administration moves ahead on Illinois prison purchase -- possible Gitmo replacement

    The Justice Department informed the Illinois congressional delegation that the White House was going ahead with consideration of the Thomson Correctional Center, located 150 miles west of Chicago, as home for some detainees from Guantanamo Bay; lawmakers opposing to moving terrorists to a U.S. prison blocked funding for refurbishing Thomson, but the administration says the Justice Department can purchase the prison and hold federal inmates in it