• Mass. man arrested for planning ISIS-inspired attack on a college campus

    Alexander Ciccolo, 23, who is also known as Ali Al Amriki, was arrested by the FBI for planning to carry out an Islamic State-inspired attack on one or two Boston college campuses, using guns and improvised explosives, including a pressure-cooker bomb like the ones used in the Boston Marathon bombing. Ciccolo was arrested after he took a delivery of four guns on 4 July. He was under surveillance by law enforcement since September, when his father, a Boston police captain, alerted federal authorities about his son’s growing infatuation with Islam and the Islamic State. Ciccolo told a cooperating witness that his attack would be concentrated on dormitories and a cafeteria, according to court documents, “and would include executions of students broadcast live via the Internet.”

  • Questions arise over ammunition purchases at Hoover Dam

    Periodically, questions arise regarding the amount of ammunition purchased by the federal government’s non-military agencies. One must take into account the nature of an agency’s mission and the number of armed personnel included in its ranks. Factor in the number of rounds expended in training and practice, and it becomes clear that the large ammunition purchases make sense. One such instanced surfaced late last week, when it was disclosed that the federal Bureau of Reclamation has requested a purchase of 52,000 rounds of ammunition for law enforcement personnel at Hoover Dam and Lake Mead.

  • Assad is still using chemical weapons. What will it take to stop him?

    While the Syrian conflict has been perpetually overshadowed in the headlines by recent events such as the possibility of a Grexit and the Chinese stock market crash, two recent developments regarding Syria’s use of chemical weapons have nearly managed to refocus international attention on Syria. First, on June 17th the House Committee on Foreign Affairs convened a hearing on the Assad regime’s use of chlorine barrel bombs. Second, U.S. intelligence agencies publicly reported this week that they expect another attack by the regime using chemical weapons beyond chlorine bombs. In particular, the Syrian government is suspected of maintaining stocks of sarin and VX gas.

  • Kosovo’s capital cuts water supplies for fear of ISIS plot to poison reservoir

    Kosovo security and health authorities have cut off water supplies to tens of thousands of residents in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, following a suspicion that ISIS followers had poisoned the city’s water supplies. The city’s water board said supply was cut early on Saturday “because of security issues” and that supplies had been tested for suspicious substances. Police sources say that security officers patrolling the Badovac reservoir saw three of the men behaving suspiciously near the reservoir, and arrested them. They were later identified as ISIS supporters. Kosovar members of ISIS recently appeared in propaganda videos, warning of attacks against targets in the Balkans, including the water supplies of major cities.

  • Canadian Senate panel: Imams should be vetted, certified to stamp out “extreme ideas”

    A Canadian Senate committee said Canada must go much further in cracking down on radicalism and terrorism, including a process to certify, or verify, the credentials of Muslim imams as a means of stamping out “extreme ideas.” The committee’s twenty-five recommendations on how to fight radicalization in Canada more effectively follow closely on the heels of a controversial new anti-terror law, C-51, which calls for a more pervasive, and potentially more intrusive, fight against extremism and radicalization in Canada.

  • Giving government special access to data poses major security risks

    In recent months, government officials in the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries have made repeated calls for law-enforcement agencies to be able to access, upon due authorization, encrypted data to help them solve crimes. Beyond the ethical and political implications of such an approach, though, is a more practical question: If we want to maintain the security of user information, is this sort of access even technically possible? A report by cybersecurity and encryption experts says that whether “backdoor” or “front-door,” such mechanisms “pose far more grave security risks, imperil innovation on which the world’s economies depend, and raise more thorny policy issues than we could have imagined when the Internet was in its infancy.”

  • Privacy vs. security debate intensifies as more companies offer end-to-end-encryption

    A long running debate has now come to the fore with greater urgency. The tension between the privacy that encryption offers, and the need for law enforcement and national security agencies to have access to secured and encrypted e-mail, has become more acute in the last two years. The revelations of Edward Snowden about the post-9/11 reach and scope of surveillance by intelligence agencies and law enforcement, have caused some tech giants to offer encrypted services to their customers – encrypted services which enhance customers’ privacy protection, but which at the same time make it impossible for law enforcement and intelligence services to track and monitor terrorists and criminals. “Our job is to find needles in a nationwide haystack, needles that are increasingly invisible to us because of end-to-end encryption,” FBI director James Comey told lawmakers in recent hearing on the Hill.

  • Ascribing “criminality” to immigrants defies the factual record, distorts U.S. policy

    A just-published report by the American Immigration Council says that many studies have confirmed two simple but compelling truths about the relationship between immigration and crime: immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be behind bars than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime. This holds true for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, regardless of their country of origin or level of education. These facts notwithstanding, the report says, immigration policy is frequently shaped more by fear and stereotype than by empirical evidence, leading to the stigma of “criminality” ascribed to immigrants by an ever-evolving assortment of laws and immigration-enforcement mechanisms. The result is an immigration policy which “is cruel, pointless, shortsighted, and counterproductive. And it is not an effective substitute for immigration reform which makes our immigration system responsive to the economic and social forces which drive migration in the first place,” the report concludes.

  • Countering extremist groups’ social media influence, persuasion

    Social media has become a vital channel for terrorist groups to share news and seduce new members. The recent, notable successes of ISIS in the United States and Europe have demonstrated that terror groups can successfully use this approach to further their agenda of violence. While it gets less attention, social media is equally important for groups that are sharing and communicating information to counter extremist discourse. The problem is, how can those looking to counter the violent ideology of groups like ISIS analyze all the conversations to determine what is a significant danger? How can groups countering violent extremism leverage social media to limit the diffusion of extremist ideology? New research aimed at helping to solve this puzzle.

  • Lawmakers demand answers on labs’ handling of deadly pathogens

    The leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee from both parties yesterday sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services demanding answers regarding the Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP). “Select agents” is the term used by the government for viruses, bacteria, and toxins that could be used by terrorists. The committee members directed ten questions to the HHS IG in an effort to learn details about labs that have been fined or faced other enforcement actions, including suspension or revocation of their federal authorizations to work with select agents. “So far we’ve been lucky, but that luck may run out if we don’t get the system fixed,” said Representative Frank Pallone Jr. (D-New Jersey).

  • Israel to build sophisticated fencing system along border with Jordan to keep ISIS out

    Israel’s cabinet has approved the construction of a new high-tech fencing along Israel’s border with Jordan, with the aim of making it more difficult for Islamist terrorists such as members of ISIS from entering the country. Israel has built sophisticated fencing – indeed, complex defensive systems — along its borders with Lebanon, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Sinai. A similar system has been built along parts of Israel’s border with Syria. The Israeli security services are worried that a route through Jordan, the border with which is not as tightly secured as Israel’s borders with its other neighbors, may be an entryway for its enemies.

  • “Strong possibility” Assad may use chemical weapons on a large scale to protect regime: U.S. intelligence

    U.S. intelligence agencies say there is a strong possibility the Assad regime will use chemical weapons on a large scale as part of a last-ditch effort to protect important Syrian government strongholds, or if the regime felt it had no other way to defend the core territory of its most reliable supporters, the Alawites. Following a 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack by the Syrian military on Sunni suburbs of Damascus, in which more than 1,400 civilians were killed, President Bashar al-Assad allowed international inspectors to remove the Syrian regime’s most toxic chemical weapons, but after the most toxic chemicals were removed, the Assad regime has developed and deployed a new type of chemical bomb filled with chlorine. Western intelligence services suspect that the regime may have kept at least a small quantity of the chemical precursors needed to make nerve agents sarin or VX.

  • Concerns grow about Syria’s nuclear materials

    In September 2007 Israel destroyed the Al Kibar nuclear reactor in north-east Syria, which the Assad regime was building with the aid of North Korea. It is now under the control of ISIS, which is apparently dismantling and possibly conducting excavation activities at the site. Although Syria is no longer believed to have an active, secret nuclear reactor program at this time, it is believed to be hiding assets associated with its past undeclared nuclear efforts, including a large stock of more than 50,000 kilograms of natural uranium. Natural uranium is not as readily usable as Syria’s past chemical weapons stockpile, but if enriched to weapon-grade, this amount of natural uranium would be enough for at least 3- 5 nuclear weapons. As the situation in Syria deteriorates, concerns about Syria’ nuclear assets grow.

  • New York state, city officials mismanaged millions in anti-terror grants: DHS IG

    A new report from DHS Inspector General found that New York City and the state of New York have mismanaged millions of dollars in federal grants meant to help improve homeland security. DHS IG found that New York officials spent nearly 10 percent – or $67 million of the $725 million granted during three years by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) — on questionable costs not in line with homeland security goals or strategies.

  • Teaching terror: what role for schools in countering violent extremism?

    A new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute calls for the inclusion of counter-radicalization messages in the school curriculum and for the teaching of the situation in the Middle East and Australia’s involvement. Those who propose that schools should help law-enforcement identify students who might be susceptible to radicalization should realize that any approach that attempts to identify people for law enforcement and other forms of intervention risks over-reporting on radicalization. It also fails to understand that young people may superficially engage with some of the symbols of violent extremist organizations without fully comprehending the implications of such actions or without ever actually agreeing with those ideologies that promote and justify violent extremism. Perhaps even more concerning is that certain behaviors considered indicative of radicalization could potentially “misdiagnose” other issues such as drug abuse, family violence or mental illness. Assessing whether or not an individual is radicalized to the point where they pose a risk of violent extremism is far beyond the core business of education.