• Militants kidnap 7 from Nigerian Exxon platform

    After the 9/11 attacks, Bin Laden boasted that he used an operation which cost al Qaeda $500,000 to finance to inflict a $500 billion damage on the U.S. economy; this was not a mere boast: experts say it was an indication that econo-jihad was an integral part of al Qaeda’s strategy to weaken and defeat the West; the recent BP disaster offered an example of one tactics terrorists may pursue in order to inflict serious economic and environmental damage on the United States and other countries: attack off-shore oil rigs: these rigs are utterly vulnerable to attack, and the damage such an attack can do is considerable; in Nigeria, a militant organization is already attacking oil rigs — if, for now, only to kidnap rig workers in order to blackmail their employers for money and political concessions; the ease with which such attacks are carried out should give all of us a pause

  • U.S. snoops scan the Web for potential terror risks

    The U.S. government created a special center prior to Barack Obama’s inauguration for analyzing oceans of data passing through Facebook, Twitter, and other sites in an attempt to identify hazards; personnel at DHS’s National Operations Center scan the Web using dozens upon dozens of key search terms and phrases, among them “militia,” “cops,” “riot,” “dirty bomb,” “Mexican army,” “decapitated,” “Iraq,” “radicals,” and many more

  • U.K. General: West cannot defeat al Qaeda militarily

    General Sir David Richards, a former NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Islamist militancy would pose a threat for at least thirty years, and that a clear-cut victory over militants was not achievable; Richards also said that that extremist Islamism could not be eradicated as an idea; “The trick is the balance of things that you’re doing and I say that the military are just about, you know, there. The biggest problem’s been ensuring that the governance and all the development side can keep up with it within a time frame and these things take generations sometimes within a time frame that is acceptable to domestic, public and political opinion”

  • Law enforcement agencies dig deeper into applicants' digital past

    More and more police departments are digging deep into the social media accounts of applicants, requesting that candidates sign waivers allowing investigators access to their Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, and other personal spaces; some agencies are demanding that applicants provide private passwords, Internet pseudonyms, text messages, and e-mail logs; of “particular concern” to law enforcement agencies is that defense lawyers could use officers’ posts to undercut their credibility in court

  • Mail bomb timed to explode over eastern U.S.

    British police investigators say that forensic evidence showed the explosive device hidden inside an ink cartridge, originally sent from Yemen by way of Cologne, Germany, was timed to be detonated about six to seven hours after the cargo aircraft carrying it left the United Kingdom for the United States — meaning that it could have exploded over the East Coast of the United States; the UPS cargo plane intercepted in England left the country without the package at 11:20 p.m. ET on 28 October, two hours after landing, police said; the device was timed to be activated at 5:30 a.m. ET, said British police

  • New congressional majority could scale back U.S. science budgets

    President Barack Obama has ordered all federal agencies that are not linked to national security to reduce by 5 percent their budget requests for 2012 compared to the 2011 budget year; if Republicans hold to their pre-election pledge, non-defense related federal research spending could dip more than 12 percent to around $58 billion — compared to $66 billion requested by the White House for 2011

  • U.S. intensifies drone war in Yemen

    The U.S. is intensifying the drone war over Yemen; yesterday the Yemeni foreign minister admitted for the first time that the U.S. was helping out in the Yemeni fight with unmanned drones; the foreign minister said that while the U.S. was providing intelligence, “The (drone) attacks are undertaken by the Yemeni air force” (officials in Yemen have habitually claimed those sorties were the work of the Yemeni air force, although Yemen has neither the aircraft nor the air crews able to conduct these precision attacks); a tug-of-war is going on in Washington on whether the drone war should be conducted by the U.S. military or the CIA; unconfirmed news reports claim that in early November the U.S. moved a squadron of Predator drones to a secret base at the Yemeni Red Sea port of Al Hodaydah

  • Nuclear bomb forensics will identify who planted it

    In 2009 researchers from the Institute for Transuranium Elements in Karlsruhe, Germany, showed that when smuggled nuclear material is intercepted, its source can be deduced from details of its composition; gleaning forensic information from an exploded nuclear bomb, though, is a different matter — but scientists argue that this, too, can be done

  • Growing worries about terrorism in Indonesia

    With President Barack Obama set to begin a visit Tuesday to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country — and where he lived from age 6 to 10 — there is renewed attention on terrorists in Indonesia — terrorists who, in the past year, appeared to be banding together into a new al Qaeda-influenced insurgency; since 2006 the Pentagon has sent about $60 million in military aid to Indonesia for a new regional maritime warning system; as much as $20 million more is in the pipeline; the military steer arrested terrorists into a rehabilitation program; the policy is rooted in a fundamental belief that militants are fellow Muslims who have gone astray and that they are inherently reformable

  • Al Qaeda plot to use kamikaze dogs failed

    Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq tried to bring a plane down by deploying a pair of kamikaze canines on a U.S.-bound airplane; terrorists placed the bombs inside the dogs’ bodies, then took the dogs to the Baghdad airport in kennel carriers, destined for a flight to the United States; the plot failed because the bombs were so poorly stitched inside the dogs, that the dogs died

  • Rep. Peter King: DHS has more "refined" approach to terrorism

    The likely incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) has been one of the administration’s loudest critics on issues of counterterrorism and homeland security in the past year; he had repeatedly criticized White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, and has called for his firing; King has a softer tone toward the administration now, a week after the federal government prevented a series of possible attacks against cargo jets — and two month before assuming the chairmanship of the House Homeland Security Committee

  • U.K. outlines counter-terrorism priorities

    The Home Secretary’s priorities are to: enhance protective security measures, invest in conflict prevention and stopping overseas terrorist plots, refocus the U.K. strategy for preventing radicalization, and strike a better balance between liberty and security

  • Plotters had no control over where cargo bombs would go off

    The plotters behind last week’s unsuccessful mail bombings could not have known exactly where their Chicago-bound packages were when they were set to explode; the communication cards had been removed from the cell phones attached to the bombs, meaning the phones could not receive calls, making it likely the terrorists intended the alarm or timer functions to detonate the bombs; each bomb was attached to a syringe containing lead azide, a chemical initiator that would have detonated PETN explosives packed into each computer printer toner cartridge; both PETN and a syringe were used in the failed Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner linked to an al Qaida branch in Yemen

  • Not your father's police dept.: Tarrytown police adopts latest technology

    Tarrytown police cruisers are now rolling with the latest technology and software; two of the software systems at the fingertips of the police are the Mobile Plate Hunter 900 and the TraCS (Traffic and Criminal Software) system; used in conjunction with dual, rear-mounted license plate readers, an officer can catch an offending driver, check a driver’s background, and print up a ticket and a court summons in a matter of minutes

  • New Jersey towns warm up to electronic traffic ticketing

    Officers will be able electronically to issue summonses and tickets for moving and nonmoving violations in a fraction of the time it takes to write them by hand; the efficiency should free officers to do more police work — a benefit as departments deal with reduced manpower, said officers and advocates of the technology