• U.K. Muslim group holds antiterrorism summer camp

    More than 1,000 attend 3-day al Hidayah event at University of Warwick campus to learn how to fight arguments of extremists; those attending are taught practical ways of countering extremist views in their schools, universities, and communities, and are learning how to engage with people expressing extremist views and are being directed to passages in the Qur’an and other Islamic texts to allow them to argue against them

  • Chemical industry spends millions shaping chemical facilities security legislation

    Fourteen parent companies own chemical plants which endanger a large number of people in the United States in the event of an accident or attack on one of their chemical facilities; these 14 parent companies own 163 facilities in 37 different states and Puerto Rico; the facilities owned by The Clorox Company, Kuehne Chemical, and JCI Jones Chemical each put more than 12 million people at risk; these fourteen companies and their affiliated trade associations spent $69,286,198 lobbying the committees with jurisdiction over chemical security legislation in 2008 and 2009; the political action committees (PACs) of these fourteen companies and the PACs of their affiliated trade associations gave $2,187,868 in the 2008 election cycle and the 2010 cycle to date directly to the campaigns of members of the committees of jurisdiction over chemical security legislation

  • How serious is the threat of an "EMP Pearl Harbor"?

    In 1962 the United States conducted a high-altitude nuclear test above Johnston Island, 825 miles southwest of Hawaii; detonated 400 kilometers above the island, the resulting nuclear blast knocked out street lights across Hawaii and tripped circuit breakers, triggered burglar alarms, and damaged a telecommunications relay facility on the island of Kauai; could terrorist, or a nuclear-armed rogue state, launch an EMP Pearl harbor against the United States?

  • Ending "birthright citizenship"

    Proponents of ending Birthright Citizenship through repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment often argue that the parents of children born to “aliens” — both undocumented and those present in the United States lawfully —are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and, therefore, their children born in the United States are not U.S. citizens — but if they were not under the jurisdiction of the United States, “illegal aliens” would not be “illegal.”

  • A U.S. attack on about a half-dozen nuclear facilities would "defang" Iran

    Iran has many potential nuclear weapons-related targets, but only about a half-dozen facilities are so critical that, if destroyed, would set back the program significantly; John Pike of Global Security.org: “Almost all [the high-value targets] are in isolated areas where civilian casualties would not be much of a problem. Most of them have co-located staff housing. Bomb the housing, kill the staff, set back the program by a generation”

  • Senate may yet add funds to border security before going on recess

    The Senate may yet vote for additional funds for border security before leaving for a month-long recess; Senator Schumer is going to try to push through a bill that provides an additional $600 million for the border; this includes $176 million to hire 1,500 more officers to form a strike force to be deployed in critical areas along the border; Schumer would pay for his measure by raising fees on visas for temporary skilled workers sent to the United States by Indian companies; Republicans, who propose a similar measure, prefer to pay for additional border security by taking unused money from the Obama administration’s economic stimulus program, an idea unacceptable to Democrats

  • Indonesia joins countries mulling BlackBerry ban to fight terror

    Indonesia considers joining a growing list of countries, including India, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in banning BlackBerry devices; Research in Motion is receiving increasing pressure to allow government access to data generated by the hand-held devices

  • TSA enlisting parking attendants and meter maids in anti-terror campaign

    From the 1993 attempt on the Twin towers, to Timothy McVeigh, to Faisal Shahzad, the United States has experience with terrorists using vehicles to carry out their plots; TSA’s First Observer program will roll out lesson plans for workers such as parking attendants and meter maids to help them become the latest anti-terror weapons

  • End to water-boarding: Using brain waves to reading terrorists minds about imminent attacks

    There may soon be no need for water-boarding or other “enhanced interrogation” to extract vital information about pending attacks from captured terrorists or terrorism suspects; Researchers at Northwestern university were able to correlate P300 brain waves to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy in the lab

  • A Qaeda attacks Jordanian port city; 1 killed, 3 hurt

    A Grad rocket exploded early Monday in the Jordanian seaside resort of Aqaba, killing one person and injuring at least three; al Qaeda operatives launched a similar rocket attack on Aqaba on 8 July 2007, in which a Jordanian soldier was killed; one of the targets of the 2007 attack was the USS Ashland, which was docking at the Aqaba port at the time

  • U.K. citizens to be spied on by foreign police

    The U.K. Home Office today signed up to the European Investigation Order (EIO) which, when it is approved by the European Parliament, would allow any police force in Europe to spy on and pursue Britons even for the minor offenses; the power allows prosecutors from any EU country to demand details such as DNA or even bank and phone records on anyone they suspect of a crime as minor as leaving a restaurant without paying the bill

  • Leaked U.S. documents: Pakistan collaborates with the Taliban to kill Americans

    Leaked U.S. military documents offer detailed and disturbing accounts of the degree and scope of the cooperation between Pakistan’s intelligence agency and anti-American forces in Afghanistan; this cooperation comes from an agency of a country that receives more than $1 billion a year in aid from the United States; ISI, the Pakistani secret service, recruits insurgents, trains them, supplies them, helps them choose targets, and provides them with the weapons to carry out attacks; the cooperation has resulted in the death of many American soldiers and, more broadly, is aimed to undermine U.S. strategy and goals in Afghanistan

  • The worst database security breaches in the U.S., U.K.

    On 6 February 2010 AvMed Health Plans announced that personal information of current and former subscribers have been compromised by the theft of two company laptops from its corporate offices in Gainesville, Florida; the information was comprehensive, including Social Security numbers and protected health information; attempts the thwart the theft have been unsuccessful, leaving the identity data of nearly 1,100,000 vulnerable; this is only one of many cases of database breaches — and the number of cases is growing

  • House's homeland security bill doubles cybersecurity R&D budget

    The 2010 Homeland Security Science and Technology Authorization Act would double the cybersecurity research and development budget to $75 million for each of the next two years and authorize another $500 million for a study to find ways to promote industry best practices through, for example, liability requirements that hold hardware and software vendors responsible for damages caused by a security breach

  • U.S. chemical industry comes out swinging against new Senate plant security bill

    Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) introduced a 107-page chemical plant safety bill which goes further than a similar bill — HR-2868 — approved by the House last November; Lautenberg’s bill requires the highest-risk facilities replace the most toxic and volatile chemicals they use with inherently safer technology (IST); it also set a provision, known as private right of action (PRA), which would allow citizens to file suit in federal court against DHS to force enforcement against a specific facility, and would allow private citizen petitions to DHS to demand federal investigation of suspected security shortcomings at particular sites