• Beyond fingerprints: The FBI's next generation database

    New, mammoth database will include not only enhanced fingerprint capabilities, but also other forms of biometric identification like palm prints, iris scans, facial imaging, scars, marks, and tattoos — in one searchable system

  • Napolitano issues first action directives

    On her first day in office, new DHS secretary issues five action directives centering on protection of critical infrastructure, transportation, and on better intelligence sharing among federal, state, and local levels of government

  • New sensors to monitor health of U.S. infrastructure

    Northeastern University researchers are working on developing new sensor systems for cars and trucks that will allow road and bridge infrastructure to be assessed in real-time across the United States

  • States, localities are slow to repair poorly maintained levees

    Two years ago the U.S. government identified 122 levees as too poorly maintained to be reliable in major floods; only forty-five of them had necessary repairs; people living behind the unrepaired levees should be concerned

  • DHS announces grant applications

    DHS began to distribute applications for state agencies in two categories: $48.6 million for the implementation of the Real ID Act, and $34 million for emergency operations centers

  • Increased Pentagon role in U.S. domestic security

    The U.S. Department of Defense will have an increased role in domestic U.S. security; a Pentagon plan calls for up to 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe

  • New York City opens counterterrorism center

    The $100 million project was launched after 9/11; the facility would eventually receive video footage from 3,000 cameras posted in and near the financial district, an area of about 1.7 square miles

  • Biosafety Lab-Level 4 dedicated in Galveston, Texas

    The $174 million, 186,267-square-foot lab will employ 300 people; the lab is one of two approved in 2003 by NIH (the second is being built in Boston); critics question placing a BSL-4 lab on a barrier island vulnerable to hurricanes

  • DHS releases FY2009 guidance for $3 billion worth of grants

    FEMA requests applications for 14 programs for which it has allocated $3 billion; funded programs concentrate on state and local governments and strengthening community preparedness

  • Briefly noted

    Deadly plague found in Grand Canyon… IG: USDA monitoring system improves IT security… France’s DGA issues multinational contract for lightweight UAV radar tech… Thales completes acquisition of U.K. encryption specialist… N.J. safer, but not safe from terrorists

  • U.S. government to take counterterrorism local

    The federal government says local police efforts to record and share activities that could be related to terrorism are critical to the government’s counterterrorism effort; the creation and coordination of a uniform system of reporting among thousands of jurisdictions is a problem, though

  • Letter carriers may deliver antibiotics during bioterror attack

    The task of delivering medications to citizens during a bioterror attack may fall to volunteer mailmen (and mailwomen); trial in St. Paul

  • Texas county weighing border fence alternatives

    Cameron County, Texas, must decide which option is more beneficial to it: DHS’s fence plan which the county does not like, but which will see $37 million in contracts go to local businesses, or resubmitting the county’s alternative fence plan, which DHS had already rejected, exploiting the fact that DHS has postponed the 31 December fence deadline

  • Briefly noted

    Smart cluster bomb hunts down targets… Anthrax-case documents reveal bizarre Ivins’s behavior… New FISMA bill receives committee OK… L-1 in $5.9 million Mississippi driver’s license contract…

  • Treasury grants cannot be used for chemical detection

    The federal government told the Boston transit authority and other municipal transportation agencies that they cannot use anti-terrorism grants to install chemical threat detection systems at subway stations