• Radiation detection equipment installed in four Mexican ports

    The Megaports Initiative is a U.S. Department of Energy program intended to enhance the ability of ports around the world to detect and interdict illicit shipments of special nuclear and other radioactive materials; Under the initiative, radiation detection gear and protocols were implemented in the Mexican ports of Manzanillo, Altamira, Lazaro Cardenas, and Veracruz, through which 92 percent of Mexico’s containerized cargo pass

  • AQIM leader killed in Mali

    If every cloud has a silver lining, this may be one: Algerian sources say that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, one of the deadliest leaders of Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was killed during the 25 June battle of Gao, in which the Islamist Ansar Dine group took over the city of Gao in Azawad, the break-away region in north Mali

  • Inmarsat responds: We do not sell telecommunications services to any Iranian entity

    Shurat Hadin, a Tel Aviv-based law firm specializing in litigation against terror sponsors, claims mobile satellite company Inmarsat PLC provides prohibited guidance services to Iranian oil tankers and Iranian military vessels; Inmarsat says these claims are wrong: the company says it seeks to comply with all applicable sanctions laws and regulations, and that Inmarsat does not sell telecommunications services to any Iranian entity, or to any entity on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control list of Specially Designated Nationals

  • Global air control system largely defenseless against hacking

    The ADS-b system, the multi-billion dollar communication system deployed at airports around the world over the last few years, has two major flaws: first, it has no means of verifying who is actually sending a message, which means that a hacker can impersonate an aircraft and send malicious and misleading information to control towers and to other aircraft; second, the position, velocity, and other information broadcast by aircraft is not encrypted and can be grabbed from the air; a presenter at the Black Hat cybersecurity event showed how it is possible to use the information to plot the route of Air Force Phone on an iPad; these two vulnerabilities can be easily exploited by anyone with modest technical skills and about $2,000 worth of electronics

  • By the numbers: Terrorism and the Olympics

    The 2012 Summer Olympic Games open today in London; history offers a warning, but no clear pattern on the true risk of terrorism at the Olympic Games, concludes a new report

  • DHS offers advice on how to survive shooting sprees

    For people who get caught in a shooting spree, such as the one in Aurora, Colorado,  DHS offers a survival plan

  • Critics charge satellite company Inmarsat violates Iran sanctions

    A legal organizations specializing in fighting legal battles against terror sponsors – they say their goal is to bankrupt the terror groups and grind their activities to a halt, one lawsuit at a time – warned mobile satellite company Inmarsat PLC against providing prohibited guidance services to Iranian oil tankers and Iranian military vessels; in 2008, a United States Supreme Court ruling made the determination that individuals or companies that materially support terrorist organizations are liable for the murder and injuries they cause, according to Boim v. Holy Land Foundation

  • Israel, U.K. worried about “anniversary” Olympic attack by Iranian agents

    Forty years ago, during the Munich Summer Olympic Games, terrorists belonging to the Palestinian Black September organization entered the Olympic Village, kidnapped members of the Israeli Olympic team, then killed eleven of them and injured twenty more during a botched German rescue operation; there is worry in Israel and London that Iran, using its own operatives or Hezbollah’s, would try a spectacular 40-year anniversary attack on the Israeli delegation to the games

  • U.S. to send hand-launched UAVs to Kenya to help fight Somali al Shabaab

    The United States will include hand-launched Raven UAV’s in the $41.4 million military aid package to Kenya; the package also includes trucks, communications gear, and rifles for Burundi, Djibouti, and Uganda; the military aid aims to help east African countries cope with the growing menace of al Shabaab, a Somali al Qaeda affiliate

  • Bulgaria attack shows Iran’s terror strategy

    The Wednesday suicide-bombing attack by a Hezbollah operative on a bus carrying Israeli tourists on their way to a Bulgaria sea resort, an attack in which six Israeli were killed and thirty-five injured, is an indication that Iran has decided to increase the cost to Israel, and the United States and the West more generally, of a set of policies which have materially undermined Iran’s interests; Iran has built a large network of terror sleeping cells in Europe and the Americas, operated by the Iranian Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and by Hezbollah, a network it intends to activate where and when it serves its interests

  • Hezbollah suicide bomber kills Israeli tourists in Bulgaria

    A Hezbollah-trained suicide bomber, carrying a forged Michigan-issued driver’s license, blew himself up in a bus carrying Israeli tourists, killing seven and injuring thirty-four; the attack appears to be part of a campaign launched by Iran several months ago in retaliation for the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists by the Israeli Mossad; Iranian intelligence operatives have recently attempted attacks on Israeli targets in India, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Kenya, and Cyprus

  • Bulgaria bus bombing underscores vulnerability of public transport: MTI experts

    The Mineta Transportation Institute’s (MTI) Database on Terrorist and Serious Criminal Attacks Against Public Surface Transportation records 3,159 attacks against public surface transportation between January 1970 and January 2012, in which 7,997 people were killed and 30,046 were injured; of these attacks, 47.4 percent were against buses, bus stations, and bus stops; they accounted for 55 percent of the fatalities and 41 percent of the injuries resulting from terrorist attacks during this period

  • The Top 3 Syrian security officials assassinated by rebels

    In the heaviest blow yet to the Assad regime, a bomb placed inside the fortress-like National Security headquarters in Damascus earlier today killed the three top commanders of the regime’s anti-insurgency effort: Defense Minster Dawoud Rajha; Deputy Defense Minister (and Assad’s brother-in-law) Assef Shawkat; and Hassan Turkmani, a former defense minister who was serving as head of the regime’s central command unit for crisis management a secure room; the bomb was placed in the secure room, where a meeting of the central command unit for crisis management was taking place, by a bodyguard assigned to Assad’s inner circle; the assassination, and the way it was carried out, demonstrate daring, operational competence, and excellent intelligence; the operation reflects, more generally, a noticeable increase in the lethality and effectiveness of the rebel forces, and the growing vulnerability of the regime

  • House designates Haqqani Network as a terrorist organization

    The U.S. House of Representative yesterday voted to designate the Haqqani Network as Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO); the network has been supported and armed by Pakistan, which uses the Haqqanis to attack U.S. and coalition soldiers, aid the Taliban, destabilize the Karzai government, and frustrate U.S. Afghan strategy; if the Senate approves the House bill, this would mean designating the Pakistani government, or at least some of its major agencies, as supporters of terrorism, making it legally difficult for the United States to continue and send billions of dollars in military and civilian aid to Pakistan

  • Short-sighted Tuareg leadership dooms independence quest

    With the quickening pace of preparations for a military intervention to remove an al Qaeda-affiliated Islamist group from a break-away region of Mali, and disrupt this group’s plan to turn the region into what African leaders call “Africanistan,” the leaders of the MNLA, the Tuareg movement which fought for the independence of the region, said the MNLA would not participate in the operation against the Islamists unless it receives guarantees from outside powers that the goal of the operation will not be to re-unify Mali; the cause of Tuareg independence never had much support among the Tuareg people, and was resolutely opposed by neighboring states; the MNLA refusal to help in removing the Islamists from Azawad all but guarantees that the dream of Tuareg independence will remain just that – a dream