Weapons violations on federal properties increased by 10 percent over the last year, while threats against IRS facilities have risen 11 percent, Gregg Carlstrom notes in a Federal Times take on government employees’ mounting security concerns. “Federal employees are entitled to, and should come to expect, a reasonable degree of personal safety and security on the job,” Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., who last week introduced a resolution to that effect, tells Federal News Radio’s Tom Temin and Jane Norris — and see FNR, too, on “Tips for staying safe at work.”
Feds: President Obama’s second nominee to head TSA told senators yesterday he wants U.S. airport security to more closely resemble that seen in Israel, CNN’s Mike M. Ahlers relates. DHS’s Janet Napolitano, meanwhile, was on the high-level U.S. delegation to Mexico City yesterday to discuss mounting border violence, the Los Angeles Times’ Ken Ellingwood recounts. “Months after an al Qaeda double agent obliterated a CIA team, agency veterans are upset,” Washington Post columnist and former CQ scribe Jeff Stein blogs in a dissection of Robert Baer’s post mortem of the matter in GQ. DHS has made significant progress on strategic plans for only half of U.S. National Planning Scenarios, Homeland Security Today’s Mickey McCarter has an IG report noting — and check out a new CRS Report: “The DHS Intelligence Enterprise: Operational Overview and Oversight Challenges for Congress.”
Exile in Cyberia: The metro Washington area, home to some of the most tech-savvy people on the planet, is the nation’s third-riskiest cybercrime city, trailing Boston and Seattle, The Washington Times’ Mark A. Kellner has a new survey suggesting — as eWeek’s Roy Mark mentions that the Senate cybersecurity bill is set for markup. An increasing rate of cyber-attacks and the growing complexity of critical IT infrastructure drive a surge in federal cybersecurity spending, InformationWeek’s Elizabeth Montalbano analyzes. DHS plans to work with a commercial Internet service provider on a pilot test of the Einstein 3 intrusion detection and prevention system, InfoWeek’s J. Nicholas Hoover also relates.
State and local: Authorities say they found 1,600 knives and other weapons at the home of a man arrested trying to enter a Chicago court building with four hunting knives, The Mattoon (Ill.) Journal Gazette relays — as Legal Times learns that starting April 5, visitors to D.C.’s E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse will not be allowed to bring in more than 3.4 ounces of liquid (or gels). A bill to severely restrict the use of biometrics by private businesses and government agencies in New Hampshire was overwhelmingly defeated last week, Security Management mentions. “The thousands of responders, volunteers and residents left sickened after the terrorist attack need long-term health care more than ever,” The New York Times editorializes.
Follow the money: The U.N. has quietly dropped Youssef Nada, a prominent financial and ambassadorial envoy of the Muslim Brotherhood, from a sanctions list designed to curb alleged terror financiers, Newsweek notes — while another Newsweek item says the outgoing Bush administration had been reviewing the thorny legal and diplomatic issues raised by sanctions against the brotherhood. “The effort to win over Afghans on former Taliban turf has put American commanders in the rare position of arguing against opium eradication,” The New York Times leads — as NPR notes that “cracking the extremist group’s finances has proved far more complex than just following the flow of drug money.” A new National Police team will follow up on a recent report indicating the funding of terrorist activities in 97 Indonesian bank accounts, The Jakarta Post reports.
Coming and going: D.C. Metro will stage simulated explosions on a train and a bus this coming weekend as it continues a series of emergency exercises testing regional agency coordination, The Washington Post reports. A new team of sniffer dogs is being charged with keeping London rail stations terror-free before and during the 2012 Olympics, The Hackney Gazette recounts. The Navy is warning ships sailing in waters near Yemen that al Qaeda is planning seaborne attacks similar to the 2000 suicide boat bombing of the USS Cole, The Washington Times tells.
Bugs ‘n bombs: An “oil patch activist” in a region of Alberta where blasts have damaged petro pipelines claims innocent explanations for the explosive chemicals and books on terrorism seized in a recent raid, The Edmonton Sun says. More than 100 Austin drivers found their cars disabled or their horns uncontrollably blaring after an intruder hijacked a Web-based vehicle-immobilization system used to dun car payment delinquents, Threat Level relates. “An Iran with one or two nuclear bombs is a very bad thing . . . but it’s not the end of the world,” an L.A. Times piece on coming to terms with that perhaps inevitable outcome characterizes the thinking of some — as Alan Dershowitz insists in The Wall Street Journal that “the gravest threat faced by the world today is a nuclear-armed Iran.”
Close air support: An out-of-control mohawked man ran amok at Miami’s airport Monday, tussling with workers and police before finally being tasered and arrested, NBC Miami mentions. “Fear not, world travelers toting around replacement parts. The full-body scanner is safe for all passengers,” or at least TSA says so, The Chicago Tribune briefs — while Homeland Security Newswire has holistic health guru Andrew Weil reassuring readers that “full body scanners . . . emit far less radiation than medical scans.” Smartphones and PDAs “could have a new use in the nation’s airports: helping passengers avoid long lines at security checkpoints,” USA Today leads. Malicious intent-detection software devised by an Israeli firm “does not rely on the subjective impressions of possibly tired and bored security guards,” The Economist spotlights. Airports across the subcontinent have been put on high alert following last week’s Kerala bomb scare, OneIndia News notes.
Damage limitation: “Explosives detection is a field that has long been the purview of the animal kingdom [but] techniques such as gas chromatography, ion mobility spectrometry and X-ray are now standard equipment in airport security suites,” Materials Views essays. The latest airport-security scanner aimed at combating the threat of suicide “body bombers” has been unveiled to U.K. government officials, The Engineer informs. A bomb disposal robot that fits into a backpack has been unveiled by Britain’s Ministry of Defence, The Daily Mail mentions — as the Post reports that “Taliban fighters have more than doubled the number of homemade bombs they used against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last year.”
Terror tech: The bacterial DNA signatures left behind on computer keyboards by users’ hands may soon become a forensic identification tool, Homeland Security Newswire notes — while Engineering Marketing Trends examines “some of the emergency engineering innovations that can play a role in protecting people at home and abroad.” “There might be less to the perceived relationship between the internet and radicalization than meets the eye,” a Homeland Security Watch essay posits — even as The Christian Science Monitor ponders “jihobbyists,” or “people drawn to the online theater of violent jihad, becoming increasingly radical as they delve deeper into Web forums.” The creation and shutting down of a Saudi-CIA Web site designed to uncover terrorist plots “illustrate the need for clearer policies governing cyberwar,” the Post, again, spotlights.
Courts and rights: A federal judge ordered Monday that a Guantanamo detainee accused of links to some of the 9/11 hijackers be released, Reuters reports — while The Wilkes Barre Times-Leader has an appeals court upholding the conviction of a Pennsylvania man convicted of trying to help al Qaeda terrorists blow up American pipelines. The Supremes, meantime, have declined to hear a case on whether federal judges can require the United States to give 30 days notice before moving Gitmo inmates to another country, The Christian Science Monitor mentions. Al Qaeda bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi’s prosecutor, interim Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Benton J. Campbell, “is widely considered principled and sincere,” Law.com profiles — as The Detroit News says a trial date for underpants bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will likely be set at an April 13 hearing.
Over there: An attack on London during the 2012 Olympic Games poses a major security threat to Britain, The Associated Press has a U.K. terror risk assessment saying. A teenage daughter of Osama Bin Laden has been released from Iran after years of house arrest and then months of hiding out in the Saudi embassy, ABC News notes. Tehran stands accused, again, by Afghan and NATO officials of delivering tons of weaponry to the Taliban, including plastic explosives, mortars, grenades and technical manuals, The Times of London tells. Indonesian officials have asked Philippine authorities to track down a jihadi fugitive wanted in connection with several beheadings, AP also reports.
Speaking frankly: “The underwear bomb terror attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the straw that broke the camel’s back in America’s newscasting business,” Glossy News notes. “In a rare show of agreement between the top media outlets, news commentators from every major prime time and cable news program, excluding PBS, has asked the FBI, CIA and other law enforcement and governmental spokespersons to create shorter nicknames for terrorists as soon as any new terrorist threat or action is leaked to the news. ‘Not only are we finding it hard to pronounce the names when they come in, but because of the fact that most of our newsroom interns are unpaid students, they don’t have the international spelling skills necessary to get names like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab correct,’ FOX News associate producer John Smith said. ‘If the CIA could create a list of simpler names for news gatherers to follow at the outset of these terrorist acts, we could spend more time on gathering the facts instead of looking up the correct pronunciations of these foreigners’ names.’ ”
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