“The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home,” Conchita Sarnoff writes in The Huffington Post, characterizing the gunning down of U.S. consulate officials in Juarez last weekend. The escalating drug cartel conflict sparks fear amongst Americans living in the Rio Grande Valley who have relatives just across the border or worry about spillover violence, The Brownsville Herald’s Ildefonso Ortiz surveys — while The Texas Tribune’s Brandi Grissom has Gov. Rick Perry activating a secret spillover contingency plan and seeking federal reinforcements, which request was brushed off by DHS’s Janet Napolitano, The Dallas Morning News’ Todd J. Gillman adds.
Homies: Napolitano also announced yesterday that DHS will halt new work on the so-called virtual border fence, diverting $50 million in planned economic stimulus funds for the project to other purposes, The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu reports. President Obama’s vow to double U.S. exports over the next five years would create more work for ICE, the enforcer on intellectual property theft and sensitive technology controls, top cop John Morton, reminds Homeland Security Today’s Mickey McCarter. “The quality of Obama’s nominees to head the TSA has been so poor that even a normally compliant Senate is refusing to roll over and accept his picks,” James Corum chides in The Daily Telegraph.
Feds: A House homeland hearing slated for today relies upon “witnesses sympathetic to Islamist extremist organizations here in America,” IPT News complains. Following a federal air marshal case, Congress is moving to give whistle-blowers better safeguards against retaliation, USA Today’s Peter Eisler reports. Obama probably will veto legislation authorizing the next intel budget if it mandates a new probe of the 2001 anthrax attacks, Bloomberg’s Jeff Bliss relates — while the Post’s David Ignatius sees the outsourcing of counterterror ops highlighting “some big problems that have developed in the murky area between military and intelligence activities.” New internal e-mail messages suggest his superiors had reason to suspend the Fort Hood shooter’s training, and perhaps re-evaluate his suitability as a military physician, but failed to do so, The Washington Times’ Rowan Scarborough recounts.
State and local: “The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency misspent nearly $18 million in Hurricane Katrina reconstruction grants, federal auditors say, and they want the money back with interest,” The Jackson Clarion-Ledger leads. Local South Carolina officials dislike an amendment to a state bill allowing public access to EMS records that would withhold first responders’ names, The Columbia State recounts. The Pentagon “established the U.S. Cyber Command in 2009 based on the theory that the next war will be waged on the information superhighway [and] the bulk of that defense will be based in western Anne Arundel County,” The Annapolis (Md.) Capital crows. The Edwardsville Fire Department’s chief will step down next month to become Illinois’ first“Fire Service Intelligence Officer” on the State Terrorism Task Force, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio notes.
Follow the money: A Danish court has convicted a left-wing group’s spokesman of violating terror laws by raising funds for Marxist rebels in Colombia and Palestinian militants, The Copenhagen Post reports. Saudi Arabia has warned citizens to be wary of Web and cell phone scams involving bogus charities possibly aimed at funding terrorism, Agence France-Presse relates. In Afghanistan, “Islamic terrorists have partnered with tribe-based drug gangs to produce most of the world’s heroin. This sort of thing is nothing new,” The Strategy Page surveys. “Terrorism and militancy are being deliberately fanned to destabilize the Indian economy,” which is at the threshold of a double digit growth, Indian Express hears the home minister maintaining. An Islamist-linked Somali bizman who may have pocketed ransom bucks intended for kidnapped French aid workers was a contractor for U.N. agencies, Reuters reports.
Bugs ‘n bombs: A Florida theater student was arrested earlier this month after discovery in his car of fake dynamite, a prop project for school, prompted the evacuation of a multiplex theater, The Ocala Star-Banner reports. Taliban commanders have claimed that homemade bombs in Afghanistan are now being salted with anthrax, though there is as yet no evidence of this, Britain’s Sunday Express says. “Before we start building reactors we need to address another urgent matter. We need to make current reactors secure,” Charles S. Faddis advises in a CNN op-ed. “The slow, dull work of keeping nuclear warheads and weapons-grade uranium and plutonium protected from terrorists goes on almost unnoticed,” The Washington Post leads.
Coming and going: The Association of American Railroads has named TSA’s acting general manager of mass transit as its assistant VP for security, Progressive Railroading reports. “A visit to the driver’s license office has always been a little slice of hell. Now it’s gotten even worse,” The South Florida Sun Sentinel summarizes in re: new Real ID-friendly licensing rules. With the population of foreign citizens in Texas prisons at an all-time high and a state budget crisis looming, the idea of deporting some of them is getting another look, The Austin American-Statesman spotlights. The number and scope of pirate attacks is increasing worldwide and could trigger more joint military operations to keep shipping lanes safe, Reuters quotes a top NATO official.
Close air support: The debut of full-body scanners at O’Hare International on Monday was marked by two American Muslim groups asserting that they violate Islamic law, The Christian Science Monitor spotlights — while The Chicago Tribune has that airport’s TSA chief predicting that all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to get virtually naked. “General aviation poses no more of a threat than any other vehicle such as a car or truck and indeed, perhaps is less of a threat,” an op-ed in The Officer soothes. The future of airport customs security could be a German company’s e-passport equipped with an AMOLED display, CNET News notes — while the Tribune, again, reports United Airlines shifting to paperless boarding passes.
Terror tech: “Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? That’s one suggestion the Pentagon has received,” Stars and Stripes notes in a feature on tactical advice volunteered by concerned citizens. “The Internet grew 20 percent uglier last year, with terrorists and racists increasingly turning to social media sites . . . and targeting children,” FOX News relays from the “2010 Digital Hate Report.” In recent Senate testimony, an anthropologist urged the feds “to engage social scientists more directly in open, peer-reviewed studies of terrorism, rather than relying on clandestine intelligence and anti-terrorism technology,” Science Insider informs. Spotting a terrorist by reading his mind sounds like science fiction, but a University of Dayton researcher tells the Daily News technology exists for detecting brain wave patterns indicating an intent to do harm.
Gadgetronica: An Israeli start-up has developed a “potentially game-changing” surveillance camera that can both monitor a panoramic field and zoom in on details, Israel 21c spotlights. Spearheaded by DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate, an app called Cell-All aims to equip your cell phone with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals at minimal cost, National Terror Alert spotlights — while The Somerville (N.J.) Courier-News profiles an iPhone app that would allow users to alert the authorities when they see potentially terroristic suspicious activity. Crowd-image analysis advances by the University of Reading’s Computational Vision Group, highlighting unusual behavior in crowds, would be ideal for securing events like the 2012 Olympic Games, Info4Security informs.
Courts and rights: A key figure in the ongoing U.S. investigation connected with the November 2008 Mumbai terror assault plans to plead guilty in Chicago this week, The Southtown Star says. An organized theft case allegedly linked to terrorism in the Middle East devolved into a racketeering case with the word “terrorism”seldom heard during sentencing, St. Louis’ KMOX Radio, again, reports. In what would be bad news for the struggling towns surrounding Illinois’ Thomson prison, possible host of a mainland terror detention center, studies suggest “prisons have done little to change the economic realities of rural communities,” The Christian Science Monitor mentions. Two of seven suspects arrested in connection with an alleged Swedish cartoonist plot have been charged in Ireland, BBC News notes.
Over there: The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan successfully lobbied for a ban on ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a common ingredient for homemade explosives, though it could be smuggled in easily enough, Danger Room discusses. Last summer, the Taliban’s Mullah Omar issued a new ethics code for Taliban fighters, but those moral guidelines are being ignored by some fighters, another CSM item recounts. A South Africa-Israel standoff continues over Johannesburg’s concern that El Al’s security operations were run by Shin Bet spooks, The Cape Argus updates. Pakistan’s annual National Games, scheduled in Peshawar this month, have been postponed because of security concerns, The Dawn hears the country’s National Olympic Committee ruling.
Spring forward and die: Citing a ‘mistake of Biblical proportions,’ the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is reporting that the famous Doomsday Clock, which measures how close humanity is to annihilation, was accidentally moved one hour forward this past weekend during the Daylight Savings Time change,” CAP News notes. “As a result, it is now 12:54am and it looks like we’re goners. ‘It appears the janitor at our doomsday offices changed the time on the microwave and the clock hanging in the lobby like he was supposed to, but he should have known not to touch the clock above the mantel, I mean, there’s a sign right below it that says Doomsday Clock — Don’t Touch’ said BAS spokesperson Dr. Philip Schnell. ‘I know it’s not good, but you’ll be happy to know that we did discipline him,’ added Schnell. ‘We docked his pay an hour and sent him home early.’ ” See also, at Glossy News: “Doomsday Clock Sold on eBay to Anonymous Bidder.”
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