CQ - Behind the Lines for Thursday, March 25, 2010

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Keyboard Kaos: Cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure could literally "challenge our country's very existence," FBI computer security czar alerts . . . Launch the mango chutney mortars: "The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world's hottest chili" . . . Grinding slowly but exceedingly fine: Turkish university assembling international Islamic scholars to revisit 700-year-old fatwa on jihad. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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The FBI is investigating threats against lawmakers stemming from intense opposition to the health care overhaul law, The Associated Press’ Jim Abrams relates while The New York Times’ Carl Hulse has ten House Dems reporting death threats, harassment or vandalism of their district offices. A Harris Poll, meantime, shows high percentages of Republicans avowing that President Obama is “racist,” “anti-American” and “wants the terrorists to win,” The Daily Beast’s John Avlon relates. “Even on terrorism, Obama currently has high approval ratings,” Mark Green writes in The Huffington Post, predicting his reelection in 2012.

Feds: A top FBI official warned yesterday that cyber-adversaries can access virtually any computer system, posing a risk so great it could “challenge our country’s very existence,” Computerworld’s Patrick Thibodeau reports. A U.S. consular official denied the underpants bomber a U.S. visa in 2004 due to false info on his application, but was overruled by a supervisor, The Washington Post’s John Solomon learns. The Pentagon’s top intel official yesterday ended a visit to Sana to discuss “ongoing counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and Yemen,” The Yemen News Agency notes. “An investigation into the destruction of CIA videotapes that depicted harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects appears to be nearing a close,” the Post’s Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate also recount.

Homies:“It appears that the president has picked the perfect spook for a spooky agency,” The Bircherite New American editorializes, waxing paranoid about TSA nominee Robert Harding’s military intel career. TSA, meanwhile, is heeding the general aviation community as it formulates its new security plan for smaller private aircraft, a source tells Aviation Week’s Fred George. USCIS is far from ready to process the flood of applications expected from a proposed immigration legalization bill, The Washington Times’ Steven Dinan has the DHS IG alerting. Speaking from Secret Service headquarters, DHS’s Janet Napolitano yesterday addressed women in law enforcement, BNO News recounts, noting that 35,000 women serve in DHS as law enforcers.

State and local:Broward County is looking to save money by outsourcing to private contractors 100 security positions at Ft. Lauderdale airport and Port Everglades now filled by Sheriff’s Office employees, The South Florida Sun Sentinel says. Beefing up security for a high-profile drug trial, Homeland Security vehicles marked with “Federal Protective Service” encircle Des Moines’ federal courthouse this week, the Register reports — while The Austin American-Statesman notes that Gov. Rick Perry has repeatedly said he’s against metal detectors at the State Capitol, “but key lawmakers don’t appear to agree.” Six days after exchanging words with a GOP congressman in D.C. about his relationship with CAIR, L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca met Tuesday with Southland-area Muslim Americans, The Los Angeles Daily News notes — and check IPT News on Baca’s “willful ignorance.”

Ivory (Watch) Towers:Nineteen students at Salt Lake City’s S.J. Quinney College of Law participated in an elaborate counterterror response simulation last Friday positing attacks in Times Square and Baltimore, The Deseret News notes. DHS’s Napolitano will keynote at the University of North Dakota’s spring graduation, The Jamestown Sun says. Scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a polymer fiber mesh “that could quickly and effectively combat all chemical and bioterror agents without harming our bodies or the environment,” Inhabitat informs — while Business First reports the University of Louisville working with the National Institute of Hometown Security on computer software that will help health responders allocate resources during a pandemic.

Bugs ‘n bombs:“The Indian military has a new weapon against terrorism: the world’s hottest chili,” AP reports, saying that thumb-sized “bhut jolokia,” or “ghost chili,” will be used for tear gas-like hand grenades to immobilize suspects. “The release of anthrax is silent and making endless quantities is very easy,” the International Security & Biopolicy Institute’s prez told a Chicago audience last week, BioPrepWatch reports — as The Frederick (Md.) News-Post reiterates a White House threat to veto intel legislation that would re-open the 2001 anthrax mailing probe. “Argonne biochemist Daniel Schabacker could be considered a Sherlock Holmes of bioterrorism,” his most powerful deductive tool being the biochip, Lab Manager Magazine profiles.

Close air support: A long-planned proposal to meet TSA requirements by erecting a security fence around Provincetown’s municipal airport, runway and all, prompts concerns about wetlands wildlife conservation, the Banner reports — while The Bangor Daily News has airport authorities there moving forward with plans to add concessions past the TSA checkpoints. Since “sweeping scrutiny of airline passengers is wasteful and ineffective, focusing on the problem, however ‘discriminating,’ is far more logical,” a Clarksville (Md.) Current op-ed applauding profiling concludes. Washington will abandon its post-Christmas Day bomber decision to impose special security measures on Lebanese traveling to United States, The Daily Star recounts.

Coming and going:Lawmakers are proposing a national ID card — a/k/a “high-tech, fraud-proof Social Security cards” — that would be required for all U.S. employees, Threat Level relates. A Transport Canada report on the escape of four Algerian stowaways from a Halifax terminal two years ago points to a need for updated phone lists and security procedures at port gates, The Toronto Star says. A new U.K. agency will counter the threat of a terrorist attack from the sea by monitoring of the hundreds of thousands of small boats sailing off Britain’s coastline, The Times of London tells. “The two words ‘Port Security’ hold a much more sinister connotation than they did five years ago,” a PTI Online editorial leads.

Courts and rights: India’s justice minister yesterday demanded that the U.S permit Indian investigators to directly question a Chicago man who has pleaded guilty to links with the 2008 assault on Mumbai, ANI notes. Three Guantanamo detainees, their identities undisclosed for security and privacy reasons, were transferred to the Caucasian nation of Georgia on Tuesday, Reuters reports — as Deutsche Presse Agentur reports two brothers, the last of the Uighur detainees save five, arriving safely yesterday in Switzerland. Senate GOPers are using a federal court’s order to release a terror suspect held at Guantanamo to slam the Obama administration’s bid to close the controversial prison, Politico recounts.

Over there: A Boston man facing trial in North Korea for illegally entering that hermit nation “is not a terrorist,” a friend tells AP — as BBC News learns that an Australian terror suspect was mistakenly released last week by Kenyan police who thought he was “just an illegal immigrant.” Saudi Arabia announces having arrested 113 al Qaeda militants, including suicide bombers who had been planning attacks on energy facilities, Reuters reports. As Somalia’s government gears up for a major offensive, the beleaguered population is turning against al Shabaab, one of Africa’s most fearsome Islamic groups, The New York Times leads. A new report asserts that the U.K. is confronted with a heightened risk of coming under assault by a terrorist radiological “dirty bomb,” Global Security Newswire relays.

Over here:“Young and angry Muslim Canadians. That is a recipe that al Qaeda would dream to have,” a resident of Toronto’s Little Mogadishu tells The National Post in re: the recruitment by extremists of Canada’s Somali Muslims. “Adam Gadahn and Anwar al Awlaki are not the only radicalizing agents who speak English as a first language. Australia’s Feiz Muhammad may have equally grim potential to incite terrorism,” The Counterterrorism Blog profiles. “The path of a Muslim soldier in this country’s Army is often not an easy one, especially not after the Fort Hood incident,” leads a Post feature on the tribulations of one such. “Supporting the vast majority of peaceful, law-abiding Muslims living in the West could be key to keeping the small minority of Islamist terrorists from gaining more recruits,” a Houston Chronicle op-ed by “a group of Jews and Muslims” maintains. British judges have ruled that action taken to restrict the possible “malign influence” of an imprisoned radical imam dubbed “Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe” was justified and proportionate, The Daily Telegraph tells.

Holy Wars:“I believe that Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to Western values,” Pamela Geller avows in Human Events, while rapping Glenn Beck’s denunciation of anti-Islamist Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders as “a fascist.” A Turkish university is hosting an assembly of international Islamic scholars next week to revisit a fatwa on jihad in Islam dating back seven centuries to the Mongol invasions, Hurriyet reports. “Just as social networking and online video sites have boomed with the general online community, they’ve become popular as tools for those spreading hate and fear,” CNET News has the “Digital Terrorism and Hate 2010” report finding. “A new research paper has pointed how militaries worldwide could use the Transcendental Meditation . . . as a non-religious and scientifically verified way to prevent war and terrorism,” a Time of India op-ed spotlights.

Sup with the devil with a long spoon: “A few hours after an explosion rocked Times Square, breaking windows and rattling local residents, a group claiming responsibility for the apparent attack issued a short statement through Al Jazeera indicating that their intent was to strike out against the Great Satan and to herald the opening of a new terror-themed restaurant, The Jihad Cafe,” Ridiculopathy reports. “Investigators are also looking into a series of mysterious letters sent to members of Congress that same day. At this point, officials believe the mailings may be somehow connected to the Times Square explosion since the cryptic envelopes reportedly contain fliers advertising the restaurant’s weekly specials. In a grainy video released to the local media and played between commercials during the evening news, restaurant owner Ben Laidin invited New Yorkers to come down to the Jihad Cafe and enjoy their playful mix of Middle Eastern and American cuisine.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

CQ - Behind the Lines for Wednesday, March 24, 2010

By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Uncle Sam under the gun: Weapons violations on federal properties up by 10 percent, while threats against IRS facilities climb 11 percent . . . Look sharp: Illinois cops find 1,600 knives and other weapons at the home of a man given to threatening court officials . . . Troubled waters: Navy warns vessels transiting Yemeni waters that al Qaeda plans seaborne attacks similar to USS Cole suicide-boat bombing. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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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.’ ”

Source: CQ Homeland Security

Khmer Rouge Tribunal vs. Karmic Justice

Image via Wikipedia

By SOPHAL EAR

When my mother — who saved me and four siblings from starvation under the Khmer Rouge in 1976 — passed away in October 2009 at the age of 73, I realized that for her justice delayed had become justice denied. (I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the words “justice delayed is justice denied” had never really sunk in until my mother’s passing.)

As an observant Buddhist, however, my mother probably had the last word. She always said that no matter what happened to the Khmer Rouge leadership in their current lifetime, Karmic justice would prevail in the next: They would be reborn as cockroaches.

I am certain that this belief has helped millions of survivors cope with the reality that, after more than three decades since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, not a single leader has been held to account.

Indeed, Cambodians will largely be yawning when the Khmer Rouge tribunal, known formally as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and jointly organized with the United Nations, issues its first verdict, on the guilt or innocence of Kaing Guek Eav, widely known as Comrade Duch.

The man who headed S-21, a torture center to which an estimated 16,000 people were sent and where less than a dozen survived, confessed his crimes seven years before the tribunal started, saying: “My confession is rather like Saint Paul’s. I’m the chief of sinners.”

Even during the tribunal itself, Duch declared: “To the survivors, I stand by my acknowledgment of all crimes inflicted on you at S-21. I acknowledge them in both the moral and legal context.”

After nine months of testimony and millions of dollars spent, what verdict but guilty can there be when the defendant has made such statements under oath? What purpose has going through the motions served?

Whether the issue is degree of guilt (no one claims Duch was in charge of policy and he has testified that “even though I knew these orders were criminal ... it was a life and death problem for me and my family”) or plain punishment (the maximum sentence is life in prison), each day that has passed is itself an injustice.

Image via Wikipedia

If, after four years and $13 million in contributions to the Cambodian government from Japan, the Europe Commission and others, and $76 million in contributions to the United Nations by more than 21 donors, one guilty verdict is all the tribunal has to show, survivors of the Khmer Rouge may just as well consider justice denied.

Plagued by corruption, the tribunal was essentially hijacked to advance domestic and international agendas. For domestic politicians, the goal was to control the process by placing it in a heavily secured military base some 20 kilometers from Phnom Penh and to reduce its scope by limiting the number of individuals it could indict (five) while currying international favor for addressing, superficially at least, crimes against humanity.

The Cambodian government has even sought to limit the witnesses the tribunal could call to testify under the oft-repeated claim of the threat of another civil war. “If the court wants to charge more former senior Khmer Rouge cadres, [it] must show the reasons to Prime Minister Hun Sen,” the prime minister said, referring to himself in the third person. In any case, the tribunal has no independent means of enforcing its subpoenas without government cooperation.

For many of the foreigners involved, Cambodia served as yet another venue for pushing hybrid models of transitional justice while creating jobs for international civil servants and a stage for foreign lawyers whose careers depend on adding another tribunal to their curriculum vitae. If nothing else, they can pat themselves on the back for showing the Cambodians how justice is done.

But what has happened is the reverse. The tribunal was plagued by corruption, lack of judicial independence and shattered integrity. The appointment of a devout Marxist-Leninist as head of the Victims Unit in May 2009, fully endorsed by the U.N. head of the tribunal, sealed the tribunal’s fate as an international and domestic farce.

Thus, the euphemistically “streamlined” participation of about 4,000 “Civil Parties” (tribunal-recognized victims, including me) who shall be represented in court by only two “civil party lead co-lawyers” (with as yet undefined internal procedures of accountability and selection) imposed by the tribunal on Feb. 9, 2010, came as no surprise.

When I filed my civil complaint in 2008, I was required to outline what compensation I wanted. When I said I didn’t want any compensation and that this isn’t about money, it’s about justice for the past and accountability for the future, you could have heard a pin drop. I should have said that I would like my father and brother back; no amount of compensation can do that.

Justice in that sense is meaningless, but my hope was that in the not-too-distant future the next Pol Pot might have to think twice about genocide.

A truth commission would have been a marked contrast to the combative style of the current tribunal, which has seen denials by anyone potentially indictable and even those ready to confess. Indeed, as South Africa’s experience has shown, truth commissions can work under the right circumstances.

But I doubt the circumstances were ever right in Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge had a sense of irony when they created a Ministry of Truth. Ever since then, the first casualty of Cambodian politics has been truth.

Lost in all this are those very Cambodians for whom the tribunal was supposed to enact international standards of justice and be a cathartic experience. Instead, the tribunal has been corrosive. Jaded from a failed 1993 U.N. exercise in democracy that led inexorably toward authoritarianism, Cambodians have learned their lesson: Don’t believe in international promises; they are not kept.

Sophal Ear is an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He is writing a book on the unintended consequences of foreign aid in Cambodia.

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How Privacy Vanishes Online, a Bit at a Time

By STEVE LOHR

If a stranger came up to you on the street, would you give him your name, Social Security number and e-mail address?

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Ross Mantle for The New York Times

Alessandro Acquisti mined Web data to successfully predict Social Security numbers.

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Probably not.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

“Technology has rendered the conventional definition of personally identifiable information obsolete,” said Maneesha Mithal, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division. “You can find out who an individual is without it.”

In a class project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that received some attention last year, Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook profiles of students, including links to friends who said they were gay. The pair was able to predict, with 78 percent accuracy, whether a profile belonged to a gay male.

So far, this type of powerful data mining, which relies on sophisticated statistical correlations, is mostly in the realm of university researchers, not identity thieves and marketers.

But the F.T.C. is worried that rules to protect privacy have not kept up with technology. The agency is convening on Wednesday the third of three workshops on the issue.

Its concerns are hardly far-fetched. Last fall, Netflix awarded $1 million to a team of statisticians and computer scientists who won a three-year contest to analyze the movie rental history of 500,000 subscribers and improve the predictive accuracy of Netflix’s recommendation software by at least 10 percent.

On Friday, Netflix said that it was shelving plans for a second contest — bowing to privacy concerns raised by the F.T.C. and a private litigant. In 2008, a pair of researchers at the University of Texas showed that the customer data released for that first contest, despite being stripped of names and other direct identifying information, could often be “de-anonymized” by statistically analyzing an individual’s distinctive pattern of movie ratings and recommendations.

In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual’s actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet.

You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing.

“Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,” said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. “In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.”

Collected together, the pool of information about each individual can form a distinctive “social signature,” researchers say.

The power of computers to identify people from social patterns alone was demonstrated last year in a study by the same pair of researchers that cracked Netflix’s anonymous database: Vitaly Shmatikov, an associate professor of computer science at the University of Texas, and Arvind Narayanan, now a researcher at Stanford University.

By examining correlations between various online accounts, the scientists showed that they could identify more than 30 percent of the users of both Twitter, the microblogging service, and Flickr, an online photo-sharing service, even though the accounts had been stripped of identifying information like account names and e-mail addresses.

“When you link these large data sets together, a small slice of our behavior and the structure of our social networks can be identifying,” Mr. Shmatikov said.

Even more unnerving to privacy advocates is the work of two researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. In a paper published last year, Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported that they could accurately predict the full, nine-digit Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003 — nearly five million individuals.

Social Security numbers are prized by identity thieves because they are used both as identifiers and to authenticate banking, credit card and other transactions.

The Carnegie Mellon researchers used publicly available information from many sources, including profiles on social networks, to narrow their search for two pieces of data crucial to identifying people — birthdates and city or state of birth.

That helped them figure out the first three digits of each Social Security number, which the government had assigned by location. The remaining six digits had been assigned through methods the government didn’t disclose, although they were related to when the person applied for the number. The researchers used projections about those applications as well as other public data, like the Social Security numbers of dead people, and then ran repeated cycles of statistical correlation and inference to partly re-engineer the government’s number-assignment system.

To be sure, the work by Mr. Acquisti and Mr. Gross suggests a potential, not actual, risk. But unpublished research by them explores how criminals could use similar techniques for large-scale identity-theft schemes.

More generally, privacy advocates worry that the new frontiers of data collection, brokering and mining, are largely unregulated. They fear “online redlining,” where products and services are offered to some consumers and not others based on statistical inferences and predictions about individuals and their behavior.

The F.T.C. and Congress are weighing steps like tighter industry requirements and the creation of a “do not track” list, similar to the federal “do not call” list, to stop online monitoring.

But Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies social networks, is skeptical that rules will have much impact. His advice: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

Short Hops, Low Fares, Around Asia

By MATT GROSS

Frank Pinckers for NYT, Ahmad Yusni, via European Pressphoto Agency, Stuart Isett for NYT Malaysia-based Air Asia flies to major tourist destinations like Bali and Siem Reap.

A long, long time ago — way back in the mid-1990s — when I was living in Southeast Asia, getting around the region was a frustrating process. If I wanted to visit Cambodia, I’d take a bus from wherever I happened to be — usually Bangkok or Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam — and though it never cost more than $6, the daylong ordeal was always so painful I swore I’d never do it again. Then, a few months later, I’d do it again.

Sure, there were flights, but a round-trip to Phnom Penh, the capital, or to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat, could cost $200, more than I made in a week back then. Once, I even flew to Taiwan, a nearly $500 expense. How I covered it I don’t remember.

Today, however, flights within Asia can cost as little as a long-haul bus, thanks to the well-established network of low-cost carriers — or L.C.C.’s — that stretches from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Like their European counterparts, these are generally no-frills experiences, so don’t expect a pillow, a free beverage or a guaranteed window seat in the exit row. But since you’re spending about $50 to get from, say, Mumbai to Kozhikode (it’s in India’s Kerala state) on JetLite, you can’t really complain.

Okay, maybe you can complain a little — about the booking process. In general, it’s fairly simple and very familiar: Go to an individual airline’s Web site, punch in your dates and destination, keep an eye out for hidden fees including luggage and taxes, which can cost as much as the base fare, and pay with a credit card. So far, so good.

The problem is that with dozens of airlines now serving Asia — and often competing with so-called legacy airlines on many routes — booking an L.C.C. flight can be a dizzying, laborious process. Some airlines fly domestic only, like Nok Air (Thailand), Jeju Air (Korea) and Air Do (Japan). Others fly only internationally, like Viva Macau (which connects Macao to Japan, Indonesia, Australia and elsewhere). And others, like Malaysia-based Air Asia, do both, connecting hubs like Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Hong Kong with little-known locales like Bintulu, Sandakan and Tawau in Malaysia.

Many have silly names like IndiGo, but as I learned while flying low-cost carriers around Europe in 2007, sometimes the silliest have the best service. And a handful, like Jeju Air and Air Do, don’t provide full English versions of their Web sites. I presume they’re passing the translation savings on to the consumer.

There is, unfortunately, no all-in-one, perfect meta-search engine that will calculate and let you book a low-cost route around Asia. But, fortunately, there is a two-step process that can help ensure that you find the best route at the best price.

The first thing to do is get the lay of the L.C.C. land. Where can you actually fly to? And which airlines will take you there?

A trio of Web sites — WhichBudget.com, FlyBudget.com and FlyLowCostAirlines.org — aims to answer exactly these questions. They all do almost exactly the same thing: Enter one location (anywhere in the world, not just Asia), and they’ll tell you which low-cost carriers fly directly from there, and the various destinations. That’s it! It seems like a simple thing, but with low-cost carriers adding and deleting routes throughout the world, it’s not.

So, from Kuala Lumpur, according to WhichBudget: Air Asia flies to Dhaka, Bangladesh; Shenzhen, China; Vientiane, Laos; and dozens of other places; Cebu Pacific flies to 15 destinations in the Philippines; Tiger Airways goes to Vietnam and Perth, Australia; Lion Air flies to Jakarta. For those with a low budget but high sense of adventure, the beauty here is seeing all the places that you can possibly get to cheaply.

Which should you use? I like WhichBudget’s interface best, while FlyBudget seems to miss out on some of the more obvious routes. Ultimately, they’re all very similar, and you’ll wind up using whichever you’re most comfortable with.

The one thing you won’t use them for is searching timetables and airfares and booking flights. They don’t do that at all.

But don’t go running to Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak or Vayama. The standbys don’t usually search the Asian low-cost-carrier routes. Even ITASoftware.com, which is supposed to be plugged into airline booking systems better than any other site, doesn’t see Air Asia.

Instead, visit SkyScanner.net, Momondo.com or WeGo.com, all of which let you comparison-shop by route and price, and among airlines both low-cost and traditional. Even though the companies are scattered all over the world (SkyScanner in Scotland and Poland; Momondo in Denmark; WeGo in Singapore), they’re all fairly similar with regard to design and functionality. Indeed, they probably look a lot like the travel booking site you already use.

But these sites are far more aware of the low-cost-carrier world, and routinely find fares that traditional booking sites don’t. For a round-trip flight to Taipei from Bangkok, for example, all three sites recently turned up a result from Air Asia for around $190 (Momondo had it for $185), which is a lot better than what I spent in 1997 — and a lot better than the $289 KLM flight turned up by Kayak and Expedia. Even the Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh route was a better deal — about $100 now — although it’s served by the same carrier as ever, Vietnam Airlines.

At the same time, none of these search engines is perfect, especially when it comes to finding indirect or unorthodox bookings. If, say, you wanted to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul, Momondo and WeGo suggest a nonstop flight on Malaysia Airlines for $360, and SkyScanner wants you to spend $464 to fly Air China to Pusan, a three-and-a-half-hour train ride south of Seoul.

But according to WhichBudget, Asian low-cost carriers connect Malaysia and South Korea through four locations: Bangkok and Cebu, Kalibo and Manila in the Philippines. By booking multiple legs with, say, Cebu Pacific, you’d spend roughly $250. And though it might mean a lengthy layover, you’d save more than $100, a sum that can go a long way in many parts of Asia.

So, the short version: Check WhichBudget.com to get a sense of who goes where. Then search SkyScanner and Momondo for the flight itself. If they fail to turn up a route that you know exists, go right to the airline’s own Web site.

Of course, travelers should remember that low-cost airlines are more likely to tack on fees for things that traditional airlines include automatically, like checking baggage and offering snacks. Although the number of traditional airlines that still offer these freebies is speedily dwindling to zero.

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CQ - Behind the Lines, Wednesday, March 17, 2010

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By David C. Morrison, Special to Congressional Quarterly

Three dead in Juarez: "The most imminent and certainly dangerous war threatening Americans today finally made its way home" . . . Department of reasonable questions: Could parachute-wearing bears sniff out Osama bin Laden? Just ask the Pentagon . . . OK, everyone strip: O'Hare TSA chief predicts all boarding airline passengers will eventually be required to undergo a full-body scan. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage.

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“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.”

Source: CQ Homeland Security