Links of Interest
December 18, 2010
November 27, 2010
November 26, 2010
DHS Inspector General admits screener training needs improvement
This report “addresses the strengths and weaknesses of some aspects of the Transportation Security Administration's [TSA] management of its screening workforce training program. It is based on interviews with employees and officials of relevant agencies and institutions, direct observations, and a review of applicable documents.” The OIG makes four recommendations that would improve TSA’s management of its screening workforce training program.
Two reports on the role of the military in the Americas
Abused and Afraid in Ciudad Juarez: An Analysis of Human Rights Violations by the Military in Mexico:
This report “focuses on human rights violations -- including forced disappearances, torture and arbitrary detentions -- that have been committed by the Mexican government’s security forces, mainly the Mexican military, in the context of the counter-drug efforts in the country. The failure to hold soldiers responsible for the violations they commit leads to more abuses, weakens citizen trust, and undermines the population’s willingness to collaborate in the struggle against any type of crime."
Preach What You Practice: The Separation of Military and Police Roles in the Americas
This report U.S. practices that encourage Latin America’s armed forces to take on internal security roles that the U.S. military cannot legally play at home. It looks at the U.S. experience with Posse Comitatus, Latin America’s history of civil-military relations, and the United States’ tendency to help the region’s militaries take on internal security roles. It then provides “recommendations for Latin American governments seeking to protect their populations while at the same time consolidating their democracies; for the executive and legislative-branch architects of U.S. policy toward Latin America; and for the United States at home, as it seeks to secure its citizens and borders against 21st century threats.”
October 10, 2009
President Obama is raising more doubts than ever on the Democratic left about his goals and policies, even though liberals provided some of the most passionate support for his election. If the doubts intensify, they could jeopardize Obama's ability to negotiate a grand compromise on healthcare and eventually undermine his ability to move his larger agenda through Congress.
Forget about early retirement. Most Americans now plan to stay employed as long as they are able to work or can hold on to a job. A recent Bankrate, Inc. and Princeton Survey Research Associates International phone survey of 1,003 adults age 18 or older conduced in September found that 75 percent of Americans plan to work as long as they can because they enjoy work (39 percent), need the money (32 percent), or for both reasons.
A teenager trying to get into his apartment after school is confronted by police. A man leaving his workplace chooses a different route back home to avoid officers who roam a particular street. These and hundreds of thousands of other Americans in big cities have been stopped on the street by police using a law-enforcement practice called stop-and-frisk that alarms civil libertarians but is credited by authorities with helping reduce crime. Police in major U.S. cities stop and question more than a million people each year — a sharply higher number than just a few years ago. Most are black and Hispanic men. Many are frisked, and nearly all are innocent of any crime, according to figures gathered by The Associated Press.
President Barack Obama is prepared to accept some Taliban involvement in Afghanistan's political future and will determine how many more U.S. troops to send to the war based only on keeping al-Qaida at bay, a senior administration official said Thursday.
Terrorism investigators are trying to determine whether suspect Najibullah Zazi sent instructions to associates as he drove from Denver to New York last month, according to law enforcement officials. Such instructions could explain a critical missing piece of the high-profile terrorism case: why authorities could not find actual explosives.
Agency Aims to Outmaneuver Cyber Enemies The burgeoning number of devices, wireless capabilities and social media sites is challenging one of the leading
Economics Seeps Into Intelligence Assessments The worst global economic recession since the Great Depression
is causing repercussions far beyond home foreclosures, skyrocketing
fuel prices and lost jobs. In the intelligence realm, analysts find
themselves considering its ramifications on politics, governments and
security. Even cyberspace, an environment that is tenuously secure at
best, may be feeling the effects of a stagnant economy as
organizations—both public and private—put off investments in both
security upgrades and research. According to a senior
National Park Service History Today, roughly 60% of the 391 park areas administered by the National Park Service have been set aside as symbols and evidence of our history and prehistory. Many of our natural parks contain historic places that represent important aspects of that history. Collectively, these places present an American history textbook, a textbook that educates us about the people, events, buildings, objects, landscapes, and artifacts of the American past and about the aspirations and actions that produced those tangible survivors. The National Park Service's history web site represents varying aspects of this history.
Congressional Oversight Panel Releases Assessment of Foreclosure Mitigation Efforts The Congressional Oversight Panel today released its October oversight report, "An Assessment of Foreclosure Mitigation Efforts after Six Months." The Panel expresses concern about the limited scope and scale of the Making Home Affordable program and questions whether Treasury's strategy will lead to permanent mortgage modifications for many homeowners.
Mexican drug trafficking organizations (cartels) are a pervasive organized crime threat to the United States, according to the Department of Justice’s 2009 National Drug Threat Assessment. The cartels use firearms trafficked from the United States – primarily from the Southwest border states of Texas, California, Arizona, and to a lesser extent, New Mexico – in their lucrative drug trafficking operations. Project Gunrunner is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) national initiative to reduce firearms trafficking to Mexico and associated violence along the Southwest border."
September 26, 2009
A little reading for the mmorning
Air Force on Guard for Terrorist Plots Against Domestic Drone Bases Taliban and al-Qaida militants targeted by U.S. unmanned aircraft may attempt to retaliate against bases in Nevada and Arizona where the pilots remotely control the drones, said an Air Force official. Col. Jeff Eggers, Air Force director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance innovations, said those being targeted by unmanned aircraft have already struck back at the bases in the theaters of operation where the drones land and takeoff. This usually comes in the form of mortar attacks. But officials also fear that militants may seek revenge on U.S. forces by making direct attacks on bases located in the United States, where the operators fly the unmanned aerial vehicles and launch the missiles that kill militants.
The Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management (DIEM) DIEM is comprised of 19 universities and partners and is currently engaged in 21 research projects within four primary research areas – 1) Coastal Hazard Modeling; 2) Engineering to Enhance the Resilience of the Built and Natural Environment; 3) Disaster Response and Social Resilience; and 4) Planning for Resilience
EMP Attack Would Send America into a Dark Age “If a nuclear device designed to emit EMP were exploded 250 to 300 miles up over the middle of the country, it would disable the electronics in the entire United States,” says Nordling, president and CEO of Minneapolis-based Emprimus. “That would disable the entire electric grid. It would disable communications, it would disable fuel manufacturing and production, it would disable hospitals and medicines, it would disable 911 call centers.”
Making Up a Sport Helps Folks Regain Their Mojo
IWS - The Information Warfare Site is an online resource that aims to stimulate debate on a variety of issues involving information security, information operations, computer network operations, homeland security and more. It is the aim of the site to develop a special emphasis on offensive and defensive information operations.
Rotten Tomato's picks for 100 worst movies of the last decade
Spate of terrorism arrests not connected, analysts say Five terrorism cases in five states not connected, CNN analysts say Arrests in Colorado, New York, Texas, Illinois, North Carolina called "happenstance" Jordanian accused in Dallas bomb plot goes to court Long before authorities arrested Smadi, however, they were following his Internet discussions, according to a court affidavit. "Smadi was discovered by the FBI within an online group of extremists," the affidavit says. "Among many others in the group who espoused and endorsed violence, Smadi stood out based on his vehement intention to actually conduct terror attacks in the United States." A would-be terrorist was arrested in Springfield, Illinois, for allegedly attempting to detonate a truck bomb to blow up a federal building and kill its occupants, officials said Thursday.
By about 2020, he says, our entire life histories will be online and searchable. Location-aware smartphones and inexpensive digital memory storage in the "cloud" of the Internet make the transition possible and inevitable. No one will have to fret about storing the details of their lives in their heads anymore. We'll have computers for that. And this revolution will "change what it means to be human," he writes.
The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at
Google whose
singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and
out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should
be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a
product. We help and consult other engineering teams within Google on how to
"liberate" their products.
Slogan hailing Stalin returns to metro station, draws scorn Two sentences inscribed above the refurbished entrance hall of Moscow's Kurskaya metro station are causing great agitation for survivors of Russian labor camps.Yuri Fidelgoldsh, who had five ribs removed after imprisonment six decades ago, is one of the offended survivors.
Some doubt hand washing stops H1N1 According to some experts, you can wash your hands all you want, and it won't do much to stop the spread of influenza, including the H1N1 variety. "Washing hands really is wonderful for preventing many diseases, such as the common cold, but it's not very helpful to prevent influenza," said Arthur Reingold, professor of epidemiology at the University of California-Berkeley.
WHO: Very few Tamiflu-resistant swine flu cases The World Health Organization says 28 swine
flu patients worldwide had viruses resistant to Tamiflu, but another
antiviral still worked. WHO says patients with very weak immune systems
are at higher risk of developing drug-resistant viruses. Cases of
resistance have also arisen in people who preventively took Tamiflu to
avoid getting sick. Investors look for stocks that could gain from swine flu
We're All Wine Critics Now How the Internet has democratized drinking.
August 22, 2009
July 10, 2009
Dengue Fever a Looming Threat in the United States
Two types of mosquitoes capable of transmitting the dengue fever virus are invading Southern and Mid-Atlantic states, creating conditions more favorable for an outbreak, according to a report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Areas of the United States previously inhospitable to the disease now support populations of mosquitoes capable of carrying the virus — a problem that may worsen with global warming. An estimated 173.5 million Americans live in counties that now contain one or both of the mosquito species.
June 29, 2009
NASA Regional Planetary Image Facility
The Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (CEPS) at the National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution houses a NASA-supported Regional Planetary Image Facility. The purpose of the image facility is to act as a reference library providing planetary science researchers with access to the extensive collection of image data obtained from planetary missions. The Planetary Image Facility houses over 300,000 photographs and images of the planets and their satellites. Cartographic products generated from these images are also available. Earth-looking photographs from early manned missions and from the Center's extensive collection of space shuttle photographs, as well as selected images from LANDSAT and other remote sensing experiments, are used for research in comparative planetology.
Research Strategy: 7 Steps (via Cornell University)
The following seven steps outline a simple and effective strategy for finding information for a research paper and documenting the sources you find. Depending on your topic and your familiarity with the library, you may need to rearrange or recycle these steps
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