The War on Terror will never end. Not because we can never actually defeat a concept like "Terror," not because we haven't been able to actually find and kill Osama bin Laden, not because we've let ourselves get distracted in Iraq -- but because the War on Terror is just so darned profitable. Everyone, it appears, has figured out a clever way to hold their hand out to the federal slop bucket.

In mid-2003, the Department of Homeland Security compiled a list of 160 potential terrorist targets, triggering intense efforts by representatives, senators and their constituents to find potential targets in their districts that might require protection and therefore be eligible for federal funding. The result? Widened definitions and blurrier categories of potential targets and mushrooming increases in the infrastructure and assets deemed worthy of protection. By late 2003, the list had increased more than tenfold to 1,849; by 2004 it had grown to 28,364; by 2005 it mushroomed to 77,069; and by 2006 it was approximately 300,000.
 

Across the country, hundreds of interest groups recast their traditional objectives and funding proposals to reflect the new imperatives of the new war. The National Rifle Association declared that the War on Terror means more Americans should own firearms to defend against terrorists. The gun control lobby argued that fighting the War on Terror means passing stricter gun control laws to keep assault weapons out of the hands of terrorists. Schools of veterinary medicine called for quadrupling funding to train veterinarians to defend the country against terrorists using foot-and-mouth disease to decimate cattle herds. Pharmacists advocated the creation of pharmaceutical SWAT teams to respond quickly with appropriate drugs to the victims of terrorist attacks.
 

According to a 2005 report by the Small Business Administration (SBA) inspector general, 85 percent of the businesses granted low-interest SBA counterterrorism loans failed to establish their eligibility. The SBA authorized 7,000 loans worth more than $3 billion, including $22 million in loans to Dunkin’ Donuts franchises in nine states.

Sort of like using the "Sarbanes-Oxley" stick to justify IT spending on all sorts of activities that we've always wanted but could never justify on their merits, the WoT has become the source of endless justifications for spending money on anti/counterterrorism measures. And it's better than the Cold War, because they may be among us even now. 

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (3) · Pings (0) · TR/G

So, somewhere out there, my name has gotten onto a government watch list. Not me, mind you -- just my name. Which means that, about half the time (and, no, using my middle initial doesn't always help), I have to check in at the counter rather than using a kiosk or the Internet. There then ensues endless typing of info from my Drivers License so that the TSA Mothership can declare me not to be an Enemy of the State (today).

Then I heard a news blurb on NPR driving home yesterday that indicated that Homeland Security might be willing to do something about it -- essentially by letting folks key in their birth date online or at kiosks to (somehow) prove they are who they are.

Each airline will now be able to create a system to verify and securely store a passenger’s date of birth to clear up watch list misidentifications. By voluntarily providing this limited biographical data to an airline and verifying that information once at the ticket counter, travelers that were previously inconvenienced on every trip will now be able to check-in online or at remote kiosks.

“Hassles due to misidentification and the resulting necessity to stand in line to check in at the ticket counter is consistently among the deepest – and most valid – complaints of the traveling public,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “Thousands of passengers are inconvenienced each day, and this change should provide a way to eliminate the vast majority of these situations. This is good for travelers and for security, because as we make the checkpoint environment calmer, it becomes easier to spot individuals with hostile intent.”

Um ... not sure how that Proves I'm a Nice Guy and all that. I mean, if I were Dave Hill, Secret Naughty Terrorist, I could find out Dave Hill, Nice Guy's birthday without too much difficulty and get around the system. Right?

Oops. I've said too much. 

The program is currently voluntary with the airlines -- and it appears that the airlines themselves will each have to "verify" me (i.e., see my photo ID once to prove my DoB, and keep the info on record), so DH-IMM will likely have to keep flashing his drivers license for some time to come.

More:
New US airport security measures announced
New technology, rules aim to ease air travel aggravation - CNN.com
Changes to the Terrorist Watch List - WMAR ABC2 News Baltimore Maryland 

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (2) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Um ... what do you think would happen to you if you tried to sneak a gun past security at the TSA checkpoint in Denver? Well, apparently, if you've got a yen to do so, you just need to be sure you hire on with the TSA before you do it.

A Transportation Security Administration worker who brought a gun through an X-ray machine at Denver International Airport is back on the job. A FOX 31 investigation reveals that Alvin Crabtree got to keep his job as a screener at DIA, despite the incident.

Airport and Denver Police documents show the incident happened on the morning of November 23, 2007. Another screener saw an “unloaded firearm” in Crabtree’s bag as he reported for his shift at the “A-Bridge” checkpoint.

Airport documents show that the security office suspended Crabtree’s badge for 30 days as a result of the incident, but a TSA spokeswoman cited privacy rules when asked if Crabtree received any formal punishment.

You mean "formal punishment" as in being thrown in jail? Losing his job? Something like that? Evidently not. 

I mean, not that being suspended from your job for a month is trivial, but, heck if you or I tried doing that, as Cory Doctorow puts it, it would "land any of the rest of us in Gitmo for a decade's worth of stress-positioning."

To which I would also add that the TSA seems to be a lot more particular about their employees' privacy than about ours.

(via Doyce)

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (2) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Sometimes the government has to keep secrets. There are certain operations of, yes, national security that have to be kept under wraps, at least for a time.

But there is nothing so addictive as secrecy, especially when coupled with power, and keeping things secret because otherwise the bad guys will find out too soon all too easily turns into keeping things secret for the public's own good, which in turn becomes keeping things secret for the good of the secret-makers.

The Bush Administration has time and again used the first excuse, when it's been all too clear that, at best, they really have #2 in mind, if not #3. Their mantra of "Trust us, or else the Terrorists will win" rang hollow every early on, and now it would be laughable if the consequences were not so grave.

Now the Senate has taken up S.2533, the State Secrets Protection Act, which basically provides judicial oversight when the executive branch seeks to invoke "state secrets" as a reason to suppress information or stop judicial proceedings. 

Filed under :: Homeland Security :: Politics & Law
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (2) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Okay, not only did the DoJ claim it was okay to torture folks if the President said to do it, someone at the EFF spotted a footnote in the original memo.

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). [emphasis added] 

That memo hasn't yet been released (and it's not clear whether it's ever been rescinded).

Now, wait ... the Fourth Amendment? Which one's that? I get so confused by all those silly Constitutional protections ... 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Oh, that Fourth Amendment.

In other words, if the Administration asserts (whether it believes it or not) that something is a "domestic military operation," then it can search (including wiretap) anyone or anything to its heart's content. It can also take whatever the heck it wants. There's no Constitutional protection against it. Or so said the Dept of Justice.

But that's talking about "military operations," right? Like, army men and all that, in case of a national emergency, right? Well, what the Administration deems to be a "domestic military operation" is a bit broader than that.

In 2006, the Department of Justice has asserted that "that warrantless communications intelligence targeted at the enemy in time of armed conflict is a traditional and fundamental incident of the use of military force authorized by the AUMF." The DOJ also asserted that "the NSA activities fit squarely within the sweeping terms of the AUMF. The use of signals intelligence to identify and pinpoint the enemy is a traditional component of wartime military operations." As the DOJ sees it, "In the present conflict, unlike in the Korean War, the battlefield was brought to the United States ..." The NSA is part of the Department of Defense.

AUMF is the "Authorized Use of Military Force" passed by Congress in October 2001.

In other words, if the NSA wants to listen to your phone calls, all it has to claim is that it's in pursuit of the "enemy" and it's fully authorized (by the AUMF, according to this memo) to do so. Which is what the Administration has claimed -- only hypothetically, until very recently -- it was doing, and why the telcos that supported it (perhaps because the above-mentioned memo was waved around at them) need immunity (according to the Administration) so that judges aren't in a position to rule on these various assertions of essentially unlimited executive power by the DoJ.

In a government of Laws, not Men, we're not supposed to have to rely on the benignity and goodwill of those in authority to preserve our rights and not do anything evil or tyrannical. That's why we have a Constitution in the first place. If we can only rely on this Administration -- or the next, or the next, or the next -- all being good eggs and not exploiting any of the "We're from the government -- trust us, it's an emergency" security crap that this one has put on the record, we might as well all give up and move to China.

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (3) · Pings (0) · TR/G

I can't believe March is over. Yeesh.

1. Wiki Woman - An article on the Wikipedia wars on both Obama and Clinton's pages.
2. Most Awesomely Bad Military Patches 10 | Danger Room from Wired.com - Tenth in a series of stunningly improper / un-PC / goofy "morale patches" for various military organizations. This page has a list of the previous entries. I don't know whether to be appalled or to giggle or both.
3. Triviagasm: Far Out SciFi Worlds of Sid and Marty Krofft - I loved the Kroft stuff as a kid. Well, some of them. I was a big Bugaloos fan and Lidsville follower, And, of course, Land of the Lost rocked. Most of the others, though, I never got into.
4. Writing for Firefly and Battlestar - From the only person who did both, Jane Espenson.
5. Exchange: HBO's 'John Adams' (Parts 1 and 2) - A discussion between historians about the mini-series. I'm going to revisit this once I've read the whole thing.
6. Commentary: Inside the Twisted Mind of the Security Professional - A Bruce Schneier discussion of how security professionals see things differently -- and why maybe we should (sometimes) do the same.
7. Pulp of the Day - A pulp magazine cover a day -- complete with caption contest. Cool.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Elections 2008 :: Homeland Security :: Media :: Media - TV :: Potpourri
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (5) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Much (appropriate) blogosphere and news brouhaha (e.g., here, here) over a woman who was forced to remove her nipple piercings (which required pliers to do so) before she was allowed past an airport TSA checkpoint. Regardless of how you feel (or cringe) at the concept of nipple rings, the idea that they are somehow taboo on an airplane (even given the extremity of the woman involved offering to show them to a female TSA agent to prove they weren't a threat, rather than having to remove them) seems extreme.

Hamlin said she was trying to board a flight from Lubbock to Dallas on Feb. 24 when she was scanned by a Transportation Security Administration agent after passing through a larger metal detector without problems. The female TSA agent used a handheld detector that beeped when it passed in front of Hamlin's chest, the Dallas-area resident said.

Hamlin said she told the woman that she was wearing nipple piercings. The female agent then called over her male colleagues, one of whom said she would have to remove the body piercings, Hamlin claimed.

Hamlin said she could not remove them and asked if she could instead display her pierced breasts in private to the female agent. But several other male officers told her she could not board her flight until the jewelry was removed, she said.

She was taken behind a curtain and managed to remove one bar-shaped nipple piercing but had trouble with the second, a ring. "Still crying, she informed the TSA officer that she could not remove it without the help of pliers, and the officer gave a pair to her," said Hamlin's attorney, Gloria Allred, reading from a letter she sent Thursday to the director of the TSA's Office of Civil Rights and Liberties. Allred is a well-known Los Angeles lawyer who often represents high-profile claims.

She said she heard male TSA agents snickering as she took out the ring. She was scanned again and was allowed to board even though she still was wearing a belly button ring.

Initially, the TSA took the standard line that Anything That Alarms the Security Folks is Per Se Dangerous and Must Be Resolved.

If an alarm does sound, "until that is resolved, we're not going to let them go through the checkpoint, no matter what they're wearing or where they're wearing it," said TSA spokesman Dwayne Baird in Salt Lake City.

People routinely pass through security wearing wedding rings without problems and it might take a larger bit of metal to trigger an alarm, Baird said. "I'd be really curious to know what this woman had in her nipples," he said. "Sometimes they have a chain between their nipples, or a chain between their nipples and their belly button. It would have to be made of heavy metal to be detected."

Transportation Security employees are required to check anything that raises concerns at checkpoints, Baird said. "No matter what it is, if it's something that unduly alarms people or sets off the sensors they must check it," Baird said. "But I've never heard of any of our people having anyone remove something that sounds as small as a nipple ring."

Allred said celebrity Nicole Richie had her breasts inspected by security at an airport because of her nipple rings several years ago. Baird said he was not aware of the Richie incident either.

The TSA, though, has gotten a bit more publicity-savvy these days, running, for example, their own blog. At which site, the incident has been addressed (or at least acknowledged), leading to the following official statement -- which is about as "y'know, we really goofed up on this and we're sorry" an admission as one could ever hope for from the TSA, or any government agency:

TSA has reviewed the circumstances related to the screening of a passenger with body piercings that occurred recently in Lubbock, Texas. It appears that the Transportation Security Officers involved properly followed procedures in that incident. They rightly insisted that the alarm that was raised be resolved. TSA supports the thoroughness of the Officers involved as they were acting to protect the passengers and crews of the flights departing Lubbock that day.

TSA has reviewed the procedures themselves and agrees that they need to be changed. In the future TSA will inform passengers that they have the option to resolve the alarm through a visual inspection of the article in lieu of removing the item in question. TSA acknowledges that our procedures caused difficulty for the passenger involved and regrets the situation in which she found herself. We appreciate her raising awareness on this issue and we are changing the procedures to ensure that this does not happen again.

Which actually says, "The folks involve did as they were instructed to do, but maybe the instructions weren't the right ones, so we're going to change them." Which isn't terribly satisfying, and is still more than a bit goofy (follow the comments in the blog entry for reasons why) -- but is, at least, a somewhat positive sign.

Though how sad is it that such a lukewarm acknowledgment of screwing up is to be considered something all that positive?

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Keen.  A Canadian university is saving money and improving service by tossing its old legacy email and collaboration system in exchange for Google Aps But there's a problem ...

Eighteen months ago, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., had an outdated computer system that was crashing daily and in desperate need of an overhaul. A new installation would have cost more than $1-million and taken months to implement. Google's service, however, took just 30 days to set up, didn't cost the university a penny and gave nearly 8,000 students and faculty leading-edge software, said Michael Pawlowski, Lakehead's vice-president of administration and finance.

U.S.-based Google spotlighted the university as one of the first to adopt its software model of the future, and today Mr. Pawlowski boasts the move was the right thing for Lakehead, saving it hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual operating costs. But he notes one trade-off: The faculty was told not to transmit any private data over the system, including student marks.

It's not some sort of anti-Americanism at work, but a well-founded fear by the faculty that, under the PATRIOT Act and similar legislation, US law enforcement / anti-terror / homeland security types can willy-nilly sift through all their correspondence and research. Not to mention student academic records and grades.

At Lakehead, the deal with Google sparked a backlash. "The [university] did this on the cheap. By getting this free from Google, they gave away our rights," said Tom Puk, past president of Lakehead's faculty association, which filed a grievance against Lakehead administration that's still in arbitration. Professors say the Google deal broke terms of their collective agreement that guarantees members the right to private communications. Mr. Puk says teachers want an in-house system that doesn't let third parties see their e-mails.

Some other organizations are banning Google's innovative tools outright to avoid the prospect of U.S. spooks combing through their data. Security experts say many firms are only just starting to realize the risks they assume by embracing Web-based collaborative tools hosted by a U.S. company, a problem even more acute in Canada where federal privacy rules are at odds with U.S. security measures.

Using their new powers under the Patriot Act, U.S. intelligence officials can scan documents, pick out certain words and create profiles of the authors - a frightening challenge to academic freedom, Mr. Puk said.

For instance, a Lakehead researcher with a Middle Eastern name, researching anthrax or nuclear energy, might find himself denied entry to the United States without ever knowing why. "You would have no idea what they are up to with your information until, perhaps, it is too late," Mr. Puk said. "We don't want to be subject to laws of the Patriot Act."

Seems quite reasonable to me. And, once again, an example of how much US reputation -- and business -- has been damaged by self-inflicted wounds in the "War on Terror."

Filed under :: Geopolitical Brouhaha :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security :: School Daze :: ZT & PC
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (1) · Pings (0) · TR/G

Are you a state agency worried that your state "open government" laws are making it hard to hide stuff from the public, from Freedom of Information Act requests, and from other nosy nellies who have the audacity to keep an eye on what sort of a job you're doing? Easy-peasy -- just work with the Federal Government at a "Fusion" Center, which combines their Super-Secret Federal Government Stuff with your State Stuff ... then push for a law to exempt your Fusion Center State Stuff from any sort of review, FOIA requests, or other state open government rules. The Feds will be glad to help ...

Filed under :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (1) · Pings (0) · TR/G

NY Times coverage, including who did it, and when. Interesting that "training exercises" make it okay to access your relatives' passport files, but not a politician's.

InformationWeek notes that it wasn't a technological breach. The folks doing the peeking had full access rights to do so. Cool! The big gaps were that folks did it with no "need to know," and that their supervisors/management didn't report it up the food chain, and when they did it took way too long to notify the folks whose security was violated.

Meanwhile, Time notes that, right as all this was going on, the Bush Administration was granting access to these files to still more folks, for "counter-terrorism," border security, and anti-fraud (!)  purposes, including "Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Counter-Terrorism Center, 'foreign governments, and entities such as Interpol'" And I'm sure all of them will immediately report any unauthorized use.

What kind of personal information do these Passport Records actually contain? Contrary to what you might expect, the system doesn't have information about your entries into the U.S. (That's in a separate system run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that actually swipes your passport when you come into the country.) The State Department's records do, however, hold every application for a passport and copies of any supporting documents like birth or marriage certificates. That application has your address, Social Security number, phone number, the name and number of your emergency contact and your photograph. The records also have information on any attempts to change the status of your citizenship, which is what employees in the elder Bush Administration were suspected of looking for in Bill Clinton's records in 1992. A search by name or passport number can also dredge up other items that have been attached to the file, such as court orders, arrest warrants, financial reports and even medical reports, according to the public State Department records.

Filed under :: Elections 2008 :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security
Link · Print · Edit · Comments (0) · Pings (0) · TR/G