| Behind the Lines for Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2010 — 3 P.M. Thanks a little: State's European travel alert issued in response to al Qaeda threat reports "was anything but precise," critics complain . . . Chaff from the wheat: For second time in a week, veteran CBP officer on California-Mexico line charged with waving smugglers across the border . . . One nation: Kentucky law proclaiming "reliance upon Almighty God" a bedrock of state homeland security is back on the hot plate. These and other stories lead today's homeland security coverage. --------------------------------- When aviation security is a paramount issue, why is there no permanent U.S. representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization 20 months into the Obama administration, former ambassador Donald T. Bliss wonders in USA Today. How soon TSA restrictions are lifted, such as carry-on limits for gels and liquids, “may depend on the speed of advancements in security technology,” the Los Angeles Times’ Hugo Martin, relatedly, suggests. Feds: Coming Nov. 1, the final phase of TSA’s Secure Flight program will require airlines to collect full name, date of birth and gender from passengers when they book their flights, The Miami Herald’s Hannah Sampson surveys. The State Department travel alert covering Europe, “issued in response to reports of a threat by al Qaeda, was anything but precise,” The New York Times’ Scott Shane assesses. (“Be specific or be quiet,” Warsaw-based Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum chides Foggy Bottom.) For the second time in a week, a veteran CBP officer stands charged with taking bribes for almost a decade to wave drugs and illegals across the border, The San Diego Union-Tribune’s Greg Moran mentions. Extreme prejudice: “If one leader can order the death of any citizen without review by a court — or even releasing a reason or evidence — could there be a more perfect definition of the word ‘dictatorship?’” Thomas R. Eddlem demands in the John Bircherite New American. In President Obama’s view, “not only would the government be within its rights to kill [citizen terrorists such as Anwar al-Awlaki] but that for the sake of national security there can be no . . . accountability for the decision to kill them,” Daniel Larison similarly objects in The American Conservative — and see Philip J. Palin in Homeland Security Watch: “Killing a fellow citizen: Four frames on the present reality of Anwar al-Awlaki.” State and local: The New Mexico-born al-Awlaki, by the way, “left little mark” in Colorado “and relatively few in Fort Collins or Denver remember him,” The Denver Post profiles. A legal battle over once-obscure Kentucky laws proclaiming the commonwealth’s “reliance upon Almighty God” for its security is sucking in Kentucky’s top political figures, The Louisville Courier-Journal recounts. Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, “the NYPD has trained to deal with multiple attacks at the same time and the cops can now quickly access building plans for hotels and other soft targets,” CBS News spotlights. Ex-DHS chief Michael Chertoff, “who co-authored the Patriot Act, will discuss national security at Wellesley College” late this afternoon, The Milford Daily News notes. The Pennsylvania scandal involving a terror threat forecasting firm “has lifted the lid on corruption and waste in the U.S.’s private intelligence industry,” The Guardian surveys. Bid-ness: Facing military criticism, Electronic Arts will eliminate the ability for players of its “Medal of Honor” video game to “fight” as Taliban insurgents against “U.S. forces,” ABC News notes. “High frequency trading can be used as a kind of denial of service attack against financial exchanges. This is clearly of some interest to the cyberwarfare community,” a Counterterrorism Blog contributor comments. Bizzes having taken greater strides to protect supply lines since 9/11, a new study finds that a clear supply chain security strategy is one of the most valuable components of a market plan, Homeland Security Newswire notes. By 2020, India will become one of the largest players in the global homeland security market, Silicon India cites from a recent study — while the Los Angeles Times says Afghanistan has taken steps to end the operations of eight private security firms, including the one formerly known as Blackwater. Bugs ‘n bombs: “Private-sector security experts say the government’s public reports on the Stuxnet worm — the world’s first publicly known cyber-superweapon — often seem to be old news or incomplete,” The Christian Science Monitor spotlights. “Inside a Silicon Valley company’s windowless vault, massive servers silently monitor millions of heads of lettuce,” the L.A. Times leads, in re: field-to-table food security tracking technologies that are increasingly the norm. HHS has released a draft solicitation to the biomedical industry for the creation of centers of innovation for speedy production of advanced medical countermeasures, Homeland Security Today tells. Security guards at the Pilgrim nuke plant in Plymouth, Mass., narrowly averted going out on strike last weekend, a prospect that had aroused some safety and security concerns, The Quincy Patriot-Ledger relates. Close air support: A new lawsuit claims that the city of Atlanta wasn’t playing fair when it turned down a $3.5 million contract to handle security at its Hartsfield-Jackson air hub, the Journal-Constitution recounts. Palm Beach’s airport has revealed a new security device “that some travelers might find a little too revealing,” The South Florida Sun-Sentinel teasingly leads. With stricter security restrictions at San Francisco’s airport, “more fliers are buying food and drink within boarding areas, forcing the eateries outside checkpoints to close down,” the Examiner explains. “A mobile phone application costing less than [$3.20] which tracks the precise location of passenger aircraft in the sky is a serious terrorist threat and should be banned,” The London Daily Mail hears a Minister of Parliament warning. In response to Friday’s bomb blasts in Nigeria’s capital, security has been intensified at Lagos’ airport, This Day relates. Coming and going: The Phoenix P.D. will temporarily shift officers from other areas of the city to increase security along the light rail line and around transit stations, The Arizona Republic reports — while IANS sees security guards deployed on the New Delhi Metro to keep men off coaches now earmarked for women only. The U.S. travel alert for citizens touring across the pond “is a step below a formal warning not to visit Europe, but some experts said it could still hurt a fragile European economy already hit hard by the debt crisis, The Associated Press leads. Undeterred, NBA teams in Europe will go on with their planned preseason activities, The St. Paul Pioneer Press relays — as The Other Paper hears a Columbus (Ohio) Blue Jackets spokesman saying he is “confident” the National Hockey League is taking “all appropriate security measures” as the team heads to Sweden. Courts and rights: When wanna-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad is sentenced today, he will face an 81-year-old female U.S. District Court judge with a reputation for close questioning, The Wall Street Journal profiles — while The New York Daily News sees federal prosecutors winding Shahzad’s watch by airing “chilling footage” of the damage he could have inflicted had his bomb worked. Four accused Bronx synagogue bomb plotters were “ready and willing to attack,” Bloomberg hears prosecutors assuring jurors during yesterday’s final arguments — as the New York Times limns brief “flashes of the defendants’ personalities” that have emerged during the trial. The long-delayed extradition case of a notorious Russian weapons trader accused by Justice of conspiring to arm Colombian terrorists hit another roadblock yesterday, The Christian Science Monitor mentions. Talking . . . er, arguing points: “Following the Iranian president’s doubts on the Sept. 11 event, a top military adviser to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution says the CIA and Mossad were involved in the attacks,” Al Jazeera relays. “It is not al Qaeda that inspires affiliates and radicalizes homegrown terrorists. It is America’s violent policies in the Muslim world,” Sheldon Richman counters in a Hillsboro (Ohio) Times-Gazette retort to DHS’s Janet Napolitano. Angst over the Washington security community’s latest hobby horse, “homegrown terrorism,” needs to be placed in “dispassionate perspective,” Michael Brenner maintains in The Huffington Post. “The damage from [the Iraq] war, including the Islamist terrorism it has stimulated . . . will last far beyond any supposed, or even real, ‘end’ to U.S. combat operations,” ex-CIAer Paul R. Pillar propounds in The National Interest. Trying to solve terrorism with more bombings is like trying to cure lung cancer by smoking more cigarettes, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald growls. Over there: Armed security safeguarding Britain’s Prince Harry has been doubled amid growing fears that he is the main target for a new wave of Islamic and Irish terrorists, News of the World notes. “The Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 caused many anti-terrorism experts to call for radical changes to the way Britain prepares for such an incident,” The Daily Telegraph leads — while ANI relays a warning from two ex-commanders of the Special Air Service that U.K. security forces might be unable to cope with a Mumbai-style assault. Three alleged secessionists are being questioned by Nigerian authorities in connection with the Friday blasts that killed 12 and injured 50 in the nation’s capital, CNN notes. A drone-fired U.S. missile killed eight German Islamists taking shelter in a house in the Waziristan area of Pakistan yesterday, ABC News notes. [Your name here]: “As part of his latest effort to jumpstart the economy in an increasingly volatile political climate, President Obama announced a plan to replace the existing hurricane naming process with a corporate sponsorship program that is expected to add at least $500 million annually to the federal coffers,” CAP News notes. “ ‘It’s a plan that says even in the aftermath of possibly the worst natural disaster to strike an area, we may cry, but, uhh, we’ll cry all the way to the bank,’ Obama said. ‘So when the forecast calls for pain, middle class America won’t be left holding the bag . . . Aww, who am I kidding: Middle class America is always left holding the bag. But at least now the bag will be sponsored.’ Treasury’s Office of Domestic Finance will oversee the application and bidding process, which will begin as soon as a storm is forecast to become a hurricane. Treasury officials acknowledge that the $50 million starting price tag could be a bit steep for all but the largest multinational corporations.” |
CQ Behind the Lines
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