Border Security : Does the border really need Perry’s 1,000 National Guard?

By Robert Lee Maril

Published 31 July 2014

Various solutions to the two and one-half year surge at the border by unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have been proposed by Congress, law enforcement, the public, and politicians with a dog in the fight. The increase in unaccompanied children seeking asylum, however, should be defined less as a border security problem, and more as a refugee problem. At the same time, this newest border dilemma reemphasizes Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform that could calmly address this and other real border issues, all problems with which individual states like Texas have had to contend since 1986.

Various solutions to the two and one-half year surge at the border by unaccompanied children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador have been proposed by Congress, law enforcement, the public, and politicians with a dog in the fight. But lest we forget recent history, Governor Rick Perry’s decision to send 1,000 National Guard men and women to the Texas border should be considered in light of similar attempts. We’ve already seen this supposed solution to gain “operational control” of the Texas border. President George W. Bush tried it in 2006, as did President Barack Obama in 2010. Both turned to the National Guard as a quick and symbolic fix to a broken set of immigration laws(see Robert Lee Maril, “Was/is border National Guard really worth it?” HSNW, 23 January 2012).

The actual performance and utility of the National Guard at the border, however, is highly questionable. First and foremost, these men and women are professional soldiers, not law enforcers. While this point might seem to be mere quibbling, the work of the average Border Patrol Agent is far different than the training our citizen soldiers receive. Border Patrol Agents must be knowledgeable of the language and culture of those they attempt to apprehend, cognizant of immigration law, and familiar with the border terrain. Agents in south Texas say that it takes them at least a year to learn the tricky environment of the Rio Grande River including the slight of hand of both human smugglers and those trafficking in illegal drugs. These are all skills that the National Guard to not have.

According to the GAO, the border deployment from 2006 to 2012 cost $1.35 billion. And in 2012, at a cost of $60 million per year, 300 Guardsmen were permanently assigned to the border after their fellow Guardsmen were sent home. No cost analysis or independent assessment of the performance of the National Guard at the border were ever publicized. It remains problematic whether the bill paid by taxpayer was indeed worth it. 

While some local CBP agents welcomed the National Guard in 2006, as they now do in 2014, the CBP’s institutional judgment should always be reconsidered in light of its own history: it has a wretched record of cost accounting as evidenced by a long list of projects and programs that monumentally failed. Most recent is CBP’s SBI-net that cost the public more than a whopping $1 billion, but failed miserably to achieve its stated objectives.

Equally significant in response to Governor Perry’s announcement that he will send the state’s guardsmen to the border, are the direct comments by south Texas sheriffs. Says Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio, “I really don’t know what they’re going to do.” “I need people who I can hire who know the community, the language and who can help”(Christy Hoppe, “Perry says troops will be ‘force multiplier’ to battle crime; sheriffs say they need deputies, not military,” Dallas News, 21 July 2014).

Hidalgo County Sheriff Eddie Guerra told the McAllen Monitor that the Guard troops can’t make arrests and he didn’t know what their objective would be. “The National Guard — they’re trained in warfare; they’re not trained in law enforcement,” he said. “I need to find out what their actual role is going to be, but I think the money would be better spent giving local law enforcement more funds.”

Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, a Democratic state senator from McAllen, a border community, added that if crime were a reason to call out the National Guard, then based on statistics, the troops would be better sent to Dallas and Houston.

Sheriff Lucio and other sheriffs not based in Austin or Washington, D.C., all note that the influx of unaccompanied children at the border has not resulted in a corresponding increase in crime. This appears to be less a border security issue than a humanitarian crisis. After all, we seem to forget these are children, including infants, who are asking to be arrested at our Mexican border (see Steve Benen, “Perry fails to impress Texas border sheriffs,” MSNBC, 23 July 2014; and Jennifer Medina,  “Most Migrant Children Entering U.S. are now with Relatives, Data Show,” New York Times, 25 July 2014).

So we are left with four essential questions: What exactly are these 1,000 members of the National Guard going to do at the border? Do they have the professional skills to actually help the CPB? How much is it going to cost? At present the bill is $12 million a month for the National Guard, plus $5 million a month for an increase in Texas Department of Public Safety agents reassigned to the border. Governor Perry wants the federal government to help pay (Dan Restrepo and Ann Garcia, The Surge of Unaccompanied Children from Central America: Root Causes and Policy Solutions, Center for American Progress, 24 July 2014).

My own take is that the two and one-half year increase in unaccompanied children seeking asylum should be defined less as a border security problem, more as a refugee problem. At the same time, this newest border dilemma reemphasizes Congress’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform that could calmly address this and other real border issues, all problems with which individual states like Texas have had to contend since 1986.

In the name of border security, will Congress really deport these children who are guilty of nothing but escaping violence in their countries?

Robert Lee Maril, a professor of Sociology at East Carolina University, is the author o f The Fence: National Security, Public Safety, and Illegal Immigration along the U.S.-Mexico Border. He blogs at leemaril.com.

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Infrastructure Protection : Scientists urge making critical infrastructure more resilient to solar storms

Published 31 July 2014

Scientists predict the probability of a massive solar storm striking the Earth in the next decade to be 12 percent. The 23 July 2012 solar storm was pointed away from Earth and blasted safely into space, but had it been directed towards Earth, it would have produced the worst geomagnetic storm in more than four centuries, causing extensive electricity problems that could take years to resolve. Scientists are debating the amount of damage the grid would suffer during a massive solar storm. The U.S. National Academy of Sciencesestimated in 2008 that the damage and disruption could reach up to $2 trillion with a full recovery time between four and ten years.

Scientists predict the probability of a massive solar storm striking the Earth in the next decade to be 12 percent. The 23 July 2012 solar storm was pointed away from Earth and blasted safely into space, but had it been directed towards Earth, it would have produced the worst geomagnetic storm in more than four centuries, causing extensive electricity problems that could take years to resolve.

Should a solar storm be directed at Earth, policy makers and power grid operators would have just a few hours from the first signs until the full fury of the storm to secure critical assets. “The July 2012 solar storm was a shot across the bows for policymakers and space weather professionals,” U.S.solar researchers warned in the journal Space Weather.

According to the Insurance Journal, scientists and power grid operators are debating the amount of damage the grid would suffer during a massive solar storm. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated in 2008 that the damage and disruption could reach up to $2 trillion with a full recovery time between four and ten years. “The loss of electricity would ripple across the social infrastructure with water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on,” according to a study funded by the federal government.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) characterizes severe geomagnetic storms as “high impact, low frequency” (HILF) risks, which tend to be difficult to manage because policymakers must decide how much funds to allocate on reducing a risk that would be devastating but has little chances of occurring. Emerging markets, where electricity and communications systems are supported by outdated equipment, will be the most vulnerable during a solar storm. According to NASA scientist Dr. Tony Phillips, “as society relies more and more on high technology such asGPS, the Internet, satellite communications and smart power grids, we also expose ourselves more and more to the dangers of stormy space weather.”

Measuring the severity of a solar storm depends on the size of the flare, the scale of coronal mass ejection, the speed at which it travels from the Sun to Earth, magnetic flux, time of day, and location of the direct hit. Solar researchers use the disturbance-storm time (Dst) index, recorded in nano-Teslas (nT) to measure how hard Earth’s magnetic field shakes after a solar storm. The more negative Dst becomes, the worse the storm. The worst solar storm on record occurred on 1 September 1859, observed in England by Richard Carrington, after whom the Carrington Event is named. The -850 nT event damaged the new telegraph systems installed in North America and Europe. The next solar storm reported in May 1921 also damaged telegraph services in the West, followed by a March 1989 -589 nT event that blacked out Quebec’s power grid in less than two minutes- the worst impact to date.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory warned in 2010 that older electrical transformers should be replaced or upgraded to withstand the electrical currents from a solar storm. Grid operators already have plans on how to reboot power in the aftermath of a blackout, but they must now plan for repairing damaged assets in the aftermath of a solar storm. Replacing transformers promptly following a solar storm would be nearly impossible. High-voltage transformers are too large and expensive to build and store spare units. “It may take one week to move a 250,000-volt transformer a short distance in major metropolitan areas,” Oak Ridge explained. “Even the distance of a few miles may take an entire weekend, as a number of traffic lights have to be removed and reinstated as the load is moved at snail’s pace in special trailers and the route taken has to be fully surveyed for load-bearing capability by civil engineers.”

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Immigration : Immigration cases clog immigration courts across the country

Published 31 July 2014

The highly publicized mass immigration of Central American children into the United States — roughly 57,000 over a little under a year — many court systems are facing a crisis as the number of judges, lawyers, and juries available cannot keep up with demand. Across the United States, that caseload reached 375,373 trials last month — an average of 1,500 per each of the country’s 243 immigration judges. Some rescheduled cases are being pushed back as late as 2017.

Due to the highly publicized mass immigration of Central American children into the United States — roughly 57,000 over a little under a year — many court systems are facing a crisis as the number of judges, lawyers, and juries available cannot keep up with demand.

As theBaltimore Sun reports, nearly 60 percent of the children which are facing deportation are also arriving into courts without lawyers to represent them. Much of this leads to delayed hearings, which only further compounds the crowding, resources, and time needed for effective processing to occur. Across the United States, that caseload reached 375,373 trials last month — an average of 1,500 per each of the country’s 243 immigration judges. Some rescheduled cases are being pushed back as late as 2017.

“We’re extremely overwhelmed,” said Adonia Simpson, managing attorney for immigration legal services at the Esperanza Center in Baltimore, “The numbers are just off the charts.”

TheSun notes that Maryland is a clear example of the problem that is impacting many states.

Judge Lisa Dornell, serving at the George H. Fallon Federal Building in Baltimore, handled many cases last Monday with children that lacked an attorney.

“What efforts have you made to look for a lawyer?” Dornell, with the help of an interpreter, asked the family of a 15-year old Guatemalan boy. Unsurprisingly, the answer was that they could not afford one, as an immigration lawyer in Maryland could cost anywhere from roughly $3,000 to $10,000.

The Maryland State Bar Association, in the meantime, has decided to make the cases of these minors the focus of their pro bono legal work for the year. They are pledging ten attorneys to the effort. As the paper notes, some of their policies could have implications for other states as well, “Those attorneys may help overcome a quirk in immigration law. Because immigration court is a federal endeavor, immigration lawyer do not need to be licensed in the state where they practice.”

Yet despite much of these efforts, many groups that represent child immigrants say the attorney shortage will remain a serious problem. Megan McKenna, a spokeswoman for Kids in Need of Defense reported that referrals for the new attorneys filled up within minutes.

“We have to limit the number of cases we can take every month in each of our offices,” she said, “Our internal resources have just not risen to this incredible situation.”

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

HOMELAND SECURITY: TERRORISM Threat Trends and Possible Strategies

By Lilly Chapa

More than 800 people, including 107 foreigners, were taken hostage for four days in Aménas, Algeria, on January 16, 2013, by al Qaeda terrorists; 39 hostages were killed. In Boston, Massachusetts, on April 15, 2013, two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon—allegedly planted by two brothers motivated by radical Islamic beliefs; more than 260 people were injured, and three people were killed. In Nairobi, Kenya, September 21, 2013, al Shabaab militants stormed a mall, shooting non-Muslims. More than 200 were injured, with at least 68 killed.

These terrorist attacks top the charts of the incidents that occurred around the world in 2013. Though terrorists still favor traditional methods—explosives and arms—the terrorist threatscape is constantly evolving, and government and security professionals must evolve in how they counter those threats in 2014 and beyond. 

Online. One notable trend that is worth keeping an eye on is terror groups’ use of technologically savvy recruitment methods. Robin McFee, who chairs ASIS International’s Global Terrorism Council, notes how al Qaeda and other extremist groups are leveraging the Internet and video games for recruitment. Extremists are taking to multiplayer networked video games where players can team up—and talk with—anyone in the world.

Sometimes this cyber-radicalization is subtle, like encouraging virtual teammates to fight in the name of a certain ideology, and sometimes it’s more direct, which can be seen in some Internet recruiting forums. Either way, extremist groups are indoctrinating young minds all over the world through online technology. “More and more, cyberspace is being used as a highly effective way of reaching young adults who are susceptible to being indoctrinated,” she says.

Speaking at a panel on online radicalization last year, Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, noted that “As older people, we don’t fully get the idea that you can develop social ties to people online.” And Imam Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, noted at the same event that as far back as 2004, the imams began to realize that the Internet was becoming a mosque for the mosqueless. Webb tries to reach them in a positive way through that same medium.

Collaboration. Another ongoing trend is that of influential terrorist organizations collaborating to carry out attacks, McFee says. This occurs in regions where there is a power vacuum, a large impoverished sector of society, and few opportunities for young men. For example, McFee notes, groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and other small franchises are all thriving in Iran. Combined, these extremist organizations can take advantage of larger numbers and a range of skill sets to train radicalized people to carry out attacks, she says.

Not so alone. Another issue is that of the lone wolf terrorist, a concern because he or she is harder to track or catch if unaffiliated with any group. They are sometimes called self-radicalized, but McFee says it may not be accurate to call them lone wolves or self-radicalized, since they do tend to get their ideas from the major groups in one way or another—which gets back to the impact of online influences. They may find bomb-making materials and inspirational jihadist literature online, for example.

At other times, they are not nearly as alone as they appear at first. For example, the brothers who allegedly carried out the Boston Marathon bombing were initially thought to be working as lone wolves since they had lived in America for 11 years, according to news reports. However, it was later revealed that older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev had spent six months in Russia, where he is believed to have become radicalized and possibly trained.

“These weren’t two kids who watched Bill Nye the Science Guy and decided to cook up something in their backyard,” McFee says. “[Tamerlan] was well trained in sophisticated stuff. They were both good at evading security cameras and other security measures.”

McFee says this type of indoctrination and training will continue to increase because it’s so easy to reach “psychologically susceptible” young people over the Internet. This will lead to an increase in Boston Marathon-type attacks—small pockets of indoctrinated nationals carrying out sophisticated, specific attacks, she says.

Longer-term strategies. Apart from the efforts to counter threats at home via airport checkpoints, border security, and other internal measures, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is trying to preemptively fight transnational crime through programs focused on bolstering the security capacity of partner nations. For example, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the DHS spent approximately $451 million on these programs in 2012 (2013 figures were not available at press time).

They consist of four types of efforts: deploying programs abroad that inhibit people who present a threat to the United States; working with and sharing information with international and federal partners to help counter terrorism; working alongside foreign officials in assessing their own security vulnerabilities; and helping other nations strengthen their security infrastructure through training and consultation.

Although the GAO found that the programs have contributed to fighting terrorism, the agency recommended that the DHS establish clearer priorities and better ways to track whether program spending was directed in ways that were optimal for furthering those priorities.

But 10 years after the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, it may be time to reassess not just how DHS handles some policies but how it’s structured. In anticipation of the second quadrennial homeland security review of the agency (due in December but not out at press time), The Heritage Foundation last year laid out what it saw as major concerns—such as that DHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are still fighting over who should take the lead on intelligence information sharing with state and local law enforcement. It’s time to cede that ground to the DOJ, it said. For example, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) are more established than the DHS’s fusion centers and the dual-tracking of these sometimes competing efforts creates inefficiencies.

The group also calls on DHS to find ways to coordinate work better with state and local law enforcement in intelligence gathering and counterterrorism. Another suggestion is to stop involving the federal government in routine disasters. Instead, it advocates letting the Federal Emergency Management Agency focus (FEMA) resources on preparing for truly catastrophic events, because the federal government still lacks that type of comprehensive plan. 

While advocating that Congress rein in FEMA, The Heritage Foundation calls on legislators to strengthen DHS’s central authority over its component agencies, so that it is not such a weak institution. The group’s paper on the issue says that DHS needs clearer authority to resolve inter-agency conflicts and create strategies that cut across these units. DHS needs the equivalent, it wrote, of what was done for the Department of Defense.

However, preventing attacks isn’t just the government’s battle. Private security operations have a role to play as well, as ASIS members know.

“We have eyes and ears and boots on the ground in places that sworn officers aren’t, like malls and office buildings,” says McFee.

“At the end of the day, security is local. The reason that we minimized the number of deaths in Boston was because law enforcement was working well with fire rescue, hospitals, and the people, and there is tremendous infrastructure there,” she says. “Thanks to that, we were able to save a lot of people. Can that be said if it happened anywhere else? With few exceptions, there’s a big question mark.”

http://www.securitymanagement.com/

BOOK REVIEWS: TERRORISM

Terrorism and Homeland Security, Eighth Edition

By Jonathan R. White; Reviewed by Kevin A. Cassidy

***** Terrorism and Homeland Security, Eighth Edition. By Jonathan R. White. Cengage Learning; cengage.com; 528 pages; $133.95; also available as e-book.

Terrorism expert Jonathan R. White expands on concepts from his previous edition and provides additional thought-provoking ideas in Terrorism and Homeland Security, 8th Edition. Some critics may disagree with how White explains and discusses various terrorism events and organizations, but his ideas are current and his learning objectives throughout the book are widely recognized. The text remains objective and offers a plethora of information on various terrorist organizations, their recruiting methods, and comparisons of the various terrorist groups.

White begins by explaining why terrorism is hard to define and how the term “terrorism” is used and applied throughout history. Designed to introduce criminal justice and other social science students to the field of terrorism and homeland security, the book does more than that. It takes a practical look at how law enforcement agencies, the military, and society view terrorism and the importance of homeland security.

Beginning with Michael Collins and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, White provides detailed accounts of terrorist organizations past and present and offers some history on how these organizations evolved. The book employs charts, pictures, and maps as reference material to support ideas and examples, leading the reader to understand the area of discussion, as well as its significance to other terrorist groups and activities worldwide. White also incorporates discussions on influential terrorist analysts and policy makers, focused on international and domestic threats and how governments deal with the threat of terrorism.

Each chapter includes key terms, discussion questions, marginal side bars, and a self-check question box. These boxes serve a two-fold purpose: encouraging the reader to think critically and analyze what White is discussing, and providing a basis for further discussion inherent to homeland security and terrorism. This new edition has been comprehensively reorganized and will benefit students in criminal justice, security, public administration, and law enforcement.

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Reviewer: Kevin A. Cassidy is director of public safety and risk management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he is also an adjunct professor. He is a member of ASIS International.

http://www.securitymanagement.com/

Reflections on 9-11 Commission Report Address Evolving Threats

By Lilly Chapa

07/29/2014 -

Released in 2004, The 9/11 Commission Report detailed what led to the terrorist attacks and what could be done to make the nation safer. Ten years later, the Bipartisan Policy Center has released a look back on the changes made during the last decade and where the terrorist threat stands today in Reflections on the Tenth Anniversary of The 9/11 Commission Report.

The organization, which works to address challenges facing the nation through dialogue and analysis, interviewed unnamed national security leaders to understand the threat landscape. Findings included concerns over the changing face of terrorism, a lack of cyber readiness, and fragmented oversight of national security programs.

The report acknowledges that the “core” of al Qaeda has been diminished, but its affiliates have dispersed throughout the Middle East and pose a greater threat to more regions than ever before. Terrorist attacks rose by 43 percent worldwidein 2013, according to the report, and the United States still faces an evolving threat from terrorists.

Although the U.S. homeland has not been targeted in recent years, the report acknowledges an increased focus on the American presence overseas, including diplomatic posts, military bases, and American businesses in foreign countries. 

“The absence of another 9/11-style attack does not mean the threat is gone: as 9/11 showed, a period of quiet can be shattered in a moment by a devastating attack,” the report states.

Another concern brought up in the report is the nation’s inability to defend against cyberattacks. Although the threat is not from terrorists, state actors, such as China, Russia, and Iran, have caused damage in the digital world. Chinese hackers have accessed U.S. weapons systems, Iran hacked into Navy computer systems, and a virus originated in Iran left 30,000 computers of a Saudi Arabian oil company inoperable.

Security officials are afraid that these attacks will continue to increase and that terrorist groups will begin to take their attacks to the digital realm.

“A growing chorus of senior national security officials describes the cyber domain as the battlefield of the future,” the report states. “Yet Congress has been unable to pass basic cybersecurity legislation, despite repeated attempts.”

The report emphasizes the importance of informing the American public of this problem to garner more support in bolstering the nation’s cyberdefenses. Cyberattacks are largely affecting private companies and cost the country more than $300 billion in intellectual property theft, and this plunder will harm American competitiveness, depress job creation, and reduce the standard of living.

The report did not hesitate to condemn Congress for being “deeply resistant to needed change.” In the 2004 9/11 Commission Report, authors urged Congress to garner control over the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to curb fragmented congressional oversight of the program.

“Regrettably, the Department of Homeland Security is still being simultaneously overseen by an unwieldy hodgepodge of committees,” the report stated. “In 2004, we remarked with astonishment and alarm that DHS reported to 88 committees and subcommittees of Congress. Incredibly, Congress over the past 10 years has increased this plethora of oversight bodies to 92.”

Lastly, the report raises concerns over “counterterrorism fatigue”—the waning sense of urgency among Americans who believe the terrorist threat is waning.

“One of America’s most pressing challenges as a country is to resist the natural urge to relax our guard after 13 years of a draining counterterrorism struggle,” the report states.

To read the full report, visit the Bipartisan Policy Center Web site

http://www.securitymanagement.com/

NSA's Actions Threaten U.S. Economy and Internet Security, New Report Suggests

By Megan Gates

07/29/2014 -

The U.S. National Security Agency’s (NSA) actions have and will continue to cause “significant damage” to U.S. interests and the global Internet community, the New America Foundation suggests in a new report released Tuesday morning.

Written by New America’s Open Technology Institute, Surveillance Costs: The NSA's Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom, and Cybersecurity details how the NSA has been using a variety of programs and methods to collect metadata on Internet users and engage in a massive surveillance effort that impacts the global Internet community. In the report, the authors move past the debate over trade offs between national security and individual privacy to focus on the overall costs and benefits of the NSA’s programs on the U.S. economy, American foreign policy, and the security of the Internet as a whole.

Direct Economic Costs to American Companies

Since leaks by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden were published about the NSA’s activities, trust in American businesses has decreased. Those facing the “most acute economic fallout” are cloud computing and web hosting services as “nearly 50 percent of the worldwide cloud computing revenue comes from the United States,” the report said. Just weeks after Snowden’s leaks were reported, cloud computing companies—like Dropbox and Amazon—announced they were losing business to foreign competitors.

Additional calculations predict that the cloud computing industry will suffer anywhere from a $22 to $180 billion loss over the next three years because of the NSA’s PRISM program. These losses may already be playing out as a survey of 1,000 global information and communications technology (ICT) decision-makers found that the NSA disclosures “have had a direct impact on how companies around the world think about ICT and cloud computing in particular.”

However, cloud computing isn’t the only market at risk as over the past year numerous American companies “have reported declining sales in overseas markets, loss of customers, and increased competition from non-U.S. services marking themselves as secure alternatives” to U.S. products. Cisco, Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard have all reported decreased sales in China due to the NSA revelations.

Also, U.S. companies are sometimes being left out of business deals because of the NSA disclosures, especially in Germany. Following accusations of spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country said that it would not renew its contract with Verizon because of the NSA spying allegations. Verizon had previously supplied the several German government departments with Internet service.

Economic and Technological Costs

Since the creation of the Internet, countries and activists have expressed concerns with Internet jurisdiction. After the Snowden leaks, more than a dozen countries have introduced or are contemplating data localization laws, “which would prevent or limit information flows,” the report said.

Germany is one of the countries considering such legislation and Merkel has supported the concept to protect against NSA efforts to intercept information. Brazil has proposed similar measures, asking Internet companies to establish local data centers to force them to comply with Brazilian laws, and Greece, Brunei, and Vietnam have also introduced similar proposals.

Additionally, India has considered a policy that would “force companies to maintain part of their IT infrastructure in-country, give local authorities access to the encrypted data on their servers for criminal investigations, and prevent local data from being moved out of the country,” according to the report.

“Until now, most foreign countries accepted America’s comparative advantage in the technology industry, but the threat of NSA surveillance may be the catalyst that pushes countries to invest heavily in technology sectors that they would otherwise have left to the United States, including cloud computing and data storage,” the report suggested.

Political Costs to U.S. Foreign Policy

One of the most apparent effects of the NSA disclosures are the strained relations the United States is now working to ease with its allies, particularly Germany and Brazil.

After the Snowden leaks were published and it became public knowledge that her own cellphone was targeted in a spying effort, Merkel refused to visit the United States for months until finally agreeing to a visit that was “tense and awkward,” the report said. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff went one step further than Merkel and decided not to attend a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, becoming the first world leader to turn down a state dinner with an American president.

The report’s authors also suggested that the NSA disclosures have “undermined American credibility” when it comes to the Internet Freedom Agenda. In 2010, the United States began promoting a policy of an open and free Internet, but the recent disclosures about the NSA have “led many to question the legitimacy of these efforts in the past year.”

“Concrete evidence of U.S. surveillance hardened the positions of authoritarian governments pushing for greater national control over the Internet and revived proposals from both Russia and Brazil for multilateral management of technical standards and domain names, whether through the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) or other avenues,” according to the report. Many developing nations are now declining to work with the United States and are instead embracing assistance from Russia, China, and the ITU when it comes to Internet availability and control for their citizens.

Costs to Cybersecurity
Along with collecting phone records and monitoring Internet communications, the NSA has also been actively participating in conduct that “fundamentally threatens the basic security of the Internet,” the report said. Such activities include working to weaken security standards issued by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2006 and developing relationships with companies to weaken their standards and build backdoors into products, sometimes without the company’s knowledge.

The NSA has also been accused of stockpiling information about security holes to later exploit them instead of alerting companies about the vulnerability so it can be patched. “This leaves companies and ordinary users open to attack not only from the NSA, but also from anyone who discovers the weaknesses,” according to the report, which cited the Heartbleed bug as one of the many vulnerabilities the NSA was aware of.

When the NSA can’t gain access through a vulnerability, it has been known to use its Tailored Access Operations unit to hack in. These employees specialize in computer network exploitation and target endpoint devices, like computers, routers, phones, and servers.

“One tactic for scooping up vast amounts of data is to target networks and network providers, including the undersea fiber optic cables that carry global Internet traffic from one continent to another,” the report said. The NSA has used this method to target the cable system that connects Europe to the Middle East and North Africa, along with links that connect Google and Facebook data centers outside the United States.

The NSA has also used its QUANTUMTHEORY toolbox to insert malware on target computers. One tactic includes pretending to be a major company, such as Facebook, and redirecting traffic to the “NSA’s own servers to obtain access to sensitive information or insert malware.”

Recommendations
The U.S. government has taken some steps to reduce the damage of the NSA allegations, but New America said more can be done to mitigate the damage and rebuild trust. It offered eight recommendations for the government, including strengthening privacy protections, increasing transparency around surveillance, and recommitting to the Internet Freedom agenda.

New America also suggested that the United States begin to restore trust in cryptography standards through the NIST, discontinue inserting backdoors in hardware and software products, eliminate security vulnerabilities instead of stockpiling them, develop clear policies about secretly installing malware, and separate the offensive and defensive functions of the NSA to minimize conflicts of interest.

For more information, visit the New America page on the report. 

http://www.securitymanagement.com/
 

Cybersecurity : SWAMP: Improving software assurance activities

Published 30 July 2014

The Software Assurance Market Place, or SWAMP, is an online, open-source, collaborative research environment that allows software developers and researchers to test their software for security weaknesses, improve tools by testing against a wide range of software packages, and interact and exchange best practices to improve software assurance tools and techniques.

The Software Assurance Market Place, or SWAMP, is an online, open-source, collaborative research environment that allows software developers and researchers to test their software for security weaknesses, improve tools by testing against a wide range of software packages, and interact and exchange best practices to improve software assurance tools and techniques.

“The goal of the SWAMP is to aid in the development of a healthier and safer cyber environment, and that starts with creating better quality software,” said Kevin Greene, Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), Cyber Security Division, SWAMPProgram Manager. “We’re doing something unique, we’re providing software developers the opportunity to test software and leverage multiple software analysis tools together in one space to improve the accuracy of their results.”

A DHS S&T release reports that SWAMP, built in a high-performance computing environment, allows the users to leverage a wide-range of software packages, test cases, and community projects while addressing weaknesses within the software through an assessment platform comprised of five open-source tools — PMD, FindBugs, CppCheck, GCC, and Clang, as well as more than 100 open-source software packages. In the future, the tool repository will expand to include dynamic and binary code assessments, commercial software analysis tools, new platforms — including mobile — and offer Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for third-party services and to support continuous integration as part of the software development process.

According to Greene, the SWAMP’s designers went to great lengths to ensure the site was secure, including implementation of identity-based controls to protect submitters’ intellectual property. Software may be submitted either as public or private, based on the submitter’s desired security level. For software packages that are private, only those who are granted access by the project owner may access the results. Public packages rely on a crowdsourcing approach and encourage technical exchange and collaboration, resulting in better quality open-source software.

“Software requires several checks and balances during the development phase. Likewise, if someone is developing software for you, you would need to validate whether that software can be trusted. The SWAMP serves as a resource to vet software and ensure it meets individual security requirements before installed.”

The SWAMP was made available to users in February 2014, and has been drawing a great deal of interest from academia, federal government, industry, and freelance software developers.

Since then, users have been registering and uploading software packages and testing and vetting software for weaknesses that could lead to vulnerabilities. Software developers who test their software early and often can decrease the cost of software failure, weed out common bugs, and contribute to community-wide cyber knowledge.

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Epidemics : What you need to know about Ebola

Published 30 July 2014

More West African nations are alerting health officials and citizens about the potential for the deadly Ebola disease to spread by individuals traveling from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where more than 700 people have died in recent weeks.An American doctor, Kent Brantly, working in Monrovia, Liberia with Ebola patients has contracted the disease.

More West African nations are alerting health officials and citizens about the potential for the deadly Ebola disease to spread by individuals traveling from Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, where more than 700 people have died in recent weeks. Nigerian health officials reported last Friday that a Liberian man sick with the disease had traveled to Togo and then Nigeria before dying in a hospital. “We call on all Nigerians to be calm and not panic and do hereby assure them that both the state and federal governments are up in arms to ensure that the virus did not escape and that no Nigeria is infected with it,” said Lagos state health commissioner Jide Idris.Here are five points to understand about Ebola and how it spreads:

• The current Ebola outbreak is the largest in history with a total of 1,201 cases reported as of last week, according to the World Health Organization.
• The fatality rate for Ebola can be as high as 90 percent, but some people who have contracted the disease have recovered with a 30 percent chance of survival. There is no specific treatment for the disease, but Ebola survivors sought immediate medical attention and received supportive care to prevent dehydration in the early stages of the disease.
• Early symptoms of Ebola can often resemble other diseases. Fever, headaches, muscle aches, and sore throat, all of which are also symptoms of malaria, typhoid fever, or cholera - common diseases in West Africa. It is in the later stages of the disease that people with Ebola begin bleeding internally and externally, often through the nose and ears.
• The Ebola virus is spread through bodily fluids, and not airborne. Individuals who have contracted the virus have come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
• Misinformation about Ebola has increased the probability that more individuals in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, will fall ill to the virus. Health workers in all three countries have come under attack from residents who blame foreign doctors and nurses for bringing the virus to remote communities.

CBS News reportsthat an American doctor, Kent Brantly, working in Monrovia, Liberia with Ebola patients has contracted the disease. “We’re trying to figure out what went wrong because he was always very careful,” said Tolbert Nyenswah, an assistant health minister in Monrovia. Brantly’s wife and two children left Monrovia for Abilene, Texas days before he felt ill. Though they are not subject to quarantine, City of Abilenehealth officials assured that the family is being closely monitored.

For now, Brantly remains in an isolated clinic in Monrovia. Efforts to evacuate him into Europe have failed because of fears that he poses a threat to health and security.

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Space Security : U.S. faces serious future threats in space

Published 30 July 2014

Gen. William Shelton, the commander of Air Force Space Command, said last week that U.S. dominance in space will be challenged by very real threats in the years ahead. The general said that those threats might consist of “jammers, lasers and tactical space nukes,” with any of these challenges exponentially more dangerous than in the past as the technology becomes more common.

Gen. William Shelton, the commander of Air Force Space Command, said last week that U.S. dominance in space will be challenged by very real threats in the years ahead.

As Defense One reports, the general also added that those threats might consist of “jammers, lasers and tactical space nukes,” with any of these challenges exponentially more dangerous thhan in the past as the technology becomes more common.

Jammers are potentially devastating weapons as they could quite easily disrupt global positioning systems (GPS), which operates 31 GPS satellitesacross the globe.

The United States has yet to face a jamming attack, but there are currently countries using them against one another. In 2012, North Korea launched a series of jamming attacks on South Korea, reportedly effecting the navigational equipment of hundreds of aircraft and some ships.

Additionally, the army has released its Electromagnetic Spectrum Strategy, and, purportedly, much of the defense world took notice when Russiaencountered issues with its own form of GPS in April.

In the optical field, lasers are becoming increasingly more common on the battlefield. While not an entirely new problem — the FAA has classed blinding laser pointers a threat for many years – research bears evidence that there are many tactics to employ against such beams. In June, NASAalso displayed the available range of such weapons when it beamed a 2.5 watt laser from the International Space Station to Earth to test a new light-based communication system called Optical Payload Lasercomm Science (OPALS).

Defense Onenotes that the logistics of employing a similar and potentially disruptive laser, which would be beamed into space, would be even simpler, given the lack of size and weight restriction when operating from the ground.

Shelton’s last listed threat, space-based nuclear weapons, remains the most menacing. He said that “A high altitude nuclear burst…has prompt effects if you happen to be in the area but sustained effects because of what it does to the Van Allen belts (the rings of radiation around the Earth). It pumps up the magnetic field around the Earth with charged particles and potentially, everything in low-Earth orbit has its electronics fried.”

More alarmingly, any country that possessed such a weapon and had intercontinental ballistic missiles would be capable of such an attack.

As Defense One summarizes, “The space race isn’t a race that ever ends. It just gets faster."

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Border Security : Border surveillance towers deployment on hold as GAO seeks reevaluation

DHS’s plan to deploy fifty surveillance towers across southern Arizona is temporarily on hold, following a protest by Raytheonthat the agency improperly awarded the work to rivalEFW. In a decision released last Thursday by the Government Accountability Office(GAO), DHS has been asked to reevaluate the competitors’ proposals, saying that it is possible Raytheon was “prejudiced by the agency’s errors” during an evaluation of proposals.

Relocateable surveillance tower // Source: worldjournal.com

DHS’s plan to deploy fifty surveillance towers across southern Arizona is temporarily on hold, following a protest byRaytheon that the agency improperly awarded the work to rival EFW. In a decisionreleased last Thursday by the Government Accountability Office(GAO), DHS has been asked to reevaluate the competitors’ proposals, saying that it is possible Raytheon was “prejudiced by the agency’s errors” during an evaluation of proposals. GAO General Counsel Susan Poling wrote in her decision that DHS should “make a new source selection decision based on that reevaluation. Should the agency conclude that a concern other than EFW properly is in line for award, we recommend that the agency terminate the contract awarded to EFW, and make award to the new concern.”

NextGov reports that Raytheon claims EFW won the contract partly by earning credit for the past performance of an affiliated company which will not be working on the surveillance tower contract. Poling notes that DHS’s comparison of each contractor’s infrared camera systems lacked “a rational basis and evidences unequal treatment of offerors.” The department counted EFW’s enhanced digital image capability as a strength in two categories, while only counting Raytheon’s special high-resolution camera feature once.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) spokeswoman Jenny Burke toldNextgov that “GAO has recommended we take corrective action on a fairly narrowly defined set of issues. CBP intends to follow that recommendation and then re-assess our contract award decision. We hope to complete the corrective action by early August.” Raytheon is pleased with the GAO’s decision. “As we’ve stated previously, Raytheon is confident in the solution it proposed and we look forward to working with the Department of Homeland Security on the next steps in response to the GAO decision,” the company said in a statement.

CBP had planned to build seven towers during the first year of a potentially eight year, $145 million contract with EFW. The deal was awarded in February after a two-year bidding among fourteen companies. If DHScancels the EFW contract, it would be the second time the department has had to change plans for a virtual fence initiative to detect drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other illicit activities along that portion of the Southern border.

The Secure Border Initiative network (SBINet) was terminated in 2011 after being awarded to Boeing in 2006. DHS invested $1 billion in the concept, but the department later realized that the technical specifications could not be achieved without building delays, cost overruns, and camera performance issues. Functioning SBInet towers in Tucson and Ajo, Arizona remain in place.

http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/

Disaster Preparedness & Recovery : White House Innovation Day Highlights Disaster Response, Recovery

Emergency managers converged with the tech community to discuss tools that can create more resilient communities.

Elaine Pittman | July 29, 2014

Shutterstock

Emergency managers converged with the tech community in Washington, D.C., to discuss tools that can create more resilient communities and also positively impact disaster preparedness, response and recovery. The White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Initiative Demo Day on July 29 showcased new innovations in both government and the private sector that aim to aid the survivors of large-scale emergencies. 

The key goal is to “find the most efficient and effective ways to empower survivors to help themselves,” said U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park, adding that there have been many technological advancements since Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

“We all know that tech in the wake of a disaster isn’t helpful,” Park said. So the demo day sought to highlight new initiatives and how emergency managers can work with and benefit from them.

“You all here today and the effort that’s associated with this really do help bring the whole-of-nation approach to building preparedness because it relies upon integrating the efforts of the private sector, nongovernmental actors, communities, individuals, federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments,” said Rand Beers, deputy homeland security adviser to the White House National Security Council. “What we need to do is to build on this collective group of people who are committed to making our country safer and to responding to these kind of issues.”

Numerous government agencies and companies made announcements during the event, including:

CITY72 TOOLKIT — San Francisco launched an open source tool based off its emergency preparedness portal, SF72 portal. The City72 Toolkit helps emergency managers create their own site, while benefiting from lessons learned by San Francisco. Kristin Hogan Schildwachter, external affairs specialist for the city’s Department of Emergency Management, said current messaging focuses on pushing people to extremes and doesn’t build on current tools that the public is already using to communicate. The customizable Web platform is also in use in Johnson County, Kan., and branded as JoCo72.

AIRBNB — The sharing economy platform used to locate a place to stay now has memorandums of understanding in place with Portland, Ore., and San Francisco to work with the cities before, during and after an emergency. Airbnb’s director of public policy and civic partnerships, Molly Turner, outlined the four parts of the partnership:

1. to identify hosts who will house emergency workers and survivors;
2. to provide preparedness materials to hosts;
3. to provide emergency alerts to hosts and their guests about hazards; and
4. to provide community response training to hosts, helping them to become community leaders.

POWER OUTAGE DATA — Going forward, a number of electric companies will publish their power outage and restoration data in a standard format so that tools like Google Crisis Map can make the information easily accessible to the public. During Hurricane Sandy, this information wasn’t openly available, leading Google to post links to the different utilities’ sites but not being able to incorporate it into its information, according to Nigel Snoad of the company’s Crisis Response and Civic Innovation arm. He also said another addition is that Google will include crowdsourcing capabilities in the Crisis Map.

LANTERN LIVE — Inspired by lessons learned from Sandy where situational awareness was lacking, particularly around the status of fuel and which gas stations were open, the U.S. Department of Energy is preparing to beta test Lantern Live, a new mobile app. Its features will include: the status of gas stations; the ability to report a power outage and downed power lines with geolocated information; and emergency preparedness tips.

DISASTER ASSISTANCE AND ASSESSMENT DASHBOARD — Appallicious launched a new disaster dashboard that aims to make rebounding after devastation more manageable. Get an in-depth look at the Disaster Assessment and Assistance Dashboard.

GEOQ — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency announced its crowdsourcing tool, GeoQ, which allows users to upload geo-tagged photos of an area impacted by an emergency. Raymond Bauer, the agency’s technology lead, said the tool is available for anyone to participate or work with the code via open source.

NOW TRENDING ON TWITTER — Helping emergency managers and public health officials, a new website, nowtrending.hhs.gov, searches Twitter data for health and natural disaster topics and analyzes that data. Karen DeSalvo, national coordinator for health IT, said the tool scours social media and looks for topics that could turn into public health emergencies.

DISASTER DATA — Coming soon, the new site disaster.data.gov aims to become a resource for preparedness and can also be used during and after an emergency. More than 100 tools from the public and private sectors have been submitted for inclusion on the site, and it will also host disaster-related data sets.

Additional announcements made at the event, via information from the White House, include:

The DHS and the Zoonotic and Animal Disease Defense Center of Excellence are piloting the AgCONNECT suite of pluggable mobile and Web-based desktop applications in 15 states and more than 60 laboratories.

Getaround is launching a disaster assistance policy and Web portal to help educate people about how to find or share a vehicle following a disaster. 

Microsoft is adding the Yammer survivor network to its disaster-response program's portfolio of solutions for use in the wake of a disaster.

NPR Labs developed an emergency alerting system that could provide timely emergency information to the 36 million Americans who are deaf and hard-of-hearing, using a battery-operated radio and Android tablet.

SeeClickFix is sharing its database of citizen requests to help generate actionable data regarding the current state of infrastructure during and immediately after a disaster.

TaskRabbit announced a new mobile Web interface, the TaskRabbit Needs for First Responders, which provides a marketplace to connect local service providers with those who need assistance.

Twilio is open-sourcing a framework for developers to stand up effective communications solutions during emergency response.

The Weather Co. is building a localized alerting platform that will enable state, local and private authorities to manage and distribute alerts.
 

Elaine Pittman  |  Associate Editor

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Elaine Pittman is the associate editor of Emergency Management magazine. She covers topics including public safety, homeland security and lessons learned. Pittman is also the associate editor for Government Technology magazine. She can be reached via email and @elainerpittman on Twitter.

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