Homeland Security Science & Technology at the University of the District of Columbia

Monday, May 11, 2015

EU planning military attacks on trafficking networks in Libya to stop migrant boats

Published 11 May 2015

The European Union (EU) is planning military attacks on trafficking networks in Libya to try and stop the influx of migrants across the Mediterranean. Today (Monday) several EU member states will try to secure a UN mandate for armed action by NATO in Libya’s territorial waters.
A senior EU official in Brussels said Britain is drafting the UN Security Council resolution to authorize the mission in Libya’s territorial waters. The naval force would be under Italian command and include naval units from ten EU countries, among them Britain, France, Spain, and Italy. NATO may eventually become involved in the anti-trafficking operations, but there are no current plans for such involvement.
Today, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s chief foreign and security policy coordinator, will be briefing the UN Security Council on the plans for a “chapter seven” resolution authorizing the use of force. Knowledgeable sources told the Guardian that the British draft calls for the “use of all means to destroy the business model of the traffickers.”
Military experts say such action would require EU vessels to operate in Libyan territorial waters, accompanied by helicopter gunships to “neutralize” identified traffickers’ ships used to send tens of thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East on the perilous voyage from the Libyan coast to southern Italy.
A British Ministry of Defense (MoD) spokesperson said: “Working closely with Italy and EU partners, HMS Bulwark and three Royal Naval Merlin Helicopters are providing wide ranging search and rescue capabilities in the Mediterranean, already rescuing over 100 people. The U.K. is now considering how best to support the proposed EU mission to counter the smuggling networks.”
The Guardian notes that Libyan militias, jihadi groups, and Islamic State affiliates who are in cahoots with the trafficking networks have deployed heavy artillery and anti-aircraft batteries close to the coast. Attacks on EU vessels and aircraft could trigger an escalation and force NATO to get involved.
EU sources say that they were told by Chinese diplomats that China would veto a Security Council resolution authorizing military action against Libyan traffickers, and that Russia, despite current tensions with the West over Ukraine, can be persuaded not to use its veto power against the resolution.
Libya’s ambassador to the UN, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told the AP that he had not been consulted on the plans and opposed them.
So far, six EU states have committed to contribute forces to the naval operation, with several more expected to offer participation. All twenty-eight member states have already expressed support for the proposed campaign.
In parallel to the preparation for military action, on Wednesday the European Commission (EC), the governing body of the EU, will unveil a new European “migration agenda.” The new policy calls for creating new and binding rules establishing a quota system of sharing refugees among the EU twenty-eight member states.
The proposal is promoted by Germany but it has already been rejected by Britain and east European countries.
“The EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states,” says the commission proposal obtained by the Guardian. By the end of the year Brussels is to table new legislation “for a mandatory and automatically-triggered relocation system to distribute those in clear need of international protection within the EU when a mass influx emerges.”
Currently, Germany and Sweden between them take nearly half of asylum-seekers in the EU, and Berlin says that the number this year could almost double to around 400,000 in Germany alone, two-thirds of the total number in the EU last year.
“Some member states have already made a major contribution to [refugee] resettlement efforts. But others offer nothing,” the commission paper complains. The document also insists that Europe has to open up legal avenues for migrants to enter the union safely, an idea which is strongly opposed by Theresa May, Britain’s home secretary.
“Such vulnerable people cannot be left to resort to the criminal networks of smugglers and traffickers. There must be safe and legal ways for them to reach the EU,” the commission document says.
The proposal now circulating in Brussels proposes to invoke “emergency mechanisms” by the end of the month making it mandatory for the twenty-eight member states to share the numbers of “persons in clear need of international protection” and “to ensure a fair and balanced participation of all member states to this common effort. This step will be the precursor of a lasting solution.”
The new blueprint, to be presented by commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on Wednesday, includes a distribution “key” system based on various criteria from national wealth levels to unemployment rates to determine what proportion of refugees each of the twenty-eight member states should each admit.

Does Iran deal advance or undermine global nonproliferation efforts? Experts disagree

Published 11 May 2015

The White House already points to the potential Iran deal as one of the highlights of Obama’s legacy, as it fulfills both the Obama doctrine of advancing U.S. interests through engagement with America’s adversaries and the vision of a world gradually retreating from furthering nuclear weapons ambitions. Nuclear nonproliferation experts, however, question whether an Iranian nuclear deal, as laid out in the framework agreement reached last month, advances or sets back the nonproliferation agenda and Obama’s vision of ridding the world of nuclear threat.

In his 2009 speech on nuclear nonproliferation in Prague, President Barack Obama called on global leaders to strive for a world free of nuclear weapons. Today, Obama and his administration are negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran which, if signed by the end of June as expected, will emerge as the centerpiece of Obama’s nuclear nonproliferation efforts. The White House already points to the potential Iran deal as one of the highlights of Obama’s legacy, as it fulfills both the Obama doctrine of advancing U.S. interests through engagement with America’s adversaries and the vision of a world gradually retreating from furthering nuclear weapons ambitions.
Nuclear nonproliferation experts, however, question whether an Iranian nuclear deal, as laid out in the framework agreement reached last month, advances or sets back the nonproliferation agenda and Obama’s vision of ridding the world of nuclear threat.
The current Iranian nuclear program, if left unchecked, could cause the proliferation of nuclear ambitions across an already volatile Middle East. An agreement which verifiably constrains Iran’s nuclear advances for at least a decade and lengthens the “breakout” time Iran would need to build a bomb is a considerable achievement, supporters of the deal say.

New airport security technologies raise privacy concerns

Published 11 May 2015

Researchers are developing surveillance technologies better to help airport security officials scan passengers and luggage for contraband and suspicious behavior. Privacy advocates say these expensive and ambitious projects, meant to increase public safety and ease air travel delays, risk intruding on passengers’ privacy.“What starts in the airport doesn’t stay there,” says a technology expert at the ACLU.

Researchers in Northeastern University, funded by DHS’s Office of Science and Technology, are developing surveillance technologies better to help airport security officials scan passengers and luggage for contraband and suspicious behavior.
In a mock airport in an underground lab at Northeastern, researchers are developing a new way to detect explosives by using radar. In another lab, a professor and a team of students are working on a scanning system which, they hope, will speed up airport security lines. The system uses machines installed in walls or other places to scan passengers as they walk past instead of having them walk individually into a conventional scanning machine.
“The goal is to have a system that provides better scanning of individuals going through security, while at the same time making it more convenient,” said Jose Martinez Lorenzo, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering, who is directing the project.
Another surveillance system, developed by engineering professors Octavia Camps and Mario Sznaier, detects when an individual is walking through a security exit in the wrong direction. The surveillance software has been tested since April 2014 at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Currently used at one exit, it scans roughly 50,000 people a week, and has a 99 percent detection rate with only five false alarms a week.
The New York Times reports that privacy advocates say these expensive and ambitious projects, meant to increase public safety and ease air travel delays, risk intruding on passengers’ privacy. “As we adopt new technologies to meet the constantly changing needs of our aviation infrastructure in a budget-constrained environment, these technologies must be proven to be effective, protect civil liberties, and properly balance security with passenger privacy,” said Representative Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), the ranking member on the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Justin Brookman, director of consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said new technologies could actually solve the budget issues. “These things are expensive, but it’s cheaper than paying a person to stand there,” he said. “You don’t have to pay health care benefits to a robot. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with it as long as there are controls in place so things are not abused and they don’t turn over the surveillance totally to a software program.”
Airport officials say passengers entering restricted areas through exits pose a security threat and can cost airports and airlines millions of dollars. Last year in Detroit, flights were canceled and a terminal was shut until a passenger who had entered an exit door the wrong way had been located.
“While it’s not a common occurrence, when it happens it can cause severe disruptions to air travel,” said William Young, a former Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official who worked in Cleveland during the exit door surveillance testing. “It’s a major security challenge for the TSA.” Most airports use video to track suspicious behavior, but the sheer volume of information can overwhelm security officers. It was Young who approached researchers at Northeastern to develop the software.
Another part of the surveillance system developed by Camps and Sznaier, which is known as the Video Analytic Surveillance Transition Project (VAST), using details such as size and shape as well as the texture and color of clothing, will remember the identity of a person who enters an exit the wrong way. This allows security personnel to track that person throughout the airport without having to shut down a terminal or the entire airport.
Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is concerned about the potential widespread use of video analytics tools. “There are so many issues raised by the use of these technologies,” she said. “Will the cameras have face-recognition capabilities, able to track your every move and tap into your Social Security number and other personal information?” While advanced video software could be a valuable tool for airport security, Crockford worries that the software could be used to track people outside of airports. “What starts in the airport doesn’t stay there,” she said.
The researchers at Northeastern said they use a small amount of video data and that no personal information is gathered. “In this project we use video feeds from cameras that are already installed at the airport and used by TSA to monitor airport security in public areas,” Camps said. “No names or identities are associated at any time with the processed video.”

DHS deportations undermine efforts to get immigrants to provide leads on radical suspects

Published 11 May 2015

DHS counterterrorism teams rely on cooperation from immigrant communities to obtain leads on radical individuals and pending terrorism plots, but many of these communities are becoming more wary of federal law enforcement as the number of deportations increase.
DHS chief Jeh Johnson met last Thursday with immigrant rights groups in Brooklyn, where he encouraged them to work with DHS to fight terrorism. “The global terrorist threat has evolved to a new place,” Johnson said. “The global terrorist threat is more decentralized, it’s more defuse, it’s more complex. We see now terrorist organizations making effective use of social media, the Internet, films.”
Camille Meckler, the director of legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition, attended last week’s meeting. She said DHS officials wanted immigrant groups and communities to report suspicious activity, but the agency failed to present a program to facilitate the reporting. She added that immigrants are concerned with reaching out to DHS, much of whose work revolves around tracking and deporting undocumented immigrants.
“We welcome and encourage any opportunity for meaningful dialogue,” Meckler told Huffington Post. “But at the same time, I think it needs to be said that the onus is on DHS to make sure that these dialogs are meaningful. … The trust has been significantly eroded. Immigrant communities are against terrorism just like any other community. They want to be safe and they want their neighbors to be safe, but it’s on the government to restore that trust.”
Following the 9/11 attacks, the federal government stepped up efforts to track undocumented immigrants and secure the southern U.S. border. DHS launched Secure Communities in 2008, which urged local law enforcement to share fingerprint data with DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Immigrant rights groups complained about the program, saying it bred distrust of local police by connecting police with deportation officials. President Barack Obama canceled the program last year and focused deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants who have been convicted of violent crimes.
Abraham Paulos, the director of Families for Freedom, a New York human rights group that helps people fight deportation, said about DHS combating terrorism while enforcing immigration laws, that if DHS had focused more on terrorism and less on deportation, immigrant communities might be more willing to work with the agency. “It’s ironic that you’ve got them coming in and trying to get information from our communities even as they’re detaining and deporting us at an alarming rate,” Paulos told Huffington Post. “That trust is just not going to be there. You can’t have it both ways.”

Friday, May 8, 2015

Depletion of soil accelerates, putting human security at risk: Scientists

Published 8 May 2015

Steadily and alarmingly, humans have been depleting Earth’s soil resources faster than the nutrients can be replenished. If this trajectory does not change, soil erosion, combined with the effects of climate change, will present a huge risk to global food security over the next century, warns a review paper authored by some of the top soil scientists in the country.
The paper singles out farming, which accelerates erosion and nutrient removal, as the primary game changer in soil health.
“Ever since humans developed agriculture, we’ve been transforming the planet and throwing the soil’s nutrient cycle out of balance,” said the paper’s lead author, Ronald Amundson, a UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management. “Because the changes happen slowly, often taking two to three generations to be noticed, people are not cognizant of the geological transformation taking place.”
A UC Berkeley release reports that in the paper, published today (Thursday, May 7) in the journal Science, the authors say that soil erosion has accelerated since the industrial revolution, and we are now entering a period when the ability of soil, “the living epidermis of the planet,” to support the growth of our food supply is plateauing. The publication comes nearly two weeks ahead of the Global Soil Security Symposium at Texas A&M University, a meeting held as part of the declaration of 2015 as the International Year of Soils by the United Nations.
A future “phosphorous cartel”
The authors identify the supply of fertilizer as one of the key threats to future soil security. Farmers use three essential nutrients to fertilize their crops: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous. The paper credits the discovery of synthetic nitrogen production in the early 1900s for significantly increasing crop yields, which in turn supported dramatic growths in global population. Because the process of synthesizing nitrogen is energy-intensive, its supply is dependent on fossil fuels.
Unlike nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous come from rocks and minerals, and the authors point out that those resources are not equitably distributed throughout the world. The United States has only 1 to 2 percent of the world’s potassium reserves, and its reserves of phosphorous are expected to run out in about three decades.
“This could create political challenges and uncertainties,” said Amundson. “Morocco will soon be the largest source of phosphorous in the world, followed by China. These two countries will have a great deal of say in the distribution of those resources. Some people suggest we will see the emergence of a phosphorous cartel.”
Contributing to climate change
Another threat to soil security relates to its role as a mass reservoir for carbon. Left unperturbed, soil can hold onto its stores of carbon for hundreds to thousands of years. The most recent estimates suggest that up to 2,300 gigatons of carbon are stored in the top three meters of the Earth’s soil — more carbon than in all the world’s plants and atmosphere combined. One gigaton is equal to a billion tons.
But agriculture’s physical disruption of soil releases stored carbon into the atmosphere. Based on the area of land used for farming worldwide, 50 to 70 gigatons of carbon has been released into the atmosphere throughout human history, according to the paper. Proponents of sequestration, the long-term storage of carbon in soil, have argued that regaining this carbon will be a means to mitigate continuing fossil fuel emissions of the greenhouse gas.
“Carbon sequestration plans won’t make a dent in the amount of soil released by climate change,” countered Amundson. “The amount of carbon stored through sequestration would be tiny compared to the potential amount lost through global warming.”
Of particular concern are the large carbon stores in the soils in the planet’s polar regions. Researchers have found that temperatures are increasing at greater rates in the northern latitudes.
“Warming those areas is like filling your freezer with food, then pulling the plug and going on vacation,” said Amundson. “There will be a massive feast of bacteria feeding on the food as the plug gets pulled on the stored carbon in the frozen soil. Microbes are already starting the process of converting the carbon to CO2 and methane.”
Recycling soil nutrients
The release notes that the authors recognize the human reliance on farming and note that most of the Earth’s most productive soils are already in agricultural production. However, they argue for better management of the soils we rely upon.
One proposal is to stop discarding nutrients captured in waste treatment facilities. Currently, phosphorous and potassium are concentrated into solid waste rather than cycled back into the soil. Additionally, more efficient management is needed to curtail losses from soil. Excess nitrogen, for example, is considered a pollutant, with the runoff sapping oxygen from the nation’s waterways, suffocating aquatic life and creating dead zones in coastal margins.
Amundson noted that it did not take too long to get people to start separating paper, glass and aluminum cans from their trash for recycling.
“We should be able to do this with soil,” said Amundson. “The nutrients lost can be captured, recycled and put back into the ground. We have the skillset to recycle a lot of nutrients, but the ultimate deciders are the people who create policy. It’s not a scientific problem. It’s a societal problem.”
— Read more in Ronald Amundson et al., “Soil and human security in the 21st century,” Science 348, no. 6235 (8 May 2015): 1261071 (DOI:10.1126/science.1261071)

Spanish “kebab laws” worry, upset Muslim immigrants

Published 8 May 2015

Withy persistent unemployment and worries about radicalization, more Spanish cities are placing limits on businesses typically owned and operated by immigrants from North Africa. In the city of Terragona, for examples, these regulations – informally called “kebab laws” — disallow commercial licenses to any kebab shops, dollar stores, or Internet cafes within 500 yards of existing ones. Additionally, these businesses would have to comply with stricter hygiene standards and business hours. Muslim leaders in Spain and civil rights advocates say these laws are a thinly veiled effort to discourage Muslim immigration.

At a City Council meeting in Terragona, Spain, the ruling Popular Party branch proposed a new measure to limit the number of kebab shops and other traditionally immigrant-owned businesses in the city’s historic quarter.
As theLos Angeles Times reports, the legislation, referred to as the “kebab law,” would disallow commercial licenses to any kebab shops, dollar stores, or Internet cafes within 500 yards of existing ones. Additionally, these businesses would have to comply with stricter hygiene standards and business hours.
Alejandra Fernandez, the head of the Popular Party and a candidate for mayor, said that the changes “would prevent immigrant ghettos and protect traditional Spanish businesses.”
“My tomatoes are Spanish, and so are the potatoes I sell,” said Nouari Benzawi, an immigrant from Algeria who has lived in Spain for twenty years and holds dual citizenship. “Please explain this to me! Do I need to sell pork to be a ‘traditional Spanish business’? Do I need to sell wine? I pay my taxes. I don’t sell contraband. So what are they so worried about? This is called discrimination. My business is legal!”
The majority of the roughly 1.6 million Muslim immigrants in Spain (3 percent of the total population) are from nearby across the Mediterranean Sea, including Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. Further, many Muslim leaders in the country say that their communities have been disproportionately hit by the economic crisis Spain is suffering from. Currently, the unemployment rate for Muslim immigrants stands at 23 percent, with double that rate for the youth population. Many of them also live along the coastal Catalan provinces, which includes cities like Tarragona and Barcelona.
“Our coastal region has always had the most immigration, and we’ve never had any problems,” said Joaquim Garola, the town councilor for citizens’ security in Reus. “In recent years, more Muslims have arrived. Now, for example, let’s say a bunch of Muslim kids are milling around after school. It’s better if we disperse them, because they could form a ghetto. What we’re doing is in their interest and in ours.”
Reus controversially and famously attempted to ban burqas last year. The country’s Supreme Court blocked the measure, but the township rewrote the language to include anything that covers the face.
“It’s not to stop the Muslim burqa or niqab,” protested Garola. “It also applies to people wearing motorcycle helmets while walking down the street. It’s not religious.”
Most Tarragona residents, however, claimed that they were not aware of the kebab law, and many worried that the ordinances might affect their favorite businesses. Additionally, many saw the matter more skeptically.
“It’s election season. We’re used to this. They think it’ll win them votes,” said resident and local imam Muhammed Bokadira.
Hilal Tarkou, a Spanish lawyer who also heads the local Watani Islamic Association in Tarragona, agrees.
“Whenever there’s a crisis, they always blame the weakest ones — the immigrants,” he said.

Nepal should use updated, upgraded building codes in post-disaster construction: Experts

Published 8 May 2015

Urban planners and disaster experts who have been arriving in Kathmandu to inventory, assess, and make recommendations have been urging the Nepalese authorities to “Build it back better.” There are plenty of examples of post-disaster construction built significantly safer, using low-cost traditional materials and methods. Nepal has last updated its building code in 1994.

The death toll from the Nepal earthquake will reach 10,000 or more, as emergency responders continue to uncover death bodies from the ruins. Hundreds of thousands of homes have collapsed, six of Kathmandu Valley’s seven UNESCO World Heritage sites and more than fifty-seven other temples and palaces have been reduced to rubble or have suffered deep cracks.
Residents are now moving to rebuild homes. In the collapsed village of Sankhu, twelve miles east of Kathmandu, villagers pick up bricks, stone blocks, and timber to reuse for the eventual rebuilding. “We have to rebuild. As soon as possible,” said local resident Gunkeshari Dangol.
“It is our pride. It is our duty,” added Bhesh Narayan Dahal, director general of Nepal’s Department of Archaeology. He predicts that with international aid, Nepal’s medieval and more recent monuments can be rebuilt in five to seven years.
ThePhiladelphia Inquirer reports that urban planners and disaster experts who have been arriving in Kathmandu to inventory, assess, and make recommendations have been urging the Nepalese authorities to “Build it back better.” There are plenty of examples of post-disaster construction built significantly safer, using low-cost traditional materials and methods.

ANNOUNCEMENT

The Criminal Justice Program and the Institute for Public Safety are pleased to announce the Scientific Leadership Awards program at the University of the District of Columbia. The scholarships are funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Scientific Leadership Awards Program, offering undergraduate students generous support for up to four years to pursue their undergraduate degree and gain research experience in homeland security science and technology related areas.