Homeland Security

NPR:

"The Salahis' testimony is important to explain how a couple circumvented layers of security at the White House on the evening of a state dinner without causing alarm," Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee chairman, said in a statement released by his committee last night. "If the Salahis are absent from tomorrow's hearing, the committee is prepared to move forward with subpoenas to compel their appearance."

Subpoena? Please. What Thompson should do is simply revoke the invitation of the Salahis to testify, then they will show up….er “crash” the hearing.

Watch this compilation video Media Matters put together of Joe Scarborough on the DHS report, then decide – is Scarborough suffering from amnesia or is he just a plan old liar?

Last month Scarborough said he couldn’t believe that the DHS released a report “attacking right wingers” and then yesterday he said he never criticized that report. And during all of it his lap dog Mika sits there agreeing.

Well, well. It turns out that DHS also has a report on left wing extremists. Funny, but I don’t see anyone on our side going batty over this. 

During the Bush years any dissent we showed on the left from the Bush policies was met with a fear of retribution from our government. The Pentagon even spent resources spying on protestors during the Bush years. This at a time when our nation was in two very deadly wars.

Well here we are with a Democratic President in the White House, and now the Department of Homeland Security is looking into the threats from right wing extremists.

The revelation came from a declassified report (pdf here) put out by DHS. Now the right is screaming about it.

Now let’s think. Our Department of Homeland Security is taking a look at groups of people, who are out stock piling weapons and ammunition and even hinting at the assassination of our President. But now the very people, who just a couple of years ago were calling for left wing protestors to be jailed, are now crying foul.

Cry me a fucking river you bunch of hypocrites. This is America – love it or leave it. Our side of the debate was told that repeatedly for the past eight years and now that the tide has turned, the right has got their panties in a bunch.

When the left was under this kind of government scrutiny. Wait. When we were under a stronger scrutiny, considering the fact that the military was watching us, we didn’t run and stock pile guns and ammos and talk about killing Bush. We went about our business and continued our protests.

And finally. How many left wing extremists went out and killed police officers because of their hatred for George Bush? Yeah – that’s what I thought.

That’s the reports going around this morning:

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) has been chosen to serve as secretary of the vast and troubled Department of Homeland Security for President-elect Obama, Democratic officials said. Napolitano is a border governor who will now be responsible for immigration policy and border security, which are part of Homeland Security’s myriad functions.

Napolitano brings law-and-order experience from her stint as the Grand Canyon State’s first female attorney general. One of the nation’s most prominent female elected officials, she made frequent appearances on behalf of Barack Obama during the campaign. She was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2006.

Napolitano is a centrist, but also a very reasonable one. There is some moaning going on in the Blogosphere that if Napolitano does accept the job we will be losing a governors seat and possible the best candidate against John McCain in 2010. I say oh well. If she is the best person for the job in the eyes of Obama, then we should support her. I’m sure we can find someone else to run against McCain and the Republican that would replace Napolitano as governor would have to run again in 2010 also. That’s a lifetime in politics and we can always see something else happen that turns the tides in our favor.

Ok this is really scarey, but it looks like the Minority Report is starting to come to life:

Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more.

So how long before these devices are everywhere - banks, stores, schools, etc.?

Not only that, but also your cell phone, camera, or any electronic device that has storage:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

Welcome to communistic America - the Republican dream come true.

Despite Congress saying otherwise. Chertoff has decided he is the new decider and it is even pissing off Republicans:

Noting that Chertoff's department was forced to temporarily suspend a similar requirement for air travelers last summer when the rule caused a massive U.S. passport backlog, Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R-N.Y.) said the secretary "frankly has as much credibility on telling people to grow up as Geoffrey the giraffe."

Now can member of Congress be shocked that someone in this administration is acting in a rogue like fashion? That is the basis of Bush's administration. They do what they want, when they want, how they want - laws be damned! Honestly I think Congress also deserves it because instead of reigning in on this abuse of power they ignore it and let it go on.

From the party of "small government" and "fiscal responsibility":

The Homeland Security Department spent more than $90 million to create a network for sharing sensitive anti-terrorism information with state and local governments that it has decided to replace, according to an internal department document.

The decision was made late last year but was not announced. It was outlined in an Oct. 27 memorandum that listed the network's flaws and asserted that DHS's counterterrorism, immigration enforcement and disaster management missions were hampered by the proliferation of more than 100 Web "portals" that provide poorly coordinated information.

How many billions have been wasted by Bush, yet the Republicans go out and brag about their fiscal responsibility? And they wonder why the real Republicans won't even get out to vote for them.

This weekend amazed me. During all the talk shows hardly a word was mention about the resignation of Susan Ralston. Instead all focus was on the Foley scandal yet again. Ralston's resignation is equally, if not more, important than Foleygate.

Ralston was Karl Rove's top aide. You could say she was to Karl Rove what Karl Rove is to Bush (she was Rove's Rove). The reasoning for her resignation is very troubling and shows an extreme lapse in our national security:

A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.

(emphasis mine).

Something that must be asked is what information Ralston passed to Abramoff. It is bad enough that a now convicted felon had 485 visits to the White House, but just as troubling is Abramoff's super Zionistic life. Abramoff was using much of his money to help fund militias in Israel. Now we must ask the question, "If Ralston was passing secrets to Abramoff, was Abramoff in turn passing secrets to these Israeli militias?".

It is troubling that the intelligence committees in both the House and Senate are not looking more into a possible breach of our national security. Of course with the Republican leadership, nothing Bush does is wrong. This is why we need the media to spend a little less time on Foley and a lot more time on Ralston and Abramoff. Their ignoring of this story could be detrimental to our nation's security.

More like Homeland Waste:

The multibillion-dollar surge in federal contracting to bolster the nation's domestic defenses in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been marred by extensive waste and misspent funds, according to a new bipartisan congressional report.

Lawmakers say that since the Homeland Security Department's formation in 2003, an explosion of no-bid deals and a critical shortage of trained government contract managers have created a system prone to abuse. Based on a comprehensive survey of hundreds of government audits, 32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement," according to the report, which is slated for release today and was obtained in advance by The Washington Post.

The value of contracts awarded without full competition increased 739 percent from 2003 to 2005, to $5.5 billion, more than half the $10 billion awarded by the department that year. By comparison, the agency awarded a total of $3.5 billion in contracts in 2003, the year it was created.

Among the contracts that went awry were deals for hiring airport screeners, inspecting airport luggage, detecting radiation at the nation's ports, securing the borders and housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Investigators looking into those contracts turned up whole security systems that needed to be scrapped, contractor bills for luxury hotel rooms and Homeland Security officials who bought personal items with government credit cards.

Yeah, the Republicans are really the ones who are up on homeland security, national defense and fiscal responsibility. The Midas touch - what the Republicans touch turns to gold (for corporations).

Another big breach in one of our government computers:

For the second time in two weeks, Social Security numbers and other personal information of Navy personnel have been discovered on an Internet site, triggering an investigation.

The Navy said Friday that information on more than 100,000 naval and Marine Corps aviators and aircrew was on the Naval Safety Center Web site and on nearly 1,100 computer discs mailed out to naval commands.

There was no indication that the information has been used illegally, said Navy spokesman Lt. Ryan Perry. He said Rear Adm. George Mayer, commander of the Naval Safety Center, had the information removed immediately and officials are looking into how the data was posted on the Web site.

The Navy is also attempting to retrieve the computer disks, he said, and individuals whose data was revealed on the Internet were being notified. Both active and reserve members were affected by the latest incident, including aviators who may have served within the last 20 years.

Hey - thanks for fighting this war while we let your information go out to the whole world. You will be welcomed back as heroes and given the honor of high debt obtained by someone else who got your information from your own country.

This is going to cost tax payers billions before it is all said and done. Congress already had to approve $160 million just because of the VA breech. While this one is not that big, there are numerous smaller stories like this and those numbers are adding up quick.

Working in the tech world, I always take quick interest in stories that involve cyber security. This is the main reason that I have been so outspoken on that recent rash of identity thefts, mainly from government computers. The icing on the cake was when we learned this week that a 28 year old consultant hacked into the FBI's computer and gained access to such vital information as identities of people in the witness relocation program and even obtained the directors password. He did so utilizing common programs found on the internet.

This kind of news is rather breath taking to someone who works to secure information all the time. I know the inner workings of software and what helps compose a good security system. Apparently the U.S. Government does not.

There has been discussion on who is to blame on this. People feel that Bush shouldn't be at fault, but the following story tells otherwise:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has still failed to appoint a cyber-security director after a delay of a year.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the creation of a position for an assistant cyber security czar as part of a six-point agenda July 13, 2005. He identified elevating the position to an assistant Cabinet-level post as part of an overall strategy to "ensure that the department's policies, operations, and structures are aligned in the best way to address the potential threats -- both present and future." But a year later, that position remains unfilled, National Journal's Technology Daily reported Wednesday.

A concerted push to appoint a single person in charge of national cyber security recovery began in Congress two years ago. As part of a cyber security subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives that was dissolved after the 108th Congress, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., helped draft and pass House legislation to create a cyber security czar with real power in the Department of Homeland Security, Technology Daily said.

Recently, Lofgren said the House inserted language in a bill to restructure the Federal Emergency Management Agency, requiring President George W. Bush to nominate someone to the cyber czar job within 90 days.

There was an article I remember reading about ten years ago that said one of the main battlegrounds in world war three would be in cyber space. That statement has stuck with me and is very true. We are in a world of terrorism and these terrorists apparently have good technology. How long before they commit a cyber terrorist act? Hell hack into an airliners mainframe and mess with air traffic or take down a power grid. There a numerous avenues this threat could go down and Bush has failed to get someone to protect such a vital area in our security.

What this all comes down to is that we are living in a different world and fighting a different war. Unfortunately we have leaders who do not see it that way. They believe in the old conventional wisdoms that war takes place on battle fields with guns and soldiers. Wars can easily be waged online in today's cyber world and this is a front we must do everything necessary to protect. Find the best hacker out there you can and hire them to be the cyber security czar. They have knowledge that can become our greatest asset in the name of security.

You can tell elections are getting closer. Instead of raising the terror level, we start to hear more about how the government is "uncovering terrorist plots":

The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned. The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels.

Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the "lone wolf" terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told The News.

It's not clear, however, if any cash or assistance was delivered.

It is going to be interesting as cases like this and the one in Miami get to court. How much of a plan are these? Are they some idiots just playing jihadist or are there really substance to them?

Something else interesting to consider when you here this story is why the government choose to cut New York's homeland security funding? I thought they didn't have any targets that terrorists would want to hit. If this claim is true then heads need to roll in Homeland Security. It also further discredits Bush's continued claim of "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

Amongst all the problems with ID theft from government computers, we now find that even the FBI is not secure:

A government consultant, using computer programs easily found on the Internet, managed to crack the FBI's classified computer system and gain the passwords of 38,000 employees, including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

The break-ins, which occurred four times in 2004, gave the consultant access to records in the Witness Protection Program and details on counterespionage activity, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. As a direct result, the bureau said it was forced to temporarily shut down its network and commit thousands of man-hours and millions of dollars to ensure no sensitive information was lost or misused.

The government does not allege that the consultant, Joseph Thomas Colon, intended to harm national security. But prosecutors said Colon's "curiosity hacks" nonetheless exposed sensitive information.

Colon, 28, an employee of BAE Systems who was assigned to the FBI field office in Springfield, Ill., said in court filings that he used the passwords and other information to bypass bureaucratic obstacles and better help the FBI install its new computer system. And he said agents in the Springfield office approved his actions.

Perhaps instead of worrying about collecting data on millions of U.S. citizens phone calls and developing this "super database", the NSA, which employs some of the greatest computer minds, should be working on developing a more impenetrable computer system.