Child porn 'social networking site' busted by feds

U.S. federal prosecutors say they are working with police in several countries to investigate suspects in a child pornography "social networking site" that at one point had more than 1,000 members trading explicit images. U.S. authorities announced Wednesday that they had broken up the international online child porn site, saying more than 50 people had been arrested in more than 50 states since the 2008 start of the investigation. They said they are also seeking the extradition of several suspects from overseas, including the alleged ringleader, Delwin Savigar, who is serving a 14-year prison term in England for sexually assaulting three underage girls. Savigar created and ran a password-protected website from which members could access collections of sexual images -- some including as many as a million files -- share their fantasies about having sex with children and give advice to each other about how to build their collections and avoid getting caught, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven D. DeBrota said.

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Mexican drug lord killed in shootout

The alleged leader of the Beltran Leyva drug trafficking organization was killed in a shootout with federal forces in northern Mexico, state media reported. Pedro Roberto Velazquez Amador, alias "La Pina," was killed in a shootout Wednesday morning, hours after a military convoy patrolling the San Pedro area in Monterrey was attacked by gunmen. Velazquez was killed in the subsequent shootout, state-run Notimex news agency reported. Pictures from a local newspaper showed the body of a man believed to be in his 30s and said to be Velazquez, lying in a puddle of water with a firearm in his hand.

Velazquez is the alleged leader of the Beltran Leyva cartel in San Pedro, according to the National Defense Secretary of Mexico. However, recent reports say the fractured Beltran Leyva cartel has been splintered into warring groups. Mexican-American drug trafficker Edgar Valdez, known by his moniker "La Barbie" for his light complexion and blue eyes, is claiming leadership over the cartel.

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i2 and ESRI Collaborate to Provide Unparalleled Solution for Analytics and Geospatial Intelligence

A new solution announced today at the Department of Defense Intelligence Information Systems (DoDIIS) Worldwide Conference will give defense and intelligence personnel unprecedented analysis capabilities for human terrain mapping, better arming them for current and future counterinsurgency (COIN) and anti-terrorism operations. i2, the leading provider of intelligence and investigation software; and ESRI, the leading provider of geospatial analysis capabilities; are collaborating to release several modules in the coming months, including the ESRI Foundation Module for i2's Analyst's Notebook: a powerful and flexible geospatial analysis tool with a host of military, intelligence, law enforcement and civilian applications.

The ESRI Foundation module for Analyst's Notebook embeds some of ArcGIS's powerful geospatial analysis capabilities, into Analyst's Notebook, i2's best-of-breed analytic solution. This will create a unique, dynamic and flexible platform for sharing and exploiting the full range of geospatial and intelligence data. It will allow users to efficiently and effectively analyze and visualize in time and space their mission critical intelligence within the Analyst's Notebook platform. "I think this is going to be of particular interest for our defense and intelligence customers," said i2 Vice President of Product Marketing Guillaume Tissot. "Human terrain mapping is an increasingly essential tool for ongoing counterinsurgency efforts in defense theaters of operation. Understanding and mapping the nuanced political, social, ethnic and religious networks in an area of operation is critical to COIN, and our collaboration with ESRI gives commanders and human terrain teams the best solution of its kind for accomplishing their mission."

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Nearly 185,000 U.S. homicides since 1980 remain unsolved

Every year in America, 6,000 killers get away with murder. The percentage of homicides that go unsolved in the United States has risen alarmingly even as the homicide rate has fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s. Despite dramatic improvements in DNA analysis and other breakthroughs in forensic science, police fail to make an arrest in more than one-third of all homicides. National clearance rates for murder and manslaughter have fallen from about 90 percent in the 1960s to below 65 percent in recent years.

The majority of homicides now go unsolved at dozens of big-city police departments, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of crime records provided by the FBI. "This is very frightening," said Bill Hagmaier, executive director of the International Homicide Investigators Association and retired chief of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit. "We'd expect that -- with more police officers, more scientific tools likes DNA analysis and more computerized records -- we'd be clearing more homicides now with more resources," Hagmaier said. "But the clearance rates have fallen drastically." Nearly 185,000 killings went unsolved from 1980 to 2008.

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32 arrested in hit on major European crime ring

British, Irish and Spanish police launched dawn raids Tuesday in a coordinated hit aimed at smashing a major European guns, drugs and money laundering empire. 32 people were arrested, including the suspected "godfather", in a strike on a crime conspiracy with tentacles stretching across the globe. "The target was a criminal network suspected of trafficking huge quantities of drugs and firearms and of laundering hundreds of millions of pounds in criminal profits," Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) said in a statement. The gang's suspected crime lord, a 53-year-old Irish-born British national living in Malaga, was arrested in the southern Spanish coastal resort.

Spanish officers detained him along with family members, other British and Irish nationals and four Spanish lawyers. The 20 suspects arrested in Spain were being questioned in Malaga. Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, speaking to Spanish public television from Warsaw, said the raids focused on a "mafia family" based on the southern Costa del Sol. "It's an operation against well-known mafia operating in different countries which is linked to different killings, as well as a number of crimes from drugs trafficking to people trafficking." About 750 officers were involved in the operation.

In Britain around 230 officers raided homes and businesses, with nine men and two women across southeastern England and the west Midlands arrested and taken for questioning. "The scale of this joint operation by law enforcement agencies from so many countries is an indication of how prolific we think this network was," said SOCA's Trevor Pearce. "Today's arrests will have dealt a major blow to an organised criminal business suspected of supplying drugs and guns to gangs in cities across the UK and Europe.

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Exploring the mind of an art thief following Paris heist

Last Thursday, five paintings were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. Reports say the thief crept through a window in the wee hours of the morning, carefully removed the paintings from their frames and slid away undetected. While the art world still reeled from the multi-million dollar museum heist, which included the theft of a Picasso and a Matisse, a second theft was reported over the weekend miles away in southern France, in the Marseille home of a private collector who was beaten by the intruders, according to news reports. But it is not clear yet whether the two events are linked. While the first heist conjures images of a suave, cat-suit clad burglar like the one Cary Grant played in the 1955 film "To Catch A Thief," or Pierce Brosnan's smart, sexy art collector-cum-professional masterpiece lifter in 1999's "The Thomas Crown Affair," the second real-life attack on the collector and art theft, including a Picasso lithograph, suggests more thug-like criminals.

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U.S. Implicates North Korean Leader in Attack

A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence. The officials said they were increasingly convinced that Mr. Kim ordered the sinking of the ship, the Cheonan, to help secure the succession of his youngest son.

“We can’t say it is established fact,” said one senior American official who was involved in the highly classified assessment, based on information collected by many of the country’s 16 intelligence agencies. “But there is very little doubt, based on what we know about the current state of the North Korean leadership and the military.” Nonetheless, both the conclusion and the timing of the assessment could be useful to the United States as it seeks to rally support against North Korea. On Monday, South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, who has moved cautiously since the assault, is expected to call for the United Nations Security Council to condemn the attack and is likely to terminate the few remaining trade ties between North and South that provide the North with hard currency.

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Armed gangs battle police on Kingston's streets

Jamaican authorities say they are putting Kingston and surrounding areas under a state of emergency as police fight armed gangs trying to stop the arrest of a reputed gang leader sought for possible extradition to the United States. Christopher "Dudus" Coke is wanted by US authorities on drug and arms trafficking charges.

A police officer and a civilian were wounded by gunfire in street clashes and three police stations came under attack in the city, police said on Sunday. One police station was set on fire after police abandoned it having run out of bullets, they added.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding held an emergency meeting with his cabinet on Sunday and issued a State of Emergency for Kingston and St. Andrew, set to take effect at 6pm (0900 AEST om Monday) in the Caribbean nation of about 2.8 million. The government said the state of emergency will last for at least a month.

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Crisis Fuels Rise in German Left-Wing Extremist Violence

Following the 2007 protests at the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm, the number of attacks by leftist extremists has risen dramatically in Germany. The government is increasing its focus on the autonomists, but authorities know little about a new generation that is torching cars, and worse, in its fight. The man is a member of Berlin's left-wing radical autonomist movement, and he's engaged in a struggle against the system. If a few things have to go up in flames as part of that struggle, it doesn't usually bother him too much.

But there are limits -- and the deaths of three people recently in Greece, employees at a bank where someone threw a firebomb, have left him contemplating them. "I never imagined something like this," the man says. He's come to a cafe at Kottbusser Tor in Berlin's diverse Kreuzberg district to talk about left-wing militancy in Germany. In his mid-twenties, he's wearing a baseball cap and a t-shirt bearing the logo of the Zapatistas, Mexico's left-wing guerrilla movement. He gives no name, revealing only that he was involved in organizing the May 1 protest in Berlin and that he belongs to an anti-fascist group.

• "Attack from the Left? Automobile Arson a Trend in Berlin", Spiegel Online International, 9/4/09.
  

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Arrest of 'Easter bombers' led to international al-Qaeda network

When MI5 received a tip-off about a possible al-Qaeda cell in the north west of England last year, the security service had no inkling it was about to smash a terrorist plot to cause mass murder on both sides of the Atlantic. Over the following weeks and months agents would gather evidence which left no doubt that Muslim fanatics were not only planning to blow up shopping centres in Manchester, but were also connected to a planned attack on New York’s transport network which would have been the worst US atrocity since 9/11. Operation Pathway, as the investigation was codenamed, began in February last year, when MI5 began looking at a Muslim man in his forties living in the inner-city area of Cheetham Hill, Manchester.

The man was working in a hair products company where he had access to bomb making materials, causing instant concern. His roommate, Abid Naseer, had arrived in Britain from Pakistan on a student visa two years earlier, exploiting a system he knew well from working at an office in Pakistan where he handed out advice for John Moores University in Liverpool. Once in Britain, Naseer, 24, and his co-conspirators dropped out of their courses and began work as a security guard, maintaining their student status by signing up for bogus courses at the Manchester College of Professional Studies. MI5 noted that Naseer and others spent a lot of time at the Cyber Net café in Cheetham Hill, and GCHQ began monitoring their emails. Analysts believed the emails were in code and that Naseer was telling an al-Qaeda contact in Pakistan about the availability of different bomb-making materials, substituting girls’ names for chemicals.

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Afghani drugs becoming a major Australian problem

AFGHAN heroin has been smuggled into Australia in increasing quantities in recent years, surpassing Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle as the principal source, as the deepening insurgency and a shift in US counter-narcotics policy block efforts to curb Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade. The Australian Crime Commission and Australian Federal Police say Afghanistan is becoming the dominant source of heroin in this country, accounting for as much as two-thirds of the drug imports in recent years. The latest International Narcotics Control Strategy report from the US State Department says that despite a decade of counter-narcotics efforts, Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium poppies, responsible for 90 per cent of the opium gum used to manufacture heroin worldwide, worth $2.8 billion a year. UN figures show opium production has exploded in the decade since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, with curbing the heroin trade a key objective. In 2001, poppy fields covered 7600ha and produced 185 tonnes of opium, last year they covered 131,000ha and produced 6900 tonnes.

IN May last year, Afghan national army commandos backed by coalition forces made an eye-popping find when they raided an insurgent stronghold in the town of Marjah in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Along with a large stash of bomb-making materials, they stumbled on the biggest opium cache located in Afghanistan. There were 18,000kg of raw opium, 200kg of heroin, 1000kg of hashish, 72,000kg of poppy seed and more than 20,000kg of precursor chemicals used to process opium into morphine and heroin. The discovery of the stash was proof of Afghanistan's emergence as not only the world's largest supplier of opium, responsible for more than 90 per cent of global stocks, but as a leading producer of processed heroin, which is flowing into Western markets including Australia. The narcotics factory at Marjah was one of 25 drug laboratories discovered and destroyed in Afghanistan last year. Tonnes of narcotics have been burned, several big traffickers imprisoned and others extradited to face trial in the US.

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Paintings by Picasso, Matisse stolen in Paris

A lone thief stole five paintings worth a total of half a billion euros, including works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist Thursday from a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said. The paintings were reported missing early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower, according to Paris police. Investigators have cordoned off the museum, in one of the French capital's most tourist-frequented neighborhoods. A single masked intruder was caught on a video surveillance camera entering the museum by a window and taking the paintings away, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. Their collective worth is estimated at euro500 million ($613 million), the prosecutor's office said. The paintings were "Le pigeon aux petits-pois" (The Pigeon with the Peas) by Pablo Picasso, "Pastoral" by Henri Matisse, "Olive Tree near Estaque" by Georges Braque, "Woman with a Fan" by Amedeo Modigliani and "Still Life with Chandeliers" by Fernand Leger.

• "The French Art Heist: Who Would Steal Unsaleable Picassos?", Time, 5/20/10.
• "5 masterpieces stolen in $123M Paris museum heist", Jakarta Post, 5/20/10.
  

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City of Reno encourages online crime reporting as it flows into Crime Analysis

In the current economic climate, staff reductions to law enforcement agencies mean that officers are not responding to non-emergency crimes to file reports. Now it is the citizens' responsibility to go to the police department, or file a report with the Online Crime Reporting System that can be accessed through the city of Reno's website. Community Services Officer Craig Nielson says it's user friendly and will save you the time and hassle of visiting a police station to file a report. He says the Reno Police Department encourages citizens to go online because even if they do not have a suspect description or the confidence that the person could be caught, those reports still help the city with crime fighting.

"The information they provide us still is valuable because that flows into our crime analysis...it alerts us to what are the crime trends and what is going on out there," Nielson said. "Where...we need to use patrol and our attention." It is important to note that whether someone takes a crime report for you at the police station, or you go online, all the information goes to the same place, there is not a delay with the online option, and you do get a conformation and case number via e-mail. You can even check the status of your case on this same site. If investigators have questions, they will contact you directly. The website is located at www.reno.gov, then click on "I want to" at the top of the page, then from the drop down menu click on "report" and from the submenu select "Police Online Reporting System."

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Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan

This paper, written by the senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan and by a company-grade officer and a senior executive with the Defense Intelligence Agency, critically examines the relevance of the U.S. intelligence community to the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Based on discussions with hundreds of people inside and outside the intelligence community, it recommends sweeping changes to the way the intelligence community thinks about itself – from a focus on the enemy to a focus on the people of Afghanistan. The paper argues that because the United States has focused the overwhelming majority of collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, our intelligence apparatus still finds itself unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which we operate and the people we are trying to protect and persuade.

This problem or its consequences exist at every level of the U.S. intelligence hierarchy, and pivotal information is not making it to those who need it. To quote General Stanley McChrystal in a recent meeting, “Our senior leaders – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States – are not getting the right information to make decisions with ... The media is driving the issues. We need to build a process from the sensor all the way to the political decision makers.” This is a need that spans the 44 nations involved with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
This paper is the blueprint for that process. It describes the problem, details the changes and illuminates examples of units that are “getting it right.” It is aimed at commanders as well as intelligence professionals, in Afghanistan and in the United States and Europe.

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The Pakistani Taliban's top leaders

After the failed car bomb attack in New York City’s Times Square, the Pakistani Taliban have suddenly risen to the top of the list of concerns for Western intelligence and law enforcement officials. The Pakistan Taliban’s claim for the failed attack was initially ignored, but the resulting investigation has pointed back to the group’s involvement. This has forced US officials to admit that the Pakistani group is more than just a local insurgent outfit aiming at overthrowing the Pakistani government.

Although the Pakistani Taliban has only recently been recognized as a threat to the US homeland, the group has for years conducted operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan and sheltered al Qaeda and a host of regional and international terror groups. Al Qaeda’s external operations network has been based in territory ruled by the Pakistani Taliban, yet strangely, most Western observers have not seen the Pakistani Taliban as a direct threat.

The largest Taliban faction in Pakistan is known as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, or the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. This is an alliance of 28 Taliban groups located in Pakistan’s tribal areas and the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the Northwest frontier Province). There are also several other major Taliban groups, mainly in North Waziristan, that are not members of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan but that have remained closely allied with the grooup.

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Terror suspect may be headed to Texas through Mexico

A Homeland Security Alert is asking Houston police and Harris County Sheriff’s deputies to keep their eyes open for a potential terrorist. The alert focuses on Mohamed Ali, a suspected member of the terrorist group Al Shabaab. It indicates he may be traveling to the U.S. through Mexico. Al Shabaab is a terrorist group based in Somalia with links to the Somali attacks dramatized in the movie “Blackhawk Down.” A few months ago, the group announced its allegiance to Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. “[Al Shabaab operatives] are certainly a real threat to U.S. security and an increasing threat to U.S. security,” said Rice University Baker Institute Fellow Joan Neuhaus Schaan. Schaan is an expert on Homeland Security and terrorism, and her research is reviewed by the U.S. government, military and civil authorities. She said Al-Shabaab trains extremists and wants to turn Somalia into the next Afghanistan.

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More Victims Reporting Driver's License Scam

In April, Greg Lapore said he got a new drivers license in the mail, but the photo and name on the license was not his. The name on the license said Paulo Cruz-Rangel, although the address belonged to Lapore. Lapore said he does not know Cruz-Rangel. According to investigators, they are now learning about a new scam plaguing innocent residents in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area. They said illegal immigrants are traveling from eight different states, selecting random Albuquerque addresses and filling out change of address forms, to get false residential documents and then obtain drivers licenses.

According to State Tax and Fraud investigator Alvan Romero, this scam can ruin a person financially. Originally, 24 victims were identified. Since the story aired on Action 7 News last week, more than a dozen victims have come forward. "We consider this a public service announcement. We want to get this out to everyone," said Romero. Luckily, Lapore intercepted the ID before a complete stranger got it. He called the post office and the MVD. "If somebody else would have had a valid drivers license with my address on it, who knows what kind of problems they would've caused," said Lapore.

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6 Ways Law Enforcement Uses Social Media to Fight Crime

From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law enforcement agencies, and not just to fight Internet (Internet)-related crimes. We’re talking about solving crimes that are happening on the street and in your community. According to Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and organizer of the SMILE (Social Media In Law Enforcement) Conference being held in Washington D.C. this April, adoption of social media is still in the “very, very, early stages,” but she sees it making an upward turn. “I expect 2010 will be a monumental year,” she said.

But many police departments that have embraced social media are still trying to figure it out. “Most agencies … are not significantly proactive with keeping up with content and updates,” said Terry Halsch from CitizenObserver.com, developers of the tip411 system for police agencies. “There are some limitations because of uncertainty of how secure information is, how can it be efficiently maintained, and the risks and liabilities of entering the world of social media.”

Below are six different ways law enforcement is utilizing social media and real-time search to enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and ultimately prevent criminal activity:

1. Police Blotter Blogs
2. The Digital "Wanted Poster"
3. Anonymous E-Tipsters
4. Social Media Stakeout
5. Thwarting Thus in the Social Space
6. Tracking and informing with Twitter

See also:

• "Gangs in New York talk Twitter: Use tweets to trash-talk rivals, plan fights", NY Daily News, 11/29/09.
  
• "Police Use Web To Track Down Gang Members", 219 Magazine, 8/13/09.

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Best Practice: Mortgage Fraud Investigations

The news from the real estate sector has been grim for months: both foreclosures and mortgage fraud are at all-time highs. Because these intertwined problems have reached crisis proportions they are threatening the stability of entire neighborhoods, making the search for effective responses a priority not only for bankers and real estate brokers but also local governments, police departments, prosecutors’ offices, and community groups.

Here is a new report that may help your investigators or any intelligence missions concerning mortgage fraud. It is entitled "A Full Response to An Empty House: Public Safety Strategies for Addressing Mortgage Fraud and the Foreclosure Crisis".

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Incidents of Jihadist Terrorist Radicalization in the United States Since September 11, 2001

Effective intelligence gathering and a Muslim community unsympathetic to calls to violence have discouraged homegrown jihadist terrorism in the United States, according to a new study from the RAND Corporation. Between September 11, 2001, and the end of 2009, 46 publicly reported cases of domestic radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism occurred in the United States; 13 of those cases occurred in 2009. Most of the would-be jihadists were individuals who recruited themselves into the terrorist role. Some provided assistance to foreign terrorist organizations; some went abroad to join various jihad fronts; some plotted terrorist attacks in the United States, usually with little success because of intervention by the authorities. The threat of large-scale terrorist violence has pushed law enforcement toward prevention rather than criminal apprehension after an event — or, as one senior police official put it, “staying to the left of the boom,” which means stopping the explosions or attacks before they occur. This shift toward prevention requires both collecting domestic intelligence — always a delicate mission in a democracy — and maintaining community trust and cooperation.

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European antiterrorism agencies favor human intelligence over technology

The tip from Spain was only a vague warning. But it was enough for France's domestic intelligence agents to go to work, tapping phones, tailing suspects and squeezing informants. Before long, they rolled up a group of Muslim men in a provincial French town who, beneath a tranquil surface, were drawing up al-Qaeda-inspired plans to set off a bomb in the Paris subway. The plot, described by a source with firsthand information, was one of 15 planned terrorist attacks by jihadist cells in France that have been thwarted in recent years, according to a count by the Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI), France's main antiterrorism force. One was a bomb plot directed against the directorate's own headquarters.

The antiterrorism policing—it is a not a "war," specialists here emphasized—has been conducted for the most part in the dark, and in a style that sets France and other European countries apart from the United States. As U.S. officials seek to understand what may have led a Pakistani immigrant to try to blow up Times Square, and how he boarded an airplane at John F. Kennedy International Airport despite multiple computerized watch lists, Europe's specialists have pointed to their own approach as an example of how to proceed.

From the beginning the emphasis in Europe has been on domestic human intelligence rather than the computerized systems such as watch lists favored by U.S. security agencies. That has meant tedious hours of surveillance, patient listening-in on telephone conversations, careful review of bank records, and relentless recruitment of informants among Islamic zealots who are motivated to betray acquaintances by everything from fear of losing visas to a desire to clear the name of Islam in European minds.

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Embassy Bombers Moved to Prevent Escape

Two militants on death row for the September 2004 car bombing at the Australian Embassy compound in Jakarta were transferred to a maximum security prison on Thursday after police discovered a plot to attack Cipinang Penitentiary and free the terrorists, an intelligence expert said. The transfer was also made amid concerns that the inmates, Iwan Darmawan Muntho, alias Rois, and Achmad Hasan, were able to communicate with fellow militants in Aceh using cellphones from inside their cells in the state penitentiary in East Jakarta. They have been transferred to the prison island of Nusakambangan in Central Java. “Police have uncovered a plot by a group of militants who were recently caught holding paramilitary training activities in Aceh. Their objective was to free Rois and Hasan by force,” Dynno Cresbon, a renowned intelligence analyst, told the Jakarta Globe.

“A series of operations that started in Aceh in February revealed key information that included contact between Rois and the group regarding the plot. So Thursday’s transfer was not carried out hastily. Police have been preparing for it for weeks,” Dynno said, adding that he obtained the information from a source at the police antiterror unit Densus 88. If the plot had materialized, the planned attack could trigger the use of a new terror method, with prisons targeted instead of hotels or tourist venues.

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Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic

For decades, illegal marijuana cultivation has been an economic lifeblood for three counties in northern California known as the Emerald Triangle. The war on drugs and frequent raids by federal drug agents have helped support the local economy — keeping prices for street sales of pot high and keeping profits rich. But high times are changing. Legal pot, under the guise of the California's medical marijuana laws, has spurred a rush of new competition. As a result, the wholesale price of pot grown in these areas is plunging.

In 1983, the Reagan administration launched a massive air and ground campaign to eradicate pot and lock up growers in northern California. With the Reagan crackdown, writer Charley Custer recalls, wholesale prices shot up — to as high as $5,000 a pound. That sudden and ironic windfall for those growers willing to risk prison time transformed the community. "Outdoor growers are having a hard time unloading their fall harvest," Custer says. "And this is six months later and when some people do move it, they don't get nearly the price they were hoping for." That goes for both legal growers who cultivate limited quantities of pot under the medical marijuana laws and illegal operators who often grow larger amounts.

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Parking attendants trained to watch for terrorists

While recently attending a course in the "Entertainment Capital of the World", a colleague in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told me that 17 of the 20 largest hotels in the world are located in Las Vegas. That is a truly significant statistic, with many implications. One of those implications is that large numbers of people congregate in, and move around, "The Strip" and other major attractions in the city. A second implication is that with such large assemblies and its iconic status, that "Sin City" is a target for terrorist attacks, maybe as much as New York City is.

However, Las Vegas and other cities are fighting back with parking attendants and meter maids being drafted into the nation's latest line of defense against terrorist attacks. A new government program aims to train thousands of parking industry employees nationwide to watch for and report anything suspicious — abandoned cars, for example, or people hanging around garages, taking photographs or asking unusual questions. Organizers say parking attendants and enforcement officers are as important to thwarting attacks as the two Times Square street vendors who alerted police to a smoking SUV that was found to contain a gasoline-and-propane bomb.

“We can no longer afford as a nation to say, `It doesn't impact me or my family, so therefore I'm not getting involved,'" Bill Arrington of the Transportation Security Administration told parking industry professionals at a convention this week in Las Vegas. "We're saying, 'Please, sir, get involved.'" The program has been in the works for about a year and gave its first presentation at the convention, attended by hundreds of people who run parking operations for cities, universities, stadiums and other places around the country.

• "City of London security guards told to report 'suspicious' photographers", The Guardian, 5/13/10.
  

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Predictive Analysis and Death From Above

The way predictive analysis works is quite simple. With more data (from the vidcams, electronic eavesdropping and informants on the ground) it's possible to create a model (or simulation) of what terrorist activity on the ground looks like. Thus, if the CIA analysts see certain patterns of actions on the ground, they can accurately predict where the Islamic terrorists are, what they doing and, often, exactly who (like a key Taliban or al Qaeda operative) is down there. At that point, the Hellfire missiles are applied. The track record of the accuracy of these predictions has been striking. Few civilians have been attacked, nearly all the targets have been, as the predictive analysis indicated, terrorists.

A key factor in making all this work was the U.S. government changing its policy, in the last two years, of only attacking terrorists on a list (of up to 500) of named individuals. Predictive analysis cannot always guarantee that a target will be a specific individual, but it can, with near certainty, indicate that the target is an Islamic terrorist. It all began back in the 1970s, when some CIA analysts discovered a new way to analyze the mountains of information they were receiving. The new tool was predictive analysis. What does this do for intelligence analysts? Predictive analysis was the result of a fortuitous combination of OR (Operations Research), large amounts of data and more powerful computers. OR is one the major (and generally unheralded) scientific developments of the early 20th century.

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Bloody Day in Bangkok

At least seven people were killed and more than 100 others injured as troops battled red-shirt protesters around the Rajprasong rally site in the most violent day since the April 10 bloodbath. Despite the insistence of the Centre for the Resolution of the Emergency Situation (CRES) that the general situation was under control, gunfires and explosions were still heard last night at the Bon Kai area. Tyres were burning along the Ratchaprarop Road, which leads to the red shirts' rally stage. Bonfires were also started on Sathorn Road. Several grenades fired from M79 launchers hit the Ratchaprarop, Bon Kai and Sala Daeng areas. Rumours abounded last night that the red shirts' militant wing, which is loyal to Maj-General Khattiya Sawasdipol, who was shot and critically injured by a sniper on Thursday, would run amok in vengeance.

Key clashes took place in front of the Lumpini Night Bazaar in the afternoon as troops sought to edge closer to the red fortress and reclaim some strategic areas seized earlier. Four people were reportedly killed as a result of the battles in this key area. The Rama IV Road was sealed off, making it an eerie space marred by black smoke from burning tyres and occupied by troops and angry, belligerent protesters. Later, protesters fought troops moving up from the northern side of Rajprasong. Clashes on the Ratchaprarop Road were more intense due to the narrower space, and continued until the evening.

• "The Battle Rages On", The Nation, 5/15/10.
  
• "UN head Ban Ki-moon urges end to Bangkok clashes", BBC News, 5/14/10.
  
• "Unfazed red-shirts guards ready for military incursion", The Nation, 5/14/10.
• "Sniper 'targeted Khattiya from high-rise'", The Nation, 5/14/10.
  

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Colombia's marijuana feeding Europe's habit

These are the mountains of Colombia's southwest Cauca province, far from the reach of the law and just as far from market -- making it difficult, the dirt-poor peasants say, to scrape a living selling legal produce. Around every bend and in every village there's a surprise. Marijuana plantations stretch sometimes for several acres, clinging to steep-sided canyons. Farmhands wielding machetes disappear amid a "forest" of thousands of plants, two or three times taller than a person. They reappear minutes later with a bundle of marijuana over their shoulder and head for rudimentary drying houses made of black plastic slung over wooden branches. In some of these shacks hundreds of pounds of marijuana are hung out to dry.

In other communities, old ladies take advantage of a brief break in the rain to toss marijuana up to dry on the tin roofs of their homes. Others hang the herb in the rafters of the kitchen, where the strangely sweet smell mingles with the aroma of a stew cooking on a smoky fire. In Cauca province at least, there's a new bonanza. This is one of the few regions of Colombia where, according to United Nations' anti-drug officials, the production of marijuana and coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, is increasing. At the same time, Colombia is once again exporting good quality pot and has become a "major supplier" to Europe, according to the DEA.

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Italy expelled Moroccans on suspicion of Pope plot

Two Moroccan students deported from Italy last month were suspected of plotting to assassinate Pope Benedict, an Interior Ministry source said on Friday. Mohamed Hlal, 26, and Ahmed Errahmouni, 22, students at the University for Foreigners in the central Italian city of Perugia, had been under surveillance by anti-terrorist police for months before they were expelled on April 29. During their inquiry, investigators found evidence suggesting the two (suspects) were plotting an attack on the pope."

An interior ministry statement issued at the time of their deportation said they were being expelled under prevention of terrorism laws. Six other foreign students, suspected of contacts with militant Islamic groups, are still under investigation. News magazine Panorama, owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's family, reported on Friday that local anti-terrorist police had tapped Hlal's phone and had raised the alarm when he said he wanted to acquire explosives.

The magazine said police discovered a map of Turin at Errahmouni's house annotated with numbers and circles, ahead of a visit to the northern Italian city by Pope Benedict on May 2 to venerate the Shroud of Turin, which many Catholics believe was Jesus Christ's burial cloth.Panorama described Errahmouni as a computer expert who remained in contact with militant groups over the Internet. It said Perugia had become a centre for travelling imams to preach radical Islam.

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Maritime Security—Actions Taken to Enhance Cruise Ship Security, but Concerns Remain

In an extensive investigation and analysis of cruise ship security, the U.S. Government Accountability Office generally gives high marks to the industry and the maritime safety and law-enforcement agencies tasked with protecting cruise ships. Still, nearly everyone associated with cruise ships is sensitive to the possibility that a single terrorist act could inflict huge losses on the industry. While loss of life is the paramount concern in safety efforts, the loss of billions of dollars in bookings would represent a body blow that might extend for years. "A successful attack on a cruise ship in or near U.S. waters that resulted in the closure of a U.S. port or discouraged cruise travel would likely harm the U.S. economy because of the significant economic impact that ports contribute to the U.S. economy," the GAO report said.

In 2008, more than 9.3 million passengers boarded cruise ships in U.S. ports, with roughly 3,900 cruises emanating from 30 U.S. ports. The ships continue to get larger, and so do the security stakes. For many reasons -- visibility, predictable sailing schedules, and large floating targets -- the GAO says the U. S. Coast Guard considers cruise ships to be "highly attractive targets to terrorists." The good news is that the National Maritime Intelligence Center did not have a single credible terrorist threat against cruise ships in 2009. There has been a sustained increased in overt efforts to protect cruise vessels, including providing Coast Guard escorts, more aggressive reviews of crew and passenger manifests, and stepped up security by the cruise lines themselves.

• "Maritime Security—Varied Actions Taken to Enhance Cruise Ship Security, but Some Concerns Remain", GAO, April 2010.

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