Thursday, September 30, 2010

Locked and Loaded: The Secret World of Extreme Militias

Camouflaged and silent, the assault team inched toward a walled stone compound for more than five hours, belly-crawling the last 200 yards. The target was an old state prison in eastern Ohio, and every handpicked member of Red Team 2 knew what was at stake: The year is 2014, and a new breed of neo-Islamic terrorism is rampant in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio ... The current White House Administration is pro-Muslim and has ordered a stand-down against Islamic groups. The mission: Destroy the terrorist command post — or die trying. The fighters must go in "sterile" — without name tags or other identifying insignia — as a deniable covert force. "Anyone who is caught or captured cannot expect extraction," the briefing officer said.


At nightfall the raiders launched their attack. Short, sharp bursts from their M-16s cut down the perimeter guards. Once past the rear gate, the raiders fanned out and emptied clip after clip in a barrage of diversionary fire. As defenders rushed to repel the small team, the main assault force struck from the opposite flank. Red Team 1 burst through a chain-link fence, enveloping the defense in lethal cross fire. The shooting was over in minutes. Thick grenade smoke bloomed over the command post. The defenders were routed, headquarters ablaze.



This August weekend of grueling mock combat, which left some of the men prostrate and bloody-booted, capped a yearlong training regimen of the Ohio Defense Force, a private militia that claims 300 active members statewide. The fighters shot blanks, the better to learn to maneuver in squads, but they buy live ammunition in bulk. Their training — no game, they stress — expends thousands of rounds a year from a bring-your-own armory of deer rifles, assault weapons and, when the owner turns up, a belt-fed M-60 machine gun. The militia trains for ambushes, sniper missions, close-quarters battle and other infantry staples.

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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Europe warned of Mumbai-style terror attacks

A man captured in Afghanistan has tipped off investigators to a potential "Mumbai-style" terror plot in Europe, a German counterterror source said Wednesday. Investigators believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden signed off on a European attack plan, a separate law enforcement source said. But U.S. and international officials say they have seen no sign of an imminent attack.



U.S. officials said the alleged plot has no U.S. component -- at least none that has been found. One official stressed that the plot is serious and credible but that the intelligence available lacked specificity -- no who, where or how. Some names of "known operational planners" are possibly connected with the plot, but there is "no precise insight" into who may be planning an attack, the official said. Soft targets such as hotels and economic targets are of particular concern, but there is "no precise" intelligence on the mode of attack, said the official.

Another official said there are different threads coming from different places, and it's not clear how or even if they will come together. The European countries involved -- primarily Germany, France, Britain -- are tackling the perceived threats as they see fit.

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Femtocells: Portable personal base stations, will they lead to greater opportunity to hack data?

Portable, personal base stations represent a major push by the telecom industry to create a mini infrastructure that it hopes can help satisfy the seemingly insatiable demand for viewing large multimedia files (in particular, Web-based video) using handheld devices, a recurring theme at EmTech on Wednesday. "Wireless has been the fastest adopted technology in history," Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said during his keynote later in the day. "There are more cell phones in use today than TVs, PCs and cars combined."

Femtocells are designed to fill in "coverage holes" that often occur in homes and small businesses, Jonathan Segel, executive director of Alcatel-Lucent's CTO Group, noted during his EmTech presentation Wednesday about mobile apps. In addition, he pointed out that cities have begun to turn to "metro cells" (which provide a range of several kilometers) to offload data traffic in densely populated areas.

Research firm IDATE last week published a report about femtocells indicating that in 2014 about 23 million femtocell devices would be sold worldwide for a total market of nearly $1.25 billion. Each of the major carriers (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon) sells femtocells, with Sprint announcing last week that it has started giving away the devices for free to some subscribers with weak 3G coverage. Femtocells generally cost between $150 and $250.

The trend over time is for mobile phone cells to continue to shrink while providing better service to wireless users. "Because your phone isn't having to shout [to reach a cell tower], your battery life is better," according to Rupert Baines, vice president of marketing for picoChip, a maker of chips used in femtocells. "If the signal doesn't have to go too far you'll get better quality, you're covering less people with each base station and each person is getting more capacity." PicoChip recently introduced a new processor designed to boost even small portable base station signals so they can be used in a variety of public spaces, including shopping malls and airports.

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Not that its anything new, but it seems like a military coup is brewing in Pakistan

The Pakistani military, angered by the inept handling of the country’s devastating floods and alarmed by a collapse of the economy, is pushing for a shake-up of the elected government, and in the longer term, even the removal of President Asif Ali Zardari and his top lieutenants. The military, preoccupied by a war against militants and reluctant to assume direct responsibility for the economic crisis, has made clear it is not eager to take over the government, as it has many times before in Pakistan, military officials and politicians said.

But the government’s performance since the floods, which have left 20 million people homeless and the nation dependent on handouts from skeptical foreign donors, has laid bare the deep underlying tensions between the military and the civilian leadership. American officials acknowledge that it has also left them increasingly disillusioned with Mr. Zardari, a now deeply unpopular president who was elected two-and-half years ago on a wave of sympathy after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto. In a series of meetings with the civilian leaders, the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, scolded the president and his prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, for incompetence and corruption in the government, according to officials familiar with the conversations.

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Monday, September 27, 2010

Computer Worm Affects Computers at Iran's First Nuclear Power Station

A complex computer worm capable of seizing control of industrial plants has affected the personal computers of staff working at Iran's first nuclear power station weeks before the facility is to go online, the official news agency reported Sunday. The project manager at the Bushehr nuclear plant, Mahmoud Jafari, said a team is trying to remove the malware from several affected computers, though it "has not caused any damage to major systems of the plant," the IRNA news agency reported.

It was the first sign that the malicious computer code, dubbed Stuxnet, which has spread to many industries in Iran, has also affected equipment linked to the country's nuclear program, which is at the core of the dispute between Tehran and Western powers like the United States. Experts in Germany discovered the worm in July, and it has since shown up in a number of attacks -- primarily in Iran, Indonesia, India and the U.S. The malware is capable of taking over systems that control the inner workings of industrial plants.

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Al-Qaida Takes Lessons Learned To Yemen

Yemeni soldiers streamed into the streets of the capital this weekend after a deadly attack on intelligence services by alleged al-Qaida gunmen, underscoring the impact of what U.S. government officials and experts on terrorism say has become the world’s most active and dangerous offshoot of al-Qaida. With dozens of attacks this year on spy and security forces, including deadly raids into the very headquarters of Yemen’s mukhabarat, or intelligence branch, Yemen's newly invigorated al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is reshaping the mission, strategy and tactics of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida brand, experts say. And the Yemeni government is now stepping up its effort to confront this insurgency and doing so with pledges of more than $1 billion in military aid from the United States.

At this point, there is a "raging war taking place between al-Qaida in Yemen and the Yemeni government," said Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle East politics at the London School of Economics, and a longtime scholar of al-Qaida. Diversifying from al-Qaida's core vision of mass-casualty attacks upon people of the distant, hated West, al-Qaida fighters in Yemen have redirected their aim squarely upon the weak, fumbling and corrupt government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Saleh this summer sided more than ever with the United States against the al-Qaida forces who have made their home in his country, proclaiming al-Qaida the greatest danger to his country.

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International Pedophile Ring in Thailand

Sentencing has been postponed in the case of a Canadian man facing up to 50 years in prison for his admitted role in an international pedophile ring he ran out of Thailand. No new date has been set in the case of John Wrenshall, who pleaded guilty to three counts including conspiring to engage in sex tourism and to producing and distributing child pornography. The 63-year-old, originally from Calgary, detailed graphic abuse of boys as young as four years old. Authorities discovered Wrenshall was running a brothel for pedophiles in Thailand after confiscating computers from Union City resident Wayne Corliss.

Mr. Corliss is serving a 20-year sentence after admitting he travelled to Thailand to have sex with at least two boys. Mr. Wrenshall pleaded guilty in May. News reports at the time said he was a former Boy Scout leader and church choir member in Calgary, and was previously convicted of sex-related charges involving young boys. Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Vartan said Mr. Wrenshall spent time in a Canadian prison and then left Canada and moved to the Thai capital Bangkok. Mr. Vartan said he was there from as early as January 2000 and lived there continuously until he was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport in December 2008.

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Friday, September 24, 2010

Reposted from Sources and Methods: Intelligence Analysts Are Insanely Happy

According to a recent Wall Street Journal sponsored study (using info from Payscale.com), Intelligence Analysts are happy -- really happy. Out of the 82 professions examined, intel analyst came in at number 7, scoring a whopping 73.1 out of 100 points. Only one job, Aerospace Engineer, scored 100 of 100 and the other 5 happiest jobs were fairly closely grouped. This study follows on the heels of the CNN report from last year that indicated that Intel analyst was the 9th best job in the country. CNN did not look at happiness per se so it is hard to compare the two lists but it is interesting to note that, on both lists, intelligence analyst ranks so highly.

I find this particularly interesting given that intelligence analyst does not even have a Bureau of Labor Statistics Standard Occupational Classification System code, which means that the US Government is not tracking the profession in any meaningful way. It suggests to me that intel analyst has become a popular and common enough job to earn the attention of both CNN and the Wall Street Journal but that there are few reliable resources for adequately managing the profession.

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Twitter Provides New Way to Fight Pharmacy Crime

Purdue Pharma L.P. announces the launch of its new pharmacy crime prevention tool: Twitter.com/rxpatrol. Pharmacy staff, law enforcement officials and loss prevention personnel can follow updates about pharmacy robberies, burglaries and potential threats in their area and nationwide. The tweets provide safety and security tips for pharmacy staff that may help them better protect customers and their businesses. Followers also receive notices for reward offers that are funded through Purdue's partnership with CrimeStoppers and other local anti-crime organizations.

The RxPatrol Program tracks and analyzes reports of pharmacy crime across the United States and posts important crime related information on its web site: www.rxpatrol.org. The program also issues alerts and updates via email to registered users in the pharmacy and law enforcement communities. However, since many pharmacists do not have Internet access during work hours, but do have access to cell phones, RxPATROL® is now using Twitter to instantly deliver pharmacy crime updates and tips to followers via their cell phones. RxPATROL's Twitter followers receive timely pharmacy crime information that is often not
reported by the media.

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Thursday, September 23, 2010

FARC commander 'Mono Jojoy' killed

Top FARC commander "Mono Jojoy" was killed by Colombian state forces. President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the death of the rebel leader from New York City, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly. The head of the FARC's Eastern Bloc and member of its Secretariat was killed in a massive air strike in a region called La Macarena in the central Colombian Meta department, 200 miles south of Bogota. Some 20 other guerrillas were reportedly also killed in the attack.

Mono Jojoy, also known as "Jorge Briceño Suárez," but born under the name Victor Julio Suarez Rojas, was thought to be group's second-in-command, and military leader of virtually all guerrillas in the rebels' war with the state. Mono Jojoy was considered a hardliner within the command structure of the country's largest guerrilla group. He was responsible for holding hostages including politicians, policemen, and soldiers.

The veteran guerrilla had a $1.3 million reward on his head, and 62 arrest warrants against him. The United States had requested his extradition to face drug trafficking charges. The FARC has faced serious setbacks in recent years, with high-level commander "Raul Reyes" killed by a Colombian air strike on Ecuadorean territory in March 2008. The group's founder and supreme leader "Manuel Marulanda" died of natural causes in 2008. An airstrike by the Colombian armed forces on Sunday killed FARC commander "Domingo Biojo," political leader of the organization's 48th Front, along with at least 26 other rebels. Current supreme commander "Alfonso Cano" remains at large.

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Risk of small-scale attacks by al-Qaeda and its allies is rising

Al-Qaeda and its allies are likely to attempt small-scale, less sophisticated terrorist attacks in the United States, senior Obama administration officials said Wednesday, noting that it's extremely difficult to detect such threats in advance. "Unlike large-scale, coordinated, catastrophic attacks, executing smaller-scale attacks requires less planning and fewer pre-operational steps," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "Accordingly, there are fewer opportunities to detect such an attack before it occurs."



Terrorism experts have puzzled over al-Qaeda's apparent unwillingness after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to use car bombs, improvised explosives and small arms to conduct assaults in the United States. The group appeared fixated on orchestrating another dramatic mass-casualty event, such as the simultaneous downing of several commercial airliners. Indeed, attacks inspired by al-Qaeda in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 involved multiple, coordinated bombings targeting mass-transit systems. But the risk of a single-target bombing or an attack by a lone gunman has increased, officials say, with the rise of al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in the tribal areas of Pakistan, in Yemen and in Somalia, and with the emergence of radicalized Americans inspired by the ideology of violent jihad.


"The impact of the attempted attacks during the past year suggests al-Qaeda, and its affiliates and allies, will attempt to conduct smaller-scale attacks targeting the homeland but with greater frequency," said Michael Leiter (shown above), director of the National Counterterrorism Center, pointing to plots against the subway system in New York, the attempt to down a commercial airliner approaching Detroit and the failed car bombing in Times Square. Leiter said in his testimony that "al-Qaeda in Pakistan is at one of its weakest points organizationally," but he noted that "regional affiliates and allies can compensate for the potentially decreased willingness of al-Qaeda in Pakistan - the deadliest supplier of such training and guidance - to accept and train new recruits."

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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Italy seizes huge explosives cache

Italian police have seized seven tonnes of the powerful RDX explosives from a container ship believed to be on its way to Syria, according to authorities. Anti-mafia police found the explosives hidden in a shipment of powdered milk at the port of Gioia Tauro in southern Calabria, Italian news agencies reported. Carmelo Casabona, the region's police chief, said investigators are not yet sure of who was in control of the shipment, but it appeared that it originally travelled from Iran.



Also known as T4, RDX is a powerful military grade explosive that has been used in several devastating attacks believed to have been carried out by the Italian mafia in past years. It was most notably used in the assassinations of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, the former being blown up with his wife and three bodyguards after a bomb was detonated under a motorway. Casabona said the cargo had "the involvement of international criminal organisations," but ruled out the involvement of local mafia, know as the Ndrangheta, saying the shipment was too large.The cargo was reportedly found on a Liberian-registered ship called the Finland, which is owned by an Italian-Swiss company, MSC.

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Police chief: Threat of attack on France hits peak

France is facing a "peak" terror threat, and authorities suspect al-Qaeda's North African affiliate of plotting a conventional bomb attack on a crowded target, the national police chief said Wednesday. The warning from National Police Chief Frederic Pechenard came on the eve of national protests that unions hope will send millions into city streets, and was the latest warning in a recent drumbeat from French officials that the public needs to be more alert about terrorism. "France is today under threat. For that matter, French people need to get used to it," he told Europe-1 radio. "We're now facing a peak threat that can't be doubted. There is a specific threat against French interests. We have serious indications, coming from reliable intelligence, saying that there's an important risk of an attack," he said, adding that al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, "is targeting us in particular."

Last week, there was a false bomb alert at the Eiffel Tower, and investigators are looking into an anonymous phone call that prompted police to evacuate the most-visited monument in the tourism-oriented country. AQIM claimed responsibility for last week's abduction of five French nationals and two Africans in northern Niger. Pechenard said the group isn't thought to have the means to launch a nuclear or biological attack in France, but could carry out assassinations or attacks using conventional explosives. "In order to do the maximum possible damage (such an attack) would be likely to happen in a place where there are lots of people, which could be the public transit system, a department store or a gathering," Pechenard said. Last week, the French Senate voted to ban burqa-style Islamic veils in France, a subject that has prompted warnings by AQIM.

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Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Bending Intelligence to Political Purposes

Intelligence, it is commonly said, is inherently fallible. And the conventional wisdom is that people tend to see the world as they expect to see it and so are slow to change their minds.

If that is true, policymakers' decisions based on such intelligence analysis and mind-set should be executed carefully. There is nowhere that is more crucial than on the Korean peninsula. Their overall judgments also must be speedy, accurate and taken with great care, especially in assessing an undercurrent of the soon-to-be-declared power shift in North Korea. Far too often, the deepest and most authoritative country analysis is colored by the administration in power in the South.

Ten years or so ago, for instance, some North Korea analysts at government-financed institutes in the South proudly enjoyed likening the North to "a ship on fire in mid-ocean with a hold full of ammunition." A handful of then-senior colleagues at Korea's Blue House joined their top decision-maker who allegedly claimed in a telephone conversation with his counterpart at the Clinton White House that the North would collapse within six to 24 months.

Of course, it's not sure whether their assenting opinions were deliberately made to support official policy under the conservative Kim Young-sam government. But other pessimistic Korea watchers imagined that if the power succession should fail to proceed, millions of people would likely abandon their homes and move in hordes across the countryside, hastening to the northwest side of the Chinese frontier to search for a better life. The roads would be crammed with hungry refugees, people clinging onto the steps of the trains or crowded upon their roofs.

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Crime bankrolls terrorism: official

Narcotics trafficking and compromised charities are key domestic bankrollers of suspected international terrorist activities, says the head of the federal financial intelligence agency. Speaking at a British economic crime symposium Wednesday, Jeanne Flemming, director of the secretive Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre, or FINTRAC, said one-third of suspected terrorist-financing cases in Canada involve money from drug trafficking, fraud and other criminal enterprises.



Another one-quarter involve charities and non-profit organizations, she told the Cambridge University conference. Terror networks often use compromised or complicit charities and businesses as a veil of legitimacy to support their objectives. "These cases involve transactions that course through the mainstream financial system as part of the routine traffic of domestic and international transactions," she said.



FINTRAC was created a decade ago to help police investigate organized crime, but after 9/11, its mandate expanded to include terrorist financing. FINTRAC, along with Australia's financial intelligence unit are the only major western agencies that have the power to collect and analyse international electronic funds transfer reports involving transactions of $10,000 or more.



Seventy-seven per cent of the suspected terrorist-financing cases forwarded to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service by FINTRAC have resulted from the agency's ability to monitor wire transfers. "Not only were wire transfers a prominent feature in a large portion of our cases, in many instances without the wire transfer data we would not have reached a threshold of suspicion of terrorist-financing activity," said Flemming, who urged other nations to adopt the practice as well. "Money can leave a very useful trail when looking at a criminal enterprise or a terrorist network that is engaged in financing acts of violence in another country."

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Monday, September 20, 2010

Basque separatist warns of IRA-type split within ETA

ETA hardliners could form a new more violent offshoot, similar to the Real IRA, a separatist leader warned Monday, as Madrid snubbed a call by the outlawed Basque group for international mediation. ETA, blamed for 829 deaths in a flagging campaign of bombings and shootings to secure an independent Basque homeland, on Sunday called on international mediators to help resolve the decades-old conflict. That followed a September 5 video declaration in which it said it had decided several months ago to halt armed offensive actions. But the ceasefire was rejected outright by Madrid for failing to promise a permanent end to the violence. The government also Monday dismissed the latest proposal, with Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega saying it contained "nothing new." "ETA knows that the only thing that has any value is the definitive and complete end to violence and arms," she said.

Patxi Zabaleta, the head of non-violent Basque separatist group Aralar, said ETA must agree to "unilaterally end (violence), verifiably and without any political benefits. "That is what we are hoping for. But there remains the risk of a split (within ETA), similar to the Real IRA," he told the newspaper El Pais. The Real IRA (Irish Republican Army) split from the Provisional IRA -- once the main Catholic militant organisation opposed to British rule in Northern Ireland -- in 1997 over the latter's support for a peace drive. Some ETA fighters who favour a continuation of the campaign of violence could form splinter group like "that of the Real IRA, marginalised and ineffective," Zabaleta said. ETA's political wing Batasuna, with which he had met three times recently, was determined to work for "the end of violence," as it has indicated since early this year, he added. Batasuna wanted to "move forward on this path," and if that was not possible "there would be a break-up" between Batasuna and ETA.

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NYPDs Counterterrorism Analytic Unit

Inspire magazine, an English-language journal published by Al Qaeda, included in its summer edition what amounted to a “Friends and Foes” list. There, on Page 4, following the letter from the editor (“We survive through jihad and perish without it”), were pictures of, and quotations from, kindred spirits like Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty in a plot to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, and, perhaps surprisingly, David Letterman, who was praised for recent criticism of former President George W. Bush. Among the magazine’s “foes” were Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates; Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France; and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Then there was Mitchell D. Silber, a studious and mild-mannered former financier who grew up in Atlantic Beach, N.Y.

Mr. Silber (“I guess I was flattered in a strange way”) may seem an unlikely choice to occupy that space with a terrorist, a television star, a cabinet secretary, a European head of state and an Arab potentate. He is not, after all, a boldface name. Rather, he is a 40-year-old father with a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University who says his main hobby is reading deeply on the Middle East. What landed Mr. Silber on that list was his leadership of a little-known counterterrorism team deep within the crime-fighting structure of the New York Police Department.

Formally known as the Analytic Unit of the department’s Intelligence Division
, the team was created in 2002 as part of the city’s response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It stands as a unique experiment in breaking traditional law-enforcement boundaries, comprising two dozen civilian experts — lawyers, academics, corporate consultants, investment bankers, alumni of the World Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations and even a former employee of the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan. The team serves as the Police Department’s terrorism reference arm: available on demand to explain Islamic law or Pakistani politics to detectives in the field.

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Sunday, September 19, 2010

Bomb deactivated at Mexican mall

Mexican soldiers deactivated a bomb at a mall in central Mexico Saturday, but it was not clear if the incident was tied to the country's drug war, Mexican newspaper Milenio reported. A message from a criminal group was left with the bomb in Leon, Milenio said. There was no information on the nature of the group. Authorities in Leon, a city of about a million people, were not immediately available for comment.

The newspaper said workers found an "explosive device" in the mall's parking lot and alerted authorities. Army troops deactivated it. Nobody was reported injured. Mexican drug gangs started using car bombs this year to target police, but have so far not used bombs against the general population. Four people were killed in July in Ciudad Juarez by a bomb planted in a car, the first such attack since President Felipe Calderon took office in December 2006.

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Friday, September 17, 2010

US couple 'tried to pass nuclear secrets to Venezuela'

The US has charged a pair of former nuclear contractors with attempting to leak nuclear secrets to Venezuela. The husband and wife team were arrested on Friday in New Mexico and accused of passing nuclear information to an FBI agent posing as a Venezuelan spy. US citizens Pedro and Marjorie Mascheroni were contractors at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a centre of US nuclear research. The US justice department did not accuse Venezuela of wrongdoing. "The conduct alleged in this indictment is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation's nuclear secrets for profit," Assistant Attorney General David Kris said in a statement.

Mr Mascheroni, a 75-year-old native of Argentina, worked as a scientist at Los Alamos from 1979 until 1988, when he was fired after criticising US nuclear research funding priorities, according to court documents. Mrs Mascheroni was a technical writer and editor from 1981 to 2010, the justice department said. The pair had access to nuclear secrets, including material on the design and manufacture of nuclear weapons.

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Thursday, September 16, 2010

Free-speech ruling gives U.S. parks, Justice pause

If you want to stage a protest or distribute leaflets at one of the 392 national parks, a panel of U.S. Court of Appeals judges says you can do it without obtaining a permit. The Department of Justice and the National Park Service are not sure they agree and are considering an appeal. They have until Sept. 27 to ask for a temporary stay of the ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which last month struck down regulations requiring permission before handing out leaflets or carrying signs.

The Department of Justice "is still considering whether to seek further review in this case," says Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. Nate Kellum, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization of Christian attorneys who defend the rights of people to express their faith, says the ruling "means the court has recognized that the First Amendment was all the permit you need to share your views on public property."

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Roma, on Move, Test Europe’s ‘Open Borders’

Bucharest, Romania — This city is full of stark, Soviet-era housing blocks, and the grimmest among them — gray towers of one-room apartments with communal bathrooms and no hot water — are given over to the Roma population. Children reflected in a puddle of water in Ferentari, a suburb of Bucharest inhabited mostly by Roma. Roma like Maria Murariu, 62, who tends to her dying husband in a foul-smelling room no bigger than a jail cell. She has not found work in five years.“There is not much for us in Romania,” she said recently, watching her husband sleep. “And now that we are in the European Union, we have the right to go to other countries. It is better there.” Thousands of Romania’s Roma, also known as Gypsies, have come to a similar conclusion in recent years, heading for the relative wealth of Western Europe, and setting off a clash within the European Union over just how open its “open borders” are.

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MI5 head warns of serious risk of UK terrorist attack

The UK faces a continuing serious risk of a lethal terrorist attack taking place, the head of MI5 has warned. Jonathan Evans raised concerns over the number of soon-to-be-freed inmates who are "committed extremists and likely to return to terrorist activities". He also said Somalia and Yemen were important concerns for MI5, as a source of serious plots against the UK. And, he said, the security service had not expected dissident republicanism to grow as it had in Northern Ireland. Mr Evans, who made the rare public remarks to the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals in London, said dealing with international terrorism remained the main focus of MI5's efforts.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Inmate sentenced for running tax fraud operation out of cell

The following article illustrates the need for an effective and wide-reaching intelligence effort in our prison systems. Preventative measures and good intelligence might have stopped this scam and provided law enforcement with much needed information.

Canada Revenue Agency says a man has been sentenced to 30 months for running a tax fraud operation from his Toronto jail cell. Michael Bannon, an inmate in the Toronto Jail, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud over $5,000. Mr. Bannon participated in a tax scheme that involved the preparation and filing of false tax returns claiming a total of $1.8 million in fraudulent income tax and GST refunds. Investigators found Mr. Bannon assisted in the preparation of 1,431 fraudulent personal income tax returns for 178 prison inmates. Mr. Bannon claimed $704,684 in income tax refunds and filed fraudulent GST returns totalling $1.1 million.

Canada Revenue Agency says no income tax refunds were issued and $90,217 in GST refunds were sent out. Mr. Bannon, who was known as the “tax guy” in prison, advised other inmates that he could prepare and file tax returns on their behalf. He obtained personal information from inmates such as name, social insurance number, date of birth, and addresses, for the purpose of preparing the inmates' personal tax returns. Mr. Bannon usually received prisoner canteen goods as payment for completing the tax returns.

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Monday, September 13, 2010

Three Charged With Million Pound Drug Seizure

The three men arrested, aged 53, 50 and 18 have now been charged with conspiracy to supply Class B drugs and possessing drugs with the intent to supply. They have also been charged with possessing a firearm and possessing ammunition after a weapon was recovered from an address in the Holmewood area of Bradford. All three are due to appear before Wakefield Magistrates. The Regional Roads Crime Team supported by Wakefield District Police seized a significant amount of Class B drugs estimated to be worth more than a million pounds during a patrol at a lorry (truck) park. Three men were arrested at Ferrybridge, West Yorkshire, on suspicion of possession of a Class B drug with intent to supply and are currently being questioned at Wakefield Police Station. Enquiries are ongoing.

Head of the Regional Roads Crime Team, Detective Chief Inspector Richard James, said: “This is an excellent example of us working together with local police to disrupt suspected criminals who cross borders to commit crime.” The Regional Roads Policing Team is the first operational team created by joint collaboration with officers and staff seconded from each of the four police forces of Yorkshire and the Humber. The team was set up in July 2008 with a clear strategic vision to create a hostile environment for criminals that use the road network and cause significant disruption to their illegal business enterprises, from burglary, to drugs, to high value vehicle theft, to people trafficking. It is committed to supplying additional capability to the four police forces of the region wherever needed across the whole of Yorkshire and the Humber.

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Friday, September 10, 2010

Who Are Gypsies, and Why Is France Deporting Them?

The term Gypsy is short for Egyptian, although ethnically, Gypsies actually originally came from India. They left their homeland sometime during the 11th century, probably as a result of Muslim invasions, and have never returned. By the 14th century, they'd entered Eastern Europe, whose residents somehow got the impression that they came from Egypt (hence the nickname). Although they rarely show up on official censuses, today's Gypsy population is estimated to be between 2 million and 5 million. Most of them live in Slavic-speaking countries such as the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania.

Yet despite centuries of Gypsy presence, Europe has never accepted this oft nomadic ethnic group and has enacted systematic purges of varying severity since they first arrived on the continent. Evidence of discrimination can be found just by looking at our language: when we cheat someone out of money, we "gyp" them. Gypsy moths are parasitic, and gypsy cabs operate illegally. And though many Roma still use the slang term — Britain's Gypsy Council is a self-organized association of so-called travelers — others regard gypsy as an insult despite its wide use and prefer Roma, or sometimes Romani.

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Violence Returns to Colombia

Although Colombia delivered some heavy blows in its war against the FARC guerrillas over the past decade, the country is facing violence on an entirely new front. Just three years ago, top U.S. officials were touring the city of Medellín to demonstrate how successfully then-president Alvaro Uribe had rescued the country from Marxist rebels and paramilitary drugrunners. But in August, Medellín’s mayor took to the streets to march with protesters through ghettos racked anew by gang warfare. And just last week, Colombia’s new president, Juan Manuel Santos, deployed troops to the city, where more than 1,200 murders have occurred so far this year, with 503 gang-related deaths in the first four months of 2010 alone—a 50 percent jump from the same period last year.


Alarmingly, Medellín is not alone. Across Colombia, cities that once served as symbols of the country’s turnaround, such as Bogotá and Cali, are witnessing a drastic increase in violence. In mid-August, a car bomb in Bogotá’s financial district injured nine people, and both the FARC and right-wing extremists have been blamed for the attack. The same week, three teens from the embattled Putumayo state in southern Colombia, whose names were on an online list, were shot dead, apparently the victims of gang violence. And Cali’s mayor has called on the national government to address the city’s spiking homicide rate.

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Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Clinton says Mexico drug wars starting to look like insurgency

Mexico's violent drug cartels increasingly resemble an insurgency with the power to challenge the government's control of wide swaths of its own soil, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday. Clinton's comments reflected a striking shift in the public comments of the Obama administration about the bloodshed that has cost 28,000 lives in Mexico since December 2006. They come as U.S. officials weigh a large increase in aid to the southern neighbor to help fight the cartels.

Clinton compared the conflict in Mexico to Colombia's recent struggle against a drug-financed leftist insurgency that, at its peak, controlled up to 40% of that country. She said the United States, Mexico and Central American countries need to cooperate on an "equivalent" of Plan Colombia — the multibillion-dollar military and aid program that helped turn back Colombia's insurgents. "We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network, drug-trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into, or making common cause with, what we would consider an insurgency," Clinton said in response to a question after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

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Monday, September 6, 2010

When a Rostered Day Off gets in the way

Information sharing is at the heart of intelligence efforts since 9/11. It commendable when disparate parts of the criminal justice system do their best to keep each other aware of changes in the environment. However, policies themselves must keep up with the intent and practicalities of the new information sharing paradigm. Here is an example when things go wrong and obvious balancing of policy and practice must take place. This is from "The Australian"...

The Australian Federal Police spent almost half a million dollars and more than six weeks trying to track down fugitive Dragan Vasiljkovic. This was despite receiving an email from the accused war criminal informing them of his movements on the day officers sought to arrest him. In a deeply embarrassing and expensive bungle, Mr Vasiljkovic's message regarding his whereabouts on the day he absconded remained unread until well after a warrant had been issued for his arrest because the officer to whom the information was sent was on a rostered day off and did not check his email. The bungle meant that 102 officers spent 3814 hours on a needless hunt.

On March 30 this year, the High Court ruled that Mr Vasiljkovic, the one-time leader of a Serbian paramilitary unit accused of rape and torture during the Balkans War in the early 1990s, should be extradited from Australia to Croatia to face questioning over his alleged crimes. Upon the High Court handing down its decision, a 2006 warrant for Mr Vasiljkovic's arrest was reinstated. But after AFP officers failed to find him at the court, they went to his Coffs Harbour home in NSW, only to find he was not there.

Freedom of Information documents obtained by The Australian have revealed that Mr Vasiljkovic had, as per the conditions of a High Court order, emailed a nominated AFP officer on March 29 -- the day before the warrant for his arrest was issued -- to inform him that he would be flying from Canberra to Coffs Harbour on the morning of March 30. However, the AFP officer was on a rostered day off on March 29 and did not start his shift on March 30 until that afternoon. By the time the officer read the email from Mr Vasiljkovic, the accused war criminal was already on the run, having learned a few hours earlier of the court's extradition order.

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Sunday, September 5, 2010

Trucking in the U.S.A.: Where the Accent is Russian

The Russians come to trucking with some tradition — it is very much the way their huge ancestral nation, with its system of badly maintained roads, takes delivery of its necessities. Indeed, many may have come over to join relatives in the U.S. after the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008 depressed the Russian trucking industry: out of the more than 10,000 companies that operated in Russia before the crisis, only around 8,000 survived. "This did cause something of an exodus among Russian truckers," says Antonina Kamchatova, spokeswoman of ASMAP, the Russian trick drivers' association. "So anyone who could, through the help of relatives or whatever, went across the Atlantic in the last couple of years to look for work."



As with all immigrant groups trying to make it in America, there are problems to do with acculturation and, more seriously, the law. Many drivers demonstrate limited English-speaking and comprehension skills; some have trouble reading Latin script. A few that I have talked to admit that they are much more used to reading Cyrillic. To work as a trucker in the U.S., an individual must have a Commercial Driver's License, which requires that a driver "read and speak the English langauge sufficiently to converse with the general public, to understand highway traffic signs and signals in the English language, to respond to official inquiries, and to make entries on reports and records."

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Basque separatist group Eta 'declares ceasefire'

Armed Basque separatist group Eta says it will not "carry out armed actions" in its campaign for independence. In a video obtained exclusively by the BBC, the group said it took the decision several months ago "to put in motion a democratic process". The Basque interior minister called the statement "insufficient". Madrid has previously insisted that Eta renounce violence and disarm before any talks.



Eta's violent campaign has led to more than 820 deaths over the past 40 years. It has called two ceasefires in the past, but abandoned them both. This latest announcement comes after the arrests of numerous Eta leaders and during an unprecedented period of debate within the Basque nationalist community over the future direction of policy, says the BBC's Clive Myrie in San Sebastian. Eta has been coming under increasing pressure to lay down its weapons.

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Pedestrian death rise blamed on iPods

Death by iPod is being blamed as a contributing factor to the 25 per cent rise in the number of pedestrian fatalities in NSW. The ''iPod zombie trance'' people get into when walking, driving or pedalling around listening to their mobile devices is being blamed for an increase in collisions and even deaths in Europe and the US.



The issue has been highlighted in Sydney by the death of a 46-year-old Glebe woman reportedly wearing headphones when she was knocked down and killed by an ambulance on Saturday night. There is speculation she might not have heard the ambulance siren when crossing Parramatta Road at Mallett Street at Camperdown. She was one of at least six pedestrians hit by vehicles on state roads over the weekend, including a 34-year-old man who died after being hit by a bus in Leumeah early yesterday morning.


Although the number of people killed on NSW roads so far this calendar year has dropped, pedestrian deaths have climbed by 25 per cent to 53, compared to 44 for the same period last year. Harold Scruby, of the Pedestrian Council of Australia, said research into deaths resulting from people not paying attention to traffic while using mobile devices was scant in NSW.

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Who am I?

I am a law enforcement professional with over 35 years experience in both sworn and civilian positions. I have service in 3 different countries in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

My principal areas of expertise are: (1) Intelligence, (2) Training and Development, (3) Knowledge Management, and (4) Administration/Supervision.

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