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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Three Indicted in Largest Corporate Identity Theft Case in History

Federal Authorities indicted three men in New Jersey in a massive identity theft case that the Justice Department is labeling as the largest in American history. Albert Gonzalez of Miami, 28, is charged with acting with two unnamed conspirators to locate large corporations and steal vital account information in a crime that the Department of Justice calls "the single largest hacking and identity theft case ever prosecuted."

Authorities say more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen in a corporate data breach involving three different corporations and two individuals. The card numbers, along with additional account information, were allegedly stolen from Princeton-based Heartland Payment Systems; 7-Eleven Inc., a Texas-based convenience store chain and Hannaford Brothers Company, a Maine-based supermarket chain. The indictment also mentions two other unidentified corporate victims as being hacked by the co-conspirators.

According to the Justice Department, the suspects used a sophisticated hacking technique called an "SQL injection attack," which "seeks to exploit computer networks by finding a way around the network's firewall to steal credit card and debit information." According to the two-count indictment alleging conspiracy and conspiracy to engage in wire-fraud, beginning in October 2006, Gonzalez and the others would seek out Fortune 500 companies and attempt to identify potential vulnerabilities in their computer systems.

After reconnaissance of the computer systems was completed, information would be uploaded to servers which served as hacking platforms. Once the information was discovered, it was stolen from the corporate servers and placed onto servers around the world controlled by the suspects. Upon the alleged theft of the data, Gonzalez, known online as "soupnazi," and his co-conspirators would seek to sell the data to others who would then use it to make fraudulent purchases, unauthorized withdrawals from banks and other identity theft schemes, the Justice Department said Monday.

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Toward an Intelligence-based Nuclear Cooperation Regime

Russian-American collaboration against the spread of nuclear weapons needs to extend beyond conventional threat reduction programs underway in Russia and elsewhere for the past 15 years, to include the difficult and relatively uncharted area of sharing proliferation-relevant information, some of which may be sensitive. Our intelligence services, which now devote vast resources to spying on each other, could join forces by sharing information on states and terrorist groups intent on developing nuclear weapons, including their clandestine procurement attempts. This process could include sharing and comparing open-source information, information on the probable source of nuclear materials seized in transit, or clandestinely acquired information on groups and individuals involved in nuclear trafficking.

Intelligence cooperation is vitally important, because the current nonproliferation regime is essentially reactive and containment-oriented. It is not well equipped to deal with the smuggling activities and nuclear procurement conspiracies of nation-states and terrorists. The nonproliferation treaty (NPT) and associated conventions and agreements obligate states in various ways, but of course do not bind sub-state actors or non-state entities. Besides, signatory states have been known to cheat, either maintaining covert weapons programs or helping those who do. Also, the ability of states to keep their nuclear houses in order has proved problematic in the past, especially in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse.

"Toward an Intelligence-based Nuclear Cooperation Regime", Foreign Policy Research Institute, July 2009.

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