USSN Link 041-03 (October 10, 2003)

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Title: USSN Link 041-03 (October 10, 2003)

If this e-mail does not show up in its correct formatting, please point your browser to this address: http://www.usscn.org/content/contentCT.asp?P=112 Thank you, USSN Staff DISCLAIMER THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT HAS BEEN ASSEMBLED FROM A VARIETY OF SOURCES AND IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS PROVIDED AS RECEIVED AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ENDORSEMENT BY THE US SECURITY NETWORK, ANY MEMBER COMPANY, OR PARTICIPATING PUBLIC AGENCIES. INFORMATION MAY BE REPEATED, AS IT IS EXTRACTED EXACTLY AS PRESENTED BY THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
	"Keeping Watch" While the nation's jails are facing overcrowding and local budgets are being cut, cities and counties across the country are combining technology with community-based supervision to keep costs down and public safety up. Some, such as Lafourche Parish, La., have turned to radio-frequency electronic monitoring systems that use a transmitter attached to an offender, a monitoring device installed in the offender's home, and a host computer to continually monitor inmates thought to be low-risk and nonviolent. In Lafourche, the cost is passed on to the prisoners. Last year, 181 offenders in the city were monitored electronically, saving 6,600 detention days at a cost of $25 per day, meaning an approximate total of $165,000 was cut from the budget. Some community corrections initiatives are employing biometric systems that confirm a person's identity by matching biological characteristics, such as a fingerprint, a retina, or a vocal pattern. One such method is voice verification systems, which can improve the number of accurate phone-based contacts that can be made with offenders under supervision. www.americancityandcounty.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "ATF Readies Schools for Bomb Threats" The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is providing school administrators with an interactive tool to help protect schools from bomb threats. The CD-ROM, titled "Bomb Threat Response: An Interactive Planning Tool for Schools," is also being distributed to emergency response agencies, including state and local law enforcement. The Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, which is part of the U.S. Education Department, will be responsible for distributing the CD program to all U.S. public school systems. The ATF demonstrated the program at a junior high school in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. The CD provides a wealth of informative content regarding bomb threats, including topics on prevention, planning, understanding, bomb-threat response, explosion response, and training exercises. It comes with quick-reference planning cards and a complementary Web site. Statistics from the National School Safety Center show that there were some 5,000 bomb threats to schools across the country in the six months following the Columbine High School massacre. www.washtimes.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Database to Help in Case of a Disaster" In Ohio, the counties of Marion and Crawford are planning to build a database to help emergency agencies locate at-risk individuals during emergencies. Called the Homeland Individual Locator System, the database would allow police, fire, and other emergency agencies to determine if a person needs specialized medical equipment or services or is handicapped. "If fully implemented, it can't help but save lives," says Joe Devany, director of the Heartland of Ohio Community Action Commission, which advocated the database. The decision to deploy the system was prompted by the August 2003 blackouts that endangered area senior citizens and disabled residents. The system may eventually be broadened to cover Morrow and Richland counties as well, and perhaps lead to a nationwide recognition tool. Approximately 50 percent of citizens in Marion County are above age 55. Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge estimates that 80 percent of U.S. citizens ages 65 and up are not listed with any social service organization. The database will be based on information collected from surveys currently being distributed by area Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) members. www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Emergency Vehicle Shows Its Versatility" The Texas-based Dallas/Fort Worth Airport's Mobile Command Post, which is a $1.2 million, 45-foot-long vehicle, responded to more than 12 emergencies at the airport during its first year in operation. The vehicle includes sophisticated computer and communications systems and the latest surveillance technologies, and it gives emergency officials the ability to work on an incident side-by-side. Firefighters, paramedics, and law enforcement officers use the Mobile Command Post as a daily means of interaction with other airport personnel. Due to the daily interaction, the team of emergency responders is able to understand different aspects of each other's jobs in order to work more effectively during an emergency situation. Currently, the Mobile Command Post responds to smaller incidents at the airport, such as toxic spills or debris collection from the space shuttle accident, but emergency responders believe the Mobile Command Post has adequately prepared them in case a mass-casualty incident develops at the airport. www.star-telegram.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Homeland Security ready to start ordering technology The Homeland Security Department is finally "open for business" for companies offering innovative protective systems, an industry executive said Tuesday. Thousands of vendors have given up hope of landing federal security contracts after two years of waiting for the department to hire staff, announce programs or standards, and increase budgets, Edmond Woollen, vice president of Raytheon of Waltham, Mass., told a conference for Massachusetts companies weighing federal sales. But the window of opportunity is finally here. Woollen said he believes Homeland Security has the quickest response of any government buyer. But he cautioned companies to be prudent and think long term in pursuit of both independent sales and collaborating with larger "system engineers" or integrators such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon or IBM. www.govexec.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx U.S. Mayors Analyze Post-9/11 Homeland Security Funding The First Mayors? Report to the Nation: Tracking Federal Homeland Security Funds Sent to the 50 State Governments, released last month by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, says that two years after the attacks of 11 September, American cities by and large are still not equipped to handle a terrorist attack or natural disaster. Unfortunately, terrorists don?t have to fill out forms in triplicate, said Tom Cochran, executive director of the conference. Until this problem is resolved, we will continue to monitor the flow of money. Without direct funding to cities, I am afraid we could be facing homeland insecurity. www.anser.org xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Aon Gets Aggressive in Pursuit of Workplace Violence" Aon Corp. recently announced its collaboration with the Center for Aggression Management to modify current catastrophe modeling techniques for identifying, measuring, and preventing workplace violence, and to help clients reduce workplace violence at their companies. In addition to contributing to decreased customer and employee satisfaction, and higher turnover, presenteeism, and passive-aggressive behavior among employees, research shows that workplace violence can result in 4.8 days of lost productivity per employee each year. Aon will offer the center's aggression management education program in an effort to help clients develop and implement policies and procedures to combat workplace violence. Experts agree that Aon's collaborative efforts, which allow the carrier to tap into a the potential growth of a niche risk management market by offering more than just insurance coverage, sets a good example for the entire insurance industry. The center's training program will help employees recognize pre-event signs of workplace violence and teach them what steps are best to mitigate future risks, while also developing emergency response plans in case workplace violence does occur. Although the on-site training program currently centers on role playing, Aon hopes to soon make aggression management training available to clients via e-learning. www.insurancenetworking.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "To Protect and Serve" A Conference Board survey of 199 security heads showed that last year, spending on corporate security was up an average 4 percent from 2001, but that 63 percent of the businesses polled still spent only less than 1 percent of their revenues on security. Budgetary crunches due to the recent economic slowdown has businesses forced to reconsider how they spend their money while maintaining tight security in the post-9/11 era. Some have fused responsibility for security under one department in order to drive harder bargains with service and equipment providers. Others have chosen to integrate digital technology to replace traditional analog video and recording, finding that in the long run, the ability to transmit data across existing networks and store images on disks proves money-saving while increasing efficacy. Integrating video and access-control systems with existing networks has also proved a money-saver, as has using electronic surveillance to decrease the number of guards needed to monitor sites. www.baselinemag.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Sea Change" Cargo shipping security is seen as our nation's biggest vulnerability, with only 2 percent of the 16 million containers arriving in the United States each year actually subject to personal inspection. To shore up security, the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection is offering a challenge to private industry in the guise of the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), which offers a set of guidelines for companies to meet, ranging from physical security of a company's manufacturing facilities all the way down the supply lines, for which compliance will mean a "fast lane" through borders along with other benefits. Barry Wilkins of Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations describes the program as "voluntary with both arms tied behind the back," since noncompliance puts companies at a competitive disadvantage. The trick is to compel businesses to participate without making guidelines to restrictive or expensive to implement, considering how it can cost as little as $2,500 to ship as much as 30 tons of material from Asia to the West Coast of the United States, a price that has drawn many U.S. companies to foreign shores to take advantage of cheap manufacturing costs. Thus far, 3,800 companies have signed memos of intent to join C-TPAT, of which 1,400 have been certified in compliance. However, Customs went onsite only about 20 times to actually validate applications due to budgetary constraints. Council on Foreign Relations' Stephen Flynn, widely recognized as the nation's foremost expert on cargo security, says that C-TPAT must move from a "trust-based system to a trust-but-verify system." www.csoonline.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Preparing for the Worst: Read a Banker's Post-9/11 Playbook" Georgia's commissioner of banking and finance, David Sorrell, credits contingency plans established in preparation for Y2K for the American banking industry's ability to cope with the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Sorrell emphasizes communication as one of the key components of contingency planning, along with buoyant information systems, noting that for businesses in general, in order to endure a disaster, key individuals must be able to communicate. To that end, contact information should be widely distributed and rendezvous locations and times established. Banking networks are now designed, Sorrell says, "to deliver liquidity, to keep the system up, and ultimately to maintain confidence." Sorrell notes a trend toward decentralization since Sept. 11, including spreading facilities across several locations, often remote from cities, and preparing for the possibility that individuals may need to work from their homes. Georgia's Banking and Finance Department has five locations in addition to the main office, and two additional fully-equipped backup facilities. Sorrell also stresses the importance of testing new components of disaster recovery plans as soon as they are established, and avoiding having any technological or human single points of failure. To avoid cyberattacks, he prefers to stay away from traditional Microsoft applications, since they have proved vulnerable to worms and viruses. www.zdnet.com xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Experts Fear Ease of Getting False ID Is Invitation to Terror" Despite revelations of how easy it was for the 9/11 hijackers to obtain official identification cards in the United States, such documents are still easily obtainable, according to experts. More and more local governments across the nation have begun accepting matricula consular, ID cards issued by countries' embassies to their citizens living abroad without documentation, from certain Latin American nations, despite the difficulty of verifying identities. California last month legalized the issuance of driver's licenses to immigrants without proper documentation. Many localities also allow immigrants to present their Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, issued by the Internal Revenue Service so that those without Social Security numbers can file taxes, as proof of identity, even though the IRS has warned against it. The amount of circulating forged ID papers is also on the rise. The General Accounting Office recently counterfeited driver's licenses and birth certificates to test the ability of government workers to detect such documents. Operatives were able to use the forged papers to enter the United States from such countries as Mexico, Jamaica, Barbados, and Canada. www.chicagotribune.com
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