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"GBI Agents Take Tough Look at Crime Scenes, Forensics"
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) employs 16 crime scene experts across the state in each of its regional offices. The agency hopes to train all of them at the National Forensic Academy at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville by 2006, says GBI Special Agent in Charge Keith Howard. Two crime scene specialists, Jeff Roesler and Lanny Cox, have already completed the 10-week training program for law enforcement costing $8,500 per student and restricted to 45 students annually, says Jarrett Hallcox of the academy. Studies cover such topics as forensic anthropology, blood spray assessments, malicious fire setting, explosives, booby traps, weapons of mass destruction, and determining if a death is a case of murder. Roesler notes that the training is particularly "in-depth" and involves "the most recent crime scene technology available." Participants can also glean additional valuable information from teachers and fellow students. One of the academy's focal points is a three-acre site called the Anthropological Research Facility, also dubbed the "Body Farm" since it was depicted in a 1994 Patricia Cornwell novel. Corpses in various stages of decay are positioned in true-to-life crime scenes to help students test their forensic skills. Students learn how to find and excavate bodies and individual parts without marring evidence. "A hair or fiber or a little piece of cloth might be the only thing that will tell you who that person is and what happened to them," says Roesler.
www.jacksonville.com
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"U.S. Checking Foreign Airlines for Terror Risks"
The content of recent intelligence reports has some U.S. officials speculating that terrorists or those sympathetic to terrorist groups may have infiltrated overseas airports and airlines, including the flight crews of foreign airliners. As such, security officials are closely inspecting the identities of foreign flight crews that arrive in and depart from the United States. Intelligence reports have indicated that overseas flights are at risk to terrorism and that terrorists could also be plotting a dirty bomb attack. The risk of attack appears greatest in Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, according to law enforcement authorities. "Terrorist operatives remain interested in bombings, suicide hijackings, and even the possible use of man-portable air defense systems," and shoulder-fired missiles, says a memo sent from the Homeland Security Department to U.S. airports on Sunday. Multiple sources, including one in the aviation industry, say that passengers entering at least one unspecified major U.S. airport on flights from Mexico and the Air France line will undergo a more rigorous security screening process, as of Dec. 24. Sources say that U.S. officials have become increasingly frustrated and concerned with the poor security in place at some foreign airports--an assessment backed up by Jane's Aviation security analyst Chris Yates, who describes security at some overseas airports as "appallingly low." Yates notes that several regional airports in Russia have shoddy security, and that many airports in the Middle East permit women who set off security alarms to board planes without being searched, due to cultural practices.
www.washingtonpost.com
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"Technology Seeks to Improve Law Enforcement Information Sharing"
Government and law enforcement officials recognize the importance of deploying an information sharing system that facilitates cooperation between different government and law enforcement agencies. The Markle Foundation issued a report on Dec. 2 that the development of a nationwide information security system was marred by a lack of direction. However, Herndon, Va.-based DigitalNet is developing a system called XTS-400, which provides information sharing capabilities to a network of agencies. The system employs checks to verify the user's security clearance for accessing information. The National Security Agency gave its top security rating for general-purpose computing systems to the previous XTS-300 system. However, Rick Smith, a computer science professor at the University of St. Thomas, notes information sharing systems are vulnerable to hacking because of the lack of strong security protections throughout the connected agencies. Smith believes administrative disputes are responsible for "most of the problems" involving data sharing.
www.federaltimes.com
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"Tracking Parental Abduction"
Law enforcement authorities across the globe are collaborating on a new high-tech system that will enable officials to keep track of cases in which parents have abducted a child, including cases in which a child is taken to a different country. The computerized system, known as the International Child Abduction Statistical Database, will also keep tabs on how court systems in other countries are adhering to the Hague Convention's tenets on child abduction disputes. "We need to understand the trends in this international child abduction system and we need to know the courts are performing," says William Duncan, deputy secretary general of the Hague Convention. The database system will keep tabs on cases in the 74 countries that have agreed to the Hague Convention guidelines. A number of prominent countries do not recognize the Hague treaty on child abduction, including China, Russia, Japan, and several Middle Eastern countries. Some 22 percent of American child abduction cases are solved by parents who hire "child recovery experts."
www.newsday.com
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Agencies urged to create backup communications services
Key government facilities need back-up communications services, according to a new report by Randolph May, senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation. "A targeted policy should be adopted requiring the federal government to focus in a systematic way on the need for truly redundant communications facilities at buildings and installations where federal agencies are housed," May said. Truly redundant facilities mean the alternate communications system uses separate facilities, he said. The Homeland Security Department or the General Services Administration should oversee the implementation of the redundant communications facilities, either through regulations or issuing guidelines.
www.govexec.com
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"Tomorrow's Conflicts: Faster, Safer, Casualty-Free"
An array of technologies will emerge over the next decade with the purpose of accelerating military deployment and response, increasing battlefield safety, and minimizing casualties and damage at home and abroad. Advances in the areas of sensors, data routing, data mining, high-speed computing, displays, and expert systems are driving computer power and accessibility to the point where battlefield commanders will have anytime/anywhere access to all the data they require so that conflicts can be won with a minimal loss of life. Information about security threats will be provided in real time by integrated sensors and reliable networks, while software programs depending on expert systems will meld data and information into displays and patterns that commanders can utilize to be more efficient and effective strategists. Simple, noninvasive biological, chemical, and weapons detection measures are expected to enhance security at transportation centers and U.S. borders, while potentially dangerous materials will be tracked by global positioning systems, radio frequency identification tags, cameras, and other next-generation devices. For home users, there is a clear consumer need for individual warning and protection systems against spoiled food and industrial toxins, and this need will be met by small, inexpensive sensors. A stronger distributed-architecture cyber net that spans the globe and can reduce the damage and improve recovery from cyberattacks is expected in the next decade, thanks to the advancement of high-capacity laser links in wireless and optical communications, and more pervasive Internet protection architectures. Faster vehicles, new logistics management strategies, and improved communications will allow military forces to respond faster to threats both offensively and defensively. Finally, the development of new multifunctional materials will usher in an age of advanced protection systems such as near-invisible camouflage, lighter and sturdier body armor, and remote health monitoring of soldiers.
www.wfs.org
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"Mother Nature Recruited for War on Cyber Terror"
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is sponsoring research at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of New Mexico with the goal of bolstering network security by applying the principle of bio-diversity to computer systems. The most successful diseases are those that attack a group of genetically similar individuals with a common flaw for the pathogen to exploit; David Hart of the NSF notes that this concept is echoed by worms and viruses that take advantage of the same vulnerabilities by computers running the same software. Bio-diversity is the biological countermeasure for disease, and the University of New Mexico/Carnegie Mellon researchers are exploring its computerized equivalent, dubbed cyber-diversity. "We are looking at computers the way a physician would look at genetically related patients, each susceptible to the same disorder," notes Carnegie Mellon's Mike Reiter, while colleague Dawn Song reports that the project aims to make computers less exploitable by automatically modifying software. Cyber-diversity forces hackers to formulate and implement a different attack strategy for each computer and software version. "Adapting the idea of diversity in biology to computers may not make an individual computer more resilient to attack, but it aims to make the whole population of computers more resilient in aggregate," Song says. Earlier software diversity efforts were too costly and time-consuming, because they focused on developing different versions of the same software by independent teams; the University of New Mexico's Stephanie Forrest says the automated strategy is potentially more economical and could yield greater software diversity. NSF program director Carl Landwehr declares that the cyber-diversity project is representative of the type of creative thinking the NSF's Cyber Trust initiative wants to engender among researchers.
science.newsfactor.com
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"Denver Airport to Test Surveillance System"
The Denver International Airport will begin testing a high-tech video surveillance system that will provide security personnel at the airport with enhanced video images. Officials had complained that the grainy images from the previous video system made identifying suspicious people a difficult task. Indeed, the previous video system captured images of a woman who evaded a screening checkpoint at the airport in August 2002, but the images were so poorly defined that officials could not identify her. The trial of the new video technology is just one of several new types of security improvements being tested by the Transportation Security Administration at airports across the nation.
www.usatoday.com
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"Working to Secure the Electric Network"
The North America Electric Reliability Council (NERC) has taken on additional homeland security responsibilities since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3 mandates that the NERC serve as the security coordinator for the electricity sector (ES). This responsibility includes assessing the vulnerabilities of the ES and creating a plan to reduce those vulnerabilities; formulating a strategy to warn members of the electricity sector when an attack has occurred or is about to occur; suggesting a program to recognize and defend against attacks; and coordinating to bring the ES back to minimum essentials after an attack has occurred. The NERC has released several proposed security guidelines for the ES that are currently being reviewed by the industry. These proposed guidelines pertain to an array of security issues, including physical security, cybersecurity, employee background screening, risk assessments, continuity planning, and the safeguarding of sensitive data. By following these guidelines, the hope is that electric utilities can create a security program capable of withstanding modern threats. The electric system's physical security needs can be reduced to the broad categories of power supply, power delivery, and facilities. Electric utilities may need to completely rework their security practices and philosophies in order to meet the high standards of security in the post-Sept. 11 era.
www.simon-net.com
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Homeland Security Presidential Directives 7 and 8
On Wednesday, the White House released two new Presidential Directives. Directive 7 establishes a national policy for Federal departments and agencies to identify and prioritize United States critical infrastructure and key resources and to protect them from terrorist attacks. Directive 8 establishes policies to strengthen the preparedness of the United States to prevent and respond to threatened or actual domestic terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies by requiring a national domestic all-hazards preparedness goal, establishing mechanisms for improved delivery of federal preparedness assistance to state and local governments, and outlining actions to strengthen preparedness capabilities of federal, state, and local entities.
www.anser.org
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