DHS to Replace 'Duplicative' Anti-Terrorism Data Network
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The Homeland Security Department spent more than $90 million to create a network for sharing sensitive anti-terrorism information with state and local governments that it has decided to replace, according to an internal department document.
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New York City will spend $500 million   on a wireless data network for emergency services following   complaints that authorities had trouble communicating with each   other when responding to the September 11 attacks.
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The Department of Homeland Security is looking for some live data to feed its new Secure Flight watch-list system, so it will order airlines to fork over a months' worth of passenger itineraries. By Ryan Singel.
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Europe&#39;s top data protection official, European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx, criticized plans to create a European equivalent of the PNR (passenger name records) gathered by U.S. authorities, questioning the plan&#39;s necessity and proportionality.&quot;The fight against terrorism can be a legitimate ground to apply exceptions to the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection, but only within certain limits,&quot; Hustinx said in a statement on Thursday.&quot;The necessity of intended measures must be supported by clear and undeniable elements, and their proportionality must be demonstrated. These two aspects are essential conditions and they are clearly not fulfilled in this case,&quot; he said.The U.S. introduced PNR gathering in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. After some initial resistance, the European Union agreed to allow airlines to hand over to American authorities details about passengers flying from the E.U. to the U.S., before a flights&#39; departure.Since then, Madrid and London have been attacked by suicide bombers, stiffening the resolve of European politicians to tighten security further.Last month the European Commission proposed a raft of pan-E.U. antiterrorism measures, including a PNR gathering system for all flights into the E.U. Under the proposed plan, air carriers would be obliged to hand over 19 pieces of passenger information, including the name, address, passport number, credit-card number, and history of changes in any flight schedule. The data would be retained for up to 13 years and be shared between authorities in all E.U. member states.This is very similar to the shape of the PNR agreement reached with the U.S. in June. Airlines have to hand over 19 details about passengers on flights to the U.S., and the U.S. authorities can keep the information for up to 15 years.Hustinx said the E.U. PNR plan would have &quot;a major impact on privacy and data protection rights of air passengers.&quot;He also criticized the agreement for its lack of clarity. In particular, he pointed out that the Commission&#39;s proposal doesn&#39;t say what the applicable legal framework for the plan would be, doesn&#39;t specify which authorities should have access to the data and fails to give rules on transferring passenger data outside of the E.U.Hustinx urged E.U. lawmakers to delay the PNR plan until after the recently agreed Lisbon Treaty comes into force, which is expected within the next year once each member state ratifies it in its national parliament.The treaty would force the Council of national governments to reach agreement with the European Parliament on the PNR plan. Currently the Council can decide on the matter by itselfMany parliamentarians are bitterly opposed to the E.U./U.S. PNR agreement and to the E.U. PNR plan.The European Commission wasn&#39;t immediately available to comment on Hustinx&#39;s comments.
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The Department of Homeland Security is testing a data-mining program that would attempt to spot terrorists by combing vast amounts of information about average Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon program killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year....
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SEPTEMBER 15, 2004  - SAN MATEO, Calif. -- The Department of Homeland Security is actively planning several new pilot projects that officials hope will help solve one of the most pressing cybersecurity
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The FBI may have to scrap a new computer program aimed at helping agents share information in the war on terror because officials consider it inadequate, the Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
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Counterterrorism authorities would be granted unprecedented access to law enforcement and commercial databases containing billions of records about private citizens under a bipartisan bill to restructure the intelligence system that the Senate began debating yesterday.
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Agency says the nearly $170 million computer system intended to help agents share data about terrorist threats is seriously deficient.
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally named a leader for its cybersecurity efforts on Monday, fulfilling a promise made last July by an agency that has drawn poor marks for digital security. Gregory Garcia has been named Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Telecommunications, according to a statement released late Monday from Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security. Chertoff announced plans to create the position in July 2005 but it had remained empty despite pressure from the IT industry to fill it. Some observers have slammed the DHS for a lack of readiness to deal with threats against the country's IT infrastructure. The DHS was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Garcia comes to the DHS from the Information Technology Association of America, where he was vice president for information security policy and programs. He has also been secretary for the IT Sector Coordinating Council, a group involved in collaboration between industry and the DHS. "He brings both industry and government experience to bear," said Shannon Kellogg, director of government and industry affairs with EMC Corp.'s RSA division. "He has a lot of IT experience, but he also has telecom experience, and he's worked on the Hill." Garcia's appointment is a "very positive sign" that DHS is going to finally give cybersecurity the attention it deserves, Kellogg added. Earlier, Garcia worked on the staff of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science for the majority Republican party and helped to draft and enact the Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2002. Garcia has also worked with the Americans for Computer Privacy and the American Electronics Association. He has a bachelor of science degree from San Jose State University in California. Robert McMillan of the IDG News Service contributed to this story.
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The Department of Homeland Security has given up on one of its broadest anti-terrorism data-mining tools after investigators found it was tested with information about real people without the required privacy safeguards.
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DHS wants to build a portable lab to set up at events and transit hubs to test ways to detect terrorists using remote sensors and pyschological techniques.  Will your thoughts be clean enough to board the train? In 27B Stroke 6.
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The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Wednesday lowered the heightened terror threat level for financial institutions in New York City, northern New Jersey and
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(InfoWorld) - In the five years since terrorists attacked the U.S., Europe has been the target of extremist attacks, as has India. Bombings in London and Madrid and a recent failed attempt to blow up passenger trains in Germany have prompted a security clampdown never seen on the Continent. Throughout the European Union, governments are grappling with how to guard against terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, Indian IT services companies have beefed up efforts to protect data. The discovery of bombs in two German trains in July pushed up several security measures on the political agenda there. In September, the German government agreed to a new antiterror database, which will be available to authorities across the country and contain information such as a person's religion, travel history, telephone number and Internet data and bank details. It also approved increased use of video surveillance in public areas. These measures reflect a gigantic shift in thinking about privacy in Germany, which has been highly sensitive about data protection and surveillance because of its Nazi history and, more recently, the Stasi secret police in the former communist-run East Germany. The need to tighten security has created demand for new technologies to help authorities combat terrorism. The German subsidiary of IBM Corp., for instance, is working on new technology that will enable computers -- not human beings -- to filter information from the cameras monitoring public areas and other locations. Two German companies have developed a new biometric system for identifying airline passengers. Lufthansa Systems Group GmbH, the IT services arm of German airline Lufthansa AG, and high-security document producer Bundesdruckerei GmbH have developed the SecBoard system. The companies hope that the system, designed to conduct biometric checks on passengers prior to boarding an aircraft, will play a significant role in "trusted passenger" programs planned by the airline industry to increase security. In the U.K., the government is close to activating part of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) of 2000 that deals with encrypted data, one in a set of powers covering electronic surveillance and wiretapping. Authorities say the increased use of encryption is hampering their access to information on suspectsâ computers. RIPA would allow police to demand that a suspect decrypt data or face up to two years in jail. The encryption measure in RIPA has remained dormant since the techniques werenât widely used when the law was passed, according to the U.K. Home Office. Terrorist suspects already face up to five years for failing to decrypt data or provide an encryption key. But critics contend the law, which would apply in more than terrorism-related investigations, gives too much power to law enforcement and has the potential for abuse. High-ranking officials could demand the decryption of data without a court order, and the law binds to secrecy those served with a request. Experts say the law could increase the chance that, if seized, a companyâs mission-critical data could be mishandled. Elsewhere in Europe, heads of state met to discuss 57 antiterrorism measures two weeks after the March 11, 2004 bombings of four crowded commuter trains in Madrid. Among the measures discussed were the surveillance of telecommunications, Internet communications and air transportation. Civil liberties groups accused them of using the fight against terrorism as an excuse to increase police powers. E.U. legislation was slow to follow but, from September 2007, telecom carriers and ISPs (Internet service providers) must keep data on all mobile and fixed-line calls for between six months and two years. From March 2009, they must keep data on VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) calls, Internet connections and e-mail messages. Law enforcement officials will be able to demand the date and time of calls and messages, but not their content, and identifying information of the calling or sending and receiving parties. In India, the Sept. 11 attacks were not a watershed event because the country experienced frequent attacks by Kashmiri separatist groups demanding independence. Even before Sept. 11, some of the large Indian IT services companies had hardened data centers supporting their offshore businesses, said T. R. Madan Mohan, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan Inc. After Web sites of a ministry of the Indian government and an Indian atomic energy agency were hacked, and anti-India messages posted on these sites, Indian businesses showed increased concern about the need for intrusion detection and related security measures, he added. Infosys Technologies Ltd., Indiaâs second largest outsourcer, already had disaster recovery and business continuity plans in place before Sept. 11, said a spokeswoman for the company in Bangalore. However, those attacks brought the threat of terrorism into sharp focus for Indiaâs export-oriented industries, such as software outsourcing, because U.S. and European customers began worrying about the preparedness of their Indian suppliers for terrorist attacks. (Reported and written by John Blau in Dusseldorf, Germany; Peter Sayer in Paris; Jeremy Kirk in London; and John Ribeiro in Bangalore, India, and assembled by Grant Gross in Washington, D.C.)
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THE NEWS: More than three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has not created a unified U.S. fingerprint database because of interagency disputes.
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DHS huddled masses tracker further delayed The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s plan to build hundreds of all-seeing networked surveillance towers along American borders has run into further problems. The project in question is the technology portion of the Secure Borders Initiative (SBI).â¦
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Congress on Wednesday ordered the biggest overhaul of U.S. intelligence in a half-century, replacing a network geared to the Cold War fight against communism with a post-Sept. 11 structure requiring military and civilian spy agencies to work together against terrorists intent on holy war.