July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

(October 29-31; Charleston, SC) Leading transportation and security professionals discuss threat assessment, prevention, and consequence management and how real the threat is to your community, business, or agency; whether you are prepared; and how to respond and where to turn for help. Networking events, tabletop displays, and presentations and workshops will facilitate industry, military, and government interaction to construct a system of prevention, mitigation, and containment and response initiatives. The expo will explore emerging technologies and the latest in products and services in transportation security and response capabilities. [View conference website]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

October 9; Arlington, VA) The conference will discuss approaches to securing critical infrastructure, such as how the government and private stakeholders can work together and how to build and maintain a risk assessment, create partnerships, and reduce vulnerabilities. Speakers will discuss the nation’s physical and information technology security, including lessons learned, tools, and methods used and those that need to be developed. [View conference website]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

 (October 2-4; Colorado Springs) The symposium features high-level participation by the Defense and Homeland Security departments and their corporate, academic, and media counterparts for an exchange of views on how best to protect our country and our friends. International participants will offer their perspectives on our shared challenges. [View conference website]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

(October 1; Colorado Springs) This conference is cosponsored by the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs and the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce. Topics will include “The Impact of 4th Generation Warfare on First Responders,” establishing interagency communications systems, and managing trauma. [View conference website]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

The Homeland Security Department released its plan to push forward new nationally standardized drivers’ licenses,” reports Federal Computer Week. “… the plan includes a staffing configuration for the Real ID Program Office and goals to focus on in the next year … monitoring state implementation, issuing guidelines, helping states implement card standards, overseeing grants to the states and proposing alternative implementation solutions in an effort to ease states’ transition to the new cards.” [View article]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Fed up with being part of a group that cuts off a person’s face with piano wire to teach others a lesson, dozens of low-level members of al-Qaeda in Iraq are daring to become informants for the US military in a hostile Baghdad neighbourhood,” reports the Times. “The ground-breaking move in Doura is part of a wider trend that has started in other al-Qaeda hotspots across the country and in which Sunni insurgent groups and tribal sheikhs have stood together with the coalition against the extremist movement.… Al-Qaeda informants comprise largely members of the Doura network who found themselves either working with the group after the US-led invasion in March 2003, or signed up to earn extra cash because there were no other jobs going. Disgusted at the attacks and intimidation techniques used on friends, neighbours and even relatives, they are now increasingly looking for a way out.” [View article]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

“Software Defined Radio Forum, a nonprofit international industry association for reconfigurable wireless technology, has found that a lot of hurdles remain to providing secure radio communications when a disaster such as Hurricane Katrina strikes,” reports Government Computer News. “The report cites five key challenges: incompatible and aging communications equipment, limited budgets and funding, fragmented planning and coordination, insufficient spectrum, and inadequate equipment standards.” [View article]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police “is distributing an unusual primer on immigration enforcement to thousands of law enforcement agencies, saying the absence of a national immigration policy has left local communities with an ‘overwhelming’ burden,” reports USA Today. “The publication … offers instruction on when state and local officers may intervene in cases involving illegal immigrants” but “stops short of urging local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws but says agencies can no longer ignore the local troubles posed by the explosive growth of undocumented immigrants.” [View article]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

On July 20, a Houston judge sentenced Daniel Joseph Maldonado, a U.S. citizen, to ten years in prison for receiving military training from a terrorist organization. Maldonado admitted traveling to Somalia in 2006 to join the Islamic Courts Union and elements of al-Qaeda to fight jihad against the Transitional Federal Government to establish an independent Islamic state in Somalia. And Mahmud Faruq Brent Al Mutazzim, a “Washington, D.C., cab driver who admitted he attended training camps in Pakistan was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison after he was portrayed as eager to serve a terrorist group,” reports the Associated Press. [View Justice Dept. press release] [View AP article]

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July 30, 2007 by Tim McDowell.

The Transportation Security Administration warned earlier this week “that terrorists might be testing whether innocent-looking bomb components can be smuggled onto an airplane,” reports the Associated Press, “… although TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe emphasized there is ‘no credible, specific threat.’ … Citing four incidents since last September at the San Diego, Milwaukee, Houston and Baltimore airports, the agency said screeners had found in checked and carry-on luggage various combinations of ‘wires, switches, pipes or tubes, cell phone components and dense clay-like substances,’ including block cheese.” Two of the four cases appeared to be innocent, and the report of clay in ice packs that were wrapped in duct tape turned out to be false. [View article]

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