A hacker compromised a U.S. Army database that holds sensitive information about vulnerabilities in U.S. dams, according to a news report. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ National Inventory of Dams contains information about 79,000 dams throughout the country and tracks such information as the number of estimated deaths that could occur if a specific [...]
The notion of a weapon exploding and crippling everything electronic for miles around doesn’t just live in old black and white military film for Faisel Kaleem. For the Florida International University engineering professor, the threat is real. “Somebody comes over to your country and destroys your infrastructure without even bombing,” he said. Kaleem is referring [...]
Two scholars from the congressionally mandated 2010 Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack make the case to protect the U.S. from a potentially catastrophic nuclear EMP attack on the U.S. by terrorists or rogue states. William Radasky and Peter Vincent Pry rebut Yousaf M. Butt’s charge that [...]
North Korea on Thursday vowed to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, amplifying its threatening rhetoric hours ahead of a vote by U.N. diplomats on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.
Online rumors about a big government munitions purchase are true, sort of. The Homeland Security Department wants to buy more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the next four or five years. It says it needs them — roughly the equivalent of five bullets for every person in the United States — for law enforcement [...]
With the U.S. military now planning a new drone base to track extremists in northern Mali, senior U.S. intelligence officials confirmed Thursday that the Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa aspires to strike more U.S. and other western targets in the region.
People are used to seeing TSA inspectors at airports but on Wednesday, a specialized team made their presence known at the Amtrak station in Emeryville. Train stations are difficult to secure because they’re so wide open but on Wednesday, the TSA showed up unannounced to let the public, especially potential troublemakers, know that they are [...]
What would you do if all the lights went out and they never came back on? That is a question that the new NBC series “Revolution” asks, but most people have no idea that a similar thing could happen in real life at any moment. A single gigantic electromagnetic pulse over the central United States could [...]
It’s official now – Boeing and the US Air Force have successfully demonstrated a working electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) device over a military compound in the Utah desert. A spokesperson for Boeing stated, “Today we turned science fiction into science fact.” Read More
Testing by the Homeland Security Department of unmanned aerial vehicles under simulated emergency conditions presents few privacy concerns, says the departmental privacy office. A privacy impact assessment (.pdf) dated Nov. 16 notes that tests in Ft. Sill, Okla., involve volunteers; the assessment doesn’t address privacy implications that would be created by the actual deployment of [...]
Four Southern California men have been charged with plotting to kill Americans overseas and in the United States by joining Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, federal officials said Monday. The defendants were arrested for plotting to bomb government facilities and public places after federal authorities uncovered their plans to engage in “violent [...]
Two individuals—one a United States citizen who allegedly provided support to a foreign terrorist organization, the other wanted for his alleged role in the overseas kidnapping of an American—have been added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.
The Homeland Security Department has commissioned Accenture to test technology that mines open social networks for indications of pandemics, according to the vendor.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration plans to test using a private vendor next year to expand its expedited-security program at airports, Administrator John Pistole said. Consumers who aren’t part of an airline frequent-flier program would be able to pay a vendor a fee to undergo a security check based on criteria set by the agency, [...]
You know those x-ray body scanners that not only expose you to radiation but reveal your nakedness to security agents? That unsettling experience will be a thing of the past at many major airports, because the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has been quietly removing them, according to this report. Over the past few weeks, backscatter [...]
The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last months deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islams Prophet Muhammad, U.S. officials have told The Associated Press. It is unclear who, [...]
The United States Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) has pulled out its crystal ball to look 20 years into the future. In this case, the ball is made of focus groups and the future is that of technologies available to first responders a generation from now. The idea is to [...]
North Korea said it has rockets capable of hitting the U.S., in the totalitarian country’s first response to the U.S. agreeing to let South Korea extend the range of its ballistic missiles. The rockets are “within the scope of strike” of American military bases in Japan and Guam as well as the U.S. mainland, the [...]
Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the new chief of Al Qaeda, may be in Pakistan, says a new book.Zawahiri, an Egyptian cleric, became the new Al Qaeda chief after the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad town May 2 last year. Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani defence and security analyst, in his [...]
