Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-16

November 16, 2009 by national  
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November 9, 2009 by national  
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-11-02

November 2, 2009 by national  
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-10-26

October 26, 2009 by national  
Filed under National Interest

U.S. Food Supply Seen As Vulnerable To Terrorism

October 21, 2009 by national  
Filed under Homeland Security News

food_processing

For years, security experts have been warning that the nations food supply, often taken for granted, could be among the most significant risks for a terrorist attack.

Imported food makes up a substantial and growing portion of the U.S. food supply and, considering the health and safety concerns of keeping American’s safe, Washington insiders seem oblivious to that part of protecting American citizens.

To ensure imported food safety, federal agencies must focus their resources on high risk foods and coordinate efforts, according to a report released last week by the Government Accountability Office.

The report, submitted to the US Congress and obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police, assesses how the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service are addressing challenges in overseeing the safety of imported food.

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Shopping Mall Terror Plot Alleged In Boston Area Arrest

October 21, 2009 by national  
Filed under Incident Reports

homegrown_terrorism

An alleged shopping mall terror plot on U.S. shopping malls has resulted in the arrest of A 27-year-old Massachusetts man according to early reports this morning. The man has been charged with conspiring with others to support and plan terror attacks in and outside the United States according to the reports.

From the Boston Herald

A 27-year-old man from Sudbury has been arrested on charges he planned terrorism attacks inside and outside the United States, including a plot to use automatic weapons to open fire at shoppers and emergency responders in shopping mall attacks, federal prosecutors said today.

Tarek Mehanna, is accused of conspiring with Ahmad Abousamra and others to obtain the automatic weapons needed to carry out a mall ambush in which they planned to open fire at random, said Acting U.S. Attorney Michael K. Loucks.

The plot included plans to fire at emergency responders, but was abandoned because the men could not obtain the weapons, authorities said.

Source – Read Full Article

If this story and the names involved sound familiar …. This may be why.

From The Boston Globe 2008

Statements that Tarek Mehanna allegedly made to the FBI two years ago in the midst of a terrorism investigation came back to haunt him last weekend, when the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy graduate was arrested as he was about to board a Boston flight to start a new job overseas.

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Additional details are available at My Pet Jawa, who also covered the story here.

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Terror-Related Arrest Began in Las Vegas

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under Featured


Last week we linked to a story on Fox News about a a Somali man on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list who was stopped  outside Las Vegas along with four other men. The man was released because the officer had no legal authority to detain him. As we stated in the post, the story didn’t end there.Two days after the vehicle was pulled over outside Las Vegas, two of the passengers appeared at the U.S.-Mexico border crossing in San Ysidro, Calif.

So is that the end of the story?  Apparently not.

The Channel 8 I-Team in Las Vegas has additional details as well as pdfs of a Criminal Complaint and Criminal Indictment

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Senator Calls For Tighter Restrictions on Peroxide

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under Featured

charles-schumer

I agree withe Sen. Schumer on this one. Sen. Schumer (D-NY) is calling for a nationwide “awareness” program of sales of peroxide, a chemical widely used in over-the-counter hair dye formulas but also used by terrorists to make explosives.

You may recall, this was one of our suggestions in the recent National Homeland Security Dialogue (QHSR)

A recipe to make a homemade liquid bomb using concentrated peroxide, known as TATP, was found in Zazi’s computer, law enforcement officials say. It was said to be the same recipe used by terrorists in the London transit bombings that killed 56 and wounded more than 700 commuters on July 7, 2005

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FBI Raids Slaughterhouse In Ongoing Investigation

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under Incident Reports

Several news reports are circulating in regards to an FBI raid on a Illinois slaughterhouse. Although details are sketchy, there is no indication the raids are in any way connected to terrorism.

We’ve included links to a few of the reports.

Authorities Confirm Raid, No One Taken Into Custody

Federal agents conducted a raid Sunday afternoon at a goat meat processing plant near Morris, Illinois. The secretive operation was led by the Chicago FBI office. CBS 2’s Mike Puccinelli reports that on Monday, the Feds are being very tight-lipped on what they found and why they were even there.

Spokesman Ross Rice confirms agents were at 6260 Kinsman Road, in Kinsman, Illinois. The business is called First World Management. Rice would not say why agents were there but said nobody was taken into custody.

The FBI said the raid began Sunday morning and ended in the late afternoon. They were at the plant about nine hours total.

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From WBBM 780

Federal agents conducted a raid Sunday afternoon at a goat meat processing plant near Morris, Illinois.

The operation was led by the Chicago FBI office.  An agent confirmed for Newsradio 780 they were executing a search warrant at the First World Management plant in Kinsman, Illinois.

Why is a mystery.  A call to the plant was met largely with silence.  We did get confirmation that some items — possibly computers — were seized and that there were no arrests.

Neighbors who saw the raid tell CBS 2 News it was a huge operation, involving more than 100 agents, police officers and even what one believed to be National Guard troops.

One witness said she saw troops carrying M-16 rifles that were trained on a group of men sitting on the ground outside the facility.

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From the Chicago Tribune

Federal agents investigating possible Immigration irregularities conducted raids at a Grundy County meatpacking business and several Chicago locations over the weekend, sources familiar with the probe said Monday.

The FBI’s Chicago office confirmed agents took part in the execution of a search warrant Sunday at a First World Management Services plant in Kinsman, northwest of Dwight. FBI spokesman Ross Rice said no arrests were made there.

But a source said the owner of the plant, which processes lamb and goat, was taken into custody at his home in Chicago.

Documents and records were taken from the plant and from a Chicago travel agency on West Devon Avenue, also owned by the same person, the source said.

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Federal Agents Seize Property of Nuclear Critic

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under Incident Reports

fbi

The New York times is reporting that Federal agents have seized six computers, two cameras, two cellphones and hundreds of files from a Los Alamos, N.M., physicist.

In the report, an FBI spokesman in Albuquerque, states that the action on Monday was part of “an ongoing federal investigation” and that he could provide no details.

The physicist, P. Leonardo Mascheroni, said he was told that the seizures were part of a criminal investigation into possible nuclear espionage. Dr. Mascheroni also declared his innocence.

“If I were a real spy,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview, “I would have left the country a long time ago.”

Dr. Mascheroni was laid off from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1988 and has ever since championed an innovative type of laser fusion, which seeks to harness the energy that powers the sun, the stars and hydrogen bombs.

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Terror Threats Closes Pakistan Schools

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under World Report

pakistan_university

In the southern Sindh province, which is home to Pakistan’s financial capital Karachi, 50 000 schools and colleges have shut down until Sunday according to several news reports.

Pakistani schools and colleges have closed because of fears about militant attacks after twin suicide bombings at a university campus on Tuesday, officials said.
The federal government and armed forces already announced that they were closing their schools as a precaution against terrorism.

Two suicide bombers attacked the International Islamic University in Islamabad on Tuesday, killing four students and wounding at least 18 others. The bombers struck at mid-afternoon inside a women’s cafeteria and a faculty office in the Islamic law department at the school, which is popular with foreign students.
Source

“This is an internal security lapse. We have already advised the educational institutions to tighten their security,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters after the Islamabad university blasts on Tuesday.

Source

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Hezbollah May Be Planning Attacks On U.S. and Israeli Targets

October 20, 2009 by national  
Filed under World Report

targeting_terror_2

According to a leading Turkish news website, Hezbollah is planning attacks against possible targets that include American, Israeli institutions, synagogues and tourist destinations. The planned attacks are said to be in retaliation for assassination of a senior Hezbollah member in 2008.

Intelligence agencies warn against terror attacks planned by Hezbollah  against Israeli and American targets in Turkey, according to a report published on the Turkish news website “Haberturk”.

According to the report, Hezbollah is looking to attack Israeli tourists, Israeli vessels and airplanes, as well as synagogues in Turkey. Citizens are asked to take the necessary precautions.

In addition, Turkish police warned its units in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, saying Hezbollah might have already gathered intelligence ahead of a possible attack on Israeli and American institutions in the three major cities.

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Western Terror Recruits Are On The Rise

October 19, 2009 by national  
Filed under World Report

jihadist_camp

A rising number of Western recruits including Americans are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary terrorist training camps.

Midway through a propaganda video released last month by a group calling itself the German Taliban, a surprise guest made an appearance: a cleanshaven, muscular gunman sporting the alias Abu Ibrahim the American.

The gunman did not speak but wore military fatigues and waved his rifle as subtitles identified him as an American. The video contained a stream of threats against Germany if it did not withdraw its troops from the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. Although the American’s part in the film lasted only a few seconds, it has alarmed German and U.S. intelligence officials, who are still puzzling over his background, his real identity and how he became involved with the terrorist group.

U.S. and European counterterrorism officials say a rising number of Western recruits including Americans are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend paramilitary training camps. The flow of recruits has continued unabated, officials said, in spite of an intensified campaign over the past year by the CIA to eliminate al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders in drone missile attacks.

via Read Article.

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U.S. Intelligence Investing In Social Media Monitoring

October 19, 2009 by national  
Filed under Featured

social_media_intel

The Danger Room has an interesting article you’ll want to read. According to the exclusive report, In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that is developing cutting edge technologies to monitor social media. I know many will cite privacy concerns however I believe if done correctly and with oversight, this could be an extremely effective tool.

America’s spy agencies want to read your blog posts, keep track of your Twitter updates even check out your book reviews on Amazon.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.

Visible crawls over half a million web 2.0 sites a day, scraping more than a million posts and conversations taking place on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Amazon. (It doesn’t touch closed social networks, like Facebook, at the moment.) Customers get customized, real-time feeds of what’s being said on these sites, based on a series of keywords.

“That’s kind of the basic step — get in and monitor,” says company senior vice president Blake Cahill.

Then Visible “scores” each post, labeling it as positive or negative, mixed or neutral. It examines how influential a conversation or an author is. (”Trying to determine who really matters,” as Cahill puts it.) Finally, Visible gives users a chance to tag posts, forward them to colleagues and allow them to response through a web interface.

In-Q-Tel says it wants Visible to keep track of foreign social media, and give spooks “early warning detection on how issues are playing internationally,” spokesperson Donald Tighe tells Danger Room.

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