Cyber Threat is Nations Biggest Economic Risk

At the RSA security conference in San Francisco today, White House cybersecurity chief Howard Schmidt said that the biggest economic threat facing the nation is the cybersecurity problem.

He said the government is mobilizing to deal with electronic attacks, which have hit everyone from Google to everyday consumers who have had their identities stolen in credit card scams. (He didn’t dwell on the idea that this is the biggest economic threat; after all, bankers and insurance companies have been pretty big threats to the U.S. economy as well).

In his first major public appearance since President Obama appointed him last year, Schmidt said that the country has to do something about fixing systemic problems that make the nation’s computers vulnerable to cyber attack.

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al-Qaeda – A Wounded But Very Dangerous Enemy

Although intelligence analysts may differ as to al Qaeda’s strength, influence and operational status, there is one thing most agree on, al Qaeda is still very dangerous and poses a great threat to the US.

The Washington Post has more.

In the past six weeks, Americans have witnessed two jarringly different but completely accurate views of al-Qaeda’s terrorist network. One image was that of terrorist leaders being hunted down and killed by satellite-guided, pilotless aircraft. The other was of an agile foe slipping past U.S. defenses and increasingly intent on striking inside the United States.

New assessments of al-Qaeda by the top U.S. counterterrorism experts offer grounds for both optimism and concern a year after President Obama took office. Officials say al-Qaeda’s ability to wage mass-casualty terrorism has been undercut by relentless U.S. attacks on the network’s leadership, finances and training camps. But even in its weakened state, the group has shifted tactics to focus on small-scale operations that are far harder to detect and disrupt, analysts say.

via Al-Qaeda is a wounded but dangerous enemy – washingtonpost.com.

Obama Ties Flight 253 Attack to al Qaeda in Yemen

President Obama stated for the first time on Saturday that a branch of Al Qaeda based in Yemen was behind the attempted Christmas Day bombing of  Nortwest Airlines flight 253, and he vowed that those behind the failed attack “will be held to account.”

From The New York Times
In his first weekly Saturday address of the new year, Mr. Obama also rebutted attacks by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans who since the incident have accused him of not recognizing that the struggle against terrorists is a war. Mr. Obama said he was well aware that “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.”

The president’s speech, taped from Hawaii, where he is nearing the end of a 10-day vacation, was the third time he had publicly addressed the failed attack on Northwest Flight 253 bound for Detroit on Dec. 25. Mr. Obama noted that he had received preliminary reports about the incident but gave no more details about how a Nigerian man with known radical views was allowed to board a flight to the United States with explosives in his underwear.

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Colorado Man Charged In Threat on Obama, Mall of America

A 20-year-old southwestern Colorado man has been indicted on charges of threatening to kill President Obama and blow up the Mall of America in Bloomington.

Timothy Ryan Gutierrez, of Cortez, was indicted Tuesday in federal court in Denver. A warrant has been issued for Gutierrez’s arrest, and authorities declined to discuss his whereabouts.

He faces one count each of transmission of threats and falsely threatening to use explosives.

Gutierrez sent an e-mail to the FBI eight days before Obama was inaugurated, the indictment alleges, and wrote: “I’m going to assassinate the new president of the United States of America. PS you have 48 hours to stop it from happening.”

Federal court records also say he e-mailed the FBI with a threat against the mall: “I have rigged 40 pounds of C4 [a moldable plastic explosive] … and my favorite TNT to 7 cars outside the Mall of America.”

Mall officials were “notified immediately” by the FBI and Bloomington police of the threat, said Maureen Bausch, the mall’s executive vice president of business development. The mall was given the all-clear after 16 to 18 hours, Bausch said, once it was determined “the threat wasn’t valid” and a search of the giant retail and entertainment complex turned up nothing suspicious.

Source

White House Concerned Over al Qaeda Terror Attack During Transition

President Bush on Thursday said he is concerned that al Qaeda will try to test the incoming Obama administration with a terror attack on U.S. soil, and said he will meet with the president-elect Monday to talk about homeland defense and the economy.

Terrorists, the president said, “would like nothing more than to exploit this period of change to harm the American people.”

White House press secretary Dana Perino stressed that the U.S. government has no specific intelligence of any imminent attacks.

“I don’t know anything specific, but we do know this a heightened period of concern,” Mrs. Perino said. “We know that al Qaeda and others try to test a new administration.”

“That is something that we’re very concerned about. We’ve seen that in other countries,” Mrs. Perino said, mentioning the example of a 2004 bombing in Madrid, Spain that killed 191 people.

That bombing, however, was committed just before national elections in an attempt to influence the outcome, by what authorities deemed to be terrorists trying to imitate al Qaeda.

But Mr. Bush, speaking to more than 1,000 executive branch employees from across the federal government on the South Lawn, said the terrorist threat is a main reason that “all of must ensure that the next president and his team can hit the ground running.”

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