Former Homeland Security Official Calls For Increased Information Sharing In War On Terror

By Leah Valencia, University of New Mexico – Talk Radio News Service

Former Homeland Security Adviser Frances F. Townsend called on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Monday to focus on information sharing among local governments and other government entities, warning that a failure to do so could impede the Department's ability to prevent future terrorist attacks.

“If we do not get information sharing right, when there is another attack ... there will be a problem with information sharing,” Townsend said during a presentation at the Heritage Foundation.

Townsend said the issue of information sharing often falls down the list of priorities for the current administration, but could be vital in the prevention and response to terrorism.

“This is not a sexy issue but it is one that will absolutely be our downfall in terms of stopping an attack,” she explained.

The DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis outlined their key intelligence initiatives and reforms in a hearing before the house subcommittee on intelligence late last week. One priority mentioned included improved coordination and information sharing.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said the fundamental goal for protection is to better information sharing so that it occurs in a regular and timely manner.

“The key for protecting the homeland from attack is disseminating useable intelligence and information to our state, local, tribal and private sector partners, getting similar intelligence and information back from those partners for analytic work by Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the national Intelligence Community, and ensuring this two-way exchange happens on a real-time basis,” Napolitano said.

Townsend said drastic circumstances should not be necessary before this issue gets the attention it deserves.

“I think people sorely underestimate the consequences of a large scale cyber attack,” Townsend said. “There will be a cyber 9/11 and regretfully I think that is what it will take before people pay attention to these security issues.”

Lieberman, Lautenberg Introduce New Homeland Security Bill

By Celia Canon- Talk Radio News Service

On Wednesday, Senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) presented the 2010 Homeland Security Bill which would allocate $42.9 billion of federal funds to the Department of Homeland Security. This figure represents a 7% increase from last year’s Homeland Security Bill.

Lierberman said “it’s absolutely necessary to keep Americans safe and secure, not only from terrorist attacks but other man-made disasters and just plain natural disasters as well. There is no inexpensive way to defend the safety and security of the American people.”

The bill also places emphasis on supporting local first response units from around the country.

“We want to highlight this is the support we are giving to our first responders around the country: our firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel...” Lieberman said, adding that “This bill would double funding for instance for the safer grant program that helps local fire departments defray the cost of hiring new firefighters.”

Increased funding would go to the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program, which according to Lieberman, "sends money to the nation’s high risk metropolitan areas, [thus totaling] a bump up of $50 million dollars over last year's $187 million."

Lautenberg added that a $25 million increase from the previous bill would be appropriated to securing “high risk chemical facilities.”

Homeland Security Department Vulnerable to Hackers, GAO Says

By Joseph Russell- Talk Radio News Service

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is still considerably vulnerable to cyber attacks.

“Over the past three years, GAO has consistently reported that DHS has yet to fully satisfy its key responsibilities, including those for coordinating and protection of cyber critical infrastructure,” said Greg Wilshusen, Director of Information Issues for the Government Accountability Office during a hearing Thursday with the House Technology and Innovation Subcommittee on weaknesses in U.S. cyber security.

The Cyber Space Policy Review and a recent report from the Government Accountability Office highlighted many problems in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) cyber security operations and coordination. These problems include weak and outdated infrastructure, poor research, and lack of security.

A plan for collaborating national cyber security standards is needed, according to Wilshusen, because different agencies, including DHS, are unclear about their roles and responsibilities of addressing cyber security. 

The Bush Administration created the Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (CNCI) to secure federal systems in 2008. The classified CNCI had issues securing systems because 85 percent of the U.S. infrastructure is owned and operated by private entities. Under President Obama, the CNCI seeks to grow cyber security through increased transparency and public-private partnerships. 

Pandemic Or What?

Coffee Brown MD, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

There are three main differences between a normal flu and a pandemic flu, as described by the Department of Homeland Security: incidence, virulence, and demographics.
Incidence refers to how many of us will get it. In a normal year, about 15 percent of 300 million Americans, or about 45 million people will get infected. In a pandemic, rates rise to 25-50 percent, or 75-150 million cases.
Virulence refers to how many of us will die of the infection. In a normal year, that’s about 0.07 percent, or about 35 thousand out those 45 million. In 1918, mortality was about 2.5 percent, which would be about 7.5 million deaths, given today’s population.
Demographics refers to which of us are at most risk. In a normal year, nearly all deaths occur in people over 65 years old. In 1918 and 1957, mortality was highest among school-aged children and young adults.
This summary, with some calculations, comes from information provided by DHS and presented at GlobalSecurity.Org
Let’s compare the 2009 A-H1N1 Flu. “Atypical flu” may be a handier name. “Swine flu” is passe’.
Incidence: As of 05/02/09: There have been 615 confirmed cases in 15 countries. Attack rates so far are too low and data too incomplete to meaningfully calculate.
Virulence: Mortality in Mexico, the country hardest hit so far, is 16 out of 397 cases: about 4 percent, which works out to four thousand per hundred thousand (a common way of expressing this type of number).
The one U.S. death might properly have been considered a Mexican death, since that child contracted the disease there. If calculated as U.S. data: one death out of 141 cases: about point seven percent. If that fatality is not charged to the U.S. account, the mortality rate outside of Mexico is zero percent as of this writing.
Demographics: Reports say that the Mexican victims were young, but I have not been able to locate details to confirm that. The World Health Organization says that more study would be needed to confirm that younger people are more at risk.
Other: The other elements of this flu that merit precautions are that it is genetically unique, meaning we may have no immunity, and that it is slightly out of season, meaning that it exhibits at least some unpredictable behavior.
We are still at phase 5, so clusters of cases in multiple countries, which would define phase 6, have not yet been confirmed.
Per the WHO, there no travel advisories at this time.
Do masks help? Yes, no, and maybe. Yes: as tiny as viruses are, they could slip right through any screen that we could breathe through, but the virus is carried in droplets of exhaled moisture, and those droplets do stick to the mask. No: But the masks dry, and it’s not clear whether the virus survives and detaches into the inhaled air. Maybe: the real test would be whether people with masks get fewer infections (though such people probably also take more precautions in general), and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that data is not yet available.

Government stopping terrorism, but at what cost?

On the subject of datamining and information-gathering to fight against terrorism, Senior Legislative Counsel for the ACLU Timothy Sparapani said the House Homeland Security Committee needs "to conduct real oversight." He said that while "no one objects to the purpose," many have a problem with the "results that are occurring."

At a discussion today in the Canon Office Building in Washington DC, Sparapani called the process of datamining for predicting potential terrorists "a categorical and unmitigated waste of taxpayer dollars." He said that predictive datamining programs are not sufficiently useful because they "will lead to a flood of false alarms." Sparapani added that any program the government uses to fight terrorism must be able to makes U.S. citizens safer in order to justify any "intrusion of privacy."

Former Chief Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security Nuala O'Connor Kelly, remarked that while the government's job to "anticipate and prevent" terrorism is difficult, she said that not enough people in the government were determining whether datamining programs worked. She also chastised the government for ineffectively using "the information it already has."

Fred Cate (Distinguished Professor and Ben Dutton Professor of Law) called the fourth amendment a "paper tiger" against intrusions of privacy for the purposes of stopping terrorism. Cate said that the government should have a "stated purpose" for any datamining, and that the government should ask itself if it can get personal information for people with nothing in their past that would indicate possible terrorism. "There are no rules within the government," stated Cate. Cate added that the "national security exception has become the norm" in regards to potential privacy intrusions.