Archives: August, 2010

PRO Barrier Engineering provides an introduction to the most effective and, in many locations, necessary vehicle access control barriers. Terrorists driving a heavily loaded truck into a barrier need to be stopped. There are different types of such “anti ram” barriers. You can be introduced to them here. Effective security requires the ability to keep […]

“We must constantly strive for new ways to work across directorates…,” CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said in announcing that some of the nations’s most obscure, but critical agencies, will be working closer together to prevent the spread of dangerous weapons and technology. It may not mean much to Joe Citizen that the Counterproliferation Division […]

Okay, so who’s using what body scanner where? It’s a marker for our times, but also a bit disquieting, that some of the body scanners of the type, at least, being installed at U.S. airports can “store, print or transmit images” of the people they screen. NextGov has a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration […]

You would think that, by now, folks would have gotten the message that you can’t bring a gun on a commercial airliner. Not so. National Terror Alert (NTA) reports that, on average, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers “confiscate two guns per day on average at airport checkpoints around the country.” Believe it or not! “In […]

Security officers with top-secret FBI clearances have been getting a lot of collegial company in intensified antiterrorism activites. USA Today reports that the number of state and local law enforcement officers with top secret clearances in the FBI’s network of regional terrorism task forces “jumped to 878 in 2009, up from 125 in 2007. During […]

We’re not in the book reviewing business (unless, of course, you want to secure a library). But here’s a new book that provides grounding in perceptions of risk, where everything begins in the security business. How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, by David Ropeik, looks like a good […]

Depending on how stringently you follow the terrorism scene, you may have seen much of  the information included in the U.S. State Department’s annual terrorism report already. But it’s nice to have it all in one place. State’s just released annual terrorism report is for 2009, but given what we know about the past being […]

Because bringing Osama bin Laden to justice is the basic requirement pending from 9/11, we’re updating our June 10 advisory that bin Laden was hiding out in Iran. The Hindustan Times reports that U.S. Admiral Mike Mullen says that bin Laden and his deputy Aiman al-Zawahiri are believed to be in Pakistan, in a “very […]

Despite the fuss over who has passports and who doesn’t, it’s still not that hard to obtain a fake passport. That’s from Gregory Kutz, an investigator for the Government Accountability Office, who is testifying before a Senate committee on how his team acquired fraudulent e-passports. Security officers responsible for identifying people seeking access to the […]

Check out FEMA’s Facebook page (or, indeed, sign up for it). It could prove a security asset during an emergency. We noted here nearly a year ago that FEMA is on Facebook. But it’s worth repeating, because it’s such a pertinent site.