How does one look at a potential TSA Head who fears Americans more than the terrorists Americans often fear? One views him as more interested in protecting the US government than the US citizenry.
Two days after serving two journalists with subpoenas demanding that they reveal a confidential source, a move that prompted widespread backlash among frequent fliers, the Transportation Security Administration has withdrawn the subpoenas and returned a damaged laptop to one of the writers.
If you're not angry about government yet, then perhaps the newest account of its failure to keep people safe in the air routes will help.
The Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit has shown exactly how ineffective most of the post-September 11 security measures have been in providing actual security, even as passengers flying in its aftermath experience even more stringent security theater.
The document-leaking web site Wikileaks announced Tuesday that it would release 500,000 alphanumeric pager messages sent on September 11, 2001. I'm brewing coffee and preparing to "live" blog the more interesting of these half million intercepts as they are released over the next 24 hours.
For less than $150 you can buy all the parts necessary to construct an improvised explosive device that can be carried undetected into virtually any federal building in the country, thanks in large part to security weaknesses with the Federal Protective Service, the agency charged with protecting those buildings.
Did you buy extra ammunition after Barack Obama was elected President, and are you still concerned that he might ban your guns? Are you concerned that the economic crisis could devolve into a depression, or worse? Do you think the federal government has overstepped its authority under the Constitution? If so, the government thinks you're a right-wing extremist and a potential terrorist threat.
The Transportation Security Administration compromised security testing of airport security screeners at as many as 11 airports by sending out an e-mail about the tests and failing to report the compromise, according to a report released Friday by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general.
Last July, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted a raid of a home allegedly looking for a fugitive alien. Instead, they found a Customs and Border Protection officer.
It's that time again, time for outgoing government bureaucrats to make room for fresh new faces and to say goodbye. Today, outgoing Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said goodbye to the country in a video. Of course, the government can't seem to do anything right, and now we can add making simple videos to that list.
Perhaps the webmaster at Lamperd Less Lethal needs an electric shock.
The federal government has tried almost everything in its various bids to get undocumented immigrants out of the country. Now it's trying something simple and unusual: just asking them to please leave.
"Your safety is our priority," the Transportation Security Administration web site tells us. So how does the TSA explain these four ways it's keeping air travelers unsafe?
A congressionally mandated study released Wednesday found that the U.S. national security system is outdated and needs major restructuring.
A Brooklyn jury has found Emmanuel "Toto" Constant guilty of mortgage fraud and grand larceny. Constant is the former founder and leader of FRAPH, the Haitian paramilitary group that in the early 90's systematically tortured and murdered thousands of supporters of deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin announced that the city would begin citing residents who did not vacate the FEMA trailers in which they have been living.
You check in at the airline ticket counter. But instead of a boarding pass, you get shackled with an electronic bracelet which tracks your every move, contains all your personal information, and can shock you senseless. This vision of the future of air security is being floated around the Department of Homeland Security's research and development office.
Transportation Security Administration employees have a hard time getting their workplace concerns addressed, despite several agency initiatives, contributing to low morale and one in six screeners quitting their jobs each year, and potentially threatening airline security.
We finally know why the federal government prevented Wal-Mart from delivering water to Hurricane Katrina victims: it was free.
The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators received a no-bid contract worth millions of dollars to implement a "verification hub" connecting state and federal databases under the REAL ID program.
So far the federal government has done little to respond to the historic floods in eastern Iowa which are among the worst in recorded history. In order to maintain tyranny in the flooded areas, local governments have had to step up to meet the challenge.
Indiana residents affected by Saturday's flooding shouldn't expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all.
President George W. Bush on Friday signed an executive order requiring federal contractors to verify the employment eligibility status of federal contractors and subcontractors.
It's May again, that time of year when the Department of Homeland Security hands out millions of dollars of your hard-earned money to whoever it wants for the strangest of reasons, or none at all, in the name of "infrastructure protection." Today's stupid spending: $184,415 for a casino shuttle.
The war on terror could be recast as "A Global Struggle for Security and Progress," according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo.
If "Truth is treason in the empire of lies," as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) writes in his new book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, then Paul has certainly committed treason by laying out the truth of the precarious state of the United States in 2008.
When the next hurricane threatens to strike, how will you get the news? For that matter, will you survive? Some want to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency even more authority over disaster response than it already has, even while it struggles to modernize the country's emergency alert system.
Ostensibly the Transportation Security Administration exists to keep Americans safe when they fly. In reality it's a bureaucratic nightmare which never should have been created in the first place. Consider what the TSA has done to pilots and air marshals to put you at risk.
Transportation Security Administration rules are to blame for the conditions leading up to an accidental discharge of a U.S. Airways pilot's pistol during landing, say airline pilots familiar with the program.
The Department of Homeland Security has granted an extension to New Hampshire for compliance with the provisions of the federal REAL ID program.
Why did I say that Ron Paul's foreign policy is the only way to end terrorism?
Santa brought Kip Hawley coal this year, because he's been a very naughty boy.
More than a year after displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina first said that formaldehyde in government-issued travel trailers was making them sick, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has arranged for air quality testing to begin this week.
The excuse we hear from the Transportation Security Administration when yet another report comes out finding that its screeners miss the majority of simulated bomb components that testers attempt to bring through airport checkpoints is that the tests are designed to be difficult and nobody would be able to get away with it if they were real bomb components.Yet investigators with no insider knowledge were able to smuggle real bomb components, sufficient to assemble powerful improvised explosive devices based on liquid explosives, past the TSA at 19 separate airports, according to a report released November 15.
One of the requirements for a totalitarian police state is a system of kangaroo courts, star chambers which operate in secret and in parallel to the existing judicial system to convict political prisoners of pretended crimes against the state, which could never survive in the regular courts. And former judge Michael Mukasey, nominee for U.S. Attorney General to replace Alberto Gonzales, has proposed that the United States adopt such a system of courts.
New York State will begin issuing new versions of so-called secure driver licenses as well as a version specifically for undocumented immigrants, Gov. Eliot Spitzer said last weekend.
Since September 11, 2001, getting in to the U.S. as a foreign visitor has become a harrowing experience. So much so, in fact, that foreign tourism is down 17% as many tourists choose to spend their holidays elsewhere rather than be poked, prodded, searched, fingerprinted and verbally abused by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.Not to fear, though; the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Department of State have done something about it.
Transportation Security Administration screeners at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport missed more than 60% of bomb components which undercover agents attempted to smuggle through airport checkpoints, according to a classified report.
Town aldermen in Dover, N.J., worried that terrorists could attack the town's children by poisoning gumballs in coin-operated gumball machines, have launched an inspection of every machine they can find.
Chinese hackers broke into Department of Homeland Security computers and made off with “many megabytes” of data, and the contractor charged with securing the department’s networks attempted to cover up the breaches, according to Congressional investigators who have asked the department’s inspector general to investigate the computer security breaches.
A Justice Department audit of the government's master list of known and suspected terrorists found errors and inconsistencies which would have allowed terrorists to enter the country undetected and would mistakenly identify innocent Americans as terrorists.
In the four years since its creation, the Department of Homeland Security has fallen far short of expectations, according to an extensive Congressional audit released last week.
The state of Arizona will join Vermont and Washington state in creating a secure state identification document which can be used for travel within Canada and Mexico and will also likely meet the requirements of the REAL ID Act.
In December of 1998, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet wrote in an internal Central Intelligence Agency memorandum that "We are at war" with Osama bin Laden and that he wanted "no resources or people spared in this effort, either inside CIA or the [Intelligence] Community."But a 2005 report from John L. Helgerson, the CIA's inspector general, parts of which were declassified this week, found that Tenet failed to follow through and create a plan for countering the terrorist threat posed by bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
Over the past decade, cities around the country have established clergy response teams, comprised of pastors, priests and other religious leaders from all religious denominations, to provide aid, counseling and assistance to victims of crime and lately of natural disasters. Now a report suggests that these clergy response teams may be used to help put down civil unrest and enforce martial law.
Last weekend the Bush administration pushed through Congress a law to bolster the government's ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners and other "persons reasonably believed to be outside the U.S." without a court order.
Renowned security expert Bruce Schneier conducted an extensive interview with Transportation Security Administration head Kip Hawley, and asked him, in essence, when is airport security going to start making sense?
This makes yet another year I didn't make it to DEFCON, the longest-running hacker conference now in its 15th year. Which is unfortunate, because I really would have loved to have been at the opening speech at the Black Hat Briefings, held just prior to the main event this weekend, and at which the National Security Agency got up and asked the hacker community for help.
In late 2001, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing a controversial National Security Agency program, and on Tuesday, director of national intelligence Mike McConnell revealed that the executive order authorized not only the "terrorist surveillance program" whose existence was revealed in 2005, but a series of other programs as well.
People who survived Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in a century, then had to face the next challenge to their survival: the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those who survived FEMA's first round of incompetence in New Orleans were placed in travel trailers, many of which oozed formaldehyde, making them sick and killing at least one person. But FEMA lawyers stonewalled, preventing the agency from taking steps to mitigate the formaldehyde problem.
"Sky Harbor's not safe and hasn't been for a long time." So says one airport employee at the Phoenix, Ariz., airport.The Transportation Security Administration has been going home at midnight and returning at 4:30 a.m. During those hours, it's easy to walk into the sterile areas of the airport entirely unscreened.
Several people walked into Albany International Airport in Colonie, N.Y., in late June, carry-on bags stuffed full of bomb parts, and strolled to the security checkpoint.Transportation Security Administration screeners seized every bottle of water from all of them.
Updates to stories previously covered at Homeland Stupidity.
Before you decide that, what with all those senior management positions open, a move into the Department of Homeland Security is good for your career, you should know that many people don't last long there.
The more than 40 local and regional intelligence fusion centers created after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to improve information sharing between the federal government and state, local and tribal law enforcement, are failing to accomplish their mission of protecting the homeland.
One-fourth of top management positions at the Department of Homeland Security remain vacant as of May 1, according to a congressional report released this week.
This day the rain moved in early in the afternoon, and continued well into the night, and yet people still set off their fireworks here in a city where it's, as far as I know, perfectly legal to do so. But while the star-spangled banner yet waves, the freedom it represents is a distant memory.
Preservationists are questioning plans by the Department of Homeland Security to move into the west campus of St. Elizabeths Hospital, a former lunatic asylum.
Getting security right is a challenge for the best of us. But when you put security in the hands of government, getting it right is a virtually insurmountable obstacle. Here are a few ways government made you less secure and wasted your money over the last couple of weeks.
The Bush administration has suspended a pending rule which would have required travelers re-entering the country from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean by land or sea to present passports at entry.
With a groan of pleasure akin to torment, George surged into the Fertile Crescent again and again.
Government auditors told a Congressional committee last week that computer security at the Department of Homeland Security still needs improvement, even after years of work to remedy the problems.
The military desperately needs Arabic linguists in order to provide translation services in the ongoing war in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. But at least one Navy linguist is no longer providing those much-needed services, because, for some in the Pentagon, there's a war more important than the war on terror.
The State Department announced Friday it would suspend a rule requiring Americans to have passports in order to re-enter the country from Canada, Mexico and certain Caribbean islands which went into effect earlier this year due to a months-long backlog of passport applications.
A fax sent by Bank of America's corporate office to its Ashland, Mass., branch last week was garbled in transmission. When it came out the other end, a bank employee saw clip art of a hand lighting a match to a bomb and called police. You can guess what happened next.
The U.S. government is trying to prevent a Kansas meat company from testing all of its cows for mad cow disease.
A passport card set to be issued by the State Department for travel to Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean doesn't require privacy protection, even though it uses a radio frequency identification chip which can be read from 20 feet away, because the chip itself doesn't contain personal information, according to the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
A critical Federal Bureau of Investigation network for sharing law enforcement and investigative information is at risk of being misused or having its services interrupted, according to an audit released this week.
Members of a group who went to Greensburg, Kan., to assist in relief efforts after a May 5 tornado destroyed most of the town were forcibly ejected by police on the scene for being "federal security threats."
Technology is changing how people interact with government forever, says a prominent homeland security consultant.
On Friday, May 4, an F5 tornado wiped the town of Greensburg, Kan., almost entirely off the map. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, along with the National Guard and local police from all over Kansas, then systematically kept out relief workers while they went house to house disarming the residents.
Two proposals being floated around Capitol Hill call for the Social Security card to be updated with biometric information and for U.S. employers to be required to verify it with the Department of Homeland Security when hiring.
For those who doubted that Rep. Ron Paul was a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, the debate Tuesday night in South Carolina put all doubts to rest. Paul stirred up a firestorm of controversy for suggesting that the Department of Homeland Security made national security even more inefficient after September 11 than before, and especially for his assertion that U.S. foreign policy over the past several decades contributed to the rise of Islamic terrorism.But viewers at home responded, putting Ron Paul in second place in FOX's own tamper-proof viewer poll.
Two men who planted electronic light boards around the city of Boston to promote the Aqua Teen Hunger Force cartoon, resulting in city officials overreacting and shutting down the city, have resolved the criminal charges against them.
If you're an American reading this, then under expansive definitions being used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several states in their counterterrorism training, you just might be a domestic terrorist.
The White House will take a more direct role in managing continuity of government plans to be used in the event of a "decapitating" attack on the federal government, under a presidential directive issued Wednesday.
"Federal, State, and local governments are responsive, innovative, and effective because of the outstanding work of public servants."If you believe that, I've got some critical infrastructure to sell you. But Congress certainly seems to believe it, unless they've recently taken to passing satire off as Congressional resolutions.
If you're planning a visit to the U.S., you already have to give up your fingerprints and retinal scans to the Department of Homeland Security in order to enter the country. Now the department wants to require every visitor to go through the same procedure in order to leave the country.And they want to force the airlines to collect your biometric information, rather than do it themselves.
The Department of Homeland Security will move forward with plans to implement the REAL ID Act despite widespread opposition from citizens and state legislatures.
Boston became the laughingstock of the country earlier this year after two incidents in which it responded to harmless devices as if they were real terrorist threats. Now Sen. Ed Kennedy (D-Mass.) wants to make absurd overreaction into national policy.
Whether it's harassing elderly and disabled travelers, or breaking or even stealing valuables from passengers' luggage, almost everyone has a low opinion of the Transportation Security Administration. Except, perhaps, for those who want to get in on the jackbooted action.
A hard drive containing the names, Social Security and bank account numbers for 100,000 current and former Transportation Security Administration employees was reported stolen this week, prompting a criminal investigation.
Morale at the Department of Homeland Security remains low, but Marta Perez, the department's new human capital officer, says that "significant progress is being made." It's just not clear what the department is progressing toward, exactly.
The majority of Americans, it seems, support the idea of a national ID, as long as it doesn't contain biometric information, according to a recent UPI/Zogby poll. But a large coalition of groups from every part of the political spectrum has gotten together to oppose the REAL ID Act as a threat to Americans' security.
It's said in the Bible that the poor will always be among us. In Springfield, Ill., as in most cities across the U.S., the homeless are at the public library. They use the restroom in the stairwell of the parking garage on top of which the library sits and they store their meager tarp-covered possessions next to the building. And mayor Tim Davlin is apparently at his wit's end trying to deal with the homeless problem.But a local alderman has come up with a novel idea to clean up downtown Springfield: Suggest a terrorist threat from homeless people.
Unlike most other federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security has thrown up walls of bureaucracy in front of auditors, causing long delays in access to information necessary to oversee the department, the Government Accountability Office said this week.
Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff broke off talks with Canada on Wednesday over a plan to move the U.S. border inspection facility at the Peace Bridge from its current location in Buffalo, N.Y., to the Canadian side of the border.The dispute, it turns out, was over when the U.S. could take fingerprints of Canadians who aren't even crossing into the U.S.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency wasted billions of dollars by awarding contracts for services to maintain and remove emergency trailers for people displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to politically well-connected and financially risky companies, according to an inspector general's report released Monday.
If you're a potential threat, and you want to get those critical pictures of a bridge or a nuclear reactor, what do you do? After all, these days you're bound to have cops on your ass within minutes.
A bill to outlaw certain forms of spyware is making its way through the House of Representatives. But if you think it will actually prevent spyware from getting on your computer, you have a lot to learn about government.
Even living as close to Boston as I do, I don't always get the news about happenings in and around Boston until much later. So more than a week after it happened, I find out about yet another stupid bomb scare, this time at a high school in Newton, Mass.
"Terrorists win when the fear of them induces us to destroy the rights that make us free." Those were the words of one victim of post-9/11 anti-terrorism hysteria to a Congressional committee on Wednesday. So we got national security letters, a terrorist surveillance program, and probably many other programs, but instead of stopping terrorists, these programs have targeted ordinary Americans.
I'm in the market for a new portable media player, since my current one is getting rather old, not to mention full. Naturally, I looked at the current crop of iPods. They're excellent hardware and work well. But I won't buy one, not because of the iPod itself, but because of Apple's no-privacy policy.
The REAL ID Act will be a real nightmare for many reasons, only one of which is the fact that government bureaucrats will finally get most of the errors out of their massive databases on virtually every American.
Washington state Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to sign a bill passed last week which would ostensibly prevent the state from participating in the REAL ID program, at least until the government ponies up some money to pay for it.
Have you ever used a gun in self-defense, or defense of another? If so, there's something you may want to do.
The American Civil Liberties Union has joined the National Rifle Association to help protect the rights of Texans to travel with their guns, a move that has almost everybody scratching their heads.
There being some actual demand from regular readers of this site for a forum on the topics covered here, I've started one.
The United States Census Bureau turned over names and addresses of American citizens of Japanese descent to the Secret Service during World War II. How dare those supposedly patriotic Americans not turn themselves in to their designated concentration camps!
Continually increasing the debt is one of the logical outcomes of Keynesianism, since more government spending is always their answer. It is claimed that government must not stop spending when the economy is so fragile. Government must act. Yet, when times are good, government also increases in size and scope, because we can afford it, it is claimed. There is never a good time to rein in government spending according to Keynesian economists and the proponents of big government.
Jersey Shore? Fuhgeddaboudit. Jersey City is the gem of reality TV. Shore is MTV. Jersey City is FBI. Like, how real is that? Killer videos of pols talking trash and passing cash have been unspooling in federal court in Newark at the trial of Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Beldini was busted last summer in an FBI sweep that corralled dozens of Jersey pols. It was one of the largest corruption roundups in Jersey's thick history of roundups.
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