Government policy

  • China syndromeChinese government funds research based on stolen U.S. trade secrets

    Chinese national, Kexue Huang, charged with economic espionage involving theft of trade secrets from Dow AgroSciences, a leading U.S. agricultural company; Huang published an article without Dow's authorization through Hunan Normal University (HNU) in China, which contained Dow trade secrets; the article was based on work supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), an agency of the Chinese government

  • Pakistani military delegation cancels U.S. talks over stringent security checks

    A high-level Pakistani military delegation has cancelled a visit to the United States after members of an earlier delegation, which came to the United States to visit the U.S. military's Central Command (CENTCOM), were subjected to stringent -- the Pakistanis say "unwarranted" -- security checks at Dulles International Airport

  • Immigration matters // by David B. PalinskyState of Arizona files Opening Brief in Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

    State of Arizona filed an appeal of Judge Susan Bolton's decision which accepted many of the Obama administration's objections to the Arizona Immigration law; the appeal argues that the Arizona law does not amount to a usurpation by the state of federal power

  • Free admission to Law Enforcement/Military Appreciation Day October 14 – ASIS an

  • Taliban launches poisonous gas attack on school girls and teachers in Afghanistan

    The Taliban continues its violent campaign to push Muslim women back into Medieval times; in Afghanistan, the Taliban is pursuing a campaign against girls' education; the organization's latest tactics: poisonous gas attacks on girls' schools, aiming to scare students and teachers; Taliban operatives launched eight poisonous gas attacks on girls schools since April, and earlier today it launched the ninth attack, this time against a girls high school

  • Report says Gaza exporting terror

    A former Gazan who was in the Islamic Jihad set up a terror network in Morocco aimed at targeting key Moroccan officials and Jews, an intelligence report said

  • U.S. persuades Israel Iran nuclear threat is at least a year away

    American officials say the Obama administration, citing evidence of continued troubles inside Iran's nuclear program, has persuaded Israel that it would take roughly a year -- and perhaps longer -- for Iran to complete what one senior official called a "dash" for a nuclear weapon; "We think that they have roughly a year dash time," one of Obama's top adviser on nuclear issues says; "A year is a very long period of time"

  • Online Groomers: Profiling, Policing & Prevention – a new book from Russell Hous

  • Iran's bombIran gearing up for a post-attack retaliatory campaign in Western Hemisphere

    In February 2007, Iran Air launched flight 744 -- a bimonthly flight that originates in Tehran and flies directly to Caracas with periodic stops in Beirut and Damascus; passengers cannot book a seat on the flight because it has never been opened to the public; U.S. intelligence services have been worried for a while now that the flight is used for two purposes: first, for smuggling nuclear weapons-related materials into Iran, and, second -- in cooperation with Venezuela -- for setting up a network of Iranian operatives to retaliate against U.S. targets and Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere in the event of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities

  • House Cybersecurity Caucus launches new Web site

    Billions of dollars are spent on cybersecurity; the House cybersecurity caucus has launched a new Web site, and observers say it could provide a valuable public service if it helps aggregate disparate activities and acts as a Federal cybersecurity information hub

  • The Philadelphia storyCase against teachers using Web cams to monitor students' bedrooms, laptops dropped

    Federal investigations into whether a Pennsylvania school district used school-issue laptops to take pictures of students -- and of what they were doing in their bed rooms and online -- did not yield enough evidence to file charges; Lower Merion School District monitored more than 40 students who were issued laptop computers; the monitoring generated 30,881 Webcam photographs of students, and 27,761 screenshots of Web sites they visited

  • Iran's bombBolton: Israel should attack Iran's reactor by this week's end

    Since 1960, Israel relied on covert -- and, at times, less covert -- campaign to prevent Egypt, Iraq, and Syria from acquiring nuclear weapons; in the cases if Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007), Israel destroyed these countries' nuclear reactors before they became critical; the reason: destroying nuclear reactors before they become critical eliminates the risk of radioactive radiation from the destroyed reactor spreading over large areas, as was the case with the Chernobyl reactor following the 1986 accident; Russian state firm Rosatom announced last week that it would be starting loading nuclear fuel into the Bushehr facility on 21 August, and that the plant would become operation on that day; will Israel launch a strike against the plant before that date?

  • Immigration mattersArizona waits for court decision before changing immigration law

    In response to the 28 July decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton to block the more important provisions of the controversial Arizona immigration law, Governor Jan Brewer suggested that Arizona may "tweak" the law in order to address Bolton's objections; Arizona legislatures say there is no point in rewriting the law while the state is appealing the judge's decision; in any event, since Bolton blocked the provisions on grounds that they are preempted by federal authority over immigration matters, then the preemption issue will have to be settled by the courts before the legislature revisits the law

  • Resurgence of violence in Ireland leads to questions about MI5 intelligence gathering

    The Police Federation of Northern Ireland has attributed 49 bomb incidents and 32 shooting incidents to dissident republicans since the beginning of the year; so far this year, on both sides of the border, there have been 155 arrests and 46 charges related to militant republican activities compared with 108 arrests and 17 charges in the whole of 2009; law enforcement authorities in Northern Ireland complain about an alleged lack of information from MI5 about increasingly active republican groups

  • Deep judicial disagreements over increased police use of GPS surveillance

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on 6 August overturned a drug-trafficking conviction because the police, without a warrant, placed a GPS tracking device on the suspect's car; the decision contradicted decisions in three similar GPS-related cases by appellate panels in Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco; there are fierce judicial disagreements on the issue: Judge Douglas Ginsburg, who oppose GPS surveillance without a warrant, writes that "Prolonged surveillance reveals types of information not revealed by short-term surveillance, such as what a person does repeatedly, what he does not do, and what he does ensemble;" Judge Richard Posner, who says warrants are not necessary for GPS surveillance, says that the Fourth Amendment "cannot sensibly be read to mean that police shall be no more efficient in the 21st century than they were in the 18th"; Chief Judge Alex Kozinski characterized the GPS tracking as "creepy and un-American" and contended its capabilities handed "the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives"

  • The food we eatMaple syrup producer ends factory floor tours

    For almost a century Maple Grove Farms of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, has produced maple syrup and maple candies; for much of that time, tourists have been able to watch the production process from the factory floor -- but not anymore: fears about terrorists, disguised as visitors, contaminating some of the more than twelve million pounds of maple products processed every year lead company to end tours

  • Growing privacy concerns over Google's Street View

    Worries about the privacy invasion by Google's Street View project have led several countries to scrutinize the ambitious mapping project; Goolge offers concerned home owners the opportunity to submit a request to have their houses taken off the service, but a Google spokeswoman admits that "Processing these requests and applying blurring is a complex task which takes time"; concerns about privacy infringement were only heightened when it was learned that Google, inadvertently perhaps, also picks up private WiFi communication in the process of updating its maps -- and that a Google U.K. executive has purchased a surveillance UAV (he said it was for personal use)

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