“Airlines are protesting a government plan that would require them to take fingerprints of foreign travelers as they fly out of the USA, saying it could create massive lines at airport check-in counters. Congress has required that the 33 million foreigners a year coming into U.S. airports be fingerprinted when they arrive and leave the [...]
“The U.S. military’s first and only study looking into ties between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda showed no connection between the two, according to a military report released by the Pentagon. The report released by the Joint Forces Command five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq said it found no “smoking gun” after [...]
“The House of Representatives abruptly postponed a vote on a spy bill on Thursday after Democrats agreed to a Republican request to hold a rare secret session to discuss classified security matters.” (Reuters)
“Workers operating networks supporting the nation’s critical infrastructure such as telecommunications and transportation need better training on how to manage backup systems in case cyberattacks take down main systems, said a top Homeland Security Department official Thursday.” (GovExec)
“New anti-terrorism rules aimed at stopping companies from sending railway cars packed with toxic chemicals through cities may still leave large populations vulnerable, according to members of Congress and security experts.” (USA Today)
“Most plans to gain control of the porous U.S.-Mexico border focus on some combination of fence. But this city in far west Arizona is looking to build a moat.Faced with high-levels of crime and illegal immigration, authorities in Yuma are reaching back to a technique as old as a medieval castle to dig out a [...]
“The chief of the Strategic Command hinted Wednesday during a Senate hearing that the Pentagon has plans to conduct warfare in space as well as in cyberspace, strategies the Defense Department has been reluctant to discuss openly in the past. Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, testified before the Senate [...]
“The European Union and the United States agreed on Thursday to defuse a crisis over visa deals by allowing talks between Washington and individual EU states to run in parallel with EU-U.S. negotiations.” (Reuters)
“The US Capitol building was partly evacuated Wednesday after a plane violated its airspace, but there was no imminent threat, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department said.” (AFP)
“House Democrats on Tuesday failed to overturn President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects. The vetoed legislation would have limited the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation methods approved in the Army field manual.” (AP)