PI Newswire

Military chiefs are probing a security breach after snipers’ personal details were found in the boot of a second-hand car.

The stunned buyer found a “treasure trove” of information which could have been used by Britain’s enemies, including the Taliban.

Sensitive papers listing the identities of 28 soldiers selected to train as marksmen were discovered under the spare tyre.

There was also an Army pass giving access to Ministry of Defence bases. Top brass launched the urgent investigation.

An Army source said: “We have a duty of care to provide the best possible support for our soldiers, their families, and those who are deemed at risk if their identities are exposed while on operations.

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Simona Bonomo, in 2009, talks about the footage of her encounter with police. Link to this video
An Italian student has won an out-of-court settlement with police after she was stopped under anti-terrorist legislation while filming buildings in London, and later arrested, held in a cell for five hours and then fined.

Simona Bonomo filmed the moment she was approached by two police community support officers (PCSOs) in Paddington, west London, and later gave the footage to the Guardian.

The video, which went viral, showed one of the officers – PSCO Thomas Cooke – question the art student about why she was filming buildings “iconic to us” and demand to see images on her camera. In doing so he claimed to have powers that he did not have.

He and another PCSO then departed, only to return with other police officers who accused Bonomo, 34, of being aggressive. She was bundled to the ground and arrested.

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A former top CIA covert officer who ran one of the spy agency’s secret domestic networks says there are now more foreign spies on U.S. soil than at the peak of the Cold War. The former officer, Hank Crumpton, who also served as deputy director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center and led the U.S. response to 9/11, speaks candidly to Lara Logan about his life as a spy on 60Minutes, Sunday, May 13at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

As the chief of the CIA’s National Resources Division, the highly-sensitive, secret domestic operation, he conducted counter-intelligence within the U.S. “If you look at the threat that is imposed upon our nation every day, some of the major nation states — China in particular — [have] very sophisticated intelligence operations, very aggressive operations against the U.S.,” says Crumpton. “I would hazard to guess there are more foreign intelligence officers inside the U.S. working against U.S. interests now than even at the height of the Cold War,” he tells Logan. “It’s a critical issue.”

Also critical in Crumpton’s mind is the danger posed by al Qaeda, especially factions operating in North Africa. “I’m particularly concerned about al Qaeda in Yemen, which is fractured as a nation state,” he says. “The Sahel, if you look at al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, they pose a threat, and in Somalia. Those are the places I’d be concerned,” says Crumpton.

Crumpton says al Qaeda could make a comeback in Afghanistan if the U.S. withdraws too quickly. The current situation there reminds him of a “Greek tragedy,” he tells Logan. “You’ve got so many mistakes on the U.S. side, and you’ve got a feckless, corrupt government on the Afghan side. I am really more pessimistic now than I’ve been in a long time,” says Crumpton.

The retired spy also tells Logan about the early months in Afghanistan after 9/11, when the U.S. effort to topple the Taliban was led by the CIA and about how two administrations’ failure to let CIA assets kill Osama bin Laden led to the development of predator drones.

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Top ranking TSA managers are not telling the head office about nearly half of the security breaches at the country’s major airports — including Newark — making it more difficult to spot dangerous weaknesses in the national fight against terrorism, according to a federal report obtained by The Star-Ledger.

But much of the fault may lie with the Transportation Security Administration headquarters itself, which has a poor system for reporting and monitoring breaches, says the report, which is scheduled to be released today by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the TSA.

“The agency does not provide the necessary guidance and oversight to insure that all breaches are consistently reported, tracked and corrected. As a result, it does not have a complete understanding of breaches occurring at the Nation’s airports and misses opportunities to strengthen aviation security.” states the report, signed by Anne L. Richards, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant inspector general.

The report grew out of a February 2011 request by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) for an investigation into articles by The Star-Ledger about at least half a dozen security breaches at Newark Liberty International Airport in January and February of that year.

While the report focused on breaches occurring at Newark Liberty from January 2010 to May 2011, it says investigators also reviewed security breaches at five other major airports during the same 16-month period, to determine the severity of Newark’s problem as well as deficiencies at other airports and for TSA operations generally. The five other airports were not identified, though Lautenberg had requested investigators also look at John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports.

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San Francisco civil rights advocates who are concerned about what they call domestic spying on the city’s Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian (AMEMSA) communities are celebrating new legislation signed into law on May 9 by Mayor Ed Lee.

The Safe San Francisco Civil Rights Ordinance requires San Francisco Police Department officers working with the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to be bound by local and state laws strictly governing intelligence gathering of First Amendment-protected activities like religious worship.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to pass the final version of the legislation May 8. Although the board does not have the jurisdiction to influence FBI activity, the ordinance targeting local police participation in the task force is seen by activists as an important step in tackling the much larger issue of unlawful federal surveillance. Advocates are also hopeful that the law will begin to repair the icy relationship between San Francisco’s police department and AMEMSA communities.

“This is a first step in a long way to go for this issue our community is facing,” Yemen-born Arab-American civil rights activist Adel Somaha said. “We want to see these agents stay away from our mosques, which are places of worship, not spy stations. They turn our community environment into a war zone for no reason.”

Revised Ordinance

San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim resubmitted the ordinance to the city’s board of supervisors on April 10 after the mayor vetoed a more detailed version of the policy. The revised version will be implemented by mid-summer.

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The Justice Department sought 1,745 secret wiretapping warrants in 2011, an increase of 239 over 2010, according to correspondence sent to Congressional leaders and oversight committees posted on the Justice Department website. The secret warrants are governed under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and are used in terrorist and espionage investigations by the FBI. The secret warrants are prepared by FBI agents and prosecutors to present to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington.

Sent to Congressional leaders and Vice President Joseph Biden, the letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich said, “During the calendar year 2011, the government made 1,745 applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ( hereinafter FISC) …for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.”

A copy of the letters can be viewed here.

The letter says that 1,676 of the applications were for electronic surveillance. It is impossible to determine based on the information made available if the 69 other warrants were for physical searches during terrorism and espionage investigations. Some FISA warrants can cover both electronic intercepts and physical searches when FBI agents secretly enter an area and pull information off of computers or documents they are seeking as part of their investigation.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment on any specific reasons for the fluctuations in the numbers.

“The number of applications that the government submits to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to conduct court-authorized surveillance in national security matters varies from year-to-year and depends on myriad of different factors. The annual numbers have gone up and down and up over the past decade.” Boyd said when asked about the change in numbers.

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FBI Director Robert Mueller urged Congress on Wednesday to renew wide-ranging surveillance authority to thwart terrorism plots like the latest one in which an al-Qaida-engineered explosive device was to have been detonated on a U.S.-bound airline flight.

Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee the FBI is examining the device and said the scheme hatched in Yemen demonstrates that it’s essential for Congress to reauthorize counterterrorism tools enacted in 2008. Some of these programs expire at year-end.

The provisions allow the government to target electronic surveillance on foreign persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States.

The amendments up for reauthorization this year “are essential in our efforts to address” the terrorism threat, said Mueller.

The FBI director said the law allows the FBI to identify those both within the United States and outside the United States “who would hurt us.”

Mueller told the panel that “we’ve seen over the last several days” that terrorism should be “our No. 1 priority.”

The FBI director’s comments follow revelations that al-Qaida completed a sophisticated new, non-metallic underwear bomb last month and that the would-be suicide bomber actually was a double agent working with the CIA and Saudi intelligence agencies.

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About a dozen U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who cannot fly from the United States because they are on the so-called “no-fly list” will finally have their case heard by a federal appeals court Friday.

The two-year-old suit claims the plaintiffs, who include two retired U.S. military veterans once stranded in Egypt and Colombia, have been unconstitutionally barred from flying without being told why or provided a meaningful chance to clear their names.

“A secret list that deprives people of the right to fly and places them into effective exile without any opportunity to object is both un-American and unconstitutional,” ACLU attorney Ben Wizner said in a statement.

U.S. District Judge Anna Brown of Portland sided with the government last year, ruling the Department of Homeland Security’s redress program, known as the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, cannot be challenged in the lower federal courts, only in the appellate courts.

“The court also concludes any ‘order’ through DHS TRIP that might cause the names of any or all plaintiffs to remain on or to be removed from any no-fly list would have to be issued by TSA pursuant to § 46110(a). Accordingly, this court does not have jurisdiction to provide the relief plaintiffs seek in their second amended complaint,” Brown wrote.

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Federal investigators “identified vulnerabilities in the screening process” at domestic airports using so-called “full body scanners,” according to a classified internal Department of Homeland Security report.

DHS has spent nearly $90 million replacing traditional magnetometers with controversial X-ray body scanning machines that are intended to detect items that could be missed by a metal detector.

Exactly how bad the body scanners are is not being divulged publicly, but the Inspector General report made eight separate recommendations on how to improve screening.

The news comes as authorities are examining an underwear bomb, allegedly seized by the CIA in Yemen as it allegedly thwarted an Al-Qaida plot to destroy a U.S.-bound airplane, according to The Associated Press. Authorities are now looking to determine if the bomb could have passed through airport screeners without being detected.

Meanwhile, an unclassified version of the Inspector General report, unearthed Friday by the Electronic Information Privacy Center, may give credence to a recent YouTube video allegedly showing a 27-year-old Florida man sneaking a metallic object through two different Transportation Security Administration body scanners at American airports.

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“You have more of a chance of taking the enemy down using biometrics than you do using your M4,” said Army Lt. Col. Eric Stetson, deputy commanding officer of training for the 174th Infantry Brigade at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J.

Trainers with the 174th Inf. Bde., part of First Army Division East, recently completed a weeklong biometrics course that taught them how to integrate biometrics into mobilization training. This type of “train-the-trainer” event allows the 174th Inf. Bde’s trainers to stay current on the tactics, techniques and procedures they relay to service members preparing for deployment.

“Biometrics is an important tool for separating the enemy from the rest of the population,’ explained Army Capt. Shawnette Haynes, chief liaison officer 174th Inf. Bde.. “It is an enduring capability that we must integrate into mobilization training at all levels, especially military operations on urban terrain.”

The way the Army currently operates, in a counterinsurgency environment understanding how the biometrics system works is key to success, explained Stetson, former training chief of biometrics for Regional Command East in Bagram, Afghanistan. Modern war fighting entails effective training and employment of biometrics capabilities from the ground up, he continued. Biometrics includes exploiting DNA collection, fingerprinting, facial recognition, and retinal scan. Trainers at the 174th Inf. Bde., plan to incorporate biometrics training into the situational training lanes they operate for mobilized and deploying service members.

“Biometrics puts a uniform on the enemy,” said Chris Melton, Chief of the Biometrics NETT, a sub-division of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. “It paints a picture of an otherwise hard-to-identify enemy.”

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A group of Ohio University students who develop video games has produced a federally funded computer program to help emergency crews more safely respond to threats ranging from fires to terrorist attacks.

The 3-D “IVIN,” or Immersive Video Imaging Network, shows the inside of the 10 most-critical buildings in Franklin County. Created at OU’s Game Research and Immersive Design lab, the program eventually could be used by communities across the country.

The project took about three years and cost $950,000 in grant money from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The money paid for equipment and travel, plus the work of participating students.

The goal of IVIN’s creators is to allow police and firefighters equipped with laptops to more quickly develop a plan of attack when confronted by an emergency. The software creates a Web-based model of the buildings in its database and allows first responders to virtually place themselves inside a facility with 360-degree views, just like in a video game.

“If it is immediately accessible and up-to-date, it sounds like a fairly sophisticated monitoring system,” said Greg Paxton, acting Columbus fire chief. “We have fire-planned various buildings, but if we actually had something that’s three-dimensional, that could make it more helpful for us.”

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American travelers have been repeatedly subjected to humiliation by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents. But one recent case went too far, sparking an outcry across the country that federal security officials were out of control.

This was the case of four-year-old Isabella Brademeyer, who was recently left traumatized. TSA agents deemed her a “high security threat” after she hugged her grandmother at an airport in Wichita, Kansas.

The girl’s outraged mother gave an account of the ordeal on her Facebook page, writing: “It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter.”

Just prior to the confrontation, Mrs. Brademeyer and her two daughters had passed through security without incident. However, the grandmother was flagged for additional screening after triggering an alarm on the scanners. That’s when, according to Mrs. Brademeyer, Isabella “excitedly ran over to give her a hug, as children often do. They made very brief contact, no longer than a few seconds.”

Security agents seized the girl and told her mother she would have to be frisked. Rather than have her body probed by strangers, Isabella tried to run. Of course, she didn’t get far, and was dragged off by the agents into a small room where, according to Mrs. Brademeyer, “The [TSA agent] loomed over my daughter, with an angry grimace on her face, and ordered her to stop crying. When my scared child could not do so, two [TSA agents] called for backup saying, ‘The suspect is not cooperating.’ The suspect, of course, being a frightened child. They treated my daughter no better than if she had been a terrorist.”

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