In the documents, obtained by the privacy group and provided to CNN, the TSA specifies that the body scanners it purchases must have the ability to store and send images when in "test mode." That requirement leaves open the possibility the machines - which can see beneath people's clothing - can be abused by TSA insiders and hacked by outsiders, said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg.
EPIC, a public-interest group focused on privacy and civil rights, obtained the technical specifications and vendor contracts through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
cia misspells terrorists names to bypasses tsa & let patsies fly from earthtimes: One of the 9/11 hijackers appeared on the no-fly list with a deliberately misspelled name. The CIA supplied that name just like they did Umar Farouk Abulmutallab’s. DCBureau is publishing the page from the 2006 no-fly list with the misspelled 9/11 hijacker’s name. Veteran investigative reporters Susan and Joseph Trento, who first obtained and exposed the flaws in the no-fly list in 2006, have completed a new investigation of the CIA’s role in airline security. It reveals that the CIA is bypassing other government agencies and following terrorists on airplanes without telling TSA or the airlines involved. It shows how terrorists and nuclear proliferators have been allowed to fly because the CIA has refused to add their correct names or aliases to the no-fly list. Part I of their two-part investigation – “The No Fly List” – is posted on the DCBureau.org Web site. The two part investigation reveals: The CIA deliberately misspells names and does not provide aliases of suspected terrorists and criminals who are being targeted for recruitment or have relationships with the agency when it passes names on to the National Counterterrorism Center to be integrated in the Terrorism Identity Datamart Environment (TIDE), Selectee, and no-fly lists.
high seas search for air france jet with 228 aboard from reuters: Search planes scoured the dark waters of the Atlantic Ocean early on Tuesday, looking for the remains of an Air France jetliner that disappeared in a severe storm with 228 people on board. The Airbus A330 went missing on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said there was little chance of finding any survivors. France and Brazil sent military aircraft and ships to try to find wreckage on high seas between Brazil and West Africa...
It was carrying 216 passengers of 32 nationalities, including seven children and one baby, Air France said. Sixty-one were French citizens, 58 Brazilian and 26 German. Twelve crew members were also on board. Tearful relatives in Paris and Rio were attended to by teams of psychologists. One of the Brazilians on board was Pedro Luis de Orleans e Braganca, a direct descendant of Dom Pedro II, the last emperor of Brazil, a spokesman for the royal family told Reuters. Executives from French tire company Michelin (MICP.PA), the Brazilian unit of German steelmaker ThyssenKrupp (TKAG.DE), and Brazilian mining giant Vale (VALE5.SA) were also among the passengers, said company officials and family members.
US geologist & wife were on air france plane from ap: A spokesman for Devon Energy Corp. confirms that the Americans on an Air France plane which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean were 60-year-old Michael Harris and his wife, Anne Harris. Chip Minty of Oklahoma City says Michael Harris was a geologist in Devon's Rio de Janeiro office. He started with Devon in 2004 and became a full-time employee in 2006. Minty says Harris had moved from Houston to Brazil in July.
video: french pilots' union doubts lightning downed flight 447
update1: brazil confirms air france jet crashed in ocean from ap: Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim says a 3-mile (5-kilometer) path of wreckage found in the Atlantic Ocean confirms that an Air France jet crashed in the sea. Jobin said Tuesday that discovery of the debris by Brazilian military pilots "confirms that the plane went down in that area" hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha.
pilot claims air france flight 447 was blown out of the sky from daily mail: Investigators are baffled how a modern plane operated by three experienced pilots could have suddenly plunged out of the sky on a routine transatlantic flight. One theory is that the jet was downed by a mid-air collision, possibly involving a military spy jet or an aircraft piloted by drug-runners. Another is that the jet was hit by lightning, causing a massive electrical short circuit. But an unidentified senior long-haul Air France pilot told a French newspaper: "I have flown these jets for Air France for more than ten years and the chances of an electrical fault seem unfeasible to me. There are five electricity supplies on the plane and they would all have to fail." He said a bomb was the only logical reason for why the captain failed to send out a mayday call.
flight447.com domain name registered in '07 from threat level: As investigators seek to unravel the fate of Air France flight 447, there’s been speculation online about an unusual domain name registration made some two years prior to this week’s plane crash, flight447.com. The mystery of the Air France flight that disappeared this week deepened after news agencies on Wednesday confirmed a previous Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris was the target of a bomb threat just days before. That plane was inspected and arrived without incident. Now it has emerged that someone registered a domain for the missing plane’s flight number on September 30, 2007. The domain name, which currently point(ed) to a search engine, expires on the same date this year and was registered to Success Incorporated in Malibu, California. It’s not unusual for individuals to register domain names shortly after news breaks on a big story and then to sell them. Indeed, a second domain AirFrance447.com was registered the day of the crash, hours after the news made headlines, and a third domain AirFranceLawSuit.com is being auctioned on e-Bay this week after being registered the day after the crash. The timing of the two-year-old flight447.com, however, makes it unusual. But when contacted, the owner of the latter domain, Kari Bian, said that the connection between his registration and the crash is coincidental. “It’s just an accident (that there’s a connection),” he said. “I have nothing to do with anything. I feel really bad for that flight.” The cause of the crash is still unknown.
air france tells families no hope of survivors from ap: Air France has told families of passengers aboard Flight 447 to abandon any hope of survivors. A counsellor present at a meeting with Air France's CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon says he told the families that the plane broke apart either in the air or when it slammed into the ocean's surface. Guillaume Denoix de Saint-Marc, who was asked by Paris prosecutors to help counsel family members, said Thursday "what is clear is that there was no landing. There's no chance the escape slides came out." Denoix de Saint-Marc says Gourgeon told families at the Wednesday meeting there were no survivors. Military rescue planes were trying to narrow the search zone Thursday as ships headed to the site to recover wreckage.
brazil recovers first air france flight 447 debris from ap: A Brazilian helicopter crew recovered the first wreckage from Air France Flight 447 on Thursday, pulling a cargo pallet from the sea. No sign of human remains have been spotted, and Air France has told families that the jetliner broke apart, killing all 228 people on board... Soldiers at Fernando de Noronha's airport, where any recovered human remains would be taken, unloaded body bags and a refrigerator truck on Thursday from a military plane... Patrick Smith, a U.S. airline pilot and aviation analyst, said the failures could have begun with a loss of electrical power, possibly as the result of an extremely strong lightning bolt. "What jumps out at me is the reported failure of both the primary and standby instruments," Smith said. "From that point the plane basically becomes unflyable. If they lost control and started spiraling down into a storm cell, the plane would begin disintegrating, the engines and wings would start coming off, the cabin would begin falling apart," he said. The pilot of a Spanish airliner flying nearby at the time reported seeing a bright flash of white light plunging to the ocean, said Angel del Rio, spokesman for the Spanish airline Air Comet. "Suddenly, off in the distance, we observed a strong and bright flash of white light that took a downward and vertical trajectory and vanished in six seconds," the pilot wrote in his report, del Rio told the AP. The pilot of the Spanish plane, en route from Lima, Peru to Madrid, said he heard no emergency calls. France's defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved, and Jobim, the Brazilian defense minister, said "that possibility hasn't even been considered."
debris 'not from air france jet' from bbc: Debris recovered from the Atlantic by Brazilian search teams is "sea trash" and not from a lost Air France jet, a Brazilian air force official has said. Brig Ramon Borges Cardoso contradicted earlier reports, saying "no material from the plane has been recovered". Teams found buoys and a wooden pallet and spotted a fuel slick, and are now searching for an airline seat and a chunk of metal seen earlier this week.
air france crash mystery deepens from afp: The mystery surrounding the crash of an Air France plane off the coast of Brazil deepened after Brazilian officials said items they had pulled from the sea were not in fact debris from the downed Airbus. The search by ships for wreckage from Air France flight AF 477, which came down early Monday as it was flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board, continued in a zone where confirmed items from the plane had been spotted earlier in the week. "Up to now, no material from the plane has been recovered," Brigadier Ramon Cardoso, director of Brazilian air traffic control, told reporters in the northeastern city of Recife late Thursday. That contradicted a statement Cardoso made earlier Thursday when he said a pallet and two buoys plucked from the Atlantic by navy crews were the first pieces of the Air France crash. In fact, Cardoso admitted later, they were nothing more than sea "trash," probably from a ship, as was a big oil patch originally described as a fuel slick from the French jet.
fbi spied on tea party protesters nationwide from paul joseph watson: The FBI were spying on Tea Party protesters nationwide during last week’s demonstrations as part of a covert program conducted without the knowledge of local law enforcement, according to a source named as a current FBI agent. The Northeast Intelligence Network reports that a concerned unnamed FBI agent risked his career in blowing the whistle on the fact that Tea Party protesters were subject to covert surveillance.
from danger room: "New York City police officers and firefighters cordoned off much of Times Square for more than two hours after a small explosion - set off, the authorities said, by an “improvised explosive device” - damaged the front of the Armed Forces Career Center on the traffic island bounded by 43rd and 44th Streets, Seventh Avenue and Broadway at 3:43 a.m., the Times is reporting. "No one was injured, and after a temporary interruption, subway service was restored." ... "The mention of a bicyclist raised possible links to a May 2005 bombing at the British Consulate and an Oct. 26 explosion at the Mexican Consulate," the New York Daily News notes. "In both cases, police said, the suspect was possibly riding a bicycle when hollowed-out grenades - filled with black powder and a fuse - were tossed into the consulates. No arrests were made in those attacks."
does new york have a serial bomber? from time: New York City's Times Square - the pulsating heart of this teeming metropolis - was its usual, frenetic self Thursday morning, its scores of corporate billboards and animated displays shimmering brightly above the crush of people bustling to work. But something was amiss. Sections of the district were cordoned off with barricades and yellow tape; traffic was snarled, and police swarmed the area. For those unaware of what transpired here overnight, news crawls bellowed the troubling headlines: "TIMES SQUARE BOMBED." Authorities are investigating whether the attack is linked to two previous bombings which bore eerie similarities.
pipe-bomb 'nazi' charged in swastika spree from new york post: The Brooklyn ex-con arrested for stashing an arsenal of weapons in his posh apartment confessed to another crime yesterday - blanketing his neighborhood with swastikas last fall, police said.
Ivaylo Ivanov, who is Jewish, according to his lawyer, was charged with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as hate crimes in a string of anti-Semitic incidents in Brooklyn Heights that date back to September...
Ivanov, 37, who lives on Remsen Street with former Columbia University professor and AIDS researcher Dr. Michael Clatts, was arrested Sunday after cops uncovered a bomb-making factory in their apartment.
bomb-making factory found in brooklyn apartment of columbia professor from new york daily news: Police stumbled upon a bomb-making factory Sunday in the home of a Columbia professor who specializes in the spread of infectious disease - and are investigating whether he and his roommate have terror ties.
Cops evacuated the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood around the Remsen St. home of Michael Clatts, a medical anthropologist, after finding seven pipe bombs fitted with fuses in his flat, police sources said.
The frightening cache was discovered almost by accident - Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger and sought police help in the street about 1:15 a.m...
Investigators with the NYPD-FBI were questioning Ivanov, a native of Bulgaria, to determine whether he had any terrorism or Russian Mafia connections, a source told the Daily News.
from gothamist: An explosion occurred at the Midtown building that houses News corporation businesses including Fox News and the NY Post. Fox 5 reports that a man was burned in the chemical explosion and 700 people have been evacuated. However, "the explosion has not interrupted the cable news channel's broadcast."
1211 Avenue of the Americas is partly owned by the Rockefeller Group Development Corporation. It was opened in 1973 and is a "1.9 million square foot Class-A office building," with 45 stories.
In the Post's story about the explosion, so far it does not mention that the building is where its operations, as well as those of other Fox entities, are located.
from usa today: There was a "chemical explosion" this morning at the headquarters of Fox News Channel in Manhattan, according to CNN.
The network, which says it confirmed this report with the fire department, is reporting that four floors were evacuated. Some 700 people have fled the building, including at least one person who was burned in the blast, the local Fox station reports.
Update at 11:47 a.m. ET: Fox News Channel is still broadcasting. The network reports that the chemical explosion occurred on the 45th floor of the building.
Updates at 11:52 a.m. ET:WNYW-TV says there are "reports that the explosion happened in a cooling station in the building."
from ap: Security officials at the nation's largest nuclear power plant detained a contract worker with a small pipe bomb in the back of his pickup truck Friday, and investigators were searching his apartment, authorities said.
It didn't appear to be an act of terrorism, authorities said, but they were still trying to determine why the device was in the truck.
The worker, identified Friday afternoon asRoger William Hurdof Goodyear, Ariz., was stopped and detained at the entrance of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, about a half mile from the containment domes where the plant's nuclear material is stored, plant spokesman Jim McDonald said. Security officials then put the nuclear station on lockdown for a few hours, prohibiting anyone from entering or leaving the facility until Friday afternoon.
from oregonian: The Topoff dirty-bomb drill turned into a real-life bomb scare this afternoon after a trio of bomb-sniffing dogs alerted authorities to possible explosives on the first floor of the parking garage of the Doubletree Hotel Portland at 1000 NE Multnomah Street. Michael Chertoff, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was scheduled to be at the hotel for part of the Topoff counterterrorism exercise later in the day.
terror drill turns into the real deal near lloyd center from katu: Bomb-sniffing dogs being used for a TOPOFF exercise in northeast Portland on Thursday detected the real thing, prompting police to cordon off a hotel, close nearby streets and shut down the MAX.
According to Brian Schmautz with the Portland Police Bureau, as officials were doing a sweep of the Doubletree Hotel located near the Lloyd Center (in preparation for the TOPOFF exercise), bomb-sniffing dogs got a hit on several vehicles in the vicinity.
Police immediately cordoned off the area so they could investigate. They later discovered that the dogs had detected traces of explosives in police and military vehicles that were involved in the exercise that was being staged. The bomb residue is something common in those type of vehicles.
MAX service resumed just before 4:30 p.m. and police began clearing the area shortly after.
from news-register: Operation October, designed to simulate a countywide multiple explosives incident, will be launched in dramatic fashion.
At 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a call will be received at the Yamhill Communications Agency dispatch center in McMinnville that a bomb has just gone off at the building across from the courthouse where the Yamhill County commissioners have their offices.
Local law enforcement and emergency medical personnel will respond, along with the Oregon State Police Bomb Squad, which will send its robots and other equipment into the building in search of any additional explosive devices.
Streets in the immediate area will be cordoned off, occupants of nearby buildings will be notified and the Yamhill County Jail will be locked down.
Three elementary schools - Carlton Elementary, Newberg's Mabel Rush and Sheridan's Faulconer-Chapman - will each be informed of reports a bomb has been planted in the building. Those schools will be evacuated.
John Boynton, the county's emergency manager, will be positioned at the Dayton Fire Hall, where the primary emergency operations center will be located. He will monitor activities at the commissioners office and each of the schools.
"This drill will best the communication, accountability and coordination of the participating local, county, state and federal agencies and the school districts," Boynton said...
"We're fixing our plan and fixing our plan," (Faulconer-Chapman Principal Marti) Hofenbredl said. "We've sent letters home to parents. Another letter goes home Monday. My biggest fear is parents coming to school to pick up their children for some reason and finding everyone evacuated."
She said the exercise should benefit students and staff greatly. She said exercises like this instill confidence in everyone, particularly the students...
In addition to the commissioners, their office staffers and the schools, the roster of participants will include police and medical first responders from Carlton, Yamhill, McMinnville, Newberg and Sheridan, the public works departments from those cities, the Oregon State Police, American Red Cross and FCI Sheridan inmates and staff.
Citizens are asked not to call 911 to inquire about or report on elements of the exercise, which will be playing out between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m., rain or shine.
update: emergency exercise goes off smoothly from news-register: The sound of a bomb blast echoed through the neighborhood around the Yamhill County commissioners' Evans Street offices early Tuesday afternoon, drawing a fast and furious emergency services response.
The emergency preparedness exercise Operation October was officially under way. Some passers-by took it for the real thing, particularly when the Oregon State Police bomb squad showed up, but it was just a drill.
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just a drill: navy holds security training drill at port canaveral, florida* 
