This stealth provision was added to the bill by the committee's chairman, Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), but has a bit of a history. It was first proposed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in 2008 after the Bush administration lost the Boumediene v. Bush case, in which the Supreme Court decided that federal courts would subject the administration's asserted law of war basis to hold Guantanamo detainees to searching review. An idea that may have originally been intended to bolster the Bush administration's basis for holding Guantanamo detainees is now being promoted as an authorization of a worldwide war — and could become the single biggest ceding of unchecked war authority to the executive branch in modern American history.
contractors vie for plum work, hacking for US from nytimes: The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts. The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning. Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies. The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers. The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.
cybersecurity framework for total govt regulation & control from paul joseph watson & kurt nimmo: The Obama administration’s new Cybersecurity system will only make the Internet more vulnerable to attack, while creating the framework for a massively upgraded government surveillance grid that will control and regulate every aspect of our daily lives through the implementation of “smart” technology. Obama’s announcement of the new cybersecurity grid dovetails with a recently introduced Senate bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2009, that would hand the president the power to shut down the entire Internet in the event of a “cybersecurity” crisis. The bill’s draft states that “the president may order a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic” and would give the government ongoing access to “all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access,” reports Raw Story. The legislation would allow the government to tap into any digital aspect of every citizen’s information without a warrant. Banking, business and medical records would be wide open to inspection, as well as personal instant message and e mail communications. This is President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program on steroids, yet the reaction from the liberal left has been muted to say the least. Furthermore, the reasoning behind the proposal is a farce, since cybersecurity will make the Internet even more vulnerable to attack. According to Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the program would “basically establish a path for the bad guys to skip down.” One of the bill’s authors, Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, admitted that the bill was about more than just military or intelligence concerns. “It is a lot more than that. It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity,” said Rockefeller.
from reuters: The Obama administration has ordered a top-level review of the U.S. human spaceflight program that has been focused on returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, officials said on Thursday. Former Lockheed Martin Chairman and Chief Executive Norm Augustine will head a blue-ribbon panel charged with assessing NASA's progress on a space transportation system to replace the retiring space shuttle fleet. "Clearly if we're on the wrong path, we should change, but if you're asking me do I think we're on the wrong path, the answer is no," Chris Scolese, NASA's acting administrator, said at a news conference to unveil the agency's $18.7 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning October 1. The review, which is due by August, will focus on the U.S. space agency's Ares rocket program and the Orion capsule that is being designed to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station as well as to the lunar surface.
shootouts, crashes, murder & mayhem... 4 police officers dead in oakland gun battle from dpa: A fourth California police officer died Sunday after a gun battle with an armed prison parolee in Oakland, east of San Francisco. Three officers died during the battle Saturday, and the fourth died Sunday of his injuries, radio broadcaster KCBS reported. The suspect had been released from prison on parole, and was sought by the police officers for violating the terms of his release. He had been in jail for armed robbery. During Saturday's exchange, he had several weapons with him. The suspect was killed by a sharp shooter. It was one of the bloodiest police shoot-outs in the history of California.
update: pilots in 16-death crash jailed for praying instead of flying from wikinews: The pilot and co-pilot of Tuninter Flight 1153 have each received ten year jail sentences over the ditching of the flight, which killed sixteen people. They were found to have prayed instead of trying to direct the plane to safety when the engines failed. Tuninter Flight 1153 from Bari, Italy to Djerba, Tunisia crashed into Italian waters on August 6, 2005.
abc radio reporter george weber murdered in ny from nytimes: George Weber, a reporter whose voice had been a steady presence on ABC radio for more than a dozen years, was found dead in his brownstone apartment in Brooklyn on Sunday, the police said. The death has been ruled a homicide. The police said they found Mr. Weber’s body about 9 a.m. on Sunday. He had been stabbed, but no weapon was found, the police said.
5k people evacuated after pennsylvania acid spill from dpa: At least 5,000 residents were evacuated in eastern Pennsylvania after a truck carrying 33,000 pounds of toxic hydrofluoric acid overturned early Saturday. Driver Raymond Leblanc, 54, of Ontario, Canada, lost control of the vehicle while trying to avoid hitting a deer. He was initially trapped in the truck, but was rescued unhurt. Another passenger was also removed from the site and no other injuries were reported, police said. Most of the acid was in the form of pressurized gas, police told broadcaster CNN and the leak was plugged eight and a half hours after the trailer overturned near Wind Gap, Pennsylvania. Residents living within a two-kilometre radius of the accident site were evacuated - many went to a shelter set up at a nearby high school - and were allowed to return to their homes by evening. Hydrogen fluoride acid is highly corrosive and contact with concentrated solutions can cause severe burns. Inhalation of the gas can cause respiratory irritation and serious eye damage.
ntsb got bridge collapse cause wrong from ap: Experts hired by attorneys for victims of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse say the National Transportation Safety Board got the cause of the disaster wrong, their lead attorney said Wednesday. Attorney Chris Messerly said experts from the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti Inc. told survivors and families of victims Tuesday night the "initiating event" wasn't the fracture of a key gusset plate in the bridge, but the failure of a horizontal beam called a chord. Messerly leads a group of attorneys representing 117 families of victims and survivors for free. The engineers' conclusions give them legal grounds for suing two contractors that worked on the bridge before it collapsed Aug. 1. 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The experts concluded the "L9-L11 west" chord buckled because of heat stress on the bridge that day, the weight of construction materials on it, and frozen roller bearings that prevented the bridge from expanding as it should have to handle the heat. The engineers said the chord failure then caused the "U10 west" gusset to fail, Messerly said.
dhs proposes US gun laws to fight mexican drug cartel violence from kurt nimmo: Roger Rufe, Homeland Security’s head of operations, wants to further erode the Second Amendment. Rufe told lawmakers more restrictive gun control and law enforcement may be needed in the Southwest United States in response to the drug war in Mexico, according to the Associated Press. Rufe also said protecting border may require “deploying military personnel and equipment to the region if other agencies are overwhelmed.” He did not specify what circumstances would trigger a call for troops. “We would take all resources short of DoD and National Guard troops before we reach that tipping point,” Rufe told lawmakers on a House homeland security subcommittee. “We very much do not want to militarize our border.” Democrats joined the chorus rallying against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
police trained that informed americans are domestic terrorists from truthnews: A secret report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center lists Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equates them with radical race hate groups and terrorists. This is merely the latest example in an alarming trend which confirms that law enforcement across the country is being trained that American citizens are a dangerous enemy.
how to: survive the apocalypse (think diy knives & solar stills) from danger room: Best-selling author Neil Strauss helped Jenna Jameson show us How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Then he taught us the finer points of attracting mates in The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. Now, Strauss has new knowledge to drop. In his just-published book,Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life, he schools us on what to do, if everything suddenly goes to hell. Strauss has spent the last several years training to become a full-fledged survivalist - learning how to live off the land with D.I.Y. weapons, homemade solar stills, debris huts, and hot-wired cars. He talks to Danger Room about how he got his new skills. And in an exclusive video, Strauss shows what to do, if you really need a knife - and all you have is a cigarette.
from ap: It may seem like the country that used to make everything is on the brink of making nothing. In January, 207,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished in the largest one-month drop since October 1982. Factory activity is hovering at a 28-year low. Even before the recession, plants were hemorrhaging work to foreign competitors with cheap labor. And some companies were moving production overseas.
But manufacturing in the United States isn't dead or even dying. It's moving upscale, following the biggest profits, and becoming more efficient, just like Henry Ford did when he created the assembly line to make the Model T.
The U.S. by far remains the world's leading manufacturer by value of goods produced. It hit a record $1.6 trillion in 2007 - nearly double the $811 billion in 1987. For every $1 of value produced in China's factories, America generates $2.50.
So what's made in the USA these days?
The U.S. sold more than $200 billion worth of aircraft, missiles and space-related equipment in 2007. And $80 billion worth of autos and auto parts. Deere & Co., best known for its bright green and yellow tractors, sold $16.5 billion worth of farming equipment last year, much of it to the rest of the world. Then there's energy products like gas turbines for power plants made by General Electric, computer chips from Intel and fighter jets from Lockheed Martin. Household names like GE, General Motors, IBM, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard are among the largest manufacturers by revenue.
obama's hypocrisy for raytheon: #2 at dod worked for military-industrial complex from youtube: Obama has already U-turned on a new policy of not allowing lobbyists in his administration to work with issues they have lobbied on in the past. However, just two days after stating his policy, he is already made an exception to his own rule by allowing William Lynn, a defense lobbyist for Raytheon to become the deputy defense secretary.
video: and you thought bush was bad from sociostudent: I don't see what's so hard to understand about this: Obama is just a front-man for the New World Order, the "brand name" of tyranny for the next 4 to 8 years. He's not the Christ OR the Anti-Christ: He's just an empty suit full of empty promises.
al-zawahiri calls obama 'a house negro' from washington post: Soon after the November election, al-Qaeda's No. 2 leader took stock of America's new president-elect and dismissed him with an insulting epithet. "A house Negro," Ayman al-Zawahiri said. That was just a warm-up. In the weeks since, the terrorist group has unleashed a stream of verbal tirades against Barack Obama, each more venomous than the last. Obama has been called a "hypocrite," a "killer" of innocents, an "enemy of Muslims." He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office. "He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection," an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month. The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda's skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.
obama claims to seek space weapon ban from reuters: President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon. Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. It also promised to look at threats to U.S. satellites, contingency plans to keep information flowing from them, and what steps are needed to protect spacecraft against attack. The issue is being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, the biggest U.S. defense contractors, and other companies involved in military and civilian space contracts. Watchdog groups and even some defense officials welcomed the statement, which echoed Obama's campaign promises, but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy. Enacting a global ban on space weapons could prove even harder.
eu plans biometric border checks from time: It is a very 21st century conundrum: how can modern, open democracies provide basic homeland security in a world with nearly limitless mobility? On Wednesday, the European Commissiontried to answer that by unveiling a border management plan calling for fingerprinting all foreign visitors to the European Union.
Under its contract to build Next Generation Identification, the Bethesda contractor will expand on the FBI's electronic database of 55 million sets of fingerprints and criminal histories used by law enforcement and other authorities. The aim is to make the query and results process quicker, more flexible and more accurate.
dhs eases immigrant background checks from mcclatchy: In a major policy shift aimed at reducing a ballooning immigration backlog, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of applicants before the FBI completes a required background check... However, advocates of stricter immigration enforcement accused DHS of creating security loopholes, rather than solving the backlog problem.
federal buildings become real id zones from cnet: Starting May 11, Americans living in states that don't comply with new federal regulations could be barred from entering Washington D.C.'s visitor center and collecting the complimentary maps and brochures-unless they happen to bring a U.S. passport or military ID with them. That not-very-welcoming rule is part of a 2005 law called the Real ID Act, which takes effect in just over three months. It says that driver's licenses from states that have not agreed to Real ID mandates from the Department of Homeland Security, or which have not requested a deadline extension, can no longer be used to access "federal facilities."
US troops asked if they would shoot american citizens from paul joseph watson: U.S. troops are being trained to conduct round-ups, confiscate guns and shoot American citizens, including their own friends and family members, as part of a long-standing program to prepare for the declaration of martial law, according to a soldier who recently returned from Iraq. We received an e mail from "Scott", a member of a pipefitters union that runs an apprenticeship program called Helmets To Hard Hats, which according to its website, "Is a national program that connects National Guard, Reserve and transitioning active-duty military members with quality career training and employment opportunities within the construction industry."
annual pentagon request: half a trillion & counting from danger room: As expected, the administration's budget request for the Defense Department has topped half a trillion dollars, not counting additional money that would be used to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That a lot of money, even by defense standards. The Pentagon today announced it was requesting "$515.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense (DoD), a $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent increase over the enacted level for Fiscal Year 2008." As expected, a good portion of the regular budget it going toward ground forces, including additional funding to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
war is not a video game: fcs follies part2 from spacewar: Every fundamental mistake that was made in the disastrous Future Intelligence Architecture program is now being repeated in the Future Combat Systems projects - the main difference being the FCS will cost at least 50 times as much... Yet the assumption of the Future Combat Systems program, now being developed by the U.S. Army and other U.S. forces at a cost of at least $200 billion is that if an integrated, reliable software that can function well amid the stress of battle in real time can be created, the enhanced control from the center that it offers will make future wars far easier to win.
from danger room: Two years ago ex-Lockheed Martin engineer Michael DeKort, in a bout of frustration, posted a video on Youtube accusing his former employer of cutting corners on the electronics suites for 123-foot patrol boats for the Coast Guard - allegations that have since been proved by leaked Coast Guard documents. Today DeKort continues to hound the defense industry and the Coast Guard for wasting billions of dollars on the Coast Guard's badly-managed, poorly executed "Deepwater" family of ships and aircraft.
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air force says reporters not welcome at drone base anymore* 
from aclu.org: Tucked inside the National Defense Authorization Act, being marked up by the House Armed Services Committee this week, is a hugely important provision that hasn't been getting a lot of attention — a brand new authorization for a worldwide war.
from aclu.org: President Obama today issued an executive order that permits ongoing indefinite detention of Guantánamo detainees while establishing a periodic administrative review process for them. The administration also announced it will lift the ban on bringing new military commissions charges against detainees that don’t already have ongoing cases in the substandard system. The American Civil Liberties Union has long called for Guantánamo to be shut down and opposes the indefinite detention of prisoners there, some of whom have been imprisoned by the U.S. without charge or trial for nine years. The ACLU has also long called for an end to the illegitimate military commissions and for the government to prosecute terrorism suspects in the federal criminal courts.
4m lbs of space junk pollute earth's orbit*
from dpa: The White House Friday moved to stem escalating cyber crime as threats to internet security and wireless technology grow at an alarming pace. US President Barack Obama announced the creation of a White House office that will coordinate protection of government security, financial systems, air traffic control programmes and other systems. The problem is 'the most serious economic and security challenge that faces the nation,' Obama said. In addition, the Pentagon is reportedly planning to create a new military command for cyberspace, The New York Times reported. But defence officials have not yet presented the plan to Obama, the newspaper said.
from nytimes: The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts. The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning. Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies. The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers. The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.
google's influence grows in the white house*
from reuters: The Obama administration has ordered a top-level review of the U.S. human spaceflight program that has been focused on returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, officials said on Thursday. Former Lockheed Martin Chairman and Chief Executive Norm Augustine will head a blue-ribbon panel charged with assessing NASA's progress on a space transportation system to replace the retiring space shuttle fleet. "Clearly if we're on the wrong path, we should change, but if you're asking me do I think we're on the wrong path, the answer is no," Chris Scolese, NASA's acting administrator, said at a news conference to unveil the agency's $18.7 billion spending plan for the fiscal year beginning October 1. The review, which is due by August, will focus on the U.S. space agency's Ares rocket program and the Orion capsule that is being designed to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station as well as to the lunar surface.
Prime contractors for the shuttle replacement program include Boeing Co, Alliant Techsystems Inc, Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies Corp unit, which are building the new Ares rocket; and Lockheed Martin Corp, which is developing the Orion capsule spacecraft. The space shuttles are due to be retired by September 30, 2010, after eight more flights to assemble and outfit the space station and a final servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope that is scheduled for launch on Monday. The $3.2 billion budget request for space shuttle operations includes funds for an added flight to carry the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnet Spectrometer particle physics experiment to the station for installation and operation. Scolese said the review panel also will address extending NASA support of the space station beyond 2016 and possibly the lunar initiative.
from raw replay: Former employees are coming forward to talk about their work at a secret military facility known as Area 51. For decades there have been reports of UFO sightings near Area 51. The CIA has recently declassified a program that may explain some of those sightings. Thornton Barnes told Fox’s Bill Hemmer that a secret plane code-named OXCART was certainly mistaken for a UFO. The A-12 OXCART flew 2,850 missions out of Area 51. The plane could fly at three times the speed of sound at an altitude of 90,000 feet. The A-12 OXCART program was shut down in the late sixties. Other projects at Area 51 remain a secret. Los Angeles Times has more details here. This video is from Fox’s America’s Newsroom, broadcast Apr. 13, 2009.
from dpa: A small passenger plane crashed Sunday afternoon in the western state of Montana, killing an estimated 17 people including a number of children, federal officials confirmed. Les Dorr, the spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, could not confirm the exact number of dead. The single-engine propeller plane had departed from California, and was headed to Bozeman, Montana, the FAA said. But it changed its destination at the last minute and tried to land in Butte, where it crashed near the Holy Cross cemetery, about 170 metres short of the landing strip about 3 pm (2100 GMT), according to local media reports. It was not clear why the pilot changed his destination... The aircraft was a small Pilatus POC-12 plane type, normally only licensed to carry ten passengers, Dorr said. The plane is registered to Eagle Cap Leasing in Enterprise, Oregon, Dorr added. It wasn't immediately possible to contact the company by telephone.
from nytimes: George Weber, a reporter whose voice had been a steady presence on ABC radio for more than a dozen years, was found dead in his brownstone apartment in Brooklyn on Sunday, the police said. The death has been ruled a homicide. The police said they found Mr. Weber’s body about 9 a.m. on Sunday. He had been stabbed, but no weapon was found, the police said. 
from ap: Experts hired by attorneys for victims of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse say the National Transportation Safety Board got the cause of the disaster wrong, their lead attorney said Wednesday. Attorney Chris Messerly said experts from the engineering firm Thornton Tomasetti Inc. told survivors and families of victims Tuesday night the "initiating event" wasn't the fracture of a key gusset plate in the bridge, but the failure of a horizontal beam called a chord. Messerly leads a group of attorneys representing 117 families of victims and survivors for free. The engineers' conclusions give them legal grounds for suing two contractors that worked on the bridge before it collapsed Aug. 1. 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145. The experts concluded the "L9-L11 west" chord buckled because of heat stress on the bridge that day, the weight of construction materials on it, and frozen roller bearings that prevented the bridge from expanding as it should have to handle the heat. The engineers said the chord failure then caused the "U10 west" gusset to fail, Messerly said.
from steve watson: The Pentagon has announced intentions to launch an entire fleet of giant 450-foot-long airships which will act as a massive airborne radar system providing perpetual surveillance of vehicles, planes and people on the ground. The Pentagon said Thursday that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant dirigible that will operate on hydrogen fuel cells and solar panels, floating 65,000 feet above the Earth for 10 years, reports the LA Times. The airships will be around twenty times larger than the Goodyear Blimp, giving ground operators the capability of monitoring an area hundreds of miles in diameter at a time with surveillance equipment, such as high-resolution cameras, in addition to the football-field-sized radar antenna... In 2006, reports regarding the project resurfaced as DARPA courted defense contractors Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to develop the airships. The Air Force has signed an agreement with DARPA to develop a demonstration dirigible by 2014.
from truthnews: A secret report distributed by the Missouri Information Analysis Center lists Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag and equates them with radical race hate groups and terrorists. This is merely the latest example in an alarming trend which confirms that law enforcement across the country is being trained that American citizens are a dangerous enemy.
from ap: It may seem like the country that used to make everything is on the brink of making nothing. In January, 207,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs vanished in the largest one-month drop since October 1982. Factory activity is hovering at a 28-year low. Even before the recession, plants were hemorrhaging work to foreign competitors with cheap labor. And some companies were moving production overseas.
from press tv: US commanders say they had consulted President Barack Obama before launching recent drone attacks on Pakistan's tribal belt near the Afghan border. "Four days after assuming the presidency, he (Obama) was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks," Guardian said Sunday. The report comes after 22 people were killed in two separate US missile strikes on the Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan, on Friday. The attacks were the first since President Barack Obama took office Tuesday.
from reuters: President Barack Obama's pledge to seek a worldwide ban on weapons in space marks a dramatic shift in U.S. policy while posing the tricky issue of defining whether a satellite can be a weapon. Moments after Obama's inauguration last week, the White House website was updated to include policy statements on a range of issues, including a pledge to restore U.S. leadership on space issues and seek a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. It also promised to look at threats to U.S. satellites, contingency plans to keep information flowing from them, and what steps are needed to protect spacecraft against attack. The issue is being closely watched by Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp, the biggest U.S. defense contractors, and other companies involved in military and civilian space contracts. Watchdog groups and even some defense officials welcomed the statement, which echoed Obama's campaign promises, but said it would take time to hammer out a comprehensive new strategy. Enacting a global ban on space weapons could prove even harder.
from time: It is a very 21st century conundrum: how can modern, open democracies provide basic homeland security in a world with nearly limitless mobility? On Wednesday, the European Commission tried to answer that by unveiling a border management plan calling for fingerprinting all foreign visitors to the European Union.
from washington post: The FBI yesterday announced the award of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to Lockheed Martin to develop what is expected to be the world's largest crime-fighting computer database of biometric information, including fingerprints, palm prints, iris patterns and face images.
from mcclatchy: In a major policy shift aimed at reducing a ballooning immigration backlog, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to grant permanent residency to tens of thousands of applicants before the FBI completes a required background check... However, advocates of stricter immigration enforcement accused DHS of creating security loopholes, rather than solving the backlog problem.
from cnet: Starting May 11, Americans living in states that don't comply with new federal regulations could be barred from entering Washington D.C.'s visitor center and collecting the complimentary maps and brochures-unless they happen to bring a U.S. passport or military ID with them. That not-very-welcoming rule is part of a 2005 law called the Real ID Act, which takes effect in just over three months. It says that driver's licenses from states that have not agreed to Real ID mandates from the Department of Homeland Security, or which have not requested a deadline extension, can no longer be used to access "federal facilities."
from paul joseph watson: U.S. troops are being trained to conduct round-ups, confiscate guns and shoot American citizens, including their own friends and family members, as part of a long-standing program to prepare for the declaration of martial law, according to a soldier who recently returned from Iraq. We received an e mail from "Scott", a member of a pipefitters union that runs an apprenticeship program called Helmets To Hard Hats, which according to its website, "Is a national program that connects National Guard, Reserve and transitioning active-duty military members with quality career training and employment opportunities within the construction industry."
from danger room: As expected, the administration's budget request for the Defense Department has topped half a trillion dollars, not counting additional money that would be used to fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That a lot of money, even by defense standards. The Pentagon today announced it was requesting "$515.4 billion in discretionary authority for the Department of Defense (DoD), a $35.9 billion or 7.5 percent increase over the enacted level for Fiscal Year 2008." As expected, a good portion of the regular budget it going toward ground forces, including additional funding to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.
from spacewar: Every fundamental mistake that was made in the disastrous Future Intelligence Architecture program is now being repeated in the Future Combat Systems projects - the main difference being the FCS will cost at least 50 times as much... Yet the assumption of the Future Combat Systems program, now being developed by the U.S. Army and other U.S. forces at a cost of at least $200 billion is that if an integrated, reliable software that can function well amid the stress of battle in real time can be created, the enhanced control from the center that it offers will make future wars far easier to win.
from danger room: Two years ago ex-Lockheed Martin engineer Michael DeKort, in a bout of frustration, posted a video on Youtube accusing his former employer of cutting corners on the electronics suites for 123-foot patrol boats for the Coast Guard - allegations that have since been proved by leaked Coast Guard documents. Today DeKort continues to hound the defense industry and the Coast Guard for wasting billions of dollars on the Coast Guard's badly-managed, poorly executed "Deepwater" family of ships and aircraft.