Okay, maybe not the best metaphor, since it’s been raining all day in Washington. Nonetheless: In the next five days, the Obama administration is probably going to release a more detailed 2010 budget proposal, its cybersecurity review, and the details of the bank “stress tests.” Busy week. The details of the stress tests have been slowly leaking out — Citigroup and Bank of America both need more capital — and it’s an open secret that the cybersecurity review will call for a big White House role in cybersecurity. But it will be interesting to dig into the specifics. And, of…
Browsing: Homeland Security
The Smoking Gun reports that FEMA pulled a children’s coloring book from its Web site earlier this week after it drew criticism for including images of the World Trade Center attacks. The coloring book, “A Scary Thing Happened,” was intended to teach children about disasters and the emotional turmoil they cause. But some felt that showing the smoldering Twin Towers might be going too far. “Oh gosh, that was on the front of a coloring book?” Kim Pressley-Herrick, founder of Coloring Away Pain, told Fox News. Pressley-Herrick’s company produces coloring books intended to help children deal with traumatic events. “As…
I’ve done a lot of swine flu reporting this week, and one question that keeps coming up is why DHS doesn’t just close the Mexican border. Congress has held a few swine flu hearings; someone invariably asks this same question at each hearing. Let me take a stab at answering it, based on conversations I’ve had this week with scientists and doctors and other people much smarter than I am. First, a little history. The chart on the right (courtesy of Wikipedia) shows the spread of the Black Plague through Europe in the 14th century. You can see the disease…
The Senate could vote this week on more of President Barack Obama’s nominees. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Reform Committee approved two nominations by voice vote Monday: W. Craig Fugate for Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator and John Morton for assistant secretary of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Senate may vote this week on their nominations, which aren’t controversial. No vote has been scheduled. Meanwhile, senators are debating the nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for secretary of Health and Human Services Tuesday, with a vote expected later in the day. The vote on her nomination has been delayed…
We’ve done a lot of reporting on cybersecurity over the past few months (cf here, here and here), mostly focused on defense — how the federal government protects itself against intruders. But the government is also improving its offensive capabilities, a story that gets far less coverage. The New York Times has an interesting article about it this morning: President Obama is expected to propose a far larger defensive effort in coming days […] But Mr. Obama is expected to say little or nothing about the nation’s offensive capabilities, on which the military and the nation’s intelligence agencies have been…
Melissa Hathaway, the official in charge of the White House’s 60-day cybersecurity review, gave a speech last night at the RSA conference in San Francisco. The review concluded last Friday, so there were high expectations around the speech: most experts expected her to announce her findings. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, apparently because the administration hasn’t read the final report yet. I’m told that the White House deputies committee is meeting to review it today or tomorrow. So we’ll probably see a final copy early next week. Hathaway did confirm that the final report calls for the White House to coordinate…
We’ve got a story up on the Web site about the cybersecurity power struggle between the Homeland Security Department and the National Security Agency. It mentions Rod Beckstrom, the National Cybersecurity Center director who announced his resignation last week. His resignation letter was pretty critical of NSA’s cybersecurity role: NSA effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions, and the proposed move of… the NCSC to a Fort Meade NSA facility. NSA currently dominates most national cyber efforts… I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds… the intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or…
Say what you will about the Transportation Security Administration, at least they’re being thorough this time. CNN says TSA is requiring some colonial reenactors at an Easton, Pa., historical park to undergo background checks and apply for a Transportation Worker Identification Credential card. These mule skinners regularly guide two mules named Hank and George as they pull a boat down a two-mile canal at the Hugh Moore Historical Park. Usually only transportation workers such as longshoremen or truck drives are required to apply for TWIC cards, but since the mule skinners hold Coast Guard credentials to operate the canal boat, TSA…
The Government Accountability Office is warning the Transportation Security Administration that the agency’s 2007 study on the efficiency and effectiveness of private screeners doesn’t tell the whole story. In 2007, TSA studied the cost, wait time in security lines, customer satisfaction, threat detection capabilities and recertification test passage rates of private security screeners at six of the nation’s airports and compared the results to federal screeners. A newly released GAO report reviews a TSA assessment of cost savings and performance of private screeners and found the agency didn’t account for all costs in its study, which found private screeners were equal to…
The National Capital Planning Commission in January approved the master plan to transform the 176-acre abandoned St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital compound into a headquarters complex for the Homeland Security Department. Federal Times videographer Colin Kelly and Senior Staff Writer Tim Kauffman recently participated in a media tour of the southeast Washington site. Here’s Colin’s footage: