Don’t expect much to happen in this year’s fast dwindling congressional session, but a bi-partisan group of senators today introduced legislation to bolster the Federal Protective Service, responsible for security at some 9,000 federal buildings. The bill would push FPS to hire 500 more full-time employees over the next four years, require the agency to do more to ensure the competence of contract guards, and mandate standards for checkpoint detection technologies for explosives and other threats at federal facilities, according to a news release from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.…
Browsing: Federal Protective Service
Government Security News had an item Sunday about a curious solicitation from the Federal Protective Service — a surveillance system for government buildings that can also spy on the user: A recent solicitation issued by the Federal Protective Service unit of DHS for what it calls a “Video Surveillance Rapid Deployment Kit” contained an intriguing requirement among its roster of technical specifications: “Hidden internal camera and microphone that will allow a remote user to see and hear the operator of the system.” That sounds as if a boss back at FPS headquarters wants to be able to watch and listen…
The 31-story Peachtree Summit Federal Building in downtown Atlanta was evacuated yesterday after mailroom workers flagged a suspicious package that turned out to be a decorative egg. Federal Protection Service authorities ordered the evacuation just before noon Tuesday after a routine X-ray spotted what appeared at first to be a grenade inside the package. The suspicious item later turned out to be a Fabergé-like egg. About 1,900 federal employees from the IRS, Social Security Administration and other agencies work at the building, which also contains a daycare center. Employees were allowed to return to the building about an hour and…
Federal Protective Service contract guards failed to detect guns, knives and other prohibited items brought into federal agencies more than half of the time during covert tests by the agency, the Government Accountability Office reveals in a new report. Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the new report shows FPS continues to face widespread problems with its contractor workforce. While it has taken some steps forward in recent months, the Federal Protective Service continues to be an agency in crisis. As I blogged earlier, the House Homeland Security Committee, which requested the…
Chances are when you entered your federal office this morning, you passed by a private-sector security guard. Although the Federal Protective Service is charged with protecting employees and visitors at roughly 9,000 federal buildings nationwide, the agency largely relies on contract security guards to get the job done: 15,000 guards to be precise, compared to just 1,225 FPS officers, investigators and administrative staff. The House Homeland Security Committee is debating whether that needs to change. Specifically, the committee will hold a hearing tomorrow morning to debate whether federal guards would provide better security than contract workers. A series of eye-opening…