Homeland Security

Oscars-bound Palestinian film-maker describes ‘unpleasant’ LAX detention

by News Sources 02.21.2013

The Guardian reports: An Academy-nominated Palestinian film-maker has spoken of the “unpleasant experience” of being detained by US immigration officials when he arrived for this weekend’s Oscars ceremony. Emad Burnat said that he was held for about an hour at Los Angeles airport on Tuesday, along with his wife and youngest son Gibreel, who plays [...]

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British fascist leader gets jailed in the U.K. after illegally sneaking into the U.S.

by News Sources 01.07.2013

What happens when someone tries to enter the U.S. using someone else’s passport? That’s what the leader of the neo-fascist English Defense League did and he got caught because his fingerprints didn’t match those associated with the passport he was using — a passport lent to him by a similar-looking friend. But then comes the [...]

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Video: Bollywood star in U.S. ‘racial profiling’ row

by News Sources 04.14.2012
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Homeland Security kept tabs on Occupy Wall Street

by News Sources 02.29.2012

Rolling Stone reports: As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street,” dated October of last year, opens with the observation that “mass gatherings associated with [...]

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Tourists visiting the U.S. advised not to use figurative language

by News Sources 02.01.2012

BBC News reports: Holidaymakers have been warned to watch their words after two friends were refused entry to the US on security grounds after a tweet. Before his trip, Leigh Van Bryan wrote that he was going to “destroy America”. He insisted he was referring to simply having a good time – but was sent [...]

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DHS pumping money into drones for domestic surveillance, hunting immigrants and seizing pot

by News Sources 01.23.2012

AlterNet reports: The Department of Homeland Security says it needs a fleet of two-dozen Predator and Guardian drones to protect the homeland adequately. Designed for military use, 10 of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already patrolling U.S. borders in the hunt for unauthorized immigrants and illegal drugs. DHS is building its drone fleet at [...]

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Does airport security really make us safer?

by News Sources 12.25.2011

Charles C. Mann writes: Not until I walked with Bruce Schneier toward the mass of people unloading their laptops did it occur to me that it might not be possible for us to hang around unnoticed near Reagan National Airport’s security line. Much as upscale restaurants hang mug shots of local food writers in their [...]

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Occupy and the militarisation of policing protest

by News Sources 11.09.2011

Ayesha Kazmi writes: In our not-so-distant history, protest in the United States was handled by local law enforcement that treated demonstrations and marches as mere nuisance, mediating and directing as needed. Today, observing the interaction between Occupy movements and law enforcement suggests something different is afoot. Present Occupy protests are now being defined by a [...]

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Top secret America

by News Sources 09.09.2011

Part One: Part Two: Part Three: Part Four: Part Five: Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

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The terrorism industry that hijacked America

by News Sources 09.08.2011

John Tirman writes: The anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has, predictably, loosed a torrent of sentimental accounts of that terrible day ten years ago. They recall the shock and horror at these unprecedented events, the courage of the firefighters, the sadness of the victims’ families, and the traumatic impact to the nation. All of this [...]

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Counter-terrorism Inc. — How the US government funds America’s booming security industry

by News Sources 08.30.2011

The Los Angeles Times reports: On the edge of the Nebraska sand hills is Lake McConaughy, a 22-mile-long reservoir that in summer becomes a magnet for Winnebagos, fishermen and kite sailors. But officials here in Keith County, population 8,370, imagined this scene: an Al Qaeda sleeper cell hitching explosives onto a ski boat and plowing [...]

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Time to be afraid of everyone and everything

by Paul Woodward 12.22.2010

The 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders resulted in seven deaths and spawned an industry: the production of tamper-resistant packaging. Four years earlier mercury-injected Jaffa oranges from Israel caused short-lived panic across Europe. But 32 years later tamper-resistant oranges have yet to make it to the produce shelves. The same populations that needed at all costs to [...]

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The Israelification of America

by Paul Woodward 11.22.2010

As the Transportation Security Administration faces a barrage of criticism, some indignant Americans are calling for the “Israelification” of US airports — as though the security procedures used in a tiny Middle Eastern ethnocracy with one international airport could easily be scaled up for America. Ironically, Israelification is not what we need — it’s what [...]

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The Post covers spy town

by Paul Woodward 07.22.2010

At the Atlantic, the independent investigative reporter, Tim Shorrock, slams the Washington Post‘s Top Secret America series: Priest and Arkin offer an incredibly simplistic explanation for how the contracting bandwagon took off under President Bush, who they say manipulated “the federal budget process” to make it easier for agencies to hire contractors. Is that why [...]

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America’s national security protection racket

by Paul Woodward 07.19.2010

Every year, the images of a national security state careening out of control, as depicted in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil, become eerily more realistic. In his Ministry of Information, the underlings sneak their entertainment when the overseer steps out of sight, but at the National Counterterrorism Center (a “dumping ground for bad analysts“), entertainment [...]

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Intelligence chief says FBI was too hasty in handling of attempted bombing

by Paul Woodward 01.21.2010

Intelligence chief says FBI was too hasty in handling of attempted bombing By Spencer S. Hsu and Jennifer Agiesta, Washington Post, January 21, 2010 The man accused of trying to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day should have been interrogated by special terrorism investigators instead of FBI agents, the nation’s intelligence chief said [...]

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National security adviser: Airline bomber report to ‘shock’

by Paul Woodward 01.07.2010

National security adviser: Airline bomber report to ‘shock’ By Susan Page, USA Today, January 7, 2010 White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel “a certain shock” when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the [...]

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Craving terrorist melodrama

by Paul Woodward 12.31.2009

Craving terrorist melodrama By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, December 30, 2009 The fact that Obama doesn’t hysterically run around like some sort of frightened chicken with his head cut off every time Al Qaeda sneezes — or swagger to the nearest camera to beat his chest and play the role of protective daddy-cowboy — is one [...]

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President Obama takes the heat President Bush did not

by Paul Woodward 12.30.2009

President Obama takes the heat President Bush did not By Josh Gerstein, Politico, December 29, 2009 Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security just a few months after the attacks of Sept. [...]

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Watching government cure incompetence with idiocy

by Paul Woodward 12.29.2009

The trouser bomber effect: watching government cure incompetence with idiocy By Thomas Lipscomb, Huffington Post, December 28, 2009 The tragedy in the midst of this farce was that it was all so much easier. And the problem had nothing to do with any of the myriad of shinplaster grotesqueries we have come to expect from [...]

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Documents show DHS improperly spied on National of Islam in 2007

by Paul Woodward 12.17.2009

Documents show DHS improperly spied on National of Islam in 2007 By Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson, Washington Post, December 11, 2009 The Department of Homeland Security improperly gathered intelligence on the Nation of Islam for eight months in 2007 when the leader of the black Muslim group, Louis Farrakhan, was in poor health [...]

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Airline bomb plotters case threatened by US fears

by Paul Woodward 09.08.2009

Airline bomb plotters case threatened by US fears By Vikram Dodd and Lee Glendinning, The Guardian, September 8, 2009 Several months of high-level surveillance on the key suspects in the airline bomb plot was almost foiled by the nervousness of US authorities who “lost their nerve”, according to Scotland Yard’s then head of counter-terrorism operations. [...]

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U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE

by Paul Woodward 07.28.2009

U.S. citizens wrongly detained, deported by ICE By Tyche Hendricks, San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 2009 The son of a decorated Vietnam veteran, Hector Veloz is a U.S. citizen, but in 2007 immigration officials mistook him for an illegal immigrant and locked him in an Arizona prison for 13 months. Veloz had to prove his [...]

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OPINION: The false dichotomy of security versus privacy

by Paul Woodward 01.30.2008

What our top spy doesn’t get: Security and privacy aren’t opposites By Bruce Schneier, Wired, January 24, 2008 We’ve been told we have to trade off security and privacy so often — in debates on security versus privacy, writing contests, polls, reasoned essays and political rhetoric — that most of us don’t even question the [...]

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