Timing is everything. Three days — including a weekend — is not quite enough to cause production problems that really hurt. Just days into the U.S. government shutdown in 2013, several defense companies threatened to furlough thousands of their employees whose jobs were tied to federal facilities or projects that were curtailed. This year, that… Keep Reading
Unit created last May by INL and DHS has so far identified "240 MS-13 members not previously known to U.S. law enforcement." Keep Reading
In the summer of 2016, a group of Minnesota community leaders from the public, private, and nonprofit sector joined with local and federal law enforcement agencies to form an anti-trafficking group to address the issue of sex trafficking at this year’s Super Bowl in Minneapolis. Although the group established practical goals of providing more outreach… Keep Reading
Local, state, and federal agencies involved with security at this year’s big game have gathered to put their planning and preparation to the test. Keep Reading
FBI Director Christopher Wray has called on the tech industry to create encryption “back doors” for law enforcement agencies so they can unlock seized devices. Speaking at the International Conference of Cyber Security in New York, Wray said that the FBI seized nearly 8,000 devices from suspects in FY 2017 that they are unable to… Keep Reading
NIMS is a key component of U.S. incident management efforts and enables organizations from across the country to work together during all incidents. Keep Reading
COMPAS, a tool frequently used to assess a defendant’s risk of committing another crime, is no more accurate than strangers from the internet, according to a new study from Dartmouth College. The COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) algorithm assesses a number of factors, including a defendant’s criminal record, to assess if an… Keep Reading
Department of Homeland Security press release The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report revealing that three out of every four, or 402, individuals convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts between September 11, 2001, and December 31, 2016 were foreign-born. Over the same period, U.S.… Keep Reading
FBI agents took down or disrupted only about one-tenth as many cyber criminal operations during the 2017 fiscal year as they did three years earlier, according to annual reports. The number of cyber crime operations that FBI agents dismantled or disrupted fell from nearly 2,500 in fiscal year 2014, the first year reliable records were… Keep Reading
The Department of Homeland Security designated January Human Trafficking Awareness month with various activities and events to raise awareness and provide training to recognize human trafficking. “Make no mistake, human trafficking is modern-day slavery. Through use of force, fraud, or coercion, people around the world are robbed of their freedom and forced into labor or… Keep Reading
To start the new year, U.S. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Paul Zukunft shared his bookshelf and his leadership philosophy with Coasties on his All Hands blog. The commandant said in a “volatile, increasingly complex and uncertain time” the USCG should focus on the importance of sound leadership to move forward. The commandant’s leadership philosophy is… Keep Reading
All measures of crime in the 30 largest American cities — the overall crime rate, violent crime rate, and murder rate — are estimated to decline in 2017 according to a year-end analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. Crime in 2017: Updated Analysis directly undercuts any claims of a… Keep Reading
An Inspector General’s report has raised concerns about the treatment of detainees at ICE facilities, stating that they were often housed incorrectly, according to criminal history, and some were subjected to illegal strip searches. The report recommends that a process is developed to review this area of operations. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG),… Keep Reading
DHS and FBI released a pair of Joint Technical Alerts (TA17-318A and TA17-318B) that provide details on tools and infrastructure used by North Korea to target the media, aerospace, financial, and critical infrastructure sectors in the United States and globally. The North Korean government malicious cyber activity noted in these alerts is part of a… Keep Reading
The Borders, Trade, and Immigration (BTI) Institute, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) Center of Excellence, has announced a new funding opportunity focused on research related to border security, trade and immigration. This opportunity, which was announced June 1, marks the third funding announcement made by the BTI Institute since… Keep Reading
The Homeland Security Committee’s Republican Members of the Task Force on Denying Terrorists Entry to the United States released its final report after conducting an extensive review to assess key pathways extremists might utilize to infiltrate the homeland. The Task Force was also charged with identifying gaps in U.S. government information sharing and vetting procedures.… Keep Reading