Eideard

The U.S. government’s list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to the United States or within its borders has more than doubled over the past year, a counterterrorism official told CNN…

The “no fly” list produced by the FBI now has approximately 21,000 names on it, according to the official, who has knowledge of the government’s figures. One year ago about 10,000 individuals were on it.

Only about 500 people currently on the no-fly list are Americans, the official said…

The United States can now ban people from flying who are “deemed to be a threat to national security” or who had gone to terrorist training camps, said the official. The earlier standard was to block only those considered a specific threat to try to bring down a plane…

…Analysts can now use single-source information, if it’s considered credible, to recommend someone for one of the government’s terror watch lists, including the no-fly list…

The government also has a much larger list, called the Terrorist Screening Database, with approximately 510,000 names currently on it. The smaller no-fly list is a subset of that.

About 1,000 changes are made to the catalog of possible terrorists each day. Names are added and deleted, or more information is included on individuals.

If I ever intended to fly again, I’d probably take the time to harass the bureaucrats in charge of this crap to see if I made the list, yet.

Actually, I refuse to travel anywhere in the world I can’t drive to in my old pickup truck. Courtesy of George W. Bush, Homeland Insecurity and the TSA.

Their vacation trip to Los Angeles came to a screeching halt

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 home…

Trade association ABTA told the BBC that the case highlighted that holidaymakers should never do anything to raise “concern or suspicion in any way”. Don’t even fart out loud if you’re passing through the TSA.

The US Department for Homeland Security picked up Mr Bryan’s messages ahead of his holiday in Los Angeles.

The 26-year-old bar manager wrote a message to a friend on the micro-blogging service, saying: “Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.”

The Irish national told the Sun newspaper that he and his friend Emily Bunting were apprehended on arrival at Los Angeles International Airport before being sent home. “The Homeland Security agents were treating me like some kind of terrorist,” Mr Bryan said…

In another tweet, Mr Bryan made reference to comedy show Family Guy saying that he would be in LA in three weeks, annoying people “and diggin’ Marilyn Monroe up”…

After the interview, Homeland Security’s reported: “Mr Bryan confirmed that he had posted on his Tweeter website account that he was coming to the United States to dig up the grave of Marilyn Monroe.

The fact remains that TSA and Homeland InSecurity not only are missing a sense of humor – they have few if any brains. The same people who learn to read and write based solely on phonics appear to have learned what they know of civil liberties at the white American Legion bar on a Friday night.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

The files, released by the F.B.I. under the Freedom of Information Act, disclose how the police are instructed to react if they encounter a person on the list. They lay out, for the first time in public view, the legal standard that national security officials must meet in order to add a name to the list. And they shed new light on how names are vetted for possible removal from the list.

Inclusion on the watch list can keep terrorism suspects off planes, block noncitizens from entering the country and subject people to delays and greater scrutiny at airports, border crossings and traffic stops.

The database now has about 420,000 names, including about 8,000 Americans, according to the statistics released in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. About 16,000 people, including about 500 Americans, are barred from flying.

Timothy J. Healy, the director of the F.B.I.’s Terrorist Screening Center, which vets requests to add or remove names from the list, said the documents showed that the government was balancing civil liberties with a careful, multilayered process for vetting who goes on it — and for making sure that names that no longer need to be on it came off…

Mr. Healey, true to the standards of the F.B.I., is a liar.

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“I told you we left the truck down here!”

On Washington state’s remote and wooded Olympic Peninsula, major commotion is usually limited to a log tumbling off an overloaded lumber truck. But lately the peninsula has been roiled by a noisy debate over the expansion of a Border Patrol station in Port Angeles, a three-hour car and ferry ride away from the U.S.-Canadian land border.

The U.S. Border Patrol is spending nearly $6 million to renovate a Port Angeles building that could house up to 50 of its agents.

Prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, four agents were stationed in Port Angeles, a city of about 20,000 people some 15 miles across the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Canada.

“It’s not needed, there’s nothing for them to do up here,” said Lois Danks, a local writer and organizer of Stop the Checkpoints, which last month staged a small protest near where the Border Patrol’s new station is being built.

She says border agents “drive around and hassle people without any reasonable suspicion of anything except for possibly the color of their skin.”

“They park across the street from Hispanic grocery stores and taco stands and watch who comes and goes,” according to Danks…

Port Angeles border agent Christian Sanchez says he and his colleagues are “paid to do nothing…”There’s nothing to do,there are no gangs or cross-border activity. I haven’t seen it.”

Sanchez told the not-for-profit Advisory Group on Transparency he never intended to become a whistle-blower, but decided to speak out publicly after he felt his complaints about the Port Angeles station’s “lack of mission” were being brushed aside by supervisors.

Sanchez told the panel he ran afoul of supervisors for refusing overtime he didn’t feel he was entitled to since, he said, there was so little work to do.

“The taxpayers are paying us all this extra money to do nothing on this peninsula, where it’s a water-based border,” Sanchez said during the panel discussion. “It’s a burden on the taxpayers right now especially with the economy, with Medicare being cut, with the foreclosures.”

Another one of those aspects of change that are unchanged. If you can use the magic definition – “homeland security” – you’re golden. You can steal as much as you can carry in the name of bureaucracy and it’s OK with Congress and the White House.

Whoever has the biggest boondoggle gets the biggest salary.

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.

The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.

The agreement acknowledges that there will be occasions when people are delayed or prevented from flying because they are wrongly identified as a threat, and gives them the right to petition for judicial review in the US federal court. Well, isn’t that special?

The 15-year retention period is likely to prove highly controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU’s PNR (passenger name record) regime to cover flights into, out of and within Europe. A period of five and a half years has just been negotiated in a similar agreement with Australia. Germany and France raised concerns this week about the agreement and the unproven necessity for the measure.

Britain has already announced its intention to opt in to the European PNR plan, in which the home secretary, Theresa May, played a key role, and is expected to join the US agreement this summer…

The US Senate passed a resolution last week saying it “simply could not accept” any watering down by European ministers of data-sharing, describing it as “an important part of our layered defences against terrorism”. Senators said it was an important tool in the security agencies’ “identifying possible threats before they arrive in our country”.

But the European parliament, which would have to approve it, has demanded proof that such a PNR agreement is necessary, and said it should in no circumstances be used for data-mining or profiling…

This draft agreement appears to give the Americans all they have asked for…

The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, the names of those they are travelling with and how much baggage they have, as well their itinerary.

Well, we certainly are assured our government cares enough about our safety and security that they are willing to keep an eye on us for years and years. I feel safer, now. Don’t you?

A suspicious white substance in an airplane bathroom?

It could be anthrax, could be explosive residue or — as authorities in California learned Friday — it could be toilet paper.

The white dust appeared in the back lavatory of Alaska Airline’s Flight 508 soon after it took off Friday afternoon from Seattle, said Bobbie Eagan, a spokeswoman for the carrier. Sometime during the 1,000-mile flight, the flight’s crew notified authorities about the unknown substance and asked for help.

Fire department crews, law enforcement officers and hazardous materials experts circled the plane soon after it touched down shortly after 4 p.m. at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Mike Fergus.

The aircraft’s 151 passengers and six crew members deplaned, and authorities climbed on board. They included members of the Orange County Fire Authority, who along with members of the county’s sheriff department tested the suspicious substance.

Capt. Greg McKeown, the fire department’s spokesman, said that authorities eventually determined that white dust actually was a “cellulose paper material” — or, in other words, what appeared to be toilet paper.

Phew. Another critical incident for Homeland Security successfully resolved. Probably only cost how much? $10,000? $20,000? Good thing we can afford all this security, eh?

Sienna Marengo, four, was seen picking flowers with six-year-old stepsister Olivia in Poole, Dorset. A member of the public reported them to police and two constables attended and advised the girls’ mother, Jane Errington, that she and her partner, Marc Marengo, could be arrested for criminal damage…

The family had been enjoying the spring sunshine with a walk through Whitecliff Park on Sunday when the girls broke off and started to pick daffodils.

Errington, who owns a property maintenance business, said: “The little ones had been riding their bikes but after a while they got bored and went to play in the daffodils.

“I didn’t see them pick any flowers, but the next thing we knew a police patrol car pulled up and the officers in it started watching us.

“We didn’t know what was going on and after about 20 minutes my partner started feeling very uncomfortable.

“Two male police officers then came up to us, saying they’d had a report of flowers being ripped up. They said we had committed a crime.

“The little ones were really upset and started crying. It was quite frightening for them. They did have daffodils in their hands – I’d say about 20 between them – and they had been picking them up and sorting them out like children do.

“If we’d seen it, we would have stopped them, but all it needed was for whoever complained to have approached us and made us aware.

“I had to explain to them that the police are friendly and it was just a mistake. I explained to them that the flowers were there for everybody and that in the future we will leave them there.

“I just felt it was unnecessary and upsetting. Surely the police have better ways to spend their time and taxpayers’ money?”

When I was a kid, the first police officer I knew was “Uncle Jimmy” who guided schoolchildren across the street at the one major intersection we had to cross on the way to elementary school.

I doubt the change originated with Brother Blue. Like so much in our lives, change comes from the political hacks in charge, the small number of people they actually represent – and the willingness, the readiness of citizens to obey.

Linda Bird couldn’t believe it when agents from the U.S. Border patrol at the crossing between Manitoba and Minnesota told her she had illegal contraband in her car – and that she faced the possibility of a $300 fine.

The unlawful property in question: a Kinder Surprise egg she had bought as a gift…

The family was driving to Ontario to visit her two daughters and going through the United States, which is a shorter drive, Bird said…

“They told us it was prohibited,” she said in an interview with the Star. Then they handed her a list of prohibited items that are not allowed in the United States which she took, escaping with just a warning.

“We kind of thought of it as more of a nuisance. We left. I didn’t think anything more about it.” That is until last week when she got a seven-page letter from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. The letter asked her if she wanted the egg back or if she was going to abandon any rights to it.

“I was in disbelief,” she said. “It’s a two-dollar egg. Why make a big fuss over it? Just throw it in the garbage.”

If she doesn’t sign the letter, let U.S. Customs and Border officials know whether she wants the egg, and return it within five business days, she also could be liable for $250 in storage costs for the egg in the event of a legal challenge.

When President Obama speaks of eliminating foolish spending by the government, he might wish to start with crap like this. Especially the part about storing confiscated items, charging for the storage – and I’ll bet there’s an equally complex and useless procedure for their disposal.

Thanks, Mr. Fusion

Federal authorities were investigating Friday the circumstances of a drone that crashed in El Paso, Texas, this week, which U.S. officials said originated in Mexico.

But Rocio Torres, a spokeswoman for the Mexican attorney general’s office, disputed that the drone belonged to that country…

But U.S. National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said he believed that the drone “was owned by the government of Mexico, and I think they were the operators…”

The crash of an unmanned aerial vehicle from Mexico would be a first on U.S. soil, said U.S. Customs and Border Protection Special Operations Supervisor Ramiro Cordero.

Holloway said the craft was an Orbiter Mini UAV designed by Aeronautics Defense Systems, whose website describes it as “a compact and lightweight system designed for use in military and homeland security operations” and “the ultimate solution for over-the-hill reconnaissance missions, low-intensity conflicts and urban warfare operations.”

“I guess we are investigating, but we don’t know what we’re going to do with the information at this point,” Holloway said.

Unmanned drones are routinely used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to look for illegal immigration on the U.S.-Mexico border.

I wonder what the Mexican government is using theirs for?

UPS 747-400 crashed a few minutes after takeoff from Dubai on September 3rd

Yemen has arrested a woman suspected of mailing the explosive parcels from the country to the US that sparked a global security alert. The arrest took place on Saturday in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, after security forces surrounded a house where a suspect believed to have sent the packages was hiding.

A Yemeni security official said that the woman had been traced through a telephone number she left with a cargo company…

Security officials have been on high alert since the UK and the United Arab Emirates intercepted two packages containing explosive material that were being shipped by air from Yemen to synagogues in Chicago…

Al Jazeera’s Monica Villamizar, reporting from Washington, DC…said that US investigators will now look at previously shipped packages from Yemen to determine if they were used as a “dry run” by al-Qaeda.

Police in Dubai said the package they found bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda. They also said that the ink cartridge found at the sorting facility was packed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN…the same substance that was packed into the underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who attempted to ignite a bomb on board an airliner over the US on December 25 last year. The police said the explosive materials were wired to a mobile phone SIM card hidden inside the printer…

The screening of cargo has been a point of debate in the US; in 2007, congress directed the Transportation Security Administration to screen all cargo carried on passenger flights beginning this year, according to US media.

“Cargo is in big pallets, it’s wrapped, its prepared for shipment,” Bob Ayers, security analyst, said. “You can’t X-ray the large pallet in many cases. You don’t tear it apart because its already been pre-packaged, so cargo has always been less rigorously inspected than baggage going into a passenger aircraft.”

Both UPS and FedEx said they had halted all packages being sent from Yemen to the US while the incident is investigated.

In September, a large fire broke out in the cargo hold of a UPS cargo jet shortly after it took off from the Dubai airport. The plane crashed, killing both crew members. Our correspondent said that investigators will probably now check to see if any cargo from Yemen was on board.

Lots of ways to build a better bomb if you’re trying to bring down a cargo plane. Cellphone triggers are the latest, preferred by many in the Middle East. By no means are methods limited to what you see used in this case.

Fire in the hold of an ocean freighter is comparatively easy to control – with early detection. Airplanes are flimsy critters at best.

UPDATE: Engineering student released after authorities discover a different woman had used the student’s name and personal information when shipping the bombs.