FEMA Releases Comprehensive Preparedness Guide 101

Yesterday, April 14, 2009, the “Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced … the release of the final Comprehensive Preparedness Guide (CPG) 101: ‘Developing and Maintaining State, Territorial, Tribal, and Local Government Emergency Plans.’” The “CPG 101 is the first in a series of publications developed [...]

DHS Releases New Immigration Statistics for 2008

Naturalizations in the United States: 2008
U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2008
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics has just released these two statistical reports which provide information on U.S. legal permanent residents and naturalizations for the year 2008. These reports are part of an ongoing [...]

Hemet Police buying armored vehicle

HEMET: Most of the funds for $270,000 car covered by grant from Homeland Security.
The Hemet Police Department is buying a $270,000 police car.
Well, not exactly.
The department is buying an armored personnel carrier designed to get a lot of officers into a crime scene without getting shot.
“The main function of this vehicle [...]

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette on MIAC report

See also: The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization
of Law Enforcement

Patriots, Christians and concerned citizens are increasingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intelligence community, and battle lines are being quietly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforcement and military forces against us.
A February 20 report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” was issued [...]

Homeland Security Secretary Proposes Increase in Spending for Domestic Surveillance Programs

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified before the House Committees on Homeland Security, and said that DHS plans to connect governmental databases containing personal information, expand the government’s employment tracking system, promote passenger screening, use e-passports, employ watchlists and utilize contactless identity verification cards. EPIC [...]

CA Appeals Court Rule that Federal Law Does Not Block Disclosure of State Records

A California appellate court has ruled that, under the state’s open government law, local officials can’t withhold otherwise public information on the ground that it was submitted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as “protected critical infrastructure information.” The state court found that the Santa Clara county Geographic [...]

Thousands march against Arpaio in Phoenix

Thousands of opponents of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s illegal-immigration policies held their “March to Stop the Hate” in downtown Phoenix on Saturday..
As of 1:30 p.m., the speeches were still being made at the march’s destination, the federal building. According to initial reports, the march was peaceful, with no major incidents as [...]

Ex-agent: Probe of head of Riverside office widens

Already under investigation for allegedly punishing agents who did not meet arrest quotas, the head of Riverside’s U.S. Border Patrol office is now being probed for other alleged offenses, according to a former agent and the union representing Riverside agents.
Ramon Chavez, patrol agent in charge of the Riverside office, declined to [...]

Focus on Fusion Centers –

The Department of Homeland Security has produced a new “Concept of Operations” (pdf) to define how the Department will support and oversee the network of dozens of “fusion centers” that have been established around the country.  The fusion centers are intended to promote a collaborative approach among federal, state [...]

NSA aims to expand power: Eavesdropping agency looks to take over cybersecurity

The spy shop that brought you the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program wants to expand its power under President Barack Obama, the nation’s top intelligence chief told Congress Wednesday, in a little-noticed intelligence grab.
While acknowledging that many distrust the agency for its role in eavesdropping, Obama Director of National Intelligence [...]

Finally, the Law Goes After Joe Arpaio — the Most Abusive Sheriff In America

WASHINGTON – House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), and Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Constitution Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-Va.) called on Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to investigate allegations of misconduct [...]

Documents say DHS helped Md. police “spy”

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security tracked an anti-war group’s plans for peaceful protests and passed the information on to the Maryland State Police, according to documents released to The Washington Post and reported in Tuesday’s editions.
The documents are the first indication that the state police [...]

Hey Kids, Wanna Play Security Checkpoint: The Terrifying Marketing Of Police State Normalacy To Children

When I flew home from Washington, DC after a business trip last week, the TSA agent asked to test my laptop.  I politely asked what they were testing for.  It was just routine she told me.  And she’s right, it has become routine, a much too routine standard operating procedure [...]

NSA Whistleblower Tells More on Illegal Wiretapping of US Citizens (videos)

On January 21, former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice appeared Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show. Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, told Olbermann government programs designed to spy on the American people are more extensive and far reaching than previously admitted. “The National Security [...]

“Fusion Centers”

Ever hear of a Fusion Center?
They are run by the Department of Homeland Security and are locally based across the country.
A fusion center is an effective and efficient mechanism to exchange information and intelligence, maximize resources, streamline operations, and improve the ability to fight crime and terrorism by merging data [...]

NYPD Wants to Jam Cell Phones During “Terrorist Attacks”

The New York Police Department wants to be able to shut down cell phones, in case of a terrorist attack.
During last month’s massacre in Mumbai, terrorist handlers over micromanaged via mobile phone the assaults on the hotels, train stations, and Jewish center that killed more than 170 people.
In [...]

New Air Security Rules Hit Private Jets

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is holding a meeting today to discuss a proposed security plan from the Department of Homeland Security to extend to private aviation many of the same passenger security rules and inconveniences imposed on commercial airlines, the New York Times reports.
The proposal, which could affect [...]

Freedom of the press as a foreign concept

Yes, we reporters might get stuck covering the late shift or — egad! — a parade. When disaster strikes or a source calls back on deadline, the nights can be long. Newspaper layoffs and hard economic times can cast a pall over just about everything we do.

But those concerns seem a [...]

ACLU Challenges Border Patrol’s Searches

SEATTLE — The note from U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan to the U.S. Border Patrol was short and to the point: Stop sending petty marijuana cases to his office.”
It is our long-standing policy to use limited federal resources to pursue the sophisticated criminal organizations who smuggle millions of dollars of drugs, guns [...]

Police State Propaganda

One mark of a rising police state is a lapdog media that is sympathetic to those in power. And when it goes out of its way to portray agents of the state in a compassionate and heroic light, no one will dare raise criticism for fear of being branded unpatriotic. Enter Homeland Security U.S.A.:
This is [...]

DoE Seeks to Limit “Public Interest” FOIA Disclosures

A proposed new Department of Energy regulation would eliminate the so-called “public interest” balancing test that encourages DOE officials to release information under the Freedom of Information Act even when it is legally exempt from disclosure if doing so would serve the public interest.

Dome Under Lock and Key

In early August 2007, as the House moved rapidly to pass legislation modifying the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before its summer recess, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seemed uncertain about the details of the bill they were debating. There had been intense negotiations with the White House, and [...]

Ex-defense contractor Michael Wade drops hints of major corruption scandal involving 5 Congressmen

Mitchell Wade, the corrupt former lobbyist who plead guilty in 2006 to bribing former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA), is reportedly assisting “the government in investigating five other members of Congress,” according to a memorandum filed on Wednesday. The 42-page sentencing memo filed by Wade’s attorneys says that the other unnamed members are under investigation for [...]

Homeland Security Now Spying on Americans

Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV´s) and Space-Based Domestic Spying Surveillance technology the U.S. Government is now watching American citizens under the guise of disaster management and controlling the U.S. Mexican border.

DHS issues a policy to all employees not to talk to the Barack Obama’s Transition Team

DHS issues a policy to all employees not to talk to the Barack Obama’s Transition Team because the members are non-federal employees yet.  This “don’t talk policy” sounds like a “gag-order” – what does the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has to hide?