Free Talk Live

A “Memorandum of Agreement” struck last week between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency (NSA) promises to increase Pentagon control over America’s telecommunications and electronic infrastructure.

Connecticut Senator, and chairman of the Homeland Security committee, Joseph Lieberman introduced legislation last week that would grant broad new emergency powers over the Internet to the federal government. The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act (PCNAA) would require broadband providers, search engines, and software companies to comply with emergency orders issued by the Department of Homeland Security under penalty of fine.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

It only took nearly a year of hiatus and $1 billion in sunk costs, but the Department of Homeland Security has finally gotten rid of the networked suite of sensors that made up its virtual border fence.

The virtual fence “cannot meet its original objective of providing a single, integrated border-security technology solution,”

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No shit?!

According to recently leaked documents, the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security has been tracking anti-gas drilling groups and their meetings — including a public screening of the film “Gasland,” a documentary about the environmental hazards of natural gas drilling.

The office has included the information in its weekly intelligence bulletins sent to law enforcement agencies.

The bulletins are also sent to gas companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale.

One might expect the lady in charge of the US Federal Government's Homeland Security department—the person leading US "cyber security" policy—to have an inbox full of briefings, encrypted strategies, and plans for keeping America safe from "Terrorists." But, she doesn't. In fact, Janet Napolitano, in her own words, doesn't use email "at all."

The Department of Homeland Security has wasted up to nearly a half billion dollars in taxpayer money and time on its current plans to develop technology at the nation's borders to detect nuclear material being smuggled into the country, according to two recent GAO reports cited by a Republican senator on Thursday.

Fighting homegrown terrorism by monitoring Internet communications is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security, the nation's homeland security chief said Friday.

Military drones are already used to survey the border between the US and Mexico, but starting last week, another piece of military technology has made its way back home. The latest surveillance tool to be picked up by the Department of Homeland Security is the Kestrel wide-area camera system, which can capture miles of terrain in a single high-resolution image. The system was originally used in Afghanistan, where it watched perimeters and took pictures of insurgents at bomb emplacements.