Monday, July 13, 2009

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The Wanted – NBC’s Terrorism Series Premieres Next Week


Posted: 13 Jul 2009 01:03 AM PDT






The Wanted, NBC’s new counter-terrorism series begins
next Monday night at 10:00pm. The series promises to offer a
unique blend of reality, and entertainment in what producers are
calling a “follow documentary”. ‘The Wanted’ breaks new
ground in reality television by making viewers feel as if they are a
part of the live action as cameras follow four intelligence experts around
the world as they attempt to locate and apprehend accused terrorist
suspects.


Due to the strong interest in the show,
we’re considering a “live chat” event the night of the
premiere . If you would like additional information, please register for
our RSS feed or Email Alerts for additional updates.


Two recent articles offer additional information about
the series…





The Wanted - Cast

The Wanted - Cast


NBC Hopes Viewers Appreciate Action News Series –
AP


More than any news program in recent memory, NBC’s “The
Wanted” comes with a reputation preceding it. And it isn’t good.


[...]


Its producers are anxious for people to judge the work for
itself.


“The people who’ve called it, `To Catch a War Criminal,’
they’ve never seen the show,” said journalist Adam Ciralsky, who
co-produces the series with documentary filmmaker Charlie Ebersol and
appears on screen, too.


Ciralsky works with Roger Carstens, a counterterrorism
expert; former Navy SEAL Scott Tyler; and former U.S. intelligence
official David Crane on the show. Each week’s hour focuses on someone
who is living freely despite being accused of crimes by governments or
tribunals elsewhere in the world.


Read Full Article




NBC Hunts Terrorists – The New York
Post


NBC’s getting in on the terrorist hunting busi ness.


“The Wanted,” premiering July 20, is a “follow-doc” which
sends four intelligence gathering experts around the world, attempting
to bring accused terrorists with globally significant Interpol Red
Notices to justice.


The show “is about shining a light on the ‘impunity gap,’
where there are accusations against people who are wanted by all sorts
of countries, yet for a variety of legal reasons, they just haven’t
faced justice yet,” says series executive producer Adam Ciralsky, who
pulls double-duty as the show’s expert journalist.


“We want to create an opportunity to look at why justice
isn’t being done and potentially create a dialogue for justice to
occur,” adds executive producer Charlie Ebersol.


Each episode lets viewers sit in on talks with government
officials, interviews with the terrorists’ victims and the team’s
tactical surveillance and intelligence gathering efforts.


Read Full Article


Our original post – The
Wanted
– NBC News Sets Premiere for Anti-terror Series


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Panetta Terminates CIA’s Secret Al Qaeda Plan


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 11:48 PM PDT


cia


A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by
Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential
authorization to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives, according to former
intelligence officials familiar with the matter.


The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear,
and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.


According to current and former government officials, the
agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting
on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which
authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become
fully operational at the time Panetta ended it.


Source


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Kim Jong Il – North Korea Leader Has Pancreatic Cancer


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 06:40 PM PDT


north_korea_kim


A news report says North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has
pancreatic cancer.


Seoul’s news channel network YTN television reported Monday
that Kim, 67, was diagnosed with the cancer around the time he was felled
by a stroke last summer.


The report cited unidentified intelligence officials in South
Korea and China.


Comments from South Korea’s spy agency were not immediately
without naming a successor.


Source


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Hi-Tech Drones Aid Terror Hunt – Al Qaeda ‘Alarmed’


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 05:14 PM PDT


al_qaeda_drone_strike


A new online video reveals alarm and concern from Al Qaeda
leaders over unmanned missile drones launched by the CIA to strike against
suspected terrorists. David Martin reports from the Pentagon.


Watch Video


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Is Your City Prepared For A Home-made Nuke?


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 05:03 PM PDT


nuke_threat


As US president Barack Obama visits Moscow this week to discuss
nuclear arms reduction with his Russian opposite number Dmitry Medvedev, a
different nuclear threat is preoccupying emergency planners back home. A
panel of medical experts has just released its assessment of the
technologies and therapies that could be rolled out if a home-made nuclear
bomb was ever detonated in the heart of an American city.


A device of this kind – now judged by Obama to pose “the most
immediate and extreme threat to global security” – would kill hundreds of
thousands of people. But as catastrophic as such an attack would be, it
would not level an entire city, and a timely response could save many
lives. Recent advances in techniques for mapping the path of radioactive
fallout after an attack, combined with novel therapies for treating
radiation victims, will improve survival chances, the report says.


“Clearly there would be loss of life, but it’s not hopeless,”
says Georges Benjamin, head of the panel of doctors and public health
officials that was convened by the National Academy of Sciences to assess
the nation’s level of preparedness for such an attack. “We feel that there
are things that one can do to mitigate it.”


So what would a city need to do? The panel explored the
consequences of a nuclear explosion packing a punch equivalent to 10,000
tonnes of TNT. That’s tiny compared with the thermonuclear weapons
deployed by the US and Russia – and smaller even than the 15-kiloton bomb
dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 – but plausible for an improvised device.


The blast wave would destroy buildings and kill almost everyone
within 1 kilometre (see map), so the panel focused its attention on people
outside this zone, for whom the main danger would come from radioactive
fallout. “That’s a place where you could get big gains if you plan right,”
says panel member Fred Mettler of the New Mexico Veterans Administration
Health Center in Albuquerque.


Read Full Article


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






New Curbs Set on Arrests of Illegal Immigrants


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:55 PM PDT


border


The Department of Homeland Security said Friday it was revising
a program that authorized local police to enforce federal immigration law
— a controversial aspect of U.S. border policy.


Opponents said the program, known as 287g, was intended to
identify criminal aliens but instead has led to racial profiling; it
allowed local police to identify and arrest illegal immigrants for such
minor infractions as a broken tail light. Program supporters said it has
been an effective tool for combating illegal immigration.


The new guidelines sharply reduce the ability of local law
enforcement to arrest and screen suspected illegal immigrants. They are
intended to prevent sheriff and police departments from arresting people
“for minor offenses as a guise to initiate removal proceedings,” according
to Homeland Security. The program will instead focus on more serious
criminals.


“In a world of limited resources, our view is that we need to
focus first and foremost on people committing crimes in our community who
should not be here,” said John Morton, Assistant Secretary of U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Morton said his agency would sign
new contracts with local law enforcement that would bolster federal
oversight.


Source


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Chips in Official IDs Raise Privacy Fears


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:51 PM PDT


rfid_scanner


Climbing into his Volvo, outfitted with a Matrics antenna and a
Motorola reader he’d bought on eBay for $190, Chris Paget cruised the
streets of San Francisco with this objective: To read the identity cards
of strangers, wirelessly, without ever leaving his car.


It took him 20 minutes to strike hacker’s gold.


Zipping past Fisherman’s Wharf, his scanner detected, then
downloaded to his laptop, the unique serial numbers of two pedestrians’
electronic U.S. passport cards embedded with radio frequency
identification, or RFID, tags. Within an hour, he’d “skimmed” the
identifiers of four more of the new, microchipped PASS cards from a
distance of 20 feet.


Embedding identity documents — passports, drivers licenses, and
the like — with RFID chips is a no-brainer to government officials.
Increasingly, they are promoting it as a 21st century application of
technology that will help speed border crossings, safeguard credentials
against counterfeiters, and keep terrorists from sneaking into the
country.


But Paget’s February experiment demonstrated something privacy
advocates had feared for years: That RFID, coupled with other
technologies, could make people trackable without their knowledge or
consent.


via Chips in
Official IDs Raise Privacy Fears – Science News Science & Technology
Technology News – FOXNews.com
.


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Pakistan: Osama Bin Laden Isn’t Here


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:45 PM PDT


bin_laden_pakistan


Osama bin Laden and the top Al Qaeda leadership are not in
Pakistan, making U.S. missile attacks against them futile, according to
the country’s interior minister.


“If Osama was in Pakistan we would know, with all the thousands
of troops we have sent into the tribal areas in recent months,” Rehman
Malik told The Sunday Times. “If he and all these four or five top people
were in our area they would have been caught, the way we are
searching.”


He added: “According to our information Osama is in
Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan
are being directed from Kunar.”


Pakistani officials say the U.S. has carried out more than 40
attacks inside its borders in the past 10 months, killing hundreds of
people.


via Pakistan: Usama
Bin Laden Isn’t Here – International News News of the World Middle
East News Europe News – FOXNews.com
.


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Death Threats Targets Top Tijuana Cop


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:40 PM PDT


bajaviolence


The first attack came at 7 p.m. Monday. Gerónimo Calderón
Jiménez was getting off guard duty in southern Tijuana, when heavily armed
gunmen shot him repeatedly and left behind a hand-written sign: Five
officers will die each week, unless police chief Julián Leyzaola
resigns.


The next 15 hours saw four more assaults in Tijuana and
Rosarito Beach that left two officers dead, one injured and fifth unhurt
but badly shaken. In the brutal showdown between drug cartels and Mexican
law enforcement, these victims were shot at random, authorities said –
officers who found themselves in harm’s way as a brutal drug lord named
Teodoro García Simental sent a deadly message.


A half-hour after Calderón was killed, miles away in the
seaside city of Rosarito Beach, gunmen fired at a 20-year-old Rosarito
Beach officer, a member of the city’s tourist police unit, as she stopped
at a food stand in a neighborhood west of the toll road. She escaped
injury, but blocks away and moments later, they killed fellow officer
Rubén Villegas Bartolini, 42, behind the wheel of a patrol vehicle.


Another half-hour later, this time on Bulevar Insurgentes in
eastern Tijuana, gunmen attacked an unarmed auxiliary police officer
outside a Smart & Final store. When he was taken to the Red Cross
Hospital for treatment, officers were assigned to stand guard outside. At
10 a.m. the next day, gunmen sprayed gunfire on their pickups, killing
officer Eva González Cruz on her 38th birthday.


“The fight to recover Tijuana’s tranquillity will continue,”
Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos vowed Thursday following a City Hall ceremony
honoring Calderón and González. “It is not with little anonymous messages
that they are going to make the Mexican state back down.”


Authorities believe the attacks were carried on the orders of
García – commonly known as El Teo – who is said to control trafficking
routes and the domestic drug market in much of eastern Tijuana and
Rosarito Beach. In recent weeks, García’s group has suffered serious
losses, as the military and civilian law enforcement forces have arrested
some of his top deputies, best known by their nicknames: El Rambo, El
Chuletas, La Perra, El Cande.


Garcia has wielded power in the region by building a network of
corrupt police officers, but in recent months authorities say many of his
allies in Tijuana’s 2,200-member have been arrested, dropped from the
force or voluntarily resigned.


via Threat
targets top Tijuana cop
.


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.






Teen To Be Tried As An Adult For Bomb Threats


Posted: 12 Jul 2009 04:36 PM PDT


Ashton


Federal prosecutors say a teenager from Oxford is a celebrity
in an online prankster world in which conspirators, for nominal fees, make
bomb threats to high schools, universities, federal offices and other
places and then broadcast the results live to a select audience.


In indictments issued this week by a federal grand jury in
Indiana, prosecutors accuse Ashton Lundeby, 16, of making or helping make
bomb threats in at least a dozen states from his home computer since last
year. In some cases, prosecutors say, Lundeby and unnamed co-conspirators
would collect fees to lodge bomb threats at high schools and middle
schools with the goal of closing school for the day.


Federal prosecutors call it “Swatting,” the act of making a
false emergency report that frequently prompts responses from special
weapons and tactics, or SWAT, teams. They say Lundeby and the
co-conspirators used pseudonyms and elaborate computer gaming techniques
to disguise their voices and identities, then transmit threats and watch
live through video surveillance and webcams as law enforcement teams
responded.


via Teen to be
tried in bomb threats – Local & State – News & Observer
.


This story comes to us via Homeland Security - National
Terror Alert. National Terror Alert is America's trusted source for
homeland security news and information.












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