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President signs H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008.  To read more, click here...

BACKGROUND - "The Intelligence Consensus"  - a Wall Street Journal Opinion by Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. To read, click here...

UPDATE:  22 July 2008 - Review of FISA Amendments Act of 2008, click here ...

A disgruntled city computer systems administrator has been arrested and accused of commandeering San Francisco's new multimillion-dollar computer network, altering it to deny access to other administrators. To read more, click here...

Follow-Up / June 17, 2008 - Experts say lax security allowed San Francisco network hijacking.  To read more, click here...

The Santa Cruz Consolidated Emergency Communications Center (9-1-1) has launched a new Emergency Notification system to send important messages to residents and businesses within Santa Cruz County via their cell phone and email. The system has the capability of sending thousands of messages in a very short time based on geographic location of the incident. For more info and to register, click here...

This new DHS activity is organized as part of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and appears to be focused on the proliferation of counterfeit products.

To see the remarks by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff at the Inauguration of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, click here...

National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center web site, click here...

The threat assessment equation that DHS uses to calculate "RISK" addresses international terrorism and not domestic terrorism or natural hazards..  To read more, click here...

EDITORIAL COMMENT:  This type of funding used to be evenly split between the states with some high risk regions getting an additional supplement. That approach resulted in a per-capita skew to the funding.  Ignoring domestic terrorism and especially natural hazard risks is very short sighted.  Although the Bay Area gets its fair share of international terrorism related funding it needs even more funding in this regard because of the earthquake risk.  Fortunately the local end users of this funding are beginning to take an all-hazards approach to the actual investments in disaster mitigation, response, recovery and preparation funding ... for example improvements in first responder communication systems helps disaster prepardness for all-hazards.

For more info see the GAO report, DHS Risk-Based Grant Methodology Is Reasonable, But Current Version's Measure of Vulnerability is Limited, June 2008, GAO-08-852.  To downlpoad this report, click here...

F. Hoffmann-La Roche, the manufacturer of the antiviral Tamiflu, has launched a program under which US companies that have a designated person on staff skilled with flu diagnosis can stockpile supplies of the drug in preparation for distribution to employees in the event of a pandemic. To read more, click here...

To read the F. Hoffmann-La Roche press release, click here...

A panel of the National Academy of Sciences is looking at the risk of a terrorist nuclear attack on a U.S. city.  Six U.S. metropolitan regions are considered to be at most risk, New York City, Washington D.C., Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  To read more click here...

NOTE: To keep things in perspective USGS and CGS say California has more than a 99% chance of having a magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake (equivalent to about a .3 Megaton nuclear explosion) within the next 30 years, click here...

Next time you travel outside the country you might be surprised on your return that DHS wants to do a search or to copy your computer hard drive.  U.S. Courts have recently ruled that warrants or suspicions when a person is seeking to enter the country are not required to do a search of a computers hard drive  ... court rulings say "routine search" is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.  Independent of the privacy concerns, U.S. based companies and U.S. companies with foreign partners are concerned over the possible compromise of sensitive intellectual property.  For more info on this, click here...

A White House Memorandum issued on May 9, 2008 defines a new method for the handling of Sensitive But Unclassified information.  When implemented, this new system will have direct impact on the InfraGard secure sharing system. 

To read a Washington Post article about this, click here...

To read the Presidential Memorandum, click here...

FOLLOW-UP  June 6, 2006

Legislation that would set parameters for the Homeland Security Department's "controlled unclassified information" designation has been introduced.  To read more, click here...

FOLLOW-UP June 11, 2006

House Homeland Subcommittee Approves Bills to Ease Assess to Information, To read more, click here..

FOLLOW- UP June 26, 2008
House Moves To Cutback Secrecy - Classification overuse targeted.  To read more, click here...