The U.S. military wants to exert more influence over the protection of power grids, transportation networks and financial network systems, a Pentagon official says in a broad-ranging essay published in Foreign Affairs.

In cyberwar, who’s in charge?

To do so the Pentagon is urging that its defense expertise be put in play beyond the .mil domain to include .gov and .com and wants policy makers to figure out how best to do that.

The reasons are that the military relies on these networks to deal with suppliers and that these networks could become military targets, says William J. Lynn III, undersecretary of defense, in the essay called “Defending a New Domain.”

Because the military relies on these networks, the expertise it has developed should be made available to them, he says, but he doesn’t describe exactly how that would happen in practice.

“The best-laid plans for defending military networks will matter little if civilian infrastructure — which could be directly targeted in a military conflict or held hostage and used as a bargaining chip against the U.S. government — is not secure,” he says. “The Defense Department depends on the overall information technology infrastructure of the United States… The Pentagon is therefore working with the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector to look for innovative ways to use the military’s cyberdefense capabilities to protect the defense industry.”

Some of these defenses are being developed by the National Security Agency and include blending U.S. intelligence capabilities with network security so that networks can react to threats detected by other means than network intrusion-detection tools.

“The National Security Agency has pioneered systems that, using warnings provided by U.S. intelligence capabilities, automatically deploy defenses to counter intrusions in real time,” Lynn says.

“They work by placing scanning technology at the interface of military networks and the open Internet to detect and stop malicious code before it passes into military networks.”

The Pentagon is also relying on Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to come up with ways to blunt the capabilities of intruders. DARPA is trying to figure out a new basic design for Pentagon networks that would result in a generation-long overhaul to make hardware, software and computer languages less susceptible to cyber attack, he says.

Gaining the authority to impose military security on civilian assets is still in its infancy. “The U.S. government has only just begun to broach the larger question of whether it is necessary and appropriate to use national resources, such as the defenses that now guard military networks, to protect civilian infrastructure,” Lynn says.

“Information networks connect a variety of institutions, so the effort to defend the United States will only succeed if it is coordinated across the government, with allies, and with partners in the commercial sector.”

[Via:Networkworld]

RICHMOND, Calif.—California officials are outfitting preschoolers in Contra Costa County with tracking devices they say will save staff time and money.

The system was introduced Tuesday. When at the school, students will wear a jersey that has a small radio frequency tag. The tag will send signals to sensors that help track children’s whereabouts, attendance and even whether they’ve eaten or not.

School officials say it will free up teachers and administrators who previously had to note on paper files when a child was absent or had eaten.

Sung Kim of the county’s employment and human services department said the system could save thousands of hours of staff time and pay for itself within a year.

It cost $50,000 and was paid by a federal grant.

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Information from: KTVU-TV

Source: MercuryNews

The national debt is the single biggest threat to national security, according to Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tax payers will be paying around $600 billion in interest on the national debt by 2012, the chairman told students and local leaders in Detroit.

“That’s one year’s worth of defense budget,” he said, adding that the Pentagon needs to cut back on spending.

“We’re going to have to do that if it’s going to survive at all,” Mullen said, “and do it in a way that is predictable.”

He also called on the defense industry to hire veterans and become more robust in the future.

“I need the defense industry, in particular, to be robust,” he said. “My procurement budget is over $100 billion, [and] I need to be able to leverage that as much as possible with those [companies] who reach out [to veterans].”

Mullen highlighted the unity of purpose between the government and industry as well, in working to solve national security issues.

“I have found that universally, [private-sector workers] care every bit as much about our country, are every bit as patriotic and wanting to make a difference … as those who wear the uniform and are in harm’s way,” he said.

[Via:Executive Gov.]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to broaden its Secure Communities program nationwide by 2013, according to a DHS release. Administered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the largest investigative agency within DHS, Secure Communities aims to identify and possibly remove illegal immigrants with criminal histories from the United States.

The program, which began in October 2008, was expanded on Aug. 10, to all 25 counties that line the Southwest border of the United States In the past 18 months, the program has grown from covering 14 U.S. jurisdictions to 544.

Mario Alberto-Lopez (R) waits to be unshackled by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents before being led to the Mexican border and released from custody on May 25.

Under Secure Communities (S-Comm), when an individual is arrested, his or her fingerprints are recorded with a biometric scanner, and all available information about the arrestee is sent to ICE. The agency then checks immigration records and criminal databases for information on the individual, and if a criminal conviction and illegal immigration are found, the person can be deported.

According to the DHS, the program is meant for “identifying and removing convicted criminal aliens who pose a public safety threat to American communities.”

A key concern about S-Comm is that it will encourage racial profiling, and that individuals who are not convicted of crimes will be deported. “Preliminary data confirms that some jurisdictions, such as Maricopa County, Arizona, have abnormally high rates of noncriminal S-Comm deportations,” says a report from several rights groups, including the National Day Laborer Organization Network.

Small Percentage Deported

To date, the program has identified more than 262,900 illegal immigrants convicted of crimes, and more than 34,600 of them were removed from the United States. According to the DHS, more than 9,800 of the individuals removed were convicted of “major violent or drug offenses.”

Although ICE is screening a large number of individuals through S-Comm, only a small percentage of them are being removed, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Vaughan said that after speaking with ICE agents and local law enforcement officers, she has not seen any evidence of racial profiling through S-Comm.

Since the system runs a check on immigration status automatically, police officers will no longer need to make the determination themselves of whether or not to check an individual’s immigration status.

The DHS has a goal to identify 95 percent of those within the illegal immigrant population who have criminal histories by using biometric scanners. The agency hopes to accomplish this sometime beyond 2011, according to a 2009 DHS report. The 2009 goal was to identify 30 percent of the population, and the 2010 goal is to identify 60 percent.

The information will give ICE “data needed to analyze the size, characteristics, and geographic distribution of the criminal alien population across the country; these results will inform future strategic decisions,” says the report.

According to Vaughan, S-Comm could affect not only individuals who are illegal immigrants, but also those on legal visas or green cards who did not disclose criminal convictions. Since it uses biometric scans, it can also catch individuals who try to give an alias.

Border Security

Under S-Comm, close to 10 percent of individuals arrested nationwide could be subjected to deportation, according to Vaughan.

Still, the chances of the program being implemented to its full potential remains unlikely. According to a 2009 DHS report on S-Comm, “The size of the alien population subject to immigration enforcement actions exceeds ICE’s current capacity. Due to these resource constraints, ICE is limited to conducting enforcement actions only against a subset of potential subjects.”

S-Comm is part of the DHS border security operations, which has seen a major increase over the past year.

The expansion of S-Comm was announced just three days before President Barack Obama signed the Southwest Border Security Bill into law, which will provide $600 million to combat the Mexican drug cartels and secure the border.

A portion of the funds, earmarked for illegal immigration, will be focused “where we think the best efforts ought to be,” DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said during an Aug. 13, press conference.

She added, “And that is making sure we are removing from our country criminal aliens, felony fugitives, gang members who are also in our country illegally, particularly once they’ve served their sentences.”

An ongoing concern among the immigrant population is how border security affects them. According to University of Illinois professor Anthony Sisneros, the effects of border security operations tend to spill over into the entire Mexican immigrant population, ranging from racism to deportation of illegal immigrants who do not have criminal histories.

Sisneros said issues of immigration reform and border security are “complicated by the drug war on the border.” He added that “it is a concern that there is a particular focus on Mexican immigrants.”

“No one is against fighting drugs and engaging on the drug war on the border, but it gets mixed up, and it gets thrown into the pot of discussion on immigration reform,” he said.