ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center
SOURCE: Department of Homeland Security
30March2011 11:02amEST
GCIS INTELLIGENCE UPDATE: On March 28, 2011, the European Union and the United States opened negotiations on an agreement to protect personal information exchanged in the context of fighting crime and terrorism. The negotiations will build on our long-standing, robust cooperation and agreements in this area. The United States and the European Union are committed to ensuring a high level of protection of personal information, while fighting crime and terrorism. The United States and the European Union are strongly determined to reach, without delay, an agreement that will advance our mutual goals. (read full report)
The Homeland Security Department — the civilian agency that oversees commercial and government cybersecurity — has relayed mitigation procedures to federal agencies that have installed RSA's SecurID tools, the department announced on Friday. A DHS official on Monday said the government is not recommending that agencies replace their SecurID products. The department is helping RSA and clients who control critical infrastructure deal with the threat to the devices, which are a single point of failure in the computer security ecosystem, according to some industry observers.
The one-of-a-kind Commercialization Office, which resides within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, doesn’t buy a thing. In fact, the office has shunned the traditional time- and resource-consuming acquisition process of releasing requests for proposals and requirements documents and holding a competition. Under the auspices of the System Efficacy through Commercialization, Utilization, Relevance and Evaluation (SECURE) program, the office places detailed requirements on its website, along with an estimate of the available market. 
fiscal year ending in September.
caused the blackout, but Office of Management and Budget officials referred all questions to civilian cybersecurity authorities at the Homeland Security Department, which suggests the event was an attack.
Department because of outdated policies that Congress and the White House must reform, former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday.
The analyzer, about the size of a laser printer, initially will be used to determine kinship among refugees and asylum seekers. It also could help establish whether foreigners giving children up for adoption are their parents or other relatives, and help combat child smuggling and human trafficking, said Christopher Miles, biometrics program manager in the DHS Office of Science and Technology.
Secure Communities is a program between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Justice that automatically sends name and fingerprint information submitted through a federal file-sharing system, where it’s checked against both the FBI criminal history records and biometrics-based immigration records in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Automated Biometric Identification System.
sentence enhancement based on Lajqi conducting activities to fulfill his pledge to retaliate against the United States for its involvement in the Kosovo conflict, which Lajqi believed had led to the deaths of several family members.
Chief of Operations Mike Braun, adding that the group "is developing relations with those responsible for operating those smuggling operations and then forming close relations with them, so that they can move anything they have an interest into virtually anywhere in the world." He goes on to tell me that the Middle East terror group is "rubbing shoulders" with drug cartels around the globe.
The continuing resolution, passed by the Republican majority in the House, would provide DHS with $2.1 billion less than requested by the White House for fiscal 2011. The amount would be less than the DHS enacted budget of $42.9 billion for fiscal 2010.
and Department of Justice (DOJ) today announced the execution of seizure warrants against 10 domain names of websites engaged in the advertisement and distribution of child pornography as part of "Operation Protect Our Children"—a new joint operation between DOJ and DHS’ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target sites that provide child pornography.
to America is overblown, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a House committee Tuesday that "the terrorist threat to the homeland is in many ways at its most heightened state since 9/11."
Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), chair of the Appropriations Committee, unveiled spending limits for the federal government in a report on Feb. 3. The budget cuts contained in the report, Revised Suballocation of Budget Allocations for Fiscal Year 2011, would trim the entire White House budget request for the year — submitted to Congress more than one year ago — by $74 billion.
securing our Nation from terrorism. Nevertheless, the terrorist threat facing our country has evolved significantly in the last ten years – and continues to evolve – so that, in some ways, the threat facing us is at its most heightened state since those attacks. This fact requires us to continually adapt our counterterrorism techniques to effectively detect, deter, and prevent terrorist acts.
anytime soon. It’s too controversial for an agency already getting hammered for naked scanners and junk-touching.
GCIS Briefing Room 