01/29/12: CNN reports that at a time when TSA airport searches are unpopular among many air travelers, civil liberties groups say the joint participation of special TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams (VIPRS) with local police in "warrantless" searches have been "flying under the radar" in violation of constitutional protections. Transit police say it helps them better guard against attacks like those that have hit Madrid, London and Moscow since 2004. VIPRS are tasked with performing random, unpredictable baggage and security checks at passenger train, subway and bus stations as well as trucking weigh stations across the nation.

01/29/12: The New York Times features an opinion piece by Barry Friedman. Everyday, Friedman contends, those of us who live in the digital world give little bits of ourselves away. On Facebook and LinkedIn. To servers that store our e-mail, Google searches, online banking and shopping records. Does the fact that so many of us live our lives online mean we have given the government wide-open access to all that information? Friedman argues that the Supreme Court’s decision last week in United States v. Jones presents the disturbing possibility that the answer is yes.

01/29/12: The Boston Globe reports that Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday blamed each other for the impasse in newly launched peace efforts, raising doubts about whether the dialogue would continue just weeks after it began. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of spoiling the low-level talks, saying it failed to present detailed proposals for borders and security requested by international mediators. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Palestinians "refused to even discuss" Israeli security needs.

01/29/12: The Los Angeles Times reports that Jeffery H. Moran, chief of the counter-terrorism laboratory at the Arkansas Department of Health — one of 62 such federally funded labs in the country — has been armed with $2 million worth of new equipment. Recently, Moran has given his staff a new task — helping police in half a dozen states identify "Spice," a chemical substance that produces a marijuana-like high and has sent hundreds of users to emergency rooms. Using a counter-terrorism lab to test for synthetic marijuana is the latest sign of how a multibillion-dollar national infrastructure built to detect or respond to chemical or biological attacks over the last decade has adapted to the lack of any actual attacks.

01/29/12: The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that UN nuclear inspectors began a critical mission to Iran on Sunday to probe allegations of a secret atomic weapons program amid escalating Western economic pressures and warnings about safeguarding Gulf oil shipments from possible Iranian blockades. The findings from the three-day visit could greatly influence the direction and urgency of US-led efforts to rein in Iran's ability to enrich uranium — which Washington and allies fear could eventually produce weapons-grade material.

01/29/12: The Albany Democrat Herald reports that Russia's defiance of international efforts to end Syrian President Bashar Assad's crackdown on protests is rooted in a calculation that it can keep a Mideast presence by propping up its last remaining ally in the region and has nothing to lose if it fails. The Kremlin has put itself in conflict with the West as it shields Assad's regime from United Nations sanctions and continues to provide it with weapons even as others impose arms embargoes.

01/28/12: The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that Israel is proposing to essentially turn its West Bank separation barrier into the border with a future state of Palestine, two Palestinian officials said Friday, based on their interpretation of principles Israel presented in talks this week. The officials said Israel wants to keep east Jerusalem and consolidate Jewish settlements behind the separation barrier, which slices close to 10 percent off the West Bank.

01/28/12: The New York Times reports that the many navies involved in counterpiracy patrols off Africa’s northeastern shore have learned the pirates’ habits and sharpened interdiction efforts. Hijackings have declined sharply in the past year. But where interdiction ends, an enduring problem begins: what to do with the pirates that foreign ships detain?  Vessels from several navies collaborating on counterpiracy are holding a total of 71 captured pirates, but no system has been developed for prosecuting their cases.

01/28/12: CNN reports that Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said he is hopeful that the recent planned visit by representatives of the nuclear watchdog will "resolve any ambiguity and show (our) transparency and cooperation with the agency." "This trip is aimed at neutralizing enemy plots ... and baseless allegations, and proving the peaceful nature of our nuclear activities," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told the state-run Islamic Republican News Agency.

01/28/12: The San Francisco Chronicle features an opinion piece by Joel Brinkley concerning the succession of Kim Jong Un. Brinkley contends that North Korea’s elite has its own goals in mind when it presents him as a militant god-like leader. Brinkley argues that even in his first few days in office, Kim has offered indications that he may not preside over business as usual. North Korea did not go through with a predicted unprovoked attack on South Korea, and announced it would release prisoners, the first general amnesty in seven years.And then, for the first time, it agreed to allow a Western news agency, the Associated Press, to open an office in Pyongyang.

01/27/12: The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the CIA officer working as an assistant to the department's top intelligence officer will leave in April after nine months. The Associated Press reported Thursday that the officer's assignment was being cut short. On Friday, Kelly said the department was notified in November of when the officer would leave. The CIA's inspector general earlier cleared the agency of any wrongdoing in its relationship with the NYPD but criticized how the collaboration was established.

01/27/12: The Omaha World Herald reports that an Irish Republican Army veteran long accused of laundering counterfeit US $100 bills on behalf of North Korea could face trial in Ireland. High Court Justice John Edwards said he has forwarded an evidence file to state prosecutors against Sean Garland, 76, who denies smuggling more than $250,000 worth of fake American banknotes from the North Korean embassy in Moscow in 1998. Edwards issued his follow-up statement one month after he rejected a 6-year-old US extradition warrant for Garland.

01/27/12: The Washington Post reports that since it began a decade ago, the federal government’s massive investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks has been plagued by missteps and complications. Investigators initially focused on the wrong man, then had to pay him a nearly $6 million settlement. In 2008, they accused another man, Bruce E. Ivins, who killed himself before he could go to trial. Now, in the latest twist, the government has argued Ivins was likely not the anthrax killer.

01/27/12: The Washington Times reports that Egypt is preventing at least 10 Americans and Europeans from leaving the country, including the son of US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, raising tensions with Washington over a campaign by Egypt's military against groups promoting democracy and human rights. The United States warned Thursday that the campaign raised concerns about Egypt’s transition to democracy and could jeopardize American aid that Egypt’s battered economy needs badly after a year of unrest.

01/27/12: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Pentagon has released a budget blueprint that cuts projected military spending by nearly half a trillion dollars, yet still calls for increasing the base defense budget in all but one of the next five years. The proposal meets both goals because spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is dropping sharply, allowing the base budget — the annual cost of paying troops and buying planes, ships and tanks — to increase modestly, even while complying with last year's bipartisan deal in Congress to reduce the deficit.

01/27/12: CNN reports that three years after the Obama administration killed controversial plans to store the nation's nuclear waste permanently at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a presidential commission has declared that the nation needs to adopt a "consent-based approach" to position disposal facilities, gaining the approval of any community before moving forward with future sites. Such an approach -- which may include "substantial incentives" for a community, if necessary -- would be frustratingly slow, the commission conceded, suggesting it could take five to 10 years to find a temporary nuclear storage site and 15 to 20 years to identify a permanent one.

01/27/12: The New York Times reports that the Secret Service says it is looking into a photograph posted on the Internet that showed a group of young Arizona men posing in the desert with guns while holding up what appeared to be a bullet-riddled image of President Obama’s face. The photograph showed seven casually dressed young men, four of whom clutched weapons and one of whom held up a T-shirt covered with small holes and gashes and bearing a likeness of Mr. Obama above the word “HOPE.” The weapons held aloft appeared to be a revolver, a bolt-action rifle and two assault rifles.

01/27/12: Homeland Security Watch features commentary by Philip J. Palin concerning the administration’s new National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security. Palin contends this is an easy issue to underestimate. Like the plumbing in your house, it tends not to be at the forefront until something goes wrong: leaking, freezing, breaking, bursting, or when the well goes dry. He shares his brief quick take on context and potential implications of the new strategy.

01/26/12: The Denver Post reports that the top US intelligence official declared Thursday that it will take roughly five years to put in place new measures to stop another WikiLeaks-style exposure of classified information.  Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper said officials are working to "tag" information to be able to track back to which intelligence staffers shared it—something prosecutors could have used to help prove allegations that Bradley Manning copied thousands of war-related records that were leaked to the website Wikileaks.

01/26/12: The Ithaca Journal reports that Iraq will take legal action to ensure justice for the families of 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians killed in a US raid in Haditha seven years ago, a government spokesman said Thursday, after the lone US Marine convicted in the killings reached a deal to escape jail time. Residents in Haditha, a former Sunni insurgent stronghold of about 85,000 people along the Euphrates River valley some 140 miles northwest of Baghdad, have expressed outrage at the American military justice system for allowing Staff Sergeant Frank Wultrich to avoid prison.

01/26/12: The Washington Post reports that with the Iraq war over and the American presence waning in Afghanistan, US security contractors are looking for new prospects in Mexico, where spreading criminal violence has created a growing demand for battle-ready professionals. However, Mexico’s restrictive gun laws mean that foreign contractors must enter the bloody drug war unarmed as they take jobs ranging from consulting and technical training for the Mexican military to guarding business executives from kidnapping gangs and extortionists.

01/26/12: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Navy's new drone being tested near Chesapeake Bay stretches the boundaries of technology: It's designed to land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, one of aviation's most difficult maneuvers. What's even more remarkable is that it will do that not only without a pilot in the cockpit, but without a pilot at all. Although humans would program an autonomous drone's flight plan and could override its decisions, the prospect of heavily armed aircraft screaming through the skies without direct human control is unnerving to many.

01/26/12: The Seattle Post Intelligencer reports that about 300 Cambodians working at the UN-backed Khmer Rouge tribunal will not be paid this month — and some have worked without pay since October — because funds from donor countries have dried up. International staff are paid by the United Nations and will continue to receive salaries. The salaries of local staff, however, are funded by contributions from donor countries, said Huy Vannak, a tribunal spokesman.

01/26/12: The Washington Post reports that prosecutors contend presidential assailant John W. Hinckley should not get more freedom from his psychiatric hospital, because of his pattern of deception, isolation and problematic relationships with women. Hinckley’s family and St. Elizabeths Hospital staff members say his mental health has improved and are asking a federal judge to expand his privileges.

01/26/12: Stars and Stripes reports that Russia is standing firm on blocking any UN sanctions against Syria, its longtime ally and a significant arms customer, saying that any resolution by the world body must exclude the possibility of international military involvement such as in Libya. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that UN approval for sanctions against Syria mirroring those by other nations would be "unfair and counterproductive."