Urban Shield is a continuous, 48-hour Full Scale Multi-Disciplinary Homeland Security/Disaster Preparedness Exercise hosted by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, with the support of the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), and more than 150 local, state, federal, international and private sector partners.
Defense CI activities shall be undertaken as part of an integrated DoD and national effort to detect, identify, assess, exploit, penetrate, degrade, and counter or neutralize intelligence collection efforts, other intelligence activities, sabotage, espionage, sedition, subversion, assassination, and terrorist activities directed against the Department of Defense, its personnel, information, materiel, facilities, and activities, or against U.S. national security.
This Instruction implements the policy in DoD Directive (DoDD) O-5240.02 to assign responsibilities and establish procedures for conducting CI inquiries within the Department of Defense pursuant to the authority in DoDD 5143.01.
This PoC Military Reference Guide is intended to be a resource for military commanders and staffs who must consider PoC while conducting operations in PSO and MOAC contexts as shown below Other interested readers may include international organizations, national militaries, training centers, and civilian and police officials who are also concerned with PoC.
The current Department of Defense manual on the procedures for intercepting wire, electronic and oral communications for law enforcement. The manual also discusses “access to electronic communications in electronic storage or in a remote computing service.”
This Joint Intelligence Bulletin (JIB) provides information on the 16 May 2013 arrest of Idaho-based Uzbekistan national Fazliddin Kurbanov by the FBI Boise Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). On 16 May, Kurbanov was charged under two indictments alleging terrorism, one each in the United States District Court, District of Idaho and United States District Court, District of Utah. FBI and DHS are providing this information to support their respective activities and to assist federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government counterterrorism and law enforcement officials and the private sector in deterring, preventing, or disrupting terrorist attacks against the United States. All events described in this JIB are taken from the criminal indictment. The charges contained in the indictment are mere allegations. As in any criminal case, the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
More than 1700 pages of building specifications for the NSA/CSS facility at Fort Gordon, Georgia known as “Sweet Tea” dated February 5, 2010.
More than a dozen images originally published on the website Кавказская политика Kavkazskaya Politika (Politics of the Caucasus) after being displayed at a press conference held in Moscow by Ibragim Todashev’s father Abdul-Baki Todashev on May 30, 2013. Ibragim Todashev was shot seven times in his Orlando, Florida apartment on May 22, 2013 following eight hours of questioning by an FBI Special Agent from the Boston Field Office and at least one Massachusetts State Police trooper. Law enforcement sources have provided media outlets with several differing versions of the events leading up to Todashev’s death. First, sources described Todashev being shot after he reportedly attacked the FBI agent with a knife. In later accounts, Todashev was described as being unarmed. In the most recent version of events Todashev reportedly overturned a table, knocking the FBI agent to the ground, before lunging at the agent with a pole or broomstick.
A Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) is a civil-military organization, task-organized to a geographical province, whose purpose is to extend the reach and legitimacy of the Central Government of Afghanistan by developing a self-sustaining, peaceful, civil-society. It is a tactical organization with strategic impact. The ratio of military to other governmental, United Nations (UN), and non-governmental organizations depends heavily on the degree to which the area is pacified. The success of a PRT is measured by its ability to increase Central Government capacity and good governance as well as to, “Seize the human terrain and defeat the enemy.” One important element of this is to identify and mentor key Afghan personnel in democratic governance and leadership.
State, local, tribal and territorial (SLTT) computer networks have been increasingly targeted by cyber adversaries. At the same time, the expansion of mobile devices integrated into SLTT networks provides new opportunities for cyber adversaries seeking to collect information or disrupt operations by compromising mobile technology and exploiting vulnerabilities in portable operating systems, application software, and hardware. Compromise of a mobile device can have an impact beyond the device itself; malware can propagate across interconnected networks.
A number of exclusions, deductions, preferential rates, and credits in the federal tax system cause revenues to be much lower than they would be otherwise for any given structure of tax rates. Some of those provisions—in both the individual and corporate income tax systems—are termed “tax expenditures” because they resemble federal spending by providing financial assistance to specific activities, entities, or groups of people. Tax expenditures, like traditional forms of federal spending, contribute to the federal budget deficit; influence how people work, save, and invest; and affect the distribution of income. This report examines how 10 of the largest tax expenditures in the individual income tax system in 2013 are distributed among households with different amounts of income.
Many networks run by public and private organizations have experienced intrusions in recent years, and this cyber exploitation has resulted in an unprecedented transfer of wealth due to lost intellectual property. The threats to our networks and systems exist across numerous components that include end-user-devices, servers, and infrastructure devices. To address threats to routers and other network infrastructure devices, the National Security Agency’s Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) is publishing this IAA to guide U.S. Government systems accreditors’ strategic plan for network hardening.
Adversary actors in cyberspace continue to demonstrate the interest in and ability to execute Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against the United States. The need to offer Internet services in support of mission requirements inherently exposes these services to malicious traffic and the potential for DDoS attack. Proactive preparation to ensure network resilience in the event of a DDoS event is essential. Reactive measures are feasible, but are often too slow to respond to the dynamic nature of today’s threat.
Terrorists and violent extremists have used—or considered using—diversionary tactics in terrorist attacks overseas. Diversionary tactics are often used to draw security forces and first responders away from the intended primary target of the attack and may be used as part of a complex or multi-pronged attack. Diverting first responders to a location other than the primary target of an attack delays the response and the provision of medical care to victims, and depletes first responder resources.
Terrorists and violent extremists could use unsuspecting civilians to transport improvised explosive devices (IEDs) artfully concealed in seemingly harmless items for use in attacks in the Homeland. Overseas attacks demonstrate that violent extremists have successfully used unsuspecting individuals to carry items containing IEDs to specific targets where the devices are then detonated remotely. This tactic enables terrorists and violent extremists to place IEDs in secure areas, among large gatherings of people, or at high profile events and detonate them from a standoff distance.
On May 21, 2013, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee will hold a hearing that is a continuation of a series of reviews conducted by the Subcommittee on how individual and corporate taxpayers are shifting billions of dollars offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. The hearing will examine how Apple Inc., a U.S. multinational corporation, has used a variety of offshore structures, arrangements, and transactions to shift billions of dollars in profits away from the United States and into Ireland, where Apple has negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than two percent. One of Apple’s more unusual tactics has been to establish and direct substantial funds to offshore entities in Ireland, while claiming they are not tax residents of any jurisdiction. For example, Apple Inc. established an offshore subsidiary, Apple Operations International, which from 2009 to 2012 reported net income of $30 billion, but declined to declare any tax residence, filed no corporate income tax return, and paid no corporate income taxes to any national government for five years. A second Irish affiliate, Apple Sales International, received $74 billion in sales income over four years, but due in part to its alleged status as a non-tax resident, paid taxes on only a tiny fraction of that income.
In 2011, a total of 478,400 fatal and nonfatal violent crimes were committed with a firearm. Homicides made up about 2% of all firearm-related crimes. There were 11,101 firearm homicides in 2011, down by 39% from a high of 18,253 in 1993. The majority of the decline in firearm-related homicides occurred between 1993 and 1998. Since 1999, the number of firearm homicides increased from 10,828 to 12,791 in 2006 before declining to 11,101 in 2011. Nonfatal firearm-related violent victimizations against persons age 12 or older declined 70%, from 1.5 million in 1993 to 456,500 in 2004. The number then fluctuated between about 400,000 to 600,000 through 2011. While the number of firearm crimes declined over time, the percentage of all violence that involved a firearm did not change substantively, fluctuating between 6% and 9% over the same period. In 1993, 9% of all violence was committed with a firearm, compared to 8% in 2011.
This handbook provides the tactical operator, commander, and battle staff with information on planning, executing, assessing, and sustaining information operations (IO). The handbook is based on observations collected in Iraq during July and August 2004 by an IO collection and analysis team (CAAT). The application of this tool is both for training and real-world events the Soldier may encounter in the Iraqi area of operations.
The United States has long been committed to upholding the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) and minimizing collateral damage, which includes civilian casualties (CIVCAS) and unintended damage to civilian objects (facilities, equipment, or other property that is not a military objective). In support of these goals, the U.S. military developed capabilities for precision engagements and accurately identifying targets, such as the development of refined targeting processes and predictive tools to better estimate and minimize collateral damage. These capabilities permitted the conduct of combat operations with lower relative numbers of civilian casualties compared to past operations. However, despite these efforts, and while maintaining compliance with the laws of war, the U.S. military found over the past decade that these measures were not always sufficient for meeting the goal of minimizing civilian casualties when possible. Resulting civilian casualties ran counter to U.S. desires and public statements that the United States did “everything possible” to avoid civilian casualties, and therefore caused negative second-order effects that impacted U.S. national, strategic, and operational interests.
A Defense Security Service presentation from December 2012 outlining information and statistics on defense industrial base cyber incidents and intrusions.
Multiple groups, and individual hacker handles have claimed their intent to attack U.S. websites as part of OpUSA. As seen in many hacktivist operations (Ops), willing participants have posted free tools to assist other like minded individuals in their attack efforts. Often, more coordinated attacks will name a specific tool, target, day and time for the attack. That has not been the case for OpUSA thus far. Individual hacker groups seem to be conducting attacks independently, each claiming responsibility for individual defacements and data breaches that have supposedly recently taken place. Below you will find some of the tools being posted in conversations about OpUSA and links to US-CERT sites which provide background on the vulnerabilities exploited by these tools as well as mitigation advice for computer network defense actions.
Websites and emails referencing the Boston Marathon bombing should be viewed with caution, as malicious actors are using the incident to disseminate malware and conduct fraud. While other agencies investigate the frauds, the NJ ROIC provides this information for situational awareness.
Nation-state adversaries regularly use accounts on popular social networking sites to facilitate social engineering against DoD members. Information disclosed or discovered on social networking sites creates a significant operations security (OPSEC) concern and in the context of a wide spread collection effort could be by adversaries to form a classified picture.
An “Active Shooter” is an individual actively engaging in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearm(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims. Active Shooter situations are unpredictable and evolve quickly. Typically, the immediate deployment of Law Enforcement is required to stop the shooting and mitigate harm to victims. Because Active Shooter incidents are often over within 5-15 minutes, before Law Enforcement arrives on the scene, individuals must be prepared both mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter situation.
Approximately fifty million students attend nearly 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools throughout the Nation. Elementary and secondary schools are relatively open-access, limited egress congregation points for children, and have been successfully targeted by terrorists in the past.