| March 6, 2011 | - The House's Homeland Security Committee prepared for upcoming Congressional hearings on the “radicalization” of American Muslims, despite criticism that the hearings unfairly targeted a specific religious group. “We know that Al Qaeda is not going to be recruiting in a Knights of Columbus Hall,” said committee chair Peter King (R., N.Y.). “It's going to be recruiting within the Muslim community.”
| Source:
Daily News
|
| February 17, 2011 | - The Vatican cautioned against beatification-ceremony ticket scalpers, the Department of Homeland Security accidentally shut down 84,000 innocuous websites as part of a child-pornography sting, and the father of the 5 Browns, a quintet of classical pianists, pleaded guilty to the sodomy and sexual abuse of his three daughters.
| Source 1:
Vatican Radio
Source 2:
TIME
Source 3:
Salt Lake Tribune
Source 4:
Gawker
|
| January 24, 2011 | - A suicide bomber struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport, killing as many as 34 people and leaving at least 168 injured. “From the preliminary information we have, it was a terror attack,” said Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in a televised briefing. Former Department of Homeland Security official Stephen A. Baker noted, “They’d like to be bombing planes and they can’t, so they’re bombing airports.” Artyom Zhilenkov, a taxi driver, claimed he was about 10 yards from the bomber, a short, dark man carrying a suitcase. “How did I manage to save myself? I don’t know,” he said. “The people behind me on my left and right were blown apart. Maybe because of that.”
| Source 1:
NYTimes
Source 2:
NPR
|
| November 24, 2010 | - A 19-year-old Somali-born U.S. citizen was arrested for trying to bomb a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Oregon, and the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to drop its color-coded terror-alert system.
| Source 1:
The Oregonian (Oregon Live)
Source 2:
AP (via Time)
|
| January 1, 2010 | - The Transportation Security Administration announced that it would add 150 full-body scanners to U.S. airports, and former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff went on television to tout the importance of equipping airports with the scanners, which can see through people's clothing; the Christmas Day attack was a “vivid lesson in the value of that machinery,” he told CNN, without revealing that he is paid by the machine's manufacturers.
| Source 1:
Christian Science Monitor
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| November 1, 2008 | - It was reported that Obama's half-aunt Zeitun Onyango lives in a Boston housing project and is an illegal immigrant--a detail likely leaked by the Bush Administration against the procedures of the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source:
TPM Muckraker
|
| November 25, 2007 | - The Department of Homeland Security was asking firefighters to look for signs of suspicious activity while putting out fires.
| Source:
Dept of Homeland Security wants Firefighters to look for terrorists while in the line of duty
|
| September 26, 2007 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that the completion of a $20 million “virtual fence” pilot project along the Mexican border near Tucson would be delayed because its cameras and radar were unable to distinguish people and vehicles from bushes and cows.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 19, 2007 | - U.S. Homeland Security was noting what some people read when they fly.
| Source:
Wired.com
|
| August 30, 2007 | -
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff vowed to make employers who hire illegal immigrants “unhappy.”
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 30, 2007 | - “Hot” patients who had recently received medical treatment using radioisotopes were setting off Homeland Security
radiation detectors.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo!NEWS
|
| December 1, 2006 | - The Department of Homeland Security was ranking the terrorist potential of American air travelers.
| Source:
CNN
|
| November 3, 2006 | - The Homeland Security
website
texasborderwatch.com began broadcasting live footage of the United States - Mexico border.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| October 18, 2006 | -
Domestic security officials notified seven football stadiums of a discredited threat of radiological bomb attacks out of an “abundance of caution.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2006 | - Two years after it started, Project BioShield, the $5.6 billion Bush Administration effort to develop and stockpile medical supplies in case of biological attacks, had shown little progress. “The inept implementation of the program,” said the director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, “has led the best brains and the best scientists to give up.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| July 7, 2006 | - The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security claimed to have foiled a plot by foreign terrorists, in Lebanon, to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| June 15, 2006 | - The United States added the secret phone number for its Homeland Security hotline to the federal Do Not Call Registry. “Every time that phone rings,” said Delaware Governor Ruth Ann Minner, “it's telemarketers.”
| Source:
USA Today
|
| April 27, 2006 | - It was reported that lobbyists had once provided former (now imprisoned) Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham with free limousine service, free access to hotel suites, and the services of prostitutes; it was also reported that the limousine service that was used to ferry the prostitutes had received a contract worth $21 million from the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source 1:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
Sign On San Diego
|
| February 17, 2006 | - Two Homeland Security guards in Bethesda, Maryland, were in trouble after they accused a man of using an Internet terminal in a public library to view pornography. An official said the guards had “overstepped their authority” and had subsequently been given other duties.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| February 14, 2006 | - Sheriffs from 10 different U.S. states visited Israel to learn more about homeland-security techniques.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| February 11, 2006 | - Former FEMA director Michael Brown told a Senate committee that the White House knew about the flooding of New Orleans immediately after the the levees were breached, even though President Bush has said he didn't know about the flooding until the following day.
| Source:
ABC AM
|
| February 6, 2006 | - A Rhode Island man who attempted to pay down a large balance on his JCPenney charge card was told that the payment would be delayed because it first had to be approved by Homeland Security.
| Source:
The Providence Journal
|
| February 3, 2006 | - In Detroit the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. The Department of Homeland Security monitored the event using holograms.
| Source:
CNET News.com
|
| December 17, 2005 | - It was reported that agents from the Department of Homeland Security visited a college student in New Bedford, Massachusetts, soon after he requested a copy of “Mao's Little Red Book” through interlibrary loan—although many librarians felt the story might be a hoax.
| Source 1:
The Standard-Times
Source 2:
BoingBoing
|
| September 3, 2005 | - “I don't think,” said President George W. Bush, “anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the disaster “exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight.” The flooding had been anticipated by National Geographic magazine, Scientific American magazine, the Times-Picayune newspaper, FEMA, and Mr. Bill.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
CNN.com
Source 3:
The Times-Picayune
Source 4:
The Independent
Source 5:
National Geographic
Source 6:
Scientific American
Source 7:
Mr. Bill
|
| September 3, 2005 | - The effectiveness of FEMA head Mike Brown, who was fired from his previous job supervising the International Arabian Horse Association, was called into question after he repeatedly claimed not to have known the severity of the storm or the location of several thousand refugees.
| Source:
Boston Herald
|
| September 1, 2005 | -
National Preparedness Month began.
| Source:
Homeland Security
|
| June 24, 2005 | - The University of Connecticut was planning to offer a master's degree in homeland security.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| May 10, 2005 | - Tom Ridge admitted that when he was head of the Department of Homeland Security he let other administration officials bully him into raising the terrorist attack threat level based on only flimsy evidence.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| May 8, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that it had wasted a great deal of money and needed much more.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| March 25, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that the department had “misinformed” the public about copying the records of 12 million passengers on America West, American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Frontier, and JetBlue.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| March 16, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security was preparing for: the detonation of a ten-kiloton nuclear device; a biological attack with aerosolized anthrax; an outbreak of pneumonic plague; a flu pandemic starting in south China; the spraying of a chemical blister agent over a football stadium; an attack on an oil refinery; the explosion of a tank of chlorine; a 7.2-magnitude earthquake; a major hurricane in a metropolitan area; three Cesium-137 dirty bombs going off in three different cities, each contaminating thirty-six city blocks; the detonation of improvised bombs in sports stadiums and emergency rooms; liquid anthrax in ground beef; a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak; and a cyber attack on the nation's financial infrastructure.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 2, 2005 | - The Department of Homeland Security required 1,700 legal immigrants to wear ankle bracelets.
| Source:
NPR
|
| February 24, 2005 | -
Tom Ridge joined the board of Home Depot.
| Source:
MarketWatch
|
| February 2, 2005 | - Secretary of Homeland Security nominee Michael Chertoff said the government could not "protect everything, everywhere, every time," and that he needed a staff member who "really understands computers."
| Source:
Govexec.com
|
| January 11, 2005 | - Forty agencies were working together to provide security for the 2005 presidential inauguration.
| Source:
The News-Herald
|
| January 11, 2005 | - The White House refused to reimburse Washington, D.C., for inauguration expenses, which will require $11.9 million to be diverted from homeland security funds.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 12, 2004 | - Bernard Kerik withdrew from consideration to replace Tom Ridge as head of homeland security after discovering that a nanny he had employed may have been an illegal immigrant for whom he may not have paid taxes; questions also arose about his failure to report financial gifts, including a $1,900 jeweled Tiffany badge he received while New York City's police commissioner.
| Source:
Daily News
|
| December 3, 2004 | -
President Bush selected former bodyguard, undercover cop, corrections officer, and New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik to replace Ridge; Kerik has made millions of dollars in partnership with Rudolph Giuliani in a post-9/11 security consulting firm and recently has been in Iraq training its police officers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 2, 2004 | - Former head of the CIA George Tenet said it might be necessary to limit access to the Internet because terrorists could use it to attack the United States.
| Source:
Washington Times
|
| December 1, 2004 | -
Tom Ridge, who raised the color-coded terror alert to orange six times, announced that he would step down as secretary of homeland security. There were no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during his tenure.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 24, 2004 | - The interim Iraqi government officially notified the International Atomic Energy Agency that 380 tons of extremely powerful HMX and RDX explosives that American forces simply failed to secure have disappeared from a former military facility called Al Qaqaa. The explosives can be used to destroy buildings, arm missile warheads, and detonate nuclear devices, and it was generally conceded that the Al Qaqaa cache, which was under seal by the IAEA prior to the U.S. invasion, is the most likely source of the explosives used in the extremely effective roadside and suicide bombs that have been the primary weapon of the Iraqi insurgency. The Department of Defense has known about the loss of the explosives for more than a year.
| Source:
The Nelson Report
|
| October 23, 2004 | - It was reported that the federal government has still failed to stockpile anti-radiation pills, which can prevent thyroid cancer from radiation in the event of a nuclear accident or terrorist attack, and that even the distribution study required by the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 has not been completed.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2004 | -
Swaziland's police commissioner was detained for several hours in the Atlanta airport when he was traveling to the Interpol General Assembly in Mexico.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 30, 2004 | - A new homeland security blimp was seen flying around in Washington, D.C., and the House of Representatives voted to overturn Washington's 27-year-old ban on handguns.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 24, 2004 | - The inspector general of the Homeland Security Department reported that airport screeners are still permitting knives, guns, and explosives to be smuggled through security checkpoints by government testers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 5, 2004 | - Tom Ridge, the secretary of Homeland Security, "categorically" denied that the recent terror alerts, which were based on three- and four-year-old intelligence, were politically motivated.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| July 30, 2004 | - it was revealed that the Census Bureau has been giving population statistics on Arab-Americans, broken down by zip code, to the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 23, 2004 | - A homeland-security officer was in big trouble for beating up a Chinese tourist.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 8, 2004 | - Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, warned that Al Qaeda might be planning an attack to disrupt the November elections, but he said that he was aware of no specific threat or details about the alleged plan. The color-coded threat level remained unchanged, and many observers suspected the announcement was made to distract attention from Senator John Kerry and his new running mate, Senator John Edwards, whom President Bush accused of being too inexperienced.
| Source:
Associated Press, Nelson Report
|
| May 24, 2004 | - The U.S. Homeland Security department was preparing to award a $15 billion contract for a massive electronic-surveillance and data-mining system to track foreign visitors to the United States.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 22, 2004 | - Transit police in Boston confirmed that they will begin stopping passengers on the Boston T for identity checks as part of a new national rail security plan.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| April 4, 2004 | - The International Boundary Commission warned that the U.S.-Canadian border is becoming overgrown and could be lost in some places.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 3, 2004 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that visitors from Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan, Australia, and 21 other countries will be photographed and fingerprinted when they enter the United States.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 27, 2004 | - Richard Butler said that when he was chief U.N.
weapons inspector he had to meet contacts in Central Park because he knew that his telephone conversations were routinely intercepted.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 22, 2004 | - An internal Pentagon report warned that global climate change will soon lead to drought, famine, and widespread warfare as countries begin to fight over scarce water, food, and energy supplies. Climate change, the report argues, "should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a U.S. national security concern."
| Source:
Observer
|
| February 6, 2004 | - The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force subpoenaed Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, to hand over records concerning an antiwar conference sponsored by the university and the National Lawyers Guild.
| Source:
National Lawyers Guild
|
| January 27, 2004 | - It was reported that the U.S. government plans to order airlines to provide background information on all passengers for a new screening system.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| January 11, 2004 | -
President George W. Bush nominated Michael Chertoff, a former aide to John Ashcroft and former Senate Republican counsel for the Whitewater investigation, to head the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source 1:
PBS
Source 2:
New York Timesimes
|
| January 8, 2004 | - The Department of Homeland Security handed out three $2 million contracts to build a missile-defense system to prevent civilian aircraft from being shot down by surface-to-air missiles.
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| January 4, 2004 | - A new program (called the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology system, or US-VISIT) was launched to photograph and fingerprint every foreigner who needs a visa to enter the United States. "The system," said one expert, "seems to presume that most terrorists are fools."
| Source:
NY Daily News
|
| December 19, 2003 | - A federal appeals court ordered President Bush to release Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was arrested last year in Chicago and has been held since then as an enemy combatant. The court ruled that "the president, acting alone, possesses no inherent constitutional authority to detain American citizens seized within the United States, away from the zone of combat, as enemy combatants."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 17, 2003 | - A class-action lawsuit was filed against the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security accusing the agencies of illegally using a national crime database to enforce civil immigration laws.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 27, 2003 | - Advanced Digital Solutions announced that it has developed a system to use subdermal implants to make credit-card payments using radio frequency identification, or RFID. Privacy advocates were not amused: "If we establish a robust credit-card network based on RFID chips implanted under the skin," said one, "we are also creating the infrastructure for potential government surveillance."
| Source:
New Scientist
|
| November 26, 2003 | - The U.S. military decided to release Captain James Yee, the Muslim chaplain, formerly assigned to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was arrested three months ago and accused of being some kind of Muslim spy. Officials said that Yee might still face charges for keeping pornography on his computer and for having an extramarital affair.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 22, 2003 | - The Department of Homeland Security was reportedly planning to abandon its program requiring most Arab and Muslim foreign men to register with the government. Sources said the program was expensive, inefficient, and useless.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2003 | - Shropshire lads were warned by British police to stop throwing eggs or face prosecution; parents were asked to keep a close watch on the household egg supply, and police cautioned shopkeepers to be suspicious of egg-buying children.
| Source:
BBC
|
| October 25, 2003 | -
FBI agents at the Norfolk, Virginia, airport took anal swabs from a mechanical farting dog to make sure it did not contain explosives.
| Source:
BBC
|
| October 11, 2003 | - Federal prosecutors indicted Greenpeace, under an obscure 1872 law designed to prevent "sailor mongers" from preying on returning seamen, for authorizing a protest in which two activists boarded a cargo ship and unfurled a banner. "Never before," said the director of Greenpeace USA, "has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organization for the free speech activities of its supporters."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 9, 2003 | - President Vladimir Putin rejected any comparisons between his regime and the Soviet Union: "To talk about a return to the Soviet times in connection with [Russian security officials] would be like talking about the times of McCarthy, referring to the ministry of homeland security in the United States."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 9, 2003 | - An FBI bug was found in the Philadelphia mayor's office.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 27, 2003 | - The American Defense Threat Reduction Agency was keeping a close watch on Scottish whiskey makers.
| Source:
BBC
|
| September 21, 2003 | - A U.S. Army chaplain was arrested on suspicion of being a Muslim spy.
| Source:
Independent
|
| September 18, 2003 | - Members of the House and Senate appropriations committees agreed to kill funding for the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness program (formerly known as Total Information Awareness) but said parts of the program would be used to spy on foreigners.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 18, 2003 | - JetBlue Airways admitted that last year it shared 5 million passenger itineraries with a defense contractor that was testing a passenger-screening system for the Transportation Security Administration.
| Source:
Wired News
|
| September 16, 2003 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft mocked librarians for their opposition to provisions of the USA Patriot Act that permit federal agents to seize citizens' library records; Ashcroft said that the librarians were indulging in "baseless hysteria" and wondered why the FBI would care "how far you have gotten on the latest Tom Clancy novel." He did not make clear why the government needs access to library records, however.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 11, 2003 | -
President Bush took advantage of the September 11 anniversary to call for more surveillance and detention powers.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 10, 2003 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft gave a speech at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan and said that critics of the USA Patriot Act "have forgotten how we felt" on 9/11.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 9, 2003 | - It was reported that the federal government is planning to introduce a new airline security system in which all passengers will be assigned a color-coded rating based on their terror-risk quotient.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 22, 2003 | - Tampa, Florida, shut down its face-recognition software that scanned crowds in the Ybor City neighborhood for criminals but led to no arrests after two years. "I wouldn't consider it a failure," said one policeman.
| |
| August 10, 2003 | - A congressional report recommended eliminating the government's color-coded terrorist alert system.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 6, 2003 | - It was reported that Florida
police are building an "antiterrorism" database called Matrix that will be used to detect patterns of suspicious activity among the citizenry; the system, which will be partially financed with federal funds, is remarkably similar to the Pentagon's Terrorist Information Awareness program. Mayor Anthony Williams of Washington, D.C., said that District police are working with police in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New York to build a similar data-mining system.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 25, 2003 | - A folksinger was banned from performing at a Border's bookstore in Fredericksburg, Virginia, after she opined between songs that President Bush has "chicken legs" and would be well advised to lift weights.
| Source:
Newsday
|
| July 23, 2003 | - The Los Angeles Times refused to allow a Secret Service agent to interrogate a cartoonist who had depicted a figure labeled "politics" pointing a gun at President Bush against a background labeled "Iraq."
| Source:
AP
|
| July 17, 2003 | - Two FBI agents interrogated a bookstore employee who was observed reading an article entitled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity."
| Source:
Creative Loafing
|
| July 15, 2003 | - The Department of Homeland Security announced that Microsoft was chosen as its exclusive supplier of desktop and server software.
| Source:
GovExec.com
|
| June 20, 2003 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft asked journalists to help convince the American people that the U.S.A.
Patriot Act, the antiterrorism law that gave sweeping new powers to federal law enforcement agencies, is really a good thing.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 18, 2003 | -
President Bush issued guidelines banning racial profiling except in cases of terrorism and national security.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 15, 2003 | - People named "David Nelson" were still having a hard time traveling by air because the name appears on the federal antiterrorism "no-fly" list.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| May 30, 2003 | - The Supreme Court ruled that police can question suspects who are in great pain without reading them their rights; Justice John Paul Stevens called the interrogation at issue in the case "the functional equivalent of an attempt to obtain an involuntary confession from a prisoner by torturous methods."
| Source:
Undernews
|
| May 29, 2003 | - Philadelphia's city council voted to condemn the USA Patriot Act.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 28, 2003 | -
Schoolchildren in Akron, Ohio, will be fingerprinted so that they can be identified in school lunch lines.
| Source:
Beacon Journal
|
| May 16, 2003 | - TheDepartment of Homeland Security admitted that it had been enlisted to track down the Texas lawmakers who fled the state for Oklahoma.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 30, 2001 | -
Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, a major antiterrorism bill that will greatly increase the power of the federal government to spy on citizens and potential terrorists.
| |
