Daily Security Brief: Federal Security Guards, Attempted Cybersabotage at TSA, IARPA and Trust, & Smartphone Chem Detector

♦ Private security officers contracted by the Federal Protective Service (FPS) to guard federal buildings tell The Washington Post they get no respect. "We've gained minimal respect over the years, but we're still looked down on," said one guard, who asked for anonymity. "We're on the front lines. Being on the front lines, we need to be seen as essential and treated as essential." Next week, House lawmakers will hold a hearing on the FPS's future. The hearing comes after the recent shooting at the Pentagon and a GAO report last summer that discovered lax security at many federal buildings protected by FPS.

♦ A Colorado man has been charged with trying to sabotage a government database that holds the names of suspected terrorists, reports Reuters. In October, Douglas Duchak learned he was getting terminated from the Transportation Security Administration operations center. A week before his last day, the government alleges Duckak tried to insert malicious code into TSA servers. He failed, according to Reuters. "The tampering with a computer that is used as a tool to protect national security of the United States will not be tolerated," James Davis, an FBI special agent, said in a statement.

♦ There's another government sci-fi research outfit in town and it goes by the name Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). It's the intelligence community's answer to the Pentagon's DARPA and its research is just as weird, reports POPSCI. "The spooks' lab has now launched a 'TRUST (Tools for Recognizing Useful Signals of Trustworthiness)' program that aims to figure out whom can be trusted, even under the most stressful or deceptive circumstances," the Web site reports. Here's how the IARPA's own Web site describes the research project: "The TRUST Program seeks to conduct high-risk, high-payoff research that will bring together sensing AND validated protocols to develop tools for assessing trustworthiness by using one's own ("Self") signals to assess another's ("Other") trustworthiness under certain conditions and in specific contexts, which can be measured in ecologically-valid, scientifically-credible experimental protocols."

♦ In other futuristic tech news, the Department of Homeland Security's research department is trying to turn your average smartphone into a mobile toxic chemical detector. "Spearheaded by the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), Cell-All aims to equip your cell phone with a sensor capable of detecting deadly chemicals at minimal cost—to the manufacturer (a buck a sensor) and to your phone’s battery life," reports the Gov Monitor. Theoretically, when Cell-All sniffs a dangerous chemical in the air, it would immediately contact the authorities and increase emergency response times.