Morning Security Brief: Aviation Security, PA's Poor Intelligence Reports, Electronic Wiretapping, Campus Security, & More

♦ Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano today will urge 190 countries to install full body scanners and other security technologies at their airports to counter nonmetallic threats at an international aviation conference. Napolitano "said the push aims to counter terrorists who might use international flights for attacks by smuggling explosives through overseas metal detectors," USA Today reports. "Such devices can't stop suicide bombers from hiding unconventional weapons under their clothes. A Nigerian man is under federal indictment for trying to blow up an international flight headed for Detroit in December by igniting powdered explosives in his underwear." According to the paper, the nearly 200 countries that make up the International Civil Aviation Organization will agree to bolster their aviation security defenses.

♦ The intelligence bulletins generated by a private intelligence firm for Pennsylvania's Office of Homeland Security sent law enforcement on wild goose chases, according to witnesses from the state police. "Maj. George Bivens, head of the criminal investigation division, said some of the notices about threats to Pennsylvania infrastructure produced by the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response for the state Office of Homeland Security resulted in a waste of manpower to address nonexistent threats. He compared the bulletins to a tabloid magazine," according to The Associated Press. "Every so often they have something right. Much of the time it is unsubstantiated gossip," Bivens told the Senate Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee.

♦ Wired.com takes a skeptical look at the FBI's push to make companies' electronic communications systems comply with wiretapping statutes and argues it could make communications less secure. "According to the proposal, any company doing business in the States could not create an encrypted communication system without having a way for the government to order the company to decrypt it, and those who currently do offer that service would have to re-tool it. It’s the equivalent of outlawing whispering in real life," Threat Level reports. "Cryptographers have long argued that backdoors aren’t a feature — they are just a security hole that will inevitably be abused by hackers or adversarial governments."

♦ Boston-area colleges are struggling to balance long-held traditions of an open campus and adequate security after two recent stabbings at two area colleges. "At Regis College in Weston, where an 18-year-old was stabbed to death Friday morning, campus police kept an around-the-clock watch on student dormitories and screened all visitors at the main entrance. Gates at two other entrances to the campus are being locked overnight. At Boston College, police stepped up campus patrols over the weekend, after a student was stabbed in the abdomen outside a dormitory," reports The Boston Globe. "Since the mass shootings at Virginia Tech three years ago, colleges and universities across the country have ramped up security by hiring more officers, installing key card systems and surveillance cameras, and denying access to outsiders." But some campus security experts urge more has to be done.

♦ Classified intelligence bulletins from the special forces branch of India's Central Bureau of Investigation report that two terrorists organizations will target India's Commonwealth Games. "One document says a phone tap surveillance revealed that a local faction of the Delhi based The Mars group has joined forces with the Naxalites - a disaffected group of Maoist rebels in east India in supplying explosives specifically for an attack on the Commonwealth Games," according to the Telegraph. The intelligence documents recently turned up on a Pakistani Web site. The Telegraph reports local police have not been able to verify the authenticity of the documents.