Morning Security Brief: FBI Warns About Koran Burning, State Secrets, Full Body Scanners, Smartphone Security Apps, & EMP Threat

♦ The FBI has released an intelligence report arguing that the Koran burning event planned by a Florida evangelical preacher could cause radical Islamists and jihadists to retaliate. "While the FBI has no information to indicate a specific attack has been planned against the United States or U.S. assets in response to the 'International Burn a Koran Day' event, the FBI assesses with high confidence that, as with past incidents perceived as acts of desecration against Islam, extremist actors will continue to threaten or attempt to harm the leaders, organizers, or attendees the event," an intelligence bulletin from the FBI's Jacksonville bureau notes, according to ABC News. According to the bulletin, one poster on the terrorist Web site Al-Faloja expressed a desire to suicide attack the pastor's church who created the event.

♦ A federal appeals court sided with the government yesterday, ruling that five men cannot sue a government contractor that they allege was instrumental to their torture because it may expose government secrets. "The sharply divided ruling was a major victory for the Obama administration’s efforts to advance a sweeping view of executive secrecy powers. It strengthens the White House’s hand as it has pushed an array of assertive counterterrorism policies, while raising an opportunity for the Supreme Court to rule for the first time in decades on the scope of the president’s power to restrict litigation that could reveal state secrets," according to The New York Times. "By a 6-to-5 vote, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a Boeing subsidiary accused of arranging flights for the Central Intelligence Agency to transfer prisoners to other countries for imprisonment and interrogation. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case on behalf of five former prisoners who say they were tortured in captivity — and that Jeppesen was complicit in that alleged abuse."

♦ Political activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is calling on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to hold a public hearing on full body scanners because of civil liberties and health concerns. "On April 6, 2010, a group of distinguished scientists at the University of California-San Francisco wrote to Dr. John Holdren, President Obama’s science adviser, urging a more rigorous review of this technology citing the absence of any real, independent safety data," Nader's letter explained. "The letter noted that the media (and TSA) has misleadingly compared the backscatter’s radiation dose as equal to the exposure one gets from in-flight air travel. However, the scientists explain that while airplane flight exposure is a whole-body exposure, the backscatter technology targets the skin and adjacent tissue, and thus the real radiation dose to the skin is higher than stated.'

♦ A new study argues that smartphone users need to purchase security apps to protect their phones, just like antivirus software protects personal computers and laptops. "Austrian security testing lab AV-Comparatives today released a study comparing four smartphone security products: ESET Mobile Security, F-Secure Mobile Security, Kaspersky Mobile Security and Trend Micro Mobile Security," reports PCMag.com. 'All four support Windows Mobile 5.0-6.5 and Symbian 9.1-9.4. F-Secure adds support for Android while Trend Micro supports Android7. Trend Micro also offers a limited-feature edition called Trend Micro SmartSurfing for the iPhone; that's the only iPhone support found in these products."

♦ The private intelligence firm STRATFOR assesses the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States. The firm's conclusion: "Hardening national infrastructure against EMP and HPM is undoubtedly important, and there are very real weaknesses and critical vulnerabilities in America’s critical infrastructure — not to mention civil society," explains the firm. "But each dollar spent on these efforts must be balanced against a dollar not spent on, for example, port security, which we believe is a far more likely and far more consequential vector for nuclear attack by a rogue state or non-state actor."