Morning Security Brief: Homegrown Terrorism Threat, Border Security, IATA Airport Screening Plan, Poison Food Plot, & More

♦ In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, Attorney General Eric Holder revealed that the threat of homegrown terrorism "keeps me up at night." Holder told ABC's Pierre Thomas that 50 American citizens have been charged with terrorist offenses over the last two years, CBS's Political Hotsheet reports. According to the attorney general, "The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens -- raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born."

♦ Millions of people are still crossing into America from land ports of entry without the necessary documentation. "The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security estimated this week that about 3.6 million people a year were still passing through customs without the required documents, and that about half of those were coming through the border crossings in Texas," reports The New York Times. "The audit noted that overall compliance with the law was relatively high; about 96 percent of travelers entering the country’s 39 land ports of entry along the Mexican and Canadian borders now follow the new rules, presenting, for instance, a passport, a border-crossing card or a birth certificate."

♦ Airline pilot and Salon.com columnist Patrick Smith gets behind a new security screening plan at airports released last week by the the International Air Transport Association (IATA). "Under the IATA plan, unveiled last week, each passenger will be categorized into one of three risk groups, and then screened accordingly. Biometric proof-of-identity, such as a fingerprint or encoded passport, will be checked against a stored profile containing various personal data, and also against passenger watch lists. This, together with flight booking data, will determine which of three screening lines a traveler is then assigned to," Smith writes. "Those in the first line would receive little more than a cursory bag check, while those in the third line would be subject to an 'enhanced'-level check similar to the Transportation Security Administration procedures that are currently applied to all passengers." Smith, however, worries the United States won't go for it.

♦ USA Today checks in with a representative from the hotel industry to comment on the plot to poison hotel and restaurant salad bars and hotel buffets, reported by CBS News two days ago. CEO of American Hotel and Lodging Association Joe McInerney's response: "It isn't that major of a threat." McInerney told USA Today that he and his colleagues heard about the threat from TV and radio reports yesterday. Although McInerney doesn't believe the threat is serious, his association will take precautions. "As a result of the threat, AHLA is now planning to develop a webinar to educate industry employees about the possibility of such an attack, he said," according to USA Today. "The hotel industry, he notes, is well aware that it's considered a 'soft target' for terrorists, and is already taking other actions."

♦ U.S. fliers unsurprisingly do not like the security screening at U.S. airports. The online survey conducted by the U.S. Travel Association found that "75% of travelers say there must be more passenger-friendly procedures to screen airline passengers," reports the Los Angeles Times. "More than half of the people who have traveled in the past 30 days called the current security procedure 'inconsistent' and 'stressful,' according to the survey." What was surprising, however, was that travelers hate taking off their shoes (37 percent) more than they oppose receiving an enhanced pat-down (31 percent) or going through a full body scanner (25 percent) .