Morning Security Brief: Protecting the U.S.-Canada Border, the USB Threat, Military and the Press, and Prison Victimization

► While most border security talk centers on the United States' Southern flank, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spent some time this week in Montana discussing how the country's northern border with Canada is being secured. Funding cuts was one of the issues raised. "Close to $100 million in allocations through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had originally been slated to fund improvements at nine ports along the northern border, though the current expenditures are coming in lower than that, at around $50 million, with some costs still being worked out, according to Department of Homeland Security numbers," reported Allison Maier of the Independent Record. Interagency communications was another. "Kevin Bruski, the executive director of the Interoperability Montana Project associated with the state’s Information Technology Services Division, said he was there to advocate on behalf of several local governments for a change in the way the various entities who deal with border control communicate," writes Maier. "He said the system in place now does not allow for immediate and direct communication between officers and border patrol agents between the two countries."

► New reports from Panda Security about the threat of computer virus infection from USB devices follows on a report of how a USB left in a Pentagon parking lot led to a serious high-level threat infection within the Defense Department, reports ComputerWorld. A new survey by Panda "of more than 10,000 small- and medium-sized firms found that 27% of those victimized by a malware infection in the last year reported that the attack had originated with infected USB hardware, primarily flash drives," ComputerWorld reports.

► So soon after a Rolling Stone magazine article led to General Stanley McChrystal being relieved of duty, you'd think military brass would be a little reticent about speaking with the press, but not everyone got the message. Wired's Danger Room reports that Army Colonel Lawrence Sellin "got the sack yesterday from his job as a staff officer at the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Kabul." He wrote an op-ed for United Press International, explains Danger Room: The "colonel’s rant called into question whether ISAF’s revamped command structure, charged with coordinating the day-by-day war effort, was much more than a briefing factory."

► A new Bureau of Justice Statistics report finds that 4.4 percent of prison inmates and 3.1 percent of jail inmates suffered sexual victimization from 2008 to 2009. Eighty-two percent of female victims said they were pressured by staff to engage in sexual activity, according to the report: Sexual Vicitimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09.