Morning Security Brief: Yemeni Terror Suspects Released, India Demands Servers in Country, Insider Threats, & More

♦ Two Yemeni men traveling from Chicago to Amsterdam accused of preparing a dry run for a future terrorist attack have been released by the Dutch authorities, according to Bloomberg. “Now that there are no indications which support the initial allegations, there is no reason to detain the men longer and they are no longer seen as suspects,” Martijn Boelhouwer, a spokesman for Dutch prosecutors, said in a statement yesterday.

♦ India will ask Research in Motion, Google, and Skype to place servers inside the country so the government can monitor the data traffic that flows through them. "The Indian government, concerned that terrorists may take advantage of the encryption in smartphones to plan attacks or other illegal activity, is urging equipment makers and service providers to come up with solutions to meet its security needs," reports Bloomberg.com. "RIM, the Canadian maker of BlackBerry phones, averted a ban on Aug. 31 by conceding access to the e-mail and instant-messenger traffic on the device. India started testing RIM’s monitoring tools yesterday to see if they allow security agencies to tap its messenger- and enterprise mail services, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in New Delhi. Discussions for further access are continuing and the steps will be reviewed in 60 days, he said." A Skype spokesman told Bloomberg yesterday that the company hasn't received a server demand from the Indian government yet.

♦ The Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), the military's research and development lab, is launching a project to determine how to detect invaders inside Department of Defense networks. "Under the Cyber Insider Threat (CINDER) Program, DARPA will explore new approaches for improving the speed and accuracy of insider threat detection. The agency last week sought proposals for ways to identity hostile insider activity by monitoring specific user and network behaviors," reports Computerworld. "In the initial stage of the project, the goal is not necessarily to develop new ways of detecting individual malicious insiders themselves. Instead, DARPA hopes to figure out the tell-tale signs and network activities that organizations should monitor to accurately detect malicious activity."

♦ Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC) wants the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the possibility that Hezbollah operatives have cooperated with Mexican drug cartels. "On June 23, I sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano asking her to establish a task force to investigate the presence of Hezbollah along the U.S.-Mexico border," Myrick writes at The Washington Times. "The evidence is there: Hezbollah's cooperation with countries across South America. Highly sophisticated tunnels for transferring drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border, ones very similar to the tunnels dug by Hezbollah into Israel. The close relationship between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the increase in Iranian nationals traveling through Venezuela to receive false documents, which they use to cross into the United States. Mexican officials raising concerns about Hezbollah operatives possibly training Mexican drug cartel enforcers in making car bombs." DHS has not responded to Myrick's letter asking for an investigation.

♦ An independent study released yesterday reports illegal immigration has plunged in recent years. "About 300,000 immigrants illegally entered the country each year from March 2007 to March 2009, nearly two-thirds fewer than the 850,000 who annually crossed the border from 2000 to 2005, according to the report by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center," reports POLITICO. "An estimated 11.1 million illegal immigrants were living in the U.S. in 2009, an 8 percent decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007. That represented the first significant decrease in two decades, the report said." Although the study's authors don't pinpoint why illegal immigration fell, they do note beefed-up border security as well as the economic recession.