"Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., along with Senator Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, House Committee on Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., and Congressman James Langevin, D-R.I., Wednesday called on the Department of Homeland Security to hold off on a $1.2 billion acquisition of nuclear radiation monitors until questions about their reliability, performance, and effectiveness have been addressed," according to a press release from the committee.

 

The New York Police Department's Intelligence Division has released a report on the homegrown terrorism threat facing the city and the United States.

The report says that while the threat from al Qaeda's core still persists, a new threat has emerged from radicalized local residents or citizens or both.

Yesterday's Boston Globe reported the Department of Homeland Security has been funding video surveillance systems across the country at the price of $23 billion in grants since 2003.

These hi-tech video camera networks are not just being installed in big cities that carry significant terrorism risks but in mid-size cities and across small-town America as well.

While state fusion centers are generally lauded as a reasonable effort to improve information sharing among intelligence agencies and law enforcement, they are raising fears among civil libertarians because of the amount and type of information collected and shared.

For the paper by the privacy advocacy group EPIC, click here.