►The 1200 National Guard troops posted at the U.S.-Mexico border [1]have helped apprehend 25,514 illegal immigrants to the tune of $160 million. Now critics of the deployment say the cost is too high and the troops are “doing less than ever” compared to the 6,000 troops on the border under George W. Bush from 2006 to 2008. Back then, the soldiers helped build miles of fences and roads. The current National Guardsmen are only allowed to be the eyes and ears on the border and are required to call border patrol agents to actually make the apprehensions. However, “the National Guard is working the border at a time when arrests of illegal crossers have fallen to historic lows and the number of Border Patrol agents has soared,” The Washington Post reports.

►Because of the increased security costs, the organizers of the 2012 Olympic games in London [2]have already almost reached their budget, but still have many security issues to address. Auditors said that only $785 million remain allocated to deal with future costs. “An additional 271 million pounds ($424 million) has been allocated to making venues and other sensitive sites, such as hotels, more secure. That means the total cost of securing the venues has climbed to over 553 million pounds ($862 million),” the Associated Press reported. The total cost of the event is around $14.6 billion.

►MIT researchers, in a recently published paper, say that because many stakeholders involved in securing the utility grid aren’t working together and the lack of a central entity responsible for grid cybersecurity awareness [3], the government should designate an agency responsible for cybersecurity preparedness in the utility industry. "There will be a successful attack at some point. It is thus important for the involved government agencies (i.e., NIST, DOE, FERC, and DHS), working with the private sector in a coordinated fashion, to support the research necessary to develop best practices for response to and recovery from cyberattacks on transmission and distribution systems, so that such practices can be widely deployed," the researchers wrote.

►In other news, an algorithm originally created to detect spamming attacks [4] now being applied to detect attack points of the HIV virus. ♦ India is encouraging social media companies to remove offensive material [5]. ♦ And the Washington Times takes a look at some of the evolving uses of surveillance tools [6].