I stumbled upon a Web site this morning that may give a little insight into this question. TSA-Screeners.com claims to serve the TSA screener community with screening-related news, advocacy, editorials, a comic strip, parodies and forums. Its opening banner reads “This is a private website not affiliated with the U.S. government … so speak freely.” 

The site was created by a military and law enforcement veteran whose wife worked as a TSA screener before leaving the organization with four official complaints in her wake. So is it unbiased coverage of this federal organization’s news and operations? Um … no. But it represents a side of the coin not often publicized, and it’s certainly an interesting read.

Marleah

Anybody else think there are some skewed priorities here?

The announcement suffers some unfortunate timing, without a doubt. It comes the same day news outlets picked up on a federal judge’s ruling that FEMA unconstitutionally stopped payment to Katrina victims in February without stated cause.

I’m not saying a new icon is useless. The press release states that “not since these cold war relics (the civil defense symbols) has there been any universal visual associated with the field that is so critical to life, safety and security.” They’re right. Everyone knew the civil defense symbol. Everybody knew what it meant. But it was also bolstered by a massive PR campaign of ads, radio announcements and now notorious grade-school filmstrips.

People were afraid of the unpredictable then, and they trusted the government to show them what to do when the unpredictable happened. People are afraid of the unpredictable now. Period.

The slogan that appears under the new icon is “Public Safety, Public Trust.”

Note to FEMA: Make sure you have the goods before you start advertising them. 

Marleah

NB: Thanks to Fark.com for making my headline writing easy.

Besides the T.M.X. Elmo and the PlayStation 3, one of the most hyped product releases of this year’s spend-o-rama is Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player, which was released Tuesday with more of a splat than a bang. Critics have attacked the Zune’s looks, size, controls, and download services in comparison with its target competitor, the Apple iPod. I have no opinion on this one way or the other. One thing that did catch my eye, though, was a report on Mary Foley’s ZDNet blog (http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=104) claiming that the Zune has been shown to be incompatible with Microsoft’s new Windows Vista. (This report was confirmed by Microsoft this morning, according to VNUNet.com.)

Since Vista is going to be released to the general public as a stand-alone or standard preinstalled OS in January, the lack of compatibility is puzzling. You’d think it would have been a no-brainer for Microsoft. Perhaps both projects just got so big, the compatibility issue escaped them.

Now switch gears and think about your own security systems planning. When you’re looking at a major upgrade or installation, or even a minor one, it can be easy to focus only on the project at hand and its immediate requirements. But take a moment to consider other plans in the works and other systems already in use. Gather all the stakeholders in your organization and talk with them to make sure you’re not making an omission that someone might, after-the-fact, consider a no-brainer. 

-Marleah

OK, so the Democrats have ousted the Republicans in both the House and Senate. What does that mean for the country? Probably not much. We have just seen the most do-nothing Congress in the history of this country accomplish little more than embarass themselves in the media with mudslinging campaign messages to either save their sorry jobs or earn one. How far have we fallen as a nation. As we send men to the Middle East to fight an invisible enemy, our politicians spend more time worrying about who knew what when regarding Mark Foley’s sexual fantasies than the cost of the war.

Now that the Dems have their victory, which was only made sweeter today with the announcement of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. They have an apparent mandate from its citizens. Will Congress get off their hindquarters and DO SOMETHING??!! Let’s hope and pray for the sake of our troops and our country that the new party in power takes the high road and really tries to accomplish more than setting the table for the 2008 election.

The ball is in your court Democrats. You’ve moaned and groaned the last 10 years you didn’t have the steering wheel, and now you do. Make the most of it.

 -Steve

This news comes on the heels of some other recent developments in RFID, including the October 19 announcement that researchers at the University College London planned to develop a system of tagging all airline passengers with RFID tags to allow their movements to be tracked. (Geoff Kohl raised some very legitimate questions about this project in last week’s Security Week that Was column - http://www.securityinfowatch.com/article/article.jsp?id=9718&siteSection=306.) 

To many of us, programs like this prospective airline tagging system sound pretty far-fetched. But the DHS committee’s report on RFID gives the impression that they have wholeheartedly bought into the feasibility of such programs, because some of their arguments against the technology sounded like they were based on a sci-fi series rather than real, available applications. This leaves me with three possible conclusions: 1) There is significant successful government R&D on RFID people tracking of which we’re unaware. 2) The committee is so concerned about the potential impact of RFID on personal privacy that they’re covering all the bases of possible future applications in order to stop the government’s use of the technology before it has a chance to progress. 3) These guys didn’t do enough research.

 Read it yourself. What do you think?

-Marleah

I’m not trying to turn this blog into a political forum; this article put me in mind of an important issue in corporate security. As much as our national security concerns have been changing over the last few years, this should serve as a reminder to all corporate security executives to carefully examine the threats to their organizations and facilities on a regular basis. Just as escalating Sunni-Shiite conflicts in Iraq may be reshaping the face of the enemy in the War on Terror, the changes this conflict and other events have recently wrought on our country may be reshaping the threats to your organization. Don’t overlook them.

Not far from my house, there’s a box store—one of those giants of retail industry that sells peanuts by the gallon and toilet paper by the cartful. Recently, this store implemented self checkout stations where its “10 or less” aisles used to be. I was ecstatic. I do a lot of shopping at this place, often stopping in for just a couple of things, and I’d always seen the self checkout as a way to turbo charge an otherwise boring and irritating trip through the cashier’s line.

At first, it was like a honeymoon. I’d pop into the store on a whim, pick up an item or two, whiz through the line and be on my way. But it wasn’t long before things began to change. I got to the store one Friday evening and the lines for self checkout extended out into the main aisle. I wondered if Friday was the universal night for technophobes to slowly and deliberately face their fears, but then I looked around and noticed that only two of the normal cashier lines were open, and their lines were also winding out into the aisles.

It took nearly 20 minutes to get through the self checkout. When I finally turned to leave, with my three items in their bag, I noticed that there was only one employee stationed in the entire self checkout bank. Eight registers, one employee.

The store only had to pay three cashiers for the evening. But they lost some customers who decided they would rather go someplace else than wait in these lines. And they certainly compromised their security.

The single employee supervising the self checkout lines was overwhelmed—running this way and that to check an ID for an alcohol purchase here, help a confused customer over there, log in to override a purchase here, call a manager for assistance over there. This employee had no time to watch for customers who may be leaving items in their carts without scanning them. Even if she hadn’t been overwhelmed, she couldn’t have easily kept track of the motions of all the people at eight registers. What’s more, the employees who man the door of the store to check receipts against cart contents were nowhere to be seen.

There are great technologies out there for every industry that can help a business save plenty of money. It’s smart business to use self checkout to decrease manpower costs. But in every industry, common sense has to play a part in technology implementations. We’ve said it again and again: Technology will not do its job unless it’s followed up with solid process and training. This is true specifically in security as well. The shiny new surveillance system isn’t worth a dime if no one’s paying attention to the monitors, or if you can’t locate an incident in your recorded archives. The smart card reader alone doesn’t stand a chance against a door prop.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was in the house, which is always entertaining since everytime he speaks he steps in a pile of it. The station was replaying his comments from a national TV show where Nagin was asked about delays in rebuilding New Orleans during the year following Hurricane Katrina. Nagin immediately goes on the defensive and attacks efforts to redevelop the World Trade Center site.

When a correspondent for the CBS news show “60 Minutes” chided Nagin about all the flood-damaged cars abandoned on New Orleans city streets, the witty Nagin quickly retorted, “You guys in New York can’t get a hole in the ground fixed, and it’s five years later. So let’s be fair.”

OK, so you tell me where the connect is here. One has nothing to do with the other. The fact that a large portion of the disaster and lack of prepardedness for the New Orleans tragedy can be directly laid at the feet of the Nagin’s inept city government seems to be washed under the levee as so many tons of silt. The fact that Nagin’s “chocolate city” is still mostly residing in other areas around the South like Atlanta, Houston and Memphis, should clue Nagin in to how much confidence his former citizens have in his leadership.

I lived in the New Orleans area for close to 3 years when I was going to grad school back in the late 1970s. It was a fun and lively place to be. What was New Orleans has turned into a cesspool of crime and corruption that has to be, in some part, blamed on the city government’s incompetence or worse. Everyone knew the levees would not hold. Everyone knew Nagin had no gameplan for a major hurricane. Everyone knew that this city was a disaster waiting to happen.

Now it seems every time Nagin opens his mouth New Orleans relives another embarrassing chapter. The people who reelected Nagin earlier this year are getting just what they deserve. Unfortunately, like the tragedy that was Katrina, his verbal fallout is claiming innocent victims. Every word he utters diminishes the greatness that was once New Orleans. How long are the people of the Crecent City keep to give Nagin a free pass?

The bottom line here is we are looking to open an interactive discussion on issues and events that are shaping security policy and political agendas. You might not always like my views, but I will guarantee you an honest give-and-take and hope to get you talking back! We may not be able to solve all the world’s problems, but at least for me, I’ll feel a whole lot better just being able to shoot off my mouth in an open forum. Join the party and bring an opinion!