Federal | Agencies | Legislative

DHS is planning to spend up to $50 million to hire as many as four contractors to provide “aerial remote sensing” services, that will include taking photos from airborne sensors of homeland security missions and emergency incidents, processing those images and disseminating them throughout the department.

The chosen vendors will be asked to collect aerial imagery using digital cameras in what are known as “vertical” or “oblique” renditions to support emergency and non-emergency incidents nationwide.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) wants to organize two different focus groups per year -- one involving 500 immigrants; the other involving 500 “stakeholders” -- in order to gain further insights and early warnings, and improve the delivery of its communications, training and overall operations.

The TSA’s trusted traveler Pre Check program will expand to dozens more airports around the country in the coming months, including some of the busiest, such as Boston’s Logan, New York’s JFK and LaGuardia, Chicago’s O’Hare,  and Washington’s National and Dulles.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and TSA Administrator John Pistole unveiled on Feb. 8 a lengthy list of additional airports where the Pre Check passenger pre-screening program will expand in 2012 following the current pilot initiatives at seven airports.

A provision in the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill approved by Congress on Feb. 7, which would allow airports to privatize their security screeners and essentially opt-out of TSA’s program, is “troubling” and “regrettable,” said the leader of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

A study of the outbreak of E. coli that killed 50 people in Germany last summer and sickened thousands has yielded some clues about the emergence and spread of infectious diseases.

While protections for nuclear plants from possible terror attacks have improved dramatically since 9/11, a report by a group of nuclear scientists said there is plenty of room for more enhancement in new reactor and plant designs in the coming years.

Lockheed Martin Corp. and Cleversafe, Inc. have formed a new technology alliance that will facilitate collaboration between the two companies to support a new level of storage capacity beyond traditional capabilities.

These secure, distributed storage Cloud offerings will enhance the performance of active archive, data security, still imagery, full motion video (FMV), SharePoint storage enhancement and distributed computing.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agent pleaded guilty to all 21 counts accusing her of leaking sensitive government information to relatives involved in drug trafficking.

According to a statement by the FBI on Jan. 6, Jovana Deas, 33, of Rio Rico, AZ, admitted to abusing her position as an HSI special agent to illegally obtain and disseminate government documents classified as "Official Use Only."