Homeland Security nets more than 500 gang arrests

[jonnygemini]

www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--gangarrests0801aug01,0,4544104.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

August 1, 2005, 12:38 PM EDT

WASHINGTON -- Federal authorities arrested 582 alleged gang members over a two-week period, officials said Monday, targeting an estimated 80 violent groups they say have spawned street crimes across the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called the gangs "a threat to our homeland security and ... a very urgent law enforcement priority."

Investigators picked up most of the offenders between July 16 and July 28 on immigration violations for being in the United States illegally. Seventy-six face criminal charges, ranging from illegal possession of a firearm to holding fraudulent documents.

"For too long, these gangs have gone unchecked _ flouting all laws and demonstrating a blatant disregard for public safety," Chertoff said in announcing the arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. ICE is an arm of the Homeland Security Department.

Investigators targeted members in 27 states of what they considered to be the most violent street gangs, including Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13; Sure Inos; the 18th Street Gang; Latin Kings; the Mexican Mafia; Border Brothers; Brown Pride and numerous others.

Many of the arrests came in large urban areas, including 61 in Boston, 28 in Denver, and 23 each in Los Angeles and Detroit. But even smaller cities have been infiltrated by the gangs, the arrests showed, including 42 in Birmingham, Ala., and one each in Grand Rapids, Mich.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; and North Platte, Neb.

The crackdown is part of ICE's ongoing "Operation Community Shield" campaign, targeting gang activity with other federal and state authorities. So far, ICE has made 1,057 arrests as part of the sting.

More than half of them have been members of MS-13, a street gang rooted in Central America where members have been known to behead enemies and attack with grenades and machetes. Federal officials estimate between 8,000 and 10,000 MS-13 members live in 31 states _ the majority of them in the country illegally.

"We're just getting started," said ICE investigations chief Marcy Forman.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement: www.ice.gov/graphics/index.htm

[jonnygemini]

better get your guns now...

FOX News
8/1/2005

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering.

The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement.

In an argument that eerily foreshadowed the July London terror attacks, the Pentagon in late June announced its "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Support," which would expand its reach domestically to prevent "enemy attacks aimed at Americans here at home."

The strategy, approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England (search ) on June 24, argues that the government needs a multi-layered, preventive approach to national defense in order to combat an unconventional enemy that will attack from anywhere, anytime and by any conceivable means.

"Transnational terrorist groups view the world as an integrated, global battlespace in which to exploit perceived U.S vulnerabilities, wherever they may be," reads the 40-page document that outlines the new plans.

"Terrorists seek to attack the United States and its centers of gravity at home and abroad and will use asymmetric means to achieve their ends, such as simultaneous mass casualty attacks," it said.

Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens.

"Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr (search ), R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian.

"This document provides a blueprint for doing just that."

Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns.

Critics say they believe much of TIA lives on in some form through smaller, undisclosed military contracts. This latest plan, they say, is one way of jump-starting TIA's initial goals.

"This is TIA back with a vengeance," said Barr. "What they have come up with here is a much vaguer and much broader concept that sounds more innocuous. [The Pentagon] is getting much smarter in how to sell these things."

The Defense Department report says its increased surveillance capabilities at home will adhere to constitutional and privacy protections, even though it emphasizes enhancing current "data mining" capabilities.

"Specifically, the department will… develop automated tools to improve data fusion, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data and to detect, fuse and analyze aberrant patterns of activity, consistent with U.S. privacy protections," the report reads.

It will also develop "a cadre of specialized terrorism intelligence analysts within the defense intelligence community and deploy a number of these analysts to interagency centers for homeland defense and counter-terrorism analysis and operations," states the report.

Some national security experts agree that emboldened surveillance on domestic soil is necessary in the global War on Terror, and that such intelligence could prevent the kind of attacks perpetuated by homegrown terrorists in England on July 7 and 21.

"The Defense Department has always done intelligence operations in the United States. They have the legal right to do that. There is nothing new here," James Carafano, a homeland security analyst with The Heritage Foundation, told FOXNews.com. "There are no new threats to privacy or constitutionality. I just think it's about doing [intelligence] more efficiently and effectively."

But John Pike, founder of GlobalSecurity.org , a clearinghouse of available intelligence and national security information, says it's not so clear how much data the Pentagon will be collecting on citizens and whether it will be retaining, sharing and building individual dossiers. So far, the lack of detail leaves as many question as answers, he said.

"The bad news is there is certainly the possibility of a return to the sort of domestic surveillance that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s," Pike said.

Pentagon officials declined to comment on the variety of data it would gather and share, or how long it would retain files on individuals under the new homeland defense plan.

The Washington Post reported recently that among the databases being built by the Pentagon is a military recruitment list of individual high school and college students culled from commercial data brokers and other sources. The military is planning to share the database with federal and state law enforcement agencies if necessary, the Post reports.

A Defense Department spokesman said the military's domestic role in homeland security will remain a supportive one, and the Pentagon will only provide resources when local, state and federal resources and capabilities "have been exceeded or do not exist."

"We have expanded activities in order to better execute support missions, but we are extremely sensitive to the historically restricted, limited role of the Defense Department," the spokesman told FOXNews.com in an e-mailed response to questions.

The Pentagon's new strategy appears to dovetail with a recent report by The New York Times, that said the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, which outlines the future vision of the military and is due to Congress in February, will reflect a new approach in which the Defense Department will prepare to fight in one war theater at a time while putting the bulk of its resources into homeland defense.

The strategy approved by military officials in June also increases joint training exercises with first responders and other agencies as well as the creation of National Guard-staffed teams in case of a catastrophic attack.

The president would have to authorize the actual use of troops on military soil in order to adhere to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Pentagon officials say the new strategy won't require that authorization.

But the strategy does includes more collaboration with law enforcement in "support" roles on all levels of counter-terrorism efforts as well as the monitoring of terrorist threats along the borders, in the air and on water.

"If they find information in the course of their business that might help other agencies, then they can share it. If other agencies in their own intelligence gathering find information that can help the Defense Department, they can share that," said Carafano. "I really don’t see any legal or constitutional issues here."

[Healthy Merking]

bro

youre becoming the official news source over here

respect due

PEACE

[jonnygemini]

from:
www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1542080,00.html

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday August 4, 2005
The Guardian

A new army special forces regiment was involved in the operation that led to the killing of an innocent man at Stockwell tube station in south London last week, the Guardian can reveal.

The Special Reconnaissance Regiment, set up in April to help combat international terrorism, was deployed in the surveillance operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician, on July 22, according to Whitehall sources.

Article continues
The revelation came as Scotland Yard announced the first charges in connection with the terror attacks in London.

Ismael Abdurahman of Kennington, south-east London, will appear before Bow Street magistrates today. He will be charged with having information he knew or believed may be of material assistance in securing the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of another person in the UK for an offence involving the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.

Yesterday Whitehall sources told the Guardian that soldiers of the Special Reconnaisance Regiment, modelled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland, was engaged in "low-level intelligence behind the scenes" when the Brazilian was shot. There was "no direct military involvement in the shooting", the sources said.

It is believed to be the first time the new regiment was engaged in an operation.

The regiment absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as "14 Int", a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.

Geoff Hoon, the then defence secretary, said the unit had been formed to meet a worldwide demand for "special reconnaissance capability".

Mr De Menezes was targeted because he was seen coming out of a three-storey block of nine flats, Corfe House in Tulse Hill, south London, identified as a building linked to the failed July 21 bombers.

He lived on the first floor with his two cousins, Vivian and Patricia.

Mr De Menezes was followed and seen boarding a No 2 bus, heading north towards Stockwell. Boarding with him, it is understood, were several plainclothes officers. Defence sources refuse to comment on suggestions that they may have been members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment.

Other officers followed the bus in vehicles. When it became clear that Stockwell tube was his possible destination, a team of armed police officers in plain clothes were alerted. They fired eight shots at Mr De Menezes at close range after the 27-year-old Brazilian ran on to a tube train.

A senior police officer was running the operation from Scotland Yard's "Gold Command".

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is conducting an inquiry into the shooting. It is certain to include the role of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, and also issues relating to the false identification of the victim, and whether CCTV pictures of the failed bombers were available at the time.

Another question is why the Brazilian - a suspected suicide bomber - was allowed to get on to a London bus when two buses had already been targeted.

[Os3y3ris]

They've just authorized that level of force here in the states.