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| A Primedia Property | |
| March 24, 2005 | Vol. 1, No. 6 |
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Table Of Contents U.S. courthouses address security issue Chertoff's approach: The sky may not be falling Report: Database integration necessary for U.S.-VISIT success ADVERTISEMENT iCLASS Meets Government Standards HID supports GSC-IS V2.1 with fully-compliant iCLASS contactless smart card readers that are available to output the FASC-N in multiple configurations, providing versatility to support both existing and new access control systems. Standard communication protocols make it easy to replace existing access control card readers with HID GSC-compliant card readers. http://www.hidcorp.com/products/iclass/ In the News U.S. courthouses address security issue For years, lawyers and judges worried about lax security at Seattle's King County Courthouse. It took a bloodbath in Atlanta to get their concerns addressed. Similar stories are occurring throughout the country, as city officials and security planners tackle courthouse and courtroom security issues in the wake of the Brian Nichols shootings at the Fulton County courthouse in downtown Atlanta on March 11 that took three lives, including a superior court judge. More metal detectors have been installed in courthouses, and weapons have been barred from the court buildings, except for those carried by law enforcement and military personnel. Unarmed civilian screeners keep order alongside armed deputies. "Whenever you have an incident like the one in Atlanta, every judge thinks about it," Washington Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson told The Associated Press. "They look around and start thinking about whether what has been done is enough." Johnson served on a statewide court-security task force following the 1995 Seattle shootings, in which a man walked into the courthouse with a concealed semiautomatic pistol and used it to kill his pregnant, estranged wife and two of her friends as they sat on a bench outside a courtroom. "I think we have the best system possible, but what happened in Atlanta certainly could happen here today, next week, or never," said John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff's Office. "There's always someone bigger and badder and stronger than a particular deputy." There is no clear, nationwide picture of what measures have been taken to secure courthouses. Security in federal courts is handled by a single agency, the U.S. Marshals Service, but at the state and local levels, security measures vary widely. The National Center for State Courts in Virginia has received a $100,000 Department of Justice grant to hold a court security summit with state supreme court justices next month. "You don't want to feel that the people in Atlanta died without at least using that to say we've learned from it," says Mary McQueen, president of the courts center and the former Washington state courts administrator. Fulton County has boosted security by adding 40 uniformed deputies and announcing that high-risk inmates will be transported separately, accompanied by specially trained officers. California's chief justice recently said two-thirds of his state's 451 courthouses lack adequate security. One judge, he said, stacked law books in front of his bench as a barrier to bullets after his rural courthouse was the scene of an attempted hostage-taking. Chertoff's approach: The sky may not be falling The U.S. government cannot protect the American public from all possible terrorist attacks. Instead, it must focus on trying to prevent more serious or catastrophic strikes, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a recent speech. "Threats are important, but they should not be automatic instigators of action," Chertoff says. "A terrorist attack on the two-lane bridge down the street from my house would be bad, but would have a relatively low consequence compared to an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge." Chertoff's view is that the Department of Homeland Security must transform itself from an enterprise set up in reaction to the Sept. 11 attacks to one engaged in a more focused, sustainable and reasoned battle against terrorism. The federal government needs to have a more restrained and coordinated public message than it had in the first Bush term when it comes to discussing potential threats, the secretary said in the speech at George Washington University. That might mean he and other department officials will decline to comment at times about rumored threats until definitive information is available, he said. He did not mention the department's much-criticized color-coded alert system but has said previously he was assessing it. "I don't want to get up in public and say the sky is falling if it's not falling," he said in a New York Times interview. "I'm going to try to be very realistic and sensible and serious about the kinds of tradeoffs that we have to consider when we're making decisions about protecting ourselves." Report: Database integration necessary for U.S.-VISIT success The Homeland Security Department is being hampered in its efforts to verify the identities of visitors at U.S. borders by the need to check multiple databases, DHS inspector general Richard Skinner says in a new report. "The time-consuming process that the Customs and Border Protection officers must use to query multiple database systems to verify travelers' identities and identify potential criminals and terrorists is particularly problematic at land points of entry because of the limited time available to conduct the queries," the report concludes. Multiple databases need to be integrated so Customs and Border Protection officers at land points of entry can validate the identity of visitors trying to enter the country using the department's biometric identity verification program, the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (U.S.-VISIT). The report said it would issue no recommendations to enhance the program's implementation because such advice would be "short-lived or premature." In addition to the need for integration of databases, Skinner expresses concern about the small percentage of visitors to be enrolled in U.S.-VISIT (just 2.7 percent of visitors initially) and the large number of exempt visitors. News You Can Use Homeland Security by the numbers 10.3 percent The projected increase in spending by DHS on information security projects in 2006 Read about where this funding will be allocated in the February issue of GOVERNMENT SECURITY by following this link Procurement Watch
Events March 28-April 1 Defense and Security Symposium 2005 Orlando, Fla. Organizer: International Society for Optical Engineering http://spie.org/Conferences/Calls/05/dss/conferences/index.cfm April 5-7 April 6-8 April 10-13 April 11-16 April 25-28 April 26-28 April 26-28 May 3-5 New Announcements from GOVERNMENT SECURITY magazine Now on www.govtsecurity.com February 2005 Browse our latest issue at your leisure Coming in April's GOVERNMENT SECURITY Niagara Falls Both video surveillance and access control add safety to beauty |
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