Tag Archives: homeland-security

Lab 257 – Michael C. Carroll

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Lab 257

The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory

Michael C. Carroll

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: October 13, 2009

Publisher: HarperCollins e-books

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


Strictly off limits to the public, Plum Island is home to virginal beaches, cliffs, forests, ponds — and the deadliest germs that have ever roamed the planet. Lab 257 blows the lid off the stunning true nature and checkered history of Plum Island. It shows that the seemingly bucolic island in the shadow of New York City is a ticking biological time bomb that none of us can safely ignore. Based on declassified government documents, in-depth interviews, and access to Plum Island itself, this is an eye-opening, suspenseful account of a federal government germ laboratory gone terribly wrong. For the first time, Lab 257 takes you deep inside this secret world and presents startling revelations on virus outbreaks, biological meltdowns, infected workers, the periodic flushing of contaminated raw sewage into area waters, and the insidious connections between Plum Island, Lyme disease, and the deadly West Nile virus. The book also probes what's in store for Plum Island's new owner, the Department of Homeland Security, in this age of bioterrorism. Lab 257 is a call to action for those concerned with protecting present and future generations from preventable biological catastrophes.

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Lab 257 – Michael C. Carroll

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We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

Mother Jones

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On January 27, President Trump issued an executive order on immigration. Within 30 days, the Secretary of Homeland Security was ordered to compile a list of the information needed from foreign countries to properly adjudicate new visa applications. Immediately thereafter, the Secretary of State was ordered to ask “all foreign governments that do not supply such information to start providing such information regarding their nationals within 60 days of notification.” At that point, any foreign government that refused to provide the necessary information would be “recommended for inclusion on a Presidential proclamation that would prohibit the entry of foreign nationals.”

That’s plain enough, and by April 27 this should have been completed. The executive order may have been stayed by the courts, but that affected only the immediate ban of visitors from seven specified countries. Homeland Security presumably carried out the president’s order to create the list, and the State Department presumably notified foreign countries of its requirements.

So did they? If they didn’t, what held them up? Why hasn’t any such list been published? And why is the Trump administration continuing to waste time in court over its EO since it should be moot at this point?

Has any progress been made on this? Or has Trump put it on hold in a huff because he didn’t get his way? Has anyone asked?

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We Should Have a New List of Banned Countries By Now

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Here’s How the Green Card Chaos Unfolded

Mother Jones

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Josh Rogin has a fascinating piece in the Washington Post today about the turmoil within the Trump administration over the immigration order issued last week. Much of this was due to the fact that no one outside the White House, including those who had to carry out the order, were part of the review process. The end result, apparently, was a temporary halt to executive orders “until a process was established that included the input of key officials outside the White House.”

But it’s worth putting this all in a timeline. Here it is, drawing from Rogin’s article and a CNN summary.

Friday afternoon: Trump signs immigration order

Saturday evening: As chaos ensues, “The man charged with implementing the order, Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, had a plan. He would issue a waiver for green-card holders from the seven majority-Muslim countries whose citizens had been banned from entering the United States.”

Later Saturday evening: “White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon wanted to stop Kelly in his tracks. Bannon paid a personal and unscheduled visit to Kelly’s Department of Homeland Security office to deliver an order: Don’t issue the waiver. Kelly, according to two administration officials familiar with the confrontation, refused to comply with Bannon’s instruction…. Respectfully but firmly, the retired general and longtime Marine told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command.”

Later still on Saturday evening: “Trump didn’t call Kelly to tell him to hold off. Kelly issued the waiver late Saturday night.” But the waiver is not announced, and green card holders continue to be denied entry.

2 am Sunday morning: “A conference call of several top officials was convened to discuss the ongoing confusion over the executive order….On the call were Bannon, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, White House Counsel Donald McGahn, national security adviser Michael Flynn, Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State designee Rex Tillerson, who had not yet been confirmed.”

8 am Sunday morning: “In mere minutes during an interview with NBC, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said the order ‘doesn’t affect’ green card holders, then later said ‘of course’ it affects green card holders from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia — the seven countries Trump has temporarily stop immigration from for 90 days.”

6 pm Sunday evening: “Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly issued a statement clarifying their status saying ‘lawful permanent resident status will be a dispositive factor in our case-by-case determinations.’ Another Homeland Security official told CNN…’This is our message to them: get on a plane. Come back to the US. You will be subject to secondary screening, but everything else will be normal.’ “

Kelly is implicitly the hero of this story. And yet, he allowed the green card confusion to continue all day Sunday even though he had issued his waiver Saturday night. Some hero.

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Here’s How the Green Card Chaos Unfolded

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Why are we building a research center full of deadly diseases in the tornado capital of the world?

The United States eradicated foot-and-mouth disease from its borders in 1929. The virus, deadly to livestock, persists in more than 100 countries, though, and travels with ease. It is able to hitchhike on shoes, clothes, and tires. Airborne, it can travel almost 40 miles overland and almost 190 over open ocean. …

If the foot-and-mouth virus—or any other airborne danger—escaped from the lab, the air currents would likely carry it beyond where it could cause harm. An out-of-the-way location makes sense because no lab is risk free. In 2007, for instance, the foot-and-mouth virus escaped from Great Britain’s Pirbright Institute, one of the world’s leading laboratories studying animal disease, and set off an outbreak at a nearby farm.

So it is absolutely mind-boggling that Homeland Security has decided to move the lab, to be known as the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility, to the Kansas State University campus in Manhattan, Kansas, smack in the middle of cattle country and Tornado Alley. Builders recently broke ground on the brand-new $1.25 billion dollar facility, which is set to be fully operational in 2022. It will include a biosafety level 4 lab, meaning one designed to handle deadly and exotic pathogens for which no vaccines or treatments exist. …

In 2010, the National Academy of Sciences conducted a risk assessment of Homeland Security’s first proposal for the Kansas lab and found a 70 percent probability that a foot-and-mouth virus release resulting in an outbreak would occur over the facility’s 50-year life span. In 2012, the National Research Council evaluated Homeland Security’s revised proposal and found considerable improvements in lab construction design that lowered the 50-year risk to below 1 percent, but this extremely low probability of accidental viral release was based on Homeland Security’s unsupported, overly optimistic estimates of human error rates.

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Why are we building a research center full of deadly diseases in the tornado capital of the world?

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The FBI Is Very Excited About This Machine That Can Scan Your DNA in 90 Minutes

Mother Jones

Robert Schueren shook my hand firmly, handed me his business card, and flipped it over, revealing a short list of letters and numbers. “Here is my DNA profile.” He smiled. “I have nothing to hide.” I had come to meet Schueren, the CEO of IntegenX, at his company’s headquarters in Pleasanton, California, to see its signature product: a machine the size of a large desktop printer that can unravel your genetic code in the time it takes to watch a movie.

Schueren grabbed a cotton swab and dropped it into a plastic cartridge. That’s what, say, a police officer would use to wipe the inside of your cheek to collect a DNA sample after an arrest, he explained. Other bits of material with traces of DNA on them, like cigarette butts or fabric, could work too. He inserted the cartridge into the machine and pressed a green button on its touch screen: “It’s that simple.” Ninety minutes later, the RapidHIT 200 would generate a DNA profile, check it against a database, and report on whether it found a match.

A scanner, quickly: The RapidHIT 200 can generate a DNA profile in about 90 minutes. IntegenX

The RapidHIT represents a major technological leap—testing a DNA sample in a forensics lab normally takes at least two days. This has government agencies very excited. The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the Justice Department funded the initial research for “rapid DNA” technology, and after just a year on the market, the $250,000 RapidHIT is already being used in a few states, as well as China, Russia, Australia, and countries in Africa and Europe.

“We’re not always aware of how it’s being used,” Schueren said. “All we can say is that it’s used to give an accurate identification of an individual.” Civil liberties advocates worry that rapid DNA will spur new efforts by the FBI and police to collect ordinary citizens’ genetic code.

The US government will soon test the machine in refugee camps in Turkey and possibly Thailand on families seeking asylum in the United States, according to Chris Miles, manager of the Department of Homeland Security’s biometrics program. “We have all these families that claim they are related, but we don’t have any way to verify that,” he says. Miles says that rapid DNA testing will be voluntary, though refusing a test could cause an asylum application to be rejected.

Miles also says that federal immigration officials are interested in using rapid DNA to curb trafficking by ensuring that children entering the country are related to the adults with them. Jeff Heimburger, the vice president of marketing at IntegenX, says the government has also inquired about using rapid DNA to screen green-card applicants. (An Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman said he was not aware that the agency was pursuing the technology.)

Meanwhile, police have started using rapid DNA in Arizona, Florida, and South Carolina. In August, sheriffs in Columbia, South Carolina, used a RapidHIT to nab an attempted murder suspect. The machine’s speed provides a major “investigative lead,” said Vince Figarelli, superintendent of the Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab, which is using a RapidHIT to compare DNA evidence from property crimes against the state’s database of 300,000 samples. Heimburger notes that the system can also prevent false arrests and wrongful convictions: “There is great value in finding out that somebody is not a suspect.”

But the technology is not a silver bullet for DNA evidence. The IntegenX executives brought up rape kits so often that it sounded like their product could make a serious dent in the backlog of half a million untested kits. Yet when I pressed Schueren on this, he conceded that the RapidHIT is not actually capable of processing rape kits since it can’t discern individual DNA in commingled bodily fluids.

Despite the new technology’s crime-solving potential, privacy advocates are wary of its spread. If rapid-DNA machines can be used in a refugee camp, “they can certainly be used in the back of a squad car,” says Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “I could see that happening in the future as the prices of these machines go down.”

Lynch is particularly concerned that law enforcement agencies will use the devices to scoop up and store ever more DNA profiles. Every state already has a forensic DNA database, and while these systems were initially set up to track convicted violent offenders, their collection thresholds have steadily broadened. Today, at least 28 include data from anyone arrested for certain felonies, even if they are not convicted; some store the DNA of people who have committed misdemeanors as well. The FBI’s National DNA Index System has more than 11 million profiles of offenders plus 2 million people who have been arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime.

For its part, Homeland Security will not hang onto refugees’ DNA records, insists Miles. (“They aren’t criminals,” he pointed out.) However, undocumented immigrants in custody may be required to provide DNA samples, which are put in the FBI’s database. Homeland Security documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation say there may even be a legal case for “mandating collection of DNA” from anyone granted legal status under a future immigration amnesty. (The documents also state that intelligence agencies and the military are interested in using rapid DNA to identify sex, race, and other factors the machines currently do not reveal.)

The FBI is the only federal agency allowed to keep a national DNA database. Currently, police must use a lab to upload genetic profiles to it. But that could change. The FBI’s website says it is eager to see rapid DNA in wide use and that it supports the “legislative changes necessary” to make that happen. IntegenX’s Heimburger says the FBI is almost finished working with members of Congress on a bill that would give “tens of thousands” of police stations rapid DNA machines that could search the FBI’s system and add arrestees’ profiles to it. (The RapitHIT is already designed to do this.) IntegenX has spent $70,000 lobbying the FBI, DHS, and Congress over the last two years.

The FBI declined to comment, and Heimburger wouldn’t say which lawmakers might sponsor the bill. But some have already given rapid DNA their blessing. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a former prosecutor who represents the district where IntegenX is based, says he’d like to see the technology “put to use quickly to help law enforcement”—while protecting civil liberties. In March, he and seven other Democratic members of Congress, including progressive stalwart Rep. Barbara Lee of California, urged the FBI to assess rapid DNA’s “viability for broad deployment” in police departments across the country.

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The FBI Is Very Excited About This Machine That Can Scan Your DNA in 90 Minutes

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