The Americas Post - The new club is open but the US and Canada are not invited.

A newly formed Latin American and Caribbean organization has issued statements in support of Argentina’s claim to sovereignty over the British-ruled Falkland Islands and against U.S. sanctions on Cuba at the end of its first two-day summit.

However, the 33-member Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC, declined to engage in stronger anti-Western rhetoric as some had feared at a meeting hosted by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.  Instead, its 22 final declarations spoke in general terms of the need to combat global ills like price speculation, drugs, terrorism, nuclear arms and cruelty to migrants.

“I don’t think we’re exaggerating if we call it a historic day,” said Chavez, 57.  ”United in our differences, we must demand respect,” he told the assembly. “No more interference; we’ve had enough.”

For Chavez the summit achieved two goals: setting up a regional body without the United States, and allowing him to showcase his recovery from cancer treatment.  He and other left-wing leaders like Raul Castro of Cuba, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador say the hemisphere-wide Organization of American States (OAS)  is a tool of Washington.

Conservative-led nations like Colombia, Chile and Mexico were able to keep CELAC from appearing overly radical however, with relatively mild final declarations  and next year’s meeting set for Santiago, Chile.  And the communiques over the Falklands – or Malvinas islands as they are known in Argentina – and the U.S. embargo on Cuba were already standard positions within the region.

The final declaration backed Argentina’s “legitimate rights” and urged Britain to resume negotiations.

“The Argentine government has shown a permanently constructive attitude and willingness to reach, via negotiations, a peaceful and definitive solution to this anachronistic, colonial situation on American soil”, it stated.

On Cuba, CELAC, whose countries total almost 600 million in population and  about $6 trillion in GDP, urged Washington to respect U.N. votes and lift trade sanctions in place for decades against the communist government.

Chavez, who survived cancer surgery in June, presided over lengthy sessions and speeches, frequently intervening to add his own anecdotes and opinions.

He plans to run for re-election in 2012, and his opponents used the summit to mount some protests in an attempt to embarrass him in front of his Latin American counterparts.  Activists beat pots and pans around the city on Saturday night in a traditional “cacerolazo” demonstration. Some banners were also briefly unfurled over roads saying “Welcome to Crime City” – before police removed them.

Dr.Nasrullah Memon, Program Chair of EISIC 2011 in exclusive interview with TheAmericasPost.com

On the occasion of the EISIC (September 12-14,2011) held in Athens, we interviewed the Program Chair of the event Dr. Nasrullah Memon, professor at the University of Southern Denmark and member of the Steering Committee of the European Intelligence & Security Informatics Conference EISIC on Counterterrorism and Criminology. The event was organized jointly with The International Symposium on Open Source Intelligence and Web Mining (OSINT-WM 2011), and having as Academic Sponsors The University of Arizona, University of Southern Denmark,  and The Hellenic American University, as technical co-sponsor the IEEE Computer Society, as local organizer the Hellenic American University and SPRINGER as the Industry Sponsor.

During the interview, Dr. Memon gave details about EISIC (past, present and future plans) , how the Intelligence Community can take advantage of the Intelligence & Security Informatics discipline, the relationship between counterterrorism and computational criminology, the role of Higher Education, as well as differents kinds of Crime involving information and communication technologies. The privacy problem was also analized during the conversation.

Here is an excerpt of a very interesting interview with one of the world´s most brilliant minds in Defense, Counterterrorism and Security Informatics, Dr. Nasrullah Memon.

Dear Dr. Memon, could you please tell us what is EISIC 2011? Please elaborate on its creation, mission, objectives and members.

EISIC is the European chapter of Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) series of conferences. The conference is dynamic and allows academicians, researchers and practitioners to keep abreast of new tools and methodologies in the area of Intelligence Security and Informatics. It is also a venue that fosters networking opportunities for people working in this scientific area.

After my graduation (PhD Defense), Professor Hsinchun Chen, Director, Artificial Lab, University of Arizona, the founder of ISI series of conferences encouraged us to organize the European chapter of ISI. In this context, the first event was organized under the name of EUROISI 2008 at Esbjerg, Denmark.  That event was organized more as a workshop than a conference and it was not very well attended.

In September 2010, while Professor Hsinchun Chen visited University of Southern Denmark, we discussed how to re-organize the European chapter of ISI as an annual event in order to create a consortium involving academic researchers in information technologies, computer science, public policy, criminology, and social and behavior studies as well as local, national, and European law enforcement and intelligence experts, and information technology industry consultants and practitioners to support counterterrorism and national/international security missions of anticipation, interdiction, prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist acts. In other words the mission and objectives for the organization of EISIC series of conferences that came out from the discussions with Prof. Chen are to provide opportunities to establish a European network in the area of Intelligence and Security Informatics.

The organization of the conference was a very difficult task and we started working for the success of the event from September 2010 with the collaboration of Hellenic American University, University of Southern Denmark and University of Arizona. We formed a team from the above mentioned academic institutes and Hellenic American University accepted to host EISIC 2011 in Athens, Greece while University of Southern Denmark accepted to host EISIC 2012 in Odense, Denmark.  As per program chairs, Daniel Zeng and me invited around 100 researchers from academia and industry to work as program committee members. We received 111 submissions for EISIC 2011 and we accepted 27% of high quality papers as LONG papers based on the peer-review process.  The research articles were received from 41 countries from all sub-continents.

The founding members of EISIC 2011 are: Prof. Hsinchun Chen, Prof. George J. Hagerty, Professor Uffe Kock Wiil, Professor Triant Flouris, Dr. Panagiotis Karampelas and myself.

What is your assessment of the conference in Athens?

As per feedback from the audience we found it was a very successful event. The keynote speeches as well as the paper presentations were very well attended by the participants and there were a lot of positive comments on the quality of the presentations. There were also a lot of opportunities for networking between the participants and we witnessed several discussions about future collaborations between the participants. I would like to mention at this point that the host organization played a vital role in the success of the conference sponsoring the expenses of keynote speakers and finding alternatives of certain problems we faced because of unforeseen incidents such as strikes, etc.

What activities does EISIC plan to carry out in the near future?

We have a number of long and short term plans in the area of Intelligence and Security Informatics.  We have established the Counterterrorism Research Lab at University of Southern Denmark in October 2009.  Behind the lab there is a small group of researchers (around 10, one Professor, one Associate Professor and several PhD students) working in the area of ISI. We are publishing our research articles in the area in various conferences and journals and we try to establish connections with various law enforcement bodies and intelligence services providing them with our cutting edge technology and experience. Concerning EISIC, we plan to organize EISIC 2012 at our University at Odense on August 22-24, 2012. We also received a number of informal proposals for the organization of collocated events. As soon as we receive formal proposals, we’ll decide accordingly. We have also received informal proposals for the organization of EISIC 2013 and EISIC 2014 in Italy and Sweden respectively. The steering committee will decide as soon as we receive formal proposals for the organization of EISIC and related events in future.

In regard to the Intel discipline, where do you classify the Intelligence Security Informatics ISI? Is it a separate intelligence discipline in and of itself, or part of other intel disciplines like HUMINT, SIGINT, IMINT, etc.?

ISI is a discipline where INTEL disciplines could be benefited. Let us take an example; we are working on a research project (sponsored by the Faculty of Engineering, University of Southern Denmark): Developing an Early Warning System to predict Terrorist Threats. Mostly we use OSINT (Open Source Intelligence), but there is room for counterterrorism experts/INTEL to work. We do not have yet a formal collaboration with INTEL agencies, but I’m sure INTEL people could be benefited as well from ISI research.

What role does higher education play in ISI?

As this is a new inter-disciplinary area, higher education can play a vital role in encouraging students from Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Criminology, Computer Science, and Applied Mathematics to adopt research in the area of ISI in order to educate experts to help us in building a SAFE AND SECURE WORLD. It is also a need of the hour to train INTEL people with this emerging area of research.

What is the relationship between counter-terrorism and computational criminology?

Computational criminology like Countering terrorism is an emerging blend of criminology, anthropology, social computing, computer science and applied mathematics. Modern concerns about public safety and security include a focus on a range of events from less serious everyday crimes like shoplifting to personal violent crimes like homicide and ultimately terrorism. Underlying all of these events is a decision process or a chain of steps in target identification, steps that focus first on rough and vague decisions and move towards the precise plot. The fields of counterterrorism and computational criminology involves the use of computational power to identify: (1) crime patterns and emerging patterns; (2) crime generators and attractors; (3) terrorism, organized crime and gang social and spatial networks as well as co-offending networks; and, (4) cybercrime/cyber terrorism. Algorithms are developed using computational topology, hyper-graphs, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Knowledge Discovery and Data-mining (KDD), agent based simulations, dynamic information systems analysis and more for detecting organized crime and predicting terrorist threats.

The methods and models used for counter terrorism and computational criminology can provide information about pattern theory and identification. In short, we treat terrorism as an organized crime, and therefore, it would be possible to use some of the traditional methods to detect terrorism evidences, but also new models can be developed looking into the new type of terrorism of 21^st century.

What is cybercrime and what current challenges does it pose?

Crime involving information and communication technologies (ICT), for example:

·        ICT as an instrument, where ICT can be used as primary tool to commit the offence (Identity theft, Internet scams and Fraud-misappropriation of funds are some of the examples)

·        ICT as target, where ICT is the target of the offence (Hacking, Misuse of  ICT resources, Denial of service, Stealing information)

·        ICT as Ancillary Resource, where conventional crime can be assisted by ICT; in other words technology can be used to commit conventional crime or technology can be used to store information about crime (Fraud, Money laundering, etc., are known examples)

As the cybercrime has border-less and transnational reach, therefore, there is urgent need to establish competency in predictive cyber analysis and to develop trusted relationships to encourage information sharing among the INTEL agencies.  There are number of challenges in cybercrime, for example

·        Enforcing extraterritorial/ trans-border law enforcement activity

·        Many offences are never detected

·        Many detected offences are never reported

·        Difficult to quantify the offence

·        Difficult to “Police” the cyber space

·        Evidence can be intangible

·        Issuing warrant without knowledge of the precise location of data (evidence) can be problematic

·        Evidence can be destroyed during search

·        Encryption and other concealment technologies are available to offenders

·        Human rights and privacy issue, etc.

How can the right to individual privacy be balanced against the need for protection from cybercrime?

It is a very difficult question; I think security is more important than privacy of individual person in some cases.  But according to the laws of each country, the privacy problem should be dealt in treating with cyber criminals.

Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and our Publisher Victor Bjørgan during EISIC 2011, European Intelligence & Security Informatics Conference on Counterterrorism and Criminology.

On September 12th, and during the first day of the conference EISIC 2011 “European Intelligence & Security Informatics Conference, on Counterterrorism and Criminology,” the first keynote speech was given by the expert Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham Cyber ​​Security (BT) (*). The title of his presentation was “Data Mining for Malicious Code Detection and Security Applications”. Among the highlights of his academic dissertation BT defined the meaning of saying that data mining “is the process of posing queries and extracting patterns different from data using techniques”. About its use, she said the technology can be used in national security as well aganist cybercrime and security, like f.e. like to Prevent buildings, destroying critical infrastructure (power, telecom). Dr Thuraisingham said that also can Data Mining find out who the bad guys are, capable of carrying out those Terrorist Activities.
Defining Cyber ​​Security BT said it is a technology to Protect the computer and network systems due to Against Corruption last generation of malware like Trojan horses, worms and viruses, including the ultradangerous malware called RAMAL (Radioactive Adaptive Malware), as well as intrusion detection and auditing.

During the first part of the presentation, BT described her research (together with Prof Latifur Khan and students of the University of Texas) and said that some techniques like the Link Analysis technology can be used to trace the viruses to the perpetrators. Another technology called Classification can prevent future attacks depending on the data mining learned about the terrorists through emails and phone conversations. The technology can also separate between real threats and non threats at all, by reducing false positives and false negatives.

More into details of her speech, BT said that the researched techniques like the CFB Program can extract the code blocker malware from data, and make a control flow analysis. She also compared her System with another already in the market , the code blocker SigFree, and assured her system is better, performs better.   Her System can detect Malware that is evolving continuosly, even every milisecond, like the RAMAL (Radioactive Adaptive Malware). Currently, all last generation malware evolve continuosly and it is difficult to prevent for regular firewalls. Dr. Bhavani Thuraisimgham defined her anti RAMAL malware tech as the NCD Novel Class Detection, and the tool is the system based on NCD, the so called SNOD or SNODMAL).

Currently, the most advanced Malware goes undetected because a continuos change in behaviours , every milisecond, and the regular anti malware software can not keep up that speed.

BT assured that her SNOD hast the ability to detect new classes of malware and its changes. She used the SNODMAL, malware detector using SNOD.

She classified the Malware in two categories: Benign and Novel.

The usefullness of SNODMAL will extend to detect multiple novel malware classes and quarantine them.

Summarizing, BT also revealed that they are working to find the best way to detect where this malware attack comes from, and to be able to attribute the attack, where it come from with 100% certainty (to avoid false accusations). Several countries have been attacjed by these novel malware.

In regard to the privacy matter, BT affirmed that the extract of results of the data mining should be private, this is a legal matter, not only an ethical one.

Once her speech finalized and the round of questions ended, Dr. Bhavani Thuraisimgham met Victor Bjoergan , CEO of the U.S. based Global Security Services LLC,  also Publisher of TheAmericasPost.com and EuropeSecurityNews (this under construction). Both discussed the importance of developing these technologies, and its role anti Cybercrime and the strengthening of global security against terrorism.

(*) READ MORE ABOUT DR. BHAVANI THURAISINGHAM

(**) MORE ON DR.THURAISINGHAM

Interpol Summit in Montevideo against tech crime

During the inauguration in Montevideo, Uruguay of the XI International Conference of the Interpol Working Group on Technology Crime (including cybercrime) , the President of the Interpol Working Group Mr. Miguel Angel Justo (from Argentina) said that “the police of the countries of Latin America must bring their national legislation on tech crime to the conference, in order to increase cooperation to better cope with cybercrime”.
After inaugurating the 11th Meeting of the Working Group in Montevideo, the Principal of the Argentine Federal Police Mr. Justo also said that “the ongoing challenge is to achieve international cooperation against technology and Internet crime.”

“There is no technique that can advance in cybercrime without achieving  international cooperation, due to the dynamic nature of the Internet,” Police Chief Justo said, estimating  that “international cooperation is the only way to circumvent the difficulty of defining the jurisdictions in investigating a cyber crime of this type.”

The current state of cooperation “today may not be the ideal to which we aspire,” Mr. Justo admitted. “We think our countries should have a better legal and legislative framework to fight cybercrime, but to alleviate the shortcomings of law we are making efforts at the regional level within the framework of Interpol,” he added.

Justo explained that the nature of such crimes makes it difficult to apply traditional rules. For example, in most countries of the region Business Internet Service Providers BSIP are not required to store information for a specific period.

“When there is no obligation for them to store this information, we do not have the information necessary to conduct an investigation,” he said.

“This happens in most countries , and very few have legislated on the subject”, added Mr. Justo that “ at some point our countries are going to regulate this technology , so that we can do our police work, “he said.

From Wednesday until Friday in Montevideo, representatives of police research units of each country devoted to combating cybercrime will exchange information on new types of crime through the use of Internet and social networking and ways to combat them.

The participants and members of this Working Group include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Spain, France, Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Paraguay.

Janet Napolitano, Head of Homeland Security. Following U.S. trend to cuts in defense and security..?

The coming wave of U.S. defense budget cuts will apparently be followed by less spending on Homeland Security. Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. Government is spending near $75 Billion per year on U.S. Homeland Security. Whether the Spending Spree has been worthwhile is the subject of increasing debate, especially among U.S. liberals…READ MORE HERE ]]> http://www.theamericaspostes.com/3682/u-s-liberals-start-debating-on-budget-cuts-for-homeland-security/feed/ 0 http://www.theamericaspostes.com/3632/panama-and-el-salvador-agreed-intelligence-exchange-and-common-security-strategy-against-organized-crime/ http://www.theamericaspostes.com/3632/panama-and-el-salvador-agreed-intelligence-exchange-and-common-security-strategy-against-organized-crime/#comments Sun, 14 Aug 2011 14:10:10 +0000 Carbonero http://www.theamericaspostes.com/?p=3632 Panama and El Salvador agreed in sharing a security strategy that involves all countries in the region to tackle organized crime, reported the Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez after a meeting in Panama City.

“What we’ve decided is a regional strategy against organized crime , that respects no borders and, therefore, the answer has to be the union of all central american countries to fight crime,” said Martinez to reporters after signing with the Panamanian Foreign Minister, Juan Carlos Varela, a bilateral agreement.

Martinez said he is aware of a criminal phenomenon that has multiple origins and manifestations, so it must deal comprehensively with components of prevention, prosecution of crime and rehabilitation, as well as strengthening institutions that fight crime.

He explained that the agreement signed today creates a mechanism for sharing intelligence information, including the criminal history of people in particular, and coordinated patrols between countries that share borders.

Finally, the Panamanian Foreign Minister announced a meeting of vice presidents in the Central American region to be held in September in Panama, whose main purpose will be to promote a common security agenda.

Riots in London: Security Expert William Bratton was hired by the British Government

After the riots in England, a U.S. street crime expert has been hired by the Cameron government.

Prime Minister David Cameron (Conservative Party) has taken a hard line on rioting in statements this week after returning from his summer holiday and recalling parliament. He has also come under attack for austerity measures his government is introducing like cutting the amount of police officers and security budget, among other measures.

Cameron has criticized the police  for their handling of the riots. On the other hand , another conservative, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has said the riots weakened the case for those police cuts.

Cameron has said social and economic problems had little to do with the looting and violence which followed in which five people were killed, calling it “criminality pure and simple” and saying gang violence lay at its heart.

He enlisted U.S. street crime expert William Bratton on Friday to advise the government on handling it.

But some officers within the british police are not satisfied with Cameron´s decission of hiring an american expert.

“We do not need any lessons from the United States,” answered in today’s Independent newspaper  the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Hugh Orde.

William “Bill” Bratton, the new adviser, is a very successful police expert. He has been credited with curbing street crime as police chief in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, and Bratton said he would offer advice based on his experience tackling gangs. Bratton is not in favor of massive arrests to solve the gangs problem, and says to ABC news “arrest is certainly appropriate for the most violent, the incorrigible, but so much of it can be addressed in other ways and it’s not just a police issue, it is in fact a societal issue.”

A ComRes poll for The Independent newspaper showed 54 percent of Britons say Cameron failed to provide leadership early enough to control the riots.

Most offenders are unemployed young men, and the riots were the result of a build-up of frustration among young people growing up on grim housing estates with little hope.

There is a debate in the british society, and many are saying the police should have been tougher.

About Bill Bratton.

William Joseph “Bill” Bratton (64) is an American police officer who was the New York City Commissioner, the Chief of Police in Los Angeles and the Boston Police Commissioner.

Bratton started his career at Boston Police Department before becoming New York Police Comissioner in 1994. He designed the successful zero-tolerance policy which reduced petty and violent crime in New York. The city became one of the safest in the world, and the safest in the U.S.

After the 1992 Riots in Los Angeles, he moved to that city. He reformed the Los Angeles Police and crimes lowered.

Bratton’s policing policy is mainly the following:

a) any crime, does not matter how minor or petty crime it is, must be dealt with

b) tolerance to crime equals an increase in the crime rate

c) zero tolerance to crime is one of the solutions to gang crime and riots.

d) the police must be  ethnically diverse, and the force must be representative of the population and its ethnicity

e) the police must promote a strong relationship with the law-abiding population

f) fierce against police corruption

g) must be tough on gangs

h) and a strict no-tolerance of any kind of anti-social behaviour

Bratton was  offered an advisor role to the British government which he accepted in August 2011.

Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón is now working as adviser for the Mission to Support the Peace Process established by the OAS. Photograph Credit to Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

During a lecture under the XXIX Interdisciplinary Course on Human Rights which concluded on August 19th at the American Institute of Human Rights in Costa Rica, the Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón said that governments foster instability among citizens when politicians elaborate security policies without consulting the people. Garzón  called upon the american states to include the opinions and needs of more people, common citizens, in the elaboration of security policies.
For the lawyer and advisor to the International Court in Hague, the authorities act in secret and assume that  regular people do “not understand” their policy decisions.
Garzón thinks that “Citizens must participate in the design of those aspects or rules that affect them.”
For the jurist, one of his major concerns is that some governments postulate the safety of citizens, but continue to violate basic human rights.

Garzon gained worldwide fame for promoting an arrest warrant against former dictator Augusto Pinochet for the death and torture of Spanish citizens during his dictatorship. He also accused Pinochet of commiting crimes against humanity. Garzón has niow been suspended in Spain, due to his initiative to investigate the human rights situation during the Franco regime.
“What is the role of victims in the fight against organized crime,” he asked yesterday at the Institute headquarters in Los Yoses, San Pedro, Montes de Oca.  “Normally, no government takes into account what the victims claims during the design of security policies ,” ​​the judge responded to an audience that included senior officials and security minister, Mario Zamora, and the president of the Supreme Court Justice Luis Paulino Mora.
Garzón said that “we need citizen involvement to define the security agenda so that everything does not become a critique of the government in power because in the end is a matter of coresponsibility.”
During his speech of nearly an hour, Garzon said he was alarmed by the levels of “very serious” violence  that plague countries like Mexico and Colombia in the fight against drug trafficking. He said that violence has led criminal groups to bring their operations in the Isthmus, especially in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
In this regard, he considered that they are wrong who believe that the attacks by organized crime reach only members of rival groups in fight among themselves for power quotas or zones of influence.  “Anyone who thinks this makes a big mistake,” said Garzón.

Mudge (right) with Grandmaster Ratte' at DEF CON 14, August 2006

According to a report from CNN, a project manager in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – DARPA (the original developers of Internet)  has confirmed that the Defense Department will begin to fund hackers to help make systems more secure in the event of a new cyber attack.

Peiter Zatko , a well known hacker acting in the intricacies of the cyber space with the alias “Mudge” during the 90´s , worked for the private sector and other government agencies until 2011, but now Mudge is working for DARPA , and that is just the beginning of a program leaded by former hackers backed by the U.S., called the Fast Track Cyber.
Zatko or “Mudge”, said to the Defense Dept that the number of attacks will increase, even with the natural increase of investment in security systems. In 2000 there were 1,400 “incidents of malicious cyber activity,” but nine years later that number had increased to more than 71,000, he said.

There are many hackers who claim that their activities serve the public interest, since they help to notice flaws in the system whose existence is unknown. The logic used by these web security “experts” is clear: if they (hackers) can intrude without major problems, those who are looking for secret information or money, can also hack any current system.

“The current systems are unnecessarily complicated, which makes them more susceptible to a malicious intrusion” confessed Zatko.

The Government is now trying to change its policy with regard to security systems. More and more government agencies are trying to convert these “underground hackers” into experts working for Washington. A measure that is still being viewed with some suspicion by the hacker community, known for its codes and rules of its own and has always lived on the margins of society, both by choice and consequence. But change is already happening.

“I hope the old Mudge of 1999 will take a look at 2011 and say: Yes, my hair is hort now and I use cuflinks. But yes,  still faithful to the cause.”

This task is not impossible for the U.S. agencies.  It happened before.  Many of those agents who where recruited were liberals and idealists, with a profound sense of patriotism, and finally became among the best agents the U.S. ever had.  RETURN TO HOMEPAGE.

U.S. Coast Guard seized a semi submarine used in drug trafficking at sea.

Recently , the Colombian Coast Guard opened a course to 20 naval officers from 13 countries across the Americas, including U.S. Homeland Security.  The United States Coast Guard USCG sends two fluent Spanish-speaking junior officers to the course each year. The objective of the course was to enable joint strategies for combating the increasing threat of drug trafficking at sea, and transmit the colombian experience to other countries in the western hemisphere.

The course took place at the Colombian Naval Base in Cartagena de Indias and its International Maritime Interdiction Course Center.

“The two months of training was based on…READ MORE HERE.