An Ignoble Experiment

2. DHS financial management modernization on 'aggressive' schedule, says Fulgham

The pace at which cyber attacks transpire has posed a challenge to efforts to combat them, top Obama administration officials said during a Senate hearing Nov. 14.

For cyber threats that demand a response from more than one agency, too much time spent coordinating can be a liability.

"When you're doing a La Cosa Nostra investigation, you can de-conflict by calling each other or setting up a meeting for next Wednesday," FBI Director James Comey said before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. "When the threat is moving at 186,000 miles per second, as a photon does on the Internet, there's no time to make that phone call."

The National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, which includes representatives from 19 agencies, has helped speed up coordination, Comey said. "The advantage of this, the genius of this, is the FBI and a DHS person are sitting next to each other."

The bureau has also embedded its agents within police departments in the Netherlands, Ukraine, Romania, Estonia and elsewhere to improve coordination.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Rand Beers, who also appeared at the hearing, said the pace of cyber attacks was a key reason for Congress to pass legislation to encourage the private sector to share information on cyber threats.

Companies can be slow to share information about intrusions or vulnerabilities out of concerns that doing so will create liabilities or damage their reputation.

Beers said legislation could create an environment where companies "are more willing to share that information instead of having a long conversation between lawyers."

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (webcast and prepared testimonies available)

Read more about: cybersecurity, FBI
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By David Perera

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3. Officials defending TSA behavior detection: Israel, Australia do it too

A Homeland Security Department plan to complete an incremental, component-by-component modernization of financial management systems by fiscal 2018 is under a tight schedule, said Chip Fulgham, the department's acting chief financial officer.

"I'll be the first to admit that the schedule is aggressive," said Fulgham, while testifying Nov. 15 before the House Homeland Security subcommittee on oversight and management efficiency.

He said his greatest concern is funding for the effort. In the fiscal 2014 budget proposal, components collectively asked for nearly $30 million for financial system modernization, Fulgham said, adding that while appropriations committees have been supportive, uncertainty about fiscal 2014 funding casts doubt on whether DHS will receive the money.

The department adopted a decentralized approach toward financial system modernization following the May 2011 cancelation of an attempt to implement a centralized system, the second time that DHS found failure in a financial systems project, having previously canceled a predecessor effort in 2006.

The new approach is at the early planning stage, says the Government Accountability Office in a September report released publicly days before the hearing. DHS is following some project management best practices, auditors say, but are lacking in others--such as transition planning and in describing in detail how the component financial systems will operate in the future.

Financial reporting at DHS still requires substantial manual intervention, the GAO says in the report, and in the most recently completed audit, auditing firm KPMG found five material weaknesses.

Nonetheless the fiscal 2012 audit was the first in which DHS was able to obtain a qualified opinion on its financial statements, Fulgham noted. That year, "approximately 90 percent of DHS' $87.2 billion in assets and liabilities were auditable, which is an increase from 63 percent in 2009," he said.

Departmental officials hope to achieve an unqualified opinion on the fiscal 2013 financial statements, and are working toward a goal of achieving full assurance over the effectiveness of internal controls by fiscal 2016, he added.

Along the way, new weaknesses in internal controls could be uncovered, since the current lack of assurance over internal controls means that future audits could find previously unknown flaws, warned Asif Kahn, director of financial management and assurance at the GAO.

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (prepared testimony and archived webcast available)
- download the GAO report, GAO-13-561 (.pdf)

Read more about: House Homeland Security, GAO report
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By Zach Rausnitz

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4. Higher issuance of border crossing cards due to more travel, cyclical issuance period

In the wake of a report calling the Transportation Security Administration's behavior detection program unscientific, defenders of the program pointed to similar efforts in other countries as confirmation of its value.

"It is worth noting that a number of other governments...have developed and deployed behavior detection screening protocols. I have personally toured the facilities and received briefings on the use of behavior detection in Australia and Israel," said Daniel Gerstein, the acting head of the Homeland Security Department's Science and Technology Directorate. S&T has supported TSA's behavior detection program, called Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques.

Canada, the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland also use behavior detection for airport screening, Gerstein said during a Nov. 14 hearing held by a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the full committee, called himself "a fan" of behavior detection and also cited Israel's use the practice.

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office concluded that SPOT has no proven basis in science. Behavior detection techniques are, at best, little better than chance at actually detecting malicious intent, auditors found.

Other countries' use of behavior detection did not appear to persuade Stephen Lord, GAO's director for homeland security and justice issues. At the hearing, Lord said that one foreign country that uses behavior detection found it to be ineffective, though he could not name the country for security reasons.

As for Israel's behavior detection program, "there's as many dissimilarities as similarities in their system" in comparison to TSA's, Lord said. Israeli personnel are allowed to racially profile, for example.

Israel's air travel system is also much smaller in scale, with only one major international airport and far fewer passengers overall than in the United States. That allows airport security to interview every passenger.

If TSA tried to replicate that, "the entire system would come screeching to a halt," Lord said.

Lord also criticized TSA for deploying the SPOT program at the same time that it was evaluating its effectiveness. That evaluation is still ongoing today, even as the program has cost $900 million since it began in fiscal 2007.

"Typically, you validate a concept first, then deploy," he said. "TSA chose--which, they're free to choose--a strategy which I deem higher risk."

For more:
- go to the hearing webpage (webcast and prepared testimonies available)

Read more about: House Homeland Security, TSA
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By Ryan McDermott

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5. Government requests for Google user data keep rising

The State Department issued significantly more border crossing cards in the last few years due to the recovery of travel to U.S. that had dropped after the Sept. 11 attacks and a cyclical issuance period that recently ended, Edward Ramotowski State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Visa Services told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subcommittee on national security Nov. 14.

Border crossing cards are being issued at a rate of 300,000 more per year under President Obama than they were under President Bush, with the State Department issued 1.3 million border crossing cards in fiscal year 2013.

The cards, which remain valid for 10 years, allow Mexicans limited entry into the United States for visits to border areas for a set amount of time. Applicants for border crossing cards must demonstrate that they have ties to Mexico to compel them to return after a temporary stay in the United States, Ramotowski said at the hearing.

The demand for the border crossing cards tend to be cyclical, Ramotowski said, responding to questions by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) about the rise in cards issued under Obama.

"When you come to the end of a 10 year period, a larger group of applicants are renewing their cards," Ramotowski said.

Tourism has rebounded as well, which accounts for more border crossing cards being issued, he said.

"Travel demand to the United States has been increasing," Ramotowski said. "Demand dropped drastically after the 9/11 attacks, and it's now recovering."

Both Democrats and Republicans chided the Homeland Security Department for delaying release of statistics on overstay rates for border crossing card holders.

Woods said DHS will publish the 2012 overstay rates at the end of the year and that the 2013 statistics will follow or be published in conjunction with the 2012 report. Woods also said the delay in answers was due to a lengthy clearance process.

For more:
- go to the hearing page (webcast and prepared testimony available)

Read more about: DHS, Mexico
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By Zach Rausnitz

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