Students, employees told to stay inside and secure doors
By The Associated Press
Updated: 08-4-2011 1:50 pm
BLACKSBURG, Va.
--
Virginia Tech was locked down Thursday when three children attending a summer camp said they saw a man holding what looked like a gun on the campus where a 2007 massacre left 33 people dead.
The university issued an alert on its website at 9:37 a.m. telling students and employees to stay inside and lock their doors. The alert also was posted on the school's Twitter account. The Roanoke Times reported that the university also sounded its emergency sirens and issued an emergency alert by phone and email.
The school posted an update on its website around 1 p.m., saying authorities were combing through buildings on campus. Classes were canceled for the day, and the school said searching the buildings would be a long process. A composite sketch was posted on the school's website.
Officials told students, employees and others on campus to stay indoors.
Several thousand students attending summer classes, as well as the school's 6,500 employees, were on campus when the alert was issued, said University spokesman Larry Hincker. Many of the school's 30,000 students are on summer break and will return when the fall semester begins Aug. 22.
Maddie Potter, a 19-year-old rising sophomore from Virginia Beach, said she was working on a class project inside Burchard Hall when a friend received a text message from the school at 9:41 a.m. Soon after, staff locked the doors and turned off the lights.
Potter, an interior design major, said she was still holed up in a wood shop inside the building Thursday afternoon. She said things had calmed down since the alert went out.
"I was pretty anxious. We had family friends who were up here when the shooting took place in 2007, so it was kind of surreal," she said. "I had my phone with me and I called both my parents."
Hincker said he was not certain when the lockdown might be lifted.
"That's the $64,000 question," he said. "You get this report of a sighting that someone might have had a weapon. Then you've got this one-square-mile campus, 150 major buildings with several million square feet of space to search."
The school's website was inundated throughout the morning, and school officials said they were bringing additional servers online to deal with the traffic.
The children told police they saw the man quickly walking toward the volleyball courts, carrying what might have been a handgun covered by some type of cloth. State and local police swarmed the area but said they could not find a gunman matching their description. The university said in a tweet posted just before noon that no other sightings had been reported but asked people to stay inside.
Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum said that the three children were interviewed, and that the information they gave was deemed credible.
The children who made the report were visiting the campus as part of a summer academic program for middle schoolers in Washington, Richard Tagle, CEO of the group Higher Achievement, said in an emailed statement. All the students who were with the group are safe, he said.
An alert on the school's website said the gunman was reported near Dietrick Hall, a three-story dining facility steps away from the dorm where the first shootings took place in the 2007 rampage.
"We're in a new era. Obviously this campus experienced something pretty terrible four years ago ... regardless of what your intuition and your experience as a public safety officer tells you, you are really forced to issue an alert, and that's where we believe we are right now," said Hincker, the Virginia Tech spokesman.
S. Daniel Carter, director of public policy for Security On Campus, a nonprofit organization that monitors how colleges react to emergencies, said it appeared Virginia Tech responded appropriately. Carter's organization had pressed for an investigation into the school's handling of the 2007 shootings.
"You have to take all of the reports seriously because you cannot take the risk that there's something serious going on and you failed to act," Carter said. "The key is the community was informed so they were able to take steps to protect themselves."
Carter said having various forms of notification - sirens and message boards in addition to text messages and e-mails - are important in instances like Thursday's, when many on campus are there for summer camps or otherwise not registered to receive alerts individually.
Last month, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion that said public university policies generally can prohibit people from openly carrying firearms in campus buildings and at events. However, such a policy would not apply to someone who had a valid concealed carry permit and carried a concealed firearm.
Federal authorities fined the school in March after ruling that administrators violated campus safety law by waiting too long to notify staff and students about a potential threat after two students were shot to death April 16, 2007, in West Ambler Johnston Hall, a dorm near the dining facility.
An email alert went out more than two hours later that day, about the time student Seung-Hui Cho was chaining shut the doors to a classroom building where he killed 30 more students and faculty and himself. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
The school's alert system also was activated in 2008, when an exploded cartridge from a nail gun produced sounds similar to gunfire near a campus dormitory. It was the first time the system was activated after the 2007 massacre. After the shootings, Virginia Tech started using text messages and other methods besides emails to warn students of danger.
In 2009, a woman was decapitated while having coffee with a fellow student in a campus cafe. Police said at the time that officers detained the suspect within minutes of being called. The school said it sent some 30,000 notifications by voicemail, email and text message, though they were not sent as emergency alerts because the suspect was already in custody.
On Thursday, officials said they were looking for a 6-foot-tall white man with light brown hair. Officials said the person was clean-shaven and wearing a blue and white striped shirt, gray shorts and brown sandals.
US to propose ammonium nitrate regulations
Program would require those who purchase, sell at least 25 pounds of chemical to register with feds
BY EILEEN SULLIVAN
Associated Press
Updated: 08-3-2011 1:45 pm
WASHINGTON
--
More than 15 years after a fertilizer bomb was used to blow up a government building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, the federal government is proposing to regulate the sale and transfer of the chemical ammonium nitrate.
The proposal comes nearly four years after Congress gave the Homeland Security Department the authority to develop a program to regulate the compound.
Ammonium nitrate is one of the most common farm fertilizers in the world, and instructions for turning it into a bomb are available on the Internet. Its deadly potential was once again realized on July 22, when a Norwegian man allegedly blew up a government building in his country, killing eight people with a bomb that investigators believe was made with ammonium nitrate.
On Tuesday, the Homeland Security Department's proposal was posted on the Federal Register website, and the public will have 120 days to comment.
As it's proposed, the "Ammonium Nitrate Security Program" would require those who purchase, sell or transfer at least 25 pounds of the chemical in the U.S. to register with the government so that they may be screened against U.S. terror watch lists, according to a homeland security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposal had not formally been published. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh used 4,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995.
"In today's ever-evolving threat environment, we must continually reinforce the security of substances, such as ammonium nitrate, which can be used for legitimate purposes or exploited by terrorists," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Tuesday.
The Homeland Security Department would give registration numbers to those who are approved to buy, sell or transfer ammonium nitrate. The registrants would also be required to keep records and report the theft or loss of the chemical within 24 hours of discovering it missing.
A number of countries, including Germany, Colombia, Ireland, the Philippines and China, have banned ammonium nitrate fertilizer. And some U.S. states started to regulate its use after the chemical was used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Last year, the Afghan government banned ammonium nitrate, as the chemical most often used in bombs targeting American soldiers in Afghanistan. Such "fertilizer bombs" have also been used in Iraq in attacks against government security forces.
In late 2007, Congress passed a law requiring the department to develop a regulation program. The department missed its 2008 deadline to publish a final rule, and instead that year, it posted an advance notice in the Federal Register that it would eventually post a proposal for regulating ammonium nitrate. The public had 120 days to comment then, as well. Among the concerns was that farmers who use fertilizer with ammonium nitrate don't have the computers or computer skills to adhere to the federal government's reporting requirements.
In a September 2010 letter to the top Republican on the House Homeland Security committee, Napolitano said the department held "listening sessions" with stakeholders and created a government task force for input into the regulation.
The department already requires that businesses storing certain dangerous or combustible chemicals, including ammonium nitrate, provide regular reports on the security of those materials. But those regulations are centered on the security of the facility and not the sale and transfers of the chemical.
The bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives already regulates explosive mixtures that include ammonium nitrate. The homeland security proposal is designed not to duplicate other federal efforts, the homeland security official said.
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, ATF partnered with the industry group, The Fertilizer Institute, and other members of the agriculture industry to launch a voluntary reporting program for people to report suspicious activities, including thefts of ammonium nitrate.
Studies were done to see whether the explosive properties of ammonium nitrate could be made inert, said Kathy Mathers, spokeswoman for the Fertilizer Institute. That was not possible, she said, and over the years it became clear that there needed to be a formal regulating program.
"At this point, it's necessary," Mathers said of the proposed regulation. "We're lined up with Congress and DHS on this one."
Hackers crash Missouri sheriffs' association website
Officers' Social Security numbers, usernames and passwords published
BY BRENNAN DAVID
Columbia Daily Tribune (Missouri)
Updated: 08-2-2011 2:21 pm
Computer hackers associated with an anti-security group called AntiSec have attacked the websites of at least 70 law enforcement agencies, including the Missouri Sheriffs' Association.
The attack disabled the association's website, and the hackers accessed and published the Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, usernames and passwords of scores of law enforcement officers in the state.
At least two current and one former Boone County Sheriff's Department employee had their Social Security numbers published. Other department members had their home addresses and personal email addresses published.
Brooks-Jeffery Marketing Inc. hosts the website for the Missouri Sheriffs' Association. A spokeswoman declined comment Monday afternoon.
Earlier Monday, Boone County Sheriff Dwayne Carey said he believed only "noncritical" information was accessed. Officials from the association were unavailable Monday morning because they were conducting a training seminar. Carey was attending the seminar.
Carey's published information included the sheriff's department address, his work email and work phone, and his username and password. His Social Security number was not listed.
AntiSec, which took responsibility for the attacks, opposes the computer security industry. AntiSec wrote that the attack is in response to recent arrests of members of another hacking group, Anonymous. The group demands prosecutors immediately drop all charges.
"To law enforcement: your bogus trumped-up charges against the Anonymous paypal LOIC attacks will not stick, nor will your intimidation tactics stop us from exposing your corruption. While many of the recent 'Anonymous' arrestees are completely innocent, there is no such thing as an innocent cop, and we will act accordingly," the group's website said.
AntiSec claims it extracted 10 gigabytes of private data from at least 70 websites. It claims to have acquired entire spools of email records from dozens of law enforcement agencies, passwords, Social Security numbers and home phone numbers and addresses of more than 7,000 officers. The group also claims to have found a list of hundreds of "snitches" who made anonymous crime tips to police and hundreds of internal police academy training files.
"In our fight for a world free from police, prisons and politicians, we will continue to expose their corruption and destroy their systems. Remember there are more of us than there are of them, and they can never stop us all," the group wrote on its website.
Copyright 2011 Columbia Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NYPD pioneers new dirty bomb detection system
Command center would monitor 2,000 mobile radiation detectors carried by police officers
BY TOM HAYS
Associated Press
Updated: 07-29-2011 9:57 am
NEW YORK
-- The New York Police Department is testing ground-breaking counterterror technology expected to dramatically increase its ability to detect and thwart a potential radiation attack, officials said Thursday.
The technology will allow a command center in lower Manhattan to monitor 2,000 mobile radiation detectors carried by officers each day around the city. The detectors will send a wireless, real-time alert if there's a reading signaling a dirty bomb threat.
The system already is being tested under the watch of federal authorities in hopes it can be perfected and used elsewhere.
"This is the first and only place you'll see it," said Jessica Tisch, an NYPD counterterrorism official. "It's been tested in the field. It works, and we're hoping to get (the wireless detectors) deployed in a few months."
A dirty bomb - intended to spread panic by using a small explosive to create a radioactive cloud in urban settings - has never been discovered or detonated in a U.S. terror plot. But law enforcement considers dirty bombs a serious threat because they're easy to build and because of intelligence that foreign terrorists want to use them against American cities.
The radiation detection system is being developed as part of a $200 million lower Manhattan security initiative. Police say the overall plan was inspired by the so-called "ring of steel" encircling the business district in London but is broader in scope and sophistication.
The initiative will rely largely on 3,000 closed-circuit security cameras carpeting the roughly 1.7 square miles south of Canal Street, the subway system and parts of midtown Manhattan. So far, about 1,800 cameras are up and running, with the rest expected to come on line by the end of the year.
In 2008, police began monitoring live feeds from the cameras round-the-clock at a high-tech command center in lower Manhattan, home to Wall Street, the new development at ground zero, and other sites needing heightened protection.
"We're talking about some of the most significant targets anywhere in the world," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Thursday.
The NYPD is using a single, high-bandwidth fiber optic network to connect all its cameras to a central computer system. It's also pioneering "video analytic" computer software designed to detect threats, like unattended bags, and retrieve stored images based on descriptions of terror or other criminal suspects.
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