DHS\FEMA. Lessons Learned Info Sharing at LLIS.GOV

  

Below you'll find a list of new documents posted on LLIS.gov between 08/23/2012 and 08/30/2012 in your particular areas of interest. We continually add information that is relevant and interesting to you, so please login often to LLIS.gov and explore, share, and connect. EMERGENCY DISCIPLINES: Community Preparedness How to Develop a Family Reunion Plan Emergency Management Effective Emergency Management - A Closer Look at the Incident Command System Emergency Operations Framework: Resource and Utility Management Annex for the University of North Carolina Health Care System Swedish Civil Contingency Agency (MSB) Lessons Learned Process Federal Homeland Security Official Infogram: March 1, 2012 Information Security - Guide for Conducting Risk Assessments, NIST Special Publication 800-30, Revision 1 NASA Cybersecurity: Statement of Linda Y. Cureton, NASA Chief Information Officer before the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology Mass Care and Human Services 2011 Edwin I. Hatch Nuclear Plant REP Program Evaluated Exercise Menominee County Ice Storm Tabletop Exercise Final After Action Report/Improvement Plan Legend Lake Dam Failure Tabletop Exercise Final After Action Report/Improvement Plan Tornado Response of 2012: Johnson County, Kentucky, Health Department Executive Summary Report Pacific Panda Full Scale Exercise After Action Report Texas Hurricane Plan Attachment 12: Commodity Distribution Plan Mental Health 22 July Commission's Report on the Terrorist Attacks on Oslo and Utøya Island: Preliminary English Version of Selected Chapters Public Health Tornado Response of 2012: Johnson County, Kentucky, Health Department Executive Summary Report Texas Hurricane Plan Attachment 12: Commodity Distribution Plan FEATURED TOPICS: Lessons Learned Information Sharing Help@llis.dhs.gov   866-476-4827

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One Years Supply? Healthy Babies Coalition Launches Text4Baby Contest

National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition Launches Text4Baby Contest

In honor of Infant Mortality Awareness Month in September, Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition is announcing the text4baby 2012 Fall Sign-up Contest . Text4baby is a FREE, nationwide texting service delivering critical health and safety tips and resources to pregnant women and moms with babies under age one. During the contest period of September 1 through September 30, anyone who enrolls in text4baby will be entered to win a year's supply of Johnson's Baby products, courtesy of Johnson & Johnson, text4baby's Founding Sponsor. Moms can register online , via Facebook , or by texting BABY (or BEBE in Spanish) to 511-411. The Office of Minority Health is a partner of the text4Baby campaign.

THE RIGHT TO VOTE: PEOPLE WITH MENTAL DISABILITIES HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE!

Please distribute far and wide info below on voters with mental disabilities have the Right to Vote.  Thanks.

VOTE Tuesday, November 6, 2012

People with Mental Disabilities 

have the right to vote! 

Everyone needs to vote this year, on November 6;  including voters with mental disabilities.  Voters with mental disabilities should know their rights.  Knowing one’s rights will help make sure her/his can vote.  Information below tells lawyers and poll workers where to find the laws that protect the voting rights of individuals with mental disabilities.

You do have the right to vote!

§  If you are a person with a mental disability and understand what it means to vote, Federal law guarantees your right to vote. 

The law that gives you that right:  

                      The Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12132; 

                       Doe v. Rowe, 156 F.Supp.2d 35 (D.Me.2001).

You have the right to get help from a person YOU choose 

§  If you can’t read or need help voting because of your disability, you can have someone help you vote.

§  You can bring a friend, family member or someone else you trust. 

§  You can also ask the poll worker to help you if you didn’t bring anyone with you.

The law that gives you that right:  

                       The Voting Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. §§1973aa-6; 

                       The Americans with Disabilities Act, 42 U.S.C. § 12132

The law says EVERYONE gets to cast a ballot, so don’t leave without voting!

§  Even if someone says you cannot vote, the law says the poll worker must allow you to vote a Provisional Ballot.

§  Later, an election worker will determine whether you are qualified to vote. If you are, your vote will be counted.

The law that gives you that right:  

                         The Help America Vote Act, 42 U.S.C. § 15482

Addressing the issue of drugs, guns and child porn at Homeland Security

Aug26

on August 26th, 2012 at 8:00 am

By Aaron Mehta — Center for Public Integrity

The Department of Homeland Security is the first line of defense against threats to Amer­icans, entrusted with guarding the borders, protecting the skies and cracking down on potential terrorist attacks.

But instead of protecting America’s citizens, hundreds of DHS agents have been busy smug­gling drugs, guns and illegal immi­grants, obtaining child porn, and raking in thou­sands in bribes and theft.

Those are just a sampling of the crimes DHS agents committed, according to the “Summary of Signif­icant Inves­ti­ga­tions” released by Homeland Security’s Inspector General this month.

It was a busy 2011 for the IG’s office, which inves­ti­gated 1,389 alle­ga­tions that resulted in 318 arrests and 260 convic­tions. Fines and recovered funds saved more than $45 million in taxpayer funds, according to agency estimates.

DHS is a massive government agency, with “over 225,000” employees, so it may not be surprising that there would be some indi­viduals breaking the rules. But the seri­ousness of the crimes — including cases where American security was directly compro­mised by the very agents who are supposed to secure the borders and airports — is eye opening.

“A corrupt DHS employee may accept a bribe for allowing what appear to be simply undoc­u­mented aliens into the U.S. while unwit­tingly helping terrorists enter the country,” warned Charles Edwards, the acting inspector general (IG) at DHS, inCongres­sional testimony August 1. “Likewise, what seems to be drug contraband could be weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical or biological weapons or bomb-making materials.”

Among the more incen­diary crimes profiled in the report:

• Two TSA agents plead guilty in unre­lated cases of having child pornog­raphy in their possession. One was sentenced to 20 months in prison; the other received 132 months in jail.
• One border agent in Arizona phys­i­cally assaulted another agent before he “pulled his service weapon and pointed it at the victim’s head.” The agent served an unspec­ified amount of time in jail.
• While on duty and driving his government issued vehicle, a uniformed Immi­gration Enforcement officer was viewed buying crack cocaine in Arkansas. The agent received 60 days in prison and 60 months of probation
• A detention officer at an immi­gration holding facility was sentenced to 10 months in prison after forcing “noncon­sensual sexual contact” on an adult being detained at his facility.
• One TSA agent was arrested after he “he was observed chasing and threat­ening to kill a young Somali male.” At the time, the agent was carrying a pair of handguns. The agent, who had also assaulted an 82 year old Somali in 2010, became the second-ever conviction under the 2009 Matthew Shepard hate crimes act.

In all the above cases, the agents were relieved of duty.

While the largest percentage of cases came from FEMA agents — including a consultant who had to pay a nearly $3 million fine for settle a false claims suit and a contractor that billed the government almost $40,000 for a fake employee — many of the most dangerous cases involved agents from Customs and Border Protection.

“We take all alle­ga­tions of corruption very seri­ously,” David V. Aguilar, the acting commis­sioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said during an early August hearing. “While the number of corrupt indi­viduals within our ranks who have betrayed the trust of the American public and their peers is a fraction of one percent of our work­force, we continue to focus our efforts on rooting out this unac­ceptable and deplorable behavior.”

Cases involving border security agents were spread throughout the nation. In New York, an Immi­gration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent was discovered to be working with a drug cartel to rob other drug traf­fickers and sell their product. In Texas, a border agent allowed vehicles carrying “approx­i­mately 1,700 pounds of mari­juana through his inspection lane in exchange for approx­i­mately $10,000 in bribes.” And in Georgia, a border agent working at Hartsfield-Jackson Inter­na­tional Airport used his position to bypass security and carry drugs and weapons for the cartel.

One notable case involved a border protection officer who “provided drug traf­fickers with his work schedule and lane assign­ments, which they used to coor­dinate their smug­gling efforts through his inspection lane.” The agent received more than nine years in prison for his actions; his estranged wife, who also pleaded guilty to assisting the scheme, is on the run after not showing at a Texas courthouse.

Not all crimes are created equal, of course. A customs agent in Boston appar­ently let his inner fanboy get the better of him when he stole an immi­gration card filled out by astronaut Neil Armstrong at Logan airport before attempting to sell it through an auction ware­house. The agent was sentenced to 24 months of probation.

Edwards, the acting IG, testified that 2,527 DHS employees have been convicted of crimes since 2004. During this period, the grand majority (65 percent) of those crimes have come from FEMA employees, many of whom were involved in kick­backs with contractors or schemes to steal taxpayer funds. 15 percent of the crimes came from border protection agents, 6.5 percent came from immi­gration offi­cials, and over 5 percent was from TSA agents.

Unfor­tu­nately, DHS doesn’t seem to have licked the corruption problem. As of July 15, fiscal year 2012 has seen 146 convic­tions of agents. That number is guar­anteed to increase; last week, two border protection agents were convicted of smug­gling hundreds of people into the U.S. aboard Border Patrol vehicles.

http://galesburgplanet.com/posts/17583

YES! How Voter Suppression Could Swing the Election

It won’t be easy to protect our votes from being sidelined and stolen this year, but here are a few simple things we can do.

posted Aug 01, 2012by Greg Palast

Photo by KSIVey.

In more than 100 years, there has not been a single case of voter identity fraud in the state of Indiana. Yet, in 2008, 145,000 legitimate voters there were turned away from the polls because they could not produce the photo IDs acceptable to state officials on a crusade against “voter fraud.”

Approximately two out of three of those voters were black. Ten of them were black and white (nuns from the Sisters of the Holy Cross). One nun, aged 98, had given up her driver’s license as had her “younger” sisters.

If someone steals your wallet, you don’t take the rest of  your money and throw it in the street. If someone steals your vote, don’t just hand them the next one.

Now, 16 states have passed voter ID laws similar to Indiana’s. The story is that legislators are trying to stop an epidemic of people voting under false names or casting the ballots of dead people. But nobody’s come up with more than a tiny handful of cases where that’s happened. Taking away the votes of hundreds of thousands of people to stop one or two fake votes is like killing a flea with a shotgun.

Moreover, no fewer than 68,029 Indiana citizens, and 488,136 voters nationwide, had their absentee ballots thrown out on nutty technicalities like using the wrong size envelope or crossing out a bubble instead of filling it in.

In all, my fellow investigator, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and I found that more than 5.9 million citizens were wrongly barred from voting or having their ballots counted in 2008.

Nonetheless, Indiana, birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan, was won by a black man, Barack Obama, despite the massive number of votes tossed and voters turned away.

That happened because in Indiana, and nationwide, a massive turnout of African-American voters and record registration of young voters—both groups that are hugely affected by voter ID laws—overcame efforts to block votes.

Because of all the attacks on voting I’ve reported, I’ve been asked, “Why bother? If they’re going to steal my vote, then why should I vote at all?”

The answer is, “That’s what the thieves want you to say.” If someone steals your wallet, you don’t take the rest of  your money and throw it in the street. If someone steals your vote, don’t just hand them the next one.

It won’t be easy to protect our votes this year—estimates say the new restrictions could again disenfranchise as many as 6 million people. But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. protected the votes of African-Americans when voting while black meant risking your life. Our task in 2012 is far easier.

First and foremost, check your voting status. Think you’re registered to vote? Check again. Under new federal laws, secretaries of state have eliminated 22 million voters from the registries in the past two years. Check online right now. 

How To Ask Candidates Questions
That Make a Difference
Tips for spreading your ideas without getting the runaround.

Do you live in a state with new ID laws? Find out what ID you need, and figure out a way to get it. It may not be easy—but that’s the point. They’re hoping that people will just throw up their hands—and throw away their votes. Do you vote at one address and register a car at another? That’s asking for trouble. Have you added your middle initial to your signature? Well, don’t.

Read the instructions on your absentee or mail-in ballot. If they tell you to fill in a bubble, don’t cross it out. If they say to use a pencil, don’t use a pen. It may seem like trivial stuff, but it killed almost half a million votes last time.

The people who don’t want your vote to count are counting on you to give up easily. Don’t do it. We can work to fix the laws after the election. But right now, the most important thing is to find out what rules are in place and make sure you follow them.

Get informed—then get going. Voting is for We the People, not Them the Ballot Bandits.

---

Greg Palast wrote this article for It's Your Body, the Fall 2012 issue of YES! Magazine. Greg is a widely published investigative reporter and author of several books. His latest, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, a look at the role of big money in the current election, features comics by Ted Rall. BallotBandits.org

Interested?

• Can't Buy My Vote: Maine’s Fight for Fair Elections
  For more than a decade, a groundbreaking Clean Elections law has helped protect Maine politics from the influence of big money. But what’s happening now that big spenders have free rein to influence elections—and what does it mean for the rest of the country?
• An Oregon Experiment in Citizen Governance
  A new law that puts voters in charge of breaking through political spin could be a first step in making policy decisions that work.
• What Would Real Voting Reform Look Like?
  We have to do more than block bad laws. We need real voting reform to expand the franchise for the 21st century.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/its-your-body/how-voter-suppression-could-swing-the-election?utm_source=august12&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=titleVoterSuppressionSwingElection

Voting Rights Advocates

‘A Lot Is At Stake’: Voting Rights Advocates Gear Up For Huge 2012 Battle

Image of Election Protection (EP) Volunteers at EP Command Center in DC

August 21, 2012, 6:00 AM 696

WASHINGTON — Two blocks from the White House, in a conference room on the fourth floor of a nondescript office building, voting rights advocates are fighting on the front line of the voting wars.
Welcome to the headquarters of Election Protection, a program run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and a multitude of civil rights organizations that seeks to combat the wave of restrictive voting laws that have swept state legislatures in the past few years.

“I was here in 2000 when the debacle happened in Florida. That really led to civil rights groups coming together and saying we have to have a paradigm shift in the way that we view elections,” Barbara R. Arnwine, President & Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law told TPM in an interview at their office, which doubles as headquarters for the Election Protection’s hotline number.

“Our normal modus operandi was to always wait until after the election and then to bring lawsuits or whatever challenges were appropriate after that time. But for the first time we realized that voter suppression was being used as a tactic to really drive down the participation of African-Americans in that instance,” she said.

“We couldn’t wait until after the election, we had to do preventative election protection, and that’s how the whole concept originated,” Arnwine said. “The landscape has shifted on us, and we had to acknowledge that we had to shift our tactics.”

The Election Protection coalition consists of about 60 groups and partnerships with countless others. One key feature: a hotline that provides Americans with “comprehensive voter information and advice on how they can make sure their vote is counted.” A new addition this year: a SmartPhone application that Election Protection hopes will create countless advocates who sign up their friends.

Calls to Election Protection’s hotline have provided plaintiffs to groups filing suit against over various changes to voting laws, including at least one plaintiff in the suit against Pennsylvania’s voter ID law.
Eric Marshall, the co-leader of Election Protection, said groups that oppose voter ID have an uphill battle, with polls indicating public support for voter ID laws.

“We have to start changing the nature of the conversation, get out the fact that these laws are like cutting off your ankle to cure the flu,” Marshall said.

“I think this is a margins game for the right,” Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote, told TPM. “They’re out there with very expensive ads, they’re playing to win, and this is just one prong of a multi-pronged strategy.”

With all of the new elections laws that are hitting his cycle, Marshall said Election Protection looks at a number of factors when deploying resources to various states.

“It’s a civil rights organization, so we care about particularly communities of color but also historically disenfranchised voters — language minorities, people with disabilities, and so on,” Marshall said. “So we tend to focus on areas with high concentrations of those voters and a history of problems. We want to make sure that we’re having the greatest impact.”

But the competitiveness of a particular race does factor into their calculations, Marshall said.
“Where there are highly-competitive elections, there’s higher turnout,” Marshall said.

“There are traditional battleground states like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania that we work in, but there are states like Georgia, California, New York that aren’t necessarily, and there are states like North Carolina that we’ve worked in historically that are now considered to be battleground states,” Marshall said, adding that the group was especially active in about 20 states.

Arnwine noted that Election Protection worked recent Republican primaries, including Florida’s primary. She said the wide variety of threats to voting rights this year has made the Election Protection coalition very strong.
“The biggest barrier I see, the biggest headache and fight that we’re going to have is pure voter education — poor voters are going to be just so confused,” Arnwine said.

“I think the interactions are the best I’ve ever seen them, because everybody feels the weight of the threat of disaster that could really be a consequence of this voter suppression effort if it is successful,” Arnwine said.
Still, they could use more funding.

“I don’t think there’s a group out there that will say we’re at our ideal budgets,” Arnwine said. “I think it’s always frustrating that the non-partisan efforts are the last funded and the least funded, and that is always annoying.”

Arnwine said she’s frustrated when Democrats ask her why the group is “wasting time” in Mississippi or Georgia by spending resources in states that aren’t in play in November.

“People think only political. Well, peoples’ rights are being abridged in those states. African-Americans are being targeted in those states,” Arnwine said. “We’re not here to elect anyone into office, we’re here to make sure every voter has an opportunity to cast a ballot and have it counted. That is our role.”

Marshall said he believes the program can be on par with their efforts in 2008. They will raise somewhere in the $2 million to do the program and leverage about $30 million in pro bono legal representation.

“It could be devastating for years to come, decades to come. If it succeeds, those who are promoting voter suppression will only feel more embolden — they will feel like this is the best tactic — and for those who are harmed by those tactics, they will feel ‘well, why vote.’” Arnwine said. “So a lot is at stake here.”

Voter ID, Voter Identification, Voter Registration, Voter suppression, Voting, Voting Rights Act, voter fraud, voter intimidation, voting

Eric Marshall

Manager of Legal Mobilization

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

1401 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 400

Washington, DC 20005

emarshall@lawyerscommittee.org

http://www.lawyerscommittee.org

Insider Threat Awareness Virtual Roundtable. September 14, 2012

 

TO:                              Federal Senior Leadership Council

Sector Coordinating Councils

Government Coordinating Councils

Critical Infrastructure Cross-Sector Council

State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Government Coordinating Council

Regional Consortium Coordinating Council

                                   

FROM:                        National Protection and Programs Directorate / Office of Infrastructure Protection

SUBJECT:                  Insider Threat Awareness Virtual Roundtable

DISTRIBUTION:      Intended for Widest Distribution to Critical Infrastructure Partners

                                   

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Protection and Programs Directorate/Office of Infrastructure Protection is hosting a live, 60-minute virtual roundtable designed to increase awareness of and the ability to respond to insider threats.

What: Insider Threat Awareness Virtual Roundtable

Date: presented live Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Time: 2:00 – 3:00 pm (EDT)

Location: Please visit INSIDER THREAT to register

Registration closes September 14, 2012.

To help you prepare for the possibility of an insider threat, the Insider Threat Awareness Virtual Roundtable will raise awareness of common characteristics and indicators of insider threats and help you to understand:

·         What malicious insiders are and how they impact organizations;

·         What an organization can do to deter and detect insider threats; and

·         What defense and response strategies are available to mitigate the insider threat.

This free, online interactive session will include video, commentary by security experts, a question-and-answer session, and additional resources.

The target audience for this virtual roundtable is security staff, private sector owners and operators, government agencies and organizations, and employees from all industries.

If you are interested in participating in this event, please visit INSIDER THREAT to register.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone who may benefit from this presentation. 

A limited number of phone lines will be available for participants, so please plan to listen online using either your computer’s speakers or headphones.

For additional information pertaining to this event, please email insiderthreatawareness@dhs.gov.