Obama requests $600 million for border security

The president's emergency funding request would pay for more Border Patrol agents, drones, National Guard troops and more.

By Peter Nicholas

June 22, 2010

Reporting from Washington and Los Angeles

The Obama administration formally asked Congress on Tuesday for $600 million in emergency funds to hire another 1,000 Border Patrol agents, acquire two drones and enhance security along the Southwest border.

The money would also pay for an additional 160 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and extra Border Patrol canine teams, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- San Francisco), President Obama said his request "responds to urgent and essential needs" and asked that it be considered an emergency.

"These amendments would support efforts to secure the Southwest border and enhance federal border protection, law enforcement and counter-narcotics activities," Obama wrote.

The president's request also would provide money for extra FBI task forces, Drug Enforcement Administration agents, prosecutors and immigration judges. The 1,000 extra Border Patrol agents would amount to a 5% staffing increase. The patrol has doubled in size since 2004, to 20,000.

Some of the money would go to help Mexican authorities, such as with ballistic and DNA analysis, the White House official said. Border states are concerned that violence from Mexico's drug war will spill into the United States.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who met with Obama last month after signing a law making it a state crime to be in the country illegally, has called her state "the gateway to America for drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping and crime." She has blamed the federal government for failing to secure the border and has lobbied for stepped-up law enforcement resources and unmanned aircraft.

In March, Arizona rancher Robert Krentz was shot to death on his property, a crime authorities suspect happened in an encounter with a drug smuggling scout.  

The president's proposal includes 1,200 National Guard troops to boost border security, which the administration announced last month. He said then that he would ask for an additional $500 million.

Tuesday's formal funding request includes another $100 million that would be redirected from a different Homeland Security Department program. That money would be used to repair fences and improve infrastructure along the border, the official said.

Homeland Security Department officials refused to comment about the border initiative Tuesday night.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is scheduled to discuss the new strategy Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. She is to be joined by National Drug Control Policy Director Gil Kerlikowske, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton and Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-border-patrol-20100623,0,4307114,print.story

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Alleged Jamaican drug lord is captured

Acting on a tip, police find Christopher 'Dudus' Coke disguised as a woman. Coke was also wanted in the U.S., and the hunt for him provoked violence last month that left 76 people dead.

By Rasbert Turner and Chris Kraul, Special to The Times

June 22, 2010

Reporting from Kingston, Jamaica, and Bogota,

Ending a monthlong search that cost 76 people their lives, Jamaican authorities on Tuesday captured Christopher "Dudus" Coke, 42, an alleged trafficker in guns and drugs who is also wanted in the United States.

Acting on a tip, police captured Coke in St. Catherine Parish on the outskirts of Kingston. He was dressed like a woman and wearing a wig, police said.

Coke was in the company of the Rev. Al Miller, who earlier had mediated the surrender of Coke's brother Leighton to police. Coke was on his way to surrender at the U.S. Embassy in Kingston when he was stopped at a police checkpoint, Miller told a Reuters reporter.

"The police searched the vehicle that I was in, and they recognized him and held him," Miller said.

Police said they are now seeking to arrest Miller, who was not detained with Coke and remains at large.

The capture occurred two days after police offered a $5-million reward for information leading to Coke's arrest.

"I knew when they offered so much money, he would not be allowed to remain at large too long," a vendor in downtown Kingston said.

U.S. authorities initially requested the extradition of Coke in August after he was indicted in New York on drug- and gun-smuggling charges. Although he first declined to execute an arrest order, Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding finally launched an operation to capture Coke last month in the Tivoli Gardens slum, which is Coke's power base.

Authorities met with resistance from Coke's gang members, and 73 civilians and three security force members died in gun battles. More than 900 suspects were arrested and held in the National Arena for several days.

Golding's reluctance to arrest Coke had raised suspicions that the leader was protecting him, and the deadly manhunt nearly cost Golding his job. Opponents, including former Prime Minister Edward Seaga, urged Golding to resign, and he narrowly survived a no-confidence vote in Jamaica's Parliament on June 1.

The case has led to scrutiny of the close relations between some Jamaican politicians and so-called dons, or neighborhood ward bosses, of whom Coke was the most powerful. As the Caribbean became a major drug-trafficking route in recent years, U.S. authorities say, some dons, allegedly including Coke, became involved in the narcotics trade and other illegal activities, with some accruing more power and wealth than their former political patrons.

Coke allegedly was the leader of the so-called Shower Posse, the most powerful Jamaican drug-smuggling gang, with members in New York and other American cities along the East Coast.

Coke's father is a former Shower Posse boss who was burned to death in jail in 1992 before he could be extradited.

A state of emergency and curfew is still in effect for much of Kingston, and the U.S. State Department has issued a travel advisory for the capital and environs.

Special correspondent Turner reported from Kingston and special correspondent Kraul from Bogota.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-jamaica-arrest-20100623,0,1053291,print.story

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Mexico asks court to reject Arizona immigration law

Mexico on Tuesday asked a federal court in Arizona to declare the state's new immigration law unconstitutional, arguing that the country's own interests and its citizens' rights were at stake.

Lawyers for Mexico on Tuesday submitted a legal brief in support of one of five lawsuits challenging the law. The law will take effect June 29 unless implementation is blocked by a court.

The law generally requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there's a “reasonable suspicion” they're in the country illegally. It also makes being in Arizona illegally a misdemeanor, and it prohibits seeking day-labor work along the state's streets.

Citing “grave concerns,” Mexico said its interest in having predictable, consistent relations with the United States shouldn't be frustrated by one U.S. state.

Mexico also said it had a legitimate interest in defending its citizens' rights and that the law would lead to racial profiling, hinder trade and tourism and strain the countries' work on combating drug trafficking and related violence.

“Mexican citizens will be afraid to visit Arizona for work or pleasure out of concern that they will be subject to unlawful police scrutiny and detention,” the brief said.

It will be up to a U.S. District Court judge to decide whether to accept the brief, along with similar ones submitted by various U.S. organizations.

A spokesman for Gov. Jan Brewer did not immediately return a call for comment on Mexico's brief. Brewer, who signed the law on April 23 and changes to it on April 30, has lawyers defending it in court.

Brewer and other supporters of the bill say the law is intended to pressure illegal immigrants to leave the United States. They contend it is a necessary response to federal inaction over what they say is a porous border and social problems caused by illegal immigration. They also argue that it has protections against racial profiling.

Mexican officials previously had voiced opposition to the Arizona law, with President Felipe Calderón saying June 8 that the law “opens a Pandora's box of the worst abuses in the history of humanity” by promoting racial profiling and potentially leading to an authoritarian society.

Calderón voiced similar criticism of the law during a May visit to Washington.

U.S. officials have said the Obama administration has serious concerns about the law and may challenge it in court. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently went further by saying a lawsuit was planned.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/06/mexico-asks-court-to-reject-arizona-immigration-law.html

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From the New York Times

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Census Reports It Has Reached Almost All Households

As of Tuesday, 98 percent of the 47 million households that had failed to return their census questionnaires had been contacted by a census worker.

Metropolitan New York was among the regions with the lowest completion rates, with 94 percent of questionnaires turned in; an area in Mississippi was the least complete local census office, with about 88 percent, Robert M. Groves , the Census Bureau director, said in an interview.

Despite fears of hostility toward the federal government, incidents involving census workers have been relatively few. Since April, in the course of knocking on 47 million doors an average of two times, the bureau has logged 430 on-the-job incidents against enumerators, including 13 cases where shots were fired (one man was killed in Baltimore) and 139 cases where a weapon was pulled. Ten workers were robbed, one was bitten by a duck and another by a rooster.

“I don't see a pattern,” Mr. Groves said. “The assaults are not all ideological, but there is a group where the respondents articulated a hatred of the federal government.”

Presaging 2010 census results, Texas accounted for much of the nation's urban growth in the year ending July 1, 2009, according to census data released Tuesday.

Four Texas cities — San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston and Austin — were among the nine cities in the nation with the biggest numerical gains in population during the year beginning July 1, 2008. Over the period since 2005, Houston has led every other American city in growth and, with three other Texas cities, accounted for four of the six cities in the country with the greatest population gains.

Frisco, Tex., north of Dallas, grew by 6.2 percent to 102,000 since 2008, the fastest rate of any city with more than 100,000 people in the country. Since the start of the decade, Frisco expanded from 33,000 people, an average annual growth rate of 204 percent, also the nation's highest.

“The rise of Texas cities can be attributed to their relative immunity to the housing bubble burst and later recession that plagued other parts of the Sun Belt, the continued draw of immigrants and their mix of both new and old economy industries,” said William H. Frey, a Brookings Institution demographer.

Detroit continued its decline, but by fewer than 2,000 to 910,920 since the year before, compared with 951,000 when the decade began, holding up better than some had expected .

New Orleans continued its comeback, growing by more than 18,000 in a single year to nearly 355,000, but still well below its nearly 455,000 before the city was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Most of the fastest-growing cities were in Texas, North Carolina, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, although the recession appeared to have dampened the pace of that growth. Traditional magnets for retirees and job-seekers lost some of their attraction.

Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Buffalo registered declines, but Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Francisco; Indianapolis; Columbus, Ohio; Boston; and Washington recorded gains. New York City grew by 45,000 people to 8,391,881, a growth rate of only 0.5 percent, but the largest one-year numerical gain of any city in the country.

Chicago recorded its highest growth rate this decade as did Denver, Seattle and Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23census.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print

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Cutting Off the Unemployed

It was bad enough when the Senate left town for a long Memorial Day break without passing a bill to extend expiring unemployment benefits. It's worse now.

Back in session for nearly three weeks, the Senate still has not acted. That means that 900,000 jobless workers have already lost their benefits, a number that will swell to an estimated 1.6 million people if an extension is not passed by the July Fourth holiday. Lost benefits — the average check is $309 a week — deprives struggling Americans of cash they need for buying food, paying the rent or mortgage and other essentials.

All indications are that when the Senate finally does pass a bill, it will be stingy and cynical — hacking away at jobless benefits and fiscal aid to cash-strapped states, while preserving tax breaks for the wealthy and other well-connected political donors.

The problem, as always, is getting 60 votes to overcome hurdles imposed by the Republican minority. But Republicans aren't the only culprits here.

Passage was delayed last week as several Democratic senators — including John Kerry of Massachusetts, Mark Warner of Virginia and Maria Cantwell of Washington — worked to water down a provision in the bill that would have largely closed an unfair loophole that benefits rich fund managers in investment partnerships. Unfortunately, the senators seem to have won that fight.

This has led to even more maneuvering. Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican of Maine, is now trying to eliminate another tax provision in the bill. The provision, which would raise roughly $9 billion over 10 years, would stop owners of some small corporations from overpaying themselves in profits and underpaying themselves in salary to lessen their payroll taxes.

At the same time, many lawmakers — mostly Republicans, but not all — are claiming that extending jobless benefits and aid to states is simply too costly. That may sound like good politics, but it is very bad economics. If the government fails to keep spending when the economy is weak, especially on core safety-net issues, it will only worsen unemployment and impede the chances of recovery.

Neither basic economics nor basic decency seems to matter. To win votes for passage, the Democratic leadership has agreed to drop the extra $25 a week that was added to unemployment benefits last year as part of the stimulus package. That would cut $6 billion from the roughly $40 billion it would cost to extend benefits through November. Senate leaders also are considering sizable cuts to the bill's proposed $24 billion aid package for the states.

It's unclear if even those cutbacks will be enough to win passage. What is clear is that unemployment is high, the safety net is frayed and the Senate has other priorities than helping struggling Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/opinion/23wed2.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

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From the White House

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Bringing Relief to Americans

When President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in March he ushered in a new day for every American family that has seen its wages and dreams eroded by a health care system that worked for the insurance companies' bottom line — and at the expense of regular people.

To me, reforming America's health care system has always been about re-empowering America's workers and putting consumers back in charge of their health coverage and care.

Today, I joined with my colleagues at HHS and Treasury in announcing new regulations to do just that by stopping insurance companies from limiting the care you need and removing the bureaucratic barriers between you and your doctor.

Beginning this fall -- just six months after the Affordable Care Act was enacted -- new regulations will put an end to some of the most egregious practices. These rules:

• Put an end to pre-existing condition exclusions for children under age 19 for all group health plans and new individual market policies;
  
  
• Stop insurers from arbitrarily rescinding coverage except in cases involving fraud or an intentional misrepresentation of material facts for all plans;
  
  
• Prohibit the use of lifetime limits in all policies issued or renewed after September 23, 2010;
  
  
• Phase out the use of annual dollar limits over the next three years for most plans;
  
  
• Allow consumers to designate any available participating primary care provider as their primary care provider for all new plans;
  
  
• End the practice of charging higher out-of-pocket costs for  services that are obtained out of a plan's network emergency for all new plans.

Together, this new Patient's Bill of Rights , will bring immediate relief to many Americans and provide peace of mind to millions more who are only one illness or accident away from medical and financial chaos.

For too long, many small business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs have been priced out of adequate health care coverage. The provisions announced today provide these engines of economic growth with more choices in care, greater value for the money, and the confidence that comes with both.

Hilda Solis is the Secretary of Labor

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/06/22/bringing-relief-americans

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From the Department of Homeland Security

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Obama Administration Announces Multi-Agency Effort to Enhance Intellectual Property Protection

Release Date: June 22, 2010

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

Highlights DHS' Efforts to Combat Counterfeiting and Piracy Crimes

Washington, D.C.—Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano today joined Vice President Joe Biden to announce the Obama administration's Joint Strategic Plan for Intellectual Property (IPR) Enforcement—a multi-agency effort to enhance intellectual property protection by strengthening efforts to combat civil and criminal violations of trademark and copyright infringement.

“The products of American ingenuity—from life-saving medicines and vaccines to state of the art technologies—fuel our nation's progress and economy,” said Secretary Napolitano. “DHS is committed to disrupting and dismantling the criminal organizations that promote counterfeiting and piracy that threaten the livelihoods of American businesses and workers.”

The full plan, available  here  calls for improved communication between law enforcement and rights holders, industry, and international partners and the general public; enhanced international and domestic IPR cooperation; close collaboration with the importing community to find effective, cooperative solutions; dedicating resources to building and improving data collection for enforcement of IPR laws; a secure supply chain and improved data collection—and will utilize the IPR resources currently employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and the U.S. Secret Service.

The ICE-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center) brings together key federal agencies including ICE, CBP, the Department of Commerce, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command Major Procurement Fraud Unit, the General Service Administration Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office, the Government of Mexico Tax & Revenue Service, and works closely with the Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section to combat IPR violations that endanger the public health and safety, threaten our economic stability, and impact the competitiveness of U.S. industry.

Since the beginning of 2010, the IPR Center's efforts have resulted in 166 criminal arrests, 56 indictments, 34 convictions and 1,078 seizures valued at more than $358 million.

CBP also plays a vital role in IPR enforcement—focusing on improving risk analysis to target and interdict shipments of fake goods while facilitating the flow of legitimate trade; identifying and disrupting business practices linked to importing counterfeit goods; working with IPR holders to protect their rights; and collaborating with other government agencies, foreign customs administrations and international organizations to strengthen IPR enforcement around the world.

The Secret Service is responsible for investigating violations of laws relating to counterfeiting of obligations and securities of the United States, including access device fraud, financial institution fraud, identity theft, computer fraud; and computer-based attacks on our nation's financial, banking and critical infrastructure.

For more information, visit www.dhs.gov .

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/pr_1277230118250.shtm

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Remarks by Secretary Napolitano at American Constitution Society National Convention

June 21, 2010

Washington, D.C.
American Constitution Society

Secretary Napolitano: Well, thank you. Thank you, Judy, for that introduction. As she said, we have known each other for quite a long time, a friend who I greatly admire and whose friendship I greatly value.

And I want to thank the American Constitution Society for inviting me this afternoon. I especially appreciate the opportunity to speak here because I notice that the title of the conference, “The Constitution, Congress, and the Courts,” conspicuously leaves out one branch of government. That would be my branch, the Executive Branch. And it seems to me that a discussion of the Executive Branch is essential to any discussion of the Constitution because the Executive Branch is where the direct responsibilities of governing are met every day and where many important constitutional issues play out in myriad and in complicated ways.

Indeed, often these constitutional questions arise because someone in an agency far away from the General Counsel's office or the Secretary's office made a decision or adopted a policy with neither the time nor the background to fully consider all of the issues that become evident perhaps only in hindsight. And you know, it's not the decisions I know about that typically cause me to lose sleep. The decisions I don't know about, on the other hand, can be real insomnia-inducers.

The importance of the Executive Branch in our constitutional system is fundamental and profound, and it must constantly be balanced with the prerogatives of the Congress and the judiciary. Over the past year and a half, one of the most important roles of the legal community has been to work with this administration to make sure that the proper balance between competing interests and values is embraced. And as we move forward, we must create a better way of relating our national security to our national values, including personal privacy as well as the core civil rights and civil liberties expressly defined in our Constitution.

Too often, the effort to get to the right balance, especially where a national security question is raised, is portrayed as the same kind of ideological tug of war that we see too often in politics, where you need to be either on one side or the other. And it's not that simple. In truth, we need to protect both our national security and our national values. They are, in fact, intertwined. And while this task is oftentimes hard, there is no more important set of issues. And it is the Executive Branch that deals with these issues on a daily basis.

We frequently hear about a simple inverse relationship between security and liberty. If one is up, the other must be down. If one is embraced, the other must be sacrificed. I say that this is, to use the legal term, baloney.

[Applause]

The description doesn't do justice to the relationship between security and other values, especially in a world of fast-moving and fast-changing threats. Security is interrelated with our core values, and among the aspects of the homeland that must be made secure are our fundamental rights and freedoms. And security itself is a fundamental value. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, places security of person alongside life and liberty as a foundational right. And within the Constitution itself, we find these values interrelated. The preamble states that we must “ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense,” as well as secure the blessings of liberty for the American people.

So there is a simple fact underlying this dynamic: One cannot live free if one lives in fear because people are more able to exercise their freedoms if they feel safe. But the need to be safe, the need to be free from fear should not be used, as it sometimes has been, to justify policies or actions that ignore our rights. It does not mean that our efforts to secure civil rights, liberties, and privacy must be partially rooted in the need to secure our nation.

Here's the truth, and here's the way I look at it. We can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances. At the same time, there are situations where tradeoffs are inevitable. And what results from this? Well, sometimes there are decisions I make that are relatively straightforward. Sometimes there are decisions where striking the right balance requires a lot of careful thought and planning.

Let me give you three examples of areas where we face these kinds of decisions in the Department today. The examples reflect the weighing process that must occur with so many of our initiatives.

The first example is this administration's effort to expand the use of advanced imaging technology at our nation's airports. Now, this gets to the heart of a clear vulnerability in aviation security, as we saw during the attempted bombing on Christmas Day. The reality is simple: al Qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation, and they are attempting to use explosive materials that do not contain metal, and therefore cannot be detected by magnetometers.

This means that we need improved technology to secure the safety of passengers on board planes. AIT is an objectively better technology because it can pinpoint anomalies on a person's body, such as nonmetallic weapons and explosives, as well as other dangerous materials. And the courts have clearly recognized the permissibility of security measures like AITs because they fall within the category of a special need or administrative search.

The Supreme Court has not had the occasion to rule on airport screening. But the Circuit Court precedent is clear. Since the 1970s, case law establishes that airport searches are constitutional if they are done for the right reasons – to detect the presence of threats to airplane safety – and if they are done in the right way – no more intrusively than necessary to accomplish the security purpose.

In one of the earliest of these cases, U.S. v. Davis , the Ninth Circuit upheld airport screening, provided that the screening process was no extensive nor intensive than necessary, in the light of current technology, to detect the presence of weapons or explosives. Now, weapons and explosives have become harder to detect. AIT is a tool that can help detect them. It's reasonably fast and it is noninvasive. This makes AIT an essential security technology.

But it's also one that has raised privacy and civil rights/civil liberties concerns, and DHS, the Department, has worked to accommodate these concerns through a number of steps. We started by asking for help. We consulted with privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties advocates about how to build in protections which were present and are now present in the technology and in our operating policies.

First, the transportation security officer who asks the passenger to walk through an AIT machine never sees the passenger's image. Next, another security officer in a walled-off location, off to the side in the airport, views the black-and-white chalk-like image generated by the technology. And once that officer reviews the image and resolves any anomalies, the image is immediately deleted. None of the machines can store this data because DHS requires the manufacturers to disable the function before the machines can be placed in airports. With AIT, there are no identifiers and there are no records being made.

Next, TSA employees are prohibited from bringing any kind of device capable of capturing an image, like a camera or a cell phone, into any area where images are being shown. And finally, going through an AIT machine is optional. Signs advise travelers of this, and anyone can request a pat-down inspection accompanied by going through a magnetometer. And these are carried out by a person of the same gender and in private if a traveler so requests. All of these things, combined together, are designed to make sure we can use an objectively better technology, but in such a fashion that respects and embraces privacy and other rights.

A second area where we are achieving this balance is how we determine which travelers should receive what kinds of searches before they board a plane en route to the United States. It is critically important that we prevent dangerous people, including those with known connections to terrorism or terrorist groups, from boarding flights to the United States. At the same time, we should be careful of casting the net wider than necessary.

That is why, following the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day, we issued a new security directive for all air carriers with international flights to the United States, based on real time threat-based intelligence. But first, what we had to do was a somewhat cruder measure, and that is that we had to identify all passengers who come through or had any part of their itinerary that had gone through 14 countries. It was the so-called 14-country list. That, obviously, was not acceptable.

What we did was we developed, in consultation with the intelligence community and others, a new system, where we received information from the intelligence community and we write directives or rules about places, about tactics and techniques, that inform our law enforcement measures or officers at airports located abroad. That way, when we are screening abroad, we are screening based on a scenario that is intelligence-based rather than country-based.

In an ideal world, we would actually have the personal identity of a traveler. But we often don't. So we have to use intelligence, and use it in a targeted, specific way to make sure that we increase the security level of air flight and minimize the risk to our passengers. That is one of the ways that we have been able to work, using our offices of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties, to achieve the appropriate balance. And the rules that we devise are regularly reviewed to make sure that they match the scope of the intelligence we receive so that we now have a system where intelligence is received, rules are crafted, rules are deployed, rules are constantly reviewed, a better system, a more effective system for all involved.

A third example I'd like to raise is one that is extremely complicated. But it is the need to secure our nation against violent extremism here at home. Put another way, we need to prevent terrorist attacks that are conceived, plotted, and carried out by United States citizens on United States soil. Yet in so doing, the legal and constitutional questions are numerous and complex.

We have seen greater mobilization by violent extremists of people who are either U.S. citizens or are legal residents. Indeed, there is now active recruitment of U.S. citizens or legal residents by al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. There are cases like that of David Headley, the U.S. citizen who helped do some preparatory work for the Mumbai attacks in 2008; or cases like that of Najibullah Zazi, the legal permanent U.S. resident who was arrested last year for planning terrorist bombings in the New York City area.

This not only presents a new challenge to the security system that our country set up post-9/11, but it recognizes that while we have focused on targeting threats coming from beyond our borders and from non-citizens, there are new legal and constitutional questions being raised because there is a new type and form of recruitment being used.

At the base of this, at the base of homegrown terrorism, is the problem of violent extremist ideology, something that at this point we are only beginning to understand from a psychological or sociological perspective. The fact is, the First Amendment protects radical opinions. But we need the legal tools to do things like monitor the recruitment of terrorists via the internet. And when young people are being targeted by terrorist recruits, we must view their communities as partners in solving that problem and in addressing threats to the country, not as parts of the problem.

We have begun important work with many communities across the country. The focus is on preventing violent crime and leveraging successful models like community policing. We seek to collaborate with organizations already working to build strong, capable communities. And finally, we look to educate communities about the evolving threats and what they can do to counter them.

Examples like these, the ones I've just stated, demonstrate how the Department of Homeland Security, and the Executive Branch as a whole are approaching the relationship between our national security and our national values. Today's threats are growing and changing so quickly that we must constantly take action. At the same time, it is essential that we place a priority on preserving and protecting our national values. This is what is happening at the Department.

As I mentioned, we have a Privacy Office, and an Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. They are both active participants in formulating policies before policies are implemented. We do not attempt to shoehorn these considerations into policies after the fact. We consider them critical priorities from the beginning. These offices are robust. They're fully integrated in the decision-making process at the Department. They're each led by lawyers who are nationally respected leaders in their fields. So the Privacy and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Offices aren't merely attempts at tokenism. Instead, they are at the table throughout the policy-making process.

These are the things that have to be debated and embraced within the Executive itself, not just within the courts or at the Congress.

The American people should know that their safety and security comes first. That's what my Department focuses on every day and every week throughout the year. We face a determined set of adversaries who are constantly evolving. The threats we face today are not the ones we are used to.

So in light of the ever-changing threat environment, we also need to evolve. We need to evolve in a way that puts to rest the old dichotomy that pits security against our other values. We need to evolve in a way that recognizes a more complex and dynamic relationships, where we search hard for solutions in which rights and security can work in tandem. The threats we face are very unpredictable, but we can predict one thing, that securing ourselves against them will often present us with challenges and difficult decisions.

I hope that the American Constitution Society can help foster a greater recognition in the public's view of the Constitution that we need careful calibration between both our security and our other national values. We must take both seriously. And we need to realize that this is not an impossible task. Rather, it is a calling, a calling that our nation must heed.

If we hold fast to our guiding principles, we will continue to make progress in securing our country. And while it is not possible to provide 100 percent guarantees against every threat, we can cultivate an American ethic of strength and resiliency in the face of challenge. And this, ultimately, is how we will further the security of the country, and how we will safeguard the values that have made us the great nation that we are, and how we marginalize the politics of fear.

I view this as my charge as the Secretary of Homeland Security. And this is why the Executive Branch must be an essential part of any constitutional discussion in the years to come.

Thank you for having me here today.

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/speeches/sp_1277158211019.shtm

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From the Department of Justice

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As part of the Obama Administration's launch of the first-ever Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement, Attorney General Eric Holder today emphasized the Department of Justice's ongoing commitment to protecting U.S. intellectual property as central to America's economic prosperity and public safety.

“The Department worked closely with Administration officials to develop key aspects of this strategic plan to better protect our nation's ability to remain at the forefront of technological advancement, business development and job creation,” said Attorney General Holder. “The Department, along with its federal, state and local partners, is confronting this threat with a strong and coordinated response at home and abroad to ensure American entrepreneurs and businesses continue to develop, innovate and create.”

Attorney General Holder joined Vice President Joe Biden, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Department of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk, and Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) Victoria Espinel at the White House earlier today to announce the strategic plan.

“The integrity of health and safety products and trade secrets must be protected. The FBI is committed to pursuing those groups and individuals who steal, manufacture, distribute or otherwise profit from intellectual property theft,” said Gordon M. Snow, Assistant Director of the FBI's Cyber Division.  

The components of the strategic plan that the Department will assist in implementing include:

• Ensuring efficiency and coordination among enforcement efforts across federal, state and local levels, domestically and overseas, through means such as shared information, streamlined investigatory processes and training efforts;
  
  
• Enhancing international enforcement efforts, including combating foreign-based web sites that violate American intellectual property rights by encouraging further cooperation and coordination with our trading partners in overseas markets, including China; 
  
  
• Securing our supply chain to stop illegal products from coming into the country by providing law enforcement with authorities it needs and by fostering cooperation with the private sector to reduce infringement on the Internet and elsewhere.

The strategic plan is the latest effort in the Department's ongoing initiative to protect intellectual property. Others include:

Department Task Force on Intellectual Property

Earlier this year, the Attorney General formed a new Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property to focus on strengthening efforts to protect intellectual property rights through close coordination with state and local law enforcement partners as well as international counterparts. As part of its mission, the task force, chaired by the Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler, will also work together with the IPEC and other key partners to implement the Administration-wide strategic plan on intellectual property.

As part of its efforts to enhance coordination with its federal, state and local law enforcement partners, the task force is hosting joint sessions in the coming months. In July, the task force will be holding a joint workshop with Customs and Border Protection. In September, the Department, in partnership with the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), will hold a one-day Intellectual Property Crime Enforcement Outreach Summit in California for state and local law enforcement to learn and understand the impact of intellectual property crime on the local, regional, and national economy. In addition, the Department will emphasize the substantial health and safety risks to Americans from counterfeit goods and products .

The task force includes representatives from the offices of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and the Associate Attorney General; the Criminal Division; the Civil Division; the Antitrust Division; the Office of Legal Policy; the Office of Justice Programs; the Attorney General's Advisory Committee; the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and the FBI.

Increased Intellectual Property Enforcement Resources

As part of stepped up enforcement efforts, the Department has also devoted more resources to investigate and prosecute intellectual property crimes. In April, the Department announced the appointment of 15 new Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) positions and 20 FBI Special Agents to be dedicated to combating domestic and international intellectual property crimes.

These new AUSAs will be working closely with the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) to aggressively pursue high tech crime, including computer crime and intellectual property offenses. The new positions are located in California, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington. These new positions will be part of the Department's Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) program.

Just last month, the Department solicited applications for grant funding under the Department's Intellectual Property Enforcement Program, which is administered by the Department's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and its Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). Under this program, OJP/BJA will award up to $4 million in competitive grants to fund state, local and tribal criminal investigations, prosecutions, and prevention and education efforts.

Enhanced Intellectual Property Enforcement Efforts

As part of its enforcement strategy, the Department has been aggressively targeting intellectual property criminals. The Department has successfully prosecuted cases in every area of intellectual property crime including health and safety, trade secret theft and economic espionage, large-scale counterfeiting and online piracy. These prosecutions include one of the largest counterfeiting cases in U.S. history ( United States v. Lam http://www.cybercrime.gov/lamGuilty.pdf ). During FY 2010, the FBI opened 150 new investigations, including 21 counterfeit health and safety investigations and 26 investigations involving theft of trade secret cases.  Additionally, the FBI also opened 40 new Economic Espionage investigations during the same time period.

Industry and International Engagement

The Department has also taken steps to strengthen its relationships with key stakeholders in the fight against intellectual property crimes around the world by meeting with foreign law enforcement partners as well as leaders in the industry.

In the past several months, the Attorney General has met with foreign law enforcement officials from South America and Spain, industry CEOs and others to discuss the Department's ongoing efforts and emphasize the need for greater coordination and cooperation in the fight against intellectual property crime.

Read the Strategic Plan here .

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/June/10-ag-722.html

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From ICE

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Los Angeles shop owners plead guilty to selling Chinese-made counterfeit designer jewelry containing hazardous lead levels

LOS ANGELES - The owners of a downtown Los Angeles jewelry store pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into allegations they illegally imported and sold counterfeit designer costume jewelry, some of which tested positive for hazardous levels of lead.

Il Keun Oh, aka James Ken Oh, 57, and his wife Jacqueline Oh, 55, owners of Elegance Fashion Mart on East Olympic Blvd., and her brother, Joon Yeop Kim, 47, a manager at the store, appeared in U.S. District Court Monday. The three pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of introducing and delivering a hazardous substance.

The defendants, who face a maximum penalty of more than five years in prison, are scheduled to be sentenced October 18.

The hazardous substance charge was lodged after lab tests showed some of the counterfeit jewelry seized in the case contained nearly 20 times the amount of lead deemed safe by the Consumer Product Safety Commission for handling by children. Despite that, the items were labeled as "lead free."

"To people who think designer knockoffs are a harmless way to beat the system and get a great deal - buyer beware," said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for ICE in Los Angeles. "Part of what you're paying for when you buy established brands, regardless of the product, is quality control. As this case shows, when you purchase counterfeit items, you can easily get something you hadn't bargained for, something that could put you and those around you at risk."

Monday's pleas are the culmination of an ICE investigation that began in 2007 when the agency received a tip that the Oh's jewelry store, which operated as both a retail and wholesale business, was selling counterfeit designer merchandise. During the course of the investigation, ICE agents seized more than 25,000 counterfeit pieces of jewelry and accessories ranging from necklaces, rings and bracelets to watches, hair ornaments and cell phone charms. The goods were manufactured in Qingdao, China.

The fakes featured nearly a dozen well-known designer brands, including Tiffany and Co., Bvlgari, Louis Vuitton, Baby Phat, Chanel, Tous, Bebe, Christian Dior,Van Cleef and Arpels, Hello Kitty and Juicy Couture. Had the seized products been genuine, they would have had an estimated retail value of more than $18 million.

Sales records recovered during an execution of a search warrant at the business in April 2008 indicated the defendants were distributing counterfeit items to merchants in at least four other states - Texas, Florida, Georgia and Illinois. Eight months after the execution of that warrant, the three were indicted by a federal grand jury on 28-felony counts, including smuggling, trafficking in counterfeit goods and money laundering.

ICE received assistance with the investigation from U.S. Customs and Border Protection; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of the Inspector General; and Investigative Consultants, a Los Angeles-area private investigative company that specializes in intellectual property investigations.

In fiscal year 2009, ICE launched more than 1,400 investigations into intellectual property rights violations. Those investigations resulted in 164 indictments and 203 convictions, as well as the seizure of more than $62 million in counterfeit merchandise.

For more information, visit www.ice.gov .

http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/1006/100621losangeles.htm

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