Homeland Insecurity

[USAMomma]

..Specifically, those TSA people that screen your luggage.
TSA employees have been caught running robbery rings, enabling drug trade and just being strange.

Just read this and thought to share since, summer time coming up and many people will be traveling.

7 ways to keep your stuff safe when you fly

7 ways to keep your stuff safe when you fly - todaytravel - TODAY.com

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says, "Heck - dey can't even keep track of the ones dey know about...

DHS Can’t Account for 10 Libyan Men It Caught and Released Inside U.S.
Friday, April 22, 2011 - Even as President Barack Obama continued the U.S. military intervention in Libya’s civil war--with armed Predator drones beginning patrols over that North African country on Thursday--U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the division of the Department of Homeland Security responsible for enforcing immigration laws, could not account for 10 Libyan men it had caught and released inside the United States since July 2009.

After two weeks of inquiries about the Libyans from CNSNews.com, ICE finally responded on Thursday afternoon that it had already released to CNSNews.com all the information that was “available” on these Libyans and that the agency had “nothing more to add on the matter.” ICE describes itself as “the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the second largest investigative agency in the federal government.” It says its “primary mission is to promote homeland security and public safety through the criminal and civil enforcement of federal laws governing border control, customs, trade, and immigration.”

The information about the unaccounted-for Libyans derives from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that CNSNews.com filed with ICE on Dec. 1, 2010. This FOIA request asked for records about non-Mexican foreign nationals processed by ICE in fiscal years 2009 and 2010. On Jan. 28, 2011, ICE responded to the FOIA request by providing CNSNews.com with two Excel spreadsheets including information about 286,769 non-Mexican foreign nationals processed by the agency over the two years. One Excel spreadsheet contained information on 143,543 non-Mexican aliens processed by ICE in fiscal 2009, and another Excel spreadsheet contained information about 143,206 non-Mexican aliens processed by ICE in fiscal 2010.

The Excel spreadsheets did not include the names of the aliens, but did include eight columns of information about them. These columns included: 1) the “book in” date on which the alien had been detained, 2) the “book out” date on which the alien had been released from detention, 3) the ICE geographical “area of responsibility” in which the alien had been detained, 4) the alien’s "case status,” 5) the alien’s “case category,” 6) the alien’s date of birth, 7) the alien’s gender, and 8) the alien’s country of citizenship. In all 286,769 cases, ICE had redacted the unnamed alien’s date of birth from the version of the database released to CNSNews.com citing the (b)(6) and (b)(7)(C) exemptions under FOIA. As ICE explained in a letter to CNSNews.com, these exemptions allow the government to withhold information from a FOIA response if releasing it would be an “unwarranted invasion of privacy.”

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Feds Made $125 Billion in 'Improper Payments' in 2010--Enough To Fund State Department 11 Times Over
Friday, April 22, 2011 - - At a time of growing concern about government spending, the federal government made $125 billion in “improper payments” in fiscal 2010, more than eleven times the total 2010 spending by the U.S State Department.

The $125 billion in improper payments was also more than 7 times the total spending by the Justice Department or by NASA, which runs the U.S. space program, which is preparing to launch its last-ever shuttle flights. Federal agencies reported improper payments estimated at $125.4 billion in fiscal year 2010, an increase of $16.2 billion from the $109.2 billion estimate in fiscal 2009, the Government Accountability Office said. Ninety-four percent of those payments came from social spending programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, GAO said in its April 15 report.

According to the U.S. Treasury, total State Department spending was $11.017 billion in fiscal 2010--or less than 1/11th the amount the government made in improper spending. The Justice Department spent $16.6 billion during the year, and NASA spent $17.2 billion. The GAO defines improper payments as “overpayments, underpayments, and payments that were not adequately documented,” as well as fraud. It also noted that improper payments are not necessarily fraudulent, only that they represent instances where the government did not follow its own internal rules for spending taxpayers’ money.

The $125 billion in improper payments came from 70 different programs across 20 federal agencies. “This estimate represents about 5.5 percent of the $2.3 trillion of reported outlays for the related programs in fiscal year 2010,” GAO said. Ten programs accounted for 94 percent of all improper payments in 2010, led by Medicare, which reported $34.3 billion in improper payments – mainly because of medically unnecessary services and insufficient documentation. Viewed a different way, the estimated $34.3 billion in improper payments attributed to Medicare in fiscal 2010 nearly equals the $38.5 billion in budget cuts made by Republicans in 2011, the largest spending cut in history.

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