Private security guards blocked a local television reporter's access to workers cleaning up oil from a local public beach last Friday, directly contradicting claims from BP that it has not restricted media access to the ongoing clean-up operation.

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A theft ring is successfully preying on the key-card culture of Northern Virginia by tailgating into office buildings and stealing things from unoccupied offices, reports Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic.

This, however, doesn't only pose an access-control and antitheft problem, according to Ambinder: it presents ...

Drug and illegal alien smuggling. Bribes. Kickbacks. Possession of child pornography. Attempted child sex abuse. These are just some of the crimes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees and contractors were convicted of in fiscal year 2009, according to a report (.pdf) released today from the department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG).

A public-private report released last week weighed the risks associated with coordinated cyber and physical attacks, pandemic diseases, and high-altitude nuclear bomb detonations on North America's power system and how government and the electric sector can join forces to keep the lights on when the improbable occurs. 

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