Free Republic

HONOLULU – President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered "red flags" and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. "There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security," Obama said. Senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities are now looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. They did not say how these communications with the suspect, Umar Farouk...

The importance of full disk encryption solutions for laptops and other digital media has been espoused a myriad of times by numerous security vendors like AlertBoot. WeÂ’ve all heard the stories regarding identity theft, and the importance of keeping Social Security Numbers safe. Then there are those unique stories that cause oneÂ’s jaws to slacken. Those unique, imaginative capers that remind me again and again why protecting data is no laughing matter. For example, SSNs could be used to build up your wealth two cents at a time. Wired.com is reporting that a man in California, Michael Largen, did exactly...

President Bush hoped to limit the political damage from the nomination of Bernard B. Kerik by cutting him loose as soon as he confessed he had not paid taxes for a Mexican nanny who apparently had been in the country illegally. Instead, questions about Bush's judgment have escalated because of a cascade of damaging details about Kerik's business and personal lives that White House vetters either missed or ignored... ...White House officials said they knew about many of the issues before the nomination but did not deem them disqualifying. In part, they were relying on the support of New York's...