Security Tidbits

Various humanitarian security topics of note, as the year wraps up...

A Chad court convicted six French aid workers (Zoe's Ark) of kidnapping and has sentenced them to eight years of hard labor. While it seems likely international pressure will either reduce the sentences or transfer imprisonment to France, the court ruling does send a strong accountability message to the humanitarian community.

Chrispin writes in with a link to a nice security manual published by the New Zealand government. Entitled Security in Government Sectors, even though the manual isn't NGO-specific, it's quite comprehensive and has a lot of good information that can be applied outside government circles. Definitely worth a bookmark.

A belated pointer to humanitarian adviser (and frequent commenter to NGO Security Scenario posts) Kevin Toomer's blog. His Web site and blog have been up and running for awhile now, and feature a variety of humanitarian-security content.

Security Tidbits

Humanitarian security news from around the world...

In addition to rubber bullets, tear gas, and pepper spray, NGO security practitioners should be aware of a new, hi-tech crowd control device. Authorities in Georgia (the country, not the U.S. state) are now using non-lethal sound weapons against protesters. This technology has been recently used by ships against pirates, but this is one of the first wide scale, land deployments.

Tip of the hat to tbb for sending in a link to an article about the joint African Union/U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur and how it's likely to fail. Good background reading for anyone doing work in the area.

And in legal news - Canadian charges against a U.S. aid worker were dropped for smuggling Haitian refugees into the country. The French NGO child kidnapping scandal in Chad continues, with essayist Jacques Attali saying it is the duty of NGOs to disobey laws. And today, the French government issued a travel advisory after anti-France demonstrations in Chad's capital.

Security Tibits

News from around the world...

• UN says 34 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.
• Aid workers accused of kidnapping in Chad. French nationals working for Zoe's Ark held for trying to fly 100 children out of the country.
• UN Somalia WFP head released after arrest.
• US aid worker released on bail in Nigeria.

Security Tidbits

Drug resistant staph infections on the rise. This bears watching, especially in terms of U.S. (and likely European) headquarter operations. - Myanmar seizing UN computers in hunt for dissidents. And what would the implications be of a government seizing your PCs? - Navigadget is a great site for keeping track of new GPS products. - A good Washington Post read on IEDs. - I've posted in the past about Bruce Schneier's respected, monthly Crypto-Gram newsletter. It's also available in audio format, perfect for MP3 players and long plane trips. - Commtouch's 2007 Third Quarter Email Threats report is out covering the latest spam trends. From a security perspective, there's an increasing use of spam to transmit malicious software.