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Security & Intelligence - new material (19)

01 April 2008

Eyes in the Sky, Gary Mason. Police Product Review February/March 2008, pp19-21. At the start of his article Mason notes that EU homeland security ministers are seriously concerned at porous European borders and "the ease with which criminal gangs can traffic people, drugs and other contraband". Now the EU is looking to emulate the United States where Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) patrol the border with Mexico and Minutemen beat and abuse those unfortunate enough to be picked up. The EU project - Border Surveillance by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (BSUAV) - is led by a consortium of companies including Dassault Aviation, Alenia Aeronautica, Rolls Royce, Saab, Eurosense and Sener and the drones could be used over the English Channel, the Mediterranean coasts and the Balkans.

Preparing the Battlefield: the Bush administration steps up its secret moves against Iran, Seymour Hersch. The New Yorker 7.7.08. Latest update by Hersch on the US escalation of covert operations against Iran designed to destabilise the country's religious leadership. US clandestine operations against Iran are not new, and Hersch has reported on cross-border operations involving the kidnapping of Revolutionary Guards for interrogation over the past year; the approval by Congress of an additional US $400m is a disturbing development. According to a highly confidential "Presidential Finding" the money will fund Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations to undermine the Iranian government through violence, which has already increased dramatically over the past year. It will also fund gathering intelligence on Iran's alleged nuclear-weapons programme.See:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersch