CYBERWAR/DHS/ENERGY/NATIONAL SECURITY/NUCLEAR/POLICE: “The Department of Homeland Security plans to close a New York-based laboratory that has helped the city’s Police and Fire Departments develop systems to detect nuclear and biological threats, a move that some local officials fear could hamper efforts to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.
The radiological program that the laboratory, the National Urban Security Technology Laboratory, developed with the New York Fire Department is widely considered the national standard, and technologies it has tested are in widespread use across the country. It has also worked on systems to combat drug trafficking and money laundering: Portable card readers it tested have helped officials recover millions of dollars in drug proceeds smuggled across borders using gift and other prepaid cards…
The Trump administration has proposed closing the lab as part of larger cuts it envisions for the Department of Homeland Security’s scientific research and development programs. The administration’s budget would cut funding for these programs by more than 18 percent, to $627 million this year from $771 million in the last fiscal year, according to budget documents.
In an email, a spokesman for the department said the elimination of spending on the lab and other programs would allow the agency’s research arm, the Science and Technology Directorate, to focus on the administration’s top priorities, including border security, counterterrorism, explosives and cybersecurity.”
-Ron Nixon, “New York Officials Fear Closing of U.S. Lab Combating Biological Threats,” The New York Times online, Oct. 22, 2017