Reposted from ASIS

​In late 2017, a photograph surfaced of three construction workers from American Sewer Services carrying weapons on a job site in Milwaukee. In the photo, two men clearly displayed their weapons in holsters, while another held a pistol in his hand.

As a result, the three construction workers were fired. The city of Milwaukee cited its policy that prohibits employees from bringing weapons to their jobs, including employees of subcontractors.

One gun advocate defended the workers and said the geographic area where they carried their weapons was "infamous" for its crime rate, The Blaze reported. 

On the other end of the spectrum, a Wisconsin state legislator told the media outlet that carrying guns openly on the job was "irresponsible."

While the city of Milwaukee has a clear policy on guns, for most private employers, the issue is anything but cut-and-dried. There is currently no U.S. federal law regulating weapons at private workplaces, but many state legislatures have taken up the cause of protecting the Second Amendment rights of employees while on the job. These laws, which are typically designed to protect employees' individual rights to possess concealed firearms, vary in terms of their restrictions and make it tough for employers operating in multiple U.S. states to implement one weapons policy across the board.

Workplace shootings have become increasingly common in the United States over the last few decades. The number of these incidents rose 15 percent in 2015 to 354 shootings, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and resulting homicides grew by 2 percent that year. 

Gun advocates cite such cases as reasons to allow guns in the workplace, while critics say these shootings are exactly why employers should ban firearms. As the debate rages on, employers are left grappling with the question of how to comply with state law and institute their own policies that promote a safe work environment.

While there are many legal twists and turns surrounding the issue, security practitioners must deal with the question of how current laws affect their responsibility to keep employees and property safe from external and internal threats.

By understanding the legal landscape surrounding firearms on work property, and ensuring that existing policies and procedures properly address workplace violence, security professionals can help promote a safe work environment without infringing on the legal rights of their employees.  ​

Parking Lot Laws

Most commonly, workplace gun laws allow employees the right to have firearms in their locked, private vehicles while parked on company-owned property. Additional obligations may be placed on the employer, such as a prohibition on searching vehicles and discriminating against an employee because he or she is a gun owner.

Twenty-three U.S. states provide some level of protection for employees who bring their firearms to company property. These so-called "parking lot laws" were part of an effort by state legislatures in the early 2000s to allow workers to exercise their Second Amendment rights at work, with some restrictions.

For example, often the gun must be locked in the trunk or glove box, or be hidden from view through the vehicle's windows. But the business community sees many issues with these laws and fears they will have a far-reaching impact on both employee safety and legal liability.

Parking lot laws vary in the level of protection they offer gun owners. Most prohibit employers from asking workers if they own guns, and from firing employees for owning firearms. These laws frequently conflict with existing workplace policies, which limit the employee's ability to bring firearms to work.

Oklahoma was the first U.S. state to pass a parking lot law when it amended legislation in 2004 to protect firearm owners from weapons prohibitions in workplace parking lots.

In 2002, an Oklahoma employer terminated several employees for having guns in their vehicles, which were parked on the employer's property. In response to the outcry that followed, the Oklahoma legislature amended the Oklahoma Self-Defense Act to ban employers from establishing any policy or rule that has the effect of prohibiting employees from transporting and storing firearms in a locked vehicle that is parked in employers' lots. 

This caused great concern among the business community, which felt certain that the law would not survive legal scrutiny. In response, a group of Oklahoma employers challenged the state law, arguing that the legislation conflicted with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) general duty clause, also known as the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act), a U.S. federal law.

The plaintiffs argued that the general duty clause says employers must maintain a safe and secure workplace free of violence, and preempts any existing U.S. state law. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma agreed with the employers.

The district court reasoned that under the general duty clause, gun-related workplace violence is a "recognized hazard." Therefore, any employer allowing firearms in the workplace lot may be in violation of U.S. federal law by promoting an unsafe workplace.

The case went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, which reversed the decision. The court reasoned that "OSHA has not indicated in any way that employers should prohibit firearms from company parking lots," according to court documents. "OSHA's website, guidelines, and citation history do not speak at all to any such prohibition."

Because OSHA does not indicate that employers should prohibit firearms from company parking lots, the appellate court ruled that there is no U.S. federal law that would preempt Oklahoma's amendment to the Self-Defense Act.

This initial case was a signal that employers would not be able to simply dismiss these laws by citing safety and security concerns or by arguing that U.S. federal regulations created an obligation to keep the workplace free of employees' weapons.​

Employee Rights

More lawsuits can be expected regarding employee termination based on gun-free workplace policies. An intriguing case comes out of the state of Florida, which passed a comprehensive law in 2008 that prohibits public and private employers from discriminating against any employee, customer, or invitee for exercising the right to keep and bear arms.

Under the Florida law, employers are barred from many actions, including: prohibiting employees or invitees from possessing legally owned firearms in their vehicles; inquiring about the presence of a firearm in the employee or invitee's vehicles; searching a private motor vehicle; and taking any action against an employee or invitee based on any verbal or written statement regarding the possession of a firearm in a private vehicle.

The law also says that companies are barred from conditioning employment on the following: whether an employee or prospective employee holds a concealed-weapons permit; an agreement by the employee or prospective employee that forbids the employee from keeping a legal firearm locked in his or her vehicle when the firearm is kept for lawful purposes; or prohibiting any employee or invitee from entering the parking lot because the employee or invitee's vehicle contains a legal firearm.

Finally, the law bars employers from terminating or otherwise discriminating against an employee or expelling an invitee for exercising the right to keep and bear arms or to exercise self-defense, so long as the firearm is not exhibited on company property for any reason other than lawful defensive purposes.

In December 2015, an employee who worked for Universal theme park in Orlando, Florida, had a concealed weapon in his vehicle in the employee parking garage. The employee, who had worked for Universal since 1993, commonly left his gun in his car at work. One day, the handgun was stolen from his vehicle, and he reported it to the police.

When park officials learned that he had a firearm on company property, they terminated him, claiming that he had violated Universal's gun-free zone policy.

The employee sued Universal in Orange County Circuit Court, citing the 2008 law. The lawsuit argued that he had an express right to bring his gun onto the lot and leave it in his vehicle.

Universal claimed that the Florida law didn't apply because schools and prisons are exempt from state weapons policies, and Universal has a program for school children on its property. Before the litigation could play out, Universal gave the employee his job back in April 2016 and he withdrew the lawsuit, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Comparable cases have been filed in similar circumstances in other states. In Kentucky, a man was fired from UPS Supply Chain Solutions in May 2013 for transferring a gun lawfully stored in his personal vehicle to another worker's personal vehicle.

The man, who had a concealed carry permit, said he experienced car trouble on the way to work, and moved the weapon because he was taking his car to be repaired. The fellow employee storing his weapon as a favor soon became uncomfortable and reported it to his supervisor.

The company then placed the employee on suspension and eventually fired him, citing that its policy only allowed for weapons inside a private vehicle. The company claimed that by removing the gun from his personal vehicle, he violated the workplace policy.

 In the lawsuit, the employee claimed that under a Kentucky Revised Statute, a firearm may be "removed from the vehicle or handled" when it is done so in "defense of property."

But the court ruled that the employee was attempting to interpret their law too broadly. "However inclined we might be to believe that such an exception would be a good thing, we decline to construe the term 'defense of property' as broadly as the employee suggests," the court wrote. (Holly v. UPS Supply Chain Solutions, Inc., U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, March 2017)  ​

Employer Protections

Several U.S. states have included some liability protections to provide conditional immunity to employers that comply with their state's guns-at-work law. This is mainly in response to the business community's outcry over what liability they will face for workplace violence involving guns on their property.

For example, under Georgia law, an employer is not liable for any criminal or civil action for damages arising from an occurrence involving the transportation, storage, possession, or use of a firearm, including theft of the firearm, unless the employer commits a criminal act involving a firearm, or if the employer knew the person using the firearm would commit a criminal act on the employer's premises.

While the Georgia law provides some cover for employers, it also leaves them vulnerable to lawsuits if they knew the person would commit an act of violence. This raises many questions as to how to handle someone who may have violent tendencies. How do you restrict that person's access to firearms in his or her vehicle? Can you terminate him or her based on that assumption alone?

Policies. Although these laws at face value complicate certain aspects of workplace violence policies and active shooter response plans, there are many steps that employers can take. Most importantly, security practitioners should educate themselves on relevant U.S. state guidelines, and confer with their general counsel on these issues to avoid unknowingly breaking the law.

For example, signs that read "no weapons" in parking lots are illegal in some U.S. states in certain circumstances. Knowing the limitations will allow companies to properly respond without risking legal liability.

If located in a state with current legal provisions for weapons in the workplace, companies should educate their workers on the boundaries of that law. For example, some employees will unintentionally assume they have greater rights, such as open-carry or storing the weapon inside the workplace.

Workplace violence. Policies on workplace violence should include a thorough explanation of relevant state law regarding guns on workplace property. Employers should be comprehensive in creating policies that outline how to report and respond to employees who are potentially violent or otherwise pose a threat to the safety of others.

Many employers lose their conditional immunity in a workplace shooting or incident if the perpetrator was someone who had a history of violence, or was otherwise known to the employer to be a threat.

In U.S. states that make provisions for weapons on workplace property, conducting high-risk terminations are of greater concern. Employees who store weapons in their cars, abiding by the law, could inadvertently become a threat during termination.

When firing any individual considered to be high-risk, companies should consider providing a security escort to the parking lot. Security should ensure that the former employee has left the property, and front desk or other reception team members should be alerted that the person is not allowed back on the premises. Organizations should train security officers, as well as human resource employees, in the use of de-escalation techniques. 

Finally, for workplaces that must comply with parking lot laws, there are several steps that will help protect the employer while respecting the legal rights of employees.

Organizations may consider increasing security in parking areas, such as adding an access control point; conducting patrols around the building and in parking lots; installing or enhancing video surveillance systems; and implementing proper lighting.

In some cases, bag searches or mag­neto­­meters may be installed at building entry points, but legal requirements should be checked before implementing such measures. Deterring the carriage of weapons outside the vehicle will generally serve as a reminder of the law and keep both employers and employees safe.

At first glance, the laws surrounding weapons in the workplace may seem like a jigsaw puzzle that is difficult to comprehend, but there are steps employers can take to ensure that assets and people are protected. Understanding the law and establishing strong policies within the employers' legal rights will ensure that workplaces abide by the law while keeping their assets and people safe.  

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Julia Wades in the Water was a member of  the Blackfeet Nation and became the first American Indian policewoman shortly after the turn of the 20th century. She served at the Blackfeet Agency in Montana for 25 years until her retirement in the 1930s. 

 Julia Wades in Water served her community managing the detention facility and assisting with female suspects. She sustained many warm friendships among the Blackfeet and the non-Native people of northern Montana.  This pioneering law enforcement woman was deeply invested in maintaining the values and safety of their community, and Blackfeet of that era remember all her contributions

Whether they are a part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or work for a partner tribal agency, women today serve as uniformed police officers, agents/investigators, correction officers, administrators, dispatchers, support staff, analysts, supervisors and victim specialists all thanks to the groundbreaking work of Wades in the Water.

Reposted from Travel + Leisure

Following the battle of Dunkirk in 1940, as British Prime Minister Winston Churchill grew increasingly concerned about a Nazi invasion on U.K. soil, he ordered that precious works of art from London's National Gallery be evacuated.

After deciding that shipping the paintings to Canada would be too dangerous, politicians and museum authorities housed them instead in a variety of locations in northern Wales, including a disused slate mine. Now, a new exhibit at the National Gallery is exploring how the gargantuan rescue effort took place.

The exhibition, showcasing 24 archival photographs and a new video, shows visitors how the museum successfully hid its art for four years during World War II. It is set to run March 6–April 8.

“Hundreds of feet underground, the Manod slate mine is an extraordinary subterranean space in north Wales. Robin Friend’s photographs convey the wonder of this secret and labyrinthine world, where for four years during the Second World War, the National Gallery hid their collection for safe-keeping," National Gallery curator Minna Moore Ede told The Telegraph.

Museum workers evacuated hundreds of paintings from the London galleries and transported them to the Manod mine in 1940. The entrance to the cave was enlarged with explosives to allow easier transportation for the art, and curators built brick "bungalows" inside the mine to protect the paintings from the damp.

A number of paintings were also transported to the University of North Wales, the National Library of Wales, and three additional Welsh castles, according to the National Gallery website.

The entire collection was fully evacuated by the summer of 1941, the Irish Independent reported.

The British were not the only ones to hide art in caves and castles during WWII. French curators collected and hid art in caves and chateaux during the war, as curator Rose Valland documented the paintings and sculptures looted by the Nazis for retrieval after the war.

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By Stevan P. Layne, CPP, CIPM, CIPI, Founding Director, IFCPP

I once asked a museum director if his institution did background screening on its volunteers. "Are you crazy," he replied. "If we did that, we wouldn't have any volunteers."   I'm not sure if that was an indication that none of them would pass the screen, or if none of them would submit to it.  

All of us recognize the many benefits a strong volunteer program brings to an institution. In many places, volunteers far outnumber paid staff. Without the work they provide, some programs could conceivably be lost. We forget, however, that volunteers are just "people." And people, given the right opportunity, steal. People, with the proper motivation, take advantage of other people - financially, physically, or even sexually. It logically follows, therefore, that any "people" brought into the workforce, regardless of whether or not they are compensated, should undergo a reasonable screening of their background and character. This is exactly the language used by the courts in examining cases of negligent hiring. We screen to protect the good people in the workforce, visitors, and other volunteers, from being subjected to or exposed to those who would take advantage of them, or cause harm.

The level of depth of the screening should be dependent on the applicant's exposure to people and access to assets. ALL applicants should undergo a thorough check for criminal histories. It should be asked on the application and verified by a records check. This may be done directly through the courts or through a professional background service.

If the applicant is serving to greet guests, has access to no keys, assets, or classes with minor children, then minimal screens may be performed. The information on the application needs to be verified. If a falsehood is discovered, the process is over and the application should be denied. This includes employment history, driving record, education, licenses or certifications held. Credit histories should be performed on all of those persons who will handle cash or accessioned artwork.

Everyone should be able to account for their time, for no less than the past ten years. You have to be somewhere - gainfully employed, in school, in the military, undergoing health care, or in prison. Some records must exist, somewhere, which verifies this existence. Women who were married and not employed should have access to tax records showing a joint return for the time period in question.

If volunteers are asked to perform certain tasks with special knowledge or education, they should be trained identically to paid employees who perform those tasks. The bottom line, volunteers are worth their weight in gold. Just be sure they're not taking the gold with them...

Reposted from Security Management

When most people think of Orlando, Florida, Walt Disney World Resort comes to mind. The world-renowned theme park makes Orlando the second most popular travel destination in the United States. But there is much more to the city than Mickey and Minnie Mouse. 

Beyond the complex infrastructure that supports Orlando’s 2.3 million citizens, the city is filled with parks and wildlife, the largest university in the country, and a vast hospitality industry that includes more than 118,000 hotel rooms. And International Drive, an 11-mile thoroughfare through the city, is home to attractions such as Universal Orlando Resort, SeaWorld Orlando, and the Orange County Convention Center, the site of ASIS International’s 62nd Annual Seminar and Exhibits this month. 

Hospitality goes hand-in-hand with security in Orlando, where local businesses and attractions see a constant flow of tourists from all over the world. And at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, which hosts events ranging from Broadway shows to concerts to community education and events, a new security director is changing the culture of theater to keep performers, staff, and visitors safe.​

The Living Room of the City

Open since November 2014, the Dr. Phillips Center spans two blocks and is home to a 2,700-seat main stage, a 300-seat theater, and the Dr. Phillips Center Florida Hospital School of the Arts. The building’s striking architecture, which includes a canopy roof, vast overhang, and a façade made almost entirely of glass, stretches across two blocks and is complemented by a front lawn and plaza.

After the June 11 shooting at Pulse nightclub less than two miles south of the theater, that lawn became the city’s memorial. Days after the shooting, the Dr. Phillips Center plaza, normally used for small concerts or events, hosted Orlando’s first public vigil. A makeshift memorial was established on the lawn, and dozens of mourners visited for weeks after the attack.

Chris Savard, a retired member of the Orlando Police Department, started as the center’s director of security in December, shortly after terrorists killed dozens and injured hundreds in attacks on soft targets in Paris. Prior to Savard, the center had no security director. Coming from a law enforcement background to the theater industry was a challenging transition, he says. 

“Before I came here, I was with an FBI terrorism task force,” Savard says. “Bringing those ideologies here to the performing arts world, it’s just a different culture. Saying ‘you will do security, this is the way it is’ doesn’t work. You have to ease into it.”

The Dr. Phillips Center was up and running for a year before Savard started, so he had to focus on strategic changes to improve security: “The building is already built, so we need to figure out what else we can do,” he says. One point of concern was an overhang above the valet line right at the main entrance. Situated above the overhang is a glass-walled private donor lounge, and Savard notes that anyone could have driven up to the main entrance under the overhang and set off a bomb, causing maximum damage. “It was a serious chokepoint,” he explains, “and the building was designed before ISIS took off, so there wasn’t much we could do about the overhang.”

Instead, he shifted the valet drop-off point, manned by off-duty police officers, further away from the building. “We’ve got some people saying, ‘Hey, I’m a donor and I don’t want to walk half a block to come to the building, I want to park my vehicle here, get out, and be in the air conditioning.’ It’s a tough process, but it’s a work in progress. Most people have not had an issue whatsoever in regards to what we’ve implemented.”

Savard also switched up the use of off-duty police officers in front of the Dr. Phillips Center. He notes that it can be costly to hire off-duty police officers, who were used for traffic control before he became the security director, so he reduced the number of officers used and stationed them closer to the building. He also uses a K-9 officer, who can quickly assess a stopped or abandoned vehicle on the spot. 

“When you pull into the facility, you see an Orlando Police Department K-9 officer SUV,” Savard explains. “We brought two other valet officers closer to the building, so in any given area you have at least four police cars or motorcycles that are readily available. We wanted to get them closer so it was more of a presence, a deterrent.” The exact drop-off location is constantly changing to keep people on their toes, he adds.

The Dr. Phillips Center was already using Andy Frain Services, which provides uniformed officers to patrol the center around the clock. Annette DuBose manages the contracted officers. 

When he started in December, Savard says he was surprised that no bag checks were conducted. When he brought up the possibility of doing bag checks, there was some initial pushback—it’s uncommon for theater centers to perform any type of bag check. “In the performing arts world, this was a big deal,” Savard says. “You have some high-dollar clientele coming in, and not a lot of people want to be inconvenienced like that.”

When Savard worked with DuBose and her officers to implement bag checks, he said everyone was astonished at what the officers were finding. “I was actually shocked at what people want to bring in,” Savard says. “Guns, knives, bullets. I’ve got 25-plus years of being in law enforcement, and seeing what people bring in…it’s a Carole King musical! Why are you bringing your pepper spray?”

Savard acknowledges that the fact that Florida allows concealed carry makes bag checks mandatory—and tricky. As a private entity, the Dr. Phillips Center can prohibit guns, but that doesn’t stop people from trying to bring them in, he notes. The Andy Frain officers have done a great job at kindly but firmly asking patrons to take their guns back to their cars, Savard says—and hav­ing a police officer nearby helps when it comes to argumentative visitors.​

Culture, Community, and Customer Service

There have been more than 300 performances since the Dr. Phillips Center opened, and with two stages, the plaza, classrooms, and event spaces, there can be five or six events going on at once. 

“This is definitely a soft target here in Orlando,” Savard notes. “With our planned expansion, we can have 5,000 people in here at one time. What a target—doing something in downtown Orlando to a performing arts center.”

The contract officers and off-duty police carry out the core of the security- related responsibilities, but Savard has also brought in volunteers to augment the security presence. As a nonprofit theater, the Dr. Phillips Center has a large number of “very passionate” volunteers—there are around 50 at each show, he says. 

The volunteers primarily provide customer service, but Savard says he wants them to have a security mindset, as well—“the more eyes, the better.” He teaches them basic behavioral assessment techniques and trends they should look for. 

“You know the guy touching his lower back, does he have a back brace on or is he trying to keep the gun in his waistband from showing?” Savard says. “Why is that person out there videotaping where people are being dropped off and parking their cars? Is it a bad guy who wants to do something?”

All 85 staffers at the Dr. Phillips Center have taken active shooter training classes, and self-defense classes are offered as well. Savard tries to stress situational awareness to all staff, whether they work in security or not. 

“One of the things I really want to do is get that active shooter mindset into this environment, because this is the type of environment where it’s going to happen,” Savard explains. “It’s all over the news.”

Once a month, Savard and six other theater security directors talk on the phone about the trends and threats they are seeing, as well as the challenges with integrating security into the performing arts world. 

“Nobody wanted the cops inside the building at all, because it looked too militant,” Savard says. “And then we had Paris, and things changed. With my background coming in, I said ‘Listen, people want to see the cops.’” 

Beyond the challenge of changing the culture at the Dr. Phillips Center, Savard says he hopes security can become a higher priority at performing arts centers across the country. The Dr. Phillips Center is one of more than two dozen theaters that host Broadway Across America shows, and Savard invited the organization’s leaders to attend an active shooter training at the facility last month. 

“There’s a culture in the performing arts that everything’s fine, and unfortu­nately we know there are bad people out there that want to do bad things to soft targets right now,” Savard says. “The whole idea is to be a little more vigilant in regards to protecting these soft targets.”

Savard says he hopes to make wanding another new norm at performing arts centers. There have already been a number of instances where a guest gets past security officers with a gun hidden under a baggy Cuban-style shirt. “I’ll hear that report of a gun in the building, and the hair stands up on the back of my neck,” Savard says. “It’s a never- ending goal to continue to get better and better every time. We’re not going to get it right every time, but hopefully the majority of the time.”

The Dr. Phillips Center is also moving forward with the construction of a new 1,700-seat acoustic theater, which will be completed within the next few years. The expansion allows the center to host three shows at one time—not including events in private rooms or on the plaza. Savard is already making plans for better video surveillance and increasing security staff once the new theater is built.

“We really try to make sure that everybody who comes into the building, whether or not they’re employed here, is a guest at the building, and we want to make sure that it’s a great experience, not only from the performance but their safety,” according to Savard. “It’s about keeping the bad guys out, but it’s also that you feel really safe once you’re in here.” 

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Reposted from CNBC

Cyber threats represent the greatest danger to the international community today, Raytheon International CEO John Harris told CNBC Friday.

"(Cyber) is, I would, say one of largest and most important threats to our nation and to our allies," Harris said ahead of the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

"One of the challenges of cyber is that access to that technology is easy. So any number of individuals, both state and non-state actors, have the ability to make fundamental negative impacts to societies and to nations."

The major U.S. defense contractor and weapons manufacturer was one of several hundred senior executives and policymakers attending the summit, convened to discuss current and future security challenges.

"Hundreds of thousands of malware products are designed each and every day, and any number of people — state and non-state actors — have the ability to employ those systems," Harris said.

Research from software firm Symantec revealed that one in 131 emails contained malware in 2017, and that ransomware attacks increased 36 percent on the previous year.

"Our job is to make sure that we understand where they're coming from, make sure we design architectures that are resilient, and afford our customers the opportunity to defend."

Cyberattacks at both commercial and governmental levels are more of a threat than they've ever been before, and there are numbers to prove it. In 2016, the U.S. government spent $28 billion on cybersecurity. That's up from just $7.5 billion in 2007, and it's expected to increase in 2018.

And the shadowy perpetrators don't limit themselves in their targets — malware threats have increasingly made headlines as they manifest themselves across industrial sectors, governments, financial institutions and households. The last two years have tested relations between countries amid allegations of Russian election hacking in the U.S. and threats emanating from North Korea and China, among others.

Major recent cyber disruptions include high-profile attacks like the WannaCry virus, NotPetya and more recently hacks by cyber espionage group Fancy Bear, which is believed to have targeted U.S. defense contractors, national election networks and web infrastructure for the Winter Olympics. Raytheon was one of Fancy Bear's targets, along with competitors including Boeing, General Atomics and Lockheed Martin.

"Cyber is a core focus of our company, it is one of the fastest growing elements both in defense and commercial area," Harris said, describing record investments the company has made in the last 15 years into the area, both in organic capability and mergers and acquisitions.

"The more we are connected the more we are vulnerable," the CEO added. "We understand the vulnerabilities, we understand the threats, and devise systems and solutions that afford us an opportunity to protect our networks, protect our products and protect our customers."

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Reposted from The New York Times

Four states in the Northeast with relatively strong gun laws banded together on Thursday to form a gun safety coalition, filling what the states called a vacuum of federal action by pledging to share registries of people prohibited from owning firearms in individual states.

The states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island, all of which have among the lowest rates of gun deaths per capita in the country — will directly share information like the names of people who have been deemed mentally unfit to own a gun, people who have a domestic violence restraining order against them and people who have a warrant out for their arrest. The states will also share details about how guns are trafficked and sold within their borders and designate universities that can collaborate on regional gun violence research, according to a memorandum of understanding signed by the states’ governors, all Democrats.

“This is a federal government that’s gone backwards on this issue,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said on a conference call with the other governors and reporters, outlining his dim hopes for new restrictions in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Florida. “President Trump has pledged allegiance to the N.R.A. and he’s delivered for them.”

Mr. Cuomo cited a proposal in Mr. Trump’s budget to cut funding to the federal background check system.

Some details about how the agreement will work in practice remain murky. The patchwork of state law means that states cannot necessarily restrict gun sales to everyone on another state’s no-gun list. And gun control advocates said states are already supposed to report to the national background check system people prohibited from owning guns under the parameters of state law, and not only those restricted by federal law.

But officials working on the coalition said the agreement would reinforce and expand what they share, including the names of people, for example, who have been voluntarily hospitalized for mental illness and are prohibited by some states from owning guns.

The agreement seemed poised to heighten the monitoring of people with mental illness, raising concerns among mental health advocates about unnecessarily stigmatizing people and discouraging them from seeking care. New York, for example, keeps a no-guns database that has grown to 77,447 names of people whom mental health professionals have reported as being a danger to themselves or others.

New York will now share that database with the other three states, Alphonso David, Mr. Cuomo’s chief counsel, said in an interview. It is not clear how the other states would act on it, given that the law in Connecticut and New Jersey, for example, expressly forbids firearm purchases only by people who have been committed to a mental health center.

But some states give their licensing authorities discretion to ban people they deem a risk to public safety, and Mr. David said they could use New York’s database as an investigative tool to make their own determination.

Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, and now the chief executive of Pathways Housing First, which provides housing to the mentally ill, said that for people already vulnerable to feeling isolated and marginalized, putting so many of them on a list and then giving other states more medical information about them “is only going to exacerbate that condition.”

The vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent and there is scant information about how effective such databases have been. Mr. David said he did not know how many guns have been seized on the basis of New York’s list.

States will also share information about people with orders of protection against them, Mr. David said. All four states in the coalition, to varying degrees, use protective orders as a basis for restricting gun sales.

The states will also share the findings of law enforcement agencies about where illegal guns came from and how they are transported to the Northeast. Gun trafficking groups have often been found to buy guns, particularly handguns, in states south of New York along the Interstate 95 corridor, nicknamed the Iron Pipeline, and then drive them to the Northeast.

“It will help identify trafficking patterns,” said Elizabeth Avore, the legal and policy director at Everytown for Gun Safety, calling the coalition the most comprehensive she knew of. “It would be great to see states up and down the Iron Pipeline sharing information.”

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Reposted from the Huffington Post

Some people’s idea of justice is an eye for an eye, but China wants “severe punishment” for a man who stole a clay thumb.

Michael Rohana, 24, was charged last week for allegedly breaking a thumb off the left hand of a 2,000-year-old terra-cotta warrior on display at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. The incident is said to have occurred in December while he attended the museum’s ugly Christmas sweater party.

The FBI said Rohana snuck away from the party and used a cellular telephone as a flashlight to look at exhibits that were displayed in a closed-off showroom.

At one point, he stepped up onto a platform supporting one of the statues on display and took a selfie, according to China’s Xinhua News Agency. 

Security cameras show Rohana putting his hand on the left hand of the statue, and then appearing to break something off from its left hand and put it in his pocket before leaving the room, according to an arrest affidavit.

The museum-goer allegedly took the clay digit to his home in Bear, Delaware, as a souvenir. He is now accused of theft of an artwork from a museum, concealment of the artwork and interstate transportation of stolen property, according to The New York Times.

The statues featured in the Franklin’s “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor” exhibit are some of thousands discovered in China’s Xi’an city in 1974 by a group of farmers, according to the BBC. They are considered one of China’s most important archaeological finds.

The vandalized statue is worth quite a thumb, er, sum: $4.5 million.

The broken-off thumb wasn’t reported missing until Jan. 8, at which point the FBI’s Art Crime Team was contacted. The agency used the video as well as credit card information from the party to finger Rohana as the thumb thief.

Rohana allegedly attended the party with five friends, one of whom told investigators she heard the suspect mention the thumb on the ride home, according to USA Today.

Another friend said Rohana posted a photo of “a finger” from a terra-cotta warrior on Snapchat a day after the party.

Investigators interviewed Rohana on Jan. 13 and asked if he had anything in his possession that he wanted to turn over to the FBI. That’s when Rohana allegedly took an agent to his bedroom and grabbed the terra-cotta thumb from a drawer in a desk.

The Franklin Museum has apologized for the incident. An official from the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Centre, the agency that arranged for the loan of the statues, seeks a “severe penalty” for the perpetrator, according to the South China Morning Post.

“The terracotta warriors are national treasures of our country,” an unnamed official told the paper. “Their historical and artistic value are impossible to value … We express strong resentment and condemnation towards this theft and the destruction of our heritage.”

Franklin Institute spokeswoman Stefanie Santo told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the warrior and its thumb will be repaired. She blames the incident on a contractor who did not follow security protocols the night of the theft.

Rohana is currently out on bail.

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Reposted from The Guardian

Wanton proliferation of artificial intelligence technologies could enable new forms of cyber-crime, political disruption and even physical attacks within five years, a group of 26 experts from around the world have warned.

In a new report, the academic, industry and the charitable sector experts, describe AI as a “dual use technology” with potential military and civilian uses, akin to nuclear power, explosives and hacking tools.

“As AI capabilities become more powerful and widespread, we expect the growing use of AI systems to lead to the expansion of existing threats, the introduction of new threats and a change to the typical character of threats,” the report says.

They argue that researchers need to consider potential misuse of AI far earlier in the course of their studies than they do at present, and work to create appropriate regulatory frameworks to prevent malicious uses of AI.

If the advice is not followed, the report warns, AI is likely to revolutionise the power of bad actors to threaten everyday life. In the digital sphere, they say, AI could be used to lower the barrier to entry for carrying out damaging hacking attacks. The technology could automate the discovery of critical software bugs or rapidly select potential victims for financial crime. It could even be used to abuse Facebook-style algorithmic profiling to create “social engineering” attacks designed to maximise the likelihood that a user will click on a malicious link or download an infected attachment.

The increasing influence of AI on the physical world means it is also vulnerable to AI misuse. The most widely discussed example involves weaponizing “drone swarms”, fitting them with small explosives and self-driving technology and then setting them loose to carry out untraceable assassinations as so-called “slaughterbots”.

Political disruption is just as plausible, the report argues. Nation states may decide to use automated surveillance platforms to suppress dissent – as is already the case in China, particularly for the Uighur people in the nation’s northwest. Others may create “automated, hyper-personalized disinformation campaigns”, targeting every individual voter with a distinct set of lies designed to influence their behavior. Or AI could simply run “denial-of-information attacks”, generating so many convincing fake news stories that legitimate information becomes almost impossible to discern from the noise.

Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh of the University of Cambridge’s centre for the study of existential risk, one of the report’s authors, said: “We live in a world that could become fraught with day-to-day hazards from the misuse of AI and we need to take ownership of the problems – because the risks are real. There are choices that we need to make now, and our report is a call-to-action for governments, institutions and individuals across the globe.

“For many decades hype outstripped fact in terms of AI and machine learning. No longer. This report … suggests broad approaches that might help: for example, how to design software and hardware to make it less hackable – and what type of laws and international regulations might work in tandem with this.”

Not everyone is convinced that AI poses such a risk, however. Dmitri Alperovitch, the co-founder of information security firm CrowdStrike, said: “I am not of the view that the sky is going to come down and the earth open up.

“There are going to be improvements on both sides; this is an ongoing arms race. AI is going to be extremely beneficial, and already is, to the field of cybersecurity. It’s also going to be beneficial to criminals. It remains to be seen which side is going to benefit from it more.

“My prediction is it’s going to be more beneficial to the defensive side, because where AI shines is in massive data collection, which applies more to the defence than offence.”

The report concedes that AI is the best defence against AI, but argues that “AI-based defence is not a panacea, especially when we look beyond the digital domain”.

“More work should also be done in understanding the right balance of openness in AI, developing improved technical measures for formally verifying the robustness of systems, and ensuring that policy frameworks developed in a less AI-infused world adapt to the new world we are creating,” the authors wrote.

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Reposted from The Telegraph

The Year of the Dog may be approaching, but on a recent Monday at the Palace Museum in Beijing it seemed to already be here. However, the chorus of 23 barking dogs that erupted as a stranger stepped into the museum’s kennel did not sound like a Lunar New Year celebration or a warm welcome.

These dogs help guard a huge hoard of national treasures every night. The museum, the country’s imperial palace from 1421 until the fall of the Chinese monarchy in 1911, houses as many as 1.86 million cultural relics. The collection of this single museum accounts for 42 per cent of the whole country’s registered national-level precious cultural relics.

Chang Fumao, 59, heads the five-person canine patrol squad. His office, also his bedroom, is hidden near the western gate of the palace complex. Before nightfall, visitors and the rest of the museum staff leave. Mr Chang and his colleagues are most familiar with the shadowy face of the ancient complex, where they are on duty from dusk to dawn.

Mr Chang started work helping monitor the museum when he was 20. In the 1980s the human guards had the help of only sound detectors in the exhibition halls. When something abnormal was heard they would rush to the scene in case there was a burglar.

Chasing and biting abilities are among the most valued characteristics of the dogs because they learn that the burglar is the top enemyChang Fumao, canine patrol squad head

“Sometimes I felt terrified checking the empty and dark palaces alone,” Mr Chang said. “There are many folk legends about supernatural phenomena, like ghosts, in the Forbidden City at night.”

A guard dog was a welcome addition. A German shepherd named Tiger became his friend for night patrol. “I’ve loved raising dogs since I was very young,” he said. “Tiger also gave me courage at first.”

But there was a ban on large dogs in downtown Beijing at that time, and the museum was no exception. Tiger was sent to the countryside. Shortly after that, a burglar sneaked into the palace. “My colleagues were very close to catching the burglar,” Mr Chang said. “They watched him climb over the wall.”

Mr Chang suggested organising a canine patrol squad at the museum and, in 1987, dogs came back. Mr Chang became not only a dog trainer but also headmaster of a puppy care centre.

He chose four-month-old puppies, most selected from the countryside or police stations, and began to train his young wards. “That’s how you can find each dog’s talent,” he said.

“Some are particularly good at fetching a ball from a long distance. That means they are good at tracking. Some have the keenest sense of smell, and some of the more energetic ones like biting things.”

We have chubby cats all over the palace but dogs are the unseen animal heroesShan Jixiang, museum director

When each dog is a year old it is given a tailored training course. Most start their career as guard dogs after three months’ intense training. “Chasing and biting abilities are among the most valued characteristics of the dogs because they learn that the burglar is the top enemy,” Mr Chang said.

At 4:30am, Mr Chang rises to give the dogs their morning practice. The entire Forbidden City is their training ground. They must finish before 7am, when some other museum employees start work.

After 5:30pm, when the palace gates are closed, more training begins as the dogs warm up for their night-time shifts. It is a separate world that many museum employees, let alone visitors, do not realise exists.

The Forbidden City is the world’s most visited museum – it had about 16.7 million visits last year – and it is not always easy to make sure everyone obeys the rules.

The museum also is immense, at 860,000sq yd. The dogs occasionally find people who have hidden in the museum at night, but the rule-breakers are generally released without charge if they have not stolen or broken anything.

“If I caught a burglar, I would become really well-known,” Mr Chang said. “However, at least we have prevented potential accidents and saved national treasures from being damaged. That’s the most important thing, right?”

People get sleepy, and machines sometimes malfunction. But the dogs are alert even when they are sleeping. They are the most reliable line of defenceChang Fumao, canine patrol squad head

In 2011, in the museum’s most recent theft, a burglar stole seven pieces of historic treasure from a temporary jewellery exhibition. He was later caught and all the lost items were recovered. Now a guard dog is assigned to every courtyard with a temporary exhibition to keep an even closer eye on exhibits.

The museum also has a video surveillance system that leaves no angles unseen, said Shan Jixiang, the museum’s director. “We now have a comprehensive security system combining people, dogs and machines. We have chubby cats all over the palace but dogs are the unseen animal heroes.”

Mr Chang praised the dogs as well. “People get sleepy, and machines sometimes malfunction. But the dogs are alert even when they are sleeping. They are the most reliable line of defence.” When and where patrols pass remain top-secret.

Guard dogs for the former imperial palace retire when they are seven years old, when it is possible they may be “unable to catch up with a young person in their 20s at full speed”, Mr Chang said. They spend their last years at the museum, and a few now among the group are retirees.

Mr Chang will retire next year, and worries that few young people will be willing to take his place, but the other four humans in the squad are younger than Mr Chang.

“This job is about being bitten,” Mr Chang said. “It’s common in training to get hurt by mistake. I cannot remember how many rabies vaccines I’ve had. But I love dogs and have raised dogs all my life, which is good enough.”

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