FSU College of Law Research Center Blog

NYPD's Report on Terror

Time.com's article on Homegrown Terror notes that "the most sophisticated government analysis of the homegrown terrorism threat to be made public in the United States came out this week, and it didn't come from Washington — not from the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence or the Department of Homeland Security. It came from the New York City Police Department, and with any luck, its release will spur the federal government ostensibly leading the war on terror to show more faith in the general public's ability to digest serious intelligence." 

You may access the NYPD report from this link: Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat on the official NYC Police Department website, http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/.

Quoted excerpt from http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1653566,00.html.

Posted by Marin Dell

Preparing for the Worst

As we enter the traditional peak of hurricane season, the government is here to help you.  Ready.gov is the official disaster planning site of the Department of Homeland Security.  (The content of this site has been criticized as inadequate by the Federation of American Scientists, who put up ReallyReady.org in response.)

Florida has quite of bit of recent experience with disaster planning.  The Florida Division of Emergency Management has created FloridaDisaster.org which allows you to craft a personalized plan for your family or business and store it on the web.

Posted by Robin Gault

Domestic Terrorism or Free Speech?

Six Philadelphia-based animal rights activists went on trial this week in a federal courthouse in Trenton, N.J. for their alleged direct harassment of a contract research company with animal-testing labs in the state of New Jersey, Huntingdon Life Sciences.

The Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign is based in the United Kingdom and manages a local and global mission to end the operations of Huntingdon Life Sciences. The activists claim that their website and other efforts to shutdown the company are exercises in free speech and are therefore legal.

John E. Lewis, from the F.B.I., gave testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on October 26, 2005. He discussed the threat animal rights activists pose to legitimate business and what constitutes not advocacy, but criminal activity.

Posted by Toni Urquhart