Airport security breaches are typically exposed by TSA screeners, “but making these disclosures often comes at a devastating personal cost, including harassment, reassignment, suspension and termination,” The Newark Star-Ledger’s Ron Marsico spotlights. Two TSA laptop computers with detailed personal info about commercial drivers nationwide who transport hazmats are missing and considered stolen, The Associated Press’ Eileen Sullivan says.

Homies: While some opponents of DHS’s so-called no-match rule for weeding out illegal works savored their court victory last week, they also began wondering about the looming legal battle, The Chicago Tribune’s Stephen Franklin and Antonio Olivo survey. As many as 70 per cent of discrepancies found in the no match letters sent out in recent tests belong to U.S. citizens or legal residents, The Chicago Sun-Times’ Teresa Puente comments. The White House plans no major changes to much-disputed border and identity programs as a result of its new homeland strategy, United Press International’ Shaun Waterman writes.

Can you tap me now? Citing White House objections, the three biggestphonecarriers have refused to tell lawmakers what role, if any, they had in NSA’s domestic eavesdropping, The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau relates. But Verizon did tell Hill probers that it has provided customers' phone records to the feds without court orders hundreds of times since 2005, The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima notes. Upon lawful request and for a thousand dollars, Comcast “will intercept its customers' communications under the FISA law,” Secrecy News’ Steven Aftergood quotes from a handbook.

Poly-ticks: Answering a young questioner, Rudy Giuliani promised Sunday that “we'll be prepared for anything that happen,” even an attack from outer space, The Manchester Union-Leader relays. “Since most Republican voters are more afraid of terrorism than they are of global warming, Giuliani's image as the 9/11 mayor has served him well, The Jerusalem Post’s Jonathan Tobin handicaps— and see Robert McMahon’s CFR Daily Analysis: “Campaign 2008’s Foreign Policy Divide.” At an annual Iowa GOP chili supper, Rep. Tom Latham hailed the war on terrorism as “the battle of our generation,” while a Senate contender pledged implacable war against terror and “Washington hypocrisy,” alike, The Fort Dodge Messenger mentions.

State and local: “The bomb's in place. The terrorists are ready. The city waits. As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, a lethal cloak of radiation will cover much of downtown Portland,” The Oregonian offers in re: the DHS drill starting today. “So what's located in this corridor that DPS could claim as a Homeland Security issue?” an Austin American-Statesmandemands in re: disputed Texas Capitol security camera footage. A year after magnitude 6.7 and 6.0 earthquakes shook the Big Island, officials say Hawaii is better prepared for the next time trouble comes knocking, The Honolulu Advertiser relates — and see the Advertiser, as well, on Hawaiian Electric Co.’s beefed up crisis training.

Hessians: Even confronted with its role in Iraqi civilian deaths, Blackwater seeks to “vault into the major leagues of U.S. military contracting, taking advantage of the movement to privatize all kinds of government security,” The Wall Street Journal spotlights. Namibia is deporting two U.S. security company recruiters who were seeking to sign on Namibians as armed guards in Iraq and Afghanistan, South Africa’s Independent informs. U.S. officials worry that employees of such firms could be considered unlawful combatants, the Los Angeles Times adds.

Bid-ness: Algerian terror concerns “could hamper the government's efforts to stimulate the non-hydrocarbons economy through promoting foreign investment,” The Economist conveys. Individuals are joining the terror-free investment movement, a Christian Science Monitor Q&A explores, highlighting Missouri’s new terror-free 529 fund, a terror-free mutual fund and other options on the way. DHS’s chemical security “efforts are paved with good intentions, but may yield unintended consequences for many small and medium-size businesses that do not even consider themselves ‘Chemical Facilities,’” IndustryWeeksurveys. DHS’s pending tough new citizenship-work rules “leave restaurants looking for cooks with green cards,” The Dallas Observer observes.

Bugs ‘n bombs: Amidst fears of a Midwestern foot-and-mouth outbreak this summer, “the White House received secret briefings that highlighted the potential for old farm diseases to be new national security threats,” AP spotlights. Writes one in the know to Crypto-Gram concerning last month’s much-ballyhooed generator security test: “The vulnerability they hypothesize is completely bogus but I won't say more about the details. Gitmo is still too hot for me this time of year.” Bay State regulators are commissioning a prestigious science panel to independently review a planned Boston University biolab “where the world's deadliest germs will be studied,” The Boston Globe reports.

Coming and going: In yet another airport screener incident fatality, an unruly international arrival died Sunday after being Tased at Vancouver’s airport, the Sun says. Israeli airport officials are reviewing the Denver airport's security policies and procedures, taking a look at everything from airfields to perimeter fences, The Rocky Mountain News notes. Although the long-awaited transport worker credential program launches in Wilmington today, it will be a good year before the operation moves beyond background checks and fingerprinting, USA Today tells. “I continue to believe that these are virtual strip searches,” an ACLU mouthpiece tells the Boston Globe of the all-revealing backscatter x-ray machines getting a trial at Phoenix’s airport.

Borders and papers: A new Tennessee law meant to give immigrants a temporary state ID has left some legal residents unable to obtain a driver's license, The Chattanooga Times Free Press tells. Cast adrift by federal gridlock, states are creating “a national patchwork of incongruous immigration laws” that some observers fear will only complicate future reforms, The Washington Post reports. “Arizona could get at least a few additional National Guardsmen along the border, even as the government is proceeding with plans to withdraw another 1,200 of them,” The Daily Star leads. DHS chief Mike Chertoff “may use his power to unilaterally trump a federal court order halting construction of a fence on a stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border,” Capital Media Services says.

Beating around the Bush: “America's most formidable foe — once practically dead — is back. This is one of the most historically significant legacies of President Bush. At nearly every turn, he has made the wrong strategic choices in battling al Qaeda,” Peter Bergen broods in The New Republic. “Whatever else may be said about Bush's war presidency, on his watch, so far at least, the country has not seen a repeat of 9/11,” Terry Eastland offers as a silver lining in a Weekly Standard review essay. The “muted reaction” to Israel’s recent attack on an alleged Syrian nuclear facility “may give new life to the Bush doctrine” of preemptive defense, Joshua Muravchik forecasts for the Los Angeles Times — while The New York Times’ David Sanger highlights the chastened caution that marks today’s Bush doctrinaires. “We have watched Republican lawmakers help President Bush shred the Constitution in the name of fighting terrorism. It is time for that to stop,” a New York Timeseditorial intones.

Talking terror: A new study released by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center examines the history of splits among al Qaeda bigs, finding the group may be more vulnerable than many officials suggest, U.S. News notes. “The collapse of al Qaeda's networks in Iraq is the chief reason both U.S. casualties and Iraqi civilian deaths plunged in September, despite an increased operations tempo,” a Washington Times op-ed asserts. “America's top priority for weakening Islamist terror groups should be to defeat al-Qaeda-in-Iraq, which is the increasingly important offshoot of al-Qaeda-in-Afghanistan,” Frederick W. Kaganargues in an LA Times survey of expert opinion on the planned $190 billion war supplemental. With 9/11’s sixth anniversary done and gone, “voices in the center and on the right are demanding that the U.S. policies not be defined by the 9/11 legacy,” Salim Lone surveys for Nairobi’s The Nation.

Courts and rights: On Oct. 22, a federal appeals court will determine whether Turkish immigrant and post-9/11-detention poster boy Ibrahim Parlak can remain in the U.S., Earth News relays. Six years of probes and prosecutions have turned up little evidence of Islamic jihadists at work in the U.S., CNN quotes from a law center’s new study. “To demand that western freedoms be dismantled and stored away for the duration of a ‘war on terror’ is to wave the flag of surrender,” a Times of Londoncolumnist contends.

Over there: Thirty mostly Algerian men went on trial in Madrid Monday for allegedly plotting to blow up a court that is the hub of Spain's anti-terror investigations, AP reports — while The Independent has the gang accused of recruiting the first European female suicide bomber facing the bar in Brussels yesterday. U.S. labor and human-rights advocates were placed on a terrorist watch list by the Philippines government and barred entry to the country earlier this year, UPI informs. New Zealand police arrested 17 people in a series of “anti-terrorist” raids yesterday, with Maori and environmental activists the main targets, Agence France-Presse reports.

Pakghanistan: The route trod by an increasing number of militants from mainland Europe to Pakistan for terror training “represents a new and dangerous reconfiguration,” the LA Times spotlights. A nuclear-armed Muslim power facing a growing insurgency by radical Islamists, Pakistan’s “political future is in many ways far more important to U.S. national security than the war in Iraq or the standoff with Iran,” Newsday opines. See, also, The New Zealand Herald on the “savage” Taliban war on Pakistan’s northwest frontier

Herd on the street: “A recent independent study determined that Tasers are generally safe in the hands of the police. What do you think?” The Onion’s intrepid shutter-bug asks “average” Americans on the street. “Yes. Give the police more Tasers,” injection molding operator Larry Dawes asserts. “The police care for their Tasers so much that they tend to neglect their pepper spray, and that just tears me up inside,” saw sharpener Owen Baker admits. “Breathe easy, YouTube community. It looks like you'll have entertainment for decades to come,” union organizer Maggie Astley assures. Listen, also, to The Onion News Network for “Proposed (Classified) Bill Will Defend Against Flesh-Eating (Classified).”