WASHINGTON, March 29 (UPI) -- The U.S. intelligence community is moving towards replacing the federal government's nearly 60-year-old General Schedule salary scale with a merit system that gives managers more flexibility to establish competitive salaries and reward success.
The Federal Times reported Tuesday that by 2008 the new system will impact tens of thousands of intelligence employees spread across 16 agencies.
Despite legal objections, the Defense and Homeland Security departments are beginning the process of reforming their personnel and pay systems, changes that will eventually impact nearly half of the government's 1.8 million employees, altering how they are compensated, promoted and managed.
Director of National Intelligence, Chief Human Capital Officer Ronald Sanders said, "Human capital policies can either strengthen the community or they can unravel it. That's sort of the choice we face with moving forward on compensation modernization. If we do nothing, we run the risk of unraveling the community. If we move forward, as controversial as that may be and as anxious as that may make people, the fact is I don't think we have a choice."
Homeland Security Intelligence employees are moving under the new performance MaxHR management system, while next year Defense Department intelligence employees will start transferring from the General Schedule system to one similar to the Defense Department's new National Security Personnel System. The changes will affect 650,000 Pentagon GS and Wage Grade workers. While intelligence employees are exempt from NSPS, Pentagon officials decided to apply the NSPS broad pay bands and performance-based aspects to Pentagon intelligence employees.
It remains unclear how smooth the transition to the new system will be and whether it will create friction across the government's disparate intelligence communities.
"If you're going to have a community, one of the things you have to worry about is a level playing field within that community, and I think that what's driving us in the area of pay systems modernization," Sanders said.
"We can't have a community if one part enjoys substantial competitive advantage over another part, if one part has flexibilities the other part doesn't, or worse, if two or three parts have flexibilities all exercised differently and the other parts do not."
The International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Center has reported an upward trend in pirate attacks on merchantmen since the beginning of 2006.
The IMB Piracy Reporting Center is located in Kuala Lumpur and is supported by financial contributions from the shipping industry, providing its services for free to all ships that request them.
SeaNews reported on Tuesday that two pirate vessels attacked a tanker in the Red Sea Sunday.
The IMB's Piracy Reporting Center reported the fast boats approached the unnamed oil tanker at the southern end of the Red Sea. When the tanker took evasive action and its crew mustered on deck the pirate vessels fled in a northerly direction.
Pirate incidents have also been increasing off the coast of Somalia, where 39 incidents have been reported since the beginning of March. The IMB warns that Somali pirates are venturing farther and farther away from shore to find their targets and reiterates its warnings to merchantmen sailing off the coast of Somalia, advising those who are not calling at Somali ports to stay at least 200 nautical miles from the coast.
The United Nations Security Council announced that it will urge member states to act upon the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization's request to provide naval and air cover in Somalia's offshore waters to cope with the rising lawlessness.
Despite the IMB announcing that in 2006 pirate attacks worldwide were at their lowest level since 1999, concern in the shipping community has risen about the deteriorating situation in new piracy hot spots such as Somalia and Iraq.
Unwanted spam e-mail now accounts for 75 percent of all email and the United Nations estimates the current cost of dealing with the problem at $25 billion annually.
Increasingly clogging the Internet is the bulk spamming software written to take control of personal computers on global broadband networks, which after infecting them turns them into an anonymous "proxy" for the spammers, who uses them to send out spam for pornography or illegal drugs without the computer owner's knowledge or permission.
The Register reported Tuesday that a Russian Web site is selling a DIY spyware kit called WebAttacker IE0601 for $15. The site lists its creator's credentials in writing computer viruses, spamware and malware, and offers technical support to those who purchase WebAttacker IE0601.
WebAttacker IE0601 is specifically designed to make writing JavaScript code simple. Once written, programmers can infect computers by sending spam messages inviting potential victims to visit a compromised Web site.
Internet security firm Sophos, in investigating spamming, has determined that many sites use newsworthy topics to lure unwary users, such as the H5N1 bird flu virus, or claims that Slobodan Milosevic was murdered.
Internet surfers visiting compromised sites will be exposed to code exploiting Web browser and Windows vulnerabilities to download malware onto the computer's hard drive, which will attempt to turn off the firewall and install password theft, keylogger or banking Trojan programs.
Sophos senior security consultant Carole Theriault said, "This type of behavior is inviting the return of script-kiddies. By simplifying the task of the potential hacker for (little money) ... sites like this one will attract opportunists who aren't necessarily very skilled and turn them into cyber-criminals."
Six convicted terrorists tried to escape Monday from a maximum-security jail in Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway republic of Somaliland.
The group, five of whom are said to belong to an al-Qaida cell, are serving long sentences or death sentences after being convicted of killing several foreign aid workers in Somaliland.
Awdal News Network reported on March 27 that five men, including Abdirahman Indho-Ade, described as one of the most dangerous and most wanted terrorists in the Horn of Africa, jumped the prison fence on the evening of March 26. Authorities immediately began a massive manhunt and rearrested the men, who have been taken back to the Hargeisa prison. Indho-Ade was wounded while resisting arrest.
In November 2005 a Somaliland court had sentenced eight men to death for killing several aid workers between 2003 and 2004. Their victims included British teachers Richard and Enid Eyeington, Italian hospital humanitarian worker Annalena Tonelli and German aid agency GTZ employee Florence Chepkemei and her colleague.
