A rare Pentagon briefing for Obama; US troops praised for restraint in Kabul; French defense minister in DC today; Iran wants missiles in its nuke deal; And a bit more. - Monday July 6th, 2015 at 3:04 PM - U.S. National Security and Military News Review

July 06, 2015

A rare Pentagon briefing for Obama; US troops praised for restraint in Kabul; French defense minister in DC today; Iran wants missiles in its nuke deal; And a bit more.
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 3:04 PM

In a rare presidential trip to the Pentagon, Barack Obama will cross the Potomac River today for an update on the fight against the Islamic State, Defense One’s Marcus Weisgerber reports. Obama is scheduled to make a statement after the meetings on Monday, but don’t expect to see him taking questions.
Meantime, at least nine civilians were killed and a dozen others wounded when an Iraqi air force jetdropped a bomb over an eastern neighborhood of Baghdad this morning. The bomb reportedly failed to detach from the Sukhoi jet during a mission to bomb Islamic State militants, then fell as the jet returned to base, Reuters reports. And on Sunday, four bombings struck cafes and bus stops in Shiite districts of Baghdad, killing at least 15 and wounding nearly three dozen, AP reported.
In Syria, the U.S.-led air campaign against ISIS pounded militant strongholds, bridges and transit routes in the headquarters city of Raqqa over the weekend. “This was one of the largest deliberate engagements we have conducted to date in Syria,” said coalition spokesman Lt. Col. Thomas Gilleran, AP reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that one strike targeting a militant near a school also killed six civilians, an allegation a coalition spokesman said could not be verified just yet. CNN has a little bit more on that.
And here’s a quick glimpse at the rapidly escalating deaths of foreign fighters in Syria. Hard to say with certainty if this is more the product of an increase in reporting or an actual trend; nevertheless the rise in nations represented and locations of fighting is certainly notable.

Iran wants UN sanctions on its ballistic missile program lifted before it proceeds with nuclear negotiations, Iranian officials said the day before the extended deadline to reach an agreement, Reuters reports from Vienna. Western officials, however, are reportedly not interested in this latest pitch from Tehran.
And peeking ahead to the future: Should the parties reach an agreement in three days, the 30-day Congressional review process could hinge on these 14 Democrats in the Senate, where the deal’s fate appears most uncertain. If an agreement is reached after July 9, legislation passed this year gives Congress 60 days to dig in and sound off on one of President Obama’s more ambitious goals.
Speaking of sounding off, Iraq war vet and Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is still perhaps the strongest skeptic of any deal, as he explained in typical harsh language yesterday on ABC’s “This Week.”
And Tehran’s deputy oil minister says his country’s exports could easily double, setting up a possible clash with Saudi Arabia on the heels of any formal agreement, the Wall Street Journal reported. “We are like a pilot on the runway ready to take off. This is how the whole country is right now,” Mansour Moazami told the Journal.

Nigerian authorities have blamed Boko Haram for Sunday night mosque and restaurant bombingsthat killed 44 in the central city of Jos. The attacks “are the latest in a string blamed on Boko Haram that have killed more than 200 people over the past week in northeast Nigeria,” AP reports.
And over the weekend, to the north, the nation of Tunisia could soon collapse, its president warned after declaring a state of emergency attributed to spillover violence from ISIS militants in neighboring Libya. President Beji Caid Essebsi attributed the situation to a “lack of international resolve in targeting the Islamic State group throughout the region…[adding] Tunisia specifically had been a target of the extremist group because it had a functioning, secular democracy,” AP reported.

If Iran agrees to a nuke deal, ISIS will be a big reason why, Kathy Gilsinan writes in The Atlantic, citing experts who spoke recently at the Aspen Institute and elsewhere. “There is actually support for this deal within the Revolutionary Guards in Iran,” says Vali Nasr, the dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, “because their day job is right now fightingISIS, and they need the United States, particularly in Iraq, on the right side of that fight.”

“I Played Make-Believe With the Pakistani Military” is Georgetown professor C. Christine Fair’s fascinating account of lies, prevarications, and fanciful stories told to her as she traveled around Pakistan to learn about its armed forces and its wars. Her full report is here.

The UK is stepping up its defense posture to meet a world growing more dangerous, British Ambassador to the U.S. Peter Westmacott writes at Defense One. Citing Russia and ISIS as threats, he notes that 4,000 UK troops are currently involved in 21 joint operations in 19 countries, “which is double the number five years ago.”

Jim Webb nailed it with his 2002 op-ed warning that invading Iraq would help Iran and China and unleash sectarian violence across the Mideast — but will it be enough to vault him past Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nod? Quartz’ Daniel DePetris lays it out.

Meanwhile, Clinton accuses China of “hacking into everything that doesn’t move in America,”according to Reuters. Via Jake Flanigan at Quartz, here.

Corruption and lack of regard for human life at U.S. Customs and Border Patrol could undermine its entire mission, reports a Homeland Security panel formed to investigate the agency. GovExec’s Eric Katz has the story.

Congress is poised to erode a key way that U.S. citizens perform national service, says Stephen Hadley, a former national security adviser to George W. Bush who now works on the Franklin Projectat the Aspen Institute. Both the House and Senate considering a 34% cut to the budget of the Corporation for National Service, he notes at Defense One.

On July 16, get “read on” to the DOD Insider Threat Program as our Tech Editor Patrick Tucker sits down with Patricia Larsen, co-director of the National Insider Threat Task Force; and Mark Nehmer, associate deputy director for cybersecurity and counterintelligence at the Defense Security Service. The event gets underway at 8 a.m. EDT, at the CEB Waterview Conference Center in Arlington, Va. Register for your spot here.

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The D Brief, from Ben Watson and Brad Peniston. And a big congrats to the U.S. Women’s National Team for their blowout victory in the World Cup against Japan one day after America celebrated its 239th birthday. Want to share The D Brief with a friend? Find our subscribe link here. (And if you want to view today’s edition in your browser, you can do that here.) And please tell us what you like, don’t like, or want to drop on our radar right here at the-d-brief@defenseone.com.

Today in Washington, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian sits down with Defense OneExecutive Editor Kevin Baron to talk about the future of U.S.-French cooperation. Hosted by the German Marshall Fund, it starts at 4 p.m. EDT. Full details right here.

After a U.S. convoy was attacked in Kabul nearly a week and a half ago, American soldiers acted with “admirable restraint”—including one soldier who kept his cool after being stabbed in the arm by an Afghan man after a bomb ripped into an MRAP—in maintaining order and keeping violence at a minimum despite a “confusing and violent” scene, the New York Times reported after NATO officials wrapped an investigation into the matter.
Pakistan’s military, meantime, is touting more “major victories” in their months-long clearance operations in and around the Shawal Valley bordering Afghanistan, where al-Qaeda and elements of the Pakistani Taliban are believed to be holed up, WaPo’s Tim Craig reported from Islamabad. “Zahid Hussain, an Islamabad-based military analyst, said the Pakistani army is trying to complete its offensive in the Shawal Valley before snow begins falling there in September. ‘This is going to be the most critical phase of the North Waziristan operation,’ said Hussain, who has made several visits to the area. ‘It’s a very, very treacherous, mountainous area, and thickly forested, so there is a reason why the army has left it for the end.’”

Back stateside, female sailors and Marines can now take 18 weeks for maternity leave after Navy Secretary Ray Mabus updated the policy late last week. “The new 18-week figure was inspired by Google’s maternity leave policy, according to chief of naval personnel spokesman Cmdr. Chris Servello,” Marine Corps Times reported. “When [Google] increased its policy from 12 to 18 weeks in 2007, he said, they found that half as many new moms were leaving the company. The Navy and Marine Corps have a similar problem when it comes to women getting out to focus on their children. The hope is that women will be more likely to stay on active duty if they have more time with their newborns.”

Ahead of House and Senate defense committee’s closed-door talks on the defense authorization bill,The Hill’s Kristina Wong rolls up the key differences in the two chambers’ draft legislation. The topics to know: Guantanamo (Senate offers a path to closure; House extends restrictions), reforming the acquisition process, pay and benefits (one percent pay raise difference between the two currently), and the Pentagon’s use of Russian-made rockets (Senate authorizes nine; the House, 14).

A relatively obscure 1950 U.S. Supreme Court decision prevents troops from suing the military—and this fall SCOTUS will hear another petition to challenge that 75-year-old law, Military Times’ Patricia Kime reports. The past decade has already seen three challenges, all of which concerned allegedly excessive physical duty imposed on pregnant troops, which preceded complications in delivery and the premature deaths of the soldiers’ children.
Marine leadership at Parris Island, S.C., meantime, is under the microscope after relieving a female commander for butting heads with her boss over what she viewed as “lower expectations for female recruits and a lack of male-female competition at boot camp, which she [felt] hurts performance,” The San Diego Union-Tribune reported last week.

Now for a bit of heartwarming veteran news: NYT has this story of U.S. and Vietnam veterans sharing a space in Da Nang, blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival tunes, and generally having the opposite experience to the ones they had 45 years ago. The July 4 visit was the latest in a series of moves to restore relations with Vietnam before Nguyen Phu Trong, the head of Vietnam’s Communist Party, meets with President Obama at the White House for the first time.

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How a ‘billion dollar spy’ stole Soviet secrets and helped the U.S. Air Force
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 3:03 PM

By David E. Hoffman July 6 at 9:35 AM

In early 1977, the new president, Jimmy Carter, and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, were both fascinated by spy satellites, especially the revolutionary KH-11 that transmitted electronic images directly to the ground, rather than using the cumbersome previous method, in which film canisters were ejected from a satellite and captured by airplanes on descent.

The KH-11 images could be seen in real time instead of days or weeks later. “It was a marvelous system,” Turner later recalled, “much like a TV in space that sent back pictures almost instantly.”

[Book excerpt: How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow]

But satellites had their limitations in collecting intelligence. They could count missile silos and track military equipment. But they could not see inside a file cabinet, or inside the mind of a Politburo member. George J. Tenet, who was CIA director in the Clinton years, recalled: “From the mid-1960s on to the Soviet collapse, we knew roughly how many combat aircraft or warheads the Soviets had, and where. But why did they need that many or that kind? What did they plan to do with them? To this day, intelligence is always much better at counting heads than divining what is going on inside them.”

This is why Adolf Tolkachev was so valuable as an agent for the United States, a radar engineer working deep inside the Soviet military-industrial complex. His story is told in my new book, “The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal.”

In the secret documents which he copied with a simple Pentax 35mm camera clamped to the back of a chair, Tolkachev opened a window on Soviet research and development plans a decade into the future. He provided the kind of intelligence that no satellite could ever hope to capture.

Espionage can be split into “operational intelligence” – carrying out the spying – and “positive intelligence,” the secrets that are stolen.

Tolkachev’s “positive intelligence” was a goldmine, particularly for the U.S. Air Force.

On June 17, 1980, Tolkachev met his CIA case officer, John Guilsher, in Moscow. He gave Guilsher 179 rolls of 35mm film containing documents about Soviet airborne radars and weapons control systems. According to a CIA memo, Tolkachev’s delivery included the first documentation about a new Soviet Airborne Warning and Control system, or AWACS, and extensive information about a new modification of the MiG‑25 high-altitude interceptor. And, the memo said, Tolkachev had documented “several new models of airborne missile systems and technical characteristics of other Soviet fighter and fighter/bomber aircraft to be deployed between now and 1990.”

Tolkachev was providing a road map to the United States for compromising and defeating two critical Soviet systems: the radars on the ground that defended the country from attack, and the radars on warplanes that gave it capacity to attack others. His espionage put the United States in position to dominate the skies in aerial combat and confirmed the vulnerability of Soviet air defenses—that in the event of any war, American cruise missiles and bombers could fly under the radar.

The evaluations of Tolkachev’s material from the U.S. military were glowing. They said he had provided the “first information” and “only information” about certain Soviet weapons systems; that “time saved on research and development of U.S. countermeasures to these systems has been reduced by [a] minimum of 18 months, for one system as much as five years,” and his material had led to a 180-degree turnabout in a $70 million radar. In addition to blueprints, documents and schematics, Tolkachev twice turned over to the CIA actual circuit boards from Soviet radar design projects.

At one point, the CIA asked the Air Force to estimate what Tolkachev’s intelligence was worth, in a broad way. Could they put a dollar amount on how much they had saved in research and development costs? The answer came back: “somewhere in the neighborhood of $2 billion.”

That was before they even looked at the 179 rolls of film delivered to Guilsher in the briefcase.

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Is Google more accurate than the FBI in tracking police-involved killings?
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 3:02 PM

Alabama Opinion

When tracking police-involved homicides across the U.S., you'd assume the FBI would be the agency to most accurately track those numbers.

Would you be surprised to know that Google may do a better job?

According to a report by criminal justice news website The Marshall Project, independent websites that track officer-involved killings using Google to "crawl" news websites have more accurate counts than the FBI's annual Uniform Crime Report and the Centers for Disease Control.

The Washington Post just released its online database of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer in the line of duty in 2015. The Post's number stands at 463 at mid-year, and was gathered by "culling local news reports and monitoring independent websites such as "Killed by Police" and "Fatal Encounters." Both of those websites rely heavily on Google news alerts to gather their data, according to The Marshall Project.

The Guardian's recently launched database, "The Counted", lists 550 incidents of people killed by police. It also relies heavily on independent websites like Killed by Police and Fatal Encounters that gather their data using Google alerts, according to The Marshall Project.

The Post and The Guardian developed their own methods for tracking police-involved killings because similar databases compiled by the FBI and The Centers for Disease Control are out-of-date and incomplete, The Marshall project article states.

Providing numbers to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report is voluntary, and only about 2,700 of 22,000 agencies recognized by the FBI contributed in 2013, the most recent year data is available, according to The Marshall Project. The FBI's 2013 number was 461 homicides committed by officers.

The CDC's numbers are compiled from voluntary state submissions, and only about 32 states provided numbers in 2013, according to The Marshall Project. It estimated 516 police-involved homicides in 2013.

"By year's end, both the FBI and the CDC numbers stand to be about half the number estimated by both the Guardian and the Washington Post," states The Marshall Project article.

Four NATO Ships Enter Black Sea for Annual Exercise, Russian Activity on Rise in the Region
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 3:00 PM

USNI News

USS Porter (DDG-78) off the coast of Bulgaria on July 6, 2015. US Navy Photo

Guided missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG-78) entered the Black Sea on Sunday — following three other NATO ships in the last several days — marking a noticeable uptick in activity in the region ahead of military exercises in Bulgaria, according to a Bosphorus Naval News ship spotting site and U.S. 6th Fleet.

Porter crossed the Bosphorus and entered the Black Sea on Sunday a day after the Dutch frigate HNLMS Tromp (F-803) and Portuguese frigate NRP D. Francisco de Almeida (F-334). Spanish minesweeper ESPS Tajo (M-36) crossed the strait on July 1.

The ships were bound for Bulgaria as part of the annual Breeze 2015 exercise that include ships from Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) and the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 2 (SNMCMG2). The exercise began on July 3 and is scheduled to run until July 12, according to a release from the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense.

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG 78) arrives at Naval Station Rota, Spain on April 30, 2015. US Navy photo.

“Porter’s presence in Bulgaria reaffirms to NATO allies that the U.S. Navy shares a commitment to strengthen ties while working toward mutual goals of promoting peace and stability in the Black Sea region,” read a statement from 6th Fleet.

The exercise will include 30 ships and around 1,700 personnel from Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey as well as the U.S., according to the MoD.

Outside of the exercise, the French signals intelligence ship Dupuy de Lôme (A759) and guided missile destroyer USS Laboon (DDG-58) recently left the Black Sea as part of an ongoing presence mission since Russia seized the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March of 2014.

In addition to the NATO ship moves, Russia moved two Project 775 amphibious warships — Korolev(130) and Alexander Otrakovski (031) — into the Black Sea on Friday.

All warships from countries without a coast on the Black Sea operate under the 1936 Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Straits.
Montreux rules call for foreign warships to depart the Black Sea after 21 days.

Four NATO Ships Due in Black Sea Ahead of Maritime Exercise

Four NATO warships are due in the Black Sea in the next several days ahead of an international maritime exercise to include Ukraine, according to press reports and information from the U.S. Navy. Guided missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG-71) was scheduled to transit the Bosphorus Strait today — U.S. 6th…

September 3, 2014

In "Foreign Forces"

Cruiser Vella Gulf Leaves Black Sea, More NATO Ships Inbound

The U.S. guided missile cruiser USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) has left the Black Sea and two more NATO ships are inbound, according to Russian press reports. Vella Gulf has rotated in and out of the Black Sea in the past few months as part of NATO’s presence mission following the…

August 26, 2014

In "Foreign Forces"

U.S. Cruiser Leaves Black Sea, Several NATO Ships Remain

A U.S. guided missile cruiser has left the Black Sea on Tuesday, leaving a collection of NATO ships to maintain an ongoing presence mission following Russia’s seizure of the Crimea region from Ukraine. USS Vella Gulf (CG-72) left the Black Sea on Tuesday following the Bulgarian led exercise, Breeze 2014,…

July 15, 2014

In "Budget Industry"

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· · · · · · ·

Hacking Team Breach Shows a Global Spying Firm Run Amok
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:59 PM

WIRED

Few news events can unleash more schadenfreude within the security community than watching a notorious firm of hackers-for-hire become a hack target themselves. In the case of the freshly disemboweled Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team, the company may also serve as a dark example of a global surveillance industry that often sells to any government willing to pay, with little regard for that regime’s human rights record.

On Sunday night, unidentified hackers published a massive, 400 gigabyte trove on bittorrent of internal documents from the Milan-based Hacking Team, a firm long accused of unethical sales of tools that help governments break into target computers and phones. The breached trove includes executive emails, customer invoices and even source code; the company’s twitter feed was hacked, controlled by the intruders for nearly 12 hours, and used to distribute samples of the company’s hacked files. The security community spent Sunday night picking through the spy firm’s innards and in some cases finding what appear to be new confirmations that Hacking Team sold digital intrusion tools to authoritarian regimes. Those revelations may be well timed to influence an ongoing U.S. policy debate over how to control spying software, with a deadline for public debate on new regulations coming this month.

One document pulled from the breached files, for instance, appears to be a list of Hacking Team customers along with the length of their contracts. These customers include Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Nigeria, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and several United States agencies including the DEA, FBI and Department of Defense. Other documents show that Hacking Team issued an invoice to Ethiopia’s Information Network Security Agency (the spy agency of a country known to surveil and censor its journalists and political dissidents) for licensing its Remote Control System, a spyware tool. For Sudan, a country that’s the subject of a UN embargo, the documents show a $480,000 invoice to its National Intelligence and Security Services for the same software.

These are the equivalents of the Edward Snowden leaks for the surveillance industry Eric King

“These are the equivalents of the Edward Snowden leaks for the surveillance industry,” says Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International. “There are few countries [Hacking Team] aren’t willing to sell to. There are few lines they aren’t willing to cross.”

In its marketing materials, Hacking Team describes its RCS product as “a solution designed to evade encryption by means of an agent directly installed on the device” an agency is monitoring. “You want to look through your target’s eyes,” reads the script of one of the company’s videos, shown below. “You have to hack your target.” Last year, researchers at Toronto-based Internet surveillance analysis group Citizen Lab and antivirus firm Kaspersky revealed Hacking Team software that targets every mobile operating system to take total control over phones.

Hacking Team hasn’t yet responded to WIRED’s request for comment. One Hacking Team engineer, Christian Pozzi, seemed to defend his employer briefly on Twitter, writing that the company’s attackers were “spreading lies about the services we provide.” His feed was soon hacked and then deleted.

Hacking Team’s newly exposed business practices call into question whether current regulations effectively prevent a private firm from selling hacking software to any government in the world. One written exchange between Hacking Team’s executives and UN officials shows the UN questioning Hacking Team’s sales to Sudan. A letter from the UN to the company references a March 2015 letter Hacking Team sent the UN, in which it argued that its spying tools didn’t count as a weapon, and so didn’t fall under the UN’s arms embargo. (The UN disagreed.)

“Sudan is one of the most strictly embargoed countries in the world,” says Chris Soghoian, a privacy activist and lead technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union who first spotted the UN correspondence in the Hacking Team data dump. “If Hacking Team believes they can lawfully sell to Sudan, they believe they can sell to anyone.”

That issue of whether hacking tools are defined as weapons in the terms of arms control agreements couldn’t be more timely: An arms control pact called the Wassenaar Arrangement has been hotly debated in recent weeks over its measures that would control the international export of intrusion software. The US Department of Commerce has opened the process to public comment, a window that ends on July 20.

The Wassenaar Arrangement has been criticized by the hacker community as limiting security research and preventing the sharing of penetration testing tools. But Privacy International’s Eric King argues that the practices of Hacking Team demonstrate why the pact is necessary, along with what he describes as “carve-outs” to protect security research. “What’s clear is that these companies can’t be left to their own devices,” says King. “Some form of regulation is needed to prevent these companies from selling to human rights abusers. That’s a hard policy question, and one tool won’t be a silver bullet. But regulation and export controls should be part of the policy response.”

The issue of whether hacking tools are defined as weapons in the terms of arms control agreements couldn't be more timely

Despite Hacking Team being based in Italy, the US Department of Commerce’s still-evolving export control regulations may still apply to the company, says the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian. He points to two firms he spotted in Hacking Team’s breached files who appeared to be reselling the company’s tools: Cyber Point International in Maryland and Horizon Global Group in California.

The hacked documents are far from the first evidence that Hacking Team has sold its tools to authoritarian governments. Researchers at Citizen Lab have accused Hacking Team of selling to countries including Sudan and the United Arab Emirates, who used it to spy on a political dissident who was later beaten by thugs. WIRED reported in 2013 on an American activist who was apparently targeted by Turkey using Hacking Team tools. But Hacking Team has responded with denials, criticisms of Citizen Lab’s methods, and claims that it doesn’t sell to “repressive regimes.”

“Hacking Team has continuously thrown mud, obfuscated, tried to confuse the truth,” says Privacy International’s King. “This release helps set the record straight on that, and shows their deviousness and duplicity in responding to what are legitimate criticisms.”

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Obama makes rare visit to Pentagon for update on Islamic State operations
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:57 PM

President Obama will visit the Pentagon on Monday for a briefing on the campaign against the Islamic State. (Carolyn Kaster/AP)

Military leaders will update President Obama on operations against the Islamic State when he makes a rare visit to the Pentagon on Monday, defense officials said.

The discussions come a little over a year after Islamic State militants burst out of Syria and captured much of northwest Iraq, laying bare the frailty of Iraqi security forces and the vulnerability of the Baghdad government after the U.S. military withdrawal in 2011.

For almost a year, U.S. and allied aircraft have conducted strikes on Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria, making it harder for militants to launch large-scale attacks.

Senior officials briefing Obama will include Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter; Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command; and Gen. Joseph Votel, head of Special Operations Command.

The Islamic State threat also prompted Obama, who has sought to limit American involvement in overseas conflicts, to send about 3,500 U.S. advisers and trainers back to Iraq. He has also vowed to keep American troops out of combat there.

But U.S. military personnel there have struggled to ensure that Iraqi forces, which remain reliant on Shiite paramilitary fighters and lack capability in key areas such as logistics, intelligence and air power, can take on the Islamic State.

In May, Iraqi forces ceded the city of Ramadi to Islamic State fighters when they retreated en masse.

[In Ramadi, the Islamic State settles in]

American officials are also grappling with the widespread appeal of the extremist group, which has recruited fighters from around the world and has inspired attacks across the Middle East and in Europe and the United States. Most of those attacks have targeted Westerners or Shiite Muslims, whom the Islamic State consider infidels.

Obama, who as president has paid infrequent visits to the Pentagon, last made the trip to the Defense Department in October 2014.

Missy Ryan writes about the Pentagon, military issues, and national security for The Washington Post.

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White Hate but Islamic Terror? Thoughts on Charleston, Hat Crimes and Terrorism by Jane Chong
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:50 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

What are the implications of failing to deem the Charleston shootings "terrorism"?

In the wake of Wednesday’s atrocities, commentators have been seriously questioning the public and political inclination to characterize shooter Dylann Roof as a deranged lone wolf rather than a terrorist. And not long after the Department of Justice announced it was investigating the shooting as a potential act of domestic terrorism as well as a potential hate crime, FBI Director James Comey set off a renewed flurry of debate with his remarks distinguishing the events of Charleston from the kind of "political act" that qualifies as terrorism.

Netizens have taken particular interest in contrasting the immediate reaction to Charleston with the immediate reaction to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. Presumably these two attacks have emerged as fertile subjects for comparison partly because of the early dearth of evidence that either alleged perpetrator had official ties to or an operational role in a designated terrorist organization.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is among those who have been singled out for his disparate treatment of Charleston and Boston. Commenting on what the Charleston shooting might signify for his home state, Senator Graham described Roof as “one of these wacked out kids” and stated, “I don't think it's anything broader than that.”

This presents a sharp contrast with the views Graham’s espoused back in 2013 on the appropriate treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: "This man, in my view, should be designated as a potential enemy combatant and we should be allowed to question him for intelligence gathering purposes to find out about future attacks and terrorist organizations that may exist that he has knowledge of, and that evidence cannot be used against him in trial. That evidence is used to protect us as a nation."

Judd Legum of Think Progress cited the Senator’s statements as a glaring example of our collective insistence on seeing violence motivated by Islamic extremism as a systemic threat while minimizing right-wing supremacist violence as the work of individual madmen. As Charles Kurzman and David Schanzer noted in a New York Times op-ed the day before the Charleston attack, such bias is particularly indefensible given the data: Attacks carried out by Muslim Americans account for 50 fatalities in the thirteen and a half years since 9/11, while plots by right-wing extremists have resulted in 254 fatalities between 9/11 and 2012.

The conflation of terrorism with Islamic extremism is an undeniable error. But distinguishing Boston and Charleston need not unequivocally boil down to bias of this particular kind.

Consider President Obama’s reactions shortly after each attack—reactions that, if read in isolation, might seem to reflect this bias. On April 16, 2013, the day after the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama delivered a speech in which he stated the following:

[G]iven what we now know about what took place, the FBI is investigating it as an act of terrorism. Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terror. What we don’t yet know, however, is who carried out this attack, or why; whether it was planned and executed by a terrorist organization, foreign or domestic, or was the act of a malevolent individual. That’s what we don’t yet know.

Now contrast this with President Obama’s speech last Thursday, one day after the attacks in Charleston, which nowhere made mention of terrorism:

The FBI is now on the scene with local police, and more of the Bureau’s best are on the way to join them. The Attorney General has announced plans for the FBI to open a hate crime investigation. We understand that the suspect is in custody. And I’ll let the best of law enforcement do its work to make sure that justice is served.

Superficially speaking, there are at least two ways to read the administration's initial decision to investigate one attack as a terrorist act and the other as a hate crime. A critic might contend that President Obama, like Senator Graham, appears to have untenably reserved the terrorist designation for Muslim extremists. Alternatively, we could take President Obama’s words at face value and recognize the weapon of choice as a critical factor in how a massacre tends to be classified when facts remain sparse and the evidence is still forthcoming. Those words again: “Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terror.”

And so our inquiry evolves. Is Dylann Roof being widely portrayed as a hater and not a terrorist because, based on the available evidence, he is a white supremacist and not a Muslim extremist? Or is it because his weapon of choice was a gun and not a bomb?

It seems easy enough to conclude that the former, if true, is unacceptable; the white-crime/Muslim-terrorism presumption is impossible to defend. The gun-crime/bomb-terrorism binary isn’t nearly as unreasonable. Any number of legal, political, sociological and technological factors—some legitimate—could help explain why the government might choose to treat violence involving bombs as terrorism per se, while only on a case-by-case basis treating mass shootings as what I will dub terrorism per quod (i.e., after taking into account extrinsic facts). After all, possession of an explosive is illegal, with some narrow industrial exceptions; owning a gun is not. Going through the trouble of constructing a bomb would appear to require premeditation; shooting a gun does not necessarily. There are other nuances too.

All of this I note in service of a simple point. When it comes to mass killings, it is a mistake to explain to the public in the immediate aftermath that the difference between hate crime and terrorism boils down to the nature of the attacker's motivations. The inevitable result will be confusion and anger from commentators who attribute the differentiation to unjustifiable bias and take to Twitter to spit back at the government language from any one of several broad definitions of terrorism that resurface in hundreds of statutes and regulations. For example, following Comey's remarks, critics have latched onto the FBI's own definition of terrorism, as promulgated by the DOJ's research arm, as well onto as the State Department's similarly expansive definition of terrorism as it appears in 22 U.S.C. 2656f(d) (which is not a criminal statute but a set of provisions detailing requirements for the Secretary of State's annual country reports on terrorism).

Conversely, the definition of terrorist acts in the actual criminal code tends to favor Obama's reading. For instance, 18 U.S.C. § 2332b(g)(5) defines "federal crime of terrorism" in two parts: First, the offense must be "calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct"—which is presumably what Comey was somewhat inartfully alluding to with his "political act" comment. Second, the office must also violate any one of a host of statutory provisions that, to boil it down, effectively cover violence of two general types: (a) involving particular targets (for example, mass transportation systems, energy facilities, government targets, or U.S. persons abroad), or (b) using particular weapons (such as biological weapons, explosives, or weapons of mass destruction). This is presumably what Obama was referring to in the language quoted above. The attention to the nature of the target and the choice of weaponry is less clearly embedded but nonetheless evident in a number of other statutes, such as 6 U.S.C. 444(2) [definitions relating to anti-terrorism technology] and 22 U.S.C. 2780(d) [transactions with countries supporting international terrorism].

Now for a moment let's put aside the acceptableness of the assorted criteria that officially and informally influence our definition of terrorism. Given the tenor of the current debate, I wonder whether there is a way to actually assess whether the gun-crime/bomb-terrorism or the white-crime/Muslim-terrorism binary holds more sway over our national consciousness. Perhaps, for example, we could examine our treatment of Muslim shooters versus white bombers. But this is difficult, in part because bombings in the United States are relatively rare to begin with, and because few in the last decade appear to be attributable to whites. Meanwhile, Muslims are responsible for only a small fraction of the many mass shootings that have taken place in the U.S. over the last decade. Two high-profile instances, both from 2009: Nidal Malik Hasan, the Palestinian-American psychiatrist who was court-martialed after fatally shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (born Carlos Bledsoe), the convert to radical Islam who killed one soldier and wounded another at a Little Rock recruiting station.

Notably, despite considerable pressure and criticism from Congress—and a special report issued by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security expressly describing Hasan's killings as “the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11”—the Obama administration declined to formally classify either attack as an act of terrorism. The Army did not try Hasan as a terrorist and the Pentagon classified his attack as workplace violence, prompting public outcry and debate, and the feds deferred to state prosecutors in trying Muhammad, thereby triggering rampant speculation as to their motivations for not getting involved.

My own view is that, as suggested by these examples and others, Obama administration has a record of approaching the crime-terrorism distinction with care. Predictably, this caution has opened up the administration to a tremendous amount of criticism. For whatever functional and legal ends that judicious use of the “terrorism” tag may serve for the administration, the issue of nomenclature is obviously deeply emotional for the public.

And for good reason. How we choose to classify these attacks has material consequences. Sometimes these consequences are immediately tangible. For example, the President’s critics picked him apart for choosing not to classify the Fort Hood attacks as terrorist acts because that choice also meant that the soldiers who were killed and wounded in the shooting were not eligible for Purple Hearts. The controversy raged on until this year, when Congress broadened the definition of an attack by a foreign terrorist organization to include attacks “inspired or motivated by the foreign terrorist organization,” allowing the soldiers to be awarded Purple Hearts and accompanying benefits.

But in most cases, as in the case of Charleston, the stakes are subtler. Terrorism is more than a word; it has displaced the term "hate crime" as the ultimate cipher, one that informs us which atrocities need only be lamented and which atrocities warrant wholesale reconsideration and reconstruction of our social fabric. It is understandable, this fear of ours, that failing to affix the “terror” label to the horrors of Charleston amounts to permitting our grief to be relegated to the bottom of an ever-expanding grief hierarchy, for that hierarchy has real implications for how we as a nation choose to allocate our resources and how valiantly we battle which demons within.

I agree that only by recognizing the systemic nature of the derangement that motivated Roof and others like him can we properly treat root causes and contain future threats. But I also hope for the day when the t-word no longer commands such a monopoly on our willingness to do that.

Read the whole story

· · · · · · ·

Jim Comey, ISIS, and "Going Dark" by Benjamin Wittes
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:49 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

I had a lengthy conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey today about the nexus of our domestic ISIS problem and what the FBI calls the "going dark" issue. CNN the other day reported on some remarks Comey made on the subject, remarks that have not gotten enough attention but reflect a problem at the front of his mind these days:

FBI Director James Comey said Thursday his agency does not yet have the capabilities to limit ISIS attempts to recruit Americans through social media.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Americans are gravitating toward the militant organization by engaging with ISIS online, Comey said, but he told reporters that "we don't have the capability we need" to keep the "troubled minds" at home.

"Our job is to find needles in a nationwide haystack, needles that are increasingly invisible to us because of end-to-end encryption," Comey said. "This is the 'going dark' problem in high definition."

Comey said ISIS is increasingly communicating with Americans via mobile apps that are difficult for the FBI to decrypt. He also explained that he had to balance the desire to intercept the communication with broader privacy concerns.

"It is a really, really hard problem, but the collision that's going on between important privacy concerns and public safety is significant enough that we have to figure out a way to solve it," Comey said.

Let's unpack this.

As has been widely reported, the FBI has been busy recently dealing with ISIS threats. There have been a bunch of arrests, both because ISIS has gotten extremely good at the inducing self-radicalization in disaffected souls worldwide using Twitter and because of the convergence of Ramadan and the run-up to the July 4 holiday.

As has also been widely reported, the FBI is concerned about the effect of end-to-end encryption on its ability to conduct counterterrorism operations and other law enforcement functions. The concern is two-fold: It's about data at rest on devices, data that is now being encrypted in a fashion that can't easily be cracked when those devices are lawfully seized. And it's also about data in transit betweendevices, data encrypted such that when captured with a lawful court-ordered wiretap, the signal intercepted is undecipherable. Comey raised his concerns on both subjects at a speech at Brookings last year and has talked about them periodically since then:

What was not clear to me until today, however, was the extent to which the ISIS concerns and the "going dark" concerns have converged. In his Brookings speech, Comey did not focus on counterterrorism in the examples he gave of the going dark problem. In the remarks quoted by CNN, and in his conversation with me today, however, he made clear that the landscape is changing fast. Initial recruitment may take place on Twitter, but the promising ISIS candidate quickly gets moved onto messaging platforms that are encrypted end to end. As a practical matter, that means there are people in the United States whom authorities reasonably believe to be in contact with ISIS for whom surveillance is lawful and appropriate but for whom useful signals interception is not technically feasible.

That's a pretty scary thought.

I don't know what the right answer is to this problem, which involves a particularly complex mix of legitimate cybersecurity, investigative, and privacy questions. I do think the problem is a very different one if the costs of impaired law enforcement access to signal is enhanced ISIS ability to communicate with its recruits than if we're dealing primarily with more routine crimes, even serious ones.

I also think it's an issue that warrants a very serious discussion. This is an issue on which battle lines were drawn more than 20 years ago and a lot of people have lived in the same trenches since then. It's an area that, at least in my view, would benefit a lot from fresh thinking on all sides. Comey has taken a lot of heat for reopening this subject, but I think it's more than fair for him to ask whether we really want ISIS to be able to recruit people on Twitter and then have secure communications with them elsewhere. And if we don't want that, what then?

Read the whole story

· · · ·

Pentagon Releases New National Military Strategy by Cody M. Poplin
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:49 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

Yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey unveiled the the Pentagon's new 2015 National Military Strategy. Revising the 2011 National Military Strategy, General Dempsey indicated that the security landscape the United States faces is dramatically different than four years ago.

According to General Dempsey, the United States now faces "multiple, simultaneous security challenges from traditional state actors and transregional networks of sub-state groups — all taking advantage of rapid technological change." The new strategy notes that the United States is "more likely to face prolonged campaigns than conflicts that are resolved quickly… that control of escalation is becoming more difficult and more important… and that as a hedge against unpredictability with reduced resources, we may have to adjust our global posture.” Accordingly, he concludes that a military conflict with a major power is "low but growing."

The strategy also emphasizes the growing threat of what it calls "[h]ybrid conflicts" wherein "state and non-state actors working together toward shared objiectoves, employing a wide range of weapons such as we have witnessed in eastern Ukraine." Such conflicts present new challenges as they "serve to increase ambiguity, complicate decision-making, and slow the coordination of effective responses. Dempsey concludes that "due to these advantages to the aggressor, it is likely that this form of conflict will persist well into the future.”

In addition to calling out Russia, the document also points to Iran and North Korea as threats to both U.S. and global security. While critical of China's actions in the South China Sea, Dempsey begins the paragraph on the People's Republic by stating the the United States "support[s] China's rise and encourage[s] it to become a partner for greater international security."

You can read the full strategydocument below:

Read the whole story

· · ·

Director Comey and the Real Threats by Susan Landau
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:48 PM

Lawfare - Hard National Security Choices

Conflation obscures issues. That's what's happening now with FBI Director Comey's argumentsregarding ISIS, Going Dark, and device encryption. On Wednesday, Ben, quoting the director, discussedhow the changes resulting from ISIS means we ought to reexamine the whole encryption issue. "Our job is to find needles in a nationwide haystack, needles that are increasingly invisible to us because of end-to-end encryption," Comey said. "This is the 'going dark' problem in high definition."

Nope. Comey is looking at the right issue but in the wrong way. The possibility of ISIS attacks on US soil is very frightening. But as the New York Times reports, though the organization inspires lone wolf terrorists, it doesn't organize them to conduct their nefarious acts.

Encryption is not the difficulty in determining who the attackers might be and where their intentions lie. But encryption is important in combating our most serious national security concerns. I've quoted William Lynn here before, but the point he made is directly relevant, and it bears repeating. The Deputy Director of Defense wrote, "the threat to intellectual property is less dramatic than the threat to critical national infrastructure, [but] it may be the most significant cyberthreat that the United States will face over the long term."

The way you protect against such threats is communications and computer security everywhere. This translates to end-to-end encryption for communications, securing communications devices, etc. This is why, for example, NSA has supportedtechnological efforts to secure devices, communications, and networks in the private sector.

Thoughts of an armed thug wielding a machete or shooting a semiautomatic rifle at a Fourth of July parade or picnic are terrifying. But one thing we expect out of government officials is rational thought and a sense of priorities. Tackling ISIS domestically is difficult, but there is no evidence that being able to listen to communications would have helped prevent the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, in Tunisia, or other ISIS-inspired efforts. Meanwhile there is plenty of evidence that securing our communications and devices would have prevented the breaches at Anthem, OPM, and elsewhere. The latter are serious long-term national security threats.

Securing the US means more than protecting against a knife-wielding fanatic; it includes securing the economy and developing the infrastructure that protects against long-term threats. We expect our leaders to prioritize, putting resources to the most important threats and making the choices that genuinely secure our nation. Director Comey's comments mixing ISIS with discussions about communications security and encryption do not rise to that level.

Read the whole story

· ·

FBI Director: 'I Really Am Not a Maniac' About Encryption
Monday July 6th, 2015 at 2:43 PM

July 6, 2015 FBI Director James Comey on Monday defended his agency's position that too-tough-to-crack encryption poses a threat to national security, arguing that terrorists are increasingly using the technology to lock out law enforcement and coordinate attacks.

Comey, in a brief op-ed appearing on the prominent national security blog Lawfare, said that "there are lots of good things" about universal strong encryption, such as expanded privacy and protection from cybercriminals. But those benefits must be balanced against the potential risks created by making it more difficult for the government to access the digital communications and data of those suspected of wrongdoing, he said.

"When the government's ability—with appropriate predication and court oversight—to see an individual's stuff goes away, it will affect public safety," Comey wrote. "That tension is vividly illustrated by the current ISIL threat, which involves ISIL operators in Syria recruiting and tasking dozens of troubled Americans to kill people, a process that increasingly takes part through mobile messaging apps that are end-to-end encrypted, communications that may not be intercepted, despite judicial orders under the Fourth Amendment."

Comey said that the same tension could be seen in domestic criminal investigations as well, adding that "there is simply no doubt that bad people can communicate with impunity in a world of universal strong encryption."

Comey's post previews a showdown later this week on Capitol Hill, where he will testify before two powerful Senate committees on Wednesday about the dangers of law enforcement "going dark" in its investigations due to encryption. Comey will appear before the Intelligence Committee—a rare open hearing before the normally closed-door panel—and the Judiciary Committee.

The Obama administration has grown increasingly wary about encryption on smartphones ever since Apple and Google last year announced efforts to offer tighter security by default on their products. Earlier this year, President Obama warned that "if we get into a situation which the technologies do not allow us at all to track somebody we're confident is a terrorist … that's a problem."

But many cybersecurity experts strongly disagree with Obama and Comey. Many believe there is no such thing as a "golden key" for encryption that could allow law-enforcement or national security professionals access into an encrypted device without also creating a vulnerability that malicious hackers could exploit. A secret 2009 U.S. cybersecurity report obtained by Edward Snowden and published by The Guardian seemed to back that view up, warning that government and private computers are vulnerable to cyberattacks from Russia, China, and criminal actors if stronger encryption was not adopted across the board.

Comey, in his blog post, said that the two sides of the encryption debate are "talking past each other" and that he intends to kickoff a "healthy discussion" about the tension between privacy and security with respect to this issue.

"I really am not a maniac (or at least my family says so)," Comey said. "But my job is to try to keep people safe. In universal strong encryption, I see something that is with us already and growing every day that will inexorably affect my ability to do that job."

Read the whole story

· ·

Economist: Greek minister resignation 'extremely strong signal'

U.S. National Security and Military News Review

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Company Update (NYSE:RTN): NASA awards Raytheon $240 million contract ... Jutia Group Summary (NYSE:RTN): Raytheon Company develops integrated products, services, and solutions in the areas of sensing; effects; command, control, communic...

» Board members at healthcare organizations lack understanding of cybersecurity ... - FierceHealthIT
06/07/15 10:10 from cybersecurity - Google News
FierceHealthIT Board members at healthcare organizations lack understanding of cybersecurity ... FierceHealthIT Although professionals in healthcare say that cybersecurity has grown as a business priority at their organizations, a large ...

» LNP leader Lawrence Springborg won't rule out future asset sales - Herald Sun
06/07/15 10:10 from anti-Americanism - Google News
Herald Sun LNP leader Lawrence Springborg won't rule out future asset sales Herald Sun OPPOSITION Leader Lawrence Springborg was in campaign mode yesterday when he released an economic plan and spruiked the LNP's readiness for a ...

» New $200m venture planned for Queensland's north - Herald Sun
06/07/15 10:10 from anti-Americanism - Google News
Herald Sun New $200m venture planned for Queensland's north Herald Sun Featured Video. Do Iranians Really Hate America? With a looming deadline to strike a nuclear agreement that will see sanctions lifted from Iran, Benoit Faucon vis...

» ‘Morning Joe’ Pans Clinton Campaign’s ‘Hamfisted’ Treatment of Press
06/07/15 09:51 from Washington Free Beacon

» FBI training sheds light on real, life-changing decisions - Cincinnati.com
06/07/15 09:48 from fbi - Google News
Cincinnati.com FBI training sheds light on real, life-changing decisions Cincinnati.com The only thing we're told beforehand are the FBI's rules of engagement; Agents can shoot if they have "reasonable belief" that they...

» 5 surprising things I learned about the FBI - Cincinnati.com
06/07/15 09:48 from fbi - Google News
Cincinnati.com 5 surprising things I learned about the FBI Cincinnati.com The FBI . What do those letters mean to you? There's the obvious literal meaning: the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the nation's top federal law enforce...

» Four NATO Ships Enter Black Sea for Annual Exercise, Russian Activity on Rise ... - USNI News
06/07/15 09:48 from nato - Google News
Press TV Four NATO Ships Enter Black Sea for Annual Exercise, Russian Activity on Rise ... USNI News Guided missile destroyer USS Porter (DDG-78) entered the Black Sea on Sunday — following three other NATO ships in the last several days...

» Company Update: Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) - Northrop ... - Jutia Group
06/07/15 09:42 from CyberWar - Google News
Company Update: Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) - Northrop ... Jutia Group This segment sells its products primarily to government agencies for use in various areas, including intelligence , surveillance, and reconnaissance; comm...

» Spain's Podemos shows us that we can (but without Labour)
06/07/15 09:38 from openDemocracy
If the UK is to learn anything from the political changes in Spain, it must be that Podemos was formed out of the failings of the country’s traditional socialist party. Pablo Iglesis, leader of Podemos. Demotix/Hugo Ortuno. All rights re...

» Search warrant reveals target of FBI probe in Wallingford - Meriden Record-Journal
06/07/15 09:38 from fbi - Google News
Search warrant reveals target of FBI probe in Wallingford Meriden Record-Journal WALLINGFORD — The target of Tuesday's FBI raid on a certified accountant firm was Joseph Castellano, according to a copy of the search warrant given to ...

» Is Google more accurate than the FBI in tracking police-involved killings? - AL.com
06/07/15 09:36 from fbi - Google News
AL.com Is Google more accurate than the FBI in tracking police-involved killings? AL.com According to a report by criminal justice news website The Marshall Project, independent websites that track officer-involved killings using Google ...

» How a ‘billion dollar spy’ stole Soviet secrets and helped the U.S. Air Force
06/07/15 09:35 from National Security: National Security, Pentagon & Defense Department News - The Washington Post
In early 1977, the new president, Jimmy Carter, and his CIA director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, were both fascinated by spy satellites, especially the revolutionary KH-11 that transmitted electronic images directly to the ground, rather th...

» Forget The F35; NSA Pentagon And USCC Are Busy With Cyber War Games - WCCFtech
06/07/15 09:33 from cyber warfare - Google News
WCCFtech Forget The F35; NSA Pentagon And USCC Are Busy With Cyber War Games WCCFtech If you're even remotely interested in all things US military, you'd have heard about the recent dogfight which left the F-35 rather red faced. ...

» Wall St. set to open lower as Greece concerns weigh
06/07/15 09:27 from Search Results
Wall St. set to open lower as Greece concerns weigh Greek finance minister quits to smooth talks after thunderous 'No' China's economy shows 'positive changes': statistics bureau Disputes over missiles and arms embargo hold up Iran talks...

» MSNBC Panel Laughs at Palmieri As She Tries to Spin Clinton Campaign Roping Off Reporters
06/07/15 09:26 from Washington Free Beacon

» Insight - Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink - Reuters UK
06/07/15 09:26 from nato - Google News
Reuters UK Insight - Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink Reuters UK BRUSSELS NATO is preparing for a long standoff with Russia, reluctantly accepting that the Ukraine conflict has fundamentally transformed Europe'...

» A rare Pentagon briefing for Obama; US troops praised for restraint in Kabul; French defense minister in DC today; Iran wants missiles in its nuke deal; And a bit more.
06/07/15 09:21 from Defense One - All Content

» Reuters: Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink - Kyiv Post
06/07/15 09:15 from Nato Russia - Google News
Reuters: Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink Kyiv Post NATO is preparing for a long standoff with Russia , reluctantly accepting that the Ukraineconflict has fundamentally transformed Europe's security landscape a...

» Hacking Team is not the only cyberwar 'arms dealer' out there - TechSpective (press release)
06/07/15 09:14 from cyber warfare - Google News
Hacking Team is not the only cyberwar 'arms dealer' out there TechSpective (press release) It's very interesting to watch the public undressing of a company like Hacking Team–especially when that undressing seems to prove tha...

» Wiretap Numbers Don’t Add Up
06/07/15 09:08 from Just Security
Albert Gidari Last week, the Administrative Office (AO) of the US Courts published the 2014 Wiretap Report , an annual report to Congress concerning intercepted wire, oral, or electronic communications as required by Title III of the Omn...

» First Trust to Launch the First Trust NASDAQ CEA Cybersecurity ETF - MarketWatch
06/07/15 09:04 from cybersecurity - Google News
First Trust to Launch the First Trust NASDAQ CEA Cybersecurity ETF MarketWatch Cybersecurity is gaining global attention following recent high profile security breaches. With the heightened need for cybersecurity solutions, First Trust b...

» FBI using facial recognition despite privacy concerns - Valley News Live
06/07/15 09:01 from fbi - Google News
Valley News Live FBI using facial recognition despite privacy concerns Valley News Live So in a desperate bid to track down the Pennsylvania native, an FBI agent submitted Cozart's mug shot to the agency's newly created Next Gene...

» Iran nuclear talks could miss deadline, again
06/07/15 08:59 from National Security: National Security, Pentagon & Defense Department News - The Washington Post
VIENNA — The Iran nuclear talks could stretch beyond Tuesday’s deadline, a senior Iranian negotiator said Monday, adding it was up to the United States and its partners to make a “difficult decision” on settling the last points.Read full...

» Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink - Reuters
06/07/15 08:54 from nato - Google News
Reuters Tensions with Russia could prompt NATO strategy rethink Reuters BRUSSELS NATO is preparing for a long standoff with Russia, reluctantly accepting that the Ukraine conflict has fundamentally transformed Europe's security lands...

» Russia's S-400 Air Defense System to Sport New Missile - Tasnim News Agency (press release)
06/07/15 08:52 from missile defense - Google News
Tasnim News Agency (press release) Russia's S-400 Air Defense System to Sport New Missile Tasnim News Agency (press release) General Babakov said that crews operating the new missile system were now being trained at military academie...

» The Morning Download: Banks, Energy Companies Join Pentagon's Cyberwar ... - Wall Street Journal (blog)
06/07/15 08:50 from cyber warfare - Google News
The Morning Download: Banks, Energy Companies Join Pentagon's Cyberwar ... Wall Street Journal (blog) The Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and other agencies joined British officials and a numbe...

» Clinton Flack Doesn’t Think Hillary Needs to Turn Over Her Secret Email Server to Be Trustworthy
06/07/15 08:47 from Washington Free Beacon

» Stock to Follow: Cia de SaneamentoBasico do Estado de Sao Paulo (ADR ... - Markets Wired
06/07/15 08:29 from cia - Google News
Stock to Follow: Cia de SaneamentoBasico do Estado de Sao Paulo (ADR ... Markets Wired [Zacks] Cia de SaneamentoBasico do Estado de Sao Paulo (ADR) (NYSE:SBS)(TREND ANALYSIS) Value investing is always a very popular strategy, and for goo...

» Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... - Virtual-Strategy Magazine (press release) (registration) (blog)
06/07/15 08:17 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... Virtual-Strategy Magazine (press release) (registration) (blog) Waterfall Security Solutions (Waterfall Security ), which specializes in protection and secur...

» Last News Of The World Journalist Sentenced Over Phone Hacking - Huffington Post
06/07/15 08:14 from Cyberwar - Google News
BBC News Last News Of The World Journalist Sentenced Over Phone Hacking Huffington Post Former News of the World features editor Jules Stenson arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on August 21, 2014, to face charges with co...

» Avoid cyber security fears by assessing employee working habits, exec argues - AppsTech
06/07/15 08:10 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Avoid cyber security fears by assessing employee working habits, exec argues AppsTech So how can this be remedied? Andy Taylor, lead assessor and CLAS information assurance consultant at APMG, argues companies need to take how each of th...

» Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... - SYS-CON Media (press release)
06/07/15 08:04 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... SYS-CON Media (press release) "The growing sophistication of cyber attacks poses a serious risk to utility providers, threatening the safety and reliabi...

» NATO to have no military role in Afghanistan after 2016 - IHS Jane's 360
06/07/15 08:03 from nato - Google News
NATO to have no military role in Afghanistan after 2016 IHS Jane's 360 It will have neither a military dimension nor any responsibility to counter the country's resurgent poppy production, according to a senior NATO official who said...

» Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... - PR Newswire (press release)
06/07/15 08:02 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Waterfall Security Solutions Elevates Cyber Protection at Taiwan Smart Grid ... PR Newswire (press release) Waterfall Security Solutions (Waterfall Security ), which specializes in protection and security for critical infrastructure and ...

» ZeusVM malware building tool leak may cause botnet surge - PCWorld
06/07/15 08:01 from Cyberwar - Google News
PCWorld ZeusVM malware building tool leak may cause botnet surge PCWorld The Internet could see a new wave of botnets based on the ZeusVM banking Trojan after the tools needed to build and customize the malware program were published onl...

» News Roundup and Notes: July 6, 2015
06/07/15 08:00 from Just Security
Nadia O'Mara Before the start of business, Just Security provides a curated summary of up-to-the-minute developments at home and abroad. Here’s today’s news. IRAQ and SYRIA An Iraqi jet accidentally bombed Baghdad today, killing at lea...

» Visit to NATO by Deputy Prime Minister / Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and Minister of Justice of Montenegro
06/07/15 08:00 from NATO Latest News
The Deputy Prime Minister / Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Montenegro, Mr. Igor Lukšić together with the Minister of Justice, Mr. Zoran Pažin will visit NATO Headquarters on Tuesday 7 July 2015. They will meet wi...

» Leak of ZeusVM malware building tool might cause botnet surge - Computerworld
06/07/15 07:56 from Cyberwar - Google News
Computerworld Leak of ZeusVM malware building tool might cause botnet surge Computerworld However, the builder and control panel is all that attackers need to start their own ZeusVM version 2 botnet , for free. The builder is a program t...

» Scottish SMEs get discounted cyber-security - SC Magazine UK
06/07/15 07:55 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Scottish SMEs get discounted cyber - security SC Magazine UK The Scottish Business Resilience Centre (SBRC) has recruited five graduates from Dundee's Abertay University 'Ethical hacking and Countermeasures' BSc degree to pro...

» Leak of ZeusVM malware building tool might cause botnet surge - ITworld
06/07/15 07:52 from Cyberwar - Google News
Leak of ZeusVM malware building tool might cause botnet surge ITworld However, the builder and control panel is all that attackers need to start their own ZeusVM version 2 botnet , for free. The builder is a program that allows attackers...

» Joe Scarborough Goes on Epic Pro-America Rant
06/07/15 07:50 from Washington Free Beacon

» BEASTMODE: Joe Scarborough Goes on Epic Pro-America Rant
06/07/15 07:50 from Washington Free Beacon

» Obama should be angrier about China hacking US security clearance info - Business Insider
06/07/15 07:50 from Cyberwar - Google News
Business Insider Obama should be angrier about China hacking US security clearance info Business Insider obama xi us china REUTERS/Kevin LamarqueU.S. President Barack Obama (R) meets China's President Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of ...

» Documenting ISIS Mass-Murder of Hundreds of Civilians In Kobani, Syria
06/07/15 07:49 from ThereAreNoSunglasses
Syria: Deliberate Killing of Civilians by ISIS Children, Women, Elderly Among Kobani Targets Available In العربية English Français Türkçe (New York) – Armed militants believed to be members of Islamic State, also known as ISIS, deliberat...

» News of the World editor spared jail for hacking - Herald Scotland
06/07/15 07:43 from Cyberwar - Google News
News of the World editor spared jail for hacking Herald Scotland He was responsible for recruiting prolific hacker Dan Evans who admitted his involvement and became the star witness in a succession of trials in which he implicated editor...

» US refuses to give Scots cops CIA torture report - Aberdeen Press and Journal
06/07/15 07:28 from cia - Google News
Aberdeen Press and Journal US refuses to give Scots cops CIA torture report Aberdeen Press and Journal US authorities have still not agreed to hand over an uncensored report into CIA torture to help the police investigation into the use ...

» CNN: Clinton Campaign Roping Off Reporters Shows It’s Hillary’s Way or the Highway
06/07/15 07:21 from Washington Free Beacon

» News of World features editor sentenced over hacking - BBC News
06/07/15 07:20 from Cyberwar - Google News
BBC News News of World features editor sentenced over hacking BBC News Ex-News of the World features editor Jules Stenson has been given a four-month suspended jail sentence for his part in the phone- hacking scandal. Stenson, 49, from B...

» Bear Chart of the Day: PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF - TheStreet.com
06/07/15 07:17 from Cyberwarfare - Google News
Bear Chart of the Day: PureFunds ISE Cyber Security ETF TheStreet.com Sometimes, market pullbacks present opportunities in hot sectors. Quite often, it can be tough to pull the trigger, but every once in a while the technical setup might...

» Do Iranians Really Hate America? - Wall Street Journal
06/07/15 07:15 from anti-Americanism - Google News
Wall Street Journal Do Iranians Really Hate America? Wall Street Journal With a looming deadline to strike a nuclear agreement that will see sanctions lifted from Iran, Benoit Faucon visits Tehran to find out if " anti-Americanism &...

» Head of POW-MIA office favors closer links to private groups
06/07/15 07:10 from News - Stripes
Head of POW-MIA office favors closer links to private groups The head of the Pentagon's new agency in charge of recovering and identifying remains of U.S. war dead said he will push for more partnering with private groups that have resou...

» PT Telkom Awards Kratos Contract for Master Control Station - Nasdaq
06/07/15 07:05 from CyberWar - Google News
PT Telkom Awards Kratos Contract for Master Control Station Nasdaq Its map-driven user interface allows operators to identify and overlay satellite and signal information , spectrum analyzer displays and other necessary elements to perfo...

» Hacking Hacking Team: Team does just that - exposes list of government ... - The Register
06/07/15 07:05 from Cyberwar - Google News
The Register Hacking Hacking Team: Team does just that - exposes list of government ... The Register Italian surveillance software outfit Hacking Team has allegedly been cracked with some 400 gigabytes of data pillaged. The plunder has b...

» No, sweet no
06/07/15 06:47 from openDemocracy
The astounding NO vote that swept every part of Greece will take time to digest and understand and its meaning also depends on how the Europeans respond. But here are some immediate reactions. NO victory celebrations in Syntagma Square. ...

» cybersecurity standards - New Electronics
06/07/15 06:35 from cybersecurity - Google News
cybersecurity standards New Electronics To address security issues on a global scale ETSI established its CYBER technical committee on cybersecurity issues. As well as developing standards for cybersecurity , it coordinates work in other...

» Jewish Oligarchs Love the Clintons
06/07/15 06:33 from ThereAreNoSunglasses
Jewish billionaires line up behind Clinton According to a recent report published in the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Jewish billionaires George Soros and Haim Saban, two of the most politically influential plutocratic internationalists sway...

» ETSI ramps up cybersecurity standards push - Telecoms.com
06/07/15 06:33 from cybersecurity - Google News
ETSI ramps up cybersecurity standards push Telecoms.com In what seems to have been some kind of convention for standards bodies the ITU, ISO, CEN/CENELEC, NIST, IETF and W3C were all represented at this cybersecurity deep-dive, as well a...

» Greek FM visits Israel, receives a warm welcome
06/07/15 06:22 from DEBKAFile
July 6, 2015, 1:22 PM (IDT) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met in Jerusalem with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, who arrived in Israel for a three-day official visit the day after the crucial referendum in which a majo...

» Chile: el agotamiento de la democracia representativa
06/07/15 06:18 from openDemocracy
Hoy, con una democracia representativa que ha fallado miserablemente, no podemos restringir la voluntad ciudadana a una expresión pasiva de consentimiento o aprobación. Los individuos, nos dice Kant, tenemos la cualidad y el poder de ser...

» Hacking Team spyware company hacked, embarrassing emails revealed - The Verge
06/07/15 05:54 from Cyberwar - Google News
The Register Hacking Team spyware company hacked, embarrassing emails revealed The Verge Hacking Team, a company that helps police hack citizens, has been hacked itself. In a series of tweets from the company's compromised Twitter ac...

» The power of Electric Yerevan
06/07/15 05:39 from openDemocracy
Strong-arm tactics and cynical compromises are yet to send Yerevan's protesters home. Is this the beginning of the end for the politics of old in Armenia? On 22 June, roughly 2,000 protesters gathered in front of the Opera House a...

» Hacking Team responds to data breach, issues public threats and denials - CSO Online
06/07/15 05:30 from Cyberwar - Google News
CSO Online Hacking Team responds to data breach, issues public threats and denials CSO Online Hacking Team is an Italian company that sells intrusion and surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies. However, their busi...

» Stocks, euro fall but no rout after Greek 'No'
06/07/15 05:21 from Search Results
Stocks, euro fall but no rout after Greek 'No' Greek finance minister quits to smooth talks after 'No' vote | China stocks rise as Beijing's emergency moves brings some relief | BOJ keeps rosy view of regional Japan, watching markets aft...

» Dispatches: how local governments are being fleeced by the banks for £15bn
06/07/15 05:12 from openDemocracy
Dispatches will tonight report on the latest banking scandal - the kickbacks and dodgy loans surrounding local government financing. So what's going on? Flickr/ell brown. Some rights reserved. Debt Resistance UK (DRUK) are initiating a l...

» Dispatches: how local governments are being fleeced by the banks on £15bn loans
06/07/15 05:12 from openDemocracy
Dispatches will tonight report on the latest banking scandal - the kickbacks and dodgy loans surrounding local government financing. So what's going on? Flickr/ell brown. Some rights reserved. Debt Resistance UK (DRUK) are initiating a l...

» Geopolitical Calendar: Week of July 6, 2015 - STRATFOR
06/07/15 05:02 from stratfor russia - Google News
STRATFOR Geopolitical Calendar: Week of July 6, 2015 STRATFOR Editor's Note: The following is an internal Stratfor document listing significant meetings and events planned for the next week. Stratfor analysts use this document to sta...

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