PRISM is bigger than anything that came before it—but no-one knows how much bigger

The mystery surrounding how much domestic spying the US government has been conducting on its own citizens will only intensify in the coming days, as a growing number of the nine major internet companies linked to an alleged top-secret data-mining program deny they had anything to do with it.

The stories in the Guardian and Washington Post contend that the National Security Agency and FBI were jacking directly into the central servers of the companies and scooping up all sorts of personal data in a hunt for terrorist activity. Publicly, these agencies insist that they only do that overseas, to foreigners, while the tech firms concerned insist they aren’t involved and have never heard of such a scheme.

That may or may not be true, and finding out the gritty details is sure to become the next parlor game in Washington. One thing is for sure, though. If PRISM is what the two newspapers say it is, it is the biggest domestic spying program that the United States has ever conducted, and by orders of magnitude.
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A smart member of the global warrior elite ‘discovers’ the next big threat

It’s not exactly a new thing in international security circles, but it seems poised to become the next big thing: deviant globalization. The concept describes the convergence of all of the types of criminal activity that flourish in the teeming underworld of black market economies.

The idea began circulating after three Bay Area big thinkers—Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber—wrote a book about it in March 2011 (“Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century“). But it generated little public attention or discussion then. At that time, global security experts didn’t yet understand the interconnectedness of so many forms of criminal and legitimate business activity, Gilman told Quartz. A Facebook page and Twitter account,@DeviantGlobalization, soon cropped up, but with very meager followings. A Nexis search generates two obscure hits. Continue reading →

The French: Either very good or very bad at international bribery

Now that oil giant Total has agreed to pay $398 million in a US enforcement action, France has three multinationals on the list of the 10 biggest Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) cases ever. That’s according to Richard L. Cassin, founder and editor of the FCPA Blog, which keeps a running tally of the worst offenders.

The blog, which bills itself as “The World’s Biggest Anti-Corruption Compliance Portal,” bases its list solely on the dollar amounts of settlements with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s because the US is essentially the only aggressive prosecutor of international bribery cases in the world, even if it does settle virtually all of its cases in voluntary “deferred prosecution agreements.”
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How to look fashionable and still be bullet-proof

What’s driving the explosive growth in sales of fashionable bullet-resistant clothing for the rich and not so famous?

Colombian specialty clothier Miguel Caballero has no idea. He’s just glad he’s selling a lot more of his “personal ballistic protection apparel” than he used to. And he’s doing so in some unexpected places, including Uruguay, India, Panama and at Harrods in London. Continue reading →

Next year’s Winter Olympics are being held in just about the most unsafe place they could be

With nine months to go before the 2014 Winter Olympics, the biennial sport of Olympics-bashing has begun in earnest. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is being criticized for cost overruns and the other usual problems. And as always, the host country, this time Russia, is taking heat for cronyism, corruption, environmental concerns and construction delays.

But this time there is another, bigger set of worries. At several recent gatherings around the world, experts have wrung their hands publicly about how the XXII Winter Games pose the biggest security threat of any games in memory.

The Olympics, which will run from February 7th to the 23rd, are going to be held right in the middle of one of the world’s hottest conflict zones, the North Caucasus. Sochi, the host city, is a lovely resort town on Russia’s Black Sea coast. But the region around it is a cauldron of ethnic hatred and anti-Russian separatist movements. And then there is all of the organized crime, Islamist militancy and terrorism. Continue reading →

When it comes to leaks, Obama administration plays both sides

On Wednesday, 24 hours or so before President Obama’s major speech today on national security issues, some of the top security reporters in Washington began their predictable barrage of mini-scoops on what he was going to say.

The administration was going to rein in drone attacks on U.S. citizens and hold them up to the rule of law. It was going to transfer drone strikes from the CIA to the military. It was going to shift away from a military war footing to something more in keeping with the rule of law. Oh, and the administration acknowledged killing four Americans in drone strikes over the years.

Those are just the kind of leaks of classified information that this administration has become known for hunt down; more investigations and prosecutions, in fact, than all other administrations combined, according to the experts. But here’s the difference: these leaks were all but assuredly sanctioned by the White House and most likely by the President and his inner circle. Continue reading →

To locate the next Arab Spring revolution, look to the soccer stands

It’s been said that soccer tells us all we need to know about life, parenting, even globalization.

Now a Singapore-based blogger says soccer can tell us which Middle East or North African government will be the next to blow. At the top of the list: Algeria and Saudi Arabia.

Over at his blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, James M. Dorsey looks at soccer as a lens through which to view the fault lines carving up the Middle East and North Africa. In Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and other countries, he says, soccer played a key role in allowing pent-up anger and frustration to percolate into organized protest that forced transitions from autocratic rule to more open societies. Continue reading →

Unhappy employees = corruption and fraud

Squeeze your employees, and you’ll pay the price. Seems obvious—but Ernst & Young has actual evidence. For its annual fraud report the firm surveyed 3,000 company board members, managers and their teams in 36 countries across the world, and found that employees feeling the double pinch … Continue reading →

Argentina mulls opening its banks to money launderers

Have some dirty money you need to launder? You may want to consider Argentina as an option. Lawmakers there are considering a measure that would give amnesty to anyone who wants to pull undeclared cash out of tax havens and deposit it in Argentinian banks.

The government of President Cristina Kirchner is behind the proposal, saying the country needs to do something drastic in order to prop up its investment-starved economy—especially its stalled energy and construction sectors. The idea has a certain logic. Continue reading →

What the strange case of alleged US spy Ryan Fogle doesn’t tell you about how espionage really works

Today’s brouhaha around Ryan Fogle, a junior US diplomat in Moscow whom Russian authorities detained and accused of spying, may have seemed to some like a joke, or else suspiciously like a bad frame-up.

Fogle was paraded in front of cameras at Russia’s state security service, the FSB, along with his alleged tools of tradecraft—which included two wigs, a wad of cash, a compass, and a “Dear Friend” letter intended for a potential Russian recruit—before being declared persona non grata and told to leave the country.

To say this doesn’t add up would be an understatement. The real story probably won’t be known for days, if not years. But here are five common misconceptions about the world of espionage that the Fogle case shows. Continue reading →