Foley documentary wins Sundance award

A powerful film depicting the life in captivity of Medill alum James Foley is winning awards and premiering on HBO, raising awareness of the dangers of conflict reporting. Continue reading →

NSA chief says ‘two-person rule’ will help protect classified information

ASPEN, Colo. – The National Security Agency is implementing a series of procedural changes to guard against insider threats like that posed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose leaks of classified information have caused “significant damage” to U.S. security, the head of the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command told the Aspen Security Forum on Thursday.

Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads the two agencies, said he has “concrete proof that terrorists have taken action and made changes” based on the information Snowden has made public.

Alexander said he knows what information Snowden downloaded and took from NSA computers and responded “yes” when asked if it was a lot. Continue reading →

TSA offering new way to expedite airport security screening

Air travel will soon be easier for Americans who can afford $85 for a new, expedited security screening plan, the head of the Transportation Security Administration said Friday. Continue reading →

NSA Surveillance Leaks: Facts and Fiction

Medill NSJI’s Ellen Shearer was among the panelists of journalists, educators and national security experts at this roundtable at the Newseum in Washington on June 25. Click the video above to watch a replay. Transcript of the session:

Preventing cyberattacks means going after threats, experts say

Federal efforts to block cyberterrorism need more teeth and should focus more on going after threats instead of concentrating on protecting vulnerabilities, according to several top cyber experts speaking at a recent panel sponsored by the American Bar Association.

The cybersecurity panel on June 21 was part of the ABA Homeland Security Law Instutute conference. The speakers were high-level current and former government cyber experts. Here are some of their comments. Continue reading →

Media stuck to news — not politics — in bin Laden coverage, Pew analysis finds

At the end of long week of news coverage of the killing of Osama bin Laden, a review of the U.S. media by the Project for Excellence in Journalism offers encouraging news: The mainstream news media stayed focused on the news, not moving to political ramifications or analysis, and continued to deepen and broaden its reporting throughout the week, offering readers and viewers new details and international reaction.

“One quarter (25%) of the mainstream media coverage monitored from May 1 through May 4 involved reconstructing the commando mission at bin Laden’s secret hiding place” the report said. “…The second-biggest storyline in the mainstream press was also one that involved reporting more than analysis. It detailed reactions to bin Laden’s death from around the world and around the country, and accounted for 24% of the bin Laden coverage monitored. “ Continue reading →

Military propaganda program based on fake online personas

We’ve all heard of the folks who create new versions of themselves to appear more attractive or appealing on social media sites – but now the U.S. government is getting into the act.

But what may seem just sleazy when it’s a private citizen turns a little scary when it’s the government using fake identifies to spread misleading information on the Internet.

The Guardian newspaper reports that the military’s Central Command, headed by Gen. James Mattis, has contracted with a California firm to create an “online persona management service.” The contract is intended to help the military “secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence Internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.”

The program is aimed at disrupting terrorists and extremists and the personas will communicate only in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto – not English, a Centcom spokesman said. Continue reading →

Police leaders call for immigration reform, but is anyone listening?

A group of top local police officials wants Congress and President Barack Obama to pass a comprehensive immgration reform law.Research conducted for police officials from the largest city, county and state law enforcement agencies around the country shows that local police chiefs have increasingly become drawn into the controversy over how to enforce federal immigration laws.

The new report (right) by the Police Executive Research Forum was the result of case studies in six locations: Phoenix and Mesa, Ariz.; Prince William County, Va.; New Haven, Conn.; Minneapolis; and Montgomery County, Md.

Previous research by PERF found many local police chiefs feel frustrated with the way immigration policies and laws are affecting local law enforcement.

In fact, the police officials gathered to review the recent report and issued recommendations to the Obama administration and Congress, chief among them that immigration reform needs to happen now and a strong consensus that because immigration laws are federal laws. Continue reading →

How journalists should handle the aftermath of attacks

CBS News correspondent Lara Logan is recovering from injuries sustained in a vicious attack by a mob while she was reporting in Cairo last Friday (Feb. 11, 2011), according to a the network.

The Washington Post reported that CBS said Logan is in a U.S. hospital, but a source said she has returned to her home.

Logan “suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating,” CBS said.

Victims of sexual assault trying to recover need to address their mental health as well as physical health, experts say.

Elana Newman, a psychology professor at the University of Tulsa and research director for the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, said . . . Continue reading →

Wikileaks prosecutors go after Twitter information

Information about the government’s WikiLeaks investigation, which has been mainly under the radar, surfaced this week in a federal courtroom in Virginia, where prosecutors argued for the right to force Twitter to provide detailed account information on users who are linked to the probe.

The Washington Post reported that “Tuesday’s arguments went to the heart of a larger debate about WikiLeaks – whether the posting of the documents was free speech or a violation of national security. They also provided a high-profile test of outdated rules about what data the government can seize in the new world of social networking.”

An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer representing one of the Twitter clients argued that releasing the information would violate the First Amendment right to free speech and the Fourth Amendment protection against unwarranted searches.

The judge, who originally ordered Twitter to provide the information, has taken the case under consideration. Continue reading →