By
Josh Meyer
By devising an ingenious series of possibly undetectable airline bombs, a wiry Saudi named Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri has become the latest personification of the ever-changing al Qaeda threat. You can thank him and his tradecraft for much of the frenzy of counterterrorism activity in recent days. That includes pretty much every country shutting down its embassy in Sana’a, Yemen and evacuating government personnel, and dire warnings of a possibly large-scale imminent attack in North Africa or the Middle East—or possibly somewhere else.
The global war on terrorism has never lacked a face of evil to embody the threat; Osama bin Laden, of course, as well as Ayman Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and others. But authorities are now pursuing Asiri with an especially high level of urgency and concern. The reason: not only is he a bomb-maker for the terror network’s most dangerous affiliate, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), he’s apparently a very capable and creative one who has trained other al Qaeda operatives. Continue reading →
By
Josh Meyer
I guess it’s good news that Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has rolled out new rules for protecting the news media from overly aggressive leak investigations and prosecutions, but forgive me for being a bit skeptical.
Holder only did so after igniting a firestorm of criticism (actually, several of them) for the way he and his boss, President Obama, went after journalists and the government officials who talked to them.
Most egregious was the secret effort to get a wide array of phone records from Associated Press reporters that the administration thought had revealed sources and methods and other classified information about counter-terrorism operations in Yemen and elsewhere. Also noteworthy: the administration’s attempts at criminalizing the behavior of Fox News’ James Rosen (a Medill alum) for working a source at the State Department for classified information about North Korea. Continue reading →
By
SB Anderson
Twitter kicked off what has become semi-annual transparency report season late last week, reporting an 11% increase in requests from the U.S. government for data about its users in the first half of 2012 compared to July to December of … Continue reading →
By
SB Anderson
Last week all but certainly will be looked back at as a watershed week in shifting support for the Surveillance State by not only U.S. citizens, but members of Congress.
For those who’ve been eyes-half-open mode because it’s Summer and watch to catch up, The New York Times today has a must-read on the politics and cross-party partnerships behind last week’s surprising oh-so-close vote in the House that would have killed funding for the National Security Administration’s telephone data collection, exposed by Edward Snowden.
Meantime, new research data shows the opinion shift among Americans. Almost half of those polled from July 17-21 said their “greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties,” Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported on Friday.
That was a 15-point jump since 2010, when the question was last asked. “This is the first time a plurality has expressed greater concern about civil liberties than security since the question was first asked in 2004.” Continue reading →
By
Josh Meyer
As the only person to ever head both the US National Security Agency and the US Central Intelligence Agency, retired Air Force General Michael V. Hayden has a lot of experience in seeing around corners. He’s now a global security consultant, helping companies and governments to protect themselves against cyber threats and other dangers.
Last week, Hayden, also a director of Motorola Solutions and a distinguished visiting professor at the George Mason University School of Public Policy, said in a rare extended interview that Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies shared sensitive US information with the Beijing government. In a brief aside, he added that he’s undecided as to whether corporations should be allowed to go on the cyber-offensive, even in the absence of government intervention and protection.
Quartz talked to Hayden about the threats private companies face and whether they’re well-positioned to address those threats for themselves, and for humanity. Continue reading →
By
SB Anderson
Army suicides are running slightly ahead of last year compared to 2012 — up 8% through May — and the potential suicide totals for inactive duty reserves now outnumber those for active duty soldiers — a trend that started in … Continue reading →
By
Ellen Shearer
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 →
By
Josh Meyer
Say you’re minding your own business in outer space, and all of a sudden, one of your multibillion-dollar satellites gets blown up. Or the signals it sends to Earth go haywire and fly-by-wire planes start crashing. Or, worse, those signals … Continue reading →
By
Josh Meyer
There’s no longer doubt that the US government spies on foreign multinational corporations as well as governments, thanks to the disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor turned international fugitive Edward Snowden. The NSA vacuums up mountains of classified information from a rich array of sources. The CIA assists by launching digital “black bag” operations aimed at manually penetrating the computer systems of some of the world’s largest foreign multinationals.
Washington isn’t alone, of course; dozens of other governments do the same, in collaboration with each other and individually. But one thing that US officials insist they won’t do is use the information gleaned from industrial espionage to help US corporations, like the Chinese do with their state-run defense, oil and other companies. Continue reading →
By
SB Anderson
Airport gun confiscations soar in first half of 2013 About 30% more guns were confiscated at airport security gates in the first half of 2013 than that same period a year ago, a Medill analysis of federal data it aggregates … Continue reading →
