Tag Archives: national security

The human interest in Pakistani media

There’s a lamentation that floats around the foyers and dining room tables of those who are familiar with the American media product. Perhaps you’ve heard it. It goes something like:

“It’s important to me to stay informed, but there’s just so much junk out there — so much celebrity gossip nonsense. I can barely stand to keep the television on.”

It’s usually accompanied by a sigh or an eye roll before the utterer offers a nuanced critique of a recent Instagram post by Kim Kardashian or Taylor Swift.

I used to think this was the immutable condition of the media, something akin to the human condition in psychology. Just as the body must decay into nothingness despite the enduring idealism of the mind, so must the consumer of media crave a red carpet photoshoot despite good intentions to learn about tax code reforms in the Washington Post.

But the veneration of hard news and analysis at the expense of milder journalistic fare is not a media universal, as I learned recently on a trip to Pakistan. In fact, it’s very much an American phenomenon.

My j-school cohort was meeting with a delegation of seasoned Pakistani journalists at the Karachi Press Club, and I asked the group as a lark what they would change about the culture of Pakistani media if they had the power.

They thought about it for a moment, and then two journalists blurted out almost in unison, “More human interest stories!”

“More human interest stories?” I asked. Having spent the last year being inculcated with the values of free speech, governmental transparency and skepticism towards power, I found it a curious suggestion.

“What you need to understand,” explained Shabbir Sarwar, a business reporter for the Daily Times, a prominent newspaper in Pakistan, “is that we have an abundance of hard news in this country. Every day, there are major, major stories that would take the American media cycle a week or more to process fully.”

“Take this bomb blast yesterday,” continued Shabbir’s colleague and Wall Street Journal reporter Syed Hasan, referencing an attack on a Christian church in the north of Karachi. “If that happened in the U.S., you would have the initial reports for two or three days, then you would have the editorials, then the feature stories, then the talk shows, then the long form documentary pieces, and so on until you finally get it out of your system. Here in Karachi, we’ll probably have another blast or two this week.”

While Hasan’s statement is an exaggeration, his sentiment is spot on. Even a cursory glance at most Pakistani newspapers reveals a much higher concentration of newsworthy events and much less in the way of investigative and enterprise reporting.

For example, in the mere three days that our group was in Karachi, the papers were abuzz with the possibility that the city might shut down if the government went ahead with their execution of a captured assassin loyal to the country’s main opposition party.

What a story!

“What we need,” said Akber Ali, bureau chief of Dawn News, the country’s most widely read newspaper, “is less reporting of facts and events and more time to introduce Pakistanis to each other.”

“The fluff is the good stuff,” Shabbir chimed in. “It’s what binds the community. But, of course, our first responsibility is to tell people what’s going on and to make sense of it for them.”

The idea that gossip is a social adhesive has a long academic history in sociology and social psychology, one that has recently been applied to mass media by Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, who has studied the media in the same way that anthropologists study information dissemination among tribal groups.

Elite consumers of American media, however, have yet to give this notion any credence. The refrain that shallowness is on the rise and legitimate journalism is on the decline is stuck in our heads like a good pop song, too familiar not to be sung.

While Pakistan would certainly benefit from the relative newslessness of American society, we might also take a cue or two from Pakistan and appreciate the cohesion and intelligibility that is borne of a rich tradition of cultural journalism.

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Experts: Commercial airliners need air gap for cyberprotection (video)

WASHINGTON – At a time when cybersecurity is at the forefront of many Americans’ minds, that manufacturing companies are producing commercial planes that experts say are more likely to be hacked than previous versions.

Recently a cybersecurity expert was pulled off a United Airlines flight after tweeting that he had the ability to access the plane’s systems, such as control of the oxygen masks on board.

The expert, Chris Roberts, was then taken into FBI custody and questioned for hours.

While Roberts says he was not attempting to harm anyone on board, the event drew attention worldwide to possible gaps in security onboard commercial flights with in-flight Wi-Fi.

According to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, there is more connectivity in the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 between cockpit and cabin Wi-Fi systems than in previous models.

Aaron Rinehart, CEO of cybersecurity company Testbed Inc. and a former security expert for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, says that this is a step backward in terms of security and safety.

 

Rinehart says cockpit systems should be air gapped, meaning that the system is physically isolated from all unsecured computer networks, including the in-flight entertainment system onboard. This disconnects the cockpit from outside systems to prevent hackers from accessing it.

“It doesn’t seem to me either logical or rational to combine in-flight Wi-Fi with the avionics systems,” Rinehart said.

Why anyone would combine these systems and take the extra risk isn’t clear.

“My guess would be they want to combine the signal and maybe just either save money or save the amount of power because all those antennas require power,” he said.

“If there’s multiple antennas [putting off] separate signals, it may require more power for that… which to me represents a considerable threat.”

In its report, the GAO found that firewalls are currently protecting avionics systems on planes from hacks, but, like any software, firewalls don’t always prevent attacks on networked systems.

Rinehart says the systems should remain completely separate to avoid problems, including downed airliners.

What do the airlines say about this, especially United, since they’re the ones that pulled Roberts off the plane?

Although the argument can be made that it is difficult to hack into a plane’s avionics system and launch such an attack, experts say the threat of malicious activities grows along with increased connectivity.

For example, Macworld recently reported that American Airlines’ fleet of Boeing 737 aircrafts experienced a glitch in an iPad app used by pilots in their cockpits. This caused all of the fleet’s iPads to go dead at once and leaving passengers delayed for hours at airports across the country.

According to Rinehart, if it were decided that all systems needed to be air gapped, planes can be retrofitted with these systems, but it is easier to design with air gapping in mind in the beginning while factoring in the cost.

“We’ve already had enough [problems] in the past two years,” he said. “Our regulatory authorities don’t need to contribute to that.”

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Security threat interrupts White House press briefing (video)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service evacuated the White House Briefing Room Tuesday afternoon after a bomb threat was called in to Washington police.

Security threat interrupts White House press briefing from Medill Washington on Vimeo.

The evacuation came in the middle of a televised press briefing by Press Secretary Josh Earnest. The North Lawn of the White House was also cleared.

PHOTOS, STORIFY: Bomb threat sparks evacuation of White House press briefing 

Secret Service officials said the threat was called in at 1:53 p.m. About 30 minutes after the call journalists were allowed back into the White House. Secret Service officers on the scene said an all-clear had been issued.

“As a precaution, the White House Briefing Room was evacuated,” Secret Service spokeswoman Nicole B. Mainor said in a statement. “The evacuation was limited to the White House Press Briefing Room and did not affect any other sections of the White House.”

Shortly after the evacuation Earnest wrote on Twitter that the briefing would resume shortly after the room was cleared. “Hopefully won’t be long,” he wrote.

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Bomb threat sparks evacuation of White House press briefing

WASHINGTON — The White House Briefing Room was evacuated Tuesday afternoon in the middle of a press conference in response to a bomb threat, the Secret Service confirmed via email.

“At approximately 1:53 p.m. today, a telephonic bomb threat concerning the White House Briefing Room was called into the Metropolitan Police Department,” a Secret Service statement said. “As a precaution, the White House Press Briefing Room was evacuated.”

According to the statement, no other parts of the White House were affected by the evacuation.

“Sweeps concluded at 2:36, the area was declared safe, all occupants were returned to the White House Press Briefing Room,” the statement continued.

You can view photos from the scene below:

  • Tourists look on as Secret Service officers checks IDs of individuals attempting to gain access to the cordoned-off area during a June 9 White House Press Briefing evacuation. (Jennifer-Leigh Oprihory/MEDILL NSJI)

Here is a moment-by-moment rundown of the evacuation, as narrated by reporters who were attending the briefing when the evacuation occurred via social media:

VIDEO: Security threat interrupts White House press briefing

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The West’s forgotten war

WASHINGTON — As ISIS captures land and headlines and President Barack  Obama pivots toward the Pacific, it can seem understandable that the backwater state of Somalia has received less press than in years past.

As if to remind the United States —and the world— of the serious crisis still unfolding in the Horn of Africa, gunmen linked to the Islamist extremist al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab stormed a university in neighboring Kenya in early April, killing 147, after systematically determining which among the students were Christians.

It is the deadliest attack inside Kenya since the 1998 US embassy bombing carried out on the orders of Osama bin Laden, and one that has many analysts worrying about the power of Islamic extremists in this impoverished corner of the world.

Somalia has been considered a failed state since the early 1990s. Armed opposition to the rule of longtime Marxist strongman Mohamed Siad Barre eventually exploded into civil war in 1986; the situation was exacerbated by food and fuel shortages and famine, which killed hundreds of thousands. The presence of UN and African Union peacekeepers has been largely unable to quell the ongoing violence between various warlords and armed factions.

The failed nation has proved to be fertile ground for hardline Islamist groups like the Islamic Courts Union —which briefly controlled southern Somalia before being driven out by Ethiopian troops— and al-Shabaab (“The Youth”), a jihadist group founded by Soviet-Afghan War veteran Aden Hashi Farah in 2006.

Though Farah was killed by a US airstrike in 2008 —a fate shared by many of al-Shabaab’s “emirs”— the movement continues on. While no longer at the height of its power, the group continues to control wide swaths of the countryside in Somalia’s south. Recent operations —including the Westgate shopping center attack in Nairobi in 2013— indicate that even a weakened al-Shabaab is extremely dangerous.

Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, sees in al-Shabaab an increasingly dangerous and insidious threat.

“Compared to 2009, yes, Shabaab is weaker. But when I look at the issues in terms of security, it’s stagnating and at worst deteriorating,” she said.

Even though al-Shabaab no longer controls many major cities, Felbab-Brown said, the group’s influence is still widely felt. They control many small villages and roads and raise money by extorting travelers. Assassinations continue daily as al-Shabaab seeks to undermine confidence in the weak central government.

Asked about any potential links or similarities between a resurgent al-Shabaab and the more visible Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Felbab-Brown is quick to highlight their differences. While al-Shabaab and ISIS may share some superficial similarities, she says, the Somali group has more in common with the Taliban than the Islamic State. Afghanistan, like Somalia, is a deeply tribal society, and tribal affiliations give al-Shabaab the resources it needs to thrive. And like the Taliban, al-Shabaab practices a “politics of exclusion” meant to disempower certain clans and religious minorities, a practice that suggests a preoccupation with local politics, not global jihad.

While both al-Shabaab and ISIS operate like Islamic armies, their aims and ideologies are different. According to Felbab-Brown, al-Shabaab seems to limit its horizons to Somalia specifically. Unlike the Nigerian Boko Haram, the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiyah and the Filipino Abu Sayyaf, al-Shabaab has not pledged allegiance to ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and shows little enthusiasm for a unified caliphate in their propaganda videos.

“They are struggling with the relationship they have with ISIS and al-Qaeda,” Felbab-Brown said.

Though there is some fear that foreign fighters trained by al-Shabaab may launch attacks in the West, such instances are few and far between, with most international jihadis flocking to ISIS. The real danger of al-Shabaab, Felbab-Brown said, is the possibility that the group will extend its reach. From bases inside Somalia, the jihadi group has ready access to East African countries —many of them US allies— that have so far been spared from the scourge of Islamist violence. Western embassies might also find themselves targeted.

As al-Shabaab regroups, the international community seeking to rebuild Somalia faces new challenges. Beside Islamic extremists, the UN and AU must contend with widespread corruption, an unpopular leadership, militant separatist groups, Ethiopian and Kenyan proxy forces and an unstable economy. For its part, the US has limited its involvement in Somalia as of late. Though the United States occasionally conducts drone strikes against al-Shabaab, fear of upsetting the delicate peace process and killing civilians means that drones are used less liberally there than in Yemen and Pakistan.

Experts like Felbab-Brown are urging the international community to take a new approach: hold Somalia accountable for governmental failures, even if that means confronting allies. Such steps are needed, they say, if ordinary Somalis are to see the government as a legitimate alternative to al-Shabaab.

“They [al-Shabaab] are not good governors. But Somalis often choose between the lesser of two evils,” Felbab-Brown said.

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Iraqi Christians forgotten as ISIS threat grows

WASHINGTON—Amid the furor currently surrounding the Islamic State group, the US has remained more or less on the sidelines. There are no coalition boots on the ground, Western, Gulf Arab or otherwise. Barrel bombs and chlorine gas have been used to call President Barack Obama’s “red line” bluff. Perhaps, as some American officials have argued, this is an Arab war, to be fought and won by Arabs. It must be this way, they say, lest ISIS and its extremist brethren use American soldiers on Arab ground as a recruiting tool.

And while all of this rhetoric plays well with non-interventionists and probably is the wisest policy route, that doesn’t mean that the decision to stand by is easy, especially when one considers the probable fate of one of the region’s oldest peoples, the Christians. Also known as Assyrians or, in some contexts, Chaldeans, many of them have been expelled from their homes in Mosul and northern Iraq.

Assyrians are a Semitic Christian people whose ancient homeland reaches from Turkey to Iran. Their mother tongue is Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. Because their presence in the Near East predates the Arab settlement of the region, most Assyrians will, with irrepressible pride, tell you that they are the indigenous people of ancient Mesopotamia.

“It goes back a very long time. Assyrians were at the very center of the cradle of civilization,” said Peter Bityou, director of the Assyrian Aid Society of America.

Bityou was born in Iraq and left for the United States in 1982 to look for work as an engineer. Many of his relatives —including his brother— remain in Iraq to this day and have been displaced by ISIS’s ongoing campaign. Since early 2014, Bityou and the AASA have been instrumental in delivering food, water, kerosene, clothing, medicine, gas stoves, generators, mattresses, blankets and other essentials to the refugees struggling to rebuild their lives.

The AASA and other aid groups must help, Bityou said, because no one else will. Assyrians in Iraq have been abandoned by the central Iraqi government and, in general, are not treated well by the Kurdish Regional Government in the north, he said. While the Kurdish peshmerga, or military force, allows Assyrian refugees to cross into their territory, those fleeing violence are not provided with food or other essentials.

“No one is looking out for the Assyrians. That’s why we have to do for ourselves,” Bityou said.

Martin Youmaran, an executive director of the Assyrian American National Federation, sees ISIS’s persecution of Assyrians as part of a larger pattern of racist oppression and disenfranchisement that goes back many hundreds of years.

“In Iraq, the Assyrian people have faced continuous persecution,” Youmaran said.

Historical fact largely supports that narrative. While Assyrians have peacefully coexisted with their Muslim Arab neighbors for centuries, to say that they were treated well would be a conceptual stretch. Under the Seljuqs and the Ottomans, Assyrians were given three options: convert to Sunni Islam, pay a tax (known as jizia) or face expulsion and possible death. Ottoman discrimination against Christians became so severe that, during World War I, the nationalist government killed 1.5 million Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians —all Christian subjects of the empire.

The treatment of Assyrians during the 1960s and 1970s under the Iraqi Ba’ath Party varied widely. Ba’athist ideology stressed secularism and sought to brush aside religious differences in the service of national unity; Islamic extremism was largely kept at bay. Many Assyrians ascended to high levels of power within the Iraqi government, including Tariq Aziz, a former deputy prime minister who was also one of Saddam Hussein’s closest advisors.

Assyrian expressions of ethnic pride however, met with severe repression.

“People will say that under Saddam, Assyrians were not persecuted. But Saddam hanged three Assyrian nationalists,” said Bityou, referring to the executions of Youbert Shlimon, Youkhana Esho Jajo and Yousip Hermis, who were put to death without trials in 1985.

“What can you call that other than persecution?” Bityou asked.

Saddam’s relationship with Iraq’s many ethnic and religious minorities worsened in the late 1980s, when Kurdish peshmerga forces rebelled against the government. Faced with a secession campaign, the government used conventional weapons alongside unidentified chemical agents —most likely the nerve gas sarin mixed with mustard gas— to eradicate entire villages; according to Human Rights Watch, nearly 2,000 Assyrians perished from gas alone.

Iraqi Assyrians fared even worse after the 2003 American invasion. By 2004, Islamic terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam and al-Qaeda in Iraq were blowing up Assyrian churches and enforcing hardline sharia law on Assyrian Christian communities. Many Assyrians sought refuge in Turkey, Europe, Syria and the United States.

“In 2003, there were 1.2 million Assyrians in Iraq. Today, less than 300,000,” Bityou said.

ISIS has continued the violence instigated by its predecessors, expelling and in some cases kidnapping Assyrians along the Iraqi-Syrian border.

Due to the escalating violence, Youmaran and the AANF are more insistent than ever. Among their most pressing concerns: military intervention against ISIS.

“We want intervention not only from the US but from the UN under Chapter Seven,” Youmaran said, referring to the section of the United Nations Charter that gives the UN Security Council the power to intervene to stop crimes against humanity.

Beyond a foreign offensive against ISIS, Assyrian groups have renewed calls for an autonomous Christian homeland in Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate, known as Nīnwē to the Assyrians.

“We need an internationally protected homeland,” Youmaran said. “We demand that the international community preserve it [the Assyrian homeland in Nineveh], because the Iraqi government cannot.”

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VIDEO: The 3-D-printed arms race

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In May of 2013, the online organization Defense Distributed publicly released the blueprints for a plastic 3-D printed handgun they designed and built. Within two days, the U.S. Department of Defense ordered the group to remove this information, but it was too late. By then, over 100,000 people had downloaded the plans for the single-shot pistol, dubbed the Liberator.

The process of 3-D printing involves the layering of an additive, such as plastic, to create a model based on a digital file. This technology has the potential to revolutionize several industries and sectors, including manufacturing, medical implantation and art, but some are fearing the dangerous implications of 3-D printed firearms.

Last year, Illinois State Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) and Illinois State Representative Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) proposed respective bills in the Illinois Senate and House that would ban the production of 3-D printed firearms without a Federal Firearms License. Both proposals are active in the Illinois General Assembly.

The current federal law, the Undetectable Firearms Act, outlaws firearms that could go unnoticed by a metal detector. That means a gun must have at least a 3.7-ounce metal component.

However, gun control advocates argue that 3-D printed firearms can be built with a purely superficial metal piece that can be removed and still yield the gun operable. Furthermore, the guns tend to have a short shelf life, making them particularly dangerous.

“They’re not reliable,” said Mark Walsh, program director for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. “There are only a certain number of opportunities to fire a bullet before the weapon malfunctions and has the potential to injure the person using it or someone else.”

The Liberator, a plastic 3-D printed gun, disassembled. (Photo: Justin Pickard)

The Liberator, a plastic 3-D printed gun, disassembled. (Photo: Justin Pickard)

Julie Friedman Steele, founder and CEO of the 3-D Printer Experience, a Chicago facility that manufactures 3-D printed objects, disagrees with restrictions placed on the technology.

“The first human innovation was fire, you could either use it for good or you could be an arsonist,” Friedman Steele said. “No matter what innovation it is, you’re going to find people using it for good or using it for bad, but if you take away the ability to use it, then there is so much innovation for good that we won’t be able to access.”

Back in 2013, Philadelphia became the first U.S. city to ban the production of 3-D printed firearms. That same year, the United Kingdom passed strict legislation banning all 3-D printed guns or gun components. Violators in Great Britain could face up to 10 years in prison.

In a city like Chicago that’s no stranger to gun violence, gun control advocates are hoping for similar legislation.

(Editor’s note: This story originally appeared on Medill Reports: Chicago.)

 

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FAA considers support of commercial drone use, with exemptions

The Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications vehicle system. (Courtesy of CyPhy Works)

The Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications vehicle system. (Courtesy of CyPhy Works)

 

WASHINGTON—Drones aren’t on their way – they’re already here. But they’re not technically legal, at least not where commercial and hobbyist use are concerned. So what exactly are people hoping to do with them, and how is the government planning to regulate it?

This past February, the Federal Aviation Administration released a set of proposed rules to govern the commercial use of small unmanned aircraft systems under 55 pounds, and then opened a 60-day commentary period. That has expired, but the FAA never set a date for a final version, and experts say the waiting game could last two years, possibly longer.

Meanwhile, unmanned aircraft system technology is advancing at a rapid pace, a fact not lost on Robert Pappas, whose team coordinates Unmanned Vehicle policy for the FAA. He said his office is trying to work with various government agencies and the private sector to ensure drones are used safely, both now and once a final set of rules are released.

The agency’s current priorities, Pappas said, are improving safety requirements and streamlining certifications and exemptions. Not at the top of the list: preventing the tiny unmanned vehicles from being used for illicit surveillance purposes – or even as part of a terrorist attack.

And that’s surprising, considering recent incidents. In the early hours of January 26, an employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency crashed an illegal drone onto the White House lawn, completely undetected by radar. What that drone could have done – or carried with it – is something best left to the imagination.

“We’ve seen a rise in UAS operations in the national air space over the last few years,” Pappas said, referencing an existing exemption process which helps the private sector “pursue some potential relief” from the current ban. Pappas grants exemptions to the existing “no commercial use rule” on a case-by-case basis, governed by Section 333 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.

Speaking at a discussion on civil drone policy sponsored by the Center for Strategic & International Studies in late April, Pappas said that Section 333 demand remains consistently and “remarkably high.”

Pappas said his division has issued close to 250 exemptions in the last seven months alone, and is “now issuing dozens on a weekly basis,” many of them to commercial entities so that they can use UASs for aerial photography, survey and film production.

According to Pappas, the UAS Integration Office is working internationally to develop standards, approaches and frameworks for commercial guidance in light of recent technological advances. “We continue to see new and novel applications” for drone use, Pappas said, including survey and photo capabilities in the real estate and property management sectors. He said he has received exemption requests for aircraft with unusual power sources and rotors, as well as for nighttime operations, which the proposed framework excludes for safety reasons. Permission to operate outside line-of-sight constraints, which currently require that operators maintain visual contact with their drones at all times, is also a frequent request, he said.

In theory, the potential capabilities of drones are infinite, a point made by Brian Wynne, CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, at the CSIS panel. “There are going to be as many devices as you can imagine missions going forward,” he said.

And the FAA’s response to date has been all about flexibility. In a press release timed with the release of the proposed rules, FAA administrator Michael Huerta said, “We have tried to be flexible in writing these rules. We want to maintain today’s outstanding level of aviation safety without placing an undue regulatory burden on an emerging industry.”

Drone advocate Patrick Egan, who helps manage an international organization dedicated to capturing news related to UASs, said that “flexible” doesn’t begin to describe the FAA’s proposed framework and approach. He offered a better word for it: “liberal,” as in accommodating.

Egan, a former consultant with the Space and Missile Defense Command Battle Lab where he worked on future warfare research projects said he was initially surprised by how generous the proposed rules were – even if they aren’t yet final. And from what he’s heard, the drone community feels the same way.

“As a community, we got a gift,” Egan said. “[These rules are] way, way more progressive than we could have really hoped for.” Egan said that in his opinion, the FAA may have even been more generous than they should have, in terms of not instituting formal licensing requirements and granting a weight limit as large as 55 pounds.

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Aviation lawyer: Gyrocopter stunt pilot probably ‘doing time’

WASHINGTON — It’s a balloon! It’s a kite! It’s a … gyrocopter?

The Secret Service completely mistook a blip on their radar systems for an innocent toy last month until it landed on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Then they saw it for what it really was: a disgruntled U.S. postal worker from Florida in a one-man flying machine. He had 535 letters with him demanding campaign finance reform – one for each member of Congress.

By then Douglas Hughes, 61, had breached three major no-fly zones, crossing through some of the most protected airspace in the country. And though he had broken federal law, he was admittedly unapologetic, alternately seen as a hero, a crank or an activist.

Last week, things suddenly got far more serious; a federal grand jury indicted Hughes on six criminal counts. Two of them are felonies – flying without a pilot’s license and failure to register an aircraft – and the other four are misdemeanors related to violating national airspace and operating a vehicle falsely labeled as a postal carrier.

Hughes holds another label: alleged criminal.

According to Hughes, his self-proclaimed “Freedom Flight” from Gettysburg to Washington, D.C. on April 15 was part of a longtime protest against existing campaign finance laws. A man on a mission, Hughes said he wanted to raise awareness about corruption on Capitol Hill.

“He’s going to face jail time and he’s going to do it,” said Joe Lamonaca, a Delaware-based attorney specializing in domestic and international aviation law. Lamonaca is not part of Hughes’ legal team, although he has been following the case and believes conviction is likely if it goes to trial.

The fact that Hughes intentionally flew into P-56 airspace, the designation for prohibited airspace surrounding the Capitol and White House, is without question, Lamonaca said. And that airspace belongs to the Secret Service – not the Federal Aviation Administration: “That’s the holy grail of all prohibited airspace in the country.”

“And it’s actually not restricted,” he added. “It’s prohibited – which means no flight under any circumstances.”

A gyrocopter resembles a helicopter, except that its rotating blade is propelled by air flow, rather than an engine. It’s also much lighter, smaller and incapable of hovering the way a helicopter does.

Hughes’ stunt was planned years in advance and widely discussed, and was the subject of interviews with the Tampa Bay Times and at least two Secret Service Agents months before he ever took flight.

So Hughes can’t claim that he lost control of his gyrocopter, took a left instead of a right and wound up at the Capitol, Lamonaca said. Hughes even livestreamed his journey mid-air. What he did was premeditated and that will limit his defense strategy, Lamonaca added.

“He was trying to make a statement for himself,” Lamonaca said. “But I think the government is going to make one the other way.”

With 30 years of experience as a pilot, Lamonaca said he knows why the Secret Service may have mistaken Hughes’ gyrocopter for a toy. It doesn’t have a transponder, which means that Hughes wasn’t sending out a secondary radar signal the way planes do.

“I know what it would have looked like on that radar screen, low flightpath, slow speed,” he said. “He was so low, the signature was almost nonexistent.”

But that’s no excuse, Lamonaca said. The Secret Service should be checking out every signal, using visual spotting to make up the difference: “There are so many different ways [to fly a weapon] and that’s going to require manpower.” Hughes had letters onboard, as opposed to bombs or explosives, but the potential for danger was still there. And the Secret Service either missed it entirely or let it slide – when they let it land.

“Whether it’s drones [or] gyrocopters … they’ve got to start taking them seriously,” he added, in reference to the need for federal security officials to account for new technology. Because a future incident, he said, may up the stakes significantly.

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ISIS’ media plan: Kill one, win one thousand

Journalists are on the front lines covering terrorism. We are unarmed and unprotected. We work mostly alone. We not only work in hostile areas but now we are also the targets of terrorism.

It wasn’t always this way. Richard Engel, chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, noted at a panel discussion on reporting from the frontline at the University of Chicago in May that journalists used to enjoy some protection in hostile environments.

“The rebel groups didn’t like you,” said Engel. “But back then they knew they needed me because I was there to do a story about them and what I said had some sort of impact.”

But the code of conduct has changed. A reporter no longer serves as the messenger. Terrorists can cut out the journalist and go directly to the Internet to deliver their message. Engel believes the change occured because terrorists find journalists frustrating to deal with since they often edited interviews, taking rebels’ words out of context.

We are all familiar with the fate of James Foley as Medill students. He was one of our own, part of our extended family by education and trade. He was abducted while covering the Syrian civil war by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2012 and very publicly beheaded in a video that went viral in 2014.

Certainly journalists who cover terrorism on the front line face risks. There is no doubt that an assignment could end up with the story being published about the writer’s death. Yet, journalists can’t allow fear to stop the stories. I’m not advocating anyone put their life in danger for death defeats a journalist’s purpose: To get the story out to others who have the power and resources to make change happen. But we must continue reporting, taking calculated risks, so the world can have a fair and unbiased report of what is truly happening, rather than accept the propaganda terrorists push out as the truth.

Some experts believe that targeting Western journalists as part of an ISIS terrorism campaign is a critical part of its marketing plan to instill fear in journalists and the public.

“Terrorism works in a similar fashion as good advertising and marketing work,” said Angi English, executive director of the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities, a part of the state’s emergency management division.

English recently graduated from the Masters program at the Naval Postgraduate School and Homeland Security where she studied national security issues. She recently wrote “The Social Influence of the ISIS Beheadings.”

Ken Aucremanne agrees. He formerly worked with the military and is a graduate researcher in social media at American University in Washington D.C. He said killing journalists is ISIS’ way of controlling its message. English adds that beheading journalists and putting the videos on social media can instill fear into the thousands of Americans that ISIS can’t reach directly because it gives them the message that their government can’t protect them.

“Kill one, win a thousand,” said English. “It’s a Chinese proverb. If it is so horrific that it jars our consciousness, our whole psyche, when you do it to one person, people get the message.”

ISIS is both symbolically and physically cutting off information to the West by cutting off journalists’ heads.

ISIS also has gotten extremely sophisticated in the way it uses video and social media. Terrorist groups used to put out shaky, grainy video but no more. ISIS has stolen video techniques from independent filmmakers and the journalists they kill.

“Terrorist organizations, for the most part, they don’t have critical infrastructure and resources to attack other nations,” said English.

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Screenshot of ISIS video on how it produces video.

Instead, they use video and social media as their tools of terror. ISIS creates and shares cinematic videos that people are drawn to, giving the terrorist group an air of credibility.

“Ten or 15 years ago if you wanted to get the whole world to see your vision, you had to send someone to flight school and target the World Trade Center, but today all you need to do is go to film school,” said Aucremanne.

Aucremanne believes ISIS is using video because cameras and equipment are inexpensive and unrestricted in ways that weapons are not. The second video in this Daily Mail article shows ISIS’ behind the scenes video production techniques. Jon Lee Anderson, a correspondent for the New Yorker, said during the frontline reporting panel at the University of Chicago rebels now need fewer tools to be terrorists.

Screenshot of ISIS video on how it produces video.

Screenshot of ISIS video on how it produces video.

“All that is needed to be a terrorist or commit global terrorism is an iPhone, knife and a victim, with that you have your battlefield,” he said. “You have tens of millions of people who are going to see that and be terrorized by it.”

The West focuses on the gruesome and graphic beheading videos, but those are only a small portion of the videos ISIS is releasing. Aucremanne said there are plenty of other videos designed to show ISIS fighters as heroes and instill Pan-Arabic pride that are being distributed through private social media channels.

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