Government
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Nuclear proliferationBudget proposal cuts funds for nuclear nonproliferation programs
The White House’s fiscal 2015 budget proposal includes more than $220 million in cuts for nuclear security initiatives such as the International Material Protection and Cooperationprogram, which aims to secure and eliminate vulnerable nuclear weapons and materials, and the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which supports the Energy Department’s efforts to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear and radiological materials that could be used in weapons of mass destruction. The administration says that 54 percent of the reduction in the administration’s nonproliferation budget request can be accounted for by the decision to halt the South Carolina Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility(MOX), which would have convert weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel, because the project proved to be too costly.
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Plutonium processingS.C. politicians want decision to halt work on Savannah River plutonium plant reversed
Three Republican lawmakers from South Carolina — Senator Lindsey Graham and Representatives Tim Scott and Joe Wilson have – have asked South Carolina governor Nikki Haley to “explore any legal avenues” to prevent the mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) project at the Savannah River Sitefrom shutting down. The administration has decided to put the project on hold after repeated delays and cost overruns averaging 60 percent over the original estimates.
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SurveillanceMetaPhone: The sensitivity of telephone metadata
Is telephone metadata sensitive? This is, at base, a factual dispute. Is it easy to draw sensitive inferences from phone metadata? How often do people conduct sensitive matters by phone, in a manner reflected by metadata? New research finds that phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even in a small population and over a short time window. The researchers were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership, and more, using solely phone metadata.
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Analysis // Libya disintegratingLibyan PM escapes country after assembly ousts him over oil tanker fiasco
Libya’s General National Congress has approved a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and designated the defense minister as acting prime minister. Zeidan left Libya after the vote, in all likelihood for Italy. The no-confidence vote came after a North Korean-flagged tanker named Morning Glory managed to sail away from the port of al Sidra, carrying 234,000 barrels of crude oil from rebel-held oil fields. Last summer, armed militias in east Libya took over most of the country’s oil fields – and also three ports, with partial control of a fourth — bringing oil exports, which had amounted to 1.6 million barrels a day, to a halt. U.S. describes oil sale by the militias as “theft” from the Libyan people.
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InfrastructureEast Europe’s natural gas networks vulnerable during conflicts and crises
Gas networks in Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine and Belarus, are less resilient than the U.K. gas networks during conflicts and crises, according to new research. The authors suggest that a decentralized approach to managing congestion on gas pipeline networks could be crucial for energy security during geopolitical conflicts or natural disasters, for example.
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Missile defenseIsrael open to offering missile defense coverage to Jordan, Egypt
With worries about Iran military capabilities growing, a U.S. general on Monday said that Israel should consider extending the coverage area of its missile defense systems so they could cover Jordan and possibly Egypt, and an Israeli official cautiously welcomed the idea. The United States has funded most of the research and development work on Israel’s layered ballistic missile and short-range rocket defense systems, and under the Obama administration, Israel’s deployed missile interceptor systems have been integrated with U.S. global missile tracking and regional missile defense systems.
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Radiation risksScotland demands U.K. govt. apology over radiation leak at MoD nuke facility
In 2012 the U.K. Ministry of Defense decided to refuel the nuclear reactor on board Britain’s oldest nuclear submarine, HMS Vanguard, after a test reactor operating at the Naval Reactor Test Establishment at Dounreay, Caithness, in Scotland was found to have a small internal leak of radiation. The test reactor had been shut down after the fault was detected, and both the independent Defense Nuclear Safety Regulator and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) had been informed. It now appears that SEPA did not share the information with the Scottish cabinet, or with Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland. Salmond, in a scathing letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron, has demanded an apology from Camron for “disrespecting” the Scottish Parliament and the people of Scotland and for treating both in an “underhanded” manner by not sharing the information about the radiation leaks.
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GridFERC orders development of physical security standards for transmission grid
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Friday directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to develop reliability standards requiring owners and operators of the Bulk-Power System to address risks due to physical security threats and vulnerabilities.
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Terrorism insuranceAllowing Terrorism Risk Insurance Act to expire could hurt national security: Study
The current terrorism risk insurance program has a $27.5 billion threshold for aggregate losses that are paid by the insurance industry and commercial policyholders before the government program begins paying. The program will expire in 2014 and Congress again is considering the appropriate government role in terrorism insurance markets. Allowing the federal terrorism risk insurance act to expire could have negative consequences for U.S. national security, according to a new study from the RAND Corporation.
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CybersecuritySoftware spots malicious behavior by apps
Last year at the end of July the Russian software company Doctor Web detected several malicious apps in the app store Google Play. Downloaded on a smartphone, the malware installed — without the permission of the user — additional programs which sent expensive text messages to premium services. German computer scientists have now developed software which can discover such malicious apps already in the app store. The software detects pieces of code where the app accesses sensitive data and where data is sent from the mobile device.
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SyriaGangbangin' in Syria: Two L.A. gang members in Syria to defend Assad regime
About a hundred Americans have gone to Syria to take part in the war, all of them — with the apparent exception of two L.A. gang members named “Creeper” and “Wino” — to fight on the side of the Sunni rebels against the Alawite Assad regime. In a video recently posted on YouTube, the two are shown brandishing AK-47s and firing at an unseen enemy. Their tattoos identify one of them as a member of Sureños-13, which is affiliated with the Mexican mafia, and the other as a member of Westside Armenian Power gang. They tell the camera they are “in Syria, gangbangin’.”
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BiometricsBiometric security for mobile devices becoming mainstream
Biometric security such as fingerprint, face, and voice recognition is set to hit the mainstream as global technology companies market the systems as convenient and easy to use. The latest biometric technologies are not without their security issues, but they are marketed as more convenient than traditional methods rather than more secure, and encourage adoption by people who currently do not have any security on their phone at all.
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PrivacyCollecting digital user data without compromising privacy
The statistical evaluation of digital user data is of vital importance for analyzing trends. It can also undermine users’ privacy. Computer scientists have now developed a novel cryptographic method that makes it possible to collect data and protect the privacy of the user at the same time.
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Countering radicalizationToo much too young? Teaching children about violent extremism
Dealing with the rise of homegrown terrorism has prompted governments to take novel approaches in combating such threats. The U.K. government, for example, has recently pushed for schools to teach children as young as four about the dangers of violent extremism. One counter-radicalization strategy adopted by the U.K. government is Prevent, which has been used effectively in British secondary schools. Prevent has in the past been viewed with suspicion, however, particularly by British Muslim communities, as Prevent funding has previously been tied directly to the number of Muslim schools in an area. What Australia can learn from the British example is ensuring that certain communities do not feel alienated. Instead, any attempts at education should focus on the problem of radicalization as a whole.
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TerrorismIsrael intercepts ship carrying Syrian missiles from Iran to Gaza
In its most daring – and logistically demanding –military operation in about a year, Israeli naval commandos earlier yesterday (Wednesday) intercepted an Iranian arms ship in the Red Sea, more than 900 miles from Israeli shores. The ship was carrying dozens of Syria-manufactured M-302 medium-range missiles from Iran to Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. The M-302 missile would have dramatically increased the capabilities of militant organizations in Gaza. It carries a warhead of 150 kg and has a range of about 300km.
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