• New evidence released showing deaths in Syrian state detention centers

    Human Rights Watch has released new evidence that up to 7,000 Syrians who died in state detention centers were tortured, mistreated, or executed. The human rights organization says that holding Syrian government officials to account should be central to peace efforts. Observers were aware of the five large detention centers the Assad regime ran. Analysts estimate that more than 117,000 Syrian civilians were tortured and mistreated in these centers since the anti-Assad rebellion erupted in March 2011.

  • Saudi-led alliance sends troops to Syria; protecting Mosul dam; Italy and refugees

    On Monday, Saudi Arabia announced the formation of a new alliance, consisting of thirty-four Sunni Arab and Muslim states, to fight terrorism. The alliance forces will join the moderate rebels in Syria – Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that these rebels were 70,000-strong – not only to fight ISIS, but also to turn their fire on the weakening Assad regime’s military; Italy will send troops to defend the strategically important Mosul Dam in northern Iraq; the EC ordered Italy to use force if necessary to compel migrants and refugees to have their fingerprints taken, this obliging these refugees to apply for asylum in Italy rather than use Italy as a corridor on their way to other EU countries.

  • 34 Muslim states form new military alliance to fight terrorism

    Saudi Arabia has announced the formation of a 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a statement published by SPA, the state news agency. A long list of Arab countries such as Egypt, Qatar, and the UAE, along with Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan, and several African states were named in the Saudi statement. Iran is not part of the new alliance.

  • U.S. officials barred from reviewing social media postings of visa applicants

    Officials from DHS and the Department of State, as a general policy, do not check social media postings of applicants out of civil liberties concerns. With this policy in place, the department’s officials who handled Tashfeen Malik’s application could not have seen her pro-ISIS postings and note her growing radicalization. Officials from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pressed for a change in DHS policy in light of the fact that social media  is increasingly used by followers of jihadist groups to declare their allegiance, but the disclosures by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance programs was behind the reluctance of DHS high officials to change the policy for fears such a change would further damage the administration’s standing with civil rights groups and European allies.

  • The third intifada; new, smaller Schengen; EU border patrol

    Mahmud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has been warned by the military wing of the PLO that unless he can persuade the UN Security Council to vote for a resolution calling for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, a new intifada will be launched to convince Israel that a continued occupation of Palestinian lands will be costly; European officials are planning to abandon the 30-year old Schengen Agreement and replace it with a much smaller, Western Europe-only free-travel zone; facing rising seas, residents of the Pacific island of Tuvalu are looking for a new home.

  • How French strategies prevented Al Qaeda's expansion in Mali

    There have been many books on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but there are few about the recent military interventions of America’s allies in countries such as Mali and others on the African continent. Because the January 2013 French intervention in Mali against the local Al Qaeda affiliate was quick, effective, and relatively low cost, the story contains valuable lessons for future strategy.

  • Merkel: Germany will “drastically reduce” number of refugees arriving in Germany

    German chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that she wanted to “drastically decrease” the number of refugees coming to Germany, indicating she would willing to compromise with critics within her own conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). These critics have charged that her open-door policy posed security risks to Germany and would expand the government welfare rolls.

  • French backlash, Egypt: no terrorism in plane crash, Libyan unity government

    The French right-wing Front National failed to translate its gains in the first round of France’s regional elections a week ago into any victories in the election’s second round on Sunday; Angela Merkel, facing growing opposition from within her party to her open-door refugee policy, said she would limit number of refugees arriving in German; Turkish prime minister Erdogan says the Middle East “would benefit greatly from normalization of Turkish-Israeli relations; the two rival Libyan governments are set to sigh a historic peace accord in Morocco on Wednesday. 

  • DHS questioned over pressure it put on a library to disable Tor node

    Back in September, Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire briefly disabled its Tor relay after local police, following a tip from agents with Homeland Security’s investigations branch that the network may be used by criminals or terrorists. A Congresswoman from California wants to know why DHS officials pressured the New Hampshire library to take down the relay node, and whether DHS has leaned on other organizations to do so.

  • Following indictments, China’s military reduces its commercial cybeespionage against American companies

    The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reduced its cyberespionage activity targeting American companies since five PLA officers were indicted by the Department of Justice in May 2014. “The indictments had an amazing effect in China, more than we could have hoped for,” said one expert. In April, Obama signed an executive order calling for impose economic sanctions on individuals and entities that take part in or benefit from illicit cyber-activities such as commercial espionage. “If the indictments had the effect of getting the PLA to scale down, then sanctions likely will have a wider effect on other Chinese state-sponsored groups,” says another expert.

  • Flawed U.S. Senate report on CIA torture doomed to "eternal controversy": Researcher

    The U.S. Senate summary report on the allegations of CIA torture during the “war on terror” failed to live up to its original purpose, a Stanford scholar said. The researchers says that the U.S. Senate’s 2014 summary report on alleged CIA torture and interrogation Four key errors have doomed the Senate report to “eternal controversy,” she said: “It was not bipartisan, took too long to write, made little effort to generate public support along the way, and produced a declassified version that constituted a tiny portion of the full study.”

  • DHS S&T calls on non-traditional performers to offer solutions to tough threats

    DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) last week announced its first Innovation Other Transaction Solicitation (OTS) aimed at non-traditional performers such as technology start-ups to offer solutions to some of the toughest threats facing DHS and the homeland security mission. Awarded through Other Transaction Solicitation HSHQDC-16-R-B0005, the first call for proposals is looking for solutions to improve situational awareness and security measures for protecting Internet of Things (IoT) domains.

  • Better FEMA options for increasing the affordability of flood insurance

    FEMA currently does not have the policy analysis capacity or necessary data to comprehensively analyze different options for making flood insurance more affordable. A new report identifies an approach for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to evaluate policy options for making premiums through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) more affordable for those who have limited ability to pay.

  • Terror attacks in Paris and California expose modern society’s lack of resilience

    Our complex global society lacks resilience. The root cause of our vulnerability is the structure of the global economy: highly interconnected, complex, and filled with turbulence. Major disasters can occur unexpectedly, and even minor incidents can cascade into significant human and financial losses. Emerging pressures such as climate change and urbanization will only intensify the potential for extreme events and severe disruptions. Risk management makes sense in a stable environment with predictable events, but in today’s more complex risk landscape — the new normal — it is inadequate for dealing with fast-moving, unfamiliar threats that may cascade into disasters. The good news is that brittleness is not inevitable. It is a fundamental design flaw. Resilience — the capacity to survive, adapt, and flourish in the face of disruptive change — is a basic characteristic of all living systems, from individual creatures to entire ecosystems. In this age of turbulence, resilience has become a prerequisite for continued prosperity.

  • FBI unable to break 109 encrypted messages Texas terror attack suspect sent ahead of attack

    FBI director James Comey told lawmakers this week that one of the suspects in the foiled terror attack in Garland, Texas, in May had exchanged 109 messages with sources in a “terrorist location” overseas ahead of the attack. U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, however, have not been able to break into and read those messages because they were exchanged on devices equipped with end-to-end encryption software which, security services in the United States and Europe argue, make it impossible to monitor and track terrorists and criminals.