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FBI: U.S. facing "cybergeddon"
FBI experts say that cyber attacks pose the greatest threat to the United States after nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction — and these attacks are increasingly hard to prevent
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Gaza civilians suffer as a result of Hamas's tactics -- and Israel's
Israeli drew many lessons from its inconclusive 2006 war in Lebanon; one of the more important ones is that Israel had been too restrained, too careful about distinguishing between Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon (i.e., civilian population and institutions) — with the result being too many Israeli soldiers dead and an inconclusive end to the fighting; whether the different, more ruthless tactics used in Gaza will succeed remains to be seen
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Security specialist Core Systems sees U.S. prisons as opportunity
Belfast-based Core Systems provides biometric equipment to prisons in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland; it is now expanding to the United States; with a prison population of 2.2 million; “In the prisons business, the United States is the market leader,” says Patricia O’Hagan, company’s co-owner
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U.K. Home Office denies remote snooping plan
There have been discussions among EU ministers about giving police more authority to snoop on crime and terror suspects remotely, but the legal framework to do so is yet be created; what is more, techies says it cannot be done
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Israel uses new ISR systems, ordnance
Advocates of air power were humbled in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, but they hope to be vindicated in the Israel-Hamas conflict; Israel uses new ISR systems which shrink the sensor-to-shooter loop, and new bunker-busting ordnance
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TSA has processed more than 1 million commercial HAZMAT applications
Since the HAZMAT driver’s license screening process was launched nearly four years ago, TSA has completed a review of 1,015,660 applications and approved more than 1 million
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Britain may outsource large surveillance database
The U.K. Home Office is moving forward with a £12 billion plan for a massive database to track phone calls, e-mails, and chat conversations in the country; the Home Office said it is considering outsourcing the database’s maintenance to private firms
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U.S. air travel database fails own privacy tests
DHS privacy report says the department is in violation of U.S. law and the DHS-EU agreement on the handling of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data
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Not yet ready for prime time: RFID technology
RFID technology is incorporated into more and more documents (e-passports, enhanced driver’s licenses); trouble is, the technology still suffers from privacy and security vulnerabilities
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Survey of emergency care cases indicate excessive use of force by police
New survey: Excessive police violence is evident in the types of injury and trauma emergency care doctors are treating in the United States
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New guide for truck cargo security
Some 80 percent of all communities in the United States rely solely on trucks for the products and goods they receive, including food, books, clothing, electronics, automobiles, and medical supplies; making sure these trucks and their cargo are safe is thus an essential part of securing the home front
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Follow the money: The value of tracking terrorist financing
Mounting terrorist operations is cheap, but maintaining a terrorist network is expensive; disrupting the money flow to a terrorist organization is thus an important preventive tool; it is also a valuable intelligence-gathering tool
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Bush administration meticulous about power handoff
The transfer of power from the Bush administration to the Obama administration will be the first handoff since 9/11; the Bush administration is taking unprecedented measures to make sure the incoming administration is ready from day one
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DHS expands biometric info collection to include green card holders
DHS will begin to collect biometric data from permanent residents of the United States and from refugees; new rule, to go into effect on 18 January 2009, will include “nearly all aliens,” except Canadian citizens on brief visits
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Graham, Talent: U.S. should do more to prevent terrorist attack
The leaders of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism say that the incoming administration must do more, much more, to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States
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The long view
Americas’ Longest-Running Insurgency: Lessons for U.S. Longest-Running War
In 2016, Colombia achieved a remarkable success by seemingly bringing to an end the Western Hemisphere’s longest-running insurgency. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) has been at war with government forces for more than fifty years. And yet here was a negotiated settlement by which two parties that had been fighting for generations agreed to lay down their arms—by which the guerrilla organization itself would be brought into the government’s formal power structures. The case raises important questions—not least for a U.S. government that watches the clock on its own counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan tick ever closer to two decades. How was this possible? And are there lessons that can be exported and applied to other intransigent conflicts, like Afghanistan?
Polarization versus Democracy
When can we realistically expect ordinary people to check the authoritarian ambitions of elected politicians? An answer to this question is key to understanding the most prominent development in the dynamic of democratic survival since the end of the Cold War: the subversion of democracy by elected incumbents and its emergence as the most common form of democratic breakdown.
U.S. Election Infrastructure: Troubling Bipartisan Conclusions
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released its first of several bipartisan reports about its own investigation into Russia’s 2016 election interference on Thursday. This one focused on Russian efforts against U.S. election infrastructure. The finding that dominated headlines was that Russia targeted election systems in all 50 states in 2016. This meant the Russian effort reached far deeper into the U.S. than previously understood by officials. What also caught people’s attention about the report was how heavily redacted it was. The report, with its worrying conclusions, provokes one overwhelming question: What can be done to stop this from happening again?
Sounding the Alarm about Another Kind of 9/11
Richard Clarke knows some things about clear and present dangers. As the first U.S. counterterrorism czar, he tried to alert important White House decision-makers before September 11 about the threat of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, but those warnings were largely ignored; afterwards, he famously apologized publicly for the government’s failures. These days, Clarke is trying to get people to think hard about the next big attack—the cyber version—and all the ones that have already happened.
Jettisoning Arms Control Endangers America’s Edge in Great-Power Politics
The Trump administration’s National Defense Strategy identified the “reemergence of long-term, strategic competition” with China and Russia as the foremost threat to U.S. national security. Both the White House and Pentagon insist that the U.S. military needs enhanced capabilities to counter growing threats such as Russian hypersonic missiles and new Chinese warships and submarines. Yet, as the Trump administration escalates its hard-power focus, it is systematically eroding the restrictions on hard power that historically have limited the strength of potential great-power challengers.
Upholding Scientific Integrity at Federal Agencies
Republicans and Democrats on a House subcommittee on Thursday agreed that science-related policy decisions should be based on facts, but differed on how to protect the federal scientists who gather and analyze those facts from undue influence.