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U.S. drone strike kills leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP)
Two leading al-Qaeda terrorists — Shawki al-Badani, a leader of al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) who was designated “global terrorist” by the United States, and Nabil al-Dahab, a local leader of the armed group’s affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia — have been killed in a drone strike in central Yemen yesterday. They were killed in Yemen’s al-Bayda province.
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Judges question claims that NSA metadata collection poses threat to ordinary citizens
A panel of three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenged arguments made earlier this week by Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer arguing on his own behalf, and Cindy Cohn, an attorney representing the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), that the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass-surveillance program is a breach of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.The case, Klayman v. Obama, is one of three currently at the appeals-court level regarding the NSA surveillance program.In the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judges Stephen Williams and David Sentelle voiced skepticism about claims that collecting metadata posed a threat to ordinary citizens.
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Head of U.K. surveillance agency: U.S. tech companies have become terrorists' “networks of choice”
The new director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K. intelligence organization responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces, said that privacy has never been “an absolute right.” Robert Hannigan used his first public intervention since becoming head of Britain’s surveillance agency to charge U.S. technology companies of becoming “the command and control networks of choice” for terrorists.
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Lebanese court sentences a cousin of Qatar’s foreign minister for funding terrorism
Abdulaziz bin Khalifa al-Attiyah, the cousin of Qatar’s foreign minister and a former member of the Qatar Olympic Committee, was convicted in June in absentia by a Lebanese court of funding international terrorism. Al-Attiyah’s conviction is one of many events that ties members of the Qatari government to the funding of terrorism. The Qatari government itself has been funding Jihadists groups in the Middle East and North Africa in an effort to undermine and weaken to influence of moderate forces and governments in the region.
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U.S. introduces new security measures to screen Western-passport travelers
At least 3,000 of the 15,000 foreign fighters in Syria are from Australia and Europe. DHS has introduced new screening measures for travelers from Europe, Australia, and other allied nations due to concerns about the increasing number of Islamist militants who have fought in Syria and Iraq alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and could travel freely to the United States using their Western passports.
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Government tries better to define cybersecurity needs
In a science advisory board meeting on 23 October at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), officials attempted to glean just where the government cybersecurity workforce stood in terms of talent and hiring necessity. There is currently no government-wide federal job description in the cybersecurity field, and that has led to meetings similar to the October summit.
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Security contractor USIS failed to notice months-long hacking of its computer systems
A new report reveals that the cyberattack on security contractor USIS, similar to previous attacks by Chinese government hackers on U.S. firms, was infiltrating USIS computer systems for months before the company noticed. The breach, first revealed publicly by the company and the Office of Personnel Management(OPM) in August, compromised the records of at least 25,000 DHS employees.
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European Muslims say they pay the price for the actions of extremists
Many European Muslims feel that anti-Islamic sentiment is on the rise, partly due to recent violent videos of torture and beheadings by Islamic State (ISIS). At least 3,000 Europeans have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight in ISIS ranks, and European security services are worried that if they return home, some of them would use the skills they acquired in Iraq and Syria to perpetrate terrorist activities at home. In response, the public has been on high alert, ringing the alarm whenever a potential terrorist is spotted.
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Tensions over Islam find their way to U.S. campuses
University of Central Florida(UCF) professor Dr. Jonathan Matusitz is facing backlash from some groups which claim that his class on terrorism and communication is based on a biased view and a hatred of Islam. Students at the University of California-Berkeleybegan to protest the university’s selection of television personality Bill Maher as the mid-year commencement speaker on 20 December, describing his comments on Islam as racist, divisive, and offensive to many students. UCF says it stands behind Matusitz, and UC-Berkeley says Maher’s invitation stands.
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Setback to U.S. Syria plan as Islamists evict anti-ISIS militia from stronghold
One of the moderate rebel forces in Syria which the United States views as central to the formation of an effective ground force to fight ISIS is the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF). Over the weekend, however, the SRF suffered a major defeat when the al-Qaeda-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra ousted it from its stronghold.
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U.K. prepared to assist disillusioned Jihadists returning from Syria
William Hague, former British foreign secretary, said that British jihadists returning to the United Kingdom from Syria and Iraq will be helped by the government as long as they have “good intentions.” Hague said that the U.K. authorities are prepared to assist people who come back to Britain after fighting in the Middle East as long as it can be established that they are not planning attacks in the United Kingdom.
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World’s first counterterrorism “bank” to finance anti-extremism projects
The world’s first counterterrorism “bank” will next year begin funding projects aiming to stop violent extremism in five of the most “at risk” countries. The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) was established in Switzerland last month, and it will soon be awarding grants of around $10-$30,000 to small-scale counter-radicalization programs in Mali, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, and Bangladesh. The organization expects to be financing thousands of such programs over the next decade. Some of these projects appear to be replicating development work, but the new organization says that the difference is that these prospective projects will have security outcomes in mind, and that funding will specifically target areas of the world at risk of creating violent combatants, but where there are few resources to tackle the issues.
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Microrockets fueled by water neutralize chemical and biological warfare agents
With fears growing over chemical and biological weapons falling into the wrong hands, scientists are developing microrockets to fight back against these dangerous agents. Scientists point out that titanium dioxide is one of the most promising materials available for degrading chemical and biological warfare agents. It does not require harsh chemicals or result in toxic by-products. There is no way, however, actively to mix titanium dioxide in waterways, so scientists have been working on ways to propel titanium dioxide around to accelerate the decontamination process without the need for active stirring.
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Foreigners from 80 countries are joining ISIS on “unprecedented scale”: UN
A report by the UN Security Council has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale” and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism. The report finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) and other extremist groups. These volunteers come from more than eighty countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaeda.” ISIS is estimated to have more than $1 million in daily revenues from oil smuggling operations alone. It controls territory the size of Texas in Iraq and Syria, a territory which is home to between five and six million people, a population the size of Finland’s. The UN reports says that ISIS’s treasury also benefits from up to $45 million in money from kidnapping for ransom.
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Identifying ways to improve smartphone security
What information is beaming from your mobile phone over various computer networks this very second without you being aware of it? Experts say your contact lists, e-mail messages, surfed Web pages, browsing histories, usage patterns, online purchase records and even password protected accounts may all be sharing data with intrusive and sometimes malicious applications, and you may have given permission. The apps downloaded to smartphones can potentially track a user’s locations, monitor his or her phone calls and even monitor the messages a user sends and receives — including authentication messages used by online banking and other sites, he says, explaining why unsecured digital data are such a big issue. Assigning risk scores to apps may slow down unwarranted access to personal information.
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More headlines
The long view
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.
Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.
Vaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”