• One Year On: Marking Progress on Biden’s Counter-Domestic Terrorism Strategy

    Early in the Biden administration, the president instructed the intelligence community to evaluate the domestic terrorist threat – and intelligence officials concluded that it’s severe. On 15 June 2021, the Biden administration released the National Strategy to Counter Domestic Terrorism. Ryan B. Greer writes that now that it has been a full year since the launch, there is an opportunity to review the administration’s progress made toward countering the threat of domestic violent extremism.

  • Global Summit on the Use of Drones

    Over 300 participants from more than 50 countries have converged in the Norwegian capital to attend INTERPOL’s fourth expert conference on the use of drones, representing a multitude of law enforcement agencies as well as attendees with security and emergency preparedness functions.

  • Making hardware and software Quantum-Safe

    Quantum computers are thought to have the potential to perform specialized calculations beyond the reach of any supercomputers in existence and will be able to break current public key cryptosystems used today.

  • Spain Sacks Intelligence Chief in Wake of Pegasus Scandal

    Paz Esteban was replaced after a controversy over the use of the Pegasus spyware to hack top Spanish officials’ cellphones, as well as spying on Catalan separatists.

  • The Movement to Ban Government Use of Face Recognition

    Our faces are unique identifiers that can’t be left at home, or replaced like a stolen ID or compromised password. Facial recognition technology facilitates covert mass surveillance of the places we frequent, people we associate with, and, purportedly, our emotional state. Communities across the country are fighting back.

  • National Action Plan: The U.S. Domestic Counter-Unmanned Aircraft

    Over the last decade, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS or “drones”) have become a regular feature of American life. We use them for recreation, for research, and for commerce. But the proliferation of this new technology has also introduced new risks to public safety, privacy, and homeland security. On Monday, the administration released whole-of-government plan to address UAS threats in the homeland.

  • International Approval Shapes Public Perceptions of Drone Warfare

    Drones that carry weapons are increasingly employed as counterterrorism tools, but nations use and constrain strikes differently. France, for example, submits its strikes to the U.N. for approval; the U.S. typically does not. This difference matters when it comes to public support and perceptions of legitimacy.

  • DHS S&T Awards $259M to Counter-Unmanned Aircraft System Threats

    Germantown, Maryland-based Amentum has been awarded a five-year contract with a maximum value of $260 million by DHS S&T to develop and deploy emerging capabilities and prototypes for countering unmanned systems threats (C-UST).

  • Google Fights Dragnet Warrant for Users’ Search Histories Overseas, but It Is Continuing to Give Data to Police in the U.S.

    Google is fighting back against a Brazilian court order to turn over data on all users who searched for specific terms, including the name of a well-known elected official and a busy downtown thoroughfare. Google should be applauded for challenging this digital dragnet search in Brazil, but the company must also stand up for the rights of its users against similar searches in the U.S. and elsewhere.

  • Another Problem for Russia in Ukraine: Effective Satellites Are Few and Far Between

    The Russian forces have faced many problems in Ukraine. A big item on the list of problems: satellites — there are too few of them, and too few with high-quality capabilities. According to experts and open-source information, Russia has long been saddled with a small and inadequate fleet of communications and surveillance satellites that in many cases rely on either outdated technology or imported parts that are now harder to come by due to Western sanctions.

  • DHS Sued Over Vetting Program to Collect and Data Mine

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) the other day filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for records about a multi-million dollar, secretive program that surveils immigrants and other foreign visitors’ speech on social media.

  • Drone Warfare Is Increasingly Sophisticated, Deadly

    Policymakers, legislators and military strategists must prepare for the consequences of other countries and actors such as the Islamic State using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and others.

  • We Need Answers about the CIA’s Mass Surveillance

    The Central Intelligence Agency has been collecting American’s private data without any oversight or even the minimal legal safeguards that apply to the NSA and FBI, an unconstitutional affront to our civil liberties. The whos, whats, whys, and hows of this semi-disclosed CIA program are still unknown, and the public deserves the right to know exactly what damage has been done.

  • Users of Unmanned Aircraft Need to View Risk Mitigation More Holistically

    A recently published study has found that users of unmanned aircraft, also known as drones, need to take a more holistic approach to identifying and mitigating potential risks before undertaking a flight.

  • In 2021, the Police Took a Page Out of the NSA’s Playbook: 2021 in Review

    Dragnet searches were once thought to be just the province of the NSA, but they are now easier than ever for domestic law enforcement to conduct as well. With increasing frequency, law enforcement has been using unconstitutional, suspicionless digital dragnet searches in an attempt to identify unknown suspects in criminal cases.