08/30/11: Wired.com reports that whether the federal government and the nation’s telecommunication companies can be held accountable for allegedly funneling every American’s electronic communication to the National Security Agency without warrants is the subject of oral arguments scheduled for a federal appeals court Wednesday. At issue is a January 31, 2006 lawsuit, and others that followed, alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from warrantless searches and seizures. The cases, about three dozen which will be consolidated into two oral arguments, have been thrown out of court on a variety of grounds, chiefly the government’s claim that the lawsuits would expose state secrets, and a 2008 law that immunized the nation’s telcos from such lawsuits.
08/29/11: The New York Times reports that dministration officials say that even though the NATO intervention in Libya, emphasizing airstrikes to protect civilians, cannot be applied uniformly in other hotspots like Syria, the conflict may, in some important ways, become a model for how the United States wields force in other countries where its interests are threatened.
08/28/11: The New York Times reports that a drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency killed Al Qaeda’s second-ranking figure in the mountains of Pakistan on Monday, American and Pakistani officials said Saturday, further damaging a terrorism network that appears significantly weakened since the death of Osama bin Laden in May. An American official said that the drone strike killed Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who in the last year had taken over as Al Qaeda’s top operational planner. Mr. Rahman was in frequent contact with Bin Laden in the months before the terrorist leader was killed on May 2 by a Navy Seals team, intelligence officials have said.
08/26/11: Secrecy News reports that The Department of Justice refused this month to declassify a 2001 legal Office of Legal Counsel opinion by John C. Yoo concerning the legality of the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance program. The redacted information in the OLC opinion “is classified, covered by non-disclosure provisions contained in other federal statutes, and is protected by the deliberative process privilege,” wrote Paul P. Colborn, Special Counsel at OLC.
08/26/11: The Blog of Legal Times reports that the US Justice Department wants a federal appeals court in Washington to overturn a judge's ruling that said an American contractor detained in Iraq can sue former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for alleged abuses. US District Judge James Gwin this month ruled for the contractor, an American civilian and former Army veteran who provided translation services to the military in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. Gwin said Rumsfeld is not entitled to qualified immunity.
08/25/11: The Miami Herald reports that five South Koreans, including a former parliamentary aide, have been indicted for allegedly spying for North Korea, prosecutors said Thursday. The five civilians passed military secrets and other sensitive information to North Korea beginning in the early 1990s, Seoul prosecutors said in a statement. Information funneled to North Korea included satellite photos of military bases in South Korea, US military field manuals and information on South Korean politicians, the prosecutors said.
08/24/11: The New York Times reports that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been more likely to be hunting for potential threats to national security than for ordinary criminals in recent years, but much of the time found neither, according to newly disclosed internal information. Data from a recent two-year period showed that the bureau opened 82,325 assessments of people and groups in search for signs of wrongdoing. Agents closed out most of the assessments, the lowest-level of FBI investigation, without finding information that justified a more intensive inquiry.
08/24/11: The Washington Post reports that the transit agency in the San Francisco Bay area hopes to ease tensions with a public meeting over whether there should be a policy on cutting wireless access to its stations during protests. The Bay Area Rapid Transit agency board of directors meets Wednesday morning in Oakland to discuss whether it wants to continue using the tactic, which drew unfavorable comparisons to Hosni Mubarak’s attempts to cut Internet access to most of Egypt to quell demonstrations protesting his regime.
08/24/11: JURIST reports that the International Criminal Court on Wednesday concluded its first war crimes trial after two years. Democratic Republic of Congo militia leader Thomas Lubanga was taken into ICC custody in March 2006, becoming the first DRC war crimes defendant to appear before the ICC.
08/23/11: Wired.com reports that a former WikiLeaks spokesman under fire for recently destroying thousands of unpublished documents submitted to the secret-spilling site last year says WikiLeaks is publicly exaggerating the contents of the deleted files, in an increasingly ugly dispute playing out over Twitter and in the press. Daniel Domscheit-Berg shocked WikiLeaks supporters this week when he told the German newsweekly Der Spiegel that he’d deleted more than 3,500 unpublished documents that he and an associate took with them when they left the organization last year. He said he destroyed the documents because Julian Assange could not guarantee safe handling of the files or their sources.
08/23/11: The Washington Post reports that Iran’s president claimed on Tuesday the country’s military can cripple enemies on their own ground as Tehran put a new Iranian-made cruise missile on display, the latest addition to the nation’s growing arsenal. The state TV reported that the new missile, showcased at a ceremony in Tehran, is designed for sea-based targets, with a range of 124 miles (200 kilometers) and is capable of destroying a warship. The TV said it can travel at low altitudes and has a lighter weight and smaller dimensions.
08/21/11: The Washington Post reports that new revelations in long-running political scandals under former president Alvaro Uribe, a close US ally throughout his eight-year tenure, have implicated American aid, and possibly US officials, in egregious abuses of power and illegal actions by the Colombian government under the guise of fighting terrorism and drug smuggling. American cash, equipment and training, supplied to elite units of the Colombian intelligence service over the past decade to help smash cocaine-trafficking rings, were used to carry out spying operations and smear campaigns against Supreme Court justices, Uribe’s political opponents and civil society groups.
08/21/11: The Chicago Tribune reports that until recently, medical files belonging to nearly 300,000 Californians sat unsecured on the Internet for the entire world to see. There were insurance forms, Social Security numbers and doctors' notes. At a time of mounting computer hacking threats, the incident offers an alarming glimpse at privacy risks as the nation moves steadily into an era in which every American's sensitive medical information will be digitized. Southern California Medical-Legal Consultants, which represents doctors and hospitals seeking payment from patients receiving workers' compensation, put the records on a website that it believed only employees could use, owner Joel Hecht says.
08/20/11: The New York Times reports that In a little-known effort, General Electric has successfully tested laser enrichment for two years and is seeking federal permission to build a $1 billion plant that would make reactor fuel by the ton. That might be good news for the nuclear industry. But critics fear that if the work succeeds and the secret gets out, rogue states and terrorists could make bomb fuel in much smaller plants that are difficult to detect. Iran has already succeeded with laser enrichment in the lab, and nuclear experts worry that GE’s accomplishment might inspire Tehran to build a plant easily hidden from the world’s eyes.
08/19/11: The BBC reports that the US Office of Naval Research says that it has successfully tested a new type of explosive material that can dramatically increase weapons' impacts. Missiles made from the high density substance can explode with up to five times the energy of existing armaments. The material mixes metals and polymers and is said to be as dense as steel but have the strength of aluminum. US Navy scientists say that projectiles made from the new compound are less likely to kill innocent bystanders.
08/19/11: The Long War Journal reports that on Thursday, the US State Department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism, which provides an overview of terrorism for the previous calendar year. Iran "remained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2010," the State Department reported. "Iran's financial, material, and logistic support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a direct impact on international efforts to promote peace, threatened economic stability in the Gulf, and undermined the growth of democracy." As in past reports, the State Department highlighted Iran's assistance to its onetime foe, the Taliban.
08/18/11: The Washington Post reports that Al-Qaida’s North African offshoot has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing at an Algerian police station that injured at least 29 people. A statement posted Thursday on Al-Qaida affiliated militant websites said al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb targeted the police station in the city of Tizi Ouzou on Sunday.
08/17/11: IntelDaily reports that US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says Washington has “no choice” but to work out its troubled relations with Pakistan because it needs Islamabad’s help fighting Al-Qaeda. Speaking alongside US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a televised event in Washington, Panetta said nuclear-power Pakistan represents “an important force in that region” and is the United States is “fighting a war there.”
08/17/11: The Miami Herald reports that President Barack Obama said Tuesday that a "lone wolf" terror attack in the US is more likely than a major coordinated effort like the September 11 attacks nearly a decade ago. With the nation preparing to observe the 10th anniversary of hijacked airliners crashing in New York and Washington and along the Pennsylvania countryside, Obama said the government is in a state of heightened awareness. "The biggest concern we have right now is not the launching of a major terrorist operation, although that risk is always there," the president said in an interview with CNN.
08/17/11: The Washington Post reports that the State Department is the new overseer of intelligence activities in Iraq. With insurgent violence continuing in the country and all US combat forces still scheduled to leave by the end of the year, State has taken over a $230 million Army contact with L-3 Communications to allow intelligence services to continue through the end of May 2012, five months after military personnel are expected to leave. In a document justifying the the transfer to State, the Army has redacted the exact intelligence activities to be carried out, but it does say that L-3 will “assist in all aspect of intelligence support activities in order to provide timely and actionable intelligence information.”
08/17/11: The Miami Herald reports that German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet has approved a four-year extension for a package of terrorism-fighting measures enacted after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The package approved Wednesday allows authorities to continue to access banking and flight data of terrorist suspects. It gives them new powers to access central repositories of that information rather than having to contact individual airlines and banks. Some measures that were either never used or legally problematic, like tracking mail and post-office box traffic, are being dropped.
08/16/11: CNN reports that the military research wing that last week launched a hypersonic aircraft test is being investigated after questions were raised about potential conflicts of interest in awarding lucrative contracts. The audit by the Department of Defense's inspector general will look at the "adequacy" of the handling by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, of "selection, award, and administration of contracts and grants" in fiscal years 2010 and 2011, according to a memo the inspector general sent to government watchdog group Project on Government Oversight.
08/16/11: The Los Angeles Times reports that a series of blasts and gunshots ripped across Iraq on Monday, killing at least 70 people and wounding more than 300 in a spasm of bloodshed that raised fresh concerns that the nation's security forces might be overwhelmed by insurgents when American soldiers withdraw later this year. Ali Haidari, a security expert, said the assaults came shortly after Abu Mohammed Adnani was named Al Qaeda's new leader in Iraq. Haidari said the terrorist group had been announcing for weeks on its website that it was preparing a major operation to exploit the perceived weakness of Iraqi forces.
08/16/11: The Miami Herald reports that Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said Tuesday his administration has asked legislators to strengthen an anti-terror law by easing safeguards against abuse that have deterred authorities from using it. Former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed the Human Security Act in 2007 to strengthen the Philippines' battle against al-Qaida-linked militants. But concern over possible rights violations prompted lawmakers to include strong safeguards against abuses. Since its passage, the law is known to have been used only twice.
08/16/11: The Wall Street Journal reports that an Air Force cargo aircraft collided with a drone in Afghanistan, a potentially serious mishap that underscores how crowded the skies can be over the combat zone. Air Force Capt. Justin Brockhoff, a spokesman for the military in Afghanistan, confirmed that the C-130 cargo plane was forced to make an emergency landing Monday at a forward operating base.
08/16/11: The Miami Herald reports that a 38-year-old man who admitted he tried to illegally export parts of missiles to Iran from the United States has been sentenced to more than four years in prison, officials announced Monday. Davoud Baniameri, an Iranian citizen and legal US resident who lived in Woodland Hills, California, was sentenced to 51 months. He pleaded guilty in May and was sentenced Friday in Chicago's federal court.
08/16/11: The Washington Post reports that the US military has moved to stem the flow of contract money to Afghan insurgents, awarding at least 20 companies new contracts worth about $1 billion for military supply transport and suspending seven current contractors it found lacking in “integrity and business ethics.” The new contracts, which were finalized Monday and will take effect next month, aim to eliminate layers of brokers and middlemen who allegedly skimmed money, and to allow more transparency in a complex web of Afghan subcontractors paid to provide security for the supply truck convoys.
08/15/11: The Washington Post reports that San Francisco’s mass transit system prepared for renewed protests Monday, a day after hackers angry over blocked cell phone service at some transit stations broke into a website and posted company contact information for more than 2,000 customers. The action by a hacker group known as Anonymous was the latest showdown between anarchists angry at perceived attempts to limit free speech and officials trying to control protests that grow out of social networking and have the potential to become violent.
08/15/11: The Miami Herald reports that Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb wants to put its footprint on the Arab Spring now that violence is fueling the uprisings, and in a two-part video is trying to lure new followers for revolt by jihad. The push comes as the group has sought to expand its operations beyond its Algerian base and desert outposts to countries around Africa, from Nigeria to Libya, after the death of Osama bin Laden and after being sidelined when the Arab revolts erupted earlier this year.
08/14/11: The Miami Herald reports that a team of six suicide bombers - some wearing explosive vests - stormed a provincial governor's compound in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing 22 people in the latest high-profile attack to target prominent Afghan government officials, authorities said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the Parwan provincial capital of Charikar, some 30 miles north of Kabul. The province is home to Bagram Air Field, a sprawling base for US and NATO troops.
08/13/11: The New York Times reports that American counterterrorism officials are increasingly concerned that the most dangerous regional arm of Al Qaeda is trying to produce the lethal poison ricin, to be packed around small explosives for attacks against the United States. Intelligence officials say they have collected evidence that Qaeda operatives are trying to move castor beans and processing agents to a hideaway in Shabwa Province, in one of Yemen’s rugged tribal areas controlled by insurgents. The officials say the evidence points to efforts to secretly concoct batches of the poison, pack them around small explosives, and then try to explode them in contained spaces, like a shopping mall, an airport or a subway station.
08/12/11: The New York Times reports that New York State cannot be forced to investigate a psychologist accused by a human rights organization of overseeing coercive interrogation tactics at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a judge in Manhattan ruled on Thursday. The rights group, the Center for Justice and Accountability, had brought a suit claiming that the psychologist, John Francis Leso, helped develop a plan of coercive techniques, including sleep deprivation and isolation, to use on detainees at Guantánamo. The suit was brought on behalf of Steven Reisner, a psychologist and an assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. It sought an investigation of Dr. Leso by a professional disciplinary office in the state’s Education Department that regulates psychologists’ licenses.
08/11/11: The New York Times reports that private security companies play a vital part in the conflict now raging inside Somalia, a country that has been effectively ungoverned and mired in chaos for years. The fight against the Shabab, a group that United States officials fear could someday carry out strikes against the West, has mostly been outsourced to African soldiers and private companies out of reluctance to send American troops back into a country they hastily exited nearly two decades ago. “We do not want an American footprint or boot on the ground,” said Johnnie Carson, the Obama administration’s top State Department official for Africa.
08/11/11: CNN reports that FBI agents are looking into who left what appeared to be a crude explosive device attached to a natural gas line in rural Oklahoma, the bureau said Wednesday. The "potential explosive device" was found late Wednesday morning outside Okemah, about 70 miles east of Oklahoma City, the FBI's Oklahoma City bureau said in a statement. Bureau spokesman Clay Simmonds said authorities used a water cannon to disrupt the device and took it to a laboratory for examination.
08/11/11: The Miami Herald reports that the former director of the CIA says President Barack Obama is pulling troops from Afghanistan too soon. Retired Gen. Michael Hayden said Wednesday at a forum in Utah that it would be more strategic to draw down American troops after summer 2012, when fighting is expected to be heaviest. Hayden says some American troops should remain in Afghanistan for the long term, even if the number of troops is relatively small. He says the commitment of troops is more important for stability in the region than the number of troops.
08/09/11: The Washington Post reports that the US Air Force is again holding joint exercises with Russia and Canada in Alaska’s airspace. KTUU-TV reports this is the second year for Exercise Vigilant Eagle. This year’s scenario is of an American passenger jetliner flying over Alaska that is not responding to air traffic controllers and no one on the ground knows what’s happening on board. Under the drill, the Air Force scrambles F-15 Eagles to pull alongside the airliner to make visual contact with the pilot and hijackers to get control of the situation. Once the exercise is finished, the forces practice their response on a Russian airliner.
08/09/11: The Miami Herald reports that since the Afghan Allies program began in 2009, not a single visa has been handed out. A document obtained by The Associated Press suggests the delays may not be a matter of bureaucracy, but reflect a worry among US officials over holding on to hard-to-replace employees. "This act could drain this country of our very best civilian and military partners: our Afghan employees," former Ambassador Karl Eikenberry wrote in a February 2010 cable to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
08/08/11: The Washington Post reports that the Chinese military’s chief of staff will visit Israel next week for the first time, the Israeli military said Monday, in what may signal a renewed warming of ties between the Jewish state and Beijing. Chen Bingde will be a guest of the Israeli military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, the military said.
08/03/11: The Los Angeles Times reports that in what security experts believe may be the largest coordinated attack ever launched, hackers have for at least five years infiltrated the computer networks of thousands of companies, organizations and governments, stealing reams of intellectual property, military information and state secrets. The perpetrators probably belong to a government-sanctioned group from either Eastern Europe or East Asia, according to security analysts. The hackers not only broke in but remained embedded in the computer systems, quietly siphoning secret data for years.
08/03/11: The Miami Herald reports that on the 50th anniversary of the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency has released more of it long-held secret papers on its failed 1961 Cuba operation to overthrow Fidel Castro. The secret documents were released in Washington, DC, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Peter Kornbluh, an activist who has long sough to unmask US secret operations in Latin America.
08/03/11: JURIST reports that US Attorney General Eric Holder invoked the state secrets privilege Monday to block evidence in a lawsuit against the FBI over its investigation into Muslim mosques. The Department of Justice also filed a motion to dismiss claims and for summary judgment in the US District Court for the Central District of California claiming that without the privileged information many of the claims against the FBI could not continue.
08/03/11: The Los Angeles Times reports that the Homeland Security Department announced plans Tuesday to regulate the sale of ammonium nitrate, 16 years after the fertilizer was used to make a bomb that killed 168 people at a federal office building in Oklahoma City. Under the proposed regulations, anyone who buys, sells or transfers 25 pounds of the chemical must apply to register with the department. Ammonium nitrate facilities must also keep records of sales or transfers of the chemical for at least two years after each transaction.
08/03/11: The New York Times reports that the continued push for the Global Hawk reflects how drones are changing warfare and how critical high-altitude spying can be in any type of fight. However, the program remains ensnared in military politics and budget battles, and the aircraft itself awaits some important technical changes that could slow its unveiling. In particular, creating the new models and their high-tech sensors, which can cost more than the planes, has been difficult.
08/02/11: JURIST reports that the Department of Justice on Monday filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Northern District of Alabama challenging an Alabama law that expands restrictions on undocumented immigrants. The DOJ contends that various provisions of the Alabama immigration legislation are preempted by federal law and violate the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Specifically, the measures that permit police officers to detain a person stopped for a traffic violation if the officer has "reasonable suspicion" the person is in the country illegally, the DOJ argues, are unconstitutional.
08/02/11: CNN reports that a federal judge on Monday rejected arguments that the CIA should be held in contempt for destroying videotapes allegedly showing the torture of detainees during interrogations. The ruling by Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York came in a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union that the intelligence agency be held in contempt. Although he ruled against the ACLU motion, the judge applauded the efforts of the ACLU's legal team for prompting the disclosure of thousands of documents related to detainee treatment. In a rare move, Hellerstein sanctioned the CIA by ordering it to pay attorneys fees for the ACLU.
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