Today's Headlines and Commentary
Carrie Johnson of NPR speaks on Morning Edition today to assess what we've learned from all the NSA surveillance program declassifications.
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Carrie Johnson of NPR speaks on Morning Edition today to assess what we've learned from all the NSA surveillance program declassifications. And the U.N.'s Ben Emmerson will launch an investigation into the Snowden leaks, writes the Guardian.
The Economist has this lengthy piece on the topic of "smart weapons"---ones enabled with fingerprint identification and other technologies meant to prevent the weapons from being used improperly.
The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General has released a report on the security of the department's cyber networks, and it's not a positive review. Josh Hicks in the Washington Post has details, as does Tony Romm in Politico. Senator Tom Coburn voiced outrage over the report.
The U.N. highlights an unsettling trend in Afghanistan: the number of attacks targeting aid workers is increasing, rapidly. Here's Rod Nordland of the New York Times with the data, and commentary from the U.N. humanitarian coordinator Mark Bowden.
Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, says evidence points to Bashar al-Assad being responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the conflict in Syria. Here are a Wall Street Journal piece, and Times story. The polio outbreak there, by the way, has spread to four cities. There are 17 confirmed polio cases, NPR tells us. U.N. agencies yesterday confirmed that some vaccines had been airlifted into Syria.
Nicholas Winning writes in the Journal about the United Kingdom's new Envoy to Iran. The British diplomat, Ajay Sharma, will discuss Syria matters with his Iranian counterpart this week.
Iran's Prime Minister says the country has selected a locale for a new nuclear reactor. Here's The Hill.
Tom Toles reminds us the term "nuclear option" has other meanings beyond Senate procedure:
In Nigeria, Boko Haram stormed an air base, but the terror group was defeated by the country's Army, according to this Journal piece on the attack.
The Journal's Margherita Stancati and Nathan Hodge write about Afghanistan post-2014, should the U.S. withdraw entirely from the country. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey writes in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post of the importance of the U.S. remaining a presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
And it seems two of the approved-for-transfer Algerian detainees at Guantanamo are "refusing" their "imminent" repatriation to Algeria. That's all I can glean from this piece by Agence France Presse.
At the European Court of Human Rights, two Guantanamo detainees, Al Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, allege they were subjected to torture while detained at a CIA blacksite in Poland. They brought the case against the blacksite host country Poland. Here's a Guardian story about the hearing today.
Let's shift to Asia: in Thailand, protests seem to have died down, following a unique strategy on the police's part: dropping aggressive tactics and avoiding confrontation. Thomas Fuller has the story at the Times.
And Vice President Joe Biden is in Japan to ease tensions between Japan and China over the East China Sea islands dispute, as Mark Landler explains in the Times. Meanwhile, the U.S. has deployed submarine-hunting aircraft to the disputed region, in response to China's new demand for identification upon entering the no-fly zone above the islands.
Chinese tech company (and accused facilitator of Chinese spying) Huawei is bowing out of the U.S. market, so as to avoid meddling with U.S.-China relations, write Shane Harris and Isaac Stone Fish in Foreign Policy.
An interesting piece in Foreign Policy says the United States is seemingly wrapping up the war on drugs---in Colombia, at least. Dan Lamothe writes that the U.S. has indicted a former Mexican governor of a state that borders the U.S. for accepting bribes in exchange for protecting drug shipments through it. Jose de Cordoba reports at the Journal.
A Nazi war criminal convicted in 2010 and serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering three people has died in a German prison at the age of 92. Here's the AP story on Heinrich Boere.
The Senate will hold a hearing on Amazon's plan to use UAVs to deliver packages, next year, reports The Hill's Brendan Sasso.
Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.
In Nigeria, Boko Haram stormed an air base, but the terror group was defeated by the country's Army, according to this Journal piece on the attack.
The Journal's Margherita Stancati and Nathan Hodge write about Afghanistan post-2014, should the U.S. withdraw entirely from the country. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey writes in a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post of the importance of the U.S. remaining a presence in Afghanistan after 2014.
And it seems two of the approved-for-transfer Algerian detainees at Guantanamo are "refusing" their "imminent" repatriation to Algeria. That's all I can glean from this piece by Agence France Presse.
At the European Court of Human Rights, two Guantanamo detainees, Al Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah, allege they were subjected to torture while detained at a CIA blacksite in Poland. They brought the case against the blacksite host country Poland. Here's a Guardian story about the hearing today.
Let's shift to Asia: in Thailand, protests seem to have died down, following a unique strategy on the police's part: dropping aggressive tactics and avoiding confrontation. Thomas Fuller has the story at the Times.
And Vice President Joe Biden is in Japan to ease tensions between Japan and China over the East China Sea islands dispute, as Mark Landler explains in the Times. Meanwhile, the U.S. has deployed submarine-hunting aircraft to the disputed region, in response to China's new demand for identification upon entering the no-fly zone above the islands.
Chinese tech company (and accused facilitator of Chinese spying) Huawei is bowing out of the U.S. market, so as to avoid meddling with U.S.-China relations, write Shane Harris and Isaac Stone Fish in Foreign Policy.
An interesting piece in Foreign Policy says the United States is seemingly wrapping up the war on drugs---in Colombia, at least. Dan Lamothe writes that the U.S. has indicted a former Mexican governor of a state that borders the U.S. for accepting bribes in exchange for protecting drug shipments through it. Jose de Cordoba reports at the Journal.
A Nazi war criminal convicted in 2010 and serving a life sentence in Germany for murdering three people has died in a German prison at the age of 92. Here's the AP story on Heinrich Boere.
The Senate will hold a hearing on Amazon's plan to use UAVs to deliver packages, next year, reports The Hill's Brendan Sasso.
Email the Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
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