Today's Headlines and Commentary
Ambassador James F. Dobbins testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that the Obama administration still believes it possible to sign a security pact with Afghanistan that would allow a small number of American troops to remain in the country after 2014. Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reports. Meanwhile, Gen.
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Ambassador James F. Dobbins testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday that the Obama administration still believes it possible to sign a security pact with Afghanistan that would allow a small number of American troops to remain in the country after 2014. Joby Warrick of the Washington Post reports. Meanwhile, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters late yesterday that the U.S. does not intend to renegotiate its already exhaustively negotiated security deal with Afghanistan, according to this story in the Associated Press. For his part, in a recent interview with Le Monde, Afghan President Hamid Karzai lashed out at the U.S. for behaving "like a colonial power" in pressuring Kabul to sign the accord.
The Office of the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was established by Congress in 2008 to expose waste and fraud in the U.S. war in Afghanistan---and is losing access to the projects it's supposed to be reviewing due to the drawdown in U.S. forces. Dan Lamothe has the story at the Complex, the Foreign Policy's new national security blog.
The Taliban have claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb that exploded outside the military entrance to Kabul International Airport early Wednesday. Here is Rod Nordland of the New York Times.
Colin H. Haul has a piece in Politico explaining why the Iran sanctions being pushed by several lawmakers would not further Iranian concessions but instead derail diplomacy.
Lebanon has banned the construction of box shelters just south of the border with Syria. The fear is that the plywood and corrugated zinc dwellings "look too permanent and could encourage the Syrians to stay," writes Norimitsu Onishi of the New York Times.
The Islamic Front's successful seizure of Western-backed rebel warehouses has prompted the U.S. and Britain to suspend all non-lethal assistance to northern Syria, report Dasha Afanasieve and Humeyra Pamuk of Reuters.
Beijing is withholding visa renewals for 12 New York Times journalists working in China, prompting concerns that the Chinese government is taking its American-media-crackdown to new heights. Isaac Stone Fish of Foreign Policy discusses whether Bloomberg and the Times might face expulsion from the country.
China's former security chief Zhou Yongkang is under house arrest on accusations of corruption, reports Reuters.
As Matt Waxman noted earlier this week, the Brennan Center has just released a new report on how counterterrorism policing threatens both civil liberties and national security. Says the press release:
The Brennan Center’s new report shows how the lack of consistency and oversight in local counterterrorism programs directs resources away from traditional police work, violates individual liberties, undermines community-police relations, and causes important counterterrorism information to fall through the cracks. The Boston Marathon bombing exemplifies how critical information can get lost in a din of irrelevant data.
AT&T has set off a firestorm by issuing a letter opposing public disclosure of its dealings with NSA at the company's annual shareholder meeting next spring, writes Chris Brook of Threat Post.
Politico just barely veils its attempt to frame the competing proposals to end military sexual assault as something of a catfight between Sens. Claire McCaskill and Kirsten Gillibrand. Over at Just Security, Gen. Charles Dunlap introduces his essay on the top ten problems with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's bill. And here is Andy Wright's reply.
The AP is reporting that newly declassified documents show that former CIA Director Leon Panetta disclosed secret information during a speech at CIA headquarters on the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. The question is whether Panetta knew "Zero Dark Thirty" scriptwriter Mark Boal was in the room.
Duke University researchers used a smartphone app to demonstrate a strong relationship between the frequency with which a particular item appears in a virtual suitcase and the likeliness that the searcher will detect it. This apparently does not bode well for airport screeners seeking out the rare weapon.
Calling all computer specialists: Uncle Sam Wants You. So writes Walter Pincus of the Post:
As the public faces almost daily new details about the National Security Agency’s worldwide collection and manipulation of metadata, the U.S. Army is seeking computer specialists to help it develop programs that could collect, retrieve and display massive amounts of data. The Army also wants to be able to use the metadata to draw actionable intelligence, some for display on three-dimensional touch-screen maps.
Or if you're kind of a commitment-phobe: play some online games to help DARPA eliminate vulnerabilities in commercial off-the-shelf software used by the U.S. military. That's right. From Danger Room:
Lastly, as noted in yesterday's roundup, world leaders and luminaries gathered in Soweto to pay their respects to Nelson Mandela. The stadium memorial service attracted thousands---including this guy. 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. Sign up to receive Lawfare in your inbox. Visit our Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings on our Job Board.Darpa’s Crowd Sourced Formal Verification (CSFV) program offers games that simultaneously perform formal verification of C and Java software, a process that checks that software is free from flaws that can make it vulnerable to misuse. . . .The site’s five games are designed so that when users solve puzzles to advance to the next level of play, they are actually generating mathematical proofs that can identify software flaws that cyberattacks could exploit.
Jane Chong is former deputy managing editor of Lawfare. She served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University.
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