Today's Headlines and Commentary

Tim Mak at the Politico covers in more depth the developing story surrounding court documents from an aviation dispute in Hudson, NY that detail the CIA's rendition program. David Ignatius ponders whether incoming CIA Director David Petraeus will be able to handle the CIA's skepticism of U.S. strategy on Afghanistan, given the agency's recent assessment of Afghanistan. British authorities have arrested two suspects in connection with the hacks by Anonymous and Lulzsec. The Guardian has the story. Greg Miller and Julie Tate at the Washington Post note the significant changes at the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, both in terms of the size of its resources and its strategy, with many observers beginning to see the CTC as a paramilitary group. AQAP recently released a video biography about Hani Abdo Shaalan, a former Guantanamo detainee who was transferred to Yemen, only to be released by Yemen's Political Security Organization, and who was then killed in late 2009. The biography asserts that Shalaan was killed in a U.S. airstrike, not, as the Yemeni government claimed upon his death, in a shootout with government forces. Thomas Joscelyn at the Long War Journal covers this release. Bharatha Mallawarachi at the AP (via Salon.com) reports that Sri Lanka will continue to detain hundreds of terrorist suspects and will outlaw the Tamil Tigers, even as it lifts its wartime emergency law. Wikileaks confirmed that it's lost control of U.S. diplomatic cables, admitting a security breach which resulted in the release of unredacted documents. The Wall Street Journal's Jeanne Whalen reports, as does Jason Ukman at the Post and a team of New York Times reporters. Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American writes a long piece on the development, use, and expansion of drones in warfare. John Bellinger III revisits the 2001 AUMF in an interview on the Council on Foreign Relations web site, coming to the conclusion that the nature of the authorization will increasingly limit counterterrorism operations and needs updating. Daniel Byman predicts the direction in which al Qaeda is headed in the next ten years at Slate. Michael B. Mukasey has an excerpt at the National Review from the new anthology Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security. His essay critiques the Obama adminsitration's handling of Guantanamo detainees, arguing that it is overly committed both to releasing people it should continue to hold and that it is overly committed to trying others in federal court. Lydia Polgreen at the Times reports on India's effort to collect a biometric database of its citizens.

Across this sprawling, chaotic nation, workers are creating what will be the world’s largest biometric database, a mind-bogglingly complex collection of 1.2 billion identities. But even more radical than its size is the scale of its ambition: to reduce the inequality corroding India’s economic rise by digitally linking every one of India’s people to the country’s growth juggernaut.

Follow us on Twitter for interesting law and security-related articles, and email me interesting articles that I may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com. I hope to post reviews of Cheney's book later today.