Today's Headlines and Commentary

The AP  covers breaking news that the hacker group Anonymous intercepted and leaked a January conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard regarding the tracking and prosecution of members of the group. Meanwhile, Nate Anderson over at Foreign Policy tries to decipher the goals of Anonymous, the masked hackers driving governments and businesses batty. Josh Gerstein at the Politico tells us that the DOJ's investigation into two detainees who died while in CIA custody will be concluding soon. Attorney General Eric Holder's announcement came during testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Charles Hoskinson at the Politico writes on the rather uncomfortable comment made by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that "somebody, somewhere [in the Pakistani government] probably had that knowledge" that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad. Meanwhile, Senator Dianne Feinstein is not pleased by President Obama's apparent drone non-gaffe during his Google+ hangout with the world, says Josh Gerstein. While she did not call out the President by name, her remarks came remarkably close to doing so. Writes Gerstein:

"Once again this committee has been put in a difficult position of trying to avoid any mention of classified matters when various parts of the executive branch may be doing somewhat the opposite," Feinstein said at the outset of the annual hearing on the most serious threats to U.S. security. "I ask members to be careful in your questions and statements and to remember that public discussion of some intelligence programs and assets can lead to them being compromised."

Defense lawyers in the 9/11 military commission case requested a delay in filing briefs arguing against capital punishment, while they await a final decision over the controversial mail-monitoring policy recently put in place at Guantanamo. Carol Rosenberg at the Miami Herald gives us the details. Another day, another drone down. The AP reports that a drone has crashed into a refugee camp in Mogadishu. Alan Levin at Bloomberg, meanwhile, reminds us that the FAA will soon be issuing its first rules regarding flying drones in civilian airspace. Courthouse News Service updates us on the ACLU suit for details on U.S. drone strikes in the Al Aulaqi case. The case will be heard by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon in the Southern District of New York, and the initial conference date is February 24. The AP notes that the Munich Security Conference, gathering top security and defense officials from around the world, begins today. Germany's spy agency has apparently been spying on at least 27 members of that country's parliament--members who represent a left-wing party, reports Aaron Weiner at the Los Angeles Times. Dominic Basulto at the Post's Ideas@Innovations blog makes the case for reconsidering our concept of warfare, as drones continue to play an increasingly important role on the battlefield. And on the heels of all the bad press drones are getting, Ryan Gallagher of the Guardian reports that drone industry representatives are working to improve the negative image that drones have. Maybe they should start by building them to look fuzzy and cute, rather than scary. And Dina Temple-Raston has  a very interesting story on NPR's Morning Edition on the role that DOJ lawyers are playing in the Guantanamo military commissions, including an interview with Lisa Monaco, the assistant attorney general for National Security at the DOJ. Temple-Raston also calls Brig. Gen. Mark Martins Guantanamo's "detox man." For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s new Cyber Brief. Email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and singh.lawfare@gmail.com.