Today's Headlines and Commentary

Dan Kaminsky, chief scientist at the security firm DKH, and Stewart Baker, a partner at Steptoe & Johnson and former policy guru at DHS, have this op-ed in Politico arguing that CISPA shouldn’t be mistaken for SOPA, and that the former needs to be fixed--though the latter suffered a much-deserved death.

Meanwhile, the Hill’s Hillicon Valley blog has the story of the privacy amendments the ACLU has planned for the House cybersecurity bill.

Don't ground those drones just yet. But the Associated Press is reporting that the new Yemeni President, Abed Rabo Mansour Hadi, met with FBI Director Robert Mueller yesterday and pledged to ramp up the fight against Al Qaeda.

Boom! Pakistan has launched a ballistic missile into the sea to remind the world that it, too, has the power of the bomb. The New York Times has the story.

Five terrorism suspects have been arrested in Luton, a small town near London, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Jose Rodriguez, ex-head of the CIA’s operations program and the man that ordered the waterboarding tapes destroyed, has a book coming out on April 30^th entitled “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives." Dana Priest of the Washington Post writes about her meeting with him and reviews the book, and the AP also comments. Over at the Empty Wheel blog, Ms. Wheel herself and her amusingly-monikered colleague BMAZ offer their thoughts.

Andy Rosenthal at the Times ruminates on KSM’s upcoming trial—and why it should take place in NYC.

The New York Daily News tells us about the testimony of one Bryant Neal Vinas in Adis Medunjanin’s trial in Brooklyn. Proscutors put him on the stand in the hope of proving Medunjanin guilty of plotting to bomb NYC subways.

According to the Hill’s Hillicon Valley blog, an official from the Government Accountability Office testified at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management that “federal agencies reported 42,887 cybersecurity ‘incidents’ in 2011, compared with just 5,503 in 2006”— an increase of 680 percent in five years!

From the Frenemy Press comes this story in Pakistan’s Express Tribune on the “logjam” between the United States and Pakistan over the issue of a formal American apology for the NATO airstrike that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers last November:

The formal apology is one of the key preconditions set by Pakistan’s parliament to revive cooperation with the US and reopen Nato supply routes blocked since the airstrike at Salala which killed two dozen Pakistan Army soldiers.

However, Pakistani officials have now disclosed that Washington is reluctant to accept the demand.

The apparent hesitation on part of the Obama administration to tender a public apology over the incident has led to a stalemate, said a Pakistani diplomat, familiar with the development.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the diplomat added that Washington had earlier displayed signs of ‘willingness’ to apologise but President Barrack [sic] Obama’s public ratings, in an election year, appear to have forced the administration to rethink its decision.

The recent attacks in Kabul, blamed on the Haqqani network, have also complicated the situation and made it difficult for Obama to take such a step at a time when his political rivals are calling for a tough action against Pakistan.

In an attempt to find a midway, the White House was planning to send veteran Democrat Senator John Kerry to Pakistan but the visit was postponed after Islamabad apparently refused to accept his apology.

And the next time you find yourself getting irritated by the TSA’s security screening measures, honor--but do not imitate--this gentleman's protest: today’s Moment of Zen.

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