Today's Headlines and Commentary

Today is the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 U.S. service members, and 58 French paratroopers. Here are SecDef Hagel's remarks, President Obama's, an AP story, and a BBC News commemoration Benjamin Weiser's latest piece in the New York Times explains that the U.S. has asserted that Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, upon capture, implicated himself in criminal activity after he was transferred from military custody to law enforcement authorities in New York. And the Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. proposes a joint trial for him and two other alleged co-conspirators, who were extradited to the U.S. back in 2012: Khaled Al Fawwaz and Adel abdel Bary. Apropos of terrorism trials, Josh Gerstein notes at Politico the government's opposition to Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's motion to vacate the special administrative procedures imposed on him and his attorneys. The White House said it strongly disagrees with the two drone strike civilian casualty reports released this week, writes Jeremy Herb at The Hill. Another report, meanwhile, has come out on the topic of drone strikes---from the Army War College entitled "The Effectiveness of Drone Strikes in Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism Campaigns," by James Igoe Walsh. The Washington Post's editorial team opposes the U.S. spying on its allies; the New York Times's, meanwhile, acknowledges that governments everywhere conduct electronic surveillance, and we as citizens willingly turn that information over, but it concludes that "free countries must place limits on the security institutions allowed to function in the shadows." Saudi Arabia's head intelligence official indicated over the weekend that his country will scale back its cooperative efforts with the U.S. to train Syrian rebels, to protest U.S. policy in the Middle East. Ellen Knichmeyer reports in the Wall Street Journal. Let's shift gears, and talk about privacy: Evgeny Morozov wrote this lengthy piece in the MIT Technology Review reflecting on a prescient 1967 essay by Paul Baran entitled "The Future Computer Utility." And the Brennan Center has a report about what the government does with U.S. citizens' data. As Paul mentioned yesterday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has released its Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework, as required under President Obama's executive order. Stewart Baker takes a look at it over at the Volokh Conspiracy, and Reuters assesses it, too. At Forbes, meanwhile, Dan Woods examines an important dilemma facing corporate executives: who in their companies should be responsible for overseeing cybersecurity matters? A bit of national security world gossip circulating the web: the Twitter handle @natsecwonk, which has been, according to the Daily Beast, "tormenting the foreign policy community" for the past two years, was operated by an up-and-coming national security wonk, who most recently worked in the National Security Council. He was fired last week after he was discovered as the Tweeter. Email the Lawfare Roundup Team noteworthy law and security-related articles to include, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook for additional commentary on these issues. Visit the Lawfare Events Calendar to learn about upcoming national security events, and check out relevant job openings at the Lawfare Job Board.