Today's Headlines and Commentary

The New York Times sat down with Edward Snowden this month. The most important take away from the in-depth and wide-ranging interview: Snowden says he did not take any secret files or documents with him to Russia. He hopes to assure the United States that no Russian officials can get their hands on any secret NSA documents.

In July a North Korean crew and ship were detained in Panama for smuggling weapons from Cuba back to North Korea. The Guardian is reporting that Panama is now ready to return the ship and its crew back to its home country. Panama believes that 33 out of 35 crew members were not aware of the Cuban arms on board. The United States has been engaging in unprecedented diplomatic talks with Iran this past week. In talks that ended on Wednesday, the United States proposed offering Iran access to billions of dollars in frozen funds to ease the pain of sanctions. The States would only unfreeze the assets in exchange for the Iranian government taking specific and important steps to curb its nuclear program. The Times has the story. Congress doesn’t seem to approve of the administration’s approach to talks with Iran. While the administration would ease sanctions and unfreeze assets, Congress wants the opposite. On Wednesday, while the government was still shut down, members of Congress (mostly Republicans) discussed the escalation of sanctions to Iran. The United Nations has released a report on the use of drones in counterterrorism operations.  The report calls on the United States to release data on civilian drone casualties and harshly criticizes the United States for lack of transparency surrounding drone strikes. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has analysis of the report. Here’s an excerpt:

In the United States, the involvement of CIA in lethal counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan and Yemen has created an almost insurmountable obstacle to transparency. This is because, just as all secret services, it operates on the basis of  neither confirming nor denying its operations. [… ] One consequence is that the United States has to date failed to reveal its own  data on the level of civilian casualties inflicted through the use of remotely piloted aircraft in classified operations conducted in Pakistan and elsewhere, or any information on its methodology for evaluating this. The Special Rapporteur does not accept that considerations of national security justify withholding statistical and basic methodological data of this kind, and he notes that the Director of CIA has publicly called for information on civilian casualties to be released in the interests of transparency. (Emphasis added.)

The Times has a story about an Afghan citizen’s experience during and after being kidnapped and held for ransom. The piece outlines the increasing doubt felt by Afghan citizens toward their police force. According to them, the Afghan police is not doing a good job in dealing with instances of kidnapping, which are becoming more and more frequent. Jeh C. Johnson, the former General Counsel at the Department of Defense, has been tapped to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Johnson is credited for framing many of the Obama administration’s national security policies during he time at the Pentagon. Yesterday, we learned that General Keith Alexander and John Inglis, the top official and his deputy at NSA, respectively, are leaving the agency in January. Rumor has it that Richard Ledgett, who currently heads the NSA task force to investigate information leaks, may take over as the deputy head of the agency, according to The Chicago Tribune. News of Inglis' replacement came to the Tribune from anonymous sources inside the NSA; the NSA declined to give an official comment. Bruce Schneier has penned an opinion piece for CNN in which traces the history of surveillance in the United States.  We’ve moved, he posits, from a time when the private and public sectors were in totally different realms of surveillance and data collection to “a world where both corporations and governments have us all under pretty much constant surveillance.” Over in the United Kingdom, the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is launching a major investigation to assess the UK’s spy agencies’ surveillance programs. The inquiry comes as a result of concerns raised by Edward Snowden. Parliament has announced that the committee, usually conducted in closed session, will hold part of the investigation in public. We’ve all breathed a sign of relief ever since the US government was reopened and Congress managed to avoid default, but the Defense Department is still holding its breath. The Department’s budget experts are planning its 2015-2019 budget but is having trouble because of lack of confidence in the government’s ability to come up with a fiscal 2014 Pentagon budget. According to various Defense officials, until there is stability in the Pentagon’s budget, the DoD budget planners can’t get to work. The Wall Street Journal sat down with the senior vice president of China’s Huawei Technologies Co, the world’s second-largest supplier of telecommunications equipment. Senior VP John Suffolk talks about issues of cyber-security and increasingly advanced security threats to telecommunications security. Suffolk also tackles enduring questions about whether Huawei’s equipment could post a threat to US national security, and about the company's relationship with the Chinese government. Brookings’ own Michael O’Hanlon and Jeremy Shapiro have penned a concise but important piece on “America’s Role in the World.” Many have questioned America’s role in the world since President Obama’s reluctance to intervene in Syria. The two authors contend that the United States still holds a global role, but it may just be more selective than before. 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.