Today's Headlines and Commentary
An unprecedented level of security is in place today for the 118th Boston Marathon: 4,000 deployed police officers, over 100 surveillance cameras, and an underground coordination center filled with security officials from over 60 local, state and federal agencies, according to ABC. The Boston Globe notes
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An unprecedented level of security is in place today for the 118th Boston Marathon: 4,000 deployed police officers, over 100 surveillance cameras, and an underground coordination center filled with security officials from over 60 local, state and federal agencies, according to ABC. The Boston Globe notes that low-flying helicopters have been sweeping the route over the weekend to establish baseline levels of naturally-occurring radiations and will be checking for abnormalities during the race.
At least three people are dead after an early morning gunfight near Slaviansk, a Ukrainian city controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Reuters reports that the shootings have prompted anger from both Ukraine's interim government and Moscow, with each blaming the other for failing to comply with the peace accord brokered in Geneva last week. Ukrainian government has provided photographs to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe that the Obama administration says constitute convincing evidence that the well-armed pro-Russian gunmen occupying government buildings in eastern Ukraine are, in fact, Russian military and intelligence forces. The New York Times reports.
Infighting among the Pakistani Taliban is prompting questions about whether the Taliban can deliver a peace deal. The Times writes that the Taliban's "fractious nature," shifting militant alliances, tribal strife and unprecedented expansion pose a special challenge for the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as it seeks to win the Taliban's confidence.
Half the votes are in, and the Times is reporting that neither of the two frontrunners in the Afghan presidential race look likely to win more than 50 percent of the vote---that means a runoff election.
Airstrikes killed about 40 suspected militants in southern Yemen on Sunday, reports Reuters. The U.S. is assumed to have carried out the strikes; here's Al Jazeera America.
On Sunday, two weeks before the parliamentary election, clashes in Fallujah and a suicide blast in north Baghdad have left dozens dead, reports Al Jazeera America. And Dexter Filkins has a long piece of in the New Yorker on the return of sectarian violence in Iraq under the rule of the increasingly authoritarian Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who is seeking a third term amid criticism that he is responsible for bringing the country to the brink of civil war.
Insurgents ambushed an Algerian military convoy and killed 14 soldiers; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for the attack. Here is Al Jazeera America.
Maritime experts are puzzling over the the crew's decision not to evacuate the Sewol, writes the Associated Press. Captain Lee Jun-seok is under fire for abandoning the South Korean ferry with hundreds of passengers, mostly high schoolers, still trapped below deck, an incident that "seem[s] likely to test the notion of criminal liability in disasters," suggests the Times.
The State Department has given $2.8 million to a team of American hackers and activists to develop a mesh network as a way for dissidents abroad to communicate more securely than they can on the open internet. The Times points out in its cover story that the original aim of this mesh project, "foiling government spies" has become an "awkward subject" for the U.S. in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks.
“Exactly at the time that the N.S.A. was developing the technology that Snowden has disclosed, the State Department was funding some of the most powerful digital tools to protect freedom of expression around the world,” said Ben Scott, a former State Department official who supported the financing and is now at a Berlin policy nonprofit, the New Responsibilities Foundation. “It is in my mind one of the great, unreported ironies of the first Obama administration.”
What happens to the Guantanamo detainees---in particular, the 14 Afghans suspected of being members of the Taliban or affiliated groups---under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force when U.S. troops withdraw from Afghanistan at the end of this year? Possibly nothing. According to the Guardian, U.S. officials have indicated that a release of detainees to correspond with the end of major combat operations is "unlikely."
Dr. James Elmer Mitchell, the retired air force psychologist who designed the CIA's post-9/11 torture program told the Guardian last week that he is not a monster and that the program's successes have been ignored, pushing back against a 2004 CIA inspector general report criticizing Mitchell's coercive techniques. Mitchell also dismissed the Senate intelligent committee's new $40 million report, of which only a 2-page summary has been leaked. Mitchell stated:
I’m skeptical about the Senate report, because I do not believe that every analyst whose jobs and promotions depended upon it, who were professional intelligence experts, all them lied to protect a program? All of them were wrong? All of these [CIA] directors were wrong? All of the people who were using the intel to go get people were wrong? And 10 years later a Senate staffer was able to put it together and finally there’s clarity? I am just highly skeptical that that’s the truth.
State and local law enforcement are struggling to keep up with cybercrime, reports the Wall Street Journal, and the FBI has offered help to Utah in the form of limited top-secret security clearances and lessons on how to track foreign hackers.
How did Mt. Gox lose $500 million in bitcoin and another $27 million in cold hard cash? Reuters reports that answers are not forthcoming from CEO Mark Karpeles, who is likely to be investigated for liability for the exchange's collapse, according to a court-appointed administrator.
The Times has published a book review of Poilu, the classic 1978 French World War I memoir by Louis Barthas recently translated into English by Edward M. Strauss.
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Jane Chong is former deputy managing editor of Lawfare. She served as a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University.
