Today's Headlines and Commentary
Happy Friday, all.
Ellen Nakashima has this lengthy (and fascinating) report on the 2008 Buckshot Yankee breach. Her report answers some, but not all of the questions surrounding this massive cyber security intrusion on the U.S. military, and discusses the current debate on how to respond and prevent such attacks in the future.
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Happy Friday, all.
Ellen Nakashima has this lengthy (and fascinating) report on the 2008 Buckshot Yankee breach. Her report answers some, but not all of the questions surrounding this massive cyber security intrusion on the U.S. military, and discusses the current debate on how to respond and prevent such attacks in the future. Bobby has written about this here.
Ben already shared Jon Stewart's hilarious, and largely inaccurate, monologue on the NDAA here, and Melissa Bell at the Washington Post collects the online manifestations of citizen anger here.
The Georgetown law professor David Cole, writing in the New York Review of Books, warns readers about the detention provisions in the NDAA. Although the House and Senate's conferees are under a cone of silence, Jeremy Harb over at the always-dependable DefCon Hill blog tells us that they held their first meeting on Wednesday.
The captured U.S. drone in Iran has a lot of people talking, including Brian Palmer at Slate, who discusses whether or not the drone had a self destruct button (and the history of Pentagon self-destruct mechanisms in its technology). The similarities between the U.S. drone downing in Iran and the 1960 U2 spy plane incident are not lost on Amy Davidson at The New Yorker. The Chinese Xinhua news agency reports that Iran's Ambassador to the United Nations has sent a letter to Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, requesting "clear and effective" measures to end the United States' "dangerous and unlawful acts" against Iran. (Good luck getting that though a Security Council on which the United States has a veto!) Iran's foreign ministry has also decided to take it out on Switzerland, which represents U.S. interests in Tehran and since our virtual embassy web site is blocked--summoning the Swiss Ambassador to Iran Livia Leu Agosti, Al Jazeera reports.
Reprieve, the British human rights group, and Pakistani partners are teaming up to conduct a sustained political and legal campaign against the use of drones in Pakistan. The Wall Street Journal trio of Adam Entous, Evan Perez, and Siobhan Gorman write on their recent letter to the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan.
Turkey, by contrast, is bullish on drones. In fact, it wants 'em and has requested (and expects approval of) the use of U.S. drones in its fight against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Bloomberg's Viola Gienger reports.
Anwar al-Aulaqi's father, Nasser al-Aulaqi, has posted a YouTube video encouraging others to continue his son's work. Wired's Danger Room blog covers it.
For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, and visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief as well as the Fordham Law Center on National Security’s Morning Brief. And you can read today's LWOT here. Feel free to email us noteworthy articles we may have missed at wakeman.lawfare@gmail.com and singh.lawfare@gmail.com.
Raffaela Wakeman is a Senior Director at In-Q-Tel. She started her career at the Brookings Institution, where she spent five years conducting research on national security, election reform, and Congress. During this time she was also the Associate Editor of Lawfare. From there, Raffaela practiced law at the U.S. Department of Defense for four years, advising her clients on privacy and surveillance law, cybersecurity, and foreign liaison relationships. She departed DoD in 2019 to join the Majority Staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where she oversaw the Intelligence Community’s science and technology portfolios, cybersecurity, and surveillance activities. She left HPSCI in May 2021 to join IQT.
Raffaela received her BS and MS in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009 and her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 2015, where she was recognized for her commitment to public service with the Joyce Chiang Memorial Award. While at the Department of Defense, she was the inaugural recipient of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s General Counsel Award for exhibiting the highest standards of leadership, professional conduct, and integrity.
