Today's Headlines and Commentary
It's official: the Pentagon said yesterday that Matt Bissonnette's book did reveal "sensitive and classified" information, and Rear Adm.
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It's official: the Pentagon said yesterday that Matt Bissonnette's book did reveal "sensitive and classified" information, and Rear Adm. Sean Pybus, who heads up the Naval Special Warfare Command, sent a letter to those under his command that "We owe our chain of command much better than this." The AP has the story, as does Jeremy Herb at The Hill.
A drone strike in eastern Yemen killed five suspected Al Qaeda members, reports the AFP.
Micah Zenko writes at CFR on a new report by the Defense Science Board (which advises the DOD) dealing with autonomous systems. Zenko focuses on two findings: one deals with how to reduce the number of personnel required to maintain one combat air patrol, and the other considers how adversaries of the U.S. might leverage autonomous systems. Check out the report here.
At least 25 mourners were killed by a suicide bomber at a funeral in eastern Afghanistan. The bomber is believed to have been targeting the district governor, say Khalid Alokozay and Rod Nordland of the Times.
Hundreds of Afghan troops have been expelled or arrested as part of the Afghan Defense Ministry's efforts to stem the deadly insider attacks that have killed 45 NATO troops this year, reports Sayed Salahuddin and Richard Leiby of the Washington Post.
And John Wendel wrote this Time article that shows just how challenging vetting Afghans is.
AntiSec, a hacking group affiliated with Anonymous, claims that the 1M Apple IDs that they leaked yesterday came from a hack they perpetrated on an FBI agent's laptop which gave them over 12M UIDs. The FBI says that that is "totally false," reports the Economist. Read Nicole Perlroth's New York Times Bits blog post, as well as The Hill's stories here and here. This claim only feeds the fire for Congressman Ed Markey, who's been aggressively looking into the government's requests for personal cell phone data and who said that it "raises questions about why the FBI had this information in the first place." Brendan Sasso at The Hill reports.
The Democrats announced their official stance on cybersecurity policy at the DNC, and it's not surprising that it is quite different from that of the GOP. Jennifer Martinez of The Hill describes the two parties' stances on how best to improve security of our critical infrastructure and computer systems.
Conor Friedersdorf at The Atlantic adds his voice to those displeased with the Democrats' apparent abandonment of criticism of the GWOT.
From Colombia: it seems that the government of Colombia will be re-opening peace talks with the FARC, as William Neuman and Jenny Carolina Gonzalez of the Times report.
The residents of Kismayo, Somalia have fled their homes as the Kenyan Navy prepares to capture it, reports the AP. Kismayo is the primary remaining stronghold of the Shebab in Somalia.
For more interesting law and security-related articles, follow us on Twitter, visit the Georgetown Center on National Security and the Law’s Security Law Brief, Fordham Law’s Center on National Security’s Morning Brief, and Fordham Law’s Cyber Brief. 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.
