/deep/ - Deep Politics

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The Secret NSA Diary of an Abu Ghraib Interrogator

https://archive.is/hfGo6

AFTER WORKING AS an interrogator for a U.S. military contractor in Iraq, Eric Fair took a job as an analyst for the National Security Agency. When he went to the NSA, Fair was reckoning with the torture of Iraqi prisoners, torture he had witnessed and in which he had participated.

Fair would go on to write a memoir detailing his experiences in Iraq; the book, Consequence, was published last month to strong notices, including not one but two positive reviews in the New York Times. But Fair actually wrote about his time as an interrogator more than a decade earlier in an internal NSA publication.

One of the publication’s editors asked him to contribute a piece about “how my experience as an interrogator influences my work at the NSA,” as he put it in Consequence. Fair submitted an article in which “I question the efficacy of certain intelligence-gathering techniques and wonder whether, for the sake of morality, it might be best to sacrifice some level of tactical knowledge.”

“I was asked rewrite this section. I cut it completely. Instead, I wrote about how my experience in the interrogation booths had familiarized me with the overall intelligence cycle.”

Fair’s article for the NSA publication is among the files provided by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. It appeared in SIDtoday, a newsletter for the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, or SID, and is being released by The Intercept.

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Judge Allowed Destruction of Evidence in 9/11 Case, Defense Says

https://archive.is/IWNhk

The government has secretly destroyed evidence that is relevant to the death penalty trial of the five Guantánamo Bay detainees accused of aiding the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, two defense lawyers for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described architect of those attacks, said on Wednesday.

The dispute appears likely to add a new chapter to the problems that have plagued the effort to bring the case before a military commission, which has been bogged down for years in pretrial proceedings. The defense lawyers are asking for the judge overseeing the case, Col. James Pohl of the Army, and the prosecution team, led by Brig. Gen. Mark S. Martins, to be recused from further involvement, and for the case to be shut down.

The defense lawyers, David Nevin and Maj. Derek Poteet, said they were not permitted to say what the evidence was, or what exactly had happened to it, because the underlying issue was classified. But Mr. Nevin characterized it as “favorable” to the defendants, and Major Poteet said it was “important or even critical” to an eventual trial, including in terms of weighing what sort of punishment should be imposed if the defendants were convicted.

Major Poteet also said the defense was informed in February that Colonel Pohl had approved a plan by the government to give the defendants a government-prepared “summary of a substitute” for the original, classified evidence that is no longer available. He provided no further details about what the alternative evidence consisted of.

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Radar integration effort starts to improve ISR capabilities

The U.S. Navy and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems are enhancing the imaging capabilities of Air Force unmanned aerial systems for improved joint intel missions.

https://archive.is/9sxqE

 Maritime-mode inverse synthetic aperture radar imaging capability is being integrated into the standard payload of U.S. Air Force unmanned aerial systems.

The effort is being undertaken by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, or NRL, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.

Integration of the maritime-ISAR image capability with the Lynx Multi-Mode Radar on MQ-9 Reaper and Predator XP aircraft is to improve joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations.

"Because ships and small watercraft at sea are usually in motion -- having both forward velocity and other linear and angular motions, for example, pitch and roll and heave and sway -- this creates a problem for typical ISAR platforms," said Thomas Pizzillo, head of the NRL Radar Analysis Branch. "The addition of a maritime-ISAR mode to the General Atomics Lynx radar, as a software only upgrade, is the most cost-effective alternative to introduce this capability to the MQ-9 fleet."

Synthetic Aperture Radar is a radar imaging method that uses multiple pulses transmitted from a moving platform. The received signals are combined to form a high quality 2D image of the ground-terrain of interest.

SAR algorithms assume the target scene is stationary and any motion in the scene shows up as a smear or streak in the image. ISAR algorithms assume the target itself is moving, and through a set of complex algorithms, calculates enhanced angular or cross-range resolution by analyzing subtle differences in range-rates caused by the target motion.

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Dozens of terrorism suspects among refugees who entered Germany

https://archive.is/G2mOI

German authorities are investigating 40 cases in which Islamic militants are suspected of having entered the country with the recent flood of refugees from the Middle East, the federal police said on Wednesday.

That represents a doubling of such cases since January and is likely to deepen concerns about the threat level in Germany, which has not suffered a large-scale Islamist attack like those that have rocked neighbours France and Belgium in recent months.

In the past, the German government has played down the risks of Islamic State fighters entering Europe with the tide of migrants, in part to avoid exacerbating public concerns about the influx, which hit a record 1.1 million last year.

But the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency Hans-Georg Maassen told a conference last week that although there were more efficient ways to smuggle in fighters, Islamic State appeared to have sent some via the Balkan route from Greece in order to fan fears about refugees and "send a political signal".

"I am not telling you a secret when I say that I am concerned about the high number of migrants whose identities we don't know because they had no papers when they entered the country," Maassen said.

PARIS ATTACKS

The number of migrants entering Germany reached peaks of more than 10,000 a day last autumn, but has fallen dramatically in recent months due to the closing of the Greek border with Macedonia and a deal between the European Union and Turkey that has discouraged refugees from crossing the Aegean Sea.

The reduction in the numbers has eased pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came under fierce criticism last year for welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war in the Middle East with the optimistic slogan "We can do this".

A spokeswoman for the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), or federal police, said there had been 369 warnings about possible extremists entering the country since the influx of refugees accelerated last year, of which 40 merited further investigation by federal and state authorities.

That represents a sharp increase from the 213 warnings and 18 investigations that the police had recorded in early January.

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Do Blunders Mean South Korea’s Spying Apparatus Is Broken?

https://archive.is/SBHYP

When it comes to spying on North Korea, rival South Korea seems to be wrong almost as much as it's right.

Seoul's intelligence agents get battered in the press and by lawmakers for their gaffes, including one regarding Ri Yong Gil, the former head of North Korea's military. Officials in Seoul's National Intelligence Service, the country's main spy agency, reportedly said Ri had been executed, but at this month's ruling-party congress, he was seen not only alive but also in possession of several new titles.

While spying on perhaps the world's most cloistered, suspicious, difficult-to-read country is no easy task, repeated blunders raise questions about whether South Korea's multibillion-dollar spying apparatus is broken.

Knowing what's happening in North Korea is crucial for the South, whose capital city, Seoul, is within easy striking range of thousands of North Korean missiles bristling along the world's most heavily armed border. But it's also important for the United States and Japan, who rely in part on South Korean spies for details about the North and its push for nuclear-armed missiles.

 
There's no single answer for what's going wrong, but the mistakes have been linked to the closed nature of North Korea, the way information is verified and disseminated, and agents' alleged penchant for playing politics and for choosing face-saving over gathering solid information.

Internal South Korean politics and the near-constant state of animosity between the Koreas also play a part.

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US officials in Belgium to promote intelligence-sharing

https://archive.is/pOC4i

A U.S. government delegation is in Belgium to promote greater intelligence-sharing by Belgian and European authorities in the wake of the March suicide bombings that killed 32 victims here, the group's members said Tuesday.

Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said "what we have learned in the hard work that we did and continue to do after 9/11 is the importance of sharing information, both across our services as well as rapidly with our international partners."

Monaco said she will meet at U.S. President Barack Obama's request Wednesday with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, and that meetings are also planned with security services and other Belgian agencies on how to cooperate better in the fight against the Islamic State extremist group.

"The only way we are going to be effective ... is if we work together in partnership," Monaco said.

 
The March 22 bombings in Brussels, as well as attacks also claimed by IS that killed 130 victims in Paris on Nov. 13, revealed numerous shortcomings in Belgium's response, including breakdowns in communication between law enforcement agencies and with other nations.

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The FBI Is Keeping 80,000 Secret Files on the Saudis and 9/11

https://archive.is/1Vj5S

The secret ‘28 pages’ are just the start. The FBI has another 80,000 classified documents, many of which deal with Saudi connections to the 9/11 terror plot. What’s the Bureau got?

The Obama administration may soon release 28 classified pages from a congressional investigation that allegedly links Saudis in the United States to the 9/11 attackers. A former Republican member of the 9/11 Commission alleged Thursday that there was “clear evidence” of support for the hijackers from Saudi officials.

But in Florida, a federal judge is weighing whether to declassify portions of some 80,000 classified pages that could reveal far more about the hijackers’ Saudis connections and their activities in the weeks preceding the worst attack on U.S. soil. 

The still-secret files speak to one of the strangest and most enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks. Why did the Saudi occupants of a posh house in gated community in Sarasota, Florida, suddenly vanish in the two weeks prior to the attacks? And had they been in touch with the leader of the operation, Mohamed Atta, and two of his co-conspirators?

No way, the FBI says, even though the bureau’s own agents did initially suspect the family was linked to some of the hijackers. On further scrutiny, those connections proved unfounded, officials now say.
But a team of lawyers and investigative journalists has found what they say is hard evidence pointing in the other direction. Atta did visit the family before he led 18 men to their deaths and murdered 3,000 people, they say, and phone records connect the house to members of the 9/11 conspiracy.

The FBI did initially suspect something was off when their agents descended on the Sarasota house shortly after the attacks, tipped off by suspicious neighbors who had always found the family aloof.
Investigators found signs that the occupants had left in a hurry. Food was left on the counter and the refrigerator was stocked. Toys were still floating in the backyard swimming pool. Dirty diapers were left in a bathroom. It also looked like the people who lived there weren’t coming back. The mail was piling up outside, and the door to an empty safe was wide open. Three cars remained parked in the garage and driveway.

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Split Decision on NYPD’s X-ray Vans

A state appeals court said the NYPD doesn’t have to tell the public about how it has used X-ray vans to detect explosives or how much they cost. But it does have to tell them about radiation risks.

https://archive.is/geFee

A state appeals court today ordered the New York City Police Department to release information on the health risks of the unmarked X-ray vans that it uses to covertly detect explosives.

But the panel overturned a lower court’s ruling that required the department to disclose records on when and where the vans had been used, its policies on van usage, or how much the vans cost, agreeing with the NYPD that concerns over terrorism outweighed the public interest.

For the past four years, ProPublica has sought information about the secretive NYPD counterterrorism program that uses the vans equipped with X-ray machines. The vans can drive alongside vehicles or buildings to find organic materials such as drugs and explosives that may be hidden inside.

But because the vans use backscatter X-rays, which bounce back from the target to create an image, they may also expose unknowing drivers, passengers and pedestrians to ionizing radiation, which can increase the risk of cancer. The X-ray vans are similar to the airport body scanners that were removed by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration over privacy concerns in 2013.

The NYPD has refused to release any records about how it uses the vans and what it does to protect people who may be in the vicinity. Until ProPublica’s lawsuit, the police department had never said anything publicly about them other than to confirm their existence.

In 2015, state Supreme Court Judge Doris Ling-Cohan said the NYPD’s argument amounted to “mere speculation” and was “patently insufficient” to outweigh the public’s right to know. But in its decision today, the appeals court largely agreed with the NYPD’s argument that releasing the information would “hamper NYPD’s counterterrorism operations and increase the likelihood of another terrorist attack.”

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DARPA Shows Off Technology at Demo Day

Archive.is and archive.org both cannot archive page for some reason. 

Click at own risk: http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=2178

Dozens of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program managers, researchers and engineers descended upon the Pentagon May 11 to show off new technology.

DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar said the goal of the agency’s demo day is to get the agency's breakthrough technology in front of the right people.

“Today is the day that we bring some of those crazy technologies out here into the Pentagon so that we can get them in front of our customers and our partners, people across all the military services and across DoD,” she told reporters.

With 60 program managers at the event, Prabhakar said they would be engaging with Defense Department officials to set up links and work on accelerating the transition of the programs into formal acquisitions.

One important area of research is in biological technologies, Prabhakar said. DARPA’s newest office — the biological technologies office — was stood up two years ago and does work in infectious diseases, synthetic biology and neurotechnologies. 

“DARPA has been working in biological technologies for now close to two decades but we felt it was an important time to put a special focus there,” she said. “This is one of the areas of research where the pot is bubbling and when you see the pace of research and the pace of the underlying technologies that affect biology that tells us that surprise is going to come from this year and we want to make sure that we understand that and help drive it.”

The recent Zika and Ebola crises are pointed reminders of the challenges that infectious diseases pose to national security, she said.

“We also worry about the possibility of engineered biological threats,” Prabhakar said. “All of those argue for a future where we have a much faster way to nip disease in the bud.”

One piece of technology under the biological technologies office is the dialysis-like therapeutics program. Using a lightweight, affordable and portable system, DARPA wants to filter the blood of a sick patient and remove pathogens, toxins and harmful bacteria, said the system’s program manager Army Col. Matthew Hepburn. 

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