The Inspectors General Bring Out the Space Heroes to Defend Full Access
A few weeks back, I noted that Office of Legal Counsel had finally released its opinion on whether DOJ had to share everything its Inspector General requested, or could hold things (and investigations) up until the Deputy Attorney General decided…
Mankiw’s Principles of Economics Part 5: Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off
The introduction to this series is here.
Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
Part 4 is here.
Mankiw’s fifth principle is: Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off. He says that that my family competes with other families for…
The Things Our Allies Tell Us -- Or Don't
On Friday, the NYT reported that the US was surprised that the Nusra Front attacked Division 30, which is what they're now calling the group of US-trained "moderate rebels" who've only recently been inserted in Syria.
In Washington, several…
In NYT's Fictional Presentation, China Pioneered the "Collect It All" Strategy
Way down in the second-to-last paragraph of this NYT piece claiming the US will retaliate against China for the OPM hack, national security reporter David Sanger makes this claim about the hack, about experts affiliated with an agency that aspires…
Department of Energy: CyberSprinting Backwards
Earlier this week, I noted that of the seven agencies that would automatically get cybersecurity data shared under the Cyber Information Sharing Act, several had similar or even worse cyberpreparedness than the Office of Personnel Management,…
How About "Any Time, Anywhere" Inspections for Israel's Nuclear Weapons?
While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his whinging campaign that the West capitulated on a non-existent earlier demand for "any time, anywhere" snap inspections in Iran under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated…
We Were Calling Out the Pakistanis on a Lot of Secrets in Early 2011
One of my favorite ironies from the Greg Miller story on the Mullah Omar death -- which doesn't really try to explain why we're just learning about a death that all sides likely knew about years ago -- is that Mullah Omar, not Osama bin Laden,…
FDL: Looking At Things As They Were; Dreaming Of Things That Never Would Be
There are multiple better voices here to address the apparent demise of Firedoglake, whether briefly or at length. I was, in a way, an interloper by chance. By fortune, actually. Because I was asked, for inexplicable reasons I will never fully…
Black Lives Matter
I was at the Netroot Nations candidates session listening to Martin O’Malley with other writers from Emptywheel in a cavernous hall with terrible acoustics and wildly over-amped speakers. We had already heard the moderator tell his story;…
How CISA Might Hurt FBI's Ability to Fight Cyberattacks
DOJ's Inspector General just released a report on how well FBI's cybersecurity initiative has been going. In general, it finds that the FBI has improved its ability to investigate cyberattacks.
But among the most significant challenges facing…
Is the Intelligence Community Inspector General Trying to Give Contractors Whistleblower Protections?
Last week, McClatchy’s Marisa Taylor reported on two cases showing the new appeals process for whistleblower retaliation claims ordered by President Obama is now operational; in the cases of Army whistleblower Michael Helms and CIA whistleblower…
Did the Former Deputy Director of CTC Misinform Congress about Torture Report Costs?
Jason Leopold had an important update on the torture report that -- because he's doing rolling updates -- hasn't gotten sufficient attention.
Leopold obtained the contracting documents of the company, Centra, that drove up costs for the report…
Evan Kohlmann: Garbage In, Garbage Out
Trevor Aaronson has an important piece on one of DOJ's several "terrorism experts," Evan Kohlmann. He has long been mocked, to no avail, by defense attorneys working terrorism cases for his lack of credentials and his hack theories about "radicalization;"…
After Targeting OPM, Hackers Moved onto United?
Bloomberg reports that the same people who hacked OPM then went on to target United, which does a lot of business with the government (and, though the story doesn't say it, a lot of flights to China).
United, the world’s second-largest airline,…
Mankiw’s Principles of Economics Part 4: People Respond to Incentives
The introduction to this series is here.
Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
The Fourth Principle of Economics, which N. Gregory Mankiw assures us is accepted by almost all economists is: People Respond To Incentives.…
Jim Comey Finally Has a Dastardly Criminal Who Made His Texts Unavailable
Jim Comey has been pushing for backdoors, implicitly in iPhones, for months based on the concern that a dastardly criminal might evade investigators by making texts unavailable.
He finally has a dastardly criminal he can point to: Tom Brady.
If…
Under CISA, Data Would Automatically Get Shared with Agencies with Worse Cyberpreparedness than OPM
In the wake of the OPM hack, Congress is preparing to do something!!! Unfortunately, that "something" will be to pass the Cyber Information Sharing Act, which not only wouldn't have helped prevent the OPM hack, but comes with its own problems.
To…
In Support of Ben Wittes
Over at Lawfare, Ben Wittes does some brainstorming about what other databases the Chinese may be hacking after ingesting all its OPM winnings. He thinks they might target:
FDA New Drug Applications
VA patient records
Visa applications…
I Con the Record: Drop the Lawsuits and We'll Release the Data Hostages
I Con the Record just announced that the NSA will make the phone dragnet data it has "analytically unavailable" after the new system goes live in November, and unavailable even to techs three months later.
On June 29, 2015, the Foreign Intelligence…
Our Definitions of National Security Crimes Are Fucked
I realized something the other day.
For the purposes of hacking, a theater (or at least any mall it was attached to) might count as critical infrastructure that would deem it a National Security target, just as Sony Pictures was deemed…