Maritime security

Russia to bar foreign countries from transporting oil and gas via Northern Sea Route

Vice Prime Minister Yuriy Borisov said that the right to transport hydrocarbons along the Northern Sea Route can only be granted to ships sailing under the Russian flag.

The official said at the International Maritime Show that the Russian government was working to grant Russian ships a unique right to transport and store hydrocarbons within the Northern Sea Route.

Borisov drew attention to the fact that the Russian Federation pays a lot of attention to the development and "replenishment" of the civilian fleet, especially when it comes to vessels intended for the transportation of liquid bulk cargo.

The Arctic region is known for its enormous deposits of hydrocarbons. The Russian shelf measures 4.1 million square kilometres - the territory is as large as the territories of all EU countries combined.

Hidden treasury

Police investigate company's 'treasure ship' claims

Police are investigating a South Korean company that claimed to have discovered a sunken Russian warship with $8.9 billion worth of gold on board.

South Korean police are investigating the firm, called Shinil Group, for possible fraudulent claims and have banned senior company staff members from leaving the country, a police spokesman told CNN on Tuesday.

The company announced earlier this month that it had found the Dmitri Donskoii, a 5,800-ton Russian warship that had sunk during the 1905 Battle of Tsushima, in the waters between present-day South Korea and Japan.

Military

In Soviet echo, Putin gives Russian army a political wing

Vladimir Putin has created a new directorate inside the Russian army to promote patriotism, evoking memories of a Soviet practice that once saw soldiers taught the precepts of Marxism and Leninism by political commissars.

The move, approved by Putin in a presidential decree published on Monday, will affect Russia’s around 1 million active military service people and appears designed to ensure soldiers’ loyalty at a time when Moscow is locked in a geopolitical standoff with the West.

“In conditions of a global information and psychological confrontation (with the West) the role of political and moral unity within the army and society drastically grows,” Alexander Kanshin, who sits on a civilian body that shapes military policy, told Interfax news agency in February.

In the Soviet Union, a similar directorate worked to ensure that the army stayed loyal to the then ruling Communist party.

Chemical security

‘Skripal spoke to UK spies about the Russian mafia’ – Seymour Hersh doubles down on Salisbury theory

Legendary journalist Seymour Hersh has thrown doubt on the theory that the Kremlin was behind the Skripal attack, suggesting that the double agent had been briefing British intelligence on ‘Russian organized crime.’

In an interview published in the Independent following the publication of his memoir ‘Reporter,’ Hersh outline his doubts, stating: “The story of Novichok poisoning has not held up very well. [Skripal] was most likely talking to British intelligence services about Russian organized crime.”

Pulitzer-prize winning Hersh, renowned for his investigative work, has previously taken aim at the British government’s narrative that the Russian state is ‘culpable’ for the poisonings.

“There’s bias all the time, this country’s riddled with bias, there’s a great dislike of Russia here, an instinctive dislike,” he said in an interview with BBC Radio 4.

“You saw that mess you had in March, the two Russians that were allegedly killed by nerve gas, which is essentially impossible,” he continued, referring to the poisoning of ex-Soviet double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

“If you kill them, you kill half the city with nerve gas,” he added, before saying that interest in reporting on the story has “dwindled away.”

Election security

What Are the FBI and CIA Hiding?

Did the Central Intelligence Agency lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation down a rabbit hole in the counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign?

Although the FBI’s case officially began July 31, 2016, there had been investigative activity before that date. John Brennan’s CIA might have directed activity in Britain, which could be a problem because of longstanding agreements that the U.S. will not conduct intelligence operations there. It would explain why the FBI continues to stonewall Congress as to the inquiry’s origin.

Further, what we know about the case’s origin does not meet the threshold required by the attorney general guidelines for opening a counterintelligence case. That standard requires “predicate information,” or “articulable facts.”

Border security

Air Cargo Advance Screening Now Mandatory

The Air Cargo Advance Screening (ACAS) program went into effect last month, requiring the submission of advanced air cargo information on shipments arriving in the United States from a foreign location. Before June 12, 2018, a voluntary process in which many airlines already participated, was in effect. The program requirements are now mandatory for airlines flying to the United States.

As part of the ACAS program, participating carriers submit a subset of required pre-arrival air cargo data to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the earliest point practicable and prior to loading the cargo onto aircraft destined to or transiting through the United States.

The program had its genesis in October 2010, when the global counter-terrorism community disrupted an attempt by al-Qaeda in Yemen to conceal and ship explosive devices in cargo onboard US-bound aircraft. 

War on terror

Government's counter-terror strategy Prevent is creating 'high levels of distrust' among Muslims leading to 'genuine fears' of persecution

A 'lack of information' about a Government counter-terrorism strategy has led to 'genuine fears' of persecution among Greater Manchester Muslims, a report has found.

Although Prevent was 'working well' in the region, a commission set up in the wake of last May's Manchester Arena suicide bombing, said it was not getting its message across to communities where 'high levels of distrust and suspicion of statutory agencies continues to exist'.

It concluded there should be an effort to move Prevent - which aims to stop people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism - away from the police and law enforcement to wider safeguarding.

Navy

The Navy Is Seeking to Transform Every Ship Into a Mini Aircraft Carrier

Last month the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the start of the second phase of its Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) program. TERN, a joint program between DARPA and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), aims to create a system that would enable small ships to operate both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and combat drones.

“The goal of Tern is to give forward-deployed small ships the ability to serve as mobile launch and recovery sites for medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial systems (UAS),” DARPA said in a press release announcing Phase 2 of the program. “These systems could provide long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and other capabilities over greater distances and time periods than is possible with current assets.”

Statecraft

ODNI COMPLETES TRANSFORMATION EFFORT

Today, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence stood up a new organizational structure based on the Transformation plan that Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon announced in March 2018.

The ODNI’s Transformation reflects the changing nature of our environment and threats to the Nation, and will ensure that the ODNI and the IC will continue to be the best intelligence service in the world, in support of our policy-makers and our national security. The ODNI must be postured to lead the IC in tackling issues like finding and retaining the right, trusted and agile workforce; rationalizing how the IC manages data and information securely; improving our acquisition agility across the entire Community; augmenting intelligence using machines; partnering smartly with the private sector; and developing a comprehensive posture for cyber. These are issues that no one IC element can solve alone and are critical to the IC’s ability to continue to provide timely, relevant and accurate intelligence and information to our policy-makers.

Politics

Europe shouldn’t fear Steve Bannon. It should fear the hype that surrounds him

If Steve Bannon didn’t exist, the media would have had to invent him. And, in fact, they largely did. US coverage has turned Bannon into Donald Trump’s Rasputin, single-handedly responsible for his shock election as the 45th president of the United States. And now, as Bannon crosses the Atlantic, breathless reports speak of his “Plan to Hijack Europe for the Far Right”. His meeting with the former foreign secretary Boris Johnson was apparently convened to plot “new moves that could have a significant impact on European politics”.

The notion of the evil genius, particularly one on the far right, is seductive. It helps externalise the evil. Rather than accepting that nationalist and populist ideas are part of the mainstream of society, their success is presented as the outcome of a devious plot, constructed by a political mastermind, in which a gullible population is seduced by a charismatic leader.

Immigration security

ICE Delivers More Than 5,200 I-9 Audit Notices to Businesses in Nationwide Op

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) announced Tuesday the results of a two-phase nationwide operation in which I-9 audit notices were served to more than 5,200 businesses around the country since January. A notice of inspection (NOI) informs business owners that ICE is going to audit their hiring records to determine whether they are complying with existing law.

From July 16 to 20, the second phase of the operation, HSI served 2,738 NOIs and made 32 arrests. During the first phase of the operation, Jan. 29 to March 30, HSI served 2,540 NOIs and made 61 arrests.

“This is not a victimless crime,” said Derek N. Benner, Acting Executive Associate Director for HSI. “Unauthorized workers often use stolen identities of legal U.S. workers, which can significantly impact the identity theft victim’s credit, medical records and other aspects of their everyday life.”

Public security

Schools Eye Facial Recognition Technology to Boost Security

The surveillance system that has kept watch on students entering Lockport schools for over a decade is getting a novel upgrade. Facial recognition technology soon will check each face against a database of expelled students, sex offenders and other possible troublemakers.

It could be the start of a trend as more schools fearful of shootings consider adopting the technology, which has been gaining ground on city streets and in some businesses and government agencies. Just last week, Seattle-based digital software company RealNetworks began offering a free version of its facial recognition system to schools nationwide.

Already, the Lockport City School District’s plan has opened a debate in this western New York community and far beyond about the system’s potential effectiveness, student privacy and civil rights.

Business security

Incorporating CSR Into Due Diligence Programs

Modern technology allows people to disseminate allegations of corporate irresponsibility easily. Those accusations may be unfair or inaccurate, but companies ignore such attacks at their peril. Any perceived association with unethical third parties can leave a company’s leadership scrambling to defuse a reputation crisis, and those responses often require dramatic action to “prove” the company takes the allegations seriously.

This concern surrounding REPUTATION RISK has contributed to the rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) factors as something corporations should consider while governing business conduct. How a company treats its own employees; which suppliers and other third parties it engages; even where to expand or what new products to launch — all those decisions must now acknowledge CSR as an influencing factor.

All those forces speak to the need for more due diligence — broader due diligence, that assesses third parties for risks well beyond the usual anti-corruption or data security criteria.

Electronic surveillance

NSA Timeline 1791–2015

NSA Surveillance History from December 15, 1791 through November, 9 2015.  This timeline is no longer maintained and is provided here for historical reference.

The information found in this timeline is based on the Summary of Evidence we submitted to the court in Jewel v. National Security Agency (NSA). It is intended to recall all the credible accounts and information of the NSA's domestic spying program found in the media, official government statements and reports, and court actions. The timeline includes leaked documents, first published by the Guardian in June 2013, that confirmed the domestic spying by the NSA, as well as accounts based on unnamed government officials.

The documents that form the basis for this timeline range from a Top Secret Court Order by the secret court overseeing the spying, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court), to a working draft of an NSA Inspector General report detailing the history of the program. The "NSA Inspectors General Reports" tab consists of information taken from an internal working draft of an NSA Inspector General report that was published by the Guardianon June 27, 2013.

Business security

China Is Still Stealing America’s Business Secrets, U.S. Officials Say

The Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property remains a “critical” threat, with perpetrators who have adapted to evade the strictures of a three-year-old ban on such hacking, according to a top-secret report intelligence officials sent j to Congress this week..

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2015, the U.S. and China signed an agreement to curb Chinese economic espionage over the Internet. That produced a “lull” in Chinese cyber theft, but did not stop it, William Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, told reporters Thursday. As the digital ecosystem continues to expand so does the threat posed by Chinese industrial cyber theft to America’s long-term economic power.

Evanina’s office made a shorter, unclassified version of the report available to journalists and to the public. It lists a variety of known cases of recent Chinese economic espionage, as well as other prepetrators of cyber economic espionage. But officials both during their briefing and in their report highlighted China.

Privacy security

UK Tribunal Says GCHQ Engaged In Illegal Telco Collection Program For More Than A Decade

UK's NSA -- GCHQ -- has lost legal battle after legal battle in recent years, most of those triggered by the Snowden leaks. The UK Appeals Court ruled its bulk collection of internet communications metadata illegal earlier this year. This followed a 2015 loss in lawsuit filed over the interception of privileged communications, resulting in a destruction order targeting everything collected by GCHQ that fell under that heading.

Some battles are still ongoing, with several of them spearheaded by Privacy International. PI's work -- and multiple lawsuits -- have led to the exposure of GCHQ's oversight as completely toothless and a declaration that the agency's surveillance agreement with the NSA was illegal… at least up to 2014's codification of illegal spy practices. (This codification was ultimately ruled illegal earlier this year.)

Thanks to another PI legal challenge, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal has found GCHQ engaged in even more illegal spying... for more than a decade. The expansion of surveillance powers following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks gave GCHQ more ways to collect data from telcos. This was supposed to be directed and overseen by the UK Foreign Secretary, but the lawsuit showed the oversight did nearly nothing and there were virtually no limits to what could be collected from phone companies.

Information security

How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies
Unlike on the East Coast, foreign intel operations here aren’t as focused on the hunt for diplomatic secrets, political intelligence or war plans. The open, experimental, cosmopolitan work and business culture of Silicon Valley in particular has encouraged a newer, “softer,” “nontraditional” type of espionage, said former intelligence officials—efforts that mostly target trade secrets and technology. “It’s a very subtle form of intelligence collection that is more business connected and oriented,” one told me. But this economic espionage is also ubiquitous. Spies “are very much part of the everyday environment” here, said this person. Another former intelligence official told me that, at one point recently, a full 20 percent of all the FBI’s active counterintelligence-related intellectual property cases had originated in the Bay Area. (The FBI declined to comment for this story.)

Electronic surveillance

NSA watchdog details privacy concerns and moves to protect whistleblowers

The National Security Agency's open source intelligence collection process, which gathers publicly available information from the internet, has "an increased risk of jeopardizing the civil liberties and privacy of [US persons] and compromising classified information," concluded the agency's top watchdog in its first public report for Congress.

The NSA watchdog criticized facets of the digital spy agency's "Emerging Open Source Activities Branch," which analyzes the information collected. Areas of concern highlighted included insufficient "guidance and training" for analysts to adequately protect Americans' personal data. The IG did not go into further detail about specific violations.

But the agency is also prioritizing whistleblower protection in new ways, the report revealed, highlighting progress for the secretive spy unit after several high-profile whistleblowers criticized internal protections for those who report wrongdoing.

Financial safety

Virtual currencies spark real concern about national security threat

U.S. government officials are increasingly worried about the potential national security threat posed by the rise of cryptocurrencies.

In the past week, the Department of Justice, congressional lawmakers and even Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell have voiced concern about the misuse of digital currencies, especially for money laundering. The topic sparked new interest following Bitcoin’s prominent mention in the indictments of Russian military intelligence officers by special counsel Robert Mueller earlier this month.

Both critics and champions of cryptocurrencies agree that getting the policy right toward the emerging financial technology could be key to the future of the upstart industry — as well as the ability of the U.S. and its allies to cut off funding for terrorists and rogue states.

In a report issued July 20, the Justice Department said it has formed a Digital Currency Initiative to ramp up anti-money laundering prosecutions in cases involving cryptocurrency, which it sees as increasingly used in illicit financing. The initiative is meant to encourage the pursuit of cybercrime using cryptocurrencies across federal law enforcement agencies.

Nuclear security

How South Africa Built Nuclear Weapons (And Then Gave Them Up)

Acquiring fissile material is half the nuclear secret. The other half of the secret is that nuclear weapons actually work. (The United States spent the money and manpower to get the first and prove the second. Other powers just need the first.) Separating the minute amounts of fissile Uranium 235 from Uranium 238 is a key step in fissile material production. Uranium can be combined with fluorine to create the chemical uranium hexafluoride, a toxic, corrosive, heavy gas. This gas can be forced through a very long series of filters or sieves that separate the lighter U-235 from the heavier U-238. Diffusion plants are the size of auto factories and consume more electricity—they’re hard to hide.

Health security

Opiate epidemic said to recall AIDS in the ’80s

The opioid epidemic has become this generation’s pressing public health crisis with the same devastating effect as the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s, a top health expert said.

The warning comes as a cluster of HIV cases linked to dirty needles used to shoot up heroin and fentanyl was discovered in the Lowell-Lawrence region, as the Herald reported earlier this week.

That coupled with more than 2,000 people dying from opiate overdoses last year is an epidemic “heading in the wrong direction,” said Carl Sciortino, executive director of the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, which has merged with Fenway Health.

“We’re not reaching everyone in the streets ... and we’re not doing enough to keep them alive,” Sciortino said yesterday. “We’re already losing a generation.”

He likened the drug scourge to the AIDS epidemic of the early ’80s, which was also stymied by a “stigma” — the same negativity plaguing the opioid crisis. But just like AIDS, drug addiction hits in the suburbs and the city.

Financial safety

What do they know? Mystery as Russia LIQUIDATED almost ALL of its holdings in US Treasury securities during run up to Helsinki summit, in move labeled 'unprecedented' by experts

The Russian government has sold off the vast majority of its holdings of US Treasury securities for reasons that remain mysterious, in a dramatic move that experts are calling unprecedented.

A US Treasury report released on July 18 shows that Russian holdings of Treasury securities declined by 84 per cent between March and May, down to just $14.9 billion from March holdings of $96.1 billion.

The report was issued quietly amid the controversy surrounding President Donald Trump's July 16 meeting with Russian President Valdimir Putin in Helsinki, dropping Russia from the list of major Treasuries holders without comment.

Benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields saw a spike during mid-May to a seven-year high of 3.11 per cent, possibly indicating excess supply during the sell off. But yields quickly stabilized, indicating that any Russian bond dumping had little effect on the overall market or the US government's cost of borrowing.

Transportation security

The government is secretly monitoring ordinary US citizens when they fly

Are you a United States citizen who caught a flight in the last few months? If so, there’s a small chance federal air marshals followed and monitored you, as part of a secret TSA program called “Quiet Skies.”

Jana Winter at the Boston Globe on Saturday reported about the previously undisclosed program that specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base.” Winter cites a TSA bulletin from March, which says the goal of the initiative is to thwart threats to commercial flights posed by “unknown or partially known terrorists.”

All US citizens who come into the country are automatically screened for potential inclusion in Quiet Skies, and thousands of Americans have reportedly already been subject to surveillance at the airport and on their flights under the program. Travelers stay on the Quiet Skies watch list for up to 90 days or three encounters, and they’re never notified they’re on the list at all.

Climate security

How can we talk about heatwaves without mentioning climate change?

The world is suffering from extreme weather.

Heatwaves have killed 50 in Canada and 80 in Japan, caused drought in Germany and Scandinavia, set record temperatures in Algeria, Morocco, and Oman, and left the UK looking brown from space. The heat has spurred wildfires that have claimed at least 80 lives in Greece, melted electrical wires in California, and forced Sweden to call for international help.

This is not normal. Weather is a localized phenomenon to which long-term climate trends contribute. The more greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, the warmer the climate gets and the more likely these extreme weather events become. Put another way, climate change adds fuel to the fire.

The world’s five hottest years on record are (in ranked order): 2016, 2015, 2017, 2014, and 2010. “The sort of temperatures that are occurring now would’ve been a one-in-a-thousand occurrence in the 1950s,” Joanna Haigh, of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, told the BBC. “Now, they are about a one-in-10 occurrence.”

Weapons

Become a Super Sniper: DARPA is Turning .50 Caliber Bullets into Guided Rounds

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has taken the latter approach. EXACTO, or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance bullets turns .50 caliber bullets into guided rounds capable of zeroing in on a target. Although DARPA is mum on how it does this, other sites report that the technology involves optical sensors in the nose of the bullet and fins capable of adjusting the bullet’s flight path in the tail. The optical sensor apparently homes in on a spot illuminated by a laser designator. The guidance system is similar to laser-guided weapons such as the Maverick and Hellfirelaser-guided missiles. The bullet is even capable of making some remarkably sharpcourse corrections.

U.S. elections

There are 100 days to the midterm election. Here's what to watch

Voters are now 100 days away from delivering their verdict on President Donald Trump's first two years in office, and while the political landscape could shift dramatically in three months, right now, the wind is at Democrats' backs.

Democrats need a net gain of 23 seats to wrest control of the House away from Republicans. And they need a net gain of two seats to take a Senate majority, although the path to get to that number is difficult.

Trump got some welcome news on Friday, with the announcement that the economy grew at a 4.1% in the second quarter, the best number since 2014. Trump will surely make that growth part of his midterms pitch to voters.