As hackers continue their rampage against the world's largest banks, defense contractors and technology companies, executives and government officials are confronting a sobering truth: The bad guys are winning.
The seemingly unending string of high-profile attacks, most recently against Citigroup Inc. and Sony Corp., have shown that nearly every organization is vulnerable to a growing contingent of well-trained and agile attackers who are finding security holes faster than they can be plugged.
"It's gotten very dangerous out there," said Stan Stahl, a security consultant and president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Information Systems Security Assn. "There's an epidemic of this stuff going on right now."
The increase in high-profile attacks comes as companies are looking to move more of their business operations online, including to the "cloud," in which computing tasks are outsourced to firms that maintain huge data centers around the world.
Despite the cloud's potential for cost savings and reducing the hassles of running in-house computer servers, security analysts say it may not yet be as safe as advertised — a warning that many companies are taking seriously.
Alex Bermudez, the security manager for Beachbody, a Los Angeles company that makes the popular P90X workout videos, said that although his company is beefing up security as it expands overseas, he's held off on shifting operations into the cloud.
"There are a lot of good technology companies doing the cloud well," he said, but having his company's data stored remotely, alongside data from many other firms, "is a little scary."
DERRY, N.H. — The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view, with some presidential candidates expressing a desire to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and suggesting that the United States has overreached in Libya.
The shift, while incremental so far, appears to mark a separation from a post-Sept. 11 posture in which Republicans were largely united in supporting an aggressive use of American power around the world. A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.
I noticed this, and I wondered a bit about Michele Bachmann on foreign policy. She hardly sounds like a neocon, but I think that's good. We've been in Afghanistan for almost 10 years, and that's hard to sustain politically. Look for a lot of folks to declare victory and advocate a rapid drawdown.
Over the past several weeks the Pakistani military has been distancing itself from American intelligence and counterterrorism operations against militant groups in Pakistan. This has angered many in Washington who believe that Bin Laden’s death has shaken Al Qaeda and that there is now an opportunity to further weaken the terrorist organization with more raids and armed drone strikes.
But in recent months, dating approximately to when a C.I.A. contractor killed two Pakistanis on a street in the eastern city of Lahore in January, American officials said that Pakistani spies from the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, have been generally unwilling to carry out surveillance operations for the C.I.A. The Pakistanis have also resisted granting visas allowing American intelligence officers to operate in Pakistan, and have threatened to put greater restrictions on the drone flights.
NAIROBI, Kenya — The al-Qaida mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania was killed this week at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu by Somali forces who didn't immediately realize he was the most wanted man in East Africa, officials said Saturday.
The death of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed — a man who topped the FBI's most wanted list for nearly 13 years — is the third major strike in six weeks against the worldwide terror group that was headed by Osama bin Laden until his death last month.
Mohammed had a $5 million bounty on his head for allegedly planning the Aug. 7, 1998, embassy bombings. The blasts killed 224 people in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Most of the dead were Kenyans. Twelve Americans also died.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — who was on a visit to Tanzania on Saturday as Somali officials confirmed Mohammed's death — called the killing a "significant blow to al-Qaida, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa.
"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere — Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, and our own embassy personnel," Clinton said.
More at that link above, although I think the same lessons apply now that applied after the Abbottabad raid: Targeted killings don't kill the Al Qaeda organization. Depending on whom you talk to, global jihad constitutes an amorphous, multi-faceted terror network, with many alliances of convenience and substantial ties to state actors, such as Pakistan. There's lots of work to do in that sense. See, for example, Jayshree Bajoria, "Pakistan's New Generation of Terrorists."
JERUSALEM — Israeli forces fired at pro-Palestinian protesters on the Syrian frontier on Sunday as they tried to breach the border for the second time in three weeks, reflecting a new mode of popular struggle and deadly confrontation fueled by turmoil in the Arab world and the vacuum of stalled peace talks.
Wave after wave of protesters, mainly Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria, approached the frontier with the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli soldiers opened fire on those who crossed a new trench and tried to attack the border fence near the towns of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights and Quneitra in Syria.
By nightfall, the Syrian news agency SANA reported that 22 protesters had been killed and more than 350 had been wounded. Israeli officials said that they had no information on casualties but suggested that the Syrian figures were exaggerated.
Even so, it was the worst bloodshed in the Golan Heights since Israel and Syria fought a war there in 1973.
Gotta love those silly "COEXIST" bumper stickers, which include Islam in among the other religions, despite the fact that Islam's mission (per the Quran and Hadith) is not "coexistence" but the conversion or death of all who do not believe as they do.
I think every American should read Tom Clancy's, Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier. The ships are the sine qua non of global power projection, and a key indicator of great power status. CSM just reported last month on the increasing prestige of carriers among nations, amid heightened international security demands requiring that kind of operational mobility. See, "Aircraft Carriers Gain Naval Clout." At the clip below is the USS Abraham Lincoln, which I visited in 1999. It's a Nimitz-class carrier. The last carrier from the group is the USS George H.W. Bush, commissioned in 2009. The Navy is moving to the Gerald R. Ford class carrier program, with the first two ships expected to be commissioned in 2015 and 2019. Ten carriers from that groups are expected to be deployed, guaranteeing a global U.S. ocean-going preponderance throughout most of the 21st-century.I mention this just as news reports indicate that Britain and France are set to share aircraft carriers. See Telegraph UK, "We should share aircraft carrier, say French." I wasn't quite sure what to think of this, so checking around I found this at Reuters, "INTERVIEW-French navy boss sees Libyan military humanitarian aid":
ENTENTE CORDIALE
One area earmarked for cooperation is the use of aircraft carriers. In a sweeping review last year, Britain cut its defence budget of 36.9 billion pounds by 8 percent in real terms up to 2015, scrapping its only aircraft carrier.
While the short distance between coalition bases and Libya means an aircraft carrier is not essential, Forissier said a British carrier would have been useful to reduce air time, boost attacks and relieve the Charles de Gaulle.
Forissier would like the French flagship to return to base to replace older Super Etendard jet fighters with the latest Rafales. If it were forced to continue its operations "it would only begin to have serious problems in the autumn," he said.
A new British carrier, the Queen Elizabeth, due by 2020 will be designed so each country could fly its planes off the other's ship. The aim is to have one carrier at sea at all times.
British crew will learn on the Charles de Gaulle so that the Queen Elizabeth can enter operation once finished. One British watch officer is currently operating on the French vessel.
While similar foreign policy aims made a Franco-British alliance inevitable, national sovereignty remained, he said.
"France needs its aircraft carrier and Britain needs one to carry out its sovereignty as it wishes, but what is important is to make the planes inter-operable so that we can train on either one in periods of maintenance."
Forissier believes the two governments should consider building together a cheaper carrier to be used for training.
"If we both want to have a permanent operating presence then we'll both need two aircraft carriers and I don't think given the financial situation our governments have the means."
While Paris has hardly touched its military budget, Forissier said he was "stunned" by the Royal Navy cuts, at a time when it has had costly operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"The Royal Navy, which was always an example for us, is in a tough situation," he said. "It makes me wonder whether we'll also have to go through this in the future."
Part of avoiding that has been the closer cooperation.
"I know in Great Britain you pay tribute to Nelson and here we pay tribute to Napoleon, but really we have good reasons to work together," he said, looking at a painting celebrating a French naval victory over the Royal Navy in 1781.
Now, go check out James Fallows, who suggests we not belittle China's efforts to deploy an aircraft carrier fleet, "Please Read This Article About the Chinese Navy." And whether one agrees with Fallows or not, the key to remember is that at one point Britain's navy was the unrivaled master of the seas. Today the U.S. fills that role. Britain and France are now both struggling to maintain a single operational aircraft carrier, while in the U.S. our outgoing secretary of defense has recommended military downsizing. It all relates in the rise and fall of nations. Quite an interesting set of interrelated developments.
Google Inc. said Chinese hackers targeted the email accounts of senior U.S. officials and hundreds of other prominent people in a fresh computer attack certain to intensify growing concern about the security of the Internet.
The victims, including government and military personnel, Asian officials, Chinese activists and journalists, were tricked into sharing their Gmail passwords with "bad actors" based in China, Google said in an unusual blog post. The attack's goal was to read and forward the victims' email.
The company, which in 2010 blamed China for an attack on its computer networks, said it recently discovered the Gmail campaign, which "appears to originate from Jinan, China," and targeted specific individuals.
In Washington, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security said they were working with Google to investigate the attacks. "We have no reason to believe that any official U.S. government email accounts were accessed," said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Interesting how the FBI got involved. It's a hacking case, you know, like Representative Weiner's. A Member of Congress certainly merits concern, although we've heard so many lies and distortions by now I think the dude's safe.
Robert Gates, who steps down next month after four-plus years at the Pentagon, is making his retirement lap a tutorial on America's defense spending and security needs. His message is welcome, especially on Memorial Day, and even if he couldn't always heed it in his time as Secretary of Defense.
In a series of farewell speeches, Mr. Gates has warned against cuts to weapon programs and troop levels that would make America vulnerable in "a complex and unpredictable security environment," as he said Sunday at Notre Dame. On Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Gates noted that the U.S. went on "a procurement holiday" in the 1990s, when the Clinton Administration decided to cash in the Cold War peace dividend. The past decade showed that history (and war) didn't end in 1989.
"It is vitally important to protect the military modernization accounts," he said, and push ahead with new capabilities, from an air refueling tanker fleet to ballistic missile submarines.
More at the link at top. The statistics on "entitlement overstretch" are staggering.
And she says that the United States is "not the kind of democracy I want to live in."
Well, duh. These idiots hate Western liberal democracy and are doing the damned-well best to bring an end to it.
I think that the act I took of courageously standing up in front of Congress doesn’t—the opportunity to do that doesn’t come along very often. But every day, as Americans, we have an opportunity to stand up. And whether it’s putting our money where our hearts are, by participating in economic pressure against Israel through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or calling our Congress people or taking other actions, it’s time for us to say no to this terrible policy that, just as Dr. Barghouti has illustrated, will not bring about peace. Netanyahu proved yesterday that he is the primary obstacle to peace and justice for Israelis and Palestinians. And to see our Congress giving away three billion of our tax dollars every year to Israeli war crimes, while our economy suffers, while our kids can’t go to college, while our needs aren’t being met here at home, is absolutely an outrage ...
I just wanted to say that the people that were sitting around me in the gallery of Congress yesterday were mostly wearing badges from the AIPAC Israel lobby conference. And I did not expect that people holding such power and representing such a huge lobby group would respond so violently to my peaceful disruption. And after I spoke out, Netanyahu said, you know, "This is what’s possible in a democracy. And you wouldn’t be able to get away with this in other countries like Tunisia." And I think that is ridiculous and absurd. If this is what democracy looks like, that when you speak out for freedom and justice, you get tackled to the ground, you get physically violated and assaulted, and then you get hauled off to jail, that’s not the kind of democracy that I think I want to live in.
Longtime readers will recall that McKinney spoke at LBCC a few years back. I've been on her list-serve ever since. Normally I delete these, but she's been getting sensational coverage of late, so her latest communique is worth sharing (below).
While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union's survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.
NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a "cordon sanitaire" around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the "Cold War."
Avowed "Cold Warriors" of today still view the world in these terms and, unfortunately, cannot move past Communist China and an amputated Soviet Empire as enemy states of the U.S. whose moves any where on the planet are to be contested. The collapse of the Soviet Union provided an accelerated opportunity to exert U.S. hegemony in an area of previous Russian influence. Africa and the Eurasian landmass containing former Soviet satellite states and Afghanistan and Pakistan along with the many other "stans" of the region, have always factored prominently in the theories of "containment" or "rollback" guiding U.S. policy up to today.
With that as background, last night's NATO rocket attack on Tripoli is inexplicable. A civilian metropolitan area of around 2 million people, Tripoli sustained 22 to 25 bombings last night, rattling and breaking windows and glass and shaking the foundation of my hotel.
I left my room at the Rexis Al Nasr Hotel and walked outside the hotel and I could smell the exploded bombs. There were local people everywhere milling with foreign journalists from around the world. As we stood there more bombs struck around the city. The sky flashed red with explosions and more rockets from NATO jets cut through low cloud before exploding.
I could taste the thick dust stirred up by the exploded bombs. I immediately thought about the depleted uranium munitions reportedly being used here--along with white phosphorus. If depleted uranium weapons were being used what affect on the local civilians?
Women carrying young children ran out of the hotel. Others ran to wash the dust from their eyes. With sirens blaring, emergency vehicles made their way to the scene of the attack. Car alarms, set off by the repeated blasts, could be heard underneath the defiant chants of the people.
Sporadic gunfire broke out and it seemed everywhere around me. Euronews showed video of nurses and doctors chanting even at the hospitals as they treated those injured from NATO's latest installation of shock and awe. Suddenly, the streets around my hotel became full of chanting people, car horns blowing, I could not tell how many were walking, how many were driving. Inside the hotel, one Libyan woman carrying a baby came to me and asked me why are they doing this to us?
Whatever the military objectives of the attack (and I and many others question the military value of these attacks) the fact remains the air attack was launched a major city packed with hundreds of thousands of civilians.
I did wonder too if the any of the politicians who had authorized this air attack had themselves ever been on the receiving end of laser guided depleted uranium munitions. Had they ever seen the awful damage that these weapons do a city and its population? Perhaps if they actually been in the city of air attack and felt the concussion from these bombs and saw the mayhem caused they just might not be so inclined to authorize an attack on a civilian population.
I am confident that NATO would not have been so reckless with human life if they had called on to attack a major western city. Indeed, I am confident that would not be called upon ever to attack a western city. NATO only attacks (as does the US and its allies) the poor and underprivileged of the 3rd world.
Only the day before, at a women's event in Tripoli, one woman came up to me with tears in her eyes: her mother is in Benghazi and she can't get back to see if her mother is OK or not. People from the east and west of the country lived with each other, loved each other, intermarried, and now, because of NATO's "humanitarian intervention," artificial divisions are becoming hardened. NATO's recruitment of allies in eastern Libya smacks of the same strain of cold warriorism that sought to assassinate Fidel Castro and overthrow the Cuban Revolution with "homegrown" Cubans willing to commit acts of terror against their former home country. More recently, Democratic Republic of Congo has been amputated de facto after Laurent Kabila refused a request from the Clinton Administration to formally shave off the eastern part of his country. Laurent Kabila personally recounted the meeting at which this request and refusal were delivered. This plan to balkanize and amputate an African country (as has been done in Sudan) did not work because Kabila said "no" while Congolese around the world organized to protect the "territorial integrity" of their country.
I was horrified to learn that NATO allies (the Rebels) in Libya have reportedly lynched, butchered and then their darker-skinned compatriots after U.S. press reports labeled Black Libyans as "Black mercenaries." Now, tell me this, pray tell. How are you going to take Blacks out of Africa? Press reports have suggested that Americans were "surprised" to see dark-skinned people in Africa. Now, what does that tell us about them?
The sad fact, however, is that it is the Libyans themselves, who have been insulted, terrorized, lynched, and murdered as a result of the press reports that hyper-sensationalized this base ignorance. Who will be held accountable for the lives lost in the bloodletting frenzy unleashed as a result of these lies?
Which brings me back to the lady's question: why is this happening? Honestly, I could not give her the educated reasoned response that she was looking for. In my view the international public is struggling to answer "Why?".
What we do know, and what is quite clear, is this: what I experienced last night is no "humanitarian intervention."
Many suspect it is about all the oil under Libya. Call me skeptical but I have to wonder why the combined armed sea, land and air forces of NATO and the US costing billions of dollars are being arraigned against a relatively small North African country and we're expected to believe its in the defense of democracy.
What I have seen in long lines to get fuel is not "humanitarian intervention." Refusal to allow purchases of medicine for the hospitals is not "humanitarian intervention." What is most sad is that I cannot give a cogent explanation of why to people now terrified by NATO's bombs, but it is transparently clear now that NATO has exceeded its mandate, lied about its intentions, is guilty of extra-judicial killings--all in the name of "humanitarian intervention." Where is the Congress as the President exceeds his war-making authority? Where is the "Conscience of the Congress?"
For those of who disagree with Dick Cheney's warning to us to prepare for war for the next generation, please support any one who will stop this madness. Please organize and then vote for peace. People around the world need us to stand up and speak out for ourselves and them because Iran and Venezuela are also in the cross-hairs. Libyans don't need NATO helicopter gunships, smart bombs, cruise missiles, and depleted uranium to settle their differences. NATO's "humanitarian intervention" needs to be exposed for what it is with the bright, shining light of the truth.
As dusk descends on Tripoli, let me prepare myself with the local civilian population for some more NATO humanitarianism.
RELATED: From the comments at that YouTube thread:
He is a war criminal and mass murderer, also a liar, and a pathetic excuse for a human. Listen to all those retarded people clap for him. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on whats for dinner. We are supposed to be a Republic. Fuck Netanyahu piece of shit ass.
Debatecontinuesoverthe president's speech today in Washington. Obama more than once said that the United States will not stand by while Israel is delegitimized. And he sounded forceful. But he remains committed to a Palestinian state that would cut through territory Israel needs to maintain its security from hostile neighbors. Contiguity for Palestine means dividing Israel geographically where there's been no basis in negotiations previously. Israel will be required to relinquish a corridor from Gaza to the West Bank that divides the county on the map. See, "Obama’s ‘Contiguous’ Palestinian State Could ‘Split Israel in Half,’ Says Middle East Expert." That will open up Israel's strategic vulnerability and impede transportation corridors necessary for national defense. It's absurd. Besides, I doubt there's any realistic chance for the old-time "two-state solution." The demand for Palestinian right of return is the dominant theme. The "Nakba" the basis for historical grievance, despite the myths behind it. The administration should be pushing the other way, against the Fatah-Hamas alliance committed to Israel's destruction, and against the Muslim anti-Semitism that's darkened the region like a terminal malignancy. This is why the AIPAC speech is a lost opportunity.
Behind the high-falutin’ expressions of passion for justice over shoot-to-kill, much of the pity-for-Osama lobby is really concerned with expressing its moral superiority over apparently vengeful Americans. Where ‘them’ Yanks still have an attachment to nationalism and war, ‘we’ Europeans are post-nationalist, cosmopolitan, empathetic rather than vengeful, and are far more comfortable with having a man in a wig rather than a man with a gun sort out our moral and political problems.
*****
It is extraordinary, and revealing, how quickly the expression of concern about the use of American force in Pakistan became an expression of values superiority over the American people. The modern chattering classes are so utterly removed from the mass of the population, so profoundly disconnected from ‘ordinary people’ and their ‘ordinary thoughts’, that they effectively see happy Americans as a more alien and unusual thing than Osama bin Laden. Where OBL wins their empathy, American jocks receive only their bile.
I've written a couple of times now on John Yoo's thoughts on the Bin Laden killing. Recall that Yoo argues that President Obama had choices. U.S. forces could have gone in with a much heavier contingent for the primary purpose of capturing Bin Laden. We captured Saddam Hussein, for example. We could have taken Bin Laden as well. And, sure, we now know that Bin Laden's (purported) resistance was the (potentially lethal) fact of a couple of guns within arm's reach, and perhaps a suicide bomber's vest that could have been detonated as the commandos stormed the upper chambers of the compound. But given the administration's failure to close Guantanamo, and its backtracking on civilian trials for al Qaeda's leadership, it's entirely within reason to consider that President Obama frankly didn't want to deal with it. Screw it. Kill the f**ker and be done. The truth is, John Yoo's offered one of the most compelling explanations of the operation yet. And now the folks at Balloon Juice are freakin' out over his hypothesis, chest thumping at how the killing of Bin Laden has allegedly caused conservative heads to explode. See "Only Real Men Torture Folks…" (via Memeorandum and Talking Points Memo). Again, all of this is about claiming credit. The left's hypocrisy on national security is unmatched, and Republicans are going to have an enormous opportunity to clarify the debate in 2012. Indeed, it's not the idiotic dolts at Balloon Juice who represent the long-term progressive stand on this, but folks like Michael Moore. The communist filmmaker was on Piers Morgan's last night gnashing his teeth about how horrible it is that Americans killed Bin Laden. But not for the reasons that John Yoo identifies. No, Moore's just unhappy that U.S. forces would actually kill our foremost enemy. More than unhappy, in fact. He's completely dejected, "The world's a better place without him," Moore says, but "it's not necessarily the way" he would have done it:
Here is the fact of the age: People believe nothing. They think everything is spin and lies. The minute a government says A is true, half the people on Earth know A is a lie. And when people believe nothing, as we know, they will believe anything. We faked the moon landing, there was a second gunman in Dallas, the World Trade Center was blown up in a U.S.-Zionist conspiracy, Hitler grew old in Argentina.
There will always be people who believe conspiracy theories, and with the Internet there will be more. They are impervious to evidence. But people who care about the truth need to be armed with evidence to refute them.
Mr. Obama misunderstands all this. He tells Steve Croft Sunday on Sixty Minutes that showing photos of the dead Osama would be to "spike the football." "We don't trot this stuff out as trophies." Trophies? Who does he think we are?
It's not about pride, it's about proof. "We got him, shot him and immediately threw him in the sea" is not enough. The U.S. government should release all the evidence it has that does not compromise security. Pictures of Osama are said to be gruesome. Then get the least gruesome one and put it out. Release the DNA evidence, incriminating information found in the house, and pictures of the raid. If there was a passport under the mattress, make it public. And let the SEALs tell their story. Allow them, if they are willing and eager, to go on "Nightline," "Frontline" and "60 Minutes." If they cannot be identified or don't wish to be, put a blue dot over their faces, filter their voices, and don't use their names.
All of this should be put in one big package and released to the world. In this way you give the nation and the world data, and a lot to talk about. That talk will crowd out and diminish conspiracy theories and deather denialism.
Americans don't want to spike the ball. They just want to show they crossed the goal line.
A follow up to my essay from Wednesday, "The Editors at the New York Times are Living in Another World." I quoted John Yoo's latest op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, discussed at the clip below with Eliot Spitzer. It gets a little heated toward the end, and that's when Yoo reiterates his thesis: The Obama administration made a political decision to not even attempt a capture of Bin Laden, and this may have deprived the U.S. of valuable intelligence, while also adding more fuel to the hypothesis that reelection considerations were at least as important as national security in White House decision-making on the raid in Abottabad:
