Posts Tagged ‘Intelligence’

 

Hacking the Bad Guys

The United States is fighting a new kind of war, but the first shots were fired a generation ago. Check out my feature story in Washingtonian about the rise of cyber security in the U.S. government, told through the tales of two key actors.

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The Cyberwar Plan

A 2007 order by President Bush to launch a cyberattack on insurgents in Iraq played a more important role than is generally recognized in changing the course of the war. The order was a harbinger of things to come: Digital weapons are an increasingly important part of warfare. Read the full story in National Journal.

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Pentagon sharing classified cyber threat intelligence with companies

In response to an unprecedented wave of attacks on the Defense Department’s computer networks, and possible theft of information about U.S. weapons systems by foreign governments, the Pentagon has quietly begun sharing classified intelligence about hackers and online threats with the country’s biggest defense contractors. The new intelligence partnership, which has not been previously reported, […]

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Hacking the Hill

The cover story of today’s National Journal features a narrative about an unidentified hacker (or perhaps hackers) who compromised the computers of eight members of Congress and seven committees in the House of Representatives. Some members publicly blame China for the incident, and one calls it a case of “overseas espionage.” The story shows how […]

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Intel Officials Make Their Case

Senior officials are making their case that the two Mikes–McConnell and Hayden–should stay at the helm of the intelligence community.

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Executive Orders Offer ‘Quick Fix’ On Torture

Calls are coming in for President-elect Obama to take quick and decisive action on interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects.

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A Matter of Opinions

Somewhere on the fifth floor of an immense federal office building in downtown Washington is a filing cabinet, or perhaps a computer hard drive, that holds a set of documents that the next president and his lawyers will want to read very, very carefully. Read the story here in National Journal.

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Surveillance Standoff

In the old days, everyone was linked to a lug nut, and Jim Kallstrom liked it that way. It was 1985, a simpler time for a cop like Kallstrom, who was in charge of setting telephone wiretaps on suspected drug dealers and mobsters for the FBI’s New York City field office. In New York, Kallstrom’s […]

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Iran Estimate: Debate Persists

On December 3, 2007, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell declassified a set of key judgments from a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon. The judgments may have contained some good news — namely, “that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” — but few in the upper […]

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The Other About-Face on Iran

In releasing a bombshell about Iran’s nuclear program, intelligence director Mike McConnell reversed a vow of secrecy. But he probably had no choice. “You will be disappointed,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told a gathering of journalists in Washington on November 13. U.S. spy agencies were putting the finishing touches on a National […]

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