In a major speech on US national security, the President signaled that some wartime authorities will not be withdrawn. Continue reading…    

In a rare public appearance, a senior intelligence official who has worked on the front lines of securing Defense Departments computer networks said it would be “almost immoral” for the DOD to focus on protecting itself and not apply that expertise to the commercial sector. Continue reading…    

My op-ed in today’s New York Times looks at a decade of secret government surveillance and why we’re still powerless against it.

  Why is the government pressing so hard to find leaks of classified information? Because it can. More here.

Have a bunch of Silicon Valley computer geeks figured out how to stop terrorists?

No one asks, “Where were you on 9/10?” and most people don’t remember. It’s only in hindsight that the details of a thoroughly ordinary day seem so remarkable.

Before a team of elite Navy forces stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, they and senior US officials had closely studied a digital mock-up of the facility and even a physical miniature, able to be laid out on a table. It showed them the intelligence community’s best guess about what Bin Laden’s hiding [...]

A draft indictment against former NSA official Thomas Drake, which was never filed, shows that the government contemplated prosecuting him for a range of crimes, including conspiracy. But many of the most serious charges were dropped. Why? And what does it tell us about the Obama administration’s ongoing campaign to staunch leaks of classified information? [...]

I’ve long known that, on many important national security decisions, former president George W. Bush wasn’t in the driver’s seat. But I was shocked to discover that at one of the most critical points of his presidency, Bush wasn’t even in the car. Here’s my review of Bush’s shocking admission, in his new memoir, about [...]

The New York Times review is in today’s paper. Eric Lichtblau, no stranger to the opaque world of surveillance, gave it strong praise:

“it uses smart technical analysis and crisp writing to put the reader inside the room with the watchers and to help better understand the mind-set that gave rise to the modern surveillance state.”

“At its best ‘The Watchers’ provides an insightful glimpse into how Washington works and how ideas are marketed and sold in the back rooms of power, whether the product being peddled is widgets or a radical model for intelligence gathering.”