NATO News and Video – FOX News Topics – FOXNews.com

Posted on by

NATO Remains Deadlocked on Helping Turkey

Washington's effort to build a coalition for war against Iraq hit more resistance Tuesday from NATO and beyond, with allies balking and China adding its voice to calls for bolstered U.N. arms inspections.A second day of heated negotiations failed to end one of the worst crises in NATO's 53-year history: a split triggered when France, Germany and Belgium blocked U.S. plans to defend Turkey in a possible new Persian Gulf war.After behind-the-scene talks throughout the day, ambassadors from the 19 NATO countries met for only 20 minutes Tuesday evening before ending the session. Talks were to resume Wednesday morning. The 15 other alliance members support the United States."Right now we do not have a conclusion," NATO spokesman Yves Brodeur told reporters."There are a number of options that have been discussed," Brodeur said without elaborating. "Consultations between capitals" will continue through the night "to try and find common ground," he said.The division in the alliance also threat...

Read More

See more here:

NATO News and Video - FOX News Topics - FOXNews.com

NATO exercise scenario: Naval response to invasion of allied country

Posted on by

Stars and Stripes

Published: April 29, 2014

NAPLES, Italy A NATO exercise beginning this week in Spain will imagine a naval response to the invasion of an allied country.

Dubbed Trident Jaguar, the command post exercise involves staff officers and commanders at the headquarters level and will certify the maritime component of the NATO Response Force, the alliances fast-reaction force.

A pair of NATO tasks forces Naval Striking Force NATO out of Naples and NATO Rapid Deployable Corps-Spain will come together for the exercise, which runs May 2-16 near Menorca in Spains Balearic islands. The Navy command ship USS Mount Whitney, based in Naples, will participate in the exercise.

A NATO official, speaking on background because he was unauthorized to talk about the exercise, said the event is part of regular certifications for the NATO Response Force and had been planned long before events in Ukraine, where Russias annexing of the Crimea peninsula and agitation in the east has caused particular worries to NATO members in eastern Europe and the Baltics.

news@stripes.com

Read the rest here:

NATO exercise scenario: Naval response to invasion of allied country

New water records show NSA Utah Data Center likely behind schedule

Posted on by

New water records finally released to the Salt Lake Tribune appear to confirm that the National Security Agency's new data storage facility in Bluffdale, Utah, may not be fully operational.

Reporter compelled Bluffdale to provide data on Utah Data Center's water usage.

The data shows that since July 2013, the facility used 6.2 million gallons of water in a month, the highest single month in more than two years of data. For that, the NSA paid $28,596 monthly to the City of Bluffdale, the minimum bill amount.

Under the two entities water contract, that minimum bill jumped to $31,692 as of 2014. However, since July 2013, the monthly water usage fell, rose, and fell again in 2014, reaching a low point of 2.8 million gallons as of February 2014 (the most recent data point).

In October 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Utah Data Center had experienced 10 [electrical] meltdowns in the past 13 months. The paper added that the Utah site continuously draws 65 megawatts of power, which could power a small city of at least 20,000. Bluffdale itself is a small city of 8,000 people, located just south of Salt Lake City. It is also the headquarters of the Apostolic United Brethren, a Mormon fundamentalist group.

The NSA did not respond to Ars repeated requests to find out whether the facility is operational.

The water is believed to be used to cool the massive data center the NSA has been building at the site. In order to accommodate the NSAs water needs, the Tribune reports:

Bluffdale built a $3 million water-delivery system for the center. To ensure it would be able to repay the bond, the city required minimum monthly paymentscalled take or payfrom the NSA. But the contract assumes the NSA will exceed those minimums, at which point Bluffdale begins charging the NSA at a rate that currently amounts to $2.05 per 1,000 gallons.

The version of the contract between the NSA and Bluffdale released by the city redacts the planned amounts of the minimum payments and the Utah Data Centers projected water usage. Its unclear how much more water the NSA could receive with the minimum payment.

When the originalwater records request was denied by the city, the rulingcited legal advice from David Sherman, the associate director for policy and records at the NSA.

Read this article:

New water records show NSA Utah Data Center likely behind schedule

Posted in NSA

NSA will sit on security vulnerabilities because of terrorism

Posted on by

THE UNITED STATES National Security Agency (NSA) has advised the American people that although it knows that telling them about security issues is in the public interest, it will not always do that.

Following the exposure of the Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL, the NSA explained its stance via the White House blog, sort of, and revealed that each security vulnerability that comes its way is assessed on a range of merits and will only be disclosed depending on its risk assessment.

White House cybersecurity coordinator Michael Daniel penned the blog post and explained the position. He said that if there is a chance of the US being exploited by terrorists or other opponents following disclosure then the NSA will not disclose the threat.

"There are legitimate pros and cons to the decision to disclose, and the trade-offs between prompt disclosure and withholding knowledge of some vulnerabilities for a limited time can have significant consequences," he said.

"Disclosing a vulnerability can mean that we forego an opportunity to collect crucial intelligence that could thwart a terrorist attack, stop the theft of our nation's intellectual property, or even discover more dangerous vulnerabilities that are being used by hackers or other adversaries to exploit our networks."

Daniel said that stockpiling vulnerabilities at the expense of the American people is not in the "national security interest", but it does appear that there is an element of that.

"Building up a huge stockpile of undisclosed vulnerabilities while leaving the internet vulnerable and the American people unprotected would not be in our national security interest. But that is not the same as arguing that we should completely forgo this tool as a way to conduct intelligence collection, and better protect our country in the long-run," he added.

"Weighing these tradeoffs is not easy, and so we have established principles to guide agency decision-making in this area."

Daniel also took the time to repeat the NSA position that it knew nothing of the infamous Heartbleed vulnerability, explained in the video below, before it hit the headlines earlier this month.

Read this article:

NSA will sit on security vulnerabilities because of terrorism

Posted in NSA

NSA Throwdown: John Oliver v. 60 Minutes

Posted on by

Politics National Security

In the debut episode Sunday of his new HBO show Last Week Tonight, Daily Show alum John Oliver grilled former National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander about the spy agencys controversial surveillance programs. Oliver won praise for being remarkably tough in the segment, especially for a comedian, but it isnt the first time Alexander sat down for a nationally-televised interview.

In December last year, Alexander granted unprecedented access to the CBS News program 60 Minutes, including an extensive interview with the top spook himself. The 60 Minutes segment on the NSA scored extraordinary access into a notoriously secretive organization but at perhaps too high a cost. The segment was panned for being remarkably easy on the agency, especially for a venerated investigative news program.

TIME wanted to see how tough-for-a-comedian stacked up against easy-for-a-venerated-news-program. So we did a completely unscientific, utterly subjective match up to help weigh the two interviews against one another. (Full disclosure: TIME is currently owned by Time Warner, the same parent company that owns HBO, though that will change in the coming months.)

Behold, the comedian-journalist throwdown of the century (or the week, or the day, anyway): John Oliver v. 60 Minutes.

1. On the reach of the NSAs programs.

Among the low points of 60 Minutes correspondent John Millers interview with Alexander was when Miller asks if the NSAs phone records collection constitutes spying on Americans and basically answers his own question. You dont hear the call? Miller says, offering Alexander his answer. You dont hear the call, Alexander repeats, to the surprise of no one. Miller didnt see the point in pressing the issue any further. And while Alexanders answers were not strictly untrue as a logistical matter, the NSAs collection of phone metadata, including call duration, timestamp, and phone numbers, is not trivial, which John Oliver proves with one piercing retort.

But thats not nothing. Thats significant information. Otherwise you wouldnt want it.

Point Oliver

2. On the status of NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

More:

NSA Throwdown: John Oliver v. 60 Minutes

Posted in NSA

Justices suggest public employees' testimony is protected

Posted on by

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said the Alabama Education Association is currently paying Edward Lane's lawyers.

WASHINGTON - Government employees who testify about public corruption are protected by the First Amendment, several Supreme Court justices suggested Monday.

During oral arguments in a freedom-of-speech case out of Alabama, several justices challenged the notion that public employees who testify truthfully about an issue of significant public concern aren't shielded from retaliation by the First Amendment.

"What kind of message are we giving when we're telling employees, you're subpoenaed in a trial, go and tell a falsehood because otherwise you can be fired?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked attorneys in the case.

The Fifth Amendment protects state employees against self-incrimination on the witness stand, but "it doesn't protect the department he works for from being incriminated," Chief Justice John Roberts said.

The case involves an employee at Central Alabama Community College whose testimony helped convict former Alabama state representative Sue Schmitz of corruption-related charges. The employee, Edward Lane of Ashville, was fired after he testified at Schmitz's first trial in 2008.

Before Lane gets a chance to prove in court his firing was retaliatory, the Supreme Court must decide if his testimony is protected speech under the First Amendment.

Lane, who attended Monday's arguments, was surprised that's even in doubt.

"I thought for sure that being able to go testify truthfully in court that I should be protected," he said in an interview on the Supreme Court steps after Monday's arguments. "And to find out (the other side) actually thinks that is not the case - that just blows me over."

Steve Franks, former president of the two-year college, says Lane's testimony wasn't protected by the First Amendment. His attorney, Mark Waggoner of Birmingham, argued Monday that Lane's testimony was based on information he gleaned only from his job and that he was testifying as a state employee, not a regular citizen.

Read this article:

Justices suggest public employees' testimony is protected

Court may let cops search smartphones

Posted on by

Others say there must be a different standard because of the sheer amount of data on and available through cellphones. In February, for instance, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals suppressed evidence found on the phone of a high school student who was arrested on charges of causing a disturbance on a school bus. "Searching a person's cellphone," the court said, "is like searching his home desk, computer, bank vault and medicine cabinet all at once."

The justices are not always savvy about technology. At last week's argument over whether an Internet streaming service is lawful, Justice Antonin Scalia seemed to think HBO is a broadcast rather than a cable channel.

Read More IRS to face the Supreme Court over summons power

But the justices can be sensitive to the implications of new technology for privacy rights, especially their own. Things did not go well for the Justice Department after one of its lawyers said at a 2011 argument that the F.B.I. was free to place GPS devices on the justices' cars. The government lost the case, against a drug dealer it had tracked for a month, by a 9-to-0 vote.

Similarly, in 2001, the court limited the use of thermal-imaging devices to peer into homes. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, said, "It would be foolish to contend that the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment has been entirely unaffected by the advance of technology."

The problem in the thermal-imaging case, he wrote, was that the devices could detect not only heat lamps used to grow marijuana but also "at what hour each night the lady of the house takes her daily sauna and bath."

Searches of phones may give rise to a similar protective reaction. "It's a technology that all the justices will understand," Professor Kerr said. "They all have cellphones."

But they may not know how much information such phones can contain, including call records, messages, Internet browsing records, calendars, books, diaries, photographs and videos, to say nothing of applications that connect to financial, medical and travel records.

Adam M. Gershowitz, a professor at William & Mary Law School, noted that his iPhone tracked and stored his movements. "I just looked," he said, "and my phone shows that I arrived at work yesterday at 8:56 a.m." It also showed where and when he had lunch.

The first case to be argued Tuesday, Riley v. California, No. 13-132, arose from the arrest of David L. Riley, who was pulled over in 2009 in San Diego for having an expired registration. The police found loaded guns in his car and, on inspecting Mr. Riley's smartphone, entries they associated with a street gang.

See the rest here:

Court may let cops search smartphones

Supreme Court to hear case on police searches of cellphones

Posted on by

WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court will hear two cases regarding whether police searches of cellphones should require a warrant to avoid violating the Fourth Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment prohibits law enforcement and the government from engaging in "unreasonable searches and seizures" but the Justice Department is trying to exploit an old loophole that allows a warrantless search to prevent the destruction of evidence.

The cases are among several that have tested the Constitution in the digital age. The first case, which is being heard on Tuesday, is Riley v. California. When David L. Riley was pulled over for expired registration in San Diego in 2009, police found guns in his vehicle and searched his smartphone, which contained evidence linking him to a street gang. He was arrested and convicted for attempted murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

In its Supreme Court brief, California claims information on cellphones "is not different in kind from wallets, address books, personal papers and other items that have long been subject to examination."

However, many argue now that smartphones carry troves of personal data including communications, banking information, health information and access to a person's social media, it needs to be protected as that information would under the Fourth Amendment.

The original judge in the second case the court will hear, United States v. Wurie, agreed with that sentiment when he threw out the evidence collected from Brima Wurie's cellphone after his call logs led to an arrest on drug and gun charges.

"Today, many Americans store their most personal papers and effects in electronic format on a cellphone, carried on the person," Judge Norman H. Stahl wrote for a divided three-judge panel.

Riley's lawyers say the solution to the police's problem is as simple as requiring them to put the phone in airplane mode while they wait for a warrant or to disrupt the signal with Faraday bags to prevent wiping.

See the original post:

Supreme Court to hear case on police searches of cellphones

Weighing The Risks Of Warrantless Phone Searches During Arrests

Posted on by

hide captionThe Supreme Court is hearing arguments in two cases over whether law enforcement can search cellphones obtained at an arrest without a warrant.

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in two cases over whether law enforcement can search cellphones obtained at an arrest without a warrant.

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Tuesday in two cases testing whether police can search cellphones without a warrant at the time of an arrest, be it for a traffic violation or for a felony.

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches to require that police obtain a search warrant from a neutral judge upon a showing that there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. The warrant is to specify where the search will be conducted and the evidence being sought.

There are, however, exceptions to the warrant requirement.

The court has long allowed police to search people without a warrant at the time of their arrest. But as privacy advocate Andrew Pincus points out, until very recently, those searches were self-limiting, meaning they were limited by the amount of information an individual could carry on his person.

Now, however, because cellphones can store so much information, a person can carry more than any one of the Founding Fathers had amassed in a lifetime.

"The Library of Congress' entire collection of James Madison's papers is 72,000 pages," Pincus observes, adding, "he couldn't have carried them. They would have weighed 675 pounds." And, says Pincus, today's cellphones carry 100 times that much information.

Indeed, the iPhone 5 in its smallest storage version keeps 800 million words of text, Pincus says. That's enough to fill more than a football field's length of books, or over 8,000 photos, 260,000 private voice mails and hundreds of home videos.

"It's misleading to even think of them as phones," says George Washington University professor Orin Kerr, an expert on technology and the law. They are "general purpose computers" that have a bunch of apps, one of which is the telephone function.

Read the original post:

Weighing The Risks Of Warrantless Phone Searches During Arrests

Supreme Court Gun Carry Rights; Drake v. Jerejian, Pending petition – Video

Posted on by


Supreme Court Gun Carry Rights; Drake v. Jerejian, Pending petition
Drake v. Jerejian, Pending petition [NEW TIME] Issue: (1) Whether the Second Amendment secures a right to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense; and (2) whether state officials violate...

By: Hawaii Volcano Squad

See the original post:

Supreme Court Gun Carry Rights; Drake v. Jerejian, Pending petition - Video

Judge Won't Stop Jason Patric from Using Son's Name for Advocacy Purposes

Posted on by

Jemal Countess/Getty Images

Jason Patric

On Monday, Jason Patric prevailed in what is likely a first-of-its-kind legal dispute. The actor's ex-girlfriend Danielle Schreiber demanded a restraining order that would have prevented Patric from using their son's name for "Stand Up for Gus," an advocacy outfit that raises awareness of parental alienation. But a Los Angeles judge decided that to stop Patric from doing things like tweeting Gus' name would be a prior restraint under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

STORY:Jason Patric's Sperm Spawns First Amendment Battle

How the issue got to such a ruling is a twofold story.

First, Patric and Schreiber have been fighting over custody of their four-year-old son, who was born through artificial insemination. Thanks to California law, which grants the mother full custody unless there is a written agreement establishing parental rights before conception, a judge has denied The Lost Boys star access to his son. So as the custody battle heads to an appeals court next month, Gus can be considered in some respects a legal stranger to his father.

Second, in response to the situation, Patric started "Stand Up for Gus" and has been promoting it through media interviews, at fundraising events, on Twitter and on Facebook. Schreiber sought a restraining order preventing Patrric from using the childs name and likeness for alleged commercial purposes without her permission. Usually, celebrities lean upon laws protecting one's likeness to prevent others from exploiting their fame, but in this instance -- and this is why this sort of situation hasn't popped up before -- Patric was using his fame and the name of his in vitro son to promote his cause.

Schreiber's attorney,Patty Glaser, insisted the child's "exploitation" was at stake, while Patric's attorney,Lawrence Iser,focused the judge's attention on the First Amendment. "Our country is founded upon the fundamental rights to speak freely and petition for causes, and the censorship sought by Ms. Schreiber is contrary to those fundamental values," said Iser.

STORY:California Sperm Donor Rights Bill Stalls Despite Actor Jason Patric's Impassioned Plea

At a hearing on Monday, Judge Stephen Moloney agreed that to grant a restraining order would mean a prior restraint. This doesn't necessarily foreclose Schreiber's legal recourse for any improper statements by Patric after they are made, but the judge doesn't see the need to create something that would be tantamount to a gag.

Follow this link:

Judge Won't Stop Jason Patric from Using Son's Name for Advocacy Purposes