One of the most heartbreaking problems I’ve faced as CDC director is our nation’s opioid crisis.
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Main news and opinions, selected, compiled, and occasionally commented on by Mike Nova
Saturday, December 17, 2016
News Reviews and Opinions: FOX News: EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end...
News Reviews and Opinions: FOX News: EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end...: FOX News: EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end America's growing opioid epidemic by Thomas Frieden, M.D. Saturday December...
FOX News: EXCLUSIVE: CDC Chief Frieden: How to end America's growing opioid epidemic by Thomas Frieden, M.D.
David Friedman, a longtime friend of the president-elect, is known for making provocative statements about issues in the Mideast.
Japan launched a fresh effort to overcome a deadlock in a territorial dispute with Russia by announcing bilateral economic deals worth $2.5 billion.
Russian special-operations forces have played a pivotal part in the Syrian ground offensive to retake Aleppo, a role shielded by secrecy about their operations there.
The Russian government hit back at allegations the country’s top leadership was behind cyberattacks allegedly designed to influence the U.S. presidential election.
American military personnel in Syria are working to find and destroy advanced Russian weaponry seized by Islamic State extremist fighters when the militants retook the city of Palmyra less than a week ago from Moscow-supported Syrian-regime forces
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The president-elect will inherit an executive branch whose power has ballooned far beyond its constitutional bounds.
Pope Francis celebrated an active 80th birthday, sharing breakfast with eight homeless people before celebrating Mass with cardinals and meeting with Malta’s president.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Osama bin Laden's son Omar was refused entry to Egypt on Saturday, airport sources said, giving no reason why his name was on a list of people banned from the country.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- With Ivanka Trump, the typically minor role of first daughter could get a major makeover....
The government has made prescriptions more accessible as business has rapidly grown, and it may even support exports as a source of revenue.
China to Return Seized U.S. Underwater Drone, Pentagon Saysby Ben Blanchard, Steve Holland / Reuters
(BEIJING/WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.) — China will return an underwater U.S. drone seized by a naval vessel this week in the South China Sea, both countries said on Saturday, but Beijing complained the United States had been “hyping up” the incident.
The drone, known as an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), was taken on Thursday, the first seizure of its kind in recent memory. The Pentagon went public with its complaint after the action and said on Saturday it had secured a deal to get the drone back.
“Through direct engagement with Chinese authorities, we have secured an understanding that the Chinese will return the UUV to the United States,” Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said in a statement.
The incident drew criticism from U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to take a more aggressive approach in dealing with Beijing.
The drone, which the Pentagon said was operating lawfully and was clearly marked as U.S. property, was collecting data about the salinity, temperature and clarity of the water about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, off the Philippines.
It was seized on Thursday just as the USNS Bowditch was about to retrieve it, U.S. officials said.
The Defense Ministry said a Chinese naval vessel discovered a piece of “unidentified equipment,” and checked it to prevent any navigational safety issues before discovering it was a U.S. drone.
“China decided to return it to the U.S. side in an appropriate manner, and China and the U.S. have all along been in communication about it,” the ministry said on its website.
“During this process, the U.S. side’s unilateral and open hyping up is inappropriate, and is not beneficial to the smooth resolution of this issue. We express regret at this,” it added.
Trump, a Republican who takes office on Jan. 20, waded into the dispute on Twitter on Saturday.
“China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters – rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” Trump said in a tweet early on Saturday from his seaside resort club Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, where he plans to spend the holidays.
HEIGHTENED CONCERNS
The drone incident has raised fresh concerns about China’s increased military presence and aggressive posture in the disputed South China Sea, including its militarization of maritime outposts.
New satellite imagery shows China has installed weapons, including anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, on all seven artificial islands it has built in the South China Sea, a U.S. research group said this week.
Without directly saying whether the drone was operating in waters Beijing considers its own, China’s Defense Ministry said U.S. ships and aircraft have for a long period been carrying out surveillance and surveys in “the presence” of Chinese waters.
“China is resolutely opposed to this, and demands the U.S. stops this kind of activity,” it said.
China will remain on alert for these sorts of activities and take necessary steps to deal with them, the ministry said without elaborating.
The Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, earlier cited an unidentified Chinese source as saying they believed the issue would be resolved smoothly.
Trump has previously complained about the South China Sea build-up. He has threatened to declare China a currency manipulator and force changes in U.S.-Chinese trade policy, which he says has led to the greatest theft of American jobs in history.
Trump has also raised questions about whether Washington would stick to its nearly four-decades-old policy of recognizing that Taiwan is part of “one China.”
He irked Beijing by taking a congratulatory phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan after his Nov. 8 election victory. China lodged a diplomatic protest.
The 10-minute telephone call was the first of its kind since U.S. President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of “one China.”
President Barack Obama said on Friday it was fine for Trump to review Washington’s policy toward Taiwan, but he cautioned that a shift could lead to significant consequences in the U.S. relationship with Beijing.
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton and Jonathan Landay in Washington, Josephine Mason and Meng Meng in Beijing; editing by Ian Geoghegan, G Crosse)
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Huffington Post |
Henry Heimlich, Developer Of Anti-Choking Maneuver, Dead At 96
Huffington Post Dr. Henry Heimlich, with Brent Meldrum, 5, and Tanya Brandon, 6. Meldrum used the maneuver to save his friend Brandon after she started choking on a piece of candy. Henry Heimlich, the medical maverick who came up with a maneuver credited with ... Henry Heimlich, inventor of Heimlich maneuver, dies at 96USA TODAY Henry J. Heimlich, creator of anti-choking maneuver, dies at 96NOLA.com Dr. Henry J. Heimlich, Famous for Antichoking Technique, Dies at 96New York Times NPR -Los Angeles Times -BBC News -Bustle all 78 news articles » |
'The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin' author Steven Lee Myers provides insight
Dr. Henry Heimlich invented the Heimlich maneuver in 1974. His technique has saved people from choking across the country. In 1990, he told Larry King Live about the lifesaving maneuver.
The director of national intelligence rejected calls to speed up release of evidence that would show Russia tried to tamper with the U.S. election, saying Friday that they'll finish out their review before making the proof public.
But the DNI's office said it stands by its conclusion that Russia's "senior-most ...
In 1933, George Bernard Shaw wrote the Manchester Guardian to protest the British press’s “blind and reckless” reporting on Russia. “Particularly offensive and ridiculous,” Shaw claimed, was “the revival of the old attempts to represent the condition of Russian workers as one of slavery and starvation, the Five-Year Plan as a failure, the new enterprises as bankrupt and the Communist regime as tottering to its fall.” Nothing could be further from the truth—or so Shaw thought. He had visited Russia two years earlier and “saw nowhere evidence of such economic slavery, privation, unemployment and cynical despair.” British readers, he scolded, should “take every opportunity of informing themselves of the real facts of the situation.”
If Shaw himself had bothered to take off his blinders, he would have discovered that those “real facts” included about 25,000 Ukrainians dying of starvation every day at the same time he wrote these words. Between three and five million Ukrainians and about one-and-a-half million Kazakh peasants died in the first half of 1933 alone. These were all a direct result of Stalin’s ambitious Five-Year Plan, as it was called, to collectivize the nation’s agriculture and make Russia an industrial powerhouse. Ukrainian and Kazak peasants were either killed or enslaved and their farms requisitioned in order to redirect resources to workers in the cities. Yields plummeted, and the remaining peasants were accused of hiding surpluses. Party activists charged with finding those supposed surpluses took the farmers’ seed corn to make their quotas, and before long, there was nothing left to plant, and nothing left to do except wait for death.
When Shaw visited Russia, he saw none of this. Neither did many Soviet writers, most of whom were from the city. Members of various Soviet writers unions were sent into the country to visit model, working farms, and returned with glowing reports of Russian productivity. Some hinted in their work that something was wrong, while others, like Maxim Gorky, welcomed the extermination of the peasants. “You’ll pardon my saying so,” he once remarked, “but the peasant is not yet human…He is our enemy, our enemy.”
One of the few to write openly about the Holodomor, or Terror Famine, was Andrei Platonov (1899-1951). Unlike other writers, Platonov knew actual peasants. A supporter of the 1917 Revolution, Platonov left his budding writing career in 1921 to work land reclamation projects for the government, digging 763 ponds, 331 wells, and draining 2,400 acres of swamplands. In the early 1930s, as a member of the People’s Commissariat of Agriculture, he visited farms and reported on the collectivization effort. His entries in his notebooks were damning: “State Farm no. 22 ‘The Swineheard.’ Building work—25% of the plan has been carried out. There are no nails, iron, timber…milkmaids have been running away, men have been sent after them on horseback and the women have been forced to work. This has led to cases of suicide…Loss of livestock—89-90%.”
His novel, The Foundation Pit (1930), and his plays during this period, The Hurdy-Gurdy (1931) and Fourteen Little Red Huts (1933), capture the surreal horror of Stalin’s collectivists programs, where activists and workers mindlessly repeat Soviet progressive jargon about the bright future of Mother Russia while actual mothers mourn their dead children or contemplate using them as fish bait. All of these works were suppressed and only first published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The latter two plays, plus an unfinished draft, have recently been published by Columbia’s excellent Russian Library Series, with revised and new translations from the long-time Platonov apologist Robert Chandler.
The Hurdy-Gurdy follows two cultural workers who wander around the country visiting district towns with a robot who spews Soviet propaganda, and who play old-fashioned tunes on the hurdy-gurdy to reach “uncollectivized peasant households” and “dekulakize”— or “organize”—them. They are also supposed to sing the praises of Stalin’s “shock workers” who were committed, as the slogan went, to the “Five-Year-Plan-Now-Being-Fulfilled-in-Four.” But the cultural workers don’t really care about collectivization, and neither does the director of the district office, Ignat Nikanorovich Shchoev.
Under Shchoev’s management, the district runs out of food. When the workers try to catch a supply of fish, a huge flock of birds sweeps in and eats the catch. Shchoev turns to a Danish researcher to create a new “scientific” food—“black earth cutlets,” “kasha made from locusts and ants’ eggs,” a dessert of “glue and kvass,” and other items. The entire town is invited to sample the dishes, which they can barely finish before exploding in “collective nausea.” Shchoev, who is snacking on sausage and cheese, commands them to school themselves “in self-control—you are opening a new epoch of radiant food. The whole world is developing, thanks to patience and torment.” Shchoev’s assistant responds that “They stuffed themselves till they burst, the monsters. They’re yelping now…but they’ll get used to it!”
While Platonov claimed to be an atheist, his works are packed with religious allusions, and some critics have speculated that he may have been a covert Christian. In The Hurdy-Gurdy, not only is there an allusion to the plague of Egypt before salvation of the Jews from the oppression of Pharaoh, but to the Last Supper. In the Biblical accounts, God executes judgment on others—the Egyptians in one case and Christ in the other—to redeem his people. In the Eucharist, Christ’s body is the bread, “broken” for us, and the wine is his blood, “shed for the remission of sins.” In The Hurdy-Gurdy, however, it is the peasants who must suffer, who must be broken, for the benefit of those who are supposedly saving them.
Fourteen Little Red Huts follows Johann-Friedrich Bos, a one-hundred-year-old “world-renowned scholar” and “chairman of the League of Nations Commission for the Resolution of the Riddle of the World Economy,” who is visiting the Soviet Union to see the successes of the “second Five-Year Plan” and tell the world of socialism’s superiority.
Bos is based on Shaw, who turned 75 during his visit to the Soviet Union in 1931. Bos, like Shaw, only wants to see the good in socialism. “Where can I see socialism,” he asks almost immediately as he steps off the train. “Show it to me at once. Capitalism irritates me.” Yet unlike Shaw, Bos follows a beautiful local woman who appears by chance on the train platform and goes to live with her in a village by sea. Here, he sees collectivism in all its absurd, gory detail. The play ends with Bos leaving the village after most of its children have died. “I’ll go on my way,” he tells Futilla, “I’m bored of you all with your youth and enthusiasm, your capacity for work, and your faith in the future. You stand at the beginning, but I already know the end. We can’t understand one another.”
Platonov is sometimes called a surrealist because of the jarring juxtaposition of diction and situation in The Foundation Pit and these early plays. His characters speak with cool detachment in scenes depicting the gruesome results of Stalin’s collectivization—a child sleeping on her mother’s corpse or an emaciated mother trying to nurse her dead son.
The truth is, he’s a realist—a realist of the absurd, and one whose work is all the more necessary as the siren song of socialism tickles young ears again.
The post Russia’s Forgotten Anti-Stalinist Playwright appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
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Trump risks damaging intelligence agencies, warns former CIA chief by Julian Borger in Washington
Michael Hayden says disparaging comments about US spies could hurt the moral authority of their leaders
Donald Trump’s public disparagement of US intelligence agencies would have a discouraging effort on the country’s spies and undermine the moral authority of their leaders to send them “into harm’s way”, a former CIA director said on Wednesday
Michael Hayden, who served as both director of the CIA and NSA in the George W Bush administration, entered the growing controversy over the president-elect’s attitude towards the US intelligence community, questioning its conclusion that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee and the CIA’s finding that Moscow had meddled in the presidential election in Trump’s favour.
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Russian president made key decisions in operation seen as revenge for past criticisms by Hillary Clinton, says NBC
US intelligence officials believe that Vladimir Putin was personally involved in hacking during the American election campaign as part of a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, NBC News has claimed.
The Russian president personally instructed how material hacked from US Democrats was leaked and otherwise used, the US television network said, quoting two senior officials with access to this information.
Continue reading...Donald Trump accuses China of 'unpresidented' act over US navy drone by Martin Pengelly and agencies
- President-elect makes spelling error in belligerent tweet
- China says negotiations ongoing and ‘hyping up’ of issue is not helpful
President-elect Donald Trump has risked further inflaming US relations with China, after he used Twitter on Saturday to accuse China of an “unpresidented [sic] act” in its seizing of an unmanned American submarine this week.
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China said an underwater drone it seized off the Philippines would be returned in a “proper way,” and President-elect Donald Trump entered the fray.
Our spy agencies fight each other nonstop, but woe to the pol who provides common cause by insulting them in public
Six weeks before the inauguration, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s budding administration has been thrown into crisis by revelations of clandestine Russian interference in our election. None of the issues is new—if you read my column you knew about them months ago—but Trump’s reaction to them has opened the door to unprecedented conflict in Washington before he even moves into the White House.
Trump has repeatedly pooh-poohed allegations that the Kremlin meddled in the election, dismissing them as foolishness. Such memorably cavalier brush-offs—for instance suggesting in September that the culprit behind the theft of Democratic National Committee’s emails wasn’t Moscow, rather a “400-pound guy” on a bed somewhere—drew guffaws from his supporters but have now landed Trump in serious trouble.
The game-changer came late last week, with a report that the Central Intelligence Agency has assessed that efforts by the Russian intelligence services to influence our election were motivated by a desire in Moscow to throw the election Trump’s way. The Intelligence Community has long considered Wikileaks to be a Kremlin front and by the summer, when that vaunted “privacy organization” was getting down to work depriving Hillary Clinton and the DNC of any privacy they possessed after EmailGate, it was patently obvious to anybody acquainted with Russian spycraft that Julian Assange was doing Vladimir Putin’s bidding. Russian spy agencies can be subtle, but there was nothing subtle about this operation.
There is simply no debate anymore inside the IC whether Moscow employed Wikileaks as a front to disseminate emails which had been purloined by Russian intelligence. American intelligence and our spy-allies possess considerable classified evidence, from multiple sources, that Putin employed disinformation to confuse American voters in 2016.
Read the rest at The Observer…
Filed under: Counterintelligence, Espionage, USG
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There are Kremlin moles among us
In the latest twist in the evolving story of how Moscow and its spies interfered with America’s 2016 election cycle, U.S. intelligence has determined that RVladimir Putin himself was deeply involved in the secret operation to discredit the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.
According to NBC News, our Intelligence Community has “a high level of confidence” that Russia’s president ”personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used.” Putin’s motivation was revenge, according to unnamed senior IC officials, since he despises Clinton, plus the Kremlin sought to create confusion in the United States to make us appear an unreliable ally and an ailing global power.
To anybody acquainted with Putin and his Russia, this is entirely unsurprising. The Russian president grew up in the KGB and long worked in counterintelligence. To his core, Putin is a secret policeman, what Russians call a Chekist—a term worn with pride in the Kremlin. It’s an easy bet that Putin was briefed on this most special intelligence operation daily; it was very likely the first item in his morning briefing from Russia’s spy services, a quotidian event that Putin—unlike our president-elect—takes seriously.
For a former KGB officer, humiliating the hated Americans by disseminating the embarrassing emails of our top politicians is the summit of glee. The takedown of Clinton, Inc.—and no matter the reality, this is unquestionably how it’s being sold, with smiles all around, by Putin’s inner circle—was by any standard a very successful operation. A century hence, it seems likely that Moscow’s spies will rank this achievement among their “greats” like the TRUST operation and the Rosenbergs.
However, some salient facts about this secret Kremlin operation need to be understood. In the first place, there wasn’t much “hacking” going on here. Instead, most of the purloining of emails from top Democrats fell under normal 21st century signals intelligence operations of the kind done by Russia, the United States, and pretty much every technically advanced country on earth. Everybody spies—among adults this isn’t a controversial statement.
Read the rest at The Observer …
Filed under: Counterintelligence, Espionage, Strategy, USG
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Blake Franko
Security, Asia
Are hawks prepared to level with Americans about the potential costs of our commitments?
Are the Russia hawks like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham prepared to level with Americans and “honestly tell them that Americans should die for Kiev and Tbilisi, and not even for Kiev and Tbilisi but to provide them with the privilege to be in NATO on their schedule?” This was the pointed question that Dimitri K. Simes posed at an event at the Newseum yesterday hosted by Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Moderated by Kevin Ryan, the panel featured Fiona Hill from the Brookings Institution, Simon Saradzhyan from the Belfer Center’s “Russia Matters Project” and the president and CEO of the Center for the National Interest, Dimitri K. Simes.
Simes’s question about Kiev and Tbilisi was meant to indicate that America often takes on commitments that it is not necessarily willing to fulfill. Is there a better path forward? Simes started off the discussion by observing that President Bill Clinton was also befuddled by the lingering question of how to improve relations with Moscow. He also expressed optimism that relations between Russia and the United States would improve, due to the fact that “Trump is a dealmaker” and “is not easily intimidated” and would not be hamstrung by stigmas in Washington for wanting to work with Russia. Simes expressed three reasons that Trump may have better luck in deals with Putin than his predecessors.
The first reason was that “democracy promotion is not going to be a priority” in his administration. He explained that this did not mean that Trump would not defend democracies around the world and encourage democratization, but that it would not focus on regime change. Second, he observed that Trump would not press humanitarian interventions. Third, he pointed to NATO expansion.
Simes mentioned that Trump focused a great deal of attention to the issue of NATO burden sharing and the mission of the organization, including the open door policy toward joining the alliance. Simes summed up that if these aspects were addressed, “the most fundamental disagreements would be removed automatically” between the two powers. Simes ended by saying that if Trump sees himself as a dealmaker he must understand the issues facing Russia and what their national interests are, as well as those that are critical to the United States. “If we have a president willing to challenge conventional wisdom, his Russia policy will have a real chance.”
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Donald Trump's candidacy broke long-standing conventions _ and his incoming Cabinet embodies a sharp turn from the outgoing Obama administration
Senior Administration Officials have regularly provided extensive, detailed classified and unclassified briefings to members and staff from both parties on Capitol Hill since this past summer and have continued to do so after Election Day. Last week, the President ordered a full Intelligence Community review of foreign efforts to influence recent Presidential elections – from 2008 to present.
Recently, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has received requests from Members of Congress, several Electors of the Electoral College and the general public for additional information on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that she will go to Baltimore to press for a legally enforceable agreement.
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Russia, it would appear, “hacked” its way into the US election. The Obama administration has pledged some sort of response. That reaction should be guided by a close consideration of international law and two specific questions: What rules did Russia violate? And what lawful measures are available to respond?
The Assumed Facts
The facts are unsettled, and so for the purposes of this posting, I’m going to rely on Max Fisher’s summary in The New York Times: Russian security agencies hacked Democratic National Committee email servers in 2015 and 2016. They also penetrated the private email account of Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign chair, John Podesta. Then, this past summer, “intermediaries linked to the Russian government” supplied emails to Wikileaks and a blog, Guccifer 2.0, which then released the emails, precipitating negative coverage of the Clinton campaign.
Russia’s motives remain unclear. But the CIA has reportedly concluded that the Russian campaign was aimed at supporting Donald Trump’s presidential bid. To date, there is no evidence suggesting that the voting process itself was manipulated.
The Starting Point: The Rules of State Responsibility
International law as it pertains to the Russian campaign hacking properly starts with the draft articles on state responsibility, widely regarded as an authoritative treatment of customary international law on matters relevant to this discussion. The starting premise is simple: A state is responsible for breaches of its international obligations, actually attributable to it under specific rules of attribution. Where it is responsible, the state must remedy it misconduct. That means ceasing its violations, and making full reparations for injuries.
Reparations come in different forms. Restitution – returning the situation to the status quo ante – is a preferred outcome, but not available in circumstances such as a hacked election. Compensation and satisfaction – an acknowledgement of the breach and apology – are available, in principle.
But no one should be holding their breath for Russian remedies. And so injured states – in this case, the US — are permitted to employ countermeasures against the responsible state to induce compliance with these remedy expectations. In exercising countermeasures, the injured state may suspend some international obligations toward the responsible state, but not all. For instance, countermeasures cannot include threat or use of force – the availability of those responses are governed by the UN Charter and jus ad bellum rules.
Moreover, countermeasures must be proportional to the injury suffered, and must be prefaced by certain procedural rules, such as notification to the responsible state. (For more on potential U.S. responses to Russian hacking, see Sean Watt’s post from October.)
Breach of an International Obligation
Given the assumed facts, has Russia violated an international obligation? If so, which ones? There are two obvious candidates, and both stem from the concept of sovereignty.
Non-intervention
One ingredient of sovereignty is the principle of non-intervention. In Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded that, at a minimum, the principle of non-intervention
“forbids all States or groups of States to intervene directly or indirectly in internal or external affairs of other States. A prohibited intervention must accordingly be one bearing on matters in which each State is permitted, by the principle of State sovereignty, to decide freely. One of these is the choice of a political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation of foreign policy.”
In the particular context of the Nicaragua case, the ICJ concluded that prohibited interventions included “methods of coercion,” even when these were short of use of force. Notably, coercion in this context likely means more than direct, physical compulsion. As one authority describes it, “[c]oercion in inter-State relations involves the government of one State compelling the government of another State to think or act in a certain way by applying various kinds of pressure, threats, intimidation or the use of force.” These strictures clearly implicate some forms of covert action. Thus, the influential Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare suggests coercive interference could include manipulation of “elections or of public opinion on the eve of elections, as when online news services are altered in favour of a particular party, false news is spread, or the online services of one party are shut off” (at 45).
The Russian influence operation seems a plausible candidate for exceeding this threshold, depending on how broadly one construes the requirement of “coercion.”
Enforcement Jurisdiction
More than this, there are other, more general strictures on the exercise of state power across borders. Famously, the Permanent Court of International Justice in the SS Lotus matter noted:
“the first and foremost restriction imposed by international law upon a State is that – failing the existence of a permissive rule to the contrary – it may not exercise its power in any form in the territory of another State.”
The exercise of state power is known as “enforcement jurisdiction”, and the prohibition on non-consensual extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction remains a bedrock principle of international law:
“the legal regime applicable to extraterritorial enforcement is quite straightforward. Without the consent of the host State such conduct is absolutely unlawful because it violates that State’s right to respect for its territorial integrity.”
Violation of this standard would certainly extend to a state’s use of physical force on the territory of another state. What actions short of this conduct violate the prohibition on extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction is less clear. For instance, the question of whether international law prohibits spying is unresolved.
And so was Russian hacking of email servers in the United States an improper exercise of enforcement jurisdiction? There is no real clarity on this issue. But in my view, a cyber intrusion that requires the manipulation of computers in a foreign state (through hacking or otherwise) does constitute an exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction. This is not like remote sensing, involving passive sensors located outside the territory of the state. Instead, it involved the transmission of electrical impulses in a manner that changed (and did not simply observe) the physical status quo in a foreign computer system. While it seems that the physical intrusion was minimal, I am not aware of any authority demonstrating that the legality of enforcement jurisdiction depends on transcending some de minimis physical presence. Indeed, to the extent that the hacking violated law where it occurred (the US), this may increase the international legal gravity of the intrusion. (See discussion at p. 80 from my July article in the Virginia Law Review). This seems especially likely where, as here, some international treaties oblige states to prohibit cyber hacking. This is not, in other words, an idiosyncratic local U.S. law.)
Conclusion
In sum, the Russian “election hack” does engage plausible international law issues. But they are not necessarily of an open-shut nature, given the novelty of some of the technological means used. Since much international law stems from state conduct, how the United States and its allies fearing similar Russian influence operations respond may shape norms and future interpretations of the law in this burgeoning area of cyber espionage and intrusion.
Image: Flickr Read on Just Security »
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The United States’ senior intelligence officer has told Congress that new legislation requiring spy agencies to act against alleged Russian covert operations constitutes “micromanagement” of the American Intelligence Community.
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It would be extremely unusual and highly uncharacteristic of Russian spy agencies if they did not target the 2016 US presidential election. To not have done so would mean that they did not do their job.
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A reported discord between British and German intelligence services, which began in 2014, allegedly persists and now constitutes the “biggest rift between [the] secret services” of the two countries “since World War II”. 
White House suggests Putin was involved in US hackingby In Homeland Security Staff
The Obama administration suggested Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the hacking of Democratic officials' email accounts in the run-up to the presidential election.
If Democrats ever want to regain their status of helping middle-class voters, they need to go into their communities and really speak to them, not at them.
CNBC |
US to disclose estimate of number of Americans under surveillance
CNBC ... important to informed debate on Section 702 in the next Congress— and, without it, even those of us inclined to support reauthorization would have reason for concern," said the letter signed by 11 lawmakers, all members of the House Judiciary ... Feds to reveal how many Americans are under digital surveillanceThe Week Magazine How Much Does The Government Spy On Us? US Intelligence Officials To Announce Extent Of SurveillanceInternational Business Times Thank Snowden? US to Reveal Numbers of Americans Affected by SurveillanceReason (blog) Sputnik International -International Business Times UK all 7 news articles » |
Daily Beast |
Monica Crowley, Fox News Personality, to Join Trumps National Security Council
Daily Beast ... who currently serves as the U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications. Rhodes was one of Obama's the most influential staff members and had a critical hand in shaping the administration's global security policies and then ... |
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Christian Science Monitor |
Who is Monica Crowley, Trump's latest national security team addition?
Christian Science Monitor He is the "single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from POTUS himself," says The New York Times. Indeed, Rhodes had "a critical hand in shaping the administration's global security policies and then selling those policies to ... Monica Crowley, Fox News Personality, Joins Trump National ...Daily Beast Fox News Terminates Monica Crowley's Contract as She Reportedly ...Mediaite Fox News' Monica Crowley reportedly joining the Trump administrationTheBlaze.com The Hill -Washington Times all 65 news articles » |
C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidenceby By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The conclusion that Russia intervened in the election to help Donald J. Trump was based on what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence, which is often the most intelligence analysts have at their disposal.
AOL News |
FBI backs CIA's assessment of Russia's 2016 election hack
AOL News On the heels of the leak of the CIA's secret report that Russia attempted to meddle in American elections, a major question was how many in the intelligence community agreed with the CIA's conclusions. Now, surprisingly and following criticism, FBI ... CIA director: FBI and CIA find 'strong consensus' that Russian hacks were intended to help Trump win electionLos Angeles Times FBI backs CIA conclusion on Russian hacking motive, says Brennan in messagePBS NewsHour Clinton blames FBI director & Russia for her defeatRT AlterNet -CBS News -BBC News -NBCNews.com all 1,963 news articles » |
USA TODAY |
FBI accepts CIA conclusion that Russians hacked to help Trump
USA TODAY WASHINGTON —The FBI is now backing the CIA's assessment that Russian hackers sought in part to tilt the election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump when they breached American political institutions resulting in the theft of a trove of sensitive ... FBI Agrees With CIA: Russia Was Trying To Help Trump Win ElectionSlate Magazine (blog) FBI and CIA now agree that Russia hacked to help Trump winThe Verge Podesta: Something Is Rotten At The FBIHartford Courant NPR -Washington Post -Mintpress News (blog) -NBCNews.com all 511 news articles » |
Huffington Post |
FBI Now Backs CIA Assessment That Russia Deliberately Tipped The Election In Favor Of Trump
Huffington Post The FBI, which previously told lawmakers it could not be sure of the motive behind the Russian cyberattack, now agrees with the CIA assessment that Moscow intended to boost Trump's chance of winning, The Washington Post reported on Friday. CIA director: FBI and CIA find 'strong consensus' that Russian hacks were intended to help Trump win electionLos Angeles Times US hacking claims: Clinton blames Russia and FBI boss for lossBBC News FBI backs CIA conclusion on Russian hacking motive, says Brennan in messagePBS NewsHour Chicago Tribune -CBS News -PEOPLE.com all 1,456 news articles » |
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House Intel Chair 'Alarmed' FBI Agrees With CIA On Russian Election Interference
Daily Caller The head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is “alarmed” the FBIconcurred with the CIA's assessment regarding Russia's alleged interference in the presidential election without informing Congress. The CIA has not issued any public ... and more » |
Hartford Courant |
Podesta: Something Is Rotten At The FBI
Hartford Courant The more we learn about the Russian plot to sabotage Hillary Clinton's campaign and elect Donald Trump, and the failure of the FBI to adequately respond, the more shocking it gets. The former acting director of the CIA has called the Russian ... Podesta: 'Something is deeply broken at the FBI'The Hill John Podesta hits FBI over Russian hackingCBS News Podesta's Scathing Message for the FBITownhall CNN -Politico -ABC10.com -Washington Post all 45 news articles » |
December 17, 2016, 11:34 AM (IDT)
A Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Bakr Saturday reported a new deal to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas that was stalled Friday. Speaking from Aleppo, he said the deal comprised an evacuation from the two Shi'ite villages besieged by rebels, the evacuation of wounded people from two towns besieged by pro-government forces near the Lebanese border, and the full evacuation of rebel-held eastern Aleppo.
December 17, 2016, 8:44 PM (IDT)
China’s ministry of defense Saturday promised to return a US Navy underwater drone in an “appropriate” manner after its seizure of the vehicle in the South China Sea sparked a diplomatic row with Washington. The promise came in a post on Beijing’s Welbo social media. President-elect Donald Trump slammed the theft in a Twitter message Saturday: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters -- rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,”
December 17, 2016, 10:04 PM (IDT)
Gaza's Islamic Hamas rulers issued one report after another on the assassination of Moham Al Zoari, 49, an aviation engineer and drone expert, in Tunisia Thursday, claiming he was one of their members. They asserted that the only agency that would benefit from the hit is “the Zionist enemy” and later named the Mosad,
It was claimed that Al-Zoari, who was shot in a car outside his home in Sfax, had for the past ten years run the Hamas program for developing explosives-bearing drones for use against Israel.
It was claimed that Al-Zoari, who was shot in a car outside his home in Sfax, had for the past ten years run the Hamas program for developing explosives-bearing drones for use against Israel.
The enthusiasm with which the Palestinian Islamists seized on Al-Zoari’s death suggested an opportunistic bid to propagandize their military capabilities.
The Tunisian aviation expert did in fact work for Hamas but that was only years ago – not of late. He had turned to hiring out his services as an aviation and drone development expert to Middle East clients that included Syrians, Iranians, Hizballah and Hamas.
According to DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources, Al-Zoari’s assassination was probably motivated by activities more recent than his work for Hamas. He was suspected of using his private flying club to train would-be drone operators belonging to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which maintains bases in southern Tunisia. Therefore the field is wide open for pinning down the motive for his assassination, as the Tunisian authorities indicated Saturday.
Politico |
FBI backs CIA findings that Russia tried to help Trump win election
Politico The message comes on the heels of a Post report last week that the FBI differed with the CIA o Russia's motivation in launching a series of cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and other ... Senate Homeland chair: I hope Trump can stop Russia from trying to destabilize Western democraciesCNBC all 396 news articles » |
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Los Angeles Times |
CIA director: FBI and CIA find 'strong consensus' that Russian hacks were intended to help Trump win election
Los Angeles Times There is "strong consensus" among U.S. intelligence services that Russia orchestrated hacks and online leaks in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, the head of the CIA told agency employees in a message Friday. FBI Director James B. Comey ... FBI chief backs CIA's conclusion Russia interfered with electionNew York Post The Proof Is Not In The PutinDaily Caller FBI, James Clapper back CIA, say Russia interfered in U.S. election to help TrumpWashington Times Baltimore Sun -Daily Mail -NBCNews.com -NPR all 1,440 news articles » |
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