They’re coming to take the waters: Mexican federal agents have arrested four Iraqis trying to sneak into the United States without proper documents, the government said Monday. […] Many undocumented Iraqi nationals have been captured in Mexico en route to the U.S. border. None has been found to have had any links to terrorism.

William Arkin points out an interesting set of coincidences: The National Security Agency is in the process of building a new warning hub and data warehouse in the Denver area, realigning much of its workforce from Ft. Meade, Maryland to Colorado. On the surface, the NSA move seems to be a management and cost cutting…

Reuters opens the back door (draft) – (thanks E.D.):   The U.S. Army has forced about 50,000 soldiers to continue serving after their voluntary stints ended under a policy called “stop-loss,” but while some dispute its fairness, court challenges have fallen flat.   The policy applies to soldiers in units due to deploy for the…

DOJ PAO explains what all the fuss is about.

My Weekly Standard article is up. Thanks Steve, R, C, and of course WK. Pre-emptive note to the CF community: Yes, if this were going to the IJDE  it would read a lot differently. Consider who the average WS reader is. I’m on the HTCIA listserv if you want to discuss technology/technique.

I spent a brief but memorable time in West Texas many years ago. Unlike a lot of my cohorts I never made a weekend trip south of the border; in part because I’m not all that interested in donkey shows, and because I had a bad experience with tequila once that haunts me to this…

In case I needed to paint a bolder and more colorful picture of what one can find on captured media . . . from crypto/privacy guru Bruce Schneier in Wired:   Some years ago, I left my laptop computer on a train from Washington to New York. Replacing the computer was expensive, but at the…

Computerworld’s EiC weighs in on a COMPUSEC issue: Computerworld‘s Jaikumar Vijayan reported that the DHS is spending $1.24 million on a project designed to improve the security of open-source software (“DHS Funds Effort to Find Flaws in Open-source,” Jan. 16). The money is being paid to Stanford University, Symantec and source-code analysis vendor Coverity to…

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, yesterday said that four British diplomats accused of espionage in Moscow should not be expelled, as their replacements might be cleverer than they were and harder to catch.

Part two of the CNSN story on how NSA deals with percieved malcontents here. Sad.

It may have been the delirium of being woken up several times in the night by a crying newborn, or it might have been just normal run-of-the-mill delirium, but if I’m not mistaken Matt Lauer started off the 07:00 hour of the Today Show with a line about the Administration playing the “name game” with…

CQ points out that NSA isn’t the only place where it pays to keep your pie hole closed: The FBI’s former top agent in Panama carried on an affair with a confidential informant that left him open to blackmail by “a hostile foreign intelligence agency,” according to his former deputy, who has filed a discrimination…

. . . or a fox? In the first part of a two-part series of stories on IC retaliation against employees, Cyber Cast News Service lays out a compelling case for why it is better for one’s career – not to mention their health – to just go along and get along: Five current and…

At first glance one is tempted to say, “Well, at least he’s being honest.” After a few moments of reflection it hits me, “Yeah, but it’s the honesty of a fool.” I may be wrong, but I’d bet good money that Mr. Stein not only knows nothing about the military or our national security apparatus;…

. . . is no good if you chose to ignore it, or, “Why it helps to know what the **** you’re doing.” In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm’s likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of…