In 2012, former Navy linguist James F. Hitselberger was indicted on two felony counts under the Espionage Act statutes after several classified documents were found in his possession. In 2013, a superseding indictment charged him with another four felony counts. But in the end, Mr. Hitselberger pleaded guilty this year to a single misdemeanor charge […]
Those who are involved (or merely interested) in the field of geospatial intelligence will want to know about a new Army doctrinal publication on the subject. “Geospatial intelligence is the exploitation and analysis of imagery and geospatial information to describe, assess, and visually depict physical features and geographically referenced activities on the earth. Geospatial intelligence […]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released the “2013 Statistical Transparency Report” detailing the frequency of use of various intelligence surveillance authorities and the estimated number of targets affected by the surveillance. While the reported numbers give some rough sense of the scale of intelligence surveillance — civil liberties groups said the estimated […]
By Hans M. Kristensen In December 1963, a shipment of U.S. nuclear bombs arrived at Ghedi Torre Air Base in northern Italy. Today, half a century later, the U.S. Air Force still deploys nuclear bombs at the base. The U.S.-Italian nuclear collaboration was celebrated at the base in January. A placard credited the nuclear “NATO […]
The C-130 Hercules aircraft, which was introduced over half a century ago, is often flown by crew members who are younger than the plane they are flying. And that peculiar arrangement is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, says a new report from the Congressional Research Service. “The C-130 has been the cornerstone of […]
There is too much information that is marked “For Official Use Only” at the Department of Homeland Security, the House Appropriations Committee said in its report on DHS Appropriations for 2015. Efforts to sort out what is really sensitive have “wasted substantial staff resources,” the report said. Therefore, the Committee would require any official who […]
The implications of the conflict in Iraq for U.S. policy were examined in a new report from the Congressional Research Service. See Iraq Crisis and U.S. Policy, June 20, 2014. The CRS report notably includes open source reporting and translations from the DNI Open Source Center. This sort of material had been routinely available to […]
The Secretary of the Army last week issued a directive specifying that retaliating against someone for reporting a crime is itself a crime. “No Soldier may retaliate against a victim, an alleged victim or another member of the Armed Forces based on that individual’s report of a criminal offense,” the new Directive states. See Prohibition […]
Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) devised an amendment to the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill that would earmark $2 million for investigation of intelligence community whistleblower complaints. The amendment was approved by the House of Representatives on June 18. The money was taken from the intelligence community management account and allocated to the IC whistleblowing and source protection directorate […]
An Intelligence Community Directive that prohibited unauthorized contacts with the news media is overbroad and needs to be corrected, said Sen. Ron Wyden last week on the Senate floor. “I will tell you, I am troubled by how sweeping in nature this is,” Senator Wyden said about the Directive, ICD 119, issued last March. (See […]
“The number of unaccompanied alien children arriving in the United States has reached alarming numbers that strain the system put in place over the past decade to handle such cases,” says a new report from the Congressional Research Service. See Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview, June 13, 2014. Other new or newly updated CRS reports […]
People who voluntarily share information with a third party are not entitled to an expectation of privacy concerning that information under the so-called “third-party doctrine” that currently prevails in judicial interpretations of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. The implications of the third-party doctrine are profound, a new report from the Congressional Research Service explains. […]