On Monday at the Center for Strategic & International Studies' Global Security Forum, John Brennan, Director of the US' Central Intelligence Agency, spoke about the recent bombings in Paris. In what many commentators took as a reference to Edward Snowden, but could instead refer to the Church Committee, Brennan predicted that finding the attackers will be more difficult than it would have been, had intelligence services been left unchecked:
In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand-wringing over the government's role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that are taken that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging.
I do hope that this is going to be a wake-up call particularly in areas of Europe where I think there has been a misrepresentation of what the intelligence security services are doing by some quarters that are designed to undercut those capabilities.
[...]
There are a lot of technological capabilities that are available right now that make it exceptionally difficult both technically as well as legally for intelligence security services to have insight that they need to uncover it.
Brennan's complete remarks are available in video via C-SPAN.
[Additional coverage after the break]
(Score: 3, Informative) by fritsd on Wednesday November 18 2015, @06:50PM
Well, whatever Obama says, but the director of Abrams tanks-R-us must surely be very happy with his profit these last few years:
some 40-odd to one side...
ISIS Captures Hundreds of US Vehicles and Tanks in Ramadi from Iraqis [military.com]
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Iraqi-army-losing-Abrams-tanks-so-easily [quora.com]
some 170-odd to the other side ...
US Selling Another 170 M-1 Abrams Tanks To Iraq After ISIS Captured 40 Last Summer [zerohedge.com]
Translation: Daesh is very happy with their tanks, and would like to procure some more.
Now I don't know much about tanks, but apparently these are the most modern ones in the world.
What's next, sell some to the Wahabbi's in Saudi Arabia to use after their weakening autocracy has collapsed?
Military-industrial complex >> Obama.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday November 19 2015, @08:16AM
Hmm. Does bring to mind that article awhile back where the tank factory was building a successor to the Abrams and the Army was all, "The hell are you talking about? Our tanks are fine. We don't need any new ones."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"