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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday November 18 2015, @05:02PM   Printer-friendly

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]


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @03:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 19 2015, @03:38AM (#265241)

    [...] all those military age males we hand them a real assault rifle, and send them back home to fight for their country?

    Would you let them choose which side they'll join, or would you suggest one to them, that in your mind best represents "their country"? Would you ask these untrained soldiers to fight for Bashar al-Assad's government? For the Islamic State? Or for that elusive faction that opposes Assad but also opposes IS? If you tried to choose sides for them, don't you think they'd go against your wishes? Certainly I would be inclined to do so, if my request for asylum were rebuffed in the manner you propose. I would also form a resentment against your country, even as the rest of my family sought refuge there. Would my family members, who you accepted because they were children, females, or old men, agree with your disposition of me, your attempt to turn me into a warrior, or could they become ungrateful? Suppose I fought for the side you asked me to, and died heroically. Would they be proud that I died a hero's death, or would they rather I still lived?

    Suppose these males, who didn't want any part of the war, decide that, now that their families have been broken up, they may as well kill after all—and just start shooting at whoever's in range, Ft. Hood [wikipedia.org] style? You want to put unmotivated men with rifles into a war where poison gas, jet fighters, bombers, and tanks are being used. I notice you didn't mention training, nor resupply. Come to think of it, you didn't mention ammunition—I'm assuming you'd provide them with a bullet or two? If they chose to fight, what chance would they have and how much difference could they make? The rational things for them to do would be to promptly desert or surrender.

    Speaking of rationality, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said [un.org] "there is no military solution to the crisis—not in Syria or anywhere else."

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday November 19 2015, @03:13PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday November 19 2015, @03:13PM (#265358) Journal

    Good questions and silly questions all bundled together. Cool.

    Yes, of course, they get training. The same sort of training our soldiers get before going to war as part of an infantry company. Yes, they get ammo to go with those rifles. Yes, the get resupply. And, I prefer they serve any force in the field, so long as it is not Daesh. They can join the Kurds, the Yazidi, Assad, any force that has boots on the ground, and fights against Daesh. I'm not choosy.

    As for breaking up families - whoop-ti-do. The family is already broken up, not through my doing. I have a man, a wife, and 1 to 12 children standing in line. Where's Grandma? Grandpa? (That's two each, of each - four persons.) Where are all the aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, etc ad nauseum? I am merely encouraging that man to go back and fight for his family, and providing him the means to fight.