National Security Law Brief

According to Congress Daily, Senator Arlen Specter, D-Pa., suggested he might push for revisions to federal wiretapping laws to prevent secret video surveillance.

Specter is facing fierce competition in his primary election campaign after having switched his political party affiliation from Republican to Democrat last year. The remarks come amid a recent Philadelphia case involving allegations that school administrators monitored students via a secret webcam that had been embedded in a school-issued laptop.

The school’s secret monitoring came to light after the student was punished for actions caught on camera in his own home. Privacy advocates have seized on the case as an example of the perils of the online community.

Read more at technology daily.

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Over the past several years, the Russian government has consistently frustrated European and U.S. officials by refusing to take hard stances regarding organized cybercrime gangs that have become increasingly sophisticated. The organized gangs have stolen millions of identities as well as millions of dollars in employee pay by striking at banking systems throughout Europe and the United States.

During the past few days, however, Russian authorities associated with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) – the successor organization to the KGB – have quietly arrested several men who have been wanted in connection with a notorious cyber-attack on the payment processing unit of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Viktor Pleshchuk, an alleged mastermind behind the $9m attack on the payment processing unit of RBS WorldPay, based in Atlanta, was detained by the FSB and is awaiting next steps in Russia. The group broke RBS encryption protecting the data associated with payroll debit cards and “counterfeit versions of the cards were used in a 12-hour period in late 2008 to withdraw cash from 2,100 ATMs in 280 cities,” according to the original U.S. grand jury indictment in Atlanta.

U.S. experts are cautiously optimistic that this new level of cooperation will continue in the future. The Financial Times quotes Don Jackson, a cybersecurity expert with SecureWorks, in Atlanta, stating that  “I believe [the United States is] embarking on an era of genuine co-operation with Russian authorities.”

To read more, visit the Financial Times (free registration required).

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The Federal Communications Commission has released its long-awaited national broadband plan to finally move the United States towards a faster, more cost-effective broadband network. While one of the founding countries of the internet, the United States has fell behind other states in both speed and average cost per consumer.

To help broadband deployment, the FCC would “transition the Universal Service Fund, which now largely subsidizes traditional telephone service, into a broadband fund.” The $4.6-billion-a-year program would transition into a new Connect America Fund over 10 years, with the FCC expecting to put $15.5 billion into broadband deployment over the next decade.

The FCC plan is the first official national plan of action for the United States and, beyond committing the FCC to the $15.5 billion investment, also calls for Congress to fund a nationwide wireless broadband network for emergency response agencies at a cost of $12 billion to $16 billion.

The plan also seeks to free up 500MHz of wireless spectrum for broadband in the next decade which has led the National Association of Broadcasters to state serious objections to the plan – a key ally for the plan to be effectively executed.

As evidenced in recent weeks by several high-ranking former officials statements regarding the insecurity of our computer networks and shown definitely by the public, cyber war-game that the BiPartisan Policy Center enacted last month, the United States is increasingly vulnerable to attacks on its networks by other state and non-state actors.

To learn more about the FCC’s broadband plan, read more at ComputerWorld, Politico and the Wall Street Journal.

To read the plan, go to the FCC’s Broadband.gov.

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The British Parliament’s cross-party foreign affairs committee said the perception that Britain was subservient to the United States, after Tony Blair’s support of George W. Bush in Iraq, damaged Britain’s standing. The MPs stated that, while US-UK relations have been warm in the past, it is an ever-evolving relationship. These comments were spurred by Sir David Manning’s statement that President Obama was not as sentimental about the historic ties between the United States and Britain, because of his Kenyan heritage and part-Indonesian upbringing.

To read more, please visit: Guardian

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Senior members of the Obama administration are clashinginternally regarding the scope of certain counter-terrorism powers.  The rift has divided top lawyers in the State Department and Pentagon, as well as Justice Department personnel and political appointees.  The discussions center around how broadly to define the type of terror suspects targeted and detained without trials as “wartime prisoners”.

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U.S. hacker Albert Gonzales was convicted of three counts of computer fraud and will serve 20 years in prison.  Gonzales was a part of a trio of hackers who stole more than 130 million credit and debit card numbers by hacking into retailers’ payment systems and payment processing services.  One judge referred to the attack as “. . . the largest and most costly example of computer hacking in US history.”

Gonzales was initially accused last August along with two Russian co-conspirators.  As part of his plea agreement, Gonzales turned over over $1 million in cash, a condo in Miami, a car, a diamond ring, and several high-end watches.  Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Department of Justice noted that these types of attacks are attempted on a daily basis by cyber criminals, and the credit card numbers of unsuspecting American consumers are the likely targets.  As such, Bruer stated that “[t]hese sentences – some of the longest ever imposed for hacking crimes – send a powerful message to hackers around the globe that U.S. law enforcement will not allow [hackers] to breach American computer networks and payment systems, or illegally obtain identities.” Read more here.

The frequency and complexity of hacking crime rings and identity theft has increase over the last 12 months.  For a similar story from late 2009 click here.

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In preparation for Passover, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered that the West Bank will be blocked for most civilians until the holiday is over on Tuesday, April 6. Such measures are quite typical in Israel during religious holidays, as Israeli officials worry about the potential consequences of Palestinians traveling to high-population areas.

This most recent instance comes in the wake of heightened tension between Israelis and Palestinians. Three Palestinians and two Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza last Friday, and government officials fear that similar attacks might occur if the West Bank and other nearby regions are not sealed off temporarily.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, the only people allowed passage through the area will be those in need of medical attention, as well as certain professionals such as doctors, lawyers and journalists.

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On Sunday, President Obama made his first visit to Afghanistan as the President of the United States.  During the trip which, lasted only few hours, President Obama addressed the soldiers and civilians in Bagram Air Base and met with President Hamid Karzai.  During the joint press conference, Mr. Obama expressed his wish to see progress in governance issues as well as anti-corruption efforts and tackling drug-trafficking.  President Obama invited President Karzai to visit the United States in May to continue the talks.

Read more at The New York Times and BBC News.

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A South Korean navy ship sank early Saturday, in the Yellow Sea, near the border area between North and South Korea. The navy officials said that a ship carrying 104 crew members sank near the island of Baengnyeong, but the cause of the incident is unknown at the moment. The 1,500-ton corvette Cheonan went down after an explosion in the rear of the ship.

The South Korean government issued a statement saying they are not ruling out the possibility that the ship was damaged in a military engagement. The South Korean navy also shot at an unidentified ship toward the north. The officials are still uncertain whether North Korea was involved, but they are holding emergency meeting of ministers involved in security matters.

Sources reveal that North Korea recently has been bulking up its defenses, and they conducted dozens of artillery firing drills just a day before the incident.

Find out more at CNN.

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The United States and Russia appear to have come to an agreement on a new nuclear reduction treaty to replace the existing arms-control pact signed in 1990.

The deal would substantially reduce the number of long-range weapons in both countries’ arsenals but have little effect on the number of jets, submarines, and missiles designed to carry them.  The White House is optimistic that a new treaty can be announced in the coming months.

Challenges for the arms-control deal exist in the Senate, however, where ratification requires 67 votes.  Republican leaders have made clear that they will oppose any deal that doesn’t include a missile defense system in Europe.  Russia vigorously opposes the missile shield and the United States has held that the system is aimed at defending against threats from Iran.

The nuclear-reduction treaty, though praised by arms-control advocates, represents a potentially serious decline in the United States’ nuclear deterrence capability.  Without a proper verification and security framework to ensure Russia meets its obligations and maintains proper control over its materials, the treaty could put the United States and its allies at a strategic disadvantage.

Read more at the Washington Post.

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