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From the Blogs
Fusion Centers Flayed in Senate Report:
Steven Aftergood writes that the state and local fusion centers
supported by the Department of Homeland Security have produced little
intelligence of value and have generated new concerns involving waste
and abuse, according to an investigative report from the Senate Homeland
Security Committee Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
New START Data Released- Nuclear Flatlining:
This week, the U.S. State Department released the fourth batch of START
data which shows that the United States and Russia since January 5,
2011, have reduced their accountable deployed strategic delivery
vehicles by 76 and 30, respectively. Parts of those numbers are
fluctuations due to delivery platforms entering or leaving maintenance.
Also, the United States and Russia have reduced their number of
accountable deployed strategic warheads by 78 and 38, respectively. Much
of these numbers are fluctuations due to delivery platform maintenance
and it is not clear that either country has made any explicit warhead
reductions yet under the treaty. In any case, 38-78 warheads don’t
amount to much out of the approximately 5,000 nuclear warheads the two
countries retain in each of their respective nuclear stockpiles.
New Declassification Portal at the National Archives: The National Archives has set up a new online portal that provides an overview of declassification activity in and around the Archives,
with input from the National Declassification Center, the Public
Interest Declassification Board, the Presidential Libraries, and the
Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP). The new
section on ISCAP declassification decisions is of particular interest,
since it provides links to the
documents that have been newly declassified at the direction of the
ISCAP, which receives appeals from the public for release of documents
that agencies have declined to declassify. Documents declassified
through the ISCAP process in the past year include excerpts of several
Presidential Daily Briefs from the 1960s, intelligence reports on
various topics, and several documents on strategic nuclear forces.
Pentagon Sets New Framework for Security Policy:
This week, the Department of Defense established a new Defense Security
Enterprise that is intended to unify and standardize the Department’s
multiple, inconsistent security policies.The new security framework
“shall provide an integrated, risk-managed structure to guide DSE policy
implementation and investment decisions, and to provide a sound basis
for oversight and evolution.” The Defense Security Enterprise, launched
October 1 by DoD Directive 5200.43, is a response to the often
incoherent and internally contradictory
state of DoD security policy.
Figure the Odds:
Humans like to know what causes what – and particularly what causes bad
things to happen. So when something bad – like cancer – happens we want
to find a cause; and we also want to know what causes cancer so that we
can avoid getting it. How does this concept relate to radiation and
cancer?
Supreme Court Urged to Grant Standing in Surveillance Challenge:
In its new term that began on October 1, the U.S. Supreme Court will
hear arguments over whether to affirm the right of journalists and human
rights organizations to challenge the constitutionality of the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act, or FAA. The FISA
Amendments Act authorizes the collection of a broad swath of public
communications without a warrant (though not the intentional targeting
of the communications of any particular U.S. person). As such, critics
say, it jeopardizes freedom of
communication with individuals abroad.
2010 Military Intelligence Budget Request Declassified:
This week, the Department of Defense released a redacted version of the
budget justification for the FY 2010 Military Intelligence Program
(MIP). The MIP budget justification for FY 2010, which was submitted to
Congress in 2009, presents dozens of individual military intelligence
programs. While budget figures have been censored, along with various
other classified matters, the summary descriptions of most of the
individual MIP programs were released more or less intact.
India's SSBN Shows Itself:
A new satellite image might show part of India’s first nuclear-powered
ballistic missile submarine, the Arihant. The image, taken by GeoEye’s
satellite and made available on Google Earth, shows what appears to be
the conning tower (or sail) of a submarine in a gap of covers intended
to conceal it deep inside the Visakhapatnam (Vizag) Naval Base on the
Indian east coast.
Status of Iran's Nuclear Program and More from CRS:
Secrecy News has obtained recently released CRS reports on topics such
as Iran's nuclear program, Israel's potential strike against Iran's
nuclear facilities, chemical facility security and Puerto Rico's political status.
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