Author: Peter Van Buren

“No one left behind” sounds nice, but in America’s wars it usually only refers to Americans. Foreigners who risked their own and their family’s lives to help the United States are optional.

But a small victory. After extraordinary outside pressure from Congress and veterans’ groups, the State Department agreed to undo a change to visa procedure that would have condemned even more Afghan translators to their deaths.

The idea was that Afghans translators who loyally served the United States and who were at risk in their own country could apply for visas for themselves, their spouses and their children, to live in the U.S. These were never called refugee visas or anything that might imply our freedom war was not fully successful, but were pitched as a kind of parting gift for good work.

And so we learn that the latest blunder in the government’s management of a special visa program for Afghan interpreters was fixed this week.

Continue reading “State Department Partially Fixes Unfair Afghan Translator Visa Change”

The FBI on Thursday threatened to raise the stakes in its legal battle with Apple, suggesting it could demand access to the iPhone’s source code and the electronic signature used to verify its software updates.

Battle Over Encryption

As part of the ongoing battle between the government and the tech industry over encryption in the United States, the FBI demanded Apple help it defeat the password security features on an iPhone 5C used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Specifically, the FBI wants Apple to create a modified version of the iPhone operating software that would allow the FBI to run an unlimited number of brute force attacks against a phone’s password to gain access.

Continue reading “FBI Threatens To Demand Apple’s iPhone Source Code, Digital Key”

The FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies as potential future terrorists, warning that such “extremists” are in the same category as ISIS.

The FBI’s Preventing Violent Extremism in Schoolsguidelines try to avoid the appearance of specific discrimination against Muslim students by targeting every American teenager who is politically outspoken, as if that somehow makes all this better. The FBI’s goal is to enlist every teacher and every student as informants. The concept is not dissimilar to attempts by the FBI to require tech companies such as Apple to become extensions of the FBI’s power. FYI, the FBI also now has full access to data collected on Americans by the NSA.

Continue reading “FBI Has New Plan To Spy on High School Students”

Hear that hissing sound? That is the last gasps for air from the Bill of Rights. The Bill is one breath away from hell.

The FBI has quietly revised its rules for searching data involving Americans’ communications collected by the National Security Agency.

The classified revisions were accepted by the secret U.S. FISA court that governs surveillance, under a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702. That is the portion of law that authorizes the NSA’s sweeping PRISM program, among other atrocities.

Continue reading “FBI and Access to NSA Data on Americans”

Yep, you should care. Very much. Hang up the phone and listen.

What This is All About

The FBI wants Apple to help unlock an iPhone used by one of the attackers who killed 14 people in the December San Bernardino shooting. Specifically, the Bureau wants Apple to create new software that would override a security system on the phone designed to erase its contents after ten unsuccessful password tries. The new software would also eliminate the built-in pause required between tries.

The software on the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, after ten tries, will automatically destroy any data on it as a security measure. The FBI needs that ten try limit, plus the required pauses between tries, taken away so that they can run a “brute force” attack against the password. A brute force attack runs an unlimited number of passwords (a1, a2, a3… aa1, aa2, aa3…) at high speed against the system until one works.

Continue reading “You Should Care About Apple, Your iPhone, and the FBI”

Think what it must be like to be one of America’s allies.

You enjoy some trade, groove on uber-Americanos like Beyonce and Brad Pitt, and visit Disneyland. But then there’s America again at your cubicle, asking again that you join some coalition, get some troops into another wacky American overseas intervention for freedom, or regime change, or to stop another impending genocide only American can stop. What can you do? It’s hard to say no, but given how poorly the last one worked out, and the one before that, and the one before that, nobody at home is in favor of another round. Still, you’re stuck giving something…

And so it is with Canada, that big snowy place near the U.S. that is not Mexico (why doesn’t Mexico have to join these coalitions anyway?)

New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fulfilled one of his most contentious election campaign promises, as Canadian military airstrikes on Islamic State in Iraq and Syria ceased in mid-February. Canada is still indirectly involved in the aerial campaign, and in training Iraqi security forces.

Continue reading “Canada’s Changing Mission in Iraq”