Niccolò Pollari was sentenced to 10 years in prison for complicity in the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) abduction of Abu Omar (Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr). His former deputy, Marco Mancini, received nine years, and three Italian secret service officials were sentenced to six years each.   read more

Among the useful tools exploited by Riot are the encoding of latitude and longitude embedded in photos taken by Smartphones and GPS locations posted on Foursquare. Raytheon has received approval from the U.S. government to export the software. Put in the hands of dictatorships, Riot could become what some have dubbed the “Google for spies” and others have characterized as “stalking technology.”   read more

The U.S. “War on Terror,” specifically the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have exacted a frightening toll on American military personnel the past eleven years. More than 50,000 Americans have been wounded in action and 6,656 have died. More than 1,700 troops have lost one or more limbs, almost 130,000 have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more than 253,000 have experienced some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI).   read more

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) last week claimed that U.S. drone strikes were causing less than 10 civilian casualties a year worldwide. That claim would seem to clash with reports from more than one source indicating that civilian deaths from drones have averaged in the double digits for years, up through 2012.   read more

He had met secretly with U.S. intelligence officials in Texas and provided names of military and civilian officials he suspected of providing protection to drug traffickers. Nevertheless, DEA and defense officials had compiled “a troubling portfolio of allegations against the general,” according to the newspaper, referring to him as “Mr. Ten Percent,” in honor of his handling of defense contracts.   read more

With a classified legal document in support, the White House concluded that the president of the United States can order a pre-emptive attack using cyberweapons on an enemy preparing to launch its own online assault on American targets. John O. Brennan, Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and his nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency, played a critical role in developing the administration’s new policies regarding cyberwarfare.   read more

Regardless of the motivation for developing the park, many Pakistanis reportedly don’t believe the story of how bin Laden died in Zero Dark Thirty, which has not appeared in theaters, but which is available on pirated DVDs. They insist that American commandos could never swoop into their country and kill someone so notorious, having labeled the film utter propaganda by the U.S.   read more

Instead of manning its own terrorist plots aimed at U.S. soil, al-Qaeda has used “affiliates” to stage “an unlikely but limited recovery over the past year,” according to The Washington Post. The terrorist organization has made connections with armed groups in North Africa and the Middle East, where weapons are aplenty and the U.S. is limited in its military options.   read more

This year’s budget for CARSI is $26.2 million, with another $47.5 million going to Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI). Most of the drug war money is spent on equipment made by U.S. companies, including aircraft, patrol boats, night-vision goggles, body armor, radios, weapons, and X-ray equipment for scanning cargo containers. CARSI also funds counter-drug units comprised of FBI and DEA agents working with local police.   read more

The U.S. military is in the process of setting up a drone base, most likely in Niger, which would permit aerial surveillance of Islamic rebels in neighboring Mali. It has been estimated that such a base would have upwards of 300 military and contractor personnel. Officials in the Obama administration say the base would only launch reconnaissance missions for now. But carrying out missile attacks from the unmanned aerial vehicles could happen as well, they acknowledged to The New York Times.   read more

During Obama’s first two years in office, Fried was busy negotiating with foreign governments to get them to take many of Guantánamo’s detainees. The total at the prison dropped from 242 to 166 under Fried’s efforts, with three men dying in custody. But the repatriations nearly ground to a halt last year, when only four detainees were moved out of Guantánamo.   read more

The recent terrorist attack at an oil complex in Algeria that left dozens dead, including three Americans, has prompted one analyst to point out that the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound two years ago produced documents showing the former al-Qaeda leader was communicating Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that opposes the Algerian government. It would appear that the Algerian attack was carried out by an offshoot of AQIM.   read more

American citizen Saeed Abedini has been sentenced to eight years in prison by the Iranian government for allegedly helping establish underground churches in the Islamic republic. Abedini, an Iranian-born convert to Christianity, reportedly led secret churches in the early 2000s when the pro-reform presidency of Mohammad Khatami tolerated such activity.   read more

Afghanistan’s security forces have continued to torture detainees, according to a new report released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. The torture has occurred despite admonishment from the United Nations and corrective measures by U.S./NATO commanders.   read more

A new Bloomberg poll of 921 subscribers to Bloomberg Professional service revealed that 47% of global investors surveyed said they are reducing their investments in the U.S. as a direct result of “repeated confrontations between the U.S. Congress and President Obama.” More than a third of respondents said the nation’s fiscal problems pose the biggest threat to the world economy, while 29% chose Europe’s sovereign debt crisis and 15% named China’s slowing economy.   read more

The CIA will be exempted from the rules for at least a year. Agency leaders objected to being bound by the playbook, citing the pressing need to continue bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan before the U.S. withdraws from neighboring Afghanistan, where the drones are based. Critics of the government assassination program view the playbook as indicative of the institutionalization of the U.S. killing policy.   read more