Category Archives: NSA

The National Sheep Association (NSA) has responded to the vote in the House of Commons on a Lords amendment to the Agriculture Bill that would force future trade deals to meet UK animal welfare and food safety rules.

The vote which saw MPs reject the amendment with 332 votes to 279 will potentially allow food products with lower standards than that produced in the UK to be accepted into the country once new trade deals are secured following the UKs departure from the EU.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said:

This amendment provided opportunity to uphold and protect our animal welfare standards, some of the highest in the world.

With this being rejected by MPs last night there is now the very real risk, despite governments assurances, that the UKs standards that our nations farmers are proud to work to, could be undermined by lower standard imports.

The government may have already given a verbal commitment to farmers and consumers that the current high UK standards will not be threatened by imported goods.

However, even if this commitment is upheld it comes from the current government only and therefore is for the present Parliamentary term; four years down the line there is a risk this commitment could be lost and the UK farming sector could be left to fight this battle again.

Farming Minister George Eustice last week stated that the amendment was unnecessary and would be opposed by ministers as it could cause technical issues and disrupt existing trade deals with countries such as South America that already bring small amounts of product into the UK.

Stocker continued:

Any suggestion by the government that importing just relatively small quantities of lower standard products is worth it in order to safeguard other trade flies in the face of the UKs stated aim to see animal welfare standards increase across the world.

We simply will not achieve this if we allow our markets to support standards we wouldnt find acceptable here.

We sincerely hope the British public will get behind the countrys farmers more than ever now in supporting their hard work producing the highest quality, good value farm produce whilst caring for their livestock and upholding animal welfare standards at all times.

As we leave the EU and further trade deals are secured it will be more important than ever to support UK agriculture and buy British to be assured of food traceability and quality.

NSA Scottish Region chairman Jen Craig added:

It is incredibly disappointing that the UK government has voted against the amendment to ensure imports to the UK are produced to the same standard as our own.

However, we should not allow this vote to undermine what we do in the UK. We will continue to be world leaders in animal health and welfare whilst producing food to the highest of standards.

This allows our consumers to have the utmost trust and confidence that when they buy Scottish and British food, they can have pride in knowing where it has come from and that it is safe.

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Agriculture Bill rejection leaves a 'real risk' to UK animal welfare standards - NSA - Agriland.co.uk

In this episode of "Intelligence Matters," Anne Neuberger, Director of the National Security Agency's Cybersecurity Directorate, details her trajectory from the agency's Chief Risk Officer, to the lead on election security in 2018, to the head of the agency's newly revamped cybersecurity mission. She tells Morell what lessons were learned about deterring Russia during the 2018 midterm elections and how the Cybersecurity Directorate seeks to help the public and private sectors defend themselves against foreign cyber threats. She also explains why the NSA is looking to shed some of its secretive reputation, and adjust to a rapidly changing technological environment.

HIGHLIGHTS

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Intelligence Matters: Anne Neuberger

Producer: Olivia Gazis

MICHAEL MORELL: Anne, welcome to Intelligence Matters. It is great to have you on the show.

ANNE NEUBERGER: It's great to be here, thank you.

MICHAEL MORELL: So I think the place to start, Anne, is with your career. Before you joined the National Security Agency, you had a career in the private sector. Can you tell us about that and tell us what you did in the private sector and then what drew you into government service?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Sure, absolutely. So I was running technology at a at a financial services company, and during that time period when financial services companies really moved off mainframe environments to the Web and to client server technology. So that piece of both taking in operations and a mission, and its associated technology and people and culture, really shaped the way I approach a lot of those problems today.

And I was raised in in a family where my dad came as a refugee; all my grandparents came as refugees to the U.S., and they just constantly instilled in us how grateful we should be for the opportunity to be born in America and raised in America with its freedoms, with its ability to pursue one's dreams and and that we owed a debt for that.

And I was driving home from work in 2006. We had just done a large acquisition of a company, of a bank's custodian operations. And on the radio, they were talking about the bombing of a mosque, Samarra mosque in Samarra, Iraq, and just the soldiers dying, civilians dying and the troubles there. And I still don't know why, but I thought of my dad and thought to myself, 'Perhaps now's the time to repay a little bit of of that debt in some way.'

And, when I'd been a graduate student at Columbia, I had a I had a professor tell me about the White House Fellows program and encouraged me to apply. And I have to admit that, with a bit of the New Yorker, 'I can't leave New York, ever,' kind of put that aside. And for whatever reason, I just felt that calling at that moment, called him, and said, 'I'll apply.'

And, fast forward, I was assigned to the Pentagon with zero military background and, you know, learned a lot about the culture, felt very drawn to that shared commitment. And so I spent a year in the Pentagon and worked for the Navy and then came to the NSA a couple of years later.

MICHAEL MORELL: What did they have you doing at the Pentagon and the Navy?

ANNE NEUBERGER: I was the Deputy Chief Management Officer at the Navy. So, essentially the Navy had a number of broad enterprise-wide technology efforts, which they were working to again, bring that people-mission-technology triangle together.

And they asked me to help work on a couple working directly for the Secretary of the Navy figure out why a couple of them were struggling and then help them get on track. So I worked on that. And, you know, I often get asked by people, 'How did you end up at NSA?' It was a pretty funny story in that I had a seven- and six-year-old and I was commuting from Baltimore and the work-life balance was a bit tough.

And I met somebody and he asked me about how I was doing. And I commented that I really loved the work, but it was a little hard for me to do the juggle. And he said, 'I happen to know that the NSA is standing up the Director of NSA is standing up Cyber Command, and I know they need people with your kind of a background. So how about if I make a phone call there?'

And I went for an interview, my commute was 30 minutes. And it sounds so foolish, but that was pretty much what it took.

MICHAEL MORELL: Interesting. So the private sector and then the Department of Defense, which is, as you know, this huge enterprise, and then NSA and this is not an easy question, I know, but: the similarities and differences of those three different experiences?

ANNE NEUBERGER: It all begins with people. In every organization, missions have to adapt and change. They adapt and change in the private sector because perhaps you have a competitor, perhaps the customer space has adapted. Certainly financial services saw that, where the scale of data was just increasing, the scale of trades was increasing, and the traditional manual processes couldn't keep up. So we knew automation was needed to just reduce errors and help us keep on track with where trading was going. Technology could deliver on that, but the business of the organization had to change to fully take advantage of the technology. And the way people did that mission and use technology had to change along the way.

So I think in each of those organizations, it taught me that that triangle has to be kind of guided together to get to an outcome.

Mission, technology, and people. If you really want to be able to fully whether it's take advantage of a market or stay ahead of an adversary in our own mission here in the IC or DOD that triangle has to work together and you have to communicate those three planes together when talking about why the change is needed.

MICHAEL MORELL: So Anne, in your tenure at NSA, you've served as its first Chief Risk Officer, the Assistant Deputy Director of Operations, the head of the Russia Small Group, and now the head of the Cybersecurity Directorate. Can you take us through your trajectory there? How did your responsibilities differ from role to role?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So I came in to NSA on a small team, part of a small team that was standing up Cyber Command. The chief risk officer role was created after the media leaks period of 2013 where we learned that really appreciating risk meant looking at that in a holistic way, across partnership risk, operational risk, technology risk. And we learned that we needed to adapt the way we looked at risk and then change according to that.

So I think in each of those roles, either the adversary was changing around us, the threat was changing around us, or, internally, we wanted to take advantage fully of an opportunity. And I was responsible for taking the big-picture strategic goals and translating those to measurable outcomes and objectives, and communicate the why and then bringing a team of people along to get there.

And each of those efforts was a bit different, but in each of those we talked about the risk of doing and the risk of not-doing, weighing that appropriately. We talked about ensuring that, as we approached new missions, policy and technology move together. And certainly when we looked at the elections work in 2018, the Russia Small Group work, we saw where adversaries have used influence operations since the time of Adam and Eve, but perhaps what had changed was, again, the ability to use social media to both focus and direct it to have larger impact.

MICHAEL MORELL: So focusing on the Russia Small Group for just a second, Anne. What was that? What was the mission and what were your responsibilities with regard to the 2018 elections to the extent that you can talk about that?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So the mission was ensuring the integrity of the 2018 midterm elections: ensuring that we, first, understood the threat. Second, that we appropriately tipped all the information we had about that threat to key partners across the U.S. government, certainly the FBI, from a counter-influence perspective, DHS from a cybersecurity of elections infrastructure perspective, and then, finally, that we would support Cyber Command, if authorized, to impose costs, if there were attempts to disrupt the election.

MICHAEL MORELL: So after the 2018 elections, President Trump publicly confirmed that Cyber Command played a role in deterring the Russians in 2018. Are there important lessons from what happened in 2018 about how we as a country can defend ourselves against this insidious threat?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Yes. So, you know, across the government, we look at two key poles of election integrity. One is, attempts to malignly influence the population, whether that is to highlight social discord, to highlight issues that divide the population or to, you know, share information as part of shaping individuals' ideas.

And then the second is potentially interfering, hacking into elections infrastructure as part of efforts to change the vote.

And I think the first piece is the value of resiliency: the sense that, once trust is lost, it's very hard to regain. So the knowledge for the American public that there are hundreds of people across the U.S. government committed to and working to ensure the integrity of those elections, of our elections.

When it comes to counter-influence, though, the biggest resilience is each of us as Americans. When we're reading something, asking, 'Who might be trying to influence me, what is the source of that information? Am I fully confident in that source of that information?'

And then, finally, the role of technology and the role of public private partnership as part of elections integrity. So for us in the intelligence community, we're constantly watching for which adversaries may be seeking to shape a population's thinking, to shape an election and then rapidly to bring that to partners or to the private sector to ensure that they're both aware of techniques and are countering them on their platforms.

MICHAEL MORELL: So we've since learned, in fact, last week in updates from the DNI that the Russians continue to engage in election interference; the Chinese, the Iranians. And the punchline of all that for me is, it's really hard to deter foreign interference, right. And I'm wondering if it's something special about foreign interference or if it's more about cyber at the end of the day? And the difficulty of seeing cyber, attributing it if you see it. How do you think about that question?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. I think it is more about cyber than about elections. From a cyber perspective, when we look at fully both protecting cyber infrastructure, and then to your second point about attribution, there's complexity in laying what we call 'the red' on top of that.

We may see threats that are talked about at a strategic perspective, and then we and partners across the US government are looking to see, 'Where does that present itself? Where are the given vulnerabilities in a given infrastructure?'

The power is when you can lay the two together and say, 'Here is a nation state that has intent to interfere' in whatever that is, in election critical infrastructure, IP theft and then translate that to the tactical level to say, that network scanning or that vulnerability in hardware or software that we see out there may well be used to achieve the objective putting that in place and then, most importantly, preventing it. Because at the end of the day, writing a report about a victim and notifying the victim is far less satisfying than being able to put that together and prevent the adversary achieving their objective.

MICHAEL MORELL: So we've already started to shift now into your new role, right, which was relaunched in October, I believe. It would be great if you could, Anne, if you could explain for our listeners first, what NSA's two main missions are SIGINT and then cybersecurity and the difference between them just to give some folks here a level set.

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So, NSA is a foreign intelligence agency. We're responsible for understanding a broad range of threats presented by foreign governments to the United States.

One of those threats include our cyber threats: how nations may be using cyber to achieve their national objectives. As I said, that might be intellectual property theft, for example, to counter the Department of Defense's lethality by accelerating a foreign government's ability to actually productize particular R&D for a weapon; that may be targeting critical infrastructure of a country as part of threatening tat country or as part of putting pressure on a given country. So that is the threat information.

On the second side. NSA has a cybersecurity mission where it's less well known. We build the keys, codes and cryptography that's used to protect all of US government's most sensitive communications: thinking nuclear command and control weapon systems, the president's communications with allies. And we provide technical advice to mitigate those same threats that I talked about.

So the key integration of the two missions is where we think the magic is, where we can say 'Here's what we think adversaries are seeking to do, and here's how, from a cybersecurity perspective, we recommend you protect against that.'

MICHAEL MORELL: So what motivated, Anne, the relaunch of the directorate and has its mission changed at all?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Really good question. So we recognized that we were at a crossroad with national security as both technology and society shifts were happening. We saw all new kinds of technology that people wanted to use, from small satellites to Internet of Things. And each of those presents huge advancements, but they also present cyber security risk.

Along with that, we saw various nation-states to use new technologies think North Korea and cryptocurrency to get around sanctions to achieve their own objectives. And we said, 'We really need to up our game' to more quickly be understanding those threats and ensuring that we could both provide advice to build new technologies as securely as possible, but also to counter adversaries' use of those same technologies to achieve their national security goals.

MICHAEL MORELL: So, Anne, what are the primary areas of focus for your directorate? What kind of people work there? What's their skill set? And what kind of customers do you serve?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Yep, great question. So the first part is operationalizing intelligence: how do we ensure that, from the intelligence that we see, we tip anything that's unique, actionable and timely quickly so that we can prevent the victim? So that's the first piece of work.

Our areas of focus are both understanding that, giving guidance. Encryption. We believe encryption is a key protection, particularly in a telecommunications environment that, in many cases is untrusted. So both in building the government's special encryption, modernizing that, as well as providing advice and insights on how to best use encryption.

The types of people who work here are, like we see in many organizations, a broad gamut. We have intelligence analysts, we have country-specific experts, we have a broad swath of technical experts, encryption network technologies, hardware and software vulnerability analysts as well.

But the power is where that can be integrated, where you can say, 'How do you build on a road of trust all the way through to an end point?' How do you properly defend a network and take a step back and do a risk analysis to say, 'Where are the gaps in your resilience and where should your next dollar of investment be to close those gaps?'

MICHAEL MORELL: And then what about customers? Is it just the Department of Defense? Is that the U.S. government? Is it even broader than that? How do you think about who it is you're working for?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Yeah, great question. So there's a specific set of work we do for what we call national security systems, systems carrying classified information, national security information. The director of NSA is also the national manager for national security systems. So that's the authority under which, as I mentioned, we build the keys, codes and cryptography and we're responsible for distributing threat information as well. So those are across the U.S. government with a particular focus on DOD. weapons systems and related systems.

A second set of key partners and customers are certainly DHS, FBI. DHS in its role supporting critical infrastructure and the sector-specific agencies. And like I said, the real magic of understanding the critical infrastructure, where its key gaps and vulnerabilities are and being able to marry that up with what a foreign government may be intending to do and providing focused insight.

Across the U.S. government, there is broad use of commercial technologies, particularly DOD and national security systems. So you may have seen, when we're issuing advisories, we're also issuing advice on how to secure and configure those commercial technologies well, because we see that those are used all across sensitive systems as well.

MICHAEL MORELL: So Anne, your directorate has issued, I think, a dozen or so advisories about cybersecurity threats. Can you talk about why you guys do that, what the criteria is for putting one of those out? And then, how do you think about the impact they have? Do you keep metrics on that? How do you think about advisories?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So our advisories we really do them for three reasons. One is, if we see a nation-state actor using a particular vulnerability against a system we care about, we find that it really drives urgency of action. People run faster when they're pursued. And if we can say, 'This nation state actor is using this vulnerability, here's the mitigation advice to protect yourself against that,' we see impact, and I'll talk about that, how we measure that impact at the end.

The second thing is, you know, there's a deep expertise here because we build and we break encryption. So encryption-related technologies like VPNs like, you may recall, the Windows 10 cryptographic vulnerability in January, those are areas we focus on because we know those are sometimes hard to understand, technically hard to implement. So if we can give very practical advice, then we'll issue those as well to help that be put in place.

And then the third would be where there is a timely need, and we're getting a lot of questions and we feel that putting out a product helps guide people in thinking about how to think about security. I'll give an example: As COVID pressed a lot of organizations across the U.S. government, particularly DOD as well, to move to telework, we started getting a lot of questions about secure collaboration and which commercial tools were safe to use. And our goal was teaching people how to evaluate what's safe to use. So we issued a product which laid out the different attributes. Like: Code is available for review, its end to end encrypted, and a few other such attributes. And then we rated different secure collaboration, publicly available tools, against them. And the cool part was, we had companies call and say, 'Well, you know, you didn't get something quite right,' or 'Can we be included as well?' And we said, 'Absolutely.' And we issued a second version. And then we have another one coming out next week, because our goal was making it as useful as possible and also helping teach people how to assess different products for security.

You asked the question about, how we measure impact? So there's three different measures we've been using.

The first is, do we see patch rates go up? Do we see, for vulnerabilities that we've talked about, here is a foreign actor that might be using a vulnerability to achieve an objective? Can we watch those patriots go up? And, you know, it was really cool to see, in a number of cases we've watched that increase.

The second piece is there is a very capable and active cybersecurity industry. Has the information shared enabled them to better protect sensitive U.S. government, national security systems, networks? And in the case of the Exim vulnerability that we issued, the advisory where we talked about the particular unit of Russian intelligence using the Exim mail vulnerability, it was really great to see five different cybersecurity entities using that to identify other Russian intelligence infrastructure and then take that down. So that was success for us, that we made it harder for that adversary to achieve its objectives.

And then the third one is really the feedback on the number of downloads and the feedback from network administrators saying, 'This was useful, this was unique, timely and actionable. I could act on it.'

MICHAEL MORELL: And then in in May, you guys took what I thought was an unprecedented step of actually openly attributing the exploitation of a vulnerability to the Russian GRU. And that seemed rare to me. And I'm wondering why you decided to actually name Russia in this instance.

ANNE NEUBERGER: So first, it is rare, because as you noted earlier, implicitly, attribution is hard. You may have seen a prior product where we highlighted one nation state using another country's infrastructure to achieve its objective and that highlighted just how hard attribution is. So when it's done it needs to be done with precision to be confident in that.

And we chose to do it because we see that it makes targeted network owners more quickly patched and secure and build the resilience of their systems. Network administrators have way more vulnerabilities to address than they have time for, or frankly, money for and way more alerts than they can act on. So if we can say, 'This particular vulnerability is being used by a nation-state intelligence service, we see network administrators moving quickly and addressing it. And that's our fundamental goal: our fundamental goal is improving cybersecurity.

MICHAEL MORELL: So Anne, if you kind of step back and look at the big picture here, you know, maybe from a 35,000 foot level: How are we doing against the cyber threat? Are we barely keeping up? Or are we catching up? Are we getting ahead of the game or is it always going to be hard for the defender in this game because the guy on the offense can always come up with something new? How do you think about where we are in the history of the threat of cyber and the defense against it?

ANNE NEUBERGER: I think three points. Overall, technology is getting more secure. Technology is built more securely today. So the fundamental resilience is improving. When you have open source products, you have lots of eyes looking at a given technology and helping find vulnerabilities and address them.

That being said, we're an ever more connected economy and an ever more connected society. And as we build more connections, sometimes the systems that were not necessarily built for those kinds of connections, I think SCADA systems in that way, we bring in introduce new risks.

On the third pole, though, and on the positive side, there's far more awareness about those risks and how to approach addressing them, identifying what are the most important assets to protect and ensuring good practices are in place. And it's far easier than ever to put that in place.

So I think it's a mixed story. On the one hand, more and more technologies built more securely, and there are communities of individuals working together to ensure they're secure. On the other hand, far more technology, some of which is connected in ways that bring risk in ways that we always have to and, I guess the third part, which is where we started adversaries seeking to take advantage of those risks to achieve their objectives.

MICHAEL MORELL: So Anne, if you were standing in front of a large multinational board of directors and you were talking to them about cybersecurity, what's the one or two things that you would absolutely want them to take away from from your conversation?

ANNE NEUBERGER: What is the tangible thing you most want to protect and what's the intangible thing you most want to protect? So if you're a drug company, what is the intellectual property that's going to be your next potentially big drug, big driver of economic growth, big driver of healing?

And then second, what's the biggest intangible thing? Perhaps that's your reputation, the way you treat your employees, the prices that you charge and how much you mark that up. Make sure that you're protecting both carefully because, you make your your cybersecurity commensurate with the risk presented to you if you lose either one.

MICHAEL MORELL: Anne you mentioned SCADA systems, and I'm not sure that all my listeners know what those are. Could you just explain that? And then is there something is there something special about protecting a SCADA system from protecting a normal network?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So SCADA systems are essentially control systems for the core areas of infrastructure in a given country, ina given company. So think power systems, clean water, drug manufacturing and those are those are often complex systems. So what's unique about them is, those systems over the years were often built for reliability in the event of a bad storm, that a power system would come back online with confidence.

As more technologies got connected so, for example, the ability to measure the use of power, the ability to measure confidence in water and chemical levels some of those systems got connected to network systems that provide a way to access them. So there is risk in that.

One of the reasons that one of the joint products we recently issued between NSA and DHS was an ICS product because there had been some public articles about a given attack against SCADA systems in the Middle East. And we wanted to ensure that we, together with DHS, one of our closest partners, was providing technical advice to SCADA entities in the U.S. based on what we were learning about those attacks.

MICHAEL MORELL: So Anne, just a couple of more questions; you've been terrific with your time. There seems to be an effort on the part of NSA to kind of open up the black box and kind of shed the reputation of "No Such Agency," right. Your conversation with me, I think, is an example of that. Why is that a priority for the agency and for General Nakasone?

ANNE NEUBERGER: First, in the cybersecurity mission, fundamentally, if we're not trusted, we can't achieve our impact. People take advice from those they trust -- across the US government, Team USA works cyber. Each organization plays its position within that role. You know, my counterpart at DHS, Chris Krebs, often talks about them being the national risk managers. At NSA, we believe what we can bring uniquely is that integration of intelligence, what adversaries are seeking to do, what their capabilities are, what their infrastructure looks like, and how to defend against it, cybersecurity advice to counter that. And that's always continuing because technologies change, adversaries' goals change, and the resilience always has to be increased to meet that.

So if we want to be trusted to achieve what we believe we can uniquely contribute to Team USA on cyber, the first step to doing that is conveying who we are, conveying the culture that's here, the commitment to American values. And certainly, when a part of our mission is an intelligence mission in a in a democracy, we have an obligation to ensure that the Americans we serve feel they understand the values by which we live.

MICHAEL MORELL: So your former colleague and my really good friend, Glenn Gerstell, wrote an op-ed about a year ago about what he saw as the profound implications of the digital revolution on national security. And he raised a lot of concerns. And among those was the sheer pace and scale and volume of technological change, and data that's going to force intelligence agencies, including NSA, to fundamentally change how they do business.

How is NSA thinking big picture about those kinds of challenges? What are you trying to tackle first? What do the adjustments look like? How do you think about the challenge that Glenn laid out?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Absolutely. So first, from the perspective of large amounts of data and ensuring we can make sense of them, ensuring that we can do big data analysis to help triage the information we identify and determine what our people, our biggest assets, put their time on to determine key threats and how to act on that.

So, for example, we're looking at machine learning to classify malware to help us understand what's routine malware versus what's something new. And we're certainly looking at machine learning, potentially, to help us identify vulnerabilities at scale, particularly when we look at systems that represent 30 years of technology like weapon systems: How do you secure a weapons system that's been out there and represents each phase of technology and have confidence in its resilience and its command and control?

And then finally, we have an obligation to both bring those technologies to be on our mission and understand how adversaries might use that and manage that accordingly. So, for example, as we think about artificial intelligence and the potential to automatically direct a weapon. In the United States, we have strong values around how we would think about automation versus human control. In other countries around the world, there might be different ways that those kinds of decisions are approached.

So how do we ensure that we both bring that integration of values, compliance and technology to the way we pursue it, but also be aware of those gaps and keep an eye on the risks of those gaps?

MICHAEL MORELL: Anne, you mentioned people a couple of times. And just two questions about that. One is, given the competition that you face, right, with all of these cybersecurity firms and, you know, your folks must be very attractive to them and their skills are quite valuable in the private sector. How difficult is it for you to recruit and retain talent?

ANNE NEUBERGER: Really thoughtful question, because you asked two questions in there: recruit and retain. So from the recruit side, we get really great people. On the retain side, we have a really compelling mission. And what brings what keeps people here is the sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves that is challenging and fulfilling.

It's on us as organizational leaders to ensure that each person has that opportunity to contribute what they can uniquely bring to that mission. And one of the cool aspects of the cyber security stand-up has been people who have left to call in and say, 'Hey, I'd like to come back. I learned a lot in the private sector, the mission's calling me and I'd like to contribute again.' And, you know, we've hired a number of them back and continue to increase that.

And part of the message we have when people, if people do decide to leave, is to say, 'That is great. You will continue to contribute to the nation's security. You'll learn a lot in the private sector. And if you ever want to come back, the door is open.'

MICHAEL MORELL: Yeah. And then in a related question and last question, Anne, what do you want the American people to know about the women and men who work for you?

ANNE NEUBERGER: That they're committed to the values that this country was established for. That there are significant threats to the United States, our allies and to those values. And that not always can we talk about those threats because, by impact, sometimes the intelligence community, even the cyber security mission, has to operate in the shadows. So, trust our values. Trust that we are proud Americans. We swear an oath to the Constitution of the United States.

And if you do question it, or if you want to learn more, roll up your sleeves and come into the IC for a few years and get to know it yourself. Because each person has unique abilities and a unique ability to contribute to their country in whatever way they choose, whether that's in government or in the private sector. But if you ever doubt it, come on in and work here and raise your voice and be a part of it.

MICHAEL MORELL: It sort of takes you back to what your parents taught you, too.

ANNE NEUBERGER: It really does. My dad grew up in communist Hungary, and in the beginning when I came into government, he would call me on the phone sometimes and switch to a foreign language. And I realized that for him, growing up in another country, there never is that complete trust of government that I, American-born, had. That doesn't mean it's trust and not-verify. It's trust and verify. But there are things that I take for granted growing up in this society that I don't know if he ever will. So being able to look at things through his eyes and through mine make me realize how fortunate we are to be here, and how much we have an obligation to ensure it stays that way.

MICHAEL MORELL: Anne, thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for your service.

ANNE NEUBERGER: Thank you so much for your time.

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NSA Cybersecurity Directorate's Anne Neuberger on protecting the elections - CBS News

NEW YORK, Aug. 21, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ASGARD Partners & Co. ("ASGARD"), an investment firm based in New York, announced today that it has sold Wild Things, LLC ("Wild Things" or the "Company") to National Safety Apparel, Inc. ("NSA").

Wild Things is a leader in the design and manufacture of highly technical outdoor apparel and gear for the military and law enforcement communities across the globe.

When ASGARD acquired Wild Things in 2018, the Company was struggling with limited liquidity and had suffered years of underinvestment in both the brand and the infrastructure of the business. Immediately post close ASGARD brought on an industry leading management team, led by CEO Amy Coyne, to drive the Wild Things transformation, through the revival of its highly respected legacy brand and the renewal of its reputation for exceptional design, quality, and performance.

Under ASGARD's ownership, the Company reinvigorated customer relationships with key industry distribution leaders, diversified its customer base, introduced new sales channels, re-established relations with key military agencies and influential end user groups, expanded sales infrastructure and new sales representation, and recruited top industry talent. Wild Things also went through training in ASGARD's frameworks of operational excellence, centered around both culture and execution.

Karan Rai, Managing Partner of ASGARD, stated, "Wild Things exemplifies ASGARD's operationally focused investment strategy and intention to be in service of great companies through true partnership. We congratulate Amy and the entire Wild Things team for their passion for excellence and impressive execution. Additionally, we'd like to congratulate NSA on the acquisition of a great company."

"We are proud of the extraordinary transformation of Wild Things under our ownership. Our goals of stabilizing the Company, re-establishing the Wild Things brand in the marketplace and end-user community, and achieving material growth metrics were incredibly successful. We are excited for the Company's next stage of growth under NSA's ownership," said Christian Cantalupo, Partner at ASGARD.

"Working in partnership with ASGARD, Wild Things has become a business with a clear strategic vision and a focus on execution. NSA is now the perfect steward and strategic partner to help advance the Company's strategic objectives and maximize its growth potential. This acquisition will enable Wild Things to tap into a world class organization where it can leverage existing manufacturing resources and supply chain partnerships, expand its capabilities, and achieve long term growth. I am truly excited for the team and the future that lies ahead for Wild Things. We thank our customers, suppliers and employees for their contributions to our success," added Amy Coyne, CEO of Wild Things.

About ASGARD

ASGARD Partners & Co. is a private equity firm based in New York that primarily invests in founder, family, and management-owned companies with defensible value propositions and strong growth prospects. ASGARD predominantly focuses on manufacturing, services and distribution businesses, with ties to defense, government or aerospace markets, located in North America. The partners at ASGARD form a cohesive team, with decades of investing and operating experience, wellsuited to drive value and assist companies with transformational change. The firm invests in all forms of corporate divestitures, management buyouts, recapitalizations, generational ownership transitions, and going-private transactions. ASGARD believes business is a powerful platform that can change the world for the better and is committed to serving entrepreneurs, companies, and investors that share this belief. For more information about the firm, please visit https://asgardpartners.com.

About Wild Things

Wild Things (www.wildthingsgear.com) is a leading brand and manufacturer of premium technical outerwear and gear for extreme outdoor conditions, primarily serving the military, special forces, and law enforcement communities both domestically and internationally. The Company is headquartered in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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ASGARD Partners & Co. sells Wild Things, LLC to National Safety Apparel, Inc. - PRNewswire

WESTGATE@CRANE Technology Park The White River Military Coordination Alliance welcomed two new commanding officers of NSA Crane and NSWC Crane during the Alliances third-quarter meeting in early August.

Commander James L. Smith, commanding officer of NSA Crane, and Captain Thomas (Duncan) McKay, commanding officer of NSWC Crane, both started their new positions at the southern Indiana installation in July 2020. Smith will represent Crane in the Alliances efforts to strengthen the relationship between Crane and the community.

NSA Crane is committed to working with the Alliance collaboratively toward the mutual goals of protecting the Installations ability to perform its mission in support of the warfighter, Smith said. At the same time, we work to ensure that we have the opportunity for economic prosperity in the region and in the state of Indiana.

Smith and McKay both recognized the Alliances achievements in increasing communication with the surrounding communities and creating new regional economic growth opportunities.

The tremendous level of support the Alliance has for our community is already evident to me, McKay said. Its exciting to see the level of involvement and support that Crane gets from the government at the municipal, state and federal level. We feel incredibly fortunate to have such a significant level of support for our missions.

About Commander James Smith, Commanding Officer, NSA Crane

Commander James Smith is a 2002 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Ocean Engineering and was commissioned as an Ensign. He also completed Naval Nuclear Power training and a Master of Science degree in Systems Engineering and Analysis at the Naval Post Graduate School.

Smith completed multiple sea tours in various roles, including Electronic Warfare and Communications Officer, Reactor Laboratories Officer, Combat Systems Officer, Main Propulsion Assistant, and Executive Officer. He served on the staff of the Commander Naval Air Forces Atlantic as the Deputy Officer in Charge of the Surface Nuclear Propulsion Mobile Training Team, and most recently served as an Opposition Force Director for Commander Carrier Strike Group 15.

His personal awards include the Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, and various unit and campaign awards.

About Captain Duncan McKay, Commanding Officer, NSWC Crane Division

Captain Duncan McKay graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Florida State University in 1996, and was commissioned as an Ensign the same year after completion of Officer Candidate School. He also earned a Naval Engineers Degree and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006.

McKays first assignment was to the fast attack submarine USS Alexandria. He reported to Commander Submarine Squadron Eleven as the Battlegroup Operations Officer before beginning his graduate education in 2003. McKays roles following his graduate education included military deputy for submarine maintenance and serving as the repair officer for multiple projects. He most recently served as Production Resources and Operations Officer at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

His personal decorations include the Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, and various unit awards.

About the White River Military Coordination Alliance

The Alliance is a community organization that was formed in 2018 to promote positive development and growth in the communities that surround Naval Support Activity Crane and Lake Glendora Test Facility (Daviess, Greene, Lawrence, Martin and Sullivan counties) by facilitating two-way communication between the communities, counties, state agencies, and NSA Crane. The focus of our 24-member alliance is to create opportunities for economic prosperity and land conservation in the region, safeguard Cranes military mission, and protect community health and safety. We would encourage the community to take our survey about Crane at WRMCAlliance.com. Follow the Alliance on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story.

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Alliance welcomes new commanding officers of NSA Crane and NSWC Crane - Washington Times Herald

Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker, Associated Press Published 2:09 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2020 | Updated 8:48 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2020

The suit doesn't seek a halt to distribution of his book, released in more than 20 countries, but does press for recovery of all proceeds. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON (AP) Attorney General William Barr said he would be vehemently opposed to any attempt to pardon former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, after the president suggested he might consider it.

The attorney generals comments in an interview with The Associated Press come days after President Donald Trump said he would look at whether to pardon Snowden, who was charged under the Espionage Act in 2013 with disclosing details of highly classified government surveillance programs.

There are many, many people it seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things, Trump said of Snowden at a news conference on Saturday. And Im going to take a very good look at it.

The Justice Departments criminal complaint against him was dated just days after Snowdens name first surfaced as the person who had leaked to the news media that the NSA, in classified surveillance programs, gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out potential terror plots.

Justice Department suing Edward Snowden over his new memoir 'Permanent Record'(Photo: Getty)

He was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people, Barr said. He was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We cant tolerate that.

Snowden remains in Russia to avoid prosecution even as the federal charges against him are pending.

It was unclear how serious Trump was, particularly given that years earlier he had denounced Snowden as a spy deserving of execution. But Trumps distrust of his own intelligence community has been a staple of his tenure, particularly because of its conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf, and he has at times bemoaned the broad surveillance powers that the intelligence agencies have at their disposal.

Attorney General William Barr(Photo: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY)

Any effort to pardon Snowden would unquestionably infuriate senior intelligence officials, who say his disclosures caused extraordinary damage and will have repercussions for years to come.

In a memoir published last year, Snowden wrote that his seven years working for the NSA and CIA led him to conclude that the U.S. intelligence community had hacked the Constitution and put everyones liberty at risk and that he had no choice but to turn to journalists to reveal it to the world.

I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bushs, would ever hold the IC legally responsible for anything, he wrote, using an abbreviation for the intelligence community.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/21/edward-snowden-attorney-general-william-barr-opposed-to-pardon/3410460001/

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AG William Barr says he is 'vehemently opposed' to pardoning Edward Snowden - USA TODAY

By Arindrajit Basu

On July 16, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) invalidated the US-EU Privacy Shield that facilitated cross-border data transfers between the two jurisdictions. The decision, colloquially called Schrems II, was based partly on the absence of a clear legal framework in the USA which adequately protects the personal data of non-US citizens from surveillance by US intelligence agencies. In December 2019, I had written a paper for the NUJS Law Review titled Extra-Territorial Surveillance and the incapacitation of human rights law, part of which unpacked the law and practice on surveillance adopted by American intelligence agencies. In this post, I summarise parts of my paper which looked at the programs and legal enablers exploited by the NSA to spy on foreigners. As I discuss in the NUJS Law Review paper, the legal protections provided in the United Kingdom are similarly weak. It remains to be seen how this impacts UK-EU data flows post Brexit.

The Schrems II decision also threatens standard contractual clauses, that is, standardised sets of contractual terms which both the sender and receiver of personal data sign up to, and therefore serve as firm based workarounds to any restrictions on data transfers. I will not discuss SCCs in this piece and limit it to the law and policy on extra-territorial surveillance in the UK.

Algorithmic surveillance exploited by American intelligence agencies can broadly be divided into two phases:

In this stage, vast amounts of data are captured through the bulk collection of data generated online by individuals a phenomenon that Roger Clarke termed dataveillance in 1998, referring to the systematic monitoring and surveillance of an individuals action and behaviour through the use of information technology.

Dataveillance may be conducted on two kinds of datasets metadata and content. Metadata only provides information on the time and length of the communication between individuals but does not reveal the language (content) of these communications. While the NSA itself is a public authority, it has set up multiple partnerships with private sector corporations including Microsoft, Verizon, Intel, Quest and AT&T. The NSA intercepts data from these platforms and redirects these to their data repositories. An example of such a repository is the one in Bluffdale, Utah, codenamed Mainway that is capable of recording 20 billion record events daily. Mainway was first revealed by USA Today in 2006 and it is unclear since when it has been in operation. A slide leaked by the New York Times as part of the Snowden revelations indicates that it has been recording over 20 billion events daily and making them available to the NSA.There is no evidence suggesting that this program has been discontinued or amended since the Snowden revelations.

Through its private partners, the NSA is able to get access to data generated in multiple territories through various programs. BLARNEY , in operation at least since 2006,is one such program which uses NSAs relationship with AT&T to access high capacity international fibre optic cables, switches and/or routers throughout the world. Countries targeted using this program include Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Venezuela. FAIRVIEW, another NSA program, engaged in something similar with the aid of an unknown corporate partner. The existence of the program only became known due to a leaked slide. STORMBREW is yet another program conducted closely with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation that provides the NSA access to data which is travelling through various choke points on US, territory. A significant proportion of the worlds internet traffic passes through these choke points given the talismanic role the US had in setting up the worlds internet architecture. Choke points are any network node that internet traffic passes through when it enters or exits a countrys internal networks.

The NSAs most infamous program PRISM targets data containing the content of communications from the nine biggest internet companies. Unlike the programs mentioned before which utilise upstream collection using fibre optic cables, PRISM enables the NSA to directly obtain content from the servers of private internet providers in the US.

At this stage of algorithmic surveillance, collected data is processed using data mining techniques to identify potential suspects, whose profiles are subsequently examined in detail. This is known as data-chaining which connects recorded events into a topographic mapping of patterns that selects suspicious patterns. XKeyscore and TreasureMap are analytical programs developed by the NSA for this purpose. XKeyscore allows for aggregated processing of information based on suspicious patterns derived from nationality, location or online behaviour. For example, one declassified NSA slide shows a query titled germansinpakstin which would enable an NSA analyst to examine residents in Pakistan that may be use German language messaging systems. Treasure Map constructs the risk analysis done by programs like Xkeyscore to construct recognisable patterns. Through this process, suspect profiles are developed, which enable the NSA to make predictions about their future behaviour.

The legal authority for the NSAs surveillance programmes stems from Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment Acts 2008 (FISAA). The FISAA adopts different standards of protection for American citizens, including American citizens overseas, and non-citizens, including those on US soil. Non-citizens may be surveilled under a lower reasonable belief standard without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) though the FISC must annually sign off on the high level plan of action with a broad strategy for surveillance, rather than approving surveillance measures on a case to case basis. Although the relevant provision was set to expire in January 2018, Congress voted to re-authorise it for another six years, thus providing tacit approval to surveillance programmes as they stand now.

Executive Order 12333, which was promulgated by President Reagan, has empowered the President to order surveillance activities at his discretion. E.O.12333 has been shrouded in opacity. The aftermath of the Snowden revelations prompted President Barack Obama to issue the Presidential policy Directive (PPD-28) in 2014 which is legally not binding. This Directive states that

Our signals intelligence activities must take into account that all individuals must be treated with dignity, regardless of their nationality or wherever they reside and that all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information.

PPD-28 pays lip-service to the notion that signals intelligence will not be collected to suppress criticism or discriminate against persons. However, it suggests that bulk collection is necessary to decipher threats in todays complex age where communications are often weaponised by terrorist groups. The Directive goes on to state six cases where bulk targeting is permissible. These include:

This list of purposes is seemingly exhaustive though categories such as terrorist threats or cybersecurity are fairly broad and ambiguous. PPD-28 also includes safeguards that are drawn from the broad parameters of any standard data protection framework, including minimisation of data collection, limits on dissemination, use and retention, and proportionality and oversight. There was therefore an implicit recognition that signals intelligence should comply with International Human Rights Law, although its real-life implementation is far from clear.

The CJEUs argument on surveillance in Schrems II was that Section 702 FISAA and E.O. 12333 do not comply with the principle of proportionality, equivalent to the standard provided in Article 52 (1) of the European Charter of Human Rights (para 178-184). The court explained that while the annual certifications by the FISC check whether surveillance is undertaken with the objective of acquiring foreign intelligence information, it does not look into the question of whether individuals are properly targeted in order to acquire foreign intelligence information.

The CJEU in Schrems II picked up on this and stated that while PPD-28 is binding on the US intelligence authorities, it does not grant data subjects (that is, non-US citizens) actionable rights against these authorities in court. It went on to say,

PPD-28 allows for bulk collection of a relatively large volume of signals intelligence information or data under circumstances where the Intelligence Community cannot use an identifier associated with a specific target. This allows in the context of surveillance programmes based on E.O. 12333 access to data in transit to the US without that access being subject to any judicial review and thus does not delimit in a sufficiently clear and precise manner the scope of such bulk collection of personal data.

Schrems II opens an avenue for emerging economies like India to push back against their entrenched extra-territorial surveillance practices. Indias surveillance framework has been in dire need for a legal overhaul. For starters, it makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens as the US does. Yet, the provisions governing surveillance in India (which applies equally for citizens and non citizens) would likely not satisfy thresholds for adequacy determination and even if it did, it would likely be struck down by a Schrems like challenge at the CJEU. While there is no evidence of Indian intelligence agencies running mass extra-territorial surveillance programs like the NSA does, the law and policy is certainly not in line with the thresholds articulated in Schrems.

The legal framework governing surveillance in India stems from four statutes the Telegraph Act (1885), Information Technology act, 2000, Code of Criminal Procedure (1973), and is enabled further by the Personal Data Protection Bill (tabled in 2019). The Telegraph Act enables targeted surveillance and covers the interception of post and telephone/telegraph. Section 5(2) has a two-tiered threshold for the Central Government to authorise the interception of messages. First, there should be a public emergency or the authorisation must be in the interest of public safety. Second, the official must be satisfied that the interception is necessary or expedient in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of an offence. Rule 419A charts out the process that needs to be followed prior to, during and subsequent to the interception, including the relevant sanctioning authority, the review process, and duration.

In addition to calls and messages, the government can also intercept information contained in computer resources through Section 69 of the Information Technology Act. While it is modelled on the Telegraph Act, there are important distinctions. First, it allows the government to intercept, monitor or decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource without the prerequisites of public emergency of public safety, which are there in the Telegraph Act. Further,the second tier test is widened by providing two additional and ambiguous grounds which are defence of India and investigation of any offence. Section 69(3) imposes an obligation on an intermediary to comply with the intercepting agency.

Section 69B allows the Central Government to undertake bulk surveillance by collecting and monitoring traffic data (defined in 69B4(ii) to include metadata) for enhancing cybersecurity and for identification,analysis, and prevention of any intrusion or spread of computer contamination in the country a threshold that is as low and as ambiguous as the parameters contained in the US PPD-28. It is worth noting here that the regime does not provide for any judicial oversight of this surveillance mechanism.

The Personal Data Protection Bill served as an opportunity to reform the surveillance regime in India. However, Section 35 of the Bill states that exemptions can be made to collection rules, reporting requirements, and other requirements whenever the government feels that it is necessary or expedient-a significant departure from the 2018 version which used the term necessary and proportionate a standard recognised in international human rights law, and the Schrems II decision. This Bill is still under consideration by the Joint Parliamentary Committee and India has an opportunity yet to enact meaningful reform that will comply with the EUs adequacy standards.

Schrems II comes as a victory for the critical mass of civil society organisations trying to restrict extraterritorial surveillance and bring it within the boundaries of International Human Rights Law. A German court recently rendered extra-territorial surveillance by German authorities unconstitutional. Schrems II has mounted a firm judicial challenge to the US on this front, and given the importance of cross-border data flows, it might prompt the US to reconsider its surveillance practices, though worryingly some experts have already recommended stubborn retaliation instead through trade retaliatory measures, among other forms of diplomatic pressure.

It remains to be seen whether the EU will use GDPR adequacy to challenge the practices of other countries. The UK, for example, still allows extra-territorial bulk surveillance through the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 (formerly Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000) Further, will other countries whose citizens are victims of US surveillance but do not have the EUs geopolitical clout be emboldened by this decision to take a judicial or policy stance against US surveillance? India initially cited foreign surveillance in the Srikrishna Committee Report (2018) as one of the reasons underpinning its localisation gambit but failed to ground this argument in the discourse on individual sovereignty. It still has an opportunity to change this by amending Section 35 of the Act and thereby furthering the pushback against unbridled extra-territorial surveillance. Similar pushback from middle powers will likely determine the future of extra-territorial surveillance although the Schrems II decision is a giant leap forward towards developing a norm ostracising it. It has been recognised for some time that US surveillance practices have been illegal as per the standards of international human rights law. The CJEUs decision highlighted that the US needs to abide by these rules in order to survive in todays era of inter-dependence and cannot create and implement rules unilaterally.

The complete paper is available here.

Arindrajit Basu is a Research Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society.

Edited by Aditi Agrawal

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Unpacking US law and practice on extraterritorial mass surveillance in light of Schrems II - MediaNama.com

Mutual aid organizing is experiencing something of a renaissance amid the coinciding crises of COVID-19 and overdoses. But the concept is not just used by communities setting up fridges stocked with free groceries or grassroots safer use supplies distribution.

The cops areand have beendeploying the framework first popularized by a Russian anarchist to facilitate their war on drug users and border communities. While community organizers tend to think about mutual aid as a means to survive and build power despite austerity, law enforcement has defined it as sharing intelligence, pooling militarized equipment, and bringing together officers to boost each departments respective capacity to criminalize Black, Indigenous, migrant, and poor communities.

As the movement to defund law enforcement grows and President Donald Trumps migrant concentration camps continue, law enforcement mutual aid arrangements are now being proposed by sheriffs as a mechanism for ramping up border policing and raising funds through asset forfeiture.

In a federally-funded August 18 report, the National Sheriffs Association (NSA) put forth a vision of border sheriffs mutually banding together to increase traffic stops, which often involve racist profiling and have resulted in the murder of Black motorists. Called criminal interdiction units (CIU), these multi-departmental collaborations share information and gather intelligence among sheriffs, which, historically speaking, are nothing new. Since at least the 1960s, some local jurisdictions in states like Wisconsin have had such mutual aid systems for traffic policing.

What seems to different is their function in this current moment. CIUs would address, the authors suggest, border sheriffs reported main priority of funding, while also supporting efforts to fill personnel voids, bolster northern border policing and crack down on the drug tradeissues and priorities identified in roundtable discussions funded by a Justice Department grant to the tune of more than $100,000. The grantor, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, did not respond toFilters request for comment about NSAs report.

The NSA authors, whose spokesperson also did not respond to comment, frame the scaling up of traffic stops as cash cows for law enforcement departments that are at the center of coinciding political battles over defunding the police and Trumps border regime.

The value of interdiction units is illustrated the authors wrote, by a mutual aid model in northern Texas, which collected more than $65 million in profits from seized illicit substances and weapons in a 30-month period between December 2017 and June 2020. Cannabis, a plant increasingly legalized despite continued federal criminalization, was the second most common drug seized (more than one-quarter) during arrests, just behind methamphetamine.

The law enforcement organizations know that a coordinated mutual aid effort is going to attract scrutiny from progressives and the media.

The collaboration, named the North Texas Criminal Interdiction Unit, anticipate[s] even better resultsmeaning more arrests, and more money taken out of the pockets of communitieswith this years integration of license plate reader technology in the eight participating counties.

The law enforcement organizations know that a coordinated mutual aid effort to ramp up traffic stops along the borders is going to attract scrutiny from progressives and the media, as Trump systematically violates migrants human rights and cops brutalize communities. In the words of the reports authors, CIU members will be in a high-profile position and will often be the targets of numerous complaints because of their high level of stops and interactions.

An historic proportionabout one-thirdof the public and high-profile cultural figures, like musicians John Legend and Lizzo and actors Jane Fonda and Natalie Portman, support defunding law enforcement. The movement sparked by the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade has been estimated by The New York Times to be the the largest movement in the countrys history.

Bullet-proofing the program from anticipated popular criticism, for the authors, means weeding out the bad apples. If the wrong member is selected, the unit could fail. The members must be of high moral character, must be highly motivated, and must have demonstrated a high conviction rate. The personnel selected will have the ability to affect all criminal interdiction efforts across the nation through resulting case lawgood or bad.

In the United States, law enforcement mutual aid has been used to facilitate settler-colonialism, suppress Black resistance, and stop liberation movements.

It began at least as early as the 19th century. Before local police departments were formed, a 1973 NSA report on law enforcement mutual aid explained, local U.S. Army troops would assist sheriffs in enforcing United States colonial law during western expansiona euphemism for the genocide of Native Americans and theft of their lands.

A century later, law enforcement mutual aid was used to violently suppress Black-led uprisings in the 1960s, from the 1965 Watts Riot, a response to police terror, and the April 1968 actions in the wake of the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. After the Long Hot Summer of 1968, Congress passed the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, leading the Department of Justice to commission numerous studies on expanding the countrys riot control capacity.

One such report, published in June 1973, recognized law enforcement mutual aid as a major step for control[ling] public demonstrations, or what they dub collective violence, by political activists, students, urban minorities, especially urban blacks, and labor unions. Such systems should target, the 1973 document suggests, housing projects, college student unions and labor picketing, among others.

In the 21st century, law enforcement mutual aid systems have been repurposed for the priorities of the ever-militarizing police forces. Post-9/11, they were promoted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police as a model for the domestic War on Terror. Now, amid the 2020 uprisings against police terror, the systems have been activated by local authorities to protect residents and businesses in Sacramento, California, among others.

Photograph of sheriffs from the North Texas Criminal Interdiction Unit via Collin County Sheriffs Office/Public Domain

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The Frightening Future and Past of Cop Mutual Aid - Filter

Washington, Aug 26 (PTI) Iqbal Singh, a former Asian Championship bronze medalist for India, has been charged with murder in the US after he chillingly admitted to killing his wife and mother, according to media reports.

Singh, 62, from Delaware County in Pennsylvania called police on Sunday morning to admit his crime, The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted officials as saying.

When police arrived at Singhs home in Newtown Township, they found Singh covered in blood, suffering from self-inflicted stab wounds. Inside were the bodies of the two women, the report said.

Singh was charged on Monday with first- and third-degree murder, court records show, and remained in custody, denied bail given the nature of the charges. There was no indication that he had hired an attorney, it said.

The former shot-putter won a bronze medal at the 1983 Asian Athletics Championship, which was held in Kuwait. This remained the biggest achievement of his sporting career before he moved to the US.

He was working as a taxicab driver, US media reports said.

Singh was taken to an area hospital for the treatment of self-inflicted injuries, where he remains in police custody, NBC News reported.

At Singhs home on Rockwood Road, police found his mother, Nasib Kaur, lying unresponsive on the first floor with her throat slit. Singhs wife, Jaspal Kaur, was found upstairs, similarly wounded. Both women were pronounced dead at the scene, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

The motive in the slayings was unclear.

At this point, theres been no previous criminal contact with this individual and so the mystery of why this happened is still a mystery, CBS Local quoted Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer as saying.

A chilling phone call between Singh and his son brought the responding officers to his home.

I killed both of them. I killed your mother and grandmother. Call the police to come get me, he told his son over phone.

He then talked to his daughter, who was with her brother and told her the same story. Thats when law enforcement was contacted, they arrived and they found Mr Singh covered in blood, injured. But they also found the two deceased individuals in the home, Stollsteimer said.

Neighbours say the now-accused killer was well-known. He was often seen walking and meditating in the quiet Newtown Square neighbourhood.

But they say something seemed off a day before the killings.He didnt seem to be his usual self. When he was doing his prayers, I just kind of sensed that he was maybe a little bit off or agitated about something, neighbour Sue Davison said. PTI NSA AKJ NSA

Disclaimer :- This story has not been edited by Outlook staff and is auto-generated from news agency feeds. Source: PTI

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Former Indian shot put medalist arrested in US for killing wife and mother - Outlook India

National Safety Apparel in Cleveland recently has grown by acquiring two apparel companies: leather glove manufacturer Kunz Glove and military gear manufacturer Wild Things. Kunz was acquired in late July and Wild Things in late August, the company said in an email.

Terms of the acquisitions are not being disclosed.

"We're committed to providing workers in the field and military personnel in the battlefield with the gear they need, while growing our manufacturing footprint in the USA," National Safety Apparel president and CEO Chuck Grossman said in a news release. "Both Wild Things and Kunz Glove align with NSA's mission to provide high quality, innovative products, and expand our offering to our customers."

Chicago-based Kunz Glove serves the electrical utilities and other industrial markets. Virginia Beach-based Wild Things started as a maker of gear for mountaineers and now makes outerwear for the U.S. military.

National Safety Apparel serves industries ranging from electrical and gas utilities to steel mills to construction, as well as the military, with its industrial safety apparel. Revenue figures and employee numbers are not being shared for any of the companies.

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National Safety Apparel grows with two acquisitions - Crain's Cleveland Business

ISTANBUL & RICHARDSON, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mavenir, the industry's leading end-to-end cloud-native network software provider for CSPs, and Turkcell, Turkeys leading digital operator today announce the worlds first OpenRAN vRAN call fully containerized with O-RAN Split 7.2 architecture, in Turkey.

Running on Turkcells Telco Cloud environment, Mavenirs OpenRAN vRAN is integrated with Turkcell Core, and is the first workload that will be going live on Turkcells Edge Cloud.

Mavenirs award winning OpenRAN vRAN solution centralizes baseband processing in cloud-native virtualized and containerized baseband units (vBBU) and exploits fronthaul over ethernet between vBBU and multiple remote radio units (RRU). The Mavenir vRAN architecture and platform supports 4G as well as both 5G NR NSA and SA. The vBBU is split into Central Unit (CU) and Distributed Unit (DU) and it features O-RAN standard interfaces.

The split between the DU and the RRU gives flexibility to the RAN system by enabling an efficient interface which can be run over Ethernet and allows concentration of the processing power either into data centers or onto edge platforms. Mavenirs OpenRAN vRAN allows a very secure and transparent interface which is based on a single architecture that can accommodate several deployment scenarios.

With these open interfaces, as well as virtualization and web scale containerization, the solution has the flexibility to support various deployment scenarios including Public Cloud, Private Cloud and at the RRU site. It can also support massive MIMO, mmWave, edge micro services and network slicing for 5G NR.

Mavenir is extremely proud to have supported Turkcell, which is a very innovative and advanced operator, in achieving this first call in a truly OpenRAN containerized implementation, said Mikael Rylander, Mavenirs SVP/GM Radio Access Products. The standard O-RAN 7.2 interface will enable and boost the OpenRAN ecosystem significantly by allowing many RRU vendors to be deployed and to have very effective solutions in all possible frequency bands with great deployment flexibility and with automation and remote operations.

We strongly believe in Turkcell that innovation is the engine that allows us to be very close to our customers and meet their demands, Gediz Sezgin, Turkcell CTO stated. Now with OpenRAN, we are entering a new era that offers us new ways of deploying Radio Networks and create a real distributed 5G network to fulfill the expectations that the industry has. We are pleased to pioneer this technology with Mavenir by realizing worlds first containerized implementation with a truly open architecture using a mix and match of Open FH supported RRU and CU/DU which reflects the true sense of Open RAN.

Turkcell is also transforming its LTE and 5G voice network into 100% virtual infrastructures. Mavenir was selected by Turkcell to deploy its cloud-native, NFV-based IMS solution, in Turkcells home country Turkey and other subsidiaries.

Mavenirs Virtualized IMS (vIMS) solution is designed to fully support LTE use cases and evolve into a fully web-scale platform that can meet the requirements enabling Turkcell to continue to lead the evolution to its 5G networks.

About Turkcell:

Turkcell is a digital operator headquartered in Turkey, serving its customers with its unique portfolio of digital services along with voice, messaging, data and IPTV services on its mobile and fixed networks. Turkcell Group companies operate in 5 countries Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Northern Cyprus, Germany. Turkcell launched LTE services in its home country on April 1st, 2016, employing LTE-Advanced and 3 carrier aggregation technologies in 81 cities. Turkcell offers up to 10 Gbps fiber internet speed with its FTTH services. Turkcell Group reported TRY6.9 billion revenue in Q220 with total assets of TRY47.0 billion as of June 30, 2020. It has been listed on the NYSE and the BIST since July 2000, and is the only NYSE-listed company in Turkey. Read more at http://www.turkcell.com.tr

About Mavenir:

Mavenir is the industry's only end-to-end, cloud-native Network Software and Solutions/Systems Integration Provider for 4G and 5G, focused on accelerating software network transformation for Communications Service Providers (CSPs). Mavenir offers a comprehensive end-to-end product portfolio across every layer of the network infrastructure stack. From 5G application/service layers to packet core and RAN, Mavenir leads the way in evolved, cloud-native networking solutions enabling innovative and secure experiences for end users. Leveraging innovations in IMS (VoLTE, VoWiFi, Advanced Messaging (RCS)), Private Networks as well as vEPC, 5G Core and OpenRAN vRAN, Mavenir accelerates network transformation for more than 250+ CSP customers in over 140 countries, which serve over 50% of the worlds subscribers.

Mavenir embraces disruptive, innovative technology architectures and business models that drive service agility, flexibility, and velocity. With solutions that propel NFV evolution to achieve web-scale economics, Mavenir offers solutions to help CSPs with cost reduction, revenue generation, and revenue protection.

http://www.mavenir.com

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Mavenir and Turkcell Enable World's First OpenRAN vRAN Call with Fully Containerized CU/DU and Open Front Haul - Business Wire