Homeless in Arizona

Of course they always want to cut the pork somebody else gets and keep their pork. And that seems to be the theme of this article. It's time to cut Federal government pork, BUT, we can't do it in Arizona.

The bottom line is just about ALL of these programs are government PORK and need to be cut. But sadly I can almost guarantee that it won't happen.

If Congress fails to strike a deal on the “fiscal cliff” before the new year, a “meat ax” could clobber Arizona’s military bases and defense industry, several of the state’s representatives in Washington warn.

Deep cuts in federal defense spending, triggered after Dec. 31 unless Congress comes up with another plan in the waning hours of 2012, could result in Arizona suffering thousands of layoffs and losing billions of dollars, military advocates say.

Arizona’s economy depends heavily on the defense industry. The state has four major military installations and a robust network of defense contractors employing thousands of Arizonans.

Even the signature F-35 fighter-jet program, the linchpin to the survival of Luke Air Force Base in the West Valley, could be in jeopardy, some observers believe.

As the window for action quickly narrows, several of Arizona’s congressmen are pressing to cancel the cuts and take a surgical approach next year to reducing the size of the Defense Department. That’s despite ongoing disagreement between Republicans and Democrats over how to deal with the nation’s debt following the recession, heightened after the 2010 “tea party” freshman class took office demanding major cuts to government spending.

U.S. Rep. Ron Barber, a Tucson Democrat who represents Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and Fort Huachuca Army Base near Sierra Vista, said Congress must not allow the roughly $500 billion in military “sequestration” over a decade to occur.

“A cut of that magnitude would have a devastating impact on our military,” Barber said, describing the plan as taking a “hammer or meat ax” to federal budgets. [Sorry Mr. Barber, that's what needs to be done!!!] “It (requires) a more exacting approach. ... We need more time. We’ve had a lot of time, but we haven’t gotten down to serious business. Now, we need to.”

Rep. Paul Gosar, a Prescott Republican, supports wielding the hatchet, he said in a recent opinion piece in The Arizona Republic. That’s despite the fact his new district includes the Yuma Marine Corps Air Station.

“To say that our defense budget cannot take a 7.5 percent cut, or that non-defense programs can’t take an 8.4 percent haircut, is simply not realistic,” Gosar wrote.

Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican whose northeast Valley district includes the major defense employer Honeywell Aerospace, said through a spokeswoman that reducing federal spending must take priority.

“He isn’t a fan of the sequestration. It’s not good policy, and it was something the House worked to avoid by passing budget after budget (that never made it through the Senate),” spokeswoman Rachel Semmel said. “(But) David has always said sequester is better than no sequester.”

However, outgoing Rep. Ben Quayle blasted his fellow Republican freshmen, Gosar and Schweikert, for their stances, in particular Schweikert, who beat Quayle in a nasty primary election this summer.

Schweikert was the only Republican in Arizona’s delegation to vote against a House bill more than a week ago that would have canceled the military-sequestration cuts.

The state’s Democrats, including Barber, opposed the bill because it gouged domestic programs, like school lunches and children’s health insurance, to make up for the cuts taken away from the military. [Translation - Don't you dare cut MY PORK]

“Any Arizona representative who voted against that reconciliation bill has to answer to a lot of their constituents,” Quayle said, “because ... it’s going to cost Arizona jobs.”

Schweikert voted no, Semmel said, believing the bill was a “cover” for House Speaker John Boehner’s subsequent legislation to raise taxes on millionaires, which Schweikert and other Republicans opposed, causing House leaders to abandon a floor vote on the measure.

Rep. Trent Franks, who represents Luke Air Force Base, did not respond to a request for comment.

It’s impossible to know precisely the outcome of military cuts on Arizona because sequestration mandates a one-size-fits-all cut to everything except the level of military personnel, instead of specifying programs to eliminate.

Some Arizona defense contractors could be insulated by multiyear contracts to tide them over while Congress seeks a better solution or by diversifying their businesses in anticipation of reduced military spending.

Still, a new report by the Southwest Defense Alliance argues that the effect on Arizona would be dire. The six-state military-advocacy group estimates Arizona would lose as many as 39,000 defense-related jobs, $1.6 billion in economic output and $600 million in personal earnings over eight years. [For us fiscal conservatives that sounds GREAT!!!!]

The group’s chairman, John Regni, a retired lieutenant general with 40 years in the Air Force, said lawmakers must work to avoid such consequences.

“An across-the-board budget whack without regard to the hard thinking of which pieces should be cut ... it’s not a strategic plan,” Regni said.

xxx

Do we need a cop that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a police officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

Do we need a school resource officer that is paid $96,200 at every high school????

By Melissa Leu and Eddi Trevizo The Republic | azcentral.com Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:47 AM

Some West Valley schools have police officers on campus, an idea that got a renewed push by the National Rifle Association.

The NRA is advocating for armed guards on every school campus after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 children and six educators this month.

Currently, there is a divide among high schools. Those in such cities as Avondale, Peoria and Surprise have police officers, called school-resource officers, on campus, while many high schools in Glendale do not.

It comes down to money. [So it sounds like most schools will gladly have a cop, police officer or school resource officers on their campus - As long as the school doesn't have to pay the cops $96,200 yearly salary]

As the recession hit, funding for school-resource officers dried up, causing the Glendale Police Department to pull back its officers from schools.

State funding for school officers was cut nearly in half amid tight finances the past five years. A Democrat state lawmaker is calling to renew that funding.

Beyond money, the proposal is one that is sure to spark conversation in West Valley communities and beyond.

“Obviously, we think it’s the right thing to do to have a police officer there for our middle schools and high schools — because they already are there,” said Christy Agosta, a school-board member in the Deer Valley Unified School District.

“As a parent, as well as a school-board member, having my kids have to go by armed security arriving at schools is kind of a heartbreaking thought,” Agosta said. “I’m mixed. … If there had been an armed guard standing outside Sandy Hook, those parents still might have their children. So it’s hard to say we shouldn’t.”

School-resource officers are armed and have the authority of a police officer [and they ARE POLICE OFFICERS], but their duties go beyond security. They offer lessons on law-related issues and add a friendly face on campus for students and staff to turn to for advice.

Police officials credit them with reducing the number of student disciplinary problems.

In 2011, before Centennial High School in Peoria hired its resource officer, the school reported 318 disciplinary incidents. That dropped to 147 incidents, according to Peoria police.

Centennial resource Officer Dave Fernandez typically starts his day at 6:30 a.m. in the school parking lot, helping parents navigate traffic. [Why do you need a cop that is paid an average of $96,200 a year to help parents navigate traffic???]

After about an hour, he heads to his office to answer e-mails, and if nothing major is happening, he walks the campus. [So most of the time he does nothing. Well other then answer e-mails and help parents navigate traffic. And this guy is paid an average of $96,200]

“The best way to see if there is an issue is to be outside looking and talking to people,” Fernandez said.

He said the Sandy Hook shootings were a tragedy. “But we think about these things constantly not just after something has occurred.”

Dale Nicol, principal at Sunrise Mountain High School in Peoria, said resource officers act as a preventive measure.

“He can gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. [I suspect teachers and other school employees can also gather (information) as a result of making connections with students. Do you really need a cop that is making an average of $96,200 a year to do that???] Consequently, we can intervene and stop negative behaviors before they escalate,” Nicol said.

But a divide exists among the Peoria district schools, which stretch across Glendale and Peoria.

The district partners with the city to pay for resource officers in its Peoria-based high schools, but Glendale does not provide funding.

“The police department’s budget is not able to support funding of these positions at this time,” Glendale police spokeswoman Tracey Breeden said.

For the Peoria district, the cost of having officers in Glendale high schools is beyond its budget.

“Grant opportunities are scarce. It becomes funding issues for both the city and the school district,” said Steve Savoy, Peoria’s administrator for K-12 academic services.

The salary of Peoria’s school-resource officers averages $96,200 per year including benefits, Peoria police spokeswoman Amanda Jacinto said. In the past, it was paid by a combination of grants and school district and city budgets.

When the money disappeared, the Peoria district and police partnered to continue the program. The district pays about $30,000 toward the officers’ salaries, and Peoria police pay the rest.

The district relies on neighborhood patrol officers at its Glendale high schools.

The Deer Valley district shoulders the cost of paying officers $30 to $35 an hour for each of its five high schools and three middle schools in Glendale and Phoenix, said Bill Gahn, the district’s director of school operations.

The district earmarks about $300,000 in its budget, which is supplemented through event ticket sales.

An officer is almost always on campus during school hours and after-school events, but the same officer doesn’t always work every day of the week, Gahn said.

Two years ago, Glendale Union had to eliminate its school-resource officers. At one point, the district had officers at seven of its nine campuses in Glendale and Phoenix, district spokeswoman Kim Mesquita said.

That number declined with state grant funding. When the district failed to win the grant last school year, the officers disappeared completely. The district now relies mostly on teachers and administrators to pick up the slack.

Avondale’s Agua Fria Union High School District has a resource officer at each school, funded with state grants and shared costs with local police departments.

Surprise’s Dysart Unified School District has resource officers at each of its four high schools with grant funding.

The district’s 20 elementary schools do not have resource officers, Dysart spokesman Jim Dean said.

Sometimes it’s simply hard to fill the position, said Jim Cummings, spokesman for the Glendale Elementary School District.

His district received federal funding five years ago for officers at Challenger and Landmark schools, but had to return some of that money because of a lack of candidates, Cummings said.

School officials note that elementary schools typically have less of a need for officers than in high schools, where drugs, theft and violence may be more common.

Patrol officers assigned to Peoria and Glendale neighborhoods regularly check in with elementary principals and students, Peoria’s Savoy said.

The Litchfield Elementary School District used to provide resource officers for its middle schools in partnership with the Avondale and Goodyear police departments and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“We would approve of armed security at our schools if the state or federal government paid for it,” said Litchfield Elementary spokeswoman Ann Donahue, noting the district would not be able to cover the costs.

State Superintendent John Huppenthal on Friday noted the NRA’s proposal would be a large expense to an already financially stressed education system.

House Minority Leader Chad Campbell, D-Phoenix, said he plans to introduce legislation in 2013 to fully fund and train school resource officers at every Arizona school.

Meanwhile, conversations will continue over what parents and residents want for their schools.

Dysart school board member Jerry Enyon said concerns are high, but school officials go through training and routinely practice safety drills.

Congress repeals 4th Amendment??? - Again

WASHINGTON — Congress gave final approval on Friday to a bill extending the government’s power to intercept electronic communications of spy and terrorism suspects, after the Senate voted down proposals from several Democrats and Republicans to increase protections of civil liberties and privacy.

The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 73 to 23, clearing it for approval by President Obama, who strongly supports it. Intelligence agencies said the bill was their highest legislative priority.

Critics of the bill, including Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, and Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, expressed concern that electronic surveillance, though directed at noncitizens, inevitably swept up communications of Americans as well.

“The Fourth Amendment was written in a different time and a different age, but its necessity and its truth are timeless,” Mr. Paul said, referring to the constitutional ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. “Over the past few decades, our right to privacy has been eroded. We have become lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. [We haven't become anything. Congress has become tyrannical] Digital records seem to get less protection than paper records.”

The bill, which extends the government’s surveillance authority for five years, was approved in the House by a vote of 301 to 118 in September. Mr. Obama is expected to sign the bill in the next few days. [Obama isn't a freedom fighter anymore then Hitler or Stalin was!!!]

Congressional critics of the bill said that they suspected that intelligence agencies were picking up the communications of many Americans, but that they could not be sure because the agencies would not provide even rough estimates of how many people inside the United States had had communications collected under authority of the surveillance law, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The inspector general of the National Security Agency told Congress that preparing such an estimate was beyond the capacity of his office.

The chief Senate supporter of the bill, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the proposed amendments were unnecessary. Moreover, she said, any changes would be subject to approval by the House, and the resulting delay could hamper the government’s use of important intelligence-gathering tools, for which authority is set to expire next week.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was adopted in 1978 and amended in 2008, with the addition of new surveillance authority and procedures, which are continued by the bill approved on Friday. The 2008 law was passed after the disclosure that President George W. Bush had authorized eavesdropping inside the United States, to search for evidence of terrorist activity, without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that he and Mr. Wyden were concerned that “a loophole” in the 2008 law “could allow the government to effectively conduct warrantless searches for Americans’ communications.”

James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, told Congress, “There is no loophole in the law.”

By a vote of 52 to 43, the Senate on Friday rejected a proposal by Mr. Wyden to require the national intelligence director to tell Congress if the government had collected any domestic e-mail or telephone conversations under the surveillance law.

The Senate also rejected, 54 to 37, an amendment that would have required disclosure of information about significant decisions by a special federal court that reviews applications for electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence cases.

The amendment was proposed by one of the most liberal senators, Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, and one of the most conservative, Mike Lee, Republican of Utah.

The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said the surveillance law “does not have adequate checks and balances to protect the constitutional rights of innocent American citizens.” [Yea, but the 4th Amendment does, and the law flushes the 4th down the toilet]

“It is supposed to focus on foreign intelligence,” Mr. Durbin said, “but the reality is that this legislation permits targeting an innocent American in the United States as long as an additional purpose of the surveillance is targeting a person outside the United States.”

However, 30 Democrats joined 42 Republicans and one independent in voting for the bill. Three Republicans — Mr. Lee, Mr. Paul and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted against the bill, as did 19 Democrats and one independent.

Mr. Merkley said the administration should provide at least unclassified summaries of major decisions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

“An open and democratic society such as ours should not be governed by secret laws,” Mr. Merkley said, “and judicial interpretations are as much a part of the law as the words that make up our statute.”

Mrs. Feinstein said the law allowed intelligence agencies to go to the court and get warrants for surveillance of “a category of foreign persons,” without showing probable cause to believe that each person was working for a foreign power or a terrorist group.

Mr. Wyden said these writs reminded him of the “general warrants that so upset the colonists” more than 200 years ago. [Gasp - Are they saying the American government has become tyrannical and needs to be overthrown like the British tyrants were??? - Probably]

“The founding fathers could never have envisioned tweeting and Twitter and the Internet,” Mr. Wyden said. “Advances in technology gave government officials the power to invade individual privacy in a host of new ways.”

Using the Connecticut shooting to create a jobs program for cops???

Do each of the nations approximately 70,000 schools need a police officers to protect against an incident which only happens one or twice every 10 years or so? I don't really think that is a cost efficient solution.

However if you are a police chief and want to expand your empire, hiring 70,000 new cops sounds like a great idea for an empire building bureaucrat. Even if it isn't cost efficient it is a way to increase your pay and empire size.

WASHINGTON - The student's attack began with a shotgun blast through the windows of a California high school. Rich Agundez, the El Cajon policeman assigned to the school, felt his mind shift into overdrive.

People yelled at him amid the chaos but he didn't hear. He experienced "a tunnel vision of concentration."

While two teachers and three students were injured when the glass shattered in the 2001 attack on Granite Hills High School, Agundez confronted the assailant and wounded him before he could get inside the school and use his second weapon, a handgun.

The National Rifle Association's response to a Connecticut school massacre envisions, in part, having trained, armed volunteers in every school in America. But Agundez, school safety experts and school board members say there's a huge difference between a trained law enforcement officer who becomes part of the school family and a guard with a gun. [Translation - He wants to create jobs for police officers, not armed guards who are not police officers.]

The NRA's proposal has sparked a debate across the country as gun control rises once again as a national issue. President Obama promised to present a plan in January to confront gun violence in the aftermath of the killing of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary School students and six teachers in Newtown, Conn.

Agundez said what happened before the shooting in the San Diego County school should frame the debate over the NRA's proposal.

After a shooting at another county school just weeks before, Agundez had trained the staff in how to lock down the school, assigned evacuation points, instructed teachers to lock doors, close curtains and turn off the lights. He even told them computers should be used where possible to communicate, to lessen the chaos.

And his training? A former SWAT team member, Agundez's preparation placed him in simulated stressful situations.

The kids in the school knew to follow his advice because they knew him. He spoke in their classrooms and counseled them when they came to him with problems.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, school boards, administrators, teachers and parents are reviewing their security measures.

School security officers can range from the best-trained police officers to unarmed private guards. Some big-city districts with gang and crime problems formed their own police agencies years ago.

Others, after the murder of 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999, started joint agreements with local police departments to have officers assigned to schools - even though that was no guarantee of preventing violence. A trained police officer at Columbine confronted one of two shooters but couldn't prevent the death of 13 people.

"Our association would be uncomfortable with volunteers," [Of course they are uncomfortable with volunteers, it means less jobs for police officers] said Mo Canady, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers - whose members are mostly trained law enforcement officers who "become part of the school family.' " [I think a better title for their group would be National Association of Police Officers who work in Schools. "Resource Officers" is just a politically correct word for cops that work in schools]

Canady questioned how police agencies responding to reports of a shooter would know whether the person with a gun is a volunteer or the assailant. [You can ask the same question and say how would the cops know if a person was a teacher or the assailant?]

Former Rep. Asa Hutchinson, who also was a top Homeland Security official and will head the NRA effort, said the program will have two key elements.

One is a model security plan "based on the latest, most up-to-date technical information from the foremost experts in their fields." Each school could tweak the plan to its own circumstances, and "armed, trained, qualified school security personnel will be but one element."

The second element may prove the more controversial because, to avoid massive funding for local authorities, it would use volunteers. Hutchinson said in his home state of Arkansas, his son was a volunteer with a local group "Watchdog Dads," who volunteered at schools to patrol playgrounds and provide added security.

He said retired police officers, former members of the military or rescue personnel would be among those likely to volunteer.

There's debate over whether anyone should have a gun in a school, even a trained law enforcement officer.

"In general teachers don't want guns in schools, period," said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, one of the two large unions representing teachers. He added that one size does not fit all districts and said the union has supported schools that wanted a trained officer. Most teachers, he said, do not want to be armed themselves.

• Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne proposed a plan to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun. [Isn't Tom Horne the guy who is trying to distract the public from his alleged affair with Carmen Chenal and the alleged hit and run accident he was involved in on his way to an alleged affair with Carmen Chenal???]

• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says he has the authority to mobilize private citizens to fight crime and plans to post armed private posse members around the perimeter of schools. He said he hasn't spoken to specific school districts and doesn't plan to have the citizen posse members inside the buildings. [ Sheriff Joe is just a publicity hound who is using the Connecticut shooting to get attention for himself]

• The Snohomish School District north of Seattle got rid of its school officers because of the expense.

• The Las Vegas-based Clark County School District has its own police department and places armed officers in and around its 49 high school campuses. Officers patrol outside elementary and middle schools. The Washoe County School District in Nevada also has a police force that was authorized about a decade ago to carry guns on campus.

• In Milwaukee, a dozen city police officers cover the school district but spend most of their time in seven of the 25 high schools. In Madison, Wis., an armed police officer has worked in each of the district's four high schools since the mid-1990s.

• A Utah group is offering free concealed-weapons permit training for teachers as a result of the Connecticut shootings.

"I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college" - The author who is an ex-cop and owner of a police training school has a vested interest in hiring more cops.

The discussion concerning active-shooter situations needs to remain productive and on-topic.

Some of that discussion involves the controversial option of arming teachers and other qualified concealed-carry-permit holders. Some politicians and media folks have attempted to hijack the narrative on the subject and offer nonsensical solutions. [So if you are not a cop, you are too stupid to be involved in this discussion???] Those of us in law enforcement must reinforce those who voice legitimate solutions. Our kids are being murdered in elementary schools. We have no choice but to make ourselves heard.

Law-enforcement professionals have done a pretty good job over the past 14 years in training and preparing for such situations. [Yea, but off hand I don't remember then stopping ANY shootings. The shooters usually commit suicide, or are arrested after they leave the scene] As a former police officer and co-owner of North American SWAT Training Association, I have been directly involved in this training and preparation for thousands of officers and educators throughout the United States since 1999. [So he has a vested interest in hiring more cops] In many cases, responding officers and educators have limited the number of casualties. This comprehensive approach to training and preparation must continue and be improved upon.

Historically, a homicidal-suicidal active shooter stops killing innocent people only when he or she is confronted by a responsible person carrying a gun. [Yes I remember a few of these incidents the cop were cowards and didn't confront the assailants. Columbine was one of them.]

Therefore, we must cause this confrontation to take place within seconds of when an active shooter starts his or her rampage.

The only way to ensure this is to have a responsible and armed person at the scene when the situation begins. Like most, I would prefer to hand-pick those individuals for this assignment. I would select an experienced, tactically trained, on-duty police officer. I would have them in every school in the United States, preschool through college. [And of course after those thousands of cops are hired I will make of buck off of training a few of them]

But I'm not convinced that we have enough sworn personnel or resources to accomplish that task.

Another option: Recruit off-duty and retired police officers, paid or volunteer. How many active and retired officers, former military personnel and other qualified gun owners already volunteer in their kids’ and grandkids’ schools? I would gladly volunteer for the assignment.

Another option: Arming responsible teachers who are proficient in the use of firearms. It has worked successfully in some school districts throughout Texas and other states. The Harrold School District in Texas has an excellent plan that includes all of the necessary selection, training and policy procedures.

Law enforcement would need to assist educators in establishing a safe and workable plan.

Like most officers, I want to be there when an active-shooter situation erupts. If I can't be there, I want a fellow officer to confront the shooter. If we can't be there in the first 30-90 seconds, I want someone else armed and prepared to end the situation. [If you ask me it's highly unlikely that a school cop will get their in 30 to 90 seconds]

When the lives of our children are at stake, we can't afford to take any solution off the table. [Translation I want to make a few bucks training cops, and I think you can afford to pay me] Politicians and celebrities are provided individualized, armed security 24/7. How can we justify depriving our children of at least one armed security professional per school?

Drone War Spurs Militants to Deadly Reprisals

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — They are dead men talking, and they know it. Gulping nervously, the prisoners stare into the video camera, spilling tales of intrigue, betrayal and paid espionage on behalf of the United States. Some speak in trembling voices, a glint of fear in their eyes. Others look resigned. All plead for their lives.

Pakistan militants punish accused informers aiding drone attacks by taping their confessions and executions.

“I am a spy and I took part in four attacks,” said Sidinkay, a young tribesman who said he was paid $350 to help direct C.I.A. drones to their targets in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Sweat glistened on his forehead; he rocked nervously as he spoke. “Stay away from the Americans,” he said in an imploring voice. “Stay away from their dollars.”

Al Qaeda and the Taliban have few defenses against the American drones that endlessly prowl the skies over the bustling militant hubs of North and South Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, along the Afghan border. C.I.A. missiles killed at least 246 people in 2012, most of them Islamist militants, according to watchdog groups that monitor the strikes. The dead included Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Qaeda ideologue and deputy leader.

Despite the technological superiority of their enemy, however, the militants do possess one powerful countermeasure.

For several years now, militant enforcers have scoured the tribal belt in search of informers who help the C.I.A. find and kill the spy agency’s jihadist quarry. The militants’ technique — often more witch hunt than investigation — follows a well-established pattern. Accused tribesmen are abducted from homes and workplaces at gunpoint and tortured. A sham religious court hears their case, usually declaring them guilty. Then they are forced to speak into a video camera.

The taped confessions, which are later distributed on CD, vary in style and content. But their endings are the same: execution by hanging, beheading or firing squad.

In Sidinkay’s last moments, the camera shows him standing in a dusty field with three other prisoners, all blindfolded, illuminated by car headlights. A volley of shots rings out, and the three others are mowed down. But Sidinkay, apparently untouched, is left standing. For a tragic instant, the accused spy shuffles about, confused. Then fresh shots ring out and he, too, crumples to the ground.

These macabre recordings offer a glimpse into a little-seen side of the drone war in Waziristan, a paranoid shadow conflict between militants and a faceless American enemy in which ordinary Pakistanis have often become unwitting victims.

Outside the tribal belt, the issue of civilian casualties has dominated the debate about American drones. At least 473 noncombatants have been killed by C.I.A.-directed strikes since 2004, according to monitoring groups — a toll frequently highlighted by critics of the drones like the Pakistani politician Imran Khan. Still, strike accuracy seems to be improving: just seven civilian deaths have been confirmed in 2012, down from 68 the previous year, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which has been critical of the Obama administration’s drone campaign.

And civilian lives are threatened by militants, too. As the American campaign has cut deeply into the commands of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, drone-fearing militants have turned to the local community for reprisals, mounting a concerted campaign of fear and intimidation that has claimed dozens of lives and further stressed the already fragile order of tribal society.

The video messages from accused spies are intended to send a stark message, regardless of whether innocents are among those caught up in the deadly dragnet. The confessions are delivered at gunpoint, and usually follow extensive torture, including hanging from hooks for up to a month, human rights groups say.

“In every civilized society, the penalty for spying is death,” said a senior commander with the Pakistani Taliban, speaking on the condition of anonymity from Waziristan.

Although each of myriad militant factions in Waziristan operates its own death squads, by far the most formidable is the Ittehad-e-Mujahedeen Khorasan, a shadowy group that experts consider to be Al Qaeda’s local counterintelligence wing. Since it emerged in 2009, the group, which is led by Arab and Uzbek militants, has carefully cultivated a sinister image through video theatrics and the ruthless application of violence.

Black-clad Khorasan militants, their faces covered in balaclavas, roam across North Waziristan in jeeps with tinted windows. In one video clip from 2011, Khorasan fighters are seen searching traffic under a cluster of palm trees outside Mir Ali, a notorious militant hub. Then they move into the town center, distributing leaflets to shoppers, before executing three men outside a gas station.

“Spies, your days are numbered because we are carrying out raids,” chants the video soundtrack.

Thought to number dozens of militants, the Khorasan cooperates closely with the Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is based in North Waziristan. A sister organization in Afghanistan has been responsible for 250 assassinations and executions, according to American military intelligence.

“Everyone’s frightened of them,” said Mustafa Qadri of Amnesty International, which recently published a report on human rights abuses by both the military and militants in the tribal belt. “No one really knows who is behind them. But they are very professional.”

The videotapes produced by Khorasan and other groups offer a stark, if one-dimensional, picture of their spy hunt. A review of 20 video confessions by The New York Times, as well as interviews with residents of the tribal belt, suggest the suspects are largely poor tribesmen — barbers, construction workers, Afghan migrants.

The jittery accounts of the accused men reveal dramatic stories of espionage: furtive meetings with handlers; disguising themselves as Taliban fighters, fruit sellers or even heroin addicts; payment of between $150 and $450 per drone strike; and placing American-supplied electronic tracking devices, often wrapped in cigarette foil, near the houses and cars of Qaeda fugitives.

But the videos are also portraits of fear and confusion, infused with poignant, even darkly comic, moments. Curiously, some say they have been hired through Pakistani military intelligence officials who are identified by name, directly contradicting the Pakistan government’s official stance that it vehemently opposes the drone strikes. An official with Inter-Services Intelligence, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said any suggestion of Pakistani cooperation was “hogwash.”

Quite clearly, the video accounts are stage-managed. Behind the camera, an unseen militant prompts the prisoners to speak. Some say they have been told they will be freed if they tell the “truth.” Others are preparing for death. “Tell my parents that I owe 250 rupees to a guy from our village,” Hamidullah, a bearded Afghan migrant, said in a quavering voice. “After I die, please repay the money to him.”

Death is not inevitable, however. Suleman Wazir, a 20-year-old goat herder from South Waziristan, said militants abducted him in September on suspicion of being a spy. “They held me in a dungeon and flogged me hundreds of times. They told me I would die,” he said in a video interview recorded through an intermediary in Waziristan. But after some weeks, Mr. Wazir said, his relatives intervened through tribal elders and persuaded the Taliban of his innocence. Upon presentation of five goats to the militants, he was set free, he said.

The Taliban and Al Qaeda have become obsessed with “patrai” — a local word for a small metallic device, now synonymous with the tiny electronic tagging devices that militants believe the C.I.A. uses to find them. In 2009 Mr. Libi, the Qaeda deputy, published an article illustrated with photographs of such devices, warning of their dangers. He was killed in a drone strike near Mir Ali in June.

This year, the Taliban released a video purporting to show one such device: an inchlong electronic circuit board, cased in transparent plastic, that, when connected to a nine-volt battery, pulsed with an infrared light. A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to comment on details of the drone program. But a former American intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the agency does use such GPS devices, which are commercially available in the United States through stores that supply the military.

As a result, the Taliban are adapting. Wali ur-Rehman, a senior Taliban commander, said in an interview last spring that his fighters had started to scan all visiting vehicles with camcorders set to infrared mode in order to detect potential tracking devices.

Still, the Taliban may be overestimating the importance of such devices. A former Obama administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the subject, said that satellites and aerial surveillance planes — whose powerful sensors sweep up mobile phone, Internet and radio intercepts from the tribal belt — provide much of the drone program’s electronic intelligence. Other experts said many American intelligence informers in Waziristan are recruited in Afghanistan, where a C.I.A. base in the border province of Khost was attacked by a suicide bomber three years ago.

On the ground, though, the spy war has further destabilized a tribal society already dangerously weakened by years of violence. Paranoia about the profusion of tracking chips has fueled rivalries between different clans who accused one another of planting the devices.

“People start to think that other tribes are throwing the chips. There is so much confusion and mistrust created within the tribal communities. Drone attacks have intensified existing mistrust,” one tribesman told researchers from Columbia Law School, as part of a study into the effects of the drone campaign, last May.

The Khorasan’s brutality has alienated even some of its putative allies. In September 2011, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a leading warlord in North Waziristan, publicly withdrew his support for the group after coming under pressure from tribal supporters over the number of apparently innocent tribesmen who had been executed as spies. In a statement, the Khorasan responded that it would pursue its objectives “at all costs and not spare anyone.”

Amid the long knives and paranoia, some tribesmen believe there is no option but to flee. Some of those accused of espionage run to the gulf states; others make it to the sprawling slums of the port of Karachi. In an ethnic Pashtun neighborhood of that city, one elderly man described how he fled with his family after the execution of his son in 2009.

“I was afraid the militants would also kill me and my family,” said the man, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Still now, his life remained in danger, he added, because the Taliban believed he was spending what they said was his son’s ill-gotten money. But it was simply untrue, the old man insisted: “My son was innocent.”

Reasonable Restrictions on your First and Second Amendment rights

Imagine that the First Amendment is subject to just a few 'reasonable restrictions.'

Desperate for weapons, Syrian rebels make their own, fix tanks

I guess you could extend that to any metal working tools from micrometers to socket wrenches. Same for a huge number of common chemicals like fertilizer (ammonium nitrate), the stuff Timothy McVey used to blow up the FBI building. And don't forget that steak knife on your kitchen table. You could easily kill somebody with it.

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.

In a neat row against the wall is the finished product, homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar al-Assad have gone unanswered.

"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.

Using the Internet, the workshop of about seven men work together to try and perfect the crude weapons. For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons. Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.

"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a 3-1/2 meter crater.

Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 km (almost 4 miles).

Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 21-month conflict, they are outgunned by Assad's forces.

Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Gulf states, and Western countries say they are giving non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.

Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told Reuters last week that his forces are fighting without any help from the Western and Arab governments which want Assad removed from power.

"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.

The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 percent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.

"The more we practice, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.

At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.

The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Assad's military bases.

Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.

Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.

"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him (Assad) with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he told Reuters.

"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.

Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.

"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases (we take over)," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade, wearing a plaid yellow and black turban.

Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.

"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.

This Federal job pays $186,000 to do nothing!!!!!

Federal bureaucrats put on PAID leave can get stuck in an ill-defined limbo for years

I bet some poor smuck who is making minimum wage doing backbreaking work would dream about this job.

The article also seems to say that the Feds have flushed the First Amendment down the toilet and give Federal employees PAID leave to attend religious events.

If the Boy Scouts are your cup of tea, I see nothing wrong with that. But since it is a quasi-religious organization you should not be paid with tax dollars to attend Boy Scout events.

These government bureaucrats in DC are not alone. In Arizona, Phoenix police officers who are accused of misconduct often are placed on PAID leave for months or years at a time waiting for their case to be resolved. Phoenix cops start at around $50,000/yr or $25/hr and many make over $100,000/yr or $50/hr.

Paul Brachfeld, the inspector general for the National Archives, plans to ring in the new year with his wife with a relaxed visit to their vacation home near Bethany Beach, Del. In October, the couple took a cruise to Puerto Rico. Brachfeld runs every morning in Silver Spring, hikes with Spree, his Jack Russell terrier, in the woods most afternoons and catches up with his adult daughters in the evening. All while collecting his $186,000 government salary.

These days, his life seems like one long vacation. The veteran watchdog for the historical records agency is entering his fourth month on paid time off, one of an unspecified number of federal employees who are collecting paychecks and benefits to do . . . nothing. At least nothing to advance the immediate interests of the government.

Brachfeld, 54, was put on paid administrative leave in September after an employee on his staff accused him of misconduct. He has not yet been interviewed by the panel that investigates complaints against inspectors general. It meets just four times a year.

Cases like his, in which a civil servant is accused of breaking rules, can go on for months and even years. Some involve accusations of cut-and-dried misconduct — threatening violence, for example — that lead to paid leave while the case is investigated. Other employees are caught up in more ambiguous circumstances, like blowing the whistle on wrongdoing or filing a complaint of employment discrimination.

In a system that rarely fires people, no one can say how many are on paid administrative leave. It’s one number the government apparently doesn’t track.

“It’s the federal government’s dirty little secret, how much they do it,” said Debra D’Agostino, founding partner of the Federal Practice Group, an employment law firm.

Brachfeld, who was put on leave by the Archives chief after a dispute with an agent on his staff, said he was “placed under virtual home detention” based on “untested smears” to which has not been able to respond. The agent claims the inspector general altered audits, used vulgar language and gave CBS News’s “60 Minutes” sensitive information before its release was authorized.

There are 64 reasons listed in the “Administrative Leave/Excused Absence” section of the Office of Personnel Management rule book that officially allow government employees paid time off. They range from giving blood to attending a Boy or Girl Scout jamboree. And then there are the Brachfelds of the federal world, who are paid to do nothing or banished to perform telework with the kind of flexible schedule in which no meaningful assignments materialize.

The status is not, as some critics of public-sector workers might conclude, a day at the beach — Brachfeld actually had to put in for vacation time to take get his.

“I’ve had clients [on paid leave] for long periods of time who absolutely hated it,” said William Bransford, general counsel for the Senior Executives Association, which represents 7,000 government executives. “The perception that’s spun is that this is a paid vacation. But employees want to know what’s going to happen to them as quickly as anybody else.”

Getting paid not to work supposedly requires close supervision by managers. It means moving up the General Schedule pay scale, accruing a pension and vacation and sick days until you’re either fired or cleared to return to the office. While they’re not working, idled employees are not allowed to take another job.

Blake DeVolld, a civilian Air Force intelligence officer, was stripped of his top- secret security clearance in 2006 after his ex-wife, in a bitter divorce, told the FBI she had found 15 classified pages in a box in his basement.

For three years, while he was under investigation, DeVolld, 52, scanned personnel records into a computer in a glass-enclosed room at the National Air and Space Intelligence Center in Springfield, Ohio. Then he was suspended without pay for two more years.

After six years, the Air Force exonerated him last June and reinstated his clearance.

“They can put you in this status and leave you in there forever,” he said of the 1,000 days he drew a $93,000 salary to push papers. “It wasn’t really meaningful work, I’ll tell you that. I caught up on my reading.”

Much the same story unfolded for Maria Jones and William Porter, program analysts at the Energy and Health and Human Services departments, respectively, after they filed equal-employment-opportunity complaints with their agencies alleging racial discrimination by their supervisors.

Jones, 49, says she was put on paid leave for eight months, receiving her $89,750 salary until she was fired last March. She said her boss, who was black, had created a hostile work environment with disparaging comments about white employees. Jones is black.

At home in Prince George’s County, she was instructed to call her supervisor at the Office of Fossil Energy at 7:30 every morning to “find out what my schedule was.” But he was never in the office at that hour, so she left a voice mail. She says she talked to him twice in eight months.

“It benefited me because I was getting paid,” Jones said. “But it was a waste of federal dollars. Why did it take that long to fire me?” Like all of the six employees, Jones says her performance reviews became unfavorable before she was put on leave.

Porter, who makes $112,000, says his duties billing for reimbursement for disaster expenses were taken away and he was sent to an office with no work for a year after he complained that his boss, who is white, created a hostile work environment with negative comments about blacks, including Louis Farrakan. Porter, who is black, then told managers he has an anxiety disorder that was triggered by his agency’s failure to give him meaningful work.

He was dispatched to a year-long detail for Tricare, the military health system, which assigned him to telework. But Porter says months passed without his ever hearing from a supervisor, and he was given very few assignments. “They’re having me sit and do nothing and I’m collecting six figures.”

Peter Van Buren, a former foreign service officer who penned an unflattering book in 2011 about his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was sent home to Falls Church for two months on administrative leave after he wrote an offensive post about Hillary Clinton on an unauthorized blog just as his book was published. Then he was assigned to telework that consisted of copying Internet addresses into a file from a computer in his bedroom. This continued for 11 months while he drew his $150,000 salary.

“Telework is a great way to deep-six somebody,” Van Buren said. “And the State Department can say, ‘We’ve got another guy teleworking!’ ” He retired in September under an agreement with the agency, years sooner and with a smaller pension than he had planned.

And Stephen Patrick, a courier who transports nuclear material and drove a government car 340 miles without authorization, was finally fired from the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is part of the Energy Department, in August. His tug-of-war with his bosses after he challenged a 30-day suspension lasted five years. For four of them, Patrick, 45, was on administrative leave in Canton, Ohio, making $47,000 plus automatic raises.

Their agencies declined to comment on DeVolld, Jones, Porter, Van Buren, Patrick and Brachfeld, saying they were not authorized to discuss personnel issues.

Private companies tend to tackle thorny personnel issues differently. A problem employee can be placed on leave with pay. “But the notion of extending it indefinitely? It’s anathema to a private employer,” said Barbara Brown, a Washington employment attorney.

In government, civil service protections mean that firing someone is not so easy, even when they deserve it.

“Every time I hear these kind of stories, I think, ‘Ye gods! It takes government a long time to make a decision!’ ” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime advocate for whistleblowers and critic of government inefficiency. “It’s a culture within all of government — we’ve been handling personnel issues this way for 40 years, so we’d better keep doing it this way.”

“Resolving these cases gets put to the bottom of the to-do list,” said D’Agostino, the employment lawyer. “Meanwhile, the employee is still accruing time. At agencies that are downsizing, it makes it hard to function.”

Unions and managers say it is rare for do-nothing status to draw out. But it’s an area where managers have wide discretion.

Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said paid leave is used “in rare circumstances” while an employee who is “considered a potential threat to themselves or others in the workplace” is being investigated.

There are no official limits on how long the limbo can go on. In 1990, in the case of a Forest Service employee put on paid leave for 22 weeks, the comptroller general ruled, “We are unaware of any legal basis where . . . an employee can be placed on extended administrative leave with pay.”

“It’s used for employees who are not meeting conditions of employment,” said Terry Sutherland, spokesman for the Pentagon Force Protection Agency. He said administrative leave decisions are made “at a very senior level” and “looked at very closely.”

“The intent is it’s supposed to be very quick and simple,” Sutherland said. “When it goes beyond those normal situations, we ask, ‘What did this individual do? Would bringing them back be disruptive?’ ”

He acknowledged that long-term leave “is not good for the person, and not good for the agency.”

The six employees say their experience showed an ugly side of due process. They all say that after conflicts with their supervisors, they were marginalized in an attempt to get them to quit. That’s often easier for the government than firing, which, as Patrick’s case shows, can take years and end up in litigation.

It took the Energy Department four months to officially fire Patrick after they sent him a termination notice. This followed a slew of psychological evaluations, accusations, memos and appeals by him and his supervisors. He fought them at every step, won an appeal in 2008 and was ordered back to his courier job by a top Energy official.

But the agency kept blocking his certification to guard nuclear materials, and without it he could not keep his job.

“I appealed a 30-day suspension and they were hellbent to get rid of me right then and there,” he said. “I took a freaking government vehicle out to dinner. When all is said and done, you’re talking to a federal employee who got paid a government salary for five years and didn’t do a damn thing.” He is suing to get his job back based on his bosses’ failure to reinstate him after he was ordered back to work.

DeVolld says his ordeal so sapped his pride that he chose to leave the Air Force after he was cleared. He now teaches intelligence and national security at a Christian college near his home.

“This thing took five years and ruined my career,” he said. He filed a lawsuit against the Air Force in federal court in Ohio in December, charging that his two-year suspension without pay violated his due process rights.

Porter is now back at Health and Human Services on administrative leave. He has given his supervisors doctors’ notes certifying his readiness to work. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did not advance his complaint, but he is suing HHS in federal court, alleging that the government denied his rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act.

He cared for his dying mother-in-law and is now digging a hole for a patio in his garden in Upper Marlboro. “My doctors tell me to keep busy,” he said.

Paul Brachfeld, meanwhile, continues to collect his paycheck, and awaits the opportunity to tell his side of his story.

Simple Things to Protect Your Privacy

Over the weekend, I wound up at Washington, D.C.’s Trapeze School with a group of friends. Before one of them headed up a ladder to attempt a somersault landing from the trapeze bar, she handed me her phone and asked me to take photos. “What’s the password?” I asked. “I don’t use one,” she replied. My jaw dropped as it often does when someone I know tells me they’re choosing not to take one of the very simplest steps for privacy protection, allowing anyone to snoop through their phone with the greatest of ease, to see whichever messages, photos, and sensitive apps they please.

So this post is for you, guy with no iPad password, and for you, girl who stays signed into Gmail on her boyfriend’s computer, and for you, person walking down the street having a loud conversation on your mobile phone about your recent doctor’s diagnosis of that rash thing you have. These are the really, really simple things you should be doing to keep casual intruders from invading your privacy.

1. Password protect your devices: your smartphone, your iPad, your computer, your tablet, etc. Some open bookers tell me it’s “annoying” to take two seconds to type in a password before they can use their phone. C’mon, folks. Choosing not to password protect these devices is the digital equivalent of leaving your home or car unlocked. If you’re lucky, no one will take advantage of the access. Or maybe the contents will be ravaged and your favorite speakers and/or secrets stolen. If you’re not paranoid enough, spend some time reading entries in Reddit Relationships, where many an Internet user goes to discuss issues of the heart. A good percentage of the entries start, “I know I shouldn’t have, but I peeked at my gf’s phone and read her text messages, and…”

If a police officer stops you and wants more information about you in addition to illegally searching you, your car and your home, they almost always will grab your cell phone and attempt to steal all the data on it. Password protecting your cell phone will usually prevent officer unfriendly from doing this. And don't use your birth date, middle name or any other information the police officer can steal from you for your password.

Remember the police officer has your driver's license which contains your birth date and you middle name.

And don't voluntarily give your cell phone password to the police officer as many people do according to this article.

You are under no obligation to tell the police anything including the password to your phone or the combination to your safe. Take the 5th Amendment and refuse to tell anything to the police.

Many of our ancestors died fighting to give us our 5th Amendment rights. Don't give us that right just because some crooked police officer threatens you.

2. Put a Google Alert on your name. This is an incredibly easy way to stay on top of what’s being said about you online. It takes less than a minute to do. Go here. [ http://www.google.com/alerts ] Enter your name, and variations of your name, with quotation marks around it. Boom. You’re done.

3. Sign out of Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. when you’re done with your emailing, social networking, tweeting, and other forms of time-wasting. Not only will this slightly reduce the amount of tracking of you as you surf the Web, this prevents someone who later sits down at your computer from loading one of these up and getting snoopy. If you’re using someone else’s or a public computer, this is especially important. Yes, people actually forget to do this, with terrible outcomes.

4. Don’t give out your email address, phone number, or zip code when asked. Obviously, if a sketchy dude in a bar asks for your phone number, you say no. But when the asker is a uniform-wearing employee at Best Buy, many a consumer hands over their digits when asked. Stores often use this info to help profile you and your purchase. You can say no. If you feel badly about it, just pretend the employee is the sketchy dude in the bar.

And don't voluntarily give your cell phone password or any other information to the police. Many people do according to this article do.

The Fifth Amendment says you don't have to give ANYTHING to the police. If you don't use it, you will lose it.

5. Encrypt your computer. The word “encrypt” may sound like a betrayal of the simplicity I promised in the headline, but this is actually quite easy to do, especially if you’re a MacHead. Encrypting your computer means that someone has to have your password (or encryption key) in order to peek at its contents should they get access to your hard drive. On a Mac, you just go to your settings, choose “Security and Privacy,” go to “FileVault,” choose the “Turn on FileVault” option. Boom goes the encryption dynamite. PC folk need to use Bitlocker [ technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766295%28v=ws.10%29.aspx ].

And don't give the password to a police officer if he asks you! Take the 5th Amendment! It's your RIGHT.

Also remember cryptology experts can sometimes decrypt the data on you computer. If you are a big enough fish the police will call in the cryptology experts

If you don't want somebody to know about something it probably shouldn't be on your computer.

6. Gmailers, turn on 2-step authentication in Gmail. The biggest takeaway from the epic hack of Wired’s Mat Honan was that it probably wouldn’t have happened if he’d turned on “2-step verification” in Gmail. This simple little step turns your phone into a security fob — in order for your Gmail account to be accessed from a new device, a person (hopefully you) needs a code that’s sent to your phone. This means that even if someone gets your password somehow, they won’t be able to use it to sign into your account from a strange computer. Google says that millions of people use this tool, and that “thousands more enroll each day.” Be one of those people. The downside: It’s annoying if your phone battery dies or if you’re traveling abroad. The upside: you can print a piece of paper to take with you, says James Fallows at the Atlantic. Alternately, you can turn it off when you’re going to be abroad or phone-less. Or you can leave it permanently turned off, and increase your risk of getting epically hacked. Decision’s yours.

7. Pay in cash for embarrassing items. Don’t want a purchase to be easily tracked back to you? You’ve seen the movies! Use cash. One data mining CEO says this is how he pays for hamburgers and junk food these days.

8. Change Your Facebook settings to “Friends Only.” You’d think with the many Facebook privacy stories over the years that everyone would have their accounts locked down and boarded up like Florida houses before a hurricane. Not so. There are still plenty of Facebookers that are as exposed on the platform as Katy Perry at a water park. Visit your Facebook privacy settings. Make sure this “default privacy” setting isn’t set to public, and if it’s set to “Custom,” make sure you know and are comfortable with any “Networks” you’re sharing with.

9. Clear your browser history and cookies on a regular basis. When’s the last time you did that? If you just shrugged, consider changing your browser settings so that this is automatically cleared every session. Go to the “privacy” setting in your Browser’s “Options.” Tell it to “never remember your history.” This will reduce the amount you’re tracked online. Consider a browser add-on like TACO to further reduce tracking of your online behavior. [If the police arrest you or get a search warrant they will definitely look at your browser history. Erase it to make life difficult for police who want to make life difficult for you. Also remember that even if you erase your browser history, many web sites keep logs showing each time you visited their sites. ]

10. Use an IP masker. When you visit a website, you leave a footprint behind in the form of IP information. If you want to visit someone’s blog without their necessarily knowing it’s you — say if you’re checking out a biz competitor, a love interest, or an ex — you should consider masking your computer’s fingerprint, which at the very least gives away your approximate location and service provider. A person looking at their analytics would notice me as a regular visitor from Washington, D.C. for example, and would probably even be able to tell that I was visiting from a Forbes network address. To hide this, you can download Tor [ https://www.torproject.org/ ] or use an easy browser-based option.

These are some of the easiest things you can do to protect your privacy. Ignoring these is like sending your personal information out onto the trapeze without a safety net. It might do fine… or it could get ugly. These are simple tips for basic privacy; if you’re in a high-risk situation where you require privacy from malicious actors, check out EFF’s surveillance self-defense tips [ https://ssd.eff.org/ ].

Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns

The three European men with Somali roots were arrested on a murky pretext in August as they passed through the small African country of Djibouti. But the reason soon became clear when they were visited in their jail cells by a succession of American interrogators.

U.S. agents accused the men — two of them Swedes, the other a longtime resident of Britain — of supporting al-Shabab, an Islamist militia in Somalia that Washington considers a terrorist group. Two months after their arrest, the prisoners were secretly indicted by a federal grand jury in New York, then clandestinely taken into custody by the FBI and flown to the United States to face trial.

The secret arrests and detentions came to light Dec. 21 when the suspects made a brief appearance in a Brooklyn courtroom.

The men are the latest example of how the Obama administration has embraced rendition — the practice of holding and interrogating terrorism suspects in other countries without due process — despite widespread condemnation of the tactic in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Renditions are taking on renewed significance because the administration and Congress have not reached agreement on a consistent legal pathway for apprehending terrorism suspects overseas and bringing them to justice.

Congress has thwarted President Obama’s pledge to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has created barriers against trying al-Qaeda suspects in civilian courts, including new restrictions in a defense authorization bill passed last month. The White House, meanwhile, has resisted lawmakers’ efforts to hold suspects in military custody and try them before military commissions.

The impasse and lack of detention options, critics say, have led to a de facto policy under which the administration finds it easier to kill terrorism suspects, a key reason for the surge of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Renditions, though controversial and complex, represent one of the few alternatives.

“In a way, rendition has become even more important than before,” said Clara Gutteridge, director of the London-based Equal Justice Forum, a human rights group that investigates national security cases and that opposes the practice.

Because of the secrecy involved, it is not known how many renditions have taken place during Obama’s first term. But his administration has not disavowed the practice. In 2009, a White House task force on interrogation and detainee transfers recommended that the government be allowed to continue using renditions, but with greater oversight, so that suspects were not subject to harsh interrogation techniques, as some were during the George W. Bush administration.

The U.S. government has revealed little about the circumstances under which the three alleged al-Shabab supporters were arrested. Most court papers remain under seal.

In a statement, the FBI and federal prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York said the defendants were “apprehended in Africa by local authorities while on their way to Yemen” in early August. The statement did not spell out where they were detained or why.

The FBI made no mention of any U.S. involvement with the suspects until Oct. 18, when a federal grand jury handed up the sealed indictment. The FBI said its agents took custody of the men on Nov. 14, but the bureau did not specify where or from whom. A spokesman for federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York did not respond to a phone message and e-mail seeking comment.

Defense attorneys and others familiar with the case, however, said the men were arrested in Djibouti, a close ally of Washington. The tiny African country hosts a major U.S. military base, Camp Lemonnier, that serves as a combat hub for drone flights and counterterrorism operations. Djibouti also has a decade-long history of cooperating with the United States on renditions.

The Swedish Foreign Ministry confirmed that two of the men — Ali Yasin Ahmed, 23, and Mohamed Yusuf, 29 — are Swedish citizens and were detained in Djibouti in August.

Anders Jorle, a spokesman for the ministry in Stockholm, said Swedish diplomats were allowed to visit the men in Djibouti and New York to provide consular assistance.

“This does not mean that the Swedish government has taken any position on the issue of their guilt or innocence,” Jorle said in a telephone interview. “That is a question for the U.S. judicial system.”

Lawyers assigned to represent the defendants in federal court in Brooklyn said the men were interrogated for months in Djibouti even though no charges were pending against them — something that would be prohibited in the United States.

“The Djiboutians were only interested in them because the United States of America was interested in them,” said Ephraim Savitt, an attorney for Yusuf. “I don’t have to be Einstein to figure that out.”

Harry C. Batchelder Jr., an attorney for the third suspect, Mahdi Hashi, 23, concurred. “Let’s just put it this way: They were sojourning in Djibouti, and all of a sudden, after they met their friendly FBI agents and CIA agents — who didn’t identify themselves — my client found himself stateless and in a U.S. court,” said Batchelder, whose client is a native of Somalia who grew up in Britain.

The sequence described by the lawyers matches a pattern from other rendition cases in which U.S. intelligence agents have secretly interrogated suspects for months without legal oversight before handing over the prisoners to the FBI for prosecution.

In December 2011, a federal court hearing for another al-Shabab suspect, an Eritrean citizen named Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, revealed that he had been questioned in a Nigerian jail by what a U.S. interrogator described as a “dirty” team of American agents who ignored the suspect’s right to remain silent or have a lawyer, according to court proceedings.

Later, the Eritrean was interviewed by a “clean” team of U.S. agents who were careful to notify him of his Miranda rights and obtain confessions for trial. Once that task was completed, he was transported to U.S. federal court in Manhattan to face terrorism charges. His American attorneys sought to toss out his statements on the grounds that they were illegally coerced, but the defendant pleaded guilty before a judge could rule on that question.

A diplomatic cable released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks makes clear that Nigerian authorities were reluctant to detain Ahmed and held him for four months under pressure from U.S. officials.

Robin Sanders, the U.S. ambassador to Nigeria at the time, chided high-ranking officials there in a February 2010 meeting for nearly allowing Ahmed to depart on an international flight “because they did not want to hold him any longer,” according to the classified cable summarizing the meeting. He was finally handed over to FBI agents, but only after he was indicted by a U.S. grand jury.

In the more recent Djibouti rendition, defense attorneys challenged the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts, saying there is no evidence that the defendants targeted or threatened Americans or U.S. interests.

“That is the $64,000 question. I said to the assistant U.S. attorney, ‘Did he blow up an embassy? No,’ ” said Susan G. Kellman, who represents Ali Yasin Ahmed, one of the Swedish defendants. “Why are we holding them? What did they do to insult us?”

The State Department officially categorized al-Shabab as a terrorist organization in 2008, making it illegal for Americans or non-citizens to support the group. Still, Obama administration officials acknowledge that most al-Shabab fighters are merely participants in Somalia’s long-running civil war and that only a few are involved in international terrorism.

Savitt, the attorney for Yusuf, acknowledged that his client fought on behalf of al-Shabab against Somali forces backed by the United States. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m not going to deny that allegation, put it that way.”

But Savitt said that was not a legitimate reason to prosecute Yusuf in the United States. “The last thing in the world we really need to do is apprehend and lock up 10,000 al-Shabab fighters or bring them into the court system,” he said.

Authorities in Sweden and Britain had monitored the three men for years as they traveled back and forth to Somalia, but neither country assembled enough evidence to press criminal charges.

“These guys are well known to Swedish security forces,” said a Swedish official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Sweden’s security agencies have cooperated in the past with U.S. officials on rendition cases by sharing intelligence about targets. Mark Vadasz, a spokesman for the Swedish Security Police Service, declined to comment on whether the agency played a role in the cases involving Yusuf and Ahmed.

Last summer, before he was detained in Djibouti, British authorities notified Hashi’s family that they were taking the unusual step of stripping him of his citizenship, citing his “extremist” activities.

Hashi and his family have denied the allegation. In 2009, Hashi filed an official complaint of harassment against MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, saying agents had pressured him to become an informant.

A spokesman for Britain’s Home Office, which issued the citizenship order, declined to comment or to say whether British officials cooperated with the United States on the rendition.

Asim Qureshi, executive director of CagePrisoners, a British human rights group that has advocated on behalf of Hashi, said the case was too weak to pass muster in a European court.

“A cynic would say it’s easier to get a conviction under spurious evidence in the United States than anywhere else,” he said. “Just alleging somebody is a member of al-Shabab won’t get you very far in the U.K. A judge would just throw out the case before it even gets started.”

American occupation of Afghanistan is a failure, just like Soviet occupation.

WASHINGTON — The young president who ascended to office as a change agent decides to end the costly and unpopular war in Afghanistan. He seeks an exit with honor by pledging long-term financial support to allies in Kabul, while urging reconciliation with the insurgency. But some senior advisers lobby for a deliberately slow withdrawal, and propose leaving thousands of troops behind to train and support Afghan security forces.

This is a nearly exact description of the endgame conundrum facing President Obama as he prepares for a critical visit by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, planned for early January.

But the account is actually drawn from declassified Soviet archives describing Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s closed-door struggles with his Politburo and army chiefs to end the Kremlin’s intervention in Afghanistan — one that began with a commando raid, coup and modest goals during Christmas week of 1979 but became, after a decade, what Mr. Gorbachev derided as “a bleeding wound.”

What mostly is remembered about the withdrawal is the Soviet Union’s humiliation, and the ensuing factional bloodletting across Afghanistan that threw the country into a vicious civil war. It ended with Taliban control and the establishment of a safe haven for Al Qaeda before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

But scholars who have studied the Soviet archives point out another lesson for the Obama administration as it manages the pullout of American and allied combat forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

“The main thing the Soviets did right was that they continued large-scale military assistance to the regime they left behind after the final withdrawal in ’89,” said Mark N. Katz, a professor at George Mason University and author of “Leaving Without Losing: The War on Terror After Iraq and Afghanistan” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012).

“As long as the Afghan regime received the money and the weapons, they did pretty well — and held on to power for three years,” Mr. Katz said. The combat effectiveness of Kabul’s security forces increased after the Soviet withdrawal, when the fight for survival become wholly their own.

But then the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, and the new Russian leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, heeded urgings of the United States and other Western powers to halt aid to the Communist leadership in Afghanistan, not just arms and money, but also food and fuel. The Kremlin-backed government in Kabul fell three months later.

To be sure, there are significant contrasts between the two interventions in Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion and occupation were condemned as illegal aggression, while the American one was embraced by the international community, including Russia, as a “just war,” one with limited goals of routing the Taliban and eliminating Al Qaeda. That war of necessity has since evolved into a war of choice, one the Obama administration is working to end as quickly as is feasible.

Despite the differences going in, both the Soviet Union and the United States soon learned that Afghanistan is a land where foreigners aspiring to create nations in their image must combat not just the Taliban but tribalism, orthodoxy, corruption and a medieval view of women. As well, Pakistan has had interests at odds with those of the neighboring government in Afghanistan, whether Kabul was an ally of Moscow or of Washington.

“The Soviet Union did not understand religious and ethnic factors sufficiently, and overestimated the capacity of Afghan society to move very fast toward a modern era, in this case socialism,” said Svetlana Savranskaya, director of Russian programs at the National Security Archive, an independent research center at George Washington University.

“Here I see similarities with the approach of the United States, especially with all the discussion about trying to leave behind an Afghanistan that is democratic and respects the rights of women, ideas that simply are not accepted across the broad society there,” said Ms. Savranskaya, who has written extensively on the Soviet archives.

If the Soviet experience offers any guidance to the current American withdrawal, she said, it would be to accelerate the departure of foreign combat forces — but to leave in their place a “sustained, multiyear international involvement in military training, education and civilian infrastructure projects, and maybe not focusing on building democracy as much as improving the lives of the common people.”

And she noted that the United States should already be seeking partnership with Afghan leaders beyond Mr. Karzai, who is viewed across large parts of the population as tainted by his association with the Americans.

Pentagon officials have signaled that they are hoping for an enduring military presence of 10,000 or more troops, but may have to accept fewer, to cement the progress of the years of fighting. Those troops would focus on training and supporting Afghan forces along with a counterterrorism contingent to hunt Qaeda and insurgent leaders.

In a parallel, one of Mr. Gorbachev’s closest early confidants, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the foreign minister, advocated a slow withdrawal pace — and pressed for 10,000 to 15,000 Soviet troops to remain to support the Communist government. The Soviets left only 300 advisers.

But after losing more than 15,000 Soviet troops and billions of rubles, the Kremlin knew it had to somehow justify the invasion and occupation upon withdrawal.

Mr. Gorbachev had “to face up to a difficult problem of domestic politics which has puzzled other nations finding themselves in similar circumstances,” Rodric Braithwaite, a former British ambassador to Moscow, wrote in “Afgantsy” (Oxford University Press, 2011), his book on the Soviet intervention based on Communist Party documents.

“How could the Russians withdraw their army safely, with honor, without looking as if they were simply cutting and running, and without appearing to betray their Afghan allies or their own soldiers who had died?” Mr. Braithwaite wrote of the internal Kremlin debate, in terms resonant of the Americans’ conundrum today.

Around the time of the Soviet withdrawal, an article by Pravda, the Communist Party mouthpiece, clutched for a positive view as the Soviet Army pulled out. Read today, it bears a resemblance to the news releases churned out by the Pentagon detailing statistics on reconstruction assistance.

“Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan repaired, rebuilt and constructed hundreds of schools, technical colleges, over 30 hospitals and a similar number of nursery schools, some 400 apartment buildings and 35 mosques,” the article said. “They sank dozens of wells and dug nearly 150 kilometers of irrigation ditches and canals. They were also engaged in guarding military and civilian installations in trouble.”

The Kremlin had learned that its armies could not capture political success, but Soviet commanders made the same claims upon withdrawal that are heard from NATO officers today: not a single battlefield engagement was lost to guerrillas, and no outpost ever fell to insurgents.

That understanding seemed to animate Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta as he toured Afghanistan recently in a traditional holiday visit with the troops.

At each stop, Mr. Panetta acknowledged that significant challenges remain to an orderly withdrawal and a stable postwar Afghanistan, and not just the resilient insurgency.

He cited unreliable Afghan governance, continuing corruption and the existence of insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. None of those are likely to be fixed with American firepower.

Taliban likens US Afghan role to Vietnam War

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban Wednesday likened the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan to America's pullout from Vietnam, calling it a "declare victory and run" strategy.

A statement from the militant group said the ongoing transfer of security operations from U.S. troops to Afghan forces was merely a retreat similar to the American withdrawal from South Vietnam prior to the communist victory there in 1975.

American-led NATO troops are scheduled to pull out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, although the U.S. will leave a residual force behind and other NATO countries have pledged continuing support of the Kabul government.

"They want to flee from Afghanistan just as they turned tail and ran from Vietnam," the Taliban statement said. "When America faced utter destruction in Vietnam, they came up with the formula 'declare victory and run' and want to utilize the formula of 'transfer security and run' here in Afghanistan."

The United States withdrew is combat troops from South Vietnam in 1973, leaving South Vietnamese forces to face the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong who marched into the capital, Saigon, two years later.

Pakistan: U.S. drones kill 13, including top militant

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — pair of U.S. drone strikes in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border killed 13 people Thursday, including a senior militant commander who had a truce with the Pakistani military, intelligence officials and residents said.

Five Pakistani security officials said the commander, Maulvi Nazir, was reportedly among nine people killed in a missile strike on a house in the village of Angoor Adda in the South Waziristan tribal region early Thursday. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Nazir’s death could prove to be a contentious issue between Washington and Islamabad, which is believed to have struck a nonaggression pact with Nazir ahead of the Pakistani military’s 2009 operation against militants in South Waziristan. While Nazir earned the U.S.’s enmity by launching attacks against American forces in Afghanistan, the Pakistani military views commanders like Nazir as key to keeping the peace internally because they do not attack Pakistani targets.

Residents in both Angoor Adda and Wana, the biggest town in South Waziristan, said they heard announcements on mosque loudspeakers announcing Nazir’s death and that a funeral service was to be held later Thursday.

Reports of individual deaths are difficult to independently verify, and the U.S. rarely comments on its secretive drone program.

The second drone strike took place near Mir Ali, the main town of the North Waziristan tribal region. One missile hit a vehicle near the town, followed by another missile when people rushed to the vehicle to help people in the car. The officials say four people were killed in the strike, although the identities of the dead were not immediately known.

Nazir was attacked by a suicide bomber last November as he was arriving at an office he used to meet with locals and hear their complaints. Nazir and more than a dozen other people were wounded in the attack, and seven people were killed.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion immediately fell on rival militants who have been jockeying with Nazir for power in South Waziristan.

U.S. gives unstable Lebanon 200 armored vehicles

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The United States has given 200 armored vehicles to Lebanon, the Lebanese army said on Monday, bolstering forces that have been struggling to deal with sectarian violence inflamed by the war across the border in Syria.

The M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) arrived by ship to Beirut on Sunday, the army said in a statement. A Lebanese security source said the army now had 1,200 APCs.

A U.S. diplomat said the shipment of vehicles would support the Lebanese armed forces' "capabilities and their mobility and ability to respond to crises. It is also to protect borders and internal stability".

The diplomat, who preferred not to be named, said the vehicles were used but were all in "very good working order and will be refurbished here in Lebanon".

The United States has provided more than $140 million in equipment and assistance to the Lebanese armed forces in the past six months, including six Huey 2 helicopters, a 42-metre coastal security craft, more than 1,000 guns - including grenade launchers -- and 38 million rounds of ammunition.

Lebanon, still rebuilding after its 15-year civil war, has seen clashes between gunmen loyal to opposing sides in neighboring Syria's conflict, mostly in the northern port town of Tripoli, but also in the capital Beirut and the southern coastal city of Sidon.

Syrian forces have occasionally breached the Lebanese border to battle with rebels who are fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and take refuge in Lebanese border towns. Syrian mortar bombs have also targeted Lebanese villages.

Few expect a fight between Lebanon and its much larger neighbor Syria, a country whose troops were garrisoned in Lebanon until 2005 and still has influence over the security services.

But Lebanon's army is ill-equipped to deal with powerful internal militant groups, including the Shi'ite Muslim guerrilla and political movement Hezbollah, which the United States counts as a terrorist organization.

The CIA's double standard on secrecy

IN the last week, the American public has been reminded of the Central Intelligence Agency’s contradictory attitude toward secrecy. In a critique of “Zero Dark Thirty,” published last Thursday in The Washington Post, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., defended the use of waterboarding and said that operatives used small plastic bottles, not buckets as depicted in the film, to carry out this interrogation method on three notable terrorists. On Sunday, The New York Times reported on the Justice Department’s case against a former C.I.A. officer, John C. Kiriakou, a critic of waterboarding who faces 30 months in prison for sharing the name of a covert operative with a reporter, who never used the name in print.

The contrast points to the real threat to secrecy, which comes not from the likes of Mr. Kiriakou but from the agency itself. The C.I.A. invokes secrecy to serve its interests but abandons it to burnish its image and discredit critics.

Over the years, I have interviewed many active and retired C.I.A. personnel who were not authorized to speak with me; they included heads of the agency’s clandestine service, analysts and well over 100 case officers, including station chiefs. Five former directors of central intelligence have spoken to me, mostly “on background.” Not one of these interviewees, to my knowledge, was taken to the woodshed, though our discussions invariably touched on classified territory.

Somewhere along the way, the agency that clung to “neither confirm nor deny” had morphed into one that selectively enforces its edicts on secrecy, using different standards depending on rank, message, internal politics and whim.

I am no fan of excessive secrecy, or of prosecuting whistle-blowers or leakers whose actions cannot be shown to have damaged American security. The C.I.A. needs secrecy, as do those who place their lives in the agency’s hands, but the agency cannot have it both ways.

What message did it send when George J. Tenet, its former director, refused to explain the intelligence debacle involving nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but later got a seven-figure book contract and became a highly paid speaker? How is it that Milton Bearden, a former covert operative, got agency permission to write a book (“The Main Enemy”) with a New York Times reporter? What of the many memoirs written by ex-spooks like Robert Baer (“See No Evil,” and, with his wife, another former C.I.A. operative, “The Company We Keep”), Tony Mendez (“The Master of Disguise”), Lindsay Moran (“Blowing My Cover”), Melissa Boyle Mahle (“Denial and Deception”) and Floyd L. Paseman (“A Spy’s Journey”)?

These works help us understand the shadowy business of intelligence gathering, but collectively they may be undermining the credo of espionage: it is not a spectator sport. And how do we explain the profusion of former C.I.A. operatives who are now on-air pundits?

There was a time at the C.I.A., not so long ago, when the notion of cashing in on one’s access to secrets was considered contemptible. How, then, does one explain how Chase Brandon, a former C.I.A. covert operative, became the agency’s liaison with Hollywood (“Mission Impossible III”)? And what of the International Spy Museum, a for-profit entity in Washington headed by a former covert C.I.A. officer, Peter Earnest? (The museum gift shop’s most popular T-shirt says “Deny Everything.”)

The agency can be quite creative in evading its own strictures on secrecy. When I was researching a book on covert operatives killed in the line of duty — a book the C.I.A. tried to persuade me not to write — a senior agency employee called me. He gave me the ISBN number and part of the title of an obscure book, and advised me to find a copy. When I did, I saw what he had left out of the title: the name of a deceased covert operative. Why? So he could pass a polygraph test if asked if he had ever given a reporter the name of an operative. All that training in tradecraft, and it was used to evade the very secrecy it was designed to protect.

Now consider Mr. Rodriguez. As recently as 2005, national security reporters were told that they could not use his full name — unusual for someone at such a senior position — though he was no longer in the field and was overseeing covert operations from Washington. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, even reporters can be prosecuted for unmasking operatives. So journalists complied and referred to Mr. Rodriguez simply as “Jose.” Mr. Rodriguez oversaw — and then ordered the destruction of videotapes that documented — the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. He is now a published author and public speaker. The agency has no apparent problem with that; after all, he is defending not only his own handiwork but also the agency’s.

The confidentiality of clandestine work is and must be a core value at the C.I.A. But the agency’s arbitrary and selective application of secrecy rules threatens its already fragile credibility. If confirmed, John O. Brennan, whom President Obama has nominated to lead the C.I.A., should demand more consistent and less self-serving application of those rules.

Ted Gup is the author of “The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified Deaths at the C.I.A.” and a fellow at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Politicians use Connecticut murders to demand more cops and gun control

Gun control and school safety are emerging as hot-button issues for Arizona’s 2013 legislative session, which begins Monday. But with conflicting proposals among even members of the same party, the conversation is likely to become divisive rather than reassuring in the wake of December’s massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

In general, Republicans are pushing to put more armed individuals in schools, while Democrats want to toughen state gun laws. But some common ground is emerging in the area of funding school-resource officers and services for the seriously mentally ill.

There is also a move afoot at the national level, but various proposals are also swirling there. Vice President Joe Biden kicked off a week of meetings Wednesday to gather input on the best way to prevent gun violence. Among the participants was Arizonan Hildy Saizow, president of the grass-roots group Arizonans for Gun Safety.

Arizona House Minority Leader Chad Campbell on Wednesday introduced his $261 million Arizona Safer Schools, Safer Communities Plan, which includes more money for school-resource officers and school counselors, increased state funding for services for the mentally ill, and gun-law reforms.

His bill is the latest in a series of measures proposed by politicians throughout the state in response to the Connecticut shooting.

“It’s time to have an adult conversation and avoid the partisan nature this conversation has had in the past couple of years,” said Campbell, D-Phoenix.

Today, Senate Assistant Minority Leader Linda Lopez will unveil details of her proposal to reform state gun laws. Her plan includes requiring background checks for all private and gun-show gun sales and banning high-capacity ammunition magazines.

Both plans face an uphill battle in the Republican-dominated Legislature, which in recent years pushed for some of the loosest gun laws in the nation, including successfully passing a measure to allow Arizonans to carry concealed weapons without any training or a permit. The Legislature also passed bills to allow guns on college campuses and in public buildings, but Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed them.

Brewer this week said she is open to addressing school-safety issues, including possibly providing more state funding for school-resource officers.

Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson said the governor will introduce a plan of her own in the coming days.

“The governor is the leader,” Benson said. “She recognizes the importance of making sure our kids have a safe place to learn. She’s been studying the issue and has held off on coming forward with a plan until she felt she was ready.”

“Governor Brewer is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but she does recognize that there is a balance with public safety,” he said. “We have safe zones like public buildings and schools where we don’t have guns.”

No related bills have been officially filed yet, but state Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed allowing each school to train and arm its principal or another staff member.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to put armed volunteer Sheriff’s Office posse members near schools.

Senate President Andy Biggs said his party is still developing a plan, which will include additional safety measures for schools.

“We haven’t yet narrowed it down, but one of the things we need to really focus on is the seriously mentally ill,” he said. “It seems to me that’s where the bulk of these problems seem to be coming from.”

Biggs said state leaders need to avoid any knee-jerk response and provide a structure for leaders and the community to talk about a rational solution.

“I have a sense that everybody in the public has a different answer, everything from seize all guns and melt them down to arm everybody in schools, and everything in between,” he said. “This is a very sensitive and emotional issue. It’s going to require some deep thought and discussion and dialogue.”

Charles Heller, spokesman for the Arizona Citizens Defense League, a gun-rights group behind many of Arizona’s prior efforts to loosen gun laws, said he’s not interested in any new laws regulating guns.

“More school-resource officers are not a bad idea if they’re not stuck in a classroom teaching DARE classes. And the idea of studying security circumstances in every school is brilliant, ” he said. “But we don’t need a single new law.”

He said he supports training gun users, but not as a state law. He said background checks don’t work. He supports allowing retired law-enforcement and military personnel to work as armed security in the schools.

Lopez said the debate over funding mental-health care should be a separate budget discussion from gun-law reform.

“You need a multipronged approach, but if we can’t get the funding in place right away, if we can’t get the services, we at least need to do something to impede access to high-capacity magazine clips and make sure we have a universal background check on every gun sale,” Lopez said.

Lopez said she’s skeptical that Republicans will support any gun reforms and dismissed their argument that they need to focus on the budget.

“That’s a cop-out,” she said. “Yes, the budget is important. But this is an important issue, as well.”

Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix, criticized Campbell’s plan, saying the House leader is wasting an opportunity by trying to do too much. He said Democrats should focus on pushing through a few key issues that can realistically succeed. He is pushing to focus on gun safety, including requiring individuals to report any lost or stolen gun, and reinstating gun-training requirements.

“Over the last 10 years that I’ve been here, I’ve introduced a firearms bill every year, and we’ve never had a real discussion,” he said. “I think, because of Connecticut, we’re at a point where the public wants to have a real discussion. But too many ideas muddy up the water.”