The National Security Agency (NSA) has formally recommended terminating its controversial phone and text surveillance program, according to the Wall Street Journal.[1] The program has been frequently criticized for violating Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure.
Our present understanding of how USCYBERCOM conducts operations in cyberspace comes either through anecdotal examples such as JTF-ARES/OPERATION GLOWING SYMPHONY or through broad doctrine as communicated in publications like JP 3-12 Cyberspace Operations. Little has been revealed about processes linking broad doctrine and strategy to tactical operations. Today the National Security Archive publishes a collection of documents obtained via FOIA declassification regarding the process of building the Cyber Mission Force and Joint Force Headquarters – Cyber under USCYBERCOM.
Washington D.C., April 24, 2019 – The Tallinn Manual 2.0 is the second edition of NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence’s analysis on the application of international law to cyberspace. The analysis rests on the idea that cyber operations do not occur in a legal vacuum, and preexisting obligations under international law apply equally to the cyber domain. As such, the Tallinn Manual 2.0 is broken into four parts with twenty chapters total, each examining a different area of existing international law.
Beginning in 1997 the Department of Defense Information Assurance Technology Analysis Center (IATAC) published quarterly newsletters on information assurance with the stated goal of supporting U.S. information superiority efforts in accordance with the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Joint Vision 2010 (JV2010) warfighting concept.
The foundations of today’s internet rest on Cold War-era research and development performed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and researchers associated with the Department of Defense’s ARPANET. ARPANET used a packet-switching approach pioneered by RAND’s Paul Baran, but was unable to interface with other networks being developed.
Recent years have seen increased interest in data privacy and answering the question of what sort of data collection, by whom and for what purpose, is legitimate. The U.S.’s Federal Trade Commission for years has filed complaints against companies with misleading or malicious data privacy policies, such as its 2012 cases against Facebook and Google. Though the latter of these cases ended in a record $22.5 million civil penalty, and the FTC continues to bring cases against the misuse of consumer data, these questions have remained largely unanswered.
A FOIA request by the National Security Archive Cyber Vault has produced the original Operations Order (OPORD) outlining USCYBERCOM support to Operation Inherent Resolve. This document, referenced in Cyber Vault’s original analysis of Operation Glowing Symphony and Joint Task Force ARES, marks the beginning of the US Military’s cyber campaign to degrade and ultimately contribute to the destruction of the Islamic State terrorist network.
In February of 2016 thirty five fraudulent orders were sent over the SWIFT network, a telecommunications system linking financial institutions used to exchange information on transactions, to transfer a total of US $1 billion from the Bangladesh Bank’s account with the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Thirty of those orders were stopped for review and cancelled, but five orders totaling US $101 million were completed. US $20 million was transferred to a company in Sri Lanka while US $81 million was routed to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the Philippines.
A Cyber Vault study of social media activity by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the violent Charlottesville protests in August 2017 demonstrates how the controversial Russia-based organization targeted social divisions in the United States at an extraordinarily tense political moment. Researchers with the Cyber Vault project at the nongovernmental National Security Archive used two publicly released datasets to bring into relief at least a part of the IRA’s operations, providing a level of clarity into that organization’s tactics.
Election security has been a pressing issue since the 2016 elections due to concern over foreign interference in the election and possible cybersecurity risks.
According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission Web site: