I'm a journalist and author. I make my living by finding things out and writing about them.
Governors normally have jurisdiction over public health emergencies, but a widespread biological attack would cross state boundaries.
White House officials acknowledge in broad terms that a president's time and public rhetoric are among his most valuable policy tools.
NoScript is probably the most important privacy tool, but it costs you in convenience.
Ordinary Geiger counters, worn on belt clips and resembling pagers, have been in use by the U.S. Customs Service for years.
Nothing is absolute in security.
Stuxnet, a computer worm reportedly developed by the United States and Israel that destroyed Iranian nuclear centrifuges in attacks in 2009 and 2010, is often cited as the most dramatic use of a cyber weapon.
Ecuador has never stated flatly that it would give asylum to Edward Snowden.
The first time I set out to find George F. Kennan, in 1982, I had just turned 21, begun my final semester at Princeton University and noticed with astonishment that the senior thesis deadline had crept to within four months.
As militias go, the Ohio Defense Force is on the moderate side.
Enclosed by a sand berm four miles around and 160 feet high, the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility entombs what remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It has stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel.
The modern era of continuity planning began under President Ronald Reagan.
I don't think Cheney started off in 2000 with a burning desire to become vice-president. I think the prospect gradually became more appealing, and he goosed the process.
Friend of mine, a smart journalist, had his iPad stolen. He couldn't help that - the thief broke into his house. But his private, personal data wasn't stolen, exactly. Donated, more like. He had no passcode set on the iPad.
The federal government is often said in militia circles to have made wholesale seizures of power, at times by subterfuge. A leading grievance holds that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, was ratified through fraud.
I doubt there's any government in the world that guides itself primarily by strategy or conceptual documents or worldview. Anybody who has the reins of power has to look at practical limitations and tradeoffs - the fact that you can focus at most on one or two things at a time, that resources are limited.
Pakistan has accepted some security training from the CIA, but U.S. export restrictions and Pakistani suspicions have prevented the two countries from sharing the most sophisticated technology for safeguarding nuclear components.
Daniel Ellsberg showed tremendous courage back in the '70s.
The surveillance of ordinary people is far greater than I would have imagined and far greater than the American public has been able to debate.
There is evidence that some of al Qaeda's nuclear efforts over the years met with swindles and false leads.
For months, Obama administration officials attacked Snowden's motives and said the work of the NSA was distorted by selective leaks and misinterpretations.
You don't need to be a spook to care about encryption. If you travel with your computer or keep it in a place where other people can put their hands on it, you're vulnerable.
Suppose a bad guy guesses the password for your throwaway Yahoo address. Now he goes to major banking and commerce sites and looks for an account registered to that email address. When he finds one, he clicks the 'forgot my password' button and a new one is sent - to your compromised email account. Now he's in a position to do you serious harm.
Throughout the early and mid-1990s, the Clinton administration debated the merits of paying for AIDS testing and counseling of vulnerable populations overseas.
During the morning rush hour on March 20, 1995, the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo placed packages on five subway trains converging on Tokyo's central station. When punctured, the packages spread vaporized Sarin through the subway cars and then into the stations as the trains pulled in.
Counterterrorism analysts have known for years that al Qaeda prepares for attacks with elaborate 'targeting packages' of photographs and notes.
The NSA is forbidden to 'target' American citizens, green-card holders or companies for surveillance without an individual warrant from a judge.
All Americans are dependent for their energy on the Arabian peninsula.
Privacy is relational. It depends on the audience. You don't want your employer to know you're job hunting. You don't spill all about your love life to your mom or your kids. You don't tell trade secrets to your rivals.
Scott Ritter is a very well-known archetype of a certain U.S. military officer. Very hard talking, very ambitious, zealous, and completely consumed with carrying out his mission. He's a guy who, throughout his career, I would say, did not break rules, but he worked around road blocks.
In effect, you cannot stop Iraq from growing nasty bugs in the basement. You can stop them from putting operational warheads on working missiles and launching them at their neighbors.
Al Qaeda is closely aligned with the Chechens.
The Patriot Act unleashed the FBI to search your email, travel and credit records without even a suspicion of wrongdoing.
The Obama administration, like those before it, promotes a disturbingly narrow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, misapplying the facts of old analog cases to a radically different digital world.
In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.
I do read licenses, and they aggravate me, but a computer isn't much good without software. When I need a product, I hold my nose and click 'agree.'
One common puzzle for the security-minded is how to work with confidential data on the road. Sometimes you can't bring your laptop, or don't want to. But working on somebody else's machine exposes you to malware and leaves behind all kinds of electronic trails.
Iraq has, in effect, one export of any consequence. That's oil.
Sudan expelled bin Laden on May 18, 1996, to Afghanistan.
U.S. surveillance of Pakistan extends far beyond its nuclear program. There are several references in the black budget to expanding U.S. scrutiny of chemical and biological laboratories.
In the wealthy industrialized nations, effective drug therapies against AIDS became available - AZT as early as 1987, then combinations of antiretroviral agents in 1996. The new drugs offered hope that fatal complications might be staved off and AIDS rendered a chronic condition.
The first reports of AIDS closely followed the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan, whose 'family values' agenda and alliance with Christian conservatives associated AIDS with deviance and sin.
At Cheney's initiative, the United States stripped terror suspects of long-established rights under domestic and international law, building a new legal edifice under exclusive White House ownership.
Scores of armed antigovernment groups, some of them far more radical, have formed or been revived during the Obama years, according to law-enforcement agencies and outside watchdogs.
When the 'New York Times' revealed the warrantless surveillance of voice calls, in December 2005, the telephone companies got nervous.
The U.N. Security Council ordered Iraq in April 1991 to relinquish all capabilities to make biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as long-range missiles.
Snowden has yet to tell me anything that was a fact that I have been able to rebut or that anybody in the U.S. government I have talked to has been able to rebut.
There is no reliable way to calculate from the number of recorded compliance issues how many Americans have had their communications improperly collected, stored or distributed by the NSA.
Of all Iraq's rocket scientists, none drew warier scrutiny abroad than Modher Sadeq-Saba Tamimi.
