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Newer News: February 2017

January 2017 Intelligence News

• NRO Denies Release of Unclassified Portions of FY 2016 Budget Justification Book, January 23. "The NRO has determined that a series of unclassified items in the document in the aggregate reveals associations or relationships not otherwise revealed in the unclassified items individually."
• Make America, wait, what again? US Army may need foreign weapons to keep up by Thomas Claburn, The Register, January 23. "A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published last week finds that the US Army has failed to modernize its ground combat systems and now faces the possibility of operating under the limitations of Cold War-era equipment for years to come."
• Elite Scientists Have Told the Pentagon That AI Won't Threaten Humanity by Ben Sullivan, Motherboard, January 19. "A new report authored by a group of independent US scientists advising the US Dept. of Defense (DoD) on artificial intelligence (AI) claims that perceived existential threats to humanity posed by the technology, such as drones seen by the public as killer robots, are at best 'uninformed'."
• CIA Posts More Than 12 Million Pages of CREST Records Online, CIA news release, January 17. "The largest collection of declassified CIA records is now accessible online. Approximately 930,000 documents, totaling more than 12 million pages are now available through the CIA's Electronic Reading Room on cia.gov."
• Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning, soldier convicted for leaking classified information by Ellen Nakashima and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post, January 17. "President Obama commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, an Army private convicted of taking troves of secret diplomatic and military documents and disclosing them to WikiLeaks, after deciding that Manning had served enough time."
• The CIA's Secret History Is Now Online by Jason Leopold, Buzzfeed, January 17. "After restricting access to just four computers in a room in Washington, DC, the CIA is finally putting 12 million declassified pages on the web for all to see."
• Will Obama pardon Snowden? by Josh Gerstein, Politico, January 17. "It's unlikely, but a 2001 Clinton pardon reflected concerns about using the Espionage Act against whistleblowers."
• There Are Now Questions About Whether The Secret Trump Dossier Is Classified by Ali Watkins, Buzzfeed, January 13. "The dossier, whose contents remain unverified by the intelligence community, was included in a rare, high-level briefing -- and now intelligence officials don't even know if they can talk about it."
• We should punish Russia further, lawmakers say after U.S. report on election hacking by Tim Johnson, McClatchy News, January 6. "The release Friday of a U.S. intelligence report that clearly says Russia interfered in the U.S. presidential campaign galvanized support in Congress for punishing Russia further and strengthening cyber defenses."