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From Los Angeles Times

A false sense of national security

A premature triumphalism may put the nation at risk. A weakened Al Qaeda can still attack, and so can a slew of other terrorist groups.

by Max Boot

August 7, 2011

The raid to kill Osama bin Laden is barely three months old, but already it is one of the proudest chapters in the history of the U.S. Special Operations Command — and of the Obama administration. Officials of both organizations have been taking one well-deserved victory lap after another, even going so far as to cooperate (apparently) with a journalist from the New Yorker who has just produced a riveting account of Operation Neptune's Spear. No doubt more books, articles and movies are in the offing. I wouldn't be surprised to see some Navy SEALs writing memoirs or licensing their stories.

There are two major problems with the understandable impulse to pop the champagne cork. In the first place, the officers and officials who are talking may well be compromising important operational details and making it harder to preserve secrecy about future missions — including those that don't go quite as well. Even more worrisome is the possibility that we are being lulled into a false sense of complacency that will allow Al Qaeda and other radical groups to stage a resurgence.

U.S. government officials are probably premature when they rush to proclaim, as the Washington Post reported, that Al Qaeda is "on the brink of collapse." Such predictions have been made many times before, and each time have been disproved by this terrorist group with its alarming ability to regenerate itself. It does not take much in the way of resources to carry out a terrorist strike (the Sept. 11 operation cost an estimated $500,000), so Al Qaeda does not need much infrastructure to pose a threat. Moreover, Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist organization we have to worry about.

Other Islamist extremists are capable of planning attacks with scant direction or assistance from Al Qaeda Central. These organizations range from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Al Qaeda in Iraq to the Haqqani network, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hezbollah, Kataib Hezbollah and Hamas. None of these groups have pulled off anything on the scale of Sept. 11, thank goodness, but several of them have undoubtedly killed far more people — and dominated far more territory — than Bin Laden ever did.

Al Qaeda in Iraq managed to take over a substantial portion of the Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq before suffering devastating defeats in 2007 and 2008, but it continues to set off bombs. Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip and is rapidly building up its arsenal. Hezbollah is the most powerful force in Lebanon and has more missiles than some nation-states. The Pakistani Taliban is steadily undermining the government in Islamabad with one atrocity after another. Lashkar-e-Taiba has almost sparked war between India and Pakistan with its terrorist attacks in India and undoubtedly will strike again. Kataib Hezbollah, along with other Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist groups, is asserting its power in Iraq as the U.S. prepares to withdraw.

By focusing too much on Al Qaeda and its charismatic founder — now resting at the bottom of the Arabian Sea — we risk not devoting sufficient resources or attention to these other threats, which are less publicized but ultimately may be just as dangerous.

We have already seen one sign of this premature triumphalism: President Obama ordered 30,000 "surge" troops to come home from Afghanistan by September 2012 against the advice of his military commanders. The battle against the Haqqani network and Taliban — two of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world — is far from won. It will be much harder to defeat Bin Laden's allies in Afghanistan with the U.S. force reduced by a third before the end of next summer's fighting season.

Defenders of the administration's Al Qaeda-centric approach may argue that only Al Qaeda has shown the will and capacity to strike the American homeland. But other groups are targeting us as well, and sooner or later they may succeed: Faisal Shahzad, who tried to blow up a car bomb in Times Square last year, was trained and funded by the Pakistani Taliban. Also in 2010, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula tried to mail bombs to the U.S. that could have blown up passenger aircraft in midair. All it would take would be one such terrorist success to dispel the current complacency.

History, I fear, may be repeating itself. President George W. Bush and his Defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, appeared to be transfixed by early military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in particular the successes of the Special Operations Command. Remember the hoopla over the "horse soldiers," the Green Berets on horseback who called in the airstrikes that toppled the Taliban in the fall of 2001. Or the hype over Saddam Hussein being pulled out of his spider hole by soldiers of the same Joint Special Operations Command that killed Bin Laden. This created a mind-set of triumphalism embodied in the famous "Mission Accomplished" banner displayed behind Bush when he welcomed the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln home from the Persian Gulf.

Sen. Obama later mocked Bush for prematurely claiming victory. But now President Obama, or at least his aides, may be making the same mistake.

Max Boot, a contributing editor to Opinion, is a senior fellow in national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is completing a history of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot-threat-20110807,0,2454954,print.story

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Release child welfare reports

County supervisors' withholding of files on child deaths is unlawful and prevents public oversight.

August 7, 2011

In 2008, 10-year-old Seth Ireland of Fresno was beaten by his mother's boyfriend and later died of his injuries. Assembly Democrat Henry T. Perea responded with a demand that the state audit his county's child protective services agency plus three others in California, including the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services. There is little point now in arguing whether Perea was merely playing to his Fresno constituents or genuinely seeking constructive change. One way or the other, the audit is on, and if conducted properly it can give the public and county governments valuable information about the performance of four of the state's child welfare agencies.

But the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is stonewalling. As Times staff writer Garrett Therolf reported last Monday, the supervisors have thumbed their collective noses at the Bureau of State Audits and refused to produce reports dealing with the deaths of dozens of children who came to the county's attention over the last four years because of abuse or neglect.

Such intransigence and preference for secrecy have a long history in the county Hall of Administration. The board exhibited these traits a year ago when it defied a state law requiring the county to release the files of children who had died from abuse or neglect.

Uncomfortable with scrutiny, or worried about lawsuits, or jealous of their reputations, or otherwise skittish about the possible consequences of allowing the public to see how the county operates, the supervisors decided that no file would be released until their lawyers had established that the cause of the child's death was in fact abuse or neglect. The DCFS clung tightly to files until they were shown to the district attorney's office — just in case county prosecutors wanted to bring charges. Prosecutors responded with what amounted to a blanket objection to disclosing anything. The result: An attempt to examine the causes of child deaths and the performance of social workers in Los Angeles County was thwarted by the board, the child welfare department and the district attorney.

Now, again, faced with a state probe, the county is circling the wagons. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky dissented from the board's decision to defy the audit, just as he was the holdout on complying with the sunshine law a year ago, but one supervisor's willingness to allow scrutiny isn't enough.

The county's in-house lawyers and outside law firm assert that child death files are protected by the attorney-client privilege. That absurd and outrageous justification for non-disclosure is laughable, or would be, were the consequences not so tragic.

First, many of the files are not privileged at all. The DCFS conducted internal reviews of child deaths, which were then forwarded for review and approval to the county counsel's office. An after-the-fact sign-off by lawyers cannot and does not render a document privileged. Otherwise, the Board of Supervisors would be able to sit on every ostensibly public record in its possession simply by sending it to its lawyer's office for a rubber-stamp.

Second, even files that arguably are privileged could and probably should be released. The privilege belongs not to the lawyers but to the client — Los Angeles County — which can waive its prerogative, and should do so, in the public interest. It is true that the county's interests are articulated by the five elected supervisors, but those supervisors have increasingly focused on their own needs rather than those of the vulnerable children, grieving families, responsible taxpayers and hosts of others they are elected to represent. They too often ask their lawyers for advice on how to avoid outside critique and — surprise — are told that the matters they discuss with counsel are privileged and beyond disclosure. It's a boot-strapping argument that locks the public and, in this case, the state out of their proper oversight role. It perpetuates the county's continuing failure.

The actual rationale for stonewalling the state audit became apparent in a letter from the county's outside counsel: "Further, your office's demand that the county produce self-critical documents, and subject them to the bureau's critique, threatens to destroy the very type of child protection — unfettered self-evaluation — that this audit seeks to promote."

That says it all. The only evaluations of the county will be those it performs itself, and the results of those evaluations will remain known only to the county. Not since the days of Chief William H. Parker's Los Angeles Police Department has this region seen an institution steeped in such arrogance, insularity and contempt for public accountability. None of the other counties being audited — not Fresno, not Sacramento, not Alameda — have objected to the state's request for child death files.

The state, after all, makes policy and provides funding for the Department of Children and Family Services, and it ought to be able to audit programs that it funds. Defying the audit is a crime. Los Angeles County taxpayers may soon find themselves paying both to defend their county government against criminal charges and to keep themselves in the dark about their county government's performance.

All that said, the supervisors' actions may be comprehensible, even if indefensible. Child deaths from abuse and neglect are fraught with emotion and can result in sensational headlines, in newspapers like this one, to which supervisors feel compelled to respond. One more study of fatalities, such as the state audit demanded after the killing of Seth Ireland, steeps policymakers in a swamp of exceptional failures and worst cases. It makes it easy to forget that data show overwhelmingly that outcomes are better for children who stay in their homes — even with families struggling with poverty, even in neighborhoods with inadequate schools — than for those removed by well-meaning or backside-covering county agencies. It makes it easy to forget that the county's most effective and most economical response to children in trouble is to help their families with resources and programs to cope with their challenges.

Some supervisors may fear the release of files on child deaths because they sincerely believe such information will increase pressure from the public or state officials to traumatize more children by removing them unnecessarily from their homes. Other supervisors may believe the files could show the opposite — that social workers were insufficiently aggressive in identifying the few truly abusive households and failed to remove endangered children for fear of bucking county policy.

In either case, the county is not helped — children and their families are not helped — by secrecy and intransigence. The supervisors owe the people they serve, to drop their claim of privilege and to bring some sunshine into the dark corners of county government.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-dcfs-20110807,0,237003,print.story

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From Google News

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Anonymous attacks US sheriffs' websites

Hacking collective says it stole data including emails and credit card numbers in retaliation for arrests of its sympathisers

The group of hackers known as Anonymous says it has hacked into about 70 mostly rural law enforcement websites in the US, a data breach that at least one local police chief said leaked sensitive information about an ongoing investigation.

The loose-knit international hacking collective posted a cache of data to the internet early on Saturday, including emails stolen from officers, tips that appeared to come from members of the public, credit card numbers and other information.

Anonymous said it had stolen 10 gigabytes worth of data in retaliation for the arrests of its sympathisers in the US and Britain.

Tim Mayfield, a police chief in Gassville, Arkansas, told the Associated Press that some of the material posted online – including pictures of teenage girls in swimsuits – was sent to him as part of an ongoing investigation. He declined to provide more details.

Mayfield's comments were the first indication that the hack might be serious. Since news of some kind of cyber-attack first filtered out less than a week ago, various police officials said they were unaware of the hacking or dismissed it as nothing to worry about.

Though many of the leaked emails appeared benign, some of the stolen material carried sensitive information, including tips about suspected crimes, profiles of gang members and security training.

The emails were mainly from sheriffs' offices in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Mississippi. Many of the websites were operated by a media services hosting company in Mountain Home, Arkansas, and most, if not all, were either unavailable on Saturday or had been wiped clean of content. The company, Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, declined to comment.

In a statement, Anonymous said it had leaked "a massive amount of confidential information that is sure to [embarrass], discredit and incriminate police officers across the US". The group said it hoped the disclosures would "demonstrate the inherently corrupt nature of law enforcement using their own words" and "disrupt and sabotage their ability to communicate and terrorise communities".

The group did not say specifically why these sheriffs' departments were targeted, but Anonymous members have increasingly been pursued by law enforcement in the United States and elsewhere following a string of high-profile data thefts and denial of service attacks – operations that block websites by flooding them with traffic.

Last month, the FBI and British and Dutch officials made 21 arrests, many of them related to the group's attacks on the internet payment provider PayPal, which was targeted over its refusal to process donations to WikiLeaks. Anonymous also claims credit for disrupting the websites of Visa and MasterCard in December when the credit card companies stopped processing donations to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.

An internet security expert said Anonymous may have gone after the sheriffs' offices because the hosting company was an easy target. Dick Mackey, vice-president of consulting at SystemExperts in Sudbury, Massachusetts, said many organisations did not see themselves as potential targets for international hackers, causing indifference that could leave them vulnerable.

"It seems to me to be low-hanging fruit," he said. "If you want to go after someone and make a point and want to have their defences be low, go after someone who doesn't consider themselves a target."

As part of the information posted from US sheriffs' departments, Anonymous leaked five credit card numbers it said it used to make "involuntary donations". At least four of the names and other personal details published appeared genuine, although those contacted by the Associated Press said they did not know whether their financial information had been compromised.

Anonymous also posted several emails from police tipsters, many of whom had asked law enforcement not to use their names for fear of retaliation. One tipster wrote that his uncle was a convicted sexual offender who was homeless and hanging around a Walmart and other places where children were. Another tipster wrote to police that she and her neighbours could smell drugs coming from a house. Neither responded to emails requesting comment.

Most calls to more than two dozen affected sheriffs' offices went unanswered or were not returned on Saturday. Several confirmed that a cyber-attack had taken place, and some said they did not believe highly sensitive information had been leaked.

"At this point, other than emails ... there's really not any other critical information they could get their hands on," said John Montgomery, sheriff of Baxter County in northern Arkansas.

In Arkansas, the St Francis County sheriff, Bobby May, said his department and several others had been targeted in retaliation for the arrests of hackers who had targeted Apple Computer, among other companies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/07/anonymous-attacks-us-sheriffs-websites/print

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