JihadJane, an American woman, faces terrorism charges – Washington Post
A petite, blond-haired, blue-eyed high school dropout who allegedly used the nickname JihadJane was identified Tuesday as an alleged terrorist intent on recruiting others to her cause.
The most obvious point here is that if profiling was ever an effective counterterrorism tool in the past, which is doubtful, [...]

Experts Urge Keeping Two Options for Terror Trials – New York Times
An article in yesterday’s New York Times noted that though several congressional Republicans have publicly equated a tough anti-terrorism stance with a commitment to try all foreign terrorism suspects before military tribunals, some high-ranking former Bush Administration counterterrorism officials believe that the option to [...]

On Thursday March 4th, as part of its “How Safe Are Our Skies” documentary, the BBC showcased a controlled simulation that it commissioned to determine the level of damage and destruction that the Christmas Day airline bombing attack attempted by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would have caused if executed successfully. The results of the experiment, which was [...]

Google, in an attempt to live up to their corporate credo “don’t be evil,” has taken a stand and reversed its controversial decision to censor results China’s Google search engine. In their announcement, Google’s Chief Legal Officer David Drummond stated that the cyber attacks on more than 20 companies were part of a coordinated attempt [...]

According to one U.S.  official, “blond-haired, blue-eyed types,” with American passports, are among those training in Al-Qaeda’s Yemen camps, reports the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Al Qaeda in Yemen and Somalia: A Ticking Time Bomb, released yesterday.
If it was not clear already, this information only makes it only more obvious that racially profiling at [...]

From the White House summary of the Christmas bombing intelligence failures (summary_of_wh_review_12-25-09.pdf):
“A misspelling of Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa.”
I’ve been railing about this for a while.  But if anything makes the case for moving to a biometric identity assurance system, this has to [...]

There was an interesting news analysis article in the NYT today: News Analysis – Can Buildup in Afghanistan Prevent Terror Attacks? – NYTimes.com. Reporters Eric Schmitt and Scott Shane write:
Does the United States need a large and growing ground force in Afghanistan to prevent another major terrorist attack on American soil?
….
In interviews, most counterterrorism [...]

I’ve written about this before, but this is a good time to revisit the issue.  From today’s NYT: 1 in 7 Freed Detainees Rejoins Fight, Report Foun:
An unreleased Pentagon report provides new details concluding that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has [...]

Today, the American Security Project released an interim update as part of its ongoing “Are We Winning?” study, which found several discouraging trends, including an increase in worldwide Islamic violence and a dampening of the so-called “Obama Effect” in the Muslim world, among other issues.
Click here to listen to audio of a conference call held [...]

Blogger Andrew Sullivan has likened torture to a cancer on America’s democracy, that “metastasizes quickly and poisons everything it touches.” Today’s Washington Post has a story about likely investigations in Europe of torture during the Bush Administration:
European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on [...]