Google Chrome Frame and Microsoft IE by Mike Wood (Socially Engineered Malware)

Sure, Google Chrome Frame increases the Microsoft IE attack surface…
… but there’s more to the issue than what’s currently being bickered about.

Google’s Chrome Frame plugin for Internet Explorer is meant to incorporate web 2.0 functionality that the IE browser currently does not support. As reported in [1] Microsoft fired back claiming that Google’s plugin will double the threat landscape for Internet Explorer users and that they would not recommend this plugin to their relatives. While Microsoft’s statement has some theoretical truth to it — in the superficial conjecture that more code means more vulnerabilities — it naively discounts the beneficial security features the plugin can add to the system.

What’s more important are the implications on social engineering attacks as a result of this Google plugin.

Everyone knows Google. They dominate the Internet search market. People are also used to seeing Google links on tons of other people’s websites, with AdWords sponsored links or Google Maps images. Google is a ubiquitous part of the Internet, or at the very least, a household name.

Given this context, how suspicious might the average web user be when confronted with a page that displays a message to the tune of:

“The page you requested requires this Google plugin. Click here to install…”

Disrupting the web user’s primary task with a “required plugin download” is a common tactic for malware distribution. Among the many attempts are several fake codecs as well as phony Adobe plugins. And the success of this strategy can be inferred by its growing use — note the recent adoption by Koobface malware.

I am confident it won’t be long before we will see spoofed versions of pages like this:

… where all the links point to a malicious download, not just the install button.

As some consolation, Internet Explorer 8 users at least will be well equipped to defend against such attacks, as NSS Labs Q3 Report rates IE8 as vastly superior in the detection of Socially Engineered Malware.

Verizon Wireless Plans Mass LTE Deployment by W. David Gardner

Verizon Wireless is planning to light up its Long-Term Evolution (LTE) nationwide network next year in one fell swoop rather than deploying it in a traditional market-by-market rollout, according to Tony Melone, the firm's senior vice president and chief technology officer.

The rollout "will be as close to all-at-once as possible," Melone said in an interview in which he noted that the firm is right on schedule with its LTE wireless technology. "We want to give our customers a significant footprint," and won't "tease," them he said, with trial deployments.

In the interview, in the wake of his talk on Verizon Wireless' LTE project this week at the 2009 PCIA Wireless Infrastructure Show, Melone described the move to LTE from Verizon's existing CDMA EV-DO network as an "overlay" and not a "switchover." He added that the LTE network is able to use much of the existing infrastructure of the CDMA network including towers and backhaul gear.

Melone also discussed what consumers can expect from the new LTE network. "You will need new devices to take [full] advantage of LTE," he said. "But there won't be a need to force migrate" The carrier's CTO explained that existing Verizon Wireless users will be able to continue to use their current devices and handsets after LTE is commercially launched.

LTE will enable traditional-type handsets and PDAs, but also some non-traditional devices like the IREX Technologies e-book reader, GM's OnStar auto security solution, and even court-ordered electronic bracelets. Melone noted that Verizon has certified more than 55 devices to operate on its 3G network and they will be available also for use with the LTE network. Most of them are machine-to-machine (M2M) units.

The company, which is jointly owned by Verizon Communications (55%) and Vodafone Group (45%), has launched trial sites in suburban Boston and suburban Seattle. The Verizon LTE Innovation Center in suburban Boston is nearly completed, Melone added.

In his PCIA talk this week, Melone sought to scotch rumors that his firm's LTE rollout is falling behind schedule. In the interview, he maintained that deployment is on schedule. The firm, however, hasn't yet given specific dates on its nationwide deployment, but it has pledged it will happen in 2010 in 25 to 30 markets. The company will seek to have the service available for some 100 million POPs (points of presence) in 2010 and continue to deploy the network over the next two and three years.

Melone said Verizon's Developer Community and its V CAST Apps will launch by the end of the year, enabling developers to take advantage of the launch to bring their own products and services to market.

"We can build all the bells and whistles and make lots of bold claims," said Melone, "but none of it will matter if the network -- and all of the underlying infrastructure that supports the network -- isn't fundamentally reliable. There will be no substitute for good old-fashioned engineering. Reliability built in at the start based on rigid engineering standards and a disciplined approach year-after-year will continue to be our mantra."

Inside Iranian Politics and Nuclear Strategy: A G-20 Briefing featuring Stephen P. Rosen and Mehdi Khalaji

Stephen Rosen

Studying the behavior of states with nuclear weapons may give some insight into what Iran would do if it acquires nuclear weapons capabilities. Every state that has nuclear weapons, with the exception of India, has shared the technology and the know-how -- not the weapons -- with other states: the United States shared technology with Great Britain and then, in the 1950s, provided nuclear weapons for German fighter jets on German bases flown by German pilots; Israel and France shared nuclear energy technology in the 1960s; China assisted Pakistan; North Korea aided Syria; and Pakistan assisted many countries through the A. Q. Khan network. In short, states transfer nuclear technology because it is easy to accomplish, difficult to track, and returns very high rewards.

Historically, many states have misstated their actual nuclear weapons capability. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union noticeably exaggerated the capabilities of its bomber forces. In its initial years after acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States acted similarly by concealing the small size of its arsenal. North Korea also used a similar strategy. Thus, it would not be unprecedented if Iran were to manipulate the perception of its nuclear capabilities.

Few countries with nuclear capabilities have made overt threats; rather, nuclear-armed states tend to become bold and make tacit threats. Former U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, did not directly threaten to use nuclear weapons if North Korea and China did not agree to an armistice during Korean War; instead, he threatened that "the United States would employ all means at its disposal" and sent nuclear-capable B-29 planes to bases in the Pacific. During the Suez crisis of 1956, the Soviet Union made similar vague threats if France and the United Kingdom did not withdraw. In an effort to put pressure on the United States, the Soviet Union deployed nuclear weapons to Cuba in 1962. Since Pakistan has acquired nuclear weapons, the frequency and intensity of hostile incidents between Pakistan and India have significantly increased. In 1988, India may have deployed its nuclear arsenal to several battlefield positions during the largest military mobilization exercise in its history to date, a development closely observed by Pakistan. In short, when states get nuclear weapons, they become more confident and push their interests more aggressively.

Iran has a clear tendency to act indirectly through proxies, allowing the Iranian government plausible deniability. For example, Iran's acquisition of nuclear arms could encourage Hizballah to take additional action against Israel to advance Iranian interests.

Iran has significant incentives to test a nuclear weapon, which have only grown since the June 12 election. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) may opt to test a nuclear weapon earlier rather than later, since they want to say to the Iranian people: "We have asked you to make sacrifices for this program, and we have succeeded in making Iran a great power." Nuclear testing will increase confrontation between Iran and other countries, enabling the regime to make the case that it is protecting the Iranian people against hostile, foreign pressure. Since preparation for underground tests takes months and is easy to detect, Tehran may conduct a test above ground to elude Western intelligence prior to detonation and demonstrate its newly found power more clearly to the region.

Mehdi Khalaji

Since 1979 the Islamic Republic has promoted the last Friday of Ramadan as Quds Day (Jerusalem Day), a celebration of solidarity with Palestinian rejectionism and a protest against the United States and Israel. Quds Day has become symbolic of the Islamic Republic's effort to present itself as the leader of the world Muslim community in rejecting what it perceives as Western and Israeli plots against Islam. Due to his earlier support for the protestors, Ayatollah Akbar Rafsanjani was prevented from performing the Friday prayer during Quds Day for the first time in thirty years.

State television stopped broadcasting the Quds Day demonstrations due to the intense protests against the government; during a state television interview of Ahmadinezhad, for instance, the crowd could be heard chanting, "Resign, resign." Despite blunt IRGC threats and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's statement that the government has the right to crack down violently, protestors turned out in large numbers on Quds Day in many cities. During the protests, two popular chants were "I will sacrifice my life for Iran, not Lebanon or Palestine" and "Ahmadinezhad nuclear hero, get some rest" (both rhyme in Persian).

Ahmadinezhad was not the sole focus of the protests: 80 percent of the slogans targeted Khamenei and the institution of velayat-e fagih -- "rule of the jurisprudent." Many Iranians agree with Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri's assessment of the Islamic Republic as neither Islamic nor a republic, but as a military dictatorship.

Khamenei and the Iranian leadership are looking at nuclear negotiations through a distorted lens. For them, the current protests and the political turmoil take priority over the nuclear negotiations -- a trend that is likely to continue. Now that Iranians have learned how to hijack revolutionary occasions to promote their own agenda, the near future is likely to witness more resistance from the people and more violence from the government, which will weaken Khamenei, further impeding successful negotiations.

Even though Khamenei says that his regime does not need the West's stamp of legitimacy -- implying he sees no need for the nuclear negotiations -- he also believes that if the West were to make an offer, it would invariably be part of a plot to undermine Iran. For him, the nuclear program is not the only issue at stake -- the very existence of the Islamic Republic dominates his view of the negotiations. Khamenei does not believe that sorting out the nuclear crisis will normalize relations with the United States or Israel, who oppose the very nature of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei's nightmare extends beyond direct negotiations with the United States -- he fears that the West will penetrate Iranian society. In a recent speech, he deplored the fact that Iran has two million students in colleges studying humanities and social sciences, describing those subjects as dangerous Western tools to colonize Muslim minds. Khamenei subsequently mandated that Islamic sciences replace the humanities.

Since the June election, the Iranian people's view of the nuclear talks has changed. Until recently, the nuclear program and Palestine were perceived as national causes; as a result of the elections, they are now seen as Ahmadinezhad's causes, not those of the Iranian people. Many Iranians now believe that the nuclear program works against the national interest and is a political tool of Ahmadinezhad. In the televised pre-election debate between opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and Ahmadinezhad, Mousavi said that Iran -- instead of fighting the world -- should first gain the confidence of the world before proceeding with its nuclear program.

Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan: Hamas in Ascendance by Hassan Barari

Two Competing Schools of Thought

Jordan's MB has always been divided ideologically between hawks and doves, a division that historically has benefited and strengthened the MB. The doves -- mainly East Bankers -- served as both the movement's leaders and as a cushion that insulated the regime from the organization's more radical base. Until recently, Jordanians of Palestinian origin never filled leadership positions. On April 30, 2008, however, Hamam Said, a radical clergyman with Palestinian roots and sympathies, was elected supreme guide, the top position in the MB.

Hamam Said's ascendance has been controversial, creating a dynamic that places the kingdom's Islamists into direct confrontation with the state. Paradoxically, this development may itself lead to increased dependence on the doves to mitigate expected tension with the state in the coming months.

While the friction between the hawks and doves is historical, two other recent trends in the MB have dramatically changed internal MB politics. These changes largely relate to the arrival of new, determined opposition groups within Jordan's political landscape.

The first group, referred to in the MB literature as the "fourth current," comprises activists who identify themselves with Hamas. Practically, this group is allied with the hawks, but when it comes to determining the MB's political platform, they set the agenda. The second group comprises reformers, largely non-East Bank MB members who seek to reform the political system in Jordan and to drive the MB away from Hamas in favor of a more nationalist, Jordanian agenda. A leading figure in this movement is Rheil Gharibeh, who in March 2009 proposed that Jordan should move to a constitutional monarchy, similar to the English system, in an attempt to limit the authority of the king. Members of this group are genuine reformers, and although religious, they not ideologically rigid. They advocate, for example, a civil legal code as opposed to the implementation of Islamic (Sharia) law.

According to prominent Jordanian intellectual and activist Jamal Tahat, the state is not frightened by Hamas disciples in the kingdom, but rather by East Bankers who are challenging the regime on the basis of democratic reform. According to Tahat, the regime is most concerned with the pro-democracy trend advocated by traditional East Banker Islamists. For this reason, many analysts and politicians believe that the state has been targeting the reformists in the MB, for although they constitute the moderates of the organization, this group is perceived to be a more significant long-term threat to the system than the pro-Hamas militants.

Hamas Factor

Since his expulsion from Jordan in 1999, Khaled Mashal has been looking for opportunities to exploit internal divisions within the MB to strengthen his standing vis-a-vis the Jordanian state. For years, Mashal made efforts to avoid being seen as interfering in the movement's affairs. A few weeks ago, however, Mashal's father died in Jordan and the king allowed him to attend the funeral. During the ceremony, Mashal was surrounded by thousands of admirers. Although his visit was arranged for the express purpose of attending the funeral and he had pledged not to use his time in Amman to deliver political messages, he gave a conciliatory speech during his stay in which he praised King Abdullah. He also reaffirmed that he would not interfere with Jordan's internal affairs.

Despite his statements, Mashal is clearly focused on Jordan and deeply involved in the kingdom's and the MB's internal affairs. Indeed, in the struggle between Hamas and reformists, Mashal has offered himself as a mediator. Because Mashal is essentially a party to the conflict, however, it is difficult to see how he could serve as an impartial mediator. Nevertheless, if he does eventually mediate, Mashal will increase his political clout, enabling him to dominate Jordan's MB and use it to further the Hamas agenda.

Mashal's attempt to mediate is not welcome by the moderates, and even some in the pro-Hamas contingent are embarrassed by Mashal's desire to play a role. Hamam Said, a pro-Hamas hawk, is ostensibly a critic: In an interview by Shihan Weekly on September 13, Said commented, "When I heard in the media that Hamas seeks to mediate, I called [Mashal] and told him that these issues pertain [to] Jordan and [that] no one has the right to interfere." But few believe Said's protestations, as it is widely known that Mashal has substantial influence on Said and his colleagues. For this reason, East Bankers, such as Rheil Gharibeh and Abd al-Latif Arabiyat have been seeking a complete organizational separation between Jordan's MB and Hamas.

Negotiations about the relationship between Hamas and the MB are currently taking place in the MB's administrative offices in the Gulf. The Hamas wing within the MB, in coordination with the hawks, seeks to increase its representation in the executive bureau from four seats to twelve. So far, the internal battle has not been decided, but if Hamas uses its majority and decides on certain issues -- such as the percentage of Palestinians in the Gulf executive bureau of the MB -- the movement will become fully "Palestinianized," a development that might trigger additional fissures in the organization and defections by some important Islamist figures.

Conclusion

While it remains to be seen how the internal debate will unfold, the near absence of official Jordanian intervention to date has been striking. Indeed, the moderate reformist group that led the MB from 2006 to 2008 appears to have been weakened the most by the state's passivity in the face of the Hamas takeover of the MB. Perhaps this was intentional; after all, government-sponsored election irregularities in the 2007 municipal and parliamentary elections resulted in a Hamas-wing boycott of the balloting. Because this wing of the MB didn't actively participate, the reformists lost the elections. Had they won, reformists would today be in the parliament and the dominant group within the MB.

The Jordanian state can still intervene and prevent Mashal from strengthening his grip on the Jordanian MB. Given the stakes, Amman should start viewing developments within the MB as an issue of state security. For the Jordanian monarchy, it is time to radically rethink its MB strategy.

Increasing the Focus on Iran's Corruption by Michael Jacobson

Although Iran has formally accepted the U.S. offer to meet on October 1, expectations are low, particularly since Tehran has made clear that the nuclear issue is not negotiable. The United States and its allies have already begun to prepare for the possibility of failed negotiations by developing potential sanctions packages that could be imposed on Tehran. Unfortunately, due to Chinese and Russian opposition, pushing a strong resolution through the UN Security Council appears unlikely. Washington, however, can adopt other multilateral approaches to increase the pressure on Iran, such as ramping up its anticorruption enforcement efforts against companies doing business in Iran, and encouraging other countries to do the same. Given the widespread corruption in Iran, and the powerful anticorruption legislation in place in many countries worldwide, this approach could have a significant impact on the regime.

Anticorruption Legislation

Laws prohibiting U.S. companies from engaging in corrupt activity overseas have been on the books for more than thirty years. In 1977, Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibited U.S. companies from paying bribes to foreign government officials to obtain or retain business. The FCPA also imposed various record-keeping obligations on companies in an effort to make it more difficult to hide these types of payments. Both civil and criminal penalties exist for violating the FCPA, which is jointly administered by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the U.S. government's efforts have focused primarily on illegal activity by U.S. companies abroad, the statute gives the government extraterritorial reach over non-U.S. companies as well. Most importantly, any foreign company listed on the U.S. stock exchange falls under FCPA jurisdiction.

In the 1990s, a number of other countries began putting similar anticorruption legislation in place. The first step came in 1997, when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) passed its Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Agreements, which came into force in 1999. The convention defines bribery quite broadly and requires countries not only to cooperate on these types of investigations, but also to impose real penalties on companies found in violation. As of March 2009, all thirty OECD member states and eight others have signed this convention and passed their own legislation to implement it. Perhaps of greatest significance, the ratifying countries include Germany, Italy, and Austria, some of Iran's major trading partners. In June 2009, the OECD released a policy statement that calls on countries to enforce their national legislation more strictly, explaining that with the global economic crisis, companies will experience greater pressure to engage in illegal activity to raise needed funds. Additionally, the UN's Convention against Corruption, which came into force in 2005, has been signed by 140 member states and ratified by 80.

FCPA in Action

The United States has used FCPA in the past to target corruption by foreign companies in Iran. In October 2006, Norwegian energy giant Statoil reached a settlement with the U.S. government, agreeing to pay $21 million and appoint an independent compliance director for various violations of the FCPA. Statoil admitted that it had paid millions of dollars to an Iranian official in 2001 and 2002, when the company was trying to break into the lucrative Iranian energy market. Statoil believed that this official could steer the contract for the development of the South Pars field -- one of the largest natural gas fields in the world -- to their company. Statoil, indeed, was subsequently awarded the contract.

The Statoil case was precedent setting: It was the first time the United States asserted FCPA jurisdiction over a non-U.S. company on the basis of its listing on the U.S. stock exchange. A senior Justice Department official explained the government's position later, noting: "If you come to the United States and seek access to our capital markets, we expect you to play by the same rules our own companies do."

Despite the relatively small financial penalty imposed against Statoil, the case had a major impact on the company. Since then, Statoil has spent millions of dollars in building a more robust internal anticorruption compliance system and putting good governance procedures into place. The damage to Statoil's reputation was significant, however, and the company remains under close government scrutiny.

FCPA penalties, in fact, can be far harsher and even more damaging for a company. In December 2008, for example, the German company Siemens was fined $800 million for violation of the FCPA. As a result of the investigation, Siemens was also forced to replace senior management, and to bring on a U.S. lawyer as its first compliance director, among other changes.

Iranian Corruption

In the effort to develop effective ways to pressure Iran, the United States and its allies should consider employing these anticorruption tools more broadly for several reasons. First, as the Statoil case indicated, corruption in Iran is rampant, and increased scrutiny would undoubtedly uncover numerous violations. Contrary to their image as ideological fanatics, Iran's leaders devote much of their efforts to lining their own pockets -- fighting more often and viciously to protect their incomes rather than their ideas. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, for example, currently the head of the Assembly of Experts (which chooses and has the power to dismiss the supreme leader), has always placed high priority on advancing the economic interests of his family, such as his son, who is now the manager of the Tehran Metro. And the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is both the central pillar of the Islamic Republic and a central pillar of its corruption, lining its pockets through shady deals and brute force.

Second, even the suggestion of increased focus by the United States and a number of other powerful industrialized countries could sufficiently deter many companies from doing business with Iran. The 2008 Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Iran 141 out of the 180 countries it rated, indicating already widespread concern about Iran's business environment. The index also suggests that corruption is a growing problem, since Iran had ranked 105 two years earlier. In the end, companies may decide that compliance with anticorruption laws is too difficult and costly to do business in Iran.

Conclusion

The key for Washington in pushing this initiative forward will be persuading European companies to begin aggressively utilizing their existing laws. Although many European countries have strong legislation in place -- in many cases more strict than the FCPA -- they have generally been reluctant to use these powers. A good example is the debacle that ensued in 2007 when the British government halted an investigation into allegations that BAE had bribed senior Saudi government officials. Former prime minister Tony Blair defended the decision, stating that it was in the UK's "national interest" and that the inquiry could have "significantly [and] materially damaged our relationship with Saudi Arabia." Even though increased unilateral U.S. action against foreign companies participating in illegal business activities in Iran could have a significant impact, convincing others to join in a broader anticorruption effort would undoubtedly yield far greater results.

Samsung 5-Megapixel SoC Image Sensor Brings Digital Still Camera Capabilities to High-end Mobile Phones

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., announced its newest quarter-inch optical format, 5-megapixel (Mp) system-on-chip (SoC) image sensor, the S5K4EA, which brings digital still camera functionality to high-end mobile phones. The chip was revealed at the sixth annual Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum held at the Westin Taipei Hotel. Targeted at smart phones and advanced handsets, the S5K4EA SoC imager combines a CMOS image sensor with an image signal processor, giving mobile handset designers a cost effective and size efficient solution.





“Mobile phones today allow us to stay in contact with friends and family not only by voice and text but also with high resolution images,” said Dr. Lee Yun Tae, senior vice president, image development team, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. “To meet the current demand for slimmer, sleeker mobile phones with digital still camera capabilities, Samsung brings 1.4-micron (um) pixel technology to this state-of-the-art imager solution.”





Samsung’s S5K4EA imager has regionally adaptive dynamic range expansion to brighten shadowed areas of a picture and intensify the clarity of brighter regions. In addition, its fast frame capture with anti-shaking control feature enables sharp pictures by reducing blur caused by jitter from unsteady hands. Capable of processing 1080p resolution images at 30 frames-per-second, the S5K4EA supports high quality video capture on advanced mobile phones.





To meet the current trend of ever smaller mobile devices with HD capabilities, Samsung’s advanced pixel shrink technology was utilized to achieve a tiny, ultra-sensitive 1.4um pixel size. Samsung’s proprietary pixel technology, the Samsung Enhanced Energy Steering (SEES), integrates more light into an optimized pixel structure to present clear, high resolution images. Advanced noise removal logic is also used to further improve image performance.





Samsung’s S5K4EA also offers auto focus, Xenon flash, mechanical or electronic rolling shutter. For designers, this new imager has a YUV output interface over MIPI2 or parallel. It also has JPEG with thumbnail output to speed up picture browsing on the phone.





The S5K4EA imager is available in an auto focus 8.5x8.5x6mm or smaller module. Samples are currently available with mass production slated for the first quarter of 2010.

Samsung Opens the Door to PC-Level Performance on Mobile Devices with 1GHz Low-power Application Processors

Electronics Co., Ltd., introduced two new 1GHz ARM® CORTEX™-A8 based application processors, the S5PC110 and S5PV210, for advanced mobile devices at the sixth annual Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum held at the Westin Taipei Hotel. The S5PC110 is targeted for small form-factor connected devices such as multimedia intensive smartphones, while the S5PV210 is aimed at portable computing devices such as netbooks that demand high performance and design flexibility.

“More and more, user generated content currently accessed via the PC will be spread to mobile devices,” said Dr. Kwang Hyun Kim, senior vice president, strategic marketing team, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. “PC-level performance with lower power consumption will become mainstream requirements for advanced mobile devices. Samsung developed S5PC110 and S5PV210 application processors to satisfy these conflicting requirements to enable a new level of user experience not previously possible.”

Both the S5PC110 and S5PV210 ensure longer battery life for mobile devices running on standard size batteries through a variety of low power technologies, including the use of a 45-nanometer (nm) Low Power fabrication process and intricate low power architectures. Each of these application processors comes with 32KB data and 32KB instruction caches, and is equipped with a 512KB L2 cache. With the 1GHz clock speed and large size L2 cache, these processors enable real-time applications such as web browsing and user interface (UI) to run smoothly with a fast response time.

High speed 3D graphics rendering and high resolution video support are two key differentiating features for advanced mobile devices. Both the S5PC110 and S5PV210 are equipped with a powerful built-in 3D graphics engine to support sophisticated 3D UI and high-caliber games. In addition, the two processors integrate a 1080p full HD codec engine that supports 30fps full HD video playback and recording. A built-in HDMI1.3 interface allows output of captured or downloaded mobile multimedia contents to an external high definition digital display.

These two new application processors also feature a wide variety of interfaces and peripherals to maximize design flexibility and reduce system BOM cost of targeted mobile devices. In particular, a high speed USB 2.0 host interface is integrated for hosting various USB peripheral devices.

Targeted for small form factor mobile devices, the S5PC110 is housed in a 0.5mm pitch, 14X14mm2 FBGA package that allows package-on-package vertical stacking of low power, multiple chip package (MCP) memory such as OneDRAM™, mobile DDR and LP DDR2, greatly reducing the overall foot print of the memory and processor combo.

Designed for portable computing applications, the S5PV210 is packaged in a 0.65mm pitch, 17X17mm2 FBGA package with a high performance 2-channel 32-bit DDR2 memory interface that is essential for computing devices.

Customer samples of both products will be available in December, 2009.

Robert Gates: Overhaul the Pentagon by Noah Shachtman

From his earliest days as secretary of defense, Robert Gates kept a little countdown clock in his briefcase. It ticked off the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until January 20, 2009, when President George W. Bush would leave office and Gates could retire to his secluded home in the Pacific Northwest, 43 years after entering public life. He'd be punting some tough issues to the next guy. But that wasn't his problem.

Until it was. Barack Obama prevailed on him to stay—in the midst of economic turmoil and two ongoing wars, the new president needed a low-key, no-surprises steward at the Pentagon.

That's not what the president got. More than five months after his countdown clock hit zero, Gates has turned out to be neither a caretaker nor merely the guy tasked with cleaning up the mess Donald Rumsfeld made of the Department of Defense. Instead, Robert Gates has emerged as the most radical secdef in generations, upending the politics of national security, scrapping the traditional ways gear gets to troops, and defying the military-industrial complex.

Gates denies all that. Mostly. As he leans over a small desk crammed into a cabin on board a modified 757, he comes across as just another Washington big shot. His starched white shirt has two pens in the breast pocket. His blue jeans are hiked up a bit too high on his waist, like he's been wearing suits too long to remember where dungarees belong. He waves off talk of massive change, of revolutions in military affairs.

Rather, he offers what sounds like common sense: The military needs to fight today's battles, not tomorrow's. Generals are always fighting the last war, the old saying goes, but in reality the Department of Defense has the opposite problem. While a relative handful of troops fight and die "downrange" in war zones, a massive bureaucracy develops strategies, spends money, and—most especially—builds weapons, all in the name of theoretical, decades-hence showdowns. It's a $500 billion perpetual motion machine.

Every secdef talks about changing the Pentagon, then almost immediately gets stymied by bureaucratic resistance. Only this time, Gates' talk is turning into action—a Gates Doctrine, if you will. Its core tenets: Base policy on the wars that are most likely to happen and the technology that's most likely to work. Stop trying to buy the future when you can't afford the present. With a White House veteran's feel for Washington, a love of policy, a penchant for secrecy, and an old man's sense of the ticking clock, the silver-haired administrator has become the most dangerous person in the military-industrial complex. "I've referred to myself as the secretary of war, because we're at war," he says in a nasal Kansas twang, raising his voice over the roar of the plane's engines. "This is a department that principally plans for war. It's not organized to wage war. And that's what I'm trying to fix."

On the Sunday before the midterm elections in 2006, while guests mingled in the main house at the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas, for the first lady's 60th birthday party, Bush took Gates into his private study and asked him to take over the Defense Department. Gates was a national security pro, having served in the White House and at the CIA for six presidents. He was a trusted protégé of Bush Senior and had continued to sit on several important advisory panels even after leaving DC in 1993.

As Bob Woodward told it in his 2008 book The War Within, Gates and the president talked about increasing the size of the Army, halting unneeded weapons programs, the unfinished fight in Afghanistan. But Gates knew only one topic really mattered: Iraq. The country Bush had set out to liberate was turning into The Road Warrior, with more bombs. Donald Rumsfeld's approach—"go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want"—had helped fuel the chaos. All the American power and prestige Gates had fought for decades to preserve was disappearing. He took the job.

When Gates arrived at the Pentagon in December 2006, without aides or entourage, he learned that few people in the building shared his sense of urgency about Iraq. Part of this was institutional: The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 essentially splits the military in two—relatively small, regional commands do the fighting, and everyone else does the conceptualizing, training, and gear-buying. But the bigger hurdle was attitude. Iraq was important, the Pentagon's prevailing wisdom went, but so were a whole range of other conflicts just over the horizon. "There wasn't any kind of dedicated place in the institution where people were coming to work every day saying, 'What can I do to help the people downrange today?'" Gates says. "And that got me—" His lips tighten. His eyes narrow. He takes a breath. "It made me very impatient."

Just two months into Gates' tenure, The Washington Post revealed that Walter Reed Army Medical Center was keeping wounded soldiers in moldy, mouse- and cockroach-infested squalor. Gates fired the general in charge. Then he fired the secretary of the Army and forced out the Army's surgeon general. On Rumsfeld's watch, no one got fired for incompetence—not even after the Abu Ghraib prison debacle. Gates was clearly different. "I can't tell you how cathartic, how refreshing that was," says Ryan Henry, a top aide to both secretaries.

But replacing bureaucrats is easier than diverting whole bureaucracies. Gates found that out as soon as he began acting on his promise to focus on waging war, not planning for it. He knew that soldiers were driving thousands of Humvees with substandard armor and that improvised explosive devices, which easily pierced the vehicles' thin skins, had caused 70 percent of US casualties in Iraq. The Army's answer to the pressing need for hardened vehicles was to keep pouring billions of dollars into Future Combat Systems, a program that was supposed to yield a next-generation networked, lightly armored infantry vehicle by, oh, 2016 or so.

Meanwhile, in one part of Iraq, hard-shelled trucks called MRAPs (mine-resistant, ambush-protected) had withstood hundreds of attacks without a single US fatality. But in May 2007, just 64 were delivered into the field—they were considered too big to use anywhere but Iraq, and the Army already had Future Combat Systems going. Gates learned about MRAPs not from his generals but from an April 2007 article in USA Today. "Nobody wanted the things, because they were afraid they'd wind up with thousands of them in a big car park at the end of the war," Gates says. "My attitude was: If you're in a war, it's all in. I don't care what we have left over at the end."

So Gates ordered a task force to figure out how to deliver 1,000 MRAPs a month by 2008. This was, to put it gently, crazy talk. Typically, defense contractors crank out just a few hundred armored vehicles a year. But task force chief John Young set up a plan to buy 17,000 specialized tires per month (Michelin, the sole supplier, was producing less than 1,000) and 21,000 tons per month of high-strength ballistic steel. It would eventually cost $25 billion—a lot of money, even at the Pentagon.

Gates put Young's plan into practice. He asked Congress for permission to expand manufacturing lines with $1.2 billion from other programs, and he activated a rarely used Cold War law to force steel makers to prioritize sales to the Pentagon's MRAP manufacturers. Monthly MRAP deliveries climbed to 1,189 by the end of the year. Today, there are 13,000 MRAPs deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. IED attacks have gone up, but in the 325 bombings involving MRAPs in Afghanistan so far this year, only five servicemembers have died.

The Gates Doctrine was emerging: Spare nothing to win today's war. Don't let the future distract you from the present day.

As a veteran of the national security and intelligence communities, Gates is both a defense outsider and a Washington insider. The son of a Wichita, Kansas, auto parts dealer, he was an Eagle Scout who dreamed of becoming a doctor—dissecting rats and cats in his parents' basement to get ready. He ended up majoring in history at William & Mary and then landed in the master's program at Indiana University. In his memoir, Gates claimed he met with the CIA recruiter there on a lark. "I thought I could get a free trip to Washington," he wrote.

Gates spent eight years as a junior analyst and an Air Force intelligence officer, then joined Nixon's National Security Council staff in 1974. Administrations changed, and political parties swapped control of the White House, but Gates remained. On the old boys' network, he had become a central node. He advised Carter on the Iranian hostage crisis, sized up Gorbachev for Reagan, and wrote George H. W. Bush's war aims for Operation Desert Storm.

All the while, Gates was learning how to bend a bureaucracy to his will. As a deputy national security adviser to the first President Bush, Gates took charge of the Deputies Committee, an interagency group responsible for the nuts and bolts of national security policy. The committee was a mess: rambling, inconclusive, a haven for back-channelers and leakers. Gates reined it in, ensuring no meeting lasted longer than an hour and that every one ended with a decision. Even the scuttling of his 1987 nomination to head the CIA didn't stop him. (Opponents alleged Gates, then the CIA's number two, hadn't done enough to stop the Iran-Contra scheme.) When Bush nominated him again four years later, Gates defused his critics with self-effacing humor and humility and was confirmed easily.

He left government in 1993; about a decade later he became head of Texas A&M and, once again, cleaned house. He replaced underperforming administrators with more- scholarly-minded deans, sending a message to an insular bureaucracy to focus on academics. A&M became one of the top public- service universities in the country and created hundreds of new academic positions.

Such a record should have told the current Pentagon establishment what to expect from their new boss. But to them, he turned out to be inscrutable. In some meetings, Gates would rarely speak; in others, he told stories from his Cold War glory days or cracked jokes about Washington's stuffed shirts. Rumsfeld was famous for intimidating people and bruising egos; Gates never interrupts. He can be stiff and reserved, until emotion comes gushing out. During one speech, recalling the death of a marine, he nearly broke down in tears, surprising even longtime friends. Gates doesn't travel much on the Beltway's social circuit, instead spending off-hours with his wife and a small cadre of aides. He smokes cigars, drinks Belvedere martinis with a twist (the first President Bush weaned him from gin to vodka), and watches trashy movies—Transformers and Wolverine were recent favorites.

Gates is also unforgivingly tough on failure. In August 2007, an Air Force unit mistakenly flew six nuclear warheads across the US on a B-52—a cardinal sin to an old Cold Warrior like Gates. Later, when Air Force chief of staff Mike Moseley briefed Gates on the incident, Gates asked him how many generals were going to get fired over the mishap. Moseley was taken aback; he said he wanted to spend time fact-finding first. More than 90 officers and airmen were eventually relieved or reassigned.

But there was a bigger problem with the Air Force. The service saw itself as the high tech deterrent against an apocalyptic encounter with another superpower. Current conflicts—and weapons for those conflicts—got short shrift. Unmanned aircraft like the Predator are cheap (compared to planes with pilots on board) and flexible, and they provide fast, useful intelligence to troops. But despite having been at war for nearly six years, the Air Force had fewer than a dozen Predator air patrols, or orbits, over Iraq and Afghanistan. US commanders were getting increasingly frustrated with the shortage.

In April 2008, a second task force—headed by Brad Berkson, a former partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company—investigated drone operations headquarters at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. Berkson found a host of inefficiencies limiting drone time in the air. They were flying for only 20 hours a day, and some of the Nevada ground control stations used for practice in the daytime were simply shut down at night, instead of being used to control drones over the battlefield.

The Air Force brass thought the idea of the head of the entire freakin' military sending staff to spend this much time down in the weeds was, in the words of one former senior Air Force officer, "just amateurish." Gates found their recalcitrance equally frustrating. "I had to go outside the bureaucracy to get any kind of urgent action," Gates says. In late April, he gave a talk at the Air War College, one of the service's intellectual hubs, and told the assembled fliers that reform was going too slowly: "Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth." Gates knew that what he said was impolitic; after the speech he reached Moseley at his father-in-law's home in Texas to assure him that he hadn't meant to single out the general or the Air Force.

Moseley got the message anyway. The Air Force increased the number of drones over war zones; today there are 37 orbits over Afghanistan and Iraq. But drones weren't at the heart of the Air Force's strategy. What the service really wanted was the F-22 Raptor. At $250 million a pop, this next-gen superjet is unquestionably a champion dogfighter, all but invisible to radar and able to fly at least Mach 1.5. It's decades ahead of anything out of Moscow or Beijing.

Against insurgents and terrorists, however, F-22s are of little use compared to drones. So Gates wanted to cap F-22 production at 187, a level set by Rumsfeld, and emphasize drone use. Yet Moseley and Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, kept lobbying for more. Raptors, they said, were essential replacements for the aging US aircraft fleet.

A couple of weeks after his speech at the Air War College, Gates met with the Joint Chiefs and a few other officials to talk about a strategy document. It included a line about the US accepting some risk in fights with superpowers in order to win asymmetric, unconventional conflicts. Moseley, a former fighter pilot, said that such a risk was unacceptable, that he needed those Raptors. Representatives from the Army, Navy, and Marines all registered similar discontent. They wanted their future war gear, too. "They kept making the case over and over. You would've thought someone's children we're being held hostage, how they carried on," a former senior defense official says.

Gates sat through it silently for about an hour. Finally, he told them he wouldn't ask Congress for any more Raptors. "It was like a cold shower. Like, 'Wow, what just happened here?'" another former official says.

Wynne and Moseley took one more crack at Gates at yet another meeting. The secdef wouldn't budge. "You know, Buzz," Wynne told Moseley afterward, "I think that just sealed our fate."

An internal DOD investigation into how the Air Force had accidentally shipped to Taiwan four fuses used in nuclear missiles didn't help. Gates read it and asked for Wynne's and Moseley's immediate resignations, but the fuses may have been just an excuse. "It was so spylike, to claim it was about the nuclear incident," a former Air Force official familiar with the situation says. "It was an opportunity. It had all the right labels."

By 2009, changes to the status quo, combined with a successful counterinsurgency push in Iraq, resulted in adjusted attitudes at the Pentagon. The new Air Force chiefs were talking about how awesome drones were. Pentagon staffers were talking about asymmetric war. Anyone discussing showdowns with China or Russia tended to use the same theoretical tone one might employ in considering war with Alpha Centauri.

Still, these changes were marginal compared to the $500 billion-a-year spending machine. Now, $300 billion of that was sacrosanct, going to troops, operations, and maintenance. But the rest went to the Pentagon's deeply odd process of developing and acquiring new weapons. Among the ongoing projects when Gates came aboard: a constellation of five "transformational" communications satellites that talk to one another using a technology that hasn't been shown to work, a laser-equipped 747 designed to zap incoming missiles (which had its first test fire last summer after 13 years in development), a presidential helicopter with a kitchen that can heat up meals after a nuclear war, and Future Combat Systems—the Army's $160 billion, grand modernization project, due to actually get high tech gear to troops by 2011. "You ever read Superman comic books?" asks Eric Edelman, the former Pentagon policy chief. "Well, acquisitions is like the Bizarro universe. Everything is reversed; the world is square, not round."

Every secdef from McNamara to Rumsfeld tried to cut over-budget, long-delayed weapons programs. Usually, though, their efforts leaked to the press and Congress, who hit them with a tsunami of tears over lost jobs and weakened national potency. Starting in 1989, then-secdef Dick Cheney (before he became a supervillain) tried four times to ax the Osprey, an aircraft that takes off like a helicopter and cruises like a plane. It took $26 billion, 30 dead crewmembers, and 25 years of development, but the Osprey eventually flew. Even Cheney couldn't stop it.

Gates thought his circumstances gave him a better shot. Even amid two wars and a collapsing economy, he had already lived through one scandal, and he was the only cabinet secretary to serve both Bush and Obama. "I decided to take full advantage of the opportunity," Gates says. He told his aides to forget about the economy, about generals and defense contractors and all the other extraneous political bullshit. "Let me worry about the politics," he said.

Then he made his deliberations covert. "I don't want this leaking out in pieces," he told his staff. "We'll get eaten alive." For the first time, everyone involved in the process had to sign a nondisclosure agreement. Gates' team set up an exclusive reading room for the budget documents. Only top-ranking generals—four stars—were allowed inside, and they were not permitted to take the briefings out.

Starting on January 6, Gates and a handful of advisers began meeting regularly. "Everything is on the table," Gates told them. The group would get a white paper on a given issue—missile defense, fighter aircraft, ground forces—and Gates would review the options on what to keep or kill. Gates wouldn't say outright what he wanted to do with a given program; that way, no one would have details to leak. But everyone knew cuts were coming. Under the Bush administration, Pentagon spending had gone up 75 percent in eight years. "You need a cut to force the institution to make changes to the system," says Berkson, who coordinated the budget deliberations. "You need that pressure."

In the end, Gates cut the satellites, the nuke-proof helicopter, the laser-firing jumbo jet prototype, the Future Combat Systems trucks, and, most symbolic, the F-22. Each one of these strike-throughs meant billions of dollars and thousands of jobs lost in dozens of congressional districts. Taken together, they represented the biggest reorg of the Pentagon in a generation.

After the April budget announcement, Republican senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma said that Gates was "gutting our military." One congressional committee after another voted to keep building F-22s and other Bizarro projects. Gates and the Pentagon "need to learn who's in charge, and the Congress is," said Democratic representative Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii. Not even Obama's threats to veto any budget with F-22s had an effect. The jet had become a symbol of resistance to the Gates Doctrine. By one tally, the Raptor had 45 supporters in the Senate. Gates had only 23 backers.

In mid-July, the weekend before the crucial vote, the White House and Gates' team started lobbying. Gates assured senator John Kerry that the Massachusetts Air National Guard wouldn't be severely impacted, and he reportedly warned the CEO of Raptor-maker Lockheed Martin that if his company lobbied in favor of the F-22, Gates would cut other Lockheed contracts. The new Air Force secretary told Wyoming senator Mike Enzi he didn't want any more Raptors anyway. The following Tuesday, the Senate voted 58-40 to stop production of the Raptors. Gates had won.

Aboard his plane, however, the secretary tries to downplay the importance of the budget votes. This is a onetime, temporary win over the square planet, not some wholesale rewriting of the rules, he insists. "Given the nature of the Pentagon, if you're in the middle of a war, you're going to have to have a lot of direction from the top, to break down bureaucratic barriers and get people to move out with a sense of urgency," he says.

Now the secretary of war is working on phase two of his plan, speeding up a once-every-four-years grand strategy review and working on even bigger changes in next year's budget. For decades, the Pentagon prepped itself for a straightforward set of superpower wars because ... well, those were the battles the US knew how to prepare for. It bought exquisite high tech weapon systems because they had the coolest capabilities, not because they necessarily countered any threats.

At long last, a changing world may be changing the Pentagon. Gates says he's trying to build an organization prepared for threats that defy present-day categorization—terror groups with bigger and better weapons and organization, and superpowers like China and Russia adopting the tactics of guerrillas. "Conflict in the future will slide up and down the spectrum," Gates says. "You're not only going to have irregular warfare over here and high-intensity conventional war over here." But every case will still require a pragmatic approach to strategy and equipment, even if that seems to clash with Gates' "all in" approach to war. Stanley McChrystal, the man Gates named in May to be top general in Afghanistan, has asked for more troops. Gates is "deeply skeptical"—his understanding of the Soviet experience there tells him more grunts may not be the way to defeat the Taliban.

After three years under Gates, the Defense Department is finally learning the right lesson: You wage war with the enemies you have, not the ones you wish you had.

(((if only the same could be said for military medical care.....i.e. use and abuse of feres doctrine, use of position, lack of seperation between conus medical care and combat zone medical care)))

Iran's Internal Problems Curb Regional Ambitions: Analysts by Taieb Mahjoub

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flexes Iran's muscles at the UN General Assembly this week, putting on a brave international face after domestic unrest has put the brake on its ambitions to become a Shiite powerhouse in a predominantly Sunni region, Gulf analysts say.

His disputed victory in the presidential election of June 12 triggered a wave of popular and deadly protest unprecedented since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979.

It came as Iran faced continuing economic problems and three sets of international sanctions imposed for refusing to suspend its controversial programme of uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be a cover to develop nuclear weapons.

"Iran is now going through a serious internal crisis, which demonstrates that its youth are tired" of their country's intervention in the region, said Sami al-Faraj, head of the Kuwait Centre for Strategic Studies.

"This country faces so many problems that it would not be able in the short term to foment civil war or clashes between Shiites and Sunnis in neighbouring states," he said of Iran's Shiite-majority neighbour Iraq.

Plagued by economic difficulties, with unemployment running at 12.5 percent in 2008, according to Western statistics, the central bank in Tehran reported inflation of 20.2 percent in August after peaking last September at 29 percent.

"Iran cannot offer the image of itself as a model state" for public opinion among Arabs disillusioned by their own political systems, according to Faraj.

The sole exception may be Lebanon's Iran-backed Shiite Hezbollah movement, three years after Arab public opinion lent the militant group full support in its short but bloody war against Israel in the summer of 2006, he added.

Hezbollah's rise, the emergence of a Shiite government in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime, the Damascus-Tehran alliance and Iranian support for Palestinian Islamist group Hamas have all fuelled Iranian regional ambitions, sparking concern among Gulf Arab monarchies.

"Iran has used the religious element for political gain" and "it clearly wanted to intervene in Arab affairs," said Abdel Aziz al-Sagr, chairman of the Gulf Research Centre in Dubai.

But he said Iran could no longer continue its politics of "intervention" in Iraq, Lebanon and more recently "in the war in Yemen between the government and the Shiite rebels in Saada province bordering Saudi Arabia," the spiritual home of Sunni Islam.

On the Palestinian issue Sagr said Tehran's "goal is not the liberation of Jerusalem" as it claims. He said Iran had not hesitated to "cooperate with Israel to purchase arms for its war with Iraq from 1980 to 88."

Bahraini analyst Ali Fakhrou believes that mistrust between Arabs and Iranians should not prevent dialogue.

"Iranian-Arab relations are at their lowest since the Iran-Iraq war," the former minister said, adding that "there are forces on both sides who are climbing."

"A rational dialogue is necessary for a consistent agreement on red lines that are not to be crossed," he said, admitting however that such dialogue was "impossible in the near future because of the situation on both sides."

In Tehran, Mohammad Saleh Sadeqian, director of the Arab Centre for Iranian Studies, said the problems faced by the Iranian government will not change its policy towards the Middle East.

"The recent events have no impact on Iran's strategy in the Middle East," he said, adding that "the imperatives of Iran's national security justify its growing influence in some parts of the Arab world.

"Dialogue is necessary for an agreement on a roadmap that serves the interest of both parties," using geography, history and religion as a basis for coexistence, he said.

But Ahmadinejad has more immediate pressing international concerns to address, with Israel -- widely considered to be the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power -- saying its options remain open on how to respond to Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Tehran also faces high-profile international talks on October 1 with the six world powers on its latest package of proposals over its nuclear programme.

"No power will ever dare to think of launching aggression against Iran. Today, Iran is experienced and powerful," Ahmadinejad said as he addressed the nation on the anniversary of the breakout of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980.

He made the remarks on Tuesday, shortly before leaving for New York and the UN General Assembly.

Judge's Ruling a Bad Omen for National Security Legislation? by IPT

A recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth, Horn v. Huddle, has revived a question of national security law and policy long thought to be settled – is control over access to classified information entrusted to the sole discretion of the Executive Branch, and if so, can the Judiciary review that determination?

The Executive branch plays a critical role in protecting the nation's security, and to that end, it enjoys broad discretion to control access to sensitive military and national security information. Under the Executive Order controlling access to classified materials, an individual must satisfy three prongs: (i) they must receive a security clearance; (ii) sign a nondisclosure agreement; and (iii) have a "need to know" the classified information. Each of these elements is handled by the agency in control of the classified material, and courts have historically been reticent to second-guess any determination made by the Executive branch. For example, challenges related to the denial of security clearances or the legality of nondisclosure agreements are routinely denied on the grounds that they are political questions entrusted to the sole discretion of the Executive. As the Supreme Court has explained in Department of the Navy v. Egan:

"The authority to classify and control access to such information is constitutionally vested in the President as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief, and this authority should not be intruded upon by the courts."

Huddle arose over allegations that an employee of the State Department illegally wiretapped an employee of the DEA. All parties to the case were involved in sensitive activities in Burma at the time of the alleged wiretapping, and as a result, the case was expected to implicate classified national security information. Although the plaintiff's attorneys were familiar with the classified material, defense counsel would have required access in order to effectively defend the lawsuit.

In order to prevent the disclosure of the classified material in question, the DOJ intervened and successfully asserted the state secrets privilege, at which point the government went on to claim that portions of the non-privileged materials were classified and therefore unavailable to defense counsel. Consequently, the court was forced to determine how, if at all, it could grant cleared defense counsel access to classified material over the government's objection.

In ruling against the government – and ignoring long standing precedent – Judge Lamberth held that counsel in the case indeed had a "need to know" the classified material in question, stating: "the deference generally granted to the Executive Branch in matters of classification and national security must yield when the Executive attempts to exert control over the courtroom."

The decision by the District Court will likely have a profound impact on future national security cases, as is already proving evident in ongoing litigation in Oregon involving the al Haramain Islamic Foundation. The plaintiff in that case, al Haramain, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT), was seeking injunctive relief on the grounds that classified information used to designate the organization was unconstitutionally gathered. Although the litigation has moved past the relevant discovery proceedings, during an earlier phase of the case, the plaintiff sought access to the classified material that was used in their designation. Refusing to disclose the information, the Government explained that although the plaintiffs' counsel had been granted security clearances, they did not have the requisite "need to know," and that determination was not subject to judicial review – the same argument made by the Government in Huddle. Although the court in al Haramain side-stepped the ultimate question, the case is demonstrative of the effect that Judge Lamberth's decision in Huddle could have on future litigation. Based on Huddle, future defendants in national security cases may be able to force disclosure of classified material over the government's objection. Hopefully the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will be cognizant of this looming inevitability and the institutional competencies of each branch of government when Huddle comes up for appellate review.

Read the full text of Horn v. Huddle here.

Al-Qaradawi Center for "Moderation" by IPT

In an amazing bit of irony, a Qatari government fund is creating the Al-Qaradawi Centre for Islamic Moderation and Renewal, named after leading Sunni scholar and self-proclaimed "Mufti of martyrdom operations" Yousef Al-Qaradawi. Its director claims that the center will direct its "moderation" towards "politicians and economists," train imams, and show the "huge difference between terrorism and jihad."

Yet all of these stated goals directly contradict Al-Qaradawi's statements in support of terrorism, his desire to overthrow capitalism, and his position as a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Director Hasan Khalifa is a professor of Comparative Religion at Cairo University and a great admirer of Al-Qaradawi. He stated that the organization "would direct its works at politicians and economists to help them promote moderation in their respective areas."

In the realm of politics, there are numerous examples of Al-Qaradawi's "moderation." He has openly permitted the killing of American troops in Iraq and praised the "heroic deeds" from "Hamas, Jihad, Al-Aqsa Brigades, and others." Reports by prominent London newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, repeated Israeli claims that Al-Qaradawi was funding "the heart of Hamas," the Al-Islam Charity, through his Welfare Coalition. He has also pledged to fight the United States if it attacked Iran, stating:

"When America threatened it [Iran], I said I am against America. Iran has the right to possess peaceful nuclear power, and if America fights it, we would stand up against it [America]."

To top it all off, Al-Qaradawi has proclaimed himself the "Mufti of martyrdom operations" and stated:

"I have been affiliated with a group considered by Zionists as their first enemy; it is the Muslim Brotherhood that has provided and still provides martyrs for the cause of Palestine."

Al-Qaradawi is known for advocating the overthrow of Western capitalism. While sitting together with Hamas leader Khalid Mishal in a public meeting of the Al-Quds International Institution, an organization in which the two of them are both board members, Al-Qaradawi stressed:

"We have our own economic philosophy and system which others do not have. The collapse of the capitalist system, which is based on usury and securities rather than commodities in markets, shows us that it is undergoing a crisis and that our integrated Islamic philosophy, if properly understood and applied, can replace Western capitalism."

The center claims that it will "also publish and translate books about moderation so as to reach out to Western readers." Perhaps they will also disseminate Al-Qaradawi's Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase, which advocates violent jihad and supports nearly all of the Mujahideen movements affiliated with Al-Qaeda. In this book, Al-Qaradawi has stated:

"The Islamic Movement should consider itself at the 'beck and call' of every Islamic Cause and respond to every cry for help wherever that cry may come from. It should stand with Eritrea in its jihad against the unjust Marxist Christian regime… It should stand by Sudan against the treacherous Christian racist rebellion… It should support the Muslims of Philippines against the biased Christian regime… It should also help the Muslims of Kashmir in their struggle… [against] Indian imperialism which … is trying to turn it into a base of conspiracy against Pakistan and the whole Muslim world as a whole... Hamas is an embodiment of the Palestinian people's belief in its Muslim and Arab origins, and a testimony that the people are still alive and will never die and that jihad will be carried on by pure hands and clean hearts until victory is achieved with the Will of Allah."

Another goal of the center is to train preachers and imams "because they have more close contact with the masses and can spread moderation to them." Al-Qaradawi's "moderation" includes his views on how to achieve victory over the Jews, in which he stated:

"When I was asked why we did not achieve victory over the Jews and why the Jews' state was established, I said because they entered the battle as Jews and we did not enter it as Muslims… In fact, we have stripped the battle of any religious meaning. Therefore, we will never achieve victory except by religion and faith. This is a religious nation. It has religious roots. If you advocate to it socialism, nationalism, democracy, or any such thing, it will not affect it. However, if you say there is no God but Allah and Allahu Akbar, raise the Koran in front of this nation, and say O winds of paradise blow and O Allah's Brigades set out, you will find the entire nation behind you… they [the Arabs] will never get anything except by resistance. Resistance is our support in front of our enemy. Our enemy will not give us anything free or do us a favor. Independence and freedom are not given or granted to people. They tree of freedom is watered by blood."

Al-Qaradawi "has always been calling for acceptance of others, 'whether they are Muslims or not,'" said Center director Hasan Khalifa. Al-Qaradawi expressed such views in the following quote, from Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase:

"It is not right, in my view, that Christianity should monopolize all these [Western] countries unrivalled, or rivaled by Zionist Judaism that only joins forces with it against us. This is what I told our brothers in America, Canada, Australia, and other countries many years ago."

Perhaps, the statement to which he was referring was his 1995 speech at the MAYA conference in Toledo, Ohio, where he stated:

"Conquest through Da'wa [proselytizing], that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through sword but through Da'wa."

With all of his radical statements and hate speech, it is unbelievable that the Qatari Emir and Queen would sponsor a foundation in the name of Al-Qaradawi. This is especially worrisome, as the center is a part of its Western-oriented Education City, an effort to reach out to non-Muslim students. If these are the voices of a moderate Islam, which "are trying to fight extremism," what is left for the extremists?

Hizb ut-Tahrir: Constitution Will Lose (Homegrown Terrorism) by IPT

The 2009 Hizb ut-Tahrir conference featured an illuminating exchange between a questioner from the audience and a conference speaker. Their identities were not immediately available.

Transcript:

Audience Member: "Would you get rid of the Constitution for Shariah, yes or no?"

Imam: "Over the Muslim world? Yes, it would be gone."
Audience Member: "And so if the United States was a Muslim world, the Constitution would be gone?"

Imam: "If the United States was in the Muslim world, the Muslims who are here would be calling and happy to see the Shariah applied, yes we would."

Audience Member: "And the Constitution gone. That's all. "

Imam: "Yes as Muslims they would be long gone."

Audience Member: 'You answered."

FCC Backs Net Neutrality — And Then Some by Ryan Singel

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski delivered Monday on President Obama’s promise to back “net neutrality.” But he went much further than merely seeking to expand rules that prohibit ISPs from filtering or blocking net traffic — he proposed that they cover all broadband connections, including data connections for smartphones.

Genachowski, Obama’s law school classmate, announced in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution his intent to codify and expand the four current broadband principles (.pdf) known as the Four Freedoms and extend them to all broadband connections. He said that an open internet is necessary for economic growth and democratic participation. The rules were originally applied only to wireline broadband services, and the FCC kept postponing any ruling on whether they also applied to wireless services.

“The Internet’s creators didn’t want the network architecture — or any single entity — to pick winners and losers,” Genachowski said, embracing what is known as the end-to-end principle. “The principles that will protect the open Internet are an essential step to maximize investment and innovation in the network and on the edge of it — by establishing rules of the road that incentivize competition, empower entrepreneurs, and grow the economic pie to the benefit of all.”

So-called “Net neutrality” is shorthand for the idea that the government should mandate that ISPs should largely act as dumb pipes that transmit data across the net without regards to what is in the data packets. Today’s announcement marks a huge win for advocates say the rules are necessary to keep ISPs from stifling innovation by erecting tollbooths and created tiered access plans.

But others argue that consumer pressure will keep the net open and the rules will stifle attempts at innovation, such as finding ways to prioritize video calls over less urgent traffic such as photo uploads. ISPs balk at the rules, since they have grown envious of the profits of companies like Yahoo and Google, who they see as free riders on their infrastructure.

The current rules, which never went through an official rule-making process and are being contested in court by Comcast, give broadband consumers the right use whatever services, applications and devices they like, so long as they don’t harm the network.

Genachowski proposes adding two more principles:

broadband providers cannot discriminate against services or applications by slowing them down
broadband providers must tell customers how its engineers manage the network when it gets congested

The first new rule seeks to prevent cable ISPs from slowing down online video services and 3G providers from messing with internet calling services like Skype.

Those rules are necessary because there is little competition in the broadband market, Genachowski added. ”The net result is that broadband providers’ rational bottom-line interests may diverge from the broad interests of consumers in competition and choice,” Genachowski said.

The second new rule is intended to prevent a repeat of Comcast’s blocking of peer-to-peer traffic, which was discovered by an engineer having trouble sharing public-domain barbershop-quartet songs on the net. Comcast denied for months that it was blocking the traffic, and only after a year of substantial pressure from the FCC did the company explain what it was doing.

All six principles will become part of an official rule-making process starting in November, Genachowski said. That will means a few rounds of public comment and much backroom negotiating among the FCC five commissioners, currently comprised of three Democrats and two Republicans.

But both longtime commissioner Michael Copps and the newly appointed Mignon Clyburn quickly issued statements supporting Genachowski, signaling that only the details are up for discussion.

The nation’s largest broadband providers and the wireless industry will surely strenuously objected to the proposal.

The former have argued that the rules aren’t necessary, since consumers will simply switch away from any service that doesn’t play fairly. They also say their engineers need to have the freedom to tinker with traffic in order to stop spam and viruses, as well as to keep the system running in times of peak traffic.

For its part, the wireless industry says that new rules will stifle innovation and that wireless networks are too complicated to allow consumers to use whatever compatible device they like, even though buying a smartphone and service separately is common outside the United States.

“Unlike the other platforms that would be subject to the rules, the wireless industry is extremely competitive, extremely innovative, and extremely personal,” said Chris Guttman-McCabe, a VP for the CTIA-The Wireless Industry, the industry’s lobbying group. “How do the rules apply to the single-purpose Amazon Kindle? How about the efforts from Apple and Android, Blackberry and Nokia, Firefly and others to differentiate the products and services they develop for consumers?”

Genachowski’s announcement marks a big win for consumer groups such as Public Knowledge which have mobilized millions of netizens over the last few years to fight for new rules and who have complained that the nation’s telecoms held sway over the FCC.

“FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski struck exactly the right balance this morning when he announced a plan to require a free and open internet,” said Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge, in a press release. “The chairman’s proposals for additional transparency in how companies manage their traffic, coupled with new rules prohibiting big telephone and cable companies from discriminating against some services in favor of others will go a long way to freeing investment not only in the network but also in new services and features.”

It’s clear public interest groups, not the incumbent telecoms, have a friend in the new chairman, who finished his speech Monday in a rousing call to action.

“We are here because [...] Internet pioneers had unique insights about the power of open networks to transform lives for the better, and they did something about it,” Genachowski said. “Our work now is to preserve the brilliance of what they contributed to our country and the world. It’s to make sure that, in the 21st century, the garage, the basement, and the dorm room remain places where innovators can not only dream but bring their dreams to life. And no one should be neutral about that.”

Indeed, neither the telecoms nor the interest groups will not be neutral or silent about that in the coming fight.