At the Washington Post: A long report on the Obama Administration's "global drone killing apparatus."

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

....The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

It's also a billion dollar industry that has "created blind spots in congressional oversight."

TSA searches have been expanding in recent months, thanks to its 25 Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response Teams which conduct random checks without suspicion. First authorized in 2005, they are now increasingly being used at train stations. The checks are being noticed at LA's Union Station. An additional 12 teams are planned for 2012. Since last summer, the VIPR teams have conducted 9,300 suspicionless searches.

What's a Visible Intermodal Prevention & Response Team? According to TSA:

AntiSec members of Anonymous have struck again, this time hitting the credit card database of a law enforcement and military supply store, Special Forces.com. They say they obtained 14,000 email passwords and 8,000 credit card records fron the site months ago. From #AntiSec's press release on Pastebin, which I'm not linking to because it contains some data (although the release is readily available on Twitter, just search #AntiSec or #lulzxmas or #Anonymous.)

[T]he online piggie supply store SpecialForces.com. Their customer base is comprised primarily of military and law enforcement affiliated individuals, who have for too long enjoyed purchasing tactical combat equipment from their slick and “professional” looking website. What’s that, officer? You get a kick out of pepper-spraying peaceful protesters in public parks? You like to recreationally taser kids? You have a fetish for putting people in plastic zip ties?

[More...]

Meet William "Billy" Burton. He's a Thalidomide baby born with short arms and twisted hands. In 1992, at age 29, he was traveling abroad and ran into financial difficulties. He attempted to smuggle 12 pounds of marijuana from the Philippines to Australia.

Interrogated without counsel and under duress, Billy was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. When sentenced, he was eligible for release in 8 years. But the Philippines later changed its laws on parole and retroactivity and his minimum time to serve on a life sentence became first 30 years, then 40 years. He wouldn't get released until 2032.

Now 48, and having served the past 19 years at the maximum security New Bilibid Prison, south of Manila, this week Billy was granted a conditional pardon due to his deteriorating health by Philippines President Benigno Aquino III . He's been released to go home to Britain.

Here are some happy photos of him being released from prison.

His release is the culmination of a 20 month effort by organizations in Britain, including Fair Trials International and supporters of the UK Thalidomide Trust. Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne says he also was supportive.

The U.S. has added another surveillance drone to the Southwest border to aid in the war on drugs. It's in Sierra Vista, AZ.

The Predator-B drone is based at the National Air Security Operations Center in Sierra Vista, a few miles north of the Mexico border in southeast Arizona, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency said.

The addition brings CBP's fleet of surveillance drones along the nearly 2,000-mile southwest border with Mexico to six. Four are based at the Arizona center, and two more overfly the border from Corpus Christi, Texas.

The addition was authorized in the supplemental budget provisions of August 2010. CBP's press release is here. CBP's list of top seizures for 2011 is here.

Guantanamo Commander, Navy rear Adm. David Woods, has sent a 27 page memo to defense lawyers representing clients charged in military commission proceedings which includes a provision that attorney-client mail will be submitted to a security review.

The memo asked the lawyers to sign and approve the the memo within 48 hours. Instead, the lawyers filed an objection.

The defense objection, filed December 19, is listed on the Guantanamo docket "Defense Motion to Bar JTF-GTMO from Interfering with the Defendant's Right to Receive Confidential Legal Mail and Access to the Courts". The site says it is undergoing a security review. If deemed publically releasable, it will be made available to the public 15 business days after the document was filed with the court.

The next hearing in al-Nashiri's case is Jan. 12. On Dec. 21, Gitmo sent out this invitation to the press to attend.

You may remember Barrett Brown from the recent dust-up over the plan by some members of Anonymous to out those believed providing assistance to the Mexican drug cartels. The plan was off-again, on again, with Barrett being the major spokesman.

He's back, now weighing in on the Stratfor hacking of its subscriber and e-mail databases. He says the purpose of the attack was not to obtain the credit card info, but the email database. [More...]

The madness continues in Indonesia. Schapelle Corby, an Australian serving 20 years for having 4 kilos of pot in her boogie board (which she denied knowing was there) skipped Christmas mass at Kerobokan prison because there were so many reporters. She had been recommended for a reduction of 1.5 months. Now she may not get it. The prison warden says:

This will be a special point against her [getting future sentence cuts] and I will report it to the Australian Consulate,” he said. “She has failed to meet all the requirements for a remission.” He also said he would report her to the Justice and Human Rights Ministry, which oversees the Directorate General of Corrections.

“She is a naughty child and unappreciative of Kerobokan Penitentiary,” he said. (my emphasis.)

[More....]

Sad news from the Agitator: Pain Relief spokesperson Siobhan Reynolds, who for years fought the feds, and proseuctor Tanya Treadway, advocating for the rights of pain patients and doctors who prescribe to them, died in a plane crash this weekend. She was 50.

See this Slate article by Radley Balko on the vindictive grand jury investigation against her.

One of the people she helped: Richard Paey, a 45-year-old father of three in a wheelchair, suffering from multiple sclerosis and chronic pain from botched back surgery, sentenced to 25-years for forging prescriptions to treat his pain. Reynolds helped get the sentence reversed. An interview with Paey is here.

One more to read: Cato's 2005 Treating Doctors as Drug Dealers:The DEA’s War on Prescription Painkillers.

Advocates against the war on drugs have lost an important ally. RIP, Sibohan Reynolds.

Christmas is over, the news is slow, I'm starting on my "end of year" tasks. What are you hoping to wrap up or change by New Year's?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

The Mexican Army announced tonight it has captured the chief security guard for Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

The army will name and "present" him to the media tomorrow. He was captured in Culiacan.

The army said the man they had arrested also ran cartel activities in Durango and southern Chihuahua state, and was responsible for carrying out secret burials of cartel victims, kidnapping, extortion and arson. They did not say if the arrest moved the military closer to capturing Guzman, an arrest that would be seen as a major victory for the government of President Felipe Calderon.

Update: The person captured is Felipe Cabrera Sarabia. It was not, as I thought, Manuel Alejandro Aponte Gomez, aka "el Bravo." (The Mexico Attorney General's office (PGR) put out a $2 million reward for Aponte Gomez 3 months ago, referring to him as "an ex-captain of the Mexican army who defected to become the head of security "El Chapo" Guzman." (Reward notice here, Google Translation here.)

Stratfor has sent out this updated message on the hacking of its subscriber data base, which included customer credit card information.

At least one person's data I saw on Pastebin had the full credit card number and 3 digit "CVV" code (I'm not linking to it.) If Stratfor didn't encrypt the card data and left the full credit card numbers and pins on its servers, I wonder whether it failed to be in full compliance with PCI Data Security Standards. See page 14: [More...]