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...]

Update: Anonymous denies it hacked Stratfor. Here is its press release.

Second Update: Stratfor has sent out this updated message. It may be too little too late. If they didn't encrypt the card data and left full credit card numbers and pins on their servers, it sure doesn't seem like they would be in compliance with PCI Data Security Standards. There will undoubtedly be lawsuits over this. Stratfor can hire the best security firm on the planet now, but its poor judgment is going to cost it subscribers and business and its reputation is going to take a serious hit.

Third Update: There's bickering going on. Sabu responds to a tweeter who says no one else in Anonymous besides #AnonymousIRC and #Anonymous Sabu knew about the hack:

We did the hack under #antisec which is an operation within anonymous. Unsure who made you a leader, but we are decentralized

[More...]

Christmas Eve has arrived. This year at the TL house, we're celebrating with dinner and movies. "Love Actually" is my favorite for this time of year, even though I've probably seen it 10 times.

Whether you're cooking, watching movies, relaxing or celebrating with friends and family, we wish you a Very Happy Holiday Eve.

Darlene Love on Letterman is a Christmas Tradition. I really like this 2005 version.

If you're tracking Santa, he just arrived in Uzbekistan.

What's getting you in the mood for Christmas?

The tradition of making Christmas as pleasant as possible for the inmates at the Pitkin County jail continues. Deputy Sheriff and jail administrator Don Bird says the inmates will not only get their special Christmas day meals, but also wake up to little presents outside their cell door.

[P]roviding good food and a couple of small gifts for those who are incarcerated goes a long way toward helping morale at what can be an exceptionally hard time of the year.

“Nobody’s getting anything pricey,” Bird said. “It’s just something that somebody can get on Christmas so [when] they get up in the morning, there’s something outside their door.”

[More...]