Mediaboss Marketing

Defense

As the status of the dual-hat leadership structure of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command remains under review, the Government Accountability Office teamed up with Pentagon officials to identify the advantages and disadvantages of such a change in a new report.

The benefits of the current arrangement, as identified by officials from the Department of Defense, involve collaboration, faster decision making and resource efficiency.

But the big downside is that wider access to NSA's toolkit of exploits increases the risk that destructive bugs will get loose as has been seen recently.

GAO was directed to conduct the review in the report language of a recent defense bill.

Auditors found that because one officer calls the shots for two organizations, senior leaders from each organization have visibility into the procedures of the other, allowing for natural coordination on capability development, testing and business processes.

"In the absence of the dual-hat, [NSA] and CyberCom would need to formalize these internal processes in order to maintain them," auditors write.

Another advantage is that the single leader for both organizations allows for faster decision-making because it doesn't require building consensus across commands.

Officials from several DOD components, including NSA and CyberCom, told GAO that the structure allows the two organizations to make efficient use of their resources by sharing digital and physical infrastructure and by combining employee training sessions.

DOD officials also detailed the disadvantages of the dual-hat approach.

Officials reported concerns about preferential prioritization of one organization's requests for support over the other's, concerns that may only be exacerbated as CyberCom is set to receive the authorities of a unified combatant command.

And, as previously noted, CyberCom's use of NSA's tools and infrastructure increases the risk those tools being leaked or exposed.

Because of the wide range of responsibilities of the two organizations, and as CyberCom is elevated to become a full combatant command, DOD officials expressed concerns that the duties may be too broad for a single officer to realistically handle.

Although they both operate in cyberspace, the missions of CyberCom and NSA also have an inherent tension. CyberCom focuses primarily on conducting military operations, while NSA's mission is primarily intelligence-based.

DOD officials also told auditors that while the sharing of resources is efficient, the resource allocation between the two entities is sometimes unclear. They stated that DOD does not have an official position on the advantages and disadvantages of the dual-hat structure.

The report also includes actions that could limit potential risks of splitting the leadership.

While there is broad support from current and former officials, including former President Barack Obama, for elevating Cyber Command to the level of an independent combatant command, the idea of splitting the agencies has received some pushback.

Legislatively, 2017 National Defense Authorization Act stated that the dual-hat role, which dates back to CyberCom's creation in 2009, will remain in place until an assessment is conducted about the potential security risks of splitting the current structure.

The 2018 bill submitted by the House Armed Services Committee includes a $647 million boost to support the elevation of U.S. Cyber Command to a full combatant command level, but omits new language about an eventual split of the NSA and CyberCom.

About the Author

Chase Gunter is a staff writer covering civilian agencies, workforce issues, health IT, open data and innovation.

Prior to joining FCW, Gunter reported for the C-Ville Weekly in Charlottesville, Va., and served as a college sports beat writer for the South Boston (Va.) News and Record. He started at FCW as an editorial fellow before joining the team full-time as a reporter.

Gunter is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where his emphases were English, history and media studies.

Click here for previous articles by Gunter, or connect with him on Twitter: @WChaseGunter

Original post:
Should NSA and CyberCom split? A watchdog weighs in - FCW.com

When my family first got a modem for our 486 it took us a while to figure out that, with this modem, it was possible to acquire software for free. But once we made this discovery, we went at it hard: setting up downloads that could sometimes take weeks in order to get our hands on [redacted]. The fact that, most of the time, these downloads wouldn't work, or they'd be riddled with viruses, was almost part of the fun.

Anyway, this free itch.io game b00tl3g kr3w is a harkening back to that era. You play as a pirate and must collaborate with other pirates in order to upload cracked games including riffs on Mario and Sonic. It's not a long game, but it's a nice little period piece and it's created by the guy behind Shower With Your Dad Simulator. So you know it's going to be good. It's very funny.

The game was made as part of the Awful Summer Jam 2017, which had the theme "bootleg". Check the game out over here. Cheers, Rock Paper Shotgun.

Excerpt from:
b00tl3g kr3w is a free game about pirating software in the '90s - PC Gamer

More than 1,000 pupils have taken part in a six-week pilot of what is claimed to be the UKs first creative codingsoftware platform aligned to the national computing curriculum.

The free learning-to-code platform, which was developed by Turinglab, an education technology organisation, uses a mix of gamification and creative project-based software tools.

It is aimed at key stage 3 and key stage 4 pupils, and had supportive funding from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Using theplatform, pupils learn and practise a set of core coding skills, which they then employ to create a project of their own, typically a game or application, to reinforce their learning by applying it directly to a problem.

Its creators said it had been designed with the teacher in mind, and was to be used in conjunction with traditional teaching methods.

It aims to help to improve digital teaching standards and open up future technology career and apprenticeship opportunities.

The pilot, carried out over the summer,involved 30 schools, and the platform will be made available to schools across the UK after feedback from the pilot has been considered.

Cris Baptiste, ICT and computing teacher at Saint Gabriels College in Camberwell, South London, said:In the short time my students have taken part in the Turinglab pilot, general interest in computer science has grown, with several asking for the pilot to continue after the summer holiday.

The platform has a lot to offer from colourful drawings and interactive animations to programming exercises and online quizzes bringing computer science theory to life.

The great news for me has been an increase in the number of girls now showing interest, andthe programming languages used by Turinglab, being Python and JavaScript, fit in perfectly with the next phase of studies at GCSE level.

Turinglab worked on the project in partnership with Ada, National College for Digital Skills in Tottenham Hale, North London. They were supported by IT consultancy BJSS.

Want to keep up with the latest education news and opinion? FollowTes on Twitterand likeTes on Facebook

Read the original:
Schools to get free creative coding software | Tes - TES News

Washington, D.C. residents, you dont have to holster your Second Amendment rights anymore. Unfortunately, residents of many other states like California dont have the same ability that D.C. residents now do to protect themselves.

In a stirring victory for those who live in the nationals capital, a panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently threw out a D.C. ordinance that denied concealed-carry permits to anyone who could not show a special need for self-defense, what is referred to as a good reason requirement. The problem is that other courts of appeal have upheld such restrictive laws and the U.S. Supreme Court has turned down appeals of those decisions, refusing to take up the issue of the Second Amendments application to carrying a weapon outside of the home.

This happened most recently at the very end of the Supreme Courts 2017 term in June when it refused to take up Peruta v. California, an appeal of a decision of the Ninth Circuit upholding Californias good reason requirement.

In a scathing dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas (joined by Neil Gorsuch) castigated the other justices for treating the Second Amendment as a disfavored right. He said it was long-past time for the Court to decide this issue and that he found it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen.

In the opinion over the District of Columbias concealed carry law written by Judge Thomas Griffith of the D.C. Circuit, Griffith pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Courts first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment occurred in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller, where the Court threw out D.C.s complete ban on handguns as unconstitutional.

That decision is younger than the first iPhone. The Supreme Court did not outline how the Second Amendment applies to the carrying of a weapon in public, but as Griffith says, Heller reveals the Second Amendment erects some absolute barriers than no gun law may breach.

After Heller, D.C. implemented a complete ban on concealed carry. That was struck down in 2014 in Palmer v. District of Columbia. D.C. responded by restricting concealed-carry permits only to those who could show a good reason to fear injury. That required showing a special need for self-protection distinguishable from the general community as supported by evidence of specific threats or previous attacks.

Living in a high-crime neighborhood wasnt a good enough reason for a concealed-carry permit under D.C.s regulation. In essence, you had to prove you had a good reason to exercise your constitutional right, a bizarre situation unique in American constitutional jurisprudence.

D.C. argued, absurdly enough, that its ordinance did not violate any constitutional right because the Second Amendment doesnt apply outside of the home.

Judge Griffith dismissed this claim, saying that the fact that the need for self-defense is most pressing in the home doesnt mean that self-defense at home is the only right at the [Second] Amendments core.

Obviously, the need for self-defense might arise beyond as well as within the home. Further, the Second Amendments text protects the right to bear as well as keep arms. Thus, it is natural that the core of the Second Amendment includes a law-abiding citizens right to carry common firearms for self-defense beyond the home.

Even under Heller, governments can apply regulations on the possession and carrying of firearms that are longstanding, such as bans on possession by felons or bans on carrying near sensitive sites such as government buildings. But preventing carrying in public is not a longstanding tradition or rule.

This opinion goes into detail discussing the long American and English history applicable to weapons and self-defense, going back as far as the Statute of Northampton of 1328 -- whose text, as the court says, will remind Anglophiles of studying Canterbury Tales in the original. But the state of the law in Chaucers England or for that matter Shakespeares or Cromwells is not decisive here.

What is decisive is that the Supreme Court established in Heller that by the time of the Founding, the preexisting right enshrined by the Amendment had ripened to include carrying more broadly than the District contends based on its reading of the 14th-century statute. According to Griffith, the individual right to carry common firearms beyond the home for self-defense even in densely populated areas, even for those lacking special self-defense needs falls within the core of the Second Amendments protections.

Unfortunately, other federal courts of appeals have upheld similar good reason laws for concealed carry permits. But as Judge Griffith points out, those courts dispensed with the historic digging that would have exposed that their toleration of regulations restricting the carrying of a weapon is faulty.

The constitutional analysis that should be applied to all government gun regulations is that they must allow gun access at least for each typical member of the American public. Because D.C.s restrictive good reason concealed-carry law bars most people from exercising their Second Amendment right at all, it is unconstitutional. At a minimum, the Second Amendment must protect carrying given the risks and needs typical of law-abiding citizens.

The court drew together all the pieces of its analysis in this way:

At the Second Amendments core lies the right of responsible citizens to carry firearms for personal self-defense beyond the home, subject to longstanding restrictions. These traditional limits include, for instance, licensing requirements, but not bans on carrying in urban areas like D.C. or bans on carrying absent a special need for self-defense. In fact, the Amendments core at a minimum shields the typically situated citizens ability to carry common arms generally. The Districts good-reason law is necessarily a total ban on exercises of that constitutional right for most D.C. residents. Thats enough to sink this law under Heller I.

One of the judges on the D.C. panel, Karen LeCraft Henderson, dissented, arguing that the core right in the Second Amendment is only to possess a firearm in ones home and she saw no problem with D.C.s good-reason requirement.

That dissent, along with the contrary decisions of other appeals courts, shows why the Supreme Court needs to follow Justice Thomass admonition and finally settle this issue. As Thomas scolds in his dissent in Peruta:

For those of us who work in marble halls, guarded constantly by a vigilant and dedicated police force, the guarantees of the Second Amendment might seem antiquated and superfluous. But the Framers made a clear choice: They reserved to all Americans the right to bear arms for self-defense. I do not think we should stand by idly while a State denies its citizens that right, particularly when their very lives may depend on it.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former Justice Department official. He is coauthor of Whos Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.

Read more:
The Second Amendment has won (again) in Washington. So why ... - Fox News

If youve heard of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, mixed-martial arts or the UFC, the reason is Royce Gracie. In the early 1990s, his dominance of the octagon brought his familys style of jiu-jitsu into the American mainstream, and the martial art has become immensely popular around the world ever since. In addition to his hand-to-hand combat skills, Gracie is also a fan of firearms and the Second Amendment. Shooting Illustrated Editor-in-Chief Ed Friedman sat down with Gracie to discuss his career, his love of freedom and his interest in guns.

SI: How did you get interested in firearms?

Royce Gracie: Growing up in Brazil, my dad had a few guns on our farm. Its part of martial arts. Sure, they say its empty hands, but so many styles use weapons, so its part of the martial arts culture. When I came to America and saw the freedom that we have, I was blown away. Back in the early days, we had a friend who would take us to the range, and wed shoot 100 rounds through a .45 ACP 1911. Our goal was to make the bullseye disappear, and I got the shooting bug. Shooting is an art. You need to know what youre doing, how to be safe, to recognize the skill needed to control that power. Its a lot like martial arts in that way.

SI: What makes someone who is so skilled in unarmed self-defense feel the need to own firearms?

Royce Gracie: What if theres more than one person? What if the adversary is armed? If its just one guy whos not armed, yeah, I can take care of him. But what if he pulls a gun? What if theres more than one attacker and they have knives? What happens if theres a terrorist attack? Ive got a mentality that Im going to try to stop an attack no matter what, but if hes got a gun, thats suicidal if Im not armed. Also, if a criminal is attacking other people, its not always feasible for even someone with my skills to stop that attack without a firearm.

Attackers arent going to make it a fair fight. They launch surprise assaults; they try to take you out to get to your family or your property. Its not the octagon. Theres no referee. And if he pulls a weapon, hes not just trying to fight mehes trying to kill me. At that point, youd be crazy to try to go hand to hand. I have a gun to defend myself if the situation escalates like that.

SI: Tell me a little about the situation in Brazil as it pertains to gun ownership and crime.

Royce Gracie: Brazil never had the degree of freedom we have in the U.S., but you used to be able to buy some guns. There were restrictions, but there were shops we could go to. Then, they essentially banned civilian ownership guns in what they said was an effort to fight crime. That resulted in the criminals arming themselves to the teeth. I mean, they had RPGs and machine guns. They get it from corrupt officials. Violence got out of control after that. It was like the law switched to protect the bad guys. So at the same time they disarmed the law-abiding citizens, they made life easier on the criminals. The murder rate went through the roof. Its so bad, the prisoners in jails get better food than the police!

SI: Why do people sign up for your classes? What is it about Brazilian jiu-jitsu that is so popular?

Royce Gracie: The main reason people go to any martial arts school is to gain confidence by learning skills. They may have had something happen to them or seen a situation that they didnt know how to react to. That stays with themthey dont go right away to learn about self-defense, but that thought stays filed away. Then one day a friend will say Hey, Im learning this martial art; lets go check it out. Then they go to class and start to get the hang of it. Its a lot of the same reasons why people buy a gun for the first time. People realize theyre vulnerable, but it often takes a while. Its not like they see a fight and say, I need to learn a martial art, but a while later that thought comes to the front and they sign up for a class. Its really all about the skills you need to be confident. Parents sign their kids up for the same reason; for the confidence that can come with the discipline that martial arts provide.

SI: What can people expect to learn in a Royce Gracie-taught class?

Royce Gracie: I teach them self-defense. I dont teach competition. Martial arts were made to defend yourself. A lot of schools teach you how to score points, but thats not real life. Competition can ruin a martial art. I teach how to defend yourself in a street-fight situation. Why do you buy a gun? Sure, there are a small number of people who want to be the best competitive shooter in the world, but for most of us, its for self-defense. And maybe that leads to competition, which is fine, but thats not why you signed up for a martial arts class or why you bought that first gun.

SI: What drew you to the NRA? How important is the Second Amendment to you?

Royce Gracie: TheNational Rifle Associationis the front line of keeping my right to keep and bear arms. Thats the way I look at it. I really respect the NRA, because I know from experience, from what happened to Brazil, how important the Second Amendment is. It is my right to defend myself, and the NRA makes sure that right will be there. Look what happened when they took those rights away in Brazil, in Venezuelait is vital to keep that right.

Want to take a class with Royce Gracie? VisitNRACarryGuardExpo.comtoday to sign up for the (limited-space) Brazilian jiu-jitsu class he will teach at the inaugural Carry Guard Expo in Milwaukee, WI, Aug. 25 to 27. Gracie will teach paying attendees several moves that could come in handy should you find yourself in a close-quarters criminal attack. He will also be signing autographs at the show. In addition, there will be seminars from world-class instructors like Steve Tarani, Travis Doc T and many others, so you wont want to miss the best event for those interested in self-defense.

Go here to see the original:
MMA Legend Royce Gracie On The Second Amendment - The Daily Caller