Kerry, Clinton and a glimmer of hope on Syria

Editor's note: David Rothkopf writes regularly for CNN.com. He is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- On Monday, President Barack Obama's two secretaries of state inadvertently collaborated to shape an interesting twist in the Syria debate. Whether it proves to be more than just a footnote remains to be seen. But the development has added a glimmer of hope to a story that for the past two weeks has been an unrelenting mess for the White House and of deep concern to the American people.

The first move came from the current secretary of state, John Kerry. In a statement that was initially seen as a slip of the tongue (probably because it was), Kerry raised the possibility that if Syria were to give up its chemical weapons, an attack might be avoided. Although the administration almost immediately backed away from the statement and the British foreign secretary characterized it as impossible, the idea quickly began to gain traction.

David Rothkopf

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem announced that his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had proposed that Syria's chemical weapons be put under some form of international control as a way of forestalling a U.S.-led attack. Moallem went further, welcoming the initiative.

It turned out Kerry had spoken to Lavrov. And while Washington's first response was natural skepticism given the misrepresentations of the Syrian government in the past, it became clear that if there was any chance such an initiative could spare the president the political debacle of a failed vote in the Congress -- and possibly spare the country the costs of another military intervention in the region -- some in the administration felt it was worth considering.

So, hours after a senior official had told CNN the Kerry statement was a "major goof," the press office in the White House was claiming credit suggesting that the "credible threat" of a U.S. plan had triggered the diplomatic opening.

Kerry: Syrian videos make case for strike

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Kerry: Riskier to not act against Syria

Rep. Sanchez: I'm not there yet on Syria

Clinton: Russia proposal 'important step'

Next up, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had already been teed up to offer a statement of support for her former boss/potential predecessor, made a brief statement that had to have been carefully cleared with the White House.

She called the idea that Syria might give up its chemical weapons an "important step" if the Russians and the Syrians actively followed up on it. This was yet another sign that the administration was hoping that the morning's seeming misstep yield an opportunity to step away from a congressional showdown or at least buy some breathing room.

Further, while Clinton did not address the specifics of Obama's proposed Syria intervention, she did say that she would support him.

Up until now, her silence on the issue was seen by some as an effort by the likely presidential candidate to distance herself from the Obama team's muddled handling of the proposed Syria intervention. But Monday's message not only showed her political loyalty to the president but it also emphasized the outsized influence of her views in America and around the globe.

In the wake of her remarks, there were reports that other nations, such as France, would welcome giving the Russian initiative a real chance. It is still clearly a long shot. It still falls into the category of a "show me" idea, which will only be treated seriously in terms of how quickly and concretely its parameters develop.

Nonetheless, even should it blow up, appearing to consider it allows Obama to be able to say he had exhausted all diplomatic options to resolve the problem. And for the more the hawkishly inclined, it would also be seen as reminder that military pressure is often key to producing peaceful, political outcomes.

Either way, for a moment, an idea that might ultimately seem to be in the interest of Obama (a "potentially positive development," he said), Russian President Vladimir Putin, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and, arguably, the Syrian Opposition (to the extent they no longer might face chemical weapons) gained surprising traction. This was thanks in part to the seeming misstep of America's current top diplomat, to his swift interaction with his Russian counterpart, and the added weight his predecessor's views brought to the matter.

It is a long-shot proposal started perhaps by accident, promoted by parties who have regularly lied, and cautiously embraced by a U.S. administration whose policies in Syria have been incoherent by any measure. Regardless of whether it amounts to anything or not, it speaks volumes about how bad our options are.

Jihadist terrorism in America since 9/11

The bombings in Boston on Monday, April 15, 2013, serve as a cruel reminder that the U.S. has seen other terror attacks on home soil.See all photography related to the Boston bombings.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and a director at the New America Foundation. David Sterman is a graduate student at Georgetown University's National Security Studies Program. This article is adapted from "Jihadist Terrorism: A Threat Assessment," a report for the Bipartisan Policy Center's Homeland Security Project written by Peter Bergen with Bruce Hoffman, Michael Hurley and Erroll Southers.

(CNN) -- We are about to mark the 12th anniversary of 9/11. Since then, al Qaeda and its affiliated groups haven't launched a successful attack in the United States.

The Boston Marathon bombings in April, however, serve as a reminder that the United States still faces a terrorism threat from disaffected U.S. citizens and residents who are influenced by al Qaeda's ideology.

So what is the status of this kind of threat?

Peter Bergen

The good news is that the number of "homegrown" jihadist extremists who have been indicted or convicted has steadily declined over the past few years, according to New America Foundation data. Where there were 41 cases in 2009, there have been six so far this year.

The number of individuals indicted for plotting actual attacks within the United States -- as opposed to other terrorism-related crimes such as raising money for a terrorist group -- also declined from 12 in 2011 to only three so far in 2013.

In recent years, extremists plotting attacks against the United States have also shown little, if any, connection to foreign groups. None of the 21 homegrown extremists involved in plots against the United States from 2011 to so far in 2013 is known to have received training abroad.

Of these extremists, only one, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the alleged Boston bombers, is reported to have had contact with foreign militant operatives, but it remains unclear to what extent, if any, those contacts played a role in the Boston attack.

This lack of coordination between domestic extremists and overseas groups is likely the result of two factors. First, the ability of terrorist organizations to coordinate with extremists in the United States has been reduced by policing efforts inside the country and counterterrorism operations abroad.

Is terrorism still a threat to U.S. families?

Second, Internet use among jihadist extremists enables them to come into contact with extremist communities abroad and be radicalized without face-to-face meetings.

Of the 45 "homegrown" jihadist extremists who were indicted, convicted or killed from 2011 to now, 18 are known to have communicated with other extremists over the Internet or posted materials related to their radicalization online.

The shift to plotting by individuals who lack ties to foreign groups poses a distinct type of threat -- plots and attacks that are more difficult to detect but are also likely to be of a smaller scale. And because of the measures now in place to prevent the acquisition of precursor chemicals and materials suitable for making conventional explosives, homegrown extremists have also often struggled to produce effective bombs.

Before the Boston Marathon bombings, homegrown jihadists in the United States had shown little success at producing explosives. Joseph Jeffrey Brice -- who has professed admiration for Osama bin laden and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh -- almost killed himself in April 2010 when a homemade bomb he was constructing exploded prematurely.

A month later, Faisal Shahzad's car bomb failed to explode in Times Square, even though he had received explosives training in Pakistan.

If the Tsarnaev brothers built the bombs used in the Boston attack without guidance from jihadists abroad, it suggests that the difficulties other "homegrown" militants have had building or detonating explosives may have been overcome. On the other hand, the Tsarnaevs' successful bombmaking could just as easily have been a fluke.

While the number of terrorism-related indictments fell between 2009 and 2013, the number of terrorist incidents has stayed about the same -- about one per year -- though not all of them have been lethal:

-- In June 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad killed a soldieroutside a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas.

-- Five months later, Major Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.

-- Shahzad's 2010 attempt to bomb Times Square was foiled when his bomb did not ignite properly.

-- Yonathan Melaku's drive-by shooting of military facilities in Northern Virginia in 2011 produced no casualties.

-- The Boston Marathon bombers killed four and wounded hundreds of others in April 2013.

The incidents carried out by homegrown extremists continue to be limited in their lethality, and major operations such as the 9/11 attacks are well beyond the skills of even the most capable domestic extremists.

Additionally, no homegrown jihadist militant in the United States is known to have acquired or used chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapons in the past twelve years. This point bears repeating, as there has been considerable overheated commentary on this subject over the past decade. Of the 221 individual cases of jihadist extremism since 9/11, not one case involved an allegation of CBRN acquisition, manufacture or use.

However, the fact that jihadist extremists in the United States have shown no interest in CBRN weapons does not eliminate the need for securing potential sources of chemical, biological and radiological agents.

According to a count by the New America Foundation, since 2001, 13 extremists motivated by right-wing ideologies, one left-wing militant and two individuals with idiosyncratic motives have deployed, acquired or tried to acquire chemical, biological or radiological weapons.

For example, William Krar and Judith Bruey, two anti-government extremists, possessed precursor chemicals for hydrogen cyanide gas, which they discussed deploying through a building's ventilation system. They were arrested in 2003 and later pleaded guilty.

The threat from homegrown extremists to the U.S. homeland has been constrained in recent years by a variety of security measures. According to data collected by the New America Foundation, family members of extremists and members of the wider Muslim American community provided useful information in the investigations of about a third of the homegrown jihadist extremists indicted or killed since 9/11.

Noncommunity members provided useful reports of suspicious activity in another 9% of homegrown extremist cases, while an informant or undercover agent monitored almost half of all homegrown extremists.

The Boston Marathon bombing, however, demonstrate the potential for these security measures to fail when plotters have few, if any connections, to known terrorist groups.

Looking forward, a concern about the Boston attack is whether it represents an intelligence failure that could have been avoided through a better implementation of existing policies or a new trend where "lone wolf" extremism is largely undetectable with the existing systemic checks in place.

The threat from homegrown extremists has changed substantially in the past three years, becoming the province of fewer individuals who are less connected to foreign groups than was once the case.

Whether this remains the case will depend on law enforcement being able to successfully adapt to confront the threat from disaffected U.S.-based individuals motivated by al Qaeda's ideology as well as whether the past few years' counterterrorism successes against al Qaeda overseas can be maintained.

Snapchat tries to shed naughty reputation

Snapchat tries to shed naughty reputation(CNN) -- Snapchat is trying to get away from its reputation as a service for randy sexting teens and secretive philanderers.

"It's not a good way to send inappropriate photos," said Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the San Francisco Techcrunch Disrupt conference on Monday.

Snapchat is a popular mobile messaging app for sending self-destructing messages. Private photo and text messages disappear forever after one to 10 seconds. More than 350 million of these messages, called "snaps," are traded every day on Snapchat, according to Spiegel.

The short lifespan of the messages is what has made the 2-year-old app a natural for content people don't want falling into the wrong hands, such as naughty photos.

Meet the kid-friendly version of Snapchat

Spiegel pointed out that it is possible for a recipient to take take screenshots of snaps, and said it was even possible for determined hackers with time and money to access the messages and "betray your trust."

Touting the potential security flaws of a product might seem like an odd move for a popular app, but for Snapchat to continue growing at a rapid pace it needs to appeal to a wider audience. Last year, Snapchat told AllThingsD that most of its users were from 13 to 23. The company needs to pull in more adults, starting with the founder's parents.

"I was just snapping my mom this morning," said Spiegel.

The company is also dabbling in the wearable computing world. On Monday, it announced a new app for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch called Snapchat Micro. With the app, users can upload photos taken with the watch's small camera, shaving a few seconds off the time it takes to share a moment.

Snapchat may be moving on to wrists, but it won't be coming to your face anytime soon.

Spiegel said the company had no plans to develop for Google Glass and dismissed the technology as invasive, saying, "You kind of feel like you have a gun pointed at you." Google's wearable computing system has already stirred up privacy concerns for its ability to surreptitiously capture photos, and the association could be just the kind of negative publicity Snapchat is trying so hard to avoid.

Spiegel didn't express the same concerns about a wearable wristwatch, but not because a tiny camera on a wrist is necessarily safer. He thinks Gear owners won't abuse the tool to take sneaky photos because he believes people are "generally not mean."

The other challenge for the company is actually making money off the service. Instead of taking the usual route and adding in display ads, Spiegel said the company was leaning toward in-app transactions. Investors seem confident that revenue details will be ironed out. In June, Snapchat received another $60 million in funding.

For now, the company is continuing to pitch itself as a wholesome app that's fun for the whole family.

"We don't want to be a place for people to share mean secrets," said Spiegel.

Blissfully wired: 10 rules for digital happiness

How Galaxy Gear stacks up to other smartwatches

Can you really be liable for texting a driver?

Snapchat tries to shed naughty reputation

Snapchat tries to shed naughty reputation(CNN) -- Snapchat is trying to get away from its reputation as a service for randy sexting teens and secretive philanderers.

"It's not a good way to send inappropriate photos," said Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel at the San Francisco Techcrunch Disrupt conference on Monday.

Snapchat is a popular mobile messaging app for sending self-destructing messages. Private photo and text messages disappear forever after one to 10 seconds. More than 350 million of these messages, called "snaps," are traded every day on Snapchat, according to Spiegel.

The short lifespan of the messages is what has made the 2-year-old app a natural for content people don't want falling into the wrong hands, such as naughty photos.

Meet the kid-friendly version of Snapchat

Spiegel pointed out that it is possible for a recipient to take take screenshots of snaps, and said it was even possible for determined hackers with time and money to access the messages and "betray your trust."

Touting the potential security flaws of a product might seem like an odd move for a popular app, but for Snapchat to continue growing at a rapid pace it needs to appeal to a wider audience. Last year, Snapchat told AllThingsD that most of its users were from 13 to 23. The company needs to pull in more adults, starting with the founder's parents.

"I was just snapping my mom this morning," said Spiegel.

The company is also dabbling in the wearable computing world. On Monday, it announced a new app for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch called Snapchat Micro. With the app, users can upload photos taken with the watch's small camera, shaving a few seconds off the time it takes to share a moment.

Snapchat may be moving on to wrists, but it won't be coming to your face anytime soon.

Spiegel said the company had no plans to develop for Google Glass and dismissed the technology as invasive, saying, "You kind of feel like you have a gun pointed at you." Google's wearable computing system has already stirred up privacy concerns for its ability to surreptitiously capture photos, and the association could be just the kind of negative publicity Snapchat is trying so hard to avoid.

Spiegel didn't express the same concerns about a wearable wristwatch, but not because a tiny camera on a wrist is necessarily safer. He thinks Gear owners won't abuse the tool to take sneaky photos because he believes people are "generally not mean."

The other challenge for the company is actually making money off the service. Instead of taking the usual route and adding in display ads, Spiegel said the company was leaning toward in-app transactions. Investors seem confident that revenue details will be ironed out. In June, Snapchat received another $60 million in funding.

For now, the company is continuing to pitch itself as a wholesome app that's fun for the whole family.

"We don't want to be a place for people to share mean secrets," said Spiegel.

Blissfully wired: 10 rules for digital happiness

How Galaxy Gear stacks up to other smartwatches

Can you really be liable for texting a driver?

New van Gogh painting discovered: 'Sunset at Montmajour'

New van Gogh painting discovered: 'Sunset at Montmajour'Van Gogh Museum director Axel Ruger, and senior researcher Louis van Tilborgh, right, unveil the newly discovered painting by Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh during a press conference at the museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday September 9, 2013.

(CNN) -- More than 120 years after Vincent van Gogh's death, a new painting by the Dutch master has come to light.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the largest collection of the artist's work, announced Monday the discovery of the newly identified painting, a landscape titled "Sunset at Montmajour."

"A discovery of this magnitude has never before occurred in the history of the Van Gogh Museum," the museum's director, Axel Ruger, said in a statement.

Van Gogh is believed to have completed the relatively large painting in 1888, two years before his death and during "a period that is considered by many to be the culmination of his artistic achievement," Ruger said.

The picture depicts a landscape in the vicinity of Arles in the south of France, where van Gogh was working at that time, the museum said.

Vincent Van Gogh's lost painting

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Museum discovers 'new' van Gogh painting

Ruger said the museum attributed the painting to van Gogh after "extensive research into style, technique, paint, canvas, the depiction, van Gogh's letters and the provenance."

Starting September 24, it will appear in "Van Gogh At Work," an exhibition currently on show at the museum in Amsterdam.

From the 'Sunflowers' period

Van Gogh (1853-1890) crafted some of the world's best known and most loved paintings, including "Sunflowers," "Irises" and "Starry Night," and a number of self-portraits.

He painted "Sunset at Montmajour" during the same period in which he produced "Sunflowers," Ruger said.

Van Gogh achieved little recognition as an artist during his lifetime, but his reputation blossomed in the years after his suicide at the age of 37, following years of mental illness.

His works now hang in leading museums and galleries around the world.

During the art market boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s, three of van Gogh's works succeeded each other as the most expensive paintings ever sold: "Sunflowers" for $39.9 million, "Irises" for $53.9 million and "Portrait of Dr. Gachet" for $82.5 million.

In its statement, the Van Gogh Museum didn't divulge the full story behind the discovery of "Sunset at Montmajour," saying it would be published in the October edition of The Burlington Magazine, a fine art publication, and at the museum.

Louis van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp, two senior researchers at the museum, said the painting had belonged to the collection of van Gogh's younger brother, Theo, in 1890 and was sold in 1901.

Saving van Gogh's home from dereliction

Obama asks Congress to delay Syria vote

The use of the United States military to strike the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — once thought imminent — could be cancelled after the White House asked on Tuesday for Congress to postpone any vote to authorize an attack.

Amid a potential deal being brokered by Russia that would require Assad to surrender his arsenal of chemical weapons, US President Barack Obama urged lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday to delay a vote authorizing an American assault on the Syrian government.

Obama spent over an hour meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, during which he reportedly told lawmakers to await the results of a potential compromise orchestrated between Russia and Syria.

“I think to give them an opportunity to put together a proposal that Russia has suggested is the right thing to do,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) told Bloomberg News after the sit-down with Mr. Obama. “He’s inclined to try to do that.”

The proposal, revealed earlier this week, would involve the surrendering of Assad’s arsenal and the signing of his country’s name to an international prohibition against chemical weapons. Syria has until now been absent from that agreement, and US officials are adamant that Assad’s regime launched an attack on civilians near Damascus last month that killed over 1,400 people.

On his part, Assad has denied any involvement in the attack but has reportedly agreed to cooperate with Russia’s plan.

After Russia asked Assad’s government to surrender their warheads on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said, “The Syrian Arab Republic welcomes Russia’s initiative, based on the Syrian’s government care about the lives of our people and security of our country.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry initially responded to murmurings of a compromise by saying the White House would continue to urge Congress to authorize a strike, but by Tuesday the president was signing a much different song.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the Senate Majority Whip, told CNN that Obama "asked for some time to work things out” during their meeting on Tuesday, and said the president wasn’t opposed to waiting until next week before deciding how to proceed with any action aimed at Syria.

"What he wants is to check out the seriousness of the Syrian and the Russian willingness to get rid of those chemical weapons in Syria. He wants time to check it out," Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) told reporters after meeting with the president.

As news of an agreement surfaced mid-day Tuesday, Sec. Kerry said he is awaiting more details from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about a potential deal regarding the Syrian arms.

"He is sending those to us. They'll be coming informally in the course of the day. We'll have an opportunity to review them," Kerry said in a Google+ hangout interview.

Lavrov told reporters that same day that Russia was working on a "workable, clear, specific plan" to present to the international community.

"We're waiting for that proposal, but we're not waiting for long," Kerry responded.

Pres. Obama is slated to address the Syrian crisis during a televised announcement later Tuesday evening.

Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo file motions to reveal NSA data requests

Facebook and Yahoo, have joined Google and Microsoft in addressing the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to legally allow them to make public the data requests received from the NSA as part of the infamous PRISM program.

Microsoft and Google filed motions to the FISA court in August, but the proceedings were delayed at the US government’s request to allow time to negotiate. Since then no common ground has been found between the state and the tech giants.

On Monday, Google updated its request, asking for the company to be “allowed to publish detailed statistics about the types (if any) of national security requests we receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including Section 702.”

“Given the important public policy issues at stake, we have also asked the court to hold its hearing in open rather than behind closed doors. It's time for more transparency," Google’s director of law enforcement and information security, Richard Salgado, and the director of public policy and government affairs, Pablo Chavez, wrote in a blog post.

The company’s stance is that “the levels of secrecy that have built up around national security requests undermine the basic freedoms that are at the heart of a democratic society."

Microsoft also amended its petition on September 9 as it earlier pledged to work with Google in their bid to release Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) request information.

Meanwhile, the battle for transparency was joined by Facebook and Yahoo!, who also decided to file their claims to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. 

The US government hasn’t done enough to “adequately address” the public concerns about “whether their information is safe and secure with internet companies,” says Facebook's vice president and general council, Colin Stretch. 

"We believe there’s more information that the public deserves to know, and that would help foster an informed debate about whether government security programs adequately balance privacy interests when attempting to keep the public safe," he said. 

In its petition, Facebook asked to publish the total number of orders it receives relating to physical searches, business records and wiretap orders, as well as the total number of users, who had their messages and other personal content released to the NSA.

Yahoo filed a petition similar to Google's as the company named specific FISA orders, on which it wanted to publish more details.

The company says it has been unable to engage fully in the debate about whether the government has“properly used its powers”, because it has imposed a restraint on Yahoo's freedom of speech.

"We believe that the US government's important responsibility to protect public safety can be carried out without precluding internet companies from sharing the number of national security requests they may receive," Ron Bell, general counsel for Yahoo, Is cited by the Guardian.

"Ultimately, withholding such information breeds mistrust and suspicion – both of the United States and of companies that must comply with government legal directives," he added.

Google and Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo have been allegedly been involved in giving the National Security Agency access to customer data under the program known as Prism. The Internet giants are now determined to correct “false claims” and reports about what they have provided to the government.

Yahoo spokeswoman Suzanne Philion explained in an e-mail to AP that "these actions stem from a common interest in ensuring that we can provide the most accurate information to the public about the national security requests we receive from the US government."

In the wake of the first NSA disclosures by the agency’s former contractor Edward Snowden, lawmakers in the US and abroad have debated whether or not the secretive surveillance programs, such as Prism, strike the proper balance between privacy and security. 

President Barack Obama and his administration has made numerous claims that those operations exist with significant oversight to prevent any abuses, including constitutional violations, but other documents released by Snowden in the wake of the first disclosures have shown that the NSA has accidentally collected personal correspondence of Americans at least thousands of times annually. 

According to their latest report, the federal government is spending millions to find a way to keep those companies collecting data that invades the privacy of those outside the US. 

According to the latest Snowden leak, released earlier this month, the NSA and its British counterpart have circumvented the encryption methods used to secure emails, chats and essentially most Internet traffic that was previously thought to be protected from prying eyes. 

The price tag for such an endeavour, the Guardian reported, is around a quarter-of-a-billion dollars each year for just the US, and involves not just intricate code-breaking, but maintaining partnerships with the tech companies that provide seemingly secure online communications. 

“The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that Internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments,” James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald reported.

The director of US national intelligence, James Clapper, has responded by saying the government would simply not be doing its job if it did not use legally dubious techniques to track down communications. 

“Throughout history, nations have used encryption to protect their secrets, and today, terrorists, cyber-criminals, human traffickers and others also use code to hide their activities,” read the statement issued on September 6.

National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters building in Fort Meade, Maryland (Reuters)

Rocket launcher murder plot by Russian mayor

Police have seized a portable surface-to-air missile system, which they say the mayor of the capital of Russia’s Republic of Dagestan, also known as ‘Bloody Roosevelt,’ planned to use to assassinate a high-ranking state official.

There’s “solid ground” to believe that Amirov and his two accomplices “were preparing an attempt on the life of a state official, in order to influence decision making by the authorities of the Republic of Dagestan,” the prosecutors said in a statement.

“As an instrument of crime, they were planning to use an illegally acquired portable surface-to-air missile system, Strela-2M, which was discovered today [on Tuesday] in the cache, which Abdulgalimov kept in one of the republic’s districts,” the statement added.

The identity of the official, whom the trio wanted dead hasn’t been revealed in the interests of the investigation.

On Tuesday, a search was conducted of Amirov’s premises, during which “items relevant to the investigation” were discovered and seized. 

Strela-2M is a man-portable, shoulder-fired, low-altitude surface-to-air missile system, with a high explosive warhead and passive infrared homing guidance. The rocket launcher, which went into series production in the 1970, is comparable to the earlier US Army FIM-43 Redeye system.

The son of Makhachkala’s mayor – local MP, Magomed Amirov – was present in the house during the search, but there are no reports of him being arrested. 

The operation was carried out early morning, with riot police blocking the approaches to the building ahead of the investigators’ arrival.

Armored vehicles were used to detain Said Amirov on June 1, with the official transferred to Moscow before the charges were made against him due to security concerns. 

Amirov is the principle suspect in another high profile assassination. The currently suspended head of Makhachkala’s administration is believed to be one of the republics top criminal lords.

He remains in custody in Moscow on accusations of ordering the killing of an Investigative Committee employee, Arsen Gadzhibekov, back in 2011. Gadzhibekov was leading an investigation into a string of contract murders in the republic. 

9K32 Strela-2.(Image from wikipedia.org)

Amirov has been the mayor of Makhachkala, since 1998. Since the early 1990s, the 59-year-old has survived over a dozen attempts on his life. In one incident a bullet severed his spine, putting him in a wheelchair.

Dagestan’s press has nicknamed Amirov ‘Bloody Roosevelt,’ linking him to a number of assassinations of local businessmen, who refused to share profits or give up lucrative companies to the mayor’s control, as well as stubborn officials and politicians, who opposed the local mafia clans. 

E-searches and seizures at US borders ‘more invasive’ than traditional searches – ACLU

E-searches and seizures at US borders ‘more invasive’ than traditional searches – ACLUTransportation Security Administration (TSA) agents screen passangers at Los Angeles International Airport.(AFP Photo / Kevork Djansezian)

Following the case of David Miranda, whose electronic devices were confiscated in August by British authorities at Heathrow Airport, a US watchdog reports that similar abuses of power are happening at US borders.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has released documents showing how US authorities, exceeding their powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism and other threats, are involved in a widespread, largely secretive program that empowers the government to search and seize American citizens’ electronic devices at the border.  

According to US government data, an estimated 4,957 travelers to the US had their electronic devices searched between October 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013, while an additional 4,898 people were subject to similar searches the previous year.

The ACLU report focused on the case of David House, who previously worked with the Bradley Manning Support Network. House was detained by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents at Chicago’s O'Hare International Airport in November 2010. 

House’s case is similar to that of Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, an investigative journalist with The Guardian who broke the story on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. British authorities justified Miranda’s detention for nine hours, and the confiscation of his electronic devices, under a controversial law – Schedule 7 of the UK Terrorism Act 2000. 

As was the case with House, Miranda was detained by the authorities and forced to endure a drawn-out criminal investigation.

Government agents interrogated House about his political activities and beliefs. He was also forced to surrender his laptop, camera and USB drive to officials for seven weeks. 

The ACLU report states: “[E]ven after the government returned House’s physical devices, it continued to actively investigate copies of his files for nearly six more months.”

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit on House’s behalf, arguing that the government took action against House solely because of his association with the Bradley Manning Support Network, “violating both his First Amendment right to freedom of association and his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.”

In March 2012, the judge in the case ruled that even though the US government does not require a warrant to search people’s electronic devices at the country’s borders, that power is not unlimited and First Amendment rights still apply. 

Eventually, the US government agreed to a settlement wherein it would destroy all of the personal data it had acquired from House’s electronic devices, and also turn over documents related to its investigation of House and the search of his personal effects.

The ACLU revealed how the Homeland Security Investigations (an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subdivision that is now the second-largest law enforcement agency in the United States) entered a so-called “lookout” into a government database called TECS (see the document here), thereby notifying US agents nationwide that House was wanted for questioning in connection with the Department of Justice’s investigation into Manning and WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website.

(US Army PFC Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley Manning, was sentenced by a US military court last month to 35 years in prison for releasing hundreds of thousands of military reports to Wikileaks.)  

As a result of the nationwide warning system, which was linked to the Advance Passenger Information System, HSI was able to receive an automated notification that House would be taking a trip outside of the United States and that he was scheduled to return through Chicago on November 3, 2010.

The ACLU report said the US government was abusing its power to protect US borders from terrorism in order to interrogate an individual over political issues. 

“House’s case provides a perfect example of how the government uses its border search authority to skirt the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment,” the civil rights watchdog stated. “The government enjoys wider latitude to search people and their belongings at the border than it possesses elsewhere, for the purpose of protecting our borders.”

The documents in possession of the ACLU also show that HSI was “acting in cooperation with – and perhaps at the request of – the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division, not to protect our borders but to further a domestic investigation of the WikiLeaks disclosures.”

House’s connection to the Manning case made him an unwitting target of the investigation, the report said. The US government then used its access to airline passenger information to determine when and where House and others would be entering the United States (see the document here), and “laid in wait to seize his computer and other electronic devices,” the report said.

The documents say the US government is able to use “sophisticated forensics software” to carry out intrusive searches of personal documents stored on today’s electronic devices.

The report described the US government’s process for searching electronic devices at the border as “not reassuring” because the details of how it organizes these searches largely remain a secret. 

The watchdog also said that electronic device searches “are substantially more invasive than traditional border searches, which is why this particularly intrusive form of government surveillance should not be conducted without reasonable suspicion.”

Although ICE’s policy states that electronic device searches should generally be completed within 30 days, it required up to seven months for the government to complete its search of House’s electronic information. In the course of the government’s investigation, the contents of House’s data were “shared with another government agency, the Army Criminal Investigation Division,” the ACLU reported.

The ACLU report concluded: “We have no way of knowing how many of those searches may have been carried out not to search for contraband – which is the reason ICE has been granted such broad search powers – but to exploit border search powers to evade the Constitution.”