WikiLeaks aid on CIA software holes could be mixed blessing
NEW YORK (AP) — WikiLeaks has offered to help the likes of Google and Apple identify the software holes used by purported CIA hacking tools — and that puts the tech industry in a bind.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday that the anti-secrecy site will work with technology companies to help defend them against software vulnerabilities in everyday gadgets such as phones and TVs. During an online news conference, Assange said some companies asked for more details about the purported CIA cyberespionage toolkit that he revealed in a massive disclosure Tuesday.
“We have decided to work with them, to give them some exclusive access to the additional technical details we have, so that fixes can be developed and pushed out,” Assange said.
The digital blueprints for what he described as “cyberweapons” would be published to the world “once this material is effectively disarmed by us.”
While companies have a responsibility — not to mention financial incentive — to fix problems in their software, accepting help from WikiLeaks raises legal and ethical questions. And it’s not even clear at this point exactly what kind of information WikiLeaks has to offer.
Death toll rises to 34 in fire at youth shelter in Guatemala
SAN JOSE PINULA, Guatemala (AP) — A blaze that killed at least 34 girls at a shelter for troubled youths erupted when some of them set fire to mattresses to protest rapes and other mistreatment at the badly overcrowded institution, the parent of one victim said Thursday.
Officials said they are still investigating who started the fire Wednesday at the long-criticized shelter on the outskirts of Guatemala’s capital. It houses troubled and abused boys and girls as well as juvenile offenders.
Nineteen victims were found dead at the scene, and 15 more succumbed one by one to their grisly injuries at hospitals in Guatemala City. Several more girls were fighting for their lives, some with severe burns over more than half their bodies.
The fire started when someone ignited mattresses in a dormitory that held girls who had been caught the day before during a mass breakout attempt, authorities said.
On Thursday, distraught parents haunted hospitals and the morgue, passing scraps of paper scrawled with the names of loved ones they hoped to find.
White House: Trump unaware of Flynn’s foreign agent work
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was not aware that his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had worked to further the interests of the government of Turkey before appointing him, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday.
Spicer’s comments came two days after Flynn and his firm, Flynn Intel Group Inc., filed paperwork with the Justice Department formally identifying him as a foreign agent and acknowledging that his work for a company owned by a Turkish businessman could have aided Turkey’s government.
Asked whether Trump knew about Flynn’s work before he appointed him as national security adviser, Spicer said, “I don’t believe that that was known.”
Flynn and his company filed the registration paperwork describing $530,000 worth of lobbying before Election Day on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch-based company owned by Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin. In an interview with The Associated Press, Alptekin said Flynn did so after pressure from Justice Department officials.
The filing this week was the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s first acknowledgement that his consulting business furthered the interests of a foreign government while he was working as a top adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign.
US commander signals larger, longer US presence in Syria
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. commander in the Middle East signaled Thursday that there will be a larger and longer American military presence in Syria to accelerate the fight against the Islamic State group and quell friction within the complicated mix of warring factions there.
Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, told senators Thursday that he will need more conventional U.S. forces to insure stability once the fight to defeat Islamic State militants in their self-declared capital of Raqqa is over. The U.S. military, he said, can’t just leave once the fight is over because the Syrians will need help keeping IS out and ensuring the peaceful transition to local control.
Votel’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee comes as a couple hundred Marines moved into Syria in recent days to bring in large artillery guns for the Raqqa fight, and another couple hundred Army Rangers went into northern Syria to tamp down skirmishes between Turkish and Syrian forces near the border.
“I think as we move towards the latter part of these operations into more of the stability and other aspects of the operations, we will see more conventional forces requirements,” Votel said. Until recently, the U.S. military presence in Syria was made up of special operations forces advising and assisting the U.S.-backed Syrian troops.
It will be critical, Votel said, to get humanitarian aid, basic working services and good local leaders in place in Raqqa so that businesses can return and the city can move on.
Media the enemy? Trump is sure an insatiable consumer
NEW YORK (AP) — Before most people are out of bed, Donald Trump is watching cable news.
Indeed, with Twitter app at the ready, the man who condemns the media as “the enemy of the people” might be the most voracious consumer of news in modern presidential history.
Trump usually rises before 6 a.m. and first watches TV in the residence before later moving to a small dining room in the West Wing. A short time later, he’s given a stack of newspapers — including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and, long his favorite, The New York Post — as well as pile of printed articles from other sources including conservative online outlets like Breitbart News.
The TVs stay on all day. The president often checks in at lunch and again in the evening, when he retires to the residence, cellphone in hand.
It is a central paradox of the Trump presidency. Trump is a faithful newspaper reader who enjoys jousting with reporters, an avid cable TV news viewer who frequently live-tweets what he’s watching, and a reader of websites that have been illuminated by his presidential spotlight, showcasing the at-times conspiratorial corners of the internet.
