Archive for the ‘NSA’ Category

PMB, NSA and the war against terriorism, small arms, light weapons – Blueprint Newspapers Limited

Over the years, human security has been threatened, primarily by the small arms and light weapons, on a large scale, as they are distinctly inexpensive and are easy to construct, maintain and operate and conceal. States are sole legitimate source of weapon manufacturing and of their use against the anti-social and anti-national rudiments.

Sadly, these states have failed to maintain and sustain their monopoly over the manufacturing and use of such weapons. As a result, many illicit sources are producing the weapons domestically and are misusing them against mankind.

Today, these are the weapons of choice for insurgent groups who are indulged in violent struggle with the states and other groups or for the terrorists, criminals and underworld mafias. The misuse of such weapons results in the thousands of human causalities, disruptiilon of human development and creation of refugees crisis.

All these have led to human rights abuses, fuelling deadly conflicts, troubling humanitarian assistance and peace-keeping programmes. It therefore becomes imperative to control the diffusion of such weapons and misuse of such weapons to protect and promote human security and development, which again demands responsible attitudes on the part of human being as well as states.

Africa continues to bear the brunt, with heightened trafficking in small arms in West Africa and with the porous borders between different countries. It has become increasingly difficult to address the spread of these weapons. Small arms have been recycled in the West African countries of Nigeria, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea and Burkina Faso. Rebel groups and criminal groups supply each other with arms in past and present conflict situations in countries such as Cte dIvoire, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso and Liberia.

In the end, the proliferation of these weapons has undermined security sector reform (SSR). Nigeria has been challenged with the same phemonon in the last decade and half, a development previous governments have tried unsuccessfully to contain.

But the tide changed with the assumption of office by President Muhammadu Buhari on May 29, 2015. He demonstrated his commitment to tackling insecurity and tame proliferation of small arms and light weapons with the appointment of egg heads like Gen Muhammed Babagana Monguno (rtd) to head his security architecture. The National Security Adviser (NSA) has not only proved his mettle but surpassed the expectations of his critics.

Evidence, they say, is the end of argument. In recent times, the highthened security alert in Nigeria has reduced. Even in the Noth East, North West and other parts of the Nigeria, a new lease of life is beginning to bekcon. There have not been reported cases of Boko Haram and ISWAP attacks, unlike before. This feat cannot happen in a vacuum. Credit must be given to whom it is due, in which case, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Buhari.

Also, President Buharis National Security Adviser, Monguno must be generously comended for his doggedness in the war against terriorists. Most remarkable also is the containment of the proliferation of samll arms and light weapons, which poses existential threat to our collective security. The illicit proliferation and misuse of small arms and light weapons ranks among todays most pressing security threats. Tens of thousands of people are killed or wounded each year in conflicts that are fought primarily with these weapons and in crime-ridden areas outside of conflict zones.

One of strategies adopted was decentralising the operation with the creation of six zonal offces in each geopolitical zone to monitor and enforce laws against small arms proliferation. The Buhari and Mongonu-led onslaught couldnt have come at a better time than now that serious concerns are beginning to emerge, with the 2023, general elections approaching. More than ever, theres need to curb the menace of insecurity in other to conduct best democratic elections without violence

The air of hope and optimism that has characterised the Buhari presidency can be attributed to the competence of his team, especially the National Security Adviser, Gen Monguno. Without a pinch of doubt, Monguno has proven that he towers above his equals in his professional callings. Indeed, he is a deft security/intelligence czar.

For Gen Monguno, no doubt, the role of intelligence gathering in a nations security architecture cannot be overemphasised. That is where the dexterity of the Chief Spy Officer lies. As a man who has spent quality working years in the intelligence community, organising a viable security system for Nigeria is like a walk in the park. Before he took over as the National Security Adviser to President Buhari in 2015, the countrys security architecture was in a shambles but seven years down the line, the story is different.

Noose has been tightened around terror groups terrorising Nigerians and the terrorist groups have almost been defeated, even as all territorial extensions have been returned to the sovereignty of Nigeria. We must be objective; it is incontrovertible that what is obtainable today is far more than in 2014 when lives all around Nigeria were becoming poor, nasty, brutish and short. Lest we forget so soon, 17 local government areas in Borno State alone were under the control of Boko Haram, with their flag firmly hoisted.

The ingenuity and courage of the NSA must be commended for confronting and winning the fight against insurgency. From records, General Monguno is a renowned security expert and a retired Nigerian military general. He was the Chief of Defence Intelligence from July 2009 to September 2011 and the Commander of the Brigade of Guards from 2007 to 2009.

As Nigerias number one spy master, Monguno has a natural, adaptable and high functioning ability to interact with others. Social interaction as a spy will take many different forms, requiring you to be comfortable associating with the entire spectrum of personality types.

Monguno, as the National Security Adviser from 2015 to date, has acted in his best to recover the local governments controlled by the Boko Haram terrorists and ensuring that Nigerians put the nightmare of Boko Haram behind them. This is the greatest height of professionalism and it could be said of the NSA to be the best choice of President Buhari for courageously doing his work.

Each administration has always set the guidelines for intelligence activities and, within these guidelines, establish in a timely fashion specific requirements and priorities for the conduct of these activities.

Under Gen Monguno, the Nigerian intelligence community is saddled with two broad functionscollection and analysisand one relatively narrow one, covert action. An additional function, counterintelligence, is integral to the entire intelligence process. In the forthcoming general elections, we are set to see the best of these efforts as President Buhari is poised to deliver free fair and credible elections, with his NSA readily available to provide the enabling playground with adequate security.Ibrahim is director of Communications and Strategic Planning of the Presidential Support Committee (PSC).

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PMB, NSA and the war against terriorism, small arms, light weapons - Blueprint Newspapers Limited

Global 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) Architecture Infrastructure Market Size and Share Over The Forecast Period 2022-2028 The Bite – The Bite

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Global 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) Architecture Infrastructure Market Size and Share Over The Forecast Period 2022-2028 The Bite - The Bite

How the NSA is creating a cybersecurity education pipeline in Texas – The Dallas Morning News

Youve read the headlines. A ransomware attack forces a major American gasoline pipeline to shut down. Hackers hit Dallas ISD data. The U.S. braces for Russian cyberattacks as the Ukraine conflict escalates.

Youve gotten the emails. Your personal information was compromised in a data breach. You should change your password immediately.

Cyberattacks are a growing threat around the world. About three-quarters of nearly 600 C-suite executives recently surveyed by auditing giant Deloitte said their organizations had experienced between one and 10 cyberincidents or breaches in the last year.

Companies, governments and other organizations are trying to bulk up their defenses to protect their information infrastructure. According to government estimates, the employment of information security analysts is expected to grow 33% this decade faster than the average for all occupations.

Yet there is a shortage of skilled workers to fill these jobs. Microsoft estimates that for every two cybersecurity jobs that are filled in the U.S. there is one open position.

Our colleges and universities in North Texas are doing something to address that problem. Collin College just earned a prestigious designation from the National Security Agency as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense. It becomes the fifth institution of higher education in Dallas-Fort Worth to receive an NSA academic designation, following Southern Methodist University, the University of Dallas, the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of North Texas.

Collin College is also the first community college in the region to earn this accolade.

The label comes with a lot of perks for Collin College faculty and students. There are more than 40 instructors in the cybersecurity program, about 1,700 students enrolled full time for an associates degree in cybersecurity and more than 200 in the new bachelors degree in cybersecurity. About 500 other students have indicated an interest in cybersecurity but have not yet committed to a degree.

As an NSA Center of Academic Excellence, Collin College can tap into grants and scholarship money to grow the programs resources and enrollment. Ervin Frenzel, director of the colleges cybersecurity program, said that institutions with the NSA recognition can also share instructors.

For example, if there is a cohort at the college interested in the internet of things a network of everyday objects connected to the internet that collect and share data with one another then specialists from across the U.S. can assist in developing or teaching that curriculum. Or Collin College can lend its experts on wireless intrusion detection to another institution.

Cybersecurity specialists are not just concerned with machines. They study people and processes to identify and fix vulnerabilities that prevent bad actors from stealing your credit card or from paralyzing a hospitals computer systems. We urgently need to grow that professional pipeline, and were glad to see North Texas rise to the challenge.

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How the NSA is creating a cybersecurity education pipeline in Texas - The Dallas Morning News

The Secretive History of the NSA’s UFO Studies in the Sixties – The Debrief

In recent days, The Debrieflooked at the evolving views on the subject of unidentified aerial phenomenon expressed by the Air Forcebeginning in the late 1940s. The Air Forces silence in dealing with this topic was also the subject of a recent analysis by Christopher Mellon, which seems to continue into the present.

While the views of many United States federal and military agencies when dealing with UFOs have evolved considerably over time, what of the National Security Agency (NSA), arguably one of the most secretive groups inside of Americas military and security apparatus?

Prying historical documents out of the NSA and challenging its decisions to classify information on any subject, including UFOs, is a daunting task on the best of days. This is a fact that researchers attempting to gather this type of data, such as John Greenewald jr of the Black Vault run into regularly. When Greenewald attempted to have a heavily redacted set of UFO-related NSA documents reviewed as part of a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR), he was eventuallyinformed thatthe original, unredacted documents could not be found. The NSA is apparently so skilled at protecting the nations deepest, most critical secrets that they can even hide them from themselves.

But a few NSA documents dealing with the subject of UFOs have survived. One of these is a 1968 report on the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects, what the most common theories regarding their origins were, and what implications they might hold for matters as weighty as the survivability of human civilization. The document, produced by an author whose name remains redacted, was titled UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions. The NSA was looking at the question seriously and considering the long-term implications of the possible existence of UFOs and how the nation might be best prepared for what such encounters could entail.

The document is a draft version of what was presumably the final release, but that makes it potentially even more interesting because it includes numerous footnotes and scribbled comments from the author. The paper broke down five different general hypotheses as to the overall explanation for the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. Of potential interest is the first footnote in the document, attached to the first use of the acronym UFO. The footnote reads, All flying, sailing or maneuvering aerial objects whether glowing, pulsating or of a constant metallic hue, whose shape is somewhat circular or cigarish. Note the use of the adjective cigarish. It sounds rather reminiscent of the now-infamous tic-tac.

The general categories they identified were as follows:

To put this document in a historical context in terms of the debate over UAP, its worth pausing here and looking at the widely publicized UAP Task Force report from June 25, 2001. As you may recall, that document also broke down the governments assessment of various bins of potential explanations for sightings. Perhaps not coincidentally, the number of such bins in that report was also five. They were:

The 2021 report does not attempt to attribute any of the reported sightings to hoaxes or hallucinations, but this is easily explained by the preamble to that list which specifies that the reports under consideration were given by trained military observers. The majority were described as also involving observations with multiple sensors. That factor would almost eliminate the possibility of hoaxes and they certainly wouldnt wish to imply that their Top-Gun pilots were insane.

The other categories fit in remarkably well with items 3 through 5 in the 1968 report. Natural Phenomena would clearly encompass some airborne clutter and natural atmospheric phenomena. Secret Earth Projects is a perfect fit for USG/Industry developmental programs and foreign adversarial systems. And the other bin obviously opens the door to objects related to extraterrestrial intelligence, among other things. As in other studies of government UAP documents, The Debrief has examined here, its fascinating how little the conversation seems to have changed in more than seven decades.

The NSA report spends relatively little time on the idea of hoaxes accounting for all or most UFO sightings and takes a skeptical view on the theory. It speaks of the rarity of men of science perpetrating such fakery while acting in their professional capacities, including military professionals. The increasing frequency of such reports during the period being considered is also noted. It concludes by saying that if this number of reports were indeed all fictional, then a human mental aberration of alarming proportions would appear to be developing, and such an aberration would seem to have serious implications for nations equipped with nuclear toys.

The report treats the idea of hallucinations in a similar fashion. While agreeing that some people do experience hallucinations, occasionally even among groups of people sharing a vision, the author notes the number of reports that include data not limited to human sensory perceptions. They note that many observations are backed up by radar data and gun camera video footage. There is also a reference to reports where physical evidence of a circumstantial nature seemed to support the reports of sightings. The physical evidence reference is linked to works published by Jacques Vallee. Were all such sightings to be hallucinations, the report concludes that we might bring into strong question the ability of mankind to distinguish reality from fantasy, thereby producing a negative impact on mans ability to survive in an increasinglycomplex world.

The report finds the possibility that all UFOs might be natural phenomena to be troubling on multiple fronts, particularly when it comes to Americas ability to maintain early warning systems against potential Soviet nuclear missile attacks. This isnt a concern over the possibility that humans might misinterpret some form of weather pattern or other naturally occurring biological or meteorological activity, which is always a possibility. The larger danger here is that the people manning Americas defensive perimeter might develop a blind spot to legitimate UFO incursions, writing them off as such natural phenomena. Even worse, the Soviets might take advantage of this blind spot and build offensive systems that would mimic the UAP, luring us into complacency.

The reports final concern seems far more grave and suggests records of truly remarkable UFO behavior. It references objects that appear to defy radar detection and cause massive electromagnetic interference. The author goes on to stress the need to discover the nature of these objects or plasmas before any prospective enemy can use their properties to build a device or system to circumvent or jam our air and spect detection systems. This too is eerily reminiscent of the recommendations included in the June 25, 2021 AATIP report. Sadly, the only footnote included in this portion of the report sends the reader to an article in the Encyclopedia Brittanica describing Project Grudge.

The report only spares a single paragraph to the possibility of Secret Earth Projects. The author confidently states that there is little doubt as to the validity of this hypothesis. They warn that all UFOs should be carefully scrutinized to ferret out such enemy or friendly projects. The failure to do so could leave the nation vulnerable to a new, secret doomsday weapon.

That brings us to the most intriguing portion of the report, dealing with the possibility of an extraterrestrial intelligence being the source of these UFO sightings. Interestingly, the chapter is preceded by a handwritten note stating that the hypothesis cannot be disregarded. The note goes on to reference the 1952 wave of UFOs seen over Washington, D.C. A handwritten footnote to this addition points the reader to the work of Professor James E. McDonald, J. Allen Hynek, and (again) Jacques Vallee. McDonalds name is misspelled in the handwritten note as MacDonald, but there is little doubt as to who the author meant to reference. McDonald was a legendary UFO researcher in his own right, who died under what some researchers consider questionable circumstances. You can see the FBI file that was maintained on McDonald here.

As to the question of mankinds potential interaction with an extraterrestrial intelligence, the report divides the possibilities into categories based on whether we discover them or they discover us. A number of survival strategies are offered. The author references human interactions between technologically advanced civilizations and indigenous peoples who were overwhelmed by them, placing humanity in the role of the disadvantaged species if the creators of the UFOs have a significant scientific advantage over the humans they discovered here on Earth. The report suggests strategies such as full and honest acceptance of the nature of the inferiorities separating you from the advantages of the other people. It advises a strategy of national solidarity in dealing with the invading culture and limited interaction with the aliens to the extent that is possible. Humans are also advised to learn from the technology of the aliens as rapidly as possible and prepare for unconventional, asymmetrical warfare. These strategies could easily have been the inspiration for a variety of science fiction movies ranging from War ofthe Worlds to Independence Day.

Nothing in the NSA report suggests that the presence of nonhuman intelligences in our airspace had been definitively proven. But at the same time, the agency was not in any way scoffing at it. They were leaning toward preparing for the possibility and developing strategies that might best equip the nation in the event of a potentially hostile alien invasion. The report closes with the suggestion that more of this survival attitude is called for in dealing with the UFO problem.

It may be worth considering how often the phrase the UFO problem has shown up in military and government documents from the post-World War 2 era reviewed by The Debrief. Such references have been found in records from the Army, the Air Force, and security agencies. If the question was seen as purely speculative or the product of delusional conspiracy theorists, a reference to the UFO question or the UFO theory might have been more likely. But the word problem suggests that the guardians of our nations secrets and security were exploring a phenomenon that they saw as not only possible but perhaps likely, if not confirmed. And plans were under discussion to come up with a solution to that problem.

Perhaps if additional official documents come to light in the future, more answers will be revealed. But at this point, what we have learned of the United States governments early responses to reports of unexplained objects in our skies sounds more like a serious effort to understand and perhaps even confront a very real unknown phenomenon than any sort of preparation to respond to outbreaks of mass hysteria.

Follow Jazz Shaw and connect with him on Twitter @JazzShaw.

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The Secretive History of the NSA's UFO Studies in the Sixties - The Debrief

ScotSheep admission rises as NSA looks to improved health – The Scottish Farmer

Two new working groups for sheep farmers looking to improve flock health are to be established in Scotland.

That was the good news story from the National Sheep Association (NSA) Scotland Annual Region Members Meeting (ARMM) at Stirling Agricultural Centre, where chairman Jen Craig told members the Scottish Government is committed to progressing upon animal health and welfare priorities within the sector.

While England, Wales and Northern Ireland has already received finance and initiatives to look into better control methods of sheep scab, the Scottish Government has finally engaged conversations to explore options within Scotland.

Although notifiable in Scotland, sheep scab remains a huge welfare concern and while blood tests and control methods are available to test and eliminate the mites, the disease remains a real challenge in certain areas. As a result, a working group to address the problems has already been established and is currently chaired by NSA Scotland.

NSA Scotland is also actively looking for sheep farmers to join their Jaagsiekte or ovine pulmonary adenocarcinoma (OPA) task force in a bid to find out more about this fatal lung disease in association with the Moredun at Edinburgh, when there is no accurate test or cure for it as reported in The SF three weeks previous.

The organisation also launched its annual survey on sheep worrying incidents by dogs, to further raise awareness and find ways of improving education, guidance and co-operation with dog owners.

Restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic, have however had a negative impact on the finances of the Scottish branch in line with all other NSA regions with the cancellation of two NSA ScotSheep events incurring additional expenditure without any income. Figures released at the ARMM show a balance sheet in the red at -34,087.53 for the end of 2021, which compares to 2019 (pre-Covid) of +7257.75 and 2018 the last time ScotSheep was staged at +11,132.13.

While membership remains unchanged since pre-covid, loss of earnings are nevertheless expected to be restored following this year's NSA ScotSheep at Over Finlarg, Tealing on Wednesday, June 1. Admission is also set to increase to 20 per head with NSA members gaining access at half price.

Election of office bearers saw Jen Craig continue as Chair for another year alongside Maimie Paterson as Vice and Mary Dunlop as Treasurer. Grace Reid continues as NSA Scottish Region Coordinator and Euan Emslie as regional Events Organiser and Secretariat.

For more information on the issue of sheep worrying by dogs and NSAs work on this issue visit http://www.sheepworrying.org.uk

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ScotSheep admission rises as NSA looks to improved health - The Scottish Farmer