Russia Is Already Exacting Its Revenge On Turkey

Just over 24 hours after Turkeyshot down a Russian warplaneafter claiming the jet had violated Turkish airspace, Moscow is already exacting its revenge — albeit subtly.

"We're not going to wage a war against Turkey. ... But we will seriously reconsider our agreements with the Turkish government," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a press call on Wednesday,according to The Associated Press.

"Our attitude to the Turkish people hasn't changed," Lavrov continued. "We only have questions about the Turkish leadership."

Turkey defended its decision to down the plane on Tuesday, contending that the plane was in Turkish airspace and had been warned repeatedly before it was shot down by Turkish F-16 jets. But Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane was destroyed by a Turkish missile while flying in Syrian airspace, roughly a mile from the Turkish border.

By Wednesday morning, Russia had begun bombarding rebels — including Turkmen insurgents, who have ethnic ties to Turkey — in Syria's Latakia province, ignoring demands made by Turkey over the past week to end its military operations close to the Turkish border.

Russia also announced Wednesday that it would deploy state-of-the-art S-400 missile systems to the Russian Hemeimeem air base near Latakia, Syria — 30 miles south of the Turkish border, the AP reported. The missiles, which are able to hit a plane with extreme accuracy, are evidently meant to deter Turkish jets from shooting down Russian planes in the future.

Additionally, Russia issued an official travel warning advising its citizens against visiting Turkey. And Russian travel agencies announced on Wednesday that they will withdraw their business in Turkey until next year, according to a translation by Boris Zilberman, a Russia expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Russian tourists account for a huge portion of Turkey's tourism industry — 3.3 million Russian tourists visited Turkey in 2014, the second-largest number of tourist arrivals after Germany and around 12% of total visitors, according to Reuters.

And in a largely symbolic gesture on Wednesday, the Russian parliament proposed a five-year jail term for anyone who denies that the mass killings of Armenians that began under Ottoman rule in 1915 constituted a "genocide," according to an article translated by Foreign Policycolumnist and Russia commentator Julia Ioffe.

Use of the word remains a charged issue in Turkey, which staunchly objects to such a characterization. Eastern Armenia remained part of the Russian Empire until its collapse in 1917.

And there is one other way that Russia could retaliate against Turkey more directly: Namely, by drawing attention to the NATO ally's suspected ties to the Islamic State in Syria.

As The Soufan Group noted on Wednesday in its daily briefing, Russia "is likely to use intelligence and disinformation to highlight Turkey’s dealings with the Islamic State."

Western officials have long harbored suspicions about Turkey's links to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh. One official told The Guardian's Martin Chulov in July that aUS-led raid on the compound housing ISIS' "chief financial officer" produced "undeniable" evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with ranking ISIS members — namely, by purchasing oil from them.

Separately, experts, Kurds, and even US Vice President Joe Biden have suggested in the past that Turkey has helped enable ISIS by turning a blind eye to the vast smuggling networks of weapons and fighters during the ongoing Syrian war.

For his part, Biden charged that countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were so focused on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that they did not properly vet the opposition groups to which they sent money and weapons. (He later apologized.)

Turkey joined the US-led anti-ISIS coalition in late July, after a suicide bomber with links to the terrorist group killed 32 activists in the southeastern border town of Suruc. Still, lingering suspicions remained about Turkey's commitment to fighting ISIS, as it embarked on a dual campaign to wipe out a Kurdish insurgency in its southeast.

Those suspicions were all but put to rest last month when an ISIS-linked suicide bomber killed more than 150 people at a peace rally in Ankara — the deadliest terror attack in Turkey's recent history.

But one day after Turkey downed its warplane, Russia has already begun to bring Turkey's murky history with the group back into focus in order to discredit Ankara's role in the anti-ISIS coalition — and legitimize its own.

"Turkey has demonstrated that it is protecting ISIS," Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday on Twitter, adding that the damage from "Turkey's criminal actions ... will be hard to repair."

Medvedev was seemingly echoing a statement made by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, when he referred to Turkey as "accomplices of terrorists."

"We established a long time ago that large quantities of oil and oil products from territory captured by the Islamic State have been arriving on Turkish territory," Putin said from theRussian Black Sea resort of Sochi before a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah.

Lavrov added on Wednesday morning that "terrorists" have been using Turkish territory to plot attacks on other countries, the AP reported. He claimed that the Russian warplane shot down by Turkey had been targeting the extremists' oil infrastructure in Syria.

In any case, this war of words may be as far as Russia is willing to go — for now.

"Putin's initial reaction — calling the incident 'a stab in the back by the terrorists' accomplices' — is about as bellicose as could be imagined. But Putin is no stranger to harsh rhetoric, and he has broader interests to play for," geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, told Business Insider on Tuesday.

Bremmer noted, however, that the "huge egos" of Turkish President Erdogan and Putin certainly won't help future efforts to mend Turkish-Russian relations.

The Soufan Group largely agreed.

"The most unfortunate consequence will be that Russia will now roll back from its apparent willingness to consider solutions for Syria that do not depend on Assad remaining in power," the group said. "This is a key demand for Turkey, and in the macho world occupied by Erdogan and Putin, neither will want to appear to have blinked first."

Turkey Shot Down A Russian Warplane

On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that it says had crossed into its airspace from Syria. Though Russia denies it had violated Turkish airspace, Turkey has been complaining of such Russian violations ever since Russia began its military intervention in Syria this September.

To understand why Russia might do this and how Moscow might respond to this incident, I called Mark Galeotti, a professor at NYU's Center for Global Affairs who focuses on Russia. He suggested that Russia could have been poking at NATO, as it has in the past, but also discussed some much deeper, and more important, issues in the Russia-Turkey relationship and Russia's military adventure in Syria. What follows is a transcript of our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Zack Beauchamp: Why would Russia fly into Turkey's airspace in the first place?

Mark Galeotti: There are a few possible reasons.

First is pilot error. They were operating near the border and so strayed over by mistake. It's unlikely, given modern avionics, but nonetheless we can't completely exclude the possibility.

The second thing is that this could, since Turkey is a NATO state, have been Russia just trying to flex its political-diplomatic muscles. Wanting to make the point that they can do this with impunity — which, of course, they have done in NATO's northern reaches.

The third possibility is that this was just a brief foray into Turkish airspace, and the bomber pilot was just setting up an attack run. And given that the Turks are actively supporting some pretty toxic rebel groups, it could have been that the target was just inside Turkish borders. That's the problem when you have a target-rich environment on both sides of the borderline.

It's [also] worth noting that we heard that one of the two pilots was gunned down by rebels while parachuting down, which means that it's possible that it was in Syria. Nonetheless, the fact that the Russians are operating so close to the Turkish border in any case does say something about a certain arrogance and a certain brinksmanship.

Zack Beauchamp: Speaking of brinksmanship: Immediately after the attack, Putin threatened "serious consequences" for the Turks after the plane went down. How seriously should we take his threat?

Mark Galeotti: These days it's very hard to predict Putin. But I suspect Moscow is not keen to start yet another diplomatic war, let alone anything more than that. They're stuck in a quagmire in Ukraine. There's a very dangerous commitment to Syria. They have a whole series of international sanctions on them.

What we're likely to see is some kind of symbolic act: maybe banning Turkish airliners from landing in Russian airports, some kind of economic sanctions, words with the Turkish ambassador, that kind of thing. [Ed. note: after this conversation, the Russian Ministry of Defense suspended military-to-military communications with its Turkish counterparts.]

At the same time, they'll hope for there being even the faintest signs of contrition from Ankara, which would allow Putin to tell the Russian people that "the Turks messed up, the Turks have acknowledged that, we move on."

Zack Beauchamp: So what is the Russian public reaction to this going to be?

Mark Galeotti: The first indications are that there's a definite surge of public anger. They only know what the Kremlin is going to tell them, which is that this was a Turkish attack on a Russian plane over Syria while it was trying to bomb terrorist targets. All Putin's rhetoric about being stabbed in the back will have resonance, particularly because Russians — even more so than many other people — are very conscious of their history.

Russia has a long pre-Soviet history of rivalry with the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and a sense that the Turks are not to be trusted, rooted in crude cultural stereotypes. But one has to realize that it's not as though they're demanding war: They can, to a large extent, be modulated and if need be distracted through the state controlled media. I don't think this is, in any meaningful sense, a constraint on the Kremlin.

In Russia, the whole Syrian adventure has been played as "strike the terrorists in Syria before we have to fight them in Russia." It's been sold as an operation that's tremendously successful. You could argue with how effective the airstrikes are — let's be honest, the best the Russian airstrikes can do is slightly slow the rate at which Assad is losing the war; they won't turn the tide. But that's not how it's being sold in Moscow. Finally, it's been sold as a safe operation: no large ground troop commitments, the Russians are doing everything at arm's length away from danger.

One plane being shot down — and by another country, not the rebels — is not going to change that last element. But it really does point to the fact that if the Russians do start taking losses, losses they can't paper over with their propaganda machine, then there are risks that this will quite quickly become less popular.

Zack Beauchamp: That point you made about historical animosity between Russia and Turkey is interesting, and brings up a bigger issue: how do you see the Russian-Turkish relationship today more generally? Will this incident change anything?

Mark Galeotti: We saw, at one point, something of a connection forming between Turkey's [President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and Russia's Putin. Both of them were leaders in the strongman roles.

But to be perfectly honest, Turkey has — at best — been a frenemy to Moscow. Under Erdogan, Turkey has embarked on a campaign to assert itself as a regional power. To essentially acquire a sphere of influence, and in the process it is inevitably challenging and competing with Moscow.

This predates Syria. I remember when I was in Azerbaijan, there were a whole variety of actors competing there, very clearly including Turkey. Turkey was making quite a push [to the chagrin of] the Russians. There's actually a long history of rivalry in the modern era; the Russians have clearly infringed on Turkish sovereignty, including the assassination of Chechen rebel fundraisers on Turkish soil by what were almost certainly Russian intelligence officers.

Relations are unlikely to change, then, because they've always been quite tense and antagonistic.

Zack Beauchamp: Another thing you said I'd like to pick up on: The more Russia takes casualties, the more of a burden the Syria war will become for Putin. If that's the case, then is this incident going to make Putin less assertive in using military force in Syria?

Mark Galeotti: It depends very much on the scale. If we're talking about a slow-drip feed — a soldier killed by a sniper here, a plane shot down there — it's a lot more manageable. On the other hand, I'm thinking back to when Ronald Reagan was forced to call back the US Marines from Lebanon after the major truck bombing in the barracks [in 1982]. A single, cataclysmic loss of life made this much more of a story.

But let's be honest. Moscow is not looking for an open-ended, much less an expanded, military effort in Syria. The purpose of the air attacks is, more than anything else, to place Moscow within the decision-making cycle about what happens in Syria. What the Russians are actually looking for is to be some part of a political settlement.

Now, a political settlement would actually see Assad go — the Russians are probably the only people who can get Assad out of Damascus peaceably and offer him sanctuary in Russia. It would also include the creation of some kind of political settlement, including the rebels and the Alawite elite. That's the only way you're going to get enough combatants on the ground in Syria to actually take on the Islamic State.

Putin is much more concerned with that political dimension than the military one — he wants to be moving on that political dimension as soon as possible. And thanks to the Paris attacks, it looked like the momentum was actually going his way. This shoot-down could stymie efforts at reaching a West-Russia deal, or it could make it more urgent. We really don't know at this stage.

ISIS Is Funded by 40 Countries — Including G20 Members

Russian president Vladimir Putin has announced that he has shared intelligence with the other G20 member states, which reveals the 40 countries from which ISIS finances the majority of their terrorist activities. The list reportedly included a number of G20 countries.

“I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told reporters.

In addition to discussing the need to stop the flow of donor money to ISIS, Putin also reiterated the need to stop the illegal oil trade by ISIS.

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin said.

Oil sales — the extremists’ largest single source of continual income — are a key reason they have been able to maintain their rule over their self-declared “caliphate” stretching across large parts of Syria and Iraq. With the funds to rebuild infrastructure and provide the largesse that shore up its fighters’ loyalty, it has been able to withstand ground fighting against its opponents and more than a year of bombardment in the U.S.-led air campaign.

It’s worth noting that within the past 24 hours the U.S. has launched its first strike against an ISIS oil convoy. Prior to Monday, the United States had refused to strike the over 1,000 ISIS controlled tanker trucks out of a stated concern about causing civilian casualties, a dubious assertion at best.

Intensifying pressure on the Islamic State, United States warplanes for the first time attacked hundreds of trucks on Monday that the extremist group has been using to smuggle the crude oil it has been producing in Syria, American officials said.

According to an initial assessment, 116 trucks destroyed in the attack, which took place near Deir al-Zour, an area in eastern Syria that is controlled by the Islamic State.

The airstrikes were carried out by four A-10 attack planes and two AC-130 gunships based in Turkey.

While the U.S. claims these new operations were planned well in advance of the terrorist attacks in Paris, one can’t help but be suspicious of the timing of the U.S. change in tactics. It seems that the U.S. is being forced closer to the Russian position in the wake of the attacks in France.

During the press conference, Putin went on to stress that an international coalition is needed to more effectively counter the terrorist group, noting Russia’s readiness to support the fight against ISIS.

“Some armed opposition groups consider it possible to begin active operations against IS with Russia’s support. And we are ready to provide such support from the air. If it happens it could become a good basis for the subsequent work on a political settlement,” Putin said.

“We really need support from the US, European nations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran,” the Russian president added.

In the wake of the claimed ISIS attacks in Paris, perhaps the NATO contingent involved in Syria will now realize that removing Assad is not the primary goal, and that fighting ISIS is the actual mission.

The Russian intelligence analysis of the 40 nations funding the ISIS terror machine were relayed to diplomats attending the G20 summit — but were not released to the media, nor the general public.

Mali: At Least 27 Dead, Including American, In Terror Attack

A U.S. citizen died in the attack on a luxury hotel in Bamako, Mali, where armed Islamist militants took hostages on Friday, the U.S. State Department said.

Six Americans were recovered safely and U.S. special forces assisted in the rescue efforts, U.S. officials said earlier.

The State Department, in a statement, identified the victim as Anita Datar. It included a separate comment from her family that said she was an aid worker who "has spent much of her career working to advance global health and international development, with a focus on population and reproductive health, family planning, and HIV."

The family said she was survived by a son, her parents, brother "and many, many friends around the world."

It said she was a senior manager at Palladium Group and a founding member of Tulalens, a not-for-profit organization connecting underserved communities with health services.

The Washington Post and ABC News reported earlier that Datar was 41 year old and lived in Maryland.

Early on Friday morning, gunmen shouting Islamic slogans attacked the Radisson Blu hotel, which is frequented by foreigners, taking 170 people hostage in Bamako, the country's capital. At least 27 people were reported dead after Malian commandos stormed the hotel and dozens of people were reported to have escaped or been freed.

Representatives for U.S. Africa Command said American military personnel were helping move civilians to safety as Malian forces cleared the Radisson Blu.

"Mali forces have the lead in Bamako," Africa Command said in a tweet. "Small team of U.S. troops assisting with relocating rescued hostages."

Army Colonel Mark Cheadle, a spokesman for Africa Command, said six Americans were recovered from the hotel and he believed all were alive.

Another defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said five U.S. Defense Department personnel were at the hotel at the time of the siege and all have been accounted for. "We have no reports of any injuries," the official said.

One U.S. service member "who was at the location stepped in to assist first responders with moving civilians from the hotel to secure locations as Malian forces worked to clear the hotel of hostile gunmen," the official said. "U.S. forces did not directly participate in the operation."

A senior U.S. official said a security officer and a number of U.S. troops assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Bamako, who were in the area of the hotel at the time, were among the first on the scene.

The official said that when the U.S. security officer and troops entered the building to look for Americans inside, it was filled with smoke from a fire in the hotel kitchen.

“The first person they could not locate visually due to smoke but could hear the person,” the official said. The officers went to the third floor of the building, working their way down, helping to evacuate people.

“They could not get above the third floor initially because (attackers) had barricaded the stairs,” the official added.

The total number of U.S. citizens at the hotel during the siege was unclear.

In all, the defense official said, 22 military and civilian Pentagon employees were in Bamako at the time of the attack and all have been accounted for.

About 1,000 U.S. special forces are deployed across Africa at any given time.

A Malian official told French television station BFMTV that all remaining hostages were safe and out of the hotel.

The U.S. military was providing airlift support and aerial reconnaissance support to French forces in Mali under a 2013 agreement, Africa Command said.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who is attending a regional summit in Malaysia, was briefed by his national security adviser on the Bamako situation, a White House official said on Friday.

Surgery Could Give Men Wombs of Their Own Within 5 Years

That’s the question provoked by last week’s announcement that the Cleveland Clinic is performing uterus transplant surgery on women who were born without a womb or whose uterus is diseased or malfunctioning. Hearing the news, we, and some of you, wondered: If science can transplant a uterus into a woman, can it transplant one into a man?

The answer is yes. Theoretically, men could receive a uterus, carry a baby to term,  and give birth. But what really blew our minds is that the day of male pregnancy is closer than you’d think.

“My guess is five, 10 years away, maybe sooner,” says Dr. Karine Chung, director of the fertility preservation program at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. Today, medical advances let transgender women adjust their biochemistry to suppress male and introduce female hormones, have breasts that can lactate, and obtain surgically constructed vaginas that include a “neoclitoris,” which allows sensation.

Until now, however, a place to carry the fetus — a womb of its own — was a major missing link. Uterus transplants could conceivably surmount that hurdle.

“I’d bet just about every transgender person who is female will want to do it, if it were covered by insurance,” says Dr. Christine McGinn, a New Hope, Pa., plastic surgeon who performs transgender surgeries on men and women and is a consultant to the new movie The Danish Girl, about one of the first recipients of sex reassignment surgery.

McGinn, a transgender woman and mother of twins, says the “human drive to be a mother for a woman is a very serious thing. Transgender women are no different.”

Uterus transplants are still in the research stage for women suffering from uterine factor infertility (UFI). A Swedish team already has successfully transplanted uteri harvested from live donors and achieved five pregnancies and four live births. In the coming months, the Cleveland Clinic team plans to transplant uteri from deceased donors into UFI female patients.

Transplant surgery is difficult and dangerous, requiring patients to take antirejection drugs throughout their pregnancies, putting them at risk for infection. But for many women — and presumably for many transitioning women — the risk is worth the reward.

However, biological women have a leg up on biological males when it comes to accepting and nurturing a transplanted uterus. Women already have: vasculature needed to feed the uterus with blood, pelvic ligaments designed to support a uterus, a vagina and cervix, and natural hormones that prepare the uterus for implantation and support the pregnancy.

Men have none of those support systems — naturally — but none are impossible to create. “Male and female anatomy is not that different,” says Chung. “Probably at some point, somebody will figure out how to make that work.”

In fact, medical techniques already exist to overcome many obstacles to male pregnancy.

Hormone therapy can shut off testosterone and introduce progesterone and estrogen needed to prepare the uterus for pregnancy.

Even though males do not have uterine veins and arteries needed to nurture the womb, it’s possible to attach a branch of a large vessel, like the internal iliac, to the uterus. “It’s doable, it just hasn’t been done,” Chung says.

Although it’s preferable for a vagina to support the uterus, it’s possible to attach a transplanted uterus to other ligaments in the pelvis.

At the moment, the thorniest problem standing between men and pregnancy is transferring an embryo grown in vitro into the transplanted womb. The usual route for women undergoing fertility treatments is through the vagina and cervix and into the uterus. But since a uterus has never been transplanted into a biological male, techniques to connect a constructed vagina to a transplanted uterus have not been attempted. But Dr. Elliot Jacobs, a Manhattan plastic surgeon, says that theoretically, “Connecting the two is not a major surgical feat.”

Perhaps the most insurmountable obstacle will be the economics: Transplants are wildly expensive, ranging from $25,000 for a corneal transplant to $1.3 million for a heart, according to the National Foundation of Transplants. We can’t even begin to guess how much a uterus transplant will cost if the surgery makes it out of the research phase, and chances are slim that insurance companies will pay for it.

“It’s a class issue; you’ll only have wealthy people able to do this,” says McGinn, who is featured in the documentary TRANS.

Also, transplanting uteri into men provokes ethical questions about long-term health outcomes for transplant recipients and subsequent children, and the benefit to society of using so many resources for men and women to experience the joy of birth.

By Lisa Kaplan Gordon

Mali:170 Taken Hostage In Radisson Hotel

Gunmen have attacked a Radisson hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, and are holding 170 hostages, the hotel company has confirmed.

At least two private security guards were injured in the attack, the hotel’s head of security said.

Malian army commander Modibo Nama Traore said 10 gunmen stormed the Radisson Blu hotel shouting “Allahu Akbar” before shooting at guards and taking hostages.

Some hostages, including those able to recite verses of the Qur’an, were later released, security sources told Reuters. A security source told AFP that the gunmen were “jihadis” and entered the hotel compound in a car that had diplomatic plates.

“It’s all happening on the seventh floor, jihadists are firing in the corridor,” AFP’s source said.

The hotel is just west of the city centre in a neighbourhood that is home to government ministries and diplomats.

In a statement the US-based Rezidor group, which owns the hotel, said 140 guests and 30 staff were being held hostage by two gunmen.

“The Rezidor Hotel Group … is aware of the hostage-taking that is ongoing at the property today, 20th November 2015. As per our information two persons have locked in 140 guests and 30 employees,” the company said in a statement quoted by AFP.

“Our safety and security teams and our corporate team are in constant contact with the local authorities in order to offer any support possible to re-instate safety and security at the hotel,” it added.

The Chinese state news agency Xinhua said several Chinese tourists were among those trapped inside the building.

The US embassy in Bamako said in a series of tweets that it was aware of an “ongoing shooter situation” and advised its citizens to seek shelter.

Joke Of The Day

A Jewish businessman in America decided to send his son to Israel to absorb some of the culture of the homeland. When the son returned, the father asked him to tell him about his trip. 
The son said, "Pop, I had a great time in Israel. By the way, I converted to Christianity." "Oy vey," said the father. "What have I done?" 
He decided to go ask his friend Jacob what to do. Jacob said, "Funny you should ask. I too sent my son to Israel, and he also came back a Christian. Perhaps we should go see the rabbi and ask him what we should do." 
So they went to see the Rabbi. The Rabbi said, "Funny you should ask.I too sent my son to Israel. He also came back a Christian. What is happening to our young people? Perhaps we should go talk to God and ask him what to do." 
The three of them prayed and explained what had happened to their sons and asked God what to do. Suddenly a voice came loud and clear from Heaven. The Voice said, "funny you should ask, I too sent my son to Isreal..."

Going dark: FBI continues effort to bypass encryption

The FBI's ongoing effort to bypass encryption and its warnings about "going dark" show no signs of letting up -- even as major technology companies, such as Apple, push back.

public statements airing concerns about "going dark" -- the bureau's lack of technical ability to access legally intercepted communications and information. And the crux of the going-dark issue is encryption technology that protects targeted data and communications from prying eyes.

In the July congressional hearing, FBI Director James Comey discussed the state of national security in relation to encryption and the going-dark issue. "We cannot break strong encryption," Comey said during his testimony to Congress. "So, even if I get a court order under the Fourth Amendment to intercept that communication as it travels over the wires, I will get gobbledygook."

Other FBI officials have also expressed alarm at potentially increased use ofencryption technology. At the recent 2015 IoT Security Summit in Boston, FBI CISO Arlette Hart said encryption technology keeps user data safe, but it's also used by "the bad people" to make sure their communications aren't interdicted by law enforcement. And during his keynote at the Advanced Cyber Security Center conference in Boston last month, FBI General Counsel James Baker said the bureau "can't get the fruits of surveillance" because of encryption.

The FBI has searched for ways to bypass encryption, including law requiring the installation of backdoor access points in technology products, butComey recently told Congress that the FBI and the Obama administration are "not seeking legislation at this time."

But that game-plan shift hasn't dimmed the rhetoric of darkness, or the FBI's search to find ways to bypass encryption. Instead of backdoor access, intelligence agencies, such as the National Security Agency, have argued for "front-door access" via key escrow plans or split-key encryption, where the technology vendor or service provider retains half of a master key and law enforcement retains the other half -- meaning no one party can access user data without the other. But those plans have been shot down by security experts who said the technology isn't feasible in practical use.

Comey said he wants to encourage technology companies to find solutions to the going-dark problem, rather than force an approach on them. "We would like to emphasize that the going-dark problem is, at base, one of technological choices and capability," Comey said. "We are not asking to expand the government's surveillance authority, but rather we are asking to ensure that we can continue to obtain electronic information and evidence pursuant to the legal authority that Congress has provided to us to keep America safe."

But with technology companies increasingly handing encryption keys over to their customers, known as bring your own key or BYOK, search warrants compelling a software company or service provider to decrypt user data have been rendered useless.

Comey said encryption was always available over the last 20 years, but now it's become the default option for communications and data protection, accompanied by "an explosion in apps" that use the Internet. In essence, the FBI claims the government's ability to intercept communications, such as texts, emails and photos, is severely waning as encryption adoption grows -- which, Comey argues, makes it increasingly difficult to obtain critical evidence for court cases.

In a speech delivered to the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. last month, Comey specifically called out Apple, as well as Google, for creating products that the companies themselves couldn't unlock or decrypt. "Both companies are run by good people, responding to what they perceive is a market demand," Comey said of Apple and Google. "But the place they are leading us is one we shouldn't go to without careful thought and debate as a country.

The iOS encryption case

When Apple expanded iPhone encryption protection on its iOS 8 mobile platform last year, it caused concern among government officials -- notably, the FBI. This issue at hand is that devices running iOS 8 or higher can now only be unlocked by the user, as Apple no longer has the ability to unlock and decrypt devices.

Recently, a case involving an iOS device brewed new controversy in the going-dark debate. Last month, a federal magistrate judge questioned an application by the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn, N.Y. to order Apple to disable the security lock on an iOS device. The authorities had obtained a warrant to search the device, but couldn't access the encrypted data because it was locked.

In its response, Apple said it would be impossible to decrypt any iPhone running on an iOS 8 or higher, because the latest encryption in Apple's mobile operating system prevents anyone but the device's owner from acquiring access. However, the catch is the device in question was actually running iOS 7, and Apple admitted that it has the ability to extract "certain categories of unencrypted data from a passcode-locked iOS device," such as user-generated files for native iOS applications.

But Apple feels its integrity is on the line with the Department of Justice's requested order, and argued that forcing the company to extract data without customer consent would impale Apple's reputation and damage the trust it has with its loyal customers.

"Apple has taken a leadership role in the protection of its customers' personal data against any form of improper access," Apple's brief stated. "Forcing Apple to extract data in this case, absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers, and substantially tarnish the Apple brand."

The going dark tug-of-war

The standoff between technology companies and the U.S. government is heating up in the post-Snowden era.

A number of leading information security vendors have preached the value of strong encryption and criticized the government's effort to weaken it. Pam Kostka, CEO of Bluebox Security, a mobile security startup based in San Francisco, said government-mandated backdoor access would undoubtedly introduce vulnerabilities for operating systems, applications and cloud services that would defeat the purpose of using encryption in the first place. Even if technology companies gave the government keys to encryption, the company and its customers would have to give the government an astronomical degree of trust, which many people are not willing to do.

Here's How Often Happy Couples Have Sex

Couples who constantly “Netflix and chill” aren’t necessarily happier. In fact, having sex once a week is just about perfect. That’s the takeaway from a new study, based on surveys of more than 30,000 Americans gathered over 40 years, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science. 

Related: The Sexiest Man Alive Isn’t an Actor

After previous research found more wealth wasn’t actually associated with greater happiness, lead author Amy Muise began to wonder if the same was true for sex, “an aspect of life that is thought to be associated with greater happiness,” she says, per Time. 

However, researchers found that while couples who have sex once a week are happier than those who have sex less often, “having sex more frequently than once a week was not associated with greater well-being.” The findings held regardless of gender, age, or the length of a relationship.

Related: Study: Women Don’t Really Care About Guys’ Penis Size

The study found couples who had sex less than once a month and those who knocked boots once a week reported a difference in life satisfaction that was even greater than that reported by couples who earn $15,000 to $25,000 annually and those who earn $50,000 to $75,000, according toa release. 

Muise isn’t sure why having sex once a week seems to be ideal, but it may “be the frequency that people feel is enough to maintain their intimate connection,” she says. The “big problem” one researcher not involved found with the study is that it identifies correlation, not causation. 

Related: The Surprising Reason Women Fake Orgasms

“People are basically having as much sex as they want, and for some reason … [those who do it] about once a week seem to be happier,” George Loewenstein tells the Guardian (see his sex research here). As for single people, Muise says researchers found no link between sexual frequency and happiness among that group. (It turns out men and women want sex at different times of the day.)

By Arden Dier

Job Bush calls for US ground forces to fight Islamic State

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush on Wednesday called for the U.S. to send more troops to the Middle East to fight the Islamic State group.

"This is the war of our time," the former Florida governor said at the Citadel five days after Islamic State militants attacked Paris and killed at least 129 people.

"Radical Islamic terrorists have declared war on the Western world. Their aim is our total destruction. We can't withdraw from this threat, or negotiate with it. We have but one choice: to defeat it."

Bush had planned for weeks to deliver a speech about Pentagon and military purchasing reform at the prestigious South Carolina military college. But the horrific events in France Friday moved Bush, who has supported the potential deployment of troops in Iraq and Syria, to call for ground troops.

"The United States, in conjunction with our NATO allies and more Arab partners, will need to increase our presence on the ground," he added, calling air power insufficient.

He offered no specifics, but said the number of Americans sent to the region should be "in line with what our military generals recommend, not politicians."

The speech came as European nations hunted for conspirators in the attack and amid a fierce political debate within the U.S. over whether to limit or halt the resettlement of refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria. One of the Paris bombers was thought to have arrived in a wave of migrants surging toward the West, but a top German official later said the Syrian passport found at a Paris attack scene was likely a fake.

The Paris attack has put national security atop the conversation in the 2016 presidential race. Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, was expected on Thursday to deliver her own prescription for defeating ISIS and fighting jihadis.

Bush, the brother and son of presidents, has projected himself as a potential commander in chief able to handle such challenges. But his focus on national security has increased as his own campaign for the presidential nomination has struggled to gain traction, and especially since the Paris attacks.

"The brutal savagery is a reminder of what is at stake in this election," Bush said. "We are choosing the leader of the free world. And if these attacks remind us of anything, it's that we are living in serious times that require serious leadership."

It's no mystery why Bush made the speech in South Carolina. Many of the Republican primary voters in the early voting Southern primary state are retired and active-duty military.

Bush is not the only Republican presidential candidate who supports sending ground troops to fight the Islamic State. South Carolina's own senior Sen. Lindsey Graham has been an aggressive advocate. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has also suggested sending U.S. troops. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was generally supportive of President Obama's decision to put 50 special operations troops in Syria, and has suggested the number ought to grow. However, he hasn't called for a larger scale mobilization.

Bush has long faulted President Barack Obama's administration and Clinton for allowing wholesale federal spending cuts prompted by the 2013 budget reconciliation after Congress and the president were unable to craft more strategic cuts.

The cuts affected military and non-military spending alike, at a time when conflicts in Syria and Iraq "spiraled out of control," Bush said.

And while Bush has often referred to the Islamic State as an unconventional threat, his prescription for the military includes heavier spending on its conventional elements.

He called for doubling the U.S. Marine Corps' battle-ready strength to 186,000, and updating the U.S. nuclear weapons capacity.

Bush also proposed increasing production of next-generation stealth bombers, which can cost roughly $150 million apiece. Bush did not suggest a way to pay for the buildup.

People join ISIS Cause Of Money Not Religion

Despite ISIS's claims of ruling over a Islamic "caliphate" in line with Sharia law, a large number of the group's fighters joined for reasons having little to do with religion, according to a defector from the group that The Daily Beast's Michael Weiss interviewed in Istanbul, Turkey.Instead, people are joining the organization because they are desperate for money and are struggling to find a way to survive in Syria, where four years of civil war have decimated the economy.
The ISIS defector, who goes by the pseudonym Abu Khaled, spoke with Weiss about the group's internal dynamics, and what it was like to live under ISIS's rule.
According to Abu Khaled, a large number of people are joining ISIS because they need money. After joining the militants, people are paid in US dollars instead of Syrian liras. Abu Khaled said that ISIS also runs its own currency exchanges.
ISIS members receive additional incentives to fight for the group. “I rented a house, which was paid for by ISIS,” Abu Khaled, who worked for ISIS's internal-security forces and "provided training for foreign operatives," told Weiss. “It cost $50 per month. They paid for the house, the electricity. Plus, I was married, so I got an additional $50 per month for my wife. If you have kids, you get $35 for each. If you have parents, they pay $50 for each parent. This is a welfare state.”
And those financial benefits are not just limited to the organization's fighters. According to Abu Khaled, any member of ISIS, ranging from construction workers to doctors, receives similar compensation. In war-torn Syria, these salaries are a powerful lure for people who might not otherwise be able to support their families — or for people just hoping to get rich.
“I knew a mason who worked construction. He used to get 1,000 lira per day. That’s nothing," Abu Khaled told Weiss. "Now he’s joined ISIS and gets 35,000 lira—$100 for himself, $50 for his wife, $35 for his kids. He makes $600 to $700 per month. He gave up masonry. He’s just a fighter now, but he joined for the income.”
Other Syrians who have fled from ISIS's rule have corroborated Abu Khaled's reports, confirming that one of the only ways to accumulate wealth and status under ISIS's rule is by joining the organization. Yassin al-Jassem, a Syrian refugee from near ISIS's de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria,shared his experience with The Washington Post."There is no work, so you have to join them in order to live," al-Jassem told the Post. "So many local people have joined them. They were pushed into Daesh by hunger."
According to Newsweek, there is a widening gap in living standards for those under ISIS rule. Members of the organization have access to food, free medical care, and desirable housing. In contrast, people who aren't ISIS members suffer under a barely functioning economy with rapidly increasing prices.
ISIS can afford to pay people seeking to join its ranks through four main sources of income: oil, the sale of looted antiquities, taxation, and kidnapping ransoms.
The militant group either controls or has an operational presence around a number of oil wells in Iraq and in the majority of oil-producing areas in Syria. This allows the group to earn a steady income from oil production and smuggling that helps it to continue its daily operations.
The New York Times estimates that ISIS can make upward of $40 million a month through oil-related activities. In a bid to cut the group's income, the US conducted its first airstrikes against ISIS oil trucks on November 16.
Residents watch militant Islamist fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province on June 30, 2014.
ISIS's main source of income is significantly more difficult for the US and other coalition partners to target by air. According to Foreign Policy, ISIS makes the majority of its money through extortion and taxation of people living under the group's rule.ISIS taxes nearly every possible economic activity, with the revenue ultimately covering the expenses of waging continuous war along multiple fronts. Foreign Policy notes that taxes are put in place for militants who loot archaeological sites. Non-Muslims must pay religious taxes, and all ISIS subjects pay a base welfare and salary tax in support of the fighters. All vehicles passing through ISIS territory — which may carry the only food available to those living under ISIS control — must pay taxes often totaling hundreds of dollars.
This ad hoc war economy means that ISIS has little money to spend on improving the lives of those who are forced to live under its rule. But as Abu Khaled's account confirms, it still finds the money for conducting military operations and incentivizing militants to join the group.
That money and the other benefits that ISIS fighters receive means that Syrians join ISIS out of desperation — and not necessarily out of religious or ideological conviction.