Key US military command’s Twitter, YouTube sites hacked

WASHINGTON—Hackers claiming to work on behalf of Islamic State militants seized control of the Twitter and YouTube sites of the military’s US Central Command on Monday. The Pentagon swiftly suspended the sites and said it appears that no classified material was breached.

The hacker group appears to be the same one that is under FBI investigation for hijacking the websites or Twitter feeds of media outlets in the last month, including a Maryland television station and a New Mexico newspaper.

The Central Command Twitter site was filled with threats that said “American soldiers, we are coming, watch your back.” Other postings appeared to list names, phone numbers and personal e-mail addresses of military personnel as well as PowerPoint slides and maps.

Most of the material was labeled “FOUO,” which means “For Official Use Only,” but none of it appeared to be classified or sensitive information, suggesting the hackers did not breach classified material.

One of the documents appeared to be slides developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, a federally funded research and development center focused on national security. The slides appeared to depict what it called “scenarios” for conflict with North Korea and China.

An ‘annoyance’

“This is little more than a prank or vandalism. It’s inconvenient and it’s an annoyance. But that’s all it is,” said Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. “It in no way compromises our operations in any way shape or form.”

Warren said Pentagon officials are in contact with Twitter and YouTube to ensure that military passwords and other security for such public websites are adequate.

The tweets came shortly after US Central Command posted its own tweets about the US and partner nations continuing to attack Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria and one repeating a report that said France will deploy an aircraft carrier to the fight.

The hackers titled the Central Command Twitter page “CyberCaliphate” with an underline that said “i love you isis.” And the broader message referred to the ongoing airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria and threatened, “We broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you. You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base.”

It added: “US soldiers! We’re watching you!”

The intrusion on the military Twitter account carried the same logo, CyberCaliphate name and photo that appeared on the Albuquerque Journal’s website in late December when one of its stories was hacked. And earlier this month, it appeared that the same hackers breached the Journal’s Twitter account and also took over the website and Twitter feed of WBOC-TV in Salisbury, Maryland.

The FBI at the time acknowledged it was looking into the Albuquerque case, and WBOC said it was also in contact with the agency.

Some IS militant videos also were posted on the Central Command’s YouTube site, purporting to show military operations and explosions.

“This is something we’re obviously looking into, and something we take seriously,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. But he cautioned against comparisons to the broader hack attack against Sony. “There’s a pretty significant difference between what is a large data breach and the hacking of a Twitter account,” he said.

A senior defense official confirmed that the two accounts were compromised and said US Central Command was taking appropriate measures to address the matter. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak about it publicly on the record.

The military suspended the Central Command Twitter site and terminated the YouTube site. This is not the first time that US government websites or other accounts have been hacked. It was not clear whether the site was attacked by the insurgent group or by sympathizers.–Lolita C. Baldor with Josh Lederman   

source: technology.inquirer.net

PH, US to sign access pact Monday

 MANILA, Philippines—Washington and Manila have reached a 10-year pact that would allow a larger US military presence in the Philippines as it grapples with increasingly tense territorial disputes with China, according to two Philippine officials and a confidential government primer seen by The Associated Press on Sunday.

The Agreement on Enhanced Defense Cooperation, which would give American forces temporary access to selected military camps and allow them to preposition fighter jets and ships, is due to be signed Monday at the Department of Defense, shortly before the arrival of US President Barack Obama, the officials said. Obama’s two-day visit is the last leg of a four-country Asian tour that also took him to Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

The two officials spoke with AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details of the pact ahead of its signing.

“Yes, you can say we got what we wanted,” a ranking government official told the Inquirer. “After 10 years, the agreement may be renewed or not renewed,” said the source who likewise requested anonymity. The term of the agreement was one of the contentious points of the deal, the source said.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and US Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg are to sign the agreement at 10 a.m., just a few hours before Obama arrives in the country.

A Philippine government primer on the defense accord did not indicate how many additional US troops would be deployed “on temporary and rotational basis,” but it said the number would depend on the scale of joint military activities to be held in Philippine camps.    




‘Military occupation’

Militants slammed the agreement, saying it “ushers a new period of military occupation.”

“We condemn in the strongest terms the brazen treachery of the Aquino regime which is set to sign tomorrow the US-PH Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, just before the arrival of US president Obama,” said Bayan Secretary General Renato Reyes in a text message on Sunday.

A nationwide protest is set against the defense pact and Obama’s visit in the country.

He said the deal is an “obvious gift of a puppet president to his imperialist master.”

“Aquino now gains the distinction of reversing the gains from the rejection of US bases in 1991. He ushers a new period of US military occupation, underscoring our country’s status as a neo-colony. We will fight this new foreign imposition,” Reyes also said.

Hundreds of American military personnel have already been deployed in the southern Philippines since 2002 to provide counterterrorism training and as advisers to Filipino soldiers who have been battling Muslim militants for decades.

The Philippine Constitution bars permanent US military bases. Under the agreement, a Filipino base commander would have access to entire areas to be shared with American forces, according to the primer.

Disagreements over Philippine access to designated US areas within local camps had hampered the negotiations for the agreement last year.

Better coordination

The agreement would promote better coordination between US and Filipino forces, boost the 120,000-strong Philippine military’s capability to monitor and secure the country’s territory, and respond to natural disasters and other emergencies.

“Prepositioned materiel will allow for timely responses in the event of disasters—natural or otherwise,” the primer said.

The presence of foreign troops is a sensitive issue in the Philippines, a former American colony.

The Philippine Senate voted in 1991 to close down major US bases at Subic and Clark. However, in 1999, it ratified a pact with the United States allowing temporary visits by American forces. That paved the way for hundreds of US forces to hold counterterrorism combat exercises with Filipino troops dealing with insurgents in the country’s south.

This time, the focus of the Philippines and its underfunded military has increasingly turned to external threats, as territorial spats with China in the potentially oil- and gas-rich South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) have heated up in recent years. The Philippines has turned to Washington, its longtime defense treaty ally, for help to modernize its Navy and Air Force, among Asia’s weakest.

Chinese paramilitary ships took effective control of the disputed Scarborough Shoal (Panatag Shoal), a rich fishing ground off the northwestern Philippines, in 2012. Last year, Chinese coast guard ships were deployed to another contested offshore West Philippine Sea territory, Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal), where they have been trying to block food supplies and rotation of Filipino marines aboard a grounded Philippine Navy ship in the shallow waters of the remote coral outcrops.

Pivot to Asia 


The Philippines’ desire to bolster its territorial defense has dovetailed with Washington’s intention to pivot away from years of heavy military engagement in the Middle East to Asia, partly as a counterweight to China’s rising clout.

Such convergence would work to deter China’s increasingly assertive stance in disputed territories but the question that begs to be answered remains whether Washington would come to the rescue of Manila if its territorial claims over part of the West Philippine Sea escalate into an armed conflict with Beijing.

Obama is to arrive at 1:30 p.m. Monday. Hounding him throughout his trip to Asia is the question on how he would reassure allies of Washington’s support amid China’s expansionism and growing military and economic influence in the region.

It’s the same question that will confront him when he and President Aquino face the media in a joint press conference in Malacañang at 3:25 p.m.

Prior to facing reporters, Obama and Aquino will sit down for an expanded bilateral meeting.

“President Aquino will convey the country’s vision for an enduring and strategic Philippine-US partnership that will be characterized by modern, mature and forward-looking bilateral relations,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma said in a radio interview.

He said this would center on “three major fronts: strengthening political and security cooperation, expanding trade and investments, tourism and development cooperation, and deepening people-to-people ties.”

Mutual defense pact 


Coloma did not say exactly how the new defense agreement with the United States would help the Philippines in its territorial conflict with China. “Our view is that our good coordination with them will continue and so will their commitment to be one with our country in the aspect of national defense based on the existing treaty,” he said.

Coloma was referring to the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, which the Palace considers the foundation of the new defense agreement with Washington.

Article 5 of the treaty states that “an armed attack on either of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the metropolitan territory of either of the parties, or on the island territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific or on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific.”

“In guarding the West Philippine Sea and our exclusive economic zone, we have to do it on our own,” defense analyst Antonio Custodio told the Inquirer. “We should not expect a blank check from the United States,” he said, pointing to the standoff at Scarborough Shoal in 2012. “We lost Scarborough Shoal to China. Where was the United States?”—With reports from Christian V. Esguerra and Nikko Dizon of PDI, and Frances Mangosing of INQUIRER.net

source: globalnation.inquirer.net

Misconduct forces more US soldiers out

WASHINGTON — The number of U.S. soldiers forced out of the Army because of crimes or misconduct has soared in the past several years as the military emerges from a decade of war that put a greater focus on battle competence than on character.


Data obtained by The Associated Press shows that the number of officers who left the Army due to misconduct more than tripled in the past three years. The number of enlisted soldiers forced out for drugs, alcohol, crimes and other misconduct shot up from about 5,600 in 2007, as the Iraq war peaked, to more than 11,000 last year.

The data reveals stark differences between the military services and underscores the strains that long, repeated deployments to the front lines have had on the Army’s soldiers and their leaders.

It also reflects the Army’s rapid growth in the middle part of the decade from 2000 to 2010, and the decisions to relax standards a bit to bring in and retain tens of thousands of soldiers to fill the ranks as the Pentagon added troops in Iraq and continued the fight in Afghanistan.

The Army grew to a peak of about 570,000 soldiers during the height of the wars, and soldiers represented the bulk of the troops on the battlefields compared with the other services.

“I wouldn’t say lack of character was tolerated in (war) theater, but the fact of the last 10 or 12 years of repeated deployments, of the high op-tempo — we might have lost focus on this issue,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s top officer, told the AP last week. “Sometimes in the past we’ve overlooked character issues because of competence and commitment.”

His comments mirror concerns aired by Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several times in recent months. The ethical lapses, Dempsey said, can be attributed in some ways to 10 years at war when the military failed to properly balance character and competence.

“It is not the war that has caused this,” Dempsey said. “It is the pace, and our failure to understand that at that pace, we were neglecting the tools that manage us as a profession over time.”

Over the past year, a series of high profile scandals — from sexual assault and damaging leadership to mistreatment of the enemy and unauthorized spending — has dogged the military, leading to broad ethics reviews and new personnel policies.

Those scandals included the demotion of Army Gen. William “Kip” Ward for lavish, unauthorized spending; sexual misconduct charges against Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair; and episodes of gambling and drinking by other general officers.

More recently, there have been cheating allegations against Air Force nuclear missile launch officers and a massive bribery case in California that has implicated six Navy officers. Examples of troop misconduct include Marines urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters and soldiers posing with body parts of Afghan militants.

As a result, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other leaders say ethics is a priority about which they now routinely lecture troops and officers. They also have undertaken initiatives aimed at identifying and dealing with problem service members.

“We’re paying a lot more attention to it now. We are not tolerant at all of those showing a lack of character,” Odierno said. “We have to refocus ourselves so we get to where we think is the right place.”

In 2010, 119 Army officers were forced to leave the service because of misconduct; that number was fairly consistent with the annual totals since 2000. Last year the number was 387.

For enlisted soldiers, the numbers have seesawed over the past 13 years, hovering near 9,000 at the start of the decade and falling to 5,706 in 2007. Since then, the number has climbed again.

When the country needs a lot of troops on the front lines, more people with behavioral problems are allowed to come in and stay. When the military begins to shrink, commanders can be much more selective about who is kicked out and who is allowed to stay.

As the Army began to reduce its ranks in recent years toward a goal of 490,000 in 2015, leaders have been more willing and able to get rid of problem soldiers. That is likely to escalate because the latest plan would reduce the Army to 420,000 later in the decade if deep, automatic budget cuts continue.

The Navy went through a similar process.

When the decision was made to cut the size of the 370,000-strong naval force in 2004, the number of sailors who left due to misconduct and other behavior issues grew. In 2006, more than 8,400 sailors left due to conduct issues.

As the size of the Navy began to stabilize — it’s now at about 323,000 — the number of problem sailors leaving also began to decline steadily, dropping each successive year to a new low of about 3,700 in 2013.

In nearly one-third of the cases each year over that time period, the problems involved drug and alcohol use. More than 1,400 cases each year involved a “serious offense” or civil or criminal court case.

The Navy has become known as the most transparent service, often quicker to publicly fire commanders for misconduct or poor leadership. But the number of Navy officers forced out has remained relatively constant, ranging from 84 to 107 annually for the past eight years. The bulk of those were for what the service calls “unacceptable conduct” or unfitness for duty.

The Air Force, which is smaller than the Navy and Army, reported far fewer cases of airmen leaving for misconduct, both for officers and enlisted service members. The number of officers separated from service since 2000 due to a court-martial ranged from a low of 20 in 2001 to a high of 68 in 2007. For enlisted airmen, the number ranged from a high of nearly 4,500 in 2002 to a low of almost 2,900 in 2013.

Data for the Marine Corp, the military’s smallest service, was not broken out by officers and enlisted personnel. Overall, it showed that Marines leaving the service due to misconduct was about 4,400 in 2007, but has declined to a bit more than 3,000 last year.

Those forced to leave for commission “of a serious offense” has nearly doubled from about 260 to more than 500 over the past seven years. The number of Marines who left after court-martial has dropped from more than 1,300 in 2007 to about 250 last year. The Marine Corps also grew in size during the peak war years, and is now reducing its ranks.

Across the services, leaders are trying to deal with complex questions about how to identify and correct the problems.

He said he is appointing a top officer to work with the services on the problem, and he will be addressing the topic at regularly scheduled meetings with his military leaders.

The military services have been adding more lectures on ethics in their schools, and are also targeting top officers.

Lower-ranking service members are being asked to evaluate their higher-ranking superiors as part of the annual performance reviews. That process is slowly being expanded.

“As we conduct operations around the world we represent the United States with our moral and ethical values,” said Odierno. “We believe we should be held to a higher standard.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

US military ‘godsend’ to ‘Yolanda’ victims

ABOARD THE USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — As soon as Navy pilot Matthew Stafford puts his helicopter down in the village of Borongan, he is rushed by dozens of local men who form a line to unload the supplies he has flown in from the USS George Washington aircraft carrier.

On the Philippine islands of Leyte and Samar that were shattered by Typhoon Yolanda (international name Haiyan), there is no doubt about it: the US military has been a godsend.

“It is awesome to see this,” says one grateful villager. “They are saving us.”

But while US military support can be critical when disasters like Yolanda strike, staging massive humanitarian relief missions for allies in need isn’t just about being a good neighbor. They can be a strategic and publicity goldmine for US troops whose presence in Asia isn’t always portrayed in such a favorable light — and a powerful warning to countries that aren’t on board.

“These disasters are not unique only to the Philippines. It will send a signal to all of Southeast Asia, to Asia, that the US is serious about its presence here,” said Philippine political analyst Ramon Casiple. “It’s easy to translate this capability for disaster handling into handling warfare. This is the new orientation of the task forces.”

From the military perspective, humanitarian missions like the ongoing Operation Damayan in the Philippines offer concrete benefits — the chance to operate in far-flung places, build military-to-military alliances and get realistic training — that they may later apply to their primary mission, which will always be fighting and winning wars.

“Crisis response planning is a skillset for the military, so when you have an opportunity to execute crisis response it’s good for your planning team,” said Rear Adm. Mark C. Montgomery, who commands the George Washington strike group, stationed offshore in the Gulf of Leyte. “So, sure, there is a benefit there. But in reality the reason we do this mission is because in the Navy’s list of missions this is one of the significant efforts we plan for.”

In the week since the disaster, the Philippines has started to receive support from military forces around the region. Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have sent aircraft or personnel and more support is expected soon from Brunei, Great Britain, New Zealand and Thailand.



But none has come close to matching the US. Equally importantly, America’s regional rival China has not sent any military personnel, and contributed relatively tiny financial aid.

“This is being done in a big way that highlights the meager response of China — that’s the politics there. They’re saying China is not actually your friend in the region,” said Casiple

“I’m sure China is watching and assessing,” he said. China announced Sunday it is ready to send rescue and medical teams to the Philippines, but did not say when the teams would depart.

For US allies like the Philippines, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand and to some extent Indonesia, it is an affirmation of the US commitment. For others — Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar who are more closely aligned with China — he said the mission is a not-so-subtle message that the U.S remains the biggest power in the region.

Within hours of the typhoon, US Marines were on their way from their bases in Japan to assess the damage and plan out their response. Within days, the George Washington was pulling out of Hong Kong to lead its half-dozen ship battle group to the Gulf of Leyte. By the time they arrived, the US Air Force was already in action.

According to the Marines, US military aircraft have put in nearly 480 flight hours in 186 aircraft sorties, moved nearly 1,200 relief workers into the devastated city of Tacloban and have airlifted nearly 2,900 displaced people from the affected areas. On Saturday alone, they delivered more than 118 tons of food, water and shelter items to Tacloban, Borongan and Guiuan — some of the hardest-hit regions.

More than 600 US military personnel are currently ashore in the Philippines. The USS George Washington strike group adds another 6,200 sailors supporting air operations, and 1,000 Marines and sailors with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit are expected to arrive later this week.

“Getting to help people is actually the primary thing that we signed up to do,” Toby Pickens, a Navy rescue diver, said after helping off-lift supplies during several hours of helicopter operations from the George Washington. “It’s not so much the combat that we are looking for … Compared to anything else we do, I would say that this is by far the tops.”

US military public affairs offices, meanwhile, have been pushing out a torrent of photos, text updates, videos and media packages to play up that message of friendship and support.

Col. Miguel Okol, a spokesman for the Philippine Air Force, said that while he is grateful to the US assistance, he is also keenly aware that this is a military operation, with military implications.

He noted that by working together on humanitarian missions, US and Filipino soldiers are in effect conducting joint military exercises, such as while operating C-130 transport planes. The US has deployed 15 of them in the Philippines, which has three of its own.

“No country buys these kind of transports” purely for humanitarian purposes, he said as he watched two C-130 transport aircraft, one from each country, unload supplies at Villamor Air Base in Manila.
“Together, now, we are doing real operations,” he said.

source: globalnation.inquirer.net