Fear in Syria: Secret Police Swarm Damascus, Say Residents (Time.com)

The capital of Syria has the illusion of calm. But do not trust appearances. In fact, trust is a very precious commodity in Damascus nowadays. The city, according to residents, is swarming with secret police. Nobody dares speak out against the government. In central districts of the capital, the number of street peddlers seems to have quadrupled. The scuttlebutt is that the extra sales force is being employed by the government to spy on and even beat anyone attempting to rally. Indeed, while small protests have materialized in some suburbs, they have been quickly broken up by baton-wielding thugs.

It is almost impossible to gauge the significance of the crisis going on in the rest of the country. "There are no problems in Syria," a taxi driver spat out in response to a question, his cigarette almost falling out of his mouth and his eyes widening. To strangers, the citizens of Damascus are quick to applaud President Bashar Assad and blame terrorists and gun smugglers for the unrest. That is the official government line. However, as rapport is built and conversations ease, it is clear that few believe what they preach. "Outside Damascus, it's a big problem. Many have been killed," the rugged taxi driver admitted suddenly, sheepishly. (See pictures of protests in Syria.)

The view from broad is that Syria is the very model of tyrannical repression. Following in Barack Obama's footsteps, the European Union slapped sanctions on Assad on Monday after one of the bloodiest weekends in the country's nine-week uprising. Local human-rights activists say the repression has so far left more than 1,000 people dead. E.U. foreign ministers condemned the "ongoing repression in Syria and the unacceptable violence" wreaked on peaceful protests and called for the end of mass arrests and torture and for the Assad government to allow in aid workers, medics and journalists.

Antigovernment activists in Syria are unimpressed. "Nothing will change here," an activist in Damascus said. "Obama placed sanctions on Assad last week, and look at what happened this weekend." Syria is reeling after a weekend when security forces fired into crowds of mourners who took part in a funeral procession for antigovernment protesters killed last week. The death toll on Fridays has been falling steadily since April 22, when more than 100 people were killed. (Friday is the Islamic holy day and the occasion for people gathered to pray at mosques to then band together to march in protest.) But that doesn't mean the government has relented in its shooting spree. On May 20, police fired on demonstrations across the country, killing at least 44 people, according to human-rights groups outside Syria that collate the names of the dead. (See "Did Obama's Speech Give Syria's Assad a Breather?")

And the government has also opened fire on the funerals of those who died. In Syria, as is customary elsewhere in the sweltering Middle East, funerals are often held the day after a person dies. In Homs, a central city that has become a hub for the antigovernment movement, 11 more people died when police fired on mourners carrying coffins on their shoulders on major roads.

Nadim Houry, Human Rights Watch's senior researcher for Syria and Lebanon, said there have been no signs that the Syrian government has become any less brutal since the start of the protests in mid-March. "I haven't seen the government show more restraint," he said. "The government has not got to a stage where they are more tolerant of protests," he added. International rhetoric and sanctions, it seems, have not had much effect so far.

Fearful of being tailed in Damascus, revolutionaries are traveling out of the capital to protest. One activist, who will be referred to as Ammar, said that every Thursday he travels to Homs to protest. "In Homs I could get shot, but in Damascus I'll get arrested and thrown in jail before we can even organize a protest," he said, speaking in a smoky old Damascene cafE, confident that the ambient noise of the lively room would drown out his dissenting views. It is well known, he said, that phones and e-mails are tapped. Ammar will talk only in person. (See how public spaces helped mold the Arab Spring.)

But stories from beyond Damascus are trickling into the capital. Another activist, who asked to be referred to as Noor, moved to Damascus this year to study. She says accounts are leaking out from friends and family back home of atrocities committed by security forces. On May 21, in Noor's sandy eastern hometown, near the Iraqi border, 17-year-old activist Mohammed Akram al-Tumeh poured lamp oil over his body and set himself alight in a central street only hours after he was released from prison for protesting. Noor's friends say that when the police released Tumeh, he was covered in bruises, and there are rumors that he was sexually abused in jail. Tumeh died on May 22.

With YouTube full of graphic videos showing children dying of bullet wounds and old men bleeding to death in the back of pickup trucks, Noor says that more and more Syrians who sat on the fence before for fear of the secret police are now willing to rise up. It remains to be seen whether the self-immolation of Tumeh will fully parallel that of the Tunisian vegetable vendor whose death ignited antigovernment protests across the Middle East.

For Noor, the question of whether sanctions will work is immaterial. She believes that in Syria, as it did in Tunisia and Egypt, anger will eventually overtake fear. Says Noor: "I know that I will be arrested or killed if I go out and protest in Damascus. But after learning what has happened to Syrians, I can't sit at home. That is as bad as watching it happen in front of you and not doing anything."

See how democracy can work in the Middle East.

See TIME's special report "The Middle East in Revolt."

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Key role in bin Laden raid for secret choppers

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secret until now, stealth helicopters may have been key to the success of the Osama bin Laden raid. But the so-far-unexplained crash of one of the modified Black Hawks at the scene apparently compromised at least some of the aircraft's secrets.

The two choppers evidently used radar-evading technologies, plus noise and heat suppression devices, to slip across the Afghan-Pakistan border, avoid detection by Pakistani air defenses and deliver two dozen Navy SEALs into the al-Qaida leader's lair. Photos of the lost chopper's wrecked tail are circulating online — proving it exists and also exposing sensitive details.

President Barack Obama traveled Friday to Fort Campbell, Ky., and met privately with the elite Army pilots who flew the daring mission. They are members of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, nicknamed the Night Stalkers, and he saluted them in public remarks afterward.

The reason one of the helicopters crash landed at the bin Laden compound has not been disclosed, but Daniel Goure, a defense specialist at the Lexington Institute think tank, said Friday it might be explained by the unusual aerodynamics resulting from the aircraft's modifications.

"It could be much more difficult to fly, particularly at slow speed and landing than you would expect from a typical Black Hawk," Goure said.

The U.S. military's first stealth aircraft, the now-defunct F-117 fighter jet, was notoriously difficult to handle in flight, officials have said.

Night Stalker pilots also fly other, publicly acknowledged versions of the Black Hawk that are specially equipped with advanced navigation systems, plus devices allowing for low-level and all-weather flight, day or night. Those are rigged to permit occupants to "fast rope" from the helicopter as it hovers just off the ground — a technique used in the bin Laden assault.

Also taking part in the bin Laden mission were two MH-47 Chinooks, specially modified versions of the heavy-lift Chinook helicoptersthat are widely used by the Army's conventional forces.

The MH-47s are flown by the 160th, the Night Stalkers. Those aircraft are not known to have stealth capabilities, although one was summoned to the scene of the raid after one of the stealthy Black Hawks crash-landed, in order to help ferry the SEAL contingent out of Pakistan.

Many aspects of stealth technology have been known for decades, including the use of angled aircraft edges and composite materials to make aircraft less visible on radar. The Army began a program to build a new class of helicopter with stealth technology in 1992. Known as the RAH-66 Comanche, it was canceled in 2004, in part to speed up development of drone aircraft.

Bill Sweetman, editor-in-chief of Defense Technology International and a long-time student of stealth aircraft development, said the biggest secret behind the stealth helicopter is simply that it existed.

"There was obviously a fairly high risk that you were going to compromise it one way or another the minute you used it," he said in an Associated Press interview.

The decision to use the helicopters reflected the extraordinary stakes involved in eliminating bin Laden, the world's most-wanted terrorist. It is not known whether the choppers have been used in earlier Special Operations raids, but Dick Hoffman, a former Navy SEAL and now a defense analyst at the Rand Corp. think tank, said he had never before heard of their existence.

Hoffman said in a telephone interview that the apparent stealth technology on the choppers boosted the raid's chances for success.

"Getting into the target area undetected is hugely important, especially with these terrorist targets and militia targets," he said. He noted that the SEAL team did not arrive at the Abbottabad compound in complete silence, since a resident in the same town was writing on Twitter during the raid that he could hear one or more helicopters and wondered what was happening.

But the modifications that suppressed noise from the helicopters — including the use of extra blades in the tail rotor and placement of a hubcap-like cover on the rotor — may have been sufficient to allow the assault teams to get on the ground before bin Laden and his security guards could mount enough of a defense to slow the SEALS; only one of the defenders was said to have gotten off a shot.

Noise suppression, Goure said, is "a huge advantage in these kinds of strikes."

Some elements of that noise suppression technology were visible in photos of the tail section that was left behind. The main body of the helo was blown up by the SEALs before they left with bin Laden's body, apparently in order to prevent the exposure of other secret stealth components.

A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Col. David Lapan, declined to say Friday whether Pakistan was resisting U.S. efforts to retrieve the remains of the chopper.

Sweetman said it was remarkable that the SEALs managed to swoop into the compound and catch the bin Laden party by surprise.

"They're probably expecting that someday they could get a visit from (U.S.) Special Forces," he said. "But they would also be expecting to hear helicopters for a few minutes before they arrive overhead. If your first warning is that you hear the thing and then you look up and it's right there, you've lost valuable time."

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Is your iPhone tracking your movements and keeping a secret file?

The Guardian newspaper has stirred up major buzz on the Web today with a report that two security researchers have apparently discovered that Apple's iPhone keeps track of a user's every movement and stores it on a secret file inside the device.

Moreover, writes The Guardian's Charles Arthur, the data -- which contains latitude and longitude and timestamp -- are then copied to the owner's computer when the devices are synchronized.

He says researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have posted details on their blogs and on a website that addresses key questions.

Meanwhile, Gizmodo's Sam Biddle used the data he found on his phone to post a map that he calls "jarringly accurate" of his travels up and down the East Coast over the past year.

Biddle writes that the phone appears to rely on tower triangulation rather than GPS pinpointing, meaning it doesn't help to switch off "location services."

How troubling is this? Here's how security researcher Allan puts it:

"Neither Pete nor myself think there is any sort of conspiracy going on, however we're both worried about this level of detailed location data being out there in the wild."

Biddle says he has asked Apple for commentary.

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Secret memo suggests FBI had a mole inside ABC News in 1990s

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Update at 5:56 p.m. ET: Gawker claims it knows who the mole was: Christopher Isham, now the Washington bureau chief for CBS News and a network vice president. He declined to comment, and a CBS spokeswoman said, "This is a matter for ABC News."

Read Gawker's report to see how it deduced the informant's ID -- and how CBS responded to the initial report.

By Douglas Stanglin
USA TODAY

Original post: A once-secret memo shows that the FBI treated a senior ABC News journalist as a potential confidential informant in the 1990s, beginning with information the reporter supplied at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, The Center for Public Integrity reports.

The journalist's name is not disclosed in the document, which is labeled "secret."

But it shows that the journalist not only cooperated with the FBI in the 1995-96 period, but provided the bureau with the identity of a confidential source in what the center calls a possible breach of journalist ethics.

The center quotes one journalism professor as saying that the fact that the journalist was given an informant number and had contributed information in the past indicates he or she was sharing the information in the public good.

ABC News tells CPI that it is not certain about the identity of the journalist, but does not believe he or she still works for the network.

Spokesman Jeffrey Schneider tells the center, however, that the FBI description of its interactions with the reporter raises serious concerns about intrusions on the First Amendment.

The memo was recently discovered by a Utah lawyer who found it -- unredacted and still marked 'secret' -- in a box of documents gathered by attorneys for Terry Nichols, a defendant in the Oklahoma City bombings.

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