Models for possible Syria interventionSyrian rebel fighters in the southern Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan, June 2013

Models for possible Syria interventionSyrian rebel fighters in the southern Syrian town of Maaret al-Numan, June 2013 Western states have been edging towards more direct support for President Bashar al-Assad's opponents, with the US now saying it will provide military aid to rebels. Here, Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute looks at recent examples of Western military action that could provide models for intervention, if diplomacy fails. US forces were involved in a number of international military operations over the past two decades, from the large-scale intensive warfare of the 1991 Gulf War down to the very small - if albeit tragic - US involvement in Somalia. In all cases, humanitarian concerns were put forward as a key justification, but the real reasons why the US decided to act usually involved broader considerations, such as maintaining regional stability or upholding the cohesion of Nato and other Western-led military alliances. The US also used secret arms supplies to rebels and no-fly zones as key policy instruments even if these ran contrary to international law restrictions, but these were only decisive when combined with a broader US military engagement. IRAQ 1991 Codenamed Operation Desert Storm, the 1991 Gulf War is still considered as a perfect case-study in international intervention, conducted by a US-led global military coalition, fully anchored in international law and boasting an explicit mandate from the UN Security Council, in pursuit of clear and limited objectives. Kuwaitis celebrate with a US marine on 26 February 1991 after the marines entered Sabahiah, near Kuwait City. The 1991 Gulf War achieved its immediate objectives That was partly the result of Saddam Hussein's egregious behaviour: had the Iraqi leader refrained from occupying and annexing all of Kuwait's territory, it is likely that the international response would have been more feeble. And the broader strategic environment also helped: with the Cold War just ended, the Soviet Union was desperate to forge a new partnership with the West, and the moral authority of the US as the supposed "winner" of the 20th Century's ideological contests was at its zenith. Marshalling the required war resources proved relatively straightforward. The anti-Iraq coalition attracted almost one million soldiers from 12 contributing nations, with half of the troops from the US. A further 27 countries offered logistical and financial support. The war achieved its immediate objectives. Iraqi forces were evicted, and Kuwait's sovereignty was restored. More importantly, the US resisted the urging of some of its Arab allies who wanted to continue the fighting deep into Iraqi territory in pursuit of "regime change", precisely because the Americans feared that this would shatter the international consensus and spirit of security co-operation which flourished at that time. However, hopes were dashed that the operation would provide a template for subsequent military interventions, thereby promoting respect for international law and security, because Desert Storm was an old-fashioned, classic war between sovereign states over ownership of a precise bit of territory. As such, it offered few useful lessons for the management of subsequent crises, which usually entailed civil wars fuelled by the internal collapse of fragile states. Meanwhile, the post-Cold War momentum for international co-operation also evaporated. Just one year after Desert Storm, Russia and the US were again at loggerheads over the legality of international interventions in the Balkans. BALKANS A series of Yugoslav wars began soon after Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence from the other republics of Yugoslavia on 25 June 1991, and lasted in one way or another for the remainder of the 1990s. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote The purposes of the military operations in the Balkans were, therefore, more realistic that those currently pursued in Syria” End Quote When efforts to prevent Yugoslavia's violent break-up failed, European leaders insisted that this was "their hour", and they should be allowed to handle the crises in their backyard alone. The US administration of President Bill Clinton readily acquiesced, but it quickly became clear that the Europeans were both unwilling and unable to prevent bloodshed in the Balkans. Croatia's territory was torn apart by a rebellion of ethnic Serbs, and a vicious war erupted in Bosnia-Hercegovina, another republic which seceded from Yugoslavia in March 1992. European nations - with Britain and France in the lead - were increasingly drawn in, unwilling to take part in the war but unable to keep the peace. The outcome was that they watched helplessly as the siege of Sarajevo throttled the Bosnian capital, and thousands were massacred in places such as Srebrenica in July 1995, right under the noses of UN peacekeepers. It ultimately took the US to overturn this depressing spiral of violence, largely by supplying the anti-Serb resistance in both Croatia and Bosnia with weapons, in defiance of a UN-mandated embargo. Belgrade skyline after Nato air strikes, March 1999 Nato strikes in 1999 did not destroy the Serbian military, but the Serbs were isolated That helped turn the pressure on the Serbs, but only because it was accompanied by a US-led air campaign against Serb paramilitaries that paved the way for the imposition of the US-negotiated Dayton Agreement, ending the Bosnia war in November 1995. US jets also provided the bulk of the 38,000 sorties that Nato conducted against Serbia between March and June 1999, in an effort to prevent massacres in Kosovo, then an ethnically-Albanian province of Serbia. In both Bosnia and Kosovo, US air power failed to dislodge Serb forces or destroy the Serbian military. Still, the Serbs were forced to accept US-dictated settlements to their wars, largely because they were alone: Russian support for Serbia remained confined to rhetoric, unlike Iranian support for today's Syria, which consists of both weapons and battle-hardened fighters. The US also eschewed grand objectives, like the recreation of Yugoslavia or regime change in Serbia: the purposes of the military operations in the Balkans were, therefore, more realistic that those currently pursued in Syria. The Kosovo operation remained legally controversial. Although the UN Security Council expressly linked its resolutions demanding the end of violence in Kosovo to "enforcement measures" under the UN Charter, Russia denied that this gave either the US or Nato the right to use force. By the late 1990s, however, the Europeans were so exhausted by the seemingly unending crises in the Balkans that they accepted both US military leadership and Washington's legal justifications. Still, throughout the Yugoslav wars the Europeans supplied most of the troops on the ground in the Balkans - the US contribution was overwhelmingly in terms of air power and precision munitions. SOMALIA Faced with a humanitarian disaster precipitated by a complete failure of the Somali state, the UN Security Council authorised in December 1992 the creation of an international force with the aim of facilitating humanitarian supplies. Somalis look at the wreckage of a US helicopter in Mogadishu, October 1993 "Black Hawk Down" led to the rapid withdrawal of American troops The US was not initially involved in this effort and had little at stake in the Horn of Africa. However, the Americans gradually started contributing to the Somalia operation, partly because it was judged to deserve international support, but largely because US President Bill Clinton wished to deflect criticism about America's refusal to contribute to UN-led operations in Yugoslavia at that same time. The result was, however, a creeping US military involvement without a clear objective which culminated in disaster: The deaths of 18 US servicemen during the Battle of Mogadishu - more commonly referred to as Black Hawk Down - on 3 and 4 October 1993. The tragedy had an immediate impact on American public opinion. US troops were hastily withdrawn, though the civil war in Somalia continued. The Somalia episode has gone down in the Pentagon's strategic annals as a classic example of how not to conduct an international operation. LIBYA It was not the US, but France and Britain that sought UN Security Council authorisation for a humanitarian operation that they said was needed to save the residents of the rebel city of Benghazi from being massacred by forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Vehicles belonging to forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi explode after an air strike by Nato forces, Libya, March 2011 Russia says Nato exceeded its mandate in Libya Nevertheless, the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 on 17 March 2011 that provided the justification for military action would not have been possible without the diplomatic lobbying of US senior diplomats, who succeeded in persuading both Russia and China to abstain rather than veto the resolution. Nor would the subsequent air campaign have succeeded without the logistical, intelligence and ordnance support provided by the US. European commentators derisively accused the US of "leading from behind" in Libya by refusing to put American soldiers in harm's way. Yet it was the US that bore the biggest military burden for an operation that took much longer than anyone envisaged before Muammar Gaddafi was killed on 20 October 2011. Russia, however, has protested ever since that the initial UN Security Council resolution only authorised the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya, and not a blanket, Nato-led bombardment that continued for months. The Russians were also angered by the fact that, although all Western governments denied any intention to promote "regime change" in Libya, in practice the Western military offensive continued precisely until Gaddafi was overthrown. The dispute over Libya led directly to the current diplomatic impasse over Syria. Russia is determined to veto any UN resolution almost regardless of its content, largely because it fears that, as happened during the 1999 Kosovo crisis and the 2011 Libya showdown, the US and its Western allies would misinterpret these resolutions as a blank cheque to do as they please. The Russians are also threatening to supply S-300 surface-to-air missiles to Syrian government forces should Western government begin supplies of weapons to Syrian rebels, precisely because Moscow is no longer willing to be out-manoeuvred by illicit Western weapon deliveries, as it was during the Balkan wars of the 1990s

Your phone is blabbing your location to anyone who will listen

Your phone is blabbing your location to anyone who will listen Devin Coldewey NBC News Aug. 31, 2013 at 12:18 PM ET Renew Renew Unique numbers associated with our devices can be harvested and tracked. Everywhere you go, your phone is sending out signals that can be assembled to form a picture of your movements. You can't turn them off, and companies have begun to pick them up, often without any indication that they're doing so. As this trend develops, smartphones could spell the end of real-world privacy. "It'll get worse before it gets better," mobile industry expert Chetan Sharma told NBC News. "Unless leaders step up and work on a framework that works for all consumers, it's going keep getting worse and worse until it is unbearable." That prediction may sound grim, but alarming examples are mounting. A company called Renew recently enabled the LCD-toting "smart trash bins" in London to record the unique MAC addresses — broadcasted in order to facilitate network connections — of devices in the hands or pockets of passersby. In a single day, just a fraction of the network of smart bins collected data from nearly a million devices. By comparing when a device was in range of one bin to when it appeared at another, or for how long it stayed in range, the movements of these devices could be determined with a high degree of accuracy. All of this happened without a single person noticing — no consent, no warning, no opportunity to opt out. Renew Renew This graph from Renew shows how much foot traffic was observed passing by each "smart bin" thoughout a 3-day period. It's not the first time such tracking has been done — the fashion retail company Nordstrom tried it out recently, and other firms are already selling this service to brick-and-mortar retailers — but it was perhaps the most high-profile revelation of the practice, triggering an Internet outcry and a conciliatory blog post from Renew's CEO. "The process is very much like a website," wrote Renew's Kaveh Memari, after explaining that the real-world (but, he stressed, anonymous) tracking had been discontinued. "You can tell how many hits you have had and evaluate repeat visitors, but we cannot tell anything personal about any of the visitors on the website." This is a common argument of those who track us on the Web — but of course, with enough collected data points, a personalized portrait is easy to paint. The scary part is that if Renew hadn't said anything, no one would even have known the bins were collecting all of this data. You can't opt out of something you don't know is happening to you. "People are not consenting to this," ACLU electronic privacy expert Christopher Soghoian told NBC News. "The phone doesn't vibrate every time the store tracks them." Soghoian said it would be trivial to block such tracking attempts, particularly since MAC addresses can be switched without causing problems. However, mobile operating systems like Android and iOS have "not been built with privacy in mind." It's not just a matter of fixing this one vulnerability, said Bruce Schneier, another leading security technologist. "Tracking technology will just get better," he told NBC News. If they can't identify a MAC address or some other software feature, he said, "they actually can use the noise pattern from your antenna." That gives your phone a fingerprint that can't be overwritten or hidden. surveillance David Moir / Reuters A surveillance export observes feeds from CCTV cameras in Edinburgh, Scotland. If you're walking through a park and someone takes your picture, that photographer might argue that you didn't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. You were, after all, in plain view. So what about with your smartphone? Can you even expect privacy for your device, which is constantly reaching out to cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, if it's out in "plain view" of other machines? Yes, say the experts. Sharma noted that with, for example, CCTV cameras, people are clear on the fact that they're being recorded, and they understand what is being captured. That's not the case with this kind of electronic surveillance. Not only is there no requirement for companies to alert users that this type of information is being collected, there's no mechanism for it. "There's a consistent, systematic violation of privacy by — I'm not going to say everyone, but a significant number of the big players," warned Sharma. Euclid is a technology company that, like Renew, tracks foot traffic by "sensing" smartphones. Its system, sold to retailers, not only tracks "how shoppers flow through your store" but it keeps tabs on "their visit duration, and return shopping patterns." "To be honest, the industry standard is no disclosure whatsoever," said John Fu, Euclid marketing director, told tech site ITWorld earlier this year. "Whether they’re using cameras, infrared, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi, no one is doing really good notification." Euclid Euclid Diagrams from Euclid show how Wi-Fi harvesting can track customers' movements and habits. The problem is that customer tracking is potentially so lucrative — and really, it could also be useful. Marketers will want to know what area of town you eat lunch in, so they can offer coupons when you step outside the office. Retailers want to know which of their locations has the most foot traffic, or where people stay seated the longest. And users, of course, want their phone to be remembered for ease of connection with local Wi-Fi spots. But what if an insurance company got data from such points that suggested you regularly sped on your way to work? Or if your employer found that your phone was hanging out at a bar when you'd called in sick? If you're still not creeped out by the possibilities, think about this: Google filed for a patent in 2011 detailing what they call "pay-per-gaze" advertising. It would track what someone wearing a Google Glass-like device was looking at, and alert advertisers which billboards and brands users saw, studied, or skipped. A "Minority Report"-esque scheme of hyper-personalized ads isn't as far away as you'd think. And things may get pretty serious before regulators get involved, or before developers decide that protecting privacy is more profitable than invading it. "Obviously, data is not bad," said Sharma. "Data is great. It just needs to be paired with transparency and easier ways to have privacy. At some point you cross a line — society needs to establish where that line is."