Morning Security Brief: The War Logs, BlackBerry's Security Threat, Radicalization, HLS Summer Camp, & Hackers

♦ Yesterday, nearly 100,000 U.S. military documents were released in what could be  the "biggest leak in intelligence history," reports New York's Daily News. Released by the whistleblowing site WikiLeaks, "The War Logs" were given to The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegelweeks ago to review. (Click on the prior links to see full coverage of the documents.) "The data is overwhelming - 92,201 internal records - and serves to offer a glimpse into the day-to-day struggles, challenges, frustrations and failures of a military on the ground fighting a slippery and violent insurgency," according to the Daily News. "A mountain of information, the documents reveal that hundreds of civilian casualties have gone unreported."

♦ The United Arab Emirates telecommunications watchdog has released a statement calling BlackBerry phones a security threat. "The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said in a statement carried late Sunday on the state news agency that BlackBerry devices operate 'beyond the jurisdiction' of national laws because the data they carry is managed by a foreign company," reports the Associated Press. "As a result of how Blackberry data is managed and stored, in their current form, certain Blackberry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions," the regulator's statement read.

♦ Non-violent Islamic extremism groups are not a pathway to terrorist violence, classified British reports argue. "One paper, classified 'Restricted' and entitled 'Government strategy towards extremism', says: 'It is sometimes argued that violent extremists have progressed to terrorism by way of a passing commitment to non-violent Islamist extremism, for example of a kind associated with al-Muhajiroun or Hizb ut Tahrir ... We do not believe that it is accurate to regard radicalisation in this country as a linear "conveyor bel" moving from grievance, through radicalisation, to violence … This thesis seems to both misread the radicalisation process and to give undue weight to ideological factors.'" The Sunday Telegraph reports. The paper also disagrees with the above assessment. "In fact, at least 19 terrorists convicted in Britain have had links with al-Muhajiroun, including Omar Khayam, sentenced to life imprisonment as leader of the 'fertiliser bomb' plot, and Abdullah Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the airliner 'liquid bomb' plot, who is also serving life," according to the Telegraph.

♦ Nine middle- and high-school students in Central Pennsylvania are participating in an unorthodox camp this summer put on by Penn State: Homeland Security Summer Camp. "P.J. Ferretti, 15, of Bainbridge, was among nine middle and high school students doing that last week in a summer camp on national security at Penn State Harrisburg," reports the Centre Daily Times. "The camp was Penn State Harrisburg’s way of meeting a requirement for summer 'pre-college' programming in return for receiving a $1 million federal grant to expand national security initiatives."

♦ Yahoo may invest in hackers who's creativity could help the company perfect its products and services, reports TechWorld. "The Internet company does not have a fund earmarked for this purpose, or a definite model or set of criteria for such investments," Jeff Kinder, Yahoo’s senior vice president for media products and solutions, told the Web site. "Hackers and Open Hack Days have proven to be important sources of new ideas and technologies for Yahoo, Kinder said. Meme, now a microblogging site, was transformed from an internal Yahoo product idea into a product on Yahoo’s platform after an Open Hack Day in Brazil in late 2008."