The Defense Department is changing how it uses military recruiting database information, following a settlement reached in a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five high school students. The suit challenged the legality of the manner in which DOD collected and used information in the Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies, or JAMRS database, claiming it violated their privacy rights. The Pentagon reportedly has agreed to stop disseminating the information to other government agencies and to limit retention of the information to three years.
U.S. Southern Command recently announced its first lethal strike on a suspected narco-trafficking vessel in two months, and the first under a newly formed permanent counter-cartel task force. The U.S. is also reportedly planning to transfer MQ-9 drones to Colombia to bolster its counter-cartel efforts.