One year ago, most people on either side of Atlantic had scant or no knowledge of the NSA and its activities. Edward Snowden’s
revelations changed all that and rocked one of the pillars of transatlantic relations.
The same situation happened with Vault 7 revelation and CIA capabilities as for false flag operation in cyberspace. Actually
cyberspace is an ideal space for false flag operation and using such unscrupulous middleman as Crowdstrike you can bothe plant and
reveal what ever you wish.
It is clear the CIA uses hacks for false flag operations and has tools that do just that -- imitate malware from a
particular state of other players, while performing the hack themselves. Then blaming the arget of this false flag operation. False
flag operation in cyberspace are much easier then with material object as there are more possibilities to hide the trace.
We can now talk about global cyber war unleashed by the USA after year 2000. It already has three stages:
Stuxnet discovery (2010) and Flame revelations (2012). Those worms were pretty complex creation which were clearly
stated by state actors. They are typically attributed to the NSA (although Israel may also participated in the development in
some role). At this point (2010) the technologies used in Stuxnet and Flame became public knowledge and the trust toward
the US producer of hardware was undermined.
Edward Snowden revelations (2013) signify the round two this Global Cyberwar. As the result the confidence
in Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, etc was undermined (many companies prohibited employees to use Facebook) and in government
sector completely disappeared. That also changed behaviour of both US friends and "adversaries" (which are few states which does
not want to accept the USA dictat). The level of damage Snowden did to the USA "intelligence complex" should be
underestimated. There was a huge fallout. For example Obama personally and his
administration
did lost moral high ground. From this point Obama generally looks more like an employee of a three letter agency (specifically as
Brennan subordinate) rather then the
President of the country. Public was really alarmed and became somewhat paranoid. As one commenter stated: "it's easy to poke fun
at the Snowden affair from many angles, but I, for one, do not like the idea of any Agency anywhere,
governmental or private, reading my e-mails and monitoring my calls. "
There was angry voices:
Peter Schaar, Germany's freedom of information commissioner, told Reuters he wanted "clarity"
from the United States "regarding these monstrous allegations of total monitoring of various
telecommunications and Internet services." Another German official has called for a boycott
of the companies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is running for reelection, has said she will
raise the issue with Obama this week either at Lough Erne or in Berlin.
"The most upset party in all of this, I think, is the Germans," said Michael J. Geary, an assistant
professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and an expert on Europe. "The Germans were
the most snooped-upon country, apparently, in March. In a country where memories of the former East
German Stasi are still quite fresh, the response has been quite critical." Geary described Europeans
as "peeved" and "quite annoyed" at the U.S. actions and said they have the potential to set
back sensitive trade negotiations and do damage to transatlantic relations. "It's a major PR
disaster for the administration," he said. "Now, they have really lost the moral high ground."
Wikileaks Vault 7 release (2017). It was not the initial release, just the most publicized case. At this point the cat
was already out of the bag for a long time. Now with CIA tools available on the Internet we can talk about the
third phase of this global Cyberwar. One of the most damaging revelations ws that CIA has tools to create cyber
attacks under the false flag. It also became clea that CIA’s secret hacking division had produced malware and other means of
hacking iPhones, Android phones, Samsung Smart TVs. As well as some
popular encrypted apps like WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram. All of them were also targeted. At some point CIA lost control of
their whole arsenal of highly advanced hacking tools and malware and it became its travel first of "dark Internet" and then
on "grey. ". at this point cat was out of the bag and other government start paying serious attention both to
cyber-defense and cyber offence. This is not only a gross, malignant incompetence.
It shows clearly that CIA again is was totally out of control (and crossed the boundaries with NSA) for duration
of Bush II and two terms of Obama administration. May be longer.
Like with Snowden scandal Obama tried to swipe the dirt under the carpet ("change we can believe in" -- what a cruel joke)
There are several good YouTube presentation on the topic. Among them:
This first part in the series has 8,761 documents and files from a high-security network at
Langley. WikiLeaks dump amounted to several hundred million lines
of code — bu this is probably less them full archive that was circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors. WikiLeaks was given “portions” of the archive.
In any case tremendous amount of taxpayers money was spent on this dirty adventure
In other word the USA unleashed three stages of global cyberwar and which now endanger its own infrastructure. So by by virtue of
its own actions the USA became much less secure and now it is tremendously more difficult to protect the infrastructure from
intrusions, which became more sophisticated. To the great joy of all those snake oil security solutions salesmen like
Crowdstrike.
So a lot of "security parasites" got access to serious money, imitating previous ISS "achievements" on the new level (with the
same dream of being bought by somebody big before some spectacular failure of their products).
One of first signs of this damages are talks that DNC was hacked specifically to conceal Seth Rich or somebody else leak
and then this hack was malignantly attributed to Russians using greedy and biased Crowdstrike cyber warriors which
performed the attribution (while details are secret, Crowdstrike attribution of DNC hack to Russians (which FBI took at face value;
a very usual step). BTW the level of hype over Crowstrike products does reminds me days of ISS glory ;-). Probably they are the same
type of greedy and unscrupulous security parasites ready for money to do anything. Both can sell for money their own mother.
More about Vault 7
CIA surveillance and hacking tools not eroded transatlantic trust but also reveals internal political
struggle within intelligence CIA, with some forces consider CIA too dangerous and out of control and
ready to risk their life to cut CIA influence. As was with Snowden revelations this is another game changer:
When the
Guardian started reporting on the largest disclosure of secret NSA files in the history of the
agency in June, it was only a question of time before the information spill reached America's allies
overseas. That's because the NSA's prime duty is to monitor and collect global signals intelligence.
The agency is by law prohibited from conducting electronic surveillance on Americans except under
special circumstances.
In the Guardian's first story on how the NSA was collecting the metadata of phone calls from Verizon,
a major US carrier, it was clear that data of European citizens would be involved, since the NSA's
secret court order included all calls made from and to the US.
But it was the second scoop on the NSA's
PRISM
program that really blew the story wide open. It revealed that the agency was siphoning off personal
data like email, chats and photos from the world's biggest Internet companies including Google, Microsoft,
Apple and Yahoo.
This also reveals the real danger of modern smartphones and PC. Smartphones now are pretty powerful computer in their
own right and the fact the vulnerabilities are literally planted into popular
operating system and applications caused public outrage. It also might speed up balkanization of Internet,
started after Snowden revelations, as foreign countries now clearly want to control information flows
from and to thier country. so far only China totally control those flows.
How it will affect US manufactures of hardware, especially PC and smartphone we can only guess.
Here are direct quotes from WikiLeaks describing Vault 7 (Heavy.com)
By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the
agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5,000 registered users and
had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other
“weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its
hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had
created, in effect, its ‘own NSA’ with even less accountability and without
publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on
duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified. In a statement to
WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be
debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its
mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source
wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use,
proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”
These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal,
Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the ‘smart’ phones that they run
on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.”
WikiLeaks continued.
The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came
after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share
of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The
government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered
after 2010 on an ongoing basis. ‘Year Zero’ documents show that the CIA breached
the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the
CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival
intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.”
WikiLeaks redacted and anonimized some of the information before releasing it,
including CIA targets throughout the U.S. and the world.
Here are just some highlights about how the hacks worked, according to WikiLeaks:
Samsung Smart TVs are vulnerable due to a Weeping Angel hack
that puts the TV in a “Fake-Off” mode. The owner believes the TV is off when it’s
actually on, allowing the CIA to record conversations in the room and send them
through the internet to a covert CIA server.
Vehicle Control Systems of Cars and Trucks: It’s not known if
these were hacked, but in 2014 the CIA was looking into infecting vehicle control
systems used by modern cars and trucks. Motivation was unknown.
Remotely Hack Smart Phones: Infected phones would send the
user’s geolocation, audio, and texts. It could covertly activate the camera and
mic of the phone. A special division was devoted to hacking iOS products, like
iPhones and iPads. Android phone were also targeted.
Bypassing Encrypted Apps: The CIA used techniques to
bypass encrypted apps. WikiLeaks listed the following: WhatsApp, Signal,
Telegram, Wiebo, Confide, and Clockman. The smart phones would be hacked first,
and then audio and message traffic was collected before encryption was
applied through the apps.
Targeting Microsoft, Linux, and OSx with Malware: The CIA’s
efforts also focused on infecting Microsoft Windows users with malware. Microsoft
was targeted via viruses injected through CDs/DVDs, USBs, data hidden in images,
covert disk areas, and other types of malware. Malware attacks were also aimed at
Mac OS X, Solaris, Linus, and more.
Phones Running Presidential Twitter Accounts: Interestingly,
WikiLeaks wrote that “specific CIA malware revealed in Year Zero is able to
penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs
or has run presidential Twitter accounts.” As WikiLeaks mentioned, if the CIA can
hack these phones, so can anyone else who obtained or discovered the
vulnerability. When WikiLeaks obtained the hack, it had been distributed to others
too.
Router Exploitations: Hundreds of router exploitations are
listed in the document.
The CIA Can Misdirect Their Cyber Attacks to Look Like Someone Else:
According to WikiLeaks,
the CIA collects attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states
including Russia via a project called UMBRAGE. The CIA does this for many reasons,
but one use they can do is leave behind fingerprints that misdirect attribution,
making it look like their cyber attack was done by someone else. (Note: It’s
unclear at this time if the misdirection is WikiLeaks’ interpretation of one thing
the CIA could do, or if there’s a specific place in the document where
the CIA mentions this use of UMBRAGE.)
Because the CIA kept the vulnerabilities hidden, even after they were exposed,
WikiLeaks said this put the population at large at risk, including members of the
U.S. government, Congress, top CEOs, and engineers. Without letting Apple and Google
know about their vulnerabilities, the companies had no means to fix the hacks after
they leaked.
According to WikiLeaks, an archive with the malware and other exploits was being circulated for at
least a year and
only fraction of it was given to WikiLeaks by an unnamed source..
Antivirus Hack Details
So what are some of the takeways from this? There are many. But essentially,
because the CIA was targeting Android devices, iOS devices, Smart TVs, and even
Microsoft and Mac OSX and Linus systems, it seems that almost anything is vulnerable
— especially any device that has microphone and is camera-equipped and connects to the
Internet. These seem to be the biggest targets.
And antivirus systems really won’t stop them. According to WikiLeaks, “CIA hackers
developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are
documented in AV
defeats, Personal
Security Products,
Detecting and defeating PSPs and
PSP/Debugger/RE
Avoidance.” Some of the antivirus and security programs that they may have found
defeats or workaround for included (Note: It’s unclear if these were all bypassed,
because some files were redacted by WikiLeaks):
Bitdefender
Comodo
AVG
F-Secure
Avira
Avast
Zone Alarm
Trend Micro
Norton
Panda
Malwarebytes
McAfee
Microsoft Security Essentials
Kaspersky
GDATA
ESET
ClamAV
Symantec
Rising
DART (?)
Zemana Antilogger
They even discussed how the NSA got some things wrong and how they could do it
better.
There are other aspects to Vault 7 that are still being deciphered. For example,
some are concerned that the CIA was infiltrating online games,
because of one page’s reference to League of Legends, Hearthstone, and Heroes of
the Storm.
Clinton’s Missing Emails or the FBI’s Vault on Clinton
Some believed this was about a seventh “vault” of FBI emails, since the FBI had
released six sets of Clinton emails and information at the time that the tweets were
published. But this was less than likely, since the FBI just released Part 7 of its
Clinton vault
here. Others believed that it was related to Clinton’s missing 33,000 emails.
This theory gained new traction after a federal court hearing about Anthony Weiner
and Huma Abedin’s laptop emails, scheduled for Tuesday March 7, was postponed on
March 6. However, it’s unclear at this time if the postponement happened before or
after WikiLeak’s announcement. Read the press release from Judicial Watch, where they
mention the hearing was postponed, here.
Obama Wiretapping
Because of President Donald Trump’s recent tweets claiming President Barack Obama
“wiretapped” him, some believe that Vault 7 is about this. However, the wiretapping
suspicion so far is unsubstantiated.
‘Pizzagate’
Others theorized this was somehow related to a longstanding conspiracy theory
about “pizzagate,” which involves the idea that high-ranking politicians are involved
in a pedophile ring to keep them from deviating from the "Deep state" party line. So far no conclusive evidence has been found to support this
theory. The rumors gained traction after WikiLeaks released John Podesta’s emails.
Sessions is not recused from a Ukraine investigation.
An investigation of the State Dept should bring the focus around to issues of
substance.
- Obama repeal of Smith-Mundt to allow State Dept propaganda in the domestic US
- Obama coup of Ukraine
- Obama / McCain support of Nazis in Ukraine
- Adam Schiff relationship with Ukrainian arms dealer Igor Pasternak
- DNC collusion with Ukrainian IT "Security" company Crowdstrike tied to the Atlantic
Council to push false narrative of DNC hack and malware to influence US election
- DNC consultant Andrea Chalupa, unregistered foreign agent whose entire family is tied to
Ukrainian Intelligence
Further research revealed that Andrea Chalupa and her two siblings are actively involved
with other sources of digital terrorism, disinformation and spamming, like TrolleyBust com,
stopfake org, and informnapalm.
Ms. Chalupa kept cooperating with the Khodorovky owned
magazine "The Interpreter."
Now, it's a part of RFE/RL run by the government funded
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) whose director, Dr. Leon Aron also a director of
Russian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Brilliant summary of the situation. You should listen this interview. False Russiagate was from the beginning a plot to derail and then depose Trump. They created false facts.
Brazen port to exonerate Hillary Clinton and then derail Trump
Notable quotes:
"... It is rare to see a man of integrity and a lawyer who speaks in plain English and speaks about facts and conclusions of law. The problem we face today is far too many lawyers with no integrity in positions of government that protect blatant criminals holding public office who are also lawyers. Lawyers always protect other lawyers, except this wonderful man! ..."
It is rare to see a man of integrity and a lawyer who speaks in plain English and speaks
about facts and conclusions of law. The problem we face today is far too many lawyers with no
integrity in positions of government that protect blatant criminals holding public office who
are also lawyers. Lawyers always protect other lawyers, except this wonderful
man!
Love Joe to bad he can't become the new AG and why isn't this interview on the news at
least Fox, Hannity, Tucker, Laura. And we know CNN, MSNBC, and the rest are all in the bag
for Obummer and Killary. 😎
NY Times Buzzfeed Washington Post CNN ABC CBS NBC are all complicit in perpetrating these
lies Just watch Colbert Jimmy Farrel or Jimmy Kimmel These bad actors pretending to be
entertainers need to hang
Mueller carried the sample of Uranium to the Russians. Mueller was paid off, as was Comey.
So glad President Trump can confiscate all their money. Now to catch Daddy Bush and Jr for
having all those people in New York killed on 9/11! Go Trump!!
There needs to be an arrest of ALL the top MSM owners and chairpeople of all the
affiliates including those who stand in front of the camera pushing false information. Their
license needs to be rescinded and taken away. Bankrupt the news affiliates and sell off their
assets.
This is a truly excellent and clear explanation of how our government was corrupted by
Team Hillary. I reckon she needs to pay the Ultimate price: a thorough investigation into her
crimes: A fair trial... and maybe execution, followed by her being reviled down the centuries
as one of the most evil women in History. Every little girl should be told: Do not be like
this woman!
Bill, don't forget to mention that those same entities also include those working for CNN
and MSNBC who were funded by Clinton donations to push the false media on the country. Can
you say lawsuits?
You should listen this interview. As one commenter said "Three heroes will go down in history: Journalist Julian Asange, Adm.
Mike Rogers, Rep. Devin Nunes"
False Russiagate was from the beginning a plot to derail and then depose Trump. They created false facts.
It is rare to see a man of integrity and a lawyer who speaks in plain English and speaks
about facts and conclusions of law. The problem we face today is far too many lawyers with no
integrity in positions of government that protect blatant criminals holding public office who
are also lawyers. Lawyers always protect other lawyers, except this wonderful
man!
Love Joe to bad he can't become the new AG and why isn't this interview on the news at
least Fox, Hannity, Tucker, Laura. And we know CNN, MSNBC, and the rest are all in the bag
for Obummer and Killary. 😎
NY Times Buzzfeed Washington Post CNN ABC CBS NBC are all complicit in perpetrating these
lies Just watch Colbert Jimmy Farrel or Jimmy Kimmel These bad actors pretending to be
entertainers need to hang
Mueller carried the sample of Uranium to the Russians. Mueller was paid off, as was Comey.
So glad President Trump can confiscate all their money. Now to catch Daddy Bush and Jr for
having all those people in New York killed on 9/11! Go Trump!!
There needs to be an arrest of ALL the top MSM owners and chairpeople of all the
affiliates including those who stand in front of the camera pushing false information. Their
license needs to be rescinded and taken away. Bankrupt the news affiliates and sell off their
assets.
This is a truly excellent and clear explanation of how our government was corrupted by
Team Hillary. I reckon she needs to pay the Ultimate price: a thorough investigation into her
crimes: A fair trial... and maybe execution, followed by her being reviled down the centuries
as one of the most evil women in History. Every little girl should be told: Do not be like
this woman!
Bill, don't forget to mention that those same entities also include those working for CNN
and MSNBC who were funded by Clinton donations to push the false media on the country. Can
you say lawsuits?
"... Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. ..."
"... Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out? ..."
"... Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet services. ..."
"... This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line. The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans. ..."
"... If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff. ..."
"... How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election in a new direction. ..."
"... According to Esquire.com , Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said the measures taken were directly because of his work. ..."
"... Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016. ..."
"... According to Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia. ..."
"... The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support throughout the campaign. ..."
"... What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland Security? ..."
"... Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers. ..."
"... When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government. ..."
"... Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other? ..."
"... This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared. If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves and not draw unwanted attention. ..."
"... Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike? ..."
"... What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US intel efforts. ..."
"... The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst. Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he and these hackers need to be investigated. ..."
"... According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have, the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I have." ..."
"... While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests. He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine. ..."
In the wake of the JAR-16-20296 dated December 29, 2016 about hacking and influencing the
2016 election, the need for real evidence is clear. The joint report adds nothing substantial
to the October 7th report. It relies on proofs provided by the cyber security firm Crowdstrike
that is clearly not on par with intelligence findings or evidence. At the top of the report is
an "as is" statement showing this.
The difference between Dmitri Alperovitch's claims which are reflected in JAR-1620296 and
this article is that enough evidence is provided to warrant an investigation of specific
parties for the DNC hacks. The real story involves specific anti-American actors that need to
be investigated for real crimes.
For instance, the malware used was an out-dated version just waiting to be found. The one
other interesting point is that the Russian malware called Grizzly Steppe
is from Ukraine . How did Crowdstrike miss this when it is their business to know?
Later in this article you'll meet and know a little more about the real "Fancy Bear and Cozy
Bear." The bar for identification set by Crowdstrike has never been able to get beyond words
like probably, maybe, could be, or should be, in their attribution.
The article is lengthy because the facts need to be in one place. The bar Dimitri
Alperovitch set for identifying the hackers involved is that low. Other than asking America to
trust them, how many solid facts has Alperovitch provided to back his claim of Russian
involvement?
The December 29th JAR adds a flowchart that shows how a basic phishing hack is performed. It
doesn't add anything significant beyond that. Noticeably, they use both their designation APT
28 and APT 29 as well as the Crowdstrike labels of Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear separately.
This is important because information from outside intelligence agencies has the value of
rumor or unsubstantiated information at best according to policy. Usable intelligence needs to
be free from partisan politics and verifiable. Intel agencies noted back in the early 90's that
every private actor in the information game was radically political.
The
Hill.com article about Russia hacking the electric grid is a perfect example of why this
intelligence is political and not taken seriously. If any proof of Russian involvement existed,
the US would be at war. Under current laws of war, there would be no difference between an
attack on the power grid or a missile strike.
According
to the Hill "Private security firms provided more detailed forensic analysis, which the FBI
and DHS said Thursday correlated with the IC's findings.
"The Joint Analysis Report recognizes the excellent work undertaken by
security companies and private sector network owners and operators, and provides new indicators
of compromise and malicious infrastructure
identified during the course of investigations and incident response," read a statement. The
report identities two Russian intelligence groups already named by CrowdStrike and other
private security firms."
In an interview with Washingtonsblog , William Binney, the creator of the NSA global
surveillance system said "I expected to see the IP's or other signatures of APT's 28/29 [the
entities which the U.S. claims hacked the Democratic emails] and where they were located and
how/when the data got transferred to them from DNC/HRC [i.e. Hillary Rodham Clinton]/etc. They
seem to have been following APT 28/29 since at least 2015, so, where are they?"
According to the latest Washington Post story, Crowdstrike's CEO tied a group his company
dubbed "Fancy Bear" to targeting Ukrainian artillery positions in Debaltsevo as well as across
the Ukrainian civil war front for the past 2 years.
Alperovitch states in many articles the Ukrainians were using an Android app to target the
self-proclaimed Republics positions and that hacking this app was what gave targeting data to
the armies in Donbass instead.
Alperovitch first gained notice when he was the VP in charge of threat research with McAfee.
Asked to comment on Alperovitch's
discovery of Russian hacks on Larry King, John McAfee had this to say. "Based on all of his
experience, McAfee does not believe that Russians were behind the hacks on the Democratic
National Committee (DNC), John Podesta's emails, and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.
As he told RT, "if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the
Russians."
How does Crowdstrike's story part with reality? First is the admission that it is probably,
maybe, could be Russia hacking the DNC. "
Intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to Wiki Leaks."
The public evidence never goes beyond the word possibility. While never going beyond that or
using facts, Crowdstrike insists that it's Russia behind both Clinton's and the Ukrainian
losses. NBC carried the story because one of the partners in Crowdstrike is also a consultant
for NBC.
According to NBC the story reads like this."
The company, Crowdstrike, was hired by the DNC to investigate the hack and issued a report
publicly attributing it to Russian intelligence. One of Crowdstrike's senior executives is
Shawn Henry, a former senior FBI official who consults for NBC News.
"But the Russians used the app to turn the tables on their foes, Crowdstrike says. Once a
Ukrainian soldier downloaded it on his Android phone, the Russians were able to eavesdrop on
his communications and determine his position through geo-location.
In June, Crowdstrike went public with its findings that two separate Russian intelligence
agencies had hacked the DNC. One, which Crowdstrike and other researchers call Cozy Bear, is
believed to be linked to Russia's CIA, known as the FSB. The other, known as Fancy Bear, is
believed to be tied to the military intelligence agency, called the GRU."
The information is so certain the level of proof never rises above "believed to be."
According to the December 12th Intercept article "Most importantly, the Post adds that
"intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin
'directing' the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks."
Because Ukrainian soldiers are using a smartphone app they activate their geolocation to use
it. Targeting is from location to location. The app would need the current user location to
make it work.
In 2015 I wrote an article that showed many of the available open source tools that
geolocate, and track people. They even show street view. This means that using simple means,
someone with freeware or an online website, and not a military budget can look at what you are
seeing at any given moment.
Where Crowdstrike fails is insisting people believe that the code they see is (a) an
advanced way to geolocate and (b) it was how a state with large resources would do it. Would
you leave a calling card where you would get caught and fined through sanctions or worse? If
you use an anonymous online resource at least Crowdstrike won't believe you are Russian and
possibly up to something.
If you read that article and watch the video you'll see that using "geo-stalker" is a better
choice if you are on a low budget or no budget. Should someone tell the Russians they
overpaid?
According to Alperovitch, the smartphone app
plotted targets in about 15 seconds . This means that there is only a small window to get
information this way.
Using the open source tools I wrote about previously, you could track your targets all-day.
In 2014, most Ukrainian forces were using social media regularly. It would be easy to maintain
a map of their locations and track them individually.
From my research into those tools, someone using Python scripts would find it easy to take
photos, listen to conversations, turn on GPS, or even turn the phone on when they chose to.
Going a step further than Alperovitch, without the help of the Russian government, GRU, or FSB,
anyone could
take control of the drones Ukraine is fond of flying and land them. Or they could download
the footage the drones are taking. It's copy and paste at that point. Would you bother the FSB,
GRU, or Vladimir Putin with the details or just do it?
In the WaPo article Alperovitch states "The Fancy Bear crew evidently hacked the app,
allowing the GRU to use the phone's GPS coordinates to track the Ukrainian troops'
position.
In that way, the Russian military could then target the Ukrainian army with artillery and
other weaponry. Ukrainian brigades operating in eastern Ukraine were on the front lines of the
conflict with Russian-backed separatist forces during the early stages of the conflict in late
2014, CrowdStrike noted. By late 2014, Russian forces in the region numbered about 10,000. The
Android app was useful in helping the Russian troops locate Ukrainian artillery positions."
In late 2014,
I personally did the only invasive passport and weapons checks that I know of during the
Ukrainian civil war.
I spent days looking for the Russian army every major publication said were attacking
Ukraine. The keyword Cyber Security industry leader Alperovitch used is "evidently."
Crowdstrike noted that in late 2014, there were 10,000 Russian forces in the region.
When I did the passport and weapons check, it was under the condition there would be no
telephone calls. We went where I wanted to go. We stopped when I said to stop. I checked the
documents and the weapons with no obstacles. The weapons check was important because Ukraine
was stating that Russia was giving Donbass modern weapons at the time. Each weapon is stamped
with a manufacture date. The results are in the articles above.
Based on my findings which the CIA would call hard evidence, almost all the fighters had
Ukrainian passports. There are volunteers from other countries. In Debaltsevo today, I would
question Alperovitch's assertion of Russian troops based on the fact the passports will be
Ukrainian and reflect my earlier findings. There is no possibly, could be, might be, about
it.
The SBU, Olexander Turchinov, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense all agree that
Crowdstrike is dead wrong in this assessment . Although subtitles aren't on it, the former
Commandant of Ukrainian Army Headquarters thanks God Russia never invaded or Ukraine would have
been in deep trouble.
How could Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike be this wrong on easily checked detail and
still get this much media attention? Could the investment made by Google and some
very large players have anything to do with the media Crowdstrike is causing?
According to Alperovitch, the CEO of a $150 million dollar cyber security company "And when
you think about, well, who would be interested in targeting Ukraine artillerymen in eastern
Ukraine who has interest in hacking the Democratic Party, Russia government comes to mind, but
specifically, Russian military that would have operational over forces in the Ukraine and would
target these artillerymen."
That statement is most of the proof of Russian involvement he has. That's it, that's all the
CIA, FBI have to go on. It's why they can't certify the intelligence. It's why they can't get
beyond the threshold of maybe.
Woodruff then asked two important questions. She asked if Crowdstrike was still working for
the DNC. Alperovitch responded "We're protecting them going forward. The investigation is
closed in terms of what happened there. But certainly, we've seen the campaigns, political
organizations are continued to be targeted, and they continue to hire us and use our technology
to protect themselves."
Based on the evidence he presented Woodruff, there is no need to investigate further?
Obviously, there is no need, the money is rolling in.
Second and most important Judy Woodruff asked if there were any questions about conflicts of
interest, how he would answer? This is where Dmitri Alperovitch's story starts to unwind.
His response was "Well, this report was not about the DNC. This report was about information
we uncovered about what these Russian actors were doing in eastern Ukraine in terms of locating
these artillery units of the Ukrainian army and then targeting them. So, what we just did is
said that it looks exactly as the same to the evidence we've already uncovered from the DNC,
linking the two together."
Why is this reasonable statement going to take his story off the rails? First, let's look at
the facts surrounding his evidence and then look at the real conflicts of interest involved.
While carefully evading the question, he neglects to state his conflicts of interest are worthy
of a DOJ investigation. Can you mislead the federal government about national security issues
and not get investigated yourself?
If Alperovitch's evidence is all there is, then the US government owes some large apologies
to Russia.
After showing who is targeting Ukrainian artillerymen, we'll look at what might be a
criminal conspiracy.
Crowdstrike CEO Dmitri Alperovitch story about Russian hacks that cost Hillary Clinton the
election was broadsided by the SBU (Ukrainian Intelligence and Security) in Ukraine. If Dimitri
Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US
Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?
Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years.
Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows
for evidence doesn't just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a
reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to
carry this out?
Real Fancy Bear?
Meet the real Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear, part of the groups that are targeting Ukrainian
positions for the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. These people were so tech savvy they
didn't know the Ukrainian SBU (Ukrainian CIA/internal security) records every phone call and
most internet use in Ukraine and Donbass. Donbass still uses Ukrainian phone and internet
services.
These are normal people fighting back against private volunteer armies that target their
homes, schools, and hospitals. The private volunteer armies like Pravy Sektor, Donbas
Battalion, Azov, and Aidar have been cited for atrocities like child rape, torture, murder, and
kidnapping. That just gets the ball rolling. These are a large swath of the Ukrainian
servicemen Crowdstrike hopes to protect.
This story which just aired on Ukrainian news channel TCN shows the SBU questioning and
arresting some of what they call an army of people in the Ukrainian-controlled areas. This news
video shows people in Toretsk that provided targeting information to Donbass and people
probably caught up in the net accidentally.
This is a civil war and people supporting either side are on both sides of the contact line.
The SBU is awestruck because there are hundreds if not thousands of people helping to target
the private volunteer armies supported by Ukrainian-Americans.
The first person they show on the video is a woman named Olga Lubochka. On the video her
voice is heard from a recorded call saying " In the field, on the left about 130 degrees. Aim
and you'll get it." and then " Oh, you hit it so hard you leveled it to the ground.""Am I going
to get a medal for this?"
Other people caught up in the raid claim and probably were only calling friends they know.
It's common for people to call and tell their family about what is going on around them. This
has been a staple in the war especially in outlying villages for people aligned with both sides
of the conflict. A neighbor calls his friend and says "you won't believe what I just saw."
Another "fancy bear," Alexander Schevchenko was caught calling friends and telling them that
armored personnel carriers had just driven by.
Anatoli Prima, father of a DNR(Donetsk People's Republic) soldier was asked to find out what
unit was there and how many artillery pieces.
One woman providing information about fuel and incoming equipment has a husband fighting on
the opposite side in Gorlovka. Gorlovka is a major city that's been under artillery attack
since 2014. For the past 2 1/2 years, she has remained in their home in Toretsk. According to
the video, he's vowed to take no prisoners when they rescue the area.
When asked why they hate Ukraine so much, one responded that they just wanted things to go
back to what they were like before the coup in February 2014.
Another said they were born in the Soviet Union and didn't like what was going on in Kiev.
At the heart of this statement is the anti- OUN, antinationalist sentiment that most people
living in Ukraine feel. The OUNb Bandera killed millions of people in Ukraine, including
starving 3 million Soviet soldiers to death. The new Ukraine was founded
in 1991 by OUN nationalists outside the fledgling country.
Is giving misleading or false information to 17 US Intelligence Agencies a crime? If it's
done by a cyber security industry leader like Crowdstrike should that be investigated? If
unwinding the story from the "targeting of Ukrainian volunteers" side isn't enough, we should
look at this from the American perspective. How did the Russia influencing the election and DNC
hack story evolve? Who's involved? Does this pose conflicts of interest for Dmitri Alperovitch
and Crowdstrike? And let's face it, a hacking story isn't complete until real hackers with the
skills, motivation, and reason are exposed.
In the last article exploring the
DNC hacks the focus was on the Chalupas . The article focused on Alexandra, Andrea, and
Irene Chalupa. Their participation in the DNC hack story is what brought it to international
attention in the first place.
According to journalist and DNC activist Andrea Chalupa on her Facebook page "
After Chalupa sent the email to Miranda (which mentions that she had invited this reporter
to a meeting with Ukrainian journalists in Washington), it triggered high-level concerns within
the DNC, given the sensitive nature of her work. "That's when we knew it was the Russians,"
said a Democratic Party source who has been directly involved in the internal probe into the
hacked emails. In order to stem the damage, the source said, "we told her to stop her
research."" July 25, 2016
If she was that close to the investigation Crowdstrike did how credible is she? Her sister
Alexandra was named one of 16 people that shaped the election by Yahoo news. The DNC hacking
investigation done by Crowdstrike concluded hacking was done by Russian actors based on the
work done by Alexandra Chalupa? That is the conclusion of her sister Andrea Chalupa and
obviously enough for Crowdstrike to make the Russian government connection. These words mirror
Dimitri Alperovitch's identification process in his interview with PBS Judy Woodruff.
How close is Dimitri Alperovitch to DNC officials? Close enough professionally he should
have stepped down from an investigation that had the chance of throwing a presidential election
in a new direction.
According to Esquire.com ,
Alperovitch has vetted speeches for Hillary Clinton about cyber security issues in the
past. Because of his work on the Sony hack, President Barrack Obama personally called and said
the measures taken were directly because of his work.
Still, this is not enough to show a conflict of interest. Alperovitch's relationships with
the Chalupas, radical groups, think tanks, Ukrainian propagandists, and Ukrainian state
supported hackers do. When it all adds up and you see it together, we have found a Russian that
tried hard to influence the outcome of the US presidential election in 2016.
In my
previous article I showed in detail how the Chalupas fit into this. A brief bullet point
review looks like this.
The Chalupas are not Democrat or Republican. They are OUNb. The OUNb worked hard to start
a war between the USA and Russia for the last 50 years. According to the
Ukrainian Weekly in a rare open statement of their existence in 2011, "Other statements
were issued in the Ukrainian language by the leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists (B) and the International Conference in Support of Ukraine. The OUN (Bandera
wing) called for" What is OUNb Bandera? They follow the same political policy and platform
that was developed in the 1930's by Stepan Bandera. When these people go to a Holocaust
memorial they are celebrating both the dead and the OUNb SS that killed
There is no getting around this fact. The OUNb have no concept of democratic values and
want an authoritarian fascism.
Alexandra Chalupa- According
to the Ukrainian Weekly , "The effort, known as Digital Miadan, gained momentum following
the initial Twitter storms. Leading the effort were: Lara Chelak, Andrea Chalupa, Alexandra
Chalupa, Constatin Kostenko and others." The Digital Maidan was also how they raised money
for the coup. This was how the Ukrainian
emigres bought the bullets that were used on Euromaidan. Ukraine's chubby nazi, Dima
Yarosh stated openly he was taking money from the Ukrainian emigres during Euromaidan and
Pravy Sektor still fundraises openly in North America. The "Sniper
Massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine by Dr. Ivan Katchanovski, University of Ottowa shows
clearly detailed evidence how the massacre happened. It has Pravy Sektor confessions that
show who created the "heavenly hundred. Their admitted involvement as leaders of Digital
Maidan by both Chalupas is a
clear violation of the Neutrality Act and has up to a 25
year prison sentence attached to it because it ended in a coup.
Andrea Chalupa-2014, in a Huff Post article Sept. 1 2016, Andrea Chalupa described
Sviatoslav Yurash as one of Ukraine's important "dreamers." He is a young activist that
founded Euromaidan
Press . Beyond the gushing glow what she doesn't say is who he actually is. Sviatoslav
Yurash was Dmitri Yarosh's spokesman just after Maidan. He is a hardcore Ukrainian
nationalist and was rewarded with the Deputy Director
position for the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) in Kiev .
In January, 2014 when he showed up at the Maidan protests he was 17 years old. He became the
foreign language media representative for Vitali Klitschko, Arseni Yatsenyuk, and Oleh
Tyahnybok. All press enquiries went through Yurash. To meet Dimitri Yurash you had
to go through Sviatoslav Yurash as a Macleans reporter found out.
At 18 years old, Sviatoslav Yurash became the spokesman for Ministry of Defense of Ukraine
under Andrei Paruby. He was Dimitri Yarosh's spokesman and can be seen either behind Yarosh on
videos at press conferences or speaking ahead of him to reporters. From January 2014 onward, to
speak to Dimitri Yarosh, you set up an appointment with Yurash.
Irene Chalupa- Another involved Chalupa we need to cover to do the story justice is Irene
Chalupa. From her bio – Irena
Chalupa is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center.
She is also a senior correspondent at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), where she has
worked for more than twenty years. Ms. Chalupa previously served as an editor for the
Atlantic Council, where she covered Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Irena Chalupa is also the
news anchor for Ukraine's propaganda channel org She is also a Ukrainian
emigre leader.
According to
Robert Parry's article At the forefront of people that would have taken senior positions in
a Clinton administration and especially in foreign policy are the Atlantic Council. Their main
goal is still a major confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
The Atlantic Council is the think tank associated and supported by the
CEEC (Central and Eastern European Coalition). The CEEC has only one goal which is war with
Russia. Their question to candidates looking for their support in the election was "Are you
willing to go to war with Russia?" Hillary Clinton has received their unqualified support
throughout the campaign.
What does any of this have to do with Dimitri Alperovitch and Crowdstrike? Since the
Atlantic Council would have taken senior cabinet and policy positions, his own fellowship
status at the Atlantic Council and relationship with Irene Chalupa creates a definite conflict
of interest for Crowdstrike's investigation. Trump's campaign was gaining ground and Clinton
needed a boost. Had she won, would he have been in charge of the CIA, NSA, or Homeland
Security?
When you put someone that has so much to gain in charge of an investigation that could
change an election, that is a conflict of interest. If the think tank is linked heavily to
groups that want war with Russia like the Atlantic Council and the CEEC, it opens up criminal
conspiracy.
If the person in charge of the investigation is a fellow at the think tank that wants a
major conflict with Russia it is a definite conflict of interest. Both the Atlantic Council and
clients stood to gain Cabinet and Policy positions based on how the result of his work affects
the election. It clouds the results of the investigation. In Dmitri Alperovitch's case, he
found the perpetrator before he was positive there was a crime.
Alperovitch's relationship with Andrea Chalupa's efforts and Ukrainian intelligence groups
is where things really heat up. Noted above she works with Euromaidanpress.com and Informnapalm.org which is the outlet
for Ukrainian state-sponsored hackers.
When you look at Dimitri Alperovitch's twitter relationships, you have to ask why the CEO of
a $150 million dollar company like Crowdstrike follows Ukrainian InformNapalm
and its hackers individually . There is a mutual relationship. When you add up his work for
the OUNb, Ukraine, support for Ukraine's Intelligence, and to the hackers it needs to be
investigated to see if Ukraine is conspiring against the US government.
Alperovitch and Fancy Bear tweet each other?
Crowdstrike is also following their hack of a Russian government official after the DNC
hack. It closely resembles the same method used with the DNC because it was an email hack.
Crowdstrike's product line includes Falcon Host, Falcon Intelligence, Falcon Overwatch and
Falcon DNS. Is it possible the hackers in Falcons Flame are another service Crowdstrike offers?
Although this profile says Virginia, tweets are from the Sofia, Bulgaria time zone and he
writes in Russian. Another curiosity considering the Fancy Bear source code is in Russian. This
image shows Crowdstrike in their network.
Crowdstrike is part of Ukrainian nationalist hacker network
In an interview with
Euromaidanpress these hackers say they have no need for the CIA. They consider the CIA
amateurish. They also say they are not part of the Ukrainian military Cyberalliance is a
quasi-organization with the participation of several groups – RUH8, Trinity, Falcon
Flames, Cyberhunta. There are structures affiliated to the hackers – the Myrotvorets
site, Informnapalm analytical agency."
In the image it shows a network diagram of Crowdstrike following the Surkov leaks. The
network communication goes through a secondary source. This is something you do when you don't
want to be too obvious. Here is another example of that.
Ukrainian Intelligence and the real Fancy Bear?
Although OSINT Academy sounds fairly innocuous, it's the official twitter account for
Ukraine's Ministry of Information head Dimitri Zolotukin. It is also Ukrainian Intelligence.
The Ministry of Information started the Peacekeeper or Myrotvorets website that geolocates
journalists and other people for assassination. If you disagree with OUNb politics, you could
be on the list.
Trying not to be obvious, the Head of Ukraine's Information Ministry (UA Intelligence)
tweeted something interesting that ties Alperovitch and Crowdstrike to the Ukrainian
Intelligence hackers and the Information Ministry even tighter.
Trying to keep it hush hush?
This single tweet on a network chart shows that out of all the Ukrainian Ministry of
Information Minister's following, he only wanted the 3 hacking groups associated with both him
and Alperovitch to get the tweet. Alperovitch's story was received and not retweeted or shared.
If this was just Alperovitch's victory, it was a victory for Ukraine. It would be shared
heavily. If it was a victory for the hacking squad, it would be smart to keep it to themselves
and not draw unwanted attention.
These same hackers are associated with Alexandra, Andrea, and Irene Chalupa through the
portals and organizations they work with through their OUNb. The hackers are funded and
directed by or through the same OUNb channels that Alperovitch is working for and with to
promote the story of Russian hacking.
Pravy Sektor Hackers and Crowdstrike?
When you look at the image for the hacking group in the euromaidanpress article, one of the
hackers identifies themselves as one of Dimitri Yarosh's Pravy Sektor members by the Pravy
Sektor sweatshirt they have on. Noted above, Pravy Sektor admitted to killing the people at the
Maidan protest and sparked the coup.
Going further with the linked Euromaidanpress article the hackers say" Let's understand that
Ukrainian hackers and Russian hackers once constituted a single very powerful group. Ukrainian
hackers have a rather high level of work. So the help of the USA I don't know, why would we
need it? We have all the talent and special means for this. And I don't think that the USA or
any NATO country would make such sharp movements in international politics."
What sharp movements in international politics have been made lately? Let me spell it out
for the 17 US Intelligence Agencies so there is no confusion. These state sponsored, Russian
language hackers in Eastern European time zones have shown with the Surkov hack they have the
tools and experience to hack states that are looking out for it. They are also laughing at US
intel efforts.
The hackers also made it clear that they will do anything to serve Ukraine. Starting a war
between Russia and the USA is the one way they could serve Ukraine best, and hurt Russia worst.
Given those facts, if the DNC hack was according to the criteria given by Alperovitch, both he
and these hackers need to be investigated.
According to the Esquire interview "Alperovitch was deeply frustrated: He thought the
government should tell the world what it knew. There is, of course, an element of the personal
in his battle cry. "A lot of people who are born here don't appreciate the freedoms we have,
the opportunities we have, because they've never had it any other way," he told me. "I
have."
While I agree patriotism is a great thing, confusing it with this kind of nationalism is
not. Alperovitch seems to think by serving OUNb Ukraine's interests and delivering a conflict
with Russia that is against American interests, he's a patriot. He isn't serving US interests.
He's definitely a Ukrainian patriot. Maybe he should move to Ukraine.
The evidence presented deserves investigation because it looks like the case for conflict of
interest is the least Dimitri Alperovitch should look forward to. If these hackers are the real
Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, they really did make sharp movements in international politics.
By pawning it off on Russia, they made a worldwide embarrassment of an outgoing President of
the United States and made the President Elect the suspect of rumor.
From the Observer.com , " Andrea
Chalupa -- the sister of DNC
research staffer Alexandra Chalupa -- claimed on
social media, without any evidence, that despite Clinton
conceding the election to Trump, the voting results need to be audited to because
Clinton couldn't have lost -- it must have been Russia. Chalupa hysterically
tweeted to every politician on Twitter to audit the vote because of Russia and claimed the TV
show The Americans
, about two KGB spies living in America, is real."
Quite possibly now the former UK Ambassador Craig Murry's admission of being the involved
party to "leaks" should be looked at. " Now both Julian
Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia . Do we credibly
have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access
to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access.
After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for
truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has
released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for
inconvenient truth telling."
"... I think Jack Rabbit's question hits the money in that they KNOW what happened. My question is how come the Clintons would have so much clout to control the story away from their shenanigans? It must leak over into significant parts of the Democratic Party itself. PS I may be wrong on this--Crowdstrike is responsible for Guccifer 2.0, at the behest of Hillary. ..."
@25 I don't mean to argue but would wonder on your second note in the chain, blaming Comey.
Clinton was done far far before anything Comey could do at the last minute. In the summer. By
then the emails had been released (however that release occurred) to show how she had twisted
Sanders away from the nomination and had questions re The Clinton Foundation.
I think Jack Rabbit's question hits the money in that they KNOW what happened. My
question is how come the Clintons would have so much clout to control the story away from
their shenanigans? It must leak over into significant parts of the Democratic Party itself.
PS I may be wrong on this--Crowdstrike is responsible for Guccifer 2.0, at the behest of
Hillary.
The alleged Russian computer Hacker named Guccifer 2.0 whom the Democrat National Committee
has publicly blamed for hacking its emails and giving them to WIkiLeaks before the Election in
order for Russia to help Donald Trump, was really a fiction created by an Obama White House
Staffer in order to prevent the exposure of why DNC Staffer Seth Rich was murdered and also try
to pin the exposure of DNC emails on Russia and Trump.
Democrat operatives had pushed the fictional Guccifer 2.0 story as the supposed Russian
hacker who broke into DNC servers and downloaded thousands of emails, then sent them to the
Russians, who then sent them to Wikileaks so Hilary Clinton could be defeated.
Never mind that it has now been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the download speed
was far too great to have been done by anyone but a DNC insider like Seth Rich. Because
Internet speeds are not nearly sufficient to support download speed that the meta data,
embedded in the emails, reported.
Never mind that the same meta data shows that the download came from the eastern time zone
of the US, not Romania or Russia.
A five minute video (below) proves Guccifer 2.0 was an invention of someone using a version
of Microsoft Word that was originally registered to a DNC / White House Staffer named Warren
Flood.
Here are two screen shots from warren floods Facebook page. Notice that warren worked for
"Obama for America," the DNC, and the White House . He lives in LaGrange, GA.
The video below does a great job explaining who is behind the original Trump opposition
research leaked via WikiLeaks AND the later (same) document allegedly obtained by Guccifer 2.0
by "hacking."
EVIDENCE OF DNC/WHITE HOUSE STAFFER BEING "RUSSIAN HACKER GUCCIFER
2.0″
If you have ever accidentally tried to open a Microsoft Word document in a simple text
editor like Notepad, you can see the meta data behind each word document, including WHO that
copy of Word belongs to.
The video below explains who the author of the original opposition research document was and
how we know:
. . . it also includes who the AUTHOR of the document of is. It gets that information from
the name that was entered when you installed your copy of Microsoft Office. Inside the
original trump opposition research, the document later released by WikiLeaks, the author of
the document is listed as Lauren Dillon , DNC Research Director.
This is Lauren Dillion from the DNC:
The metadata in the WikiLeaks release of Trump Opposition research shows that it was created
by Lauren Dillon, as show below:
_______________
HOWEVER, that same document later released by Guccifer 2.0 shows a CHANGE in who authored
Document; this later copy showing the Author as Warren Flood . . . . who worked in the White
House!
Thus, the entire claim by Guccifer 2.0 that he was a Russian Hacker who stole the DNC
emails, was a deliberate deception attributable to a staffer in the Obama White House: Warren
Flood.
Here's the kicker, the version of Trump's opposition research file that was originally
released by WikiLeaks, and later released to the Main-Stream-Media (MSM), was never attributed
to the DNC, it was attributed to the Russian Hacker "Guccifer 2.0 -- A man jailed in Romania
for hacking.
THE DNC/WHITE HOUSE "FATAL MISTAKE"
It just wouldn't do, to have the head of research for the DNC be the Leaker to WikiLeaks or
to have the later Guccifer 2.0 release to come from a White House staffer, it had to
be attributable to someone connected to the Russians. The Romanian guy was the FALL GUY.
The one fatal mistake the DNC and the Obama White House made was that no one remembered
about the Microsoft Word metadata which reveals the owner of that particular copy of the Word
software. So, according to the evidence, Guccifer 2.0 was actually DNC/White House Staffer,
Warren Flood.
Yes, you read that correctly: EVIDENCE. Not speculation, or rumor, or innuendo. Actual real
life, hard copy EVIDENCE.
Guccifer 2.0 was an invention of the DNC/White House to cover-up who the real leaker was;
and at the same time start the Russian Hacking rumors that persist today.
INTERESTINGLY, the Wikipedia entry for Guccifer 2.0, describes an interview he did with
MotherBoard via an online chat. Guccifer 2.0 insisted he was Romanian but, when pressed to use
the Romanian language in an interview with an Interview with Motherboard via an online chat, he
used such clunky grammar and terminology that experts believe he was using an online
translator.
Bottom line: The Obama White House invention of Guccifer 2.0, apparently through its Staffer
Warren Flood, accomplished three things:
1) It covered DNC research director Lauren Dillon. Whatever sort of opposition research she
authored was later claimed by Guccifer 2.0.
2) It covered for Seth Rich. This is the BIG ONE, because he was killed in an obvious
assassination staged to look like street robbery -- the only problem is, the robbers didn't
take anything. He still had all his cash and his Rolex watch when police arrived. And Guccifer
2.0 took also credit for the Podesta emails which were actually downloaded by Seth Rich and
given to WikiLeaks.
AND;
3) It created the conduit to "Russian Intelligence" to fortify the claim that it was the
Russians who leaked the DNC emails to WikiLeaks, and therefore Trump "was in collusion with the
Russians" to defeat Clinton.
The whole claim of "Russian Hacking" and "Trump colluding with Russians" has come unraveled
because it was ALL a complete fraud.
What remains is how this fraud is STILL affecting our nation to this very day, and how the
Congress of the United States, acting late last month upon this totally FALSE "Russian Hacking"
claim, has now enacted further sanction upon Russia – sanctions that will very likely
lead to war.
VIDEO EVIDENCE
Here is the video containing the EVIDENCE that the Wikileaks original Trump Opposition
document was created by a user whose Microsoft Word software was registered to DNC Research
Director Lauren Dillon, and the later exact same document, allegedly hacked by "GUccifer
2.0″ was done by DNC/White House Staffer William Flood
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible
timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated
timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the
dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and
attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some
(or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired –
meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five
day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable
the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
"... It's very interesting. But there is one thing that is certain according to McAffee (the McAffee) "If it looked like it was the Russians, then I can guarantee it WASN'T the Russians." ..."
"... Good comment and reading the last line, it has just reminded me of 'Vault 7' and what Wiki Leaks had to say. ..."
"... Vault 7 CIA Hacking Tools Revealed.docx... https://www.scribd.com/docu... ..."
Getting closer all the time, but Mueller's job will continue till the mid-term elections just to see if they can get away
with their scheming. The tale within a tale: FBI investigates and discovers they themselves are also part of this tale. The
story will have a tail: will it be a tragic, Shakespearean end or repentance by Hillary and Mueller (Duh...).
It's about the date / time stamps on the files, and the HACKER (Guciffer 2.0) was acutely
an Obama aid called: WARREN FLOOD. Warren Flood pretended to hack the DNC and made himself
out to be Russian with an alias of Guciffer 2.0. That was the smoke screen the Democrats put
out on top of the Crowdstrike false evidence job. It's excellent reading.
Thank you for the link and must admit it has made me laugh. A line I will use in the
future. '50 Shades of Pissed Off' - no doubt I will use it as my Mantra for 2018.
Yes, that Guccifer 2.0 stuff and the clear evidence that it was not a hack was published
before but you are now updating us by identifying the guy who did it, which should also
change the process. Thanks for that!
Update: Just see what Libby and Trauma2000 mean: yes, that makes sense!
In actual fact, it was Seth Ritch who 'leaked' the material (if you believe that Huma Abdeen was the original leaker and used Seth as a 'go between' then that is up to you). When
the DNC found out Seth was the leaker, the murdered him and had to 'think up a story' hence
Guccifer 2.0. There are several DNC employees involved but Warren Flood is the 'fall guy'
along with a girl (her name is out there) whom had her name on the software licenses that
were used to doctor the emails.
It's very interesting. But there is one thing that is certain according to McAffee (the
McAffee) "If it looked like it was the Russians, then I can guarantee it WASN'T the
Russians."
For me it is because of the truth: there is not much point being on this or that "side",
but when the truth is so twisted it becomes perversion and that should be uncovered.
Flood had already stopped working as Biden's IT director back in 2011, the only place he'd
likely have had his name on a license under the company name GSA based on his work history -
was there.
So, Guccifer 2.0's first docs were most likely constructed using a computer that had
resided in the West Wing office on June 15, 2016 at the exact same time as Pyatt, Nuland and
others (also connected to the Ukraine coup in 2014) were meeting there.
source:
http://g-2.space
(the person behind it is the person who originally wrote this "Fancy Fraud, Bogus Bears..."
article too)
RE: The Eastern timezone. - If referring to the NGP-VAN analysis, the timestamps
themselves don't show timezones but the timezone can be evaluated due to how timestamps on
files (that appear to be part of the same batch transfer on July 5, 2016) are displayed in
the 7zip archive root versus those in various RAR files contained within (and the different
methods of timestamp storage used by the different archive formats) and how this changes
depending on what your computer's timezone is set to (the time changes in the 7zip but not in
the RARs and the only timezone in which these have a close correlation is Eastern).
There was an article, that I read, just before Christmas Day, that supports what you say.
That Mueller has got to keep the narrative running, until they have sorted out the Mid-Term
Elections, that the Dems believe will work to their advantage. Is it something to do with the
Dems hoping to control Congress and managing to close any investigations that Trump is
working on?
Surprised with Fox. Considering old Murdoch has a problem with Russia, no doubt owing to
his interests in Genie Energy. However, not complaining, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and now
the ex-NSA on Fox News. Nice.
This is just the beginning: just read New Trump Executive Order Targets Clinton-Linked
Individuals, Lobbyists And Perhaps Uranium One on
Zerohedge.com
1. It will have huge consequences for all those who made shady deals with dictators and
criminals (adding to the coffers of the Clinton Foundation etc.etc.). Perhaps this is what
Trump was waiting for to start in the new year:his fireworks response to all the mud slung
around?
2. Seth Rich and distraction by Guccifer 2.0: Trauma200 comments below is BIG and makes the
connection to SETH RICH's murder, which also shows how Assange made it necessary for the
complete the search and expose with evidence what was going on.
What I am curious about, is will he use it for that or will he go for any foreigner that
Washington DC has a problem with. Such as anybody who is a friend of President Putin, just to
cause problems, before the Russian Presidential Campaign.
Or am I being cynical. I seriously hope he uses it for the Russia Gate crowd and no doubt,
he has good reason and he is not known to like being insulted, with no payback. However, I
can also see him using it as another form of punishment on non-nationals.
One additional point: Thomas Rid and most of the mainstream media keeps saying that German
intelligence fingered Russia for the German Parliament attacks. While this is partly true,
German intelligence in fact never said directly that APT 29 or "Fancy Bear" WAS DEFINITELY
Russian state sponsored. They said they ASSUMED Russia was conducting hacks on Germany.
See here:
Digital Attack on German Parliament: Investigative Report on the Hack of the Left Party
Infrastructure in Bundestag
https://netzpolitik.org/201...
Jeffrey Carr made this point early on in his Medium article:
One of the strongest pieces of evidence linking GRU to the DNC hack is the equivalent of
identical fingerprints found in two burglarized buildings: a reused command-and-control
address -- 176.31.112[.]10 -- that was hard coded in a piece of
malware found both in the German parliament as well as on
the DNC's servers. Russian military intelligence was identified by the German domestic
security agency BfV as the actor responsible for the Bundestag breach. The infrastructure
behind the fake MIS Department domain was also linked to the Berlin intrusion through at
least one other element, a shared SSL certificate.
This paragraph sounds quite damning if you take it at face value, but if you invest a
little time into checking the source material, its carefully constructed narrative falls
apart.
Problem #1:
The IP address 176.31.112[.]10 used in the Bundestag breach as a Command and Control server
has never been connected to the Russian intelligence services. In fact, Claudio Guarnieri, a
highly regarded security researcher, whose technical analysis was referenced by Rid, stated
that "no evidence allows to tie the attacks to governments of any particular country."
Problem #2: The Command & Control server (176.31.112.10) was using an outdated version
of OpenSSL vulnerable to Heartbleed attacks. Heartbleed allows attackers to exfiltrate data
including private keys, usernames, passwords and other sensitive information.
The existence of a known security vulnerability that's trivial to exploit opens the door
to the possibility that the systems in question were used by one rogue group, and then
infiltrated by a second rogue group,
making the attribution process even more complicated. At the very least, the C2 server should
be considered a compromised indicator.
Problem #3: The BfV published a newsletter in January 2016 which assumes that the GRU and
FSB are responsible because of technical indicators, not because of any classified finding;
to wit: "Many
of these attack campaigns have each other on technical similarities, such as malicious
software families, and infrastructure -- these are important indicators of the
same authorship. It is assumed that both the
Russian domestic intelligence service FSB and the military foreign intelligence service GRU
run cyber operations."
Professor Rid's argument depended heavily on conveying hard attribution by the BfV even
though the President of the BfV didn't disguise the fact that their attribution was based on
an assumption and not hard evidence.
Thanks for the article and reminding us of Crowd Strike. Must admit, I read an interesting
article, over on Oped News, by George Eliason, with regards Crowd Strike. Plus a few other
reminders.
Does anybody remember the Awan Brothers from Pakistan and what they were arrested for,
with regards the DNC and computers?
Then you have Google and Soros and their links into Crowd Strike. Hasn't the CEO of Google
just stepped down, the same day that Trump signed a Presidential Order, that might prove a
problem for some, in the future?
QANON EXPOSES DEM CONSPIRACY TO FRAME TRUMP, CLAIMS GOOGLE'S SCHMIDT PLAYED PIVOTAL
ROLE
QAnon also claims Debbie Wasserman Schultz contracted MS-13 gang to kill Seth Rich...
https://www.infowars.com/qa...
Remember, Crowd Strike, Dmitry Alperovic and his links back to The Atlantic Council? Then
you have the Ukrainian Oligarch Pinchuk, who happily invested $25 million in the Clinton
Foundation. Remember his Yalta Summits and the one back in September 2013? Now who attended
and what were the various topics that they discussed?
Then you have Obama giving Crowd Strike
a White House Commission for Cyber Security. Plus, the DNC refusing the FBI access to their
servers, but, having no problem giving Crowd Strike full access. Now why was that? Funny how
often Ukraine comes up, when looking into Clinton, Fusion, Crowdstrike, Old Ukrainian Malware
and The Trump Dossier? Coincidence or what?
"... Donald Trump is deep in the world of spooks now, the world of spies, agents and operatives. He and his inner circle have a nest of friends, but an even larger, more varied nest of enemies. As John Sevigny writes below, his enemies include not only the intel and counter-intel people, but also "Republican lawmakers, journalists, the Clintons, the Bush family, Barack Obama, the ACLU, every living Democrat and even Rand Paul." ..."
"... A total of 8,761 documents have been published as part of 'Year Zero', the first in a series of leaks the whistleblower organization has dubbed 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said that 'Year Zero' revealed details of the CIA's "global covert hacking program," including "weaponized exploits" used against company products including " Apple's iPhone , Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs , which are turned into covert microphones." ..."
"... According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate Android phones and collect "audio and message traffic before encryption is applied." ..."
"... "CIA turned every Microsoft Windows PC in the world into spyware. Can activate backdoors on demand, including via Windows update "[.] ..."
"... Do you still trust Windows Update? ..."
"... As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. ..."
"... "Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism chief under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told the Huffington Post that Hastings's crash looked consistent with a car cyber attack.'" Full and fascinating article here . ..."
"... Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive. ..."
"... Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force - its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities. ..."
"... By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware. Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified. ..."
"... I learned this when I was in my 20s. The Catholic Church was funding my early critique of American foreign aid as being imperialist. I asked whether they thought I should go into politics. They said, "No, you'd never make it". And I said, "Why?" and they said, "Well, nobody has a police record or any other dirt on you." I asked what they meant. They said, "Unless they have something over you to blackmail you with, you're not going to be able to get campaign funding. Because they believe that you might do something surprising," in other words, something they haven't asked you to do. So basically throughout politics, on both sides of the spectrum, voters have candidates who are funded by backers who have enough over them that they can always blackmail. ..."
"... The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates. A national security apparatus that vacuums up all our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and the Democratic party, is beyond frightening. ..."
"... 4th impressions – I went looking for the "juicy bits" of interest to me – SOHO routers, small routers – sadly its just a table documenting routers sold around the world, and whether these guys have put the firmware in their Stash Repository. Original firmware, not hacked one. But the repository isn't in the vault dump, AFAIK. ..."
"... The WikiLeaks docs show that CIA has developed means to use all personal digital device microphones and cameras even when they are "off," and to send all of your files and personal data to themselves, and to send your private messages to themselves before they are encrypted. They have installed these spyware in the released version of Windows 10, and can easily install them on all common systems and devices. ..."
"... So we have a zillion ways to spy and hack and deceive and assassinate, but no control. I think this is what the military refers to as "being overtaken by events." ..."
"... My godfather was in the CIA in the late sixties and early seventies, and he said that outside of the President's pet projects there was no way to sift through and bring important information to decision makers before it made the Washington Post (he is aware of the irony) and hit the President's breakfast table. ..."
"... To what extent do these hacks represent the CIA operating within the US? To what extent is that illegal? With the democrats worshipping the IC, will anyone in an official position dare to speak out? ..."
"... Schumer said that as he understands, intelligence officials are "very upset with how [Trump] has treated them and talked about them ..."
"... The CIA's internal security is crap, too. Really a lot of people should be fired over that, as well as over Snowden's release. We didn't hear of it happening in the NSA, though I'm not sure we would have. Given Gaius's description of Trump's situation, it seems unlikely it will happen this time, either. One of my hopes for a Trump administration, as long as we're stuck with it, was a thorough cleanout of the upper echelons in the IC. It's obviously long overdue, and Obama wasn't up to it. But I used the past tense because I don't think it's going to happen. Trump seems more interested in sucking up to them, presumably so they won't kill him or his family. That being one of their options. ..."
"... "The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability ." [My emphasis]. It seems to characterize an organization that operates outside of any control and oversight – and one that is intentionally structuring itself that way. That worries me. ..."
"... It's a dangerous world out there and only our brave IC can protect us from it. Come on. Stop blaming the victim and place the blame where it belongs–our IC and MIC. I say stop feeding the beast with your loyalty to a government that has ceased to be yours. ..."
"... "These CIA revelations in conjunction with those of the NSA paints a pretty dark future for privacy and freedom. Edward Snowden made us aware of the NSA's program XKEYSCORE and PRISM which are utilized to monitor and bulk collect information from virtually any electronic device on the planet and put it into a searchable database. Now Wikileaks has published what appears to be additional Big Brother techniques used by a competing agency. Say what you want about the method of discovery, but Pandora's box has been opened." ..."
March 9, 2017 by Yves Smith Yves here. The first
release of the Wikileaks Vault 7 trove has curiously gone from being a MSM lead story yesterday to a handwave today. On the one hand,
anyone who was half awake during the Edward Snowden revelations knows that the NSA is in full spectrum surveillance and data storage
mode, and members of the Five Eyes back-scratch each other to evade pesky domestic curbs on snooping. So the idea that the CIA (and
presumably the NSA) found a way to circumvent encryption tools on smartphones, or are trying to figure out how to control cars remotely,
should hardly come as a surprise.
However, at a minimum, reminding the generally complacent public that they are being spied on any time they use the Web, and increasingly
the times in between, makes the officialdom Not Happy.
And if this Wikileaks claim is even halfway true, its Vault 7 publication is a big deal:
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero
day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more
than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The archive appears to
have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided
WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
This is an indictment of the model of having the intelligence services rely heavily on outside contractors. It is far more difficult
to control information when you have multiple organizations involved. In addition, neolibearlism posits that workers are free agents
who have no loyalties save to their own bottom lines (or for oddballs, their own sense of ethics). Let us not forget that
Snowden planned his career job moves
, which included a stint at NSA contractor Dell, before executing his information haul at a Booz Allen site that he had targeted.
Admittedly, there are no doubt many individuals who are very dedicated to the agencies for which they work and aspire to spend
most it not all of their woking lives there. But I would assume that they are a minority.
The reason outsiders can attempt to pooh-pooh the Wikileaks release is that the organization redacted sensitive information like
the names of targets and attack machines. The CIA staffers who have access to the full versions of these documents as well as other
major components in the hacking toolkit will be the ones who can judge how large and serious the breach really is. 1 And
their incentives are to minimize it no matter what.
By Gaius Publius , a professional writer living
on the West Coast of the United States and frequent contributor to DownWithTyranny, digby, Truthout, and Naked Capitalism. Follow
him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius ,
Tumblr and
Facebook . GP article archive
here . Originally published at
DownWithTyranny
CIA org chart from the WikiLeaks cache (click to enlarge). "The organizational chart corresponds to the material published
by WikiLeaks so far. Since the organizational structure of the CIA below the level of Directorates is not public, the placement
of the EDG [Engineering Development Group]and its branches is reconstructed from information contained in the documents released
so far. It is intended to be used as a rough outline of the internal organization; please be aware that the reconstructed org
chart is incomplete and that internal reorganizations occur frequently."
* * *
"O brave new world, that has such people in it."
Bottom line first. As you read what's below, consider:
That the CIA is capable of doing all of the things described, and has been for years, is not in doubt.
That unnameable many others have stolen ("exfiltrated") these tools and capabilities is, according to the Wikileaks leaker, also
certain. Consider this an especially dangerous form of proliferation, with cyber warfare tools in the hands of anyone with money
and intent. As WikiLeaks notes, "Once a single cyber 'weapon' is 'loose' it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used
by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike."
That the CIA is itself using these tools, and if so, to what degree, are the only unknowns. But can anyone doubt, in this aggressively
militarized environment, that only the degree of use is in question?
Now the story.
WikiLeaks just dropped a huge cache of documents (the first of several promised releases), leaked from a person or people
associated with the CIA in one or more capacities (examples, employee, contractor), which shows an agency out-of-control in its spying
and hacking overreach. Read through to the end. If you're like me, you'll be stunned, not just about what they can do, but that they
would want to do it, in some cases in direct violation of President Obama's orders. This story is bigger than anything you can imagine.
Consider this piece just an introduction, to make sure the story stays on your radar as it unfolds - and to help you identify
those media figures who will try to minimize or bury it. (Unless I missed it, on MSNBC last night, for example, the first mention
of this story was not Chris Hayes, not Maddow, but the Lawrence O'Donnell show, and then only to support his guest's "Russia gave
us Trump" narrative. If anything, this leak suggests a much muddier picture, which I'll explore in a later piece.)
So I'll start with just a taste, a few of its many revelations, to give you, without too much time spent, the scope of the problem.
Then I'll add some longer bullet-point detail, to indicate just how much of American life this revelation touches.
While the cache of documents has been vetted and redacted
, it hasn't been fully explored for implications. I'll follow this story as bits and piece are added from the crowd sourced research
done on the cache of information. If you wish to play along at home, the WikiLeaks
torrent file is here . The torrent's
passphrase is here . WikiLeaks
press release is here (also reproduced below). Their FAQ
is here .
Note that this release covers the years 2013–2016. As WikiLeaks says in its FAQ, "The series is the largest intelligence publication
in history."
Preface - Trump and Our "Brave New World"
But first, this preface, consisting of one idea only. Donald Trump is deep in the world of spooks now, the world of spies,
agents and operatives. He and his inner circle have a nest of friends, but an even larger, more varied nest of enemies. As John Sevigny
writes below, his enemies include not only the intel and counter-intel people, but also "Republican lawmakers, journalists, the Clintons,
the Bush family, Barack Obama, the ACLU, every living Democrat and even Rand Paul." Plus Vladimir Putin, whose relationship
with Trump is just "business," an alliance of convenience, if you will.
I have zero sympathy for Donald Trump. But his world is now our world, and with both of his feet firmly planted in spook world,
ours are too. He's in it to his neck, in fact, and what happens in that world will affect every one of us. He's so impossibly erratic,
so impossibly unfit for his office, that everyone on the list above wants to remove him. Many of them are allied, but if they are,
it's also only for convenience.
How do spooks remove the inconvenient and unfit? I leave that to your imagination;they have their ways. Whatever method they choose,
however, it must be one without fingerprints - or more accurately, without their fingerprints - on it.
Which suggests two more questions. One, who will help them do it, take him down? Clearly, anyone and everyone on the list. Second,
how do you bring down the president, using extra-electoral, extra-constitutional means, without bringing down the Republic? I have
no answer for that.
Here's a brief look at "spook world" (my phrase, not the author's) from "
The Fox Hunt " by John
Sevigny:
Several times in my life – as a journalist and rambling, independent photographer - I've ended up rubbing shoulders with
spooks. Long before that was a racist term, it was a catch-all to describe intelligence community people, counter intel types,
and everyone working for or against them. I don't have any special insight into the current situation with Donald Trump and his
battle with the IC as the intelligence community calls itself, but I can offer a few first hand observations about the labyrinth
of shadows, light, reflections, paranoia, perceptions and misperceptions through which he finds himself wandering, blindly. More
baffling and scary is the thought he may have no idea his ankles are already bound together in a cluster of quadruple gordian
knots, the likes of which very few people ever escape.
Criminal underworlds, of which the Trump administration is just one, are terrifying and confusing places. They become
far more complicated once they've been penetrated by authorities and faux-authorities who often represent competing interests,
but are nearly always in it for themselves.
One big complication - and I've written
about this before - is that you never know who's working for whom . Another problem is that the hierarchy of handlers,
informants, assets and sources is never defined. People who believe, for example, they are CIA assets are really just being used
by people who are perhaps not in the CIA at all but depend on controlling the dupe in question. It is very simple - and I have
seen this happen - for the subject of an international investigation to claim that he is part of that operation. [emphasis added]
Which leads Sevigny to this observation about Trump, which I partially quoted above: "Donald Trump may be crazy, stupid, evil
or all three but he knows the knives are being sharpened and there are now too many blades for him to count. The intel people are
against him, as are the counter intel people. His phone conversations were almost certainly recorded by one organization or another,
legal or quasi legal. His enemies include Republican lawmakers, journalists, the Clintons, the Bush family, Barack Obama, the ACLU,
every living Democrat and even Rand Paul. Putin is not on his side - that's a business matter and not an alliance."
Again, this is not to defend Trump, or even to generate sympathy for him - I personally have none. It's to characterize where
he is, and we are, at in this pivotal moment. Pivotal not for what they're doing, the broad intelligence community. But pivotal for
what we're finding out, the extent and blatancy of the violations.
All of this creates an incredibly complex story, with only a tenth or less being covered by anything like the mainstream press.
For example, the Trump-Putin tale is much more likely to be part of a much broader "international mobster" story, whose participants
include not only Trump and Putin, but Wall Street (think HSBC) and major international banks, sovereign wealth funds, major hedge
funds, venture capital (vulture capital) firms, international drug and other trafficking cartels, corrupt dictators and presidents
around the world and much of the highest reaches of the "Davos crowd."
Much of the highest reaches of the .01 percent, in other words, all served, supported and "curated" by the various, often competing
elements of the first-world military and intelligence communities. What a stew of competing and aligned interests, of marriages and
divorces of convenience, all for the common currencies of money and power, all of them
dealing in
death .
What this new WikiLeaks revelation shows us is what just one arm of that community, the CIA, has been up to. Again, the breadth
of the spying and hacking capability is beyond imagination. This is where we've come to as a nation.
What the CIA Is Up To - A Brief Sample
Now about those CIA spooks and their surprising capabilities. A number of
other outlets have written up the story, but
this
from Zero Hedge has managed to capture the essence as well as the breadth in not too many words (emphasis mine throughout):
WikiLeaks has published what it claims is the largest ever release
of confidential documents on the CIA It includes more than 8,000 documents as part of 'Vault 7', a series of leaks on the agency,
which have allegedly emerged from the CIA's Center
For Cyber Intelligence in Langley , and which can be seen on the org
chart below, which Wikileaks also released : [org
chart reproduced above]
A total of 8,761 documents have been published
as part of 'Year Zero', the first in a series of leaks the whistleblower organization has dubbed 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said
that 'Year Zero' revealed details of the CIA's "global covert hacking program," including "weaponized exploits" used against company
products including " Apple's iPhone , Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs
, which are turned into covert microphones."
WikiLeaks tweeted the leak, which it claims came from a network inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley,
Virginia.
Among the more notable disclosures which, if confirmed, "
would rock the technology world ", the CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services
such as Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram. According to the statement from WikiLeaks, government hackers can penetrate
Android phones and collect "audio and message traffic before encryption is applied."
With respect to hacked devices like you smart phone, smart TV and computer, consider the concept of putting these devices in "fake-off"
mode:
Among the various techniques profiled by WikiLeaks is "Weeping Angel", developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB),
which infests smart TVs , transforming them into covert microphones. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target
TV in a 'Fake-Off' mode , so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In 'Fake-Off' mode the TV operates
as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.
As Kim Dotcom chimed in on Twitter, "CIA turns Smart TVs, iPhones, gaming consoles and many other consumer gadgets into open
microphones" and added "CIA turned every Microsoft Windows PC in the world into spyware. Can activate backdoors on demand,
including via Windows update "[.]
Do you still trust Windows Update?
About "Russia did it"
Adding to the "Russia did it" story, note this:
Another profound revelation is that the CIA can engage in "false flag" cyberattacks which portray Russia as the assailant
. Discussing the CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group, Wikileaks' source notes that it "collects and maintains a substantial
library of attack techniques 'stolen' from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.["]
As Kim Dotcom summarizes this finding, " CIA uses techniques to make cyber attacks look like they originated from enemy
state ."
This doesn't prove that Russia didn't do it ("it" meaning actually hacking the presidency for Trump, as opposed to providing
much influence in that direction), but again, we're in spook world, with all the phrase implies. The CIA can clearly put anyone's
fingerprints on any weapon they wish, and I can't imagine they're alone in that capability.
Hacking Presidential Devices?
If I were a president, I'd be concerned about this, from the WikiLeaks "
Analysis " portion of the Press Release (emphasis added):
"Year Zero" documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration's commitments [that the intelligence community would
reveal to device manufacturers whatever vulnerabilities it discovered]. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA's cyber arsenal
are pervasive [across devices and device types] and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.
As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in "Year Zero" [that it] is able to penetrate, infest and control both the
Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts . The CIA attacks this software by using
undisclosed security vulnerabilities ("zero days") possessed by the CIA[,] but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone
else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and
Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.
Does or did the CIA do this (hack presidential devices), or is it just capable of it? The second paragraph implies the latter.
That's a discussion for another day, but I can say now that both Lawrence Wilkerson, aide to Colin Powell and a non-partisan (though
an admitted Republican) expert in these matters, and
William Binney,
one of the triumvirate of major pre-Snowden leakers, think emphatically yes. (See
Wilkerson's
comments here . See
Binney's comments here .)
Whether or not you believe Wilkerson and Binney, do you doubt that if our intelligence people can do something, they would
balk at the deed itself, in this
world of "collect it all
"? If nothing else, imagine the power this kind of bugging would confer on those who do it.
The Breadth of the CIA Cyber-Hacking Scheme
But there is so much more in this Wikileaks release than suggested by the brief summary above. Here's a bullet-point overview
of what we've learned so far, again via Zero Hedge:
Key Highlights from the Vault 7 release so far:
"Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of
"zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products , include Apple's iPhone,
Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Wikileaks claims that the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized
"zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation . This extraordinary collection, which
amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The
archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one
of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI),
had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other
"weaponized" malware . Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than
that used to run Facebook.
The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question
as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.
Once a single cyber 'weapon' is 'loose' it can spread around the world in seconds , to be used by rival states, cyber
mafia and teenage hackers alike.
Also this scary possibility:
As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks.
The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations
.
Journalist Michael Hastings, who in 2010
destroyed the career of General
Stanley McChrystal and was hated by the military for it, was killed in 2013 in an inexplicably out-of-control car. This isn't
to suggest the CIA, specifically, caused his death. It's to ask that, if these capabilities existed in 2013, what would prevent their
use by elements of the military, which is, after all a death-delivery organization?
And lest you consider this last speculation just crazy talk, Richard Clarke (that
Richard Clarke ) agrees: "Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism
chief under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush,
told the Huffington
Post that Hastings's crash looked consistent with a car cyber attack.'" Full and fascinating
article here .
WiliLeaks Press Release
Here's what WikiLeaks itself says about this first document cache (again, emphasis mine):
Press Release
Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named "Vault
7" by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.
Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero
day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more
than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA The archive appears to
have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided
WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.
"Year Zero" introduces the scope and direction of the CIA's global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of
"zero day" weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android
and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.
Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA
found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force - its own
substantial fleet of hackers. The agency's hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations
to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA's hacking capacities.
By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's
Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over
5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware.
Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The
CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether
such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.
In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public
, including whether the CIA's hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency.
The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.
Once a single cyber 'weapon' is 'loose' it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia
and teenage hackers alike.
Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that "There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber 'weapons'.
Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such 'weapons', which results from the inability to contain
them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of "Year Zero" goes well beyond the
choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective."
Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the "Year Zero" disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the
distribution of 'armed' cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA's program and
how such 'weapons' should analyzed, disarmed and published.
Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some
identifying information in "Year Zero" for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack
machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen,
we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in "Vault 7" part one ("Year Zero")
already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.
Be sure to click through for the Analysis, Examples and FAQ sections
as well.
"O brave new world," someone once wrote . Indeed.
Brave new world, that only the brave can live in.
____
1 Mind you, the leakers may have had a comprehensive enough view to be making an accurate call. But the real point
is there are no actors who will be allowed to make an independent assessment.
Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump
campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself.
The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump's relationship with Moscow. They were
drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant. BuzzFeed on Tuesday published
the documents, which it said were "unverified and potentially unverifiable".
The Guardian has not been able to confirm the veracity of the documents' contents,
Emphases mine. I had been sitting on this link trying to make sense of this part. Clearly, the Trump Whitehouse has some major
leaks, which the MSM is exploiting. But the start of this article suggests that para-intelligence (is that a word? Eh, it is now)
was the source of the allegedly damaging info.
This is no longer about the deep-state, but a rouge state, possibly guns for higher, each having fealty to specific political
interests. The CIA arsenal wasn't leaked. It was delivered.
hmm.. as far as I can see, noone seems to care here in Germany anymore about being spied on by our US friends, apart from a
few alternative sources which are being accused of spreading fake news, of being anti-american, russian trolls, the matter is
widely ignored
I have read a few articles about the Vault 7 leak that typically raise a few alarms I would like to comment on.
1) The fact that the
CIA had managed to bypass encryption on popular phone and messaging services
does not mean that it has broken encryption, just that it has a way to install a program at a lower level, close to the operating
system, that will read messages before they are encrypted and sent by the messaging app, or just after they
have been decrypted by it.
As a side note: banks have now largely introduced two-factor authentication when accessing online services. One enters username
(or account number) and password; the bank site returns a code; the user must then enter this code into a smartphone app or a
tiny specialized device, which computes and returns a value out of it; the user enters this last value into the entry form as
a throw-away additional password, and gains access to the bank website.
I have always refused to use such methods on a smartphone and insist on getting the specialized "single-use password computer",
precisely because the smartphone platform can be subverted.
2) The fact that
"Weeping Angel", developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), [ ] infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert
microphones.
is possible largely because smart TVs are designed by their manufacturers to serve as spying devices. "Weeping Angel" is not
some kind of virus that turns normal devices into zombies, but a tool to take control of existing zombie devices.
The fact that smart TVs from
Vizio ,
Samsung or
LG constitute an outrageous intrusion into the privacy of their owners has been a known topic for years already.
3) The
CIA [ ] also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks
is not a "scary possibility" either; various demonstrations of such feats on
Tesla ,
Nissan , or
Chrysler vehicles have been demonstrated in the past few years.
And the consequences have already been suggested (killing people by disabling their car controls on the highway for instance).
My take on this is that we should seriously look askance not just at the shenanigans of the CIA, but at the entire "innovative
technology" that is imposed upon (computerized cars) or joyfully adopted by (smartphones) consumers. Of course, most NC readers
are aware of the pitfalls already, but alas not the majority of the population.
4) Finally this:
He's so impossibly erratic, so impossibly unfit for his office,
Trump is arguably unfit for office, does not have a clue about many things (such as foreign relations), but by taxing him of
being "erratic" Gaius Publius shows that he still does not "get" the Donald.
Trump has a completely different modus operandi than career politicians, formed by his experience as a real-estate mogul and
media star. His world has been one where one makes outrageous offers to try anchoring the negotiation before reducing one's claims
- even significantly, or abruptly exiting just before an agreement to strike a deal with another party that has been lured to
concessions through negotiations with the first one. NC once included a video of Trump doing an interactive A/B testing of his
slogans during a campaign meeting; while changing one's slogans on the spot might seem "erratic", it is actually a very systematic
market probing technique.
So stop asserting that Trump is "unpredictable" or "irrational"; this is underestimating him (a dangerous fault), as he is
very consistent, though in an uncommon fashion amongst political pundits.
While I agree that it's worth pointing out that the CIA has not broken any of the major encryption tools, even Snowden regards
being able to circumvent them as worse, since people using encryption are presumably those who feel particularly at risk and will
get a false sense of security and say things or keep data on their devices that they never never would if they thought they were
insecure.
Re Gaius on Trump, I agree the lady doth protest too much. But I said repeatedly that Trump would not want to be President
if he understood the job. It is not like being the CEO of a private company. Trump has vastly more control over his smaller terrain
in his past life than he does as President.
And Trump is no longer campaigning. No more a/b testing.
The fact is that he still does not have effective control of the Executive branch. He has lots of open positions in the political
appointee slots (largely due to not having even submitted candidates!) plus has rebellion in some organizations (like folks in
the EPA storing data outside the agency to prevent its destruction).
You cannot pretend that Trump's former MO is working at all well for him. And he isn't showing an ability to adapt or learn
(not surprising at his age). For instance, he should have figured out by now that DC is run by lawyers, yet his team has hardly
any on it. This is continuing to be a source of major self inflicted wounds.
His erraticness may be keeping his opponents off base, but it is also keeping him from advancing any of his goals.
Yes, not breaking encryption is devious, as it gives a false sense of security - this is precisely why I refuse to use those
supposedly secure e-banking login apps on smartphones whose system software can be subverted, and prefer those non-connected,
non-reprogrammable, special-purpose password generating devices.
As for Trump being incompetent for his job, and his skills in wheeling-dealing do not carrying over usefully to conducting
high political offices, that much is clear. But he is not "erratic", rather he is out of place and out of his depth.
I am writing this in the shower with a paper bag over my head and my iPhone in the microwave.
I have for years had a password-protected document on computer with all my important numbers and passwords. I have today deleted
that document and reverted to a paper record.
I think he means a machine dedicated to high-security operations like anything financial or bill-pay. Something that is not
exposed to email or web-browsing operations that happen on a casual-use computer that can easily compromise. That's not a bad
way to go; it's cheaper in terms of time than the labor-intensive approaches I use, but those are a hobby more than anything else.
It depends on how much you have at stake if they get your bank account or brokerage service password.
I take a few basic security measures, which would not impress the IT crowd I hang out with elsewhere, but at least would not
make me a laughingstock. I run Linux and use only open-source software; run ad-blockers and script blockers; confine risky operations,
which means any non-corporate or non-mainstream website to a virtual machine that is reset after each use; use separate browsers
with different cookie storage policies and different accounts for different purposes. I keep a well-maintained pfSense router
with a proxy server and an intrusion detection system, allowing me to segregate my secure network, home servers, guest networks,
audiovisual streaming and entertainment devices, and IoT devices each on their own VLANs with appropriate ACLs between them. No
device on the more-secured network is allowed out to any port without permission, and similar rules are there for the IoT devices,
and the VoIP tools.
The hardware to do all of that costs at least $700, but the real expense is in the time to learn the systems properly. Of course
if you use Linux, you could save that on software in a year if you are too cheap to send a contribution to the developers.
It's not perfect, because I still have computers turned on :) , but I feel a bit safer this way.
That said, absolutely nothing that I have here would last 30 milliseconds against anything the "hats" could use, if they wanted
in. It would be over before it began. If I had anything to hide, really, I would have something to fear; so guess I'm OK.
They're key fobs handed to you by your IT dept. The code displayed changes every couple of minutes. The plus is there's nothing
sent over the air. The minus is the fobs are subject to theft, and are only good for connecting to 'home'. And since they have
a cost, and need to be physically handed to you, they're not good fit for most two factor login applications (ie logging into
your bank account).
I watched (fast forwarded through, really) Morning Joe yesterday to see what they would have to say about Wikileaks. The show
mostly revolved around the health care bill and Trump's lying and tweeting about Obama wiretapping him. They gave Tim Kaine plenty
of time to discuss his recent trip to London talking to "some of our allies there" saying that they are concerned that "all the
intelligence agencies" say the Rooskies "cyber hacked" our election, and since it looks like we aren't doing anything when we
are attacked, they KNOW we won't do anything when they are attacked. (more red baiting)
The only two mentions I saw was about Wikileaks were, first, a question asked of David Cohen, ex Deputy Director of the CIA,
who refused to confirm the Wikileaks were authentic, saying whatever tools and techniques the CIA had were used against foreign
persons overseas, so there is no reason to worry that your TV is looking at you. And second, Senator Tom Cotton, who didn't want
to comment on the contents of Wikileaks, only saying that the CIA is a foreign intelligence service, collecting evidence on foreign
targets to keep our country safe, and it does not do intelligence work domestically.
So that appears to be their story, the CIA doesn't spy on us, and they are sticking with it, probably hoping the whole Wikileaks
thing just cycles out of the news.
The unwillingness of the main stream media (so far) to really cover the Wikileaks reveal is perhaps the bigger story. This
should be ongoing front page stuff .. but it is not.
As for using ZeroHedge as a source for anything, can we give that a rest. That site has become a cesspool of insanity. It used
to have some good stuff. Now it is just unreadable. SAD
And yes I know the hypocrisy of slamming ZH and the MSM at the same time we live in interesting times.
Your remarks on ZH are an ad hominem attack and therefore a violation of site policies. The onus is on you to say what ZH got
wrong and not engage in an ungrounded smear. The mainstream media often cites ZH.
NC more than just about any other finance site is loath to link to ZH precisely because it is off base or hyperventilating
a not acceptably high percent of the time, and is generally wrong about the Fed (as in governance and how money works). We don't
want to encourage readers to see it as reliable. However, it is good on trader gossip and mining Bloomberg data.
And I read through its summary of the Wikileaks material as used by Gaius and there was nothing wrong with it. It was careful
about attributing certain claims to Wikileaks as opposed to depicting them as true.
My rules for reading ZH:
1- Skip every article with no picture
2- Skip every article where the picture is a graph
3- Skip every article where the picture is of a single person's face
4- Skip every afticle where the picture is a cartoon
5- Skip every article about gold, BitCoin, or high-frequency trading
6- Skip all the "Guest Posts"
7- ALWAYS click through to the source
8- NEVER read the comments
It is in my opinion a very high noise-to-signal source, but there is some there there.
Discerning a 'news from noise' is NEVER that easy b/c it is an art, developed by years of shifting through ever increasing
'DATA information' load. This again has to be filtered and tested against one's own 'critical' thinking or reasoning! You have
to give ZH, deserved credit, when they are right!
There is no longer a Black or white there, even at ZH! But it is one of the few, willing to challenge the main stream narrative
'kool aid'
In addition to the "para-intelligence" community (hat tip Code named D) there are multiple enterprises with unique areas of
expertise that interface closely with the CIA The long-exposed operations, which include entrapment and blackmailing of key actors
to guarantee complicity, "loyalty" and/or sealed lips, infect businesses, NGOs, law enforcement agencies, judges, politicians,
and other government agencies. Equal opportunity employment for those with strong stomachs and a weak moral compass.
Yes I can't remember where I read it but it was a tale passed around supposedly by an FBI guy that had, along with his colleagues,
the job of vetting candidates for political office. They'd do their background research and pass on either a thick or thin folder
full of all the compromising dirt on each potential appointee. Over time he said he was perturbed to notice a persistent pattern
where the thickest folders were always the ones who got in.
I learned this when I was in my 20s. The Catholic Church was funding my early critique of American foreign aid as being
imperialist. I asked whether they thought I should go into politics. They said, "No, you'd never make it". And I said, "Why?"
and they said, "Well, nobody has a police record or any other dirt on you." I asked what they meant. They said, "Unless they
have something over you to blackmail you with, you're not going to be able to get campaign funding. Because they believe that
you might do something surprising," in other words, something they haven't asked you to do. So basically throughout politics,
on both sides of the spectrum, voters have candidates who are funded by backers who have enough over them that they can always
blackmail.
I find the notion that my consumer electronics may be CIA microphones somewhat irritating, but my imagination quickly runs
off to far worse scenarios. (although the popular phase, "You're tax dollars at work." keeps running thru my head like a earworm.
And whenever I hear "conservatives" speak of their desire for "small government", usually when topics of health care, Medicare
and social security come up, I can only manage a snort of incredulousness anymore)
One being malware penetrating our nuke power plants and shutting down the cooling system. Then the reactor slowly overheats
over the next 3 days, goes critical, and blows the surrounding area to high heaven. We have plants all around the coast of the
country and also around the Great Lakes Region – our largest fresh water store in a drought threatened future.
Then the same happening in our offensive nuke missile systems.
Some other inconvenient truths – the stuxnet virus has been redesigned. Kaspersky – premier anti malware software maker – had
a variant on their corporate network for months before finally discovering it. What chance have we?
In China, hacking is becoming a consumer service industry. There are companies building high power data centers with a host
of hacking tools. Anyone, including high school script kiddies, can rent time to use the sophisticated hacking tools, web search
bots, and whatever, all hosted on powerful servers with high speed internet bandwidth.
Being a bit "spooked" by all this, I began to worry about my humble home computer and decided to research whatever products
I could get to at least ward off annoying vandalism. Among other things, I did sign up for a VPN service. I'm looking at the control
app for my VPN connection here and I see that with a simple checkbox mouse click I can make my IP address appear to be located
in my choice of 40 some countries around the world. Romania is on the list!
Actually, I very much doubt that does work. The mic "pickup" would feed its analog output to a DAC (digital to analog converter)
which would convert the signal to digital. This then goes to something similar to a virtual com port in the operating system.
Here is where a malware program would pick it up and either create a audio file to be sent to an internet address, or stream it
directly there.
The article is just plugging in a microphone at the output jack. The malware got the data long before it goes thru another
DAC and analog amp to get to the speakers or output jack.
It depends on how it is hooked up internally. Old fashioned amateur radio headphones would disable the speakers when plugged
in because the physical insertion of the plug pushed open the connection to the speakers. The jack that you plug the ear buds
into might do the same, disconnecting the path between the built-in microphone and the ADC (actually it is an ADC not a DAC).
The only way to know is to take it apart and see how it is connected.
The CIA is not allowed to operate in the US is also the panacea for the public. And some are buying it. Along with everyone
knows they can do this is fueling the NOTHING to see here keep walking weak practically non existent coverage.
At what point do people quit negotiating in terrorism and errorism? For this is what the police, the very State itself has
long been. Far beyond being illegitimate, illegal, immoral, this is a clear and ever present danger to not just it's own people,
but the rule of law itself. Blanket statements like we all know this just makes the dangerously absurd normal I'll never understand
that part of human nature. But hey, the TSA literally just keeps probing further each and every year. Bend over!
Trump may not be the one for the task but we the people desperately need people 'unfit', for it is the many fit who brought
us to this point. His unfit nature is as refreshing on these matters in its chaotic honest disbelief as Snowden and Wiki revelations.
Refreshing because it's all we've got. One doesn't have to like Trump to still see missed opportunity so many should be telling
him he could be the greatest pres ever if (for two examples) he fought tirelessly for single payer and to bring down this police
state rather than the EPA or public education.
This cannot stand on so many levels. Not only is the fourth amendment rendered utterly void, but even if it weren't it falls
far short of the protections we deserve.
No enemy could possibly be as bad as who we are and what we allow/do among ourselves. If an election can be hacked (not saying
it was by Russia).. as these and other files prove anything can and will be hacked then our system is to blame, not someone else.
What amazes me is that the spooks haven't manufactured proof needed to take Trump out of office Bonfire of The Vanities style.
I'd like to think the people have moved beyond the point they would believe manufactured evidence but the Russia thing proves
otherwise.
These people foment world war while probing our every move and we do nothing!
If we wait for someone fit nothing will ever change because we wait for the police/media/oligarch state to tell us who is fit.
But being fit by the standards of our ruling class, the "real owners" as Carlin called them is, in my book, an automatic proof
that they are up to no good. Trump is not my cup of tea as a president but no one we have had in a while wasn't clearly compromised
by those who fund them. Did you ever wonder why we have never had a president or even a powerful member of congress that was not
totally in the tank for that little country on the Eastern Mediterranean? Or the Gulf Monarchies? Do you think that is by accident?
Do you think money isn't involved? Talk about hacked elections! We should be so lucky as to have ONLY Russians attempting to affect
our elections. Money is what hacks US elections and never forget that. To me it is laughable to discuss hacking the elections
without discussing the real way our "democracy" is subverted–money not document leaks or voting machine hacks. It's money.
Why isn't Saudi Arabia on Trump's list? Iran that has never been involved in a terrorist act on US soil is but not Saudi Arabia?
How many 911 hijackers came from Iran? If anything saves Trump from destruction by the real owners of our democracy it is his
devotion to the aforementioned countries.
The point again is not to remove him from office but to control him. With Trump's past you better believe the surveillance
state has more than enough to remove him from office. Notice the change in his rhetoric since inauguration? More and more he is
towing the establishment Republican line. Of course this depends on whether you believe Trump is a break with the past or just
the best liar out there. A very unpopular establishment would be clever in promoting their agent by pretending to be against him.
Anyone who still believes that the US is a democratic republic and not a mafia state needs to stick their heads deeper into
the sands. When will the low information voters and police forces on whom a real revolution depends realize this is anyone's guess.
The day is getting closer especially for the younger generation. The meme among the masses is that government has always been
corrupt and that this is nothing new. I do believe the level of immorality among the credentialed classes is indeed very new and
has become the new normal. Generations of every man for himself capitalist philosophy undermining any sense of morality or community
has finally done its work.
Go take a jaunt over to huffpo, at the time of this post there was not a single mention of vault 7 on the front page. Just
a long series of anti trump administration articles.
Glad to know for sure who the true warmongers were all along.
No.. The Church commission was a sweep it under the rug operation. It got us FISA courts. More carte blanche secrecy, not less.
The commission nor the rest of the system didn't even hold violators of the time accountable.
We have files like Vault 7. Commissions rarely get in secret what we have right here before our eyes.
River: Interesting historic parallel? I believe that the Ottomans got rid of the Janissaries that way, after the Janissaries
had become a state within a state, by using cannons on their HQ
From Wiki entry, Janissaries:
The corps was abolished by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 in the Auspicious Incident in which 6,000 or more were executed.[8]
Took less than a minute to download the 513.33MB file. The passphrase is what JFK said he'd like to do to CIA: SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheWinds.
"The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer." Henry Kissinger, 1975.
The campaign to frame up and discredit Trump and his associates is characteristic of how a police state routinely operates.
A national security apparatus that vacuums up all our communications and stores them for later retrieval has been utilized
by political operatives to go after their enemies – and not even the President of the United States is immune. This is something
that one might expect to occur in, say, Turkey, or China: that it is happening here, to the cheers of much of the media and
the Democratic party, is beyond frightening.
The irony is that the existence of this dangerous apparatus – which civil libertarians have warned could and probably would
be used for political purposes – has been hailed by Trump and his team as a necessary and proper function of government. Indeed,
Trump has called for the execution of the person who revealed the existence of this sinister engine of oppression – Edward
Snowden. Absent Snowden's revelations, we would still be in the dark as to the existence and vast scope of the NSA's surveillance.
And now the monster Trump embraced in the name of "national security" has come back to bite him.
We hear all the time that what's needed is an open and impartial "investigation" of Trump's alleged "ties" to Russia. This
is dangerous nonsense: does every wild-eyed accusation from embittered losers deserve a congressional committee armed with
subpoena power bent on conducting an inquisition? Certainly not.
What must be investigated is the incubation of a clandestine political police force inside the national security apparatus,
one that has been unleashed against Trump – and could be deployed against anyone.
This isn't about Donald Trump. It's about preserving what's left of our old republic.
Yeah I downloaded it the day it came out and spent an hour or so looking at it last night. First impressions – "heyyy this
is like a Hackers Guide – the sort I used in the 80s, or DerEngel's Cable Modem Hacking" of the 00s.
2nd impressions – wow it really gives foundational stuff – like "Enable Debug on PolarSSL".
3rd impressions – "I could spend hours going thru this happily ".
4th impressions – I went looking for the "juicy bits" of interest to me – SOHO routers, small routers – sadly its just
a table documenting routers sold around the world, and whether these guys have put the firmware in their Stash Repository. Original
firmware, not hacked one. But the repository isn't in the vault dump, AFAIK.
Its quite fascinating. But trying to find the "juicy stuff" is going to be tedious. One can spend hours and hours going thru
it. To speed up going thru it, I'm going to need some tech sites to say "where to go".
It seems clear that Wikileaks has not and will not release actual ongoing method "how-to" info or hacking scripts. They are
releasing the "whats", not the tech level detailed "hows". This seems like a sane approach to releasing the data. The release
appears to be for political discussion, not for spreading the hacking tools. So I wouldn't look for "juicy bits" about detailed
methodology. Just my guess.
That said, love what you're doing digging into this stuff. I look forward to a more detailed report in future. Thanks.
Yves, I think that you much underestimate the extremity of these exposed violations of the security of freedom of expression,
and of the security of private records. The WikiLeaks docs show that CIA has developed means to use all personal digital device
microphones and cameras even when they are "off," and to send all of your files and personal data to themselves, and to send your
private messages to themselves before they are encrypted. They have installed these spyware in the released version of Windows
10, and can easily install them on all common systems and devices.
This goes far beyond the kind of snooping that required specialized devices installed near the target, which could be controlled
by warrant process. There is no control over this extreme spying. It is totalitarianism now.
This is probably the most extreme violation of the rights of citizens by a government in all of history. It is far worse than
the "turnkey tyranny" against which Snowden warned, on the interception of private messages. It is tyranny itself, the death of
democracy.
Your first sentence is a bit difficult to understand. If you read Yves' remarks introducing the post, she says that the revelations
are "a big deal" "if the Wikileaks claim is even halfway true," while coming down hard on the MSM and others for "pooh-pooh[ing]"
the story. Did you want her to add more exclamation points?
So we have a zillion ways to spy and hack and deceive and assassinate, but no control. I think this is what the military
refers to as "being overtaken by events."
It's easy to gather information; not so easy to analyze it, and somehow impossible to act on it in good faith. With all this
ability to know stuff and surveil people the big question is, Why does everything seem so beyond our ability to control it?
We should know well in advance that banks will fail catastrophically; that we will indeed have sea level rise; that resources
will run out; that water will be undrinkable; that people will be impossible to manipulate when panic hits – but what do we do?
We play dirty tricks, spy on each other like voyeurs, and ignore the inevitable. Like the Stasi, we clearly know what happened,
what is happening and what is going to happen. But we have no control.
My godfather was in the CIA in the late sixties and early seventies, and he said that outside of the President's pet projects
there was no way to sift through and bring important information to decision makers before it made the Washington Post (he is
aware of the irony) and hit the President's breakfast table.
AS, I would interpret it as saying that there was so much coming in it was like trying to classify snowflakes in a snowstorm.
They could pick a few subject areas to look at closely but the rest just went into the files.
Leaking like a sieve is also likely, but perhaps not the main point.
The archive appears to have been circulated among government hackers and contractors in a authorized manner
There, that looks the more likely framing considering CIA & DNI on behalf of the whole US IC seemingly fostered wide dissimilation
of these tools, information. Demonstration of media control an added plus.
Todd Pierce , on the other hand, nails it. (From his Facebook page.)
The East German Stasi could only dream of the sort of surveillance the NSA and CIA do now, with just as nefarious of purposes.
Perhaps the scare quotes around "international mobster" aren't really necessary.
In all this talk about the various factions aligned with and against Trump, that's one I haven't heard brought up by anybody.
With all the cement poured in Trump's name over the years, it would be naive to think his businesses had not brushed up against
organized crime at some point. Question is, whose side are they on?
Like all the other players, the "side" they are on is them-effing-selves. And isn't that the whole problem with our misbegotten
species, writ large?
Then there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Hzds9aGdA
Maybe these people will be around and still eating after us urban insects and rodents are long gone? Or will our rulers decide
no one should survive if they don't?
To what extent do these hacks represent the CIA operating within the US? To what extent is that illegal? With the democrats
worshipping the IC, will anyone in an official position dare to speak out?
I've long thought that the reason Snowden was pursued so passionately was that he exposed the biggest, most embarrassing secret:
that the National "Security" Agency's INTERNAL security was crap.
And here it is: "Wikileaks claims that the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal "
The CIA's internal security is crap, too. Really a lot of people should be fired over that, as well as over Snowden's release.
We didn't hear of it happening in the NSA, though I'm not sure we would have. Given Gaius's description of Trump's situation,
it seems unlikely it will happen this time, either. One of my hopes for a Trump administration, as long as we're stuck with it,
was a thorough cleanout of the upper echelons in the IC. It's obviously long overdue, and Obama wasn't up to it. But I used the
past tense because I don't think it's going to happen. Trump seems more interested in sucking up to them, presumably so they won't
kill him or his family. That being one of their options.
Ah, that's the beauty of contracting it out. No one gets fired. Did anyone get fired because of Snowden? It was officially
a contractor problem and since there are only a small number of contractors capable of doing the work, well you know. We can't
get new ones.
What I find by far the most distressing is this: "The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability
." [My emphasis]. It seems to characterize an organization that operates outside of any control and oversight – and one that is
intentionally structuring itself that way. That worries me.
It is becoming increasingly clear that the Republic is lost because we didn't stand guard for it. Blaming others don't cut
it either – we let it happen. And like the Germans about the Nazi atrocities, we will say that we didn't know about it.
Hey, I didn't let it happen. Stuff that spooks and sh!tes do behind the Lycra ™ curtain happens because it is, what is the
big word again, "ineluctable." Is my neighbor to blame for having his house half eaten by both kinds of termites, where the construction
is such that the infestation and damage are invisible until the vast damage is done?
And just how were we supposed to stand guard against a secret and unaccountable organization that protected itself with a shield
of lies? And every time some poor misfit complained about it they were told that they just didn't know the facts. If they only
knew what our IC knows they would not complain.
It's a dangerous world out there and only our brave IC can protect us from it. Come on. Stop blaming the victim and place
the blame where it belongs–our IC and MIC. I say stop feeding the beast with your loyalty to a government that has ceased to be
yours.
Studiously avoid any military celebrations. Worship of the military is part of the problem. Remember, the people you thank
for "their service" are as much victims as you are. Sadly they don't realize that their service is to a rotten empire that is
not worthy of their sacrifice but every time we perform the obligatory ritual of thankfulness we participate in the lie that the
service is to a democratic country instead of an undemocratic empire.
It's clearly a case of Wilfred Owen's classic "Dulce et Decorum Est". Read the poem, google it and read it. It is instructive:
" you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria
mori." Make no mistake. It is a lie and it can only be undone if we all cease to tell it.
"These CIA revelations in conjunction with those of the NSA paints a pretty dark future for privacy and freedom. Edward
Snowden made us aware of the NSA's program XKEYSCORE and PRISM which are utilized to monitor and bulk collect information from
virtually any electronic device on the planet and put it into a searchable database. Now Wikileaks has published what appears
to be additional Big Brother techniques used by a competing agency. Say what you want about the method of discovery, but Pandora's
box has been opened."
All signs of sophisticated false flag operation, which probably involved putting malware into DNC servers and then
detecting and analyzing them
Notable quotes:
"... 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The hacking apparently continues unabated. ..."
"... The Smoking Gun ..."
"... I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter, was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred. ..."
"... Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative. ..."
"... Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible. That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from a Russian source. ..."
"... Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich. In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national cybersecurity: http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/ ..."
"... I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents. ..."
"... It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow the truth to come out ..."
"... Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council - are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect"). ..."
"... Alperovitch is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money. ..."
"... One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet? ..."
"... Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack. You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post: ..."
"... His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches. Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation, and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on. ..."
"... The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia. ..."
"... None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak. ..."
Notwithstanding the conventional wisdom that Russia hacked into the DNC computers, downloaded emails and a passed the stolen missives
to Julian Assange's crew at Wikileaks, a careful examination of the timeline of events from 2016 shows that this story is simply
not plausible.
Let me take you through the known facts:
1. 29 April 2016 , when the DNC became aware its servers had been penetrated (https://medium.com/homefront-rising/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f).
Note. They apparently did not know who was doing it. 2, 6 May 2016 when CrowdStrike first detected what it assessed to be a Russian
presence inside the DNC server. Follow me here. One week after realizing there had been a penetration, the DNC learns, courtesy of
the computer security firm it hired, that the Russians are doing it. Okay. Does CrowdStrike shut down the penetration. Nope. The
hacking apparently continues unabated. 3. 25 May 2016. The messages published on Wikileaks from the DNC show that 26 May 2016
was the last date that emails were sent and received at the DNC. There are no emails in the public domain after that date. In other
words, if the DNC emails were taken via a hacking operation, we can conclude from the fact that the last messages posted to Wikileaks
show a date time group of 25 May 2016. Wikileaks has not reported nor posted any emails from the DNC after the 25th of May. I think
it is reasonable to assume that was the day the dirty deed was done. 4. 12 June 2016, CrowdStrike purged the DNC server of all malware.
Are you kidding me? 45 days after the DNC discovers that its serve has been penetrated the decision to purge the DNC server is finally
made. What in the hell were they waiting for? But this also tells us that 18 days after the last email "taken" from the DNC, no additional
emails were taken by this nasty malware. Here is what does not make sense to me. If the DNC emails were truly hacked and the malware
was still in place on 11 June 2016 (it was not purged until the 12th) then why are there no emails from the DNC after 26 May 2016?
an excellent analysis of Guccifer's role : Almost immediately after the one-two punch of the Washington Post article/CrowdStrike
technical report went public, however, something totally unexpected happened -- someone came forward and took full responsibility
for the DNC cyber attack. Moreover, this entity -- operating under the persona Guccifer 2.0 (ostensibly named after the original
Guccifer , a Romanian hacker who stole the emails of a number of high-profile celebrities and who was arrested in 2014 and sentenced
to 4 ½ years of prison in May 2016) -- did something no state actor has ever done before, publishing documents stolen from the DNC
server as proof of his claims.
Hi. This is Guccifer 2.0 and this is me who hacked Democratic National Committee.
With that simple email, sent to the on-line news magazine,
The Smoking
Gun , Guccifer 2.0 stole the limelight away from Alperovitch. Over the course of the next few days, through a series of
emails, online posts and
interviews
, Guccifer 2.0 openly mocked CrowdStrike and its Russian attribution. Guccifer 2.0 released a number of documents, including a massive
200-plus-missive containing opposition research on Donald Trump.
Guccifer 2.0 also directly contradicted the efforts on the part of the DNC to minimize the extent of the hacking,
releasing the very donor lists
the DNC specifically stated had not been stolen. More chilling, Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be in possession of "about 100 Gb of data"
which had been passed on to the online publisher, Wikileaks, who "will publish them soon." 7. Seth Rich died on 10 July 2016.
I introduce Seth Rich at this point because he represents an alternative hypothesis. Rich, who reportedly was a Bernie Sanders supporter,
was in a position at the DNC that gave him access to the emails in question and the opportunity to download the emails and take them
from the DNC headquarters. Worth noting that Julian Assange offered
$20,000 for information leading to the arrest of Rich's killer or killers. 8. 22 July 2016. Wikileaks published the DNC emails
starting on 22 July 2016. Bill Binney, a former senior official at NSA, insists that if such a hack and electronic transfer over
the internet had occurred then the NSA has in it possession the intelligence data to prove that such activity had occurred.Notwithstanding the claim by CrowdStrike not a single piece of evidence has been provided to the public to support the conclusion
that the emails were hacked and physically transferred to a server under the control of a Russian intelligence operative.Please do not try to post a comment stating that the "Intelligence Community" concluded as well that Russia was responsible.
That claim is totally without one shred of actual forensic evidence. Also, Julian Assange insists that the emails did not come from
a Russian source.
Wikileaks, the protector of the accountability of the top, has announced a reward for finding the murderers of Seth Rich.
In comparison, the DNC has not offered any reward to help the investigation of the murder of the DNC staffer, but the DNC found
a well-connected lawyer to protect Imran Awan who is guilty (along with Debbie Wasserman-Schultz) in the greatest breach of national
cybersecurity:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/29/wasserman-schultz-seemingly-planned-to-pay-suspect-even-while-he-lived-in-pakistan/
Seth Rich's family have pleaded, and continue to plead, that the conspiracy theorists leave the death of their son alone and have
said that those who continue to flog this nonsense around the internet are only serving to increase their pain. I suggest respectfully
that some here may wish to consider their feelings. (Also, this stuff is nuts, you know.)
"We also know that many people are angry at our government and want to see justice done in some way, somehow. We are asking
you to please consider our feelings and words. There are people who are using our beloved Seth's memory and legacy for their own
political goals, and they are using your outrage to perpetuate our nightmare."
"Wheeler, a former Metropolitan Police Department officer, was a key figure in a series of debunked stories claiming that Rich
had been in contact with Wikileaks before his death. Fox News, which reported the story online and on television, retracted it
in June."
I'm afraid you're behind the times. Wheeler is no longer relevant now that Sy Hersh has revealed an FBI report that explicitly
says Rich was in contact with Wikileaks offering to sell them DNC documents.
It's unfortunate for the Rich family, but now that the connection is pretty much confirmed, they're going to have to allow
the truth to come out.
Mr. Dmitri Alperovitch, of Jewish descent (and an emigre from Russia), has been an "expert" at the Atlantic Council, the same
organization that cherishes and provides for Mr. Eliot Higgins. These two gentlemen - and the directorate of Atlantic Council
- are exhibit one of opportunism and intellectual dishonesty (though it is hard to think about Mr. Higgins in terms of "intellect").
Take note how Alperovitch coded the names of the supposed hackers: "Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National
Committee's computer network and accessed opposition research on Donald Trump, according to the Atlantic Council's Dmitri Alperovitch.
Two Russian groups ! codenamed FancyBear and CozyBear ! have been identified as spearheading the DNC breach." Alperovitch
is not just an incompetent "expert" in cybersecurity - he is a willing liar and war-mongering, for money.
The DNC hacking story has never been about national security; Alperovitch (and his handlers) have no loyalty to the US.
PT, I make a short exception. Actually decided to stop babbling for a while. But: Just finished something successfully.
And since I usually need distraction by something far more interesting then matters at hand. I was close to your line of thought
yesters.
But really: Shouldn't the timeline start in 2015, since that's supposedly the time someone got into the DNC's system?
One could of course start earlier. What is the exact timeline of the larger cyberwar post 9/11, or at least the bits and
pieces that surfaced for the nitwits among us, like: Stuxnet?
But nevermind. Don't forget developments and recent events around Eugene or Jewgeni Walentinowitsch Kasperski?
The Russia thing certainly seems to have gone quiet.
Bannon's chum says the issue with pursuing the Clinton email thing is that you would end up having to indict almost all of
the last administration, including Obama, unseemly certainly. Still there might be a fall guy, maybe Comey, and obviously it serves
Trump's purposes to keep this a live issue through the good work of Grassley and the occasional tweet.
Would be amusing if Trump pardoned Obama. Still think Brennan should pay a price though, can't really be allowed to get away
with it
Scott Ritter's article referenced in PT's post is terrific, covering a ton of issues related to CrowdStrike and the DNC hack.
You need to read it, not just PT's timeline. In case you missed the link in PT's post:
Also, the article Carr references is very important for understanding the limits of malware analysis and "attribution". Written
by Michael Tanji, whose credentials appear impressive: "spent nearly 20 years in the US intelligence community. Trained in both
SIGINT and HUMINT disciplines he has worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the National
Reconnaissance Office. At various points in his career he served as an expert in information warfare, computer network operations,
computer forensics, and indications and warning. A veteran of the US Army, Michael has served in both strategic and tactical assignments
in the Pacific Theater, the Balkans, and the Middle East."
His article echoes and reinforces what Carr and others have said about the difficulty of attribution of infosec breaches.
Namely that the basic problem of both intelligence and infosec operations is that there is too much obfuscation, manipulation,
and misdirection involved to be sure of who or what is going on.
The Seth Rich connection is pretty much a done deal, now that Sy Hersh has been caught on tape stating that he knows of
an FBI report based on a forensic analysis of Rich's laptop that shows Rich was in direct contact with Wikileaks with an attempt
to sell them DNC documents and that Wikileaks had access to Rich's DropBox account. Despite Hersh's subsequent denials - which
everyone knows are his usual impatient deflections prior to putting out a sourced and organized article - it's pretty clear that
Rich was at least one of the sources of the Wikileaks email dump and that there is zero connection to Russia.
None of this proves that Russian intelligence - or Russians of some stripe - or for that matter hackers from literally
anywhere - couldn't or didn't ALSO do a hack of the DNC. But it does prove that the iron-clad attribution of the source of Wikileaks
email release to Russia is at best flawed, and at worst a deliberate cover up of a leak.
And Russiagate depends primarily on BOTH alleged "facts" being true: 1) that Russia hacked the DNC, and 2) that Russia was
the source of Wikileaks release. And if the latter is not true, then one has to question why Russia hacked the DNC in the first
place, other than for "normal" espionage operations. "Influencing the election" then becomes a far less plausible theory.
The general takeaway from an infosec point of view is that attribution by means of target identification, tools used, and "indicators
of compromise" is a fatally flawed means of identifying, and thus being able to counter, the adversaries encountered in today's
Internet world, as Tanji proves. Only HUMINT offers a way around this, just as it is really the only valid option in countering
terrorism.
"... The elephant in the room is not privacy problems. It is blackmail for various purposes. ..."
"... This makes he US Government totally dysfunctional. the spread of such spy technique has created chaos. Latest news is that Democrats paid some hackers for not revealing their server information. ..."
"... I don't think this can be stopped. But we need more open discussion about blackmailing and thus protection from such methods. An elected President or Official should not have their private life discussed by the Media. It should be banned ..."
"... And Clinton never feared anything, probably because the CIA was in her pocket and could get the goods on anybody even Loretta Lynch. ..."
That the CIA has reached into the lives of all Americans through its wholesale gathering of the nation's "haystack" of information
has already been reported.
It is bad enough that the government spies on its own people. It is equally bad that the CIA, through its incompetence, has opened
the cyberdoor to anyone with the technological skills and connections to spy on anyone else.
The constant erosion of privacy at the hands of the government and corporations has annihilated the concept of a "right to privacy,"
which is embedded in the rationale of the First, Third, Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
It is becoming increasingly clear that we are sliding down the slippery slope toward totalitarianism, where private lives do not
exist.
We have entered a condition of constitutional crisis that requires a full-throated response from the American people.
Before you label Kucinich as being overly-dramatic, you may want to note that Bill Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created
the agency's mass surveillance program for digital information, the 36-year NSA veteran widely who was the senior technical director
within the agency and managed thousands of NSA employees –
told Washington's
Blog that America has already become a police state.
And Thomas Drake – one of the top NSA executives, and Senior Change Leader within the NSA –
told
us the same thing.
And Kirk Wiebe – a 32-year NSA veteran who received the Director CIA's Meritorious Unit Award and the NSA's Meritorious Civilian
Service Award – agrees (tweet via Jesselyn Radack, attorney for many national security whistleblowers, herself a Department of Justice
whistleblower):
It's not just NSA officials Two former
U.S. Supreme Court Justices have warned that America is sliding into tyranny.
The elephant in the room is not privacy problems. It is blackmail for various purposes.
We have many indications that politicians, judges, officials and even other intel organizations are being blackmailed, and
destroyed using lucid information from their private life.
This makes he US Government totally dysfunctional. the spread of such spy technique has created chaos. Latest news is that
Democrats paid some hackers for not revealing their server information.
I don't think this can be stopped. But we need more open discussion about blackmailing and thus protection from such methods.
An elected President or Official should not have their private life discussed by the Media. It should be banned.
Officials say disclosures about targeting of Joaquín Almunia was 'not the type of behaviour
that we expect from strategic partners'
The latest disclosures from the Snowden files provoked exasperation at the
European commission,
with officials saying they intended to press the British and American governments for answers about
the targeting of one its most senior officials.
Reacting shortly after an EU summit had finished in Brussels, the commission said disclosures
about the targeting of Joaquín Almunia, a vice-president with responsibility for competition policy,
was "not the type of behaviour that we expect from strategic partners, let alone from our own member
states".
A spokesman added: "This piece of news follows a series of other revelations which, as we clearly
stated in the past, if proven true, are unacceptable and deserve our strongest condemnation."
In Britain, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chair of the parliamentary committee that provides oversight
of GCHQ, said he was "disturbed by these allegations." He added he could be "examining them in due
course as part of the intelligence and security committee's wider investigation into the interception
of communications."
A prominent German MP, Hans-Christian Ströbele, who met
Edward Snowden in Moscow
in October, told the Guardian it was becoming "increasingly clear that Britain has been more than
the US' stooge in this surveillance scandal". He suggested the snooping by GCHQ on German government
buildings and embassies was unacceptable.
"Great Britain is not just any country. It is a country that we are supposed to be in a union
with. It's incredible for one member of the
European Union to spy on another
– it's like members of a family spying on each other. The German government will need to raise this
with the British government directly and ask tough questions about the victims, and that is the right
word, of this affair."
The Liberal Democrats have been inching towards calling for an independent commission to investigate
the activities of Britain's spy agencies and the party president, Tim Farron, said that "spying on
friendly governments like this is not only bad politics, it is bad foreign policy".
"These nations are our allies and we should work together on issues from terrorism to Iran and
climate change," he said. "But we seem to be spying on them in conjunction with the NSA in what seems
like an industrial basis."
In its strongest statement yet on the issue, Labour called for the ISC to be given beefed up powers,
with Douglas Alexander, shadow foreign secretary, saying it was time for Britain to follow the lead
of the US and start a more vigorous debate about surveillance.
"I think we should also consider whether the ISC should be empowered to subpoena and to compel
witnesses to appear before them as is the case for the other parliament select committees," he said.
Nicolas Imboden, head of the Geneva-based Ideas Centre, said he believed his work in Africa had
been the reason he was targeted. "It's about cotton," he told Der Spiegel. "That is clearly economic
espionage and politically motivated." For the past 10 years his group has advised and represented
African countries such as Chad, Mali and Benin in their fight against high cotton subsidies in western
countries including the US. "This was clearly about them trying to gain advantages during WTO negotiations
by illegal means," Imboden told Der Spiegel.
But the strongest condemnation came from one of the groups named in the documents, Médecins du
Monde.
Leigh Daynes, UK executive director of the organisation said: "If substantiated, snooping on aid
workers would be a shameful waste of taxpayers' money. Our doctors, nurses and midwives are not a
threat to national security. We're an independent health charity with over 30 years' experience in
delivering impartial care in some of the world's poorest and most dangerous places.
"Our medical professionals, many of whom are volunteers, risk their lives daily in countries like
Mali and Somalia, and in and around Syria. There is absolutely no reason for our operations to be
secretly monitored. We are also gravely concerned about any breach of doctor-patient confidentiality,
which would be an egregious impingement on medical ethics."
Nick Pickles, Director of Big Brother Watch, said it appeared GCHQ has "become a law unto itself".
Eric King, head of research at Privacy International, added: "The targeting of the international
actors tasked with caring for the most vulnerable people, particularly children, is one of the most
distressing revelations yet."
Downing Street has repeatedly refused to comment on the allegations in any detail saying it is
not comment on security issues. The Israeli government said it would not comment on leaks.
Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent
years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations,
foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American
technology businesses.
While the names of some political and diplomatic leaders have previously emerged as targets, the
newly disclosed intelligence documents provide a much fuller portrait of the spies' sweeping interests
in more than 60 countries.
Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, working closely with the National Security Agency,
monitored the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African
heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs,
and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries, according to the documents. In addition to Israel,
some targets involved close allies like France and Germany, where
tensions have already erupted over recent revelations about spying by the N.S.A.
Details of the surveillance are described in documents from the N.S.A. and Britain's eavesdropping
agency, known as GCHQ, dating from 2008 to 2011. The target lists appear in a set of GCHQ reports
that sometimes identify which agency requested the surveillance, but more often do not. The documents
were leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and shared by The New York Times,
The Guardian and
Der Spiegel.
The reports are spare, technical bulletins produced as the spies, typically working out of British
intelligence sites, systematically tapped one international communications link after another, focusing
especially on satellite transmissions. The value of each link is gauged, in part, by the number of
surveillance targets found to be using it for emails, text messages or phone calls. More than 1,000
targets, which also include people suspected of being terrorists or militants, are in the reports.
It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts
of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available
elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.
Some condemned the surveillance on Friday as unjustified and improper. "This is not the type of
behavior that we expect from strategic partners," Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, a spokeswoman for the European
Commission, said on the latest revelations of American and British spying in Europe.
Some of the surveillance relates to issues that are being scrutinized by President Obama and a
panel he appointed in Washington that on Wednesday
recommended tighter limits on the N.S.A., particularly on spying of foreign leaders, especially
allies.
The reports show that spies monitored the email traffic of several Israeli officials, including
one target identified as "Israeli prime minister," followed by an email address. The prime minister
at the time, in January 2009, was Ehud Olmert. The next month, spies intercepted the email traffic
of the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, according to another report. Two Israeli embassies also
appear on the target lists.
Mr. Olmert said in a telephone interview on Friday that the email address was used for correspondence
with his office, which he said staff members often handled. He added that it was unlikely that any
secrets could have been compromised.
"This was an unimpressive target," Mr. Olmert said. He noted, for example, that his most sensitive
discussions with President George W. Bush took place in person. "I would be surprised if there was
any attempt by American intelligence in Israel to listen to the prime minister's lines," he said.
Mr. Barak, who declined to comment, has said publicly that he used to take it for granted that
he was under surveillance.
Despite the close ties between the United States and Israel, the record of mutual spying is long:
Israeli spies, including Jonathan Jay Pollard, who was sentenced in 1987 to life in prison for passing
intelligence information to Israel, have often operated in the United States, and the United States
has often turned the abilities of the N.S.A. against Israel.
Mr. Olmert's office email was intercepted while he was dealing with fallout from
Israel's military response to rocket attacks from Gaza, but also at a particularly tense time
in relations with the United States. The two countries were simultaneously at odds on Israeli preparations
to attack Iran's nuclear program and cooperating on a
wave of cyberattacks on Iran's major nuclear enrichment facility.
A year before the interception of Mr. Olmert's office email, the documents listed another target,
the Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an internationally recognized center
for research in atomic and nuclear physics.
Also appearing on the surveillance lists is Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the European
Commission, which, among other powers, has oversight of antitrust issues in Europe. The commission
has broad authority over local and foreign companies, and it has punished a number of American companies,
including Microsoft and Intel, with heavy fines for hampering fair competition. The reports say that
spies intercepted Mr. Almunia's communications in 2008 and 2009.
Italian communications have been targeted through the US's Special Collection Service sites in
Rome and Milan, according to Italy's l'Espresso. The same service allegedly tapped into German Chancellor
Angela Merkel's cellphone.
The new leak, revealed by Glenn Greenwald with l'Espresso, alleges that the National Security
Agency subjected Italy's leadership to surveillance, although not specifying which people within
the country's "leadership" were monitored, via US diplomatic missions in Rome and Milan.
The spying went on from 1988 to at least 2010.
The NSA conducted snooping in Italy via its Special Collection Service, which came under scrutiny
after the snooping
scandal involving Chancellor Angela Merkel. The
report on Friday reveals the service kept whole two sites running in Italy: one in Milan, the
country's main economic hub, and one in Rome (staffed with agents). Of all European nations, only
Italy and Germany had two SCS sites working simultaneously, according to the leak.
"The NSA partners with the CIA in the SCS construct in which NSA employees under diplomatic covert
conduct SIGINT collection," reads the telling line in the newly published file. SIGNIT is the
NSA's Signal Intelligence service, which intercepts communications between people.
SCS is one of the most sensitive units in US intelligence. It has teams working in US embassies around
the world, including in Berlin, Athens, Mexico City, New Delhi and Kiev, according to a recent Cryptome
leak. In NSA revelations
on Germany it was alleged that the US embassy in Berlin provided its roof for the service's intercepting
antennae.
According to the l'Espresso documents, the SCS "in 1988 had 88 sites, our peak." Despite
the number of sites being reduced following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the official end of the
Cold War with the Soviet Union, by 2010 the SCS had up to 80 sites, two of which were the Rome and
Milan sites in Italy. The document states that the SCS has always "opened or closed sites based
on productivity."
The new report provided appears to directly contradict official statements which have been dismissive
of earlier spying allegations. In November, Italian PM Enrico Letta stated that "we are not aware
that the security of the Italian government and embassies has been compromised."
PRIME Minister Tony Abbott could be constrained in responding to Indonesia over spying claims
because of concerns there could be more damaging revelations still
Josh Frydenberg, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, said the Guardian newspaper
had stated that just one per cent of the information from US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden was
in the public arena.
Similarly, the head of the United States National Security Agency, where Snowden worked, suggested
as many as 200,000 files could have gone missing, he said.
"This could be a very slow burn. Today it could be Indonesia," Mr Frydenberg told the ABC's Q
and A program.
"I would be astounded if, with only one per cent of that information out there, if there will
not be more damaging revelations for Australia and its allies in due course. I don't know."
Mr Frydenberg said as Snowden was now in Russia, the intelligence files he took could now be in
the possession of the Russians.
"This may be part of a bigger play out there," he said.
A week ago, the Guardian Australia and ABC reported that Australian intelligence had monitored
the mobile phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, his wife and other leaders.
These revelations outraged Indonesia which suspended all co-operation with Australia in terms
of strategic partnerships, including in combating people smuggling, intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism
efforts and halted some joint defence activities.
Mr Frydenberg said it was a longstanding tradition of both sides of politics not to comment on
on intelligence matters and Mr Abbott had adopted exactly the right approach in expressing regret
but not an apology.
Former US assistant secretary of state Kurt Campbell said this was the very beginning of a whole
string of revelations.
"So you just don't know what to expect so you have to be very careful how you handle this," he
said.
Massive data collection by the NSA comes down much heavier on the cost side of the ledger than
the benefit.
Senator Frank Church, spied on by the NSA
Polls show that a majority of Americans rhetorically oppose the extensive domestic surveillance
conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But the outrage is far less than one might expect,
considering the agency's profound intrusion into people's private spheres.
One explanation for this might be that, in the age of Facebook and Google, people are simply used
to the massive sharing of information as a condition for using social media services. The currency
is information, not money-a price many citizens seem to be very willing to pay.
Many might also think that they are simply not affected by the extensive collection of data-and
even if they are, it is unclear why they, innocent citizens with "nothing to hide," should be concerned.
After all, the collection is done for the sake of security, a value many are willing to pay for with
their privacy.
But the many recent revelations fueled
by the documents provided by Edward Snowden have cast serious doubt on these arguments. Even for
people who hold the very modern assumption that privacy is not a value in itself-as "old fashioned"
people might argue-there are much broader consequences of the intrusion that must be considered.
Let's first look at the domestic problems of the massive data collection.
Even for ordinary Americans, assenting to this massive intrusion of privacy requires enormous
trust in the government, which is not supported by historic experience with the NSA. As it increasingly
becomes an independent actor, surveillance can become a purpose in and of itself, or even a political
instrument.
Only 50 years ago, the NSA massively spied on protesters who organized against the Vietnam War.
The NSA - yes, the very same institution we are discussing today - even spied on
two sitting U.S. senators who criticized the war. You don't even have to agree with the anti-war
movement of the 60s and 70s to be deeply appalled that the NSA previously spied on elected representatives
of the American people.
"If there's a lesson to be learned from all this, when we are dealing with a non-transparent society
such as the intelligence community that has a vast amount of power, then abuses can and usually do
happen," writes
Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian specializing in the NSA.
There is no guarantee your data can't be used against you in the future. And unlike paper documents
back then that could be burned, the Internet hardly forgets.
This massive data collection also weakens the Fourth Estate and civil society, two key institutions
in the separation of power in liberal democracies. It becomes harder for journalists to provide credible
protection of sources when informants must always be afraid that each digital move is being monitored
and even phone records could be seized, as has been the case for the
Associated Press.
Civil society loses its ability to challenge the government when citizens no longer have untapped
channels to speak truth to power as whistleblowers. Given what torments whistleblowers are now made
to endure, will the next Daniel Ellsberg or Chelsea Manning lose the courage to speak up? By prosecuting
an unprecedented number of whistleblowers, the Obama administration has sent a clear signal about
what it is willing to do when someone reveals a secret connected to the massively collected data.
Moreover, besides these potential domestic threats, the costs of the NSA's "institutional
obsession" with surveillance have today reached an international scale.
The documents released by Edward Snowden helped reveal that the U.S. was spying on
35 world leaders, as well as
institutions like the UN, the EU, and millions of foreign citizens.
The cost in U.S. credibility and soft power must not be underestimated. Brazil's president canceled
a recent meeting with the President Obama, and Germany and Brazil are pushing for a
UN resolution, obviously addressed at the United States, to outlaw state intrusion on private
communications.
If the U.S. ever had any credibility in criticizing other countries for violating privacy
and misusing intelligence, it is now irreversibly gone. Several diplomatic initiatives, like the
trade talks with the EU, could be hampered as fallout of the revelations.
For all these costs, how much security did the program actually bring to the American people?
It is important to note that even the core argument of the NSA and the Obama Administration-security-is
on shaky ground.
"We've heard over and over again the assertion that 54 terrorist plots were thwarted" by the two
programs,
said Sen. Patrick Leahy, who had the opportunity to read a classified list concerning the benefits
of the NSA's surveillance. "That's plainly wrong, but we still get it in letters to members of Congress,
we get it in statements. These weren't all plots and they weren't all thwarted. The American people
are getting left with the inaccurate impression of the effectiveness of NSA programs."
It is the very narrow dominant security narrative since 9/11
that irrationally portrays external terroristic threats as the major danger for security and aggressive
measures like extensive spying as solutions. This overlooks the fact that human security has many
more facets like shelter, healthcare and a sustainable environment. The Institute for Policy Studies
uses the term "just
security" to draw attention to this.
In the political climate in the U.S., even the right to carry a weapon for self-defense-against
one's fellow citizens as well as, its backers say, the government itself - is so sacrosanct that
thousands of deaths are accepted for it each year. It seems absurd that the right to privacy enjoys
so little priority.
So the massive collection of data weakens the media and civil society, concentrates the power
of information in the hands of few, and creates a powerful secretive institution that damages America's
standing on the diplomatic stage. In return the American people get some unverifiable claims about
terrorist plots that may have been disrupted, and even that seems like a stretch.
Not convinced about the highly problematic nature of massive data collection and the NSA? We will
see what revelations are yet to come.
Moritz Laurer is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.
Conceptually speaking, we've never seen anything like the National
Security Agency's urge to surveil, eavesdrop on, spy on, monitor, record, and save every communication
of any sort on the planet-to keep track of humanity, all of humanity, from its major leaders to obscure
figures in the backlands of the planet. And the fact is that, within the scope of what might be technologically
feasible in our era, they seem not to have missed an opportunity.
The NSA, we now know, is everywhere, gobbling up emails, phone calls, texts, tweets, Facebook
posts,
credit card sales, communications and transactions of every conceivable sort. The NSA and
British intelligence are feeding off the fiber optic cables that carry Internet and phone activity.
The agency stores records ("metadata") of
every phone call made in the United States. In various ways, legal and otherwise, its
operatives long ago slipped through the conveniently ajar backdoors of media giants like
Yahoo, Verizon, and Google-and also in conjunction with British intelligence they have been
secretly collecting "records" from the "clouds" or private networks of Yahoo and Google to the
tune of
181 million communications in a single month, or more than two billion a year.
Meanwhile, their
privately hired corporate hackers have systems that, among other things, can slip inside your
computer to count and see every keystroke you make. Thanks to that mobile phone of yours (even when
off), those same hackers can also locate you just about anywhere on the planet. And that's just to
begin to summarize what we know of their still developing global surveillance state.
In other words, there's my email and your phone metadata, and his tweets and her texts, and the
swept up records of billions of cell phone calls and other communications by
French and
Nigerians,
Italians and
Pakistanis,
Germans and
Yemenis,
Egyptians and
Spaniards (thank you,
Spanish intelligence, for lending the NSA such a hand!), and don't forget the Chinese, Vietnamese,
Indonesians, and
Burmese, among others (thank you,
Australian intelligence, for lending the NSA such a hand!), and it would be a reasonable bet
to include just about any other nationality you care to mention. Then there are the NSA
listening posts at all those U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, and the reports
on the way the NSA listened in
on the U.N.,
bugged European Union
offices "on both sides of the Atlantic,"
accessed computers inside the Indian embassy in Washington D.C. and that country's U.N. mission
in New York, hacked into the computer network of and
spied on Brazil's largest oil company,
hacked into the Brazilian president's emails and the emails of two Mexican presidents, monitored
the German Chancellor's
mobile phone, not to speak of those of dozens,
possibly hundreds, of other German leaders, monitored the phone calls of at least
35 global leaders, as well as U.N. Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon, and-if you're keeping score-that's just a partial list of what we've learned so
far about the NSA's surveillance programs, knowing that, given the Snowden documents still to come,
there has to be so much
more.
When it comes to the "success" part of the NSA story, you could also play a little numbers game:
the NSA has at least 35,000 employees, possibly as many as
55,000, and an almost $11 billion budget. With
up to 70 percent of that budget possibly going to private contractors, we are undoubtedly talking
about tens of thousands more "employees" indirectly on the agency's payroll. The Associated Press
estimates that there are 500,000 employees of private contractors "who have access to the government's
most sensitive secrets." In Bluffdale, Utah, the NSA is
spending
$2 billion to build what may be one of the largest data-storage facilities on the planet (with its
own
bizarre fireworks), capable of storing almost inconceivable yottabytes of information. And keep
in mind that since 9/11,
according to the New York Times, the agency has also built or expanded major data-storage
facilities in Georgia, Texas, Colorado, Hawaii, Alaska, and Washington State.
But success, too, can have its downside and there is a small catch when it comes to the NSA's
global omniscience. For everything it can, at least theoretically, see, hear, and search, there's
one obvious thing the agency's leaders and the rest of the intelligence community have proven remarkably
un-omniscient about, one thing they clearly have been incapable of taking in-and that's the most
essential aspect of the system they are building. Whatever they may have understood about the
rest of us, they understood next to nothing about themselves or the real impact of what they were
doing, which is why the revelations of Edward Snowden caught them so off-guard.
Along with the giant Internet corporations, they have been involved in a process aimed at taking
away the very notion of a right to privacy in our world; yet they utterly failed to grasp the basic
lesson they have taught the rest of us. If we live in an era of no privacy, there are no exemptions;
if, that is, it's an age of no-privacy for us, then it's an age of no-privacy for them, too.
The word "conspiracy" is an interesting one in this context. It comes from the Latin conspirare
for "breathe the same air." In order to do that, you need to be a small group in a small room.
Make yourself the largest surveillance outfit on the planet, hire tens of thousands of private contractors-young
computer geeks plunged into a situation that would have boggled the mind of George Orwell-and organize
a system of storage and electronic retrieval that puts much at an insider's fingertips, and you've
just kissed secrecy goodnight and put it to bed for the duration.
There was always going to be an Edward Snowden-or rather Edward Snowdens. And no matter what the
NSA and the Obama administration do, no matter what they threaten, no matter how fiercely they
attack whistleblowers, or who they
put away for
how long, there will be more. No matter the levels of
classification and the desire
to throw a penumbra of secrecy over government operations of all sorts, we will eventually know.
They have constructed a system potentially riddled with what, in the Cold War days, used to be
called "moles." In this case, however, those "moles" won't be spying for a foreign power, but
for us.
There is no privacy left. That fact of life has been embedded, like so much institutional DNA, in
the system they have so brilliantly constructed. They will see us, but in the end, we will see them,
too.
Omnipotence
With our line-ups in place, let's turn to the obvious question: How's it going? How's the game
of surveillance playing out at the global level? How has success in building such a system translated
into policy and power? How useful has it been to have
advance info on just what the U.N. general-secretary will have to say when he visits you at the
White House? How helpful is it to store endless tweets, social networking interactions, and phone
calls
from Egypt when it comes to controlling or influencing actors there, whether the Muslim Brotherhood
or the generals?
We know that
1,477 "items" from the NSA's PRISM program (which
taps into the central servers of nine major American Internet companies) were cited in the president's
Daily Briefing in 2012 alone. With all that help, with all that advanced notice, with all that insight
into the workings of the world from but one of so many NSA programs, just how has Washington been
getting along?
Though we have very little information about how intelligence insiders and top administration
officials assess the effectiveness of the NSA's surveillance programs in maintaining American global
power, there's really no need for such assessments. All you have to do is look at the world.
Long before Snowden walked off with those documents, it was clear that things weren't exactly
going well. Some
breakthroughs in surveillance techniques were, for instance, developed in America's war zones
in Iraq and
Afghanistan, where U.S. intelligence outfits and spies were clearly capable of locating and listening
in on insurgencies in ways never before possible. And yet, we all know what happened in Iraq and
is happening in Afghanistan. In both places, omniscience visibly didn't translate into success. And
by the way, when the Arab Spring hit, how prepared was the Obama administration? Don't even bother
to answer that one.
In fact, it's reasonable to assume that, while U.S. spymasters and operators were working at the
technological frontiers of surveillance and cryptography, their model for success was distinctly
antiquated. However unconsciously, they were still living with a World War II-style mindset. Back
then, in an all-out military conflict between two sides, listening in on enemy communications had
been at least one key to winning the war. Breaking the German
Enigma codes
meant knowing precisely where the enemy's U-boats were, just as breaking
Japan's naval codes
ensured victory in the Battle of Midway and elsewhere.
Unfortunately for the NSA and two administrations in Washington, our world isn't so clear-cut
any more. Breaking the codes, whatever codes, isn't going to do the trick. You may be able to pick
up every kind of communication in
Pakistan or Egypt, but even if you could listen to or read them all (and the NSA doesn't have
the linguists or the time to do so), instead of simply drowning in useless data, what good would
it do you?
Given how Washington has fared since September 12, 2001, the answer would undoubtedly range from
not much to none at all-and in the wake of Edward Snowden, it would have to be in the negative. Today,
the NSA formula might go something like this: the more communications the agency intercepts, the
more it stores, the more it officially knows, the more information it gives those it
calls its "external customers" (the White House, the State Department, the CIA, and others),
the less omnipotent and the more impotent Washington turns out to be.
In scorecard terms, once the Edward Snowden revelations began and the vast conspiracy to capture
a world of communications was revealed, things only went from bad to worse. Here's just a partial
list of some of the casualties from Washington's point of view:
The first
European near-revolt against American power in living memory (former French leader Charles
de Gaulle aside), and a phenomenon that is
still growing across that continent along with an upsurge in distaste for Washington.
A
shudder of horror in Brazil and across Latin America, emphasizing a growing distaste for the
not-so-good neighbor to the North.
China, which has its own sophisticated surveillance network and was being
pounded for it by Washington, now looks like Mr. Clean.
Russia, a country run by a former secret police agent, has in the post-Snowden era been miraculously
transformed into a
global peacemaker and a land that provided a
haven for an
important western dissident.
The Internet giants of Silicon valley, a beacon of U.S. technological prowess, could in the
end take a
monstrous hit, losing billions of dollars and
possibly their near monopoly status globally, thanks to the revelation that when you email,
tweet, post to Facebook, or do anything else through any of them, you automatically put yourself
in the hands of the NSA. Their CEOs are
shuddering with worry, as well they should be.
And the list of post-Snowden fallout only seems to be growing. The NSA's vast
global security state is now visibly an edifice of negative value, yet it remains so deeply embedded
in the post-9/11 American national security state that seriously paring it back, no less dismantling
it, is probably inconceivable. Of course, those running that state within a state claim success by
focusing only on counterterrorism operations where, they swear,
54
potential terror attacks on or in the United States have been thwarted, thanks to NSA surveillance.
Based on the relatively minimal information available to us, this
looks
like a major case of threat and credit inflation, if not pure balderdash. More important, it
doesn't faintly cover the ambitions of a system that was meant to give Washington a jump on every
foreign power, offer an economic edge in just about every situation, and enhance U.S. power globally.
A First-Place Line-Up and a Last-Place Finish
What's perhaps most striking about all this is the inability of the Obama administration and its
intelligence bureaucrats to grasp the nature of what's happening to them. For that, they would need
to skip those daily briefs from an intelligence community which, on the subject, seems blind, deaf,
and dumb, and instead take a clear look at the world.
As a measuring stick for pure tone-deafness in Washington, consider that it took our secretary
of state and so, implicitly, the president, five painful months to finally agree that the NSA had,
in certain limited areas, "reached
too far." And even now, in response to a global uproar and changing attitudes toward the U.S.
across the planet, their response has been laughably modest.
According to David Sanger of the New York Times, for instance, the administration believes
that there is "no workable alternative to the bulk collection of huge quantities of 'metadata,' including
records of all telephone calls made inside the United States."
On the bright side, however, maybe, just maybe, they can store it all for a mere three years,
rather than the present five. And perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider giving up on listening
in on some friendly world leaders, but only after a major rethink and reevaluation of the complete
NSA surveillance system. And in Washington, this sort of response to the Snowden debacle is
considered a "balanced" approach to security versus privacy.
In fact, in this country each post-9/11 disaster has led, in the end, to more and worse of the
same. And that's likely to be the result here, too, given a national security universe in which everyone
assumes the value of an increasingly para-militarized, bureaucratized, heavily funded creature we
continue to call "intelligence," even though remarkably little of what would commonsensically be
called intelligence is actually on view.
No one knows what a major state would be like if it radically cut back or even wiped out its intelligence
services. No one knows what the planet's sole superpower would be like if it had only one or, for
the sake of competition, two major intelligence outfits rather than
17 of them, or if those agencies
essentially relied on open source material. In other words, no one knows what the U.S. would be like
if its intelligence agents stopped trying to collect the planet's communications and mainly used
their native intelligence to analyze the world. Based on the recent American record, however, it's
hard to imagine we could be anything but better off. Unfortunately, we'll never find out.
In short, if the NSA's surveillance lineup was classic New York Yankees, their season is shaping
up as a last-place finish.
Here, then, is the bottom line of the scorecard for twenty-first century Washington: omniscience,
maybe; omnipotence, forget it; intelligence, not a bit of it; and no end in sight.
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrated the opening of the new U.S. embassy in Berlin in
2008, she could not have imagined that she was blessing the workplace for the largest and most effective
gaggle of American spies anywhere outside of the U.S.
It seems straight out of a grade-B movie,
but it has been happening for the past eleven years: The NSA has been using Merkel as an instrument
to spy on the president of the United States.
We now know that the NSA has been listening to and recording Merkel's cellphone calls since 2002.
Angela Merkel was raised in East Germany, and she has a personal revulsion at the concept of omnipresent
state surveillance.
In 2008, when the new embassy opened, the NSA began using more sophisticated techniques that included
not only listening, but also following her.
Merkel uses her cellphone more frequently than her landline, and she uses it to communicate with
her husband and family members, the leadership of her political party, and her colleagues and officials
in the German government.
She also uses her cellphone to speak with foreign leaders, among whom have been President George
W. Bush and President Obama.
Thus, the NSA -- which Bush and Obama have unlawfully and unconstitutionally authorized to obtain
and retain digital copies of all telephone conversations, texts and emails of everyone in the U.S.,
as well as those of hundreds of millions of persons in Europe and Latin America -- has been listening
to the telephone calls of both American presidents whenever they have spoken with the chancellor.
One could understand the NSA's propensity to listen to the conversations of those foreign leaders
who wish us ill. And one would expect that it would do so. But the urge to listen to the leadership
of our allies serves no discernible intelligence-gathering purpose.
Rather, it fuels distrust between our nations and in the case of Merkel exacerbates memories of
the all-seeing and all-hearing Stasi, which was the East German version of the KGB that ruled that
police state from the end of World War II until it collapsed in 1989.
Merkel was raised in East Germany, and she has a personal revulsion at the concept of omnipresent
state surveillance.
Obama apparently has no such revulsion. One would think he's not happy that his own spies have
been listening to him.
One would expect that he would have known of this.
Not from me, says Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, who disputed claims in the media
that he told Obama of the NSA spying network in Germany last summer.
Either the president knew of this and has denied it, or he is invincibly ignorant of the forces
he has unleashed on us and on himself.
When Susan Rice, Obama's national security advisor, was confronted with all of this by her German
counterpart, she first told him the White House would deny it. Then she called him to say that the
White House could not deny it, but the president would deny that he personally knew of it.
How did we get here? What are the consequences of a president spying on himself? What does this
mean for the rest of us?
Neither Bush nor Obama has had a strong fidelity to the Constitution. They share the views of
another odd couple of presidents from opposing political parties, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson,
in that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land as it proclaims to be, but rather a guideline
that unleashes the president to do all that it does not expressly forbid him to do.
In the progressive era 100 years ago, that presidential attitude brought us the Federal Reserve,
the federal income tax, Prohibition, World War I, prosecutions for speech critical of the government
and the beginnings of official modern government racial segregation.
That same attitude in our era has brought us the Patriot Act, which allows federal agents to write
their own search warrants, government borrowing that knows no end -- including the $2 trillion Bush
borrowed for the war in Iraq, a country which is now less stable than before Bush invaded, and the
$7 trillion Obama borrowed to redistribute -- and an NSA that monitors all Americans all the time.
In the case of the NSA spying, this came about by the secret orders of Bush and Obama, animated by
that perverse TR/Wilsonian view of the Constitution and not by a congressional vote after a great
national debate.
Just as people change when they know they are being watched, the government changes when it knows
no one can watch it.
Just as we can never be ourselves when we fear that we may need to justify our most intimate thoughts
to an all-knowing government, so, too, the government knows that when we cannot see what it is doing,
it can do whatever it wants. And it is in the nature of government to expand, not shrink. Thomas
Jefferson correctly predicted that 175 years ago.
But spying on yourself is truly asinine and perhaps criminal. You see, the president can officially
declassify any secrets he wants, but he cannot -- without official declassification -- simply reveal
them to NSA agents.
One can only imagine what NSA agents learned from listening to Bush and Obama as they spoke to
Merkel and 34 other friendly foreign leaders, as yet unidentified publicly.
Now we know how pervasive this NSA spying is: It not only reaches the Supreme Court, the Pentagon,
the CIA, the local police and the cellphones and homes of all Americans; it reaches the Oval Office
itself. Yet when the president denies that he knows of this, that denial leads to more questions.
The president claims he can start secret foreign wars using the CIA, secretly kill Americans using
drones, and now secretly spy on anyone anywhere using the NSA.
Is the president an unwitting dupe to a secret rats' nest of uncontrolled government spies and
killers?
Or is he a megalomaniacal, totalitarian secret micromanager who lies regularly, consistently and
systematically about the role of government in our lives?
Which is worse? What do we do about it?
Andrew P. Napolitano joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in January 1998 and currently serves as
the senior judicial analyst. He provides legal analysis on both FNC and Fox Business Network (FBN).
A four-page internal précis regarding a visit to Washington by two top French intelligence officials
denies the NSA or any US intelligence agency was behind the May 2012 attempted break-in – which sought
to implant a monitoring device inside the Elysee Palace's communications system – but instead fingers
the Israelis, albeit indirectly:
The visit by Barnard Barbier, head of the DGSE's technical division, and Patrick Pailloux, a top
official with France's National Information Systems Security, was intended to elicit an explanation
for the break-in, which the French media blamed on the Americans. The NSA's inquiries to the British,
Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and other US allies all turned up negative. However, one
such close ally wasn't asked.
As Glenn Greenwald and Jacques Follorou, citing the NSA document,
put it in their Le Monde piece: the NSA "'intentionally did not ask either the Mossad
or the ISNU (the technical administration of the Israeli services) whether they were involved' in
this espionage operation against the head of the French government."
An interesting omission, to say the least, one justified by the author of the memo with some odd
phraseology: "France is not an approved target for joint discussion by Israel and the United States."
Meaning – exactly what? This is a job for Marcy
Wheeler! But I'll hazard a guess: the US is well aware of Israeli spying on France and wants
nothing to do with it, and/or the author of the memo is simply invoking some obscure protocol in
order to justify going any farther.
In any case, the Israeli connection to the NSA's global spying network – including its all-pervasive
surveillance inside the US – has been well-established by Greenwald's previous reporting on the subject:
a September 11
article detailing how the NSA shares raw intercepts from its data-dragnet with Israeli intelligence,
scooping up purloined emails and other data – in effect giving the Mossad a "back door" into a treasure
trove of information on the private lives and activities of American citizens.
The Guardian
published a five-page memorandum of understanding between Tel Aviv and Washington, provided to
Greenwald by Snowden: rife with references to the legal and constitutional constraints "pertaining
to the protection of US persons," it goes on to state forthrightly that the Israelis are permitted
access to "raw Sigint" – unredacted and unreviewed transcripts, Internet metadata, and the content
of emails and telephonic communications. While the Israelis supposedly solemnly swear to not "deliberately"
target any American citizen, the agreement explicitly rules out a legal obligation on the part of
the Israelis to follow the rules:
"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed
to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international
law."
The Israelis are allowed to retain raw NSA data on American citizens for up to a year, as long
as they inform the NSA, but when it comes to US government communications – those must be destroyed
"upon recognition." This interdict presumably covers the internal communications of our law enforcement
officers, but as both
James
Bamford and Fox News's
Carl Cameron
have reported, Israeli penetration of this vital sector is already an accomplished fact.
New submitter badzilla writes with a story from ZDnet that says a vote is scheduled in the
European Parliament for today, U.S. Independence Day, on "whether existing data sharing agreements
between the two continents should be suspended, following allegations that U.S. intelligence spied
on EU citizens." One interesting scenario outlined by the article is that it may disrupt air travel
between the U.S. and EU: "In the resolution, submitted to the Parliament on Tuesday, more than
two-dozen politicians from a range of political parties call the spying 'a serious violation of
the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,' and call on the suspension of the Passenger Name
Records (PNR) system. Prior to leaving the airport, airlines must make passenger data available
to the U.S. Names, dates of birth, addresses, credit or debit card details and seat numbers are
among the data - though critics say the information has never helped catch a suspected criminal
or terrorist before. Should the PNR system be suspended, it could result in the suspension of
flights to the U.S. from European member states."
Chrisq
Let me get this right
The British GCHQ taps fibre connections, collects data on EU citizens and shares it with US
intelligence services. In response the EU wants to stop sharing information on passenger records
for people flying between the EU and the USA. .... Well I suppose its easier than suggesting that
EU governments should not spy on its citizens.
xaxa
Re:Let me get this right
The British are not the EU, in fact they are viewed by most as an US shill inside the EU. In
the area of surveillance they are ahead US by quite a bit.
We need another De Gaulle. He gave the finger to the US and to NATO in the sixties, and he
absolutely didn't want the UK in the CEE (later to be known as the EU). We don't need Turkey nor
Israel in the EU and we certainly don't need the 51st american state either (aka the UK).
Please don't make us (the UK) leave! The EU's the only thing with a chance of preventing further
erosion of British citizens' working rights, civil liberties, environment, etc.
Unfortunately, many of the uninformed voters here want to leave :-(
ledow
Re:Let me get this right
Britain and the EU have an odd relationship unlike almost any other country in the EU.
Yes, technically, we are part of it. But we're exempt from other parts associated with it (we
don't use the Euro, etc.). We pump more money in than some others and, as compensation, we're
allowed to opt-out of certain things.
Also, if you ask people in Britain what it means to go to Europe, it doesn't include touring
around Britain. Britain and the EU are - to the British - two separate entities. Even more confusing
you have things like the EC and the continent of Europe and lots of other definitions over the
years that we are sometimes in, sometimes out.
However, GCHQ has hit a LOT of flak for its actions. The question really is - if what the US
does is illegal, and the EU is doing it back, why do we have a formal legal statement of something
else entirely? Why bother? Why not just legalise what we do or not? But, ultimately, the attitude
is - if we DO share things with you, why distrust us and find things out illegally for your self?
And if you do that, why should we bother to trust you or give you anything anyway?
The GCHQ involvement is a side-issue, and you can guarantee that whatever sanctions the US
has imposed on it, those on GCHQ will be worse.
But, politics what it is, I find it hard to believe that anything will happen, certainly anything
that will affect air travel. More likely a few trade agreements will have more lenient terms than
they would have otherwise and promises to clean up, and that'll be the end of it.
Though, I swore off going to the US many years ago after they basically took liberties with
what rights they think they have (which include this EU passenger data crap). If I was forced
to enter the US now, I'd do so for as short a time as possible and carry no electronic equipment
whatsoever and encrypt all communications home. That's the only sensible business choice and has
been for years, and it just happens to be the complete antithesis of the intention to collect
that data in the first place.
gstoddart:
The British GCHQ taps fibre connections, collects data on EU citizens and shares it with US
intelligence services. In response the EU wants to stop sharing information on passenger records
for people flying between the EU and the USA
Well, it's right there in the article:
Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the European Commission is examining if the U.K. broke
EU law, which could lead to an infringement procedure against the British government. This
could lead to financial sanctions imposed by the European Court of Justice.
That the UK did this is also something they're looking at.
Well I suppose its easier than suggesting that EU governments should not spy on its citizens.
That's exactly what they're suggesting.
There's also this:
I can not understand why a U.S. citizen has the right to redress in the EU, but an EU citizen
does not have the right to redress in the U.S.
As usual, the US won't sign an agreement which says a US entity would have to face laws in
other countries, but expect they will get access to those laws when convenient.
It's a one-sided arrangement that isn't working for anyone but the US, and I believe you're
going to start seeing countries deciding they're not going to sign up for any more of those. I
think people are getting fed up with having terms dictated to them, and aren't going to be willing
to keep doing it.
eulernet
Side effects
There is an interesting side effect about this data problem: the cloud.
Currently, the biggest cloud providers are based in US. But due to the NSA disclosure,
most companies cannot afford to give their data to outside countries, especially since it's now
clear that NSA spied european companies economically.
So local cloud providers will quickly emerge, and this will directly impact Google and Amazon's
services. US clouds cannot be trusted anymore.
wvmarle
Re: Side effects
Agreed, fully.
Recently I had the need of a virtual server - just to run my web site, host my documents, and
various other tasks. So searching for this I specifically searched for local Hong Kong companies
(which is where I live), to host such a server. And a short search later I found one that offers
cloud servers, just what I needed.
A few months ago I was thinking about the same issue - and then I was considering Amazon. I
am a customer of Amazon already, for their glacier cold storage service, where I keep back-ups
(all encrypted before they leave my systems). They have a good reputation, and overall very good
prices, however it being a US company made me not even consider them now.
And that's a direct result of Snowden's revelations.
TheP4st
Re:Side effects
US clouds cannot be trusted anymore.
They never could, only difference is that now it is confirmed and I can enjoy of saying "I
told you so!". However, I would not trust any cloud service regardless of its country of origin
with important data.
In a big data world, we have our first global big data scandal. It seems the 'Basketballer-in-chief'
who was a liberal dream in 2008, would make an Orwellian bureaucrat from 1984 blush with his ambitious
spy programme.
Presented with the most unpalatable development in a generation, President Hollande
of France has led vitriolic condemnation of the USA's addiction to espionage.
There are those who might argue that being a mono-superpower world, the American empire, at, or
around, the height of its unchallenged superpower status, has a right to collate whatever data it
can. This, after all was standard practice in the 19th century, why not scale the same thing for
the digital era? Meanwhile, allies cry with the sort of anguish which demonstrates a real concern
on their part. Mostly it is the concern that voters might oust, say, Mrs Merkel in her looming general
election as all her claims of being a great US ally have proven as vapid as her supposed European
crisis resolution skills.
Widespread spying is nothing new. It's just the scale of digital equipment in the age of big data
that makes it appear so remarkable. Only a couple of decades ago, the British government, while negotiating
with Ulster's terrorists to bring peace to the province, chided their Irish counterparts to improve
security standards as their codes were so simple London found it easy to read sensitive Dublin government
data..
The Internet Defense League, a coalition of web companies against government control of the internet
and its data that formed after the SOPA blackout in 2012, is also getting in on the action. Reddit
released its own
blog post announcing the rally and continues to hold conversations with organizers and participants
at /r/restorethefourth. The
league's other members, including Mozilla and WordPress, are also involved in the rally, which was
recently endorsed by
the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
What should Europeans expect from the European Commission in response to the
Prism scandal? Not a lot, unfortunately, because it's mostly a matter for individual countries.
When it emerged that the U.S. was spying on foreign users of Google (GOOG),
Facebook (FB),
and other services, the first reaction to come out of the commission was an unfortunately phrased
placeholder that suggested the global surveillance scheme was "an internal U.S. matter." After
a few hours of consideration, Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström put out something slightly
weightier, expressing concern for "possible consequences on EU citizens' privacy" and explaining
that the commission would "get in contact with our U.S. counterparts to seek more details on these
issues."
Since then, EU sources have told me that the commission already knew about Prism before the current
leaks and has raised it "systematically" when talking to U.S. authorities about EU-U.S. data protection
agreements, particularly in the context of police and judicial cooperation. Justice Commissioner
Viviane Reding apparently spoke about the matter with U.S. Attorney General Holder Eric Holder at
a meeting in Washington in April.
It is certainly the case that the EU has previously
warned that
"any data-at-rest formerly processed 'on premise' within the EU, which becomes migrated into
Clouds, becomes liable to mass-surveillance-for purposes of furthering the foreign affairs of
the U.S. (as well as the expected purposes of terrorism, money-laundering etc.)."
It doesn't look, however, as if the Commission can or will issue any blanket direction on what
should happen now or whether it is acceptable for EU member states to allow their citizens to be
monitored under Prism, as appears to be the case in the U.K. That is because, under the legal principles
governing the European Union, national security remains a matter for member states.
As the Commission said in a statement:
"Where the rights of an EU citizen in a Member State are concerned, it is for a national judge
to determine whether the data can be lawfully transmitted in accordance with legal requirements
(be they national, EU or international)."
Still, according to the Commission, Reding will raise the issue in ministerial talks with the
U.S. on Friday (June 14) in Dublin. Reding views this debacle as a matter of data protection principles
that need to be firmed up, as she said in this statement:
"This case shows that a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a
luxury or constraint but a fundamental right. This is the spirit of the EU's data protection reform.
These proposals have been on the table for 18 months now. In contrast, when dealing with files
[that] limit civil liberties online, the EU has a proven track record of acting fast: The Data
Retention Directive was negotiated by Ministers in less than six months. It is time for the Council
to prove it can act with the same speed and determination on a file [that] strengthens such rights."
It's not entirely clear from that statement whether stronger data protection rules can preclude
the sort of monitoring of EU citizens that we're talking about here. With member states having the
final say on national security, that may not be possible.
The path taken now by those member states will of course depend on their existing cooperation
with the U.S. on Prism. This is only starting to come out, and of course it raises huge questions
about governments using a U.S. scheme to accomplish what their own national laws might forbid them
from doing.
By RICK GLADSTONE, WILLIAM NEUMAN and MELISSA EDDY 8:08 AM ET
After rumors that Edward J. Snowden was aboard, the Bolivian president's plane landed in Vienna
and stayed there overnight before taking off Wednesday morning, an airport spokesman said.
In as a seemingly offhand remark by the president of Bolivia, who suggested during a visit to
Moscow that he might be happy to host Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive former security contractor
who is desperate to find asylum. It escalated into a major diplomatic scramble in which the Bolivian
president's plane was rerouted on Tuesday, apparently because of suspicions that Mr. Snowden was
aboard.
Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was attending an energy conference in Moscow when he was asked
in an interview if he would consider giving asylum to Edward J. Snowden.
By day's end, outraged Bolivian officials, insisting that Mr. Snowden was not on the plane, were
accusing France and Portugal of acting under American pressure to rescind permission for President
Evo Morales's plane to traverse their airspace on the way back to Bolivia. Low on fuel, the plane's
crew won permission to land in Vienna.
"They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities
we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane,"
the Bolivian foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, told reporters after the plane touched down in
Vienna, where Mr. Morales was spending the night.
"We don't know who invented this big lie," the foreign minister said at a news conference in La
Paz, Bolivia. "We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president's life at risk."
Rubén Saavedra, the defense minister, who was on the plane with Mr. Morales, accused the Obama
administration of being behind the action by France and Portugal, calling it "an attitude of sabotage
and a plot by the government of the United States."
There was no immediate response by officials in Paris, Lisbon or Washington.
"We were in flight; it was completely unexpected," Mr. Saavedra said on the Telesur cable network.
"The president was very angry."
Speaking by phone with Telesur, Mr. Saavedra said that Mr. Snowden was not on the plane. Later,
Reuters cited an unidentified Austrian Foreign Ministry official as saying the same thing.
Bolivian officials said they were working on a new flight plan to allow Mr. Morales to fly home.
But in a possible sign of further suspicion about the passenger manifest, Mr. Saavedra said that
Italy had also refused to give permission for the plane to fly over its airspace. Later he said that
France and Portugal had reversed course and offered to allow the plane to fly through their airspace
after all.
On Monday, Mr. Morales, who was attending an energy conference in Moscow, was asked in an interview
on the Russia Today television network if he would consider giving asylum to Mr. Snowden, 30, who
has been holed up at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for more than a week, his passport revoked by
the United States.
"Yes, why not?" Mr. Morales responded. "Of course, Bolivia is ready to take in people who denounce
- I don't know if this is espionage or monitoring. We are here."
He said, though, that Bolivia had not received a request from Mr. Snowden, despite news reports
to the contrary.
It was already clear by then that the Moscow conference had been overshadowed by the drama of
Mr. Snowden and his disclosures about American intelligence programs, which have deeply embarrassed
the Obama administration.
President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, who was also at the conference, had suggested he might
offer Mr. Snowden asylum but did not plan to fly him to Venezuela.
But Mr. Morales's remarks appeared to open the door. At least that was the way they were interpreted.
The problems began even before Mr. Morales left Moscow, Mr. Choquehuanca said. On Monday, Portugal,
without explanation, had withdrawn permission for Mr. Morales's plane to stop in Lisbon to refuel,
the foreign minister said. That required Bolivian officials to get permission from Spain to refuel
in the Canary Islands.
The next day, after taking off from Moscow, Mr. Morales's plane was just minutes from entering
French airspace, according to Mr. Saavedra, when the French authorities informed the pilot that the
plane could not fly over France.
There was also plenty of confusion in Moscow over how Mr. Snowden could possibly have left undetected
on a government aircraft.
Government planes carrying foreign officials to diplomatic meetings in Moscow typically arrive
and depart from Vnukovo Airport, which is also the main airfield used by the Russian government,
rather than from Sheremetyevo, where Mr. Snowden arrived from Hong Kong on June 23 hours after American
officials had sought his extradition there.
The speculation that Mr. Snowden would hitch a ride on a government jet was discounted by the
fact that the plane would have to first make a quick flight from one Moscow airport to the other.
In an interview with the television station Russia Today, Mr. Maduro said he would consider any
request by Mr. Snowden. Then, ending the interview with a dash of humor, he said, "It's time for
me to go; Snowden is waiting for me."
Irrespective of whether Mr Snowdon is a hero or villain, his actions have exposed to what extent
US government agencies collect and analyse data, which those who produced them thought personal
and private. We now know that they are not. To suggest we knew about this all along is confusing
hypothesis with established knowledge, which Mr Snowdon seems to have provided.
The ongoing debate of what will happen to Mr Snowdon only seems to distract from the questions
that should be posed.
First the ethical question, to what degree can the breach of trust by the US agencies towards
individuals and foreign governments be justified in the light of national security?
Second the practical question. Given the national and international outrage about the agencies'
activities and the associated degradation of US esteem, trust and influence, should we not question
the competence of these agencies to enhance our national security.
They seem to enjoy spying for spying's sake and not consider the implications when found
out?
BFNY, NY
For every article about Snowden, that's one less articlee about the spying programs. This dysfunctional
congress will change nothing and the public continues to yawn. How far we've fallen since the
post-Watergate era when people were shocked and politicians made responded with corrective action.
MJCalifornia
What is interesting to me as a foreigner is that everybody is down on america and its government
on the NSA issue. Where have you been people: Where were you when it mattered?
1. The patriot act had widespread public support at the time. So do not say you did not see it
coming. Blame yourselves, not the government or at least take part of the responsibility.
2. People stil believe we go to war to "save the people against oppression" and never not protest
against going to war because "America is always right" attitude.
RLS
Jennifer wrote,
"[S]urveillance isn't about Big Brother, it's about trying to contain terrorism
using an alternate way to war."
It's stunning that some people are willing to allow the government to violate their Fourth
Amendment rights. If folks think that the electronic data collection of 300 million innocent
people (and everyone abroad) is about finding "a terrorist," think again.
"This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at
the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for
each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa
court, the congressional committees – is all a KABUKI DANCE, predicated on the national security
claim that we need to find a threat.
"The reality is, they just want it all, period.
"To an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential
suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data.
"The NSA is wiring the world; they want to own internet. I didn't want to be part of the dark
blanket that covers the world, and Edward Snowden didn't either.
"What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience."
CathySan Jose, Costa Rica
"Low on fuel" ? The Bolivian plane was denied airspace. Snowden must have incredible information
for the US government to be this desperate!
jjames at replicountsPhiladelphia, PA
In the U.S. in 21st century so far, terrorists have killed fewer than 1% of the people killed
in traffic accidents -- and this comparison includes all of the murders on September 11, 2001.
We must protect ourselves, but not out of all proportion to the risk.
NSA spying and other security excesses are not harmless if you have nothing to hide. This level
of spying and infrastructure can easily result in a tiny, secret, self-interested group controlling
the real direction of this society, with no serious accountability.
LONDON (AP) -- The saga of Edward Snowden and the NSA makes
one thing clear: The United States' central role in developing the Internet and hosting its most
powerful players has made it the global leader in the surveillance game.
Other countries, from dictatorships to democracies, are also avid snoopers, tapping into the high-capacity
fiber optic cables to intercept Internet traffic, scooping their citizens' data off domestic servers,
and even launching cyberattacks to win access to foreign networks.
But experts in the field say that Silicon Valley has made America a surveillance superpower,
allowing its spies access to massive mountains of data being collected by the world's leading communications,
social media, and online storage companies. That's on top of the United States' fiber optic
infrastructure - responsible for just under a third of the world's international Internet capacity,
according to telecom research firm TeleGeography - which allows it to act as a global postmaster,
complete with the ability to peek at a big chunk of the world's messages in transit.
"The sheer power of the U.S. infrastructure is that quite often data would be routed though
the U.S. even if it didn't make geographical sense," Joss Wright, a researcher with the Oxford
Internet Institute, said in a telephone interview. "The current status quo is a huge benefit to the
U.S."
The status quo is particularly favorable to America because online spying drills into people's
private everyday lives in a way that other, more traditional forms of espionage can't match. So countries
like Italy, where a culture of rampant wiretapping means that authorities regularly eavesdrop on
private conversations, can't match the level of detail drawn from Internet searches or email traffic
analysis.
"It's as bad as reading your diary," Wright said. Then he corrected himself: "It's FAR WORSE
than reading your diary. Because you don't write everything in your diary."
Although the details of how the NSA's PRISM program draws its data from these firms remain shrouded
in secrecy, documents leaked by spy agency systems analyst Edward Snowden to the Guardian and The
Washington Post newspapers said its inside track with U.S. tech firms afforded "one of the most valuable,
unique, and productive" avenues for intelligence-gathering. How much cooperation America's Internet
giants are giving the government in this inside track relationship is a key unanswered question.
Whatever the case, the pool of information in American hands is vast. Redmond, Washington-based
Microsoft Corp. accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computer operating systems,
according to one industry estimate. Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. carries two-thirds
of the world's online search traffic, analysts say. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook Inc. has
some 900 million users - a figure that accounts for a third of the world's estimated 2.7 billion
Internet-goers.
The pool of information in American hands is vast. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft Corp. accounts
for more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computer operating systems, according to one industry
estimate. Mountain View, California-based Google Inc. carries two-thirds of the world's online search
traffic, analysts say. Menlo Park, California-based Facebook Inc. has some 900 million users - a
figure that accounts for a third of the world's estimated 2.7 billion Internet-goers.
Electronic eavesdropping is, of course, far from an exclusively American pursuit. Many other nations
pry further and with less oversight.
China and Russia have long hosted intrusive surveillance regimes. Russia's "SORM," the Russian-language
acronym for System for Operational-Investigative Activities, allows government officials to directly
access nearly every Internet service provider in the country. Initially set up to allow the FSB,
the successor organization to the KGB, unfettered access to Russia's Internet traffic, the scope
of SORM has grown dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power in 2000 and now allows a wide range
law enforcement agencies to monitor Russians' messages.
In China, surveillance is "pervasive, extensive, but perhaps not as high-tech" as in the United
States, said Andrew Lih, a professor of journalism at American University in Washington. He said
major Internet players such as microblogging service Sina, chat service QQ, or Chinese search giant
Baidu were required to have staff - perhaps as many as several hundred people - specially tasked
with carrying out the state's bidding, from surveillance to censorship.
What sets America apart is that it sits at the center of gravity for much of world's social media,
communications, and online storage.
Americans' "position in the network, the range of services that they offer globally, the size
of their infrastructure, and the amount of bandwidth means that the U.S. is in a very privileged
position to surveil internationally," said Wright. "That's particularly true when you're talking
about cloud services such as Gmail" - which had 425 million active users as of last year.
Many are trying to beat America's tech dominance by demanding that U.S. companies open local branches
- something the Turkish government recently asked of San Francisco-based Twitter Inc., for example
- or by banning them altogether. Santa Clara, California-based WhatsApp, for example, may soon be
prohibited in Saudi Arabia.
Governments are also racing to capture traffic as it bounces back and forth from California, importing
bulk surveillance devices, loosening spy laws, and installing centralized monitoring centers to offer
officials a one-stop shop for intercepted data.
"Eventually, it won't just be Big Brother," said Richard J. Aldrich, the author of a book about
Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency. "There will be hundreds of little brothers."
But the siblings have a lot of catching up to do if they want to match surveillance powers of
the United States, and some have turned to cyberespionage to try to even the playing field. A high-profile
attack on Gmail users in 2010, for example, was blamed on Chinese hackers, while suspicion for separate
2011 attack on various U.S. webmail services fell on Iran.
But even in the dark arts of cyberespionage, America seems to have mastered the field. Washington
is blamed for launching the world's first infrastructure-wrecking super worm, dubbed Stuxnet, against
Iran and for spreading a variety of malicious software programs across the Middle East. One U.S.
general recently boasted of hacking his enemies in Afghanistan.
In his comments to the South China Morning Post, Snowden said Americans had broken into computer
systems belonging to a prominent Chinese research university, a fiber optic cable company and Chinese
telecoms providers.
"We hack everyone everywhere," Snowden said.
U.S. officials haven't exactly denied it.
"You're commuting to where the information is stored and extracting the information from the adversaries'
network," ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden told Bloomberg Businessweek earlier this year. "We are the
best at doing it. Period."
Politicians in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Romania are among those
to have called for an investigation into PRISM at a European level. German privacy chief Peter Schaar
has demanded that the U.S. government "provide clarity" regarding what he described as "monstrous
allegations of total monitoring of various telecommunications and Internet services." And Schaar
has been backed up by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who plans to raise the issue when she meets
in Berlin with President Obama next week. Further afield, Canadian and Australian officials have
also been voicing their concerns-with Ontario privacy chief Ann Cavoukian calling the disclosures
about PRISM "breathtaking" and "staggering."
For decades, spy agencies have conducted surveillance of overseas communications as part of their
intelligence-gathering mission. But as the U.N. special envoy on free speech noted in an unprecedented
report published last week, new technologies have changed the game. Tools available to governments
today enable a more ubiquitous form of surveillance than ever before-all happening under a veil of
intense secrecy and beyond public oversight-and that is precisely the danger with PRISM. U.S. companies
have been strong-armed into complying with U.S. espionage, undermining the civil liberties of everyone
who uses these services. No longer is foreign surveillance targeted at specific channels of diplomatic
communication or aimed at particular suspects-it is much broader than that, capable of sweeping up
data on millions or even billions of citizens' communications. Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower
behind the disclosure of PRISM, has alleged that the agency "specifically targets the communications
of everyone."
Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said Thursday that the intelligence community
was "committed to respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all American citizens." But the U.S.
government claims to endorse the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which makes it clear that
all citizens-not just American citizens-have a right not to be subjected to "arbitrary interference"
with "privacy, family, home or correspondence." And that is exactly the problem with the NSA's PRISM:
it puts the universal right to privacy through the shredder, and encourages other governments to
do the same.
Angela Merkel and Barack Obama: 'It is the responsibility of the German government to see to it that
the programmes of the NSA and GCHQ no longer process the data of German citizens.' Photograph: Breul-Bild/Juri
Reetz/dpa/Corbis
"Germany's security is being defended in the Hindu Kush, too," said Peter Struck,
who was Germany's defence minister at the time,
in 2002. If that's
true, then the government should also be expected to defend the security of its people at their own
doorstep. Because the massive
sniffing out and saving of data of all kinds – that of citizens and businesses, newspapers, political
parties, government agencies – is in the end just that: a question of security. It is about the principles
of the rule of law. And it is a matter of national security.
We live in changing times. At the beginning of last week, we thought after the announcement of
the American Prism programme that President Barack Obama was the sole boss of the largest and most
extensive control system in human history. That was an error.
Since Friday, we have known that the British intelligence agency GCHQ is "worse
than the United States". Those are the words of Edward Snowden, the IT expert who uncovered the
most serious surveillance scandal of all time. American and British intelligence agencies are monitoring
all communication data. And what does our chancellor do? She says: "The internet is uncharted territory
for us all."
That's not enough. In the coming weeks, the German government needs to show that it is bound to
its citizens and not to an intelligence-industrial complex that abuses our entire lives as some kind
of data mine. The justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, hit the right note when
she said she was shocked by this "Hollywood-style nightmare".
We have Snowden to thank for this insight into the interaction of an uncanny club, the
Alliance of Five Eyes. Since the second world war, the five Anglo-Saxon countries of Great Britain,
the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have maintained close intelligence co-operation,
which apparently has got completely out of control.
It may be up to the Americans and the British to decide how they handle questions of freedom and
the protection of their citizens from government intrusion. But they have no right to subject
the citizens of other countries to their control. The shoulder-shrugging explanation by Washington
and London that they have operated within the law is absurd. They are not our laws. We didn't make
them. We shouldn't be subject to them.
The totalitarianism of the security mindset protects itself with a sentence: if you have nothing
to hide, you have nothing to fear. But first, that contains a presumption: we have not asked
the NSA and GCHQ to "protect" us. And second, the sentence is a stupid one: because we all have something
to hide, whether it pertains to our private lives or to our business secrets.
Thus the data scandal doesn't pertain just to our legal principles, but to our security as well.
We were lucky that Snowden, who revealed the spying to the entire world, is not a criminal, but an
idealist. He wanted to warn the world, not blackmail it. But he could have used his information for
criminal purposes, as well. His case proves that no agency in the world can guarantee the security
of the data it collects – which is why no agency should collect data in such abundance in the first
place.
That is the well-known paradox of totalitarian security policy. Our security is jeopardised
by the very actions that are supposed to protect it.
So what should happen now? European institutions must take control of the data infrastructure
and ensure its protection. The freedom of data traffic is just as important as the European freedom
of exchange in goods, services and money. But above all, the practices of the Americans and British
must come to an end. Immediately.
It is the responsibility of the German government to see to it that the programmes of the NSA
and GCHQ no longer process the data of German citizens and companies without giving them the opportunity
for legal defense. A government that cannot make that assurance is failing in one of its fundamental
obligations: to protect its own citizens from the grasp of foreign powers.
Germans should closely observe how Angela Merkel now behaves. And if the opposition Social Democrats
and Green party are still looking for a campaign issue, they need look no further.
• This article originally appeared on
Spiegel International and is republished with permission
thereandaback
I think the standard state response is.
'Shut the F***! UP or we will black bag you and drag your arse off to Guantanamo'
Wrapped in a democratic wrapper. Report Share this comment on Twitter Share this comment on
Facebook
ForTheEmpire
Good post except for the democratic bit.
I don't think anyone thinks that the USA is a democracy anymore.
It isn't one and it never has been as the constitution makes pretty clear.
Since 1941 the US has been more of an Empire and less of a Republic.
The Republic died sometime between the years 1962 and 1975.
Rapport
The US and Britain claim they have operated within the law. But they are not our laws and we
shouldn't be subject to them This is a punishable transgression and attempt to corrupt the relationship
between 'LORDS' and vassals!
richmanchester
I vaugely recall reading that in some EU negotiaion or other, in the 80's, Britain's casue
was helped by having a suspiciously accurate insight into what the German position was.
bigcugglybear
F##k fibre interception. Time machines!
OrangeZonker
before Tempora there was Echelon
RueTheDay
I think that the majority of rational people in Western countries have rejected the Guardian/Greenwald
base delusional perception that a majority of people will be offended by this relatively unobtrusive
intelligence gathering which is so clearly designed to prevent terrorist atrocities.
Strange that The Guardian doesn't see that it is flogging a dead horse.
Strummered -> RueTheDay
I think you really must try harder. Look around you at the global response to these revelations,
not least from national governments.
kagaka -> DavidC012
Its my technical understanding that snooping happened at data exchanges in the UK which are
governed by EU law.
Same for us here in Canada but the Government is way to scared of the USA to do anything against
USA laws. USA laws supercede any International Laws.
bonbonniera
Anything 'we' do is intelligence gathering and necessary for self-defence. Anything 'they'
do is spying.
Absolutely simple.
StephenStafford
The Germans may be a little more sensitive to Governments compiling information on them as
the Stasi would have embraced the internet and sought to monitor social networking sites.
However the problem is that the information is in free flow on the internet for anyone with
access. PRISM is a little different and the EU will probably be looking at how EU citizens' data
might be better protected if stored in the EU and not anywhere else and to which the USA et al
couldn't have access.
No doubt China, Russia, etc will also be reviewing the state of play.
richmanchester
Can data be corralled that easily, or does it tend to slosh around the world willy nilly, flaunting
itself for anyone who might want a peep?
GM Potts
Data flows like water on the internet, so as best to avoid obstacles. It's perfectly possible
for Germany to keep internal German data within Germany, or for the rest of Europe to keep their
internal data routed within Europe, away from the US and UK, in the same way a company can keep
it's communications internal. However they'd also have to set up internal alternative services
such as social media.
A better approach may be to teach encryption, computer security and privacy practices at school.
bujinin
To understand the full scope of this (it far exceeds "metadata") requires inclusion of the
role of Britain's spy agency GCHQ
Essentially it is the greatest theft of property (communications are property) in human
history.
"One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn
from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation,
codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.
GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications
between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.
This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook
and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even
though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets."
His case proves that no agency in the world can guarantee the security of the data it collects
– which is why no agency should collect data in such abundance in the first place. Well, quite.
What's more amazing is the fact that they are calling him a spy -- for revealing the fact that
the NSA and GCHQ have been, for all intents and purposes, spying. It's rather sad that of all
the people who had access to the stuff Snowdon had access to over the past decade, he's the only
one to have blown the whistle. Didn't George Orwell say something along the lines that when you
live in a time of universal deceit, even simple truth-telling becomes (or seems) an act of revolutionary
insurgency? What a world we live in.
simbasdad
If we really are spying on the Germans, we should be able to construct a profitable manufacturing
sector
TucholskyfuerArme -> simbasdad
Remember, the UK has a service based economy. So your 1% are selling it to the highest bidder
and then evade any taxes on it....
GM Potts -> simbasdad
Given that Boeing had full access to Airbus communications then they must be really shit engineers
to have built the Bad Dreamliner.
SantaMoniker
Is there no end to these articles that appeal to the hysteria and mob-think here?
In the USA the whole Snowden affair is largely being treated as a "where in the world is Waldo?"
paper chase. Americans have discovered that there is indeed life after the NSA reads - or doesn't
read - their e-mails, and the whole overwrought response is simply ludicrous.
All that remains to know now is whether (a) Snowden actually had access to information that
could really result in significant risk to others (b) if so, will he reveal it in a final flame-out?
In the meantime, his reliance on beacons of transparency, fair play, internet access, and democracy
such as China, Russia, Cuba (perhaps) and Ecuador (perhaps) has made him into a joke.
PeopleOverWallSt -> SantaMoniker
"This is old news and is not a threat - therefore Snowden should be prosecuted as a spy, because
he revealed nothing that is important at all! "
SantaMoniker -> PeopleOverWallSt
No - he should be prosecuted for revealing state secrets after he took an oath not to do so,
regardless of the degree to which his revelations are important.
So far, I have seen nothing that he has revealed that makes me feel less secure or that could
have aided anyone interested in attacking America.
Only an idiot - and there seem to be many of them on these threads - would assume that the
spy agency (or agencies) was (were) not spying.
Anyone able to mount a credible threat to the USA would certainly assume they are, and they
could not care one way or another whether the program was called PRISM or anything else, or what
the Fisa documents say or permit. It is so reminiscent of the Casablanca line - "I'm shocked
- shocked" that it really quite funny.
The only question remaining is whether, in order to enhance his reputation as a danger to the
US, he - or Greenwald - actually reveals names of operatives or other information that could seriously
endanger someone or impede security activity.
In the meantime - the media will simply play "where in the World is Waldo Snowden?" since there
really isn't much else going on except the slaughter in Syria and the riots in Brazil - the latter
something I note that ex-pat Greenwald remains studiously indifferent to.
LakerFan
Germans should closely observe how Angela Merkel now behaves. And if the opposition Social
Democrats and Green party are still looking for a campaign issue, they need look no further.
We read, here in America, that German luxury cars are given as gifts to especially pernicious
spies.
Face it: all the governments of the world have declared war- against their own citizens.
Yosser
Well that may be so, LakerFan, and it's easy to poke fun at the Snowden affair from many
angles, but I, for one, do not like the idea of any Agency anywhere, governmental or private,
reading my e-mails and monitoring my calls. The mantra 'If something can be done it will
be done' plus Moore's Law suggests to me that it may not be a bad idea to take President Obama
up on his 'Welcome a debate' remark.
Paul_lgnotus
So the British Empire never died - it just went online. Hurrah for the five eyes on which the
sun never sets....
CC0564 -> Paul_lgnotus
They stopped gold digging and started data mining.
And for fun they shoot at paper tigers. Or maybe that is the whole point of this new empire:
create new enemies. It is a great money spinner.
Comrade2070
But they have no right to subject the citizens of other countries to their control.
The problem, though, is that this inference is actually an open question and has been since
the Treaty of Westphalia ... especially with respect to spying
While one can argue that the "binding customary principles of territorial sovereign equality
and nonintervention, by the comity of nations," as one Canadian court put it, prohibits the collection
of intelligence by one nation-state against another without its consent ... there are few treaties
on the books where states have explicitly abrogated their powers to collect foreign intelligence.
More importantly, I'm not aware of any treaties that have established an enforcement mechanism
to see to it that countries are punished when they spy against one another.
Indeed most treaties that recognize the broad principal that "No one shall be subjected
to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence." See Article
12, Declaration of Human Rights and Article 8 of the ECHR also recognize the broad principle that
"Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." The tension between liberty
and security that we see in domestic law is right there in international law. Yet, that tension
has come about without the member states completely ceding their individual liberty to breach
any of these rights that we see reflected in domestic law.
For example, the Rome Statute that established the ICC explicitly excludes delicts against
privacy from its jurisdiction.
Which returns us to sovereignty--IT is the core problem here. In a system of international
anarchy, governments are effectively at liberty to keep secrets from one another and they are
at liberty to try to discover each others' secrets. Until they are willing to yield both liberties
to a higher authority, your protestations against individual citizens getting caught up in the
mix of international espionage will not be remedied ...
truthpleasestoplies -> Comrade2070
And we come back to Adolf Hitler:
Right, Law, Justice, agreements are for the weak. The powerful one does not need them as he
and his power authorize themselves. (in the Nietzschean version of it adopted by Nazism)
But was then Nazism defeated only to occupy the ueberalles place it had outlined and the principles
it had chosen? Was eventually Adolf Hitler right in the concept but wrong in the identity of the
one country which would incarnate it? The power-and-no-rights followers and countries, though
not me, are on his side and his heirs.
Is the truth even more simple and Nazism the real engine of the empires of 19th century which
existed before and continued after Hitler?
Just when the Snowden spy saga needs comic relief to counter Washington's bad-tempered diplomacy,
in walks Russian president Vladimir Putin with his own way of describing what might be in the whole
deal for Moscow – "it's like shearing a pig – lots of screams, but little wool."
Clearly the Russian leader thought he could indulge in such colourful language because for the
benefit of the international throngs following the story, he had just answered the 'where's Wally'
question – indeed, Mr Snowden was still at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport; though in the transit area
which, technically, meant he was not in the country.
... ... ...
There were signs that Washington is issuing chill pills to senior officials.
Couching his words in the terms in which indignant Chinese and Russian officials used to reject
his hot-headed comments of Monday, a more measured US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters
in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: "We're not looking for a confrontation. We're not ordering anybody. We are
simply requesting under a very normal procedure for the transfer of somebody.
"I would simply appeal for calm and reasonableness at a moment when we don't need to raise the
level of confrontation over something as frankly basic and normal as this."
With so many people in different time zones having their tuppence worth, it was though everyone
was speaking at once. And in that context Kerry's Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov, wasn't buying
the new Mr Kerry tone.
"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violations of US laws and even some sort of conspiracy
which, on top of all that, are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable,"
Mr Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.
"There are no legal grounds for such conduct [by] US officials."
Despite the formal explanation, Hong Kong officials also indicated displeasure over Mr. Snowden's
revelation that the semi-autonomous Chinese city had been a target of American hacking. The government
noted that it asked the U.S. for more information on the issue, suggesting it played some role in
the decision.
Some observers believe the move to allow Mr. Snowden to leave Hong Kong was orchestrated by China
to avoid a prolonged diplomatic tussle with the U.S. over his extradition. Mr. Snowden also claimed
that the U.S. accessed private text messages after hacking into mobile phone companies in China.
The U.S. has long complained that it has been a victim of Chinese computer-based attacks.
Hong Kong lawmaker and lawyer Albert Ho, who had represented Mr. Snowden, said an intermediary
who claimed to represent the government had relayed a message to Mr. Snowden saying he was free to
leave and should do so.
"The entire decision was probably made in Beijing and Beijing decided to act on its best interests,"
he told reporters. "However, Beijing would not want to be seen on stage because it would affect Sino-U.S.
relations. That's why China has somebody acting in the background."
What is Snowden's life like in hiding?
The cramped conditions of staying in the home of a local Hong Kong supporter didn't bother Mr.
Snowden, his lawyer told The New York Times – so long as he had access to his computer.
In fact, Mr. Ho said, the one thing that scares him most about the idea of prison is of losing
his computer. "If you were to deprive him of his computer, that would be totally intolerable," Mr.
Ho said.
Was Snowden hiding in plain sight?
Though Mr. Snowden is going to great lengths to avoid detection (Mr. Ho told The New York Times,
for example, that all visitors are asked to hide their cellphones in the refrigerator to prevent
eavesdropping), at least a few journalists have had better luck.
Even while fleeing extradition, Mr. Snowden has granted interviews to The Guardian and The South
China Morning Post newspapers – essentially hiding in plain sight of officials.
For The Guardian, he even agreed to be filmed on video and then last week participated in a live
"Q&A" session with Guardian readers.
"I believe in freedom of expression," he told the Post. "I acted in good faith but it is only
right that the public form its own opinion."
Journalists strike out on Aeroflot Flight 180
After word leaked that Mr. Snowden would fly from Moscow to Havana on Monday, journalists who
had been searching for him at Sheremetyevo International Airport rushed to book seats on Aeroflot
Flight 180. However, he was not on board.
To make matters worse, there are no alcohol sales aboard the nearly 12-hour flight and the reporters
must spend three days in Cuba before they can leave because of the country's travel rules.
The WikiLeaks connection
The ongoing NSA drama has led to a strategic alliance between Mr. Snowden and the anti-secrecy
activist group WikiLeaks. The arrangement has allowed WikiLeaks – whose founder Julian Assange
has been in refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy for over a year – to share in Mr. Snowden's media spotlight,
and also given Mr. Snowden access to the expertise and resources that the international organization
has gained over the years.
Mr. Assange said that Mr. Snowden had approached the activist group over a week ago for its help,
and they have since been providing legal and logistical support. On Sunday, Ecuadorean foreign minister
Ricardo Patiño Aroca said the country had received an asylum application from Mr. Snowden.
Before there was Edward Snowden, there was Mark Klein, a telecommunications technician who alleged
that AT&T was allowing U.S. spies to siphon vast amounts of customer data without warrants
In a
new series, Comment is free writers and editors want to highlight some of the best comments on
the site. Each week, either an editor or the author of a recent piece will pick a comment that they
think contributes to the debate. Hopefully, it will give staff and readers an opportunity to see
how thought-provoking such contributions can be and allow great posts the chance to be seen by a
wider audience.
Where is the outrage over Prism in Australia? In the same place as Australian outrage over
Echelon. Next to the US, Australia is probably the second most insular "western" democracy in
the world. And even more ready to believe that it's all about foreigners, which doesn't include
them but does include anybody slightly brown tinged or with a funny accent on the continent, than
the Americans.
I was talking to a (typically) frighteningly casual racist Australian yesterday. And he was
genuinely convinced that NSA would only be spying on "immigrant darkies" in Australia. He couldn't
grasp the concept that TCP/IP and the ISO communications model don't have an ethnic identification
layer. And the NSA don't (can't) racially profile meta data.
Antony explains why he picked this comment:
One of the constant refrains about the Snowden revelations, from supporters of unaccountable
surveillance, is that the state and authorities would never peek into lives that have no connection
to terrorism. Or that Washington has a watertight court oversight (Glenn Greenwald
demolished that lie recently). The commenter understands that the post 9/11 world has seen
development of a massive, privatised system of monitoring and gathering metadata on us all. Alas,
I have to agree that insularity is an Australian speciality (not unique to us, alas). These Prism
revelations should alarm politicians and media but far too many of them are sucking on the drip-feed
of sanctioned US government and intelligence leaks and information to care. The online rage against
the Obama administration recently shows that many in the public are demanding action.
Spatial
○ concerning the NSA revelations, media blackout has been very successful
only reporting on the US charging Snowden was allowed
you wouldn't be mistaken to assume that news outlets are run directly from NSA offices. technology
is making this possibility a piece of cake ○
in this 'free country' one is only free to acquiesce unquestionably to the instructions coming
from Washington
ChaseChubby -> Spatial
in this 'free country' one is only free to acquiesce unquestionably to the instructions
coming from Washington
Indeed. Not like the socialist paradises of Venezuela and Cuba. There a person can say what
he thinks without fear. Report Share this comment on Twitter Share this comment on Facebook
Spatial ChaseChubby
Not like the socialist paradises of Venezuela and Cuba. There a person can say what
he thinks without fear
good on you! very 'rational' and adequate response. it doesn't stink of acquiescence at all.
discuz
Even accounting for the third party doctrine, how can FISA ordering call data on ALL US calls
be squared with the Fourth Amendment, statutory protections, common law privileges and the rights
of the third parties themselves?
AngloSkeptic AngloSkeptic
As with the City, so with GCHQ:
Britain's feeble public institutions combined with the global reach of ambitious British-based
interests menace the entire world, not just the basic rights of the British population.
The poorly regulated activities of GCHQ appear to undermine the constitutional protections
enjoyed by citizens in other sovereign states.
The sudden loss of 'plausible deniability' creates for governments around the world a legal
obligation to act.
AngloSkeptic AngloSkeptic
Voting is of no avail if the population is uninformed or if the activity emanates from another,
'sovereign' jurisdiction.
As Mr Snowdon put it, it is a case of 'turn-key tyranny', but on a global scale.
Meanwhile, Britain, with its lax constitutional arrangement, serves as the Loophole of the
world, through which other governments circumvent their constitutional protections.
MobiusLoop -> RueTheDay
I prefer to live in a safe society, free of criminals and terrorists. The trade off of
allowing government snooping across the board, to keep me safe is acceptable to me.
The central assumption here is that governments and their agencies always act in a benign manner
yet this very story, the Hillsborough, Lawrence and Tomlinson cases are all clear examples of
areas where there is the danger of and actual misuse of power and where public scrutiny is therefore
essential. Looking at the history of Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday with subsequent cover up
then internment can seen as examples of the misuse of powers that had the impact of taking a volatile
situation and making it more dangerous. In this case a far greater level of safety was achieved
through open dialogue and an acknowledgement of the underlying economic and political drivers.
For society to remain balanced and safe, there must be limits on power, scrutiny and accountability.
Without checks there is a tendency to drift towards an ever more draconian and I would argue truly
dangerous world.
Sentinel001 -> libertarianSW
Good comments, they ( gove, media etc ) are still portraying using Microsoft Windows or Apple
Mac OSX as viable business operating systems.
This is where they capture all of your data from; remember, they ( Microsoft and Apple) gave
the NSA / GCHQ, Five-Eyes Nations, access to zero-day exploits and other Operating System errors
to exploit for commercial gain before telling the public ( whole world who use those operating
systems for their businesses ) about these exploits.
The whole business community around the world need to remove the back-door enabled operating
systems from Microsoft and Apple; Windows and OSX, as this is the only way to guarantee their
own data privacy locally.
Message needs to be spread
libertarianSW -> Sentinel001
Exactly, the US is facing a massive backslash, as you pointed, no body knows the extent and
what else PRISM involved.
It's funny because the US was issuing security warnings about Chinese TELCO's and Chinese made
equipment because of possible back-doors and illegal data collection ...now the US seems to follow
a similar pattern.
AhBrightWings
I was talking to a (typically) frighteningly casual racist Australian yesterday. And
he was genuinely convinced that NSA would only be spying on "immigrant darkies" in Australia.
This was a great post, and I particularly admire how the poster addressed head-on the most
disturbing essence of this Orwellian dynamic. The sad truth is that the racism expressed in the
quotation is the purest distillation of Martin Niemöller's axiom about who they come for first.
Virtually everything that has unfolded in the post 9/11 world has been an invitation to pit "Us"
against "Them." As long as it is happening to them, the vast majority has not cared how outrageous
the transgressions are or how horrendous the suffering is. I am still struggling with my disappointment
that it took having one's precious cellphone or Facebook page effected to wake up the slumbering
masses to what is going on, but keep coming back to the thought that at least they are waking
up.
Many people use the future tense when talking about what "can" or "might" go wrong if we don't
put a stop to this. That view studiously ignores the thousands who have been tortured and imprisoned,
without trial, and the hundreds of thousands killed in an illegal war.
We should be outraged, but the source of that rage should be fueled by our awareness that others
are already suffering in our name. If we don't want them to come for us, we need to care passionately
that they've already come for others.
mikedow
I'm always bemused when I see that NSA picture, with it's massive car park. A serious transportation
breakdown would just about scuttle the place. They call that security.
goodkurtz
AhBrightWings:
Virtually everything that has unfolded in the post 9/11 world has been an invitation
to pit "Us" against "Them."
By now my dear AhBrightWings you should not be hide bound by that paradigm. I lectured you
enough at Salon to get smart about 9/11Truth. So by now you should have realized that 9/11 was
so arranged by Them, that yahoo nation would be happy with Them pitting themselves against Us.
And now what they were too stupid to see they were sowing - now must yahoo nation reap.
goodkurtz
Talk about yahoo, sure to appear:
RueTheDay
I prefer to live in a safe society, free of criminals and terrorists. The trade off
of allowing government snooping across the board, to keep me safe is acceptable to me. I
will vote for someone who has my physical security as a primary interest.
I didn't know whether to laugh, spit or cry with despair reading your garbage. The State doesn't
give a flying fuck about your "physical security." They sent many into war to be killed or maimed
on false pretenses didn't they? They put the frightners on you in order that you'll be happily
stupid enough to keep up the protection payments.
There's one born every minute - but I really, really wish there wasn't.
American intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden may expose top secret Australian intelligence
gathering operations and embarrass Australia's relations with neighbouring Asian countries, Australian
intelligence officials fear.
Former Labor Defence Minister John Faulkner has confirmed that the heads of the Australian Security
Intelligence Organisation and Australia's signals intelligence agency, the Defence Signals Directorate,
David Irvine and Ian McKenzie, have briefed the federal parliament's intelligence committee on the
US PRISM internet surveillance program.
The Australian government would not comment yesterday on whether Mr Snowden's exposés of top secret
US and British intelligence and surveillance programs have been the subject of diplomatic exchanges
between Canberra and Washington. Foreign Minister Bob Carr's office would not say whether he has
had any exchanges with US Secretary of State John Kerry on the subject.
However Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus's office has confirmed that a high level interagency taskforce
is monitoring events and coordinating the government's response.
... ... ...
"Disclosure of highly sensitive collection operations and methodology will damage Australia's
intelligence capabilities. It already has done so. But there's also risk of serious complications
in our relations with our neighbours," one official said.
"The US may be able to brush aside some of the diplomatic fallout from the Snowden leak, but that
may not be the case for Australia. China, Malaysia, other countries may respond to us in ways that
they would not to Washington."
Nicho
Heh. The govt. was spying on their own people. Snowden's a traitor only if you regard your
citizens as the enemy ..
Scooter
Nicho, the citizen is always the enemy of the State. The biggest weakness resides within. That
is why a modern political State will move to control the means and methods of violence, to minimise
that risk.
The president arrives in Northern Ireland early Monday morning to begin an intense three days
of behind-the-scenes diplomacy and very-public speechmaking to culminate in what the White House
hopes is a spectacular address at the eastern side of the historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The
crowd for that could top 200,000. But more important for Obama may be the smaller one-on-one sessions
when he is expected to face tough questions about the surveillance disclosures and the evolving U.S.
policy on Syria.
Those would come at Lough Erne Resort, a golf resort nestled between two lakes near Enniskillen
in Northern Ireland, site of this year's G-8 Summit. Obama is almost certain to hear complaints from
several of the allied leaders upset at public disclosure that the FBI and National Security Agency
collected data on private calls made by citizens, including those using major internet servers in
Europe. Since the disclosure, the complaints have been loudest in Germany, France and Italy. But
a nerve was struck across the continent, with Europe long more concerned about privacy than the United
States and long annoyed that Europeans had to rely on Internet servers maintained by U.S. companies
such as Google and Facebook.
Peter Schaar, Germany's freedom of information commissioner, told Reuters he wanted "clarity"
from the United States "regarding these monstrous allegations of total monitoring of various
telecommunications and Internet services." Another German official has called for a boycott
of the companies. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is running for reelection, has said she will
raise the issue with Obama this week either at Lough Erne or in Berlin.
"The most upset party in all of this, I think, is the Germans," said Michael J. Geary, an assistant
professor at Maastricht University in the Netherlands and an expert on Europe. "The Germans were
the most snooped-upon country, apparently, in March. In a country where memories of the former East
German Stasi are still quite fresh, the response has been quite critical." Geary described Europeans
as "peeved" and "quite annoyed" at the U.S. actions and said they have the potential to set back
sensitive trade negotiations and do damage to transatlantic relations. "It's a major PR disaster
for the administration," he said. "Now, they have really lost the moral high ground."
Among the questions Obama will face, said Geary, is how much of this information was gathered
"simply for security or is it being used for economic advantage in the United States?"
Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
said she expects the European leaders to be "extremely vocal about their concerns" privately. She
said the disclosures could prove to be "a major stumbling block" for successful trade talks and revive
European concerns about privacy. "Public opinion on this is actually quite strong in Europe," she
said.
The White House anticipates the questions. "We certainly understand that, like the United States,
countries in Europe have significant interests in privacy and civil liberties," said Ben Rhodes of
the National Security Council.
"So we will want to hear their questions and have an exchange about these programs and other
counterterrorism programs that we pursue in the United States and in partnership." But Rhodes
stressed to reporters at the White House that the president will defend the program as "a tool
that is essential to our shared security."
"He'll be able to discuss with the other leaders the importance of these programs in terms
of our counterterrorism efforts in particular, the constraints and safeguards that we place on
these programs so that they have oversight against potential abuses."
No meeting with another leader at the summit is more eagerly anticipated than Obama's session
with Vladimir Putin, who is back as president of Russia and back at the G-8 summit for the first
time since George W. Bush was the U.S. president. Putin and Obama have had a particularly rocky relationship,
with Putin never missing a chance to tweak or embarrass Obama. And when they sit down Monday evening
at Lough Erne, they will face a crowded agenda, including the surveillance program, Syria, Afghanistan,
trade, human rights and arms control.
In his comments this week, Putin has offered a modest defense of the surveillance program, suggesting
it is understandable if done legally. But he cast the Kremlin as more law-abiding and more sensitive
to privacy concerns than his American counterparts. "Such methods are in demand," Putin told RT,
Russia's English-language satellite news channel.
"But you can't just listen to the phone call in Russia; you need a special order from court.
This is how it should be done in civilized society while tackling terrorism with the use of any
technical means. If it is in the framework of the law, then it's OK. If not, it is unacceptable."
Today was released that the National Security Agency and the FBI have access to audio, video calls,
pictures, e-mails, documents and connections. The information was revealed by The Washington Post,
this is the first time that something of this scale has become public. The announcement came, unfortunately
for the White House, the same day that [...]
There is outrage over an NSA program that records billions of phone calls by wireless phone users.
Some of the anger is from Congressmen who approved the plan, but never believed it would be exposed.
A far more invasive program, called PRISM, was created by George W. Bush to obtain more power over
the American [...]
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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