So schöpfen die Spione Ihrer Majestät deutsche Daten ab

An einem einzigen Tag soll der britische Geheimdienst GCHQ Zugriff auf 21.600 Terabyte gehabt haben – wozu, weiß nicht einmal der BND. Sicher ist nur: Die Überwacher bekommen Hilfe von großen Telekommunikationskonzernen.

Das amerikanische Außenministerium hat vor Jahren einen kleinen Flecken in Ostfriesland auf eine Liste der weltweit schützenswürdigen Einrichtungen gesetzt. Ein Angriff auf das Städtchen Norden könnte angeblich die nationale Sicherheit der USA bedrohen. Sogar der Chef des US-Geheimdienstes NSA, General Keith B. Alexander, hat vor terroristischen Attacken gewarnt.

Norden ist ein heimliches Zentrum der neuen virtuellen Welt. Das TAT-14 (Trans Atlantic Telephone Cable No 14) ist am Hilgenrieder Siel bei Norden verbuddelt. Die meisten Internetverbindungen zwischen Deutschland und Amerika laufen dort durch mehrere Glasfaserleitungen; auch Frankreich, die Niederlande, Dänemark und Großbritannien sind durch TAT-14 miteinander verbunden. Etwa 50 internationale Telekommunikationsfirmen, darunter die Deutsche Telekom, betreiben ein eigenes Konsortium für dieses Kabel.

Manchmal fließen pro Sekunde Hunderte Gigabyte an Daten durch die Leitungen. Es ist ein gigantischer Datenrausch: Millionen Telefonate und E-Mails schießen durch das Netz. Auch deshalb hat der deutsche Verfassungsschutz stets nachgeschaut, ob in Norden alles in Ordnung ist. Keine Sabotage. Keine Terroristen. Kein Problem?

Für die über die “Seekabelendstelle” Norden, wie die offizielle Bezeichnung der Einrichtung lautet, vermittelten Daten hat sich offenbar der britische Geheimdienst Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) brennend interessiert. Aus Unterlagen des Whistleblowers Edward Snowden jedenfalls soll hervorgehen, dass die Briten im Rahmen der Operation “Tempora” die Daten abgegriffen haben. Es soll sich um unzählige Daten handeln, die aus Deutschland kamen oder nach Deutschland geschickt wurden.

Das ist nicht der Cyberkrieg, vor dem die amerikanische NSA immer gewarnt hat, sondern ein heimlicher umfassender Big-Data-Angriff auf die Bevölkerung eines befreundeten Landes. Die alte Formel: “Freund hört mit” umfasst das Problem nicht mal ungefähr. Großbritanniens Geheimdienst hat einen Lauschangriff auf Deutschland gestartet.

Die Menge der abgefangenen Daten ist noch Spekulation, und unklar ist auch, wo der Angriff genau erfolgt sein soll. Sicher nicht in Norden, das früher durch sein Seeheilbad bekannt wurde. Das würde sich kein Nachrichtendienstler trauen. Schon gar nicht in freundlicher Absicht.

Wahrscheinlich erfolgte der Angriff in dem kleinen Küstenstädtchen Bude im Südwesten Englands, das 858 Kilometer Luftlinie von Norden entfernt liegt. Dort macht das Kabel Zwischenstation – das Ende der Strecke ist New Jersey.

Dass ein britischer Geheimdienst auf diese Weise und so umfassend E-Mails deutscher Bürger abfängt oder Telefonate abhört, war vor Snowdens Enthüllungen für undenkbar gehalten worden. Der Bundesnachrichtendienst erklärt seit Tagen, dass er von den Aktivitäten der Amerikaner oder der Briten nichts wusste und selbst nur Zeitungswissen habe. Das klingt glaubhaft. Die beiden befreundeten Nationen, heißt es in Berlin, hätten offenbar ihr eigenes nationales Sicherheitsprogramm gefahren.

So viel Sicherheit war sicherlich nur mithilfe von Kommunikationsgesellschaften möglich. Angeblich sollen die beiden britischen Unternehmen Vodafone und British Telecommunications (BT) den Geheimen behilflich gewesen sein.

Jeder Eingriff, das erklärt eine Telekom-Sprecherin, müsste von dem internationalen Konsortium genehmigt werden, aber eine solche Genehmigung liegt nicht vor. Ein Sprecher der britischen Vodafone erklärte auf Anfrage, dass sich das Unternehmen an die Gesetze in den jeweiligen Ländern halte und Angelegenheiten, die mit der nationalen Sicherheit zusammenhingen, nicht kommentiere. Diese Formel klingt in diesen Tagen sehr vertraut.

Rechtsgrundlage für die Aktion “Tempora” ist ein sehr weit gefasstes Gesetz aus dem Jahr 2000. Danach kann die Kommunikation mit dem Ausland abgefangen und gespeichert werden. Die privaten Betreiber der Datenkabel, die beim Abhören mitmachen, sind zum Stillschweigen verpflichtet.

Nordengate macht klar, wie unterschiedlich Gesetze und Regeln in dieser Welt angewandt werden, es symbolisiert aber auch den Wandel der Geheimdienstarbeit. Ganz früher haben Nachrichtendienste Telefonate über relativ simple Horchposten abgehört. Glasfaserleitungen stellten die Dienste vor neue Herausforderungen. Telefonate werden seitdem in optische Signale umgewandelt. Da die Leitungen vor allem am Meeresboden verlaufen, gerieten Nachrichtendienste für kurze Zeit an ihre Grenzen.

Bereits um die Jahrtausendwende berichteten amerikanische Blätter, dass die NSA mithilfe von U-Booten an die Daten gelangen wollte. So wurde das Atom-U-Boot Jimmy Carter umgerüstet, um Glasfaserkabel aufzuschlitzen und dann abzuhören. Vorher hatten die Dienste auf anderem Weg regelmäßig Seekabel angezapft. Bei früheren Kupferkabeln reichte ein Induktions-Mikrofon, um die Gespräche abzugreifen. Glasfaserkabel hingegen müssen gebogen werden, um die optisch vermittelten Signale auslesen zu können. Am verwundbarsten sind die Kabel freilich an Land.

Was die Briten mit den vielen deutschen Daten machen und gemacht haben, erschließt sich selbst dem BND nicht so ganz. An einem einzigen Tag soll der britische Geheimdienst insgesamt Zugriff auf 21.600 Terabyte gehabt haben. Dank Snowden ist bekannt, dass die abgefangenen Inhalte drei Tage vorgehalten wurden und Benutzerdaten 30 Tage. In der Zwischenzeit wurden die Daten mit speziellen Programmen gefiltert. Selbst dem Briten George Orwell wäre ein solches Überwachungsprogramm im Leben nicht eingefallen.

25. Juni 2013 05:10 Großbritanniens Abhördienst GCHQ
Von John Goetz, Hans Leyendecker und Frederik Obermaier

Find this story at 25 June 2013

Copyright: Süddeutsche Zeitung Digitale Medien GmbH / Süddeutsche Zeitung GmbH

Elusive Snowden Could Cause New Hitch in U.S.-Russia Ties

Ecuador’s flag flying above its coat of arms at the country’s embassy in Moscow on Monday. Snowden is seeking asylum in the South American nation.

Journalists flocked to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on Monday to board a flight to Cuba that supposedly would also contain fugitive Edward Snowden, who is attempting to escape arrest by U.S. authorities for revealing highly classified surveillance programs.

According to a widely distributed statement by an unidentified Aeroflot employee, Snowden should have been on flight SU150 direct to Havana leaving Moscow on Monday afternoon. The Aeroflot employee even said which seat he was to occupy, 17A.

But reporters, whose news organizations shelled out about $2,000 per ticket to get them on board at the last minute, found no Snowden anywhere on board — increasing suspicions that Russia could be helping to stymie U.S. efforts to catch him amid a low point in bilateral relations.

After Snowden supposedly arrived at Sheremetyevo from Hong Kong on Sunday, Washington pressured Moscow to detain him, apparently to no avail. Russian officials said that given poor ties between the countries, which have split in recent months over issues including the civil war in Syria and the U.S. Magnitsky Act, they are in no rush to help their former Cold War foes.

“Ties are in a rather complicated phase, and when ties are in such a phase, when one country undertakes hostile action against another, why should the United States expect restraint and understanding from Russia?” Alexei Pushkov, the head of the State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, repeated Reuters.

A former technical contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, Snowden is reportedly seeking to travel to Ecuador, which is considering his asylum request. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Ecuador has already equipped Snowden with refugee papers that could allow him safe passage to his destination, according to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization has assisted Snowden. The U.S. government said earlier that Snowden’s American passport had been revoked.

Assange told the Guardian on Monday that he was aware of Snowden’s whereabouts but that he was unable to reveal them due to “bellicose threats coming from the U.S. administration.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking on Monday at a news conference in New Delhi, implored Russia to assist in efforts to apprehend Snowden, recalling that over the last two years, the U.S. had extradited seven prisoners requested by Russia. “Reciprocity and the enforcement of the law is pretty important,” he said.

“I suppose there is no small irony here. I mean, I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia’s assistance in his flight from justice because they are such powerful bastions of Internet freedom, and I wonder if while he was in either of those countries he raised the question of Internet freedom, since that seems to be what he champions,” Kerry said.

The cooperation described by Kerry is a drop in the bucket compared to the disputes between the countries, however.

Following some successes during a “reset” in ties kicked off in 2009 at the behest of U.S. President Barack Obama, relations took a sharp downward turn with the return of Vladimir Putin to the Kremlin last year.

Under Putin, the Russian government has undertaken what critics call a harsh crackdown on the opposition and on civil society, including kicking out the U.S. Agency for International Development, while the U.S. last year passed the Magnitsky Act, which imposes economic and travel restrictions on Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses. Russia retaliated by outlawing U.S. adoptions of Russian orphans.

More recently, the two nations have argued bitterly over what tack to take in seeking a solution to the civil war in Syria, with Russia backing President Bashar Assad and the U.S. supporting the rebels.

Now, the fate of Snowden, a 30-year-old former employee of a U.S. security contractor whose exposure of government phone and Internet surveillance has provoked public outrage, is becoming another point of contention.

According to Andrei Soldatov, a leading expert in Russia’s security agencies, the Russian government itself has an extensive system to monitor almost any kind of communication between its citizens.

Pushkov said Russia had no obligation to help the U.S. in this situation, given the recently passed Magnitsky Act. It was unclear whether Russian authorities had had contact with Snowden — Putin’s spokesman said Monday that the Kremlin was unaware of any such contact — but it seemed unlikely that the government could be unaware of Snowden’s whereabouts if he had entered Russia.

“All these flights carried out by Aeroflot via Moscow, as though there is no other route, are emblematic of Russia’s involvement in the process,” said Valery Garbuzov, deputy director of the Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies in Moscow.

Ecuador’s foreign minister also said his government was in “respectful” contact with Russia over Snowden’s asylum application.

Nonetheless, Washington appears to be holding out hope for assistance from Moscow.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. National Security Council, mentioned “intensified cooperation after the Boston marathon bombings and our history of working with Russia on law enforcement matters” as grounds for Russia “to look at all options available to expel Mr. Snowden back to the U.S. to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged.”

25 June 2013 | Issue 5154
By Ivan Nechepurenko

Nikolay Asmolovskiy / Reuters

Find this story at 25 June 2013

© Copyright 1992-2013. The Moscow Times

The Strange Case of Barrett Brown

In early 2010, journalist and satirist Barrett Brown was working on a book on political pundits, when the hacktivist collective Anonymous caught his attention. He soon began writing about its activities and potential. In a defense [2] of the group’s anti-censorship operations in Australia published on February 10, Brown declared, “I am now certain that this phenomenon is among the most important and under-reported social developments to have occurred in decades, and that the development in question promises to threaten the institution of the nation-state and perhaps even someday replace it as the world’s most fundamental and relevant method of human organization.”

By then, Brown was already considered by his fans to be the Hunter S. Thompson of his generation. In point of fact he wasn’t like Hunter S. Thompson, but was more of a throwback—a sharp-witted, irreverent journalist and satirist in the mold of Ambrose Bierce or Dorothy Parker. His acid tongue was on display in his co-authored 2007 book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny, in which he declared: “This will not be a polite book. Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession.”

But it wasn’t Brown’s acid tongue so much as his love of minutia (and ability to organize and explain minutia) that would ultimately land him in trouble. Abandoning his book on pundits in favor of a book on Anonymous, he could not have known that delving into the territory of hackers and leaks would ultimately lead to his facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison. In light of the bombshell revelations published by Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman about government and corporate spying, Brown’s case is a good—and underreported—reminder of the considerable risk faced by reporters who report on leaks.

In February 2011, a year after Brown penned his defense of Anonymous, and against the background of its actions during the Arab Spring, Aaron Barr, CEO of the private intelligence company HBGary, claimed to have identified the leadership of the hacktivist colletive. (In fact he only had screen names of a few members). Barr’s boasting provoked a brutal hack of HBGary by a related group called Internet Feds (it would soon change its name to “LulzSec”). Splashy enough to attract the attention of The Colbert Report [3], the hack defaced and destroyed servers and websites belonging to HBGary. Some 70,000 company emails were downloaded and posted online. As a final insult to injury, even the contents of Aaron Barr’s iPad were remotely wiped.

The HBGary hack may have been designed to humiliate the company, but it had the collateral effect of dropping a gold mine of information into Brown’s lap. One of the first things he discovered was a plan to neutralize Glenn Greenwald’s defense of Wikileaks by undermining them both. (“Without the support of people like Glenn, wikileaks would fold,” read one slide.) The plan called for “disinformation,” exploiting strife within the organization and fomenting external rivalries—“creating messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization,” as well as a plan to submit fake documents and then call out the error.” Greenwald, it was argued, “if pushed,” would “choose professional preservation over cause.”

Other plans targeted social organizations and advocacy groups. Separate from the plan to target Greenwald and WikiLeaks, HBGary was part of a consortia that submitted a proposal to develop a “persona management [4]” system for the United States Air Force, that would allow one user to control multiple online identities for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grassroots support or opposition to certain policies.

The data dump from the HBGary hack was so vast that no one person could sort through it alone. So Brown decided to crowdsource the effort. He created a wiki page, called it ProjectPM [5], and invited other investigative journalists to join in. Under Brown’s leadership, the initiative began to slowly untangle a web of connections between the US government, corporations, lobbyists, and a shadowy group of private military and information security consultants.

One connection was between Bank of America and the Chamber of Commerce. WikiLeaks had claimed to possess a large cache of documents belonging to Bank of America. Concerned about this, Bank of America approached the United States Department of Justice. The DOJ directed it to the law and lobbying firm Hunton and Williams [6], which does legal work for Wells Fargo and General Dynamics and also lobbies for Koch Industries, Americans for Affordable Climate Policy, Gas Processors Association, Entergy among many other firms. The DoJ recommended that Bank of America hire Hunton and Williams, explicitly suggesting Richard Wyatt [7] as the person to work with. Wyatt, famously, was the lead attorney in the Chamber of Commerce’s lawsuit against the Yes Men.

In November 2010, Hunton and Williams organized a number of private intelligence, technology development and security contractors—HBGary, plus Palantir Technologies, Berico Technologies, and, according to Brown, a secretive corporation with the ominous name Endgame Systems—to form “Team Themis” —‘themis’ being a Greek word meaning “divine law.” Its main objective was to discredit critics of the Chamber of Commerce, like Chamber Watch [8] using such tactics as creating a “false document, perhaps highlighting periodical financial information,” giving it to a progressive group opposing the Chamber, and then subsequently exposing the document as a fake to “prove that US Chamber Watch cannot be trusted with information and/or tell the truth.” In addition, the group proposed creating a “fake insider persona” to infiltrate Chamber Watch. They would “create two fake insider personas, using one as leverage to discredit the other while confirming the legitimacy of the second.” The leaked emails showed that similar disinformation campaigns were being planned against WikiLeaks and Glenn Greenwald.

It was clear to Brown that these were actions of questionable legality, but beyond that, government contractors were attempting to undermine Americans’ free speech—with the apparent blessing of the DOJ. A group of Democratic Congressmen asked for an investigation [9] into this arrangement, to no avail.

By June 2011, the plot had thickened further. The FBI had the goods on the leader of LulzSec, one Hector Xavier Monsegur, who went under the nom de guerre Sabu. The FBI arrested him on June 7, 2011 and (according to court documents) turned him into an informant the following day. Just three days before his arrest, Sabu had been central to the formation of a new group called AntiSec, which comprised his former LulzSec crew members, as well as members as Anonymous. In early December AntiSec hacked the website of a private security company called Stratfor Global Intelligence. On Christmas Eve, it released a trove of some five million internal compnay emails. AntiSec member and Chicago activist Jeremy Hammond [10], has pled guilty to the attack and is currently facing ten years in prison for it.

The contents of the Stratfor leak were even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. They included discussion of opportunities for renditions and assassinations. For example, in one video, Statfor’s Vice President of Intelligence, Fred Burton, suggested taking advantage of the chaos in Libya to render Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, who had been released from prison on compassionate grounds due to his terminal illness. Burton said that the case “was personal.” When someone pointed out in an email that such a move would almost certainly be illegal—“This man has already been tried, found guilty, sentenced…and served time”—another Stratfor employee responded that this was just an argument for a more efficient solution: “One more reason to just bugzap him with a hellfire. :-)”

(Stratfor employees also seemed to take a keen interest in Jeremy Scahill’s writings about Blackwater in The Nation, copying and circulating entire articles, with comments suggesting a principle interest was in the question of whether Blackwater was setting up a competing intelligence operation. Emails also showed grudging respect for Scahill: “Like or dislike Scahill’s position (or what comes of his work), he does an amazing job outing [Blackwater].”)

When the contents of the Stratfor leak became available, Brown decided to put ProjectPM on it. A link to the Stratfor dump appeared in an Anonymous chat channel; Brown copied it and pasted it into the private chat channel for ProjectPM, bringing the dump to the attention of the editors.

Brown began looking into Endgame Systems [11], an information security firm that seemed particularly concerned about staying in the shadows. “Please let HBGary know we don’t ever want to see our name in a press release,” one leaked email read. One of its products, available for a $2.5 million annual subscription, gave customers access to “zero-day exploits”—security vulnerabilities unknown to software companies—for computer systems all over the world. Business Week [12] published a story on Endgame in 2011, reporting that “Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems.” For Brown, this raised the question of whether Endgame was selling these exploits to foreign actors and whether they would be used against computer systems in the United States. Shortly thereafter, the hammer came down.

The FBI acquired a warrant [13] for Brown’s laptop, gaining the authority to seize any information related to HBGary, Endgame Systems, Anonymous, and, most ominously, “email, email contacts, ‘chat’, instant messaging logs, photographs, and correspondence.” In other words, the FBI wanted his sources.

When the FBI went to serve Brown he was at his mother’s house. Agents returned with a warrant to search his mother’s house, retrieving his laptop. To turn up the heat on Brown, the FBI initiated charges against his mother for obstruction of justice for concealing his laptop computer in her house. (Facing criminal charges, on March 22, 2013, his mother, Karen McCutchin, pled guilty to one count of obstructing the execution of a search warrant. She faces up to twelve months in jail. Brown maintains that she did not know the laptop was in her home.)

By his own admission, the FBI’s targeting of his mother made Brown snap. In September 2012, he uploaded an incoherent YouTube video [14], in which he explained that he had been in treatment for an addiction to heroin, taking the medication Suboxone, but had gone off his meds and now was in withdrawal. He threatened the FBI agent that was harassing his mother, by name, warming:

“I know what’s legal, I know what’s been done to me… And if it’s legal when it’s done to me, it’s going to be legal when it’s done to FBI Agent Robert Smith—who is a criminal.”

“That’s why [FBI special agent] Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids… How do you like them apples?”

Please support our journalism. Get a digital subscription for just $9.50! [15]

The media narrative was immediately derailed. No longer would this be a story about the secretive information-military-industrial complex; now it was the sordid tale of a crazy drug addict threatening an FBI agent and his (grown) children. Actual death threats against agents are often punishable by a few years in jail. But Brown’s actions made it easier for the FBI to sell some other pretext to put him away for life.

The Stratfor data included a number of unencrypted credit card numbers and validation codes. On this basis, the DOJ accused Brown of credit card fraud for having shared that link with the editorial board of ProjectPM. Specifically, the FBI charged him with Traffic in Stolen Authentication Features, Access Device Fraud, Aggravated Identity Theft, as well as an Obstruction of Justice charge (for being at his mother’s when the initial warrant was served) and charges stemming from his threats against the FBI agent. All told, Brown is looking at century of jail time: 105 years in federal prison if served sequentially. He has been denied bail.

Considering that the person who carried out the actual Stratfor hack had several priors and is facing a maximum of ten years, the inescapable conclusion is that the problem is not with the hack itself, but with Brown’s journalism. As Glenn Greenwald remarked in the Guardian: “it is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism.”

Today, Brown is in prison and ProjectPM is under increased scrutiny by the DOJ, even as its work has ground to a halt. In March, the DOJ served the domain hosting service CloudFlare with a subpoena [16] for all records on the ProjectPM website, and in particular asked for the IP addresses of everyone who had accessed and contributed to ProjectPM, describing it as a “forum” through which Brown and others would “engage in, encourage, or facilitate the commission of criminal conduct online.” The message was clear: Anyone else who looks into this matter does so at their grave peril.

Some journalists are now understandably afraid to go near the Stratfor files. The broader implications of this go beyond Brown; one might think that what we are looking at is Cointelpro 2.0—an outsourced surveillance state—but in fact it’s worse. One can’t help but infer that the US Department of Justice has become just another security contractor, working alongside the HBGarys and Stratfors on behalf of corporate bidders, with no sense at all for the justness of their actions; they are working to protect corporations and private security contractors and give them license to engage in disinformation campaigns against ordinary citizens and their advocacy groups. The mere fact that the FBI’s senior cybersecurity advisor has recently moved to Hunton and Williams shows just how incestuous this relationship has become. Meanwhile the Department of Justice is also using its power and force to trample on the rights of citizens like Barrett Brown who are trying to shed light on these nefarious relationships. In order to neutralize those who question or investigate the system, laws are being reinterpreted or extended or otherwise misappropriated in ways that are laughable—or would be if the consequences weren’t so dire.

While the media and much of the world have been understandably outraged by the revelation of the NSA’s spying programs, Barrett Brown’s work was pointing to a much deeper problem. It isn’t the sort of problem that can be fixed by trying to tweak a few laws or by removing a few prosecutors. The problem is not with bad laws or bad prosecutors. What the case of Barrett Brown has exposed is that we confronting a different problem altogether. It is a systemic problem. It is the failure of the rule of law.

Links:
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOW7GOrXNZI
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/anonymous-australia-and-t_b_457776.html
[3] http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/426198/may-09-2013/colbert-s-book-club—learning–the-great-gatsby-
[4] http://boingboing.net/2011/02/18/hbgarys-high-volume.html
[5] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page
[6] http://www.hunton.com/
[7] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/19/chamber-of-commerce-still_n_768076.html
[8] http://images2.americanprogress.org/ThinkProgress/ProposalForTheChamber.pdf
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/28/AR2011022805810.html
[10] http://www.dailydot.com/news/lulzsec-jeremy-hammond-bail-denied-hacker/
[11] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Endgame_Systems
[12] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/cyber-weapons-the-new-arms-race-07212011.html
[13] http://www.buzzfeed.com/mhastings/exclusive-fbi-escalates-war-on-anonymous
[14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOW7GOrXNZI
[15] https://subscribe.thenation.com/servlet/OrdersGateway?cds_mag_code=NAN&cds_page_id=122425&cds_response_key=I12SART1
[16] http://leaksource.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/doj-issues-subpoena-for-info-on-barrett-browns-project-pm-site/

Peter Ludlow | June 18, 2013

Find this story at 18 June 2013

© 2012 The Nation

Jeremy Hammond Pleads Guilty to Stratfor Hack Cyber-activist faces up to 10 years in federal prison

Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty today to the infamous Stratfor hack, as well as taking responsibility for eight additional hacks of law enforcement and defense contractor websites in 2011 and 2012. As a condition of the plea, the radical hacker will face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, and restitution costs of up to $2.5 million. After Hammond entered his plea, his legal team framed his prosecution as part of the government’s larger attempt to control the flow of information and punish those who seek to distribute it to journalists and the public.

“There’s a war going on about corporate spying and access to information,” said defense attorney Sarah Kunstler at a press conference immediately following the hearing. “Jeremy is someone who worked toward making information public.”

In a statement posted online after the plea deal, Hammond echoed this point. “I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors,” Hammond wrote. “I did what I believe is right.”

The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Hammond: Enemy of the State

Hammond entered his plea – admitting to one count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking – in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, surrounded by observers and supporters. One of those in attendance was his twin brother, Jason, who had just flown in from Chicago. When Hammond initially addressed the judge, he raised his right hand to be sworn in, and clenched his fist in a symbol of defiance.

The hack Hammond pleaded guilty to involved accessing information from the servers of Stratfor, a private intelligence company, and providing it to Wikileaks, who then published some of the information. Hammond was charged under the controversial 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law used to charge the late Aaron Swartz and other cyber-activists. “Included among the leaked internal documents were millions of emails that exposed Stratfor’s wide-ranging spying activities, including surveillance of Bhopal activists at the behest of Dow Chemical, of PETA on behalf of Coca-Cola, and of Occupy Wall Street under contract to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” supporters said in a statement.

Beyond Stratfor, Hammond took responsibility for eight other hacks, all of which involved either law enforcement, intelligence firms or defense contractor websites. From June 2011 to February 2012, Hammond obtained unauthorized information from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the FBI virtual academy, a marketing firm that builds websites for law enforcement called Brooks Jeffreys, Special Forces Gear, Vanguard Defense Industries, the Jefferson County sheriffs department, the Boston Police Patrolman’s Institute and a Pennsylvania firm called Combined Systems that makes tear gas. Hammond was granted immunity from federal prosecution for any of those hacks in exchange for taking responsibility for them. Kunstler said he could potentially face charges at the state level, though she said there may be some double jeopardy protection.

The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Whistleblowers

Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center For Constitutional Rights and lawyer for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, said that journalists should stand up for Hammond. “He should be looked at as a source, as a whistle-blower,” Ratner said after the plea deal. “He, like other whistle-blowers in this country, ought to be protected, because they’re the only thing that let us know what our government and our private security companies are doing and they’re the only things that can keep this government even close to honest.”

Earlier in the case, Hammond’s legal team made a motion for Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband was a victim of the Stratfor leak. That motion was denied. (Full disclosure: This reporter previously spoke at a rally that called for Preska to recuse herself.)

Other hackers in the Anonymous-affiliated group called Lulzsec who were charged in similar leaks – but were tried in the U.K. – have received much lighter sentences, from 20 to 32 months. Jason Hammond has asked supporters to sign a Change.org petition on his brother’s behalf calling for Judge Preska to sentence Hammond to time served. Jeremy Hammond’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for September 6th.

by John Knefel
MAY 28, 2013

Find this story at 28 May 2013

©2013 Rolling Stone

The Global Intelligence Files

LONDON—Today, Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods, for example :

“[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control… This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase” – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the “Yes Men”, for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Stratfor has realised that its routine use of secret cash bribes to get information from insiders is risky. In August 2011, Stratfor CEO George Friedman confidentially told his employees : “We are retaining a law firm to create a policy for Stratfor on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. I don’t plan to do the perp walk and I don’t want anyone here doing it either.”

Stratfor’s use of insiders for intelligence soon turned into a money-making scheme of questionable legality. The emails show that in 2009 then-Goldman Sachs Managing Director Shea Morenz and Stratfor CEO George Friedman hatched an idea to “utilise the intelligence” it was pulling in from its insider network to start up a captive strategic investment fund. CEO George Friedman explained in a confidential August 2011 document, marked DO NOT SHARE OR DISCUSS : “What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like”. The emails show that in 2011 Goldman Sach’s Morenz invested “substantially” more than $4million and joined Stratfor’s board of directors. Throughout 2011, a complex offshore share structure extending as far as South Africa was erected, designed to make StratCap appear to be legally independent. But, confidentially, Friedman told StratFor staff : “Do not think of StratCap as an outside organisation. It will be integral… It will be useful to you if, for the sake of convenience, you think of it as another aspect of Stratfor and Shea as another executive in Stratfor… we are already working on mock portfolios and trades”. StratCap is due to launch in 2012.

The Stratfor emails reveal a company that cultivates close ties with US government agencies and employs former US government staff. It is preparing the 3-year Forecast for the Commandant of the US Marine Corps, and it trains US marines and “other government intelligence agencies” in “becoming government Stratfors”. Stratfor’s Vice-President for Intelligence, Fred Burton, was formerly a special agent with the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service and was their Deputy Chief of the counterterrorism division. Despite the governmental ties, Stratfor and similar companies operate in complete secrecy with no political oversight or accountability. Stratfor claims that it operates “without ideology, agenda or national bias”, yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to the Mossad – including through an information mule in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Yossi Melman, who conspired with Guardian journalist David Leigh to secretly, and in violation of WikiLeaks’ contract with the Guardian, move WikiLeaks US diplomatic cables to Israel.

Ironically, considering the present circumstances, Stratfor was trying to get into what it called the leak-focused “gravy train” that sprung up after WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan disclosures :

“[Is it] possible for us to get some of that ’leak-focused’ gravy train ? This is an obvious fear sale, so that’s a good thing. And we have something to offer that the IT security companies don’t, mainly our focus on counter-intelligence and surveillance that Fred and Stick know better than anyone on the planet… Could we develop some ideas and procedures on the idea of ´leak-focused’ network security that focuses on preventing one’s own employees from leaking sensitive information… In fact, I’m not so sure this is an IT problem that requires an IT solution.”

Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections. Readers will find that whereas large numbers of Stratfor’s subscribers and clients work in the US military and intelligence agencies, Stratfor gave a complimentary membership to the controversial Pakistan general Hamid Gul, former head of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service, who, according to US diplomatic cables, planned an IED attack on international forces in Afghanistan in 2006. Readers will discover Stratfor’s internal email classification system that codes correspondence according to categories such as ’alpha’, ’tactical’ and ’secure’. The correspondence also contains code names for people of particular interest such as ’Hizzies’ (members of Hezbollah), or ’Adogg’ (Mahmoud Ahmedinejad).

Stratfor did secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists – from Reuters to the Kiev Post. The list of Stratfor’s “Confederation Partners”, whom Stratfor internally referred to as its “Confed Fuck House” are included in the release. While it is acceptable for journalists to swap information or be paid by other media organisations, because Stratfor is a private intelligence organisation that services governments and private clients these relationships are corrupt or corrupting.

WikiLeaks has also obtained Stratfor’s list of informants and, in many cases, records of its payoffs, including $1,200 a month paid to the informant “Geronimo” , handled by Stratfor’s Former State Department agent Fred Burton.

WikiLeaks has built an investigative partnership with more than 25 media organisations and activists to inform the public about this huge body of documents. The organisations were provided access to a sophisticated investigative database developed by WikiLeaks and together with WikiLeaks are conducting journalistic evaluations of these emails. Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents.

END

Public partners in the investigation
Comment
Current WikiLeaks status
How to read the data
Public partners in the investigation:

More than 25 media partners (others will be disclosed after their first publication) :

Al Akhbar – Lebanon – http://english.al-akhbar.com
Al Masry Al Youm – Egypt – http://www.almasry-alyoum.com
Bivol – Bulgaria – http://bivol.bg
CIPER – Chile – http://ciperchile.cl
Dawn Media – Pakistan – http://www.dawn.com
L’Espresso – Italy – http://espresso.repubblica.it
La Repubblica – Italy – http://www.repubblica.it
La Jornada – Mexico – www.jornada.unam.mx/
La Nacion – Costa Rica – http://www.nacion.com
Malaysia Today – Malaysia – www.malaysia-today.net
McClatchy – United States – http://www.mcclatchydc.com
Nawaat – Tunisia – http://nawaat.org
NDR/ARD – Germany – http://www.ndr.de
Owni – France – http://owni.fr
Pagina 12 – Argentina – www.pagina12.com.ar
Plaza Publica – Guatemala – http://plazapublica.com.gt
Publico.es – Spain – www.publico.es
Rolling Stone – United States – http://www.rollingstone.com
Russian Reporter – Russia – http://rusrep.ru
Sunday Star-Times – New Zealand – www.star-times.co.nz
Ta Nea – Greece –- http://www.tanea.gr
Taraf – Turkey – http://www.taraf.com.tr
The Hindu – India – www.thehindu.com
The Yes Men – Bhopal Activists – Global http://theyesmen.org
Comment:

WikiLeaks – Kristinn Hrafnsson, Official WikiLeaks representative, +35 4821 7121

Other comment :
Bhopal Medical Appeal (in UK) – Colin Toogood : colintoogood@bhopal.org / +44 (0) 1273 603278/ +44 (0) 7798 845074
International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (in India) – Rachna Dhingra : rachnya@gmail.com, +91 98 261 67369
Yes Men – mike@theyesmen.org / +44 (0) 7578 682321 – andy@theyesmen.org, +1-718-208-0684
Privacy International – +44 (0) 20 7242 2836

Twitter tag : #gifiles
CURRENT WIKILEAKS STATUS:

An extrajudicial blockade imposed by VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Bank of America, and Western Union that is designed to destroy WikiLeaks has been in place since December 2010. The EU Commission is considering whether it will open a formal investigation, but two lawsuits have been filed (http://wikileaks.org/Banking-Blocka…). There are also other ways to donate (https://shop.wikileaks.org/donate). It is legal to donate, including in the United States. The US Treasury has publicly stated that that there are no grounds to place WikiLeaks on a US government blacklist.

WikiLeaks Founder and Publisher Julian Assange has not been charged with any crime in any country. Four prosecutors are currently trying to charge him under the Espionage Act of 1917 before a closed Grand Jury in Virginia, in the United States. Julian Assange has been detained for 447 days (10,728 hours) since Dec 7, 2010, without charge, and he is currently awaiting a decision from the UK Supreme Court on extradition to Sweden (http://www.justiceforassange.com/Su…). The decision is expected in March. The decision on whether he will be onwardly extradited to the US lies in the hands of the Swedish Executive, but Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has refused to state whether he will protect Assange from a politically motivated extradition to the United States (http://justice4assange.com/US-Extra… ).

The Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has repeatedly attacked WikiLeaks this week in a bizarre manner (http://ferrada-noli.blogspot.com/20… ).

An alleged WikiLeaks US military source, Bradley Manning, has been in pre-trial detention for 639 days (http://bradleymanning.org/ ). His arraignment took place on 24 February 2012. In December 2011, Manning’s attorney revealed in the preliminary hearing that the US government is attempting to enter a plea deal with Manning in order to “go after” Assange. Manning has 22 charges against him, including violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and aiding the enemy. Manning has deferred entering a plea. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are legally represented in the Manning hearings by the US Centre for Constitutional Rights (http://ccrjustice.org/ ). WikiLeaks was denied full access to Manning’s hearing after appeal (http://ccrjustice.org/newsroom/pres… ). WikiLeaks put out a statement relating to Manning’s trial ahead of the Article 32 Hearing : (http://www.wikileaks.org/Statement-… ).

The alleged WikiLeaks-supporting hacktivists known as the “PayPal 14” were arrested in 2011 following co-ordinated online demonstrations against the financial services companies that are carrying out the unlawful financial blockade on WikiLeaks (VISA, MasterCard, Paypal, Western Union, Bank of America). They are represented by attorney Stanley Cohen and will go before court in May 2012 (http://www.cyberguerrilla.org/?p=4644 ).

WikiLeaks is about to launch a distributed, encrypted “Facebook for revolutionaries” (https://wlfriends.org/ ).

Julian Assange is currently directing interviews, from house arrest, for a programme on the future of the world that is syndicated to various broadcasters. The first show will be broadcast in March (http://www.wikileaks.org/New-Assang… )
HOW TO READ THE DATA

This is a glossary and information on how to understand the internal terms and codes used by Stratfor in their emails. It is not a complete list. We call on the public to add to this list by tweeting #gifind

To see a list of the terms George Friedman considers useful for his staff to know please download this PDF : The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms.

OPEN SOURCE VS. “COVERT”

As you browse through the content, you will notice that a large set of it is what is classified as “open source” (subject lines which include [OS]). These are basically email threads that start with someone posting a published and accessible source, such as news sites, and follow with commentary by the staff. In one of the emails, Joseph Nye is referenced saying :

“Open source intelligence is the outer pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, without which one can neither begin nor complete the puzzle”

CODES IN SUBJECT LINES

Many of the emails have codes in the subject lines as well as in the body, to make it easier for the staff to “quickly identify when we need to go back and have a look-see.” [*] :

Examples : INSIGHT – COUNTRY – Subject – SOURCE CODE INSIGHT – CHINA – Trains and planes – CN1000

Please refer to the glossary for the code names of subject and country tags, as well as mailing list names.

SOURCE CODES

A lot of interesting stuff comes from “sources”. Sources are either informal contacts or people they have a formal relationship with. The IDs for sources have the format of CN120 or ME001. In terms of the character part, it refers to a region or a country :

A) Regions ME – Middle East region EU – European Union EE – Eastern Europe LA- South America SA- South Asia

B) Countries or Orgs CN – China PK – Pakistan IN- India ML – Malaysia VN – Vietnam NP- Nepal

US – United States VZ – Venezuela CO- Colombia BR-Brazil NC- Nicaragua MX- Mexico CL/CH- Chile AR- Argentina PY- Paraguay BOL- Bolivia

RU – Russia UA – Ukraine GE – Georgia TJ – Tajikstan MD – Moldova BG -Bulgaria CR/CZ- Czech Republic PT- Portugal

ZA – South Africa AO – Angola SO – Somalia NG- Nigeria CD- DR Congo CI- Cote D’Ivoire ZW- Zimbabwe ZM- Zambia RW- Rwanda KE- Kenya ET- Ethiopia SD -Sudan MA- Morocco SN- Senegal GN- Guinea SL- Sierra Leone

IR – Iran IQ- Iraq IL or IS- Israel SA- Saudi Arabia SY- Syria KU- Kuwait Y or YN – Yemen HZ – Hizbollah TK – Turkey LN- Lebanon LY- Libya UAE- UAE EG- Egypt (etc.)

C) Odd codes OCH – Old China hand, a finance insider. Stick – Scott Stewart, high level employee Z’s – Zetas, Mexican drug gang

INSIGHTS FORMAT

When “insights” are sent, they usually have the following header information :

SOURCE : The ID of the source, say CN123. Sometimes this is left “no source ID” when it’s a new source.

ATTRIBUTION : How the source is to be attributed, i.e. “Source in the pharma distribution industry in China”, Stratfor source, etc.

SOURCE DESCRIPTION : Describes the source, for example : “Source works with Mercator Pharmaceutical Solutions, distributing pharma to developing countries.” These include concrete details on the source for internal consumption so that there’s a better understanding on the source’s background and ability to make assessments on the ground.

PUBLICATION : Yes or No. If the option is yes it doesn’t mean that it would be published, but rather that it _can_ be published.

SOURCE RELIABILITY : A/B

SOURCE RELIABILITY : A-F, A being the best and F being the worst. This grades the turnaround time of this source in responding to requests.

ITEM CREDIBILITY : 1-10, 1 being the best and 10 being the worst (we may change the range here in the future). this changes a lot based on the info provided. 1 is “you can take this to the bank” and 10 would be an example of maybe – “this is a totally ridiculous rumor but something that is spreading on the ground”

SPECIAL HANDLING : often this is “none” but it may be something like, “if you use this we need to be sure not to mention the part about XXX in the publication” or any other special notes

SOURCE HANDLER : the person who can take follow-up questions and communicate with the source.

MAILING LISTS

alpha@stratfor.com Discussions circulated exclusively among analysts, writers and higher-ups, including ’insights’ and discussions about sources and source meetings. secure@stratfor.com Discussions circulated exclusively among analysts and higher-ups, and only for use within continental US (analysts traveling ’overseas’ are removed from the list for the duration of their journey). analysts@stratfor.com – Discussion among analysts only, who manage sources, gather and analyze intelligence. ct@stratfor.com Ongoing discussions to collect and analyze counterterrorism intelligence, circulated among select group of analysts. tactical@statfor.com Non-time sensitive discussions for internal training on technical and tactical matters within field of counterterrorism. intelligence@stratfor.com gvalerts@stratfor.com – Related to Gas ventures clients military@stratfor.com Military list for pre-approved staff africa@stratfor.com eastasia@stratfor.com mesa@stratfor.com Middle East/South Asia list for pre-approved staff. eurasia@stratfor.com os@stratfor.com List with information from the public domain circulated and discussed among all employees. adp@stratfor.com List for ADPs. See Glossary. translations@stratfor.com alerts@stratfor.com responses@stratfor.com dialog-list@stratfor.com

GLOSSARY

a) Industry and other misc. tags :

HUMINT – Human intelligence OSINT- Open source intelligence DATA FLU BIRDFLU ECON TECH ENERGY MINING GV – Gas Venture CT – Counterterrorism G1-G4 B2-B4 S1-S4 MILITARY or MIL PENTAGON AQ- Al Qaeda AQAP – Al Qaeda in the Arabia Peninsula SF- Special Forces CONUS- Continental US

b) Special internal codewords :

Hizzies or HZ – Hizbollah Izzies or IZ – Israel A-dogg – Mahmoud Ahmadinajad, Iranian President Baby bashar – Bashar Al-Assad, Syrian President Uncle Mo – Moammar Gaddhafi ADP- Analyst Development Program. Four-month program at STRATFOR from which candidates— mostly recent college graduates— are selected for hire. Strictly protect and protect – Often mentioned in the ’subject’, means that the source is protected. Played- A term used for procuring sensitive information from sources. E.g. from one of the secure list messages circulating the ’complete scenario for the Israeli team in Centcom’s war game,’ the analyst who procured the data wrote : “I played the head of the Mossad which was great fun.” Excomm- Appears to be ’executive committee’ of STRATFOR.

c) Regions and Orgs

AFRICOM – African countries LATAM – Latin American MERCOSUR NATFA ASEAN APEC FSU – Former Soviet Union countries MESA or MIDDLEEAST – Middle East EASTASIA OPEC EURASIA SA – South Asia FSB- Federal Security Service (Russia)

ATTACHED DOCUMENTS

Attached documents can be searched by Filename or part of the file name. Preliminary searches for filenames using the terms ’lists’, ’source lists’ or ’insight lists’, coupled with the names of source handlers (e.g. Reva for Turkey, Brazil or Venezuela) produced Excel lists of the source names, contact info and source descriptions which correspond to the source codes (e.g. ME1315).

Sourcing Criteria

The following are the proposed criteria for analyzing both sources and insight.

1. Source Timeliness 2. Source Accessibility/Position 3. Source Availability 4. Insight Credibility 5. Insight Uniqueness

Source Timeliness : This is the average grade on how long this particular source turns around tasks and replies to inquiries. It may change but is more of a static indicator.

Source Accessibility : Accessibility weighs the source’s position to have certain knowledge in a particular field. So, for example, if we are looking for energy insight and the source is an official in an energy agency, his or her Accessibility would be ranked higher than if s/he was a banker giving insight on energy. While we would welcome a banker giving his/her insight, a good source may not have a high accessibility ranking if they aren’t in a position to offer reliable insight on a certain topic. The source’s access to decision makers, specific training or education in the desired topic area, specific knowledge of events/situations/incidents can also be considered.

Source Availability : How often can we go to this source ? Are they someone we can tap daily, weekly, monthly, yearly ?

Insight Credibility : This is our assessment of the veracity of the insight offered. Here we need to consider whether or not this is disinformation, speculation, correct data or knowledgeable interpretation. Any bias that the source is displaying or any specific viewpoints or personal background the source is using in the assessment provided should also be considered.

Insight Uniqueness : Is this insight something that could be found in OS ? If it is but the analysis of the information is unique, it would still have a high uniqueness ranking. Or, if it is concrete data, but is something that is only offered to industry insiders, i.e. stats that aren’t published but that aren’t secret, it would still have a high uniqueness score.

Scoring

All of the above factors will be scored on an A-F scale, with A being exemplary and F being useless.

Source Timeliness : A = turnaround within 24 hours B = turnaround within 48 hours C = turnaround within a week D = turnaround within a month F = lucky to receive a reply at all

Source Accessibility : A = Someone with intimate knowledge of the particular insight B = Someone within the industry but whose knowledge of the topic is not exact (e.g. if we were asking someone in the oil industry about natural gas) C = Someone working close to the industry who doesn’t have intimate knowledge of a particular topic but can speak to it intelligently (e.g. a financial consultant asked to gauge the movement of the stock market) D = Someone who may know a country but doesn’t have any concrete insight into a particular topic but can offer rumors and discussions heard on the topic F = Someone who has no knowledge of a particular industry at all

Source Availability : A = Available pretty much whenever B = Can tap around once a week C = Can tap about once a month D = Can tap only several times a year F = Very limited availability

Insight Credibility : A = We can take this information to the bank B = Good insight but maybe not entirely precise C = Insight is only partially true D = There may be some interest in the insight, but it is mostly false or just pure speculation. F = Likely to be disinformation

Insight Uniqueness : A = Can’t be found anywhere else B = Can only be found in limited circles C = Insight can be found in OS, but the source has an interesting take/analysis D = Insight can be found in OS, but still may not be common knowledge F = Insight is accessible in numerous locations

Daily Insight Scoring

SOURCE : code ATTRIBUTION : this is what we should say if we use this info in a publication, e.g. STRATFOR source/source in the medical industry/source on the ground, etc SOURCE DESCRIPTION : this is where we put the more concrete details of the source for our internal consumption so we can better understand the source’s background and ability to make the assessments in the insight. PUBLICATION : Yes or no. If you put yes it doesn’t mean that we will publish it, but only that we can publish it. SOURCE RELIABILITY : A-F. A being the best and F being the worst. This grades the source overall – access to information, timeliness, availability, etc. In short, how good is this source ? ITEM CREDIBILITY : A-F. A = we can take this info to the bank ; B = Good insight but maybe not entirely precise ; C = Insight is only partially true ; D = There may be some interest in the insight, but it is mostly false or just pure speculation ; F = Likely to be disinformation. SPECIAL HANDLING : often this is “none” but it may be something like, “if you use this we need to be sure not to mention the part about XXX in thepublication” or any other special notes SOURCE HANDLER : the person who can take follow-up questions and communicate with the source.

Find this story at 27 February 2012

The legal loopholes that allow GCHQ to spy on the world

William Hague has hailed GCHQ’s ‘democratic accountability’, but legislation drafted before a huge expansion of internet traffic appears to offer flexibility

GCHQ – the government’s communications headquarters. Does it have the strongest checks and balances in the world? Photograph: Reuters

William Hague was adamant when he addressed MPs on Monday last week. In an emergency statement (video) forced by the Guardian’s disclosures about GCHQ involvement with the Prism programme, the foreign secretary insisted the agency operated within a “strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight”.

The laws governing the intelligence agencies provide “the strongest systems of checks and balances for secret intelligence anywhere in the world”, he said.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian give the impression some high-ranking officials at GCHQ have a different view.

In confidential briefings, one of Cheltenham’s senior legal advisers, whom the Guardian will not name, made a note to tell his guests: “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US”.

The parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which scrutinises the work of the agencies, was sympathetic to the agencies’ difficulties, he suggested.

“They have always been exceptionally good at understanding the need to keep our work secret,” the legal adviser said.

Complaints against the agencies, undertaken by the interception commissioner, are conducted under “the veil of secrecy”. And the investigatory powers tribunal, which assesses complaints against the agencies, has “so far always found in our favour”.

The briefings offer important glimpses into the GCHQ’s view of itself, the legal framework in which it works, and, it would seem, the necessity for reassuring the UK’s most important intelligence partner, the United States, that sensitive information can be shared without raising anxiety in Washington.

None of the documents advocates law-breaking – quite the opposite. But critics will say they highlight the limitations of the three pieces of legislation that underpin the activities of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – which were repeatedly mentioned by Hague as pillars of the regulatory and oversight regime during his statement to the Commons.

The foreign secretary said GCHQ “complied fully” with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), the Human Rights Act (HRA) and the Intelligence Services Act (Isa).

Privacy campaigners argue the laws have one important thing in common: they were drafted in the last century, and nobody involved in writing them, or passing them, could possibly have envisaged the exponential growth of traffic from telecoms and internet service providers over the past decade.

Nor could they have imagined that GCHQ could have found a way of storing and analysing so much of that information as part of its overarching Mastering the Internet project.

The Tempora programme appears to have given Britain’s spymasters that resource, with documents seen by the Guardian showing Britain can retain for up to 30 days an astronomical amount of unfiltered data garnered from cables carrying internet traffic.

This raises a number of questions about the way GCHQ officials and ministers have legitimised the programme.

The briefings, which are entitled UK Operational Legalities, stress that GCHQ “is an organisation with a highly responsible approach to compliance with the law”.

GCHQ also has a well staffed legal team, known as OPP-LEG, to help staff navigate their way through the complexities of the law.

But there appears to be some nervousness about Tempora. In a paper written for National Security Agency (NSA) analysts entitled A Guide to Using Internet Buffers at GCHQ, the author notes: “[Tempora] represents an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data.

“As large-scale buffering of metadata and content represent a new concept for GCHQ’s exploitation of the internet, GCHQ’s legal and policy officers are understandably taking a careful approach to their access and use.”

So how did GCHQ secure the legal authority for setting up Tempora, and what safeguards are in place for sharing the intelligence with the Americans? According to the documents, the British government used Ripa to get taps on to the fibre-optic cables.

These cables carry internet traffic in and out of the country and contain details of millions of emails and web searches. The information from these cables went straight into the Tempora storage programme.

In one presentation, which appeared to be for US analysts from the NSA, GCHQ explained: “Direct access to large volumes of unselected SSE data [is] collected under a Ripa warrant.”

The precise arrangement between the firms is unclear, as are the legal justifications put before ministers. Isa gives GCHQ some powers for the “passive collection” of data, including from computer networks.

But it appears GCHQ has relied on paragraph four of section 8 of Ripa to gain “external warrants” for its programmes.

They allow the agency to intercept external communications where, for instance, one of the people being targeted is outside Britain.

In most Ripa cases, a minister has to be told the name of an individual or company being targeted before a warrant is granted.

But section 8 permits GCHQ to perform more sweeping and indiscriminate trawls of external data if a minister issues a “certificate” along with the warrant.

According to the documents, the certificate authorises GCHQ to search for material under a number of themes, including: intelligence on the political intentions of foreign governments; military postures of foreign countries; terrorism, international drug trafficking and fraud.

The briefing document says such sweeping certificates, which have to be signed off by a minister, “cover the entire range of GCHQ’s intelligence production”.

“The certificate is issued with the warrant and signed by the secretary of state and sets out [the] class of work we can do under it … cannot list numbers or individuals as this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage.”

Lawyers at GCHQ speak of having 10 basic certificates, including a “global” one that covers the agency’s support station at Bude in Cornwall, Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, and Cyprus.

Other certificates have been used for “special source accesses” – a reference, perhaps, to the cables carrying web traffic. All certificates have to be renewed by the foreign secretary every six months.

A source with knowledge of intelligence confirmed: “Overall exercise of collection and analysis [is] done under a broad, overall legal authority which has to be renewed at intervals, and is signed off at a senior political level.”

The source said the interception commissioner was able to “conclude that [the process] was not appropriate”, and that the companies involved were not giving up the information voluntarily.

“We have overriding authority to compel [them] to do this,” the source said. “There’s an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this.

“Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice. They can’t talk about the warrant, they can’t reveal the existence of it.”

GCHQ says it can also seek a sensitive targeting authority (STA), which allows it snoop on any Briton “anywhere in the world” or any foreign national located in the UK.

It is unclear how the STA system works, and who has authority over it.

The intelligence agencies also have to take note of the HRA, which demands any interception is “necessary and proportionate”.

But the documents show GCHQ believes these terms are open to interpretation – which “creates flexibility”. When Tempora became fully functional in around 2011, GCHQ gave the NSA access to the programme on a three-month trial – and the NSA was keen to impress.

The US agency sent a briefing to some of its analysts urging them to show they could behave responsibly with the data. Under a heading – “The need to be successful!” – the author wrote: “As the first NSA users to receive operational access [to Tempora], we’re depending on you to provide the business case required to justify expanded access. Most importantly we need to prove that NSA users can utilise the internet buffers in ways that are consistent with GCHQ’s legal and policy rules.

“In addition, we need to prove that NSA’s access … is necessary to prosecute our mission and will greatly enhance the production of the intelligence … success of this three-month trial will determine expanded NSA access to internet buffers in the future.”

The NSA appears to have made a successful case. In May last year, an internal GCHQ memo said it had 300 analysts working on intelligence from Tempora, and the NSA had 250. The teams were supporting “the target discovery mission”.

But the safeguards for the sharing of this information are unclear.

Though GCHQ says it only keeps the content of messages for three working days, and the metadata for up to 30 days, privacy campaigners here and in the US will want to know if the NSA is adhering to the same self-imposed rules. One concern for privacy campaigners is that GCHQ and the NSA could conduct intercepts for each other, and then offer to share the information – a manoeuvre that could bypass the domestic rules they have to abide by.

This was raised by MPs during last week’s statement, with the former Labour home secretary David Blunkett calling for clarification on this potential loophole.

Last week, the Guardian sent a series of questions to the Foreign Office about this issue, but the department said it would not be drawn on it.

“It is a longstanding policy not to comment on intelligence matters; this includes our intelligence co-operation with the United States.

“The intelligence and security committee is looking into this, which is the proper channel for such matters.”

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
The Guardian, Friday 21 June 2013 17.23 BST

Find this story at 21 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant

Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA’s surveillance of Americans’ communication

• Document one: procedures used by NSA to target non-US persons
• Document two: procedures used by NSA to minimise data collected from US persons

The documents show that discretion as to who is actually targeted lies directly with the NSA’s analysts. Photograph: Martin Rogers/Workbook Stock/Getty

Top secret documents submitted to the court that oversees surveillance by US intelligence agencies show the judges have signed off on broad orders which allow the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.

The Guardian is publishing in full two documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the Fisa court), signed by Attorney General Eric Holder and stamped 29 July 2009. They detail the procedures the NSA is required to follow to target “non-US persons” under its foreign intelligence powers and what the agency does to minimize data collected on US citizens and residents in the course of that surveillance.

The documents show that even under authorities governing the collection of foreign intelligence from foreign targets, US communications can still be collected, retained and used.

The procedures cover only part of the NSA’s surveillance of domestic US communications. The bulk collection of domestic call records, as first revealed by the Guardian earlier this month, takes place under rolling court orders issued on the basis of a legal interpretation of a different authority, section 215 of the Patriot Act.

The Fisa court’s oversight role has been referenced many times by Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials as they have sought to reassure the public about surveillance, but the procedures approved by the court have never before been publicly disclosed.

The top secret documents published today detail the circumstances in which data collected on US persons under the foreign intelligence authority must be destroyed, extensive steps analysts must take to try to check targets are outside the US, and reveals how US call records are used to help remove US citizens and residents from data collection.

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of “inadvertently acquired” domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

• Preserve “foreign intelligence information” contained within attorney-client communications;

• Access the content of communications gathered from “U.S. based machine[s]” or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans’ call or email information without warrants.

The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA’s foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.

Since the Guardian first revealed the extent of the NSA’s collection of US communications, there have been repeated calls for the legal basis of the programs to be released. On Thursday, two US congressmen introduced a bill compelling the Obama administration to declassify the secret legal justifications for NSA surveillance.

The disclosure bill, sponsored by Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, and Todd Rokita, an Indiana Republican, is a complement to one proposed in the Senate last week. It would “increase the transparency of the Fisa Court and the state of the law in this area,” Schiff told the Guardian. “It would give the public a better understanding of the safeguards, as well as the scope of these programs.”

Section 702 of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which was renewed for five years last December, is the authority under which the NSA is allowed to collect large-scale data, including foreign communications and also communications between the US and other countries, provided the target is overseas.

FAA warrants are issued by the Fisa court for up to 12 months at a time, and authorise the collection of bulk information – some of which can include communications of US citizens, or people inside the US. To intentionally target either of those groups requires an individual warrant.
One-paragraph order

One such warrant seen by the Guardian shows that they do not contain detailed legal rulings or explanation. Instead, the one-paragraph order, signed by a Fisa court judge in 2010, declares that the procedures submitted by the attorney general on behalf of the NSA are consistent with US law and the fourth amendment.

Those procedures state that the “NSA determines whether a person is a non-United States person reasonably believed to be outside the United States in light of the totality of the circumstances based on the information available with respect to that person, including information concerning the communications facility or facilities used by that person”.

It includes information that the NSA analyst uses to make this determination – including IP addresses, statements made by the potential target, and other information in the NSA databases, which can include public information and data collected by other agencies.

Where the NSA has no specific information on a person’s location, analysts are free to presume they are overseas, the document continues.

“In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person,” it states “a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person.”

If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the US, analysts are permitted to look at the content of messages, or listen to phone calls, to establish if this is indeed the case.

Referring to steps taken to prevent intentional collection of telephone content of those inside the US, the document states: “NSA analysts may analyze content for indications that a foreign target has entered or intends to enter the United States. Such content analysis will be conducted according to analytic and intelligence requirements and priorities.”

Details set out in the “minimization procedures”, regularly referred to in House and Senate hearings, as well as public statements in recent weeks, also raise questions as to the extent of monitoring of US citizens and residents.

NSA minimization procedures signed by Holder in 2009 set out that once a target is confirmed to be within the US, interception must stop immediately. However, these circumstances do not apply to large-scale data where the NSA claims it is unable to filter US communications from non-US ones.

The NSA is empowered to retain data for up to five years and the policy states “communications which may be retained include electronic communications acquired because of limitations on the NSA’s ability to filter communications”.

Even if upon examination a communication is found to be domestic – entirely within the US – the NSA can appeal to its director to keep what it has found if it contains “significant foreign intelligence information”, “evidence of a crime”, “technical data base information” (such as encrypted communications), or “information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property”.

Domestic communications containing none of the above must be destroyed. Communications in which one party was outside the US, but the other is a US-person, are permitted for retention under FAA rules.

The minimization procedure adds that these can be disseminated to other agencies or friendly governments if the US person is anonymised, or including the US person’s identity under certain criteria.
Holder’s ‘minimization procedure’ says once a target is confirmed to be in the US, interception of communication must stop. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

A separate section of the same document notes that as soon as any intercepted communications are determined to have been between someone under US criminal indictment and their attorney, surveillance must stop. However, the material collected can be retained, if it is useful, though in a segregated database:

“The relevant portion of the communication containing that conversation will be segregated and the National Security Division of the Department of Justice will be notified so that appropriate procedures may be established to protect such communications from review or use in any criminal prosecution, while preserving foreign intelligence information contained therein,” the document states.

In practice, much of the decision-making appears to lie with NSA analysts, rather than the Fisa court or senior officials.

A transcript of a 2008 briefing on FAA from the NSA’s general counsel sets out how much discretion NSA analysts possess when it comes to the specifics of targeting, and making decisions on who they believe is a non-US person. Referring to a situation where there has been a suggestion a target is within the US.

“Once again, the standard here is a reasonable belief that your target is outside the United States. What does that mean when you get information that might lead you to believe the contrary? It means you can’t ignore it. You can’t turn a blind eye to somebody saying: ‘Hey, I think so and so is in the United States.’ You can’t ignore that. Does it mean you have to completely turn off collection the minute you hear that? No, it means you have to do some sort of investigation: ‘Is that guy right? Is my target here?” he says.

“But, if everything else you have says ‘no’ (he talked yesterday, I saw him on TV yesterday, even, depending on the target, he was in Baghdad) you can still continue targeting but you have to keep that in mind. You can’t put it aside. You have to investigate it and, once again, with that new information in mind, what is your reasonable belief about your target’s location?”

The broad nature of the court’s oversight role, and the discretion given to NSA analysts, sheds light on responses from the administration and internet companies to the Guardian’s disclosure of the PRISM program. They have stated that the content of online communications is turned over to the NSA only pursuant to a court order. But except when a US citizen is specifically targeted, the court orders used by the NSA to obtain that information as part of Prism are these general FAA orders, not individualized warrants specific to any individual.

Once armed with these general orders, the NSA is empowered to compel telephone and internet companies to turn over to it the communications of any individual identified by the NSA. The Fisa court plays no role in the selection of those individuals, nor does it monitor who is selected by the NSA.

The NSA’s ability to collect and retain the communications of people in the US, even without a warrant, has fuelled congressional demands for an estimate of how many Americans have been caught up in surveillance.

Two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall – both members of the Senate intelligence committee – have been seeking this information since 2011, but senior White House and intelligence officials have repeatedly insisted that the agency is unable to gather such statistics.

Glenn Greenwald and James Ball
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 June 2013 23.59 BST

Find this story at 20 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Web’s Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders

WASHINGTON — When Max Kelly, the chief security officer for Facebook, left the social media company in 2010, he did not go to Google, Twitter or a similar Silicon Valley concern. Instead the man who was responsible for protecting the personal information of Facebook’s more than one billion users from outside attacks went to work for another giant institution that manages and analyzes large pools of data: the National Security Agency.

Mr. Kelly’s move to the spy agency, which has not previously been reported, underscores the increasingly deep connections between Silicon Valley and the agency and the degree to which they are now in the same business. Both hunt for ways to collect, analyze and exploit large pools of data about millions of Americans.

The only difference is that the N.S.A. does it for intelligence, and Silicon Valley does it to make money.

The disclosure of the spy agency’s program called Prism, which is said to collect the e-mails and other Web activity of foreigners using major Internet companies like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, has prompted the companies to deny that the agency has direct access to their computers, even as they acknowledge complying with secret N.S.A. court orders for specific data.

Yet technology experts and former intelligence officials say the convergence between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. and the rise of data mining — both as an industry and as a crucial intelligence tool — have created a more complex reality.

Silicon Valley has what the spy agency wants: vast amounts of private data and the most sophisticated software available to analyze it. The agency in turn is one of Silicon Valley’s largest customers for what is known as data analytics, one of the valley’s fastest-growing markets. To get their hands on the latest software technology to manipulate and take advantage of large volumes of data, United States intelligence agencies invest in Silicon Valley start-ups, award classified contracts and recruit technology experts like Mr. Kelly.

“We are all in these Big Data business models,” said Ray Wang, a technology analyst and chief executive of Constellation Research, based in San Francisco. “There are a lot of connections now because the data scientists and the folks who are building these systems have a lot of common interests.”

Although Silicon Valley has sold equipment to the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies for a generation, the interests of the two began to converge in new ways in the last few years as advances in computer storage technology drastically reduced the costs of storing enormous amounts of data — at the same time that the value of the data for use in consumer marketing began to rise. “These worlds overlap,” said Philipp S. Krüger, chief executive of Explorist, an Internet start-up in New York.

The sums the N.S.A. spends in Silicon Valley are classified, as is the agency’s total budget, which independent analysts say is $8 billion to $10 billion a year.

Despite the companies’ assertions that they cooperate with the agency only when legally compelled, current and former industry officials say the companies sometimes secretly put together teams of in-house experts to find ways to cooperate more completely with the N.S.A. and to make their customers’ information more accessible to the agency. The companies do so, the officials say, because they want to control the process themselves. They are also under subtle but powerful pressure from the N.S.A. to make access easier.

Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.

Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011.

A Skype executive denied last year in a blog post that recent changes in the way Skype operated were made at the behest of Microsoft to make snooping easier for law enforcement. It appears, however, that Skype figured out how to cooperate with the intelligence community before Microsoft took over the company, according to documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former contractor for the N.S.A. One of the documents about the Prism program made public by Mr. Snowden says Skype joined Prism on Feb. 6, 2011.

Microsoft executives are no longer willing to affirm statements, made by Skype several years ago, that Skype calls could not be wiretapped. Frank X. Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman, declined to comment.

In its recruiting in Silicon Valley, the N.S.A. sends some of its most senior officials to lure the best of the best. No less than Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the agency’s director and the chief of the Pentagon’s Cyber Command, showed up at one of the world’s largest hacker conferences in Las Vegas last summer, looking stiff in an uncharacteristic T-shirt and jeans, to give the keynote speech. His main purpose at Defcon, the conference, was to recruit hackers for his spy agency.

N.S.A. badges are often seen on the lapels of officials at other technology and information security conferences. “They’re very open about their interest in recruiting from the hacker community,” said Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.

But perhaps no one embodies the tightening relationship between the N.S.A. and the valley more than Kenneth A. Minihan.

A career Air Force intelligence officer, Mr. Minihan was the director of the N.S.A. during the Clinton administration until his retirement in the late 1990s, and then he ran the agency’s outside professional networking organization. Today he is managing director of Paladin Capital Group, a venture capital firm based in Washington that in part specializes in financing start-ups that offer high-tech solutions for the N.S.A. and other intelligence agencies. In effect, Mr. Minihan is an advanced scout for the N.S.A. as it tries to capitalize on the latest technology to analyze and exploit the vast amounts of data flowing around the world and inside the United States.

The members of Paladin’s strategic advisory board include Richard C. Schaeffer Jr., a former N.S.A. executive. While Paladin is a private firm, the American intelligence community has its own in-house venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, financed by the Central Intelligence Agency to invest in high-tech start-ups.

Many software technology firms involved in data analytics are open about their connections to intelligence agencies. Gary King, a co-founder and chief scientist at Crimson Hexagon, a start-up in Boston, said in an interview that he had given talks at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., about his company’s social media analytics tools.

The future holds the prospect of ever greater cooperation between Silicon Valley and the N.S.A. because data storage is expected to increase at an annual compound rate of 53 percent through 2016, according to the International Data Corporation.

“We reached a tipping point, where the value of having user data rose beyond the cost of storing it,” said Dan Auerbach, a technology analyst with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an electronic privacy group in San Francisco. “Now we have an incentive to keep it forever.”

Social media sites in the meantime are growing as voluntary data mining operations on a scale that rivals or exceeds anything the government could attempt on its own. “You willingly hand over data to Facebook that you would never give voluntarily to the government,” said Bruce Schneier, a technologist and an author.

James Risen reported from Washington, and Nick Wingfield from Seattle. Kitty Bennett contributed reporting.

June 19, 2013
By JAMES RISEN and NICK WINGFIELD

Find this story at 19 June 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

Skype’s secret Project Chess reportedly helped NSA access customers’ data

Scheme – set up before firm was purchased by Microsoft – allegedly eased access for US law enforcement agencies

Prosecutors in Zhu Yufu’s trial for subversion cited text messages that he sent using Skype. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Skype, the web-based communications company, reportedly set up a secret programme to make it easier for US surveillance agencies to access customers’ information.

The programme, called Project Chess and first revealed by the New York Times on Thursday, was said to have been established before Skype was bought by Microsoft in 2011. Microsoft’s links with US security are under intense scrutiny following the Guardian’s revelation of Prism, a surveillance program run by the National Security Agency (NSA), that claimed “direct” access to its servers and those of rivals including Apple, Facebook and Google.

Project Chess was set up to explore the legal and technical issues involved in making Skype’s communications more readily available to law enforcement and security officials, according to the Times. Only a handful of executives were aware of the plan. The company did not immediately return a call for comment.

Last year Skype denied reports that it had changed its software following the Microsoft acquisition in order to allow law enforcement easier access to communications. “Nothing could be more contrary to the Skype philosophy,” Mark Gillett, vice president of Microsoft’s Skype division, said in a blog post.

According to the Prism documents, Skype had been co-operating with the NSA’s scheme since February 2011, eight months before the software giant took it over. The document gives little detail on the technical nature of that cooperation. Microsoft declined to comment.

The news comes as the tech firms are attempting to distance themselves from the Prism revelations. All the firm’s listed as participating in the Prism scheme have denied that they give the NSA “direct” access to their servers, as claimed by the slide presentation, and said that they only comply with legal requests made through the courts.

But since the story broke a more nuanced picture of how the tech firms work with the surveillance authorities has emerged. The US authorities have become increasingly interested in tech firms and its employees after initially struggling to keep up with the shift to digital communications. NSA officials have held high level talks with executives in the tech firms and are actively recruiting in the tech community.
‘That information is how they make their money’

Shane Harris, author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, said the NSA had a crisis in the late 1990s when it realised communication was increasingly digital and it was falling behind in its powers to track that data. “You can not overstate that without this data the NSA would be blind,” he said.

The NSA employs former valley executives, including Max Kelly, the former chief security officer for Facebook, and has increasingly sought to hire people in the hacker community. Former NSA director lieutenant general Kenneth Minihan has taken the opposite tack and is helping create the next generation of tech security firms. Minihan is managing director of Paladin Capital, a private equity firm that has a fund dedicated to investing in homeland security. Paladin also employs Dr Alf Andreassen, a former technical adviser for naval warfare who was also for classified national programmes at AT&T and Bell Laboratories.

Harris said the ties were only likely to deepen as technology moves ever more of our communications on line. He warned the move was likely to present more problems for the tech firms as their consumers worry about their privacy. “It’s been fascinating for me listening to the push back from the tech companies,” said Harris.

Christopher Soghoian, a senior policy analyst studying technological surveillance at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the relationship between the tech giants and the NSA has a fundamental – and ironic – flaw that guarantees the Prism scandal is unlikely to be the last time tensions surface between the two.

The US spying apparatus and Silicon Valley’s top tech firms are basically in the same business, collecting information on people, he said. “It’s a weird symbiotic relationship. It’s not that Facebook and Google are trying to build a surveillance system but they effectively have,” he said. “If they wanted to, Google and Facebook could use technology to tackle the issue, anonymizing and deleting their customers’ information. But that information is how they make their money, so that is never going to happen.”

Dominic Rushe in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 June 2013 17.37 BST

Find this story at 20 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Skype calls’ immunity to police phone tapping threatened

Skype calls’ immunity to police phone tapping threatened
Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown.

Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping as part of a pan-European crackdown on what law authorities believe is a massive technical loophole in current wiretapping laws, allowing criminals to communicate without fear of being overheard by the police.

The European investigation could also help U.S. law enforcement authorities gain access to Internet calls. The National Security Agency (NSA) is understood to believe that suspected terrorists use Skype to circumvent detection.

While the police can get a court order to tap a suspect’s land line and mobile phone, it is currently impossible to get a similar order for Internet calls on both sides of the Atlantic.

Skype insisted that it does cooperate with law enforcement authorities, “where legally and technically possible,” the company said in a statement.

“Skype has extensively debriefed Eurojust on our law enforcement program and capabilities,” Skype said.

Eurojust, a European Union agency responsible for coordinating judicial investigations across different jurisdictions announced Friday the opening of an investigation involving all 27 countries of the European Union.

“We will bring investigators from all 27 member states together to find a common approach to this problem,” said Joannes Thuy, a spokesman for Eurojust based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

The purpose of Eurojust’s coordination role is to overcome “the technical and judicial obstacles to the interception of Internet telephony systems”, Eurojust said.

The main judicial obstacles are the differing approaches to data protection in the various E.U. member states, Thuy said.

The investigation is being headed by Eurojust’s Italian representative, Carmen Manfredda.

Criminals in Italy are increasingly making phone calls over the Internet in order to avoid getting caught through mobile phone intercepts, according to Direzione Nazionale Antimafia, the anti-Mafia office in Rome.

Police officers in Milan say organized crime, arms and drugs traffickers, and prostitution rings are turning to Skype and other systems of VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) telephony in order to frustrate investigators.

While telecommunications companies are obliged to comply with court orders to monitor calls on land lines and mobile phones, “Skype’ refuses to cooperate with the authorities,” Thuy said.

In addition to the issue of cooperation, there are technical obstacles to tapping Skype calls. The way calls are set up and carried between computers is proprietary, and the encryption system used is strong. It could be possible to monitor the call on the originating or receiving computer using a specially written program, or perhaps to divert the traffic through a proxy server, but these are all far more difficult than tapping a normal phone. Calls between a PC and a regular telephone via the SkypeIn or SkypeOut service, however, could fall under existing wiretapping regulations and capabilities at the point where they meet the public telephone network.

The pan-European response to the problem may open the door for the U.S. to take similar action, Thuy said.

“We have very good cooperation with the U.S.,” he said, pointing out that a U.S. prosecutor, Marylee Warren, is based in The Hague in order to liaise between U.S. and European judicial authorities.

The NSA (National Security Agency) is so concerned by Skype that it is offering hackers large sums of money to break its encryption, according to unsourced reports in the U.S.

Italian investigators have become increasingly reliant on wiretaps, Eurojust said, giving a recent example of customs and tax police in Milan, who overheard a suspected cocaine trafficker telling an accomplice to switch to Skype in order to get details of a 2kg drug consignment.

“Investigators are convinced that the interception of telephone calls have become an essential tool of the police, who spend millions of euros each year tracking down crime through wiretaps of land lines and mobile phones,” Eurojust said.

The first meeting of Eurojust’s 27 national representatives is planned in the coming weeks but precise details of its timing and the location of the meeting remain secret, Thuy said.

“They will exchange information and then we will give advice on how to proceed,” he said. Bringing Internet telephony into line with calls on land lines and mobile phones “could be the price we have to pay for our security,” he said.

Paul Meller (IDG News Service)
— 23 February, 2009 09:47

Find this story at 23 February 2009

Copyright 2013 IDG Communications

Random afluisteren in India

In het voorjaar van 2010 was India een paar weken in de ban van een afluisterschandaal, maar vervolgens verdween dat in de vergetelheid. Dit is opmerkelijk gezien de staat van dienst van de inlichtingenwereld in India. Schandalen die gewone Indiërs raken, maar ook corruptie, slecht management, verkeerde technologie en apparatuur en bovenal incompetentie lijken de boventoon te voeren bij de NTRO, die verantwoordelijk wordt gehouden voor het schandaal. NTRO, National Technical Research Organisation, gebruikt IMSI Catchers om voor lange tijd en op grote schaal politici, ambtenaren, zakenmensen, beroemdheden en gewone Indiërs af te luisteren.

Het gebruik van een IMSI catcher moet nauwlettend gecontroleerd worden. Het afluisterschandaal in India laat zien wat de gevaren zijn van het toelaten van het apparaat in een veiligheidsstelsel. Een IMSI catcher is een mobiele zendmast. Het International Mobile Subscriber Identity nummer is een uniek nummer dat aan een SIM kaart voor een mobiele telefoon is gekoppeld. Aan het IMSI nummer zit tevens een uniek telefoonnummer. Het IMSI nummer bestaat uit drie groepen getallen, 111/22/3333333333. Aan het nummer is te zien uit welk land de SIM kaart komt. De eerste cijfers (111) staan voor het land, Nederland heeft bijvoorbeeld 204 als code. De tweede set cijfers (22) onthullen de provider, KPN heeft bijvoorbeeld 08 en Vodafone 04. De laatste cijfers, maximaal tien cijfers, zijn het unieke abonnementsnummer. Dit is niet hetzelfde als het telefoonnummer. Telefoons waar twee SIM kaarten in zitten, hebben ook twee IMSI nummers.
De IMSI catcher fungeert als mobiele antenne die het gsm verkeer in de buurt opvangt, hierbij gaat het alleen om uitgaande gesprekken. Bij gewone mobiele telefoons vindt de versleuteling van de conversaties plaats in de dichtstbijzijnde mast. De IMSI catcher hoeft de informatie dus niet te kraken, maar kan simpelweg de gesproken of geschreven data lezen. De catcher moet het telefoonverkeer wel doorgeleiden naar een reguliere mast anders kan er geen contact worden gemaakt met de persoon die door de gsm wordt gebeld. De catcher fungeert als tussenstation om de data ofwel direct af te vangen ofwel niet versleuteld door te geleiden. Het doel van de catcher is natuurlijk ook? om het telefoonnummer van een beller te achterhalen. Voor opsporingsinstanties die het gsm nummer van een verdachte niet kunnen traceren is dit een handig middel. Men plaatst een catcher in de buurt van de persoon in kwestie, vangt de nummers allemaal af en kan nagaan welk nummer men moet hebben. Bij politie-invallen kan het apparaat ook zijn dienst bewijzen door op locatie het telefoonverkeer te monitoren, vooral als binnen een onderzoek niet alle gsm-nummers bekend zijn. Tevens kan de catcher worden gebruikt voor spionage doeleinden, vooral spionage die de overheid niet aan de grote klok wil hangen. Bij het afluisteren met een IMSI catcher heeft men namelijk geen medewerking van een Telecom provider nodig. De IMSI catcher laat echter wel een spoor achter die een gebruiker kan wijzen op onregelmatigheden in de transmissie en het apparaat is niet altijd succesvol. De IMSI catcher was tot begin 2011 ook te koop door particulieren. Verschillende bedrijven in New Delhi, Gurgaon en Noida boden de ‘off-the-air-monitoring’ systemen aan. In 2011 besloot de regering de handel van de apparaten aan banden te leggen. Private ondernemingen bleken namelijk gebruik te maken van de catcher.

NTRO
In India is de IMSI Catcher op grote schaal ingezet voor spionage doeleinden, zo onthulde het weekblad Outlook in het voorjaar van 2010. Vanaf waarschijnlijk eind 2006 tot en met april 2010 werden politieke tegenstanders, mensen die promotie zouden maken, leden van het kabinet en allerlei andere politieke en niet politieke figuren door één van de Indiase geheime diensten afgeluisterd. De gesprekken werden afgeluisterd, opgenomen en bewaard. De dienst die verantwoordelijk is voor het afluisteren is de National Technical Research Organisation, de NTRO. De NTRO werd na de Kargil oorlog in 1999 opgezet. Dit conflict ontstond toen het Pakistaanse leger posities in het district Kargil, in de regio Kashmir innam. India reageerde furieus en verdreef de Pakistanen uit een groot deel van Kargil. De laatste posities werden door Pakistan verlaten na diplomatieke druk. De Kargil Review Committee concludeerde in 1999 dat een van de redenen van het uit de hand lopen van het conflict gebrekkige inlichtingen was. De Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) en de National Technical Facilities Organization (NTFO) die al snel NTRO werd gedoopt, werden opgezet.
De NTRO begon zijn werkzaamheden in april 2004. De NTRO is de Indiase stofzuiger van data, zowel internet als telecommunicatie data, en monitort het Indiase grondgebied en luchtruim. De NTRO gebruikt hiervoor allerlei technische hulpmiddelen, van satellieten tot IMSI catchers. De Technology Experiment Satellite (TES), een satelliet die is uitgerust met een camera die foto’s kan maken van voorwerpen van een meter, is een van de hulpmiddelen. De satelliet werd in oktober 2001 gelanceerd en de beelden worden beheerd door de Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Beelden worden ook commercieel verhandeld door een bedrijf dat verbonden is aan de ISRO, Antrix Corporation. BBC News rapporteerde dat India door TES ook beelden bezit van de oorlog in Afghanistan. In 2001 was India het tweede land naast de Verenigde Staten dat een satelliet bezit die beelden kan genereren van voorwerpen van een meter groot. Een van de functionarissen die centraal staat in de introductie van de afluister praktijken door de NTRO is dhr. Narayanan. Narayanan heeft decennia lang een centrale rol gespeeld in de Indiase inlichtingenwereld. Hij was hoofd van het Intelligence Bureau van 1988 tot 1992, en diende daarbij onder vijf verschillende minister-presidenten. Daarna nam hij een adviserende rol op zich onder de directe verantwoordelijkheid van de minister-president van India. In zijn rol als National Security Advisor (NSA) introduceerde hij de nieuwe afluistertechnologie in India in 2005. Narayanan wordt wel de ‘super spook’ van India genoemd, omdat hij zijn gehele wat? leven? al in de kringen van de Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), het Intelligence Bureau en de NSA heeft bewogen. Zijn verhouding met minister-president Manmohan Singh was toen hij National Security Advisor niet close. Hij had bezwaren tegen de nucleaire samenwerking tussen Amerika en India en de toenadering van India en Pakistan. In de Wikileaks Cables over India die begin 2011 zijn vrijgegeven door The Hindu wordt Narayanan echter wel omschreven als een belangenbehartiger van de relatie met de Verenigde Staten. In een van de berichten wordt hij omschreven als de smeerolie voor zaken die voor de Amerikanen interessant zijn.
De NTRO valt onder de verantwoordelijkheid van de inlichtingendienst buitenland van India, de Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), hoewel het een zekere mate van onafhankelijkheid heeft. De NTRO faciliteit waar het afluisteren van de communicatie met het buitenland wordt gedaan ligt in de buurt van Kala Ghoda, zuidelijk Mumbai. Bij Malad, dat in de buurt ligt van Kala Ghoda, komen de datakabels die internet- en telecommunicatie tussen continenten mogelijk maken het Indiase vasteland binnen. De NTRO zit er letterlijk boven op. Hierbij gaat het om communicatie tussen India en het buitenland. De inlichtingendiensten van India hebben daarnaast genoeg binnenlandse capaciteit om de iedere Indiase burger af te luisteren.

Afluisteren
Het afluisterschandaal van de NTRO werd eind april 2010 door het weekblad Outlook onthuld. In de editie van 3 mei van dat jaar zegt een senior inlichtingenofficier dat de NTRO geen toestemming nodig heeft om een telefoon te tappen. Het gaat volgens hem om het onderscheppen van een signaal tussen de gsm en de antenne. Volgens de officier gaat het daarom niet om het afluisteren van een telefoonnummer. Het apparaat zou signalen binnen een cirkel van twee kilometer kunnen onderscheppen. De medewerker van de NTRO lijkt te suggereren dat er helemaal niets mis is met het afluisteren met behulp van een IMSI catcher, het signaal wordt gewoon opgevangen en bewaard. Op dezelfde wijze lijkt de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken van India, P. Chidambaram, de storm rond het afluisterschandaal te willen sussen. In een van de eerste reacties verklaarden bronnen binnen de regering dat het ging om een proef van de NTRO. De regering had geen opdracht gegeven, dus is zij niet verantwoordelijk, en er hoeft geen onderzoek te komen. Volgens de minister waren in de bestanden van de NTRO ook geen bewijzen gevonden van het afluisteren van politici. Tevens wees de regering erop dat de NTRO niet zelfstandig operaties uitvoert, maar werkt onder auspiciën van andere diensten. Bij deze diensten zou het gaan om zeven inlichtingendiensten: het Intelligence Bureau, de Research and Analysis Wing, de Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau, Economic Intelligence Unit and Directorate-General of Investigations, Income-Tax (CBDT). Een oud medewerker van de NTRO voegde daar in de Economic Times van 24 april 2010 nog aan toe dat de dienst slechts onderzoek doet naar technische hulpmiddelen. Volgens hem luistert de dienst geen individuen af en wordt het NTRO in diskrediet gebracht door verongelijkte werknemers.
Ook de politie heeft de bevoegdheid om af te luisteren. De minister van Binnenlandse Zaken stelde dat ruim dertig instanties in de verschillende Indiase deelstaten de mogelijkheid hebben om te tappen en af te luisteren. Volgens minister Chidambaram ligt daarom de macht tot het uitvoeren van deze observaties niet alleen op nationaal niveau, maar ook op deelstaatniveau. Dat dit ook daadwerkelijk aan de hand is werd in dezelfde periode geïllustreerd door een afluisterschandaal van de CBDT. Deze dienst had lobbyisten van de telecommunicatie industrie afgeluisterd ten tijde van de toewijzing van mobiele breedband netwerken met de 2G technologie. Bij deze onthulling werd niet de CBDT beschuldigd van illegale taps, maar kregen de bedrijven het te verduren. De afgeluisterde gesprekken onthulden de grote invloed van de industrie op de besluitvorming van de regering. De CBDT luisterde de lobbyisten af in het kader van een onderzoek naar belastingfraude. Zowel politiek als binnen de juridische wereld worden er vraagtekens gezet bij het afluisteren van mensen die worden verdacht van belastingfraude.
Hoewel de onthulling in de Outlook erg gedetailleerd was, was het antwoord van de minister en de dienst dat er niets aan de hand is. Er wordt niet afgeluisterd en er is geen bewijs gevonden dat het is gebeurd, luidde het officiële regeringsstandpunt. De Indiase Telecomwet van 1885 en de toegevoegde wijziging van 2008 maken afluisteren echter wel mogelijk. Bij het afluisteren gaat het om uitzonderlijke situaties en niet om een standaard regel. Het was dus wel degelijk een schending van wettelijke regels. In de week erna bevestigden enkele inlichtingenofficieren anoniem dat er op grote schaal afgeluisterd wordt. Naast de vier politici waarover Outlook in het nummer van 3 mei 2010 publiceerde bleken er veel meer mensen te zijn afgeluisterd. Het gaat daarbij naast politici om ambtenaren, zakenmensen, gewone Indiërs en beroemdheden. Volgens de anonieme officieren werden de gesprekken zonder wettelijke toestemming afgeluisterd . De officieren vertellen in de Outlook van 10 mei 2010 dat zij de opdrachten mondeling kregen of soms op een geel memo papiertje. Volgens de officieren waren de afluisteroperaties allemaal illegaal , zonder toestemming van de NSA of het kabinet van de minister-president. Er mocht ook geen administratie van worden bijgehouden. De IMSI catchers werden ingezet om bijvoorbeeld in Delhi, de hoofdstad van India, rond te rijden om gsm verkeer op te vangen. Eigenlijk waren het ‘fishing operaties’ op zoek naar dat ene gesprek dat mogelijk een gevaar kan zijn voor de nationale veiligheid. Het systeem scant alle nummers zonder onderscheid te maken en kan alles opnemen. Op elk willekeurig moment kan het apparaat dat in India is gebruikt maximaal 64 gesprekken opnemen. Sommige gesprekken werden vernietigd, andere werden bewaard. Het wordt uit het interview met de medewerkers niet duidelijk wie er verantwoordelijk was voor het besluit om gesprekken al dan niet te vernietigen. In The Times of India worden anonieme bronnen aangehaald die zeggen dat het afluisteren van de politici was uitgevoerd door “junior officials”, maar dat hun werk deel uitmaakt van een grotere operatie.
Volgens de medewerkers van de inlichtingendiensten gaat het om in totaal vijf apparaten die door de NTRO gebruikt worden. Van de ritten van de auto met de IMSI Catcher worden twee logboeken bijgehouden. Het ene logboek bevat geen enkel detail van de operatie. Het andere logboek is “top secret” en bevat gedetailleerde informatie over de locatie waar het apparaat heeft afgeluisterd. De precieze route, bestemmingen, data en tijden zijn in dat logboek te vinden. Medewerkers van de inlichtingendienst vertelden dat het niet alleen de NTRO hoeft te zijn die verantwoordelijk is voor het tappen. Verschillende van de zeven inlichtingendiensten en zelfs de politie hebben een IMSI catcher. Bronnen in de inlichtingenwereld hebben het weekblad Outlook aangegeven dat er in totaal 90 apparaten zijn aangeschaft door de verschillende instanties. Vooral in regio’s waar veel moslims wonen gebeurt dit volgens de officier. De inlichtingenofficieren die in Outlook worden geïnterviewd worden ondersteund in hun verhalen door een oud- directeur van het Intelligence Bureau (IB), dhr. Dhar. Hij vertelde het Indiase weekblad Tehelka dat de NTRO namen moet hebben gekregen om af te luisteren. Tevens verklaart hij dat politieke leiders regelmatig inlichtingendiensten de opdracht geven om mensen af te luisteren zonder schriftelijke toestemming. Medewerkers van diensten die weigeren aan deze afluisterpraktijken mee te doen, worden ontslagen volgens de oud-directeur van het Intelligence Bureau.

Iedereen is verdacht
Het is onduidelijk wat het doel is van de afluisteroperatie die zeker vier jaar heeft geduurd. Hoewel de verantwoordelijk minister in zijn eerste reactie had aangegeven niets van het afluisteren af te weten, gaven regeringsbronnen aan de The Times of India toe dat de NTRO wel toezicht uitvoerde. Welk toezicht wordt door de Times niet vermeld. Volgens de bronnen staan die activiteiten onder directe verantwoordelijkheid van de National Security Advisor of het kabinet van de minister-president waaronder de Research and Analysis Wing en de NTRO valt. Bij de NSA zou het gaan om dhr. Narayanan, de man die aan de wieg stond van het afluisteren in 2005. In de Indiase media worden ook verbanden gelegd met de lange traditie van de Indian National Congress (INC), een regeringspartij, om de oppositie in diskrediet te brengen door het verzamelen van politiek gevoelige informatie door het inzetten van inlichtingendiensten. Het dagblad The Pioneer vergelijkt het met de werkwijze van de Indiase roddelpers, maar dan veel serieuzer. Volgens de krant gaat het er bij het afluisteren om om te achterhalen wie elkaar ontmoeten, met wie iemand contact heeft, met wie personen van de elite slapen en vergelijkbare vragen uit de roddelbladen. Het lijkt er volgens de krant op dat de inlichtingendiensten de levens van politieke spelers in kaart probeert te brengen.
De Indian National Congress (INC) is echter niet de enige politieke partij die deze middelen inzet. Het lijkt erop dat het binnen de Indiase democratie de gewoonte is om de oppositie op allerlei manieren in de gaten te houden. De wijze waarop de oppositie het schandaal gebruikte om de regering onder druk te zetten, lijkt deze stelling ook te ondersteunen. De oppositie is geschokt en wil uitleg van de minister-president, maar daadwerkelijke wettelijke hervormingen werden niet met zoveel woorden geëist.
De verantwoordelijk minister voor de afluisteroperatie is Chidambaram. Chidambaram is lid van de Indian National Congress (INC). Onder de afgeluisterde politici bevond zich ook de minister voor Consumentenzaken, voedsel en distributie, Sharad Pawar van de Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), een afsplitsing van de INC. De NCP neemt op dit moment ook deel aan de regering samen met het INC. Ook leden van de partij van de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken zoals dhr. Digvijay Singh werden afgeluisterd, evenals leden van de oppositie, zoals het hoofd van de Communistische Partij India, dhr. Karat. Het afluisteren vond niet alleen nationaal plaats, ook in deelstaten van India zoals in Bihar werden hoge politici afgeluisterd, zoals de premier van Bihar, dhr. Kumar.
De onderwerpen van de gesprekken die Outlook in haar bezit heeft, zijn uiteenlopend. Bij de gesprekken van de minister van Consumentenzaken ging het om het grote schandaal rond de Indian Premier League (IPL), de Indiase cricket competitie, IPL-gate, waar sprake was van witwassen van geld en het vooraf bepalen van de winnaar van een wedstrijd. De premier van Bihar belde een collega om te lobbyen voor meer geld voor zijn deelstaat. En van de communistische partij zijn gesprekken bewaard uit 2008 toen er oppositie werd gevoerd tegen de aankoop van nucleaire technologie van de Verenigde Staten. Hoewel Karat tegenstander was van de overeenkomst tussen India en de Verenigde Staten stond hij onderhandelingen met minister-president Singh niet in weg. Hij fungeerde ook als een belangrijke exponent van de oppositie in India tegen de overeenkomst. De gegevens over de afluisterpraktijk van de NTRO geven nu aan dat dhr. Karat toen is afgeluisterd. Uiteindelijk bleef de Communistische Partij bij haar standpunt om tegen te stemmen, maar de regering behaalde toch een nipte overwinning. De Samajwadi Party (SP) en tien leden van de BJP, beide oppositie partijen, hielpen de regering aan haar meerderheid. De overeenkomst met de Amerikanen kon doorgaan. Naar nu blijkt werden er tijdens de onderhandelingen over het akkoord met de Amerikanen parlementariërs omgekocht. In documenten van de Amerikaanse vertegenwoordiging in India die door Wikileaks zijn buitgemaakt, blijkt dat de Amerikanen op de hoogte waren van de steekpenningen die parlementariërs ontvingen om voor te stemmen. Of de afgeluisterde gesprekken hebben bijgedragen aan het omkopen van leden van het parlement is niet duidelijk.

DE NTRO als schandaal
De NTRO heeft absoluut geen schoon blazoen. De korte historie van de dienst kent al vele schandalen, gebrekkig functioneren, politieke benoemingen en tekenen van corruptie. India kent geen Commissie van Toezicht op de Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdiensten, wel een algemene controledienst, te vergelijken met de algemene Rekenkamer. De regering stelde dhr. P.V. Kumar van de Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) aan om de misstanden bij de NTRO te onderzoeken. Kumar is een oud medewerker van de Research and Analysis Wing en werd na zijn onderzoek begin 2011 aangesteld om de NTRO te leiden. In hoeverre er een einde is gekomen aan de misstappen is dan ook niet duidelijk. Een van de schandalen naast het afluisteren van politici is de benoeming van de tweede man van de dienst, dhr. Vijararaghavan, en zijn betrokkenheid bij een deal met het Amerikaanse bedrijf CISCO. Na de deal met CISCO werd de dochter van Vijararaghavan door CISCO in dienst genomen. De positie van de tweede man staat ook ter discussie omdat hij naast zijn functie bij de NTRO ook nog zijn oude functie als hoofd van Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) vervult en tevens directeur is van een lobbygroep van de elektronica-industrie. Ook diverse andere benoemingen worden door de CAG onderzocht op hun onvolkomenheden. Het gerechtshof in Delhi oordeelde verder dat er een onderzoek moet komen naar administratieve en financiële onregelmatigheden bij de aanstelling van ruim zeventig werknemers. Vacatures zouden zijn opgevuld met niet capabele mensen zonder de juiste opleiding en voor sommige functies is zelfs geen vacature uitgeschreven, maar die zijn onderhands opgevuld.
Naast het personeelsbeleid zijn er ook vragen gerezen over de aankoop van apparatuur door de dienst. Een medewerker schafte zonder overleg met het agentschap dat over de aankopen van gevoelige apparatuur gaat, computers aan die vitale Chinese onderdelen bevat. De spanningen tussen India en China fluctueren al decennia lang tussen gespannen en vriendschappelijk. De laatste jaren gaat het beter, maar tien jaar geleden had de verhouding tussen de twee landen een nieuw dieptepunt bereikt na Indiase kernproeven. En dat de relatie verre van close is maakten Canadese onderzoekers van de Information Warfare Monitor (IWM) duidelijk toen zij India erop wezen dat begin 2010 Chinese hackers zich de toegang hadden verschaft tot computers van het Indiase leger. IWM had de Indiase overheid er een jaar eerder al op gewezen dat haar computers en servers kwetsbaar waren voor aanvallen uit vooral China. Op de computers die in 2010 gehackt zijn, zou informatie staan over het raketprogramma van India, de artillerie-brigades van Assam, luchtmachtbases en andere militaire informatie. De Canadese onderzoekers produceerden een rapport over de Chinese elektronische infiltratie, ‘Shadow in the Cloud’. In mei 2010 bleek dat de schade van de Chinese spionage operatie aanzienlijk is. Computers en servers van diplomatieke vestigingen van India in Kabul, Moskou, Dubai, Abuja, in de Verenigde Staten, Servië, België, Duitsland, Cyprus, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Zimbabwe waren door de Chinezen overgenomen. Ook het kantoor van de National Security Advisor was besmet en zelfs bedrijven als Tata, YKK India en DLF Limited. Naast deze militair en economisch strategische spionage hadden de Chinezen het ook gemunt op de Tibetaanse gemeenschap in Dharamshala.
Een andere medewerker kocht satelliet communicatiemiddelen van een bedrijf uit Singapore (Singapore Technologies), een bedrijf dat door de Indiase overheid op een zwarte lijst was geplaatst. Bij de aanbesteding van de satelliet communicatie apparatuur kwamen de specificaties van de NTRO precies overeen met het product van Singapore Technologies. In andere gevallen, zoals bij de aanschaf van onbemande vliegtuigen van het Israëlische bedrijf Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is door het NTRO geen aanbesteding uitgeschreven volgens de onderzoekers van CAG. De onbemande vliegtuigen moesten in januari 2010 aan de grond worden gehouden, omdat bleek dat de NTRO onveilige en open radiofrequenties gebruikte voor de besturing van de vliegtuigen. Volgens de India Today zouden ook de onbemande vliegtuigen van het Indiase leger op deze manier worden bediend. Bij grote uitgaven dient de NTRO een aanbesteding te doen en toestemming te vragen aan de National Security Advisor en uiteindelijk de minister-president. Ook dit laatste is bij diverse aankopen door de dienst niet gebeurd.
Naast deze personele en technische misstappen wordt de kwaliteit van het werk van de dienst in het publieke debat in India in twijfel getrokken. Hoewel haar taak het verzamelen van informatie over mogelijke terroristische aanslagen, cyber crime, opstanden en illegale grensoverschrijdingen is, heeft de dienst geen enkel duidelijk succes geboekt. De aanslagen van 26 november 2008 in Mumbai worden gezien als het bewijs van de mislukking van de dienst. Toch lijkt de dienst onaantastbaar, zoals zoveel inlichtingendiensten. Twee jaar later was het opnieuw raak. Op basis van informatie van de inlichtingendiensten werd een man gearresteerd die verantwoordelijk werd gehouden van de aanslag op de “Duitse bakkerij”, een populaire uitgaansgelegenheid voor toeristen in Pune. Minister Chidambaram feliciteerde de inlichtingendiensten, maar ze bleken het bij het verkeerde eind te hebben. De man moest worden vrijgelaten wegens ontlastend bewijs.
En hoewel de NTRO de stofzuiger is van data van Indiase burgers staat zij net als de andere spelers in de Indiase inlichtingenwereld bekend om het ‘kwijtraken’ van gevoelige data. In 2003 was de Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) plotseling 53 computers kwijt. Toen zij werden teruggevonden, ontbraken de harde schijven. Op de harde schijven stonden geheime codes voor communicatie met inlichtingendiensten en het leger. In 2006 raakte een belangrijke wetenschapper van de DRDO zijn laptop kwijt op het vliegveld van Delhi. Op de laptop bewaarde de wetenschapper geheime informatie over het Indiase kernwapenarsenaal en raketsystemen. En in 2008 raakte een directeur van de NTRO zijn laptop met geheime informatie over de kernwapenprogramma’s in Pakistan, China en Noord Korea kwijt in Washington DC.

Het schandaal staat niet op zich
De NTRO is niet de enige dienst die tekenen vertoont van verval. Ook de dienst waaruit zij is voortgekomen, de Research and Analysis Wing, wordt geteisterd door technische, personele, administratieve en financiële schandalen. Eigenlijk is het niet onlogisch dat er schandalen optreden binnen de Indiase inlichtingenwereld. Met zoveel onregelmatigheden is het bijna vanzelfsprekend dat er schandalen plaatsvinden die ook Indiase burgers raken. Het NTRO schandaal staat dan ook niet op zich. Vergelijkbare afluisterpraktijken zijn de afgelopen decennia aan het licht gekomen. In de jaren tachtig kwam aan het licht dat de Indiase overheid politieke leiders afluisterde. Daarnaast werden ook toen toonaangevende journalisten in de gaten gehouden. In 1990 – 1991 was het opnieuw raak met een nieuw afluisterschandaal. De Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), een burgerrechtenbeweging, bracht de zaak voor de rechter. Tijdens de rechtzaak gaf de CBI, Central Bureau of Investigation, toe dat op grote schaal journalisten, parlementariërs en leden van het kabinet zowel op nationaal als op deelstaatniveau waren afgeluisterd. Het CBI gaf toe dat deze afluisterpartij onwettig was.
En is er wat veranderd na het schandaal in het voorjaar van 2010 dat de Indiase politiek enkele weken bezig hield? Nee, in juli van hetzelfde jaar werd de IMSI Catcher als nieuw gepresenteerd in een operatie met de codenaam Fox, alsof het om een nieuwe strijd ging tegen terrorisme en criminele bendes. De media waren het schandaal van twee maanden eerder al weer vergeten.

Buro Jansen & Janssen

Find this story at 20 April 2011

Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks

MUMBAI, India — The terrorists who struck this city last month stunned authorities not only with their use of sophisticated weaponry but also with their comfort with modern technology.

The terrorists navigated across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai from Karachi, Pakistan, with the help of a global positioning system handset. While under way, they communicated using a satellite phone with those in Pakistan believed to have coordinated the attacks. They recognized their targets and knew the most direct routes to reach them in part because they had studied satellite photos from Google Earth.

And, perhaps most significantly, throughout the three-day siege at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, the Pakistani-based handlers communicated with the attackers using Internet phones that complicate efforts to trace and intercept calls.

Those handlers, who were apparently watching the attacks unfold live on television, were able to inform the attackers of the movement of security forces from news accounts and provide the gunmen with instructions and encouragement, authorities said.

Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai’s police commissioner, said Monday that as once complicated technologies — including global positioning systems and satellite phones — have become simpler to operate, terrorists, like everyone else, have become adept at using them. “Well, whether terrorists or common criminals, they do try to be a step ahead in terms of technology,” he said.

Indian security forces surrounding the buildings were able to monitor the terrorists’ outgoing calls by intercepting their cellphone signals. But Indian police officials said those directing the attacks, who are believed to be from Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group based in Pakistan, were using a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service, which has complicated efforts to determine their whereabouts and identities.

VoIP services, in which conversations are carried over the Internet as opposed to conventional phone lines or cellphone towers, are increasingly popular with people looking to save money on long distance and international calls. Many such services, like Skype and Vonage, allow a user to call another VoIP-enabled device anywhere in the world free of charge, or to call a standard telephone or cellphone at a deeply discounted rate.

But the same services are also increasingly popular with criminals and terrorists, a trend that worries some law enforcement and intelligence agencies. “It’s a concern,” said one Indian security official, who spoke anonymously because the investigation was continuing. “It’s not something we have seen before.”

In mid-October, a draft United States Army intelligence report highlighted the growing interest of Islamic militants in using VoIP, noting recent news reports of Taliban insurgents using Skype to communicate. The unclassified report, which examined discussions of emerging technologies on jihadi Web sites, was obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based nonprofit group that monitors the impact of science on national security.

VoIP calls pose an array of difficulties for intelligence and law enforcement services, according to communications experts. “It means the phone-tapping techniques that work for old traditional interception don’t work,” said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania.

An agency using conventional tracing techniques to track a call from a land line or cellphone to a VoIP subscriber would be able to get only as far as the switching station that converts the voice call into Internet data, communications experts said. The switch, usually owned and operated by the company providing the VoIP service, could be located thousands of miles from the subscriber.

The subscriber’s phone number would also likely reveal no information about his location. For instance, someone in New York could dial a local phone number but actually be connected via the Internet to a person in Thailand.

In Mumbai, authorities have declined to disclose the names of the VoIP companies whose services the Lashkar-e-Taiba handlers used, but reports in Indian news media have said the calls have been traced to companies in New Jersey and Austria. Yet investigators have said they are convinced that the handlers who directed the attacks were actually sitting somewhere in Pakistan during the calls.

One senior Lashkar-e-Taiba leader who American officials believe may have played a key role in planning the Mumbai attacks is Zarrar Shah. Mr. Shah, known to be a specialist in communications technology, may have been aware of the difficulties in tracing VoIP.

To determine the location of a VoIP caller, an investigating agency has to access a database kept by the service provider. The database logs the unique numerical identifier, known as an Internet Protocol (I.P.) address, of whatever device the subscriber was using to connect to the Internet. This could be a computer equipped with a microphone, a special VoIP phone, or even a cellphone with software that routes calls over the Internet using wireless connections as opposed to cellular signals.

It would then take additional electronic sleuthing to determine where the device was located. The customer’s identity could be obtained from the service provider as well, but might prove fraudulent, experts said.

Getting the I.P. address and then determining its location can take days longer than a standard phone trace, particularly if service providers involved are in a foreign country.

“Ultimately, we can trace them,” said Mr. Gafoor, referring to VoIP calls. “It takes a little longer, but we will trace them.”

Washington is assisting the Indian authorities in obtaining this information, according to another Indian police official who also spoke anonymously because of the continuing investigation.

Further complicating this task is the fact that I.P. addresses change frequently and are less tied to a specific location than phone numbers.

Computer experts said that while these challenges were formidable, none were insurmountable. And they cautioned that security services and police forces might be disingenuous when they complain about terrorists’ use of new technologies, including VoIP.

The experts said that VoIP calls left a far richer data trail for investigators to mine than someone calling from an old-fashioned pay phone. Mr. Blaze, the computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania, also noted that 15 years ago the Mumbai attackers would probably not have had the capacity to make calls to their handlers during the course of their attacks, depriving investigators of vital clues to their identities. “As one door closes — traditional wire line tapping — all these other doors have opened,” Mr. Blaze said.

December 9, 2008
By JEREMY KAHN

Find this story at 9 December 2008

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world’s communications

Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal

Secret document detailing GCHQ’s ambition to ‘master the internet’

Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency’s ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

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.

The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his attempt to expose what he has called “the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history”.

“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”

However, on Friday a source with knowledge of intelligence argued that the data was collected legally under a system of safeguards, and had provided material that had led to significant breakthroughs in detecting and preventing serious crime.

Britain’s technical capacity to tap into the cables that carry the world’s communications – referred to in the documents as special source exploitation – has made GCHQ an intelligence superpower.

By 2010, two years after the project was first trialled, it was able to boast it had the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

UK officials could also claim GCHQ “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA”. (Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.)

By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.

The Americans were given guidelines for its use, but were told in legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: “We have a light oversight regime compared with the US”.

When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was “your call”.

The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases.

The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
Document quoting Lt Gen Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, during a visit to Britain

Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.

And the scale of the programme is constantly increasing as more cables are tapped and GCHQ data storage facilities in the UK and abroad are expanded with the aim of processing terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at a time.

For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fibre-optic cables that ring the world.

The NSA has meanwhile opened a second window, in the form of the Prism operation, revealed earlier this month by the Guardian, from which it secured access to the internal systems of global companies that service the internet.

The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.

This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as “intercept partners”.

The papers seen by the Guardian suggest some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned “sensitive relationship teams” and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of “special source” material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause “high-level political fallout”.

The source with knowledge of intelligence said on Friday the companies were obliged to co-operate in this operation. They are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables.

“There’s an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this. Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice.”

The source said that although GCHQ was collecting a “vast haystack of data” what they were looking for was “needles”.

“Essentially, we have a process that allows us to select a small number of needles in a haystack. We are not looking at every piece of straw. There are certain triggers that allow you to discard or not examine a lot of data so you are just looking at needles. If you had the impression we are reading millions of emails, we are not. There is no intention in this whole programme to use it for looking at UK domestic traffic – British people talking to each other,” the source said.

He explained that when such “needles” were found a log was made and the interception commissioner could see that log.

“The criteria are security, terror, organised crime. And economic well-being. There’s an auditing process to go back through the logs and see if it was justified or not. The vast majority of the data is discarded without being looked at … we simply don’t have the resources.”

However, the legitimacy of the operation is in doubt. According to GCHQ’s legal advice, it was given the go-ahead by applying old law to new technology. The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) requires the tapping of defined targets to be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary.

However, an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad. But the nature of modern fibre-optic communications means that a proportion of internal UK traffic is relayed abroad and then returns through the cables.

Parliament passed the Ripa law to allow GCHQ to trawl for information, but it did so 13 years ago with no inkling of the scale on which GCHQ would attempt to exploit the certificates, enabling it to gather and process data regardless of whether it belongs to identified targets.

The categories of material have included fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism, but the criteria at any one time are secret and are not subject to any public debate. GCHQ’s compliance with the certificates is audited by the agency itself, but the results of those audits are also secret.

An indication of how broad the dragnet can be was laid bare in advice from GCHQ’s lawyers, who said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage”.

There is an investigatory powers tribunal to look into complaints that the data gathered by GCHQ has been improperly used, but the agency reassured NSA analysts in the early days of the programme, in 2009: “So far they have always found in our favour”.

Historically, the spy agencies have intercepted international communications by focusing on microwave towers and satellites. The NSA’s intercept station at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire played a leading role in this. One internal document quotes the head of the NSA, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, on a visit to Menwith Hill in June 2008, asking: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith.”

By then, however, satellite interception accounted for only a small part of the network traffic. Most of it now travels on fibre-optic cables, and the UK’s position on the western edge of Europe gave it natural access to cables emerging from the Atlantic.

The data collected provides a powerful tool in the hands of the security agencies, enabling them to sift for evidence of serious crime. According to the source, it has allowed them to discover new techniques used by terrorists to avoid security checks and to identify terrorists planning atrocities. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and in the field of cyberdefence.

It was claimed on Friday that it directly led to the arrest and imprisonment of a cell in the Midlands who were planning co-ordinated attacks; to the arrest of five Luton-based individuals preparing acts of terror, and to the arrest of three London-based people planning attacks prior to the Olympics.

As the probes began to generate data, GCHQ set up a three-year trial at the GCHQ station in Bude, Cornwall. By the summer of 2011, GCHQ had probes attached to more than 200 internet links, each carrying data at 10 gigabits a second. “This is a massive amount of data!” as one internal slideshow put it. That summer, it brought NSA analysts into the Bude trials. In the autumn of 2011, it launched Tempora as a mainstream programme, shared with the Americans.

The intercept probes on the transatlantic cables gave GCHQ access to its special source exploitation. Tempora allowed the agency to set up internet buffers so it could not simply watch the data live but also store it – for three days in the case of content and 30 days for metadata.

“Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data,” one document explained.

The processing centres apply a series of sophisticated computer programmes in order to filter the material through what is known as MVR – massive volume reduction. The first filter immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads, which reduces the volume by about 30%. Others pull out packets of information relating to “selectors” – search terms including subjects, phone numbers and email addresses of interest. Some 40,000 of these were chosen by GCHQ and 31,000 by the NSA. Most of the information extracted is “content”, such as recordings of phone calls or the substance of email messages. The rest is metadata.

The GCHQ documents that the Guardian has seen illustrate a constant effort to build up storage capacity at the stations at Cheltenham, Bude and at one overseas location, as well a search for ways to maintain the agency’s comparative advantage as the world’s leading communications companies increasingly route their cables through Asia to cut costs. Meanwhile, technical work is ongoing to expand GCHQ’s capacity to ingest data from new super cables carrying data at 100 gigabits a second. As one training slide told new users: “You are in an enviable position – have fun and make the most of it.”

Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
The Guardian, Friday 21 June 2013 17.23 BST

Find this story at 21 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Spy agencies win millions more to fight terror threat

Britain’s intelligence agencies will emerge as the biggest winners from the Government’s review of public spending, The Telegraph can disclose.
MI6, MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters will see an increase in their combined £1.9 billion budget

MI6, MI5 and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) will see an inflation-busting increase in their combined £1.9 billion budget, underlining the Government’s concern over the growing terrorist threat following the Woolwich attack.

Police spending on counter-terrorism will also be protected and will rise in line with inflation.

The percentage increase in the budgets of the intelligence agencies – at more than three per cent in addition to inflation – will be the largest of any item of government spending including the NHS, schools and international development.

It will lead to the agencies receiving about another £100 million in funding annually from 2015.

Local councils are also expected to emerge as winners with increased funding for elderly social care. Money from the ring-fenced NHS budget is expected to be diverted to help fund care homes and home visits for frail pensioners.
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George Osborne will on Wednesday unveil the Government’s spending plans for the 2015-16 financial year following months of Whitehall wrangling.

The Spending Review, which will cut a further £11.5 billion in public expenditure, is regarded as especially sensitive as the cuts will be implemented just weeks before the next general election.

The biggest losers will include the Business department, the Culture department, the Home Office and the Justice department, which are expected to each lose about eight per cent from their budgets.

The Ministry of Defence will see its budget cut by about £1 billion, although this will not involve further reductions in front-line troops.

Mr Osborne is also expected to set out plans for long-term caps on welfare spending and other areas of government expenditure which are not tightly controlled.

The Chancellor will detail proposals to divert the money saved from Whitehall spending to fund long-term infrastructure projects such as widening major roads.

He is expected to say: “Britain is moving from rescue to recovery. But while the British economy is leaving intensive care, now we need to secure that recovery.

“We’re saving money on welfare and waste to invest in the roads and railways, schooling and science our economy needs to succeed in the future.”

The intelligence agencies have recently faced criticism that they are struggling to deal with emerging threats, amid suggestions that MI5 and MI6 could have done more to prevent the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich. One of the suspects had attempted to travel to Somalia and both were known to the intelligence services.

GCHQ’s activities have also come under scrutiny following accusations that it may be abusing its power in secretive projects with the United States to monitor internet traffic.

The Chancellor is understood to have contacted the heads of the three agencies last Friday to inform them of their spending increases. MI5, MI6 and GCHQ have seen their budgets fall in real terms by more than 10 per cent since 2010 and there were fears that they would face a further round of cuts.

A Whitehall source said: “This has been one of George’s personal priorities. It is vitally important we look after these budgets and they were settled last week with agreement at the very highest level.”

Mr Osborne and the Prime Minister are understood to believe the agencies need more resources to tackle the growing terrorist threat from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria, and the rising problem posed by cyber terrorism.

In the wake of the GCHQ snooping row, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, praised the agencies’ work and cooperation with US counterparts.

Speaking in America, he said “we should have nothing but pride” in the “intelligence-sharing relationship between Britain and the United States”. He added that both countries’ intelligence work operated “under the rule of law” and “only exists to protect” people’s freedoms.

Mr Osborne confirmed on Tuesday that the NHS and schools budgets would continue to rise.

Money is also expected to be diverted from the health budget to local authorities to fund social care. Norman Lamb, a health minister, recently warned of an impending crisis in social care as councils struggled to fund enough places for ailing pensioners.

Last week, council leaders warned Mr Osborne that street lights may have to be switched off and libraries closed unless NHS funding was diverted to help pay for elderly care.

They said the amount of money spent on social care has been cut by a fifth in less than three years and they were preparing to reduce budgets further.

Mr Osborne agreed for £2 billion to be transferred from the NHS to the social care sector in his previous Spending Review, but councils said much of the money has gone on propping up the system because of the ageing population.

Ministers are also expected to set out the entitlement criteria for state help. The Government has pledged to cap the maximum bill that anyone faces for social care at £72,000 from 2016, and the details of how this will work are to be announced this week.

Earl Howe, a health minister, was asked about the growing problem in social care, with hospitals often forced not to discharge elderly patients who are infirm but not ill because they have nowhere to go. He said there would be “more news” about increased funding for social care on Wednesday and sources confirmed that the social care budget would rise after several years of cuts.

Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, also hinted that the Government may speed up the introduction of its community budgets programme, which is designed to make public sector services share operations.

He urged MPs to “listen carefully” to the Chancellor’s statement for more news after being asked about the programme’s national implementation.

By Robert Winnett, Political Editor
10:00PM BST 25 Jun 2013

Find this story at 25 June 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Operation Tempora: GCHQ in fresh snooping row as it eavesdrops on phones and the internet

Data includes recordings of telephone calls, contents of emails, details of messages on social media and the history of internet use

Britain’s electronic eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, has started collecting data from the network of fibre-optic cables carrying the world’s telephone calls and internet traffic, it was reported tonight.

The massive programme of surveillance allows the agency to store vast volumes of information for up to 30 days which it can then study for evidence of terrorist and criminal activity.

The claims, in The Guardian, will provoke a fresh civil liberties storm following recent allegations that thousands of Britons could have been spied on by GCHQ through a covert link with the US National Security Agency (NSA).

According to the paper, the agency has been running Operation Tempora for 18 months under which it gains access to transatlantic cables carrying data about phone calls and internet use. It is said to share information gleaned from it with the NSA.

The data includes recordings of telephone calls, contents of emails, details of messages on social media and the history of internet use.

Documents seen by the paper suggest that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 at a time.

A source told The Guardian that the eavesdropping allowed the security services to arrest three people planning attacks on last year’s London Olympics, as well as terrorist cells in the Midlands and Luton. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and to boost cyberdefence.

A GCHQ spokesman said: “It is longstanding practice that we do not comment on intelligence matters.”

He added: “GCHQ takes its obligations under the law very seriously. Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight, including from the Secretary of State, the Interception and Intelligence Services Commissioners and the Intelligence and Security Committee.”

* Edward Snowden has been charged in his absence by US prosecutors with spying and theft of government property. The charges are included in sealed documents filed by prosecutors.

Nigel Morris
Saturday, 22 June 2013

Find this story at 22 June 2013

© independent.co.uk

MI5 feared GCHQ went ’too far’ over phone and internet monitoring

Amid leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, senior intelligence source reveals worries were voiced in 2008

GCHQ taps can intercept UK and US phone and internet traffic. Photograph: EPA

Senior figures inside British intelligence have been alarmed by GCHQ’s secret decision to tap into transatlantic cables in order to engage in the bulk interception of phone calls and internet traffic.

According to one source who has been directly involved in GCHQ operations, concerns were expressed when the project was being discussed internally in 2008: “We felt we were starting to overstep the mark with some of it. People from MI5 were complaining that they were going too far from a civil liberties perspective … We all had reservations about it, because we all thought: ‘If this was used against us, we wouldn’t stand a chance’.”

The Guardian revealed on Friday that GCHQ has placed more than 200 probes on transatlantic cables and is processing 600m “telephone events” a day as well as up to 39m gigabytes of internet traffic. Using a programme codenamed Tempora, it can store and analyse voice recordings, the content of emails, entries on Facebook, the use of websites as well as the “metadata” which records who has contacted who. The programme is shared with GCHQ’s American partner, the National Security Agency.

Interviews with the UK source and the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden raise questions about whether the programme:

■ Exploits existing law which was passed by parliament without any anticipation that it would be used for this purpose.

■ For the first time allows GCHQ to process bulk internal UK traffic which is routed overseas via these cables.

■ Allows the NSA to engage in bulk intercepts of internal US traffic which would be forbidden in its own territory.

■ Functions with no effective oversight.

The key law is the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Ripa, which requires the home secretary or foreign secretary to sign warrants for the interception of the communications of defined targets. But the law also allows the foreign secretary to sign certificates that authorise GCHQ to trawl for broad categories of information on condition that one end of the communication is outside the UK.

According to the UK source: “Not so long ago, this was all about attaching crocodile clips to copper wires. And it was all about voice. Now, it’s about the internet – massive scale – but still using the same law that was devised for crocodile clips. Ripa was primarily designed for voice, not for this level of interception. They are going round Ripa. The legislation doesn’t exist for this. They are using old legislation and adapting it.”

The source claimed that even the conventional warrant system has been distorted – whereas police used to ask for a warrant before intercepting a target’s communications, they will now ask GCHQ to intercept the target’s communications and then use that information to seek a warrant.

There is a particular concern that the programme allows GCHQ to break the boundary which stopped it engaging in the bulk interception of internal UK communications. The Ripa requirement that one end of a communication must be outside the UK was a significant restriction when it was applied to phone calls using satellites, but it is no longer effective in the world of fibre-optic cables. “The point is that this is an island,” the source said. “Everything comes and goes – nearly everything – down fibre-optic cables. You make a mobile phone call, it goes to a mast and then down into a fibre-optic cable, under the ground and away. And even if the call is UK to UK, it’s very likely – because of the way the system is structured – to go out of the UK and come back in through these fibre-optic channels.”

Internet traffic is also liable to be routed internationally even if the message is exchanged between two people within the UK. “At one point, I was told that we were getting 85% of all UK domestic traffic – voice, internet, all of it – via these international cables.”

Last year, the government was mired in difficulty when it tried to pass a communications bill that became known as the “snoopers’ charter”, and would have allowed the bulk interception and storage of UK voice calls and internet traffic. The source says this debate was treated with some scepticism inside the intelligence community – “We’re sitting there, watching them debate the snoopers’ charter, thinking: ‘Well, GCHQ have been doing this for years’.”

There are similar concerns about the role of the NSA. It could have chosen to attach probes to the North American end of the cables and documents shown to the Guardian by Edward Snowden suggest that key elements of the Tempora filtering process were designed by the NSA. Instead, the NSA agency has exported its computer programs and 250 of its analysts to operate the system from the UK.

Initial inquiries by the Guardian have failed to explain why this has happened, but US legislators are likely to want to check whether the NSA has sought to bypass legal or policy requirements which restrict its activity in the US. This will be particularly sensitive if it is confirmed that Tempora is also analysing internal US traffic.

The UK source challenges the official justification for the programme; that it is necessary for the fight against terrorism and serious crime: “This is not scoring very high against those targets, because they are wise to the monitoring of their communications. If the terrorists are wise to it, why are we increasing the capability?

“The answer is that you can’t stop it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more we develop communications technology, the more they develop technology to intercept it. There was MS Chat – easy. Then Yahoo chat – did that, too. Then Facebook. Then Skype. Then Twitter. They keep catching up. It is good for us, but it is bad for us.”

It is clear from internal paperwork that GCHQ has created systems to restrain the use of this powerful tool and to ensure that its use complies not only with Ripa but also with the 1998 Human Rights Act, which requires essentially that the use of the data must be proportional to the crime or threat investigated. Defenders insist that the mass of data is heavily filtered by the programme so that only that relating to legitimate targets is analysed.

However, there are doubts about the effectiveness of this. First, according to the UK source, “written definitions for targeting and filtering are very elastic. They are wide open to interpretation.” The target areas defined by the Ripa certificates are secret.

Second, there is further room for interpretation when human analysts become involved in using the filtered intelligence to produce what are known as “contact chains”. “Here is target A. But who is A talking to? Now we’re into B and C and D.” If analysts believe it is proportional, they can look at all the traffic – content and metadata – relating to all of the target’s contact.” GCHQ audits a sample of its analysts’ work – believed to be 5% every six months – but even the statistical results of these audits are also secret.

Beyond the detail of the operation of the programme, there is a larger, long-term anxiety, clearly expressed by the UK source: “If there was the wrong political change, it could be very dangerous. All you need is to have the wrong government in place. It is capable of abuse because there is no independent scrutiny.”

Nick Davies
The Observer, Saturday 22 June 2013 20.18 BST

Find this story at 22 June 2013
© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

G20 summit: NSA targeted Russian president Medvedev in London

Leaked documents reveal Russian president was spied on during visit, as questions are raised over use of US base in Britain

US spies intercepted communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during a G20 summit in London. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.

The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.

The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ.

The document was drafted in August 2009, four months after the visit by Medvedev, who joined other world leaders in London, including the US president, Barack Obama, for the event hosted by the British prime minister, Gordon Brown.

Medvedev arrived in London on Wednesday 1 April and the NSA intercepted communications from his delegation the same day, according to the NSA paper, entitled: “Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London – Intercept at Menwith Hill station.”

The document starts with two pictures of Medvedev smiling for the world’s media alongside Brown and Obama in bilateral discussions before the main summit.
RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire. Photograph: Nigel Roddis/Reuters

The report says: “This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president.”

The NSA interception of the Russian leadership at G20 came hours after Obama and Medvedev had met for the first time. Relations between the two leaders had been smoothed in the runup to the summit with a series of phone calls and letters, with both men wanting to establish a trusting relationship to discuss the ongoing banking crisis and nuclear disarmament.

In the aftermath of their discussions on 1 April, the two men issued a joint communique saying they intended to “move further along the path of reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms in accordance with the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons”.

A White House official who briefed journalists described the meeting as “a very successful first meeting focused on real issues”. The official said it had been important for the men to be open about the issues on which they agreed and disagreed. Obama had stressed the need to be candid, the official noted.

While it has been widely known the two countries spy on each other, it is rare for either to be caught in the act; the latest disclosures will also be deeply embarrassing for the White House as Obama prepares to meet Vladimir Putin, who succeeded Medvedev as president, in the margins of the G8 summit this week.

The two countries have long complained about the extent of each other’s espionage activities, and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats are common. A year after Obama met Medvedev, the US claimed it had broken a highly sophisticated spy ring that carried out “deep cover” assignments in the US.

Ten alleged Russian spies living in America were arrested.

Putin was withering of the FBI-led operation: “I see that your police have let themselves go and put some people in jail, but I guess that is their job. I hope the positive trend that we have seen develop in our bilateral relations recently will not be harmed by these events.” Last month, the Russians arrested an American in Moscow who they alleged was a CIA agent.

The new revelations underline the significance of RAF Menwith Hill and raise questions about its relationship to the British intelligence agencies, and who is responsible for overseeing it. The 560-acre site was leased to the Americans in 1954 and the NSA has had a large presence there since 1966.

It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white “radomes” that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Monday 17 June 2013

Find this story at 17 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians’ communications at G20 summits

Exclusive: phones were monitored and fake internet cafes set up to gather information from allies in London in 2009

Documents uncovered by the NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, reveal surveillance of G20 delegates’ emails and BlackBerrys. Photograph: Guardian

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

There have often been rumours of this kind of espionage at international conferences, but it is highly unusual for hard evidence to confirm it and spell out the detail. The evidence is contained in documents – classified as top secret – which were uncovered by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian. They reveal that during G20 meetings in April and September 2009 GCHQ used what one document calls “ground-breaking intelligence capabilities” to intercept the communications of visiting delegations.

This included:

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates’ use of computers;

• Penetrating the security on delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;

• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;

• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;

• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

The documents suggest that the operation was sanctioned in principle at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and that intelligence, including briefings for visiting delegates, was passed to British ministers.

A briefing paper dated 20 January 2009 records advice given by GCHQ officials to their director, Sir Iain Lobban, who was planning to meet the then foreign secretary, David Miliband. The officials summarised Brown’s aims for the meeting of G20 heads of state due to begin on 2 April, which was attempting to deal with the economic aftermath of the 2008 banking crisis. The briefing paper added: “The GCHQ intent is to ensure that intelligence relevant to HMG’s desired outcomes for its presidency of the G20 reaches customers at the right time and in a form which allows them to make full use of it.” Two documents explicitly refer to the intelligence product being passed to “ministers”.
One of the GCHQ documents. Photograph: Guardian

According to the material seen by the Guardian, GCHQ generated this product by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates.

One document refers to a tactic which was “used a lot in recent UK conference, eg G20”. The tactic, which is identified by an internal codeword which the Guardian is not revealing, is defined in an internal glossary as “active collection against an email account that acquires mail messages without removing them from the remote server”. A PowerPoint slide explains that this means “reading people’s email before/as they do”.

The same document also refers to GCHQ, MI6 and others setting up internet cafes which “were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has finished”. This appears to be a reference to acquiring delegates’ online login details.

Another document summarises a sustained campaign to penetrate South African computers, recording that they gained access to the network of their foreign ministry, “investigated phone lines used by High Commission in London” and “retrieved documents including briefings for South African delegates to G20 and G8 meetings”. (South Africa is a member of the G20 group and has observer status at G8 meetings.)
Another excerpt from the GCHQ documents. Photograph: Guardian

A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA’s intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.

Other documents record apparently successful efforts to penetrate the security of BlackBerry smartphones: “New converged events capabilities against BlackBerry provided advance copies of G20 briefings to ministers … Diplomatic targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones. Exploited this use at the G20 meetings last year.”

The operation appears to have run for at least six months. One document records that in March 2009 – the month before the heads of state meeting – GCHQ was working on an official requirement to “deliver a live dynamically updating graph of telephony call records for target G20 delegates … and continuing until G20 (2 April).”

Another document records that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September, GCHQ again took advantage of the occasion to spy on delegates, identifying the Turkish finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, as a target and listing 15 other junior ministers and officials in his delegation as “possible targets”. As with the other G20 spying, there is no suggestion that Simsek and his party were involved in any kind of criminal offence. The document explicitly records a political objective – “to establish Turkey’s position on agreements from the April London summit” and their “willingness (or not) to co-operate with the rest of the G20 nations”.

The September meeting of finance ministers was also the subject of a new technique to provide a live report on any telephone call made by delegates and to display all of the activity on a graphic which was projected on to the 15-sq-metre video wall of GCHQ’s operations centre as well as on to the screens of 45 specialist analysts who were monitoring the delegates.

“For the first time, analysts had a live picture of who was talking to who that updated constantly and automatically,” according to an internal review.

A second review implies that the analysts’ findings were being relayed rapidly to British representatives in the G20 meetings, a negotiating advantage of which their allies and opposite numbers may not have been aware: “In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential.”

In the week after the September meeting, a group of analysts sent an internal message to the GCHQ section which had organised this live monitoring: “Thank you very much for getting the application ready for the G20 finance meeting last weekend … The call records activity pilot was very successful and was well received as a current indicator of delegate activity …

“It proved useful to note which nation delegation was active during the moments before, during and after the summit. All in all, a very successful weekend with the delegation telephony plot.”

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Monday 17 June 2013

Find this story at 17 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

G20 summit: Britain plunged into diplomatic row over claims GCHQ spied on foreign politicians

Intelligence services were even said to have set up internet cafés at the summit venues which they used to read emails

Britain was plunged into a diplomatic row last night following claims that foreign politicians and diplomats were repeatedly spied upon when they attended two G20 summit meetings in London.

The allegations provoked anger in Turkey, Russia and South Africa, whose dignitaries were reportedly targeted by the covert surveillance operations in 2009 while Gordon Brown was Prime Minister.

The intelligence services were even said to have set up internet cafés at the summit venues which they used to read emails sent by visiting officials.

David Cameron refused yesterday to comment on the allegations, which proved an embarrassing distraction for him as the leaders of G8 nations gathered for a two-day meeting at Lough Erne, Northern Ireland.

However, one British source said he was not surprised by the claims and said it was always assumed other delegations tried to listen in to other countries’ private discussions at international summits.

Turkey, up to 15 of whose officials could have been snooped on in London, spelt out its fury and contacted the UK’s ambassador to Ankara to demand an explanation. It described the report in the Guardian as “very worrying”, particularly as Turkey and Britain are both members of Nato.

“We want an official and satisfactory explanation,” said a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry. “If these allegations are true, this is going to be scandalous for the UK.

“At a time when international co-operation depends on mutual trust, respect and transparency, such behaviour by an allied country is unacceptable.”

Clayson Monyela, a spokesman for South Africa’s foreign ministry said in his twitter feed that the matter was “extremely disturbing” and was “receiving attention”.

He said Britain and South Africa had cordial relations and called on London to investigate the claims “with a view to take strong & visible action”.

Alexei Pushkov, the chief of foreign affairs committee in the lower house of Russian parliament, tweeted: “It’s a scandal! The U.S. and British special services tapped (then President Dmitry) Medvedev’s phone at the 2009 G-20 summit. The US denies it, but we can’t trust them.”

Sergei Devyatov, a spokesman for the Federal Protection Service, which provides security for Russian government officials, said in a statement: “The Federal Protective Service is taking every necessary measure to provide the appropriate level of confidentiality of information for top-ranking officials of the country.”

According to yesterday’s report, secret documents show that delegates to the two summits had their computers monitored and phones intercepted on the Government’s orders.

The Guardian said the leaked papers suggested the operation was sanctioned at a senior level in Mr Brown’s government. One briefing paper said the head of GCHQ was about to meet David Miliband, who was the Foreign Secretary at the time.

One former Brown aide told the Independent yesterday: “We always assumed that everyone else did it at such meetings. We were advised not to plug in our laptops, use photocopiers, wi-fi or our usual Blackberrys – we would be given a different one for the duration of a summit.

“Traditionally the French were always at it. Others joined in so as not to be at a disadvantage. It was about knowing the thinking in the other delegations. But usually it didn’t yield much that was very surprising. It was regarded as fair game because every government did the same. I don’t know if it ever extended from governments to civil society or the media, that would be different and much more sinister.”

Tackled about the reports, Mr Cameron said today: “We never comment on security or intelligence issues and I am not about to start now. I don’t make comments on security or intelligence issues – that would be breaking something that no government has previously done.”

David Miliband could not be contacted last night.

Nigel Morris, Andrew Grice
Tuesday, 18 June 2013

Find this story at 18 June 2013

© independent.co.uk

UK intelligence agencies planned to spy on Commonwealth summit delegates

Top-secret document, prepared by GCHQ, contained proposals to target Commonwealth allies at heads of government summit

The Queen and Commonwealth leaders at the heads of government summit in Trinidad. Photograph: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty Images

UK intelligence agencies planned to spy on delegates to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in 2009, including being asked to obtain information to give UK ministers an advantage in talks with their Commonwealth counterparts, according to a top-secret document seen by the Guardian.

The meeting, which takes place every two years, was held in Trinidad in 2009. The UK delegation was headed by the Queen, with Prince Philip also in attendance, along with Gordon Brown, the then prime minister, David Miliband, then foreign secretary, and Douglas Alexander, then international development secretary.

A page from an internal top-secret intranet of GCHQ, shared with the NSA, discovered by the 29-year-old whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows a list of “key intelligence requirements” set out for the summit.

Alongside notes to check for threats against the security of the UK delegation during the visit, the document lists “Intelligence to inform UK senior’s [sic] Bi-lats”, “Initelligence [sic] on South Africa’s views on Zimbabwe prior to Brown/Zuma meeting” and “climate change reporting”.

The revelation that UK intelligence agencies made plans to target ministers and officials from Commonwealth countries, as well as the targeting of G20 officials disclosed elsewhere, is likely to raise tensions among the Commonwealth nations, who may seek clarity over whether their officials were bugged, and if so to what extent.

The note, which was prepared in advance of the meeting, also sets out a schedule for different UK agencies to set up their activities in Trinidad. MI6 were tasked to set up several days before the event, with GCHQ’s operation beginning with the arrival of delegates. The Guardian is not publishing the original document as it contains logistical details and some limited references to personnel.

The 2009 Commonwealth meeting, which was also attended by Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, appears to have been the first time MI6 – formally known as SIS, or the Secret Intelligence Service – had been asked to gather intelligence from a Commonwealth heads of government gathering.

“SIS have no past history of targeting this meeting,” the document notes in an explanation of why operations might be limited in their scope.

As it was prepared in advance of the Commonwealth meeting, the memo does not confirm to what extent surveillance was carried out, or even whether planned operations actually took place.

However, it does stress to agency staff that “we will be measured on our ability to deliver”.

The memo also shows that the agencies were preparing to brief senior ministers, and the prime minister, during the conference.

The memo noted that Lady Kinnock was available for briefings from 25 to 29 November, David Miliband could be briefed from 26 to 29 November, and Gordon Brown on 29 November only.

There is no indication as to whether the briefings actually took place, or whether the ministers were aware of the security services’ plans for the summit.

Ewen MacAskill, Nick Davies, Nick Hopkins, Julian Borger and James Ball
The Guardian, Sunday 16 June 2013 20.47 BST

Find this story at 16 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Warning of a ‘private army’ running Britain after government increases spending on security firm G4S by £65million

Controversial firm saw income from UK taxpayer rise by 20% last year
Company earned £394million in 2012-13, up from £328.5million
Labour MP Barry Sheerman warns of over-reliance on private contractors

Controversial security firm G4S has enjoyed a 20 per cent surge in government contracts despite a string of blunders, new figures show.

The company – which failed to recruit enough guards for the London Olympics – earned £394million from the taxpayer in 2012-13, up from £328.5million a year earlier.

The revelation sparked claims it was becoming the ‘private army’ of the state.

Security: The controversial firm G4S has seen a 20 per cent increase in its income from the UK government, raising fears of an over-reliance on a ‘private army’

With just weeks before the London Olympics opened in July last year, G4S admitted it would not be able to provide the thousands of guards it had promised.

Its reputation was severely damaged when 3,500 troops were called in to provide security at the biggest events.

In the wake of the debacle MPs called on the government to think again before awarding more lucrative contracts to the firm.

But it seems to have done little to dent its reputation in Whitehall, and next week it will provide security guarding the world’s most powerful men and women at the G8 summit at Lough Erne.

More…
Tories launch web assault on Labour and Lib Dems to put pressure on MPs to ‘Let Britain Decide’ on Europe
Number of over-65s still in work doubles in two decades to top 1million for the first time
Public-private pay gap widens even further: Average private sector earnings have ‘fallen faster’ than state employees during the recession

Labour MP Barry Sheerman, who obtained the figures on government spending with G4S, said he was worried about an increasing over-reliance on a small number of companies.

He warned: ‘The trouble is a lot of contractors are in a monopoly. They do seem to be swelling up and getting bigger and bigger and we are getting to the stage where the over-reliance on one company troubles you.

‘I am becoming increasingly worried about the monopoly position that G4S have in security services.

‘They are becoming the private army of Her Majesty’s Government. There is something going on that I think we need to shine a spotlight on.’

Blunder: The army had to be called in for the London Olympics after G4S failed to recruit enough guards last summer

Nick Buckles, who last month quit as G4S chief executive, admitted the Olympic security contract had been a ‘humiliating shambles’ for the company but Labour MP Barry Sheerman (right), who obtained the figures, warned of a few firms having a monopoly on state contracts

Most of the hike in Government spending on G4S contracts was down to an extra £51 million spent by the Ministry of Justice on contracts with the company.

A spokesman for the department said the increase was down to G4S being given contracts to run prisons at Birmingham and Oakwood, as well as managing the facilities of a large part of Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service.

The Department for Work and Pensions more than doubled its spend on G4S contracts – up from nearly £13.8 million to more than £32.1 million.
G4S: A HISTORY OF BLUNDERS

The UK-based security firm traces its roots back to a guarding company founded in Denmark in 1901.

G4S was formed when Group 4 merged with Securicor in 2004. The company has a long record of blunders including:

In 1993 Group 4 became the first private company to run prisoner escort services,m and lost seven inmates in three weeks

A year later a hunger striker escaped from Campsfield House detention centre, guarded by Group 4

In 1997 it emerged the firm had transferred a prisoner between two vans on a petrol station forecourt

Three prisoners escaped from Peterborough Crown Court in 2001

In 2011, G4S staff lost a set of cell keys just days after taking over Birmingham Prison Workers put an electronic tag on criminal Christopher Lowcock’s artificial limb

In 2012 the firm failed to train enough guards for the London Games which meant 3,500 soldiers had to be recalled from leave

In March this year a G4S guard at Heathrow ordered Royal Navy engineer Nicky Howse to change out of her uniform before flying to the US because it was ‘offensive’

A contract awarded to G4S for the Government’s Work Programme accounted for the increase, Employment Minister Mark Hoban said in his answer to Mr Sheerman’s question.

The figures do not include spending by the Department for Communities and Local Government which has not yet answered the MP’s question.

Mr Sheerman said it was ‘amazing’ that so much was being spent on G4S when it was failing to pay Olympic subcontractors that were ‘not complicit in the debacle’ of the company’s handling of security at London 2012.

‘I thought it was amazing that such an amount is being spent on one major contractor, also at a time when we still know that G4S have failed to pay subcontractors who have worked for them on the Olympic site,’ Mr Sheerman said.

He said some small and medium-sized businesses who worked on the Olympic site were made to subcontract to G4S by Locog, but now have not been paid.

‘I don’t know why they haven’t paid them, it is just bad principles,’ he said.

‘They were told at one stage in the development they were running the logistics and security of the athlete’s village.

‘Once that was finished they became subcontractors and told to be subcontractors to G4S.

‘One would have thought Locog would have leaned on G4S to do the honourable thing to the subcontractors.

‘They were not complicit in the debacle that occurred when the army came in.’

Kim Challis, G4S CEO of government and outsourcing solutions, said: ‘We have been working with the UK government for more than two decades, delivering the highest levels of service and under a high degree of monitoring and oversight.

‘We have won every contract we have been awarded by bidding in a highly competitive environment, based on delivering an effective service for the best deal for the taxpayer, with a number of providers challenging for the work.

‘We have a strong track record of delivering for our UK Government customers and are proud of the service our 11,000 employees provide to them, and the general public, every single day.’

Former G4S company boss Nick Buckles, who admitted the London 2012 contract had been a ‘humiliating shambles, last month quit his £1.2million-a-year role as chief executive.

He clung on to his job in the immediate aftermath of the Olympics debacle but the firm’s reputation suffered badly and in recent weeks poor trading caused shares to slump by more than 13 per cent in one day.

This month, G4S’s AGM was interrupted by protesters making reference to Jimmy Mubenga – an Angolan man who died while being deported from the UK by G4S guards.

In July last year, prosecutors said they would be taking no action against the three G4S staff over the death.

By Matt Chorley, Mailonline Political Editor

PUBLISHED: 12:36 GMT, 12 June 2013 | UPDATED: 08:42 GMT, 13 June 2013

Find this story at 13 June 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

Microsoft founder Bill Gates buys into G4S

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has given a vote of confidence to embattled British security firm G4S, despite a recent profit warning and ongoing controversy over the company’s Israeli prison contracts and the death of an Angolan man.

The US tech titan’s private investment vehicle, Cascade Investment, and his high-profile charitable fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, poured an extra £16m into G4S stock on Thursday, to increase their joint stake in the security giant to 3.2pc. The total holding is now worth around £110m.

Mr Gates’ endorsement will come as welcome relief following a year blighted by the company’s failure to supply enough security staff for the London Olympics. The fiasco eventually claimed the scalp of chief executive Nick Buckles, but only after a difficult first quarter in Europe prompted the company to issue a profits warning in May.

Last week, board members endured a stormy annual meeting, at which they faced repeated questions over three Israeli prison contracts in occupied Palestine and the death of Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga in 2010. Despite protests, G4S’ new chief executive Mr Almanza insisted at the fraught meeting that an independent study concluded that the company had not breached any aspect of “international humanitarian law”.

But this would not be the first time the $36.4bn Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest of its kind, has invested in a company that has faced fierce public criticism. The charitable trust holds stakes in BP and Exxon Mobil, which have both come under fire over catastrophic oil spills.

Mr Gates also has a history of investing in British companies, including Carpetright, Diageo and JJB Sports.

“The best guess would be that given the changes that have taken place at G4S over the past year, it’s probably an opportunity for G4S to set out a clear path,” said Steve Woolf, support services analyst at Numis.

“The underlying business is still very good. The share price has been quite beleaguered over the past 12 months. Now there is a chance to begin again and reinforce the core strategy.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was established by Mr Gates and his wife in 2000 with the goal of eradicating poverty and combating the world’s deadliest diseases.

By Denise Roland
4:29PM BST 10 Jun 2013

Find this story at 10 June 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Woolwich suspect’s brother ‘harassed and threatened by MI6 and MI5’

The brother of one of the men charged with the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich has claimed he was “harassed and threatened” by the British security services.

Michael Adebolajo’s younger brother, Jeremiah, 26, said he met MI6 intelligence officers numerous times while he was working in Saudia Arabia and was quizzed by MI5 early last year on a trip home to London.

He described a series of meetings, at the British Embassy in Riyadh, at airports and at other locations which he says he felt compelled to attend. At one stage, he claims he was stopped from flying on holiday so he could attend a meeting.

Mr Adebolajo, who cannot discuss his brother’s case for legal reasons, says he was first approached by MI6 early in 2011 when he was teaching English at the University of Ha’il in Nejd.

The approach from the British Embassy asking him to attend a meeting to discuss “life in Saudi Arabia” came a few weeks after his brother had been arrested in Kenya near the Somali border and deported to Britain.

During the meetings he was questioned about his brother-in-law James Thompson and asked about two other men who he was told had travelled to Yemen in advance of a terror attack on the UK.

Mr Adebolajo told The Times: “They were never openly aggressive, but they were always implicitly threatening. There was never the understanding that if I wanted I could stand up and say, that’s enough. There was always the understanding that that I have to co-operate or I would lose my job and I don’t know what else.”

He said the officers, who admitted they were from the security services, were particularly interested in the two men who had travelled to Yemen but denied their claims that he had been in contact with them.

“They were always looking for my knowledge and dealings with the two main indivuals they had shown me. They asked me biographical stuff, what mosques did I go to, do I pray, that sort of thing. Like they were trying to build a profile of me.”

When Drummer Rigby was killed on May 22 in Woolwich, Mr Adebolajo says he recognised his brother from a video posted online. He contacted his parents and said: “My Dad was so upset, distraught.”

Michael Adebolajo will next appear in court alongside co-defendant Michael Adebowale, 22, of Greenwich, south-east London, for a preliminary hearing on June 28.

Justin Davenport, Crime Editor
20 June 2013

Find this story at 20 June 2013

© Evening Standard Limited

Woolwich murder, the MI6 connection: Younger brother of Michael Adebolajo ‘was paid thousands to spy in Middle East’

The younger brother of one of the men accused of murdering Drummer Lee Rigby was paid thousands of pounds by MI6 as part of spying operations in the Middle East, The Mail on Sunday has discovered.

Jeremiah Adebolajo, who uses the name Abul Jaleel, was also asked to help ‘turn’ his brother, Michael, to work for MI5, who were already aware of Michael’s close links to extremist groups.

The claims are made by the Adebolajo family and a well-placed source who contacted The Mail on Sunday.

Jeremiah Adebolajo, 26, who works as an English teacher at a university in Saudi Arabia and returned to Britain this week, is to be questioned about his brother by Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detectives today.

Government sources have already confirmed that Michael Adebolajo was known to MI5. Last week it was alleged that he rebuffed efforts by the security service to recruit him as a spy.

Michael, 28, was discharged from hospital on Friday and was yesterday charged with the murder of Drummer Rigby and attempted murder of two police officers on May 22 in Woolwich, South London.

Now it has emerged that MI5’s sister agency, MI6, had targeted Jeremiah, a married teacher based at the University of Ha’il.

MI5 and MI6 work closely together on counter-terrorism operations. MI5 focuses on home security, while MI6 targets threats from overseas.

A document seen by The Mail on Sunday details concerns raised by Jeremiah’s family about MI6’s alleged harassment in April last year.

In it, Jeremiah’s sister, Blessing Adebolajo, 32, who works as a human resources assistant in London, says her brother was approached by MI6 while he was working at the University of Ha’il – an important strategic location in the Middle East because it takes only one hour by plane to reach 11 Arab capitals.

Jeremiah Adeboljao was working at the University of Ha’il in Saudi Arabia when he was approached by MI6

Complaint: A redacted copy of the allegations made by the Adebolajo family

A friend of Jeremiah has confirmed her account.

The friend said: ‘They asked him about Michael and asked him to help “turn” him to work for MI5.

‘They also told him to go to certain hotels, order a cup of tea and wait for his contact.

‘On these occasions he was handed £300, and was paid to fly first-class and stay in five-star hotels.’

The document, prepared by case workers with the charity Cageprisoners, says Blessing approached the East London charity for help because she was worried about the harassment and intimidation of both her brothers by the security and intelligence services.

She says MI6 bought a ticket so Jeremiah could fly to an Intercontinental hotel in another Middle East country (believed to be the United Arab Emirates) and that he was given local currency worth more than £1,000.

She also alleges Jeremiah told her that he was interrogated about specific people and was shown pictures of himself with named individuals taken in the UK. But Blessing told Cageprisoners that Jeremiah had ‘strongly’ rejected MI6’s offer to work as one of their agents.

Blessing Adebolajo says her brother Jeremiah was approached by MI6 and asked to become an informant

As a result of this rejection, his sister says he was ‘intimidated’ until he was finally told that he would be stopped from leaving the UK.

The friend said that two years ago Jeremiah was approached by UK security officers when he was held at Heathrow on his way back from Saudi Arabia.

During the interview, he was warned about what happens to Muslims who don’t help the Government and was shown documents that confirmed people he knew were being held in prisons throughout the world.

Police and security services are under huge pressure to explain what they know about Adebolajo and his alleged accomplice, Michael Adebowale. Despite warnings stretching back ten years, Michael Adebolajo is said to have been considered ‘low risk’ by MI5. He was photographed at high-profile protests – even standing next to hate preacher Anjem Choudary.

He was arrested in Kenyan 2010 over his alleged plans to travel to Somalia to join terror group Al-Shabaab before being returned to the UK. Jeremiah married Charlotte Patricia Taylor in 2008 at Sutton Register Office in Surrey.

Shortly afterwards the couple are believed to have left for Saudi Arabia where Jeremiah found work teaching. The University of Ha’il is one of Saudi Arabia’s most progressive education establishments and was established by Royal Decree in 2005. It consists of five colleges – Sciences, Medicine and Medical Sciences, Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, and a Community College – and has more than 16,000 students.

By Robert Verkaik
PUBLISHED: 21:02 GMT, 1 June 2013 | UPDATED: 21:03 GMT, 1 June 2013

Find this story at 1 June 2013

© Associated Newspapers Ltd

UK pays price for MI5 courting terror

The brutal murder of an off-duty British soldier in broad daylight in the southeast London district of Woolwich raises new questions about the British government’s national security strategy, at home and abroad. Officials have highlighted the danger of “self-radicalizing” cells inspired by Internet extremism, but this ignores overwhelming evidence that major UK terror plots have been incubated by the banned al-Qaeda-linked group formerly known as Al Muhajiroun.

Equally, it is no surprise that the attackers had been seen earlier on the radar of MI5, the UK’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency. While Al Muhajiroun’s emir, Syrian cleric Omar

Bakri Mohammed – currently self-exiled to Tripoli in northern Lebanon – has previously claimed “public immunity” due to murky connections with British intelligence, compelling evidence suggests such connections might still be operational in the context of foreign policy imperatives linked to oil and gas interests.

Security services and the Woolwich suspect
Despite being proscribed, Al Muhajiroun has continued to function with impunity in new incarnations, most recently under the banner of Izhar Ud-Deen-il-Haq – run under the tutelage of Bakri’s London-based deputy, British-born Anjem Choudary.

Almost every major terrorist attack and plot in the UK has in some way been linked to Choudary’s extremist network. The Woolwich attack was no exception. Anjem Choudary himself admitted to knowing one of the attackers, Michael “Mujahid” Adebolajo, as someone who “attended our meetings and my lectures”.

Adebolajo was a regular at Al Muhajiroun’s Woolwich High Street dawah (propagation) stall, was “tutored” by Omar Bakri himself, and had attended the group’s meetings between 2005 and 2011.

According to intelligence sources, both attackers were known to MI5 and MI6, which is concerned with foreign intelligene, and had appeared on “intelligence watch lists”, and Adebolajo had “featured in several counter-terrorist investigations” as a “peripheral figure” for the “last eight years” – suggesting his terrorist activities began precisely when he joined Al Muhajiroun.

In particular, credible reports suggest he was high on MI5’s priority for the past three years, with family and friends confirming that he was repeatedly harassed by the agency to become an informant – as late as six months ago.

In this context, the touted “lone wolf” hypothesis is baseless. For instance, while the recently convicted “Birmingham 11”, sentenced last month for their role in a bombing plot in the UK, had access to al-Qaeda’s Inspire magazine and Anwar al-Awlaki’s video speeches, they had also attended al-Qaeda terrorist training camps in Pakistan. This could only happen through an established UK-based Islamist network with foreign connections.

Al Muhajiroun is the only organization that fits the profile. One in five terrorist convictions in the UK for more than a decade were for people who were either members of or had links to Al Muhajiroun. Last year, four Al Muhajiroun members were convicted at Woolwich Crown Court of planning to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

Inspired by Awlaki’s teachings, the plotters had also been taught by Choudary’s longtime Al Muhajiroun colleague, ex-terror convict Abu Izzadeen. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

MI6’s terror Network
In 1996, Omar Bakri founded Al Muhajiroun with Anjem Choudary. According to John Loftus, a former US Army Intelligence Officer and Justice Department prosecutor, three senior Al Muhajiroun figures at the time – Bakri, Abu Hamza, and Haroon Rashid Aswat – had been recruited by MI6 that year to facilitate Islamist activities in the Balkans.

The objective was geopolitical expansion – destabilizing former Soviet republics, sidelining Russia and paving the way for the Trans-Balkan oil pipeline protected by incoming North Atlantic Treaty Organization “peacekeeping” bases.

“This is about America’s energy security”, said then US energy secretary Bill Richardson: “It’s also about preventing strategic inroads by those who don’t share our values. We’re trying to move these newly independent countries toward the West. We would like to see them reliant on Western commercial and political interests rather than going another way. We’ve made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and it’s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right.”

On February 10, 1998, Bakri and Choudary issued and signed a “fatwa” – a religious ruling – titled “Muslims in Britain Declare War Against the US and British governments”, which warned that the governments of “non-Muslim countries” must “stay away from Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Arabia, etc or face a full scale war of jihad which will be the responsibility of every Muslim around the world to participate in” – “including the Muslims in the USA and in Britain” who should “confront by all means whether verbally, financially, politically or militarily the US and British aggression”.

The same year, Bakri was one of a select few to receive a fax from Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan outlining four objectives for a jihad against the US, including hijacking civilian planes.

Public Immunity
In 2000, Bakri admitted to training British Muslims to fight as jihadists in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya or South Lebanon. Recruits were “learning firearms and explosives use, surveillance and other skills” and “would be expected to join a jihad being waged in one country or another”. That year, he boasted: “The British government knows who we are. MI5 has interrogated us many times. I think now we have something called public immunity. There is nothing left. You can label us … put us behind bars, but it’s not going to work.”

Labour Party MP Andrew Dismore told parliament the following year about a month after 9/11 that Bakri’s private security firm, Sakina Security Services, “sends people overseas for jihad training with live arms and ammunition”, including training camps “in Pakistan and Afghanistan”, and even at “many different sites in the United Kingdom”.

Hundreds of Britons were being funneled through such training only to return to the UK advocating that Whitehall and Downing Street be attacked as “legitimate targets”. Though Sakina was raided by police and shut down, Bakri and Hamza were not even arrested, let alone charged or prosecuted.

It later emerged that the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation had flagged up the unusual presence of Al Muhajiroun activists at Arizona flight schools in the US in the summer preceding 9/11, many of whom had terrorist connections, including one described as a close bin Laden associate.

The London bombings
In 2003, two Al Muhajiroun members carried out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, Israel. That year, authorities began tracking an al-Qaeda ringleader in Britain, Mohammed Quayyum Khan. By 2004, the surveillance operation uncovered a plot to plant fertilizer bombs around the UK, prepared by a cell of 18 people, most of whom were Al Muhajiroun members who had studied under Bakri and Choudary. Quayyum Khan, like the latter, remains free.

The 7/7 bombers, also Al Muhajiroun members, were connected to both terror plots – Mohamed Sidique Khan had been friends with the Tel Aviv bombers, and had even travelled to Israel weeks before their suicide attack. Khan went on to learn to make explosives in a terrorist training camp set up by Al Muhajiroun’s British and American members in northern Pakistan.

A year before 7/7, Bakri warned of a “well-organized group” linked to al-Qaeda “on the verge of launching a big operation” against London. Then just months before the 7/7 bombings, The Times picked up Bakri telling his followers in Internet lectures: “I believe the whole of Britain has become Dar al-Harb [land of war]. The kuffar [non-believer] has no sanctity for their own life or property.” Muslims are “obliged” to “join the jihad… wherever you are”, and suicide bombings are permitted because “Al-Qaeda… have the emir”.

Entrapment gone crazy
The strange reluctance to prosecute Al Muhajiroun activists despite their support for al-Qaeda terrorism seems inexplicable. But has Britain’s support for al-Qaeda affiliated extremists abroad granted their Islamist allies at home “public immunity”?

In early 2005, shortly before the July 7 London bombings, the Wall Street Journal’s Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ron Suskind interviewed Bakri after he was told by an MI5 official that the cleric “had helped MI5 on several of its investigations”.

Suskind recounts in his book, The Way of the World, that when asked why, Bakri told him: “Because I like it here. My family’s here. I like the health benefits.” Bakri reiterated this in an interview in early 2007 after his move to Tripoli, Lebanon, claiming, “We were able to control the Muslim youth… The radical preacher that allows a venting of a point of view is preventing violence.”

Suskind observed: “Bakri enjoyed his notoriety and was willing to pay for it with information he passed to the police… It’s a fabric of subtle interlocking needs: the [British authorities] need be in a backchannel conversation with someone working the steam valve of Muslim anger; Bakri needs health insurance”.

Why would MI5 and MI6 retain the services of someone as dangerous as Bakri given the overwhelming evidence of his centrality to the path to violent radicalization? On the one hand, it would seem that, through Al Muhajiroun, MI5 is spawning many of the plots it lays claim to successfully foiling – as the FBI is also doing.

On the other, the strategy aligns conveniently with narrow geopolitical interests rooted in Britain’s unflinching subservience to wider US strategy in the Muslim world.

The not-so-new great game
Little has changed since the Great Game in the Balkans. According to Alastair Crooke, a former MI6 officer and Middle East adviser to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the Saudis are mobilizing Islamist extremists to service mutual US-Saudi interests: “US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor [from Iran to Syria], but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted.”

This region-wide strategy involves sponsorship of Salafi jihadists in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq. Praising Obama’s appropriation of this policy, John Hannah – former national security advisor to vice president Dick Cheney – rejoiced that the idea was to “weaken the Iranian mullahs; undermine the Assad regime; support a successful transition in Egypt; facilitate Gaddafi’s departure; reintegrate Iraq into the Arab fold; and encourage a negotiated solution in Yemen.”

The strategy’s endgame? Petro-politics, once again, is center-stage, with the US-UK seeking to dominate regional oil and gas pipeline routes designed, in the words of Saudi expert John Bradley “to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism” in the Persian Gulf petro-states.

The seeds of this clandestine alliance with Islamists go back more than six years, when Seymour Hersh reported that the George W Bush administration had “cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations” intended to weaken the Shi’ite Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria,” wrote Hersh, “a byproduct of which is ’the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups’ hostile to the United States and sympathetic to al-Qaeda”. He also noted that “the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria.”

In April 2007, the Lebanese Daily Star reported that the United States had earmarked US$60 million to reinforce Interior Ministry forces and Sunni organizations identified as “jihadists”.

Did Omar Bakri benefit from this? Having settled in Lebanon, Bakri told one journalist at the time, “Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organize their jihad against the Shi’ites… Al-Qaeda in Lebanon… are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah.”

And last year, Bakri boasted, “I’m involved with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side.” The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters”, including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon.

That Bakri appears to be benefiting from the US strategy to support Islamist extremists in the region is particularly worrying given the British government’s acknowledgement that a “substantial number” of Britons are fighting in Syria, who “will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests… or in Western states”.

With the EU embargo against supplying arms to Syrian rebels lifted this month after UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to support the rebels – some of whom are al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists with links to extremists at home – the question must be asked whether Britain’s security services remain compromised by short-sighted geopolitical interests rooted in our chronic dependency on fossil fuels.

Unfortunately the British government’s latest proposals to deal with violent radicalization – Internet censorship, a lower threshold for banning “extremist” groups – deal not with the failures of state policy, but with the symptoms of those failures. Perhaps governments have tacitly accepted that terrorism, after all, is the price of business as usual.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is an international security expert who writes for The Guardian at his Earth Insight blog. He is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (2006). His work was used by the Coroner’s Inquiry into the July 7 2005 bombings in London and the 9/11 Commission.

May 30, ’13
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Find this story at 30 May 2013

© Copyright 1999 – 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings), Ltd.
© Copyright 2013 Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Patrick Cockburn on U.S. Plans to Arm Syrian Rebels: Where is the Skepticism About Chemical Weapons?

Veteran foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn of The Independent joins us to discuss the Obama administration’s decision to begin directly arming Syrian rebels after concluding the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons. “There must be some doubts about this,” Cockburn says, adding that it “reminds me of what they were saying in 2002 and 2003 about Saddam [Hussein]’s weapons of mass destruction.” Cockburn warns U.S. involvement could escalate regional conflicts that could “go on for years,” and critiques the media’s lack of skepticism about White House claims.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin the news that the Obama administration has decided to begin arming Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad after concluding Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons. The White House said Thursday it has firmer evidence the Assad government has used the weapons multiple times on a “small scale” and that up 150 people have died. Unnamed officials told the Times the CIA would coordinate the transfers of small arms and ammunition. The United Nations says roughly 93,000 people have died in the two-year-old civil war.

AMY GOODMAN: A U.N. panel recently accused both sides of carrying out war crimes. In a conference phone call with reporters Thursday, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes declined to say exactly what type of aid the U.S. would give the rebels’ Supreme Military Council.

BEN RHODES: The president has made a decision about providing more support to the opposition. That will involve providing direct support to the SMC. That includes military support. I cannot detail for you all of the types of that support, for a variety of reasons, but, again, suffice to say this is going to be different in both scope and scale in terms of what we are providing to the SMC than what we have provided before.

AMY GOODMAN: For more, we’re joined on the telephone by Patrick Cockburn, foreign correspondent for The Independent of London who has reported extensively on Syria.

Your response to what the United States is saying and going to do in Syria, Patrick?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, I think it’s probably bad news for the Syrian people. It means there’s going to be an escalation of the war. What isn’t clear yet is whether the administration, as it hints, is going to just trying to redress the balance between the rebels and Assad’s forces, after the rebels have suffered some defeat, or whether they’re going right down the road to try and overthrow Assad, rather like Libya in 2011, and this is the beginning of an all-out offensive against Assad, which will grow incrementally.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Patrick Cockburn, the potential here for the United States intervening not only in the situation in Syria but also in the growing sort of divide and conflict between Shia and Sunni throughout that region of the world?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah, so this is extraordinarily dangerous. I mean, the—what’s happening in Syria may have begun as an uprising against a dictatorial government, but now it’s Sunni against Shia within the country, it’s Sunni against Shia outside the country. The allies of the U.S. in this conflict are extremely sectarian Sunni monarchies, very little interest in democracy. So, I think once you get entangled in this, rather like Iraq, it’s very different to—difficult to disentangle yourself, and this could go on for years.

AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, the evidence that the U.S. says it has that the Assad forces used chemical weapons?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, there must be, you know, some doubts about this. You know, they say this in a sure voice, but it’s a sure voice which reminds me of what they were saying in 2002 and 2003 about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. You know, you would need the evidence to be laid out in front of you to really be convinced by this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the concerns in some circles that this is really developing into a proxy war with Iran and Hezbollah, rather than actually trying to deal with the situation internally within Syria?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Yeah, it already has turned into a proxy war. You can see that with—Hezbollah and Iran were involved, but also the U.S. was—had already combined with Qatar to send weapons. Qatar has sent up to $3 billion to the rebels, 70 loads of flights of weapons, organized by—with the CIA. So, that was already happening. I think one of the—you know, what ought to happen would be to go down the diplomatic road to try and have a ceasefire. I don’t think you can have any solution at this moment in time, because you people are too involved in the war, they hate each other. But they should push for a ceasefire, and then there might be the basis for some talks afterwards. But the decision by the U.S. looks as though it’s going to push this into an all-out and long-running conflict.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Patrick Cockburn, your assessment of the media coverage of what’s happening in Syria and the U.S.’s decision?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, I was rather amazed and depressed by some of it that I have seen, particularly CNN, that was an—seemed to be an immediate acceptance that whatever was said about Syria employing chemical weapons was accepted as if it was written in stone, despite all of what happened in Iraq in the past, and an almost total lack of skepticism about the claims now being made.

AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, I want to thank you for being with us—of course, we’ll continue to follow what’s happening in Syria—foreign correspondent for The Independent, speaking to us from London. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’ll speak with James Bamford about the NSA’s secret war. Stay with us.

Friday, June 14, 2013

Fin this story at 14 June 2013

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We’ve moved on from the Iraq war – but Iraqis don’t have that choice

Like characters from The Great Gatsby, Britain and the US have arrogantly turned their backs and left a country in ruins

Iraq’s ministry of social affairs estimates 4.5 million children have lost one or both parents. This means 14% of the population are orphans. Photograph: Reuters

The dust in Iraq rolls down the long roads that are the desert’s fingers. It gets in your eyes and nose and throat; it swirls in markets and school playgrounds, consuming children kicking a ball; and it carries, according to Dr Jawad Al-Ali, “the seeds of our death”. An internationally respected cancer specialist at the Sadr teaching hospital in Basra, Dr Ali told me that in 1999, and today his warning is irrefutable. “Before the Gulf war,” he said, “we had two or three cancer patients a month. Now we have 30 to 35 dying every month. Our studies indicate that 40 to 48% of the population in this area will get cancer: in five years’ time to begin with, then long after. That’s almost half the population. Most of my own family have it, and we have no history of the disease. It is like Chernobyl here; the genetic effects are new to us; the mushrooms grow huge; even the grapes in my garden have mutated and can’t be eaten.”

Along the corridor, Dr Ginan Ghalib Hassen, a paediatrician, kept a photo album of the children she was trying to save. Many had neuroblastoma. “Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumour in two years,” she said. “Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same.”

Among the doctors I interviewed, there was little doubt that depleted uranium shells used by the Americans and British in the Gulf war were the cause. A US military physicist assigned to clean up the Gulf war battlefield across the border in Kuwait said, “Each round fired by an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft carried over 4,500 grams of solid uranium. Well over 300 tons of DU was used. It was a form of nuclear warfare.”

Although the link with cancer is always difficult to prove absolutely, the Iraqi doctors argue that “the epidemic speaks for itself”. The British oncologist Karol Sikora, chief of the World Health Organisation’s cancer programme in the 1990s, wrote in the British Medical Journal: “Requested radiotherapy equipment, chemotherapy drugs and analgesics are consistently blocked by United States and British advisers [to the Iraq sanctions committee].” He told me, “We were specifically told [by the WHO] not to talk about the whole Iraq business. The WHO is not an organisation that likes to get involved in politics.”

Recently, Hans von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and senior UN humanitarian official in Iraq, wrote to me: “The US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where depleted uranium had been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.” A WHO report, the result of a landmark study conducted with the Iraqi ministry of health, has been “delayed”. Covering 10,800 households, it contains “damning evidence”, says a ministry official and, according to one of its researchers, remains “top secret”. The report says birth defects have risen to a “crisis” right across Iraqi society where depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metals were used by the US and Britain. Fourteen years after he sounded the alarm, Dr Jawad Al-Ali reports “phenomenal” multiple cancers in entire families.

Iraq is no longer news. Last week, the killing of 57 Iraqis in one day was a non-event compared with the murder of a British soldier in London. Yet the two atrocities are connected. Their emblem might be a lavish new movie of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Two of the main characters, as Fitzgerald wrote, “smashed up things and creatures and retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness … and let other people clean up the mess”.

The “mess” left by George Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq is a sectarian war, the bombs of 7/7 and now a man waving a bloody meat cleaver in Woolwich. Bush has retreated back into his Mickey Mouse “presidential library and museum” and Tony Blair into his jackdaw travels and his money.

Their “mess” is a crime of epic proportions, wrote Von Sponeck, referring to the Iraqi ministry of social affairs’ estimate of 4.5 million children who have lost one or both parents. “This means a horrific 14% of Iraq’s population are orphans,” he wrote. “An estimated one million families are headed by women, most of them widows”. Domestic violence and child abuse are rightly urgent issues in Britain; in Iraq the catastrophe ignited by Britain has brought violence and abuse into millions of homes.

In her book Dispatches from the Dark Side, Gareth Peirce, Britain’s greatest human rights lawyer, applies the rule of law to Blair, his propagandist Alastair Campbell and his colluding cabinet. For Blair, she wrote, “human beings presumed to hold [Islamist] views, were to be disabled by any means possible, and permanently … in Blair’s language a ‘virus’ to be ‘eliminated’ and requiring ‘a myriad of interventions [sic] deep into the affairs of other nations.’ The very concept of war was mutated to ‘our values versus theirs’.” And yet, says Peirce, “the threads of emails, internal government communiques, reveal no dissent”. For foreign secretary Jack Straw, sending innocent British citizens to Guantánamo was “the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objective”.

These crimes, their iniquity on a par with Woolwich, await prosecution. But who will demand it? In the kabuki theatre of Westminster politics, the faraway violence of “our values” is of no interest. Do the rest of us also turn our backs?

www.johnpilger.com

• This article was amended on 27 May 2013. The original referred to the A-10 Warthog aircraft as the A-10 Warhog.

John Pilger
The Guardian, Sunday 26 May 2013 18.00 BST

Find this story at 26 May 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

FBI admits to using surveillance drones over US soil

Robert Mueller tells Congress bureau uses drones in a ‘very, very minimal way’ as senators describe ‘burgeoning concern’

The FBI has admitted it sometimes uses aerial surveillance drones over US soil, and suggested further political debate and legislation to govern their domestic use may be necessary.

Speaking in a hearing mainly about telephone data collection, the bureau’s director, Robert Mueller, said it used drones to aid its investigations in a “very, very minimal way, very seldom”.

However, the potential for growing drone use either in the US, or involving US citizens abroad, is an increasingly charged issue in Congress, and the FBI acknowleged there may need to be legal restrictions placed on their use to protect privacy.

“It is still in nascent stages but it is worthy of debate and legislation down the road,” said Mueller, in response to questions from Hawaii senator Mazie Hirono.

Hirono said: “I think this is a burgeoning concern for many of us.”

Dianne Feinstein, who is also chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the issue of drones worried her far more than telephone and internet surveillance, which she believes are subject to sufficient legal oversight.

“Our footprint is very small,” Mueller told the Senate judiciary committee. “We have very few and have limited use.”

He said the FBI was in “the initial stages” of developing privacy guidelines to balance security threats with civil liberty concerns.

It is known that drones are used by border control officials and have been used by some local law enforcement authorities and Department of Homeland Security in criminal cases.

Mueller said he wasn’t sure if there were official agreements with these other agencies.

“To the extent that it relates to the air space there would be some communication back and forth [between agencies],” Mueller said.

A Senate intelligence committee member, Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, later questioned whehter such use of drones was constitutional. “Unmanned aerial systems have the potential to more efficiently and effectively perform law enforcement duties, but the American people expect the FBI and other government agencies to first and foremost protect their constitutional rights,” Udall said in a prepared statement.

“I am concerned the FBI is deploying drone technology while only being in the ‘initial stages’ of developing guidelines to protect Americans’ privacy rights. I look forward to learning more about this program and will do everything in my power to hold the FBI accountable and ensure its actions respect the US constitution.”

Another senator, Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, also expressed concern. Asked whether the FBI drones were known about before the Mueller hearing, Grassley told CNN “absolutely not.” Grassley added the FBI was asked last year whether agents were using drones but the bureau never got back with an answer.

At the same hearing, Mueller urged Congress to move carefully before making any changes that might restrict the National Security Agency programs for mass collection of people’s phone records and information from the internet.

“If we are to prevent terrorist attacks, we have to know and be in their communications,” said Mueller. “Having the ability to identify a person in the United States, one telephone number with a telephone that the intelligence community is on in Yemen or Somalia or Pakistan … may prevent that one attack, that Boston or that 9/11.”

The FBI director argued for the continued use of the NSA programs. “Are you going to take the dots off the table, make it unavailable to you when you’re trying to prevent the next terrorist attack? That’s a question for Congress,” said Mueller.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

20 Jun 2013
Robert Mueller says the use of unmanned drones for surveillance purposes in the US is ‘minimal’

19 Jun 2013
Immigration reform bill would boost economy and cut deficit, report says

16 Jun 2013
Blocking immigration bill would doom 2016 hopes, says leading Republican

13 Jun 2013
NSA to release more information on surveillance programs – as it happened

Dan Roberts in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 June 2013 21.20 BST

Find this story at 19 June 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Spies Like Them; How Robert Mueller transformed — for better and for worse — the FBI into a counterterrorism agency.

With the announcement that James B. Comey will be nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Robert W. Mueller III as the director of the FBI, a modern era will soon come to an end. Mueller has served longer (12 years) as FBI director than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover. He is the first person to complete a full term as director since Hoover’s tumultuous and controversial 48-year reign, and the imposition of a 10-year term limit by Congress in 1976. While the public and the press generally laud Mueller for his achievements at the FBI, his own agency has a more conflicted view.

Mueller was appointed by President George W. Bush to replace Louis Freeh just days before 9/11, and was a bit like a raw recruit the first time he witnessed combat in the stressful period that followed the attack. He was little heard or seen in the field as he allowed Deputy Director Tom Pickard to lead the daily all-office conference calls and manage the initial stages of the TRADEBOM and PENTBOM cases, as the investigations into the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were known. Mueller soon found his voice, however, and set about ensuring that the FBI was protected from the wolves that were circling the bureau, sniffing the blood of blame and recrimination for the 2,977 innocent victims. The wolves were bent on dismantling and destroying the organization that allowed 19 Saudi terrorists to live among us for so long, essentially unnoticed. The FBI was described as having precipitated an intelligence failure of epic proportions.

Mueller eventually prevailed over his detractors, and he satisfied the FBI’s numerous 9/11 critics by creating the National Security Branch, an Intelligence Division, a Cyber Division, and reprogramming thousands of FBI agents from criminal work into counterterrorism and intelligence analysis. He personally initiated one of those grand paradigm shifts in government that academics and historians build careers around analyzing and evaluating. There is no doubt that Director Mueller is held in the highest esteem by local law enforcement, Congress, and the general public; he will go down in history as one of the FBI’s greatest directors.

Within the FBI, however, there are at least two divergent views of Mueller’s legacy. The first is that Mueller saved the FBI from being broken up into its component parts amid the 9/11 Commission’s call to create a new domestic intelligence agency to address counterterrorism. For that political feat he is a hero to a great many current and former agents — certainly to the more than 50 percent of FBI agents who have joined the bureau since 2001, many specifically to fight terrorism. Most of them have spent their entire careers working counterterrorism or intelligence matters, however, and they have no experience with the criminal investigative organization that was the pre-9/11 FBI. Theirs is a world of terrorism leads, assessments, preliminary investigations, national security letters, FISA intercepts, and the occasional undercover operation targeting a self-directed domestic terrorist.

Much like the way the FBI shifted in the 1940s from fighting bank robbery and gangster crime to fighting Nazis and catching Communist spies during the Cold War, the modern FBI became all counterterrorism, all intelligence, all the time, after the 9/11 attacks. Mueller effectively transformed the FBI into the intelligence agency that his critics always wanted it to be

To effect this great change, Mueller mandated that the FBI would leave no counterterrorism leads unaddressed, at a time when the amount of unaddressed work in FBI files was a standard by which field office manpower needs were documented. At the direction of President Bush, Mueller ordered this focus on prevention — at the expense, if need be, of prosecution. He shifted the internal and external legacy of the FBI agent from that of a hard-nosed, cigar-smoking, tough-guy criminal investigator, to one of desk-bound, egghead intelligence collector, perusing open and classified sources for leads and tips — an FBI agent whose job it was to collate and analyze information about terrorism, not just to investigate federal crimes.

But there is another view of Mueller’s legacy. The shift to an intelligence agency was dramatic and disheartening to those who had joined the bureau under other former directors, particularly Louis Freeh, to investigate gangs, organized crime, and international cartels — and actually put people in jail. It was now clear to them that being part of an intelligence agency was not the same as being a member of the world’s premier law enforcement agency.

Many senior agents view the changes with a jaundiced eye. In a nutshell, here’s what a lot of current agents think: The focus on intelligence for intelligence’s sake has been detrimental to the FBI, particularly within the criminal program. You can gather all the intelligence you want and “know your domain,” but if you don’t have the agents to act on the intelligence, or don’t want to act on criminal intelligence, it’s useless. Many outside the FBI do not understand that, unlike within the national security and intelligence communities, there is no system to easily disseminate criminal intelligence to other law enforcement agencies. So criminal evidence is often collected, reported, analyzed, and then filed away.

Senior agents complain about the increase in the administrative burden that accompanied the shift to intelligence gathering: Intelligence reporting requirements often take away from the time necessary to build a case for prosecution. Instead, agents now spend their valuable investigative time entering evidence into computer systems, making their own copies, logging vehicle mileage, running records checks, and in general doing their own administrative support with no clerical assistance. “Support” positions have given way to intelligence analysis positions to track an al Qaeda threat that President Obama says is severely diminished and may no longer exist domestically. As one senior agent said to me, “If they want to pay a 20-year agent with an advanced degree and national criminal expertise to move file boxes and make copies of case files, who am I to complain?” All of this, however, makes the FBI far less efficient.

Others noted the shift away from the law enforcement model to a corporate model. Internal FBI directives now come out as corporate policy. Outsiders like McKinsey Consulting and its 23-year-old Harvard MBAs were brought in to tell senior FBI agents how to transform themselves and work more efficiently. Learning Lean Six Sigma and earning your business black belt became more important than catching bad guys. The FBI’s own Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide and other policy implementation guides (PIGs) have become overly burdensome to follow and impossible to commit to memory. For example, the PIG regarding the use of bureau vehicles is over 40 pages long, when all it really needs to say is, “Bureau vehicles are for official use only.”

In addition to the corporate transition, current street agents complain that the shift to intelligence work has made senior FBI officials perceive the bureau’s analytical model as superior to the investigative model. Analysts are given more respect, particularly at FBI headquarters, where the influx of senior staff from within the U.S. intelligence community are given deference over those who carry guns, take risks (both with their lives and liability), are injured on duty, and ultimately collect the intelligence that the analysts regurgitate into reports for field agents. These are the views of the agents in the streets and are based on conversations with them about the direction of the FBI.

As I write these words, I can already hear the disagreement from my colleagues and friends within the intelligence community, who will argue that my comments re-enforce the need for a separate agency to conduct domestic intelligence collection. But my argument is not about the need for analysts, but rather about how they are used in the bureau to the detriment of investigators, particularly within the criminal programs. When you try and create an animal by committee, you end up with a camel. That is what the FBI has become under Mueller … a law-enforcement camel.

Currently, the FBI’s top investigative priorities, in order, are:
Protect the United States from terrorist attacks;
Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage;
Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes;
Combat public corruption at all levels;
Protect civil rights;
Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises;
Combat major white-collar crime;
Combat significant violent crime.

As you can see from this list, combating major white-collar and significant violent crime is now the FBI’s lowest investigative priority.

In my personal opinion, one of Mueller’s major failings during his 12-year tenure has been ignoring the threat to national security that systemic mortgage fraud by banking insiders posed to the United States. The FBI basically ignored systemic financial institution fraud of major proportions. While many threats are often bandied about as a danger to national security, the near collapse of the housing industry through sub-prime lending and the securitization of mortgages almost resulted in a total failure of the banking industry. Without the intervention by Congress and the bailout of numerous banks “too big to fail,” the United States — and possibly the world — would have experienced catastrophic consequences.

According to a report by the Seattle Post Intelligencer in 2007, this occured because the FBI “dramatically cut its number of white-collar crime investigations, including mortgage fraud, after shifting about 2,400 agents from traditional crime-fighting squads to counterterrorism units in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks.” The Post Intelligencer further reported that “the FBI was aware for years of ‘pervasive and growing’ fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America’s financial meltdown, but it did not take definitive action to stop it.” The Bush administration later rejected FBI pleas for more agents to investigate mortgage fraud. “We have to prevent another 9/11-type surprise attack,” agents were told by Bureau officials. Transfers to counterterrorism prevented the FBI from understanding how bad mortgages were packaged into bad securities, creating a widespread impact that weakened the greater economy.

What then occurred was that FBI staffing issues after 9/11 led to white-collar criminals escaping prosecution and punishment in financial institution fraud cases involving billions of dollars. For example, the collapse of Washington Mutual Bank, which was the largest savings and loan institution in the United States until its collapse in 2008, due to horribly flawed sub-prime lending practices, resulted in no one in bank executive management (who had pledged to make WaMu “the Walmart of banking”) going to jail. Not one!

FBI officials knew what was going on because they had good criminal intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, on the corrupt attorneys and appraisers, and on the insider schemes. But no action was taken on the intelligence. Had the violators been terrorists whose crime resulted in deaths of innocent civilians — instead of homes lost to foreclosure while the corporations reaped billions of dollars in profits — the FBI would have been excoriated. But it was alleged that when Mueller was briefed on mortgage fraud, “his eyes would glaze over. It was not something that he would consider a high priority. It was not on his radar screen,” according to a retired FBI official cited in the press.

It wasn’t just the FBI’s white-collar crime program that lacked the resources and political will to do its job. Organized crime, complex international drug investigations, and domestic police cooperation suffered as well. There were simply not enough experienced agents working criminal cases nor enough federal prosecutors to prosecute the complex cases that could result from criminal investigations. As former FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, speaking as the source Deep Throat, allegedly told Watergate reporter Bob Woodward in a basement parking garage, “You got to follow the money.” Unfortunately, today, according to current and past FBI agents, there are few people left with the expertise to follow the money.

The next director of the bureau will face significant criminal investigative and counterterrorism challenges. James Comey, like the previous two FBI directors, was a career federal prosecutor and an attorney at the Department of Justice for the majority of his career. This experience will serve him well, but only if he embraces a new paradigm that takes a hard look at the functionality of the counterterrorism and intelligence programs vis-a-vis the criminal programs and does not succumb to political pressure to only commit resources to what is politically expedient.

Among the current and former agents with whom I have spoken, Comey is highly regarded for his stand, along with Mueller, against then White House aides Andrew H. Card and Alberto R. Gonzales during their attempt to get ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens then being conducted by the National Security Agency. Integrity goes a long way with rank-and-file FBI agents, as do the stones to stand up to your boss and tell him he is wrong. The threat to resign was real and would have had tremendous political impact had both Comey and Mueller left in protest of that policy. It is my personal hope that the president chose Comey based on a belief that a willingness to stand on principle is the single most important characteristic that an FBI director can have.

Will Comey continue to maintain that political independence, or will he succumb and follow Mueller’s policies regarding the prioritization of national security programs within the FBI over the needs of the criminal branches, particularly as the war in Afghanistan ends, and the president proclaims al Qaeda defeated? Does Comey represent a new hope or a continuation of the status quo? Only time will tell.

BY DAVID GOMEZ | MAY 31, 2013

Find this story at 31 May 2013

©2013 The Foreign Policy Group, LLC.

Obama and His Allies Say the Govt Doesn’t Listen to Your Phone Calls — But the FBI Begs to Differ

Today, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) insisted [3] the NSA has not been recording Americans’ phone calls under any surveillance program, and that any claim to the contrary was “misinformation.” Rogers’ comments countered remarks from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who said he was told in a House Judiciary Committee briefing [4] by FBI Director Robert Mueller that private firms contracted by the NSA could listen to phone calls made by American citizens.

Since Nadler’s comments were reported by CNET [4], he has issued a subsequent statement backtracking [5] on his original remarks: “I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.”

The full transcript of Nadler’s exchange with Mueller shows the FBI director claiming that “a particularized order from the FISA court directed at that particular phone and that particular individual” is required for the FBI to retrieve the content of any American’s call.

However, in a May 1 interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett– well before the scandal over NSA spying sent the White House and its allies into damage control mode – a former FBI agent named Tim Clemente made a startling revelation. According to Clemente, an April 18 phone call between Boston bombing perpetrator Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife was retrieved by the FBI as part of its surveillance of bulk US telecom data.

Here is the relevant section of Burnett and Clemente’s exchange [6]:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.

Clemente’s comments completely undermine Rep. Rogers’ claim that the government is not recording Americans’ phone calls, and seem to contradict Mueller’s claim that any surveillance that exists is “particularized” according to court orders. Unfortunately, the remarkable statement was buried under the Boston bombings media frenzy, and seems to have been forgotten amidst the latest revelations of NSA domestic spying.

During a March 11, 2011 briefing [7] to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI’s Mueller offered another clue that his bureau was seeking broad access to American phone records. Towards the end of his testimony, Mueller complained that, “our investigations can be stymied by the records preservations practices of private communications providers. Current law does not require telephone companies and Internet service providers to retain customer subscriber information and source and destination data for any set period of time.”

A year later, the FBI formally requested that Congress expand the 1994 Communications for Law Enforcement Assistance Act (CLEA) to ensure that instant messaging, VoIP, and email servers were “wiretap friendly [8].” FBI general counsel Andrew Weissman began the process by drafting legislation requiring online servers to add extra coding to their programs providing the FBI a backdoor into consumer data, including emails and online chats.

This April, at a luncheon for the American Bar Association, the FBI’s Weissman declared [9] that the bureau’s “top priority this year” was to enhance its ability to monitor web based services like Gmail, Google Voice, and Dropbox.

According to Bill Binney, a former high-ranking NSA official who resigned in protest of the agency’s domestic surveillance operations, the FBI depends on the NSA for data on Americans’ phone calls and online communications.

“The FBI is asking for data on Americans – just look at the Verizon court order [10] – and FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act special court] is ordering data to be sent to the NSA,” Binney told me. “So the NSA is becoming the central processor and storage facility for government surveillance. That means they are going into emails and chats. They are absolutely involved in collecting data the FBI uses to spy on Americans.”

Given open FBI acknowledgment that it monitors American phone calls on a massive scale, and that it almost certainly relies on the NSA to do so, it is hard to understand the denials by the White House and its allies. Perhaps, like Groucho Marx, they hope we will believe them instead of our own two lying eyes.

See more stories tagged with:
fbi [11],
nsa [12],
surveillance [13]

Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/obama-and-his-allies-say-govt-doesnt-listen-your-phone-calls-fbi-begs-differ

Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[3] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/16/rogers-nsa-is-not-listening-to-americans-phone-calls/
[4] http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57589495-38/nsa-spying-flap-extends-to-contents-of-u.s-phone-calls/
[5] http://news.yahoo.com/jerrold-nadler-does-not-think-nsa-listen-u-163036644.html
[6] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1305/01/ebo.01.html
[7] http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/pdf/11-3-30%20Mueller%20Testimony.pdf
[8] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57428067-83/fbi-we-need-wiretap-ready-web-sites-now/
[9] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/28/fbi-surveillance_n_2970691.html
[10] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order
[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fbi-0
[12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/nsa
[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/surveillance
[14] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
June 16, 2013

Find this story at 16 June 2013

NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls; National Security Agency discloses in secret Capitol Hill briefing that thousands of analysts can listen to domestic phone calls. That authorization appears to extend to e-mail and text messages too.

NSA Director Keith Alexander says his agency’s analysts, which until recently included Edward Snowden among their ranks, take protecting “civil liberties and privacy and the security of this nation to their heart every day.”
(Credit: Getty Images)

The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls, a participant in the briefing said.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed on Thursday that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed “simply based on an analyst deciding that.”

If the NSA wants “to listen to the phone,” an analyst’s decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. “I was rather startled,” said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.

Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA’s formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically, it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.

James Owens, a spokesman for Nadler, provided a statement on Sunday morning, a day after this article was published, saying: “I am pleased that the administration has reiterated that, as I have always believed, the NSA cannot listen to the content of Americans’ phone calls without a specific warrant.” Owens said he couldn’t comment on what assurances from the Obama administration Nadler was referring to, and said Nadler was unavailable for an interview. (CNET had contacted Nadler for comment on Friday.)

Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, being able to listen to phone calls would mean the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.

Nadler’s initial statement appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii “wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president.”

There are serious “constitutional problems” with this approach, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated warrantless wiretapping cases. “It epitomizes the problem of secret laws.”

The NSA declined to comment to CNET. (This is unrelated to the disclosure that the NSA is currently collecting records of the metadata of all domestic Verizon calls, but not the actual contents of the conversations.)

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a statement on Sunday saying: “The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress.” Clapper’s statement did not elaborate, however, on what “proper” authorization would be. Some reports have suggested that permission from a “shift supervisor” would also be required.

The Washington Post disclosed Saturday that the existence of a top-secret NSA program called NUCLEON, which “intercepts telephone calls and routes the spoken words” to a database. Top intelligence officials in the Obama administration, the Post said, “have resolutely refused to offer an estimate of the number of Americans whose calls or e-mails have thus made their way into content databases such as NUCLEON.”

A portion of the NSA’s mammoth data center in Bluffdale, Utah, scheduled to open this fall.
(Credit: Getty Images)

Earlier reports have indicated that the NSA has the ability to record nearly all domestic and international phone calls — in case an analyst needed to access the recordings in the future. A Wired magazine article last year disclosed that the NSA has established “listening posts” that allow the agency to collect and sift through billions of phone calls through a massive new data center in Utah, “whether they originate within the country or overseas.” That includes not just metadata, but also the contents of the communications.

William Binney, a former NSA technical director who helped to modernize the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network, told the Daily Caller this week that the NSA records the phone calls of 500,000 to 1 million people who are on its so-called target list, and perhaps even more. “They look through these phone numbers and they target those and that’s what they record,” Binney said.

Brewster Kahle, a computer engineer who founded the Internet Archive, has vast experience storing large amounts of data. He created a spreadsheet this week estimating that the cost to store all domestic phone calls a year in cloud storage for data-mining purposes would be about $27 million per year, not counting the cost of extra security for a top-secret program and security clearances for the people involved.

NSA’s annual budget is classified but is estimated to be around $10 billion.

Documents that came to light in an EFF lawsuit provide some insight into how the spy agency vacuums up data from telecommunications companies. Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for over 22 years, disclosed in 2006 (PDF) that he witnessed domestic voice and Internet traffic being surreptitiously “diverted” through a “splitter cabinet” to secure room 641A in one of the company’s San Francisco facilities. The room was accessible only to NSA-cleared technicians.

AT&T and other telecommunications companies that allow the NSA to tap into their fiber links receive absolute immunity from civil liability or criminal prosecution, thanks to a law that Congress enacted in 2008 and renewed in 2012. It’s a series of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as the FISA Amendments Act.

That law says surveillance may be authorized by the attorney general and director of national intelligence without prior approval by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, as long as minimization requirements and general procedures blessed by the court are followed.

A requirement of the 2008 law is that the NSA “may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States.” A possible interpretation of that language, some legal experts said, is that the agency may vacuum up everything it can domestically — on the theory that indiscriminate data acquisition was not intended to “target” a specific American citizen.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, an attorney and member of the House Judiciary committee, who said he was “startled” to learn that NSA analysts could eavesdrop on domestic calls without court authorization.
(Credit: Getty Images)

Rep. Nadler’s statement that NSA analysts can listen to calls without court orders came during a House Judiciary hearing on June 13 that included FBI director Robert Mueller as a witness.

Mueller initially sought to downplay concerns about NSA surveillance by claiming that, to listen to a phone call, the government would need to seek “a special, a particularized order from the FISA court directed at that particular phone of that particular individual.”

Is information about that procedure “classified in any way?” Nadler asked.

“I don’t think so,” Mueller replied.

“Then I can say the following,” Nadler said. “We heard precisely the opposite at the briefing the other day. We heard precisely that you could get the specific information from that telephone simply based on an analyst deciding that…In other words, what you just said is incorrect. So there’s a conflict.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence committee, separately acknowledged that the agency’s analysts have the ability to access the “content of a call.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the head of the House Intelligence committee, told CNN on Sunday that the NSA “is not listening to Americans’ phone calls” or monitoring their e-mails, and any statements to the contrary are “misinformation.” It would be “illegal” for the NSA to do that, Rogers said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee, acknowledged this week that NSA analysts have the ability to access the “content of a call.”
(Credit: Getty Images)

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell indicated during a House Intelligence hearing in 2007 that the NSA’s surveillance process involves “billions” of bulk communications being intercepted, analyzed, and incorporated into a database.

They can be accessed by an analyst who’s part of the NSA’s “workforce of thousands of people” who are “trained” annually in minimization procedures, he said. (McConnell, who had previously worked as the director of the NSA, is now vice chairman at Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden’s former employer.)

If it were “a U.S. person inside the United States, now that would stimulate the system to get a warrant,” McConnell told the committee. “And that is how the process would work. Now, if you have foreign intelligence data, you publish it [inside the federal government]. Because it has foreign intelligence value.”

McConnell said during a separate congressional appearance around the same time that he believed the president had the constitutional authority, no matter what the law actually says, to order domestic spying without warrants.

Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente told CNN last month that, in national security investigations, the bureau can access records of a previously made telephone call. “All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not,” he said. Clemente added in an appearance the next day that, thanks to the “intelligence community” — an apparent reference to the NSA — “there’s a way to look at digital communications in the past.”

NSA Director Keith Alexander said on June 12 that his agency’s analysts abide by the law: “They do this lawfully. They take compliance oversight, protecting civil liberties and privacy and the security of this nation to their heart every day.”

But that’s not always the case. A New York Times article in 2009 revealed the NSA engaged in significant and systemic “overcollection” of Americans’ domestic communications that alarmed intelligence officials. The Justice Department said in a statement at the time that it “took comprehensive steps to correct the situation and bring the program into compliance” with the law.

Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, says he was surprised to see the 2008 FISA Amendments Act be used to vacuum up information on American citizens. “Everyone who voted for the statute thought it was about international communications,” he said.

Update, June 16 at 10:45 p.m. PT: Adds one paragraph with a statement provided by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

Update, June 16 at 11:15 a.m. PT: The original headline when the story was published Saturday was “NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants,” which was changed to “NSA spying flap extends to contents of U.S. phone calls,” to better match the story. The first paragraph was changed to add attribution to Rep. Nadler. Also added was an additional statement that the congressman’s aide sent this morning, an excerpt from a Washington Post story on NSA phone call content surveillance that appeared Saturday, and remarks that Rep. Rogers made on CNN this morning.

by Declan McCullagh | June 15, 2013 4:39 PM PDT

Find this story at 15 June 2013

© CBS Interactive Inc.

Most Analysis of Spy Data is Done by Private Contractors

The controversy involving Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency (NSA) leaks has drawn attention to the fact that most analysis of the government’s intelligence data is performed by private contractors, not government employees.

When it comes to examining and deciphering the enormous volumes of communications collected by the NSA, it’s companies like SAIC, CSC and Booz Allen Hamilton that do much of the work.

Snowden was just one of thousands of private contractor employees helping operate the NSA’s vast operation of finding threats before they manifest.

Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing, estimates that about 70% of the federal government’s intelligence budgets are spent on the private sector.

Shorrock says if the 70% figure is applied to the NSA’s estimated budget (the official figure is classified) of $8 billion a year (the largest in the intelligence community), NSA could be spending as much as $6 billion on contractors.

Michael V. Hayden, former director of both the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, has said that “the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet” is located just down the street from NSA headquarters in Maryland. More specifically, he meant at the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32, which is where all of NSA’s major contractors, from Booz to Northrop Grumman, carry out their surveillance and intelligence work for the agency.

With so many companies taking part in America’s spying activity, it is no wonder that private sector workers hold about 22% of all U.S. government security clearances and about 29% of top secret security clearances.

The Obama administration promised four years ago to substantially reduce this figure and put more of this highly sensitive work back in the hands of federal employees.

That hasn’t happened yet.

June 15, 2013 – Nth America – Tagged: 1984, corporatocracy, NSA, PRISM, US

By allgov.com

Find this story at 15 June 2013

Digital Blackwater: How the NSA Gives Private Contractors Control of the Surveillance State

As the Justice Department prepares to file charges against Booz Allen Hamilton employee Edward Snowden for leaking classified documents about the National Security Agency, the role of private intelligence firms has entered the national spotlight. Despite being on the job as a contract worker inside the NSA’s Hawaii office for less than three months, Snowden claimed he had power to spy on almost anyone in the country. “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president, if I had a personal email,” Snowden told The Guardian newspaper. Over the past decade, the U.S. intelligence community has relied increasingly on the technical expertise of private firms such as Booz Allen, SAIC, the Boeing subsidiary Narus and Northrop Grumman. About 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is now spent on the private sector. Former NSA Director Michael V. Hayden has described these firms as a quote “digital Blackwater.” We speak to Tim Shorrock, author of the book “Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence.”
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: The U.S. government has begun the process of charging Edward Snowden with disclosing classified information after he leaked a trove of secret documents outlining the NSA’s surveillance programs. The FBI has already questioned Snowden’s relatives and associates. Snowden is a 29-year-old computer technician who formerly worked for the CIA. He reportedly turned over thousands of documents to Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian newspaper, as well as to The Washington Post. Only a few have been published so far. His current whereabouts are unknown. Snowden flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong on May 20th. On Monday, he reportedly checked out of his Hong Kong hotel one day after The Guardian posted a video of him explaining his decision to leak the information.

AMY GOODMAN: Response to Edward Snowden’s actions has been mixed. On Capitol Hill, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused Snowden of committing treason. Meanwhile, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg called Snowden a hero, writing, quote, “In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material—and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago,” he said. The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has also praised Edward Snowden.

JULIAN ASSANGE: Edward Snowden is a hero who has informed the public about one of the most serious, serious events of the decade, which is the creeping formulation of a mass surveillance state that has now coopted the courts, corrupted the courts in the United States, made them secret, made them produce orders which violate U.S. constitutional protections to nearly the entire population, and then, if that wasn’t enough, has embroiled U.S. high-tech companies like Google, Yahoo!, Skype, Facebook, etc., to extend that surveillance all across the world—the amount of collections from the United States alone revealed to be more than 2.4 billion in the month of March alone. And that is something that I and John Perry Barlow and many other journalists and civil libertarians have been campaigning on for a long time, so it’s very pleasing to see such clear and concrete proof presented to the public.

AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange speaking on Sky News. Up until a few weeks ago, Edward Snowden worked as a systems administrator inside the NSA’s office in Hawaii. His employer was not the U.S. government, but a military contractor called Booz Allen Hamilton. Over the past decade, the U.S. intelligence community has relied increasingly on the technical expertise of private firms such as Booz Allen, SAIC, the Boeing subsidiary Narus and Northrop Grumman. Former NSA director Michael V. Hayden has described these firms as a, quote, “digital Blackwater.” According to the journalist Tim Shorrock, about 70 percent of the national intelligence budget is spent on the private sector.

AARON MATÉ: The leaks by Edward Snowden have also raised questions over who has access to the nation’s biggest secrets. According to The Washington Post, authorities are unsure how a contract employee at a distant NSA satellite office was able to obtain a highly classified copy of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. During his interview with The Guardian, Edward Snowden claimed he had the power to spy on anyone, including the president.

EDWARD SNOWDEN: Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything. But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge, to even the president, if I had a personal email.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about Edward Snowden and the privatized world of intelligence, we’re joined by Tim Shorrock, author of the book Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence . He has just written a piece for Salon.com entitled “Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data: Private Companies Are Getting Rich Probing Your Personal Information for the Government. Call It Digital Blackwater.” In fact, Tim Shorrock, explain who exactly called it “digital Blackwater.”

TIM SHORROCK: Well, this was said by Michael V. Hayden, who used to be the director of the NSA and was the director of the NSA when President Bush began the warrantless surveillance program back in 2001 right after 9/11. He has moved on from intelligence, the intelligence agencies, to become an executive with Chertoff Group, which is a large consulting company in Washington that works very closely with intelligence agencies and corporations advising them on cybersecurity and advising them on just basically security issues. And so, you know, he has cashed himself in and is making lots of money himself in this industry.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to the former NSA and CIA director, General Michael Hayden, who, as you said, oversaw much of the privatization of the NSA from 1999 to 2005. This is him speaking in 2011.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: We may come to a point where defense is more actively and aggressively defined even for the—even for the private sector and what is permitted there is something we would never let the private sector do in physical space.

UNIDENTIFIED: That’s interesting.

MICHAEL HAYDEN: I mean, you look—well, I mean, let me really throw out a bumper sticker for you here: How about a digital Blackwater? OK? I mean, we have privatized certain defense activities, even in physical space. And now you’ve got a new domain in which we don’t have any paths trampled down in the forest in terms of what it is we expect the government or will allow the government to do. And in the past, in our history, when that has happened, private sector expands to fill the empty space. I’m not quite an advocate for that, but these are the kinds of things that are going to be put into play here very, very quickly.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the former head of the CIA and the NSA, General Michael Hayden. Tim Shorrock, talk about Booz Allen, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Edward Snowden and what this relationship is all about between Booz Allen and the NSA.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, the most astonishing thing I found in the articles in The Guardian and the revelation that he was from Booz Allen was that, in fact, Booz Allen Hamilton is involved at the—basically the darkest levels, the deepest levels of U.S. intelligence. If Mr. Snowden had access to these kinds of documents, such as these PRISM documents about surveillance on the Internet, as well as this FISA court order, that means practically anyone in Booz Allen who is in intelligence working for the NSA has access to the same kinds of documents. And American people should really know that now we have conclusive proof that these private-sector corporations are operating at the highest levels of intelligence and the military. I think that’s the bottom line here. It’s not curious—you know, the question is not why this low-level person at Booz Allen got these documents; the question is: Why is Booz Allen involved at this level of intelligence?

AARON MATÉ: Tim Shorrock, so, according to The New York Times, it’s gone so far that even the process of granting security clearances is often handled by contractors. So, can you talk about the duties that contractors are performing for the government on these intelligence matters?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, first of all, I want to comment on some of these stories in The New York Times and other newspapers. I mean, that’s an old story. Everyone knows that, you know, the security clearances is done by contractors. That’s been true for a decade or more. And, you know, Booz Allen has been around for years and years and years. The question is: Why haven’t these newspapers covered this? They cover intelligence as if there’s no private-sector involvement at all. And suddenly, they hear that Booz Allen is involved, and suddenly we have all these stream of articles about privatized intelligence. Well, welcome to the world of “digital Blackwater,” as Hayden calls it.

And, you know, specifically on Booz Allen and what these companies do, I mean, you know, they—as I wrote in my book, Spies for Hire, they do everything from, you know, CIA intervention in other countries; JSOC, you know, when it does raids, contractors are involved in finding out where people they attack are and determining the mapping and all that and the imagery to make sure that pilots and drones can hit the right people—or the wrong people. And they’re involved in the Defense Intelligence Agency. They’re involved in all military agencies that do intelligence. They do everything. They do everything that the government does.

AMY GOODMAN: What’s wrong with that?

TIM SHORROCK: What’s wrong with that is that it’s a for-profit operation. Many times, you have—inside these agencies, you have contractors overseeing other contractors, contractors, you know, giving advice to the agency about how to set its policies, what kind of technology to buy. And, of course, they have relationships with all the companies that they work with or that they suggest to the leaders of U.S. intelligence.

And I think, you know, a terrible example of this is, you know, a few months ago, I wrote a cover story for The Nation magazine about the NSA whistleblowers that you’ve had on this show a few times—Tom Drake, Bill Binney and the other two—and, you know, they blew the whistle on a huge project called Trailblazer that was contracted out to SAIC that was a complete failure. And this project was designed, from the beginning, by Booz Allen, Northrop Grumman and a couple other corporations who advised the NSA about how to acquire this project, and then decided amongst themselves to give it to SAIC, and then SAIC promised the skies and never produced anything, and the project was finally canceled in 2005.

And it’s very ironic that Michael Hayden says he’s not sure about, you know, this privatization. I mean, he’s the one who set this whole privatization in place. He’s the one who did it. He’s the one who pulled the trigger on it. And he’s responsible for this vast privatization of NSA, which, I have to say, began before 9/11.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Booz Allen Hamilton in terms of its other clients? Here it has this remarkable access to information. You know, as Edward Snowden said in his video statement, which we ran yesterday on Democracy Now!, he could wiretap almost anyone, at his level, and that a lot of people could. The information that people like Snowden get, can Booz Allen then share this information with other corporate clients it has?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, I don’t know that for sure, because it’s very difficult to penetrate these companies, but I don’t think so. I think what they do is they operate just like the intelligence community does, like the—you know, the NSA shares the information with other agencies. Of course, the NSA collects, is the main collector for the government in terms of signals intelligence, what comes over the Internet and telephone and cellphones and all that, and they pass that on to other agencies that request it. It goes to the president of the United States. It goes—it goes to all the high levels of the State Department and other agencies that need to know what’s going on both around the world and inside the United States. And so, I doubt that they would pass it to other corporations, but they certainly have their hands in it.

And I think if Booz Allen Hamilton is doing this and has access to such high-level documents, then you know that these other companies do, too—SAIC, Northrop Grumman, all of the companies you named at the top of the show. They have the same kinds of access, and they do—they do very much the same kinds of work that Booz Allen does. And I think it’s—like I said before, it’s just about time we recognized that this is really, you know, Intelligence Inc. This is a—you know, 70 percent of it is a for-profit operation. It’s a joint venture between government agencies and the private sector, and the private sector makes money off of it. They make big profits from this.

AARON MATÉ: Tim, I’m wondering if you can talk about some more—about these companies, specifically Narus and Palantir.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, Narus is the company that basically makes the technology that allows agencies, as well as corporations and telecom companies, to intercept traffic coming in, telecom traffic coming in, you know, from the outside, from other countries, on fiber-optic cables. And they have this incredible capacity to process information. And, you know, a few year—right after—you know, when this story started blowing up in the—after The New York Times blew the story on surveillance, warrantless surveillance, you know, there was this whistleblower at AT&T, this technician, who found that Narus equipment had been attached to AT&T’s switching center in San Francisco, and they were using this equipment to divert the entire—the entire traffic, all the whole—the whole—everything that was coming in, they diverted that to a secret room, and that went right into the NSA’s servers.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Mark Klein.

TIM SHORROCK: And those—that’s what Narus—that’s what Narus technology does. And so, you know, that’s the key—

AMY GOODMAN: And Narus is owned by Boeing?

TIM SHORROCK: Boeing. It was bought by Boeing. It was actually—the company originated, actually, in Israel. You know, Israel has a very powerful equivalent to the National Security Agency. And it came out of—it came out of Israel, and then they brought their technology here, and they were very involved in the wiretapping right after—right after 9/11. And then Boeing bought them. And, of course, Boeing itself is a major intelligence contractor, through that company, and, you know, they used to—they own a company that used to transport a lot of these prisoners around that the CIA captured overseas.

AMY GOODMAN: And Palantir?

TIM SHORROCK: And you asked about—you asked about Palantir. It’s a Silicon Valley company that basically does data mining and mapping out relationships. I mean, all this—as I said in the Salon article yesterday, all this information and all this data that comes into the NSA has to be analyzed, and that’s what these companies they do that they hire. You know, they take—you know, NSA stores all this data. We know the story about this big Utah data center that’s just about to open. And they download it all there, and then they can go back to it. They can go back to it a day later, or they can go back to it months later or years later. And that’s one of the things that Mr. Snowden talked about in his interviews, was how they go back and analyze this data.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about The Guardian in its reports calling the NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who fed them information, “whistleblower.” But the Associated Press says it would instead use terms like “source” or “leaker.” In a memo sent to reporters, it said, quote, “A whistle-blower is a person who exposes wrongdoing. It’s not a person who simply asserts that what he has uncovered is illegal or immoral. Whether the actions exposed by Snowden and [Bradley] Manning constitute wrongdoing is hotly contested. … Sometimes whether a person is a whistle-blower can be established only some time after the revelations, depending on what wrongdoing is confirmed or how public opinion eventually develops,” unquote. What do you make of what the AP is saying? I mean, of course, they change their—their definitions over time. We just saw them drop the word “illegal” when it comes to describing people.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, I think it’s kind of semantics. I mean, you know, he has blown the whistle on some actions that the NSA is doing, some programs the NSA is doing, that may be unconstitutional. And I think, you know, that’s why Daniel Ellsberg has had so much praise for him. I mean, he’s showing the underside of the war on terror, the underside of the surveillance state. And I think, in that sense, he’s a real whistleblower. You know, perhaps the difference between him and, say, the NSA Four—Tom Drake and Bill Binney and the others—is that, you know, the NSA Four did not leak information. I mean, they reported it through the chain of command, or they tried to. And what’s unfortunate was, you know, they tried to do this, and then they were caught up in an investigation of who leaked to The New York Times about the NSA surveillance program, and they were persecuted and investigated, and Tom Drake was actually indicted under the Espionage Act and charged with being a spy. Those charges were ridiculous, and the case completely collapsed, but nevertheless, that’s what happened to them. So, Snowden maybe looked at that and decided, you know, he’s just—you know, why go through channels? I mean, I think if we had a system where people could actually expose wrongdoing and without fear of being persecuted, that he may not have broken the law. And I think we need to look very carefully at that, because we need to protect people like this who want to expose wrongdoing.

AARON MATÉ: Tim Shorrock, is it harder for Snowden, as a private contractor, to try to blow the whistle than it would have been had he been working directly for the government?

TIM SHORROCK: Well, perhaps so. I’m not sure what the difference in how they might prosecute somebody like this, but clearly, from what’s being said, you know, today and what was said yesterday, they’re going after him. In fact, I’ve heard they may charge him under the Espionage Act. So, that’s what they would do to a government official, as well, or an intelligence officer who leaked the same kind of thing. So, I don’t really think it’s that much different. And like I said at the top of the show, you know, what really—what really amazed me was the fact that Booz Allen Hamilton, as a corporation, is involved at this level of intelligence. It’s not that this guy was just a low-level employee. It’s that this company is involved, and you have the private sector at that level of NSA.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think should be done differently? I mean, there’s two different issues here: One is the level of privatization of the military and intelligence, and the other is what Edward Snowden has actually revealed about what the U.S. government is doing with our information.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, what should we do about specifically what?

AMY GOODMAN: In terms of these private intelligence contractors and the access they have.

TIM SHORROCK: Well, you know, there’s been a process underway where the agencies are supposed to be doing, you know, inventories of the contractors and who they—what they do. And I think—you know, there was a report I saw recently from the inspector general of the Pentagon that looked at the Special Operations Command, which is—you know, Jeremy Scahill has been writing about it. It’s the most secretive part of the U.S. military, does these raids all over the world. And they looked at their contracts, and they found that a lot of JSOC and special operations contractors were doing inherently governmental work; in other words, they were doing things that, by law, should only be done by the government. And there was—at that level, there was very loose oversight.

And I think that we need to look, as a country, and the government certainly needs to do this, and Congress certainly needs to do this—you know, OK, it’s fine to buy technology from corporations, if they need it, but using corporations to fill your ranks, you know, to provide personnel—I mean, you go to these agencies, and it’s—you know, it’s not exactly like this, but it’s very much like a NASCAR race where they have logos, corporate logos, all over themselves. I mean, that’s what it’s like inside the NSA. You’ve got CSC over here. You’ve got Northrop Grumman over here, Lockheed Martin and so on.

Do we need to have the private sector doing all this analysis? I think that’s a very critical question to be asked. Do we want to have private corporations at the highest levels? And again, you know, if that’s something—that’s something that Congress, I believe, should really look at. And in the time that I’ve been covering this, as far as I recall, there’s only been one single hearing in Congress on this issue of intelligence contractors, and it was three years ago, and it was a pathetic hearing. They actually called me in for some advice, and they actually called Tom Drake in for advice, too. I didn’t know it at the time. And they—of course they didn’t use any of our suggestions. I—

AMY GOODMAN: The man they charged with espionage?

TIM SHORROCK: The man they—the man that was—had been charged earlier with espionage.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, the U.S. government had been charged with espionage, who, of course, ultimately—

TIM SHORROCK: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —those charges were dropped—

TIM SHORROCK: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —and has been called by many a whistleblower.

TIM SHORROCK: Right. He’s a true whistleblower. And—but the point—you know, I said, “You know, you ought to call in the chief executives of Booz Allen Hamilton and all these companies, so the American people can meet the secret leaders of the intelligence community.” We know who Clapper is. We knew—you know, when Hayden was director, we knew who he was. But we don’t know these people running the corporations.

AMY GOODMAN: McConnell?

TIM SHORROCK: McConnell, Michael McConnell, used to be the director of national intelligence. Before that, he was NSA director. And, you know, in between, he was at Booz Allen Hamilton running their military intelligence programs. Now he’s back at Booz Allen Hamilton. So there’s this continuous flow of people in and out of the private sector back into government. It’s not even a revolving door; it’s just a spending door. But basically, what we have is an intelligence ruling class, public and private, that hold the secrets. And I think, you know, when Bill Binney talks about the Stasi, the East German police that listened to everybody, you know, look at, we have hundreds of thousands of contractors with security clearances. We have hundreds of thousands of federal workers in, you know, Homeland Security and intelligence. We have a massive number of people that are monitoring other Americans. I think it’s a very dangerous situation.

AMY GOODMAN: Tim Shorrock, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative reporter who covers national security. His most recent piece at Salon.com is “Meet the Contractors Analyzing Your Private Data: Private Companies Are Getting Rich Probing Your Personal Information for the Government. Call It Digital Blackwater.” He is author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Outsourced Intelligence.

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’ll look at the Wal-Mart shareholders’ meeting and what happened outside and in. Stay with us.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Find this story at 11 June 2013

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About 500,000 private contractors have access to top-secret info

One of the big questions raised after Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s secret surveillance programs is how a private contractor working at Booz Allen Hamilton had access to such sensitive information in the first place.

We still don’t know the precise answer, though here’s a bit of broader context: As our Washington Post colleagues report Tuesday, top-secret clearances for outside contractors aren’t necessarily unusual. In fact, roughly 500,000 private contractors had security clearance to handle top-secret material in 2012:

But there’s an important caveat here: Clearance doesn’t mean all these workers get to see every classified document out there. And, as various analysts have pointed out, Snowden likely would have needed even higher clearance than “top secret” to gain access to PRISM and other surveillance programs. (One former NSA official told the Post that “maybe 30 or maybe 40″ people would have access to the secret court orders that Snowden leaked.) So this chart still isn’t the full story.

Meanwhile, Booz Allen Hamilton, where Snowden worked, is only one private contractor of many here:

There’s a lot more detail in this Post story about the outsourcing of intelligence work, which notes that one in four intelligence workers has been a contractor, and 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to private firms. “But,” the caveat goes, “in the rush to fill jobs, the government has relied on faulty procedures to vet intelligence workers, documents and interviews show.”

In a related vein, The Atlantic’s Jordan Weissman compiles some of the evidence that outsourcing key functions doesn’t always save the government money. For instance: “The Senate Intelligence Committee has stated that while the average civilian federal employee costs $125,000 per year (with overhead included), an equivalent contractor comes out to about $250,000.”

This phenomenon isn’t confined to military and intelligence. Since 1999, the number of civilian workers directly employed by the entire federal government has stayed roughly constant at about 2.7 million. But the number of private contractors across the board has ballooned, from 4.4 million to an estimated 7.6 million in 2005 — that’s everything from defense contractors and auditors to food inspectors and groundskeepers. And there’s no ready way to tell whether this outsourcing boom has actually saved taxpayers money.

By Brad Plumer, Updated: June 11, 2013

Find this story at 11 June 2013

© The Washington Post Company

More Intrusive Than Eavesdropping? NSA Collection of Metadata Hands Gov’t Sweeping Personal Info

As the American Civil Liberties Union sues the Obama administration over its secret NSA phone spying program, we look at how the government could use phone records to determine your friends, medical problems, business transactions and the places you’ve visited. While President Obama insists that nobody is listening to your telephone calls, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau says the metadata being collected by the government may be far more revealing than the content of the actual phone calls. A mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer, Landau is the author of the book “Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies.”
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over the National Security Agency’s secret program to vacuum up the phone records of millions of Americans. The lawsuit comes less than one week after The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the existence of a secret court ruling ordering Verizon to hand over records of its business customers. This is ACLU attorney Alex Abdo.

ALEX ABDO: This program is a massive and unprecedented grab of information by the intelligence agencies. They’re sweeping up or they’re tracking literally every call made in this country. And the Constitution simply doesn’t allow the government to do that. If it has a reason to suspect a particular American of wrongdoing, then the government should target that American for investigation or surveillance, but they shouldn’t indiscriminately sweep up the calls of millions of innocent Americans.

AMY GOODMAN: The disclosure of the secret NSA surveillance program was based on information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who most recently worked inside the NSA’s Hawaii office for the private firm Booz Allen Hamilton. On Friday, President Obama confirmed the existence of the surveillance program.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism. If these folks—if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation. So, I want to be very clear—some of the hype that we’ve been hearing over the last day or so—nobody is listening to the content of people’s phone calls.

AMY GOODMAN: While President Obama insisted nobody is listening to your telephone calls, many cybersecurity experts say the metadata being collected by the government may be far more revealing than the actual content of the phone calls.

Joining us now from Washington, D.C., is Susan Landau, mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer, author of the book Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012.

Susan Landau, welcome to Democracy Now! This may surprise many people, this point that metadata—just, you know, the fact of a phone call, who you called, perhaps where you made the call—can be more revealing than a transcript of the conversation itself.

SUSAN LANDAU: That’s right. That’s because a phone call—the metadata of a phone call tells what you do as opposed to what you say. So, for example, if you call from the hospital when you’re getting a mammogram, and then later in the day your doctor calls you, and then you call the surgeon, and then when you’re at the surgeon’s office you call your family, it’s pretty clear, just looking at that pattern of calls, that there’s been some bad news. If there’s a tight vote in Congress, and somebody who’s wavering on the edge, you discover that they’re talking to the opposition, you know which way they’re vote is going.

One of my favorite examples is, when Sun Microsystems was bought by Oracle, there were a number of calls that weekend before. One can imagine just the trail of calls. First the CEO of Sun and the CEO of Oracle talk to each other. Then probably they both talk to their chief counsels. Then maybe they talk to each other again, then to other people in charge. And the calls go back and forth very quickly, very tightly. You know what’s going to happen. You know what the announcement is going to be on Monday morning, even though you haven’t heard the content of the calls. So that metadata is remarkably revealing.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, John Negroponte, the nation’s first director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, has defended the surveillance program and the collection of metadata. He described metadata as, quote, “like knowing what’s on the outside of an envelope.” Susan Landau, your response to that?

SUSAN LANDAU: That’s not really true. That was the case when we had black telephones that weighed several pounds and sat on the living room table or the hall table, and you knew that there was a phone call from one house to another house. Now everybody carries cellphones with them. And so, the data is, when I call you, I know that I’m talking to you, but I have no idea where you are. It’s the phone company who has that data now. And that data is far more revealing than what’s on the outside of an envelope. As I said earlier, it’s what you do, not what you say. And because we’re carrying the cellphones with us and making calls all during the day, that it’s very, very revelatory.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Could you explain, Susan, the significance of location data? Can the government map a person’s whereabouts through this metadata?

SUSAN LANDAU: Of course. In fact, all it takes is four data points to be 95 percent sure who the person is. I noticed President Obama said no names, but in fact, if you know four locations, because home and work are often unique pairs for most people, 95 percent location of—of times when you have four location points, you know who it is you’re listening to. So, you follow somebody, and they make calls from work every day, and then one day you notice they’ve made some calls from a bar at the end of the day. And then you discover somebody in middle age, somebody who ought to be working, is now making calls only from home. You know they’ve been fired, even though you haven’t listened to any of the content of the calls.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the comments of the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, coming under increasing scrutiny over comments he made to the Senate over the government’s surveillance program. In March, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden questioned Clapper about the NSA.

SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir.

SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not?

JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.

AMY GOODMAN: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is holding his head as he’s responding to questions from Senator Ron Wyden in March. Well, during an interview this week with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, James Clapper defended his response, saying he had answered the question in the, quote, “least untruthful manner,” unquote. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Senator Wyden called for public hearings to investigate the scope of the NSA’s surveillance of Americans. Wyden said, quote, “One of the most important responsibilities a Senator has is oversight of the intelligence community. [This] job cannot be done responsibly if Senators [aren’t] getting straight answers to direct questions.” Susan Landau, translate what James Clapper said.

SUSAN LANDAU: Well, he said that we’re not getting—that the NSA was not getting data on millions of Americans. But given that Verizon and the other telecos presumably were also sending this information, and they were sending it daily, that does not appear to be true.

Now, what we don’t know, we don’t know a lot of things. One of the things we don’t know is the kind minimization that the NSA did on the data. When you do a criminal wiretap, you’re required to do what’s called minimization. You can listen to the call, but if it’s not the target of the investigation, if it’s not the criminal him or herself, but let’s say their teenage daughter, then you have to shut down the wiretap, and you can pick it up again in a couple of minutes. If it’s the criminal, but they’re talking about going out to buy milk, let’s say, unless you think that’s code for going out to pick up some heroin, you have to shut it down. That’s minimization.

We don’t know several things. First of all, of course, there was a secret interpretation of a law, and that has no place in a democracy. That’s tantamount to secret laws. But we also don’t know what kind of data minimization the NSA was doing, and that’s something that ought to come out in public hearings. That’s very different from exposing sources and methods.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, the secret court order to obtain Verizon phone records was sought by the FBI under a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was expanded by the PATRIOT Act. In 2011, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned about how the government was interpreting its surveillance powers under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

SEN. RON WYDEN: When the American people find out how their government has secretly interpreted the PATRIOT Act, they are going to be stunned, and they are going to be angry. And they’re going to ask senators, “Did you know what this law actually permits? Why didn’t you know before you voted on it?” The fact is, anyone can read the plain text of the PATRIOT Act, and yet many members of Congress have no idea how the law is being secretly interpreted by the executive branch, because that interpretation is classified. It’s almost as if there were two PATRIOT Acts, and many members of Congress have not read the one that matters. Our constituents, of course, are totally in the dark. Members of the public have no access to the secret legal interpretations, so they have no idea what their government believes the law actually means.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Susan Landau, that was Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Could you comment on what he said? He was speaking in 2011.

SUSAN LANDAU: Yes. No, I actually had members of the press call me after his speech and say, “What is he talking about in Section 215?” And I literally had no idea, because it did not occur to me, and maybe that’s my naïveté. It did not occur to me that the government would be collecting the metadata under a secret interpretation.

So what Senator Wyden is talking about is that collection of metadata, and what he’s alluding to is how extremely powerful it is. Currently, our laws, our wiretapping laws, which were passed when phones didn’t move, back in the 1960s and ’70s, those wiretap laws protect content, very strongly. You need a wiretap warrant to get at content. But they protect the metadata—the who, the when, the what time, how long a call was for, the location—much less strongly. That needs to be changed. And, in fact, a bill was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act—an updated version of the bill was reported out earlier this year. That’s what Senator Wyden is alluding to. The fact that that metadata, now that we carry cellphones, now that payphones essentially don’t exist—there are far fewer payphones than a decade ago, and so one has to rely on cellphones—Senator Wyden is saying that information is very private information. It reveals a remarkable amount about what a person is doing, who they are, whom they associate with, who they spend their nights with, where they are when they travel. All that kind of information is very private, deserves constitutional protection. And yet, under a secret interpretation of the law, it’s in fact being handed over to the government. And that’s what Senator Wyden is saying.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Susan Landau, people like Senator Feinstein are calling for an investigation into what Edward Snowden has done. We’re about to have a debate on whether he is a traitor or a hero. What do you think of what Snowden has done? And what do you think needs to be done? Where should the investigation take place?

SUSAN LANDAU: So, the first thing is whether—what do I think of what Edward Snowden has done. I think of myself as a computer scientist, not a policy or legal expert. I don’t know what I would have done in his shoes, but I do know that what he’s done is opened up a public debate about something that should have been public many, many years ago. We can’t have secret interpretations of law in a democracy.

Where do I think things should go? I think there need to be two investigations. One, I think Senator Feinstein is absolutely right, although I would target things a little bit differently. We’ve developed a surveillance-industrial complex, as has been exhibited to the public now, and I think that’s where Senator Feinstein should concentrate. I think it’s time for a Church-type Committee investigation, under perhaps the aegis of the Judiciary Committee, under perhaps Senator Leahy, but we need an examination of the surveillance laws and what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, what was done illegally, and so on. And it needs to be a broad investigation, the same way it was done in the 1970s under the Church Committee.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you very much, Susan Landau, mathematician, former Sun Microsystems engineer, author of the book Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012. When we come back, a debate on what Edward Snowden has done. Traitor or hero? Stay with us.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Find this story at 12 June 2013 
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects. This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”. I will show how we can use this “metadata” to find key persons involved in terrorist groups operating within the Colonies at the present time. I shall also endeavour to show how these methods work in what might be called a relational manner.

The analysis in this report is based on information gathered by our field agent Mr David Hackett Fischer and published in an Appendix to his lengthy report to the government. As you may be aware, Mr Fischer is an expert and respected field Agent with a broad and deep knowledge of the colonies. I, on the other hand, have made my way from Ireland with just a little quantitative training—I placed several hundred rungs below the Senior Wrangler during my time at Cambridge—and I am presently employed as a junior analytical scribe at ye olde National Security Administration. Sorry, I mean the Royal Security Administration. And I should emphasize again that I know nothing of current affairs in the colonies. However, our current Eighteenth Century beta of PRISM has been used to collect and analyze information on more than two hundred and sixty persons (of varying degrees of suspicion) belonging variously to seven different organizations in the Boston area.

Rest assured that we only collected metadata on these people, and no actual conversations were recorded or meetings transcribed. All I know is whether someone was a member of an organization or not. Surely this is but a small encroachment on the freedom of the Crown’s subjects. I have been asked, on the basis of this poor information, to present some names for our field agents in the Colonies to work with. It seems an unlikely task.

If you want to follow along yourself, there is a secret repository containing the data and the appropriate commands for your portable analytical engine.

Here is what the data look like.1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 StAndrewsLodge LoyalNine NorthCaucus LongRoomClub TeaParty Bostoncommittee LondonEnemies
Adams.John 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
Adams.Samuel 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
Allen.Dr 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Appleton.Nathaniel 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
Ash.Gilbert 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Austin.Benjamin 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Austin.Samuel 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Avery.John 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
Baldwin.Cyrus 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Ballard.John 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

The organizations are listed in the columns, and the names in the rows. As you can see, membership is represented by a “1”. So this Samuel Adams person (whoever he is), belongs to the North Caucus, the Long Room Club, the Boston Committee, and the London Enemies List. I must say, these organizational names sound rather belligerent.

Anyway, what can get from these meagre metadata? This table is large and cumbersome. I am a pretty low-level operative at ye olde RSA, so I have to keep it simple. My superiors, I am quite sure, have far more sophisticated analytical techniques at their disposal. I will simply start at the very beginning and follow a technique laid out in a beautiful paper by my brilliant former colleague, Mr Ron Breiger, called “The Duality of Persons and Groups.” He wrote it as a graduate student at Harvard, some thirty five years ago. (Harvard, you may recall, is what passes for a university in the Colonies. No matter.) The paper describes what we now think of as a basic way to represent information about links between people and some other kind of thing, like attendance at various events, or membership in various groups. The foundational papers in this new science of social networke analysis, in fact, are almost all about what you can tell about people and their social lives based on metadata only, without much reference to the actual content of what they say.

Mr Breiger’s insight was that our table of 254 rows and seven columns is an adjacency matrix, and that a bit of matrix multiplication can bring out information that is in the table but perhaps hard to see. Take this adjacency matrix of people and groups and transpose it—that is, flip it over on its side, so that the rows are now the columns and vice versa. Now we have two tables, or matrices, a 254×7 one showing “People by Groups” and the other a 7×254 one showing “Groups by People”. Call the first one the adjacency matrix A and the second one its transpose, AT. Now, as you will recall
there are rules for multiplying matrices together. If you multiply out A(AT), you will
get a big matrix with 254 rows and 254 columns. That is, it will be a 254×254 “Person by Person” matrix, where both the rows and columns are people (in the same order) and the cells show the number of organizations any particular pair of people both belonged to. Is that not marvelous? I have always thought this operation is somewhat akin to magick, especially as it involves moving one hand down and the other one across in a manner not wholly removed from an incantation.

I cannot show you the whole Person by Person matrix, because I would have to kill you. I jest, I jest! It is just because it is rather large. But here is a little snippet of it. At this point in the eighteenth century, a 254×254 matrix is what we call Bigge Data”. I have an upcoming EDWARDx talk about it. You should come. Anyway:1
2
3
4
5
6
7 Adams.John Adams.Samuel Allen.Dr Appleton.Nathaniel
Adams.John – 2 1 1
Adams.Samuel 2 – 1 2
Allen.Dr 1 1 – 1
Appleton.Nathaniel 1 2 1 –
Ash.Gilbert 0 0 0 0
Austin.Benjamin 0 1 0 0

You can see here that Mr Appleton and Mr John Adams were connected through both being a member of one group, while Mr John Adams and Mr Samuel Adams shared memberships in two of our seven groups. Mr Ash, meanwhile, was not connected through organization membership to any of the first four men on our list. The rest of the table stretches out in both directions.

Notice again, I beg you, what we did there. We did not start with a “social networke” as you might ordinarily think of it, where individuals are connected to other individuals. We started with a list of memberships in various organizations. But now suddenly we do have a social networke of individuals, where a tie is defined by co-membership in an organization. This is a powerful trick.

We are just getting started, however. A thing about multiplying matrices is that the order matters. It is not like multiplying two numbers. If instead of multiplying A(AT)
we put the transposed matrix first, and do AT(A), then we get a different result. This
time, the result is a 7×7 “Organization by Organization” matrix, where the numbers in the cells represent how many people each organization has in common. Here’s what that looks like. Because it is small we can see the whole table.1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8 StAndrewsLodge LoyalNine NorthCaucus LongRoomClub TeaParty BostonCommittee LondonEnemies
StAndrewsLodge – 1 3 2 3 0 5
LoyalNine 1 – 5 0 5 0 8
NorthCaucus 3 5 – 8 15 11 20
LongRoomClub 2 0 8 – 1 5 5
TeaParty 3 5 15 1 – 5 10
BostonCommittee 0 0 11 5 5 – 14
LondonEnemies 5 8 20 5 10 14 –

Again, interesting! (I beg to venture.) Instead of seeing how (and which) people are linked by their shared membership in organizations, we see which organizations are linked through the people that belong to them both. People are linked through the groups they belong to. Groups are linked through the people they share. This is the “duality of persons and groups” in the title of Mr Breiger’s article.

Rather than relying on tables, we can make a picture of the relationship between the groups, using the number of shared members as an index of the strength of the link between the seditious groups. Here’s what that looks like.

And, of course, we can also do that for the links between the people, using our 254×254 “Person by Person” table. Here is what that looks like.

What a nice picture! The analytical engine has arranged everyone neatly, picking out clusters of individuals and also showing both peripheral individuals and—more intriguingly—people who seem to bridge various groups in ways that might perhaps be relevant to national security. Look at that person right in the middle there. Zoom in if you wish. He seems to bridge several groups in an unusual (though perhaps not unique) way. His name is Paul Revere.

Once again, I remind you that I know nothing of Mr Revere, or his conversations, or his habits or beliefs, his writings (if he has any) or his personal life. All I know is this bit of metadata, based on membership in some organizations. And yet my analytical engine, on the basis of absolutely the most elementary of operations in Social Networke Analysis, seems to have picked him out of our 254 names as being of unusual interest. We do not have to stop here, with just a picture. Now that we have used our simple “Person by Event” table to generate a “Person by Person” matrix, we can do things like calculate centrality scores, or figure out whether there are cliques, or investigate other patterns. For example, we could calculate a betweenness centrality measure for everyone in our matrix, which is roughly the number of “shortest paths” between any two people in our network that pass through the person of interest. It is a way of asking “If I have to get from person a to person z, how likely is it that the quickest way is through person x?” Here are the top betweenness scores for our list of suspected terrorists:1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8 round(btwn.person[ind][1:10],0)
Revere.Paul Urann.Thomas Warren.Joseph Peck.Samuel
3839 2185 1817 1150
Barber.Nathaniel Cooper.William Hoffins.John Bass.Henry
931 931 931 852
Chase.Thomas Davis.Caleb
852 852

Perhaps I should not say “terrorists” so rashly. But you can see how tempting it is. Anyway, look—there he is again, this Mr Revere! Very interesting. There are fancier ways to measure importance in a network besides this one. There is something called eigenvector centrality, which my friends in Natural Philosophy tell me is a bit of mathematics unlikely ever to have any practical application in the wider world. You can think of it as a measure of centrality weighted by one’s connection to other central people. Here are our top scorers on that measure:1
2
3
4
5
6
7 > round(cent.eig$vector[ind][1:10],2)
Barber.Nathaniel Hoffins.John Cooper.William Revere.Paul
1.00 1.00 1.00 0.99
Bass.Henry Davis.Caleb Chase.Thomas Greenleaf.William
0.95 0.95 0.95 0.95
Hopkins.Caleb Proctor.Edward
0.95 0.90

Here our Mr Revere appears to score highly alongside a few other persons of interest. And for one last demonstration, a calculation of Bonacich Power Centrality, another more sophisticated measure. Here the lower score indicates a more central location.1
2
3
4
5
6
7 > round(cent.bonpow[ind][1:10],2)
Revere.Paul Urann.Thomas Warren.Joseph Proctor.Edward
-1.51 -1.44 -1.42 -1.40
Barber.Nathaniel Hoffins.John Cooper.William Peck.Samuel
-1.36 -1.36 -1.36 -1.33
Davis.Caleb Chase.Thomas
-1.31 -1.31

And here again, Mr Revere—along with Messrs Urann, Proctor, and Barber—appears towards the top or our list.

So, there you have it. From a table of membership in different groups we have gotten a picture of a kind of social network between individuals, a sense of the degree of connection between organizations, and some strong hints of who the key players are in this world. And all this—all of it!—from the merest sliver of metadata about a single modality of relationship between people. I do not wish to overstep the remit of my memorandum but I must ask you to imagine what might be possible if we were but able to collect information on very many more people, and also synthesize information from different kinds of ties between people! For the simple methods I have described are quite generalizable in these ways, and their capability only becomes more apparent as the size and scope of the information they are given increases. We would not need to know what was being whispered between individuals, only that they were connected in various ways. The analytical engine would do the rest! I daresay the shape of the real structure of social relations would emerge from our calculations gradually, first in outline only, but eventually with ever-increasing clarity and, at last, in beautiful detail—like a great, silent ship coming out of the gray New England fog.

I admit that, in addition to the possibilities for finding something interesting, there may also be the prospect of discovering suggestive but ultimately incorrect or misleading patterns. But I feel this problem would surely be greatly ameliorated by more and better metadata. At the present time, alas, the technology required to automatically collect the required information is beyond our capacity. But I say again, if a mere scribe such as I—one who knows nearly nothing—can use the very simplest of these methods to pick the name of a traitor like Paul Revere from those of two hundred and fifty four other men, using nothing but a list of memberships and a portable calculating engine, then just think what weapons we might wield in the defense of liberty one or two centuries from now.

Note: After I posted this, Michael Chwe emailed to tell me that Shin-Kap Han has published an article analyzing Fischer’s Revere data in rather more detail. I first came across Fischer’s data when I read Paul Revere’s Ride some years ago. I transcribed it and worked on it a little (making the graphs shown here) when I was asked to give a presentation on the usefulness of Sociological methods to graduate students in Duke’s History department. It’s very nice to see Han’s much fuller published analysis, as he’s an SNA specialist, unlike me.

Posted by Kieran Healy •Jun 9th, 2013 • Data, IT, Politics, R, Sociology

Find this story at 9 June 2013

U.S. surveillance architecture includes collection of revealing Internet, phone metadata

On March 12, 2004, acting attorney general James B. Comey and the Justice Department’s top leadership reached the brink of resignation over electronic surveillance orders that they believed to be illegal.

President George W. Bush backed down, halting secret foreign-
intelligence-gathering operations that had crossed into domestic terrain. That morning marked the beginning of the end of STELLARWIND, the cover name for a set of four surveillance programs that brought Americans and American territory within the domain of the National Security Agency for the first time in decades. It was also a prelude to new legal structures that allowed Bush and then President Obama to reproduce each of those programs and expand their reach.

What exactly STELLARWIND did has never been disclosed in an unclassified form. Which parts of it did Comey approve? Which did he shut down? What became of the programs when the crisis passed and Comey, now Obama’s expected nominee for FBI director, returned to private life?

Authoritative new answers to those questions, drawing upon a classified NSA history of STELLARWIND and interviews with high-ranking intelligence officials, offer the clearest map yet of the Bush-era programs and the NSA’s contemporary U.S. operations.

STELLARWIND was succeeded by four major lines of intelligence collection in the territorial United States, together capable of spanning the full range of modern telecommunications, according to the interviews and documents.

Foreigners, not Americans, are the NSA’s “targets,” as the law defines that term. But the programs are structured broadly enough that they touch nearly every American household in some way. Obama administration officials and career intelligence officers say Americans should take comfort that privacy protections are built into the design and oversight, but they are not prepared to discuss the details.

The White House, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the record for this article. A senior intelligence official agreed to answer questions if not identified.

“We have rich oversight across three branches of government. I’ve got an [inspector general] here, a fairly robust legal staff here . . . and there’s the Justice Department’s national security division,” the official said. “For those things done under court jurisdiction, the courts are intrusive in my business, appropriately so, and there are two congressional committees. It’s a belts-and-suspenders-and-Velcro approach, and inside there’s rich auditing.”

But privacy advocates, such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said the intelligence committee on which he serves needs “straight answers” to do vigorous oversight.

He added: “The typical person says, ‘If I am law-abiding and the government is out there collecting lots of information about me — who I call, when I call, where I call from’ . . . I think the typical person is going to say, ‘That sure sounds like it could have some effect on my privacy.’ ”

Two of the four collection programs, one each for telephony and the Internet, process trillions of “metadata” records for storage and analysis in systems called MAINWAY and MARINA, respectively. Metadata includes highly revealing information about the times, places, devices and participants in electronic communication, but not its contents. The bulk collection of telephone call records from Verizon Business Services, disclosed this month by the British newspaper the Guardian, is one source of raw intelligence for MAINWAY.

The other two types of collection, which operate on a much smaller scale, are aimed at content. One of them intercepts telephone calls and routes the spoken words to a system called NUCLEON.

For Internet content, the most important source collection is the PRISM project reported on June 6 by The Washington Post and the Guardian. It draws from data held by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other Silicon Valley giants, collectively the richest depositories of personal information in history.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, 29, who unmasked himself as the source behind the PRISM and Verizon revelations, said he hoped for a systematic debate about the “danger to our freedom and way of life” posed by a surveillance apparatus “kept in check by nothing more than policy.”

For well over a week, he has had his wish. Startling disclosures have poured out of the nation’s largest and arguably tightest-lipped spy agency at an unprecedented pace. Snowden’s disclosures have opened a national conversation about the limits of secret surveillance in a free society and an outcry overseas against U.S. espionage.

The debate has focused on two of the four U.S.-based collection programs: PRISM, for Internet content, and the comprehensive collection of telephone call records, foreign and domestic, that the Guardian revealed by posting a classified order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to Verizon Business Services.

The Post has learned that similar orders have been renewed every three months for other large U.S. phone companies, including Bell South and AT&T, since May 24, 2006. On that day, the surveillance court made a fundamental shift in its approach to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which permits the FBI to compel production of “business records” that are relevant to a particular terrorism investigation and to share those in some circumstances with the NSA. Henceforth, the court ruled, it would define the relevant business records as the entirety of a telephone company’s call database.

The Bush administration, by then, had been taking “bulk metadata” from the phone companies under voluntary agreements for more than four years. The volume of information overwhelmed the MAINWAY database, according to a classified report from the NSA inspector general in 2009. The agency spent $146 million in supplemental counterterrorism funds to buy new hardware and contract support — and to make unspecified payments to the phone companies for “collaborative partnerships.”

When the New York Times revealed the warrantless surveillance of voice calls, in December 2005, the telephone companies got nervous. One of them, unnamed in the report, approached the NSA with a request. Rather than volunteer the data, at a price, the “provider preferred to be compelled to do so by a court order,” the report said. Other companies followed suit. The surveillance court order that recast the meaning of business records “essentially gave NSA the same authority to collect bulk telephony metadata from business records that it had” under Bush’s asserted authority alone.

Telephone metadata was not the issue that sparked a rebellion at the Justice Department, first by Jack Goldsmith of the Office of Legal Counsel and then by Comey, who was acting attorney general because John D. Ashcroft was in intensive care with acute gallstone pancreatitis. It was Internet metadata.

At Bush’s direction, in orders prepared by David Addington, the counsel to Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the NSA had been siphoning e-mail metadata and technical records of Skype calls from data links owned by AT&T, Sprint and MCI, which later merged with Verizon.

For reasons unspecified in the report, Goldsmith and Comey became convinced that Bush had no lawful authority to do that.

MARINA and the collection tools that feed it are probably the least known of the NSA’s domestic operations, even among experts who follow the subject closely. Yet they probably capture information about more American citizens than any other, because the volume of e-mail, chats and other Internet communications far exceeds the volume of standard telephone calls.

The NSA calls Internet metadata “digital network information.” Sophisticated analysis of those records can reveal unknown associates of known terrorism suspects. Depending on the methods applied, it can also expose medical conditions, political or religious affiliations, confidential business negotiations and extramarital affairs.

What permits the former and prevents the latter is a complex set of policies that the public is not permitted to see. “You could do analyses that give you more information, but the law and procedures don’t allow that,” a senior U.S. intelligence lawyer said.

In the urgent aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, with more attacks thought to be imminent, analysts wanted to use “contact chaining” techniques to build what the NSA describes as network graphs of people who represented potential threats.

The legal challenge for the NSA was that its practice of collecting high volumes of data from digital links did not seem to meet even the relatively low requirements of Bush’s authorization, which allowed collection of Internet metadata “for communications with at least one communicant outside the United States or for which no communicant was known to be a citizen of the United States,” the NSA inspector general’s report said.

Lawyers for the agency came up with an interpretation that said the NSA did not “acquire” the communications, a term with formal meaning in surveillance law, until analysts ran searches against it. The NSA could “obtain” metadata in bulk, they argued, without meeting the required standards for acquisition.

Goldsmith and Comey did not buy that argument, and a high-ranking U.S. intelligence official said the NSA does not rely on it today.

As soon as surveillance data “touches us, we’ve got it, whatever verbs you choose to use,” the official said in an interview. “We’re not saying there’s a magic formula that lets us have it without having it.”

When Comey finally ordered a stop to the program, Bush signed an order renewing it anyway. Comey, Goldsmith, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most of the senior Bush appointees in the Justice Department began drafting letters of resignation.

Then-NSA Director Michael V. Hayden was not among them. According to the inspector general’s classified report, Cheney’s lawyer, Addington, placed a phone call and “General Hayden had to decide whether NSA would execute the Authorization without the Attorney General’s signature.” He decided to go along.

The following morning, when Mueller told Bush that he and Comey intended to resign, the president reversed himself.

Three months later, on July 15, the secret surveillance court allowed the NSA to resume bulk collection under the court’s own authority. The opinion, which remains highly classified, was based on a provision of electronic surveillance law, known as “pen register, trap and trace,” that was written to allow law enforcement officers to obtain the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing calls from a single telephone line.

When the NSA aims for foreign targets whose communications cross U.S. infrastructure, it expects to sweep in some American content “incidentally” or “inadvertently,” which are terms of art in regulations governing the NSA. Contact chaining, because it extends to the contacts of contacts of targets, inevitably collects even more American data.

Current NSA director Keith B. Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. have resolutely refused to offer an estimate of the number of Americans whose calls or e-mails have thus made their way into content databases such as NUCLEON.

The agency and its advocates maintain that its protection of that data is subject to rigorous controls and oversight by Congress and courts. For the public, it comes down to a question of unverifiable trust.

“The constraints that I operate under are much more remarkable than the powers that I enjoy,” said the senior intelligence official who declined to be named.

When asked why the NSA could not release an unclassified copy of its “minimization procedures,” which are supposed to strip accidentally collected records of their identifying details, the official suggested a reporter submit a freedom-of-information request.

As for bulk collection of Internet metadata, the question that triggered the crisis of 2004, another official said the NSA is no longer doing it. When pressed on that question, he said he was speaking only of collections under authority of the surveillance court.

“I’m not going to say we’re not collecting any Internet metadata,” he added. “We’re not using this program and these kinds of accesses to collect Internet metadata in bulk.”

Julie Tate and Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.

By Barton Gellman, Published: June 16

Find this story at 16 June 2013

© The Washington Post Company

Secret to Prism success: Even bigger data seizure; What makes Prism shine? National Security Agency’s megadata collection from Internet pipeline

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the months and early years after 9/11, FBI agents began showing up at Microsoft Corp. more frequently than before, armed with court orders demanding information on customers.

Around the world, government spies and eavesdroppers were tracking the email and Internet addresses used by suspected terrorists. Often, those trails led to the world’s largest software company and, at the time, largest email provider.

The agents wanted email archives, account information, practically everything, and quickly. Engineers compiled the data, sometimes by hand, and delivered it to the government.

Often there was no easy way to tell if the information belonged to foreigners or Americans. So much data was changing hands that one former Microsoft employee recalls that the engineers were anxious about whether the company should cooperate.

Inside Microsoft, some called it “Hoovering” — not after the vacuum cleaner, but after J. Edgar Hoover, the first FBI director, who gathered dirt on countless Americans.

This frenetic, manual process was the forerunner to Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies. As laws changed and technology improved, the government and industry moved toward a streamlined, electronic process, which required less time from the companies and provided the government data in a more standard format.

The revelation of Prism this month by the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.

But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government and technology officials and outside experts show that, while Prism has attracted the recent attention, the program actually is a relatively small part of a much more expansive and intrusive eavesdropping effort.

Americans who disapprove of the government reading their emails have more to worry about from a different and larger NSA effort that snatches data as it passes through the fiber optic cables that make up the Internet’s backbone. That program, which has been known for years, copies Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the United States, then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Whether by clever choice or coincidence, Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.

The fact that it is productive is not surprising; documents show it is one of the major sources for what ends up in the president’s daily briefing. Prism makes sense of the cacophony of the Internet’s raw feed. It provides the government with names, addresses, conversation histories and entire archives of email inboxes.

Many of the people interviewed for this report insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss a classified, continuing effort. But those interviews, along with public statements and the few public documents available, show there are two vital components to Prism’s success.

The first is how the government works closely with the companies that keep people perpetually connected to each other and the world. That story line has attracted the most attention so far.

The second and far murkier one is how Prism fits into a larger U.S. wiretapping program in place for years.

___

Deep in the oceans, hundreds of cables carry much of the world’s phone and Internet traffic. Since at least the early 1970s, the NSA has been tapping foreign cables. It doesn’t need permission. That’s its job.

But Internet data doesn’t care about borders. Send an email from Pakistan to Afghanistan and it might pass through a mail server in the United States, the same computer that handles messages to and from Americans. The NSA is prohibited from spying on Americans or anyone inside the United States. That’s the FBI’s job and it requires a warrant.

Despite that prohibition, shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, President George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to plug into the fiber optic cables that enter and leave the United States, knowing it would give the government unprecedented, warrantless access to Americans’ private conversations.

Tapping into those cables allows the NSA access to monitor emails, telephone calls, video chats, websites, bank transactions and more. It takes powerful computers to decrypt, store and analyze all this information, but the information is all there, zipping by at the speed of light.

“You have to assume everything is being collected,” said Bruce Schneier, who has been studying and writing about cryptography and computer security for two decades.

The New York Times disclosed the existence of this effort in 2005. In 2006, former AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the company had allowed the NSA to install a computer at its San Francisco switching center, a spot where fiber optic cables enter the U.S.

What followed was the most significant debate over domestic surveillance since the 1975 Church Committee, a special Senate committee led by Sen. Frank Church, D-Idaho, reined in the CIA and FBI for spying on Americans.

Unlike the recent debate over Prism, however, there were no visual aids, no easy-to-follow charts explaining that the government was sweeping up millions of emails and listening to phone calls of people accused of no wrongdoing.

The Bush administration called it the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and said it was keeping the United States safe.

“This program has produced intelligence for us that has been very valuable in the global war on terror, both in terms of saving lives and breaking up plots directed at the United States,” Vice President Dick Cheney said at the time.

The government has said it minimizes all conversations and emails involving Americans. Exactly what that means remains classified. But former U.S. officials familiar with the process say it allows the government to keep the information as long as it is labeled as belonging to an American and stored in a special, restricted part of a computer.

That means Americans’ personal emails can live in government computers, but analysts can’t access, read or listen to them unless the emails become relevant to a national security investigation.

The government doesn’t automatically delete the data, officials said, because an email or phone conversation that seems innocuous today might be significant a year from now.

What’s unclear to the public is how long the government keeps the data. That is significant because the U.S. someday will have a new enemy. Two decades from now, the government could have a trove of American emails and phone records it can tap to investigative whatever Congress declares a threat to national security.

The Bush administration shut down its warrantless wiretapping program in 2007 but endorsed a new law, the Protect America Act, which allowed the wiretapping to continue with changes: The NSA generally would have to explain its techniques and targets to a secret court in Washington, but individual warrants would not be required.

Congress approved it, with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in the midst of a campaign for president, voting against it.

“This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide,” Obama said in a speech two days before that vote. “I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom.”

___

When the Protect America Act made warrantless wiretapping legal, lawyers and executives at major technology companies knew what was about to happen.

One expert in national security law, who is directly familiar with how Internet companies dealt with the government during that period, recalls conversations in which technology officials worried aloud that the government would trample on Americans’ constitutional right against unlawful searches, and that the companies would be called on to help.

The logistics were about to get daunting, too.

For years, the companies had been handling requests from the FBI. Now Congress had given the NSA the authority to take information without warrants. Though the companies didn’t know it, the passage of the Protect America Act gave birth to a top-secret NSA program, officially called US-98XN.

It was known as Prism. Though many details are still unknown, it worked like this:

Every year, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence spell out in a classified document how the government plans to gather intelligence on foreigners overseas.

By law, the certification can be broad. The government isn’t required to identify specific targets or places.

A federal judge, in a secret order, approves the plan.

With that, the government can issue “directives” to Internet companies to turn over information.

While the court provides the government with broad authority to seize records, the directives themselves typically are specific, said one former associate general counsel at a major Internet company. They identify a specific target or groups of targets. Other company officials recall similar experiences.

All adamantly denied turning over the kind of broad swaths of data that many people believed when the Prism documents were first released.

“We only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Facebook said it received between 9,000 and 10,000 demands requests for data from all government agencies in the second half of last year. The social media company said fewer than 19,000 users were targeted.

How many of those were related to national security is unclear, and likely classified. The numbers suggest each request typically related to one or two people, not a vast range of users.

Tech company officials were unaware there was a program named Prism. Even former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials who were on the job when the program went live and were aware of its capabilities said this past week that they didn’t know what it was called.

What the NSA called Prism, the companies knew as a streamlined system that automated and simplified the “Hoovering” from years earlier, the former assistant general counsel said. The companies, he said, wanted to reduce their workload. The government wanted the data in a structured, consistent format that was easy to search.

Any company in the communications business can expect a visit, said Mike Janke, CEO of Silent Circle, a company that advertises software for secure, encrypted conversations. The government is eager to find easy ways around security.

“They do this every two to three years,” said Janke, who said government agents have approached his company but left empty-handed because his computer servers store little information. “They ask for the moon.”

That often creates tension between the government and a technology industry with a reputation for having a civil libertarian bent. Companies occasionally argue to limit what the government takes. Yahoo even went to court and lost in a classified ruling in 2008, The New York Times reported Friday.

“The notion that Yahoo gives any federal agency vast or unfettered access to our users’ records is categorically false,” Ron Bell, the company’s general counsel, said recently.

Under Prism, the delivery process varied by company.

Google, for instance, says it makes secure file transfers. Others use contractors or have set up stand-alone systems. Some have set up user interfaces making it easier for the government, according to a security expert familiar with the process.

Every company involved denied the most sensational assertion in the Prism documents: that the NSA pulled data “directly from the servers” of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL and more.

Technology experts and a former government official say that phrasing, taken from a PowerPoint slide describing the program, was likely meant to differentiate Prism’s neatly organized, company-provided data from the unstructured information snatched out of the Internet’s major pipelines.

In slide made public by the newspapers, NSA analysts were encouraged to use data coming from both Prism and from the fiber-optic cables.

Prism, as its name suggests, helps narrow and focus the stream. If eavesdroppers spot a suspicious email among the torrent of data pouring into the United States, analysts can use information from Internet companies to pinpoint the user.

With Prism, the government gets a user’s entire email inbox. Every email, including contacts with American citizens, becomes government property.

Once the NSA has an inbox, it can search its huge archives for information about everyone with whom the target communicated. All those people can be investigated, too.

That’s one example of how emails belonging to Americans can become swept up in the hunt.

In that way, Prism helps justify specific, potentially personal searches. But it’s the broader operation on the Internet fiber optics cables that actually captures the data, experts agree.

“I’m much more frightened and concerned about real-time monitoring on the Internet backbone,” said Wolf Ruzicka, CEO of EastBanc Technologies, a Washington software company. “I cannot think of anything, outside of a face-to-face conversation, that they could not have access to.”

One unanswered question, according to a former technology executive at one of the companies involved, is whether the government can use the data from Prism to work backward.

For example, not every company archives instant message conversations, chat room exchanges or videoconferences. But if Prism provided general details, known as metadata, about when a user began chatting, could the government “rewind” its copy of the global Internet stream, find the conversation and replay it in full?

That would take enormous computing, storage and code-breaking power. It’s possible the NSA could use supercomputers to decrypt some transmissions, but it’s unlikely it would have the ability to do that in volume. In other words, it would help to know what messages to zero in on.

Whether the government has that power and whether it uses Prism this way remains a closely guarded secret.

___

A few months after Obama took office in 2009, the surveillance debate reignited in Congress because the NSA had crossed the line. Eavesdroppers, it turned out, had been using their warrantless wiretap authority to intercept far more emails and phone calls of Americans than they were supposed to.

Obama, no longer opposed to the wiretapping, made unspecified changes to the process. The government said the problems were fixed.

“I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs,” Obama explained recently. “My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards.”

Years after decrying Bush for it, Obama said Americans did have to make tough choices in the name of safety.

“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience,” the president said.

Obama’s administration, echoing his predecessor’s, credited the surveillance with disrupting several terrorist attacks. Leading figures from the Bush administration who endured criticism during Obama’s candidacy have applauded the president for keeping the surveillance intact.

Jason Weinstein, who recently left the Justice Department as head of its cybercrime and intellectual property section, said it’s no surprise Obama continued the eavesdropping.

“You can’t expect a president to not use a legal tool that Congress has given him to protect the country,” he said. “So, Congress has given him the tool. The president’s using it. And the courts are saying ‘The way you’re using it is OK.’ That’s checks and balances at work.”

Schneier, the author and security expert, said it doesn’t really matter how Prism works, technically. Just assume the government collects everything, he said.

He said it doesn’t matter what the government and the companies say, either. It’s spycraft, after all.

“Everyone is playing word games,” he said. “No one is telling the truth.”

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Peter Svensonn, Adam Goldman, Michael Liedtke and Monika Mathur contributed to this report.

Contact the AP’s Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations@ap.org

By Stephen Braun, Anne Flaherty, Jack Gillum and Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press | Associated Press – Sat, Jun 15, 2013

Find this story at 15 June 2013

Copyright © 2013 Yahoo! Inc

Chris Pyle, Whistleblower on Domestic Spying in 70s, Says Be Wary of Attacks on NSA’s Critics

As NSA director General Keith Alexander blasts the leaks that exposed widespread surveillance of Americans, we’re joined by Chris Pyle, a former military instructor who exposed the CIA and Army’s monitoring of millions of Americans in the 1970s. Pyle discovered the Army and CIA were spying on millions of Americans engaged in lawful political activity while he was in the Army working as an instructor. His revelations prompted Senate hearings, including Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence, ultimately leading to a series of laws aimed at curbing government abuses. Now teaching constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College, Pyle says the NSA is known for attacking its critics instead of addressing the problems they expose.
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We want to go on to the National Security Agency director, General Keith Alexander, who testified before Congress Wednesday, a week after a trove of secret documents about his agency’s widespread surveillance program stunned the nation and sparked heated debate. During his testimony, Alexander denied claims he has personal wiretapping abilities at the agency and insisted phone data collection has helped prevent dozens of terrorist attacks. He refused to publicly answer questions about how the NSA had made the transition to collecting phone records of Americans. Alexander also said he hoped for greater transparency around the surveillance programs, but he argued some secrecy helps the agency’s mission. He was also asked about the impact of the NSA leaks. This was his response.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: Great harm has already been done by opening this up. And the consequence, I believe, is our security is jeopardized. There is no doubt in my mind that we will lose capabilities as a result of this and that not only the United States, but those allies that we have helped, will no longer be as safe as they were two weeks ago. And so, I am really concerned about that. I’m also concerned that, as we go forward, we now know that some of this has been released. So what does it make sense to explain to the American people so they have confidence that their government is doing the right thing? Because I believe we are, and we have to show them that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The disclosure of the secret NSA surveillance program was based on information leaked by Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who most recently worked inside the NSA’s Hawaii office for the private firm Booz Allen Hamilton. In an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said, quote, “I’m neither traitor nor hero, I’m an American.” He also said he intends to stay in Hong Kong until he’s asked to leave, and he intends to fight any extradition attempts by the U.S. government. Snowden also told the paper, quote, “People who think I made a mistake in picking [Hong Kong] as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined by Christopher Pyle, who first exposed domestic spying in the 1970s here in the U.S. Pyle discovered the CIA was spying on millions of Americans engaged in lawful activity while he was in the Army and worked as an instructor. After he left, he wrote about the Army’s vast and growing spy operations. His article from 1971 began, quote, “For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States.” Pyle’s story prompted Senate hearings, including Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence. These ultimately led to a series of laws aimed at curbing government abuse. Chris Pyle is the co-author of Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, Getting Away with Torture and The Constitution Under Siege. He now teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College and recently wrote a piece headlined, “Edward Snowden and the Real Issues.” He joins us from Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Pyle. Talk about what you feel those real issues are. But before you do, explain what happened to you, how it was you revealed in the early ’70s what was going on in the military.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: I received a briefing at the U.S. Army Intelligence Command that showed me the extent of the surveillance system. There were about 1,500 Army agents in plain clothes watching every demonstration in the United States of 20 people or more. There was also a records system in a giant warehouse on about six million people. I disclosed the existence of that surveillance and then recruited 125 of the Army’s counterintelligence agents to tell what they knew about the spying to Congress, the courts and the press. As a result of those disclosures and the congressional hearings, the entire U.S. Army Intelligence Command was abolished. This was before Watergate.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Professor Pyle, did you, at that time, suffer any repercussions from your willingness to step forward and reveal what was going on to Congress?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, two things happened. The Army created a 50-man unit in the Pentagon whose sole job was to discredit my disclosures. That effort failed: The disclosures were all quite accurate. I was also put on President Nixon’s enemies list, which resulted in a tax audit.

AMY GOODMAN: Christopher Pyle, let’s turn for a minute to the Church Committee’s special Senate investigation of government misconduct, which you played a key role in the mid-’70s, U.S. Senate committee chaired by Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho, who conducted a massive investigation of the CIA and FBI’s misuse of power at home and abroad, the multi-year investigation examining domestic spying, the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders, the FBI and CIA’s efforts to infiltrate and disrupt leftist organizations, and a lot more. This is Senator Frank Church speaking during one of the committee’s hearings.

SEN. FRANK CHURCH: You have seen today the dark side of those activities, where many Americans who were not even suspected of crime were not only spied upon, but they were harassed, they were discredited and, at times, endangered.

AMY GOODMAN: And this is another clip from the Church Committee Senate hearing. This is CIA Director William Colby testifying. He was asked if he found the work of the committee unwelcome.

WILLIAM COLBY: No, I do not. I’ve—as I’ve said to the chairman, I welcome the chance to try to describe to the American people what intelligence is really about today. It’s a—it is an opportunity to show how we Americans have modernized the whole concept of intelligence.

AMY GOODMAN: That was then-CIA Director William Colby. So, if you would, Chris Pyle, take this forward, from what came out of the Church Committee hearings, that started with your exposé from being a military whistleblower, to what you’re seeing today with Edward Snowden.

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, what we’ve seen in the ensuing years has been a vast explosion in intelligence-gathering capabilities. But the most significant part of that is the fact that civilian corporations are now doing the government’s work. Seventy percent of the intelligence budget of the United States today goes to private contractors like Booz Allen, which employed Edward Snowden. This is a major change in the power of surveillance. It now goes not only to the government, but to private corporations.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you seem—in a recent article, you seem to raise what you think are the real issues in these Snowden leaks. You mention, one, the inability of Congress to actually do legitimate oversight over intelligence. You say that the secrecy system is out of control. And you also say that the system is also profoundly corrupt because of all this use of private contractors who make huge amounts of money that no one can actually hold them accountable for. Could you talk about those issues?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Yes. The forerunner of the PRISM system that Snowden disclosed was called Trailblazer. It wasted $1 billion on private contracts. It replaced a much less expensive system called ThinThread, which had more privacy protections and had been developed inside the government. Now, the reason that private contractors get this business is because members of Congress intercede with them with government agencies. And we now have a situation where members of the Intelligence Committee and other committees of Congress intercede with the bureaucracy to get sweetheart contracts for companies that waste taxpayers’ money and also violate the Constitution and the privacy of citizens. This is a very serious situation, because it means that it’s much more difficult to get effective oversight from Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to the Senate Appropriation Committee hearing with the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, defending the phone surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I thought the great part about this program was that we brought Congress, the administration and the courts all together. We did that. That’s what our government stands for, under the same Constitution. We follow that Constitution. We swear an oath to it. So I am concerned, and I think we have to balance that. I will not—I would rather take a public beating and people think I’m hiding something than to jeopardize the security of this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Pyle, could you respond?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, we all want to protect the security of the country. We all want to protect the Constitution. But when government agencies are totally unaccountable, we can’t do that. Members of Congress do not go to those briefings, even if they’re offered, because once you go to the briefing, then you can’t talk about what you’ve been told, because it’s classified. So the briefing system is designed to silence Congress, not to promote effective oversight.

Members of Congress don’t want to spend time on oversight. They’re too busy raising money. New members of the House of Representatives this winter were told by the Democratic Campaign Committee that they should spend between four and six hours a day dialing for dollars. They have no time to do the public’s business. They’re too busy begging for money. President Obama himself attended 220 fundraisers last year. Where does he get the time to be president when he’s spending so much time asking wealthy people for money to support his campaign?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Chris Pyle, in Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Senator Dick Durbin asked NSA director, General Keith Alexander, why someone like Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden was in a position in which he had access to the classified information he leaked.

SEN. DICK DURBIN: He was a high school dropout. He was a community college dropout. He had a GED degree. He was injured in training for the U.S. Army and had to leave as a result of that. And he took a job as a security guard for the NSA in Maryland. Shortly thereafter, he took a job for the CIA in what is characterized as IT security in The Guardian piece that was published. At age 23, he was stationed in an undercover manner overseas for the CIA and was given clearance and access to a wide—a wide array of classified documents. At age 25, he went to work for a private contractor and most recently worked for Booz Allen, another private contractor working for our government. I’m trying to look at this résumé and background—it says he ended up earning somewhere between $122,000 and $200,000 a year. I’m trying to look at the résumé background for this individual who had access to this highly classified information at such a young age, with a limited educational and work experience, part of it as a security guard, and ask you if you’re troubled that he was given that kind of opportunity to be so close to important information that was critical to the security of our nation?

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I do have concerns about that, over the process, Senator. I have grave concerns over that, the access that he had, the process that we did. And those are things that I have to look into and fix from my end, and that across the intel community, Director Clapper said we’re going to look across that, as well. I think those absolutely need to be looked at. I would point out that in the IT arena, in the cyber-arena, some of these folks have tremendous skills to operate networks. That was his job, for the most part, from the 2009-’10, was as an IT, a system administrator within those networks. He had great skills in that areas. But the rest of it, you’ve hit on—you’ve hit on the head. We do have to go back and look at these processes, the oversight in those—we have those—where they went wrong, and how we fix those.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was NSA director, General Keith Alexander, speaking before the Senate on Wednesday. Well, in 2012, General Alexander spoke at DEF CON, the annual hacker convention. During his speech, Alexander tried to court hackers to work at the National Security Agency. The third bullet on his PowerPoint presentation that he refers to is privacy and civil liberties must be protected.

GEN. KEITH ALEXANDER: I think the third bullet down is what we really want to do is innovate freedom, how we’re going to look at where we take this next. This is a great opportunity for not only our nation, but for the world. And, you know, one of the things that I’m really proud of saying is, when you look at Vint Cerf and the others, we’re the ones who helped develop, we’re the ones who built this Internet. And we ought to be the first ones to secure it. And I think you folks can help us do that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was General Keith Alexander speaking in 2012 at DEF CON. For our radio listeners, I should note that he was in a black T-shirt and wearing jeans as he spoke to the hackers. Chris Pyle, your response?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, it’s true. NSA doesn’t want to hire people like you and me. We don’t know enough about the Internet. That said, it’s important to note that the vice chairman of Booz Allen happens to be Mike McConnell, who was former director of NSA and of national intelligence. There is a revolving door between high government positions and private corporations, and this revolving door allows these people to make a great deal more money upon leaving the government, and then being rented back to the government in a contractor capacity. And that’s part of the corruption of the system.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, one of the things you’ve also said is that the top-secret designation is a way to—is more of a way for the government officials, the bureaucrats and the contractors not to be held accountable than it is to actually protect secrets that the government needs to protect. Could you expand on that?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, yes. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures, only binds the government, doesn’t bind corporations. That’s a serious problem. The reason we have privatization of prisons, in some ways, is for governments to escape liability. They put the liability on the private corporations that run the prisons, and they just charge their liabilities as an operating cost.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Pyle, the attack on Edward Snowden—I mean, you’ve got the pundits. What Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, quickly blogged: Snowden is “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.” Thomas Friedman writes, “I don’t believe [that] Edward Snowden, the leaker of all this secret material, is some heroic whistle-blower.” David Brooks says, “Though obviously terrifically bright, he could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college.” That’s the pundits. And then, of course, there’s the NSA. Can you talk about the attack on the whistleblower today and back when you were blowing the whistle?

CHRISTOPHER PYLE: Well, when I was blowing the whistle and they couldn’t get any dirt on me—I had led a very uninteresting life—they made up dirt and tried to peddle it on Capitol Hill in order to discredit me and prevent me from testifying before Senator Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. Every bureaucracy hates dissenters. They must expel dissenters and discredit dissenters, because dissenters force them to reconsider what it is they’re doing, and no bureaucracy wants anybody to interrupt what they’re doing. And so, this is the natural, organic response of any bureaucracy or any establishment.

Now, I think it is inappropriate and quite irrelevant to analyze Ed Snowden’s motivations. It doesn’t matter much—except in court, to prove that he either did or did not intend to aid a foreign power or hurt the United States. But separate from that motivation, whether he’s a narcissist, like many people on television are, no, I don’t think that’s relevant at all. He’s neither a traitor nor a hero, and he says this himself. He’s just an ordinary American. He’s trying to start a debate in this nation over something that is critically important. He should be respected for that, taken at face value, and then we should move on to the big issues, including the corruption of our system that is done by massive secrecy and by massive amounts of money in politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Chris Pyle, we want to thank you for being with us, co-author of Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, Getting Away with Torture and The Constitution Under Siege. In 1970, Christopher Pyle disclosed the military’s spying on civilians and worked for three congressional committees to end it, including Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence. He now teaches constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

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NSA program part of a larger effort to target Internet

PRISM appears to be a response to overseas data centers and Internet services’ increasing encryption of email.

WASHINGTON — Operating under secret court orders, the National Security Agency has access to a large segment of U.S. and global Internet traffic, allowing the giant spy agency to intercept specific information for counter-terrorism and foreign intelligence purposes, according to current and former intelligence officials.

News leaks this week revealed a highly classified NSA program code-named PRISM that allows it to mine data from domestic Internet and social media companies under certain circumstances. But PRISM is part of a much larger evolving effort by the intelligence agency to scoop up as much Internet traffic as possible, the officials said.

Most Internet data moves through fiber-optic cables in the United States, and the NSA physically intercepts much of it through equipment installed at telecommunications facilities, or from undersea cables.

But two trends have forced the NSA to adapt in recent years. Google and other major U.S.-based Internet providers have built computer server farms and data centers abroad. In addition, an increasing amount of digital traffic, including Google’s Gmail service, is encrypted to ensure privacy and to thwart cyber-theft.

The 6-year-old PRISM program appears to be a response to those developments. The agency can access emails, video and other data directly from the companies, U.S. officials said. It’s far simpler than tapping computer lines overseas or trying to decrypt emails.

It’s “the easy way,” a former senior NSA official said. “It’s also the complete way. You don’t have to worry about missing anything.”

U.S. officials denied Friday that the NSA had direct access to Internet company servers or their data streams, challenging published reports on the PRISM program. The officials said the NSA needs a surveillance court order to obtain bulk data, and must notify the companies.

The NSA was chartered to collect foreign intelligence. But as a general matter, surveillance on the Internet makes it difficult to cull Americans from the data stream and only focus on foreigners.

“You can set up a wiretap between Minsk and Pinsk and get Americans,” said Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel who was not briefed on the PRISM program.

The NSA reportedly seeks to “minimize,” or disregard, data on U.S. citizens that it is not authorized to collect. However, the agency has wide leeway under laws passed since Sept. 11, 2001, to target individual Americans if it can convince the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that there is probable cause to believe the individual has terrorist links.

Under the court orders, Internet companies turn over data that meet so-called validated selectors chosen by the intelligence community. Those could be phone numbers, email addresses or other data that suggest a terrorist tie-in or foreign espionage.

A similar legal structure is used for the giant archive of telephone company records that the NSA has assembled since at least 2007. The trove includes toll records for every local call in the United States, as well as those to or from overseas numbers. But officials said a separate court order is required to utilize the vast database in any given investigation.

If the validated selectors show, for example, that an American is in contact with militants in Pakistan, the NSA could then use a warrant to obtain the American’s emails and other digital communications as well as permission to eavesdrop on phone calls.

“If it hits on that person’s communication, and I have been in communication with that person, then it’s likely that my phone number or email address will be pulled out,” the former official said. At some point, the FBI would go back to the surveillance court and seek a more specific warrant.

On Friday, two Democrats who serve on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, disputed claims by Obama administration officials that collecting Americans’ phone records had helped thwart terrorist attacks.

“After years of review, we believe statements that this very broad Patriot Act collection has been a critical tool in protecting the nation do not appear to hold up under close scrutiny,” they said in a joint statement.

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Times staff writer Chris O’Brien in San Francisco contributed to this report.

June 07, 2013|By Ken Dilanian, Washington Bureau

Find this story at 7 June 2013

Copyright 2013 Los Angeles Times