Government snooping, backdoors and #necessaryhashtags

[Nick]

For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, an old copy of an NSA security manual is available
here (unverified):
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/nsaman.pdf

Notice that employees are discouraged from revealing their employer outside work.
Given the number of pure mathematicians and computer scientists employed there
(or so we think), I would not be surprised if this forum has members who work at the NSA.

Hi to all NSA people reading this, either as forum members or by tapping us!

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Nick

Given the number of pure mathematicians and computer scientists employed there
(or so we think), I would not be surprised if this forum has members who work at the NSA.

The NSA routinely helps sponsor crypto-style academic conferences. I am sad to say that back in the late 90s I accepted some modest sum of money from them by way of a partial travel-cost defrayal for my flight to that year's installment of the West Coast Number Theory Conference at Asilomar. [Which, being near Monterey CA is now within easy driving distance for me - but back then I lived in Ohio].

[kladner]

Originally Posted by xilman

Seems about right to me.

[raman]You might like to get your irony detector recalibrated if you need to read this bit.[/raman]

Even while wondering why the BB codes on [RAMAN][/RAMAN] were showing, I found it necessary to go test the code to see if it really had been added. Alas, it is but a simulation.

[Batalov]

Using white font color is just wrong!
Where's you sense of balance? - this webpage begs for LemonChiffon (I can only repeat after Xyzzy* Albert: "One does want a hint of color!").
__________
*who chose these colors ;-)

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by kladner

Even while wondering why the BB codes on [RAMAN][/RAMAN] were showing, I found it necessary to go test the code to see if it really had been added. Alas, it is but a simulation.

I had the opposite (or is it the orthogonal-complementary?) problem: Since my default browser mode overrides page-set colors with my own eye-relief-based color scheme, I saw both the phony BBcode markup tags and the enclosed text, and thought maybe Paul was (unsuccessfully) testing out some kind of Raman-noodling doodling markup.

Upon enabling the "let pages choose their own colors" setting I saw that it was merely a sekrit "white power" message.

[cheesehead]

Originally Posted by kladner

A friend sent me this link. I used to look at the site fairly often until I recovered somewhat (or burnt out) from news junkiedom. I do vouch for Naomi Wolf as an author I consider reliable and thoughtful.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/my-cree...-to-be/5339161

I think she makes good points (a, b, c & h) about Snowden's not being a typical whistleblower ... but how do the revelations of spying on EU-countries fit with her theory?

[ewmayer]

I didn't give Ms. Wolf's musings much more credence than more-or-less idle speculation deserves - one can easily rebut, or at least come up with an as-plausible benign alternative for, most of her key theses. For example:

a) He is super-organized, for a whistleblower, in terms of what candidates, the White House, the State Dept. et al call ‘message discipline.’

Assange isn't exactly disorganized - and Snowden had the experiences - and now it seems perhaps the active aiding of - other recent whistleblowers including Assange.

b) In the Greenwald video interview, I was concerned about the way Snowden conveys his message. He is not struggling for words, or thinking hard, as even bright, articulate whistleblowers under stress will do.

So being an inarticulate bumbler is her criterion for genuineness? Perhaps Snowden did like public speaker do ... you know "rehearse his presentation"?

c) He keeps saying things like, “If you are a journalist and they think you are the transmission point of this info, they will certainly kill you.” Or: “I fully expect to be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.”

Lucky for him then that the administration is playing the "he is not a journalist" card ... and less than 1 week after Wolf's piece hit the web, he *was* charged under the Espionage Act. Having a good idea what is likely to happen is again supposed to be implausible for a 'real' leaker?

d) It is actually in the Police State’s interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this.

But that ignores the crucial fact that the U.S. is in deep denial about being a Police State - she is talking about a Police State which makes no bones about that.

e) ...That very pretty pole-dancing Facebooking girlfriend who appeared for, well, no reason in the media coverage…and who keeps leaking commentary, so her picture can be recycled in the press…really, she happens to pole-dance?
Jealousy does not become you, Naomi. :) Anyway, thankfully for all involved the pole-dancing gf has faded as far as media interest goes.

f) Snowden is in Hong Kong, which has close ties to the UK, which has done the US’s bidding with other famous leakers such as Assange. So really there are MANY other countries that he would be less likely to be handed over from…

Like, say, Russia?

g) Media reports said he had vanished at one point to ‘an undisclosed location’ or ‘a safe house.’ Come on. There is no such thing.

LOL, there is no such thing as an undisclosed location? Anyway, more than likely the media simply didn't know and thus filled the void with sexy euphemisms for "we don't know".

Her last point amounts to "he has no lawyer of whom i am aware - he must be a fraud!"

I mean, it *might* be true, but that is a litany of weak-ass sh*t she trots out, to use the parlance of street hoops.

[ewmayer]

o Interesting bit of Kabuki theater with the Bolivian president's plane in Vienna yesterday ... anyone care to predict where Snowden will eventually end up? I would say that France, Portugal and Spain just forfeited any right they had to complain about U.S. spying.

o Job Title Key to Inner Access Held by Snowden

The N.S.A.’s assessment of Mr. Snowden’s case will likely also consider what has become, for intelligence officials, a chilling consideration: there are thousands of people of his generation and computer skills at the agency, hired in recent years to keep up with the communications boom.

The officials fear that some of them, like young computer aficionados outside the agency, might share Mr. Snowden’s professed libertarian streak and skepticism of the government’s secret power. Intelligence bosses are keeping a closer eye on them now, hoping that there is not another self-appointed whistle-blower in their midst.

Assange - see link in post #77 - made a good point about this aspect - you need to hire bright young kids to do this stuff, but if they realize you lied to them about the mission, they are likely to turn against you. The "lying about the mission" aspect is alas highly unlikely to be one of the aforementioned officials' takeaways from the affair.


o Regarding "how revealing are metadata?", MIT Media Lab's Immersion program is cool, in a creepy kinda way [which is good in the present context]:

What the N.S.A. Knows About You: It’s difficult to have an informed opinion about the National Security Agency’s collection of “metadata” without understanding what “metadata” is, not that that’s stopped anyone.

The name suggests that it’s data about data, and the Obama administration has gone to some lengths to reassure Americans that “metadata” is definitely not “content,” which unlike your “metadata” presumably enjoys Fourth Amendment protections. But Glenn Greenwald, among others, has said that’s a distinction without a difference: “In reality, it is hard to distinguish email metadata from email content.”For anyone still in the dark — pretty much everyone? — there’s a simple way to figure out what the N.S.A. can glean from your email: An online program from the MIT Media Lab called “Immersion.”

Tinfoil-hatters take note:

Yes, it only works with Gmail and you have to reveal your password. But as The Boston Globe notes, “Unlike Google, or the NSA, the project also offers an instant deletion option: Remove your name, and it erases your metadata.”

Or, at least it promises that your metadata have been removed ... not that it's important, because the NSA has 'em already anyway. Immersion simply gives you a way to visualize how even a fairly unsophisticated LinkedIn-style network map based on your e-mail metadata can be quite revealing.


o How Can We Debate Secret Law?: The A.C.L.U. wants more information on the legal opinions supporting the N.S.A. surveillance program.

One of the problems with the debate over the necessity and legality of the National Security Agency’s data-mining program is that we’re having it in the dark. The surveillance programs are based on legal arguments delivered in secret by government lawyers to a court that operates out of public view and issues opinions that are classified as too secret for mere mortals to read.

For that reason, 16 members of Congress — a majority of them Republicans — recently filed a supporting brief for a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union to compel the release of declassified versions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinions “evaluating the meaning, scope and constitutionality” of the relevant part of the Patriot Act, Section 215.

“We accept that free countries must engage in secret operations from time to time to protect their citizens,” Representative Justin Amash, Republican of Michigan, wrote in the brief. “Free countries must not, however, operate under secret laws. Secret court opinions obscure the law. They prevent public debate on critical policy issues and they stop Congress from fulfilling its duty to enact sound laws and fix broken ones.”

The documents that are being requested, the lawmakers said, appear to involve a substantial expansion of the meaning of Section 215 that is not evident from the law’s text. They said the court’s opinion authorizing the surveillance appears to have “broken significant new legal ground, which suggests that the nation’s surveillance laws may be operating in ways that are not obvious to Congress or the public.”

The brief noted that while some members of Congress have seen those opinions, they are barred by law from discussing them in public.

This has resulted in some strange theatrics. In a recent hearing, Senator Ron Wyden, who was briefed on the surveillance programs, asked James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, if the N.S.A. collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.”

Mr. Clapper replied: ”No sir.”

Mr. Wyden knew that Mr. Clapper was not telling the truth, but he could not say so at the time. Later, Mr. Clapper tried to excuse himself by saying that the question did not have a simple “yes or no” answer, so he responded in “what I thought was the most truthful or least untruthful manner.”

Since then, the Guardian newspaper reported, Mr. Clapper has sent a letter to the Senate apologizing for his “erroneous” statements.

That’s about the level of discourse we are going to get until the government releases the arguments its lawyers made to the surveillance court about Section 215, and the court’s opinion accepting those arguments.

[Nick]

For an academic introduction to Traffic Analysis (currently called metadata), a good starting point is
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/...rs/TAIntro.pdf

It has also been used successfully against the U.S. government. When the first claims of extraordinary rendition emerged, flight log data was gathered by plane spotters on N379P and N44982. The ownership was traced back to Washington DC and the flights gave significant evidence of secret CIA prisons in Poland and Romania. This was later confirmed by an official investigation of the Council of Europe.

[ewmayer]

o Interesting Reuters headline on this Independence Day in the self-proclaimed Land of the Free:

U.S. enjoys July 4 parades, picnics under watchful eyes of police

Can't let the NSA have all the watching fun now...

o Funny protest sign seen this past week in Europe is a riff on one of the Obama campaign slogans: "Yes we scan".

o Op-Ed in yesterday's NYT about how to better balance the need to gather intelligence aimed at thwarting terrorism (and other international criminality) with some actual accountability and concern for civil liberties:

Data Mining, Without Big Brother

o Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi comments on the "who is a journalist" theme.

But, it seems the vast majority of 'mericans have gone back to watching Dancing With the Stars...

[ewmayer]

Breaking: Iceland rejected his bid, but both Venezuela and Nicaragua have offered asylum to Snowden. Question is, even if he accepts an offer, how do they get him out of Russia with the travel routes effectively turned into a no-fly zone by U.S. allies? Stay tuned...

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o Despite president Hollande's protests about U.S. spying, zee French are mass-spying too, on both the foreign (no surprise there) but also domestic fronts, and in even grander style (Le Monde by way of econo-blogger Mish here) - relatively speaking - than the NSA. "So we had to replace the 'liberté' bit with 'sécurité' - what's le big deal?"

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o Since 9/11 - and the precedent goes back much further - the U.S. has also been (legally, according to a court decision, this one shockingly handed down in non-secret) spying on snail mail, by photographing the cover of every letter and package you send via USPS.

The big differences between the longstanding precedent w.r.to snail mail and e-comms to me are:

a) Software analysis of metadata was unknown at the time the mail-covers programs were first used, and the modern-day ability to glean private details about people from seemingly-innocuous activities would likely have shocked those who approved the earlier mail-tracking programs;

b) Unlike snail mail, e-communications make it trivial to read both envelope information *and* content (for an agency like the NSA, most likely only slightly less trivial if the content is PGP-level encrypted). If the capability exists it will be (mis)used, that is now clear beyond any doubt.

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o Die Welt on Prism's successor - non-German readers are suggested to feed the URL to Google Translate for a gist-level translation (and some laughs, to boot) - I translated the header below:

Prism is downright puny compared to its successor: The USA's Prism program and British spying activities in the Internet seem frighteningly sophisticated. But Prism is feeble in comparison to the NSA's newest IT-initiative.

Hmm, let's see what GT does with the original header not too shabby, aside from the typically stilted syntax:

Prism is downright small compared to his successor: Even the Prism program of the U.S. and the British espionage activities on the Internet sophisticated look frightening. But Prism is weak compared to the new IT initiative of the NSA.