Wikileaks again proves to be useful to Russia

March 8, 2017March 7, 2017 ~ susie

With their latest leaks, seemingly timed to help Donald Trump while he’s under fire:

The documents not only describe these programs in some detail, but also provide step-by-step instructions on how to create and install the software or devices. WikiLeaks’ introduction, which summarizes the gist of these documents, criticizes the CIA for creating these malware programs, noting that once they’re out in the world, they can spread and be exploited by other users, including criminals. The irony is that, by providing the working papers for these programs, WikiLeaks has made that task much easier.

Again, there is nothing in these documents, nothing even in the WikiLeaks introduction, to suggest that the CIA uses any of these devices to spy on American citizens. Assuming that is the case, there is nothing improper about any of these programs. This is what spy agencies do: They spy. And in an age when information is stored or transmitted on digital devices, they spy on those digital devices.

The WikiLeaks documents are likely to have three effects: They will blow legitimate U.S. cyberintelligence operations; they will instruct other spy agencies, criminals, and mischief-makers on how to do what the CIA does; and they will provide yet another propaganda victory for Russia.

At a moment when nearly everyone is criticizing Russia for hacking the U.S. presidential election, the Russians can point to these documents and say, “See? The Americans do this, too.” It’s true that U.S. intelligence agencies have been hacking for decades, longer than the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, Israelis, French, and others have been hacking. The process described in these documents—implanting devices or malware inside consumer electronics, then triggering those devices or tracking the malware—is also nothing new.

McConnell’s investigation isn’t enough

December 13, 2016December 12, 2016 ~ susie ~ 5 Comments

This morning Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shrugged off calls for a Select Committee to investigate intelligence agencies’ meddling in the election while reassuring everyone that he was sure North Carolina Senator Burr would convene an investigation via regular order. Calling the allegations of Russian meddling “disturbing,” McConnell said the intelligence panel should take the lead,… Continue reading “McConnell’s investigation isn’t enough” →

Time to switch browsers

December 6, 2016December 5, 2016 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

This is a very important (and long) story that all of us should read:

Albright’s map also provides a clue to understanding the Google search results I found. What these rightwing news sites have done, he explains, is what most commercial websites try to do. They try to find the tricks that will move them up Google’s PageRank system. They try and “game” the algorithm. And what his map shows is how well they’re doing that.

That’s what my searches are showing too. That the right has colonised the digital space around these subjects – Muslims, women, Jews, the Holocaust, black people – far more effectively than the liberal left.

“It’s an information war,” says Albright. “That’s what I keep coming back to.”

But it’s where it goes from here that’s truly frightening. I ask him how it can be stopped. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it can be. It’s a network. It’s far more powerful than any one actor.”

So, it’s almost got a life of its own? “Yes, and it’s learning. Every day, it’s getting stronger.”

The more people who search for information about Jews, the more people will see links to hate sites, and the more they click on those links (very few people click on to the second page of results) the more traffic the sites will get, the more links they will accrue and the more authoritative they will appear. This is an entirely circular knowledge economy that has only one outcome: an amplification of the message. Jews are evil. Women are evil. Islam must be destroyed. Hitler was one of the good guys.

What if someone hacked Julian Assange’s emails?

October 20, 2016October 19, 2016 ~ susie ~ 2 Comments

To understand the exposure of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta’s emails by Wikileaks, it may be helpful to try a few simple thought experiments. What if the National Security Agency stole tens of thousands of emails from a politician in another country – or better yet, from a different politician here – and then published them… Continue reading “What if someone hacked Julian Assange’s emails?” →

Connecticut cracking down on out of state car registrations

August 12, 2016August 11, 2016 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Yeah, not so much. While Connecticut has a very high media income, there are a lot of poor people. And if they’re registering in another state, they are trying to comply as best they can:

City officials in Waterbury, Conn. recently announced an aggressive crackdown on residents who register their cars out of state to avoid Connecticut’s high vehicles taxes. In a state where municipal taxes are collected annually on all motor vehicles, some residents who work or have family in neighboring states have opted to register their cars out of state. In attempt to squeeze every last penny for the state’s dwindling coffers, the city’s police department, in conjunction with the tax authority, has contracted with a private firm to photograph and track parked vehicles every night.

The city’s move is drawing criticism from some who say the plan is a violation of their civil rights. For car owners who live in Waterbury – regardless of where the automobile is registered – the city’s new plan could be a privacy nightmare. Once tracking data is compiled and suspect vehicles are identified, the police will assign light-duty officers to investigate and issue citations. Penalties can include back taxes and fines up to $1,000.

Municipal Tax Services, a central Connecticut-based company, will begin assisting the city by deploying vehicles equipped with high-speed cameras. As the company’s private patrol cars cruise the city each night, they will be taking photos of every vehicle parked on city’s streets – including the license plates. The company will then build a database and profile the parking patterns of all vehicles to determine which cars are suspected of using out-of-state registrations to dodge taxes.

While residents in Washington, D.C. may not be trying to avoid taxes, there is a similar scenario playing out on this city’s streets. Pursuant the District’s Registration of Out-of-State Automobiles – or ROSA – regulation, the Department of Public Works does monitor the streets for vehicles that do not comply with District registration requirements.

Washington’s program is far less intrusive than the one currently being implemented in Connecticut. According to the Washington, D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles, any vehicle parked or operated in the District for 30 consecutive days must be registered and display a valid DMV inspection sticker and tags. During normal work rounds, DPW personnel make note of any vehicle not in compliance twice in a 30-day period.

Once an offending vehicle is identified, DPW may issue a warning to notify the owner of compliance violations. Owners then have the option of requesting a ROSA exemption as a recurring visitor to the District. ROSA exemptions may be obtained in person, by mail, or online at the DMV website and apply only to the ROSA enforcement and no other parking provisions.

In Connecticut, the city of Waterbury will be actively collecting license plates and storing them by the location where they were photographed.

Peter Billings commented, “While there is an element of Big Brother to the program, vehicle owners who rely on street-side parking may have little recourse when it comes to objections to the city’s intrusive activity.”

An “element” of Big Brother? Ya think?

The U.S. Supreme Court has addressed numerous iterations of Fourth Amendment claims in the criminal context, but the situation in Waterbury, Conn. carries no criminal aspect. It is a civil matter concerning the tax authority – and while a penalty may be imposed for violating the vehicle registration rules, it is not one imposed by a criminal court.

Though residents may face obstacles in raising a Fourth Amendment challenge, the Supreme Court has issued some case law that may hold promise. In 2012 the Court held that installing a GPS on a car for a month was a Fourth Amendment violation because, while anyone could watch where the vehicle travelled, the accumulation of the observations and data over time was excessively intrusive.

Additionally, there are two fundamental rights in the Connecticut surveillance issue that might tentatively be addressed in the context of the First Amendment. They include the right to privacy, and the closely related right of anonymity – a form of privacy that comes with being in public places, but correlates to freedom from identification. Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested in a 2012 concurring opinion that a new definition of privacy may be warranted to address the growing encroachment of technology and “whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated.”
Continue reading “Connecticut cracking down on out of state car registrations” →

Creep

July 1, 2016June 30, 2016 ~ susie

So it seems Trump used to listen in on his resort guests’ private phone calls. Creepy, yes?

Excerpt: ‘Rogue Justice: The Making Of The Security State’

May 23, 2016May 22, 2016 ~ susie

The War on Terror has transformed the Department of Justice into an arm of the intelligence community- hijacking an institution charged with upholding the Constitution and the rule of law and using it as legal cover for mass surveillance and torture. No one has detailed that monumental shift in policy like Karen Greenberg, Director of the… Continue reading “Excerpt: ‘Rogue Justice: The Making Of The Security State’” →

Oops! One Of Two Copies Of The CIA Torture Report ‘Accidentally Destroyed’

May 18, 2016May 17, 2016 ~ susie ~ 3 Comments

This really is shocking and not just in a sarcastic way. According to Yahoo! News, one of the two remaining copies of the Senate CIA torture report has been “accidentally” destroyed. The CIA inspector general’s office – the spy agency’s internal watchdog – has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture… Continue reading “Oops! One Of Two Copies Of The CIA Torture Report ‘Accidentally Destroyed’” →

Data privacy vs. national security

May 3, 2016May 2, 2016 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

The hotly debated issue of national security versus data privacy has been making headlines all over the world due to the iPhone encryption case pitting the US Department of Justice against mammoth technology company Apple Inc.

A US District Court judge in California ordered Apple to help the FBI unlock the encrypted iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters who killed 14 people and seriously injured 22 in December 2015. Apple refused the court order saying it will not destabilize its products’ security features because that would leave customers vulnerable to hackers and other serious cyber threats.

Specifically, the FBI wanted Apple to write and turn over new code that would allow federal data analysts to break Apple’s encryption key. It is asking Apple to develop software that would weaken its own product – create a “backdoor” that would admit government hackers into the heart of its operating system.

Apple CEO Tim Cook’s open letter to customers denounced the FBI’s actions and court order saying, “The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step, which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.”

He followed up with a similar email to all Apple employees thanking them for their support, reiterating that Apple has no sympathy for terrorists, and outlining how Apple has cooperated and will continue to cooperate with investigators and comply with information requests. But he urged prosecutors to withdraw their demand to turn over encryption secrets arguing it sets a dangerous precedent from both a technical and a personal privacy perspective.

Most technology experts and privacy advocates agree with Apple. They say that forcing US companies to weaken their encryption methods would invite attention from unscrupulous hackers, expose private data, threaten Internet security, and give a competitive advantage to technology companies in other countries.

Atlanta Defense Attorney Allen Yates commented, “Apple’s pushback against the government’s aggression in this case is understandable given the tech giant’s desire to protect its products, and more importantly, its customers and the ability to access their data. It is always a sensitive issue when the government invokes national security, but allowing the government unfettered access to United States Citizen’s encrypted data will create a very dangerous precedent and have unknown ramifications on the security of our most popular technologies.”

It’s a controversial topic. On the other side of the debate, the FBI and government supporters strongly disapprove of Apple’s refusal to cooperate. They say Apple must comply due to the highly sensitive nature of information that might reside on the phone. The FBI insists the code would only be used for this iPhone – one that had been in the possession of a known, deadly terrorist with allegiance to ISIS.

Like the Apple CEO, FBI Director James Comey also appealed to the public to gain support. He issued a passionate statement on the internet defending his request and saying that it is solely a question of justice for the victims and not intended to set a precedent of any kind. In his words, “We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land. I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead.”

While the immediate legal issues surrounding the battle between Apple and the federal government became moot after the FBI hacked the iPhone itself and announced they were dropping the lawsuit, the entire debate between the right to privacy and national security will clearly continue.

The 289 classified pages of the 9/11 Commission.

April 25, 2016April 24, 2016 ~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Just going to link to a few stories you should read, like this:

In 1999, there were a handful of Arab flight students in SW Florida. In 2001 there were thousands. At a big AFB base in the Panhandle, a trainer told me, “It used to be Iranians. Now its all Saudis.”

Were they there by themselves? Hell no. Did the CIA know? Hell yes. I asked an old hand, in a highly irate tone of voice, how could the CIA not have known blah-di-blah blah. His answer was mild. Why, I’m sure that they did know. He said, “It would have been impossible for them not to.”

Venice and the surrounding region was teeming with spooks. The Sheriff in nearby Charlotte County—where Atta lived for a time, though you won’t find that in the 9/11 Commission Report—told me that, because of the 40-year history of covert activity that he had seen been run through Charlotte County, which he and everyone else in the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Department had been powerless to stop, he believed the CIA was responsible for 9/11.

Was one of the bigger shocks of my life. A Southern cracker Sheriff telling me he thought the CIA was responsible for 9/11. And hey. Maybe he’s right. But I couldn’t go there. I might believe that. But I never had proof.

This:

Here are some other snippets from www.historycommons.org...

“9/11 Commissioner John Lehman repeatedly meets with Bush administration officials and discusses links between the 9/11 hijackers and Saudi government officials.”

“Lehman is aware that the Commission’s investigators are working the topic and is interested to see what they will find. According to author Philip Shenon, “He thought it was clear early on that there was some sort of Saudi support network in San Diego that had made it possible for the hijackers to hide in plain sight in Southern California.” He is especially intrigued by money possibly passed from Princess Haifa, wife of the Saudi ambassador to the US, to associates of the hijackers, although Lehman thinks she would not have known the money’s real destination and had simply signed checks given her by radicals at the Saudi embassy in Washington. Lehman also doubts that the Saudi officials knew the details of the 9/11 plot, but thinks they knew the hijackers were “bad guys,” and “The bad guys knew who to go to to get help.”

“However, there is an absolute lack of interest on the administration’s part about the Saudi information. According to Shenon, “Lehman was struck by the determination of the Bush White House to try to hide any evidence of the relationship between the Saudis and al-Qaeda.” Lehman will say: “They were refusing to declassify anything having to do with Saudi Arabia. Anything having to do with the Saudis, for some reason, it had this very special sensitivity.”

And this: