Commentary on the economic , geopolitical and simply fascinating things going on. Served occasionally with a side of snark.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Edward Snowden - Q&A with Thue Guardian June 17 , 2013.... China refutes Dick Cheney's balderdash from Sunday that Snowden could be a spy for China ! New York City Police Commissioner delivers a strong rebuke to the NSA Spying campaign - even goes as far as to say Edward Snowden was right about privacy abuse !
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.”
“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.
His blast came days after the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder outraged New York officials by endorsing a federal monitor for the NYPD.
Kelly appeared to firmly reject Holder’s claim that disclosure of the monitoring campaign seriously damaged efforts to fight terrorism.
William Miller
Ray Kelly
“I think the American public can accept the fact if you tell them that every time you pick up the phone it’s going to be recorded and it goes to the government,” Kelly said. “I think the public can understand that. I see no reason why that program was placed in the secret category.”
“Secondly, I think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people . . . sitting around and watching the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the [National Security Agency] NSA to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking place?”
Kelly has been on the receiving side of this kind of criticism.
The NYPD secretly spied on Muslim organizations, infiltrated Muslim student group and videotaped mosque-goers in New Jersey for years, it was revealed in 2012. The NYPD said its actions were lawful and necessary to keep the city safe.
After the vast federal phone-Internet monitoring program was revealed, President Obama said he had struck the right balance between ensuring security and protecting privacy.
But yesterday, Kelly indicated Obama was wrong.
“I think we can raise people’s comfort level if in fact information comes out as to that we have these controls and these protections inside the NSA,” he said.
Allies of Kelly viewed his criticism as payback for Holder’s decision to recommend — at the 11th hour of a controversial court case — that a federal monitor oversee the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program.
“Everything that Ray Kelly does has a purpose,” said City Council Public Safety Chairman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens). “If Eric Holder wants to lecture Police Commissioner Kelly on how to fight crime in New York, then one of the world’s foremost experts on public safety [Kelly] can lecture Holder on how to fight terrorism.”
Holder and other law-enforcement officials have trashed Snowden and his claim about out-of-control government snooping.
Kelly said of the leaker:
“He tried to give the impression, it seems to me, that these system administrators had carte blanche to do what they wanted to do,” he said. “I think it’s a problem if that’s in fact what’s happening.”
( The irony presented here isn't that Federales have treated Orwell's 1984 as an instruction manual , but that citizens have to view The Wire as an instruction manual for truly " private " conversations ! )
The Whistleblower’s Guide to the Orwellian Galaxy: How to Leak to the Press
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article ran in Wired Opinion last month (“Hear Ye, Future Deep Throats: This Is How to Leak to the Press”). It has been updated given recent events and reflects the author’s new findings about government recording of mail.
Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Felt, Jeffrey Wigand, Sherron Watkins, Bradley Manning, and now… Edward Snowden. (He’s just the latest informant caught in the web of government administrations that view George Orwell’s 1984 as an operations manual.)
But while the list of government (and corporate) whistleblowers continues to grow, their options for leaking continue to shrink. It is, as one commenter noted, “a dangerous time to be right when the government is wrong.” We now live in a world where public servants informing the public about government behavior or wrongdoing must practice the tradecraft of spies and drug dealers à la The Wire. Even the head of the CIA can’t email his mistress without being identified by the FBI. And privately collected data isn’t immune, either; highly sensitive metadata is particularly vulnerable thanks to the Third Party Doctrine.
So how can one safely leak information to the press, let alone coordinate a Deep Throat-style meetup? The obvious choices: email, phone, and mail … but you’ve got to be really careful. Here’s a guide.
The parking garage where Bob Woodward met Mark Felt (Deep Throat). photo: martin_kalfatovic / Flickr
Leaking by Email
Nicholas Weaver
Nicholas Weaver is a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley and U.C. San Diego (though this opinion is his own). He focuses on network security as well as network intrusion detection, defenses for DNS resolvers, and tools for detecting ISP-introduced manipulations of a user’s network connection. Weaver received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley.
The CIA supposedly already provided a guide to secure email, which the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) translated back to English — convenient, given the situation we now find ourselves in.
Get a dedicated computer or tablet: the cheapest Windows laptop will do. And pay cash, as our normal laptops have a host of automatic synchronization and similar services. Our personal web browsers also contain all sorts of location-identifying cookies. Even if you’re logged in to but don’t actually visit Facebook’s home page, a subpoena to Facebook can still reveal where you connect and what pages you visit — every “Like” button reports to Facebook that you are visiting that particular page, at a particular time, from a particular IP address.
Leave your cellphone, your normal computer, and your metro card (like SmarTrip) at home: anything that speaks over a wireless link must stay behind. Then go to a coffee shop that has open Wi-Fi, and once there open a new Gmail account that you will only use to contact the press and only from the dedicated computer. When registering, use no personal information that can identify you or your new account: no phone numbers, no names.
Don’t forget: if you get anything at the cafe, or take public transit,pay cash. Be prepared to walk a bit, too; you can’t stay close to home for this.
Of course, the job still isn’t finished. When you are done you must clear the browser’s cookies and turn off the Wi-Fi before turning off the computer and removing the battery. The dedicated computer should never be used on the network except when checking your press-contact account and only from open Wi-Fi connections away from home and work.
Leaking Over the Phone
Again, start by leaving all electronic devices at home. Go to a small liquor store in a low-income neighborhood, and buy a pre-paid cellphone (TracPhone or similar) with cash. Make sure it has enough airtime to not expire for a few months — T-mobile prepaid is particularly good since the pay-as-you-go plan doesn’t expire for a full year if you buy $100 of airtime.
By the way, I would personally look for a store with security cameras that look old — a continuous tape or similar setup — since once the FBI has the number, the next step is to contact the store that sold the phone. Alternatively, you can get someone else to walk into the store and buy it for you.
You now own your very own “burner” phone — remember The Wire? – and this phone must remain off with the battery removed at all times. Because every active cellphone is effectively a continuous GPS, monitoring your location and feeding the information to the phone company which retains this information for weeks, months, even years. Just a warrant-step away.
Now, to use the phone … Once again, go to a different location without carrying your normal devices, turn on the phone, check your voicemail, make your call, turn it off again, and pull out the battery. Your phone calls are now (hopefully) anonymous so that when the FBI leak-hunt starts, there is no trail for them to follow.
Of course, the burner laptop or phone could still identify you if it’s ever found, as they both contain network identifiers built into the hardware. So if you ever need to abandon your device, first wipe the device back to its factory fresh configuration using any “secure erase” options available, then take a hammer and break the device. Put it in some other piece of trash (like an empty McDonald’s sack), go for another stroll, and drop in a public trashcan.
But if the feds are already following you, you’re caught anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they catch you taking out the trash instead of finding something when they search your home.
Leaking by Mail
Investigative journalist Julia Angwin of the Wall Street Journalpointed out that physical mail, dropped in a random post-box with a bogus return address, is perhaps the best way for anonymous one-way communication. Perhaps the best use of mail is simply to send the reporter a burner phone pre-programmed to only call your burner.
Believing that the U.S. Postal Service recorded specific mail address information only when asked by law enforcement, I had previously argued that there’s no history with mail — and even if there were, it could only be traced to the processing post office.
However, The Smoking Gun spotted — buried in an affidavit! — that the U.S. Postal Service records the outside of mail. According to the full affidavit (also available on RECAP; see page 5) the machine used to automate mail operations, the Automated Facer Canceler System, contains a “Mail Isolation Control and Tracking” program that photographs every single piece of mail and maintains this information for future access by law enforcement.
Although there’s no mention of optical character recognition to allow indexing by recipient rather than by postmark, leakers must now assume that the U.S. government is indeed recording the outside of everything we mail. A leaker should therefore access a public postbox in the same way s/he uses a burner phone: Leave all devices behind, walk to a remote postbox, and follow all the other guidelines above. But be sure to include a note to the reporter telling him or her to trash the envelope immediately.
***
All of this may seem like a script for a fictional T.V. show. But such extreme measures are a modern necessity if you want to leak information. Any future Deep Throat needs to follow these sorts of procedures if he or she wishes to talk to the press.
Though just imagine if Mark Felt had to do all of the above when leaking to Woodward and Bernstein. Snowden might have been willing to out himself … but not everyone is.
It is the interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.
The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.
Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.
He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.
To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.
We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in full after the live chat has finished.
1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?
2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you , do they still exist ? :
Answer:
1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.
Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.
I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?
Answer:
Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current Administration.
Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?
Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.
1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.
2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?
1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.
2 ) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.
Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?
Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.
What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie?
Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)?
Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.
They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do think the government would do ? Shut them down ?
Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.
Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:
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.
Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?
Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.
More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self evident , that all US people are created equal. "
Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?
This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.
US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.
What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?
Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others influenced your path? Do you feel the "system works" so to speak? #AskSnowden
Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman:
Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?
Answer:
No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.
Final question from Glenn Greenwald:
Anything else you’d like to add?
Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity from their surveillance.
Over the weekend, Dick Cheney emerged from his lair, and staunchly defended the NSA surveillance programs that started under his tenure as Vice President, telling Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday that the programs could have stopped 9/11 had they been in effect. More to the point, Cheney shared his view of Edward Snowden, whom he accused of being a traitor and went so far as hinting that he could be a spy for China. "I'm suspicious because he went to China. That's not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth," Cheney said, adding: "It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this." The last statement finally generated an official response from China whose Foreign Ministry on Monday, which had been silent for the past week over all issues surrounding the whistleblower, denying Edward Snowden was a Chinese spy and said the United States should give the world an explanation regarding its international internet surveillance programme.
In its first official response to the recent exposure of the US National Security Agency’s internet surveillance programme by whistleblower Edward Snowden, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the US should pay attention to concerns of the international community on the issue.
Hua, in her daily briefing in Beijing, also hit back at the allegation that Snowden could be a spy for China, calling it “sheer nonsense”.
Beijing has been tight lipped about the saga since Snowden revealed his identity to the media last week, only saying they have no information regarding the case.
But Hua said on Sunday that she is aware of media reports that saying Hong Kong citizens wanted Snowden to stay in the city, and that she is aware of the response of the Hong Kong government to the matter.
Half of Hong Kong people believe that cyberspying whistle-blower Edward Snowden should not be handed over if Washington makes a formal request for his return, according to an exclusive opinion poll commissioned by the Sunday Morning Post.
Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said on Saturday that "when the relevant mechanism is activated", the Hong Kong government would handle Snowden's case in accordance with the city's laws. He also said the government would follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated.
Of course, with Hong Kong's ultimate decisionmaking still made in Beijing, whatever China wants vis-a-vis Snowden, China gets. And just like Syria, the fate of the 29 year-old will almost certainly become yet another diplomatic fallout issue between the US and China.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/17/2013 08:19 -0400
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