July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

A Few Random Thoughts...
by Eugen Leitl 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

----- Forwarded message from Michael <cozzi(a)cozziconsulting.com> -----

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Re: ISP sniffing day begins July 1
by Bryce Lynch 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:27 AM, rushkoff <rushkoff(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'm guessing everyone here knows about this: > http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/15/american-isps-to-launch-massive-copyr… Yep. I wrote a couple of scripts that package meta-X-spook text in UDP packets and launch them at random intervals, just to give them something to look at. > What I want to know is what does this mean for business clients of ISPs? > Does this mean that everything they do, including their business secrets, > are now being watched by the ISPs as well? The safe thing to do would be to assume that companies' communications are being recorded for analysis as well. I don't see why ISPs would differentiate between home and business customers on their networks for this, if only to cover their butts in case somebody pwns example.com's office LAN and uses it as a staging ground for an attack. It would minimize liability on the part of the ISP. Office-to-office VPN connections might become popular as a result. I wish it were so, but I don't think this'll be the event that tips PGP/GnuPG usage over the top into commonality, though I do advocate and train for it at work for this reason. -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "I am everywhere." ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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What happened to the Cryptography list...?
by ghicks＠cadence.com 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Kind sir: As the subject says... All of a sudden mail just stopped. Figuring that I had, somehow, become unsubscribed from the list, I tried to re-subscribe. This resulted in an "Unknown list" message from majordomo@wasabisystems... Any ideas? could assist please? I know that you are not the list owner, but you, at one time, seemed to be active on the list. Regards, Gregory Hicks --- end forwarded text

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Re: ISP sniffing day begins July 1
by Bryce Lynch 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 8:27 AM, rushkoff <rushkoff(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I'm guessing everyone here knows about this: > http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/15/american-isps-to-launch-massive-copyr… Yep. I wrote a couple of scripts that package meta-X-spook text in UDP packets and launch them at random intervals, just to give them something to look at. > What I want to know is what does this mean for business clients of ISPs? > Does this mean that everything they do, including their business secrets, > are now being watched by the ISPs as well? The safe thing to do would be to assume that companies' communications are being recorded for analysis as well. I don't see why ISPs would differentiate between home and business customers on their networks for this, if only to cover their butts in case somebody pwns example.com's office LAN and uses it as a staging ground for an attack. It would minimize liability on the part of the ISP. Office-to-office VPN connections might become popular as a result. I wish it were so, but I don't think this'll be the event that tips PGP/GnuPG usage over the top into commonality, though I do advocate and train for it at work for this reason. -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ "I am everywhere." ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Secrecy News -- 07/26/12
by Steven Aftergood 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Format Note: If you cannot easily read the text below, or you prefer to receive Secrecy News in another format, please reply to this email to let us know. SECRECY NEWS from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Volume 2012, Issue No. 75 July 25, 2012 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ ** SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE ADOPTS A DOZEN ANTI-LEAK MEASURES SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE ADOPTS A DOZEN ANTI-LEAK MEASURES The Senate Intelligence Committee's markup of the 2013 intelligence authorization bill includes 12 provisions that are intended to combat unauthorized disclosures of classified information. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/ssci-leaks.pdf The proposed steps, which are of varying weight and severity, include: * a requirement to notify Congress when intelligence information is disclosed to the public (outside of the FOIA or the regular declassification review process) and to maintain a record of all authorized disclosures of classified information * a requirement to establish formal procedures for leak investigations * a requirement to assess procedures for detecting leaks, including expanded use of polygraph testing in other parts of the executive branch * a prohibition on cleared personnel (or formerly cleared personnel for up to a year after employment) serving as paid consultants or commentators to a media organization regarding intelligence matters * a requirement that only certain designated intelligence community officials may communicate with the media * a requirement for all intelligence community employees to report any contacts with the media * a requirement for the Attorney General and the DNI to submit a report to Congress on possible improvements to current procedures governing leak investigations * establishment of provisions to require surrender of federal pension benefits as a penalty for unauthorized disclosures * a provision to prohibit security clearances for individuals who make unauthorized disclosures of covert action information "The culture of leaks has to change," said Committee Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a news release. "Leaks of classified information regarding intelligence sources and methods can disrupt intelligence operations, threaten the lives of intelligence officers and assets, and make foreign partners less likely to work with us." http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2012/07/ssci072512.html In several respects, the proposed new measures are not a dramatic departure from the status quo. Unauthorized disclosures are already barred by non-disclosure agreements that all cleared personnel must sign. Unauthorized contacts between intelligence personnel and the press are already discouraged or prohibited. The Director of National Intelligence has already ratcheted up leak investigations and started an insider threat detection program. Significantly, the proposed anti-leak provisions would not amend the Espionage Act. They would not make all disclosures of classified information a felony. They would not impose restrictions on the unauthorized receipt of classified information, or penalize publication of such information (although one provision invites the Attorney General to reconsider limitations on subpoenas to members of the media). And yet there is something incongruous, if not outrageous, about the whole effort by Congress to induce stricter secrecy in the executive branch, which already has every institutional incentive to restrict public disclosure of intelligence information. In an earlier generation of intelligence oversight, leaks led to leak investigations in executive agencies, but they also prompted substantive oversight in Congress. When Seymour Hersh and the New York Times famously reported on unlawful domestic surveillance in December 1974, the urgent question in Congress was not how did Hersh find out, or how similar disclosures could be prevented, but what to do about the alarming facts that had been disclosed. In contrast, while pursuing leaks and leakers, today's Senate Intelligence Committee has not held an open public hearing for six months. The Committee's investigative report concerning CIA interrogation practices from ten years (and two presidential terms) ago has still not been issued. Upon publication -- perhaps this fall -- it will essentially be a historical document. Most fundamentally, the Committee's new draft legislation errs by treating "classification" as a self-validating category -- i.e., if it's classified, it warrants protection by definition -- rather than as the flawed administrative instrument that it is. As far as the Committee is concerned, the unauthorized disclosure of any classified information -- even the substance of a constitutional violation that was recently committed by a US intelligence agency -- would constitute a punishable offense, regardless of its public policy significance. Last Friday, the DNI agreed to declassify the bare fact of such an actual violation, in response to a request by Senator Ron Wyden (as reported by Wired, but altogether overlooked in the Committee's latest report on FISA last month). This disclosure by the DNI would apparently trigger the proposed new requirement to notify Congress of public releases of intelligence information since it was "declassified for the purpose of the disclosure" -- which is just silly. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/07/surveillance-spirit-law/ "The whole notion of classification in this building has degenerated into a joke, most reporters and a lot of officials would agree," said Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News at a Pentagon press briefing on Tuesday. He asked how the Pentagon planned to distinguish between legitimate secrets and spurious secrets when monitoring news stories for leaks. http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2012/07/dod072412.html "What steps are you going to be taking to make sure when you analyze these news stories that it's really classified-classified versus B.S.-classified information?" "I don't have the answer yet, Tony," replied Pentagon press spokesman George Little. Neither does the Senate Intelligence Committee. The full version of the FY2013 Senate intelligence bill and the accompanying report is expected to be filed on Friday. The proposed anti-leak provisions "are the product of work over the past several weeks within the Committee, in discussion with the Executive Branch, in consultation with the House Intelligence Committee, and reflecting input from nongovernmental organizations," according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. _______________________________________________ Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. The Secrecy News Blog is at: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.html To UNSUBSCRIBE, go to http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/unsubscribe.html OR email your request to saftergood(a)fas.org Secrecy News is archived at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation: http://www.fas.org/member/donate_today.html _______________________ Steven Aftergood Project on Government Secrecy Federation of American Scientists web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html email: saftergood(a)fas.org voice: (202) 454-4691 twitter: @saftergood ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[DIYbio] DIYbio.org survey, win a free iPad/OpenPRC
by Dan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

*Hello DIYers, In the last few months, DIYbio and the community science movement have come under increasing scrutiny in policy circles. The attention rises from a spate of articles<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/amateur-biologists-are-new-fear-in…>that paint citizen scientists as national security risks. I'm working in conjunction with DIYbio.org and the Wilson Center to dispell the misconceptions about the community. We need 7-15 minutes of your time to take this survey in order to show the policymakers a more accurate portrait of the community. As a perk, those who complete the survey will be in entered into a drawing for your choice of an OpenPCR or iPAD 2. Click here <https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/diybio> to take the survey. ( https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/diybio) Thanks again for your help! Daniel Grushkin The founders of DIYbio.org * *and The Wilson Center * -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups DIYbio group. To post to this group, send email to diybio(a)googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/diybio?hl=en Learn more at www.diybio.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DIYbio" group. To post to this group, send email to diybio(a)googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to diybio+unsubscribe(a)googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/diybio?hl=en. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/diybio/-/Vj8ANP6V-CoJ. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] A matter of humanity
by Srini Ramakrishnan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits' By Petula Dvorak Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01 For six decades, they held their silence. The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt. When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects. Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them. "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance. Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. "I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University. When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece. "I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City. The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what happened there during the war. Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich. "We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark. The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor. "During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity." Exactly what went on behind the barbed-wire fences of Fort Hunt has been a mystery that has lured amateur historians and curious neighbors for decades. During the war, nearby residents watched buses with darkened windows roar toward the fort day and night. They couldn't have imagined that groundbreaking secrets in rocketry, microwave technology and submarine tactics were being peeled apart right on the grounds that are now a popular picnic area where moonbounces mushroom every weekend. When Vincent Santucci arrived at the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway office as chief ranger four years ago, he asked his cultural resource specialist, Brandon Bies, to do some research so they could post signs throughout the park, explaining its history and giving it a bit more dignity. That assignment changed dramatically when ranger Dana Dierkes was leading a tour of the park one day and someone told her about a rumored Fort Hunt veteran. It was Fred Michel, who worked in engineering in Alexandria for 65 years, never telling his neighbors that he once faced off with prisoners and pried wartime secrets from them. Michel directed them to other vets, and they remembered others. Bies went from being a ranger researching mountains of topics in stacks of papers to flying across the country, camera and klieg lights in tow, to document the fading memories of veterans. He, Santucci and others have spent hours trying to sharpen the focus of gauzy memories, coaxing complex details from men who swore on their generation's honor to never speak of the work they did at P.O. Box 1142. "The National Park Service is committed to telling your story, and now it belongs to the nation," said David Vela, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There is a deadline. Each day, about 1,100 World War II veterans die, said Jean Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army's Freedom Team Salute program, which recognizes veterans and the parents, spouses and employers who provide support for active-duty soldiers. By gathering at Fort Hunt yesterday, the quiet men could be saluted for the work they did so long ago. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[liberationtech] Kill the Messenger: What Russia taught Syria
by Rafal Rohozinski 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Good article on TAC SIGINT capabilities for laypersons. Rafal http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/02/kill_the_messenger?page=fu… Kill the Messenger What Russia taught Syria: When you destroy a city, make sure no one -- not even the story -- gets out alive. BY ROBERT YOUNG PELTON | MARCH 2, 2012 It was a star-filled night in Chechnya's besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phoneand waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites. I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. "Enough," he said, motioning for me to remove the battery. As we walked briskly back to the safe house, it was exactly 10 minutes before the cascade of double wa-whumps announced the Grad rocket batteries pounding the vacant neighborhood we had just left. It was December 1999, and the Russian assault on Grozny was unfolding in all its gruesome detail. After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin's new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and "cleanse." It was a combination of brutal tactics -- a Stalinist purge of fighting-age males plus Orwellian propaganda that fed Russians a narrative wherein Chechen freedom fighters were transformed into Islamist mercenaries and terrorists. More than 200,000 civilians were to die in this war, the echoes of which continue to this day. This time, journalists were specifically targeted to prevent sympathetic or embarrassing reports from escaping the killing zone. As such, you can't find a lot of stories about the second Chechen war. One of the few and best accounts was written by Marie Colvin, who described her terrifying escape from Grozny for the Sunday Times. Last month, Colvin thought she could roll the dice and enter the besieged Syrian city of Homs to defy yet another brutal war of oppression. This time she lost. It's impossible to know whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- a longtime ally of Russia -- studied the success of the last Chechen war before launching his own assault on the restive city of Homs. However, his Russian military advisors surely know the tactics well. The crackdown in Homs carries a grim echo of Grozny, both in its use of signals intelligence to track down and silence the regime's enemies and in its bloody determination to obliterate any opposition, including Western journalists. Assad's ability to lethally target journalists using satellite-phone uplinks could well have cost Colvin her life. Multiple reports have suggested that Syrian forces used phone signals to pinpoint her location and then launched a rocket barrage that resulted in her death on Feb. 22, along with that of French photographer Remi Ochlik and multiple Syrian civilians. The use of satellite and cellular transmissions to determine a subject's location was relatively new a decade ago, when I was in Grozny. Tracking phone transmissions to hunt down targets began in earnest with a covert unit of U.S. intelligence officers from the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, Navy, Air Force, and special operations called "The Activity." This snooping unit was also called the Army of Northern Virginia, Grey Fox, and even Task Force Orange. We see much of this technology used to inform modern drone and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command strikes. My decade covering U.S. spec ops, intelligence gathering, and their contractors highlighted the impressive ability of various countries to monitor, locate, network, and act on what is called SIGINT, or signals intelligence. The Russians have their own version of this capability, which fell under the command of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, now part of the Federal Protective Service. In the United States, it would be equivalent to the NSA and FBI combined, and the agency provides sophisticated eavesdropping support to Russia's military, intelligence, and counterterrorism units -- and to Russia's allies, including Syria. Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya's breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call, he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev's coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest. It should have been clear even back then that there was a benefit and a distinct penalty to modern communications on the battlefield. Flash forward to Syria today. The opposition Free Syrian Army is officially run by a former air force colonel who commands a barely organized group of army defectors supported by energetic youth. They rely almost entirely on cell-phone service, satellite phones, the Internet, and social media to organize and communicate. Early in February, according to a Fox News report, Qatar provided3,000 satellite phones, which the Syrian rebels have used to upload numerous impactful videos and stories. These past few weeks, under a barrage of mortar, tank, and artillery shells, their plaintive calls for help from inside the besieged Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs sparked international outrage. But without Western journalists filing for newspapers and television outlets, these videos -- mostly shaky, low-resolution footage of corpses and artillery strikes -- wouldn't have had the impact they deserve. In a welcome resurgence of non-embedded journalism, brave reporters like Colvin and many others risked their lives to enter Homs and report from the ground. What they showed us was moving, horrific, and embarrassing. Once again, Western governments were caught doing nothing -- while women, children, and innocents were murdered by their own government. It's a playbook the Syrians are good at: The shelling of Homs began on Feb. 3, 2012 -- exactly 30 years after the Hama massacre, in which Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, killed up to 15,000 civilians over three weeks in a similar program of wanton destruction. What we haven't seen as clearly is the extent to which the Syrian regime (thanks to its Russian advisors) now has the tools of electronic warfare to crush this popular uprising -- and anything that happens to get in the way. Syria is one of Russia's biggest clients for weapons, training, and intelligence. In return for such largesse, it has offered the Russian Navy use of Tartus, a new deep-water military port in the Mediterranean. Moscow sold Damascus nearly $1 billion worth of weapons in 2011, despite growing sanctions against the oppressive Assad regime. With these high-tech weapons comes the less visible Russian-supplied training on technologies, tactics, and strategies. The sounds of rockets pulverizing civilians should have brought back memories and warnings to Colvin. She would have recognized all the signs from her previous reporting in Chechnya, where she and her escorts were hunted relentlessly by Russian domestic security agents who sought to arrest, silence, or kill any journalist attempting to report on the slaughter of civilians. My time in Grozny included being surrounded three times by the Russian army, numerous direct bombardments, and frequent close calls. I paid attention to the safety warnings of the Chechen rebel commanders who kept me alive. These rebels were once part of the Soviet military and intelligence apparatus and were fully schooled in Russia's dirty tricks. They taught me much. Chief among them was not communicating electronically while in country, not trusting "media guides," and never telling people where I was going. If captured by Russian troops, they urged me -- for my own safety -- to say that I had been kidnapped by Chechen forces. Just as I exited Chechnya, I met Colvin, who was heading in. She wanted to know as much as she could. I warned her of the duplicity and violent intent of the Russian military and their Chechen proxies. Despite my warnings, she bravely entered Chechnya and wrote riveting, award-winning stories that now sound almost identical to her coverage from Syria. I was distressed to read of Colvin's death in Syria, and even more distressed to think she might still be alive now if she had remembered some basic warnings. Her first error was that she stayed inside the rebel "media center" -- in reality, a four-story family home converted to this use as it was one of the few places that had a generator. The second was communication. The Syrian army had shut down the cell-phone system and much of the power in Baba Amr -- and when journalists sent up signals it made them a clear target. After CNN's Arwa Damon broadcast live from the "media center" for a week, the house was bombarded until the top floor collapsed. Colvin may have been trapped, but she chose to make multiple phone reports and even went live on CNN and other media channels, clearly mentioning that she was staying in the bombed building. The third mistake was one of tone. She made her sympathies in the besieged city clearly known as she emotionally described the horrors and documented the crimes of the Syrian government. Unsurprisingly, the next day at 9 a.m., a barrage of rockets was launched at the "media center." She was killed -- along her cameraman, Remi Ochlik, and at least 80 Syrian civilians across the city -- targeted with precision rocket barrages, bombs, and the full violence of the Syrian army. In Grozny, Russian forces decided that they would eliminate everything, everybody, and every voice that stood up to the state -- including journalists who tried to enter. Syria has clearly made the same determination in Homs. This military action is intended to be a massacre, a Stalinist-style lesson to those who dare defy the rulers of Syria. The United Nations estimates that more than 7,500 Syrians have so far been killed in the yearlong spasm of violence there. Perhaps this ghastly toll would be even higher now if brave reporters like Colvin had not entered. With the recent news that the rebels have retreated from the bombardment of Baba Amr to safer territory, Assad's forces, as well as their Russian advisors, are claiming victory. According to official news reports from the Syrian Information Ministry, "the foreign-backed mercenaries and armed terrorist groups" have fled, the corpses of three Western journalists have been "discovered," and Homs is now "peaceful." Despite what Damascus claims, this fight is not yet over. And we need more brave and bright journalists who will shine a light in places like Syria, where a regime works diligently to plunge its people into darkness. But let's not forget whose callous playbook they're using. Save big when you subscribe to FP. LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[silk] A matter of humanity
by Srini Ramakrishnan 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits' By Petula Dvorak Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01 For six decades, they held their silence. The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt. When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects. Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them. "We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance. Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army's Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. "I feel like the military is using us to say, 'We did spooky stuff then, so it's okay to do it now,' " said Arno Mayer, 81, a professor of European history at Princeton University. When Peter Weiss, 82, went up to receive his award, he commandeered the microphone and gave his piece. "I am deeply honored to be here, but I want to make it clear that my presence here is not in support of the current war," said Weiss, chairman of the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy and a human rights and trademark lawyer in New York City. The veterans of P.O. Box 1142, a top-secret installation in Fairfax County that went only by its postal code name, were brought back to Fort Hunt by park rangers who are piecing together a portrait of what happened there during the war. Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich. "We did it with a certain amount of respect and justice," said John Gunther Dean, 81, who became a career Foreign Service officer and ambassador to Denmark. The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor. "During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity." Exactly what went on behind the barbed-wire fences of Fort Hunt has been a mystery that has lured amateur historians and curious neighbors for decades. During the war, nearby residents watched buses with darkened windows roar toward the fort day and night. They couldn't have imagined that groundbreaking secrets in rocketry, microwave technology and submarine tactics were being peeled apart right on the grounds that are now a popular picnic area where moonbounces mushroom every weekend. When Vincent Santucci arrived at the National Park Service's George Washington Memorial Parkway office as chief ranger four years ago, he asked his cultural resource specialist, Brandon Bies, to do some research so they could post signs throughout the park, explaining its history and giving it a bit more dignity. That assignment changed dramatically when ranger Dana Dierkes was leading a tour of the park one day and someone told her about a rumored Fort Hunt veteran. It was Fred Michel, who worked in engineering in Alexandria for 65 years, never telling his neighbors that he once faced off with prisoners and pried wartime secrets from them. Michel directed them to other vets, and they remembered others. Bies went from being a ranger researching mountains of topics in stacks of papers to flying across the country, camera and klieg lights in tow, to document the fading memories of veterans. He, Santucci and others have spent hours trying to sharpen the focus of gauzy memories, coaxing complex details from men who swore on their generation's honor to never speak of the work they did at P.O. Box 1142. "The National Park Service is committed to telling your story, and now it belongs to the nation," said David Vela, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There is a deadline. Each day, about 1,100 World War II veterans die, said Jean Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army's Freedom Team Salute program, which recognizes veterans and the parents, spouses and employers who provide support for active-duty soldiers. By gathering at Fort Hunt yesterday, the quiet men could be saluted for the work they did so long ago. ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[liberationtech] Kill the Messenger: What Russia taught Syria
by Rafal Rohozinski 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Good article on TAC SIGINT capabilities for laypersons. Rafal http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/03/02/kill_the_messenger?page=fu… Kill the Messenger What Russia taught Syria: When you destroy a city, make sure no one -- not even the story -- gets out alive. BY ROBERT YOUNG PELTON | MARCH 2, 2012 It was a star-filled night in Chechnya's besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phoneand waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites. I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. "Enough," he said, motioning for me to remove the battery. As we walked briskly back to the safe house, it was exactly 10 minutes before the cascade of double wa-whumps announced the Grad rocket batteries pounding the vacant neighborhood we had just left. It was December 1999, and the Russian assault on Grozny was unfolding in all its gruesome detail. After the dissolution of so much of the former Soviet empire, Chechnya was one country that the newly minted prime minister, Vladimir Putin, refused to let go of. His boss, Boris Yeltsin, and the Russian army had been defeated and then humiliated in the media by Chechen forces in the first war. Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin's new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and "cleanse." It was a combination of brutal tactics -- a Stalinist purge of fighting-age males plus Orwellian propaganda that fed Russians a narrative wherein Chechen freedom fighters were transformed into Islamist mercenaries and terrorists. More than 200,000 civilians were to die in this war, the echoes of which continue to this day. This time, journalists were specifically targeted to prevent sympathetic or embarrassing reports from escaping the killing zone. As such, you can't find a lot of stories about the second Chechen war. One of the few and best accounts was written by Marie Colvin, who described her terrifying escape from Grozny for the Sunday Times. Last month, Colvin thought she could roll the dice and enter the besieged Syrian city of Homs to defy yet another brutal war of oppression. This time she lost. It's impossible to know whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- a longtime ally of Russia -- studied the success of the last Chechen war before launching his own assault on the restive city of Homs. However, his Russian military advisors surely know the tactics well. The crackdown in Homs carries a grim echo of Grozny, both in its use of signals intelligence to track down and silence the regime's enemies and in its bloody determination to obliterate any opposition, including Western journalists. Assad's ability to lethally target journalists using satellite-phone uplinks could well have cost Colvin her life. Multiple reports have suggested that Syrian forces used phone signals to pinpoint her location and then launched a rocket barrage that resulted in her death on Feb. 22, along with that of French photographer Remi Ochlik and multiple Syrian civilians. The use of satellite and cellular transmissions to determine a subject's location was relatively new a decade ago, when I was in Grozny. Tracking phone transmissions to hunt down targets began in earnest with a covert unit of U.S. intelligence officers from the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, Navy, Air Force, and special operations called "The Activity." This snooping unit was also called the Army of Northern Virginia, Grey Fox, and even Task Force Orange. We see much of this technology used to inform modern drone and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command strikes. My decade covering U.S. spec ops, intelligence gathering, and their contractors highlighted the impressive ability of various countries to monitor, locate, network, and act on what is called SIGINT, or signals intelligence. The Russians have their own version of this capability, which fell under the command of the Federal Agency of Government Communications and Information, now part of the Federal Protective Service. In the United States, it would be equivalent to the NSA and FBI combined, and the agency provides sophisticated eavesdropping support to Russia's military, intelligence, and counterterrorism units -- and to Russia's allies, including Syria. Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya's breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call, he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev's coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest. It should have been clear even back then that there was a benefit and a distinct penalty to modern communications on the battlefield. Flash forward to Syria today. The opposition Free Syrian Army is officially run by a former air force colonel who commands a barely organized group of army defectors supported by energetic youth. They rely almost entirely on cell-phone service, satellite phones, the Internet, and social media to organize and communicate. Early in February, according to a Fox News report, Qatar provided3,000 satellite phones, which the Syrian rebels have used to upload numerous impactful videos and stories. These past few weeks, under a barrage of mortar, tank, and artillery shells, their plaintive calls for help from inside the besieged Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs sparked international outrage. But without Western journalists filing for newspapers and television outlets, these videos -- mostly shaky, low-resolution footage of corpses and artillery strikes -- wouldn't have had the impact they deserve. In a welcome resurgence of non-embedded journalism, brave reporters like Colvin and many others risked their lives to enter Homs and report from the ground. What they showed us was moving, horrific, and embarrassing. Once again, Western governments were caught doing nothing -- while women, children, and innocents were murdered by their own government. It's a playbook the Syrians are good at: The shelling of Homs began on Feb. 3, 2012 -- exactly 30 years after the Hama massacre, in which Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, killed up to 15,000 civilians over three weeks in a similar program of wanton destruction. What we haven't seen as clearly is the extent to which the Syrian regime (thanks to its Russian advisors) now has the tools of electronic warfare to crush this popular uprising -- and anything that happens to get in the way. Syria is one of Russia's biggest clients for weapons, training, and intelligence. In return for such largesse, it has offered the Russian Navy use of Tartus, a new deep-water military port in the Mediterranean. Moscow sold Damascus nearly $1 billion worth of weapons in 2011, despite growing sanctions against the oppressive Assad regime. With these high-tech weapons comes the less visible Russian-supplied training on technologies, tactics, and strategies. The sounds of rockets pulverizing civilians should have brought back memories and warnings to Colvin. She would have recognized all the signs from her previous reporting in Chechnya, where she and her escorts were hunted relentlessly by Russian domestic security agents who sought to arrest, silence, or kill any journalist attempting to report on the slaughter of civilians. My time in Grozny included being surrounded three times by the Russian army, numerous direct bombardments, and frequent close calls. I paid attention to the safety warnings of the Chechen rebel commanders who kept me alive. These rebels were once part of the Soviet military and intelligence apparatus and were fully schooled in Russia's dirty tricks. They taught me much. Chief among them was not communicating electronically while in country, not trusting "media guides," and never telling people where I was going. If captured by Russian troops, they urged me -- for my own safety -- to say that I had been kidnapped by Chechen forces. Just as I exited Chechnya, I met Colvin, who was heading in. She wanted to know as much as she could. I warned her of the duplicity and violent intent of the Russian military and their Chechen proxies. Despite my warnings, she bravely entered Chechnya and wrote riveting, award-winning stories that now sound almost identical to her coverage from Syria. I was distressed to read of Colvin's death in Syria, and even more distressed to think she might still be alive now if she had remembered some basic warnings. Her first error was that she stayed inside the rebel "media center" -- in reality, a four-story family home converted to this use as it was one of the few places that had a generator. The second was communication. The Syrian army had shut down the cell-phone system and much of the power in Baba Amr -- and when journalists sent up signals it made them a clear target. After CNN's Arwa Damon broadcast live from the "media center" for a week, the house was bombarded until the top floor collapsed. Colvin may have been trapped, but she chose to make multiple phone reports and even went live on CNN and other media channels, clearly mentioning that she was staying in the bombed building. The third mistake was one of tone. She made her sympathies in the besieged city clearly known as she emotionally described the horrors and documented the crimes of the Syrian government. Unsurprisingly, the next day at 9 a.m., a barrage of rockets was launched at the "media center." She was killed -- along her cameraman, Remi Ochlik, and at least 80 Syrian civilians across the city -- targeted with precision rocket barrages, bombs, and the full violence of the Syrian army. In Grozny, Russian forces decided that they would eliminate everything, everybody, and every voice that stood up to the state -- including journalists who tried to enter. Syria has clearly made the same determination in Homs. This military action is intended to be a massacre, a Stalinist-style lesson to those who dare defy the rulers of Syria. The United Nations estimates that more than 7,500 Syrians have so far been killed in the yearlong spasm of violence there. Perhaps this ghastly toll would be even higher now if brave reporters like Colvin had not entered. With the recent news that the rebels have retreated from the bombardment of Baba Amr to safer territory, Assad's forces, as well as their Russian advisors, are claiming victory. According to official news reports from the Syrian Information Ministry, "the foreign-backed mercenaries and armed terrorist groups" have fled, the corpses of three Western journalists have been "discovered," and Homs is now "peaceful." Despite what Damascus claims, this fight is not yet over. And we need more brave and bright journalists who will shine a light in places like Syria, where a regime works diligently to plunge its people into darkness. But let's not forget whose callous playbook they're using. Save big when you subscribe to FP. LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/Getty Images _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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