July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

MD5 collisions in one minute
by Weger, B.M.M. de 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Hi all, You might be interested in knowing that my MSc student Marc Stevens has found a considerable speedup of MD5 collision generation. His improvements of Wang's method enables one to make MD5 collisions typically in one minute on a PC; sometimes it takes a few minutes, and sometimes only a few seconds. His paper (shortly to appear on the Cryptology ePrint Archive) can be found on http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/, where we've also made his software available (source code and a Win32 executable). Grtz, Benne de Weger --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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Re: [tor-talk] Automatic vulnerability scanning of Tor Network?
by andrew＠torproject.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 04:50:57AM +0000, case(a)SDF.ORG wrote 1.4K bytes in 38 lines about: : Either way your name is not attached to it, and your home address, : etc., isn't either. It's trivial for law enforcement to make the one hop from your company to you and then to your house. Stupid criminals use a front company all the time. While this may provide some legal protection after you're raided and talking to a lawyer, you still get the swat team if your local police are prone to overreaction. : The list may not appreciate my criticism, but the reality is we get : about one post every six months from someone who literally has their : door kicked in and their property stolen by the state. So what? Just because there are overzealous police forces doesn't mean running a Tor relay isn't legal and not your right to use the banwidth for which you pay monthly. The vast majority of people will never experience the exception to the rule; the SWAT team at 5 AM. https://blog.torproject.org/blog/five-years-exit-node-operator is my experience. This is still the case four years later. One raided relay out of 3000 relays every six months is a fantastic ratio. I wish it were zero, but running Tor is not illegal, nor is relaying traffic for others. The vast majority of Tor traffic is benign, normal traffic from people who need Tor. I'm going to trust the probability that says I'm very unlikely to get raided for a Tor exit node at home. We also have the start of a legal directory for relay operators, https://blog.torproject.org/blog/start-tor-legal-support-directory. At the worst, call me, I'll try to help. I've helped many over the past few years, some of them as the police were in the house asking questions. I'm not a lawyer, but I'll try to help you find one, if needed. -- Andrew http://tpo.is/contact pgp 0x74ED336B _______________________________________________ tor-talk mailing list tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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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'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well With Others
by R. A. Hettinga 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/books/review/22KELLERT.html?pagewanted=pr…> The New York Times June 22, 2003 'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well With Others By BILL KELLER AT WAR WITH OURSELVES Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. By Michael Hirsh. 288 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $26. Americans make lousy imperialists. Our hulking military and economic might make the Roman Empire seem inconsequential by comparison, but our hearts are not in conquest. We want to be liked, and are surprised when we're not. We are inward-looking, a little complacent, and we have been, at least since Vietnam, more than a little risk averse. When we do go to war we go to win, but we don't stick around. America put the hedge in hegemon. At least, that's the way we see ourselves. It is increasingly not the impression held by the rest of the world. The Bush administration, provoked by those September blows to the heart, has set about persuading America to step up to its imperial potential. In the 30 months of the Bush era, America has led posses of its own choosing into two wars, withdrawn from international arrangements that we considered confining, adopted a with-us-or-against-us rhetorical style and declared as a matter of national purpose that we will allow no rival to grow into our weight class. These two books are offered as multilateralist rebuttals to the ascendant above-it-all doctrine. Both volumes are short and aimed at a general audience. Both conclude that the unilateralism of the Bush administration is wrong, not because it violates some abstract moral code but because it is inimical to American interests. Inevitably the two books cover a lot of the same ground, but from different vantage points. If you want to know how the American colossus looks to the rest of the world, ''Rogue Nation,'' by Clyde Prestowitz, is your book -- an unsparing but unhysterical catalog of American behavior that has made the world see us as self-centered and hypocritical. The counts in the indictment are familiar: We preach fair trade but underwrite American cotton farmers at such high prices that we keep African farmers in poverty. We guzzle petroleum, and then need a foreign policy that overemphasizes one region of the globe. We preach democracy and dance with tyrants. ''Rogue Nation'' could serve as an appendix to this month's global poll by the Pew Research Center, which shows a balloning fear and mistrust of the United States around the world. Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington and a former trade negotiator. (His 1988 book, ''Trading Places,'' was a mildly alarmist look at the competitive threat of Japan.) He is at his best translating the forbidding details of international commerce into lucid narrative. How American indifference contributed to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, for example, and how world currencies came to be pegged to the dollar -- a kind of monetary unilateralism that enables us to export our economic problems -- are explained with welcome clarity, and without a trace of antiglobalist cant. Likewise, his recounting of the dispute over the Kyoto treaty on global warming is fair-minded. He acknowledges the weaknesses of the treaty and the culpability of the European greens, frustrated leftists who hijacked the cause of environmentalism, but he concludes that in the end what was lost was much more than an inadequate treaty. He is sometimes glib on the politic! s -- his co While he focuses his opprobrium on the Bush administration, Prestowitz understands that America has long been an outlier, a feet-and-Fahrenheit power in a metric world, gripped by an assumption that the rest of the world should conform to us as the benchmark of normal civilized values. ''Indeed, the chief reason Americans are blind to their own empire is their implicit belief that every human being is a potential American, and that his or her present national or cultural affiliations are an unfortunate but reversible accident.'' And the solution? Essentially, spontaneous enlightenment. Americans should wise up, throw out unilateralist politicians, treat the world with respect and generally be just a little less . . . American. While we're at it, I propose that we eat right, floss daily, tithe generously and stop watching mindless TV shows. Michael Hirsh's ''At War With Ourselves'' is a more introspective look at America, particularly the America of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, which Hirsh followed in his jobs as foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Although the book is enlivened by reporting trips he has taken, it is written from inside the intellectual bubble of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hirsh drizzles the text so liberally with bylines from the world of scholarly punditry that the prose often becomes sodden with attribution. Someone should have advised him to put his sources in the footnotes and trust his own judgment. For his judgment is fundamentally sound. His book is well informed, historically literate, nonideological common sense. That may sound like faint praise, but in an America that sometimes seems poised between reckless adventure and helpless inertia, centrist common sense is something to be treasured. By ''centrist,'' I mean Hirsh is a liberal internationalist who has come to see the value, as well as the inevitability, of applying American muscle to the world's problems, up to a point. Where, exactly, that point is, the reader may have trouble telling. Hirsh is a hawk on the Balkan wars (who isn't, these days?), and he confesses to having been badly wrong in anticipating that our ouster of the Taliban would turn out disastrously. On a harder test -- Iraq -- he ducks. Both of these books apparently went to press on the cusp of the war, so the authors knew whatever they said would be overtaken by events. Prestowitz nonetheless plunges in; he says that ''at this point there is little choice but for the United States and whatever partners it can gather to overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq. The cost of not doing so is now greater than that of doing so.'' Hirsh does not quite say what he would do, though he gives the impression he would not have supported an invasion without United Nations sanction. Poor, maligned, unsexy multilateralism has, for all its faults, historically been the default position of American foreign policy, and Hirsh does a powerful job of reminding us why. He demonstrates that the ''international community'' we often disparage as feckless, corrupt and inhospitable (Condoleezza Rice called it ''illusory'') is in fact an instrument we built, one that most often serves as an extension of American power, and one that we desperately need. Even the United Nations, despite its noisy membership of pipsqueak tyrants and volatile states, serves a variety of useful functions, most importantly co-opting potential adversaries like China and Russia. As for other international bodies, ''the W.T.O. is the world's rule-setter; the I.M.F. its credit union; and the World Bank its principal charity,'' he writes. America dominates all of these organizations, and can use them to ''take the raw edge off American hegemony.'' More than useful instruments, Hirsh argues, these agencies have become, bit by bit, better advocates of the values we profess -- the freedoms of marketplace and voting booth, the rule of law. We need these imperfect surrogates because America has a serious credibility problem peddling values on its own. Hirsh calls this ''ideological blowback.'' For example, we cherish democracy in principle, just not in Pakistan, not right now. Hirsh is good on the subtleties of how, as countries develop the wherewithal to challenge us, they become inexorably entangled in the global order -- the way, for example, the manager of a privatized Chinese enterprise quickly develops ''a kind of dual citizenship'' as he learns to anticipate the needs of his foreign customers. And America is inescapably entangled, too. Even our defense industry, once the domain of sheltered, single-client weapons manufacturers, has shifted more and more to global suppliers of technology whose health depends on the rules of free trade. Hirsh outlines a sensible basis for detente between the warring hegemonists and internationalists, an America that leads without bullying. That is an accomplishment to be congratulated, even if you do not entirely share his optimism that this consensus is emerging before our eyes. Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for The Times Magazine. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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<nettime> Glenn Greenwald: The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/201… Friday, Feb 11, 2011, Glenn Greenwald There's been a very strange episode being written about the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald, has been been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler, Forbes, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, Matt Yglesias, Reason, Tech Dirt, and others), so I'll provide just the summary. Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site (such as Paypal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and others). In retaliation, Anonymous hacked into the email accounts of HB Gary, published 50,000 of their emails online, and also hacked Barr's Twitter and other online accounts. Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary -- in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies -- on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank's "counterespionage work" against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistle-blower site, along with the hiring of "several top law firms" and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials). The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America's highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign. The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters"; and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prongs of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks. One section of the leaked report focused on attacking WikiLeaks' supporters and it featured a discussion of me. A graph purporting to be an "organizational chart" identified several other targets, including former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, Guardian reporter James Ball, and Manning supporter David House. The report claimed I was "critical" to WikiLeaks' public support after its website was removed by Amazon and that "it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted"; absurdly speculated that "without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold"; and darkly suggested that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause." As The Tech Herald noted, "earlier drafts of the proposal and an email from Aaron Barr used the word 'attacked' over 'disrupted' when discussing the level of support." In the wake of the ensuing controversy caused by publication of these documents, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Tech, Alex Karp, has now issued a statement stating that he "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary." The full statement -- which can be read here -- also includes this sentence: "personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Palantir has also contacted me by email to arrange for Dr. Karp to call me to personally convey the apology. My primary interest is in knowing whether Bank of America retained these firms to execute this proposal and if any steps were taken to do so; if Karp's apology is genuine, that information ought to be forthcoming (as I was finishing writing this, Karp called me, seemed sincere enough in his apology, vowed that any Palantir employees involved in this would dealt with the way they dealt with HB Gary, and commendably committed to telling me by the end of the week whether Bank of America or Hunton & Williams actually retained these firms to carry out this proposal). * * * * * My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity. Not being familiar with the private-sector world of internet security, I hadn't heard of these firms before and, based on the quality of the proposal, assumed they were just some self-promoting, fly-by-night entities of little significance. Moreover, for the reasons I detailed in my interview with The Tech Herald -- and for reasons Digby elaborated on here -- the very notion that I could be forced to choose "professional preservation over cause" is ludicrous on multiple levels. Obviously, I wouldn't have spent the last year vehemently supporting WikiLeaks -- to say nothing of aggressively criticizing virtually every large media outlet and many of their leading stars, as well as the most beloved political leaders of both parties -- if I were willing to choose "career preservation over cause." But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously -- not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights. For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir). Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual; in other leaked HB Gary emails, ThinkProgress discovered that similar proposals were prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists (including ThinkProgress). And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks. That's why this should be taken seriously, despite how ignorant, trite and laughably shallow is the specific leaked anti-WikiLeaks proposal. As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns.The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self- evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely. But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power. That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well- connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks. The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites. Just consider one amazing example illustrating how this works. After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening. Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted. That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. The same mindset drives the Government to shield high-level political officials who commit the most serious crimes, while relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers who expose their wrongdoing. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law; those who threaten or subvert it have the full weight of law come crashing down upon them. * * * * * What is set forth in these proposals for Bank of America quite possibly constitutes serious crimes. Manufacturing and submitting fake documents with the intent they be published likely constitutes forgery and fraud. Threatening the careers of journalists and activists in order to force them to be silent is possibly extortion and, depending on the specific means to be used, constitutes other crimes as well. Attacking WikiLeaks' computer infrastructure in an attempt to compromise their sources undoubtedly violates numerous cyber laws. Yet these firms had no compunction about proposing such measures to Bank of America and Hunton & Williams, and even writing them down. What accounts for that brazen disregard of risk? In this world, law does not exist as a constraint. It's impossible to imagine the DOJ ever, ever prosecuting a huge entity like Bank of America for doing something like waging war against WikiLeaks and its supporters. These massive corporations and the firms that serve them have no fear of law or government because they control each. That's why they so freely plot to target those who oppose them in any way. They not only have massive resources to devote to such attacks, but the ability to act without limits. John Cole put it this way: One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. . . . You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn't enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. . . . And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them . . . . I don't even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. Webre a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit. There are supposed to be institutions which limit what can be done in pursuit of those private-sector goals. They're called "government" and "law." But those institutions are so annexed by the most powerful private- sector elites, and so corrupted by the public officials who run them, that nobody -- least of all those elites -- has any expectation that they will limit anything. To the contrary, the full force of government and law will be unleashed against anyone who undermines Bank of America and Wall Street executives and telecoms and government and the like (such as WikiLeaks and supporters), and will be further exploited to advance the interests of those entities, but will never be used to constrain what they do. These firms vying for Bank of America's anti-WikiLeaks business know all of this full well, which is why they concluded that proposing such pernicious and possibly illegal attacks would be deemed not just acceptable but commendable. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- 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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<nettime> Glenn Greenwald: The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters
by nettime's avid reader 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/201… Friday, Feb 11, 2011, Glenn Greenwald There's been a very strange episode being written about the past couple of days involving numerous parties, including me, that I now want to comment on. The story, first reported by The Tech Herald, has been been written about in numerous places (see Marcy Wheeler, Forbes, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, Matt Yglesias, Reason, Tech Dirt, and others), so I'll provide just the summary. Last week, Aaron Barr, a top executive at computer security firm HB Gary, boasted to the Financial Times that his firm had infiltrated and begun to expose Anonymous, the group of pro-WikiLeaks hackers that had launched cyber attacks on companies terminating services to the whistleblowing site (such as Paypal, MasterCard, Visa, Amazon and others). In retaliation, Anonymous hacked into the email accounts of HB Gary, published 50,000 of their emails online, and also hacked Barr's Twitter and other online accounts. Among the emails that were published was a report prepared by HB Gary -- in conjunction with several other top online security firms, including Palantir Technologies -- on how to destroy WikiLeaks. The emails indicated the report was part of a proposal to be submitted to Bank of America through its outside law firm, Hunton & Williams. News reports have indicated that WikiLeaks is planning to publish highly incriminating documents showing possible corruption and fraud at that bank, and The New York Times detailed last month how seriously top bank officials are taking that threat. The NYT article described that the bank's "counterespionage work" against WikiLeaks entailed constant briefings for top executives on the whistle-blower site, along with the hiring of "several top law firms" and Booz Allen (the long-time firm of former Bush DNI Adm. Michael McConnell and numerous other top intelligence and defense officials). The report prepared by these firms was designed to be part of the Bank of America's highly funded anti-WikiLeaks campaign. The leaked report suggested numerous ways to destroy WikiLeaks, some of them likely illegal -- including planting fake documents with the group and then attacking them when published; "creat[ing] concern over the security" of the site; "cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters"; and a "media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities." Many of those proposals were also featured prongs of a secret 2008 Pentagon plan to destroy WikiLeaks. One section of the leaked report focused on attacking WikiLeaks' supporters and it featured a discussion of me. A graph purporting to be an "organizational chart" identified several other targets, including former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8 Lee, Guardian reporter James Ball, and Manning supporter David House. The report claimed I was "critical" to WikiLeaks' public support after its website was removed by Amazon and that "it is this level of support that needs to be disrupted"; absurdly speculated that "without the support of people like Glenn, WikiLeaks would fold"; and darkly suggested that "these are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause." As The Tech Herald noted, "earlier drafts of the proposal and an email from Aaron Barr used the word 'attacked' over 'disrupted' when discussing the level of support." In the wake of the ensuing controversy caused by publication of these documents, the co-founder and CEO of Palantir Tech, Alex Karp, has now issued a statement stating that he "directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary." The full statement -- which can be read here -- also includes this sentence: "personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters." Palantir has also contacted me by email to arrange for Dr. Karp to call me to personally convey the apology. My primary interest is in knowing whether Bank of America retained these firms to execute this proposal and if any steps were taken to do so; if Karp's apology is genuine, that information ought to be forthcoming (as I was finishing writing this, Karp called me, seemed sincere enough in his apology, vowed that any Palantir employees involved in this would dealt with the way they dealt with HB Gary, and commendably committed to telling me by the end of the week whether Bank of America or Hunton & Williams actually retained these firms to carry out this proposal). * * * * * My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity. Not being familiar with the private-sector world of internet security, I hadn't heard of these firms before and, based on the quality of the proposal, assumed they were just some self-promoting, fly-by-night entities of little significance. Moreover, for the reasons I detailed in my interview with The Tech Herald -- and for reasons Digby elaborated on here -- the very notion that I could be forced to choose "professional preservation over cause" is ludicrous on multiple levels. Obviously, I wouldn't have spent the last year vehemently supporting WikiLeaks -- to say nothing of aggressively criticizing virtually every large media outlet and many of their leading stars, as well as the most beloved political leaders of both parties -- if I were willing to choose "career preservation over cause." But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously -- not in terms of my involvement but the broader implications this story highlights. For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation's largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir). Moreover, these kinds of smear campaigns are far from unusual; in other leaked HB Gary emails, ThinkProgress discovered that similar proposals were prepared for the Chamber of Commerce to attack progressive groups and other activists (including ThinkProgress). And perhaps most disturbing of all, Hunton & Williams was recommended to Bank of America's General Counsel by the Justice Department -- meaning the U.S. Government is aiding Bank of America in its defense against/attacks on WikiLeaks. That's why this should be taken seriously, despite how ignorant, trite and laughably shallow is the specific leaked anti-WikiLeaks proposal. As creepy and odious as this is, there's nothing unusual about these kinds of smear campaigns.The only unusual aspect here is that we happened to learn about it this time because of Anonymous' hacking. That a similar scheme was quickly discovered by ThinkProgress demonstrates how common this behavior is. The very idea of trying to threaten the careers of journalists and activists to punish and deter their advocacy is self- evidently pernicious; that it's being so freely and casually proposed to groups as powerful as the Bank of America, the Chamber of Commerce, and the DOJ-recommended Hunton & Williams demonstrates how common this is. These highly experienced firms included such proposals because they assumed those deep-pocket organizations would approve and it would make their hiring more likely. But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power. That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well- connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks. The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites. Just consider one amazing example illustrating how this works. After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening. Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted. That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. The same mindset drives the Government to shield high-level political officials who commit the most serious crimes, while relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers who expose their wrongdoing. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law; those who threaten or subvert it have the full weight of law come crashing down upon them. * * * * * What is set forth in these proposals for Bank of America quite possibly constitutes serious crimes. Manufacturing and submitting fake documents with the intent they be published likely constitutes forgery and fraud. Threatening the careers of journalists and activists in order to force them to be silent is possibly extortion and, depending on the specific means to be used, constitutes other crimes as well. Attacking WikiLeaks' computer infrastructure in an attempt to compromise their sources undoubtedly violates numerous cyber laws. Yet these firms had no compunction about proposing such measures to Bank of America and Hunton & Williams, and even writing them down. What accounts for that brazen disregard of risk? In this world, law does not exist as a constraint. It's impossible to imagine the DOJ ever, ever prosecuting a huge entity like Bank of America for doing something like waging war against WikiLeaks and its supporters. These massive corporations and the firms that serve them have no fear of law or government because they control each. That's why they so freely plot to target those who oppose them in any way. They not only have massive resources to devote to such attacks, but the ability to act without limits. John Cole put it this way: One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be destroyed. There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like there is a reason they are targeting Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and Acorn. . . . You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth isn't enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. . . . And they are well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations dedicated to running cover for them . . . . I don't even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged. Webre a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and other tribal bullshit. There are supposed to be institutions which limit what can be done in pursuit of those private-sector goals. They're called "government" and "law." But those institutions are so annexed by the most powerful private- sector elites, and so corrupted by the public officials who run them, that nobody -- least of all those elites -- has any expectation that they will limit anything. To the contrary, the full force of government and law will be unleashed against anyone who undermines Bank of America and Wall Street executives and telecoms and government and the like (such as WikiLeaks and supporters), and will be further exploited to advance the interests of those entities, but will never be used to constrain what they do. These firms vying for Bank of America's anti-WikiLeaks business know all of this full well, which is why they concluded that proposing such pernicious and possibly illegal attacks would be deemed not just acceptable but commendable. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- 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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'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well With Others
by R. A. Hettinga 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

<http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/22/books/review/22KELLERT.html?pagewanted=pr…> The New York Times June 22, 2003 'Rogue Nation' and 'At War With Ourselves': Does Not Play Well With Others By BILL KELLER AT WAR WITH OURSELVES Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. By Michael Hirsh. 288 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $26. Americans make lousy imperialists. Our hulking military and economic might make the Roman Empire seem inconsequential by comparison, but our hearts are not in conquest. We want to be liked, and are surprised when we're not. We are inward-looking, a little complacent, and we have been, at least since Vietnam, more than a little risk averse. When we do go to war we go to win, but we don't stick around. America put the hedge in hegemon. At least, that's the way we see ourselves. It is increasingly not the impression held by the rest of the world. The Bush administration, provoked by those September blows to the heart, has set about persuading America to step up to its imperial potential. In the 30 months of the Bush era, America has led posses of its own choosing into two wars, withdrawn from international arrangements that we considered confining, adopted a with-us-or-against-us rhetorical style and declared as a matter of national purpose that we will allow no rival to grow into our weight class. These two books are offered as multilateralist rebuttals to the ascendant above-it-all doctrine. Both volumes are short and aimed at a general audience. Both conclude that the unilateralism of the Bush administration is wrong, not because it violates some abstract moral code but because it is inimical to American interests. Inevitably the two books cover a lot of the same ground, but from different vantage points. If you want to know how the American colossus looks to the rest of the world, ''Rogue Nation,'' by Clyde Prestowitz, is your book -- an unsparing but unhysterical catalog of American behavior that has made the world see us as self-centered and hypocritical. The counts in the indictment are familiar: We preach fair trade but underwrite American cotton farmers at such high prices that we keep African farmers in poverty. We guzzle petroleum, and then need a foreign policy that overemphasizes one region of the globe. We preach democracy and dance with tyrants. ''Rogue Nation'' could serve as an appendix to this month's global poll by the Pew Research Center, which shows a balloning fear and mistrust of the United States around the world. Prestowitz is president of the Economic Strategy Institute in Washington and a former trade negotiator. (His 1988 book, ''Trading Places,'' was a mildly alarmist look at the competitive threat of Japan.) He is at his best translating the forbidding details of international commerce into lucid narrative. How American indifference contributed to the Asian economic crisis of 1997, for example, and how world currencies came to be pegged to the dollar -- a kind of monetary unilateralism that enables us to export our economic problems -- are explained with welcome clarity, and without a trace of antiglobalist cant. Likewise, his recounting of the dispute over the Kyoto treaty on global warming is fair-minded. He acknowledges the weaknesses of the treaty and the culpability of the European greens, frustrated leftists who hijacked the cause of environmentalism, but he concludes that in the end what was lost was much more than an inadequate treaty. He is sometimes glib on the politic! s -- his co While he focuses his opprobrium on the Bush administration, Prestowitz understands that America has long been an outlier, a feet-and-Fahrenheit power in a metric world, gripped by an assumption that the rest of the world should conform to us as the benchmark of normal civilized values. ''Indeed, the chief reason Americans are blind to their own empire is their implicit belief that every human being is a potential American, and that his or her present national or cultural affiliations are an unfortunate but reversible accident.'' And the solution? Essentially, spontaneous enlightenment. Americans should wise up, throw out unilateralist politicians, treat the world with respect and generally be just a little less . . . American. While we're at it, I propose that we eat right, floss daily, tithe generously and stop watching mindless TV shows. Michael Hirsh's ''At War With Ourselves'' is a more introspective look at America, particularly the America of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, which Hirsh followed in his jobs as foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek. Although the book is enlivened by reporting trips he has taken, it is written from inside the intellectual bubble of the Council on Foreign Relations. Hirsh drizzles the text so liberally with bylines from the world of scholarly punditry that the prose often becomes sodden with attribution. Someone should have advised him to put his sources in the footnotes and trust his own judgment. For his judgment is fundamentally sound. His book is well informed, historically literate, nonideological common sense. That may sound like faint praise, but in an America that sometimes seems poised between reckless adventure and helpless inertia, centrist common sense is something to be treasured. By ''centrist,'' I mean Hirsh is a liberal internationalist who has come to see the value, as well as the inevitability, of applying American muscle to the world's problems, up to a point. Where, exactly, that point is, the reader may have trouble telling. Hirsh is a hawk on the Balkan wars (who isn't, these days?), and he confesses to having been badly wrong in anticipating that our ouster of the Taliban would turn out disastrously. On a harder test -- Iraq -- he ducks. Both of these books apparently went to press on the cusp of the war, so the authors knew whatever they said would be overtaken by events. Prestowitz nonetheless plunges in; he says that ''at this point there is little choice but for the United States and whatever partners it can gather to overthrow Saddam and occupy Iraq. The cost of not doing so is now greater than that of doing so.'' Hirsh does not quite say what he would do, though he gives the impression he would not have supported an invasion without United Nations sanction. Poor, maligned, unsexy multilateralism has, for all its faults, historically been the default position of American foreign policy, and Hirsh does a powerful job of reminding us why. He demonstrates that the ''international community'' we often disparage as feckless, corrupt and inhospitable (Condoleezza Rice called it ''illusory'') is in fact an instrument we built, one that most often serves as an extension of American power, and one that we desperately need. Even the United Nations, despite its noisy membership of pipsqueak tyrants and volatile states, serves a variety of useful functions, most importantly co-opting potential adversaries like China and Russia. As for other international bodies, ''the W.T.O. is the world's rule-setter; the I.M.F. its credit union; and the World Bank its principal charity,'' he writes. America dominates all of these organizations, and can use them to ''take the raw edge off American hegemony.'' More than useful instruments, Hirsh argues, these agencies have become, bit by bit, better advocates of the values we profess -- the freedoms of marketplace and voting booth, the rule of law. We need these imperfect surrogates because America has a serious credibility problem peddling values on its own. Hirsh calls this ''ideological blowback.'' For example, we cherish democracy in principle, just not in Pakistan, not right now. Hirsh is good on the subtleties of how, as countries develop the wherewithal to challenge us, they become inexorably entangled in the global order -- the way, for example, the manager of a privatized Chinese enterprise quickly develops ''a kind of dual citizenship'' as he learns to anticipate the needs of his foreign customers. And America is inescapably entangled, too. Even our defense industry, once the domain of sheltered, single-client weapons manufacturers, has shifted more and more to global suppliers of technology whose health depends on the rules of free trade. Hirsh outlines a sensible basis for detente between the warring hegemonists and internationalists, an America that leads without bullying. That is an accomplishment to be congratulated, even if you do not entirely share his optimism that this consensus is emerging before our eyes. Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for The Times Magazine. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Secrecy News -- 08/01/12
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. 78 August 1, 2012 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ ** WHAT IS AN UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE? ** US ARMS SALES TO PAKISTAN, AND MORE FROM CRS WHAT IS AN UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE? The anti-leak provisions proposed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in the pending FY2013 intelligence authorization act have been widely criticized as misconceived and ill-suited to achieving their presumed goals. http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2012/07/press_public.html But they also suffer from a lack of clarity and an absence of definitions of crucial terms. For example, there is no clear definition of "the news media" to whom unauthorized disclosures are to be prohibited, as noted today by Josh Gerstein in Politico. Certainly a reporter for a national news organization is a member of the news media, but what about a blogger who produces original reporting? Or a tweeter who spreads previously undisclosed information? Nor is the term "classified information" defined in the new bill as precisely as one would wish. By contrast, the Freedom of Information Act, for example, limits withholding of information on national security grounds to records that are "properly classified." Merely being "classified" is not enough to warrant an exemption from disclosure under FOIA. (In a pending lawsuit, a court has ordered the US Trade Representative to publicly release a classified document that the court said was not properly classified. The government has so far refused. Which position is "authorized"?) The new Senate bill does not make any practical distinction between properly and improperly classified information, though it directs the DNI to address the issue in a report to Congress (section 504). In fact, the very concept of an "unauthorized disclosure" is not clearly articulated in the bill. What is it, exactly? Though the answer may seem obvious, it is actually subject to conflicting interpretations. According to a May 8, 2004 FBI interview with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, "it is possible to talk about something contained in a classified document without violating the law regarding declassification [sic]." http://www.governmentattic.org/6docs/FBICheneyPlame_2004.pdf "For example, the Vice President has made numerous public statements about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which were based on and, in some cases tracked, his reading of classified information...," according to the FBI record of the interview. "However, he did not violate any relevant laws or rules in making these statements because he did not reveal the confidential sources or methods involved in gathering the classified information," the Vice President told the FBI (at p. 26). "Vice President Cheney advised that he believed it was justifiable to rely on classified information to shape and inform what one says publicly." This is not a particularly orthodox view of classification policy. But would such reliance on classified information in public statements constitute an unauthorized disclosure in the eyes of the Senate Intelligence Committee? It's unclear. In any event, the Senate Intelligence Committee bill would not apply to White House officials. Nor would it penalize unauthorized disclosures originating in Congress. The inconsistency in the Senate approach was highlighted today in two articles: "Bill to plug leaks doesn't reach White House" by Josh Gerstein, Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/79237.html and "Senate's anti-leaking bill doesn't address the real sources of information" by David Ignatius, Washington Post: http://wapo.st/N1XQZJ US ARMS SALES TO PAKISTAN, AND MORE FROM CRS New products of the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include these: Major U.S. Arms Sales and Grants to Pakistan Since 2001, July 25, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/pakarms.pdf Direct Overt U.S. Aid and Military Reimbursements to Pakistan, FY2002-FY2013, July 27, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/pakaid.pdf Georgia [Republic]: Recent Developments and U.S. Interests, July 13, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/97-727.pdf The Proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement: Background and Key Issues, July 19, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41107.pdf _______________________________________________ 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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Re: NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution
by Adam Fields 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:24:35AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: > Counter Terror Expo: News of a possible viable business model for P2P > VoIP network Skype emerged today, at the Counter Terror Expo in London. > An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National > Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can > offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic. > > .... > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnag… Of course, this could just be a smokescreen to try to convince people that they can't already do it. The voice traffic may be hard to break, but the fact that every client can download my entire IM history when logging into a new machine kind of kills the "it's p2p so we can't track it" argument. Those messages are stored somewhere. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.adamfields.com ] [ http://workstuff.tumblr.com ] ........... Technology Blog [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Personal Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.twitter.com/fields ].......... Twitter [ http://www.morningside-analytics.com ] .. Latest Venture [ http://www.confabb.com ] ................ Founder --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- 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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Re: NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution
by Adam Fields 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:24:35AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: > Counter Terror Expo: News of a possible viable business model for P2P > VoIP network Skype emerged today, at the Counter Terror Expo in London. > An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National > Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can > offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic. > > .... > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnag… Of course, this could just be a smokescreen to try to convince people that they can't already do it. The voice traffic may be hard to break, but the fact that every client can download my entire IM history when logging into a new machine kind of kills the "it's p2p so we can't track it" argument. Those messages are stored somewhere. -- - Adam ** Expert Technical Project and Business Management **** System Performance Analysis and Architecture ****** [ http://www.adamfields.com ] [ http://workstuff.tumblr.com ] ........... Technology Blog [ http://www.aquick.org/blog ] ............ Personal Blog [ http://www.adamfields.com/resume.html ].. Experience [ http://www.flickr.com/photos/fields ] ... Photos [ http://www.twitter.com/fields ].......... Twitter [ http://www.morningside-analytics.com ] .. Latest Venture [ http://www.confabb.com ] ................ Founder --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com ----- 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 -- 07/02/12
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. 62 July 2, 2012 Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/ ** FINANCIAL COSTS OF CLASSIFICATION SOAR ** THE DNI AS SECURITY EXECUTIVE AGENT ** ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CONTRACTORS QUESTIONED ** SECOND THOUGHTS IN CONGRESS ABOUT DOMESTIC DRONES ** HYDROPOWER, HIGH SPEED RAIL, HAITI, AND MORE FROM CRS FINANCIAL COSTS OF CLASSIFICATION SOAR At a time when "leaks" are said to be running rampant, the government is spending more money than ever before to protect classified information. The estimated cost of securing classified information in government increased last year by at least 12% to a record high level of $11.36 billion. An additional $1.2 billion was spent to protect classified information held by industry contractors. These figures were reported to the President last week by the Information Security Oversight Office. http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/2011costs.pdf The ISOO report breaks down the expenditures into six categories (personnel security, physical security, etc.). But it does not provide any explanation for the rapidly escalating cost of secrecy. One factor in the rising costs may be the continued growth of the secrecy system. While some essential security costs are fixed and independent of classification activity, the failure to rein in classification and especially overclassification is a likely contributor to marginal cost growth. The ISOO report itself provides a stark illustration of the overclassification problem when it notes that the classification costs of several intelligence agencies -- CIA, DIA, ODNI, NGA, NRO and NSA -- are excluded from the new report because they are classified. "The cost estimates of these agencies are classified in accordance with Intelligence Community classification guidance and are included in a classified addendum to this report," the ISOO report states. But the classification of this information, which is almost certainly illegitimate, defies credulity for several reasons. First, the secret intelligence cost numbers are estimates, not actual expenditures. ("Requiring agencies to provide exact responses to the cost collection efforts would be cost prohibitive," ISOO said.) The potential intelligence value of such estimates to a hostile intelligence service is vanishingly small, particularly since their accuracy is variable and uncertain. Second, the disclosure of the cost estimates for non-intelligence agencies, which has had no adverse effect on the security programs of those agencies, is a strong indication that no damage can result from release of such information. If publication of the non-intelligence classification cost estimates had caused any kind of harm over the years, those estimates would not be published. But of course they haven't, and so they are. Thus, one is led to conclude that the classification of the intelligence agency classification cost estimates is not threat-driven, but instead is "culture"-based. The disclosure of the estimates would not cause identifiable damage to national security, which means this information has been classified in violation of executive order 13526. Unfortunately, there seems to be no one to tell the DNI that his classification policies are mistaken. Congress could perform critical oversight of classification policy, inquiring into the basis of particular classification decisions, but it almost never does so. If anything, congressional leaders favor more aggressive and unforgiving enforcement of existing classification policies. The Obama Administration's Fundamental Classification Guidance Review was supposed to challenge the habits of reflexive classification, but in this case at least it has not had the desired effect. If some rogue employee leaked a copy of the classification cost estimates for the intelligence agencies, he or she would be subject to new procedures announced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week to combat unauthorized disclosures, including polygraph testing and inspector general investigations. http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2012/06/dni-leaks.pdf In the absence of leaks, the estimated cost of implementing the DNI's new anti-leak procedures will be classified and unavailable to the public. THE DNI AS SECURITY EXECUTIVE AGENT The anti-leak procedures announced last week by the Director of National Intelligence apply specifically to intelligence community employees. But the DNI is also responsible more broadly for security policies that affect almost everyone who holds a security clearance for access to classified information, whether or not it pertains to intelligence, as well as other government employees who are candidates for "sensitive positions." The DNI's role as "Security Executive Agent" was described in a March 2012 directive, according to which he is responsible for oversight of "investigations and determinations by any agency for eligibility for access to classified information and eligibility to hold a sensitive position." The DNI's authority extends to every individual who has or seeks access to classified information with only a handful of exceptions: the President, the Vice President, Members of Congress, Justices of the Supreme Court, and Federal judges appointed by the President. In this capacity, the DNI is responsible for developing standardized procedures for security questionnaires, financial disclosure forms, polygraph policies and practices, and foreign travel and foreign contact reporting requirements. See "Security Executive Agent Directive (SEAD) 1," effective 13 March 2012: http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/sead-1.pdf "SEAD 1 applies to all departments and agencies performing investigations or adjudications of persons proposed for eligibility to hold a sensitive position whether or not requiring access to classified information," said Charles B. Sowell of ODNI in congressional testimony last month. "The ODNI also led the interagency efforts to revise the National Security Adjudicative Guidelines" -- which are used to evaluate a person's loyalty, reliability and trustworthiness -- "which we expect to issue later this year," he said. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_hr/062112sowell.pdf ROLE OF INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY CONTRACTORS QUESTIONED Persistent questions about the U.S. intelligence community's reliance on contractors to perform or support core mission functions were explored in a partially closed hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee last year. A redacted transcript of the classified session of the hearing was included in a hearing volume which was recently published. Among other things, "questions have been raised about whether some IC contracting firms hold undue influence within the IC because senior intelligence officials are often recruited from, and often return to, these firms," according to a background paper prepared for the hearing (citing author Tim Shorrock) and included in the appendix to the PDF version of the new hearing volume. "A 'revolving door' where employees move between public and private sector service increases the risk that decisions made by either contractor or government employees could be influenced by past professional relationships or potential future employment opportunities." "Some have also highlighted concerns about contractors who immediately return to their former IC agency [as private sector employees], but serve in the same capacity and at greater expense," the background paper stated (citing reporting by Julie Tate of the Washington Post). "In addition to clear conflicts of interest, the different incentives of corporations and their employees versus federal agencies and their employees create the need for robust oversight. For example, the need to make corporate profits could create an incentive to provide analysis or decision support services in a manner that is likely to increase future business opportunities." "Additionally, because contract employees owe a duty of loyalty to their employers rather than the U.S. government, they may have incentives to act in the interest of their employers rather than in the interests of the government where those interests differ," the background paper said. At first glance, the questions seemed more interesting than the answers that intelligence community officials were able to provide at the hearing, but it was remarkable to see those questions raised at all. The hearing was held not by the Senate Intelligence Committee, but by a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chaired by retiring Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI). See "Intelligence Community Contractors: Are We Striking the Right Balance," September 20, 2011: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2011_hr/contractors.html SECOND THOUGHTS IN CONGRESS ABOUT DOMESTIC DRONES Some members of Congress are having second thoughts about the future use of unmanned aerial systems in U.S. airspace, judging from a colloquy on the House floor last week. When Congress passed the FAA reauthorization bill, recalled Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), it included "this very simple language allowing for the expansion of unmanned aerial vehicles in the national airspace." "None of us really thought that was much of a problem, but our constituents are bringing it back to us," Rep. Burgess said. "They are concerned about privacy, and they're concerned about Federal agencies surveilling normal activities of commerce in which people may be engaged." Looking beyond privacy concerns, Rep. Burgess proposed an amendment to the Transportation Appropriations bill that would prohibit the use of armed drones within the United States. "If these drones are weaponized, you can--if you've been surveilled unfairly, you can go to court and perhaps seek a remedy. But if a bullet is fired from one of these platforms, you don't have any remedy if you're the recipient of that bullet," he said. "The amendment that I offer today is preemptive. As to my knowledge, no actual applications have been filed with the FAA to use armed drones in U.S. airspace. But I believe it is necessary, as there has been some discussion in the public media about the ability to arm unmanned aerial vehicles. I personally believe this is a road down which we should not travel," Rep. Burgess said. However, the amendment was rejected for procedural reasons. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/drone-thud.html Similar legislation sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) was approved last month as an amendment to the pending Homeland Security Appropriations bill. http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2012_cr/dhs-uas.html HYDROPOWER, HIGH SPEED RAIL, HAITI, AND MORE FROM CRS New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that has Congress has not authorized CRS to release to the public include the following. Hydropower: Federal and Nonfederal Investment, June 26, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42579.pdf The Development of High Speed Rail in the United States: Issues and Recent Events, June 28, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42584.pdf Haiti Under President Martelly: Current Conditions and Congressional Concerns, June 6, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42559.pdf Federal Laws Relating to Cybersecurity: Discussion of Proposed Revisions, June 29, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42114.pdf U.S. Foreign Assistance to Latin America and the Caribbean: Recent Trends and FY2013 Appropriations, June 26, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42582.pdf China's Economic Conditions, June 26, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33534.pdf Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air, and Missile Defense: Background and Issues for Congress, June 29, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/R41526.pdf Cluster Munitions: Background and Issues for Congress, June 27, 2012: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RS22907.pdf _______________________________________________ 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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