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[Clips] Stew Baker: *I* didn't approve Ports Bill...
by R. A. Hettinga 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2006 14:15:39 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Stew Baker: *I* didn't approve Ports Bill... Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/PORTS_SECURITY?SITE=7219&SECTION=HOM…> Feb 25, 1:20 PM EST Homeland Security Objected to Ports Deal By TED BRIDIS Associated Press Writer AP Photo/JOSEPH KACZMAREK WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent. The department's early objections were settled later in the government's review of the $6.8 billion deal after Dubai-owned DP World agreed to a series of security restrictions. The company indefinitely has postponed its takeover to give President Bush time to convince Congress that the deal does not pose any increased risks to the U.S. from terrorism. Some lawmakers have pressed for a new and intensive review. Despite persistent criticism from Republicans and Democrats, the president has defended his administration's approval of the ports deal and threatened to veto any measures in Congress that would block it. Hearings are to continue this week. A DP World executive said the company would agree to tougher security restrictions to win congressional support only if the same restrictions applied to all U.S. port operators. The company earlier had struck a more conciliatory stance, saying it would do whatever Bush asked to salvage the agreement. "Security is everybody's business," senior vice president Michael Moore told The Associated Press. "We're going to have a very open mind to legitimate concerns. But anything we can do, any way to improve security, should apply to everybody equally." The administration approved the ports deal on Jan. 17 after DP World agreed during secret negotiations to cooperate with law enforcement investigations in the future and make other concessions. Some lawmakers have challenged the adequacy of a classified intelligence assessment crucial to assuring the administration that the deal was proper. The report was assembled during four weeks in November by analysts working for the director of national intelligence. The report concluded that U.S. spy agencies were "unable to locate any derogatory information on the company," according to a person familiar with the document. This person spoke only on condition of anonymity because the report was classified. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and others have complained that the intelligence report focused only on information the agencies collected about DP World and did not examine reported links between UAE government officials and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks. The uproar over DP World has exposed how the government routinely approves deals involving national security without the input of senior administration officials or Congress. President Bush, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and even Treasury Secretary John Snow, who oversees the government committee that approved the deal, all say they did not know about the purchase until after it was finalized. The work was done mostly by assistant secretaries. Snow now says he may consider changes in the approval process so lawmakers are better alerted after such deals get the go-ahead. Stewart Baker, a senior Homeland Security official, said he was the sole representative on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States who objected to the ports deal. Baker said he later changed his vote after DP World agreed to the security conditions. Other officials confirmed Baker's account. "We were not prepared to sign off on the deal without the successful negotiation of the assurances," Baker told the AP. Officials from the White House, CIA, departments of State, Treasury, Justices, and others looked for guidance from Homeland Security because it is responsible for seaports. "We had the most obvious stake in the process," Baker said. Baker acknowledged that a government audit of security practices at the U.S. ports in the takeover has not been completed as part of the deal. "We had the authority to do an audit earlier," Baker said. The audit will help evaluate DP World's security programs to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials at its seaport operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. The administration privately disclosed the status of the security audit to senators during meetings about improving reviews of future business deals involving foreign buyers. Officials did not suggest the audit's earlier completion would have affected the deal's approval. New Jersey's Democratic governor, who is suing to block the deal, said in his party's weekly radio address on Saturday that the administration failed to properly investigate the UAE's record on terrorism. "We were told that the president didn't know about the sale until after it was approved. For many Americans, regardless of party, this lack of disciplined review is unacceptable," Jon Corzine said. Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said there was no going back on the deal. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- 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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25 Feb '06

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/. [UK Government Wins Villain of the Year]
by Eugen Leitl 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

(((Duration of data retention varies, it's 6 months in Germany (just been passed as law), up to 2 years elsewhere (you forgot Poland?) -- approval status unknown))) Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/24/2047203 Posted by: Zonk, on 2006-02-24 21:52:00 Anonymous Cowpat writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK Government, or rather their six month presidency of the EU, has been awarded the [1]Internet Villain of the Year award by the [2]Internet Service Providers Association for being the driving force behind [3]the new EU data retention laws. These require that ISPs and other telecomms providers keep records of the time\date & recipient of every communication made by their subscribers." References 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4744304.stm 2. http://www.ispa.org.uk/ 3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4527840.stm ----- End forwarded message ----- EU approves data retention rules Individual governments will decide exactly how long to keep data The European Parliament has approved rules forcing telephone companies to retain call and internet records for use in anti-terror investigations. Records will be kept for up to two years under the new measures. Police will have access to information about calls, text messages and internet data, but not exact call content. The UK, which pressed European member states to back the rules, said that data was the "golden thread" in terrorist investigations. The parliament voted by 378 to 197 to approve the bill, which had already been agreed by the assembly's two largest groups, the European People's Party and the Socialists. Compromises The measures were proposed by Britain after the bomb attacks in London in July. They still need to be formally approved by EU member states. UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the approval showed the European institutions - the Parliament, the Council, the Commission - standing firm against terrorism and serious organised crime. "This sends a powerful message that Europe is united against terrorism and organised crime," he said. "All three institutions have worked closely together and been willing to compromise in order to reach agreement on this important measure." The measures will require firms to store: * data that can trace fixed or mobile telephone calls * time and duration of calls * location of the mobile phone being called * details of connections made to the Internet * details, but not the content, of internet e-mail and internet telephony services Details of connected calls that are unanswered, which can be used as signals to accomplices or used to detonate bombs, will also be archived where that data exists. Costs But the telecommunications industry has raised some concerns about the measures, which firms say could be expensive to implement. Thierry Dieu, spokesman for European Telecommunications Networks Operators' Association, said that because the proposed measures go much further than the current practices, especially for the internet data, "it is clear that there will be a lot of investment for the industry to make". A spokesman for the Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) said it remained to be seen how the measures would affect providers once incorporated into UK law. He said there was already some voluntary co-operation with the authorities, but mandatory data retention would result in significant costs. ISPs would have to create ways of holding the data, managing it and providing access to it for the authorities, he said. "At the end of the day ISPs are not law enforcement agencies so they should not have to pay for it all," he said. -- 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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[dave@farber.net: [IP] Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data,By JOHN MARKOFF]
by Eugen Leitl 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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[dave@farber.net: [IP] WORTH READING "Total Information Awareness" - secretly funded in defiance of Congress]]]
by Eugen Leitl 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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Re: AT&T's database of 1.92 trillion phone calls (Sprint does it too, and i'm sure they aren't the only ones)
by coderman 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

Sprint did this as well starting in the mid to late 90's but covering a much deeper/wider data set. for hypothetical example, mobile phones add much more richness/detail at this scale when you consider the location tracking aspects of monitoring radio signal levels, cell tower associations (with associated GIS attributes) and hand off / interpolation with multiple towers to get within a few hundred meters or better. they tapped their fiber at the backbone peering / termination points. company line was "monitoring packet headers/circuit|path ids only, for routing optimization only, for a brief period of time only". (yes, that means voice, data, leased optical circuits, all of it) the under reported capabilities and extensive secrecy around this project indicated other uses and other "collaborators" to assist with processing and collection. like anonymous hero in the story below calling out att i'm not going into much detail (NDA's aren't the only stick they can beat you with, heh). keep digging all you guys/gals, this story just gets nastier the deeper you look... and keep blowing those whistles; we need some real accountability and this "legalize it in retrospect" / "classify and compartmentalize it into deep black" bullshit doesn't cut it. (just be careful when you do so, and that goes for reporters who receive the info - see the previous post about holding reporters liable for merely possessing classified materials) [[ i'm one of a small set of people who has been through a tour of the Sprint world network headquarters / technical operations center and salivated over the equipment present (not the new campus, not the old HQ, it's below ground, and you either know what i'm talking about or don't. i never got to see the geographic fail-over location but it had to be just as impressive. a nuke in this facility, the nerve core of sprint enterprise, and you had recovery on the order of seconds via this redundant remote "hot backup" data center. it still makes me go 'wow' this many years later. the raw technology located here, and the processing it was capable of doing, coupled with the fact that collection and subsequent analysis was distributed and comprised centers like this one and others meant public estimates of what was "possible to tap and process" at the global level for even an NSA style adversary were almost always grossly underestimated. the closer you got to ballpark, the more likely such scenarios were publicly declared "tin foil hat paranoia" :) NOTE: to the corporate legal departments, TLA spooks: all of the above information is public in some form or another given enough digging; please don't interpret this as proprietary or classified. and please don't send the white vans for remote technical surveillance like FBI Infragard over the wireless security debacle; i'm no dummy. (Hi Mary! i'm still waiting for that apology...) ]] P.S. who is going to start an open public/community driven data mining program to perform knowledge discovery against our tax payer funded entities and public corporations and those who serve them? large scale decentralized / distributed computing is possible these days with broadband and gaming boxes laying aplenty across this nation. perhaps if accountability will not be enforced by those in power charged with doing so a more grass roots approach is appropriate... P.P.S is this funny / amusing (funsec) in a dark humor (haha, we got so pwn'ed!) kinda way? *grin* ok, enough parens and commentary. i've spoken my mind and said my peace. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Richard M. Smith <rms(a)bsf-llc.com> Date: Feb 25, 2006 6:36 AM Subject: [funsec] AT&T's database of 1.92 trillion phone calls To: funsec(a)linuxbox.org http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/technology/25data.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Taking Spying to Higher Level, Agencies Look for More Ways to Mine Data ... He was alluding to databases maintained at an AT&T data center in Kansas, which now contain electronic records of 1.92 trillion telephone calls, going back decades. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights advocacy group, has asserted in a lawsuit that the AT&T Daytona system, a giant storehouse of calling records and Internet message routing information, was the foundation of the N.S.A.'s effort to mine telephone records without a warrant. An AT&T spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the claim, or generally on matters of national security or customer privacy. But the mining of the databases in other law enforcement investigations is well established, with documented results. One application of the database technology, called Security Call Analysis and Monitoring Platform, or Scamp, offers access to about nine weeks of calling information. It currently handles about 70,000 queries a month from fraud and law enforcement investigators, according to AT&T documents. A former AT&T official who had detailed knowledge of the call-record database said the Daytona system takes great care to make certain that anyone using the database - whether AT&T employee or law enforcement official with a subpoena - sees only information he or she is authorized to see, and that an audit trail keeps track of all users. Such information is frequently used to build models of suspects' social networks. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing sensitive corporate matters, said every telephone call generated a record: number called, time of call, duration of call, billing category and other details. While the database does not contain such billing data as names, addresses and credit card numbers, those records are in a linked database that can be tapped by authorized users. New calls are entered into the database immediately after they end, the official said, adding, "I would characterize it as near real time." According to a current AT&T employee, whose identity is being withheld to avoid jeopardizing his job, the mining of the AT&T databases had a notable success in helping investigators find the perpetrators of what was known as the Moldovan porn scam. In 1997 a shadowy group in Moldova, a former Soviet republic, was tricking Internet users by enticing them to a pornography Web site that would download a piece of software that disconnected the computer user from his local telephone line and redialed a costly 900 number in Moldova. While another long-distance carrier simply cut off the entire nation of Moldova from its network, AT&T and the Moldovan authorities were able to mine the database to track the culprits. _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.

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25 Feb '06

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perfect duplicates
by Sue C. Oconnor 25 Feb '06

25 Feb '06

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by Dwight Ellison 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

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TIA Lives On (so that's where it went...)
by coderman 24 Feb '06

24 Feb '06

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0223nj1.htm TIA Lives On By Shane Harris, National Journal (c) National Journal Group Inc. Thursday, Feb. 23, 2006 A controversial counter-terrorism program, which lawmakers halted more than two years ago amid outcries from privacy advocates, was stopped in name only and has quietly continued within the intelligence agency now fending off charges that it has violated the privacy of U.S. citizens. ""It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget."" Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts. It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified. Two of the most important components of the TIA program were moved to the Advanced Research and Development Activity, housed at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., documents and sources confirm. One piece was the Information Awareness Prototype System, the core architecture that tied together numerous information extraction, analysis, and dissemination tools developed under TIA. The prototype system included privacy-protection technologies that may have been discontinued or scaled back following the move to ARDA. A $19 million contract to build the prototype system was awarded in late 2002 to Hicks & Associates, a consulting firm in Arlington, Va., that is run by former Defense and military officials. Congress's decision to pull TIA's funding in late 2003 "caused a significant amount of uncertainty for all of us about the future of our work," Hicks executive Brian Sharkey wrote in an e-mail to subcontractors at the time. "Fortunately," Sharkey continued, "a new sponsor has come forward that will enable us to continue much of our previous work." Sources confirm that this new sponsor was ARDA. Along with the new sponsor came a new name. "We will be describing this new effort as 'Basketball,' " Sharkey wrote, apparently giving no explanation of the name's significance. Another e-mail from a Hicks employee, Marc Swedenburg, reminded the company's staff that "TIA has been terminated and should be referenced in that fashion." Sharkey played a key role in TIA's birth, when he and a close friend, retired Navy Vice Adm. John Poindexter, President Reagan's national security adviser, brought the idea to Defense officials shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The men had teamed earlier on intelligence-technology programs for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which agreed to host TIA and hired Poindexter to run it in 2002. In August 2003, Poindexter was forced to resign as TIA chief amid howls that his central role in the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s made him unfit to run a sensitive intelligence program. It's unclear whether work on Basketball continues. Sharkey didn't respond to an interview request, and Poindexter said he had no comment about former TIA programs. But a publicly available Defense Department document, detailing various "cooperative agreements and other transactions" conducted in fiscal 2004, shows that Basketball was fully funded at least until the end of that year (September 2004). The document shows that the system was being tested at a research center jointly run by ARDA and SAIC Corp., a major defense and intelligence contractor that is the sole owner of Hicks & Associates. The document describes Basketball as a "closed-loop, end-to-end prototype system for early warning and decision-making," exactly the same language used in contract documents for the TIA prototype system when it was awarded to Hicks in 2002. An SAIC spokesman declined to comment for this story. Another key TIA project that moved to ARDA was Genoa II, which focused on building information technologies to help analysts and policy makers anticipate and pre-empt terrorist attacks. Genoa II was renamed Topsail when it moved to ARDA, intelligence sources confirmed. (The name continues the program's nautical nomenclature; "genoa" is a synonym for the headsail of a ship.) As recently as October 2005, SAIC was awarded a $3.7 million contract under Topsail. According to a government-issued press release announcing the award, "The objective of Topsail is to develop decision-support aids for teams of intelligence analysts and policy personnel to assist in anticipating and pre-empting terrorist threats to U.S. interests." That language repeats almost verbatim the boilerplate descriptions of Genoa II contained in contract documents, Pentagon budget sheets, and speeches by the Genoa II program's former managers. As early as February 2003, the Pentagon planned to use Genoa II technologies at the Army's Information Awareness Center at Fort Belvoir, Va., according to an unclassified Defense budget document. The awareness center was an early tester of various TIA tools, according to former employees. A 2003 Pentagon report to Congress shows that the Army center was part of an expansive network of intelligence agencies, including the NSA, that experimented with the tools. The center was also home to the Army's Able Danger program, which has come under scrutiny after some of its members said they used data-analysis tools to discover the name and photograph of 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta more than a year before the attacks. Devices developed under Genoa II's predecessor -- which Sharkey also managed when he worked for the Defense Department -- were used during the invasion of Afghanistan and as part of "the continuing war on terrorism," according to an unclassified Defense budget document. Today, however, the future of Topsail is in question. A spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y., which administers the program's contracts, said it's "in the process of being canceled due to lack of funds." It is unclear when funding for Topsail was terminated. But earlier this month, at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, one of TIA's strongest critics questioned whether intelligence officials knew that some of its programs had been moved to other agencies. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte and FBI Director Robert Mueller whether it was "correct that when [TIA] was closed, that several ... projects were moved to various intelligence agencies.... I and others on this panel led the effort to close [TIA]; we want to know if Mr. Poindexter's programs are going on somewhere else." Negroponte and Mueller said they didn't know. But Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who until recently was director of the NSA, said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Asked for comment, Wyden's spokeswoman referred to his hearing statements. The NSA is now at the center of a political firestorm over President Bush's program to eavesdrop on the phone calls and e-mails of people in the United States who the agency believes are connected to terrorists abroad. While the documents on the TIA programs don't show that their tools are used in the domestic eavesdropping, and knowledgeable sources wouldn't discuss the matter, the TIA programs were designed specifically to develop the kind of "early-warning system" that the president said the NSA is running. Documents detailing TIA, Genoa II, Basketball, and Topsail use the phrase "early-warning system" repeatedly to describe the programs' ultimate aims. In speeches, Poindexter has described TIA as an early-warning and decision-making system. He conceived of TIA in part because of frustration over the lack of such tools when he was national security chief for Reagan. Tom Armour, the Genoa II program manager, declined to comment for this story. But in a previous interview, he said that ARDA -- which absorbed the TIA programs -- has pursued technologies that would be useful for analyzing large amounts of phone and e-mail traffic. "That's, in fact, what the interest is," Armour said. When TIA was still funded, its program managers and researchers had "good coordination" with their counterparts at ARDA and discussed their projects on a regular basis, Armour said. The former No. 2 official in Poindexter's office, Robert Popp, averred that the NSA didn't use TIA tools in domestic eavesdropping as part of his research. But asked whether the agency could have used the tools apart from TIA, Popp replied, "I can't speak to that." Asked to comment on TIA projects that moved to ARDA, Don Weber, an NSA spokesman said, "As I'm sure you understand, we can neither confirm nor deny actual or alleged projects or operational capabilities; therefore, we have no information to provide." ARDA now is undergoing some changes of its own. The outfit is being taken out of the NSA, placed under the control of Negroponte's office, and given a new name. It will be called the "Disruptive Technology Office," a reference to a term of art describing any new invention that suddenly, and often dramatically, replaces established procedures. Officials with the intelligence director's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.

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