On that slippery slope

Apple will roll out an update later this year that will include technology in iPhones and iPads that allows the tech giant to detect images of child sexual abuse stored in iCloud, the company announced Thursday.

The feature is part of a series of updates Apple unveiled aimed at increasing child safety, but security researchers and advocates are warning the scanning update — along with one that aims to give parents protective tools in children’s messages — could pose data and security risks beyond the intended purpose.

With the new scanning feature, Apple will be able to report detected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) which acts as a comprehensive reporting center and works in collaboration with law enforcement agencies across the country. The company will also disable users accounts if the abusive content is found, Apple said in the update.

Apple said its method to detect the abusive material is “designed with user privacy in mind.” Instead of scanning images in the cloud, the system performs “on-device matching” using a database of known child sexual abuse material image hashes provided by child safety organizations.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Well, what a surprise

In the case of Saudi Arabia, sources familiar with the matter said the kingdom was temporarily cut off from using Pegasus in 2018, for several months, following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but was allowed to begin using the spyware again in 2019 following the intervention of the Israeli government.

It is unclear why the Israeli government urged NSO to reconnect the surveillance tool for Riyadh.

However, the 10 countries that the forensic analysis for the Pegasus project suggests have actually been abusing the technology all enjoy trade relations with Israel or have diplomatic ties with the country that have been improving markedly in recent years.

  Guardian

Here's the full story.

And here's the background.

Also...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Devin Nunes

Recently, several members and staffers on the House Intelligence Committee, which [was] investigating Russia’s role in the Presidential election, visited the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland. Inside the enormous black glass headquarters of America’s largest spy agency, the congressmen and their aides were shown a binder of two to three dozen pages of highly classified intercepts, mostly transcripts of conversations between foreign government officials that took place during the Presidential transition.

[...]

What the intercepts all had in common is that the people being spied on made references to Donald Trump or to Trump officials. That wasn’t even clear, though, from reading the transcripts. The names of any Americans were concealed, or “masked,” the intelligence community’s term for redacting references to Americans who are not the legal targets of surveillance when such intelligence reports are distributed to policy makers.

The binder of secret documents is at the center of the bizarre scandal created by what may be the most reckless lie President Trump has ever told.

  New Yorker

And his middle name is reckless.

On March 4th, he tweeted, “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!” The White House made several efforts to justify Trump’s claim, including using Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as a conduit for the documents, which allegedly offered some substantiation. A former Nunes staffer now working for the White House dug up the transcripts and shared them with Nunes. As Bloomberg View reported, earlier this month, Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser, had used a process that allowed her to request that the masked names be revealed to her. Rice had to log her unmasking requests on a White House computer, which is how Trump’s aides knew about them. Nunes and the White House presented this as a major scandal.

It is now clear that the scandal was not Rice’s normal review of the intelligence reports but the coördinated effort between the Trump Administration and Nunes to sift through classified information and computer logs that recorded Rice’s unmasking requests, and then leak a highly misleading characterization of those documents, all in an apparent effort to turn Rice, a longtime target of Republicans, into the face of alleged spying against Trump.

[...]

I spoke to two intelligence sources, one who read the entire binder of intercepts and one who was briefed on their contents. “There’s absolutely nothing there,” one source said. The Trump names remain masked in the documents, and Rice would not have been able to know in all cases that she was asking the N.S.A. to unmask the names of Trump officials.

Nunes is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee because, in talking about the documents, he may have leaked classified information. But this is like getting Al Capone for tax evasion. The bigger scandal is the coördinated effort to use the American intelligence services to manufacture an excuse for Trump’s original tweet.

[...]

They put out an all-points bulletin”—a call to sift through intelligence reports—“and said, ‘We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.’ And I’m telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.”

[...]

The law governing the N.S.A.’s collection of the content of communications of foreign targets is up for renewal this summer. Known as Section 702, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is perhaps the most important intelligence tool that America’s spy agencies have to gather information about potential terrorist attacks and about the intentions of regimes around the world.

Or, alternately, from the point of view of an American citizen who expects privacy, a tool for the government - advertently or inadvertently - to collect information on innocent Americans.

“Section 702 of FISA allows warrantless searches on Americans. That’s unconstitutional & must be changed,” Representative Ted Lieu, the Democrat from California, tweeted last month, during the controversy.

[...]

Some American intelligence officials are now concerned that Trump and Nunes’s wild claims about intercepts and Rice have made Section 702 look like a rogue program that can be easily abused for political purposes. The intelligence source said, “In defense of the President, Devin Nunes and some other partisans have created a huge political problem by casting doubt, in the service of Donald Trump, on these intercepts.”

[...]

“They manufactured a scandal to distract from a serious investigation,” Eric Swalwell, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, who would not comment on the N.S.A. documents, said. “And the collateral damage is the public confidence in our intelligence community when we need to count on them now more than ever. Considering the threats we are facing right now from North Korea and ISIS, it’s a pretty dangerous time to undermine the I.C.’s credibility to make a five-yard sack in the Russia investigation.”

[...]

The fake scandal created by Trump and Nunes is not over yet. The first name on the Republican list [of requested witnesses for the Intel Committee's impeachment hearings was] Susan Rice.

Well, they didn't get her.  They'll just have to wait until the Senate impeachment trial.

GOP Doug Collins has a great idea

Have the federal government investigate a news source for a report unfavorable to the president.  Just what you'd expect from a representative democracy, no?

we are living in disturbing times.

GOP Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.) on Tuesday called for an investigation into CNN over the network's report that said the CIA pulled a high-level informant from Russia amid concerns that President Trump mishandled intelligence.

“To put this out at this time and to put it such a way that the CIA had to come out and respond to this is really a disturbing part,” Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News.

“I really question whose side CNN is on," the GOP congressman continued. "This is a problem we’re seeing. I think it needs to be investigated. With the CIA coming out like it has, I think it has to be something we look at."

Collins's call for an investigation came as the White House and CIA broadly denied CNN's report, and as new reporting emerged from other outlets that appeared to contradict key parts of the network's story.

CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill on Tuesday.

CNN's report published the previous day was the first to detail efforts by the CIA to extract a top informant from Russia.

[...]

CNN reported that the source's removal was driven "in part" by concerns Trump and his administration could contribute to the source's exposure by mishandling classified intelligence.

But later reports published by The New York Times and The Washington Post contradicted part of CNN's story.

Former intelligence officials told the Times that there was no public evidence indicating that Trump directly endangered the informant. Other officials said the extraction stemmed from concerns about the media's scrutiny of the agency.

As news outlets reported more on topics such as the CIA's intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the agency reportedly revived an extraction plan for the top-level informant.

The move ultimately caused the CIA to lose a key source of its information about the Kremlin. The spy was key to the CIA's finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Times reported.

[...]

CIA Director for Public Affairs Brittany Bramell said in a statement to CNN that its narrative for the story was "simply false."

"Misguided speculation that the President's handling of our nation's most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate," Bramell said.

  The Hill

Trump compromised a CIA Kremlin source

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN.

[...]

At the end of the Obama administration, US intelligence officials had already expressed concerns about the safety of this spy and other Russian assets, given the length of their cooperation with the US, according to a former senior intelligence official.

Those concerns grew in early 2017 after the US intelligence community released its public report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which said Putin himself ordered the operation.

[...]

In the first months of his administration, Trump's handling of classified intelligence further concerned intelligence officials. Ultimately, they decided to launch the difficult operation to remove an asset who had been working for the US for years.

[...]

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel.

[...]

The secret removal of the high-level Russian asset has left the US without one of its key sources on the inner workings of the Kremlin and the plans and thinking of the Russian president at a time when tensions between the two nations have been growing. The US intelligence community considers Russia one of the two greatest threats to US national security, along with China.

"The impact would be huge because it is so hard to develop sources like that in any denied area, particularly Russia, because the surveillance and security there is so stringent," a former senior intelligence official told CNN. "You can't reacquire a capability like that overnight."

[...]

The President was informed in advance of the extraction, along with a small number of senior officials. Details of the extraction itself remain secret and the whereabouts of the asset today are unknown to CNN.

  CNN

Cue Trump tweet about CNN being full of shit.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Pushback from Trump AND the CIA.  GOP Rep Doug Collins wants CNN investigated.

Another US spy convicted

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer pleaded guilty today to conspiring to communicate, deliver and transmit national defense information to the People’s Republic of China.

[...]

According to court documents, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 54, left the CIA in 2007 and began residing in Hong Kong. In April 2010, two Chinese intelligence officers (IOs) approached Lee and offered to pay him for national defense information he had acquired as a CIA case officer. The IOs also told Lee they had prepared for him a gift of $100,000 cash, and they offered to take care of him “for life” in exchange for his cooperation.

[...]

“This is the third case in less than a year in which a former US intelligence officer has pled or been found guilty of conspiring with Chinese intelligence services to pass them national defense information,” said Assistant Attorney General Demers. “Every one of these cases is a tragic betrayal of country and colleagues. The National Security Division will continue to prosecute individuals like Lee who abuse their former access to classified information for financial gain while threatening the security of America.

[...]

"Lee sold out his country, conspired to become a spy for a foreign government, and then repeatedly lied to investigators about his conduct. This prosecution should serve as a warning to others who would compromise our nation’s secrets and betray our country’s trust."

  Justice.Gov

I imagine that will depend upon the punishment.

In March, a former U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Ron Rockwell Hansen, pleaded guilty attempting to transmit classified information to China and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars while acting as an agent for Beijing.

Last June, another former CIA case officer, Kevin Mallory, was convicted on espionage charges for passing classified documents to China.

  Reuters

Do our national security agencies need to clean house?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The real national security issue is the president of the United States

Federal authorities are investigating possible Chinese intelligence operations targeting President Donald Trump and his private Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, sources familiar with the never-before-reported investigation told the Miami Herald Wednesday.

The federal counterintelligence probe was turbo-charged on Saturday when U.S. Secret Service agents arrested a Chinese woman, Yujing Zhang, after they said she tried to enter the club with a bevy of electronic devices, including a thumb drive infected with “malicious malware.”

The ongoing investigation has also recently focused on Li “Cindy” Yang, the sources told the Herald. Yang is a South Florida massage parlor entrepreneur who has promoted events at Mar-a-Lago with ads targeting Chinese business executives hoping to gain access to Trump and his family.

[...]

Now, investigators with the FBI Counterintelligence Division in South Florida are trying to figure out who Zhang is, whether she is involved in a possible Chinese intelligence mission and whether there are links to Yang’s social events at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.


Zhang was headed to a Mar-a-Lago event advertised on Chinese social media by Yang when she was arrested by federal authorities on charges of making a false statement to a federal officer and entering restricted property.

[...]

She told conflicting stories about wanting to use the club’s pool, as well as hoping to discuss U.S.-China economic relations with a member of the president’s family, court records say. Trump was golfing at another of his South Florida clubs during the incident.

[...]

Zhang, whose birth year is listed as 1986 in court records, has not been charged with any crimes related to espionage. Her federal public defender did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yang has said she has no ties to China’s government and does not personally know Donald Trump or sell access to him.
  Miami Herald

I thought that's what the whole massage parlor madam scandal was about.

Zhang, whose birth year is listed as 1986 in court records, has not been charged with any crimes related to espionage. Her federal public defender did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Yang has said she has no ties to China’s government and does not personally know Donald Trump or sell access to him.

[...]

On Wednesday, top Democrats in Washington called on the FBI and Director of National Intelligence to assess the risks posed by Mar-a-Lago’s policy of admitting members of the public and foreign nationals while the president and his family are using the club.

[...]

“As the White House Communications Agency and Secret Service continue to establish several secure areas at Mar-a-Lago for handling classified information when the president travels there, these potential vulnerabilities have serious national security implications.”

[...]

The letter also asks for the FBI and DNI to coordinate with the Secret Service to determine the steps needed to “detect and deter adversary governments or their agents from attempting to gain access to or conduct electronic surveillance or acquire material at Mar-a-Lago or President Trump’s other properties.”

How much more is that going to cost us?

In a CNN interview Wednesday, President Trump said he is not concerned about the Chinese trying to spy on him at Mar-a-Lago. “I think that was just a fluke situation,” he said.

He can just ask Xi who will tell him it has nothing to do with the Chinese government. That should clear it up.

According to the court documents, Zhang traveled from Shanghai, China, to South Florida to attend a “United Nations Chinese Friendship” event as a guest of a social media contact she identified only as “Charles.” Although authorities pointed out there was no event occurring by that exact name, Yang had previously been promoting two Mar-a-Lago events that day: an “International Leaders Elite Forum,” and a Safari Night gala, a fundraiser for a youth charity. The events were canceled after intense news coverage of Yang and her activities, something Zhang might not have realized.

[...]

At an exterior checkpoint, Zhang provided two Chinese passports and told Secret Service personnel that she wanted to use the pool, though it was later discovered there was no swimming suit in her bag. She was allowed to pass. Suspicions were raised after a receptionist found Zhang was not on Mar-a-Lago’s guest list for the weekend.

[...]

She was arrested after allegedly becoming “verbally aggressive” with agents, according to court records.

[...]

Mar-a-Lago club management — not the Secret Service — determines who has access to the property, according to a Secret Secret statement released Tuesday.

[...]

Yang pitched the combination of March 30 events as a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for overseas Chinese clients to meet members of the Trump family and other top politicians in her Chinese-language ads targeting overseas buyers.

An associate of Yang named Charles Lee also pushed out the advertisements on Chinese social media.

Lee is the founder of the United Nations Chinese Friendship Association, a for-profit Delaware-based company that is not listed by the United Nations as an affiliated organization. Instead, Lee uses the company to advertise Yang’s Mar-a-Lago invites to Chinese clients hoping to get close to Trump.

[...]

The group’s website promoted the Chinese Communist Party, and promoted President Xi Jinping’s business diplomacy agenda — an effort to send Chinese business leaders abroad to befriend politicians in hopes of gaining favor for China and its agenda.

[...]

Lee could not be reached for comment and appears to have disconnected his phone and taken down the group’s website after being contacted by a Herald reporter last week. In a brief conversation at the time, Lee denied knowing Yang before hanging up.

[...]

“The surprise would be if Chinese and Russian and other adversarial governments were not trying to get into Mar-a-Lago and the president’s other properties,” said Peter Harrell, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former Obama administration State Department official. ”There’s a huge trove of information available.”

Although the Secret Service regularly sweeps the property for bugs, Harrell said Trump’s penchant for speaking off-the-cuff could make an enticing target.

[...]

Since Trump became president, longtime Mar-a-Lago members have noted the increased presence of foreigners at charity events and galas — in particular, large contingents of Chinese people who spoke little English. “It’s a circus,” one longtime employee told the Miami Herald on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions at work. The employee said Chinese guests would bring gifts of cheap electronics, and constantly ask staff to help them get face time with Trump or his family.

So Zhang's electronic devices may have been intended as "gifts", but the security risks are still there. Trump is still there.

And he's going to be carrying around government secrets for the rest of his life. It's not like changing the locks on the White House doors will be the end of it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The reality makers

This story involves a Tulare, California, hospital that was driven into bankruptcy by its administrator who was himself making boatloads of money. A local group trying to save the hospital decided to run someone against one of the administrator's enablers on the hospital board. The administrator, in turn, sought help from a DC law firm.

The recall was a clear threat to Benzeevi’s hospital-management business, and he consulted a law firm in Washington, D.C., about mounting a campaign to save Kumar’s seat. An adviser there referred him to Psy-Group, an Israeli private intelligence company. Psy-Group’s slogan was “Shape Reality,” and its techniques included the use of elaborate false identities to manipulate its targets. Psy-Group was part of a new wave of private intelligence firms that recruited from the ranks of Israel’s secret services—self-described “private Mossads.” The most aggressive of these firms seemed willing to do just about anything for their clients.

Psy-Group stood out from many of its rivals because it didn’t just gather intelligence; it specialized in covertly spreading messages to influence what people believed and how they behaved. [...] “Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds,” Uzi Shaya, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, said. “You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It’s a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It is a no man’s land.”

[...]

No election was too small. One company document reported that Psy-Group’s influence services cost, on average, just three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—as little as two hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour. [...] No election was too small. One company document reported that Psy-Group’s influence services cost, on average, just three hundred and fifty thousand dollars—as little as two hundred and seventy-five dollars an hour.

[...]

In New York, Psy-Group mounted a campaign on behalf of wealthy Jewish-American donors to embarrass and intimidate activists on American college campuses who support a movement to put economic pressure on Israel because of its treatment of the Palestinians.

[...]

[F]ew countries produce more highly trained and war-tested intelligence professionals, as a proportion of the population, than Israel.

[...]

Spies, private investigators, criminals, and even some journalists have long used false identities to trick people into providing information, a practice known as pretexting. The Internet made pretexting easier.

[...]

One of the boldest [private intel/psy-ops groups], Black Cube, openly advertised its ties to Israeli spy agencies, including Mossad and Unit 8200, the military’s signals-intelligence corps. Black Cube got its start with the help of Vincent Tchenguiz, an Iranian-born English real-estate tycoon. [...] In March, 2011, Tchenguiz was arrested by a British anti-fraud unit investigating his business dealings. (The office later dropped the investigation and paid him a settlement.) He asked Meir Dagan, who had just stepped down as the director of Mossad, how he could draw on the expertise of former intelligence officers to look into the business rivals he believed had alerted authorities. Dagan’s message to Tchenguiz, a former colleague of Dagan’s said, was: I can find a personal Mossad for you. (Dagan died in 2016.) Tchenguiz became Black Cube’s first significant client.

[...]

Russia’s intelligence services had begun using a variety of tools—including hacking, cyber weapons, online aliases, and Web sites that spread fake news—to conduct information warfare and to sow discord in neighboring countries. In the late two-thousands, the Russians targeted Estonia and Georgia. In 2014, they hit Ukraine. Later that year, [Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer named Royi] Burstien founded Psy-Group, which, like Black Cube, used [social media] avatars to conduct intelligence-collection operations. But Burstien also offered his avatars for another purpose: influence campaigns, similar to those mounted by Russia.

[...]

Tulare seemed an unlikely target for an influence campaign.

[...]

Today, the city is home to just over sixty thousand people.

[...]

Citizens for Hospital Accountability began as a simple Facebook page. At first, the group’s leaders hoped that Alex Gutiérrez would run for Kumar’s seat, but he was planning to stand for a position on the city council. Senovia [Guitiérrez, Alex's mother] was the backup choice.

[...]

Hospital-board races are usually small-time affairs. One former member of the Tulare board said that her campaign had cost just a hundred and fifty dollars, which she used to buy signs and cards that she handed out door-to-door. In the recall, which had been set for July 11, 2017, voter turnout was expected to be fewer than fifteen hundred people. Still, Alex decided to take a break from college and serve as his mother’s campaign manager. He suspected that the race would be bitterly contested, and expensive.

[...]

Tulare County is largely Republican; Trump won it with fifty-three per cent of the vote in 2016, and the district’s representative in the House, Devin Nunes, has spearheaded efforts to counter the Russia investigation. But the hospital board was a crossover issue.

[...]

While Alex and Senovia were soliciting small donations from neighbors, [hospital manager Yorai] Benzeevi got on a plane to Israel to meet with Psy-Group.

[...]

Psy-Group went to great lengths to disguise its activities. Employees were occasionally instructed to go to libraries or Internet cafés, where they could use so-called “white” computers, which could not be traced back to the firm. They created dummy Gmail accounts, often employed for one assignment and then discarded. For particularly sensitive operations, Psy-Group created fake front companies and avatars who purported to work there, and then hired real outside contractors who weren’t told that they were doing the bidding of Psy-Group’s clients. Psy-Group operatives sometimes paid the local contractors in cash.

In one meeting [...] before a parliamentary election in a European country, his operatives had created a sham think tank. Using avatars, the operatives hired local analysts to work for the think tank, which then disseminated reports to bolster the political campaign of the company’s client and to undermine the reputations of his rivals. In another meeting, Psy-Group officials said that they had created an avatar to help a corporate client win regulatory approval in Europe. Over time, the avatar became so well established in the industry that he was quoted in mainstream press reports and even by European parliamentarians.

[...]

Most Psy-Group employees knew little or nothing about the company’s owner, Joel Zamel. According to corporate documents filed in Cyprus, he was born in Australia in 1986. Zamel later moved to Israel, where he earned a master’s degree in government, diplomacy, and strategy, with a specialization in counterterrorism and homeland security. [...] He cultivated relationships with high-profile Republicans in the U.S., including Newt Gingrich and Elliott Abrams, who served in foreign-policy positions under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and whom Psy-Group listed as a member of its advisory board.

  New Yorker

Good old Elliott Abrams.

[An Israel Defense Forces intelligence officer Royi Burstein, who was hired by another psy-ops company, Aviran,] sent representatives to pitch State Department officials on an influence campaign [...] that would “interrupt the radicalization and recruitment chain.” The State Department never acted on the proposal.

Probably because they already have their own psy-ops influence program running.

Psy-Group had more success pitching an operation, code-named Project Butterfly, to wealthy Jewish-American donors. The operation targeted what Psy-Group described as “anti-Israel” activists on American college campuses who supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as B.D.S.

[...]

In early meetings with donors, in New York, Burstien said that the key to mounting an effective anti-B.D.S. campaign was to make it look as though Israel, and the Jewish-American community, had nothing to do with the effort. The goal of Butterfly, according to a 2017 company document, was to “destabilize and disrupt anti-Israel movements from within.”

[...]

Project Butterfly launched in February, 2016, and Psy-Group asked donors for $2.5 million for operations in 2017. Supporters were told that they were “investing in Israel’s future.” In some cases, a former company employee said, donors asked Psy-Group to target B.D.S. activists at universities where their sons and daughters studied.

[...]

A former company employee said that Benzeevi “appeared to like the idea that someone from Mossad would be on his side.” Before Benzeevi flew back to California, he was given the number of a bank account where he could wire Psy-Group the fee for the Tulare campaign—two hundred and thirty thousand dollars. On May 8th, [...the] project was set in motion, and its code name was changed from Mockingjay to Katniss, a reference to Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist in the “Hunger Games” novels.

[...]

In June of 2017, strange things began happening in Tulare. A series of ominous Web sites appeared: Tularespeaks.com, Tulareleaks.com, and Draintulareswamp.com. The sites directed visitors to articles that smeared Senovia Gutiérrez and her allies in the hospital-board fight.

[...]

The domain names appeared to be playing off themes from the 2016 Presidential campaign. [...] Along with the Web sites, online personae, who claimed to be local residents but whom nobody in town recognized, began posting comments on social media. Some of the messages suggested that Senovia took bribes. Others pointed to her Mexican background and her accent and questioned whether she was an American citizen.

[...]

Early on the evening of June 9th, a woman with short blond hair knocked on Senovia’s front door, and told Senovia’s adult son Richard, who answered, that she was a supporter of his mother’s campaign. The woman handed Richard an envelope that read “To: Mrs. Sanovia,” misspelling her name. Richard noticed that a man was standing across the street, next to a Yukon Denali S.U.V., taking photographs with a telephoto lens. Later that night, the S.U.V. returned to Senovia’s street, and the man took more photographs.

Some of the photographs soon appeared on Draintulareswamp.com, under the title “Who Is Pulling Senovia’s Strings?” [...] The photographs seemed designed to make it appear as if Senovia had taken a bribe.

[...]

Deanne Martin-Soares, one of the founders of Citizens for Hospital Accountability, said. “We couldn’t trace anything. We didn’t know where it was coming from.”

[...]

On June 15th, campaign flyers ridiculing Senovia for having “zero experience,” and directing residents who “want proof” to visit Tularespeaks.com, appeared on door handles around town. The small businessman who printed and distributed the flyers said that he had been paid in cash by a stranger who used the name Francesco Manoletti, which appears to be a made-up persona.

[...]

“It didn’t really hurt Senovia,” [a California campaign veteran named Michael] McKinney said. “It made it look like she was being harassed. It hurt Kumar. It backfired.”

[...]

On the eve of the election, Alex’s house burned down and he lost almost everything, including his final batch of campaign flyers. He suspected that the blaze could have been election-related, but local fire-department officials said that they saw no evidence of foul play.

[...]

Burstien hoped that Psy-Group’s work in Tulare would help the company land other small campaigns, but that proved overly optimistic. He told colleagues that he was close to finalizing several deals, but the new clients fell through, and, in February, 2018, Burstien found that he couldn’t make payroll.

Psy-Group’s financial woes coincided with sudden scrutiny from the F.B.I.

[...]

Psy-Group’s larger ambition was to break into the U.S. election market. During the 2016 Presidential race, the company pitched members of Donald Trump’s campaign team on its ability to influence the results. Psy-Group’s owner, Joel Zamel, even asked Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, to offer Zamel’s services to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. The effort to drum up business included brash claims about the company’s skills in online deception. The posturing was intended to attract clients—but it also attracted the attention of the F.B.I. Robert Mueller.

[...]

The Bureau had taken an interest in George Nader for helping to organize a secretive meeting in the Seychelles ahead of Trump’s Inauguration, with the aim of creating an unofficial channel with Vladimir Putin.In January, 2018, F.B.I. agents stopped Nader, an American citizen, at Dulles International Airport and served him with a grand-jury subpoena. Nader agreed to coöperate, and told F.B.I. agents about his various dealings related to the Trump campaign, including his discussions with Zamel. (Nader has been granted immunity in exchange for testifying truthfully.)

[...]

The following month, F.B.I. agents served Zamel with a grand-jury subpoena. Agents also tracked down Burstien in the San Francisco area, where he was on a business trip. [...] The F.B.I. also visited Psy-Group’s so-called D.C. office, at the WeWork, and seized a laptop computer that had been hidden in a desk drawer, where it had been running continuously.

[...]

Psy-Group officials referred the F.B.I. to the letters they had received from law firms, attesting to the legality of their activities and telling the company that it didn’t need to register as a foreign agent. “The F.B.I. seemed genuinely surprised that this shit wasn’t illegal,” a former Psy-Group employee said.

[...]

Early in 2016, a Republican consultant with ties to the Israeli government put Psy-Group in touch with Rick Gates, a senior Trump campaign official. [...] In the proposal, dubbed Project Rome, which was first reported on by the Times, last October, Psy-Group used code names for the candidates: Trump was Lion, and Hillary Clinton was Forest. Psy-Group also hired the Washington law firm Covington & Burling to conduct a legal review of its work. Former Psy-Group officials said that the resulting memo gave a green light to begin offering the company’s services in the U.S.

[...]

In early May, 2016, Zamel sent an e-mail to Gingrich, saying that he could provide the Trump campaign with powerful tools that would use social media to advance Trump’s chances. Zamel suggested a meeting in Washington to discuss the matter further. Gingrich forwarded the e-mail to Jared Kushner and asked if the campaign would be interested. Kushner checked with others on the campaign, including Brad Parscale, who ran Web operations. According to a person familiar with the exchange, Parscale told Kushner that they didn’t need Zamel’s help. (A 2016 campaign official said, “We didn’t use their services.”)

Also that spring, Zamel was introduced to George Nader, a Lebanese-American with ties to the Emirati leader Mohammed bin Zayed and other powerful figures in the Gulf.

[...]

In June, 2016, Nader was attending an international economic forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, when Zamel approached him and requested a meeting. According to a representative for Nader, Zamel told Nader that he was trying to raise money for a social-media campaign in support of Trump; he thought that Nader’s Gulf contacts might be interested in contributing financially. Nader listened to Zamel’s pitch but didn’t make any commitments, according to the Nader representative. (Zamel’s representatives denied that he spoke to Nader in St. Petersburg about trying to help Trump.)

Zamel had another opportunity to pitch his services in early August, 2016, when Erik Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security firm, helped arrange a meeting at Trump Tower among Zamel, Nader, and Donald Trump, Jr.

[...]

Burstien said that his talks with the Trump campaign went nowhere; a representative for Zamel denied that his client engaged in any activity having to do with the election. But, according to the Nader representative, shortly after the election Zamel bragged to Nader that he had conducted a secret campaign that had been influential in Trump’s victory.

[...]

A representative for Zamel denied that he told Nader that he or any of his operatives had intervened to help Trump during the 2016 election. If Nader came away with that impression, the representative said, he was mistaken.

[...]

U.S. leaders were generally skeptical about the effectiveness of these kinds of operations.

[...]

Russian military and intelligence agencies, on the other hand, didn’t see information warfare as a sideshow. They invested in cyber weapons capable of paralyzing critical infrastructure, from utilities to banks, and refined the use of fake personae and fake news to fuel political and ethnic discord abroad.

[...]

The 2016 election changed the calculus. In the U.S., investigators pieced together how Russian operatives had carried out a scheme to promote their preferred candidate and to stoke divisions within U.S. society. Senior Israeli officials, like their American counterparts, had been dubious about the effectiveness of influence campaigns. Russia’s operation in the U.S. convinced Tamir Pardo, the former Mossad director, and others in Israel that they, too, had misjudged the threat. “It was the biggest Russian win ever. Without shooting one bullet, American society was torn apart,” Pardo said. “This is a weapon. We should find a way to control it, because it’s a ticking bomb. Otherwise, democracy is in trouble.”

[...]

In early 2017, as Trump took office, interest in Psy-Group’s services seemed to increase. Law firms, one former employee said, asked Psy-Group to “come back in and tell us again what you are doing, because we see this ability to affect decisions that we weren’t fully aware of.” Another former Psy-Group employee put it more bluntly: “The Trump campaign won this way. If the fucking President is doing it, why not us?”

To capitalize on this newfound interest, Burstien started making the rounds in Washington with a new PowerPoint presentation. [...] Titled “Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign—Analysis,” the presentation outlined the role of Web sites, avatars, and bots in influencing the outcome of the election. In one case highlighted in the slide deck, pro-Trump avatars joined a Facebook page for Bernie Sanders supporters and then flooded it with links to anti-Hillary Clinton articles from Web sites that posted fake news, creating a hostile environment for real members of the group. “Bernie supporters had left our page in droves, depressed and disgusted by the venom,” the group’s administrator was quoted as saying. As part of the presentation, Burstien pointed out that Russian operatives had been caught meddling in the U.S.; Psy-Group, he told clients, was “more careful.”

Psy-Group’s post-election push into the U.S. market included a cocktail reception [part of Psy-Group’s campaign to shape perceptions about itself] on March 1, 2017. [...] The next day, an article in Politico briefly mentioned the gathering and described Psy-Group as a multinational company with “offices in London, Hong Kong and Cyprus.” There was no mention of Israel; Burstien thought it would be better for business to play down the Israel angle.

[...]

According to a former company official, Zamel decided to shut down Psy-Group in February, 2018, just as Mueller’s team began questioning employees. But its demise hasn’t suppressed the appetite for many of the services it provided. Some of Psy-Group’s former employees have met with Black Cube to discuss job opportunities. [...] Uzi Arad, a Mossad veteran and a former national-security adviser for Netanyahu, said that he was ashamed to see some of his former colleagues become “mercenaries for hire,” adding, “It’s highly immoral, and they should know it.”

[...]

Ram Ben-Barak, who helped woo Benzeevi on behalf of Psy-Group, said that he decided to leave the company after he learned about the extent of its operations in Tulare, which he objected to. Ben-Barak said that he regrets his decision to work with the firm. “When you leave the government and you leave Mossad, you don’t know how the real world works,” he said. “I made a mistake.” Ben-Barak, who is now running for a seat in Israel’s parliament, said that he believes new regulations are needed to stem the proliferation of avatars and misinformation. “This is the challenge of our time,” he said. “Everything is fake. It’s unbelievable.”

Believe it.

As for the Tulare hospital scam...

The hospital-board election resulted in a landslide—but not for Psy-Group’s client. There were more than a thousand ballots cast, and only a hundred and ninety-five people voted for Kumar to keep his seat. Senovia Gutiérrez won with seventy-five per cent of the vote.

[...]

After Senovia’s victory, Benzeevi’s contract was rescinded. [...] The hospital was more than thirty-six million dollars in debt, and had to close for nearly a year. (It reopened in October, 2018.)

The president of the United States is running his own psy-ops scam. Let's hope the electorate in 2020 is as wise as the citizens of Tulare.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Somebody knows all about you

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Further Whelan update

So Paul Whelan [...] turns out to be the shittiest version of a Jason Bourne movie ever. It’s being reported he holds 4 passports. Canadian, American, UK, Ireland. Nothing fishy here at all folks. This guy also claimed to be a sheriff’s deputy while only being a part time employee who did stuff like patrolling and crossing guard.
  Daily Kos

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for an explanation for Mr Whelan's detention and said his release would be demanded if his detention is found to be inappropriate.

"We've made clear to the Russians our expectations that we will learn more about the charges, come to understand what it is he's been accused of and if the detention is not appropriate, we will demand his immediate return," he said in Brasilia where he was attending the presidential inauguration.

  RTE

That's pretty tepid, alright. "If the detention is not appropriate."

[Whelan] served in the US Marine Corps Reserves from 10 May 1994 to 2 December 2008 and the highest rank he attained was staff sergeant, according to records provided by the Pentagon.

He was discharged for bad conduct following his conviction by court martial on charges related to larceny, the Pentagon said.

Puts a different spin on the ex-Marine label.

Over the years, Whelan, a Marine Corps veteran, has held himself out to friends and family as a world traveler, accustomed to working closely with FBI agents and American embassy personnel. And he was deeply interested in Russia and its people. He spent considerable time and energy developing a network of contacts there. For the past decade, he has had a profile on the social media platform VKontakte, Russia’s equivalent of Facebook, which is unusual for a non-Russian.

[...]

But that doesn’t make Whelan a spy, former intelligence officers said. In fact, his résumé suggests he’s perhaps the last person that the U.S. government would use to collect intelligence, they said.

  WaPo

They would say that.

Whelan was born in Canada and later moved to Michigan, where he embarked on a career in law enforcement in the early 1990s. He appears on some occasions to have exaggerated his credentials as a law enforcement and security expert and, according to former military colleagues, came across as naive.

In a 2013 deposition, stemming from a case in which Whelan wasn’t a party, he said that he had been a sheriff’s deputy in Wash­tenaw County and a police officer for the city of Chelsea.

But a representative for the Washtenaw County sheriff said the agency had no record of Whelan’s employment. And Chelsea police records show that he worked as a part-time police officer, as well as a dispatcher, a crossing guard, and a parking officer, also in a part-time capacity, from 1990 to 1996.

Whelan’s brother, David, said Paul had connections to the sheriff’s office going back to his days as a Police Explorer, a kind of law enforcement version of the Boy Scouts. But he acknowledged that he wasn’t certain Paul was a sheriff’s deputy and said that the two didn’t discuss their work lives.

I wonder why.

Julie LeBourdais, a former colleague in the police department of Keego Harbor, Mich., said Whelan had worked as a patrol officer there from 1998 to about 2000. She remembered him being “straight as an arrow,” and said he seemed to know a lot about world affairs, which she chalked up to his experience in the military, although at that point Whelan had never deployed overseas.

Curiouser and curiouser.

One person who deployed to Iraq with him in 2006 recalled Whelan learning Russian while the unit was there, writing the Cyrillic alphabet out on a board and taking the allotted holiday time to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“I did not remain in touch with him after the deployment, but I do have 15 years of experience doing intelligence,” said T.J. Sjostrom, who served as a noncommissioned intelligence officer in the Marines and was in Whelan’s unit when it deployed to Iraq in 2006. “No intelligence agency would take someone with his record to be a spy.”

Have you met the US intelligence agencies?

In January 2008, Whelan was convicted in a special court-martial for attempted larceny, three specifications of dereliction of duty, making a false official statement, wrongfully using another person’s Social Security number and 10 specifications of making and uttering checks without sufficient funds in his account, according to military court documents.

He was sentenced to 60 days’ restriction — which usually means restriction to a base — and knocked down two pay grades, according to the military court documents. According to his military record, he received a bad-conduct discharge and was separated from the Marine Corps on Dec. 2, 2008.

[...]

His brother said he had no knowledge of the charges.

It seems the only thing his brother knows about him is that he's totally innocent of any Russian charges.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whelan update

He just went to Russia for a wedding.  Sure.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  There's more.

American arrested in Russia

You may have been seeing the stories about Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine, who his parents say was only in Russia for a wedding when he was arrested recently as a spy.

This story will be interesting for how the Trump administration deals with it.  The man's parents and the media are going to cry foul because "he's innocent".  I tend to have a much more jaded view of these types of arrests in other countries.  Just because someone hasn't told his or her family that he/she is working for the US government, doesn't mean they're not.  I don't know about Mr. Whelan, but I'm going to remain skeptical of the protestations simply because Russia and the US have long been spying on each other, and neither ever admits to any of their apprehended citizens being spies.

And the wedding bit is not convincing, because it could also be true, and that's what provided the cover.  Some stories have it that Amelia Earhart was working for the US government when she disappeared on what was supposedly just a bit of PR for herself.  Harpo Marx once carried secret messages to and from Americans  involved in spying when he was on an entertainmnet tour in Soviet Russia.  Had he been caught, he would certainly have been arrested as a spy - and rightly so.  (I'm so glad he wasn't.) There are any number of incidences in which spies have been caught, and how many more might there be of those who didn't?  They all had a cover story.

Maybe Trump will offer to trade Maria Butina.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

FURTHER UPDATE:

Yeah, he just went for a wedding.  There's more.

Corporate-Government tech alliance

Apple is slated to unveil later this year a new portal that law enforcement agencies can use to submit and track requests for user data related to investigations.

[...]

In recent years, federal investigators and law enforcement agencies have begun to ramp up their information requests.

[...]

The company can provide some data to law enforcement that users store on its iCloud service, however, it doesn't have as easy access to its encrypted phones. Apple has, in the past, pushed back against law enforcement authorities who have tried to get it to provide a way into its phones.

The company has staked a firm position that introducing backdoors for law enforcement would create vulnerabilities that could be exploited by nefarious actors.

  The Hill

And they'll do it anyway now apparently. Perhaps because there isn't a Snowden-type scandal and that one has pretty much died out.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

While you were distracted with the circus

Haven't we already settled that?

Resistance is futile.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that unsecured phone Trump uses....

A federal study found signs that surveillance devices for intercepting cellphone calls and texts were operating near the White House and other sensitive locations in the Washington area last year.

[...]

"This admission from DHS bolsters my concern about stingrays and other spying devices being used to spy on Americans’ phones," Wyden said in a statement on Thursday. "Given the reports of rogue spying devices being identified near the White House and other government facilities, I fear that foreign intelligence services could target the president and other senior officials."

  WaPo

Show of hands: who thought that wasn't happening?

And, by the way...

IMSI catchers are widely used by local, state and federal police, as well as foreign intelligence agencies.

And anybody who wants to invest in one. Why are we pretending only government connected people could be doing this?

ESD America, a defense and law enforcement technology contractor based in Las Vegas, has reported detecting IMSI catchers throughout the Washington area while conducting testing for private clients.

Thank you.

In the tests that ESD conducted for private clients, which took place over the past three years, the company said it had detected signs of IMSI catchers near the White House, the FBI headquarters, the Senate, the Pentagon, the Russian Embassy and along the collection of other foreign embassies in an area known as Embassy Row in Northwest Washington.

Pretty much where you'd place a bet they'd be.

DHS was aware of reports that a global cellular network messaging system, called SS7, was being used to spy on Americans through their cellphones. Such surveillance, which can intercept calls and locate cellphones from anywhere in the world, is sometimes used in conjunction with IMSI catchers.

[...]

When they are in range, IMSI catchers also can deliver malicious software to targeted devices for the purpose of stealing information stored on them or conducting longer-term monitoring of communications.

[...]

The surveillance devices are hard to counteract, although encrypted calling and messaging apps — such as Signal, WhatsApp or Apple's FaceTime — provide protection against IMSI catchers.

Too inconvenient, right Donald?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

P.S. It really makes me wonder who else is blackmailing Trump on any number of issues because they have his phone calls. I don't imagine we'll be told, even if that information is known.

Can anyone even imagine?

Actually, I can imagine something VERY like that.

A former National Security Council official now slated to work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials familiar with the effort.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former national security adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters. He portrayed his desired leak hunt as an “insider threat” detection effort, according to the ex-officials. Those who heard of it presumed it would focus on NSC staffers held over from the Obama administration.

[...]

The former officials noted the overwhelming technical and legal hurdles to doing so. One called it “wholly inappropriate” for Cohen-Watnick, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, to do anything of the sort, considering it a blatant attempt at intimidating his colleagues.

[...]

“This seemed designed to intimidate rather than protect national security,” said a different ex-NSC official familiar with the proposal.

[...]

Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick’s insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman. Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trump’s baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance.

[...]

Cohen-Watnick is now re-emerging from a post-White House stint at the software behemoth Oracle to take a senior advisory role to Sessions, ostensibly about counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

  The Daily Beast

In fact, I can imagine another thing like that:

A source familiar with Black Cube’s outreach to the Kahls told NBC News that it was part of an effort to discredit Obama administration officials who had worked on the Iran nuclear deal – and, by extension, the deal itself. Black Cube sought evidence of nefarious behavior, such as financial or sexual impropriety, by the deal's architects, including Colin Kahl. Operatives hoped to obtain such evidence by befriending their targets or their targets’ associates.

[...]

The firm was founded by former Israeli military officers in 2011. It retains close ties to the Israeli intelligence community, and many of its recruits are former Mossad agents.

[...]

Also targeted was Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under Obama, whose wife, Ann Norris, was approached by a Black Cube operative about consulting on a political drama for TV. Norris had previously worked at the State Department.

[...]

Black Cube made headlines last fall after revelations that it had been hired to intimidate and disparage accusers of Harvey Weinstein, as well as reporters investigating the Hollywood producer.

[...]

[T]he Iran operation was launched just days after President Donald Trump visited Israel in May 2017. The source said he was told that the work was being carried out “for Trump,” but there is no evidence that the Trump administration had anything to do with the operation, which may have been commissioned by an outside group or agency with no connection to the administration.

  NBC

Or one of Trump's many ass-kissers. Or Junior. Or Ivanka.

Strike "Commencment [sic] Address" and replace it with "Campaign Speach".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

"Uh...what I meant to say..."

Yesterday:



Response:

The head of the FBI and other intelligence chiefs in congressional testimony this year urged American citizens to steer clear of products from ZTE and its Chinese rival Huawei. And just two weeks ago, the Pentagon banned the companies’ phones from being sold on military bases, saying they “may pose an unacceptable risk to Department's personnel, information and mission.”

[...]

President Trump’s surprising promise Sunday to help bring Chinese telecom giant ZTE back from the brink of collapse undercuts top law enforcement and intelligence officials, who have warned for years that the company’s products could be used for cyberespionage in the United States.

ZTE has close ties with China’s government, and U.S. officials have raised concerns that its phones and other devices could be used as surveillance tools against Americans.

Lawmakers immediately pointed out the contradiction. “Our intelligence agencies have warned that ZTE technology and phones pose a major cyber security threat,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted at Trump yesterday. “You should care more about our national security than Chinese jobs.”

As Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) put it in a tweet this morning, the "problem with ZTE isn't jobs & trade, it's national security & espionage":

  WaPo

Today:



Oh, I see.  Now that the beans have been spilled on ZTE, it's not a move to get Chinese employment up.  It's a move to make a deal for US companies.

Nice try, asshat.  Now address the Pentagon's ban.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

They still don't get it

A former National Security Council official now slated to work for Attorney General Jeff Sessions explored ways to surreptitiously monitor the communications of White House staff for leaks or perceived political disloyalty to Donald Trump, according to three former Trump NSC officials familiar with the effort.

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, whom former national security adviser Michael Flynn brought onto the NSC as senior director for intelligence, sought technical solutions in early 2017 for collecting and analyzing phone and other data on White House colleagues for interactions with reporters. He portrayed his desired leak hunt as an “insider threat” detection effort, according to the ex-officials. Those who heard of it presumed it would focus on NSC staffers held over from the Obama administration.

[...]

The former officials noted the overwhelming technical and legal hurdles to doing so. One called it “wholly inappropriate” for Cohen-Watnick, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, to do anything of the sort, considering it a blatant attempt at intimidating his colleagues.

[...]

“This seemed designed to intimidate rather than protect national security,” said a different ex-NSC official familiar with the proposal.

[...]

Some staffers considered Cohen-Watnick’s insider-threat focus ironic, considering that Cohen-Watnick himself reportedly played a role in a Trump White House effort to leak intelligence reports to Devin Nunes, the House intelligence committee chairman. Nunes then subsequently used the reports in a failed attempt to reinforce Trump’s baseless accusation that Barack Obama had placed his camp under surveillance.

  The Daily Beast

Maybe they shouldh have hired Michael Cohen for insights into the Trump administration.

Cohen-Watnick is now re-emerging from a post-White House stint at the software behemoth Oracle to take a senior advisory role to Sessions, ostensibly about counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

DOJers, you are warned. Including you, Elf.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Wyden demands answers

One US senator is calling out the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for pushing the moronic notion that there is somehow a good way to add backdoors to encryption used to protect devices like Apple’s iPhone.

In a speech earlier this month, FBI Director Christopher Wray carried on the time-honored agency tradition of claiming that Silicon Valley can backdoor encryption safely if its workforce just nerds a little bit harder.

[...]

The problem, according to Wray, is that law enforcement is stymied by phone encryption, which is now widespread. [...] Tech companies, Wray said, “should be able to design devices that both provide data security and permit lawful access with a court order.”

But this is exactly what cryptographers and tech companies have repeatedly warned they can’t do, arguing that creating “lawful access” would also open the door to all sorts of hackers and malicious actors, undermining the security of the entire internet in the process.

[...]

During Wray’s confirmation process last summer, [Senator Ron] Wyden pressed him on the topic of encryption. Wray claimed he hadn’t formed a policy position on the issue, and Wyden requested that Wray consult with him before going public with his position. That apparently didn’t happen.

In a letter sent to Wray today, Wyden chastised him for advocating “a flawed policy that would harm American security, liberty, and our economy” and for not contacting Wyden prior to giving his speech.

Your stated position parrots the same debunked arguments espoused by your predecessors, all of whom ignored the widespread and vocal consensus of cryptographers. For years, these experts have repeatedly stated that what you are asking for is not, in fact, possible.

[...]

I would like to learn more about how you arrived at and justify this ill-informed policy proposal. Please provide me with a list of the cryptographers with whom you’ve personally discussed this topic since our July 2017 meeting and specifically identify those experts who advised you that companies can feasibly design government access features into their products without weakening cybersecurity. Please provide this information by February 23, 2018.

We’re guessing it’s a short list.

  Gizmodo

Or a blank one.

I'm still pissed off at Wyden for not reading out on the Senate floor - which was his to do - what he knew about the NSA's illegal domestic spying activities, allowing James Clapper to lie to Congress with impunity and forcing Edward Snowden to release classified documents and go into exile with a price on his head. I can't forgive Wyden. He'll have to do a lot more than this to make up for it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Haven: Anti spyware for your Android phone

IF you have something to hide, of course.

Android phone users have been up in arms in recent times following revelations that Google has been collecting their location data even while they have that feature turned off. Last month, Quartz discovered that Android devices have been sending “Cell ID codes” to the search engine giant via cellular towers across the US.

[...]

A new app developed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden promises to harness the surveillance power of your smartphone and turn it into a tiny security system to physically guard your data.

Haven uses the regular features of a standard Android smartphone to detect changes in the environment around the device. The app, which adapts the camera for use as a motion tracker, can also pair with other devices to record sounds or changes in light before sending an alert to the owner – an ideal feature for those looking to ward off unwelcome snoopers.

[...]

“We designed Haven as a tool for investigative journalists, human rights defenders and people at risk,” the whistleblower said.

“Haven makes it harder [for parties] to silence citizens through raids, searches, arrests, without getting caught in the act themselves.This creates a kind of herd immunity where before people launch a crackdown they have to think, ‘will I be witnessed in a way that I can’t stop.’”

  RT

I like and admire Snowden a lot, and what he does (including this) are important and valuable, but I find this video a bit odd. I don't think he's got a future in product sales.

"Imagine if you had a guard dog you could take with you to any hotel room and leave it in your room when you’re not there,” Snowden told Wired. “The real idea is to establish that the physical spaces around you can be trusted.”

[...]

Writing for The Intercept, Lee said: "Here's how Haven might work. You lock your laptop in a hotel safe — not a secure move on its own — and place your Haven phone on top of it. If someone opens the safe while you're away, the phone's light meter might detect a change in lighting, its microphone might hear the safe open, its accelerometer might detect motion if the attacker moves the laptop, and its camera might capture a snapshot of the attacker's face."

So, you're gonna need two phones.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.