Greenwald Interview on NSA Covert Anti-Encryption Program

Political Risk

Not to mention, the wind is now blowing in that direction.

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

Pwned

Nice dinner conversation.  And a global snub.

Just prior the start of the[G20] summit [in St. Petersburg], Putin announced that Syria would be discussed at dinner after all, contrary to the official agenda, which had foreseen an exchange of ideas on sustainable economic development. The change seemed to reflect the Russian president's certainty that he would not be backed into a corner during such a discussion; the majority of those present shared his skepticism of a military strike in Syria.

[...]

For days, the US president has been insisting that the blatant violation of the United Nations Chemical Weapons Convention cannot go unpunished. Washington believes that a one-time strike is both appropriate and necessary -- and vital for the credibility of the international community.

Putin, however, once again proved immune to such arguments. He continues to profess his doubts that his ally Assad was behind the poison gas attacks. Moscow insists that it isn't "logical," saying that there is no military reason for the Syrian regime to use chemical weapons. And Putin has been quick to disregard the evidence presented by the US, Britain, France and Germany, saying it wasn't substantive and that the Syrian rebels could just as easily be behind the attack.

  Der Spiegel

And, don’t forget the CIA.

In this particular power struggle, most observers on the eve of the G-20 appeared to be on the side of the Kremlin. Pope Francis sent a letter demanding that a political solution be found to the Syrian conflict. Then China emphasized its opposition to a military strike, with Deputy Foreign Minister Zhu Guangyao saying that it would drive up the price of oil and endanger the global economy.

Higher oil prices? That alone would put the kibosh on it.

Putin's plan to isolate Obama seems to have worked.

During Thursday night's dinner, it became clear that, while all of those present condemn the use of poison gas, none of them seemed inclined to do anything about it. At the same time, though, few appeared interested in preventing the US from going it alone.

Indeed. Why not let us ruin ourselves?

In New York, US Ambassador to the United Nations Samatha Power made withering comments about Russia's role on the world stage on Thursday. Indicating that the US was prepared to move ahead without a Security Council resolution, she said that "Russia continues to hold the council hostage and shirk its international responsibilities."

Dang, those grapes are sour.

Gotcha

A New (After Dinner) Tune

White House deputy national security adviser Tony Blinken said Friday that if Congress rejects President Obama's request to authorize a military strike against Syria, it is "neither his desire nor his intention" to carry out the attack alone.

[...]

That admission is a significant one, as the White House's repeated caveats declaring that the president could act without congressional approval led many to believe Obama might carry out a strike against the Assad regime even if he was rebuffed by Congress.

  The Hill

Which is exactly what "many" were meant to believe.  A little international dinner set a different mood.

Hey, Those People Are Used to It

And they need the work.

The new cheaper iPhone that Apple will unveil to a global audience on Tuesday is being produced under illegal and abusive conditions in Chinese factories owned by one of America's largest manufacturing businesses, investigators have claimed.

Workers are asked to stand for 12-hour shifts with just two 30-minute breaks, six days a week, the non-profit organisation China Labor Watch has claimed. Staff are allegedly working without adequate protective equipment, at risk from chemicals, noise and lasers, for an average of 69 hours a week. Apple has a self-imposed limit of 60 working hours a week.

The problems were uncovered at a plant in Wuxi, near Shanghai, where Apple's first low-cost handset, dubbed the iPhone 5C, is being produced.

  UK Guardian

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

So You Want Records?

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just released 1,400 pages of emails and other internal records concerning the agency’s role in advising the Department of Justice and Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on changes made to the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) guidelines used to collect and retain data about potential terrorist threats.

[...]

The documents are so heavily redacted it’s impossible to determine what the talking points said and what advice DHS had offered DOJ and ODNI in drafting the new guidelines.

[...]

Last March, Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a joint statement announcing that they were updating NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] November 2008 guidelines “that governed NCTC’s access, retention, use, and dissemination of “terrorism information” contained within federal datasets that are identified as also including non-terrorism information and information pertaining exclusively to domestic terrorism.”

The most controversial aspect of NCTC’s updated guidelines was that the agency now had the ability to retain data on U.S. persons for five years—even if the individual is not suspected of being involved in terrorist activities—instead of 180 days under the November 2008 guidelines.

In a July 6, 2011 email written by DHS Associate General Counsel Matthew Kronisch that he sent to DHS General Counsel Ivan Fong and DHS Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis Caryn says, “I have inserted two new bullets at the top of the paper to clarify why the new guidelines are needed.”

But the “paper” included in the batch of records released by DHS is completely redacted.

  Freedom of the Press Foundation

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

And Good Luck to You

Public advocacy groups and farmers have joined forces to challenge biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically engineered seed patents, and to halt the company’s aggressive lawsuits against anyone whose fields are contaminated by their GMOs.

Seventy-three US farmers, seed companies, and public advocacy groups appealed their case against Monsanto Co. to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

  RT

Drip, Drip, Drip

The [NSA] has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

[...]

Beginning in 2000, as encryption tools were gradually blanketing the Web, the N.S.A. invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. Having lost a public battle in the 1990s to insert its own “back door” in all encryption, it set out to accomplish the same goal by stealth.

[...]

In some cases, companies say they were coerced by the government into handing over their master encryption keys or building in a back door. And the agency used its influence as the world’s most experienced code maker to covertly introduce weaknesses into the encryption standards followed by hardware and software developers around the world.

[...]

When the British analysts, who often work side by side with N.S.A. officers, were first told about the program, another memo said, “those not already briefed were gobsmacked!”

An intelligence budget document makes clear that the effort is still going strong.

[...]

“The risk is that when you build a back door into systems, you’re not the only one to exploit it,” said Matthew D. Green, a cryptography researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “Those back doors could work against U.S. communications, too.”

Paul Kocher, a leading cryptographer who helped design the SSL protocol, recalled how the N.S.A. lost the heated national debate in the 1990s about inserting into all encryption a government back door called the Clipper Chip.

“And they went and did it anyway, without telling anyone,” Mr. Kocher said.

[...]

N.S.A. documents show that the agency maintains an internal database of encryption keys for specific commercial products, called a Key Provisioning Service, which can automatically decode many messages. If the necessary key is not in the collection, a request goes to the separate Key Recovery Service, which tries to obtain it.

How keys are acquired is shrouded in secrecy, but independent cryptographers say many are probably collected by hacking into companies’ computer servers, where they are stored. To keep such methods secret, the N.S.A. shares decrypted messages with other agencies only if the keys could have been acquired through legal means.

Even agency programs ostensibly intended to guard American communications are sometimes used to weaken protections. The N.S.A.’s Commercial Solutions Center, for instance, invites the makers of encryption technologies to present their products to the agency with the goal of improving American cybersecurity. But a top-secret N.S.A. document suggests that the agency’s hacking division uses that same program to develop and “leverage sensitive, cooperative relationships with specific industry partners” to insert vulnerabilities into Internet security products.

[...]

“Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on,” [Edward Snowden] said, though cautioning that the N.S.A. often bypasses the encryption altogether by targeting the computers at one end or the other and grabbing text before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted. 

[...]

The documents are among more than 50,000 shared by The Guardian with The New York Times and ProPublica, the nonprofit news organization.

[...]

Intelligence officials asked The Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read. The news organizations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the article because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful privacy tools.

  NYT

Also: Report on these documents from Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian.

Dubious Legal Underpinnings

Really?

In a major victory in one of EFF's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits, the Justice Department conceded yesterday that it will release hundreds of documents, including FISA court opinions, related to the government’s secret interpretation of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the law the NSA has relied upon for years to mass collect the phone records of millions of innocent Americans.

While the government finally released a white paper detailing its expansive (and unconstitutional) interpretation of Section 215 last month, more important FISA court opinions adopting at least part of that interpretation have remained secret. The results of EFF’s FOIA lawsuit will finally lift the veil on the dubious legal underpinnings of NSA’s domestic phone surveillance program.

  EFF