Former NSA Boss Claims Terrorists Use Gmail, Anonymity Is Awful And The US Built The Internet, So Of Course It Should Spy On It

from the tone-deaf dept

Mon, Sep 16th 2013 9:31am — Mike Masnick

Michael Hayden is the former NSA and CIA boss, whose claim to fame is that he oversaw the illegal warrantless wiretapping of Americans under President George W. Bush. He's pretty consistently managed to stick his foot in his mouth concerning everything regarding the latest NSA leaks every time he speaks. He claimed that Ed Snowden was worse than every American revealed spy in history (despite the fact that, unlike actual spies like Benedict Arnold and the Rosenbergs, Snowden focused on informing the public, rather than selling secrets to our enemies). He brushed off Snowden's supporters as internet shut-ins who can't get laid. Though, perhaps he should talk to a geek or two, because he doesn't even understand what data mining means.

His latest is no better. On Sunday he gave a speech where he revealed that (he claims) terrorists love Gmail:

"Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service. He added: "I don't think you're going to see that in a Google commercial, but it's free, it's ubiquitous, so of course it is."

Of course, if this is true (and seeing as he hasn't been in the government for a while, I'm not sure how he'd actually know that), it would seem like that statement alone is much worse than anything that Snowden revealed, because General Hayden basically just told every terrorist "don't use Gmail any more, because we're on to you." Of course, from all reports so far of the way that Al Qaeda brass communicates, it appears they learned that lesson since before Gmail existed. It seems highly unlikely that any sophisticated terrorist would be using a service like Gmail, since it's long been suspected that the US government monitored it anyway.

Hayden didn't stop there. He also flat out admitted that the US was "militarizing" the internet (though he called it the web), which is another thing that the government has been trying to deny until Hayden just blurted it out.

Hayden also conceded that the United States. "could be fairly charged with the militarization of the World Wide Web."

Hayden also reveals the rather ridiculous sense of entitlement that the intelligence community has towards snooping on the internet. He argues, effectively, that since the internet rose out of a US government project, then of course it should be able to spy on everything on it.

"We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said, adding that partially due to that, much of traffic goes through American servers where the government "takes a picture of it for intelligence purposes."

Of course, that totally ignores the status of the internet today, and how much has changed since the old ARPANET days. Also, as the Washington Post notes, having intelligence community officials say ridiculous crap like that is more or less telling the rest of the world (and many Americans) to stop doing business with American internet companies. Is whatever minor intel the NSA picks up really worth losing many billions to the US economy?

And, of course, Hayden once again made it clear that if he had his way, the NSA would be able to track anything and everything, because anonymity is bad.

At one point, Hayden expressed a distaste for online anonymity, saying "The problem I have with the Internet is that it's anonymous."

Given that, I'd like to challenge Michael Hayden to release his browser history from the past three months. After all, I'm sure he wouldn't want anyone to think he's a hypocrite who surfed the web anonymously, now would he?

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Filed Under: anonymity, email, internet, michael hayden, nsa, nsa surveillance, terrorists

35 Comments

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Rikuo (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 4:47am

""We built it here, and it was quintessentially American," he said,"

Could've sworn that it was English settlers who built the colonies, so by his logic, there never should have been an American War of Independence. They should have always stayed loyal to Britain.
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- RocRizzo (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 1:07pm
  
  Re:
  Yep, and if we go all the way down the line, civilization started in Africa, so we are ALL Africans, in some way or another.
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  - Anonymous, 16 Sep 2013 @ 3:50pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Why didn't it catch on there?
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Sep 2013 @ 2:51am
  
  Re:
  It was also the British who created the web.
  Remember the guy they showed off at the Olympics?
  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 9:39am

"Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide," presumably meaning online service rather than the actual provider of Internet service.

I'm pretty sure Bin Laden's preferred internet service provider was a guy with a USB stick. I expect most of Al Qaeda has the same preference.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:53am
  
  Re:
  You keep your damn logic out of this argument!! We might scare the fragile NSA employees
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Namel3ss (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 9:40am

Want to know something else about gmail?
Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of Craigslist scammers. Everyone who ever tried to scam me through CL used a gmail account.
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- Trails (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:08am
  
  Re: Want to know something else about gmail?
  I heard that oxygen was the preferred inhalant of terrorists. In fact, vast swathes of terrorists use oxygen directly to further bomb making, grainy video production, and training others in bomb making.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:29am
    
    Re: Re: Want to know something else about gmail?
    And don't forget the chosen beverage of the terrorist, dihydrogen monoxide is drunk by each and every terrorist every single day!
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    - Deranged Poster (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:36am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Want to know something else about gmail?
      I know that Dihydrogen Monoxide has also been known to be used in enhanced interrogation.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 1:37pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Want to know something else about gmail?
      We should poison the dihydrogen monoxide supply to take out the terrorists!
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out_of_the_blue, 16 Sep 2013 @ 9:44am

Crazies in high places. Schmidt mistakes gov't and society:
FIRST, clearly the purpose of Hayden is to make a silly claim that stops thought and diverts from the real topic: it's standard technique. There's also more than a touch of reversal, as one of NSA's sources is in fact Gmail.

So I'm just going to show an even sillier claim:

Google's Eric Schmidt says government spying is 'the nature of our society'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/13/eric-schmidt-google-nsa-surveillance

Sch midt is trying to gain acceptance for Google's "business model" which is entirely based on spying. But in fact, while gov't and corporations gain power by spying, that's at the expense of we "natural" persons -- and we don't have to put up with it.

When you think surveillance or spying or snooping, think Google!
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:24am
  
  Re: Crazies in high places. Schmidt mistakes gov't and society:
  Actually, I just think of you.
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- Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:30am
  
  Re: Crazies in high places. Schmidt mistakes gov't and society:
  "make a silly claim that stops thought and diverts from the real topic: it's standard technique"
  
  Sounds like someone we know!
  
  I think OOTB is in fact Hayden in disguise.
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Brazilian Guy, 16 Sep 2013 @ 9:51am

Now i know why the U.S. is spying Brazilians so much. If they believe people who use Gmail are probably terrorists, an entire nation who still insisted to using Orkut is probably up with China, North Korea and Iran in the contemporary Axis of Evil.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:04am

News: google bans encrypted com apps
I hadn't seen this story written anywhere so I thought I'd post it here. I found this last night in the FAQ for Linphone. (which is still available fully functional from Fdroid)

Q: Why SIP/TLS and SRTP are not available in Android and iOS versions available from Google Play and AppStore ?

Due to new restrictions in Google Play and Appstore policy for application submissions, we have been constrained to temporary remove all encryption features from the published applications. Re-enabling them requires getting authorization from US and France government agencies, which might take some time.
However these features are not removed from source code and are enabled by default when building Linphone from source code.
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- zub, 17 Sep 2013 @ 8:20am
  
  Re: News: google bans encrypted com apps
  Huh. I tried to find it in the FAQ and it's not there, at least as of this writing. But googling for "Q: Why SIP/TLS and SRTP are not available in Android and iOS versions available from Google Play and AppStore ?" finds it, so it must have been there.
  
  There's also http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/linphone-users/2013-09/msg00040.html
  
  I wonder why has it disappeared/what's the status...
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- John Fenderson (profile), 17 Sep 2013 @ 10:10am
  
  Re: News: google bans encrypted com apps
  Solution: don't use the Google App Store for these types of apps. It's their walled garden, and completely optional. There are plenty of alternatives.
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Anonymous Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:08am

Outrageous

"Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide,"

This is on its face an outrageous statement. Everybody KNOWS that Al Queda is the principle behind 'Cat Lovers' Yahoo Groups feed, and communicate via code in their postings. Chief Al Queda person is known as the 'Cheshire Cat', and the US is euphemismized as the 'Yellow Tabby' .
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- Ninja (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:16am
  
  Re: Outrageous
  That cat?
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:09am

It's a pretty good response to any NSA apologist when they try to justify the unconstitutional aspects of their spying on hundreds of millions of people. Monitoring phone calls, breaking encryption, snooping on email, forcing companies to install backdoors or other types of monitoring equipment, whatever other bullshit they come up with.

If they truly feel they should be able to do all of that, that "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", then they should be first to post online all of the data about their private lives for all the world to see.

Until they're willing to do that, they need to STFU.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:14am

NSA Bosses are liars and sell weapons to terrorists.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:17am

And I'm pretty sure that 9/11 was an Inside Job.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:23am

They keep on doing it
These kind of comments that are CLEARLY so insulting to the intelligence of the American public keep coming out of these dipshits' mouths over an over again.

Seriously, what kind of bubble does Hayden live in where he thinks it's acceptable to say things like this?

And to the nice folks at Google who have been willingly cooperating with the government, how does it feel to be the preferred email service of terrorists? How does it feel to get an endorsement like that from the same people you're cooperating with?

Hayden is a waste of a salary.
And US companies need to grow a set of balls and tell the NSA to piss off.

/rant
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Internet Zen Master (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:38am

*facepalm*
Edward Snowden gave the NSA documents to reporters that he trusted wouldn't completely cripple the U.S.' spying capabilities. What he didn't take into account was the fact that some ex-government officials don't know when to shut up.

I have some orders for Gen. Keith Alexander while he sits in his Captain's Chair aboard the USS Big Data: muzzle your ex-boss before he damages the U.S.' reputation even further with his rambling.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 10:59am

Yah, the terrorist like Gmail so well that the NSA has a name for it. It's called going dark, where no electronic communications happen to illuminate the targets. So how likely is it that terrorists love Gmail? I'd say not at all and it's just another lie/coverup attempt by those that think spying on everyone for any reason or no reason at all is acceptable.

Is it any doubt why the American public has suddenly lost all trust in their government given the scandals over the NSA, big finance, whistle blower protections collapsing, a do nothing congress, and corporate welfare gone rampant.

Certainly one of the fall outs of this is the fact that Obama couldn't get enough support to launch his little war.
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Krish (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:04am

Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide

I knew it! Terrorists are flocking to Kansas City (and soon Austin) for that sweet, sweet Google Fiber!
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Ninja (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:13am

Given that, I'd like to challenge Michael Hayden to release his browser history from the past three months.

I object. I don't want to see his porn surfing habits. And don't give me that puzzled look, we all know the internet is for porn. Which automatically invalidates his claims. Terrorists are obviously all Muslims that can't view porn due to their Allah commandments so they are obviously not on the internet.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 11:23am

Terrorist actually use Tmail.
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Zakida Paul (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 12:25pm

And this guy was once in charge of the agency monitoring communications for terrorist activity? He seems to have zero understanding of anything and if this is the calibre of person in US intelligence, I would be very afraid.
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Sep 2013 @ 1:13pm

where the hell do these guys come from? the bit between a womans legs that has more sense than these so-called experts!
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- Namel3ss (profile), 16 Sep 2013 @ 2:05pm
  
  Re:
  What, their anuses?
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Valis, 17 Sep 2013 @ 4:50am

The solution is simple.
The ninety-six percent of us who live in the free world must isolate the USA from the internet completely. Stop routing ALL traffic through the US. Build new exchanges in Central and South America to route traffic through instead. Once this is done destroy all physical links between the US and the rest of the world. They can then have their little government controlled, censored and monitored intranet while the ninety-six percent of us can enjoy our free, open and secure internet!
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- Anonymous Coward, 17 Sep 2013 @ 6:31am
  
  Re: The solution is simple.
  I agree to this, just stop routing traffic to the US.
  
  Instead of using US-based companies, create new ones = proffit
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2013 @ 12:16pm

re:re: news: goole bans...
whoa, it's gone. that's creepy. brings to question weather all other apps in the play store are compromised. Are redphone and silent circle in the play store?
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