'Hacking' Of US Nuclear Facilities Appears To Be Little More Than The Sort Of Spying The US Approves Of

from the spies-like-us dept

Earlier this week, the New York Times raised the alarm -- and vivid Stuxnet imagery -- about hackers targeting US nuclear facilities. The DHS raised its own alarm -- one with a specific color -- about the same hacking attempts.

Among the companies targeted was the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear power plant near Burlington, Kan., according to security consultants and an urgent joint report issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week.

The joint report was obtained by The New York Times and confirmed by security specialists who have been responding to the attacks. It carried an urgent amber warning, the second-highest rating for the sensitivity of the threat.

Later in the article, the New York Times brings up Stuxnet, despite undermining such speculative comparisons in earlier paragraphs. According to the documents the Times saw, hackers don't appear to be attempting to control the facilities.

The report did not indicate whether the cyberattacks were an attempt at espionage — such as stealing industrial secrets — or part of a plan to cause destruction. There is no indication that hackers were able to jump from their victims’ computers into the control systems of the facilities, nor is it clear how many facilities were breached.

Wolf Creek officials said nothing sensitive had been breached and the evidence trail suggests something not nearly as concerted as an "attack." Instead, it appears the breaches have been the result of watering holes and spearfishing, not a concentrated assault on nuclear plant control systems. It's not that there's nothing to be worried about, but that there's nothing to be worried about on an "amber" level, to use the DHS's own color-coded Map of Worries.

The DHS's amber alert is mostly baseless… according to the DHS itself.

In a joint statement with the F.B.I., a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said, “There is no indication of a threat to public safety, as any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks.”

One paragraph after that, an official at the agency all 99 US nuclear facilities report to said no facility had reported any breaches of operational systems.

So, there's apparently some "targeting," but nothing aimed at operational systems and certainly no Stuxnet-equivalent roaming around plants in search of a nuclear catastrophe. Instead, these "attacks" appear to be something the US considers to be perfectly acceptable hacking… at least when we do it. Here's Marcy Wheeler on what the hacking revelations actually reveal:

There is spying — the collection of information on accepted targets. And there is sabotage — the disruption of critical processes for malicious ends.

This is spying, what our own cyber doctrine calls “Cyber Collection.”

Cyber Collection: Operations and related programs or activities conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, for the primary purpose of collecting intelligence – including information that can be used for future operations – from computers, information or communications systems, or networks with the intent to remain undetected. Cyber collection entails accessing a computer, information system, or network without authorization from the owner or operator of that computer, information system, or network or from a party to a communication or by exceeding authorized access. Cyber collection includes those activities essential and inherent to enabling cyber collection, such as inhibiting detection or attribution, even if they create cyber effects. ( C/NF)

This isn't to say the US shouldn't be engaged in these activities. This isn't to say the US should be completely OK with other countries doing the same thing. What does need to be said is the US government needs to be completely clear about what it has observed, rather than raise alerts about cyber attacks that portray intelligence gathering by foreign operatives as attacks on crucial (and potentially dangerous) systems.

That doesn’t mean Russian spying on how our nuclear facilities work is not without risk. It does carry risks that they are collecting the information so they can one day sabotage our facilities.

But if we want to continue spying on North Korea’s or Iran’s nuclear program, we would do well to remember that we consider spying on nuclear facilities — even by targeting the engineers that run them — squarely within the bounds of acceptable international spying. By all means we should try to thwart this presumed Russian spying. But we should not suggest — as the NYT seems to be doing — that this amounts to sabotage, to the kinds of things we did with StuxNet, because doing so is likely to lead to very dangerous escalation.

This is where the DHS fell down in its "sharing" of internal documents with the New York Times. No one bothered to correct the Times when it went off on a Stuxnet tangent. This could give some government officials the wrong idea about what's happening -- both here and in foreign nations. There are many people in power who get much of their information from the press. This leads to bad bills being hurriedly crafted and public calls to action based on hearsay from a document someone else viewed. And that's just here in the US.

On top of that, there's how we behave and how we expect others to behave. We're going to do this sort of thing. So are our adversaries. Both sides will continue to play defense. But going from 0-to-Stuxnet in the DHS's Ambermobile isn't a great idea. And it allows US officials to further distance themselves from actions we condone as part of our national security efforts.

Filed Under: dhs, espionage, hacking, nuclear facilities

Almost Every Word Of John McCain's Response To Chelsea Manning's Sentence Commutation Is Flat Out Wrong

from the hypocrites-in-congress dept

It's hardly a surprise that a bunch of people who have been fed a load of bullshit about what Chelsea Manning did years ago are now quite angry over President Obama's decision to commute Manning's sentence. But I don't think any are quite as painstakingly wrong as Senator John McCain. Someone should call up the Guinness World Record folks, because the wrong-per-sentence ratio of McCain's angry statement might just set a new world record. Let's dig in.

President Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence is a grave mistake that I fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline.

Wait. Really? Manning has been in prison for seven years, with a significant portion of that being held in solitary confinement, sometimes being made to strip naked before being able to sleep. This was called "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture" by the United Nations. You would think, of all people, Senator John McCain, who similarly was held in solitary confinement and tortured for extended periods while being held captive for 5 and a half years in Vietnam, would recognize that "only" 7 years of such treatment wouldn't exactly encourage more of Manning's behavior.

To put it more directly: who, in their right mind, is going to leak a bunch of documents thinking "oh, perhaps after going through literal torture, character assassination and basically hell on earth, it'll be okay, because maybe some other President will commute my insane 35 year sentence to just 7 years? No one. The idea that this commutation is going to lead to further leaks is ridiculous. If anything will lead to further leaks it's Manning's courage in seeing something wrong in the system and actually doing something about it.

In fact, it was things like Manning's courage that helped inspire Ed Snowden and other whistleblowers to step up. They didn't do it on the idea that they might "only" suffer 7 years of torture.

Second, what Manning did was not "espionage" and for McCain to suggest it is, means McCain either has no idea what he's talking about, or is lying. Manning leaked diplomatic cables and related information exposing vast wrongdoing by the US, to Wikileaks, who partnered with a number of respected press outlets to reveal the wrongdoing. That's not espionage. That's classic whistleblowing. And, yes, in case you've forgotten, Manning's leaks revealed a hell of a lot of wrongdoing by the US government.

It also devalues the courage of real whistleblowers who have used proper channels to hold our government accountable.

Oh come on. We've highlighted repeatedly how the "proper channels" claim is a complete joke. The "proper channels" have a long history of retaliating against whistleblowers such that everyone now knows the best way to destroy your life is to use the proper channels.

It is a sad, yet perhaps fitting commentary on President Obama’s failed national security policies that he would commute the sentence of an individual that endangered the lives of American troops, diplomats, and intelligence sources by leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents to Wikileaks, a virulently anti-American organization that was a tool of Russia’s recent interference in our elections.

First of all, Manning did not endanger the lives of American troops, diplomats and intelligence sources. During Manning's sentencing hearing, following her conviction, the US military admitted no one died because of Manning's leaks. So why does this myth still persist? Mainly because it's politically convenient to lie and pretend that whistleblowing leaks must "cost lives."

Thousands of Americans have given their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq upholding their oaths and defending this nation. Chelsea Manning broke her oath and made it more likely that others would join the ranks of her fallen comrades. Her prison sentence may end in a few months’ time, but her dishonor will last forever.

This has been pointed out over and over again: the oath that people take is to defend the Constitution. And a big part of that is calling out unconstitutional behavior by "this nation." Which is exactly what Manning did. Manning clearly felt that part of defending our nation and upholding her oath was to reveal wrongdoing by the US government. Furthermore, once again, the US military itself admitted that Manning didn't cause anyone to die.

Finally, as Marcy Wheeler correctly points out, McCain isn't just completely wrong with most of his statement, he's a total hypocrite as well. After all, McCain has been one of the most vocal supporters of General David Petraeus, a man who was convicted of giving classified information (much more serious than anything leaked by Manning) to his mistress. When there was talk of demoting Petraeus for this fairly serious breach, McCain said he was going to launch a Congressional investigation. And, more recently, McCain had this to say about Petraeus:

People make mistakes in life, they pay a price and move on.

So, uh, yeah. Compare that to his statement about the commutation (not pardon) of Manning's sentence and explain how McCain is not an utter and total hypocrite. If commuting Manning's sentence after "just" 7 years of torture and inhuman treatment will incentivize more leaks, wouldn't that also mean that Petraeus getting basically no punishment at all for leaking much more serious material will lead to more leaks, since it seems top government and intelligence community officials are clearly being given the message: it's okay to give up the nation's biggest secrets if it means you get laid.

Filed Under: chelsea manning, commutation, espionage, harm, john mccain, oath, whistleblowing

How 'Just Metadata' Helped Ruin A Career Diplomat's Life

from the silent-killer dept

Those defending bulk domestic surveillance have dismissively referred to the take as "just metadata." To many people, this likely seems acceptable. It's nothing but call records... or so it often seems. But "just metadata" is actually surveillance state slang for almost anything that can be obtained without a warrant or subpoena -- which includes anything the government considers to be a "third party record," like financial transactions and historical cell site location data.

"Just metadata" is actually a dangerous thing when left in the hands of intelligence agencies. It's what turned State Department advisor Robin Raphel's diplomatic work with Pakistani officials into a severely misguided -- and severely intrusive -- espionage investigation. A series of blundering investigations into people who had done nothing wrong resulted in the DOJ changing its investigative guidelines, but not before Raphel's house was raided (twice) by the FBI and her reputation severely damaged.

In the end, the government had nothing left of its espionage investigation but a single allegation that Raphel kept classified documents at her home. (Not that she shared them with anyone, unlike General Petraeus, who suffered a mild wrist slap and was temporarily considered for a Trump cabinet position.) In the beginning, though, it was all "just metadata."

In February 2013, according to law-enforcement officials, the FBI received information that made its agents think Raphel might be a Pakistani mole.

The tip came in the form of intercepted communications that suggested Raphel had shared sensitive inside information without authorization. Two officials said this included information collected on wiretaps of Pakistani officials in the U.S.

[...]

Investigators began what they call “circling the target,” which means examining the parts of Raphel’s life they could explore without subpoenas or warrants.

[...]

One of the first things they looked at was her “metadata”—the electronic traces of who she called or emailed, and also when and for how long. Her metadata showed she was in frequent contact with a host of Pakistan officials that didn’t seem to match what the FBI believed was her rank and role.

The reason Raphel worked outside of her "rank and role" was because staying within the system meant dealing only with Pakistani officials who would be unable or unwilling to part with useful information. Raphel had plenty of experience in dealing with Pakistan's often-volatile relationship with the US -- something that had been strained even further by President George W. Bush's anti-nuke sanctions and President Obama's increasing reliance on drone strikes, including one that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops, rather than the target the US was seeking.

Raphel may have operated outside of her "rank and role," but she was still aligned with the US's goals, rather than pursuing her own agenda. Apparently, nearly four decades of service to the US government meant nothing. Spurred on by the Snowden leaks, the FBI had a renewed interest in hunting down potential "threats." This is what moved the investigation from mere metadata to something far more intrusive.

After months of circling the target, FBI supervisors decided it was time to delve deeper. To monitor Raphel’s private conversations with Lodhi and other contacts on Skype, the FBI obtained a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—a decision approved at the highest levels of the FBI and the Justice Department.

The FBI used these communications to build a case against Raphel. It still had nothing that showed criminal intent or actually anything resembling wrongdoing. But it did -- with its limited experience in dealing with diplomatic targets -- feel something wasn't quite right. It had lots of "smoke" but no "smoking gun," according to a former FBI official. It dumped a bunch of "smoke" into an affidavit and secured a "sneak and peek" warrant for Raphel's home. After an extensive search, it managed to locate a 20-year-old file related to Raphel's "Diplomatic Security" investigation. Something of little consequence to anyone -- especially this far removed from its originating date -- was used to justify the FBI's more intrusive search later, one that resulted in Raphel's electronic devices and computers being seized.

The search also led to perhaps the most incongruous question Raphel had ever been asked.

Two FBI agents approached her, their faces stony. “Do you know any foreigners?” they asked.

Raphel’s jaw dropped. She had served as a diplomat in six capitals on four continents. She had been an ambassador, and the State Department’s assistant secretary for South Asian affairs. Knowing foreigners had been her job.

“Of course,” she responded, “Tons…Hundreds.”

This was followed by more FBI activity that bore the unmistakable imprint of recently-installed director James Comey. The FBI routed its inquiries with the State Department to someone who wouldn't talk to anyone else about its actions. It forbade the State Department from informing Raphel's coworkers why she wouldn't be returning to work while simultaneously leaking news of the investigation to the New York Times.

The FBI finally began talking to other State Department officials and employees, most of whom felt they had to explain how diplomacy actually worked. They didn't like what they saw in the FBI's "mole-hunting" effort.

At times, Raphel’s colleagues pushed back—warning the FBI that their investigation risked “criminalizing diplomacy,” according to a former official who was briefed on the interviews.

The interviews undercut the FBI's narrative, but it did nothing to slow the agency's roll towards an indictment. The DOJ, however, seemed less sure of the merits of a prosecution. But it also did little to head the FBI off. Meanwhile, Raphel not only lost her career but also her life savings.

Raphel heard nothing for months from the FBI. She had already spent about $100,000 on legal fees, which she paid by tapping into her savings, but the bills were piling up. Jones set up a legal-defense fund and 103 of Raphel’s friends and colleagues, mostly from the State Department, donated nearly $122,000.

The 20-year-old document on which the prosecution hinged could very well have been declassified while the government pursued a conviction, leaving it with nothing but thousands of taxpayer dollars spent and the embarrassment of being unable to determine the difference between diplomatic activity in volatile outposts from actual espionage.

The charges were finally dropped in March of this year. To date, Raphel's security clearance is still revoked and her career as a diplomat is effectively over. This is what "just metadata" -- along with a newfound enthusiasm for hunting down "insider threats" -- can do to a person who spent nearly 40 years serving their country.

Filed Under: diplomacy, espionage, fbi, just metadata, metadata, pakistan, robin raphel, state department

Is The DNC Hacking A New Cold War... Or Just The Continuation Of What Every Intelligence Agency Does?

from the even-the-US dept

Various degrees of hand-wringing (and hasty resignations) have greeted the news that our old Cold War foe -- the Russkies -- were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's computers. (And the eventual embarrassment of those caught on unofficial record jumping on the Hillary Clinton bandwagon well before it became clear Bernie Sanders wasn't going to land the nomination.)

Certainly, Vladimir Putin gives absolutely no indication that he cares at all what the rest of the world thinks of him, much less the United States. And if the US government feels the Russian government can't be trusted, a) it's probably right and b) Putin will remain unperturbed. There are indications this was done to assist Trump in his presidential run, but I imagine it makes little difference to those handing down hacking orders -- just as long as it embarrassed US government officials and political leaders.

But if there's a high road to be had, the US government can't really claim it. As James Bamford explains in his commentary piece for Reuters, US spy agencies haven't exactly stayed out of world affairs, including local elections.

The United States is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation when it comes to cyberspying and cyberwarfare. The National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on foreign cities, politicians, elections and entire countries since it first turned on its receivers in 1952.

If this sounds like the sort of things the NSA should actually be doing, then there's not really a problem. If it sounds like overreach -- aided and abetted by technological advances -- then there might be few issues, going beyond the hypocrisy of acting shocked when foreign intelligence agencies engage in the same tactics we do… like attempting to influence elections.

NSA operations have, for example, recently delved into elections in Mexico, targeting its last presidential campaign. According to a top-secret PowerPoint presentation leaked by former NSA contract employee Edward Snowden, the operation involved a “surge effort against one of Mexico’s leading presidential candidates, Enrique Peña Nieto, and nine of his close associates.” Peña won that election and is now Mexico’s president.

This is in addition to other US actions, including weaponizing centrifuge components in Iran and (inadvertently) taking Syria's leading internet provider offline. Every agency under the Defense Department's control plays a part in the government's undeclared Cyber War. Leaked documents show the NSA aspires to deploy millions of malicious implants in millions of computers, to better assist with the wide scale harvesting of data and communications it grabs from internet backbones located outside of the US.

However, the twist in the Russian attack is what was done with the information obtained.

What is new is a country leaking the intercepts back to the public of the target nation through a middleperson.

As Bamford points out, the US public is supposed to be outraged by the Russian-led hacking while ignoring similar efforts made by our own government. The DNC wants to enjoy its outrage, even if it was the DNC's own election-influencing efforts that got it into hot water -- the same sort of activity US government officials claim is so evil when the Russians do it. Russia may be a convenient villain but its actions are not so far afield from our own. The twist is the dumping of purloined documents in the laps of the US public, where they'd do far more damage than they would in the sole possession of the Russian government. Who needs misinformation when you can uncover damaging statements made by political leaders in assumed confidence?

Filed Under: dnc, dnc hacking, espionage, intelligence, surveillance

DOJ Issues New Rules On Espionage Investigations To Keep It From Embarrassing Itself So Often

from the it's-not-so-much-the-bad-prosecutions-as-it-is-people-making-fun-of-us dept

A string of aborted federal prosecutions of alleged "traitors" has the DOJ rethinking its national security strategies. The DOJ went after National Weather Service employee Sherry Chen, who shared public web links about reservoir water funding with a senior Chinese official, who also happened to be Chen's friend. It went after Temple University's physics department head Xi Xiaoxang for allegedly sharing secret semiconductor blueprints with Chinese scientists. The case fell apart once the DOJ was informed by actual experts in the field that the shared blueprints weren't for the item the DOJ claimed they were for. Finally, it went after Robin Raphael, a State Department advisor, who it believed was passing on state secrets to Pakistani officials. At this point, the DOJ's case has dissolved into little more than an accusation that Raphael kept classified documents in her home, something others like Hillary Clinton and General Petraeus have managed to walk from unscathed.

The New York Times reports the DOJ has issued some new guidelines for national security prosecutions -- ones that will hopefully result in fewer misguided prosecutions and destroyed lives.

In a letter last month to federal prosecutors nationwide, Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates said that would change. All cases affecting national security, even tangentially, now require coordination and oversight in Washington. That had always been the intention of the rule, but Ms. Yates made it explicit.

“The term ‘national security issue’ is meant to be a broad one,” she wrote.

Ms. Yates told federal prosecutors that consulting with experienced national security prosecutors in Washington would help “ensure prompt, consistent and effective responses” to national security cases.

This doesn't exactly sound encouraging, but it's a step away from the DOJ's autonomy, which has led to a run of botched prosecutions predicated on next to no evidence. According to the letter shared with the New York Times, the DOJ will now have to consult with "espionage experts" before moving forward with investigations and will face more direct supervision from higher-ranking officials during the investigative process.

This fix -- if that's what it actually is -- will possibly head off misguided investigations before they wreck the lives of people who've done nothing wrong. Sadly, the DOJ doesn't seem to view its high-profile failures as being anything more than a learning experience. There's no effort being made to undo the damage done by the agency during its botched prosecutions. And even though prosecutors dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, the government is still seeking to fire her.

The problem with espionage investigations is that they're a completely opaque process. Tying something to "national security" is a great way to circumvent due process, and the DOJ has used this to pursue extremely dubious cases without having to face any sort of legal challenge until the life-destroying process is well underway. The new guidelines don't appear to open up this process in any appreciable fashion, but any additional eyes on "evidence" collected by the DOJ can only be a good thing as it's obviously terrible at making those determinations on its own.

Filed Under: doj, espionage, investigations, leaks, prosecution, traitors, whistleblowers

DOJ On The Verge Of Dropping Third Straight Espionage Prosecution

from the ever-vigilant-against-the-threat-of-non-spycraft dept

Maybe the DOJ has grown accustomed to the FBI handing over fully-groomed terrorists for it to prosecute. Its recent attempts to go outside of the realm of young, impressionable men when seeking spy-related prosecutions have gone disastrously.

Last month, it thought it had cornered a pesky Chinese spy and found itself instead looking at someone who had committed no criminal activity. The feds believed Xi Xiaoxing (the head of Temple University's physics department) had shared secret semiconductor-related blueprints with Chinese scientists. Well after moving forward with its prosecution, the DOJ discovered the FBI's investigative work had come to erroneous conclusions. It dropped all charges and left Xiaxiong to pick up the pieces of his shattered life.

This came on the heels of the DOJ's aborted prosecution of Sherry Chen, a National Water Service employee. While visiting China she passed on some PUBLIC website links related to water reservoir funding to a friend of hers, who was a senior official in China's Ministry of Water. She also put him in touch with a former colleague from the Army Corps of Engineers, who rewarded the official's queries by reporting this contact to the DOJ. Another life was turned upside down based on the most specious of suspicions.

Third time's the charm. The DOJ is seemingly ready to drop another espionage-related prosecution due to a lack of culpatory evidence. (h/t Unredacted)

Last fall, federal agents raided the home and office of Robin L. Raphel in search of proof that she, a seasoned member of America’s diplomatic corps, was spying for Pakistan. But officials now say the spying investigation has all but fizzled, leaving the Justice Department to decide whether to prosecute Ms. Raphel for the far less serious charge of keeping classified information in her home.

The fallout from the investigation has in the meantime seriously damaged Ms. Raphel’s reputation, built over decades in some of the world’s most volatile countries.

An intercepted conversation involving Raphael, collected during routine surveillance of Pakistani officials, seemed to suggest the State Department advisor was passing on state secrets. The government put Raphael under surveillance for several weeks, which culminated in a search of her home and office. The DOJ then stripped her of her security clearances, but refused to give her any information about its suspicions.

The smoking gun the DOJ found was tepid, given its recent prosecutorial history: some classified documents in Raphael's home. At this point, the DOJ doesn't appear to have any evidence this information was distributed, which puts Raphael in the company of other mishandlers of sensitive documents -- like General Petraeus… and Hillary Clinton. The range of punishments those two received ranged from a wrist slap to nothing at all. If the DOJ's going to maintain any consistency (and it won't), Raphael should receive something within that same range. And if that's all that's to come of it, it hardly seems worth pursuing.

For her part, Raphael has rejected the plea deals offered by the DOJ, claiming she's actually innocent. At most, she took home documents she shouldn't have. The DOJ seems hesitant to move forward, although the New York Times quotes anonymous prosecutors who would like to see her charged with a felony under the Espionage Act -- charges that could result in years of prison time. To do so would be unnecessarily punitive, considering the government's ongoing refusal to punish members of the "in crowd."

Even if the DOJ decides to drop the case, Raphael may be no better off than Thomas Drake -- another person whose career was destroyed over the alleged "mishandling" of classfied documents. The government claimed Drake held onto classified documents -- despite being told to hold onto them by the Inspector General investigating his whistleblower case and despite these documents being declassified before the prosecution was over. Drake went from working with the NSA to manning an Apple store "Genius Bar." Raphael is likely on a similar path, even if charges are dropped. Officials from combative nations will be far less likely to confide in someone who's obviously under US government surveillance and the US government itself likely won't be offering her any advancement opportunities.

Filed Under: classified information, doj, espionage, robin raphel

DOJ Drops All Charges Against Professor After Realizing No One Checked To See If What He Sent To China Was Actually A Secret

from the total-failure dept

There's been a bit of hysteria in the US lately about "the Chinese stealing our secrets." Now, there's plenty of evidence of corporate espionage going on from China, but the actual impact of it appears to be quite overblown. But as we're in a giant moral panic about everything China related, the White House launched a big "crackdown" on such things recently -- and so far it seems to have resulted in the DOJ destroying innocent people's lives, while getting a lot of egg on its face. The latest: late on Friday the DOJ announced that it was completely dropping all charges against Xi Xiaoxing, the head of Temple University's physics department, who had been arrested earlier this year for apparently sharing the schematics of a special device known as a pocket heater with Chinese scientists. The only problem? It turns out he didn't actually share the schematics of a pocket heater with the Chinese -- the FBI just assumed what he shared must be a pocket heater. But it wasn't.

The schematics, prosecutors said, revealed the design of a device known as a pocket heater. The equipment is used in semiconductor research, and Dr. Xi had signed an agreement promising to keep its design a secret.

But months later, long after federal agents had led Dr. Xi away in handcuffs, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence at the heart of the Justice Department’s case: The blueprints were not for a pocket heater.

Faced with sworn statements from leading scientists, including an inventor of the pocket heater, the Justice Department on Friday afternoon dropped all charges against Dr. Xi, an American citizen.

You would think that this is the sort of thing that the DOJ would check before arresting the guy and destroying his life.

“I don’t expect them to understand everything I do,” Dr. Xi, 57, said in a telephone interview. “But the fact that they don’t consult with experts and then charge me? Put my family through all this? Damage my reputation? They shouldn’t do this. This is not a joke. This is not a game.”

And he's not kidding about putting his family through a terrible situation. A dozen FBI agents "with guns drawn" stormed his home when he was arrested back in May. His whole family was there at the time.

Meanwhile, as the NY Times report notes, this is not the first time this kind of thing has happened. Just a few months ago, the DOJ similarly dropped all charges against Sherry Chen, who worked for the National Weather Service. The story here is perhaps even more ridiculous. Chen, in a visit back to China to see her parents, had also visited with a former classmate, who was a senior official in the Ministry of Water. In passing he asked her some questions about how certain projects concerning US reservoirs were funded. Chen later emailed him some links to public websites that contained some basic info (not even that relevant to the original question). She also put him in touch with a colleague she had worked with at the Army Corps of Engineers who might be able to answer more questions. That person reported the emails to officials saying she was "concerned" about what was happening.

And, from there, the DOJ flipped out. It got a warrant, searched her emails and work computers and discovered a very weak link. In searching around, Chen had accessed another database, just for US government workers, using a colleague's password, since she didn't have a password to that particular database (but was allowed to access it). She had downloaded some info that was useful to a project she was working on, and had told her former classmate back in China that if he wanted info from the database, he would need to go through more official channels, suggesting the colleague at the Army Corps. of Engineers... who had just turned her in as a possible spy.

She was later arrested and her name was all over the press -- and then eventually dropped months later when the DOJ finally took the time to realize that she hadn't actually done anything wrong, and it had jumped to all sorts of crazy conclusions because of her one 15 minute meeting and her sending a few emails with public information.

A week before trial was to begin, Mr. Zeidenberg requested a meeting with Carter M. Stewart and Mark T. D’Alessandro, two United States attorneys for the Southern District of Ohio.

“Why,” Mr. Zeidenberg said he asked, “if she’s a spy, is she coming back from China and telling her colleagues that ‘I met this guy in China and this is what he wants to know’? Why is she telling the guy in China, ‘Here’s my boss’s phone number’? Why is she asking for a password over email? Why would you do that?”

Mr. Zeidenberg says the prosecutors listened. On March 10, the day after their meeting, they dismissed the charges.

“Thank God,” Mr. Zeidenberg added.

You'll notice, of course, that both of the individuals arrested are American citizens, but were born in China, leading to reasonable accusations that the DOJ is overreacting to Chinese-Americans and assuming that anything they do with people back in China may be espionage.

Again, it's likely that there is real espionage going on. No one denies that. But when we scare ourselves so much that we're looking for ghosts, we're taking down innocent people because the DOJ is just too amped up looking for "bad guys" and either unable or unwilling to actually look at the evidence first. That's really, really messed up.

Filed Under: china, doj, espionage, failures, fbi, investigation, pocket heater, sherry chen, xi xiaoxing

Wikileaks Latest Info-Dump Shows, Again, That The NSA Indeed Engages In Economic Espionage Against Allies

from the with-friends-like-these dept

With all the revelations that have come out about the NSA and our foreign and domestic spy programs, it can, at times, become difficult to parse out exactly what we're supposed to be getting pissed off about and what is the exact kind of spy-work we ought to expect the alphabet agencies to conduct. Some of the groups that are involved in getting these revelations out there don't make it much easier, of course. Take as an example the latest Wikileaks info-dump, which chiefly concerns the NSA's spy program against our ally Japan. From the press release accompanying the documents:

Today, Friday 31 July 2015, 9am CEST, WikiLeaks publishes "Target Tokyo", 35 Top Secret NSA targets in Japan including the Japanese cabinet and Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, together with intercepts relating to US-Japan relations, trade negotiations and sensitive climate change strategy. The list indicates that NSA spying on Japanese conglomerates, government officials, ministries and senior advisers extends back at least as far as the first administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which lasted from September 2006 until September 2007. The telephone interception target list includes the switchboard for the Japanese Cabinet Office; the executive secretary to the Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga; a line described as "Government VIP Line"; numerous officials within the Japanese Central Bank, including Governor Haruhiko Kuroda; the home phone number of at least one Central Bank official; numerous numbers within the Japanese Finance Ministry; the Japanese Minister for Economy, Trade and Industry Yoichi Miyazawa; the Natural Gas Division of Mitsubishi; and the Petroleum Division of Mitsui.

Now, what Wikileaks is doing is mashing together the NSA spying on the Japanese government, our ally, with Japanese industry. That's silly, in my estimation. In fact, much of the hand-wringing that goes on about our spy networks spying on allies seems naive in the extreme, as if to suggest that our closest allies aren't conducting similar spy programs on our government. You can insist, if you like, that America should not be spying on her allies, but then I get to insist that you grow up, because that's exactly the kind of work you want the NSA doing.

But on the economic side, things get a little murkier. The NSA has insisted for years that the agency does not engage in economic espionage, actions which would put it out of the norm for how we treat our allies. It's also been clear for some time that the NSA is full of crap in this regard. This latest Wikileaks dump fleshes out just how much economic espionage we do against our allies, even very close allies like Japan.

The documents demonstrate intimate knowledge of internal Japanese deliberations on such issues as: agricultural imports and trade disputes; negotiating positions in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization; Japanese technical development plans, climate change policy, nuclear and energy policy and carbon emissions schemes; correspondence with international bodies such as the International Energy Agency (IEA); strategy planning and draft talking points memoranda concerning the management of diplomatic relations with the United States and the European Union; and the content of a confidential Prime Ministerial briefing that took place at Shinzo Abe's official residence.

It's just more egg on the face of government and security officials who have claimed to have kept their hands clean of economic espionage. There's sure to be more of interest in the documents as they get parsed out, but if nothing else we can be reminded that the NSA is a spy agency and that its officials have been caught lying over and over again.

Filed Under: economic espionage, espionage, japan, nsa, surveillance, trade deals

Another Reason Adopting 'Collect It All' Was A Bad Idea: China May Now Be Applying It To US Citizens' Personal Data

from the this-is-why-strong-crypto-is-your-friend dept

At the start of the year, we wrote about an important point made by Bruce Schneier and Edward Snowden concerning information asymmetry in the world of spying -- the fact that the US and the West in general have far more to lose by undermining security in an attempt to gain as much information as possible about other countries, than they have to gain. A fascinating analysis from Bloomberg indicates that this also applies to the "collect it all" mentality. The article raises the troubling possibility that both the huge OPM data breaches were not only the work of Chinese state actors, but part of a much larger plan:

Some investigators suspect the attacks were part of a sweeping campaign to create a database on Americans that could be used to obtain commercial and government secrets.

"China is building the Facebook of human intelligence capabilities," said Adam Meyers, vice president of intelligence for cybersecurity company CrowdStrike Inc. "This appears to be a real maturity in the way they are using cyber to enable broader intelligence goals."

The Bloomberg article suggests that China started gathering first travel records, then health records, Social Security numbers and other personal information on Americans in an attempt to build an increasingly complete picture about huge swathes of the US population. Whether or not that new "collect it all" approach was directly inspired by the NSA's espousal of the idea is a detail: it was certainly brought to prominence by General Alexander's statements, and is now part of the common currency of surveillance.

It is made possible by lax security, even for huge datasets, as the OPM fiasco shows. That means it is entirely plausible for the Chinese secret services -- and for those of other nations -- to try to collect information about every US or EU citizen, as people's lives move online, and their most personal data is stored in Internet-accessible databases.

Standing in the way of achieving that is the strength of the security protecting that information -- something that governments around the world are now threatening to undermine in the name of their own offensive surveillance capabilities. How many hundreds of millions of personal records must be lost before the authorities wake up to the fact that if they compromise encryption, the only thing they are certain to achieve is to make the task of "collecting it all" easier for China and other nations?

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Filed Under: china, collect it all, dossier, espionage, privacy, surveillance

Bruce Schneier: Sure, Russia & China Probably Have The Snowden Docs... But Not Because Of Snowden

from the because-espionage dept

Given all the fuss over the ridiculous article this past weekend -- which has since been confirmed as government stenography rather than actual reporting -- security maven Bruce Schneier has written up an article making a key point. It's quite likely that the underlying point in the article -- that Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies have access to the documents that Snowden originally handed over to reporters -- is absolutely true. But, much more importantly, he argues, the reason likely has almost nothing to do with Snowden.

First, he notes, it's quite likely that Snowden -- as he has said -- no longer has access to the documents. But other people do. And they're not as knowledgeable about encryption and spycraft as Snowden is.

First, the journalists working with the documents. I’ve handled some of the Snowden documents myself, and even though I’m a paranoid cryptographer, I know how difficult it is to maintain perfect security. It’s been open season on the computers of the journalists Snowden shared documents with since this story broke in July 2013. And while they have been taking extraordinary pains to secure those computers, it’s almost certainly not enough to keep out the world’s intelligence services.

There is a lot of evidence for this belief. We know from other top-secret NSA documents that as far back as 2008, the agency’s Tailored Access Operations group has extraordinary capabilities to hack into and “exfiltrate” data from specific computers, even if those computers are highly secured and not connected to the Internet.

These NSA capabilities are not unique, and it’s reasonable to assume both that other countries had similar capabilities in 2008 and that everyone has improved their attack techniques in the seven years since then.

But, the second point is an even bigger one, which is that it's highly likely that Russian and Chinese intelligence got these documents long before Snowden gave them to the press, because that's what spies do.

Which brings me to the second potential source of these documents to foreign intelligence agencies: the US and UK governments themselves. I believe that both China and Russia had access to all the files that Snowden took well before Snowden took them because they’ve penetrated the NSA networks where those files reside. After all, the NSA has been a prime target for decades.

Those government hacking examples above were against unclassified networks, but the nation-state techniques we’re seeing work against classified and unconnected networks as well. In general, it’s far easier to attack a network than it is to defend the same network. This isn’t a statement about willpower or budget; it’s how computer and network security work today. A former NSA deputy director recently said that if we were to score cyber the way we score soccer, the tally would be 462–456 twenty minutes into the game. In other words, it’s all offense and no defense.

In this kind of environment, we simply have to assume that even our classified networks have been penetrated. Remember that Snowden was able to wander through the NSA’s networks with impunity, and that the agency had so few controls in place that the only way they can guess what has been taken is to extrapolate based on what has been published. Does anyone believe that Snowden was the first to take advantage of that lax security? I don’t.

Remember, this is the same government that's now reeling from the Chinese hacking of OPM getting all the secrets of government employees, including those with security clearances. It was a hack so impressive that even Michael Hayden -- former CIA and NSA boss -- can't hide his appreciation of the work that was done. Hayden called it "honorable espionage work" by the Chinese and further notes that he "would not have thought twice" if he had the ability to get the same info from the Chinese.

These are the games that intelligence agencies play all the time. Schneier's piece has a lot more in it, but the idea that the Russians and Chinese learned anything particularly new or useful from the Snowden documents -- or that they even got them from Snowden's document dump -- seems quite dubious.

Filed Under: bruce schneier, china, encryption, espionage, michael hayden, russia, snowden documents