CIA And NSA Directors Blame The Media For Terrorists Using Encryption

from the sorry dept

When it comes to the conversation that's going on about the use of encryption, CIA director John Brennan and NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett have acquitted themselves rather poorly on a regular basis. It's been an ongoing source of frustration to see the aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks in particular devolve into a discussion on encryption, despite all evidence suggesting that those attacks weren't planned using any kind of encryption at all. That didn't keep Brennan from claiming that the CIA was unable to keep attacks from occurring due to encryption, nor has it stopped the calls from intelligence officials for even more data collection, despite the fact that those same officials have proven to be soft targets for hackers themselves. Ledgett, meanwhile, has proven to be an adversary of the free press, cheering on the destruction of computers from The Guardian.

And so it is with this backdrop that Brennan and Ledgett sat before Congress and claimed that terrorists were only using all of this encryption because of the god damned media. The hearing was supposed to be for questioning FBI Director James Comey about the dust up between the government and Apple over backdooring iPhones, except Comey essentially answered every question by shrugging his shoulders. Frustrated, the questioners turned to Brennan and Ledgett.

The oddest part came at the end, after everyone realized that Comey wasn’t actually going to say anything substantive. At that point, members of Congress asked CIA Director John Brenner and NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett about terrorists “going dark” by using encryption technology. “Going dark” has become an intelligence community slogan, a phrase to describe what happens when it has the legal means to search and intercept digital communications but can’t technically do it because of security protections.

“The ability of these terrorists to communicate with one another that makes it very difficult to uncover has been increasing. It’s very frustrating but very concerning,” Brennan said. “They follow the press, they follow these discussions.”

Ledgett poked his finger at the media even more explicitly. “We track when our foreign intelligence targets talk about the security of their communication,” he said. “And we see a growing number of them, because of what’s in the press about the value of encryption, moving towards that.”

Are we really to believe that the same terrorists of whom the American public ought be so terrified are chiefly informed as to their technological tactics by media and technology outlets? The suggestion appears to be that terror groups were unaware of encryption before coming across reporting on them. Reporting that really only ramped up, mind you, after intelligence officials falsely invoked encryption as the danger. In what world does that timeline result in the media being to blame for terrorists using encryption?

And, more interestingly, what would Brennan and Ledgett have happen, assuming anyone believed this nonsense? Is there to be a moratorium on discussing technology in the press? Some kind of strange silent treatment given to a technology that is in widespread use for all manner of legitimate reasons? What is the point of the comment? It can't accomplish anything, other than to attempt to distract the public from the failings and lies of these same intelligence agencies for a moment.

Neither Brennan or Ledgett specified which reports were believed to be frequently dog-eared on ISIS squatters, but that doesn’t matter. Extremists are interested in privacy tools, and media reports on privacy tools. Saying that they read about which tools to use is just saying that any group with goals attempts to find information that will help achieve those goals. Implying that media reports are aiding and abetting the enemy—not to mention the notion that reports highlighting privacy protections are somehow devious—is just unfair and chilling.

And not only that, but also consider that it will achieve no end. Trying to reduce discussions about encryption doesn't eliminate the technology itself. Try picturing an ISIS operation planner saying, "Man, we wanted to hide our communication, but we couldn't find anything about it on Techdirt so we gave up." If you can do so without laughing, it might be time for a brain tune-up, because something in your head is askew.

The point is that blaming the media is a tactic best left to talk radio shows. Our intelligence officials ought to be able to do better.

Filed Under: cia, encryption, isis, john brennan, media, nsa, rick ledgett, terrorists

How A Treasury Terror List Is Preventing Americans With 'Scary' Names From Using Online Services

from the scary-names dept

We've talked a few times before about the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, a government office theoretically designed to keep money from flowing to and from scary people in scary countries or whatever. Its work typically amounts to keeping businesses from doing business-y things with people in places like North Korea and such. On the other hand, sometimes the folks at the OFAC get their knickers in a twist over a graphic novel about some of these scary people, so it's not like these folks have a spotless record when it comes to keeping the proper targets in its collective sights.

But a couple of stories have been trickling in having to do with non-scary people who share names too-closely associated with actual scary people suddenly being denied online services due to the OFAC scare-list. The first of these concerned a man named Muhammad Zakir Khan being refused a registration for a multiplayer video game.

Gamasutra, which broke the story, reports that when Khan submitted his request, he received an unusual denial, one explaining that his name had come up as “a match against the Specially Designated Nationals list maintained by the United States of America's Office of Foreign Assets Control.” Epic was, in other words, refusing Khan the opportunity to try out its new game simply because his name resembles that of someone who might be financially involved with terrorism.

Khan tweeted a a screengrab of the rejection form and hashtaged it “#Islamophobia.” Surprisingly, Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney replied to another tweet about the issue, claiming that it had been caused by an “[o]verly broad filter related to US trade restrictions.”

Which, you know, good for Epic Games. And I wouldn't really refer to this as "islamophobia" so much as I'd refer to it as broad laziness by both a government agency and a corporation. Let's think this through for one moment. If our Treasury Department is going to cast a worried eye towards Islamic terrorism such that it compiles a list of names that businesses are refused from interacting with, and if those names come from a region of the world where there is a certain repetition of these sorts of names (Muhammad Khan sounds like it could be akin to John Smith), then how useful is this directory of scary people to begin with? The point of the list is to identify bad actors, but if innocent folks are getting caught up in it, then it isn't serving its chief function particularly well, now is it? But no matter, says the government agency. Just add the name to the list and damn the fallout to hell.

The broader question, of course, is why an online game should be checking registrations against the CFAC list to begin with. In this particular case, it appears the check was ported over from the game engine itself.

Unreal Engine 4 has a wide range of uses, both domestic and foreign, that apparently bring it under the umbrella of trade guidelines. Under ordinary circumstances, those restrictions should only apply to people who are using the engine to create new games. (For instance, the U.S. government presumably doesn't want ISIS to use the engine to create a recruiting game.) But when Epic used the engine to make Paragon, it accidentally left those restrictions in place. Thus, the filter shouldn't have been there in the first place, and no one should have been banned from Paragon, regardless of whether they show up on a watch list.

As I said: government laziness and corporate laziness combine to keep an innocent person from playing a video game. Success!

Such innocent circumstances don't appear to be replicated in the story of Noor Ahmed's attempt to sign up for a payment app called Venmo, which is normally a cinch to register for, but for which Ahmed still isn't able to use.

When she tried to sign up last year, Venmo refused to add her. The company sent her an email instead, asking Ahmed to provide a stack of additional information to verify her identity. What followed was the opposite of simplicity: Ahmed had to obtain paper copies of her utility bills as well bank statements, and then find a fax machine (a practically unheard of technology for many younger people) to send them to Venmo. After complying with this rigamarole, Ahmed still was unable to sign on to Venmo.

It turns out that she, like thousands of other Americans, shares a name with someone on a list created by a Treasury group called the Office of Foreign Assets Control. This list is called “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons,” and includes (on page 33) a 41-year-old Afghan man also named Noor Ahmed. The New York-based Ahmed, said she is familiar with such mix-ups.

“I was born and raised in California, but I’m taken into secondary customs at the airport no matter what because of my name,” said Ahmed. “I think it’s now extending to other parts of my life.”

Whatever your thoughts on terrorism and international politics, it's quite clear that this isn't helpful. It isn't stopping a terrorist from using the app; it's stopping a US citizen from using it. It isn't helpfully identifying a person for a US business to steer clear of; it's mis-identifying a US citizen. Hell, the list can't even keep men and women straight. For the CFAC list to useful, never mind non-discriminatory, it should at least be able to keep a valid US citizen from being caught up in the web.

If it can't manage that simple task, it's probably worth revisiting whether this list should be employed at all.

Filed Under: ofac, office of foreign asset control, terrorists, treasury department, watch list

President Obama Hints At Asking Silicon Valley To Magically Block Terrorists From Using Tech Products

from the not-good dept

As you probably know, last night President Obama gave a big address from the Oval Office about what he plans to do about ISIS, along with dealing with the threat of lone wolf and other attacks at home. Buried deep within (in fact, I missed it the first time through) was a nod towards the idea of pushing Silicon Valley to magically undermine encryption. Here's the entirety of what he said on the subject:

I will urge high tech and law enforcement leaders to make it harder to use technology to escape from justice.

That seems like a simple sentence, but it's loaded with meaning, and most of it's not good. As we've noted over and over again, the last refuge of those looking to undermine encryption is to bring up the idea of "if only Silicon Valley techies and law enforcement could get together, surely they could come up with some magic golden key. But that's clueless, because what they're asking for is impossible. This isn't something that's "difficult" -- it's impossible. You can't make a backdoored encryption system that doesn't make everyone vulnerable and less safe.

And, yes, while you can say he doesn't specifically say "encryption" here, the use of the phrase "technology to escape from justice" clearly implies encryption. Of course, as we've noted time and time again, the hand-wringing over encryption is totally overblown. Every time we look at terrorist attacks, they seem to do plenty of planning out in the open. And, even when encryption is used, law enforcement and the intelligence community have admitted that either the people often mess up, making them trackable, or they leave other trails.

Besides, what changes does President Obama think technology needs to stop a husband and wife from plotting at home to shoot up an office holiday party?

The whole thing is ridiculous -- and perhaps the only redeeming thing is that he didn't say he was going to ask Congress for a law on this, but rather just put pressure on US tech companies. Unfortunately, as we've seen in the past, sometimes that pressure can be intense and almost impossible to refuse. The President's statement today just undermined a whole bunch of the US tech industry's claims towards keeping information private. He just handed a gift to foreign companies.

Filed Under: encryption, going dark, gun control, isis, president obama, terrorists

A Month Ago, Dianne Feinstein Said Cybersecurity Was Super Important... Now She Says We Should Undermine Encryption

from the which-side-is-she-on? dept

Look, everyone has known for quite some time that Senator Dianne Feinstein's big push for so-called "cybersecurity" legislation in the form of CISA had absolutely nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was always about giving another surveillance tool to her friends at the NSA. However, given that she was one of the most vocal in selling it as a "cybersecurity" bill (despite the fact that no cybersecurity experts actually thought the bill would help) it seems worth comparing her statements from just a month ago, with her new attacks on actual cybersecurity in the form of encryption.

Here is Feinstein just a month ago, claiming to worry about "cyberattacks" on Americans:

"Millions of personal records and hundreds of billions of dollars fall victim to cyber-attacks every year, and we’ve done little to stem the tide."

Of course, CISA does nothing to protect any of that. You know what does protect against that -- better use of encryption to keep that information from getting hacked in any useful manner.

Okay, fast forward. Following the Paris attacks, Feinstein has been among the most vocal in claiming that we need to undermine encryption, which is pretty amazing given that she represents California (and is from San Francisco), home to tons of tech companies that actually get this and think she's completely crazy for undermining actual cybersecurity.

Never mind that, though. Here she is this past weekend, on CBS's Face the Nation totally attacking encryption itself and mocking the tech companies that just a month ago she was insisting needed special government help to protect against cyberattacks. She was asked if the intelligence community has the tools it needs, and she decides to attack encryption -- even choosing to cite as a source CIA director John Brennan -- the same John Brennan who illegally spied on her staffers and then lied about it repeatedly.

"I can say this. [FBI] Director [James Comey] and, I think John Brennan, would agree, that the Achilles Heel in the internet is encryption. Because there are now... it's a black web! And there's no way of piercing it. And this is even in commercial products! PlayStation, John! Which our kids use. If the two ends communicate, that's encrypted. So terrorists can use PlayStation to be able to communication and there's nothing that can be done about it."

The host, John Dickerson, then points out that the tech industry (again, mostly based in or near Feinstein's hometown, and that she's supposed to be representing) says that backdooring encryption makes us less safe and opens us up to more attack, and Feinstein brushes it off, relying on her apparent years of computer security training...

No. I don't think so. I think with a court order, with good justification, all of that can be prevented. It can be prevented in Europe, because Europe has been a major driver for more encryption. And I think that they are now seeing the results. I have visited with all of the General Counsels of the tech companies, just to try to get them to take bomb building recipes off the internet. Recipes that have been tested and we know can explode a plane. Directions. Where to sit on the plane to blow it up. We know that there are bombs that can go through magnetometers. And to put that information out on the internet, is terrible. And I sorta got 'well, pass a law.' So, we may just have to do that. But I am hopeful that the companies, most of whom are my constituents -- not most, but many -- will understand what we're facing. And we're not crying wolf. There's good reason for this. And people are dying all over the world. And I think the Sinai-Russian airliner is a classic example of a bomb that got on a plane, that blew up that plane.

Where to start with this nonsense? First, note that she doesn't actually respond to the question concerning how undermining encryption will make us all less safe and make all that information Feinstein herself claimed was under attack just a month ago more vulnerable, other than to say that she, personally, doesn't think that what every computer security expert has been saying is true. Yikes.

Second, rather than focus on encryption, she pivots to her other pet projects, claiming that the government should force internet companies to censor The Anarchist's Cookbook. She keeps on this despite the fact that all the way back in 1997, the DOJ directly told Feinstein that this would violate the First Amendment. From the DOJ to Feinstein:

The First Amendment would impose substantial constraints on any attempt to proscribe indiscriminately the dissemination of bombmaking information. The government generally may not, except in rare circumstances, punish persons either for advocating lawless action or for disseminating truthful information -- including information that would be dangerous if used -- that such persons have obtained lawfully.

Third, this weird infatuation with The Anarchist's Cookbook, despite the fact that it's generally recognized as a joke for fools, where the likelihood of being able to build an actual bomb from it are minimal at best. And, while she pretends that the GCs of tech companies just sort of shrugged their shoulders about this, it's much more likely that it's because they thought she was being ridiculous trying to censor the internet in violation of the First Amendment. Whoever told her "well, pass a law" was almost certainly trying to get rid of her, knowing that any such law would be unconstitutional.

Fourth, this tangent about "bomb making instructions" online still has absolutely nothing to do with encryption or the question about how encryption makes us all much more vulnerable to attack and actually makes us all less safe.

Fifth, the comment about Europe is insane. Again, while the attackers may have used some encryption, it's been revealed (since long before Feinstein did this interview) that they did an awful lot of communicating in the clear, including unencrypted SMS and Facebook messenger. On top of that, what the hell does "Europe has been a major driver for more encryption" even mean? Perhaps it's true that they've been adopting more encryption to hide from the NSA's spying that Feinstein herself helped hide from everyone.

Sixth: the whole PlayStation thing has been debunked as a way that the Paris attackers communicated. They did not. Furthermore, she's just wrong that the PlayStation has end-to-end encryption. It does not.

Seventh, does she honestly believe that whoever blew up that Russian airplane downloaded bomb-making instructions from the internet? Also, if it were really so easy to get such instructions and get them through security, don't you think we'd have seen a lot more airplanes blown up by now?

In summary, Feinstein (a month ago) said we should all be deathly afraid of cyberattacks, and the only way to solve it was to give the government much greater access to companies' computer systems, via CISA. And, now, she insists that encryption is an "Achilles's heel" and that actual cybersecurity experts are lying when they say undermining encryption will put everyone at risk. Why? Because The Anarchist's Cookbook is online and Google won't take it down.

Is it really so much to ask for politicians to actually understand technology before they go off on ridiculous, ignorant, uninformed rants about it -- often leading to even more ridiculous and dangerous legislation?

Filed Under: cisa, cybersecurity, dianne feinstein, encryption, going dark, surveillance, terrorists

DailyDirt: Seemingly Innocent Things...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Sometimes it's pretty easy to track down the origin of how a meme gets popular. If you've ever seen gifs with the caption "Do Not Want" -- you might not have realized where that phrase came from (or just assumed it was just the typical bad grammar of the internetz), but it actually comes from a bootleg version of Star Wars Episode III with comically bad "Engrish" subtitles -- specifically the scene where Anakin Skywalker is first revived as Darth Vader and screams "Nooooo" which was hilariously translated from English to Chinese and back to English as "Do Not Want." That aside, some products have become unusually popular in unexpected demographic groups without clear explanations. Here are just a few things that have crossed cultures.

• The Casio F-91W watch was introduced in 1991, and it's a remarkably reliable inexpensive digital watch -- that's also been used as a bomb timer by terrorists. There's nothing inherently sinister about the F-91W, but maybe you shouldn't wear one if you want to minimize your time at a TSA checkpoint. [url]
• ISIS appears to be brand loyal when it drives around -- almost exclusively in Toyota trucks. Toyota doesn't know how its vehicles get into the hands of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Syrian rebels, or fighters in Chad/Libya's "Toyota War," but these trucks have a reputation of being indestructible which might be one of the reasons why Toyota's trucks are so popular. [url]
• The kaffiyeh was a brief fashion fad in the US that seemed to supplant Che Guevara T-shirts. It's just a scarf usually worn in Middle Eastern countries, but it also became popular among hipsters and some kids in Tokyo. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: casio f-91w, fad, fashion, gadgets, isis, kaffiyeh, popularity, terrorists, toyota war
Companies: casio, toyota

FBI & Homeland Security Now 0 For 41 In Predicting Imminent Terrorist Attacks On The US

from the why-does-anyone-take-them-seriously dept

I don't have cable. I almost never watch TV. I never see cable news unless someone points me to a clip online. Yet apparently, with the extended holiday weekend this past weekend, cable news went absolutely bonkers with vague, unsubstantiated claims from government officials about how everyone should be on heightened alert for an attack from ISIS:

CNN has led the pack in whipping Americans into a panic over the Isis threat, running story after story with government officials and terrorism industry money-makers hyping the threat, played against the backdrop of scary b-roll of terrorist training camps. Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell ominously told CBS last week that “I wouldn’t be surprised if we weren’t sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States.” MSNBC and Fox joined in too, using graphics and maps right out of Stephen Colbert’s satirical “Doom Bunker,” suggesting World War III was just on the verge of reaching America’s shores.

The Morell appearance was particularly ridiculous, with it posting during the episode the following map of "recent ISIS arrests" in the US to emphasize the bullshit claim that ISIS was already in the US and plotting attacks: The problem, of course, is that none of those arrests were really connected to ISIS in any serious way. Nearly all of them were actually plots cooked up by the FBI to trick gullible individuals that they were in on an ISIS plot.

Before the weekend, Adam Johnson put together an astounding list of how Homeland Security and the FBI are 0 for 40 in their last 40 predictions for terrorist attacks inside the US -- raising serious questions about why the news media actually takes any of these "warnings" seriously. And that doesn't even get into the fact that DHS and the FBI have failed to stop actual plots like the Boston bombing. Here's the list that Johnson put together:

October 2001: “Potential use of chemical/biological and/or radiological/nuclear weapons“

November 2001: California bridges

February 2002: “Hollywood studios”

May 2002: Statue of Liberty

June 2002: “Around the Fourth of July holiday”

July 2002: Stadiums

August 2002: “Landmarks”

October 2002: “AQ to attack Amtrak”

November 2002: “Spectacular Al Qaeda attacks”

February 2003: “Apartments, hotels, sports arenas and amusement parks“

May 2003: “Possibility of multiple attacks”

May 2004: “Attempt to affect the outcome” of presidential election

July 2004: “Military facilities and large gatherings” on July 4th

August 2004: VA hospitals

January 2005: Dirty bomb

March 2005: US/Mexican border

October 2005: NYC & Baltimore subways

March 2006: “Sporting events”

June 2007: Colleges

December 2007: “Shopping malls in Chicago and LA”

November 2008: “Al Qaeda to attack transit during Thanksgiving”

November 2010: Mass transit in New York City

October 2011: “Americans in Europe” facing “commando-style AQ attack”

February 2011: “Financial institutions”

May 2011: “Threats of retaliation”

June 2011: Al Qaeda “hit list”

July 2011: “Private jets of executives” involved in drone manufacturing

September 2011: “Small planes”

September 2011: “New York City or Washington around…10th anniversary of 9/11”

September 2011: Airports

March 2012: “Terrorist hacking”

August 2012: Anarchists blowing up bridge during Tampa RNC

September 2012: “Islamic violence over movie”

August 2013: “San Fransisco on high alert”

November 2013: “cyber attacks”

April 2014: “College students abroad”

December 2014: ISIS targeting Mississippi River bridge

December 2014: ISIS “sabotaging US military personnel” over social media

April 2015: ISIS targeting “parts of California”

May 2015: ISIS targeting “military bases”

And now we can add this past weekend, making them 0 for 41.

Johnson highlights three reasons why these warnings still get issued:

1. The FBI has all the incentive in the world to issue warnings and no incentive whatsoever to not issue warnings. Issuing warnings has no downside, while not doing so is all downside.
2. The FBI, like all agencies of the government, does not operate in a political vacuum. Emphasizing the “ISIS threat” at home necessarily helps prop up the broader war effort the FBI’s boss, the president of the United States, must sell to a war-weary public. The incentive is to therefore highlight the smallest threats. This was a feature that did not go unnoticed during the Bush years, but has since fallen out of fashion.
3. It has no actual utility. What does it mean to be “more vigilant”? It’s a vague call to alertness that officials, aside from “beefing up security” by local police, never quite explain what it means. If the FBI wanted to tell local police departments to up their security of the 4th of July weekend, surely they could do so quietly, without the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security having to go on all major networks talking over b-roll of ISIS in apocalyptic terms.

There's also one other reason which is related to the first reason above, but is slightly different: if there is actually a big terrorist attack (and not one they can wave off), DHS and FBI officials will be hauled before Congress and asked why they didn't spot it or warn about it. So this is, once again, an example of officials wanting to cover their own asses. As we noted recently in explaining why surveillance state defenders don't care that the programs they defend don't work, a lot of the mental calculus involves covering their own asses in the event something bad does happen. No one wants to have to explain that what they did was useless, so they feel the need to "do something." Combine that with the near total lack of downside, and of course, there are going to be random predictions based on nothing.

So the real question, though, is how come cable news feels the need to fall for it too? As Tevor Timm notes, all this really does is help terrorists in "terrorizing" the American public:

All of this doesn’t mean that a terrorist attack on US won’t eventually happen. Simple math tells us that, no matter the precautions taken or the civil liberties taken away, one may get through. But it is a rare event, and one which human beings have lived with throughout our history. By magnifying it and terrifying everyone, we’re only doing the terrorists’ job for them.

And the cable news teams are helping this right along...

Filed Under: cable news, dhs, fbi, fud, homeland security, isis, terror, terror warnings, terrorists

Everyone's An Agent: UK Company Provides Spy Software To Teachers To Weed Out Child Terrorists

from the no-no-no dept

Never content to simply let America take a bad idea and run with it alone, these past few years have seen our friends in the UK slowly start to lose their collective minds concerning terrorism and radical Islam. It's hard to be too terribly snarky about it, considering here in America we've done our best to perfect overreacting to terrorism, but when the UK decided to institute something like Orwellian "thought crime," it was still worth noting how dumb of an idea it was. But our British friends weren't done. Now, schools throughout the country are being offered some very special software that will allow teachers to spy on student activities to try to weed out the eventually-maybe-might-be-radicalized.

Schools are being offered new software that helps teachers spy on pupils' potentially extremist online activity. It alerts teachers if pupils use specific terrorism-related terms or phrases or visit extremist websites on school computers, laptops or tablets. Teachers are encouraged to look for a pattern of behaviour rather than raise the alarm after a single warning.

This software is being offered in an effort to help schools comply with the Counter Terrorism and Security Act, which puts the onus on schools to prevent children from becoming terrorists, because apparently everyone is in the business of counter-terrorism these days. It must be quite nice to be in the national security business in the UK, given how the government has managed to simply foist their responsibilities upon public citizens with nothing better to do than teach the stewards of the nation's future.

And that last line in the quote, the one about how teachers are encouraged to look for ongoing patterns rather than flying off the handle if a student happens to look up "jihad" on Google? Yeah, because teachers are clearly the best able and most trained when it comes to making those kinds of judgements. They're not. You know who is? The god damned people in the counter-terrorism business. Maybe stop shirking your responsibility and do the damned job.

Those producing this software are just full of the old "the internet is just the worst" tropes, too.

Sally-Ann Griffiths, of Impero Software, which designed the program, said: "With a widely reported increase in the number of children being radicalised, it's vital that schools put measures in place to prevent pupils coming to harm online. By defining terms such as 'yodo', a phrase used by jihadist sympathisers meaning 'you only die once', the glossary gives teachers, who are part of the solution to the problem, the tools they need to identify, intervene and safeguard at-risk pupils."

Heh, yodo, that's actually pretty good. Less good is someone pimping this privacy-invading, research-chilling, conversation-stopping spyware retreating to the argument-safe-house position of relying on "widely reported" non-statistics and appeals to protecting the children. On the other hand, I suppose it's quite a nice lesson for these children to find out what life will be like as an adult. Thanks to the NSA and its international counterparts, they can expect to be surveilled in much the same way when they're all growed up.

Filed Under: children, extremists, schools, spy softare, teachers, terrorists, uk

Rogers, Hayden Claim Release Of CIA Torture Report Will Be The Tipping Point For Enemies Of The US

from the you-know,-rather-than-everything-else-we've-done-to-piss-them-off dept

The NSA's many, many surveillance programs. The TSA's security theater. "See something, say something." The DHS and its "Fusion Centers," in which First Amendment-protected activity is viewed as inherently suspicious. The distribution of armored vehicles and high-powered weapons to law enforcement agencies. The FBI's constantly expanding investigative scope and powers. The NYPD's "Demographics Unit." These are all things we do because of terrorism.

Those who believe the threat of terrorism can justify nearly anything are now claiming the threat of terrorism justifies NOT doing something. Daniel Drezner rounds up quotes from current and former officials who believe that the safety of our nation now hinges on not releasing the long-delayed "Torture Report." Joining John Kerry in his statement that the release could have negative effects on "foreign policy" are a host of familiar names, starting with House Intelligence Committee head Mike Rogers.

"I think this is a terrible idea," Rogers said. "Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths. . . . Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, 'You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.' Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths."

Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, echoes Rogers' concerns.

"...[T]his will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans and American facilities overseas."

As Drezner points out, the narrative these men are pushing makes no sense. According to Hayden, Rogers and (to a lesser extent) Kerry, the release of this report will be the tipping point for our enemies, rather than two lengthy, unending military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan… or years of drone strikes… the United States' constant support of Israel… the revelations of torture occurring at Abu Ghraib…

According to this narrative, terrorists will be more outraged by a damning Senate report than by the previous decade-plus of actions in response to the 9/11 attacks.

I'm sorry, but this is just nuts. There is no shortage of US foreign policy actions and inactions in the region to inflame enemies. The Senate report is small potatoes compared to that.

The release of the report could actually be a net win for the US. Its reputation has taken several hits over the past year, and exposing its flaws to the world -- in hopes of preventing this behavior from repeating itself -- will show our allies, and our enemies, that the nation is stronger than its weakest moments. Delaying the release of the report, or rendering it meaningless via over-redaction, won't send the same message. Instead, it will confirm our enemies' (and allies') worst suspicions: that the US government cares more about maintaining a facade than actually making an effort to rebuild its damaged reputation. Doing what Kerry, Rogers and Hayden suggest -- bury the report until whenever (and at what point will we not have enemies?) -- could actually provide more motivation to terrorists than being open, honest and contrite about the CIA's actions.

Filed Under: cia, foreign policy, john kerry, michael hayden, mike rogers, surveillance, terrorists, torture, torture report

Why Requiring Social Networks To Monitor Posts To Spot Terrorists Will Make It Even Harder To Catch Them

from the false-positives dept

Last week we wrote about how the UK government was clearly signalling it wanted social networks to start monitoring users' activity for tell-tale signs of terrorist intentions -- without, of course, worrying about how that might be done. Now, James Ball in the Guardian has put together a great summary of why that approach cannot possibly work.

He runs through various ways Facebook, Twitter and the rest might try to spot potential terrorists before they acted -- for example, by using keywords, lists of suspicious sites, social graphs etc. But one feature automated systems all share is that to avoid the risk of letting individuals slip through the net, the criteria for flagging up people have to be loose. And that, inevitably, means there will be false positives:

However sophisticated these systems are, they always produce false positives, so if you are unlucky enough to type oddly, or to say the wrong thing, you might end up in a dragnet.

Here's what that would mean in practice:

Data strategist Duncan Ross set out what would happen if someone could create an algorithm that correctly identified a terrorist from their communications 99.9% of the time -- far, far more accurate than any real algorithm - with the assumption that there were 100 terrorists in the UK.

The algorithm would correctly identify the 100 terrorists. But it would also misidentify 0.01% of the UK's non-terrorists as terrorists: that’s a further 60,000 people, leaving the authorities with a still-huge problem on their hands. Given that Facebook is not merely dealing with the UK’s 60 million population, but rather a billion users sending 1.4bn messages, that's an Everest-sized haystack for security services to trawl.

Requiring social networks to bring in any kind of automated monitoring -- the only kind that is feasible given the huge volume of posts involved -- will simply cause the intelligence agencies to be swamped with a huge number of false leads that will make it impossible to pick out the real terrorists from among the data supplied. In other words, the UK government's plans, if implemented, will just make a bad situation much, much worse.

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Filed Under: false positives, haystacks, liability, monitoring, policing, statistics, terrorists, uk

David Cameron Says People Aren't Radicalized By Poverty Or Foreign Policy, But By Free Speech Online, So ISPs Agree To Censor Button

from the censor-now! dept

A few years ago, we mocked then Senator Joe Lieberman's request that internet companies put "report this content as terrorist content" buttons on various types of online content. The plan went nowhere, because it's a really bad idea, prone to massive abuse. Yet, over in the UK, some apparently think it's such a grand idea that they're actually moving forward with it. This isn't a huge surprise -- the current UK government has been going on for quite some time about banning "extremist" content, and just recently ramped up such efforts.

And now it appears that a bunch of big UK broadband access providers have agreed to play along:

The UK’s major Internet service providers – BT, Virgin, Sky and Talk Talk – have this week committed to host a public reporting button for terrorist material online, similar to the reporting button which allows the public to report child sexual exploitation.

They have also agreed to ensure that terrorist and extremist material is captured by their filters to prevent children and young people coming across radicalising material.

I love the term "radicalising material" as if it's the material itself that has the power to magically turn mild-mannered Brits into violent jihadis just by appearing on their screens. That's not how it works. Yet some have such an irrational fear of the power of words we disagree with that it must be prevented from anyone ever seeing it.

Also, the comparison to child porn is a common one, but wrong. Images of sexually exploited children are not a judgment call issue, for the most part. It's an obvious thing. "Extremist" material or "terrorist" material, on the other hand, is almost entirely subjective. And, over time, the definition of what counts always seems to expand, rather than contract. And that doesn't even take into account how many people will simply choose to use such buttons to try to censor any sort of content they dislike.

David Cameron seems quite excited about turning an open and free internet into a closed and censored space, where only content he likes is allowed:

Addressing a special sitting of federal parliament, Cameron said: “We must not allow the internet to be an ungoverned space”.

Why? What's wrong with letting people speak their minds? The whole "terrorism!" claim is overplayed:

“In both our countries we have seen some of our young people radicalised, going off to fight in Iraq and Syria, and even appalling plots to murder innocent people back in our own countries.”

Yes, but perhaps you should look at the root causes of why that's happening? But Cameron insists it can't possibly be poverty or UK foreign policy:

“And let us be frank. It’s not poverty, though of course our nations are united in tackling deprivation wherever it exists. It’s not exclusion from the mainstream. Of course we have more to do but we are both successful multicultural democracies where opportunities abound.

“And it’s not foreign policy. I can show you examples all over the world where British aid and British action have saved millions of Muslim lives, from Kosovo to Syria – but that is not exactly the real point. In our democracies, we must never give in to the idea that disagreeing with a foreign policy in any way justifies terrorist outrages.”

Hmm. So disagreeing with foreign policy cannot justify terrorist outrages... but, apparently it can justify blatant censorship. Because, apparently, the only possible reason why people are radicalized is because they read something on the internet. David Cameron insists that's the case:

The root cause was in fact the “extremist narrative”, Cameron said.

This meant “we must ban extremist preachers from our country, we must root out extremism from our schools, universities and prisons”, as well as dealing with the internet.

So he presents no actual evidence, but completely waves off poverty and disagreements over UK foreign policy as being non-factors -- and then automatically assumes that the problem is "extremist" speech online? Incredible.

And the end result is pure censorship. How long until calling it censorship is considered an "extremist" position as well?

Filed Under: censorship, david cameron, extremist speech, foreign policy, free speech, isps, poverty, terrorists
Companies: bt, sky, talk talk, virgin