Obama Administration Has Declared War On Whistleblowers, Describes Leaks As 'Aiding The Enemy'

from the going-a-bit-far dept

In 2008, now President Obama ran with the following as a key plank in his campaign:

Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.

None of that has happened. Instead, as we've discussed repeatedly, President Obama has been the most aggressive President ever in attacking whistleblowers and bringing the full weight of the law down on them. In fact, in 2012, rather than promote protecting whistleblowers in his campaign, the campaign bragged about how it cracked down on whistleblowers:

President Obama has done more than any other administration to forcefully pursue and address leaks of classified national security information.... The Obama administration has prosecuted twice as many cases under the Espionage Act as all other administrations combined. Under the President, the Justice Department has prosecuted six cases regarding national security leaks. Before he took office, federal prosecutors had used the Espionage Act in only three cases.

The above paragraph is true -- and we've pointed it out in the past as well -- but we thought it was shameful, not something worth bragging about. Furthermore, since he was elected, President Obama has never praised a single federal employee who was a whistleblower. When asked by a reporter from the Huffington Post for an example of President Obama supporting a whistleblower, the White House refused to respond.

Given all of that, it will come as little surprise to read a piece by reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan Landay of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, in which they reveal that the White House has a special attack program to deal with whistleblowers called Insider Threat Program (ITP). And, no, contrary to what the administration has claimed, it's not just about "national security" issues. It goes way beyond that:

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments.

And, as the reporters note, the program may emphasize classified material, but actually goes way beyond that to cover leaks of just about anything. Furthermore, it encourages the ridiculous view that leaks which expose questionable behavior to the public are the same as aiding the enemy.

“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

Yes, informing the American public of misdeeds by the US government is considered "aiding the enemies of the United States." The reality, of course, is what they're saying is that they really mean "the current government" when they refer to "the United States," and "the enemies" are the American public.

And, part of the program seems to be to put pressure on anyone to snitch on their colleagues if they suspect potential leakers. Government employees who fail to report colleagues who exhibit "high risk" behaviors may be subject to criminal charges. Basically, snitch on anyone who acts suspiciously, or else... And, of course, it's not just the Defense Department. The Agriculture Department has an online tutorial teaching people how to spot potential whistleblowers, entitled "Treason 101."

As becomes obvious, this massively discourages whistleblowing. It massively discourages anyone raising any alarm about programs that might be out of control, for fear that they might be declared a "high risk" person or even guilty of espionage for trying to blow the whistle. President Obama not only has not supported the "courageous" whistleblowers he praised, he's made it so scary to report any malfeasance that when it eventually does come out, it takes the dramatic form of someone like Edward Snowden, rather than someone willing to go through all the "official channels." It's a complete failure and does little to promote good government.

Filed Under: aiding the enemy, espionage, leaks, whistleblowers

British Intelligence Spied On G20 Officials' Phone Calls And Emails During 2009 Summit

from the of-course-they-did dept

Late Sunday, the Guardian revealed that during the G20 summit in London in 2009, the UK government made sure to intercept phone calls and internet communications of foreign politicians and officials who were attending. As the article notes, many have suspected this kind of activity, but this is the first time that evidence has been presented of it happening and that it was organized by GCHQ (the UK equivalent of the NSA). And, of course, this had nothing to do with "stopping terrorism" but was about "the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings." The listed activities:

• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates' use of computers;
• Penetrating the security on delegates' BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;
• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;
• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;
• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.

Of course, this seems like traditional espionage that has gone on for ages, which by itself is less troubling to me. What's more revealing is some of the methods -- such as the ability to get around the security on the BlackBerry. As for the "internet cafe" -- who in their right mind would use such a thing, knowing that it was almost certainly being monitored?

Filed Under: ed snowden, espionage, g20, g8, gchq, london, nsa, nsa surveillance, spying

Why The Tech Industry Should Be Furious About NSA's Over Surveillance

from the it'll-hit-their-bottom-lines dept

We've already pointed out how some tech companies, including Yahoo!, Google and Twitter have fought back against overly intrusive attempts at government surveillance (though, they often lose), and there's been some discussion about how these companies are fighting to protect their users' privacy. There's a further reason why all of the tech industry should be speaking out against NSA surveillance. Beyond just being the right thing to do to protect your users' privacy, it's likely that it also improves their bottom line. We're already starting to see the fallout from the revelations of the NSA being able to scoop up data from various tech companies, and it's going to be harmful to their revenue.

Right after the initial NSA leaks came out, David Kirkpatrick quickly wrote about how the Obama administration appeared to be sacrificing the US internet industry in a weak attempt at trying to increase security (despite no evidence that it's actually done that). The global implications of the NSA spying aren't hard to figure out -- especially when looking at how many people around the globe use these services:

It's quite possible that Obama has undermined the effectiveness and attractiveness for political speech and protest of what have been the most potent communications tools for activism in history. Political and commercial opponents of the U.S. in every country as well as governments themselves will likely alert citizens to the potential that U.S. companies could pass their info back to US authorities. This will seriously conflict with these companies' aim to maintain their platforms as neutral global environments. It could dramatically slow their global growth.

[....] Do we really want to impair such powerful tools for spreading dialogue, political discourse, and U.S. values? Is it worthwhile to impair the extraordinary financial and commercial success of these great flagships for the American economy? Does Obama want Facebook et al just to be seen as tools of American power? That is certainly not the way the average user in Bolivia sees it. They see it as a tool of their own personal power, and they don't want governments interfering with that.

Further, he points out, this will likely drive users to foreign corporations, rather than American ones, as they strive to protect their privacy:

Don't believe there are not alternatives to the U.S. Net collossi. Companies worldwide are already relentlessly working on alternatives. The second largest search service worldwide is China's Baidu, with more than 8% of searches globally at the end of last year according to ComScore. Russia's Yandex is at close to 3%, more than Microsoft's own search product. In social networking, China's Tencent has had a stunning recent success with its WeChat product, which by some counts has over 450 million users worldwide, including many tens of millions outside China. Most major Chinese Internet companies have global ambitions.

Kirkpatrick was focusing more on the consumer side, and the importance of using these tools for open and free communication. But the same issues clearly impact the business side as well. As CFO.com recently, noted, companies are gong to be a lot less trusting of US-based cloud computing companies because of these leaks. Exposing the key info to governments is a real risk:

At the end of the day, if you have mission critical data and information in the possession of a third party service provider - Cloud or otherwise – the assumption that your provider will be in full control over their environments may be drawn unto doubt. As a CFO, it is prudent to consider your next steps very carefully to ensure that your intellectual property and trade secrets do not become the assets of others.

Given the suggestions that the US government has used this surveillance as a form of economic espionage, these fears seem quite well grounded. Foreign companies are now going to be a lot less interested in using the services of American companies.

And this isn't a theoretical problem either. Sweden just issued a ruling that bars the public sector from using Google's cloud services. Meanwhile, India is already telling companies that they need to setup local servers rather than make use of US servers if they want to do business in India.

This issue is important on a number of levels, but technology companies, who rely on a global audience, should be standing up and loudly protesting the NSA's broad surveillance, because it's going to hit their bottom lines hard. The administration and the NSA are directly making it difficult for US internet companies to be global enterprises, at a time when that's exactly what we need. Is it really worth sacrificing one of the few growing and dynamic industries that the US has these days, based on some vague and unproven claims that the government "needs" all of this info? It seems like a massive cost for almost no benefit.

Filed Under: business, cloud computing, espionage, free speech, global business, india, nsa, nsa surveillance, privacy, silicon valley, sweden, trust
Companies: google, yahoo

WSJ Claims That Wikileaks Is Not Journalism But Espionage By Taking A Bunch Of Quotes Out Of Context

from the reporting! dept

The Wall Street Journal's former publisher, Gordon Crovitz, has apparently decided to follow the lead of the NY Times' former managing editor Bill Keller in misrepresenting things having to do with Bradley Manning and Julian Assange to new and impressive heights. Crovitz has a history of being fact-challenged, especially when it comes to the internet, and his latest opinion piece entitled Aiding the Enemy Isn't Journalism is an impressive work of bad journalism. Let's start from the top.

It looks as if Pfc. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange will go down in history as outliers, not trend setters. There have been no copycat leaks of massive quantities of diplomatic and intelligence documents, despite how easy the Internet makes it to leak and the fact that more than four million Americans have clearance to access government secrets.

Um, might that have something to do with the fact that the US government went absolutely apeshit over the release and charged Manning with a variety of offenses that have the possibility of capital punishment? We've already discussed the fact that the administration's reaction likely created massive chilling effects for whistleblowers around the world. Pointing to the lack of anyone willing to step into that breach doesn't mean Manning was necessarily an "outlier." It just means the government's intimidation campaign against whistleblowers may have been quite effective.

Furthermore, requiring an exact "copycat" as the standard for whether or not leaking government docs was a one-time ordeal is just silly. Prior to Manning's leak, Wikileaks had a regular stream of important documents leaked to it, so I'm not sure what Crovitz thinks he's proving here.

Among the prosecution's more than 100 witnesses will be a Navy SEAL who participated in the raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden. He'll testify to finding Manning-Assange documents on the terrorist leader's computer. Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

How much do you want to bet that terrorists have read the Wall Street Journal as well at times? How does that matter?

The key element of this espionage charge is intent: Did Pfc. Manning mean to give intelligence to the enemy? In his 35-page plea, Pfc. Manning describes himself as a whistleblower, but he doesn't explain what he was blowing the whistle on. The documents didn't disclose government wrongdoing. Instead, WikiLeaks posted unedited diplomatic and intelligence cables that identified by name Iraqis, Afghans and others who were helping the U.S. war effort. People were outed as homosexuals in countries where that makes them a target for deadly violence. Prosecutors will identify a long list of victims.

And here, Crovitz is just lying. Either that or he's ignorant. First off, Manning highlighted some key things that he was blowing the whistle on in both his chat with Adrian Lamo and in his plea. Things like the "collateral murder" episode, in which US military helicopters shot reporters. I'd consider that (and the ensuing coverup) to be "government wrongdoing." Furthermore, it's simply untrue that Wikileaks just "posted unedited diplomatic and intelligence cables." Wikileaks worked with a small group of newspapers -- including the NY Times, The Guardian and others -- to sort through the leaked cables, redact sensitive information, and highlight which stories were important.

Building a case that Pfc. Manning knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy seems open and shut. The more interesting question is how this requirement of intent applies to Mr. Assange.

No, it doesn't seem "open and shut" at all. Having the press report on something embarrassing is not "knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy." If it is, then shouldn't Bob Woodward and his White House sources be facing similar charges? After all, Woodward's book Obama's War was recommended by Al Qaeda for people to read after the death of Osama bin Laden. Woodward's book contained much more classified info, including the code names for NSA programs, details of CIA activities in Afghanistan, and details about Chinese hackers breaking into Obama's computers. But somehow that's considered legitimate reporting, but Manning's activities are "an open and shut case" of knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy? That's ridiculous. Manning gave information to the press. It may have embarrassed the US at times, but that's not the same as giving "intelligence to the enemy."

President Obama has used the Espionage Act often, invoking it six times to bring cases against government officials for providing classified information to the media—twice the number of such cases brought by other presidents since the law was passed in 1917. So it's at least curious that Mr. Assange hasn't been charged.

It's not that curious at all when you realize that Wikileaks didn't "leak" information it had privileged access to, but rather worked with other news organizations to publish information that had been leaked to Wikileaks.

Bill Keller, a former executive editor of the New York Times, recently wrote: "As a matter of law I believe WikiLeaks and the New York Times are equally protected by the First Amendment." That misses the point. Unlike WikiLeaks, the mission of newspapers is to inform the public. Mr. Assange's stated mission is to undermine the U.S. That ought to make it much easier to prove that he intends to help the enemy.

This is a total whitewash of actual history. We actually wrote about Wikileaks right when it launched, and its goal from the beginning was also to "inform the public." And, early on it had little interest in the US. When it launched, we noted that it was focused on Asia, the Middle East and Africa -- areas where they were interested in exposing corruption, which is a public service. It's only the rewriting of history that suggests Wikileaks was about anyone trying to "undermine the US." I'm sure that, now, having seen everything the US has done to go absolutely apeshit about Wikileaks, that Assange doesn't have pleasant feelings towards the country (of which he is not and has never been a citizen), but it seems like an incredible leap beyond basic facts to argue that the mission of Wikileaks was to "undermine the US."

"An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently," [Assange] wrote in 2006, "cannot act to preserve itself."

It might help to read where that came from, and note that it actually builds off a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, which says: "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship." Assange's "manifesto" may have been naive and silly, grandiose and full of itself, but that hardly makes it evidence of a plan to undermine the US specifically. It is a general call for stopping authoritarianism around the globe by increasing transparency and stopping the powers that be from communicating too much in secret, something that many people feel is a reasonable goal.

But news executives and media lawyers should think twice before treating Mr. Assange as if he were a journalist. If leaders in the news industry blur the distinction between their journalists and self-proclaimed enemies of the state like Mr. Assange, they may encourage prosecutors to make the same false equivalence.

Frankly, I'm no fan of Assange, who often seems incredibly self-important for no good reason, but Crovitz's willingness to toss out the press freedom he relies on, based on taking a few quotes and actions completely out of context to claim that a media organization can be declared the "enemy of the state" for wishing to change government to make it more open and more responsive to the will of the people is really frightening. That he doesn't realize how that can be twisted and turned around on himself and the wider Wall Street Journal directly is even more troubling.

Just for fun, how difficult would it be to make the case that Crovitz himself is an "enemy of the state"? Let's make this clear: in the following paragraph I am deliberately taking Crovitz's comments out of context, in the same way he did with Assange's (though, unlike Crovitz, I actually link to the original sources -- Crovitz just implies what he thinks Assange and Wikileaks have said most of the time). Let's go: In one recent column, he supports "a march on Washington" to change US policy to make it more immigrant friendly. So, he's advocating attacking our own government for the aid of foreigners? Hmmm... In another column, Crovitz actively calls for tech companies to become "united to go after overreaching government." That same column complains about the US government and laws they pass. That sounds like a call for revolution and overthrowing the US government. Clearly, he's an enemy of the state. In another piece he calls for ramping up the police state in the US, cheering on entrapment, which seems to clearly go against American ideals. In another piece, Crovitz cheers on France while criticizing the US government. In another story, he calls for using US taxpayer money to help Iran and China!

And that's just with a very, very quick stroll through some of Crovitz's recent opinion pieces. Meanwhile, the organization he writes for, The Wall Street Journal, is in the news today for supposedly bribing Chinese officials. Hmm...

Yes, my paragraph about Crovitz is totally bogus, but if he's willing to toss out freedom of the press, and twist statements about seeking more transparency and being against authoritarianism as being an "enemy of the state", well, he shouldn't be surprised when people show that he, too, is an enemy of the US.

Filed Under: bradley manning, espionage, gordon crovitz, journalism, julian assange
Companies: wikileaks

Bradley Manning Nominated For Nobel Peace Prize As People Begin Realizing How Damaging His Case Is To A Free Press

from the wake-up-people dept

With Bradley Manning pleading guilty to some of the lesser charges against him, Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler -- who is a possible expert witness in the trial -- has an excellent and detailed post about why the entire case against him should be seen as a threat to the nature of whistleblowing and a free press. He notes that the US prides itself on its support of the First Amendment, even in uncomfortable situations, but this case could flip that around in a very damaging way.

A country's constitutional culture is made up of the stories we tell each other about the kind of nation we are. When we tell ourselves how strong our commitment to free speech is, we grit our teeth and tell of Nazis marching through Skokie. And when we think of how much we value our watchdog press, we tell the story of Daniel Ellsberg. Decades later, we sometimes forget that Ellsberg was prosecuted, smeared, and harassed. Instead, we express pride in a man's willingness to brave the odds, a newspaper’s willingness to take the risk of publishing, and a Supreme Court’s ability to tell an overbearing White House that no, you cannot shut up your opponents.

Yet, in the case of Manning, the government is going much, much, much further. It is trying to make leaking information to the press the equivalent of espionage and aiding the enemy -- a capital offense. If you want to create chilling effects on free speech and a free press, this is how you do it. If you believe in the stories above, about the fundamental respect for the First Amendment, then the nature of the prosecution should worry you a great deal.

As for those who claim that leaking to Wikileaks is not like the Pentagon Papers or leaking something to the press, Benkler's detailed analysis shows why that's bunk. Since Wikileaks released some of the material that Manning sent them, the organization has been painted as being this evil anti-American organization, and there's also been a big spotlight on Julian Assange, who is certainly not presented as a particularly likeable character. But, as Benkler points out, before Wikileaks got that material, it was regularly seen as an upstart media property, and a great place for whistleblowers to go to expose fraud and corruption. In other words, the idea that Manning chose to go to Wikileaks to harm the US seems quite unlikely. His story of exposing wrongdoing by the US and forcing a debate on how to have America live up to its principles has more credibility when you realize just how Wikileaks was portrayed prior to Manning's material being submitted:

The reputation that WikiLeaks has been given by most media outlets over the past two and a half years, though, obscures much of this—it just feels less like “the press” than the New York Times. This is actually the point on which I am expected to testify at the trial, based on research I did over the months following the first WikiLeaks disclosure in April 2010. When you read the hundreds of news stories and other materials published about WikiLeaks before early 2010, what you see is a young, exciting new media organization. The darker stories about Julian Assange and the dangers that the site poses developed only in the latter half of 2010, as the steady release of leaks about the U.S. triggered ever-more hyperbolic denouncements from the Administration (such as Joe Biden's calling Assange a “high-tech terrorist”), and as relations between Assange and his traditional media partners soured.

In early 2010, when Manning did his leaking, none of that had happened yet. WikiLeaks was still a new media phenom, an outfit originally known for releasing things like a Somali rebel leader’s decision to assassinate government officials in Somalia, or a major story exposing corruption in the government of Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya. Over the years WikiLeaks also exposed documents that shined a light on U.S. government practices, such as operating procedures in Camp Delta in Guantanamo or a draft of a secretly negotiated, highly controversial trade treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. But that was not the primary focus. To name but a few examples, it published documents that sought to expose a Swiss Bank’s use of Cayman accounts to help rich clients avoid paying taxes, oil related corruption in Peru, banking abuses in Iceland, pharmaceutical company influence peddling at the World Health Organization, and extra-judicial killings in Kenya. For its work, WikiLeaks won Amnesty International's New Media award in 2009 and the Freedom of Expression Award from the British magazine, Index of Censorship, in 2008.

It's sometimes difficult to remember that, given everything that happened in the past two and a half years.

Benkler goes on to point out that the "precedents" that the US tries to rely on to argue that whistleblowing to the press is a form of aiding the enemy are ancient, obsolete and laughable. Many of the arguments go back to some Civil War-era precedents, and even then, when you look at the details you realize they were discussing something extremely different than what happened with Manning (i.e., the cases involved using the press to send coded messages about confidential info, not releasing the info to the public).

In the end, Benkler makes a powerful point:

If Bradley Manning is convicted of aiding the enemy, the introduction of a capital offense into the mix would dramatically elevate the threat to whistleblowers. The consequences for the ability of the press to perform its critical watchdog function in the national security arena will be dire. And then there is the principle of the thing. However technically defensible on the language of the statute, and however well-intentioned the individual prosecutors in this case may be, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror of this case and ask: Are we the America of Japanese Internment and Joseph McCarthy, or are we the America of Ida Tarbell and the Pentagon Papers? What kind of country makes communicating with the press for publication to the American public a death-eligible offense?

What a coup for Al Qaeda, to have maimed our constitutional spirit to the point where we might become that nation.

Given all of that, you can see why some have nominated Manning for the Nobel Peace Prize. While it is highly unlikely that Manning will be given serious consideration for the prize, the more you look at the case, the more you realize how dangerous the US government's own argument is here, and how much of an attack it is on fundamental principles we supposedly believe in and fight for here in the US.

Filed Under: bradley manning, chilling effects, espionage, free speech, freedom of the press, nobel peace prize, whistleblowing, yochai benkler
Companies: wikileaks

Stop Calling Electronic Espionage Cyberwar

from the because-it's-not dept

Cyberwar. Cyberwar never changes, mostly because it has never existed. Since the dawn of the new millenium, when the movie Hackers was still Congress's best approximation of the threat of compromised computers, thoughts have been spilled in the name of expunging this stupid hyperbole, this made-up threat with a trumped-up enemy. We're told the threats are everywhere, from an Iranian government that provides more laughs than danger, to a pirate wing of the Chinese military, to simple psychotic terror-hacking wings. Sadly, it is left to a pathetically small few media members to push back against the nonsense.

If stealing secrets is an act of war then America is currently at war with all of its allies. Espionage is what governments do so they don’t have to go to war...directly. What appears to be upsetting the Congressman is that the Chinese are using espionage to make money in a way that the United States didn’t think of first.

In the year 2013, after millenia of technological progress coupled with man's fear of it, the tidal wave of a complicit mainstream media could hold itself back no longer. As such, the world has been plunged into an abyss of cyber-nuclear threats, and bullshit.

The Times wasn’t content with using other peoples’ reports based on circumstantial evidence so it went out and got one of its own. The study by Mandiant has come under some fairly withering criticism.

-It doesn’t appear to say anything new. CEO Kevin Mandia: "Mandiant’s not the first company to blame China for the hacks, but it was our turn to carry the ball for a little bit." Translation = “We were working for the NYT and that’s some golden PR.”

-Did I mention it was based on circumstantial evidence? Jeffrey Carr does a superb job of explaining why Mandiant saw exactly what it expected to find and then offers several other equally valid possible perpetrators, including Russia, France and Israel.

But this threat has not, as some have predicted, caused the end of the world. Instead, the fake apocalypse was just the prologue to another crappy chapter of human history. For man had succeded destroying the fourth estate for the betterment of the cyber-defense industry.

Here is my boilerplate response on the security weakness of U.S. utilities in regards to cyber attacks: "Yes, there is a problem. It is not a crisis. To do any significant damage any such attack would most likely have to be associated with a physical attack." (The sky is not falling, Chicken Little, but I bet I could make a whole lot of money convincing you otherwise.)

Cyberwar. Cyberwar never changes, because it has never existed.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, cyberwar, espionage, exaggeration

Spy Stories From The Murdoch Empire: News Corp Fights With Itself In Grand Game Of Espionage

from the corporate-spy-vs-corporate-spy dept

Back in 2008, News Corp (owners of satellite providers DirecTV) was sued by DISH Networks for allegedly hacking their competitors satellite smartcards and flooding the market with them. News Corp (sort of) lost that lawsuit. Following News Corp's more recent high-profile hacking scandal related to News Of The World, more accusations of satellite hacking emerged, this time in the UK.

But amidst all the lawsuits and accusations, it turns out there are some other fascinating stories to be found in News Corp's world of competitive corporate hacking and private security. A new book by Neil Chenoweth, Murdoch's Pirates, digs into that world and turns up some pretty fascinating results. From an excerpt published in the Sydney Morning Herald, we get the story of some befuddled inter-agency espionage between News Corp and its own subsidiary, complete with aliases, informants, moles and a cross-border escape gambit by a spy on the run.

The story is complex, but I'll attempt to summarize. In the late 90s, NDS (the branch of News Corp that deals with private security and anti-piracy activities) sent top hacker Oliver Kömmerling undercover to Toronto, under the pseudonym Alex, with a mission: pose as a satellite pirate and infiltrate the rings selling hacked DirecTV smartcards. Oliver was also one of the hackers directly involved in the hacking of competitors' smart cards, but in this case he was being put to work defending News Corp's own satellite operation. But NDS made one big mistake: they never told DirecTV, which had its own security/anti-hacking division led by a former FBI agent, and they believed Oliver was still a bonafide satellite pirate at large. They had no idea he was now working for NDS—and one of the Canadian hackers Oliver met with turned out to be working for DirecTV, and ratted him out to them. Moreover, no matter NDS or Oliver's intentions, he was breaking the law by hacking and selling smart cards to track down the "real" hackers—so he ended up facing potential arrest or detainment at the border.

As a result, the two security divisions (both ultimately owned by News Corp) played spy-games with each other, and for the details you really should just read the whole story. It's fascinating, and quite funny—and it also raises some interesting questions about how big corporations should approach this kind of security. In one way, I actually think some of the principles here are the right way to approach things—investigate the biggest commercial pirates until you have enough evidence to either bring a lawsuit against them or pass the case along to a criminal prosecutor. That's better than having the government act as corporate police. However, big problems arise when companies start breaking the law in the course of their investigation—as much as they might want to play spy, they don't get the exemptions that law enforcement and intelligence agencies do. It's also highly troubling when their investigations are intertwined with law enforcement, such as when FACT in the UK joined the police raid on the SurfTheChannel offices—that's crossing a line between private interests and government. But then, on top of all that, you have the potential for a comedy of errors like this one: News Corp spending lots of resources to put a man in significant danger in a foreign country, for the sake of hacking its own products, and spurring its own property to put more resources into tracking down a hacker that was supposed on be on their side. At some point you have to ask: what is security worth? And how likely is it to be effective against hackers if it is disorganized to the point of farce?

Filed Under: espionage, hacking, satellite tv
Companies: direct tv, nds, news corp.

Leaked White House Report Finds No Evidence Of Huawei Spying

from the politics-at-work dept

Remember that Congressional report from last week that warned everyone to fear Huawei, the Chinese telco equipment maker? Much of the fearmongering was around Huawei's close ties to the Chinese government (and military specifically) with no actual allegations, but plenty of speculation that there could be espionage issues. Of course, now, details of a White House report have leaked, claiming that they found no evidence of Huawei spying. They do point out that there are problems with Huawei equipment that could lead to exploitable security flaws -- which is certainly an issue. Of course, that seems like an issue that security experts to deal with, rather than politicians...

Filed Under: china, congress, espionage, hype, spying, white house
Companies: huawei

Congress: Fear Chinese Networking Companies! But Ignore That China Makes All Our Networking Equipment!

from the where's-the-smoking-gun? dept

For years, there have been reports or whispers about how Chinese networking giant, Huawei, might not be trustworthy. Specifically, people talked about how China might hide trojan horses in the equipment for economic espionage or even cyberattack reasons. These rumors got so loud that Huawei last year flat out told the US government to investigate it and come to its own conclusion. Well, the House Intelligence Committee has done exactly that... and Huawei is not pleased (pdf). Despite the investigation coming at its own request, with its promises to be as open as it could be, the report slams Huawei and another company ZTE, and basically says "don't trust these companies."

Huawei has hit back hard, claiming that the report is "libel" and "utterly lacking in substance." They also note that it appears to just be political, calling it "an exercise in China-bashing and misguided protectionism." Indeed, some commentators are noting that this has all the indications of blatant protectionism, rather than a legitimate concern, with some pointing out that the Intelligence Committee seems to consistently ask Huawei to prove a negative and then bashes the company for failing.

But again and again, throughout the report, the pattern emerges: an allegation is made, Huawei denies it, without providing evidence deemed detailed enough to substantiate the denial, and the Committee is unimpressed.

As that writeup notes, Huawei has not been found guilty, but is repeatedly asked to prove its innocence, and being unable to prove conclusively that it hasn't done anything, the Intelligence Committee insists that the threat is just too great.

It is, of course, quite possible that something nefarious is going on with Huawei and ZTE. But there doesn't appear to be any detals in the report that actually proves anything. Instead, it's all just baseless allegations, followed by Huawei (and ZTE) not providing enough details to convince investigators that they're innocent. Given Congress' history of grandstanding, this certainly raises some questions.
But... an even bigger issue is that the whole focus on Huawei may be kind of silly. Yes, it's a Chinese company, but as others have noted, basically all of our electronics products are made in China, and if that country really wanted to do something questionable, why not sneak in trojan horses there as well?

One fundamental failure of all this official hand-wringing is that it neglects the fact that many if not most of the components, with the exception of certain higher-value chips like those from Intel, are manufactured in China. Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks in the U.S., Alcatel-Lucent in France and Ericsson in Sweden, all use Chinese-made parts and carry out at least some portion of the final assembly of their equipment in China.

Furthermore, that same report notes that, if this is just kicking off a trade war between the US and China over telco products, the US companies may get hurt a lot more than the Chinese:

Might China respond with its own restrictions against U.S. telecom firms like Cisco and Juniper? Is this the first shot of a telecom trade war? We’ll see.

If that happens, expect Cisco to be hurt more than Huawei. U.S. sales account for only 4 percent of its overall revenue, whereas Cisco’s operations in Asia, the Pacific Rim and China account for more than 16 percent, and China was its second fastest-growing market in that region after Japan.

Yes, it's entirely possible that Huawei and ZTE are doing something bad -- but you'd think any report claiming that would have a lot more evidence than what's in this report. Of course, considering it's by the same FUD-spewing folks responsible for CISPA, perhaps we should get used to the fact that FUD without evidence is their standard operating procedure.

Filed Under: china, congress, cybersecurity, espionage, house intelligence committee, mike rogers, protectionism
Companies: huawei, zte

Former Top Government Secrets Keeper Blasts Administration For Abusing Espionage Act To Punish Whistleblowers

from the sad dept

We've discussed the rather disappointing and immensely troubling efforts by the Obama administration, which promised more transparency and encouraged whistleblowing upon taking office, to attack whistleblowers any way it can. As noted, the administration has been using the Espionage Act -- which is supposed to be used against spies -- against whistleblowers, and has done so more often than all previous Presidents combined. Of course, the first big case against a whistleblower, Thomas Drake, completely collapsed.

Now it's come out that a former government official, J. William Leonard, who was in charge of the Information Security Oversight Office was so disturbed by the Thomas Drake case that he filed a formal complaint with both the Justice Department and the NSA and offered to testify on Drake's behalf that "there were no secrets at issue" and that he had never seen "a more deliberate and willful example of government officials improperly classifying a document."

Leonard held his role during the Bush administration (which was fairly notorious for secret keeping in its own right -- though not to this level). So some may argue that it's purely a political move. But these sorts of roles generally aren't particularly partisan, and even when there are political party differences, this sort of effort is pretty rare.

Filed Under: espionage, free speech, nsa, obama, thomas drake, warrantless wiretapping, whistleblowing, william leonard