New Report: Germany Caved To France On Copyright In A Deal For Russian Gas

from the horse-trading:-the-public-internet-for-russian-gas dept

In the hours leading up to the vote in the EU Parliament on the EU Copyright Directive, the German publication FAZ (which has been generally supportive of the Directive) has released quite a bombshell (in German), suggesting that the reason Germany caved to France on its terrible demands concerning copyright was in order to get France's approval of the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia.

If you don't recall, the German delegation had actually pushed back on the more extreme versions of Article 13 -- and, in particular, had demanded that a final version have a clear carve-out for smaller companies, so as not to have them forced out of business by the onerous demands of the law. However, after some back and forth, Germany caved in to France's demands, with many left scratching their heads as to why. However, some noted the "coincidence" in timing, that right after this, France also withdrew its objections to the pipeline which is very controversial in the EU (and the US, which is threatening sanctions).

FAZ notes that there were whispered rumors about Germany and France basically trading these two proposals, with Germany effectively selling out the open public internet in exchange for easier access to Russian gas. However, it has now seen documents that support this claim. Germany's economic minister, Peter Altmaier apparently promised startups that Germany would not cave on its promise to create a carve-out for all companies with less than 20 million euros in revenue per year -- only to drop that demand the very next day.

According to FAZ, the French delegation directly suggested the idea of France backing away from its opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Germany backed away from its concerns about Article 13. And, voila, within days, Germany gave up on its demands regarding Article 13 and, a few days later, France switched sides and agreed to support the pipeline. So, as the German MEPs go to the polls tomorrow, we'll see if they think it was a fair deal to sell out the public internet in exchange for some Russian gas.

Filed Under: article 13, copyright, eu copyright directive, france, germany, internet, nord stream 2, oil, pipelines, russia

Can Russia Actually 'Unplug' From The Internet?

from the it-won't-be-easy dept

As you may have heard, Russia recently announced a plan to run a "test" by which it would disconnect from the internet:

Russia is considering a plan to temporarily disconnect from the Internet as a way to gauge how the country's cyberdefenses would fare in the face of foreign aggression, according to Russian media.

The general idea behind this is to see what would happen if other countries (such as the US...) decided to try to cut Russia off from the internet:

The bill would require Internet providers to make sure they can operate if foreign countries attempt to isolate the Runet, or Russian Internet. It was introduced after the White House published its 2018 National Security Strategy, which attributed cyberattacks on the United States to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

As part of the experiment, communications oversight agency Roskomnadzor would examine whether data transmitted between Russia's users can remain in the country without being rerouted to servers abroad, where it could be subjected to interception.

Of course, this shouldn't come as a huge surprise. Over the past few years, Russia has made a bunch of fairly significant moves leading up to this. In 2014, it passed a new law demanding that user data remain on Russian soil, and threatened multiple US companies for failing to do so. Also, almost exactly two years ago, a top Putin adviser hinted at a similar plan to experiment with disconnecting the country from the internet to see how resilient a domestic Russian internet would be.

So the real question is whether or not this would actually work. Wired has a pretty thorough analysis of just how difficult this might prove for Russia:

“What we have seen so far is that it tends to be much harder to turn off the internet, once you built a resilient internet infrastructure, than you’d think,” says Andrew Sullivan, CEO of Internet Society, a nonprofit that promotes the open development of the internet.

[....]

The process by which it would do so remains challenging. “In short, Russia would need to do two things: Ensure that the content Russians seek to access is actually located somewhere in the country, and ensure that routing and exchanges could all occur domestically,” says Nicole Starosielski a professor at New York University and author of The Undersea Network.

[...]

No matter how much Russia has prepared, however, unanticipated issues will almost certainly arise if it tries to dissever from the rest of the world. “I’m absolutely sure that’s the case. It may not break from the perspective of their major infrastructure grinding to a halt, but that’s a risk that they’re taking,” says Paul Barford, a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who studies computer networking. It’s difficult for internet service providers to know precisely how reliant they are on every piece of infrastructure outside their borders. “Because of the complexity across all levels of the protocol stack, there could be catastrophic failures somewhere,” says Barford.

There's a lot more in the Wired piece, but it certainly suggests that Russia might find it more difficult than it expects -- but I guess that's the reason why the country is considering this as a "test," rather than finding out how well it works out of necessity at some later date. To some extent, this sounds like a nation-state level experiment along the lines of Kashmir Hill's recently journalistic experiment in cutting out the various tech giants, which alone proved to be significantly harder than most people would have expected.

There is, of course, a larger point here. The value and importance of the internet is built quite heavily into the fact that it is a borderless, global network that allows information sharing and communication nearly anywhere. There have, obviously, been some limited challenges to that (China being the most notable), but it still remains mostly true. There have been increasing fears of a "fragmenting" internet, and Russia toying with this "test" only drives home how real that fragmentation may become in the very near future.

Filed Under: data localization, disconnect, fragmentation, internet, localization, russia

Russian Site-Blocking Leads To An Explosion In 'Pirate' Sites, Tiny Dip In Piracy

from the oops dept

Over the past couple of years, we've discussed Russia putting in what is supposed to be an extreme site-blocking policy, in part to curb piracy. There has been a fair amount of mostly anecdotal evidence that has suggested that the video pirate market in Russia has actually increased during this time, while there is very concrete evidence as to the insane amount of collateral damage that the site-blocking policy has caused. Some found this puzzling, but new data out of Russia suggests that the effects on piracy are muted at least in part because of an explosion in new piracy sites or mirrors of blocked sites.

For example, the company says that in 2017, the number of torrent sites offering content to the Russian market sat at around 1,300. However, last year – in the face of overwhelming blocking measures – that number grew to around 2,000.

In 2018, torrent sites accounted for just over a fifth of the ‘pirate’ market (streaming platforms dominate with more than 70%) but due to multiple links to the same content appearing on most platforms, torrent links accounted for around 40% of the available links to pirated material. Further underlining the importance of torrents, despite a smaller share of the market, the company reports that in 87% of cases, the first public copies of premiere titles appeared on torrent sites first, before spreading out to other platforms such as streaming and hosting sites.

Meanwhile, the number of streaming sites increased slightly as well. The report also notes that over all traffic to so-called pirate sites in Russia has "dipped slightly", causing something of a victory cry to come from the content industries with offerings in the country as, I suppose, the overall per-capita, per-site-available piracy rate fell. But, for such a draconian regime, huge amounts of collateral damage coupled with an increase in pirate sites and a tiny drop in traffic to those sites, this isn't exactly a glowing review.

So of course Russia is doubling down on it.

Meanwhile, Russia is further investing in site-blocking with the introduction of a new system. Telecoms watchdog Roscomnadzor reports that to date, 660 large telecoms operators have switched to a new mechanism which allows sites to be blocked more efficiently.

“The new mechanism allows service providers to receive data from the Unified Registry [national blacklist] for only updated or changed entries instead of downloading the entire data set,” Roscomnadzor reports.

This may, again, show a slight increase in the Russian government's effectiveness in its arms race against filesharing sites, but this isn't going to change the fundamental reality that site-blocking is apparently barely effective, with disastrous results for far too many innocent sites.

Filed Under: copyright, piracy, russia, site blocking

Emma Best's New Transparency Project Targets Russian Leaks She Says Wikileaks Refuses To Touch

from the actual-transparency dept

Turnabout, as they say, is only fair play.

If you hadn't noticed, Wikileaks isn't quite the transparency operation it used to be. Staffers who routinely helped rein in Assange's less noble impulses long ago left the effort behind, leaving us with the often bizarre comedy that is Wikileaks in 2019. And while that doesn't justify the misguided DNC lawsuit or the potential threat to transparency posed by government efforts to prosecute leakers, that doesn't change one undeniable fact: modern Wikileaks is increasingly seen in infosec and policy circles as a poorly-written joke, long-since buried under the rubble of numerous scandals and Assange's bulbous ego.

That's not to say that Wikileaks didn't provide an invaluable service in its prime. Its early operations lit a much-needed fire under a press routinely terrified of speaking truth to power, especially in regards to the United States' often bipartisan, mindless unchecked international militarism. These days, however, Wikileaks is more about pandering to MAGA kids for bitcoin donations, selectively avoiding transparency, and levying silly legal threats against the press rather than actually adhering to its core mission of a decade ago.

Still, there's no doubt that Wikileaks of old contributed to a marginally braver press, even if it remains obvious that a lot of work on this front still needs to be done. And its influence continues to be mirrored by subsequent incarnations looking to improve on the formula, even as those efforts criticize Wikileaks' increasingly erratic behavior in the wake of a percussive parade of unflattering revelations.

Case in point: transparency activist and long-time infosec reporter Emma Best has unveiled the creation of Distributed Denial of Secrets. The organization is expected to make waves this week with the publication of hundreds of thousands of hacked emails and gigabytes of leaked documents, some of which come from previous hacks of Putin aides like Vladislav Surkov.

Unlike Wikileaks, DDoS will focus more on compiling and curating information, much of it coming from past hacks and breaches, building a sort of museum and library of now easily-accessible information. Especially information related to the Russian government and its bone-grafted relationship to Russian organized crime; stuff, project supporters claim, Wikileaks has steered clear of in recent years:

"A lot of what WikiLeaks will do is organize and re-publish information that’s appeared elsewhere,” said Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley’s International Computer Science Institute. “They’ve never done that with anything out of Russia."

DDoS differs from WikiLeaks in that it doesn’t solicit direct leaks of unpublished data—its focus is on compiling, organizing, and curating leaks that have already appeared somewhere in public. “Emma Best, I think, is someone who will actually do a good job,” said Weaver, citing Best’s aggressive use of the Freedom of Information Act to extract documents from recalcitrant U.S. agencies. “Things get so scattered that putting it all into one place is a huge benefit."

According to the group's FAQ, the biggest difference between itself and Wikileaks is it won't advocate for any particular ideology, putting the data itself back as the priority, a concept pretty clearly lost by Wikileaks in recent years:

"Distributed Denial of Secrets (“DDOS”) is a transparency collective, aimed at enabling the free transmission of data in the public interest. We aim to avoid any political, corporate or personal leanings, and to act as a simple beacon of available information. As a collective, we do not support any cause, idea or message beyond ensuring that information is available to those who need it most - the people."

Needless to say, Best and company are trying to manage the "creeping paranoia" that comes with playing information patty cake with Vlad and friends, having already mitigated what she calls "cyber shenanigans" the group believes was aimed at disrupting Friday's information dump. Also needless to say, this new operation, like operations before it, will likely be challenged by criticism when it comes to determining how far such transparency efforts should go (in fact it already has). But the fact remains that as long as the press refuses to fully embrace transparency, there's an evolving role for organizations just like this one.

In the interim, Best has been having fun with Wikileaks supporters who haven't been handling her criticism of the organization particularly well:

If you've been tuned in to Wikileaks and its newer supporters' aggressive disdain for even the most tempered criticism, things should definitely get interesting when the full data trove drops this week.

Filed Under: emma best, journalism, julian assange, leaks, russia
Companies: ddos, distributed denial of secrets, wikileaks

Contrary To Media Claims, There's No Evidence Russia Was Behind Fake Net Neutrality Comments

from the a-game-of-telephone dept

Earlier this week we noted how the Ajit Pai FCC again shot down journalist FOIA attempts to find out who was behind the millions of bogus comments that plagued the agency's net neutrality repeal. The move prompted one of the agency's commissioners, Jessica Rosenworcel, to accuse her own agency of a coverup--since Pai refuses to work with either journalists or law enforcement investigations trying to uncover the truth of who was behind the comment fraud.

In an uncharacteristically snarky statement (pdf) issued the same day, Pai attempted to dismiss the criticisms as purely partisan attacks. But he also acknowledged something we already knew...that 500,000 or so of the email addresses used in the FCC's comment form came from users purportedly on Russian ISPs. From his statement:

"...one finds the now-standard overheated rhetoric about “net neutrality” (omitting, as usual, the fact that the half-million comments submitted from Russian e-mail addresses and the nearly eight million comments filed by e-mail addresses from e-mail domains associated with FakeMailGenerator.com supported her position on the issue!)."

So this is nothing new. Media reports had noted previously how 444,938 of the millions of bogus comments happened to have Russian email addresses. The New York Times' FOIA-focused lawsuit against the FCC also specifically highlights these addresses (many of which actually supported retaining net neutrality), likely in the hopes this would lend a little extra gravitas to court consideration.

Yet in the modern news media cycle, which can often resemble a game of telephone, numerous media outlets somehow rushed to the conclusion that Pai had "confirmed" that Russia must have been behind the efforts to stuff the ballot box at the FCC. Just a smattering of examples from this week:

That's fairly remarkable, given that's not what Pai said, nor is there any proof that "Russia" itself interfered with the net neutrality public comment period.

While many of these stories were more nuanced than the headlines (which writers often don't get to pick), the reality is the headlines are all a pretty large majority of people read. The Daily Dot report in particular was a huge hit on Reddit, upvoted more than 66,000 times and circulated far and wide. Not too surprisingly, the media's collective headline errors quickly drove many on Twitter to accuse Pai of being a Russian agent himself in dire need of prosecution:

Even Tim Wu, the Columbia law professor who coined the term net neutrality, circulated one of the headlines claiming Russia itself had been "linked" to the comment fraud:

Here's the problem: while these 500,000 email addresses used in the FCC's form appear to be Russian, that may not mean all that much.

Whoever stuffed the FCC comment section with farmed support (and in some cases opposition) for the repeal used all kinds of tricks to generate the bogus identities, including a bot that pulled names alphabetically from a hacked database of some kind. Many of the names used were dead people. Anybody could have plugged Russian email addresses into some of these form-generated responses, without actually representing the Russian government or even Russian people, thanks largely to an FCC website that didn't even remotely try to ferret out spam or bullshit.

Putin's adoration of hacking and disinformation is a legitimate problem, even if many may disagree on the breadth of the impact the Russian leader's digital dick waving has had on the real world and elections. And while it's certainly possible that Russia's attempts to pour gasoline on our already napalm-esque levels of dysfunction extended to the net neutrality fight, there's simply no evidence actually supporting that claim right now. Nor did Pai state that there was.

In similar cases, the evidence that inevitably appears usually points to a more obvious culprit: industry. These kinds of fake comments have been plaguing multiple US government agencies and proceedings in the states over the last few years, from proceedings at the Labor Department trying to rein in financial fraud, to efforts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aimed at thwarting payday loan fraud.

More often than not it's the companies that benefit from the shenanigans that are found to be behind gamesmanship like this, since more than a few DC policy shops now offer this kind of greasy bullshit as an added value service for clients hoping to shape or influence public perception and government policy. The goal is usually to not just to create bogus support for bad policy, but to help undermine trust in the public comment process--often the only chance many Americans have to voice their thoughts on these decisions. Using Russian email addresses in bulk certainly would go a long way toward achieving that goal.

In the case of net neutrality, whoever was behind the fake comments was obviously keen on trying to downplay and discredit the millions of bipartisan Americans pissed off by the FCC's blatant handout to giant ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter (Spectrum). Numerous investigations (at the GAO and NY AG, for example) and next February's net neutrality court battle are likely to, sooner or later, shed light on who carried out this operation, who funded it, and why Pai's FCC is trying so hard to keep most of these investigations from getting to the truth.

Filed Under: ajit pai, bad reporting, comments, fake comments, fcc, net neutrality, russia

UK Hosts Theatrical Facebook Hearings On 'Fake News'... Undermined By Creating Fake News Itself

from the good-for-show,-not-good-for-truth dept

As you may have heard, the UK Parliament put on quite a show on Tuesday in what it claimed was an attempt to go after Facebook for its "fake news" problem. Of course, in the process, the hearings themselves created some fake news that undermined the entire point. To be clear, upfront, Facebook does have many issues that should be taken seriously. But this hearing did not get at those, and actually showed how, when political grandstanding is the focus, it's quite easy to create "fake news" in the process. Still, boy, was that hearing theatrical. It was apparently the first time since 1933 that the UK Parliament had representatives from other countries participate in a hearing, and so there were nine other countries present, including Canada, France, Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, Latvia, Argentina and Singapore. On top of that, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the bad decision of refusing to participate in the hearings, giving the Committee the opportunity for this classic photo op:

Facebook's VP of policy, Richard Allan appeared instead, and despite even him admitting that it didn't look great that Zuckerberg wasn't in attendance, he is actually someone who would probably be better positioned to answer actual substantive questions about Facebook's policies in these areas.

But that would only matter if the inquisitors were interested in discussing substantive policy matters. And it did not appear they did. They were there for the grandstanding, repeatedly blaming Facebook for reflecting back human nature and all its foibles. There were questions about what Facebook was doing to protect democracy -- which I don't think is actually Facebook's job (indeed, seems like that's the government's job, no?). But, of course, the main highlight of the show was the organizer of the hearing, MP Damian Collins, who you'll recall seized a bunch of documents, under questionable circumstances, from a US business exec who was visiting the UK.

The "documents" were supposed to be the star of the show, and Collins dropped the apparent big bombshell during the hearing: Facebook had, he claimed, actually been alerted to an attempt by Russian's to mess with the site all the way back in October of 2014. As summarized by Wired:

Collins cut right to the heart of the documents during the hearing. In October of 2014, he said, a Facebook engineer notified the company that entities with Russian IP addresses had been using a Pinterest API to pull out three billion data points a day from the Facebook friends API. Collins wanted to know what happened after that information was brought forward.

"Was that reported or was it kept, as so often seems to be the case, kept within the family?" he asked.

Ooooh. Intrigue.

Except... it was bullshit. Facebook revealed the redacted emails in question and it showed that while an engineer had initially raised concerns that it appeared that Russian IP addresses were using the Pinterest API access to get lots of data, further investigation showed that he was wrong. The initial email says that the person is seeing calls from "Russian IPs" and is having the Site Integrity team investigate, though it's quickly followed up with a note that "those might not have been Russian IPs after all, we are digging."

Then, on the very same day -- indeed, just a little over two hours after the initial alarm of Russian IPs -- the person emails that it was a false alarm.

If you can't see that, it says:

Ok, thinks are not as bad as they seemed, apologies for the trash. There was a series of unfortunate coincidences that made me think the worse.

1/ We verified that the endpoint has not been "leaked" and calls seem to be coming all from Pinterest servers.
2/ We verified that the volume of calls per day is actually around 6M successful and 40M failed due to invalid access.

In short, it wasn't 3 billion data points and it wasn't Russia. Also, it wasn't abuse of the system. And yet, the way Collins raised the issue, he suggested that Facebook was aware that Russians had abused the API to access 3 billion data points and then kept it secret. In other words, Collins' explanation of what happened was 100% incorrect and misleading. It was misinformation. Or, as some like to call it: fake news.

And while it will not be, this should be the lesson that the folks who held this hearing should learn: there are all sorts of ways to make incorrect claims. Some of them on purpose. Some of them by accident. Some of them because of confirmation bias of what you want to be true. And expecting Facebook to magically understand what is what... is insanity.

So, not that MP Damian Collins will respond to me (perhaps I should set up a dramatic photoshoot of an empty chair with his nameplate), but I'm wondering. Does he think Facebook should block all the stories reporting on his false claim about them supposedly "hiding" news of Russians abusing the API to extract 3 billion data points? Or would that, you know, be crazy?

Filed Under: api, damian collins, disinformation, fake news, grandstanding, interference, mark zuckerberg, richard allan, russia, uk
Companies: facebook

Russian Government Hits Last Independent News Outlet With A $338,000 Fine

from the death-by-338,000-cuts dept

The Russian government took another consolidation-of-power step recently. Deciding to exercise a 2012 law written specifically to give it leverage against independent press outlets, a Moscow court has hit the country's last remaining opposition magazine with a massive fine.

The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned an exorbitant fine imposed on the independent news outlet The New Times. A Moscow court on October 26 ordered the outlet to pay 22.3 million rubles (US$338,000) for failing to provide financial information under Russia's "foreign agents" law and ordered the outlet's editor-in-chief Yevgenia Albats to pay an additional fine of 30,000 rubles, TV Dozhd reported.

Albats suspects this fine is the result of an October 22nd interview with opposition politician and vocal Putin critic Aleksei Nalvany. The hefty fine should result in the closure of The New Times, which would be exactly what the Russian government wants.

The law used to effectively push the magazine into bankruptcy went live in 2012. It requires all non-government operations that receive foreign funding to register as "foreign agents." This law was upgraded last year in response to a new US policy requiring similar "foreign agent" registration for Russian state-run news outlets. This newer twist allows for direct targeting of press outlets. But, even without this addition, the Russian government still could have crippled The New Times. As Agence France-Presse reports, part of The New Times' funding involves donations collected by a registered charity.

With this move, Russian citizens will now be limited to state-run publications. The internet will still provide opportunities for Russians to read news not controlled by the state, but those too will eventually dry up as the Russian government continues to assert its control of this medium as well. The internet was the last refuge of The New Times, which had to cease publication of its print edition due to a lack of funding.

The court decision itself is suspect. Rather than pretend the fine (supposedly triggered by single failure to update registration paperwork three months ago) could be discussed or disputed, the court made its decision without input from the defendants. New Times' staff and lawyers were not present and evidence showing the outlet had made a good faith effort to rectify its error was not presented.

The court case, which began back in April, suddenly accelerated towards a hefty fine following the publication's interview with a prominent Putin critic. There are additional details contained in The New Times' post on the subject -- including its justifiably dour announcement that it will be appealing this decision -- harbors no expectations any Russian court will reverse this decision.

If it all plays out the way everyone involved believes it will, the Russian government will have secured a "100% Complete" trophy for press suppression. If it can just keep the internet in line, it will be able to return the country to its former Cold War glory.

Filed Under: fine, foreign agents, news, reporting, russia
Companies: the new times

The President's Phone OPSEC Continues To Be, Well, Crap

from the ill-communication dept

By now the President's unwillingness to adhere to anything close to reasonable security when using his mobile phones has been made pretty clear. Whereas the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and the NSA usually work in concert providing state leaders with "hardened" devices that are heavily encrypted, routinely updated, and frequently swapped out, Trump has refused to use these more secure DMCC-S devices (effectively a Samsung Galaxy S4 device utilizing Samsung's Knox security architecture), because it might infringe on his ability to Tweet.

Past reports have suggested that security advisors have at least convinced him to use two iPhones: one locked down specifically for Twitter, and the other specifically tasked with making phone calls. But as a new report this week from the New York Times makes clear, Trump's lax phone security is being pretty routinely taken advatage of by foreign intelligence agencies:

"When President Trump calls old friends on one of his iPhones to gossip, gripe or solicit their latest take on how he is doing, American intelligence reports indicate that Chinese spies are often listening — and putting to use invaluable insights into how to best work the president and affect administration policy, current and former American officials said."

Senators sent a letter to Trump back in April expressing concern at his abysmal operational security, but that message still hasn't gotten through to the aggressively cocksure President, according to the Times report:

"Mr. Trump’s aides have repeatedly warned him that his cellphone calls are not secure, and they have told him that Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on the calls, as well. But aides say the voluble president, who has been pressured into using his secure White House landline more often these days, has still refused to give up his iPhones. White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them."

The Times quotes numerous anonymous experts who say their claims come from sources in these foreign governments. And while the Times story doesn't get technical about how foreign intelligence agencies are tapping into the calls, many surmise they're exploiting, among other things, the cellular network Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signalling System 7 in the US) flaw that the industry has been refusing to fix for the better part of the last decade. The flaw can be exploited to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations if strict countermeasures aren't adhered to.

That said, security experts were quick to point out there's an ocean of ways that foreign intelligence agencies could be intercepting Trump's calls in transit via passive decryption as the calls travel between the phone and cellular tower:

Of course intel agencies could also be targeting his most-commonly called individuals on the other end. As is his way, the President was quick to issue a Tweet insisting the entire story was false...while using his iPhone:

To let Trump's ego dictate his security practices is obviously still problematic, potentially even to the point of putting lives at risk. It's also incredibly ironic given all the time Trump spends complaining about potential Chinese spying habits, including the Trump-driven blacklist of all Huawei products in the United States. It's a blackballing that's not based on much in the way of evidence, but is certainly appreciated in a protectionist capacity by the U.S. networking and cell phone vendors who didn't want to have to compete with cheaper Chinese gear. Huawei, for its part, was quick to make light of the report:

Trump's phone habits continues to be a giant middle finger toward transparency (like adhering to the Presidential Records Act) and fundamental opsec, but neither Trump nor the adults tasked with his daily supervision appear to much care.

Filed Under: china, donald trump, iphone, listening in, opsec, phones, russia, surveillance, wiretap