Proposed Hungarian Law Would Allow Government To Suspend Key Human Rights Whenever There Is A 'Terror Threat Situation'

from the please-see-government-for-definition-of-'terror-threat-situation' dept

Techdirt has reported how many Western governments are playing on fears of vaguely-defined "terror" to push through laws limiting fundamental freedoms that would never otherwise have been discussed, much less approved. Amnesty International is warning that Hungary is aiming to join the club -- and go much, much further down this slippery slope:

A draft proposal to combat terrorism, apparently authored by the Hungarian government and leaked in mid-January, recommends amendments to the Constitution and to several laws to streamline the process to call a state of emergency in the country. If adopted in its current form, the proposal would have profoundly negative consequences for human rights in Hungary, including the freedoms of expression, assembly, association, and movement, and the rights to privacy and security of person. The current proposal, referred to as the "sixth amendment", devolves near absolute power on the executive in a so-called "terror threat situation," the result of which would be a full frontal assault on human rights and the rule of law.

As Amnesty International's more detailed analysis of the so-called "sixth amendment" to the country's constitution explains, the "emergency measures" available during a very vague "terror threat situation" would give the Hungarian authorities wide-ranging and almost unchallengeable powers (pdf), including:

Blanket permission to introduce undefined "special counter-terrorism measures"

Complete government control over procurement of goods and services, including over supply lines

Restrictions on the movement of foreign nationals, including refusal to enter the territory, despite Hungary's existing obligations under international law

Arbitrary restrictions on movement (including obligatory reporting requirements) for foreign nationals already lawfully present in the territory

Enhanced stop and search powers

Enhanced asset-freezing powers

Powers to seize and limit broadcasters' equipment, and to control the content and messaging of broadcasts

Powers to suspend or limit the use of postal, telecommunication and email services

Strict controls on internet usage and traffic

Limitations or prohibition on contact and communication with foreign nationals and foreign organizations

Prohibition of organized demonstrations and assemblies in public spaces

Curfews in designated areas

Restrictions on travel to and residence in certain areas of the country (including the possibility of forced relocation or evacuation, or restrictions on travel within the country)

Deployment of armed forces in the national territory

Suspension or limitation of the use of key transport and infrastructure

Amnesty notes that the proposed legislation would almost certainly fail the test of necessity and proportionality required to comply with Hungary’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. But something tells me that a government awarding itself near-totalitarian powers probably wouldn't be too worried by a slap on the wrist from a bunch of human rights judges in some distant court.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: human rights, hungary, surveillance, terror, terror threat

Former UK Bureaucrat Whines About People Happily Looking At Mobile Phones Rather Than Fearfully Spying On Everyone Else

from the wtf? dept

Yes, lots of people whine about the fact that so many people out in public these days seem to have their heads down in their mobile phones, but as we've pointed out before, things aren't necessarily so different than in the past: However, Pauline Neville-Jones, the former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the UK, has taken this form of anti-smartphone luddism to new and even more ridiculous levels, claiming that all these people looking at their mobile phones or listening to music/podcasts in public are a public nuisance, because they're not watching out for terrorists. Really.

“I think being alert is very important. I am alarmed by the number of people I see wandering along the street entirely engaged in their mobile telephones and with their ears plugged into music and they are not aware of their surroundings. You need to be aware of your surroundings,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “You do have to take some personal responsibility.”

In short: you lowly citizens, do not enjoy your life, but live in fear and report on any suspicious looking neighbors. I mean, while there have been terrorist attacks in the UK, it's not as if they're a regular occurrence. And living life in fear is hardly a productive way to live in a modern society.

However, Neville-Jones is pretty sure that living in fear is the best possible idea. Because she also encouraged the UK government to issue terrorist warnings more frequently, even if the evidence wasn't very strong:

She said the authorities had to take any intelligence seriously: “If you have got a piece of information, it may be difficult for you to assess it, you may not be comfortable about having a broader picture – part of the problem with intelligence is it can be fragmentary – but it’s a very bold government or policeman who chooses not to take precautions in such circumstances.

“I think the population on the whole would prefer them to be cautious and occasionally have closed something that it turned out wasn’t necessary – but how do we know – rather than take the risk of exposing people to dangers on which they have information, even if it’s not complete and on which they can’t necessarily totally rely.”

Of course, when you live in a world where bogus "terrorist threat" warnings come out all too often, it does the exact opposite of what Neville-Jones actually appears to want. That is, it makes people no longer trust the system at all, and become cynical about it. Wouldn't it be a lot smarter to explain to people that the real risk of dying in a terrorist attack is basically nil?

Filed Under: fear, fearmongering, mobile phones, pauline neville-jones, terror, terrorism, uk

Latest FBI Terrorist Bust Shows A Future So 'Dark' Some Eye Protection Might Be Warranted

from the I-study-bitcoin-and-violence,-I-love-my-hashes... dept

So much for "going dark." The FBI's narrative of a terrorist-filled world enshrouded in encryption continues to be disproven. For one, it appears the NSA has made tremendous strides towards cracking commonly-used encryption, thanks to its computing power and a multitude of shared Diffie-Hellman primes. For another, the super secret world of terrorism doesn't seem to be all that secret. FBI director James Comey has repeatedly pointed out that terrorism suspects are vanishing behind encrypted communication platforms, but when pointedly asked about how often this is actually happening, he could only claim "dozens of times."

Operational security may be improving over time, but as of this point, suspected terrorists are still leaving themselves exposed through easily-accessed channels. Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel took a look at the latest terrorism suspect busted by the FBI and sees nothing in the criminal complaint that suggests the agency had much trouble hunting him down.

Given Jim Comey’s repeated warnings of how the FBI is going dark on ISIS organizing, I thought I’d look at how FBI found this guy.

Ardit Ferizi, the suspect’s real name, was connected to the @Th3Dir3ctorY account on Twitter. On that account Ferizi linked to an article about the Kosova Hacker’s Security group (KHS) for which he had been interviewed. He also identified himself as the owner of KHS.

Ferizi registered the Twitter identity to a hotmail account tied to an IP address in Kosovo.

@Th3Dir3ctorY subsequently logged into Twitter from various ISPs in Malaysia, including 210.186.111.14.

The hacker who first broke into “Victim Company” on June 13, 2015 and ultimately stole the data of 100,000 people created an account with the identity KHS. On August 19, 2015 — after the company had removed the malware used to exfiltrate the data — someone identifying himself as “Albanian Hacker” and using the email “khs-crew@live.com” contacted the company and asked them to stop taking down their files (which the FBI interpreted to mean the malware left on the server). The IP address tied to the SQL injection used by the hacker was 210.186.111.14.

A Facebook account tied to the name “ardit.ferizi01” also used that IP address. Ferizi sent himself a spreadsheet via that facebook account with the stolen PII.

Facebook, Hotmail, Twitter… these aren't exactly the tools of the "going dark" trade. It could be that Ferizi is an anomaly -- a terrorist who thinks OPSEC is for losers who want to stay out of prison. But it also suggests commonly-used communications continue to be commonly used, even by people performing unlawful actions.

As Wheeler points out, the FBI calls Ferizi a hacker… and yet, for all of his alleged skills, he deployed less secretive measures than many people who have no connection to illicit deeds or today's Public Enemy No. 1: ISIS/ISIL.

Even if Ferizi had been more careful, it's likely the FBI would not have run into an encrypted dead end. While apps like WhatsApp may offer encrypted communications, their creators are often willing to hand over whatever identifying information they do have on suspected criminals. This can then be tied to more open communications platforms. It's highly unlikely that every single bit of communication between terrorism suspects happens on secured channels. And once a suspect is in custody, work can begin on forcing the person to cough up login info.

Nothing about this suggests backdoored encryption is the only way to successfully fight terrorism (and the drug war, etc.). What Comey's complaints suggest is that the FBI would definitely prefer an easier way to do this, one that doesn't involve approaching the NSA for anything it has collected or seeking court orders/ warrants to collect information from third parties. What it would like is as many communication platforms as possible to be open books, where all investigators have to do is a small amount of Googling -- or simply have full access to any account where it suspects discussions of illegal acts might be taking place.

Filed Under: ardit ferizi, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, investigation, terror

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

When We Call Criminal Acts 'Terrorism' We Destroy Our Rights And Sacrifice Our Principles

from the letting-the-terrorists-win dept

Every so often over the past decade or so in the "age of terrorism," someone has raised the issue of why we treat "terrorism" as somehow distinct from criminal activity. We let the intelligence community, rather than law enforcement, focus on terrorism (even as some in law enforcement -- notably, the FBI and the NYPD -- have tried to redefine their missions as being about terrorism). In the past, I've actually seen the wisdom of treating terrorism and criminal activities as separate, especially when terrorism was part of a larger, coordinated effort (especially when connected with state-level actors). However, these days, we're quick to call so much terrorism, it's really problematic. And not just because of the semantic argument. This hit home reading Hamilton's thought-provoking piece pointing out that "Terrorism Works."

His argument, in short, is that terrorism "works" because our reaction to it generally is the reaction of those who have been successfully terrified:

Two men with a rifle paralyze Washington, DC for weeks. Two men with a couple of homemade bombs paralyze Boston for days. One man on a plane with a dud bomb packed inside his boots has an entire nation taking off its shoes at the airport for years to come. A small group of religious zealots send three U.S. presidential administrations down a nightmarish rabbithole of drone war, torture, and total surveillance of the citizenry.

Terrorism works. Against us, terrorism works very, very well. Our collective insistence on treating terrorist acts as something categorically different than crime—as something harder to understand, something scarier, something perpetrated not by humans but by monsters—feeds the ultimate goals of terrorists. It makes us dumb. It makes us primitive. It is our boogeyman, and no amount of rational talk will drive it out of our minds.

That point, that we treat terrorism as different than crime really hits home. When there's a criminal spree -- bank robberies, burglaries, car thefts -- we may make certain changes in how we act (get better locks, security systems, etc.) but we don't seem to change our entire national psyche. We don't get terrified by crime. We take some actions to mitigate the risk, but we get on with our lives. When we call things "terrorism" we seem to let all perspective go out the window.

We switch from a mode of trying to minimize the risk to an absolutely impossible ideal of eliminating the threat entirely. That's dangerous. It tosses out anything involving cost-benefit analysis. It tosses out common sense. And, most importantly, it seems to toss out our rights, privacy and freedoms.

There's a way to deal with this and it's to treat most of these things as criminal activity, and to react accordingly. But that doesn't generate quite the same headlines or opportunities for politician grandstanding, so it probably won't happen.

Filed Under: attacks, crime, principles, rights, terror, terrorism

America, The Defensive: Wars, Terrorism And Thirty Years Of Perpetual 'States Of Emergencies'

from the US-still-tops-in-'sound-and-fury,'-trailing-the-pack-in-'significanc dept

If there's anything our government can do well, it's take a word loaded with tension and abuse it to the point of abstraction. First, we had "war." The word described the hellish events of the First and Second World War, along with armed, bloody conflicts dating back to the rebellious creation of the nation itself. Now, it's simply a term applied to any conflict with the weight of a self-serving bureaucracy propelling it. A "war" on drugs. A "war" on illiteracy. And so on.

The horrors endured by both sides of the Vietnam "conflict" were never afforded the gravity of the word "war." The same goes with every military intervention since then. We've been in Iraq and Afghanistan for years, but there's no "war" there -- at least nothing officially declared. There's only violence and death and occasional sharp bursts of more violence and death. There's a "war" on drugs in Afghanistan, but that's even more of an abject failure than our other long-running military efforts -- $7 billion spent and poppy production at an all-time high.

There's a "war" on terror in progress as well, but this brings us to another word robbed of any gravitas by constant abuse: "terror." Terrorism is what fuels our nation's security/surveillance state. But "terror" and "terrorism" -- words that once carried some weight -- are now abstractions. They're buzzwords pressed into service by the US government as a sales pitch for an illusion of security. And it all can be yours for less than a Fourth Amendment violation a day.

Which brings us to another set of loaded words that once were evocative but now have been stripped of their ability to move masses.

For the last 30+ years, the United States has been in a "state of emergency." This is perpetual and involves more than thirty concurrent states of emergency.

An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror.

Tuesday, President Obama informed Congress he was extending another Bush-era emergency for another year, saying "widespread violence and atrocities" in the Democratic Republic of Congo "pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States."

Declaring a temporary state of emergency has it uses. It temporarily expands government powers in order to facilitate speedy responses. It de-gunks the system of its red tape residue and allows help to arrive when it's needed, rather than weeks after it would have any impact.

But this isn't the case here. Temporary expansions of power have morphed into the new status quo. Since 1976, the government has declared 53 "emergencies." Almost every single one still remains in effect.

Part of the problem is the office of the president. For thirty-plus years, the office has become accustomed to the extra powers granted with each flip of the "emergency" switch. States of emergency are extended. And extended again. Only one state of emergency has been allowed to lapse during the last decade. There is a curb to this power, but like the many other oversight positions its entrusted with, Congress seemingly has no interest in fulfilling its duty.

The 1976 law requires each house of Congress to meet within six months of an emergency to vote it up or down. That's never happened.

And so, "state of emergency" becomes shorthand for government abuse. It conjures up images of towns destroyed by national disasters or extreme threats from foreign nations, but in practice it's rarely anything more than a leading indicator of governmental power grabs. What can this nation's government do during a "state of emergency?" This very small sampling of "extra powers" is chilling.

Reshape the military, putting members of the armed forces under foreign command, conscripting veterans, overturning sentences issued by courts-martial and taking over weather satellites for military use.

Suspend environmental laws, including a law forbidding the dumping of toxic and infectious medical waste at sea.

Bypass federal contracting laws, allowing the government to buy and sell property without competitive bidding.

Allow unlimited secret patents for Army, Navy and Air Force scientists.

"Emergency" is the new normal. For thirty years this nation has "struggled" under multiple states of emergency. What should be a very limited, very short-term solution to unexpected or dangerous situations is now indistinguishable from everyday life. More fear is sold by government agencies and purchased -- via tax dollars -- by a public unable to prevent the checks from clearing. Like the boy who cried wolf, the government has stripped "emergency" of its galvanizing power. Hearing a "state of emergency" being declared by the president most likely won't move hearts reflexively to throats but will prompt a certain number of hands to make protective moves towards wallets and purse strings. And it will definitely move the average American closer to cynicism than patriotism.

When everything is an "emergency" that never ends, nothing is. President Obama says there's no need to declare a state of emergency over the worldwide spread of Ebola. He's likely right, but the words are meaningless. Declare it. Don't declare it. It makes no difference to anyone outside of those directly benefiting from (likely permanent) expansion of government powers.

What is the government going to do once it's used up all the evocative words? Where does it go next? Apocalypse? The government is inherently untrustworthy, and its inability to express itself without using buzzwords, hyperbole and the broadest of strokes isn't helping.

Voter apathy? Record lows in approval ratings? These are only symptoms. The disease is the government itself and its willingness to present everything as the Worst Ever in order to erode rights, expand power and appropriate public funding.

Filed Under: fear, fud, politics, state of emergency, terror, war

Obama Administration Learns: If You Redefine Every Word In The Dictionary, You Can Get Away With Just About Anything

from the words-mean-something dept

We've written before about how the NSA uses its own definitions of some fairly basic English words, in order to pretend to have the authority to do things it probably... doesn't really have authority to do. It's become clear that this powergrab-by-redefinition is not unique to the NSA when it comes to the executive branch of the government. Earlier this year, we also wrote about the stunning steady redefinition of words within the infamous "Authorization to Use Military Force" (AUMF) that was passed by Congress immediately after September 11, 2001. It officially let the President use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those who "planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." But, over time, the AUMF was being used to justify efforts against folks who had nothing to do with September 11th, leading to this neat sleight of hand in which the military started pretending that the AUMF also applied to "associated forces." That phrase appears nowhere in the AUMF, but it's a phrase that is regularly repeated and claimed by the administration and the military.

But, it goes beyond that. As Trevor Timm highlights over at The Guardian, pretty much the entire drone bombing (drones, by the way, are also apparently "authorized" by the AUMF) of Syria involves the administration conveniently redefining basic English to suit its purposes. Let's start with the authorization for the bombing itself:

For instance, in his Tuesday statement that US airstrikes that have expanded into Syria, Obama studiously avoided any discussion about his domestic legal authority to conduct these strikes. That dirty work was apparently left up to anonymous White House officials, who told the New York Times’s Charlie Savage that both the Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) from 2001 (meant for al-Qaida) and the 2002 war resolution (meant for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq) gave the government the authority to strike Isis in Syria.

In other words: the legal authority provided to the White House to strike al-Qaida and invade Iraq more than a dozen years ago now means that the US can wage war against a terrorist organization that’s decidedly not al-Qaida, in a country that is definitely not Iraq.

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you pretend words mean something entirely different than they do. Hell, if you can just make words mean whatever the hell you want them to mean, there's no such thing as a limitation on what you can do. It's all fair game. Who needs laws when the law is basically a mad libs for you to fill in what you want?

Moving on. The definitional jujitsu covers the people who were killed by the bombing as well. Civilians? What civilians?

Buzzfeed’s Evan McMorris-Santoro reported that the Pentagon is “confident” that no civilians were killed in any of the initial airstrikes in Syria, despite a credible report to the contrary. But we have no idea what that actually means either. The White House previously embraced a re-definition of “civilian” so it could easily deny its drone strikes were killing anyone than “militants” in Yemen, Pakistan, and elsewhere, according to a New York Times report in 2012:

It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

So any casualties, if they’re men, might well be tallied as “militants” even if the actual dead people were not.

Kill anyone you want, just as long as they're men of a certain age. Thank you Pentagon dictionary. You just wiped out civilian deaths.

But why stop there? How about "imminent threats"? Because that sounds pretty scary, right? It sure is -- especially when it can mean whatever the hell the administration wants:

In addition to conducting airstrikes against Isis is Syria on Tuesday, the Obama administration also announced it had also targeted the “Khorasan Group”, a separate al-Qaida-linked terrorist organization. They justified it by claiming that the group was plotting an “imminent” attack on the US. Before last week, hardly anyone had heard of the Khorasan Group (in fact, even their name was classified), so it’s difficult to judge from public information just how threatening their alleged plot really was. But when you add in the administration’s definition of “imminent,” it becomes impossible.

Take, for example, this definition from a Justice Department white paper, which was leaked last year, intended to justify the killing of Americans overseas:

[A]n “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons will take place in the immediate future.

To translate: “imminent” can mean a lot of things … including “not imminent”.

This is pretty neat. Anything else you've got for us? How about "combat" or "ground troops"? They're not what you think they are either, because a malleable language can do anything:

As the New York Times’s Mark Landler detailed over the weekend, White House has “an extremely narrow definition of combat … a definition rejected by virtually every military expert.” According to the Obama administration, the 1600 “military advisers” that have steadily been flowing in Iraq fall outside this definition, despite the fact that “military advisers” can be: embedded with Iraqi troops; carry weapons; fire their weapons if fired upon; and call in airstrikes. In the bizarro dictionary of war employed by this White House, none of that qualifies as “combat”.

Yes, the English language changes over time and that's generally a good thing. But we're not talking about the way the word "decimate" once meant to lop off 10% and now means "destroy everything." This is a deliberate misrepresentation of things.

Hell, this seems to go further than Orwell even imagined with his authoritarian use of language and rewriting of history. In this case, rather than just saying "we were always at war with Eurasia," he could have just changed the definition of "we," "were," "always," "at," "war," "with," and "Eurasia," and it would have been that much more powerful.

Filed Under: aumf, authorization to use military force, civilians, combat, definitions, english, fud, imminent, language, obama administration, terror, war

Proposed Terror Law Would Allow Australia's Entire Internet To Be Monitored With Just One Warrant

from the terrorists-have-already-won dept

Recently, Techdirt has been following the Australian government's moves to bring in intrusive new surveillance powers. The "justification" for all this is, of course, "terrorism", which has become the lazy politician's excuse for everything, and has already led to episodes of ridiculous over-reaction in Australia. So it hardly comes as a surprise that the worsening situation in the Middle East has brought forth even more of the same, in the form of the "Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill 2014" (pdf). An accompanying Explanatory Memorandum (pdf) gives a good summary of its rationale:

1. Australia faces a serious and ongoing terrorist threat. The escalating terrorist situation in Iraq and Syria poses an increasing threat to the security of all Australians both here and overseas. Existing legislation does not adequately address the domestic security threats posed by the return of Australians who have participated in foreign conflicts or undertaken training with extremist groups overseas ('foreign fighters').

2. This Bill provides a suite of measures which are specifically designed to strengthen and improve Australia’s counter-terrorism legislative framework to respond to the foreign fighter threat. It will provide additional powers for security agencies to deal with the threat of terrorism within Australia and that posed by Australians who participate in terrorist activities overseas. It will further counter terrorism through improving border security measures and by cancelling welfare payments for persons involved in terrorism.

The Bill is a huge collection of amendments to dozens of existing laws, including those that regulate police search powers. Here's CNET's description of a major change in this field:

The Bill introduces the concept of a "delayed notification search warrant" -- often referred to in the United States as a 'no-knock warrant' -- which would allow Australian Federal Police to search premises without prior warning and "without having to produce the warrant at the time of entry and search".

The Explanatory Memorandum details an important new capability relating to computers:

As computers and electronic devices are becoming increasingly interconnected, files physically held on one computer are often accessible from another computer. Accordingly, it is critical that law enforcement officers executing a search warrant are able to search not only material on computers located on the search premises but also material accessible from those computers but located elsewhere. This provision would enable the tracing of a suspect's internet activity and viewing of material accessed by the suspect through the use of that equipment.

That seems rather broad; an article in the Sydney Morning Herald reveals just how broad:

On Wednesday afternoon, [Australian Attorney-General] Senator Brandis confirmed that under the legislation, ASIO [Australia's spy agency] would be able to use just one warrant to access numerous devices on a network.

The warrant would be issued by the director-general of ASIO or his deputy.

"There is no arbitrary or artificial limit on the number of devices," Senator Brandis told the senate.

This means that the entire Australian internet could be monitored by just one warrant if ASIO wanted to do so, according to experts and digital rights advocates including the Australian Lawyers Alliance, journalist union the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance and Electronic Frontiers Australia.

Whether or not new powers are needed to address the problem of "foreign fighters" returning home, clearly that ability to monitor the entire Australian Internet with just one warrant is completely disproportionate, an assault on citizens' privacy, and ripe for abuse by the authorities. It underlines once again that abrogating basic freedoms in order to "fight terrorism" simply means the terrorists have already won.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: asio, australia, george brandis, laws, surveillance, terror, warrants

Keith Alexander Tells Senators He Can't Think Of Any Other Way To Keep The US Safe Other Than Bulk Metadata Collections

from the oh,-he-knows-other-ways...-he-just-doesn't-like-them dept

NSA head Gen. Alexander once again appeared before the Senate to defend his agency's actions and to deliver the talking points in an effort to head off a number of pieces of legislation aimed at rolling back the NSA's powers.

If the NSA has a chance to hold off what now appears to be near inevitable, it will need to update its rhetorical ploys. Alexander offered nothing much in the way of new arguments, which is only going to hurt the agency's position. It looks as though the old stuff isn't really working anymore. His assertion that the Section 215 program has led to 50+ terrorist attacks averted has disintegrated. Sen. Leahy raised additional questions about the efficiency of the 702 program (internet metadata) in the hunting terrorists. No answer was forthcoming but the agency head implied it would take much longer than next Wednesday's hearing to come up with an answer.

No surprises here either, as Gen. Alexander almost literally played the 9/11 card.

"Metadata is a way of knowing where those books are in the library, and a way of focusing our collection... to knowing, where are the bad books," Alexander says.

He holds up an index card – it's meant to be an old-style card-catalog card (sorry, millennials) – on which are listed the categories of information encompassed by "metadata": time, date, duration, contact numbers.

Then he returns to the 9/11 attacks and says, as he always does, that the attack might have been stopped by a metadata collection program like the USA has now.

Might have been. Except it wasn't. Sen. Leahy called Alexander out for using this tired ploy.

Leahy jumps in and says the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks also has been put down to a failure to communicate within the intelligence community. US agents had the info they needed, they just failed to share it with one another.

There's no tread left on those tires, General. The Guardian points out this is the first time Alexander has been interrupted while deploying the "could have prevented 9/11" argument.

This wasn't the only used-up rhetoric Alexander deployed. He defended the bulk collections by claiming he "didn't know" a "better" way to protect Americans from terrorism.

"I don't know a better way to do it,” he said. "It's like holding onto a hornets' nest. We're getting stung. You've asked us to do this for the good of the nation … nobody's thought of a better way. We can't let the nation down."

That was Alexander's justification. There's no other way but a bulk, untargeted metadata collection containing millions of records of non-suspects.

But when Alexander says there's no other way to keep Americans safe, he's (no surprise) lying. There is another way and Alexander knows it because the NSA was forced (by the FISA court) to accomplish the task of fighting terrorism without being given access to millions of non-relevant phone records. FISA Judge Walton's orders, which followed on the heels of the admission of widespread abuse of the Section 215 collections, forced the NSA to seek court approval just to search what had previously been collected.

Since the March 5, 2009 FISA Court order, the Court's approval has been required for each selector before it is tasked for BR FISA metadata analysis. On Mar 21 NSA resumed manual access to BR FISA metadata, allowing chaining [redacted] of FISA Court-approved selectors associated with [redacted] following multiple operational and technical reviews to ensure compliance.

As Judge Walton noted then, the collection itself seemed to be overkill and prone to abuse.

The minimization procedures… have been so frequently and systemically violated that it can fairly be said that this critical element of the overall BR regime has never functioned effectively.

Nearly all of the call detail records collected pertain to communications of non-US persons who are not the subject of an FBI investigation… [or] are communications of US persons who are not the subject of an FBI investigation… and are data that otherwise could not be legally captured in bulk by the government.

So, there are other ways to accomplish this and the agency has had to work within stricter limitations in the past. The multiple flaws in Alexander's assertions are highlighted in this statement. Most of what's collected isn't pertinent to investigations and is, in fact, bordering on illegal. The only thing saving Alexander's favorite collection is some very favorable readings of the Third Party Doctrine and secret interpretations of the laws governing these data hauls.

Legislative efforts being made aim to roll back some of this power, something Alexander can't bear to see happen. If nothing else, a neutral storage site that can only be accessed by court-aprroved RAS selectors would be a start. But according to the chief spy, these limitations would lead to another 9/11. He wants it all and he wants unfettered access. There are other ways of compiling and searching metadata. Alexander knows this, but he has no interest in a more targeted approach.

This is Alexander's "hornet nest." Any stings he collects while handling it are solely his fault. If he doesn't like the pain associated with handling the hornet's nest, maybe he shouldn't have fought so hard to keep holding it.

Filed Under: 9/11, bulk data collection, fud, keith alexander, nsa, surveillance, terror

Why Does The NSA Focus So Much On 'TERROR!' When PRISM's Success Story Is About Cybersecurity?

from the odd dept

We've mocked the NSA for the way it always reverts to FUD about "terrorists" to show how "successful" programs like PRISM have been, but then also reverts to talking about cybersecurity as a focus to make the surveillance seem more like it's about protecting people, rather than spying on them. However, as some of the latest revealed documents show, perhaps the NSA has its talking points all mixed up. There's plenty to discuss concerning the revelations about the NSA spying on French phone calls, but some people have noticed that, while some of the presentation documents revealed with that story were revealed before, there are a few new ones as well, including this one: The key thing here is the report that the NSA was able to use its FAA authority (apparently via both PRISM and "upstream collection" -- which is tapping directly into the backbone via telcos) to figure out that someone, perhaps the Chinese, had gotten access to a defense contractor's network and was either preparing to, or at least had the ability to get 150 gigs of important data out. The NSA alerted the FBI which alerted the contractor and they plugged the hole the same day. While that certainly seems like a good thing, it's not entirely clear stopping such hacking is really worth giving up a ton of privacy, though it does show, again, why Keith Alexander keeps demanding access to pretty much everything. Of course, you'd think that the NSA would be a bit more forward in promoting this success story, rather than its bogus claims about stopping terrorist attacks, which have fallen apart under scrutiny.

The other interesting slide is this one: It shows some of the differences between PRISM and the upstream collections, both of which the NSA believes are authorized under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. PRISM involves being able to collect specific data from the 9 specific companies which have been named (Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Skype, AOL, Paltalk, YouTube), while "upstream" is what the NSA gets from tapping the backbone via telcos. "DNR Selectors" are the phone call metadata collected under a different program (Section 215 of the Patriot Act) which they apparently can filter the upstream data collection against. "DNI" is internet data (email addresses and such). Once again, it looks like tapping the backbone provides a hell of a lot more data, but it lacks the ability to "access stored communications," which they get via PRISM.

The other interesting tidbit to me, is the "direct relationship" claim. Note that with PRISM, it says "only through FBI," which suggests a reason why the PRISM companies have insisted that they've never been involved in any NSA program. It looks like they may have only had to deal with FBI requests (and associated FISA court orders). It's just that the data the FBI gets is then shared with the NSA.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, nsa, nsa surveillance, prism, terror, upstream collection