DOJ Says It's Time To Add Ransomware Attacks To The Ever Expanding 'War On Terror'

from the not-everything-needs-to-be-terrorism dept

High-profile ransomware attacks -- some the FBI have tentatively attributed to Russian hackers -- have provoked the kind of response none of us should be in any hurry to welcome. But it's been coming to this point for years.

Malicious hacking efforts -- some of them targeting government agencies -- have been normal for as long as we've had computers and networks. And it's something our own surveillance agencies engage in, whether to search for terrorists or to simply cripple foreign governments. Throughout it all, there's been a steady call by some legislators and officials to turn cyber wars into actual wars. Or, at the very least, allow US government agencies to engage in more offensive hacking efforts, rather than simply play defense.

War -- or anything a government can call a "war" -- is the one simple trick governments use to obtain more power for themselves at the expense of the rights of those they serve. That's why the War on Drugs and the War on Terror are more known for mass imprisonment and mass surveillance than any solid victories over the concepts and products the US has declared war against.

Ransomware is the next thing in line for the "war on" treatment. A DOJ internal memo first referenced by Reuters and shared (by the DOJ!) with Gizmodo is equating ransomware attacks with terrorism.

The U.S. Department of Justice plans to take a much harsher approach when pursuing cybercriminals involved in ransomware attacks—and will investigate them using strategies similar to those currently employed against foreign and domestic terrorists.

The new internal guidelines, previously reported by Reuters, were passed down to U.S. attorney’s offices throughout the country on Thursday, outlining a more coordinated approach to investigating attacks. The new guidance includes a stipulation that such investigations be “centrally coordinated” with the newly created task force on ransomware run by the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

This equation of ransomware with terrorism was made explicit by the acting deputy attorney general, who told Reuters this "model" has been used to handle terrorism investigations but not for malicious cyberattacks.

What this means is information will be shared with other agencies as well as oversight and legislators whenever investigators, analysts, and private sector requests for assistance involve ransomware or other online threats, like botnets and forums selling hacking tools and stolen credentials.

What this will mean in practice remains to be seen. The War on Terror hasn't exactly boosted anyone's confidence in the federal government's ability to respond effectively or appropriately to this omnipresent threat. It has saddled us with the TSA and dozens of useless "Fusion Centers." It has created an FBI cottage industry that allows informants to radicalize random citizens into 20-year prison sentences using tactics that often appear to cross the line into entrapment. It has expanded the buying power of the military and allowed local law enforcement to wield its hand-me-downs against American citizens. It has expanded the reach and grasp of multiple intelligence agencies -- some of which have had their own hacking tools leaked/purloined and wielded by the same state-sponsored hackers and cybercriminals these agencies were supposed to be taking down.

Without a doubt, ransomware is a threat to Americans. It has crippled major industry players, resulting in panic buying and price spikes following production dips and logistics nightmares. And it's only a matter of time before critical systems and agencies are held hostage at virtual gunpoint until ransoms are paid. But considering the underlying infrastructure that allows ransomware attacks to take place is also something millions of non-criminals around the world use regularly, allowing the government to treat the greatest communication tool ever invented as Terrorist HQ isn't likely to make it better or safer for anyone using it.

Filed Under: criminals, doj, fbi, ransomware, war on terror

General Wesley Clark: Some WWII-Style Internment Camps Are Just The Thing We Need To Fight Domestic Radicalization

from the perhaps-separate-restrooms-for-'radicals'-might-curb-their-enthusiasm dept

So, we're engaged in a war of sorts. Against capital-T "Terror." It's a very ambiguous war that couples troop deployments with a dense mesh of surveillance programs. As is the case with all wars, there are those "up top" who see the only way to fight back -- or just "secure" the nation -- is to expand the government's powers.

Many horrible decisions have been made during times of war. In the past, some of these moves may have seemed more justifiable. The enemies were more tangible. They moved above ground, using vehicles and infantry. The stakes were higher, with countries being invaded and their citizens forced to live in uninterrupted terror. The United States government did some very regrettable things -- most notably, the forced incarceration of US citizens of Japanese descent in internment camps.

Most people look back at this with disgust -- an example of what not to do during times of war. But a lot of that hindsight vanished along with the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The government took control of the situation in the immediate aftermath, with an emphasis on "control." Spying powers and military authorities were vastly expanded. An entirely new agency -- the Department of Homeland Security -- came into being and swiftly became the Border Patrol-on-steroids, expanding "papers, please" harassment across, and into, the country. The TSA set up shop in every airport and swiftly proved more capable of abusing power than securing air travel.

Fourteen years on and very few lessons have been learned. Many government officials seem to still be under the impression that every day is another September 11th. Or would be, if not for these expanded powers. There but for Executive Order 12333 go we as a nation. Security has a cost, but the estimate keeps changing.

Officials keep hoping we can head off another attack by catching "radicals" and "extremists" before they can do any damage. The FBI has set up an entire cottage industry based on little more than entrapment. Maybe these people being "radicalized" are just too hard to find. Maybe that's why the FBI has to do 90% of the "radicalization" on its own before swooping in to save the nation from daydreamers and shit-talkers who have the misfortune of being "befriended" by its undercover agents.

General Wesley Clark has a solution. In an interview with Thomas Roberts on MSNBC, General Clark (who was last seen at Techdirt telling Congress that P2P software was a threat to national security) suggests a return to the WWII good old days might be the only way to stamp out the threat of self-radicalizing "lone wolves." (via Crooks and Liars)

We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We've got to cut this off at the beginning. There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated. They don't get a job, they lost a girlfriend, their family doesn't feel happy here and we can watch the signs of that. And there are members of the community who can reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.

So, the nation's intelligence agencies need to be looking for underemployed weirdos who can't maintain a relationship or exude positivity about their current situation. Then they need to do something about these potential "lone wolves." Like, put them all in one place where we can keep an eye on them.

But I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology. In World War II if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.

Free speech for some, indefinite detainment for others! USA! USA! USA!

So, if these people are radicalized and they don't support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle fine. It's their right and it's our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. And I think we're going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.

Nothing says "you're never getting out of here" like "for the duration of the conflict." Does anyone foresee an end to the War on Terror in their lifetime? (You youngsters milling around towards the back waiting for your Ubers and Amazon drone deliveries are encouraged to speak up.) How about in their kids' lifetimes? There is no endgame. There is only constant wariness and the endless grasping for more control and power.

This is a war we can't end. We can't even bow out and awkwardly "agree to disagree" like we did in Vietnam and Korea. It is the true "forever war." Even if ISIS becomes just another Al-Qaeda and fades from prominence, something else will take its place. There will always be those who feel violence is the only way to get results. But General Clark wants certain kinds of speech to be punished with neverending imprisonment. He wants a return to one of the most morally-dark moments in American history. For national security.

Filed Under: free speech, internment camps, war on terror, wesley clark

An Innocent Pressure Cooker Pays The Price In The War On Terror

from the so-dangerous-it-needed-to-be-blown-up-only-yards-away-from-its-original-location dept

We talk a lot about "disruption" here at Techdirt, although generally not in this context.

Police Lt. Kimberly A. Schneider told The Associated Press that Capitol Police officers on routine patrol spotted the parked, unoccupied vehicle on a street on the mall west of the Capitol around 5 p.m. Sunday.

“Further investigation revealed a pressure cooker, and an odor of gasoline was detected,” Schneider said, adding a Capitol Police bomb squad was called in because the vehicle was deemed “suspicious in nature.”

She said the squad known as the Hazardous Devices Section destroyed “items of concern in the vehicle including the pressure cooker” at about 7:45 p.m. after temporarily closing off the area on the long Memorial Day holiday weekend. She did not immediately identify the other items but said only that “this safe disruption produced a loud ‘bang.’

That's how the "boots on the ground" War on Terror ends continues: not with the whimpering of surveillance state enthusiasts in legislators' clothing, but with the "bang" of a "safe disruption." It also continues with the delivery of witless soundbites from Officer Obvious.

"Odor of gasoline" emanating from a vehicle that operates on gasoline? Do tell. Or how about this, just in case we citizens wonder whether blowing up disrupting common items frequently carried in vehicles is the way it's just going to be from now on?

Authorities have noted that pressure cookers have been used in the past to create explosive devices.

Presumably, these same authorities can also be counted on to point out that planes have been hijacked in the past, just in case anyone has forgotten the "devices" used in high-profile terrorist attacks on American soil.

While I appreciate the fact that law enforcement officers don't really have the luxury of gambling with other people's lives by playing "Bomb or not?" when coming across items like these, there's a definite lack of restraint in play here. The person who owned the vehicle was located and charged (because how can you not after you've smashed his back window, blown up his personal property and, as a last step, performed a "hand search" that turned up nothing suspicious) with "operating after revocation": driving without a valid license.

Israel Shimeles operates a food truck (SUSPICIOUS!) and moved those items to his parked car to make more room in his truck. He has since apologized and calls his own actions "stupid." That's the world we live in today, where a propane tank and a pressure cooker laying in plain sight in a parked vehicle results in destroyed property and apologies from the person who's now out a pressure cooker, propane tank and rear window.

He also says he'll "be more careful" in the future. This suggests the "explosive" items will be safely stowed in his food truck or out of sight in a parked vehicle. This will also keep the inherently suspicious items out of the view of passing police officers -- the sort of precaution one would assume an actual terrorist would take to ensure his or her "disruption" isn't "disrupted."

And let's not overlook the dissonance of the solution. The items were deemed a threat to others in the crowded National Mall area, but could be safely "disrupted" a few yards away from their original location. While I understand it's not safe to carry around possible explosives, this fix seems about as respectful of the public's safety as the TSA's policy of tossing seized liquids ("potential explosives," to TSA agents) into nearby trash cans. If something may blow up spectacularly (and dangerously), why is it suddenly "safer" a few feet removed from its origin? Yes, it was a "controlled" detonation, but there's a lot of incongruity to the visual of the "disruption" tossing debris within a foot or two of the vehicle the supposed bomb was removed from.

I don't expect authorities to do nothing when spotting possible explosive devices. I'm just disappointed that this is the new standard for "suspicious" items -- a mindset that will outlast terrorist-"targeting" government surveillance programs, apparently. Because two people used pressure cookers in their terrorist attack, pressure cookers are now viewed as bombs by default -- despite 99.999% of pressure cooker purchases resulting in nothing more than cooked food.

Filed Under: overreaction, police, pressure cooker, threats, war on terror

There Is No End In Sight For The Self-Perpetuating 'War On Terror'

from the we-have-always-been-at-war-with-terrorism dept

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
~Alexis de Tocqueville

War generally used to refer to a finite state, but as with the endless "War on Drugs," the War on Terror has scattered the US military around the globe to battle terrorists with no endgame. Hillary Clinton speculated back in 2009 that we would be in Afghanistan (in one form or another) for another "50 or 60 years." Greg Miller's article for the Washington Post quotes unnamed senior administration officials as stating these operations are "likely to be extended for at least another decade." [As this story was being prepped, the administration announced plans to pull all American troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Seeing as this completely contradicts the Pentagon's claim that a large fighting force will need to be maintained seemingly indefinitely, we're probably better off believing this when we see it.] Eleven years and counting from the 9/11 attacks and the "action" only seems to be heating up. Glenn Greenwald, writing for The Guardian, points out the current administration's escalation of this undeclared war.

The policies adopted by the Obama administration just over the last couple of years leave no doubt that they are accelerating, not winding down, the war apparatus that has been relentlessly strengthened over the last decade. In the name of the War on Terror, the current president has diluted decades-old Miranda warnings; codified a new scheme of indefinite detention on US soil; plotted to relocate Guantanamo to Illinois; increased secrecy, repression and release-restrictions at the camp; minted a new theory of presidential assassination powers even for US citizens; renewed the Bush/Cheney warrantless eavesdropping framework for another five years, as well as the Patriot Act, without a single reform; and just signed into law all new restrictions on the release of indefinitely held detainees.

Much of this has to do with the very nature of government itself: surviving a round of budget cuts is a larger victory than actually achieving stated goals. We've seen evidence of this perverted incentive in the TSA, which has done everything it can to protect its turf in order to remain "essential" enough to receive funding year in and year out.

Another bonus for those in power is that long-lasting wars create an atmosphere conducive to the expansion of government control. Barry Ritholtz at The Big Picture quotes James Madison's warning about the corruption of executive power by the act of war:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

We have a government (and various industries) that has no interest in ending the War on Terror. In order to maintain the new, post-9/11 status quo, the "war" must continue. There is simply no incentive to end it, at least nothing that outweighs the side benefits.

If you were a US leader, or an official of the National Security State, or a beneficiary of the private military and surveillance industries, why would you possibly want the war on terror to end? That would be the worst thing that could happen. It's that war that generates limitless power, impenetrable secrecy, an unquestioning citizenry, and massive profit.

Limitless power and impenetrable secrecy. That's what we've got and that's what's in store for us in the future. The FISA Amendments Act, which was recently extended for another half-decade with scarcely an objection, sanctions warrantless wiretapping on American citizens thanks to a "secret" interpretation of the law's language by a secret court. A so-called "National Counterterrorism Center" is collecting a giant database of information on innocent Americans, an action so breathtakingly wrong that it raised objections from the DHS. Law enforcement officials, with assistance from the FBI and CIA, have spent years violating the rights of US citizens who happen to be Muslim in hopes of uncovering terrorist plots. To date, they've found nothing. If certain "security" legislation fails to make its way through the proper channels, executive orders are issued to make it a reality.

The politicians and private companies benefiting from our ongoing battle will be pleased to learn that our "anti-terrorist" actions are going a long way towards making the War on Terror self-perpetuating.

There's a good reason US officials are assuming the "War on Terror" will persist indefinitely: namely, their actions ensure that this occurs. The New York Times' Matthew Rosenberg examines what the US government seems to regard as the strange phenomenon of Afghan soldiers attacking US troops with increasing frequency, and in doing so, discovers a shocking reality: people end up disliking those who occupy and bomb their country:

"Such insider attacks, by Afghan security forces on their Western allies, became "the signature violence of 2012", in the words of one former American official. The surge in attacks has provided the clearest sign yet that Afghan resentment of foreigners is becoming unmanageable, and American officials have expressed worries about its disruptive effects on the training mission that is the core of the American withdrawal plan for 2014. . . .

"But behind it all, many senior coalition and Afghan officials are now concluding that after nearly 12 years of war, the view of foreigners held by many Afghans has come to mirror that of the Taliban. Hope has turned into hatred, and some will find a reason to act on those feelings.

Our government has, over the past decade, ordained murder (targeted killing), torture (enhanced interrogation techniques) and kidnapping (extraordinary rendition) under the guise of "fighting terrorism." The administration has granted itself the power to authorize war/warlike tactics anywhere in the world without requiring congressional authorization. The conscription of local law enforcement into the War on Terror has availed them of the same questionable procedures and tactics, further eroding our rights as citizens.

Rather than make the world safer, our actions have created more enemies. And it's only going to get worse. Laws, especially far-reaching legislation that grants unprecedented powers, rarely, if ever, come back "off the books." The feeling that this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better is particularly disheartening because the "better" half of that sentence looks like its chances are moving from "slim" to "none."

It's no surprise that the War on Terror is endless. It is, however, discomfiting to hear administration officials confirm this. What began as merely overreaction to a horrendous attack has become the focal point of two administrations -- a vague quest against a poorly-defined "evil" that has been used to excuse criminal activities by national security agencies and as impetus for a swiftly-growing surveillance state.

Filed Under: surveillance, war on terror