US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Peter Lemkin]

The Police State of America

Sun, 09/29/2013 - 11:26

Freedom's just another word...'


by:
Dave LIndorff



I no longer recognize my country.
Back in 1997, after two years living in China, and five more living in Hong Kong, during which time, as a correspondent for Business Week magazine, I slipped in and out of China regularly as a journalist to report on developments there, I got a good dose of life in a totalitarian society. When I alit from the plane in Philadelphia where my family and I were about to start a new chapter of our lives, I remember feeling like a big weight had been lifted off my chest.
The sense of freedom was palpable.
Almost immediately, though I got an inkling that something was amiss. An art teacher in Upper Dublin, the suburban town where we had bought a house, had just been arrested, charged with theft of $400 in school art supplies. Of course, my initial reaction was, "Great school district we're in, if the teachers are stealing from the school!"
The teacher, Lou Ann Merkle, who had been arrested and finger-printed pending arraignment, was fired and was facing trial on a felony charge of stealing public property. But in a few weeks, as I followed the story in the local weekly paper, it became clear that there had really been no theft (she was taking old supplies which were being replaced with new ones, intending to bring them to a local community center used by low-income children who went there for day care and after-school care. Moreover, when stopped by the principal and told to return the supplies, she grudgingly complied. She was arrested anyway later). I learned over subsequent weeks of news reports that Merkle actually was being hounded by an obsessive power-tripping school administration simply for being an "activist" and outspoken teacher. A school board hearing I attended was packed in December of that year with over a hundred angry parents and former students of Merkle's demanding that the board drop its case against her. It did not, but a county judge had the good sense to do exactly that, ruling that "no crime occurred here." (Merkle, who got her job back with back pay, later sued the school district and won a significant judgement against it.)
This was one small example of government tyranny run amok but since then I have seen it become the norm in a United States where people are now being arrested for almost everything -- kids jailed without trial for shoplifting, hitchhikers jailed for arguing, correctly, with cops that it is not illegal for them to thumb for a ride, non-white youths in many cities stopped and frisked for "walking while black or hispanic" and then getting busted on trumped up charges (resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, disturbing the peace, etc.) when the cops find no guns or drugs on them, protesters beaten and gassed and jailed for simply trying to exercise their First Amendment rights.
But that is just the surface.
Massive arrays of NSA computers now monitor every communication of every American. To what end?
As a journalist working in China, I had to watch my back all the time. Spies from the Ministry of State Security (China's KGB) or one of the local Public Security Bureaus that operate under its jurisdiction would secretly follow my movements, and would keep track of whoever I interviewed. In one case, after my departure, they badly beat a source to the point that he had to be hospitalized for reconstructive surgery to his crushed cheek bones (his entire groin region was also left black and blue after his brutal beating). The man's offense? He had shown me around a rural region where peasants were improving their lives by sending some of their children off to the city to do construction jobs.
I thought this kind of monitoring and intimidation of sources was a nightmare back then in China.
Now it's happening here in the US, only worse. Not only is the National Security Agency monitoring every phone call I make, every email I send, every person I interview and every article I write--something Chinese police were not capable of at least in those days--but the agency can be watching what I write at this moment, as a type these letters on my keyboard.
How do I know they're watching me? Well, of course I can't know for certain, because they won't tell me on the grounds of "national security," which has rendered the Freedom of Information Act moribund. But courageous leakers from within the NSA, most notably Edward Snowden, have released documentary evidence proving that the super-secretive spy agency has been monitoring all communications between Americans and foreign contacts, most notably with countries like Russia or Iran or other nations which the US views as "enemies."
In my case, as a journalist, I write often on international issues, as when I broke the story exposing an arrested killer in Lahore, Pakistan as a CIA operative [1], or wrote about how Israeli commandos executed a 19-year-old unarmed American peace activist in their raid on a Turkish-flagged peace flotilla headed for Gaza [2]. I am also an occasional guest on news programs on RT-TV [3], the Russian state television news network, and on Iran's state-owned Press TV [4]. For one year, ending about a year ago, I was contracted to write a weekly column for PressTV's English-language website [5], for which I was paid $200 per column. Because of US sanctions against Iran's banking business, Press TV said they would pay me quarterly, rather than monthly, to minimize the paperwork hassles. This meant that for a year I was getting wire transfer of about $2600 every quarter from an Iranian bank. You can be sure I was on the NSA's radar for that, if nothing else.
(Interestingly, I had more editorial freedom with that job than I've ever had writing for any news organization in the US. I picked my own topics for columns, Press TV agreed not to make any changes, or cuts, in my pieces, and I got paid in full whether they ran a story or not. Only once in the course of a year of columns did they not run a piece -- an article I did on the debate over the death penalty in the US. The editor claimed that it was too "US-focused" and that it would "not be of interest" to Press TV readers. Even articles I wrote that included criticisms of Iranian policy ran unaltered.)
Even if everything I say on the phone or write on my computer, every site I visit online, every place I travel, every person I interview, is not being monitored by the NSA, the fact that we know the government is doing this, and is capable of doing this thanks to billions of dollars being spent in secret on massive super-computer arrays in Maryland and Utah, the damage is done. I have to assume that it is being done, and adjust my mind and my working methods to that reality. Recent arrests, convictions and lengthy sentences handed out to journalists' sources also mean I have to assume that my promises of anonymity to sources -- a key to any good investigative journalism -- are empty. The reality is that unless I resort to secret meetings in person with sources, or start using throw-away cell phones, the NSA can find out who I am communicating with.
A total police state may not exist (yet) in the US in the sense of the one I lived in for a while in China, where people get taken away without charge, not to be seen again for years, if ever, and where people get executed without even the semblance of a fair trial on trumped-up charges of corruption or assaulting an officer or threatening state security. But because of the extent of the spying secretly being done now in the US by the NSA, the FBI and other US "law-enforcement" and national "security" agencies, we have to live now as though it is happening.
Because it could be happening to any one of us, and because all that data they are collecting could be used later against us.
Not only that, but the data being collected can be manipulated, clipped and doctored, so as to make us look guilty of something when we are not.
Make no mistake. What happened to Lou Ann Merkle was an example of a police state at work. A courageous woman who dared to speak out against subtle and sometimes not so subtle racism in the school where she worked, and someone who dared to speak her mind on any topic, was threatened with jail by a school superintendent who felt he had absolute power and who in fact had the power to have her arrested on his say-so on trumped-up charges.
Today we are all Lou Ann Merkle. Step out of line or stand on principle and we lose jobs, face arrest, and become the targets of the NSA's spy machine.
(Incidentally, by way of full disclosure, Lou Ann is a friend and the wife of my ThisCantBeHappening! colleague John Grant. I met them both at that Upper Dublin School Board hearing mentioned above.)
There is one difference between China, the police state I lived in and reported on back in the 1990s, and the US police state of today. In China, everyone knows they are living in a totalitarian society. There is no confusion about that. Chinese people know that their news is controlled, that they are being watched and monitored on phone and online, and that if they step out of line there will be dire consequences for them and their families. Many do anyway, or resist in smaller ways.
In the US, most Americans remain blissfully unaware of how their freedoms have been stolen or surrendered. While they may say they don't trust the government and don't believe the news, they actually do to a remarkable extent. That's the only explanation for society allowing -- even encouraging -- the government to continue to execute people based on a findings of a court system that is clearly corrupt to the core. It's the only reason so many people say they support government spying to keep us "safe from terrorism." It's the only reason local communities, like mine here in Upper Dublin, keep voting more money for small armies of police officers equipped with M-16s and SWAT gear in places that violent crime is almost unheard of.
The United States is not China, or the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Not yet. But I'm afraid we are almost there, and in some ways we are in a worse place than the peoples of those societies, because so many of us here in the so-called "Land of the Free and the Brave" are living with eyes willfully closed to what is happening to us and to our country.
Americans can still wake up. We seem to have done that in the latest attempt by the war-mongers in Washington to launch yet another bloody war in the Middle East. But there is still far too much sleep-walking going on.
Benjamin Franklin once famously said: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
We Americans have been surrendering our liberty since the dawn of the national security state in 1947. The process accelerated with President Nixon's "war" on crime and especially his "war" on drugs, which militarized police. Things grew worse under subsequent presidents, including President Reagan, who accelerated the Drug War,
 and President Clinton, who gutted habeas corpus. Presidents George W. Bush and current President Obama have stolen more freedom from Americans than any leaders in the country's history, with the acquiescence of most citizens.
Clearly we are not safer now. And as Franklin warned so presciently, when it comes to our liberties, we are now in danger of losing it all.
As it is, I no longer recognize the country I grew up in and in which I began my journalism career.

[David Guyatt]

stopped and frisked for "walking while black or hispanic"

Jeeezuz.

The USA is moving back to the past.

[Peter Lemkin]

stopped and frisked for "walking while black or hispanic"

Jeeezuz.

The USA is moving back to the past.

Quite a sizable number of those stopped and frisked for walking while not white were beaten, mistreated, arrested, and some tazered, shot or killed - while not even resisting. Yes, our new motto: 'Forward Into The Past!'......I can think of NO good development in the USA in decades - and all of these have been taken back. The current halt of the government is to do several things on the part of the most Neanderthal and Reich-wing - but primary is to stop Obamacare [a semi-privatized and only partly effective measure to try to help those who don't have any medical insurance], Obama, abortions and access to birth control, etc. States could opt out of certain features that primarily effect the poor and non-whites...and half of the states [most of the old South and a few in the West] did - containing half of the population who will never benefit the little bit Obamacare can offer, theoretically and will suffer more. Absolutely the least advanced 'developed' nation on earth and moving backwards, not forwards...becoming authoritarian if not totalitarian and all rights and freedoms, financial advantages of a 'developed' nation being lost to all but the top few.....the rest are now serfs in cities and suburbs...soon many to be serfs in prison camps, IMO.

[David Guyatt]

"Reich-wing"!

::laughingdog::

I'm going to steal that one...

[David Guyatt]

Interesting, not surprising...

NSA and GCHQ target Tor network that protects anonymity of web users Top-secret documents detail repeated efforts to crack Tor
US-funded tool relied upon by dissidents and activists
Core security of network remains intact but NSA has some success attacking users' computers
Bruce Schneier: the NSA's attacks must be made public
Attacking Tor: the technical details
'Peeling back the layers with Egotistical Giraffe' document
'Tor Stinks' presentation full document
Tor: 'The king of high-secure, low-latency anonymity'


James Ball, Bruce Schneier and Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian, Friday 4 October 2013 15.50 BST
Jump to comments (816)


One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers. Photograph: Felix Clay
The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.
Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.
But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.
Another top-secret presentation calls Tor "the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity".
Tor which stands for The Onion Router is an open-source public project that bounces its users' internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls "relays" or "nodes", to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.
It is relied upon by journalists, activists and campaigners in the US and Europe as well as in China, Iran and Syria, to maintain the privacy of their communications and avoid reprisals from government. To this end, it receives around 60% of its funding from the US government, primarily the State Department and the Department of Defense which houses the NSA.
Despite Tor's importance to dissidents and human rights organizations, however, the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have devoted considerable efforts to attacking the service, which law enforcement agencies say is also used by people engaged in terrorism, the trade of child abuse images, and online drug dealing.
Privacy and human rights groups have been concerned about the security of Tor following revelations in the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica about widespread NSA efforts to undermine privacy and security software. A report by Brazilian newspaper Globo also contained hints that the agencies had capabilities against the network.
While it seems that the NSA has not compromised the core security of the Tor software or network, the documents detail proof-of-concept attacks, including several relying on the large-scale online surveillance systems maintained by the NSA and GCHQ through internet cable taps.
One such technique is based on trying to spot patterns in the signals entering and leaving the Tor network, to try to de-anonymise its users. The effort was based on a long-discussed theoretical weakness of the network: that if one agency controlled a large number of the "exits" from the Tor network, they could identify a large amount of the traffic passing through it.
The proof-of-concept attack demonstrated in the documents would rely on the NSA's cable-tapping operation, and the agency secretly operating computers, or 'nodes', in the Tor system. However, one presentation stated that the success of this technique was "negligible" because the NSA has "access to very few nodes" and that it is "difficult to combine meaningfully with passive Sigint".
While the documents confirm the NSA does indeed operate and collect traffic from some nodes in the Tor network, they contain no detail as to how many, and there are no indications that the proposed de-anonymization technique was ever implemented.
Other efforts mounted by the agencies include attempting to direct traffic toward NSA-operated servers, or attacking other software used by Tor users. One presentation, titled 'Tor: Overview of Existing Techniques', also refers to making efforts to "shape", or influence, the future development of Tor, in conjunction with GCHQ.
Another effort involves measuring the timings of messages going in and out of the network to try to identify users. A third attempts to degrade or disrupt the Tor service, forcing users to abandon the anonymity protection.
Such efforts to target or undermine Tor are likely to raise legal and policy concerns for the intelligence agencies.
Foremost among those concerns is whether the NSA has acted, deliberately or inadvertently, against internet users in the US when attacking Tor. One of the functions of the anonymity service is to hide the country of all of its users, meaning any attack could be hitting members of Tor's substantial US user base.
Several attacks result in implanting malicious code on the computer of Tor users who visit particular websites. The agencies say they are targeting terrorists or organized criminals visiting particular discussion boards, but these attacks could also hit journalists, researchers, or those who accidentally stumble upon a targeted site.
The efforts could also raise concerns in the State Department and other US government agencies that provide funding to increase Tor's security as part of the Obama administration's internet freedom agenda to help citizens of repressive regimes circumvent online restrictions.
Material published online for a discussion event held by the State Department, for example, described the importance of tools such as Tor.
"[T]he technologies of internet repression, monitoring and control continue to advance and spread as the tools that oppressive governments use to restrict internet access and to track citizen online activities grow more sophisticated. Sophisticated, secure, and scalable technologies are needed to continue to advance internet freedom."
The Broadcasting Board of Governors, a federal agency whose mission is to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy" through networks such as Voice of America, also supported Tor's development until October 2012 to ensure that people in countries such as Iran and China could access BBG content. Tor continues to receive federal funds through Radio Free Asia, which is funded by a federal grant from BBG.
The governments of both these countries have attempted to curtail Tor's use: China has tried on multiple occasions to block Tor entirely, while one of the motives behind Iranian efforts to create a "national internet" entirely under government control was to prevent circumvention of those controls.
The NSA's own documents acknowledge the service's wide use in countries where the internet is routinely surveilled or censored. One presentation notes that among uses of Tor for "general privacy" and "non-attribution", it can be used for "circumvention of nation state internet policies" and is used by "dissidents" in "Iran, China, etc".
Yet GCHQ documents show a disparaging attitude towards Tor users. One presentation acknowledges Tor was "created by the US government" and is "now maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)", a US freedom of expression group. In reality, Tor is maintained by an independent foundation, though has in the past received funding from the EFF.
The presentation continues by noting that "EFF will tell you there are many pseudo-legitimate uses for Tor", but says "we're interested as bad people use Tor". Another presentation remarks: "Very naughty people use Tor".
The technique developed by the NSA to attack Tor users through vulnerable software on their computers has the codename EgotisticalGiraffe, the documents show. It involves exploiting the Tor browser bundle, a collection of programs, designed to make it easy for people to install and use the software. Among these is a version of the Firefox web browser.
The trick, detailed in a top-secret presentation titled 'Peeling back the layers of Tor with EgotisticalGiraffe', identified website visitors who were using the protective software and only executed its attack which took advantage of vulnerabilities in an older version of Firefox against those people. Under this approach, the NSA does not attack the Tor system directly. Rather, targets are identified as Tor users and then the NSA attacks their browsers.
According to the documents provided by Snowden, the particular vulnerabilities used in this type of attack were inadvertently fixed by Mozilla Corporation in Firefox 17, released in November 2012 a fix the NSA had not circumvented by January 2013 when the documents were written.
The older exploits would, however, still be usable against many Tor users who had not kept their software up to date.
A similar but less complex exploit against the Tor network was revealed by security researchers in July this year. Details of the exploit, including its purpose and which servers it passed on victims' details to, led to speculation it had been built by the FBI or another US agency.
At the time, the FBI refused to comment on whether it was behind the attack, but subsequently admitted in a hearing in an Irish court that it had operated the malware to target an alleged host of images of child abuse though the attack did also hit numerous unconnected services on the Tor network.
Roger Dingledine, the president of the Tor project, said the NSA's efforts serve as a reminder that using Tor on its own is not sufficient to guarantee anonymity against intelligence agencies but showed it was also a great aid in combating mass surveillance.
"The good news is that they went for a browser exploit, meaning there's no indication they can break the Tor protocol or do traffic analysis on the Tor network," Dingledine said. "Infecting the laptop, phone, or desktop is still the easiest way to learn about the human behind the keyboard.
"Tor still helps here: you can target individuals with browser exploits, but if you attack too many users, somebody's going to notice. So even if the NSA aims to surveil everyone, everywhere, they have to be a lot more selective about which Tor users they spy on."
But he added: "Just using Tor isn't enough to keep you safe in all cases. Browser exploits, large-scale surveillance, and general user security are all challenging topics for the average internet user. These attacks make it clear that we, the broader internet community, need to keep working on better security for browsers and other internet-facing applications."
The Guardian asked the NSA how it justified attacking a service funded by the US government, how it ensured that its attacks did not interfere with the secure browsing of law-abiding US users such as activists and journalists, and whether the agency was involved in the decision to fund Tor or efforts to "shape" its development.
The agency did not directly address those questions, instead providing a statement.
It read: "In carrying out its signals intelligence mission, NSA collects only those communications that it is authorized by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes, regardless of the technical means used by those targets or the means by which they may attempt to conceal their communications. NSA has unmatched technical capabilities to accomplish its lawful mission.

"As such, it should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract targets' use of technologies to hide their communications. Throughout history, nations have used various methods to protect their secrets, and today terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others use technology to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that."
This article was amended on 4 October after the Broadcasting Board of Governors pointed out that its support of Tor ended in October 2012.
Bruce Schneier is an unpaid member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's board of directors. He has not been involved in any discussions on funding.

[Peter Lemkin]

I read the several inter-related articles on NSA and Tor. F**K Them! As I understand it, if you want to use Tor, you can NOT use the Firefox web browser ever - only Vidalia, at this point. They have an exploit for Firefox they ONLY use if you use Tor [which they can't read - or so they say], so they break into your computer and compromise it [because you use Tor] via your Firefox browser and can read your keystrokes and likely 'look around' at your computer files and internet browsing. Land of the Free....no more! ::

[Peter Presland]

.... As I understand it, if you want to use Tor, you can NOT use the Firefox web browser ever - only Vidalia, at this point. They have an exploit for Firefox they ONLY use if you use Tor [which they can't read - or so they say], so they break into your computer and compromise it [because you use Tor] via your Firefox browser and can read your keystrokes and likely 'look around' at your computer files and internet browsing.

Peter

This is a horrendously complex subject but, in simple terms, you have misunderstood the Firefox browser references in that series of articles.

Firefox is the core of ALL open-source browsers.

NSA/GCHQ concentrate on FF users with browser profiling techniques, simply because cryptographic and Privacy savvy users do not use anything else. The reason is quite simple; the others, lead by MS IE and Google Chrome are proprietary with black-box code known only to the companies who supply them. Anyone who seriously believes that that NSA/GCHQ have not secured the full co-operation of both is living in cloud cuckoo land. By co-operation I mean working to agreed secret protocols that provide the SIS's exactly what they want in terms of back-doors etc. Mozilla FF OTOH uses publicly available code. Any back-door or other code-based compromise in the code repository would be quickly spotted by developers and the shit would hit the fan big time. So far that hasn't happened so its fairly safe to assume FF remains OK.

Vidalia is the Tor client/server graphical control panel, not a browser. The safest way to use Tor right now is by way of the Tor Browser bundle which includes Vidalia and a tightly secured Firefox browser - and by tightly secured I simply mean with Scripting turned off and various other options that can leak identity through browser profiling techniques, being turned off. You can easily turn them back on again but become less and less secure as you do so.

NSA/GCHQ concentration on FF users involves mainly traffic analysis to identify the Tor nodes, relays and hidden services that carry Tor encrypted traffic. That, together with the nodes, relays and HS's that the SIS's undoubtedly operate themselves because they're such generous, kind-hearted bandwidth-donating altruists :hock::, gives them a LOT of useful info. If/when they identify a POI from all that - or other activity - they may then get back-door access to an MS or Android OS machine and pinch the encryption keys off of it. That then allows them to read encrypted emails and PM's etc. But it does not break the Tor encryption itself - other than - maybe ..... see the following...

There is also another level - and this is the really dark stuff. It postulates that ALL the major CPU manufacturers now include code such that any encryption key generated by these CPU's, is automatically compromised to the SIS's that have forced co-operation protocols on the manufacturers. My guess is that, by now that includes ALL US CPU chips designers and manufacturers with Intel being number one. That's why Germany and other countries are stealthily removing all internet connectivity from critical State comms systems and having a major re-think about the whole comms security issue - and NSA/GCHQ are apoplectic about it. Rumour is that the foregoing only scratches the surface of what Snowden lifted. Problem is it now seems to be in the hands of those who profess concern to 'leak responsibly' and other such absurdities - IOW the gatekeepers are in place. It will be interesting to see if Glenn Greenwald cracks under what is undoubtedly being thrown at him right now.

As for the Guardian itself - it is a treacherous, dishonest pile of shite so far as I am concerned. It made millions of Assange before turning its attention to defaming him in order to make more money and ingratiate itself with its Establishment masters - and it now looks like it's shaping up for a repeat performance on Snowden - Bastards!

---------

After post edit

Oops - I missed Apple off the above listed companies. It is as bad - or worse - as Microsoft and Google. Proprietory browser and OS software and dominating the hand-held, mobile market. Could never get that big if it had declined one of those SIS offers that 'cannot be refused' PP

[Peter Lemkin]

Thanks for the clarification.....::

[David Guyatt]

So Peter, FF is the only safe of the big name browsers?

[Peter Lemkin]

So Peter, FF is the only safe of the big name browsers?

As I understand it [I know you were asking the other Peter], only the 'stripped down' FF that comes with the Tor Package has some effectiveness against the Electronic Spy Guys. Soon, we'll be back to invisible writing and dead drops, et al.::