Welcome to the dark side, the world of covert ops of overt oops.
We begin with a headline designed to make a real truly insecure, via USA TODAY:
Nuclear missile officers caught in cheating scandal
The Air Force said Wednesday it has uncovered a test cheating ring at a ballistic missile base in Montana that implicated 34 missile launch officers.
The investigation found that some officers were electronically sharing answers on a monthly proficiency test, the Air Force said.
The officers either cheated on the test or knew about it and did nothing to stop or report it, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said.
Computerworld courts the ex parte:
FISA judges oppose plan for privacy advocate
Say plan to add privacy advocate to secret court could hamper its work
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges have said the creation of a privacy advocate in the secret court could be counterproductive and hamper its work.
The FISC court was set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which requires the government to obtain a judicial warrant for certain kinds of intelligence gathering operations.
The creation of the position of a privacy advocate, to represent privacy and civil liberty issues in the court, was first suggested in August by U.S. President Barack Obama in the wake of demands for reforms of the surveillance programs of the National Security Agency. The agency came under scrutiny after disclosures through newspaper reports by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, of its dragnet surveillance, including the bulk collection of phone records of Americans.
Deutsche Welle divides:
US Congress divided on NSA reform proposals
A US Senate intelligence review panel has found shortcomings in the NSA spy agency. The panel of experts has been cross-examined by a Senate committee, which made an effort to calm concerns about implementing reforms.
The National Security Agency (NSA) must be reformed: The review panel is unanimous on this point, even if Congress is not.
Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the judiciary committee that interviewed the intelligence experts, gave the hand-picked panel his backing. “I believe strongly that we must impose stronger limits on government surveillance powers,” the Democrat said on Tuesday (14.01.2014) at the start of the hearing. But those called to testify before the committee apparently did not want to put it as starkly as that. The five authors of the 308-page report entitled, “Liberty and Security in a Changing World,” were adamant about not jeopardizing the work of the NSA.
“Much of our focus has been on maintaining the ability of the intelligence-community to do what it needs to do,” said one of the panel, law professor Cass Sunstein. “And we emphasize – if there is one thing to emphasize, it is this – that not one of the 46 recommendations of our report would in our view compromise or jeopardize this ability in any way.”
CNN stonewalls:
NSA to senator: If we were collecting your phone records, we couldn’t tell you
National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander, in response to a letter from Sen. Bernie Sanders, said Tuesday that nothing the agency does “can fairly be characterized as ‘spying on Members of Congress or American elected officials.’”
Alexander did not offer any further details about members of Congress specifically, arguing that doing so would require him to violate the civilian protections incorporated into the surveillance programs.
“Among those protections is the condition that NSA can query the metadata only based on phone numbers reasonably suspected to be associated with specific foreign terrorist groups,” Alexander wrote.
Sanders, I-Vermont, had written to Alexander earlier this month asking whether the NSA is currently spying “on members of Congress or other American elected officials” or had in the past.
The New York Times simulates Hope™, refuses Change™:
Obama to Place Some Restraints on Surveillance
President Obama will issue new guidelines on Friday to curtail government surveillance, but will not embrace the most far-reaching proposals of his own advisers and will ask Congress to help decide some of the toughest issues, according to people briefed on his thinking.
Mr. Obama plans to increase limits on access to bulk telephone data, call for privacy safeguards for foreigners and propose the creation of a public advocate to represent privacy concerns at a secret intelligence court. But he will not endorse leaving bulk data in the custody of telecommunications firms, nor will he require court permission for all so-called national security letters seeking business records.
Techdirt nails it:
Obama Plans Cosmetic Changes To NSA: Embraces ‘The Spirit Of Reform’ But Not The Substance
from the as-expected dept
The expectation all along was that the President’s intelligence task force was likely to recommend cosmetic changes while leaving the worst abuses in place. And, in fact, many of us were quite surprised to see the panel’s actual recommendations had more teeth than expected (though, certainly did not go nearly far enough). It was pretty quickly suggested that President Obama wouldn’t support the most significant changes, and now that he’s set to announce his plan on Friday, it’s already leaked out that he’s going to support very minimal reforms that leave the problematic spying programs of the NSA effectively in place as is.
And The Guardian delivers the symbolic:
NSA reform measures quietly included in $1.1tn spending bill
Compromise spending package contains provisions asking the NSA to quantify the effectiveness of its surveillance program
Congress is calling on the National Security Agency to detail the effectiveness of its bulk data collection programmes and will outlaw certain types of domestic surveillance, using two little-noticed clauses included in its giant federal spending bill.
The $1.1tn budget bill passed the House of Representatives Wednesday afternoon by 359-67 votes and is expected to become law after clearing the Senate as soon as Friday.
But in a sign of pent-up reform pressure on Capitol Hill, two measures dealing with the NSA were quietly included in the 1,600-page spending text with relatively little fanfare – or opposition from the White House – and are likely to pave the way for more binding legislative efforts once President Barack Obama outlines his own response to the surveillance scandal on Friday.
And the latest NSA spooky doings revelation, via the New York Times:
N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
Deutsche Welle fumes:
Opposition hits out at progress in Germany-US ‘no-spy agreement’
Talks over a potential ‘no-spy agreement’ with the US appear to be stalling. Germany’s opposition parliamentarians have hit out at the government’s handling of the affair, calling it the “scandal after the scandal.”
The Left party’s parliamentary home affairs expert, Jan Korte, told a special session of the Bundestag on Wednesday convened to discuss the fledgling ‘no-spy agreement’ negotiations that the German government’s handling of the NSA affair has now become the “main problem.”
Instead of just expressing their dissatisfaction with the negotiations over the proposed agreement with the US, Germany must also pull out of the planned European Union-US trade agreement, Korte said. “This is a language the Americans understand,” he added.
Greens data protection expert Konstantin von Notz accused the government of months of “transfiguration and cover-up” during the affair. “This is the scandal after the scandal,” said von Notz, adding that the no-spy agreement was an “inadequate attempt” to resolve the US National Security Agency’s violation of international law.
Spiegel has a pessimistic take:
‘The Americans Lied’: Trans-Atlantic ‘No-Spy’ Deal on the Rocks
Berlin wants a deal with the US that prohibits trans-Atlantic spying, but Washington seems uninterested.
Last summer, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised her citizens a pact which would prohibit US spying on German citizens. But since then, Washington has shown little interest in pursuing such a treaty. Now, officials in Germany fear the deal is dead.
Failed talks? Hardly. The negotiations “are continuing,” says Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). “We are still talking,” says the German government. In other words, nothing has yet been decided. The No-Spy deal is still alive.
But the statements coming out of Berlin and Pullach, where the BND is headquartered, reek of forced optimism. Nobody wants it to look as though efforts have been abandoned toward a deal which would see the US agree to swear off spying operations in Germany. Yet despite the assertions, most of those involved are slowly coming to the realization that a surveillance deal between Washington and Berlin isn’t likely to become reality. The US government is still digging in its heels.
EUbusiness deliberates:
Berlin hosting talks for EU ‘no-spy’ pact: report
Germany has hosted confidential EU talks for months to forge a “no-spying” pact among its member states, a drive opposed especially by Britain, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
The pre-released Sueddeutsche Zeitung report came a day after the Munich daily said that similar US-German talks were seen close to failure, sparking denials from both Berlin and Washington.
Both sets of talks follow revelations by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden of American mass surveillance of global online and phone data in cooperation with Britain’s GCHQ service.
The Washington Post drones on, prolifically:
Border-patrol drones being borrowed by other agencies more often than previously known
Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are increasingly borrowing border-patrol drones for domestic surveillance operations, newly released records show, a harbinger of what is expected to become the commonplace use of unmanned aircraft by police.
Customs and Border Protection, which has the largest U.S. drone fleet of its kind outside the Defense Department, flew nearly 700 such surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies from 2010 to 2012, according to flight logs released recently in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-liberties group.
The records show that the border–patrol drones are being commissioned by other agencies more often than previously known. Most of the missions are performed for the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration and immigration authorities. But they also aid in disaster relief and in the search for marijuana crops, methamphetamine labs and missing persons, among other missions not directly related to border protection.
MintPress News goes Post-al:
Activists Continue To Push Washington Post To Disclose Its CIA Connection
But Executive Editor Martin Baron said the newspaper doesn’t need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA.
In this May 6, 2009 file photo Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, introduces the Kindle DX at a news conference in New York. The Kindle DX has a larger 9.7 inch screen than its predecessor, the Kindle 2, and can be ordered for $489 for delivery this summer. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
After collecting some 33,000 signatures, a group of activists say they are ready to deliver a petition to the Washington Post on Wednesday, asking the paper to disclose to the public that the paper’s owner Jeff Bezos not only works with, but profits from the CIA.
Started by the progressive online organization RootsAction, which advocates for economic fairness, equal rights, civil liberties, environmental protection and defunding endless wars, the petition says that “a basic principle of journalism is to acknowledge when the owner of a media outlet has a major financial relationship with the subject of coverage.”
From China Daily, insecurity:
UK moves away from Chinese telecom equipment
Accusations about “information security” directed toward Chinese communication equipment should based on facts or investigative results rather than concerns raised by possible “vulnerabilities”, observers said on Tuesday after British ministries dumped Chinese products.
British government departments such as the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Crown Prosecution Service are all said to have stopped using equipment manufactured by Chinese telecom company Huawei amid fears they are being used by the Chinese government to eavesdrop, according to a report by the UK’s Sunday Mirror.
A briefing was sent to all ministerial departments urging them to stop using the video-conferencing equipment, the newspaper said, adding that there are possible “vulnerabilities” that have caused widespread concern.
Wired wins:
Scholar Wins Court Battle to Purge Name From U.S. No-Fly List
A former Stanford University student who sued the government over her placement on a U.S. government no-fly list is not a threat to national security and was the victim of a bureaucratic “mistake,” a federal judge ruled today.
The decision makes Rahinah Ibrahim, 48, the first person to successfully challenge placement on a government watch list.
Ibrahim’s saga began in 2005 when she was a visiting doctoral student in architecture and design from Malaysia. On her way to Kona, Hawaii to present a paper on affordable housing, Ibrahim was told she was on a watch list, detained, handcuffed and questioned for two hou
The New York Times palavers:
Syria Says It Held Talks With Western Spies About Jihadis
As Western countries display increasing alarm at the strength of multinational Islamist extremists among rebels in Syria opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian official was quoted on Wednesday as saying Western intelligence agencies had sent representatives to Damascus to discuss the phenomenon with the government there.
If confirmed, the assertion by the official, Faisal Mekdad, the deputy foreign minister, would mean that while Western politicians have publicly called for Mr. Assad’s ouster, their own intelligence subordinates were privately collaborating with Mr. Assad’s lieutenants.
In an interview with the BBC, Mr. Mekdad was asked whether representatives of Western intelligence agencies — including those of Britain — had recently traveled to Damascus. “I will not specify them but many of them have visited Damascus, yes,” he replied.
After the jump, security crises in Asia, spook-thwarting software and tech [marketed and stolen], plus some corporate cyberstalking. . .
On to Asia, the realms of the crises de jour, starting with this from Want China Times:
60% of US nuclear submarine patrols take place in the Pacific
In an article written for the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Jan. 11, nuclear experts Hans M Kristensen and Robert S Norris stated that more than 60% of US submarine nuclear deterrent patrols take place in the Pacific Ocean.
The article says there are currently 14 Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines patrolling international waters around the world, with eight deployed to the Pacific and the other six to the Atlantic. All of the submarines are equipped with Trident II D5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with a range of 7,840 kilometers, while 12 of the subs are normally considered operational, with a 13th and 14th boat in overhaul at any given time, they said.
China Daily gets cozy:
Better China-ROK relations
At a news conference on Jan 6, President of the Republic of Korea Park Geun-hye said that relations between her country and China have become closer than ever, and she expressed the hope that the two sides will remain committed to improving the well-being of the two peoples and realizing peace and stability in Northeast Asia.
The good momentum in the development of relations between the two countries has served as a positive element amid the security instability caused by the rapidly evolving strategic landscape in Northeast Asia and the faltering denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula.
Jiji Press huddles:
Japan, U.S. Officials Confirm Cooperation over N. Korea
Visiting Japanese government official Nobuo Kishi and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns on Wednesday confirmed the need to enhance cooperation among the two countries plus South Korea in dealing with North Korea’s missile and nuclear development, and its abductions of foreign nationals.
Kishi, parliamentary senior vice foreign minister, and Burns also exchanged views on China’s declaration last November of an air defense identification zone in the East China Sea, which includes airspace over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands, also claimed by China.
In addition, they agreed on the importance of reinforcing the Japan-U.S. alliance by further revising the guidelines on the two countries’ defense cooperation.
The Yomiuri Shimbun lobbies:
Japan explains island tensions to Vietnam
Ichita Yamamoto, state minister for territorial issues, met with Pham Binh Minh, Vietnamese deputy prime minister and foreign minister, to explain tensions between Japan and China over East China Sea islands.
The Senkaku Islands, in Okinawa Prefecture, are part of Japan and Tokyo does not recognize any territorial dispute over them, Yamamoto stressed in the meeting in Hanoi on Tuesday.
China, which claims sovereignty over the Japanese-administered uninhabited islands, also has territorial rows with Vietnam and other nations over South China Sea islets.
NHK WORLD polarizes:
Public divided over collective self-defense
An NHK poll shows that people are divided on whether Japan should exercise the right to collective self-defense to help an ally that comes under attack.
NHK conducted the survey at the weekend of randomly selected people aged 20 or over. 1,066 responded.
Asked whether they think the Constitution should be revised, 30 percent said yes, while another 30 percent said no. 34 percent were undecided.
27 percent said the government should exercise the right to collective self-defense, while 21 percent said the opposite. 43 percent didn’t give a clear answer.
The Japan Daily Press softens the stance:
Foreign Ministry assures China of apologies, calls for Abe-Xi summit
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida urged China to consider a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Xi Jinping in light of the strained relations between the two countries.
Referring to the apologies issued by previous Cabinet members in the 1990s, Kishida said that Abe’s Cabinet members “inherited” the position and view of their predecessors pertaining to Japanese aggression and imperialistic action during the Second World War. He further said that, “they have never denied the Kono statement, the Murayama statement, or the various statements issued by Cabinets.” Chief Cabninet Secretary Yohei Kono, in a statement issued in 1993 recognized their military’s responsibility for the use of “comfort women,” or women forced into sexual slavery, and apologized to the victims. Then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued a statement in 1995 apologizing for wartime aggression in Asia. These two landmark statements are held as a symbol of Japanese repentance and regret by their neighboring countries, which were victims of the said crimes.
Sky News censors:
China Defends Blocking Some Western Websites
Twitter and Facebook are both unavailable inside China because of their ability, as the UK ambassador put it, to “spread rumours”.
China’s ambassador to the UK has defended his country’s long-standing decision to block some Western media companies, in an interview with Sky News.
Speaking to Sky’s Jeff Randall, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming said the websites of the New York Times, Bloomberg, Facebook and Twitter would remain blocked because “they have to fall in the law of China and they have to serve the interests of the people”.
“Are you really saying that you want propaganda rather than the truth?” Randall asked the ambassador.
“No. That’s not true. We are looking for truth,” the ambassador replied.
NSA tech lead to bust, via the Japan Daily Press:
Japanese national faces 10 years in US prison after attempting to buy, export military-grade radios
A Japanese national could be imprisoned for 10 years for attempting to export sensitive U.S. military equipment. 29-year old Iteru Masui is facing charges of illegally exporting military-grade radios manufactured in Rochester, and illegal exporting of items that are export-controlled by federal regulations.
U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul officially stated that inquiry by Homeland Security Investigations special agents began in September 2012 when an eBay advertisement for AN/PRC-152 radios for sale went up. Manufactured by the Harris Corporation in Rochester, the radios in question are not available for the general public, as they are part of the Controlled Cryptographic Item list by the National Security Agency. Masui was tracked when he attempted to buy one of the radios, and the email address he used for the transaction was traced back to a telecommunications company in Tokyo: KDDI Corporation. They found out that apart from using an address belonging to a freight forwarding business, Masui had previous purchases on eBay for U.S. radios, body armor and military-style optical goggles.
The Verge thwarts:
Renowned cryptographer believes his ‘Blackphone’ can stop the NSA
Revelations about how insecure our communications are have been a daily fixture of the news cycle recently, and it’s in this climate that a pair of companies are combining to launch a new smartphone focused on privacy. The Blackphone will run a “security-oriented” version of Android named PrivatOS, which the companies say will allow users to securely place and receive phone calls, text messages, video chat, transfer and store files, and “anonymize your activity” through a VPN.
The project is the brainchild of Phil Zimmermann’s company Silent Circle and Geeksphone, a Spanish startup that created the Firefox OS developer devices. Zimmermann rose to fame as the creator of PGP, an early email encryption standard, before founding Silent Circle, a company focused on encrypted communications. In a press release announcing the project, Zimmermann says the Blackphone will offer users “everything they need to ensure privacy and control of their communications, along with all the other high-end smartphone features they have come to expect.”
RT defeats:
Brazilian hacker creates Twitter-like app shielded from NSA gaze
In a post-Snowden world where NSA surveillance has been exposed as ubiquitous, one man decided to invent a networking system akin to Twitter, but with one key difference: It would be surveillance-proof and completely decentralized. Meet ‘Twister.’
Miguel Freitas was always a big Twitter fan – especially as it drummed out information on the June mass protests in his native Brazil at a time when no competent up-to-the-minute source existed locally.
But even though Twitter to him symbolized what decentralized media is, Freitas, in an interview with Wired magazine, opened up about his feelings that a world in which the NSA apparently has its nose in every conceivable internet communication would soon need new avenues for information exchange. Ten years of people blissfully communicating their daily routines and locations to Facebook, Twitter and other services have led to large segments of society seeking a newer, upgraded kind of networking, Freitas says.
And for our final item, cyberstalker cited via the Toronto Globe and Mail:
Google broke Canada’s privacy laws with targeted health ads, watchdog says
Google Inc. broke Canada’s privacy law by using sensitive information about users’ online activities to target them with health-related ads, says the country’s interim privacy commissioner.
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated Google’s practices after receiving a complaint from a man with sleep apnea, which interferes with breathing during sleep.
After searching online for medical devices to treat sleep apnea, the man was shocked to discover he was being pitched devices for the condition when he visited websites that had no relation to the sleep disorder, the commissioner said on Wednesday.
