First, from the Dept. Of Haven’t We Seen this Headline Before, via Reuters:
Obama says key allies ready to join U.S. action in Iraq
Next, guess who might be one of those allies? Via BBC News:
Iran ‘backs US military contacts’ to fight Islamic State
Iran’s Supreme Leader has approved co-operation with the US as part of the fight against Islamic State (IS) in Iraq, sources have told BBC Persian.
Ayatollah Khamenei has authorised his top commander to co-ordinate military operations with the US, Iraqi and Kurdish forces, sources in Tehran say. Iran has traditionally opposed US involvement in Iraq, an Iranian ally.
However, Iran’s foreign ministry officially denied it would co-operate with the US against IS.
From the London Daily Mail, and, uh, gee, so why was Osama so hard to find, then?:
‘Isis are using Snowden leaks to evade US intelligence’: Former NSA boss warns terror group are exploiting massive breach of security
Chris Inglis, NSA deputy chief during leaks, says IS ‘clearly’ harder to find
Says they altered tactics, allowing them to operate away from gaze of U.S.
He says Snowden spill went ‘way beyond disclosing privacy concerns’
Leaks also cover NSA’s top-secret ‘means and methods’ of hunting enemies
Islamic State extremists have studied and exploited the leaks made by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to operate under the radar of U.S. intelligence, a former agency chief has claimed.
Chris Inglis said militants in Iraq and Syria are ‘clearly’ harder to track down since the rogue agent made freely available a wealth of top-secret information about how the U.S. government hunts its enemies online.
And from The Intercept, some of what he was up to:
The U.S. Government’s Secret Plans to Spy for American Corporations
Throughout the last year, the U.S. government has repeatedly insisted that it does not engage in economic and industrial espionage, in an effort to distinguish its own spying from China’s infiltrations of Google, Nortel, and other corporate targets. So critical is this denial to the U.S. government that last August, an NSA spokesperson emailed The Washington Post to say (emphasis in original): “The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.”
After that categorical statement to the Post, the NSA was caught spying on plainly financial targets such as the Brazilian oil giant Petrobras; economic summits; international credit card and banking systems; the EU antitrust commissioner investigating Google, Microsoft, and Intel; and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In response, the U.S. modified its denial to acknowledge that it does engage in economic spying, but unlike China, the spying is never done to benefit American corporations.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for instance, responded to the Petrobras revelations by claiming: “It is not a secret that the Intelligence Community collects information about economic and financial matters…. What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of—or give intelligence we collect to—U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”
But a secret 2009 report issued by Clapper’s own office explicitly contemplates doing exactly that. The document, the 2009 Quadrennial Intelligence Community Review—provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—is a fascinating window into the mindset of America’s spies as they identify future threats to the U.S. and lay out the actions the U.S. intelligence community should take in response. It anticipates a series of potential scenarios the U.S. may face in 2025, from a “China/Russia/India/Iran centered bloc [that] challenges U.S. supremacy” to a world in which “identity-based groups supplant nation-states,” and games out how the U.S. intelligence community should operate in those alternative futures—the idea being to assess “the most challenging issues [the U.S.] could face beyond the standard planning cycle.”
From The Week, and along the same lines:
This is why you can’t trust the NSA. Ever.
New documents show the agency missing a massive number of violations. And that’s before it set up a new program with virtually no oversight.
The notion that the National Security Agency could police its own internet dragnet program with minimal oversight from a secret court has long drawn scoffs from observers. Now it appears that skepticism was completely justified, following the release of a bunch of documents on the program earlier this month by the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (ODNI), which came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Exhibit A is a comprehensive end-to-end report that the NSA conducted in late summer or early fall of 2009, which focused on the work the agency did in metadata collection and analysis to try and identify people emailing terrorist suspects.
The report described a number of violations that the NSA had cleaned up since the beginning of that year — including using automatic alerts that had not been authorized and giving the FBI and CIA direct access to a database of query results. It concluded the internet dragnet was in pretty good shape. “NSA has taken significant steps designed to eliminate the possibility of any future compliance issues,” the last line of the report read, “and to ensure that mechanisms are in place to detect and respond quickly if any were to occur.”
Motherboard debunks ornamental “reform”:
CISPA’s Clone Will Undermine NSA Reform, Civil Liberties Groups Warn
When Congress comes back from its five week vacation, the Senate will have to decide what to do with the NSA-reforming USA FREEDOM Act and the CISPA clone called CISA. In many ways, the two bills are directly opposing forces.
Passing USA FREEDOM would be a huge step forward in curbing NSA abuses; passing CISA would immediately undo all that progress, according to several dozen civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press Action Fund, Center for Democracy and Technology, and TechFreedom.
“The Senate cannot seriously consider controversial information-sharing legislation such as CISA without first completing the pressing unfinished business of passing meaningful surveillance reform,” the groups wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Minority Reader Mitch McConnell, and senators on the Intelligence, Judiciary, and Homeland Security committees.
From the Guardian, domestic insecurity:
Arab-American activists chased and threatened with beheading in Brooklyn
Police allegedly took more than 45 minutes to respond
Man charged after NYPD deploys hate crime investigators
A drunken man chased two female Arab-American community organisers in Brooklyn, New York, threatening to behead them and throwing a large metal garbage can at them.
Despite two separate 911 calls, the New York police department took more than 45 minutes to respond. The department sent top hate crime investigators after one of the women, a prominent activist, told her story at an NYPD community relations meeting that happened soon after the incident on Wednesday.
Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said she initially found the man leaning against the wall near her social services agency.
More of the same from Salon:
“I wish someone would pull a Ferguson on them”: Louisiana cop resigns for racist texts
15-year veteran Michael Elsbury wrote, “I enjoy arresting those thugs with their saggy pants”
Glenn Beck was right–the events in Ferguson really have brought out the best in people. Let’s take, for example, a police officer from Baton Rouge who resigned on Thursday after a local news channel reported that he had sent a series of violently racist text messages, including one in which he said he wished his fellow officers would “pull a Ferguson” on a “bunch of monkeys.”
The police officer in question is 15-year veteran of the force Michael Elsbury who resigned after the texts were shown to his superiors. In another text, he wrote, “I wish someone would pull a Ferguson on them and take them out. I hate looking at those African monkeys at work… I enjoy arresting those thugs with their saggy pants.”
From the Department of Don’t They Hate ISIS Because They Force People to Swear Allegiance to their Religion?, via Al Jazeera America:
Air Force spurns atheist airman for refusing religious oath, group says
Serviceman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada alleges he was denied reenlistment for refusing to say ‘so help me God’
An airman stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada, was prohibited from reenlisting in the U.S. military last month for omitting the words “so help me God” from a service oath he was required to recite, and for refusing to sign the oath containing the same words on his enlistment form, according to the American Humanist Association (AHA).
In a letter of complaint sent to the Air Force’s inspector general on Tuesday, Appignani Humanist Legal Center, the AHA’s legal wing, said the soldier – who is an atheist – “was told that his options were to say ‘so help me God’ or to leave the Air Force.’”
The AHA, which describes itself as “advocating values and equality for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers,” characterized the ultimatum as a civil-rights violation and demanded the Air Force correct the matter.
And from Britain’s Western Daily Press, a real security threat to the working class:
Robots help deliver meals for patients at Bristol’s new £430million super Southmead Hospital
This is the incredible fleet of robots helping to provide food for almost 1,000 patients at a new £430 million super hospital.
Southmead Hospital in Bristol has deployed a fleet of 12 automatic guided vehicles to deliver meals to its 950 patients.
The droids, which start work at 10.15 every morning, are capable of opening doors, operating lifts and picking up food without any human assistance. They transfer chilled dishes to kitchens scattered around the hospital, where they are heated and then served to patients.
Another security threat to millions of Americans where secrecy is the name of the game, via Bloomberg News:
Secret Network Connects Harvard Money to Payday Loans
Alex Slusky was under pressure to put the money in his private-equity fund to work.
The San Francisco technology financier had raised $1.2 billion in 2007 to buy and turn around struggling software companies. By 2012, investors including Harvard University were upset that about half the money hadn’t been used, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation.
Three Americans on the Caribbean island of St. Croix presented a solution. They had built a network of payday-lending websites, using corporations set up in Belize and the Virgin Islands that obscured their involvement and circumvented U.S. usury laws, according to four former employees of their company, Cane Bay Partners VI LLLP. The sites Cane Bay runs make millions of dollars a month in small loans to desperate people, charging more than 600 percent interest a year, said the ex-employees, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
From The Verge:
Competition heats up to sell drones to the average consumer
After jump, Canadian arctic drone tests, militia identity theft, the IRS memory hole expands, iCloud blames celebrities for hacks, hackers crack OSX, retail invites hacks, Chinese hackers loot the country’s rich and a lawsuit embarrasses, Google Glass-detector coming soon, an Indo/Aussie uranium deal, Australia goes postal, Indo/Pakistani tensions, Japan pushes for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and takes control over media content, and that sex slave issue just won’t go away. . .
United Press International prepares for conflict:
Canada tests unmanned vehicles in Arctic environment
The Canadian government has tested the use of unmanned vehicles in Arctic conditions.
The use of unmanned ground and aerial vehicles in Artic conditions has been studied by scientists and technicians of Canada’s Department of National Defense.
The department said this week that 34 tests in all were conducted last month by the Canadian Armed Forces Joint Arctic Experiment Scientific Team at Canadian Forces Station Alert.
Experiments covered issues such as the deployment of assets in an Arctic environment; technology performance; and how unmanned systems can extend the CAF’s ability to operate in this remote area.
From the Guardian, more domestic insecurity:
Minnesota militia member sentenced for stealing identities of soldiers
Michael Novak, a former army soldier who prosecutors say led an anti-government militia, pled guilty to stealing others’ IDs
A Minnesota man who admitted to stealing identification information from soldiers in his former army unit at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg, then selling it so false identities could be created for militia members, was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.
US district judge Patrick Schiltz also sentenced Keith Michael Novak, 25, to three years of supervised release, saying Novak’s crime was more serious than a typical identity theft case because, among other things, he used his military access “to victimize his fellow soldiers”.
Novak, who prosecutors say was leading an anti-government militia group in Minnesota at the time of his December arrest, pleaded guilty in April to one count of identity theft. In a letter read in court Friday by his attorney, Novak said he meant no harm and he apologized for the “terrible mistake” that has hurt people he cares about.
The Hill covers the memory hole:
IRS: Five more staffers lost emails
The IRS told lawmakers Friday that five staffers connected to the agency’s Tea Party controversy besides Lois Lerner probably lost emails due to computer problems.
Those five staffers include officials key to the various investigations into the IRS’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups – including Judith Kindell, who was a senior adviser to Lerner, the former agency official at the center of the controversy.
The IRS told Congress in June that a collection of Lerner’s emails between 2009 and 2011 had gone missing because her hard drive crashed.
From The Independent, it’s their fault:
Apple tightens iCloud security but says celebrity’s nude photos wouldn’t have been stolen if they’d followed the rules
Following the publication of dozens of celebrities’ private photos by hackers, Apple has said it will introduce new, stricter security measures to keep its customers’ data safe in the cloud.
Since the stolen photos were first published last Sunday, Apple has admitted that iCloud accounts were breached by hackers but has maintained that the fault was down to poor passwords and phishing scams used to obtain individuals’ log-ins – not because of Apple’s own security.
However, this response has met with little sympathy from the security community, which maintains that although Apple may not technically be at fault, it was its systems that gave hackers the opportunities they needed to take the data.
Network World takes a bite out of the Apple:
Cyberespionage group starts using new Mac OS X backdoor program
A group of hackers known for past cyberespionage attacks against the U.S. Defense Industrial Base, as well as companies from the electronics and engineering sectors, has recently started using a backdoor program to target Mac OS X systems.
“The backdoor code was ported to OS X from a Windows backdoor that has been used extensively in targeted attacks over the past several years, having been updated many times in the process,” security researchers from FireEye said Thursday in a blog post.
The malicious program is dubbed XSLCmd and is capable of opening a reverse shell, listing and transferring files and installing additional malware on an infected computer. The OS X variant can also log keystrokes and capture screen shots, the FireEye researchers said.
From Homeland Security News Wire, surprise, surprise:
Retailers spend less on cybersecurity than other industries, and it shows
Cybersecurity analysts say that retailers are spending less on cybersecuirty measures than banks and healthcare providers. Retailers spend 4 percent of their IT budgets on cybersecuirty, while financial services and healthcare providers spend 5.5 percent and 5.6 percent, respectively. On cybersecurity spending per employee, the banking and finance industries spend roughly $2,500 per employee, while retailers invest about $400 per employee. On Tuesday, Home Depot became the latest retailer to investigate a potential major breach of customer credit or debit card data.
Cybersecurity analysts say that retailers are spending less on cybersecuirty measures than banks and healthcare providers. On Tuesday, Home Depot became the latest retailer to investigate a potential breach of customer credit or debit card data. According to Krebs on Security, multiple banks have evidence that Home Depot stores are likely to be the source of a massive new collection of stolen credit and debit cards that went on sale on Tuesday in the cybercrime underground. “I can confirm we are looking into some unusual activity and we are working with our banking partners and law enforcement to investigate,” Home Depot spokesperson Paula Drake said, adding that “protecting our customers’ information is something we take extremely seriously, and we are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers.”
The Register covers a crime impossible in a communist state:
Robin Hood virus: Chinese hackers target nation’s wealthy
Steal from the rich, give to yourself
Chief security officer Tom Kellerman told Dark Reading the crackers were targeting the nations’ “bourgeois, nouveau-riche Chinese elite who have profited from capitalism” as well as those in other countries.
“[Beijing] has been focused externally … on information dominance and espionage,” Kellerman told the publication.
“[The black hats] who are not beholden to the regime … believe money is god and believe that crime has evolved with technology.”
South China Morning Post covers more irony:
Chinese man sues telecoms provider over blocked Google access in rare challenge to ‘Great Firewall’
Wang Long says China Unicom’s inability to give him access to the search engine is a breach of responsibility
A Chinese man threw a rare official spotlight on the country’s internet controls when he sued a state-owned telecom operator for denying him access to US search engine Google, documents and reports showed on Friday.
Authorities in China impose strict limits on the internet, censoring domestic content and blocking foreign websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube using a system known as the “Great Firewall”.
Google partially withdrew from mainland China in 2010 and moved its servers to Hong Kong after a fallout with the central government.
Access to its services has been blocked or disrupted since shortly before June’s 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
From Wired threat level, the next must-have:
For Sale Soon: The World’s First Google Glass Detector
Earlier this summer, Berlin-based artist and coder Julian Oliver released Glasshole.sh, a simple and free piece of software designed to detect Google Glass and boot it from any local Wi-Fi network. That DIY idea, says Oliver, was so popular among Glass’s critics that he’s now offering his cyborg-foiling hack to the masses in a much more polished form: an easy-to-use commercial product selling for less than $100.
Later this month, Oliver says he’ll start taking pre-orders for Cyborg Unplug, a gadget no bigger than a laptop charger that plugs into a wall and patrols the local Wi-Fi network for connected Google Glass devices, along with other potential surveillance gadgets like Google Dropcams, Wi-Fi-enabled drone copters, and certain wireless microphones. When it detects one of those devices, it can be programmed to flash an alert with an LED light, play a sound through connected speakers, and even ping the Cyborg Unplug owner’s smartphone through an Android app, as well as silently booting those potential spy devices from the network.
“Basically it’s a wireless defense shield for your home or place of work,” says Oliver. “The intent is to counter a growing and tangibly troubling emergence of wirelessly capable devices that are used and abused for surveillance and voyeurism.”
From the Asahi Shimbun, a deal:
Australia to sign uranium export deal with India
Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott met with his Indian counterpart on Sept. 5 ahead of an expected deal to allow the export of Australian uranium to India for use in power generation.
The agreement is expected to be signed on the evening of Sept. 5. Australia, which has almost a third of the world’s known uranium reserves, imposes strict conditions on uranium exports and India’s failure to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty had long been a barrier to a trade deal.
Australia and India have been negotiating a nuclear safeguards agreement with verification mechanisms since 2012, when a former Australian government agreed on civil nuclear energy cooperation with India that would eventually allow the export of Australian uranium to the energy-starved South Asian nation.
From the Guardian, Aussie snail mail emulates Comcast’s dream:
Australia Post wants to charge premium for speed in two-tier letter system
The federal government is reviewing the request, which the postal service says is necessary to arrest declining profits
The government is considering a new tiered postal system where customers pay a premium for next-day delivery.
Australia Post wants to charge customers extra to deliver letters within a designated time – for example the next day – while regular mail could take longer.
The government-owned postal service says losses due to plummeting demand in its letter business could overwhelm the entire company if changes aren’t made.
From the Times of India, blame-placing:
‘Pakistan army, ISI stage-managing al-Qaida advance into India’
Pakistan should be warned that it will be placed on the list of states sponsoring terrorism, a former US official and intelligence analyst said on Thursday, while accusing the Pakistani military of stage-managing the latest al-Qaida advance into India in order to strengthen its stranglehold over Pakistani domestic politics.
Amid growing concern in New Delhi over the formation of new al-Qaida affiliate in India and the spread of the ISIS, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official for South Asia, bluntly pointed to the Pakistan military and its intelligence outfit ISI for the renewed terror threats against India. He said there was no doubt that al-Qaida leader Ayman Al Zawahiri made the latest tape (threatening jihadist attacks across India) in his hideout in Pakistan, protected, as New Delhi suspects, by the ISI.
“The domestic politics of Pakistan are central to this drama, and to this threat,” Riedel wrote in his column. “In short, the Pakistani army and its ISI spies are once again playing with fire — with India, the LeT and Kashmir — in order to secure domestic gains against their civilian leaders.”
The Times of India again:
India’s air and maritime shield against terror stronger, but gaps persist
Indian airspace and coastal boundaries are still far from becoming impregnable but the armed forces are now much more confident about thwarting terror threats emanating from either “rogue” planes or militants using the sea route.
India was jolted into initiating a total revamp of its coastal security architecture after the 26/11 Mumbai terror strikes in 2008, much like some measures were undertaken to “sanitize” the airspace over major cities and approve a tough new anti-hijack policy after the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001.
The progress has been painfully slow. But “many gaps” have now been plugged in the anti-terror infrastructure, as also in ensuring swifter dissemination of “actionable intelligence” to security forces to prevent impending attacks, say senior officers.
NHK WORLD looks to a deal:
Amari: Speed up Japan-US talks for TPP agreement
Economic Revitalization Minister Akira Amari says if the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade talks fail to reach a broad agreement by the end of this year, the talks will continue for a long time.
In an interview with NHK and other media, Amari said on Friday he aims to quickly conclude bilateral talks with the US on tariffs and other issues. He said these will affect the TPP talks overall.
Amari said a broad agreement on TPP needs to be reached by the year-end as next year the United States will begin focusing on the 2016 presidential election.
From Jiji Press, taking control:
Japan Govt May Make Requests on NHK Broadcast
The Japanese government may make requests to Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, over its international services, Sanae Takaichi, new minister of internal affairs and communications, said Friday.
“It is possible to make requests to transmit correct information on Japanese territories and other issues and to underscore the good points of Japan,” Takaichi said in an interview.
Apparently, she had in mind rows over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, also claimed by China, and the South Korean-held Sea of Japan islets of Takeshima, also claimed by Japan.
From Japan Today, rubbing salt into wounds:
New internal affairs minister says she will visit Yasukuni Shrine
Japan’s new internal affairs minister said on Friday she intends to visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine although she did not address concern that her new position is likely to exacerbate neighboring countries’ anger over what they see as a symbol of militarism.
The shrine honors Japan’s war dead, including 14 leaders convicted as war criminals by an Allied tribunal.
Neighboring countries which suffered under Japanese occupation during World War Two regard politicians’ visits to pay respects at the shrine as evidence of Japan’s failure to atone for its aggression.
And for final item, failure to learn from the past, via Kyodo News:
Japan continues to see U.N. “comfort women” report as inappropriate
The Japanese government said Friday that it continues to regard as inappropriate a 1996 U.N. report on “comfort women” that described mostly Asian women forced to work in brothels for the wartime Japanese military as “sex slaves.”
The report, compiled by Sri Lankan lawyer Radhika Coomaraswamy, then a special rapporteur on violence against women, urged Tokyo to apologize and pay compensation over the sex slave issue.
“Japan has kept saying it is inappropriate,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference. “It’s regrettable that the Coomaraswamy report has not taken into account our basic stance, or how hard we have been tackling the issue.”
