We Have No Privacy, We Are Always Being Watched.

US got NSA leaker Edward Snowden's middle name wrong, says Hong Kong
Justice secretary explains why White House's request for arrest of whistleblower was turned down

Associated Press
The Guardian, Wednesday 26 June 2013 18.28 BST


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/26/edward-snowden-name-wrong-hong-kong

GIBSON RESEARCH CORPORATION http://www.GRC.com/

SERIES: Security Now!
EPISODE: #409
DATE: June 19, 2013
TITLE: Listener Feedback #170
SPEAKERS: Steve Gibson & Leo Laporte
SOURCE FILE: http://media.GRC.com/sn/SN-409.mp3
FILE ARCHIVE: http://www.GRC.com/securitynow.htm

Quote:

"For anyone in the habit of wearing a tinfoil hat, the last couple of weeks have been ones of redemption. With a steady stream of revelations about the National Security Agency's astonishingly broad intelligence-gathering activities, conspiracy theories about its reach have been seemingly validated. Those same raise a related question: Are there ways to avoid the NSA's prying eyes?

"It turns out there are, for the most part, anyway. And for the companies selling communication tools to circumvent surveillance programs, business is going like gangbusters. Silent Circle, a company that provides encrypted email, phone, and messaging services, has seen sales increase 400% so far this month. You can now take advantage of a 50% discount on its full suite of services.

"Moxie Marlinspike, the hacker and developer behind Whisper Systems, another purveyor of encrypted communications tools, says his service has seen a 3,000% increase in its new active user rate since June 6, when the story about the NSA's PRISM program first broke, though he did not offer specifics about the number of users the company has signed up. Cryptocat, a free encrypted chat service" - which was of course the topic of this podcast a couple weeks ago - "welcomed almost 5,000 new users last week, and server traffic is currently running 80% above average for its 65,000 regular users, according to Nadim Kobeissi, the site's lead developer. And Tor, a web browser" - as this site describes it, and we know what Tor is, actually, a network, anonymizing network - "that protects its users from so-called 'traffic analysis,' has seen a 17% increase in its mean daily users in the United States. The number of users is now approaching 90,000.

"'We are running around with our hair on fire. It's insane,' said Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke to Foreign Policy. Utilizing a peer-to-peer encryption tool, Silent Circle's communication tools - which include everything from email to text messaging to video conferencing - promise near-anonymity on the web. In layman's terms, these services scramble your communications with users using a similar encryption protocol, turning your message into a bunch of gibberish for the NSA analyst listening in.

"Silent Circle's offerings are part of a burgeoning movement online to ensure user anonymity and prevent privacy breaches, but tools such as encrypted email can only do so much to fight back against the NSA. In recent years, encryption technology has become so advanced that the agency has largely moved away from using brute-force decryption methods - that is, leveraging an immense amount of computer power to unlock a given encryption algorithm - and instead has adopted traffic analysis methods, according to Janke." This is the Silent Circle CEO guy.

"As part of this new approach, the NSA scoops up immense troves of a given type of communication and tries to spot patterns in the usage of those exchanges. That technique, known as traffic analysis, allows the agency to establish connections between people and groups on the Internet. And by identifying its targets in the morass of messages, the NSA can map a given target's entire social network. That information can often be more valuable than the content of the message itself."

And to pause here for a second, of course we noted, and I think mostly it was after we stopped recording last week, Leo, you reiterated more strongly and I thought made the very good point that the reason the NSA is sitting there tapping the communications of these major providers is they all know who their customers are, even if the NSA can't see it because it's encrypted, but they can see the patterns. Then the NSA can go to the provider, saying, well, we know this is a customer of yours because this went down your pipe at such and such a time. So we need to know who that is. And then they can go to the warranted full disclosure on a targeted basis, rather than just the wholesale sweeping of content, many people saying, well, it's encrypted, so what.

Anyway, just to wrap this up, it says, "All this means that encryption tools like those offered by Silent Circle are only a first step, a reality that Janke fully acknowledges, and that email is particularly vulnerable to NSA snooping. 'Due to the physics of email'" - I'm quoting somebody. "'Due to the physics of email, how a server needs to take that data and send it down to someone else'" - ah, it's Janke again, saying, "'it is vulnerable to metadata, and it hangs around forever,' Janke said, referring to secondary data, the contents of the 'to' and 'from' fields, say, or routing information" and so forth.

https://blog.torproject.org/blog/prism-vs-tor


PRISM vs Tor
Posted June 8th, 2013 by mikeperry in decentralization hidden-services nsa surveillance ya-basta
By now, just about everybody has heard about the PRISM surveillance program, and many are beginning to speculate on its impact on Tor.
Unfortunately, there still are a lot of gaps to fill in terms of understanding what is really going on, especially in the face of conflicting information between the primary source material and Google, Facebook, and Apple's claims of non-involvement.
This apparent conflict means that it is still hard to pin down exactly how the program impacts Tor, and is leading many to assume worst-case scenarios.
For example, some of the worst-case scenarios include the NSA using weaponized exploits to compromise datacenter equipment at these firms. Less severe, but still extremely worrying possibilities include issuing gag orders to mid or low-level datacenter staff to install backdoors or monitoring equipment without any interaction what-so-ever with the legal and executive staff of the firms themselves.
We're going to save analysis of those speculative and invasive scenarios for when more information becomes available (though we may independently write a future blog post on the dangers of the government use of weaponized exploits).
For now, let's review what Tor can do, what tools go well with Tor to give you defense-in-depth for your communications, and what work needs to be done so we can make it easier to protect communications from instances where the existing centralized communications infrastructure is compromised by the NSA, China, Iran, or by anyone else who manages to get ahold of the keys to the kingdom.

The core Tor software's job is to conceal your identity from your recipient, and to conceal your recipient and your content from observers on your end. By itself, Tor does not protect the actual communications content once it leaves the Tor network. This can make it useful against some forms of metadata analysis, but this also means Tor is best used in combination with other tools.
Through the use of HTTPS-Everywhere in Tor Browser, in many cases we can protect your communications content where parts of the Tor network and/or your recipients' infrastructure are compromised or under surveillance. The EFF has created an excellent interactive graphic to help illustrate and clarify these combined properties.
Through the use of combinations of additional software like TorBirdy and Enigmail, OTR, and Diaspora, Tor can also protect your communications content in cases where the communications infrastructure (Google/Facebook) is compromised.

However, the real interesting use cases for Tor in the face of dragnet surveillance like this is not that Tor can protect your gmail/facebook accounts from analysis (in fact, Tor could never really protect account usage metadata), but that Tor and hidden services are actually a key building block to build systems where it is no longer possible to go to a single party and obtain the full metadata, communications frequency, *or* contents.
Tor hidden services are arbitrary communications endpoints that are resistant to both metadata analysis and surveillance.
A simple (to deploy) example of a hidden service based mechanism to significantly hinder exactly this type of surveillance is an XMPP client that also ships with an XMPP server and a Tor hidden service. Such a P2P communication system (where the clients are themselves the servers) is both end-to-end secure, and does *not* have a single central server where metadata is available. This communication is private, pseudonymous, and does not have involve any single central party or intermediary.
More complex examples would include the use of Diaspora and other decentralized social network protocols with hidden service endpoints.

Despite these compelling use cases and powerful tool combination possibilities, the Tor Project is under no illusion that these more sophisticated configurations are easy, usable, or accessible by the general public.
We recognize that a lot of work needs to be done even for the basic tools like Tor Browser, TorBirdy, EnigMail, and OTR to work seamlessly and securely for most users, let alone complex combinations like XMPP or Diaspora with Hidden Services.
Additionally, hidden services themselves are in need of quite a bit of development assistance just to maintain their originally designed level of security, let alone scaling to support large numbers of endpoints.
Being an Open Source project with limited resources, we welcome contributions from the community to make any of this software work better with Tor, or to help improve the Tor software itself.
If you're not a developer, but you would still like to help us succeed in our mission of securing the world's communications, please donate! It is a rather big job, after all.

We will keep you updated as we learn more about the exact capabilities of this program.
mikeperry's blog Email this Blog entry

Yes I know Firefly it all for our own good...........

http://www.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-copied-a-lot-of-nsa-files-2013-6

FORMER US OFFICIAL: The NSA Thinks Edward Snowden Copied 'Almost Everything That Place Does'
MICHAEL KELLEY JUN. 25, 2013, 12:37 PM



REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

A former U.S. official says that NSA analysts believe that Edward Snowden may have copied "almost everything [the NSA] does," Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller of The Washington Post report.
As of last night it was reported that officials didn't know how much Snowden took from the NSA’s Hawaii facility where he worked as a Booz Allen contractor.

“They think he copied so much stuff — that almost everything that place does, he has,” one former government official, referring to the NSA, told The Post. “Everyone’s nervous about what the next thing will be, what will be exposed.”

Last week NSA Director Keith Alexander told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Snowden fabricated digital keys that gave him access to areas way above his clearance as a low-level contractor and systems administrator.

Earlier this month, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald told The New York Times that Snowden gave him “thousands” of documents, “dozens” of which Greenwald says are newsworthy.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the he got a job at Booz Allen to get "access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked."

He added:

"If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country to make their own assessment, independent of my bias, as to whether or not the knowledge of US network operations against their people should be published."

Greenwald recently told CNN he knows Snowden "has in his possession thousands of documents, which, if published, would impose crippling damage on the United States’ surveillance capabilities and systems around the world.”

The fear is that Chinese or Russian intelligence have gained access or will gain access to classified files Snowden may have in his possession.

From The Post:

It’s unclear whether officials in Hong Kong or in Russia, where Snowden fled over the weekend, obtained any of the classified material. A spokesman for the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which has been assisting the former National Security Agency contractor, strenuously denied reports that foreign governments had made copies of the documents.

Snowden has provided documents detailing how NSA hackers systematically targeted computers and civilian targets in Hong Kong and mainland China over a four-year period.

Greenwald said he wouldn't have published that information.

“Whether I would have disclosed the specific IP addresses in China and Hong Kong the NSA is hacking, I don’t think I would have,” Greenwald told The Daily Beast. “What motivated that leak though was a need to ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China.”

Matthew Rojansky, the deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told David M. Herszenhorn of The New York Times that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the post-Soviet successor of the K.G.B., would naturally want to talk to Snowden.

“The guy is supposedly carrying four laptops, plus a bunch of thumb drives, supposedly knows all sorts of other things,” he said. “You don’t pass up an opportunity like that. You don’t just let him pass through the business lounge, on the way to Cuba.”

Snowden hasn't always been the champion for whistleblowers he portrays himself now as. I just don't find the guy sympathetic.

What NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Said Four Years Ago About Whistleblowers Might Surprise You

Also, there is some doubt he is legally a whistleblower because the actions he disclosed are legal because they have been approved by congress and because he broke the law when he stole classified documents.

Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America
by DANIEL ELLSBERG on JUNE 10, 2013
My opinion piece in the Guardian today:

In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden’s release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden’s whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an “executive coup” against the US constitution.

Since 9/11, there has been, at first secretly but increasingly openly, a revocation of the bill of rights for which this country fought over 200 years ago. In particular, the fourth and fifth amendments of the US constitution, which safeguard citizens from unwarranted intrusion by the government into their private lives, have been virtually suspended.

The government claims it has a court warrant under Fisa – but that unconstitutionally sweeping warrant is from a secret court, shielded from effective oversight, almost totally deferential to executive requests. As Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst, put it: “It is a kangaroo court with a rubber stamp.”

For the president then to say that there is judicial oversight is nonsense – as is the alleged oversight function of the intelligence committees in Congress. Not for the first time – as with issues of torture, kidnapping, detention, assassination by drones and death squads –they have shown themselves to be thoroughly co-opted by the agencies they supposedly monitor. They are also black holes for information that the public needs to know.

The fact that congressional leaders were “briefed” on this and went along with it, without any open debate, hearings, staff analysis, or any real chance for effective dissent, only shows how broken the system of checks and balances is in this country.

Obviously, the United States is not now a police state. But given the extent of this invasion of people’s privacy, we do have the full electronic and legislative infrastructure of such a state. If, for instance, there was now a war that led to a large-scale anti-war movement – like the one we had against the war in Vietnam – or, more likely, if we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.

There are legitimate reasons for secrecy, and specifically for secrecy about communications intelligence. That’s why Bradley Mannning and I –both of whom had access to such intelligence with clearances higher than top-secret – chose not to disclose any information with that classification. And it is why Edward Snowden has committed himself to withhold publication of most of what he might have revealed.

But what is not legitimate is to use a secrecy system to hide programs that are blatantly unconstitutional in their breadth and potential abuse. Neither the president nor Congress as a whole may by themselves revoke the fourth amendment – and that’s why what Snowden has revealed so far was secret from the American people.

In 1975, Senator Frank Church spoke of the National Security Agency in these terms:

“I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

...

http://www.ellsberg.net/

There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious by their brilliancy, their number, or their excess; thus it happens that public robbery is called financial skill, and the unjust capture of provinces is called a conquest.

Plus, what would you say, Rev, if you wanted to keep that job

That too is fallacious. Congress makes a lot of laws that are illegal/ unconstitutional. That's the whole point of whistleblowing - to uncover the criminal actions of the offending party

Ever since Edward Snowden revealed himself as the leaker of classified documents about U.S. surveillance programs, he has sometimes been called a whistle-blower. But is he?

Those who believe he has shed light on improper government actions say he deserves to be called one. But there seems little doubt that he cannot claim legal whistle-blower protection.

For starters, the general whistle-blower laws apply to government employees who expose wrongdoing, by protecting them from such retaliatory actions as firing, demotion, salary cuts, or blocked promotions. But those laws do not apply to employees or contractors who work for the intelligence agencies.

Instead, a separate law, the Intelligence Community Whistle-blower Protection Act, applies to people who held positions such as the one Snowden did as a contractor for the National Security Agency. Legal experts say, however, that it provides no protection to him for two reasons.

First, they say, he did not expose the kinds of actions covered by whistle-blower protections — illegal conduct, fraud, waste or abuse. Some people have argued that the programs revealed by Snowden are illegal or unconstitutional. For now, they are presumptively legal, given the assent of members of Congress and the special court known as FISA that oversees intelligence operations.

But suppose Snowden’s supporters are right, and what he exposed was illegal conduct after all.

Then he would face a second problem: The Federal Whistle-blower Protection Act protects the public disclosure of “a violation of any law, rule, or regulation” only “if such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law.” In other words, Snowden could claim whistle-blower protection only if he took his concerns to the NSA’s inspector general or to a member of one of the congressional intelligence committees with the proper security clearances.

Asked on Tuesday what chances Snowden would have to qualify for whistle-blower protection, Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington — an expert on the issue — said, “none.”

Plus, what would you say, Rev, if you wanted to keep that job

Don't know how he expected to keep his job skipping off to Hong Kong.

But suppose Snowden’s supporters are right, and what he exposed was illegal conduct after all.

Then he would face a second problem: The Federal Whistle-blower Protection Act protects the public disclosure of “a violation of any law, rule, or regulation” only “if such disclosure is not specifically prohibited by law.” In other words, Snowden could claim whistle-blower protection only if he took his concerns to the NSA’s inspector general or to a member of one of the congressional intelligence committees with the proper security clearances.

Asked on Tuesday what chances Snowden would have to qualify for whistle-blower protection, Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington — an expert on the issue — said, “none.”

Moreover, he revealed in a way which exposed things to other countries which in my opinion shouldn't have been exposed.

The point is that whistleblowers usually report things against the law that a company or government is doing. The data spying and the rest is covered under the Patriot Act powers which congress has passed again and again.

If they don't want the government to have those powers, don't pass the law again.

If the administration was doing something that no one knew anything about and was not approved of and did not go through FISA (regardless of being a rubber stamp or not) then, Snowden did in fact reveal something earthshattering. But that was not the case.

in the name of keeping us safe