Interview with Laura Poitras
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
"Two of the 9/11 hijackers were on the CIA list and had trained with bin Laden in Afghanistan. They came into the country and [the CIA] failed to notify the FBI. We’re here 13 years later with 13 years of war, $4 trillion of money spent, occupied countries, and it was an intelligence failure that could have been corrected in a different way where we should have said, “Why did this happen? Some people should get fired, and let’s be smarter about this.” They had a handful of people that hated us, but now they’ve created entire generations. That’s the stuff that drives me crazy—this response of more violence and more war to make us all safer actually creates more violence."
Perhaps that's the goal. I've spent a long time trying to understand the grand chessboard of geopolitics and military strategy, and my general conclusion about the WOT is that it was designed as a destabilization program in the first place. Destabilization helps by allowing the jackals to manipulate the power structure to allow whatever the real objective(s) are. In the case of Iraq, for example, it was largely about two things: control of oil (not about getting oil for ourselves, but about controlling who did get it), because the real intellectual hawks (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Kissinger, etc kind of people who persist in the beltway over decades) feel that Russia and China are the real threat as we move towards resource wars, and by extension Iran is a threat because it doesn't comply with our power structure. We isolated Iran with both Afghanistan and Iraq, and continue to allow both neo-cons and the hawkish left to isolate them even more. I don't think they understand the gravity of such actions though.
I gave Wartard some pointers on this article that is worth a read if you are interested in this sort of subject matter.
http://wartard.blogspot.com/2012/01/phase-ii-why-us-wants-to...
Anyway, I digress, the point is that we need to acknowledge and accept that actual national security from terrorism has never been the primary goal, and instead is the cover for the perceived national security situation that is soon to be here, namely, a neo-cold war era of global resource and economic wars. Until this fact is acknowledged, I will continue to be disappointed in journalists who simply stop at "but we are creating more terrorists!" and don't move on the the bigger picture of why this is the current state of the union.
How did Iraq isolated Iran? Iran and Iraq, while both bucking the 'US power structure', were enemies of each other.
If you haven't watched it, it's a must see. well worth the 3 hours for the whole series. I re-watch it every couple of years.
It's not just the War on Terror. The war on drugs has had a similar effect -- drug enforcement focusing on importation, incentivizes more concentrated drugs allowing for profit per pound in smuggling operations. These drugs happen to also be more addictive. Cocoa Leaves -> Cocaine -> Crack
In fact, I submit you can probably find a similar effect in every "grand effort" at the federal level that gets called a "war".
"but the Chinese did manage to sneak a diesel powered sub into the middle of a carrier group during USN exercises off Taiwan in 2006."
I was stationed in Japan when I was in the Navy and just missed this little event. Supposedly the sub surfaced directly in front of the Kittyhawk. Shortly thereafter, the Kittyhawk went into General Quarters.
Blaming the Iraq war for their dislike of us is about as silly as it gets, they didn't like us before. The key differences now is that technology allows such groups to better organize than ever before.
Many Arabs went from "that crazy bin Laden is a conspiracy theorist" to "bi Laden is right, America is our enemy".
Actually, I'd love to hear a better explanation for the Iraq war. Because I've not heard one that wasn't silly.
Iraqi's didn't like us and didn't like us before? Have you met many Iraqis? Remember this was a relatively modern, westernish country. The average Iraqi liked america, our freedom, and wish they could be liberated from Saddam. (this is not a justification for the war with Iraq, in my mind, but neither is the 9/11 event which involved Saudis and had no apparent connection to Iraq.)
How about Iranians. Do you think Iranians hate westerners? Reports from people visiting Iran, and the Iranians I have known disagree with that position. Again, also a relatively modern society, though with an even more religious government than Iraq.
I think you might be making the mistake that many make of conflating the views of "leaders" (often self described) or "government" with "the people".
On the other hand, take an individual Iraqi or Afghani father, who lost his wife and kids to a drone attack that only killed civilians. Do you think he might hate america? Quite possibly. But that was not "before", that is only "since" the drone attacks started.
I imagine there are many kids who were teenagers who lost their fathers and or mothers to drone attacks in the last 10 years who will grow up to hate americans, and some of them may turn out to be terrorists.
The "War on terrorism" is using tactics that create terrorists.
Closed as WONTFIX: this is a feature not a bug.
Which Iraq war are you referring to? Iraq -- people and government -- was generally favorable to the US prior to the 1991 war. For generally diametrically opposed reasons between the government and large segments of the populace, that was significantly less true prior to the 2003 war (the government was anti-US for the US fighting the 1991 war, large segments of the populace that weren't favorable to the government were less pro-US than before the 1991 war because they felt betrayed by not being supported by the US in the aftermath of that war.) But certainly there were a whole new set of sources of anti-US sentiment resulting from the conduct of the 2003 war and, perhaps more importantly, the occupation after the defeat of Saddam's regime.
The world would be safer without religions that deny the rights of others to exist, and would also be safer if violence hadn't been used to encourage more membership in those religions that promote violence.
The law of unintended consequences is a tricky beast. I have pasted this link before, but it bears repeating. It's thorny by design, and happens to snide at US - but they are certainly not the only ones who have succesfully created their own enemies. Usually by supporting and funding earlier allies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4H_E8b-qmo
IIRC Iran was a massive source of counterfeit US dollars in the 1980's and early 1990's. The reason? The last Shah of Persia was supported by the US and was even provided with a mint-quality printing press. [0][1] When he fled the country after the 1979 uprising, the printing press was left behind.
0: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17960/did-usa-se...
1: http://articles.latimes.com/1992-07-02/news/mn-1906_1_counte...
EDIT: made quote appear in italics
We will go on for decades killing grunts of Radical Islam, all while they take the lives of countless innocents, and not be one inch closer to ending with it. If we had put the sheiks and Imams funding Al Qaeda/ISIS/Hamas/Boko Haram/etc. in prison and frozen their assets, those movements would have died off years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudi_Arabia%E2%80%93United_Sta...
Similarly, it is known that Saudis are the prime backers behind Hamas. Most of their money comes from religious "charities":
That is my only problem with Snowden and how these things are being reported. It started out with valid whistle blowing but there are plenty of real operational national secrets that are being revealed in the process. If Snowden simply stuck to the NSA's overreach in domestic spying, it would be much harder for politicians and the like to call him a traitor and marginalize these issues.
On behalf of the other 6.7 billion people on this spinning green ball, thankfully he didn't. We have rights too.
Not under the US Constitution which is what governs the NSA. That has been one of the main features of government throughout history. They put their own people's rights above the rights of foreigners. EDIT: And doing the opposite will generally be viewed as treason.
I am honestly not aware of anything that was revealed that would violate any international treaty the US agreed to, but will definitely listen if you have examples. I also have a hard time believing that any other country with the capability to do the type of international spying the US does wouldn't do the exact same thing (or isn't already).
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-27_en.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Safe_Harbor_Priv...
If something is not restricted by international treaties, it does not mean it's ethically ok to do so. I can understand that the US would push the boundaries when it comes to enemies. But it is utterly painful what it has done to so-called allies.
Europe has a lot of historical debt to Canada and the US. However, 'betrayal' is the word that comes up describing what many Europeans feel.
This is where I think we get into problems. You seem to be suggesting that people should be allowed to reveal classified national secrets that are legal both nationally and internationally if they find them unethical. I think this is a dangerous precedent to set. Different people will have wildly different views on what is ethical when it comes to war and espionage. That is why it is important to codify these things into laws and international treaties.
Definitely.
That is why it is important to codify these things into laws and international treaties.
But treaties (as we have seen in this case) often lag significantly.
In the end it is the judgement and the responsibility of the leaker. In this case, I think Snowden made a good call. For many reasons: e.g. the world had the right to know that virtually all internet traffic is tapped or tappable and that cryptography was intentionally weakened. Even if the US is your friend, that makes you vulnerable to criminal organizations and states that are not allies.
>Not under the US Constitution which is what governs the NSA.
US is a signatory of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Accords
That is at the end of the first paragraph, so I am not sure what you are getting at with your post. Even ignoring that, I didn't find anything that jumped out in that short Wikipedia article. Can you expand on how you believe the US violated the Helsinki Accords?
1. a cornerstone of Helsinki is "fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief"
2. it is well established legal principle, incl. in US legal system, that mass surveillance violates such fundamental freedoms (by means of chilling effect in particular)
>>The Helsinki Accords, however, were not binding as they did not have treaty status.
There is also a binding treaty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bill_of_Human_Rig...
and "U.S. Finally Ratifies Human Rights Covenant" http://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc1369.html
"Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt."
Not "German". "Human".
The NSA is a foreign signals intelligence service principally, though not exclusively, supporting the military. I don't really see any argument that the existence of the NSA -- however much the case may be made of particular activities of the NSA violating various provisions of the Constitution -- is any less within the purview of Art. I Sec. 8 enumerated powers (particularly, the power to "raise and support armies") than any other non-uniformed part of the military support structure in the US government.
I can understand people being outraged at the idea of NSA spying and wanting specific programs to end immediately. Whether certain intelligence operations violate your Constitutional or philosophical rights to privacy is an issue that's important to democracy and should be debated vociferously. But there is no legal or moral right that entitles you to know what air force base controls our drone fleet, what the nuclear launch codes are or where our achilles heels are located.
Dumping troves of sensitive data is a bad idea, even if you want the NSA to be completely abolished. Snowden could have just as easily made a speech, instead of handing millions of unread classified documents over to private individuals.
They regulate the flow of what documents they want the public to see, while still holding a large trove of other documents, deciding unilaterally when they will get released. For someone who had a lot issues with the government, Snowden seems to be emulating quite well with this draconian process of releasing the remaining documents at such a slow pace.
Why do you propose Snowdon should have chosen the suicide mission? It it essential to disconnect the leaker from the documents to bring life threatening action down to a minimum.
Whistleblowing is when you see something illegal and you reveal those specific instances of illegal activity. You can debate whether or not what has been revealed has been beneficial or not, but that doesn't change the definition of whistleblowing - it's not taking a job specifically to gain access to classified information you've never seen before with intention to leak it[1], downloading hundreds of thousands of documents, then handing them over to a few reporters and saying "I'm not sure what's appropriate to reveal to the public, so I'll let you decide." If those reporters reveal something that isn't in the public interest or is damaging to national security, it's a cop-out to say that he wasn't the one who revealed it - he gave it to the reporters and he's responsible for anything they choose to report.
I see people saying all of the time that there's a huge difference between what Manning and Snowden did. The way I see it, the difference is that Manning gave thousands of documents to Julian Assange hoping that he'd act responsibly with them, whereas Snowden gave hundreds of thousands of documents to Greenwald, Poitras and Gellman hoping that they'd act responsibly with them.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/nsa-leak-snowden-job/
That's very much a contradiction in this case. Snowdon found a whole corpus of evidence of illegal action. Since you agree he was capable to evaluate what's illegal or not, the next logic step is to reach out for experts in public interests. Who do you think is more qualified than journalists for this job?
Everything after that has been showing actual foreign intelligence collection or technical information on the NSA's capabilities, often times shown to the public with a warning that they could be used against ordinary citizens, but no evidence to show that they have. In fact, multiple independent reviews of the NSA's program all mentioned in their reports that they found no evidence of abuse[2][3][4].
If he's going to go up and make the claim that the NSA is spying on all of us, I what to see actual evidence of spying on regular people, not descriptions of how they spy with a warning that it could be used against us. That's like saying "the police have guns - they could use them to kill your children!" Instead of showing small number of revelations limited to actual abuse, he's instead given us this: [5][6].
He doesn't get to say that he has no responsibility for it or try to shift the blame over to the reporters. He dumped a huge trove of documents on them unrelated to abuse.
[1] http://www.ala.org/advocacy/advleg/federallegislation/theusa...
[2] http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1... (PDF page 78/labelled p. 76)
[3] http://www.pclob.gov/Library/215-Report_on_the_Telephone_Rec... (p. 16/12)
[4] http://www.pclob.gov/All%20Documents/Report%20on%20the%20Sec... (p. 7/2)
[5] http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/01/the-extent-of-the-snowden...
[6] http://www.lawfareblog.com/catalog-of-the-snowden-revelation...
Well, except for all the stuff detailing mass search and seizure[1] of domestic communication. While some people proclaim that the writs of assistance[2] issued by the FISA court make these searches legal, the constitution is still the highest law of the land.
> independent reviews
> [2]...whitehouse.gov
> [3],[4]...pclob.gov
You consider two parts of the executive-branch[3] to be "independent"? Even when one is a "five-member Board is appointed by the President"[4] and the other is "The President’s Review Group"[5]? That's about as far from "independent" as you can get.
[1] https://www.eff.org/files/2014/07/24/backbone-3c-color.jpg ( https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/deeper-dive-effs-backb... )
[2] aka the primary reason the 4th Amendment exists. These non-specific, general warrants are the very thing the 4th Amendment forbids.
[3] "The PCLOB is an independent agency within the executive branch" ( http://www.pclob.gov/about-us.html )
[4] ibid
[5] see: your link #2, http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-1...
With regards to the independence of the President's Review Group and the PCLOB: all of the members of the PCLOB are confirmed by Congress, so the President can't just staff them with people favorable to his policies; and if you read the PRG report you'll see that it called for quite a few things that directly contradicted the President's statements beforehand (e.g.: moving the phone records to a 3rd party, splitting up NSA and US Cyber Command, limiting NSLs, etc.)
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1346...
[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1346...
> NSA to collect targeted information
> show that the connection is only used by the target
This is off topic. Targeted searches are not relevant, and assuming they have a proper warrant, is perfectly legal. I'm sure some unavoidable collection happens while executing targeted searches, and the filtering necessary is is just the mechanics of wiretapping. Obviously, this is not the illegal part.
Bulk, non-targeted collection is very different. The NSA admits they do not meet the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement, while claiming to have a general warrant from the FISA court, often while waving around Sections 215 and 702 of the Patriot Act, or Executive Order 12333. IN the end, the NSA is still claiming to have a general warrant ("writ of assistance"). As we have not had a constitutional amendment that repeals the 4th Amendment, the specific warrant requirement is still the highest law of the land.
Running your "grep" filter to find the communications of a specific target will probably run across other people's communications. The important part is that - as a targeted action - it only applies to specific locations (or routers/etc) at some some specific time. If you getting a traditional search warrant to search someone's house does not allow you to come back at some future data for another search, nor does it extend to other locations.
On the other hand, if you had a warrant to search Alice's apartment, it is likely that some of her roommate Carol's stuff will be search as well. This is unfortunate, but probably unavoidable and generally legal. The fact that there is a valid reason for the search of Carol's stuff doesn't suddenly extend to allowing a search of anybody else.
As noted above, however, all upstream collection — of which “about” collection is a subset — is “selector-based, i.e., based on . . . things like phone numbers or emails.” Just as in PRISM collection, a selector used as a basis for upstream collection “is not a ‘keyword’ or particular term (e.g., ‘nuclear’ or ‘bomb’) but must be a specific communications identifier (e.g., email address).” In other words, the government’s collection devices are not searching for references to particular topics or ideas, but only for references to specific communications selectors used by people who have been targeted under Section 702.
The EFF says in their motion that they have no problem with the final results of the filtering - they instead consider the act of putting a packet filter on the line to begin with to be illegal[2]. They argue that the packet filter itself constitutes bulk collection, even if it is only pulling out communications that match specific, targeted identifiers.
If the court were to side with the EFF's definition of collection, the NSA would be legally prohibited from collecting on any network connection unless it could show that the only communications that would pass over it were ones that match those specific identifiers because (getting back to my analogy) you can't implement a variant of grep that only reads in the lines that match.
[1] https://www.eff.org/document/plaintiffs-jewel-knutzen-and-wa... (p. 14/9)
[2] Ibid (p. 13-14/8-9)
You asserted that "[Snowden] hasn't shown anything illegal". I have attempted to point out that he has shown illegal activity: their improper search-and-seizure and the writs of assistance they are using to pretend those searches are legal.
What you (and many other people) seem to be missing is that yes, the constitution says that the NSA is "legally prohibited from collecting on any [domestic] network connection [unless they get warrant]". It doesn't matter if this is inconvenient, it's still law. If modern technology has made the law unworkable or obsolete, the law can be amended. Until then, yes, they don't get to run grep against without a specific warrant.
You claim that the NSA is legally prohibited from collecting on any domestic network connection, but the 4th Amendment protects people, not network connections. There was never any 4th Amendment issue with spying on foreigners before because, being outside US jurisdiction, they don't have 4th Amendment rights - thus no warrant requirement. A warrant is absolutely required to gather the communications of an American citizen.
You say that the law can be amended, and I would counter that by saying that it already was amended - FISA Section 702 is specifically written to target non-US persons using US telecommunications infrastructure to communicate.
Yes, you already said that. But logic tells me before any conclusion the documents must be analyzed in the first place. To put it simple: Dumping then judging.
There are only two ways around this timeline, a time machine or you already knew the documents before they were published. Since the former can be safely assumed unrealistic, do you see who do you support with your reasoning?
* Ramstein is a large city unto itself with the proper security perimeters and provisions. Even if you get on the base itself, you're not going to walk into the fenced off drone ops area. Revealing it as the location/hub is not a major security issue.
* If the military cared enough, they would camouflage the tell-tale cookie cutter design of rows of trailers + satcom equipment from Google Maps, but they don't. Even the CIA doesn't seem to for its less-than-public UAV ops facilities in VA and the Middle East.
* Ramstein is already well-known as the hub of virtually everything US military going on in the other side of the world, from medical, to logistics, materiels, intelligence, etc.
Source: former military with knowledge/experiences.
> I was destroying the physical media, because you can’t encrypt SD cards.
Does she mean they don't come with built-in encryption? I'm curious as to why you couldn't just save an encrypted file or encrypted container to an SD card.
edit: aaah, camera. I got the wrong end of the stick. Thanks!
The main problem with adding encryption would be that photos and video can consume a lot of bandwidth, and the bandwidth inside a digital camera is limited, as is the processing power. It would make more sense to put the encryption directly on the media card, similar to the fashion in which Eye-fi cards include a tiny CPU and web server to automatically offload the content to a trusted network.
I'm just worried that could confuse the camera, though: image preview wouldn't work, checksumming wouldn't work...
for i in $(seq 1 1000); do if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdc bs=$((1024 * 1024)) count=(SD size in MB); done
Depends on the capability of your opponent and the consequences if your guess is wrong.
Might be easier to microwave the SD card
>Whole-disk wiping techniques faired only slightly better with SSD media. In the most extreme case, one unnamed SSD model still stored 1 percent of its 1 GB of data even after 20 sequential overwrite passes on the entire device.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/21/flash_drive_erasing_...
I wonder how hard it is on SD drives.
Meanwhile this forum claims the NSA mandates physical destruction https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-5521
More on topic though, while there may not be a "simple" or trustworthy solution using built-in encryption on cameras or SD cards, it should be possible to create a (small, or "prototype sized but usable") device to sit in the middle of the electrical connections of the SD slot on any camera, and a normal SD card. The device would transparently encrypt video footage or pictures sent to the card. Would be an interesting side project.
I've used the Beaglebone's USB client and host ports, along with the Linux USB gadget drivers and LUKS, to do something similar to transparently encrypt USB sticks, it wasn't particularly fast (8-9MB/s) but it was usable :)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital#DRM_copy-protect...
1) Create a LUKS volume on a connected USB stick/drive (cryptsetup luksFormat /dev/sda1)
2) Open the LUKS volume with a standard name for step 3 to use (cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda1 securestick)
3) Load the g_mass_storage USB gadget module and point it at that LUKS device (modprobe g_mass_storage file=/dev/mapper/securestick)
That's basically it, for testing it can be done very easily without scripting.
The end result is a transparent encryption device for USB drives. Plug the beaglebone in to a laptop's USB port and it will show a standard USB mass storage device available for formatting and mounting, unaware that the actual storage is encrypted, and neither the password or LUKS master key will ever be in the laptops RAM (a useful property of this setup).
This could of course be automated with some scripting, and made quite fancy (touchscreen keyboard to unlock the LUKS stick at boot time and load that gadget module properly).
Some beaglebone distros load a gadget module at boot time with their own scripts, but it should be possible to automatically unload it where that is the case.
It is almost certain that this power it is currently already shaping many geopolitical events from the backstage.
Many think these new awesome amounts of money will just vanish after all the oil is gone, but that's not true. The money, most of it, it's already invested in many economical infrastructures around the world, the Saudí sphere of influence has probably similar chances to vanish in the next couple of hundred years as any of the current superpowers (US, Russia, China, etc.).
So many current superpower certainly need to comply with requests from those "new" kids on the block. Like it or not.
And many should look there for reasons to send troops where nobody wants to send them, or for to start wars without any public reasonable cause.
That said, I agree with her when she says that these two decades of war and terror we've inflicted on the world will be seen as dark times.
I say two decades because we've already been through 13 years, and only now are starting to show the faintest hints of slowing down the rampage abroad and the totalitarianism at home.
Russia doesn't even maintain the slightest veneer of democracy or civic empowerment, and China doesn't really have the capacity to enforce complete compliance from its massive population yet.
China, Russia, Iran and other such countries - no matter what you may think about their policies - can at least be said to be honest.
That doesn't make them good but it does show that the US isn't better, in fact they are quite a bit worse.
What we got was only an allusion to said "unrevealed secrets".
Seems legitimate, but that's crazy to me. Maybe they don't count everything?
Because stuff like dealing with Russian immigration law and maybe also negotiating with the USA does require a lawyer?
And for the question why it's only $9k, the Wau Holland Foundation also accepts bank transfers which won't show up there.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/laura-poitr...
Right there she throws any accountability that she has any idea what she's talking about regarding encryption out the window.