US National Security Agency

Stasi Meets Steve Jobs

By Eric Margolis

“Gentlemen do not read other gentlemen’s mail” sniffed US Secretary of State Henry Stimson in 1929 when told that American cryptographers had broken Japan’s naval and diplomatic codes.

Stimson, who later headed the War Department, ordered code-breaking shut down.

Alas, there are not any old-school gentlemen left in Washington these days. Revelations of US electronic spying by whistleblower Edward Snowden have ignited a furor across Latin America and now Europe.

This week’s uproar was intensified by claims that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped into the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europe’s most important and influential leader. Further outrage erupted in France after reports that its leaders and diplomats had been tapped by NSA’s big ears.

To no surprise, President Obama officially denied listening in to Merkel’s calls. A US source sought to lessen the damage by claiming NSA had only tapped her office phone, not her cell phone. German anger was not assuaged.

Back in the day, French Interior Ministers – notably Nicholas Sarkozy – used to stay up late poring over wire taps of fellow officials’ peccadillos. That was good fun. Today, by contrast, the NSA and CIA are sweeping up all communications of supposed allies as part of the runaway US national security state. Call it the Stasi meets Apple’s late Steve Jobs.

Last month alone, NSA reportedly sifted through 70 million French phone calls, text and email under the lame pretext of fighting terrorism. What NSA was really finding were the phone numbers of prominent Frenchmen’s mistresses or boyfriends – very useful for CIA blackmail ops – and important commercial information. Terrorism is a red herring. NSA’s run amok spying, allegedly to combat “terrorism,” is making a lot of Americans wonder again about the events of 9/11 that triggered the explosion of America’s spy state, restrictive laws, and foreign wars.

Still, one wonders if President Obama knew what his spies were doing. He has little control over the Pentagon and probably even less over America’s mammoth, ever-growing spy state built by former President George W. Bush that costs over $80 billion per annum. Some 4.8 million Americans now have secret security clearance and work for the octopod national security state.

Obama would not be the first president not to know what his spooks were up to. But he should have been this time. Bugging the leaders of America’s closest European and Latin American allies was an incredibly stupid act. Nothing thereby learned could have been worth the damage caused.

US Elint (electronic spying) has humiliated European and Latin leaders and made them and NATO look like American vassals to be dismissed or disdained.

How can Europe’s leaders face their own voters after this shameful episode? Revelations by Snowdon and Army private Bradley Manning show that Washington treats its NATO allies in the same imperious manner the old Soviet Union bossed around the Warsaw Pact.

Europe’s leaders are under mounting pressure to demonstrate their independence of Uncle Sam by taking some stern retaliatory action against US interests.

A starting point would be building a brand-new electronic communications architecture for Western Europe that resists US penetration, and creating a truly independent Europe military capability. Time for Europe to stop being foot soldiers to America’s nuclear knights.

US reputation in Europe and Latin America is now at an all-time low. The next NSA spying scandals will likely come from the Mideast, India and Pakistan, Canada, South Korea and Japan. Obama may be remembered as having gotten the world even angrier at the US than predecessor George W. Bush – quite an accomplishment.

Washington claims “everyone does spying.” True enough, but no one is anywhere close to NSA’s giant vacuum cleaner and all-hearing bugs. What the US has been doing is far more than information gathering against a handful of anti-American militants. It’s heavy-duty intimidation. A reminder that Big Brother is watching and listening.

The deeply corrupt US Congress won’t do much to curtail NSA’s information theft. Too many of its members profit from market trades made on the basis of NSA snooping. – The Gulf Times

Brazil to break free from US-centric internet

Brazil plans to divorce itself from the US-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying.

This is a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward politically fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.

President Dilma Rousseff has ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the US National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to US tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

Internet security and policy experts say her government’s reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.

“The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months,” said Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute at the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank.

“This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe.”

While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from US-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.
Brazil intends to increase its independent Internet connections with other countries.

The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from US spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say.

In December, countries advocating greater “cyber-sovereignty” pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.

US digital security expert Bruce Schneier says that while Brazil’s response is a rational reaction to NSA spying, it is likely to embolden “some of the worst countries out there to seek more control over their citizens’ Internet. That’s Russia, China, Iran and Syria. That’s Tunisia. That’s Egypt.”

Rousseff says she intends to push for new international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software during the UN General Assembly meeting later this month.

Among Snowden revelations: the NSA has created backdoors in software and Web-based services.

Brazil is now pushing more aggressively than any other nation to end US commercial hegemony on the Internet. More than 80 percent of online search, for example, is controlled by US-based companies.

Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fibre optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of US eavesdropping.

More communications integrity protection is expected when Telebras, the state-run telecom company, works with partners to oversee the launch in 2016 of Brazil’s first communications satellite, for military and public Internet traffic.

Brazil’s military currently relies on a satellite run by Embratel, which Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim controls.

Rousseff is urging Brazil’s Congress to compel Facebook, Google and other US companies to store all data generated by Brazilians on servers physically located inside Brazil in order to shield it from the NSA.

If that happens, and other nations follow suit, Silicon Valley’s bottom line could be hit by lost business and higher operating costs: Brazilians are among the most voracious consumers of social media, ranking No. 3 on Facebook and No. 2 on Twitter and YouTube. An August study

by a respected U.S. technology policy nonprofit estimated the fallout from the NSA spying scandal could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry, which stores data remotely to give users easy access from any device, as much as $35 billion by 2016 in lost business.

Brazil also plans to build more Internet exchange points, places where vast amounts of data are relayed, in order to route Brazilians’ traffic away from potential interception.

And its postal service plans by next year to create an encrypted email service that could serve as an alternative to Gmail and Yahoo!, which according to Snowden-leaked documents are among US tech giants that have collaborated closely with the NSA.

“Brazil intends to increase its independent Internet connections with other countries,” Rousseff’s office said.

It cited a “common understanding” between Brazil and the European Union on data privacy, and said “negotiations are underway in South America for the deployment of land connections between all nations.”

It said Brazil plans to boost investment in home-grown technology and buy only software and hardware that meet government data privacy specifications.

While the plans’ technical details are pending, experts say they will be costly for Brazil and ultimately can be circumvented. Just as people in China and Iran defeat government censors with tools such as “proxy servers,” so could Brazilians bypass their government’s controls.

International spies, not just from the United States, also will adjust, experts said. Laying cable to Europe won’t make Brazil safer, they say. The NSA has reportedly tapped into undersea telecoms cables for decades.

Meinrath and others argue that what’s needed instead are strong international laws that hold nations accountable for guaranteeing online privacy.

“There’s nothing viable that Brazil can really do to protect its citizenry without changing what the US is doing,” he said.

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins computer security expert, said Brazil won’t protect itself from intrusion by isolating itself digitally.

It will also be discouraging technological innovation, he said, by encouraging the entire nation to use a state-sponsored encrypted email service.

“It’s sort of like a Soviet socialism of computing,” he said, adding that the US “free-for-all model works better.”
-Sapa

Britain faces furore over Snowden-linked detention

British authorities faced increasing pressure Monday to explain why they used anti-terror laws to detain the partner of a journalist who worked with US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

David Miranda — the Brazilian partner of Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist with Britain’s Guardian newspaper — was held for almost nine hours on Sunday as he passed through London’s Heathrow Airport on his way to Rio de Janeiro from Berlin.

A furious Greenwald said British authorities had “zero suspicion” that Miranda was involved in terrorism and instead spent hours questioning him about the Guardian’s reporting on the activities of the US National Security Agency, which has enraged Washington.

“This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters),” Greenwald wrote in the Guardian.

“They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”

Miranda, 28, often assists Greenwald with his work, the Guardian said.

He is not an employee of the newspaper but it paid for his flights. He stayed in Berlin with Laura Poitras, a US filmmaker who has been working with the Guardian.

Miranda said he had been questioned by six agents at Heathrow who confiscated his electronic equipment.

“The minute I stepped out of the plane they took me away to a small room with four chairs and a machine for taking fingerprints,” he told the Guardian.

“They asked questions about my entire life, about everything. They took my computer, video game, mobile phone, my memory card.”

A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron said the British government takes “all necessary steps to protect the public from individuals who pose a threat to national security”.

“But it is for the police to decide when it is necessary and proportionate to use these powers,” the spokesman said.

London’s Metropolitan Police on Monday insisted their actions were “reviewed throughout to ensure the examination was both necessary and proportionate” and that its use of anti-terror powers was “legally and procedurally sound”.

The force also dismissed reports that Miranda was denied legal representation and said that a solicitor was present.

But authorities were under increasing pressure to explain why Miranda was held, with Brazil expressing “grave concern” that one of its citizens had apparently been “held incommunicado”.

Britain’s opposition Labour party called for an urgent investigation into whether anti-terror laws had been misused.

“Any suggestion that terror powers are being misused must be investigated and clarified urgently,” said Yvette Cooper, Labour’s home affairs spokeswoman.

Brazil’s foreign ministry said its embassy in London had contacted British officials prior to Miranda’s release and that Brazil would also be seeking an explanation.

“This measure is without justification since it involves an individual against whom there are no charges that can justify the use of that legislation,” the ministry said in a statement.

— ‘Revenge tactics’ —

Greenwald, a well-known journalist in the United States, analysed and published information on documents released by former US security contractor Snowden revealing huge electronic surveillance operations by the NSA.

The United States denied it asked Britain to detain Miranda.

“There was a heads-up that was provided by the British government, so this is something we had an indication was likely to occur,” White House deputy spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

“But it’s not something that we requested, and it’s something that was done specifically by the British law enforcement officials.”

Snowden was granted asylum in Russia after spending five weeks in limbo at a Moscow airport attempting to avoid extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on espionage charges.

Arriving to meet Miranda at Rio’s airport, meanwhile, Greenwald said he was now even more determined to continue reporting on the intelligence leaks — with a new focus on Britain.

“Now I will be more radical in my reporting,” he warned. “This was a clear attempt at intimidation.”

Rights group Amnesty International said Miranda was “clearly a victim of unwarranted revenge tactics”, while Reporters Without Borders said it was “outraged” by his detention. – AFP

German email providers to protect customers from US cybersnooping

Germany’s three biggest email providers announced Friday a partnership to bolster the security of messages sent between them in the wake of revelations of US online surveillance.

Telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom as well as GMX and Web.de, both subsidiaries of Germany’s United Internet, will automatically encrypt their email traffic from now on.

Email content as well as the identity of the sender and recipient and attachments will be encrypted, Deutsche Telekom and United Internet told reporters, presenting the “Email Made in Germany” initiative.

The email services of t-online.de, web.de and gmx.de represent two-thirds of private email accounts used in Germany, or more than 50 million email addresses, according to the companies.

Deutsche Telekom chief executive Rene Obermann said the leak, which detailed the US National Security Agency’s gathering of vast amounts of phone call logs and Internet data, had “deeply unsettled” users.

He said talks with other email providers aimed at widening the alliance have already taken place. – AFP