Edward Snowden

Google Engineer Wins Award from the NSA and then Slams it

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In accepting the award I don’t condone the NSA’s surveillance. Simply put, I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.

– Dr. Joseph Bonneau

In case you weren’t aware, Dr. Joseph Bonneau, a google engineer, received an award for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 from the National Security Agency’s first annual “Science of Security Competition” on July 19th. He experienced such mixed emotions upon its receipt that he felt the need to express them publicly in a blog post. We should all be thankful he had the courage to do so.

While his post may at first seem like no big deal, it represents another example of the extraordinarily positive impact Edward Snowden’s leaks are having throughout American culture. When a person who wins an award from the NSA immediately expresses his revulsion of its practices as a result of what he learned from Snowden’s act of civil disobedience, we can rest assured the cultural grounds underneath our feet are shifting for the better. Let’s not forget that the latest version of Congress’ internet spy bill, CISPA, has been placed on the back burner as a result, and instead Congress is being forced to vote on positive things, such as the Amash Amendment.  Dr. Bonneau’s statement simply would not have been written if it weren’t for Mr. Snowden’s whistle-blowing. His key points are:

Yesterday I received the NSA award for the Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper of 2012 for my IEEE Oakland paper “The science of guessing.” I’m honored to have been recognised by the distinguished academic panel assembled by the NSA. 

On a personal note, I’d be remiss not to mention my conflicted feelings about winning the award given what we know about the NSA’s widespread collection of private communications and what remains unknown about oversight over the agency’s operations. Like many in the community of cryptographers and security engineers, I’m sad that we haven’t better informed the public about the inherent dangers and questionable utility of mass surveillance. And like many American citizens I’m ashamed we’ve let our politicians sneak the country down this path.

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Department of Homeland Security Warns Employees: They Face “Legal Action” for Clicking on a Link

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You know a government has lost all credibility and is nothing more than a rotting carcass of corruption and criminality when it starts taking draconian steps to prevent its own employees from knowing the truth about what it is doing. Incredibly, an internal memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last Friday to employees … Read more

Richard Stallman: “Facebook is a Monstrous Surveillance Engine”

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If you want to have the possibility of some privacy someday, you’d better join the fight now, because now a bunch of other people are joining the fight. Now is the moment when you can make a difference. If you wait until the day you wish you had some privacy and only then try to do … Read more

Interview with Dr. Dave Janda – July 2013: Why Aren’t There More Wall Street Whistleblowers?

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This past Sunday, I sat down with the always excellent Dr. Dave Janda for the first time since April. As usual, we had a lively, intellectually stimulating conversation on a wide variety of topics. From why there aren’t more Wall Street whistleblowers, to Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden as a “second generation whistleblower,” whether or not Chief … Read more

Montana Passes Sweeping Anti-Government Spying Bill

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What is so interesting about Montana’s House Bill 603, which passed overwhelmingly the state Senate by a 96-4 margin, is that it was passed in April, or several months before Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. Talk about some foresight. Hopefully, we will see many more such bills sweep across the nation, as “change” will have to be done at the local level. The central government in D.C. is hopelessly corrupt and I don’t see that changing. We must just decentralize away from the District of Criminals on our own. From the Atlantic Wire:

Privacy advocates, behold the Montana legislature and House Bill 603, a measure that requires the government to obtain a probable cause warrant before spying on you through your cell phone or laptop. HB 603 was signed into law this past spring, effectively making Montana the first state to have an anti-spy law long before anyone heard of Edward Snowden. To be clear, HB 603 passed the state Senate overwhelmingly by a vote of 96-4 in April and was signed into law on May 6.

At the time, the law might have seemed extraneous, or even paranoid. But knowing what we know now, the law seems prophetic. The law is pretty straightforward—the government can’t spy on Montanans through their electronic devices unless they obtain a warrant:

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Meet Xmission: The ISP Focused on Privacy

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Earlier this week, I highlighted alternative search engine DuckDuckGo, which focuses on privacy and claims that: “if the NSA demanded data there would be none to hand over.” Today’s article focuses on a little known internet service provider (ISP) called Xmission, which is based in Utah and has 30,000 subscribers. Ironically, it is situated close to the NSA’s new multi-billion dollar spy center and it has received rave reviews from the always excellent Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF). It’s founder, Pete Ashdown is a brave man who, unlike his larger tech peers, has consistently stood up to the government and intelligence services to protect his customers’ Constitutional rights. From The Guardian:

Silicon Valley’s role in US government surveillance has triggered public anxiety about the internet, but it turns out there is at least one tech company you can trust with your data. The only problem: it’s a relative minnow in the field, operating from offices in Utah.

Xmission, Utah’s first independent and oldest internet service provider, has spent the past 15 years resolutely shielding customers’ privacy from government snoops in a way that larger rivals appear to have not.

The company, a comparative midget with just 30,000 subscribers, cited the Fourth Amendment in rebuffing warrantless requests from local, state and federal authorities, showing it was possible to resist official pressure.

“I would tell them I didn’t need to respond if they didn’t have a warrant, that (to do so) wouldn’t be constitutional,” the founder and chief executive, Pete Ashdown, said in an interview at his Salt Lake City headquarters.

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New Interview with Gold Money: Tear Down Those Pyramids!

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It’s only been a few hours since my interview with Gold Money News’ Félix Moreno was posted to youtube, but I’ve already experienced a flood of positive feedback.  It’s almost impossible to fathom the tremendous ground covered.  We start off discussing some of the more interesting aspects of my time on Wall Street (a topic I … Read more

The 3 Key Takeaways from the Ridiculous “Insider Threat Program”

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McClatchy’s recent report covering the government’s expansive employee snitch policy, aka the Insider Threat Program, has gotten a great deal of attention in the alternative media, and rightfully so. I finally took the time to read it and quickly realized that I need to offer my own take since it encapsulates so much of the severe mental illness, delusion and sociopathy rampant within the so-called American “elite” class.

The first line of the report pretty much summarizes what the Insider Threat Program intends to do:

“In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues.”

There are three main takeaways from this revelation I think are crucial to be aware of.  I will cover each of them briefly.

1) This creates a horrible and counterproductive work environment where everyone distrusts everyone else.

So imagine working for the government and being fully aware that because you are going through a divorce or having some financial difficulties that you are now deemed “suspicious” to your superiors.  What about voicing a political view in a conversation at the water cooler? The mere fact that this program exists turns the work environment into a virtual prison where all normal human behavior is suspect and you are encouraged to become a government robot.  But it’s even worse than that.  This program guarantees that the nastiest and most immoral types will rise to the top. Someone with sociopathic tendencies will quickly realize that the “upside” is to always snitch on everyone. Is there someone right above you who’s position you covet?  Simply make consistent accusations against them and play the political game until you ruin that person. This works particularly well if your target is a decent person.

2) Solidifies the fact the government is not interested in solving problems, but rather is focused on continuing the cronyism and criminality and merely covering it up.

The above point basically summarizes everything that is wrong with all of our major institutions today, and why we have total political and economic disfunction. This is a topic I have covered for many, many years with regard to the financial system. The reason the economy has not really recovered and why it will not enter into a healthy recovery is that our “leaders” merely covered up all of the bubbles and crimes pre-2008.  Not only did no one go to jail, but those most responsible for the crisis were rewarded with high political positions (Larry Summers and Tim Geithner) and also monetarily through bailouts. The same thing is now happening with the NSA scandal. Rather than addressing this gross violation of the 4th Amendment as well as Clapper lying in front of Congress, the power structure is focused on making sure its crimes aren’t revealed going forward. Whistleblowers are prosecuted and jailed, while those in power destroying the Constitution are promoted. This guarantees future societal breakdown.

3) Exposes how completely hopeless and terminal the status quo is.

This is the silver lining to the entire thing. I have covered previously how the status quo has no philosophy the masses can believe in. Its position of power depends on its crimes being hidden in the shadows and enormous payoffs (or threats) for those at the top directly involved in the pillaging. Once the scam is exposed, the public will ultimately turn against the system. This is why Snowden’s leaks are so important and why the status quo is panicking. One of the things McClatchy notes is that one trend the government is looking out for is: “an increasingly disgruntled, post-Great Recession workforce and the entry of younger, ‘Gen Y’ employees who were ‘raised on the Internet.'”  Sorry, but a power structure this frightened of the younger generation cannot and will not survive. It is simply a matter of time.

Now here are some key excerpts from the McClatchy report:

WASHINGTON — In an initiative aimed at rooting out future leakers and other security violators, President Barack Obama has ordered federal employees to report suspicious actions of their colleagues based on behavioral profiling techniques that are not scientifically proven to work, according to experts and government documents.

The techniques are a key pillar of the Insider Threat Program, an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.

The order covers virtually every federal department and agency, including the Peace Corps, the Department of Education and others not directly involved in national security.

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Search Engine “Duck Duck Go” Experiences Traffic Surge in Wake of NSA Scandal

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The tremendous positive impact from Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations will only be properly appreciated in the years and decades ahead, but I believe they will be extraordinary. In fact, we are already seeing many of them. From the recent halt on the CISPA bill in Congress, to the forced exposure of authoritarian shills in the mainstream media as they struggle to publicly defend the NSA. However, perhaps the most significant long-term impact will be the resulting boom in the privacy business.  If you recall, I wrote a piece titled Bitcoin and Kim Dotcom: Why it’s Time to “Encrypt Everything” a couple of months ago.

In what I think is great news, the alternative, “non-tracking” search engine Duck Duck Go has seen a surge in traffic since the NSA scandal was revealed.  As was noted in a Guardian article from today: “If the NSA demanded data from DuckDuckGo, there would be none to hand over.”  More on this fascinating trend below:

Gabriel Weinberg noticed web traffic building on the night of Thursday 6 June – immediately after the revelations about the “Prism” program. Through the programme, the US’s National Security Agency claimed to have “direct access” to the servers of companies including, crucially, the web’s biggest search engines – Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.

Within days of the story, while the big companies were still spitting tacks and tight-lipped disclaimers, the search engine Weinberg founded – which pledges not to track or store data about its users – was getting 50% more traffic than ever before. That has gone up and up as more revelations about NSA and GCHQ internet tapping have come in.

Using it is very definitely an active choice, whereas using Google is the default option on most browsers. And 95% of people never change the default settings on anything.

But this 20-person business offers what none of the big search engines do: zero tracking. It doesn’t use cookies or store data about its users’ IP addresses, doesn’t offer user logins, and uses an encrypted connection by default.

 If the NSA demanded data from DuckDuckGo, there would be none to hand over.

Having decided that searching is intimately personal, he deduced that governments would want to get hold of search data. “I looked at the search fiascos such as the AOL data release, and decided that government requests were real and would be inevitable, and that search engines and content companies would be handing over that data [to government] in increasing amounts.”

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Meet the Secret Supreme Court of the United States

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This program, by the way, is fully overseen not just by Congress, but by the FISA Court — a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them, and that it’s being carried out consistent with the Constitution and rule of law.

– President Barack Obama on June 7, 2013 (transcript here)

Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

– From the July 6, 2013 New York Times article: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of N.S.A.

One of the most incredible things that has occurred in the aftermath of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks has been President Barack Obama’s laughable attempt to justify the spying by claiming the process has judicial oversight, as he did in the quote above. What he fails to mention of course is the fact that the FISA court that signs off on all these activities is a secret court, the opinions of which are never made public. Does he think the American public is so brain-dead it is incapable of recognizing the difference between a regular court of law and a secret one? Apparently he does.  For those of you that have yet to get up to speed on America’s “parallel Supreme Court,” which also disturbingly happens to constructs its own laws, please read the article below from The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court.

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