Forbes | Trump Reminds Merkel What Germany Owes NATO Forbes President Trump has many vices, but subtlety is not one of them. In his usual Saturday morning Tweet storm, the president denounced reports that he had anything other than, a GREAT meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House the ... |
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To the casual observer, the scene mightve looked like an odd cross between a reenactment of a past war and a demonstration of a future conflict. Elite special operators, some of whom were speaking foreign languages, were roving around the hills of West Virginia on foot, horseback, all-terrain vehicles, and by helicopter, while practicing specialized tactics, some of which are nearly a century old.
But this wasnt another remake of the movie Red Dawn or a weird time-traveling short story. It was a real life, routine exercise called Ridge Runner 2017 that occurred in February 2017. The particular group of participants including special operators from the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all of whom are NATO members and certain practice sessions suggested the event had a lot to do with Russias increasingly revanchist polices in Europe.
Broadly, Ridge Runners purpose is to provide challenging, realistic, and meaningful training, the training programs official website says. In a changing world where global security threats are taking new forms in an increasingly swift and unpredictable manner, Ridge Runner is a training opportunity for [special operations forces] and [general purpose forces] to enhance their readiness to meet these missions.
The West Virginia Army National Guard runs the irregular warfare program for the benefit special operations forces and conventional troops, other government agencies, and sometimes American allies, all of whom who want to make use of the states unique Advanced Mobility Training Area. The facility is huge, covering approximately 500,000 acres of both public and private land, which state and federal authorities use under land agreements with the owners.
US Army
Special operators conduct a mock sensitive site exploitation during Ridge Runner 2017.
The entire setup provides a real, populated zone with various natural and man-made features for troops and police to practice both containing mock insurgencies and terrorist movements in friendly territory and working behind enemy lines with local forces made up of other troops and civilian role players. The Pentagon refers to the latter task of training irregular forces in foreign countries to conduct guerrilla warfare against hostile governments or occupying forces as unconventional warfare.
The 2017 iteration included members of the U.S. Armys 10th Special Forces Group, the West Virginia Army National Guard, and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, as well as the Baltic special operations forces. The West Virginia State Police also took part in the event.
Before Ridge Runner, during the Cold War, Green Berets had also trained in West Virginia as part of previous guerrilla warfare programs, including one known as Guerrilla USA. And the overall structure of newer training sessions, along with the practice area itself, shared many similarities with the Armys Special Forces capstone qualification exercise, nicknamed Robin Sage.
Held at various times throughout the year, Robin Sage puts the latest batch of Green Beret candidates through that unconventional warfare scenario set in the fake region of Atlantica that covers much of the United States eastern seaboard. The basic premise is that the trainees must support resistance forces in the Republic of Pineland North Carolina against invading forces from United Provinces of Atlantica, which stretches from Maine to Virginia.
US Army
The focus of Ridge Runner can be more varied, but the unconventional warfare tasks would be similar. During the 2017 iteration, troops and police conducted heli-borne raids against simulated militant camps and practiced hunting for insurgents with dogs, among other events. After assaulting the mock compounds, special operators trained on how to pick over the sites for possible intelligence, a skill known as sensitive site exploitation.
In addition, special operations forces learned how to perform less common military tasks. One of these events included covertly infiltrating into areas at night on horses. Some regions have roads that are too small for even small pickup trucks, if there are any roads at all, and animals might be the only mode of transport. American elite troops regularly practice how to utilize and care for both horses and pack animals like donkeys for specialized operations. In 2001, Green Berets famously rode around Afghanistan on horseback, supporting North Alliance fighters and fighting the Taliban.
Another task involved a nearly 100 year-old method of sending messages from hard to reach areas. During that practice session, elite troops strung a rope trapeze with the physical message between two poles. Contractors from Colorado-headquartered Rampart Aviation flew a de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter low enough that an individual in the back could grab the line with a grappling hook.
US Army
A contractor-operated de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter swoops down to pick up a message.
Pennsylvania dentist Dr. Lytle Schooler Adams invented this system in the 1920s. In 1937, he founded All American Aviation with the express purpose of picking up and delivering mail in remote regions. Between 1939 and 1949, his airline delivered approximately 75,000 pounds of mail to small towns and villages in Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and West Virginia, according to the National Postal Museum. Today, most people would know All American Aviation by its current name, U.S. Airways.
During World War II, Army aviators used the system to rapidly send orders and other information across the battlefield in lieu of radios. Early special operators also used the gear to deliver and recover equipment and intelligence from partisans and agents in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. On top of that, the trapeze arrangement proved useful for getting downed troop gliders back into the air and even snatching individuals right off the ground. In the 1950s, inventor Robert Fulton improved on the basic principle to create his famous Skyhook recovery device.
For a special operations team today, the method could be useful if enemy forces had either jammed or tried to intercept radio communications, threatening to expose friendly positions or reveal sensitive information. Russian troops have employed electronic warfare systems to great effect, coupled with their own special operations forces on the ground, while supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine and government security forces in Syria.
US Army
A special operator on horseback during Ridge Runner 2017.
And if the presence of the Baltic special operations forces was any indication, it appears that Ridge Runner 2017 may have been inspired by Russia in other ways, too. While the mock insurgencies and counterinsurgencies might reflect missions American forces, both conventional and special operations, might expect in their near future, for Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian operators it is a scenario they might be able to imagine in their own back yards.
After Russia invaded Ukraines Crimea region in March 2014, subsequently annexed the peninsula, and began supporting armed separatists fighting Kievs authority in the countrys eastern Donbas region, many of Russias neighbors worried they might be next. Semi-autonomous republics inside the Soviet Union until 1991, all three Baltic countries also have significant ethnic Russian populations who have at times agitated for greater freedoms and accused government authorities of trying to stamp out their culture.
Since their independence, Baltic officials continued to worry about Kremlin-backed political movements, insurgencies, or even an outright invasion. In 2004, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania all joined NATO in no small part because of these concerns.
A brief war in 2008 between Russia and Georgia only served to reinforce those fears. Georgia was another former Soviet republic that had been waging a low-level counterinsurgency campaign against pro-Russian groups. Authorities in Tbilisi decided to make a push to recapture the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but ended up routed by Moscows troops.
US Army
West Virginia State Police K-9 unit moves out.
Afterwards, in both of the de facto independent countries, the Russian Ruble became the official currency and citizens began to carry Russian passports, making it seem like total annexation was inevitable. The events in Ukraine, yet another former Soviet republic, only compounded the anxiety in the Baltic region.
Then, In September 2014, the Russian Federal Security Service, a successor to the Soviet KGB that is also better known by its Russian acronym, FSB, detained Estonian Internal Security Service officer Eston Kohver under suspicious circumstances. Moscow claimed Kohver had crossed the border was attempted to conduct an intelligence operation on Russian soil. The response from Tallinn was that the FSB had kidnapped him.
After a year in Russian hands, a show trial and a brief imprisonment, Kohver returned home as part of a prisoner swap. In a scene out of a Cold War spy drama, Aleksei Dressen, who Estonian authorities had charged with treason for working with the FSB, walked past Kohver on a bridge over Piusa River onto Russian soil.
US Army
Special operations forces assault a building during Ridge Runner 2017.
If a conflict with Russia or Russian-backed partisans were to break out in the Baltics, special operations forces would likely be key actors to either tackle anti-government groups or lead resistance against occupying forces. A stay-behind force led by special operators might be critical in the event of an actual invasion.
Thanks to the shared history of the Soviet Union, the capitals of present day Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are all less than 200 miles straight down a major highway from the Russian border. In Lithuanias case, the boundary is with Russias strategic enclave in Kaliningrad, which has significant forces permanently stationed within.
In February 2016, the RAND Corporation think tank released a shocking report suggesting that Russian troops could seize control of the seats of government in Estonia and Latvia within three days. More damning, according to the analysis, NATO would be hard pressed to stop the offensive or even counterattack, despite American efforts to improve their military capabilities near the alliances borders with Russia.
US Army
Baltic operators provide security during Ridge Runner 2017.
In 2014, President Barack Obama announced the beginning of the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI), which led to an uptick in training exercises, troop deployments, and aerial patrols along NATOs eastern flanks. The Pentagons dubbed the mission Operation Atlantic Resolve. In December 2016, American officials decided to accelerate the initial deployments of new rotating force packages in the Baltic States, Poland, and Romania. The first Army contingents began arriving the next month, which prompted Russian officials to say they would respond in kind to the "provocation."
But during the 2016 election campaign and after his victory and inauguration, President Donald Trump repeatedly stated his desire for better relations with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Even more worrisome to residents in Baltics was the language of one his most vocal supporters. I'm not sure I would risk a nuclear war over some place which is the suburbs of St. Petersburg, Republican politician and Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich said on CBS This Morning in July 2016.
Trumps election sent a shiver through the whole region, Eerik-Niiles Kross, an Estonian parliamentarian who formerly acted as the countrys intelligence coordinator, told The New York Times after the election in November 2016. So, Baltic officials may be inclined to prepare for any contingency, with or without American help.
Still, the lessons their special operations forces learned at Ridge Runner 2017 could only help with that type of planning.
Contact the author: jtrevithickpr@gmail.com
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U.S. And NATO Special Ops Just Fought a Fake Guerrilla War in ... - The Drive
An extra special duo of visitors in the shape of two NATO warships are visiting Belfast.
The trio, led by group flagship, Norwegian frigate Roald Amundsen and Spanish frigate ESPS Reina Sofia arrived in Northern Ireland on Thursday night at Pollock Dock for a brief port visit during which they will meet with local leaders as well as enjoy a mini break in Belfast this weekend.
The ships are part of Standing NATO Maritime Group One (SNMG1) and fresh from completing their participation in the UKs tri-service multinational exercise Joint Warrior 17-1 (JW 171) off the north west coast of Scotland.
Read more: Belfast hosting fleet of Nato warships for the weekend
During that exercise the ships worked with nearly 30 highly capable warships and submarines from more than 10 allied and partnering countries.
The idea of the exercise Joint Warrior is to provide a range of scenarios and unique challenges to the command team, and to each ship, giving the ships and crews opportunities to sharpen their warfighting capabilities.
Commodore Ole Morten Sandquist, Commander SNMG1, exercised command over three additional warships during the exercise; Danish command and support ship HDMS Absalon and HDMS Vaedderen as well as German oiler FGS Bonn.
He described it as challenging training for the group.
Joint Warrior was very well planned and executed, he said.
It provided a range of challenging scenarios that could realistically be encountered in operations.
Together with professional and highly skilled counterparts, it gave us challenging and good training for use in a combined joint task force. We entered the exercise as a group of ships at a high level of readiness but left in even better shape. I am very pleased with the outcome of the exercise.
SNMG1 is one of four standing maritime forces composed of ships from various allied countries. These vessels are permanently available to NATO to perform different tasks ranging from participation in exercises to operational missions. They also serve as an oncall maritime force as a part of the NATO Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).
SNMG1s main area of operation is to the North Atlantic, including the Baltic Sea. Their main objective is to provide immediate maritime capability to the NATO Alliance, enhancing maritime situational awareness, demonstrate solidarity, conduct routine diplomatic visits, exhibiting forward presence and contributing to operational interoperability among Allied naval forces to support greater regional security and stability.
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NATO warships dock in Belfast for brief Northern Ireland visit ... - Belfast Telegraph
NATO marked the International Day for Mine Awareness on Tuesday (4 April 2017), observed annually to highlight the deadly threat that mines pose to civilians lives and nations development. NATO has a strong track record in humanitarian demining, working with partners ranging from Ukraine to Afghanistan, and from Georgia to Egypt. To date, the Alliance has helped destroy more than 5 million anti-personnel landmines, as well as 642,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance.
Over the years, NATO has also trained thousands of experts in explosive ordnance disposal and counter-IED techniques. Following the March explosion at the Balaklia arms depot, NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme is providing personal protection such as bomb suits and demining equipment, as well as communication systems to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.
The NATO SPS Programme is also working in close cooperation with partner countries to develop advanced mine detection technologies to ensure a better, safer and more efficient demining process. Examples include: subsurface radar technology in Ukraine; devices suitable for demining in the Egyptian desert; and techniques tailored to under-water mine detection in Montenegro.
The United Nations General Assembly declared in 2005 that 4 April of each year shall be observed as The International Day for Mine Awareness and Assistance in Mine Action.
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NATO marks International Day for Mine Awareness - NATO HQ (press release)
This report first appeared on CyberScoop.
The man responsible for leading the National Security Agencys defensive mission says his team is fielding more calls than ever from agencies across the government.
Dangerous, highly capable hackers and a desire by agencies to adopt cloud technology have increased the workload forInformation Assurance chief Paul Pitelli and his office, which he says is sort of like the Geek Squad for defense in government.
Pitelli is acareer professionalwho has served in the NSA for more than 20 years as the secretive spy agency transformed into what it is today a highly sophisticated technology behemoth with an array of federal responsibilities, including both signals intelligence and protecting sensitive government systems. With the recent retirement of former Information Assurance Directorate head Curtis Dukes, a renown computer scientist and intelligence community icon, Pitelli took on an increased role in an ever important effort to ensure that the Defense Department and broader government arent hacked.
Well get a wide range of calls from Hey were trying to set up a whole new [information technology] environment and that could be the White House calling, Pitelli said.
A big focus in recents years for Information Assurance, according to Pitelli, has been helping a variety of different federal agencies establish secure cloud data storage processes.
I have never been more busy, Pitelli told CyberScoop in an interview Thursday after he spoke at the McAfee Security Through Innovation Summit.We are getting calls because they all need help. Everyone wants to take advantage of cloud services, thats sort of one thing were getting called for, but its also traditional issues because our nation is being constantly attacked. Were one of the few agencies that get to see when and how the adversary starts operating.
Federal lawmakers have increasingly encouraged agencies in recent years to adopt cloud data storage technologies as a way to both save costs and phase out old on-premise servers.
Because of the economics of cloud services theres so much incentive [for agencies] to migrate many of their capabilities, Pitelli said. A lot of people in government want the NSAs help.
Nobody in government wants to be the next to suffer a hack like the2015 data breach that exposed federal employee information held by theOffice of Personnel Management, he said.
So were getting a lot of calls where its basically, Hey we want to make this move, but how do we do it well? Pitelli said.
Turnoverat the White House also adds to the Information Assurance divisions current workload.
With a change of administration, you know, they typically take a fresh look. And for us thats an opportunity because it allows us to sometimes make an [IT] environment better, Pitelli said. The cyber dimension is adding, on one hand, what you can call issues or events, but I think can be opportunities.
Historically, Fort Meades defensive efforts in cyberspace have been overshadowed by the spy agencys more offensive-centric, intelligence gathering mission set. This is evident from a labor perspective, given that the NSAs Signals Intelligence workforce remains much larger than the Information Assurance unit.
An overwhelming majority of budget dollars are allocated to offense rather than defense, former intelligence officials say, and thats resulted in an agency that is known almost exclusively for digital espionage rather than cyber-defense.
Dukes, former IAD head Debora Plunkett and departing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett recently voiced their concerns that the NSA should be focusing on defense more than it has in the past.
Roughly 90 percent of the U.S. government cybersecurity spending is used to fuel offensive operations, Ledgett told Reuters.
I absolutely think we should be placing significantly more effort on the defense, particularly in light of where we are with exponential growth in threats and capabilities and intentions, Plunkett, who oversaw the NSAs defensive mission from 2010 to 2014, recently told Reuters.
Defense under NSA21
The trios comments come amid an expansive reorganization effort by the NSA, instituted by agency Director Michael Rogers, that works to combine what was once called the Information Assurance Directorate and Signals Intelligence Directorate into a single, joint entity.
Although Rogers plan, known as NSA21, is intended to streamline operations, it has also spurred new concerns that the spy agencys defensive mission will receive even less resources in the future.
When the NSA goes through a change a lot of that discussion goes on because theres a big difference between offense and defense as far as the budget and so that was one of the big concerns that some folks vocalized, said Pitelli, I see a need, a bigger need for cybersecurity not just at NSA but for everybody.
The dual impact of NSA21s rollout and Dukes recent retirement has caused some confusion in government.
I know Curt voiced concerns that as we make this move [towards NSA21] there can be this perception that Oh well who do I call? And if they dont know who to call the question is, Well where did it go? Curt was really one of the great, visible icons of Information Assurance and he retired and so there is that time right now where we are waiting to find out whose going to be given the mantle next, Pitelli said.
Pitelli declined to specifically discuss the NSAs budget but said he would like to see Congress broadly allocate greater resources for cybersecurity writ large, across the entire government.
I will go so far as to say I would hope that the government not just at NSA, but the government really tries to allocate additional funds for the cybersecurity information assurance mission, Pitelli said. Alot of times people have lumped in their information assurance budgets with their IT budgets and the challenge I think youre seeing now is that we havent kept up with the budgets of cybersecurity.
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NSA cyber-defense chief: 'I have never been more busy' - FedScoop
Shadow Brokers, the group behind last yearsrelease of hacking exploits allegedly used by the National Security Agency,has dropped another trove of files. In a Medium posttoday, the hacker group offered up a password giving freeaccess to files it had previously tried to auction off.
The Shadow Brokers first came to prominence last August whenthey leaked exploits linked tothe NSA and the Equation Groupcontaining vulnerabilities inmajor firewall products.The group would later release a list of IP addressesit claimed were compromised by the Equation Group.
Shadow Brokerswas hoping to auction off another set of files, but didntattract very much interest or Bitcoin in the attempt. After that failed, the group posted a farewell message in January and leaked a new set of Windows-related vulnerabilities.
Todays leak from the Shadow Brokerscomes with a lengthy Medium post, in which the group says it is releasing the files as a form of protest after losing faith in the leadership ofPresident Donald Trump. Claiming that Trump appears to be abandoning his base, the post also offers a list of suggestions for how the president could Make America Great Again.
Security researchers are still goingthrough the files, but many of the exploits appear to be used for attacking older or little-used systems. And at least one guy thinks this leak might lead to the unmasking of the hackers:
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Alleged NSA hack group Shadow Brokers releases new trove of exploits - TechCrunch
For many, many years, Senator Ron Wyden has been directly asking the US intelligence community a fairly straightforward question (in his role as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee): just how many Americans are having their communications swept up in surveillance activities supposedly being conducted on foreigners under the FISA Amendments Act (FISA being Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act). Wyden started asking way back in 2011 and got no answers. His continued questioning in 2013 resulted in Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress in a public hearing, which Ed Snowden later claimed was a big part of the inspiration to make him leak documents to the press.
Just last month, we noted that Wyden had renewed his request for an accurate depiction of how many Americans have had their communications swept up, this time asked to new Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats. Unfortunately, for all these years, it's basically felt like Senator Wyden tilting at a seeming windmill, with many others in Congress basically rolling their eyes every time the issue is raised. I've never understood why people in Congress think that these kinds of things can be ignored. There have been a few attempts by others -- notably on the House Judiciary Committee -- to ask similar questions. Almost exactly a year ago, there was a letter from many members of the HJC, and there was a followup in December. But, notably, while there were a number of members from both parties on that letter, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Bob Goodlatte, did not sign the letter, meaning that it was unlikely to be taken as seriously.
Suddenly, though, it seems that the ins-and-outs of Section 702, and how the "incidental" information it collects on Americans is used has taken on a much wider interest, following President Trump's misleading suggestion that President Obama tapped his phone lines, and some Trump supporters trying to twist typical 702 surveillance to justify those remarks. Either way, if that leads people to actually look at 702, that may be a good result out of a stupid situation. And, thus, we get to this surprising moment, in which Goodlatte has actually sent a similar letter to Coats (along with ranking member John Conyers) asking about the impact of 702 surveillance on Americans. And since (for reasons that are beyond me) Reuters refuses to link to the actual source materials, you can read the full letter here or embedded below.
The letter demands an answer by April 24th. And, yes, it's notable that Goodlatte has signed on, because Section 702 is up for reauthorization at the end of the year, and if Goodlatte is not on board with reauthorization, then the NSA is going to have some difficulty in getting it through.
You have described reauthorization of Section 702 as your "top legislative priority." Although Congress designed this authority to target non-U.S. persons located outside of the United States, it is clear that Section 702 surveillance programs can and do collect information about U.S. persons, on subjects unrelated to counterterrorism. It is imperative that we understand the size of this impact on U.S. persons as our Committee proceeds with the debate on reauthorization.
The letter then even points to Coats' response to Wyden during Coats' confirmation hearing that he was "going to do everything I can to work with Admiral Rogers in NSA to get you that number." Of course, back in December, it was said that the intelligence community might finally deliver that number... in January. And it's now April. Still, with Goodlatte finally taking an interest in this, it's a sign that the NSA can't just coast by and continue to completely ignore this.
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Oh, Sure, Now Congress Is Serious About Asking NSA About Surveillance On Americans - Techdirt
Defense
Strategic Command chief Gen. John Hyten says that Cyber Command needs its own platform ahead of a planned split from NSA.
U.S. Cyber Command needs to be elevated to a full combatant command as soon as possible, but it should remain tied to the National Security Agency until it has its own cyber platform, according to the head of U.S. Strategic Command.
Air Force Gen. John Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he and Adm. Michael Rogers, head of the NSA and CyberCom, submitted their plan to the Trump administration calling for elevation of CyberCom "sooner rather than later."
He said that needed to happen "just to normalize that command and make sure that we can kind of develop normal command relationships between Cyber Command and all the combatant commanders including Strategic Command."
Later in the hearing, Hyten added that the end of the dual-hat leadership structure of the NSA and CyberCom will have to wait until CyberCom has an independent cyber platform from the NSA.
"There are acquisition programs of record being instituted to build those capabilities," said Hyten. "Once those capabilities are built, I would be supportive of separating the two. But I will not advocate separating the two until we have a separate platform in the services that Cyber Command can operate on."
Senators pressed Hyten on a number of cybersecurity topics, including the ramifications of modernizing the IT architecture that controls the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Strategic Command currently oversees cyber, space and nuclear capabilities, and Hyten said they are linked in that a cyber threat that could affect command and control capabilities could undermine the U.S. nuclear deterrent, "and we have to make sure we never allow that to happen."
Hyten said Congress needs to demand that as the military services modernize nuclear command and control capabilities that they move from a 20th century architecture and not simply move from eight-and-a-half inch floppy discs to the five-inch variety.
"We will introduce cyber vulnerabilities as we walk into that, but if you work it right from the beginning, you can make sure that that threat is mitigated from the beginning," he said.
When asked whether the U.S. has the capacity to protect nuclear cyber systems, Hyten said in general he was happy with where the Cyber Mission Forces are going right now. But he warned that they do yet not have the capacity to meet all of the requirements the DOD has.
He said that currently cyber forces are specifically assigned to the combatant commands, and that DOD needs to look at cyber forces like special forces -- as a high-demand, low-density asset that needs to be centralized and allocated out based on mission priority.
"The demand signal is going to go nowhere but up and the capacity is not sufficient to meet all of the demand," he said.
Hyten also said the conversation on deterrence in cyberspace must move past the nuclear framework of the past, with its binary analysis.
"I think what's missing is a broader discussion of what 21st century deterrence really means," said Hyten. "That involves the nuclear capabilities as the backstop, but fundamentally space, cyber, conventional, all the other elements as well.""Now it's a multivariable analysis and each of those has to be put in context," he said. "And context has to be the fact that we're actually not deterring cyber, we're not deterring space. We're deterring an adversary that wants to operate and do damage in those domains."
About the Author
Sean Carberry is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence. Prior to joining FCW, he was Kabul Correspondent for NPR, and also served as an international producer for NPR covering the war in Libya and the Arab Spring. He has reported from more than two-dozen countries including Iraq, Yemen, DRC, and South Sudan. In addition to numerous public radio programs, he has reported for Reuters, PBS NewsHour, The Diplomat, and The Atlantic.
Carberry earned a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and has a B.A. in Urban Studies from Lehigh University.
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General: Cyber Command needs new platform before NSA split - FCW.com
President Donald Trump should not have accused American intelligence agencies of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 Presidential campaign, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency Michael Hayden said Thursday afternoon in a talk at Princeton University.
Thats awful, and thats untrue, Hayden said. The retired four-star Air Force general said that the assorted intelligence agencies do not have political motives in their actions.
Just found out that Obama had my wires tapped in Trump Tower just before the victory, Trump tweeted on March 4. He has since maintained that the Obama administration, and specifically National Security Advisor Susan Rice, monitored the Trump campaigns communications.
Trump has not provided any firm evidence for his claims, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.
Although there has been a particularly public conflict between Trump and the CIA at times, it is normal for there to be tensions between an incoming president and intelligence agencies, Hayden said. I dont know if youve been following along up here in New Jersey, but it hasnt been smooth.
It has been harder than usual for Trump and the intelligence agencies to work together because Trump thinks intuitively by nature and is not used to consuming the large amounts of information intelligence agencies provide.
Hayden also recounted stories from his time in the upper echelons of American government. He was the director of the NSA when the 9/11 attacks happened.
He had to address the agencys tens of thousands of employees two days after the attacks and reassure them that their work mattered, he said. Some employees were scared to come to work.
Hours after the attacks, Hayden directed the NSA to expand monitoring of communications between Afghanistan and the United States. He later played a critical role in expanding the surveillance program that former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed in 2013.
In Haydens view, Snowden should not be considered a true whistleblower, since he did not expose any illegal activity. Everything that the NSA did was authorized by Congress and Presidents Bush and Obama, so the American public should already have known what was happening, Hayden said.
There are far more checks on the powers of the NSA to collect data on Americans than the organizations foreign counterparts have, Hayden said in defense of the agency. In other countries, including Western democracies, legislatures and courts do not have oversight, but they do in America.
We know that as night follows day, we will end up in a Congressional hearing sooner or later, Hayden said. When he led the CIA and NSA, he would use the maximum powers allotted to him by the Constitution, American law, and American policy to keep the country safe, even if he knew some of his actions would be controversial.
Complete transparency is not possible from the spy agencies because the full reality would scare some Americans, Hayden said. He advocated for what he calls a policy of translucence over full transparency, so that Americans could know generally what was going on without hearing unnecessary specifics.
Frightened people dont make good Democrats or Republicans, Hayden said.
Hayden teaches a course as George Mason University called Intelligence and Public Policy in which he challenges his students to find the correct amount of control and knowledge that the American public should have over the intelligence agencies that are tasked with protecting it.
At the beginning of the course, he asks his students a single question, which he wants them to answer over the course of the semester, he said.
Is the secret pursuit of secret truth compatible with American democracy? Hayden asked. "Is the secret pursuit of any secret truth compatible with any modern democracy?
Continued here:
Former CIA and NSA director: Trump should stop attacking ... - Packet Online
Here we go again. The latest twist in President Donald Trumps never-ending allegation that the Obama White House was spying on Team Trump before inauguration day involves an arcane, highly classified issue about Americans who arementioned in signals intelligence intercepts.
Trump and his supporters seek to paint any interception of American phone callsor even discussions about Americans by foreignersas improper and maybe illegal. Thats not true. Every day, the National Security Agency intercepts lots of calls between foreigners in which Americans are discussed. If theyre important Americanstop politicians, for instancethat intercept may have intelligence value. If it doesnt, the intercept is deleted and forgotten.
More rarely, the NSA intercepts phone calls in which one of the interlocutors is an American. As long as this operation has been approved per the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Actmeaning a top-secret Federal court has issued a warrant for this collectionthis is perfectly legal SIGINT. Here, too, an intelligence report will be issued in top-secret channels if the NSA determines theres foreign intelligence value here and somebody, usually the FBI, needs to know what the intercept reveals.
In all cases, the identity of the American or Americans discussed is masked in the top-secret reports issued by NSA. They are referred to as US Person or USP for short; if theres more than one of them, a number is added. Such SIGINT reports look like this fictional excerpt:
(TS/SI) In a recent conversation with one of his top aides, Zendias foreign minister, Abu Jefferson, opined that it would not be in his countrys interests if USP-1 is named U.S. Secretary of State by the incoming administration of USP-2. In particular, Abu Jefferson noted the concern of Zendias Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) that USP-1 is too close to the oil business and his appointment as Americas top diplomat may prove negative for Zendias rising LNG industry. He indicated that USP-3 would be a better choice as U.S. Secretary of State from the Zendian MFAs perspective, and that actions should be taken to support USP-3s potential candidacy.
Lets say a few months back youre one of the high-level people in Washington with the right security clearances and a need to know, since SIGINT reports which cite USPs are not widely disseminated even in top-secret channels. Unless youre clueless, youd immediately realize that USP-2 is Donald Trump while USP-1 is almost certainly Rex Tillerson. But who is USP-3?
Thats an important question since Zendias foreign minister wants actions taken to support USP-3 as Secretary of State. Given the tricky state of American relations with Zendia, it would be good to know whats going on here, particularly since past Zendian actions in Washington have included illegalities such as bribes to members of Congress.
If youre a top dog inside the Beltway, you would then ask the NSA to let you know who the mystery USP-3 is. Theres nothing sinister about thisit happens all the time in Washington. When the NSA receives a request to unmask that Americans identity, to use the proper spy-term, the Agency office which issued the report is asked if theyre ok with the unmasking. The request then goes upa chain, potentially as high as the NSA director, for final approval.
As Admiral Mike Rogers, the Agencys director, recently informed the House Intelligence Committee in open session, the number of NSA officials authorized to unmask USPs is only about 20including the director himself. Neither is this any sort of rubber stamp. The NSA reserves the right to decline unmasking requests, if they think the request is inappropriate or would reveal sensitive intelligence sources and methods. Denials are hardly uncommon.
Even if unmasking approval is granted, the USPs identity is shared only with the requester, in top-secret channels, and cannot be shared more widely. At all times, the NSA retains control of the information and it must be protected per stringent Agency regulations.
The above scenario is the backdrop for the latest accusation against the Obama administration proffered by Team Trump. The White House has jumped on a new report by Bloomberg which alleges that Susan Rice, National Security Adviser during Obamas second term, on multiple occasions last year asked NSA to reveal the identity of Trump associates who wound up in SIGINT reports.
The report, by Eli Lake, is hedging and cautious, noting that most of the intercepts in question involved two foreigners, not any member of Team Trump, while adding, Rices unmasking requests were likely within the law. Lakes exclusive illuminates the strange saga of Devin Nunes, the House Intelligence Committee chair, whose mysterious late-night White House visit turns out to have involved a Trump administration unofficial investigation of possible malfeasance by Rice, including top-secret information which White House officials wanted to share with Rep. Nunes.
It hardly needs to be explained that this report has been greeted warmly by those who wish to turn attention away from the presidents mounting Russia problems. Since the commander-in-chief has repeatedly stated in tweets that the whole Russia story is FAKE NEWS, this is a welcome development indeed for the White House, since it puts the spotlight on Team Obama rather than Team Trump.
That said, President Trump and his fans should be cautious, since it will be nearly impossible to prove that Rice did anything wrong by asking the NSA to unmask Americans in SIGINT reports. Most of the reports in question involve senior officials of foreign governments discussing the still-forming Trump administration, including speculation about potential cabinet appointments. As National Security Advisor, Rice had perfectly legitimate reasons to want to know the full story about those reports. This scandal appears to be a giant nothingburger, to use one of President Obamas preferred descriptions.
Yet there are caveats. Although its all but impossible to prove, if Rice asked for those identities for politicalnot national securityreasons, theres a problem. Then theres the possibility that she may not have adhered to NSAs rigid rules about protecting the identities of those unmasked USPs. If she informed White House staffers without a need to know who those Americans were, the FBI may have something to investigate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Susan Rice is a deeply unpopular figure with our Intelligence Community. Her abrasive personality and overall incompetence grated on the IC. Her habitually coarse language was inflicted on senior intelligence officials more than once, while nobody outside Obamas inner circle considered Rice even marginally competent at her job. Simply put, she was the worst National Security Adviser in American historyat least until Mike Flynns dismally failed three-week tenure.
In addition, Rice didnt like to play by the rules, including the top-secret ones. On multiple occasions, she asked the NSA to do things they regarded as unethical and perhaps illegal. When she was turned downthe NSA fears breaking laws for any White House, since they know they will be left holding the bag in the endRice kept pushing.
As a longtime NSA official who experienced Rices wrath more than once told me, We tried to tell her to pound sand on some things, but it wasnt allowedwe were always overruled. On multiple occasions, Rice got top Agency leadership to approve things which NSA personnel on the front end of the spy business refused. This means there may be something Congress and the FBI need to investigate here.
Susan Rice and Team Trump are both despised by our intelligence agencies, albeit for different reasons. The prospect of a death-match between them is causing unusual emotions in the IC. For us, this is like the Iran-Iraq war, explained another longtime NSA official: Wed like both sides to lose.
Its unfortunate that the Rice story is distracting from the far more important KremlinGate issue, since clandestine Russian interference in our politics is a considerably weightier national security concern than potential illegalities about SIGINT unmasking by the past administration. Nevertheless, President Obama may have gifted his successor and his Republican allies in Congress a genuine scandal, which could delay necessary resolution of the knotty issue of Team Trumps alleged ties with Moscow.
John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, hes also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. Hes published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.
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The choice of Rob Joyce, former head of the National Security Agencys Tailored Access Operations unit as cyber security coordinator puts an experienced offensive cyber operator at the nexus of the nations cyber policy and strategy at a time when nation-state cyber interference is at the forefront of public consciousness.
Joyce succeeds Michael Daniel, who had a public policy, economist and finance background and spent nearly a decade in cyber policy at the Office of Management and Budget and the White House. Joyces background, by contrast, is as an operator in the cyber realm, bringing an intimate understanding of the threat to the forefront of national cyber policy.
As cyber coordinator, Joyce is not the federal chief information security officer (CISO). That post is largely focused on securing the federal enterprise; the cyber coordinator drives policy beyond the federal government. The cyber coordinator is also interested in cybersecurity across the entire digital ecosystem, including private industry, state and local governments and foreign governments, as well. So its a much broader role than what the federal CISO focuses on, says Daniel, who is now president of the Cyber Threat Alliance, a non-profit focused on cyber threat sharing across the industry. There is some degree of overlap and complementarity obviously the cybersecurity coordinator has to care about the security of federal networks but the cybersecurity coordinator has a broader mandate than that.
Little is publicly known about NSAs offensive cyber activities. But in a rare public appearance last August at the USENIX 2016 conference, Joyce described the five steps to a successful cyber intrusion initial exploitation, establish presence, install tools, move laterally and collect/ex-filtrate/exploit and then walked through the weaknesses he and his hackers came across and exploited each day.
If you really want to protect your network, he said then, you really have to know your network. You have to know the devices, the security technologies, and the things inside it. His clear message: His team often knew better than the networks managers. Indeed, while NSA hackers might not understand products and technologies as well as the people who design them, Joyce said they learn to understand the security aspects of those products and technologies better than the people who created them.
You know the technologies you intended to use in that network, he said. We know the technologies that are actually in use in that network. [Theres a] subtle difference. Youd be surprised at the things that are running on a network versus the things you think are supposed to be there.
Penetration-testing is essential, as is follow-up. Joyces OTA regularly conducted Red Team testing against government networks. Well inevitably find things that are misconfigured, things that shouldnt be set up within that network, holes and flaws, he said. The unit reported its findings, telling the network owner what to fix.
Then a few years later, it would be time to test that network again. It is not uncommon for us to find the same security flaws that were in the original report, Joyce said. Inexcusable, inconceivable, but returning a couple of years later, the same vulnerabilities continue to exist. Ive seen it in the corporate sector too. Ive seen it in our targets.
Laziness is a risk factor all its own. People tell you youre vulnerable in a space, close it down and lock it down, Joyce said, reflecting on the fact that network administrators frequently dont take all threats and risks seriously enough. Dont assume a crack is too small to be noted or too small to be exploited. Theres a reason its called advanced persistent threats: Because well poke and well poke and well wait and well wait and well wait, because were looking for that opportunity to [get in and] finish the mission.
As an offensive cyber practitioner, Joyce sought to identify and, when needed, exploit the seams in government and enemy networks. He focused on the sometimes amorphous boundaries where the crack in the security picture might come from getting inside a personal device, an unsecured piece of operational security, such as a security camera or a network-enabled air conditioning system, or even an application in the cloud. Cloud computing is really just another name for somebody elses computer, he said. If you have your data in the cloud, you are trusting your security protocols the physical security and all of the other elements of trust to an outside entity.
Most networks are well protected, at least on the surface. They have high castle walls and a hard crusty shell, he said. But inside theres a soft gooey core.
Figuring out how to protect that core from a national security and policy perspective will be Joyces new focus, and if Daniels experience is any indicator, it will be a challenge.
From his perspective, cybersecurity is only partly about technology. Adversaries tend to get into networks through known, fixable vulnerabilities, Daniel says. So the reason those vulnerabilities still exist is not a technical problem because we know how to fix it its an incentive problem an economics problem. That is, network owners either fail to recognize the full extent of the risks they face or, if they do, may be willing to accept those risks rather than invest in mitigating them.
The challenge, then, is formulating policy in an environment in which the true level of risk is not generally understood. In that sense, Joyces ability to communicate the extent to which hackers can exploit weaknesses could be valuable in elevating cyber awareness throughout the White House.
The NSC is about managing the policy process for the national security issues affecting the US government, Daniel explains. You dont have any direct formal authority over anyone. But you do have the power to convene. You have the power to raise issues to people in the White House. You have the ability to try to persuade and cajole. The background he brings will obviously color what he prioritizes and what he puts his time against. But the role itself will not be dramatically different. understanding how to get decisions keyed up in a way that you can actually get them approved.
Joyces background could affect how this administration views commercial technologies, such as cloud services, mobile technology and other advances that, while ubiquitous in our daily lives, are not yet standard across the federal government.
Trust boundaries now extended to partners, Joyce said a year ago. Personal devices youre trusting those on to the network. So what are you doing to really shore up the trust boundary around the things you absolutely must defend? That for me is what it comes down to: Do you really know what the keys to the kingdom are that you must defend?
National security cyber policy is not just defensive, however, and having a coordinator with a keen insiders understanding of offensive cyber capabilities could have a significant long-term impact on national cyber strategy.
Just as Daniel sees cybersecurity as an incentives, or economics problem, Kevin Mandia, chief executive at the cyber security firm FireEye and founder of Mandiant, its breach-prevention and mitigation arm, sees incentives and disincentives as playing a critical role for cyber criminals and nation-state attackers, alike. Simply put, he says, the risk-reward ratio tilts in their favor, because the consequences of an attack do not inflict enough pain.
Mandia agrees that the first priority for U.S. cyber policy should be self-defense. Every U.S. citizen believes the government has a responsibility to defend itself, he said at the FireEye Government Forum March 15. So first and foremost, our mission security folks must defend our networks. But the second thing the private sector wants is deterrence. We need deterrence for cyber activities.
And in order to develop an effective deterrence policy, he argues, the nation needs fast, reliable attribution the ability to unequivocally identify who is responsible for a cyber attack.
Id take nothing off the table to make sure we have positive attribution on every single cyber attack that happens against U.S. resources, Mandia says. Because you cant deter unless you know who did it. You have to have proportional response alternatives, and you have to know where to direct that proportionate response.
Where Joyce stands on deterrence and attribution is not yet clear, but what is clear is that sealing off the cracks in federal network security is sure to get more intense.
A lot of people think the nation states are running on this engine of zero-days, Joyce said a year ago, referring to unreported, unpatched vulnerabilities. Its not that. Take any large network and I will tell you that persistence and focus will get you in, will achieve that exploitation without the zero days. There are so many more vectors that are easier, less risky and quite often more productive than going down that route.
Closing off those vectors forces threat actors to assume more risk, expose zero-day exploits and operate with less cover. When that happens, the balance of cyber power could finally start to tilt away from the hackers.
Tobias Naegele is the editor in chief of GovTechWorks. He has covered defense, military, and technology issues as an editor and reporter for more than 25 years, most of that time as editor-in-chief at Defense News and Military Times.
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What to Expect from the NSA Hacker Turned White House Cyber ... - GovTechWorks
Investopedia | Samsung's Galaxy 8 Could Endanger Fifth Amendment Rights ... Investopedia Fifth Amendment rights, which protect citizens from incriminating themselves in court cases, may be in danger thanks to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd's (SSNLF) ... Experts: Fifth amendment questions raised by Samsung Galaxy's ... |
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Samsung's Galaxy 8 Could Endanger Fifth Amendment Rights ... - Investopedia
Last week, Samsung announced that its Galaxy S8 phone would let you unlock it by scanning your face a method that could be quicker and simpler than entering a passcode or even using a thumbprint. As we noted at the time, this isnt a strong security measure; in fact, someone already fooled it with a photograph. But theres another, less-obvious issue: one key Constitutional protection for passwords usually doesnt apply to biometric security measures like face scanning.
The Fifth Amendment, which protects people from having to incriminate themselves, holds that passwords or passcodes are testimonial evidence. In other words, you can refuse to give up your PIN because doing so would mean answering a question based on the contents of your thoughts, not providing a physical piece of evidence. But as early as 2013 the year Apple announced its Touch ID sensor security experts were warning that fingerprints wouldnt fall under this rule. So far, this theory has held up. A Virginia judge let police use a fingerprint to unlock a phone in 2014, and similar requests were granted by other courts in 2016 and 2017.
Standing there while a law enforcement officer holds a phone up to your face or your eye is not a testimonial act.
The self-incrimination analysis for biometric and face scanning would be the same as for Touch ID, says Jeffrey Welty, a law and government professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Standing there while a law enforcement officer holds a phone up to your face or your eye is not a testimonial act, because it doesnt require the suspect to provide any information that is inside his or her mind.
Most people using Samsungs (or another companys) face-scanning system will never be charged with a crime. And this doesnt prevent things like searching visa applicants phones, where people are complying in order to get into the country, not because of direct law enforcement action. But the Fifth Amendment still provides a general legal layer of protection against smartphone searches, which can reveal a huge amount of personal information.
This isnt a totally cut-and-dried issue, however. In certain cases, courts can still require you to unlock a device with a passcode. If the police already know whats on the device and that the person in question is the owner, the foregone conclusion doctrine may apply, says Welty. Thats what happened last month when an appeals court ruled that a man needed to decrypt two hard drives believed to hold child pornography, because the contents werent in question.
Conversely, biometric security could still be testimonial under certain circumstances, and legal expert Oren Kerr has laid out an argument for protecting fingerprints under the Fifth Amendment. In his hypothetical example, police have a phone with a biometric sensor and seven possible owners, none of whom will claim it. Putting a finger to the sensor might not be testimony, but identifying yourself as the owner of the phone could be, and so could revealing which finger (or other body part) would unlock it. One subject of a phone-unlocking order made the latter argument last year, but in that specific case, it was shot down.
Even so, both these situations are edge cases. Bottom line, if you are concerned about whether law enforcement can compel access to your device, a password or passcode is much better than Touch ID or facial recognition, but it isnt ironclad, says Welty. Of course, if youre absolutely determined to keep your data private, you might want to just delete it.
Excerpt from:
PSA: Samsung's new face scanner won't give you the legal protection of a passcode - The Verge
By Laurie Chapman
April 3, 2017
Like the First Amendment, there is substantial information packed into the Fifth Amendment. In this section, our founding fathers have addressed issues such as double jeopardy, due process and eminent domain. It also provides citizens the right to remain silent, or not implicate themselves.
The following is a transcription of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution in its original form.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The first part of this amendment addresses the right of a citizen charged with a capital crime to be presented before a grand jury. Typically, most states satisfy this requirement through preliminary hearings. The one exception, outlined in this amendment, is specific circumstances relating to the military.
The Fifth Amendment also precludes citizens from being subject to double jeopardy. No individual may be tried for the same crime twice. Additionally, a citizen cannot be compelled to implicate themselves in the court of law. This is commonly referred to as pleading the fifth, where a defendant or witness invokes the right to remain silent.
In Miranda vs Arizona, 1966, the court expanded on the right to remain silent as presented in the Fifth. The court held that all individuals must be advised of their right to remain silent and to an attorney. If an individual is in police custody and being interrogated, failure to advise the individual of their rights makes their statements inadmissible in court.
Also relating to the court of law, the Fifth guarantees a fair, orderly and just trial. As with the wording for double jeopardy, the Fifth Amendment only applies to the federal government. However, the text of the 14th Amendment applies both issues to states as well.
Finally, the Fifth Amendment addresses eminent domain. This states the federal government may not take personal property for public use without just compensation. In Chicago, B. & Q. Railroad Co. vs. Chicago, 1897, the court held the 14th Amendment also extended in this arena to the states.
Determining just compensation typically entails assessing the propertys fair market value. The piece of this section that has been troublesome relates to the intended use of the property.
A controversial opinion was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court that allowed private property to be seized for private commercial development. Justice John Paul Stevens issued the 5-4 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London, 2005.
The courts opinion stated:
The takings at issue here would be executed pursuant to a carefully considered development plan, which was not adopted to benefit a particular class of identifiable individuals, Rather, it has embraced the broader and more natural interpretation of public use as public purpose. In a nutshell, the court agreed that allowing the city to take ownership of a condemned property with the intention of economically revitalizing it would benefit the public. While the space might be directly privatized, the public as a whole benefits from an approved, productive space. Idaho certainly has its share of public lands, and I wouldnt be surprised to see this amendment raised in future suits relating to land usage.
Laurie Chapman publishes Political Broad bi-monthly and takes an informative, opinionated peek at the functions of government. If you have a suggestion for the author, e-mail her atlchapman@idahocountyfreepress.com or call her at 208-983-1200.
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Fifth Amendment preserves our right to due process, and more - Idaho County Free Press (blog)
The iris scanner and facial recognition features of the Galaxy S8 and the Galaxy S8 Plus arent protected under the Fifth Amendment, industry experts are reminding consumers just weeks before Samsungs upcoming pair of Android flagships officially hits the market. The Fifth Amendment that protects against self-incrimination by allowing people the right not to testify against themselves in acase when doing so would criminally implicate them has previously extended to both passwords and passcodes, as providing either was defined as giving testimonial evidence, i.e. evidence that consists of ones thoughts. This protection technically doesnt apply to any kind of physical evidence like fingerprints, as several previous cases have already shown, but it also doesnt extend to devices that can be unlocked with an iris scanner or facial recognition.
Both iris scanning and facial recognition rely on certain physical features that courts can and do categorize as physical evidence, meaning e.g. you cannot refuse to unlock your smartphone by pleading the fifth if a police officer can simply hold the phone up to your face and let it unlock. While some privacy advocates previously argued such search isnt legal, a precedent on the matter has yet to be made and courts seemingly agree that a scenario in which an officer holds a phone up to someones face isnt defined as a testimonial act as it doesnt require the suspect to share any contents of their thoughts.
There are certain exceptions to the rule outlined above, legal experts explain, noting how most exceptions pertain to scenarios in which authorities arent certain who owns the device theyre looking to unlock with an iris scanner or facial recognition. While looking at your phone to unlock it in front of officers isnt a testimonial act, claiming ownership of a device certainly is, meaning youre not required to do so if authorities arent certain who owns the smartphone theyre seeking to unlock. Overall, if youre planning to acquire the Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8 Plus, or any other upcoming smartphone boasting biometric authentication, keep in mind you might want to stick with a regular password, pattern, or a passcode if youre adamant to not let authorities access your device under any conditions.
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Galaxy S8 Face Recognition Isn't Protected By 5th Amendment - Android Headlines
More than 325,000 people enter the United States via airports every day, with hundreds of thousands more crossing by land at the borders. Not only is that a lot of people, its also a lot of computers, smartphones, and tablets riding along in our pockets, bags, and trunks. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment protections we enjoy inside the U.S. for our devices arent always as strong when were crossing bordersand the Department of Homeland Security takes advantage of it. On the other hand, the border is not a Constitution-free zone. What are the limits to how and how much customs and immigrations officials can access our data?
To help answer those questions, were offering the second in our series of posts on the Constitution at the border, focusing this time on the Fourth Amendment. For Part 1 on the First Amendment, click here.
The Fourth Amendment forbids unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. In most circumstances, the Fourth Amendment requires that government agents obtain a warrant from a judge by presenting preliminary evidence establishing probable cause to believe that the thing to be searched or seized likely contains evidence of illegal activity before the officer is authorized to search.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has sanctioned a border search exception to the probable cause warrant requirement on the theory that the government has an interest in protecting the integrity of the border by enforcing the immigration and customs laws. As a result, routine searches at the border do not require a warrant or any individualized suspicion that the thing to be searched contains evidence of illegal activity.
But the border search exception is not without limits. As noted, this exception only applies to routine searches, such as those of luggage or bags presented at the border. Non-routine searches such as searches that are highly intrusive and impact the dignity and privacy interests of individuals, or are carried out in a particularly offensive manner must meet a higher standard: individualized reasonable suspicion. In a nutshell, that means border agents must have specific and articulable facts suggesting that a particular person may be involved in criminal activity.
For example, the Supreme Court held that disassembling a gas tank is routine and so a warrantless and suspicionless search is permitted. However, border agents cannot detain a traveler until they have defecated to see if they are smuggling drugs in their digestive tract unless the agents have a reasonable suspicion that the traveler is a drug mule.
How does this general framework apply to digital devices and data at the border? Border agents argue that the border search exception applies to digital searches. We think they are wrong. Given that digital devices like smartphones and laptops contain highly personal information and provide access to even more private information stored in the cloud, the border search exception should not apply.
As Chief Justice Roberts recognized in a 2014 case, Riley v. California:
Modern cell phones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the privacies of life.
Snooping into such privacies is extraordinarily intrusive, not routine. Thus, when the government asserted the so-called incident to arrest exception to justify searching a cell phone without a warrant during or immediately after an arrest, the Supreme Court called foul.
Why is the Riley decision important at the border? For one thing, the incident to arrest exception that the government tried to invoke is directly comparable to the border search exception, because both are considered categorical exemptions. Given that the intrusion is identical in both instances, the same privacy protections should apply.
Moreover, with the ubiquity of cloud computing, a digital device serves as a portal to highly sensitive data, where the privacy interests are even more significant. Following Riley, we believe that any border search of a digital device or data in the cloud is unlawful unless border agents first obtain a warrant by showing, to a judge, in advance, that they have probable cause to believe the device (or cloud account) likely contains evidence of illegal activity.
However, lower courts havent quite caught up with Riley. For example, the Ninth Circuit held that border agents only need reasonable suspicion of illegal activity before they could conduct a non-routine forensic search of a travelers laptop, aided by sophisticated software. Even worse, the Ninth Circuit also held that a manual search of a digital device is routine and so a warrantless and suspicionless search is still reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. Some courts have been even less protective. Last year a court in the Eastern District of Michigan upheld a computer-aided border search of a travelers electronic devices that lasted several hours without reasonable suspicion.
EFF is working hard to persuade courts (and border agents) to adopt the limits set forth in the Riley decision for border searches of cellphones and other digital devices. In the meantime, what should you do to protect your digital privacy?
Much turns on your individual circumstances and personal risk assessment. The consequences for non-compliance with a command from a CBP agent to unlock a device will be different, for example, for a U.S. citizen versus a non-citizen. If you are a U.S. citizen, agents must let you enter the country eventually; they cannot detain you indefinitely. If you are a lawful permanent resident, agents might raise complicated questions about your continued status as a resident. If you are a foreign visitor, agents may deny you entry entirely.
We recommend that everyone conduct their own threat model to determine what course of action to take at the border. Our in depth Border Search Whitepaper offers you a spectrum of tools and practices that you may choose to use to protect your personal data from government intrusion. For a more general outline of potential practices, see our pocket guides to Knowing Your Rights and Protecting Your Data at the Border.
Were also collecting stories of border search abuses at: borders@eff.org
And join EFF in calling for stronger Constitutional protection for your digital information by contacting Congress on this issue today.
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The Bill of Rights at the Border: Fourth Amendment Limits on Searching Your Data and Devices - EFF
Chicago police officers in March. A recent Illinois court ruling has implications for the Second and Fourth amendments.
Joshua Lott/Getty Images
The American judiciary is currently engaged in a vigorous debate that can be summed up in one question: Can you diminish your Fourth Amendment rights by exercising your Second Amendment rights? The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against unreasonable searches and seizures; the Second Amendment safeguards the right to keep and bear arms. What happens, then, if police officers search or seize a person solely because he is carrying a firearm? Is that unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment and therefore illegal?
Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.
Last week, an Illinois appeals court answered that question in the affirmative, ruling that mere possession of a handgun does not justify a search or seizure. Liberals and conservatives alike should cheer the courts decision. Empowering law enforcement to curtail the Fourth Amendment makes no one safer, even when its done in the name of controlling gun violence. And allowing officers to target gun owners without suspicion of wrongdoing puts us all at greater risk of harassment, discrimination, and brutality.
Unfortunately, not every court sees the issue that way. In January, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that when officers conduct a lawful traffic stop, they may frisk the driver if they reasonably believe him to be armedregardless of whether the person may legally be entitled to carry the firearm. Even if the individual holds a concealed-carry permit, the court clarified, an officer may still search him without having any suspicion that he committed a crime. In a trenchant critique of the ruling, National Reviews David French wrote that the majority was relegating lawful gun owners to second-class-citizen status. While that might sound dramatic, Judge James Wynn admitted as much in a concurrence, declaring that gun owners forego other constitutional rights, including freedom from unannounced police intrusion and freedom of speech.
We didnt have to wait long to see what Wynns theory looks like in practice. In March, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, refused to reconsider a decision previously issued by a panel of 11th Circuit judges. The panel had thrown out a lawsuit against a police officer who suspected, without any good reason, that a criminal might be lurking inside a particular apartment. In the dead of night, the officer banged on the apartment door. (He did identify himself as law enforcement.) The startled resident retrieved the firearm that he lawfully owned and slowly opened the front door. When he saw a shadowy figure holding a gun, he retreated inside. The officer shot him dead as he was attempting to close the door.
Endorsing the 11th Circuits decision not to re-evaluate the case, Judge Frank M. Hull likened the officers behavior to the knock and talk rule. This rule permits officers to knock on an individuals door for legitimate police purposes. Hull explained that here, the officer had simply engaged in a variation on a knock and talk. When he saw a firearm, he perceived a threat and opened fire. This shooting of an armed individual in his own home, Hull insisted, did not violate any clearly established constitutional rights.
But as Judge Beverly Martin pointed out in dissent, the officer violated at least two constitutional rights. First, he used objectively unreasonable excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Second, this force plainly infringes on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as established by the Supreme Court in 2008s District of Columbia v. Heller. Martin wrote:
The Second and Fourth Amendments, Martin concluded, are having a very bad day in this Circuit.
Martin should be pleased to learn that both amendments are faring much better in the Illinois First District Appellate Court. A panel of judges for the First District was confronted with what is, by now, a familiar fact pattern. Markell Horton, a black man, was standing on a porch when two police officers drove by. The officers saw a metallic object in his waistband that they believed to be a weapon. They stopped the car and got out, at which point Horton went inside the house. The officers walked up to the porch and, they claim, found a set of keys on the ground. They unlocked the front door and entered the house, finding Horton in a bedroom, crouching next to a bed. One officer, Roderick Hummons, detained Horton and searched the room, discovering a gun underneath the mattress. The state charged and convicted Horton, who had a criminal record, of knowingly possessing a firearm after being convicted of two qualifying felonies.
It might be tempting for liberals to view these cases through the lens of gun control. They should resist the temptation.
To summarize: Two officers stopped in front of a house, at which point its apparent residents went inside. Because one resident might have been armed, the officers barged into the house and detained its occupant while searching for the weapon. Yes, it turned out to be possessed unlawfully. But what if Horton had a concealed-carry permit? At the time of the search, the officers only knew that a man with a gun was inside of a house. Did that give them reasonable suspicion to enter the house and search it?
By a 21 vote, the court said no. Possession of a gun, the majority wrote, does not, on its own, give officers reasonable suspicion or probable cause to conduct a search or seizure. The dissent argued otherwise, noting that although a gun owner could have a permitcalled a Firearm Owners Identification, or FOID, card in Illinoishe might also possess his firearm illegally. This rationale, the majority responded, leads down a dangerous path:
The majority also noted that, given Chicagos ongoing history of police misconduct, Horton did not create reasonable suspicion by quickly entering the house upon sight of the police. In an environment where minorities have legitimate suspicion of how they might be treated by police, the court explained, they will be more likely to try to avoid police contacteven though doing so makes them appear culpable of something. Without reasonable suspicion, Hummons search and seizure was unlawful. Under the exclusionary rule, illegally obtained evidence cannot be used at trial. Thus, the court ordered the evidence against Horton should be suppressed.
It might be tempting for liberals to view these cases through the lens of gun control and favor the state or for conservatives to see them as a question of law and order and support the officers. Both sides should resist the temptation. A rule that allows cops to search or seize individuals for carrying a gun can only lead to more brutality against young black men like Philando Castile. It also permits officers to trample upon our rights to property and self-defense. These are constitutional values, not partisan ones. And advocates across the ideological spectrum should urge the courts to follow the First Districts lead and reject the disastrous illogic now developing in the federal circuits.
Read more from the original source:
Why Liberals Should Be Alarmed That Courts Are Eroding the Second Amendment - Slate Magazine
COLUMBIA AVirginia militiaman with a long gun. A 21st century white couple carrying assault weapons in a Starbucks. A black man opencarrying arifle in Dallas before being wrongly identified as the suspect whogunned down Dallas police officers last summer.
The images illustrate a topic Saul Cornell has dedicated his life to understanding: the legal carrying and display of guns in the U.S. under the Second Amendment.
He knows the topic is controversial.
"The interesting thing about the Second Amendment is everyones got an opinion on it," Cornell told a packed house of nearly 100 people in Mumford Hall on Wednesday. "I came to the subject of the Second Amendment not because of any great involvement with gun issues. I came to it out of my interest in the way history gets used by legal scholars and courts."
"Theres a complicated history and a very complicated contemporary reality between firearms and issues of race in America," Cornell said.
He explained how black Americans are disproportionately affected by gun violence, saying that African American men are less likely to be shot if they joined the military rather than remaining civilians.
Many of our gun laws, Cornell said, originated in the Antebellum South, which permitted open carrying of guns in public.
Cornell spoke at the last spring public lecture sponsored by the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, an academic center at MU that emphasizes U.S. Constitutional study, early American history and its relevance today.
He said guns have evolved since adopting the Second Amendment, which means Americans need evolved gun laws.
A Virginia militiaman carrying a long gun couldn't kill as many people as the white couple with assault weapons. Why, then, don't lawmakers enact more regulatory gun legislation parallel to new technology, Cornell asked.
He discussed the differences between the way Americans perceive a white couple and a black man open carrying: the couple celebrated exercising their rights, while police wrongly identified the black man in Dallas as a shooting suspect.
Cornell ended Wednesdays talk by comparing the number of gun-related deaths to car accident deaths in the U.S. He said gun deaths are rising, and the numbers are nearly equal.
"There are more gun stores out there than supermarkets," he said. "That's pretty ridiculous to me."
Traci Wilson-Kleekamp, the president of local activism group Race Matters, Friends, attended the lecture.
"It sounds like you're sort of tip-toeing around this thing on race," Wilson-Kleekamp said. "If you can, be explicit about this connection between slavery and today and our issues with guns."
Cornell said that the South is historically a more violent region, and expressly racial laws originated there.
"People are not aware of how these deep-seeded cultural forms influence their behavior," he said.
He cited a study in which white people often falsely identified guns in pictures with black faces, and simply saw other objects in pictures with white faces.
"It's a deeply, culturally-embedded kind of suspicion, and that makes it harder to extirpate," Cornell said. "Until we recognize it, we can't really move forward."
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Second Amendment historian connects race and gun rights - Columbia Missourian
On Friday, the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Neil M. Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Gorsuchs nomination was heavily backed by the NRA, both because of the pro-Second Amendment views expressed in his judicial writings and his originalist approach to jurisprudence. Justice Antonin Scalia exemplified originalism in his landmark Heller opinion in 2008 that recognized the Second Amendment protects an individual right grounded in the principle of self-defense.
Judge Gorsuchs confirmation capped a dramatic series of events that began with Scalias sudden, unexpected death on Feb. 13, 2016. Not only was Scalia the Supreme Courts leading Second Amendment champion, his was one of only five votes cast in the five- to-four Heller decision, and its five-to-four follow-up, McDonald v. Chicago. Although two justices voting against the Second Amendment in Heller had since left the court, they were replaced in the interim by two equally anti-gun Obama picks, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Thus, with Scalias untimely passing, the court was at best split four to four on its continued support for the Second Amendments individual right.
History will record that the balance of power on the Supreme Court was in fact a key issue in the 2016 presidential election and that Obamas hand-picked successor, Hillary Clinton, suffered a crushing defeat after emphasizing her own view that the Heller Court had been wrong on the Second Amendment.
Candidate Donald Trump, meanwhile, made no secret of his determination to nominate a pro-Second Amendment judge to the fill Scalias vacant seat. After his victory in November, President Trump kept his promise by nominating Judge Gorsuch.
In the intense media and political scrutiny that followed Trumps selection, there was never any serious argument against Judge Gorsuchs credentials, integrity, impartiality, and ability. He has been praised by legal professionals across the political spectrum.
Yet anti-gun loyalists in the Democratic Party, blinded by ideology and unable to recover from their stinging rebuke in the election, launched the first partisan filibuster in U.S. history to block Neil Gorsuchs nomination.
In practical terms, their strategy gained them nothing.
Senate Republicans on Thursday responded by applying the Senate rules instituted by Harry Reid (NV-D) in 2013. At that time, Reid pushed through the elimination of the Senate filibuster on executive appointments and lower-court nominees. The Reid Rule now applies to Supreme Court nominations as well.
Judge Gorsuch was then confirmed on Friday by a bipartisan 54-45 vote.
While there may be no end to the hypocrisy, rancor, and obstruction that liberal loyalists are willing to inflict on the American political process, all citizens of goodwill can rest assured that in Judge Gorsuch, they have a decent, unbiased, and highly-qualified Supreme Court justice who will uphold the law.
And Second Amendment advocates in particular should sleep more soundly knowing that when the Supreme Court again hears a case on the right to keep and bear arms, Justice Scalias seat will be occupied by a man dedicated to ensuring that the Framers vision of constitutional freedom is upheld.
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Freedom Wins! Pro-Second Amendment Judge Will Join U.S. Supreme Court - NRA ILA
Fairfax, Va. Iowa is the latest state to pass significant legislation in recent months restoring Second Amendment freedoms. This week Iowa lawmakers sent House File 517, an omnibus bill containing many pro-gun reforms, to Governor Terry Branstad. HF 517 would restore the right of law-abiding gun owners to carry in the capitol and would restore the rights of parents to make decisions about their youth and handguns. The bill also strengthens self-defense rights for law-abiding Iowans.
In state legislatures across America, lawmakers are expanding law-abiding citizens constitutional right to self-protection, said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action. The NRA and our five million members thank the Iowa legislature and Governor Branstad for working to strengthen Iowans Second Amendment rights so they have the freedom to protect themselves and their families.
Included in HF 517:
Second Amendment rights bills in the states this year:
Gun Control bills in the states this year:
State laws restoring/protecting Second Amendment rights in recent months:
Twelve states now have Constitutional Carry Laws: Vermont, Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming, Kansas, Maine, Idaho, West Virginia, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota
States rejecting gun control schemes in recent months:
Federal legislation protecting Second Amendment rights in recent months:
Established in 1871, the National Rifle Association is America's oldest civil rights and sportsmen's group. More than five million members strong, NRA continues to uphold the Second Amendment and advocates enforcement of existing laws against violent offenders to reduce crime. The Association remains the nation's leader in firearm education and training for law-abiding gun owners, law enforcement and the armed services. Be sure to follow the NRA on Facebook at NRA on Facebook and Twitter @NRA.
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