Daily Archives: April 21, 2017

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee is calling for the National Security Agency (NSA) to be split from U.S. Cyber Command.

Rep. Adam SchiffAdam SchiffTrump may miss deadline on Russia report Schiff: Dems failed to convey why Russian meddling matters Schiff advocates for NSA, Cyber Command split MORE (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said it would be wise to have separate leaders for the two organizations, pushing for a civilian head of the NSA during remarks at Columbia Law School in New York.

The Pentagon told The Hill earlier this year that it has startedassessingwhether it should split up the dual-hat leadership.

Those are two very big jobs housed under the same hat, Schiff said. I think we would be wise to split up those responsibilities.

Experts have noted that the split is likely to happen eventually, but have warned of the risks of separating them too quickly. Cyber Command was established at NSA headquarters in 2009 and has been largely dependent on the agency.

Schiff made the comments in response to a question of whether or not the federal government has the appropriate organization structure to be effective on cyber.

More generally, he said that the government is slow to keep pace with technology and indicated that there are organizational improvements to be made.

Were probably not structured how we should be, Schiff said, adding later, were always going to be chasing this.

Read the original here:
Schiff advocates for NSA, Cyber Command split - The Hill

A group of hackers released on Friday what appears to be the most extensive data dump yet from the National Security Agency.

The hack could have consequences for the relationship between big software companies and the U.S. government and could make it harder for Europe to trust the U.S. to respect privacy agreements.

Experts believe the hacker group behind the leak, Shadow Brokers, is connected with the Russian government. The group has released stolen information from the NSA before.

If documents released by the hack are authentic, it would show that the NSA has compromised a Dubai-based firm that routes bank transfers between countries. The hack also revealed how to break into Microsoft software. Heres a more detailed explainer from George Washington University professor Henry Farrell.

Here are some things found in the dump.

Why it matters: The U.S. government is technically allowed to access data from Swift only through a formal safeguarded process, but information revealed in the hack indicates the NSA is secretly accessing information outside this agreement. This is bound to upset European regulators.

Why it matters: If the NSA didnt let Microsoft know about the zero-day vulnerabilities, that could further undermine tech companies already eroded trust of the government.

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What you need to know about that latest NSA data dump - Recode

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE (press release) (blog)

Osinbajo meets with NSA, IG, DSS, EFCC bosses, others NIGERIAN TRIBUNE (press release) (blog) Those who were at the Presidential Villa, Abuja for the meeting at the Vice President's office were the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Daura and the Chairman of the ... Osinbajo, NSA, AGF grill Magu, Daura, IG of PoliceDaily Post Nigeria Osinbajo meets with Magu, DG DSS, NSA, othersThe Eagle Online all 23 news articles »

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Osinbajo meets with NSA, IG, DSS, EFCC bosses, others - NIGERIAN TRIBUNE (press release) (blog)

TSA or NSA? The Chicago Maroon Recently, after the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) pressured a NASA scientist to turn over his cell phone at a Houston airport, a floodgate burst in the media. Stories of others who had been coerced into handing over their phones and passcodes at ...

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TSA or NSA? - The Chicago Maroon

A new factsheet by the NSA and FBI has laid bare ludicrous contradictions in how US intelligence agencies choose to interpret a law designed to prevent spying on American citizens, but which they use to achieve exactly that end.

The document even claims that it is surveilling US citizens for their own protection while at the same time claiming that it is not doing so.

The obvious and painful contradictions within the 10-page document [PDF] are testament to the very reason why the factsheet had to be prepared in the first place: Congress is threatening not to renew the legislation due to the intelligence agencies' willful misrepresentation of the law to perform the very activities it was designed to prevent.

FISA the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was enacted in 1978 and authorizes US intelligence agencies to carry out electronic surveillance of foreign persons outside the US. It specifically prohibited surveillance of US citizens and foreign persons within US borders.

But in 2008, the FISA Amendments Act (FAA) was passed to recognize the modern realities of internet communications: that foreign intelligence targets were using networks based in the United States to communicate. The law gave the intelligence agencies the right to demand that US companies hand over their communications in the search for foreign intelligence.

In an effort to ensure that those searches were restricted to non-US citizens however, the FAA which was re-authorized in 2012 and now needs to be re-authorized again before the end of 2017 included various procedures, and checks and balances.

Somewhat inevitably however, those procedures which remain almost entirely secret and the check and balances which have been shown to be ineffective at best have been slowly undermined by the intelligence agencies to the extent that the FBI now routinely uses personally identifiable information of US citizens, such as an email or phone number, to search a huge database of gathered information if it suspects them of a crime carried out in the US.

That reality is the diametric opposite of what the law was intended to do hence the ludicrous contradictions between what the intelligence agencies say the law authorizes and the everyday realities that they argue must be retained.

The first eight pages of the 10-page document are largely accurate, giving a rundown of the law, its history and intentions, and the procedures and checks introduced. In fact, it is a useful and largely objective rundown of the issue.

On page four, the document gives some examples of where use of Section 702 have proven effective: gathering insights into the minds of high-level Middle Eastern government ministers; checking up on sanctions; identifying both terrorists and terrorist sympathizers and alerting other governments to them.

Of the five examples given (of course it's impossible to know how many real-world examples there are), only one covers an arrest on US soil: the case of Najibullah Zazi who was tracked after he sent an email to an al-Qaeda operative in Pakistan asking for help in making bombs. Zazi planned to bomb the subway in New York City but was arrested in 2009 before he had the opportunity to do so. He pled guilty in 2010 and was sentenced to life in prison in 2012. (It is worth noting, however, that Zazi was already under surveillance from US intelligence agencies thanks to his visits to Pakistan, so it's unclear what role the Section 702 data really played.)

The document carefully words some sections covering concern over how the law was being interpreted. As a result of Edward Snowden's revelations, lawmakers and civil society groups started asking precise questions and that resulted in the intelligence agencies releasing limited information about the process it goes through to obtain the rights to spy on people. The document paints the provision of that information as the intelligence agencies' "commitment to furthering the principles of transparency," when nothing could be further from the truth.

It also tries to paint a report by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) into US spying in positive terms. The independent board, the document claims, largely exonerated the intelligence agencies and "made a number of recommendations" that have "been implemented in full or in part by the government."

In reality, the board's report was a damning indictment of the agencies' effort to reinterpret the law to be able to spy on just about anyone. The recommendations that have been implemented "in part" cover the most important improvements, in particular the publication of the procedures that the agencies use in reaching determinations. These critical documents remain entirely secret.

The PCLOB also paid a high price for standing up to the NSA and FBI: they had their authority cut out from under them, the budget was slashed, and all but one of its five board members have either resigned or have not had their terms renewed. It is a shell of an organization that doesn't even answer its phone or emails.

It is on pages nine and 10 that the real issues appear however where it addresses "702 issues that are likely to arise in the re-authorization discussion."

These are:

Despite the law specifically noting that US citizens and people within US borders cannot be spied on through Section 702, in reality the intelligence agencies do exactly that.

The explanation is that this information is "incidental" and is hoovered up as the NSA and others are gathering intelligence on others. The intelligence agencies claim that it affects very few US citizens and so Congress has persistently asked what that number is: how many US citizens are included in the 702 database?

The US House Judiciary Committee first asked that question a year ago April 2016. There is still no answer.

This latest document notes: "The IC (intelligence community) and DoJ (Department of Justice) have met with staff members of both the House and Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, the PCLOB, and advocacy groups to explain the obstacles that hinder the government's ability to count with any accuracy or to even provide a reliable estimate of the number of incidental US person communications collected through Section 702."

It says that the agencies are "working to produce a relevant metric" to inform discussions.

This is a transparent attempt to prevent a figure on the number of US citizens in the database from being revealed, because it would almost certainly undermine the core contention of the intelligence agencies: that their procedures prevent the unnecessary gathering of information on US citizens.

See the rest here:
We're spying on you for your own protection, says NSA, FBI - The Register