intelligence – Page 5

Battle lines being drawn in UK surveillance debate

there appears to be a gathering of forces and a drawing of battle lines amongst the ‘big beasts’ of security policy in the UK…

The UK’s Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the influential think-tank that was behind the New Labour project, has released a report on intelligence and national security that argues that privacy and human rights will have to take second place in the War on Terror. The report, National Security Strategy, Implications for the UK Intelligence Community, is written by former civil service security and intelligence coordinator, David Omand, is part of the IPPR’s Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, whose rather unimpressive launch event I attended last year.

The Guardian newspaper’s story on this is trying to build this up into an ‘end of privacy’ / ‘end of civilisation as we know it’ story and Omand certainly comes down firmly on the side of security over liberty. He recognises that his arguments are contrary to ours and go “against current calls to curb the so-called surveillance society.” But he is not actually making a total ‘by any means necessary’ argument. Even the Guardian’s own report quotes his rather qualified statement that “in some respects [new intelligence methods] may have to be at the expense of some aspects of privacy rights.”

The report is simply not as strong or even as interesting as The Guardian‘s story suggests. Most of it is simply a description of how intelligence works (and not even a very comprehensive or insightful one at that). Much, as we predicted in our recent book (see My Publications), it tries to set the creation of ‘resilience’ as a key rationale for reducing civil liberties, as if resilience in itself was a good thing that needed no justification when in fact it is being used as a bland container for all sorts of questionable policies – from the use of torture and imprisonment without trial to the everyday use of intrusive high-tech surveillance. The references to the political controversies over surveillance are rather cursory and don’t really say much other than that people are worried and really they shouldn’t be. These are just the usual ‘trust us, we know what we are doing’ and ‘these are exceptional circumstances’ arguments that we have heard many times before, and they are as weak and old-fashioned coming from Omand as from anyone else.

It is worth noting that there appears to be a gathering of forces and a drawing of battle lines amongst the ‘big beasts’ of security policy in the UK. I reported yesterday on David Blunkett’s conversion to the cause of limiting surveillance society, and a few days ago, Stella Rimington, the former Head of the Security Service, MI5, condemned the current government’s approach to liberty and security in even stronger terms, arguing that the approach that Omand typifies would lead to ‘a police state’.

Surveillance has finally become an issue on which it is becoming less possible to be unengaged, apathetic or even neutral. That in itself is a good thing, however it does not guarantee a good outcome even if more major public figures suddenly discover their enthusiasm for liberty once they leave office. However, I hope this reflects a split which is growing within the current government too – normally when retired politicians and civil servants speak out, they are conscious of the way in which they speak on behalf of friends and colleagues who feel they cannot be so candid.

China calls for better international regulation of space

…it is the USA that effectively controls earth orbit. However many other emerging economies see no reason why this should be the case….

Following last week’s collision between an obsolete Russian military satellite and an US Iridium communications satellite, there has been a lot of discussion about the management of orbital space (or, more accurately, the lack of it). Orbital positions are managed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), but the effective control of orbital space is a matter of power projection – i.e.: which country can maintain a stronger and more pervasive presence in space. With the Russian program almost defunct, and European satellites limited in number, it is the USA that effectively controls earth orbit. However many other emerging economies see no reason why this should be the case. India now has a regular launch program and in particular China is massively expanding its space presence, even making noises about its ability to destroy satellites if necessary.

China seems now to be using this incident to sound out other countries and the international scientific community about a more coherent and comprehensive international management of orbital space. In an article published on the official English-language news site, Chinadaily, various senior Chinese scientists and People’s Daily journalists are quoted in favour of “establishing a system for the promotion of space safety is an important method of space traffic management”, through “long-term cooperation from the international community”, and perhaps even a “space traffic law”, although it is acknowledged that this is “still a very remote concept”.

The one organisation that is not going to like this at all is the US military. USSTRATCOM has absorbed the space power doctrine developed in the 1990s by USSPACECOM, which argued effectively that orbital space should be part of US military plans for ‘Full-Spectrum Dominance’ (FSD) and that international projects like the International Space Station would be tolerated only insofar as they could be ‘leveraged’ to US advantage. The US military wants to maintain the ‘ultimate high ground’ that dominance of earth orbit gives them, for communications, for surveillance, for weapons targeting. They are not even very keen on the EU Galileo project, the new and more technically-advanced rival to GPS (which is a US military system).

Just as with the discussion about internationalising management of the Internet and moving it beyond US government control, any suggestions of a more comprehensive international management of space are likely to be resisted even at the expense of logic and reason. The Chinese know this very well, and are being rather cleverly provocative. They are however, right.

Britain ‘risks a police state’

Following the damning reports of the House of Lords Constitution Committee and yesterday, the International Commission of Jurists, now Stella Rimington, ex-Head of the security service, MI5, has warned that Britain risks becoming a police state. In an internview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia reported by the Daily Telegraph, Ms Rimington attacked government plans for the National Identity Register and the soon-expected plans for a database of all communications (delayed from last year). If even ex-heads of the security service are now asking the government to change direction, in addition to civil liberties experts, independent judges, and just about everyone else, their stock of excuses must be rapidly diminishing. The current cabinet must know that their actions smack of the desperation of a failing government desperately searching for votes in being ‘tough on crime and terrorism’… but they seem to be locked into a trajectory of ever-increasing surveillance and security that they cannot justify but cannot escape. You do wonder who is actually advising them that this is all a good idea…

More details of illegal NSA wiretap program revealed

The Online Jounal has published a piece by ex-NSA operative and perennial thorn in the side of the organisation, Wayne Madsen, which gives far more detail of the system of illegal wiretapping of e-mails, in operation over recent years.

According to Madsen, two NSA programs for text interception are known to exist, one called PINWALE, which mainly targets Russian e-mails, and secondly the STELLAR WIND program, which “was initiated by the George W. Bush administration with the cooperation of major U.S. telecommunications carriers, including AT&T and Verizon.” and “was a major priority of the NSA program”.

Madesen gives details of how PINWALE and there’s little reason to suppose that STELLAR WIND is very different. Basically these programs search a range of ‘metadatabases’, repositories of captured text from millions of people around the world, outside and inside the USA. The search parameters include: “date-time, group, natural language, IP address, sender and recipients, operating system, and other information embedded in the header”.

Madesen claims that both STELLAR WIND and PINWALE “negated both USSID 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 [which were introduced following the Church Committee report into illegal operations by the NSA in the 1960s and early 1970s] by permitting NSA analysts to read the e-mails, faxes, and text messages of U.S. persons”

The three metadatabases are called LION HEART, LION ROAR, and LION FUSION and were developed, as with many NSA systems in conjunction with an external contractor, in this case, Booz Allen Hamilton, which Madsen previously revealed was also responsible for FIRSTFRUITS, program used to track the articles, and communications of particular journalists.

There’s more detail in the article, and one other thing is certain. All these exotic codenames will now be history, as all intelligence agencies have a policy of changing them once they are revealed. Journalists still talk about ECHELON as if it exists as an active NSA operation, but that one hasn’t existed under that name for twenty years or more. There are a huge diversity of NSA programs for all kinds of communications interception and sorting. Each component will have its own terminology and many will be temporary parts of a greater whole, which may not even exist by the time they are revealed. At least former insiders like Madsen can keep some track of developments…

An aerial view of the NSA's station at Yakima in Washington State (Cryptome)

US No-Fly List is a big fat waste of money

I can’t say I am remotely surprised, but in the journal, Homeland Security Affairs, Marcus Holmes has written a comprehensive demolition of the claim that the US federal government’s No-Fly List is an efficient security policy. He isn’t concerned with civil liberties – ACLU has done that elsewhere – nor with effectiveness – Bruce Schneier nailed that one a while back. He simply demonstrates, using elementary Cost-Benefit Analysis that the policy is a big fat waste of money. The article isn’t complicated to understand, so the best thing I can suggest is that you just go read it… (and thanks to Bruce Schneier and Boingboing.net for posting on this one).

Datawars Conference

There will be a very interesting -looking conference in Amsterdam, 11-12 June, called Datawars: Fighting Terrorism through Data. According to the call for papers, the workshop will be held at the University of Amsterdam in June and will explore the ethical and political implications of the new data-led approach to security, risk and fighting terrorism in Europe. Suggested topics include:

Privacy, security and human rights
Ethics, responsibility and justice in European data wars
Risk, prevention, preemption
Data and surveillance
Private authorities, states and the European Union
Constituting Europe through data

It´s part of a project run by a couple of excellent researchers, Louise Amoore and Marieke de Goede, of the Universities of Durham and Amsterdam respectively (who probably don´t remember but I worked in an tiny attic office opposite them in the Politics Dept at Newcastle for a few months just after my PhD!). I might go as I have been doing some work on attempts to create global databases, called ´From Echelon to Server in the Sky´, but the timing might be awkward (unfortunately I can´t reveal why yet…).

ACLU calls for release of Bush security info

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for President Obama´s administration to release secret files that would shed light on the previous US government´s security and surveillance policies, including the now use of torture and warrantless surveillance. It´s a good move of course, but as I´ve previously remarked, the NSA and others have been doing this for almost 50 years, either directly or indirectly through UKUSA allies, warrants or no warrants, so what makes anyone think that they only started doing this under Bush or will stop if such information is released? As intelligence researcher, Loch K. Johnson, remarked about the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s, one thing they showed was that, when it came to illegal intelligence activities, the office of the President was an irrelevancy. Bush was probably even more irrelevant than most. Still, sunlight is the best disinfectant… but if Obama can change the internal culture of US intelligence, he will truly have performed a miracle.

The robots are coming and now they’re angry…

A mindless drone robot is one thing but an independent robot with a tiny mind capable only of death and destruction – that is something else entirely.

Whilst I was doing my PhD in the late 90s, I met a guy called Steve Wright who used to run the Omega Foundation (who were like the ‘Lone Gunman’ organisation from the X-Files, but for real), and who is now at the Praxis Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He was investigating the development of new forms of automated killing and control systems and ever since then, I’ve been keeping an eye on the development of remote-controlled and increasingly automated surveillance technologies, and in particular the development of robotic devices that are able not only to collect or transfer data, but to respond physically.

Two stories this week reflect the variety of developments in all kinds of different arenas, and raise all sorts of issues around the distancing of human responsibility from material, in many cases, punitive or lethal action.

'Intruder' captured by web-slinging robot — Japanese security robot (AP)

The first was the news that Japanese technologists have produced a mobile remote-controlled robot that can fire a net over ‘intruders’. Until recent years such developments had been carried out largely in the area of military research by organisations like the RAND corporation in the USA. However, particularly since the end of the Cold War when military supply companies started to look to diversify and find new markets in a more uncertain time when the ‘military-industrial complex’ might no longer ensure their profits, there has been a gradual ‘securitization’ of civil life. One consequence of this has been that so-called ‘less-lethal’ weapons are increasing regarded as normal for use in law enforcement, private security organisations and even by individuals.

However a further change has been in the when these operations can be automated when an intermediary technology using sensors of some kind is placed between the person operating them and the person(s) or thing(s) being monitored. This removes the person from the consequences of their action and allows them to place the moral burden of action onto the machine. The operation is aided still more if the machine itself can be ‘humanized’, in the way that Japanese robots so often are. But a kawaii(cute) weaponized robot is still a weaponized robot.

In the skies above Afghanistan, Iraq and Gaza however, ‘cuteness’ doesn’t matter. Remote-control military machines have been stealthily entering the front lines, colonising the vertical battlespace, with lethal consequences that have not yet been considered enough. This week we saw US unmanned aircraft operated by the CIA kill a total of 21 people in Pakistan, one of the few aspects of Bush-era policy that new President Obama has not (yet) promised to change.

All of these machines are still under some kind of control from human operators, but several profoundly misguided scientists are trying to create systems that are more independent, even ‘intelligent’. This week, I read about Professor Mandyam Srinivasan of Queensland University in Australia who, at least according to a report in The Australian, thinks it is a great idea to give missiles brains like angry bees. A mindless drone robot is one thing but an independent robot with a tiny mind capable only of death and destruction – that is something else entirely. I can think of few things that are less in the spirit of social progress than this, but he’s hardly the only one thinking this way: there are billions of dollars being pumped into this kind of research around the world…

Obama’s new NSA-approved PDA

One story I didn’t mention last week, but which still seems to be doing the rounds, is the saga of new US President Obama´s PDA. Obama is well-known as a Blackberry-addict, using it constantly during the campaign, but as CNET pointed out such wireless devices are known to be highly insecure and vulnerable to all kinds of illicit monitoring and capture. There is, however, one device approved by the US National Security Agency (NSA), which its own employees use, the Sectera Edge Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device (SME PED), made by defence contractor, General Dynamics C4 Systems of Scottsdale, Arizona. It looks pretty similar to athe Palm Treo series, apart from the strengthned chasis, ‘secure’ ports and special ‘trusted’ display… all this for just $3500! (I hope he´s better at not losing his phones than me…)

The rest of us, I guess will just have to put up with our insecure communications. The CNET article gives plenty of scary examples of just how insecure they are to simple hacking, even without the NSA’s rather more sophisticated programs. Of course even such NSA-approved ‘secure’ systems will undoubtedly have built-in backdoors that are accessible to the NSA, which is one of the main reasons they are even involved in the development of such technologies. And it is not just these unusual products of course – remember the Windows backdoor revelations from a few years back? Or further back, the Swedish government’s discovery that the NSA could access all their encrypted Lotus Notes documents – this later reverse engineering of the backdoor by Adam Back shows that the spooks are not without a (very bleak) sense of humour. Obama might now have secure communications, but there is always one agency whose evesdropping even he will not be able to avoid…

“Harpooning fish from an airplane”: NSA surveillance of US citizens

If the NSA can put this down to a period of bad leadership and bad policy, it might be allowed to get on with what it does relatively unhindered in the Obama era.

Boingboing has a link to a ten-miunte long MSNBC inerview with Russell Tice, an ex-National Security Agency (NSA) employee who is the latest in the long line of NSA whistleblowers after the likes of Wayne Madsen and Magaret Newsham. Tice’s revelations concern the NSA’s monitoring of internal communications in the USA after 9/11. According to Tice, the NSA both swept all US communications and also targeted specific groups, including journalists, for more comprehensive collection.

I have no idea how genuine Tice is and in many ways, despite the occasional choice phrase to describe SIGINT operations like the one with which I titled this post, he is a lot less interesting than Madsen or Newsham in that he’s not really telling us anything we didn’t know already. There is also a rather naive attitude from mainstream organisations like MSNBC that this is all down to the evil President Bush. This seems to suggest a lack of knowledge of history – do they really not remember the massive scandal over the very same use of watchlists by the NSA on behalf of the FBI in the 1960s? The huge inquiry led by Senator Frank Church in the 1970s? Can they continue to pretend that this is all totally new and that we can forget about ECHELON and the fact that this kind of surveillance is pervasive and systematic and becomes more so as technologies of collection, archiving and analysis improve? That is and always has been, what the NSA does in conjunction with its UKUSA network of largely subordinate allies and helpers (see this nice summary from Le Monde).

Of course this could be another explanation of Tice’s role, and the reason why he is being allowed to do the rounds of the newspapers and TV stations. Far from being simply a disaffected employee, he might be either a knowing or unknowing part of a media strategy by the NSA. If the NSA can put this down to a period of bad leadership and bad policy, it might be allowed to get on with what it does relatively unhindered in the Obama era. We shall see… or rather, we probably won’t!

NB: I wrote my PhD thesis on the networks of NSA-related bases around the world, including Menwith Hill, not far from where I live. It is worth checking out Cryptome’s Eyeball series of aerial views of NSA and other secret sites.

Fort George C. Meade, Maryland, Headquarters of the NSA