Category Archives: Intelligence

Latest reported NSA capability is pretty awesome

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As y’all know, I’ve had critical things to say about Edward Snowden. But I have to say, sometimes we learn about some pretty cool stuff as a result of his revelations.

For instance, if we really have this capability, that’s pretty awesome:

The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine — one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door “into the past,” the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.”…

If you told Keanu Reeves about this, you know what he would say…

Krauthammer: ‘Ya gotta love’ Graham for adding fuel to Democrats’ fire

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Charles Krauthammer is getting a kick out of Lindsey Graham’s reaction to Dianne Feinstein’s accusation that the CIA has been spying on the Senate.

On FoxNews last night, the columnist said the following:

What I like the best about this is that Lindsey Graham, a Republican, comes upon the brawl, and he says that if true, the Congress should declare war on the CIA.

Interestingly, we haven’t declared war on anybody since Pearl Harbor.

Lindsey comes across a fight and he hands out Molotov cocktails to all the participants.

Ya gotta love that guy.

You can see the video above. Graham has said “This is dangerous to a democracy. Heads should roll, people should go to jail if it’s true,” and that “this is Richard Nixon stuff…”

That is a twist. You’ve got Democrats in the Senate flinging accusations at a Democratic administration, and a Republican eggs them on by saying it’s as bad as Nixon. One gathers that Republicans like watching a fight between Democrats the way schoolboys like seeing a couple of girls come to blows on the playground. (I can see Lindsey yelling down the hall, “Democrat fight!”)

Oh… and apparently Graham is enjoying the fact that Krauthammer is enjoying it. The Krauthammer clip was brought to my attention by Graham’s office.

Graham Shocker! Senator seeking answers on… you guessed it… Benghazi. Still.

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This just in from our senior U.S. senator:

Graham on Benghazi

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement on Benghazi.

“I’m pleased to hear that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers is going to follow up on what appears to be major inconsistencies in former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell’s testimony.  However, before calling him to testify, I strongly encourage the House and Senate leadership to establish a joint select committee to investigate this matter.

“For too long we have had various House and Senate committees, along with the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), investigating the small pieces of Benghazi within their jurisdictions.  These are sometimes disjointed and do not always allow for a full and thorough investigation.

“A joint select committee is the best means to ensure Benghazi is fully investigated and all questions are answered once and for all.  The American people, and most importantly, the families of the four Americans who died in the attack, deserve nothing less. 

“As for Mr. Morell, he has publicly stated he welcomes the opportunity to testify in an open hearing.  To ensure proper accountability, I believe we need to declassify his previous testimony and release all communications – written, recorded, audio, and video — involving Mr. Morell’s discussions about the talking points and the role he played in this entire episode.

“Mr. Morell, in a written statement, as well as Susan Rice in her appearance last week on television, both indicated the Administration provided the best evidence available to the public on September 16, 2012.  It’s now time to declassify all the communications regarding the attack on our compounds in Benghazi so we can properly account for these statements.

“Finally, I strongly believe it will be impossible to close the books on what happened in Benghazi unless Susan Rice is called to testify before Congress about the role she played.  Although she has appeared on television shows, she has never been required to appear before Congress to answer questions about Benghazi.

“The President has said on numerous occasions that as more information is made available he would share it with the public. This statement has not borne fruit. 

“It’s past time we clear the air on Benghazi by declassifying all relevant information and having all witnesses testify. We have learned much over the past 17 months about Benghazi that justifies recalling Mr. Morell, General Petraeus, former Secretary of State Clinton, Ambassador Susan Rice and others before a joint select committee of Congress.”

####

It seems safe to say that Sen. Graham has reached the Ahab stage in his quest for… something… on this topic.

That said, sure, make the hearings joint, so senators can participate. I’m a little concerned about his blanket demand for declassification — maybe there are some aspects of this that need to remain classified, and I would think Graham of all people would appreciate that.

But, you know, put Susan Rice in the hot seat. Let’s have the hearings. And let chips fall where they may. Take whatever lessons are learned and apply them to prevent future security disasters such as this. And then let’s talk about other stuff.

More good news for al Qaeda!

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This just in from the WashPost:

The National Security Agency is collecting less than 30 percent of all Americans’ call records because of an inability to keep pace with the explosion in cellphone use, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The disclosure contradicts popular perceptions that the government is sweeping up virtually all domestic phone data. It is also likely to raise questions about the efficacy of a program that is premised on its breadth and depth, on collecting as close to a complete universe of data as possible in order to make sure that clues aren’t missed in counterterrorism investigations….

So… if you’re plotting a terror attack, you now know that in a pinch, it may be safe to use that cell phone you’ve been avoiding. Oh, it would be prudent to avoid it as a regular thing — why take unnecessary chances? — but in an emergency, the odds are in your favor.

You know, that ol’ Edward Snowden is just the gift that keeps on giving — if you’re al Qaeda.

No, this is not a direct disclosure by that individual, but it’s something we’re learning as a result of a train of events triggered by his disclosures.

And like so much that he did disclose, it’s something that’s useful to know. If you’re a terrorist.

Robert Gates, the quintessential national security professional, judges ex-boss Obama harshly

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Coming from the source it comes from, this is pretty devastating:

In a new memoir, former defense secretary Robert Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”Gates cropped

Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.”…

The source is someone for whom I’ve always had the utmost respect, as I’ve written in the past. Other political appointees come and go, but Gates has always seemed to me the real-life version of what the fictional George Smiley was in John le Carre’s world:

Mr. Gates is a Smileyesque professional. He was the only Director of Central Intelligence ever to have come up through the ranks. He had spent two decades in the Agency, from 1969 through 1989, with a several-year hiatus at the National Security Council. He received the National Security Medal, the Presidential Citizens Medal, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal (twice) and the Distinguished Intelligence Medal (three times).
I trust professionals, particularly those who have devoted themselves to national service. Not in every case, of course — there are idiots and scoundrels in every walk of life — but if all other things are equal, give me the pro from Dover over someone’s golf buddy every time…

You know the real-life “golf-buddies” and campaign contributors and hangers-on. The fictional counterparts to them, in the le Carre world, would be Saul Enderby and, to a lesser degree, Oliver Lacon.

It’s one thing for Republicans and other professional detractors to attack the president’s national security seriousness. For Robert Gates to do it is quite another thing.

NYT claims Snowden “has done his country a great service.” No, really; they actually said that…

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If you hear me retching, it’s not because I overindulged on New Year’s Eve. It’s because of this editorial in The New York Times:

Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community…

I’m just not even going to get into it, beyond to assert yet again that this creep has not “revealed” or “exposed” anything of value. We knew such programs existed, and basically what they did. If there are instances in which the NSA has exceeded or strayed from Congress’ intent, address them. (The NYT makes much of “thousands” of violations among the billions of communications about which it collects data. But folks, that’s not what Snowden and his fans are about. They hate the existence of the legal programs; not specific failures to follow the policies they oppose.) All he has done is stirred the emotions of unthoughtful people to the point that useful intelligence-gathering programs are politically endangered.

For more, just enter “Snowden” in the blog search field at right (in fact, I’ll do it for you; here are the search results), to see what I’ve said about him in the past. I particularly call your attention to his “Christmas message,” which as I said then “reveals his immaturity, paranoia, irrationality and utter lack of perspective,” the qualities that underlie the actions that the NYT celebrates.

This editorial is the sort of nonsense I expect from an intern working as a press aide in Rand Paul’s office, not from a once-great newspaper.

So now that another judge says NSA program’s legal, Greenwald will say he and Snowden were wrong — right?

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That would be the logical response, in any case — although that’s not what I expect to see, unfortunately.

When one federal judge questioned the legality of NSA collection of metadata, that was sufficient to cause alleged newsman Glenn Greenwald to crow to the skies that it was a “pure vindication” of his creature, Edward Snowden.

By that same logic, now that another federal judge has disagreed…

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York on Friday ruled that the National Security Agency’s program that is systematically keeping phone records of all Americans is lawful, creating a conflict among lower courts and increasing the likelihood that the issue will be resolved by the Supreme Court….

 Judge Pauley said that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies.

“This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” Judge Pauley said in the ruling…

… we’ll hear Greenwald saying, “OK, we were totally wrong.”

Right? Right? I’m listening…

Edward Snowden, displaying his utter lack of perspective, declares lack of privacy today is worse than Orwellian

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Through an “alternative Christmas message” broadcast on British television (“alternative” as in, a message other than the Queen’s official one) and a Washington Post interview, Edward Snowden reveals his immaturity, paranoia, irrationality and utter lack of perspective.

I can’t find an embed code for the full video, but here’s a link to it.

Here’s a sample of his “reasoning,” as he explains why he thinks we’re worse off than Winston Smith in 1984:

“The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go,” he said. “Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

So… according to him… a cellphone, a private possession that you are in no way required to own, certainly not by the government, a thing you can throw away the moment you want to drop off the grid, is somehow worse than being watched and listened to 24 hours a day by a malevolent government that does so for the express purpose of controlling your thoughts, a government that has reshaped language itself to prevent you even from being able to form thoughts that are not to its liking.

But wait — there’s more:

Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.

No, we have learned nothing of the kind. I have seen nothing from his “revelations” (although I give him props for not congratulating himself, but using the relatively passive “we learned”) that indicates that either this government or any other is doing anything at all that comes anywhere close to “watching everything” I do.

There’s apparently a record of phone calls I have made, and everyone else has made. Not the content, but who we called and when and for how long. A record that doesn’t even begin to be the tiniest, most hesitant intrusion on my privacy unless there is something about the pattern of my calls that draws attention to them. My own privacy is protected by the sheer volume of data of which my calls form an infinitesimal part.

I have no reason to believe that this or any other government has taken the slightest interest even in this tiny corner of my life — whom I have called and when — which is a drop in the ocean of “everything” I do.

This is rich. Let’s listen to some more:

A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought.

Really? Golly, I’d certainly like to see a little bit of evidence to back up those wild assertions. I’m even going to be charitable and ignore the number disagreement between his “a child” and his use of “they” and “themselves.” First, it would help if he had any evidence whatsoever, any reason at all to think that this hypothetical child would never know a “private moment.” I see zero reason to believe that. As for “no conception” — well, that takes us far beyond lacking the experience of even a “moment” of privacy. In fact, only in an Orwellian universe — given its careful paring of unacceptable thoughts from the language — could a child lack such a conception.

As for “an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought” — what reason do we have to believe that this child’s very thoughts would be recorded and analyzed, much less all of them? The only thoughts being shared with government, to my knowledge, are those we choose to make public through social media or other means. Or over the telephone, in which case the only way the goverment hears these thoughts is if its traffic analysis has produced probable cause for a specific subpoena to listen to a specific individual’s calls, which will never happen to far, far more than 99 percent of the population. And I say this on the basis of what Snowden himself has revealed.

Let’s delve further into the thoughts — which he is voluntarily sharing — of Edward Snowden:

And that’s a problem because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

I’m not going to respond to that, because I don’t even follow what he’s saying. I thought “who we are and who we want to be” were things that were determined by a combination of unavoidable circumstances and choices we make. Perhaps privacy plays a key role in that, but he neglects to explain how. It’s just one of those pronouncements that probably sounds profound to people who are predisposed to agree with him, and puzzles anyone else who actually thinks about it.

His big finish is a call to action:

End mass surveillance, and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.

His tone indicates he thinks this is a real zinger.

I find myself marveling. So… that’s what he thinks NSA collection and analysis of metadata is about — finding out how we feel? What has he or anyone else disclosed that even comes within the same galaxy of indicating that? Gee, I kinda thought it was oriented toward finding out whether certain communications are happening between certain individuals, with an eye to catching warning signs not of feelings, but of the likelihood of certain actions.

I mean, seriously — can anyone show me a link to a single report that would make any reasonable person think that any of these government programs are aimed at taking our emotional temperatures, or our opinions?

Wow. The more you learn about this guy, the more you see just how twisted his perception of reality is…

But thanks, Edward, for the Christmas wishes. Although I must say, I think the Queen’s made more sense. But then, she’s a grownup.

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Thoughts on the president’s presser? Share them here…

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I’ve sort of been listening along during the president’s pre-holiday press availability while doing other stuff.

I liked the question — I forget who asked it, and pressed it, but he was pretty insistent — that amounted to this: Mr. President, several months ago you said the NSA wasn’t doing anything wrong. Why do you think the procedures need to be changed now?

It was a good question. The president was right — there was nothing wrong with our surveillance programs then, and there isn’t now. What has happened is that the drip, drip, drip of details — which haven’t revealed anything significant regarding policy itself, but have merely attached names and specifics (things we did not need to know), and it has had an erosive effect on public opinion. Exactly as Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald intended.

And while he sort of danced around it, the president essentially said that: There’s nothing wrong with these programs, but political opinion has changed, so we’re reacting to that. And the way we’re reacting is that we’re looking for ways to get the intel job done with some procedural changes that make people feel better.

Which is not terrible in and of itself. But I would much, much rather that the president stand up to this propaganda campaign by two people who are trying to harm this nation, and argue against the public impression that their efforts have created. Because by reacting by making changes — or even reacting by trying to make it appear that we are making changes — tells any other minor players with a God complex that if they betray this country by disclosing classified information with which they have been entrusted, they will achieve their goals.

That creates an extremely dangerous precedent.

Now, as to the Obamacare comments, two things jumped out.

I reacted initially the way Ali Weinberg did: “Has Obama ever said before that he was only meeting with health care team ‘every other week, every three weeks’?”

But about two seconds later, I reflected that hey, having a meeting every two or three weeks with a bunch of underlings to make sure they’re doing their jobs is fairly often, given that a POTUS does have a few other responsibilities. It’s way short of micromanaging, but it’s more than “only.”

Then, I noticed that CBSNews reported, “Obama takes blame on health care rollout: ‘Since I’m in charge, we screwed it up’.”

Ummm… no, not really. In fact, when I heard him say it, it struck me as a case of verbal contortion, in an effort to fall just short of taking the blame personally.

That’s really a bizarre construction: “Since I’m in charge” sounds like he’s about to take the blame, but “we screwed it up” rather startlingly shares the blame with others.

I haven’t heard an acceptance of responsibility that tortured since “Mistakes were made.”

Any other thoughts on the president’s remarks today?

‘What did the world search for in 2013?’ Google knows…

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zeitgeist

Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are feeling like pretty important guys (just ask ’em; they’ll tell ya), especially since they finally got one federal judge to agree with their view of NSA surveillance programs.

But as far as Google is concerned, they’re not all that interesting.

At least, they don’t show up in the Google Zeitgeist list of top 10 global trending searches of 2013. Here’s what does:

  1. Nelson Mandela
  2. Paul Walker
  3. iPhone 5s
  4. Cory Monteith
  5. Harlem Shake
  6. Boston Marathon
  7. Royal Baby
  8. Samsung Galaxy s4
  9. PlayStation 4
  10. North Korea

There’s more — much more. From Google’s blog:

Every day, around the world, we search. We want to find out more about our heroes, explore far-away destinations, or settle a dinner table dispute between friends. And sometimes we just search to find out how many calories are in an avocado.

In our annual Year-End Zeitgeist (“spirit of the times”), we reflect on the people, places, and moments that captured the world’s attention throughout the year. This year marks our most global Zeitgeist to date—with 1,000+ top 10 lists across categories like Trending People, Most-Searched Events and Top Trending Searches from 72 countries.

As we get ready to turn the page to 2014, we invite you to take a global journey through the biggest moments from the past 12 months in our Year in Review video…

And how did the largest number of users finish the query, “what is…?”

With the word, “twerking,” that’s how. Really. We’re serious. Even if the rest of the world wasn’t. It was “twerking,” not, say, “metadata.”

Somewhere at The Guardian, there’s an editor weeping right about now. Probably the one who keeps leading the paper (or at least, the Web version) with Snowden/NSA stories…

Snowden’s new employer kept secret ‘for security reasons.’ No, I am not making this up.

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The Slatest brought this to my attention:

Edward Snowden has a new job. His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, tells Russian outletRIA Novosti that Snowden has landed a new gig in technical support. Kucherena isn’t saying who Snowden’s new employer is, but did describe the company as a major Russian website. “He will be part of the support team of one of the largest Russian websites,” Kucherena told the Russian news agency. “I can’t say the name of the website now for security reasons.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

First, what employer on this planet would be so monumentally stupid as to hire Edward Snowden, someone who so famously betrayed every oath, every rule and principle held sacred by his former employers?

For a full reminder of the extent to which Snowden personifies the concept of betrayal, betrayal of everyone and everything around him, I urge you to go back at read David Brooks’ column of June 10. And I quote:

He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths.

He betrayed his friends. Anybody who worked with him will be suspect. Young people in positions like that will no longer be trusted with responsibility for fear that they will turn into another Snowden.

He betrayed his employers. Booz Allen and the C.I.A. took a high-school dropout and offered him positions with lavish salaries. He is violating the honor codes of all those who enabled him to rise.

He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else….

“For security reasons…” Har-de-har-har-har.

Whose security? Edward Snowden’s? Who should feel any obligation to respect or protect confidentiality for his benefit?

Who says NSA surveillance can’t be a source of fun?

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Taking off on a report that NSA operatives have on some occasions used their surveillance power to check up on their personal love interests (this kind of intelligence-gathering is informally called “LOVEINT”), a lot of folks have been having fun with #nsapickuplines.

Some diverting examples, courtesy of NPR:

I bet you’re tired of guys who only pretend to listen.

I’d tap that.

Just relax while we unzip your files.

Are you tired? Because you’ve been running through my chat log reviews all day.

I know exactly where you have been all my life

Girl, you must have fallen from heaven because there is no tracking data to indicate how you arrived at this location.

Another one of those privacy messages that I don’t read

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This morning, in her column for tomorrow (that still confuses me; I don’t think any other major columnist in the country writes columns that appear online so long before they do in print), Peggy Noonan was waxing deeply concerned about my privacy, or her privacy, or someone’s (I didn’t read the whole thing; in any case, if it’s someone else’s, it is by definition none of mine, right?):

What is privacy? Why should we want to hold onto it? Why is it important, necessary, precious?

Is it just some prissy relic of the pretechnological past?

We talk about this now because of Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency revelations, and new fears that we are operating, all of us, within what has become or is becoming a massive surveillance state. They log your calls here, they can listen in, they can read your emails. They keep the data in mammoth machines that contain a huge collection of information about you and yours. This of course is in pursuit of a laudable goal, security in the age of terror.

Is it excessive? It certainly appears to be. Does that matter? Yes. Among other reasons: The end of the expectation that citizens’ communications are and will remain private will probably change us as a people, and a country. ..

Later in the day, I got this email from some honcho at AT&T, addressed to me as the holder of a certain numbered account (and the number is none a yer damn’ bidness!):

Dear Valued Customer,

We know your privacy is important, so we’ve made it a priority to talk to you about it. We’re revising our Privacy Policy to make it easier to understand, and we want to point out two new programs that could help us and other businesses serve you better.

The first program will make reports available to businesses. These reports will contain anonymous information about groups of customers, such as how they collectively use our products and services. The second program will use local geography as a factor in delivering online and mobile ads to the people who might find them most useful.

As always, we follow important principles to keep your trust:

  • We are committed to protecting your privacy.
  • We provide you with privacy choices.
  • We will not sell information that identifies you to anyone, for any purpose. Period.
  • We are committed to listening and keeping you informed about how we protect your privacy.

The two new programs are described in this notice, including your privacy choices for each. You can also read the new and old versions of our privacy policy at att.com/privacy.

To provide feedback on the new policy, please write us in the next 30 days at privacyfeedback@att.com or AT&T Privacy Policy, 1120 20th Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20036.

Sincerely,

Robert W. Quinn Jr.
AT&T
Senior Vice President – Federal Regulatory & Chief Privacy Officer

Whenever I see anything like that — something that intones, “We know your privacy is important…” — I’m like yes, I suppose so, if you say so, and don’t read further, and move on.

But I appreciated his caring so much. I wondered whether his concern had anything to do with the Snowden stuff. Don’t know. Don’t care.

And it strikes me as extremely ironic that this guy probably gets paid more money than I’ve ever been paid to do anything to worry more about my privacy than I do. I’m more concerned about the fact that today, for some reason, I keep getting myself into sentences that don’t have an elegant way out of them, such as the preceding one, and to a lesser extent this one…

Oh, wait, you know what’s really weird? That AT&T notice came through my ADCO email, not my personal email. I have an AT&T account at home, not through ADCO. Oh, well…

Russia has committed a deliberate, hostile act against U.S.

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Lindsey Graham took little time in reacting to the news that Edward Snowden has been allowed to enter Russia technically and officially, and will be granted asylum for a year:

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) made this statement today on the reports that Russia has granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

 

“If these reports are accurate, Americans in Washington should consider this a game changer in our relationship with Russia.  Mr. Snowden has been charged with serious crimes and has put American lives at risk at home and abroad.

 

“Today’s action by the Russian government could not be more provocative and is a sign of Vladimir Putin’s clear lack of respect for President Obama. It is now time for Congress, hopefully in conjunction with the Administration, to make it clear to the Russian government that this provocative step in granting Snowden asylum will be met with a firm response.”

 

#####

Basically, Putin has just flipped a gigantic bird at the United States. He has shown a gross disrespect for the United States and its laws, protecting Snowden from prosecution on charges of doing things for which — and here’s the ironic part — were a Russian citizen to do them to his country, Putin would put him under Lubyanka Square.

So, what do we do about it? For his part, Sen. Graham has suggested that we consider boycotting the winter Olympics to show our displeasure. Some have reacted as though that were crazy talk. I don’t know why. Jimmy Carter kept us out of the real Olympics in 1980 to protest the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan.

But it doesn’t seem to me the best response to this situation. Right off, it would seem to accept the fact that we’re not getting this mutt back before February 2014, because that’s when the games are. On the other hand, if we got him back before then, we could then go ahead to the Olympics.

There must be a better approach, but I don’t know what it is. What does Putin want that we could deny him without hurting our own interests further? Someone must know.

Big Brother doesn’t need NSA to know where you’ve been

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Several of the most amazing things I’ve seen technology do in recent years are associated with Google Maps.

Such as the traffic feature.

Look at Google Maps on your phone, and you’ll see how well traffic is moving — or whether it’s moving at all — on the road ahead of you.

Google does this by — Edward Snowden and the ACLU should brace themselves at this point — keeping track of all the Maps-equipped phones traveling on the road. Not only that road, of course, but all roads, all of the time. In real time.

Now, we see that law enforcement can do, and does, something similar by tracking license plates:

The spread of cheap, powerful cameras capable of reading license plates has allowed police to build databases on the movements of millions of Americans over months or even years, according to an American Civil Liberties Union report released Wednesday.

The license-plate readers, which authorities typically mount along major roadways or on the backs of cruisers and government vehicles, can identify cars almost instantly and compare them against “hot lists” of vehicles that have been stolen or involved in crimes.

But the systems collect records on every license plate they encounter — whether or not they are on hot lists — meaning that time and location data are gathered in databases that can be searched by police. Some departments purge information after a few weeks, some after a few months and some never, said the report, which warns that such data could be abused by authorities and chill freedom of speech and association…

You have to pity the ACLU, Rand Paul, et al. They are doomed to worry themselves to death. Because this toothpaste is not going back into the tube.

I liked the way it was put in an explainer of the Google traffic function:

So how does Google know what traffic is like on the roads, nearly all the time? From our smartphones, of course. Whether you like it or not, “telephone companies have always known where your phone is,” Dobson says, because cell phone companies need to use location to appropriately charge customers for calls. That means the companies are constantly monitoring location based on the strength of signal to a cell tower, which allows the phone to switch towers as it travels. Since 2011, the Federal Communications Commission has also required that phones come with GPS, so between the triangulation with cell towers and the GPS requirement, your phone is a marked man….

Now, this has stirred up some controversy about whether the process is an invasion of privacy. But both Dobson and Zhan Guo, a transportation policy professor at New York University, nearly laughed when asked about privacy concerns. That ship has already sailed….

Indeed. One might as well laugh.

Some will say that a private company keeping tabs on your every move, for its own greater profit (and utility, of course) is preferable to the gummint doing so.

I don’t think either is necessarily preferable, just different. And either way, ultimately inevitable.

Uhhhh… I thought ‘Krypto’ was Superboy’s dog…

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Thought this was interesting, from over at Slate:

In the central courtyard of CIA headquarters stands an odd statue—in the shape of a 12-foot-high, S-shaped wall with letters punched out of it—named Kryptos (the Greek word for “hidden”). The statue, created by Jim Sanborn and installed in 1990, is more than just a curious piece of art, though. It contains four different encrypted codes that have served as a topic of discussion and distraction for cryptanalysts around the world.

It was nearly a decade after Kryptos was created before CIA analyst David Stein and computer scientist Jim Gillogly, working independently, cracked the first three codes within a year of each other. Both men gained public attention and notoriety in the field of cryptography for their efforts. But, as Wired reported on Wednesday, new documents obtained via FOIA request by Elonka Dunin, an expert on Kryptos, tell a different story. A small team of cryptanalysts at the National Security Agency—yes, the one and the same—worked out the first three codes on Kryptos years before Stein or Gillogly. And it took them less than a month to do so. All they needed was a formal challenge from the CIA’s then-deputy director, which inspired a few NSA cryptanalysts to sit down, work out three of the puzzles—the fourth code in Kryptos remains a unsolved to this day—and report back with their success in June 1993….

This is Kryptos, which I think I recognize from an episode of “Homeland,” in a scene in which Claire Danes and Damian Lewis run into each other outside CIA HQ.

I’m intrigued that the artist who created it managed to include one code (out of the four) that the boffins at NSA couldn’t crack.

Maybe Snowden has the answer on his laptop.

Or maybe it was just random gobbledegook, intended to drive the cryptographers crazy…

Edward Snowden, the sniveling ‘hero’

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This piece over at Slate…

On the merits, Snowden’s claim for asylum would not count for much in any country. Applicants for asylum typically must prove they are the victims of persecution on account of their race, ethnicity, religion, or membership in a social or political group. Frequently, these are political dissidents who are fleeing government oppression, or members of the wrong group in a civil war or ethnic conflict. They have been tortured, their families have been massacred. Snowden could be regarded as a political dissenter, but the United States is attempting to arrest him not because he holds dissenting views, but because he violated the law by disclosing information that he had sworn to keep secret. All countries have such laws; they could hardly grant asylum to an American for committing acts that they themselves would regard as crimes if committed by their own nationals…

… reminded me of the statement Edward Snowden put out a day or two ago, through his friends at Wikileaks. After complaining that President Obama is employing “the old, bad tools of political aggression” against him, he went on:

The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum…

Well, first, young Edward, you have been “convicted of nothing” because you have not been tried, which is because you have not been apprehended, which is because you’ve been running like a scalded dog ever since you revealed your identity to the world.

And I thought Slate, above, explained pretty well why most nations would be unwilling to grant you the asylum that you wrongly regard as your “right.”

The whiny tone of Snowden’s statement this week sort of stands in contrast, in my mind, to the tone of self-righteous martyrdom that he struck at the outset, from Hong Kong:

I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end… There’s no saving me…

In other words, it’s a far, far better thing I do, yadda-yadda. Back then, he wasn’t concerned for himself, only for others:

“My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner. Anyone I have a relationship with,” he said. “I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. I am not going to be able to communicate with them. They (the authorities) will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night.”…

In other words, he was worried only about those whom HE had deliberately and unilaterally betrayed, along with his employer, his own oaths, and his country. He’s right — anyone associated with him, particularly anyone who worked with him, will be under suspicion, as our counterintelligence people will naturally wonder how one guy, working alone, had access to so much compartmentalized information.

But have you noticed something about those people he supposedly was so worried about? They’re still here, in this country. They are not hiding in an airport in Russia, desperately trying to find a country that will protect them from the legal consequences for their own actions. Only Edward Snowden, “hero” in the cause of transparency, is doing that.

If Snowden really wants a national conversation about the issues he raises, there would be no better stage for him than his own trial. The one he’s unwilling to face.

If only Gaddafi and Saddam were still alive, Snowden would have two more friends in the world

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Let’s see…

First, that bastion on transparency and respect for privacy China protects Edward Snowden in Hong Kong, and lets him leave.

Then, Vladimir Putin insists it has no control over who comes and goes there. I liked the way the WSJ’s Bret Stephens underlined the absurdity of that claim: “When the Russian government wants someone off Russian soil, it either removes him from it or puts him under it.”

Of course, at each stage of his picaresque journey, Snowden’s had is being held by Julian Assange’s organization. Julian Assange, who makes it his business to shut down communications among U.S. security organizations, taking us back to the pre-9/11 condition in which information was kept in silos and not shared to prevent terror attacks.

So where might he go next? The late Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela has been mentioned. Rafael Correa of Ecuador, already happy to be harboring Assange in London, would be delighted to cock another public snook at the United States and its allies.

I’m sort of feeling bad for Evo Morales in Bolivia. You know he’d love some of this kind of action, but I haven’t heard that he’s on Snowden’s potential itinerary. Snowden and Assange should at least throw the guy a mention, just to keep peace in the anti-Yanqui clubhouse.

If only Moammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still around. Snowden would have two more friends in this cold, cruel world…

Is it really ‘hypocrisy’ when partisans switch sides on national security? Or is it something more promising?

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Meant to post about this Friday night, but got too busy…

NPR posted this Friday under the headline, “Why Partisans Can’t Kick The Hypocrisy Habit:”

American politics has become like a big square dance. When the music stops after an election, people switch to the other side on a number of issues, depending on whether their party remains in power.

That was pretty clear this week, when polls revealed more Democrats than Republicans support tracking of phone traffic by the National Security Agency — the exact opposite of where things stood under President George W. Bush.

A Washington Post-Pew Research Center released Monday showed that 64 percent of Democrats support such efforts, up from just 36 percent in 2006. Republican support, meanwhile, had dropped from 75 percent to 52 percent.

It’s not just a question of whether you trust the current president to carry out data mining in a way that targets terrorists and not innocent Americans. Partisans hold malleable positions in a number of areas — foreign policy, the economy and even who continue to serve under a new administration.

“People change their views depending on which party is in power, and not based on objective conditions on the ground,” says George Washington University political scientist John Sides….

But is “hypocrisy” the right word? You know me; I like to trash partisanship whenever I can. But maybe in this case at least some of the partisans are getting a bum rap.

As usual, I was very interested in what E.J. Dionne and David Brooks had to say on the subject Friday night.

Here’s what Brooks said, regarding the way Joe Biden has changed his tune on surveillance practices that he once called “very, very intrusive:”

Actually, there’s education, not hypocrisy… You get into office and you learn the threats. You get the daily intelligence brief. Maybe you get sucked in by the National Security apparatus, but I’d like to say you just learn. And so you do things you wouldn’t otherwise do because you learn the truth…

Indeed. And as you know, I have welcomed the Obama administration’s pragmatism on so many points of consideration in the realm of national security.

E.J. also saw something more positive than mere “hyprocrisy,” although he saw it from a different angle:

You know, in only partial defense of Biden, I would say that we have more legal limits now than we did at the time he spoke. But I think there’s been a lot of hypocrisy on this, and oddly enough, I kind of welcome it. On the one hand, you do have some liberals who were critical of Bush and now support Obama, and you have a lot of conservatives who supported Bush but now suddenly say the same things are bad.

But you also have consistency. You have liberals who are mad at Bush, mad at Obama, conservatives who support Bush, support Obama. I think the fact that there is – people have switched sides reflects a deep and intelligent ambivalence. We want to be safe. We also want to be free. And we want to have our privacy protected. And we know it’s complicated to have all of those at the same time.

And I think the fact that the partisan and ideological lines have been scrambled might actually help us have a debate on the merits…

Good points from both. For my part, I take the good breaks we can get. If Obama is able to get the political room to act on these things for the same reason Nixon could go to China, well, more power to him. Pun intended.

By the way, in the realm of putting these surveillance programs into a clearer perspective, I liked this, from Brooks:

As for the point [Biden] made, Charles Krauthammer in a column today said it’s like the outside of an envelope. The government has a right to keep track of what’s on the outside of the envelope.

They do not have to read what’s in the envelope and that’s essentially what they’re doing with the calls. I’m old enough, I can remember getting a phone bill where every single call you made was listed on your phone bill. Is that keeping track? Is that an invasion of privacy? I think a minimal one.

David Brooks’ piece on Snowden the best column I’ve seen in years

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David Brooks’ Monday column in The New York Times (which The State ran today) is the best column of any kind, by anyone, that I have read in years. (People whose thoughtfulness I respect keep bringing it to my attention, and I say, yes, thanks; I saw it — and intend to say something about it.)

Basically, you need to go read the whole thing. And then read it again. I can’t quote everything in it that is awesome without stomping all over the Fair Use standard, but let me describe briefly what the piece does.

It explains exactly what is wrong with Edward Snowden and what he did. Brooks accomplishes this in spite of the fact that we lack the common vocabulary in this country to express such things in a manner that everyone can understand. People who sort of get that what Snowden did is wrong, and that his actions reflect something fundamentally wrong with Snowden himself, don’t know how to explain that wrongness. So they either clam up, ceding the floor to the more simple-minded cheerleaders for Snowden’s brand of “transparency,” or they use a word that gets them dismissed, as John Boehner did when he resorted to “traitor.”

In explaining what is wrong with Snowden, Brooks explained something fundamentally wrong with our society and our politics today — something that is eating away at our ability to be a society governed by representative democracy, because it’s eating away at basic civil. social assumptions that make it possible for free people to live together.

The piece is headlined “The Solitary Leaker.” An excerpt:

Though thoughtful, morally engaged and deeply committed to his beliefs, he appears to be a product of one of the more unfortunate trends of the age: the atomization of society, the loosening of social bonds, the apparently growing share of young men in their 20s who are living technological existences in the fuzzy land between their childhood institutions and adult family commitments.Brooks_New-popup-v2

If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.

This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme. You’re more likely to donate to the Ron Paul for president campaign, as Snowden did….

After acknowledging that the procedures Snowden has revealed (or rather, revealed in greater detail than what we knew previously) could be abused at some future time, Brooks continues:

But Big Brother is not the only danger facing the country. Another is the rising tide of distrust, the corrosive spread of cynicism, the fraying of the social fabric and the rise of people who are so individualistic in their outlook that they have no real understanding of how to knit others together and look after the common good.

This is not a danger Snowden is addressing. In fact, he is making everything worse.

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things…

OK, that’s as much as I dare quote. But Brooks goes on to catalog the various personal, social and institutional betrayals of Edward Snowden, and the ways that such betrayals unravel the social fabric that allows a healthy civilization to exist.

It is a very, very good piece. Please go read the whole thing.