Press and internet freedom advocates including Edward Snowden have criticised a decision by Brazilian federal prosecutors to charge the journalist Glenn Greenwald with cybercrimes as a blatant abuse of power and an existential threat to investigative reporting in the country.

Prosecutors claimed on Tuesday that Greenwald, 52, helped, encouraged and guided a group of hackers who obtained phone messages between key figures in a sweeping Brazilian anti-corruption investigation.

The leaked messages formed the basis for several stories published on Intercept Brazil, which Greenwald co-founded, and exposed what appeared to be collusion between then judge Srgio Moro and prosecutors.

The prosecutors investigation resulted in the jailing of Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, Brazils highest-polling presidential candidate at the time, and the subsequent presidential election was won by the far-right Jair Bolsanaro, who appointed Moro as his justice minister.

Snowden, who leaked files to Greenwald and others that became a Pulitzer prize-winning series of Guardian stories exposing illegal spying by US intelligence agencies, said the reporters arrest was an absolute red alert.

This is unbelievably naked retaliation for revealing extreme corruption at the highest levels of Bolsanaros administration, and an existential threat to investigative journalism in Brazil, he said on Twitter.

Lula, who was released from prison in November to appeal against his conviction, also voiced support for Greenwald. All my solidarity to journalist @ggreenwald who was a victim of another blatant abuse of authority against freedom of press and democracy, the former president tweeted.

Congresspeople from both left and right-leaning parties in Brazil have condemned the charges, which came as a surprise. Though Bolsanaro had joked that Greenwald could do jail time over the leaks, Brazils federal police had said a month ago it was not possible to identify moral or material participation by the journalist.

Brazils supreme court had issued an injunction last year that prohibited Greenwald for being investigated in the alleged hackers case, citing press freedom laws.

The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, an internet freedom group, said it was dismayed to learn of the charges. Computer crime laws should never be used to criminalise legitimate journalistic practice, it said. Prosecutors must not apply them without considering the chilling effects on the free press, and the risk of politicised prosecutions.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Donald Trumps attacks on the press in the US had softened the ground for the prosecution of American journalists abroad. The United States must immediately condemn this outrageous assault on the freedom of the press, the group said in a statement.

These sham charges are a sickening escalation of the Bolsonaro administrations authoritarian attacks on press freedom and the rule of law. They cannot be allowed to stand.

Greenwald said he only received the leaks and played no role in the hacking. But in a 95-page criminal complaint, Brazilian prosecutors said new audio evidence showed the journalist had played a clear role in facilitating the commission of a crime.

They cited a purported transcript of a conversation between Greenwald and alleged hacker Luiz Henrique Molio in which the reporter was informed the group as still monitoring the communications of its targets and asked for his opinion on how they should proceed.

The transcript quotes Greenwald telling Molio: I cant give you advice. But prosecutors allege he also told the hackers there was no reason to keep archives of message they had already shared with the Intercept Brazil, which they said constituted participation in the crime.

The charges would have to be accepted by a judge before Greenwald would stand trial.

It is impossible to separate these charges against Glenn from his work as an investigative reporter, said Summer Lopez from the American branch of the free-speech group PEN. While we dont know all the contours of this story, we do know two things. First, Glenns reporting has deeply embarrassed the Brazilian government. Second, Brazils president has repeatedly and consistently attacked the press in general and Glenn in particular. As such, Its hard to take these charges at face value.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said the criminal complaint was intended to rattle investigative reporters in the country. Charging a journalist with criminal activity based on interactions with sources sends a chilling message to reporters working on sensitive stories at a time when the media in Brazil is increasingly under attack from officials in its own government, it said.

Greenwald has called the allegations an obvious attempt to attack a free press in retaliation for the revelations we reported about minister Moro and the Bolsonaro government.

We will not be intimidated by these tyrannical attempts to silence journalists, he said.

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Greenwald charges are existential threat to journalism in Brazil, says Edward Snowden - The Guardian

A group of privacy-focused lawmakers on Thursday introducedlegislation to reform a set of controversialsurveillance authorities set to expire in March,setting up ambitious goalposts in the upcoming battle overwhether Congress shouldpare down the government's ability to spy on people in the U.S.

Thebill, from a bipartisan and bicameral coalition, wouldnarrow down the kinds of information the government is allowed to collect without a warrant and officiallyshut down its ability to collectphone records on millions of Americans.

And it wouldreform a secretive court that President TrumpDonald John TrumpMnuchin knocks Greta Thunberg's activism: Study economics and then 'come back' to us The Hill's Morning Report - House prosecutes Trump as 'lawless,' 'corrupt' What to watch for on Day 3 of Senate impeachment trial MORE and Republican allies have bitterly criticized in the wake of a critical inspector general report last year.

The Safeguarding Americans Private Records Act seeks to capitalize on a wave of renewed bipartisan interest in theForeign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court), an instrumental part of the country's intelligence-gathering and national security operations.

Liberty and security arent mutually exclusive, and they arent partisan either, Sen.Ron WydenRonald (Ron) Lee WydenRestlessness, light rule-breaking and milk spotted on Senate floor as impeachment trial rolls on Hillicon Valley Presented by Philip Morris International UN calls for probe into alleged Saudi hack of Bezos | Experts see effort to 'silence' Washington Post | Bezos tweets tribute to Khashoggi Bezos tweets tribute to Khashoggi in wake of reports of Saudi phone hacking MORE (D-Ore.), who has long called for surveillance reform,said in a statement. Im proud our bipartisan coalition is standing up for Americans rights and commonsense reforms to protect our people against unnecessary government surveillance."

The bill was introduced by Wyden and Sen. Steve DainesSteven (Steve) David DainesKoch network could target almost 200 races in 2020, official says GOP senators introduce resolution to change rules, dismiss impeachment without articles Congress to clash over Trump's war powers MORE (R-Mont.) in the upper chamber, with a companion introduced by longtime privacy hawk Rep. Zoe LofgrenZoe Ellen LofgrenDemocrats begin to present case for Trump impeachment to Senate GOP rejects effort to compel documents on delayed Ukraine aid White House appoints GOP House members to advise Trump's impeachment team MORE (D-Calif.) and progressive leader Rep. Pramila JayapalPramila JayapalSanders wants one-on-one fight with Biden The Hill's Morning Report - Trump trial begins with clash over rules Jayapal: 'We will end up with another Donald Trump' if the US doesn't elect a progressive MORE (D-Wash.).

It sets the stage fora bipartisan coalition between Trump allies, who have criticized the FISA court as part of a deeply political battle over whether the FBI exhibited bias against Trump, and progressives who want to reform government surveillance authorities.

The legislation would permanently end the phone records program disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which shuttered last year amid technical difficulties.It would also officially prohibit intelligence agencies from collecting geolocation information without a warrant.

Significantly, it would ensure independent attorneys have access to the proceedings of the FISA court.

The government filed 1,117 warrant applications to the FISA court last year, including 1,081 that requested electronic surveillance.

Congressis facing a mid-March deadline to extend three expiring surveillance authorities.

"The surveillance capabilities intended to keep us safe from foreign threats have all too often trampled on Americans Fourth Amendment rights to due process," Josh Withrow, a senior policy analyst for conservative group FreedomWorks, said in a statement. "The Safeguarding Americans Private Records Act would be an enormous step forward in securing those rights."

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Lawmakers introduce bill to reform controversial surveillance authorities | TheHill - The Hill

A well-placed malicious insider has the potential to cause more damage and at a greater speed than an external threat actor due to their knowledge of, and access to, a companys IT environment.

Think back to June 2013, when the UK press published the first of a seemingly endless string of national security secrets leaked by Edward Snowden. Reports say Snowden downloaded 1.5 million files while working as a contractor for the National Security Agency. And no one noticed until it was too late.

In the years after the Snowden leaks, businesses continue to put themselves at risk. Sensitive documents are exposed to too many users, and files are often kept long after theyve lost their business value. The Varonis Global Data Risk Report found that, on average, employees could access 17 million documents.

Internal threat actors use a number of different techniques to find and copy the data they are after, as well as trying to cover their tracks to avoid detection. Threat actors working within an organisation have an obvious advantage over outsiders: they are already on the system. This means that they do not need to use malware to break in or communicate with command and control external servers, both of which can trigger alerts for the IT security team to investigate.

Unlike external attackers, insiders with access to a network do not need to carry out much, if any, reconnaissance. They often know where to look for valuable information or can quickly identify the assets to target without tripping any of the security alarms that an external agent might trigger as they extensively trawl an IT system.

Such activity becomes easier when insiders have elevated systems access. For instance, Snowden used admin-level privileges to cover up his activities for as long as he did by concealing his identity and deleting system logs.

Our Global Data Risk Report reveals the extent to which employees have access to data they shouldnt. For instance, more than half of the companies surveyed (53%) found that 1,000 sensitive files were open to every employee, while nearly a quarter (22%) of all folders were accessible to the whole business. That is a lot of exposed information that could fall into the wrong hands.

In one case,we discovered an organisation had a payroll file open to the entire staff. Even the receptionist on the front desk could use her account to easily access confidential payroll files.

Businesses need to employ a least privilege approach where employees can only access those folders and files needed for their work. The added challenge comes with employees who need higher levels of access across a range of systems. With these super users there is the danger that they could use easy-to-guess passwords such as admin123. They could also be at risk from giving away their credentials to unscrupulous employees, either by accident or persuasion.

This kind of situation can be combatted by enforcing a policy of strong passwords, employing two-factor authentication and giving passwords an expiry date to compel users to change their passwords on a regular basis.

Sometimes users with the correct level of access misuse their permissions for their own gain. A recent example is of a Tesla employee who, after being turned down for a promotion, allegedly used their elevated access to leak gigabytes of confidential, proprietary information to unknown third parties.

Conversely, insiders that dont have the access needed for their malicious actions can easily search the internet for effective open-source hacking tools and operating instructions. Many that are freely available. With a modicum of technical knowledge, a malevolent employee can become an amateur hacker or a script kiddie. They can try to find out passwords on a device using Mimikatz, or crack them through tools such as John the Ripper. Further, by visiting hacker forums they can get hints and tips for success.

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While insiders can be more difficult to detect than external threat actors, they can be identified through specific behaviours. These will be different from the actions of innocent users, meaning that solutions based on threat models will detect unusual movement patterns to identify anyone within the organisation who might be a threat. Once a threat has been detected, the IT security team will be alerted, enabling it to take remedial action, such as account suspension, while they investigate the issue.

Businesses must implement a range of measures to ensure employees only have access to those files necessary for their job and monitor the behaviour of users to identify anything suspicious. In this way, they will stop themselves from becoming the next victims of a wannabe Snowden.

Snowden is probably one of the most notorious whistleblowers in recent history and the scale of information leaked was vast. It also served as a wakeup call on what one individual can do to expose an organisations secrets. If we can learn one lesson from insider breaches, it is that while businesses should have confidence in their employees, they must also use measures to prevent this trust from being abused.

Read more: The new Edward Snowden book is being used to spread malware

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To spot next-generation insider threats, think like Snowden - Verdict

The prosecution of Glenn Greenwald and the global war on free speech 23 January 2020

The criminal conspiracy charges levelled by the Brazilian government against Intercept Brasil publisher and renowned investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald is the latest in a series of state attacks internationally on the hard-won historical right to freedom of speech. The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has opened the floodgates for a global war on independent and critical journalism and the imposition of sweeping censorship.

The allegations made in Brazil against Greenwald are essentially identical to the first charge issued in April 2019 by the US Department of Justice to file for the extradition of Assange from the United Kingdom to stand trial in the United States. Both men have been accused of assisting whistleblowers to access information that, once published, exposed criminality and corruption at the highest levels of the state apparatus.

In Greenwalds case, a prosecution is being prepared on the pretext that he conspired with people to hack messaging accounts and obtain information that proved top officials had used a corruption investigation to undermine the political opponents of fascistic demagogue Jair Bolsonaro. In the lead-up to the 2018 presidential election, which was won by Bolsanaro, former President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva was convicted of corruption and imprisoned and his Workers Party mired in scandal.

In the case of Julian Assange, he has been charged with conspiring with courageous American whistleblower Chelsea Manning in 2009-2010 to access troves of classified documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the sordid intrigues carried out around the world to prop up pro-US regimes and assert American strategic and corporate interests. A further 17 counts of espionage were then added to the charge list, threatening him with a life sentence of 175 years if he is extradited and condemned by a show trial in the US.

Greenwald has not yet been arrested, but it is almost certain that US intelligence agencies are involved in the legal moves to prosecute him. He would have been on their hitlist of priority media targets since he played a key role in 2013 in publishing the leaks made by National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden. The Snowden leaks exposed the staggering degree to which the NSA spies on the communications of virtually every American citizen and much of the worlds population.

Julian Assange sought to protect himself from the revenge of the US state by gaining political asylum in 2012 in the tiny Ecuadorian embassy in London, until he was evicted and arrested last April. Just prior to Assanges eviction, Chelsea Manning was sent back to prison for refusing to appear before a grand jury and retract her categorical testimony during her trial that she acted alonewithout any assistance from Assange and WikiLeaksto access the information she leaked.

The imprisonment of Manning and arrest of Assange was quickly followed by the Macron government initiating moves to prosecute eight journalists over the exposure of Frances complicity in Saudi Arabias illegal war in Yemen. In June 2019, unprecedented police raids on journalists homes and media offices took place in Australia. Three journalists are threatened with prosecution over the publication of leaks exposing war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan and plans to legalise mass surveillance.

Glenn Greenwald had not visited the US since 2013 due to his legitimate concern that he would be arrested. With Bolsanaro now in power, the hands of the CIA, NSA and FBI can well and truly reach into Brazil, where Greenwald has residency rights through his partner.

The WSWS warned in 2010 that if Julian Assange was not defendedafter his detention in Britain over blatantly fabricated allegations that he had committed sexual offences in Swedenit would open the way for a full-scale assault to terrorise and silence genuine journalism. Then vice-president Joe Biden in Barack Obamas Democratic Party administration had labelled Assange a high-tech terrorist. The Labor government in Australia, where Assange holds citizenship, had denounced WikiLeaks publications as illegal activity.

Within a matter of months, however, the vast majority of the ex-left and ex-liberal political and media fraternity lined up with the US state and its allies against Assange. Publications such as the New York Times and the Guardian which had worked with WikiLeaks to publish the Manning leaks because they were going to be published anywaydevoted their resources to slandering Assange as a suspected rapist and self-serving narcissist, undeserving of any popular sympathy and support. The unions and fake left organisations internationally actively opposed any campaign in his defence, refusing to discuss his case and boycotting all actions taken to demand his freedom.

The political reasons this turn against WikiLeaks took place must never be forgotten. It occurred in the wake of massive social upheavals, which were in part triggered by information contained in the Manning leaks, that brought down US-backed regimes. Foreign Policy magazine nervously asked in January 2011 if Tunisia was the first WikiLeaks Revolution. Just weeks later, the seemingly all-powerful dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by a mass movement of the Egyptian working class.

The establishment left parties, unions and media are tied by a thousand threads to the financial and corporate oligarchy and benefit from the ruthless exploitation of the vast majority of the worlds population. The way in which the truth had motivated ordinary people to rise up in open rebellion against entrenched elites was viewed in these circles with horror. A mass upheaval demanding an end to social inequality and political injustice in the United States, for example, would threaten the wealth and power of the capitalist class and privileged upper middle class, of which they are part and which they serve.

The instinctive response of the establishment organisations and media was to join with the state apparatus in seeking to prevent or censor future exposures. As New York Times editor Bill Keller bluntly wrote in November 2010 in response to WikiLeaks: When we find ourselves in possession of government secrets, we think long and hard about whether to disclose them Freedom of the press includes freedom not to publish, and that is a freedom we exercise with some regularity. [emphasis added]

The hatred of the ex-liberal publications for Assange reached visceral levels in 2016 when WikiLeaks published leaked emails that shed further light on the militarist, big business and authoritarian agenda of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Partytheir preference in the US presidential election. The Times and the Guardian spearheaded the campaign to promote the fabrications that Assange had conspired with Russian intelligence to hack the emails and to smear him as a tool of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump.

In July 2019, a US court dismissed the allegations that WikiLeaks had worked with Russian agencies as entirely divorced from the facts and defended its right to publish the leaks as plainly of the type entitled to the strongest protection that the First Amendment offers.

The Times and Guardian, however, have never retracted their false accusations and slanders. To this day, the Times and the Democratic Party machine publicly advocate that Assange be criminally prosecuted over their incessant claims that Russian interference cost Clinton the 2016 election. In April 2019, the Times published comments that described the first conspiracy charge against Assange as an indisputable crime.

Given its record, the New York Times plumbed the depths of hypocrisy in its editorial on January 22 on the charging of Glenn Greenwald. It asserted that Greenwalds publication of leaks in Brazil did what a free press is supposed to do: they revealed a painful truth about those in power. The editorial concluded: Attacking the bearers of that message is a serious disservice and a dangerous threat to the rule of law.

The reality is that the Times, along with numerous ex-left and ex-liberal organisations and publications, has proven through its complicity in the persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks that its class allegiances lie with the corporate oligarchy and the capitalist state.

A genuine defence of persecuted journalists and whistleblowers will only be taken forward by the working class, whose right to know the truth they have courageously served.

Julian Assange is imprisoned in Britain and his extradition trial begins on February 24 in London. Chelsea Manning is in a cell in the United States, Edward Snowden is in forced exile in Russia and now Glenn Greenwald is under threat in Brazil. All those who defend the fundamental democratic rights at stake in their cases have the responsibility to fight for the greatest possible independent mobilisation of workers and young people to demand their immediate and unconditional freedom.

James Cogan

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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The prosecution of Glenn Greenwald and the global war on free speech - World Socialist Web Site

The British government's view of people who encrypt their communications

The Government Reviewer of Terrorism Laws has declared that safeguards protecting Britons from police workers demanding passwords for their devices must be watered down.

In a speech delivered to conservative think tank the Henry Jackson Society yesterday, Jonathan Hall QC, the "Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation"* said section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 is too "difficult" for police and others to work with.

Section 49 of RIPA is the part of UK law that lets police and others legally order suspects to hand over passwords for encrypted information.

There are two safeguards: one is subsection (3), which says the state can only demand your password if it is "in the interests of national security", for "preventing or detecting crime" or for the "economic well-being of the United Kingdom".

The other safeguard, identified by Hall, is subsection (2)(d), which says password demands can only be made by the state if it is "not reasonably practicable" to get at the encrypted information without demanding the password. Failure to obey is a crime punishable with up to five years in prison.

Even these sweeping permissions and slim safeguards are too narrow, in Hall's view. In his speech he said:

The truth is that these preconditions may be difficult to establish, especially when counter-terrorism police are working against the clock in relation to multiple individuals and multiple devices, where those individuals are in precharge detention and must be either charged or released unconditionally...

Pre-charge detention arrest and incarceration without being charged for people apprehended under terrorism powers lasts for up to a fortnight. After 14 days police must ask a judge's permission to carry on jailing a suspect without setting out a case against them.

Hall went on to call for the creation of a new offence of failing to hand over a password during a terrorism investigation. It was unclear whether the barrister was calling for the word "terrorism" to be inserted alongside "child indecency" and "national security" in RIPA section 53(5A)(a), which sets longer sentences for refusals to decrypt in certain types of case.

In a coded warning, Hall appeared to suggest that opposing an expansion of forced-decryption powers could lead to "longer and longer periods of pre-trial detention being sought" by police, spies and the like.

Lest all this is thought to be an edge case that only applies to nasty people who had it coming to them anyway, British police abused their Terrorism Act powers to target a journalist's courier who was changing flights at Heathrow while carrying encrypted material from Edward Snowden. In an act of great national shame, a senior judge decided this was perfectly legal.

Hall's proposal would see people in similar circumstances journalists, your lawyer, your family members facing a potential five-year prison term for quite reasonably refusing to incriminate themselves or others. Such abuses, and potential abuses, must be confronted and taken outside the range of lawful options open to police and others.

Hall's full speech is available as a PDF on the government website, gov.uk.

* The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation's official name is deliberately misleading: the post is now used by the government of the day for prominent barristers to prove their political loyalty before promotion into senior politico-legal posts.

Hall's immediate predecessor, Max Hill QC, echoed then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd's demands for encryption and online anonymity to be outlawed, something that did not in any way slow down his promotion to Director of Public Prosecutions top job in the criminal legal world 10 months later.

Before Hill came David Anderson QC, who was widely accepted to have been as neutral as is possible in the post; nonetheless, this didn't stop his elevation to the House of Lords as a crossbench peer after he stepped down in 2017.

The first permanent reviewer and Anderson's predecessor was Lord (Alex) Carlile QC, who, though nominally a Lib Dem, took a post in 2001 in Tony Blair's Labour government. He spent the next nine years overseeing the introduction of intrusive legal powers for police, spies, local councils and anyone else in the public sector who fancied themselves as James Bond.

Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business

Excerpt from:
We need to make it even easier for UK terror cops to rummage about in folks' phones, says govt lawyer - The Register