Category Archives: Edward Snowden

A Key NSA Overseer’s Alarming Dismissal of Surveillance Critics

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The NSA's inspector general mischaracterized Edward Snowden's critique of the agency in remarks at Georgetown.

An NSA data-collection facility in Utah. (Reuters)

The National Security Agency's overseers have a spotty-at-best post-9/11 track record. The NSA carried out an illegal program of warrantless wiretapping during the Bush Administration. Even after the President's Surveillance Program was reformed, the agency built a surveillance dragnet that collected information on the private communications of millions of totally innocent Americans, a dramatic change in approach carried out without popular input or consent. And according to the FISA-court judges charged with overseeing the NSAthe very people who signed off on the phone dragnet, among other thingsthe agency has violated the Fourth Amendment and the law on at least thousands of occasions.

Some of those violations affected millions of people.

As well, insufficient operational security recently resulted in the theft of a still unknown number of highly classified documents by an employee of an NSA subcontractor. Civil libertarians and national-security statists alike have reason to be upset.

For all of these reasons, it must be a tough time to be George Ellard, the NSA's inspector general. The entity that he headsdeclares itself"the independent agent for individual and organizational integrity" within the NSA. "Through professional inspections, audits, and investigations," its website adds, "we work to ensure that the Agency respects Constitutional rights, obeys laws and regulations, treats its employees and affiliates fairly, and uses public resources wisely."

Since taking his post in 2007, Ellard has scarcely made a public statement. This week, however, he participated in a conference at Georgetown, and while efforts were reportedly made to keep his press exposure to a minimum, his remarks have been reported.

They're interestingand do not inspire confidence. We begin with the account provided by Kevin Gosztola:

Ellard was asked what he would have done if Snowden had come to him with complaints. Had this happened, Ellard says would have said something like, "Hey, listen, fifteen federal judges have certified this program is okay." (He was referring to the NSA phone records collection program.) "I would also have an independent obligation to assess the constitutionality of that law," Ellard stated. "Perhaps its the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do."

Even on their own, these comments are strange. Many aspects of the Section 215 phone dragnet are now public. Edward Snowden is on record with specific objections to them. The same goes for lots of other NSA initiatives: As they've been publicly fleshed out, Snowden has articulated why he believes the public ought to know about them. If Ellard understands what has transpired since last June, why is he speaking as if Snowden's leaks could've been averted if his supposed "misperceptions" had been corrected? That possibility isn't consistent with the facts. Knowing their actual nature, Snowden still thinks the programs should be public.

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A Key NSA Overseer's Alarming Dismissal of Surveillance Critics

China’s military hackers can thank Edward Snowden

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Chinas military hackers are back, more brazen than ever. You can thank Edward Snowden.

A year ago, the Internet security firm Mandiant went public with what cyber-war watchers had known for some time: Unit 61398, a secret branch of the Chinese military, had been behind more than 1,000 cyber attacks on Western targets since 2006. Employing thousands of trained cyber warriors housed in a 12-story building in Shanghai and backed by an enormous militia of part-time hackers Unit 61398 had been waging a constant war on foreign banks, infrastructure, defense firms and government agencies, including one spectacular 2007 raid on the Pentagon that shut down 1,500 different Defense Department networks.

The resulting international sensation forced a reluctant President Obama to confront the Chinese premier on the issue. Beijing issued its usual furious denial but the attacks stopped and Unit 61398 fell from the headlines.

But now we know they didnt stop for long and the West and the Obama administration are looking as ill-prepared and impotent as ever in dealing with the threat. Chinas usual attacks on banks, weapons manufacturers and other juicy targets are now back to almost daily.

Most striking is how bold the attacks have grown. The Chinese are apparently so confident we cant (or wont) stop them that theyve gotten sloppy. Examining hacker codes left behind on US military and commercial networks, Internet-security engineers have been finding bits of code identical to Chinese commercial software sold for export by companies with contracts with the Peoples Liberation Army.

Why so bold and brazen? Snowdens revelations about the National Security Agency both his public releases and his likely private ones.

The Snowden defection back in June was a double gift for Chinas hackers (as well as for Russian ones the State Department even issued a warning that any cellphone or laptop brought to the Sochi Olympics would almost certainly be hacked there, and its passwords stolen).

The data Snowden brought with him to Hong Kong included a wealth of information about how our intelligence agencies fight and trace hackers, as well as on the NSAs own hacking efforts in China.

Second, Snowdens public revelations have for more than six months distracted media and public attention away from Chinas increasingly bold and lawless cyber-war offensives, and kept it focused on the NSA.

The press and politicians are more obsessed about whether an NSA clerk might be listening in one of our phone calls than whether a transcript of that call could end up on the desk of a PLA intelligence official or whether the phone companys software becomes a conduit for Unit 61398 cracking open bank accounts around the country.

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China’s military hackers can thank Edward Snowden

Ecuador says yet to weigh Snowden asylum amid US row

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06-27-2013, 13h26

QUITO (AFP)

Ecuador's president said Thursday he had yet to consider letting US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden enter his country as tensions with the United States rose, with Washington warning Quito against granting the fugitive asylum.

The Ecuadoran leftist government defiantly pulled out of a trade pact with the United States, claiming it had become an instrument of "blackmail" as Quito considers Snowden's asylum bid.

But despite voicing support for Snowden, the Andean nation denied reports that it authorized a "safepass" travel document for the former National Security Agency contractor and said it would not be able to process his asylum bid until he enters Ecuadoran territory.

"Would he be allowed to arrive on Ecuadoran territory? This is something that, in principle, we haven't considered," President Rafael Correa told a news conference.

"We would probably examine it, but for now he is in Russia," he said, adding that Ecuador's ambassador to Russia met Snowden just once on Monday in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and that no more contact had been made.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose anti-secrecy website has assisted Snowden, said on Monday that Quito had given Snowden a "refugee document of passage" that would allow him to travel here.

The US Spanish-language television network Univision published on its website what appeared to be a "safepass" document with the letterhead of Quito's consulate in London, asking authorities in transit countries to "give the appropriate help" as the bearer travels to Ecuador.

"You request asylum when you are on a country's territory. Snowden is not on Ecuadoran territory, so technically we cannot even process the asylum request," Correa said.

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Ecuador says yet to weigh Snowden asylum amid US row

Edward Snowden elected rector of Glasgow University

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Intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden was elected the new rector of Glasgow University on Tuesday.

Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose revelations about UK and US surveillance practices have sparked controversy worldwide, beat out three other candidates for the three-year post.

More from GlobalPost: 16 disturbing things Snowden has taught us (so far)

He will succeed the Liberal Democrat's former leader Charles Kennedy.

The rector is elected to represent students to senior management at the university, chairing the university's ruling court.

Previous rectors have included Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordecai Vanunu and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.

Other candidates for the post this year included cyclist Graeme Obree, author Alan Bissett and Scottish Episcopal clergyman Kelvin Holdsworth.

More from GlobalPost: Norwegian politician nominates Edward Snowden for Nobel Peace Prize

"We're giving students a stage, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to voice their own discontent with mass surveillance. By electing Edward Snowden, we're sending a clear message, also to our government, that we will not allow this kind of surveillance,"Lubna Nowak, a member of Snowden's campaign, told The Guardian.

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Edward Snowden elected rector of Glasgow University

NSA Official Warned About Threat 17 Years Before Snowden

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Seventeen years before Edward Snowden began releasing secret documents on U.S. electronic spying, an analyst with the National Security Agency foresaw just such a threat.

In their quest to benefit from the great advantages of networked computer systems, the U.S. military and intelligence communities have put almost all of their classified information eggs into one very precarious basket: computer system administrators, the unidentified analyst wrote in a 1996 special edition of Cryptologic Quarterly, an NSA magazine.

Despite the warning, the NSA remained vulnerable. When Snowdens first disclosures became public last year, some of the agencies computers were still equipped with USB ports where thumb drives could be used to copy files, according to a National Public Radio report in September.

Snowden was a systems analyst working as a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. (BAH) at an NSA regional signals intelligence facility in Hawaii when he exploited his administrative access to copy thousands of top-secret documents before fleeing to Hong Kong and then Moscow.

A relatively small number of system administrators are able to read, copy, move, alter, and destroy almost every piece of classified information handled by a given agency or organization, the analyst wrote in the 1996 article. An insider-gone-bad with enough hacking skills to gain root privileges might acquire similar capabilities. It seems amazing that so few are allowed to control so much -- apparently with little or no supervision or security audits.

The authors name remains classified. It was redacted in a declassified version of the article that was released in 2012.

One thing we have done post-media leaks is lock those down hard, so those are all in two-person control areas, Lonny Anderson, the head of the NSAs Technology Directorate, told NPR.

In a speech at Fordham University in New York last year, General Keith Alexander, the NSAs director, said the agency also has taken steps to reduce the number of systems administrators and those with privileged access.

Snowdens security breach wasnt unprecedented, according to the 1996 article, titled Out of Control.

In 1994, for example, a contractor employed at a Regional SIGINT Operations Center (RSOC) was caught accessing restricted files on a classified system, according to the article. It also cited another incident at the same RSOC, the details of which were redacted when the article was declassified.

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NSA Official Warned About Threat 17 Years Before Snowden

Snowden elected rector of UK varsity

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LONDON: Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency analyst who revealed US surveillance of phone and Internet communications, was elected rector of Glasgow University in Scotland on Wednesday. The analyst was nominated by a group of students at the university who said they had received his approval through his lawyer. The group said: We are incredibly delighted to see Edward Snowden elected as the new rector of Glasgow University. The statement said the institution had a virtuous tradition of making significant statements through our rectors. It added: Our opposition to pervasive and immoral state intrusion has gone down in the records. What is more, we showed Edward Snowden and other brave whistleblowers that we stand in solidarity with them, regardless of where they are. The largely symbolic post of rector mainly involves representing the universitys students. The successful candidate is expected to attend meetings with the governing body and other authorities. Snowden received temporary asylum in Russia in August a move that infuriated the United States and is believed to be living in the Moscow area. Previous holders of the rectors post at Glasgow University include Winnie Mandela and Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu. The current holder is former Liberal Democrat party leader Charles Kennedy. (AFP)

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