While working for the CIA and NSA, Snowden learned firsthand that Uncle Sam is scarily adept at tracking people. So when he stole somewhere between 200,000 and 1.7 million NSA documents, leaked them to journalists, admitted that he did it, and even showed his face on camera, it must have seemed inevitable that the U.S. would hunt him down like a high-tech bloodhound and throw him in prison for decades. Yet somehow Snowden outfoxed what's possibly the most advanced surveillance apparatus on the planet and flew to Russia before authorities could catch him. What's more, for three years almost no one knew how he did it.

The story of Snowden's escape starts in Hong Kong, where he shared highly classified information with the Washington Post's Barton Gellman, the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, and filmmaker Laura Poitras. As Vice detailed, he initially stayed at a hotel, but once he turned himself into a walking bull's-eye, he needed to split like a frightened banana. Aided by a lawyer, he snuck into Hong Kong's slums and lived with refugees. According to Quartz, he shared a bedroom with two people and survived on a diet of McDonald's, cakes, and other junk food. After 12 days he was whisked away to Russia. Unfortunately for the refugees who helped Snowden, they've reportedly faced persecution by agencies meant to protect them.

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Whatever happened to Edward Snowden? - Grunge.com

On Feb. 2, I saw, in horror, how Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault said the federal government should license the news media.

The next day, I saw the enormous snap back from the media and opposition parties. PostMedia columnist Brian Lilley called it, one of the fastest reversals of government policy that Ive ever seen.

There was plenty of talk about how a licensed press could never be free, and how dare they consider this?

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer had ones of the best lines, saying George Orwells 1984 was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.

My thoughts on all this were a little different, and I didnt see a reference to it in any of the other commentary.

You see, this has been tried before.

It was called the Editors Law.

And it was enacted very soon after the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) came to power in the 1930s in Germany. Indeed, they didnt waste any time enacting it, putting it in place Oct. 4, 1933. This was nine months, four days after Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor. But dont worry, the Nazis set up the Dachau concentration camp, outlawed other parties and started burning books before they got around to regulating the media.

This is how the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website described it: The Editors Law (Schriftleitergesetz) forbids non-Aryans to work in journalism.

The German Propaganda Ministry(through its Reich Press Chamber)assumed control over the Reich Association of the German Press, the guild which regulated entry into the profession. Under the new Editors Law, the association kept registries of racially pure editors and journalists, and excluded Jews and those married to Jews from the profession. Propaganda Ministry officials expected editors and journalists, who had to register with the Reich Press Chamber to work in the field, to follow mandates and specific instructions handed down by the ministry. In paragraph 14 of the law, the regime required editors to omit from publication anything calculated to weaken the strength of the Reich abroad or at home.

What words in those last two sentences ring like a clarion call, when considered against what the Canadian federal Liberal government was considering?

Replace Propaganda Ministry with CRTC or Heritage Ministry, for instance. Doesnt had to register equate getting a federal licence?

The morning of Feb. 3 I was covering court, and one of the lawyers made joking comments that they didnt want me covering their clients. I countered that what this barrister truly didnt want is the alternative, where there isnt a free press monitoring what happens in the court, to those very clients.

All of this is very eerie, as Ive just finished a book called How America Lost its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft, telling the tale of Edward Snowden in a very critical manner. I also just went through Snowdens own book, Permanent Record, talking about his motivations and criticisms of the persistent surveillance state.

What happens when we combine all this together? Courts that arent monitored, but people who are, and a suggestion by a federal minister, no less, that the news media under the heel of some sort of federal licensure and regulation? Thats a lot to digest in 24 hours.

During a break time in the courtroom I pointed out that every phone in that room was likely monitoring everything that was being said. A few people seemed incredulous, at least until I told the tale of how, a while back, I had a Facebook ad show up on my phone, in the passenger seat of my wifes truck, advertising transmission fluid. This was not three minutes after I had told my wife that I needed to change the tranny fluid on my SUV.

We are being monitored in every way, shape and form, from the security video cameras present not just in businesses, but traffic signals and photo radar. People are purposely putting smart speakers throughout their homes, which is, in fact, continual surveillance.

What happens when this level of persistent surveillance is combined with a government that wants to limit free expression? When a government wants to, oh, I dont know, regulate the free press?

How free are we then?

What if the people who, in 1933, started licensing editors, had the surveillance tools available to corporations and governments now?

This is precisely the type of stuff Snowden wrote about. And Im not entirely a big fan of a guy who sold out his country (and ours, and every other allied nation of the U.S. who shares intelligence with them) to the Russians and likely the Communist Chinese, too.

This Heritage Minister should be sacked, with cause. Im not one who believes in cancel culture. But youre damned right I would cancel a future Joseph Goebbels.

Im still wondering when theyre going to come for me.

Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net

Originally posted here:
COLUMN: Licensed journalism happened before. It was called the Editor's Law - Pipeline News

Written by Jeff Stone Feb 3, 2020 | CYBERSCOOP

Nearly three years after WikiLeaks began publishing secret CIA hacking tools, the legal team for the former agency employee who allegedly stole those files will try to convince a jury he did so in order to reveal the governments methods for breaking into widely used consumer technology.

Based on the evidence, it will shape up to be a difficult argument.And thats before you consider the current environment, in which the U.S. justice system has taken a hard-line approach to those who go public with classified information.

Its also a fresh strategy for the defense. The U.S. has charged former CIA software engineer Joshua Schulte with transmitting files detailing the agencys arsenal of hacking tools, but until now his lawyers have given no indication that he acted out of conscience. Government prosecutors, meanwhile, will introduce evidence starting Monday that Schulte, now 31, was motivated by nothing more than revenge for what he perceived to be mistreatment by a colleague and management at the agency.

Unlike former U.S. National Security agency contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked details about NSA surveillance programs after complaining internally, Schulte has not demonstrated that he actually had any ethical concerns with the CIAs work. Government employees who follow the proper procedure for filing complaints can still be prosecuted if they go public with classified information. But pointing to a documented history of moral concerns could help a defendant portray themselves as a whistleblower motivated by his sense of morality, said Bradley Moss, an attorney specializing in national security whistleblowing at the Washington law firm Mark Zaid P.C.

During more than a year of pre-trial wrangling, Schultes defense team has given no indication that he allegedly provided CIA hacking tools to WikiLeaks for any reason other than that he did not get along with his boss.

Theyre throwing st at the wall, Moss said.

While much of the governments evidence hasnt been revealed, a series of courtroom maneuvers and legal filings have provided a glimpse into the case prosecutors will present when the trial begins.

As a CIA employee, Schulte is accused of abusing his access to start stealing classified documents during the spring of 2016. The files ultimately would make their way to WikiLeaks, which spent much of 2017 publishing the Vault 7 files, one of the largest ever disclosures of classified intelligence community information.

Publication of documents detailing the governments ability to spy on mobile operating systems, web browsers, smart TVs and an array of other systems immediately exposed U.S. adversaries like Russia and China to American cyber-warfare strategies, allowing them to take defensive measures, and making it possible for common hackers to replicate nation-state activities against any targets they chose.

The disclosure also came amid a digital arms race between nations as the U.S. government realized that hackers tied to the Russian government had stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, then used WikiLeaks to boost Donald Trumps candidacy. All the while, prosecutors have said, Joshua Schulte was leaving clues about his role in the breach.

Schulte began to have significant problems as a CIA employee during the summer of 2015, prosecutors wrote in a long court filing made public in November. He began feuding with an unnamed employee, who complained to superiors that Schulte behaved in an abusive manner, including regularly making racist remarks.

Then, in February 2016, prosecutors wrote, Schulte grew agitated with managements decision to hire a contractor to do some of the work Schulte had been assigned. He forced his way into a meeting between a CIA manager and the contractor to suggest the contractor might jeopardize the security of CIA tools and operations.

After the meeting, Schulte sent emails complaining about the situation, and he told others that he was going to cause problems because of it, including by filing a complaint with the CIAs Inspector General, the filing states.

At roughly the same time, though, Schultes problems with his unnamed co-worker escalated. The co-worker convinced CIA management to reassign Schultes work to another employee, at which point Schulte responded by claiming the employee had threatened him. Schulte then accused management of being indifferent toward his claim, while an investigation was ongoing.

During this time, prosecutors wrote, Schulte was moved to an intern desk, while his co-worker had been moved to a prestigious desk with a window.

Within weeks, according to the government, CIA higher-ups revoked Schultes administrative privileges, and he moved forward with a plan to steal hacking tools.

Schulte was first arrested in August 2017 for allegedly possessing and transmitting thousands of pictures and videos depicting child pornography. The Justice Department waited until June 2018 to charge him with the theft and disclosure of classified material. Then, in October 2018, prosecutors alleged Schulte also was using contraband cell phones from behind bars at Manhattans Metropolitan Correctional Center.

In notebooks discovered in Schultes cell, law enforcement officials say they found a diary where Schulte detailed plans to provide WikiLeaks with more information, and carry out a covert Information War against the government. The journals include Schultes description of his motive, intent preparation and planning for a leak, the government has argued, and seem to include the equivalent of a written confession. (Days before trial, Judge Paul Crotty ruled the government will be allowed to introduce key elements parts of the notebooks to the jury.)

Schultes attorneys has spent much of the past year arguing that prosecutors have not provided the defense team with sufficient evidence, that too much of the evidence is classified and taken issue with the idea that current CIA officials who might be called as witnesses would testify under pseudonyms. The defense recently argued that Schulte should not be tried under the Espionage Act, calling it unconstitutional, and that they have not had enough time to prepare for trial, despite multiple delays.

Few of these tactics have been successful. Judge Paul Crotty of the Southern District of New York dismissed challenges to the constitutionality of the Espionage Act, for example, and did not appear sympathetic during a recent hearing when attorney Sabrina Shroff said the defense, with less than two weeks before trial, had not had the opportunity to research potential witnesses.

Moving forward, Schultes lawyers appear to be arguing that he nothing more than a concerned citizen. Shroff recently asked the court whether potential jurors might have an opinion on language like whistleblower or leaker, given the national headlines in recent months.

The trial comes after a court in 2018 sentenced Reality Winner, a former NSA translator who pleaded guilty to leaking a classified government report on Russian hacking, to more than five years in prison. At 26 years old, Winner was the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act during the Trump administration, though the Obama Justice Department pursued a number of similar investigations.

A former senior official in the Department of Treasury pleaded guilty on Jan. 13 to conspiring to unlawfully disclosing financial transactions that included information about the Trump presidential campaigns dealings with Russia.

Its a hot topic lately, Shroff said during a recent pre-trial hearing.

In order to qualify as a whistleblower under federal law, said Bradley Moss, government employees must submit a formal complaint to the relevant inspector general, which under the right circumstances would forward the complaint to congressional intelligence committees. Even if a government worker goes through that process, then makes classified information public, they are still breaking the law, he added.

The way this trial is going is the same way Snowdens would be going if he came back to the U.S., said Moss. He would throw up a bunch of pretrial motions about the Espionage Act, and it would lose every time.

The goal of a whistleblower defense, even if it doesnt meet the definition under the law, would be to sway a jurors in favor of jury nullification, Moss added. Depending on the jurisdiction, jurors may think a defendant is guilty of a crime, but find them not guilty because of jurors moral objections to the law.

Youre just doing what you can do, Moss said of the technique.

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As Vault 7 trial begins, Joshua Schulte's attorneys will argue he's a whistleblower - CyberScoop

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham introduces bill that threatens end-to-end encryption By Kevin Reed 8 February 2020

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is circulating a discussion draft bill that would use the enforcement of laws against distribution of child sex abuse material (CSAM) as a means of shutting down end-to-end encryption services provided by the big tech companies.

The bill, which is also reportedly being worked on by Senator Richard Blumenthal (Democrat of Connecticut), would create a 15-member bipartisan National Commission on Child Exploitation Prevention that would be responsible for establishing the rules and overseeing the removal of CSAM content from the internet. The law would make the Attorney General the chairman of the commission and give him or her the authority to modify any of its recommendations.

Called the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2019, the bill would make technology companies liable for state prosecution and civil lawsuits for child abuse and exploitation content unless they follow best practices outlined by the commission.

On January 30, Bloomberg published a draft of the bill noting, The draft bill from Graham, the South Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, mounts a double attack against encrypted services such as Apple Inc.s iCloud and Facebook Inc.s WhatsApp chat. It jeopardizes technology companies immunity to lawsuits by victims for violating child exploitation and abuse statutes and it lowers the standard to bring such cases.

At the heart of the proposed law is an attack on what is known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which protects providers of computing devices, apps and internet services from liability for content copied or posted by users onto their products. Companies that refuse to follow the commissions best practices will lose their Section 230 protections for any content deemed to violate the content rules set by the commission.

Although the draft bill does not specify any of the rules, it is transparently obvious that it would require law enforcement immediate and unfettered access to devices, communications and cloud accounts. As has been explained by technology experts, the bills references to law enforcement identifying, categorizing, and reporting material related to child exploitation or child sexual abuse would be impossible to do on devices and services with end-to-end encryption.

End-to-end encryption is the popular method used by the consumer technology corporations of protecting electronic communications and data stored on computer devices by using cryptographic keys to block eavesdropping, surveillance and interception of information. The use of end-to-end encryption by the public, corporations and other organizations has been on the rise since the exposures by Edward Snowden in 2013 that the US government was capturing and storing the mobile phone and email communications of the entire population in a massive and illegal electronic dragnet.

Companies such as Apple and Facebook have been deploying end-to-end encryption in their products by default for several years now. Apple has battled publicly with the Justice Department several times since 2014 over demands by the FBI for back-door access to the encrypted iPhones of mass shooters.

In the most recent of these incidents, the shooting at the naval base in Pensacola, Florida, on December 6, it emerged that Apple had actually begun to cave into the demands from Attorney General William Barr and President Donald Trump for law enforcement access and a backdoor to encrypted data and communications.

As reported by Reuters at the time, Apple did in fact turn over the shooters iCloud backups in the Pensacola case, and said it rejected the characterization that it has not provided substantive assistance. Behind the scenes, Apple has provided the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation with more sweeping help, not related to any specific probe by dropping plans to offer consumers the ability to fully encrypt their iCloud backups.

Clearly, Senator Graham, the US Justice Department and others are attempting to exploit public fears and concerns about child sexual abuse as a means of pushing through their agenda for the abolition of encryption that has been underway for five years. As Riana Pfefferkorn of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School explained, This bill is trying to convert your anger at Big Tech into law enforcements long-desired dream of banning strong encryption. It is a bait-and-switch. Dont fall for it.

Gizmodo, the technology and science site, wrote on January 31, It doesnt take a genius to see where this is going. The federal government, and especially the DOJ, have wanted tech companies to build surveillance backdoors into their end-to-end encrypted messaging services for years. They insist that they are only interested in preventing major crimes like terrorism or sex trafficking, but in reality, building those backdoors would create a convenient pipeline for domestic surveillance.

The technique of exploiting the public disorientation caused by terrorist violence and other criminality by the state to attack fundamental democratic rights has been employed increasingly by the political, law enforcement and national intelligence establishment since the events of September 9, 2001.

The provisions of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act were adopted in 1996 (also known as Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) which state, No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. This section of the 1996 legislation was, in part, a response to the growth of the internet and has been frequently referred to as a key to the flourishing of the World Wide Web and sometimes as The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet.

The intensifying assault on end-to-end encryption is part of the ongoing drive by the state to censor and regulate content on the internet. Democrats, in particular, have led the campaign against big tech with Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts and candidate for the partys 2020 presidential nomination, campaigning since March 2019 for a break up of the tech monopolies.

There has also been a steady campaign conducted by the New York Times, under the guise of the fight against so-called surveillance capitalism, to utilize the egregious privacy violations carried out by the tech monopolies to mobilize the public behind government censorship of online content. Significantly, none of these initiatives warn the public about the role of the state and military-intelligence apparatus in utilizing artificial intelligence and the communications infrastructure to spy on the entire population.

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Republican Senator Lindsey Graham introduces bill that threatens end-to-end encryption - World Socialist Web Site

Saturday, February 8th 2020 - 11:29 UTC Judge Ricardo Soares Leite for now, has held off on accepting cybercrimes charges against U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald.(Pic)

A Brazilian judge indicted six people accused of hacking the phones of prosecutors in the countrys biggest corruption case on Thursday but held off for now on accepting cybercrimes charges against U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald.

The judge, Ricardo Soares Leite, said the Supreme Court had to rule first on an earlier injunction shielding Greenwald from investigation before he could decide on the indictment, which charges Greenwald, editor of news website The Intercept, with allegedly abetting the hacking as it published leaked information.

I decline, for now, to receive the complaint against Glenn Greenwald, due to the controversy over the extent of the injunction granted by Minister Gilmar Mendes, the judge wrote.

The damaging leaks showed then-judge Sergio Moro, who is now justice minister, advising prosecutors in the graft case against former leftist President Lula da Silva, who was jailed for corruption but released 18 months later.

Intercept Brasil, edited by Greenwald, published the leaked conversations that pointed to collusion between the judge and the prosecuting team. He was charged last month with criminal association with the group of six people accused of hacking the phones of members of the prosecutors team in the so-called Car Wash investigation.

Greenwald welcomed the judges decision not to proceed with the charges, but said it was insufficient to guarantee the rights of a free press.

This is not enough. We seek a decisive rejection from the Supreme Court of this abusive prosecution on the grounds that it is a clear and grave assault on core press freedoms, he said in a statement.

Greenwald, a resident of Brazil and fierce critic of far right President Jair Bolsonaro, is best known for his work on the disclosures of Edward Snowden, the American former National Security Agency contractor who leaked secret documents about U.S. telephone and internet surveillance in 2013.

Greenwalds lawyers argued that he should not have been charged because an injunction by Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes had barred prosecutors from investigating him for information published in the media.

Mendes cited Greenwalds constitutional right to the protection of journalistic sources.

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Freedom of expression and cybercrime case controversy in Brazilian court - MercoPress