Category Archives: NSA

This episode features an interview with Jason Fagone, journalist and author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies. I wax enthusiastic about Jason's book, which features remarkable research, a plot like a historical novel, and deep insights into what I call NSA's "pre-history" the years from 1917 through 1940, when the need for cryptanalysis was only dimly perceived by the US government. Elizebeth and William Friedman more or less invented American cryptanalysis in those years, but the full story was never known, even to NSAers. It was protected by a force even stronger even than classification J. Edgar Hoover's indomitable determination to get good press for the FBI even when all the credit belonged elsewhere. And, at all its crucial stages, that prehistory is a love story that lasted, literally, right to the grave. Don't miss this (long!) interview with Jason Fagone, or his book.

Meanwhile, in the news roundup. Dmitri Alperovitch covers the latest events in what we just can't call the SolarWinds hack any more. There's no doubt that Microsoft code is at the center of the hack, though not because of unintended flaws; the hackers showed great interest in Microsoft's code and took full advantage of its most easily abused features. Dmitri predicts multiple executive orders from Anne Neuberger's review of the matter, and he hopes it means more centralization of federal civilian security monitoring and policy under CISA.

Dmitri and I agree that the Congressional effort to turn the cybersecurity director position into a Senate-confirmed White House office is more trouble than it's worth.

The Maryland law taxing Google and Facebook ad revenue is ground-breaking, and for that reason is will also be heavily litigated. First time caller, first time listener David Fruchtman explains the tax and the litigation it has already spawned.

Which came first, China's dream of a rare-earth boycott or U.S. nightmares of a rare-earth boycott? We ask Jordan Schneider, who suggests that neither the dream nor the nightmare is likely to come true any time soon.

Is Australia going to war with Big Tech? I take on Oz's link fee and end up siding, improbably, with Mike Masnick and Facebook and against the fee. Meanwhile, the Australian infrastructure protection bill is drawing fire from Microsoft. Dmitri leans toward Microsoft's view that the law should not give government authority to intervene when a private sector entity is unable or unwilling to respond to an attack. I lean toward the government's position.

Jordan Schneider reviews the latest stories of tech companies getting a little too close for comfort to the Chinese surveillance state. The ByteDance censorship story is compelling but not new. The Oracle story is compelling, new, and a clever piece of journalism by another alumna of the podcast, Mara Hvistendahl.

Finally, in a series of quick bites, we cover:

And more!

Download the 350th Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

Read this article:
NSA's pre-history turns out to be a love story - Reason

National Storage Affiliates Trust (NYSE:NSA)(30-Year Financial) files its latest 10-K with SEC for the fiscal year ended on December 31, 2020. National Storage Affiliates Trust is a real estate investment trust. The company makes investments in self-storage properties located in the United States. National Storage Affiliates Trust has a market cap of $2.75 billion; its shares were traded at around $38.550000 with a P/E ratio of 78.67 and P/S ratio of 6.60. The dividend yield of National Storage Affiliates Trust stocks is 3.50%. National Storage Affiliates Trust had annual average EBITDA growth of 27.00% over the past five years. GuruFocus has detected 4 severe warning signs with National Storage Affiliates Trust. .

For the last quarter National Storage Affiliates Trust reported a revenue of $114.1 million, compared with the revenue of $100.6 million during the same period a year ago. For the latest fiscal year the company reported a revenue of $432.2 million, an increase of 11.4% from last year. For the complete 30-year financial data, please go here.. For the last five years National Storage Affiliates Trust had an average revenue growth rate of 25.9% a year.

The reported diluted earnings per share was 53 cents for the year, an increase of -453.3% from previous year. The National Storage Affiliates Trust enjoyed an operating margin of 34.04%, compared with the operating margin of 32.7% a year before. The 10-year historical median operating margin of National Storage Affiliates Trust is 29.28%. The profitability rank of the company is 6 (out of 10).

At the end of the fiscal year, National Storage Affiliates Trust has the cash and cash equivalents of $18.7 million, compared with $20.6 million in the previous year. The long term debt was $1.8 billion, compared with $1.6 billion in the previous year. The interest coverage to the debt is 2.4, which is not a favorable level. National Storage Affiliates Trust has a financial strength rank of 3 (out of 10).

For the complete 20-year historical financial data of NSA, click here.

Go here to read the rest:
Feb 28, 2021 - National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) Files 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended on December 31, 2020 - GuruFocus.com

On the morning of Sunday, October 14, 1962, Juanita Moody exited the headquarters of the National Security Agency, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and walked the short distance to her car, parked in one of the front-row spaces reserved for top leadership. The sky was a crystalline blue, a most beautiful day, she recalled later. Moody had just learned that the U.S. Air Force was sending a U-2 spy plane over Cuba to take high-altitude photographs of military installations across the island. Moody was worried for the pilottwice already in the past two years a U-2 spy plane had been shot out of the sky, once over the Soviet Union and once over China. She was also worried for the country. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were worsening by the day. President John F. Kennedy, American military leaders and the intelligence community believed that the Soviet military was up to something in Cuba. Exactly what, no one could say. I went out and got into my old convertible at the precise moment I had been told this pilot was going to get into his plane, Moody said.

What unfolded over the next two weeks was arguably the most dangerous period in the history of civilization. Close to 60 years later, the Cuban Missile Crisis is still considered a nearly catastrophic failure on the part of Americas national security apparatus. How Americas top agents, soldiers, diplomats, intelligence analysts and elected officials failed to anticipate and uncover the buildup of a nuclear arsenal on Americas doorstep, less than 100 miles off the coast, is still being studied and debated. At best, the story of American intelligence activities before and during the crisis is far from complete. One of the most extraordinary omissions to date is the central role played by Moody, a 38-year-old code-breaking whiz and the head of the NSAs Cuba desk during the perilous fall of 1962. Even today her name is largely unknown outside the agency, and the details of her contributions to the nations security remain closely guarded.

Of medium height, with lightly curled brown hair and a round face, Moody was not a spy in the secret agent sense. Her world was signals intelligence, or sigintradio messages, radar data, electronic communications, weapons systems readings, shipping manifests and anything else that could be surreptitiously intercepted from friends and foes alike. Her only brief turn in the spotlight came more than a decade after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when she found herself caught up in the domestic surveillance scandals that engulfed Washington after Watergate. But who was this woman? Ive spent several years trying to find out, digging through government archives and reviewing formerly classified documents, including internal NSA reports and performance reviews obtained using the Freedom of Information Act, as well as interviewing historians, current and former NSA staff and Moodys surviving relatives, who provided personal letters and photographs. Now the story of this spy service pioneer and key figure in the nations response to Soviet encroachment in the Western Hemisphere can be told for the first time.

* * *

Juanita Moody (Ne morris) was born on May 29, 1924, the first of nine children. Her father, Joseph, was a railroad worker turned cotton-and-soybean farmer, and her mother, Mary Elizabeth, a homemaker. The family lived in the hamlet of Morven, North Carolina, in a rented house with no bathroom, no electricity and no running water.

Moody was a leader from an early age. I felt I had to do what Juanita said, her sister Virginia Dare Marsh, 90, told me on a call last spring. To her siblings, Juanitas authority was on a par with that of their parents, yet her brothers and sisters didnt resent her. She was always sweet lovin and fair to me, Marsh said. There was also a sense that Juanita was special. I felt at times like my parents looked up to her as well. The school superintendent in Morven saw a spark in her, too, and recommended her for Western Carolina Teachers College, in Cullowhee.

Juanita borrowed money and enrolled, but then came the war. All of the sudden there were practically no men left on the campus, Moody recalled later, in one of a series of interviews with NSA historians that were declassified in 2016. I felt that it was wrong to be spending my time in this beautiful placeclear blue skies, going around campus and studying and going to classes at leisure, when my country was in a war. At the Army recruiting office in Charlotte, she said she wanted to volunteer. What do you want to do? the recruiter asked. Id like to get into intelligence work, she said.

It was spring 1943. Moody took a few tests and was sent to Arlington Hall, in Virginia, headquarters of the Signal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the NSA. She was trained quickly in what was known as cryptanalysis, and was soon part of a group that used ciphers to crack encrypted Nazi communications. When she finished work for the day, she and a few other obsessives stayed late into the night, working illicitly on an unsolved one-time pad, a code that could only be cracked with a key provided to the messages recipient ahead of time. She recalled working every waking moment and subsisting on buns made by a sympathetic local baker who left them for her to pick up on her way home in the middle of the night.

The painstaking nature of code breaking in those days, when teams of analysts sifted through piles of intercepted texts and tabulated and computed possible interpretations using pencil and paper, made a deep impression on Moody. Eventually, she and a colleague, a linguist and mathematician who had worked at Bletchley Park, Britains code-breaking headquarters, persuaded agency engineers to custom-build a machine for the one-time pad problem based on Alan Turings work that could generate cipher keys automatically, using the agents inputs. It was a very clumsy thing, Moody recalled. But it worked, helping the Americans decode secret messages sent to Berlin from the German ambassador in Tokyo. It was the first of many times in her long career that Moody, who would herself become a familiar face at Bletchley Park and at the IBM campus in New York, helped advance intelligence work by pushing for an ambitious and innovative use of new technologies.

After Japans surrender, Moody told her superior at the SIS that, with the war done, she planned to return to college. Although he himself had earned a PhD, he told her that she was making a big mistake. This is your cup of tea, and there are going to be other targetsother secrets to uncover in defense of the nation. This effort is not going to stop today. This is just the beginning.

* * *

Moody stayed with the SIS, as a staff cryptanalyst focused on signals collection in Eastern Europe. In 1947, she was promoted to chief of the Yugoslavia section. Five years later, on October 24, 1952, President Harry Truman signed a secret memorandum, and the National Security Agency was born. Since the NSAs inception, its role was unambiguous: snoop, scoop, filter, deliver. The agencys responsibility ended at gathering information. Analysis was the purview of the brains at CIA.

During the 1950s, Moody took on several new leadership roles at the NSAchief of European satellites, chief of Russian manual systems, chief of Russian and East European high-grade manual systems. She also fretted over technical inefficiencies. At a time when computing technology was advancing quickly, she viewed the NSAs use of handwritten decryptions, memos and top-secret communications as anachronistic. Where she excelled was not high-level mathematics or engineering but the application of new technologies to distill huge amounts of data and make it available to decision makers as quickly as possible. She was an advocate for using big data long before the concept had taken hold, and she pushed the agency to adopt the latest toolsTeletype, Flexowriter, early IBM computers, an intranet precursor and a searchable database called Solis.

She managed whole teams of peopleher troops, as she called them. As a leader, she was impolitic by her own measure, occasionally calling meetings to order by whacking a hockey stick on the table. She established a system she called Show and Tell. Each morning, while she sipped her coffee, the division heads under her command would come by her office one by one to present highlights from the previous days intelligence haul. Moody would then grill them about when the intercepts were made and when the information had been sent to the NSAs customersthe White House, congressional leadership, military brass, the other intelligence agencies. When she judged the lag time to be substantial, she said so. You people are doing a tremendous job producing beautiful history, shed tell them. Youre not producing intelligence.

When it came to being a woman in a male-dominated world, Moody had a simple outlook. I never had much of a problem, she told an NSA historian in 2001. She credited the men in her family for bringing her up not to question her own worth. They always made me feel that I could conquer the world if I wanted to, she said. At the same time, she was convinced that on more than one occasion she had been passed over for a promotion because she was a woman. As the only woman present at NSA stag parties she was treated like a spectacleone time the men had fed her with a spoonyet she would only say, That stood out a little bit.

She was also aware of harassment. One NSA director (Moody wouldnt name him) employed several young women in the offices in Fort Meade, whom the director, believing himself to be witty, called NSAs paint and body shop. Moody ran into three of these women one time in the restroom. Through tears, they described what theyd been subjected to, which Moody did not specify, but which appears to have been inappropriate sexual comments or behavior, perhaps even solicitation. Moody chose not to do or say anything. Until this day, she told the NSA interviewer, I wish I had done something, you knowbut I didnt.

When she wasnt working, Moody and her husband, Warren, an executive at Eastern Airlines, would escape the Beltway for the Shenandoah Valley, where they had a mountain cabin nicknamed Hoot n Holler. Life away from Washington was about cocktails, lawn games, music, tracking turkeysanything but national security. Officials from Washington, friends from around the globe, military generals, even the occasional MI6 agent were guests. Moodys favorite pastimes were listening to jazz, working in the garden, fishing, and hunting deer with a Ruger .44-caliber carbine. Shed be singing Roger Miller songs and had a drink and was all happy, Moodys nephew William Peter Jacobsen III told me.

In 1961, having been attached to the so-called Soviet problem for several years, Moody moved up again, becoming chief of a section known as G-Group, which was responsible for overseeing NSAs operations nearly everywhere excluding China and the Soviet Unionsome 120 countries. On the way home the night of her promotion, she stopped at a store and bought maps of Africa and South America. She wanted to learn what all the countries were, she recalled.

* * *

On April 17, 1961, paramilitary soldiers stormed Cubas Playa Girn, launching the brief and doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro that became known as the Bay of Pigs. The surprise attack, carried out by Cuban exiles trained and led by the CIA, was in disarray almost from the start, and the blundering operation set in motion a rapid escalation between the United States and the Soviet Union that led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before the Bay of Pigs, Castro had been lukewarm about Soviet overtures and support. When the superpower next door tried to oust him, he changed his mind. For those in the American intelligence community, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchevs vow to help the Cubans defend themselves made it imperative to focus more attention on the Caribbean, a new front in the Cold War.

That spring, the NSA reorganized its operations, shifting resources to Cuba, which fell squarely under Moodys command. There might have been the equivalent of two people on the problem at that point, Moody recalled. One of the first things her team detected was Cubas improved communication security, which had until then been relatively unsophisticated, as Moody put it. Now it was strengthened with the introduction of a microwave system across the whole island. The technology provided a high level of secrecy because land-based microwave antennas relay information in a chain, and the only way to intercept a message was to be close to an antenna. U.S. military and intelligence agencies knew about the towers but couldnt intercept the signals being transmitted.

The NSA responded by establishing new intercept facilities in Florida and flying surveillance aircraft around Cuba. But that wasnt enough, so the Navy deployed the Oxford, the Liberty and the BelmontWorld War II-era ships newly outfitted with surveillance equipmentwhich sailed along the edge of the islands territorial waters. Over the next few months, Moodys team discovered that the microwave towers were the least of Americas worries. Sigint revealed increased maritime traffic from Soviet naval bases to Cuba. Cargo manifests intercepted from Soviet ships docking in Cuba were sometimes blank. Other times, declared cargo didnt match weights reported in port. Through intercepted conversations, the NSA learned of clandestine unloading at night, as well as the delivery of Soviet tanks. Things were getting hotter and hotter, Moody recalled.

Around this same time, intercepted communications in Europe contained Spanish-language chatter at air bases in Czechoslovakia: The Soviets were training Cuban pilots. Also, the Americans learned, the USSR was sending MIG jets and IL-28 bombers to Cuba. Moody traveled to London at least once during this period, most likely to coordinate with her counterparts at Britains Government Communications Headquarters.

By the fall of 1961, the Soviets had backed out of a bilateral moratorium on nuclear-weapons testing; in late October, they detonated a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb in the Arctic Sea, producing a blast equivalent to 3,800 Hiroshima bombs.

A few weeks later, Louis Tordella, deputy director at the NSA, showed up at Moodys office with two high-ranking officials from the Kennedy administration, one of whom was Edward Lansdale, an assistant secretary of defense. They stepped into a small conference room, where Tordella closed the door and drew the blinds.

We want to know what you know about Cuba, Moody recalled Lansdale telling her. Even if its a hunch, or a thought, or a guess, I want to know everything thats on your mind when you think Cuba. Moody started in on a highlight reel of interceptsthe blank cargo manifests, the bogus port declarations, conversations that mentioned tanks, radar and antiaircraft guns, the Soviet money and personnel flowing to the island. At one point, Lansdale interjected, Now, come on! as if Moody was exaggerating. She was unfazed. I dont have to have any hunches, she said. It was all in the sigint.

Impressed by her expertise, alarmed by what she had to say, and perhaps concerned that no one was providing the White House with this level of detail about an aggressive military buildup in Cuba, Lansdale asked Moody to write up her findings. Along with a few colleagues, she spent the next three days and nights compiling wheelbarrow loads of material into what she called a special little summary for the assistant secretary of defense. When she was done, Moody urged Tordella to publish her report, meaning circulate it among the intelligence agencies, the White House, the State Department and the military. Cautious not to step outside NSAs prescribed role, Tordella rebuffed her, but he did send it to Lansdale, who sent it to President Kennedy, who returned it with his initialssignaling hed read it. I told my troops, Keep this updated, Moody said of her report. If you get anything to add to it, do it immediately and tell me.

Over the next few months, Moody repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, pleaded with Tordella to release her updated report. By early 1962, she said she was really getting scared. The amount of military equipment piling up in Cuba didnt square with the Soviets repeated assertions that it was all defensive. Details about Soviet technicians moving around in Cuba were especially worrisome, and by this point the NSA likely knew the Soviets had moved surface-to-air missiles (not to be confused with ballistic nuclear missiles) to Cuba as well.

In February, not long after the NSA learned that a general from the USSRs Strategic Rocket Forces arrived in Cuba, Moody went to Tordella once more.

Look, lets publish this, she said.

We cant do that, Tordella replied. It will get us in trouble, because it would be considered outside of our charter. It was the same rationale hed been giving since November. Moody persisted.

It has reached the point, she told him, that I am more worried about the trouble were going to get in having not published it, because someday were going to have to answer for this. And if we do....

Tordella relented. It was the first such NSA report distributed to the wider intelligence community, and it quickly made the rounds. Before long, an old CIA friend of Moodys showed up at her office. He wanted to congratulate her, he said. Everybody knows that you were responsible for getting that serialized report on whats happening in Cuba out, and I want you to know that was a good thing you did, she recalled him saying. But he also warned her that not everyone was thrilled about her initiative; he had just come from a high-level meeting at the CIA during which officials tried to decide what to do about NSA for overstepping their bounds.

Even today, in spite of the fact that so much about the Cuban Missile Crisis has been made public, Moodys groundbreaking report, dated February 1962, remains classified. Nevertheless, its possible to track the crucial impact it had on American decision-making as the Cuba situation pushed closer to disaster. By springtime, it was clear that the Cubans had established an air defense system similar to one in the Soviet Union and manned, at least in part, by native Russian speakers. In a little over a month, the NSA and its partners had tracked 57 shipments of personnel and military equipment from the USSR to Cuba. MIG fighter jets were soon buzzing U.S. naval aircraft venturing near the island.

The CIA, meanwhile, was hearing from spies and double agents about missiles, but what kind of missiles was still unknown. In an August 22 meeting, CIA Director John McCone updated President Kennedy about Soviet ships that had recently delivered thousands of Russian troops plus substantial quantities of military materiel as well as special electronic equipment, many large cases, which might contain fusillade for fighter airplanes or it might contain missile parts, we do not know. What he did know came, at least in part, from sigint reports by Moody and her team.

This was two months before the apex of the crisis. If anyone was worrying about the possible presence of nuclear missiles specifically, they didnt say so. But McCone was closest to guessing the nature of the threat. The CIA director grew convinced that the Soviets had placed surface-to-air missiles on the island to keep prying eyes away. His deputy at the time later recalled McCone telling his team: Theyre preventing intrusion to protect something. Now what the hell is it?

The Americans stopped conducting U-2 reconnaissance flights over Cuba in early September out of concern that the planes might be shot down. Later that month, armed with intelligence from Moodys G-Group and information from sources on the ground, McCone persuaded the president and the National Security Council to restart U-2 flyover missions to get answers. Poor weather and bureaucratic holdups delayed the first mission. Finally, on Sunday, October 14, after a so-called photo gap of more than five weeks, a U-2 spy plane took off from Californias Edwards Air Force Base for the five-hour flight to Cuba. That same morning, Moody sat in her convertible at Fort Meade, staring at the sky.

* * *

Because of the danger, the pilot spent only a few short minutes in Cuban airspace before landing in Florida. The next day, a group of intelligence experts huddled over tables in the Steuart Building in downtown Washington, D.C., the secret headquarters of the CIAs National Photographic Interpretation Center, to pore over 928 images that the U-2 had taken of several military sites. Examining one set of photographs, an analyst named Vince Direnzo paused when he saw what appeared to be six unusually long objects obscured by a covering, possibly canvas. He determined that these objects were much larger than Soviet surface-to-air missiles the Americans already knew were in Cuba.

Direnzo checked photographs of the same site taken during flyover missions weeks earlier and saw that the objects had been placed there in the intervening time. In the archives he compared the images with photographs of May Day celebrations in Moscow, when the Soviets paraded military equipment through Red Square. He became convinced that the objects spotted in Cuba were SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles, weapons that could carry nuclear payloads and had a range of more than 1,200 milescapable of striking a large portion of the continental United States. Further photographic evidence from other sites revealed missiles with a range of 2,400 miles.

Direnzo and his colleagues spent hours checking and rechecking their measurements and looking for ways they might be wrong. When they shared their assessment with the centers director, he concurred, adding that this was most likely the biggest story of our time. The findings were soon verified by a Soviet colonel secretly working for MI6 and the CIA.

Faced suddenly with an unprecedented threat, Kennedy ordered a maritime quarantine of Cuba, to block any further transport of weapons to the island, and declared that noncompliance by the Soviet Union would mean war. The hope was the line-in-the-sea strategy would demonstrate force and readiness to attack while providing both sides with breathing room, so they could begin inching away from the ledge.

With the discovery of nuclear weapons in Cuba, the mission at the NSA shifted abruptly from uncovering secrets to assessing the enemys war footing in real time or as close to it as possible. Gordon Blake, the NSA director, established an around-the-clock team to churn out sigint summaries twice a day as well as immediate updates as needed. Moody was put in charge of this effort; she spent many nights sleeping on a cot in her office. She later recalled the solidarity throughout the agency, with staff members from other groups showing up at Moodys office to volunteer their help. Late one night, Blake himself stopped by and asked how he could lend a hand. Moody gave him a list of names. Blake picked up the phone, and Moody overheard him rousing people from their sleep: This is Gordon Blake. Im calling for Juanita Moody. She wonders if you can come in. They need you.

Listening and watching for new activity on and near the island, sigint collectors relied on land-based electronic surveillance, a net of underwater hydrophones, spy planes, listening devices on Navy ships, and other, still-classified tools. The USS Oxford continued its near-shore mission, despite being well within range of a Soviet attack. It wasnt long before sigint indicated that radar systems at the newly discovered missile sites had been activated.

Of paramount concern was figuring out how Soviet ships would respond to the quarantine. Using intercepted radio and radar information, maritime traffic analyses and location data provided by the Navy, Moodys team kept close tabs on Soviet ships and nuclear-armed submarines as they made their way from the North Atlantic toward Cuba. One critical intercepted correspondence, from the Soviet naval station at Odessa, informed all Soviet ships that their orders would now come directly from Moscow. But whether this meant Moscow was planning a coordinated challenge to the blockade, or a standdown, no one knew.

Then, on October 24, two days after Kennedy announced the quarantine, there was a glimmer of hope: Sigint confirmed that at least one Soviet ship headed toward Cuba had stopped and changed direction, and appeared to be rerouting back toward the Soviet Uniona sign the Soviets werent intending to challenge Kennedys quarantine. Yet it was also crucial that American officials feel confident in that assessment. This close to the ledge, there was simply no room for miscalculation.

Nobody understood that better than Moody. Although the intelligence about the ship redirecting its course came in the middle of the night, Moody felt the higher-ups needed to know about it right away. She made an urgent call to Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who was slated to address the Security Council about the crisis the following day. When State Department officials refused to put her through, she dialed the number for his hotel room directly. I called New York and got him out of bed, she recalled. I did what I felt was right, and I really didnt care about the politics. (She also noted that later he sent up congratulations to the agency.)

The intelligence provided the first positive signs of a peaceful exit from the standoff, but it was hardly over. At one point, Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph tried to force a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine just outside the quarantine zone to the surface by detonating underwater explosives, nearly provoking all-out war. Then, on October 27, the Soviets shot down a U-2 plane over Cuba, killing Air Force pilot Rudolf Anderson Jr. In Washington, the plan had been to strike back in the event that a U-2 was downed, but Kennedy ultimately decided to refrain. Finally, on the morning of October 28, after the United States secretly offered to remove its nuclear missile bases in Turkey and Italy, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle the missile sites in Cuba.

A few weeks later, in a letter of thanks addressed to the NSA director, the commander of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, Adm. Robert Dennison, wrote that the intelligence coming from NSAs Cuba desk was one of the most important single factors in supporting our operations and improving our readiness.

Moodys use during the crisis of what were known as electrograms, essentially top-secret intelligence reports sent to the highest levels via Teletype, forever reshaped how the agency handled urgent intelligence, according to David Hatch, the senior NSA historian. Juanita was a pioneer in using this capability, he told me. Before Moodys innovation, he went on, most product was released via slower means, even in a crisishand-carried by courier, by interoffice mail, or even snail mail, to cite a few examples. The importance of having the ability to disseminate sigint in near-real-time was clearly demonstrated during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The information Juanita and her team produced was very important in the decision to launch U-2s, Hatch said. The United States would not have learned what it did, when it did, about offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba without Moody, a civilian woman in a male and military-dominated agency.

Moody would later say the work she did in the 1940s and 50s had prepared her for the Cuba standoff. I felt at the time, while it was happening, that somehow I had spent all of my career getting ready for that crisis, she said of those tense weeks in the autumn of 1962. Somehow, everything that I had done had helped point me to be in the best position possible, knowledge-wise, to know how to proceed in that crisis.

* * *

Moody would go on to lead management training courses within the agency, and she helped establish a permanent position for an NSA liaison in the White House Situation Room. The deaths of U-2 pilots had troubled her deeply, and she worked to improve the system for warning pilots when enemy aircraft made threatening course corrections. And she continued to work closely with IBM engineers to improve the NSAs technical capabilities. Within the agency, she reached legendary status. One of her Fort Meade colleagues told me that a gaggle of young staffers, nearly all of them men, could frequently be seen trailing Moody down the halls, scribbling notes while she spoke.

In 1971, Moody received the Federal Womans Award, established to honor leadership, judgment, integrity, and dedication among female government employees. During the Cuba emergency, Moodys citation noted, when the provision of intelligence to the highest authorities was of utmost importance, Ms. Moody displayed extraordinary executive talent. In his nomination letter, Tordella, the deputy NSA director, whom Moody had clashed with about the Cuba report, called her brilliant, and wrote that no one in a position to know can but affirm that so far as this Agency contributed to the successful U.S. effort in a critical period, Mrs. Moody must be given credit for a significant share in that success.

At the banquet dinner, Moody, dressed in a pink gown, sat next to Henry Kissinger, then the U.S. national security adviser. She brought her parents from North Carolina, as well as her sister Dare. Afterward, congratulatory letters and cables came from the White House, the British Embassy, the U.S. Mission in Vietnam, the CIA, the Navy. Yet the broader American public, at that point unaware even of the existence of the National Security Agency, had no idea who she was.

That changed in 1975, when a bipartisan congressional investigation launched in the wake of Watergate found that the NSA had intercepted conversations that included U.S. citizens. More than that, the NSA was supporting federal agencies, namely the CIA, FBI and Secret Service, in their efforts to surveil American citizens put on secret watch lists.

An outcry ensued. The maelstrom would cause lasting damage to the American peoples perception of the trustworthiness of the countrys national security apparatus. Moody, as the liaison between the NSA and other federal agenciesmemos to the NSA from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were addressed Attention: Mrs. Juanita M. Moodywas caught in the middle.

In September 1975, NSA Director Lew Allen Jr. sent Moody to Capitol Hill to testify in hearings about the agencys surveillance. She had never been trained to testify or speak to a general audience about NSA work, but she accepted the assignment without protest. Frank Church, the Idaho senator who chaired the committee investigating abuses of power by U.S. intelligence agencies, told Moody that she would have to testify in an open and televised session. Moody refused. I took an oath to protect classified information and never to reveal it to those who are not authorized and have the need to know, she told him. I dont know of any law that would require me to take an oath to break an oath. Is there such a thing, Senator? There was not, and it was closed sessions for her week on Capitol Hill.

At one point, Senator Walter Mondale, of Minnesota, demanded that Moody bring everything NSA hadmeaning all the material gathered that might relate to American citizens. Practically speaking, it was an absurd demand; NSA was already collecting enormous amounts of information, much of it superfluous. Very little of it would be of value to the committees investigation. Moody tried to explain to Mondale that he misunderstood the nature of the information he was requesting, but he cut her off. I dont give a good goddamn about you and your computers, Mrs. Moody, Mondale barked. You just bring the material in here tomorrow.

The next day a truck dumped hundreds of pounds of paper at Mondales office. Mondale, having learned in a hurry how ill-informed his request had been, tried to make nice with Moody the next time they met. Putting his hand on her shoulder, he thanked her for being so cooperative. I wasnt too pleased or happy about that, she said later, referring to Mondales hand on her shoulder, his change in tone, or both.

During her testimony, Moody explained that lists of names were given to her group at the NSA. When the names appeared in their intercepts, NSA flagged it. She maintained to the last that the NSA had never done anything wrong. We never targeted Americans, she told an NSA interviewer in 2003. We targeted foreign communications. NSAs own tribute to Moody in the agencys Hall of Honor says the congressional hearings incorrectly identified [her] with some possible abuses of government power.

Still, Moody kept cool throughout the hearings. She even savored the opportunity to teach committee members about the sigint process. She considered it a great privilege to help educate the men down on Capitol Hill. It was the only thing I enjoyed down there, she said.

Two months later, in February 1976, Juanita Moody retired. If she was ever upset about the way she had been treated during the wiretapping scandal, she kept it to herself. She and Warren made frequent trips to Hoot n Holler, their Shenandoah getaway, and to North Carolina, where Moodys parents and many siblings still lived. All the years I was working, my sisters and brothers were the ones who took care of my parents, she told a friend. Now its my turn.

After Warren became ill, in the 1980s, the Moodys relocated to a seaside town in South Carolina. When not caring for her husband, Juanita planned renovations and real estate ventures and hunted antiques and secondhand jewelry. She was a delightful lady, Fred Nasseri, a former Iranian diplomat who moved to the U.S. after the Iranian Revolution, told me recently. Nasseri had opened a Persian rug business in nearby Litchfield, and he and Moody became friends. We would discuss art, politics, diplomacy.

But even in retirement Moody, who died in 2015, at age 90, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, was discreet. When asked about her past, she would deflect. As one friend remembered her saying, Oh, Ive done lots of interesting things for a country girl from North Carolina.

This story was produced in partnership with Atellan Media.

View post:
The Once-Classified Tale of Juanita Moody: The Woman Who Helped Avert a Nuclear War - Smithsonian Magazine

File photo of National Security Advisor Ajit Doval. (Photo: PTI)

The idea that Indian forces should occupy the strategic heights on the southern bank of Pangong Tso during the standoff with China, emerged during meetings led by National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval in August last year, government sources have told India Today TV.

Terming it to be a 'game changer' idea, the sources said this move has helped in resolving the crisis in the northern borders.

It was during these meetings led by the NSA where a suggestion was given to occupy the southern bank heights, including Rezang La, Rechen La, Helmet top and Aqi La. This helped in bringing the Chinese to the talking table to ensure disengagement from the heights along Pangong Tso.

The meetings led by the NSA included Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat and Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane.

Air Force chief Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria also continued briefing to the NSA on the aggressive stance taken by the Indian Air Force to counter the Chinese threat in the northern borders area.

It was during these meetings that the idea to occupy the heights came up and was precisely implemented by special frontier force and army troops under close monitoring of the NSA and India's top military brass.

"What we have achieved so far is very good. We had a number of meetings, and in these, the advice given by our NSA also came in extremely handy. His insight into strategic affairs and matters definitely helped us in chalking out our response," Army chief General MM Naravane said while speaking about NSA Ajit Doval's role in helping resolve the standoff with China.

In the past, the NSA and his team is said to have played a key role in handling the security situation during the attack on Patahankot airbase and the Doklam crisis.

ALSO READ | NSA Ajit Doval's security beefed after arrested Jaish terrorist confesses to recceing house

ALSO READ | Retired Pak Air Force officer targets NSA Ajit Doval, accuses him of 'destabilising' Balochistan

Excerpt from:
Idea to occupy heights around Pangong Tso emerged in meetings led by NSA Ajit Doval - India Today

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--National Storage Affiliates Trust ("NSA" or the "Company") (NYSE: NSA) today reported the Companys fourth quarter and full year 2020 results.

Fourth Quarter 2020 Highlights

Full Year 2020 Highlights

Highlights Subsequent to Quarter-End

Tamara Fischer, President and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We closed out 2020 on a positive note with excellent operating results despite the continued economic stress resulting from the pandemic. Our fourth quarter same store revenues grew by 4.8% year-over-year and same store occupancy numbers remain at record levels. Our acquisition volume also accelerated during the fourth quarter with the addition of over a quarter of a billion dollars of self storage properties to our wholly-owned portfolio. These favorable trends continued into the first quarter, marking a strong start to 2021."

Financial Results

($ in thousands, except per share and unit data)

Three Months Ended December 31,

Year Ended December 31,

2020

2019

Growth

2020

2019

Growth

Net income

$

24,517

$

18,826

30.2

%

$

79,478

$

66,013

20.4

%

Funds From Operations ("FFO")(1)

$

46,184

$

36,218

27.5

%

$

166,911

$

139,151

19.9

%

Add back acquisition costs

743

534

39.1

%

2,424

1,317

84.1

%

Read the original here:
National Storage Affiliates Trust Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2020 Results - Business Wire

THE National Sheep Association (NSA) is seeking the views of its members and farmers over increasing numbers of devastating dog attacks on livestock continuing to be reported.

The NSA launched its 2021 sheep worrying by dogs survey on Monday, inviting all UK sheep farmers to contribute to this important piece of research.

The survey aims to gather data and inform policy direction on the topic that appears to have been growing in case numbers and severity over the past year.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said that for the NSA, it is been an issue for many years. trying to engage in highlight the seriousness of sheep worrying attacks by dogs.

He added: "This has seen NSA involved in many discussions with rural police forces, animal welfare charities, the veterinary sector and of course government as we have, alongside others, called for changes in legislation to protect sheep farmers and their stock.

To facilitate this work NSA is appealing to all sheep farmers in the UK to supply the most up to date information and experiences they may have had with attacks on their flocks in this survey.

The 2021 NSA survey includes many new elements seeking information on sheep farmers experiences and their thoughts on how the issue could be resolved.

Through completing the survey respondents are helping to ensure the best possible voice can be put forward supporting calls for legal and cultural changes.

Devastatingly NSA hears from many sheep farmers experiencing problems with dogs chasing and attacking sheep on a weekly basis with case numbers appearing to have increased while the nation has been in lockdown during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Stocker added: As one of the few leisure activities that the population has still been able to enjoy in the past year an increased number of walkers often accompanied by their pet dogs have been passing through farmland.

"Although thankfully the majority are responsible there is a small number that still allow their dogs to run through fields of livestock under little or no control, the resulting effect can be devastating, from extremely distressed sheep to severe injury and sadly, far too often death.

All survey data will be collected anonymously with the information gathered forming part of NSAs 2021 Sheep Worrying by Dogs campaign which is scheduled to run throughout 2021 to promote responsible dog ownership.

The survey is open now and available to complete until Monday, April 19 at http://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/sheepworrying2021

See original here:
NSA wants farmers' views over increased sheep worrying news - Border Counties Advertizer

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

| Published: Friday, February 26, 2021, 8:47 [IST]

New Delhi, Feb 26: On February 26 2019, the Indian Air Force hit a Jaish-e-Mohammad training facility in Balakot, Pakistan to avenge the Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF jawans were martyred.

In a daring pre-dawn operation the IAF took down the training facility that had been mapped by the intelligence years ago. Former officer with the Research and Analysis Wing, Amar Bhushan told OneIndia that while the facility had been mapped over one and half decades back, it required a strong leadership with guts to hit the facility.

It was at 3.45 am on February 26 2019 that the then Air Chief, B S Dhanoa made call on a special RAX number to National Security Advisor, Ajit Doval to inform that the IAF had successfully completed the operation. The NSA in turn immediately informed Prime Minister about the same.

300 terrorists died in Balakot airstrike: Former Pak Diplomat

Officials tell OneIndia that this operation was a highly guarded secret known to only a very few. The sensitivity was such, the officer also explained. The same was code named Operation Bandar to maintain utmost secrecy.

While there was no specific reason to chose this name, monkeys have had an important place in Indian culture. In the Ramayana, Lord Ram's most trusted lieutenant Lord Hanuman destroys the entire capital of Lanka.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) had done a detailed assessment of both positives and negatives of the Balakot air strike. The report deals with various aspects of the strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorist camp at Balakot, despite Pakistan being on very high alert.

One of the key aspects listed in the report is about the strategic surprise. It says that the strategic surprise was so complete that Pakistan scrambled its jets only after the Mirage-2000s delivered the weapons package and turned back.

Another major positive was the accuracy of the intelligence and the target selection. The proficiency and the skill of the pilots' part of the mission has been listed as top class and they would be rewarded for the same.

A hit at Balakot ensured JeM set aside plan for another Pulwama attack

The high level of secrecy maintained during the mission also finds a mention. 6,000 men and officers were involved in the operation and there was absolutely no leakage. Speaking more about the element of surprise, the IAF said that the Russian Su-30s flying towards the JeM's headquarters at Bahawalpur forced Pakistan to divert its resources and other capabilities in a separate sector.

During the strike, the IAF used Spice 200 precision guided munitions to hit the target. Five of the six designated targets were hit at the Jaish-e-Mohammad training facility in Balakot.

For Breaking News and Instant Updates

Allow Notifications

You have already subscribed

Read the original:
Its done: The 3.45 am call to NSA Doval after Balakot was hit and Operation Bandar was competed - Oneindia

An analysis by Bloomberg Government from last summer showed agencies have spent only $500,000 on zero trust architecture tools and services since fiscal 2017.

To be clear, that research only looked for specific mentions of what has become a buzzword mentioned at every conference and vendor white paper over the last two years.

BGov readily acknowledges that there are hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars spent on components that would go into a zero trust architecture.

The evidence of that spending and push toward modernizing the federal approach to cybersecurity seems to be everywhere, especially over the past year as agency chief information officers and others have realized the value and potential of changing their approach to network defenses. The COVID-19 pandemic reminded and reinforced the power of identity and access management as a key piece to defend against cyber attacks.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is reviewing concept papers for how to implement a zero trust architecture across six scenarios.

This project will focus primarily on access to enterprise resources. More specifically, the focus will be on behaviors of enterprise employees, contractors and guests accessing enterprise resources while connected from the corporate (or enterprise headquarters) network, a branch office, or the public internet, NISTs National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence wrote in the project description. Access requests can occur over both the enterprise-owned part of the infrastructure as well as the public/non-enterprise-owned part of the infrastructure. This requires that all access requests be secure, authorized, and verified before access is enforced, regardless of where the request is initiated or where the resources are located.

NIST said based on its review of the white papers, it plans to issue a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) to demonstrate different approaches to zero trust.

The Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency are among two of the agencies on the leading edge to do more than test these concepts.

Beth Cappello, the DHS deputy CIO, said the agency is using its target architecture initiative, which sets a common technology baseline to let programs adopt new technologies quickly, to implement zero trust components.

By rapidly implementing IT and security improvements to reduce risk, it will help the Office of the CIO address the remote work posture of our employees. Components have been able to take our target zero trust architecture and quickly customize or tailor it to field similar capabilities within their respective environments, Cappello said at the recent MicroStrategy World 2021 conference on Feb. 4. From a technology perspective, the zero trust architecture approach allow us to ensure we have a dynamic, on-demand chain of trust that is continually reassessed at each access point. Frankly, in our continued remote environment, this is incredibly important.

Homeland Securitys approach to zero trust is all about reusable architecture guides that are focused on user needs and developed with the components in mind.

Cappello said policy templates, pattern libraries and reference implementations also help to ensure DHS is implementing zero trust concepts in a standard way. The DHS zero trust action group which is made up of experts from across the agency is leading the coordinating, developing and sharing of these documents and individual experiences.

Thus far, we have fielded seven zero trust use cases to enhance access to IT assets and systems, she said. These use cases augment security while also reducing the load on our VPN connection points. This zero trust architecture approach also increases our network performance by leveraging a cloud access security broker and cloud security gateway capabilities to give users secure, direct access to cloud managed applications thereby reducing traffic on that Homeland Security enterprise network.

NSA is taking a similar approach as DHS, providing policies and reusable components as part of its zero trust approach.

Timothy Clyde, the lead systems engineer for NSAs external identity solutions and service offerings, said at the recent SailPoint Evolution of Identity conference that the agency launched a zero trust pilot just over a year ago with the goal of figuring out how to get users the data they need when they need it no matter the current set of policies and rules.

What is the level of trust that needs to go with that identity? Clyde asked. Depending on what the level of trust is that needs to be with that identity, comes the governance above that identity. Weve used policy engines. We tag our data and have been doing it successfully now for well over a decade. Some people would argue once you have a solid identity for the person, the device and the data, the policy then becomes probably the most important piece of it. It does need to be dynamic enough, that depending on the environment, you may have two policies that are almost identical. But if you are in Environment A, you may have access, but if you are in Environment B, you may not.

Clyde said the initial phase and roll out of the zero trust pilot includes a lab to test technology components for DoD partners and NSA also is making its policy engines available for others to use in their environments.

Neal Ziring, the technical director for NSAs Cybersecurity directorate, said the agencies can use policy engines to underpin the process to decide who is granted access to information. He said the policy is at the heart of access control.

Policy administrators create the rules that allow (or not allow) people and systems to access data. In a zero trust architecture, when a user makes a request to access data, the request is sent to a policy information point (PIP). The PIP provides the user information (such as attributes, clearance level, where they are located, etc.) to a policy decision point (PDP). The PDP analyzes this information along with additional policy rules regarding who can access that data, and determines if that user on that device is allowed to access that data. The PDP then delivers this decision to a policy enforcement point (PEP) who is the final authority on whether or not that user or device gets access to that data and either allows or disallows access, Ziring said in an email to Federal News Network. These PIP, PDP and PEP sub processes, when combined, are commonly referred to as the zero trust policy engine.

The zero trust pilot is a joint effort amongst U.S. Cyber Command, the Defense Information Systems Agency and NSA where they are researching, developing, piloting and lab testing technologies.

The team has been able to demonstrate the effectiveness of zero trust at preventing, detecting, responding and recovering from cyberattacks, Ziring said. NSA is part of the joint team developing the DoD zero trust reference architecture. NSA is developing zero trust best practices and guidance to share with a broader set of US critical network owners, such as National Security System owners. NSA is working with the DoD CIO and DISA to update any existing cybersecurity policies as applicable to include zero trust principles to ensure that all of DoD is synchronized on zero trust, and implements zero trust in a secure and standard way across the department to protect critical information.

He added the DoDwide working group is partnering with NIST to ensure the guidance on zero trust are in alignment across government.

Under the pilot, NSA and U.S. Cyber Command established an unclassified lab at DreamPort, a public-private innovation partnership that hosts zero trust equipment and simulates customer environments where they test diverse configurations of zero trust implementations.

Ziring said it also serves as a location to hold unclassified discussions with zero trust stakeholders, such as government customers and vendors.

The ability to engage with our stakeholders at the lowest possible classification level allows for broader engagements across the community and an increased understanding of cybersecurity as it evolves, he said. We have a separate testbed with DISA that will host any anticipated classified information.

Originally posted here:
DHS, NSA creating reusable pieces to zero trust foundation - Federal News Network

By Paul Rosenzweig, The George Washington University Law School

Generally, surveillance comes in three basic forms. First, there is physical surveillance, dating from the times of Alexander the Great and earlier, up to the Stasi State in post-World War II East Germany and to today. This is the traditional form of scrutiny that has always been the province of spies and intruders.

This is a transcript from the video series The Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You. Watch it now, on The Great Courses Plus.

When one thinks of physical surveillance, the first image that comes to our mind is that of an eavesdropper.

An eavesdropper could, for example, hear a conversation. Or, if he looks in a window, become a Peeping Tom, and see the subject of his surveillance. One could even contemplate surveillance of smellslike, say, the scent of burning cannabis.

As the nature of our physical environment changed, physical surveillance also evolved. The telegraph became a way to rapidly transmit messages around the globe, and governments began exploring ways to intercept those messages.

American electronic surveillance really came of age during the Cold War. It is said that for years, the CIA ran a joint electronic surveillance operation with the Chinese, in the western deserts of China, to monitor Soviet missile launches.

In the mid-1970s, the National Security Agency (NSA) conducted two programs involving electronic interceptions that have, since, proven quite controversial.

One of them, code-named SHAMROCK, involved U.S. communications companies giving the NSA access to all of the international cable traffic passing through their companies facilities. The second program, known as MINARET, created a watch list of U.S. persons whose communications were to be monitored.

To the above traditional forms of surveillance, we must add a third: the collection, and analysis, of personally identifiable data and information about individuals.

Dataveillance is an inevitable product of our increasing reliance on the Internet and global communications systems. As the available storehouse of data has grown, so have governmental and commercial efforts to use this data for their own purposes.

To further frame the context, lets take a look at two surveillance exercises.

Learn more about surveillance in America.

The key to finding Osama bin Laden came from tracking, one of his couriers: Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan. To track him, the CIA initially used sophisticated geo-location technology that helped pinpoint his cell phone location.

That allowed the CIA to determine the exact type of car that al-Kuwaiti droveit was a white SUV. Using physical and electronic surveillance, the CIA began tracking the vehicle. One day, a satellite captured images of the SUV pulling into a large concrete compound in Abbottabad. Agents used aerial surveillance to keep watch.

The residents of the Abbottabad compound were also extremely cautious. They burned their trashprobably to frustrate a search of that trash that might have yielded DNA samples of the residents.

The United States also learned that the compound lacked a phone or an Internet connection. Again, why? Almost certainly because the residents understood that phone and Internet communications could be tracked, traced, and intercepted.

It was observed that a man, who lived on the third floor, never left. He stayed inside the compound, and underneath a canopy, frustrating overhead surveillance by satellite.

In addition to satellites, the government flew an advanced stealth drone, the RQ-170, over Pakistan to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions from the compound.

The CIA made any number of efforts to identify this man. They tried to collect sewage from the compound to identify fecal matter and run a DNA analysis, but as the sewage contained the effluence of other houses, they couldnt isolate a good sample.

At one point, the CIA got a Pakistani doctor to pretend he was conducting a vaccination program. Nurses tried to get inside the compound and vaccinate the children, which would have allowed them to get a DNA sample, but again without success. To get a closer look, CIA spies also moved into a house on the property next door.

It has been reported that this surveillance operation cost so much money that the CIA had to ask for supplemental funding from Congressfunding that it, of course, received.

In short, during the hunt for bin Laden, the United States employed physical and electronic surveillance and sophisticated data analysis. The result, from an intelligence standpoint, was a success.

By now, most Americans are pretty familiar with the long lines, thorough pat-downs, and X-ray inspections that are part of the process.

But that physical screening comes at the back end of a process that begins much earlier when you first make a reservation to fly. The Transportation Security Administrations (TSAs) security directives require airline passengers to present identification when they make a reservation.

Later, if youre selected for secondary screening, you and your bags will be taken out of line for additional scrutiny. And why is it that we ask for a passengers name along with gender and date of birth?

Learn more about hacking and surveillance.

The reason is because that data is used for a form of dataveillance-screening, known as Secure Flight. Your name and date of birth are checked against a terrorist screening database.

Screenings include flights that overfly but dont land in the continental U.S. This was a key recommendation of the 9/11 Commission, created by the Congress and the president after the September 2001 terror attacks to identify security lapses, and ways to strengthen U.S. defenses.

The Secure Flight program has not, so far as is publicly known, ever actually spotted a terrorist.

There are ways one might legally challenge this kind of surveillance. In 2006, a traveler named John Gilmore challenged the TSAs identification requirement. He asserted that he had a right to travel and that his right to travel included the right to do so anonymously without providing identification.

The federal Ninth Circuit court of appeals agreed, provisionally, that he had a right to travel. But, it said that if he wanted to travel by air, then Gilmore was consenting to the requirement that he provide identification before boarding the plane. If he didnt want to do that, he was free to travel by some other means.

The story doesnt end there, however. For years, ten U.S. citizens were unable to fly to, or from, the United Statesor even over American airspacebecause they were on the governments top-secret No Fly List.

They were never told why theyd made to the list, they didnt have much chance of getting off of it, either. In June 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a disabled Marine veteran named Ayman Latif, who was living in Egypt, and the nine others.

Latif won the case. The court concluded that he did have a right to challenge his inclusion on the no-fly list, and was entitled to a process by which he could seek to be removed from it.

It didnt help the governments case that Latif had probably been put on the list by mistake, and should have been removed long before his lawsuit came to court.

The above polar cases bring us full circle to a set of concepts that we need to think about: the balance between transparency and effectiveness.

Some of the physical and traditional forms of surveillance include eavesdropping, looking at the object, or prying over someone, and using smell to do surveillance.

The CIA used drones, satellites, and physical surveillance in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Dataveillance is a type of surveillance that includes the collection, and analysis, of personally identifiable data and information about individuals.

Continued here:
Surveillance: Types, Uses, and Abuses - The Great Courses Daily News

As millions of people across Texas suffered from power and water outages during extreme cold from a winter storm this week, women at the federal prison in Fort Worth where National Security Agency whistleblower Reality Winner is imprisoned faced alarming conditions. The detained women were forced to literally take matters into their own hands in a disgusting way.

Winner told family and a friend that incarcerated women at her prison took one for the team and used their hands to scoop feces from overflowing toilets that hadnt been flushed due to the prolonged water outage.

Reality told me that the toilets stopped working because there wasnt any water and things got disgusting really fast.

Reality told me that the toilets stopped working because there wasnt any water and things got disgusting really fast, said Brittany Winner, who spoke with her sister Reality by video chat. Some inmates put on rubber gloves to scoop out the shit and throw it away to get rid of it because of the smell.

Many of the women, like Winner, are at Federal Medical Center Carswell because they have chronic medical needs that the prison, a medical detention center, is tasked with treating. But the toilet incident was one of several unsanitary and unhealthy hardships that the women endured, according to advocates and a detailed press report, during a week of extreme weather that has left dozens dead nationwide. While the frigid prison was dealing with internal temperatures so cold that one incarcerated woman told a local reporter that her hands were blue and shaking, it was also still contending with an ongoing Covid-19 outbreak that has already taken the lives of six women incarcerated there.

In a statement, the Bureau of Prisons said interruptions to service were minor. Similar to many of those in the surrounding community and across the state of Texas dealing with heat and water issues during the recent winter storm, the Federal Medical Center (FMC) Carswellexperienced minor power, heat, and hot water issues that affected the main supply channels, Emery Nelson, a bureau public affairs official, said in an email. However, back-up systems were in place and FMC Carswell maintained power, heat, and hot water until the main supply issues were resolved.Nelson also said incarceratedpeople at Carswell had access to potable water with no disruptions or shortages, to include hot water for showers, and the ability to flush toilets.

A report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram this week said that the medical portion of the prison the hospital facilities appeared to maintain heat, but the newspaper also collected accounts from the housing units that matched thosegiven by Winners advocates: shortages of hot water, loss of heat, and issues with waste management.

Sufferingwas widespread across Texas, where local authorities have raised alarm over people so desperate for warmth that they used cars and charcoal grills to heat their homes and suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. To Winners advocates, the crisis inside the prison felt like the latest unjust blow for an incarcerated person who, like many across the United Statess sprawling prison system, could have been released to home confinement long ago when the government made a halfhearted effort to reduce the federal prison population in the early days of the pandemic. Prosecutors involved in Winners case opposed the policy and successfully argued to keep the whistleblower behind bars, where she eventually was infected withCovid-19.

These women theyre trapped, Realitys mother, Billie Winner-Davis, said of the sub-freezing temperatures in Fort Worth this week. They cant escape this. They cant do something to better their situation at all.

Winners family and friends first heard from the whistleblower about winter storm conditions in her prison on Monday, when she told them that water had been intermittently off since Saturday afternoon. This meant the women detained inside not only couldnt flush toilets, but that they also couldnt wash their hands or drink from water fountains, Winner told them.

She was so dehydrated and so thirsty, Winners friend and advocate Wendy Meer Collins said. Collins added that Winner was so desperate to shower that she had given herself what she called a birdbath using ice cubes from a machine.

In addition to the water shortages, the furnace appeared to be off or insufficiently functioning for much of the week, even though the prison appeared to mostly maintain power, according to Winners advocates and the report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which said women put socks on their hands and guards wore winter coats and hats indoors to stay warm. The Bureau of Prisons said there was a maintenance period in the prison and that internal temperatures were monitored but did not specify what needed to be maintained nor when it wasfixed.

During the days of sub-freezing temperatures, women at FMC Carswell needed to walk in ice and snow outdoors to go to the cafeteria to get meals, according to Winner-Davis and Collins. The women dont even have the option to huddle together to stay warm, Collins said, as Winner has been punished in the past for hugging a fellow incarcerated person in violation of the prisons unauthorized contact policy. (Despite saying that the prison had maintained heat, the Bureau of Prisons also told The Intercept that it distributed extra blankets to incarcerated women.)

By the time Winner spoke to her mother on Thursday morning, she told her that heat had been recently restored in their building.

The miserable week inside the cold prison spurred a new round of calls for relief from supporters who back the year-old clemency campaign for Winner, their eyes now on the new administration.

Winner, who blew the whistle on threats to election security, is currently serving the longest prison sentence of its kind under the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law used in recent years to send journalists sources to prison, even as comparable defendants have simply gotten probation for mishandling classified information.

The government itself acknowledges that Winners intent was to send the document she leaked to journalists and therefore warn the American public, rather than use it for personal gain. The NSA report detailed phishing attacks by Russian military intelligence on local U.S. election officials and was published in a June 2017 article by The Intercept. (The Press Freedom Defense Fund, another First Look Media company, supportedWinners legal defense.)

Her clemency campaign has drawn a diverse array of political supporters, including the President George W. Bush-era secrecy czar responsible for overseeing classification procedures, who wrote an op-ed calling for Winner to be Bidens first pardon, as well as a prominent congressional Libertarian who said using the Espionage Act to prosecute her was unjust and abusive.

Winner was the first national security whistleblower prosecuted by the last administration, and Collins believes that a Democratic White House, whose voters are motivated by issues of election integrity and security, should signal a clear break with the 45th presidency and allow Winner to go home.

This is Trumps political prisoner, and its time to let her out, Collins said. Shes served more time than she ever should have anyway.

Read the original post:
Freezing Weather Creates Crisis in Reality Winner's Texas Prison - The Intercept