Reuters interview with Mike McConnell on cybersecurity - a misinformation case study

we're all reasonably aware of the ability of news media to shape the national dialogue by focusing on subject matter that the ptb wishes to highlight in the public consciousness... we're also pretty much aware of how little context we get with most news stories where often critical background information is conveniently omitted that, if included, would give a story significantly deeper meaning... and we're also aware that key public figures will often make themselves available for interviews to news outlets when they are trying to soften the public up for an event or decision that might not sit well... rarely, however, do all of these come together in one article...

Ex-U.S. spy chief says may take crisis for new cyber law

U.S. intelligence agencies have unique capabilities that can help protect American companies from cyber espionage and attack, but it will probably take a crisis to change laws to allow that type of cooperation, a former spy chief said on Monday.

Intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency are authorized to operate abroad but generally are restricted from working within the United States,

"Until we have a banking collapse or electric power goes off in the middle of a snowstorm for eight weeks, or something of that magnitude, we're likely just to talk about it and not do much," Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said.

[...]

The House intelligence committee in December approved a bill that would allow U.S. spy agencies to share cyber-threat intelligence with private companies. Some critics worry that could lead to government surveillance of private data.

[...]

"There are unique things that the government can do. For example code-breaking. The private sector out there does not do code-breaking," McConnell, a former National Security Agency director, told Reuters in an interview.

"How would you harness that capability and then make it available to the private sector in a way that their infrastructure could be better protected?"

[...]

McConnell gives an example that if NSA, which conducts electronic eavesdropping to detect foreign threats, observed a cyberthreat against the U.S. private sector, "NSA is powerless to do a thing other than issue a report."

He said in the area of cyber exploitation, such as reading an adversary's mail without leaving fingerprints, the United States, Britain and Russia are probably the best.

The United States also has the ability to conduct cyber attacks, which would be to degrade or destroy an adversary's computerized system, and has used it.

Has the United States used its cyber attack capability? "Yes," McConnell said. Did it work? "Yes."

McConnell, now vice chairman at the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm in charge of cyber activities, did not elaborate on the use of a cyber attack capability.

"Do we have the ability to attack, degrade or destroy? Sure. If you do that, what are the consequences? That is the question," he said.

McConnell said the priority is to protect the country's critical infrastructure such as the financial sector, the electric power grid and transportation from cyber attack and stop the theft of intellectual property through cyber espionage.

"There will be a thousand voices on what is the right thing to do," and it will probably require a crisis to reach consensus, he said.

i'll give credit where credit is due... at least they bothered to mention mcconnell's position with booz allen even if it took 'em 14 paragraphs to do it...

what might have been additional contextually significant information is that mcconnell is a poster child for the revolving door between top u.s. government posts and the corporations that feed off of government contracts... mcconnell served as senior vp for intelligence and national security at booz after retiring from the navy as nsa director and before being appointed as the director of national security by george bush and went immediately back to booz again as a senior vp seven days after the obama presidential inauguration and has since assumed the post of booz vice chairman (see here)...

other information about booz that would have been relevant is that booz is the 9th largest u.s. government contractor with annual revenues of over $5B, does an enormous amount of work with the u.s. government in the area of technology and cybersecurity, is majority owned by the carlyle group and has a strong profit motive to push an increase in government cyber capability by fronting a former dni who just so happens to be its current vice chairman (see here and here)...

now, what to make out of mcconnell's statement that "it will probably require a crisis"...? if there isn't one that occurs naturally and spontaneously, can we assume one will be created...? are we being tipped off...? does mcconnell know something we don't...? is it a veiled threat...?

why can't news organizations give us the information we need to make sense out of a story...? just because i happen to be a news junkie, i am aware of all this relevant background but why can't such information be a legitimate part of the news...? it would certainly help people discharge their responsibilities as informed citizens...

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I've posted a lot on Mike McConnell but Glenn has the final takedown

my last post on mcconnell was in response to his disgustingly self-serving wapo editorial on 28 february... i find that i often have the same reaction to things as glenn greenwald who, imho, delivers the ultimate take-down of this not-very-well-disguised denizen of the corporatocracy...

[I]t isn't that people like Mike McConnell move from public office to the private sector and back again. That implies more separation than really exists. At this point, it's more accurate to view the U.S. Government and these huge industry interests as one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity -- with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, it's more like an intra-corporate re-assignment than it is changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI, he's simply in one division of this entity and when he's at Booz Allen, he's in another, but it's all serving the same entity (it's exactly how insurance giant Wellpoint dispatched one of its Vice Presidents to Max Baucus' office so that she could write the health care plan that the Congress eventually enacted).

In every way that matters, the separation between government and corporations is nonexistent, especially (though not only) when it comes to the National Security and Surveillance State. Indeed, so extreme is this overlap that even McConnell, when he was nominated to be Bush's DNI, told The New York Times that his ten years of working "outside the government," for Booz Allen, would not impede his ability to run the nation's intelligence functions. That's because his Booz Allen work was indistinguishable from working for the Government, and therefore -- as he put it -- being at Booz Allen "has allowed me to stay focused on national security and intelligence communities as a strategist and as a consultant. Therefore, in many respects, I never left."

the wapo editorial was a blatant pitch focusing on three main points... one, the u.s. cyber-network is highly vulnerable to hostile attack... two, we should be very, very afraid, and three, the task of strengthening defenses against such attacks should be given to defense contractors... but glenn says it so much better than i do...

The overarching theme is all-too-familiar: we face a grave threat from Terrorists and other Very Bad People ("cyber wars"), and our only hope for protection is to vest the Government with massive new powers. Specifically, McConnell advocates a so-called "reeingeer[ing] of the Internet" to allow the Government and private corporations far greater capability to track what is being done over the Internet and who is doing it:

The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It's that simple. . . . If an enemy disrupted our financial and accounting transactions, our equities and bond markets or our retail commerce -- or created confusion about the legitimacy of those transactions -- chaos would result. Our power grids, air and ground transportation, telecommunications, and water-filtration systems are in jeopardy as well.

Scary! And what do we need to submit to in order to avoid these calamities? This:

The United States must also translate our intent into capabilities. We need to develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options -- and we must be able to do this in milliseconds. More specifically, we need to reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment -- who did it, from where, why and what was the result -- more manageable.

In one sense, this is just typical fear-mongering of the type the National Security State has used for decades to beat frightened Americans into virtually full-scale submission: you are in grave danger and you can be safe only by vesting in us far greater power, which we'll operate in secret: here, allowing us to "reengineer" the Internet so we can control it.

glenn continues...

But there's something even worse going on here. McConnell doesn't merely want to empower the Government to control the Internet this way; he wants to empower private corporations to do so -- the same corporations which pay him and whose interests he has long served. He notes that this "reengineering" is already possible because "the technologies are already available from public and private sources," and explicitly calls for a merger of the NSA with private industry to create a sprawling, omnipotent network for monitoring the Internet...

[...]

In other words, not only the Government, but the private intelligence corporations which McConnell represents (and which are subjected to no oversight), will have access to virtually unfettered amounts of information and control over the Internet, and there should be "no borders" between them. And beyond the dangerous power that will vest in the public-private Surveillance State, it will also generate enormous profits for Booz Allen, the clients it serves and presumably for McConnell himself -- though The Washington Post does not bother to disclose any of that to its readers. The Post basically allowed McConnell to publish in its Op-Ed pages a blatant advertisement for the private intelligence industry while masquerading as a National Security official concerned with Keeping America Safe.

yeah, even though i did my own sound-off on this obscene op-ed piece and the incredible hubris of a guy like mcconnell, it's worth having another go at it...

my other posts on mcconnell, dating back to 2006 can be found here...

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Glenn reviews CNN's John King's interview of Mike McConnell

our government bought-and-paid-for propaganda machine at work...

[DNI Mike] McConnell is burdened by one of the most glaring conflicts of interest that we've seen in any significant political debate over the last seven years. His career before becoming DNI was devoted to the very private telecom sector on whose behalf he's now demanding immunity. When he claims that the Fate of the Nation rests on granting retroactive immunity to the telecom industry, he's advocating for his long-time partners, colleagues, and business associates. In the job he held prior to becoming DNI -- director of defense programs at Booz Allen -- he was directly involved with the very people, and possibly the very programs, for which he is now demanding amnesty

[...]

CNN invited a high government official onto its news program to issue extremely dubious, fear-mongering demands for more government surveillance power and for a huge gift for the industry of which he was long a critical part, threatening Americans that they would be in severe danger if they didn't assent in full. They had nobody on with him or afterwards to contradict anything he said. The interviewer confessed to knowing almost nothing about the topic and spent his time doing very little other than vouching for the government official's honesty and apolitical integrity. After several minutes of airing uncontradicted government propaganda, the interview ended and the interviewer profusely thanked the government official for coming on.

do these "news" outlets really get it that we're on to them...?

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Hayden, McConnell and Mukasey are "highly respected and nonpolitical officials"

IF it is true, according to bill kristol, writing in today's nyt, that...

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds.

THEN why, pray tell, are they behaving that way now...?

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Our puppet, Pervez, decides he wants to be a "REAL" boy

pinocchio cuts his strings and flips off BOTH uncle mike AND uncle mike...

The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.


The official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the secret nature of the talks, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants.

The New York Times — which first reported on the secret visit by CIA Director Michael Hayden and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence — said Musharraf rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through overt CIA. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.

careful, pervez... you don't want to put your allowance at risk...

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The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history MAY already be in place?

i don't think there's any MAY about it... it IS in place and has been for much longer than any of us would like to believe, easily dating back to the mid-90s or even earlier...

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site [PDF].

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

"Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense.

[...]

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

i know there's a lot of folks out there that, when this stuff registers on their radar screen, somehow manage to shrug and just let it roll off their backs... others are easily distracted by the bells and whistles of the election campaign, somehow believing that the "right" choice for our next president will somehow magically insure salvation... then there are those like me and a few others who see the broader pattern of what's happening and have heart palpitations over every fresh revelation... but, putting all those folks together still doesn't add up to more than a few, single-digit percentage points of the citizenry... how many out there actually bother to inform themselves to the extent that they even READ articles like this...? how many actually UNDERSTAND that our precious constitution is being systematically shredded, that the rule of law has gone out the window, and that accountability is at the top of the endangered species list...? or do they know and just not care as long as there is no significant impact on their daily lives...?

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"Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits"

i saw this title above michael mcconnell's name on an op-ed in today's nyt and couldn't resist the urge...

Help Me Spy on Al Qaeda Everybody

as i started reading it, i found myself thinking that there just HAD to be something about telecom immunity buried in there SOMEWHERE... sure enough, eight paragraphs in, we find...

The intelligence community cannot go it alone. Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits. I share the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, after a year of study, concluded that “without retroactive immunity, the private sector might be unwilling to cooperate with lawful government requests in the future,” and warned that “the possible reduction in intelligence that might result from this delay is simply unacceptable for the safety of our nation.”

the administration broke the law by asking the telecoms to engage in illegal activity... the telecoms broke the law by agreeing to that request... retroactive immunity from criminal activity is against everything the united states stands for... moreover, having congress pass a law that overrides the 4th amendment to the united states constitution does not make overriding the 4th amendment a legal act... michael mcconnell, in the very public forum of the opinion pages of the new york times, is pushing for the citizens of this country to be as complicit as the executive branch, the congress, and the courts in the destruction of the foundations of the country... no way, mike... ain't buyin' it...

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breaking up [monopolies] is hard to do

After Downing Street reports: Pelosi Asks for Impeachable Offenses:

[I]n an October 10th interview with Ed Schultz, [Speaker Pelosi] said 'if anyone knows of impeachable offenses that can pass the Congress, then please let me know'.

Ok, lets start here:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony"

-- from the Sherman Antitrust Act

The very nature of the 5th Estate, that marriage of corporations with the Intelligence Community, (or more generally, with government), is antitrust.

We have seen unrelenting and perpetual consolidations going on under this scheme. We have seen outrageous no bid contracts that continually favor Administration cronies. The entire Department of Defense cannot give an accurate accounting of its money spent. Private Armies are now said to outnumber our government forces. There is little secret that the auspices of the newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been pushing for privatization of the Internet by the telcoms, et al., through the machinations of "immunities" and by packet sniffing.

A recent cover for further expansion of ubiquitous packet sniffing might be this little reported undertaking, under the moniker of "super V-chip". This is likely a cover for not really even a single chip at all, but rather, total spying everywhere.

This just in: AT&T may be getting a windfall. VoIP had threatened their Market Power.

Societies are able to work as well as they do on the planet precisely because of the Internet. Journals that used to take 30 days to circulate amongst professionals in a given field, are available immediately. Responses are available within minutes to new discoveries. Unfettered political ideas now currently generally abound.

Once the Internet becomes privatized, it will be used as simply another technology of political control, and its usefulness to everyday people will be limited. There will surely be a collapse of society as we know it on that day.

Update: fresh comments by Cindy Sheehan re Nanci Pelosi at CounterPunch:

No matter how many times Ms. Pelosi and George Bush share tea and giggles and no matter how often she 'prays' for him, George is not the Decider and she is only the Leader of the House of Representatives not the people. We are the sovereigns in this country and I tried to demonstrate this when I demanded a meeting with another haughty public servant: George Bush"

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"Dirty Tricks"

Bill Moyers' September 28, 2007 interview of John Bogle was quite telling. America has gone from about 7.5% of the economy being represented by money managers, to nearly 10 times that at almost 75% of our economy today. These money men chase the cheapest labor on earth, which is called outsourcing America's jobs, to places where human rights are routinely ignored, and the rest of us live large on that exploitation.

But it cannot last. Without sufficient numbers of manufacturing and/or production jobs in the US, our economy cannot sustain our population with just service industry jobs. The rich and powerful will dispose of the surplus population the way they always do.

The movie, "Blood Diamond", reveals the paradigm for the exploitation of all riches. Those in this country still content to act as apologists for the totalitarians need to realize, the small gain they achieve, comes at high cost to many others. A similar scenario is bound to play out here as the 5th Estate continues to crush free speech and other rights like the ability to eek out a living.

Slashdot reports:

Despite a congressional request for that probe, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin quashed the inquiry based on comments from National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell. 'At issue are reports last year that some big telephone companies allowed the U.S. government access to millions of telephone records for an anti terrorism program. The reports have prompted scrutiny by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of a key Energy and Commerce subcommittee, asked Martin to investigate. Markey, of Massachusetts, said McConnell's stance was "unsurprising given that this administration has continually thwarted efforts by Congress to shed more light on the surveillance program."

In reports of hearings being held on telcom issues, two names seem prominent: Edward Markey and John Kerry. Edward Markey had previously pushed the V-chip. Some of us were concerned that he had joined America's demagogue campaign of hysteria to marginalize children. These days Representative Markey seems more a voice of reason. He won't be cheap for the totalitarians to buy or kill. His wife made both Rear Admiral and served as Assistant Surgeon General of the United States.

John Kerry on the other hand, is a police state advocate. He is one of the current demagogue forces behind the "Sexual Predator" laws that aim to replace the arguably waning war on Global Terrorism.

John Kerry appears to be in favor of massive police surveillance. The recent incident of a brave young neophyte reporter asking him solid questions and paying for that by being tortured by Kerry's police with a Taser, now seems typically Kerry.

Government's enforcers make it clear: They isolate and disrupt their targets. This didn't start recently. It has roots back in COINTELPRO:

They used secret and systematic methods of fraud and force, far beyond mere surveillance, to sabotage constitutionally protected political activity. The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's own words, to 'expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize' specific groups and individuals."

Now add to that the use of terror and torture by our own government.

Want to complain? Well that's why they want to detect and fight you with packet shaping (sniffing).

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Our Congress isn't worth the powder to blow it up

goddam it... goddam it to hell... the fcc is an executive branch entity, so of COURSE they won't investigate telecom collusion with the nsa, another executive branch entity, both of which are under the control of the executive office of the president... congress continues to swat at flies when it's clear the bigger problem is a criminal presidential administration riding roughshod over separation of powers, the constitution, civil liberties, the rule of law and anything else that dares to get in its way, and that forever requesting information only to be stonewalled ain't going to miraculously go away...

The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission declined to investigate reports that phone companies turned over customer records to the National Security Agency, citing national security concerns, according to documents released on Friday.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin turned down a congressional request for an investigation as a top intelligence official concluded it would "pose an unnecessary risk of damage to the national security," according to a letter National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell sent to Martin on Tuesday.

Intelligence officials "support your determination not to initiate an investigation," McConnell wrote to Martin.

At issue are reports last year that some big telephone companies allowed the U.S. government access to millions of telephone records for an anti-terrorism program.

i've decided that congress is either full of fools or is deliberately colluding with the white house in the destruction of our country...

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They're finally getting around to admitting they're vacuuming up ALL communication EVERYWHERE from EVERYONE

they've been doing this for a very long time, well before 9/11, well before george w. bush, and probably well before william jefferson clinton... the reason 9/11 "changed everything" is because it provided an excuse to pull out the rest of the stops and brainwash us into thinking it was all being done "for our own good..."

Powerful supercomputers are vacuuming up so much information that logs of calls to or from innocent Americans could exist in government databases indefinitely, the nation's top intelligence official said Tuesday.

"You may not even realize it's in the database because you do lots of collection," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell said, referring to the "inadvertent collection" of Americans' communications through a vast surveillance program instituted after 9/11.

An untold number of communication logs on US citizens could exist within a National Security Agency database of information gained through warrantless wiretaps of foreigners abroad, McConnell said, because NSA spies do not examine the full contents on all the information it collects until it has a reason to do so.

they've been "sniffing" everything for years...

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Spying: "billions of transactions" DAILY!

whether he intends to or not, mcconnell has revealed more information about u.s. electronic surveillance and spying activities than we have had yet, minus the intelligent guesswork that we've all engaged in...

The United States' top spy said American intelligence agencies are intercepting "billions" of conversations and e-mails abroad, but he would not say how many Americans have been inadvertently snared in this international warrantless wiretapping dragnet.

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell would say only that the number of Americans overheard by National Intelligence Agency eavesdroppers was "small" in relation to the massive number of "transactions" intercepted from overseas targets.

"It's a very small number considering that there are billions of transactions every day," McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee Monday.

The US is spying on "thousands, potentially millions (of) potential targets of interest," McConnell said later in the hearing. Congress is beginning to consider another update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires intelligence agencies get a warrant before spying on Americans.

i don't have much of a head for numbers, but the "small number" in relation to the "billions of transactions" would be interesting, no...? for chuckles and grins, let's say it's 1%... so, what's 1% of a billion...? well, gol-e-e-e-eee, clem, looks like about ONLY TEN MILLION to me...! how about 1/10 of 1%...? damn...! that knocks it down to ONLY ONE MILLION... sh-e-e-e-e-e-it, jethro... nothin' to worry about THERE...!

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Has the APA seen the light?

so, how long has it been since torture was "outed" as a u.s. interrogation practice...? visibly, publicly...? since 2003 at least...

The American Psychological Association, the world's largest professional organization of psychologists, is poised to issue a formal condemnation of a raft of notorious interrogation tactics employed by U.S. authorities against detainees during the so-called war on terror, from simulated drowning to sensory deprivation. The move is expected during the APA's annual convention in San Francisco this weekend.

The APA's anti-torture resolution follows a string of revelations in recent months of the key role played by psychologists in the development of brutal interrogation regimes for the CIA and the military. And it comes just weeks after news that the White House may be calling on psychologists once again: On July 20, President Bush signed an executive order restarting a coercive CIA interrogation program at the agency's "black sites." Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has indicated that psychological techniques will be part of the revamped program, but that the interrogations would be subject to careful medical oversight. That oversight is likely to be performed by psychologists.

this is long overdue… the apa has lagged behind their colleagues at the ama in condemning the practice of government using its members to craft more effective “enhanced interrogation techniques…” the apa should be ashamed that it’s taken them this long to take a stand…

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