Glenn: The U.S. is the leading developer and perpetrator of cyberwarfare, not the leading target

i've posted extensively on the mutual back-scratching between the u.s. government, michael mcconnell and booz allen hamilton (see here)... this tawdry relationship pumps millions of dollars into the booz coffers as well as mcconnell's pocket and has made cyber-security technology one of the biggest profit contributors in the booz portfolio of taxpayer fleecing projects... mcconnell has appeared repeatedly on news segments decrying the imminent danger posed by cyber attacks and making the case for massively increased government attention spending focused on mitigating such threats...

glenn greenwald, always vigilant about spotting hypocrisy, immediately seized on today's nyt story glorifying obama's role in instigating cyber attacks on iran to make the point that, far from being the potential victim of cyber attacks, the u.s. is very likely the principal perpetrator, adding yet another chapter to the lengthy chronicle of u.s.-sponsored terrorism...

The primary fear-mongering agenda item for the National Security and Surveillance State industry is now cyberwarfare. The Washington cadre of former military officials who seek to personally profit by exploiting national security issues — represented by Adm. Michael McConnell and Gen. Michael Hayden — has been running around for several years shrilly warning that cyberwarfare is the greatest threat posed by Terrorists and other of America’s enemies (and, just coincidentally, they also argue that it’s urgent that the U.S. Government purchase wildly expensive cyber-security technology from their private-sector clients as well as seize greater control over the Internet to protect against the threat).

But — as is usually true when it comes to Washington warnings about the evils of Others — this is pure projection. The U.S. is the leading developer and perpetrator of cyberwarfare, not the leading target. The New York Times this morning has a long excerpt from a new book by its hawkish national security reporter David Sanger — the book is entitled “Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power” — which reveals that President Obama personally oversaw the development, and ordered the deployment, of the world’s most sophisticated computer virus, unleashed (in cooperation with Israel) on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility.

[...]

Isn’t it amazing how the U.S. is constantly the world’s first nation to use new, highly destructive weapons — at the same time that it bombs, invades, and kills more than any other country by far — and yet it still somehow gets its media to tell its citizenry that it is America’s Enemies who are the aggressors and the U.S. is simply a nation of peace seeking to defend itself.

Needless to say, if any cyber-attack is directed at the U.S. — rather than by the U.S. — it will be instantly depicted as an act of unparalleled aggression and evil: Terrorism. Just last year, the Pentagon decreed that any cyberattack on the U.S. would be deemed “an act of war.” As Rudy Giuliani said about whether waterboarding is torture: “It depends on who does it.”

once again, i'm led to speculate that the u.s. engages in such hypocritical and provocative behavior precisely because it does engender acts of reprisal which the u.s. then uses as justification for continuing to pump more cash into the pockets of our super-rich elites...

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Anonymous speaks out against CISPA

another despicable piece of legislation carefully crafted by our super-rich elites to control the only free flow of information available to the masses...

anonymous...

Despite growing resistance to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, CISPA has cleared its first legislative hurdle. But the battle over the widely-criticized information-sharing bill is just heating up.

In an earlier-than-expected vote Thursday evening, the House of Representatives voted 248 to 168 in favor of the bill , which was originally designed to allow more sharing of cybersecurity threat information with government agencies.

The legislation has drawn the ire of legislators, civil liberties groups, security practitioners and professors, and hundreds of thousands of petitioners, who say the bill tramples over users' privacy rights as it allows Web firms like Google and Facebook to give private users' information to government agencies irrespective of other laws that protect users' privacy. "It's basically a privacy nightmare," says Trevor Timm, a lawyer and activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "CISPA would allow companies to hand over private data to the government without a warrant, without anonymity, with no judicial review."

But even before it passed, the House voted to amend the bill to actually allow even more types of private sector information to be shared with government agencies, not merely in matters of cybersecurity or national security, but in the investigation of vaguely defined cybersecurity "crimes," "protection of individuals the danger of death or serious bodily harm," and cases where that involve the protection of minors from exploitation.

That statute, which in effect widened the most controversial portion of the bill just hours before it came to a vote, is sure to draw even more controversy as the bill works its way through the legislative branch and reaches President Obama's desk. President Obama currently backs a bill in the Senate put forward by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, designed to increase the cybersecurity regulatory powers of the Department of Homeland security, which has been opposed by the GOP and stalled in the Senate.

The White House came out Wednesday with a strongly-worded statement slamming CISPA and pushing its regulatory approach in a threat to veto CISPA, writing that "cybersecurity and privacy are not mutually exclusive" and calling CISPA an intelligence bill rather than a security bill that treats civilians as subjects of surveillance. (White House watchers have observed, however, that the president's advisors similarly recommended that he veto the National Defense Authorization Act, which he instead signed into law.)

Regardless, reconciling the House bill in its new, even more controversial form with a Senate version, even as the White House opposes the central thrust of the legislation, will only rekindle the controversy that has grown around CISPA in the last week.

The EFF's Timm says he sees the House's early vote on CISPA as an attempt by its author, representative Mike Rogers, to squeeze the bill through before its opposition grew any stronger. "We've seen an explosion of a variety of groups and congressmen come out against the bill," he says. "As the Senate debates this, it's good that privacy and civil liberties will be front and center."

why does it have to be a constant battle to have access to information and, just possibly, the truth along with it...?

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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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Let's look forward to our first cyberspace war

gosh... i was just starting to digest the existence of drones and now i've got to transition from the matrix as just a movie to the matrix as hard core reality...

Pentagon Declares the Internet a Domain of War

The Pentagon released a long-promised cybersecurity plan Thursday that declares the Internet a domain of war.

The plan notably does not spell out how the U.S. military would use the Web for offensive strikes.

The Defense Department’s first-ever plan for cyberspace calls on the DoD to expand its ability to thwart attacks from other nations and groups, beef up its cyber workforce and expand collaboration with the private sector.

Like major corporations and the rest of the federal government, the military “depends on cyberspace to function,” the DoD plan says. The U.S. military uses cyberspace for everything from carrying out military operations to sharing intelligence data internally to managing personnel.

“The department and the nation have vulnerabilities in cyberspace,” the document states. “Our reliance on cyberspace stands in stark contrast to the inadequacy of our cybersecurity.”

Other nations “are working to exploit DoD unclassified and classified networks, and some foreign intelligence organizations have already acquired the capacity to disrupt elements of DoD’s information infrastructure,” the plan states. “Moreover, non-state actors increasingly threaten to penetrate and disrupt DoD networks and systems.”

Groups are capable of this largely because “small-scale technologies” that have “an impact disproportionate to their size” are relatively inexpensive and readily available.

The Pentagon plans to focus heavily on three areas under the new strategy: the theft or exploitation of data; attempts to deny or disrupt access to U.S. military networks; and any attempts to “destroy or degrade networks or connected systems.”

One problem highlighted in the strategy is a baked-in threat: “The majority of information technology products used in the United States are manufactured and assembled overseas.”

smart money says we're on a countdown to our first cyberwar...

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Secrecy is the biggest danger to democratic society

rt...

Cryptome.org was publishing classified and secret documents long before WikiLeaks made headlines. Cryptome co-founder John Young told RT such sites are allowed to stay online so that spy services might keep an eye on their visitors. There is no secrecy on the Internet, John Young warned.

so what to do...?

cryptome...

Foster the understanding that secrecy is the greatest danger to democracy not its protector. A few counters to anti-democratic beneficiaries of secrecy around the globe:

The first step is to set funding according to how few secrets are kept. The more secrets, the less funding, the fewer secrets the more funding. Thus openness will be rewarded rather than penalized. Now it works the opposite way: secret funding promotes greater secrecy.

This should apply to all secret keepers who claim to serve the public not just governments.

Second step is to set up public overseers of secrecy who have no stake in keeping secrets. This will exclude congress members, high officials and those who classify information and protect the archives against public access. Do not expect honest oversight by those who are "cleared for access to secrets" -- getting cleared is entrapment by a self-serving system.

Third step is to set severe penalties for whoever advocates greater secrecy for any reason.

Fourth step is to penalize anyone who benefits from secrecy.

Fifth step is to keep the door open to debate on new ways to combat insidious secrecy and to guard against its reinstitutionalization by crises, lying, deception and rigged threats. Disbelieve claims secrecy is needed to combat those out to steal secrets.

Merely a beginning to cure a long-lasting disease spread by secretkeepers fearful of true democracy.

one of the key points in the video clip is that the biggest conspiracy theorists work for the national security state, manufacturing the overblown fears and the "enemies" that go with them...

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