Almost a year since
former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaked information was first
revealed to the world, US officials today confirmed to CNN a new leaker is responsible for providing additional secret documents to The Intercept. The Intercept
is an investigative website cofounded by Glenn Greenwald, the reporter
to whom Snowden entrusted the bulk of his documents, and it has recently
been publishing a series on the inner workings of the US government's
terror watch list. Just today, The Intercept published a new article
based on leaked information indicating that 40 percent of the 680,000
total people listed on the watch list have "no recognized terrorist
group affiliation."
The documents, which The Intercept
reported were leaked by someone within the intelligence community,
further show that the separate "no fly" list banning people from air
travel has expanded under President Obama to include 47,000 names, the
highest number since the list was created in 2001. The new information
raises the question of why 280,000 names remain on the terrorist watch
list if there isn't evidence linking them to specific terror groups. Are
all of these people potentially homegrown terrorists, or are they part
of groups that the government hasn't identified yet, or perhaps they
have shown interest in terror groups but haven't joined them?
"no recognized terrorist group affiliation."
The Intercept doesn't
have answers and doesn't try to speculate, but it points out that per
the leaked documents, both the terror watch list and the no-fly list are
actually subsets of an even larger database known as the Terrorist
Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), which contains over a million
names. Various agencies can add names to TIDE, including the CIA, NSA,
and FBI. The Intercept also notes that TIDE is shared with the
military and some police departments, including the NYPD. In a
controversial move, one of the government agencies responsible for
managing the TIDE database reportedly provided information on it to the Associated Press ahead of the publication of the The Intercept's article, in an apparent effort to obtain more favorable coverage.
Perhaps most worrisome of all
for those concerned about violations of privacy and government
overreach, the documents obtained by The Intercept clearly show
that the TIDE database contains at least 730,000 biometric files on some
of the people listed, including 118,000 face images and 29,000 iris
scans. The newly revealed information comes on the heels of The Intercept's publication of information from a leaked 2013 rulebook for placing suspects on the watch list.
Glenn Greenwald himself said as early as July 4th that another leaker
was releasing information, but today marks the first time US officials
have confirmed it.
The U.S. Courthouse in Washington, where the
secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court resides, is seen in a
parking garage safety mirror at left. (Cliff Owen/AP)
Virtually no foreign government is off-limits
for the National Security Agency, which has been authorized to intercept
information “concerning” all but four countries, according to
top-secret documents.
The United States has long had broad no-spying arrangements with
those four countries — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand — in a group known collectively with the United States as the Five Eyes. But a classified 2010 legal certification
and other documents indicate the NSA has been given a far more elastic
authority than previously known, one that allows it to intercept through
U.S. companies not just the communications of its overseas targets but
any communications about its targets as well.
The certification — approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden — lists 193 countries
that would be of valid interest for U.S. intelligence. The
certification also permitted the agency to gather intelligence about
entities including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the
European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The NSA is not necessarily targeting all the countries or organizations identified in the certification,
the affidavits and an accompanying exhibit; it has only been given
authority to do so. Still, the privacy implications are far-reaching,
civil liberties advocates say, because of the wide spectrum of people
who might be engaged in communication about foreign governments and
entities and whose communications might be of interest to the United
States.
“These documents show both the potential scope of the government’s
surveillance activities and the exceedingly modest role the court plays
in overseeing them,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the
American Civil Liberties Union, who had the documents described to him.
NSA officials, who declined to comment on the
certification or acknowledge its authenticity, stressed the constraints
placed on foreign intelligence-gathering. The collection must relate to a
foreign intelligence requirement — there are thousands — set for the
intelligence agencies by the president, the director of national
intelligence and various departments through the National Intelligence
Priorities Framework.
Furthermore, former government officials said, it is prudent for the
certification to list every country — even those whose affairs do not
seem to immediately bear on U.S. national security interests or foreign
policy.
“It’s not impossible to imagine a humanitarian crisis in a country
that’s friendly to the United States, where the military might be
expected on a moment’s notice to go in and evacuate all Americans,” said
a former senior defense official who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. “If that certification did not
list the country,” the NSA could not gather intelligence under the law,
the former official said.
The documents shed light on a little-understood process that is
central to one of the NSA’s most significant surveillance programs:
collection of the e-mails and phone calls of foreign targets under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act.
The foreign-government certification, signed by the attorney general
and the director of national intelligence, is one of three approved
annually by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, pursuant to the
law. The other two relate to counterterrorism and counterproliferation,
according to the documents and former officials.
Under the Section 702 program, the surveillance court also approves
rules for surveillance targeting and for protecting Americans’ privacy.
The certifications, together with the National Intelligence Priorities
Framework, serve as the basis for targeting a person or an entity.
The documents underscore the remarkable breadth of potential “foreign
intelligence” collection. Though the FISA Amendments Act grew out of an
effort to place under statute a surveillance program devoted to
countering terrorism, the result was a program far broader in scope. An affidavit in support of the 2010 foreign-government certification
said the NSA believes that foreigners who will be targeted for
collection “possess, are expected to receive and/or are likely to
communicate foreign intelligence information concerning these foreign
powers.”
That language could allow for surveillance of
academics, journalists and human rights researchers. A Swiss academic
who has information on the German government’s position in the run-up to
an international trade negotiation, for instance, could be targeted if
the government has determined there is a foreign- intelligence
need for that information. If a U.S. college professor e-mails the
Swiss professor’s e-mail address or phone number to a colleague, the
American’s e-mail could be collected as well, under the program’s court-approved rules.
Even the no-spy agreements with the Five Eye countries have
exceptions. The agency’s principal targeting system automatically
filters out phone calls from Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But it does not do so for their 28 sovereign territories, such as the
British Virgin Islands. An NSA policy bulletin distributed in April 2013
said filtering out those country codes would slow the system down.
“Intelligence requirements, whether satisfied
through human sources or electronic surveillance, involve information
that may touch on almost every foreign country,” said Timothy Edgar,
former privacy officer at the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and now a visiting fellow at Brown University’s Watson
Institute for International Affairs.
Those efforts could include surveillance of all manner of foreign
intelligence targets — anything from learning about Russian
anti-submarine warfare to Chinese efforts to hack into American
companies, Edgar said. “It’s unlikely the NSA would target academics,
journalists or human rights researchers if there was any other way of
getting information,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the NSA, Vanee Vines, said the agency may only
target foreigners “reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”
Vines noted that in January, President Obama
issued a policy directive stating that U.S. surveillance “shall be as
tailored as feasible.” He also directed that the United States no longer
spy on dozens of foreign heads of state and that sensitive targeting
decisions be subject to high-level review.
“In short, there must be a particular intelligence need, policy
approval and legal authorization for U.S. signals intelligence
activities, including activities conducted pursuant to Section 702,”
Vines said.
On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a transparency report
stating that in 2013 the government targeted nearly 90,000 foreign
individuals or organizations for foreign surveillance under the program.
Some tech- industry lawyers say the number is relatively low, considering that several billion people use U.S. e-mail services.
Still, some lawmakers are concerned that the potential for intrusions
on Americans’ privacy has grown under the 2008 law because the
government is intercepting not just communications of its targets but
communications about its targets as well. The expansiveness of the
foreign-powers certification increases that concern. In a 2011 FISA court opinion,
a judge using an NSA-provided sample estimated that the agency could be
collecting as many as 46,000 wholly domestic e-mails a year that
mentioned a particular target’s e-mail address or phone number, in what
is referred to as “about” collection.
“When Congress passed Section 702 back in 2008, most members of
Congress had no idea that the government was collecting Americans’
communications simply because they contained a particular individual’s
contact information,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has co-sponsored
legislation to narrow “about” collection authority, said in an e-mail
to The Washington Post. “If ‘about the target’ collection were limited
to genuine national security threats, there would be very little privacy
impact. In fact, this collection is much broader than that, and it is
scooping up huge amounts of Americans’ wholly domestic communications.”
Government officials argue that the wholly domestic e-mails represent
a tiny fraction — far less than 1 percent — of the volume collected.
They point to court- imposed rules to protect the
privacy of U.S. persons whose communications are picked up in error or
because they are in contact with foreign targets.
In general, if Americans’ identities are not central to the import of
a communication, they must be masked before being shared with another
agency. Communications collected from companies that operate high-volume
cables — instead of directly from technology firms such as Yahoo or
Google — are kept for two years instead of five. Some of the most
sensitive ones are segregated and may not be used without written
permission from the NSA director.
Privacy advocates say the rules are riddled with exceptions. They
point out that wholly domestic communications may be kept and shared if
they contain significant foreign intelligence, a term that is defined
broadly, or evidence of a crime. They also note that the rules allow NSA
access to certain attorney-client communications, pending review by the
agency’s general counsel.
Jennifer Granick, the director of civil liberties at the Stanford
Center for Internet and Society, expressed concern about the prospect of
capturing e-mails and phone calls of law-abiding foreigners. “The
breadth of the certification suggests that the court is authorizing the
government to spy on average foreigners and doesn’t exercise much if any
control beyond that,” she said.
Some former officials say that the court’s
role has been appropriately limited when it comes to foreign targeting
decisions, which traditionally have been the purview of the executive
branch. The court generally has focused on ensuring that domestic
surveillance is targeted at foreign spies or agents of a foreign power.
“Remember, the FISA court is not there to protect the privacy
interests of foreign people,” the former defense official said. “That’s
not its purpose, however noble the cause might be. Its purpose is to
protect the privacy interests of persons guaranteed those protections
under the Constitution.”
The only reason the court has oversight of the NSA program is that
Congress in 2008 gave the government a new authority to gather
intelligence from U.S. companies that own the Internet cables running
through the United States, former officials noted.
Edgar, the former privacy officer at the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence, said ultimately he believes the authority should
be narrowed. “There are valid privacy concerns with leaving these
collection decisions entirely in the executive branch,” he said. “There
shouldn’t be broad collection, using this authority, of foreign
government information without any meaningful judicial role that defines
the limits of what can be collected.”
Barton
Gellman writes for the national staff. He has contributed to three
Pulitzer Prizes for The Washington Post, most recently the 2014 Pulitzer
Prize for Public Service.
What are the odds?
I mean, Vladimir Putin does a call-in show and one guy who happens to get through—to ask a question in English—is Ed Snowden?
That is one amazing coincidence—almost as amazing as those soldiers
who mysteriously materialized in Crimea turning out to be Russian.
In a few moments, Snowden became part of a Soviet-style propaganda
machine, even though he clearly views himself as a public-spirited
crusader.
After Snowden leaked all those NSA documents to the Guardian and the
Washington Post, which shared a Pulitzer Prize this week, he fled to
Hong Kong and then to Moscow, which was more than happy to tweak
President Obama by harboring him.
But Snowden is clearly drawn to the spotlight, and he played a starring role in Putin’s political theater on Thursday.
He gave the Russian leader a chance to beat his chest about how moral he is, compared to the bad old USA.
Keep in mind that Snowden is not just some zealous activist. Some
people think he’s a traitor, others think he’s a hero sparking a global
debate. But there is no dispute that he is a fugitive from justice.
Nor did he just ask a question. He gave a little speech, saying that
White House and other reviews of the NSA surveillance program had
concluded “that these programs are ineffective in stopping terrorism.
They also found that they unreasonably intrude into the private lives of
ordinary citizens.”
Having delivered his anti-NSA spin, Snowden serves up the pitch for
Putin to hit: “Does Russia intercept, store, or analyze in any way the
communications of millions of individuals? And do you believe that
simply increasing the effectiveness of intelligence or law enforcement
investigations can justify placing societies, rather than subjects,
under surveillance?”
What a coup for Putin. And he did not miss the opportunity.
First, the former KGB officer engaged in a little espionage talk:
“Mr. Snowden, you are a former agent, a spy, I used to be working for
an intelligence service; we are going to talk one professional
language,” Putin said, according to a translator. “Our intelligence
efforts are strictly regulated by our law. So our special forces can use
special equipment as they intercept phone calls or follow someone
online. You have to get court permission to stalk a particular person.
We don’t have mass system of such interception. And according to our law
it cannot exist…
“We don’t have as much money as they have in the States, we don’t
have these technical devices that they have in the States. Our special
services, thank God, are strictly controlled by the society and the law,
and are regulated by the law.”
In other words, we can’t afford what the Americans do, and wouldn’t do it if we could.
First, Putin is probably not leveling about his intelligence
capabilities. Some analysts say Russia has few if any checks on its
spying apparatus. Remember all the surveillance at Sochi?
Second, the U.S. surveillance is also in accordance with the
law—although the public uproar sparked by Snowden has prompted Obama to
move toward slapping restrictions on the NSA. Whether it’s a good
anti-terror tool is another question.
But most important, this guy is lecturing us about respect for the
law? The man who at this very moment is threatening eastern Ukraine? The
man who flouted international law by seizing Crimea, even as he denied
that Russian troops had marched into the peninsula?
This is the guy who Snowden wants to prop up?
I don’t think, as I said earlier this week, that Snowden’s
involvement taints the Pulitzer-worthy work of the Guardian and
Washington Post. But his star turn yesterday sure muddies Snowden’s
reputation even further. Update: In a piece this morning for the Guardian, Snowden says he was trying to hold Putin accountable:
"I was surprised that people who witnessed me risk my life to expose
the surveillance practices of my own country could not believe that I
might also criticise the surveillance policies of Russia, a country to
which I have sworn no allegiance, without ulterior motive. I regret that
my question could be misinterpreted, and that it enabled many to ignore
the substance of the question - and Putin's evasive response - in order
to speculate, wildly and incorrectly, about my motives for asking it...
"So why all the criticism? I expected that some would object to my
participation in an annual forum that is largely comprised of softball
questions to a leader unaccustomed to being challenged. But to me, the
rare opportunity to lift a taboo on discussion of state surveillance
before an audience that primarily views state media outweighed that
risk. Moreover, I hoped that Putin's answer - whatever it was - would
provide opportunities for serious journalists and civil society to push
the discussion further."
Edward Snowden hasn't escaped the NSA's watchful eyes purely by exploiting lax security -- he also uses the right software. He communicates with the media using Tails, a customized version of Linux that makes it easy to use Tor's anonymity network
and other tools that keep data private. The software loads from
external drives and doesn't store anything locally, so it's relatively
trivial for Snowden and his contacts to discuss leaks without leaving a
trace.
The underlying technology isn't completely original, and it's not
perfect; Tails' open source code and anonymous developer base help
resist pressure to include spy-friendly back doors, but there are still potential security holes. Users also have to be careful with their choices of internet services while using Tails, as the wrong ones
could give the whole game away. Even with those concerns in mind, the
software is a big help to Snowden, journalists and others that want to
keep their conversations under wraps with a minimum of effort.
Damage to U.S. national security
caused by NSA contractor Edward Snowden will take decades to repair,
the White House official in charge of cyber security said Friday.
“Make no mistake: We are going to be dealing with the fallout from
that for all of your careers, and the impact that that has had on our
national security will reverberate for decades,” Michael Daniel, special
assistant to the president for cyber security, told Naval Academy
midshipmen.
Daniel, in a speech to the academy’s Center for Cyber Security
Studies, also said the Obama administration has adopted a passive
approach to offensive and retaliatory cyber attacks against nation
states and criminal hackers caught attacking U.S. networks. Cyber
attacks are a tool of last resort after diplomacy and law enforcement
means are tried, he said.
“We are going to prioritize network defense and law enforcement”
before conducting offensive cyber attacks, Daniel said in a wide-ranging
speech.
The presidential cyber security official also said the administration
opposes placing control of the Internet under foreign governments,
despite a recent announcement that the federal government will give up
authority over the Internet name server group.
Instead, the administration favors what Daniel called a
multi-stakeholder approach to Internet governance involving both
governments and the private sector that would protect free speech and
dissidents.
Snowden, currently under the protection of the Russian government,
stole an estimated 1.7 million classified NSA documents using his access
as a computer administrator and by fooling several NSA employees into
providing their passwords.
Snowden compromised sensitive “accesses” used by the National
Security Agency to conduct electronic spying, along with “techniques and
tools that are no longer available to us,” Daniel said, without
elaborating.
Daniel said he has spent a huge amount of time over the past year
“trying to figure out how to plug the holes that Mr. Snowden revealed
that we have in the security of our classified networks.”
Other classified NSA systems are being rebuilt and the Snowden affair
also has undermined efforts to focus on other pressing cyber security
and national security issues, he said.
The comments on Snowden came in response to a question about whether
the U.S. government should offer amnesty to the renegade NSA network
administrator to recover the lost secrets, many of which have not been
disclosed.
Rick Leggett, head of a special NSA task force in charge of the
Snowden leaks, told CBS in December that offering some type of legal
deal to Snowden in exchange for the return of classified NSA documents
pilfered by Snowden is “worth having a conversation about.”
Daniel said he too would like to find out from Snowden the full
extent of the stolen classified documents, a portion of which were
disclosed to a few news organizations.
“I think it would be very valuable for us to actually understand in much greater detail everything that was taken,” Daniel said.
Outgoing NSA Director Army Gen. Keith Alexander has said he opposes
any amnesty for Snowden. “This is analogous to a hostage-taker taking 50
people hostage, shooting 10 and then say, ‘If you give me full amnesty,
I’ll let the other 40 go.’ What do you do?” Alexander said, also on
CBS. “I think people have to be held accountable for their actions.”
Snowden is facing espionage charges and U.S. intelligence officials
believe the documents he has with him were accessed by Russian and
possibly Chinese intelligence.
The most recent Snowden disclosures included classified documents
that revealed NSA cyber attacks against China’s Huawei Technologies, a
global Internet equipment manufacturer accused by the U.S. government of
serving as a covert arm of the Chinese intelligence and security
apparatus.
China has been linked by the U.S. government to large-scale theft of
U.S. government and private sector data through cyber espionage
operations.
On offensive cyber operations, Daniel said he has taken part in “long
and torturous debates” in the White House Situation Room on the use of
cyber attack capabilities, noting that “these are very, very difficult
problems” that will continue to be debated.
Regarding cyber retaliation against the growing threat of
increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, Daniel said deterrence and
attributing the source of attacks remains very difficult, and there are
complicated polices for retaliatory cyber attacks.
“It’s still very difficult to do really good attribution in cyber space,” Daniel said.
Hackers and foreign nation states do not use computer and network
servers labeled “bad guy servers,” he said, noting that they often
hijack other people’s networks when conducting attacks.
“So when we consider what we’re doing to actually strike back at some
of these things, we have to be very careful,” he said, adding that a
counter cyber attack might damage the network that provides electrical
power to a hospital or a university.
Still, the administration is working on policy tools that will
include cyber attacks in response, although the response will “not
always be in cyberspace.”
“The right response might be through diplomatic channels—‘Hey, we
know who you are. Knock it off’—and maybe through law enforcement
channels,” Daniel said.
Counter attacks against hackers could include digital strikes against
“botnets”—networks that have been taken over by cyber attackers and
used for malicious activities, he said. For such actions, international
cooperation will be needed.
International cyber strikes together with other nations simultaneously will increase the effect of the counterattacks, he said.
“This is hard. We’ve worked at it for several years; we’ve gotten better, but we need to do a lot more in that space.”
Deterring foreign cyber attacks will remain murky and for military
cyber warriors will involve an electronic “fog of war” that is similar
to its counterpart on conventional battlefields, Daniel said.
On Internet governance, Daniel said the administration is opposing
proposals by non-democratic states such as China, Russia, and Iran to
place control of the Internet under an international organization.
“It is not enough for us to assume that the status quo that we’ve
enjoyed for the last 15 or 20 years that has enabled the Internet to
thrive as an open platform are simply going to endure,” Daniel said.
“We face a real risk that the multi-stakeholder approach, this
approach that has enabled the platform that is the Internet to bring
civilians greater transparency, dissidents a protected voice, and
economies increased growth will soon change and not for the better,” he
added.
Some governments, which he did not name, favor an intergovernmental
approach to Internet governance that would fragment the Internet, slow
the pace of innovation, and hamper international economic growth.
The administration instead is favoring a joint government-private sector framework that would protect Internet freedom, he said.
Daniel did not address the administration’s controversial
announcement March 14 that the Commerce Department will give up control
over nonprofit group Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
(ICANN) next year.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich denounced the move as the removal of U.S. control over a vital resource.
“What is the global Internet community that Obama wants to turn the
Internet over to? This risks foreign dictatorships defining the
Internet,” he stated in a tweet.
Michele Van Cleave, former national counterintelligence executive, said the potential damage caused by Snowden is staggering.
Van Cleave said one likely impact is that future sources and methods of intelligence collection will be curtailed.
“Snowden’s treachery is especially grave because he exposed how all
the parts fit together—the blueprints for how America’s most significant
intelligence enterprise actually works—which is also the blueprint for
how to defeat it,” she said.
“So what does this mean in real terms? It means that the president
may not have the intelligence he needs to have for crucial decisions.
Nor will the Congress. We may not see threats we should have seen, never
mind opportunities. It means that there may be future attacks that we
do not see coming, which otherwise might have been prevented,” Van Cleav
said in an email.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top
U.S. military intelligence official said Tuesday that the Pentagon will
have to make costly changes to programs and personnel because of leaks
by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden.
Defense
Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn told the House
Intelligence Committee that his agency has to assume that Snowden took
every document he accessed, and that much of it concerned Pentagon
programs.
"We assume the worst
case in how we are reviewing all of the Defense Department's actions...
events, exercises around the world," said Flynn, whose agency produced a
classified report assessing the fallout of the Snowden leaks. He said
he believes there will likely have to be changes in all branches of the
U.S. military because investigators have to assume the information is
compromised.
"What he
potentially made off with ... transcends" the NSA's telephone and
Internet collection programs, said Director of National Intelligence
James Clapper, speaking before the committee's annual threat assessment
hearing. "Less than 10 percent has to do with domestic surveillance
programs," he said.
Clapper has called on Snowden and anyone who is helping him to return the remaining documents that have not yet been published.
Documents
released over the past year by Snowden have revealed that the NSA
sweeps up millions of Americans' phone and Internet records. Revelations
about the NSA's spy programs were first published in the Guardian and
The Washington Post newspapers in June, based on some of the thousands
of documents Snowden handed over to Barton Gellman of the Post,
Brazil-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, a
U.S. filmmaker.
The subsequent controversy has led President Barack Obama to ask agencies and Congress to consider some reforms.
Officials
have said Snowden downloaded some 1.7 million documents. U.S.
intelligence officials have said some of those documents include the
identities of undercover operatives. The officials spoke on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the
case.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014
In describing the effect of
Snowden's leaks, Clapper appeared to carefully retreat from his
contention last week to the Senate Intelligence Committee that the
disclosures were "the most massive and most damaging theft of
intelligence information in our history." Some historians and
researchers reacted to that comment by questioning whether the Snowden
leaks were more damaging than Soviet spy rings that stole U.S. atomic
bomb designs in the 1940s and funneled critical communications data and
lethally exposed American informants in Russia in the 1980s and 1990s.
Instead,
in his opening statement Tuesday, Clapper told the House panel that
Snowden's leaks were "potentially the most massive and most damaging
theft of intelligence information in our history."
House
Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers said the information Snowden accessed
includes countermeasures the U.S. military uses to avoid the
devastating improvised explosive devices used against troops in
Afghanistan, and increasingly beyond traditional war zones, aimed at
U.S. and Western officials in places like Libya.
He
also tried to draw out Clapper and Flynn on whether they believed
Snowden was somehow working with or being exploited by the Russian
intelligence services.
When
Flynn said "I don't have any information to that effect," that drew a
sharp "Excuse me?" from Rogers, who had discussed the same subject with
the two officials in a classified session the day before.
Flynn rephrased his reply, saying, "Yes, there is a possibility that he is under that influence."
Clapper
said there was no proof, but added that, "it's beyond belief to me that
they wouldn't be taking advantage of the ... opportunity both to
exploit and to control Snowden."
After
the hearing, Rogers said, "I can tell you from a whole series of
classified meetings, the folks who do this for a living believe he is
under the influence of the Russians." He also said he believes that if
Snowden carried any of the material with him or accesses it in any way,
the Russians will crack the code and breach the information — an opinion
echoed by senior House Intelligence Committee Democrat Adam Schiff of
California.
"Snowden has to
know that if he took that classified information into Russia, there has
to be a good chance the Russians will get hold of it," Schiff said in an
interview after the hearing.
Snowden
told The New York Times that he left all of the documents with
journalists in Hong Kong before traveling to Russia, where he has
temporary asylum.
Snowden has
denied working with the Russian government or any foreign intelligence
agency. Snowden's legal representatives could not be reached for
immediate comment.
Rogers,
R-Mich., also said an individual with access to the Snowden documents
was attempting to sell them for personal profit, but he would not
identify who that was. He asked FBI Director James Comey, also at the
hearing, whether such a person could be prosecuted for selling stolen
goods, but Comey demurred, saying if the individual in question was a
journalist he or she might be protected by the Constitution's rights to
free speech.
History has long since vindicated Ronald Reagan’s Cold War policy. Even
Sen. Ted Kennedy, whom no one would accuse of harboring pro-Reagan
sympathies, had to admit that Mr. Reagan “will be honored as the
president who won the Cold War.” But opinions have not always been so
united.
In his new book, “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of
Communism,” Grove City College professor Paul Kengor sheds light on a
letter written by KGB head Viktor Chebrikov to Soviet leader Yuri
Andropov. The letter is dated May 14, 1983, right as the debate was
heating up over Mr. Reagan’s proposed deployment of intermediate-range
nuclear weapons in Western Europe to counter the Soviets’ medium-range
rockets in Eastern Europe.
Most Democrats and much of the left were universally opposed to Mr.
Reagan’s plan, which they argued would lead to nuclear war. Heading the
list of critics was Mr. Kennedy, who had, according to the Soviet
letter, sent former Sen. John V. Tunney to meet with Kremlin leaders.
Chebrikov writes that Mr. Kennedy “charged Tunney to convey the
following message, through confidential contacts, to… Andropov.”
According to the letter, Mr. Kennedy was concerned with “Reagan’s
belligerence,” which he felt was in part the result of the president’s
popularity. “The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and
peace and Soviet-American relations,” wrote Chebrikov, relaying Mr.
Tunney’s message. “These issues, according to [Mr. Kennedy], will
without a doubt become the most important of the [1984] election
campaign.”
The letter goes on to say how Mr. Kennedy felt that the Soviets’
peaceful intentions were being “quoted out of context, silenced or
groundlessly and whimsically discounted.” Conversely, Mr. Reagan “has
the capabilities to counter any propaganda.” In other words, if the
letter is to be believed, Mr. Kennedy felt his own president was the
real aggressor.
Mr. Kennedy had two proposals for Andropov, according to Chebrikov.
First, he asked for a meeting later that summer in order “to arm Soviet
officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so
they may be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in
the USA.” Second, that “Kennedy believes that in order to influence
Americans it would be important to organize … televised interviews with
[Andropov] in the USA.”
If Chebrikov’s account of events is accurate, it’s clear Mr. Kennedy was
actively engaging the Russians to influence the 1984 election. He also
seems to have genuinely believed that Mr. Reagan’s policies were
endangering U.S.-Soviet relations and that the best solution was to get
Mr. Reagan out of office. The letter closes with Chebrikov saying that
“Tunney remarked that the senator wants to run for president in 1988,”
possibly suggesting Mr. Kennedy had other, more selfish motives.
As Mr. Kengor concludes, “if the memo is in fact an accurate account of
what transpired, it constitutes a remarkable example of the lengths to
which some on the political left, including a sitting U.S. senator, were
willing to go to stop Ronald Reagan.”
We agree. Even in a jaded world, it is breathtaking to discover a U.S.
senator — brother of a former president — actively and secretly
collaborating with Soviet leaders in an attempt to undermine the
president of the United States’ nuclear defense policy during the height
of the cold war.
The
headquarters of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Md. “We do
not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of
foreign companies,” an N.S.A. official said.Jim Lo Scalzo/European Pressphoto Agency
WASHINGTON
— The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000
computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct
surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for
launching cyberattacks.
While
most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer
networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology
that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are
not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer
experts and American officials.
The
technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a
covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit
boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In
some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that
intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
The
radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems
facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers
that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make
impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency
hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an
unwitting user.
The
N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against
foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when
Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of
American companies or government agencies, American officials have
protested, often at the presidential level.
Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command,
have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has
accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American
industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or
intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also
been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and
systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions
inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like
Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A.
map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network
exploitation.”
“What’s
new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence
agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has
ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity
expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while,
but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert
software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given
the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”
How the N.S.A. Uses Radio Frequencies to Penetrate Computers
The N.S.A. and the Pentagon’s Cyber Command have implanted
nearly 100,000 “computer network exploits” around the world, but the
hardest problem is getting inside machines isolated from outside
communications.
Transmission distance of up to eight miles
DATA FROM TARGET COMPUTER
TARGET
COMPUTER
DATA TRANSMITTED
BACK TO N.S.A.
Data and malware are transmitted
over a covert radio frequency
MALWARE
ANTENNA
CASE
N.S.A. FIELD
STATION
TRANSCEIVER
PLANTED INSIDE
USB CABLE
1. Tiny transceivers are built into USB plugs
and inserted into target computers. Small circuit boards may be placed
in the computers themselves.
2. The transceivers communicate with a briefcase- size N.S.A. field station, or hidden relay station, up to eight miles away.
3. The field station communicates back to the N.S.A.’s Remote Operations Center.
4. It can also transmit malware, including the kind used in attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
No Domestic Use Seen
There
is no evidence that the N.S.A. has implanted its software or used its
radio frequency technology inside the United States. While refusing to
comment on the scope of the Quantum program, the N.S.A. said its actions
were not comparable to China’s.
“N.S.A.'s
activities are focused and specifically deployed against — and only
against — valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence
requirements,” Vanee Vines, an agency spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“We do not use foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade
secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we
collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international
competitiveness or increase their bottom line.”
Over
the past two months, parts of the program have been disclosed in
documents from the trove leaked by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A.
contractor. A Dutch newspaper published the map
of areas where the United States has inserted spy software, sometimes
in cooperation with local authorities, often covertly. Der Spiegel, a
German newsmagazine, published the N.S.A.'s catalog
of hardware products that can secretly transmit and receive digital
signals from computers, a program called ANT. The New York Times
withheld some of those details, at the request of American intelligence
officials, when it reported, in the summer of 2012, on American cyberattacks on Iran.
President
Obama is scheduled to announce on Friday what recommendations he is
accepting from an advisory panel on changing N.S.A. practices. The panel
agreed with Silicon Valley executives that some of the techniques
developed by the agency to find flaws in computer systems undermine
global confidence in a range of American-made information products like
laptop computers and cloud services.
Embracing
Silicon Valley’s critique of the N.S.A., the panel has recommended
banning, except in extreme cases, the N.S.A. practice of exploiting
flaws in common software to aid in American surveillance and
cyberattacks. It also called for an end to government efforts to weaken
publicly available encryption systems, and said the government should
never develop secret ways into computer systems to exploit them, which
sometimes include software implants.
Richard
A. Clarke, an official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who
served as one of the five members of the advisory panel, explained the
group’s reasoning in an email last week, saying that “it is more
important that we defend ourselves than that we attack others.”
“Holes
in encryption software would be more of a risk to us than a benefit,”
he said, adding: “If we can find the vulnerability, so can others. It’s
more important that we protect our power grid than that we get into
China’s.”
From
the earliest days of the Internet, the N.S.A. had little trouble
monitoring traffic because a vast majority of messages and searches were
moved through servers on American soil. As the Internet expanded, so
did the N.S.A.'s efforts to understand its geography. A program named
Treasure Map tried to identify nearly every node and corner of the web,
so that any computer or mobile device that touched it could be located.
A
2008 map, part of the Snowden trove, notes 20 programs to gain access
to big fiber-optic cables — it calls them “covert, clandestine or
cooperative large accesses” — not only in the United States but also in
places like Hong Kong, Indonesia and the Middle East. The same map
indicates that the United States had already conducted “more than 50,000
worldwide implants,” and a more recent budget document said that by the
end of last year that figure would rise to about 85,000. A senior
official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the actual
figure was most likely closer to 100,000.
That
map suggests how the United States was able to speed ahead with
implanting malicious software on the computers around the world that it
most wanted to monitor — or disable before they could be used to launch a
cyberattack.
A Focus on Defense
In
interviews, officials and experts said that a vast majority of such
implants are intended only for surveillance and serve as an early
warning system for cyberattacks directed at the United States.
“How
do you ensure that Cyber Command people” are able to look at “those
that are attacking us?” a senior official, who compared it to submarine
warfare, asked in an interview several months ago.
“That
is what the submarines do all the time,” said the official, speaking on
the condition of anonymity to describe policy. “They track the
adversary submarines.” In cyberspace, he said, the United States tries
“to silently track the adversaries while they’re trying to silently
track you.”
If
tracking subs was a Cold War cat-and-mouse game with the Soviets,
tracking malware is a pursuit played most aggressively with the Chinese.
The United States has targeted Unit 61398, the Shanghai-based Chinese Army unit
believed to be responsible for many of the biggest cyberattacks on the
United States, in an effort to see attacks being prepared. With
Australia’s help, one N.S.A. document suggests, the United States has
also focused on another specific Chinese Army unit.
Documents
obtained by Mr. Snowden indicate that the United States has set up two
data centers in China — perhaps through front companies — from which it
can insert malware into computers. When the Chinese place surveillance
software on American computer systems — and they have, on systems like
those at the Pentagon and at The Times — the United States usually
regards it as a potentially hostile act, a possible prelude to an
attack. Mr. Obama laid out America’s complaints about those practices to
President Xi Jinping of China in a long session at a summit meeting in
California last June.
At
that session, Mr. Obama tried to differentiate between conducting
surveillance for national security — which the United States argues is
legitimate — and conducting it to steal intellectual property.
“The
argument is not working,” said Peter W. Singer of the Brookings
Institution, a co-author of a new book called “Cybersecurity and
Cyberwar.” “To the Chinese, gaining economic advantage is part of
national security. And the Snowden revelations have taken a lot of the
pressure off” the Chinese. Still, the United States has banned the sale
of computer servers from a major Chinese manufacturer, Huawei, for fear
that they could contain technology to penetrate American networks.
An Old Technology
The
N.S.A.'s efforts to reach computers unconnected to a network have
relied on a century-old technology updated for modern times: radio
transmissions.
In
a catalog produced by the agency that was part of the Snowden documents
released in Europe, there are page after page of devices using
technology that would have brought a smile to Q, James Bond’s technology
supplier.
One,
called Cottonmouth I, looks like a normal USB plug but has a tiny
transceiver buried in it. According to the catalog, it transmits
information swept from the computer “through a covert channel” that
allows “data infiltration and exfiltration.” Another variant of the
technology involves tiny circuit boards that can be inserted in a laptop
computer — either in the field or when they are shipped from
manufacturers — so that the computer is broadcasting to the N.S.A. even
while the computer’s user enjoys the false confidence that being walled
off from the Internet constitutes real protection.
The
relay station it communicates with, called Nightstand, fits in an
oversize briefcase, and the system can attack a computer “from as far
away as eight miles under ideal environmental conditions.” It can also
insert packets of data in milliseconds, meaning that a false message or
piece of programming can outrace a real one to a target computer.
Similar stations create a link between the target computers and the
N.S.A., even if the machines are isolated from the Internet.
Computers
are not the only targets. Dropoutjeep attacks iPhones. Other hardware
and software are designed to infect large network servers, including
those made by the Chinese.
Most
of those code names and products are now at least five years old, and
they have been updated, some experts say, to make the United States less
dependent on physically getting hardware into adversaries’ computer
systems.
The N.S.A. refused to talk about the documents that contained these descriptions, even after they were published in Europe.
“Continuous
and selective publication of specific techniques and tools used by
N.S.A. to pursue legitimate foreign intelligence targets is detrimental
to the security of the United States and our allies,” Ms. Vines, the
N.S.A. spokeswoman, said.
But
the Iranians and others discovered some of those techniques years ago.
The hardware in the N.S.A.'s catalog was crucial in the cyberattacks on
Iran’s nuclear facilities, code-named Olympic Games, that began around
2008 and proceeded through the summer of 2010, when a technical error
revealed the attack software, later called Stuxnet. That was the first
major test of the technology.
One
feature of the Stuxnet attack was that the technology the United States
slipped into Iran’s nuclear enrichment plant at Natanz was able to map
how it operated, then “phone home” the details. Later, that equipment
was used to insert malware that blew up nearly 1,000 centrifuges, and
temporarily set back Iran’s program.
But
the Stuxnet strike does not appear to be the last time the technology
was used in Iran. In 2012, a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards
Corps moved a rock near the country’s underground Fordo nuclear
enrichment plant. The rock exploded and spewed broken circuit boards
that the Iranian news media described as “the remains of a device
capable of intercepting data from computers at the plant.” The origins
of that device have never been determined.
On
Sunday, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency, Iran’s Oil
Ministry issued another warning about possible cyberattacks, describing a
series of defenses it was erecting — and making no mention of what are
suspected of being its own attacks on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil
producer.
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
stole vastly more information than previously speculated, and is holding
it at ransom for his own protection.
“What’s floating is so dangerous, we’d be behind for twenty years in
terms of access (if it were to be leaked),” a ranking Department of
Defense official told the Daily Caller.
“He stole everything — literally everything,” the official said.
Last month British and U.S. intelligence officials speculated Snowden had in his possession a “doomsday cache” of intelligence information, including the names of undercover intelligence personnel stationed around the world.
“Sources briefed on the matter” told Reuters that such a cache could
be used as an insurance policy in the event Snowden was captured, and
that, “the worst was yet to come.”
The officials cited no hard evidence of such a cache, but indicated
it was a possible worst-case-scenario. Some version of that scenario
appears to have come true.
“It’s only accessible for a few hours a day, and is triple encrypted
to the point where no one can break it,” the official said of the data
cloud where Snowden has likely hidden the information.
According to the official, there are at least two others in
possession of the code to access the information, and, “if we nail him —
he’ll release the data.”
“Everything you don’t want the enemy to know, he has,” the official
said. “Who we’re listening to, what we’re after — they’d shut us down.”
The damage would be “of biblical proportions,” the official said.
Another official from the NSA task force commissioned to assess the
data stolen and leaked by Snowden said on television recently that
granting Snowden amnesty is “worth having a conversation about” in order
to secure any potential stolen data.
Director of the NSA Gen. Keith Alexander said on “60 Minutes” Sunday
that he opposes the idea, and said that people need to be held
accountable for their actions. The White House stated Monday it would
not be changing its policy regarding Snowden.
The NSA director has repeatedly testified before Congress about the
revealed programs, and continues to state that the leaks have
compromised U.S. national security.
Alexander announced in October he would be retiring as NSA director
and head of U.S. Cyber Command effective March, and a recent White House
task force charged with improving NSA transparency has suggested
appointing a civilian head to steer the signals intelligence agency.
The official said that following Alexander’s retirement, he doesn’t “know how (the amnesty conversation) is going to play out
Is there a Snowden effect on American business?
Ever since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden
revealed elaborate cooperation between U.S. Internet and
telecommunications firms and the the nation's intelligence service,
Washington has been watching to see the companies involved would be
hurt. Cisco this week became the one of the first companies to say publicly that its sales were down as a direct result of the NSA
disclosures. The issue is whether overseas clients are reluctant to buy
Cisco's telecommunications equipment for fear that the organization
would gain access to their systems.
On an investor conference
call Wednesday, Benjamin Reitzes of Barclays Capital asked Cisco CEO
John Chambers whether the allegations had caused a slump in Cisco's
emerging market business, adding, "It is an impact in China."
"I think we're all aware of that." said Robert Lloyd, Cisco's president
of development and sales. "It's not having material impact, but it's
certainly causing people to stop and then rethink decisions. And that
is, I think, reflected in our results." (Read more: Cramer: 'Open rebellion' among Cisco investors)
Not many tech companies are so publicly connecting the dots between
Snowden and sales. A search of this year's Securities and Exchange
Commission disclosures for mentions of the "National Security Agency"
turns up very few references to a Snowden effect.
One company that did make such a statement is eBay.
In an October filing, the online auction site said the Snowden leaks
could lead European countries to impose tighter regulations that might
harm its business.
"There is significant international
pressure against the U.S. and the National Security Agency ...
regarding the collection of data by the NSA from U.S. companies," eBay
noted among a list of potential business risks. "Further restrictions or
regulation in the European Union could result as a direct reaction to
these events." (Read more: Google calls NSA surveillance outrageous)
The Snowden effect?
Did Edward Snowden's leaks
cause a drop in demand for U.S. technology? Are U.S. companies
struggling abroad because of concerns about their relationship with the
NSA? CNBC's Eamon Javers reports.
Other companies are handling the fallout privately.
A security expert for a global firm told CNBC that the company has
explored the idea of repatriating all its corporate data out of the
United States to keep it away from the NSA's prying eyes, though the
idea may turn out to be impractical.
Telecommunications
experts say companies may not have much of a choice. In an
interconnected world, telecom equipment is made by companies operating
in several nations, many of which have their own rapacious intelligence
services.
"It's a bit complicated," said one U.S. national
security and telecom expert. "The equipment used by NSA is almost all
now made by foreign firms like Alcatel Lucent, Ericsson and Nokia. ...
"[and] most other national carriers engage in similar activity. The
French may be the most aggressive."
