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From Public Media:  Internet S.O.S. <read>

Is the Internet on life support?

Last week we learned that U.S. and British intelligence agencies have broken the back of digital encryption — the coded technology hundreds of millions of Internet users rely on to keep their communications private.

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the NSA and its British counterpart are also hacking into smartphones to monitor our daily lives in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before the age of the iPhone.

This news, just the latest revelations from the files of Edward Snowden, only heighten our sense that we can no longer assume anything we say or do online is secure.

But that’s not all. In a case that was heard in a U.S. federal appeals court on Monday, telecommunications colossus Verizon is arguing that it has the First Amendment right to block and censor Internet users. (That’s right. Verizon is claiming that, as a corporation, it has the free speech right to silence the online expression of everybody else.)

Government and corporate forces have joined to chip away at two pillars of the open Internet.It’s come to this. Government and corporate forces have joined to chip away at two pillars of the open Internet: the control of our personal data and our right to connect and communicate without censorship or interference.

The Surveillance Industrial Complex

A series of reports coordinated among the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica revealed that the NSA and its British counterpart have secretly unlocked encryption technologies used by popular online services, including Google, Facebook and Microsoft…

The secret vote has not always been guaranteed in the U.S. People used to vote in public, the way the Connecticut Legislature and the U.S. Congress does, where we know every vote. Public voting systems have advantages in integrity – it is easy to know the votes were recorded and tabulated correctly when they are given and posted publicly. What could go wrong…

The problems with a public vote are vote buying and intimidation. In the old days before the Civil War, it was superficially who would provide the most food or the best beer. Yet, it was more likely intimidation that led citizens to vote the way their friends, employers, benefactors, or bullies would want. Today, most people believe the secret vote is in the public interest.

For the benefits it provides, the secret vote has some costs and risks. Polling places, ballots, and absentee ballots are constructed and managed in ways that make it difficult, hopefully close to impossible, for any voter’s vote to be determined by others and proven to others by the voter. (Absentee votes being an exception, where voters can easily, yet illegally, demonstrate their vote to a buyer, friend, or intimidator). Extra work is required in counting secret votes, keeping them secret, and risks that they are not correctly recorded or tabulated, based on fraud or error. Thus, for the secret ballot we have increased cost, risk incorrect results, and reduced credibility.

There is perhaps something even worse than the risks of the secret vote or the risks of the public vote. Voting via Internet in a way that has many of the risks of public voting, without the benefits, along with the risks of secret voting and lack of confidence in the system. That would be Internet voting with election official insiders, outside hackers, outside political interests, outside business interests, and the Government itself able to see your vote and possibly manipulate the result; no credibility and plenty of perceived intimidation.

What is perceived intimidation?  We can easily envision the soldier going into a room to vote on the Internet, told by his superior several times, perhaps with a wink, “Nothing to worry about troop, the system is secure. I could not possibly know how you voted”. We can envision similar scenarios for Government employees, business employees, or church members “encouraged” to vote on computers owned by their employer, union, or church. No actual Interned insecurity required, just perceived intimidation.  Less easy to envision, is that it would actually be the same for the rest of us voting at home over the Internet, knowing that many can know our vote, but we cannot be sure that our vote or anyone’s is correctly counted.

Yesterday the New York Times, ProPublica, and the Guardian broke a major story. Several weeks ago, Glen Greenwald said there was much more to come based on the information obtained by Edward Snowdon. For several of those weeks we have had disturbing, yet relatively minor disclosures. Yet once again, Snowdon has providing something huge. From the Times: N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web <read>

 Because strong encryption can be so effective, classified N.S.A. documents make clear, the agency’s success depends on working with Internet companies — by getting their voluntary collaboration, forcing their cooperation with court orders or surreptitiously stealing their encryption keys or altering their software or hardware.

According to an intelligence budget document leaked by Mr. Snowden, the N.S.A. spends more than $250 million a year on its Sigint Enabling Project, which “actively engages the U.S. and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products’ designs” to make them “exploitable.” Sigint is the acronym for signals intelligence, the technical term for electronic eavesdropping…

In one case, after the government learned that a foreign intelligence target had ordered new computer hardware, the American manufacturer agreed to insert a back door into the product before it was shipped, someone familiar with the request told The Times.

To state the obvious, this should end the myth that encryption actually protects the secret vote, and vote integrity, if it really could have in the first place. Basically:

• The NSA can hack almost any encrypted communications
• They have coerced companys to put in back doors in software and hardware
• They compromised encryption standards
• The UK and other countries share in the secret and results
• Edward Snowdon did not have authorized access to the information, yet was able to obtain it
• Internet banking, purchases, stock trades, etc. are all exposed and vulnerable for the public and corporations

You can also listen to Glen Greenwald and Bruce Schneier on DemocracyNow!. <read/view>  They are providing further insights.  Not only that we have no reason to trust companies who claim useful encryption software, but that the holes created for the NSA are available to others for whatever purpose they might want. Some sophisticated users may be able to use open-source encryption and still protect their communications.

Perhaps worse, encryption standards have been hacked by the NSA, while scientists have been hoodwinked or compromised:

Cryptographers have long suspected that the agency planted vulnerabilities in a standard adopted in 2006 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and later by the International Organization for Standardization, which has 163 countries as members.

Classified N.S.A. memos appear to confirm that the fatal weakness, discovered by two Microsoft cryptographers in 2007, was engineered by the agency. The N.S.A. wrote the standard and aggressively pushed it on the international group, privately calling the effort ‘a challenge in finesse.’

‘Eventually, N.S.A. became the sole editor,’ the memo says.

In the 90’s we had a battle in congress over the government requiring back doors in encryption hardware and software. The spies lost, the public won. But in the end we have learned that we cannot trust our government. We need, once again to become a nation of laws, as Greenwald pointed out in his book, published before he had met Edward Snowdon.

A follow-up story in the Times today: Legislation Seeks to Bar N.S.A. Tactic in Encryption <read>

An example of the usual response from the NSA. This is not news, everyone knows we do it, yet its really damaging.

A statement from the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., criticized the reports, saying that it was “not news” that the N.S.A. works to break encryption, and that the articles would damage American intelligence collection.

The reports, the statement said, “reveal specific and classified details about how we conduct this critical intelligence activity.”

“Anything that yesterday’s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate,” it continued, “is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions.”

But if intelligence officials felt a sense of betrayal by the disclosures, Internet security experts felt a similar letdown — at the N.S.A. actions.

It does hurt. It is the truth that hurts:

But the perception of an N.S.A. intrusion into the networks of major Internet companies, whether surreptitious or with the companies’ cooperation, could hurt business, especially in international markets.

“What buyer is going to purchase a product that has been deliberately made less secure?” asked Mr. Holt, the congressman. “Even if N.S.A. does it with the purest motive, it can ruin the reputations of billion-dollar companies.”

In addition, news that the N.S.A. is inserting vulnerabilities into widely used technologies could put American lawmakers and technology companies in a bind with regard to China.

Over the last two years, American lawmakers have accused two of China’s largest telecommunications companies, Huawei Technologies and ZTE, of doing something parallel to what the N.S.A. has done: planting back doors into their equipment to allow for eavesdropping by the Chinese government and military.

Both companies have denied collaborating with the Chinese government, but the allegations have eliminated the companies’ hopes for significant business growth in the United States. After an investigation last year, the House Intelligence Committee concluded that government agencies should be barred from doing business with Huawei and ZTE, and that American companies should avoid buying their equipment.

We will leave for another day, a discussion of the implications for voting integrity and democracy.

Editor’s Note:  The three most basic issues upon which all others depend are media reform, the rule of law, and election integrity. If I could waive a wand and magically choose just one, it would be media reform – with media reform election integrity and the rule of law would be possible and likely, without it election integrity is of little consequence.  I spend my time on election integrity because the problems and workable solutions come naturally to me based on my knowledge, education, and experience.” Today, I would add a third basic issue upon which all others depend, the rule of law and not of people [or corporations. Two previous book reviews focus on the rule of law and media reform/freedom.

Highly recommended reading. New York Times magazine, yesterday: How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets <read>

This is a tale of three individuals Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowdon focusing on the less known of the three, Poitras, and her struggles with a country bent on suppressing information required of its citizens to participate in, direct, and obtain democracy.  It would be quite a movie trailer or book sample text, yet perhaps too unbelievable. As reality it is deeply disturbing, a profound call to action. Well written and engaging we recommend reading the entire article.

Once again we are in agreement with a Hartford Icon:

“It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” – Mark Twain

*******Update #1.The intimidation spreads to family and to the UK, Glenn Greenwald writes: Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation <read>

This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It’s bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It’s worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.

If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded. If anything, it will have only the opposite effect: to embolden us even further. Beyond that, every time the US and UK governments show their true character to the world – when they prevent the Bolivian President’s plane from flying safely home, when they threaten journalists with prosecution, when they engage in behavior like what they did today – all they do is helpfully underscore why it’s so dangerous to allow them to exercise vast, unchecked spying power in the dark.

 

******** Update #2. Meanwhile a “journalist” by everyone’s definition but the media’s dishes it out but cannot take it: Assassination TIME: Sr. journalist ‘can’t wait’ to justify drone strike that will kill Assange <read>