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Classified Cyber-Security Directive Puts NSA In Charge
dpreformer sends word that President Bush signed a classified directive Jan. 8 (it only came to light this week) putting all cyber-defense and counter-offensive activity for government networks under the aegis of the National Security Agency. Previously, federal agencies had disparate intrusion and attack monitoring programs. The directive does not address private-sector networks and systems. While some lawmakers and civil-rights advocates are unhappy with expanding the NSA's role domestically, one alternative that was considered and rejected — putting Homeland Security in charge — might have been worse. "A proposal last year by the White House Homeland Security Council to put the Department of Homeland Security in charge of the initiative was resisted by national security agencies on the grounds that the department, established in 2003, lacked the necessary expertise and authority. The tug-of-war lasted weeks and was resolved only recently, several sources said."
The NSA's probably the most qualified. Friends of mine who've worked there are some of the brightest people I know.
That said, I'm still pretty unhappy with them over the domestic spying. They really should have known better --- the damage to the democracy far outweighs the security loss involved. Thankfully my friends stopped working there before all this started... well AFAIK, clearances & all.
This is essentially an official statement, as I'm sure they're reading it right now.
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these guys do know what they're doing so far as security is concerned, that's true. The problem here, though, is less one of technical expertise as it is enforcement of standards and security best practices. The NSA would be the one of the best groups, I'd say, to lay out those standards in the first place ... whether they're a wise choice to enforce them is another question entirely. I don't have an answer to that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"Please remove your shoes before boarding the Series of Tubes..."
While this is not the most secret of the secretive (for years the very existence of the NSA was a secret) the fact that duties this big were assigned by a classified letter is appalling. When you couple this with the use of National Security Letters to compel the handover of goods to any thug in a trenchcoat it more and more appears that the goal of the present administration is to produce a kingly executive. One where oversight by the public and for the public is nonexistent and the whole process is simply inscrutable to us even as were are expected to knuckle under.
It is also interesting to me that it comes from this president who campaigned on the idea of a less controlling government, a smaller government, one that stayed out of our lives. This was based largely on the accusation that Clinton's favoratism for "Hate Crimes" legislation was an invasion of our privacy. It would be ironic if it was the least bit funny.
What I find is most interesting through is the use of the NSA in this manner. In many ways it is a textbook illustration of the way in which powers and agencies once built simply grow to fill all space they can. The NSA as initially instituted was a cold-war shop with the sole purpose of tapping and securing communications abroad while the existence of the group was a secret (many Americans were not aware of it until the 70's and the publication of the book "The Crystal Palace") it was, like the CIA, clearly setup to operate abroad and to spy on everyone but Americans.
It was, for lack of a better description a tool intended to work with us against others. With this addition that role has formally changed (it practically chainged with the AT&T hypocracy). While the formal change has been a secret the fact of the matter is that ever more of our resources are being turned inwards, onwords. Ever more effort is being expended to spy on us, on Americans with the understanding that our own government fears us as much or more than the rest of the world or at least that our own resources are better spent to attack us than others.
The idea of an executive floating on hostile seas rather than operating in safe waters has one crucial flaw. Dictators fall, and take everything around them, with them.
Bullshit. To find meaninful events, you are critical and selective. When looking for needles in metaphoric haystacks, you are best able to succeed with smaller haystacks. Anyone who has ever performed log analysis understands wht I always called "the bigger haystack problem". Log everything, and finding meaningful occurrences becomes impossible - or at least requiring too much effort for the value of the event.
Paller is a surveillance apologist, masquerading as a "security guru."
P.S. How do you really find a needle in a haystack? With a match.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Oh, it doesn't work here. Nevermind.
dpreformer: President Bush signed a classified directive Jan. 8
Ellen Nakashima; Washington Post Staff Writer; Saturday, January 26, 2008; A03:
January 26 - January 8 = 18 days.
I.e. it takes less than three weeks for "Congressional Aides" to leak our most sensitive secrets to our enemies.
I don't know why we even bother to have secrets.
In fact, the level of treason in Washington DC is so high these days that I don't even know why we bother to have a military or an NSA.
We might as well just run up the white flag and let the Chinese enslave & sodomize us.
The only thing I can say, is I've started some major "learning" about encryption and various other personal privacy applications.
.Net libraries and are required. This version is ALPHA quality and does not yet meet the current functionality of the 1.x branch. This was started due to the fact of people requesting features that would require significant rewrites to implement. Also FOSS. Available for Windows 98/98SE/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3/Vista 32 and 64 bit. Third party ports also available for PocketPC, Linux, MacOSX, J2ME, Blackberry, PalmOS.
So far, what I've found and like are:
TrueCrypt - "On-The-Fly" Disk/Storage Encryption. Actually, I've been using this for 24 hours and love it. I've also seen great reviews of this, and some of its very interesting features, such as plausible deniability. Oh, and its Free Open Source Software. Available for Windows 2K/2K3/XP/Vista, Linux, and soon MacOS (v5.0, due in Jan 08)
KeePass - Encrypted Password Storage Database. I've been using this for years, and love it. Also good reviews. If you wish to try it, there are two versions, v1.x and v2.x. v1.x (1.10 being current) is the original independent version. Can be run standalone, no system requirements (.Net or the like). Can be run from a USB Key. v2.x (2.04 being current) is a total rewrite of the application based on the
Gnu Privacy Guard - An open source PGP implementation. I use a port of this, GPG for Windows. It seems a bit clunky, and am actively looking for something to replace it so suggest away if you do know something better. I will say though that it does work as advertised, and its FOSS. GPG is distributed mainly as source code I believe, where as G4W is as binaries.
People have looked at some of us who use PGP/GPG, and other encryption/digital signatures for a few years with the look of "why do I need that, I have nothing to hide." I keep waiting for people to finally wake up and realize that the concept of "inherent privacy" (meaning anything not actively publicly published is not publicly known) is gone. We have entered the age of "explicit privacy." If you want something to be private, you must make explicitly so, especially on your computer, with these recent news articles of laptops being fair searching territories at Customs, or the reports that the NSA has feeds from AT&Ts offices to intercept everything.
This is a context thing. Whenever "cybercrime" or "cyberterrorism" is the topic, Paller is unearthed as the rational technology expert - rationailising the unpalatable and invasive loss of liberty that these grave threats require.
You don't see Bruce quoted by the WaPo or WSJ.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is basically about internal U.S. Government computer security. The problem is that the last three agencies assigned this task blew it. Early on, computer security was under NIST, which is really the old National Bureau of Standards. They were just an advisory agency on this. There was also an NSA effort, about which more later.
There's a National Cyber Security Division of Homeland Security. When it was set up, it was headed by Amit Yoran, who actually knew something about the subject. He was unpopular because he publicly mentioned the vulnerabilities of Microsoft operating systems as the biggest single problem. So he was replaced by Gregory Garcia, a lawyer and 3COM's lobbyist in Washington, who has accomplished little, if anything.
The General Services Administration, which handles public buildings and purchasing for most of the U.S. Government, has a role in computer security, but they haven't accomplished much. other than some vendor evaluation.
NSA first got into computer security in the 1980s, when I had some dealings with them. They had an institutional problem. First, it wasn't about the USSR, on which NSA used to be narrowly focused. Second, the computer security effort was located at the "Friendship Annex", which was NSA's lower-security facility near Friendship Airport (now BWI). FANX was where NSA's less important stuff was done - personnel, accounting, etc. Being assigned to FANX was a big career step down within NSA.
NSA went at computer security in the same way they went at safes and locks - you build it, they break it. NSA policy on evaluating the security of computer products was that the vendor got two tries. On try one, NSA told the vendor what was wrong. Try two was pass/fail - if they could break it, it flunked, and went on the rejected list. Vendors hated this.
Under heavy pressure from vendors, security evaluation was outsourced to third party companies, and vendors could retry forever until they wore down the evaluators. The higher levels of security (fully verified everything) were dropped from the evaluation criteria.
NSA Secure Linux was a good idea that didn't really catch on. Most Linux people don't get the point of NSA Secure Linux. It's not about making Linux more secure. It's about getting applications rewritten to work under a tight security model. Unless applications are rewritten to have only very small and heavily verified trusted parts, NSA Secure Linux doesn't help much.
While I have some problems with certain things the NSA has been doing of late, from the description in TFA there really isn't a privacy problem here.
"The directive, whose content is classified, authorizes the intelligence agencies, in particular the National Security Agency, to monitor the computer networks of all federal agencies"
"Supporters of cyber-security measures say the initiative falls short because it doesn't include the private sector -- power plants, refineries, banks -- where analysts say 90 percent of the threat exists."
So the NSA is going to be monitoring government networks, not private ones. I don't think there's any real expectation of privacy if you're sending bits to or over a government computer network.
It's definitely a strange argument to attempt when really what you need when searching for a needle in a haystack, is a method of needle location that IGNORES THE HAY, not cataloging each and every instance of !needle.
If one is searching for needles amongst haystacks, trying to control the size of the haystack or the number of haystacks seems rather....absurd.... Then the needles that don't want to be found now know exactly which pile to stay out of, even more so than now.
K, i think i've anthropomorphized at random enough for one post. I entirely agree with you except for that last bit, as needle finding tactics should require direct interaction with the hay itself as infrequently as possible.
Ice Cream has no bones.
The NSA as initially instituted was a cold-war shop with the sole purpose of tapping and securing communications abroad
Close, but not quite, if memory serves.
The NSA's limits were not so much geographical as they were national. The limits are more on foreign targets - whether or not those targets happen to be in the U.S. This would include foreign embassies and consulates on U.S. soil and foreign intelligence agents operating on U.S. soil as well, if memory serves (although much of this falls under the FBI, of course).
The CIA - another agency with a foreign focus - does much the same. It has numerous intelligence officers who interview U.S. citizens who travel to foreign countries of interest when that citizen allows it, run recruiting, and work with their own officers in the UN and in other places. The difference is not so much where the CIA and NSA operate as against whom they operate.
Terrorism throws a big kink in this, as some of the terrorist/terror supporters are U.S. citizens who, however, are acting under the power or inspiration of an ideology that knows no legal boundaries. Have these people given up U.S. citizenship, in a manner of speaking, by pledging their allegiance to a "foreign military"? (look at your passport for how to give up your citizenship) But are terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda, truly a military? Can terrorists - who act with very different motives, generally have different goals, and who often present a greater risk to life and limb - be treated as mere criminals?
It's a big area of debate at the moment and, unlike many on the web who would come down hard for one side or another, it's not entirely clear what the proper legal or policy answers are to these questions. Most law - international and otherwise - still assumes a type of war that will be increasingly rare for the U.S.; nations facing off against each other with well-identified armies. The simple fact is that war has changed, but the laws and policies are not keeping up with it - and it's doubtful they will be able to adapt with required speed.
There is a long history here that needs to be taken into consideration... We are seeing a paradigm shift in our government that is long overdue. It used to be that the government had to protect paper documents, "eyes only", and the biggest threat were photocopiers and miniature cameras... not any more.
I wrote about this transformation last year. Is it any wonder why the NSA is being brought up and groomed to help protect the critical information assets that the United States has?
From my post:
HumInt/SigInt:
Human Intelligence, CIA
Signal Intelligence, NSA
The English have been masters at the spy trade for centuries. In WWII, the United States felt that it should get into the act and turned to the English for guidance.
With their tutelage, the CIA became a formidable tool against the Soviet threat throughout the cold war. We had clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders. Gathering intelligence became a methodical science... then, once the Soviet Union collapsed, the clearly defined enemies with clearly defined borders went with it.
The growth of the internet created an atmosphere wherein information and 'intelligence' became a commodity. Then the emergence of an enemy that is not only difficult, if not impossible, to clearly define but who also operates entirely without borders. The polar opposite from what the CIA were trained to do.
Not only has this rule-set reset turned the CIA upside-down, it has rendered it all but useless. The UK isn't doing much better either. The problem is that western society itself is at odds with the rules required to make an effective spy agency. Our open government(s), free access to information, laws against spying on citizens and so forth are what both protect our civil liberties as well as create the environment in which our enemies can plot against us.
The CIA knew about al Qaeda operators operating in the USA prior to 9/11, yet did nothing to notify the FBI. This is because of the opposing nature of each agency. The CIA finds a criminal and wants to string them along to see what intelligence they can uncover by monitoring them. When the FBI finds a criminal, they want to string them up. From the CIA perspective, the FBI sure knows how to screw up an investigation and destroy your intelligence network.
The CIA is now dysfunctional to the point of uselessness. In fact, there isn't a single effective spy agency in the western world. The current battle we're fighting and the enemy we face is one that cannot be defeated by military might, it is a war that MUST be fought using intelligence.
So, the administration turned to the only other agency with experience in gathering and monitoring enemies. It also happens that this agency is experts at SigInt, as opposed to the HumInt. The problem is that the NSA is forbidden by law from spying on American Citizens, UNLESS they are monitoring overseas communications. This exception has always been allowed, no warrant necessary. There is no law that states that I have the constitutional right to conspire with enemies overseas.
No other nation even comes close to the SigInt capabilities of the NSA...
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
>Staffed and run by a lot of political appointees. There are no -- as in none -- political appointees at NSA. Not a one.
The FBI, CIA, NSA are now subcontractors for an unknown (to us, at least) asset managing entity.
It's like a shell game, Area 51 is now too well known, but they keep up appearances - wave your hand over here - palm the coin in another.
What we keep doing is concentrating on what we think is possible (tech-wise) while you have absofuckinglutly amazing things happening right under our noses. (i.e. what ARE those networking protocol hardlinks DOING in your bootblock under "bad boot sectors".
Chip crowding/code obfuscation is another.
Get the picture?
The real power doesn't want the exposure.
~hylas
You guys are in denial. You think there's a single public encryption application the NSA hasn't got an easily opened back door into?
Ever heard of Crypto AG?
"It may be the greatest intelligence scam of the century: For decades, the US has routinely intercepted and deciphered top secret encrypted messages of 120 countries. These nations had bought the world's most sophisticated and supposedly secure commercial encryption technology from Crypto AG, a Swiss company that staked its reputation and the security concerns of its clients on its neutrality. The purchasing nations, confident that their communications were protected, sent messages from their capitals to embassies, military missions, trade offices, and espionage dens around the world, via telex, radio, teletype, and facsimile. They not only conducted sensitive albeit legal business and diplomacy, but sometimes strayed into criminal matters, issuing orders to assassinate political leaders, bomb commercial buildings, and engage in drug and arms smuggling. All the while, because of a secret agreement between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Crypto AG, they might as well have been hand delivering the message to Washington. Their Crypto AG machines had been rigged so that when customers used them, the random encryption key could be automatically and clandestinely transmitted with the enciphered message. NSA analysts could read the message traffic as easily as they could the morning newspaper. The cover shielding the NSA-Crypto AG relationship was torn in March 1992, when the Iranian military counterintelligence service arrested Hans Buehler, Crypto AG's marketing representative in Teheran...."
http://mediafilter.org/caq/cryptogate/
It's not like people can read through the machine language output of a crypto application to make sure there isn't anything extra that been attached to the output that gives away the key. It's encrypted. it looks like garbage.
All the NSA has to do is either get someone to join the project helping develop the software, or swap the download file with one that includes whatever the NSA wants included. Matter of fact... how do you know the developers of, for example, "true crypt" isn't the NSA itself?
This is the Bush Administration, dude. The most secrecy obsessed White House in US History. They've got the FBI tracking and conducting surveillance like little senior citizen Quaker pacifist groups.