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Intelligence Officials Fear Snowden's 'Doomsday' Cache
Dega704 writes with news that Edward Snowden is believed to have a collection of highly sensitive classified documents that will be released in the event he is detained, hurt, or killed. According to Reuters, "The data is protected with sophisticated encryption, and multiple passwords are needed to open it, said two of the sources, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. The passwords are in the possession of at least three different people and are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said. The identities of persons who might have the passwords are unknown." These details have caused several security experts to express skepticism, but multiple sources, including Glenn Greenwald, believe Snowden has not released all of the documents he appropriated. "U.S. officials and other sources said only a small proportion of the classified material Snowden downloaded during stints as a contract systems administrator for NSA has been made public. Some Obama Administration officials have said privately that Snowden downloaded enough material to fuel two more years of news stories." Whether or not it's true, U.S. and U.K. officials clearly believe it, which can only serve to protect Snowden.
There is years' worth of material that makes intelligence analysts nervous. Just how much dirt could the US possibly have that they don't want people to know?
Bruce Schneier commented on this a while back:
I'm not sure what Snowden's alternative is, but a doomsday switch isn't exactly foolproof.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
How would that even work? Is there a central server that keeps the data and decides what time it is? That sure sounds safe.
Because there is some stuff in there that legitimately should be kept secret. Snowden's goal is to protect his safety and liberty by hanging this cache of really damaging data over their heads as a way of discouraging any attempts to capture or kill him.
Why would the US government intentionally indicate that they believe such a thing? What this accomplishes is to encourage anyone who wants to hurt the US to kill Snowden (forcing the release of the supposed super-damaging materials). If that's the message the US propaganda spooks want everyone to hear, then you should be looking for ulterior motives. I'd guess there isn't anything so terribly damaging (that can't be whitewashed away as well as the rest of the stuff has been) that would really be "doomsday" for the US.
Rather than having everything eventually trickle out over several years, well-times to keep the media pressure against the US surveillance state, I suspect it would be preferable to the NSA and friends if Snowden were forced to dump everything all at once (perhaps by being killed). Everything's going to come out eventually --- by having it all in one heap, the total impact on public perceptions (what really matters here) is reduced: one quick spike in media attention and outrage, then it's all "old news" and there's no time for serious public analysis of the implications of each individual revelation.
Snowden and friends of democracy and freedom have an advantage by controlling the gradual release of information --- otherwise, they'd have dumped it all already. Forcing everything out at once (by encouraging every dumber enemy of the US to try assassinating Snowden) would help the PR effort to quickly wash this whole mess away from public attention. It would sure make it easier for the US officials to keep their lies straight, if everything they were lying to refute was already available.
if they are fearing what he hasn't released yet.
They know what they did was wrong, and apparently have done even worse stuff.
Time for a change in Government.
Be seeing you...
Snowden's slow release has been keeping this story in the news. He's helping to build controversy around the programs. Releasing everything at once would just overwhelm the media and the pubic's ability to address all the issues raised.
Join us in our traditional gathering around the samovar, for a Christmas presentation of what's surely to become an RT classic:
"Snowed In with Snowden". Edward Snowden invites various RT holiday gusts, for the cheer of the season, in the shadow of St. Basil's. The laughs begin, as Max Kaiser drops by with a little flask of "holiday cheer" - and some very special "snow" of his own. Then, we solemnize with George Galloway and Ken Livingston, who join Ed for a haunting rendition (did we just use that word?) of "Rudolph, The Red Nosed Reindeer". But hang tight on the presents! Orthodox Chrismas in't til January, innit?
Well, happy Feast of Epiphany, in any matter. Stay tuned!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As a geek, a software developer and a security guy with a library of Schneier books on his bookshelf, I personally think that a list of "Technologies now considered "safe" for foreign spies, terrorists, and criminals to use - but have actually been hacked" is EXACTLY the sort of thing someone like Snowden should be leaking.
Deliberately making widely-used things less secure in order to catch bad guys (including withholding exploit information that could be used to make things more secure) is NOT something the good guys should be engaging in. (and yes I still consider the US, UK and Australia as "good guys")
For example, if the NSA knows how to cryptoanalyze AES or PGP, the methods used getting into the hands of criminals would be bad for everyone.
Unless someone within the NSA realized there was a billion dollar payday if he sold those methods to certain criminals or countries.
In which case the public isn't safe and doesn't know it.
That's even worse.
Some things should be secret from the public, nuclear launch codes, names of spies, etc... but interent security affects all of us, and its not making anybody safer to try and hide a vulnerability there.
The NSA isn't magic. If the NSA can break AES, then anyone else might figure it out too.
"The passwords ... are valid for only a brief time window each day, they said."
How does that work?
There's no literal way for that to work, but there are ways to protect sensitive data in a way that could be described in that way.
One way I can think of is to get someone I know to buy something like an Amazon instance in a way that isn't traceable to me. Then I upload my data in an encrypted fashion into the instance. Then I give a set of people different passwords to log into the virtual machine running in that instance. Then I set the instance to power on in a scheduled manner so that the instance is only accessible at certain moments in time known to the people I give the passwords to. At all other times the instance is powered off and the people with the passwords to it do not have any knowledge of how to manage the instance itself directly. Thus, the people I designate as trustees for the data only have access at certain times. On top of that, they could have different segments of a key-split so that to actually access the data requires at least two different people logging into the instance and providing their keys, or alternatively one person logging in and providing two different key segments.
Why you might do something like this is to try to minimize the availability of the data from being discovered or cracked. Most of the time, the data isn't on a system that is in any real way accessible from the internet. Furthermore, it also makes it less expensive to create multiple data caches in the cloud because the cost of running the systems would be very low, since they would not be running most of the time.
They should fear the Constitution and not do this shit in the first place.
Didn't they say you only need privacy if you've got something to hide?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
A: 3.6Gb http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsurance-20130815-A.aes256.torrent [wlstorage.net]
B: 49Gb http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsurance-20130815-B.aes256.torrent [wlstorage.net]
C: 349GB http://wlstorage.net/torrent/wlinsurance-20130815-C.aes256.torrent [wlstorage.net]
I think we all can agree that 3.6GB was within Snowden's opportunity and ability to gather. But, 49GB and 349GB ?!! That is a LOT of data to quietly move to USB sticks. If the last two truely are Snowden files, then it looks to me like he may have had an accomplice. Wouldn't it be so cool if there is a freedom-loving mole in a high position of the NSA?
Not that they've been doing a particularly good job lately; but the US's strongest international PR move (and, incidentally, weapon in encouraging foreign defectors) is being 'the guys who don't have any creepy secrets (aside from things like the specifics of how atomic bombs work, which the Rosenbergs went down for). Unfortunately, we've squandered that of late. Being 'the good guys' isn't just some bleeding-heart bullshit to appease liberal pinkos. It's a powerful tool in any soft-power contest of ideas. Having nothing but weapons-related details to hide was an extreme moral-high-ground position. We'll be damn lucky to see something nearly so good again in my lifetime. Will we ever see something truly golden, as we did in WWII, with Axis units bumbling around looking for Americans to surrender to? That is what 'soft power' really looks like. It doesn't deliver the goods every day; but on a good day it isn't some theoretical, it's one hell of an advantage. Can we regain that sort of reputation?
If the NSA can break AES, then anyone else might figure it out too.
One of the NSA's mandates is to secure American communications. They have certified AES as being sufficient for Federal agencies to use to secure classified information, and even Top Secret classified information with large enough (192 or 256 bit) keys. This suggests one of two things:
Common sense says it's #2. Could the best American cryptographers have it completely wrong, and we'll find out when the next Pearl Harbor happens? Certainly. Is it a conspiracy where they know it's weak and are keeping it so in order to read your e-mail? Not bloody likely.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In other words, Snowden is neither stupid nor suicidal.
Do you have a justification for trying to spy on every person on the planet? Do you have a justification for a system that's more about corporate espionage than stopping terrorism? Do you have a justification for tut-tutting Snowden's revelations when the USG flippantly stated that it was listening in on Al Queda conference calls - about the most valuable counter-intelligence secret you could name?
But this is a bullshit talking point, always has been always will be. It ignores the depth and pervasiveness of the NSA programs, the disparity in capability, and the geographical isolation of the U.S. from the rest of the world. You wouldn't say that Angola has a military, so it's equal in capability to the U.S. military, would you? Then why are you guys doing this with the NSA programs?
That is why I've said from the beginning that, if only for PR purposes, the US is most likely working the hardest to KEEP HIM ALIVE.
Because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad HIMSELF could walk up and knife Snowden, and it would be blamed entirely on the US.
-Styopa
The NSA subverted American communications deliberately, and have introduced vulnerabilities into encryption via NIST. AES may or may not have been broken or subverted, but yes they are that stupid:
https://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=15531
Given that one of their other mandates is not to lie to congress, to abide by the rulings of the FISA court, and not to spy on Americans (all of which they have breached), I think you can assume that they don't care what their legal restrictions are and do not respect them.
It was a damn good shot, I'll admit that. But I've seen plenty of people make tougher shots at faster moving targets from more restrictive positions while hunting wild game.
He wouldn't have needed a spotter because he would have had plenty of audible cues for the approaching limo. Watching people in the crowd react would have served as all the warning he needed, as they pointed, stood up, jumped waved, shouted, cheered, and generally became exited as JFK came into their view.
As for the angle, it's entirely possible that he shot the rifle left-handed which would have made it a lot easier to get that angle without leaning so far out. I myself am a right-handed person but I'm what is often called "left-eyed".. it's easier for me to shoot a rifle left-handed than right.
As for knowing which head to shoot at, that's also pretty easy. It's the one right next to his wife. If I were in his shoes, I would've just looked for the woman with the fashion sense who stuck out like a sore thumb in a group of men in suits. She was always well-dressed and easy to spot in a crowd.
I'm not saying I necessarily think Oswald did it alone, but all the things you've brought up I can quickly find reasonable explanations as to why they don't prove anything. And they were all already addressed many times in both official and unofficial examinations of the shooting. Keep in mind that Oswald was highly experienced and military trained, he wasn't just some random guy who picked up a rifle for the first time that day.
Seeing that I was a young boy in Dallas when this happened and actually got to shake his hand earlier in the day...
Could you please make sure we never shake hands?
But thats the point isn't? everything they have touched is now suspect.
Everything single thing they have changed has to be viewed as an attempt to insert a trojan. Everything single thing they have recommended has to be viewed as an attempt to limit the effectiveness of security systems to something which the NSA knows they can break one way or another.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.