Tag: 1984 was a Warning not a Blueprint

[Digital] Papers Please

As the popular phrase “On the Internet nobody know that you’re a dog.” tries to explain the Internet is a bastion of anonymity. You can be whoever you want to be when posting online and if you properly utilize effective anonymity tools there is no practical way for anybody to connect your online identity to your real identify. This shield of anonymity enables truly free speech, which means the government wants to stop it. Meet the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) initiative, an attempt by the executive branch to force people to obtain a license to use the Internet. This license isn’t merely are method for the state to identify you as being qualified to use the Internet, it’s an attempt to remove the shield of anonymity that protects free speech online:

The draft NSTIC says that, instead of a national ID card, it “seeks to establish an ecosystem of interoperable identity service providers and relying parties where individuals have the choice of different credentials or a single credential for different types of online transactions,” which can be obtained “from either public or private sector identity providers.” (p. 6) In other words, the governments want a lot of different companies or organizations to be able to do the task of confirming that a person on the Internet is who he or she claims to be.

Decentralized or federated ID management systems are possible, but like all ID systems, they definitely pose significant privacy issues. 1 There’s little discussion of these issues, and in particular, there’s no attention to how multiple ID’s might be linked together under a single umbrella credential. A National Academies study, Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy, warned that multiple, separate, unlinkable credentials are better for both security and privacy (pp. 125-132). Yet the draft NSTIC doesn’t discuss in any depth how to prevent or minimize linkage of our online IDs, which would seem much easier online than offline, and fails to discuss or refer to academic work on unlinkable credentials (such as that of Stefan Brands, or Jan Camenisch and Anna Lysyanskaya).

Providing a uniform online ID system could pressure providers to require more ID than necessary. The video game company Blizzard, for example, recently indicated it would implement a verified ID requirement for its forums before walking back the proposal only after widespread, outspoken criticism from users.

Pervasive online ID could likewise encourage lawmakers to enact access restrictions for online services, from paying taxes to using libraries and beyond. Website operators have argued persuasively that they cannot be expected to tell exactly who is visiting their sites, but that could change with a new online ID mechanism. Massachusetts recently adopted an overly broad online obscenity law; it takes little imagination to believe states would require NSTIC implementation individuals to be able to access content somehow deemed to be “objectionable.”

I will go so far as to argue that truly free speech isn’t possible without the availability of anonymity. We see this whenever a company sues a customer who wrote a bad review, the state kidnaps a businessman, somebody is kidnapped for holding the wrong political belief. Imagine how much easier it would be for a business to sue anybody who left a negative review of their products if the NSTIC initiative was realized. Confirming the identify of the reviewer would be simple and that would put anybody leaving a negative review at risk of a lawsuit.

The only reason I can perceive for the executive branch’s push for its NSTIC initiative is for squashing political dissidence and suppressing critics of its corporate partners. Problems of authentication, authorization, and accounting have already been solved in numerous ways that allow an individual to keep their online identity separate from their real life identity. There are even methods that allow a user’s real life identify to be verified (which is what my certificate provider does). Nothing in the NSTIC initiative solves a problem that hasn’t been solved already. It merely introduces another way to solve these problems in a manner that centralized information for easy federal and corporate access.

Don’t Worry Mr. President, The Senate Has Your Back

The best thing about having three branches of government is that you can get three separate affirmations for all government activities. I kind of feel bad for dictators, kings, and other monarchs. When they make a decision they don’t have anybody else to back them up. But here in American when the government does something it’s first written and voted on by Congress, signed by the President, and ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court.

A few days ago President Obama was concerned that he might actually have to release details about the people who he ordered to be executed by drones. Fortunately the Senate reassured him that it had his back:

WASHINGTON — The Senate has quietly stripped a provision from an intelligence bill that would have required President Obama to make public each year the number of people killed or injured in targeted killing operations in Pakistan and other countries where the United States uses lethal force.

The move highlights the continued resistance inside the government about making these operations, primarily carried out using armed drones, more accountable to public scrutiny. In a letter to the Senate earlier this month, James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, expressed concern that a public report would undermine the effectiveness of the operations.

And with that simple removal the Senate affirmed that the President’s practice of withholding information about those executed by drones is totally cool. We’re still waiting for the Supreme Court’s affirmation of this behavior but that should be coming soon since the case is moving through the judicial system:

A federal appeals panel in Manhattan ordered the release on Monday of key portions of a classified Justice Department memorandum that provided the legal justification for the targeted killing of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who intelligence officials contend had joined Al Qaeda and died in a 2011 drone strike in Yemen.

The unanimous three-judge panel, reversing a lower court decision, said the government had waived its right to keep the analysis secret in light of numerous public statements by administration officials and the Justice Department’s release of a “white paper” offering a detailed analysis of why targeted killings were legal.

I’m sure the Supreme Court will reverse this decision quick, fast, and in a hurry. We can’t have the government going around disagreeing with itself, it creates a bad image.

Happy Loyalty Day You Stupid Serfs

Are you a good an obedient serf? Do you always do what your oligarchs commands of you? If so I have good news. Today is your day! That’s right, today is Loyalty Day:

In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America and pay tribute to the heritage of American freedom.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2014, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

For those of you not familiar with the history of Loyalty Day, it was first observed during the First Red Scare as a response to uppity socialists who chose May 1st to remember the 1886 Haymarket Massacre. During the Second Red Scare Congress passed observance of Loyalty Day into law.

It might seem pretty absurd that Congress would waste time passing the observance of Loyalty Day into law but when you look at the big picture it makes sense. The United States government opted for fascism, which made socialism its ideological enemy (national socialists really hate international socialists and vice versa). Hoping to stomp out its ideological rivals the United States government worked very hard to instill hatred of international socialism in the American people. This resulted in many stupid things included two Red Scares, the Cold War, and an absolutely retarded level of nationalism. Loyalty Day is merely the result of the retarded level of nationalism that exists in this country.

Now get out there, wave your flag, and pledge your lifelong obedience to the oligarchs that run this nation!

The Fourth Amendment Takes Another Hit Right to the Heart

Once again the Nazgûl have done an outstanding job of serving their master. This time they drove another stake through the heart of the already heavily staked Fourth Amendment:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that police can stop and search a driver based solely on an anonymous 911 tip.

The 5-4 decision split the court’s two most conservative justices, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority and Justice Antonin Scalia penning the dissent.

Checkpoints should be much easier to setup now that this ruling has been made. Just have a gun on a cellphone a few miles away from the checkpoint call in an “anonymous tip” on every vehicle the passes. Reasonable suspicion has been a bit too rigorous for cops wanting to search a vehicle. Thankfully this ruling means that they can “receive an anonymous tip” and search go ahead with the search. Many opportunities have been opened by this ruling and I’m sure we’ll get to see them all as creative officers wanting to throw around their power put their minds to the civil rights bypassing grind stone.

The Minnesota GOP Setting Itself Up to Fail Again

It’s nice to sit on the sidelines and observe the great political competitions as they play out. People often criticize those of us on the sidelines and claim that we’re not pulling our weight. But we see things from our vantage point that those playing the games do not. One example is the apparent inability of those playing for the Minnesota Republican Party (MNGOP) to see how ineffective their strategies are.

The MNGOP is currently putting its weight behind taking Al Franken’s seat. Considering Franken’s political track record this competition should be in the bag. Franken’s track record of supporting draconian intellectual property and Internet censorship laws and defending the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance apparatus should be enough ammunition to get young politicos fired up against him. At that point the MNGOP would only need to run a candidate who could stop himself from saying stupid shit in public, advocated Internet freedom, and demanded the abolition of the NSA to achieve victory.

But anybody with knowledge of Minnesota politics knows that the MNGOP can’t bring itself to use winning strategies. Instead one of the leading candidates for the MNGOP senate candidacy has decided to play the Democrat Party’s war on women strategy:

In a petition published on her Facebook page yesterday, Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Julianne Ortman says a recently released secret recording of Al Franken joking around in an Arizona driveway shows he “still doesn’t take women seriously.”

Here is the video in question:

Pro tip: never attempt to use your opponent’s strategy against them unless you actually understand it. The war on women strategy only works when the target has said something in a serious manner that makes him look misogynistic. It’s a strategy that works wonderfully against Republican candidates because they have a habit of saying very stupid shit in public. But Franken has never really said anything too misogynistic so using the strategy against him is foolish. In fact the video, which makes it obvious that Franken was trying to be comical, does more to humanize him than make him look misogynistic.

But the failboat doesn’t only dock at that harbor. Ortman also demonstrates that she’s not opposed to the NSA’s surveillance apparatus:

The FISA Court first was authorized in 1979 and operates in secret and ex parte (only the government gets to present its case). It makes sense that we don’t want our foreign enemies to know how we are gathering information to protect ourselves. However, I am deeply concerned that the court has migrated to granting orders authorizing the wholesale gathering of information about presumably innocent private citizens and residents of the United States under the guise of intelligence gathering against unnamed foreign threats. This is where there must be more transparency. To begin with, we should insist that the FISA Court’s analysis and legal justifications be reviewed and discussed publicly by policymakers, with the right of the general public to be heard and considered.

Justifying secret courts is something only a petty authoritarian would do. So that justification was the first mistake. The second mistake was asking for more transparency instead of complete abolition of the secret court. She could have said that the secret courts made sense at the time but now their time has passed and saved herself from looking like a complete authoritarian. But she chose to justify the establishment of the secret courts and then argue that they are still necessary but a little additional oversight would be nice. Franken’s campaign won’t be able to argue against secret courts due to its candidate support of the NSA surveillance apparatus. What it will be able to do is point out that Ortman also supports the NSA surveillance apparatus and render the issue irrelevant for the race.

To quote my friend, “This is why the GOP can’t have nice things.” The party is flailing in a desperate search for a life preserver. Franken’s seat would be pretty easy to snatch if the MNGOP would use an effective strategy. Instead it’s marketing a candidate who is little more than Fraken lite. I’m not aware of any races where an incumbent was removed from office by a candidate advertising him or herself as a lite version of the incumbent.

What’s even more pathetic is that the MNGOP will likely pull the same stupidity in the governor race. Mark Dayton has burned a lot of bridges and his seat could easily be taken but the MNGOP will likely run another lackluster candidate and use absolutely idiotic campaign strategies to ensure its defeat.

This is one hell of a game to observe but I sure am glad that I’m not playing it.

When Different Government Departments Have Mutually Exclusive Missions

Trying to unwrap every mission the federal government has tasked itself with is practically impossible. The beast as grown so large that no single individual can fully grasp it. There are many dangers inherit in such a massive system. One of those dangers is different departments holding mutually exclusive mission. Take the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for instance. One of its missions [Warning: link is operated by a dangerous gang of violent criminals] is to defend the nation’s communication infrastructure. This would imply discovering and notifying the public about potential security exploits. Now consider the National Security Agency (NSA). Its mission is to exploit vulnerable system of both domestic and foreign entities in order to spy on them. This mission is mutually exclusive to DHS’s:

WASHINGTON — Stepping into a heated debate within the nation’s intelligence agencies, President Obama has decided that when the National Security Agency discovers major flaws in Internet security, it should — in most circumstances — reveal them to assure that they will be fixed, rather than keep mum so that the flaws can be used in espionage or cyberattacks, senior administration officials said Saturday.

But Mr. Obama carved a broad exception for “a clear national security or law enforcement need,” the officials said, a loophole that is likely to allow the N.S.A. to continue to exploit security flaws both to crack encryption on the Internet and to design cyberweapons.

It is impossible for the government to both protect the nation’s communication infrastructure and not inform the public about major security flaws. When you discover a security flaw you cannot know for certain that you’re the only one who knows about it. Any number of people could have discovered it beforehand. That being the case you cannot assume that the flaw isn’t being actively exploited by nefarious individuals or organizations. Therefore the only way to protect the general public is to disclose information regarding the exploit so it can be fixed.

This is one of the reasons why any mission statement given by a government agency is meaningless. While one government agency may be tasked with a certain mission another agency is likely tasked with the exact opposite mission.

How the Government Buys Corporate Cooperation

Some people wonder why private companies cooperate with the state’s surveillance apparatus. Doesn’t such cooperation hurt a company’s bottom line? Haven’t technology companies traditionally been protecting of customer data? Well it’s pretty hard to hurt a company’s bottom line when they’re being paid by the state to snitch on customers:

The documents consist of what appear to be invoices and emails between Microsoft’s Global Criminal Compliance team and the FBI’s Digital Intercept Technology Unit (DITU), and purport to show exactly how much money Microsoft charges DITU, in terms of compliance costs, when DITU provides warrants and court orders for customers’ data.

In December 2012, for instance, Microsoft emailed DITU a PDF invoice for $145,100, broken down to $100 per request for information, the documents appear to show. In August 2013, Microsoft allegedly emailed a similar invoice, this time for $352,200, at a rate of $200 per request. The latest invoice provided, from November 2013, is for $281,000.

That’s not bad money when you consider Microsoft doesn’t have to do any real work. But that still leaves the second question unanswered. Why would Microsoft, like most technology companies, put any effort into protecting customer data if they’re just going to sell it? The answer is in the question. The reason technology companies have traditionally been protective of their customer data is because they sell that data. If you don’t protect customer data then anybody can get it for free, which would be a damn shame to explain at the quarterly shareholder meeting.

The state has found a way to gain the cooperation of the private sector by appealing to its financial interest. As this is the case one cannot assume that any data they put on third-party servers is safe from the prying eyes of the state.

How Much Water Does the NSA Use

How much water does the National Security Agency (NSA) use? That’s classified. I’m not even kidding. According to the NSA the amount of water its new data center in Utah uses is a matter of national security:

The National Security Agency has many secrets, but here’s a new one: the agency is refusing to say how much water it’s pumping into the brand new data center it operates in Bluffdale, Utah. According to the NSA, its water usage is a matter of national security.

The agency made the argument in a letter sent to officials in Utah, who are considering whether or not to release the data to the Salt Lake Tribune. Back in May, Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle asked for local records relating to the data center, but when he got his files a few months later, the water usage data was redacted.

We live in an era where practically everything the government does is labeled classified, which makes the label meaningless. Furthermore labeling everything as classified makes oversight of any government agency impossible. The total lack of transparency is part of the reason elections are meaningless. How can the people know who to elect to take care of problem parts of the government if they don’t even know what those problem parts are?

If You’re Reading This Then You’re On the NSA’s Watch List

Good news readers, you’re officially on the National Security Agency’s (NSA) watch list! I know what you’re thinking, how can I be on the agency’s watch list when I haven’t done anything. It turns out that the NSA assumes anybody using encryption is a suspect and this very website employes encryption. Some time ago I switched this site over to using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and forced any attempt to access the insecure version of this site to the secure version. It’s bad news for government spies trying to snoop on your web traffic but good news for the NSA when it comes time to point out how many suspected terrorists it’s tracking:

AUSTIN, Texas — Glenn Greenwald, editor of the newly launched digital publication The Intercept, told attendees at SXSWi that the National Security Agency is wary of anyone who takes steps to protect their online activity from being hacked, such as using encryption tools.

“In [the NSA’s] mind, if you want to hide what you’re saying from them, it must mean that what you’re saying is a bad thing,” Greenwald said via a Skype video call. “They view the use of encryption… as evidence that you’re suspicious and can actually target you if you use it.”

Why stop at using encryption for just websites? Since you’re already on the watch list you might as well start encrypting your e-mail and other forms of communication. Those agents at the NSA get paid good money so we might as well make them work hard for it.

Surveillance is For Thee Not For Me

Dianne Feinstein isn’t just an unpleasant congress critter (but I repeat myself) when it comes to guns. The crone is also unpleasant when it comes to the police state. Since she’s part of the oligarchy she’s all for mass surveillance… unless her and her compatriots are the ones being spied on:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a staunch defender of government surveillance of ordinary citizens, took to the Senate floor Tuesday with the stunning accusation that the Central Intelligence Agency may have violated federal law to spy on Congress.

Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, railed against the CIA for compromising the legislative branch’s oversight role — a theme echoed by many of her Senate colleagues throughout the day. The outrage was palpable among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and some suggested CIA Director John Brennan should resign if the allegations are true. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has stuck up for intelligence agencies in the past, declared a potential war.

“This is Richard Nixon stuff,” Graham told reporters. “This is dangerous to the democracy. Heads should roll, people should go to jail if it’s true. If it is, the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA.”

Her hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy of all those who advocated for government surveillance, is palpable at this point. But I’m not surprised to see this kind of double standard from Feinstein. After all she is the same woman who supports any law that restricts the ability of individuals not employed by the government to own firearms while also enjoying the protection that accompanies her armed body guards. I stopped paying attention to what that dingbat says long ago and I think you should to.