Is He A Legitimate President? Or Just A Temporary Anomaly Who Has To Be Carefully Dealt With & Worked Around? Or Something Worse?

It makes me sick that so many Americans-- thirty-something percent-- actually believe a word the asshole says. Saturday night it was another scare tactic/threat that "if anyone but me takes over in 2020 (I know the competition very well), there will be a Market Crash the likes of which has not been seen before!" Hours later he was fighting with the NY Times-- accusing them of treason-- for exposing how worried the military is that they can't trust the "Putin president" with secret information.

David Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, in their report, U.S. Escales Online Attacks On Russia's Power Grid wrote something that would have been unthinkable about any other president but is so obvious about Trump as to be almost an afterthought. Ostensibly, the story was that the U.S. has been "stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning" to Putin. "In interviews over the past three months, the officials described the previously unreported deployment of American computer code inside Russia’s grid and other targets as a classified companion to more publicly discussed action directed at Moscow’s disinformation and hacking units around the 2018 midterm elections... Bolton, said the United States was now taking a broader view of potential digital targets as part of an effort 'to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, You will pay a price.'"

The commander of United States Cyber Command, Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, has been outspoken about the need to “defend forward” deep in an adversary’s networks to demonstrate that the United States will respond to the barrage of online attacks aimed at it.

“They don’t fear us,” he told the Senate a year ago during his confirmation hearings.

But finding ways to calibrate those responses so that they deter attacks without inciting a dangerous escalation has been the source of constant debate.

Mr. Trump issued new authorities to Cyber Command last summer, in a still-classified document known as National Security Presidential Memoranda 13, giving General Nakasone far more leeway to conduct offensive online operations without receiving presidential approval.

But the action inside the Russian electric grid appears to have been conducted under little-noticed new legal authorities, slipped into the military authorization bill passed by Congress last summer. The measure approved the routine conduct of “clandestine military activity” in cyberspace, to “deter, safeguard or defend against attacks or malicious cyberactivities against the United States.”

Under the law, those actions can now be authorized by the defense secretary without special presidential approval.

“It has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year,” one senior intelligence official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity but declining to discuss any specific classified programs. “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.”

The critical question-- impossible to know without access to the classified details of the operation-- is how deep into the Russian grid the United States has bored. Only then will it be clear whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness or cripple its military-- a question that may not be answerable until the code is activated.

The shocking part of The Times' report, buried deep in the article, is that Trump is being kept in the dark about what's going on. "Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place 'implants'-- software code that can be used for surveillance or attack-- inside the Russian grid. Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction-- and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister."

In August, General Nakasone used the new authority granted to Cyber Command by the secret presidential directive to overwhelm the computer systems at Russia’s Internet Research Agency-- the group at the heart of the hacking during the 2016 election in the United States. It was one of four operations his so-called Russia Small Group organized around the midterm elections. Officials have talked publicly about those, though they have provided few details.

This goes right to the core of Trump's legitimacy as a president. Is he the president? Or just a temporary anomaly that has to be carefully dealt with and worked around? Or something worse? A Russian asset? Adam Kinzinger is a conservative Republican in a safe Illinois congressional seat made up of exurbs and rural areas west and south of Chicago (R+8, where Trump beat Hillary 55.5% to 38.3%). Kinzinger served in the Air Force and piloted missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and is currently a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air National Guard. He takes national security extremely seriously. On Saturday, during an interview with S.E. Cupp on CNN, he admitted that Republicans in Congress "privately" agree that Trump's comments about taking dirt from foreign governments is "unacceptable."

I Hope Keeping The Russians Out Of The 2020 Elections Isn't Part Of Kushner-In-law's Portfolio

An editorial in the Washington Post stirred up a little brouhaha this morning because an International Women of Courage Award for Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro was rescinded by the State Department after it was discovered that Aro is a Trump-hater. Lost in the kerfuffle was that it was Aro who helped expose the Internet Research Agency, as the preeminent Russian troll factory that spreads propaganda online and helped steal the 2016 election for Señor Trumpanzee. Speaking of which... also this morning: Alyza Sebenius reported that the U.S. election experts at the Internet Research Agency are shifting their strategy to steal 2020 for Trump again. Will Trump's Justice Department prevent Russian infiltrators from stealing the election for Trump? Exciting!

Sebenius wrote that "Russian internet trolls appear to be shifting strategy in their efforts to disrupt the 2020 U.S. elections, promoting politically divisive messages through phony social media accounts instead of creating propaganda themselves, cybersecurity experts say." Remember, the vast majority of Trump supporters have significantly lower IQs than average Americans and are easy prey for this kind of Russian propaganda. Normal people tend to shrug it off as silly, manipulative and far-fetched. Sadly, your typical Trump supporter will eat it up and swear by it, especially if it's reinforced by fascist mass media (Limbaugh, Fox, Sinclair, etc).

“Instead of creating content themselves, we see them amplifying content,” said John Hultquist, the director of intelligence analysis at FireEye Inc. “Then it’s not necessarily inauthentic, and that creates an opportunity for them to hide behind somebody else.”

Other hackers are breaking into computing devices and using them to open large numbers of social media accounts, according to Candid Wueest, a senior threat researcher at Symantec Corp. The hacked devices are used to create many legitimate-looking users as well as believable followers and likes for those fake users.

While covert efforts to amplify divisive content originated by others isn’t a new technique, hackers and trolls seem to be embracing it heavily in advance of the next U.S. presidential election.

Wueest said he observed a decrease in the creation of new content by fake accounts from 2017 to 2018 and a shift toward building massive followings that could be used as platforms for divisive messages in 2020.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, speaking at the RSA Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, said social media remains a primary avenue for foreign actors to influence U.S. elections, and the bureau is working with companies on the problem.

“What has continued virtually unabated and just intensifies during the election cycles is this malign foreign influence campaign, especially using social media,” Wray said. “That continues, and we’re gearing up for it to continue and grow again for 2020.”

Apparently the U.S. was successful in keeping the Russians from interrupting the 2018 midterms. You knew that already, right? U.S. Cyber Command launched a cyberattack on the Russian troll farm, knocking out their internet access on election day, shutting them down for a few days.

The American military took down a Russian troll farm last Election Day in a cyberattack that continued for several days after the vote, part of what United States officials have said is a persistent campaign to block and deter interference in American democracy.

The operation was intended to prevent the Internet Research Agency, based in St. Petersburg, Russia, from spreading propaganda or disinformation aimed at undermining confidence in the midterm vote or the results of the election, American officials said.

The operation was aimed at taking the Internet Research Agency off line for several days, from Election Day until the results were certified by local officials.

...Intelligence agencies had assessed that the Russian troll farms that create and spread disinformation in the United States and Europe were likely to step up their disinformation activity on the day of the vote and while votes were being counted.

Officials said the Election Day operations were part of a larger campaign led by United States Cyber Command and the National Security Agency to secure the midterm vote. Those operations began with a campaign of direct messages sent to Russian operatives who had created disinformation and propaganda aimed at sowing dissent and undermining confidence in American voting systems. Those direct messages were aimed at deterring the creators of propaganda.

...After the election, under another White House executive order, the director of national intelligence conducted an analysis of foreign interference during the midterm election.

That report, which has not been made public, found that the Russians sought to interfere in the vote, not by trying to hack voting machines but by spreading disinformation. The report found that Russia used social media, fake personas and Moscow-controlled media to inflame opposite ideological sides with an aim of further polarizing the United States.

On Capitol Hill, intelligence committee officials declined to discuss the Election Day cyberoperation.

But after a hearing on the rise of authoritarianism in Russia, China and elsewhere, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said Russian efforts to interfere in elections were continuing.

“There is a prioritized part of the Russian agenda to not just interfere in our democracy but interfere in democracies in Europe,” Mr. Schiff said. “They are pushing their authoritarian model to undermine institutions that reinforce democracy.”

Trump Puts America Last, As Always When He's Palling Around With Putin

When Herr Asshole got back from his disastrous trip to Paris, he couldn’t think of anything better to do than insult Emmanuel Macron, the French president on twitter... in a way he would never have been man enough to do to his face. Trump is certainly the most disgusting excuse for a national leader anywhere in the world— and a stain on our nation, just like his dwindlng base of supporters are. I once pissed on Nixon’s grave. I look forward to defecating on Trump’s. Imagine what Jamie McCourt must have thought when someone in the Embassy rang her up and said, "Madame Ambassador, I think you had better take a look at la page twitter du grand crétin." Although... she did give him $400,000 for the job so she’s probably as cretinous as he is. (Besides, she used to be married to Frank McCourt and didn’t even have the class to change her name back.)

Aside from everyone in the world laughing at him for his general petulance and for being afraid to get his “hair” wet, Trump is also pissed off about Paris because Macron released an international agreement on cybersecurity principles Monday as part of the Paris Peace Forum, which was the backdrop for Trump’s latest international buffoonery. More than 50 nations were among the initial signatories, but not authoritarian states like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran… and Trumpistan.

As Axios explained yesterday, "The Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace is another step in the disjointed effort to create international norms and laws for cybersecurity and warfare. In most international matters of regulating the internet, there tends to be a wide split between the liberal Western order and authoritarian nations like Russia and China. The agreement does not command any specific legislation." Asshole just wanted to show he stands with Russia and China against democracies and especially against Macron.

The principles include agreements to promote human rights on the internet, thwart election hacking, cease the theft of intellectual property via hacking and stop "malicious cyber activities in peacetime, notably the ones threatening or resulting in significant, indiscriminate or systemic harm to individuals." China, Russia and North Korea have each been accused of violating some or all of these in the past.

And Trump probably hopes to. Caroline Orr, reporting for ShareBlue, wrote that no one is positive why Asshole refused to be part of the new framework agreement.

The need for the international pact couldn’t be clearer. Current international law protecting civilians is founded on notions of state sovereignty and traditional methods of warfare, but the digital environment doesn’t respect or abide by international borders, and the information battlespace does not separate state actors and combatants from civilians.

Without rules and norms to define these matters in the digital environment, civilians can all too easily get caught in the crossfire of state-sponsored hacking, misinformation campaigns, and cyberattacks on critical infrastructure.

Just as the Geneva Convention specified rules of combat to protect civilian populations during wartime, the cybersecurity pact is meant to define what is unacceptable, and to provide a legal basis for punishing those who breach international rules and norms in the digital world.

It’s not clear why the United States chose to join some of the world’s most repressive regimes in refusing to sign the agreement, but it’s far from the first time America has split from its allies under the leadership of the Trump administration— and just like the previous times, Russia stands to benefit substantially from America’s retreat from the global stage.

The Kremlin regularly uses its cyber capabilities as tools of war, sometimes turning them against the Russian population, and at other times aiming at countries like Ukraine, Estonia, and, most recently, the United States. And in many instances, Russia has gotten away with these acts of aggression and human rights violations, in part because there is not even widespread agreement on the definition of cyberwarfare or the rules of engagement.

A new agreement like the one unveiled Monday would put the United States and its allies in a stronger position to mount a defense and hold Russia accountable for such acts. But, as the RAND Corporation warned in a 2017 report, “Without clear consensus on what constitutes a cyber violation, Russia will likely continue to maneuver unfettered in the vast gray area of international law.”

With the Trump administration continuing to make inexplicable decisions that benefit Russia with no apparent gains for the U.S., it’s not hard to see why so many people believe that Putin has a hold on Trump.

Unfortunately for the American people, that also means Putin has a hold on Trump’s decision-making— and despite what Trump may claim, there’s nothing “America First” about America retreating.

The Fascist Right Goes To War With Apple

Herr Trumpf, tweeting away on his iPhone6, is advocating a boycott of Apple because the company refuses to buckle under to the American National Security State and create a "back-door" so that Apple customers-- including Herr Trumpf-- can be spied on. That's too complicated for him and way too complicated for his fan boys. I have a feeling many of them aren't in the Apple target demos anyway.

Even before Herr caught on there was some political hay to be made over the FBI's dispute with Apple, the homophobic, Grindr-using neo-fascist senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, was labeling Apple as terrorist friendly. One of Cotton's colleagues mused to me on the phone today that although Cotton went to Harvard, "he's as dumb as a box of bricks" [and doesn't have the capacity to either] employ critical thinking or understand the abstractions behind the case." Cotton also seems to expect Apple to spy on its customers who are suspected of "drug-trafficking, kidnapping, and child pornography."

I think it's worth publishing Apple CEO Tim Cook's letter to Apple customers explaining the issues more clearly than either Herr Trumpf or Cotton want to.

The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers. We oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.

This moment calls for public discussion, and we want our customers and people around the country to understand what is at stake.

The Need for Encryption

Smartphones, led by iPhone, have become an essential part of our lives. People use them to store an incredible amount of personal information, from our private conversations to our photos, our music, our notes, our calendars and contacts, our financial information and health data, even where we have been and where we are going.

All that information needs to be protected from hackers and criminals who want to access it, steal it, and use it without our knowledge or permission. Customers expect Apple and other technology companies to do everything in our power to protect their personal information, and at Apple we are deeply committed to safeguarding their data.

Compromising the security of our personal information can ultimately put our personal safety at risk. That is why encryption has become so important to all of us.

For many years, we have used encryption to protect our customers’ personal data because we believe it’s the only way to keep their information safe. We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business.

The San Bernardino Case

We were shocked and outraged by the deadly act of terrorism in San Bernardino last December. We mourn the loss of life and want justice for all those whose lives were affected. The FBI asked us for help in the days following the attack, and we have worked hard to support the government’s efforts to solve this horrible crime. We have no sympathy for terrorists.

When the FBI has requested data that’s in our possession, we have provided it. Apple complies with valid subpoenas and search warrants, as we have in the San Bernardino case. We have also made Apple engineers available to advise the FBI, and we’ve offered our best ideas on a number of investigative options at their disposal.

We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.

Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software-- which does not exist today-- would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.

The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.

The Threat to Data Security

Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case.

In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks-- from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers-- including tens of millions of American citizens-- from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.

A Dangerous Precedent

Rather than asking for legislative action through Congress, the FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority.

The government would have us remove security features and add new capabilities to the operating system, allowing a passcode to be input electronically. This would make it easier to unlock an iPhone by “brute force,” trying thousands or millions of combinations with the speed of a modern computer.

The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

We are challenging the FBI’s demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country. We believe it would be in the best interest of everyone to step back and consider the implications.

While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

I wonder if Cotton would understand that the $59 billion worth of products Apple sells to China annually might be jeopardized if Apple started creating back doors so U.S. spy agencies could access people's data. As Katie Benner and Paul Mozur mentioned in the NY Times yesterday, Apple "is playing the long game with its business. Privacy and security have become part of its brand, especially internationally, where it reaps almost two-thirds of its almost $234 billion a year in sales. And if it cooperates with one government, the thinking goes, it will have to cooperate with all of them. 'Tim Cook is leveraging his personal brand and Apple’s to stand on the side of consumer privacy in this environment,' said Mark Bartholomew, a law professor at the University of Buffalo who studies encryption and cyberlaw... If Apple accedes to American law enforcement demands for opening the iPhone in the San Bernardino case and Beijing asks for a similar tool, it is unlikely Apple would be able to control China’s use of it. Yet if Apple were to refuse Beijing, it would potentially face a battery of penalties. Analysts said Chinese officials were pushing for greater control over the encryption and security of computers and phones sold in the country, though Beijing last year backed off on some proposals that would have required foreign companies to provide encryption keys for devices sold in the country after facing pressure from foreign trade groups."

That's way too complicated for Herr Trumpf or the Grindr closet-case senator guy from Arkansas. Perhaps Ted Lieu (D-CA) could take pity on him and explain why this is important to get right. "This FBI court order, by compelling a private sector company to write new software, is essentially making that company an arm of law-enforcement," he informed his Los Angeles area constituents. "Private sector companies are not-- and should not be-- an arm of government or law enforcement. This court order also begs the question: Where does this kind of coercion stop? Can the government force Facebook to create software that provides analytic data on who is likely to be a criminal? Can the government force Google to provide the names of all people who searched for the term ISIL? Can the government force Amazon to write software that identifies who might be suspicious based on the books they ordered? Forcing Apple to weaken its encryption system in this one case means the government can force Apple-- or any other private sector company-- to weaken encryption systems in all future cases. This precedent-setting action will both weaken the privacy of Americans and hurt American businesses. And how can the FBI ensure the software that it is forcing Apple to create won’t fall into the wrong hands? Given the number of cyberbreaches in the federal government—including at the Department of Justice-- the FBI cannot guarantee this back door software will not end up in the hands of hackers or other criminals." Let's make sure we don't elect anymore-spying authoritarian types to anything.

Tales From The Surveillance State: The NSA Can Spy On Anyone, Anywhere, Any Time

I guess it would be terribly naive to assume the U.S. hasn't embedded the technology to spy on everyone everywhere when the opportunity is available. Buying American computing systems-- not to mention weapons systems-- has always had that obvious downside. Monday evening, Nicole Perlroth and David Sanger, writing for the NYTimes reported on the claims a Russian cybersecurity firm, Kaspersky Lab, that the NSA has found a way to permanently embed surveillance and sabotage tools in computers and networks it has targeted in Iran, Russia, Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and other countries.

It linked the techniques to those used in Stuxnet, the computer worm that disabled about 1,000 centrifuges in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program. It was later revealed that Stuxnet was part of a program code-named Olympic Games and run jointly by Israel and the United States.

Kaspersky’s report said that Olympic Games had similarities to a much broader effort to infect computers well beyond those in Iran. It detected particularly high infection rates in computers in Iran, Pakistan and Russia, three countries whose nuclear programs the United States routinely monitors.

Some of the implants burrow so deep into the computer systems, Kaspersky said, that they infect the “firmware,” the embedded software that preps the computer’s hardware before the operating system starts. It is beyond the reach of existing antivirus products and most security controls, Kaspersky reported, making it virtually impossible to wipe out.

In many cases, it also allows the American intelligence agencies to grab the encryption keys off a machine, unnoticed, and unlock scrambled contents. Moreover, many of the tools are designed to run on computers that are disconnected from the Internet, which was the case in the computers controlling Iran’s nuclear enrichment plants.

Kaspersky noted that of the more than 60 attack groups it was tracking in cyberspace, the so-called Equation Group “surpasses anything known in terms of complexity and sophistication of techniques, and that has been active for almost two decades.”

...In the past, security experts have warned about “the race to the bare metal” of a machine. As security around software has increased, criminals have looked for ways to infect the actual hardware of the machine. Firmware is about the closest to the bare metal you can get-- a coveted position that allows the attacker not only to hide from antivirus products but also to reinfect a machine even if its hard drive is wiped.

“If the malware gets into the firmware, it is able to resurrect itself forever,” Costin Raiu, a Kaspersky threat researcher, said in the report. “It means that we are practically blind and cannot detect hard drives that have been infected with this malware.”

The possibility of such an attack is one that math researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a branch of the Commerce Department, have long cautioned about but have very rarely seen. In an interview last year, Andrew Regenscheid, a math researcher at the institute, warned that such attacks were extremely powerful. If the firmware becomes corrupted, Mr. Regenscheid said, “your computer won’t boot up and you can’t use it. You have to replace the computer to recover from that attack.”

...Documents revealed by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden detailed the agency’s plans to leap the “air gaps” that separate computers from the outside world, including efforts to install specialized hardware on computers being shipped to a target country. That hardware can then receive low-frequency radio waves broadcast from a suitcase-size device that the N.S.A. has deployed around the world. At other times the air gaps have been leapt by having a spy physically install a USB stick to infect the adversary’s computer.

Basing its estimate on the time stamps in code, the Kaspersky presentation said the Equation Group had been infecting computers since 2001, but aggressively began ramping up their capabilities in 2008, the year that President Obama was elected, and began doubling down on digital tools to spy on adversaries of America.

While the United States has never acknowledged conducting any offensive cyberoperations, President Obama discussed the issue in general in an interview on Friday with Re/code, an online computer industry publication, describing offensive cyberweapons as being unlike traditional weapons.

“This is more like basketball than football, in the sense that there’s no clear line between offense and defense,” said Mr. Obama, himself a basketball player. “Things are going back and forth all the time.”

How pissed off is Obama at Russia over Ed Snowden's asylum? Pissed off enough to have put together a coup in Ukraine? Pissed off enough to drastically cut the price of energy to wreck the Russian economy? That would be very, very pissed off.

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Cheering Iran For Taking Down Vicious Warmonger Sheldon Adelson? Or Could They Have Done Better?

Tuesday afternoon we focused on the agent the Israelis use to control Democrats, Haim Saban and how the Israel-First agenda works in the Democratic Party. It's far worse inside the Republican Party, where the agent working for the Israelis is Sheldon Adelson. We've gone over that for years but something happened last February that has been very much kept from the general public until this week.

By now everyone probably knows about North Korea's spectacularly successful cyber-attack on SONY Pictures. It's been all over the news-- often covered as comedic. Why comedic... well this movie trailer has over 7.5 million views on YouTube.



And this one has almost 2.9 million views:



The damages to SONY (a Japanese-owned company)-- including a very serious law suit-- may not be worth all the publicity they got for the movie's opening, which was pulled today and is not opening after all. But what's this got to do with Adelson and Israel. Adelson has been urging Members of Congress-- some of whose careers he has substantially financed-- to get behind the Israeli policy calling for a U.S. nuclear attack on Iran, which Israel sees as an existential enemy. Adelson has been very public about it and his war fever hysteria has been widely reported worldwide. Including in Iran... which, predictably, didn't react well. Remember, this one isn't just a funny movie starring James Franco.

Adelson is the Mob's man in Vegas (or one of them) although he makes most of his money from being the Communist Chinese Party's man in Macau, where he's the gambling and prostitution kingpin. As far as we know-- or think we know-- Iran or Iran sympathizers, chose to go after Adelson in Vegas.

Most gamblers were still asleep, and the gondoliers had yet to pole their way down the ersatz canal in front of the Venetian casino on the Las Vegas Strip. But early on the chilly morning of Feb. 10, just above the casino floor, the offices of the world’s largest gaming company were gripped by chaos. Computers were flatlining, e-mail was down, most phones didn’t work, and several of the technology systems that help run the $14 billion operation had sputtered to a halt.

Computer engineers at Las Vegas Sands Corp. raced to figure out what was happening. Within an hour, they had a diagnosis: Sands was under a withering cyber attack. PCs and servers were shutting down in a cascading IT catastrophe, with many of their hard drives wiped clean. The company’s technical staff had never seen anything like it... Numerous systems were felled, including those that run the loyalty rewards plans for Sands customers; programs that monitor the performance and payout of slot machines and table games at Sands’ U.S. casinos; and a multimillion-dollar storage system.

In an effort to save as many machines as they could, IT staffers scrambled across the casino floors of Sands’ Vegas properties—the Venetian and its sister hotel, the Palazzo—ripping network cords out of every functioning computer they could find, including PCs used by pit bosses to track gamblers and kiosks where slots players cash in their tickets.

This was no Ocean’s Eleven. The hackers were not trying to empty a vault of cash, nor were they after customer credit card data, as in recent attacks on Target, Neiman Marcus, and Home Depot. This was personal. The perpetrators wanted to punish the company, or, more precisely, its chief executive officer and majority owner, the billionaire Sheldon Adelson. Although confirming their conjectures would take some time, executives suspected almost immediately the assault was coming from Iran.

This was new. Other countries have spied on American companies, and they have stolen from them, but this is likely the first time—occurring months before the late November attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment-- that a foreign player simply sought to destroy American corporate infrastructure on such a scale. Both hacks may represent the beginning of a geopolitically confusing, and potentially devastating, phase of digital conflict. Experts worry that America’s rivals may have found the sweet spot of cyberwar-- strikes that are serious enough to wound American companies but below the threshold that would trigger a forceful government response. More remarkable still, Sands has managed to keep the full extent of the hack secret for 10 months.

The Iranians asked the U.S. government to penalize Adelson after the little speech at Yeshiva University last year. Nothing happened-- until the Iranians took matters into their own hands.

Apple Says They Aren't Going To Help The CIA And NSA Illegally Spy On Their Customers Any More

Do you believe them? Or any of the big tech companies? They all lied and lied about protecting our privacy while allowing the spy agencies easy access to all our personal information and communications, as though we are all legitimate suspects in some kind of Orwellian dystopia.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, is savvy enough to know how that cooperation with the worst aspects of the National Security State has damage Apple's precious, hard-earned brand, which has already been tattered around the edges. Yesterday Cook released this statement at Apple.com:

At Apple, your trust means everything to us. That’s why we respect your privacy and protect it with strong encryption, plus strict policies that govern how all data is handled.

Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services, including iCloud and new services like Apple Pay. And we continue to make improvements. Two-step verification, which we encourage all our customers to use, in addition to protecting your Apple ID account information, now also protects all of the data you store and keep up to date with iCloud.

We believe in telling you up front exactly what’s going to happen to your personal information and asking for your permission before you share it with us. And if you change your mind later, we make it easy to stop sharing with us. Every Apple product is designed around those principles. When we do ask to use your data, it’s to provide you with a better user experience.

We’re publishing this website to explain how we handle your personal information, what we do and don’t collect, and why. We’re going to make sure you get updates here about privacy at Apple at least once a year and whenever there are significant changes to our policies.

A few years ago, users of Internet services began to realize that when an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product. But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy.

Our business model is very straightforward: We sell great products. We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers. We don’t “monetize” the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you. Our software and services are designed to make our devices better. Plain and simple.

One very small part of our business does serve advertisers, and that’s iAd. We built an advertising network because some app developers depend on that business model, and we want to support them as well as a free iTunes Radio service. iAd sticks to the same privacy policy that applies to every other Apple product. It doesn’t get data from Health and HomeKit, Maps, Siri, iMessage, your call history, or any iCloud service like Contacts or Mail, and you can always just opt out altogether.

Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will.

Our commitment to protecting your privacy comes from a deep respect for our customers. We know that your trust doesn’t come easy. That’s why we have and always will work as hard as we can to earn and keep it.

Tim

Earlier today we looked at the widespread belief that Obama Administration has the very worst record in history for transparency, even worse than Cheney and Bush, which is saying a lot. Apple claims that they are "working for greater transparency and protects on behalf of our customers" and that their "commitment to customer privacy doesn't stop because of a government information request. Government information requests," they write, "are a consequence of doing business in the digital age. We believe in being as transparent as the law allows about what information is requested from us. In addition, Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a 'back door' in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed any government access to our servers. And we never will."

Last week we took a look at what Ed Snowden had to say about these kinds of claims that, are, obviously very self serving. From Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair:

Snowden divulges that his greatest fear is not death but his efforts might ultimately be in vain, "[ ... ] that nothing will change. People will see the media, all of these disclosures [and] they’ll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society, but they [the American people] won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests." He closes the interview with a prediction of where the current state of affairs might ultimately lead: "And the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse until eventually there will be a time where policies will change because the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state are policy. Even our agreements with other sovereign governments, we consider that to be a stipulation of policy rather than a stipulation of law and because of that, a new leader will be elected ... they’ll find the switch ... say that 'Because of the crisis-- because of the dangers we face in the world-- some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power' and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it and it will be turnkey tyranny."

Early in the dialogue, Greenwald bluntly puts to Snowden, "Does it [the intelligence community] target the actions of Americans?" Greenwald wants to have the world hear, directly from the lips of a high-ranking ex-CIA employee and NSA contractor, what is taking place behind the surveillance curtain.

"The NSA, and intelligence community in general, is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible. It believes-- on the grounds of sort of a self-certification-- that they serve the national interest. Originally we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas. Now, increasingly, we see that it’s happening domestically and to do that they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that’s the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends." He continues, "Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector, anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks and the authorities that analyst is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything, but I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the president if I had a personal e-mail." He adds that the American populace should take notice "[b]ecause even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded, and the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude to where it’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer."

Apple admits that the "most common requests we receive for information come from law enforcement in the form of either a Device Request or an Account Request. Our legal team carefully reviews each request, ensuring it is accompanied by valid legal process. All content requests require a search warrant. If we are legally compelled to divulge any information and it is not counterproductive to the facts of the case, we provide notice to the customer when allowed and deliver the narrowest set of information possible in response. National security-related requests are not considered Device Requests or Account Requests and are reported in a separate category altogether.

"On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode. Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

Sounds like an ad. But the trade press seems persuaded and, of course, Yahoo couldn't be more eager to sing Apple's praises. How about you? Do you believe them?

How Glenn Greenwald Made President Obama's Meeting WIth China's President Xi Jinping In The California Desert A Drag

Walter Annenberg was connected. He built his familiy's business from publishing a shady race track form to an empire publishing TV Guide, Seventeen, the Philadelphia Inquirer. Nixon appointed him Ambassador to England in return for his financial and editorial assistance to the Republican Party. In 1976 the Queen made him an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE), something every Republican plutocrat aspires to. His palatial estate in Rancho Mirage, our near Palm Springs, was often billed as Camp David West and hosted events for Nixon, Ford, Reagan, both Bushs, Margaret Thatcher, as well as for every puffed-out monarch that had thus far escaped being decapitated-- from Queen Elizabeth to the last criminal Shah of Iran. Reagan appointed his second wife, Leonore, Chief of Protocol for the State Department.

Today, his Sunnylands estate, is still used for diplomatic events and in 2013-- June 7 and 8, it was the site of the "shirtsleeves summit" between Obama and Xi Jinping. As Bobby Flay was preparing dinner to delight the two presidents' taste buds, The Guardian was publishing an article by Glenn Greenwald, Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks. This was especially ill-timed for Obama who wanted to meet with President Xi to get on his ass about cyberattacks from China.

President Obama said Friday that he told China's President Xi Jinping that it's critical they come to an understanding on how they'll work together on cybersecurity, one of the most contentious issues facing the two nations.

…China has been widely linked to network break-ins of numerous Western companies and agencies. And Obama issued an executive order this year to compel government and industry to share intelligence about network breaches, mainly to protect the nation's infrastructure.

The Pentagon also blamed China for cyberattacks in its annual report to U.S. lawmakers on Chinese military capabilities. The report, published in May, stated that some of the recent cyberattacks in the United States appeared "to be attributable directly to Chinese government and military."

Xi didn't address those charges but said China was also the victim of cyberattacks. He added that through good faith negotiations the U.S. and China could make the issue "a positive area of cooperation."

Greenwald's article included an unpublished Presidential Policy Directive issued in October 2012, which, according to Michael Gurnow's book, The Edward Snowden Affair, "instructs the secretary of defense, director of national intelligence and head of the CIA to create a list of overseas targets of 'national importance' for possible cyberattacks. The purpose of the tentative attacks is not heightened defense, retaliatory action or even as a pre-emptive measure. It is to 'advance U.S. national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging.' Dauntingly the commander in chief also humors domestic targeting but specifies such theoretical operations cannot be carried out unless he has issued his consent or there is a national emergency, whereby various departments are authorized to act autonomously. Likewise the 18-page manuscript states cyberattacks are to conform to U.S. and international law unless they are overridden by presidential approval." Obama must have flipped. I bet he's still mad at Glenn!

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America's offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama's move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive's publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have "mountains of data" on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as those China was accused of having carried out against the US.

Presidential Policy Directive 20 defines OCEO as "operations and related programs or activities… conducted by or on behalf of the United States Government, in or through cyberspace, that are intended to enable or produce cyber effects outside United States government networks."

Asked about the stepping up of US offensive capabilities outlined in the directive, a senior administration official said: "Once humans develop the capacity to build boats, we build navies. Once you build airplanes, we build air forces."

The official added: "As a citizen, you expect your government to plan for scenarios. We're very interested in having a discussion with our international partners about what the appropriate boundaries are."

…The US is understood to have already participated in at least one major cyber attack, the use of the Stuxnet computer worm targeted on Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges, the legality of which has been the subject of controversy. US reports citing high-level sources within the intelligence services said the US and Israel were responsible for the worm.

In the presidential directive, the criteria for offensive cyber operations in the directive is not limited to retaliatory action but vaguely framed as advancing "US national objectives around the world."

The revelation that the US is preparing a specific target list for offensive cyber-action is likely to reignite previously raised concerns of security researchers and academics, several of whom have warned that large-scale cyber operations could easily escalate into full-scale military conflict.

Sean Lawson, assistant professor in the department of communication at the University of Utah, argues: "When militarist cyber rhetoric results in use of offensive cyber attack it is likely that those attacks will escalate into physical, kinetic uses of force."

An intelligence source with extensive knowledge of the National Security Agency's systems told the Guardian the US complaints again China were hypocritical, because America had participated in offensive cyber operations and widespread hacking--breaking into foreign computer systems to mine information.

Provided anonymity to speak critically about classified practices, the source said: "We hack everyone everywhere. We like to make a distinction between us and the others. But we are in almost every country in the world."

The US likes to haul China before the international court of public opinion for "doing what we do every day," the source added.

One of the unclassified points released by the administration in January stated: "It is our policy that we shall undertake the least action necessary to mitigate threats and that we will prioritize network defense and law enforcement as preferred courses of action."

When Americans win something big-- like some kind of title or a ball game series or something like that, Obama calls them and congratulates them and sometimes invites them to the White House. Greenwald, like Obama, a constitutional lawyer (although not that much like Obama) was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service as well as the George Polk Award for National Security Reporting. No invitation to visit the White House… and not even a hacked phone call!

Perelman Tonight er, Panetta Today: Beware of the coming cyber-Pearl Harbor

Warning: This is not a drill, or an outing of "Perelman Tonight."

by Ken

from Huffpost-slash-AOL News:

CIA Chief Leon Panetta: Cyberattack Could Be 'Next Pearl Harbor'

Appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a confirmation hearing for his appointment as the secretary of defense, Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. could face cyberwarfare in battles to come.

“The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systems,” Panetta said.

Though he talked on subjects ranging from Libya to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan to the war on terrorism, Panetta highlighted his concerns regarding the U.S.'s preparedness for cyberattacks.

“This is a real possibility in today’s world,” he said. “As a result, I think we have to aggressively be able to counter that. It is going to take both defensive measures as well as aggressive measures to deal with it.”

The Obama administration recently unveiled its proposal for global cybersecurity. Statements from the Pentagon have also indicated that the government will consider cyberattacks originating from foreign countries to be equivalent to acts of war meriting military response.

This sounds pretty serious, chief, and I'll bet it would help if we all went out today and took some "aggressive measures" -- like maybe abridging some civil cyberliberties? Wasn't it Justice Brandeis who said, "Better safe than sorry"? (Possibly not. I always have trouble keeping track of those justices and all they say. They're regular Chatty Cathies.)

Anyway, here's the thing, chief. It's hard not to at least crack a smile from dire warnings issued by someone who looks like, well --


This is all I'm saying. You can get back to whatever you were doing now, chief. Preparing for that move to the Pentagon, isn't it? Probably there'll be lots of stuff to warn us about from there, and aggressive measures to be taken. Just remember, well, you know.

#

How Reactionary & Extremist Does A Congressmember Have To Be To Vote Against Cybersecurity?

H.R. 4061, the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act, isn't really very controversial-- unless you're an enemy of America and want to poke around to find ways to wreck U.S. cyberspace-- or, apparently, if you stand with Rush Limbaugh that any failure on Obama's watch is good for "America" because it will rid us of him, no matter what the cost to the nation. It passed the House Science and Technology Committee in November.

The 10 congressmembers sponsoring the bill, 4 conservative Republicans (Vernon Ehlers, Ralph Hall, Mike McCaul and Adrian Smith) and 6 Democrats (Daniel Lipinski, Bart Gordon, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Ben Ray Lujan, Steven Rothman, and David Wu) span the great ideological divide in the House and the 5 votes on amendments yesterday all won by lopsided bipartisan majorities, along the lines of... well, 417-4. 4 of the 5 amendments (the outlier being Jeff Flake's nuttiness) have a combination of 4 consistent opponents in common, radical right extremist obstructionists-- who in a less politically correct time might be reviled as the seditionists they are: Paul Broun (R-GA), Tom McClintock, Ron Paul (R-TX), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ).

The 4 congressmen don't recognize that government has a legitimate role to play in cybersecurity (or much of anything), so they've broken with their party-- not to mention America-- to vote, no, no, no, no. That and they're crazy conspiracy paranoids. These are the people who fervently believe in black helicopters and a plot to turn America over to the UN. I'm guessing neither Broun, McClintock, Paul nor Flake was paying any attention when Feinstein's Select Committee on Intelligence was delving into the problem yesterday:



UPDATE: Cybersecurity Bill Passes... By A Lot

Just before noon, the full House passed the bill, 422-5, the only members working on behalf of China and other American adversaries being, once again, Paul Broun (R-GA), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Ron Paul (R-TX) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). In the end McClintock was too scared to vote against it. Unlike the Georgia and Texas kooks, he lives in California.