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The
"March 2013-Watchlisting Guidance" was leaked to journalists at The
Intercept by a source within the intelligence community.
“A source within the intelligence community” has leaked the government’s secret guidebook to how it adds names to and manages its controversial terrorist “watchlist” and was published in full by The Intercept on Wednesday. Reported by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, the 166-page document (pdf) issued by the National Counterterrorism Center—and titled “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance”—details
the most up-to-date government rules for placing individuals on their
main terrorism database, as well as the no-fly list and selectee list.
It was developed by representatives from the nation's top military and
intelligence bodies including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.
According to the report, in 2013 the Obama administration “quietly
approved a substantial expansion” of the watchlist system, “authorizing a
secret process that requires neither ‘concrete facts’ nor ‘irrefutable
evidence’ to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist.” It was
developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation’s
intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the
Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.
Scahill and Devereaux report that the guidelines permit “the elastic
concept of 'reasonable suspicion' as a standard for determining whether
someone is a possible threat.”
They continue:
The document’s definition of “terrorist” activity
includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In
addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking,
the guidelines also define destruction of government property and
damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting
placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is
“dangerous” to property and intended to influence government policy
through intimidation.
This combination—a broad definition of what
constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a
terrorist—opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret
government dragnets.
Moreover, the government tracks both “known terrorists” and
“suspected terrorists,” allowing individuals to be placed on the list
even if they are suspected of associating with potential terrorists.
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the
government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed
premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in
the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security
Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly
blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the
impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t
carried out.”
The report further reveals the Catch-22 of being placed on the list based on the vague premise of “reasonable suspicion.”
"The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage
in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the
watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of
a terrorism-related crime," Scahill and Devereaux report. "The rulebook
justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires
evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a
reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury’s verdict
cannot erase it."
One of the more notable details revealed in the report is the ability
to elevate an entire category of people from the watchlist to the
no-fly or selectee list, also known as a “threat-based expedited
upgrade,” when there is a “particular threat stream” that indicates that
a certain category of individual “may commit a terrorist act.”
According to the report, the Guidelines do not reveal what categories of
people have thus far been elevated in this manner.
Since 9/11, the number of individuals listed on the government’s no-fly list grew from just 16 to tens of thousands. In a recent court
filing, the government revealed that there were 468,749 nominations for
“known or suspected terrorists” in 2013 alone. Of those nominees, only
4,915—a mere one percent—were rejected.
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The eBay founder was a mild-mannered Obama
supporter looking for a way to spend his time and fortune. The Snowden
leaks gave him a cause — and an enemy.
Pierre Omidyar in 1999.
Photo: Yann Gamblin/Getty Images
In 2003, Omidyar took a trip with some of his real-life peers
to NASA’s Space Camp in Alabama. Larry Page and Sergey Brin were there,
as was Elon Musk, who had just sold PayPal to eBay. They played
astronaut for a week, simulating a space-shuttle launch and
weightlessness. They had dinner with Buzz Aldrin and a NASA official,
during which the campers pressed to know why America hadn’t sent a man
to Mars.
Musk is now building a private company, SpaceX, with the aim of
personally landing on Mars. Brin wants to defeat Parkinson’s disease,
while Page has invested in promoting longevity, even immortality. Jeff
Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has his own rocket company and plans to restore
the Washington Post to financial health — no small challenge
given the struggles of the news business, in part owing to the
disruption of classified advertising by companies like eBay.
Omidyar, by contrast, had trouble settling on a moon-shot project. He
didn’t aspire to live forever or touch the stars. He wanted to do
unglamorous work at the grass roots, applying the optimistic lesson he
drew from eBay: that “people are basically good” and capable of
overcoming forces like disease, ignorance, poverty, and repression. But
how could this humanistic philosophy bring actual humans together?
Through a foundation, Omidyar tried sprinkling angel investments on
“social entrepreneurs” and created a patented technology platform meant
to allow them to trade ideas the way people bought and sold goods on
eBay. (Some users grew frustrated when they learned the conversation
wasn’t meant to be a route to Omidyar’s own money, and it ultimately
shut down.) Meanwhile, Pam, who previously worked in biotechnology,
funded projects like a video game called Re-Mission, designed to help
kids fight cancer, and founded an organization called Humanity United,
which campaigns against human trafficking and genocide. Pierre realized
that information gave rise to action, and that led him to think about
newspapers, too.
“He was genuinely interested and concerned about a dissipating news industry,” says Brian Greenspun, publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, who had lengthy discussions with Omidyar almost a decade ago. “And what impact it will have on our democracy.”
Omidyar believed that powerful institutions needed to be kept in check, so he funded organizations like the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog for money in politics, and the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative-journalism nonprofit. At the same time, his own philanthropic organization, Omidyar Network,
conducted itself with unusual secrecy. Founded in 2004, it was at the
vanguard of a movement called “venture philanthropy.” It is modeled on a
VC firm, making both grants to nonprofits and equity investments in
for-profit companies. The organization is partly a private entity,
partly a foundation that functions as “just a checkbook,” as Omidyar
wrote in the Harvard Business Review. At the cost of millions in
tax breaks, this hybrid structure allows the Network to get around many
nonprofit regulations. Though Omidyar has been one of the most generous
donors to Guidestar, which tracks federal financial disclosures by
nonprofits, you won’t find much useful information about Omidyar Network
there.
Many in the philanthropy world were aghast when Omidyar began
mingling altruism and capitalism, but he dismissed the objections as
“old thinking.” He found an area that promised to unite both instincts:
microfinance. Omidyar loved the idea that giving out tiny loans in
developing countries could unleash entrepreneurialism. He endowed a $100
million fund, administered by Tufts, that invests in microfinance
institutions, and donated to numerous nonprofits in the sector. In 2008,
Omidyar took a trip to India, where he visited a village near Hyderabad
with the founder of a lender called SKS, in which Omidyar Network was
an indirect shareholder, via a 22 percent investment in a Cayman
Islands–based private-equity fund. He watched as cross-legged women in
saris borrowed cash. But when SKS mounted an IPO, the microfinance
venture turned into a philanthropic debacle. Unitus, Inc., the
Omidyar-supported nonprofit that ran the private-equity vehicle, had a
convoluted structure rife with potential boardroom conflicts of
interest. (“We have managed to stay out of jail, so we must not be
violating any ethics,” one Unitus board member assured a consultant paid
by Omidyar.) As it prepared to reap millions from the stock sale,
Unitus disbanded its charitable microfinance operations, declaring the
concept “validated.” But SKS’s stock later crashed in the midst of
political uproar in India over harsh collection tactics, which were tied
by opponents to a number of suicides.
Omidyar seems to take such setbacks in stride; he sees traditional
philanthropy as overly risk-averse. “In Silicon Valley,” he said at a
2011 nonprofit conference, “we say if you haven’t tried something and
failed, and actually learned something from that failure, then why would
I want to work with you?” But Omidyar’s habit of investing heavily in
big ideas, and sometimes dropping them abruptly, made him appear fickle
and inscrutable to many in the philanthropy world. “He got this
reputation of being an arrogant know-it-all,” says one nonprofit-sector
consultant, echoing Omidyar’s earlier self-assessment. “But they all
kissed the ring because they wanted his money.”
When Omidyar moved away from microfinance, he returned his attention
to another desperate population: journalists. Fixing the problem of news
appealed both to his apocalyptic side — in 2007, he proposed creating a
peer-to-peer text-messaging service that would help people to “survive a
flu pandemic or other widespread disaster” — and to his belief in the
responsibilities of citizenship. In 2008, he started a company called
Peer News, working with a small team of programmers in an office in
Honolulu. At first it developed a system called Ginx, which was supposed
to track the information coursing through Twitter. But it wasn’t able
to break into the crowded market, so Peer News pivoted: It would create
an ad-free subscription website covering Hawaiian government.
Omidyar conceived of the Honolulu Civil Beat,
launched in 2010, as what he called “a new civic square,” and he hoped
to reproduce the model around the country. He recruited a staff of six
“reporter-hosts” led by a newspaper refugee, John Temple, whose last
editing job had terminated with the closure of the Rocky Mountain News.
After a difficult start — half the initial reporting staff left within
months — the Civil Beat found its niche in weighty investigations.
Omidyar was a constant presence in the newsroom. When Pam learned of a
remote beach that was despoiled by washed-up plastic, they flew there on
his private jet with a reporter. Omidyar took the website’s photos
himself.
As a business, however, the Civil Beat never thrived. Omidyar was
tight-lipped about audience numbers, even requiring his reporters to
sign confidentiality agreements, but the subscription model clearly
didn’t work. On Twitter, he pleaded to know how much a reader was
willing to pay for his journalism: “No amount, no matter how small? Or a
fair price?” Ultimately, he formed a partnership with Arianna
Huffington to collaborate on an advertising-supported sister site. While
the Civil Beat still covers politics and pension funds, HuffPost Hawaii
promotes clickable content like yoga articles and photo galleries of
cute seals.
The compromise solution assured the Civil Beat’s survival, but it was
far from Omidyar’s original vision. For all his good intentions, he was
still searching for that galvanizing cause. Little did he know it had
been hidden there all along, in an underground bunker 25 miles outside
Honolulu that served as an NSA signals operation center. On June 1, 2013
— three days after the HuffPost Hawaii partnership was announced — a
technician who worked at the facility, Edward Snowden, made his
rendezvous with reporters at a hotel in Hong Kong. The radicalization of Pierre Omidyar happened with jarring
swiftness. In 2012, he advertised his proximity to Obama — he served on a
presidential commission — by tweeting out a photo of Marine One
hovering above the White House lawn. That same year, he responded to
campaign-season viciousness by tweeting out a list hashtagged
#RepublicansIRespect, citing figures like Robert Gates (a former CIA
director) and Condoleezza Rice. He started the Democracy Fund, a
foundation intended to promote moderation. “I’ve heard him use the term anti-partisan
to describe himself,” says Joe Goldman, the fund’s president. “He
believes it’s dangerous to get caught up on one side or the other.”
But on June 5, 2013, Omidyar’s Twitter account posted a link to a Greenwald story in the Guardian:
“Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans
daily.” The issue touched a nerve in him — if ever there were a power
that needed watching, it was the NSA. As further stories described the
extent of the surveillance and Snowden identified himself, Omidyar
vented his outrage. “Mr. President, look in the mirror,” he tweeted on
June 23, “when did America become a country to seek asylum from?
Whistleblowers are not spies.” On July 4, Omidyar tweeted the text of
the Fourth Amendment. At this juncture, there were many ways Omidyar
could have gone about influencing policy. He could have sought a meeting
at the White House — Pam’s human-rights organization collaborates
closely with the national-security staff — or he could have funded a
super-PAC. He could have rallied his fellow Silicon Valley billionaires
to flex their lobbying might. Instead he decided to build a machine for
confrontation and, as he puts it, “to convert mainstream readers into
engaged citizens.”
Omidyar kicked the tires on the Washington Post and raised the possibility of working with — or even somehow acquiring — the nonprofit outfit ProPublica. But the Post
sold to his old competitor Bezos. ProPublica, like other nonprofits
Omidyar talked to, wasn’t for sale. Amid a flurry of furious interaction
with privacy activists, Omidyar encountered Trevor Timm of the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. While discussing the Snowden leaks via an
encrypted video chat, Omidyar mentioned that he was thinking of starting
his own media organization. Timm suggested that he contact Greenwald.
“I think within a week, I talked to Glenn on the phone,” Timm says.
“And he said, ‘Yeah, we’ve already hired ten people.’ ”
Greenwald had a tempestuous relationship with his Guardian
editors and had already been planning to launch a website with Poitras
and Scahill. “It was really kind of amazing, because we were actually in
the process of doing almost exactly the same things,” Greenwald told
me. “The obvious difference between what we were doing and what he was
doing is that he has $8 billion.”
During last year’s Clinton Global Initiative, Omidyar summoned NYU
journalism professor Jay Rosen to his suite at the Hilton to discuss
surveillance, whistleblower prosecutions, and the future of journalism.
Rosen later became a formal adviser to what would be called First Look
Media, espousing what he calls the “personal franchise model” of
building a new-media brand: buying up stars with portable readerships.
But while acquiring the Greenwald franchise made business sense, it came
with complications. Practically, it was dispersed — Omidyar in
Honolulu, Greenwald in Rio, Poitras in Berlin — and the journalists were
afraid of what might happen if they returned to the U.S. Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper labeled them “accomplices” to
Snowden’s alleged espionage, and Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of
the House Intelligence Committee, likened them to a “thief selling
stolen material.” Now that material was First Look’s chief journalistic
asset.
Before any firm plans were in place, much to Omidyar’s chagrin, word leaked to BuzzFeed that Greenwald was leaving the Guardian
to pursue what he called a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic
opportunity.” The founders’ initial statements were full of
revolutionary swagger. “To quote that old CIA torturer,” Scahill told a
German interviewer, “we gotta put on the big-boy pants.” He described “a
journalist’s paradise,” where reporters would write what they pleased
without interference from editors, the government, or Omidyar himself.
To the world, First Look looked like Greenwald’s personal project,
but Omidyar never expected to be a passive investor. He engaged in
extensive discussions with Arianna Huffington, including a brainstorming
session aboard a private jet when they went to India last October for a
conference organized by the Dalai Lama. “He wants to do it in a way
that can reach a mass audience, not just a niche audience,” Huffington
told me. Omidyar thought he would create an omnibus site covering news,
sports, and entertainment, generating readers and revenue for a galaxy
of star-centered publications. He hired Taibbi, the Rolling Stone writer most famous for likening Goldman Sachs to a “vampire squid,” to start Racket, lampooning the financial industry in the tradition of Spy.
First Look released an animated video in which Omidyar pledged to
“bring back to journalism what’s been lost,” as a cartoon reporter
sweated over a computer. “How does a company support itself given such
ambition?” he narrated. “We’re figuring that out.” In fact, there were
still lots of things to figure out, such as who was in charge, whether
First Look’s journalism would be expected to make money, and if so, how.
As First Look raced to launch the Intercept, its vehicle for
advancing the Snowden disclosures, an Omidyar Network headhunter was
dispatched to harvest talent, promising journalists the creative freedom
that comes with a $250 million budget. Omidyar probably expected that
the potential beneficiaries would be grateful. Instead, there was much
gossip and trepidation. Within the ecosystem of journalism and
transparency nonprofits, there is hardly an organization that doesn’t
take Omidyar’s money, or hope for it, but many are wary of his
influence. “If you’re answering to Omidyar,” says the director of one,
“then you’re really not independent.” And Greenwald himself, who had
declared war on U.S. intelligence and rejects journalistic pieties about
objectivity, is a polarizing force. “I think the concept of adversarial
journalism is a limited and flawed one,” says Steven Aftergood, the
author of Secrecy News, a respected blog that has received past Omidyar
Network funding. “It is not an impartial search for truth as much as it
is a combative attempt to defeat a perceived adversary.”
To take on the intelligence agencies, First Look has adopted some
elements of spycraft. It is seeking out moles, and one of its first
hires was a cryptography expert, who fortified its systems against
penetration. To protect journalists from government retaliation, Omidyar
established the Press Freedom Litigation Fund. But despite his
aggressive approach, Omidyar ran into immediate criticism from the
conspiratorial extremes of the left. Julian Assange attacked the “big power” of First Look,
calling Omidyar an “extreme liberal centrist” and questioning his
suspicious visits to the White House. The tech-news site PandoDaily
published a series of scathing articles. “Never before has such a vast
trove of public secrets,” journalist Mark Ames wrote last November, “been sold wholesale to a single billionaire as the foundation of a for-profit company.”
Earlier this year, Omidyar convened a staff retreat at his Las Vegas
mansion, which produced a declaration of editorial independence,
promising that First Look would be incorporated as a nonprofit and that
he would have “no involvement in the newsroom’s day-to-day operations.”
In reality, though, he was deeply involved, demanding personal approval
of even trivial expenses, and intent on finding a way to make the
venture financially self-sustaining. But his staff was determined to
hold him to his promise of “independence.” Many are vociferous
personalities, not known for playing well with others. When one
prominent editor was approached about a management role, he told
Omidyar’s headhunter, “You don’t need an HR department, you need a
psychotherapist.”
The confusion inherent to any start-up has been exacerbated by
Omidyar’s ruminative style. This spring, he went through a period of
deep thinking, highlighted by a summit with news-industry veterans at a
hotel he part-owns in Laguna Beach, California. Under “Chatham House
Rules,” no one was to talk directly about what was said. “He’s a true
believer, I believe,” says Ken Doctor, a media analyst who attended.
Many of those who have heard Omidyar and his aides, at that summit and
other meetings, have come away thinking his plans sounded naïve and not
fully baked. Sandy Rowe, a former editor of the Oregonian who was
brought on as a consultant, says the fuzzy vision gives Omidyar
flexibility. “This is a man who, since he said he would put down this
$250 million, has never said, ‘Here is my plan.’ ”
The absence of a plan, however, contributed to dissension within
First Look, and chatter began to emanate from behind its wall of
operational secrecy. There was an East Coast–West Coast feud, a divide
between the journalists and the technologists. Omidyar’s loyalists out
in California and Hawaii grumbled as Greenwald traveled the world,
promoting a book, picking up awards, and speaking out of turn. Poitras,
meanwhile, was immersed in finishing a documentary on Snowden. There was
an internal battle over budgets, which stalled hiring and hindered
journalistic output. The Intercept initially published at a piddling
rate. In June, the three co-founders of the Intercept and Taibbi wrote a
joint letter to Omidyar demanding freedom to proceed with their
expansion.
Omidyar then published a blog post
saying he had “definitely rethought some of our original ideas and
plans.” Instead of quick expansion, he announced that First Look would
be in “planning, start-up, and experimental mode for at least the next
few years,” focusing its immediate efforts on the Intercept and Racket
while working to develop new journalistic technology and design with a
team in San Francisco. He also appointed a confidant as First Look’s
editorial boss: the former Civil Beat editor John Temple. “I think that
the message,” Temple told me in August, “is that we’re not trying hard
enough if we’re not failing a little bit, if we’re not saying things
that don’t bear fruit.”
The shift proved beneficial to the Intercept, which is no longer under the day-to-day management of its founders. Omidyar lured editor John Cook
away from Gawker to run the site, and after a publication pause and a
redesign, it has been gaining momentum, breaking big stories about the NSA’s surveillance of American Muslim leaders and the seemingly arbitrary standards of the government’s terrorist-screening system.
The latter disclosure reportedly came from a leaker other than Snowden;
the FBI recently searched the home of a government contractor suspected
of being the source.
The factional conflicts within Omidyar’s enterprise, however, seem
far from settled. In August, Temple spoke enthusiastically about Racket,
which he said had broadened its focus to include political topics. But
as its launch date neared, Taibbi disappeared from the company
amid disputes with First Look higher-ups. Omidyar announced Taibbi was
leaving and that First Look would now “turn our focus to exploring next
steps” for Racket, a project that a spokeswoman said had cost him $2
million over its eight months of development. In the wake of the
tumultuous departure, the Intercept published a remarkable inside account
describing “months of contentious disputes” between Taibbi and his
superiors over his management, including a complaint from an employee
that he was “verbally abusive.” But the journalists did not spare
Omidyar from blame, describing what they called “a collision between the
First Look executives, who by and large come from a highly structured
Silicon Valley corporate environment, and the fiercely independent
journalists who view corporate cultures and management-speak with
disdain.” The iconoclasts even questioned Omidyar’s “avowed strategy” of
hiring “anti-authoritarian iconoclasts.”
Even before the turmoil, Temple hinted that a strategic
reconsideration was under way. “It will be more complex,” he told me,
“than an organization of iconoclasts.” He says that Omidyar sees
journalism as “the third phase of his professional life,” bringing
together his technology experience and philanthropy, and is prepared to
be patient, even if it perplexes outsiders. Temple says there is no
incongruity between Omidyar’s communitarian ideals and his financing of
an insurgency. “It’s not all about civility,” Temple says. “It’s about
having a healthy and open society.” There’s a tangible insight buried in
that amorphous sentiment: Omidyar’s interest in journalism is
mechanistic. He wants to aggregate to himself the power to declassify
and to bring about the “greater good,” as he defines it.
In October, the founding Intercept gang — minus Omidyar — got
together for a party at Mayday Space, a loft in a graffitied section of
Bushwick. The Snowden saga had entered its Redford-and-Hoffman phase
with the premiere of Poitras’s documentary Citizenfour,
which was partly financed by Skoll’s Participant Media and looks
destined for Oscar consideration. A DJ spun songs next to a huge
propaganda-style poster reading WHISTLE-BLOWER! KNOW YOUR PLACE … SHUT
YOUR FACE. Smokers congregated on the balcony, which had a distant view
of the Empire State Building, lit red. Greenwald hinted of further
scoops. “Stay tuned, is all I can say,” he told me.
Greenwald says that he and Omidyar plan to finally meet later this
month, when they will appear at a very different sort of gathering: an
invite-only event called Newsgeist, co-sponsored by Google and the
Knight Foundation. Billed as an “unconference,” it has no agenda other
than “reimagining the future of the news.” Greenwald told me “top
editors, executives, moguls, and founders” are expected to attend,
including Dean Baquet of the New York Times. I asked the
organizer from Google about other attendees and speakers, but he said he
could disclose no further details, to “protect the privacy and security
of our invited guests.” It seems that the Newsgeist is very hush-hush.
Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported it, headlining “NSA infected 50,000 computer networks with malicious software.”
It cited leaked Edward Snowden information. His revelations are the
gift that keeps on giving. Activists representing him keep important
information coming.
It’s vital. Everyone needs to know. Unchecked NSA spying threatens fundamental freedoms. They’re fast disappearing.
Their on the chopping block for elimination. Police state lawlessness runs America. It’s too great a threat to ignore.
According to NRC, NSA hacked over 50,000 computer networks. It installed malware. It facilitates surveillance.
It’s “designed to steal sensitive information.” Snowden provided
documents prove it. A 2012 management presentation showed NSA uses
“Computer Network Exploitation (CNE) in more than 50,000 locations.”
It secretly infiltrates computer systems through malware. Belgian telecom provider Belgacom was hacked.
Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) installed
malware in its network. It did so to gain access to its customers’
telephone and data traffic.
It did it through a false Linkedin page. It was done through unwitting company employees.
NSA has a “special department.” It has over 1,000 military and
civilian hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer
hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers.
It’s top secret. It’s called the Office of Tailored Access Operations
(TAO). It identifies computer systems and supporting telecommunications
networks to attack.
It successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecom systems for around 15 years. It does the same thing globally.
Most NSA employees and officials know little or nothing about TAO.
Its operations are extraordinarily sensitive. Only those needing to know
are kept informed.
Special security clearances are required to gain access to its top secret work spaces. Armed guards keep others out.
Entering requires a correct six digit code. Retinal scanner checks are used. TAO targets foreign computer systems.
It collects intelligence by hacking, cracking passwords, compromising
computer security systems, stealing hard drive data, and copying all
subsequent emails and text messages.
NSA calls doing so Computer Network Exploitation (CNE). In October 2012, Obama issued a secret presidential directive. It selected overseas targets for cyber attacks.
His Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) claimed to “offer
unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US 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.”
Washington “identif(ies) potential targets of national importance
where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as
compared with other instruments of national power.”
It operates domestically the same way. NSA director Keith Alexander
heads US Cyber Command (Cybercom). He’s waging global cyberwar.
US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) has full operational control. It’s a cyber hit squad. It’s part of the US Strategic Command.
Rules of engagement are classified. Anything goes is policy.
Cyber-warriors are freewheeling. They operate globally. Cyber-preemption
reflects greater police state power.
TAO personnel penetrate, steal, damage, destroy or otherwise
compromise targeted sites. It’s perhaps the most important component of
NSA’s Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate.
NRC said TAO operations installed about 20,000 “implants” by early 2008. By mid-2012, they “more than doubled to 50,000.”
NSA prioritizes cyber operations. “Computer hacks are relatively
inexpensive.” They give NSA information otherwise not available.
Malware “can remain active for years without” detection. ” ‘Sleeper
cells’ can be controlled remotely and be turned on and off at will.”
Implants are digital sleeper cells. A “push of a button” activates
them. NSA has been conducting these type operations since the late
1990s.
Dutch intelligence services AIVD and MIVD “displayed interest in hacking.” In early 2013, a Joint Cyber Unit (JSCU) was created.
It’s an inter-agency operation. It uses experts with a range of IT
skills. It doesn’t go as far as NSA. Dutch law prohibits it. For how
long remains to be seen.
Last August, the Washington Post headlined “The NSA has its own team of elite hackers.” It discussed TAO operations.
It may “have had something to do with (developing) Stuxnet and Flame malware program.” Washington and Israel were involved.
In spring 2010, Iranian intelligence discovered Stuxnet malware
contamination. It infected its Bushehr nuclear facility. At the time,
operations were halted indefinitely.
Israel was blamed. So was Washington. Had the facility gone online
infected, Iran’s entire electrical power grid could have been shut down.
Flame is a more destructive virus. Internet security experts say it’s
20 times more harmful than Stuxnet. Iran’s military-industrial complex
is targeted.
So is its nuclear program. Maximum disruption is intended. Whether
plans to do so continue remains to be seen. Iran is alerted to the
possibility. Leaksource calls
itself the “#1 source for leaks around the world.” Last August, it
headlined “Codename GENIE: NSA to Control 85,000 ‘Implants’ in
Strategically Chosen Machines Around the World by Year End,” saying:
According to “top secret documents” the Washington Post obtained, “US
intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in
2011.”
Doing so represents “the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that
embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war.”
Snowden leaked information revealed it. GENIE involves using computer
specialists. They break into foreign networks. They do so to “put
(them) under surreptitious US control.”
“Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed ‘covert
implants,’ sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in
computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every
year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions,” said
Leaksource.
GENIE’s next phase involves an automated online system code-named
“TURBINE.” It’s able to potentially manage “millions of implants.”
It elevates intelligence gathering to a higher level. It lets it engage in widespread “active attack(s).”
Teams of FBI, CIA, and Cyber Command operatives work at NSA’s Remote Operations Center (ROC).
Their missions overlap. So does NSA’s National Threat Operations Center. It focuses on cyberdefense.
Snowden was involved as a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor. He learned NSA’s best hacking techniques.
The agency designs most of its implants. It spends millions of
dollars annually on “additional covert” “software vulnerabilities”
purchases.
It gets them from “private malware vendors.” They represent a growing source. They’re largely European based.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are called the “most challenging targets” to penetrate.
Other prioritized countries include so-called terrorist safe havens.
They include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq and Somalia.
NSA’s goal is sweeping. It wants to revolutionize data gathering. It wants to access “anyone, anywhere, anytime.”
It intends to “identify new access, collection and exploitation
methods by leveraging global business trends in data and communication
services.”
It wants total information control worldwide. It wants to go where no
previous spy agency went before. It wants no operational restraints. It
intends to keep doing whatever it wants.
Congress is a willing facilitator. Fake fix legislation facilitates
NSA lawlessness. It codifies collecting phone records of hundreds of
millions of Americans.
It permits the same thing online. It’s already out of committee. It’s heading for Senate passage.
Obama will sign into law whatever Congress sends him. He supports mass surveillance.
He’s waging war on fundamental freedoms. Police state lawlessness is official US policy. Obama is its leading exponent. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on
the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour http://www.dailycensored.com/nsa-infects-50000-computer-systems-worldwide/
