Schneier on Security

bttb • July 28, 2018 11:22 AM

@gordo, echo

Into the weeds regarding Assange, Wikileaks and ‘Clinton related’ email or information. From: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-the-latest-mueller-indictment-reveals-about-wikileaks-ties-to-russia-and-what-it-doesnt from July, 2018 :

“When did Russian intelligence give WikiLeaks the e-mails that it hacked from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, and how did it transmit them? Shortly after the election, James Clapper, then the director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress that American intelligence officials could not clearly pinpoint these facts. “We don’t have good insight into the sequencing of the releases, or when the data may have been provided,” he said. Today, almost two years later, and after months of investigation, we know a lot more than we once did. But our insight into the timing—at least from publicly available information—remains uncertain….”

And more from the same writer, Raffi Khatchadourian, on Assange and Wikileaks from August, 2017:

“The Ecuadorian Embassy in London is situated at the end of a wide brick lane, next to the Harrods department store, in Knightsbridge. Sometimes plainclothes police officers, or vans with tinted windows, can be found outside the building. Sometimes there are throngs of people around it. Sometimes there is virtually no one, which was the case in June, 2012, when Julian Assange, the publisher of WikiLeaks, arrived, disguised as a motorcycle courier, to seek political asylum. In the five years since then, he has not set foot beyond the Embassy. Nonetheless, he has become a global influence, proving that with simple digital tools a single person can craft a new kind of power—a distributed, transnational power, which functions outside norms of state sovereignty that have held for centuries. Encouraged by millions of supporters, Assange has interfered with the world’s largest institutions. His releases have helped fuel democratic uprisings—notably in Tunisia, where a revolution sparked the Arab Spring—and they have been submitted as evidence in human-rights cases around the world. At the same time, Assange’s methodology and his motivations have increasingly come under suspicion. During the Presidential election last year, he published tens of thousands of hacked e-mails written by Democratic operatives, releasing them at pivotal moments in the campaign. They provoked strikingly disparate receptions. “I love WikiLeaks,” Donald Trump declared, in exultant gratitude. After the election, Hillary Clinton argued that the releases had been instrumental in keeping her from the Oval Office….”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/21/julian-assange-a-man-without-a-country

bttb • July 28, 2018 1:31 PM

long post warning

Regarding topics related to interference with USA elections, like: voter suppression, insecure voting machines, foreign meddling, let’s not overlook a major actor, according to Noam Chomsky, Israel. Chomsky on multiple topics: https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_mass_media_obsession :

“[…] AMY GOODMAN: Well, Barbara L’Italien [running for congress in Massachusetts] said a lot there, but she was then cut off, with the shock of the Fox & Friends crew in the morning that they had the wrong Democratic congressional candidate. But this kind of media activism also just goes to the whole issue of the media, Noam Chomsky, the issue of Fox News becoming really state media, with—you have the person who supported the sexual harasser Roger Ailes, Bill Shine, now a top aide to President Trump in the White House. That’s gotten little attention. So you have Fox being a mouthpiece for Trump and a place for him to hear what people have to say, and the other networks very much running counter to Trump, on certain issues, CNN and MSNBC. But your thoughts?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, my frank opinion is that—I must say I don’t pay much attention to television, so I don’t know a great deal about it. But, in general, I think the media—first of all, Fox News is, by now, basically a joke. It’s, as you said, state media. The other media, I think, are focusing on issues which are pretty marginal. There are much more serious issues that are being put to the side. So, the worst of—even on the case of immigration, once again, I think the real question is dealing with the roots of immigration, our responsibility for it, and what we can do to overcome that. And that’s almost never discussed. But I think that’s the crucial issue. And I think we find the same across the board.

So, of all Trump’s policies, the one that is the most dangerous and destructive, in fact poses an existential threat, is his policies on climate change, on global warming. That’s really destructive. And we’re facing an imminent threat, not far removed, of enormous damage. The effects are already visible but nothing like what’s going to come. A sea level rise of a couple of feet will be massively destructive. It will make today’s immigration issues look like trivialities. And it’s not that the administration is unaware of this. So, Donald Trump, for example, is perfectly aware of the dangerous effects, in the short term, of global warming. So, for example, recently he applied to the government of Ireland for permission to build a wall to protect his golf course in Ireland from rising sea levels. And Rex Tillerson, who was supposed to be the adult in the room before he was thrown out, as CEO of ExxonMobil, was devoting enormous resources to climate change denial, although he had, sitting on his desk, the reports of ExxonMobil scientists, who, since the '70s, in fact, were on the forefront of warning of the dire effects of this accelerating phenomenon. I don't know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people of that kind, who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word “evil” doesn’t begin to approach it. These are the kinds of issues that should be under discussion. Instead, what’s being—there is a focus on what I believe are marginalia.

So, take, say, the huge issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. I mean, in most of the world, that’s almost a joke. First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse U.S. policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence. So if you happen to be interested in influence of—foreign influence on elections, there are places to look. But even that is a joke.

I mean, one of the most elementary principles of a functioning democracy is that elected representatives should be responsive to those who elected them. There’s nothing more elementary than that. But we know very well that that is simply not the case in the United States. There’s ample literature in mainstream academic political science simply comparing voters’ attitudes with the policies pursued by their representatives, and it shows that for a large majority of the population, they’re basically disenfranchised. Their own representatives pay no attention to their voices. They listen to the voices of the famous 1 percent—the rich and the powerful, the corporate sector. The elections—Tom Ferguson’s stellar work has demonstrated, very conclusively, that for a long period, way back, U.S. elections have been pretty much bought. You can predict the outcome of a presidential or congressional election with remarkable precision by simply looking at campaign spending. That’s only one part of it. Lobbyists practically write legislation in congressional offices. In massive ways, the concentrated private capital, corporate sector, super wealth, intervene in our elections, massively, overwhelmingly, to the extent that the most elementary principles of democracy are undermined. Now, of course, all that is technically legal, but that tells you something about the way the society functions. So, if you’re concerned with our elections and how they operate and how they relate to what would happen in a democratic society, taking a look at Russian hacking is absolutely the wrong place to look. Well, you see occasionally some attention to these matters in the media, but very minor as compared with the extremely marginal question of Russian hacking.

And I think we find this on issue after issue, also on issues on which what Trump says, for whatever reason, is not unreasonable. So, he’s perfectly right when he says we should have better relations with Russia. Being dragged through the mud for that is outlandish, makes—Russia shouldn’t refuse to deal with the United States because the U.S. carried out the worst crime of the century in the invasion of Iraq, much worse than anything Russia has done. But they shouldn’t refuse to deal with us for that reason, and we shouldn’t refuse to deal with them for whatever infractions they may have carried out, which certainly exist. This is just absurd. We have to move towards better—right at the Russian border, there are very extreme tensions, that could blow up anytime and lead to what would in fact be a terminal nuclear war, terminal for the species and life on Earth. We’re very close to that. Now, we could ask why. First of all, we should do things to ameliorate it. Secondly, we should ask why. Well, it’s because NATO expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in violation of verbal promises to Mikhail Gorbachev, mostly under Clinton, partly under first Bush, then Clinton expanded right to the Russian border, expanded further under Obama. The U.S. has offered to bring Ukraine into NATO. That’s the kind of a heartland of Russian geostrategic concerns. So, yes, there’s tensions at the Russian border—and not, notice, at the Mexican border. Well, those are all issues that should be of primary concern. The fate of—the fate of organized human society, even of the survival of the species, depends on this. How much attention is given to these things as compared with, you know, whether Trump lied about something? I think those seem to me the fundamental criticisms of the media."

Other parts of Goodman’s interview with Chomsky Thursday, broadcast yesterday:

““Brutal and Sadistic”: Noam Chomsky on Family Separation & the U.S. Roots of Today’s Refugee Crisis”
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/brutal_and_sadistic_noam_chomsky_on

“Noam Chomsky on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Spectacular” Victory & Growing Split in Democratic Party”
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/noam_chomsky_on_alexandria_ocasio_cortezs

“Chomsky Criticizes “Autocratic” Nicaraguan Government, Urges Ortega to Call for New Elections”
https://www.democracynow.org/2018/7/27/chomsky_criticizes_autocratic_nicaraguan_government_urges

bttb • July 28, 2018 6:55 PM

@MarkH, Humdee, gordo

MarkH wrote:
“If you want to learn truth by reading Chomsky, you must fact-check claim by claim. Much of what he says is true, but he lacks the integrity to scrupulously adhere to fact.”

Interestingly enough I often listen to Chomsky for facts; facts not much in common to the facts discussed in the mainstream media (MSM). Regardless, while watching/listening to Chomsky on Friday I wondered ‘did he have notes’?

Amy Goodman said, above at the first ‘Democracy Now!’ link, that Noam Chomsky will be on again next week at https://www.democracynow.org; I don’t know what day(s).

“Tune in next week when we continue our conversation with Noam Chomsky about Gaza, Israel’s new nationality law, the recent Trump-Putin summit, Iran, North Kora, the war in Yemen and more. In December, Noam Chomsky will be celebrating his 90th birthday.
[and]
Noam Chomsky, world-renowned political dissident, author and linguist, now a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. He taught for 50 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.”

I agree that it is good to try to get at truth. For example, one can ask why do say that or question what is your basis for that assertion, etc.?

To learn more about getting towards truth, afaicr, I tried (good luck with that) to read “The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society” by Habermas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Communicative_Action
https://www.amazon.com/Theory-Communicative-Action-Rationalization-Society/dp/0807015075
https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Theory_of_Communicative_Action.html?id=kuFhjNZuHTAC
http://www5.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/publsbm01.htm

I think Humdee linked to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas recently.

Does anybody know about a book like “Habermas for Dummies”?

bttb • July 30, 2018 3:38 PM

@Clive Robinson

You wrote (regarding the 13 July Indictment ; old bookmark https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/13/the-russian-hack/ :
“There is no “publicly available information” that can be verified it’s still all in the realms of conjecture publicaly…”
Yes ( ianal), it is an indictment and nothing has been adjudicated. The specificity is great imo, but, as Greenwald might say, ‘show us the evidence’. Which gets into protecting sources and methods, …

“It’s why originally people gave the “balance of probability” to “an inside job” over money issues within the DNC (Hillary stealing contributions pledged for Bernie).”
I’m still leaning toward the GRU hack evidence. otoh, afaik, Sy Hersch, may still be leaning away from it was the Russians who did it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh

bttb • July 31, 2018 12:06 PM

In layman’s terms, and I haven’t read all the posts above, here is my two cents worth on Climate Change (Global Warming):

1) What if something goes wrong with theories inadequately tested? We won’t be able to go back, of course, to previous “snapshots” of planet earth. For example, what if we put the wrong gases or stuff in the upper atmosphere to try to reflect incoming ‘heat’ from space. Unintended Consequences? Will climate change mitigation choices become the only game in town? If so, how soon? Are they now?

2) Hydrocarbon chains, afaik, still make good, and cost-effective, precursors for manufacturing plastics and presumably other stuff (pharmaceuticals?). In other words, burning (oxidizing) hydrocarbon chains may be penny wise (near term) and pound foolish (long term). Keynes said, of course, something like “In the long run, we are all dead.”

3) afaik, Fracking has problems with things like release of methane while fracking and potential detrimental problems (risks?) for drinking water.

I enjoyed reading, or skimming, the link below:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/energy-environment/hoover-dam-renewable-energy.html

“The $3 Billion Plan to Turn Hoover Dam Into a Giant Battery

Hoover Dam helped transform the American West, harnessing the force of the Colorado River — along with millions of cubic feet of concrete and tens of millions of pounds of steel — to power millions of homes and businesses. It was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century.

Now it is the focus of a distinctly 21st-century challenge: turning the dam into a vast reservoir of excess electricity, fed by the solar farms and wind turbines that represent the power sources of the future.

[…]

Lazard, the financial advisory and asset management firm, has estimated that utility-scale lithium-ion batteries cost 26 cents a kilowatt-hour, compared with 15 cents for a pumped-storage hydroelectric project. The typical household pays about 12.5 cents a kilowatt-hour for electricity.

Some dams already provide a basis for the Hoover Dam proposal. Los Angeles operates a hydroelectric plant at Pyramid Lake, about 50 miles northwest of the city, that stores energy by using the electric grid to spin a turbine backward and pump water back into the lake.

[Read more: It’s tricky to store energy on an industrial scale, but engineers have devised clever workarounds.]

But the Hoover Dam proposal would operate differently. The dam, with its towering 726-foot concrete wall and its 17 power generators that came online in 1936, would not be touched. Instead, engineers propose building a pump station about 20 miles downstream from the main reservoir, Lake Mead, the nation’s largest artificial lake. A pipeline would run partly or fully underground, depending on the location ultimately approved….”

bttb • July 31, 2018 3:14 PM

From https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/31/did-gru-learn-that-democrats-had-hired-christopher-steele-when-they-hacked-dncs-email-server/

“According to Glenn Simpson’s [Fusion GPS] SJC [Senate Judiciary Committee] testimony, he hired Christopher Steele in May or June of 2016 to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.

Q. And when did you engage Mr. Steele to conduct opposition research on Candidate Trump?

A. I don’t specifically recall, but it would 10 have been in the — it would have been May or June  of 2016.

Q. And why did you engage Mr. Steele in May or June of 2016?

Simpson is maddeningly vague (undoubtedly deliberately) on this point. In one place he suggests he hired Steele after DCLeaks was registered and amid a bunch of chatter about Democrats being hacked, which would put it after June 8 and probably after June 15….”

bttb • August 2, 2018 3:38 PM

From the comments section in the above post (w/o indentation): https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/08/02/lawfare-missing-the-kompromat-for-the-pee-glee/#comment-744725
“[…]
Ollie says:
August 2, 2018 at 1:59 pm

“Trump knows he’s screwed. He’s just not sure whether Putin or Mueller presents the bigger threat”

This. This right here makes me giddy. Oh please, please let it be Mueller and please triple please I pray the outcome is total destruction of that beastie drumpf and his spawns.
Reply

Bob Conyers says:
August 2, 2018 at 2:25 pm

I share your hope that Mueller catches him, but I would be very cautious to show any giddiness at the prospect that Trump fears Putin so much that he views him as the overriding danger. That can be a very bad scenario for all of us.
Reply

   emptywheel says:
    August 2, 2018 at 2:38 pm

    Ditto what Bob said. I think Putin will not go quietly when he realizes he’s not going to get what he wants. That’s what I was trying to lay out in this post. [ https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/14/vladimir-putin-manages-trump-with-both-carrots-and-sticks/ ]

    The country is not ready to respond to a renewed attack from Russia, and Trump has only made us less prepared.
    Reply

    Peterr says:
    August 2, 2018 at 3:07 pm

    It also leaves open questions about Mike Pence. Manafort had a very strong role in getting Trump to select Pence to be his VP, including telling Trump that his campaign plane had engine problems and he’d have to stay overnight in Indianapolis while waiting for repairs. Today I sit here wondering whether this was a brilliant political ploy by Manafort to get the Christian Right on board with Donald “Grab ’em” Trump (though that moniker didn’t come out til later) or if it was part of a fall-back plan that Putin and his oligarch pals put to Manafort, should something happen to Trump.

    When possible, spooks like to have backups when they run a big operation.

earlofhuntingdon says:
August 2, 2018 at 3:22 pm

The too-conservative-for-arch-conservative Indiana Mike Pence was hand-picked to be on the Trump ticket by Manafort and his patrons. It would seem that there is some there there.

earlofhuntingdon says:
August 2, 2018 at 3:39 pm

If Trump disappoints Vlad, or for some reason Putin feels he needs to abandon him, the ways in which he could reveal dirt on Trump are myriad, and some of them virtually untraceable. It would lead to prosecution or impeachment and disarray among the normally tightly orchestrated GOP. It would preoccupy the Dems for quite some time.

Trump’s immediate successor would be Pence, though he himself might well be compromised. He is more conservative than Trump, more disciplined, self-righteous, judgmental and secretive. He would be more effectively bad than Trump, if much quieter about it.

The disorder from officially pursuing him, however deserved, would multiply the problem. Predictably theatrical GOP defenses, such as “witch hunt” and “coup” – the ironies would abound – would cause further disruption.

The 2020 election would inevitably be involved. The next, predictably Democratic president, would be ensnared in the process. Add to that that the Dems are notoriously poor at self-defense.

All in, Putin would have a win-win. Throw in Brexit – the trap door for that officially opens next March 29th – and the West will be in considerable disarray for years. I’ll bet Putin has already laid in the champagne and vodka; the beluga caviar won’t be far behind.
Reply

Trip says:
August 2, 2018 at 3:53 pm

Any way you look at it, we are pretty screwed for years and years to come.

[…]

emptywheel says:
August 2, 2018 at 2:40 pm

One reason I have harped on Manafort’s iPods to the extent I have is I wonder if he taped certain meetings.
Reply

    earlofhuntingdon says:
    August 2, 2018 at 3:13 pm

    I wonder if any would match the audio-visual files Mr. Cohen might have.
    Reply

[…]

Willis Warren says:
August 2, 2018 at 2:50 pm

If Mueller could prove this, why wouldn’t he? what’s the delay?
Reply

emptywheel says:
August 2, 2018 at 3:11 pm

I’m not sure how strong his case is without Manafort. And everyone knows that.
Reply

   bmaz says:
    August 2, 2018 at 3:45 pm

    Maybe, and maybe some of it needs to be “cleaned up”. But it is likely known and available to Mueller.
    Reply

Peterr says:
August 2, 2018 at 3:58 pm

Mueller has to prove his case not just in court but also in the political realm — without engaging in overt politics. He knows that whatever he presents will be put under the microscope by the House GOP, and he wants to make damn sure he’s got this nailed down in such a way that Congress cannot derail his work.

See “Walsh, Lawrence, Iran-Contra and”

People talk about parallels to Watergate (including me), but I-C [Iran-Contra] seems to be at least as much an appropriate analogy to make.
Reply

[…]”

bttb • August 4, 2018 2:32 PM

@Mercantile

Regarding security clearances, which I assume many people on this blog care about, in one country or another, Scahill, https://theintercept.com/2018/07/25/double-negative-trump-putin-and-the-destruction-of-political-intelligence , had an interesting take:

“Jeremy argues that Trump is sort of right about stripping security clearances from former senior CIA officials, but for all the wrong reasons.

[…]

JS: I’m Jeremy Scahill, coming to you from The Intercept, and this is episode 64 of Intercepted.
Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders: Not only is the President looking to take away Brennan’s security clearance, he’s also looking into the clearances of Comey, Clapper, Hayden, Rice and McCabe ––
DJT: Before we get into the show, I just want to make a few quick points. As I’ve said before, Donald Trump sometimes does the right thing or says the right thing for the wrong reasons. And the case specifically that I’m talking about right now is this threat that he made to strip some of these cable news pundits and national security robber barons of their security clearances. I’m, of course, talking about so-called former intelligence officials, former CIA directors and senior CIA officers and FBI personnel and DNI officials and generals and national security advisors — these are among the worst class of people in American politics. Not just today, but always. The overwhelming majority of them use their previous posts to rake in huge amounts of corporate cash for influence peddling or to profit from wars that they helped sell that just happened to benefit the war corporations on whose boards they sit. Now, it’s not all of them, but it’s a lot of them.
And in this current moment, many of these former senior intelligence officials have basically taken up residency in the studios of cable news channels and on cable news sets. And they are constantly pushing a propaganda campaign disguised as opposition to Trump that really is about grooming the public to embrace the most authoritarian and secretive institutions in the United States government as somehow being the protectors of our democracy.
Last year, I raised this issue, which by the way was the very last time I was allowed on CNN’s airwaves. Here it is:
Jeremy Scahill: Alright, how about this Brian, when you have these retired generals and colonels on, let’s hear what defense companies they’re on the boards of. Let’s hear how they have their own private companies that benefited off of the Iraq war like Spider Marks.
Brian Stelter: I think CNN is quite careful about those disclosures, but I agree it’s important to have those disclosures.
Jeremy Scahill: Well, I mean, look: The fact is that when you talk about famous generals, and this is a different network, but Barry McCaffrey, you have your own Spider Marks, I think that the American people deserve to know what was the private sector record of these individuals when it came to the weapons industry or profiting in the private sector off of the proliferation of U.S. wars that happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere there is not the kind of transparency that is required of a truly democratic process when you’re not revealing the extent to which these people have benefited in the private sector from these wars.
JS: Privatizing your supposedly national service, service that is constantly held up with no sense of irony or hypocrisy as evidence of the impeccable character of the pundit or corporate board member who is running their mouth off, that’s legalized corruption and it should be abolished — not for political reasons, not because these people are speaking publicly about Donald Trump, but because they are using their previous positions for private agendas, whether that be lucrative consulting gigs or to engage in historical revisionism in an effort to mislead the public into trusting the most dangerous institutions in our society. Or worse: viewing these people, because they were former senior CIA people, as above criticism or that they represent the very definition of patriotism and to oppose them makes you a traitor. It would be one thing if these people were being challenged when they go on TV or investigated, called out, exposed as part of their cushy lives in the private sector. But that never happens — ever. Instead, this has been a literal and political cash cow, for people, some of whom are responsible for some of the worst crimes committed in the name of the United States when they were doing their official jobs. Allowing these people now to engage in what amounts to insider trading with the most sensitive information possessed by the United States while never holding them accountable for their tenure while they were in office is undemocratic and worse.
Now, it’s clear that Trump wants his political opponents stripped of their clearances. We get that and that is a sophomoric reason to do this. But it does raise a real issue: Why do we as a society accept this monetization and politicization of so-called public service? Why should these private citizens be able to privatize intelligence for their own personal and political benefit, or the benefit of their former employers at the CIA, NSA, FBI, DNI, on and on and on? The answer is: They shouldn’t be able to.
Most of Congress is also wrapped up in this racket; so don’t expect them to get around to addressing this any time soon. But it is something that all of us should be aware of when we watch these former spooks selling their goods on the public airwaves.”

It would be nice if talking heads, with security clearances or financial interests, would disclose any potential conflicts of interest when pontificating.[1]

[1] Pontificate, from Merriam Webster, 1: to speak or express opinions in a pompous or dogmatic way

bttb • August 4, 2018 4:40 PM

Oops, from above, Youtube links for Meat Loaf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGMCSCFoKA (Bat out of Hell)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11MzbEcHlw (Paradise by the Dashboard Light)