Schneier on Security

ResearcherZero • December 10, 2021 7:38 PM

Khalilzad joined Trump in a conference room, along with Vice-President Mike Pence, Bolton, and other national-security officials. He described the Taliban’s promise that they would not allow Al Qaeda to attack the U.S. When it was noted that Ghani was unhappy with the deal, Trump said, “Why are you wasting your time going to talk to Ghani? He’s a crook.”

Trump then asked Khalilzad if he could give the Taliban “something to make them coöperate.”

“What are you talking about, Mr. President?”

“Like money.”

“No,” Khalilzad replied. “They’re on a terrorism list. We can’t give them money.”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/the-secret-history-of-the-us-diplomatic-failure-in-afghanistan

ResearcherZero • December 11, 2021 9:16 PM

@Ted

“Prosecutors can bring charges against people for sharing information with the public only when classified or other national security material is at issue. Material cannot be classified to conceal legal violations or prevent embarrassment.”

https://www.archives.gov/isoo/policy-documents/cnsi-eo.html#one

“We are reviewing the entire process of how we conduct media leak investigations by responding to issues that have been raised by our career prosecutors and agents,” Rosenstein said. “We’re taking basically a fresh look at it. . . . We don’t know yet what, if any, changes we want to make, but we are taking a fresh look.”

Coats said the hunt for reporters’ sources would go well beyond the intelligence agencies. “These national security breaches do not just originate in the intelligence community. They come from a wide range of sources within the government, including the executive branch and including the Congress,”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/attorney-general-says-justice-dept-has-tripled-the-number-of-leak-probes/2017/08/04/1a395064-791d-11e7-9eac-d56bd5568db8_story.html

“I’m called a rogue Border Patrol agent, I’m called a right-hand man of the Trump administration, I accessed data improperly, I violated her constitutional rights — all of these things are untrue,” Rambo told Yahoo News. “All these things are standard practices that — let me rephrase that. All of the things that led up to my interest in Ali Watkins were standard practice of what we do and what we did and probably what’s still done to this day.”

ResearcherZero • December 11, 2021 10:06 PM

@Ted

“The United States has, of course, an important national interest in protecting national security information against unauthorized disclosure,” Garland wrote in his memo. “But a balancing test may fail to properly weight the important national interest in protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of information revealing their sources, sources they need to apprise the American people of the workings of their government.”

The memo makes clear that federal prosecutors can, in some cases, obtain journalists’ records. Those exceptions include if the reporters are suspected of working for agents of a foreign power or terrorist organizations, if they are under investigation for unrelated activities or if they obtained their information through criminal methods like breaking and entering. There are also exceptions for situations with imminent risks, like kidnappings or crimes against children.

Others whose records were obtained were Democratic members of Congress and aides and former White House counsel Don McGahn.
https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-reporters-records-merrick-garland-e2348419815ef84dc75cbecd7e546b39

Although improperly obtained evidence may have been used to prosecute leaks, generally, embarrassment was considered a much higher priority than breaking the law. But, the official position is that going “Rambo” is to be frowned upon.

ResearcherZero • December 11, 2021 11:47 PM

@Ted

Checks and balances definitely are good, as unofficially or “off-the-record”,
“going Rambo” at arms distance, or where it can not be proven, is not always frowned upon, and increasingly so it would seem.

“The numbers of more than 180 journalists are listed in the data, including reporters, editors and executives at the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, the Economist, Associated Press and Reuters.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/ft-editor-roula-khalaf-among-180-journalists-targeted-nso-spyware

“A successful infection enables an NSO client to access everything on the device, including contacts, chat messages – and precise location. Pineda’s phone disappeared from the scene of his murder, so a forensic examination to determine if it was targeted or infected with spyware was not possible.”

“The gunmen who murdered him could have learned of his location at a public carwash through means not related to NSO’s technologies, or its clients. But his attackers knew exactly where to find him, even though the hammock where he lay was not visible from the street.”

“People with power can do whatever they want to anyone,” said his widow, Marisol Toledo, when told Pineda had been selected for potential targeting. “If they succeeded [in infecting his phone], they would have known where he was at all times.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/18/revealed-murdered-journalist-number-selected-mexico-nso-client-cecilio-pineda-birto

“I think once you choose to charge Assange with publishing information that the Government said was secret, it’s not a huge step to charge The New York Times or a New York Times reporter or editor with publishing information the Government said should be secret,”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-29/trump-administration-after-assange-and-it-serves-as-a-warning/11350854

Spain’s National Court is investigating a Spanish private security firm on suspicion it spied on Julian Assange on behalf of the US while he was inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, according to a ruling made public on Wednesday.

The court said Morales paid €20,000 (US$22,000) a month in cash to the head of security at the embassy to ensure that there were no negative reports about Undercover Global that could lead to its contract being terminated.
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/3032260/spanish-firm-undercover-global-accused-spying-wikileaks-founder

ResearcherZero • December 12, 2021 12:28 AM

@Ted

If governments do get caught doing something wrong, they resort to changing the law.

For example, it used to be illegal for New Zealand’s foreign intelligence agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau to spy on the public in New Zealand, so the law was changed after they were caught illegally spying.

“the agency wrongly spied on Kiwis in the Pacific, and used its eavesdropping powers to snoop on rival candidates for the job of World Trade Organisation boss”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/80303385/new-gcsb-director–a-consummate-public-servant

THE GCSB lost control of its surveillance technology and wasn’t aware its systems continued spying on Kim Dotcom, according to new documents from the spy bureau.

It claimed that it turned off all surveillance systems targeting Dotcom and others but
found out more than a year later that surveillance continued without its knowledge.

The details in the documents have led Dotcom to state that there is now evidence the United States’ National Security Agency was carrying out surveillance on him.

Dotcom, who should have been protected from GCSB surveillance as a New Zealand resident, said the GCSB did not know because its equipment was being used by the NSA, which was “directly involved”.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/gcsb-had-no-idea-spy-gear-was-still-targeting-kim-dotcom/P55O2VGPHPIZVLQXSUNKVLLBIM/

Law Commissioner Donna Buckingham said the act, which governs the search and surveillance activities of police and some other enforcement agencies, is already working well after becoming law in 2012.

“The act does not need a major overhaul. All we are proposing are amendments to make the law clearer and to update it in response to the effects of new technology,” she said.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/joint-review-recommends-changes-to-search-and-surveillance-laws/SIW5LBCEWRB7TK2RSCVY4YYLJA/

The National Security Act of 1947 contained a specific ban on intelligence operatives from operating domestically. In the 1970s, America learned about the extensive domestic political spying carried out by the FBI, the military, the CIA, and the NSA, and Congress passed new laws to prevent a repeat of those abuses.

The law on surveillance begins with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which states clearly that Americans’ privacy may not be invaded without a warrant based on probable cause.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The US Supreme Court (US v. Katz 389 US 347) has made it clear that this core privacy protection does cover government eavesdropping. As a result, all electronic surveillance by the government in the United States is illegal, unless it falls under one of a small number of precise exceptions specifically carved out in the law.

United States Code Title 50, Chapter 36, Subchapter 1
Section 1809. Criminal sanctions

(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally-

(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute


There are only three laws that authorize any exceptions to the ban on electronic eavesdropping by the government. Congress has explicitly stated that these three laws are the exclusive means by which domestic electronic surveillance can be carried out (18 USC, Section 2511(2)(f)). They are:

Title III and the Electronic Commnunications Privacy Act make up the statutes that govern criminal wiretaps in the United States.
FISA. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the law that governs eavesdropping on agents of "foreign powers" within the United States, including suspected foreign terrorists.


Title III and ECPA govern domestic criminal wiretaps and are not relevant to the NSA’s spying. FISA is the law under which the NSA should have operated. It authorizes the government to conduct surveillance in certain situations without meeting all of the requirements of the Fourth Amendment that apply under criminal law, but requires that an independent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court oversee that surveillance to make sure that Americans who have no ties to foreign terrorist organizations or other “foreign powers” are not spied upon.

…warrantless surveillance would have been legal for only 15 days after the resolution was passed on September 18, 2001.

FISA contains explicit language describing the president’s powers “during time of war” and provides that “the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this title to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed fifteen days following a declaration of war by the Congress.” 50 U.S.C. § 1811 (emphasis added).

ResearcherZero • December 12, 2021 8:17 PM

@Clive Robinson

““Machine Intelligence” as a worthwhile project, “de-googling” etc might fit the bill”

This certainly would be a great project.

I’ve been wondering if google is running experiments with making payment to news organisations, the most annoying experience possible?
If the news organisations don’t then get paid, it’s the fault of ad-blockers and extensions, not the fault of google?

–

@Ted

Australian prisons are indeed victorian. The super-max prisons are probably more dystopian, with a victorian feel.

ResearcherZero • December 12, 2021 9:26 PM

@Ted

The ability of the press to report freely on its government is a cornerstone of American democracy. That ability is, by any reasonable assessment, under siege.

The Times’s executive editor, Jill Abramson, put it simply when I asked her about it Tuesday: “The press is supposed to hold government accountable. These investigations intrude on that process.”

This isn’t just about press rights. It’s about the right of citizens to know what their government is doing. In an atmosphere of secrecy and punishment – despite the hollow promises of transparency — that’s getting harder every day.
https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/leak-investigations-are-an-assault-on-the-press-and-on-democracy-too/

“Material cannot be classified to conceal legal violations or prevent embarrassment.”

This bit doesn’t seem to be taken very seriously anymore.

Legal experts say both physical and digital surveillance is worrying, especially when done by a government-owned agency.

“State surveillance comes at a very high democratic cost,” Ms Al-Azzawi says.

“Surveillance violates people’s rights to privacy, and it has a really chilling effect on the exercise of political rights.”

“I think that this kind of surveillance, the fact that it is happening in an unregulated environment, means that we’re all at risk.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-25/victoria-forests-agency-accused-of-spying-on-campaigner/100613342

ResearcherZero • December 12, 2021 10:20 PM

@Ted

“IMAGINE if American citizens never learned about the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Imagine not knowing about the brutal treatment of terror suspects at United States government “black sites.” Or about the drone program that is expanding under President Obama, or the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping of Americans.”

“This is a world without leaks.”

“And a world without leaks — the secret government information slipped to the press — may be the direction we’re headed in. Since 9/11, leakers and whistle-blowers have become an increasingly endangered species. Some, like the former C.I.A. official John Kiriakou, have gone to jail.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/public-editor/the-danger-of-suppressing-the-leaks.html

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/us/phone-records-of-journalists-of-the-associated-press-seized-by-us.html

This kind of stuff happens in Australia, only I don’t remember there being any requirement to inform anyone that they are pursuant to an order to collect their communications. They may find out when they get a knock on their door and are presented with a seizure order, and paperwork/devices are seized afterwards.

Although the government is expanding the law to encompass “phone calls, emails, instant messages, video conversations and conversations via over-the-top messaging applications”, including “draft emails” and “unsent” IM messages.” under Section 280(1)(b) of the Telecommunications Act…

…communications are already being collected, such as private messages on social media and other communications. Of course you would have to prove your communications have been collected, and the orders are secret.

There is no Bill of Rights in Australia, no Fourth Amendment. Your rights come down to what can be proved on paper, and that evidence may or may not be allowed to be heard at a trial. If you have a large amount of money, the evidence that may increase, depending on who is in charge of the hearing.
I’d recommend having at least a few million spare.

ResearcherZero • December 12, 2021 10:58 PM

@Ted

The ex-Australian intelligence officer embarrassed the government when he exposed Australia was secretly spying on the East Timor negotiation team during negotiations over East Timor’s oil and gas reserves. Australia also holds money from the gas and oil profits in a Sovereign Wealth Fund, on East Timor’s behalf.

“For 14 years now, Australia’s tiny neighbour, East Timor, has been consistently requesting Australia to negotiate the establishment of permanent maritime boundaries between the two coastlines. For 14 years now, Australia has refused to even consider doing so.”
https://www.standard.net.au/story/7228569/secret-document-is-key-witness-k-lawyer/

“Instead it has jostled East Timor into a series of temporary resource sharing arrangements, all of which short-change one of the poorest countries in Asia out of billions of dollars in oil and gas resources.”
https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/australia-is-guilty-of-the-same-misconduct-as-china-over-our-treatment-of-east-timor-20160713-gq54u0.html

ResearcherZero • December 13, 2021 12:54 AM

@Ted

How can anyone report on security lapses if someone from the government decides to come after the individual reporting the security lapse?

“State officials’ best response would have been to take down the site, thank the reporter and immediately begin its own investigation into the data exposure, not to kill the messenger with threats of legal action,”
https://statescoop.com/missouri-parson-reporter-did-nothing-wrong/

There is also generally a requirement to report a crime if you witness it.

“The Afghan police are described beating and harassing civilians; according to one report, when his bodyguard refuses to shoot a civilian, a police chief shoots the bodyguard instead. An orphanage that opened with great fanfare is shown to be empty, the coalition’s money embezzled; the police and Army are described feuding with each other, and insurgents are shown attacking U.S. troops using vehicles supplied by the coalition to fight them.”

“The documents describe the Taliban’s efforts to turn U.S. allies into enemies with bribes and threats and the killing of civilians through mistakes and misunderstanding (a deaf person who flees a convoy out of nervousness can’t hear warnings and gets shot; five children get killed in a rocket attack that was part of a botched raid against an enemy who isn’t present). Also revealed is the wider-than-known use of drones inside Afghanistan and the Taliban’s use of heat-seeking missiles against U.S. aircraft, the very type of weapon that the United Sates supplied to the mujahedeen to defeat the Soviets in the 1980s.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wikileaks-documents-white-house-tries-to-kill-the-messenger/

The WikiLeaks disclosures revealed resource-driven gaps and weaknesses in CIA’sinsider threat program.

“exempting the intelligence community form baseline federal cybersecurity requirements was a mistake.”

From intelligence brief:

“We have been slow-due to resource choices and cultural resistance-to extend state-of-the-art auditing and user activity monitoring technology to mission systems not connected to the main enterprise network.”
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden-cybersecurity-lapses-letter-to-dni.pdf

The talk explains and illustrates the procedural and technical details of the surveillance in and around the Ecuadorian embassy in London during the time Julian Assange stayed in there from June 2012 until April 2019.
https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-11247-technical_aspects_of_the_surveillance_in_and_around_the_ecuadorian_embassy_in_london

–

In Australia 13 recommendations for changes to the Telecommunications Act remain classified…

“In effect, this bill would allow spy agencies to modify, add, copy or delete your data with a data disruption warrant; collect intelligence on your online activities with a network activity warrant; [and] take over your social media and other online accounts and profile with an account takeover warrant.”
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/police-get-online-account-takeover-data-disruption-powers-569062

“It is outrageous that these warrants won’t come from a judge of a superior court that is appointed on their personal capacity.”
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/amend/r6623_amend_49c26454-34c3-45fc-8f54-e837bac45395/upload_pdf/QL187.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf

All but four of the 190 unclassified recommendations have been agreed to by the government in full, part or principle, while a further 13 recommendations are classified.
https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/publications/report-comprehensive-review-legal-framework-national-intelligence-community

–

Ham radio with a pre-arranged cypher for transmitting messages is starting to sound a lot better than email. Place the antenna so that if someone comes and cuts the support wires, then it falls on a neighbors house. Make sure to catch the offenders on camera.

ResearcherZero • December 13, 2021 11:16 PM

@Clive Robinson

“the root of trust” is very important, and I would argue it increasingly applies even to what people believe, not just authentication.

It is why hybrid warfare is a fools gambit.

Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture:

“I know, you may think I am deluded. How could life in an Embassy with a cat and a skateboard ever amount to torture? That’s exactly what I thought, too, when Assange first appealed to my office for protection. Like most of the public, I had been subconsciously poisoned by the relentless smear campaign, which had been disseminated over the years. So it took a second knock on my door to get my reluctant attention. But once I looked into the facts of this case, what I found filled me with repulsion and disbelief.”

“In the end it finally dawned on me that I had been blinded by propaganda, and that Assange had been systematically slandered to divert attention from the crimes he exposed. Once he had been dehumanized through isolation, ridicule and shame, just like the witches we used to burn at the stake, it was easy to deprive him of his most fundamental rights without provoking public outrage worldwide. And thus, a legal precedent is being set, through the backdoor of our own complacency, which in the future can and will be applied just as well to disclosures by The Guardian, the New York Times and ABC News.”
https://medium.com/@njmelzer/demasking-the-torture-of-julian-assange-b252ffdcb768

“House arrest would be absolutely possible. They did it with Augusto Pinochet. The former dictator of Chile was in extradition detention in London for 18 months. But he was not put in a high-security prison, but accommodated in a villa under house arrest. He was even visited by the former prime minister [Margaret] Thatcher, who brought him whisky. He had a very privileged existence.”

“It is important to understand that, in extradition detention, you are not to be treated as a criminal. You are just detained so you cannot escape in case you will end up being extradited. That Julian Assange is being put in a high security prison with extremely severe restrictions on his private and professional life and procedural rights is completely disproportionate.”

“It’s unnecessary, there is no legal basis to do that. The intent is clearly to intimidate other journalists, to silence him so he cannot do his journalistic work, which he clearly is entitled to exercise freely.”
https://www.dw.com/en/un-rapporteur-on-assange-the-us-is-trying-to-criminalize-investigative-journalism/a-56076248

So if you are a dictator and you torture, execute and disappear people, you get whiskey.

If you instead publish the painful truth, you don’t get any whiskey, you are sent to a maximum security prison, and you are not even afforded the legal defense preparations that are given to even the very worst of criminals.

States are dissolving “The Root of Trust”, this is in turn acting as a destabilizing force. They are destabilizing with spy tools and surveillance, they are destabilizing with political persecutions, and they are destabilizing with conspiracy theories which are amplified by their own political ‘fixers’.

If this isn’t bad enough, studies have shown exposure to automation led to an increase in support for radical-right parties in Western European countries between the late 1990s and 2016.
https://www.knowledge.unibocconi.eu/notizia.php?idArt=23580

“individual exposure to the automation shock leads to poorer perceived economic conditions, lower likelihood of having a permanent contract, and lower satisfaction with the government and democracy.”
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111611118

And there are a lot of additional costs that come with our fancy little gadgets, and that is even before considering the loss of privacy and growing authoritarianism.

RABBIT HOLE WARNING

60% of China’s ground water is rated unfit for human consumption, and the industry that supplies chemicals to the electronics industry is a $20B a year industry, which is quite an incentive for “business as usual”.

“The fact that women around the world were still being subjected to things that experts, including corporate leaders, decided should not be used in the workplace—to me that is an extremely sad story, and a loss for public health.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-15/american-chipmakers-had-a-toxic-problem-so-they-outsourced-it

In a 1911 lecture to the Eugenics Education Society in London, Sir Thomas Oliver, a physician, spoke of his hard-won success “in securing the emancipation of female labour from the dangerous processes of lead-making. …Lead hits hard the reproductive powers of man and woman, but especially of woman.”
https://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/07/toxic_substances_in_electronics_manufacturing_the_u_s_does_tragically_little.html

“What began a year ago as a drive, according to the chemical conglomerate’s spokesmen, to shift its female employees out of positions at the company’s plant here where exposure to lead could harm their unborn children has backfired into charges by five of the women that they had to have themselves surgically sterilized to keep their jobs.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1979/01/01/women-say-they-had-to-be-sterilized-to-hold-jobs/74f7104e-8449-48d2-9592-c52d496dfffc/

“Families and a labour welfare group believe the leukaemia was caused by exposure to chemicals used to clean electrical panels and say many more workers could have been affected. They add that young workers who fall sick with leukaemia are dismissed and denied continuing medical coverage, bankrupting families as they desperately pay for treatment.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2754824/Mystery-cancer-cluster-killing-Chinese-workers-factory-makes-new-iPhone-6-At-13-staff-diagnosed-leukaemia-falling-sick-plant-recent-years.html

That is a big reason why people in China have riots and protests, because the rivers and ground water are increasingly becoming a toxic soup, and the health effects are making people desperate and angry.
Then the Chinese Government in turn increases surveillance, authoritarian behavior, and creates a subjugated workforce to build the surveillance apparatus.

This in turn creates more pollution and growing resentment, so it creates a social credit scheme, and hopes that descending into the fantasies of a Brave New World can subdue the problem. Meanwhile Steve Bannon is thinking to himself, “Hell, why not have our own Cultural Revolution?”

ResearcherZero • December 16, 2021 1:34 AM

Relativity confirmed to be true again through observations of two companion pulsars.

“We see for the first time how the light is not only delayed due to a strong curvature of spacetime around the companion, but also that the light is deflected by a small angle of 0.04 degrees that we can detect.”

https://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2021/12

ResearcherZero • December 16, 2021 10:44 PM

@Ted

Maybe, vulnerabilities like Log4j will prompt them to consider the bill wisely, but then trying to explain technical problems to politicians is an issue in itself.
Financial cost is something they can understand, and perhaps if they understood technical problems meant that “all your secrets and correspondence will spill out”, maybe they would understand that.

–

Spyware firms spying on politicians on behalf of governments.

Meta was able to determine in some cases that the spyware firms were working on behalf of governments, law firms and individuals, the companies were “indiscriminate” about whom they targeted. “We are seeing politicians. We’re seeing human rights activists. We’re seeing lawyers, doctors, clergy, in some cases ordinary citizens. Anyone who might be party to a lawsuit,”

“Almost anyone can hire one of these firms,” he said. “These firms both democratize these threats and they give an added layer of deception to the worst actors.”

Black Cube created fake accounts posing as graduate students, human rights workers and film and TV producers and tried to set up phone calls and get email addresses for a wide range of targets,

Bluehawk CI tried to trick government opponents in the United Arab Emirates by pretending to be reporters for Fox News and Italy’s La Stampa,

Meta also took down accounts connected to “an unidentified entity in China” that, Meta says, made tools used by Chinese law enforcement to spy on minority groups in Xinjiang, Myanmar and Hong Kong.

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/16/1064628654/facebook-bans-surveillance-firms-that-spied-on-50000-people

hxxps://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Threat-Report-on-the-Surveillance-for-Hire-Industry.pdf

–

Craft PNG files that appear completely different in Apple software
hxxps://www.da.vidbuchanan.co.uk/widgets/pngdiff/

ResearcherZero • December 17, 2021 12:15 AM

Private spy firms helped Qatar beat other bids for World Cup

Global Risk Advisors bills itself as “an international strategic consultancy specializing in cybersecurity, military and law enforcement training, and intelligence-based advisory services”

Chalker also promised the Qataris the use of I.T. and “technical collection specialists” as well as top field operatives with backgrounds in “highly sensitive U.S. intelligence and military operations” who could “spot, assess, develop, recruit, and handle assets with access to persons and topics of interests” on Qatar’s behalf, company materials show.

He also emphasized aggression and discretion, saying his plans included “patsies,” and “lightning rods,” psychological operations, and “persistent and aggressive distractions and disruptions” aimed at Qatar’s enemies all while giving the country “full deniability,” company records show.

AP reviewed a variety of projects Global Risk Advisors proposed between 2014 and 2017 show proposals not just directly related to the World Cup.

They included “Pickaxe ,” which promised to capture “personal information and biometrics” of migrants working in Qatar. “Falconeye” was described as a plan to use drones to provide surveillance of ports and borders operations, as well as “controlling migrant worker populations centers.”

Another project, “Viper” promised on-site or remote “mobile device exploitation,” which Global Risk Advisors said would deliver “critical intelligence” and enhance national security.

Chalker authored a proposal for “Project Deviant.” It called for Global Risk Advisors to provide a robust spying and hacking training program for employees at Qatar’s Ministry of Interior “based on the elite training undertaken by (Global Risk Advisors) officers from the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. ” Deviant included a 47-week “field operations tradecraft course” that would include training on surveillance, disguises, interrogation techniques, asset recruitment, hand-to-hand combat, and other areas, a GRA proposal shows.

The 26-week “technical operations tradecraft course” promised to teach Qataris with just even just a basic IT background to become world-class hackers with the “necessary knowledge, skills and techniques to use highly restricted, cutting-edge tools to penetrate target systems and devices, collect and analyze bulk signals data, and to track and locate targets to ultra-precise locations,” records show.

https://apnews.com/article/soccer-sports-business-migration-middle-east-d9716b62fc69ab88beb3553d402da7d1

ResearcherZero • December 18, 2021 10:03 PM

@SpaceLifeForm

Moderation is hard. Just imagine people keep posting a story from the Washington Post about a guy who had 32 documents appear on his laptop.
You keep hitting it with hammers, then another story pops up that his phone was also hacked as well, by a well know spyware company.

They guy is jail, he might not be guilty, he could be guilty, the documents appearing on his laptop might have an innocent explanation. NIA says there was no malware, an analysis by another security company says there is.

It’s like whack a mole.

ResearcherZero • December 18, 2021 11:30 PM

@SpaceLifeForm

More importantly, ‘patience is a virtue’, in this self-serving, instant gratification prison of our own design (or the design of the financiers of Zuckerberg, and all who since agreed to the EULA).

If you have ever worked with, or inspected the “chain of evidence”, in many jurisdictions it is more of a “chicken wire fence”, with a bunch of holes in it, that is poorly supervised. Repercussions for reporting the state of the “chain of evidence” can be severe. Repercussions for ‘reporting’ can be severe, and reporting is considered mandatory.

“the author who self-censors — a figure who in contemporary Internet terms might be called the “creator,” or “maker.” This figure is me — and this figure is you. It’s someone who takes the burden of censorship unto themselves, without any official censor or cover-censor commanding them.

…this figure threatens to become the ultimate vessel or incarnation of the State, a person who has internalized its oppressions and works them on themselves.”
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/on-censorship-pt-1

Don’t ever become a victim of circumstance. Possibly maintain an ethereal vapor like form at all times, while never obtaining molecular stability? Any real presence in reality could end in certain doom, no matter how many high court judges you may personally know.