Category: Intelligence
November 23rd, 2009
Internet: A threat to government or the other way around? (Part 4)
Justice systems around the world had their entire world turned upside down over the past several years because of the Internet. The basic sets of laws, often founded on a nation’s constitution are being used in ways that many forefathers never anticipated or envisioned. Republic, Dominion and Socialist government institutions around the world are all facing the same issues - often without any clear path of legal precedent.
One of the challenges facing courts is jurisdiction. Because of the very nature of the Internet, legal systems are now faced with new roadblocks that did not exist 10 years ago. Traditional methods of law enforcement and legal treaties do work and continue to be the basis of process and dealing with prosecution and trials. Interpretation of existing laws and applying them to Internet-related cases has not been a significant challenge in many cases. But there are some new aspects of what is admitted into court.
Evidence
What has shocked the system is how Internet-based materials are now used in the courts as evidence. Everything from ISP logs, website blogs, and social media sites (among others) are now being used in ways that prosecutors and jurists have never had to deal with in the past. It is also becoming a battle ground for several areas of law, particularly the integrity of evidence. This has many in the legal world concerned. It’s becoming clear that this will be an area of significant debate and will have far-reaching consequences. Internet evidence does not have look and feel of traditional evidence and, in many cases, has yet to be challenged as to its validity. Prosecutors are faced with a dilemma that impacts how and what they prosecute. This in turn has created a new source of political initiatives that are not only questionable, but in some parts of the world viewed as extreme.
Don’t have a Law yet? We’ll make one
The evolution of law and how it is created has traditionally been a slow and low priority part of the political system. No longer is that the case. Government ministers and cabinet officials appear to be fast-tracking new laws, specifically because of the Internet at a rapid pace of late. Politicians are practically tripping over themselves drafting new bills that claim that they know how to fix the problems of cybercrime and abuse. These ideas are moving at such a rapid pace that often few people actually have read the fine print. What concerns many is the advice politicians are getting on how Internet law should be created. Governments all over the world will have significant impact on such issues as free speech, Net neutrality, news, crime and governance of institutions.
Prosecution
There is not much sympathy for the courts in many parts of the world. That may soon change as news travels across the multimedia world of the Internet. Attorneys general throughout the United States are political and create their own priorities and thus control what is heard before the courts. This may have significant consequences as to the timing of how the Internet evolves and impact the economics of the service that potentially influences it’s usage for decades. In the United Kingdom, the courts will have to take into account European treaties and the European Parliament. Canada’s magistrates may strike down or uphold newly created laws that may wind up creating in-balance that could take years to reverse.
Rules await the Internet
Regulators such as the CRTC, FCC, OfCom are charting new territory in communication rules and regulations. Lawmakers are beginning to micro-manage this process. No one yet knows what the impact these new elements will have on the judicial system. It will take years before this is known and goes through several rigorous tests of the court system. Case law may take a decade or more before any true outcomes are known. By that time, a nation will have changed political administration and have new agendas that reset the cycle before some true outcomes are known. Net Neutrality will be debated and wind up before the courts in jurisdictions around the world. The results will vary like your bandwidth speed and access to content.
Global perspective
Laws of a nation are now being combined in many parts of the world. The very essence of a sovereign nation set of laws is slowly being merged into a single set by which it will adhere to. This is particularly true in Europe where the European Parliament is attempting to create laws specifically surrounding the Internet. This has the potential to create political and legal challenges for courts in how they make decisions. The consequences have significant long term impacts on how courts operate and what order of Appeals and jurisdiction as they enter cyber space with profound outcomes yet to be decided.
The Supreme Court
Supreme Court decisions have not had an impact on the Internet - but likely will. Major court decisions at local, state, and provincial levels are being appealed and many will eventually be argued before the Supreme Court. That draws concern because of how many governments nominate and select jurists to be a part of the Supreme Court framework. In general terms, the institution is politically driven and has the potential to create decisions that may in fact be contrary to the very principles that many of us take for granted. It also works in the other direction. Many a government has had policies and laws overturned by the courts. Key segments will be privacy, Internet access and tracking - along with content management tangled with identity security. It could be argued that elected government officials are not a threat to the Internet, the courts are. The counter point is that will force parliamentarians to change the law, a task far easier said than done. Compounding the problem is that the highest courts around the world have (almost) unlimited tenure until death. Jurists that will have profound impacts on the stance of governments surrounding Internet issues are in China, Pakistan, India, Russia, and the Middle East. China is unique in that it will have to eventually deal with treaties in which it is a signatory to, but no one has yet to appeal any government policies. It may soon have to. If WTO treaties are before their court system, the Internet could be next.
The court system in most democratic nations has dynamics rarely resulting in quick decisions. It may take years before government’s leaders and the lawmakers truly understand what they are dealing with. Some will fail in creating new laws that are considered extreme by many; others may actually pass the litmus test of a Supreme Court decision. History awaits the outcome.
Epilogue - it will never have an ending
So here we are; some of the files are out in the open, more need further decryption, understanding and updating. The pace of the discussion is increasing and appears to be moving along with few delays. 2010 promises to be the start of a new decade that has a few fundamental issues to resolve. The debate has begun and could be a pivotal point in how society uses and government manages the Internet.
November 20th, 2009
Friday's Throw out the trash day and Polls for the week of Nov 20th
This week wasn’t a slow one for news, but it certainly had some bizarre stories. Some headlines for you and all the polls that I’ve posted throughout the week are listed here for those of you who haven’t (yet) read all my postings.
Senate Hearing hears testimony that 80% of cyber attacks are preventable. Really?
According to the British Government, they are leading the world in the use of technology. If that’s so then why are they losing so much data? Perhaps they should have senate hearings too….
To prove my point, a doctor in England claims over 100,000 X-Rays went unchecked and were stuck in closet…
But hey if you can’t get a country to create laws to ensure peace and democracy, pay them instead. The EU is giving Nigeria a BILLION Dollars to end corruption. How does this work again?
Polls of the week:
Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ... Loading ...Website of the Week: Vancouver Winter 2010 Olympic Games Website
November 10th, 2009
U.K. minister wants enhanced monitoring of Internet usage
U.K. Home Office Minister David Hanson is pushing for further data archiving of information by Communications Service Providers, including such web portals as Facebook. In a BBC published article, the Minister responsible for Privacy, Christopher Graham, (along with several other un-named ministers) has some serious concerns with the proposal.
Home Office Ministry - United Kingdom
Not only does Minister Hanson suggest that records be accessible at the source, but also tracked by internet service providers. Such a system would require immense capital and infrastructure. Based on what the Minister desires, it would appear that he wants investigative agencies to have broader mandates in observing people and creating dossiers on anyone in the world. This suggests that the British are gearing up to have a significant electronic intelligence community, similar to the U.S. variant, the National Security Agency. While most G-8 nations have extensive archives and records, it has never been required by local internet service providers or other telecommunications companies to maintain the records to the extent the Home office is suggesting. Such systems have never been within the budget of local police agencies. Minister Hanson is possibly suggesting that these costs should be passed on to the user of the internet services through cost sharing mechanisms of the communications provider and the government through direct subsidy, using tax dollars to implement the initial construction of the platforms required. Read the rest of this entry »
November 6th, 2009
Human x-ray machines: Coming soon to an airport near you
In the movie Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger (Gov. of California) runs through a security check point corridor operating using X-Ray technology. That film was released in 1990. Today that technology is being installed around the world at airports, border check points, marine ports and high risk security environments such as court buildings. They are currently being assessed or used in Canada, the U.S., U.K., Russia, Japan, and Australia. Some countries, such as India, have outright rejected them based on privacy and considered too offensive to passengers. Significant concern is being raised as to the long term medical impacts to humans going through the devices.
In Canada, the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency (CATSA) organization has completed some field trials at smaller airports (Kelowna, B.C.) and is looking to purchase a half dozen of the machines to continue further assessment. There are approximately 18 airports in the U.S. using them. In the U.K. several airports now have them including Manchester. Testing in several countries has been going since 2004. In the U.S. the Transportation Security Administration began field trials in 2007. The technology offers security details to process passengers quickly and determine if weapons or other contraband is on a person without doing physical body search. Such technology would significantly improve the detection of hidden materials. Read the rest of this entry »
October 29th, 2009
Traffic management: New Internet coming to your local roads
Since the mid 1980’s, there have been proposals to implement traffic management via wireless. Often referred to as Intelligent Transport System (ITS), the goal is to enable analysis and traffic flow services on a nation’s road system. Study and working groups have been active in the Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia. Other European countries are in various stages of reviewing similar requirements.
ITS services would be operated via wireless devices attached to any motor vehicle. It could monitor volume, speed and direction of traffic. There would be significant benefits of such a tool for various agencies. The current designs being contemplated are looking for synergies on platform standards along with radio assignment in the 5.9 GHz frequency band.
During initial development the goals became clear and benefits in public safety and traffic management could save billions of dollars. Fast forward to see how we use technology today brings new concerns and other challenges that may cause significant concerns with respect to Law, Privacy and a host of security implications. It could also prove to be a terrorist’s or hacker’s dream come true and thus a whole new level of challenges arise.
Australia has just released its analysis and request for comment for ITS solutions and the future of such a project. In it you will find some fascinating ideas, concepts and issues that raise more questions than there are answers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is specifically looking for comments on the radio frequencies recommended for such a deployment. There is no current timetable when this infrastructure would be enabled. Is this the beginning of a new era of how people management maybe becomes the norm? Perhaps…
October 15th, 2009
NSA to host Security Automation Conference
From October 26 - 29, the National Security Agency / Central Security Service will host the Security Automation Conference and Expo at the Baltimore Convention Center.
In their press release of October 2, key note speakers will be Tony Sager, NSA; Phil Reitinger, DHS; Richard Hale, DISA; and John Thompson, Symantec. Established by NIST five years ago with an attendance of less than 50 people, the conference is now jointly sponsored by NIST, NSA, DISA and the DHS. More than 1,000 attendees are expected at the conference.
To review the full agenda visit the NSA website.
January 12th, 2009
NSA initiative pinpoints 25 Top coding errors
A new report that details the 25 top programming errors is likely to drive federal and state agencies to demand vendors provide more secure programs – and vendors to step up their game.
The Top 25 initiative was launched by the National Security Agency to improve Defense Dept. purchases. It was funded by the Dept. of Homeland Security and managed by the SANS Institute and MITRE Corp.
More details at the SANS site.
“The publication of a list of programming errors that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime represents an important turn in software security awareness from a system administrator-centered view [of] detect, respond, patch, to a software engineering-centered view [of] design, implement, verify,” said Konrad Vesey, information assurance directorate of the National Security Agency.
Errors fall into three groupings:
- Insecure Interaction Between Components includes improper input validation and output encoding, errors that enable attackers to modify the programming code and ultimately hijack applications.
- Risky Resource Management involves core application components. Downloading code without an integrity check is an example here.
- Porous Defenses includes errors in locking down code, such as failure to create access controls that check that users who modify software have the proper authorization.
State governments responded enthusiastically.
This is a serious priority in New York,” said Will Pelgrin, director of the New York State Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination, and chair of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. He plans to incorporate the Top 25 list into standard procurement language he developed for New York.
“This gives us all at the programming level 25 actions we can take today to eliminate the most common errors that, frankly, keep me up at night,” Pelgrin said. “My life gets easier as people start taking this seriously.”
November 3rd, 2008
Judge wants to see legal memos in NSA wiretapping case
A federal judge has ordered the Justice Dept. to turn over documents relating to the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program, Jurist reports.
In their lawsuit against the government, the ACLU and EFF had requested memoranda authored by the White House Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Dept. refused to hand them over, citing attorney-client privilege.
In his order, Judge Henry Kennedy of the District Court for the District of Columbia said the summaries the department provided were inadequate for him to determine whether the memos were truly privileged:
Simply because the documents contain legal advice does not necessarily mean that the attorney-client privilege applies to the documents, however. In short, the declarations provided by DOJ are too vague to enable this court to determine whether the attorney-client privilege applies. The court has no doubt that, to the extent DOJ became privy to classified information, there was an expectation that DOJ was to keep this information confidential. The attorney-client privilege is not necessarily the means for protecting this information. Without more information, the court cannot conclude that the attorney-client privilege applies.
The judge will review the documents in private to make a determination regarding privilege and harm to national security. Justice hasn’t indicated whether it will comply with the order.
October 27th, 2008
Army voices Twitter fears
If you think people who send dozens of Twitter tweets a day have too much time on their hands – or not enough of a life – consider the geniuses at the Army’s 304th Military Intelligence Battalion. They spent who knows how long preparing a report, posted to the Federation of American Scientists site (PDF), detailing the scenarios in which terrorists could exploit micro-messaging.
Wired’s Noah Shachtman first blogged that the report details three Twitter scenarios:
- Terrorists use phones with Twitter to relay real-time updates of troop movements in order to coordinate an ambush.
- Terrorists use cell pics and tweets to coordinate the timing to explode a device.
- Terrorists follow a soldier’s tweets and use Twitter to obtain logistical information.
I suppose it’s good that the Army is aware of Twitter and is conceptualizing such scenarios, so it can guard against them. But, as Steven Aftergood of FAS says:
“If we have time to worry about ‘Twitter threats’ then we’re in good shape. I mean, it’s important to keep some sense of proportion.”
Unfortunately, I think the command-and-control response would be to shut down Army personnel’s use of tools like Twitter, especially given the third scenario above. That has been the military’s reaction to blogs and even Web browsing in the past. (See Air Force: No! Stop! Blogs bad!)
Twitter is just communication. If it didn’t exist, terrorists would use plain SMS. Or whatever. In a perfectly secure world, there would be no communication.
October 10th, 2008
NSA and phone sex: Eavesdroppers listened to intimate conversations
Military linguists have come forward to say that the intelligence services routinely listened in on Americans overseas calling home and on the communications of non-suspect groups like the Red Cross. And, they say, they listened in and even transcribed couples’ phone sex, The New York Times reports.
David Murfee Faulk, a Navy linguist, told ABC that he and his colleagues listened to “personal phone calls of American officers, mostly in the Green Zone, calling home to the United States, talking to their spouses, sometimes their girlfriends.”
He said the eavesdroppers would swap recordings of intimate calls for entertainment. “At times I was told: ‘Hey, check this out. There’s some good phone sex,’ ” he said.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, promised a probe into the allegations, calling them “extremely disturbing.”
“Any time there is an allegation regarding abuse of the privacy and civil liberties of Americans it is a very serious matter,” he said.
The accusations are clear violations of the rules Congress approved, which required personnel to drop calls as soon as they established they were from Americans.
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