Attack on California's grid shows lack of 'homeland security'

I've been saying for years that terrorism in the U.S. is too easy, hence all these screenings at airports, cyber security, NSA spying and fighting the terrorists "over there" are big distractions.

You don't buy a fancy home security system and then leave your front door unlocked and the windows open.    

Partly, the lack of focus on physical security of our key infrastructure such as electrical grid, ports and bridges is that the problem is very big and yet not at all sexy; and partly because simply physical security like sheet metal screens doesn't lend itself to outsourcing to the big military-industrial contractors that charge $ billions for expensive technological solutions.  

'Military-Style' Raid on California Power Station Spooks U.S.

BY Shane Harris

December 27, 2013 | Foreign Policy 

URL: http://complex.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/24/power-station-military-assault#sthash.t4ESArKb.dpuf

NSA has trouble recruiting cyber militia

Back in January 2011, I suggested that the U.S. could follow tiny Estonia's lead and create a "cyber militia," instead of relying exclusively on expensive defense contractors to fight cyber warfare.

I guess I was kind of prescient, considering that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden came from one of those contractors.  

Anyhow, now NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander is having a hard time convincing America's distrustful, trenchant hackers to help out Uncle Sam.  It didn't help his credibility this year that hackers now know, thanks to Snowden's leaks, that Gen. Alexander lied to them at the same Black Hat conference a year ago about the NSA's domestic spying.

NSA chief asks a skeptical crowd of hackers to help agency do its job

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.

August 1, 2013 | Washington Post

URL:  http://wapo.st/18NwZvc

Assange: 'Don't be evil' is banal cover for Google's sucking up to Power

You might recall that I was also critical and skeptical of Google CEO Eric Schmidt's vision for a brave, new world of digital technology all up in our junk. Unlike myself, Julian Assange bothered to read Schmidt's entire book.  Assange argues that Google has actively volunteered to become an important part of the U.S. Government's power apparatus.

I have to say I like this Assange guy, despite his somewhat sneering, sissy looks and such conflicting accounts about him.  He certainly has a singular and iconoclastic view on the world that is lacking.  Nowadays those who distrust government become conspiracy nuts.  And they get lumped in with real thinkers and critics like Assange.  But there is a difference between Government and Power.  Power certainly has a home in government but it also has residences in business, academia, the media and NGOs.  It's too easy to blame Big Government for the overreaching influence of Power.  

Also, anti-government conspiracy nuts don't bother to do their homework and make the real connections that are there to be seen in the public domain because these relationships are so well-respected and indeed banal (to borrow a word from Assange). That is what WikiLeaks did, essentially: it confirmed what we had already suspected, what we already knew but chose to ignore. Instead nuts invent unreal connections and draw false conclusions from them.  

What is known and real is bad enough, there are no fake conspiracies required!  

I also questioned Google's practice of cooperating so easily with the FBI's so-called National Security Letters that request, without a warrant, the electronic information of Google's users.  Google wasn't allowed to say how many NSLs there have been, but they said they've tripled in the past four years.  Why?  And since when do we let the government use private business to spy on us, legally?  Thank the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Patriot Act; but thank our apathy and ignorance most of all.  

Finally, a word about terrorism. Unlike most problems, I think the solution here is to ignore it.  Just pretend it doesn't exist. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit: our law enforcement bodies should try catch and foil terrorists; but it's not something our politicians or citizens should give much thought to, much less debate.  It's such a statistically insignificant problem, it merits as much attention in our public discourse and private worries as, say, West Nile virus, which, incidentally, killed 286 Americans in 2012, as opposed to Islamist terrorism which killed... zero.  That's right, none on American soil.  And yet the fight against Islamist terror costs $ trillions a year and terrible intrusions into our privacy!  Consider the absurdity of it!

The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’

By Julian Assange

June 1, 2013 | New York Times

“The New Digital Age” is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

The authors met in occupied Baghdad in 2009, when the book was conceived. Strolling among the ruins, the two became excited that consumer technology was transforming a society flattened by United States military occupation. They decided the tech industry could be a powerful agent of American foreign policy.

The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not. The prose is terse, the argument confident and the wisdom — banal. But this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances.

“The New Digital Age” is, beyond anything else, an attempt by Google to position itself as America’s geopolitical visionary — the one company that can answer the question “Where should America go?” It is not surprising that a respectable cast of the world’s most famous warmongers has been trotted out to give its stamp of approval to this enticement to Western soft power. The acknowledgments give pride of place to Henry Kissinger, who along with Tony Blair and the former C.I.A. director Michael Hayden provided advance praise for the book.

In the book the authors happily take up the white geek’s burden. A liberal sprinkling of convenient, hypothetical dark-skinned worthies appear: Congolese fisherwomen, graphic designers in Botswana, anticorruption activists in San Salvador and illiterate Masai cattle herders in the Serengeti are all obediently summoned to demonstrate the progressive properties of Google phones jacked into the informational supply chain of the Western empire.

The authors offer an expertly banalized version of tomorrow’s world: the gadgetry of decades hence is predicted to be much like what we have right now — only cooler. “Progress” is driven by the inexorable spread of American consumer technology over the surface of the earth.  Already, every day, another million or so Google-run mobile devices are activated. Google will interpose itself, and hence the United States government, between the communications of every human being not in China (naughty China). Commodities just become more marvelous; young, urban professionals sleep, work and shop with greater ease and comfort; democracy is insidiously subverted by technologies of surveillance, and control is enthusiastically rebranded as “participation”; and our present world order of systematized domination, intimidation and oppression continues, unmentioned, unafflicted or only faintly perturbed.

The authors are sour about the Egyptian triumph of 2011. They dismiss the Egyptian youth witheringly, claiming that “the mix of activism and arrogance in young people is universal.” Digitally inspired mobs mean revolutions will be “easier to start” but “harder to finish.” Because of the absence of strong leaders, the result, or so Mr. Kissinger tells the authors, will be coalition governments that descend into autocracies. They say there will be “no more springs” (but China is on the ropes).

The authors fantasize about the future of “well resourced” revolutionary groups. A new “crop of consultants” will “use data to build and fine-tune a political figure.”

“His” speeches (the future isn’t all that different) and writing will be fed “through complex feature-extraction and trend-analysis software suites” while “mapping his brain function,” and other “sophisticated diagnostics” will be used to “assess the weak parts of his political repertoire.”

The book mirrors State Department institutional taboos and obsessions. It avoids meaningful criticism of Israel and Saudi Arabia. It pretends, quite extraordinarily, that the Latin American sovereignty movement, which has liberated so many from United States-backed plutocracies and dictatorships over the last 30 years, never happened. Referring instead to the region’s “aging leaders,” the book can’t see Latin America for Cuba. And, of course, the book frets theatrically over Washington’s favorite boogeymen: North Korea and Iran.

Google, which started out as an expression of independent Californian graduate student culture — a decent, humane and playful culture — has, as it encountered the big, bad world, thrown its lot in with traditional Washington power elements, from the State Department to the National Security Agency.

Despite accounting for an infinitesimal fraction of violent deaths globally, terrorism is a favorite brand in United States policy circles. This is a fetish that must also be catered to, and so “The Future of Terrorism” gets a whole chapter. The future of terrorism, we learn, is cyberterrorism. A session of indulgent scaremongering follows, including a breathless disaster-movie scenario, wherein cyberterrorists take control of American air-traffic control systems and send planes crashing into buildings, shutting down power grids and launching nuclear weapons. The authors then tar activists who engage in digital sit-ins with the same brush.

I have a very different perspective. The advance of information technology epitomized by Google heralds the death of privacy for most people and shifts the world toward authoritarianism. This is the principal thesis in my book, “Cypherpunks.” But while Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Cohen tell us that the death of privacy will aid governments in “repressive autocracies” in “targeting their citizens,” they also say governments in “open” democracies will see it as “a gift” enabling them to “better respond to citizen and customer concerns.” In reality, the erosion of individual privacy in the West and the attendant centralization of power make abuses inevitable, moving the “good” societies closer to the “bad” ones.

The section on “repressive autocracies” describes, disapprovingly, various repressive surveillance measures: legislation to insert back doors into software to enable spying on citizens, monitoring of social networks and the collection of intelligence on entire populations. All of these are already in widespread use in the United States. In fact, some of those measures — like the push to require every social-network profile to be linked to a real name — were spearheaded by Google itself.

The writing is on the wall, but the authors cannot see it. They borrow from William Dobson the idea that the media, in an autocracy, “allows for an opposition press as long as regime opponents understand where the unspoken limits are.” But these trends are beginning to emerge in the United States. No one doubts the chilling effects of the investigations into The Associated Press and Fox’s James Rosen. But there has been little analysis of Google’s role in complying with the Rosen subpoena. I have personal experience of these trends.

The Department of Justice admitted in March that it was in its third year of a continuing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. Court testimony states that its targets include “the founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks.” One alleged source, Bradley Manning, faces a 12-week trial beginning tomorrow, with 24 prosecution witnesses expected to testify in secret.

This book is a balefully seminal work in which neither author has the language to see, much less to express, the titanic centralizing evil they are constructing. “What Lockheed Martin was to the 20th century,” they tell us, “technology and cybersecurity companies will be to the 21st.” Without even understanding how, they have updated and seamlessly implemented George Orwell’s prophecy. If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto vacant human faces — forever. Zealots of the cult of consumer technology will find little to inspire them here, not that they ever seem to need it. But this is essential reading for anyone caught up in the struggle for the future, in view of one simple imperative: Know your enemy.

Dire results of a preemptive attack on Iran

You all remember Richard Clarke, right? He the guy from the Reagan and Bush Admin.'s who criticized the invasion and occupation of Iraq. He's now cautioning against war with Iran.

There could be many very bad consequences. But here's the real strategy behind a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran [emphasis mine]:

Israel can't do long-term, severe damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, so its chief purpose in bombing Iran would be to trigger Iranian retaliation and draw the U.S. into the war to defend Israel, and to finish off what Israel started.

Therefore, the U.S. cannot allow Israel to attack Iran unilaterally and preemptively, because as Israel's best ally the United States would get sucked into a war with Iran.

Alternatively, we could tell Israel and the rest of the world that Israel would be on its own if it attacked Iran without international support. But with the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S., and American sentiment being the way it is, such a scenario is almost impossible to imagine.

What Will Happen to the US If Israel Attacks Iran?

By Brian Ross

March 5, 2012 | ABC News

President Obama is meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel at the White House today, and will try to talk him out of an immediate strike on Iran's nuclear sites.

If Israel does decide to bomb Iran, however, what will it mean for the United States? According to former White House counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, Americans should brace for a painful impact. Within a week of the first Israeli attack, says Clarke, a worst case scenario would bring soaring gas prices, terror attacks in U.S. cities, worldwide cyberwar, dead and wounded U.S. sailors, and the real possibility of broad American military involvement.

WATCH An Interview with Richard Clarke: If Israel Attacks Iran

Gas Prices Could Double

According to U.S. government estimates, about 20 percent of the oil traded worldwide passes through the Persian Gulf, bordered by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. If Israel were to bomb Iran, oil prices would immediately go up. If Iran responded by attacking oil tankers going through the Persian Gulf, says Clarke, gasoline prices for U.S. consumers could double.

"You could see very quickly Iranian commandos and their small boats attacking tankers, attacking oil platforms," said Clarke. "You could see mines being laid in the Gulf."

The result, said Clarke, "would be a huge crisis in energy." President Obama would tap the U.S.'s strategic petroleum reserve, alleviating some of the price rise. The spike in prices "might not last long if the U.S. and its allies are able to take control of the Gulf," said Clarke. "But that could take more than a week and under some scenarios it could take almost a month."

Terror Threat Against Americans

If Israel were to bomb Iran, American officials fear there could be a new wave of terrorism directed by Tehran, especially if the U.S. gets pulled in to the conflict.

"If we, the United States, we're bombing Iran, then I think they'd certainly want to try to do something on our homeland because we were bombing their homeland," said Clarke.

Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah have already shown a willingness to act outside their own borders, both with deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina in the 1990s and the apparent attempted hits on Israeli targets in a number of countries earlier this year.

"Both have strong inroads in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, where they could strike Israeli, Jewish, and U.S. targets," said Clarke.

Israeli embassies and consulates and Jewish places of worship in the U.S. have been put on alert.

The World's First International Cyberwar

An Israeli attack on Iran would likely set off the world's first international cyber war. Before striking, Israel will try to blind the air defenses of Iran and its neighbors with cyber warfare. And the U.S. might end up using capabilities it has kept secret until now.

"The United States has a very powerful ability to cause this sort of disruption to electric power grids, communications networks," said Clarke. "It hasn't done it because it doesn't like to expose its tricks as it's afraid once it does it, people will figure out how the United States does it. But in a war with Iran, they would be willing to run that risk."

Iran would also attempt to hit back. Said Clarke, "Iran also has a cyber command, which might try to retaliate by attacking U.S infrastructure such as the power grid, trains, airlines, refineries."

U.S. Navy Casualties in the Gulf

Should the U.S. become involved in the Israeli-Iran conflict militarily, says Clarke, it will be impossible to avoid American casualties.

"The Iranians have hundreds if not thousands of small boats, armed small boats, commando small boats, that will operate in the Gulf," said Clarke. "They can get in, they can swarm a U.S. destroyer. The Iranians now also have cruise missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles."

Clarke said there is a potential for the U.S. to sustain significant damage to a few ships and lose some sailors, just as it did during the war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s. Two U.S. ships were hit during that conflict, with a loss of nearly 40 American lives.

The U.S. Enters the War

According to Clarke, Israel can't do long-term, severe damage to Iran's nuclear infrastructure, so its chief purpose in bombing Iran would be to trigger Iranian retaliation and draw the U.S. into the war to defend Israel, and to finish off what Israel started.

If Israel bombs Iran, Clarke says the cascade of events will lead to attacks on Israeli cities. "Advisors to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak are saying that if Israel bombed Iran, the retaliation on Israel would be tolerable," said Clarke. "But if Hezbollah in Lebanon launched thousands of extended range, improved accuracy rockets on Israel, hundreds of Israelis would die. In such a small country, that would be devastating."

The casualties, in turn, would bring the inevitable call to Washington for help.

"You will very quickly see a phone call from Prime Minister Netanyahu to the President," said Clarke, "and he will say to him, 'Only the United States, Mr. President, can find and destroy these mobile missile launchers. Only you can save the lives of Israelis who are dying as I speak in our cities."

Clarke said that message would probably spur any U.S. president into action -- but especially one who is up for reelection within months. "It's likely to get a yes answer from the president," predicts Clarke, "and bring the U.S. into the war."

Uncle Sam needs a cyber militia?

I thought this story was kind of cool. I'm glad tiny Estonia, a David to its belligerent Russian Goliath, has found a way to defend itself against hackers and cyber attackers.

The U.S. so far is fighting cyber warfare the Big Gubument way (albeit often through private contractors), whereas small Estonia is fighting cyber war the militia (you might even say, guerrilla) way, with volunteers (although they are considering instituting a conscript service). The U.S. could do it both ways, why not? As one commenter on this story asked online, why hasn't the U.S. Government simply asked them for help, instead of assuming that all private IT experts are "distrustful" and "standoffish?"

I don't think it's just that; I think it's partly the USG's over reliance on secret clearances, and the cumbersome process of granting them. As the NYT's Nicholas Kristof recently noted, there are more U.S. citizens with "top secret" clearance than there are residents of Washington, DC.


Volunteer Cyber Army Emerges In Estonia
By Tom Gjelten
January 4, 2010 | Morning Edition on NPR

URL: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/04/132634099/in-estonia-volunteer-cyber-army-defends-nation