A Warning to Libertarians: Please Do Not End Up Like Ross Ulbricht

Monday, February 23, 2015

By Robert Wenzel

The trial of Ross Ulbricht, admitted founder of Silk Road, is over. He has been convicted on all the charges brought by the government. It is a terrible tragedy.

An anonymous commenter to the post, where the Ulbricht family expressed shock at how unfair the trial was, explained best what happens when the government has you in their crosshairs;

Having been through a federal criminal trial myself, this description sounds like standard operating procedure. While I feel badly for the mother, she does express an astonishing naivete of the system and process. A federal trial is not designed to find out the truth, or to have a discussion about the law. It is designed to get a perfunctory rubber stamp from the jury on an outcome that has already been decided.

And the appeal process is designed to rubber stamp what was determined in the district court. I hope for her sake she does not put much hope in the appeal. It's highly unlikely to be reversed.

Ubricht faces somewhere between 20 years to a life sentence. To be sure, from a libertarian perspective, there does not appear to be much that Ulbricht is guilty of. He simply provided a market for individuals willing to exchange, certainly not a violation of the libertarian non-aggression principle. (The government was allowed by the judge to bring up supposed murder-for-hire plots by Ulbricht, but never charged Ulbricht with the plots. Sounds sketchy to me.) BUT, despite the libertarian perspective, he is going to spend a a very, very long time in prison.

This is part of the reason, I find it remarkable that some libertarians are cheering on further efforts in the murky dark internet. Coin Report notes (my bold):

[I]n March of 2014, GRAMS was created.

GRAMS is the Google of the darknet. It is a cross-marketplace search engine hosted on TOR that aggregates listings from major DNMs and lists them in an easy to read, Google-like fashion. Filters sort listings by country, market, price range, and quantity. GRAMS search algorithms are constantly being updated to include more DNMs and listings. This has allowed the casual observer to discover the darknet without the hassle of creating multiple accounts. GRAMS has become so successful that it recently started selling sponsored listings, similar to Google AdSense.

Since the original Silk Road was shut down, the DNM landscape has changed dramatically. It has become more de-centralized. Yet, thanks to sites like GRAMS and the Subreddit r/darknetmarkets, it is still accessible to many people.

The Ross Ulbricht trial marks a turning point for the darknet. Originally created to combat a problem, DNMs have now become a rallying point for the adherents of Libertarian ideology. Ulbricht himself described the Silk Road as an “economic experiment.” Many see him as a martyr and have supported him through it all, from patronizing the Silk Road via contraband purchases to donating over $339,000 via Bitcoin toward his legal defense fund. His downfall was an inspiration to push further, to continue the economic experiment, for the betterment of humanity (hopefully).

A few points need to be made here. First, Silk Road 2.0 has been shut down. It was infiltrated by the government from the start. There are claims that  there are new bitcoin mixing technologies that make bitcoins completely anonymous in use. But how can we know that it is not the government that has set up these mixing exchanges, or infiltrated them after they have been set up? And keep in mind, the buying and selling of drugs on the dark net still requires physical delivery. How do we know the government isn't capturing the physical addresses where the drugs are delivered? How can we know that the government isn't running a major sting to catch sellers?

As long as a commodity needs physical delivery, there is no protection from the government, even if it is done via the dark net--and that supposes the government isn't watching on the dark net in the first place, before physical delivery.

There are just so many things that can go wrong operating in the dark net, with very heavy downside, it makes no sense for a libertarian, qua libertarian, to get involved, especially by running such an operation.

Just becasue libertarians are in favor of free exchange, where does it say they have to run  underground markets?

As Murray Rothbard put it, when discussing libertarian/agorist theory and the underground promoted by Samuel Konkin (my bold):

If the black market should develop, then the successful entrepreneurs are not going to be agoric theoreticians...but successful entrepreneurs period. What do they need with Konkin and his group?  I suggest, nothing at all.  There is a hint in the NLM that libertarians would a priori make better entrepreneurs than anyone else because they are more trustworthy and more rational, but this piece of nonsense was exploded by hard experience a long time ago.   Neither do the budding black marketeers need Mr. Konkin and his colleagues to cheer them on and free them of guilt.  Again, experience has shown that they do fine on their own, and that urging them on to black market activities is like exhorting ducks to swim...

As much as I love the market, I refuse to believe that when I engage in a regular market transaction (e.g., buying a sandwich) or a black market activity (e.g., driving at 60 miles per hour) I advance one iota nearer the libertarian revolution.  The black market is not going to be the path to liberty, and libertarian theoreticians and activists have no function in that market...

Historically, classical liberal political parties have accomplished far more for human liberty than any black markets. 

In other words, if you want to advance liberty, it makes little sense to be operating a black market web site just as it makes little sense to be selling drugs from a street corner to advance liberty. And from a practical perspective, if the government snares you while running a black market site, you are going to pay dearly.

Advancing liberty is not about selling hooch or weed, though there is no reason to condemn those who enter into these noble professions. If you want to advance liberty, you do so by writing, speaking and reading about liberty. This requires that very little be done beyond libertarian study and actual libertarian activities, even at the early stages of developing such a career. Roy Childs, a powerful libertarian speaker, who made an impact with short essays and book reviews. was a janitor before he was recognized and found work as libertarian.

As much as I disagree with a lot of Stefan Molyneux's commentary, you have to give the man credit for launching his first podcasts by recording them while he was in his car driving to work at his then-day job!

I have often thought that the ideal job for an aspiring young libertarian theoretician or essayist is as a grave yard shift security guard . Get a job at the front desk of a building on the overnight shift, where few are going to bother you--and you can read and read and read. Absorb all you can about libertariansim, and, when you are ready, start writing, creating videos or whatever.

Leave the drug dealing to drug dealers, There's this thing called the division of labor and there is no path where drug dealers and libertarians have to pass, anymore than libertarians have to cross paths with fire eaters and sword swallowers, though I doubt many fire eaters and sword swallowers are paying much in terms of taxes, something that libertarians can appreciate, as much as they can appreciate the efforts of drug dealers, without getting into the business.  .

Indeed, just because street hookers must operate on the black market doesn't mean we should be encouraging libertarian women to become hookers, even if they would only accept bitcoins.

 Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher at EconomicPolicyJournal.com and at Target Liberty. He is also author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics
via targetliberty

Hundreds of South Carolina Inmates Sent to Solitary Confinement Over Facebook

February 12, 2015 | By Dave Maass

 

In the South Carolina prison system, accessing Facebook is an offense on par with murder, rape, rioting, escape and hostage-taking.

Back in 2012, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) made “Creating and/or Assisting With A Social Networking Site” a Level 1 offense [PDF], a category reserved for the most violent violations of prison conduct policies. It’s one of the most common Level 1 offense charges brought against inmates, many of whom, like most social network users, want to remain in contact with friends and family in the outside world and keep up on current events. Some inmates ask their families to access their online accounts for them, while many access the Internet themselves through a contraband cell phone (possession of which is yet another Level 1 offense).

Through a request under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, EFF found that, over the last three years, prison officials have brought more than 400 disciplinary cases for “social networking”—almost always for using Facebook. The offenses come with heavy penalties, such as years in solitary confinement and deprivation of virtually all privileges, including visitation and telephone access. In 16 cases, inmates were sentenced to more than a decade in what’s called disciplinary detention, with at least one inmate receiving more than 37 years in isolation.

The sentences are so long because SCDC issues a separate Level 1 violation for each day that an inmate accesses a social network. An inmate who posts five status updates over five days, would receive five separate Level 1 violations, while an inmate who posted 100 updates in one day would receive only one.

In other words, if a South Carolina inmate caused a riot, took three hostages, murdered them, stole their clothes, and then escaped, he could still wind up with fewer Level 1 offenses than an inmate who updated Facebook every day for two weeks.

So extreme is the application of this policy that SCDC is forced to regularly suspend solitary confinement sentences because of a lack of space in disciplinary segregation. In many cases, the punishments associated with using social media are so unnecessarily long that inmates will never actually serve them since they exceed their underlying prison sentences.

Prison systems have a legitimate interest in keeping contraband devices out of their facilities and preventing inmates from engaging in illegal activities through the Internet. But South Carolina’s policy goes too far, and not only because of the shockingly disproportionate punishments. The policy is also incredibly broad; it can be applied to any reason an inmate may ask someone outside to access the Internet for them, such as having a family member manage their online financial affairs, working with activists to organize an online legal defense campaign, sending letters to online news sites, or just staying in touch with family and friends to create the type of community support crucial to reintegrating into society.

There is also a censorship component.

Facebook has processed hundreds of requests from SCDC officers who want inmates’ profiles taken down. Facebook’s stated policy is to suspend these pages under the auspices of Terms of Service (ToS) violations—specifically, purported violations of terms banning users from using aliases or sharing passwords with third parties—effectively allowing SCDC to censor inmates’ online speech. Yet, as described below, Facebook goes beyond its stated policy and agrees to SCDC requests to censor inmate pages even when no ToS violation has been alleged. In addition, Facebook seems to have taken no action against SCDC investigators who regularly violate these same terms in uncovering inmate profiles.

What’s more, this process is veiled in secrecy, with both Facebook and SCDC failing to create a public record paper trail documenting the takedown of inmate pages.

It’s time for South Carolinians to demand a review of this policy and for Facebook to reevaluate its role in helping prison systems censor and excessively punish inmates.

Social Media in South Carolina Lockups

Prisons and jails across the country have been looking for new ways to keep inmates off the Internet, not only by investing in controversial new cell-tracking technologies such as Stingrays and DRTboxes, but also using social networks as avenue to find and punish inmates.

South Carolina adopted a Level 1 social media offense [PDF] to punish “Creating and/or Assisting With A Social Networking Site,” defined as: “The facilitation, conspiracy, aiding, abetting in the creation or updating of an Internet web site or social networking site.”

SCDC defines “social networking” very broadly, covering everything from YouTube and Twitter to blogs and email, although all of the cases EFF reviewed [PDF] involved Facebook. Investigations are conducted by corrections officers and inmates are convicted during disciplinary hearings that often last mere minutes.

Since the policy was implemented, SCDC has brought 432 disciplinary cases against 397 inmates, with more than 40 inmates receiving more than two years in solitary confinement [PDF].

Here are some of the most severe social media punishments we’ve seen:

finish reading article

Unanswered Questions About Middle East Terrorism - video

 
The John Birch Society

JBS CEO Art Thompson's weekly news video update for September 15 - 21, 2014.

In this week's analysis behind the news video, JBS CEO Art Thompson discusses a series of questions about ISIS and other Middle East terrorists: Who funds them? Who arms them? who buys their oil? Who trains them? Why can't we hack into the terrorists' accounts? What's the role of Russia, China, and the United States? Are Russia, China, and the U.S. working together? Why is al-Qaeda still growing? and Why should we build a communist-influenced Kurdish nation? 

China To Launch Its Own OS, Defying NSA Spying & Microsoft

Could the Reds be coming to rescue us from our own corporatism & government spying?

US control over world computer operating systems being called in question in wake of NSA spying initiatives 

The Chinese government has made it official: it is launching a computer operating system to replace the likes of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows, a move that was first indicated in a May ValueWalk report.

China to launch computer operating system by October

Reuters is reporting that China's state-run media, People's Post and Telecommunications News, an official trade paper run by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), is reporting the official development.

"We hope to launch a Chinese-made desktop operating system by October supporting app stores," Ni Guangnan, who heads an official Chinese operating system development alliance, was quoted in press reports as saying.

As ValueWalk reported in May, China banned government use of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system, a move construed as being due to US National Security Agency spying.  In addition to Windows 8 being banned, Microsoft is the subject of an anti-trust investigation in China.

China has long been a troubling market for Microsoft. In 2011, for instance, former chief executive officer Steve Ballmer reportedly told employees in that year Microsoft earned less revenue in China than in the Netherlands, even though China's computer sales matched those of the US.  The reason given was due to computer piracy.  The new Windows 8 operating system is said to have more sophisticated tools that identify and track individual users with one goal to reduce software piracy.  For its part, last may the official Xinhua news agency said the ba was to ensure computer security after Microsoft Corporation  ended support for its Windows XP.

Apple creating new server configuration for Chinese customers

The moves in China appear to have a "tit for tat" motivation to various degrees.  While security from prying NSA eyes is obviously a concern, recent moves on both sides of the Pacific Ocean underscore the increasing importance China is placing on data security.  Nearly ten days ago, for instance, ValueWalk reported on Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) Computer creating a server configuration for Chinese customers that was located in China.  In May the US Justice Department indicted five Chinese military officers on counts of extensive industrial espionage, much of which took place via computers.

The storage would include datagathered from cell phone usage, a key source of US National Security Agency spying.  Instead of storing data in the US, Apple Inc. would store user data on servers provided by China Telecom Corporation Limited (ADR) (NYSE:CHA) (HKG:0728) , China's largest wireless carrier, according to a statement from Apple.

Although a report said Apple attributed the move to an effort to "improve speed and reliability of its iCloud service," it is well known, as previously reported in ValueWalk, that NSA spying is a significant issue being considered worldwide and impacting the bottom lines of many tech giants.

The Reuters report noted that "mutual suspicions between China and the United States over hacking have escalated over the past year following revelations by Edward Snowden that U.S. intelligence planted 'backdoor' surveillance tools on US-made hardware." Other sources have indicated that foreign spy services were broadly aware of US electronic spy capabilities before the release of information by Edward Snowden.

​via ValueWalk​

Big Banks Want Power to Declare Cyber War

You think you've had a Trojan annoyingly in your computer before? Wait 'til you see what the banksters can do with their Monster Trojan! 

Merger of Big Banks and National Security Power … What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
 
Bloomberg reports:

Wall Street’s biggest trade group has proposed a government-industry cyber war council to stave off terrorist attacks that could trigger financial panic by temporarily wiping out account balances, according to an internal document.

The proposal by the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, known as Sifma, calls for a committee of executives and deputy-level representatives from at least eight U.S. agencies including the Treasury Department, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, all led by a senior White House official.

The trade association also reveals in the document that Sifma has retained former NSA director Keith Alexander to “facilitate” the joint effort with the government.

 Alexander, in turn, has brought in Michael Chertoff, the former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, and his firm, Chertoff Group.

***
Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, declined to comment.
***
[Just-retired NSA Boss General Keith] Alexander had been pitching Sifma and other bank trade associations to purchase his services through his new consulting firm, IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., for as much as $1 million per month, according to two people briefed on the talks.
***
Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat, said today he was concerned that industry members in such a joint group could improperly get involved in pre-emptive strikes against a person or state planning an assault on the U.S.

“This could in effect make the banks part of what would begin to look like a war council,” Grayson said in an e-mail. “Congress needs to keep an eye on what something like this could mean.”

Congressman Grayson tweets:

Ex-NSA chief Keith Alexander wants to form a joint WH-bank war council. So now Wall Street gets to declare war?

There is cause for concern, given the following context:

• Fascism is the merger of state and corporate power  (and see this).  The big banks and government have already largely merged

• Big banks are literally criminal enterprises

• The big banks and government joined together to violently crush peaceful protests against inequality and bank bailouts

• Bankers love war, because they make out like bandits … while the economy and the American people lose

• Cyber war as fought by the U.S. government is offensive as well as defensive (and see this)

• Cyber war may lead to a shooting war. For example, Scientific American notes:

Department of Defense announcements that they intend to view cyber attacks as “acts of war” suggest a military force nearly itching to flex its muscle in response to a serious computer network–based disruption, if only as a means of deterrence.
***
Concerns about overreaction and the use of military force in response to digital intrusions often lead to discussions about the difficulty surrounding definitive attribution of these types of attack. If you want to retaliate, how do you know whom to hit? In our exercise intelligence pointed to Russia, but the evidence wasn’t clear-cut.

• The NSA spying program is unambiguously being used for industrial espionage, by spying on large foreign corporations, and the biggest financial payments systems such as VISA and Swift.  Indeed, in a slide leaked by Edward Snowden, “economic” was one of the main justifications for spying

• Top financial experts say that the NSA and other intelligence agencies are using the information to  profit from this inside information

• The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions.  Many other agencies are doing the same. In fact, virtually all U.S. intelligence agencies – including the CIA and NSA – are going to spy on Americans’ finances. The IRS will also be spying on Americans’ shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files from other government investigators

• The NSA may be changing the amount in people’s financial accounts and manipulating financial systems with its offensive cyber capabilities

"Marx and Engels never tried to refute their opponents with argument. They insulted, ridiculed, derided, slandered, and traduced them, and in the use of these methods their followers are not less expert. Their polemic is directed never against the argument of the opponent, but always against his person." - Socialism

ICLOAK Creates Revolutionary Way To Take Internet Privacy Into Your Own Hands

Now, this creation seems intriguing!

By: Ben Swann Jun 26, 2014

In this era of government spying, some are asking, “Where is the free market solution?” It is a fair question when you consider that in most other points in American history, the market responds to the public’s needs when government won’t or when big corporations refuse. That is exactly what is happening with our state of affairs when it comes to government monitoring of correspondence and movement of U.S. citizens.

In fact, there are free market solutions being developed. Among those, one of the most promising, a brand new product that kicked off its crowd funding campaign Wednesday. The company, Digithinkit is unveiling its newest protection device, ICLOAK. Eric Delisle, the CEO of Digithinkit sat down exclusively for a video interview with Benswann.com.

“The ICLOAK stik, which is the product we are just getting ready to launch is a tool that allows the non-technical computer user to take this little USB drive and stick it into any computer, a Mac or PC and when they reboot the computer it loads a live operating system into their RAM. So it actually works like a whole other computer and because of that allows us to put all of the pieces in place to make you completely anonymous online” says Delisle.

The concept is a simple one. The ICLOAK stik simply disguises your computer’s IP address, the method by which internet providers and the government monitor and track behavior online. Delisle, who grew up a Republican, became a Ron Paul supporter and like so many Americans got the inspiration for the product after first witnessing what happened to Bradley Manning and hearing the Snowden revelations a year ago.

“I realized that I wanted to do something to help. Being a software developer and knowing how to do this kind of stuff, I wanted to create something that non-technical people could use to protect themselves” says Delisle.

Of course, the big question when it comes to any product like this, how do you know it is safe. Who’s to say that Digithinkit isn’t just a company working as a government contractor? Delisle says that he has opened up his technology to the Tor Project. In fact, ICLOAK will become the first ever Tor Certified product on the market.

“With the ICLOAK stik there will be Tor relays, that you can put on your regular computers and help build that network, because the more computers there are on the Tor network, the better it is for everybody. It creates more privacy and more bandwidth.” “(the Tor Project) will literally be taking all of our code, looking through the architecture, testing it, making sure it isn’t leaking any information or any data that you don’t want to be leaked.”

Wednesday, Delisle kicked off the icloak Kickstarter campaign. The goal is to raise $75,000 over the next 30 days.

“

The bulk of that money really is for the production of the unit. We will order our first large order of the units. And its for the testing. We want to make sure this product is tested on as many hardware devices as possible to make sure that when it gets out to people’s hands it works the way it is supposed to”

You can contribute to the ICLOAK Kickstarter Campaign and as part of the rewards, you are able to receive your very own ICLOAK stick.

The ultimate goal here, Delisle says, is to give computer users the ability to protect themselves rather than having to trust some internet provider for your privacy.

“We are trying very hard with everything we talk about here and with everything we are doing to put trust in the hands of the user. We have started to coin the phrase, confidis te ipsum, and in Latin it would mean, trust thyself. So rather than having to trust some service provider who you don’t know that’s in some far away place, we’re trying to provide all the resources for the consumer to be able to check it all out themselves.”

via benswann

FLASH! Snowden NSA Release! How Secret Partners Expand NSA's Surveillance Dragnet

Shouldn't be surprising when you realize without meaningful congressional oversight, but instead is collusive by indifference, our government and its agencies can carry out anything its black heart desires.

Not to put all the blame on the current Tyrant-in-Chief, he is but the plantation overseer as have all those who've come before him. You can't possibly believe Obama, Bush, Clinton could be the bumbling idiots they are without coaching do you? Grade them all "F" for Morality.  Your next Lord of the serfdom is being decided for us right now, and may have already been determined for us. 

As FDR told us: "Nothing in politics ever happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

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By Ryan Gallagher 18 Jun 2014

Also read:  Documentation: The Snowden files

Top-secret documents reveal how the NSA has established secret partnerships to spy on huge flows of private data.

Huge volumes of private emails, phone calls, and internet chats are being intercepted by the National Security Agency with the secret cooperation of more foreign governments than previously known, according to newly disclosed documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The classified files, revealed today by the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information in a reporting collaboration with The Intercept, shed light on how the NSA’s surveillance of global communications has expanded under a clandestine program, known as RAMPART-A, that depends on the participation of a growing network of intelligence agencies.

It has already been widely reported that the NSA works closely with eavesdropping agencies in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia as part of the so-called Five Eyes surveillance alliance. But the latest Snowden documents show that a number of other countries, described by the NSA as “third-party partners,” are playing an increasingly important role – by secretly allowing the NSA to install surveillance equipment on their fiber-optic cables.

The NSA documents state that under RAMPART-A, foreign partners “provide access to cables and host U.S. equipment.” This allows the agency to covertly tap into “congestion points around the world” where it says it can intercept the content of phone calls, faxes, e-mails, internet chats, data from virtual private networks, and calls made using Voice over IP software like Skype.

The program, which the secret files show cost U.S. taxpayers about $170 million between 2011 and 2013, sweeps up a vast amount of communications at lightning speed. According to the intelligence community’s classified “Black Budget” for 2013, RAMPART-A enables the NSA to tap into three terabits of data every second as the data flows across the compromised cables – the equivalent of being able to download about 5,400 uncompressed high-definition movies every minute.

In an emailed statement, the NSA declined to comment on the RAMPART-A program. “The fact that the U.S. government works with other nations, under specific and regulated conditions, mutually strengthens the security of all,” said NSA spokeswoman Vanee’ Vines. “NSA’s efforts are focused on ensuring the protection of the national security of the United States, its citizens, and our allies through the pursuit of valid foreign intelligence targets only.”

The secret documents reveal that the NSA has set up at least 13 RAMPART-A sites, nine of which were active in 2013. Three of the largest – codenamed AZUREPHOENIX, SPINNERET and MOONLIGHTPATH – mine data from some 70 different cables or networks. The precise geographic locations of the sites and the countries cooperating with the program are among the most carefully guarded of the NSA’s secrets, and these details are not contained in the Snowden files. However, the documents point towards some of the countries involved – Denmark and Germany among them.

An NSA memo prepared for a 2012 meeting between the then-NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, and his Danish counterpart noted that the NSA had a longstanding partnership with the country’s intelligence service on a special “cable access” program. Another document, dated from 2013 and first published by Der Spiegel on Wednesday, describes a German cable access point under a program that was operated by the NSA, the German intelligence service BND, and an unnamed third partner.

The Danish and German operations appear to be associated with RAMPART-A because it is the only NSA cable-access initiative that depends on the cooperation of third-party partners. Other NSA operations tap cables without the consent or knowledge of the countries that host the cables, or are operated from within the United States with the assistance of American telecommunications companies that have international links. One secret NSA document notes that most of the RAMPART-A projects are operated by the partners “under the cover of an overt comsat effort,” suggesting that the tapping of the fiber-optic cables takes place at Cold War-era eavesdropping stations in the host countries, usually identifiable by their large white satellite dishes and radomes.

A shortlist of other countries potentially involved in the RAMPART-A operation is contained in the Snowden archive. A classified presentation dated 2013, published recently in Intercept editor Glenn Greenwald’s book No Place To Hide, revealed that the NSA had top-secret spying agreements with 33 third-party countries, including Denmark, Germany, and 15 other European Union member states:

For any foreign government, allowing the NSA to secretly tap private communications is politically explosive, hence the extreme secrecy shrouding the names of those involved. But governments that participate in RAMPART-A get something in return: access to the NSA’s sophisticated surveillance equipment, so they too can spy on the mass of data that flows in and out of their territory.

The partnership deals operate on the condition that the host country will not use the NSA’s spy technology to collect any data on U.S. citizens. The NSA also agrees that it will not use the access it has been granted to collect data on the host countries’ citizens. One NSA document notes that “there ARE exceptions” to this rule – though does not state what those exceptions may be.

According to Snowden, the agreements that the NSA has in place with its partners are lax and easily circumvented. In a statement to the European parliament in March, he used Denmark and Germany as examples to describe how the NSA had effectively established what he called a “European bazaar” for surveillance.

“An EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn’t search for Germans,” Snowden said.

“Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements.”

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source the intercept

FBI Informants using surrogates as hackers

Hey Ma, ain't it wunderful the left de-funded the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)- we wouldn't have these billions if the congress still had Oversight!

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How an FBI informant orchestrated the Stratfor hack

By Dell Cameron on June 05, 2014 

 

Sitting inside a medium-security federal prison in Kentucky, Jeremy Hammond looks defiant and frustrated. 

“[The FBI] could've stopped me,” he told the Daily Dot last month at the Federal Correctional Institution, Manchester. “They could've. They knew about it. They could’ve stopped dozens of sites I was breaking into.”

Hammond is currently serving the remainder of a 10-year prison sentence in part for his role in one of the most high-profile cyberattacks of the early 21st century. His 2011 breach of Strategic Forecasting, Inc. (Stratfor) left tens of thousands of Americans vulnerable to identity theft and irrevocably damaged the Texas-based intelligence firm's global reputation. He was also indicted for his role in the June 2011 hack of an Arizona state law enforcement agency's computer servers.

 

There's no question of his guilt: Hammond, 29, admittedly hacked into Stratfor’s network and exfiltrated an estimated 60,000 credit card numbers and associated data and millions of emails, information that was later shared with the whistleblower organization WikiLeaks and the hacker collective Anonymous.  

Sealed court documents obtained by the Daily Dot and Motherboard, however, reveal that the attack was instigated and orchestrated not by Hammond, but by an informant, with the full knowledge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

In addition to directly facilitating the breach, the FBI left Stratfor and its customers—which included defense contractors, police chiefs, and National Security Agency employees—vulnerable to future attacks and fraud, and it requested knowledge of the data theft to be withheld from affected customers. This decision would ultimately allow for millions of dollars in damages.

The documents also confirm the integral role of a shadowy hacker, operating under the handle “Hyrriiya,” who provided key access for the now-infamous attack.

FROM MOTHERBOARD: 
How an FBI informant helped Anonymous hack Brazil
 

The FBI’s official version of the Stratfor hack, as reported by the New York Times, is that the bureau was made aware of the breach on Dec. 6, 2011, after hackers were already “knee-deep” in confidential files. The FBI claims Hammond informed hacker-turned-informant Hector Xavier Monsegur—also known by the online alias Sabu—of the vulnerability at Stratfor. In turn, the FBI immediately notified the intelligence company, though at that point it was already “too late.” 

During his trial, Hammond claimed that the roles were actually reversed: It was Monsegur—released last week on time served—who first introduced him to an anonymous hacker, now known as Hyrriiya, who “supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems." 

“I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention,” Hammond said.

His statement echoed a May 2012 letter ostensibly written by Hyrriiya and provided to Hammond’s legal defense team. “I am stating and admitting, AS FACT, that I was the person who hacked Stratfor,” wrote Hyrriiya, a skilled hacker, who's known primarily for his involvement in hacks of Syrian government websites for Anonymous, two months after Hammond was charged.

Previously, however, no public records have substantiated Hammond’s and Hyrriiya’s claims.

New information, obtained by the Daily Dot and Motherboard in April, not only affirms Hammond's version of events, but also longstanding accusations that federal investigators allowed an informant to repeatedly break computer-crime laws while in pursuit of Hammond and other Anonymous figures. Further, contrary to its prior statements, the FBI, through its surveillance of Monsegur, was aware of a security breach in the network of the private intelligence company well before it was “too late.”

The evidence on which the Daily Dot-Motherboard investigation is based was collected by Monsegur and his FBI monitors during his time as an informant from June 2011 to March 2012. The cache of court documents includes thousands of previously unseen chat logs, surveillance photos, and government documents, all currently sealed under a protective order upheld by a federal judge in the Southern District of New York. 

According to the chat logs, on Dec. 4, 2011, Hyrriiya informed Monsegur that he’d compromised the company’s systems. Monsegur responded, “That’s perfect for #antisec.” (“AntiSec” refers to hacking group that formed in the summer of 2011 as an offshoot of LulzSec, which was cofounded by Monsegur. The term itself comes from the Anti Security Movement of the early 2000s.) 

Hammond was not present during this initial conversation about Stratfor, which took place in an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) room called “#Revolusec.” After Hyrriiya provided Monsegur with the names of several Stratfor clients—Cisco, Monsanto, Microsoft, and Oracle—Monsegur, as Sabu, told Hyrriiya to contact him through private messaging.

These time-stamped chat logs were retained by the FBI for the investigation of Hammond:

Monsegur first learns about the Stratfor breach from Hyrriiya on Dec. 4, in a chatroom called #RevoluSec.
 

In short order, Hyrriiya promised Monsegur access to Stratfor and delivered the details for eight credit cards from Stratfor's database as further proof that he’d infiltrated its systems. The private data belonged to employees of the National Security Agency (NSA); the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); and Booz Allen Hamilton, the former employer of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden; among others. The data included names, credit card numbers, expiration dates, credit card security codes, billing addresses, and other contact information. (Editors’ note: For the purpose of protecting the victims’ identities and financial information, that portion of the conversation has been intentionally withheld from this report.)

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