#Wassenaar: New World Order?

"Wassenaar will make resistance via the Internet impossible!"

This is another in our series of guest posts by subject matter experts.  This post relates to a new threat to internet security and freedom of expression.

Open Letter Regarding Wassenaar to the Department of Commerce and to Legislators,

Posted on May 26, 2015

[Background: 

The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technology is a multilateral export control regime [MECR] with 41 participating states, to include the USA.  Wassenaar replaces COCOM [Coordinating Committee for  Multilateral Export Controls], and is ostensibly less strict than COCOM and focuses primarily on the transparency of national export controls and not granting veto power to individual members over organizational decisions.

Wassenaar has come under fire from the IT community since, in its current form, it will have “extensive harmful effects on computer security research and defensive software”, potentially imposing criminal penalties on software and security developers.  The very credible author of this article:  Jonathan Adziarski, provides a stirring case against Wassenaar.]

To Whom it May Concern,

I am a published and respected forensics expert who pioneered the very first forensic techniques to extract data from the iPhone as early as 2008.  Since then, I have spent several years, and much of my time, assisting numerous law enforcement and military agencies around the world, including our own. I’ve trained government agencies in the US, Canada, and the UK, and I've trained law enforcement organizations from dozens of our allies here at home in the US.

My work has been validated by the NIJ/NIST. I have invested my time in providing free assistance to many US-based federal and state agencies who have flown personnel into my small town for help in the middle of the night.

Because of my research and hard work, I’ve provided the necessary information to the rest of the industry to be able to perform iOS forensics, and a vast majority of today’s forensics solutions are founded upon my techniques.

I did all of this on my own personal time, and in many cases on my own dime. The tools and techniques I developed are by no means “intrusion” tools; however, due to the excessively broad nature of the Wassenaar proposal, my services would fall under its regulations as they bypass security mechanisms of devices and collect information from them. As all of my research is done personally, I have no large company with lawyers to address the impossible spider web of export regulations that would be introduced by Wassenaar.

The current proposal, as is, would harm far more than simply the information security industry, but would also greatly damage the forensics industry and ultimately limit the quality of tools available to law enforcement agencies for conducting lawful forensics. My tools, as well as many commercial solutions, employ the use of exploits to collect information from devices for purposes that serve law enforcement and the greater good.

I sometimes only privately release the source code to my own tools, as many commercial forensics manufacturers have stolen it in the past, yet I continue to help the law enforcement community. Wassenaar will do little to accomplish the goals it set out to, and instead make it impossible for security researchers like myself to further expand the base of knowledge by contributing openly to the community – which goes far beyond this country’s borders.

Had Wassenaar (as it is proposed today) been in place in 2008, I would not have felt as though I could openly share my research publicly without risk of prosecution, which would have deprived the community as a whole – including the United States – of valuable information that has led to the greater good.

I understand there are certain nation states misusing intrusion tools to commit crimes. There are also many law enforcement agencies within the United States who have misused or abused my own tools and techniques to conduct questionable and potentially illegal intrusions. We cannot simply un-invent technologies to prevent their misuse, and unlike nuclear weapons, digital goods cannot be effectively regulated; yet this is the tradeoff we make, to create these tools for the greater good, knowing they may be abused.

This proposal stands to only damage those looking to contribute to a better and more secure community. Wassenaar has a deterrent component, and at the heart of security research are many independent researchers like myself who will simply stop contributing if there is a fear of prosecution simply for sharing knowledge in the form of code.

Sharing knowledge is not only a basic human right, but the only means by which we can become a civilized society. Without knowledge and education, the greater good suffers.

Security researchers share knowledge in the form of code, which serves as an illustration – a description – of a problem that exists in a system. Even many published papers will contain code as it is our language by which we can most effectively communicate an idea. In addition to code, we create binaries of it to help test our own systems for vulnerabilities and ensure the security of our user base.  Wassenaar, at its very core, attempts to regulate the ideas and knowledge we communicate through code.

Dept of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security

History has consistently demonstrated that regulating knowledge on any level has proven detrimental to societies. 

In Wassenaar’s attempt to prevent the dissemination of intrusion software, it is, at the very core, creating too much of a fear of prosecution to any security researcher to even consider developing or sharing their research with those who would most benefit from it.

There are alternatives to dealing with malicious nation states that do not involve creating regulations and the fear of prosecution on honest, law abiding researchers whose focus should be on their work, and not on being imprisoned by their own country. 

The day that I am prevented from sharing my knowledge freely with the world is also the day I stop sharing with all; it is the day the US declares they own the rights to my knowledge and what I do with it. That kind of power is far more dangerous than any intrusion tool.

[Posted in Politics, Security by Jonathan Zdziarski]

US: Final Descent!

This is Captain 0bama: We are now making our final descent!
[Bigcountryhomepage.com]

This Guest Post seems especially worth publicizing for a broader audience.

From a former Navy fighter pilot and retired UAL Captain. 

We AreAll Flying on the Germanwings Plane ... Will We Just Wait?

Crash Position

The pilot was locked out of the cockpit.

That phrase finally revealed the full horror of the crash of Germanwings flight 9525. Co-pilot Andreas Lubitz waited for the pilot to leave the cockpit, then locked the door to prevent his re-entry. After which Lubitz, for reasons unknown and perhaps unknowable, deliberately steered the jet into a harrowing 8-minute plunge ending in an explosive 434 mph impact with a rocky mountainside. 150 men, women and children met an immediate, unthinkably violent death.

Lubitz, in his single-minded madness, couldn't be stopped because anyone who could change the jet's disastrous course was locked out.

It's hard to imagine the growing feelings of fear and helplessness that
the passengers felt as the unforgiving landscape rushed up to meet them.

Hard ... but not impossible.

I locked you out!

Because America is in trouble. We feel the descent in the pits of our stomachs. We hear the shake and rattle of structures stressed beyond their limits. We don't know where we're going anymore, but do know it isn't good.

And above all, we feel helpless because Barack Obama has locked us out.

He locked the American people out of his decision to seize the national healthcare system. Locked us out when we wanted to know why the IRS was attacking conservatives. He locked us out of having a say in his decision to tear up our immigration laws, and to give over a trillion dollars in benefits to those who broke those laws.



Obama locked out those who advised against premature troop withdrawals. Locked out the intelligence agencies who issued warnings about the growing threat of ISIS. He locked out anyone who could have interfered with his release of five Taliban terror chiefs in return for one US military deserter.

And, of course, Barack Obama has now locked out Congress, the American people, and our allies as he strikes a secret deal with Iran to determine the timeline (not prevention) of their acquisition of nuclear weapons.  He wants to give them $50 Billion if they promise not to build a nuclear bomb; there's no mention of their work on an EMP bomb though.

Was Andreas Lubitz depressed, insane, or abysmally evil when he decided to lock that cockpit door and listen to no voices other than those in his head? Did he somehow believe himself to be doing the right thing?

The voice recordings from the doomed aircraft reveal that as the jet began its rapid descent, the passengers were quiet. There was probably some nervous laughter, confusion, a bit of comforting chatter with seatmates, followed by a brief period in which anxiety had not yet metastasized into terror.

It was only near the end of the 8-minute plunge that everyone finally understood what was really happening. Only near the end when they began to scream.

Like those passengers, a growing number of Americans feel a helpless dread as they come to the inescapable conclusion that our nation's decline is an act of choice rather than of chance. The choice of one man who is in full control of our 8-year plunge.

A man who has locked everyone out.

If you aren't screaming yet, you should be.

NSA Helps Cops Spy

[america.aljazeera.com]

Update: 26OCT2023

Once again, I'm republishing this newly updated blogpost as new information has been revealed regarding the abuse of NSA's surveillance capabilities; the two biggest perps appear to be Harris and Celebrite, both of which tout their spyware as promoting "public safety" by intruding on private phone conversations.  

Thus, a Police State makes sense to them, but, maybe not to you.

You may find the three highlighted articles both informative -- and shocking.

Having been exposed as perpetrators of potentially [probably ?] illegal hacking of phone conversations, Celebrite [an Israeli company] has reportedly found a way to "hack" iPhones using iOS 11.  Aside from selling their techniques to US Law Enforcement agencies, keep in mind that this is an Israeli country, which means Israeli Intelligence can monitor your phones [and the phones of our Intelligence and Military officials] as well.

Here's a quote from the article:

"For years, cops and other government authorities all over the world have been using phone hacking technology provided by Cellebrite to unlock phones and obtain the data within. And the company has been keen on keeping the use of its technology “hush hush.”

"As part of the deal with government agencies, Cellebrite asks users to keep its tech — and the fact that they used it — secret, TechCrunch has learned. 

"This request concerns legal experts who argue that powerful technology like the one Cellebrite builds and sells, and how it gets used by law enforcement agencies, ought to be public and scrutinized.

"In a leaked training video for law enforcement customers that was obtained by TechCrunch, a senior Cellebrite employee tells customers that “ultimately, you’ve extracted the data, it’s the data that solves the crime, how you got in, let’s try to keep that as hush hush as possible.”

Notably, while I was investigating Intelligence vulnerabilities at the Pentagon in 1990 (three years after Jonathon Pollard's conviction for spying for the KGB and Israel], I learned that LTG Sidney T Weinstein [then US Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence] had granted an Israeli company a contract to "secure US Military Intelligence data and communications"!  

Thus, Israeli Intelligence then had access to ALL Military Intelligence data.  

The original blogpost is below.

Click here for related story [Bloomberg]

We republish this blogpost in the wake of the 06 January fiasco in which 

FBI agents/provocateurs posed as demonstrators and "rioters", and spied 

on the demonstrators, monitoring their cell phone traffic.  There was a time 

when such activity was illegal, but, as we've noticed of late, legality is of 

no concern to our federal law enforcement or judicial system.  Worse, the 

NSA tools have now been made available to the Capitol Hill Police [CHP] 

which is apparently to become a National Police Force with no oversight and 

will report directly to the Speaker: Nancy Pelosi (not a paragon of virtue)]

[25 July 2022]

The original post follows:

We've commented earlier about NSA sharing their high tech capabilities with local police agencies, which was the basis for much of Mr Snowden's leaks of NSA Top Secret briefing slides.


As you may recall, NSA's mission was to spy on foreign powers, both enemy and friendly, to assure US national security.  However, after 9/11 [well, in reality, long before], NSA began spying on US citizenry; they started with Congress and political candidates, and moved from there down to Joe the Plumber -- for no other reason than that they could.

NSA [aka: Puzzle Palace]

Of late, the NSA is an agency without portfolio.

With all their whiz-bang hardware and software, they still can't break most encrypted communications since the protective technology is much stronger than NSA's hacking capabilities.

Think in terms of encryption between two communicators in which the call is transmitted over a broad bandwidth, changing frequencies hundreds of times a minute, with the encryption changing modes every few seconds.

It takes time to even locate a transmission, much less to lock on to it; and then there's the key word search -- but if it's encrypted, NSA won't hear it.
[Recently, rumors of a Chinese deciphering app have floated -- without confirmation]

NSA focuses on clear, open text communications which they can gather in huge volume, store in massive vaults, and then sort -- very efficiently by computers.  That helps analysts, but leaves the barrier of access to the really good intelligence.

So, NSA turns inward, to collect all the metadata on American citizens which DHS has now declared as "potential terrorists".  The definition of "terrorist" has now been adjusted to cover anyone who is critical of the government -- especially the President.

Local Cops/CHP Now Have NSA Tools

NSA, via DHS, has now assumed a training and support mission to local police forces monitor the local population; of late, DHS has "showered more than $35 Billion on states and localities for 'terrorism prevention'."  Sadly, Congress has now passed a bill to legitimize police access to the private communications of citizens.

 In the story linked to this blog, we learn that police are now using NSA equipment at the local level to not only track citizen telecommunications, but to disrupt, re-route, and block telecommunications -- particularly cell phones.

[Our own personal communications have been disrupted in this manner, and photos from our computer have mysteriously appeared in texts to us from anonymous sources. Interestingly, photos from computers of former colleagues have also appeared -- with warnings that Mr Clapper regards us as a threat]

Since targets are usually unaware they are being monitored, and the equipment is essentially unregistered and used by street level cops, there is no judicial link to such surveillance in which court orders are required.

Harris StingRay II

The Harris Corporation, a Defense contractor, is authorized by the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] to sell a mobile/cell phone tracking system the size of a suitcase called the StingRay - an IMSI-catcher [International Mobile Subscriber Identity].  The function of the StingRay is to send signals which mimic cell towers, thereby accessing all the identifying data from cell phones up to a mile away.

Its capabilities include:

1) Extracting data from cellphone internal storage [e.g., all phone numbers, logs, voicemails, etc.]
2) Writing Metadata to internal storage [e.g., boosting power to extend the transmission range to assist monitoring of the call; making it easy to track.
3) Tracking and Locating the cell phone or compatible cellular device even when the device is turned off.
4)  Denial of Service [DOS], or blocking of all transmissions while the StingRay conducts its surveillance.
5)  Interception of Communications Content by simulating a cell site which forces a connection with the target device [cell phone] to
     a) conduct "GSM Target Key Extraction"  to obtain the target device encryption key
     b) download the target device's IMSI and other identifying data;
     c) simulates the target device to connect to the legitimate service provider;
     d) forwards signals between the target device and the legitimate cell site -- while decrypting
         and recording the communications content

Police say they purchase these systems to "detect mobile phone detonated bombs like those used in Middle East IEDs".  

In reality, the police use the StingRay to monitor and disrupt cell phones of private citizens -- and protestors at rallies, or just to monitor their personal friends, family, neighbors and adversaries.

Chicago spent $150,000 on StingRay equipment; Harris has also peddled its equipment to San Francisco, Takoma, and Miami, but they will not disclose the purpose for which their equipment is being used.

Local law enforcement and the federal government have blocked judicial enforcement simply by refusing to turn over records demanded by the courts.  In one case, when the court demanded police documents, the US Marshalls Service seized the records to ensure the court could not access them.

The term "above the law" has taken on a completely new meaning!

GOP Self-Destructing?

Bill Whittle gives us some lessons on how it could have been

Click here for full video of Bill Whittle's speech.

In our continuing series of guest posts, we've taken the liberty of including Bill Whittle's Conservative speech at the David Horowitz Restoration Weekend 2012 event -- following Romney's bewildering loss in the Presidential election.
[The video audience has been urged to share this commentary - and this seems an effective way]

Bill explains why the Republican Party has been so effective at losing elections -- and allowing the Left to dominate the Media -- unopposed, with the result that Conservative candidates and Conservativism in general is allowed to be demonized by the Left.

He believes the GOP, and Conservatives at large, suffer from Stockholm Syndrome
"We do not believe our own philosophy!"
"Republicans are utterly unable to stand for what they believe in, ... and in a way, they are ashamed of it!"

Non-Partisan Moderator Crowley

He provides an excellent retort to Candy Crowley's question to Candidate Romney, whom he described as a "... remarkably decent and good man" -- a description with which we can all agree.

The difficulty is/was that Romney is a decent and good man, and was unprepared to enter a match with a conniving, lying, manipulative Chicago politician backed by Stalinists; but, he could have managed the battle with Mr Obama.

What he could not manage was to have the Moderator side with the other candidate, ask questions in the form of personal attacks, and last but not least, tell Romney in the midst of the debate that Romney had his facts wrong on Benghazi -- implying that he was lying -- which swayed the American voters, and likely cost Romney the election.
[Crowley was later proven wrong and roundly condemned by journalists, the Right, and even the Left for her partisan performance; but by then, the damage was irreversible.]

Mitt Romney "did not even believe his own life story!" i.e., he was embarrassed for having worked hard, built a variety of successful, profitable companies which employed tens, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of employees -- with health benefits, and in the process made a pile of money [billions of dollars] for himself and his investors.

His personal wealth was/is $250 million, of which he paid $60 million in taxes -- which went to pay the wages of government bureaucrats, build schools and homeless shelters, and support countless organizations supporting the poor and underprivileged.
Was this a crime?
Did he exploit anyone to achieve all this?
Did anyone suffer because he was creating wealth, jobs, and taxable income -- not only for himself, but for tens of thousands of taxpaying workers.

Why no, as a matter of fact, he contributed to the wealth of the country he wished to serve.
His opponent had contributed nothing, but had taken grant money from the government tax base to live in grand style and build a political base, with a Marxist and terrorist cadre advising him.

He wished to lead the most dynamic and wealthiest country in the world, a place where the greatest threat to the poor is obesity.  With his wealth, he lives better than the poor in the US, but, if he is hit by a bus, he will be taken to the same emergency room as a poor person and be treated by the same doctors; the difference is that the poor will pay nothing, and he will pay for his treatment.

On Benghazi, he could have asked why the President failed to respond to the attack; and he should have asked, but did not, where the President physically was during the attack -- and why he did not respond.   But he didn't ask.

Asked how he would have handled Benghazi as President, Romney could have responded that he would have directed the US forces in the region to respond immediately; he would have directed the commander of the 6th Fleet [in the Mediterranean Sea at the time] to launch a dozen fighters to arrive at Benghazi  -- only 22 minutes away, to be followed by rescue helicopters and an AC-130, and they would rescue those under attack.

We suspect the audience would have stood and cheered during the debate.
[We recall the Reagan years in which he took on tough topics by poking fun at his opponents, and at himself; he was the last President for whom the entire Congress stood and cheered.]

We suspect the American public would have stood in their living rooms and cheered and Mr Obama would have been soundly thrashed at the polls -- as brutally as Jimmy Carter was defeated in 1980.

We have a second chance; it means voting to take control of the Senate and solidify control of the House in November.

It's time for American citizens to take control of our country again.
Get to the polls in November.

John Oliver (HBO) on Net Neutrality: Preventing Cable Company Fuckery

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO): Net Neutrality
June 1st, 2014

"The Internet is NOT broken and the FCC is taking steps to FIX that." ---John Oliver

The President [Obama] has picked Tom Wheeler, a former top lobbyist for cable and wireless companies to be the next Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

"Yes the guy who used to run the cable industry's lobbying arm is now running the agency tasked with regulating it. That is the equivalent on needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo." 

Net Neutrality. Do you really understand it?

Click here for an account of how Comcast deals with a customer in these circumstances.

John Oliver from Comedy Central's DAILY SHOW helps make sense of this movement on his hilarious and informative HBO hit show Last Week Tonight.

"If you want to do something evil, put it in something boring."

Add some excitement to your life right now by trolling the FCC's website with your comments: http://www.fcc.gov/comments