[Reader-list] Big Brother is Watching You: Pervasive Surveillance Under Obama The DHS-NSA-AT&T "Cybersecurity" Partnership

[Taha Mehmood]

Dear All

Especially to all those who had Obama's name on their facebook updates
not many months back this bit of news must give them some reason to
rejoice, for our President is doing whatever he can, to make sure that
policies under the Bush era must be 'changed'. Yes we Can!!

Regards

Taha

Big Brother is Watching You: Pervasive Surveillance Under Obama
The DHS-NSA-AT&T "Cybersecurity" Partnership

by Tom Burghardt

Under the rubric of cybersecurity, the Obama administration is moving
forward with a Bush regime program to screen state computer traffic on
private-sector networks, including those connecting people to the
Internet, The Washington Post revealed July 3.

That project, code-named "Einstein," may very well be related to the
much-larger, ongoing and highly illegal National Security Agency (NSA)
communications intercept program known as "Stellar Wind," disclosed in
2005 by The New York Times.

There are several components to Stellar Wind, one of which is a
massive data-mining project run by the agency. As USA Today revealed
in 2006, the "National Security Agency has been secretly collecting
the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data
provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."

Under the current program, Einstein will be tied directly into giant
NSA data bases that contain the trace signatures left behind by
cyberattacks; these immense electronic warehouses will be be fed by
information streamed to the agency by the nation's telecommunications
providers.

AT&T, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
and the NSA will spearhead the aggressive new initiative to detect
malicious attacks launched against government web sites--by continuing
to monitor the electronic communications of Americans.

This contradicts President Obama's pledge announcing his
administration's cybersecurity program on May 29. During White House
remarks Obama said that the government will not continue Bush-era
surveillance practices or include "monitoring private sector networks
or Internet traffic."

Called the "flagship system" in the national security state's cyber
defense arsenal, The Wall Street Journal reports that Einstein is
"designed to protect the U.S. government's computer networks from
cyberspies." In addition to cost overruns and mismanagement by
outsourced contractors, the system "is being stymied by technical
limitations and privacy concerns." According to the Journal, Einstein
is being developed in three stages:

    Einstein 1: Monitors Internet traffic flowing in and out of
federal civilian networks. Detects abnormalities that might be cyber
attacks. Is unable to block attacks.

    Einstein 2: In addition to looking for abnormalities, detects
viruses and other indicators of attacks based on signatures of known
incidents, and alerts analysts immediately. Also can't block attacks.

    Einstein 3: Under development. Based on technology developed for a
National Security Agency program called Tutelage, it detects and
deflects security breaches. Its filtering technology can read the
content of email and other communications. (Siobhan Gorman, "Troubles
Plague Cyberspy Defense," The Wall Street Journal, July 3, 2009)


As readers of Antifascist Calling are well aware, like other telecom
grifters, AT&T is a private-sector partner of NSA and continues to be
a key player in the agency's driftnet spying on Americans' electronic
communications. In 2006, AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein revealed in a
sworn affidavit, that the firm's Internet traffic that runs through
fiber-optic cables at the company's Folsom Street facility in San
Francisco was routinely provided to the National Security Agency.

Using a device known as a splitter, a complete copy of Internet
traffic that AT&T receives--email, web browsing requests and other
electronic communications sent by AT&T customers, was diverted onto a
separate fiber-optic cable connected to the company's SG-3 room,
controlled by the agency. Only personnel with NSA clearances--either
working for, or on behalf of the agency--have access to this room.

Klein and other critics of the program, including investigative
journalist James Bamford who reported in his book, The Shadow Factory,
believe that some 15-30 identical NSA-controlled rooms exist at AT&T
facilities scattered across the country.

Einstein: You Don't Have to Be a Genius to Know They're Lying

But what happens next, after the data is processed and catalogued by
the agency is little understood. Programs such as Einstein will
provide NSA with the ability to read and decipher the content of email
messages, any and all messages in real-time.

While DHS claims that "the new program will scrutinize only data going
to or from government systems," the Post reports that a debate has
been sparked within the agency over "uncertainty about whether private
data can be shielded from unauthorized scrutiny, how much of a role
NSA should play and whether the agency's involvement in warrantless
wiretapping during George W. Bush's presidency would draw
controversy."

A "Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for EINSTEIN 2" issued by DHS in
May 2008, claims the system is interested in "malicious activity" and
not personally identifiable information flowing into federal networks.

While DHS claims that "the risk associated with the use of this
computer network security intrusion detection system is actually lower
than the risk generated by using a commercially available intrusion
detection system," this assertion is undercut when the agency states,
"Internet users have no expectation of privacy in the to/from address
of their messages or the IP addresses of the sites they visit."

When Einstein 3 is eventually rolled-out, Internet users similarly
will "have no expectation of privacy" when it comes to the content of
their communications.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters, "we absolutely intend
to use the technical resources, the substantial ones, that NSA has."
Seeking to deflect criticism from civil libertarians, Napolitano
claims "they will be guided, led and in a sense directed by the people
we have at the Department of Homeland Security."

Despite protests to the contrary by securocrats, like other Bush and
Obama "cybersecurity" initiatives the Einstein program is a backdoor
for pervasive state surveillance. Government Computer News reported in
December 2008 that Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said that "the misuse or
exposure of sensitive data from such a program [Einstein] could
undermine the security arguments for surveillance."

And with Internet Service Providers routinely deploying deep packet
inspection tools to "siphon off requested traffic for law
enforcement," tools with the ability to "inspect and shape every
single packet--in real time--for nearly a million simultaneous
connections" as Ars Technica reported, to assume that ISPs will
protect Americans' privacy rights from out-of-control state agencies
is a foolhardy supposition at best.

The latest version of the system will not be rolled-out for at least
18 months. But like the Stellar Wind driftnet surveillance program,
communications intercepted by Einstein 3 will be routed through a
"monitoring box" controlled by NSA and their civilian contractors.

    Under a classified pilot program approved during the Bush
administration, NSA data and hardware would be used to protect the
networks of some civilian government agencies. Part of an initiative
known as Einstein 3, the plan called for telecommunications companies
to route the Internet traffic of civilian agencies through a
monitoring box that would search for and block computer codes designed
to penetrate or otherwise compromise networks. (Ellen Nakashima,
"Cybersecurity Plan to Involve NSA, Telecoms," The Washington Post,
July 3, 2009)


However, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen reported last September
"that the Bush administration has authorized massive surveillance of
the Internet using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion dollar
project called the 'Einstein' program."

While some researchers (including this one) question Madsen's
overreliance on anonymous sources and undisclosed documents, in
fairness it should be pointed out that nine months before The New York
Times described the NSA's secret e-mail collection database known as
Pinwale, Madsen had already identified and broken the story. According
to Madsen,

    The classified technology being used for Einstein was developed
for the NSA in conducting signals intelligence (SIGINT) operations on
email networks in Russia. Code-named PINWHEEL, the NSA email
surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic,
and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the
email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA
eavesdroppers. According to NSA documents obtained by WMR, there is an
NSA system code-named "PINWALE."

    The DNI and NSA also plan to move Einstein into the private sector
by claiming the nation's critical infrastructure, by nature, overlaps
into the commercial sector. There are classified plans, already
budgeted in so-called "black" projects, to extend Einstein
surveillance into the dot (.) com, dot (.) edu, dot (.) int, and dot
(.) org, as well as other Internet domains. Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff has budgeted $5.4 billion for Einstein in
his department's FY2009 information technology budget. However, this
amount does not take into account the "black" budgets for Einstein
proliferation throughout the U.S. telecommunications network contained
in the budgets for NSA and DNI. (Wayne Madsen, "'Einstein' replaces
'Big Brother' in Internet Surveillance," Online Journal, September 19,
2008)


A follow-up article published in February, identified the ultra-spooky
Booz Allen Hamilton firm as the developer of Pinwale, an illegal
program for the interception of text communications. According to
Madsen, "the system is linked to a number of meta-databases that
contain e-mail, faxes, and text messages of hundreds of millions of
people around the world and in the United States."

In other words both classified programs, Pinwale and Einstein, are
sophisticated electronic communications surveillance projects that
most certainly will train the agency's formidable intelligence assets
on the American people "using as cover a cyber-security multi-billion
dollar project called the 'Einstein' program," as Madsen reported.

AT&T: "No Comment"

An AT&T spokesman refused to comment on the proposals and is seeking
legal protection from the state that it will not be sued for privacy
breaches as a result of its participation in the new program. "Legal
certification" the Post reports, "has been held up for several months
as DHS prepares a contract."

NSA's involvement is critical proponents claim, because the agency has
a readily-accessible database of computer codes, or signatures "that
have been linked to cyberattacks or known adversaries. The NSA has
compiled the cache by, for example, electronically observing hackers
trying to gain access to U.S. military systems," the Post averred.

Calling NSA's cache "the secret sauce...it's the stuff they have that
the private sector doesn't," is what raises alarms for privacy and
civil liberties' advocates. Known as Tutelage, NSA's classified
program can detect and automatically decide how to deal with malicious
intrusions, "to block them or watch them closely to better assess the
threat," according to the Post. "The database for the program would
also contain feeds from commercial firms and DHS's U.S. Computer
Emergency Readiness Team, administration officials said."

Jeff Mohan, AT&T's executive director for Einstein, was more
forthcoming earlier this year. He told Federal News Radio: "With these
services, we will provide a secure portal from the agency's
infrastructure, or Intranet to the public internet. There is a
technical aspect, which is routers, firewalls and that sort of thing
that applies these security capabilities across that portal and looks
a Internet traffic that comes from public Internet to Intranet and
vice versa."

The "technical aspect" will also provide federal agencies the ability
to capture, sort, read and then store Americans' private
communications in huge data bases run by NSA.

Mohan said that AT&T will provide the state with "optional services
such as scanning e-mail and placing filters on agency networks to keep
malicious e-mail off the network as well as forensic and storage
capabilities also are available through MTIPS [Managed Trusted
Internet Protocol Services]."

In addition to AT&T, other private partners awarded contracts under
the General Services Administration's MTIPS which has a built-in
"Einstein enclave" include: Sprint, L3 Communications, Qwest, MCI,
General Dynamics and Verizon, according to multiple reports published
by Federal Computer Week.

Claiming that the state is "looking for malicious content, not a love
note to someone with a dot-gov e-mail address," a former unnamed
"senior Bush administration official" told the Post "what we're
interested in is finding the code, the thing that will do the network
harm, not reading the e-mail itself."

Try selling that to the tens of millions of Americans whose private
communications have been illegally spied upon by the Bush and Obama
administrations or leftist dissidents singled-out for "special
handling" by the national security state's public-private surveillance
partnership!

An Electronic Spider's Web

As the "global war on terror" morphs into an endless war on our
democratic rights, the NSA is expanding domestic operations by
"decentralizing its massive computer hubs," The Salt Lake Tribune
revealed.

The agency "will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah's
Camp Williams," the newspaper disclosed July 1. The new facility would
be NSA's third major data center. In 2007, the agency announced plans
to build a second data center in San Antonio, Texas after the
Baltimore Sun reported that NSA had "maxed out" the electric capacity
of the Baltimore area's power grid.

The San Antonio Current reported in December, that the NSA's Texas
Cryptology Center will cost "upwards of $130 million." The 470,000
square-foot-facility is adjacent to a similar center constructed by
software giant Microsoft. Investigative journalist James Bamford told
the Current that under current law "NSA could gain access to
Microsoft's stored data without even a warrant, but merely a
fiber-optic cable."

A follow-up article by The Salt Lake Tribune reported that the
facility will cost upwards of $2 billion dollars and that funds have
already been appropriated by the Obama administration for NSA's new
data center and listening post.

    The secretive agency released a statement Thursday acknowledging
the selection of Camp Williams as a site for the new center and
describing it as "a specialized facility that houses computer systems
and supporting equipment."

    Budget documents provide a more detailed picture of the facility
and its mission. The supercomputers in the center will be part of the
NSA's signal intelligence program, which seeks to "gain a decisive
information advantage for the nation and our allies under all
circumstances" according to the documents. (Matthew D. LaPlante, "New
NSA Center Unveiled in Budget Documents," The Salt Lake Tribune, July
2, 2009)


Not everyone is pleased with the announcement. Steve Erickson, the
director of the antiwar Citizens Education Project told the Tribune,
"Finally, the Patriot Act has a home."

While the total cost of rolling-out the Einstein 3 system is
classified, The Wall Street Journal reports that "the price tag was
expected to exceed $2 billion." And as with other national security
state initiatives, it is the American people who are footing the bill
for the destruction of our democratic rights.

Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research.