Schneier on Security

Skeptical • February 26, 2014 6:58 PM

The big issue is COMSEC vs SIGINT. I get that.

I also understand the desire to design the NSA institutionally so that it behaves in a desired fashion, i.e. targeted surveillance on foreign entities of foreign policy and national security interest.

I do have a few quick criticisms, which I mean to be constructive.

First, the Cyber Command thesis:

Putting the U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s cyberwar wing, in the same location and under the same commander, expanded the NSA’s power. The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security, and that’s increasingly putting us all at risk. It’s time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency.

Cyber Command was not made part of the NSA until 2009; indeed the working concept of a Cyber Command didn’t have much existence until 2006.

But the prioritization of “intelligence gathering over security”, if that’s a fair assessment and it occurred, came well before 2009. So the merge of the two wouldn’t explain it.

Second, the network intrusion should be considered an offensive military operation thesis:

Whatever rules of engagement Cyber Command operates under should apply equally to active operations such as sabotaging the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran and hacking a Belgian telephone company. If we’re going to attack the infrastructure of a foreign nation, let it be a clear military operation.

Well, the CIA engages in forms of espionage that are analogous to the hacking of a computer system to acquire intelligence. What’s the value of making such activities part of the military? Is breaking into the SVR’s network any more of an intrusion than paying someone in the SVR to access that network and exfil data from it?

I can see an argument from the institutional goals I think you have in mind: by placing these functions into the military, we further reduce the risk that they could be directed domestically. Still, I think the rationale needs some fleshing out.

Third, the wall between domestic and foreign surveillance thesis:

The FBI is charged with counterterrorism in the United States, and it needs to play that role. Any operations focused against U.S. citizens need to be subject to U.S. law, and the FBI is the best place to apply that law. That the NSA can, in the view of many, do an end-run around congressional oversight, legal due process and domestic laws is an affront to our Constitution and a danger to our society. The NSA’s mission should be focused outside the United States — for real, not just for show.

This isn’t far at all from how things work right now, no? The only thing I see this changing is which agency runs searches in the telephone metadata database. And keep in mind that there are advantages to having the NSA do that, rather than the FBI. The FBI would have far more uses for an abuse of that database than does the NSA. The FBI is much more connected with ordinary law enforcement, and much more engaged and involved in domestic operations that involve surveillance and investigations of many persons and groups. There may also be, speculatively, more of an institutional bias at the NSA against stretching its use of the database. The FBI, institutionally, has conducted investigations and surveillance of various Americans throughout its history. But the NSA, not so much.

In other words, from the vantage of creating institutional obstacles to abuse, there’s an advantage in not concentrating absolutely everything in the FBI.

That said, I do think we’re dealing with very small differences. So long as the courts and the legislature continue to be informed of the use of the database in question, the odds of abuse are small. I also think that both institutions (the FBI and NSA) have very strong cultural norms against abuse, and I think those norms are strongly reinforced and supported by their own internal functions.

Skeptical • February 27, 2014 9:26 AM

@Polly: Any sources for that other than the website you linked?

In any event, a lot has happened in the 50+ years between 1962 and today. I wouldn’t base your analysis of an organization today upon the organization 50 years ago.

Skeptical • March 1, 2014 10:05 AM

@Clive: I see you are again “cherry picking” your arguments to avoid having to admit your viewpoint does not fit the known facts.

Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not trying to cherry-pick anything. If you think I missed something important, that’s okay. In fact, it’s good, because maybe I’ve missed something that will change my mind or deepen my thinking. But accusing me of cherry-picking isn’t a particularly congenial assumption to make in the course of a conversation.

Thus deliberatly avoiding such things as,

<i>Look at Bush running wee-wee-wee all the way home from Switzerland.</i>

Where it has been shown that moves were afoot to have him arested under international law, but he was tipped of by the USG to in effect become an international fugative on the run.

This example was introduced to support the proposition that American officials are “terrified” of int’l law.

It is entirely fanciful.

Fact: Bush did cancel a trip to Switzerland in 2011 (he was scheduled to give a speech there).

Fact: Various NGOs did plan to file a complaint with a Swiss prosecutor (something they had done before).

Fact: A large protest demonstration at the speech was planned.

Fact: Because of the demonstration planned, the group to which Bush was to give the speech grew concerned about the potential for disorder and violence, and cancelled the speech.

Now, various NGOs, per their usual aggressive PR, reported this as Bush cancelling the trip out of fear of prosecution.

This is false because:
1 – An NGO had previously filed a complaint with Swiss authorities in 2003, which the Swiss explicitly declined to pursue. The reasons they gave would attach to any complaints filed again, as the NGOs know, and as Bush knows (otherwise he would have hardly scheduled a trip in 2011 to Switzerland).
2 – The Swiss authorities themselves in 2011, in response to letters from Amnesty International alleging war crimes committed by Bush, told Amnesty International that they would not prosecute.

To quote The New York Times on the subject:

Amnesty International sent Swiss authorities documents detailing their case for prosecuting Mr. Bush for torture, based on his admissions and other evidence concerning the waterboarding of two members of Al Qaeda, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah.

Swiss officials told human rights groups recently that they had no plans to try to prosecute Mr. Bush, Ms. Brown said. But the prospect of large demonstrations at the site of Mr. Bush’s speech remained, and the event’s organizers feared that protests could turn violent. Protest organizers were said to have asked demonstrators to carry shoes to the event, recalling how an Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at Mr. Bush in 2008 to protest his visit to Baghdad.

While there have been various efforts by NGOs to use universal jurisdiction laws to attempt a prosecution of Bush and other officials, these have not been successful, and none is a fugitive from any country.

So the idea that American officials are “terrified” of int’l law is, again, ridiculous.

As to the rest of your comment:

You realise that in effect the US has now anounced that it aligns it’s self with all those other nations it has accused of harbouring “war criminals”.

Could you expand on this? I’m not sure what you mean by “aligns” nor am I certain of the nations you’re referring to.

How many other examples would you like to show the US double standards on not just International law but it’s own national laws?

Your evidence here is that Thatcher was opposed to Pinochet’s extradition from Britain to Spain, and that Reagan and Bush accepted some title from Britain without Congressional consent. I haven’t looked into the latter, but I highly doubt it was in circumvention of the law. As to US conduct internationally, without a doubt it has supported some very bad regimes.

In Europe untill recently the way to deal with terrorism was to basicaly not pander to it, all through the last fourty years of the last century Europe was the terrorist play ground as the US and CCCP played “proxie war” by backing various terrorist organisations. Then as both super powers have discovered “chickens come home to roost” and all of a sudden it’s in your own backyard for once, so what dose the US do? It behaves like “Chicken little” and ends up destroying it’s own economy, rather than dealing with the problem rationaly as Europe had done for fourty years.

🙂 There’s a bit of a “wise Europe and uncouth violent America” in your paragraph here, though maybe I’m misreading. I’ve always found that to be one of the more amusing silly caricatures of Europe and the US.

Let’s look at some numbers.

The total number of terrorist deaths in Europe, including the conflict with the IRA and Basque separatists, from 1950 to 1995, over 45 years, is 2,777. See the TWEED dataset, available here

The loss from 9/11 is 2,996, a number exceeding all the terrorist fatalities in Europe over 45 years, and all incurred on a single morning, with the prospect of more to come. So let’s not pretend that the problem presented during those 45 years and the problem made undeniable on 9/11 are of the same order of magnitude. They’re not.

So when continental Europe basicaly said quite wisely of your War On Terror “We don’t want to be involved with your increadably stupid idea” you accused them of amongst other things of being “cheese eating surender monkeys”. Which is the sort of childish behaviour you would expect of six year olds in the school playground.

Actually NATO declared that the attack on 9/11 triggered Article V, and there has in fact been enormous assistance from close military allies to the US in the war upon AQ and affiliated organizations. Europe quite wisely recognized that the magnitude of the problem had changed, and joined forces with the US against it.

As to “cheese eating surrender monkeys”, you’re confusing allied cooperation on the so called global war on terrorism, which has been quite strong and continuing, and allied disagreement on Iraq, which was at times quite heated (and produced silly remarks, such as that you quoted, from idiots of every nationality).

Skeptical • March 1, 2014 4:03 PM

@name.withheld: Reread my comment. GWOT != Iraq. This has nothing to do with Iraq.