[conspire] CIA chief Brennan hints new gov't initiative against crypto

[Rick Moen]

CIA Director John Brennan, taking advantage of the PR opportunity of the
Daesh attacks on Paris and Beirut, yesterday gave a keynote at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, once again pushing for
its wishlist of items to further expand mass surveillance.


http://www.c-span.org/video/?400755-1/cia-director-john-brennan-remarks-global-security&start=2685

That was a pretty vague and brief talk, but you'll notice a couple of
polite swipes:  'Unauthorized disclosures' have led to 'a lot of
hand-wringing over the government's role in the effort to try to uncover
these terrorists....  There have been some policy and legal and other
actions taken that make our ability collectively, internationally, to
find these terrorists much more challenging, and I do hope that this is
going to be a wake up call.'

He means Snowden, and in particular Snowden's revelation to the American
public of two surveillance programs:  covert bulk collection of USA
telephone traffic under PATRIOT Act section 215 (the section that was
intended to permit collection of business records, such as telephone 
call metadata, that is relevant to a national-security investigation,
and was interpreted by George W. Bush's Justice Department as permitting
the collection of _all_ telephone data), and spying on non-U.S.
citizens under Section 702.

Brennan also put us all on notice that there's going to be a new spook
war on effective encryption software:  'There has been a significant
increase of operational security of a number of these operatives and the
terrorist networks as they have gone to school on what it is they need
to do to keep their activities concealed from the authorities.  As I
mentioned, there are a lot of technological capabilities that are
available right now that make it exceptionally difficult both
technically as well as legally for intelligence security services to
have the insight they need to uncover it.'

He means your ability to keep your records and communication under your
own control, subject to your privacy measures, and able to be validated
and authenticated.  He's again' it.

(Because, gosh, none of those foreigners were capable of making
effective use of strong encryption when it became a commodity item for
everyone twenty years ago.  Clearly, the possibility of them using it is
a sudden emergency requiring new action.)

In two weeks, a provision of the new USA Freedom Act, supported by court
decisions, takes effect that prevents the NSA from collecting and
storing American phone data in bulk.  The spooks _very much_ don't like
that bit, even though it's only the tiniest start towards putting the
huge mass-surveillance apparatus a bit more under control.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/judge-deals-a-blow-to-nsa-phone-surveillance-program.html

And all that concern about government surveillance?  Brennan calls it
'hand-wringing over the governments role in the effort to uncover these
terrorists.'

Effectiveness of the Section 215 and Section 702 programs in _actually_
stopping terrorist attacks have been more than questionable:  They've
been pretty much exactly nil, and the government has then lied and
claimed otherwise -- as shown when PBS Frontline looked into both
programs:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/foreign-affairs-defense/american-terrorist/the-hidden-intelligence-breakdowns-behind-the-mumbai-attacks/


Nonetheless, expect the spooks' new war on crypto and privacy to start
in three...  two... one.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/us/after-paris-attacks-cia-director-rekindles-debate-over-surveillance.html
http://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9745932/paris-attack-terrorism-surveillance-cia-brennan


(Meanwhile, over in the UK, PM Cameron spoke of putting aggressive
surveillance proposal on the fast track.  Commenters immediately dubbed
this pending proposal the Snoopers' Charter.)