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

[Ruben Safir]

Increasingly it is obvious that these attacks on Frances were a
political blunder and no amount of surveillance would have prevented them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world/europe/its-capital-frozen-belgium-surveys-past-failures-and-squabbles.html?action=click&contentCollection=Middle%20East&region=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&moduleDetail=undefined&pgtype=Multimedia

BRUSSELS — A month before the Paris terrorist attacks, Mayor Françoise
Schepmans of Molenbeek, a Brussels district long notorious as a haven
for jihadists, received a list with the names and addresses of more than
80 people suspected as Islamic militants living in her area.

The list, based on information from Belgium’s security apparatus,
included two brothers who would take part in the bloodshed in France on
Nov. 13, as well as the man suspected of being the architect of the
terrorist plot, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Molenbeek resident who had left
for Syria to fight for the Islamic State in early 2014.

“What was I supposed to do about them? It is not my job to track
possible terrorists,” Ms. Schepmans said in an interview. That, she
added, “is the responsibility of the federal police.”
Continue reading the main story





On 11/17/2015 04:03 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> 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.)
> 
> 
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