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From iPhone to Cisco Routers – NSA Hacks It All
Everyone should read the SPIEGEL story and check the graphics and docs about the NSA's Tailored Access Operation. They describe the hardware and software tools the NSA uses to break into every level of computing – from your cellphone up to carrier class internet routers. The Apple iPhone for example is, as was to be expected, one of the devices the NSA can crack and silently control anytime it tries.
Jacob Appelbaum, who helped reporting the story, yesterday gave an hour long talk about these NSA abilities. I recommend to listen to it. He rightly points out one of the main issues that even supporters of the NSA spying should have serious headaches about. If the NSA can use the software and hardware bugs in various devices to take control over them then others can do this too. I bet that there are criminals out there who use exactly the same problematic holes the NSA uses for its spying. Such holes should be fixed and not abused.
One aspect that may help top rein in the NSA's totally overdone "collect it all" and "hack it all" attitude is the extreme damage this report will do to the U.S. computer and internet companies. Why would I buy Cisco routers or an iPhone when it is publicly known that these are extremely unsafe devices?
The NSA hacking and spying was the biggest story of 2013. It is also quite likely that further reporting on and the fallout from it will be the biggest story of 2014. Some media try to propagandize that people are okay with this NSA business and that no actions need to follow. Don't let them fool you. People do care and many are already changing some of their online habits. But there has to build even more pressure for real change to come.
My big "thank you"s for this year goes to Edward Snowden for the courage to go public with the NSA interna and to Glenn Greenwald for the excellent management of the drip by drip publication that keeps this very important story alive.
Thank you also to my readers and the commentators here who keep me motivated to continue this blog. Have a good new year in which hopefully no one will spy on you.
No doubt this is much bigger than Snowden.
For all the questions about Snowden’s seemingly amazing luck, it is probably instructive to look at the Daniel Ellsberg case. Ellsberg actually worked with Senate staff to expose the leaks, and went on to work closely for the Robert Kennedy campaign. When the power elite is at each others throat – all kinds of wacky things seem to happen…. so my guess is that he is working closely with some people who are not exactly powerless – which, assuming their good intent, takes nothing away from the leaks, in my opinion.
Now, there is some potential shadiness going on too, but it is hard to see how serious it is. But much of it I think has to do with the eclipsing of Assange and Manning and that style of very open, uncontrolled leaking, with the Greenwald/Snowden style – which seems extremely controlled. My speculation (and by no means fact): Assange was probably not given the leaks due to his being viewed by the powerful elements behind this (Americans, no doubt) as “irresponsible” (so irresponsible, in fact, that he is kept more or less a prisoner) whereas Greenwald is, apparently, so “responsible” enough to be given control over a new $250 million media venture. And I don’t mean to try and draw distinctions between those two that are very very fine – both are extremely valuable, they’ve just chosen different routes and have different backgrounds and are allied with different forces. (But just in my opinion, Assange is far more of the revolutionary thinker and the genius – a true heavyweight whereas Greenwald I think, though a fierce fighter, is less so).
Much remains to be seen here. But bevin and Mr. Pragma are correct – the effects of the leaks, no matter what the true story behind it all is, have had powerful effects that cannot be denied.
Like the Pentagon Papers, they are extremely damaging to a sector of the US power elite that likely has big enemies in high places – but ones that, for obvious reasons – must be extremely careful. The fact is that the leakers are playing, like Ellsberg did before them, an extremely high stakes game at the moment – and will be until they’ve won the battle for public opinion and a certain amount of elite blessing (which an article like the one in the NYTimes counts for a huge amount). After all, the lives of Assange, Snowden, and Manning are lives of true dissidents. We have only to imagine what the US media darlings they’d be if this was 1983 and they were Soviet dissidents locked away in embassies surrounded 24 hours by KGB men, or tortured for years in solitary confinement, or being harbored as defectors in New York City!
So, my guess is that when all is said and done, we’ll find out that the idea that there was little Snowden all by his lonesome, grabbing secret documents and, like a modern day Paul Revere, warning the country will turn out to be much myth. But again, it will matter little in the end, considering the effects of the leaks.
But —
What else do they know? What else have these powerful folks exposed, and is the current heat on the Saudis related at all to it? Is there, perhaps, 9/11 information? Information about the Iraq War? After all, Snowden should have been able grab all manner of actual conversation rather than all this high level shit…
That is pure speculation, but definite fun to think about…
….
And related or not – I can’t help thinking of the death of Michael Hastings in all of this.
Posted by: guest77 | Jan 8 2014 1:57 utc | 146
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