Whatever Should We Do About These New Biotechnology Capabilities?

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I've held onto this nifty comic for 30 years, knowing it would come in handy some day.

I’ve held onto this nifty comic for 30 years, knowing it would come in handy some day.

My high school days were filled with intrigue and controversy at the national level. On the political front, the Watergate scandal was playing out, with Nixon resigning in the summer between my junior and senior years. Another drama was also playing out at that time, but I only became fully aware of it a few years after its most dramatic events. In July of 1974, only a month before the Nixon resignation, a remarkable publication (pdf) appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. First, the paper is remarkable for its lack of an author byline. The members of the committee who authored the publication are listed at the very end. More remarkable still is that the publication marked the announcement of a voluntary moratorium by biological scientists. Several types of constructs using newly developed gene-splicing capabilities would not be attempted until the group had more fully studied the risks involved and come up with a plan for mitigating these risks.

Just under a year later, a follow-up publication (pdf) in the same journal appeared. This time there was an author list (and they finally let a woman join the authors–Maxine Singer had been involved in the discussions all along but was not listed in the 1974 paper). The risk mitigation strategy proposed in this paper has set the stage for the bulk of the work with recombinant DNA that has followed (and which allowed me to get a PhD in Molecular Biology in 1983). In the 1975 paper, Paul Berg and colleagues described a graduated level of biological and physical containment of organisms generated in recombinant DNA experiments, with the level of containment based on the relative risk perceived for the new DNA combinations that were being generated.

It should be noted that the concept of working with dangerous biological organisms was not new at all. Infectious diseases have been studied throughout the history of medicine and so the concept of biological containment of dangerous pathogens was not new to these scientists. They relied on these established practices of containment, which have continued to evolve into the current containment guidelines such as those published by the Centers for Disease Control (pdf) for containing pathogens.

Work with recombinant DNA took off quickly once the moratorium was lifted and a number of wonder drugs are now in use through this technology. Engineered plants are also in widespread use in agriculture, but implementation at least in the case of Bt corn has been mismanaged to the point that resistance is beginning to break out.

Fast forward to my impending old age and a very different sort of moratorium reared its head in a very ugly way in December of 2011. Read more →

“People in the Gulf” Talking on Skype

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The NatSec twittersphere is abuzz about the fact that the CIA indirectly warned Hezbollah that some al Qaeda operatives were preparing an attack on a location in southern Lebanon.

I’m actually less interested that we felt the need to warn a political entity that we consider a terrorist organization than the other details of the story — and that it is a story Lebanese sources felt free to share with the press.

For example, the report says we intercepted calls between the al Qaeda operatives and “people in the Gulf.”

“They had transcripts of calls made from known al Qaida people in Lebanon to people in the Gulf that included detailed information about the attacks, including the amounts of explosives that had been smuggled into Lebanon,” said one Lebanese intelligence official who is barred from speaking openly to reporters.

McClatchy suggests these al Qaeda figures were calling other al Qaeda figures in this unnamed Gulf country. But why should we assume that? Qatar has been funding al Qaeda linked militants in Syria. Is it possible this story is public because the US wants it known that we’re so tired of Qatar’s support for terrorists we’ll even tip Hezbollah to plans Qatari backed terrorists have made?

Indeed, a comment from a Hezbollah member quoted in the story seems to suggest this warning (and, I would suggest, the publicity surrounding it) is an effort to put the genie we’ve created back in the bottle.

The Hezbollah commander said he thought the warning was more pragmatic.

“The Americans are starting to realize how bad their friends in Syria are, so they’re trying to get out of this mistake,” he said. “They also think that if a bomb goes off in Dahiya, we will blame America and target Americans in Lebanon. That will never happen, but they’re scared of this monster they created.”’

That monster was created with the funding of one of our close allies.

I’m also intrigued by the suggestion that the US managed to collect these calls whereas the Lebanese could not because it was VOIP.

A security contractor familiar with the capabilities of the Lebanese intelligence services said it was likely that the targets had used voice-over-Internet software that the Lebanese services lack the equipment and expertise to decrypt but that poses few problems for the Americans.

“Lebanon lacks the expertise and the technology for that,” said the contractor, who asked not to be further identified because of the sensitivity of his work. “But once the call left Lebanon for the Gulf, the NSA would have automatically been tracking it.”

We’ve just learned the extent to which Microsoft has helped the government access Skype. And the government claims such disclosures have led terrorists to stop using Skype.

Were these terrorists and their friends in the gulf?

Update: Via Twitter, McClatchy reporter and Middle East expert Jonathan Landay says I’m reading way too much into this, and that there is a backstory he cannot share.

So take these musings as off-base ones.

Was Inspire a British-Made Product?

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Amid a longer story about one-time Brits stripped of their citizenship and handled according to the Administration Disposition Matrix, Ian Cobain fills out the story of Minh Quang Pham (whose identity in the UK is protected under a legal gag and so is referred to as B2). Among other things, Cobain answers the question I raised here: how Pham materially supported Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula by (we infer) helping to produce Inspire between the time he was arrested upon returning from Yemen in July 2011 and the time the British Home Secretary Theresa May tried to strip him of citizenship in December of that year (see my timelines here): he was out on bail.

On arrival back at Heathrow airport, the Vietnamese-born man was searched by police and arrested when a live bullet was found in his rucksack. A few months later, while he was free on bail, May signed an order revoking his British citizenship.

But that would mean Pham was materially contributing to Inspire at a time when he was in the UK. The Brits have much stronger laws against even possessing Inspire. If we (and by association they) had evidence he was producing Inspire while out on bail, it should be easy to try him there.

Which is part of Pham’s current complaint, as he tries to avoid extradition to the US: he could have and should have been charged in the UK.

Within minutes of SIAC announcing its decision and granting B2 unconditional bail, he was rearrested while sitting in the cells at the SIAC building. The warrant had been issued by magistrates five weeks earlier, at the request of the US Justice Department. Moments after that, the FBI announced that B2 had been charged with five terrorism offences and faced up to 40 years in jail. He was driven straight from SIAC to Westminster magistrates’ court, where he faced extradition proceedings.

B2 continues to resist his removal to the US, with his lawyers arguing that he could have been charged in the UK. Indeed, the allegations made by the US authorities, if true, would appear to represent multiple breaches of several UK laws: the Terrorism Act 2000, the Terrorism Act 2006 and the Firearms Act 1968. Asked why B2 was not being prosecuted in the English courts – why, in other words, the Americans were having this particular headache, and not the British – a Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson said: “As this is a live case and the issue of forum may be raised by the defence in court, it would be inappropriate for us to discuss this in advance of the extradition hearing.”

One of the charges against Pham is that he conspired to obtain military training. Which would seem to rely on Ahmed Warsame’s testimony. But it’s not clear how much of the material support charges Warsame could support, given that Pham’s material support period extends a number of months beyond Warsame’s arrest.

Note, however, that there may be overlap between the UndieBomb 2.0 mole working with AQAP (who may have arrived in AQAP 2 months before Pham left) and the tail end of the charge. In which case they may be shipping Pham to the US to better hide the mole’s role in all this.

Of course, all these charges may primarily be about protecting the mole.

Spying on Americans: A “Team Sport” Since 2004

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Screen shot 2013-07-11 at 6.25.06 PMOne of the more colorful revelations in today’s Guardian scoop is the newsletter piece that describes increased sharing of PRISM (Section 702) data with FBI and CIA.

The information the NSA collects from Prism is routinely shared with both the FBI and CIA. A 3 August 2012 newsletter describes how the NSA has recently expanded sharing with the other two agencies.

The NSA, the entry reveals, has even automated the sharing of aspects of Prism, using software that “enables our partners to see which selectors [search terms] the National Security Agency has tasked to Prism”.

The document continues: “The FBI and CIA then can request a copy ofPrism collection of any selector…” As a result, the author notes: “these two activities underscore the point that Prism is a team sport!”

But that’s something that has actually been built into the program for years. While the Joint IG Report on the illegal wiretap program claimed,

NSA also was responsible for conducting the actual collection of information under the PSP and disseminating intelligence reports to other agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) for analysis and possible investigation.

The Draft NSA IG Report explained,

Coordination with FBI and CIA. By 2004, four FBI integrees and two CIA integrees, operating under SIGINT authorities in accordance with written agreements, were co-located with NSA PSP-cleared analysts. The purpose of co-locating these individuals was to improve collaborative analytic efforts.

And the minimization procedures released by the Guardian (which date to 2009), make it clear NSA can provided unminimized content to CIA and FBI on whatever selectors they request.

6(c)

(1) NSA may provide to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) unminimized communications acquired pursuant to section 702 of the Act. CIA will identify to NSA targets for which NSA may provide unminimized communications to CIA. CIA will process any such unminimized communications received from NSA in accordance with CIA minimization procedures adopted by the Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, pursuant to subsection 702(e) of the Act.

(2) NSA may provide to the FBI unminimized communications acquired pursuant to section 702 of the Act. FBI will identify to NSA targets for which NSA may provide unminimized communications to the FBI. FBI will process any such unminimized communications received from NSA in accordance with FBI minimization procedures  adopted by the Attorney General, in consultation with the Director of National Intelligence, pursuant to subsection 702(e) of the Act.

And none of that should be surprising, given the tasking slide — above — that was first published by the WaPo. FBI, at least, is solidly in the midst of this collection, for a program deemed to be foreign intelligence collection.

There have been a variety of claims about all this team sport participation. But I’m not convinced any of them explain how all this works.

And in perhaps related news, the Fifth Circuit today said that Nidal Hasan could not have access to the FISA material on him, in spite of the fact that William Webster published a 150 page report on it last year. Legally, that material should be utterly distinct from PRISM, since a wiretap on Anwar al-Awlaki would require a specific FISA warrant (and the latest Guardian scoop refers to expanded cooperation since 2012). But I suspect the reason Hasan, the FISA evidence against whom has already been extensively discussed, can’t see it is because we would see what this actually looks like from the FBI side.

DOJ has to protect its team, you know.

Five Additional Questions for Jim Comey

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Colleen Rowley has a great list of questions Jim Comey should be asked today in his confirmation hearing (I’ll be live-tweeting it, so follow the twitter feed over there. >>>>>>

Here are five questions I would add:

  1. The May 10, 2005 torture authorization you signed off (as well as the Combined of the same date one you objected to) on was retrospective. What were the circumstances of the treatment of this detainee? Was that detainee water-boarded, in spite of CIA claims only Abu Zubaydah, Ibn Rahim al-Nashiri, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were?
  2. Do you believe the High Value Interrogation Group (HIG) should be authorized to use “separation,” including modified sleep deprivation, to coerce confessions?
  3. Do you believe it legal or advisable to delay presentment for detainees interrogated by HIG so as to set up up to two weeks of unsupervised interrogation?
  4. FBI has used the Section 215 authorization — the same law used to collect every American’s phone data — to collect lists of common products that on very rare occasions have been used as precursors to explosives. They could and may well have used the same authority with pressure cookers. Is collecting such a broad sweep of innocent activity in pursuit of terrorists the best way to identify them? What do you believe the appropriate use of Section 215 authority is?
  5. Through the entire financial crisis, it appears the FBI did not use all the investigative tools available, including (with two or three notable exceptions) wiretaps and phone and Internet tracking, when investigating large financial institutions. This appears to be true even when, as with your former employer HSBC, the institution had clear ties to terrorists and Transnational Criminal Organizations. What tools do you believe appropriate to investigate large financial institutions and do you plan to change the approach to investigating financial crime?

FBI Retirees Warn against Jim Comey, Torture, and Indefinite Detention

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When one of the unions that represent FBI Agents floated a trial balloon supporting Mike Rogers to be FBI Director, it got a lot more press attention than the unlikelihood of their request merited.

Let’s see whether this letter — from 5 retired FBI Agents — gets similar press attention. It raises concerns about two parts of Jim Comey’s past: his concurrence with a May 10, 2005 memo authorizing (among other things) torture — which I wrote about here — and his support for the indefinite detention of Jose Padilla.

However, the public record also shows that Mr. Comey concurred with a May 10, 2005 Office of Legal Counsel opinion that justified those same enhanced interrogation techniques for use individually. These techniques include cramped confinement, wallstanding, water dousing, extended sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, all of which constitute torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in contravention of domestic and international law. Further, Mr. Comey vigorously defended the Bush administration’s decision to hold Jose Padilla, a United States citizen apprehended on U.S. soil, indefinitely without charge or trial for years in a military brig in Charleston, South Carolina.

Among the signatories is Jack Cloonan, a former member of the Osama bin Laden team who watched as CIA started interrupting successful interrogations to subject the detainee to torture instead. I’d be surprised, too, if he didn’t know Comey from the Southern District of NY days.

The letter suggests that Comey might not guard the FBI’s legacy as nobly as Robert Mueller (!) did.

The FBI, while not a perfect institution, has a proud history of dealing with terrorism suspects in accordance with the law. When other agencies and departments resorted to “enhanced interrogation” techniques, FBI Director Mueller directed FBI agents not to participate and in many cases FBI agents were pulled from the field where there were concerns about complicity with unlawful interrogation approaches. To date, the FBI has played a role in prosecuting within the civilian criminal justice system nearly 500 international terrorism cases–often leading to substantial periods of incarceration—

without having to resort to indefinite detention. Even Jose Padilla was ultimately given a trial in a civilian court, despite claims by Mr. Comey that prosecuting Padilla or otherwise affording him traditional due process protections would compromise national security.

They also tied Comey’s confirmation process to the declassification of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report.

The Agents ask only that Comey “reject” the May 10, 2005 OLC memo. Me, I’d like the Senate to demand a full explanation for the circumstances of it. The memo was retroactive to cover someone who had already been tortured (though of course probably served to authorize Abu Faraj al-Libi’s torture, among others). At the very least the Senate Judiciary Committee could demand that Comey explain the circumstances of that retroactive approval.

Government Spying: Why You Can’t ‘Just Trust Us’

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imagesOkay you Wheelhouse mopes, Marcy, Jim and I are all in San Jose at Netroots. Not sure the jail in this here town is big enough to hold us all. Marcy already put up two posts earlier today, but posting may be a bit spotty, we shall see. I have an important one that will probably go up tomorrow morning on the Aaron Swartz case.

At any rate, to give some extra fodder here, and because Ms. Wheeler is terminally lame at noticing our own blog when she writes articles elsewhere, I am hereby placing you on notice that she has a great article that went up late yesterday at The Nation titled:

Government Spying: Why You Can’t ‘Just Trust Us’

Go read it, you will be glad you did! Other than that, use this as an open thread for Trash Talk (GO SPURS!), and anything and everything else you want to yammer about.

Terrorist Hobgoblins Bite the Intelligence Community in Its Efficacy Ass

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I just finished watching the House Intelligence Committee hearing on the NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden. I’ll have a lot more to say about the content of the revelations in the next few days. But first, a general observation.

Since the initial Snowden revelations, the Intelligence Community and other Administration surrogates have been trying to minimize our understanding of the scope of their surveillance and use traditional fearmongering to justify the programs by focusing on the importance of the Section 702 collection to stopping terrorism. While James Clapper’s office has made it clear that Section 702 goes beyond counterterrorism by revealing that its  successes include counterproliferation and cybersecurity successes, as well as counterterrorism ones, the focus has nevertheless been on TERROR TERROR TERROR.

Today’s hearing was really the culmination of that process, when Keith Alexander boasted up upwards of 50 terrorist plots — about 40 of which were overseas — that Section 702 has prevented.

Of the four plots the government has revealed — David Headley, Najibullah Zazi, as well as these two today…

Mr. Joyce described a plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange by a Kansas City man, whom the agency was able to identify because he was in contact with “an extremist” in Yemen who was under surveillance. Mr. Joyce also talked about a San Diego man who planned to send financial support to a terrorist group in Somalia, and who was identified because the N.S.A. flagged his phone number as suspicious through its database of all domestic phone call logs, which was brought to light by Mr. Snowden’s disclosures.

… the government has either overblown the importance of these programs and their success or are fairly minor plots.

None of the four may be as uniquely worthwhile as the cyberattack described by Clapper’s office a week ago, which it has not, however, fleshed out.

Communications collected under Section 702 have provided significant and unique intelligence regarding potential cyber threats to the United States, including specific potential network computer attacks. This insight has led to successful efforts to mitigate these threats.

That is, the government might–might!–be able to make a far better case for the value of these programs in discussing their role in preventing cyberattacks rather than preventing terrorist plots.

And yet it hasn’t done so, even as it pushes one after another attempt to legislate internet access in the name of protecting Intellectual Property and critical infrastructure.

Given the increasing focus on cybersecurity — and the already dishonest claims people like Mike Rogers have made about the means to accomplish that focus — this is the discussion we need to be having, rather than digging up terror plots first developed in 2004 that never happened. But in the same way the government shied away from conducting an honest discussion with us in 2001 and again in 2006 about these programs, it is refusing to conduct an honest discussion about cybersecurity today.

And, ironically, that refusal is preventing them from describing the value of a program that surely contributes more to countering cyberattacks than terror attacks at this point.

BREAKING: Iran Is a Terrorist Organization

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I’m trying to sort through the irreconcilable claims about the Section 215 and PRISM/702 programs made in today’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on cyber.

But for now, I want to post Dianne Feinstein’s statement about what Section 215 does because, well, it seems Iran is now a terrorist. (This is around 1:55)

The Section 215 Business Records provision was created in 2001 in the PATRIOT for tangible things: hotel records, credit card statements, etcetera. Things that are not phone or email communications. The FBI uses that authority as part of its terrorism investigations. The NSA only uses Section 215 for phone call records — not for Google searches or other things. Under Section 215, NSA collects phone records pursuant to a court record. It can only look at that data after a showing that there is a reasonable, articulable that a specific individual is involved in terrorism, actually related to al Qaeda or Iran. At that point, the database can be searched. But that search only provides metadata, of those phone numbers. Of things that are in the phone bill. That person, um [flips paper] So the vast majority of records in the database are never accessed, and are deleted after a period of five years. To look at, or use content, a court warrant must be obtained.

Is that a fair description, or can you correct it in any way?

Keith Alexander: That is correct, Senator.

Frankly, Dianne Feinstein has appeared to keep her facts straight about Section 215, at least, better than Mike Rogers and James Clapper over the last week. But this statement conflicts in some important ways with what others are saying.

So maybe this is not accurate.

But according to DiFi — and backed by General Keith Alexander, head of NSA — Iran, along with al Qaeda, is now a terrorist organization.

Still No Answer on How Minh Quang Pham Materially Supported Terror While in Custody

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The WaPo has an interesting story about US intelligence efforts to disrupt the most recent release of Inspire magazine. While the confirmation that the US was responsible for the recent disrupted release is not surprising, I find this rather interesting.

“You can make it hard for them to distribute it, or you can mess with the content. And you can mess with the content in a way that is obvious or in ways that are not obvious,” said one intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal debates.

WaPo’s sources are now bragging that they’ve altered the content of Inspire, in addition to delaying its release.

While the article focuses on this most recent sabotage, it rather bizarrely makes no mention that the first installment of Inspire was hacked in very similar way (purportedly by the Brits).

In the case of Inspire, the debate stretches back three years. The first issue contained a recipe for making a bomb using common materials, such as nails and a pressure cooker like the ones used in Boston. The title of the article was “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

There was also a threat to Molly Norris, a Seattle cartoonist who published a satirical cartoon about the prophet Muhammad. “She should be taken as a prime target of assassination,” wrote Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who was killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Though it does quote Keith Alexander making the case for sabotage.

“It’s obvious if people are calling for crazies to murder a U.S. citizen, why wouldn’t you stop it?” said one former official, recalling the debate in which National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith B. Alexander argued on behalf of disruption.

In that case, the administration decided against action, in part because the CIA preferred to use the site to gather intelligence. In subsequent debates, the danger of an imminent threat “really made the difference” in terms of whether to disrupt issues of the magazine, according to a former administration official.

DOD and CIA have, according to public reports without details, had significant deconfliction issues in the past on cyber operations. Are we so convinced DOD didn’t help the Brits insert cupcake recipes in that first installment?

And this article doesn’t mention something I’ve been tracking for a while: the case of Vietnamese-English Minh Quang Pham graphic artist, whom the US charged with materially support Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula last year. Of note, when they charged him, they called for him to forfeit any means he had to influence AQAP.

As a result of planning and perpetuating Federal crimes of terrorism against the United States … defendant [] shall forfeit … all right, title, and interest in all assets, foreign and domestic, affording a source of influence over al Shabaab and AQAP.

Which is all the more interesting still considering the period for which the US charged Pham for material support includes five months — from July to December 2011 — during which a great deal of evidence suggests he was in British custody.

I suppose it might make it easier to hack Inspire if you had their graphic artist in secret custody.