Domestic Surveillance Without A Warrant

The New York Times reports that since 2002 the U.S. Government has been spying on the phone conversations and emails of Americans without a court warrant. Internal domestic phone calls are not subject to such monitoring, but calls from the US to other countries and incoming intenational calls are subject to electronic surveillance with a court order.

While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time. The list changes as some names are added and others dropped, so the number monitored in this country may have reached into the thousands since the program began, several officials said. Overseas, about 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at one time, according to those officials.

Now you may have thought that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) prevents secret spying on Americans:

One provision says it is a crime for anyone to "intentionally engage in electronic surveillance" except as authorized by law or a court order. However, "the president, through the attorney general, may authorize electronic surveillance … to acquire foreign intelligence information" if officials obtain a warrant from a special court that operates inside the Justice Department.

But no. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says "that the president has the inherent authority, under the Constitution's commander in chief, to engage in this kind of conduct." But this Gonzales says is a "secondary argument" because Congress authorized the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force" in legislation passed after Sept. 11 thereby bypassing provisions in FISA. Moreover, the "new threat" requires a rapid response something that FISA, even with its retroactive provisions, cannot provide. When asked why not fix FISA instead of opting for a "backdoor" approach, Gonzales answered:

This is not a backdoor approach. We believe Congress has authorized this kind of surveillance. We have had discussions with Congress in the past -- certain members of Congress -- as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.

So, Congress authorized something that they would not have, if they were asked? Wow.

But don't worry! Just have a look at how Mr. Bush answered a question that raised concernes about the unchecked power of the President. Bush's answer is that there are plenty of checks like the fact he's "sworn to uphold the law" and that he's "talking to Congress all the time" so everything is OK. Right?

Borat

Well, I think Dave can see the future. Two weeks after this post discussing the new domain rules in Kazakhstan they were used to strip Borat of his .kz domain:

Isin [Nurlan Isin, President of the Association of Kazakh IT Companies] said the borat.kz Web site had broken new rules on all .kz sites maintaining two computer servers in Kazakhstan and had registered false names for its administrators

Here is the whois information.

Kazakhstan has revoked .kz domains in the past for political reasons.

Thankfully, we can all view Borat's site at borat.tv.

InfoWar

Information Warfare is certainly not a recent phenomenon. InfoWar-Monitor's timeline shows the evolution of the doctrine over time. The use of such tactics as psychological warfare operations , or PSYOPS, in the context of the war in Iraq is also not new. About a year ago the U.S. military used CNN to execute such an operation in the lead up to the assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

Now, new stories are emerging about the fact that U.S. Military's Information Operations Task Force is writing propaganda that is laundered through a defense contractor, Lincoln Group, and placed in Iraqi newspapers. The L.A. Times reported that the U.S. Military is actually paying newspapers to run the stories blurring the lines between a free press and information operations:

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs — the dissemination of factual information to the media — and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

The L.A. Times further reveals that:

...as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.

The New York Times reports that these practices are even more wide spread extending in several Arab countries as well as Afghanistan. The New York Times reports that The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) does not locally disclose its ivolvemnt with media in Afghanistan:

Similarly, AID does not locally disclose that dozens of Afghanistan radio stations get its support, through grants to a London-based nonprofit group, Internews. (AID discloses its support in public documents in Washington, most of which can be found globally on the Internet.)

USAID explains the that reason for the lack of disclosure is "to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent."

* The New York Times also reports that there was a plan by the Lincoln Group to create a publication based on The Onion that was rejected :)

Detecting & Evading Filtering

At the Internet & Democracy 2005 conference in London we had a session on "Detecting and Evading Filtering". The goal was to explain some techniques used to better determine filtering and give an overview of the ONI methodology.

In the second half of the presentation we focused on censorship circumvention. I like to talk about circumvention from two perspectives: push & pull. The "push" strategy if from the perspective of content producers and I hoped to use the discussion to start developing a sort of "best practices" document for content producers who expect their content to be blocked.

The final part of the presentation focused on pull strategies, basically proxies/anonymizers etc... -- technology that enables users to select filtered content to view. Most of the strategies from this perspective are detailed in "Choosing Circumvention". We also demo'd psiphon :)

The slides from the presentation are available here:
http://www.nartv.org/ppt/uk-prz.ppt.

Internet Filtering in Morocco

Morocco has now joined the list of countries that filter. RSF reports:

Reporters Without Borders has verified that the arso.org, cahiersdusahara.com, cahiersdusahara.com, wsahara.net and spsrasd.info websites have all been rendered inaccessible in Morocco since 21 November. ... A “connection failure” type of error message is displayed when someone tries to access one of these sites.

I can confirm (via proxy) that http://www.arso.org/ , http://cahiersdusahara.com/ , http://wsahara.net/ and http://www.spsrasd.info/ are blocked. The site http://www.afapredesa.org/ is also blocked. The IP addresses of all these sites are blocked. Blocking by IP address usually causes significant overblocking. In blocking these 5 sites, Morocco is actualy blocking 2287 domains.

SF

Well, SmartFilter has reviewed my blog and decided against re-categorization.

You are receiving this email because Secure Computing Corporation received a URL submission with your email account listed as the interested party.

The results of your submission are as follows:

************************************************************
Final Report for URL Submissions
************************************************************


Date of submission: 12/03/2005
Number of sites Submitted: 1
Number of sites Processed: 1

Not Changed: 1 -- We decided that the current categories do not need to be changed.


Thank you for your submission. If you have continued questions or concerns about any of the attached URLs, we invite you to contact sites@securecomputing.com with your concerns.


Sincerely,
Sites

Hacker

The filtering software SmartFilter, which is used to filter in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Tunisia and until recently in Iran, now classifies http://www.nartv.org/ in its "hacking" category. I consider myself a hacker so at first I was rather pleased. But SmartFilter's category definition -- certainly not the same as mine -- in no way matches the content on this site:

SmartFilter provides this definition for the category:

Hacking (hk)
This category includes URLs that distribute information and hacking tools (root kits, kiddy scripts, etc.) that help individuals gain unauthorized access to computer systems.

Version 3 still categorizes http://www.nartv.org/ as "Gen. News":

General News (nw)
The general news category applies to most online news and mainstream publications, such as business, trade, and medical journals, as well as high school and university newspapers. It also includes headline-news sites, newswire services, and proprietary news services.

While I certainly don't mind being labeled a hacker, I am concerned that people are being blocked when trying to view this site. I have requested SmartFilter change my categorization to General News.

More Filtering in Thailand

Thailand is getting set to filter over 800,000 sites. As I've written before, Thailand says the reason for filtering is to protect youth from "pornographic or violent websites", but then why are they blocking non-violent, non-pornographic websites that detail Government corruption?

(Thanks for the heads-up, Rob )

.kz domain

I just found this blog post concerning the .kz domain. The Government of Kazakhstan wants to restrict the geographic location of the .kz domain. The new rules would require that two DNS servers servicing the .kz domain as well as the webserver hosting the .kz domain be physically located in Kazakhstan. (An FAQ on nic.kz says one can regsiter a domain and not be located in Kazakhstan, it doesn't mention hosting though.) As the blog entry suggests this could have consequences for sites that the government does not approve of.

Kazakhstan is the only country I've seen that filters (or has filtered) websites with its own ccTLD. (See http://www.blokada.org/en.php and as well as RSF) Starting back in 1999 Kazakh ISP began filtering websites, explaining that the websites were inaccessible for permanent "technical reasons".

KazNIC currently operates the ccTLD and has specific rules and a dispute policy for revoking domains. In one case, KazNIC revoked the domain names of an opposition group after a court ruling. It appears to be a case about copyright infringement. (Interestingly, it seems that the domain was temorarily transfered to a new owner, but the domain is not (at least in WHOIS) back to its original owner. )