Ray McGovern and the Sam Adams party have presented the Sam Adams award to Edward Snowden. I am delighted. This from Ray’s account of the event:
In brief remarks from his visitors, Snowden was reassured — first and foremost — that he need no longer be worried that nothing significant would happen as a result of his decision to risk his future by revealing documentary proof that the U.S. government was playing fast and loose with the Constitutional rights of Americans.
Even amid the government shutdown, Establishment Washington and the normally docile “mainstream media” have not been able to deflect attention from the intrusive eavesdropping that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment. Even Congress is showing signs of awaking from its torpor.
In the somnolent Senate, a few hardy souls have gone so far as to express displeasure at having been lied to by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Keith Alexander — Clapper having formally apologized for telling the Senate Intelligence Committee eavesdropping-related things that were, in his words, “clearly erroneous” and Alexander having told now-discredited whoppers about the effectiveness of NSA’s intrusive and unconstitutional methods in combating terrorism.
Coleen Rowley, the first winner of the Sam Adams Award (2002), cited some little-known history to remind Snowden that he is in good company as a whistleblower — and not only because of previous Sam Adams honorees. She noted that in 1773, Benjamin Franklin leaked confidential information by releasing letters written by then-Lt. Governor of Massachusetts Thomas Hutchinson to Thomas Whatley, an assistant to the British Prime Minister.
The letters suggested that it was impossible for the colonists to enjoy the same rights as subjects living in England and that “an abridgement of what are called English liberties” might be necessary. The content of the letters was so damaging to the British government that Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as colonial Postmaster General and had to endure an hour-long censure from British Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn.
There has been a determined attempt by government to justify the need to intercept everybody’s communications, all the time. We have, yet again, had MI5 claim there are many thousand violent Islamic terrorists running around the UK, (yet somehow not managing to kill anybody). The cry of “paedophiles” is raised, as always. I can imagine them suggesting the entire population be shot dead, and justifying it as making sure they get the paedophiles. The tabloids would go with that.
There still had not been a single credible claim by the mainstream media that any named individual has died, despite that contingency being trotted out all the time as the reason Snowden and Manning should not have revealed state crimes and abuse of power. I am hopeful that, with the internet still largely free to the dissemination of information, out next massive whistleblower is only weeks away.
NB Thanks Craig, for picking this up first:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/18/letter-greenpeace-protester-russia-cell
“Almost – but perhaps not quite – as unfriendly as Belgium refusing to sell the UK certain kinds of (legal)ammunition during the Falklands War.”
Er, a naked act of espionage against withholding arms from a highly dubious conflict? Have you heard/read the then governor of the Falklands on how the Thatcher administration deliberately left the islanders out to dry, and as bait? I did, on Radio 4.
Mary
19 Oct, 2013 – 12:02 pm
About the Times’ state propaganda “Assad’s snipers target unborn babies”
This is of course bullshit straight from the foreign office.
This targeting of pregnant women was something the Israeli Defence Forces has form for (targeting pregnant Palestinians) the Times did not report it as far as I know.
http://news.sky.com/story/678761/israeli-army-t-shirts-mock-gaza-killings
AlcAnon, 7:01 pm
So to defeat such spying, what’s needed is a computer with the entire operating system and browser in ROM – Read Only Memory – i.e. all program software in non-writeable memory, with the processor incapable of loading executable instructions from the writeable RAM. Writeable memory would be used only to hold data.
@ Technicolour
With respect, you’re deviating. The rights and wrongs of the Falklans War can certainly be argued over, but that was not my point. Nor is what the former governor claims of any relevance here – the Belgian government would not have been aware of those claims at the time it took the decision not to supply its NATO ally and EU partner Great Britain with the requested ammunition.
Well, you were drawing an equivalence between past events and current revelations, not me. And I’m sure that, like quite a lot of people the Belgians may have been suspicious about the UK gov’s motives from the start. And would have been proved right: that interview was v educational.
Welcome Back, Mr Scorgie! Have Mary’s ever shriller cries of distress have brought you out of your self-imposed purdah?
Make sure now you don’t use the word “cunt” any more…
So obvious, Habbakuk. when all else fails, attack Mary. She has issued no ‘shrill cries of distress’, and I’m enjoying the idea of her on a walk with blackberries personally.
“So to defeat such spying, what’s needed is a computer with the entire operating system and browser in ROM – Read Only Memory – i.e. all program software in non-writeable memory, with the processor incapable of loading executable instructions from the writeable RAM. Writeable memory would be used only to hold data.”
um, what does this mean (amateur here)? how would one do it? what about the net?
@ Technicolour
Yes, right, the UK ENTICED the Argentinians under that nice General Galtieri to invade, didn’t it. How could i have forgotten?
But I digress.
I think you might be crediting the Belgians with greater insight (“at the time” you say) than they deserve. Certain Belgian commentators at the time favoured the following two explanations (remember, this was a Belgian government that had no objection to Belgium hosting US nuclear warheads and missiles…):
1. unwillingness to adversely affect trade links with Argentina
2. that Queen Fabiola was (is) Spanish and that the Belgian royal family had extremely close links with Spain; this at a time when the influence of the Belgian monarchy on the government was considerably stronger than it is today.
But please do keep believing the Belgian government had superior insight into the position than most others if you wish.
Well, what the UK gov did, according to the governor, was cold-bloodedly ignore repeated and increasingly frantic messages that a situation was boiling up which needed preferably international diplomatic attention and solutions…
I’m sure your background on Belgium is fascinating, but again, you;re trying to say that naked commerical spying on an ally is fine because of something which happened decades earlier? You should get a job in the FO!
Sure everyone does it, having said that.
@ Technicolour
I think that if you read the last few pages you’ll see several shrill cries of distress; these have taken various forms, culminating in a reference to “suing” Jemand, I believe.
But I’ll forgive your comment – you’re just yinging your yang, or yanging your ying. And I know that sitting on the fence and changing position regularly is hard on the arse.
BTW – what is the “all else” which you think has failed?
It’s Saturday night.
It ain’t no big thing, to wait for the bell to ring…
Saturday night’s alright for fighting. Sunday morning coming down. Mondays, I don’t like. I feel blue, not happy. Goodbye ruby Tuesday, then by Friday I’m in love (with a German filmstar).
Can’t think of any for Wednesday or Thursday. What’s wrong with those days?
Perhaps the reference to suing Jemand was a cry of distress. Or she could have just been understandably cross.
‘all else fails’ – posting under the same name honestly, was what I meant.
Is there a fence? I don’t see a fence. I see liminal interactions.
Wednesday, I’m in love. Off for dinner!
Technicolour
Just two points and then I’ll leave it.
Firstly, I’m not saying that anything’s fine or not fine; I’m pointing out that the Uk is being as fine an ally to Belgium as Belgium was to the UK then. Or if you prefer it more generally : allies is as allies does.
Secondly, please don’t come out with that tired old nonsense about international diplomatic solutions : if you believe that, then perhaps it’s you who should be working in the FCO (as the former governor did, btw….). Do you really think that the Blessed Galtieri would have accepted any diplomatic ‘solution’ short of one which would have given him (but perhaps not to the UK and the Falkland Islanders themselves) entire satisfaction? That is not the way of bully boys, you know. No, the Man bit off more than he could chew – probably thought he was dealing with a few Argentinian trade unionists or other lefties 🙂
Let’s ignore the personal insults, eh? Boring stuff anyway, and only likely to start a row. What sort of person would want to do that, eh?
Technicolour, back in the ’80s, computers had their operating systems in ROM, which stands for Read Only Memory. The idea was that you didn’t need to change the software, so it was fine to put it in memory that couldn’t be altered. These were the BBC Micros, Sinclair Spectrums, Nintendo games consoles, the sort of computers you could give to children to play with. It was impossible to fuck them up short of physically damaging them, because the software couldn’t be altered. If you wanted new software, you plugged in an extra cartridge containing another ROM chip.
Such a computer can’t become infected because the malware has no memory that it can be written into. The downside is that you can’t change or add to any function of the machine without physically changing one or more ROM chips.
Clark,
Well you get towards to that config if you run Tor inside a virtual machine booting from a non-writeable Linux host CD/DVD-ROM ,which is externally fire-walled with only the Tor circuit allowed through to the live net, and has no idea of its real IP address anyway.
Then even if the exploit gets to your browser, exploits a linux kernel privilege escalation flaw and tries to phone home outside TOR it won’t manage it. Assuming you haven’t been daft enough to connect your mic and webcam up to the Virtual Machine the exploit won’t be able to access these either. However it would be able to phone home using Tor itself and if you had any other media (flash drives etc) available to the VM then it could access them and possibly write to them as well.
The Tor Tails distribution can be configured this way and run inside a locked Virtualbox VM. – https://tails.boum.org/about/index.en.html
Once you reboot (assuming there was no writable media available during the previous infected session) you will be clean – until they infect you again of course!
All bets are off if they have exploits for Virtual Machine software such as VirtualBox allowing them to break out to the host operating system but there hasn’t been any leaked info suggesting that so far.
All bets are also off if “they” have exploits hidden in the Tails distribution itself or the OS in ROM in the first place.
However layering a Read Only OS (with Tor) inside a VM of another Read Only O/S (scratch writeable disks needed for working are in RAM inside the VM) seems to be the most secure way to avoid infection now according to the Tor project that they can currently think of. Still no guarantees though.
But even if we go back to a machine as described by Clark, how do you know the OS in your machine wasn’t back-doored in the first place? Or that the hardware itself can be trusted?
Btw there are proof of concept demos on the net of people infecting the firmware of things like disk controllers, bios etc that will allow an exploit to survive even a reformat of a hard disk drive. However if someone tries to reprogram a virtual disk controller inside a VM it won’t survive a reboot.
I have never used Tails myself but have occasionally used TOR when I don’t want a particular site to have my IP address for privacy reasons. I always assume that there is the possibility that my Tor traffic is logged and identified to me (although probably not) but it is not NSA/GCHQ/other authorities that I’m hiding the IP and session from in the first place so I’m not that bothered even if “they” do see it.
RD. 5 49pm
Re David Nott,
“He didn’t call for a war against anyone…”
Are you implying that someone clever enough to be a surgeon hasn’t noticed how the BBC uses that kind of reporting to stoke the mass indignation that repeatedly delivers the demand that the latest monster “Must Be Stopped” into the headlines? Or that he doesn’t know that this usually is a prelude to another blitzkrieg?
So here’s a man who knows his “good patient and nice man” deliberately lied his country into a war that killed, and is still killing countless people in Iraq. Then he ignores Britain’s long and shameful history of empire (from Norman era Ireland the present) to accept an OBE.
Is he genuine, a “useful idiot”, or an intelligence asset?
Either way he is bright enough to know that such an interview is part of a well executed media campaign to stimulate the desired appetite for war.
Is that really what doctoring is about?
RD. 5 49pm
Re David Nott,
“He didn’t call for a war against anyone…”
Are you implying that someone clever enough to be a surgeon hasn’t noticed how the BBC uses that kind of reporting to stoke the mass indignation that repeatedly delivers the demand that the latest monster “Must Be Stopped” into the headlines? Or that he doesn’t know that this usually is a prelude to another blitzkrieg?
So here’s a man who knows his “good patient and nice man” deliberately lied his country into a war that killed, and is still killing countless people in Iraq. Then he ignores Britain’s long and shameful history of empire (from Norman era Ireland the present) to accept an OBE.
Is he genuine, a “useful idiot”, or an intelligence asset?
Either way he is bright enough to know that such an interview is part of a well executed media campaign to stimulate the desired appetite for war.
Is that really what doctoring is about?
Oops! Sorry.
Government ass-kissers can pick all the little fights you want in here, but attitudes are hardening among the overwhelming mass of people who never heard of Craig Murray.
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/719.php?nid=&id=&pnt=719&lb=brusc
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/703.php?lb=brusc&pnt=703&nid=&id=
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/international_security_bt/703.php?lb=brusc&pnt=703&nid=&id=
Bad news for criminal states! Your torturers and murderers will spend their golden years in hiding. (Say! Maybe Idi Amin’s villa in Jeddah is for let!)
and another good night after last, got really excited about all of todays revelations.
Yawn, from dust to dawn.
I repeat my question to the grand election winner here, the fond of all the English language has to offer, Villager, tell us how many elections you stood in and offered an alternative to the party political fraudsters?
You are obviously so good that we all can learn from your superiority. I suspect that Red Robbo, election fixer, Mr. Doveturn Sturdee, chicken sexer and canvasser to all Hanoveranians over here are all part of your election team.
Great pictures Clark. Thanks for the links AlcAnon and Mary.
Zio-Marxo-Islamo-Whatever lifts your skirt up fuckwits are responsible for their own crimes. Leave them to it.
There’s no need to use actual ROM. Divide up the RAM into program space and data space, using physically separate chips for each. Then have a physical switch on the read/write line of the program space that prevents it entering the write mode. You only ever flip that switch when you’re deliberately modifying the software.
As for trusting hardware, well, we’ll just have to scavenge old hardware from before the information war broke out. A hassle, but doable, for those for whom it really matters.
We don’t need to worry about peripherals like hard disks so long as they can only connect to data space and not code space.
resident dissident 19 Oct, 2013 – 5:49 pm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You disingenuously say Dr Nott “didn’t comment on the plausibility of the matter”. Indeed he didn’t question the plausibility at all, he stated it as fact:
The doctor whose honour and honesty you defend so fiercely has made very serious and very specific claims. He hasn’t questioned his own ability to judge “the psychology and motivations of snipers”, or their ability to accurately and infallibly hit a small moving predesignated body part. In fact he claims he can “definitely” detect the intentions of the snipers from a few instances, and further deduce that they were “definitely” playing a game.
If you believe Dr Nott is honest, it follows that his story is true. You have never been shy about expressing your opinions on this blog before, so please, tell me, do you think the scenario he describes is plausible?
Admiral,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/british-spy-agency-gchq-hacked-belgian-telecoms-firm-a-923406.html
The actions of GCHQ/MI6/whoever would appear to be a criminal offence in Belgium. Whatever you think about Belgium refusing to supply weapons to the UK that does not appear to be a criminal offence.
I wonder where this will end up.
AlcAnon, 7:01 pm: can you post me a reference link for this bit please?
I’ll check up on it tomorrow; going off-line now…
Goodnight all! Remember to be nice to the aggressive ones so that they give their own game away.
“I repeat my question to the grand election winner here, the fond of all the English language has to offer, Villager, tell us how many elections you stood in and offered an alternative to the party political fraudsters?”
Seconded. And for anyone who hasn’t read Nevermind’s rather moving and inspiring post in reply, they should. (I just can’t find it at the moment, or I’d link)
And Emmpey had v interesting things to say about the allegedly Palestinian tunnel which just got lost, I realised, when searching)