/07

LES CIBLES SECRÈTES DE BARACK OBAMA- ▻http://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Les-cibles-secretes-de-Barack-Obama-517819

Le Guardian publie en exclusivité un document ‘top secret’ très embarrassant pour la Maison Blanche : une directive signée par Barack Obama où figure une liste de cibles potentielle de #cyber-attaques contre des pays étrangers. Ce document de 18 pages daté du 20 octobre 2012, vante les mérites des « Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) » susceptible d’offrir « les capacité uniques et non conventionnelles susceptibles de faire avancer les objectifs nationaux américains à travers le monde ».

Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks | World news | guardian.co.uk
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/obama-china-targets-cyber-overseas

Barack Obama has ordered his senior national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks, a top secret presidential directive obtained by the Guardian reveals.

The 18-page Presidential Policy Directive 20, issued in October last year but never published, states that what it calls Offensive Cyber Effects Operations (OCEO) “can offer unique and unconventional capabilities to advance US national objectives around the world with little or no warning to the adversary or target and with potential effects ranging from subtle to severely damaging”.

It says the government will “identify potential targets of national importance where OCEO can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power”.

The directive also contemplates the possible use of cyber actions inside the US, though it specifies that no such domestic operations can be conducted without the prior order of the president, except in cases of emergency. 

The aim of the document was “to put in place tools and a framework to enable government to make decisions” on cyber actions, a senior administration official told the Guardian.

The administration published some declassified talking points from the directive in January 2013, but those did not mention the stepping up of America’s offensive capability and the drawing up of a target list.

Obama’s move to establish a potentially aggressive cyber warfare doctrine will heighten fears over the increasing militarization of the internet.

The directive’s publication comes as the president plans to confront his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in California on Friday over alleged Chinese attacks on western targets.

Even before the publication of the directive, Beijing had hit back against US criticism, with a senior official claiming to have “mountains of data” on American cyber-attacks he claimed were every bit as serious as those China was accused of having carried out against the US.

En complément de ▻http://seenthis.net/messages/146382

US government invokes special privilege to stop scrutiny of data mining | World news | guardian.co.uk
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/us-government-special-privilege-scrutiny-data

In comments on Friday about the surveillance controversy, Obama insisted that the secret programmes were subjected “not only to congressional oversight but judicial oversight”. He said federal judges were “looking over our shoulders”.

But civil liberties lawyers say that the use of the privilege to shut down legal challenges was making a mockery of such “judicial oversight”. Though classified information was shown to judges in camera, the citing of the precedent in the name of national security cowed judges into submission.

“The administration is saying that even if they are violating the constitution or committing a federal crime no court can stop them because it would compromise national security. That’s a very dangerous argument,” said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer with the New York-based Emery Celli firm who acts as lead counsel in the Shubert case.

“This has been legally frustrating and personally upsetting,” Maazel added. “We have asked the government time after time what is the limit to the state secrets privilege, whether there’s anything the government can’t do and keep it secret, and every time the answer is: no.”

Facebook and Google insist they did not know of Prism surveillance program
▻http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/google-facebook-prism-surveillance-program

Some speculated that the wording of the document was incorrect or that the author had over-hyped the scheme.

Security experts and civil liberty figures were less convinced. “I was assuming that these tech companies were just lying,” said security guru Bruce Schneier. “That’s the most obvious explanation.”

“Could it possibly be that there’s a department within these companies that hides this from the executives? Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know, we don’t know. This points to the problem here. There’s so much freaking secrecy that we don’t know enough to even know what is going on.”