person:james clapper

  • Glenn Greenwald sur Twitter : “The very first NSA program we revealed from Snowden documents - the mass domestic spying program of Americans’ phone records, which James Clapper lied about; Obama insisted was vital to national security - has been shut down” / Twitter
    https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1102741757035462662

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/nsa-phone-records-program-shut-down.html

    (Non) #vital

  • 15-Year-Old Schoolboy Posed as CIA Chief to Hack Highly Sensitive Information

    https://thehackernews.com/2018/01/crackas-with-attitude-hacker.html

    A notorious pro-Palestinian hacking group behind a series of embarrassing hacks against United States intelligence officials and leaked the personal details of 20,000 FBI agents, 9,000 Department of Homeland Security officers, and some number of DoJ staffers in 2015.

    Believe or not, the leader of this hacking group was just 15-years-old when he used “social engineering” to impersonate CIA director and unauthorisedly access highly sensitive information from his Leicestershire home, revealed during a court hearing on Tuesday.

    Kane Gamble, now 18-year-old, the British teenager hacker targeted then CIA director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, FBI deputy director Mark Giuliano, as well as other senior FBI figures.

    Between June 2015 and February 2016, Gamble posed as Brennan and tricked call centre and helpline staff into giving away broadband and cable passwords, using which the team also gained access to plans for intelligence operations in Afghanistan and Iran.

    Gamble said he targeted the US government because he was “getting more and more annoyed about how corrupt and cold-blooded the US Government” was and “decided to do something about it.”

  • Jackson Lears · What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking : #Russiagate · LRB 4 January 2018
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking
    La pensée unique aux États Unis de plus en plus sectaire et pesante

    Jackson Lears

    American politics have rarely presented a more disheartening spectacle. The repellent and dangerous antics of Donald Trump are troubling enough, but so is the Democratic Party leadership’s failure to take in the significance of the 2016 election campaign. Bernie Sanders’s challenge to Hillary Clinton, combined with Trump’s triumph, revealed the breadth of popular anger at politics as usual – the blend of neoliberal domestic policy and interventionist foreign policy that constitutes consensus in Washington. Neoliberals celebrate market utility as the sole criterion of worth; interventionists exalt military adventure abroad as a means of fighting evil in order to secure global progress. Both agendas have proved calamitous for most Americans. Many registered their disaffection in 2016. Sanders is a social democrat and Trump a demagogic mountebank, but their campaigns underscored a widespread repudiation of the Washington consensus. For about a week after the election, pundits discussed the possibility of a more capacious Democratic strategy. It appeared that the party might learn something from Clinton’s defeat. Then everything changed.

    A story that had circulated during the campaign without much effect resurfaced: it involved the charge that Russian operatives had hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, revealing embarrassing emails that damaged Clinton’s chances. With stunning speed, a new centrist-liberal orthodoxy came into being, enveloping the major media and the bipartisan Washington establishment. This secular religion has attracted hordes of converts in the first year of the Trump presidency. In its capacity to exclude dissent, it is like no other formation of mass opinion in my adult life, though it recalls a few dim childhood memories of anti-communist hysteria during the early 1950s.

    The centrepiece of the faith, based on the hacking charge, is the belief that Vladimir Putin orchestrated an attack on American democracy by ordering his minions to interfere in the election on behalf of Trump. The story became gospel with breathtaking suddenness and completeness. Doubters are perceived as heretics and as apologists for Trump and Putin, the evil twins and co-conspirators behind this attack on American democracy. Responsibility for the absence of debate lies in large part with the major media outlets. Their uncritical embrace and endless repetition of the Russian hack story have made it seem a fait accompli in the public mind. It is hard to estimate popular belief in this new orthodoxy, but it does not seem to be merely a creed of Washington insiders. If you question the received narrative in casual conversations, you run the risk of provoking blank stares or overt hostility – even from old friends. This has all been baffling and troubling to me; there have been moments when pop-culture fantasies (body snatchers, Kool-Aid) have come to mind.

    Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free ‘assessment’ produced last January by a small number of ‘hand-picked’ analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. The claims of the last were made with only ‘moderate’ confidence. The label Intelligence Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself contained this crucial admission: ‘Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.’ Yet the assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, or at least for those ‘hand-picked’ analysts.

    It is not the first time the intelligence agencies have played this role. When I hear the Intelligence Community Assessment cited as a reliable source, I always recall the part played by the New York Times in legitimating CIA reports of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the long history of disinformation (a.k.a. ‘fake news’) as a tactic for advancing one administration or another’s political agenda. Once again, the established press is legitimating pronouncements made by the Church Fathers of the national security state. Clapper is among the most vigorous of these. He perjured himself before Congress in 2013, when he denied that the NSA had ‘wittingly’ spied on Americans – a lie for which he has never been held to account. In May 2017, he told NBC’s Chuck Todd that the Russians were highly likely to have colluded with Trump’s campaign because they are ‘almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favour, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique’. The current orthodoxy exempts the Church Fathers from standards imposed on ordinary people, and condemns Russians – above all Putin – as uniquely, ‘almost genetically’ diabolical.

    It’s hard for me to understand how the Democratic Party, which once felt scepticism towards the intelligence agencies, can now embrace the CIA and the FBI as sources of incontrovertible truth. One possible explanation is that Trump’s election has created a permanent emergency in the liberal imagination, based on the belief that the threat he poses is unique and unprecedented. It’s true that Trump’s menace is viscerally real. But the menace posed by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney was equally real. The damage done by Bush and Cheney – who ravaged the Middle East, legitimated torture and expanded unconstitutional executive power – was truly unprecedented, and probably permanent. Trump does pose an unprecedented threat to undocumented immigrants and Muslim travellers, whose protection is urgent and necessary. But on most issues he is a standard issue Republican. He is perfectly at home with Paul Ryan’s austerity agenda, which involves enormous transfers of wealth to the most privileged Americans. He is as committed as any other Republican to repealing Obama’s Affordable Care Act. During the campaign he posed as an apostate on free trade and an opponent of overseas military intervention, but now that he is in office his free trade views are shifting unpredictably and his foreign policy team is composed of generals with impeccable interventionist credentials.

    Trump is committed to continuing his predecessors’ lavish funding of the already bloated Defence Department, and his Fortress America is a blustering, undisciplined version of Madeleine Albright’s ‘indispensable nation’. Both Trump and Albright assume that the United States should be able to do as it pleases in the international arena: Trump because it’s the greatest country in the world, Albright because it’s an exceptional force for global good. Nor is there anything unprecedented about Trump’s desire for détente with Russia, which until at least 2012 was the official position of the Democratic Party. What is unprecedented about Trump is his offensive style: contemptuous, bullying, inarticulate, and yet perfectly pitched to appeal to the anger and anxiety of his target audience. His excess has licensed overt racism and proud misogyny among some of his supporters. This is cause for denunciation, but I am less persuaded that it justifies the anti-Russian mania.

    Besides Trump’s supposed uniqueness, there are two other assumptions behind the furore in Washington: the first is that the Russian hack unquestionably occurred, and the second is that the Russians are our implacable enemies. The second provides the emotional charge for the first. Both seem to me problematic. With respect to the first, the hacking charges are unproved and may well remain so. Edward Snowden and others familiar with the NSA say that if long-distance hacking had taken place the agency would have monitored it and could detail its existence without compromising their secret sources and methods. In September, Snowden told Der Spiegel that the NSA ‘probably knows quite well who the invaders were’. And yet ‘it has not presented any evidence, although I suspect it exists. The question is: why not? … I suspect it discovered other attackers in the systems, maybe there were six or seven groups at work.’ He also said in July 2016 that ‘even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, ‪#XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops.’ The NSA’s capacity to follow hacking to its source is a matter of public record. When the agency investigated pervasive and successful Chinese hacking into US military and defence industry installations, it was able to trace the hacks to the building where they originated, a People’s Liberation Army facility in Shanghai. That information was published in the New York Times, but, this time, the NSA’s failure to provide evidence has gone curiously unremarked. When The Intercept published a story about the NSA’s alleged discovery that Russian military intelligence had attempted to hack into US state and local election systems, the agency’s undocumented assertions about the Russian origins of the hack were allowed to stand as unchallenged fact and quickly became treated as such in the mainstream media.

    Meanwhile, there has been a blizzard of ancillary accusations, including much broader and vaguer charges of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. It remains possible that Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who has been appointed to investigate these allegations, may turn up some compelling evidence of contacts between Trump’s people and various Russians. It would be surprising if an experienced prosecutor empowered to cast a dragnet came up empty-handed, and the arrests have already begun. But what is striking about them is that the charges have nothing to do with Russian interference in the election. There has been much talk about the possibility that the accused may provide damaging evidence against Trump in exchange for lighter sentences, but this is merely speculation. Paul Manafort, at one point Trump’s campaign manager, has pleaded not guilty to charges of failing to register his public relations firm as a foreign agent for the Ukrainian government and concealing his millions of dollars in fees. But all this occurred before the 2016 campaign. George Papadopolous, a foreign policy adviser, has pleaded guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI about his bungling efforts to arrange a meeting between Trump’s people and the Russian government – an opportunity the Trump campaign declined. Mueller’s most recent arrestee, Michael Flynn, the unhinged Islamophobe who was briefly Trump’s national security adviser, has pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI about meeting the Russian ambassador in December – weeks after the election. This is the sort of backchannel diplomacy that routinely occurs during the interim between one administration and the next. It is not a sign of collusion.

    So far, after months of ‘bombshells’ that turn out to be duds, there is still no actual evidence for the claim that the Kremlin ordered interference in the American election. Meanwhile serious doubts have surfaced about the technical basis for the hacking claims. Independent observers have argued it is more likely that the emails were leaked from inside, not hacked from outside. On this front, the most persuasive case was made by a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, former employees of the US intelligence agencies who distinguished themselves in 2003 by debunking Colin Powell’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, hours after Powell had presented his pseudo-evidence at the UN. (There are members of VIPS who dissent from the VIPS report’s conclusions, but their arguments are in turn contested by the authors of the report.) The VIPS findings received no attention in major media outlets, except Fox News – which from the centre-left perspective is worse than no attention at all. Mainstream media have dismissed the VIPS report as a conspiracy theory (apparently the Russian hacking story does not count as one). The crucial issue here and elsewhere is the exclusion from public discussion of any critical perspectives on the orthodox narrative, even the perspectives of people with professional credentials and a solid track record.

    Both the DNC hacking story and the one involving the emails of John Podesta, a Clinton campaign operative, involve a shadowy bunch of putatively Russian hackers called Fancy Bear – also known among the technically inclined as APT28. The name Fancy Bear was introduced by Dimitri Alperovitch, the chief technology officer of Crowdstrike, a cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC to investigate the theft of their emails. Alperovitch is also a fellow at the Atlantic Council, an anti-Russian Washington think tank. In its report Crowdstrike puts forward close to zero evidence for its claim that those responsible were Russian, let alone for its assertion that they were affiliated with Russian military intelligence. And yet, from this point on, the assumption that this was a Russian cyber operation was unquestioned. When the FBI arrived on the scene, the Bureau either did not request or was refused access to the DNC servers; instead it depended entirely on the Crowdstrike analysis. Crowdstrike, meanwhile, was being forced to retract another claim, that the Russians had successfully hacked the guidance systems of the Ukrainian artillery. The Ukrainian military and the British International Institute for Strategic Studies both contradicted this claim, and Crowdstrike backed down. But its DNC analysis was allowed to stand and even become the basis for the January Intelligence Community Assessment.

    The chatter surrounding the hack would never have acquired such urgency were it not for the accompanying assumption: Russia is a uniquely dangerous adversary, with which we should avoid all contact. Without that belief, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s meetings with Russians in September 2016 would become routine discussions between a senator and foreign officials. Flynn’s post-election conversations with the Russian ambassador would appear unremarkable. Trump’s cronies’ attempts to do business in Russia would become merely sleazy. Donald Trump Jr’s meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya would be transformed from a melodrama of shady intrigue to a comedy of errors – with the candidate’s son expecting to receive information to use against Clinton but discovering Veselnitskaya only wanted to talk about repealing sanctions and restarting the flow of Russian orphans to the United States. And Putin himself would become just another autocrat, with whom democracies could engage without endorsing.

    Sceptical voices, such as those of the VIPS, have been drowned out by a din of disinformation. Flagrantly false stories, like the Washington Post report that the Russians had hacked into the Vermont electrical grid, are published, then retracted 24 hours later. Sometimes – like the stories about Russian interference in the French and German elections – they are not retracted even after they have been discredited. These stories have been thoroughly debunked by French and German intelligence services but continue to hover, poisoning the atmosphere, confusing debate. The claim that the Russians hacked local and state voting systems in the US was refuted by California and Wisconsin election officials, but their comments generated a mere whisper compared with the uproar created by the original story. The rush to publish without sufficient attention to accuracy has become the new normal in journalism. Retraction or correction is almost beside the point: the false accusation has done its work.

    The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. To say this is to risk dismissal as the ultimate wing-nut in the lexicon of contemporary Washington: the conspiracy theorist. Still, the fact remains: sometimes powerful people arrange to promote ideas that benefit their common interests. Whether we call this hegemony, conspiracy or merely special privilege hardly matters. What does matter is the power to create what Gramsci called the ‘common sense’ of an entire society. Even if much of that society is indifferent to or suspicious of the official common sense, it still becomes embedded among the tacit assumptions that set the boundaries of ‘responsible opinion’. So the Democratic establishment (along with a few Republicans) and the major media outlets have made ‘Russian meddling’ the common sense of the current moment. What kind of cultural work does this common sense do? What are the consequences of the spectacle the media call (with characteristic originality) ‘Russiagate’?

    The most immediate consequence is that, by finding foreign demons who can be blamed for Trump’s ascendancy, the Democratic leadership have shifted the blame for their defeat away from their own policies without questioning any of their core assumptions. Amid the general recoil from Trump, they can even style themselves dissenters – ‘#the resistance’ was the label Clintonites appropriated within a few days of the election. Mainstream Democrats have begun to use the word ‘progressive’ to apply to a platform that amounts to little more than preserving Obamacare, gesturing towards greater income equality and protecting minorities. This agenda is timid. It has nothing to say about challenging the influence of concentrated capital on policy, reducing the inflated defence budget or withdrawing from overextended foreign commitments; yet without those initiatives, even the mildest egalitarian policies face insuperable obstacles. More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders’s supporters.

    For the DNC, the great value of the Russian hack story is that it focuses attention away from what was actually in their emails. The documents revealed a deeply corrupt organisation, whose pose of impartiality was a sham. Even the reliably pro-Clinton Washington Post has admitted that ‘many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.’ Further evidence of collusion between the Clinton machine and the DNC surfaced recently in a memoir by Donna Brazile, who became interim chair of the DNC after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of the email revelations. Brazile describes discovering an agreement dated 26 August 2015, which specified (she writes)

    that in exchange for raising money and investing in the DNC, Hillary would control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised. Her campaign had the right of refusal of who would be the party communications director, and it would make final decisions on all the other staff. The DNC also was required to consult with the campaign about all other staffing, budgeting, data, analytics and mailings.

    Before the primaries had even begun, the supposedly neutral DNC – which had been close to insolvency – had been bought by the Clinton campaign.

    Another recent revelation of DNC tactics concerns the origins of the inquiry into Trump’s supposed links to Putin. The story began in April 2016, when the DNC hired a Washington research firm called Fusion GPS to unearth any connections between Trump and Russia. The assignment involved the payment of ‘cash for trash’, as the Clinton campaign liked to say. Fusion GPS eventually produced the trash, a lurid account written by the former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele, based on hearsay purchased from anonymous Russian sources. Amid prostitutes and golden showers, a story emerged: the Russian government had been blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump for years, on the assumption that he would become president some day and serve the Kremlin’s interests. In this fantastic tale, Putin becomes a preternaturally prescient schemer. Like other accusations of collusion, this one has become vaguer over time, adding to the murky atmosphere without ever providing any evidence. The Clinton campaign tried to persuade established media outlets to publicise the Steele dossier, but with uncharacteristic circumspection, they declined to promote what was plainly political trash rather than reliable reporting. Yet the FBI apparently took the Steele dossier seriously enough to include a summary of it in a secret appendix to the Intelligence Community Assessment. Two weeks before the inauguration, James Comey, the director of the FBI, described the dossier to Trump. After Comey’s briefing was leaked to the press, the website Buzzfeed published the dossier in full, producing hilarity and hysteria in the Washington establishment.

    The Steele dossier inhabits a shadowy realm where ideology and intelligence, disinformation and revelation overlap. It is the antechamber to the wider system of epistemological nihilism created by various rival factions in the intelligence community: the ‘tree of smoke’ that, for the novelist Denis Johnson, symbolised CIA operations in Vietnam. I inhaled that smoke myself in 1969-70, when I was a cryptographer with a Top Secret clearance on a US navy ship that carried missiles armed with nuclear warheads – the existence of which the navy denied. I was stripped of my clearance and later honourably discharged when I refused to join the Sealed Authenticator System, which would have authorised the launch of those allegedly non-existent nuclear weapons. The tree of smoke has only grown more complex and elusive since then. Yet the Democratic Party has now embarked on a full-scale rehabilitation of the intelligence community – or at least the part of it that supports the notion of Russian hacking. (We can be sure there is disagreement behind the scenes.) And it is not only the Democratic establishment that is embracing the deep state. Some of the party’s base, believing Trump and Putin to be joined at the hip, has taken to ranting about ‘treason’ like a reconstituted John Birch Society.

    I thought of these ironies when I visited the Tate Modern exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, which featured the work of black American artists from the 1960s and 1970s, when intelligence agencies (and agents provocateurs) were spearheading a government crackdown on black militants, draft resisters, deserters and antiwar activists. Amid the paintings, collages and assemblages there was a single Confederate flag, accompanied by grim reminders of the Jim Crow past – a Klansman in full regalia, a black body dangling from a tree. There were also at least half a dozen US flags, juxtaposed in whole or in part with images of contemporary racial oppression that could have occurred anywhere in America: dead black men carted off on stretchers by skeletons in police uniform; a black prisoner tied to a chair, awaiting torture. The point was to contrast the pretensions of ‘the land of the free’ with the practices of the national security state and local police forces. The black artists of that era knew their enemy: black people were not being killed and imprisoned by some nebulous foreign adversary, but by the FBI, the CIA and the police.

    The Democratic Party has now developed a new outlook on the world, a more ambitious partnership between liberal humanitarian interventionists and neoconservative militarists than existed under the cautious Obama. This may be the most disastrous consequence for the Democratic Party of the new anti-Russian orthodoxy: the loss of the opportunity to formulate a more humane and coherent foreign policy. The obsession with Putin has erased any possibility of complexity from the Democratic world picture, creating a void quickly filled by the monochrome fantasies of Hillary Clinton and her exceptionalist allies. For people like Max Boot and Robert Kagan, war is a desirable state of affairs, especially when viewed from the comfort of their keyboards, and the rest of the world – apart from a few bad guys – is filled with populations who want to build societies just like ours: pluralistic, democratic and open for business. This view is difficult to challenge when it cloaks itself in humanitarian sentiment. There is horrific suffering in the world; the US has abundant resources to help relieve it; the moral imperative is clear. There are endless forms of international engagement that do not involve military intervention. But it is the path taken by US policy often enough that one may suspect humanitarian rhetoric is nothing more than window-dressing for a more mundane geopolitics – one that defines the national interest as global and virtually limitless.

    Having come of age during the Vietnam War, a calamitous consequence of that inflated definition of national interest, I have always been attracted to the realist critique of globalism. Realism is a label forever besmirched by association with Henry Kissinger, who used it as a rationale for intervening covertly and overtly in other nations’ affairs. Yet there is a more humane realist tradition, the tradition of George Kennan and William Fulbright, which emphasises the limits of military might, counselling that great power requires great restraint. This tradition challenges the doctrine of regime change under the guise of democracy promotion, which – despite its abysmal failures in Iraq and Libya – retains a baffling legitimacy in official Washington. Russiagate has extended its shelf life.

    We can gauge the corrosive impact of the Democrats’ fixation on Russia by asking what they aren’t talking about when they talk about Russian hacking. For a start, they aren’t talking about interference of other sorts in the election, such as the Republican Party’s many means of disenfranchising minority voters. Nor are they talking about the trillion dollar defence budget that pre-empts the possibility of single-payer healthcare and other urgently needed social programmes; nor about the modernisation of the American nuclear arsenal which Obama began and Trump plans to accelerate, and which raises the risk of the ultimate environmental calamity, nuclear war – a threat made more serious than it has been in decades by America’s combative stance towards Russia. The prospect of impeaching Trump and removing him from office by convicting him of collusion with Russia has created an atmosphere of almost giddy anticipation among leading Democrats, allowing them to forget that the rest of the Republican Party is composed of many politicians far more skilful in Washington’s ways than their president will ever be.

    It is not the Democratic Party that is leading the search for alternatives to the wreckage created by Republican policies: a tax plan that will soak the poor and middle class to benefit the rich; a heedless pursuit of fossil fuels that is already resulting in the contamination of the water supply of the Dakota people; and continued support for police policies of militarisation and mass incarceration. It is local populations that are threatened by oil spills and police beatings, and that is where humane populism survives. A multitude of insurgent groups have begun to use the outrage against Trump as a lever to move the party in egalitarian directions: Justice Democrats, Black Lives Matter, Democratic Socialists of America, as well as a host of local and regional organisations. They recognise that there are far more urgent – and genuine – reasons to oppose Trump than vague allegations of collusion with Russia. They are posing an overdue challenge to the long con of neoliberalism, and the technocratic arrogance that led to Clinton’s defeat in Rust Belt states. Recognising that the current leadership will not bring about significant change, they are seeking funding from outside the DNC. This is the real resistance, as opposed to ‘#theresistance’.

    On certain important issues – such as broadening support for single-payer healthcare, promoting a higher minimum wage or protecting undocumented immigrants from the most flagrant forms of exploitation – these insurgents are winning wide support. Candidates like Paula Jean Swearengin, a coal miner’s daughter from West Virginia who is running in the Democratic primary for nomination to the US Senate, are challenging establishment Democrats who stand cheek by jowl with Republicans in their service to concentrated capital. Swearengin’s opponent is Joe Manchin, whom the Los Angeles Times has compared to Doug Jones, another ‘very conservative’ Democrat who recently won election to the US Senate in Alabama, narrowly defeating a Republican disgraced by accusations of sexual misconduct with 14-year-old girls. I can feel relieved at that result without joining in the collective Democratic ecstasy, which reveals the party’s persistent commitment to politics as usual. Democrat leaders have persuaded themselves (and much of their base) that all the republic needs is a restoration of the status quo ante Trump. They remain oblivious to popular impatience with familiar formulas. Jess King – a Mennonite woman, Bard College MBA and founder of a local non-profit who is running for Congress as a Justice Democrat in Lancaster, Pennsylvania – put it this way: ‘We see a changing political landscape right now that isn’t measured by traditional left to right politics anymore, but bottom to top. In Pennsylvania and many other places around the country we see a grassroots economic populism on the rise, pushing against the political establishment and status quo that have failed so many in our country.’

    Democratic insurgents are also developing a populist critique of the imperial hubris that has sponsored multiple failed crusades, extorted disproportionate sacrifice from the working class and provoked support for Trump, who presented himself (however misleadingly) as an opponent of open-ended interventionism. On foreign policy, the insurgents face an even more entrenched opposition than on domestic policy: a bipartisan consensus aflame with outrage at the threat to democracy supposedly posed by Russian hacking. Still, they may have found a tactical way forward, by focusing on the unequal burden borne by the poor and working class in the promotion and maintenance of American empire.

    This approach animates Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis, a 33-page document whose authors include Norman Solomon, founder of the web-based insurgent lobby RootsAction.org. ‘The Democratic Party’s claims of fighting for “working families” have been undermined by its refusal to directly challenge corporate power, enabling Trump to masquerade as a champion of the people,’ Autopsy announces. But what sets this apart from most progressive critiques is the cogent connection it makes between domestic class politics and foreign policy. For those in the Rust Belt, military service has often seemed the only escape from the shambles created by neoliberal policies; yet the price of escape has been high. As Autopsy notes, ‘the wisdom of continual war’ – what Clinton calls ‘global leadership’ –

    was far clearer to the party’s standard bearer [in 2016] than it was to people in the US communities bearing the brunt of combat deaths, injuries and psychological traumas. After a decade and a half of non-stop warfare, research data from voting patterns suggest that the Clinton campaign’s hawkish stance was a political detriment in working-class communities hard-hit by American casualties from deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Francis Shen of the University of Minnesota and Douglas Kriner of Boston University analysed election results in three key states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – and found that ‘even controlling in a statistical model for many other alternative explanations, we find that there is a significant and meaningful relationship between a community’s rate of military sacrifice and its support for Trump.’ Clinton’s record of uncritical commitment to military intervention allowed Trump to have it both ways, playing to jingoist resentment while posing as an opponent of protracted and pointless war. Kriner and Shen conclude that Democrats may want to ‘re-examine their foreign policy posture if they hope to erase Trump’s electoral gains among constituencies exhausted and alienated by 15 years of war’. If the insurgent movements within the Democratic Party begin to formulate an intelligent foreign policy critique, a re-examination may finally occur. And the world may come into sharper focus as a place where American power, like American virtue, is limited. For this Democrat, that is an outcome devoutly to be wished. It’s a long shot, but there is something happening out there.

    #USA #cuture #politique

  • Jackson Lears · What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking: #Russiagate · LRB 4 January 2018
    https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

    Like any orthodoxy worth its salt, the religion of the Russian hack depends not on evidence but on ex cathedra pronouncements on the part of authoritative institutions and their overlords. Its scriptural foundation is a confused and largely fact-free ‘assessment’ produced last January by a small number of ‘hand-picked’ analysts – as James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, described them – from the CIA, the FBI and the NSA. The claims of the last were made with only ‘moderate’ confidence. The label Intelligence Community Assessment creates a misleading impression of unanimity, given that only three of the 16 US intelligence agencies contributed to the report. And indeed the assessment itself contained this crucial admission: ‘Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.’ Yet the assessment has passed into the media imagination as if it were unassailable fact, allowing journalists to assume what has yet to be proved. In doing so they serve as mouthpieces for the intelligence agencies, or at least for those ‘hand-picked’ analysts.

    [...]

    The consequence is a spreading confusion that envelops everything. Epistemological nihilism looms, but some people and institutions have more power than others to define what constitutes an agreed-on reality. To say this is to risk dismissal as the ultimate wing-nut in the lexicon of contemporary Washington: the conspiracy theorist. Still, the fact remains: sometimes powerful people arrange to promote ideas that benefit their common interests. Whether we call this hegemony, conspiracy or merely special privilege hardly matters. What does matter is the power to create what Gramsci called the ‘common sense’ of an entire society. Even if much of that society is indifferent to or suspicious of the official common sense, it still becomes embedded among the tacit assumptions that set the boundaries of ‘responsible opinion’. So the Democratic establishment (along with a few Republicans) and the major media outlets have made ‘Russian meddling’ the common sense of the current moment. What kind of cultural work does this common sense do? What are the consequences of the spectacle the media call (with characteristic originality) ‘Russiagate’?

    The most immediate consequence is that, by finding foreign demons who can be blamed for Trump’s ascendancy, the Democratic leadership have shifted the blame for their defeat away from their own policies without questioning any of their core assumptions. Amid the general recoil from Trump, they can even style themselves dissenters – ‘the resistance’ was the label Clintonites appropriated within a few days of the election. #Mainstream Democrats have begun to use the word ‘progressive’ to apply to a platform that amounts to little more than preserving Obamacare, gesturing towards greater income equality and protecting minorities. This agenda is timid. It has nothing to say about challenging the influence of concentrated capital on policy, reducing the inflated defence budget or withdrawing from overextended foreign commitments; yet without those initiatives, even the mildest egalitarian policies face insuperable obstacles. More genuine insurgencies are in the making, which confront corporate power and connect domestic with foreign policy, but they face an uphill battle against the entrenched money and power of the Democratic leadership – the likes of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons and the DNC. Russiagate offers Democratic elites a way to promote party unity against Trump-Putin, while the DNC purges Sanders’s supporters.

    For the DNC, the great value of the Russian hack story is that it focuses attention away from what was actually in their emails. The documents revealed a deeply corrupt organisation, whose pose of impartiality was a sham. Even the reliably pro-Clinton Washington Post has admitted that ‘many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.’ Further evidence of collusion between the Clinton machine and the DNC surfaced recently in a memoir by Donna Brazile, who became interim chair of the DNC after Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned in the wake of the email revelations. Brazile describes discovering an agreement dated 26 August 2015, which specified (she writes)

    [...]

  • ENQUÊTE FRANCEINFO. Des « ciseaux à découper l’ADN » aussi dangereux que « les armes chimiques syriennes »
    https://www.crashdebug.fr/sciencess/13139-enquete-franceinfo-des-ciseaux-a-decouper-l-adn-aussi-dangereux-que

    CRISPR Cas9 : génétique de destruction massive ? par franceinfo

    Les "ciseaux à découper l’ADN" suscitent de grands espoirs de traitement de maladies incurables. Mais c’est un outil à ne pas mettre entre toutes les mains. L’enquête de Franceinfo, publiée samedi 28 janvier, montre les dangers potentiels de cette nouvelle technologie.

    Le grand patron du renseignement américain a été le premier à tirer le signal d’alarme, en février 2016. Dans un rapport déclassifié par la CIA, James Clapper a classé CRISPR Cas9 dans la catégorie des "armes de destruction massive" potentielles. Pour lui, cette technologie utilisée dans des milliers de laboratoires doit être considérée comme le programme nucléaire nord-coréen, les armes chimiques syriennes et les missiles de croisière russes.

    Une (...)

  • A Demand for Russian ‘Hacking’ Proof
    http://www.dedefensa.org/article/a-demand-for-russian-hacking-proof

    Les VIPS à BHO : montrez les preuves

    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), un groupement hautement qualifié d’anciens officiers du renseignement US communique un mémorandum au président Obama sur laquestion brûlante du “omplot russe” dans les élections présidentielles US. Le VIPS demande que des preiuves de ce “complot” soient produites aujourd’hui par Obama, lorsdesa defnières conférence de opresse de président. L’argument s’appuie sur l’évidence de jurispridence, montrée à plusieurs reprises par divers présidents,qu’en cas d’urgence de nationale, il est du devoir d’un président d’ignorer les règles de non-divulgation d’éléments obtenus par des moyens secrets par les services de renseignement, pour effectivement démontrer ce que ces servicxes avancent. Les VIPS, dont le mémo a été d’abord publié (...)

    • As President for a few more days, you have the power to demand concrete evidence of a link between the Russians and WikiLeaks, which published the bulk of the information in question. Lacking that evidence, the American people should be told that there is no fire under the smoke and mirrors of recent weeks.

      We urge you to authorize public release of any tangible evidence that takes us beyond the unsubstantiated, “we-assess” judgments by the intelligence agencies. Otherwise, we – as well as other skeptical Americans – will be left with the corrosive suspicion that the intense campaign of accusations is part of a wider attempt to discredit the Russians and those – like Mr. Trump – who wish to deal constructively with them.

      Remember the Maine?

      (NB : une petite relecture du billet ne ferait pas de mal…)

    • Everyone Hacks
      There is a lot of ambiguity – whether calculated or not – about “Russian hacking.” “Everyone knows that everyone hacks,” says everyone: Russia hacks; China hacks; every nation that can hacks. So do individuals of various nationalities. This is not the question.

      Comme on le voit dans l’affaire Bauer, le mot « piratage » devient un fourre-tout qui permet d’accuser n’importe qui ou de camoufler n’importe quoi.

    • Our VIPS colleague William Binney, who was Technical Director of NSA and created many of the collection systems still in use, assures us that NSA’s “cast-iron” coverage – particularly surrounding Julian Assange and other people associated with WikiLeaks – would almost certainly have yielded a record of any electronic transfer from Russia to WikiLeaks. Binney has used some of the highly classified slides released by Edward Snowden to demonstrate precisely how NSA accomplishes this using trace mechanisms embedded throughout the network.

      We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks. If NSA can produce such evidence, you may wish to order whatever declassification may be needed and then release the evidence. This would go a long way toward allaying suspicions that no evidence exists. If NSA cannot give you that information – and quickly – this would probably mean it does not have any.

    • In all candor, the checkered record of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper for trustworthiness makes us much less confident that anyone should take it on faith that he is more “trustworthy than the Russians,” as you suggested on Dec. 16. You will probably recall that Clapper lied under oath to the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 12, 2013, about NSA dragnet activities; later apologizing for testimony he admitted had been “clearly erroneous.

    • #Hacks_or_Leaks?
      Not mentioned until now is our conclusion that leaks are the source of the WikiLeaks disclosures in question – not hacking. Leaks normally leave no electronic trace. William Binney has been emphasizing this for several months and suggesting strongly that the disclosures were from a leaker with physical access to the information – not a hacker with only remote access.

      (allez, un dernier…)

  • Report : CIA set up task-force in 2016 to investigate possible Russian funding of Trump’s campaign
    http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/trump-russia-dossier-claims-cia-2017-1

    A US counterintelligence task force was established by the CIA in 2016 to investigate possible Russian funding of President-elect Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the BBC reported on Friday.

    The task force included the FBI, the Treasury and Justice Departments, the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Security Agency (NSA).

    It was set up after the director of the CIA, John Brennan, received a recording of a conversation about money from the Kremlin going into Trump’s campaign coffers, the BBC’s Paul Wood reported. The recording was apparently passed to the CIA by the intelligence agency of one of the Baltic States.
    […]
    The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, released a statement last Wednesday reiterating that, while the intelligence community had "not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, “part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.

    Cette dernière phrase est incroyable : on ne sait pas si c’est juste une rumeur, mais on diffuse aux décideurs…

    L’article de la BBC dont sont extraites les informations ci-dessus comprend une première moitié sur le kompromat de 2013.

    Trump ’compromising’ claims : How and why did we get here ? - BBC News
    http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38589427

    Donald Trump has described as “fake news” allegations published in some media that his election team colluded with Russia - and that Russia held compromising material about his private life. The BBC’s Paul Wood saw the allegations before the election, and reports on the fallout now they have come to light.

  • La Russie a tenté d’influencer les élections dans 20 pays
    https://fr.news.yahoo.com/la-russie-tent%C3%A9-dinfluencer-les-%C3%A9lections-dans-20-201230802

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) - La Russie a tenté d’influencer le résultat d’élections dans une « vingtaine » de pays, a déclaré le directeur du renseignement national américain James Clapper, mardi.

    Le même James Clapper qui avait en 2013 menti sous serment au Congrès étasunien en niant les écoutes téléphonique par la NSA.

    The Director of National Intelligence lied to Congress about NSA surveillance. What else will he lie about ?
    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/06/fire_dni_james_clapper_he_lied_to_congress_about_nsa_surveillance.html

  • There Is Still No Hard Evidence For “Russian Hacking”
    https://medium.com/mtracey/there-is-still-no-hard-evidence-for-russian-hacking-d7e12b6429db

    [A] declaration from Democrats’ new favorite pundit, former George W. Bush speechwriter and Clinton voter David Frum, has been retweeted over 3,500 times in approximately three hours. Media superstars such as John Harwood and Peter Daou joined in on the retweeting action. How many casual news consumers cursorily saw this tweet, accepted it as accurate, and then continued on with their day? Many, many tens of thousands, surely. And yet what the tweet omits, as does most every other account of the contents of the laughably anticlimactic DNI report, is that this much-anticipated document contains no new evidence corroborating the Government’s claims regarding “Russian Hacking.”

    #propagande #manipulation

  • Piratage électoral : les services américains publieront un rapport la semaine prochaine
    http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2017/01/05/piratage-electoral-les-services-americains-publieront-un-rapport-la-semaine-

    Le directeur du renseignement américain James Clapper s’est dit « encore plus convaincu » aujourd’hui de l’implication totale du gouvernement russe dans les piratages qui ont visé, pendant la campagne électorale américaine, le Parti démocrate. Le 7 octobre, un document signé par le Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), la Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) et la National Security Agency (NSA) affirmait déjà avec « un grand degré de certitude » que la Russie a commandité et exécuté ces piratages, se fondant notamment sur des rapports d’analyses effectués par des entreprises privées.

    M. Clapper, qui était auditionné jeudi 5 janvier par une commission sénatoriale, en compagnie de l’amiral Michael Rogers, directeur de la NSA, n’a donné aucune explication sur les raisons qui le poussent aujourd’hui à « réaffirmer avec encore plus de force » le rôle joué par la Russie. Mais il a dit que de nouveaux éléments ont été découverts par les services de renseignement, et qu’ils seraient rendus publics la semaine prochaine.
    […]
    Confronté à une question sur la différence entre les rapports des services de renseignement sur les piratages et le rapport qui affirmait en 2002 que l’Irak possédait des armes de destruction massives, M. Clapper s’est brièvement départi de sa réserve habituelle.

    « Mes empreintes digitales étaient sur ce document il y a treize ans, j’avais participé à sa rédaction. Depuis, nous avons changé beaucoup de choses dans nos manières de faire. Quoi que vous pensiez de la communauté du renseignement, nous sommes une communauté qui apprend de ses erreurs. Nous sommes humains, nous commettons des erreurs, et il y en aura d’autres. Mais entre ce qui s’est passé en 2002 et ce qui se passe aujourd’hui, dans notre manière de fonctionner, c’est le jour et la nuit. »

    #ce_n'est_pas_la_girouette_qui_tourne_c'est_le_vent
    (comme disait le maire historique de Port-Lesney)

  • Désespérée, l’Administration Obama se raccroche à des inventions, et peut-être pire… - Planetes360
    https://planetes360.fr/desesperee-ladministration-obama-se-raccroche-a-inventions-etre-pire

    Le 28 septembre la mission française à l’ONU a affirmé que deux hôpitaux d’Alep-est avaient été bombardés. Elle a montré dans un tweet une photo de bâtiments détruits à Gaza. Plus tard, les Français ont supprimé ce tweet.

    Ce n’est pas la première fois que des officiels « occidentaux » se rendent coupables d’allégations mensongères et de falsification volontaires de la vérité, mais en général, ils évitent les mensonges trop voyants.

    Pas John Kerry, le secrétaire d’État des États-Unis. Hier, pendant la conférence de presse qui a précédé son entretien avec le ministre français des Affaires étrangères, Jean-Marc Ayrault, au sujet d’une nouvelle résolution de l’ONU, il a dit ceci (vidéo @ 1 : 00) sur la Syrie :

    Hier soir, le régime a attaqué un autre hôpital, 20 personnes ont été tuées et 100 ont été blessées. La Russie et le régime doivent plus qu’une explication au monde sur la raison pour laquelle ils ne cessent de frapper les hôpitaux, les installations médicales et les enfants et les femmes. Ce sont des actes qui exigent une enquête pour crimes de guerre. Et ceux qui commettent ces crimes doivent et devront rendre des comptes.

    Aucun groupe d’opposition n’a dit qu’une telle chose, qui serait extrêmement grave, était arrivée. Aucun. Aucune agence de presse ne l’ a mentionnée. Le SOHR, l’organe de désinformation du MI-6 en Grande-Bretagne, qui recense de manière très fiable tous les dégâts signalés et qui est fréquemment cité dans les médias « occidentaux », n’en a pas parlé non plus.

    Le grave incident que Kerry dénonce n’a pas eu lieu. Kerry l’a inventé. (Était-il censé se produire, a-t-il été annulé et Kerry a-t-il raté la note de service ?) Kerry a utilisé ce mensonge pour appeler à une enquête pour crimes de guerre et à des sanctions. Cela devant les caméras, lors d’un événement officiel avec un hôte étranger dans le cadre d’une résolution du Conseil de sécurité des Nations Unies.

    C’est grave. C’est presque aussi grave que les fausses déclarations de Colin Powell sur les armes de destruction massive en Irak devant le Conseil de sécurité des Nations-Unies.

    Les premiers rapports, comme celui de CBSNews, relaient l’accusation de Kerry :

    Kerry a déclaré que les forces syriennes avaient frappé un hôpital pendant la nuit, tuant 20 personnes et en en blessant 100, ce qui constituerait la dernière frappe de Moscou ou de son allié à Damas sur une cible civile.

    Cependant l’article du New York Times sur l’événement indique bien que Kerry a demandé l’ouverture d’une enquête pour crimes de guerre, mais il ne mentionne pas le bombardement de l’hôpital. Il n’en parle pas du tout. Pour le « journal de référence » autoproclamé, le mensonge de Kerry n’a pas eu lieu. De même, leWashington Post, dans son propre article, ne fait aucune mention de l’accusation mensongère de Kerry.

    Le dernier article Matthew Lee d’AP omet également le mensonge. C’est curieux parce que Matt Lee sait très bien ce que Kerry a dit. Le briefing du Département d’État d’hier y a consacré un long chapitre. Sur la vidéo(@ 3 : 30) on voit que c’est Matt qui pose les questions :

    QUESTION : D’accord. Sur la Syrie et les commentaires du Secrétaire plus tôt ce matin, ma question est : Savez-vous de quelle frappe il parlait dans ses commentaires cette nuit concernant un hôpital à Alep ?

    M. KIRBY : Je pense que le Secrétaire faisait référence en fait à une frappe que nous avons vu se produire hier sur un hôpital de campagne dans le gouvernorat de Rif Dimashq. Je ne suis pas tout à fait sûr que c’est ce à quoi il faisait allusion, mais je crois bien qu’il parlait de celle qui a eu lieu à –

    QUESTION : Pas à Alep ?

    M. KIRBY : Je crois que c’était – je pense que c’était – je pense qu’il – je suppose – il me semble qu’il a fait une petite erreur sur le lieu en se référant à une –

    QUESTION : Mais vous n’êtes pas sûr ?

    M. KIRBY : Non. Tout ce que je peux vous dire, au mieux de mes connaissances, c’est qu’il faisait très probablement référence à une frappe hier dans ce gouvernorat, mais il probablement fait cette erreur en toute bonne foi.

    QUESTION : Si nous pouvions – si nous pouvions savoir avec précision ce dont il parlait –

    M. KIRBY : Je vais faire ce que je peux, Matt.

    Et ça continue comme ça encore un moment. Mais il n’y a pas d’attaque d’hôpital ni à Rif Dimashq, ni à Alep. Plus tard, Kirby, le porte-parole du Département d’Etat, a pratiquement reconnu que Kerry avait menti en disant : « Je ne peux pas confirmer cela. »

    Il apparaît également que Kerry n’a pas de preuve du moindre crime de guerre ni aucune possibilité de lancer une procédure internationale officielle à ce sujet. Et à quelle fin de toute façon ? Intimider la Russie ? Il n’y a aucune chance d’y parvenir, ce serait parfaitement inutile d’essayer, et Kerry devrait le savoir.

    Kerry est désespéré. Il a complètement perdu la direction des opérations en Syrie. La Russie mène l’affaire et elle fera tout ce qui doit être fait. En dehors d’entamer une guerre mondiale, l’administration Obama n’a plus aucun moyen d’influencer de manière significative le cours des choses.

    Kerry est seulement un des outils de l’administration Obama. Plus tard dans la même journée, le directeur du renseignement national américain, James Clapper, a porté d’autres accusations contre la Russie :

    La communauté du renseignement étasunien (USIC) pense pouvoir dire que le gouvernement russe est à l’origine des récents piratages d’e-mails de citoyens et d’institutions des États-Unis, y compris des organisations politiques étasuniennes. Les récentes diffusions d’e-mails, vraisemblablement piratés, sur des sites comme DCLeaks.com et WikiLeaks, et par Guccifer 2.0, cadrent avec des méthodes et des motivations d’inspiration russe. Ces vols d’informations ont pour but d’interférer avec le processus électoral américain. Cela n’est pas nouveau pour Moscou – les Russes ont utilisé des tactiques et des techniques similaires en Europe et en Eurasie, par exemple, pour influencer l’opinion publique. Nous croyons que, du fait de l’importance et de la sensibilité de l’entreprise, seuls les officiels les plus haut-gradés de la Russie auraient pu autoriser ces activités.

    Traduction : « ON NE SAIT PAS du tout (« pense pouvoir dire », « nous croyons », « d’inspiration ») qui est responsable de ces piratages et nous N’AVONS PAS la moindre preuve (cadre avec », « du fait de l’importance et de la sensibilité ») que la Russie est impliquée, alors il ne nous reste plus qu’à essayer de vous embrouiller et de vous embobiner. »

    L’ancien ambassadeur britannique Craig Murray a appelé ça un flagrant mensonge néoconservateur. C’est clairement le Comité national démocrate qui a manipulé l’élection américaine en faisant, contrairement à son mandat, la promotion de Clinton aux dépens de Sanders. C’est cela seulement que les pirates ont montré. Il est également facile de comprendre pourquoi ces accusations sont portées maintenant. Murray :

    Le fait que l’administration Obama ait porté une accusation officielle contre la Russie qui ne soit fondée sur aucune preuve est, d’une certaine manière, étonnant. Mais c’est un acte de désespoir. WikiLeaks a déjà annoncé qu’ils avaient une énorme quantité d’autres documents secrets sur les manigances d’Hillary. La Maison Blanche cherche simplement à les discréditer par avance en les reliant mensongèrement aux services secrets russes.

    L’administration Obama est en train de perdre. Elle n’arrive plus à imposer ses désidératas, ni en Syrie, ni pour les élections. Trump, malgré ses gros mots de sale gamin, a une très bonne chance d’emporter la présidence. Lui (-44%) et Clinton (-41%) sont plus détestés de l’électorat étasunien que Poutine (-38%). N’importe quelle solution en Syrie sera plus avantageuse pour la Russie que pour Washington.

    Un tel désespoir peut être dangereux. Kerry est aux abois quand il ment sur la Russie. Mais le président et ses collègues du Pentagone et de la CIA ont des moyens plus concrets de s’exprimer. Espérons qu’ils ne se lanceront pas dans quelque chose de vraiment insensé !

  • Rapprochement des renseignements militaires franco américains 12 Mai 2016 (afp/nxp)

    Comme prévu après les attentats de Paris, les services américains et français travaillent à une meilleure communication.

    Les responsables du renseignement militaire français et américains se sont réunis mercredi à Washington pour accélérer les échanges de renseignement entre les deux pays, dans le droit-fil des décisions prises après les attentats de Paris, a indiqué le Pentagone.

    Le général Christophe Gomart, chef du renseignement militaire français, a rencontré Marcel Lettre, le sous-secrétaire américain chargé au Pentagone du renseignement militaire, a indiqué un porte-parole du département de la défense américain.

    Il s’agit de la première réunion au sommet du « comité Lafayette », mis en oeuvre après les attentats de Paris en novembre 2015 pour fluidifier les échanges de renseignement militaire entre la France et les Etats-Unis, selon cette source.

    Les forces armées américaines et françaises ont atteint un niveau de coopération inédit dans la guerre contre les réseaux extrémistes islamistes en Afrique occidentale ou au Moyen-Orient.

    Freins

    Mais les difficultés de partage d’informations sensibles freinent parfois leur collaboration.

    Des militaires français déployés au Centcom, le commandement des forces américaines au Moyen-Orient, se sont ainsi retrouvés l’année dernière exclus de réunions de planification de la campagne contre le groupe Etat islamique (EI), faute d’avoir le droit d’accéder à certaines informations classifiées.

    Les Français espèrent pouvoir mettre en place avec les Américains un partage de renseignement comparable à celui dont bénéficient les Britanniques, les Canadiens, les Australiens et les Néo-Zélandais dans le cadre de l’alliance dite des « Five Eyes ».

    Accès

    De leur côté, les Américains ont promis de faire un effort pour améliorer l’accès des Français à leurs renseignements.

    « Nous voulons avoir » avec la France « le même niveau de partenariat approfondi » qu’avec les Five Eyes, mais d’une manière « parallèle et unique », a estimé un haut responsable américain de la défense interrogé par l’AFP.

    Les responsables américains ont souvent des commentaires appréciateurs pour les services de renseignement français, louant en particulier leurs compétences sur l’Afrique du Nord.

    Les 17 agences de renseignement américaines, dont la CIA, la NSA, la DIA (renseignement militaire)... comptent plus de 100’000 employés, selon les services du coordonnateur du renseignement James Clapper. Les agences de renseignement françaises (DGSE, DGSI, DRM) comptent pour leur part plus de 12’000 employés.

    Source : http://www.lematin.ch/monde/rapprochement-renseignements-militaires/story/18181337
    #CIA #NSA #DIA #DGSE #DGSI #DRM #OTAN #NATO #Comité_Lafayette

  • According to US National Intelligence Director James Clapper, the Snowden revelations have accelerated the availability of commercial encryption by 7 years

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9bcFXWInWE&t=247

    “as a result of the Snowden revelations, the onset of commercial encryption has been accelerated by about seven years”

    “the growing availability of apps that provide unbreakable encryption is obviously a challenge for us”

    The Intercept wrote about this, but I cannot say they are very neutral in their interpretation, because they speak of “complain” and “blame”, whereas when I listened to Clapper I did not have the impression he was really complaining about it being Snowden’s fault. He just stated facts, without a negative ring to it.

    https://theintercept.com/2016/04/25/spy-chief-complains-that-edward-snowden-sped-up-spread-of-encryption-b

    Anyway, Snowden seems happy about Clapper’s statement:

    https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/724629731686137856
    Of all the things I’ve been accused of, this is the one of which I am most proud

    #encryption
    #privacy

  • Top US intelligence official: ISIS has cells in UK, Germany, and Italy - CNNPolitics.com
    http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/25/politics/us-intel-official-isis-uk-germany-italy/index.html?sr=twCNN042516us-intel-official-isis-uk-germany-italy0830PMV

    America’s top intelligence official, James Clapper, said Monday that ISIS has clandestine cells in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, comments that come as President Barack Obama concludes an overseas visit where he asked Europe to contribute more to the fight against ISIS.
    When asked by a reporter if ISIS had British, German and Italian underground cells like the ones that carried out the deadly March terrorist attacks in Brussels, Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said, “Yes they do.”
    Clapper added, “We continue to see evidence of plotting on the part of ISIL in (the UK, Germany and Italy).” ISIL is the administration’s preferred acronym for ISIS.

    #IE
    #ISIS

  • #Obama_doctrine / partie 1
    Allez, je me lance dans le commentaire, en espérant faire des émules...
    L’article, déjà signalé par @kassem, dont la matière première sont des interviews d’Obama, est consultable ici : http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525
    Au tout début de l’article Goldberg nous dépeint une administration américaine en août 2013 persuadée, notamment Kerry, de la nécessité de faire payer amèrement à Assad les 1400 morts de l’attaque chimique de la Ghouta orientale censé avoir tout juste eu lieu. Le tout, bilan humain et responsabilité, considéré comme des faits indiscutables par le journaliste.

    In the Damascus suburb of Ghouta nine days earlier, Assad’s army had murdered more than 1,400 civilians with sarin gas. The strong sentiment inside the Obama administration was that Assad had earned dire punishment. In Situation Room meetings that followed the attack on Ghouta, only the White House chief of staff, Denis McDonough, cautioned explicitly about the perils of intervention. John Kerry argued vociferously for action.

    Puis retour en arrière sur le désaccords au sein de l’administration US quant au degré d’investissement dans la guerre en Syrie. Parmi les plus chauds partisans d’un investissement militaire plus fort en Syrie, bien sûr Samantha Power et son devoir d’ingérence humanitaire ("responsability to protect") mais aussi Hillary Clinton, selon Goldberg. A ceux-là Obama aurait opposé son principe du « don’t do stupid shit », en clair pas un soldat américain au sol pour réitérer les « conneries » de Walker Bush.
    Ce principe du « don’t do stupid shit » n’admettant selon les confidences d’Obama que deux exceptions : les intérêts vitaux américains et, bien sûr, la sacro-sainte sécurité d’Israël :

    only a handful of threats in the Middle East conceivably warranted direct U.S. military intervention. These included the threat posed by al‑Qaeda; threats to the continued existence of Israel (“It would be a moral failing for me as president of the United States” not to defend Israel, he once told me); and, not unrelated to Israel’s security, the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran.

    [Donc ça n’empêchait pas de droner autant qu’on veut au Yémen notamment conte la fameuse menace d’al-Qaïda (AQPA), exception au principe dûment revendiquée, mais aussi de financer des groupes proxies en Syrie, au risque de renforcer la cousine d’AQPA en Syrie : al-Nousra...]
    Ensuite Goldberg revient sur la fameuse ligne rouge d’Obama, censée avoir été franchie en août 2013. Adel al-Jubeïr persuadé que cette fois-ci Barack va y aller et puis Merkel qui fait savoir qu’elle n’en sera pas, le vote négatif au Parlement britannique et enfin la visite surprise de James Clapper à Obama pour lui rendre bien clair que si des éléments « robustes » soutenait la thèse de la responsabilité de l’attaque à Assad, ce n’est tout de même pas un « slam dunk ». Bref, plutôt sûr, mais pas vraiment quand même... Genre, s’il avère que c’était faux, je refuse d’endosser, Mister president !

    Obama was also unsettled by a surprise visit early in the week from James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, who interrupted the President’s Daily Brief, the threat report Obama receives each morning from Clapper’s analysts, to make clear that the intelligence on Syria’s use of sarin gas, while robust, was not a “slam dunk.” He chose the term carefully. Clapper, the chief of an intelligence community traumatized by its failures in the run-up to the Iraq War, was not going to overpromise, in the manner of the onetime CIA director George Tenet, who famously guaranteed George W. Bush a “slam dunk” in Iraq.

    Goldberg nous rapporte ensuite la déception de Valls, Abdallah II de Jordanie, l’émir d’Abou Dabi, et des Saoudiens en la personne d’al-Jubeïr, quand ils apprennent qu’Obama va demander l’autorisation préalable du Congrès.
    Tiens, et les Israéliens, qui avaient pourtant fourni obligeamment de supposés enregistrements audio d’Assad au moment de cette attaque, ils en pensaient quoi ?
    Epilogue de ce 1er épisode, Godberg nous évoque Obama à l’initiative du deal avec Poutine lors d’un sommet du G20 : abandon des armes chimiques contre abandon des frappes - ce n’est pas cette version là que l’on connaissait !

    Amid the confusion, a deus ex machina appeared in the form of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg, which was held the week after the Syria reversal, Obama pulled Putin aside, he recalled to me, and told the Russian president “that if he forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would eliminate the need for us taking a military strike.”

    Et finalement qui a quand même gagné dans ce deal ?

    The removal of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpiles represented “the one ray of light in a very dark region,” Netanyahu told me not long after the deal was announced.

    En passant rien sur la neutralisation probable par les Russes de deux missiles tirés - on ne sait trop par qui - vers la Syrie, et qui pourrait bien avoir été une invitation claire de Vladimir à Barack à se cantonner à la diplomatie plutôt qu’au hard power...

  • Le directeur du renseignement américain reconnaît s’intéresser aux objets connectés
    http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/02/10/le-directeur-du-renseignement-americain-reconnait-s-interesser-aux-objets-co

    « A l’avenir, les services de renseignement pourraient tirer parti de l’Internet des objets pour identifier, surveiller ou localiser des suspects, découvrir des indicateurs potentiels, ou obtenir des mots de passe. » Lors de son audition par le Sénat américain, mardi 9 février, le directeur national du renseignement, James Clapper, a eu un rare moment de franchise concernant la manière dont les services de renseignement états-uniens envisagent d’utiliser le développement des objets connectés — ce que (...) #contrôle_de_l'État #Internet_of_things #surveillance

  • Hacker Publishes Personal Info of 20,000 FBI Agents | Motherboard
    http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-publishes-personal-info-of-20000-fbi-agents

    Michael Adams, an information security expert who served more than two decades in the US Special Operations Command, criticized the US government for its failure to protect data, especially in the aftermath of the embarrassing and damaging hack on OPM, the government agency that handles employee information.

    “What has anybody in the United States government learned?” Adams told Motherboard in a phone interview. “They’re not doing information security fundamentals, obviously. It’s just fucking unacceptable.”

    This latest data dump comes on the heels of a long series of attacks on US government employees. In October, a group of hackers calling itself “Crackas With Attitude” (CWA) broke into the AOL email of CIA director John Brennan. The hacktivists then targeted several other high-profile government employees, including the US spy chief James Clapper, a White House official, and others.

    Last year the hacktivists were also able to break into a US law enforcement portal, gaining access to a series of information sharing tools. This hack allegedly allowed them to download one or more databases of US government employees. In November, the CWA hackers released two lists of law enforcement agents from several departments, one containing around 2,300 names, and another containing almost 1,500 names. Both lists seemed incomplete, given that they were in alphabetical order and only included names starting with the first letters of the alphabet.

    The CWA hackers appear to have shared the databases stolen last year with others. In January, another group of cybercriminals released a list of 80 police officers from Miami, Florida.

    #USA #sécurité #surveillance #hacker #CIA #FBI

  • Can we define terror, or should we let terrorism define us?
    https://oisc.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/can-we-define-terror-or-should-we-let-terrorism-define-us

    The labeling of terrorism, therefore, is a political accusation of the state against which it is aimed: this authority isn’t legitimate and is oppressive. Considering Mandela a terrorist, at the time, meant supporting the apartheid regime of South Africa against an insurgency hell-bent on destroying the status quo.

    Yet, despite this acknowledgement that crimes of occupation, crimes of aggression, and state corruption are causes of political violence, international bodies of law, by treaty or doctrine, never define terrorism.

    Do you want… John Brennan to define terrorism? (Reuters)

    Do you want… Tony Abbott to define terrorism? (TheAustralian)

    https://i2.wp.com/sadredearth.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/national-intelligence-director-james-clapper-says-prism-is-entirely-legal-tha
    Do you want… James Clapper to (unwittingly) define terrorism?

    #terrorisme

  • US government hack stole fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees | Technology | The Guardian
    http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/23/us-government-hack-stole-fingerprints

    The number of people applying for or receiving security clearances whose fingerprint images were stolen in one of the worst government data breaches is now believed to be 5.6 million, not 1.1 million as first thought, the Office of Personnel Management announced on Wednesday.

    The agency was the victim of what the US believes was a Chinese espionage operation that affected an estimated 21.5 million current and former federal employees or job applicants. The theft could give Chinese intelligence a huge leg up in recruiting informants inside the US government, experts believe. It also could help the Chinese identify US spies abroad, according to American officials.

    The White House has said it’s going to discuss cybersecurity with Chinese president Xi Jinping when he visits Barack Obama later this week.

    • Blog: OPM fingerprint hack 5 times worse than previously thought
      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/09/opm_fingerprint_hack_5_times_worse_than_previously_thought.html

      The hack of personal information from the Office of Personnel Management is easily the most underreported big story of the year, and a catastrophe that will directly affect our national security for years to come.

      At first, the OPM admitted that a few million records had been exposed. Then it become 14 million. Now it’s up to 21 million federal employees, contractors, and, in many cases, their families. Social Security numbers, personal medical information, background checks – all have been exposed to the hackers, thought to work for the Chinese government.

      The agency’s original estimate was 1.1 million fingerprints.

      This is extremely sensitive information that poses an immediate danger to American spies and undercover law enforcement agents.

      As an OPM spokesman told CNNMoney in July: “It’s across federal agencies. It’s everybody.

      Hackers now have a gigantic database of American government employee fingerprints that can be used to positively identify those employees.

      Anyone with these records could check to see if a diplomat at a U.S. embassy is secretly an employee of an American intelligence agency. That person could then be targeted for arrest or assassination.

    • Clapper: ‘We Don’t Know Exactly What Was Taken in the OPM Breach’ | Foreign Policy
      http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/24/clapper-we-dont-know-exactly-what-was-taken-in-the-opm-breach

      We don’t actually know what was actually exfiltrated,” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during an appearance at Georgetown University. “So what you’re hearing about is absolutely the worst case.

      On Wednesday, OPM revealed that as many as 5.6 million fingerprint records were among the data stolen in a breach disclosed in June. That’s up from their previous estimate of 1.1 million fingerprint records. The 5.6 million people whose fingerprint records were compromised are a subset of the total number of people whose records were stolen from OPM. The total number of people whose records — including documents gathered during the course of background investigations for current, former, and prospective federal employees seeking security clearances — were compromised remains at 21.5 million.
      […]
      Clapper has said previously that the U.S. government has no indication that the stolen information has been used against American agents, and said Thursday that the intelligence community has been searching for “evidence of it turning up some place,” but it so far hasn’t.

  • Propaganda, Intelligence, and MH-17 by Ray McGovern — Antiwar.com
    http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2015/08/18/propaganda-intelligence-and-mh-17

    ... the trust-us-it-was-Putin marathon dance has now run for 13 months – and it’s getting tiresome to hear the P.R. people in the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper still claiming that the U.S. intelligence community has not revised or updated its analysis of the incident since July 22, 2014, just five days after the crash .

  • La NSA pratiquait aussi l’espionnage économique massif de son « allié » français
    http://www.latribune.fr/economie/france/la-nsa-pratiquait-aussi-l-espionnage-economique-massif-de-son-allie-franca

    Après la publication de ces information, la Direction nationale du renseignement américain (DNI) a indiqué la doctrine des États-Unis, décrite dans une déclaration de septembre 2013 :

    Ces derniers « n’utilisent pas leur capacités de renseignement pour voler les secrets commerciaux de compagnies étrangères pour le compte de compagnies américaines », afin d’améliorer la « compétitivité » ou la « rentabilité » de celles-ci.

    Les efforts du renseignement américain pour « comprendre les systèmes économiques, les politiques économiques et surveiller les activités économiques anormales » permettent aux dirigeants politiques américains de « prendre des décisions informées dans le meilleur intérêt de notre sécurité nationale », écrivait alors James Clapper, directeur de la DNI.

    Bien sûr, bien sûr : nous, on joue franc jeu, si on surveille c’est juste pour vérifier que nos amis en font autant.

    C’est marrant, ça doit à peu de choses près la principale motivation des mêmes activités à la DGSE.

  • L’#Iran disparaît de la liste américaine des menaces terroristes | The Times of Israël
    http://fr.timesofisrael.com/liran-ne-figure-plus-dans-la-liste-americaine-des-menaces-terroris

    Un rapport annuel remis récemment au Sénat américain par James Clapper, le directeur du Renseignement national, a retiré l’Iran et le #Hezbollah de la liste des menaces terroristes ; ils y figuraient en bonne place dans des rapports similaire pendant des années.

    La contre-attaque se met en place dans les #MSM (titre trompeur à l’appui) http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/mullen-iran-more-difficult-challenge-isis-n323851

  • La #NSA a eu accès à des données de citoyens américains
    http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2014/04/02/la-nsa-confirme-avoir-collecte-des-donnees-de-citoyens-americains_4393941_65

    Dans une lettre adressée le 28 mars au sénateur démocrate Ron Wyden, James Clapper, le directeur du renseignement national admet que la NSA a espionné les communications de citoyens américains alors qu’elle cherchait à obtenir des informations sur des « cibles » à l’étranger, sans en donner le nombre exact, indique le Guardian.

    Sans en avoir le mandat express de la justice, la NSA a donc bien espionné les courriers électroniques et les méta-données d’appels téléphoniques passés aux Etats-Unis (numéro appelé, durée et horaire de l’appel, mais pas les enregistrements des conversations). Le document n’indique pas la fréquence de ce type d’espionnage. M. Clapper souligne dans son courrier que ces activités avaient fait l’objet d’un contrôle, et que rien n’avait été trouvé à redire.

    Plus quelques chiffres sur l’activité 2013

    Après les révélations d’Edward Snowden, l’opérateur Verizon, Google, Facebook et Apple, désireux de regagner la confiance de leurs utilisateurs, ont rendu public le nombre de requêtes secrètes déposées par le renseignement américain. Toutes ces demandes étaient légales car elles ont été faites dans le cadre de mandats délivrés par le tribunal chargé de contrôler les opérations du renseignement (FISA).

    • Google. Des informations ont été prises sur 9 000 à 10 000 comptes Google pendant les six premiers mois de 2013, et sur 12 000 à 13 000 comptes lors des six mois les précédant.
    • Facebook. Des mandats ont été reçus concernant 5 000 à 6 000 comptes sur les six premiers mois de 2013, 4 000 à 6 000 sur les six mois les précédant.
    • Microsoft. Le groupe a révélé sur son blog officiel avoir reçu des demandes de la FISA sur 15 000 à 16 000 comptes d’utilisateurs les six premiers mois de 2013.
    • Yahoo !. Des informations ont été demandées sur 30 000 à 31 000 comptes.
    • Apple. Des demandes ont été reçues pour moins de 249 utilisateurs lors de la première partie de l’année 2013. Les informations demandées par la NSA portaient sur les carnets d’adresses de ces personnes et non sur le contenu des appareils.

    Quelques brèches dans le mur du secret…

  • Truth in journalism
    http://warincontext.org/2014/02/12/truth-in-journalism

    In a report exemplifying the kind of journalism-as-stenography in which David Sanger specializes, comes this observation about the pressures under which Director of National Intelligence James Clapper now operates — thanks to Edward Snowden:

    The continuing revelations have posed a particular challenge to Mr. Clapper, a retired Air Force general and longtime intelligence expert, who has made no secret of his dislike for testifying in public. Critics have charged that he deliberately misled Congress and the public last year when asked if the intelligence agencies collected information on domestic communications. He was forced by the Snowden revelations to correct his statements, and he has been somewhat more careful in his testimony.

    “Critics have charged” that Clapper perjured himself in Congress, but as studiously impartial journalists, Sanger (and his colleague Eric Schmitt) are incapable of making any determination on that matter.

    #journalisme_MSM

  • Edward #Snowden, Whistle-Blower - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/opinion/edward-snowden-whistle-blower.html?_r=1
    #surveillance

    In retrospect, Mr. Snowden was clearly justified in believing that the only way to blow the whistle on this kind of intelligence-gathering was to expose it to the public and let the resulting furor do the work his superiors would not. Beyond the mass collection of phone and Internet data, consider just a few of the violations he revealed or the legal actions he provoked :

    ■ The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor.

    ■ The agency broke into the communications links of major data centers around the world, allowing it to spy on hundreds of millions of user accounts and infuriating the Internet companies that own the centers. Many of those companies are now scrambling to install systems that the N.S.A. cannot yet penetrate.

    ■ The N.S.A. systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust.

    ■ His leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.)

    ■ The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the N.S.A. for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices, according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court.

    ■ A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror.

    The shrill brigade of his critics say Mr. Snowden has done profound damage to intelligence operations of the United States, but none has presented the slightest proof that his disclosures really hurt the nation’s security. Many of the mass-collection programs Mr. Snowden exposed would work just as well if they were reduced in scope and brought under strict outside oversight, as the presidential panel recommended.

    When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government. That’s why Rick Ledgett, who leads the N.S.A.’s task force on the Snowden leaks, recently told CBS News that he would consider amnesty if Mr. Snowden would stop any additional leaks. And it’s why President Obama should tell his aides to begin finding a way to end Mr. Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home.