[governance] More perspectives on US Digital Panopticon

[Riaz K Tayob]

Two interesting articles below...

**Spy vs Spy in the cyber age*
By Brendan O'Reilly

Despite very public pressure, US President Barack Obama and his Chinese 
counterpart, Xi Jinping, failed to reach an agreement on combating 
cyber-espionage at their weekend meeting in California. Beijing and 
Washington are trading increasingly harsh accusations of launching 
state-sanctioned cyber attacks. Meanwhile, a covert program of Internet 
data mining by US intelligence agencies has been revealed by a young 
whistleblower, who has taken refuge in China's Special Administrative 
Region of Hong Kong.

China and the United States are contesting a vast and uncharted arena of 
superpower rivalry. The cyber war has already begun.

Obama and Xi left their summit in Palm Springs with a series of*


important agreements, covering such pressing issues as the North Korean 
nuclear weapons program and global warming. However, Obama's efforts to 
persuade Xi to work out an agreement on cyber-espionage were entirely 
unsuccessful.

To avoid electronic eavesdropping, Xi and his delegation decided at the 
last minute to stay in a downtown hotel away from the summit's grounds. 
If he wants to prevent American intelligence from accessing his personal 
communications, Xi would be wise to avoid Facebook and Gmail.

In recent weeks, Washington and Beijing have very publicly exchanged 
allegations of cyber malfeasance. Before the Palm Springs summit, a 
White House official stressed, "Governments are responsible for cyber 
attacks that take place from within their borders. As a part of our 
interests in protecting US businesses, we will raise with China any 
concerns we have about intrusions we believe emanate from China." [1]

The Chinese government responded with counter-accusations of American 
cyber attacks directed against China. A report in People's Daily claimed 
that in the first five months of 2013, more than 4,000 US-based control 
servers "hijacked" 2.91 million mainframes in China. Huang Chengqing, 
the director of the Chinese National Computer Network Emergency Response 
Technical Team, declared "We have mountains of data, if we wanted to 
accuse the US, but it's not helpful in solving the problem. The 
importance of handling Internet security cases keeps rising, but the 
issue can only be settled through communication, not confrontation." [2]

Meanwhile, reports of a vast operation by American intelligence to 
collect information from the world's leading Internet firms have 
overshadowed the extensive cyber-espionage and raids carried out between 
the US and China.

The PRISM program is a mechanism for direct US government access to the 
data of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, Apple, and Paltalk. It 
allows US intelligence to view emails, search queries, online chats, 
photos, and video calls hosted by the major platforms for online 
communications - everything from Gmail and Hotmail to YouTube, and 
Skype. According to classified documents, the NSA collected nearly 3 
billion pieces of electronic information from US computer servers in the 
period of just one month. [3]

According to the source of the intelligence leak, "The NSA has built an 
infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this 
capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically 
ingested without targeting." [4]

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released a fact sheet 
meant to justify the once-secret program, claiming PRISM "facilitates 
the targeted acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning 
foreign targets located outside the United States under court 
oversight". For the program to collect data, it must have "an 
appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose" and target a 
person "reasonably believed to be outside the United States". [5]

In other words, any potentially useful electronic communications of any 
human being outside the United States are fair game. According to the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the president of the United 
States has the authority to target foreign communications without a 
court order for the period of one year. No wonder the NSA can collect 
three billion pieces of data in a month.

China's blocking of major social networking, news, and political 
websites - the so-called "Great Firewall of China" - has long been the 
target of Western, and particularly American, condemnation. In a 2010 
speech, then secretary of state Hillary Clinton warned that a "new 
information curtain is descending across much of the world... In the 
last year, we've seen a spike in threats to the free flow of 
information. China, Tunisia and Uzbekistan have stepped up their 
censorship of the Internet." [6]

The most popular US-based websites blocked by the Chinese government are 
Facebook and YouTube. Google search and Gmail, while not entirely 
jammed, are frequently disrupted by China's Great Firewall.

It seems that Clinton's much-championed "free flow of information" 
includes an unquenchable flood of personal data into the NSA's massive 
information farms. By blocking Facebook and YouTube, Beijing has 
inadvertently protected the private information of Chinese citizens (at 
least from Washington), and denied the US government billions of pieces 
of potentially useful data about the Chinese economy, military, and 
government.

Roughly 700 million Chinese people are active on the Internet, out of a 
worldwide total of 2.4 billion Internet users. In other words, fully 29% 
of all Internet users live in China. Savvy Chinese netizens can easily 
find means to get beyond the Great Firewall. However, the inconvenience 
of these methods, and the availability of domestic Chinese alternatives, 
has greatly restricted the penetration of Facebook and YouTube into the 
Chinese market.

The PRISM program has provided Beijing with a golden justification for 
continuing to restrict access to certain websites. Washington's calls 
for freedom of information are more likely to be viewed in a 
hypocritical light in the wake of the PRISM program's public outing.

*A refuge in the Middle Kingdom?*
The electronic rivalry between Washington and Beijing is becoming yet 
more intense, as the whistleblower who exposed the PRISM program takes 
refuge in Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden, a former CIA-employee, chose Hong Kong as his port of 
call before leaking the classified documents. When coming public about 
his own identity, he cited the city's "reputation for freedom", while in 
the same breath saying this distinction comes "in spite of the People's 
Republic of China". [7] Snowden has cited Iceland as a possible 
long-term destination for asylum.

However, a former CIA employee, no matter how ideologically committed to 
the cause of freedom, is unlikely to be naive. The recent history of 
"extraordinary rendition" of terror suspects from America's democratic 
Western allies probably factored into Snowden's decision to decision to 
go East.

Choosing Hong Kong may serve a dual purpose - Snowden hopes to take 
advantage of both the autonomous city's open judicial process and the 
implied protection of China's clandestine security forces.

In the light of intelligence officials joking about "disappearing" 
Snowden and a reporter covering the PRISM story [8], Snowden might 
reasonably chose to trust Beijing over Reykjavik for his personal 
protection. While it may seem ironic for an American champion of open 
information to take refugee in China, politics makes for strange 
bedfellows.

Former CIA official Robert Baer has even gone so far as to say the 
entire leak of PRISM was orchestrated by Beijing: "On the face of it, it 
looks like it's under some sort of Chinese control. ... You have to ask 
what's going on? I mean, China is not a friendly country, and every 
aspect of that country is controlled." [9] Baer cited both Snowden's 
port of call and the timing of the leak - coming at the same days as the 
Obama-Xi summit - as being particularly suspicious.

If indeed Snowden has defected to Beijing, this would represent a huge 
coup for China in the emerging realm of cyber rivalry. Already the PRISM 
program has helped to justify China's Internet censorship and expose a 
large degree of official hypocrisy on the part of the American government.

The most dangerous aspect of cyber espionage remains its unpredictable 
nature. There are no clear rules of engagement differentiating between 
routine intelligence gathering and outright aggression. Both Beijing and 
Washington have a clear interest in defining red lines to prevent 
uncontrollable escalation.

However, this very necessary discussion is probably best conducted in 
secret. Washington's vocal denunciations of Beijing's aggressive cyber 
activities have served little purpose other than angering Beijing, 
exposing American hypocrisy abroad, and justifying increased domestic 
control and surveillance over the Internet by the American government.

The cyber war is already here. America's PRISM and China's Great 
Firewall may be signs of what is to come in a developing electronic arms 
race.

/*Notes:*/
1. Obama to press China's Xi to act against cyber spying 
<http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/04/us-usa-china-idUSBRE9531E220130604>, 
Reuters, June 4, 2013.
2. China is a victim of hacking attacks 
<http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90883/8271052.html>, People's Daily, 
June 5, 2013.
3. Parts of NSA's PRISM program declassified 
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/08/dni-declassifies-prism-data-collection-nsa-secret-program-obama/2403999/>, 
USA Today, June 8, 2013.
4. Edward Snowden, NSA files source: 'If they want to get to you, in 
time they will' 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why>, 
The Guardian, June 9, 2013.
5. Parts of NSA's PRISM program declassified 
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/08/dni-declassifies-prism-data-collection-nsa-secret-program-obama/2403999/>, 
USA Today, June 8, 2013.
6. Clinton: Internet 'information curtain' is dropping 
<http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/21/clinton.internet/index.html>, 
CNN, January 21, 2010.
7. Edward Snowden, NSA files source: 'If they want to get to you, in 
time they will' 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-why>, 
The Guardian, June 9, 2013.
8. Report: Intel officials allegedly 'joke' about making NSA leaker 
'disappear' 
<http://www.examiner.com/article/report-intel-officials-allegedly-joke-about-making-nsa-leaker-disappear>, 
Examiner, June 10, 2013.
9. Ex-CIA Official Baer: China Could be Behind NSA Leaks 
<http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/snowden-guardian-nsa-leak/2013/06/09/id/508874>, 
Newsmax, June 9, 2013.

/*Brendan P O'Reilly* is a China-based writer and educator from Seattle. 
He is author of /The Transcendent Harmony. /He may be reached at 
oreillyasia at gmail.com. /

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. 
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

*
THE ROVING EYE*
*Digital Blackwater rules*
By Pepe Escobar

The judgment of Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg is definitive; "There 
has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward 
Snowden's release of NSA material". And that includes the release of the 
Pentagon Papers themselves. Here is the 12-minute video 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video> 
by The Guardian where Snowden details his motives.

By now, everything swirling around the US National Security Agency (NSA) 
points to a black box in a black hole. The black box is the NSA 
headquarters itself in Fort Meade, Maryland. The

black hole is an area that would include the suburbs of Virginia's 
Fairfax County near the CIA but mostly the intersection of the Baltimore 
Parkway and Maryland Route 32.
There one finds a business park a mile away from the NSA which Michael 
Hayden, a former NSA director (1999-2005) told Salon's Tim Shorrock is 
"the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet". [1] Hayden 
coined it "Digital Blackwater".

Here is a decent round up of key questions 
<http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-black-hole-5-basic-things-we-still-dont-know-the-governments-snoop>still 
not answered about the black hole. But when it comes to how a 29-year 
old IT wizard with little formal education has been able to access a 
batch of ultra-sensitive secrets of the US intelligence-national 
security complex, that's a no-brainer; it's all about the gung-ho 
privatization of spying - referred to by a mountain of euphemisms of the 
"contractor reliance" kind. In fact the bulk of the hardware and 
software used by the dizzying network of 16 US intelligence agencies is 
privatized.

A Washington Post investigation found out that US homeland security, 
counter-terror and spy agencies do business with over 1,900 companies. 
[2] An obvious consequence of this contractor tsunami - hordes of 
"knowledge" high-tech proletarians in taupe cubicles - is their 
indiscriminate access to ultra-sensitive security. A systems 
administrator like Snowden can have access to practically everything.

"Revolving door" does not even begin to explain the system. Snowden was 
one of 25,000 employees of Booz Allen Hamilton ("We are visionaries") 
for the past three months. [3] Over 70% of these employees, according to 
the company, have a government security clearance; 49% are top secret 
(as in Snowden's case), or higher. The former director of national 
intelligence Mike McConnell is now a Booz Allen vice president. The new 
director of national intelligence, the sinister-looking retired general 
James Clapper, is a former Booz Allen executive.

At least US - and world - public opinion may now have a clearer idea of 
how a Pashtun girl in Waziristan is obliterated by a "targeted strike". 
It's all a matter of this privatized NSA-collected meta-data and matrix 
multiplication leading to a "signature". The "terrorist" Pashtun girl of 
course may eventually morph in the near future into a dangerous 
tree-hugger or a vocal political protester.

*It's all China's fault*
True to form, as soon as Snowden revealed his identity US corporate 
media privileged shooting the messenger instead of poring over the 
message. That included everything from cheap character assassination 
<http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/10-things-to-know-about-edward-snowden-92491.html?hp=r2> 
to the usual former CIA asset spinning that in Washington many were 
looking at Snowden as an agent in a potential Chinese espionage plot 
<http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/10/Former-CIA-Officer-Intel-Considering-NSA-Whistleblower-Potential-Chinese-Espionage>. 


Much has also been made of the John Le Carre-esque plot twist of Snowden 
leaving his tranquil life in Hawaii and flying to Hong Kong on May 20, 
because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of 
political dissent". Hong Kong-based blogger Wen Yunchao memorably 
described it as Snowden having "left the tiger's den and entered the 
wolf's lair". Yet Snowden's visa stamp at Chek Lap Kok airport lasts for 
90 days - plenty of time to ponder the next move.

Since 1996, before the British handover to China, an extradition treaty 
applies between the tiger and the wolf. [4] The US Department of Justice 
is already surveying its options. It's important to remember that the 
Hong Kong judicial system is independent from China's - according to the 
Deng Xiaoping-conceptualized "one country, two systems". As much as 
Washington may go for extraditing Snowden, he may also apply for 
political asylum. In both cases he may stay in Hong Kong for months, in 
fact years.

The Hong Kong government cannot extradite anyone claiming he will be 
persecuted in his country of origin. And crucially, article 6 of the 
treaty stipulates, "a fugitive offender shall not be surrendered if the 
offence of which that person is accused or was convicted is an offence 
of a political character." Another clause stipulates that a fugitive 
shall not be surrendered if that implicates "the defense, foreign 
affairs or essential public interest or policy" of - guess who - the 
People's Republic of China.

So then we may have a case of Hong Kong and Beijing having to reach an 
agreement. Yet even if they decided to extradite Snowden, he could argue 
in court this was "an offence of a political character". The bottom line 
- this could drag on for years. And it's too early to tell how Beijing 
would play it for maximum leverage. A "win-win" situation from a Chinese 
point of view would be to balance its commitment to absolute 
non-interference in foreign domestic affairs, its desire not to rock the 
fragile bilateral relation boat, but also what non-pivoting move the US 
government would offer in return.

*The ultimate Panopticon*
The usual rabid right-wingers in the US predictably skip the fact of how 
Snowden does not see intelligence analysts - and even the US government, 
per se - as inherent "bad guys". [5] What he stressed is how they all 
work under a false premise; "If a surveillance program produces 
information of value, it legitimizes it ... In one step, we've managed 
to justify the operation of the Panopticon".

Oh yes, make no mistake; Snowden has carefully read his Michel Foucault 
(he also stressed his revulsion facing "the capabilities of this 
architecture of oppression").

Foucault's deconstruction of the Panopticon's architecture is now a 
classic (see it here <http://cryptome.org/cartome/panopticon1.htm> in an 
excerpt of his 1975 masterpiece /Discipline and Punish/). The Panopticon 
was the ultimate surveillance system, designed by utilitarian 
philosopher Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The Panopticon - a tower 
surrounded by cells, a pre-Orwellian example of "architecture of 
oppression" - was not originally conceived for the surveillance of a 
prison, but of a factory crammed with landless peasants on forced labor.

Oh, but those were rudimentary proto-capitalist days. Welcome to the 
(savagely privatized) future, where the NSA black hole, "Digital 
Blackwater", lords over all as the ultimate Panopticon.

/*Notes*/:
1. Digital Blackwater: Meet the Contractors Who Analyze Your Personal 
Data 
<http://www.alternet.org/digital-blackwater-meet-contractors-who-analyze-your-personal-data?paging=off>, 
Alternet, June 10, 2013.
2. Top Secret America 
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/>, Washington 
Post, June, 2010.
3. See here <http://www.boozallen.com> for company website.
4. See here <https://bulk.resource.org/gpo.gov/documents/105/td003.pdf> 
for extradition treaty.
5. Code name 'Verax': Snowden, in exchanges with Post reporter, made 
clear he knew risks 
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/code-name-verax-snowden-in-exchanges-with-post-reporter-made-clear-he-knew-risks/2013/06/09/c9a25b54-d14c-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story_1.html>, 
Washington Post, June 10, 2013.

/*Pepe Escobar* is the author of/ Globalistan: How the Globalized World 
is Dissolving into Liquid War 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978813820/simpleproduction/ref=nosim> 
(Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during 
the surge 
<http://www.amazon.com/Red-Zone-Blues-snapshot-Baghdad/dp/0978813898>. 
His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan 
<http://www.amazon.com/Obama-Does-Globalistan-Pepe-Escobar/dp/1934840831/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233698286&sr=8-1> 
(Nimble Books, 2009).

/He may be reached at/ pepeasia at yahoo.com.

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. 
Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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