US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

[c1ue]

Obama: "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker"

translation: "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker because I don't have to. I'll just get a bunch of European nations to deny passage to an Ecuadoran diplomatic transport plane on the off chance Snowden might be on board. If My Man Eacho can bundle me $600,000 - he can search the Ecuadoran presidential jet easily."

Holder: "the United States will not seek the death penalty for Mr. Snowden should he return to the United States"

translation: "the United States will not seek the death penalty for Mr. Snowden should he return to the United States, because that would be letting him off too easy. A 30 year term of solitary confinement would be much better disincentive for other future treasonous acts of whistleblowing, and would not tarnish the liberal facade of this Democratic administration.

[c1ue]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

More Snowden fallout - probably more important than 'is he or isn't he a traitor'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...th-of-internet

In a way, it doesn't matter why the media lost the scent. What matters is that they did. So as a public service, let us summarise what Snowden has achieved thus far.

Without him, we would not know how the National Security Agency (NSA) had been able to access the emails, Facebook accounts and videos of citizens across the world; or how it had secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; or how, through a secret court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data.

Similarly, without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would there be – finally – a serious debate between Europe (excluding the UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US) and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.

These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of Snowden's activities. As far as most of our mass media are concerned, though, they have gone largely unremarked. Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap – speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in which it is heading.

As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.

The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.

Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.

Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib."

That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also have implications for you and me.

They tell us, for example, that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again.

And if you think that that sounds like the paranoid fantasising of a newspaper columnist, then consider what Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, had to say on the matter recently. "If businesses or governments think they might be spied on," she said, "they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn't matter – any smart person doesn't want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally and providers will miss out on a great opportunity."

Puts this into better perspective:

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/art...ica-2013-03-27

A marine cable connecting Brazil, Russia, India and China with 21 countries in Africa, valued at an estimated $800 000 to $1.5-billion, is a viable project that would position the Brics countries strategically from a connectivity point of view, telecommunications company i3 Africa chairperson Andrew Mthembu said.

The Brics Cable project would also go a long way to addressing the fact that, without robust information and communication technology infrastructure, an investment in a developing economy could not be successful.

Speaking during a breakaway session on infrastructure development at the Brics Business Forum, a supporting event leading up to the fith yearly Brics Summit, held in Durban in 2013, Mthembu said the marine cable project had moved beyond the conception stage and he was confident that it would go ahead.

He said his company had embarked on a detailed feasibility study last year. There had been a significant amount of interest from companies in the Brics bloc. He pointed out that sound communications infrastructure was particularly important for large infrastructure projects and the creation of a Brics development bank, the creation of which was under discussion at the summit.

At present, all Brics countries communicated through hubs, which were often located in Europe. A marine cable would enable the Brics countries to communicate directly on a “south-south basis”.

Mthembu said there were opportunities to connect this marine cable with other big cables outside Africa. “We will create opportunities for data centres to be built in our Brics countries and for clouds to be hubbed in Brics countries, thereby creating opportunities for employment and high-tech skills development,” he added.

Think this project got a boost? Original article was from March - before the Snowden revelations.

[shiny!]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

A bit off-topic, but how vulnerable are these marine cables to sabotage? IIRC, some have already been sabotaged, which caused some pretty inconvenient disruption.

[c1ue]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

A bit off-topic, but how vulnerable are these marine cables to sabotage? IIRC, some have already been sabotaged, which caused some pretty inconvenient disruption.

They get cut fairly frequently by accident:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201202281238.html

Internet services in the country have been severely affected after an illegally anchored ship on Saturday cut two submarine cables connecting Kenya to the rest of the world. The East African Marine System (TEAMS) that carries the bulk of Kenya's traffic will take about three weeks to repair, the cables general manager Joel Tanui said.

Thing is - you can't protect marine fiber optic cables, so attacking someone else's just means yours get the chop soon afterwards.

[shiny!]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

They get cut fairly frequently by accident:

http://allafrica.com/stories/201202281238.html



Thing is - you can't protect marine fiber optic cables, so attacking someone else's just means yours get the chop soon afterwards.

Thanks, c1ue. If marine cables are cut like what happened with Kenya, can the country still have internet communication within itself? Would satellite still work?

[c1ue]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

Thanks, c1ue. If marine cables are cut like what happened with Kenya, can the country still have internet communication within itself? Would satellite still work?

People within Kenya, or whatever system is on each side of the cut cable, can still communicate - just not elsewhere. Unfortunately, a lot of the world's data resides in specific areas - i.e. the US and Europe.

Satellite wouldn't be affected, but as far as I know, satellite does not have anywhere near the bandwidth these marine fiber optic cables have. Satellite is also a lot more expensive.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

A bit off-topic, but how vulnerable are these marine cables to sabotage? IIRC, some have already been sabotaged, which caused some pretty inconvenient disruption.

That reminds me of a great story from the cold war, involving damage to underwater cables.

Back in the 1960's and 70's the Soviet Union built the Kamchatka Peninsula into an important center for military operations. It had access to deep water for submarines and surface ships; was close to the USA for staging nuclear weapons and the bombers and missiles to deliver them; and was a perfect spot for USSR radar and listening systems.

The USA, therefore, kept a close eye on Kamchatka, and was especially keen to hear the USSR military chatter between Kamchatka and Moscow. The USSR were no fools, so they kept their sensitive conversations off the radio and instead used an undersea cable that ran towards Moscow, passing under the Sea of Okhotsk.



Enter a certain US submarine captain. He had grown up on the Mississippi river, and he remembered the many signs on the river banks warning all the ship captains not to drop anchor right here because there was an underwater cable that could be damaged. The US submarine captain speculated that the Soviets, too, would not want their expensive top-secret military communications cable cut by the anchors of fishing boats and cargo vessels, and they would likely have signs on the shore with the same warnings at the spots where that military cable went into the Sea of Okhotsk on both sides. Most likely up where the crossing was narrow in the Shelikohv Gulf.

Of course, those waters are well within the territory of the USSR and strictly off-limits to US naval vessels, doubly so near those military sites. I'm told that US nuclear attack submarines spend a great deal of their time spying. Our submarine captain got the mission he proposed, and took his boat into the Sea of Okhotsk. He moved near shore, slowly, at periscope depth, with a sailor always scanning the shore looking for a sturdy sign forbidding a ship to drop anchor.

It was a pretty bold thing to do - not much different, really, than if a Soviet sub had gone into Chesapeake Bay and up the Potomac to have a look in the windows of the Pentagon.

Sure enough, the captain found his anchor warning signs in short order and they did mark that military cable. For the next 20 years or so the USA listened to that cable covertly. I'm told our nuclear subs would sneak back in from time to time to swap out listening devices perched on that cable, each one a little bigger and better than the last.



In one of the famous US spy cases in the 1980s, Ronald Pelton sold that secret to the USSR.
The cable went suddenly quiet; the USSR took that last listening device to examine; and US nuclear submarines stopped sneaking into the Sea of Okhotsk.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
http://www.specialoperations.com/Ope.../ivybells.html

[jk]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

the guardian article, referring to the future of the internet, says: "now, balkanisation is a certainty." that sounds right. i wonder if the balkanization of communication enhances the likelihood of a balkanized system for whatever is going to replace the current ims.

(it seems like the contenders to replace the primacy of the dollar is 1. a globalized currency basket, 2. the same kind of basket with the addition of a commodities component, 3. a pure commodity or pm standard, 4. a regionalized ["balkanized"] system of trade and currency, i.e. an americas zone in the western hemisphere with the dollar as its standard plus a eurozone plus a yuan zone.)

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

the guardian article, referring to the future of the internet, says: "now, balkanisation is a certainty." that sounds right. i wonder if the balkanization of communication enhances the likelihood of a balkanized system for whatever is going to replace the current ims.

(it seems like the contenders to replace the primacy of the dollar is 1. a globalized currency basket, 2. the same kind of basket with the addition of a commodities component, 3. a pure commodity or pm standard, 4. a regionalized ["balkanized"] system of trade and currency, i.e. an americas zone in the western hemisphere with the dollar as its standard plus a eurozone plus a yuan zone.)

A Balkanized International Monetary System would seem to require an extra layer of tolls and fees at the borders. China and the US would still presumably trade with each other, and both of them would still buy oil in the middle east. They would need a new clearinghouse to exchange regional currency. Perhaps the Kleptokrats see that as one more desirable opportunity for graft and corruption.

[jk]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

A Balkanized International Monetary System would seem to require an extra layer of tolls and fees at the borders. China and the US would still presumably trade with each other, and both of them would still buy oil in the middle east. They would need a new clearinghouse to exchange regional currency. Perhaps the Kleptokrats see that as one more desirable opportunity for graft and corruption.

i think at the boundaries of the balkanized system, settlement would be in real goods or pms, while within each zone a regional fiat currency would be used.

[c1ue]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

The balkanization of the international monetary system was going to happen sooner or later anyway. The ongoing abuse by the US of its primacy in the present system is accelerating what is an inevitable process.

However, balkanization is a negative terminology for something which isn't clearly negative. If we instead look at the future as decentralization - where no single nation can destabilize the entire world's economy by its unilateral recklessness, is this a bad thing?

There are also some considerations regarding the composition of this future system.

1) Dollars as non-oil trade basis. This is clearly trending down for all transactions not directly involving the US. Furthermore the US' role in world trade is also clearly shrinking, which decreases the US' ability to act like the market maker in the world economy. In 1970, trade was 10% of the US economy. Today it is 25% even as the US' share of world GDP has fallen from its peak in 1985. How much of this 25% will suffer from loss of the US dollar as a trade standard is the real question.

2) Dollars for the oil trade (Petro-dollars). This is less clear; the US still has kept its implicit bargain with Saudi Arabia and Co - however, the impact of shale oil, as well as increasing demand from the 2nd and 3rd world, does make me wonder just how beneficial the petro-dollar relationship will be in the short term.

[don]

Re: US statements about Snowden: pre and post translation

from the Guardian

Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is

The press has lost the plot over the Snowden revelations. The fact is that the net is finished as a global network and that US firms' cloud services cannot be trusted



Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media, for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower.


In a way, it doesn't matter why the media lost the scent. What matters is that they did. So as a public service, let us summarise what Snowden has achieved thus far.


Without him, we would not know how the National Security Agency (NSA) had been able to access the emails, Facebook accounts and videos of citizens across the world; or how it had secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; or how, through a secret court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data.

Similarly, without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would there be – finally – a serious debate between Europe (excluding the UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US) and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.


These are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of Snowden's activities. As far as most of our mass media are concerned, though, they have gone largely unremarked. Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap – speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in which it is heading.


As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.


The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.


Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.


Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib."


That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also have implications for you and me.


They tell us, for example, that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again.


And if you think that that sounds like the paranoid fantasising of a newspaper columnist, then consider what Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, had to say on the matter recently. "If businesses or governments think they might be spied on," she said, "they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn't matter – any smart person doesn't want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally and providers will miss out on a great opportunity."


Spot on. So when your chief information officer proposes to use the Amazon or Google cloud as a data-store for your company's confidential documents, tell him where to file the proposal. In the shredder.