U.S. Congress requests ban on Chinese Tech Companies

Despite the warning from Congress, the United States allows Chinese companies to manufacture military and computer technologies which are equipped with back doors for spying purposes.

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | OCTOBER 8, 2012

Chinese telecom firms Huawei and ZTE are a threat to American security. That’s the conclusion of a report completed by the Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Congress after a year of research.

According to the commission, it is impossible to ensure that the two groups are independent of the Chinese government and therefore can be used to undermine U.S. security. “On the basis of classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE can not guarantee their independence from the influence of a foreign state, so it poses a threat to U.S. security,” says the report.

The commission believes that the Chinese government could use these two groups for the rapid growth of economic and military espionage, or cyber attacks. Huawei has answered that 70% of its business is in China. The company works in 150 countries and in none of those it has had any problems. Of course, the United States is not any country and the behind the stage war between these two foes has not stopped.

According to U.S. research commission, the two groups did not provide satisfactory answers to parliamentary questions on their relations with the Chinese government. “China has the means, the opportunity and the motivation to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes,” according to the report to be released Monday.

In conclusion, the commission said that the U.S. “should block acquisitions and mergers involving Huawei and ZTE because they would pose a threat to the national security interests of the United States. “U.S. government systems of communication,” the commission concludes , “especially in sensitive areas should not include equipment or components from Huawei and ZTE.”

But the Backdoor is left Open

Whether the commission’s concern is legitimate or not, the truth is that the report comes too late and too short about the way the Chinese have been able to infiltrate the U.S. Huawei and ZTE are not the only two companies manufacturing equipment for the U.S. government and its military. According to current and former intelligence sources in the United States, the Chinese have now have the capacity to access much of the equipment produced in China and that is being used on American territory.

The Chinese do so by utilizing previously installed components that allow them to remotely access the equipment from abroad. This revelation was first presented by Lignet, an intelligence company that detailed how communications equipment can potentially be disabled by the Chinese. The devices installed in the machines are popularly knows as backdoors because they provide hidden access to anyone who knows how to use them.

Mundane technologies fabricated in China and other Asian countries have already been demonstrated to have secret access points which can be used by technology companies, at the request of government agencies to spy on users. The same situation occurs with military grade equipment, for example, which is manufactured abroad for the United States government. Both hardware and software can be set up to enable outsiders to get into communication and weapons systems just as government agencies use the cameras built in computers and cellphones or GPS technology to monitor people’s every move.

Backdoors installed in communication devices for consumers or government use can be exploited for spying purposes to gain control of information, movement and habits, for example. Both Huawei and ZTE have been informally accused of installing microchips and stealth circuitry to enable remote control of devices manufactured in their factories. Huawei is a Chinese corporation that occupies its resources to offer networking and communication equipment and services. This company is only second to technology giant Ericsson as a provider of mobile telecommunications equipment and software.

But Huawei’s reach goes beyond American territory. It is a key provider of equipment and services that have to do with almost everything to other developed nations. It is similar to what USAID represents for the United States. The organization is an American funded front to infiltrate other countries under the auspices of humanitarian aid. Suspicion about USAID’s activities in several countries had gotten it kicked out of several countries. The most recent one is Russia.

Well known technology companies such as Symantec held partnerships with Huawei in the past, but the security software enterprise apparently ended that relationship due to the security concerns posed by the U.S. government. Another notable client of the Chinese company is the government of Iran, which has prompted some people to think that the Iranians themselves could use the backdoors to infiltrate American infrastructure. So far, however, it’s been the Americans and Israelis who have attacked Iran in several occasions with computer bugs known as Trapwire, Stuxnet and others.

Given this scenario, it sounds logical to hear the American government talking about strengthening internet security for the sake of protecting its infrastructure. The part that is not so logical is that the U.S. government allows the same technology companies to continue manufacturing sensible portions of that infrastructure, which is what opens the door to internet insecurity. Another issue is that the Americans also intend to clamp down on internet freedom by using cyber threats as a justification to ban certain portions of the world wide web.

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U.S. Intelligence Weakening Internet for Takeover

As in other occasions, exercises are being conducted before full a takeover.  Will the next false-flag attack come to fruition on the net? The Cybersecurity Bill gives Obama the power to shut down companies and the World Wide Web as a whole.

1500 AM

In places like Arlington, Va.; Washington, D.C.; across the U.S. and around the world, a global cybersecurity exercise is underway designed to test the limits not only of the “network of networks,” but the ingenuity of the people charged with protecting it.

Welcome to Cyber Storm III.

This is the third time that the Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with other federal agencies, is holding this global cybersecurity exercise. Previous Cyber Storm exercises were conducted in 2006, and again in 2008. For the first time, DHS will manage its response to Cyber Storm III from its new National Cybersecurity and Communications and Integration Center.

Normally, this facility, located in a nondescript office building in Arlington is classified and closed to the public. But the NCCIC recently opened its doors for an inside look to let DHS officials brief the media on Cyber Storm III, a worldwide cybersecurity response exercise that has been underway since late Monday.

Brett Lambo, the director of the Cybersecurity Exercise Program with DHS’s National Cybersecurity Division, is the architect, or game master for this global cybersecurity exercise.

“The overarching philosophy,” he told reporters in a recent briefing at the NCCIC, “is that we want to come up with something that’s a core scenario, something that’s foundational to the operation of the Internet.”

Cyber Storm III includes many players in places across the U.S. and around the world:

  • Seven federal departments: Homeland Security, Defense, Commerce, Energy, Justice, Treasury and Transportation.
  • Eleven states: California, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, plus the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC). This compares with nine states that participated in Cyberstorm II.
  • Twelve international partners: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (up from four countries that participated in Cyber Storm II).

DHS officials also say 60 private sector companies will participate in Cyber Storm III, up from 40 who participated in Cyber Storm II. Firms include banking and finance, chemical, communications, defense industrial, information technology, nuclear, transportation and water.

Lambo said to preserve the exercise’s value as a vigorous test of cybersecurity preparedness, exact details of the scenario which participants will deal with over the next three days are secret. However, he did share some of the broad parameters of the scenario he helped write, and which he will administer.

“In other exercises, you do have specific attack vectors; you have a denial of service attack, you have a website defacement, or you have somebody dropping a rootkit,” he said. “But we wanted to take that up a level to say, ‘All of those things can still happen, and based on what you do, if you’re concerned about the availability of infrastructure, we can look at what happens when the infrastructure is unavailable.’”

Lambo said another way to look at the scenario is that it builds upon what they learned from previous exercises.

“In Cyber Storm I, we attacked the Internet, in Cyber Storm II, we used the Internet as the weapon, in Cyber Storm III, we’re using the Internet to attack itself,” he said.

Lambo added under normal circumstances, the Internet operates based on trust that a file, or a graphic, or a computer script is what it says it is, and comes from a trusted source. But what if that source was not what it said it was, or the source has a malicious intent?

“What we’re trying to do is compromise that chain of trust,” he said, in further explaining in broad strokes of the Cyber Storm III exercise scenario.

Lambo and his colleagues at the Cyber Storm control center also will introduce new, and hopefully unexpected conditions to the scenario to further test participants.

“We have the ability to do what we call dynamic play,” he said. “If we get a player action coming back into the exercise that is either different from what we expected it to be, if it’s something we’d like to chase down further, or if it’s something we’d like to pursue, we have the ability to write injects on the fly.”

He said those injects could include new attacks.

The Cyber Storm exercise will be conducted primarily using secure messaging systems like e-mail or text messages to relay intersects to participants and that the simulated attacks are not being conducted over a live or a virtual network now in operation on the Internet, he said.

For the U.S. government, Cyber Storm III also offers the opportunity to test the DHS’ National Cyber Incident Response Plan.

“We want to focus on information sharing issues,:” he said. “We want to know how all of the different organizations are compiling, acting on, aggregating information that they’re sharing, especially when you’re thinking about classified lines coming into the unclassified domain. There’s a concept called tearlining, in which we take classified information, and get it below the tearline, so that those without security clearances and get it, and act on it.”

The Cyber Storm III exercise is expected to conclude by Oct. 1.

Google’s Plans to Take Over The Internet Exposed!

Google’s agreement with Verizon to speed certain Internet content to users opens the door to the complete sterilization of the world wide web as a force for political change. Under Google’s takeover plan, the Internet will closely resemble cable TV, independent voices will be silenced and the entire Internet will be bought up by transnational media giants.

The Military Industrial Complex’s Scheme to Control the Internet

By Tom Burghardt

The training of thousands of qualified airmen, will form the nucleus of an elite corps of cyberwarfare operatives.

Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once famously wrote that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Acentury later, radical French philosopher Michel Foucault turned Clausewitz on his head and declared that “politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

In our topsy-turvy world where truth and lies coexist equally and sociopathic business elites reign supreme, it would hardly be a stretch to theorize that cyber war is the continuation of parapolitical crime by other means.

Through the Wormhole

In Speed and Politics, cultural theorist Paul Virilio argued that “history progresses at the speed of its weapons systems.” With electronic communications now blanketing the globe, it was only a matter of time before our political masters, (temporarily) outflanked by the subversive uses to which new media lend themselves, would deploy what Virilio called the “integral accident” (9/11 being one of many examples) and gin-up entirely new categories of threats, “Cyber Pearl Harbor” comes to mind, from which of course, they would “save us.”

That the revolving door connecting the military and the corporations who service war making is a highly-profitable redoubt for those involved, has been analyzed here at great length. With new moves to tighten the screws on the immediate horizon, and as “Change” reveals itself for what it always was, an Orwellian exercise in public diplomacy, hitting the “kill switch” serves as an apt descriptor for the new, repressive growth sector that links technophilic fantasies of “net-centric” warfare to the burgeoning “homeland security” market.

Back in March, Wired investigative journalist Ryan Singel wrote that the “biggest threat to the open internet” isn’t “Chinese hackers” or “greedy ISPs” but corporatist warriors like former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.

Having retreated to his old haunt as a senior vice president with the ultra-spooky firm Booz Allen Hamilton (a post he held for a decade before joining the Bush administration), McConnell stands to make millions as Booz Allen’s parent company, the secretive private equity powerhouse, The Carlyle Group, plans to take the firm public and sell some $300 million worth of shares, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

“With its deep ties to the defense establishment” the Journal notes, “Booz Allen has become embedded in a range of military operations such as planning war games and intelligence initiatives.” That Carlyle Group investors have made out like proverbial bandits during the endless “War on Terror” goes without saying. With “relatively low debt levels for a leveraged buyout,” the investment “has been a successful one for Carlyle, which has benefited from the U.S. government’s increasing reliance on outsourcing in defense.”

And with 15,000 employees in the Washington area, most with coveted top secret and above security clearances, Booz Allen’s clients include a panoply of secret state agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, NSA and the U.S. Air Force. With tentacles enlacing virtually all facets of the secretive world of outsourced intelligence, the firm has emerged as one of the major players in the cybersecurity niche market.

While McConnell and his minions may not know much about “SQL injection hacks,” Singel points out that what makes this spook’s spook dangerous (after all, he was NSA Director under Clinton) “is that he knows about social engineering. … And now he says we need to re-engineer the internet.”

Accordingly, Washington Technology reported in April, that under McConnell’s watchful eye, the firm landed a $14.4 million contract to build a new bunker for U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM). Chump change by Pentagon standards perhaps, but the spigot is open and salad days are surely ahead.

Now that CYBERCOM has come on-line as a “subordinate unified command” of U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), it’s dual-hatted Director, Air Force General Keith B. Alexander confirmed by the Senate and with a fourth, gleaming star firmly affixed on his epaulettes, the real fun can begin.

A denizen of the shadows with a résumé to match, Alexander is also Director of the National Security Agency (hence the appellation “dual-hatted”), the Pentagon satrapy responsible for everything from battlefield signals- and electronic intelligence (SIGINT and ELINT), commercial and industrial espionage (ECHELON) to illegal driftnet spying programs targeting U.S. citizens.

Spooky résumé aside, what should concern us here is what Alexander will actually do at the Pentagon’s new cyberwar shop.

Fact Sheet posted by STRATCOM informs us that CYBERCOM “plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes, and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.”

As Antifascist Calling previously reported, CYBERCOM’s offensive nature is underlined by the role it will play as STRATCOM’s operational cyber wing. The training of thousands of qualified airmen, as The Register revealed last month, will form the nucleus of an “elite corps of cyberwarfare operatives,” underscoring the command’s signal importance to the secret state and the corporations they so lovingly serve.

Cybersecurity: The New Corporatist “Sweet Spot”

Fueling administration moves to “beef up,” i.e. tighten state controls over the free flow of information is cash, lots of it. The Washington Post reported June 22 that “Cybersecurity, fast becoming Washington’s growth industry of choice, appears to be in line for a multibillion-dollar injection of federal research dollars, according to a senior intelligence official.”

“Delivering the keynote address at a recent cybersecurity summit sponsored by Defense Daily,” veteran Post reporter and CIA media asset, Walter Pincus, informs us that “Dawn Meyerriecks, deputy director of national intelligence for acquisition and technology, said that along with the White House Office of Science and Technology, her office is going to sponsor major research ‘where the government’s about to spend multiple billions of dollars’.”

Bingo!

According to a Defense Daily profile, before her appointment by Obama’s recently fired Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, Meyerriecks was the chief technology officer with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), described on DISA’s web site as a “combat support agency” that “engineers and provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations.”

During Defense Daily’s June 11 confab at the Marriott Hotel in Washington (generously sponsored by Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and The Analysis Group), Meyerriecks emphasized although “tons of products” have been commercially developed promising enhanced security, “there’s not an answer Band-Aid that is going to come with this.”

All the more reason then, to shower billions of taxpayer dollars on impoverished defense and security corps, while preaching “fiscal austerity” to “greedy” workers and homeowners facing a new wave of foreclosures at the hands of cash strapped banks.

“We’re starting to question whether or not the fundamental precepts are right,” Meyerriecks said, “and that’s really what, at least initially, this [new research] will be aimed at.”

Presumably, the billions about to feed the “new security paradigm,” all in the interest of “keeping us safe” of course, means “we need to be really innovative, because I think we’re going to run out of runway on our current approach,” she said.

Washington Technology reported Meyerriecks as saying “We don’t have any fixed ideas about what the answers are.” Therefore, “we’re looking for traditional and nontraditional partnering in sourcing.”

Amongst the “innovative research” fields which the ODNI, the Department of Homeland Security and one can assume, NSA/CYBERCOM, will soon be exploring are what Washington Technology describe as: “Multiple security levels for government and non-government organizations. Security systems that change constantly to create ‘moving targets’ for hackers,” and more ominously for privacy rights, coercive “methods to motivate individuals to improve their cybersecurity practices.”

The Secret State’s Internet Control Bill

Since major policy moves by administration flacks always come in waves, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy June 18, that in order to fight “homegrown terrorism” the monitoring of internet communications “is a civil liberties trade-off the U.S. government must make to beef up national security,” the Associated Press reported.

While the Obama regime has stepped-up attacks on policy critics who have disclosed vital information concealed from the American people, prosecuting whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake, who spilled the beans on corrupt NSA shenanigans with grifting defense and security corps, and wages a low-level war against WikiLeaksCryptomePublic Intelligence and other secret spilling web sites, it continues to shield those who oversaw high crimes and misdemeanors during the previous and current regimes.

In this light, Napolitano’s statement that “we can significantly advance security without having a deleterious impact on individual rights in most instances,” is a rank mendacity.

With enough airspace to fly a drone through, the Home Sec boss told the gathering “at the same time, there are situations where trade-offs are inevitable.” What those “situations” are or what “trade-offs” were being contemplated by the administration was not specified by Napolitano; arch neocon Joe Lieberman however, graciously obliged.

As “Cyber War” joins the (failed) “War on Drugs” and the equally murderous “War on Terror” as America’s latest bête noire and panic all rolled into one reeking mass of disinformation, Senators Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Susan Collins (R-ME) and Tom Carper (D-DE) introduced the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 in the Senate.

The bill empowers the Director of a new National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC), to be housed in the Department of Homeland Security, to develop a “process” whereby owners and operators of “critical infrastructure” will develop “response plans” for what the legislation calls “a national cybersecurity emergency.”

This particularly pernicious piece of legislative flotsam would hand the President the power to declare a “national cyber-emergency” at his discretion and would force private companies, internet service providers and search engines to “comply with the new risk-based security requirements.” Accordingly, “in coordination with the private sector … the President [can] authorize emergency measures to protect the nation’s most critical infrastructure if a cyber vulnerability is being exploited or is about to be exploited.”

Under terms of the bill, such “emergency measures” can force ISPs to “take action” if so directed by the President, to limit, or even to sever their connections to the internet for up to 30 days.

While the administration, so far, has not explicitly endorsed Lieberman’s bill, DHS Deputy Undersecretary Philip Reitinger told reporters that he “agreed” with the thrust of the legislation and that the Executive Branch “may need to take extraordinary measures” in the event of a “crisis.”

Under the 1934 Communications Act, the World Socialist Web Site points out, “the president may, under ‘threat of war,’ seize control of any ‘facilities or stations for wire communications’.”

“Though dated,” socialist critic Mike Ingram avers, “that definition would clearly apply to broadband providers or Web sites. Anyone disobeying a presidential order can be imprisoned for one year. In addition to making explicit the inclusion of Internet providers, a central component of the Lieberman bill is a promise of immunity from financial claims for any private company which carries through an order from the federal government.”

Under terms of the legislation, the president requires no advance notification to Congress in order to hit the internet “kill switch,” and his authority to reign supreme over the free speech rights of Americans can be extended for up to six months after the “state of war” has expired.

While the bill’s supporters, which include the secret state lobby shop, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) claim the Lieberman-Collins-Carper legislation is intended to create a “shield” to defend the U.S. and its largest corporate benefactors from the “looming threat” of a “Cyber 9/11,” one cannot discount the billions of dollars in plum government contracts that will fall into the laps of the largest defense and security corps, the primary beneficiaries of this legislation; thus the bill’s immunity provisions.

Indeed, current INSA Chairwoman, Frances Fragos Townsend, the former Bushist Homeland Security Adviser, was appointed in 2007 as National Continuity Coordinator under the auspices of National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) and was assigned responsibility for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity of government (COG) policies. As readers of Antifascist Calling are aware, plans include contingencies for a declaration of martial law in the event of a “catastrophic emergency.” Whether or not a “national cybersecurity emergency” would fall under the penumbral cone of silence envisaged by NSPD-51 to “maintain order” is anyone’s guess.

However, in a June 23 letter to Lieberman-Collins-Carper, the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and 23 other privacy and civil liberties groups, insisted that “changes are needed to ensure that cybersecurity measures do not unnecessarily infringe on free speech, privacy, and other civil liberties interests.”

CDT states that while “the bill makes it clear that it does not authorize electronic surveillance beyond that authorized in current law, we are concerned that the emergency actions that could be compelled could include shutting down or limiting Internet communications that might be carried over covered critical infrastructure systems.”

Additionally, CDT avers that the bill “requires CCI owners to share cybersecurity ‘incident’ information with DHS, which will share some of that information with law enforcement and intelligence personnel.” While Lieberman-Collins-Carper claim that “incident reporting” doesn’t authorize “any federal entity” to compel disclosure “or conduct surveillance,” the bill does not indicate what might be included in an ‘incident report’ and we are concerned that personally-identifiable information will be included.” Count on it!

In a press release, INSA’s chairwoman declared that the legislation is important in “establishing a public-private partnership to promote national cyber security priorities, strengthen and clarify authorities regarding the protection of federal civilian systems, and improve national cyber security defenses.”

Amongst the heavy-hitters who will profit financially from developing a “public-private partnership to promote national cyber security priorities,” include INSA “Founding Members” BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton, CSC, General Dynamics, HP, Lockheed Martin, ManTech International, Microsoft, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Talk about one hand washing the other! A casual glance at Washington Technology’s 2010 list of the Top 100 Federal Government Contractors provides a telling definition of the term “stakeholder”!

Blanket Surveillance Made Easy: Einstein 3′s Roll-Out

During a recent Cyberspace Symposium staged by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA), an industry lobby group chock-a-block with defense and security corps, a series of video presentations set the tone, and the agenda, for CYBERCOM and the secret state’s new push for heimatcybersecurity.

During a question and answer session “with a small group of reporters” in sync with the alarmist twaddle peddled by AFCEA and STRATCOM, Defense Systems’Amber Corrin informed us that “one possibility” floated by Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynne III to “keep us safe,” is the deployment of the privacy-killing Einstein 2 and Einstein 3 intrusion detection and prevention systems on civilian networks.

“To support such a move” Defense Systems reported, “a task force comprising industry and government information technology and defense interests … has been forged to examine issues surrounding critical infrastructure network security.”

As Antifascist Calling reported last July, Einstein 3 is based on technology developed by NSA under its Tutelage program, a subordinate project of NSA’s larger and more pervasive privacy-killing Stellar Wind surveillance operation.

Einstein 3′s deep-packet inspection technology can read the content of email messages and other private electronic communications. Those deemed “threats” to national security networks can then be forwarded to analysts and “attack signatures” (or suspect political messages) are then stored in a massive NSA-controlled database for future reference.

Federal Computer Week disclosed in March that the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) “plans to partner with a commercial Internet Service Provider and another government agency to pilot technology developed by the National Security Agency to automate the process of detecting cyber intrusions into civilian agencies’ systems.”

“The exercise,” according to reporter Ben Bain “aims to demonstrate the ability of an ISP to select and redirect Internet traffic from a participating government agency using the new technology. The exercise would also be used demonstrate the ability for U.S. CERT to apply intrusion detection and prevention to that traffic and to generate automated alerts about selected cyber threats.”

That testing is currently underway and has been undertaken under authority of National Security Presidential Directive 54, signed by President George W. Bush in 2008 in the waning days of his administration. While the vast majority of NSPD-54 is classified top secret, hints of its privacy-killing capabilities were revealed in the sanitized version of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) released by the Obama White House in March.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed suit against the government in federal court after their Freedom of Information Act request to the National Security Agency was rejected by securocrats. The agency refused to release NSPD-54, since incorporated into Obama’s CNCI, stating that they “have been withheld in their entirety” because they are “exempt from release” on grounds of “national security.”

In a follow-up piece earlier this month, Federal Computer Week disclosed that the exercise “will also allow the Homeland Security Department, which runs the Einstein program, to share monitored information with the National Security Agency, though that data is not supposed to include message content.”

“The recent combination of those three elements–reading e-mail messages, asking companies to participate in the monitoring program, and getting the NSA in the loop–has set off alarm bells about future uses of Einstein 3,” FCW’s John Zyskowski disclosed.

Those bells have been ringing for decades, tolling the death of our democratic republic. As military-style command and control systems proliferate, supporting everything from “zero-tolerance” policing and urban surveillance, the deployment of packet-sniffing technologies will soon join CCTV cameras, license plate readers and “watchlists,” thus setting the stage for the next phase of the secret state’s securitization of daily life.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Seguridad Cibernética: El Secuestro del Internet

Por Luis R. Miranda
The Real Agenda
Mayo 1, 2010

En los Estados Unidos, una versión reciente de un proyecto de ley fue aprobado por la Cámara de Representantes, que dará a la internetComisión Federal de Comunicaciones (FCC) el dominio completo de la web. El proyecto de ley incluye la creación de un nuevo sector de seguridad en Internet, que incluirá la formación, la investigación y la coordinación del ciberespacio. Esta también permite que el Instituto Nacional de Estándares y Tecnología (NIST) cree un programa para reclutar infantes hasta los 12 años para enseñarles cómo llevar a cabo vigilancia y espionaje en Internet, como parte del nuevo Ejército Cibernético. El programa de becas que financiará la capacitación enseña a los estudiantes cómo crear sistemas de gestión de identidad utilizada para controlar el acceso a la web, redes informáticas, y los datos. Asimismo, se creará una serie de normas que todos los prestadores de servicios tendrán que cumplir a fin de permanecer activos. Los usuarios de Internet tendrán que soportar interminables requisitos, que incluyen el uso de software emitido por el gobierno. Bye, bye Linux!

En la sección 12, párrafo 4, el documento dice: “Vamos a ofrecer un procedimiento para identificar a estudiantes que cursen kindergarten y hasta 12 años de edad, para participar en internados y programas de prácticas que conduzcan a la certificación de las normas de la fuerza laboral federal en tecnología de la información …” En otras palabras, cualquier persona que tiene la intención de trabajar en cualquier lugar cerca de la Internet, tendrá que ser certificado por el gobierno federal y el gobierno federal se encargará de asegurarse que contará con los “recursos humanos” para llevar a cabo este plan mediante la contratación de niños que muestren habilidad desde la temprana edad de 5 años.

Además de los programas descritos anteriormente, el proyecto de ley también habla de la creación de nuevos protocolos que proporcionará una mayor seguridad. Todo el software disponible tendrá que ser revisado primero por el gobierno y luego pre-aprobado. Una vez más, hasta la vista programas de código abierto! Coincidentemente, Google ha anunciado la creación de su propia versión de la Internet, lo que preocupa a muchos ciudadanos quienes reconocen esta iniciativa como una prueba beta de lo que será Internet 2.0. Entre algunas de las prácticas sugeridas están la adopción de la identificación biométrica para poder acceder a la web. Esto permitiría que el gobierno y sus socios tecnológicos -Microsoft, Google, AT&T, Verizon y otros- sigan de cerca a cualquier persona que utiliza la web, ya que tal identificación reduciría el trabajo de indentificación de un solo individuo en un equipo específico en una determinada ubicación. Este tipo de prácticas se han puesto en marcha por los fabricantes de tecnología en computadoras, discos duros externos y otros dispositivos, que se habilitan biométricamente. Recientemente, Microsoft presentó la última versión de su consola Xbox, que cuenta con una cámara de 5 megapíxeles que se activa en por movimiento y reconoce los movimientos del cuerpo específicos a un determinado indivíduo..

Sección 7, que habla de la concesión de licencias y la certificación de profesionales de la seguridad cibernética dice: “A partir de tres años después de la promulgación de esta ley, será ilegal para cualquier persona ejercer su actividad en los Estados Unidos o para ser empleado en los Estados Unidos como un proveedor de servicios de seguridad cibernética a cualquier agencia federal o sistema de información o de la red … si este no tiene licencia y certificado por el programa. “Leyendo más el texto del proyecto de ley, es evidente que las redes mencionadas incluyen no sólo los todos los sistemas públicos, sino también todos los privados .

La Iniciativa Nacional Integral de Seguridad Cibernética le dará al Presidente poderes de emergencia que se añade a los que ya se le concedieron en el Acto Patriota, que incluye contingencias para limitar la publicación de contenidos, acceso a Internet y cierre de la web. Algunos asesores presidenciales, así como profesionales de tecnología que apoyan el proyecto de ley intentaron amortiguar las críticas confesando que el presidente ya tiene amplios poderes para regular la Internet durante las emergencias. Nadie pensaría que la intención del gobierno es aprovecharse de un proyecto como este con el fin de limitar o eliminar el acceso a la red, si no fuera por las declaraciones explícitas que algunos oficiales del gobierno han dado con respecto a la neutralidad de la red, internet 2.0 , el acceso a la web y así sucesivamente. Uno de los mejores ejemplos que podemos utilizar para ilustrar lo que el complejo industrial militar está planeando hacer, son las declaraciones más recientes del Zar que coordina regulaciones en el gobierno de Barack Hussein Obama, Cass Sunstein. El dijo que los sitios web deben ser obligados a remover “rumores“, “odio” o “declaraciones absurdas“, por lo general encontradas en sitios web “de derecha“. “En la era de la Internet, se ha hecho fácil esparcir rumores falsos o engañosos sobre casi todo el mundo”, escribe Sunstein. “Algunas páginas web derechistas hicieron comentarios absurdos y odiosos acerca de la supuesta relación entre Barack Obama y el ex radical Bill Ayers, uno de los objetivos de los sitios web fue, sin duda atraer a más espectadores. En Internet, así como en la radio, propagadores altruistas son fáciles de encontrar. Ellos desempeñan un papel especialmente importante en el ámbito político. Cuando Sean Hannity, el comentarista de televisión atacó a Barack Obama por su supuestas asociaciones, uno de sus objetivos podría haber sido la de promover los valores y las causas que él protege“.

El tipo de proyectos de ley como el aprobado en la Cámara de Representantes de EE.UU., también están siendo propuestos y aprobados en otras partes del mundo. En Australia, los senadores están sacudiendo sus poderes recién adquiridos, diciendo a los ciudadanos lo que es legal y lo que es ilegal decir o publicar en la web. Una de las muchas personas avanzando la censura es el senador Steve Fielding, quien es un miembro del partido llamado Primero La Familia. Él quiere que todos los contenidos adultos sean prohibidos para todos, incluidos los adultos. El Sr. Fielding está abierto a cualquier tipo de censura en Internet.

Mientras tanto, en Indonesia, el gobierno local está siguiendo los pasos de los Estados Unidos y Australia. “Hay miles de violaciónes de los usuarios de Internet en Indonesia. No tenemos ninguna intención de moverse hacia atrás … pero no queremos que la gente piense que el gobierno ignora asuntos como la pornografía en Internet“. La legislación reciente aprobada en Indonesia se adoptó a pesar de la firme oposición y las protestas generalizadas. El proyecto fue apoyado por grupos de musulmanes conservadores como el Partido Justicia Próspera (PKS), que remonta sus orígenes a la proscrita Hermandad Musulmana de Egipto.
Gobiernos y organizaciones que apoyan la censura en Internet por lo general citan la pornografía cibernética, rumores, mensajes de odio y las teorías de conspiración como las razones para intervenir con lo que se escribe y se lee en línea. En realidad, sin embargo, estos planes son esfuerzos para minimizar o eliminar la disidencia, al igual que algunos gobiernos como Venezuela, Irán, Arabia Saudita y Cuba hacen con estaciones de televisión y periódicos que cuestionó la “posición oficial“.

En el Reino Unido, un proyecto de ley etiquetado como el proyecto de ley Economía Digital incluye un nuevo código para limitar el acceso a Internet. Los informes locales advierten que el gobierno puede omitir el proceso de consultas regulares para ponerla en vigor. El proyecto de ley en el Reino Unido contiene dos cláusulas, 10 y 11, que son particularmente preocupantes. Ellas permitirán a Ofcom, avanzar con las medidas técnicas tan pronto como el código inicial de las obligaciones se haya introducido. Esto es visto como un plan del gobierno para limitar la Internet sin seguir los pasos adecuados. Según el sitio IPINTEGRITY.com, las normas incluidas en el proyecto de ley son un espejo del lenguaje de «limitaciones» que figura en la Directiva de servicio universal en el Paquete de telecomunicaciones de la Unión Europea.

¿Qué objetivos tienen proyectos de ley que buscan interferir con el uso libre de Internet?

De regreso en los Estados Unidos, la sección 5 del proyecto de ley establece la Seguridad Cibernética: “La transferencia de las normas de seguridad cibernética, procesos, tecnologías y técnicas, será desarrollado por el NIST.” Tanto el NIST como la FCC, han elogiado la iniciativa de Google para crear una versión de alta velocidad de Internet. Al mismo tiempo, la FCC está en proceso de presentar un plan nacional de banda ancha que efectivamente limita la cantidad de tiempo y las áreas a las que un usuario puede tener acceso. Además, los usuarios de Internet pagarán por el uso de tal banda ancha así como por la cantidad de descargas que hagan. Entre los planes a implementar con el proyecto de ley de seguridad cibernética es la “armonización” de la web. Esto significa que la gente tendrá que utilizar el software aprobado por las agencias federales con el fin de acceder a la World Wide Web.

Sección 6, que detalla las nuevas normas que NIST pondrá en marcha, indica que aquellos que no cumplen con las regulaciones federales, no podrán usar Internet. El apartado 2.2, una vez más reafirma las prerrogativas de la FCC para decidir cuáles son las normas de seguridad y permitir el acceso a la red sólo a aquellos proveedores de servicios de Internet (ISP) y otras empresas que cumplan con esas normas. En otras palabras, las empresas que proveen servicios de Internet y los propios usuarios tendrán que operar bajo los límites de los gobiernos federales o simplemente olvidar lo que hasta ahora ha sido un medio de libre acceso. Este tipo de políticas coinciden con puntos de vista de Cass Sunstein sobre el uso de la web. Él dice: “La libertad suele funcionar, pero en algunos contextos, es una corrección incompleta“. Él propone un “efecto congelante” sobre “rumores dañinos” como medidas para disuadir a los que crian rumores. World Net Daily informó sobre un documento creado por Sunstein llamado “Nueva Enmienda al Derecho de Expresión“, también conocida como una nueva”doctrina de equidad “, que incluye la creación de un grupo de “expertos no partidistas” para forzar la diversidad en los medios. La propuesta radical de reglamentación está contenida en su libro “La Constitución Parcial“, publicado en 1993.

Sección 8, que habla de los contratos de nombres de dominio, le da a un panel asesor creado con poder de veto sobre decisiones hechas por el Subsecretario de Comercio para Comunicaciones e Información con respecto a la renovación o modificación de los números asiganos a proveedores de Internet y que organizan el sistema de dominios. Esto parece hacer eco de lo expresado por los dos representantes que presentaron el proyecto de ley de seguridad cibernética. “Debemos proteger nuestra infraestructura crítica a toda costa; desde nuestra agua a la electricidad, la banca, los semáforos y los registros electrónicos de salud,” dijo Jay Rockefeller. Olympia Snowe concordó con su colega: “si no tomamos medidas rápidas, corremos el riesgo de un ciber-Katrina“. Los gobiernos que aprueban leyes como la de los EE.UU., e iniciativas como las de Indonesia, Australia, Nueva Zelandia, el Reino Unido y otros países, sin duda seguirán los pasos que China ha dejado atrás. Allí, “empresas como Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems y Websense – están acusados de complicidad con violaciónes de los derechos humanos“, afirma sitio campaignforliberty.com. El grupo Amnistía Internacional documenta violaciónes cometidas por las autoridades chinas, que han introducido normas, cerrado casas de internet, espiado y bloqueado los correos electrónicos, desmontado programas de búsqueda, así como las noticias extranjeras y los sitios web que se consideran políticamente sensibles. Más recientemente, un nuevo sistema de filtrado se puso a trabajar, con la intención de prohibir una lista de palabras claves y expresiones. Dicho control, al parecer, puede aplicarse a través de una organización central que se encargará de supervisar todos los proveedores y usuarios de Internet, o también si se cuenta con puestos de gestión regional y local, que el proyecto de ley en Estados Unidos dicta se establecerá a través del apoyo económico a organizaciones no lucrativas que sirvan como sucursales para el centro de seguridad cibernética centralizado.

Grupos de ciudadanos preocupados con los poderes que la ley de seguridad cibernética da al presidente- quien quiera que este sea- así como las agencias federales ya están movilizandose para mostrar su oposición. GoPetition.com, es un lugar donde la gente puede firmar una petición para rechazar el proyecto de ley S773. El sitio afirma correctamente que si el proyecto de ley pasa, “Barack Obama puede silenciar a los disidentes directamente censurando el acceso directo a la internet.El Internet es un sitio libre con ideas e información y no una propiedad del gobierno federal“. Thepetitionsite.com otro sitio en internet llama también a opnerse y que la gente haga sentir su preocupación mediante la firma de una petición. “Si estás en este sitio, entonces usted probablemente sabe lo útil que es Internet para el intercambio de información.” Y continúa: “Ustedes probablemente también disfrutar de las muchas maneras que usted puede interactuar con los demás y entretenerse. Todo esto llegará a su fin si la Ley de seguridad cibernética de 2009 (s773) pasa “. Freedomfactory.us comienza su oposición al citar lo que muchos usuarios de Internet ya conocen: “Las amenazas y las tácticas de miedo siempre se utilizan para justificar el otorgamiento de nuevos poderes al gobierno, incluyendo dar al Presidente el poder de cerrar partes de Internet que considere una amenaza para la seguridad nacional y el acceso a enormes cantidades de datos digitales en la actualidad legalmente fuera de sus límites“.

Shelly Roche, de breakthematrix.com señaló una cuestión muy importante. La distribución menos centralizada, la gestión y el control de la web es más difícil de ser amenazada o significativamente afectada a un nivel que represente una amenaza para los usuarios o empresas. “Si se instalan prácticas comunes y las empresas se ven obligados a adoptar un programa de certificación federal, los hackers tienen una hoja de ruta que, una vez deconstruida, podría abrir la puerta para ataques masivos en la red.”

Al igual que los neoconservadores quienes utilizaron la teoría de Leo Strauss de crear amenazas ficticias en el siglo 20, con la participación de cristianos fundamentalistas en el Estados Unidos para conseguir apoyo, un gobierno infectado con individuos que siguen movimientos socialistas y fascistas ha creado una amenaza cibernética falsa con el fin de impulsar su agenda para limitar el acceso a la red. Al igual que los neoconservadores lograron crear la falsa guerra contra el terrorismo basado en una premisa falsa y alianzas con grupos terroristas en todo el mundo -que ellos mismos financiaron y dirigieron-, ahora los liberales, -también controlados por intereses bancarios- están tratando de tomar control del único medio que amenaza su poder y control, el único medio que hasta cierto punto democratizó la información y que la llevó a la población, el único medio que pone freno a su plan de crear una tecnocracia global para consolidar su dictadura científica.

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