[A-List] Fwd: Tom Burghardt: Through the Wormhole - The Secret State's Mad Scheme to Control the Internet

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

Insanity is now cool.  Cheney may be on life support but his insane
plans thrive in secrecy.  Do read!  Do Pass On! S.


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From: Global Research E-Newsletter <crgeditor at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 4:09 PM
Subject: Tom Burghardt: Through the Wormhole - The Secret State's Mad
Scheme to Control the Internet
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Through the Wormhole: The Secret State's Mad Scheme to Control the Internet

By Tom Burghardt

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19934

Global Research, June 27, 2010
Antifascist Calling...

Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz once famously wrote
that "war is the continuation of politics by other means." A century
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.

A 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 WikiLeaks, Cryptome, Public
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 heimat cybersecurity.

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.


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