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Intelligence Community Olive Branch on Data Sharing Greeted With Skepticism
TOP INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY lawyer Robert Litt has offfered a rare olive branch to privacy advocates on Wednesday, in the form of information.
In a post on one of their favorite blogs on Wednesday, Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, outlined new intelligence data-sharing guidelines that he said will be released soon.
The post, on Just Security, was essentially a response to reporting last month from the New York Times’s Charlie Savage that the NSA would soon be sharing with other government agencies the raw, unfiltered intelligence from the depths of its massive overseas spying programs.
“There has been a lot of speculation about the content of proposed procedures that are being drafted to authorize the sharing of unevaluated signals intelligence,” Litt wrote.
The New York Times story raised concerns that the data, which inevitably includes information about Americans, would become too easily accessible by intelligence agencies including the FBI, potentially leading to fishing expeditions.
Litt provided his assurances that “these procedures are not about law enforcement, but about improving our intelligence capabilities.”
He also emphasized that there would be no additional collection of information—and that all the same privacy protections that currently exist will apply.
Privacy advocates and policy analysts interviewed by The Intercept were pleased Litt made the effort to reach out, noting some positive features of his announcement—like the possible restriction on sharing intelligence with state and local law enforcers.
Nathan White, senior legislative manager for digital rights organization Access Now, had entreated the intelligence community just the day before for more information on how the FBI would get access. “I hope that Litt replied to my op-ed means they’re taking these concerns seriously,” White wrote in a message to The Intercept.
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The Big Secret That Makes the FBI’s Anti-Encryption Campaign a Big Lie
The Big Secret That Makes the FBI’s Anti-Encryption Campaign a Big Lie
To hear FBI Director James Comey tell it, strong encryption stops law enforcement dead in its tracks by letting terrorists, kidnappers and rapists communicate in complete secrecy.
But that’s just not true.
In the rare cases in which an investigation may initially appear to be blocked by encryption — and so far, the FBI has yet to identify a single one — the government has a Plan B: it’s called hacking.
Hacking — just like kicking down a door and looking through someone’s stuff — is a perfectly legal tactic for law enforcement officers, provided they have a warrant.
And law enforcement officials have, over the years, learned many ways to install viruses, Trojan horses, and other forms of malicious code onto suspects’ devices. Doing so gives them the same access the suspects have to communications — before they’ve been encrypted, or after they’ve been unencrypted.
Government officials don’t like talking about it — quite possibly because hacking takes considerably more effort than simply asking a telecom provider for records. Robert Litt, general counsel to the Director of National Intelligence, recently referred to potential government hacking as a process of “slow uncertain one-offs.”
But they don’t deny it, either. Hacking is “an avenue to consider and discuss,” Amy Hess, the assistant executive director of the FBI’s Science and Technology branch, said at an encryption debate earlier this month.
The FBI “routinely identifies, evaluates, and tests potential exploits in the interest of cyber security,” bureau spokesperson Christopher Allen wrote in an email.
Hacking In Action
There are still only a few publicly known cases of government hacking, but they include examples of phishing, “watering hole” websites, and physical tampering.
Phishing involves an attacker masquerading as a trustworthy website or service and luring a victim with an email message asking the person to click on a link or update sensitive information.
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