FBI Orwellian Cyber Police State: Citizens Not Allowed to Have Secrets

""The police and surveillance state predicted in the forward-looking 1940s classic "1984" by George Orwell, has slowly, but steadily, come to fruition. However, like a frog sitting idly in a pan of steadily-warming water, too many Americans still seem unaware that the slow boil of big government is killing their constitutional liberties.

The latest sign of this stealth takeover of civil rights and freedom was epitomized in recent Senate testimony by FBI Director James Comey, who voiced his objections to civilian use of encryption to protect personal data – information the government has no automatic right to obtain.

As reported by The New American, Comey testified that he believes the government's spy and law enforcement agencies should have unfettered access to everything Americans may store or send in electronic format: On computer hard drives, in so-called i-clouds, in email and in text messaging – for our own safety and protection. Like many in government today, Comey believes that national security is more important than constitutional privacy protections or, apparently, due process. After all, aren't criminals the only ones who really have anything to hide?

In testimony before a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee entitled "Going Dark: Encryption, Technology, and the Balance Between Public Safety and Privacy" Comey said that in order to stay one step ahead of terrorists, as well as international and domestic criminals, Uncle Sam's various spy and law enforcement agencies should have access to available technology used to de-encrypt protected data. Also, he believes the governmentshould be the final arbiter deciding when decryption is necessary.

What could go wrong there?

Find more articles on the police state at PoliceState.news

Government, at all levels, is responsible

During the hearing, TNA reported, technology experts warned the panel that giving the FBI limitless access to the personal electronic data of Americans would open it up to exploitation by "bad actors." But Comey was having none of that.

"It is clear that governments across the world, including those of our closest allies, recognize the serious public safety risks if criminals can plan and undertake illegal acts without fear of detection," he told the committee.

"Are we comfortable with technical design decisions that result in barriers to obtaining evidence of a crime?"
So, in essence, Comey – like many before him, especially since the global war on terror was launched – believes that, in the name of national security Americans ought to give up more of their individual and constitutional rights because that's the only way we can be adequately protected.

Perhaps realizing that his Senate hearing testimony was public, Comey gave the Constitution a passing glance, noting that the government should respect the "requirements and safeguards of the laws" and the country's founding document. However, as Americans now know, spy agencies during the past two presidential administrations have been tasked increasingly with conducting warrantless, unchecked surveillance of Americans' electronic data and communications.

But all of this is not on men like Comey and Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Congress bears its share of responsibility, too.""

This is the way it is – shut up and take it:

http://www.naturalnews.com/050653_police_state_national_security_FBI.html

DARPA's Cyber War Games Called "PLAN X"

""The world's strongest military power intends to focus more of its massive resources on winning a future cyberwar against its strategic enemies, Russia and China, with a trio of sophisticated programs its foes cannot match.

At the head of these technologies is the futuristic "Plan X", one of three new programs that will allow the U.S. to prevail in any future cyber conflict, said Arati Prabhakar, head of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA.

"A significant advantage (in cyberspace), yes, I think that is something we can achieve," she said, "by using these tools and techniques but also having the people that know how to use them, use them to great effect."

The aim of these programs is to reverse today's current situation where the cyberattacker always has the advantage over the cyberdefender.

Plan X is designed to give the U.S. military's cyberwarriors greater visibility into their networks. It works by translating attacks into smart display graphics so they're harder to miss. It will also streamline the military's ability to defend against cyberattacks by building an "app store" where cyberoperations are stored, ready to deploy.

Plan X will give U.S. cyberwarriors instantaneous knowledge of the fact their network is being attacked. It's the first major attempt to create an actual online battle space and will fundamentally shift the way the U.S. military operates on the virtual battlefield.

DARPA said the system is so simple to use that simply moving a hand across a flat, touchscreen monitor allows a user to analyze the health of the entire network or find rogue computers not supposed to be connected to it.

Attacks will be translated into rich display graphics and 3D visualizations so it's impossible to miss them as they occur. Military specialists could defend against attacks by literally dragging blocks of code from a virtual shelf or marketplace similar to Apple's App Store onto their network.

They may one day even use 3D visors like the Oculus Rift, a video gaming headset, to launch these operations in virtual reality.

Plan X is vital to winning against state-sponsored cyber threats because protecting U.S. networks from computer attacks is as important to the military as defending the country's air, land, sea and space.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said a potential compromise of online systems and theft of information is the No. 1 threat to US national security, more so than terrorist groups or weapons of mass destruction.

US military superiority does not carry over into cyberspace, said Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

He noted the U.S. may have superior weapons and technology, but the asymmetrical nature of cyberconflict means increasingly sophisticated attackers will always have the upper hand against the defenders.

And the Pentagon is acquiring the brainy manpower to do just that. It announced last year it would triple the number of its cybersecurity professionals to 6,000 by 2016.

"The military takes young kids and gets them very confident in operating complex systems," Prabhakar said. "Can we start building tools so that with a modest amount of training, a lot of people can understand and see what's happening in cyber?"

DARPA is building another program to develop what Prabhakar describes as "provably correct software, systems that can't be hacked for specified security properties."

This program is particularly important to guard against those seeking to break into the operating systems of small unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.""

Another program is a Cyber Grand Challenge 

to automate defensive operations:

http://en.yibada.com/articles/22542/20150326/u-s-plans-win-cyberwar-against-russia-china-darpas-plan.htm

United States of America is it's Own Worst Enemy Troll: Edward Snowden Chimes in on International Government Surveillance Cyber Warfare Against the Public Globally

""After a year punctuated by hacks and data breaches, most notably a cyberattack against Sony, President Barack Obama used part of his State of the Union address on Tuesday to mention the growing threat to cybersecurity. “No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,” he said.

The president’s speech came a week after the White House outlined a cybersecurity policy proposal that calls for more information sharing between the private sector and government, an increase in penalties for hacking and an update in the standards for when companies have to report that their customers’ data has been compromised.

Yet in a recent interview on PBS’s Nova, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked a large number of classified documents about government surveillance, argued that one of the biggest threats to American cybersecurity may actually be ourselves.

“When the lights go out at a power plant sometime in the future,” Snowden said, “we’re going to know that that’s a consequence of deprioritizing defense for the sake of an advantage in terms of offense.”

In the interview, Snowden argued that Stuxnet, a digital virus that the U.S. and Israel allegedly used to attack Iran’s nuclear program in 2007, was a tipping point in the history of cyberconflict and led to a proliferation of attacks. “I think the public still isn’t aware of the frequency with which these cyberattacks, as they’re being called in the press, are being used by governments around the world,” he said. “We really started this trend in many ways.”

It’s impossible to know how many cyberattacks have been carried out by or against the U.S. But the numbers appear to be rising. In 2013, U.S. military and federal government computers were invaded 46,605 times, up from 26,942 in 2009, according to the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Underscoring Snowden’s point: Der Spiegel released a trove of documents earlier this week, which revealed that the NSA broke into North Korea’s computer network in 2010, out of fear of the country’s growing cybercapabilities. That’s why the FBI was quick to accuse North Korea of carrying out the Sony hack, which eventually led to the leak of sensitive internal documents and partially canceled the release of The Interview.

When “we start engaging in these kind of behaviors,” Snowden said, “we’re setting a standard. We’re creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do.”""

Continue Story:

http://www.newsweek.com/snowden-cyber-war-america-its-own-worst-enemy-301175