Trump move to declassify Russia intel draws sharp criticism

WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump is defending his unprecedented decision to give his Justice Department chief unfettered access to the country's deepest foreign intelligence secrets amid an outcry from the spy community and a veiled warning from the US intelligence czar.

The president said Attorney General Bill Barr needed unilateral power to declassify any top secret material to get to the roots of the 2016-2018 investigation into whether his election campaign colluded with Russia.

Barr "will be able to see how this hoax, how the hoax or witch hunt started, and why it started," Trump said.

"It was an attempted coup or an attempted takedown of the president of the United States. It should never ever happen to anybody else, so it's very important."

But politicians and former intelligence community leaders said Trump and Barr are threatening to expose the country's most protected sources of secrets on Russia to mount a political attack on a legitimate investigation that exposed a serious threat to the United States.

REOPENING THE RUSSIA MEDDLING INVESTIGATION

The brief order issued late Thursday tells the heads of each of the bodies of the intelligence community, including the CIA and National Security Agency, to support Barr in his review of what he has called suspected improper "spying" on Trump by the FBI and intelligence bodies.

It also gives Barr the power to access and declassify any information he views necessary, which could extend to the top-secret sources of information that intelligence chiefs used to conclude that Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a concerted effort to sway the election on Trump's behalf in 2016.

The same information led to the investigation of Trump by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose final report in April detailed numerous acts of possible collusion, but concluded none amounted to criminal conspiracy.

Critics said Trump and Barr, who has become one of the president's staunchest defenders, were playing fast and loose with intelligence for political reasons.

"The president has granted sweeping declassification powers to an attorney general who has already shown that he has no problem selectively releasing information in order to mislead the American people," said Senator Mark Warner, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"People risk their lives to gather the intelligence material that President Trump and Attorney General Barr are so eager to politicize."

'REALLY BAD IDEA'

Former CIA deputy director John McLaughlin called for Congress to thwart the move.

"Giving Barr declassification authority for this investigation is a really bad idea," he said on Twitter.

"The agencies can cooperate but must retain their legal responsibility for protecting sources."

Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence who oversees the various intelligence branches, stepped carefully, but also made clear that Barr should not play loose with the country's secrets.

"I am confident that the Attorney General will work with the intelligence community in accordance with the long-established standards to protect highly-sensitive classified information that, if publicly released, would put our national security at risk," he said.

'DANGEROUS ABUSE OF POWER'

Barr himself has stunned law enforcement and intelligence officials with his willingness to question whether there was a genuine foundation for the investigation into Russian election meddling and into the many suspect contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow.

The investigation was launched in mid-2016 after campaign advisor George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in London that Russians had offered dirt on Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. 

The subsequent investigation, which included authorized national security wiretaps, found a concerted effort by Russia to develop contacts, exchange information and negotiate deals, from a Trump real estate project in Moscow to the lifting of sanctions on Russia. 

Those acts and episodes have all been made public in detail in congressional testimony and Mueller's report. 

But Trump continues to insist that the investigation had no foundation and that the spying on his advisors was illegal, the product of a menacing "deep state."

Former CIA officer Evan McMullin warned that Trump's move "is truly a dangerous abuse of power."

"Barr will selectively release sensitive information, as he did with Mueller's report, to shape a favorable narrative for Trump and impede the intelligence community's ability to collect intel on foreign threats."

pmh/wd

source: news.abs-cbn.com

U.S. lawmakers approve warrantless internet spying program

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a bill to renew the National Security Agency's warrantless internet surveillance program, overcoming objections from privacy advocates and confusion prompted by morning tweets from President Donald Trump that initially questioned the spying tool.

The legislation, which passed 256-164 and split party lines, is the culmination of a years-long debate in Congress on the proper scope of U.S. intelligence collection - one fueled by the 2013 disclosures of classified surveillance secrets by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Senior Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives had urged cancellation of the vote after Trump appeared to cast doubt on the merits of the program, but Republicans forged ahead.

Trump initially said on Twitter that the surveillance program, first created in secret after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and later legally authorized by Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, had been used against him but later said it was needed.

Some conservative, libertarian-leaning Republicans and liberal Democrats attempted to persuade colleagues to include more privacy protections. They failed on Thursday to pass an amendment to include a warrant requirement before the NSA or other intelligence agencies could scrutinize communications belonging to Americans whose data is incidentally collected.

Thursday's vote was a major blow to privacy and civil liberties advocates, who just two years ago celebrated passage of a law effectively ending the NSA's bulk collection of U.S. call records, another top-secret program exposed by Snowden.

The bill as passed by the House would extend the NSA's spying program for six years with minimal changes. Some privacy groups said it would actually expand the NSA's surveillance powers.

Most lawmakers expect it to become law, although it still would require Senate approval and Trump's signature. Republican Senator Rand Paul and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden immediately vowed to filibuster the measure but it was unclear whether they could convince enough colleagues to force changes.

The White House, U.S. intelligence agencies and Republican leaders in Congress have said they consider the surveillance program indispensable and in need of little or no revision.

Before the vote a tweet from Trump had contradicted the official White House position and renewed unsubstantiated allegations that the previous administration of Barack Obama improperly surveiled his campaign during the 2016 election.

"This is the act that may have been used, with the help of the discredited and phony Dossier, to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign by the previous administration and others?" the president said in a tweet.

"WE NEED IT!"  

The White House did not immediately respond to a request to clarify Trump’s tweet but he posted a follow-up less than two hours later, after speaking on the phone with House Republican leader Paul Ryan.

"With that being said, I have personally directed the fix to the unmasking process since taking office and today’s vote is about foreign surveillance of foreign bad guys on foreign land. We need it! Get smart!" Trump tweeted.

Unmasking refers to the largely separate issue of how Americans' names kept secret in intelligence reports can be revealed.

After the vote Thursday, Ryan, asked about his conversation with the president, said Trump's concerns regarded other parts of the law.

"It's well known that he has concerns about the domestic FISA law. That's not what we're doing today. Today was 702, which is a different part of that law ... He knows that and he, I think, put out something that clarifies that," Ryan told reporters.

Asked by Reuters at a conference in New York about Trump's tweets, Rob Joyce, the top White House cyber official, said there was no confusion within Oval Office about the value of the surveillance program and that there have been no cases of it being used improperly for political purposes.

Without congressional action, legal support for Section 702 will expire next week, although intelligence officials say it could continue through April.

Section 702 allows the NSA to eavesdrop on vast amounts of digital communications from foreigners living outside the United States through U.S. companies such as Facebook Inc, Verizon Communications Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google.

The spying program also incidentally scoops up communications of Americans if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas, and can search those messages without a warrant.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Kaspersky blames NSA hack on infected Microsoft software

Embattled computer security firm Kaspersky Lab said Thursday that malware-infected Microsoft Office software and not its own was to blame for the hacking theft of top-secret US intelligence materials.

Adding tantalizing new details to the cyber-espionage mystery that has rocked the US intelligence community, Kaspersky also said there was a China link to the hack.

The Moscow-based anti-virus software maker, which is now banned on US government computers because of alleged links to Russian intelligence, confirmed that someone did apparently steal valuable National Security Agency programs from an NSA worker's home computer, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal on October 5.

According to the Journal, the person had top secret files and programs from the NSA hacking unit called the Equation Group on his computer, which was also using Kaspersky software protection.

They believe that Russian spies used the Kaspersky program as a back door to discover and siphon off the files, reportedly causing deep damage to the NSA's own cyber-espionage operations.

US allegations that Kaspersky, which sold more than $600 million of anti-virus software globally in 2015, knowingly or unknowingly helped Russian intelligence in the theft have effectively killed its US business and hurt its worldwide reputation.

Kaspersky software 'disabled'

Using its own forensic analysis, Kaspersky said the breach of the NSA worker's computer took place between September and November 2014, rather than 2015 as the Journal reported.

Kaspersky said what was stolen included essential source code for some Equation Group malware, as well as classified documents. Based on the materials, it said the computer appeared to belong to someone involved in creating malware for the Equation Group.

The company claimed, however, that the computer was infected by other malware, including a Russian-made "backdoor tool" hidden in Microsoft Office.

Kaspersky said that the malware was controlled from a computer server base in Hunan, China, and would have opened a path into the computer for anyone targeting an NSA worker.

"Given that system owner's potential clearance level, the user could have been a prime target of nation-states," it said.

Kaspersky's own software would have detected that malware, the company said, except that its software had been turned off.

"To install and run this malware, the user must have disabled Kaspersky Lab products on his machine," it claimed.

pmh/jh

source: news.abs-cbn.com

U.S. House panel slams former NSA contractor Snowden

WASHINGTON - A U.S congressional intelligence committee on Thursday issued a scathing report accusing former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden of leaking information that "caused tremendous damage" to U.S. national security, lying about his background and feuding with co-workers.

In a report endorsed by both its Republican and Democratic leaders, the House intelligence committee said Snowden was "not a whistleblower" as he has claimed.

Most of the material he stole from the NSA was not about invasions of privacy, but revealed intelligence and defense programs of great interest to America's foreign adversaries, it said.

The committee said that while the "full scope" of damage caused by Snowden's disclosures remains unknown, a review of materials he allegedly compromised "makes clear that he handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states."

The committee released only a four-page summary of what it said was a 36-page investigative report that remains Top Secret, but the summary contained strong words about Snowden's actions and background.

The report contains previously unreported allegations about Snowden and his possible motives for taking government secrets. It alleges that Snowden, who took refuge in Moscow after fleeing to Hong Kong, "was and remains a serial exaggerator and fabricator."

It says his official employment records show that while he claimed to have left U.S. Army basic training because of broken legs, in fact he "washed out because of shin splits." The report says Snowden claimed to have obtained a high-school graduation equivalent, but in fact never did.

It also says he claimed to have worked as a "senior advisor" for the CIA when in fact he was an entry-level computer technician.

While the report says Snowden "stole 1.5 million sensitive documents," other sources who have examined materials he turned over to media outlets say that the total is between 200,000 and 300,000 documents.

Some U.S. officials involved in Snowden-related investigations acknowledge that the U.S. government does not know how many documents Snowden downloaded, and that the 1.5 million figure is an estimate.

The report also disputes Snowden's motives for taking and leaking classified information, saying he got into a "workplace spat" with NSA managers in June 2012 over how to manage computer updates. It says a contracting officer reprimanded him for failing to follow proper grievance procedures, and he began downloading classified information two weeks later.

However, in 2013, Reuters quoted U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter as saying that Snowden began downloading such data in April 2012, almost a year earlier than had previously been reported at the time.

The issuance of the House committee report coincided with the release of "Snowden", a movie directed by Oliver Stone that portrays him as a whistleblower and hero. On Wednesday, prominent human rights advocates urged President Barack Obama to pardon Snowden before leaving office in January.

U.S. officials have said Obama is not considering a pardon for Snowden, who is facing U.S. criminal charges for providing classified information to unauthorized persons.

Ben Wizner, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Snowden, dismissed the House committee report as lacking substance.

Wizner said the report's release a day before the Snowden film opens "is evidence that people in the intelligence community are taking us seriously, that they are concerned that Oliver Stone's movie will help solidify Snowden's image as a true patriot, which he is." (Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz; editing by John Walcott and Alan Crosby)

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Snowden says he took no secret documents to Russia

WASHINGTON - US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden says he did not bring any secret documents with him to Russia when he fled there, ensuring Moscow had no access to the files.

In an interview with The New York Times published Thursday, Snowden said he gave all the classified papers he had obtained to reporters he met in Hong Kong before flying to Moscow, where he later secured asylum.

The former National Security Agency contractor did not take the documents with him "because it wouldn't serve the public interest," Snowden told the Times.

"What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?"

Snowden also insisted he was able to protect the documents from China's spy services because he was familiar with that country's intelligence capabilities through his work as an NSA contractor.

In his job, he had targeted Chinese operations and taught a course on Chinese cyber-counterintelligence.

"There's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents," he said.

The interview took place last week over several days through encrypted online communications.

US officials and critics of Snowden have expressed concern that the documents in his possession could have fallen into the hands of Russian, Chinese or other potentially hostile foreign intelligence agencies.

Snowden, however, insisted the National Security Agency knew he had not cooperated with Russian or Chinese spies.

"NSA has not offered a single example of damage from the leaks. They haven't said boo about it except 'we think,' 'maybe,' 'have to assume' from anonymous and former officials," Snowden added.

"Not 'China is going dark.' Not 'the Chinese military has shut us out.'"

Snowden also said he never considered defecting while in Hong Kong or Russia, where he has been given asylum for one year.

Snowden said his decision to leak secret documents evolved gradually, and that his doubts about intelligence agencies dated back to his time working for the CIA in Geneva.

He said he clashed with a senior manager when he tried to warn the CIA about a vulnerability in its personnel Web applications.

The episode convinced him that trying to work through the system would only lead to punishment.

The 30-year-old, who faces espionage charges over his bombshell leaks, defended his disclosures as serving the country's interests by sparking a public debate and informing the public about secret surveillance.

"So long as there's broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there's a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision," Snowden said.

"However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that's a problem.

"It also represents a dangerous normalization of 'governing in the dark,' where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input."

The NSA was not immediately available to comment on Snowden's interview.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com