Archive for February 15th, 2016
‘Internet of Things’ an Absolute Goldmine for Big Brother, Admits Top US Spy
DNI James Clappers acknowledges “intelligence services might use the [web-connected home devices] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper said in his submitted testimony (pdf)..”
Sworn testimony delivered to the U.S. Congress by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper raised eyebrows on Tuesday as he acknowledged publicly for the first time that surveillance agencies are almost certain to exploit (if they aren’t already) the increasing number of web-connected devices—also known as the “Internet of Things”—as a way to keep tabs on the population in the coming years.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listens at center to testimony given by Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart, far right, during the House Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Sept. 10, 2015.
In a piece at The Register—titled “We’re going to use your toothbrush to snoop on you, says US spy boss“—tech-security journalist Kieran McCarthy reports Clapper’s acknowledgement that the Internet of Things (IoT) is a “potential goldmine for surveillance” echoes “a similar conclusion reached by academics last week.”
The testimony on Tuesday, McCarthy adds, follows “repeated warnings over the poor security standards included in smart-home products, even the most well-resourced and well-known.
Recently, the Ring doorbell and the Nest thermostat were discovered to have security vulnerabilities that could provide an attacker with your Wi-Fi password – and so access to your home network.
According to Guardian journalist Spencer Ackerman, Clapper’s admission about the surveillance potential of networked home devices—which also include wi-fi enabled smoke detectors, larger appliances, and entertainment systems—”is rare for a US official.”
Not commonly discussed in public, Ackerman points to a 2012 speech by then CIA director David Petraeus who described the surveillance implications of such devices as “transformational … particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”
Though Clapper did “not specifically name any intelligence agency as involved in household-device surveillance”, reports Ackerman, “security experts examining the internet of things take as a given that the US and other surveillance services will intercept the signals the newly networked devices emit, much as they do with those from cellphones.
Amateurs are already interested in easily compromised hardware; computer programmer John Matherly’s search engine Shodan indexes thousands of completely unsecured web-connected devices.”
As McCarthy adds:
The data from IoT products can potentially be hugely valuable. Many include microphones and motion sensors, for example, such as new smart TVs, kids’ toys and voice-controlled products like Amazon’s Echo.
It wasn’t just the internet of things that Clapper is worried/excited about. He also references that artificial intelligence is provided a similar risk/opportunity. By meddling with or anticipating the results of algorithms, a huge number of AI systems “are susceptible to a range of disruptive and deceptive tactics that might be difficult to anticipate or quickly understand.”
On the flipside, however, they also “might create or enable further opportunities to disrupt or damage critical infrastructure or national security networks.”
And it’s not just the government spies that people worry about.
In a post at ZDNet last year, Steve Ranger explores the many pitfalls and concerns presented by IoT, including the way in which private corporations will exploit the connectedness of new technologies.
“The IoT could be one of the purest outgrowths of late capitalism imaginable,” explained Ranger, “one that can packages your every waking minute into a product (and the sleeping ones too, of course — there’s many a way of making money out of the data you generate in your slumber).
“There’s a real danger that it could form part of the ongoing erosion and corporatisation of private spaces in the quest for profit. In a surveillance economy, privacy represents an opportunity for profit forgone.”
Call Apartheid in Israel by Its Name
Citizenship here is reminiscent of South Africa’s in the past: Jews are ‘white’ citizens, Arabs in Israel (of the 1948, are ‘colored’ with partial citizenship); and Palestinians in the occupied territories have ‘black’ citizens, without political rights.
Recently, an interesting argument was held in Haaretz between Michael Sfard and Gideon Levy. Sfard claims that “One day the occupation will end suddenly” (Haaretz.com, January 22), while Levy suggests that “the occupation won’t end” (January 24) and that Israel “can continue with the occupation as long as it likes, so why should it end?”
Maybe both are wrong.
An analysis of the geopolitical situation on the West Bank shows the occupation hasn’t been an occupation for a long time.
It has not been defeated or liquidated, but rather has developed into the next stage: civil colonial control, accompanied by a creeping process of apartheid into the entire area controlled by Israel between the Jordan and the sea.
Palestinians waiting to cross through the Israeli army’s Hawara checkpoint near Nablus. Nir Kafri
The Israeli left, which is fighting this outrageous situation, needs to get in sync with the change in reality, and adopt new terminology: No longer “occupation,” a condition that doesn’t exist anymore, and which at any rate can be legal, but “apartheid,” which is coming into being before our eyes, and constitutes a grave international crime.
In general, Occupation is a situation of temporary, militarized control, external to the state’s sovereign borders.
The characteristics of Israeli rule in most of the West Bank are the opposite: Control is civilian, permanent (according to the statements of Israel’s leaders), and internal to Israeli society and politics.
Over 600,000 Israeli citizens live in the West Bank (including Jerusalem beyond the Green Line); most of the area of the West Bank is under the control of Israeli municipal councils.
Israelis in the West Bank are tried according to Israeli law and vote for the Knesset. Over 1,000 square kilometers of Palestinian land, private and public, are registered to the state (with faked documents), and they are marketable real estate in Israel.
Israel controls entry and exit, customs and taxes, tourism, trade and even registering births and deaths in the territories.
Gaza is under blockade.
The Palestinian Authority, and even the hostile Hamas, reconcile themselves to the civil makeover of the occupation, being governmental bodies within the Israeli envelope. The main harm to human rights and the obstacles to establishing a Palestinian state are not a result of the military occupation, but actually stem from the civil transformation. (Or both?)
The left in Israel always tried to separate: Democracy “here,” and occupation “there.”
But according to the data, this separation long ago disappeared. Israel created a continuous Jewish civilian space, while the Palestinians are separated into enclaves and ghettos.
True, Israeli citizens enjoy a flourishing economy and progressive legislation that protects the rights of women, LGBTs and immigrants. But Arabs have inferior collective citizenship in the Jewish state, closely linked to their identity as Palestinians.
In such a geopolitical situation, there is no possibility of talking about democracy, despite the holding of elections in Israel, because true democratic elections would remove the right wing from power.
If the elections had been held only inside the Green Line, within Israel legally sovereign territory, as is proper in a democracy – a left-center bloc would have won in every election since Rabin’s murder, except one.
(In 2001, Ariel Sharon defeated Ehud Barak even inside the Green Line, partly because of the Arab boycott). Alternatively, had the elections been held with the participation of all residents whom Israel rules (Jews and Arabs), as general elections are meant to be, it is almost certain that then, too, the right would be defeated.
Nonetheless, it is in power, with short breaks, for decades, while cynically using the term “democracy.”
In international law, a situation whereby a country appropriates and settles territories outside its sovereign borders is called colonialism.
Southern Lebanon was an example of military occupation; the West Bank is an example of colonialism, one that seeks to entrench itself over time while preserving the privileges of the ruling population, and incidentally creating an apartheid regime.
Apartheid in the West Bank seeps into the entire area between the Jordan and the sea.
In the West Bank, the expansion of the Jewish settlements means the erasing of the difference between “there” and “here,” while west of the Green Line, the means of repression are imported from the West Bank, such as the persecution of human rights organizations and removal of Bedouin from their ancestral lands.
The impressive economic prosperity of Israel has poured enormous resources mainly into the Jewish population on both sides of the Green Line. This has exacerbated the process of “separate development” that characterizes apartheid regimes.
These processes caused the creation of different types of citizenship, which remind one of South Africa in the past: Jews between the Jordan and the sea are “white” citizens, Arabs in Israel have “colored” (in other words, partial) citizenship, and Palestinians in the territories have “black” citizenship, without political rights.
So what can be done?
First, we must call this thing by its name.
Opponents of the occupation must update their image of the phenomenon and use legal, conceptual and political tools to fight it. Military occupation can be justified as essential and even legal, as many in Israel do.
Colonialism and apartheid are illegal and undemocratic. Using these terms would significantly strengthen the struggle.
Second, because of the complex history and geography involved, we must think about new, creative approaches that are not limited to “one-shot” solutions such as unilateral withdrawal.
An example of this is the “Two States, One Homeland” movement founded recently, which offers a vision of an Israeli-Palestinian union. This arrangement would have two states established on the two sides of the Green Line, which would become an open border with freedom of movement, and Jerusalem serving as a joint, unified capital for both states.
Whatever the solution, Israeli society must stop hiding its head in the sand and understand that the apartheid process is the most serious security threat facing the residents of this entire land – “white,” “colored” and “black.”
The writer is a professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and a founder of “Two States, One Homeland.” The opinions in the article are his alone.
Note: During British mandate over Palestine, the Zionist movement coerced Britain Not to have any municipal election because the Jews were terribly a minority. So no democratic processes were instituted.
Adonis Diaries 