#CozyBear, #FancyBear, #GrizzlySteppe; natsec hashtag nuttery against Russia (and Wikileaks) ultimately proves to be largely left-liberal steno BS

This has sure aged well NOT! Given everything from the Mueller Investigation on, there seems to be good reason to believe that Fancy Bear is real, even if CrowdStrike has oversold some things.

Also, given that GOP Congresscritter Mike McCaul admitted the RNC had computers hacked just like the DNC (before the RNC apparently hauled him on the carpet), and that Comey talked about that, Yasha Levine's semi-breathless claims about RNC emails being stolen like DNC ones were is breathless at best and comes off looking like a conspiracy at worst, as not even Assange proposed a version of an Assange-fronting Seth Rich character working at the RNC.

 Also an update contra "Red Painter" at Crooks and Liars, the top link. Rather than claiming this is either a case of McCaul lying as one option, rather it's either something he got from the classified world, or something that "Never Trumpers" within the RNC were already discussing. Whether the hack was successful or not, and nuancing the language on that, is a matter of quibbles. See the NYT for more.

So, not "reportedly stole," Yasha. Did steal. As McCaul admitted. Now, to further analyze why you're incorrect on this?

Levine is undercut by the facts that the RNC had better security, and thus few computers were hacked, and these older ones didn't have big information.

He's also undercut by the fact that, whether or not he was directly pipelined to the Trump campaign, Julian Assange hated Hillary Clinton. DUH!

Updating the update a bit more? I've become more and more disdainful of what I call the "ALLEGEDLY outside-the-box stenos" of left-liberal foreign policy opining, versus some left-liberals and independent leftists who actually have brains. I include here, along with Levine, his running buddies Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté and his running buddy Max Blumenthal, partially Jordan Charlton, and a few others. For different reasons, namely being a JFK conspiracy theorist, I'd add Tim Shorrock. The likes of Middle East old hand Robert Fisk or the recently discovered James Z. Dorsey of "Middle East soccer" (both on my blogroll) are the likes of people I would counterpose to them.

OK, now, on to the original. See other updates in italics below.

First, it's "interesting" that President Barack Obama's new sanctions against Russia were launched oh, about an hour after a new cease-fire in Syria was announced — a cease-fire mediated by Russia and Turkey alone, not the US, which was deliberately cut out.

I find it more interesting that, reading between the lines, a Russian spy house an hour or so away from the White House suddenly and massively hit a new level of spookery after the Russkies have been there for 44 years.  A WaPost piece on Friday, while describing the history of both now-closed sites, says nothing about the idea that spy level ramped up in the last couple of years. And, in fact, a Saturday NBC piece says the two sites had no special intelligence capabilities beyond other Russian sites. Obama is closing them because he wants to hurt the Russian cushiness factor.

It's also funny that Russian President Vladimir Putin punked Obama by not retaliating in kind.

Second, that they're little more than a list of protections needed against malware, or otherwise, a group of vague warnings pinnable to nothing.

In light of that, one should read Jeffery Carr calling other work by national security consultant CrowdStrike "a work of fiction." (And, stand by for his details on that.)

Update: Carr has deleted that story. Not updated it, to reveal new details, nor to admit there was countervening new evidence. Deleted it.

Or, let's go back six months, to when the natsec establishment was throwing #IBlamePutin bullshit at the wall to first see if it might stick.

Here's Carr then:

As Mark Twain said, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment. The problem with judgment calls and attribution is that since there’s no way to be proven right or wrong, there’s no way to discern if one’s judgment call is good or bad.

The metadata in the leaked documents are perhaps most revealing: one dumped document was modified using Russian language settings, by a user named “(Felix Dzerzhinsky),” a code name referring to the founder of the Soviet Secret Police

OK. Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix’s name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor.

Update: Carr has deleted that story, too. Not updated it, to reveal new details, nor to admit there was countervening new evidence. Deleted it. 

And — apparently he has never heard of "facing" someone, as in "in your face 'facing,'" whether online or in person. Or else he has, and maybe deliberately, ignored it.

That, in turn, the Carr piece, is referenced by a brand-new longform at Harper's, from Andrew Cockburn, one of the better pieces out there about the rise of a new McCarthyism.

Update: Per the other stupidities on time stamps by the alleged Forensicator, and per the Forensicator's own blog, which has posted less and less since Adam Carter was outed as Tim Leonard and more, I am now raising my hand, Jeffrey.

Third, per CrowdStrike, et al, c'mon, folks!

#FollowTheMoney, if you want another hashtag. Carr also addresses this issue. (He also seems to reference people who think Robert M. Lee knows a lot more shite than him.) I can't believe that people out there are smart enough to not think about this — people who are generally smart, and not normally apologists for the natsec spinoff of the military-industrial complex. But, I guess I need to start believing.

Per the link in the update above, though, follow the politics. The RNC also had computers hacked. Congressman McCaul mentioned this. Yasha tries to blow it off, as I note up top. Of course the RNC was going to blow it off if it could pretend this didn't happen to it, then attack the DNC for allegedly making stuff up.

And ... stop me if you heard this, but ... Update: Carr has deleted that story as well! Not updated it, to reveal new details, nor to admit there was countervening new evidence. Deleted it. 

That said, the account is no longer his, if you go to the root-level URL. Hacked? What, a nat sec writer had his Medium hacked?

Update underscored: I think the same Jeffrey Carr now has THIS account. Weird. I did a text search on Google, per his third link, with the Mark Twain refernence, plus his name, since many have riffed on the Twain comment. I got ONE hit. A Reddit piece, also three years old. So, per the British word, we're "binning" anything Carr said. 

Fourth, as I've said before, Hillary Clinton was not hated to death by Vladimir Putin. Google "Frank Giustra" plus "uranium" plus "Clinton Foundation" if you don't believe me. In fact, this NYT piece should be your top Google hit. (Update: That piece has been somewhat misinterpreted, including somewhat by me.)

Fifth, and related, just because Trump is allegedly a sucker for flattery doesn't make him "controllable," even if all the allegations are totally true. It just makes him an unstable, mercurial, sucker for flattery with the flattery's effect being short-term only, because of that.

Putin might well value the stability and experience of a Hillary Clinton over that.

But, she's a warhawk!

And, Putin might use that as flypaper, if she had been elected and really had tried to put a no-fly zone over Syria into effect. Even more so now that Turkey and Russia are current BFEs.

Sixth, but Julian Assange is a Russian agent, right?

Well, first, let's set aside the MSM's repeated attempts to smear him, including the Guardian, one of his earlier collaborators.

Is it possible that, in some areas, Assange has been a kind of a fellow traveler? Yes. (And Glenn Greenwald should be more suspicious of that.) That doesn't make him a Russian agent, or even an implacable foe of US interests. After all, Wikileaks' dump of Syria leaks was largely anti-Bashar Assad, just like the US government is.

(Update: Assange has been dumb enough to play with fire, as other, more recent posts show him doing. And, it seems pretty clear he launched the Seth Rich conspiracy theory meme himself.)

Seventh, speaking of, the natsec eggs and their MSM mouthpieces have been dead wrong about Russia before, in this case, specifically, Russia and Syria.

Eighth, speaking of MSM mouthpieces, one, the Washington Post, or at least its owner, has a $600 million conflict of interest vis-a-vis the CIA.

Summary: As of right now, this is a thin, runny stream of crap held between sheets of one-ply toilet paper. Click those links, purge your brain of what the MSM and the government has been feeding you, and you might learn some new stuff.

==

Update, Jan. 6: The new, allegedly more thorough, national security report is now out. Highlights, or lowlights, at a glance include —

So, "press reporting" is a CIA/FBI/NSA analytics source, re Guccifer? (page 12) Vladimir Zhirinovskiy is a credible source? (page 14) Yes, Schröder and Berlusconi (11) may have had business reasons to be Putin-friendly, like Trump allegedly did. So did Clinton. Again, folks, Google "Frank Giustra" plus "Clinton Foundation" plus uranium. Even while mentioning Russia Today's negative coverage of the Clinton Foundation (14), the NYT piece on the above isn't mentioned. As for RT mentioning (16 ff) that current US political structures don't represent many Americans? It's true! Finally, half of this 25-page report (hey, better than the 13 pages 10 days ago, right?) is focused on RT.

Update 2, Jan. 12: Masha Gessen also weighs in on the nuttery. From what's arguably the nut graf, at the end:

(T)he intelligence report does nothing to clarify the abnormalities of Trump’s campaign and election. Instead, it risks perpetuating the fallacy that Trump is some sort of a foreign agent rather than a home-grown demagogue, while doing further damage to our faith in the electoral system. It also suggests that the US intelligence agencies’ Russia expertise is weak and throws into question their ability to process and present information.

Bingo. Whether deliberately or not, our intelligence "establishment" looks more idiotic by the day. Of course, that's because it IS.

Update 3, March 7: Yasha Levine has got a must-read at the Baffler on what's behind Cozy Bear, et al, from last year's Russian snooping and hacking.

Update 4, March 8: Per Reuters, Wikileaks new Vault7 release about CIA device hacking has implications beyond the obvious.

Stuart McClure, CEO of Cylance, an Irvine, California, cyber security firm, said that one of the most significant disclosures shows how CIA hackers cover their tracks by leaving electronic trails suggesting they are from Russia, China and Iran rather than the United States.

This is directly relevant to Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear, Schmaltzy Bear, etc. Yes, those attacks MAY well be by Russian intelligence services. (If so, whether they were deliberate on the DNC at first, or just general fishing expeditions, and even after they eventually became deliberate at some point, how high the knowledge trail went within Russian intelligence circles are yet other questions.)

That said, national security establishment "eggs" claiming that Russian intelligence was incompetent here and there and with Guccifer 2.0 as well, when he was alleged to be a Russian agent? What if those were CIA bread crumbs instead? Not likely, but officially now not disprovable. 

OTOH, per my update in Section 4? The Forensicator, in all his hand-waving about time stamp errors and other things, NEVER tried to claim this was an American nat-sec plot.

Update 5, March 17: Multitudinous national Democratic politicians are admitting that, at a bare minimum, they'll not find proof Putin hacked elections, and at a maximum, there's no proof because — he didn't! At the same time, the man likely to have been named Clinton's CIA director is admitting there's nothing behind Trump-Putin collusion claims, which is the flip side of the same coin. Also per Morill, the Christopher Steele documents are bullshit, including paying informants.

Second update of this same day: Jeffery Carr reports that the Russians who allegedly hacked Yahoo were independent actors, not carrying out an official mission. (Update: Haven't Russia, and even more, China, made that claim themselves in the past?)

Update 6, May 5, 2019: Per a 2018 piece from The Intercept, attempts to overly separate Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear from the Russian state should themselves be viewed with skepticism.

Update 7, May 30, 2020: Beyond all the above updates, most of CrowdStrike's data was on cloud computers. It couldn't hand over much in the way of its own computers. Whether this was good security or not is a sidebar. None of the stenos has ever repented of beating CrowdStrike over the head on this one. In addition, none has ever admitted that maybe they should have known that sooner. In short, they come off, potentially at least, looking almost as tech-stupid as the Gleen Greenwald they like to laugh at. 

Bottom line: If we redefine "Russiagate" as it properly should be defined as, "Russia meddled in the 2016 election" rather than "Russia directly tried to get Donald Trump elected," it's true, and the allegedly outside-the-box stenos are either idiots who can't move beyond the original false claims versus a "Russia did nothing" polarity, or they're worse, if they're knowingly still insisting on this.

NSA vs. neocons — game on!

Looks like the shit may really hit the fan now on that the National Security Agency stands exposed of spying on foreign governments, even foreign leaders. Well — on one particular government.

Per the header, Gen. Keith Alexander and his groupies not only spied on people like Angela Merkel, prime minister of Germany, but on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as well as (at least) two Israeli embassies.

Yep, I'm sure al Qaeda was hiding spies inside the Israeli Defense Ministry.

If this doesn't put paid to the cybersnooping, at least in its current format, what will?

In reality, it shows the NSA's vacuuming operations, in this case, are really nothing other than a massive extension of older traditions of government espionage for reasons of fixing foreign policy, or, as in the case of one other spying, for trade policy reasons:

Also appearing on the surveillance lists is Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the European Commission, which, among other powers, has oversight of antitrust issues in Europe. The commission has broad authority over local and foreign companies, and has punished a number of American companies, including Microsoft and Intel, with heavy fines for hampering fair competition. The reports say that spies intercepted Mr. Almunia’s communications in 2008 and 2009. 

I mean, that's all this is. The EC also harbors no al Qaeda operatives. But, it does have a stronger bent toward corporate regulation, in many cases, than does Dear Leader and his gang of merry neoliberals.

At the same time, don't forget that Britain’s General Communications Headquarters was a willing partner in much of this. The industrial side of the cybersnooping targeted a bunch of non-AngloAmerican companies, like French oil giant Total. Don't tell me that this isn't related to post-war Iraq oil drilling shenanigans involving big American companies plus Shell and BP.

So, it's more insidious than even previously known. And, as conducting industrial espionage, like Hannah Arendt on Adolf Eichmann, more banal. But, that's even worse.

Evil is at its most dangerous when it's at its most banal.

And, that summarizes not just the industrial espionage, but NSA spying in general.

It's always presented as if it's "for our own good," but when We the People ask for details of how it's been for our own good, we're either shushed or else fobbed off with lies. Those lies, in turn, are often based on FBI sting operations that border on, if not engage fully in, entrapment.

Judge slaps down NSA phone snooping — will Obama listen?

Calling it "almost Orwellian," Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia has given an official slapdown to the National Security Agency's snooping on domestic phone calls.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

Take that, Barack Obama, Keith Alexander, James Clapper et al.

Judge Leon stayed his injunction ordering the NSA to stop the snooping at issue in the case for six months, allowing time for appeal. Which will certainly happen.

Now, let's hope it holds up through the appeals process. And that, if it does, Obama actually responds in the appropriate way. Because, like Andy Jackson vs. John Marshall over the Cherokee Removal, I'm seriously not sure he will.

No, that's not hyperbole. Should Judge Leon's ruling hold up all the way through the Supreme Court, I'm not sure President Obama will fully obey it.

And, given the bipartisan War on Terra establishment, I'm not sure a majority of Congress will challenge him on that.

That said, this is just an injunction. But, it's the first time that the spying-industrial complex has lost in court. Here's more from Judge Leon:

“The question that I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the government, without any basis whatsoever to suspect them of any wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval,” he wrote. “For the many reasons set forth above, it is significantly likely that on that day, I will answer that question in plaintiffs’ favor.”

Bingo.

That said, given that this just an injunction, the full process might not wind down until near the time Dear Leader leaves office.

Here's Leon's reasoning, which, as the Times notes, rejects previous claims of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as to what the NSA can "vacuum":

In laying out his conclusion, Judge Leon rejected the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, meant that there is no Fourth Amendment protections for call metadata — information like the numbers called and received and the date, time and duration of the call, but not the content.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which secretly approved the N.S.A. program after hearing arguments from only the Justice Department, has maintained that the 1979 decision is a controlling precedent that shields the program from Fourth Amendment review. But Judge Leon said the scope of the program and the way people use phones today distinguishes the N.S.A. data collection from the type at issue in that case.

It's going to be tough sledding to have Leon's reasoning stand up, per what Smith v Maryland says. But, it's just possible. A pen register recorded much less than today's phone metadata. And, that doesn't even touch on things like using GPS tracking to tie phone calls, duration, etc., to caller location.

At least we have "some hope." And, Leon's ruling will force SCOTUS, eventually, to consider modernizing its thought and rulings in this area in general.

A UK-EU showdown may be shaping up over cybersnooping

And, it won't be about the Euro, or a Tobin tax, or other financial measures that get the City of London and the Conservative Party up in arms.

Rather, the UK-US special relationship vs. UK membership in the European Union may be at risk over the National Security Agency's cybersnooping, and the active participation in that of Britian's Government Communications Headquarters, which Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian know all about.

The "push"?

A new EU law specifically designed (and carefully designed, one hopes) to fight such cybersnooping when it intrudes on personal privacy.

European Union lawmakers on Monday were set to approve sweeping new data protection rules to strengthen online privacy, and sought to outlaw most data transfers to other countries' authorities to prevent spying.

The legislation was widely expected to pass a committee vote late Monday. Still, it is likely to be amended later since it also requires approval by Parliament's plenary and the EU's 28 member states. Lawmakers hope to conclude the process before the end of their term in May.

And, those last two sentences are where Merrie Olde England comes into play.

More of the details:

In response to the revelations of the National Security Agency's online spying activities, lawmakers also toughened the initial draft regulation, prepared by the European Commission, to make sure companies no longer share European citizens' data with authorities of a third country, unless explicitly allowed by EU law or an international treaty.

That means a U.S. tech company handing over data to U.S. authorities, including information on its European customers, might be violating EU law.

That said, the law was originally targeted at for-profit companies gathering too much data, and using it for too many hypercapitalist reasons. The toughening in this area comes to the 500 million residents of the EU courtesy Edward Snowden.

That said, could this be a coalition breaker in Britain? Would Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg actually find a spine, or cojones? What about some backbencher Conservatives? Will British in general, at least in the posh class, resent Brussels trying to force it to have elements of a written constitution? Stay tuned.

That said, as I noted, this was originally written to be a consumer protection law. And, with updating, even just there, it's a damn skippy bit of legislation. Also, even there, it's something that America's posh political class will never let see the light of day. Here's the consumer protection details:

The legislation, among other things, aims at enabling users to ask companies to fully erase their personal data, handing them a so-called right to be forgotten. It would also limit user profiling, require companies to explain their use of personal data in detail to customers, and mandate that companies seek prior consent. In addition, most businesses would have to designate or hire data protection officers to ensure the regulation is properly applied.

Grave compliance failures could be subject to a fine worth up to 5 percent of a company's annual turnover (revenue in European financial lingo) — which could be hundreds of millions of dollars, or even a few billion dollars for Internet giants such as Google.

Boom. And, revenue, not profit.

There's also this:

Consumers, in turn, would be able to file complaints with their national authority, regardless of where the targeted service provider is based. For example that would make it easier for an Austrian consumer to complain about a social media site such as Facebook, which has its EU headquarters in Ireland.

Picture if I could file a complaint about Google, or Facebook, here in Texas. (Of course, that provision would also never see the light of day in the US.)

Oh, the EU has its flaws. It's susceptible to lobbyists itself at times. (That's why, with even more Big Pharma companies headquartered in the EU + Switzerland, its pharmaceutical regulation, as is the UK's as a member state, is even more toothless than here in the US. And, while it's talked tough with Google in the last couple of years, both it and member states such as Germany haven't acted a lot tougher than the US.)

But, overall, it has a stronger regulatory environment than the US, and the financial muscle to make it mean something.

Well, except for even laxer controls on lobbyists, it has a stronger regulatory environment.