by Tom Burghardt
December 2, 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
Ghost in The Machine - Secret State
Teams Up with Ad Pimps to Throttle Privacy |
The secret world of "cyber situational awareness" is a spymaster's wet
dream, made all the more alluring by the advent of ultra high speed
computing and the near infinite storage capacity afforded by massive server
farms and the ubiquitous "cloud."
Within that dusky haze, obscured by claims of national security or
proprietary business information, take your pick, would you bet your life
that the wizards of misdirection and deception care a whit that you really
are more than a disembodied data point?
Lost in the debate surrounding privacy invasion and data mining however, is
the key role that internet service providers (ISPs) play as
intermediaries and gatekeepers.
From their perch, ISPs peer deeply into and
collect and analyze the online communications of tens of millions of users
simultaneously, in real-time.
Concerted efforts to eliminate online anonymity, in managed democracies and
authoritarian regimes alike, are greatly enhanced by the deployment of
deep packet inspection (DPI)
sensors and software on virtually all networks.
As Canadian privacy watchdogs
DeepPacketInspection.ca tell us, DPI offer
ISPs,
"unparalleled levels of intelligence into
subscribers' online activities."
"To unpack this a little" they aver, "all data traffic that courses
across the 'net is contained in individual packets that have header
(i.e. addressing) information and payload (i.e. content) information. We
can think of this as the address on a postcard and the written and
visual content of a postcard."
All of which is there for the taking,
"criminal evidence, ready for use in a
trial,"
Cryptohippie chillingly informs.
from
https://secure.cryptohippie.com/pubs/EPS-2010.pdf
Still the illusion persists that communication
technologies are somehow "neutral." Neither good nor bad but rather, much
like a smart phone loaded with geolocation tracking chips or the
surveillance-ready internet itself, simply there for all to use.
Reality as is its wont, bites with ever-sharper teeth.
As with other recent advances touted as breakthroughs - from the biomedical
and pharmaceutical research that spawned factory farming and
genetically-modified crops to something as seemingly banal as the highway
system that ushered in exurban sprawl - from the workplace to the car-pool
lane to idle hours spent trolling the web, our techno-toys function rather
handily as instruments of social control.
Simply put, DPI hand our minders an unprecedented means to examine and
catalogue our online communications.
From blog posts to web searches to the content
of email and video files, we're delivered up every day, figuratively and
literally, to advertising pimps or law enforcers, a faceless army of
gatekeepers guarding an indefensible system in perpetual crisis.
Subtly guiding internet traffic into fast and slow lanes, based on the size
and content of a particular file, or examining said file for malicious or
illegal content, DPI has been deployed as a means of conserving bandwidth
and as a defense against viral attacks.
Leaving aside the critical issue of net neutrality, linked to moves to
further monetize the internet and hold communications hostage to the ability
to pay for quicker network speeds, there is no question that ISPs and
individual users should have a keen interest in defending themselves against
the depredations of organized gangs of identity thieves and predators.
If DPI were solely a tool to weed out malicious hacks or channel traffic in
more equitable ways, thereby ensuring the broadest possible access to all,
it could provide concrete benefits to users and contribute to a safer and
more secure communications' environment.
This hasn't happened. Instead, securocrats and corporatists alike are
working feverishly to "reengineer the internet" - for the delivery of
targeted ads and as a surveillance platform - and both view DPI's ability to
read individual messages, the "deep packet" as it were, as a singular means
to do just that.
Last year,
Antifascist Calling reported on moves by
surveillance mavens to deploy deep packet sniffing
Einstein 3 software
developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) on the nation's telecommunications
infrastructure.
As with the agency's pervasive driftnet spying on Americans, as AT&T
whistleblower Mark Klein revealed in his release of internal company
documents, DPI and the hardware that powers
it is the "secret sauce" animating these illegal programs.
Earlier this year, Klein told
Wired Magazine that the documents suggest
that NSA's warrantless wiretapping,
"was just the tip of an eavesdropping
iceberg," evidence of "an untargeted, massive vacuum cleaner sweeping up
millions of peoples' communications every second automatically."
Ostensibly designed for detecting and thwarting
malicious attacks aimed at government networks,
The Wall Street Journal revealed that the
packet sniffing Einstein 3 program, developed under the code name TUTELAGE,
can screen computer traffic flowing into state portals from private sector
networks, including those connecting people to the internet.
"Its filtering technology," journalist
Siobhan Gorman wrote, "can read the content of email and other
communications."
Einstein 3 is considered so toxic to privacy
that AT&T sought,
"legal assurance that it will not be sued
for participating in the pilot program," The Washington Post
reported.
Although they were given assurances by Bush's
former Attorney General, Michael B. Mukasey, that the firm "would
bear no liability," AT&T deferred until the Obama administration granted the
waiver in 2009.
So far, the federal government has expended some
$2 billion on the program.
Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher with the
Tor Anonymity Project told
CNET News in March that expanding Einstein
3 to private networks "would amount to a partial outsourcing of security" to
unaccountable corporations.
But it will do much, much more. Appelbaum averred that the project
represents,
"a clear loss of control [for the public].
And anyone with access to that monitoring system, legitimate or
otherwise, would be able to monitor amazing amounts of traffic."
A year later, a related program under
development by NSA and defense giant Raytheon, "Perfect Citizen," relies on
a suite of sensors deployed in computer networks that will persistently
monitor whichever system they are plugged into.
While little has been revealed about how Perfect
Citizen will work, it was called by a corporate insider the cyber equivalent
of "Big Brother," according to an email obtained by
The Wall Street Journal.
I have pointed out many times that under the rubric of cybersecurity (the
latest profit-generating "War on Terror" front), the secret state, America's
telecoms and internet service providers are conjoined at the hip in what are
blandly called "public-private partnerships."
Indeed, the secrecy-shredding web site
Public Intelligence, posted a confidential
document that provided details on the inner
workings of one such initiative, 'Project 12.'
Ultimately, the goal of the secretive enterprise, Public Intelligence
averred,
"is not simply to increase the flow of
'threat information' from government agencies to private industry, but
to facilitate greater 'information sharing' between those companies and
the federal government."
This will be accomplished once "real-time cyber
situational awareness" is achieved across all eighteen critical
infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) sectors identified in the report.
Simply put, NSA's warrantless wiretapping program and a constellation of top
secret cybersecurity projects will come to naught if filtering software that
examines - and catalogues - the content, or deep packets, of those spied
upon aren't deployed across all networks, public and private.
No surprise then, that the origins of the ghost in the internet surveillance
machine lie in unscrupulous efforts by advert pimps to deliver us to market.
"Opting In" to the
Corporate Police State
Readers are familiar with the practice of web sites that install tracking
"cookies" and other nasty bits of code that follow our antics across the
internet.
This information is sold to advertisers by firms such as Google and Yahoo
who charge a premium price for the privilege of peering into browsing
habits.
Last month The Wall Street Journal
reported that a gaggle of niche firms,
"harvest online conversations and collect
personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online
forums where people might discuss their lives."
We're told that the dubious practice of "web
scraping" provides the "raw material" in a rapidly expanding "data economy."
Journal reporters found that marketers,
"spent $7.8 billion on online and offline
data in 2009" and that "spending on data from online sources is set to
more than double, to $840 million in 2012 from $410 million in 2009."
And with incentives such as these, and virtually
nothing in the way of regulation, is it any wonder we find ourselves preyed
upon.
While we might garner a measure of privacy from the prying eyes of ISPs,
marketing vultures and our political minders through the use of strong
encryption, as I
reported last month, the
Obama
administration will soon seek congressional authorization which
mandates that software designers and social networking sites build backdoors
into their systems.
According to
The New York Times, the administration
claims this is necessary so that law enforcement and intelligence snoops
have a surefire means,
"to intercept and unscramble encrypted
messages," because their "ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism
suspects is 'going dark'."
Mendacious administration claims are more than
matched by those in the online advertising industry.
Last week, The Wall Street Journal
reported that deep packet inspection,
"one of the most potentially intrusive
technologies for profiling and targeting Internet users with ads is on
the verge of a comeback, two years after an outcry by privacy advocates
in the U.S. and Britain appeared to kill it."
Advertising grifters
Kindsight and
Phorm,
"are pitching deep packet inspection
services as a way for Internet service providers to claim a share of the
lucrative online ad market."
Right up front, Phorm declares that theirs' is a
"global personalisation technology company" that "delivers a more
interesting online experience," that is, if your interests lie in having a
behavioral profile of yourself created, centered around intrusive web
tracking and data mining technologies.
While both firms claim that user privacy is of,
"paramount" concern, the industry's track
record suggests otherwise. In 2008 for example, internet marketing firm
NebuAd planned to "use deep packet inspection to deliver targeted
advertising to millions of broadband subscribers unless they explicitly
opted out of the service."
An outcry ensued when the scheme became public
knowledge. While NebuAd has gone out of business,
"several U.S. ISPs who signed deals with
NebuAd have been hit with class-action lawsuits accusing them of
'installing spyware devices; on their networks," the Journal averred.
According to
Ars Technica, the
lawsuit charged the firm and ISPs,
"Bresnan Communications, Cable One,
CenturyTel, Embarq, Knology, and WOW! of all being involved in the
interception, copying, transmission, collection, storage, usage, and
altering of private data from users."
NebuAd was accused by plaintiffs of exploiting,
"normal browser platform security behaviors
by forging IP packets, allowing their own JavaScript code to be written
into source code trusted by the web browser," the complaint reads.
"NebuAd and ISPs together cooperate in this
attack against the intentions of the consumers, the designers of their
software, and the owners of the servers they visit," attorneys charged.
"All of the involved parties," journalist Jacqui Cheng wrote, were
"alleged to have violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of
1986, California's Computer Crime Law, the federal Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act, and the California Invasion of Privacy Act."
In Britain, a similar controversy erupted when
BT Group PLC were forced to disclose that they,
"had tested Phorm's technology on some
subscribers without telling them. Last year, BT and two other British
ISPs that explored deploying Phorm's service - Virgin Media Inc. and
TalkTalk - abandoned it," the Journal reported.
At the time, the nose-tweaking tech web site The
Register
revealed that although Phorm refused to
state how many BT customers had been profiled,
"at the absolute least there are 38,000 BT
Retail customers unaware their communications have been allegedly
criminally intercepted in the last two years. The number could be as
high as 108,000."
When grilled by The Register as to why Phorm
doesn't believe,
"people have the right to know how likely it
is they were part of a secret test," a Phorm spokesperson replied
"'We're just not going to disclose that'."
He claimed "'they were BT customers and you
have to ask BT about that'."
BT also refused to respond to inquiries. How's
that for transparency!
Why then, should users believe industry professions of faith that ISPs won't
provide them with subscribers' real identities? After all, as one wag told
the Journal, ISPs,
"feel like they have data and they ought to
be able to use it" and "they really desperately want to."
Accordingly, the Journal reported that Kindsight,
owned by telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent SA (talk about a seamless
web!),
"says six ISPs in the U.S., Canada and
Europe have been testing its security service this year although it
isn't yet delivering targeted ads. It declined to name the clients."
CEO Mike Gassewitz told Journal reporters that
the company,
"has been placing ads on various websites to
test the ad-placement technology and build up a base of advertisers,
which now number about 100,000."
Phorm's history hardly inspires confidence. CEO
Kent Ertugrul,
"a Princeton-educated, former investment
banker," we're informed by the Journal, honed his business skills in the
early 1990s when he formed "a joint venture with the Russian Space
Agency to offer joy rides to tourists in MiG-29 fighter jets."
Coming at the height of the Yeltsin kleptocracy
that looted billions of dollars in assets from the sell-off of the prized
possessions of the former Soviet Union, at the very least this should have
raised an eyebrow or two.
Before changing its name to Phorm in 2007, Ertugrul ran an enterprise called
121Media. According to numerous published reports, the firm produced a
spyware application called PeopleOnPage.
"This application," Wikipedia averred,
"acted as a browser hijacker and passed details of the user's currently
visited website to central ContextPlus servers, so that the user could
be targeted with advertising" in the form of intrusive pop-ups.
The adware component, AproposMedia, was
described by InternetSecurityZone.com as,
"...a malicious executable program that is
usually installed without user consent or knowledge. AproposMedia may
have the ability to secretly monitor, record, and transmit computer
activity."
Indeed, The Register
reported that Ertugrul's PeopleOnPage ad
network,
"was blacklisted as spyware by the likes of
Symantec and F-Secure."
Former pop-up king Ertugrul has called online
rights' campaigners "privacy pirates" who represent a "neo-Luddite
retrenchment," and told
The Daily Telegraph last year that Phorm's
technology is a "game changer" in "protecting users' privacy."
But armed with a marketing scheme that promises,
"the potential for companies to collect
substantially more revenue for literally any page on the internet,"
serious privacy concerns are a real issue when deep packet inspection
technologies are touted as a splendid means to do so.
Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee told
New Scientist in 2009 that the,
"ever-increasing power of computers that is
helping the internet to grow is also threatening its future."
Berners-Lee,
"likened DPI to wiretapping, and pointed out
that companies could use it to learn a huge amount about our 'lives,
hates and fears'."
Information I might add, that is portable and
readily exploitable by our political minders and the corporate grifters they
so lovingly serve.
And with a national security state already monitoring huge volumes of data
collected from the internet and other electronic communications' platforms,
The Guardian
warns that Britain and other managed
Western democracies are "sleepwalking into a surveillance society."
Isn't it time we woke up?