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The notoriously secretive National Security Agency is raising security concerns to justify an apparent new policy of pre-emptively denying Freedom of Information Act requests about the agencys contractors.

The policy was cited by John R. Chapman, the agencys chief FOIA public liaison officer, in a letter to Gizmodo on January 17, 2017, three days before Donald Trumps inauguration. In explaining that the agency had declined to even conduct a search for records about a company called SCL Group, Chapman wrote, Please be advised that due to changing security concerns, this is now our standard response to all requests where we reasonably believe acquisition records are being sought on a contract or contract-related activity.

The response appears to indicate that the NSA will no longer releaseor even search forany records pertaining to the private contractors it works with. SCL Group is a U.K.-based behavioral research firm that has reportedly worked with the Department of Defense in the past; its subsidiary Cambridge Analytica was a central component of the Trump campaigns winning strategy.

Several FOIA experts contacted by Gizmodo said they had never heard of such a denial before.

This sounds like a non-Glomar Glomar response, Bradley Moss, deputy executive director for The James Madison Project, told Gizmodo, using a nickname for the notorious practice of national security and law enforcement agencies refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records. There are existing reasons to categorically deny a request, and even to refuse to conduct a search, Moss said, but hes never seen such a response justified in this way.

Theyre clamping down across the board, Moss said. There is clearly a determined and deliberate attempt to plug any gap that might allow the public to see how the national security apparatus actually works. The apparently new standard hasnt been reflected in the regulations that govern the NSAs FOIA practices, and no rules or proposed rules have been recorded in the Federal Register that might illuminate the issue. Any decision by the NSA to pre-emptively deny requests for contractor-related records would be a major departure for the agency; in 2008 it produced a 22-page internal guidebook for responding to just such requests.

Chapmans letter didnt specify which changing security concerns motivated the new policy, and he did not immediately respond to an emailed inquiry from Gizmodo. When we called his office, the person answering the phone told us that Chapman wasnt in the office and that we dont really answer questions over the phone. The NSAs public affairs office did not respond to a request for comment.

Gizmodo will appeal the denial. As for the company we were asking about: SCL Group (originally Strategic Communication Laboratories) has a complicated and sprawling corporate structure that makes it difficult to determine which of its components conduct what business and for whom. Cambridge Analytica, the subsidiary that worked on both the Trump and Brexit campaigns, made some $14.4 million in this election cycle, filings with the Federal Election Commission show, including $5.7 million from Ted Cruzs campaign and $5.6 million from Donald Trumps. The secretive father-daughter duo Robert and Rebekah Mercerbillionaire patrons to both Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conwayare reportedly investors.

SCL Group worked predominately with commercial clients until the late 90s, when the Indonesian government reportedly hired the organization for its psychological warfare expertise to respond to secessionist and religious violence. On its website, SCL Group claims to have worked with a variety of governmental and private entities the world over, including the U.S. State Department. SCL did not return a request for comment. (When we asked the State Department for documentation of that work, an official responded, The claim by the company that you conveyed in your request is peculiar. Without additional information, I am not able to verify the vendors claim.)

If you know anything about the NSAs changing security concerns, SCL Group, or Cambridge Analytica, please do get in touch, on a confidential basis if you like.

Originally posted here:
The NSA Has Found a New Way to Categorically Deny FOIA Requests - Gizmodo

By Collin Breaux | 747-5081 | @PCNHCollinB | CollinB@pcnh.com

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NAVAL SUPPORT ACTIVITY PANAMA CITY Since Monday, hyperbaric doctor Brad Hickey has been isolated from the outside world.

Hickey and five others began a 500-foot descent Monday in the Ocean Simulation Facility (OSF) at the Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) as part of a 10-day saturation dive. Six divers have been separated from family, friends pretty much everything but each other and an extensive task list since the start of the week and wont come back up until Feb. 2.

Despite the challenging conditions, Hickey was in good spirits Wednesday.

I am doing great, he said. Weve got a great group of divers and, more importantly, weve got a great group of individuals outside working three shifts a day, 24 hours a day, taking care of us.

The divers are all Navy-trained and certified, and have varying degrees of experience with saturation diving.

So far everyone is doing great and there are no medical concerns to speak of, Hickey said.

By Wednesday, the divers had descended more than 300 feet with plans to reach 500 feet. The OSF, built in 1975 and with a working depth of more than 2,000 feet, is a training ground for what-if scenarios such as how equipment and the human body functions several hundred feet underwater.

It simulates open diving at extreme depths, NEDU Lt. Jonathan Brown said.

NEDUs divers arent actually 300 feet below ground this week, however; using the simulation, they are nestled above ground in capsule-shaped wet and dry chambers.

In laymans terms, saturation diving is when divers are sent to safely live in high-pressure environments underwater for an extended period of time. The saturation refers to divers being saturated with nitrogen or helium, which allows them to breathe safely and avoid nitrogen narcosis, Brown said. It has a rich history in Bay County NSA PC is billed as the home of military diving encapsulated at the nearby Man in the Sea Museum where the legendary SEALAB 1 underwater habitat is displayed.

Saturation diving allows the Navy and divers to go deep depths for extended periods of time, NEDU Cmdr. Jay Young said. There is a need for it for depths below 300 feet. ... It allows divers to train inside and to maintain efficiency on the saturation system.

At NEDU, divers are spending this week in hyperbaric chambers, where they are sent food, clothes and other supplies in pressurized chambers from up top. To get to the underwater part of the unit called the wet chamber they pass through whats called a trunk. The entire system is above ground at NSA PC.

NEDU does saturation dives at least twice a year, sometimes more.As common practice, doctors are sent down to live with the divers in case they get sick or injured an essential role, because decompression can take hours, at the least. Before the dive, there were months of heavy planning including medical screenings and equipment testing for divers and chambers.

Decompression sickness also known as the bends is one medical concern for resurfacing divers. Saturation diving cuts down on this, although divers still require time in a decompression chamber once they come back up. The time spent decompressing depends on how long they are down there. Because the divers are descending so deep this week, it will take about six days for them to decompress a rate of about 5-6 feet per hour, Brown said. Their carefully controlled ascent will begin Feb. 2.

While the divers are under, a team in a control room communicates with them and tracks their every move using computer monitors and high-end technology. The team extensively monitors the physical conditions in the OSF, including gas levels, and can alter them for diver safety.

Navy Diver Senior Chief William Sinrich was at the depth control board Wednesday, which also controls the chamber and water temperature. Although the OSF water was a chilly 50 degrees, the team cancontrol the hot water that flows through the divers diving suits.

It feels very important because we do unique evolutions that no other dive command does, Sinrich said. It benefits all the services that use diving and increases medical knowledge.

Here is the original post:
NSA PC saturation divers to spend week 500 feet deep - The News Herald

Posted by Edridge D'Souza on January 26, 2017 Leave a Comment

Barack Obama is no longer the president, but some of his actions may still significantly affect us in the coming days. Namely, in early-mid January, he gave 16 agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, access to information collected by the National Security Agencys (NSA) controversial (and arguably unconstitutional) warrantless surveillance program. In essence, the incoming Trump administration will have a much easier time targeting private citizens using information gathered by the controversial PRISM program.

This should be alarming to anyone who cares about privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union has described this sort of spying, conducted with little to no oversight, as blatantly illegal and in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Most of this data was previously only accessible to the NSA. However, opening it up to other agencies means that there is a far greater threat.

Advocates of the NSA will claim that there should be nothing wrong with granting wider access to this data. The common refrain is, You shouldnt be worried if you have nothing to hide. I believe the comic artist Zach Weinersmith refutes this idea rather succinctly:

Everyone has something to hide and usually no one cares. By surveilling everyone, you catch the benign breaches of law and taboo, a character in his comic says while being monitored. If the public are all guilty, the executive part of the government can selectively enforce lawswhich defeats the whole point of separation of powers.

Expanding access to this warrantless data will therefore only increase the power of the executive office. Regardless of the morality or legality of doing so, some might have believed that the executive office would not misuse this power and only use it to stop national security threats. However, in the past year, weve learned not to believe conventional wisdom very much. Former President Obama essentially weaponized the power of the federal government and subsequently handed it over to someone he believes is unfit to serve.

People might have been willing to accept such programs under what they perceive to be a benign administration, but let this be a reminder that power can and will be transferred, and when it is, it will most certainly be used for different purposes than intended. In Trumps administration, if all agencies have access to personal data on every individual, there is very little to stop them from abusing this power. Perhaps this means selectively targeting and arresting political opponents and dissenters for breaking the law, while ignoring supporters who do the same. Perhaps, as it did for the fictional Frank Underwood of House of Cards, this means covertly collecting voter data to rig elections. Or perhaps this means using the information exactly as intended, with no ill intentions.

The problem is, no one knows. There is absolutely no way for any citizen to know how the government is using this power, and with Trumps record on transparency, it seems were not likely to find out. Even if the latter case is true, and the Trump administration only uses this vast amount of power for necessary occasions, there is no oversight and no way to independently verify that it is not being abused. This runs in direct contrast to the constitutional vision of a government constrained by the people.

How can this be stopped? Well, it really cant. Well just have to wait and see what this incoming administration does, and try to hold them accountable when something goes wrong. However, this serves as a valuable lesson to all political parties in the future: do not give excessive power to the federal government, because it can and will fall into the hands of the people you least want it to.

In fact, this rule holds true for the legislative branch as well. In 2013, congressional Democrats voted for a nuclear option that would drastically reduce the Republicans power to block presidential appointments. Now that there is a Republican president making the appointments, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he regrets it. Had the old system been in place, Democrats might still be able to block many of Trumps controversial Cabinet picks.

The take-away from this is that all rules can and will be abused. The public may have perceived Bush and Obama as relatively benign, conducting warrantless surveillance only for our own good. But theres nothing benign about unconstitutional spying. Although theres no telling as of yet how Trump will use this power, its not far-fetched that he, like his predecessors, will also continue the unchecked expansion of executive power. However, with a less-charismatic figurehead, people will hopefully be a bit more careful before allowing the federal government to expand its authority and take away their constitutional rights. Donald Trump has promised to drain the swamp of Washington; lets wait and see if hell also drain the swamp of executive power.

Edridge DSouza is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at edsouza@umass.edu.

Filed under Archives, Columns, Opinion, Scrolling Headlines Tagged with american civil liberties union, Chuck Schumer, DEA, department of homeland security, Donald Trump, fbi, Frank Underwood, NSA, President, PRISM, Trump, Zach Weinersmith

Originally posted here:
NSA surveillance can't go unchecked - The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

An Abuja High Court has again reaffirmed the bail granted former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, and five others in the arm deal trial involving $2.1 billion.

Justice Baba Yusuf reaffirmed the bail on Mr. Dasuki on the ground that he was entitled to it and having been admitted to same since 2015 when the federal government brought criminal charges against him.

Mr. Dasuki and five others were re-arraigned before Justice Baba Yusuf on the criminal charges that were transferred from Justice Peter Affen of the FCT High Court to the new court.

However after the 22 charges were read to the six defendants and all pleaded not guilty, counsel to Mr. Dasuki, Ahmed Raji, applied to the court to reaffirm the bail granted to the ex-NSA even though he has not been allowed to enjoy same since December 2015.

The counsel submitted that it was on record that the FCT High Court 24 admitted Mr. Dasuki on bail before he was illegally arrested and detained by the State Security Services (SSS).

Mr. Raji argued that with the transfer of the case from Justice Affen to Justice Baba Yusuf, the SSS had been separated from the matter, adding that the court record indicated that the ex-NSA was being prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and not SSS.

The counsel further said that the illegal act of SSS should not be used to divest the court of its power to reaffirm the bail granted Mr. Dasuki earlier because he is entitled to it.

He urged Justice Baba Yusuf to adopt the bail conditions earlier granted Mr. Dasuki before Justice Affen and reaffirm same in the interest of justice.

The counsel argued that it is wrong of the prosecution counsel, Rotimi Jacobs, to have objected to the reaffirmation of the bail condition on Mr. Dasuki.

He said that Mr. Dasuki has in his possession a judgment of the ECOWAS Court which last year set aside the unlawful detention of the Ex-NSA and also imposed a fine of N15,000,000 on the Federal Government as compensation to his client.

Another Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Lateef Fagbemi, who spoke as a friend of the court, argued that there was no dispute that Mr. Dasuki was granted bail but has not been released by the SSS to enjoy the bail.

The senior counsel described the action of SSS as most unfortunate and urged Justice Yusuf to resist the temptation of being drawn into the illegality of actions of the SSS on Mr. Dasuki.

The Federal Government Counsel, Mr. Jacobs, told the court that he had no objection to the affirmation of the bail earlier granted to five other defendants in the trial.

He however urged the judge not to make any pronouncement or order in respect of the bail for Mr. Dasuki since he had not been allowed to enjoy any bail.

Court must not act in vain, there is no point making an order in vain. Dasuki has been in the custody of the DSS since 2015 and is still there till today, he said.

However in his brief ruling, Justice Yusuf said that it was an undisputable fact that ex-NSA was granted bail in 2015 and that it would be in the interest of justice to reaffirm the same bail irrespective of the action of another arm of the security agencies.

The judge adjourned trial in the matter to February 24, 2016.

Others charged along with Mr. Dasuki are former Finance Minister of State, Bashir Yuguda; a former Director of Finance and Administration in the Office of the National Security Adviser(ONSA), Shuaibu Salisu; Dalhatu Investment; Sagir Attahiru Bafarawa and a former Sokoto State governor, Attahiru Bafarawa.

They were charged with corruption and breach of trust contrary to Section 215 of the Penal Code and Section 17B of the EFCC Act 2004.

More here:
Again, Court orders release of ex-NSA Dasuki - Premium Times ... - Premium Times

When Ron Gula joined the National Security Agency in the mid-1990s, the world was still storing information on floppy disks.

The agency hired him as a penetration tester, a white-hat hacker who looks for holes in computer networks so that they can be patched before the enemy finds them. He spent years breaking into government servers and putting together reports detailing potential weak spots, part of a skill set that would prove critical throughout his career.

I tested the good guys; I did not break into the bad guys, Gula said of his time at the NSA.

It wasnt until after he met his wife, Cyndi, that he stepped into the business world. The two married in 1997 and co-founded two companies together, Ron Gula as a technologist and chief executive, Cyndi Gula handling company operations.

One of those companies, Tenable Network Security, became a prominent player among a new crop of Washington-area companies selling cybersecurity to private corporations, attracting $300 million in investments and eventually becoming a springboard for the Gulas to try something new.

The couples third act is an investment fund that they hope will enable younger technologists to follow in their footsteps. In doing so, the Gulas are part of a new generation of experienced technology executives filtering back into the Washington areas business community after making a fortune growing and selling companies on their own.

Gula Tech Adventures has made small investments in at least 13 companies, most of which operate in the Mid-Atlantic region. The fund has officially been in operation only for a few weeks, though Gula started aggressively investing his own money throughout 2016.

When Ron started Tenable, nobody quite understood the issues in cyber and how they were going to balloon, so he was really ahead of his time. Nobody questions the need for cyber-fixes today, said Jim Hunt, a cybersecurity investor who teaches an investment course at Georgetown University. If anybody can profess to be the regions cyber-czar, Rons got the rsum.

Other cyber-executives are working to turn past successes into new ones.

Dave Merkel, the former chief technology officer of Mandiant, which was sold for $1 billion to West Coast cybersecurity giant FireEye, last year started a company in Herndon, Va., and immediately attracted $7.5 million from venture capitalists.

Numerous executives from Sourcefire, which grew up in Columbia, Md., before being acquired by Cisco for $2.7 billion, have started new companies in the past five years. Former Sourcefire chief executive Wayne Jackson now heads Sonatype, and former vice president John Czupak now heads detection firm ThreatQuotient, both Washington-area businesses.

Others, including Blu Venture, a consortium of former technology executives, are getting in on the angel investing game and focusing on area companies.

This is how Silicon Valley really got its start, and why its so far ahead of every other region in the country. Out there, when entrepreneurs sell out, they go [start a new company], or they go become angel investors, said Jonathan Aberman, a Virginia-based security investor.

The fact that people like the Gulas are investing locally means that were starting to develop a more robust cybersecurity software product ecosystem, Aberman said.

The Gulas fund has mainly made small investments so far, but the pair have lofty goals. Their plan is to show strong enough returns on the funds early investments to attract well-heeled co-investors, filling what he sees as a gap in the Washington-area technology community. Ron Gula says he wants to broaden the fund beyond his family office by 2018, and eventually make bigger investments alongside the countrys large venture funds.

As I get more experience and more success, I want to do larger investments and help the companies that Im working with grow, he said. I want to see 20 Tenables.

If Gula pulls it off, hell be filling a void that has dogged the local business community in past decades. Cybersecurity researchers around the nations capital have come up with industry-shifting innovations in the security space, but an unfavorable investment climate has prevented the region from really capitalizing on all that talent.

The fastest-growing companies have tended to head west in search of operating capital. Entrepreneurs often say they have an easier time finding funding in Silicon Valley, picking up larger deals and getting more favorable investment terms compared with the Mid-Atlantic region. And the giant tech companies that buy up growing firms the Googles, Microsofts and Oracles of the world are mostly located on the West Coast, effectively poaching some of the regions fastest-growing firms.

Cybersecurity is one of the only technology sectors where the funding gap appears to be getting smaller. Area cybersecurity companies are attracting funding at a time when other start-ups are having a hard time closing deals.

The annual number of cybersecurity venture deals doubled in the four years from 2011 to 2015, and the industry here already counts at least 1,000 companies in its ranks. Many of the larger deals have come from out-of-state venture funds or private equity firms acting in absence of a strong local investment ecosystem.

Some in the start-up community are hoping that Ron Gulas former company could play the role of acquirer, buying up local firms and keeping them here.

The Gulas no longer work for Tenable Network Security, having been partially bought out as part of a big funding round. But the company recently hired Amit Yoran, the former chief executive of Dell RSA, to take Ron Gulas place as chief executive, and Tenable bought San Francisco security company Flawcheck for a sum that wasnt disclosed.

Ron Gula has not said exactly how much money he walked away with when he left Tenable, only saying that the fund he now runs with his wife is larger than a $5 million minimum set by regulators. He says he wont make investments in start-ups that compete with Tenable because he still owns a portion of the company he founded.

He says he wants to keep the fund in the Washington area and help local entrepreneurs build businesses here.

Nobody ever tapped me on the shoulder and said, If you worked in Silicon Valley or New York or Tel Aviv youd be more successful, he said. Its never occurred to me leave.

Read more:
Ron Gula, NSA hacker-turned-CEO, steps into the investment space - Washington Post