Category: Security

Security is immunity from the will of others.

Government and law enforcement back doors

One computer security concern is that various insiders — including hardware and software manufacturers, and governments which may compel them to comply — will build back doors into their products to allow the security to be compromised.

Doing this is a terrible idea. A back door put in for government surveillance or police use is also vulnerable to use for any purpose by anyone who discovers it. There’s no way to create strong encryption and security against everyone except the government, so building in back doors means deliberately spreading insecure systems throughout your society. When you deliberately design your systems to be vulnerable to one attacker (however well-motivated and regulated) you inevitably create an attack vector for an unauthorized person. You also face vulnerability if the mechanism of the backdoor is reverse engineered by unregulated agents, like criminal groups or foreign governments. With the degree of espionage focused in high-tech industry, it’s hard to imagine that any government could keep their back door strictly for their own use when well-resourced and determined opponents would also achieve many objectives through access.

The latest high-profile example of such a back door is the revelation that Swiss cryptography firm Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA. There have been numerous recent news stories, but the same information was reported in 1995. The National Security Archive has some further context.

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Open thread: the global nuclear arms race

There are several reasons to conclude that the world today is experiencing a nuclear arms race alongside conventional military buildup by many actors and a breakdown of multilateral cooperation.

Partly driven by US ballistic missile defence development, Russia began deploying weapon systems meant to counter them like the Topol-M in the 1990s. Now they are talking about hypersonic weapons and underwater cruise missiles.

China’s nuclear arsenal is developing, including through a rapidly enlarging submarine fleet with the resulting ability to carry out very rapid sub-to-shore SLBM strikes as well as less vulnerability to having land-based weapons and command systems destroyed.

India and Pakistan are also developing their nuclear capabilities, which may be the most threatening in the world because of the short flight times between the countries. Fear that a preemptive strike may destroy their ability to retaliate may be driving both countries to adopt dangerous policies to launch on what they perceive to be an attack and to delegate authority to use nuclear weapons to field commanders.

In the broadest terms, the US development of nuclear weapons in WWII encouraged Soviet weapon development (partly through extensive espionage in the US program) as well as British nuclear weapons after the US cut off cooperation. UK-French rivalry, national prestige, and skepticism about US protection helped motivate the French arsenal and their first test in 1960. Fear of Russia and the US led to Chinese nuclear weapons after 1964, and fear of the Chinese arsenal helped drive India to develop nuclear weapons and test one in 1974. Fear of India led to the current Pakistani arsenal and their test in 1998. North Korean nuclear weapons are partly consequences of fear of the United States, and also the hope they will bolster regime legitimacy and survival. The Israeli arsenal isn’t known to have been tested, and may have been motivated more by fear of being overwhelmed by conventional forces from hostile neighbours than specifically from fear of someone else’s nuclear weapons.

Despite being bound by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not to do so, all of the long-established nuclear powers have been tempted by geopolitics or profits to share technologies and expertise that helped later nuclear weapon states.

There is now a credible fear that regional nuclear arms races could break out in the Middle East and Asia. There are whispers that Pakistan has promised weapons to Saudi Arabia if Iran ever becomes a nuclear weapon state, and other states in the region may choose the same course. In Asia, South Korea and even Japan may be secretly considering nuclearization, and many other states in the region have the wealth and technical potential to do likewise.

These weapons threaten everyone, not least because accidental or unauthorized launches or detonations are a constant risk. The best thing for the world would be the emergence of a belief that possessing nuclear weapons is a stain on a country’s honour because of their indiscriminately killing power, not a golden demonstration of national prestige. I believe we should fight for a world where these fissile isotopes are put to life-affirming purposes rather than the threat of obliteration, but it’s hard to see the path from here to there while states continue to grow more distrustful about one another and while the capabilities needed to build nuclear arms become more distributed and available.

Police and intelligence services as defenders of the status quo

In Victoria today, about ten young Indigenous protestors were arrested after occupying the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources building.

Meanwhile, British security authorities have categorized Greenpeace and the Extinction Rebellion with far-right groups and neo-Nazis.

Today’s George Monbiot column calls out how government security forces have often been more focused on threats to the political and economic order than on genuine threats to security:

The police have always protected established power against those who challenge it, regardless of the nature of that challenge. And they have long sought to criminalise peaceful dissent. Part of the reason is ideological: illiberal and undemocratic attitudes infest policing in this country. Part of it is empire-building: if police units can convince the government and the media of imminent threats that only they can contain, they can argue for more funding.

But there’s another reason, which is arguably even more dangerous: the nexus of state and corporate power. All over the world, corporate lobbyists seek to brand opponents of their industries as extremists and terrorists, and some governments and police forces are prepared to listen. A recent article in the Intercept seeks to discover why the US Justice Department and the FBI had put much more effort into chasing mythical “ecoterrorists” than pursuing real, far-right terrorism. A former official explained, “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying ‘I wish you’d do something about these rightwing extremists’.” By contrast, there is constant corporate pressure to “do something” about environmental campaigners and animal rights activists.

Decarbonization is going to be a huge political fight, and it’s clear that the fossil fuel industry has the support of the security and surveillance states which have exploded since the September 11th, 2001 attacks. At the societal level we need to reconceptualize the threats which we face and the appropriate means for dealing with them. Armed force in defence of economic interests which hope and plan to keep fossil fuel use going as long as possible is the opposite.

Re-kindling multilateralism with non-carbon energy?

Clearly one of the principal things we need to learn as part of dealing with climate change is how to get along with one another as an international community. For one thing, we cannot afford the inevitably vast and frantic fossil fuel use which any great-power conflict would involve. More optimistically, it will only by coordinating efforts all around the world that we can follow the sort of decarbonization pathway which would avoid breaching the 1.5 – 2.0 ˚C temperature limit people talk about.

We can choose to be part of a noble tradition in statesmanship: of nations with different strengths, needs, and priorities being able to cooperate on projects of mutual interest and avoid the needless waste of arming excessively for war. It’s a waste in many senses: in terms of the time and skills of people who serve in military forces and who would otherwise contribute to society more in other ways; in terms of the spending on military equipment; the greenhouse gas emissions from remote location diesel generators and military vehicles; the fossil fuels which we are burning instead of keeping underground in order to keep our climate crisis from becoming catastrophic, or at least putting to an important social purpose which benefits people’s lives.

What it requires is a willingness to accept that people around the world are morally comparable to us, akin. We cannot choose a course of action which will condemn their nations to destruction, nor impose the level of disruption and suffering expected from unmitigated climate change. Once we have made a collective determination among some states that it is possible to move beyond fossil fuels and remain prosperous and democratic societies, we can begin to build that bloc outward on the basis of trading links and good and forthright relations with states outside our collective fossil fuel rationing system. Imposing tariffs at the border for states exporting carbon-intensive products may be a necessary part of containing opposition from trade-exposed domestic industries, while encouraging outside states to join the rationing bloc by implementing a credible set of decarbonization policies themselves, or at least established a comparable or integrated carbon price.

The Watchwood

In chapter 10, book 3 of the Lord of The Rings, Treebeard describes to Gandalf how Saruman will be guarded in Orthanc following the destruction of Isengard by the Ents:

‘Leave it to the Ents!’ said Treebeard. ‘We shall search the valley from head to foot and peer under every pebble. Trees are coming back to live here, old trees, wild trees. The Watchwood we will call it. Not a squirrel will go here, but I shall know of it. Leave it to Ents! Until seven times the years in which he tormented us have passed, we shall not tire of watching him.’

It is a line which has been in my head on account of an enhanced need for watchfulness in the last year and six months.

Later when they meet in chapter 6 of book 6, Treebeard greets Gandalf with a reference to this new Watchwood:

‘Welcome to the Treegarth of Orthanc!’ he said. ‘I knew that you were coming, but I was at work up the valley; there is much still to be done. But you have not been idle either away in the south and the east, I hear; and all that I hear is good, very good.’ Then Treebeard praised all their deeds, of which he seemed to have full knowledge; and at last he stopped and looked long at Gandalf.

Soon Treebeard explains that he already released the man he was meant to be guarding:

‘But he is gone. Yes, he is gone seven days. I let him go. There was little left of him when he crawled out, and as for that worm-creature of his, he was like a pale shadow. Now do not tell me, Gandalf, that I promised to keep him safe; for I know it. But things have changed since then. And I kept him until he was safe, safe from doing any more harm. You should know that above all I hate the caging of live things, and I will not keep even such creatures as these caged beyond great need. A snake without fangs may crawl where he will.’

‘You may be right,’ said Gandalf; ‘but this snake had still one tooth left, I think. He had the poison of his voice, and I guess that he persuaded you, even you Treebeard, knowing the soft spot in your heart. Well, he is gone, and there is no more to be said.’

Gandalf shortly after Gandalf says to Frodo:

‘Yes, I think you had better do that,’ said Gandalf. ‘But alas for Saruman! I fear nothing more can be made of him. He has withered altogether. All the same, I am not sure that Treebeard is right: I fancy he could do some mischief still in a small mean way.’

That seems applicable to my own situation as well. I shall try to do better than Treebeard at incorporating a necessary ongoing watchfulness into a healthy growing thing, both with the thought of the enduring of the vigil and of the mental balance of those carrying it out, who must remember why the world deserves protecting.

Pieter Basedow

If you are interacting with Toronto’s Pieter Basedow (date of birth 1958-09-01) it would be a good idea to question what he says about himself. For organizations he lists as past employers and volunteer positions it would be prudent to ask them what experience they actually had with him and what they think of him now.

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Nuclear papers

Over the years I have written a variety of academic papers on various aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear power:

1) Written for an undergrad international relations course at UBC and subsequently published in a journal and given an award:

“The Space Race as ‘Primitive’ Warfare.” UBC Journal of International Affairs. 2005. p. 19-28.

2) Written during my M.Phil at Oxford:

“Climate Change, Energy Security, and Nuclear Power.” St. Antony’s International Review. Volume 4, Number 2, February 2009. p. 92-112.

3) Written as part of my PhD coursework at U of T:

Climate change and nuclear power in Ontario (self-published on Academia.edu)

Canada’s mixed nuclear policy experiences.

Trump and conflict with Iran

This week’s Economist is reporting about the growing danger of armed conflict between the United States and Iran:

President Donald Trump’s fixation with undoing “Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement” in the form of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was worrisome and counterproductive enough, in a world where nuclear weapon proliferation is a growing threat and where proliferation in the Middle East is especially likely if any new nuclear weapon powers emerge.

It’s terrifying to think what a new profusion of nuclear powers in the region could mean. Among other things, I think it would greatly increase the risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. There were enough US-Soviet close calls in the Cold War, and that was two powers that were far apart, in communication, and well-informed about each other’s capabilities. A nuclear crisis among a larger set of tightly-packed states is a truly fearful prospect.

A conventional American or Israeli attack on Iran is also a fearful prospect, and one that seems almost certain to be less effective at curtailing Iranian nuclear ambitions in the medium term than multilateral diplomacy. Again Trump’s recklessness and the incompetence and ideological drive of his officials like John Bolton is threatening the peace of the world, such as it is holding up these days.

Soufan on the ineffectiveness of torture

After [redacted by the CIA] left, Boris had to keep introducing harsher and harsher methods, because Abu Zubaydah and other terrorists were trained to resist them. In a democracy such as ours, there is a glass ceiling on harsh techniques that the interrogator cannot breach, so a detainee can eventually call the interrogator’s bluff. And that’s what Abu Zubaydah did.

This is why the EIT [Enhanced Interrogation Technique] proponents later had to order Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded again, and again, and again—at least eighty-three times, reportedly. The techniques were in many ways a self-fulfilling prophecy, ensuring that harsher and harsher ones were introduced.

Cruel interrogation techniques not only serve to reinforce what a terrorist has been prepared to expect if captured; they give him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthen his resistance. By contrast, the interrogation strategy that [redacted] employed—engaging and outwitting the terrorist—confuses him and leads him to cooperate. The art of interview and interrogation is a science, a behavioural science, and [redacted] were successful precisely because we had it down to a science.

Evidence gained from torture is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. Indeed, as KSM, who was subjected to the enhanced techniques, later told the Red Cross: “During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop”.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. 423

The CIA holding out on the FBI before 9/11

The [redacted by the CIA] picture [of Khallad, alias of Walid bin Attash] had been in the CIA’s possession when Steve Bongardt and the Cole team had been shown the [redacted] three pictures on June 11, 2011. If it has been shown to the Cole team, Steve and the other agents would have identified the man in the picture as Khallad. We knew exactly what Khallad looked like from the Cole investigation. And if we had learned that the CIA had had a picture of Khallad in June 2001, and had been monitoring him, we would have gone straight to headquarters saying that the CIA had lied about not knowing about Khallad, and we would have demanded that they hand over the information.

If that had happened, at a minimum, Khalid al-Mindhar would not have been allowed to just walk into the United States on July 4, 2001, and Nawaf al-Hazmi, [Mohammed] Atta’s deputy, would have been arrested. At a minimum.

Soufan, Ali H. The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda. 2011. p. 296