The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- U.S. overhauling intelligence access to try to prevent another Snowden
- Venezuela slams U.S. over 'repressive regimes' remarks
- U.S. concerned over North Korean arms ship, Panama awaits U.N
| U.S. overhauling intelligence access to try to prevent another Snowden Posted: ASPEN, Colo. (Reuters) - The United States is overhauling procedures to tighten access to top-secret intelligence in a bid to prevent another mega-leak like the one carried out by former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, senior U.S. officials said on Thursday. The National Security Agency, which Snowden worked for as a Hawaii-based contractor, said it would lead the effort to isolate intelligence and implement a "two-man rule" for downloading - similar to procedures used to safeguard nuclear weapons. "When are we taking countermeasures? ... The answer is now," Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. NSA Director General Keith Alexander told the forum the two-man rule would apply to system administrators like Snowden and anyone with access to sensitive computer server rooms. "You limit the numbers of people who can write to removable media," Alexander said. "Instead of allowing all systems administrators (to do it), you drop it down to a few and use a two-person rule." "We'll close and lock server rooms so that it takes two people to get in there." Carter partly blamed the security breach on the emphasis placed on intelligence-sharing after the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks, which eventually allowed someone like Snowden to access so many documents at once. "We normally compartmentalize information for a very good reason, so one person can't compromise a lot," Carter said. "Loading everything onto one server ... it's something we can't do. Because it creates too much information in one place." Alexander said Snowden had been trusted with moving inside networks to make sure the right information was on the computer servers of the NSA in Hawaii. HOW MUCH DID SNOWDEN STEAL? Snowden fled to Hong Kong in May, a few weeks before publication in Britain's Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post of details he provided about secret U.S. government surveillance of Internet and phone traffic. The disclosures by Snowden, who is wanted on espionage charges, have raised Americans' concerns about domestic spying and strained relations with some U.S. allies. The 30-year-old American who has had his U.S. passport revoked, is stuck in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport and has applied for temporary asylum in Russia. "A huge break in trust and confidence," Alexander said, adding that extremists, aware of the surveillance, were altering their behaviour "and that's going to make our job tougher." Alexander declined to say how many documents Snowden took, but when asked whether it was a lot, he said, "Yes." Carter said the assessment was still being conducted, but "I can just tell you right now the damage was very substantial." Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last month that U.S. officials advised her that Snowden had roughly 200 classified documents. But American officials and others familiar with Snowden's activities say they believe that at a minimum, he acquired tens of thousands of documents. Asked whether U.S. officials had a good idea of what Snowden actually downloaded, as opposed to simply read, Alexander said, "We have good insights to that, yes." Current and former U.S. officials said on condition of anonymity that while authorities now thought they knew which documents Snowden accessed, they were not yet entirely sure of all that he downloaded. Snowden was adept at going into areas and then covering his tracks, which posed a challenge in trying to determine exactly what materials he had accessed, officials said. Former and current U.S. officials told Reuters that a massive overhaul of the security measures governing such intelligence would be extremely expensive. Alexander also said it would take time to implement across the Pentagon and the broader U.S. intelligence community. He also noted there were "15,000 enclaves," some of which are small. "One of the things we can do is limit what people have access to at remote sites and we're doing both. So we're taking that on," he said. Among U.S. allies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure to toughen her stance on the U.S. program. Alexander said the program had helped European allies including Germany, France and Denmark, without offering details. Asked about his reaction to German expressions of surprise, Alexander stated: "We don't tell them everything we do or how we do it. Now they know." (Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Christopher Wilson and Peter Cooney) |
| Venezuela slams U.S. over 'repressive regimes' remarks Posted: CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro demanded the United States apologise on Thursday after the Obama administration's nominee for envoy to the United Nations said there was a crackdown on civil society in the South American country. Maduro has often clashed with Washington since winning an April election following the death of his mentor, socialist leader Hugo Chavez. He said Samantha Power's comments to a Senate confirmation hearing had been aggressive and unfair. "I want an immediate correction by the U.S. government," Maduro said in comments broadcast live on state television. "Power says she'll fight repression in Venezuela? What repression? There is repression in the United States, where they kill African-Americans with impunity, and where they hunt the youngster Edward Snowden just for telling the truth." His comment was an apparent reference to the not-guilty verdict handed down in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman on Saturday for the killing of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin. Maduro has been the most vocal of three Latin American leaders who offered asylum to Snowden, the 30-year-old former National Security Agency contractor wanted by Washington for leaking details of secret surveillance programs. Since taking office, Venezuela's leader has veered between appearing to want better ties with Washington and denouncing alleged U.S. plots to assassinate him and trigger a coup d'etat. During her Senate conformation hearing on Wednesday, Power vowed to stand up against "repressive regimes", and said that meant "contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela." Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who became Chavez's foreign minister and vice president, said the "fascist right" in Venezuela were gleefully applauding her comments. "And the U.S. government says they want to have good relations? What tremendous relations they want," he scoffed. In June, Venezuela's Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of a regional summit. That meeting was seen as a sign of improving ties after years of hostility during Chavez's 14-year rule. But the latest collision came when Maduro became the first foreign leader to say explicitly that he was offering asylum to Snowden, the NSA leaker who has been trapped in the transit zone of a Moscow airport for more than three weeks. Bolivia and Nicaragua also subsequently offered him sanctuary, but Venezuela's government has said it can do little to help him as long as he remains stuck at the airport. (Editing by Ken Wills) |
| U.S. concerned over North Korean arms ship, Panama awaits U.N Posted: PANAMA CITY/MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.N. team is due to arrive in Panama next month to inspect a North Korean ship which was seized carrying arms from Cuba, a potential breach of U.N. sanctions that the United States said was "incredibly concerning." The five-member team of U.N. experts will arrive on August 5 to examine the ship, Panamanian government officials said. The military cargo is suspected of being in violation of a U.N. arms embargo that covers all exports by Pyongyang and most imports. North Korea is under a host of U.N., U.S. and other sanctions due to repeated nuclear and ballistic missile tests since 2006 in defiance of international demands that it stop. North Korea has asked for the ship and crew to be returned but Panama has not responded, saying the country has no official representation in the Central American nation. "There are no North Koreans in Panama, and we don't have any plans to respond to them," said Panamanian Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino. "According to Panamanian law they committed a crime. We won't speak with North Korea, period." The U.S. government has strongly backed Panama's seizure of the ship, the Chong Chon Gang. "There is a process in place and we are supportive of that process, because the bottom line is that any alleged violation of Security Council sanctions is incredibly concerning to us," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters. Panama has been at pains to underline it acted alone in seizing the ship, though security experts say the United States, which operated the Panama Canal until a final withdrawal on December 31, 1999, is likely to have provided assistance. When asked whether information provided by the United States was used, a U.S. intelligence official said: "Yes." A Panamanian frigate on routine patrol stopped the ship off its Atlantic coast last week and seized its cargo after a tense standoff with the North Korean crew. The 35 crew members were arrested and charged with attempting to smuggle undeclared arms through the canal. "No Americans were involved in the operation," said a Panamanian official familiar with the incident. Officers on the frigate were first alerted by the fact that the Chong Chon Gang was not issuing a transponder signal as required by maritime law, and suspected it was smuggling drugs, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It was a drug bust that came up with weapons," the official said. After an extensive search that took several days authorities discovered the weaponry aboard and Cuba later said it was "obsolete" Soviet-era missile equipment, MiG fighter jets and other arms being sent to North Korea for repair. Panama has 100 police cadets unloading the sugar in sweltering conditions in the port of Manzanillo and have so far only cleared one of the four holds, a Panamanian official said. The U.N. team had initially planned to arrive on Tuesday but delayed their trip to give Panama more time to empty the cargo. Earlier on Thursday, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations said the U.N. Security Council sanctions committee would examine the case. The U.N. team of investigators heading to Panama will be drawn from an eight-member panel of experts appointed by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to monitor the sanctions imposed on North Korea, according to diplomats within the Security Council. TELLTALE SIGNS Joe Reeder, former chairman of the Panama Canal Commission's Board of Directors and an ex-under secretary of the U.S. Army, said Panama's security apparatus has a history of cooperating closely with U.S. authorities, who may have shared intelligence on the ship. Mulino, Panama's security minister, was highly regarded by U.S. officials at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Reeder said. Officials were alerted by a number of suspicious factors, including where the ship was coming from and the fact that its transponder had been switched off, Reeder said. "They ... were clearly trying not to be detected," he said. Panamanian officials said they had found the ship's electrical equipment burned and that access to its storage areas had been blocked when they boarded the ship. Officials also noted that the ship's draft "was measurably lower coming back from Cuba than it was going out," Reeder said. He said the raid was sensitive due to the neutrality of the canal, and the decision would not have been taken lightly. "If (Panama had) busted that thing and there was nothing on it, everybody would have egg on their face," said Reeder, who is now with the law firm Greenberg Traurig in Washington, D.C.. The U.S. Southern Command in Miami, the Pentagon's headquarters for operations in Latin America, declined to comment about the specifics of the Chong Chon Gang case, though incidents involving illegal maritime activity, from drug smuggling to human trafficking, fall within its responsibility. "It's very routine for us to be working very closely with countries in the region and sharing information with partners," a spokesman for Southcom said. |
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