The United States Congress should restrict the National Security Agency’s ability to collect “bulk data” without a warrant

Terror DA

NSA bulk collection crucial to counter-terror

McCall ’15 [ALEXANDER MCCALL, Indiana Public Media, June 1, 2015, Indiana Politicians Aren’t Happy About Patriot Act Expiring, http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indianas-senators-patriot-act-82874/]

In the debate over the Patriot Act, which, in part, allows the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and temporarily expired last night, Indiana’s Senators are seeking for it to be re-instated.

Three provisions of the Patriot Act lapsed after a midnight deadline Sunday, at least temporarily.

One of those three provisions, Section 215, accommodates the NSA collection of phone records – a collection that has come under fire since former military contractor Edward Snowden revealed the collection program nearly two years ago.

In the days leading up to the provisions’ expiration, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., called that bulk collection “illegal.”

But in a recent opinion published in Goshen News, Indiana Republican Sen. Dan Coats argued those provisions were “valuable.” Coats has been part of the Republican faction pushing for the provisions’ renewal.

“I certainly understand concerns about the possibility that this program could be used to breach personal privacy and civil liberties, which are important to all Americans and protected by the Constitution,” Coats said in the piece. “But to date, there is no evidence to support accusations of abuse or unlawful spying on American citizens under this program.”

Coats has expressed concerns about implementing a replacement program, adding that he’s worried it would make U.S. counter-terrorism efforts less effective.

“It puts Americans at risk,” Coats said in an interview with Fox59.

And Sen. Coats’ Democratic counterpart, Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, says he’s on the same page.

“At a time when ISIS is causing so much havoc in the Middle East and at the same time trying to stir up lone wolf attacks right here in our own country, to leave the country without the ability to do surveillance even for a minute is extremely dangerous,” Donnelly told Fox59.

Cybersecurity Bad DA

1NC

NSA reform is horse traded for cybersecurity

Bennett ’15 [Cory Bennett, 05/31/15, Surveillance reform could tee up cyber bill, The Hill, http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/243498-surveillance-reform-could-tee-up-cyber-bill]

Supporters of cybersecurity reform are hoping a breakthough on the Patriot Act could pave the way for the Senate to consider their prized legislation.

Getting a surveillance reform measure through the Senate might assuage some of the privacy concerns that have held up cybersecurity legislation in the upper chamber, say supporters of the bill.

“If a deal is reached, it may in fact improve the chances of cybersecurity legislation coming through,” said Jim Penrose, a former head of the National Security Agency’s Operational Discovery Center who is now an executive vice president at cybersecurity firm DarkTrace.

The Senate has been trying to move a bill that would shield companies from legal liability when sharing cyber threat data with the government.

Backers of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) say exchanging more information on hackers will help the public and private sector harden network defenses that have been repeatedly breached over the last year.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, government officials and most major industry groups are supporting the bill.

But civil liberties groups and several lawmakers believe the offering would simply shuttle more personal data to the National Security agency, further empowering its surveillance program.

The House passed two companion pieces of legislation back in April, but CISA has been mired in the upper chamber, lost amid the heated debate over re-writing the Patriot Act and reforming the NSA programs.

“I don’t think cyber information-sharing legislation is in any way off the table,” said Paul Martino, senior policy counsel at the National Retail Federation, which supports CISA. “I think it is just being held up right now in a traffic jam.”

Cyber-bill leads to information overload, makes protections worse

Katznelson 11

Zachary, “Commentary: The Patriot Act, cyber-edition,” http://www.kansascity.com/2011/10/23/3214814/commentary-the-patriot-act-cyber.html

Cybersecurity is the new buzzword in Washington, capturing a wide range of potential responses to internet-related threats both real and imagined. Congress is starting to play a role, considering legislation that purports to make cyberspace more secure. But many of the solutions being offered echo those of the deeply flawed Patriot Act, enacted ten years ago this month. Just as the Patriot Act swept aside long-standing constitutional protections against government prying into private lives, current cybersecurity proposals threaten to expand the government's ability to collect personal information — even when there is no indication that the people targeted have been involved in any wrongdoing. Over the past decade, we have learned that such policies fail on two fronts: they are largely ineffective and they violate civil liberties. The Patriot Act presumes that if the government could know more of what we do with our daily lives by monitoring our e-mails and phone calls, downloading our financial transactions, and tracking our locations, it could spot patterns and find terrorists. The Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches have mattered little as claims of national security swept such concerns aside. That thinking has led even further, to warrantless wiretapping and government databases so massive that numbers most of us have never heard of (like yottabytes) have to be used to quantify the data taken in. But counter-terrorism officials consistently lament being swamped with reports and analyses while trying to come to grips with the astronomical amount of data our powerful computers struggle to collate and interpret. In seeking the needle of terrorism, we have built the biggest haystack in history. As we turn to the challenge of cybersecurity, we should be careful not to repeat past mistakes. The Obama administration's plan again seeks to gather more and more private information about regular citizens in the hope of spotting patterns. Under this proposal, private companies would be asked to hand over increasing amounts of our personal information. Once more, information gathering would be incredibly broad, sweeping in law-abiding Americans against whom there is not even a hint of alleged wrongdoing. In the name of making us safe, we once again face the prospect of flooding our systems with excessive information, and hamstringing the officials trying to protect us. There cannot be a meaningful debate about these policies until the public knows what the government is already doing with our private information. The government currently collects reams of data from private companies, some demanded, some handed over voluntarily. But we have no idea how much or how often, or maybe even more importantly, what is done with all these private details once they are in government hands. That is all kept secret. As citizens, we deserve to know what the companies holding our financial details, communications records, and other personal information are doing with it — and what the government is requiring of them. For that reason, the ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn more about how corporations and the government already pass our private information back and forth. To date, no government agency has revealed anything in response. Before Washington asks for even more power to sweep in data, surely it should disclose how much it takes in now. We must avoid the Patriot Act's pitfalls: a civil-liberties-defying policy that might actually make things worse.

Private sector solves cyber-terrorism now – legislation is too static and prevents innovation

Lee 11

Amy, “White House Cybersecurity Plan Feared Inadequate By Experts, Could Violate Privacy,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/13/white-house-cybersecurity-plan_n_861738.html

Experts fear a new government plan to combat the growing threat of cyberattacks on private computers, the government’s own systems and the nation’s critical infrastructure could end up implementing outdated controls and introduce possible privacy violations. The plan, unveiled by the White House on Thursday, was lauded by experts for increasing attention on cybersecurity and recommending higher penalties for cybercriminals. But some say the proposal lacks the force, flexibility and specificity necessary to effectively protect the nation’s cybersecurity. While most affirm the need to take a tougher stance on cybersecurity measures, many experts worry the proposed legislation will not be adequate to deal with new threats as they emerge given the complicated, ever-shifting nature of cybercrime. While legislation can take years to pass, cybercriminals are often one step ahead of cybersecurity vendors. By the time the government steps in to act to prevent cybercrime, the protections it requires might already be obsolete. “The attackers are two years ahead of the defenders, security vendors, who are two years ahead of market, which is two years ahead of compliance, and legislation is five years behind that,” said Josh Corman, the Research Director of the 451 Group's enterprise security practice. “These practices may be even more stale once enacted. It’s unlikely the law could ever keep pace, given the glacial pace of legislation.” Some experts say that legislation governing security practices could lead to the establishment of industry standards that will quickly be made obsolete by cybercriminals. But by asking companies to protect specific kinds of information using specific kinds of protections, those standards will continue to remain dominant, even if they are inadequate to protect against the present state of cyber threats. "You've already failed before you've begun," said Corman. "It's hard enough simply for vendors to keep pace." Others are worried by the proposal’s lack of specificity regarding how security protections will be implemented and say the plan would allow contractors to fleece those trying to stay protected. “This is being pushed through as something we have to do, but where’s the plan behind it? Where’s what we’re going to be implementing?” said Kurt Roemer, Citrix Systems' chief security strategist. “A call to audit -- without a detailed audit plan -- is a license to print money for contractors.” Security experts were puzzled by the prominent inclusion of intrusion prevention systems, or IPS, as protections for federal executive branch civilian computers. IPS is an outdated security protection, Corman said, adding that the technology only stops previously known kinds of breaches. Last year, 89 percent of the attacks were of a kind that IPSs cannot prevent, according to Corman. “An IPS would not have protected against Wikileaks, stuxnet or any other targeted unknown threat,” added Roemer. “To specifically call out IPS was laughable.”

Extinction

Adhikari ’09 (Richard,- leading journalist on advanced-IP issues for several major publications, including The Wall Street Journal “Civilization's High Stakes Cyber-Struggle: Q&A With Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.)”)

The conflicts in the Middle East and Afghanistan, to name the most prominent, are taking their toll on human life and limb. However, the escalating cyberconflict among nations is far more dangerous, argues retired general Wesley Clark, who spoke with TechNewsWorld in an exclusive interview. That cyberconflict will take a far greater toll on the world, contends Clark, who last led the NATO forces to end the ethnic cleansing in Albania. There is a pressing need for new institutions to cope with the ongoing conflict, in his view. Clark is a member of the boards of several organizations. He has a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University and a master's degree in military science from the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College. Background: In November 2008, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based bipartisan think tank, presented recommendations on national security to the then-incoming Obama administration. These called for an overhaul of the existing national cybersecurity organization. Since then, the state of national cybersecurity has appeared chaotic. In August, White House cybersecurity adviser Melissa Hathaway resigned for reasons that echoed the departure in 2004 of Amit Yoran, who then held essentially the same post. In an exclusive interview earlier this year, Yoran told TechNewsWorld that national cybersecurity was still a mess. TechNewsWorld: Security experts warn that nations are preparing for a new cyberwar. Is our government doing enough to protect our national cyber-infrastructure? Or is it in the process of protecting the cyber-infrastructure? Gen. Wesley K. Clark: I think we're in the process of trying to get it protected, but unlike conventional security considerations, where one can easily see an attack and take the appropriate response, the cyberstruggle is a daily, ongoing affair. It's a matter of thousands of probes a day, in and out, against systems that belong to obvious targets like the United States Department of Defense; not-so-obvious targets like banks and energy companies; and individual consumers or taxpayers. It's ongoing, it's undeclared, it's often unreported, and it's very much an ongoing concern at all levels -- business, commerce and individual privacy. TechNewsWorld: The national security infrastructure has repeatedly been reported to be sorely lacking. Is the government moving fast enough? Does it need to do more? Clark: It does need to do more. It's in the process of doing more, and there's a tremendous amount of public and private sector effort going into cybersecurity right now. Whether it's going to be adequate or not is not the issue. There are many approaches to this problem that are mainly based on software, but software is vulnerable. When you open up to communicate with the Web, when you bring in data and programs from another source, when you bring in applications -- all that entails huge risks. It's dealing with those risks and trying to gain the rewards of doing so that make it such a difficult proposition. Online banking was a novelty 20 years ago. Now, everything happens on the Internet. People pay their bills, they do business, they do their work with customers. People don't fax documents any more if they don't have to -- they do webinars and briefings. All of this exposes the opportunity for mischief. You don't know the source of the mischief. You don't know whether it's individuals trying to solve a difficult technical challenge on their own or if they're connected to governments, or if they're cells attached to governments -- and it's very difficult to pin down ... incoming probes to a source. TechNewsWorld: While it's generally agreed that the next war may be a cyberwar, much of our infrastructure is either hooked up to the Internet or in the process of being hooked up to the Internet. Electricity companies, for example, are agitating for the use of smart meters. That being the case, and with hackers increasing the frequency and sophistication of their attacks, does the increasing pace of hooking everything up to the Internet pose a real security threat? Clark: We're going into completely digitized medical records, which could lead to a huge invasion of privacy. It could also lead to things like blackmail and is physically dangerous because people can tamper with records of vital signs, or can alter prescriptions. There's no telling just what could be done. Companies could lose their supply chain management, lose their accounting records, lose their customer lists. Trying to rebuild this on paper when we've all been interconnected on the Internet will cause years of economic decline. We are, as a civilization, quite vulnerable to disruption, and this security problem doesn't just affect one nation but the whole global economic infrastructure. You can't conceive of the threats from the point of view of a traditional war. Cyber-efforts are ongoing today; we're in a cyber-struggle today. We don't know who the adversaries are in many cases, but we know what the stakes are: continued economic vitality and, ultimately, global civilization.

2NC Internal Link

Major spillover from NSA reform to cybersecurity

Bennett ’15 [Cory Bennett, 05/31/15, Surveillance reform could tee up cyber bill, The Hill, http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/243498-surveillance-reform-could-tee-up-cyber-bill]

“If something can pass on surveillance does that mean it helps in terms of getting enough votes to pass information sharing? Yes, I think so,” Martino said.

In addition to ending the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone metadata, USA Freedom would institute more accountability mechanisms. It would institute a panel to advise the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees intelligence agencies, on cases that may infringe on people’s privacy or civil liberties. The bill would also boost public reporting about the NSA’s spying programs.

Penrose believes senators who are worried CISA would embolden the NSA “may in fact take some piece of mind” from these privacy oversight provisions.

But the vitriolic debate that has caused the Senate to go down to the wire on the Patriot Act could also extend to the upcoming CISA discussion.

“It is inevitable that there will be spillover from this debate into the cyber debate, despite the fact that many of them had hoped to keep it separate,” Krayem said. “And if the cyber info sharing bill is the next one, then that debate could be much stickier.”

2NC Link T/C

Cybersecurity backdoors bulk data collection- turns the case

Bennett ’15 [Cory Bennett, 05/31/15, Surveillance reform could tee up cyber bill, The Hill, http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/243498-surveillance-reform-could-tee-up-cyber-bill]

And no Patriot Act reform will truly mitigate all the privacy concerns floating around CISA.

“CISA could actually result in the kind of bulk surveillance activity that USA Freedom is intended to stop,” said Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel and policy advisor for the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes CISA. “Once information flows from the private sector to the government, the military and intelligence community could store and mine it for purposes that go far beyond ‘cybersecurity.’”

2NC Information Overload Link

CISA causes major information overloads and collapses cybersecurity

Castillo ’15 [Andrea Castillo, The Hill, May 7, 2015, Cybersecurity bill more likely to promote information overload than prevent cyberattacks, http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/241242-cybersecurity-bill-more-likely-to-promote-information]

A growing number of information security and hacking incidents emphasize the importance of improving U.S. cybersecurity practices. But many computer security experts are concerned that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) is unlikely to meaningfully prevent cyberattacks as supporters claim. Rather, it will provide another avenue for federal offices to extract private data without addressing our root cybersecurity vulnerabilities.  

The main premise of CISA is that cyber breaches can be prevented by encouraging private companies to share cyber threat data with the government. CISA would extend legal immunity to private entities that share sensitive information about security vulnerabilities—often containing personally identifiable information (PII) about users and customers—with federal offices like the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI).  

This concerns privacy advocates who point out that such data collection could serve as an alternative surveillance tool for the NSA. Section 5(A) of CISA authorizes federal agencies to “disclose, retain, and use” shared data for many purposes beyond promoting cybersecurity, like investigating terrorism, the sexual exploitation of children, violent felonies, fraud, identity theft, and trade secret violation. In other words, CISA would allow federal agencies to use data obtained under the auspices of “cybersecurity protection” in entirely unrelated criminal investigations — potentially indefinitely. Indeed,CISA is currently stalled in the Senate in deference to debate over the NSA’s controversial bulk collection programs.  

But the Senate cool-down should not let us forget that CISA does not just threaten civil liberties, it could actually undermine cybersecurity. Information security experts point out that existing information sharing measures run by private companies like IBM and Dell SecureWorks rarely prevent attacks like CISA advocates promise. One survey of information security professionals finds that 87 percent of responders did not believe information sharing measures such as CISA will significantly reduce privacy breaches. The federal government already operates at least 20 information sharing offices collaborating on cybersecurity with the private sector, as Eli Dourado and I found in our new analysis through the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.  

These numerous federal information-sharing initiatives have not stemmed the tidal wave of government cyberattacks. Another Mercatus Center analysis Dourado and I conducted finds that the number of reported federal information security failures has increased by an astounding 1,012 percent—from 5,502 in FY 2006 to 61,214 in FY 2013. Almost 40 percent of these involved the PII of federal employees and civilians. CISA could therefore have the unintended consequence of creating a juicy and unprepared target for one-stop hacking.

The Office of Management and Budget reports that many of the federal agencies that would be given large data management responsibilities through CISA, like the DOJ and DHS, reported thousands of such breaches in FY 2014. These agencies’ own information security systems are unlikely to become miraculously impervious to external hacking upon CISA’s passing. In fact, the massive amounts of new data to manage could further overwhelm currently suboptimal practices. 

The federal government’s information security failures indicate a technocratic mindset that falsely equates the complexity of bureaucracy with the strength of a solution. In reality, the government’s brittle and redundant internal cybersecurity policies actively contribute to their security challenges. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported for years that such overlapping and unclear responsibility in federal cybersecurity policy limits the offices’ ultimate effectiveness. A 2015 GAO investigation concludes that without significant change “the nation’s most critical federal and private sector infrastructure systems will remain at increased risk of attack from adversaries.” 

The federal government must get its own house in order before such comprehensive information sharing measures like CISA could be even technically feasible. But CISA would be a failure even if managed by the most well-managed government systems because it seeks to impose a technocratic structure on a dynamic system.

Information overload prevents effective preparation

Spira 10

Jonathan, “The Christmas Day Terrorism Plot: How Information Overload Prevailed and Counterterrorism Knowledge Sharing Failed,” http://www.basexblog.com/2010/01/04/the-christmas-day-terrorism-plot-how-information-overload-prevailed-and-counterterrorism-knowledge-sharing-failed/

The tools to manage information on a massive scale do indeed exist and it is clear that the U.S. government is either not deploying the right ones or not using them correctly. The National Counterterrorism Center, created in 2004 following recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, has a mission to break “the older mold of national government organizations” and serve as a center for joint operational planning and joint intelligence. In other words, various intelligence agencies were ordered to put aside decades-long rivalries and share what they know and whom they suspect. Unfortunately, while this sounds good in theory, in practice this mission may not yet be close to be being fully carried out. In addition to the fact that old habits die hard (such as a disdain for inter-agency information sharing), it appears that the folks at the NCTC failed to grasp basic tenets of knowledge sharing, namely that search, in order to be effective, needs to be federated and contextual, that is to say it needs to simultaneously search multiple data stores and present results in a coherent manner. Discrete searches in separate databases will yield far different results compared to a federated search that spans across multiple databases. All reports indicate that intelligence agencies were still looking at discrete pieces of information from separate and distinct databases plus the agencies themselves were not sharing all that they knew. In this case, much was known about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253. In May, Britain put him on a watch list and refused to renew his visa. In August, the National Security Agency overheard Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen discussing a plot involving a Nigerian man. In November, the accused’s father warned the American Embassy (and a CIA official) in Abuja that his son was a potential threat. As a result, the son was put on a watch list that flagged him for future investigation. He bought his plane ticket to Detroit with cash and boarded the flight with no luggage. Yet, almost unbelievably, no one saw a pattern emerge here. Shouldn’t a system somewhere have put the pieces of this puzzle together and spit out “Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, Yemen, visa, plot, cash ticket purchase, no luggage = DANGER!”? Information Overload is partially to blame as well. Given the vast amount of intelligence that the government receives every day on suspected terrorists and plots, it could very well be that analysts were simply overwhelmed and did not notice the pattern. Rather than being immune from the problem, given the sheer quantity of the information it deals with, the government is more of a poster child for it. Regardless of what comes out of the numerous investigations of the Christmas Day terrorism plot and the information-sharing failures of the various intelligence agencies, one thing was abundantly clear by Boxing Day: the Federal Government needs to greatly improve its ability to leverage the intelligence it gathers and connect the dots.

2NC Innovation Link

Heavy-handed government security preventions tanks private sector innovation – that solves security more effectively

CDT 10

Center for Democracy and Technology, Cybersecurity Policy Should Protect Privacy, Innovation, http://www.cdt.org/blogs/greg-nojeim/cybersecurity-policy-should-protect-privacy-innovation

In comments filed yesterday, CDT asked the Department of Commerce to take a careful, nuanced approach to cybersecurity, to favor market-based approaches over government mandates, and to ensure that its efforts are not so heavy-handed as to stifle innovation or slow the development of necessary cybersecurity measures. CDT also urged the Department to take a leading role in implementing the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, now being developed by the White House. We alerted the Commerce Department to our concern about NSTIC’s current focus on the use of government credentials for private transactions: A pervasive government-run online authentication scheme is incompatible with fundamental American values, CDT’s comments said. CDT asked the Department to distinguish between various private systems and elements of the Internet as it formulates its cybersecurity policy. We pointed out that policy toward private systems should have a light touch and should seek to preserve the characteristics of the Internet that make it such a success – its open, decentralized and user-controlled nature. Policy toward government systems can be more prescriptive, the comments said. We also cautioned that cybersecurity measures should not compromise President Obama’s promise that the government’s pursuit of cybersecurity will not include government monitoring of private sector networks or Internet traffic. The comments urge the Department to resist calls to create a cybersecurity information sharing regime that would involve sharing of Internet communications traffic that would compromise the promise of privacy that underlies the laws governing electronic surveillance.

2NC Turns Democracy Adv

Turn – liberal democracy – cyber-bill collapses it

Burghardt 10

Tom, “Obama's National Cybersecurity Initiative: Privacy and Civil liberties are Damned,” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17993

As long time readers of Antifascist Calling are well aware, while hacking, online thievery and sociopathic behavior by criminals is a troubling by-product of the "information superhighway," state officials and shadowy security corporations have framed the debate in terms of yet another in a series of endless "wars." Mike McConnell, a former NSA Director, Bush regime Director of National Intelligence and currently an executive vice president with the spooky Booz Allen Hamilton corporation (a post he held for a decade before signing-on for the "War on Terror") penned an alarmist screed for The Washington Post February 28. McConnell, whose firm stands to reap billions of dollars in taxpayer largesse under CNCI, claimed that "The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing." Drawing a spurious and half-baked (though self-serving) parallel between the Cold World nuclear stand-off with the former Soviet Union and today's cybercriminals, McConnell declared that a "credible" cyber-deterrent analogous to the doctrine of Mutually-Assured Destruction (MAD) would serve the United States "well." Ever the Cold warrior, McConnell avers that the U.S. needs to "develop an early-warning system to monitor cyberspace, identify intrusions and locate the source of attacks with a trail of evidence that can support diplomatic, military and legal options." "More specifically," McConnell writes, "we need to reengineer the Internet to make attribution, geolocation, intelligence analysis and impact assessment--who did it, from where, why and what was the result--more manageable." In other words, the secret state's role in monitoring each and every electronic communication, email, text message, web search, phone conversation or financial transaction must be subject to a pervasive and all-encompassing surveillance by securocrats or we won't be "safe." Indeed, as McConnell and his shadowy firm are well aware since they helped develop them, "the technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same." Reckless advocacy such as this is the kiss of death for any notion of privacy, let alone the constitutional right to dissent. As Wiredinvestigative journalist Ryan Singel wrote last week, "The biggest threat to the open internet is not Chinese government hackers or greedy anti-net-neutrality ISPs, it's Michael McConnell, the former director of national intelligence." Why? Singel insists, "McConnell's not dangerous because he knows anything about SQL injection hacks, but because he knows about social engineering." And during his stint as DNI, "scared President Bush with visions of e-doom, prompting the president to sign a comprehensive secret order that unleashed tens of billions of dollars into the military's black budget so they could start making firewalls and building malware into military equipment." Self-serving rhetoric by the likes of McConnell about an alleged "cyber-armageddon" are not only absurd but the height of corporatist venality. As investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book Spies for Hire and for CorpWatch, Booz Allen Hamilton, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the shadowy private equity firm, The Carlyle Group, "is involved in virtually every aspect of the modern intelligence enterprise, from advising top officials on how to integrate the 16 agencies within the Intelligence Community (IC), to detailed analysis of signals intelligence, imagery and other critical collections technologies." Clocking-in at No. 10 on Washington Technology's "Top 100" list of Federal Prime Contractors, Booz Allen pulled down some $2,779,421,015 in contracts in 2009. According to Shorrock, "BAH is one of the NSA's most important contractors, and owes its strategic role there in part to Mike McConnell, who was Bush's director of national intelligence." During an earlier stretch with BAH, "McConnell and Booz Allen were involved in some of the Bush administration's most sensitive intelligence operations, including the infamous Total Information Awareness (TIA) program run by former Navy Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra fame." In his Washington Post op-ed, McConnell wrote that "we must hammer out a consensus on how to best harness the capabilities of the National Security Agency," and that the "challenge" is to shape "an effective partnership with the private sector so information can move quickly back and forth from public to private--and classified to unclassified--to protect the nation's critical infrastructure." Super spook McConnell claims this will be accomplished by handing "key private-sector leaders (from the transportation, utility and financial arenas) access to information on emerging threats so they can take countermeasures." However, the "private" portion of the "public-private" surveillance "partnership" must have a quid pro quo so that private sector sharing of privileged, highly personal, network information with the secret state doesn't invite "lawsuits from shareholders and others." In other words, privacy and civil liberties be damned! As Ryan Singel points out, "the contractor he works for has massive, secret contracts with the NSA" and McConnell now proposes that NSA "take the lead in guarding all government and private networks." But McConnell, and Booz Allen's advocacy goes far further than simple advocacy in developing a defensive cyber strategy. Indeed, BAH, and a host of other giant defense and security firms such as Lockheed Martin, are actively developing offensive cyber weapons for the Pentagon. According to Washington Technology, Lockheed Martin will continue to work with the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) in that Pentagon agency's development of a National Cyber Range under CNCI. That program is suspected of being part of Pentagon research to develop and field-test offensive cyber weapons. According to DARPA, "the NCR will provide a revolutionary, safe, fully automated and instrumented environment for U.S. cybersecurity research organizations to evaluate leap-ahead research, accelerate technology transition, and enable a place for experimentation of iterative and new research directions." "Now the problem with developing cyberweapons--say a virus, or a massive botnet for denial-of-service attacks," Singel writes, "is that you need to know where to point them." "That's why," the Wired journalist avers, "McConnell and others want to change the internet. The military needs targets." Add to the mix a Senate bill that would hand the president "emergency" powers over the Internet and a clear pattern of where things are headed begins to emerge. With giant ISP's such as Google already partnering-up with the NSA and other secret state agencies, the question is how long will it be before an American version of China's Golden Shield enfolds the heimat within its oppressive tentacles? Described by privacy advocates as a massive, ubiquitous spying architecture, the aim of the Golden Shield is to integrate a gigantic online data base with an all-encompassing surveillance network, one that incorporates speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records, and Internet surveillance technologies. And considering that the Empire has reportedly stood-up a giant data base of dissidents called "Main Core," whose roots lie in programs begun during the Reagan administration, assurances by the Obama administration that Americans' privacy rights will be protected as CNCI is rolled-out ring hollow. According to exposés by investigative journalists Christopher Ketchum and Tim Shorrock, writing respectively in Radar Magazine and Salon, Main Core is a meta data base that contains personal and financial data on millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other secret state sources, is collected and stored with neither warrants nor court orders. The name is derived from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community," according toSalon. While the total cost of CNCI is classified, rest assured it will be the American people who foot the bill for the destruction of our democratic rights.