Dark Territory (42 page)

As early as 2001:
Nathan Thornburgh, “The Invasion of the Chinese Cyberspies (And the Man Who Tried to Stop Them),”
Time
, Sept. 5, 2005; Adam Segal, “From Titan Rain to Byzantine Hades: Chinese Cyber Espionage,” in Jason Healey, ed.,
A Fierce Domain: Conflict in Cyberspace, 1986–2012
(Washington, D.C.: Atlantic Council/Cyber Conflict Studies Association, 2013), 165–93; and interviews.

“information confrontation”:
Bryan Krekel, Patton Adams, and George Bakos,
Occupying the Information High Ground
, Prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (Northrop Grumman Corporation, March 7, 2012), 9–11.
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB424/docs/Cyber-066.pdf

By the end of the decade:
Ibid., 24–28, 40, 45–46; and interviews.

he had written his doctoral dissertation:
It was published as Gregory J. Rattray,
Strategic Warfare in Cyberspace
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001); the rest of this section is from interviews.

The typical Chinese hack started off:
Dmitri Alperovitch, McAfee White Paper, “Revealed: Operation Shady RAT,” n.d.,
http://www.mcafee.com/us/resources/white-papers/wp-operation-shady-rat.pdf
; Ellen Nakashima, “Report on ‘Operation Shady RAT' Identifies Widespread Cyber-Spying,”
Washington Post
, Aug. 3, 2011; Michael Joseph Gross, “Exclusive: Operation Shady RAT—Unprecedented Cyber-espionage Campaign and Intellectual-
Property Bonanza,”
Vanity Fair
, Sept. 2011; Segal, “From Titan Rain to Byzantine Hades: Chinese Cyber Espionage,” 168.

On June 6,
The Washington Post
and
The Guardian
:
“Verizon Forced to Hand Over Telephone Data—Full Court Ruling,”
The Guardian
, June 5, 2013, accompanying Glenn Greenwald, “NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily,”
The Guardian
, June 6, 2013; “NSA Slides Explain the Prism Data-Collection Program,”
Washington Post
, June 6, 2013, which accompanied Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, “U.S., British Intelligence Mining Data from Nine U.S. Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program,”
Washington Post
, June 7, 2013; Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, “NSA Prism Program Taps in to User Data of Apple, Google, and others,”
The Guardian
, June 7, 2013.
The Guardian
and the
Post
, which both had Snowden documents, were locked in a fierce competition over who could publish first. The
Guardian
's Verizon story went online June 5, then appeared in its print edition June 6. The first
Post
story went online June 6, then in print June 7. For a list of all the
Post
's Snowden-based stories, see
http://dewitt.sanford.duke.edu/gellmanarticles/
.

These were the first of many stories:
For the journalists' accounts of their encounters with Snowden, see “Live Chat: NSA Surveillance: Q&A with Reporter Barton Gellman,” July 15, 2014,
http://live.washingtonpost.com/nsa-surveillance-bart-gellman.html
; and Laura Poitras's documentary film,
CitizenFour
, 2014. For critical views of Snowden, see Fred Kaplan, “Why Snowden Won't (and Shouldn't) Get Clemency,”
Slate
, Jan. 3, 2014,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2014/01/edward_snowden_doesn_t_deserve_clemency_the_nsa_leaker_hasn_t_proved_he.html
; Mark Hosenball, “NSA Memo Confirms Snowden Scammed Passwords from Colleagues,” Reuters, Feb. 13, 2014,
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/13/us-usa-security-idUSBREA1C1MR20140213
; George Packer, “The Errors of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald,”
Prospect
, May 22, 2014,
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/the-errors-of-edward-snowden-and-glenn-greenwald
.

From that point on, the Chinese retort:
At a later summit, in September 2015, Obama and Xi agreed not to “conduct or knowingly support” cyber theft of “intellectual property” with the “intent of providing competitive advantage to companies or commercial sectors.” The language was loose: “knowingly support” would still allow “tolerate,” and an action's “intent” can be briskly denied. In any case, the U.S. doesn't conduct
this
type of cyber theft (it doesn't need Chinese trade secrets), and Xi still (absurdly) denies government
involvement. And the agreement doesn't cover other forms of cyber attacks or cyber espionage, not least because the U.S. engages in them, too. Still, the deal did set up a hotline and a process for investigating malicious cyber activities. It could enable deeper cooperation down the road. White House, “Fact Sheet: President Xi Jinping's State Visit to the United States,” Sept. 25, 2015,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/25/fact-sheet-president-xi-jinpings-state-visit-united-states
.

One week after the failed summit:
Lana Lam and Stephen Chen, “Exclusive: Snowden Reveals More US Cyberspying Details,”
South China Morning Post
, June 22, 2013,
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1266777/exclusive-snowden-safe-hong-kong-more-us-cyberspying-details-revealed?page=all
.

Soon came newspaper stories:
For summary, see Kaplan, “Why Snowden Won't (and Shouldn't) Get Clemency.”

Fort Meade's crown jewels:
Jacob Appelbaum, Judith Horchert, and Christian Stocker, “Shopping for Spy Gear: Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox,”
Der Spiegel
, Dec. 29, 2013,
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969.html
.

Under the surveillance system described:
The potential extent of surveillance, covered by three hops, is most clearly explained in
Liberty and Security in a Changing World: Report and Recommendations of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies
(White House, Dec. 12, 2013), 103, https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=%22liberty%20and%20security%22%20clarke.

Following this disclosure:
For instance, General Keith Alexander, testimony, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, June 18, 2013,
http://icontherecord.tumblr.com/post/57812486681/hearing-of-the-house-permanent-select-committee-on
.

“Does the NSA collect”:
Transcribed in Glenn Kessler, “James Clapper's ‘Least Untruthful' Statement to the Senate,”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/james-clappers-least-untruthful-statement-to-thesenate/2013/06/11/e50677a8-d2d8-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_blog.html
.

The day before, he'd given Clapper's office:
Senator Ron Wyden, press release, June 11, 2013,
http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-statement-responding-to-director-clappers-statements-about-collection-on-americans
.

“I thought, though, in retrospect”:
Andrea Mitchell, interview with General James Clapper, NBC-TV, June 9, 2013.

“besmirching the reputation”:
Steven Burke, “Cisco Senior VP: NSA Revelations Besmirched Reputation of US Companies,” CRN News, Jan. 17, 2014,
http://www.crn.com/news/security/240165497/cisco-senior-vp-nsa-revelations-besmirched-reputation-of-us-companies.htm?cid=rssFeed
.

Merkel was outraged:
Philip Oltermann, “Germany Opens Inquiry into Claims NSA Tapped Angela Merkel's Phone,”
The Guardian
, June 4, 2014.

There was more than a trace:
Anthony Faiola, “Germans, Still Outraged by NSA Spying, Learn Their Country May Have Helped,”
Washington Post
, May 1, 2015; Reuters, “Germany Gives Huge Amount of Phone, Text Data to US: Report,” http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2015/05/12/world/europe/12reuters-germany-spying.html.

CHAPTER 14: “THE FIVE GUYS REPORT”

“a high-level group”:
President Obama, press conference, Aug. 9, 2013,
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-Noffice/2013/08/09/remarks-president-press-conference
.

That same day:
“Administration White Paper: Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act,” Aug. 9, 2013,
http://www.publicrecordmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/EOP2013_pd_001.pdf
; “The National Security Agency: Missions, Authorities, Oversight and Partnerships,” Aug. 9, 2013,
https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/_files/speeches_testimonies/2013_08_09_the_nsa_story.pdf
.

Sunstein had written an academic paper in 2008:
Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, “Conspiracy Theories” (Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 08-03; University of Chicago Public Law Working Paper No. 199), Jan. 15, 2008,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585
.

The other Chicagoan, Geoffrey Stone:
See esp. Geoffrey R. Stone,
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Geoffrey Stone,
Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

Peter Swire:
peterswire.net; and interviews.

“To the loved ones”:
Transcript, Richard A. Clarke, testimony, 9/11 Commission, March 24, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0403/28/le.00.html
.

a segment on CBS TV's
60 Minutes
:
“The CBS 60 Minutes Richard Clarke Interview,”
http://able2know.org/topic/20967-1
.

Published in April 2010:
For examples of criticism, see Ryan Singel, “Richard Clarke's
Cyber War
: File Under Fiction,”
Wired
, April 22, 2010.

“Cyber-war, cyber-this”:
Jeff Stein, “Book Review: ‘Cyber War' by Richard Clarke,”
Washington Post
, May 23, 2010.

On August 27:
http://www.dni.gov/index.php/intelligence-community/review-group
; the substance of the meeting comes from interviews.

The next morning:
The date of the first meeting at Fort Meade comes from a highly entertaining video of Geoffrey Stone delivering the “Journeys” lecture at the University of Chicago, sometime in 2014,
http://chicagohumanities.org/events/2014/journeys/geoffrey-stone-on-the-nsa
; substance of the session comes from that video and interviews.

In
Cyber War
, he'd criticized:
Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake,
Cyber War
(New York: HarperCollins, 2010), passim, esp. 44ff.

Stone was no admirer of Snowden:
“Is Edward Snowden a Hero? A Debate with Journalist Chris Hedges and Law Scholar Geoffrey Stone,”
Democracy Now
, June 12, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/12/is_edward_snowden_a_hero_a.
; and interviews.

Moreover, if the metadata revealed:
The figure of twenty-two NSA officials comes from the White House,
Liberty and Security in a Changing World: Report and Recommendations of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies
, Dec. 12, 2013 (hereinafter cited as “President's Review Group”), 98,
https://www.nsa.gov/civil_liberties/_files/liberty_security_prgfinalreport.pdf
; the rest of this section, unless otherwise noted, comes from interviews.

second hop:
A clear discussion of hops can be found in ibid., 102–3.

For all of 2012:
The numbers—288, 12, and 0—are cited in ibid., 104.

“Uh,
hello
?”:
Geoffrey Stone, interview, NBC News, “Information Clearing House,” Dec. 20, 2013,
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37174.htm
; and interviews.

It concerned the program known as PRISM:
This was the first news leak from Snowden, who had not yet come out as the source. See Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras, “U.S., British Intelligence Mining Data from Nine U.S. Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program,”
Washington Post
, June 7, 2013; the discussion at Fort Meade comes from interviews.

“the most significant tool”:
Quoted in Jack Bouboushian, “Feds Ponder Risk in Preserving Spying Data,” Courthouse News Service, June 6, 2014,
http://www.courthousenews.com/2014/06/06/68528.htm
. The same language was later used in the NSA's Aug. 9 release on its missions and authorities (see above), as well as in a joint statement on Aug. 22, 2013 by the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-press-releases-2013/917-joint-statement-nsa-and-office-of-the-director-of-national-intelligence
.

General Alexander had publicly claimed:
NBC News, June 27, 2013,
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19175466-nsa-chief-says-surveillance-programs-helped-foil-54-plots
; and interviews.

“selectors”. . . “foreignness” . . . 52 percent:
This was also cited in Gellman and Poitras, “U.S., British Intelligence Mining Data from Nine U.S. Internet Companies in Broad Secret Program.”

Each year the agency's director:
President's Review Group, 138.