[liberationtech] Hayden on 'Internet Freedom' as State Dept. Money Laundering Against US Security Interests

[Nadim Kobeissi]

On 2013-08-12, at 8:53 PM, Collin Anderson <collin at averysmallbird.com> wrote:

> Libtech,
> 
> A friend passed along little noticed comments by Gen. Hayden in June, which I would suggest are the most direct elaboration on the differences between the American security apparatus and piracy development efforts. The actual interview is long, but there is one statement in particular that would serve everyone to read and share wherein Hayden speaks openly on the intelligence services trying to crack anonymity and criticizes Clinton for supporting such projects.
> 
> Rough Transcript:
> 
> "We need to pull the rest of American thinking into this in a relevant way.  Secretary Clinton gave two speeches on cyber stuff while she was secretary.  And if you're you know you think of the world as security and liberty she broke left literally both times in both of her speeches she came down on on cyber freedom.  Society at the same time cyber communities out there are trying to crack the nut on anonymity on the net because you realize that's the root of many many dangers out there as cyber communities just chugging away at that. The secretary of state is laundering money through NGOs to populate software throughout the Arab world to prevent the people in the Arab street from being tracked by their government.  Alright so on the one hand we're fighting anonymity on the other hand we're chucking products out there to protect anonymity on the net."

I really appreciate the honesty here in Gen. Hayden's statement.

I wish I had seen this earlier this year when I was writing my term paper for graduation. I was trying to argue that Internet freedom had effectively become a foreign policy warring venue for the United States after Clinton's Freedom to Connect speech in February 2011, which was probably the first speech of the "two speeches on cyber stuff" that Hayden refers to. The speech itself was likely engendered by things like spikes of Tor usage in Tunisia and Egypt during the Spring (and the speed in which it followed those spikes is quite a testament to the quickness of the think tanks advising Clinton's speechwriters!)

What's also interesting is the (perhaps unintentional) distinction between which governments you're trying to protect people from. You're populating the software to Arab citizens to prevent specifically their government from tracking them. This presumably includes other governments that the U.S. wants to encourage revolutions in, such as Iran, and disenfranchised groups such as Tibetans.

Here's the thing: you ultimately have two types of software that the U.S. is interested in funding:

Software Type A: Software that protects useful dissidents and anyone else from all governments (to an extent), including the U.S. government.
Software Type B: Software that protects useful dissidents in certain countries from their own governments (that the U.S. wants overthrown because they are very inconvenient to its foreign affairs, like maybe Iran under Ahmadinejad), but that the U.S. government itself can crack.

The scary thing here is that the U.S. would, from a realist standpoint, be more interested in funding type B software than type A software, since type B software would satisfy both its domestic and foreign goals, while type A would only satisfy its foreign goals, leaving General Hayden angry and frustrated with all the money that's being, from his perspective, laundered in order to create a contradictory, troublesome situation. Maybe we should be thinking about this!

Personally, I certainly wouldn't call it money laundering, though. A lot of good has come from this NGO funding.

NK


> 
> Video: http://youtu.be/9lizGN981Rw
> Link: http://b.averysmallbird.com/entries/hayden-comments
> 
> Cordially,
> Collin
> -- 
> Collin David Anderson
> averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
> -- 
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