"Dude, you're getting a CELL"
Posted on 08/21/2015 5:13:53 PM PDT by markomalley
I imagine most of you have been following the Hillary Clinton email scandal, which has gotten more and more … interesting … since I last wrote about it. At that time, the inspectors general had only revealed emails that were properly classified CONFIDENTIAL, or marked SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED, which is a special State Department marking for things that wouldn’t cause damage to our national security but would make things uncomfortable for someone State was working with.
Since then, of course, we know that at least two more emails have been identified as TOP SECRET, and that’s a whole ’nother kettle of fish. I went through the details of classification back in the Edward Snowden days, in a PJ article titled “L’affaire Snowden and (Computer) Security,” and John Schindler of the XX Committee has a nice worked example of just how classification works in practice that I recommend.
In the meantime, I’m going to tell you a little war story about the history of computer security.
Back in the late ’70s when I actually started to work in the security community, “word processing” was done on a Selectric typewriter – I wrote my drafts on a typewriter, typing the markings carefully as I wrote; I put the drafts away in a safe, along with my typewriter ribbon, every night. We had a cleared typist, and she had an actual Wang word processing machine that had been installed in a case that prevented it from emitting readable radio waves. It was something like a twenty thousand dollar machine, in a twenty thousand dollar special case, and they couldn’t give one to everybody.
Then I went overseas, where there were secure communications, but it was using a 30-year-old teletype. When I came back, things had changed: there was email. Working on a classified project, I had an actual terminal at my desk, and could send email to my colleagues. But only the ones on that project, because the whole computer, network and all, was in a shielded Secure Compartmented Information Facility, a SCIF. The only connections to the outside world were telephones with push-to-talk buttons, and the power lines – which were specially isolated so that no signals could leak out.
The effect was an air gap – there were no electronic connections to the outside world, so there were no pathways for secrets to escape by electronic means. Someone would have to carry a document, or a disk drive, out of the room, and we had guards and such to see they didn’t.
About a year later, I went to graduate school. Cool things were starting to happen. On UNIX systems, you could get a great new kind of interface called a windowing interface. (Yes, kids, I’m that old.) Network-connected computers were coming – ARPANET was expanding, the Internet was just around the corner. And DOD agencies, primarily the NSA’s National Computer Security Center, were thinking about what it would take to let computers that were storing classified data be trusted to also connect to an unclassified world. The results of this process were a series of standards called the “Rainbow Books” because each standard had a brightly colored cover. The most important one was called the Orange Book (guess why) but was formally the Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria.
I spent years working out ways to make systems comply with the Orange Book, along with lots of other people, and the conclusion was that it simply wasn’t possible then and isn’t possible now to build a system that could both handle TOP SECRET and connect to an unclassified network. Or connect to a network that might connect to an unclassified network.
In other words, there must be an air gap. Period.
And now we get around to Hillary’s problem. At least two of the emails in her private stash turn out to have been classified
TOP SECRET//SI//TK//NOFORN
And that is just what's involved with breaking the "air gap" between JWICS and the unclassified Internet.
In the post-Snowden world, just being relaxed is not really a factor anymore...so all of those players above would have had to consciously disregard their duties. And getting paper out of a SCIF is not too much easier either, if you think that the material was printed out, spirited out of the SCIF, and scanned back into an email. It would be inventoried, packaged, receipted, and accounted.
I suspect that classified info went through H-> to foreign contributors to the Clintoon Crime Family Foundation.
Dingy needs to prove that it didn’t.
The very idea of the Secretary of State using a private email server for government business is mind-boggling.
Excellent briefing!
Interesting write up. I’ve always suspected it was not possible to completely secure any kind of transmissions over the Internet and especially wireless.
In the paper days, you described it pretty well. I went to a military training school to repair optical instruments, where I had to get a Secret clearance just to attend the school. Everything about a periscope is classified...you didn’t carry a book out of the classroom. Nothing in, nothing out. Take notes, they stay there. I didn’t specifically train on periscopes, but did learn how they are built and how they work. All classified. Had to be in the room with one laid out on a bench opened up to see how everything works. Still can’t describe it...to anyone, ever.
And that’s just Secret. I didn’t know about the typewriter ribbons and such, but it makes sense. Anything you type is imprinted on the ribbon.
But being a computer technician for the past 15 years or so, I know how the Internet works. As long as you’re working with wires, it’s semi doable, but once you get into wireless, I don’t see how it can be secured at all. It’s not easy to intercept email over a wire based Internet, but possible. Over wireless, or cell phone, I don’t see how it would be possible to be even remotely secure...
"Dude, you're getting a CELL"
Apparently one has to keep the monitor and csble to same in a good Faraday Cage so it can’t be monitored.
M O’m:
It seems to me that you are making an assumption that a TS document or perhaps a verbatim extract of a TS document was found in the collection of Hillary’s emails.
I find that possibility highly unlikely and, AFAIK, we have seen no evidence that would actually prove it.
TS documents are always classified at the paragraph level. If a paragraph contains one sentence and the paragraph is marked (TS) then the document is classified TS.
So all Hillary or whoever sent the TS email in question needed to do get in hot water would have been to include that single sentence or some variation of it in an email. And that email was by definition unclassified and would, never, ever have included any indication of a higher classification. That would be a huge red flag. It would never happen.
So I believe the TS emails that are uncovered will be of this class - simply excerpts from classified documents where Hillary and Friends were either just sloppy or failed in their attempt to reword classified information in what they hoped would be an unclassified format.
But I suspect we agree on the crime. They all belong in jail. That’s where you and I would be if we had engaged in the same activity.
See TEMPEST
FYI, they don't even allow cellphones to go into a SCIF, much less use wireless networks.
Hillary’s air gap is between her ears. After 50 years in the political bubble, she has no clue about the real world.
I obviously haven't seen the emails. But we have news reports like this one: Hillary Clinton kept top-secret SIGINT emails on her home email server. Or this one: FBI Seizes Hillary Clinton’s ‘Top Secret’ Emails
She may have an air-gap...but it’s for certain she hasn’t got a thigh-gap!
I’m not picking on you Mark.
I believe the media, who knows amazingly little about how classified documents and information are handled have been misleading their readers. The references you gave are typical and the conclusions you drew from them are perfectly rational.
But, unfortunately the MSM mostly get it wrong. The are guessing and reporting those guesses as truth.
But in the first article you referenced you will find a statement that I believe is correct. Here it is:
++
“Two more emails in her private cache had classified State Department data in them.”
++
That almost certainly true but is miles away from a posting in an email of a classified document. But illegal nevertheless. I believe The Hillary Circle will be found guilty of this in many instances but, of course, only in the court of public opinion.
WireShark.
It is easy to capture Ethernet traffic on a wired network if you have physical access to it.
I’ll be unable to sleep tonight because of that hideous mental image tormenting my mind!
What’s the connection between the SCIF and some dude’s bathroom closet?
Let me get out my Acronym Dictionary so I can understand your broken English.
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