I said I would write up my notes from DEFCON27, where I had the “opportunity” to meet General Flynn’s residual guy with cyber in his title, so here it is.

DEFCON always has been for me about meeting with the Federal Government. Since the mid-1990s it has felt like the place government staff come to party with reduced accountability and oversight.

This year I stepped into the “Ethics Village” and listened to Joshua Steinman present his vision. To be honest in my decades of experience in security and working with the government I never had heard of Josh. When he began speaking I kind of realized why. He said very emphatically to the moderator:

Please don’t ever say cyber security. It’s just cyber.

This was like telling us not to say Internet security because just saying Internet somehow magically implies security. Yeah, not going to happen.

Few things self-reveal someone inexperienced in security like their overuse of the term cyber, leaving off modifiers needed to clarify, or lacking a sense of irony.

He also gave an intro of his background where he claimed to be a world-class expert on Al Qaeda before 9/11, issuing a national security report based on all available evidence (I later found out this was just a short paper he wrote in high school, and I am not kidding).

He also said he was a big supporter of the Republican candidate for President and that pulled him straight into the White House after victory.

And finally he called himself entrepreneurial (I later found out he started a knitting company to make socks for men, and again I am not kidding).

While he definitely puffed out himself in presenting his background as someone believing he is on the right side of history and ahead of his time, something about his self-promotion seemed off, especially compared to the quality of other speakers in prior sessions in the Ethics Village.

For the next 30 minutes or so Josh rattled randomly about personal life philosophy like basic water-cooler tactics and how surprised he was to find out the 1800s-era White House is physically small.

For someone repeatedly claiming he was able to see into the future, it was the opposite of substance. Imagine travelling all the way to a conference, sitting down to hear the “head of cyber” for a national government, and getting a presentation like this:

Usually I like to stand around in the break room area by the coffee. That’s where I hear conversations others are having and can find out what’s happening in the White House. Sometimes I join their conversation.

This was by no means a comforting talk to hear from the person purporting to be the policy making leader of our industry. I’m also paraphrasing here as Josh said several times “Raise your hand if you are a reporter. There are no reporters here? What I’m saying is off the record.” It appeared he was joking about this, although nobody laughed.

What caught my attention, among the rambling stories of hanging around and doing nothing tangible, was Josh said with the utmost confidence “executive privilege is right there in the Constitution. Go read it to see for yourself.”

I’m no constitutional lawyer but as a historian who studied cold-war machinations of Presidents I’m well aware that the executive privilege line most definitely is NOT something you can read in the Constitution. Furthermore, as a security professional, I’m well aware of the danger of executive privilege being used to suppress evidence/speech and deny freedoms necessary to avert suffering at massive scale.

Perhaps Constitution Daily put it best:

One of the great constitutional myths is the principle of executive privilege. Though the term is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, every President has called upon it when necessary.

I really have no idea why Josh would say “go read it” for something that doesn’t exist in writing. He’s supposed to be a policy expert. Moreover you can imagine there is a big issue with oversight for that qualifier “when necessary”, since it’s for a privilege that is going to be argued as above all oversight.

Ronald Reagan infamously invoked executive privilege, while carefully avoiding use of the exact phrase, in attempts to avoid accountability for illegal arms deals:

The alternative language used by Mr. Reagan’s lawyers appears to reflect a desire to avoid the negative connotation associated with the term, which over the years has come to be thought of by critics as a legal ploy invoked by Presidents seeking to deflect embarrassing inquiries.

The legal skirmish is taking place in advance of Mr. Poindexter’s trial, which is scheduled to begin on Feb. 20. He faces five criminal charges, including accusations that he obstructed Congressional inquiries and made false statements to Congress about the Government’s secret arms sales to Iran and about efforts to aid the Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, at a time when such assistance was banned by Congress.

That reference to legal ploy comes from Richard Nixon, who similarly claimed he had such an executive privilege to conceal his guilt. He thought he could block White House tape recordings being revealed during the Watergate Scandal.

During the Bush Administration, executive privilege was argued to be not only non-specific but also quite limited. Note the reference to Kavanaugh (now on the Supreme Court) lying to Congress.

Predictably, the White House is claiming executive privilege and refusing to cooperate with the legitimate Congressional investigations, one springing from Mr. Bush’s decision to spy on Americans without a warrant and the other from the purge of United States attorneys. The courts have recognized a president’s limited right to keep the White House’s internal deliberations private. But it is far from an absolute right, and Mr. Bush’s claim of executive privilege in the attorneys scandal is especially ludicrous. […] Nor can it be used to shield an official who might have lied to Congress. The Senate Judiciary Committee has asked the Justice Department to investigate Brett Kavanaugh, a former White House official who told a Senate hearing on his appointment to a federal judgeship that he was not involved in forming rules on the treatment of detainees. Recent press accounts suggest that he was.

That’s a far more restrictive interpretation of executive privilege theory versus a Washington Post article from 1986 that spells out how proponents had wanted to use it under the Reagan Administration:

While serving in effect as lawyer for Attorney General Edwin Meese III, Cooper also advises the Justice Department, other federal agencies and inquiring members of Congress on a wide range of legal questions. Most of his opinions remain confidential, but some that have surfaced have generated headlines. In one opinion, Cooper argued that employers may fire persons with AIDS because of fear that the disease may be contagious, even if that fear is irrational. In another, he said that President Reagan must support an executive privilege claim by former president Richard M. Nixon to keep Nixon’s White House papers secret. […] In addition, department sources say, Cooper has been advising Meese on the U.S. decision to allow arms to be shipped to Iran in connection with efforts to free American hostages. Meese, in turn, has provided assurances to the White House that the shipments were legal.

Perhaps most importantly for this Ethics Village talk, that comment on AIDS is more significant than you might realize. Ronald Reagan claimed executive privilege could block the Centers for Disease Control from issuing a pamphlet on the AIDS crisis despite tens of thousands of Americans dying.

First, let’s set the context of how Reagan handled a threat to Americans that started in 1981. After it already killed nearly twice the number of 9/11 casualties Reagan used his authority to stay silent on the issue:

One of the most prominent stains on the…Reagan administration was its response, or lack of response, to the AIDS crisis as it began to ravage American cities in the early and mid-1980s. President Reagan famously…didn’t himself publicly mention AIDS until [Sept 17th] 1985, when more than 5,000 people, most of them gay men, had already been killed by the disease.

Even in 1985, Roberts (now on the Supreme Court) wrote an infamous memo that recommended the President keep quiet for self-benefit, avoid reassuring people with science, and wait instead for hyperbolic commentators to be proven wrong by scientists.

I would not like to see the President reassuring the public on this point, only to find out he was wrong later. There is much to commend the view that we should assume AIDS can be transmitted through casual or routine contact…

AIDS can not be transmitted through casual or routine contact. It is known today as it was already known then.

After years of intentional silence on the subject by an American President the threat went on to be the greatest public health catastrophe of the twentieth century and kill approximately 650,000, the same as number of Americans estimated killed during the Civil War.

…for the first four years in office, the nation’s top health officer was prevented from addressing the nation’s most urgent health crisis, for reasons he insisted were never fully clear to him but that were no doubt political.

Imagine executive privilege being used to prevent experts from addressing the nation’s most urgent security crisis, then look at this graph of Reagan’s policy of censorship and silence on harms.

So this prompted me to ask Josh about the large and vague theory of executive privilege. Already we can see Josh was wrong about executive privilege being written in the Constitution. Now I wanted to know if he supported its use to block discussion of a bug that can kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

I stepped up at the end of his presentation and asked 1) where executive privilege was written and 2) whether Ronald Reagan’s interpretation of it would enable the White House to secretly harm Americans with backdoors in encryption, much in the same way he avoided public accountability for export death (illegal arms shipments to Iran) and domestic death (blocking AIDS scientific alerting).

As I asked my question he shook his head disapprovingly. Perhaps my question, like my blog posts, was rambling and lacked clarity.

I was thinking of how to ask about executive privilege in terms of the AIDS epidemic because in computer security terms it would be a virus that easily could be remotely controlled. If the executive privilege theory means the White House can block scientific discussion for political self-benefit, leading to masssive harms of citizens, is the White House cyber policy head also saying secret government backdoors in encryption could be within this privilege?

Josh didn’t answer directly and instead said in a long statement that encryption was complex as a topic, there were many sides, and the market would decide backdoors. He also invited everyone to speak with him after as he could easily show where in the Constitution executive privilege was written (it’s not).

When he finished and got up to leave I walked up to him and he quickly exited towards the back of the room, passing directly by me. Several people said “he must not have seen you” so I rushed out the door and caught him in the hallway. He looked me directly in the eyes, turned and ran away.

It’s been interesting to read growing confirmations that Reagan was obviously a racist and intentionally harmed Americans who did not have white skin.

One of the best explanations I’ve seen so far is how latent racism in Reagan’s campaigns elevated his popularity, while his opponents actually suffered when they tried to call it out without directly addressing Reagan as a racist.

Josh Levin writes about Carter being chastised for opposing racism, and also how Reagan escaped any condemnations at the same time.

Carter is said to have given a Neshoba County Fair speech with some strong words about fighting hatred:

“You’ve seen in this campaign the stirrings of hate and the rebirth of code words like states’ rights in a speech in Mississippi,” Carter said, adding that “hatred has no place in this country.”

And then Carter is said to have had to go on the defensive, denying he was calling Reagan a racist, while Reagan just went right on signaling with “stirrings of hate…code words”.

Moreover, Levin points out Reagan (like the present occupant in the Whitehouse) gave Nixon’s racism the appearance of being less extreme, which is no small feat.

I thought of the Neshoba County Fair and its aftermath this week when the Atlantic published a previously unknown snippet of a conversation between Reagan and President Richard Nixon. On the morning of Oct. 26, 1971, Reagan, who was then the governor of California, told Nixon that African nations were to blame for the United Nations’ vote to eject Taiwan and welcome in mainland China. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said in audio captured by Nixon’s White House taping system, “to see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon cackled in response. A few minutes later, the president called Secretary of State William Rogers to report, in the words of the Atlantic’s Timothy Naftali, “that Reagan spoke for racist Americans, and they needed to be listened to.”

On that tape, Reagan’s racism is direct and undeniable. Nixon, whose own racism is extraordinarily well-documented, immediately rejoices in it, laughing as Reagan talks about African “monkeys.” In his call with Rogers, by contrast, Nixon distances himself from the racist commentary, attributing it to someone more prejudiced than he is. (He also tells Rogers, erroneously, that Reagan had called the African leaders “cannibals.”) At the same time, Nixon categorizes Reagan’s views as a valuable political data point, a sentiment that needs to be understood and nurtured, not rejected.

In today’s terms, this analysis is not only historically interesting, it also impacts our debate about the safety of artificial intelligence.

When machines use only straight reasoning, devoid of the truth about Reagan’s signaling and racism, they will accelerate the harms from hatred. I spoke about this briefly in my RSA Conference Presentation earlier this year:

She sometimes went by the name Moses on the Underground Railroad, which meant pro-slavery terrorists in America often were searching for a man.

Militant abolitionist and patriot John Brown, who fought to protect those who escaped slavery, even may have referred to her as a man when he said “I want him — General Tubman — leading my right flank.”

This November a new movie will be released documenting the amazing story of the first American woman to plan and lead a military campaign: Harriet Tubman.

Some friends recently were saying my examples of KKK signaling in the open are just a theory. It’s true, I am proposing theories meant for dialogue, rather than saying I’m the final word on hidden signaling.

Nonetheless, hidden signaling by hate groups is a very real thing. It takes training and some careful observation to reveal the obfuscated messages without looking like you’ve lost your eyesight. Trust depends on establishing some clear explanations.

Let me now relate to you the type of behavior that I believe needs greater scrutiny. It’s the kind of behavior that sometimes even makes it into the news.

PBS NewsHour profiled a woman volunteering for the campaign who had prominently visible tattoos of widely recognized white power symbols.

In the segment, which was first flagged by Gawker, PBS profiles Grace Tilly, who is shown making calls at a Trump campaign phone bank in North Carolina.

Her symbols were a Celtic Cross and the number 88. Would you immediately recognize those as hate symbols?

I’m definitely not the first to write about Nazi tees hiding in plain sight. A descendant of Nazis literally already sent me a Mel Magazine article about Neo-Nazi apparel and asked me if there was anything I wanted for Christmas:

At a cursory glance, the T-shirt looks like an ad for Sea World. An orca, triumphantly jutting out of the sea, splashes water above the words “Antarktis-Expedition.” It takes just a second longer to notice the bold text hovering above the orca: “Save the White Continent.”

The shirt was created by the German label Thor Steinar, one of a few clothing brands that cater to neo-Nazis. Like Ansgar Aryan and Erik and Sons, Thor Steinar uses coded references to obscure events in Nazi history, veiled threats and playful imagery to flout German hate-speech laws, which forbid explicit references to the Third Reich.

So let’s just say I’ve been, and remain, in the right circles to know when I see something fishy (both puns intended). And that is why, while walking through an airport the other day, I could not help but notice someone wearing a giant 5th SS Panzer-Division symbol on a T-shirt.

First, I will explain the Nazi symbolism I am referencing. There are three parts: the SS, the Wiking and the Panzer-Division. An easy way of explaining these three symbols is to look at the marketplace of Neo-Nazi merchandise.

You perhaps can see how a SS, Wiking, and Panzer-Division ring has been segmented into the three parts around the finger, which makes it kind of unwieldy and large.

Now I will explain these three symbols on the ring, left to right:

• SS (schutzstaffel) = a criminal militant organization of the Nazi Party directly involved in numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity
• Wiking = “Nordic” volunteers who helped commit crimes for Nazi Germany
• 5th Panzer-Division = the SS Wiking group of motorized (tank and artillery) infantry

Here’s an example of the SS Wiking symbol on a tank, for some historic perspective, as it rolls its way towards committing war crimes

And here is a pamphlet from the same time period

Second, I was walking through an airport just the other day when to my great surprise I saw someone wearing a Nazi symbol.

And here is a closer view, where a 5th Panzer symbol becomes less clear as a Nordic-looking SS becomes more apparent. Unlike the ring, however, three symbols have been combined into a single giant one. Not what I was expecting. I had to find out who was wearing this thing and why

Most people I’ve explained this to call it an unfortunate oversight, or poor (ignorant) choice in design.

One guy thought it couldn’t possibly be intentional as the words surrounding the “Nazi rune” (his words) were so peace inspiring. I found that logic to be a bit like saying a hunter isn’t going to shoot a deer because a camouflage suit seems so nature-loving.

Nazi Germany infamously broadcast “make peace” propaganda into France right before invasion:

And Nazi propaganda cells convinced groups of Americans to protest for peace with Hitler, giving him little or no resistance, even during WWII. Note how “America First” (AFC) disinformation campaigns now are described by historians:

Hitler’s dictatorship repudiated both democracy and human rights. The Nazi empire was the arena in which Hitler’s master race philosophy was to be put into practice. Censorship prevented the German press from exciting the conscience of the nation. There could never have been a successful passive resistance movement against the Nazis. The inability of members of the AFC to recognize this, especially men like Hutchins of Chicago, and Norman Thomas, is remarkable.

Inability of Americans to recognize harms from promoting Nazism definitely is remarkable, then and now. It’s probably fair to say it’s almost as bad as inability of Americans to recognize harms from promoting symbolism for white-supremacist “Confederate” states that Nazi Germany had used as inspiration.

Of course I had to walk up to this woman and ask her “what’s with wearing a giant Nazi symbol?” She gasped and said “Oh no. Oh my god. Don’t look. I don’t mean to offend anyone” and then walked away.

If all that isn’t enough. Simply Southern is, like the PBS profile of Grace Tilly, based in North Carolina. The company describes itself as a “brand to reflect the values of a southern lifestyle“. In their “giving back” section of the website they curiously depict black children next to marine animals.

I’ve written before about this kind of “giving” imagery.

So after greater scrutiny, what’s your call?

There’s something not quite right about a BBC article about the death of Fernando Corbato.

First, the meat of the story describes sharing models of compute.

Using computers during the 50s was an exercise in frustration because the huge, monolithic machines could only handle one processing job at a time.

In a bid to overcome this limitation, Dr Corbato developed an operating system for computers called the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS).

Rather than have the machine dedicated to one person, CTSS divided up the processing power of a computer into small slices so it could do little bits of work for lots of people.

Given all that…the BBC decided to run their story with a title of “Computer password inventor dies aged 93”.

Password inventor?

A lot of people think of the late Corbato this way, yet I’m not sure why that’s a good idea to keep saying it. The BBC could do better.

We are in an age where sharing systems are wildly popular and everyone hates passwords. Perhaps people think focusing on the password story will get more clicks? I don’t like how it distracts from the bigger picture.

It’s a bit like calling the guy who invented police (another sharing system) the inventor of the nightstick. Why focus on the latter when the former was their actual intent and more notable contribution? Even if there were other sharing systems around that time, Corbato’s sharing system work was seminal and very influential.

Second, the BBC describes antique compute power as “so fast”.

Even in the 50s and 60s computers were so fast that no user noticed they were only getting a small portion of a machine’s processing power at any one time.

WE have both “an exercise in frustration” because jobs had to be stacked, and yet at the same time “no user noticed they were only getting a small portion”. I find it hard to reconcile how frustration drove a user to solve something that no user noticed. Was it frustrating or was it invisible?

Also the story at this point ignores the development of batch processing in the late 1950s.

Anyway Wired describes the situation entirely differently, suggesting that slow speed actually led to hacking passwords.

In the spring of 1962, Scherr was looking for a way to bump up his usage time on CTSS. He had been allotted four hours per week, but it wasn’t nearly enough time to run the detailed performance simulations he’d designed for the new computer system. So he simply printed out all of the passwords stored on the system.

That makes more sense.

And finally, third, this whole narrative misses the point that Dr Corbato himself describes the use of a secret to gain entry as an obvious solution for shared systems.

He was reluctant to take credit for passwords, which begs the question why people are so intent on sticking it to him, instead of credit for a compute sharing model that can uniquely authenticate people.

I’ve seen some people reference IBM in the 1950s, when really there should be an investigation into Philco, RCA, ERA, NCR, GM NAA, Tymshare, National CSS, Dial Data and Fairchild computers from that time.

Many computer systems under development in the late 1950s were serving the US military. So by way of example, here is a page from a 1956 US Army FM26-5 booklet on the language used to handle access to an “internal” shared resource: