NSA Hides Google Ties As DARPA Director Takes Google Job

As the NSA tries to cover up its ties with Google, in a potential spying scandal, DARPA Director Regina Dugan is leaving the Pentagon to take a post at Google.

In the midst of what looks like it will turn out to be a massive spying scandal between the NSA and Google, like that of the NSA’s partnership with AT&T to spy on all phone calls placed within the U.S., we learn today that the Director of the Pentagon’s Premiere Research Lab, DARPA, is stepping down to take a “senior executive position” at Google.

Just three days ago, news hit the wire that the Department of Justice asked U.S. Federal courts to keep any partnerships between the Google and the NSA secret.

The request for state secrecy comes from EPIC filing a Freedom of Information request act attempting to discover why Google had not enabled encryption in Gmail by default which led to user’s email accounts being hacked and other security vulnerabilities.

EPIC apparently hit a sore spot within the government, as the NSA responded by saying they could not confirm nor deny any relationships with Google because doing so would compromise National Security.

As the story of Google’s true relationship with the NSA continues to unfold the Director of DARPA, Regina Dugan, is currently in the middle of her own scandal in which she is being investigated for contracts she has given out during her tenure.

The National Law Journal reports on the secrecy over the NSA ties to Google.

DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google, NSA

The Justice Department is defending the government’s refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.

The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency.

The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July.

[...]

EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early 2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber attacks in China that year against Google.

EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010.

The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” to ensure the availability of secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to confirm or deny any partnership with Google.

[...]

The NSA said it cannot provide documents—or confirm their existence—because the information would alert adversaries about the security agency’s priorities, threat assessments and countermeasures.

DOJ said media reports about the alleged Google partnership with NSA do not constitute official acknowledgement.

The Washington Post and The New York Times both reported that Google contacted the NSA after the Jan. 2010 cyber attack, which the company said was rooted in China and targeted access to accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The Wall Street Journal said NSA’s general counsel worked out a cooperative research and development agreement with Google.

[...]

“The NSA mischaracterizes EPIC’s FOIA Request by stating that responsive documents would reveal ‘information about a potential Google-NSA relationship,’” Rotenberg said.

The crux of the records request, Rotenberg said, is Google’s switch to application encryption by default for Gmail accounts soon after the cyber attack. Google in 2008 began allowing users to encrypt mail passing through the company servers, EPIC said in its brief, but encryption was not provided by default.

[...]

Source: The National Law Journal

RT reports more on the litigation and the highly suspicious response given by the NSA over the FOI request.

NSA refuses to disclose its links with Google

AFP Photo / Kimihiro Hoshino

Wondering if the US government’s shadowy security agents are working behind the scenes with the biggest entity on the Internet? Don’t hold your breath waiting — one advocacy group has to take Uncle Sam to court for an answer.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, is suing the United States National Security Agency to find out the truth behind any partnership between the NSA and Google, the Silicon Valley giants behind the Web’s most popular search engine and a laundry list of other online applications and services. EPIC has been asking for information on an alleged alliance since 2010, but with the NSA refusing to submit to Freedom of Information Act requests, the US District Court of Appeals will hear arguments later this month that the advocacy group hopes will mean that they will soon learn the truth regarding whether or not the two are in cahoots.

In February 2010, DC-based non-profit group EPIC filed a FOIA request with the NSA as reports were unearthed suggesting that the government’s security group was hammering out a deal with Google on the topic of cybersecurity. EPIC was curious at the time about any correspondence between the parties that could concrete rumors of a relationship and filed the necessary paperwork to obtain materials. Although the NSA responded that March, the agency did so by saying that they could neither confirm nor deny any partnership between the two. For failing to disclose information pursuant with the FOIA request, EPIC took NSA to US District Court last July, only for US District Judge Richard Leon to stand with the government and further reject EPIC’s requests.

More than two years after filing their first FOIA request, EPIC and the NSA will face off again this month when the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will hear arguments on March 20. EPIC is hoping to have Judge Leon’s 2011 decision overruled, in turn approving the non-profit’s motion for summary judgment.

Although the last court ruling granted the NSA the motion for summary judgment that has kept them from having to disclose any documents, EPIC now says that the NSA cannot be entitled to summary judgment when it neglected to even search for the materials requested. “Without first conducting the search, not even the agency can know whether there is a factual basis for its legal position. The decision of the District Court should be reversed and the case remanded with an order requiring the agency to conduct the search for responsive records,” writes EPIC.

EPIC’s attorneys drafted and published their oral arguments in January and will present them before a three-person panel of appeals judges later this month. It will be then in a DC court that they will argue that the NSA is required to conduct a search for responsive agency records before the agency can flatly opine they can neither confirm or deny any partnership, an explanation referred to in legal circles as a Glomar response. Following the initial request from 2010, the NASA invoked Exemption 3 of the Freedom of Information Act to defer acknowledging any assistance — or lack thereof — of NSA records pertinent to the request. EPIC was quick to fire back, however, filing an administrative appeal that May stating that the NSA had failed to provide evidence that the materials in question warranted a response on par with what the agency provided.

In explaining their case now, EPIC’s attorneys write that “The Glomar response is appropriate where ‘to confirm or deny the existence of records … would cause harm cognizable under a FOIA exception.’” On the contrary, argues EPIC, “The NSA has failed to meet this standard and has failed to perform the segregability analysis required by statute to determine whether non-exempt records may be released.”

“The NSA asserted Glomar, a narrow doctrine for a special category for records, without ever searching for any responsive records within the agency’s possession, without ever attempting to identify materials that could be disclosed, without even creating a record that would allow appellant or the court to evaluate the agency’s position on an agency activity that is widely report in the national media, acknowledged by the former director of the agency, and impacts the interests of millions of Internet users. The agency’s position is contrary to FOIA and prevailing case law,” adds EPIC.

Over their lack of cooperation and assistance in the inquiry, EPIC charges that “While the agency may choose to assert several statutory exemptions if it wishes to withheld records in its possession, acknowledging the existence of unsolicited third-party e-mails sent to the NSA does not reveal any information about the NSA’s functions and activities. Moreover, if records in possession of the agency reveal activities that fall outside of the agency’s proper functions and activities, these too would be subject to disclosure under the FOIA.”

In appealing, EPIC quotes US President Barack Obama, who announced on his first full day in office that FOIA requests “should be administrated with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Although Obama campaigned with the promise of creating an administration more transparent than any other in history, watchdog groups such as EPIC continue to be locked out of FOIA request and whistleblowers, including PFC Bradley Manning and WikiLeak’s Julian Assange, are prosecuted and shunned by the federal government.

EPIC also argues that the NSA has been responsive to FOIA requests in the past, which adds to the intrigue over a possible government-Google alliance. “This Court has never granted the broad authority that the NSA seeks in this case, to issue a Glomar response without conducting a search for responsive records, particularly when the agency itself has put so much information about the subject matter of the request in the public record,” claims EPIC.

Calling into question any conspiring between the search engine giants and the government, EPIC adds, “Google provides cloud-based services to consumers, not critical infrastructure services to the government.”

Despite an array of violations identified by the Securities and Exchanges Commission, Google has repeatedly been left off the hook by the federal government with merely a slap on the wrist. Earlier this month, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom attacked the partnership between Silicon Valley’s private sector and the US federal government for allowing Google to walk over copyright infringement charges while the alleged file-sharing kingpin could end up behind bars for life for similar crimes.

“I’m not Google. I don’t have 50 billion dollars in my account and right now I’ve not a penny on my account. All my lawyers currently are basically working without a penny and they are all still on board and all still doing their job because what they see here is unfair, is unreasonable and is not justice,” Dotcom told New Zealand’s 3news, adding he felt the persecution was “political.”

Source:RT

Wired reports on the DARPA director taking a new job at Google.

Exclusive: Darpa Director Bolts Pentagon for Google

Darpa Director Regina Dugan at the 'All Things D' conference. Photo: Nosillacast/Flickr

Darpa director Regina Dugan will soon be stepping down from her position atop the Pentagon’s premiere research shop to take a job with Google. Dugan, whose controversial tenure at the agency lasted just under three years, was “offered and accepted at senior executive position” with the internet giant, according to DARPA spokesman Eric Mazzacone. She felt she couldn’t say no to such an “innovative company,” he adds.

Dugan’s emphasis on cybersecurity and next-generation manufacturing earned her strong support from the White House, winning her praise from the President and maintaining the agency’s budget even during a period of relative austerity at the Pentagon. Her push into crowdsourcing and outreach to the hacker community were eye-openers in the often-closed world of military R&D. Dugan also won over some military commanders by diverting some of her research cash from long-term, blue-sky projects to immediate battlefield concerns.

“There is a time and a place for daydreaming. But it is not at Darpa,” she told a congressional panel in March 2011 (.pdf). “DARPA is not the place of dreamlike musings or fantasies, not a place for self-indulging in wishes and hopes. DARPA is a place of doing.” For an agency that spent millions of dollars on shape-shifting robots, Mach 20 missiles, and mind-controlled limbs, it was something of a revolutionary statement.

The shift was only one of the reasons why Dugan was a highly polarizing figure within her agency, and in the larger defense research community. The Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is also actively investigating hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of contracts that DARPA gave out to RedX Defense — a bomb-detection firm that Dugan co-founded, and still partially owns. A separate audit is examining a sample of the 2,000 other research contracts DARPA has signed during Dugan’s tenure, to “determine the adequacy of DARPA’s selection, award, and administration of contracts and grants,” according to a military memorandum.

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“Dr. Dugan’s departure is not related to an OIG investigation,” Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a spokesperson for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, adds in a statement. “The OIG conducts regular audits of Defense agency contracts and ethics programs; as a Defense agency, this includes Darpa.”

“In the spring, questions were raised over whether it was appropriate for Darpa to have funded a proposal submitted by RedXDefense, particularly in light of the Director’s continuing interest in this closely held small business,” Morgan says. “In response, the Department reviewed the processes in place at Darpa to ensure that those processes would ensure integrity and public confidence.”

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