US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of things to spy on you
US intelligence chief: we might use the internet of
things to spy on you
James Clapper did not name specific agency as being
involved in surveillance via smart-home devices but said in congressional
testimony it is a distinct possibility
By Spencer Ackerman and Sam Thielman in New York
Tuesday 9 February 2016 16.51 EST Last modified on
Tuesday 9 February 2016 20.26 EST
The US intelligence chief has acknowledged for the first
time that agencies might use a new generation of smart household devices to
increase their surveillance capabilities.
As increasing numbers of devices connect to the internet
and to one another, the so-called internet of things promises consumers
increased convenience – the remotely operated thermostat from Google-owned Nest
is a leading example. But as home computing migrates away from the laptop, the
tablet and the smartphone, experts warn that the security features on the coming
wave of automobiles, dishwashers and alarm systems lag far behind.
In an appearance at a Washington thinktank last month,
the director of the National Security Agency, Adm Michael Rogers, said that it
was time to consider making the home devices “more defensible”, but did not
address the opportunities that increased numbers and even categories of
connected devices provide to his surveillance agency.
However, James Clapper, the US director of national
intelligence, was more direct in testimony submitted to the Senate on Tuesday
as part of an assessment of threats facing the United States.
“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet
of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and
targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,”
Clapper said.
Clapper did not specifically name any intelligence agency
as involved in household-device surveillance. But security experts examining
the internet of things take as a given that the US and other surveillance
services will intercept the signals the newly networked devices emit, much as
they do with those from cellphones. Amateurs are already interested in easily
compromised hardware; computer programmer John Matherly’s search engine Shodan
indexes thousands of completely unsecured web-connected devices.
Online threats again topped the intelligence chief’s list
of “worldwide threats” the US faces, with the mutating threat of low-intensity
terrorism quickly following. While Clapper has for years used the equivocal
term “evolving” when asked about the scope of the threat, he said Tuesday that
Sunni violent extremism “has more groups, members, and safe havens than at any
other point in history”.
The Islamic State topped the threat index, but Clapper
also warned that the US-backed Saudi war in Yemen was redounding to the benefit
of al-Qaida’s local affiliate.
Domestically, “homegrown extremists” are the greatest
terrorist threat, rather than Islamic State or al-Qaida attacks planned from
overseas. Clapper cited the San Bernardino and Chattanooga shootings as
examples of lethal operations emanating from self-starting extremists “without
direct guidance from [Isis] leadership”.
US intelligence officials did not foresee Isis suffering
significant setbacks in 2016 despite a war in Syria and Iraq that the Pentagon
has pledged to escalate. The chief of defense intelligence, Marine Lt Gen
Vincent Stewart, said the jihadist army would “probably retain Sunni Arab urban
centers” in 2016, even as military leaders pledged to wrest the key cities of
Raqqa and Mosul from it.
Contradicting the US defense secretary, Ashton Carter,
Stewart said he was “less optimistic in the near term about Mosul”, saying the
US and Iraqi government would “certainly not” retake it in 2016.
The negative outlook comes as Carter traveled on Tuesday
to meet with his fellow defense chiefs in Brussels for a discussion on
increasing their contributions against Isis.
On the Iran nuclear deal, Clapper said intelligence
agencies were in a “distrust and verify mode”, but added: “We have no evidence
thus far that they’re moving toward violation.”
Clapper’s admission about the surveillance potential for
networked home devices is rare for a US official. But in an overlooked 2012
speech, the then CIA director David Petraeus called the surveillance
implications of the internet of things “transformational … particularly to
their effect on clandestine tradecraft”.
During testimony to both the Senate armed services
committee and the intelligence panel, Clapper cited Russia, China, Iran, North
Korea and the Islamic State as bolstering their online espionage,
disinformation, theft, propaganda and data-destruction capabilities. He warned
that the US’s ability to correctly attribute the culprits of those actions
would probably diminish with “improving offensive tradecraft, the use of
proxies, and the creation of cover organizations”.
Clapper suggested that US adversaries had overtaken its
online capabilities: “Russia and China continue to have the most sophisticated
cyber programs.”
The White House’s new cybersecurity initiative, unveiled
on Tuesday, pledged increased security for nontraditional networked home
devices. It tasked the Department of Homeland Security to “test and certify
networked devices within the ‘Internet of Things’.” It did not discuss any
tension between the US’s twin cybersecurity and surveillance priorities.
Connected household devices are a potential treasure
trove to intelligence agencies seeking unobtrusive ways to listen and watch a
target, according to a study that Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and
Society released last week. The study found that the signals explosion
represented by the internet of things would overwhelm any privacy benefits by
users of commercial encryption – even as Clapper in his testimony again alleged
that the growth of encryption was having a “negative effect on intelligence
gathering”.
The report’s authors cited a 2001 case in which the FBI
had sought to compel a company that makes emergency communications hardware for
automobiles – similar by description to OnStar, though the company was not
named – to assist agents in Nevada in listening in on conversations in a
client’s car.
In February 2015, news reports revealed that microphones
on Samsung “smart” televisions were “always on” so as to receive any audio that
it could interpret as an instruction.
“Law enforcement or intelligence agencies may start to
seek orders compelling Samsung, Google, Mattel, Nest or vendors of other
networked devices to push an update or flip a digital switch to intercept the
ambient communications of a target,” the authors wrote.
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