WEBVTT - Thats So Project Raven 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:14.000 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.400 I'm your host, Johnathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:19.840 at how Stuff Works, and I heart radio and I 0:00:19.880 --> 0:00:25.400 love all things tech and today. As often is the 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:27.200 case with tech Stuff, even though I say I love 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:30.040 all things tech at the beginning of the show, it 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:32.360 begins with a caveat because I don't love everything. In 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:39.960 this particular story, it's a really shocking one. On January nineteen, 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:45.120 Reuter's published a long piece about a secret spy project 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:48.160 out of the United Arab Emirates. The project is called 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:53.120 Project Raven and how the agency that was overseeing Project 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:57.840 Raven had hired away hackers and cybersecurity experts, a lot 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:02.080 of them from America, including American citizens who had previously 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:05.360 worked for the United States National Security Agency or n 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:07.160 s A, which is a pretty big deal. So what 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.040 exactly is going on here? Well, in this episode, I'm 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:11.679 going to talk about the n s A and what 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.760 it does first before I get into Project Craven. And 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.120 I'm doing that for two real important reasons. One is 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.920 that Project Raven employed lots of former n s A 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:27.640 employees or contractors, and Project Craven appears to use many 0:01:27.760 --> 0:01:31.360 of the same techniques that have been developed and relied 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:33.600 upon over at the n s A for many years. 0:01:34.080 --> 0:01:37.920 Another is that while much of Project Raven is still 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:42.240 a mystery, we haven't seen all of the documents that 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.560 Reuters has referred to. That Reuters came in possession too 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.680 of some of these documents rather, but we haven't. I 0:01:49.760 --> 0:01:53.000 haven't seen them all. But I figure that by understanding 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:54.800 what the n s A is and what it does, 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:58.440 we can extrapolate quite a bit to understand what Project 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.440 Raven is all about. So we're gonna start with talking 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:04.080 about the n s A and what they do, and 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:09.480 then switch over to Project Raven in more detail. So 0:02:09.919 --> 0:02:12.920 the n s A formally became an agency back in 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.040 nineteen fifty two, but the motivation for creating the n 0:02:17.120 --> 0:02:19.799 s A dates further back. In fact, it dates back 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.280 to the First World War. A guy named Herbert Osborne Yardley, 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:28.880 who was a telegraph operator, served as a cryptographer with 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:31.840 American forces in France during World War One. This was 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:35.560 not unusual. A lot of telegraph operators worked in various 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.760 theaters of war, either as communications officers or cryptographers, and 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.880 he recognized that the United States really needed to step 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:47.080 up its game because he was handling communications from top 0:02:47.120 --> 0:02:50.720 brass and he found that the American Command was using 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.160 codes that were outdated and or easy to break. He 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:56.959 even broke a few of them on his own. So 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:04.000 he advocated for a much wronger approach to cryptography, and 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:06.560 he would eventually become the lead of the so called 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:11.400 Cipher Bureau, sometimes also known as the Black Chamber. Pretty 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:16.119 ominous sounding name right there. This office would intercept messages 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:19.080 from around the world and attempt to decode them to 0:03:19.080 --> 0:03:21.640 figure out what the heck is really going on out there. 0:03:22.080 --> 0:03:26.799 And this practice was not universally accepted in government circles, 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.679 and the un S Secretary of State Henry L. Stimpson, 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:34.640 who served under President Herbert Hoover, famously pulled funding for 0:03:34.720 --> 0:03:38.200 the office in nineteen nine. He found the very concept 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:41.600 of reading messages intended for other people to be abhorrent, 0:03:41.760 --> 0:03:44.760 or at least that's what he said. He essentially made 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:46.840 a comment along the lines of a gentleman does not 0:03:47.040 --> 0:03:51.720 read another gentleman's letters, so you wouldn't intercept someone's mail 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:53.800 and read what that was written. To them and then 0:03:54.000 --> 0:03:57.120 pass it back along. That would be illegal, and he says, well, 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:00.840 the same thing should be true between nations. Now, there's 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:04.120 definitely a healthy debate that we could have about whether 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:06.440 or not the methods used by the Black Chamber were 0:04:06.480 --> 0:04:11.720 justifiable or ethical. According to the Saturday Evening Post, this agency, 0:04:11.800 --> 0:04:14.520 the Black Chamber was known for making deals with telegraph 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:20.080 companies to get access to communications across those companies infrastructures. 0:04:20.160 --> 0:04:23.039 So it would be a lot like the news that 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:27.240 broke in when Edwards Snowden revealed that the n s 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:32.359 A had agreements or had essentially strong armed major internet 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:35.679 companies in order to get access to electronic communication companies 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:40.240 like Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft, among others. Now, we're 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:42.440 going to get back to that, but anyway, my point 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:46.919 is something's never changed, right. This was originally back in 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:52.600 uh the nineteen twenties with telegraph companies, and then you 0:04:52.839 --> 0:04:55.880 fast forward to the twenty tens and you find out 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:58.240 the same things going on, but now with internet companies. 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:05.000 You also realized that Yardley's response to the office getting 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.800 shut down was to write a tell all book about 0:05:08.800 --> 0:05:11.360 the Black Chamber. It essentially said, well, if you're gonna 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.359 if you're going to close out the Cipher Bureau, then 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:17.119 I'm going to write a book about all the stuff 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.760 we did. And he effectively spilled the secret beans to 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.760 the world, much like Edward Snowden did in although to 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.839 be fair, uh, Yardley was doing it kind of out 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:31.040 of spite, whereas Snowden apparently was doing it because he 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:34.960 had strong feelings that the um the practices of the 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:40.040 n s A were We're against freedom, really against a 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:44.120 certainly against an expectation of privacy. So history really does 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:48.000 repeat itself in some ways. Well. While the Black Chamber 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.400 was in the process of getting shut down, in nine, 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:54.839 the United States Army opened up its own intelligence gathering 0:05:54.880 --> 0:05:59.360 office called the Signal Intelligence Service or s i S. 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:02.279 The s I S took possession of the files that 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.600 Yardley's office had generated during its operations, so they got 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:09.039 hold of the Cipher Bureau files. This new office became 0:06:09.080 --> 0:06:11.679 the core of the n s A when President Truman 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.200 formally created the agency in nineteen fifty two. According to 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.960 the n s a's own website, the purpose of the 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.520 agency is to end i quote, save lives, defend vital networks, 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:26.919 advanced US goals, and alliances and protect privacy rights. That 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:29.479 last one is kind of interesting to me. The n 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:32.240 s A is part of the Department of Defense, so 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:36.520 it is no longer a branch of the army or 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:40.400 any specific branch of the military. It's part of the 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.440 Department of Defense overall. It's meant to gather intelligence, both 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:50.640 foreign and domestic, largely through signal processing or intercepting electronic 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:53.400 means and radio means of communication. But you might wonder 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:55.240 what the heck is the difference between the n s 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.200 A and the other intelligence agencies, because we talk a 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.400 lot about different intelligence agencies and it's pretty easy to 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.159 get them all confused. So you've got the c i 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:08.520 A or the Central Intelligence Agency. That agency focuses on 0:07:08.560 --> 0:07:12.040 foreign intelligence, and it's mostly concerned with the kind of 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:16.920 spy stuff we associate with the movies, though in reality 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:21.920 it's rarely anywhere near as glamorous or as easy to follow. 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.600 Things get a lot more messy and a lot less 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:30.640 um flashy in real life. But this is the agency 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:34.320 that oversees covert ops and counterintelligence efforts in other countries 0:07:34.640 --> 0:07:37.640 and passes information along to the executive branch of the government. 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.440 For those of you not in the United States, the 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.960 executive branch would include the president and the presidential staff. 0:07:44.880 --> 0:07:48.680 The FBI, or the Federal Bureau of Investigations, fills a 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:52.480 similar role, but for domestic concerns, so stuff that happens 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:57.720 inside the United States and usually involving US citizens. It's 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.680 also the lead law enforcement agency and focuses a lot 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:04.520 on counter terrorism and just investigations in general. So this 0:08:04.600 --> 0:08:08.840 is the agency that was famously profiled in the X Files, 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:13.000 although obviously that was a real work of fiction anyway, 0:08:13.200 --> 0:08:15.760 the n s A is mostly concerned with making and 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:20.000 breaking codes, so it focuses on ways to communicate secretly, 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.480 and they do this in order to keep us interest 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.720 safe and also how to break all the other codes 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:28.000 that are out there so that we know what the 0:08:28.000 --> 0:08:31.840 heck is going on. And they do this both for 0:08:31.840 --> 0:08:36.199 foreign communications and domestic communications, which leads critics to point 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.319 at the n s A and say they're spying on you, 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.000 and the n s A might say, sure, we have 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.000 all your data, but we don't look at it unless 0:08:44.240 --> 0:08:46.880 you have given us a reason to look at it. 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.720 Fun times. We'll touch on that a little more a 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:54.040 bit later. There's also one other agency, in the intelligence community. 0:08:54.080 --> 0:08:56.440 I feel that I should mention which is the Defense 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.680 Intelligence Agency or d i A. You don't tend to 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:01.760 hear about this a lot in the United States, especially 0:09:01.760 --> 0:09:05.920 if you're just you know, a citizen, a civilian. This 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.240 is part of the Department of Defense, just like the 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:12.440 n s A is, and this agency focuses specifically on 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:16.960 military intelligence and combat support. So, uh, that's why you 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:18.800 don't tend to hear it in your day to day 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:23.960 life as a civilian. It's really a military application. Until recently, 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.560 the general public in the United States had not heard 0:09:26.600 --> 0:09:28.640 a whole lot about the n s A, with a 0:09:28.640 --> 0:09:32.280 couple of famous exceptions, and this was something the agency 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.880 itself took advantage of. The CIA and FBI are far 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:39.600 more prominent in the American psyche, there typically romanticized in 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:43.360 popular culture as the stuff of spies and crime investigations. Now, 0:09:43.400 --> 0:09:44.880 when the n s A was first formed in the 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:49.560 nineteen fifties, it was effectively a secret organization that was 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.440 not publicly disclosed. In fact, there was a little bit 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:54.640 of a joke that n s A stood for no 0:09:54.840 --> 0:09:59.200 such agency. However, the nature of communications and the widespread 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.040 use of cipher in cryptography, and the growing ranks of 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.120 an SSAY employees meant that by the late nineteen sixties, 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:07.480 it was pretty much impossible to maintain that the n 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.640 s A was non existent or even trying to keep 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:13.880 it a shadow organization. It became clear at that point 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.640 that there was such an agency, although a lot of 0:10:16.679 --> 0:10:19.839 people still didn't really understand what it was doing, so 0:10:19.960 --> 0:10:23.520 the n s A activities weren't widely communicated or understood 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:27.720 among the general public. There were a few spikes and awareness, 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:31.000 as I alluded to earlier in the mid nineteen seventies, 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.480 in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, there was a 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.840 major one. There was a Senate investigation that revealed that 0:10:37.880 --> 0:10:41.040 the n s A had been intercepting telegrams leaving or 0:10:41.200 --> 0:10:46.160 entering the United States, including correspondence between American citizens, and 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:50.599 it was a program called Project Shamrock. Another shocking revelation 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:53.319 was that the n s A had been monitoring communications 0:10:53.360 --> 0:10:56.800 between civil rights leaders during the nineteen sixties, including Martin 0:10:56.880 --> 0:10:59.600 Luther King Jr. And a couple of U. S senators 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.640 as well. There were records that the agency was also 0:11:02.720 --> 0:11:06.040 keeping tabs on people who objected to the United States 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.040 being involved in the Vietnam War, and all of this 0:11:09.160 --> 0:11:12.120 led to Congress establishing a new set of guidelines that 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.360 the n s A would have to follow, and it 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:18.359 was meant to restrict how and when they could collect information. 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:23.160 It was called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.400 f i s A. To get permission to spy on 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.280 American citizens, the n s A would first have to 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.280 get permission from a special court established just for that purpose. 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:37.040 It was called a surveillance court or an intelligence court. 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.199 This wasn't quite the same thing as securing a warrant 0:11:40.200 --> 0:11:44.000 through a normal court, but it was a check on 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:48.400 the NSA's power. They couldn't just wantonly start listening in 0:11:48.480 --> 0:11:54.040 on people and and have it be legal. So things 0:11:54.080 --> 0:11:57.280 pretty much went that way for the next couple of 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:01.400 decades until September eleven two one. That's when we had 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:03.959 the terrorist attacks here in the United States that were 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:07.920 so devastating, and in the wake of that, the President 0:12:08.120 --> 0:12:10.880 of the United States at that time, George W. Bush, 0:12:11.040 --> 0:12:13.880 expanded the n s a s powers and authorized the 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:18.160 agency to monitor communications, including phone calls and emails, of 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:21.640 American citizens without having to secure a warrant. From this 0:12:21.800 --> 0:12:25.360 surveillance court first, the idea being that this would speed 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.800 things up and potentially prevent further catastrophe. But the flip 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:33.079 side of that was there was no oversight. There there 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.160 were no checks on this power. The New York Times 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:39.440 broke a story about this warrantless wire tapping program in 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:42.000 two thousand five, and then a couple of years later, 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:47.200 under tremendous political pressure, President Bush ended the practice. But 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:50.960 then we get to when a former contractor with the 0:12:51.040 --> 0:12:52.880 n essay someone who had worked with the c i 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:56.839 A before that, a guy named Edward Snowden, dumped an 0:12:56.960 --> 0:13:00.040 enormous amount of information on the world, revealing that the 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.400 n s A had been gathering data about telephone calls 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:08.520 and Internet communication between millions of Americans in widespread operations. 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.280 The n s A attempted to mitigate the impact of 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.200 this revelation, uh in part by saying that while it 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:18.240 was in fact gathering all this information, no one was, 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.880 you know, actually looking at the information unless they needed to, 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:25.400 in which case they totally said they were securing permission 0:13:25.440 --> 0:13:29.319 first from a top secret court that couldn't publish its decisions. 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:32.320 This might sound like a get off of jail free 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.120 card to you, and a lot of people criticized this approach, 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:38.440 the idea that the n s A could go to 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:43.000 a secret court and get approval without having to reveal 0:13:43.320 --> 0:13:46.880 any of this to anybody, and then do a search 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.319 on all this data that likely would include stuff about 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:53.079 you in it, and anything they turned up they could 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:56.640 potentially focus on and and use in some way further 0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:59.760 down the road. That was pretty disturbing. So they were 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.920 think the information like crazy, but they said, we aren't 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:07.440 going to search it or look for anything specific unless 0:14:07.480 --> 0:14:12.200 we already have approval. This still was not really comforting 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:15.160 to a lot of people. It wasn't something that many 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:18.480 people found justifiable. There were a lot of complaints and 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:24.120 criticisms um and it also it involved an increase in 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.960 resentment toward companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, companies that were 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:33.440 at least in appearance, cooperating with the n s A. However, 0:14:33.480 --> 0:14:35.920 I covered a lot of this back in when the 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.000 news first broke, So rather than go over all that again, 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:42.200 we'll just move on. And this was the super fast 0:14:42.320 --> 0:14:46.120 overview of n s A. Obviously, there's tons of stuff 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:47.720 we could talk about. You could do a full mini 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.160 series about the n s a no problem. And if 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:51.800 I were to do that, I would have to bring 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:55.280 Ben Bolan on because if you want to talk about 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:57.720 people who know stuff that they don't want anyone else 0:14:57.760 --> 0:14:59.920 to know, they know, he's the guy to go to. 0:15:01.120 --> 0:15:03.440 Right now, let's take a quick break and when we 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.080 come back, we'll cover the story that inspired this particular episode. 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:18.480 But first a word from our sponsor. On January nineteen, 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:21.760 as I said earlier, Reuters published a special report. The 0:15:21.800 --> 0:15:25.160 title of that special report is Inside the U a 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:29.480 e S Secret hacking team of US mercenaries. It is 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.680 an amazing read. I highly recommend you seek it out. Now. 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.680 I'm going to cover the basics of that piece in 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:41.000 this episode, but I wanted to give special mention to 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:45.880 journalists Christopher Byng and Joel Schekman who wrote the piece. 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:51.160 Most of the article focuses on Lori Stroud, who is 0:15:51.200 --> 0:15:55.320 an x n s A employee through who later on 0:15:55.440 --> 0:15:57.520 worked with the n s A through a security contractor 0:15:57.560 --> 0:16:00.640 as well, who then landed a position with a United 0:16:00.680 --> 0:16:04.760 Arab Emirates top secret program Project Raven. Stroud has the 0:16:04.760 --> 0:16:08.120 distinction of being involved in that massively publicized n s 0:16:08.200 --> 0:16:12.440 A league from as well so Nut's backtrack a bit. 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.840 Stroud started as a direct employee of the n s 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.520 A back in two thousand three. Then in two thousand 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:23.040 nine she officially left as being an n s A 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:25.720 employee and came back to work for the n s 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:29.040 A as a contractor of a part of a team 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:33.200 of cybersecurity and intrusion experts or you could call them 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:36.240 hackers if you like, who worked as a consultant to 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:38.920 the n s A. H The consulting company she was 0:16:38.960 --> 0:16:42.320 working with was called Booze. Alan Hamilton's still is called Booze. 0:16:42.320 --> 0:16:45.920 Allen Hamilton's still exists. So she was still working for 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:48.040 the n s A, but as a contractor rather than 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:50.640 as a full time employee. She could actually make a 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:53.840 lot more money doing essentially the same work as she 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.200 had been doing before. And it was Stroud who actually 0:16:57.240 --> 0:17:01.280 recommended that Edwards Snowden be brought on her team at 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:04.239 the n s A. And I've already explained how that 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:10.240 turned out anyway, after Snowden shocked the world by leaking 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:12.239 all the information on what the n s A had 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:16.400 been up to and then fled the United States, understandably, 0:17:16.440 --> 0:17:20.400 Stroud's team from Booze Allen Hamilton's was pretty much persona 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:24.399 non grata at the n s A. No one was 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.439 really keen to work with them. They they ended up 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.719 bearing a lot of the responsibility because they had recommended 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.200 Snowdon to be put on the n s A team 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:37.040 in the first place, So that doesn't reflect well when 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:41.080 your recommendation turns around and purposefully dumps a ton of 0:17:41.080 --> 0:17:45.639 top secret information. Stroud received an offer from another former 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:49.919 NSA agent named Mark Buyer to work through a different 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:54.120 security consulting firm, this one called cyber Point, and Stroud 0:17:54.320 --> 0:17:58.080 would be able to work on a prestigious cyber security 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.760 project overseas in Abu Dhabi, and she took the offer. 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.560 He said it was very attractive, so she leaves Booze 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:11.200 Allen and joins CyberPoint. Stroud is then sent to Abu Dhabi, 0:18:11.240 --> 0:18:14.760 and upon arriving, she was initially told her job was 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.200 going to be in counter terrorism, so essentially she would 0:18:18.240 --> 0:18:22.760 work with other experts to detect intrusion attempts on the 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.480 ua ES government servers, so if anyone was trying to 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:28.919 hack in, she was supposed to be part of the 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.360 team detecting that sort of stuff. Determining who was doing 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.399 it and blocking them. She would also be in charge 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.879 of patching vulnerabilities. This was just meant to be a 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:41.359 defensive project. And she also found out her office was 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.600 going to be in a converted mansion in Abu Dhabi. 0:18:44.720 --> 0:18:47.919 The facility is called the Villa, and it all seemed 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.879 too good to be true, and upon arrival she was 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:56.160 brought into two different briefings back to back. The first briefing, 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:59.560 which according to Reuters, has been referred to as the 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:03.280 Purple briefing, was pretty much the story I just told 0:19:03.280 --> 0:19:06.000 you that Stroud was told before she came on board 0:19:06.320 --> 0:19:08.560 that she would be working to protect the ua ES 0:19:08.680 --> 0:19:13.520 computer and communications infrastructure. Upon the conclusion of that briefing, however, 0:19:13.920 --> 0:19:16.879 she was told that whole story was just a cover story, 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:19.760 that that wasn't really what she would be doing. And 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.000 then she was told what her real purpose was and 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:26.040 she was received the second briefing, which was dubbed the 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.639 Black briefing. Now, this is a top secret project that 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:33.560 was meant to be denied by anyone working in the 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:37.199 u A government as even existing. The team at Reuters, however, 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:40.320 actually got hold of a copy of the materials used 0:19:40.320 --> 0:19:44.080 in the black briefing. Those materials concerned the U a 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:48.479 e S National Electronic Security Authority, or in e s 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:53.000 A NISSA. It's essentially the U a e S version 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:55.679 of the n s A here in the United States. 0:19:56.200 --> 0:20:00.359 So according to Reuters, the information in this briefing outline 0:20:00.440 --> 0:20:03.359 the true purpose of Project Raven and that it was 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:09.000 meant to be quote offensive operational division of NISSA end quote. 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.240 So that means instead of trying to detect intrusions and 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.600 plug security vulnerabilities, Strold would actually be working with a 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:19.840 team dedicated to spying on other people too, gathering data 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:24.280 on them, to intercepting communications and deciphering those communications. But 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:26.080 that's pretty much what she was doing at the n 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.639 s A, so it wasn't like this was a huge 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.199 change in what she had been doing leading up to 0:20:31.240 --> 0:20:32.920 this point. In fact, that was the whole reason why 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:36.760 she was hired. NISSA would supply the team of Project 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.400 Raven with a list of people that it said were 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:44.760 enemies of the UAE government. Then the Project Raven team 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:48.359 was tasked to gather as much information on those people 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.000 as they possibly could. They would track their movements using 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.080 location data. They would build out what amounted to be 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:59.600 dossiers on each of those people, electronic dossiers and just 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:03.080 amount huge amounts of information that could potentially be used 0:21:03.320 --> 0:21:07.640 by other parts of the UAE government. And let's talk 0:21:07.680 --> 0:21:10.320 about that for a second. The government of the United 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:14.239 Arab Emirates is a little complicated if you're looking at 0:21:14.240 --> 0:21:17.600 it from the perspective of an American like me, you know, 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:22.000 compared to the American system of government. Now, for those 0:21:22.000 --> 0:21:25.000 who aren't that familiar, the name of the nation implies this. 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.440 The UAE is not just a single unified people. It's 0:21:28.480 --> 0:21:34.120 actually a collection of seven monarchies or emirates kingdoms. Two 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.200 of those are ruled by the same royal family and 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:39.560 the others are ruled by different families. So you end 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.800 up even though you have seven emirates, you have six 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:47.439 ruling families. So the six rulers, the six heads of 0:21:47.440 --> 0:21:52.800 those ruling families are collectively the Federal Supreme Council of 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:56.160 the u a E. In addition to that Council, there 0:21:56.240 --> 0:21:59.399 is a Council of Ministers that's led by the Prime Minister. 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:01.639 More on that in a second. And there's also a 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:05.480 group of leaders called the Federal National Council. Uh. Some 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:08.960 of the members of this council, they're about forty people 0:22:09.040 --> 0:22:12.560 in it total. Some of them are appointed and some 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:15.880 of them are elected. Uh. And then there's the Federal 0:22:15.920 --> 0:22:19.400 Supreme Court, which is very similar to the Supreme Court 0:22:19.400 --> 0:22:22.119 in the United States, at least in theory. The Federal 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:27.960 Supreme Council, that group of leaders technically elects a president 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:31.880 and a vice president to oversee the entire United Arab Emirates. 0:22:32.440 --> 0:22:35.919 Practically speaking, however, the president is the head of the 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:40.400 ruling family of Abu Dhabi called Al nah Jan. The 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:43.879 vice president and the prime minister. The same person is 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.679 the head of the ruling family of Al Maktoum, that 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:52.600 as the royal family that oversees Dubai. Now, there are 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:55.440 no political parties in the u A. In fact, they're 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.639 illegal in the u A, and ultimately everyone in the 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:01.760 government is there on the pledge sure of the ruling families. 0:23:01.800 --> 0:23:06.400 There's not really a democratic process here. The elected members, 0:23:06.440 --> 0:23:09.719 you know, I mentioned that though, that that forty member 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.639 Federal National Council, some of them are elected. Those elected 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:18.440 members are only advisors. The only people who have any 0:23:18.560 --> 0:23:25.000 legislative authority are appointed. So again, all power ultimately comes 0:23:25.000 --> 0:23:28.240 from these ruling families. The government of the u a 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:32.320 E has drawn criticism regarding how it operates, and the 0:23:32.400 --> 0:23:35.879 UAE government is eager to get more information on those 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:41.640 who do criticize the government. They are not particularly well 0:23:41.720 --> 0:23:45.200 looked upon by the u a E. Before a Project Raven, 0:23:45.600 --> 0:23:48.680 the u a E largely relied on primitive means to 0:23:48.840 --> 0:23:54.480 spy on these identified enemies to get electronic data on them. 0:23:54.520 --> 0:23:59.800 So typically in the old days, NISSA that that a 0:24:00.000 --> 0:24:04.080 agency would send an operative to get physical access to 0:24:04.119 --> 0:24:08.560 a targets computer or mobile device and install monitoring software 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.000 on it. So you actually have to get to that 0:24:11.040 --> 0:24:15.040 person's computer and then install some malware. That's actually a 0:24:15.080 --> 0:24:17.920 pretty tricky challenge, even if the target happens to live 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:21.320