NIAC Projects 2017

Using a rover to collect nitrogen from Pluto to manufacture fuel onsite to return home:

Bioengineering a soft robot rover based on eels to explore underneath the icy surface of Europa:

A baby toy inspires a resistant and flexible rover design:

Three Distinct Antisemitic Trends in Vichy France

Paul Fischer

9/20/2017

Professor Zdatny

Marrus, Michael R. Paxton, Robert O. Vichy France and the Jews. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1981.

Word Count: 752

Three distinct antisemitic trends in Vichy France

Vichy France and the Jews is research that has been done rereading evidence, correspondence, and documents from the persecution of the Jews in France during World War II. It is worthwhile to highlight some of the critical trends of antisemitism at the time, as well as that which separates French racism from other national discriminatory natures.

Some background is provided into the history of anti-racist measures, helping to establish the surprise with which the French encountered the success of racist movements (25-71). Foremost, loi Marchandeau prohibited antisemitism in the press and had been passed shortly before the invasion. It would be replaced with the Statut des juifs, legislation updated during the war (3). In the first statute effects were primarily felt by civil servants, but as the war drew on, its goals would be expanded in revisions to include mandatory identification, property sequestration, and ultimately death for all Jews in Occupied France. Other empirical restrictions on the activities of Jewish communities included race-exclusive leagues such as l’Ordre des Médecins established August 10, 1940 that effectively excluded Jews from medical practice (160). A similar measure was taken shortly afterwards for lawyers.

Reconciliation of trending French sympathies for the Allies that grew through the war and simultaneously increasing sanctioned persecution of the Jews can be difficult (201, 210). Three examples are useful in addressing this: that of Theodore Dannecker, SS judenreferat, of Xavier Vallat, Commissioner-General of the Jewish Question (CGJQ), and of Ambassador Otto Abetz.

Upon arrival August 12, 1940, Theodore Dannecker, a young officer of the SS, was tasked with bringing the “‘gut antisemitism’ - a visceral hatred undisciplined by reason, patriotism, or a sense of public order” of Germany to France (89). At the time, this proved complicated; even the Marshall Pétain had friends in his inner circle that he wished to ensure were exempted from early legislation (207). Dozens of property crimes and other violence had been directed against Jews in the countryside of France before German invasion, to be sure, but officially these had been hitherto rightly viewed as illegal acts (34, 182). The nature of these crimes were personal rather than organized, and did not near the level of the atrocities experienced during the war. Marrus and Paxton even point to the irony that legislation preventing refugees from getting jobs or obtaining worthwhile occupations created the very conditions of criminality that they were explicitly charged with preventing.

The invasion of France also saw antisemitism drift into the sphere of politics and diplomacy. For one powerful figure, the Ambassador Abetz, “antisemitism [was] one of the levers to replace the reactionary grip of the Church and Army in Vichy France by a popular, anticlerical, pro-European … mass-movement” (78). The use of antisemitism as a tangent factor in contingent political battles directed mass opinion in a manner uncharacteristic of the liberal or communist antisemitism extant in France before occupation.

Xavier Vallat was the Commissioner-General of Jewish Questions in France. Original enthusiasm led to his public admission that “aryanization had produced an unleashing of greed’” (156). He “proclaimed himself a champion of ‘state antisemitism,’ the regulation of Jewish existence by state agencies for the benefit of all Frenchmen” (89). The position was offensive to the Germans, though not entirely out of step with the general strategies that they employed, because the French created the position independently of Germany and without forewarning. While for some, it could be seen as a way of heading off some of the more strict German rules for Jews, it also behaved more harshly towards certain groups of Jews as well (83). Arguably, it is the deviation from German guidelines that may have led to his dismissal.

The successor of Vallat, Louis Darquier, would be a complete contradiction in terms to the first Commisioner-General. With three arrests, he took the level of antisemitism to another level (283). By the time he was appointed in 1942, Laval had taken office and persecution of the Jews already well outside the legal bounds of French sovereignty, began to escalate well out of all legal and moral bounds (251). While the Germans influenced Vichy France greatly, it is a tragedy that such a high level of complicity existed, and co-operation was present even outside of the specifically antisemitic departments, “it was not the PQJ who conducted the arrests and guarded the trains, but regular police” (294).

Technics of France in Crisis: Two Defeats in Strange Defeat

Paul Fischer

9/18/2017

Professor Zdatny

Bloch, Marc. Strange defeat: A statement of evidence written in 1940. No. 371. WW Norton & Company, New York, 1968.

France in Crisis: Two Defeats in Strange Defeat

At the time Marc Bloch wrote Strange Defeat, France had lost territory and its political status was reduced to that of a puppet empire. 1940 was a dark year, and the coming years would force the French to lose hope in the goodness of their national Marseilles, motto, or constituent ideals as a competent force for good. The technics of war, from the point of view of a supply line Intelligence officer creates a distinct prism of analysis for historians that appropriately conveys the logistical predecessors of contingent and subsequent complete defeat at the hands of the Germans. That is, the two intertwining communications stressed in this book are the military losses during the rapid advance of Nazi Germany through France and the cultural capitulation spreading throughout France and the Allies like a disease under the stress of starvation, hardship, and absence of adequate leadership.

The importance of the Maginot line cannot be stressed enough in French plans. Like the Titanic, a great ship so formidably designed no one thought to include life boats except for cosmetic purposes, the French investment in concrete believed to stop a German incursion substituted for proper evacuation and withdrawal plans (52). The French hoped to avoid a war with Germany first through diplomatic means and if all else failed to repulse her by utilization of near limitless resources invested soundly in the same mechanics of warfare found in the First World War.

Germany correctly anticipated the French attachment to a static defensive structure (73). Engines had grown in size, and motorized transports, armored divisions, and even motorcycles traversed the countryside, sowing uncontrollable panic without even confronting the fortifications of the military (51). Bloch hypothesizes that if such an outcome were possible there may have been a path to victory in this early war with full and vigorous retreats to bring the French military together and to make a unified assault on German targets (40). Improper planning led to isolated units, without water or other necessary supplies, that Bloch was personally acquainted with as an officer of the fuel depots (38).

Hitler met with psychologists in the development of the Blitzkrieg in order to ensure that the war would exert the maximum effect on civilian and military populations possible. Mechanical means were used to boost the screech of dive-bombers, for example (54).  The Battle of London showed the Luftwaffe capable of a good deal more than was deployed into France. The French likely would have required more than simple modifications to withdrawals to counter German invasion forces, should such an outcome be conceivable without dramatically changing the fundamental makeup of the French Army. Only half of the battle was lost on the field, however.

By the conclusion of military operations dramatic social class differences in France were extant, and the occupiers sought to exploit these as liberators or bringers of a new form of government: the tyrant or dictator. In the process of authoritarianism, the French would lose hope in their national Marseilles (138). For the first time, the Germans began to fail. Where the military had instilled fear in the mind of France, appropriately enough, intelligence operatives from Germany were thugs. Improper targets were chased, and fifth columnists inappropriately exploited, becoming one of the targets of blame (25). As a consequence, the Resistance lived on.

At the time Marc Bloch wrote, the France that De Gaulle described in London was a fairy tale. Even among the regular French population, “the Germany of Hitler aroused certain sympathies the Germany of Ebert could never have hoped to appeal” and the war seemed lost for the French people as well as the military (150). To Bloch, the political right had sold out to fascists and vassalized France while detracting their political opponents as warmongers. These were elements of a social class conflict with the bourgeoisie as their target. They had “refused to take the masses seriously, or they trembled before their implied threat. What they did not realize was that, by so doing, they were separating themselves effectively from France” (167).

One Thousand Pieces of a National Drama in the Unfree French

Paul Fischer

9/10/2017

Professor Zdatny

One Thousand Pieces of a National Drama in The Unfree French

Contemporary historians struggle to piece together the dramatic events that unfolded in France during the German occupation of World War II. There are a number of grounded facts that make analysis difficult, even contradictory, in practice. Ranging from former occupation to censorship such empirically founded agents of complexity are disambiguated in The Unfree French by Richard Vinen from the distinctly political and deliberate upheaval of institutions, persons, and property in France that occurred. Rather than dwelling on the tragedies in the course of war or the jubilation of victory and resistance, Vinen successfully navigates the integral developments through the war making a perplexing narrative tangible to modern historians.

The presence and widespread impact of prisoners of war in Germany and France blurs the lines between these two narratives; a political narrative was initiated in the hearts of every Frenchman, and stuck in the gut of the Frenchwoman as well (373-5). Uncertainty became a critical theme in this narrative early in the war, and though “it was probably in the bitter cold of January of 1941 that most prisoners finally accepted there was not going to be a large scale release” and that no orders to escape existed as for British soldiers, massive numbers managed to escape from early internment camps (157). On the countryside, both the confusion and the determination to serve France manifested in the panic of the exode.

While a popular film depicting the era, The Last Metro, includes a dialogue in which a woman refuses the implications of an agent of the censor by excusing herself as non-political to which he replies, “but you are wrong, everything is political,” the integral nature of politics to the era is matched by social considerations. Integrity of cached events deliberated through subsequent hunting is best reflected by the opinions of the survivors: “French people recalled the period in terms of what happened to them and those around them, the idea that these multitudes of individual dramas were part of a broader national drama only developed later” (16). The Unfree French succeeds in bringing this social collection of considerable import to political immediacy.

Intractability of the course of action of Vichy France cannot be dismissed as in the words of Bénoit-Méchin “the crowd possesses no organ for thought. Victim of its mental hallucinations and its nervous reactions, it is without defence against rumours and delirious dreams” (94). As much as silence defined the government of Pétain, and the subsequent Pétainism that dominated the colonies, circumstance dictated the actions of the individual French (31, 75). This occurred heroically, as one woman pinned a yellow star to her dog and others donned the symbol in protest though “gentiles who wore the yellow star were often themselves in some doubt about the precise significance of their act” (140). Even Marshall Pétain used the murky nature of the Franco-German occupation in a manner bordering on heroism, declaring to the Germans “if it would take you five days to invade France, it would take me five minutes to deliver my colonies and ships to Great Britain” (81).

The tale is not only one of gangsters and murder, of treaties and betrayal. There is also the final defeat of Germany, and the restoration of France. With the exception of some of the bourgeouisie, almost none found German occupation preferable to the Allied invasion: “Where the Germans had been systematically ruthless with the population, the Allies were confused and tactless” (331). Exposing the system of agents, censorship, and oppression that were in play in occupied territories through World War II helps an understanding of the formal initiation of military operations and of the subsequent blood bath to be formulated. 250,000 Gypsies in France were killed, as were 75,000 Jews. While death camp activity was lower among French citizens than many parts of Europe, and “Vichy aimed to exclude Jews from public life rather than to kill,” foreign born Jews in France suffered near complete extermination, and the highest kill rates of any civilian population in Europe was seen there (136).

Securing the Internet of Everything

Mr Philippe Roggeband

CISCO

Securing the Internet of Everything

Notes by Paul Fischer

Security not as a noun, but as an adjective. It must be attached to everything we do.

Opportunity to share with an audience the work in the cybersecurity space and also to listen, to learn, within the specific constraints of national security.

The people we are facing are highly paid professionals, they make higher salaries than we do. They get caught and after a few years in prison work for us as consultants.

I was recently in Dubai, and the cyber field was described as a graph with the skill level of the hackers and the focus of the hackers being the variables. Spearfishing, with one but not the other is not dangerous, but we need to concentrate on those who have both. Automation is possible for low skilled stuff, but the resources are needed for higher skilled efforts

Why does it happen? It is lucrative. It is lucrative because there is money, a Facebook account is worth about a dollar for each 15 friends. More and more devices connect, and bring formidable growth in efforts of conspiracy

application specific hacking and technology should be used with new objects, cross app of the tech will solve this problem.

Industrial control systems are a totally different beast. Isolated networks nonstandard, developed years ago…

Critical infrastructure were once isolated but no longer, and defense is paramount.  A German attack on a steel factory >> physical damage to the control systems.

Specific constraints, there can be no latency because there is a loop form to the code, any blocking of traffic can result in disaster (i.e., a control valve cannot be delayed when temp is changing), so IT solutions must be adapted for application in an industrial sense.

Next generation TVs with cameras will also create challenges, these techs offer promise, but also must be protected vigilantly.

Creation of the connected battlefield. Not possible without the paramount protections being offered to the field. There is no guarantee they can be 100% secure, but it may be possible to reduce problems. We have many partners, many of whom are committed towards creating such a battlefield, that are also helping to develop tech. For network segmentation, intro of latency, other points to develop this concept.

Analysis of app level data or metadata can allow understanding of patterns in normal actions and warrant intercept actions on abnormal behaviors

The concept of being watched too much is somewhat of a generation thing

In the former generation, there is an assumption that everything made is private unless made public, in this generation that assumption has changed

3 phases

Before you are attacked (two types of firms, those who know they have been compromised and those who do not know they have been compromised)

Deploy tools to decrease attack surface and vulnarability level. This will not stop the attack ,but make the hacckers job more difficultP

Phase two: detect the attack.

Low-skilled attacks warrant no effort, they will be detected. 

Finally, the after phase, what has to be done after the attack has been detected and contained. Forensics and investigations Back to the before phase… 

Don’t just change the locks, but check under the bed for an accomplice of the villain.

CISCO uses TALOS to scout for attacks and to inform consumers of the attacks. Security architecture against the threat of the month, do not present a manageable premise…

Consistency is key to achieving success in security.

The first thing is to establish a context when there is access authenticated to a network

Where how time, etc, if no authentication it must be profiled, and if authenticated, a granular image of the user is uploaded.

Sometimes data can be in a grey zone of action, a device or a file.

Then we initiate device lateral tracking or file lateral tracking. This tells us every device or file that the file uploaded to or device connected to. This allows us after TALOS determines that an attack occurred somewhere to clean up and destroy all traces of the attack.

Growth rate of new attacks on android is hitting 800% per year, which presents a new crisis for us and we have been put in a permanent catch up situation. Hackers have identified the system as lucrative in nature.

Bring visibility on what is happening by leveraging the network, extracting everything from the fabric, 

consistent control, a single source of truth on the topic

Advanced threat protection and intelligence, because no one can match the firepower of TALOS

Finally, reduce the complexity of the system through an architected approach.

Collective Cyber Defence

Collective Cyber Defence - A State and Industry Perspective.

Notes on Professor Dr. Marco Gercke, Director of the CyberCrime Research Institute

by Paul Fischer

under international criminal law

Misconception no prosecution occurs

Critical standpoint against int. Law

e.g. drone attacks

Currently unprotected, they will be. /

Is a cyber attack an act of war?

The cyber world has changed dramatically

No longer the sole domain of the military and other government organizations

It will be prosecuted as a matter of criminality

We are creating our own weapons as governments which will not be able to be once they retire or leave gov. Service

NATO independent states, instead of working on our own in the cyber world we work together, this can be difficult, there is an idea we can learn from.

Now it is time to think like a criminal

They are sharing knowledge free of charge, about cybersecurity attacks

Tools are also being distributed free of charge. Only the developers need to be smart, many criminals simply hit a button.

What is shared among states and industries is very limited.

CIO in an example refused to share information about another company at first even when one was contracted by both companies.

dist. Or otherwise for virus distribution, is a serious crime, but no one reports this, as a company. The state is unable to do anything about it, and may harm the image of the company if made public

This changed two years ago, and big companies began to stand up and say, we have a problem, we have been hacked.

States still do not engage in this behavior.

We are blind until you don’t report it, forcing people, to report, is coming up in Brussels and in Washington, under the Obama administration.

2 ways, report analysis and big data

The question arises about what to do with big data.

The state still does not have the power to protect, so the big data would need to shared with industries powerful enough to offer protection.

Necessity to discuss and to exchange information in the same way the criminals currently are.

Discussion of realtime exchange about attacks.

Prioritization of data sharing, this could be real.

The next step is making sure the companies work together in the defensive

Not every company could build the cyber machine for defense, opinion that cloud computing creates a big problem. The Patriot Act as an example that gives certain government agencies access to the data on your servers where otherwise it would not have that data.

In the industry there is a discussion to reduce the military expenditure but to pool resources more effectively

Let’s apply this to the states as well. Borders and infrastructure may be protectable by states, but the people cannot be protected in cyberspace by the state alone.

Change is the only constant we have, but more corporation is expected.

Transparency can be tough…

… governments are realizing that information will anyway leak, but it is better to have a straightforward process by which that information is disseminated.

Beyond NATO more states are more concerned about sharing standards and technology. States are not yet ready to talk the same language in strategies. We need to carefully move in this direction.

German membership to a convention changed the meaning of the international convention entirely. Translation issues and technological obsoletion created negative outcomes.

We should not stop. The development of a 3D printer is a beautiful thing, but it has been used to print guns and other thiings. That does not mean development should have been impeded.

Notes on Eric Fischer: Federal Legislation of Cybersecurity

Notes on Eric Fischer: Federal Legislation of Cybersecurity

Necessity to change the current legislative framework for cybersecurity

Role of the federal government complex.

sector specific responsibilities

individual federal agency demands pertaining to various systems

Currently 50 statutes in place but no overarching framework

infrastructure, private

sharing of CI among private and gov

DHS authorities for federal systems

workforce

R and D

cybercrime law, data breach notification and defense related cybersecurity

Several attempts to enact comprehensive legislation have failed.

Passage in the house but not the senate led to reform FISMA and DHS workforce and information sharing inadequacies

The continuing evolution of technology and threat environments has created a scenario in which legislative reform is necessitated

Enacted statutes currently only allow federal involvement in securing federal and non-federal systems in specific statutes, but without an overarching framework mentioned above.

Counterfiet access device and computer fraud and abuse act of 1984

electronic comm privacy act of 1986

the computer security act of 1987

paperwork reduction act of 1995

clinger-coven act of 1996 - CIO and responsibility burdens placed in hierarchy for information security, mandatory standards

the homeland security act of 2002 

cybersecurity research and development act

the e-government act of 2002 - primary legislative vehicle for federal IT management and initiatives to make information and services available online

the federal security management act of 2002 clarification and amplification, federal incident center, redistribution of responsibilities

40 other laws include provisions relating to cybersecurity

Executive branch actions

NIST in the department of commerce > cybersecurity standards promulgated by OMB and prosecuted/enforced by DOJ

US Cyber Command > responsibility for military cyberspace operations

Comprehensive National. Cybersecurity Initiative (2008)

12 subinitiatives declassified in 2010: consolidation of external access points to federal systems, deploying intrusion detection and prevention systems, research coordination, info sharing, ad education… mitigation of risks from the global supply chain for info tech

“cyber czar” - created in 2009 to orchestrate federal cybersecurity activity, no direct control over budgets, NSA is argued to pre-empt

FISMA gives OMB authority to automate continuous monitoring of federal info systems by agencies in April 2010, delegated a few months later to the DHS

Within 2 years an interagency program called FedRAMP was established for cloud-computing cybersecurity

Protection of cyber infrastructure

Information sharing, coordination

Responsibilities and authority

Reform of FISMA
research and Dev.

Cybersecurity workforce

Data breaches resulting in theft or exposure of personal data such as financial information

Cybercrime offenses and penalties

National cybersecurity strategy

International efforts

Discussion of proposed revisions

Posse Comitatus Act of 1879

Ch 263 20 stat. 152

18 U.S.C. §1385

Restricts use of military forces in civilian law enforcement unless it is within a federal governement facility

Violations of the act include direct active use of military investigators, use of military pervades the activities of the civilian officials or when the military is used so as to subject the civilians to military power regulatory prescriptive or compulsory in nature.

There are difficulties identifying when a cyberattack involves national defense

some argue that defense of US information systems must be the purview of civilian agencies such as DHS and FBI due to privacy and civil liberty concerns unique to cybersecurity, even If the other option is more feasibly implemented

Anti trust laws

Sherman Antitrust Act

Wilson Tariff Act

Clayton Act

Section 5 of the Federal Trad Commission Act - prohibits unfair and deceptive trade practices

These are relevant to cyber law reform because any sharing of information will give companies an edge to compete unfairly with one another.

National institute of standards and tech act

Federal Power Act

Authority over interstate sale and Transmission of electric power

Must change in light of the development of smart-grid systems

Communications act of 1934

FCC - all wired and wireless communications

Presidential authority to control all stations capable of emitting EM radiation

To close such facilities as well.

This could be considered an internet kill switch interpreted directly (section 706), there has been considerable debate about whether such an authority exists, or whether further authority needs to be meted through legislation to clarify and delimit

National security act of 1947

Created NSC CIA and Sec. of Def.

Precedures of access to classified information

US information and educational exchange act of 1948 (Smith-Mundt Act)

Domestic dissemination provision originally applied to the now defunct USIA

Restrictive to USIA, claimed to be a Cold War Relic to protect Americans from being propagandized by their own federal agencies.

State Department Basic Authorities Act of 1956

DoS org counterterrorism and HIV response efforts

3 exemptions the act about withholding information pertain to cybersecurity:

Information properly classified for national defense or foreign policy purposes as secret as established by an executive order

data specifically exempted from disclosure by a statute, if that statutes meets criteria laid out in FOIA

trade secrets andcommerical or financial information obtained from a person that is privileged or confidential

Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968

Federal grant programs and other forms of assistance to state and local law enforcement

Comprehensive and electronic eavesdropping statute outlawed both activities in general terms but permitted federal and state use of them under strict limitations

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)

Enlarges civil and criminal consequences of organized crime

Repeated recommendation to include computer fraud within the definition of racketeering.

Federal Advisory Committee Act 

Specifies the circumstances under which a federal advisory committee can be established and its responisibilities and limitations requires that such meetings be open to the public and records be available fro public inspection

Privacy act of 1974

Limits disclosure

Requires transparency in cases pertaining to an individual

Code of fair information practices for collection management and dissemination of records by agencies including requirements for security and confidentiality of records

Counterfeit Access Devic and computer fraud and abuse act of 1984

First incident of criminal penalties including asset forfeiture for unauthorized access and wrongful use of computers and networks of the federal government or financial institutions or in interstate or foreign commerce or communication

Criminalized electronic trespassing on and exceeding authorized access to federal government computers

Statutory exemption for intelligence and law enforcement activities

Electronic communications privacy act of 1986

Balance between the fundament al privacy rights of citizens and the needs of law enforcement

Internet was much smaller at the time of passage

Prohibition of the interception of wire oral or electronic communications unless an exception to the general rule applies

Prohibition of wiretapping or electronic eavesdropping

Disclosure of information secured through court-ordered wiretapping

Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002

Risk provided for concrete losses during an act of terror, such as oil fields

Does not currently apply to cybersecurity, and modification may be appropriate

E-government act of 2002

Serves as the primary legislative vehicle to guide federal IT management and initiatives to make information and services available online