Navy Voluntary Statement: Fill & Download for Free

One fine evening I was standing duty at the medical Department as a Corpsman. we had the privilege of answering calls if they came and screening people for medical emergencies and get more assistance if necessary.This was was in Japan and it was probably 1 a.m. ish or should I say zero 100 hours. anyway this young airman in the Navy came in with a bloody arm. he had been at the club and punched his arm through the glass door a fit of anger and drunken rage. needless to say he was highly inebriated.Well, I asked him his story what happened and he told me his arm went through glass door at the club. I was still young and a junior sailor and didn't want to make a report on him other than the medical treatment.I asked him a few leading questions such as “did your arm get accidentally hit while you was walking through the door and somebody else walked in at the same time?” I was trying to give him a stupid excuse for the incident to help keep them from getting into too much trouble. You just can't fix stupid.He gave me a blank book and said no “I punced my arm through glass.” OK, so I get ready to start medical treatment in filling out paperworkAbout this time in walkss shore patrol or actually the MAA’s, and they start asking questions similar to the why I had just asked him. the dude's continue to confess that he was indeed the one that deliberately punched the door.He talked his way to the brig. I treated his injury and he was escorted out. We (security and I) all looked at each other dumbfounded. We tried to give the man an out and he just kept his mouth running. Nobody wanted to do the paperwork but we had to. I was asked to fill out a voluntary statement.After that I never tried to protect anybody else. Nothing good ever happens after midnight.

First, a bit of context for those unaware of the story in question.Bloomberg published a barn-burner of a piece this morning, alleging a Chinese conspiracy to insert “stealth doorways” (in the form of rogue microchips) onto hardware produced by Super Micro, “one of the world’s biggest suppliers of server motherboards”.These compromised motherboards were allegedly purchased for use on highly sensitive installations, including “[DoD] data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships”.It’s alleged that affected hardware was discovered by Amazon and Apple (separately) in mid-2015, which accelerated/focused a “top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later”.While neither company were accused of any wrongdoing, it’s implied by context that their security measures were lax enough for infected hardware to have been put into production via an AWS data center in Beijing and 7,000 of Apple’s Siri-supporting servers.Within a few hours of this story going live, Amazon, Apple, and Super Micro all emailed in statements to Bloomberg, protesting more or less all the major points at issue.In the face of those objections, Bloomberg reiterated that they had 17 sources, including “six current and former national security officials”, “two people inside AWS, and “three Apple insiders”.Why This MattersOne of two things is true: either (1) Bloomberg was misled and has ultimately published BS likely to harm Apple and Amazon, or (2) said companies aren’t telling the full truth in response, and this really is a major, major story.To be clear, these were not generic “we disagree with elements of the reporting and look forward to an opportunity to clarify our side” responses. These were fiery denials, outlined in significant detail.To quote from Apple’s:Over the course of the past year, Bloomberg has contacted us multiple times with claims, sometimes vague and sometimes elaborate, of an alleged security incident at Apple. Each time, we have conducted rigorous internal investigations based on their inquiries and each time we have found absolutely no evidence to support any of them. We have repeatedly and consistently offered factual responses, on the record, refuting virtually every aspect of Bloomberg’s story relating to Apple. […]In response to Bloomberg’s latest version of the narrative, we present the following facts: Siri and Topsy never shared servers; Siri has never been deployed on servers sold to us by Super Micro; and Topsy data was limited to approximately 2,000 Super Micro servers, not 7,000. None of those servers has ever been found to hold malicious chips.At first blush, I thought it plausible that if Apple and Amazon did indeed volunteer to cooperate with investigations that may still be ongoing, that they might now be subject to some form of gag order. If so, how could we tell? While I don’t know of any conclusive form of proof either way, I wondered whether this response was consistent with past denials when the presumed cause of said denials was some form of government prohibition.An Imperfect ParallelThe closest case I could think of that involved similar actors was PRISM, the NSA-led surveillance program whose existence was leaked to the public via the Edward Snowden disclosures of 2013.While PRISM involved Apple, the briefing notes that formed the backbone of the Snowden leak suggested that “98 percent of PRISM production [was] based on [data from] Yahoo, Google and Microsoft” (i.e., the major email providers back in 2013). As such, I thought it useful to consider the statements issued by those companies at the time, particularly in light of what we know about PRISM now.GoogleGoogle cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a ‘back door’ for the government to access private user data.MicrosoftWe provide customer data only when we receive a legally binding order or subpoena to do so, and never on a voluntary basis. In addition we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers. If the government has a broader voluntary national security program to gather customer data we don’t participate in it.YahooYahoo takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network.As to how honest those statements were, this is where we get outside my paygrade. I’ll outline the little that I understand, while opening the door to those closer to the topic to chime in.This roundup from various security experts suggested that none of those statements were quite lies, but that all were carefully worded to sidestep realities that none were at liberty to disclose.Example 1 - “In accordance with the law” is fairly meaningless, as the Protect America Act of 2007 and the FISA Amendments Acts of 2008 gave legal cover for loads of data aggregation/inspection schemes.Example 2 - “Direct access” was very likely never provided, in the strict sense of unfettered access to raw production data. But that didn’t rule out NSA access to a dedicated server that hosted cloned data for all users that the government deemed covered by various FISA warrants.(A 196-page report was released by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board in 2014. The relevant bits about how PRISM data was collected begin on document page 32. To the degree that I follow the language, the NSA provided a “selector” like an email address, and then partners like Google would clone any data related to said address onto an NSA-accessible server. But that’s just my cursory reading, so corrections/clarifications are welcome.)The (Partial) VerdictI’ve mostly written this answer as an opening volley to give context to the question, thus lessening the explanatory burden for others who might have more insight. It doesn’t seem that any of the corporate statements re: PRISM involved the level of detail present in the rebuttals offered today by Apple and Amazon. While none of this proves or disproves anything in itself, I’m left wondering why said companies would be so aggressive/specific in their denials if their only motivation was providing cover for some ongoing investigation.This leaves a few open questions for those who care to dig deeper:Are there closer analogues than the PRISM case? Especially ones in which tech companies (or utilities like Verizon/AT&T) went to similar lengths in their rebuttals?Has Bloomberg ever gotten a story this wrong before (relative to what would be the case if Apple and Amazon are telling the truth)?If Bloomberg is right, did/does the US government have some duty of care to inform affected customers? Say a business had IP stolen because of said program, would they be eligible to sue the government or to apply for some form of financial relief?If Bloomberg is wrong, does this give cause to the named parties to sue?(To be clear, these are genuine questions. I really don’t know. I look forward to answers from others who can shed more light.)EDIT:Wanted to link the longer rebuttals by Amazon (here) and Apple (here).A few comments about said statements:Apple went so far as saying “we are not under any kind of gag order or other confidentiality obligations”.While Apple’s statement was issued by their Director of Comms, Amazon’s was from their Chief Information Security Officer (and was subsequently retweeted by their CTO, twice).Some are debating whether it’s possible that the C-suites at both companies are simply out-of-loop by legal necessity (with the government only dealing with a select handful who have TS/SCI clearances). Whether that’s at all likely is beyond me.EDIT 2:More denials have come in with the new week.The UK’s National Cyber Security Center (part of the GCHQ): “We are aware of the media reports but at this stage have no reason to doubt the detailed assessments made by AWS and Apple.”The US’s Department of Homeland Security: “Like our partners in the UK, […] at this time we have no reason to doubt the statements from the companies named in the story.”Apple went so far as sending a letter to three US congressional committees, signed by their VP of Information Security. They haven’t conceded an inch.Bottom line: either this is a 1950s-style national security cover-up deemed so important that Apple has been given carte blanche to lie, blatantly and in detail, to whomever they want — or Bloomberg got played, hard.

No. Professional rowers were paid quite comfortable salaries, and made careers of rowing.When at sea, it is far too easy for slaves to commit suicide and to take their masters with them. This gets even worse in combat. A rowing slave would deliberately cause their ship to be defeated by the enemy, and die causing their captors to die. The Romans also did not use slaves to row their ship, which makes the arc in the movie Ben Hur where he becomes a rowing slave entirely historically inaccurate. However, the conclusion of that arc shows exactly what would happen if this practice had been used: the slaves stop rowing at exactly the moment when an enemy ship was pointed directly at the side of their ship, and it smashes them to pieces.Professionals, on the other hand, fight hard and hope to survive. They follow orders not just willingly, but enthusiastically. This is part of what caused the lead-up to the Peloponnesian War.When the Delian League (really the Athenian League, they just picked a different name to disguise the fact that they were in charge) was formed, it was an alliance of nominally equal powers who each contributed ships to an annual exercise in proportion to their population. That is: small cities only had to contribute a few ships, larger cities had to contribute more. However, cities got tired of training crews and sending ships, so they set up deals with Athens whereby they would pay Athens to supply ships on their behalf. Eventually, Athens was supplying the entire navy for the Delian League, and all the other members were paying them.This meant that no one in those other cities was practicing the skills of rowing or ship-commanding. Athens accumulated a huge population of highly trained naval personnel. The war broke out when one city of the league tried to refuse to pay, and Athens attacked them with its huge navy, which all the cities of the League had paid for.This made a clear statement that the payments were not voluntary anymore, but that Athens would now apply force to compel them. There is much more that can be said about the Peloponnesian War, but we’re getting off topic.