NSA has direct access to tech giants' systems for user data, secret files reveal

mirimir · May 6, 2018

Yes, Cicero was very eloquent It's amazing how little has changed since the Roman Empire.

Chuck57 · May 15, 2018

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Benjamin Franklin

Online, when I'm making posts whether on FB (where I'm currently banned for 30 days) or on MeWe, what I say is open to the world. When I'm on the phone, cell or landline, I expect my conversations to be between me and the person I'm talking with. I'm not a criminal, never attempted a crime. I spent 25 yrs of my life wearing a badge. What they're doing and have done by collecting such conversations in the hopes of finding that one particular one that might prevent an act, is to me like trying to take away everyone's firearms (99% of which are owned by honest citizens) in hopes of preventing crime. First, it can't be done and second, the bad guys will still have them. Same thing with invading our privacy. It won't stop anything. It's all about control.

mirimir · May 15, 2018

I do love the message in that quote. And Benjamin Franklin was a great man.

But the "essential Liberty" he was talking about was the Pennsylvania legislature's right to tax the Penn family. To help fund the fight against Indians, and the French. And the Penn family was offering a lump sum ("temporary Safety") "in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it."

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/3902...safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century

Chuck57 · May 15, 2018

I know the reference, but Franklin's quote applies to the NSA, Federal Government and a lot more. It's remarkable to me that people today are willing to surrender so much of their freedom and liberty, based on promises from a bunch of politicians that many of those same people trust less than used car salesmen.

mirimir · May 15, 2018

I get that. Except that I'm more with the Penn family on the freedom to tax issue. And I'm more with the Indians and French on the conflict. There's an old joke about relationships between colonists and indigenous peoples: the Spanish killed, the English enslaved, and the French married.

deBoetie · May 16, 2018

It's being reported that a possible suspect in the Vault 7 leak is being prosecuted under child pornography charges:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...ory.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a3df154e5890

The case appears dodgy.

RockLobster · May 16, 2018

Yeah probably a frame.

Dermot7 · May 21, 2018

Ryan Gallagher
May 19 2018

Every week in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district, about three miles northeast of the bright neon lights and swarming crowds in the heart of Shibuya, a driver quietly parks a black sedan-style car outside a gray office building. Before setting off on a short 10-minute drive south, he picks up a passenger who is carrying an important package: top-secret intelligence reports, destined for the desks of the prime minister’s closest advisors.

Known only as “C1,” the office building is located inside a high-security compound that houses Japan’s Ministry of Defense. But it is not an ordinary military facility – it is a secret spy agency headquarters for the Directorate for Signals Intelligence, Japan’s version of the National Security Agency.
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The Untold Story of Japan’s Secret Spy Agency

Minimalist · Jun 4, 2018

In February of 2016, the people behind the website Government Attic made an unusual Freedom of Information Act request to the National Security Agency: "A digital/electronic copy of the NSA's old security posters from the 1950s and 1960s." It took more than two years, but the NSA finally got around to honoring the request—providing digital images of more than 100 posters from NSA's Security Education Program, spanning from the agency's early days in the 1950s up to the 1970s (with some minor redactions, of course).
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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...security-education-posters-from-the-cold-war/

guest · Jun 5, 2018

Edward Snowden: 'The people are still powerless, but now they're aware'
Five years after historic NSA leaks, whistleblower tells the Guardian he has no regrets
June 4, 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/04/edward-snowden-people-still-powerless-but-aware

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it. “People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.”

But he will not be marking the anniversary with a “victory lap”, he said. There is still much to be done. “The fightback is just beginning,” said Snowden. “The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.”
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hawki · Jun 25, 2018

"The NSA Spy-Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities...

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory...

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s 'extreme willingness to help...."

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/

guest · Jun 29, 2018

The ACLU's Biggest Roadblock to Fighting Mass Surveillance
June 29, 2018
https://www.wired.com/story/wikimedia-nsa-surveillance-privacy-lawsuit/

IN MARCH 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a type of National Security Agency bulk monitoring known as "upstream" surveillance. More than three years after the ACLU originally filed the suit, the case is still mired in procedural and bureaucratic limbo. But on Friday, a hearing over one such roadblock in Maryland district court could bring long-awaited progress.

Now, the government is using a concept known as the “state secrets privilege,” which protects classified information from the discovery process in a lawsuit, to resist cooperating with Wikimedia's requests.

"No public court has ever addressed the lawfulness of this surveillance," says Ashley Gorski, a staff attorney for the ACLU's National Security Project.

"These issues need to get back on the public's radar," Dalhousie's Penney says. And the ACLU hopes that progress on Wikimedia v. NSA will help reignite the conversation.
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guest · Jun 29, 2018

NSA: Sorry, Sorry, Trying to Delete
June 29, 2018
https://gizmodo.com/nsa-sorry-sorry-trying-to-delete-1827232036

On Thursday, the NSA released a statement saying that it began “deleting all call detail records (CDRs) acquired since 2015" in May because “several months ago NSA analysts noted technical irregularities in some data received from telecommunications service providers.”

In typical NSA fashion, it’s not going into details about exactly what technical irregularities caused it to collect “some CDRs that [it] was not authorized to receive.” It did say it was “infeasible” to sort out which records were collected following proper procedures and which ones were not.

While the NSA claims the “root cause of the problem has since been addressed for future CDR acquisitions,” its method of nuking the records of its surveillance mistakes could face pushback from privacy advocates.
[...] It makes you wonder why we’re trusting these agencies with all this information if they’re as incompetent as they claim to be.
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guest · Jun 30, 2018

Private sector isn’t sharing data with DHS’s threat portal
June 28, 2018
https://www.cyberscoop.com/dhs-ais-cisa-isnt-used-jim-langevin/?category_news=technology

The 2015 Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) gave firms legal cover to provide threat data to the government; the Department of Homeland Security rolled out an automated threat-sharing program in 2016

But today, amid consistent nation-state cyberthreats to U.S. companies, there is a growing consensus in Congress and in the private sector that these federal efforts are falling way short of expectations and needs.
Two years after DHS established its Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) program, just six non-federal organizations are using it to share threat indicators with the government, a DHS official told CyberScoop.

[...] “and that everyone would be enthusiastically accepting threat information from the government and be sharing threat information back with the government.”

That simply hasn’t happened yet.
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Minimalist · Jul 29, 2018

NSA has yet to fix security holes that helped Snowden leaks

Edward Snowden's success in leaking NSA data was chalked up in part to the agency's own security lapses, so you'd think that the agency would have tightened up its procedures in the past five years... right? Apparently not. The NSA Inspector General's office has published an audit indicating that many of the Snowden-era digital security policies still haven't been addressed, at least as of the end of March 2018. It hasn't correctly implemented two-person access controls for data centers and similar rooms, doesn't properly check job duties and has computer security plans that are either unfinished or inaccurate.
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https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/28/nsa-has-yet-to-fix-security-holes-that-helped-snowden-leaks/

reasonablePrivacy · Jul 29, 2018

Minimalist said: ↑

NSA has yet to fix security holes that helped Snowden leaks

https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/28/nsa-has-yet-to-fix-security-holes-that-helped-snowden-leaks/
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I guess there is a lot of informal stuff going on between regular employees and higher level officers. Fixing these holes would mean that more people internally would know about these.

guest · Aug 6, 2018

mood said: ↑

NSA: Sorry, Sorry, Trying to Delete
June 29, 2018
https://gizmodo.com/nsa-sorry-sorry-trying-to-delete-1827232036
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Battle lines drawn over US mass surveillance as senators probe NSA's bonfire of phone records
August 06, 2018
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/06/us_spying_programs/

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rand Paul (R-KY) have sent a letter[PDF] to the NSA's inspector general asking him to look into the agency's torching of metadata for hundreds of millions of phone calls.

The NSA blamed "technical irregularities" for the receipt and storing of an unspecified amount of phone call data [...]
At the time, both the report and the admission of record deletion sparked concerns and questions over what going on behind the scenes of the highly secretive spying program
Stand up and be discounted
Wyden and Paul have proven to be two of the very few congressmen and women willing to challenge the powerful intelligence agencies, and in the letter ask eight questions of NSA's data bonfire, focused on identifying contradictory elements.

In essence, the senators want to know what happened, and why, and what changes have been made to ensure it doesn't happen again.
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letter (PDF): https://regmedia.co.uk/2018/08/06/nsa-wyden-paul-section215.pdf

Dermot7 · Aug 17, 2018

https://theintercept.com/snowden-sidtoday/
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/15/nsa-edward-snowden-whistleblower-document-leaks/

Aug. 15 2018, 19:00 p.m.
The Intercept's largest-ever SIDtoday release, with 328 documents, is published alongside stories about an NSA "worker bee" who was fed up with how corporate the agency had become and rallied other frustrated spies to his cause; about the NSA's environmentally-driven spying; and about some of the virtual private networks the agency cracked into, and why. Other highlights from this release, which covers the first half of 2006, touch on Iranian influence in Iraq, the attitudes of NSA staff toward the countries where they are stationed, and much more.
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guest · Sep 5, 2018

Linux Kernel 4.20 to drop NSA-developed Speck Algorithm
September 5, 2018
https://appuals.com/linux-kernel-4-20-to-drop-nsa-developed-speck-algorithm/

[...] the developers are going to remove the Speck security algorithm designed by NSA which was employed in the kernel previously. This comes after news of the International Organization for Standardization rejecting the algorithm at a meeting.

[...] security analysts have long had reservations about the Simon and Speck cryptographic algorithms developed by the NSA [...]

The reason Speck is considered to be an untrustworthy security algorithm is because it failed to answer particular design and procedure related questions before the ISO. In addition to this, the NSA has a long-standing history of developing controllable or penetrable algorithms for security that NSA can exploit or use in its own interest to receive information at the back end.
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Minimalist · Sep 17, 2018

NSA Attacks Against Virtual Private Networks

A 2006 document from the Snowden archives outlines successful NSA operations against "a number of "high potential" virtual private networks, including those of media organization Al Jazeera, the Iraqi military and internet service organizations, and a number of airline reservation systems."

It's hard to believe that many of the Snowden documents are now more than a decade old.
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https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/nsa_attacks_aga.html

guest · Sep 17, 2018

Federal Court Says NSA PRISM Surveillance Good And Legal Because The Gov't Said It Was Good And Legal
September 17, 2018
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...gal-because-govt-said-it-was-good-legal.shtml

Three years after its inception, a prosecution involving possibly unlawful FISA-authorized surveillance, hints of parallel construction, and a very rare DOJ notification of Section 702 evidence has reached a (temporary) dead end. The defendants challenged the evidence on multiple grounds -- many of which weren't possible before the Snowden leaks exposed the breadth and depth of the NSA's domestic surveillance.

The federal judge presiding over the case -- which involved material support for terrorism charges -- has declared there's nothing wrong with anything the NSA or FISA Court did, so long as the surveillance was authorized and possibly had something to do with national security. (via FourthAmendment.com)

As for the Fourth Amendment challenge to Section 702 surveillance generally, the court says there's really no Fourth Amendment issues as this does not apply to "aliens in foreign territory." The court goes even further, though, suggesting the collection of communications outside of the country does not even require a warrant, even if it "inadvertently" sweeps up Americans' communications during the process.
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guest · Oct 26, 2018

UK refusal to cooperate with Belgian hacking inquiry condemned
Fears stance on GCHQ’s alleged hacking of Belgacom could damage diplomatic relations
October 25, 2018
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...lgian-hacking-inquiry-condemned-gchq-belgacom

The UK government has been accused of endangering diplomatic relations with Belgium after its “exceptional” refusal to cooperate with an inquiry into GCHQ’s alleged hacking of Belgacom, the country’s biggest telecoms company.

For at least two years ending in 2013, the British intelligence service was probably spying within the state-owned company’s networks on the instruction of UK ministers, according to leaks from a judicial inquiry presented to Belgium’s national security council this week.

The GCHQ operation, if proven, would be the first documented example of an EU member state covertly hacking into the critical infrastructure of another.

The Belgian investigation into the alleged hacking was launched in response to claims made by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden five years ago [...]
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mirimir · Oct 26, 2018

Well, what's Belgium going to do? Break off diplomatic relations? That seems a little unlikely, but hey

Stefan Froberg · Oct 26, 2018

mirimir said: ↑

Well, what's Belgium going to do? Break off diplomatic relations? That seems a little unlikely, but hey
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Yea...
Even tought im not a US citizen it's pretty depressing that there is no real democrazy there ...

This shows that their juridical system is just rubber stamp for the rich and goverment.
Just like UK, where after 17 years of unlawful (no warrants or anything like that whatsoever) spying of their citizens the court was like "All is well, carry on"

RockLobster · Oct 27, 2018

Stefan Froberg said: ↑

Yea...
Even tought im not a US citizen it's pretty depressing that there is no real democrazy there ...

This shows that their juridical system is just rubber stamp for the rich and goverment.
Just like UK, where after 17 years of unlawful (no warrants or anything like that whatsoever) spying of their citizens the court was like "All is well, carry on"
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I dont think there is true democracy or justice anywhere anymore. An interesting look at that is to google "Gordon Bowden" and/or "788-790 Finchley Road." Then just read what you find. I have talked to this guy, he is totally genuine, and all the evidence he collected is sealed in the Royal Courts of Justice but no law enforcement agency in Britain will touch it because of who is implicated in this huge multi billion dollar international fraud.

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