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‘Low-level NSA analysts can spy on Americans’

RT :: July 28, 2013

NSA spying programs give access to US citizens’ private data to low-level analysts with little court approval or supervision, says Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story on Washington’s PRISM surveillance system.

“[PRISM] is an incredibly powerful and invasive tool,” Greenwald told ABC’s ‘This Week.’ The NSA programs are “exactly the type that Mr. Snowden described. NSA officials are going to be testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, and I defy them to deny that these programs work exactly as I’ve said.”

The NSA keeps trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases which they can access anytime with simple screen programs, he said.

“And what these programs are, are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address or an IP address, and it does two things.” 

“It searches that database and lets them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored, or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered, and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that email address or that IP address do in the future.”

While the program conducts wiretapping with little court approval or supervision, there are “legal constraints” on surveillance that require approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, in which court judges can secretly review the government’s plans to track suspected terrorists in advance.

“You can’t target [Americans] without going to the FISA court,” Greenwald stressed. “But these systems allow analysts to listen to whatever emails they want, whatever telephone calls, browsing histories, Microsoft Word documents.”

“And it’s all done with no need to go to a court, with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part of the analyst,” he added.

Greenwald will testify before a Congressional committee on Wednesday, along with NSA officials who have previously downplayed Snowden’s claims about the agency’s easy-access data.

PRISM is a mass electronic surveillance data mining program operated by the NSA since 2007. The program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden earlier this summer. Snowden leaked information about the program to the media, warning of a far greater extent of mass data collection than the public knew existed. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6.

Snowden later leaked further information to Greenwald which pertained to mass security operations carried out across the world. He spoke of British spy agency GCHQ, which uses the Tempora surveillance program. The whistleblower also shared information regarding Germany’s cooperation with US intelligence, which reportedly combs through half a billion German phone calls, emails, and text messages on a daily basis.

A call for transparency on surveillance programs

The call for increased oversight and transparency for surveillance programs has been growing, even among supporters of the NSA.

“I do think that we’re going to have to make some change to make things more transparent,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told ABC.

Former federal judge James Robertson, who used to grant surveillance orders, said he was shocked to hear of changes to allow broader authorization of NSA programs – such as the monitoring of US phone records. He urged for a reform which would to allow counter-arguments to be heard.

“What FISA does is not adjudication, but approval,” Robertson said, speaking as a witness during the first public hearings into the Snowden revelations. “This works just fine when it deals with individual applications for warrants, but the 2008 amendment has turned the FISA court into an administrative agency making rules for others to follow.”

However, government officials have defended the surveillance initiatives as authorized under law, claiming they are necessary in order to guard the country against terrorist threats.

Following Snowden’s revelations on NSA surveillance, President Barack Obama assured US citizens in June that “nobody is listening to [their] telephone calls.”

He said the surveillance programs monitor phone numbers and the durations of calls, adding that if there are any suspicions and “if the intelligence community then actually wants to listen to a phone call, they’ve got to go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a criminal investigation.”

President Obama added that America is “going to have to make some choices” between privacy and security, warning that the highly publicized programs will make it harder to target terrorists.

Meanwhile, deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce said that the “program is not intentionally used to target any US citizens” and is “key in our counter-terrorism efforts.”

Testifying on Capitol Hill before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in June, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander claimed that the NSA’s storage of millions of phone records has thwarted more than 50 terror attacks in more than 20 countries since September 11, 2001. However, evidence of the prevented attacks has not been revealed.

July 29, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US looks even more like Stasi at news of Berlin cooperating with NSA

RT | July 22, 2013

RT has conducted an interview with Annie Machon, a former intel­li­gence officer with the UK’s MI5 who resigned in 1996 to blow the whistle. She is now a writer, public speaker and a Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Germans are very protective of their privacy because of the historical experience during the Nazi era and with the Stasi following the war says Machon. However German intelligence agencies used the system which the US put in place to spy on the Germans.

RT: The revelations go even further against Chancellor Merkel’s initial angry response to Washington’s surveillance operations, how do you think you could explain these contradictions?

Annie Machon: The US has dealt Germany a marked deck of cards, to be quite honest, because what we’re looking at here is on one hand they are accessing Germany as a level III, a tier III partner in the internet spying game. They seem to be spying on them in the same way they are spying on China, or Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. On the other hand they are encouraging BND BfV, the German intelligence agencies to use the system which they’ve put in place to spy on the Germans. So it is giving with one hand and taking away with the other.

When Snowden’s initial information came out, it appeared that what we’re looking at was Germany was shocked, because they have a constitution that was supposed to protect the people’s privacy, they are supposed to protect people’s private communications and yet the NSA was spying on Germany. There were the initial sounds from the government and Angela Merkel and the people like that saying- we’re shocked, we’re shocked.

Yet the new revelations that are coming out in Der Spiegel, actually indicate that the German intelligence agency was very keen to get a piece of the action, to help the PRISM program, which is getting all the meta-data from social media and the Temper program which is mainlining into intelligence information coming out from all the optic cables. So it is sort of a lot of hypocrisy as well coming from the government.

RT: Now Edward Snowden’s revelations that Germany was spied on by the US did upset many, some even comparing the White House to East Germany’s former secret service-Stasi, what do you think those critics are saying now that it’s known that Berlin was cooperating with Washington?

AM: I think that they will be saying that there are even more likenesses to the old Stasi. Because we have a situation in Germany where because of their historical experience with the Gestapo in World War II and the Stasi in East Germany, they’ve put in a very strong cast iron constitution to protect the people from the invasion of their privacy, from being spied on. And this is what the Germans for decades have taken for granted. They have certain legal protections. And we have seen this time and again when other European-wide initiatives have tried to be imposed on Germany, where things like facial recognition data on Google or Facebook have been banned in Germany.

And yet the BND and the BfV, the two intelligence agencies in Germany have been doing this sort of spying, so I think the hypocrisy is quite astounding and will create a great deal of anger and questions rightly how much the German government knew what was going on.

RT: Snowden’s leaks claim that Germany has been watched much more closely than other EU countries. What kind of threat could Washington’s close ally pose to US interests or was it not a threat that they were looking for?

AM: I think it is just the ability to snoop. It might be well be a reaction to certain privacy laws in Germany. The Germans cannot conceivably pose a threat to the US, apart from through trade powers or something. In fact they have been bending over backwards to assist the US in Afghanistan. They provided more intelligence about Afghanistan than any other NATO state. And yet the US is doing this to Germany.

Most of the countries don’t seem that worried about the PRISM and the Temper programs which spy on everybody… At least in Germany there is sense of that because of historic reasons. People are worried about the surveillance state that is encroaching.

RT: Both countries claim surveillance is essential to providing security, why so much outcry if people have nothing to hide?

AM: Firstly there’s a right to privacy enshrined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after the WWII and that can only be infringed if you pose a direct threat to the state. And secondly they can change the goal post, what it means to be a threat to the state.

So for example at the moment, if you want to go out and protest about government issues, or nuclear issues, or peace issues and you want to wave a placard on the street, most people would think that is exercising your democratic right. In many European countries, many other countries too, this is now being deemed to be an extremist behavior, or violently extremist behavior or even terrorism.

So the laws of the land can change and you become a threat even though you think you’re just exercising your democratic rights. And we’ve seen this time and time again across most European countries. So I think people need to be aware, just because they don’t think they are doing anything wrong at the moment, that situation could change. It is a very slippery slope.

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July 22, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Merkel justifies NSA eavesdropping surveillance

RT | July 11, 2013

Despite “justified questions” to the American intelligence community regarding eavesdropping on German networks, the US remains Berlin’s “most loyal ally”, announced Chancellor Angela Merkel in interview to Die Zeit weekly.

Merkel has made her first detailed comment into the unraveling diplomatic scandal with the America’s National Security Agency (NSA) global telecommunication eavesdropping, including those of its European allies, Germany foremost among them.

It emerged recently that Germany happens to be the most-snooped-on EU country by the American National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA’s real-time online surveillance PRISM program allows US intelligence agencies to intercept virtually any communications over the internet, phone calls and makes possible direct access to files stored on the servers of major internet companies.

Merkel declared that she herself has learnt about the US surveillance programs, such as the NSA’s PRISM spy program, “through the current reporting” in the media.

In early July spokesman Steffen Seibert announced on the behalf of Chancellor Merkel that “The monitoring of friends – this is unacceptable. It can’t be tolerated,” adding that Merkel had already delivered her concerns to the US.  “We are no longer in the Cold War,” Seibert added.

The German government subsequently summoned US Ambassador Philip Murphy to Berlin to explain the incendiary reports.

At the same time according to new revelations made by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to Germany’s Spiegel magazine, the American NSA and Germany’s intelligence agencies are “in bed together.”

Seibert told Reuters this week that German’s Federal Intelligence Agency’s (BND) cooperation with the NSA “took place within strict legal and judicial guidelines and is controlled by the competent parliamentary committee.”

‘Intelligence is essential for democracies’

Merkel stressed that intelligence “has always been and will in future be essential for the security of citizens” of democratic countries. “A country without intelligence work would be too vulnerable,” Merkel said.

At the same time, she observed that there must be a “balance between maximum freedom and what the state needs to give its citizens the greatest possible security.”

Merkel emphasized that German-American special relationship should not be endangered by the incident.

“America has been, and is, our most loyal ally over all the decades,” Merkel said, but pointed out that Washington should clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of the European countries and the EU facilities, noting that “the Cold War is over.”

Stasi and NSA are not comparable

In acknowledgment of the Germany’s contemporary history, Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, refused to make any parallels between the methods of work of DDR’s secret police Stasi and America’s NSA.

“For me, there is absolutely no comparison between the Stasi and the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states,” she was quoted as saying. “They are two completely different things and such comparisons only lead to a trivialization of what the Stasi did to [East Germany’s] people,” said Merkel.

Rhetoric shift

In the face of the national elections in September, Angela Merkel has come under fierce criticism in connection with the NSA spying scandal for not protesting unequivocally enough, while various German politicians demanded to stop spying immediately.

Germany’s center-left opposition insists on questioning country’s officials with a view to find out what exactly they knew about the American surveillance of German communications before the eavesdropping scandal emerged.

Earlier Germany’s Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger both declined any knowledge of the eavesdropping performed by the American US in German networks.

In the interview to Die Zeit Chancellor Merkel revealed that reports from German intelligence agencies are being delivered to her chief of staff, Ronald Pofalla who coordinates their work from the chancellery.

The head of the center-left opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) Sigmar Gabriel told Spiegel Online that “Ms. Merkel is now trying to shift political responsibility to her chief of staff.”

“That’s an old game: [pretending] not knowing anything at first, trying to play down the problem and then finally pointing the finger at a staff member. But it’s not going to work because it’s clear that the dimensions of this scandal are so great that no person other than the chancellor can ensure that basic rights are defended in Germany,” the SPD leader claimed.

Today battling terrorism is impossible “without the possibility of telecommunications monitoring,” Merkel told the weekly. “The work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future.”

In the meantime, Friedrich is meeting US Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco in Washington on Friday for talks dedicated to the NSA scandal.  Though Merkel’s government is not likely to pedal the spying issue, Berlin surely expects explanation from Washington in regards of the ‘Snowdengate’ “for all the more-than-justified questions”, Merkel was quoted as telling Die Zeit.

July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US and Israel did create Stuxnet attack code

Mehr News Agency | July 9, 2013

TEHRAN – NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has confirmed that the Stuxnet malware used to attack Iranian nuclear facilities was created as part of a joint operation between the Israelis and the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate (FAD).

“The NSA and Israel cowrote it,” he told Der Spiegel in an email interview conducted before he publicly outed himself as the NSA mole. Snowden is currently in Russia and a “free man” according to Vladimir Putin – as long as there are no further NSA leaks.

The Stuxnet code, which has been deployed since 2005, is thought to be the first malware aimed specifically at damaging specific physical infrastructure*, and was inserted into the computer networks of the Iranian nuclear fuel factory in Natanz shortly after it opened.

Early variants attempted to contaminate uranium supplies by interfering with the flow of gas to the fuel being processed, potentially causing explosive results in the processing factory. Later a more advanced variant attacked the centrifuges themselves, burning out motors by rapidly starting and stopping the units and contaminating fuel production, although it may actually have encouraged the Iranians.

Last year an unnamed US official said that Stuxnet was part of a program called Operation Olympic Games, started under President Bush and continued under the current administration, aimed at slowing down the Iranian nuclear effort without having to resort to risky airstrikes. General James Cartwright, a former vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is currently under investigation by the US government for allegedly leaking details of Operation Olympic Games.

July 9, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

AT&T joins Verizon, Facebook in selling customer data

RT | July 6, 2013

AT&T has announced that it will begin selling customers’ smart phone data to the highest bidder, putting the telecommunications giant in line with Verizon, Facebook and other competitors that quietly use a consumer’s history for marketing purposes.

The company claims its new privacy policy, to be updated within “the next few weeks,” exists to “deliver more relevant advertising” to users based on which apps they use and their location, which is provided by GPS-tracking. Apparently recognizing the natural privacy concerns a customer might have, AT&T assured the public that all data would be aggregated and made anonymous to prevent individual identification.

A letter to customers, for instance, described how someone identified as a movie fan will be sent personalized ads for a nearby cinema.

“People who live in a particular geographic area might appear to be very interested in movies, thanks to collective information that shows wireless devices from that area are often located in the vicinity of movie theaters,” the letter states. “We might create a ‘movie’ characteristic for that area, and deliver movie ads to the people who live there.”

A June 28 blog post from AT&T’s chief privacy officer Bob Quinn said the new policy will focus on “Providing You Service and Improving Our Network and Services,” but the online reaction has been overwhelmingly negative, with many customers looking for a way to avoid the new conditions.

“You require that we allow you to store a persistent cookie of your choosing in our web browsers to opt out,” one person wrote. “No mention of how other HTTP clients, such as email clients, can opt out. If you really did care about your customers, you would provide a way for us to opt out all traffic to/from our connection and mobile devices in one easy setting.”

One problem for any customer hoping for a new service is the lack of options, smartphone or otherwise. Facebook, Google, Twitter and Verizon each store consumer data for purposes that have not yet been made clear. And because of the profit potential that exists when a customer blindly trusts a company with their data, small Internet start-ups, including AirSage and many others, have developed a way to streamline information into dollars.

The nefarious aspect of AT&T’s announcement is underscored by the recent headlines around the National Security Agency, which has spent years has compelling wireless corporations to hand over data collected on millions of Americans. Unfortunately for the privacy of those concerned, AT&T’s new policy may only be a sign of things to come.

“Instead of merely offering customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a practice more common among providers of free online services like Google and Facebook,” the Wall Street Journal wrote about the matter in May.

July 7, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Restore the Fourth’: Reddit, Mozilla, thousands of people set for July 4 NSA spying protest

RT | July 3, 2013

Thousands of websites will launch a July 4 online protest against the NSA surveillance programs. Reddit, WordPress, and Mozilla will take part in the ‘Restore the Fourth’ campaign online, while live protests take place in cities across the US.

‘Restore the Fourth’ is aimed at restoring the fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment – the part of the Bill of Rights which protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures. Participants will display an online banner which reads, “This 4th of July, we stand by the 4th Amendment and against the U.S. government’s surveillance of internet users.”

The campaign, which was spawned on Reddit, has the support of several privacy and press freedom advocacy organizations, including Mozilla, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and ColorOfChange.org.

The rally was largely organized by Fight for the Future – another non-profit agency which fights against internet censorship. The organization’s co-founder, Tiffiniy Cheng, said in a statement that “the NSA programs that have been exposed are blatantly unconstitutional, and have a detrimental effect on free speech and freedom of press worldwide.” The rally is expected to be Fight for the Future’s largest online mobilization since its actions against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

But the protest doesn’t stop online. Organizers are planning live protests in dozens of US cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, and Atlanta. Doug MacArthur, a member of Restore the Fourth’s national board and moderator on Reddit’s r/news, expects between 10,000 and 20,000 people to take part in the protests in the nation’s larger cities.

MacArthur stressed the need for the protest, largely because mainstream media is failing to adequately cover the NSA leaks and what that means for everyday citizens.

“I think if you are on social media right now and political blogs, this might seem like it’s an issue that’s all over the political blogs. But if you turn on CNN or Fox or MSNBC, you’ll see that a lot of the more mainstream channels aren’t covering this as much as you might be assuming. So I really think it’s important we get more citizens aware of this issue,” he said, as quoted by Mashable.

Free Press CEO and President Craig Aaron echoed MacArthur’s sentiments. “We need to bring these government and corporate activities into the light of day, and the only way that will happen is if millions more people get involved and demand accountability, demand change, demand the truth,” he said in a Tuesday press conference.

However, it’s not just internet activists getting involved in the fight – one Hollywood celebrity has been very vocal in expressing his views on the NSA’s surveillance practices.

“How long do we expect rational people to accept using terrorism to justify and excuse endless executive and state power?” actor John Cusack said during a press conference announcing the protests. “Why are so many in our government, our press, our intellectual class afraid of an informed public?”

Cusack, who is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, complained that many of those defending the NSA surveillance programs are focusing on supposed character flaws of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden instead of questioning the program’s legality.

Harvey Anderson, senior vice president of business and legal affairs at Mozilla, agrees with Cusack. He said in a statement that the spotlight on Snowden is a “big distraction to avoid focusing on the invasions that have actually been occurring.” The lack of transparency about the surveillance programs “undermines the openness of the internet,” he added.

There has been a massive outcry against the surveillance practices since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked sensitive information in May. In just three weeks, StopWatching.us has collected more than 531,000 signatures from people calling for Congress to fully disclose details about the NSA surveillance programs.

Snowden is currently held up in the international transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. He is unable to travel as his passport is invalid. Washington has issued an extradition order against Snowden, calling for international cooperation in returning him to American soil.

The whistleblower has so far made asylum requests for more than a dozen countries, with ten nations already denying him refuge. Venezuela says it will consider Snowden’s request when it is received.

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July 4, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Greenwald on ‘coming’ leak: NSA can obtain one billion cell phone calls a day, store them and listen

RT | June 29, 2013

The NSA has a “brand new” technology that enables one billion cell phone calls to be redirected into its data hoards, according to the Guardian’s Glen Greenwald, who told a Chicago conference that a new leak of Snowden’s documents was ‘coming soon.’

Calling it part of a “globalized system to destroy all privacy,” and the enduring creation of a climate of fear, Greenwald outlined the capabilities of the NSA to store every single call while having “the capability to listen to them at any time,” while speaking via Skype to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, on Friday.

Greenwald was the first journalist to leak Snowden’s documents, having travelled to Hong Kong to review them prior to exposure.

“What we’re really talking about here is a globalized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without its being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency,” he said.

While he underlined that the NSA are not necessarily listening in on the full billion calls, he pointed out their capability to do so and the lack of accountability with “virtually no safeguards” which the NSA were being held to.

The Guardian journalist made hints that he was sitting on further details of the NSA’s billion-call backlog, which he’d keep under wraps until the documents’ full publication, which he said was “coming soon.”

He additionally suggested future exposures to come from Snowden, while lauding the sheer risk the whistleblower took in revealing the NSA’s covert surveillance program.

“More a recluse than a fame whore”

Greenwald spoke highly of Snowden throughout, saying that he apparently lacked remorse, regret and fear, while not seeking notoriety of any form.

“He’s a person who has zero privilege, zero power, zero position and zero prestige, and yet by himself he has literally changed the world,” Greenwald said of Snowden, using him as an example of the powers individuals still have.

“Courage is contagious,” he said, commenting on the demonization of whistleblowers, and saying it was necessary as Snowden could potentially set an example – something that Snowden himself aimed to do, as he had been looking for a leader to fix the problems inherent in the US system, but found nobody.

“There is more to life than material comfort or career stability… he thought about himself by the actions he took in pursuit of those beliefs,” said Greenwald.

He outlined his meeting with the NSA whistleblower, who he said contacted him anonymously via email suggesting Greenwald might be ‘interested’ in looking over the documents – a suggestion labeled by Greenwald to be “the world’s largest understatement of the decade.”

After Snowden sent Greenwald an “appetizer,” of the documents he had on hand, Greenwald recalled being dizzy with “ecstasy and elation.”

“Climate of Fear”

It was Snowden’s exposure of the documents while operating in a highly surveilled environment that Greenwald was particularly complimentary about, citing an intensifying “climate of fear” being pushed on people who may be hazardous to the government.

“One of the things that has been most disturbing over the past three to four years has been this climate of fear that has emerged in exactly the circles that are supposed to challenge the government… the real investigative journalists who are at these outlets who do real reporting are petrified of the US government now. Their sources are beyond petrified,” he commented.

He called Friday’s scandal over the US army’s blocking of the Guardian website a prize of “a significant level above” a Pulitzer or a Peabody, pointing out the seeming contradiction that soldiers fighting for the country were considered mature and responsible enough to put their lives on the line, but clearly weren’t ‘mature’ enough to be exposed to the same information that the rest of the world was accessing.

“If you talk to anybody in journalism or in the government, they are petrified of even moving. It has been impossible to get anyone inside the government to call us back,” said Greenwald, throwing some thought on the possible reasoning behind people contacting the press regarding the actions of government.

“If you look at who really hates Bradley Manning or who has expressed the most contempt about Wikileaks or who has led the chorus in demonizing Edward Snowden, it is those very people in the media who pretend to want transparency because transparency against political power is exactly what they don’t want,” he opined.

Greenwald finished by pointing out the increasing reluctance for people in government to even communicate with journalists, while highlighting the usage of the mass surveillance program to keep an eye on both dissident groups and Muslim communities.

“There’s a climate of fear in exactly those factions that are most intended to put a check on those in power and that has been by design,” Greenwald stated, saying that Snowden was a prime example that people could stand up to the government, and that there was no need to be afraid of publishing “whatever it is we think should be published in the public good.”

June 29, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK spying on Germany’s major data cable to US triggers media storm

RT | June 25, 2013

A wave of outraged comments have swept the German media after it was revealed Monday that British secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) wiretapped the dataflow of Germany’s major transatlantic cable.

The northern German public broadcaster NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported late on Monday that Germany’s external intelligence service BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) has been in the dark about GCHQ wiretapping Transatlantic Telephone Cable No. 14 (TAT-14) connecting Germany with the US via UK, in the framework of its Tempora data collection project.

The TAT-14 fiber optic cables entered service in 2001. It is operated by private consortium German Telekom and used by around 50 international communication companies for phone calls, internet connection, data transfer etc.

Countries like Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the UK itself also use this cable for internet connection to North America.

The capacity of the 15,000km TAT-14 is enormous; it transfers hundreds of gigabytes of data per second in both directions. The report claimed British GCHQ has already had access to 21,600 terabytes of private and business German data transferred through the cable.

‘We haven’t asked NSA and GCHQ to protect us’

The initial reaction from official Berlin concerning Edward Snowden’s revelations about British intelligence straddling Germany’s major fiber optics cables without Berlin’s knowledge was rather moderate.

Senior German Interior Ministry official Ulrich Weinbrenner admitted to the Bundestag committee that it was known “in general form” that foreign tapping programs – like American PRISM and British Tempora – existed.

Having met American President Barack Obama last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel cautiously commented that collecting information needs ‘proportionality’ and that “the free democratic order is based on people feeling safe.”

However, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert announced that Berlin wanted explanations from NATO allies “on what legal basis and to which extent” surveillance had been conducted.

The head of the Free Democratic Party parliamentary group, Rainer Brüderle, demanded an investigation.

“A comprehensive monitoring of citizens in the network cannot and will not be accepted ,” he told Passau Neue Presse.

“We need to step back here and say clearly: mass surveillance is not what we want,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a German Green member in charge of a planned overhaul of the European Union’s data protection laws.

“We urge the Federal Government and the EU Commission to initiate an infringement proceedings against the UK government,” which would have to deal with the matter, Albrecht said to Berliner Zeitung.

“The Federal Government and the Commission must take the issue of protecting fundamental rights seriously,” the rapporteur added in the Judiciary Committee.

Albrecht’ thoughts were echoed by CSU MEP Manfred Weber who told Berliner Zeitung that “If European law has been broken, such as in relation to the retention, the Commission must act.”

The harshest comment came from German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, who dubbed the total eavesdropping from a NATO ally a “Hollywood nightmare.”

Federal Commissioner for Data Protection Peter Schaar called on the federal government to proceed on an international level against data espionage from abroad.

“The federal government must insist that our emails will not be penetrated by foreign intelligence services,” he demanded according to Bild newspaper.

The methods used by the American NSA and British GCHQ agencies are “secret, but lawful” and “subject to proper UK statutory controls and safeguards,” stated UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.

But such statements have produced little effect on the public or within expert communities.

“How much and which data of German citizens and companies had been secretly accessed by the Anglo-American intelligence services NSA and GCHQ, for example by tapping glass fiber cables?” questioned Greens party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Ströbele, as quoted by Deutsche Welle (DW).
‘Not our laws’

“The shoulder-shrugging explanation by Washington and London that they have operated within the law is absurd. They are not our laws. We didn’t make them. We shouldn’t be subject to them,” Spiegel online columnist Jakob Augstein. “We have not asked the NSA and GCHQ to ‘protect’ us,” he said.

Gisela Pilz, a data protection expert with the parliamentary group of the liberal FDP, the junior partner in the governing coalition, agrees.

“We observe with a great deal of concern and dismay the amount of data that has been collected and stored,” she told DW.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition government was caught in the crossfire of criticism for not ensuring national digital security.

It is the responsibility of the German government to see that foreign agencies no longer process the data of German citizens and companies, Augstein stressed, because “a government that cannot make that assurance is failing in one of its fundamental obligations: to protect its own citizens from the grasp of foreign powers,” he concluded. “Germans should closely observe how Angela Merkel now behaves.”

The head of the Bundestag’s intelligence supervisory committee, opposition Social Democrats deputy Thomas Oppermann, called to speed up the elaboration of data privacy legislation currently being drafted in the EU.

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June 26, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Economics | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Snowden leak reveals US hacked Chinese cell companies, accessed millions of sms – report

RT | June 23, 2013

US government has been hacking Chinese mobile operator networks to intercept millions of text messages, as well as the operator of region’s fibre optic cable network, South China Morning Post writes citing Edward Snowden.

More information on National Security Agency activity in China and Hong Kong has been revealed by SCMP on Sunday, shedding light on statements Snowden made in an interview on June 12.

“The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data,” Snowden was quoted as saying on the SCMP website.

In a series of reports the paper claims Snowden has provided proof of extensive US hacking activity in the region.

The former CIA technician and NSA contractor reportedly provided to the paper the documents detailing specific attacks on computers over a four-year period, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, dates of attacks and whether a computer was still being monitored remotely. SCMP however did not reveal any supporting documents.

The US government has been accused of a security breach at the Hong Kong headquarters of the operator of the largest regional fibre optic cable network operator, Pacnet. Back in 2009, the company’s computers were hacked by the NSA but since then the operation has been shut down, according to the documents the paper claims to have seen.

Pacnet’s network spans across Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore and provides connections to 16 data centers for telecom companies, corporations and governments across the region.

The whistleblower has also allegedly revealed the US had viewed millions of text messages by hacking Chinese mobile phone companies. That is a significant claim since the Chinese sent almost billion text messages in 2012 and China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile network carrier.

In his very first leak to the media, Snowden had already exposed the scale of the American government spying operation on its domestic mobile network operators. He later revealed that the US and the UK possessed technology to access the Blackberry phones of delegates at two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009.

In a third article, SCMP claims that the US on a regular basis has been attacking the servers at Tsinghua University, one of country’s biggest research institutions. The whistleblower said that information obtained pointed to hacking activities, because it contained such details as external and internal IP addresses in the University’s network, which could only have been retrieved by a security breach.

Tsinghua University is host to one of Chinas’ six major backbone networks, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) containing data about millions of Chinese citizens.

June 23, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US firms in bed with intelligence agencies in info swap – report

RT | June 14, 2013

Thousands of US tech, finance, and manufacturing firms have secret agreements with national security agencies to trade sensitive information in return for classified intelligence, Bloomberg’s sources revealed.

The firms involved are referred to as ‘trusted partners’ by US intelligence organizations such as the National Security Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and branches of US military.

In fact, thousands of US companies voluntarily provide US agencies with data (i.e. equipment specifications), Bloomberg’s four sources, who either worked for the government or in companies that have these agreements, said. And the information received can be used to gain access to computers of America’s rivals.

Cooperation between companies and intelligence agencies is legal, reported Bloomberg. And the fact that the companies provide information voluntarily means there is no need for US agencies to get court orders and no oversight is required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, one out of four sources said.

Also, some of the companies’ executives are guaranteed immunity from civil actions related to transfer of information.

For example, Microsoft passes on information about bugs in its software before it publicly releases a fix to the problem, two sources confirmed. This kind of information can protect US government computers, as well as help to infiltrate those used by foreign governments by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Microsoft’s system.

Microsoft is reportedly not told how the US government uses the information passed on down to it, according to one official. Spokesman for Microsoft Frank Shaw confirmed such releases and stated that they give the government a chance to get “an early start: on risk assessment and mitigation.”

McAfee, America’s global computer security software company, is another ‘trusted partner’ and is known for its cooperation with the NSA, CIA, and FBI. It can share valuable data including malicious internet traffic, one of the sources said.

The company’s worldwide chief technology officer, Michael Fey, rebuffed the claim that the company does not share any personal information with the government.

“McAfee’s function is to provide security technology, education, and threat intelligence to governments … [including] emerging new threats, cyber-attack patterns and hacker group activity,” he stated.

Due to the sensitivity of information being traded, these kinds of agreements are usually made strictly between companies’ chief executive officers and heads of the US agencies. At times the chief executives could clear a few trusted people to work directly with the agencies.

Sharing info: Out of ‘patriotism’ or for ‘classified’ info?

In return for their cooperation, companies are showered with attention and gratitude.

“If I were the director and had a relationship with a company who was doing things that were not just directed by law, but were also valuable to the defense of the Republic, I would go out of my way to thank them and give them a sense as to why this is necessary and useful”, Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA said.

One of the sources said that public would be surprised how much help the government is seeking in terms of collecting information. Reportedly, it is currently implementing a new expensive program called Einstein 3. The program was developed by the NSA to protect the government from hackers by analyzing billions of emails being sent to the government computers.

Five of America’s major internet companies, including AT&T and Verizon, have agreed to install the program on their servers and have received immunity guarantees, which specify that they would not be held liable under US wiretap laws, one of the sources revealed.

In the past companies like AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth were already reportedly involved for eavesdropping on behalf of the NSA. In 2006 sources revealed that the companies collected call records of tens of millions of Americans and shared them with NSA.

US companies are willing to participate in these kinds of agreements because they either believe they are helping to protect the nation and/or helping to advance their own interests by receiving classified information in return, sources said.

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin, for example, was given sensitive government information a year into its data sharing agreement with NSA. The info provided linked the 2010 attack on Google to a specific unit within the Chinese military – the People’s Liberation Army – one of the sources confirmed. Brin was even given a classified clearance to attend a secret briefing on the subject.

Google was reportedly one of the participants in the secret NSA PRISM program that was revealed by ex-CIA staffer and whistleblower Edward Snowden. The program uses data mining surveillance to access emails, videos, chats, photos and search queries from nine worldwide tech giants.

Snowden also disclosed a secret NSA program called Blarney, which gathers metadata on computers and devices that send emails or browse the Internet through principal data routes, known as a backbone.

The whistleblower was last seen Monday, checking out of his hotel in Hong Kong, where he stayed for three weeks after leaving the US.

Snowden is hoping that staying in Hong Kong would help him avoid any extradition attempts on behalf of the US. In terms of the US-Hong Kong Extradition Treaty, both Hong Kong and Beijing have the power to stymie Snowden’s extradition. China for its part has no extradition treaty with the United States.

China has thus far refrained from making statements on the Snowden case. But a popular Chinese Communist Party-backed newspaper has printed an article demonstrating the benefits of not sending Snowden back to US, arguing that his knowledge of US surveillance programs are key to China’s national interest.

The article comes after Snowden resurfaced and gave an exclusive interview to the South China Morning Post, revealing top-secret US government records that show dates and IP addresses of computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland that were hacked by the NSA over a four-year period.

In the meantime, the FBI has launched an investigation into Snowden leaking US top secret surveillance tactics and has promised to hold the whistleblower accountable.

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June 14, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Germany slams US for ‘Stasi methods’ ahead of Obama visit

RT | June 12, 2013

Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program – revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower – are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security.

Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, a map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows.

German ministers are expressing their outrage over America’s sweeping intelligence-gathering leviathan, with one parliamentarian comparing US spying methods to that of the communist East Germany’s much-dreaded Ministry for State Security (Stasi).

Washington is using “American-style Stasi methods,” said Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Bavarian sister party and member of the European Parliament.

“I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell,” he said, using the German acronym for the disposed German Democratic Republic.

Clearly, enthusiasm for the American leader’s upcoming visit will be much more tempered than it was in 2008 when 200,000 people packed around the Victory Column in central Berlin to hear Obama speak of a world that would be dramatically different from that of his hawkish Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

Merkel will question Obama about the NSA program when he visits in Berlin on June 18, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters on Monday. Some political analysts fear the issue will dampen a visit that was intended to commemorate US-German relations on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.

Bush excesses, Obama digresses

One year into his second term, Barack Obama seems powerless to roll back the military and security apparatus bolted down by the Bush administration in the ‘War on Terror.’

One consequence of this failure of the Obama administration to reign in Bush-era excesses emerged last week when former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, 29, blew the whistle on a top-secret intelligence system named Prism, which collects data on individuals directly from the servers of the largest US telecommunications companies.

According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, PRISM gave US intelligence agencies access to emails, internet chats and photographs from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and Skype.

Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said leaked reports that US intelligence services are able to track virtually all forms of Internet communication demanded an explanation.

“The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is,” she wrote in a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday. “The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point.”

All of the facts must be put on the table, the minister added.

Obama has defended the intelligence-gathering system as a “modest encroachment” that Americans should be willing to accept on behalf of security.

“You can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We’re going to have to make some choices as a society. There are trade-offs involved.”

The United States, however, is not legally restricted from eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be listening to and collecting the private communications of individuals anywhere in the world.

Peter Schaar, Germany’s federal data protection commissioner, said the leaked intelligence was grounds for “massive concern” in Europe.

“The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. “Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans.”

Meanwhile, German opposition parties hope to gain from the scandal, especially with parliamentary elections approaching in September, and Merkel looking to win a third term.

“This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever,” Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.

Obama is scheduled to hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday followed by a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the 18th triumphal arch that is one of Germany’s most recognizable landmarks.

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June 12, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

No Canadian NSA connection, but very own data snooping program

RT | June 11, 2013

Canada does not use the US NSA’s top secret surveillance PRISM program, officials revealed. Instead, it has a spying platform of its own that it claims manages to distinguish between domestic and international telephone and internet data collected.

The Communication Security Establishment (CSE) spokesman separated the National Security Agency and the Canadian surveillance program.

“The Communications Security Establishment does not have access to data in PRISM”, Ryan Foreman told Reuters, confirming that the “CSE uses metadata to isolate and identify foreign communications,” as CSEC is prohibited by law from directing its activities at Canadians.

Officials admitted that CSEC “incidentally” intercepts Canadian communications, but removes such data after it is obtained, according to the Globe and Mail.

Secret spying programs have come under scrutiny this week as whistleblower and former technical assistant for the CIA Edward Snowden leaked information about the NSA’s PRISM project, describing it as a massive data mining surveillance program which gave the agency backdoor access to emails, videos, chats, photos and search queries from nine worldwide tech giants, including Google and Facebook.

A secret electronic spying program was approved in 2011 by Canada’s Defense Minister Peter MacKay. It searches through international and domestic telephone records and internet data for suspicious activity, Canada’s newspaper Globe and Mail revealed.

Despite the reports, the government’s metadata surveillance program remains a mystery with little information available publicly. The records obtained from the Access to Information requests by the Globe had many pages blacked out, citing national security.

The program was first passed in a secret decree signed in 2005 by Bill Graham, the defense minister at the time then put on hold in 2008 for more than a year due to privacy concerns. On November 21, 2011, it was once again renewed, along with other top-secret espionage programs. And currently it is headed by the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), part of the Department of National Defense.

It is still not known how the data is being collected. Mining metadata can reveal who knows who and help the authorities to map out social networks and even terrorist cells.

“Metadata is information associated with a telecommunication … And not a communication,” according to a PowerPoint briefing sent to MacKay in 2011.

The Canadian surveillance program has been authorized by ministerial decrees, bypassing the parliament, and is under the sole oversight of the Office of the CSE Commissioner.

Opposition MPs have questioned MacKay about the surveillance reports, to which he replied that Canada’s surveillance initiative “is specifically prohibited from looking at the information of Canadians” and that “this program is very much directed at activities outside the country, foreign threats, in fact. There is rigorous oversight, there is legislation in place that specifically dictates what can and cannot be examined.”

Canada’s privacy commissioner admitted a lack of clarity on the subject.

“When it comes to the metadata program, we know very little specific information at this point – but we want to find out more”, Scott Hutchinson, of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, told the Globe and Mail.

The Canadian program was criticized 2008 by a retired Supreme Court judge Charles Gonthier, who questioned whether CSEC could be passing any data collected to other partner agencies such as Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Gonthier’s biggest fear was that the data collection would lead to unlawful surveillance.

June 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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