Topic: SECURITY - on August 26, 2013 at 2:45:00 PM CEST
NSA leaks: David Cameron's response is intimidation, says world press body
David Cameron has been told that the government's attempt to destroy sensitive leaked documents about mass surveillance was "an act of intimidation" that risks a chilling effect on press freedom.
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has written to the prime minister over the government's "deeply regrettable" response to files leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The body, which represents 18,000 publications from 3,000 companies, condemned officials for their "symbolic" attempt to restrict reporting by destroying computer hard drives held by the Guardian
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 25, 2013 at 12:23:00 PM CEST
Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?
It has been revealed today, thanks to Edward Snowden, that Google and other US tech companies received millions of dollars from the NSA for their compliance with the PRISM mass surveillance system.
So just how close is Google to the US securitocracy? Back in 2011 I had a meeting with Eric Schmidt, the then Chairman of Google, who came out to see me with three other people while I was under house arrest. You might suppose that coming to see me was gesture that he and the other big boys at Google were secretly on our side: that they support what we at WikiLeaks are struggling for: justice, government transparency, and privacy for individuals. But that would be a false supposition. Their agenda was much more complex, and as we found out, was inextricable from that of the US State Department. The full transcript of our meeting is available online through the WikiLeaks website.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 25, 2013 at 12:17:00 PM CEST
Neue NSA-Dokumente: US-Geheimdienst hörte Zentrale der Vereinten Nationen ab
Der US-Geheimdienst NSA hat nicht nur die Europäische Union, sondern auch die Zentrale der Vereinten Nationen abgehört. Das geht aus geheimen Unterlagen der NSA hervor, die der SPIEGEL ausgewertet hat.
Demnach ist es der NSA im Sommer 2012 gelungen, in die interne Videokonferenzanlage der Völkergemeinschaft einzudringen und die Verschlüsselung zu knacken. Dies habe für "eine dramatische Verbesserung der Daten aus Video-Telekonferenzen und der Fähigkeit, diesen Datenverkehr zu entschlüsseln" gesorgt, heißt es in einem geheimen NSA-Dokument. "Der Datenverkehr liefert uns die internen Video-Telekonferenzen der Uno (yay!)". Innerhalb von knapp drei Wochen sei die Zahl der entschlüsselten Kommunikationen von 12 auf 458 angestiegen.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:45:00 PM CEST
NSA analysts 'wilfully violated' surveillance systems, agency admits
The National Security Agency has admitted that some of its analysts deliberately abused its surveillance systems, with one analyst disciplined for using NSA resources to track a former spouse.
The agency said Friday it had found "very rare instances of wilful violations of NSA's authorities" as officials briefed reporters that various agents had used the NSA's controversial data monitoring capabilities to spy on love interests.
"NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and co-operates fully with any investigations – responding as appropriate," the NSA said in a statement. "NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities."
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:42:00 PM CEST
NSA Officers Sometimes Spy on Love Interests
National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.
The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.
Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:41:00 PM CEST
Four ways the Guardian could have protected Snowden – by THE NSA
The Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger fears journalists – and, by extension, everyone – will be reduced to using pen and paper to avoid prying American and British spooks online.
And his reporters must fly around the world to hold face-to-face meetings with sources ("Not good for the environment, but increasingly the only way to operate") because they believe all their internet and phone chatter will be eavesdropped on by the NSA and GCHQ.
"It would be highly unadvisable for … any journalist … to regard any electronic means of communication as safe," he wrote.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 24, 2013 at 6:39:00 PM CEST
Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files
The Guardian has struck a partnership with the New York Times which will give the US paper access to some of the sensitive cache of documents leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The arrangement was made when the Guardian was faced with demands from the UK government to hand over the GCHQ files it had in its possession.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 23, 2013 at 5:10:00 PM CEST
NSA paid millions to cover Prism compliance costs for tech companies
The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.
The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 23, 2013 at 4:33:00 PM CEST
UK’s secret Mid-East internet surveillance base is revealed in Edward Snowden leaks
Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, The Independent has learnt.
The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region.
The information is then processed for intelligence and passed to GCHQ in Cheltenham and shared with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the United States. The Government claims the station is a key element in the West’s “war on terror” and provides a vital “early warning” system for potential attacks around the world.
independent.co.uk UK government now leaking documents about itself
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 23, 2013 at 1:20:00 PM CEST
NZ police affidavits show use of PRISM for surveillance
Police affidavits related to the raid on Kim Dotcom's Mega mansion appear to show that New Zealand police and spy agencies are able to tap directly into United States surveillance systems such as PRISM to capture email and other traffic.
The discovery was made by blogger Keith Ng who wrote on his On Point blog that the Organised and Financial Crime Agency New Zealand (OFCANZ) requested assistance from the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), the country's signals intelligence unit, which is charge of surveilling the Pacific region under the Five-Eyes agreement.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 22, 2013 at 3:08:00 PM CEST
Laser listening: Could you eavesdrop on the Guardian?
The UK government has warned the Guardian newspaper that foreign agents could use laser technology to eavesdrop on them, in the wake of recent surveillance leaks. What are laser listening devices and are they effective?
When we speak, our voices produce sound waves. Sound waves travel in all directions and can hit anything in the room around you. If the sound waves hit something solid, they bounce off.
Laser listening devices are designed to pick up the vibrations produced by sound waves as they hit resonant surfaces - ones that are good for picking up vibrations - such as a window or a plastic cup.
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Topic: SECURITY - on August 22, 2013 at 2:41:00 PM CEST
Öffnet Windows 8 der NSA Tür und Tor?
IT-Experten des Bundes raten Behörden von Microsofts Betriebssystem Windows 8 ab. Dieses beinhaltet nämlich eine neue Version des Trusted-Computing-Systems namens TPM 2.0, welche Microsoft die totale Kontrolle über Windows-Rechner ermöglicht. Im Kontext der Enthüllungen über die NSA in letzter Zeit empfiehlt es sich, von Trusted Computing der neuen Generation Abstand zu nehmen.
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