Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders.
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shared by John Lemke on 15 Sep 14
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New Zealand Launched Mass Surveillance Project While Publicly Denying It - The Intercept - 0 views
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2014 indienationnews law legal tech technology spying surveillance
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Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key (pictured above), who said the law was merely designed to fix “an ambiguous legal framework” by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years, that it “isn’t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders,” and the law “isn’t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations.”
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Snowden explained that “at the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called ‘X KEYSCORE.”" He further detailed that “the GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact.”
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Top secret documents provided by the whistleblower demonstrate that the GCSB, with ongoing NSA cooperation, implemented Phase I of the mass surveillance program code-named “Speargun” at some point in 2012
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Over the weekend, in anticipation of this report, Key admitted for the first time that the GCSB did plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens, but claimed that he ultimately rejected the program before implementation. Yesterday, after The Intercept sought comment from the NSA, the Prime Minister told reporters in Auckland that this reporting was referring merely to “a proposed widespread cyber protection programme that never got off the ground.” He vowed to declassify documents confirming his decision.
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That legislation arose after it was revealed in 2012 that the GCSB illegally surveilled the communications of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a legal resident of New Zealand. New Zealand law at the time forbade the GCSB from using its surveillance apparatus against citizens or legal residents. That illegal GCSB surveillance of Dotcom was followed by a massive military-style police raid by New Zealand authorities on his home in connection with Dotcom’s criminal prosecution in the United States for copyright violations. A subsequent government investigation found that the GCSB not only illegally spied on Dotcom but also dozens of other citizens and legal residents. The deputy director of GCSB resigned. The government’s response to these revelations was to refuse to prosecute those who ordered the illegal spying and, instead, to propose a new law that would allow domestic electronic surveillance.
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n high-level discussions between the Key government and the NSA, the new law was clearly viewed as the crucial means to empower the GCSB to engage in metadata surveillance. On more than one occasion, the NSA noted internally that Project Speargun, in the process of being implemented, could not and would not be completed until the new law was enacted.
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shared by John Lemke on 16 Dec 13
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NSA's bulk phone data collection ruled unconstitutional, 'almost Orwellian,' by federal... - 0 views
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2013 law legal Court+Rulings NSA spying yourrights litigation constitutional
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“The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack,” the judge wrote.
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“Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”
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“I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts,” Snowden wrote. “Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”
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shared by John Lemke on 05 May 14
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The White House Big Data Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Missing | Electronic Fronti... - 0 views
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2014 EFF mass data indienationnews law technology legal White House report review privacy yourrights notice and consent
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one issue was left conspicuously unaddressed in the report. The Securities and Exchange Commission, the civil agency in charge of protecting investors and ensuring orderly markets, has been advocating for a special exception to the warrant requirement. No agency can or should have a get-out-of-jail-free card for bypassing the Fourth Amendment.
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an example of this in Boston, which had a pilot program to allow residents to report potholes through a mobile app but soon recognized that the program was inherently flawed because “wealthy people were far more likely to own smart phones and to use the Street Bump app. Where they drove, potholes were found; where they didn’t travel, potholes went unnoted.”
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The authors of the report agree, recommending that the Privacy Act be extended to all people, not just US persons.
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metadata (the details associated with your communications, content, or actions, like who you called, or what a file you uploaded file is named, or where you were when you visited a particular website) can expose just as much information about you as the “regular” data it is associated with, so it deserves the same sort of privacy protections as “regular” data.
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The report merely recommended that the government look into the issue.
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several other government reports have taken a much stronger stance and explicitly stated that metadata deserves the same level of privacy protections as “regular” data.
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We think the report should have followed the lead of the PCAST report and acknowledged that the distinction between data and metadata is an artificial one, and recommended the appropriate reforms.
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the White House suggested advancing the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, which includes the idea that “consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it,” as well as “a right to access and correct personal data.”
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Consumers have a right to know when their data is exposed, whether through corporate misconduct, malicious hackers, or under other circumstances. Recognizing this important consumer safeguard, the report recommends that Congress “should pass legislation that provides a single national data breach standard along the lines of the Administration's May 2011 Cybersecurity legislative proposal.”
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While at first blush this may seem like a powerful consumer protection, we don’t think that proposal is as strong as existing California law. The proposed federal data breach notification scheme would preempt state notification laws, removing the strong California standard and replacing it with a weaker standard.
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the Fort Hood shooting by Major Nidal Hasan
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First, whistleblowers are simply not comparable to an Army officer who massacres his fellow soldiers
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Secondly, the real big-data issue at play here is overclassification of enormous quantities of data.
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Over 1.4 million people hold top-secret security clearances. In 2012, the government classified 95 million documents. And by some estimates, the government controls more classified information than there is in the entire Library of Congress.
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The report argues that in today’s connected world it’s impossible for consumers to keep up with all the data streams they generate (intentionally or not), so the existing “notice and consent” framework (in which companies must notify and get a user’s consent before collecting data) is obsolete. Instead, they suggest that more attention should be paid to how data is used, rather than how it is collected.
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While we agree that putting more emphasis on responsible use of big data is important, doing so should not completely replace the notice and consent framework.
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Despite being a fairly thorough analysis of the privacy implications of big data, there is one topic that it glaringly omits: the NSA’s use of big data to spy on innocent Americans.
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Even though the review that led to this report was announced during President Obama’s speech on NSA reform, and even though respondents to the White House’s Big Data Survey “were most wary of how intelligence and law enforcement agencies are collecting and using data about them,” the report itself is surprisingly silent on the issue.2 This is especially confusing given how much the report talks about the need for more transparency in the private sector when it comes to big data. Given that this same logic could well be applied to intelligence big data programs, we don’t understand why the report did not address this vital issue.
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shared by John Lemke on 10 Jun 15
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Stepson of Stuxnet stalked Kaspersky for months, tapped Iran nuke talks | Ars Technica - 0 views
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2015 kaspersky iran ars stuxnet malware cyber warfare espionage blackhat attack virus zero-day
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Since some time in the second half of 2014, a different state-sponsored group had been casing their corporate network using malware derived from Stuxnet, the highly sophisticated computer worm reportedly created by the US and Israel to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.
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the malware was more advanced than the malicious programs developed by the NSA-tied Equation Group that Kaspersky just exposed. More intriguing still, Kaspersky antivirus products showed the same malware has infected one or more venues that hosted recent diplomatic negotiations the US and five other countries have convened with Iran over its nuclear program.
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We see this battle or arms race emerging and now it involves some kind of confrontation between the security industry and nation-state sponsored spies
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Kaspersky officials first became suspicious their network might be infected in the weeks following February's Security Analyst Summit, where company researchers exposed a state-sponsored hacking operation that had ties to some of the developers of Stuxnet. Kaspersky dubbed the highly sophisticated group behind the 14-year campaign Equation Group. Now back in Moscow, a company engineer was testing a software prototype for detecting so-called advanced persistent threats (APTs), the type of well-organized and highly sophisticated attack campaigns launched by well-funded hacking groups. Strangely enough, the developer's computer itself was having unusual interactions with the Kaspersky network. The new APT technology under development, it seemed, was one of several things of interest to the Duqu attackers penetrating the Kaspersky fortress. "For the developer it was important to find out why" his PC was acting oddly, Kamluk said. "Of course, he did not consider that machine could be infected by real malware. We eventually found an alien module that should not be there that tried to mask behind legitimate looking modules from Microsoft. That was the point of discovery."
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What they found was a vastly overhauled malware operation that made huge leaps in stealth, operational security, and software design. The Duqu actors also grew much more ambitious, infecting an estimated 100 or so targets, about twice as many as were hit by the 2011 version.
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So the Duqu 2.0 attackers pulled an audacious feat that Kaspersky researchers had never seen before. Virtually all of the malware resided solely in the memory of the compromised computers or servers. When one of them was restarted, the infection would be purged, but as the rebooted machine reconnected to the network, it would be infected all over again by another compromised computer in the corporate network. The secret lynchpin making this untraceable reinfection scheme possible was the Windows vulnerability Microsoft patched only Tuesday, which has been designated
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shared by John Lemke on 25 Feb 14
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How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputatio... - 0 views
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NSA GCHQ 2014 misinformation psyops surveillance spying espinoge yourrights indienationnews law
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Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums.
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Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends. The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:
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it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption.
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Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups. Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).
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Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.
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shared by John Lemke on 10 Mar 14
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Snowden: I raised NSA concerns internally over 10 times before going rogue - 0 views
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Snowden wrote that he reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than 10 officials, but as a contractor he had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing.
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Yes. I had reported these clearly problematic programs to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them. As an employee of a private company rather than a direct employee of the US government, I was not protected by US whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about lawbreaking in accordance with the recommended process.
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shared by John Lemke on 30 Dec 13
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NSA reportedly intercepting laptops purchased online to install spy malware | The Verge - 0 views
www.theverge.com/...a-cia-fbi-laptop-usb-plant-spy
2013 nsa spy malware yourrights surveillance spying law legal government
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According to a new report from Der Spiegel based on internal NSA documents, the signals intelligence agency's elite hacking unit (TAO) is able to conduct sophisticated wiretaps in ways that make Hollywood fantasy look more like reality. The report indicates that the NSA, in collaboration with the CIA and FBI, routinely and secretly intercepts shipping deliveries for laptops or other computer accessories in order to implant bugs before they reach their destinations. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA's TAO group is able to divert shipping deliveries to its own "secret workshops" in a method called interdiction, where agents load malware onto the electronics or install malicious hardware that can give US intelligence agencies remote access. While the report does not indicate the scope of the program, or who the NSA is targeting with such wiretaps, it's a unique look at the agency's collaborative efforts with the broader intelligence community to gain hard access to communications equipment. One of the products the NSA appears to use to compromise target electronics is codenamed COTTONMOUTH, and has been available since 2009; it's a USB "hardware implant" that secretly provides the NSA with remote access to the compromised machine.
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The Der Spiegel report, which gives a broad look at TAO operations, also highlights the NSA's cooperation with other intelligence agencies to conduct Hollywood-style raids. Unlike most of the NSA's operations which allow for remote access to targets, Der Spiegel notes that the TAO's programs often require physical access to targets. To gain physical access, the NSA reportedly works with the CIA and FBI on sensitive missions that sometimes include flying NSA agents on FBI jets to plant wiretaps. "This gets them to their destination at the right time and can help them to disappear again undetected after even as little as a half hour's work," the report notes.
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shared by John Lemke on 05 Dec 13
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NSA Is Tracking Mobile Phone Location On So Many People It Can't Handle The Data Storag... - 0 views
www.techdirt.com/...cant-handle-data-storage.shtml
mobile mobile phone data law legal tech security yourrights spying tracking nsa
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The NSA cannot know in advance which tiny fraction of 1 percent of the records it may need, so it collects and keeps as many as it can — 27 terabytes, by one account, or more than double the text content of the Library of Congress’s print collection.
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NSA defends the program by saying that it uses the location data to find "unknown associates of known intelligence targets." Basically, it's tracking where everyone goes, just in case people end up spending time with people the NSA deems as being terrorists.
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Elsewhere in the article, they quote NSA officials repeatedly saying that the program is "tuned to be looking outside the United States," but not saying it only collects info outside the US. Also, they make clear, once a person leaves the US, the NSA no longer believes the 4th Amendment applies to them, so their location is fair game in this giant database.. Asked for specific numbers, an NSA person said:
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It’s awkward for us to try to provide any specific numbers..."
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shared by John Lemke on 12 May 14
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World's Largest Solar Array Set to Crank Out 290 Megawatts of Sunshine Power - Scientif... - 0 views
www.scientificamerican.com/...90-megawatts-of-sunshine-power
indienationnews 2014 solar green energy power electric future american tech
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Agua Caliente, the largest photovoltaic solar power facility in the world, was completed last week in Arizona.
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ive million solar panels that span the equivalent of two Central Parks in the desert between Yuma and Phoenix. It generates 290 megawatts of power—enough electricity to fuel 230,000 homes in neighboring California at peak capacity.
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The project, which cost a total of $1.8 billion to construct, received a million-dollar loan from the Loan Programs Office. Under its “SunShot” initiative (so-named in the spirit of president John F. Kennedy’s “moon shot” program), the DoE provides guaranteed loans to unproved ventures in solar power in the hopes of promoting innovation and making the technology more cost-effective.* Although Agua Caliente (owned by U.S. energy giant NRG Energy and partner MidAmerican Solar) is now the largest photovoltaic solar facility in the world, it probably will not hold that distinction for long. Other massive solar panel facilities, such as Antelope Valley Solar Ranch One in California’s Mojave Desert, are rapidly springing up across the Southwest.
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The energy contained in just one hour of sunlight could power the world for a year, if only it could be harnessed.
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shared by John Lemke on 26 Feb 11
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Cops: Orlando Man Sabotaged "Whac-A-Mole" Games - News Story - WFTV Orlando - 0 views
www.wftv.com/...detail.html
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shared by John Lemke on 26 Feb 11
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Spy Babe Now Wants to Design Astronaut Outfits | Danger Room | Wired.com - 0 views
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2011 writeabout spy espinoge security Russia AnnaChapman Chapman babe design Fashion
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Is your national space program fashion-forward enough? Astronauts getting a little frumpy after the Cold War? Having trouble getting that space plane off the ground? Why not lift morale and brighten up the place with some fierce new uniforms designed by planet Earth's most infamous ex-spy? Yes, Russia's famously outed sleeper agent Anna Chapman is back in yet another installment of her merciless publicity tour. This time, she's looking to help the ground crew at Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center work it down the runway in style. Frilly epaulets for all! "Chapman told me that she intends to participate in designing clothing for the Khrunichev [Space] Center, in what capacity, designer or financially, she did not specify," the Gagarin Astronaut Training Center's top astronaut told Russian state media today.
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shared by John Lemke on 08 Mar 11
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Roxxxy the US$7,000 companion/sex robot (NSFW) - 0 views
www.gizmag.com/...14063
2011 technology tech robotics robots writeabout hmm sex sexrobot adult nsfw roxxxy
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When it comes to technology, the sex industry is no laggard, and as robots become more human-like in their appearance and abilities, US-based company TrueCompany is poised to launch Roxxxy - the world's first sex robot - that has many more capabilities than your average sex doll. Apart from having better defined physical features than previous dolls, Roxxxy has been programmed with her own personality and her manufacturers say she can listen, talk, carry on a conversation, feel your touch and respond to it, as well as move her private areas inside when she is being "utilized" to deliver an unforgettable erotic experience. There are even plans for a male version - Rocky the Robot.
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shared by John Lemke on 03 May 11
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BGU Students Develop Thought-Controlled, Hands-Free Computer For The Disabled - 0 views
in.bgu.ac.il/...thought_controlled.aspx
2011 writeabout technology tech indienationnews students handsfree control medicine BGU biotech
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BGU software engineering students have developed innovative technology that could enable people to operate a computer without using a keyboard or mouse - only their brainwaves. While there have been previous attempts to develop devices to read brainwaves and operate specific programs, they were cumbersome and not feasible outside of a laboratory setting. The BGU technology features a helmet equipped with 14 EEG connect points that sense brain activity. According to Dr. Rami Puzis, "The technology is designed to assist those who are physically disabled who might otherwise be unable to manipulate a computer mouse or keyboard." The student team, Ori Ossmy, Ofir Tam and Ariel Rozen, developed the prototype application for their bachelor's degree project under supervision at BGU by Prof. Mark Last, Dr. Rami Puzis, Prof. Yuval Elovich and Dr. Lior Rokah. As part of a recent demonstration, a student composed and sent a hands-free e-mail using only thought combined with the adaptive hardware. The students and BGU team plan to continue research working with the disabled.
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Neon Goat MP3 Report Generator - 0 views
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It's Not Whether NSA Surveillance Helped Stop Any Plots, But Whether Or Not It Needed T... - 0 views
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But, the bigger issue is that without presenting any actual evidence on these situations, it's impossible to know whether or not the NSA really needed this massive data collection to stop those "potential" plots. As we've already seen, in the one case where the NSA has said the programs were useful, it quickly became clear that they were not necessary, and traditional policework actually did the bulk of the effort in identifying the plot.
How to Make Vocal Audio Sound Better in Audacity - 0 views
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shared by John Lemke on 21 Dec 13
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NSA paid $10 Million bribe to RSA Security for Keeping Encryption Weak - 0 views
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2013 nsa bribe RSA backdoor security yourrights privacy spying surveillance INN 2013.12.23
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According to an exclusive report published by Reuters, there is a secret deal between the NSA and respected encryption company RSA to implement a flawed security standard as the default protocol in its products.
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Earlier Edward Snowden leaks had revealed that the NSA created a flawed random number generation system (Dual_EC_DRBG), Dual Elliptic Curve, which RSA used in its Bsafe security tool and now Snowden has revealed that RSA received $10 million from NSA for keeping Encryption Weak. So, anyone who knows the right numbers used in Random number generator program, can decipher the resulting cryptotext easily.
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shared by John Lemke on 12 Mar 14
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Leaked Snowden documents detail NSA's plans for 'millions' of malware attacks | The Verge - 0 views
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2014 leaked documents nsa malware attacks security privacy yourroights surveillance spying indienationnews law legal
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A program known as TURBINE, first revealed last year, is meant to dramatically speed the process: one document says it will "allow the current implant network to scale to large size (millions of implants) by creating a system that does automated control implants by groups instead of individually."
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The scaling process, according to Greenwald, started in 2004, when the NSA operated only 100 to 150 software implants. The number of implants used in the years between 2010 to 2012, by contrast, is described as numbering in the tens of thousands.
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shared by John Lemke on 05 Dec 13
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NSA collects nearly 5 billion cellphone location records per day | Ars Technica - 0 views
arstechnica.com/...phone-location-records-per-day
2013 nsa cellphone location records security tech legal law 4thAmendment spying ars yourrights
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The Washington Post added another noteworthy finding to the growing pile of information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden: the NSA is collecting nearly five billion cellphone location records per day from across the world.
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This gigantic data collection feeds a database that stores information on "hundreds of millions of devices," according to the documents obtained by
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The paper spoke with an intelligence lawyer who continued to emphasize that this program focuses beyond the US, which seems to prevent the data from falling under the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizures).