Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 6

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Op zaterdag 24 augustus 2013 19:52 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op zondag 25 augustus 2013 10:06 schreef icecreamfarmer_NL het volgende:

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'NSA hackte versleutelde communicatie VN'

De Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA heeft honderden versleutelde videoconferenties van de Verenigde Naties gehackt en vervolgens afgetapt.

Dat blijkt uit geheime documenten die in de handen zijn van de Duitse krant Der Spiegel.

Volgens de documenten heeft de NSA in de zomer van 2012 versleutelde videoconferenties van de Verenigde Naties gehackt en afgetapt. Binnen drie weken liep het aantal afgetapte videoconferenties van 12 op naar 458.

De NSA zou tijdens het hacken van de versleutelde videoconferenties hebben ontdekt dat China eenzelfde hackpoging op de Verenigde Naties heeft ondernomen.

De documenten onthullen ook dat de NSA via een speciaal monitoringsprogramma belangrijke informatie aftapt van 80 verschillende ambassades en consulaten van over de hele wereld.

Het programma, genaamd The Special Collection Service, verzamelde de informatie zonder medeweten van de betreffende ambassade of het consulaat.

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Op zondag 25 augustus 2013 12:36 schreef Sloggi het volgende:

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Die terroristen ook, daar bij de VN!

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Op zondag 25 augustus 2013 12:51 schreef Barbusse het volgende:

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Idd, dat de UsA nog geen preemptive strike heeft uitgevoerd mag een wonder heten!

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Op zondag 25 augustus 2013 12:57 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

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Waarom zouden ze dat doen? De VN is een Amerikaanse organisatie met Obama als opperhoofd.

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NSA having flashbacks to Watergate era - latimes.com

Not since the domestic spying scandals of the 1970s has the NSA faced such a crisis. But intelligence officials say the problems are fundamentally different.

WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing its worst crisis since the domestic spying scandals four decades ago led to the first formal oversight and overhaul of U.S. intelligence operations.

Since former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden's flood of leaks to the media, and the Obama administration's uneven response to them, morale at the spy agency responsible for intercepting communications of terrorists and foreign adversaries has plummeted, former officials say. Even sympathetic lawmakers are calling for new curbs on the NSA's powers.

"This is a secret intelligence agency that's now in the news every day," said Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and later led the CIA. "Each day, the workforce wakes up and reads the daily indictment."

President Obama acknowledged Friday that many Americans had lost trust in the nation's largest intelligence agency. "There's no doubt that, for all the work that's been done to protect the American people's privacy, the capabilities of the NSA are scary to people," he said in a CNN interview.

He added, "Between all the safeguards and checks that we put in place within the executive branch, and the federal court oversight that takes place on the program, and congressional oversight, people are still concerned as to whether their emails are being read or their phone calls are being listened to."

Intelligence officials say those concerns are unwarranted. They say the latest revelations involve largely technical glitches that the NSA, the director of national intelligence and the Justice Department discovered and reported on their own to Congress and the secret court that oversees NSA surveillance. And none, they say, involve illegal operations.

As a result, they argue, the problems are fundamentally different than the deliberate spying on Americans that congressional committees uncovered in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

Still, the NSA's current problems stem, in part, from its efforts to keep almost all aspects of its work secret. The NSA never publicly disclosed that it was collecting domestic telephone logs, for example, so it had little public support when the court-approved secret program hit the headlines.

"A lot of the current controversy would have been avoidable with a reasonable degree of transparency," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington-based advocacy and research group.

The government should have long ago explained the parameters of surveillance that touches Americans, Aftergood said.

Instead, he said, "they have denied that records of U.S. persons are affected at all, which wasn't true, and they have made assertions about the quality and performance of oversight that have been called into question."

Arguably the most damaging disclosure so far came Wednesday when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declassified and released three documents, including an 86-page ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was created as one of the reforms of the 1970s.

The ruling revealed for the first time that the NSA had improperly collected the emails of tens of thousands of Americans between 2008 and 2011 while it was siphoning foreigners' data from Internet nodes based in the United States.

In the opinion, U.S. District Judge John Bates rebuked the NSA for repeatedly misleading the surveillance court. He ordered the collection program shut down until it could be fixed and the American emails expunged. The documents also showed that the NSA had exceeded its authority when searching databases of U.S. phone records and email "to and from" fields.

Those disclosures came days after an internal report leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA had logged more than 2,700 violations of privacy rules in a one-year period. The report said all were inadvertent mistakes caused by technical glitches and operator errors.

Obama administration officials downplayed the mistakes and said Bates' admonishment showed how well the oversight system works. But their explanations did little to quell growing public unease.

One U.S. official, for example, told reporters on a conference call that about 56,000 communications of Americans were inadvertently intercepted each year before Bates shuttered the program. The official called that a "relatively small number."

Obama said at a news conference Aug. 9 that he wanted to restore public confidence in the NSA by disclosing as much as possible about the surveillance programs that Snowden had revealed — releasing "the whole elephant," as Obama put it.

But critics, including lawmakers from both parties, say the administration has not come close to doing that.

Even closed-door briefings to Congress by senior intelligence officials, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) wrote to Obama last week, "have not provided a fulsome accounting of the totality of surveillance activities conducted by the federal government, and in particular, by the NSA."

Corker is demanding more information, and other lawmakers are proposing significant changes, including an end to the collection of domestic calling records. NSA officials fear Congress will rein in spying efforts that have helped thwart terrorist plots and revealed the intentions of other governments.

The last time the NSA faced such a firestorm of criticism was after the Watergate crisis. In 1975, the Senate created a special investigative body modeled on the committee that had helped expose the excesses of the Nixon White House. Led by Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho), the so-called Church Committee was the first to examine abuses by intelligence agencies.

Among its discoveries: The NSA had eavesdropped on Americans involved in antiwar and civil rights groups. Another program intercepted every telegram, then a key form of communication, between Americans and foreigners. No warrants were obtained.

No evidence has emerged in the Snowden leaks indicating that the NSA is intentionally spying on Americans or meddling in domestic politics. The agency's defenders argue that the disclosures actually prove how hard the NSA works to protect Americans' privacy.

Joshua Foust, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, pointed out that the NSA performed about 240 million database searches per year. Noting that it reported 2,776 violations of privacy rules in a recent one-year period, it had an error rate of "about 0.001156666667%."

"What the Church Committee revealed was that the intelligence community, which was supposed to be focused on foreign threats, was actually directly meddling in domestic issues," Foust said in an interview. "What these [recent] disclosures show is that while the NSA does violate the rules, it also makes a good-faith effort to try to minimize both the number of violations and their scope."

Congress has allowed the government to violate the Constitution so congress should look at its self. Why did they do that? Fear, our of fear they put a big rip down the middle of the 4th ammendment section. Time to make repairs to the Constitution. Do the right thing congress!

Federal agency's like the NSA is exactly why the constitution was writtent the way it was. Stand up and don't let these politicians rewrite it or interpret for their political agenda. BIG BROTHER is here...god help us. And we are going to let them handle our health care...are you kidding me?

The bottom line is that our technology has surpassed our humanity. The US Constitution has come under the greatest test since the Watergate debacle. Citizens/tax-payors/voters should not be persuaded to take a dismissive attitude, while the greatest attempt at a free society and it's legislative intent, comes under attack from within. I believe that there is a reason why another citizen would risk everything to expose this degradation of our Constitution. We've spent so much time and resources trying to educate our young minds; teaching them to read, write and understand, the history of our country and evolution or our government. The reasons behind the drafting of the Constitution and the American blood that was shed trying to protect it, and our way of life. What do we, now, look them in the eyes and tell them about why we can't tell them what's really going on? How do we explain, to the next educated generation, the supposed government's need to keep them in the dark under the guise of protecting them.

Our government can snatch cell phone calls out of the air, can read license plates from miles above, can track gloablly in real time, read any email and have the planet surrounded by satellites. A government with those kinds of capabiities must not be allowed to domestically abuse those capabilities....ever.

Bron: www.latimes.com

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David Miranda's detention is a threat to press freedom, say European editors | World news | The Observer

Newspapers urge prime minister to restore Britain's reputation for free press after holding of Guardian journalist's partner

The detention and subsequent criminal investigation into the partner of a Guardian journalist threatens to undermine the position of the free press around the world, the editors of several northern European newspapers have warned.

In an open letter to David Cameron published in today's Observer, the editors of Denmark's Politiken, Sweden's Dagens Nyheter, Norway's Aftenposten and Finland's Helsingin Sanomat describe the detention of David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, as harassment.

They say that the "events in Great Britain over the past week give rise to deep concern" and call on the British prime minister to "reinstall your government among the leading defenders of the free press".

Miranda was detained by the Metropolitan police for nine hours last Sunday as he was passing through Heathrow on his way to Brazil.

Greenwald has broken a series of stories about the US intelligence agencies based on material leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The editors describe a free press as crucial to holding governments and their intelligence agencies to account. They write: "We are surprised by the recent acts by officials of your government against our colleagues at the Guardian and deeply concerned that a stout defender of democracy and free debate like the United Kingdom uses anti-terror legislation in order to legalise what amounts to harassment of both the paper and individuals associated with it."

They add: "It is deeply disturbing that the police have now announced a criminal investigation" and they warn that "the implication of these acts may have ramifications far beyond the borders of the UK, undermining the position of the free press throughout the world".

The letter's publication comes as it emerged that Scotland Yard will face legal action over its use of anti-terrorism powers to question people at airports unless it hands over the results of investigations into alleged misuse by its officers.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has said it has given the force a seven-day ultimatum to reveal its findings into outstanding complaints about the use of the tactic following its "continued refusal" to investigate.

The watchdog said it was supervising 18 investigations into the use by the Met of Schedule 7 powers, which allow officers to detain passengers for up to nine hours without needing reasonable suspicion of involvement in terrorism.

The IPCC said it ordered the Met in February to "investigate the rationale for stopping and questioning people under Schedule 7". The force agreed to investigate two months later, following the threat of legal action, but then refused to hand over the resulting investigation documents to the watchdog, an IPCC spokesman said.

Scotland Yard said it was "working hard" to agree a procedure for dealing with investigations with the IPCC and and that legal action had so far been "unnecessary".

A Met spokesman said: "The Metropolitan Police Service recognises the IPCC's role in scrutinising complaints related to Schedule 7 stops and has been working hard to agree a procedure for dealing with such investigations that is acceptable to all stakeholders. As a result of these efforts, legal action has been unnecessary. We hope to be in a position to finalise a way forward with the IPCC in the future."

Meanwhile it has emerged that the US government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials Snowden took from the NSA have been frustrated by the former contractor's sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail.

The Associated Press reported that the US government investigation is examining whether Snowden was able to defeat safeguards established to deter people looking at information without proper permission by deleting or bypassing electronic logs.

In July, nearly two months after Snowden's earliest disclosures, the NSA director, Keith Alexander, declined to say whether he had established what Snowden had downloaded or how many NSA files he had taken with him.

The latest disclosure undermines the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the NSA surveillance programs cannot be abused because its spying systems are so aggressively monitored and audited.

Fears about government snooping are now a major concern for internet companies, which are examining measures to restrict external surveillance of people's online activity.

The Internet Engineering Task Force, a body that develops internet standards, has proposed a system in which communication between websites and browers would be shielded by encryption. The proposals, which are at an early stage, would make it harder for governments, companies and criminals to eavesdrop on people as they browse the web.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Snowden impersonated NSA officials, sources say

Edward Snowden accessed some secret national security documents by assuming the electronic identities of top NSA officials, said intelligence sources.

“Every day, they are learning how brilliant [Snowden] was,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case. “This is why you don’t hire brilliant people for jobs like this. You hire smart people. Brilliant people get you in trouble.”

“The damage, on a scale of 1 to 10, is a 12,” said a former intelligence official.

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Op vrijdag 23 augustus 2013 01:13 schreef TheThirdMark het volgende:

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Ik ben vrij Anti-VS terreurredenatie. Maar ook snowden is echt te ver gegaan in zijn acties. Ja, er zijn een hele hoop dingen aan het licht gekomen, die het licht niet kunnen verdragen. Maar daar zitten ook actieve acties tussen. Naam, toenaam, plaats van plaatsing etc.
Geef zelf eerlijk toe dat ik heel hypocriet ben in deze acties. Ja, ze moeten gebeuren, Nee ik wil het niet weten. Zolang daar aan voldaan wordt heb ik er geen enkel probleem mee. Sommige dingen moeten nu eenmaal gebeuren.

Om een lang verhaal kort te maken: ik geloof best dat er levens gered zijn dmv deze in beslagname.

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'PvdA wil belgeschiedenis fractieleden inzichtelijk'

DEN HAAG -
PvdA-fractieleider Diederik Samsom zet alles op alles om gevoelige informatie over hem en zijn partij binnenboord te houden. Samsom gaat daarin kennelijk zo ver, dat hij heeft geprobeerd om de belgeschiedenis van alle fractieleden boven tafel te krijgen.


PvdA-leider Diederik Samsom loopt met zijn telefoon aan zijn oor door de gangen van de Tweede Kamer.
Foto: ANP
Een bron binnen de PvdA-fractie vertelde vorige week over een mogelijke liefdesaffaire van Samsom met persvoorlichter Saar van Bueren. Daarop zou Samsom ernstig paranoïde hebben gereageerd. Hij wilde de Vodafone-abonnementen van alle fractieleden inzichtelijk krijgen, om de mol te ontmaskeren. Dat heeft persbureau Novum Nieuws vernomen uit 'welingelichte kringen rond de fractie'.
Een woordvoerder van de fractie ontkent dat geprobeerd is de belgeschiedenis van de Kamerleden boven tafel te krijgen. ,, Natuurlijk wil je weten wie gelekt heeft, maar de praktijk wijst uit dat dit heel moeilijk te achterhalen is. Maar de belgeschiedenis opvragen bij Vodafone is onmogelijk, en fractieleden vragen om een uitdraai gaat te ver."
Verziekte sfeer
Deze krant onthulde vrijdagochtend op de voorpagina dat fractievergaderingen van de partij op band worden opgenomen. Morrende Kamerleden worden later met eerdere uitspraken geconfronteerd in een poging ze 'in het gareel te krijgen'. Het tekent de verziekte sfeer binnen de partij.

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'NSA bespioneert Frans ministerie'

De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA heeft het Franse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken bespioneerd.

Dat meldde het Duitse tijdschrift Der Spiegel zondag op basis van geheime documenten van de dienst.

De NSA zou het vooral gemikt hebben op het computernetwerk dat de Franse ambassades en de consulaten met het ministerie verbindt. Bij computers van de vertegenwoordigers in Washington en bij de Verenigde Naties zou heimelijk software zijn geïnstalleerd. Van computers in New York werden screenshots verzameld.

In het geheime document, dat dateert uit juni 2010, is ook een prioriteitenlijst opgenomen. De NSA was naast het buitenlandse beleid vooral geïnteresseerd in de Franse wapenindustrie en de economische stabiliteit van het land.

Al-Jazeera
Vandaag bleek ook dat de Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA de communicatiesystemen van de Arabische nieuwszender Al-Jazeera gehackt heeft

Het is niet duidelijk hoelang de NSA de communicatiesystemen van Al-Jazeera heeft afgetapt en welke informatie allemaal is buitgemaakt. De communicatiesystemen worden voornamelijk door journalisten gebruikt.

Al-Jazeera is één van de televiezenders die de bekende boodschappen van de Al-Qaida publiceerde. Het is mogelijk dat de NSA achter meer informatie wilde komen in de zoektocht naar toenmalig Al Qaida-leider Osama Bin Laden.

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..:: cYbergueRrilLa AnonyMous NeXus ::..

Why CyberGuerrilla Anonnexus is needed
Can you rely on a corporate provider for confidentiality of your sensitive communications? Not only do they typically scan and record the content of your messages for a wide variety of purposes, they also concede to the demands of governments that restrict digital freedom and fail to have strict policies regarding their user’s privacy. Not to mention their obviously commercial interests put commercial providers at odds with what we are doing. Government’s practices “full pipe monitoring” and association mapping, which gives them the ability to build a detailed map of how our social movements are organized, worse this gives them precise information about what linkages should be disrupted in order to disrupt large social movements

We believe it is vital that essential communication infrastructure be controlled by movement organizations and not corporations or the government.

We strive to keep our communications as secure and private as we can. We do not log your IP address. (Most services keep detailed records of every machine which connects to the servers. We keep only information which cannot be used to uniquely identify your machine). All your data is stored by CyberGuerrilla AnoNneXus in encrypted form. We work hard to keep our servers secure and well defended against any malicious attack. We do not share any of our user data with anyone. We will actively fight any attempt to subpoena or otherwise acquire any user information or logs. We will not read, search, or process any of your communications other than by automatic means to protect you from viruses and spam or when directed to do so by you when troubleshooting.

CyberGuerrilla Anonnexus Purpose
The CyberGuerrilla AnoNneXus Collective is an autonomous body based in Europe with collective members world wide. Our purpose is to aid in the creation of a free society, a world with freedom from want and freedom of expression, a world without oppression or hierarchy, where power is shared equally. We do this by providing communication and computer resources to allies engaged in struggles against capitalism and other forms of oppression.

We value, support, and engage in struggles for human liberation, the ethical treatment of animals, and ecological sustainability. We join in the fight for freedom and the self-determination of all oppressed groups. We oppose all forms of prejudice, authoritarianism, and vanguard-ism.
We organize on the basis of autonomy, mutual aid, resource sharing, participatory knowledge, social advocacy, anti-oppression work, community creation, and secure communication.
We work to create revolution and a free society in the here and now by building alternative communication infrastructure designed to oppose and replace the dominant system.
We promote social ownership and anarchistic control over information, ideas, technology, and the means of communication.

We empower organizations and individuals to use technology in struggles for liberation. We work to support each other in overcoming the systemic oppression embedded in the use and development of technology.

The CyberGuerrilla Concept is based on an optimistic view of the prevailing autonomy, mutual aid, resource sharing, participatory knowledge, social advocacy, anti-oppression work, community creation, and secure communication. Wir machen Praxis!

Meet the Collective

cyberguerrilla.org | Main domain based in EU
cyberguerrilla.info | Main domain based in the US. We left the US country haz gone FUBAR.
anonymissexpress.cyberguerrilla.org | ENOUGH! | If treating people as people means anything at all, it means recognizing their right to self-determination, even when we disagree
lilithlela.cyberguerrilla.org | Lilith Lela | The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin. Thunder rolled back and forth across the dark, rain-lashed …
nanasilvergrim.cyberguerrilla.org | Hoist’n th’ Folly Roger | … on The Planetary Work Machine! Work to live, not live to work!

odinn.cyberguerrilla.org | Ódinn: Building Communication and Making the World Happier, One Post At a Time Home of Radio Nyan http://www.blogtalkradio.com/radio-nyan
www.occupymedia.org | @OccupyMediaDe: German based Occupy the media
www.freebradleymanning.net | @freebradde: German based blog for FREE Bradley Manning Öffentlich machen eines Verbrechens ist kein Verbrechen
Occupy Savvy (Mirror) | Occupy Savvy is a living history of the Occupy movement worldwide
Bron: www.cyberguerrilla.org

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In Secret AT&T Deal, U.S. Drug Agents Given Access to 26 Years of Americans’ Phone Records

The New York Times has revealed the Drug Enforcement Administration has an even more extensive collection of U.S. phone records than the National Security Agency. Under a secretive DEA program called the Hemisphere Project, the agency has access to records of every phone call transmitted via AT&T’s infrastructure dating back to 1987. That period covers an even longer stretch of time than the NSA’s collection of phone records, which started under President George W. Bush. Each day, some four billion call records are swept into the database, which is stored by AT&T. The U.S. government then pays for AT&T employees to station themselves inside DEA units, where they can quickly hand over records after agents obtain an administrative subpoena. The DEA says the collection allows it to catch drug dealers who frequently switch phones, but civil liberties advocates say it raises major privacy concerns. We speak with Scott Shane, national security reporter for The New York Times and co-author of the report, "Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing NSA’s."

In Secret AT&T Deal, U.S. Drug Agents Given Access to 26 Years of Americans' Phone Records

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Brazil Angered Over Report N.S.A. Spied on President

Brazils government summoned the United States ambassador on Monday to respond to new revelations of American surveillance of President Dilma Rousseff and her top aides, complicating relations between the countries ahead of Ms. Rousseffs state visit to Washington next month.

The report, based on documents provided by the fugitive N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden to Glenn Greenwald, an American journalist living in Brazil, described how the N.S.A. used different computer programs to filter through communications and gain access to specific e-mails, telephone calls and text messages of Ms. Rousseffs top aides.

In the case of Mexicos leader, the Globo report described how the N.S.A. obtained a text message from Mr. Peña Nieto himself in 2012, while he was a candidate for the presidency, that referred to an appointment he planned to make to his staff if elected.

Mexicos response to the revelations was muted compared with Brazils. Mexicos Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was asking the United States in a diplomatic note for an exhaustive investigation into the matter, while also summoning the American ambassador to emphasize the governments position.

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U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011

U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.

That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administrations growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks.

Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed covert implants, sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions.

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US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the internet

US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

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The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us.

By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back.

And by we, I mean the engineering community.

Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention.

But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can – and should – do.