Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 7

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Op zondag 8 september 2013 15:29 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
NWS / NSA kan bijna alle smartphones inzien

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Op zondag 8 september 2013 15:32 schreef tong80 het volgende:

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Kon het centrale topic al niet vinden.

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Welcome to the end of secrecy | Jeff Jarvis | Comment is free | theguardian.com

The real lesson of the Snowden leaks is not the threat to privacy. It is the NSA's losing battle against the new agents of openness

It has been said that privacy is dead. Not so. It's secrecy that is dying. Openness will kill it.

American and British spies undermined the secrecy and security of everyone using the internet with their efforts to foil encryption. Then, Edward Snowden foiled them by revealing what is perhaps – though we may never know – their greatest secret.

When I worried on Twitter that we could not trust encryption now, technologist Lauren Weinstein responded with assurances that it would be difficult to hide "backdoors" in commonly used PGP encryption – because it is open-source.

Openness is the more powerful weapon. Openness is the principle that guides, for example, Guardian journalism. Openness is all that can restore trust in government and technology companies. And openness – in standards, governance, and ethics – must be the basis of technologists' efforts to take back the the net.

Secrecy is under dire threat but don't confuse that with privacy. "All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret," Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez tells his biographer. "Secrecy is what is known, but not to everyone. Privacy is what allows us to keep what we know to ourselves," Jill Lepore explains in the New Yorker. "Privacy is consensual where secrecy is not," write Carol Warren and Barbara Laslett in the Journal of Social Issues.

Think of it this way: privacy is what we keep to ourselves; secrecy is what is kept from us. Privacy is a right claimed by citizens. Secrecy is a privilege claimed by government.

It's often said that the internet is a threat to privacy, but on the whole, I argue it is not much more of a threat than a gossipy friend or a nosy neighbor, a slip of the tongue or of the email "send" button. Privacy is certainly put at risk when we can no longer trust that our communication, even encrypted, are safe from government's spying eyes. But privacy has many protectors.

And we all have one sure vault for privacy: our own thoughts. Even if the government were capable of mind-reading, ProPublica argues in an essay explaining its reason to join the Snowden story, the fact of it "would have to be known".

The agglomeration of data that makes us fear for our privacy is also what makes it possible for one doubting soul – one Manning or Snowden – to learn secrets. The speed of data that makes us fret over the the devaluation of facts is also what makes it possible for journalists' facts to spread before government can stop them. The essence of the Snowden story, then, isn't government's threat to privacy, so much as it is government's loss of secrecy.

Oh, it will take a great deal for government to learn that lesson. Its first response is to try to match a loss of secrecy with greater secrecy, with a war on the agents of openness: whistleblowers and journalists and news organizations. President Obama had the opportunity to meet Snowden's revelations – redacted responsibly by the Guardian – with embarrassment, apology, and a vow to make good on his promise of transparency. He failed.

But the agents of openness will continue to wage their war on secrecy.

In a powerful charge to fellow engineers, security expert Bruce Schneier urged them to fix the net that "some of us have helped to subvert." Individuals must make a moral choice, whether they will side with secrecy or openness.

So must their companies. Google and Microsoft are suing government to be released from their secret restrictions – but there is still more they can say. I would like Google to explain what British agents could mean when they talk of "new access opportunities being developed" at the company. Google's response – "we have no evidence of any such thing ever occurring" – would be more reassuring if it were more specific.

This latest story demonstrates that the Guardian, now in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, as well as publications in Germany and Brazil that have pursued their own surveillance stories, will continue to report openly in spite of government acts of intimidation.

I am disappointed that more news organizations, especially in London, are not helping support the work of openness by adding reporting of their own and editorializing against government overreach. I am also saddened that my American colleagues in news industry organizations, as well as journalism education groups, are not protesting loudly.

But even without them, what this story teaches is that it takes only one technologist, one reporter, one news organization to defeat secrecy. At length, openness will out.

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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How NSA access was built into Windows

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Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.

Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's website.[link]

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Op dinsdag 10 september 2013 08:56 schreef Dave94 het volgende:
Je zou je afvragen in hoeverre ze interesse hebben in mijn Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden verhalen.

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The Guardian: NSA deelt persoonsgegevens VS met Israël


De Amerikaanse veiligheidsdienst NSA deelt geregeld persoonsgegevens met Israël zonder dat privégevoelige informatie wordt verwijderd. Dat blijkt uit geheime documenten die de Britse krant The Guardian openbaart die werden doorgespeeld door klokkenluider Edward Snowden.

De documenten bevatten een overeenkomst tussen de NSA en de Israëlische inlichtingendienst die is opgesteld in 2009 en bestaat uit vijf pagina's. Hieruit blijkt volgens The Guardian dat er zeer waarschijnlijk op regelmatige basis gegevens worden overgedragen aan Israël die mogelijk telefoongesprekken en e-mails bevatten van Amerikaanse burgers. De overeenkomst stelt geen grenzen aan het gebruik van deze data door Israël, aldus de Britse krant.

De onthulling dat de NSA een dergelijke overeenkomst met Israël sloot toont aan dat de Amerikaanse regering tegen een toezegging ingaat, namelijk dat de privacy van Amerikaanse burgers ten alle tijden wordt gewaarborgd middels strikte regels. Gegevens die met andere landen gedeeld worden moet volgens deze toezegging 'geminimaliseerd' worden, iets wat niet gebeurd is, zo blijkt uit de overeenkomst met Israël. De persoonsgegevens zijn niet gefilterd op privacygevoelige informatie, iets wat de Amerikaanse regering wel belooft te doen.

Bron: NRC

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Op woensdag 11 september 2013 18:19 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.

Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.

The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.

The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.

The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.

But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."

According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.

Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.

"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law," the document says.

In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.

"Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA's surveillance activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights," the spokesperson said.

The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.

The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain "any files containing the identities of US persons" for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA's special liaison adviser when such data is found.

Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".

It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on "the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip".

The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans' emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.

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Op woensdag 11 september 2013 22:53 schreef rakotto het volgende:
NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel

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De rest valt hier in de bron te lezen.

Israel, de 51ste staat van USA.

Edit: Dubbel, ik zie net dat Papierversnipperaar het gepost heeft.

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'NSA gaat ook internationaal betalingsverkeer na'


De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA (National Security Agency) gaat ook internationaal betalingsverkeer na. Het Duitse weekblad Der Spiegel melde dit weekeinde op zijn website dat de NSA gegevens verzamelt over betalingen, vooral die met creditcards. De dienst heeft speciale afdeling die betalingen registreert, de afdeling 'Follow the money' (Volg het geld).

Der Spiegel heeft de informatie naar eigen zeggen van de klokkenluider Edward Snowden gekregen. Snowden werkte enige tijd voor de NSA en deed daar tot groot ongenoegen van de Amerikaanse autoriteiten een boekje over open. Hij is naar Rusland gevlucht.

De betalingsgegevens worden opgeslagen in de 'Tracfin' van de afdeling. Daar zouden bijvoorbeeld in 2011 180 miljoen gegevens zijn gestald. Bij 84 procent daarvan ging het om betalingen met creditcards.
De dienst bekijkt of er transacties plaatsvinden die extra aandacht verdienen. De 'data-melkers' van de afdeling Follow the Money zouden zich vooral richten op creditcardbetalingen in Europa, het Midden-Oosten en Afrika. Zo is of was de organisatie Swift een belangrijk doelwit van Follow the Money.

Swift, de Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is een in Brussel gevestigde internationale organisatie waar duizenden financiële instellingen bij zijn aangesloten ten behoeve van het internationale betalingsverkeer.

Bron: Volkskrant

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Op zondag 15 september 2013 13:40 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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'NSA gaat ook internationaal betalingsverkeer na'

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Het is opvallend dat de NSA de bedrijfsnetwerken van Swift heeft aangevallen, omdat de Europese Unie verdragen met de Verenigde Staten heeft gesloten voor het uitwisselen van betalingsgegevens.

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Belgacom dient klacht in na mogelijke spionage door NSA


Alles wijst erop dat de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA al zeker sinds 2011 Belgacom hackt. Dat blijkt uit veiligheidsonderzoek dat in opdracht van de provider door een Nederlands bedrijf is verricht. Dat heeft het bedrijf vandaag bekendgemaakt.

Belgacom bevestigt in de mededeling slachtoffer te zijn geweest van een inbraak en een klacht te hebben ingediend. Het bedrijf verleent alle medewerking aan het onderzoek dat wordt gevoerd door het Openbaar Ministerie.

Na de recente onthullingen van klokkenluider Edward Snowden over de spionageactiviteiten van de Verenigde Staten liet Belgacom een uitgebreid onderzoek uitvoeren door een Nederlandse bedrijf, schrijft de Belgische krant De Standaard. Dat bedrijf ontdekte zeer geavanceerde malware.

Dochterbedrijf Belgacom
Volgens de kranten, die zich baseren op niet nader genoemde bronnen, wees het onderzoek uit dat de hackers vooral geďnteresseerd waren in Bics, het dochterbedrijf van Belgacom dat wereldwijd telefoonverkeer regelt. Vooral conversaties in landen als Jemen, Syrië en andere, door de Amerikanen als 'schurkenstaten' beschouwde landen, zouden worden gemonitord.

De Standaard schrijft dat er in kringen van veiligheidsdiensten weinig twijfel over bestaat dat de NSA of een dienst die ermee samenwerkt achter de spionage zit, maar helemaal zeker is dat nog niet. Door de aard van de informatie waarin de hackers geďnteresseerd waren, lijkt het wel zeer waarschijnlijk.

De Belgische overheid is hoofdaandeelhouder van het telecombedrijf en de zaak ligt daarom ook uiterst gevoelig. Premier Elio Di Rupo zou vandaag nog uitleg geven over de zaak.

Bron: Volkskrant

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Op zondag 15 september 2013 21:19 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:
Je gelooft niet wat je leest in de Washington Post:
Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide

• Former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden claimed "Gmail is the preferred Internet service provider of terrorists worldwide
• Hayden suggested that the Internet's origins in the United States partially justifies the NSA's conduct
• The problem I have with the Internet is that it's anonymous."

Verbazend. Van dat Gmail geloof ik geen snars.

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Braziliaanse president zegt bezoek VS af wegens afluisteren door NSA


De Braziliaanse president Dilma Rousseff heeft een staatsbezoek aan de Verenigde Staten afgezegd, omdat ze door de Amerikaanse geheime dienst zou zijn afgeluisterd. Dat heeft de regering van Brazilië dinsdag bekendgemaakt.

Het staatsbezoek stond gepland voor oktober. Volgens Brazilië is het bezoek in overleg met de VS uitgesteld.

De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA zou heimelijk telefoon- en e-mailverkeer van Rousseff in de gaten hebben gehouden, melden Braziliaanse media onlangs. De informatie was afkomstig van de Amerikaanse klokkenluider Edward Snowden.

Bron: Volkskrant

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Op maandag 16 september 2013 10:10 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op dinsdag 17 september 2013 20:31 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op maandag 16 september 2013 12:39 schreef robin007bond het volgende:

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Daarom, GNU/Linux.

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U.S. Government asked Linus Torvalds to insert Backdoor Into Linux - The Hacker News

At the Linuxcon conference in New Orleans today, Linus Torvalds and the other top Linux developers, talked to the Linux faithful about Linux, Microsoft, and other issues.


During a question-and-answer ‪session ‬at ‪the LinuxCon, Linux Torvalds admitted to questions from the audience that the U.S. Government approached him to put a backdoor into his open-source operating system. Torvalds responded "no" while shaking his head "yes," as the audience broke into spontaneous laughter.

Then someone asked if Linus would be interested in becoming Microsoft's CEO, which was answered with a big smile and because he is fully satisfied with the development of Linux and his life.

LinuxCon & CloudOpen North America 2013 - Linux Kernel Panel

(at 24 Minutes and 15 Seconds)
He noted that when he started Linux 22 years ago, the hardware was very different than it is today. He expects that 20 years from now the hardware will change even more.

"Linux usage keeps changing. Linux today is very different from even ten years ago,” Torvalds added. “I hope it will continue to meet new use cases."

During the session, Torvalds also explained why he became a developer in the first place. He said that when he started, he didn't have money to run Unix on his own machine. He also noted that his friends were playing games on their computers that he couldn't afford, so he had to learn to program. "Necessity made me try to do something," Torvalds said.



Bron: thehackernews.com

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Op dinsdag 17 september 2013 20:31 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

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Op donderdag 19 september 2013 20:11 schreef polderturk het volgende:

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Waarom luistert de NSA een Braziliaans oliebedrijf af? Om terrorisme te bestrijden?

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Op donderdag 19 september 2013 20:34 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

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Waarom denk je?
Informatie kan goud waard zijn.
En dat is het punt gelijk; al die klagende sukkels dat de VS afluisteren, ja duh!

Opties:
- sluit jezelf af van "het vreselijke internet"
- doe hetzelfde; afluisteren werkt blijkbaar

Dat gejank van die mennekes is als in een oorlog roepen; "hee, jij hebt grotere en betere wapens dan wij, dat is niet eeheerlijk", Calimero, jank jank.

Anonymous - OpNSA Release V John Boehner

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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"Nederland opent deur voor NSA"

<sub>zaterdag 21 sep 2013, 09:33 (Update: 21-09-13, 10:02)

Door research-redacteur Hugo van der Parre</sub>

Onder de leden van de Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) is onrust ontstaan omdat het bestuur een filiaal wil openen in de Verenigde Staten. Ze vrezen dat Amerikaanse spionagediensten dan heel eenvoudig in Nederlandse netwerken kunnen grasduinen.

De Amsterdam Internet Exchange is het belangrijkste internetknooppunt van Nederland en het een na grootste ter wereld. Een groot deel van het internetverkeer met het buitenland en het internetverkeer tussen Nederlandse internetproviders verloopt via dit knooppunt. Meer dan 600 bedrijven en organisaties zijn lid van de vereniging AMS-IX. Daaronder zijn alle internet-providers in ons land.

Felle discussie
Het bestuur wil dat de leden volgende week toestemming geven om onder de vleugels van de AMS-IX een vestiging in de Verenigde Staten te beginnen. Dat zou zakelijk aantrekkelijk zijn.

Een aantal leden noemt uitbreiding in de VS levensgevaarlijk. De Amerikaanse overheid kan dan op grond van de Patriot Act en de FISA-wet eenvoudig data verzamelen die via het knooppunt worden verstuurd. Dat betreft vrijwel alles in Nederland. Inmiddels is op internet een felle discussie losgebarsten tussen de leden.

Een van de initiaftienemers van de discussie is Eric Bais. Hij is directeur van A2B, een bedrijf dat netwerkdiensten levert. Bais is bezorgd dat de Nederlandse infrastructuur met een Amerikaanse vestiging van de AMS-IX vatbaar is voor bemoeienis door geheime diensten als de NSA.

Risico's
Dat denkt ook hoogleraar informatierecht Nico van Eijk van de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Van Eijk: "Amerika kan met de Patriot Act inzage eisen in de datastromen. En dat beperkt zich niet tot de vestiging op Amerikaanse grondgebied. Dat strekt zich ook uit tot alle buitenlandse vertakkingen van het bedrijf".

De directie van AMS-IX wil niet reageren op de kritiek van de leden of een toelichting geven op de plannen. Dat gebeurt pas na de vergadering van 27 september. AMS-IX benadrukt dat tot die tijd met een advocaat alle risico's goed worden afgewogen.

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A CEO who resisted NSA spying is out of prison. And he feels ‘vindicated’ by Snowden leaks.

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Just one major telecommunications company refused to participate in a legally dubious NSA surveillance program in 2001. A few years later, its CEO was indicted by federal prosecutors. He was convicted, served four and a half years of his sentence and was released this month.

Prosecutors claim Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was guilty of insider trading, and that his prosecution had nothing to do with his refusal to allow spying on his customers without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But to this day, Nacchio insists that his prosecution was retaliation for refusing to break the law on the NSA's behalf.

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http://www.volkskrant.nl/(...)in-Luther-King.dhtml

De Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA heeft in de late jaren '60 en in de jaren '70 telefoongesprekken afgeluisterd van prominente critici van de oorlog in Vietnam. Onder hen waren Martin Luther King en bokser Mohammed Ali.

Dat blijkt uit recent vrijgegeven documenten waarover The Guardian bericht. Het gaat over de periode waarin steeds meer mensen bezwaar kregen tegen de oorlog in Vietnam. Volgens de Britse krant trok de NSA in 'operatie Minaret' alles uit de kast om te proberen het tij te keren. Mogelijk gaat het zelfs om illegale praktijken, aldus The Guardian.

Zo werden telefoongesprekken afgeluisterd van twee Amerikaanse senatoren: de democraat Frank Church uit Idaho en de Republikein Howard Baker uit Tennessee. Overigens was laatstgenoemde juist een groot voorstander van die oorlog. Ook van enkele prominente journalisten werd communicatie onderschept.

Mohammed Ali
In 1967 werd de bokser Mohammed Ali op de spionagelijst geplaatst nadat hij zich openlijk tegen de Vietnamoorlog had gesproken. Ali zat op dat moment in de gevangenis omdat hij weigerde in het leger te dienen. Ook was hij gestript van zijn overwinningen en mocht hij in de VS niet meer vechten. Hij zou in de zes jaar daarna doelwit zijn geweest van de afluisterpraktijken van de NSA.

Ook mensenrechtenactivist Martin Luther King staat op de lijst van mensen die in die periode door de NSA zijn bespioneerd. In totaal gaat het om 1.650 personen, maar van het grootste deel daarvan is de identiteit niet bekendgemaakt.

De afluisterpraktijken kwamen al eerder aan het licht, maar het is voor het eerst dat er namen van mensen die zijn bespioneerd bekend zijn geworden. De NSA deed volgens The Guardian erg veel moeite om de documenten geheim te houden. Alle rapporten werden bijvoorbeeld persoonlijk afgeleverd bij het Witte Huis, nadat ze waren ontdaan van alle logo's en markeringen die ze terug zouden kunnen herleiden naar de NSA. Een aantal topfiguren binnen de NSA zouden de operatie later zelf 'schandelijk, indien niet compleet illegaal' hebben genoemd.

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NSA chief’s admission of misleading numbers adds to Obama administration blunders

The Obama administration’s credibility on intelligence suffered another blow Wednesday as the chief of the National Security Agency admitted that officials put out numbers that vastly overstated the counterterrorism successes of the government’s warrantless bulk collection of all Americans’ phone records.

Pressed by the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing, Gen. Keith B. Alexander admitted that the number of terrorist plots foiled by the NSA’s huge database of every phone call made in or to America was only one or perhaps two — far smaller than the 54 originally claimed by the administration.

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Snowden Files: NSA and GCHQ Target TOR Web Browser

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The National Security Agency has made repeated attempts to develop attacks against people using Tor, a popular tool designed to protect online anonymity, despite the fact the software is primarily funded and promoted by the US government itself.

Top-secret NSA documents, disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, reveal that the agency's current successes against Tor rely on identifying users and then attacking vulnerable software on their computers. One technique developed by the agency targeted the Firefox web browser used with Tor, giving the agency full control over targets' computers, including access to files, all keystrokes and all online activity.

But the documents suggest that the fundamental security of the Tor service remains intact. One top-secret presentation, titled 'Tor Stinks', states: "We will never be able to de-anonymize all Tor users all the time." It continues: "With manual analysis we can de-anonymize a very small fraction of Tor users," and says the agency has had "no success de-anonymizing a user in response" to a specific request.

Another top-secret presentation calls Tor "the king of high-secure, low-latency internet anonymity".

Tor – which stands for The Onion Router – is an open-source public project that bounces its users' internet traffic through several other computers, which it calls "relays" or "nodes", to keep it anonymous and avoid online censorship tools.

It is relied upon by journalists, activists and campaigners in the US and Europe as well as in China, Iran and Syria, to maintain the privacy of their communications and avoid reprisals from government. To this end, it receives around 60% of its funding from the US government, primarily the State Department and the Department of Defense – which houses the NSA.

Despite Tor's importance to dissidents and human rights organizations, however, the NSA and its UK counterpart GCHQ have devoted considerable efforts to attacking the service, which law enforcement agencies say is also used by people engaged in terrorism, the trade of child abuse images, and online drug dealing.

Privacy and human rights groups have been concerned about the security of Tor following revelations in the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica about widespread NSA efforts to undermine privacy and security software. A report by Brazilian newspaper Globo also contained hints that the agencies had capabilities against the network.

While it seems that the NSA has not compromised the core security of the Tor software or network, the documents detail proof-of-concept attacks, including several relying on the large-scale online surveillance systems maintained by the NSA and GCHQ through internet cable taps.

One such technique is based on trying to spot patterns in the signals entering and leaving the Tor network, to try to de-anonymise its users. The effort was based on a long-discussed theoretical weakness of the network: that if one agency controlled a large number of the "exits" from the Tor network, they could identify a large amount of the traffic passing through it.

The proof-of-concept attack demonstrated in the documents would rely on the NSA's cable-tapping operation, and the agency secretly operating computers, or 'nodes', in the Tor system. However, one presentation stated that the success of this technique was "negligible" because the NSA has "access to very few nodes" and that it is "difficult to combine meaningfully with passive Sigint".

While the documents confirm the NSA does indeed operate and collect traffic from some nodes in the Tor network, they contain no detail as to how many, and there are no indications that the proposed de-anonymization technique was ever implemented.

Other efforts mounted by the agencies include attempting to direct traffic toward NSA-operated servers, or attacking other software used by Tor users. One presentation, titled 'Tor: Overview of Existing Techniques', also refers to making efforts to "shape", or influence, the future development of Tor, in conjunction with GCHQ.

Another effort involves measuring the timings of messages going in and out of the network to try to identify users. A third attempts to degrade or disrupt the Tor service, forcing users to abandon the anonymity protection.

Such efforts to target or undermine Tor are likely to raise legal and policy concerns for the intelligence agencies.

Foremost among those concerns is whether the NSA has acted, deliberately or inadvertently, against internet users in the US when attacking Tor. One of the functions of the anonymity service is to hide the country of all of its users, meaning any attack could be hitting members of Tor's substantial US user base.

Several attacks result in implanting malicious code on the computer of Tor users who visit particular websites. The agencies say they are targeting terrorists or organized criminals visiting particular discussion boards, but these attacks could also hit journalists, researchers, or those who accidentally stumble upon a targeted site.

The efforts could also raise concerns in the State Department and other US government agencies that provide funding to increase Tor's security – as part of the Obama administration's internet freedom agenda to help citizens of repressive regimes – circumvent online restrictions.

Material published online for a discussion event held by the State Department, for example, described the importance of tools such as Tor.

"[T]he technologies of internet repression, monitoring and control continue to advance and spread as the tools that oppressive governments use to restrict internet access and to track citizen online activities grow more sophisticated. Sophisticated, secure, and scalable technologies are needed to continue to advance internet freedom."

The Broadcasting Board of Governors, a federal agency whose mission is to "inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy" through networks such as Voice of America, also supports Tor's development, and uses it to ensure its broadcasts reach people in countries such as Iran and China.

The governments of both these countries have attempted to curtail Tor's use: China has tried on multiple occasions to block Tor entirely, while one of the motives behind Iranian efforts to create a "national internet" entirely under government control was to prevent circumvention of those controls.

The NSA's own documents acknowledge the service's wide use in countries where the internet is routinely surveilled or censored. One presentation notes that among uses of Tor for "general privacy" and "non-attribution", it can be used for "circumvention of nation state internet policies" – and is used by "dissidents" in "Iran, China, etc".

Yet GCHQ documents show a disparaging attitude towards Tor users. One presentation acknowledges Tor was "created by the US government" and is "now maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)", a US freedom of expression group. In reality, Tor is maintained by an independent foundation, though has in the past received funding from the EFF.

The presentation continues by noting that "EFF will tell you there are many pseudo-legitimate uses for Tor", but says "we're interested as bad people use Tor". Another presentation remarks: "Very naughty people use Tor".

The technique developed by the NSA to attack Tor users through vulnerable software on their computers has the codename EgotisticalGiraffe, the documents show. It involves exploiting the Tor browser bundle, a collection of programs, designed to make it easy for people to install and use the software. Among these is a version of the Firefox web browser.

The trick, detailed in a top-secret presentation titled 'Peeling back the layers of Tor with EgotisticalGiraffe', identified website visitors who were using the protective software and only executed its attack – which took advantage of vulnerabilities in an older version of Firefox – against those people. Under this approach, the NSA does not attack the Tor system directly. Rather, targets are identified as Tor users and then the NSA attacks their browsers.

According to the documents provided by Snowden, the particular vulnerabilities used in this type of attack were inadvertently fixed by Mozilla Corporation in Firefox 17, released in November 2012 – a fix the NSA had not circumvented by January 2013 when the documents were written.

The older exploits would, however, still be usable against many Tor users who had not kept their software up to date.

A similar but less complex exploit against the Tor network was revealed by security researchers in July this year. Details of the exploit, including its purpose and which servers it passed on victims' details to, led to speculation it had been built by the FBI or another US agency.

At the time, the FBI refused to comment on whether it was behind the attack, but subsequently admitted in a hearing in an Irish court that it had operated the malware to target an alleged host of images of child abuse – though the attack did also hit numerous unconnected services on the Tor network.

Roger Dingledine, the president of the Tor project, said the NSA's efforts serve as a reminder that using Tor on its own is not sufficient to guarantee anonymity against intelligence agencies – but showed it was also a great aid in combating mass surveillance.

"The good news is that they went for a browser exploit, meaning there's no indication they can break the Tor protocol or do traffic analysis on the Tor network," Dingledine said. "Infecting the laptop, phone, or desktop is still the easiest way to learn about the human behind the keyboard.

"Tor still helps here: you can target individuals with browser exploits, but if you attack too many users, somebody's going to notice. So even if the NSA aims to surveil everyone, everywhere, they have to be a lot more selective about which Tor users they spy on."

But he added: "Just using Tor isn't enough to keep you safe in all cases. Browser exploits, large-scale surveillance, and general user security are all challenging topics for the average internet user. These attacks make it clear that we, the broader internet community, need to keep working on better security for browsers and other internet-facing applications."

The Guardian asked the NSA how it justified attacking a service funded by the US government, how it ensured that its attacks did not interfere with the secure browsing of law-abiding US users such as activists and journalists, and whether the agency was involved in the decision to fund Tor or efforts to "shape" its development.

The agency did not directly address those questions, instead providing a statement.

It read: "In carrying out its signals intelligence mission, NSA collects only those communications that it is authorized by law to collect for valid foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence purposes, regardless of the technical means used by those targets or the means by which they may attempt to conceal their communications. NSA has unmatched technical capabilities to accomplish its lawful mission.

"As such, it should hardly be surprising that our intelligence agencies seek ways to counteract targets' use of technologies to hide their communications. Throughout history, nations have used various methods to protect their secrets, and today terrorists, cybercriminals, human traffickers and others use technology to hide their activities. Our intelligence community would not be doing its job if we did not try to counter that."

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Cabinet was told nothing about GCHQ spying programmes, says Chris Huhne

Ex-minister says he was in 'utter ignorance' of Prism and Tempora and calls for tighter oversight of security services

quote:

Cabinet ministers and members of the national security council were told nothing about the existence and scale of the vast data-gathering programmes run by British and American intelligence agencies, a former member of the government has revealed.

Chris Huhne, who was in the cabinet for two years until 2012, said ministers were in "utter ignorance" of the two biggest covert operations, Prism and Tempora. The former Liberal Democrat MP admitted he was shocked and mystified by the surveillance capabilities disclosed by the Guardian from files leaked by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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Op dinsdag 8 oktober 2013 11:26 schreef andreas612 het volgende:

[..]

volgens mij is dat echt zo'n ruimte als in de serie '24' allemaal geeks jan en alleman te checken met satelieten en shit

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Op dinsdag 8 oktober 2013 13:55 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Zou me niks verbazen als dat ding gewoon eigenlijk al operationeel is

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Op dinsdag 8 oktober 2013 15:31 schreef andreas612 het volgende:

[..]

Die met will smith toch? zo kan het ook inderdaad

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Op dinsdag 8 oktober 2013 18:44 schreef Revolution-NL het volgende:
Wat ik met nog steeds zit af te vragen is wat voor techniek ze gebruiken voor de opslag van alle data. Met conventionele storage lijkt mij dit praktisch onmogelijk.

quote:

Op dinsdag 8 oktober 2013 18:44 schreef Revolution-NL het volgende:
Wat ik met nog steeds zit af te vragen is wat voor techniek ze gebruiken voor de opslag van alle data. Met conventionele storage lijkt mij dit praktisch onmogelijk.

quote:

Op woensdag 9 oktober 2013 10:39 schreef Killaht het volgende:
http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/55(...)op-snelkookpan.dhtml

Dit soort taferelen krijg je dan he. Snelkookpan incident

Het is een geautmatiseerd systeem dat op basis van alle vergaarde informatie van een individu een bepaald profiel maakt, dat het niet altijd klopt blijkt maar weer.

Om het systeem te verzieken zou eigenlijk iedereen dezelfde rare dingen moeten posten via mobiel, internet en telefoon.

quote:

Suffolk County Criminal Intelligence Detectives received a tip from a Bay Shore based computer company regarding suspicious computer searches conducted by a recently released employee. The former employee’s computer searches took place on this employee’s workplace computer. On that computer, the employee searched the terms “pressure cooker bombs” and “backpacks.”

After interviewing the company representatives, Suffolk County Police Detectives visited the subject’s home to ask about the suspicious internet searches. The incident was investigated by Suffolk County Police Department’s Criminal Intelligence Detectives and was determined to be non-criminal in nature.

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Guardian 'naive and arrogant' to publish Snowden articles, says Straw

Former foreign secretary says newspaper not in a position to judge whether its stories will damage national interest


The Guardian has shown "extraordinary naivety and arrogance" over the publication of articles based on NSA documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the former foreign secretary Jack Straw has said.

Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of the Iraq war in 2003, said the Guardian was wrong to assume that it could judge whether details from the files would pose a threat to anyone's security. The Guardian has said that it is taking care not to publish documents that would threaten national security or the security of individuals.

The former foreign secretary told the BBC: "I'm not suggesting for a moment anybody in the Guardian gratuitously wants to risk anybody's life. But what I do think is that their sense of power of having these secrets and excitement almost adolescent excitement about these secrets has gone to their head.

"They're blinding themselves about the consequence and also showing an extraordinary naivety and arrogance in implying that they are in a position to judge whether or not particular secrets which they have published are not likely to damage the national interest, and they're not in any position at all to do that."

The remarks by Straw reflect the claim by Oliver Robbins, the cabinet office's deputy national security adviser, that apparently innocuous information in the leaked files could be helpful to terrorists. David Cameron said on Thursday that the Guardian has "on some occasions" acknowledged the sensitivity of the material it holds.

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Video: Edward Snowden wins Sam Adams award

This week Edward Snowden received the Integrity Award from the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence. These videos from the award ceremony are the first of Mr Snowden after being granted asylum in Russia.

The videos show Mr Snowden as he was given the award by Ray McGovern (ex-CIA) who said "Sam Adams Associates are proud to honor Mr. Snowden’s decision to heed his conscience and give priority to the Common Good over concerns about his own personal future. We are confident that others with similar moral fiber will follow his example in illuminating dark corners and exposing crimes that put our civil rights as free citizens in jeopardy.... Just as Private Manning and Julian Assange exposed criminality with documentary evidence, Mr. Snowden’s beacon of light has pierced a thick cloud of deception. And, again like them, he has been denied some of the freedoms that whistleblowers have every right to enjoy."

Also present at the ceremony was WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison who took Mr Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow and obtained his asylum. The previous award winners, all United States Government whistleblowers, Thomas Drake (NSA), Jesselyn Raddack (DoJ) and Coleen Rowley (FBI), were also in attendance. These videos were filmed on the October 9 and are released for the first time today.

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Patriot Act author prepares bill to put NSA bulk collection 'out of business'

Exclusive: Bipartisan bill pulls together existing efforts to dramatically reform the NSA in the wake of Snowden disclosures

The conservative Republican who co-authored America's Patriot Act is preparing to unveil bipartisan legislation that would dramatically curtail the domestic surveillance powers it gives to intelligence agencies.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, who worked with president George W Bush to give more power to US intelligence agencies after the September 11 terrorist attacks, said the intelligence community had misused those powers by collecting telephone records on all Americans, and claimed it was time "to put their metadata program out of business".

His imminent bill in the House of Representatives is expected to be matched by a similar proposal from Senate judiciary committee chair Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. It pulls together existing congressional efforts to reform the National Security Agency in the wake of disclosures by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Sensenbrenner has called his bill the Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-Collection, and Online Monitoring Act – or USA Freedom Act, and a draft seen by the Guardian has four broad aims.

It seeks to limit the collection of phone records to known terrorist suspects; to end "secret laws" by making courts disclose surveillance policies; to create a special court advocate to represent privacy interests; and to allow companies to disclose how many requests for users' information they receive from the USA. The bill also tightens up language governing overseas surveillance to remove a loophole which it has been abused to target internet and email activities of Americans.

Many lawmakers have agreed that some new legislation is required in the wake of the collapse in public trust that followed Snowden's disclosures, which revealed how the NSA was collecting bulk records of all US phone calls in order to sift out potential terrorist targets.

In July, a temporary measure to defund the NSA bulk collection programme was narrowly defeated in a 217 to 205 vote in the House, but Sensenbrenner said the appetite for greater privacy protections had only grown since.

"Opinions have hardened with the revelations over the summer, particularly the inspector general's report that there were thousands of violations of regulations, and the disclosure that NSA employees were spying on their spouses or significant others, which was very chilling," he told the Guardian in an interview.

Instead, the main opposition to Sensenbrenner and Leahy's twin-pronged effort is likely to come from the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein, who is supportive of the NSA but who has proposed separate legislation focusing on greater transparency and checks rather than an outright ban on bulk collection.

Sensenbrenner and other reformers have been scathing of this rival legislative approach, calling it a "fig leaf" and questioning the independence of the intelligence committee. "I do not want to see Congress pass a fig leaf because that would allow the NSA to say 'Well, we've cleaned up our act' until the next scandal breaks," he said.

"[Party leaders] are going to have to review what kind of people they put on the intelligence committee. Oversight is as good as the desire of the chairman to do it."

Sensenbrenner also called for the prosecution of Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who admitted misleading the Senate intelligence committee about the extent of bulk collection of telephone records.

"Oversight only works when the agency that oversight is directed at tells the truth, and having Mr Clapper say he gave the least untruthful answer should, in my opinion, have resulted in a firing and a prosecution," said the congressman.

Clapper has apologised for the incident, but reformers expect a fierce backlash to their proposals to rein in his powers in future. "I anticipate a big fight, and Senator Feinstein has already basically declared war," said Sensenbrenner. "If they use a law like Senator Feinstein is proposing, it will just allow them to do business as usual with a little bit of a change in the optics."

His twin effort with Leahy to introduce legislation via the House and Senate judiciary committees is partly intended to circumvent such opposition among intelligence committee leaders.

But there is plenty of support among other intelligence committee members. Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, who were first to seize on Snowden's disclosures as a way to make public their longstanding concerns, recently teamed up with Republican Rand Paul and colleague Richard Blumenthal to propose similar reforms of the NSA in their own bill.

Sensenbrenner insisted the different reform efforts were likely to converge, rather than compete. "I wanted to get a bill passed, and the best way to get a bill passed is to have the chairman of the judiciary committee and the most senior US senator [Leahy] co-sponsoring it," he said. "We need to change the law, and we need to change the law quickly."

Publication of the House version of the USA Freedom bill, jointly sponsored by Democrat John Conyers, has been held up by the government shutdown, which has furloughed a number of congressional legal staff, but is still expected within the next few days.

A spokesman for Leahy's office told the Guardian on Thursday that the senator was still on track to introduce his version of the legislation through the Senate judiciary committee once the shutdown effects had passed.

The main thrust of the bill would tighten section 215 of the Patriot Act to limit the collection of business records such as telephone metadata, to instances where the NSA was able to convince courts set up under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) that the target was "an agent of a foreign power", was "subject of an investigation" or thought to be "in contact with an agent of a foreign power".

Sensenbrenner said this tighter definition was needed because previous language had been improperly interpreted by Fisa courts. "Having the three qualifications would make it very clear that they have to find out who a bad person is first, get the Fisa order, and then see who that bad person was contacting to get the information rather than find the needle in a very large haystack, which is what the metadata was," he said.

"We had thought that the 2006 amendment, by putting the word 'relevant' in, was narrowing what the NSA could collect. Instead, the NSA convinced the Fisa court that the relevance clause was an expansive rather than contractive standard, and that's what brought about the metadata collection, which amounts to trillions of phone calls."

This approach has been justified by intelligence agencies as the only way to get enough data to allow them to sift through it looking for connections, but Sensebrenner claimed that NSA director general Keith Alexander only pointed to 13 possible suspicious individuals found through this method during his recent Senate testimony.

"The haystack approach missed the Boston marathon bombing, and that was after the Russians told us the Tsarnaev brothers were bad guys," added Sensenbrenner.

Another important aspect to the bill, in the draft seen by the Guardian, is a set of measures that would prevent the NSA using other legal powers to carry on collecting bulk data – even if the Patriot Act language is tightened.

"The concern that I have had is that if the shoe starts pinching on what the NSA is doing, they will simply try to use another mechanism to try to get the metadata and national security letters is the one that would rise to the top," said Sensenbrenner, who described ways to close this potential loophole.

"I have always had a lot of questions about administrative subpoenas such as national security letters, and the bill adds a sunset date for national security letters, which were originally authorised in 1986."

Staff members have been holding discussions behind the scenes about how to make sure the NSA can continue to get access to individual phone records when they do have specific concerns about terrorism activity.

"We will have to figure out some kind of way for the NSA to get records, wether through a Fisa court order or a grand jury subpoena," said Sensenbrenner.

This is likely to be opposed by the security services, who argued in recent congressional testimony that such a system would impose unacceptable delays in obtaining records.

quote:

Op woensdag 9 oktober 2013 21:57 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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New York Times says UK tried to get it to hand over Snowden documents

Jill Abramson says she was approached by UK embassy officials after announcing collaboration with Guardian over NSA files

The editor of the New York Times, Jill Abramson, has confirmed that senior British officials attempted to persuade her to hand over secret documents leaked by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Giving the newspaper's first official comments on the incident, Abramson said that she was approached by the UK embassy in Washington after it was announced that the New York Times was collaborating with the Guardian to explore some of the files disclosed by Snowden. Among the files are several relating to the activities of GCHQ, the agency responsible for signals interception in the UK.

"They were hopeful that we would relinquish any material that we might be reporting on, relating to Edward Snowden. Needless to say I considered what they told me, and said no," Abramson told the Guardian.

The incident shows the lengths to which the UK government has gone to try to discourage press coverage of the Snowden leaks. In July, the government threatened to take legal action against the Guardian that could have prevented publication, culminating in the destruction of computer hard drives containing some of Snowden's files.

Abramson said the spectacle of angle grinders and drills being used to destroy evidence in a newspaper basement was hard to conceive in the US, where the First Amendment offers free speech guarantees. "I can't imagine that. The only equivalent I can think of is years ago when the New York Times was enjoined by a lower court from publishing the Pentagon papers, but the supreme court came in and overruled that decision. Prior restraint is pretty much unthinkable to me in this country."

Abramson has been executive editor of the New York Times, America's largest and most influential newspaper, since 2011. She said that the conversation with the UK's Washington embassy was the extent so far of British attempts to influence the paper's editorial decisions in relation to Snowden.

Within the US, the Obama administration has asked on several occasions for the New York Times to consider withholding certain information from its stories, and the paper always gives sober consideration to the requests, she said, based on a careful assessment of the possible damage to national security accruing from publication. "Our default position is usually to weigh on the side of informing the public."

In both the US and Britain, Abramson argued, "there's a war on terror being waged in the name of the public, and the public has a right to have information about it. That's critical. The Guardian as well as the New York Times are providing a very valuable service, allowing people to decide for themselves whether the intelligence agencies are being too intrusive in their data collection.

"President Obama has said he welcomes such a debate, and I think it's not only healthy but vital to have that."

Abramson added that she found the reaction of the Daily Mail to the series of stories published by the Guardian on the back of the Snowden leaks "unusual to me". On Thursday, the Mail accused the Guardian of "lethal irresponsibility" in revealing the vast data grab of ordinary people's phone and internet records by the NSA.

"The political tradition is different, and British press laws are more restrictive," she said. "There isn't the same acceptance or devotion to the idea that we have here: that a free press is fundamental to free society, and that the free flow of information is essential to having an informed public making decisions about how they want to be governed."

quote:

The German President, Joachim Gauck, concluded in an interview with the ZDF on 30.6.2013, that the NSA was not to be compared with the Stasi:

We know for example, that it is not like it was with the Stasi and the KGB – that there exist big filing cabinets in which all the content of our conversations are written down and nicely filed. This is not the case.
Wir wissen zum Beispiel, dass es nicht so ist wie bei der Stasi und dem KGB, dass es dicke Aktenbände gibt, in denen unsere Gesprächsinhalte alle aufgeschrieben und schön abgeheftet sind. Das ist es nicht.

This statement is completely correct. At the NSA, conversation contents are not written down nor filed - but digitally recorded, saved and can be searched and found within seconds.

In contrast to the Stasi, the NSA can count on new technologies and can therefore collect information in gigantic quantities. To get the picture, we compared the data volume in this little app:

According to a report by the NPR, the data center of the NSA in Utah will be capable of saving 5 Zettabytes (5 billion Terabyte). Assuming that a filing cabinet with 60 files (30.000 pages of paper) uses up 0,4 m˛, which would correspond to 120 MB of data, the printed out Utah data center would use up 17 million square kilometers. Thereby the NSA can capture 1 billion times more data than the Stasi!

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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NSA Director Alexander Admits He Lied about Phone Surveillance Stopping 54 Terror Plots

The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted before a congressional committee this week that he lied back in June when he claimed the agency’s phone surveillance program had thwarted 54 terrorist “plots or events.”

NSA Director Keith Alexander gave out the erroneous number while the Obama administration was defending its domestic spying operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He said surveillance data collected that led to 53 of those 54 plots had provided the initial tips to “unravel the threat stream.”

But Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday during a hearing on the continued oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the administration was pushing incomplete or inaccurate statements about the bulk collection of phone records from communications providers.

“For example, we’ve heard over and over again that 54 terrorist plots have been thwarted by the use of (this program),” Leahy said. “That’s plainly wrong,” adding: “These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all thwarted.”

Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.

Leahy was not happy. “We’re told we have to [conduct mass phone surveillance] to protect us, and the statistics are rolled out that they’re not accurate,” he said. “It doesn’t have the credibility here in the Congress, it doesn’t have the credibility with this chairman and it doesn’t have the credibility with the country.”

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 09:07 schreef Ryan3 het volgende:
Kunnen we die NSA nu niet fucken, alle internetters bij elkaar... gewoon in elke post iets over terrorisme zeggen of zo...
Net als "...en overigens blijf ik van mening dat Carthago vernietigd moet worden...." van Cato....

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 10:13 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Dat zou op zich al een vorm van terrorisme zijn. Duizend bommen en granaten!

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 17:24 schreef raptorix het volgende:
Deze al voorbij gekomen?

http://www.theguardian.co(...)-guardian?CMP=twt_fd

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 17:38 schreef Nemephis het volgende:
Wat een **** die Plasterk slappe lul zonder ruggegraat

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 22:41 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Shoot the messenger. De persvrijheid staat aardig onder druk door de NSA-leaks.

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The Obama administration doesn’t want the Supreme Court to look at NSA spying

President Barack Obama’s administration is urging the Supreme Court not to take up the first case it has received on controversial National Security Agency cybersnooping.

US government attorneys argue that the Supreme Court does not have the jurisdiction to take the case, filed in July by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

EPIC believes the NSA overstepped its authority by carrying out broad communications monitoring and surveillance worldwide, and demanded the program be stopped.

A US Supreme Court decision to take the case would be “a drastic and extraordinary remedy that is reserved for really extraordinary causes,” argued Donald Verrilli, an administration lawyer, in a statement released late Tuesday.

The US administration also believes the EPIC suit cannot move forward because it argues the court lacks authority under the 2001 Patriot Act to weigh in on the legality of NSA activities.

“This court lacks jurisdiction to issue a writ of certiorari to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” the secret intelligence affairs court, Verrilli added.

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Op woensdag 16 oktober 2013 17:16 schreef zarGon het volgende:

[..]

.

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New EU rules to curb transfer of data to US after Edward Snowden revelations

quote:

New European rules aimed at curbing questionable transfers of data from EU countries to the US are being finalised in Brussels in the first concrete reaction to the Edward Snowden disclosures on US and British mass surveillance of digital communications.

Regulations on European data protection standards are expected to pass the European parliament committee stage on Monday after the various political groupings agreed on a new compromise draft following two years of gridlock on the issue.

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NSA-baas Keith Alexander stapt op

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NSA-baas Keith Alexander stapt over een paar maanden op. Dat hebben functionarissen in de Verenigde Staten gezegd, meldt persbureau Reuters. Ook de tweede man van de inlichtingendienst, John Inglis, gaat weg.
Het vertrek van Alexander en Inglis zou niets te maken hebben met de omstreden afluisterprogramma’s waarvan klokkenluider Edward Snowden de afgelopen maanden details naar buiten bracht. De inlichtingenbaas had tegen eind april al besloten dat hij zou stoppen. Inglis gaat eind dit jaar met pensioen.

Een woordvoerder van de NSA liet aan Reuters weten dat Alexander in het voorjaar vertrekt. Hij werd acht jaar geleden onder president George Bush aangesteld en is daarmee de langst dienende chef van de dienst tot nu toe. Vermoedelijk grijpt president Barack Obama nu zijn kans om een nieuwe koers te varen met de inlichtingendienst.

quote:

Brazilië schrijft geschiedenis op Algemene Vergadering VN

De Braziliaanse president Dilma Rousseff had in de weken voor de Algemene Vergadering van de VN duidelijk gemaakt dat er een aantal dingen waren gebeurd die zij ten strengste veroordeelde. Zo bleek uit de onthullingen van Edward Snowden dat de NSA zowat alle communicatie van het Braziliaanse petroleumbedrijf Petrobras bespioneerde, enkele dagen later bleek de Britse inlichtingendienst GCHQ hetzelfde te hebben gedaan.

Petrobras is niet bepaald een terroristische organisatie. Het is echter wel een geduchte concurrent van Amerikaanse en Britse petroleumbedrijven. Met andere woorden, de NSA deed hier aan economische spionage. Alsof dat nog niet erg genoeg was, bleek dat de NSA ook alle interne e-mails van de Braziliaanse president met haar staf al jarenlang afluisterde.

Rousseff zegde een gepland staatsbezoek aan de VS af. Een aantal grote handelsovereenkomsten, waaronder de aankoop van militair materiaal, die tijdens dat bezoek plechtig zouden worden ondertekend, werden uitgesteld. Zelfs na een persoonlijk gesprek van 20 minuten met president Obama kwam Rousseff niet op haar beslissing terug.

Wie dacht dat zij op de Algemene Vergadering een en ander met omfloerste bewoordingen zou omschrijven, vergiste zich. In haar toespraak nam de president geen blad voor de mond. De volledige toespraak vind je in de YouTube-link hieronder. Een uittreksel:

"Wat we hier voor ons hebben is een ernstig geval van schending van de mensenrechten en burgerrechten, een geval van een invasie en beroving van vertrouwelijke geheime informatie, die commerciële activiteiten betreft. Bovenal is dit een geval van minachting voor de nationale soevereiniteit van mijn land. Wij hebben de Amerikaanse regering ons protest laten weten en eisen verklaringen, excuses en garanties dat dergelijke daden of procedures niet meer zullen voorkomen. Vriendschappelijke regeringen en maatschappijen die oprechte strategische partnerschappen willen opbouwen, zoals in ons geval, kunnen onmogelijk toelaten dat aan de gang zijnde illegale acties doorgaan alsof dat de gewone gang van zaken is. Deze acties zijn totaal onaanvaardbaar."

quote:

Fresh Leak on US Spying: NSA Accessed Mexican President's Email

The NSA has been systematically eavesdropping on the Mexican government for years. It hacked into the president's public email account and gained deep insight into policymaking and the political system. The news is likely to hurt ties between the US and Mexico.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has a division for particularly difficult missions. Called "Tailored Access Operations" (TAO), this department devises special methods for special targets.

That category includes surveillance of neighboring Mexico, and in May 2010, the division reported its mission accomplished. A report classified as "top secret" said: "TAO successfully exploited a key mail server in the Mexican Presidencia domain within the Mexican Presidential network to gain first-ever access to President Felipe Calderon's public email account."
According to the NSA, this email domain was also used by cabinet members, and contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability." The president's office, the NSA reported, was now "a lucrative source."

This operation, dubbed "Flatliquid," is described in a document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, which SPIEGEL has now had the opportunity to analyze. The case is likely to cause further strain on relations between Mexico and the United States, which have been tense since Brazilian television network TV Globo revealed in September that the NSA monitored then-presidential candidate Enrique Peńa Nieto and others around him in the summer of 2012. Peńa Nieto, now Mexico's president, summoned the US ambassador in the wake of that news, but confined his reaction to demanding an investigation into the matter.

Now, though, the revelation that the NSA has systematically infiltrated an entire computer network is likely to trigger deeper controversy, especially since the NSA's snooping took place during the term of Peńa Nieto's predecessor Felipe Calderón, a leader who worked more closely with Washington than any other Mexican president before him.

Brazil Also Targeted

Reports of US surveillance operations have caused outrage in Latin America in recent months. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a planned trip to Washington five weeks ago and condemned the NSA's espionage in a blistering speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

The US surveillance of politicians in Mexico and Brazil is not a one-off. Internal documents show these countries' leaders represent important monitoring targets for the NSA, with both Mexico and Brazil ranking among the nations high on an April 2013 list that enumerates the US' surveillance priorities. That list, classified as "secret," was authorized by the White House and "presidentially approved," according to internal NSA documents.

The list ranks strategic objectives for all US intelligence services using a scale from "1" for high priority to "5" for low priority. In the case of Mexico, the US is interested primarily in the drug trade (priority level 1) and the country's leadership (level 3). Other areas flagged for surveillance include Mexico's economic stability, military capabilities, human rights and international trade relations (all ranked at level 3), as well as counterespionage (level 4). It's much the same with Brazil -- ascertaining the intentions of that country's leadership ranks among the stated espionage targets. Brazil's nuclear program is high on the list as well.

When Brazilian President Rousseff took office in early 2011, one of her goals was to improve relations with Washington, which had cooled under her predecessor, the popular former labor leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula focused primarily on establishing closer ties with China, India and African nations, and even invited Iran's then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil, in a snub to the US. President Barack Obama postponed a planned visit to the capital, Brasília, as a result.

Rousseff, however, has distanced herself from Iran. And the first foreign minister to serve under her, Antonio Patriota, who recently resigned, was seen as friendly toward the US, maintaining good ties with his counterpart Hillary Clinton. Obama made a state visit to Brazil two years ago and Rousseff had planned to reciprocate with a visit to Washington this October.

Then came the revelation that US authorities didn't stop short of spying on the president herself. According to one internal NSA presentation, the agency investigated "the communication methods and associated selectors of Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff and her key advisers." It also said it found potential "high-value targets" among her inner circle.

Economic Motives?

Rousseff believes Washington's reasons for employing such unfriendly methods are partly economic, an accusation that the NSA and its director, General Keith Alexander, have denied. Yet according to the leaked NSA documents, the US also monitored email and telephone communications at Petrobras, the oil corporation in which the Brazilian government holds a majority stake. Brazil possesses enormous offshore oil reserves.

Just how intensively the US spies on its neighbors can be seen in another, previously unknown operation in Mexico, dubbed "Whitetamale" by the NSA. In August 2009, according to internal documents, the agency gained access to the emails of various high-ranking officials in Mexico's Public Security Secretariat that combats the drug trade and human trafficking. This hacking operation allowed the NSA not only to obtain information on several drug cartels, but also to gain access to "diplomatic talking-points." In the space of a single year, according to the internal documents, this operation produced 260 classified reports that allowed US politicians to conduct successful talks on political issues and to plan international investments.

The tone of the document that lists the NSA's "tremendous success" in monitoring Mexican targets shows how aggressively the US intelligence agency monitors its southern neighbor. "These TAO accesses into several Mexican government agencies are just the beginning -- we intend to go much further against this important target," the document reads. It goes on to state that the divisions responsible for this surveillance are "poised for future successes."

While these operations were overseen from the NSA's branch in San Antonio, Texas, secret listening stations in the US Embassies in Mexico City and Brasília also played a key role. The program, known as the "Special Collection Service," is conducted in cooperation with the CIA. The teams have at their disposal a wide array of methods and high-tech equipment that allow them to intercept all forms of electronic communication. The NSA conducts its surveillance of telephone conversations and text messages transmitted through Mexico's cell phone network under the internal code name "Eveningeasel." In Brasília, the agency also operates one of its most important operational bases for monitoring satellite communications.

This summer, the NSA took its activities to new heights as elections took place in Mexico. Despite having access to the presidential computer network, the US knew little about Enrique Peńa Nieto, designated successor to Felipe Calderón.

Spying on Peńa Nieto

In his campaign appearances, Peńa Nieto would make his way to the podium through a sea of supporters, ascending to the stage like a rock star. He is married to an actress, and also had the support of several influential elder statesmen within his party, the PRI. He promised to reform the party and fight pervasive corruption in the country. But those familiar with the PRI, which is itself regarded by many as corrupt, saw this pledge as little more than a maneuver made for show.

First and foremost, though, Peńa Nieto promised voters he would change Mexico's strategy in the war on drugs, announcing he would withdraw the military from the fight against the drug cartels as soon as possible and invest more money in social programs instead. Yet at the same time, he assured Washington there would be no U-turn in Mexico's strategy regarding the cartels. So what were Peńa Nieto's true thoughts at the time? What were his advisers telling him?

The NSA's intelligence agents in Texas must have been asking themselves such questions when they authorized an unusual type of operation known as structural surveillance. For two weeks in the early summer of 2012, the NSA unit responsible for monitoring the Mexican government analyzed data that included the cell phone communications of Peńa Nieto and "nine of his close associates," as an internal presentation from June 2012 shows. Analysts used software to connect this data into a network, shown in a graphic that resembles a swarm of bees. The software then filtered out Peńa Nieto's most relevant contacts and entered them into a databank called "DishFire." From then on, these individuals' cell phones were singled out for surveillance.

According to the internal documents, this led to the agency intercepting 85,489 text messages, some sent by Peńa Nieto himself and some by his associates. This technology "might find a needle in a haystack," the analysts noted, adding that it could do so "in a repeatable and efficient way."

It seems, though, that the NSA's agents are no longer quite as comfortable expressing such pride in their work. Asked for a comment by SPIEGEL, the agency replied: "We are not going to comment publicly on every specific alleged intelligence activity, and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations. As the President said in his speech at the UN General Assembly, we've begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share."

Meanwhile, the NSA's spying has already caused considerable political damage in the case of Brazil, seriously denting the mutual trust between Rousseff and Obama. Brazil now plans to introduce a law that will force companies such as Google and Facebook to store their data inside Brazil's borders, rather than on servers in the US, making these international companies subject to Brazilian data privacy laws. The Brazilian government is also developing a new encryption system to protect its own data against hacking.

So far, Mexico has reacted more moderately -- although the fact that the NSA infiltrated even the presidential computer network wasn't known until now. Commenting after TV Globo first revealed the NSA's surveillance of text messages, Peńa Nieto stated that Obama had promised him to investigate the accusations and to punish those responsible, if it was found that misdeeds had taken place.
In response to an inquiry from SPIEGEL concerning the latest revelations, Mexico's Foreign Ministry replied with an email condemning any form of espionage on Mexican citizens, saying such surveillance violates international law. "That is all the government has to say on the matter," stated a spokesperson for Peńa Nieto.

Presumably, that email could be read at the NSA's Texas location at the same time.

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Kroes noemt onthullingen Snowden behulpzaam

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Eurocommissaris Neelie Kroes (Digitale Agenda) heeft zich in een interview met het Duitse tijdschrift Der Spiegel positief uitgelaten over de onthullingen van klokkenluider Edward Snowden over de Amerikaanse en Britse spionagepraktijken. Kroes zegt dat over Snowdens handelswijze te twisten valt, maar dat zijn onthullingen zeer ‘behulpzaam’ zijn.

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Kroes is kritisch op de reactie van de Europese Commissie op de onthullingen. Onderhandelingen met de VS over een vrijhandelsverdrag worden ondanks de onthullingen voortgezet.

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Op maandag 21 oktober 2013 22:11 schreef kloonbeer het volgende:
Waar maken we ons druk om we hebben niks te verbergen.

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Op maandag 21 oktober 2013 22:48 schreef Igen het volgende:

[..]

Niks te verbergen? We hebben in Nederland geen politieke standpunten, geen diplomatieke relaties, geen gevoelige bedrijfsinformatie, helemaal niks?

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Op donderdag 24 oktober 2013 20:40 schreef jasparon het volgende:
Het grootste probleem is dat alle data wordt opgeslagen. Over 10 jaar een zoekopdracht om bepaalde mensen, denkwijzen of andere zaken eruit te halen. Passieve monitoring kan dan in een keer actief worden. Jouw "vrije" mening in 2013 kan in 2024 reden zijn om je te typeren zoals hun dat uitkomt.

En kom niet dat alle nutteloze data wordt verwijderd...

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'Amerika waarschuwt bondgenoten voor aankomende onthullingen Snowden'
De Verenigde Staten is bezig bondgenoten te waarschuwen voor de gevolgen van komende onthullingen van Edward Snowden, die onder meer betrekking zouden hebben op geheime samenwerking met de Verenigde Staten.

SnowdenDe Verenigde Staten waarschuwt landen, zodat ze zich kunnen voorbereiden, zegt de krant The Washington Post op basis van anonieme bronnen bij overheden. De documenten zouden onthullen dat diverse landen geheime samenwerkingen hebben met de Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA om data uit te wisselen. Omdat niet alle overheidsinstanties en regeringen hiervan op de hoogte zijn, zouden die onthullingen verstrekkende gevolgen kunnen hebben.

Het is onduidelijk of Nederland ook is gewaarschuwd, maar ondenkbaar is dat niet. Nederland is al vele jaren een bondgenoot van de Verenigde Staten in de internationale politiek. Dat de Amerikaanse geheime dienst enige interesse heeft in Nederland, is duidelijk: de NSA onderschepte in een maand metadata van 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes in Nederland. Bovendien zei Snowden onlangs dat er onthullingen over Nederland aan zitten te komen. Ook België zou tot de gewaarschuwde landen behoren. Dankzij de vestiging van veel Europese instanties in Brussel zullen buitenlandse mogendheden veel interesse hebben in de communicatie in België, zoals bleek bij de hack van Belgacom.

De NSA probeert inmiddels te achterhalen welke documenten Snowden allemaal heeft ontvreemd. Vorige week werd duidelijk dat Snowden de documenten te pakken kon krijgen door verouderde beveiligingssoftware. Hij zou 30.000 documenten hebben meegenomen, maar er zou nog geen patroon te ontdekken zijn.

_{Bron: http://tweakers.net/nieuw(...)llingen-snowden.html}

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Duitsers willen eigen internet om spionnen te weren

Of de Amerikaanse veiligheidsdiensten nu wel of niet het mobieltje van Duits kanselier Angela Merkel hebben afgeluisterd, in Duitsland gaan vast stemmen op voor een apart 'Duits' internet. Dit meldt persagentschap Reuters. .

De lancering van 'E-Mail made in Germany' van Deutsche Telekom.Telecomreus Deutsche Telekom, deels in handen van de Duitse staat, riep naar aanleiding van de recente spionageonthullingen de andere Duitse communicatiebedrijven op om het lokale Duitse internet af te schermen van buitenlandse inlichtingendiensten. Deutsche Telekom lanceerde deze al een 'E-mail made in Germany'-dienst die e-mail encrypteert en enkel langs Duitse servers stuurt.

Dat het Deutsche Telekom menens is, bevestigt concurrent Vodafone aan Reuters. Vodafone onderzoekt momenteel of het ingaat op het Deutsche Telekom-voorstel en hoe dat dan zou moeten. Mocht het niet lukken om tot een deal te komen, moet het Duitse parlement een wet aannemen om een omleiding van het Duitse internetverkeer te verplichten. .

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Op vrijdag 25 oktober 2013 19:32 schreef Probably_on_pcp het volgende:
Nog even hier posten:

Alsof Obama en het Amerikaanse congres ook maar iets te zeggen hebben over de NSA. De macht in de VS ligt allang bij mensen achter de schermen. De president en congresleden zijn maar voorbijgangers die gecontroleerd worden door deze mensen achter de schermen.

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Op vrijdag 25 oktober 2013 19:44 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

En wie zijn dan die mensen achter de schermen? De bankers?

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Leaked memos reveal GCHQ efforts to keep mass surveillance secret

Exclusive: Edward Snowden papers show UK spy agency fears legal challenge if scale of surveillance is made public

The UK intelligence agency GCHQ has repeatedly warned it fears a "damaging public debate" on the scale of its activities because it could lead to legal challenges against its mass-surveillance programmes, classified internal documents reveal.

Memos contained in the cache disclosed by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden detail the agency's long fight against making intercept evidence admissible as evidence in criminal trials – a policy supported by all three major political parties, but ultimately defeated by the UK's intelligence community.

Foremost among the reasons was a desire to minimise the potential for challenges against the agency's large-scale interception programmes, rather than any intrinsic threat to security, the documents show.

The papers also reveal that:

• GCHQ lobbied furiously to keep secret the fact that telecoms firms had gone "well beyond" what they were legally required to do to help intelligence agencies' mass interception of communications, both in the UK and overseas.

• GCHQ feared a legal challenge under the right to privacy in the Human Rights Act if evidence of its surveillance methods became admissable in court.

• GCHQ assisted the Home Office in lining up sympathetic people to help with "press handling", including the Liberal Democrat peer and former intelligence services commissioner Lord Carlile, who this week criticised the Guardian for its coverage of mass surveillance by GCHQ and the US National Security Agency.

The most recent attempt to make intelligence gathered from intercepts admissible in court, proposed by the last Labour government, was finally stymied by GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 in 2009.

A briefing memo prepared for the board of GCHQ shortly before the decision was made public revealed that one reason the agency was keen to quash the proposals was the fear that even passing references to its wide-reaching surveillance powers could start a "damaging" public debate.

Referring to the decision to publish the report on intercept as evidence without classification, it noted: "Our main concern is that references to agency practices (ie the scale of interception and deletion) could lead to damaging public debate which might lead to legal challenges against the current regime."

A later update, dated May 2012, set out further perceived "risks" of making intercepts admissible, including "the damage to partner relationships if sensitive information were accidentally released in open court". It also noted that the "scale of interception and retention required would be fairly likely to be challenged on Article 8 (Right to Privacy) grounds".

The GCHQ briefings showed the agency provided the Home Office with support in winning the PR battle on the proposed reforms by lining up people to talk to the media – including Lord Carlile, who on Wednesday gave a public lecture condemning the Guardian's decision to publish stories based on the leaked material from Snowden.

Referring to the public debate on intercept evidence, the document notes: "Sir Ken McDonald [sic] (former DPP [director of public prosecutions]), Lord Goldsmith (former AG [attorney general]) and David Davis (former Shadow HSec [home secretary) [have been] reiterating their previous calls for IaE [intercept as evidence].

"We are working closely with HO [Home Office] on their plans for press handling when the final report is published, e.g. lining up talking heads (such as Lord Carlisle [sic], Lord Stevens, Sir Stephen Lander, Sir Swinton Thomas)."

Carlile was the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation in 2001-11, and was awarded a CBE in 2012 for his services to national security.

Another top GCHQ priority in resisting the admission of intercepts as evidence was keeping secret the extent of the agency's co-operative relationships with telephone companies – including being granted access to communications networks overseas.

In June, the Guardian disclosed the existence of GCHQ's Tempora internet surveillance programme. It uses intercepts on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet to gain access to swaths of internet users' personal data. The intercepts are placed in the UK and overseas, with the knowledge of companies owning either the cables or landing stations.

The revelations of voluntary co-operation with some telecoms companies appear to contrast markedly with statements made by large telecoms firms in the wake of the first Tempora stories. They stressed that they were simply complying with the law of the countries in which they operated.

In reality, numerous telecoms companies were doing much more than that, as disclosed in a secret document prepared in 2009 by a joint working group of GCHQ, MI5 and MI6.

The agencies' report contended that allowing intercepts as evidence could damage relationships with "Communications Service Providers" (CSPs).

In an extended excerpt of "the classified version" of a review prepared for the Privy Council, a formal body of advisors made up of current and former cabinet ministers, the document sets out the real nature of the relationship between telecoms firms and the UK government.

"Under RIPA [the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000], CSPs in the UK may be required to provide, at public expense, an adequate interception capability on their networks," it states. "In practice all significant providers do provide such a capability. But in many cases their assistance – while in conformity with the law – goes well beyond what it requires."

GCHQ's internet surveillance programme is the subject of a challenge in the European court of human rights, mounted by three privacy advocacy groups. The Open Rights Group, English PEN and Big Brother Watch argue the "unchecked surveillance" of Tempora is a challenge to the right to privacy, as set out in the European convention on human rights.

That the Tempora programme appears to rely at least in part on voluntary co-operation of telecoms firms could become a major factor in that ongoing case. The revelation could also reignite the long-running debate over allowing intercept evidence in court.

The GCHQ submission goes on to set out why its relationships with telecoms companies goes further than what can be legally compelled under current law. It explains that in the internet era, companies that wished to avoid being legally mandated to assist UK intelligence agencies would often be able to do so "at little cost or risk to their operations" by moving "some or all" of their communications services overseas.

As a result, "it has been necessary to enter into agreements with both UK-based and offshore providers for them to afford the UK agencies access, with appropriate legal authorisation, to the communications they carry outside the UK."

The submission to ministers does not set out which overseas firms have entered into voluntary relationships with the UK, or even in which countries they operate, though documents detailing the Tempora programme made it clear the UK's interception capabilities relied on taps located both on UK soil and overseas.

There is no indication as to whether the governments of the countries in which deals with companies have been struck would be aware of the GCHQ cable taps.

Evidence that telecoms firms and GCHQ are engaging in mass interception overseas could stoke an ongoing diplomatic row over surveillance ignited this week after the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, accused the NSA of monitoring her phone calls, and the subsequent revelation that the agency monitored communications of at least 35 other world leaders.

On Friday, Merkel and the French president, François Hollande, agreed to spearhead efforts to make the NSA sign a new code of conduct on how it carried out intelligence operations within the European Union, after EU leaders warned that the international fight against terrorism was being jeopardised by the perception that mass US surveillance was out of control.

Fear of diplomatic repercussions were one of the prime reasons given for GCHQ's insistence that its relationships with telecoms firms must be kept private .

Telecoms companies "feared damage to their brands internationally, if the extent of their co-operation with HMG [Her Majesty's government] became apparent", the GCHQ document warned. It added that if intercepts became admissible as evidence in UK courts "many CSPs asserted that they would withdraw their voluntary support".

The report stressed that while companies are going beyond what they are required to do under UK law, they are not being asked to violate it.

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Op vrijdag 25 oktober 2013 19:44 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

En wie zijn dan die mensen achter de schermen? De bankers?

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ACLU: Lavabit 'fatally undermined' by US request for encryption keys

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Leaving

As many of you likely know, it was announced last week that I am leaving the Guardian. My last day here will be 31 October, and I will write my last column on that date.

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Op vrijdag 25 oktober 2013 23:11 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:
Glenn Greenwald stopt ermee bij The Guardian.

[..]

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Op vrijdag 25 oktober 2013 23:25 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

[..]

Ja, omdat hij een eigen nieuws platform gaat beginnen, niet zo gek dus

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Op zaterdag 26 oktober 2013 00:21 schreef APK het volgende:
Snowden kreeg toch alleen -een jaar- asiel in Rusland als hij verder zijn bek zou houden?
Of ben ik inmiddels in de war met een andere zaak, want het lukt niet echt tot nu toe

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Op zaterdag 26 oktober 2013 07:49 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

Hij houd z'n bek.Maar Glenn Greenwald heeft alle documenten al.

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Warrantless surveillance evidence faces court test in 'terrorist' case

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The Justice Department has said for the first time that it intends to use information gained from one of the government's warrantless surveillance programmes against an accused terrorist, setting the stage for a probable supreme court test of the Obama administration's approach to national security.

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Op zaterdag 26 oktober 2013 22:37 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
The Empire fights back:

[..]

[..]

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"Merkel, Rousseff pakken NSA aan"

_{zondag 27 okt 2013, 19:13 (Update: 27-10-13, 19:28)}

Bondskanselier Merkel bereidt samen met de Braziliaanse president Dilma Rousseff een VN-resolutie voor tegen de spionagepraktijken van de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA. Dat schrijft de Duitse krant Frankfurter Allgemeine.

Volgens de krant hebben Duitse en Braziliaanse diplomaten dit weekend gewerkt aan de resolutie. Verwacht wordt dat de resolutie met grote meerderheid wordt aangenomen door de Algemene Vergadering van de VN.

Scherpe storm
Er is al een internationaal verdrag tegen "willekeurige of onwettige inmenging in privésferen of gezinsleven". Die bescherming moet volgens de twee landen worden uitgebreid naar het internet.

In de tekst worden de Verenigde Staten niet genoemd, maar het is duidelijk dat het afluisterschandaal van de NSA de aanleiding is. Rousseff veroordeelde donderdag in scherpe woorden het afluisteren van bondskanselier Merkel door de NSA.

Zelf annuleerde de Braziliaanse president onlangs uit woede een bezoek aan de VS.

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Op zondag 27 oktober 2013 23:09 schreef Jan-Slagter het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 17:53 schreef Sloggi het volgende:

[..]

Wat een grappige man is het toch.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 17:53 schreef Sloggi het volgende:

[..]

Wat een grappige man is het toch.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:30 schreef Sloggi het volgende:

[..]

Of er zijn gewoon mensen die de leugenachtigheid en de hypocrisie van de leiders van het 'vrije, democratische' westen willen blootleggen.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:28 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Door de aard en de specifieke tijdstippen kunnen we er wel van uitgaan dat die onthullingen puur gericht zijn op het ondermijnen van Obama (en de Westerse Wereld). Er moet dus een organisatie of land achter zitten met niet zo frisse bedoelingen.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:35 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Nee, dat is zoals het nu gaat uitgesloten.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:37 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Anonymous, Operation Tyler.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:39 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Nee, laat je niet verblinden. Dit is iets anders.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:28 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Door de aard en de specifieke tijdstippen kunnen we er wel van uitgaan dat die onthullingen puur gericht zijn op het ondermijnen van Obama (en de Westerse Wereld). Er moet dus een organisatie of land achter zitten met niet zo frisse bedoelingen.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:42 schreef Xa1pt het volgende:

[..]

Zo kun je iedere vorm van kritiek en geluiden van klokkenluiders wel wegmoffelen.

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Cameron dringt aan op zelfcensuur media

De Britse premier Cameron zei dat zijn regering waarschijnlijk zal optreden tegen kranten om ervoor te zorgen dat ze stoppen met publiceren over wat Cameron schadelijke onthullingen noemde van de Amerikaanse klokkenluider Edward Snowden. Willen kranten dat voorkomen, dan moeten ze wat meer 'verantwoordelijkheid' tonen, zei de Britse premier. .

'Als de kranten niet wat meer maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid tonen, zal het voor de overheid erg moeilijk worden om langs de zijlijn te blijven staan en niets te doen', zei Cameron tegen het Britse parlement. The Guardian ging volgens hem door met het publiceren van schadelijk materiaal nadat de krant er aanvankelijk mee akkoord gegaan was om gevoelige informatie in hun bezit te vernietigen.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 18:41 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Daar zie ik geen aanwijzingen voor.

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Op maandag 28 oktober 2013 21:48 schreef Opa2012 het volgende:

[..]

Kijk naar Tegenlicht, dan snap je het misschien.

Anonymous - Message On Edward Snowden - Prism

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Op dinsdag 29 oktober 2013 06:57 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Ik heb op het moment geen tv. Vertel het maar in je eigen woorden.

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Op dinsdag 29 oktober 2013 20:18 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

[..]

Gast, je zit op een medium genaamd het internet.

http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/

Verder wil ik me niet in jullie discussie mengen

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Op dinsdag 29 oktober 2013 19:40 schreef VeX- het volgende:
Die Ban Ki Moon is ook een slappeling van de grootste orde.

Amerika luistert doodleuk massaal haar eigen burgers af, de burgers van andere landen af, wereldleiders van andere landen af en de verenigde naties af, maar behalve uithalen naar degene die de informatie naar buiten brengt, schittert hij vooral door afwezigheid.

Wat een slappe zak hooi.

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De hoogste Amerikaanse inlichtingenfunctionarissen hebben in het Congres hun spionagebeleid verdedigd als een rechtmatig en terecht middel. James Clapper, de directeur van de gezamenlijke inlichtingendiensten, zei dat de verontwaardigde Europese bondgenoten zelf ook Amerikaanse leiders en instellingen hebben bespioneerd.

Clapper zei dat het spionagebeleid van de VS erop gericht is om op de hoogte te zijn van de plannen en bedoelingen van buitenlandse leiders. Hij weersprak dat in het wilde weg gespioneerd wordt in andere landen. Er wordt alleen gespioneerd als grote belangen op het spel staan, verzekerde Clapper.

Internationaal terrorisme
Generaal Keith Alexander, de directeur van de inlichtingendienst NSA, beschreef het spionage-programma van zijn dienst als een belangrijk middel tegen het internationale terrorisme. Hij hield de Congresleden voor dat de Verenigde Staten na 11 september 2001 niet meer getroffen zijn door een grote terreurdaad.

In een emotioneel betoog legde hij uit hoe belangrijk het werk van de NSA voor het land is. Alexander zei dat de recente mediaberichten over het onderscheppen van miljoenen telefoongesprekken in Frankrijk, Spanje en Italië totaal onjuist zijn.

Kritiek
Alexander zei dat die gegevens in veel gevallen door die landen zelf verzameld zijn en dat het materiaal ter beschikking is gesteld aan de Amerikanen in het kader van terreur-onderzoek.

Clapper en Alexander moesten zich onder meer verdedigen tegen de kritiek van senator Dianne Feinstein, de voorzitter van de commissie voor de inlichtingendiensten. Zij zei dat de Amerikanen zich niet bezig moeten houden met het afluisteren van bevriende regeringsleiders.

quote:

'NSA tapte in het geheim Yahoo en Google af'
De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA zou in het geheim hebben ingebroken in de datacentra van internetdiensten Yahoo en Google.

Dat meldt de Washington Post op basis van documenten die klokkenluider Edward Snowden in zijn bezit heeft.
Door zichzelf toegang te verschaffen tot de internetdiensten werd het voor de NSA mogelijk om data te verzamelen van miljoenen gebruikers. De NSA zou volgens de krant niet alle gegevens ook daadwerkelijk bewaren.
De krant meldt verder dat volgens een geheim document, gedateerd op 9 januari 2013, zouden er destijds elke dag miljoenen gegevens van de netwerken van Yahoo en Google verzonden zijn naar het datacentrum van de NSA in Fort Meade. In dertig dagen voordat het desbetreffende document werd aangemaakt zouden er 181.280.466 nieuwe bestanden zijn verstuurd naar de NSA.
Dat de NSA zich in het geheim toegang verschaft tot de internetdiensten is opvallend, omdat de inlichtingendienst door middel van het PRISM-programma ook via de offiële weg toegang heeft tot de gegevens. Daarvoor is wel eerst toestemming nodig van een rechter.
De chef van de NSA, Keith Alexander, ontkent tegen Politico dat de NSA toegang heeft tot de servers van Google en Yahoo. Volgens Alexander is de NSA hier niet toe bevoegd en moet dit lopen via een rechter.

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 18:38 schreef Syntix het volgende:
Amerika Hoe zullen ze zich hier onderuit gaan praten? Ik stel voor dat de NSA keihard wordt aangepakt en Amerika (de overheid). Gewoon even de wereld tegen Amerika doen, zodat ze hun plek weer kennen.

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 18:41 schreef Kowloon het volgende:

[..]

VS gaan dan gewoon dreigen met alle andere afluisterprogramma's van bijvoorbeeld de Europese overheden bekend te maken.

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'AIVD hielp mogelijk NSA bij aftappen 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes'

De Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) heeft in december en januari mogelijk meegewerkt aan het onderscheppen van metadata van 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes in Nederland. Dat maakt technologiesite Tweakers op uit een bericht van de Spaanse krant El Mundo.

De krant heeft een screenshot geplaatst van een document met een lijst van negentien landen waarmee de Amerikaanse geheime dienst gegevens zou uitwisselen, en Nederland is daar één van. Wat precies onder het uitwisselen van gegevens wordt verstaan, blijft echter vaag. Ook is niet bekend of de diensten rechtstreeks informatie overhandigden aan de Amerikaanse geheime dienst NSA, of dat ze alleen toestemming gaven voor het aftappen van de gegevens.

Metagegevens
Dat de NSA eind vorig jaar in een maand tijd ongeveer 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes in Nederland heeft onderschept, werd vorige week al bekend. Het gaat om metagegevens van telefoontjes, in elk geval het nummer waarnaar mensen bellen. Het aantal van rond de 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes in Nederland kwam naar voren in een grafiek die het Duitse weekblad Der Spiegel deze zomer publiceerde, maar toen ontbrak de context nog.

Overigens heeft Keith Alexander, het hoofd van de NSA, deze week tijdens een hoorzitting ontkend dat zijn organisatie op grote schaal metadata onderschept in het buitenland. Hij zei verder dat de NSA telefoondata kreeg van de NAVO-partners van de Verenigde Staten, als onderdeel van een NAVO-programma dat was opgezet om de lidstaten en de militaire operaties van het bondgenootschap te beschermen.

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 18:51 schreef Syntix het volgende:

[..]

Dat zal vast idd, maar alles maar toestaan wat die kut Amerikanen doen lijkt me ook geen optie. Misschien moeten Rusland en China dan maar gaan dreigen of zo.

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 19:28 schreef Dlocks het volgende:

[..]

Ja, want Rusland en China houden zich niet bezig met afluisterpraktijken.

Dus we kunnen wel vastellen dat China, Rusland en vrijwel alle westerse landen zich bezig houden met dit soort praktijken. Dus wie zou het niet moeten toestaan en waarom zou die zich alleen op de VS moeten richten?

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 18:38 schreef Syntix het volgende:

'NSA tapte in het geheim Yahoo en Google af'

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 18:38 schreef Syntix het volgende:

[..]

Amerika Hoe zullen ze zich hier onderuit gaan praten? Ik stel voor dat de NSA keihard wordt aangepakt en Amerika (de overheid). Gewoon even de wereld tegen Amerika doen, zodat ze hun plek weer kennen.

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 19:28 schreef Dlocks het volgende:

[..]

Ja, want Rusland en China houden zich niet bezig met afluisterpraktijken.

Dus we kunnen wel vastellen dat China, Rusland en vrijwel alle westerse landen zich bezig houden met dit soort praktijken. Dus wie zou het niet moeten toestaan en waarom zou die zich alleen op de VS moeten richten?

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Op woensdag 30 oktober 2013 22:17 schreef Tocadisco het volgende:

[..]

Omdat de VS de enige zijn (voor zover nu bekend althans) wiens paranoia zich niet alleen tot haar eigen burgers en bedrijven beperkt maar waar de complete planeet last van heeft.

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Amid NSA spying revelations, tech leaders call for new restraints on agency

Six leading technology companies — Facebook, Google, Apple, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL — sent a letter to Senate leaders Thursday reflecting the sharpening industry strategy, praising the sponsors of a bill that would end the bulk collection of phone records of millions of Americans and create a privacy advocate to represent civil liberties interests within the secretive court that oversees the NSA.

“Transparency is a critical first step to an informed public debate, but it is clear that more needs to be done,” said the letter, which was sent to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of the bill’s sponsors, as well as three other senators. “Our companies believe that government surveillance practices should also be reformed to include substantial enhancements to privacy protections and appropriate oversight and accountability mechanisms for those programs.”

Although historically wary of Washington, the technology industry has been bulking up its political operations in the nation’s capital for several years. It took a public stand against the Stop Online Piracy Act, commonly known as SOPA, with a massive Internet protest last year. More recently, tech leaders made a high-profile push in the immigration debate, calling for more visas for foreign-born workers.

The tone of industry reaction to the NSA revelations has grown more aggressive since the first stories appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper in June. Companies that initially were focused on defending their reputations gradually began criticizing the government and challenging it in court. Some companies also have worked to harden their networks against infiltration.

A turning point came with Thursday’s Post revealing an NSA program that collects user information from Google and Yahoo as it moves among data centers overseas. To some, this amounted to a degree of intrusiveness that, though speculated about by privacy activists, was beyond what many in the industry thought possible.

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Op vrijdag 1 november 2013 14:53 schreef Perrin het volgende:

[..]

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Google en Facebook zijn woedend op de NSA - te laat?

De grote Amerikaanse technologiebedrijven reageren woedend op het nieuws dat de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA samen met zijn Britse tegenhanger GCHQ in het geheim datastromen van ze zou aftappen. Tegelijkertijd zijn de bedrijven al maanden bezig er maatregelen tegen te nemen. Hebben ze boter op het hoofd? .

Nog maar een paar maanden geleden waren Google, Microsoft, Facebook en andere grote Amerikaanse technologiebedrijven er als de kippen bij om te benadrukken dat ze het liever anders zagen, maar dat ze niets anders konden doen dan gehoor geven aan de verzoeken om gebruikersinformatie van inlichtingendiensten. Ze werkten wel mee bij het verzamelen van informatie, maar alleen als ze daar juridisch toe verplicht waren, was hun boodschap. Facebook, Google, Yahoo, allemaal kwamen ze vrij kort na Snowdens onthullingen met rapporten waarin ze de gegevensaanvragen van wereldwijde overheden uit de doeken deden. Ze spanden ook rechtszaken aan waarin ze eisten om meer van dergelijke gegevens te mogen openbaren. Ze wilden daarmee voor meer transparantie zorgen.

Nu de ware aard van de afluisterpraktijken veel ernstiger blijkt dan gedacht, is de ergernis over de onthullingen van Snowden omgeslagen in woede. Het lijkt er nauwelijks meer toe te doen of de bedrijven hun gegevens wel of niet met tegenzin aan de inlichtingendiensten overhandigden, als die diensten stiekem toch al in de gegevens aan het grasduinen waren. In een brief aan politici (zie onderaan de tekst - niet in de app) pleiten de grote internetbedrijven ervoor om de wijze waarop inlichtingendiensten informatie vergaren eens flink op de schop te nemen. Ze willen nu niet alleen meer transparantie, maar ook aanpassing van de regels.

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Partner Greenwald was terrorismeverdachte

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Miranda was zich er volgens de autoriteiten van bewust dat de documenten die hij in zijn bezit had mensen in levensgevaar kon brengen. Ook zou openbaring van de documenten, of de dreigende openbaring, de bedoeling hebben de regering te beďnvloeden en politieke of ideologische doelen te bevorderen. 'Daarom valt dit binnen de definitie van terrorisme', aldus het document dat tijdens een rechtszitting deze week werd voorgelezen.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op vrijdag 1 november 2013 20:33 schreef beantherio het volgende:
Organisaties als de NSA zouden onder curatele moeten worden gezet door de politiek.

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Op zaterdag 2 november 2013 18:24 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Journalisten zijn terroristen!

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Op zaterdag 2 november 2013 20:14 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Ja, idd, zo kun je uiteindelijk alles wel als terroristisch bestempelen.

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Metropolitan police detained David Miranda for promoting 'political' causes

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The detention of the partner of a former Guardian journalist has triggered fresh concerns after it emerged that a key reason cited by police for holding him under terrorism powers was the belief that he was promoting a "political or ideological cause".

The revelation has alarmed leading human rights groups and a Tory MP, who said the justification appeared to be without foundation and threatened to have damaging consequences for investigative journalism.

twitter:

YourAnonNews twitterde op zaterdag 02-11-2013 om 23:42:02 Over 1,500 contributors have donated a total of almost $60,000 to #Snowden's defense fund: http://t.co/dRJddhgJXW reageer retweet

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Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund

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The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund raises money for journalistic sources' legal defence. Periodically it will nominate sources it wishes to direct legal and campaign aide to. For its first source it has selected Mr Edward Snowden whose revelations have exposed the extent to which the world is being mass surveilled by the United States.

Derek Rothera & Company Charted Accountants is appointed to administer the Fund, which is governed by the laws of the United Kingdom. The Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund is audited and can only spend funds on the legal defence campaign of the nominated journalistic sources. The terms of the fund and its trustees can be obtained from Rothera & Co.

Mr Snowden is currently in Russia where he has been granted temporary asylum. The United States government is exerting substantial pressure on Russia and other countries in an attempt to force Mr Snowden to the United States where he will face decades in prison or worse.

Mr Snowden's legal defence and its associated public campaign will be a long and expensive journey which will only be overcome with your support. Support the right to know. Support Edward Snowden.

if you are donating with a credit card or PayPal please click on the big orange "GIVE" button above to the right of the photo of Mr Snowden, but for other ways to donate please see below.

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Brazil and Germany draft anti-spy resolution at UN

Germany and Brazil have asked the UN General Assembly to adopt a draft resolution calling for the right to privacy in the digital age.

The draft calls for an end to excessive electronic surveillance, noting that the illegal collection of personal data "constitutes a highly intrusive act".

Brazil and Germany have both been angered by allegations of large-scale US surveillance.

The allegations stem from revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden.

'Deeply concerned'
The draft resolution, which does not name individual countries, will be debated by a General Assembly committee focusing on human rights.

The draft calls on the 193-member assembly to declare that it is "deeply concerned at human rights violations and abuses that may result from the conduct of any surveillance of communications".

This includes "extraterritorial surveillance of communications, their interception, as well as the collection of personal data, in particular massive surveillance, interception and data collection".

The resolution, which will be voted on later this month, calls on all countries to protect the right to privacy guaranteed under international law.

While General Assembly resolutions are non-binding, they can carry significant moral and political weight if they win enough support.

The draft follows allegations that the US has been eavesdropping on foreign leaders, including Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, angering US allies in Europe and Asia.

Disclosures about the extent of US spying activity came from documents leaked to media organisations by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden.

The German government earlier said it was keen to speak directly to Mr Snowden about US surveillance activities, after it was revealed the NSA had been bugging Mrs Merkel's mobile phone for years.

Mr Snowden had earlier met German Green MP Hans-Christian Stroebele in Moscow and expressed his readiness to brief the German government on NSA spying.

His lawyers said any meeting with German investigators would take place in Moscow, not Germany.

The German chancellor's anxiety about US spying overshadowed last week's EU summit, when she remarked with irritation that spying on friends is "really not on".

Ms Rousseff was angered by revelations that the NSA had hacked the computer network of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras to collect data on emails and telephone calls.

US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged on Friday that in some cases, US spying had gone too far.

He said he would work with President Barack Obama to prevent further inappropriate actions by the NSA.

Mr Snowden, 30, fled to Russia in June after leaking details of far-reaching US telephone and internet espionage. He has temporary asylum, allowing him to live in Russia, until July 2014.

Mr Snowden's lawyer said his client had started work on Friday for a major private website in Russia but did not disclose which site, citing security concerns.

The scale of the alleged US espionage has provoked international concern and calls for tighter supervision.

Asian countries have also protested at claims that Australia was involved in a US-led spy network, with Indonesia summoning the Australian ambassador to Jakarta.

twitter:

ggreenwald twitterde op zondag 03-11-2013 om 11:22:38 More NSA Leakers Followed Snowden’s Footsteps, Whistleblower Lawyer Says #Correct http://t.co/qLglzfCMC9 reageer retweet

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nu.nl: NSA hield ook Ban Ki-moon in de gaten

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Het was al bekend dat de NSA spioneerde bij de Verenigde Naties. Het afluisteren van de Verenigde Naties is in strijd met de internationale wetgeving. Woensdag maakten de Verenigde Staten duidelijk dat de VN niet meer zullen worden afgeluisterd.

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NSA leaks: UK government reaction eroding freedom, rights groups warn

Coalition of organisations says Cameron's response has damaged UK's reputation for freedom of expression

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Seventy of the world's leading human rights organisations have written to David Cameron to warn that the government's reaction to the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is leading to an erosion of fundamental rights and freedoms in the UK.

The coalition, which includes organisations from 40 countries, said it had become increasingly alarmed at the way the UK government had applied pressure on media groups covering the leaks and its use of national security concerns to close down important public interest debates.

"We have joined together as an international coalition because we believe that the United Kingdom government's response to the revelations of mass surveillance of digital communications is eroding fundamental human rights in the country," the letter states. "The government's response has been to condemn, rather than celebrate investigative journalism, which plays a crucial role in a healthy democratic society."

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Read the letter to David Cameron

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Kerry urges Europe: don't let NSA spying concerns thwart trade talks

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Op dinsdag 5 november 2013 19:14 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Get the Yank where it hurts: Their wallets.

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More NSA Leakers Followed Snowden’s Footsteps, Whistleblower Lawyer Says

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Several more current and former National Security Agency insiders, inspired by American fugitive Edward Snowden, have come forward as whistleblowers with details of the shadowy agency’s operations, according to an attorney at a whistleblower protection organization.

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Statement by Sarah Harrison on Edward Snowden.

_{Wednesday 6 November 2013, 18:30 CET}

As a journalist I have spent the last four months with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and arrived in Germany over the weekend. I worked in Hong Kong as part of the WikiLeaks team that brokered a number of asylum offers for Snowden and negotiated his safe exit from Hong Kong to take up his legal right to seek asylum. I was travelling with him on our way to Latin America when the United States revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia. For the next 39 days I remained with him in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where I assisted in his legal application to 21 countries for asylum, including Germany, successfully securing his asylum in Russia despite substantial pressure by the United States. I then remained with him until our team was confident that he had established himself and was free from the interference of any government.

Whilst Edward Snowden is safe and protected until his asylum visa is due to be renewed in nine months’ time, there is still much work to be done. The battle Snowden joined against state surveillance and for government transparency is one that WikiLeaks – and many others – have been fighting, and will continue to fight.

WikiLeaks’ battles are many: we fight against unaccountable power and government secrecy, publishing analysis and documents for all affected and to forever provide the public with the history that is theirs. For this, we are fighting legal cases in many jurisdictions and face an unprecedented Grand Jury investigation in the United States. WikiLeaks continues to fight for the protection of sources. We have won the battle for Snowden’s immediate future, but the broader war continues.

Already, in the few days I have spent in Germany, it is heartening to see the people joining together and calling for their government to do what must be done – to investigate NSA spying revelations, and to offer Edward Snowden asylum. The United States should no longer be able to continue spying on every person around the globe, or persecuting those that speak the truth.

Snowden is currently safe in Russia, but there are whistleblowers and sources to whom this does not apply. Chelsea Manning has been subject to abusive treatment by the United States government and is currently serving a 35-year sentence for exposing the true nature of war. Jeremy Hammond is facing a decade in a New York jail for allegedly providing journalists with documents that exposed corporate surveillance. I hope I have shown a counter example: with the right assistance whistleblowers can speak the truth and keep their liberty.

Aggressive tactics are being used against journalists, publishers and experts who work so courageously to bring truth to the world. Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum are all in effective exile. Barrett Brown is indicted for reporting on unethical surveillance practices. My editor Julian Assange has asylum over US threats, but the United Kingdom refuses to allow him to fully exercise this right, violating the law. The UK government also detained David Miranda under the UK Terrorism Act for collaborating with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald.

The UK Terrorism Act defines terrorism as the action or threat of action "designed to influence" any government "for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause". It prescribes actions that interfere with the functioning of an "electronic system" (i.e. the NSA’s bulk spying program) or which the government alleges create a "risk" to a section of the public. It should be fanciful to suggest that national security journalism which has the purpose of producing honest government or enforcing basic privacy rights should be called "terrorism", but that is how the UK is choosing to interpret this law. Almost every story published on the GCHQ and NSA bulk spying programs falls under the UK government’s interpretation of the word "terrorism". In response, our lawyers have advised me that it is not safe to return home.

The job of the press is to speak truth to power. And yet for doing our job we are persecuted. I say that these aggressive and illegal tactics to silence us – inventing arbitrary legal interpretations, over-zealous charges and disproportionate sentences – must not be permitted to succeed. I stand in solidarity with all those intimidated and persecuted for bringing the truth to the public.

In these times of secrecy and abuse of power there is only one solution – transparency. If our governments are so compromised that they will not tell us the truth, then we must step forward to grasp it. Provided with the unequivocal proof of primary source documents people can fight back. If our governments will not give this information to us, then we must take it for ourselves.

When whistleblowers come forward we need to fight for them, so others will be encouraged. When they are gagged, we must be their voice. When they are hunted, we must be their shield. When they are locked away, we must free them. Giving us the truth is not a crime. This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.

Courage is contagious.

Sarah Harrison, Wednesday 6 November 2013, Berlin

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Op woensdag 6 november 2013 19:25 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:


Facebook: alternatief is eens naar buiten gaan en mensen in het echt te ontmoeten en goedendag te zeggen of een kaartje sturen per post vanaf je vakantieadres, veel leuker en meer attent.
.

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Op woensdag 6 november 2013 19:27 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Het regent.

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Op woensdag 6 november 2013 19:25 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:
Een ieder die een alternatief zoekt voor hotmail en gmail: www.apennootje.nl

Een Nederlandse e-post-leverancier, gratis en echt in Nederland gevestigd volgens Firefox vlag.

of http://registrace.seznam.(...)Screen?service=email (Tsjechisch)

Videos: http://www.dropshots.com/ (Frans)
http://rutube.ru/ (Russisch)
http://www.vidiload.com/ (nederlands)

file upload: http://www2.zshares.net/ (Frans)

alternatief voor google: duckduckgo https://duckduckgo.com/ (Ierland)

blog: blog.ru (Russisch)

Facebook: alternatief is eens naar buiten gaan en mensen in het echt te ontmoeten en goedendag te zeggen of een kaartje sturen per post vanaf je vakantieadres, veel leuker en meer attent.

Installeer firefox met vlagfox om te weten waar een weblocatie gevestigd is.

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Op woensdag 6 november 2013 19:41 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:
Owja, een alternatief voor Facebook kan zijn: de Russische vkontakte.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:05 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:
Apennootje.nl blijkt te worden doorgeleid na registratie naar een Amerikaans adres volgens Firefox, dus dit heeft geen zin.

www.seznam.cz
www.mail.ru
http://www.e-mail-made-in-germany.de/
http://www.arnet.com.ar/HOME.htm

zijn wel oké denk ik.

Wellicht kunnen mensen lijstjes aanvullen.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:28 schreef Motorbass het volgende:

[..]

Hushmail.com

Encrypt je email en is gevestigd in Canada. Eerste 25MB is gratis.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:29 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:

[..]

Canada is wel een redelijk democratisch land geloof ik, dus is inderdaad ook een idee.

Merci beaucoup pour votre aide, om het maar op z'n 'Canadees' te verwoorden.

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Our offices and our servers where user data is stored are located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and operated by Hush Communications Canada Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Hush Communications Corporation, a private Delaware, USA company.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:28 schreef Motorbass het volgende:

[..]

Hushmail.com

Encrypt je email en is gevestigd in Canada. Eerste 25MB is gratis.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:47 schreef Motorbass het volgende:

[..]

Al lees ik wel het volgende in hun Privacy Policy:

[..]

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:51 schreef raptorix het volgende:

[..]

Helaas is dit niet veilig genoeg, je bent nog steeds afhankelijk van SSL certificaten, wat je wilt is dus end2end encryption, met andere woorden, je wilt de data lokaal kunnen decrypten.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:52 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:

[..]

Ik stel voor een typemachine aan te schaffen en een stel postzegels en de brieven maar weer met de PTT te versturen dan.

De Russische geheime dienst heeft de typemachine ook weer in ere hersteld na de schandalen die Snowden heeft geopenbaard. Internet is eigenlijk ook het paard van Troje.

Best Way to Take Lecture Notes

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:54 schreef Motorbass het volgende:

[..]

Enig idee hoe dit te bereiken valt? Ik ben niet zo bekend op dit gebied.

[..]

Gaan we voortaan zo in de les zitten

Best Way to Take Lecture Notes

quote:

Op maandag 11 november 2013 11:59 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:

[..]

Als de Russische geheime dienst computers niet meer vertrouwt, kan je er gerust van uit gaan dat er een heleboel mis is met die dingen.
Russen zijn bijzonder slimme mensen, hooggeschoold en de geheime Russische dienst bestaat niet uit een stel naďeve lullo's.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 12:02 schreef Motorbass het volgende:

[..]

Het zou mij niet verbazen als de Russische & Chinese geheime diensten een eigen OS gebouwd hebben, aangezien de meeste OS'en Amerikaans zijn. Daarnaast is het nog altijd mogelijk een computer niet aan te sluiten op internet, dus dan ben je alsnog veilig.

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Op maandag 11 november 2013 12:04 schreef Linkse_Boomknuffelaar het volgende:

[..]

Linux is veiliger, maar internet wordt steevast getapt door de Amerikanen. Linux of Windows.

quote:

'Waakhond van de AIVD blijkt een tam schoothondje'

Als de AIVD apparatuur koopt om dingen te doen die bij wet verboden zijn, moet de waakhond daar op aanslaan en gaan blaffen. Niet vergoeilijken en zeggen dat de wet misschien toch wel een keer verruimd gaat worden. Concluderen dat de wetgever binnenkort toch wel nieuwe bevoegdheden aan de AIVD zal geven om het hele internet af te luisteren is drie stappen te ver. De regering heeft nog geen voorstel daartoe gedaan en de Tweede en Eerste Kamer moeten vervolgens hun oordeel ook nog geven. Gezien de jongste onthullingen, staat de uitkomst daarvan allerminst vast.

Met dit interview is Van Delden door de mand gevallen. De waakhond blijkt op schoot te zitten bij de AIVD. Hij gedraagt zich als de woordvoerder in plaats van als toezichthouder. Op dit moment doet Van Delden in opdracht van de Tweede Kamer onderzoek naar de rol die de AIVD heeft in de PRISM-affaire. Begin 2014 wordt zijn rapport gepubliceerd. Daar hoeft de Tweede Kamer weinig van te verwachten.

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Battle brews as tech companies attempt to fend off NSA hacking

quote:

The NSA allegedly gathered millions of records from Google and Yahoo data centers around the world, but soon, the agency might have a much harder time trying to collect this type of data.
Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, and other prominent technology companies are investing heavily in stronger, 2048-bit encryption. Due to computing power constraints, it's expected to be more than a decade before this type of encryption can be easily overcome.

Google, one of the leaders in the effort, announced in May that it would switch over to 2,048-bit encryption keys by the end of 2013. Yahoo recently confirmed to Bloomberg, which spoke with several tech companies that are investing in new encryption, that it will make 2048-bit encryption standard by January 2014 for all its Mail users. Facebook also plans to move to 2048-bit encryption, a spokeswoman told Bloomberg, and will roll out "perfect forward secrecy," a feature that prevents snoopers from accessing user data even if they can access the company's security codes.

quote:

UK's reputation is damaged by reaction to Edward Snowden, says UN official

Special rapporteur on freedom of expression says he is alarmed at political response to revelations of mass surveillance

A senior United Nations official responsible for freedom of expression has warned that the British government's response to the mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is doing serious damage to the UK's international reputation for investigative journalism and press freedom.

Frank La Rue, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said he was alarmed at the political reaction following the revelations about the extent and reach of secret surveillance programmes run by Britain's eavesdropping centre, GCHQ, and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA).

"I have been absolutely shocked about the way the Guardian has been treated, from the idea of prosecution to the fact that some members of parliament even called it treason," said La Rue. "I think that is unacceptable in a democratic society."

La Rue's intervention comes as a delegation of the world's leading editors and publishers prepares for a "press freedom mission" to the UK to raise their own concerns about the British government's position.

Organised by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), the delegation will arrive in January and include publishers and editors from five continents. WAN-IFRA says the mission is the first of its kind to the UK and has been prompted by growing concerns about UK government interference in press regulation and the political pressure on the Guardian. The delegation is expected to meet government and opposition leaders, press industry figures and civil society organisations.

"We are concerned that these actions not only seriously damage the United Kingdom's historic international reputation as a staunch defender of press freedom, but provide encouragement to non-democratic regimes to justify their own repressive actions," said Vincent Peyrčgne, chief executive of the Paris-based WAN-IFRA.

The Guardian, and major media organisations in other countries, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, began disclosing details of the extent and reach of secret surveillance programmes run by GCHQ and the NSA in June.

The articles have sparked a global debate on the scale and oversight of surveillance by the US and UK intelligence agencies. However, in the UK there has been growing political pressure on the Guardian, with calls for it to be prosecuted, a decision to call the editor, Alan Rusbridger, to give evidence to the home affairs select committee and a warning from David Cameron that he would take "tougher measures" against the newspaper unless it demonstrated "some social responsibility".

On Friday the New York Times voiced its concern over the political climate in the UK. In an editorial entitled "British press freedom under threat" it stated: "Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press. That freedom, so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron."

It pointed out that unlike the US, Britain has no constitutional guarantee of press freedom. "Parliamentary committees and the police are now exploiting that lack of protection to harass, intimidate and possibly prosecute the Guardian newspaper for its publication of information based on National Security Agency documents that were leaked by Edward Snowden … The global debate now taking place about intelligence agencies collecting information on the phone calls, emails and internet use of private citizens owes much to the Guardian's intrepid journalism. In a free society, the price for printing uncomfortable truths should not be parliamentary and criminal inquisition."

In an interview with the Guardian La Rue said the political fallout in the UK was unacceptable.

"When you are in public office you understand that the role of the press is to investigate things that are done right or things that are done wrong and make it known to the public. And if you are in office you know that you come under public scrutiny and public scrutiny comes with public criticism and you cannot use national security as an argument and much less challenge as treason something that is informing the public, even if it is embarrassing information for those that are in office."

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Britse geheime dienst bespioneert hotels

De Britse geheime dienst GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) houdt elke dag in de hele wereld reserveringen in hotels in de gaten waar doorgaans veel hoge regeringsfunctionarissen of diplomaten komen. De reserveringssystemen worden bespied met het programma 'Koninklijke Conciërge'. Dit blijkt zondag volgens het Duitse weekblad Der Spiegel uit publicaties van de Amerikaanse 'klokkenluider' Edward Snowden.

Van minstens 350 hotels weet GCHQ wie er wanneer verblijven. Dat kan aanleiding zijn om telefoons of computers in de betreffende hotelkamers af te luisteren of spionnen naar het hotel in kwestie te sturen.

Systeembeheerder Snowden heeft een schat aan vertrouwelijke informatie gestolen bij zijn voormalige werkgever, de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA (National Security Agency). Hij doet sindsdien boekjes open over de omvangrijke en technisch geraffineerde wijze waarop de Amerikaanse en Britse geheime diensten communicatie bespioneren en in kaart brengen.

Diplomatieke rel
De Brits-Amerikaanse spionage leverde een diplomatieke rel op toen uitlekte dat ook regeringsleiders, onder wie de Duitse bondskanselier Angela Merkel, zijn afgeluisterd door de NSA. De Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken John Kerry hoopt die schade snel te repareren.

Volgens Der Spiegel wil Kerry naar Berlijn komen zodra de nieuwe Duitse regering geďnstalleerd is. Hij hoopt een 'renaissance' in de transatlantische betrekkingen te realiseren. President Barack Obama beloofde eerder al dat Merkel niet afgeluisterd wordt of zal worden. Over spionage in het verleden liet hij zich niet uit.

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Grilling of spy chiefs ‘a total pantomime’

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AN UNPRECEDENTED public appearance by UK spy chiefs has been labelled a “total pantomime” after it emerged that they were told of questions in advance.

A private deal was struck with the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to ensure they did not face any surprises when they were grilled before an audience, sources close to Westminster’s secretive intelligence and security committee (ISC) have revealed.

The agreement followed a year of delicate negotiations and was a condition for the three spy bosses to subject themselves to public cross- examination.

The disclosure explains the apparently “soft” line of questioning during the hearing and why there were relatively few revelations. Some MPs on the committee believe the meticulous choreography and scripted questions were a reasonable price for securing cooperation from the three agency's for the 90-minute televised session.

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Yahoo to add encryption to all services in wake of NSA spying revelations

CEO Marissa Mayer moves to calm privacy fears after reports US spy agency gained access to Google and Yahoo data centres

Yahoo will add encryption to all its products by spring 2014, chief Marissa Mayer has announced, in a bid to tackle users’ privacy fears in the wake of reports that the National Security Agency had accessed the tech firm's data centres.

In a blogpost on Monday, Mayer said: “We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it. As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the US government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo.

“I want to reiterate what we have said in the past: Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever. There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy.”

Mayer’s move comes after the Washington Post reported last month that the NSA had broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centres around the world.

According to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials, the NSA, in partnership with its British counterpart GCHQ, has been copying large amounts of data as it flows across fibre-optic cables that carry information between the companies’ worldwide data centres.

After the story broke, Yahoo said government attempts to circumvent its online security systems offered “substantial potential for abuse”. Eric Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman, called the news “really outrageous”.

Yahoo recently announced it was beefing up security on its email service by introducing https (SSL – Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across its network by 8 January 2014.

The company said it would now:

Encrypt all information that moves between its data centers by the end of the first quarter of 2014;

Offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to/from Yahoo by the end of Q1 2014;

Work closely with international partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded mail accounts are https-enabled.

Google too is racing to encrypt its data. Executives at the tech giant refer to an “arms race” with US authorities and others who want unauthorised access to its users’ data. Executives say the company has been improving and extending its encryption of data since the Snowden stories first broke, doubling the length of its digital keys and implementing new measures to detect fraudulent attempts to access its information.

Similar moves to add greater encryption and other security measures are under way at Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. All the tech giants feel that their reputations have been damaged by the Snowden leaks and insist that they never hand over information to the NSA without a legal order.

The tech firms are currently lobbying to be allowed to make more disclosures about the number of NSA orders they receive. Currently those orders are dealt with under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the companies are gagged from disclosing details.

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Surveillance technology out of control, says Lord Ashdown

Former Lib Dem leader says it is time for high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in 21st century

The technology used by Britain's spy agencies to conduct mass surveillance is "out of control", raising fears about the erosion of civil liberties at a time of diminished trust in the intelligence services, according to the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown.

The peer said it was time for a high-level inquiry to address fundamental questions about privacy in the 21st century, and railed against "lazy politicians" who frighten people into thinking "al-Qaida is about to jump out from behind every bush and therefore it is legitimate to forget about civil liberties". "Well it isn't," he added.

Ashdown talks frequently to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and is chair of the the Liberal Democrats' general election team. Though he said he was speaking for himself, his views are understood to be shared by other senior members of the Liberal Democrats in government, who are also keen for some kind of broad inquiry into the subject.

This idea is also supported by Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ. He told the Guardian he was in favour of an inquiry and thought it would be wrong to "dismiss the idea of a royal commission out of hand". It was important to balance the need for the agencies to have powerful capabilities, and the necessity of ensuring they did not use them in a way parliament had not intended, Omand added.

Ashdown is the latest senior politician to demand a review of the powers of Britain's intelligence agencies – GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 – and the laws and oversight which underpin their activities.

In an interview with the Guardian, Ashdown said surveillance should only be conducted against specific targets when there was evidence against them. Dragnet surveillance was unacceptable, he added.

Ashdown made clear revelations in the Guardian about GCHQ and its American counterpart, the National Security Agency, had raised important issues that "could not be ignored or swept aside in a barrage of insults".

He also criticised the Labour party, which was in power when the agencies began testing and building many of their most powerful surveillance capabilities. Labour's former home secretary Jack Straw was responsible for introducing the Regulation of Investigatory Power Act 2000 (Ripa), which made the programmes legal.

"Ripa was a disgraceful piece of legislation," Ashdown said. "Nobody put any thought into it. Labour just took the words they were given by the intelligence agencies. I don't blame the intelligence agencies.

"We charge them with the very serious business of keeping us secure and of course they want to have powers. But it's the duty of government to ensure those powers don't destroy our liberties and Labour utterly failed to do this."

One consequence of Labour's negligence was the development of surveillance techniques that could damage civil liberties and erode privacy, said Ashdown.

He said that he was "frightened by the erosion of our liberties" and while accepting that there was a need to keep the nation safe it was the "habit of politicians who are lazy about the preservation of our liberties or don't mind seeing them destroyed, to play an old game.

"They tell frightened citizens: 'If you give me some of your liberties, I will make you safer'".

Ashdown said that as a young man in 1960s he was taken to a vast Post Office shed in central London where spies were steaming open letters. Recalling being met by "a deep fog of steam" after entering the room, he said that the place was "filled with diligent men and women, each with a boiling kettle on their desk, steaming open letters". It was appropriate for the state to intervene in the private communications of its citizens, but the peer added "only in cases where there is good evidence to believe the nation's security is being threatened, or arguably, when a really serious crime has been committed".

The former party leader said that intercepting communications needed to be "targeted on an individual and not classes of individuals or, as at the moment, the whole nation" and argued that ought to be sanctioned by a third-party, preferably by a judge, or if not a member of the cabinet.

Ashdown said he did not believe Britain's intelligence agencies were out of control, but he said the same was not true of technology.

"We need a proper inquiry to decide what liberties and privacies ought to be accorded in the new interconnected world, and what powers of intrusion ought to be given to the state. The old laws that applied in the age of the steaming kettle will no longer do. The old protections are no longer good enough," he said.

Ashdown said the Guardian's reporting of the NSA files had been "helpful because it had raised this important issue to the point where sensible people understand this inquiry is now necessary".

An inquiry also needed to be set in the context of people's privacy expectations, he added, noting: "People today seem more casual about their privacy than they used to be. They don't seem to mind when their privacy is breached when they use Google, Facebook and other social media."

He added that he hoped this had not "changed the public's attitude towards the state's power to intrude into their privacy" but argued this was the fundamental question that needed to be addressed.

Ashdown said he thought the agencies would welcome an inquiry too, saying that they "recognise the mechanisms are no longer sufficient" and he doubted whether such an exercise would be "inimical to the heads of the secret services".

The Lib Dem also dismissed the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, which is supposed to scrutinise the agencies.

He said that it was an institution "wholly incapable of coping" with the new circumstances.

Although he was careful to be respectful of its Conservative chair, Ashdown argued that "we are no longer in the age when a grandee's emollient words are enough to assure us that our liberties are safe" and concluded that the committee was "past its time".

Ashdown defended the Guardian's reporting of the issues over the last five months, and the paper's right to publish material that it deemed in the public interest.

He said: "I am not going to back every single thing the Guardian has done. But overall, in my view, the Guardian has done a very important in job exposing a really important issue that must now be properly considered."

But he also criticised Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who leaked files to the Guardian, the Washington Post and Der Spiegel.

"When Snowden first broke cover, I had quite a lot of admiration for him. Here was a whistleblower breaking surface on an issue that is certainly important. But I have to say that the way he has behaved since has diminished that admiration enormously. It seems to me this is becoming more about vanity."

Meanwhile, Omand said the ISC had to be given a chance to review the work of the agencies in an inquiry that it announced last month.

"Much now depends first upon the ISC and whether their latest inquiry can rise above the current clamour to a calm and dispassionate examination of the capabilities needed to keep our people safe and secure, and at the same time, how public confidence can be maintained that under no circumstances could these powerful capabilities be used in ways that parliament did not intend."

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Fisa court order that allowed NSA surveillance is revealed for first time

Fisa court judge who authorised massive tapping of metadata was hesitant but felt she could not stand in the way

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A secret court order that authorised a massive trawl by the National Security Agency of Americans' email and internet data was published for the first time on Monday night, among a trove of documents that also revealed a judge's concern that the NSA "continuously" and "systematically" violated the limits placed on the program.

The order by the Fisa court, almost certainly its first ruling on the controversial program and published only in heavily redacted form, shows that it granted permisson for the trawl in part beacause of the type of devices used for the surveillance. Even the judge approving the spying called it a “novel use” of government authorities.

Another later court order found that what it called "systemic overcollection" had taken place.

Transparency lawsuits brought by civil liberties groups compelled the US spy agencies on Monday night to shed new light on the highly controversial program, whose discontinuation in 2011 for unclear reasons was first reported by the Guardian based on leaks by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In a heavily redacted opinion Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the former presiding judge of the Fisa court, placed legal weight on the methods of surveillance employed by the NSA, which had never before collected the internet data of “an enormous volume of communications”.

The methods, known as pen registers and trap-and-trace devices, record the incoming and outgoing routing information of communications – traditionally phone calls made between individual users. Kollar-Kotelly ruled that acquiring the metadata, and not the content, of email and internet usage in bulk was harmonious with the “purpose” of Congress and prior court rulings – even though no surveillance statute ever authorized it and top officials at the justice department and the FBI threatened to resign in 2004 over what they considered its dubious legality.

“The court recognizes that, by concluding that these definitions do not restrict the use of pen registers or trap-and-trace devices to communication facilities associated with individual users, it is finding that these definitions encompass an exceptionally broad form of collection,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly in an opinion whose date is redacted.

The type of data collected under the program included information on the "to", "from" and "bcc" lines of an email rather than the content. According to the government’s declaration to Kollar-Kotelly the NSA would keep the internet metadata “online” and available to analysts to search through for 18 months, after which it would be stored in an “‘offline’ tape system” available to relatively few officials. It would have to be destroyed four and a half years after initial collection.

Metadata, wrote Kollar-Kotelly, enjoyed no protection under the fourth amendment to the US constitution, a precedent established by the supreme court in 1979 in a single case on which the NSA relies currently.

Still, Kollar-Kotelly conceded that she was blessing “a novel use of statutory authorities for pen register/trap and trace surveillance”.

While at times Kollar-Kotelly appeared in her ruling to be hesitant about granting NSA broad authorities to collect Americans’ internet metadata, “deference”, she wrote, “should be given to the fully considered judgment of the executive branch in assessing and responding to national security threats and in determining the potential significance of intelligence-related information.”

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Repeated attacks hijack huge chunks of Internet traffic, researchers warn

Huge chunks of Internet traffic belonging to financial institutions, government agencies, and network service providers have repeatedly been diverted to distant locations under unexplained circumstances that are stoking suspicions the traffic may be surreptitiously monitored or modified before being passed along to its final destination.

Researchers from network intelligence firm Renesys made that sobering assessment in a blog post published Tuesday. Since February, they have observed 38 distinct events in which large blocks of traffic have been improperly redirected to routers at Belarusian or Icelandic service providers. The hacks, which exploit implicit trust placed in the border gateway protocol used to exchange data between large service providers, affected "major financial institutions, governments, and network service providers" in the US, South Korea, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Libya, and Iran.

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Exclusive: Inside America's Plan to Kill Online Privacy Rights Everywhere

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

The diplomatic battle is playing out in an obscure U.N. General Assembly committee that is considering a proposal by Brazil and Germany to place constraints on unchecked internet surveillance by the National Security Agency and other foreign intelligence services. American representatives have made it clear that they won't tolerate such checks on their global surveillance network. The stakes are high, particularly in Washington -- which is seeking to contain an international backlash against NSA spying -- and in Brasilia, where Brazilian President Dilma Roussef is personally involved in monitoring the U.N. negotiations.

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Meet the Spies Doing the NSA's Dirty Work

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When the media and members of Congress say the NSA spies on Americans, what they really mean is that the FBI helps the NSA do it, providing a technical and legal infrastructure that permits the NSA, which by law collects foreign intelligence, to operate on U.S. soil. It's the FBI, a domestic U.S. law enforcement agency, that collects digital information from at least nine American technology companies as part of the NSA's Prism system. It was the FBI that petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to order Verizon Business Network Services, one of the United States' biggest telecom carriers for corporations, to hand over the call records of millions of its customers to the NSA.