Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 7

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'NSA imiteert websites om malware te installeren'

De NSA blijkt in staat internetverkeer te injecteren met kwaadaardige software tijdens het surfen. Met mobiele kits zijn draadloze systemen tot op acht kilometer afstand aan te vallen. Ook blijkt de geheime dienst grote hoeveelheden hardware te infecteren.

Foto: AFP

Dat stelt beveiligingsonderzoeker Jacob Appelbaum maandag tijdens een presentatie op het 30C3-congres in Hamburg en in Der Spiegel.

Hij baseert zich op geheime documenten van de NSA, die afkomstig zijn van klokkenluider Edward Snowden.

De documenten beschrijven de systemen en apparatuur die de NSA inzet om internetverkeer in de gaten te houden en te beïnvloeden.

Infecteren

Via het een systeem met de naam Turmoil is het mogelijk om het internetverkeer van mensen te monitoren tijdens het surfen. Via het Turbine-systeem wordt een bezochte website vervolgens 'nagemaakt'. Via de nepversie van de site kan malware worden geserveerd of kan het gedrag van gebruikers worden bijgehouden.

Onder meer de site van Yahoo zou door de NSA worden gebruikt om gebruikers te treffen. "Om dit te kunnen doen moet je Yahoo kunnen nadoen. Dat is een belangrijk detail", stelt Appelbaum.

De NSA kan dit niet alleen op bekabelde netwerken, maar ook op draadloze netwerken. Daarvoor heeft de dienst mobiele sets, die netwerken tot op acht kilometer afstand kunnen aanvallen. "Wat je hier hebt is een systeem om sleepnetsurveillance uit te voeren", stelt Applebaum.

Anonimiteit opheffen

Via de in de documenten beschreven systemen FoxAcid en Quantum Copper is het mogelijk om internetverbindingen zo te resetten dat het feitelijk onmogelijk wordt om anonieme verbindingen op te zetten. Een ander systeem met de naam Quantum Insert maakt het mogelijk verbindingen te verstoren.

Uit de documenten blijkt dat de NSA verschillende netwerkkaarten kan gebruiken om gegevens te injecteren. Zo blijken chips van Dell – al dan niet abusievelijk – daarvoor geschikt te zijn. "Alles waarvan de Amerikaanse overheid zegt dat de Chinezen het doen, blijkt ze zelf ook te doen", stelt Appelbaum.

Mobiele telefoons

Om mobiele telefoons te vinden en af te luisteren gebruikt de NSA een zogenoemde Typhon Hx BSR .

Uit documenten blijkt ook dat er malware voor grote hoeveelheden hardware van computers en mobiele telefoons is ontwikkeld. Zo staat in de documenten expliciet dat alle iOS-apparaten kunnen worden geïnfecteerd met malware.

Daarnaast blijken ook harde schijven te infecteren. "Het maakt dus niet uit hoe vaak je een harde schijf opnieuw formatteert. De malware functioneert", stelt Appelbaum. Daarnaast wijst hij ook op de mogelijkheid om kwaadaardige software op SIM-kaarten te installeren.

Verder is het volgens Appelbaum mogelijk om beeldschermen op afstand af te lezen met straalverbindingen.

Sms

De malware op mobiele telefoons kan worden geactiveerd met een sms-bericht. "Als je alleen een sms nodig hebt, dan kunnen anderen dit ook ontdekken en misbruiken", vreest Appelbaum.

Hij vertelt dat hij bij een bezoek aan Julian Assange verschillende malen een Oegandees welkomstbericht op zijn telefoon kreeg. Volgens hem wijst dit erop dat surveillanceapparatuur eerder in dat land is ingezet, en vervolgens niet goed is geconfigureerd voor gebruik in Londen.

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Op maandag 30 december 2013 16:37 schreef polderturk het volgende:
Heeft de VS al acties ondernomen om het massaal bespioneren te verminderen?

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Op maandag 30 december 2013 17:11 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Daar hoor je niks over. Ik geloof niets dat er ook maar 1 server is uitgezet of wetten aangepast. En trouwens, worden er wat wetten aangepast, dan gaat alles achter gesloten deuren onverminderd verder. Als je het niet weet kun je er ook niets tegen beginnen.

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Op maandag 30 december 2013 17:15 schreef polderturk het volgende:

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Er moeten in ieder geval maatregelen genomen worden om het internetverkeer beter te beveiligen of versleutelen.

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Op maandag 30 december 2013 17:11 schreef gebrokenglas het volgende:

[..]

Daar hoor je niks over. Ik geloof niets dat er ook maar 1 server is uitgezet of wetten aangepast. En trouwens, worden er wat wetten aangepast, dan gaat alles achter gesloten deuren onverminderd verder. Als je het niet weet kun je er ook niets tegen beginnen.

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Op maandag 30 december 2013 16:37 schreef polderturk het volgende:
Heeft de VS al acties ondernomen om het massaal bespioneren te verminderen?

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Noam Chomsky, the Salon interview: Governments are power systems, trying to sustain power

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Exclusive: The polymath looks back with Salon on this year's NSA revelations and ahead to the earth's destruction

In his 85th year, political theorist and linguist Noam Chomsky remains a fiercely busy polymath and dedicated activist. Indeed, his schedule is so demanding, our interview had to be booked a good number of weeks in advance and my time on the phone with the MIT professor was sandwiched between another press interview and another one of his many commitments.

Happily, though, speaking with Chomsky in late December gave occasion to look back on this year — a year of revelation and obfuscation regarding U.S. government activity.

Chomsky told Salon about his thoughts on the slew of NSA leaks, the future of the media, the neo-liberalization of the education system and the principle operations of governments. And, of course, the earth hurtling towards its own demise.

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The New York Times en The Guardian pleiten voor clementie Snowden

De redacties van The New York Times en The Guardian dringen er bij de Amerikaanse president Barack Obama op aan om Edward Snowden te behandelen als een klokkenluider en hem clementie te verlenen.

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If Snowden Returned to US For Trial, All Whistleblower Evidence Would Likely Be Inadmissible

There seems to be a new talking point from government officials since a federal judge ruled NSA surveillance is likely unconstitutional last week: if Edward Snowden thinks he's a whistleblower, he should come back and stand trial.

National Security Advisor Susan Rice said on 60 Minutes Sunday, We believe he should come back, he should be sent back, and he should have his day in court. Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell made similar statements this weekend, as did Rep. Mike Rogers (while also making outright false claims about Snowden at the same time). Even NSA reform advocate Sen. Mark Udall said, "He ought to stand on his own two feet. He ought to make his case. Come home, make the case that somehow there was a higher purpose here.

These statements belie a fundamental misunderstanding about how Espionage Act prosecutions work.

If Edward Snowden comes back to the US to face trial, he likely will not be able to tell a jury why he did what he did, and what happened because of his actions. Contrary to common sense, there is no public interest exception to the Espionage Act. Prosecutors in recent cases have convinced courts that the intent of the leaker, the value of leaks to the public, and the lack of harm caused by the leaks are irrelevantand are therefore inadmissible in court.

This is why rarely, if ever, whistleblowers go to trial when theyre charged under the Espionage Act, and why the lawa relic from World War Iis so pernicious. John Kiriakou, the former CIA officer who was the first to go on-the-record with the media about waterboarding, pled guilty in his Espionage Act case last year partially because a judge ruled he couldnt tell the jury about his lack of intent to harm the United States.

In the ongoing leak trial of former State Department official Stephen Kim, the judge recently ruled that the prosecution need not show that the information he allegedly leaked could damage U.S. national security or benefit a foreign power, even potentially. (emphasis added)

In the Espionage Act case against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake (which later fell apart), the government filed two separate motions to make sure the words "whistleblowing" or "overclassification" would never be uttered at trial.

The same scenario just played out in the Chelsea Manning trial this summer. Manning's defense wanted to argue she intended to inform the public, that the military was afflicted with a deep and unnecessary addiction to overclassification, and that the governments own internal assessments showed she caused no real damage to U.S. interests. All this information was ruled inadmissible until sentencing. Manning was sentenced to thirty-five years in jaillonger than most actual spies under the Espionage Act.

If the same holds true in Snowdens case, the administration will be able to exclude almost all knowledge beneficial to his case from a jury until hes already been found guilty of felonies that will have him facing decades, if not life, in jail.

This would mean Snowden could not be able to tell the jury that his intent was to inform the American public about the governments secret interpretations of laws used to justify spying on millions of citizens without their knowledge, as opposed to selling secrets to hostile countries for their advantage.

If the prosecution had their way, Snowden would also not be able to explain to a jury that his leaks sparked more than two dozen bills in Congress, and half a dozen lawsuits, all designed to rein in unconstitutional surveillance. He wouldnt be allowed to explain how his leaks caught an official lying to Congress, that theyve led to a White House review panel recommending forty-six reforms for US intelligence agencies, or that they've led to an unprecedented review of government secrecy. He wouldn't be able to talk about the sea change in the public's perception of privacy since his leaks, or the fact that a majority of the public considers him a whistleblower.

He might not even be able to bring up the fact that a US judge ruled that surveillance he exposed was ruled to likely be unconstitutional.

The jury would also not be able to hear how theres been no demonstrable harm to the United States since much of this information has been published. And if the prosecution was able to prove there was some harm to the US, Snowden wouldnt be able to explain that the enormous public benefits of these disclosures far outweighed any perceived harm.

Every American should be outraged that leakers and whistleblowers are being prosecuted under an espionage statute without ever having to show they meant to harm the U.S. or that any harm actually occurred. Given there are two dozen bills calling for the reform of the NSA in the wake of Snowden's revelations, there should also be reform of the Espionage Act, so it cannot be used by the government as a sword to protect itself from accountability.

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Op woensdag 1 januari 2014 00:17 schreef polderturk het volgende:
Brazilie heeft al maatregelen genomen. Zo willen ze een eigen lijn leggen glasvezel lijn naar Europa waardoor het Braziliaanse internetverkeer met Europa niet door de VS en Groot Brittanie hoeft te gaan. Europa moet deze lijn maar samen met Brazilie gaan aanleggen. Ook heeft Brazilie een wet aangenomen die google en Facebook en andere Amerikaanse bedrijven verplicht de servers in Brazilie te plaatsen, waardoor ze aan de Braziliaanse wetten moeten voldoen. Europa moet ook zulke maatregelen nemen. Van onze eigen Nederlandse regering hoeven we niets te verwachten aangezien VVD'ers de grootste kontenlikkers zijn van de Amerikanen.

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Op woensdag 1 januari 2014 00:17 schreef polderturk het volgende:
Brazilie heeft al maatregelen genomen. Zo willen ze een eigen lijn leggen glasvezel lijn naar Europa waardoor het Braziliaanse internetverkeer met Europa niet door de VS en Groot Brittanie hoeft te gaan. Europa moet deze lijn maar samen met Brazilie gaan aanleggen. Ook heeft Brazilie een wet aangenomen die google en Facebook en andere Amerikaanse bedrijven verplicht de servers in Brazilie te plaatsen, waardoor ze aan de Braziliaanse wetten moeten voldoen. Europa moet ook zulke maatregelen nemen. Van onze eigen Nederlandse regering hoeven we niets te verwachten aangezien VVD'ers de grootste kontenlikkers zijn van de Amerikanen.

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NSA Insiders Reveal What Went Wrong

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In a memo to President Obama, former National Security Agency insiders explain how NSA leaders botched intelligence collection and analysis before 9/11, covered up the mistakes, and violated the constitutional rights of the American people, all while wasting billions of dollars and misleading the public.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Official Washington from Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein to NSA Director Keith Alexander to former Vice President Dick Cheney to former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been speaking from the same set of NSA talking points acquired recently via a Freedom of Information request. It is an artful list, much of it designed to mislead. Take this one, for example:

NSA AND ITS PARTNERS MUST MAKE SURE WE CONNECT THE DOTS SO THAT THE NATION IS NEVER ATTACKED AGAIN LIKE IT WAS ON 9/11

At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 2, Senator Feinstein showed her hand when she said: I will do everything I can to prevent this [NSAs bulk] program from being canceled. Declaring that 9/11 can never be allowed to happen in the United States of America again, Feinstein claimed that intelligence officials did not have enough information to prevent the terrorist attacks.

Mr. President, we trust you are aware that the lack-of-enough-intelligence argument is dead wrong. Feinsteins next dubious premise that bulk collection is needed to prevent another 9/11 is unproven and highly unlikely (not to mention its implications for the privacy protections of the Fourth Amendment).

Given the closed circle surrounding you, we are allowing for the possibility that the smell from these rotting red herrings has not yet reached you even though your own Review Group has found, for example, that NSAs bulk collection has thwarted exactly zero terrorist plots.

The sadder reality, Mr. President, is that NSA itself had enough information to prevent 9/11, but chose to sit on it rather than share it with the FBI or CIA. We know; we were there. We were witness to the many bureaucratic indignities that made NSA at least as culpable for pre-9/11 failures as are other U.S. intelligence agencies.

We prepared this Memorandum in an effort to ensure that you have a fuller picture as you grapple with what to do about NSA. What follows is just the tip of an iceberg of essential background information much of it hidden until now that goes to the core of serious issues now front and center.

The drafting process sparked lively discussion of the relative merits of your Review Groups recommendations. We have developed very specific comments on those recommendations. We look forward to an opportunity to bring them to your attention.

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NSA and GCHQ activities appear illegal, says EU parliamentary inquiry

Civil liberties committee report demands end to indiscriminate collection of personal data by British and US agencies

Mass surveillance programmes used by the US and Britain to spy on people in Europe have been condemned in the "strongest possible terms" by the first parliamentary inquiry into the disclosures, which has demanded an end to the vast, systematic and indiscriminate collection of personal data by intelligence agencies.

The inquiry by the European parliament's civil liberties committee says the activities of America's National Security Agency (NSA) and its British counterpart, GCHQ, appear to be illegal and that their operations have "profoundly shaken" the trust between countries that considered themselves allies.

The 51-page draft report, obtained by the Guardian, was discussed by the committee on Thursday. Claude Moraes, the rapporteur asked to assess the impact of revelations made by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, lsocondemns the "chilling" way journalists working on the stories have been intimidated by state authorities.

Though Snowden is still in Russia, MEPs are expected to take evidence from him via video-link in the coming weeks, as the European parliament continues to assess the damage from the disclosures. Committee MEPs voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to have Snowden testify, defying warnings from key US congressmen that giving the "felon" a public platform would wreck the European parliament's reputation and hamper co-operation with Washington.

While 36 committee members voted to hear Snowden, only two, both British Conservatives, voted against. "Snowden has endangered lives. Inviting him at all is a highly irresponsible act by an inquiry that has had little interest in finding out facts and ensuring a balanced approach to this delicate issue," said Timothy Kirkhope, a Tory MEP. "At least if Snowden wants to give evidence, he will now have to come out of the shadows and risk his location being discovered."

The Lib Dem MEP Sarah Ludford denounced the Conservative position. "To ignore [Snowden] is absurd. The issue of whether the intelligence services are out of control merits serious examination in Europe as in the US. The Tories' ostrich-like denial is completely out of step with mainstream opinion in both continents, including Republicans in the US and Merkel's centre-right party in Germany. But their line is consistent with the obdurate refusal of Conservatives at Westminster to clarify and strengthen safeguards on snooping by GCHQ."

The draft by Moraes, a Labour MEP, describes some of the programmes revealed by Snowden over the past seven months – including Prism, run by the NSA, and Tempora, which is operated by GCHQ.The former allows the NSA to conduct mass surveillance on EU citizens through the servers of US internet companies. The latter sucks up vast amounts of information from the cables that carry internet traffic in and out of the UK.

he report says western intelligence agencies have been involved in spying on "an unprecedented scale and in an indiscriminate and non-suspicion-based manner". It is "very doubtful" that the collection of so much information is only guided by the fight against terrorism, the draft says, questioning the "legality, necessity and proportionality of the programmes".

The report also:

• Calls on the US authorities and EU states to prohibit blanket mass surveillance activities and bulk processing of personal data.

• Deplores the way intelligence agencies "have declined to co-operate with the inquiry the European parliament has been conducting on behalf of citizens".

• Insists mass surveillance has potentially severe effects on the freedom of the press, as well as a significant potential for abuse of information gathered against political opponents.

• Demands that the UK, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands revise laws governing the activities of intelligence services to ensure they are in line with the European convention on human rights.

• Calls on the US to revise its own laws to bring them into line with international law, so they "recognise the privacy and other rights of EU citizens".

The draft, still to be voted on by the chamber, has no legal force and does not compel further action, but adds to the growing body of criticism and outrage at the perceived intelligence abuses.

Separately, the European parliament has drafted new legislation curbing the transfer of private data to third countries outside the EU and setting stiff conditions for the information transfers.

But hopes of getting the new rules into force before elections for the parliament in May are fading because of resistance from the UK and EU governments. "This is a tough issue, even thorny," Greece's justice minister, Charalampos Athanasiou, told the Guardian. Greece took over the running of the EU for six months this week. "There are different views in the member states. I can't be sure about being successful."

Moraes condemns the way the Guardian was forced to destroy the Snowden files it had in London, and says the detention at Heathrow of David Miranda, the partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, constituted an interference with the right of freedom of expression under article 10 of the European convention on human rights.The report is also highly critical of the data exchange scheme Safe Harbor, which allow swaps of commercial information between US and European companies. The draft also questioned the Swift scheme supplying European financial transactions information to the Americans to try to block terrorist funding and the supply of information on transatlantic air passengers.

The European commissioner Viviane Reding says the Safe Harbor scheme is flawed and may need to be frozen.

She wants to make it harder for the big US internet servers and social media providers to transfer European data to third countries. She also wants to subject the firms to EU law rather than secret American court orders.

The Moraes report says the web companies taking part in Safe Harbor have "admitted that they do not encrypt information and communications flowing between their data centres, thereby enabling intelligence services to intercept information".

He calls for the suspension of information sharing until companies can show they have taken the all necessary steps to protect privacy.

The report calls on the European commission to present by this time next year an EU strategy for democratic governance of the internet, and warns there is currently "no guarantee, either for EU public institutions or for citizens, that their IT security or privacy can be protected from intrusion by well-equipped third countries or EU intelligence agencies".

It adds: "Recent revelations in the press by whistleblowers and journalists, together with the expert evidence given during this inquiry, have resulted in compelling evidence of the existence of far-reaching, complex and highly technologically advanced systems designed by US and some member states' intelligence services, to collect, store and analyse communication and metadata of all citizens around the world on an unprecedented scale and in an indiscriminate and non-suspicion-based manner."

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How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet

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Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the other tech titans have had to fight for their lives against their own government. An exclusive look inside their year from hell—and why the Internet will never be the same.

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Op vrijdag 10 januari 2014 20:17 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

https://thedaywefightback.org/

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Dianne Feinstein Admits That Her 'NSA Reform' Bill Is About Protecting Existing Surveillance Programs

See, there's a problem when you lie: you always forget how to keep your story straight. You may remember, for example, that Senator Dianne Feinstein, at the end of October, released a bill that pretended to be about reforming the NSA and its surveillance programs. The bill was spun in a way that was designed to make people think it was creating real reforms, with a fact sheet claiming that it "prohibited" certain actions around bulk data collection, but which actually codified them in the law, by including massive loopholes. It was an incredibly cynical move by Feinstein and her staff, pretending that their bill to actually give the NSA even greater power and to legalize its abuses, was about scaling back the NSA. But that's the spin they put on it -- which almost no one bought.

But, it seems that even Feinstein has forgotten that her bill is supposed to pretend that it's about reining in the NSA. On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee met with the White House's task force, to discuss its recommendations for surveillance reform (which don't go far enough, but go way beyond what Feinstein wants). In discussing what happened in the meeting, Feinstein basically lets slip that she disagrees with the reforms suggested, and that support for her bill means that others are against reform as well:

. Those recommendations were criticized by supporters of the NSA’s programs, including Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has said that taking the information out of the government’s hands could put the country at risk. Feinstein has spoken out against proposed reforms that would require as much, and has sponsored her own committee bill that would preserve the agency’s methods.

“Our bill passed by 11-4, so you know there’s substantial support for the programs,” she said.

In other words, "my bill is for people who already support these programs." Exactly the opposite of what her marketing and public statements about the bill have been. Oops. Next time, she should try to not misrepresent her own bill, and maybe she can keep her story straight.

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Out in the Open: An NSA-Proof Twitter, Built With Code From Bitcoin and BitTorrent

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His alternative is called Twister. It’s a decentralized social network that, in theory, can’t be shut down by any one entity. What’s more, Twister is designed to prevent other users from knowing whether you’re online, what your IP address is, or who you follow. You can still post public messages a la Twitter, but when you send direct and private messages to others, they’re protected with the same encryption scheme used by LavaBit, the e-mail provider used by Edward Snowdan.