Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 7

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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 m², 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

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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.

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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."

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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 Peña Nieto and others around him in the summer of 2012. Peña 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 Peña 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 Peña Nieto, designated successor to Felipe Calderón.

Spying on Peña Nieto

In his campaign appearances, Peña 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, Peña 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 Peña 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 Peña 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 Peña 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 Peña 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, Peña 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 Peña 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. .