Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 8

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Canadian Gov't Responds To Spying Revelations By Saying It's All A Lie And Calling Glenn Greenwald A 'Porn Spy'

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We've seen various government officials act in all sorts of bizarre ways after revelations of illegal spying on their own people (and foreigners), but none may be quite as bizarre as the response from the Canadian government, following the release late last night from the CBC (with help from Glenn Greenwald) that they're spying on public WiFi connections. That report had plenty of detail, including an internal presentation from the Canadian electronic spying agency, CSEC. In the Canadian Parliament today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra, decided to respond to all of this by by insisting it's all a lie and then flat out insulting both the CBC and Glenn Greenwald.

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If you can't watch the video, here's what he says:

Mr. Speaker, last night the CBC aired a misleading report on Canada's signals intelligence agency, Communications Security Establishment Canada. These documents were stolen by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden and sold to the CBC by Glenn Greenwald. Canada's signals intelligence agency has been clear that the CBC story is incorrect, yet the CBC went ahead and published it anyway.

Here are the facts: Before the story aired, CSEC made clear that nothing in the stolen documents showed that Canadians' communications were targeted, collected, or used, nor that travellers' movements were tracked.

In addition, CSEC's activities are regularly reviewed by an independent watchdog who has consistently found it has followed the law.

Why is furthering porn-spy Glenn Greenwald's agenda and lining his Brazilian bank account more important than maintaining the public broadcaster's journalistic integrity?

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Senior US congressman Mike Rogers: Glenn Greenwald 'a thief'

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Congressman Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, suggested Greenwald was a “thief” after he worked with news organizations who paid for stories based on the documents.

“For personal gain, he’s now selling his access to information, that’s how they’re terming it … A thief selling stolen material is a thief,” Politico quoted Rogers as saying after a committee hearing on Tuesday. Rogers said his source for the information was “other nations' press services”.

Greenwald said that the claim was foolish, unfounded, and designed to intimidate journalists. “The main value in bandying about theories of prosecuting journalists is the hope that it will bolster the climate of fear for journalism,” he tweeted Tuesday.

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Read the Snowden Documents From the NSA
Here Uppdrag granskning [Mission: Investigation] the documents leaked by Edwards Snowden and retrieved from Glenn Greenwald that are the basis for the report about Sweden's collaboration with the NSA and the GCHQ.

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In an internal, top-secret document dated 18 April this year, the NSA summarises its relations with Sweden. The document states that since 1954 Sweden has been a part of an intelligence collaboration with what is often called “The Five Eyes”, UKUSA, which refers to the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. This is despite the fact that Sweden was officially neutral, an image that has been maintained outwardly for decades by multiple governments of different political persuasions. The document also states that the UKUSA contract was discontinued in 2004 and replaced with bilateral agreements for signals intelligence and wiretapping. As of 2011, the Swedish FRA provides its American partner with extensive access to data from its cable collection.

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NSA spying has triggered a crazy chain reaction of countermeasures

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Countries ranging from France to Finland have started responding to NSA revelations in different ways, ranging from new fiber optic cables to government-backed industrial espionage. By 2015, some European countries will start implementing surveillance programs that go even beyond the NSA — and are explicitly meant to protect not only national security, but also economic interests.

Last week, Europe was rocked by the claim that Sweden has been one of the key allies of NSA in a global surveillance program. Sweden may have tapped into the undersea fiber optic cables running under the Baltic sea to deliver massive amounts of intel about countries across Nordic and Baltic regions. According to Wikileaks, Finland has now committed to building a new fiber optic cable to Germany specifically to prevent Sweden from intercepting data and passing it on to NSA. The project is run by Governia, a state-owned company.

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Op dinsdag 4 februari 2014 23:51 schreef polderturk het volgende:

[..]

Wat een hypocrisie. En de NSA is geen dief? De NSA steelt geen informatie van honderden miljoenen mensen?

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Nederland en niet VS tapte 1,8 miljoen telefoontjes

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Minister Plasterk van Binnenlandse Zaken en minister Hennis-Plasschaert van Defensie schrijven nu dat Nederland die informatie zelf onderschepte en vervolgens deelde met de NSA. Het kabinet maakt daarmee een flinke draai. In oktober meldde Plasterk nog dat het kabinet zich ervan bewust is dat de NSA telefoongesprekken kan aftappen en dat er met de Amerikanen over de kwestie gesproken werd.

Volgens de ministers betreft het 'uitdrukkelijk data verzameld
in het kader van de wettelijke taakuitoefening'. Het delen van de informatie is volgens Plasterk en Hennis op rechtmatige wijze gebeurd in het kader van terrorismebestrijding en militaire operaties in het buitenland.

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War on Anonymous: British Spies Attacked Hackers, Snowden Docs Show

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A secret British spy unit created to mount cyber attacks on Britain’s enemies has waged war on the hacktivists of Anonymous and LulzSec, according to documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and obtained by NBC News.

The blunt instrument the spy unit used to target hackers, however, also interrupted the web communications of political dissidents who did not engage in any illegal hacking. It may also have shut down websites with no connection to Anonymous.

According to the documents, a division of Government Communications Headquarters Communications (GCHQ), the British counterpart of the NSA, shut down communications among Anonymous hacktivists by launching a “denial of service” (DDOS) attack – the same technique hackers use to take down bank, retail and government websites – making the British government the first Western government known to have conducted such an attack.

The documents, from a PowerPoint presentation prepared for a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, show that the unit known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, or JTRIG, boasted of using the DDOS attack – which it dubbed Rolling Thunder -- and other techniques to scare away 80 percent of the users of Anonymous internet chat rooms.

The existence of JTRIG has never been previously disclosed publicly.

The documents also show that JTRIG infiltrated chat rooms known as IRCs and identified individual hackers who had taken confidential information from websites. In one case JTRIG helped send a hacktivist to prison for stealing data from PayPal, and in another it helped identify hacktivists who attacked government websites.

In connection with this report, NBC is publishing documents that Edward Snowden took from the NSA before fleeing the U.S. The documents are being published with minimal redactions.

Intelligence sources familiar with the operation say that the British directed the DDOS attack against IRC chat rooms where they believed criminal hackers were concentrated. Other intelligence sources also noted that in 2011, authorities were alarmed by a rash of attacks on government and corporate websites and were scrambling for means to respond.

“While there must of course be limitations,” said Michael Leiter, the former head of the U.S. government’s National Counterterrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst, “law enforcement and intelligence officials must be able to pursue individuals who are going far beyond speech and into the realm of breaking the law: defacing and stealing private property that happens to be online.”

“No one should be targeted for speech or thoughts, but there is no reason law enforcement officials should unilaterally declare law breakers safe in the online environment,” said Leiter.

But critics charge the British government with overkill, noting that many of the individuals targeted were teenagers, and that the agency’s assault on communications among hacktivists means the agency infringed the free speech of people never charged with any crime.

“Targeting Anonymous and hacktivists amounts to targeting citizens for expressing their political beliefs,” said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropology professor at McGill University and author of an upcoming book about Anonymous. “Some have rallied around the name to engage in digital civil disobedience, but nothing remotely resembling terrorism. The majority of those embrace the idea primarily for ordinary political expression.” Coleman estimated that the number of “Anons” engaged in illegal activity was in the dozens, out of a community of thousands.

twitter:

ggreenwald twitterde op woensdag 05-02-2014 om 13:40:01 Is NBC News now one of Snowden's criminal "accomplices"? Are they criminally buying stolen property? Speak up, James Clapper & Mike Rogers. reageer retweet

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Snowden Still Outwitting U.S. Spies

Sometimes, the three hardest words to say in the English language are: “I don’t know.” For the U.S. intelligence community, those words could be very useful when it comes to Edward Snowden, the NSA-contractor-turned-leaker. Because when it comes to Snowden, the spooks know precious little—despite the over-sized claims made in Congress, allegedly on the spies’ behalf.

Last month, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) completed a classified assessment of the damage caused by Snowden’s breach and began briefing the findings to Congress. The report is now driving a new round of claims by senior U.S. officials and members of Congress about what has been called the worst leak in U.S. history.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said a week ago that Snowden’s activities have placed the lives of intelligence officers and assets at risk. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said if one were to stack the documents stolen by Snowden it would be three miles high. On Wednesday, Rep. Mac Thornberry, the Texas Republican who is next in line to be the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the damage done by Snowden “will certainly cost billions to repair.”

But the DIA assessment is based on two important assumptions. First, it assumes that Snowden’s master file includes data from every network he ever scanned. Second, it assumes that this file is already in or will end up in the hands of America’s adversaries. If these assumptions turn out to be true, then the alarm raised in the last week will be warranted. The key word here is “if.”

What the DIA actually knows, according to U.S. officials briefed on its report, is that Snowden fabricated the digital keys—essentially assuming the identity—of multiple senior intelligence officials to gain access to classified intelligence systems well outside of the NSA like the military’s top secret Joint World-Wide Intelligence Communications System. One U.S. intelligence official briefed on the report said the DIA concluded that Snowden visited classified facilities outside the NSA station where he worked in Hawaii while he was downloading the documents he would eventually leak to journalists Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman. On Tuesday, Clapper himself estimated that less than 10 percent of the documents Snowden took were from the NSA. The implication was that the other 90 percent were from other spy agencies, and from the American military.

Those findings are important. But they do not necessarily mean the sky is falling. The DIA’s assessment assumed that every classified system Snowden visited was sucked dry of its data and placed in a file. DIA director Gen. Michael Flynn put it this way on Tuesday in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: “We assume that Snowden, everything that he touched, we assume that he took, stole.”

The U.S. intelligence official briefed on the report said the DIA was able to retrace the steps Snowden took inside the military’s classified systems to find every site where he rummaged around. “Snowden had a very limited amount of time before he would be detected when he did this, so we assume he zipped up the files and left,” this official said.

Bruce Schneier, a cybersecurity expert and cryptographer who Greenwald has consulted on the Snowden archive, said it was prudent to assume that lest some of Snowden’s documents could wind up in the hands of a foreign government.

The easiest way, he added, would be to go after the journalists who received Snowden’s leaks. “If anybody wants the documents, they go after Greenwald, (Laura Poitras) or Gellman.”

But he also said that this file would likely be encrypted—and that encryption today is powerful enough to be essentially unbreakable. So intelligence services may have the documents without being able to read them.

And those journalists might only have a fraction of what Snowden took. In statements and interviews, Snowden himself has been tight-lipped about any kind of master file that may exist containing everything he took from the U.S. intelligence community. In June, Greenwald told the Daily Beast that he did not know whether or not Snowden had additional documents beyond the ones he gave him. “I believe he does. He was clear he did not want to give to journalists things he did not think should be published.”

Snowden, however, has implied that he does not have control over the files he took. “No intelligence service—not even our own—has the capacity to compromise the secrets I continue to protect,” he wrote in July in a letter to former New Hampshire Republican senator Gordon Humphrey. “While it has not been reported in the media, one of my specializations was to teach our people at DIA how to keep such information from being compromised even in the highest threat counter-intelligence environments (i.e. China). You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture.”

Some allies of Snowden have speculated that any kind of master file of Snowden documents could only be accessed through a pass code or cryptographic key broken out into pieces controlled by several people in multiple jurisdictions throughout the world. That way. No one government could force a single person to give up access to Snowden’s motherlode.

But these kinds of security measures are not comforting to others. Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence told two reporters Tuesday that Snowden would be foolish to think he could outsmart Russia’s intelligence agencies.

“If he really believes he has created something the Russian intelligence services can’t get through, then he is more naïve than I think he already is,” Rogers said. “That makes a huge leap of assumption that a guy by the way who has not been quite honest about how he got where he was and what he stole and for what purpose to believe the fact that no one can get to this but me. I don’t believe it.”

In an email to the Daily Beast, Gellman said he was taking many precautions to protect the Snowden archives. “I assume that I am more interesting than I used to be to foreign intelligence services,” he said. “I’m well aware of my responsibility to protect the Snowden archive. The Post and I have taken very considerable measures to secure the material physically and electronically, with the benefit of top-flight expert advice. That’s all I want to say about it.”

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IRC network calls for investigations over GCHQ's attack on Anonymous

QuakeNet calls the GCHQ's actions grossly hypocritical...

QuakeNet, one of the oldest IRC networks on the Web, has condemned Britain's GCHQ for their hypocrisy - after it was revealed the agency launched DDoS attacks against IRC servers used by supporters of Anonymous.

The story broke on Wednesday. NBC News reported that the GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) bragged about using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, during an operation called Rolling Thunder. These attacks were part of a campaign targeting supporters of Anonymous, outlined during a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV.

During their presentation, JTRIG says they scared away 80 percent of the server's users. In addition, NBC News also reported that JTRIG visited chat rooms on AnonOps (one of the Anonymous IRC servers) and interacted with users, sometimes spreading malware, in order to collect additional intelligence. Such intelligence led to at least one prison sentence, and additional identification of potential suspects.

As I wrote in my previous post, what the GCHQ did was reprehensible. They've broken their own nation's laws, in order to target people gathered in a single location to express themselves and communicate their thoughts. Adding insult to injury, they gave themselves immunity, so no one will be facing any legal problems because of this.

Yet, as of today, anyone in the U.K. (or U.S. for that matter), who encourages, assists with, or conducts a DDoS attack, for any reason, will face up to 10 years in prison and heavy fines. It's complete hypocrisy.

DDoS is disruptive. In addition to recovery and mitigation costs, even if those costs are just personal time lost due to the act, there's collateral damage to consider. When a server is attacked, and it crashes, everything hosted on it goes down too.

In the case of the GCHQ's attack, not only did the Anonymous IRC server go offline, but websites hosted on the same server went offline as well. In addition, the people paying the bills on the server had to pay bandwidth overage fees because of government sanctioned attack. Moreover, the ISPs that provide the connections to the IRC servers themselves were attacked, and faced problems of their own. By going after Anonymous, the GCHQ also attacked groups of innocent people, in what amounts to nothing more than aggravated censorship.
- See more at: http://blogs.csoonline.co(...)sthash.DJIOVZNb.dpuf

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Snowden Docs: British Spies Used Sex and 'Dirty Tricks'

British spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into “honey traps.”

Documents taken from the National Security Agency by Edward Snowden and exclusively obtained by NBC News describe techniques developed by a secret British spy unit called the Joint Threat Research and Intelligence Group (JTRIG) as part of a growing mission to go on offense and attack adversaries ranging from Iran to the hacktivists of Anonymous. According to the documents, which come from presentations prepped in 2010 and 2012 for NSA cyber spy conferences, the agency’s goal was to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications.

Both PowerPoint presentations describe “Effects” campaigns that are broadly divided into two categories: cyber attacks and propaganda operations. The propaganda campaigns use deception, mass messaging and “pushing stories” via Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. JTRIG also uses “false flag” operations, in which British agents carry out online actions that are designed to look like they were performed by one of Britain’s adversaries.

In connection with this report, NBC is publishing documents that Edward Snowden took from the NSA before fleeing the U.S., which can be viewed by clicking here and here. The documents are being published with minimal redactions.

The spy unit’s cyber attack methods include the same “denial of service” or DDOS tactic used by computer hackers to shut down government and corporate websites.

Other documents taken from the NSA by Snowden and previously published by NBC News show that JTRIG, which is part of the NSA’s British counterpart, the cyber spy agency known as GCHQ, used a “denial of service” (DDOS) attack to shut down Internet chat rooms used by members of the hacktivist group known as Anonymous.

Read the first NBC report on JTRIG and the Snowden documents.

Read an earlier exclusive NBC report on the Snowden documents.

Civil libertarians said that in using a DDOS attack against hackers the British government also infringed free speech by individuals not involved in any illegal hacking, and may have blocked other websites with no connection to Anonymous. While GCHQ defends the legality of its actions, critics question whether the agency is too aggressive and its mission too broad.

Eric King, a lawyer who teaches IT law at the London School of Economics and is head of research at Privacy International, a British civil liberties advocacy group, said it was “remarkable” that the British government thought it had the right to hack computers, since none of the U.K.’s intelligence agencies has a “clear lawful authority” to launch their own attacks.

“GCHQ has no clear authority to send a virus or conduct cyber attacks,” said King. “Hacking is one of the most invasive methods of surveillance.” King said British cyber spies had gone on offense with “no legal safeguards” and without any public debate, even though the British government has criticized other nations, like Russia, for allegedly engaging in cyber warfare.

But intelligence officials defended the British government’s actions as appropriate responses to illegal acts. One intelligence official also said that the newest set of Snowden documents published by NBC News that describe “Effects” campaigns show that British cyber spies were “slightly ahead” of U.S. spies in going on offense against adversaries, whether those adversaries are hackers or nation states. The documents also show that a one-time signals surveillance agency, GCHQ, is now conducting the kinds of active espionage operations that were once exclusively the realm of the better-known British spy agencies MI5 and MI6.

According to notes on the 2012 documents, a computer virus called Ambassadors Reception was “used in a variety of different areas” and was “very effective.” When sent to adversaries, says the presentation, the virus will “encrypt itself, delete all emails, encrypt all files, make [the] screen shake” and block the computer user from logging on.

But the British cyber spies’ operations do not always remain entirely online. Spies have long used sexual “honey traps” to snare, blackmail and influence targets. Most often, a male target is led to believe he has an opportunity for a romantic relationship or a sexual liaison with a woman, only to find that the woman is actually an intelligence operative. The Israeli government, for example, used a “honey trap” to lure nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu from London to Rome. He expected an assignation with a woman, but instead was kidnapped by Israel agents and taken back to Israel to stand trial for leaking nuclear secrets to the media.

The version of a “honey trap” described by British cyber spies in the 2012 PowerPoint presentation sounds like a version of Internet dating, but includes physical encounters. The target is lured “to go somewhere on the Internet, or a physical location” to be met by “a friendly face.” The goal, according to the presentation, is to discredit the target.

A “honey trap,” says the presentation, is “very successful when it works.” But the documents do not give a specific example of when the British government might have employed a honey trap.

An operation described in the 2010 presentation also involves in-person surveillance. “Royal Concierge” exploits hotel reservations to track the whereabouts of foreign diplomats and send out “daily alerts to analysts working on governmental hard targets.” The British government uses the program to try to steer its quarry to “SIGINT friendly” hotels, according to the presentation, where the targets can be monitored electronically – or in person by British operatives.

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Glenn Greenwald Plans Return To United States To Test Press Rights

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One of the three reporters at the center of NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s leaks is planning to enter the country that charged Snowden with espionage. Glenn Greenwald plans to “force the issue” by returning to the United States despite the possibility that he may be arrested.

Recent comments by government officials have made the situation even more tenuous such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers who called Greenwald “a thief” who was “selling” national security secrets based on Greenwald’s freelance work. An accusation that came after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper referred to Greenwald and other journalists as “accomplices” of Snowden’s leaks.

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Op vrijdag 7 februari 2014 18:37 schreef JerryWesterby het volgende:
Oftewel, graag in je eigen woorden, met eventueel verwijzing naar het artikel.

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Op vrijdag 7 februari 2014 19:55 schreef Schunckelstar het volgende:

[..]

ik lees liever gewoon het bronartikel, zijn eigen bewoordingen interesseren me niet.
dus goed bezig papierversnipperaar

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Op vrijdag 7 februari 2014 18:36 schreef JerryWesterby het volgende:
Maar leest iemand dit artikel?

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The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program

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The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.

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US considers drone strike on American al-Qaida suspect abroad

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Appelbaum: 'No belief that president has control'

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Jacob Appelbaum is one of the leading US computer security activists and, along with Laura Poitras, a confidant of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. DW spoke to Appelbaum about the NSA and living in exile.

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I feel like a human being in exile. But I don't wear that on my sleeve as a victim, I'm just tired of it. You know, detained at airports, having my property stolen, stuff like that and I thought, well, maybe I should live in Europe for a while.

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The Next Big Thing You Missed: A Would-Be Dropbox Meant to Thwart the NSA

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About a year ago, Lissounov joined a hackathon sponsored by his employer, BitTorrent Inc., a company that seeks to transform the peer-to-peer protocol into a legitimate means of file-sharing for both consumers and businesses, and in a matter of hours, he slapped together a new BitTorrent tool that let him quickly and easily send encrypted photos of his three children across dodgy Eastern European network lines to the rest of his family. The tool won first prize at the hackathon, and within a few more months, after Lissounov honed the tool alongside various other engineers, the company delivered BitTorrent Sync, a Dropbox-like service that lets you seamlessly synchronize files across computers and mobile devices.

The difference is that, thanks to the BitTorrent protocol, which connects machines without the help of a central server, the service isn’t controlled by Dropbox or any other organization, including BitTorrent itself. This means it could be less vulnerable to surveillance by the NSA and other government organizations, and that seems to have struck a chord with many people across the net. Each month, according to BitTorrent, about 2 million people now use Sync, including not only individuals but businesses looking for simpler, safer, and more secure ways of sharing data across systems. “It immediately proved magical,” says BitTorrent CEO Eric Klinker.

Klinker believes his ten-year-old company’s fortunes are closely tied to this new tool. But beyond that, Sync is part of a larger trend towards internet services that are operated not by a central commercial company, but by independent machines spread across the internet. This includes everything from the bitcoin digital currency to open source tools that seek to replace social networking services like Twitter. They all do very different things, but the common denominator is that they put more control in the hands of the people — and less in the hands of corporations and governments.

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Edward Snowden asylum demand dropped by European parliament

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The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.

The parliament's civil liberties committee is to vote on more than 500 amendments to the first ever parliamentary inquiry into the NSA and GCHQ scandal, a 60-page report that is damning about the scale and the impact of mass surveillance.

But there is no consensus on an amendment proposed by the Greens calling on EU governments to assure Snowden of his safety in the event that he emerges from hiding in Russia and comes to Europe.

Amid what key MEPs have described as intense pressure from national governments on parliament – from the Conservatives and their allies, from the mainstream centre-right and from social democrats – the asylum call has no chance of passing.

"The amendment asking for asylum won't go through," said Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP who is the principal author of the report. "That was a red line for the right. There was never going to be a realistic majority for that."

The proposed change to the report would have read: "[Parliament] calls on EU member states to drop criminal charges, if any, against Edward Snowden and to offer him protection from prosecution, extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistleblower and international human rights defender."

Instead the report will call for international protection for whistleblowers without mentioning Snowden by name. Another amendment calling on the Americans not to prosecute Snowden is also unlikely to be adopted, parliamentary sources said.

"The only reason for this whole thing is Snowden and now he doesn't get mentioned. It's ridiculous," said Jan-Philip Albrecht, a German Green and co-author of the amendment.

The failure to make Snowden-specific demands comes amid wrangling over whether the whistleblower will and should be able to testify to the committee.

His lawyers told leading MEPs last week that he was prepared to testify via video from Moscow and questions have been sent to him. While the Conservatives opposed allowing him to testify on the NSA furore, parliamentary leaders have backed the idea by a majority.

But they are still arguing over the format of the testimony - whether live or pre-recorded video or in written answers to submitted questions. They are to meet next week to try to settle the issue.

The Americans are strongly opposed to Snowden testifying and MEPs say there has been enormous pressure from EU governments on the parliament to drop or dilute the report, which is to go before the full chamber in March.

"There has been a huge amount of pressure in the past few weeks," said Moraes. "From the member states. Most have not been friendly. They regard all this as a national competence and nothing to do with us."

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Utah lawmaker floats bill to cut off NSA data centre's water supply

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The logic of the Utah campaign is straightforward. Running the data center requires a lot of water – some 1.7m gallons daily, the activists estimate – to cool the anticipated 100,000 square feet of powerful computers and support equipment the NSA needs for storing a tremendous amount of data. The Wall Street Journal estimated this to be in the range of exabytes or even zettabytes (an exabyte is a billion gigabytes.)

Making it illegal to supply the water will cripple the data center, already beset with electrical problems, before it opens and complicate the NSA’s plans for expanding its storage capacity. For an agency that hoovers up a wide swath of the data communicated across the internet, not to mention the phone records of Americans that it can store for up to five years, it’s a problem.

But Utah is only the latest of about a dozen states to consider measures designed to restrict the NSA’s activities.

In the NSA’s home state of Maryland, eight lawmakers are backing a bill to stymie the provision of water and electricity to the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters. A similar measure, based off an initiative Maherrey’s organization calls the 4th Amendment Protection Act, has been introduced in California, Arizona, Oklahoma, Indiana, Mississippi, Washington state and Vermont.

“The provision of resources like water and electricity is a no-brainer in a state’s plenary authority,” said Buttar.

Four other states – Kansas, New Hampshire, Alaska and Missouri – are considering a related measure to prevent the sharing of NSA-derived data without a warrant.

The campaign faces unfavorable odds. The 4th Amendment Protection Act in Mississippi was referred to the state senate rules committee on 20 January, where it died on 4 February.

“I know it’s not going to pass in every state,” Maharrey said. But in Utah particularly, “we’re going to push it as hard as we can.”

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Leaked NSA Memo: Fueling the Perception Snowden Did Not Work Alone & Is No Whistleblower

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A number of media organizations have published stories based on a leaked National Security Agency memo that suggests NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden “swiped” the password of a co-worker, a civilian NSA employee, who has been forced to resign for sharing his password. The forced resignation by the civilian NSA employee is being reported as part of disciplining people for allowing breaches of security to happen, not as a part of the NSA’s effort to find people to take the fall for something the agency did not prevent from happening.

The memo, obtained and published by NBC News—and dated February 10, 2014, three days ago—provides an update to members of Congress of the House Judiciary Committee on “steps that the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken to assign accountability related to the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by former contractor Edward Snowden.”

“Three NSA affiliates have been implicated in this matter: an NSA civilian employee, an active duty military member and a contractor. The civilian employee recently resigned from employment at NSA,” the memo reports.

It adds, “On June 18, 2013, the NSA civilian admitted to FBI Special Agents that he allowed Mr. Snowden to use his (the NSA civilian’s) Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificate to access classified information on NSANet; access that he knew had been denied to Mr. Snowden. Further, at Mr. Snowden’s request, the civilian entered his PKI password at Mr. Snowden’s computer terminal. Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information. The civilian was not aware the Mr. Snowden intended to unlawfully disclose classified information. However, by sharing his PKI certificate, he failed to comply with security obligations.”

Notice what is not included in that description: when this password “swiping” occurred, whether Snowden actually needed to have the PKI to complete a task assigned to him, whether the employee typed the password in himself or actually wrote it down and handed it to him and whether this conduct would have actually been suspicious in the NSA whenever it took place.

NBC News clarifies the content of the memo with the phrase, “while the memo’s account is sketchy.” Yet, despite its “sketchiness,” NBC News published the report and presented it in a way that reinforces the narrative that Snowden did not blow the whistle and had accomplices to commit his dastardly deed.

The memo states the civilian employee was forced to resign on January 10, 2014. An active military member and contractor lost their access to NSA information and spaces in August 2013. However, there is virtually no evidence in this memo that these people being held responsible for the NSA actually had any role in helping Snowden.

Kirk Wiebe, a former NSA employee and whistleblower, suggested, “Such an act would not have been a reason for “firing” an NSA IT [information technology] guy 10 years ago, or even before the Snowden revelations in my opinion.”

“Part of the reason for tolerating such behavior before the Snowden leaks is that NSA does not have enterprise IT support. In other words, standards that make supporting NSA IT infrastructure – including data management – easy.”

The NSA does not really know the extent of what Snowden took and how he really did it. The forced resignation of this civilian employee and the decision to strip three people of their security clearances is reflective of an agency floundering in the aftermath of one of the most massive security breaches in its history.

The contact Snowden had with these employees are data points in the time Snowden worked for the agency. The confirmation bias of NSA leaders has driven them to take those data points and create causal relationships between events that took place. They decided that the civilian employee, wittingly or unwittingly, is a part of a conspiracy by Snowden because being victim of a conspiracy makes them look better than being a victim of an independent whistleblower.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA employee and whistleblower prosecuted by the administration of President Barack Obama for his act of trying to inform the public, recalled, “I had people pressured by NSA into making up stuff (including statements) about me and my character and obtaining information as well as purloining and stealing documents from NSA for the purposes of disclosing them to people”—reporters—”not authorized to receive them.” But, like Snowden, “I acted alone without any ‘help.’”

“NSA is simply choosing to believe that Snowden did not act alone. They are demonstrating something called confirmation bias.” They are looking for and manufacturing evidence to “prove” their allegations.” Or, by the simple act of forcing people out of the agency, they are creating the perception that those people played a role in Snowden’s act.

Even though unidentified FBI agents from the Washington field office, leading the investigation into Snowden, told the New York Times in December they believe Snowden “methodically downloaded the files over several months while working as a government contractor at the Hawaii facility” and “worked alone,” the story that Snowden did not do this by himself has continued to surface in the media without being appropriately questioned. (The Times did note again in January it was still the FBI’s conclusion Snowden acted alone.)

Though NBC News fails to make the connection, this civilian employee may be what House Intelligence Committee chairman was referring to when he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” some of what he had done was “beyond his technical capabilities.” And, “He had some help and he stole things that had nothing to do with privacy.”

“Some help” could be limited to the civilian NSA employee sharing the password that is mentioned in the memo. The phrase “beyond his technical capabilities” may be a way of saying he was not cleared for access in this instance and had to ask for a password to gain access to NSANet. Of course, the innuendo used by Rogers is much more effective in making Americans fear what Snowden did was malicious, especially since Rogers wants people to believe he did this with assistance from Russian foreign intelligence.

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As another whistleblower and former whistleblower William Binney explained to Firedoglake in December, NSA never developed and implemented technology in order to have the capabilities to track activities by employees on the agencys systems. The reason was because of two groups of people: analysts and management.

The analysts realized that what that would be doing is monitoring everything they did and assessing what they were doing. They objected. They didnt want to be monitored and have their privacy violated.

Management resisted because it meant one would be able to assess returns on all the programs around the world. It would be possible to lay out all the programs in the world and map [them] against the spending and the return on investment.

It meant the agency would be exposed to Congress for auditing, Binney added. Management, those leading the NSA, did not want that.

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U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors

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Private contractors play a huge role in the government, particularly in civilian intelligence services like the CIA. Contracting critics say it's an addiction whose overhead costs drive up the federal budget and leads to data breaches like the kind perpetrated by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In the wake of last year's NSA revelations, many agencies have been reviewing their contracting policies. But few people have a good grasp on just how many contractors the government employs. What's worse, the country's eight civilian intelligence agencies often can't sufficiently explain what they use those contractors for, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

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NSA-Affäre: Regierung plant Einsatz von Spionageabwehr gegen USA

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Spione aus dem Westen sollen es auf deutschem Boden künftig schwerer haben: Die Bundesregierung erwägt, die Tätigkeit westlicher Geheimdienste in Deutschland durch eigene Agenten beobachten zu lassen. Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen gibt es neun Monate nach Beginn der NSA-Affäre im Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz bereits Pläne, die Abteilung Spionageabwehr massiv auszubauen und etwa die Botschaften von Partnerländern wie den USA und Großbritannien einer "Sockelbeobachtung" zu unterziehen.

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‘Why Have You Gone to Russia Three Times in Two Months?’—Heathrow Customs Agent Interrogates Snowden Lawyer

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A lawyer who represents National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and has spoken on his behalf numerous times was detained while going through customs at Heathrow airport in London.

Jesselyn Radack told Firedoglake she was directed to a specific Heathrow Border Force agent. He “didn’t seem interested” in her passport. She was then subjected to “very hostile questioning.”

As Radack recalled, she was asked why she was here. “To see friends,” she answered. “Who will you be seeing?” She answered, “A group called Sam Adams Associates.”

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Her interrogation by a Border Force agent comes just after The New York Times reported, based off a document from Snowden, that NSA ally, Australia, has used the Australian Signals Directorate to spy on American lawyers.

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What can unite liberals and tea partyers? The NSA

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Hoyt Sparks says he has no use for liberal Democrats and their "socialistic, Marxist, communist" ways.

Toni Lewis suspects tea party Republicans are "a bunch of people who probably need some mental health treatment."

Politically speaking, the tea-party supporter in rural North Carolina and the Massachusetts liberal live a world apart.

Who or what could get them thinking the same?

Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency.

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Why does the NSA unite the right and left ends of the political spectrum?

"More extreme political views lead to more distrust of government," said George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin, who's studied the tea party's focus on the Constitution. People at the far ends of the political spectrum are less likely than middle-of-the-road voters to feel government is responsive to them.

On the flip side, Somin said, moderates generally don't follow politics as closely as people at the extremes, so they may be less aware of the scope of the NSA's activities.

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Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters

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Top-secret documents from the National Security Agency and its British counterpart reveal for the first time how the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom targeted WikiLeaks and other activist groups with tactics ranging from covert surveillance to prosecution.

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

One classified document from Government Communications Headquarters, Britain’s top spy agency, shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly monitor visitors to a WikiLeaks site. By exploiting its ability to tap into the fiber-optic cables that make up the backbone of the Internet, the agency confided to allies in 2012, it was able to collect the IP addresses of visitors in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines like Google.

Another classified document from the U.S. intelligence community, dated August 2010, recounts how the Obama administration urged foreign allies to file criminal charges against Assange over the group’s publication of the Afghanistan war logs.

A third document, from July 2011, contains a summary of an internal discussion in which officials from two NSA offices – including the agency’s general counsel and an arm of its Threat Operations Center – considered designating WikiLeaks as “a ‘malicious foreign actor’ for the purpose of targeting.” Such a designation would have allowed the group to be targeted with extensive electronic surveillance – without the need to exclude U.S. persons from the surveillance searches.

In 2008, not long after WikiLeaks was formed, the U.S. Army prepared a report that identified the organization as an enemy, and plotted how it could be destroyed. The new documents provide a window into how the U.S. and British governments appear to have shared the view that WikiLeaks represented a serious threat, and reveal the controversial measures they were willing to take to combat it.

In a statement to The Intercept, Assange condemned what he called “the reckless and unlawful behavior of the National Security Agency” and GCHQ’s “extensive hostile monitoring of a popular publisher’s website and its readers.”

“News that the NSA planned these operations at the level of its Office of the General Counsel is especially troubling,” Assange said. “Today, we call on the White House to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the extent of the NSA’s criminal activity against the media, including WikiLeaks, its staff, its associates and its supporters.”

Illustrating how far afield the NSA deviates from its self-proclaimed focus on terrorism and national security, the documents reveal that the agency considered using its sweeping surveillance system against Pirate Bay, which has been accused of facilitating copyright violations. The agency also approved surveillance of the foreign “branches” of hacktivist groups, mentioning Anonymous by name.

The documents call into question the Obama administration’s repeated insistence that U.S. citizens are not being caught up in the sweeping surveillance dragnet being cast by the NSA. Under the broad rationale considered by the agency, for example, any communication with a group designated as a “malicious foreign actor,” such as WikiLeaks and Anonymous, would be considered fair game for surveillance.

Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in surveillance issues, says the revelations shed a disturbing light on the NSA’s willingness to sweep up American citizens in its surveillance net.

“All the reassurances Americans heard that the broad authorities of the FISA Amendments Act could only be used to ‘target’ foreigners seem a bit more hollow,” Sanchez says, “when you realize that the ‘foreign target’ can be an entire Web site or online forum used by thousands if not millions of Americans.”

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'Commissie Stiekem in december geïnformeerd over metadata'

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Oppositiebronnen benadrukken tegenover NRC dat het politieke belang van de informatie in hun ogen op 12 december niet duidelijk was.

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Clapper said that the controversy would not have occurred had the security apparatus been more open before. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11 – which is the genesis of the 215 program – and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards … We wouldn’t have had the problem we had.”

His admission contradicts months of warnings, from his office and from elsewhere in the administration, that disclosure of the bulk data collection jeopardized US national security.