Monitoring NSA in de VS en erbuiten, deel 9

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UK intelligence agencies should keep mass surveillance powers, report says | World news | The Guardian

Report by official reviewer of counter-terrorism laws also says ministers should be stripped of power to authorise surveillance warrants

UK intelligence agencies should be allowed to retain controversial intrusive powers to gather bulk communications data but ministers should be stripped of their powers to authorise surveillance warrants, according to a major report on British data law.

The 373-page report published on Thursday – A Question of Trust, by David Anderson QC – calls for government to adopt “a clean-slate” approach in legislating later this year on surveillance and interception by GCHQ and other intelligence agencies.

However, Downing Street hinted that David Cameron was unlikely to accept one of his key recommendations: shifting the power to agree to warrants from home and foreign secretaries to a proposed new judicial commissioner.

The prime minister’s spokeswoman said the authorities needed to be able “to respond quickly and effectively to threats of national security or serious crime”, which appears to suggest ministers are better positioned to do this than judges.

Related: A question of trust? Anderson report lays out tests for surveillance laws

Anderson’s report, commissioned by Cameron last year, comes in response to revelations two years ago by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden about the scale of government surveillance.

Anderson, introducing his report, said: “Modern communications networks can be used by the unscrupulous for purposes ranging from cyber-attack, terrorism and espionage to fraud, kidnap and child sexual exploitation. A successful response to these threats depends on entrusting public bodies with the powers they need to identify and follow suspects in a borderless online world.

“But trust requires verification. Each intrusive power must be shown to be necessary, clearly spelled out in law, limited in accordance with human rights standards and subject to demanding and visible safeguards.”

Related: House rejects NSA collection of phone records with vote to reform spy agency

GCHQ and other intelligence agencies are likely to be satisfied with the recommendations. GCHQ successfully fought to retain its bulk collection powers and Anderson agreed. In contrast with the UK, the US Congress last month placed curbs on bulk collection of phone records by the intelligence agencies.

Privacy campaigners also largely welcomed Anderson’s recommendation to scrap existing surveillance legislation – the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa), the proposed new judicial commissioner and other proposals.

Anderson said that the existing legislation had reached the end of its useful life. “Ripa, obscure since its inception, has been patched up so many times as to make it incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates. A multitude of alternative powers, some of them without statutory safeguards, confuse the picture further. This state of affairs is undemocratic, unnecessary and – in the long run – intolerable.”

The new judicial body, the Independent Surveillance and Intelligence Commission, would be responsible for all surveillance warrants, according to the report.

There would be some new curbs on warrants, including “a tighter definition of the purposes for which it is sought, defined by operations or mission purposes”.

Anderson also proposed safeguards against snooping on journalists, lawyers and other groups. The report says that when communication data is sought from people handling privileged or confidential information, including doctors, lawyers, journalists, MPs or ministers, “special consideration and arrangements should be in place”.

As well as approving individual warrants, the judicial commissioner would also be responsible for a new bulk data collection warrant in limited circumstances. Anderson gives an example of bulk data collection under the heading of “attack planning by ISIL [Islamic State] in Iraq/Syria against the UK”. Anderson also makes clear that this would not affect existing programmes of communications data surveillance.

But the removal of the power to approve warrants from ministers may never fly. Ministers will argue that democratically elected politicians are better placed to make these decisions rather than judges who do not have access to up-to-date information on terrorist threats.

The home secretary, Theresa May, speaking in the Commons after the report was published, said she would publish a draft surveillance bill in the autumn and legislate before the end of 2016. She promised there would be a proper overhaul of investigatory powers legislation and not “simply rebranding existing law”.

She described the threats facing the UK as considerable. “In the face of such threats, we have a duty to ensure that the agencies whose job it is to keep us safe have the powers they need to do the job,” she said.

May was immediately questioned by David Davis, one of the leading Conservatives on civil liberties issues, who praised the report and the prospect of judicial control over warrants, saying that, with the exception of Zimbabwe, the UK has the world’s worst record in allowing politicians to authorise surveillance.

May said the government would consider the idea of transferring responsibility to judges. “I am not in a position to say whether the government will do one thing or another,” she said.

Related: No 10 hints it will reject key proposal in David Anderson's surveillance report - Politics live

The intelligence agencies, including GCHQ, have been expressing concern about the increasing use of encryption to protect privacy, with internet providers beginning to offer this as standard.

Anderson, in his report, does not propose legislating on the issue. He said few propose a master key to all communications be held by the state. “Far preferable, on any view, is a law-based system in which encryption keys are handed over [by service providers or by the users themselves] only after properly authorised requests.”

Anderson said he could not condone Snowden’s disclosure. National security had suffered, he added, but there had also been benefits from the disclosure of some of the intelligence agency capabilities.

“The opening up of the debate has, however, come at a cost to national security: the effect of the Snowden documents on the behaviour of some service providers and terrorists alike has, for the authorities, accentuated the problem of reduced coverage and rendered more acute the need for a remedy,” the report says.

Jo Glanville, director of English PEN, welcomed the report. “While we would have liked to see the recommendations go even further in relation to GCHQ’s bulk collection of data, we welcome the recommendations for judicial authorisation and the call for a rigorous assessment before any further powers are given to the intelligence services in a revived snooper’s charter.”

Eric King, the deputy director of Privacy International, said: “This is the final nail in the coffin for Ripa … David Anderson’s strong recommendations for improvement are the first step towards reform, and now the burden is on the government, parliament and civil society to ensure that reforms go further and ensure that once and for all, our police and intelligence agencies are brought under the rule of law.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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U.K. newspaper tries to silence Glenn Greenwald criticism with copyright claim

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Accused of publishing government propaganda against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times is using copyright to hit back at its strongest critic.

In a paywalled feature published Sunday, titled “British spies betrayed to Russians and Chinese,” three authors, citing anonymous government sources, claim that “Russia and China have cracked the top-secret cache of files stolen by the fugitive U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden.” In turn, the Times’s sources say, the U.K. had to relocate special agents around the world who were allegedly in harm’s way.

In an extremely critical takedown post, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, the journalist Snowden first met with after fleeing the U.S., denied many of the details in the Times story. In particular, the Times claimed that Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, met with Snowden in Moscow to receive more documents—a claim that’s since been deleted from the Times article.

Greenwald’s post also includes a screengrab of the Times’s layout—and that’s what the Times used to pounce on their high-profile critic. In a legal notice sent Monday, the paper cites the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and claims the Intercept is violating the Times’s copyright of “the typographical arrangement of the front page.”

“If Greenwald were selling a book of Great Covers of the Sunday Times, they'd have a case,” Parker Higgins, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who specializes in intellectual property, told the Daily Dot. “But this is grasping at straws and attempting to use the strictest takedown law available—copyright—just to silence criticism.”

There’s a long history of people accused of using online copyright law to censor critics; a recent smattering includes California mayors, lawyers, Drake’s label, and Ecuador. The Times didn’t respond to the Daily Dot’s question of just how frequently it issues those claims to other news outlets.

It’s not likely to have much effect on the Intercept’s story, though. When the Daily Dot asked Greenwald if he would abide the DMCA takedown, he simply responded “No.”

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Jacob Appelbaum's legal disclosure from Google about Wikileaks Grand Jury investigation

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This Google legal disclosure is 306 pages long. Holy cow.
^{Fri, Jun 19 2015 00:56:33}

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Ten pages into this legal document and I'm convinced that I'm never going to return to my home country. What the actual fuck.
^{Fri, Jun 19 2015 01:04:49}

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GCHQ's surveillance of two human rights groups ruled illegal by tribunal | UK news | The Guardian

Initial interceptions lawful but retention and examination of communications illegal, rules IPT in case brought following Edward Snowden revelations

GCHQ’s covert surveillance of two international human rights groups was illegal, the judicial tribunal responsible for handling complaints against the intelligence services has ruled.

The UK government monitoring agency retained emails for longer than it should have and violated its own internal procedures, according to a judgment by the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT). But it ruled that the initial interception was lawful in both cases.

The IPT upheld complaints by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the South African non-profit Legal Resources Centre that their communications had been illegally retained and examined. The tribunal made “no determination” on claims brought other NGOs – including Amnesty International, Liberty and Privacy International – implying that either their emails and phone calls were not intercepted or that they were intercepted but by legal means.

The IPT ruling said: “[We are] concerned that steps should be taken to ensure that neither of the breaches of procedure referred to in this determination occurs again. For the avoidance of doubt, the tribunal makes it clear that it will be making a closed report to the prime minister.”

It is the first time that a court has revealed that British intelligence agencies have spied on foreign human rights groups.

Related: IPT ruling on GCHQ matters more for what it permits than what it rebukes

The case against the monitoring agency follows revelations by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden. It was brought by Privacy International, Liberty, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and a number of other international human rights groups.

Welcoming the ruling, Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, said: “If spying on human rights NGOs isn’t off limits for GCHQ, then what is? Clearly our spy agencies have lost their way. For too long they’ve been trusted with too much power, and too few rules for them to protect against abuse. How many more problems with GCHQ’s secret procedures have to be revealed for them to be brought under control?”

He added: “Trying to pass off such failings as technical, or significant changes in law as mere clarifications, has become a tiring defence for those who know the jig is up. The courts are begrudgingly helping to ensure that the sun is slowly setting on GCHQ’s wild west ways. Now we need parliament to step in to fix what should have been fixed a long time ago.”

In relation to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the IPT found that “email communications ... were lawfully and proportionately intercepted and accessed ... However, the time limit for retention permitted under the internal policies of GCHQ, the intercepting agency, was overlooked in regard to the product of that interception, such that it was retained for materially longer than permitted under those policies.”

In respect of the Legal Resources Centre, the IPT said: “Communications from an [associated] email address ... were intercepted and selected for examination ... The tribunal is satisfied that the interception was lawful and proportionate and that the selection for examination was proportionate, but that the procedure laid down by GCHQ’s internal policies for selection of the communications for examination was in error not followed in this case.”

Janet Love, national director of the Legal Resources Centre, said it was “deeply concerned to learn that communications of our organisation have been subject to unlawful interception by GCHQ. As a public interest law firm, our communications are self-evidently confidential, and we consider this to be a serious breach of the rights of our organisation and the individuals concerned.

“We can no longer accept the conduct of the intelligence services acting under such a pernicious veil of secrecy, and we will be taking immediate action to try to establish more information. We urge the South African and British governments to cooperate with us in this regard. We are particularly grateful for Liberty’s efforts in spearheading this litigation and making it possible for this information to be brought to light.”

James Welch, legal director for Liberty, said: “Last year it was revealed that GCHQ were eavesdropping on sacrosanct lawyer-client conversations. Now we learn they’ve been spying on human rights groups. What kind of signal are British authorities sending to despotic regimes and those who risk their lives to challenge them all over the world? Who is being casual with human life now?”

Rachel Logan, UK legal programme director for Amnesty International, said: “[This] raises the wider question as to why the UK intelligence services were intercepting the communications of these two highly regarded human rights NGOs at all.

“Knowing that your mail has been read, or your calls have been listened to can stifle people into silence, leading to self-censorship. It is a clear interference with basic rights such as free expression and right to privacy.

“Today’s ruling in relation to Amnesty tells us nothing. We still don’t know if we’ve been spied on at all, if we have been the subject of any targeted spying, if the tribunal thought any spying – if it did happen – was necessary and proportionate, or even if they had an entirely different reason for telling us nothing.”

The legal challenge was the first of many GCHQ-related claims to be examined in detail by the IPT, which hears complaints against British intelligence agencies and government bodies that carry out surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa).

The civil liberties organisations are concerned that their private communications may have been monitored under GCHQ’s electronic surveillance programme, Tempora, the existence of which was revealed by Snowden. They also complain that information obtained through the US National Security Agency’s Prism and Upstream programmes may have been shared with British intelligence services, sidestepping protections provided by the UK legal system.

During the hearing last summer, Matthew Ryder QC alleged that the intelligence services are constructing “vast databases” out of accumulated interceptions of emails.

“If two out of 10 organisations who applied to the IPT found their emails were being illegally monitored, human rights fear, how many others are being targeted? Unless people or organisations submit claims to the IPT, it is argued, how will they know whether their communications are being unlawfully monitored.”

A government spokesperson said: “We welcome the IPT’s confirmation that any interception by GCHQ in these cases was undertaken lawfully and proportionately, and that where breaches of policies occurred they were not sufficiently serious to warrant any compensation to be paid to the bodies involved.

“GCHQ takes procedure very seriously. It is working to rectify the technical errors identified by this case and constantly reviews its processes to identify and make improvements.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Controversial GCHQ Unit Engaged in Domestic Law Enforcement, Online Propaganda, Psychology Research

The spy unit responsible for some of the United Kingdom’s most controversial tactics of surveillance, online propaganda and deceit focuses extensively on traditional law enforcement and domestic activities — even though officials typically justify its activities by emphasizing foreign intelligence and counterterrorism operations.

Documents published today by The Intercept demonstrate how the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), a unit of the signals intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), is involved in efforts against political groups it considers “extremist,” Islamist activity in schools, the drug trade, online fraud and financial scams.

Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online.

Early official claims attempted to create the impression that JTRIG’s activities focused on international targets in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Argentina. The closest the group seemed to get to home was in its targeting of transnational “hacktivist” group Anonymous.

While some of the unit’s activities are focused on the claimed areas, JTRIG also appears to be intimately involved in traditional law enforcement areas and U.K.-specific activity, as previously unpublished documents demonstrate. An August 2009 JTRIG memo entitled “Operational Highlights” boasts of “GCHQ’s first serious crime effects operation” to shut down internet forums and to remove websites identifying police informants and members of a witness protection program. Another was “used to facilitate and execute online fraud.” The document also describes GCHQ advice provided “to assist the UK negotiating team on climate change.”

Particularly revealing is a fascinating 42-page document from 2011 detailing JTRIG’s activities. It provides the most comprehensive and sweeping insight to date into the scope of this unit’s extreme methods. Entitled “Behavioral Science Support for JTRIG’s Effects and Online HUMINT [Human Intelligence] Operations,” it describes the types of targets on which the unit focuses, the psychological and behavioral research it commissions and exploits, and its future organizational aspirations. It is authored by a psychologist, Mandeep K. Dhami.

Among other things, the document lays out the tactics the agency uses to manipulate public opinion, its scientific and psychological research into how human thinking and behavior can be influenced, and the broad range of targets that are traditionally the province of law enforcement rather than intelligence agencies.

JTRIG’s domestic and law enforcement operations are made clear. The report states that the controversial unit “currently collaborates with other agencies” including the Metropolitan police, Security Service (MI5), Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Border Agency, Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and National Public Order and Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). The document highlights that key JTRIG objectives include “providing intelligence for judicial outcomes”; monitoring “domestic extremist groups such as the English Defence League by conducting online HUMINT”; “denying, deterring or dissuading” criminals and “hacktivists”; and “deterring, disrupting or degrading online consumerism of stolen data or child porn.”

It touts the fact that the unit “may cover all areas of the globe.” Specifically, “operations are currently targeted at” numerous countries and regions including Argentina, Eastern Europe and the U.K.

JTRIG’s domestic operations fit into a larger pattern of U.K.-focused and traditional law enforcement activities within GCHQ.

Many GCHQ documents describing the “missions” of the “customers” for which it works make clear that the agency has a wide mandate far beyond national security, including providing help on intelligence to the Bank of England, to the Department for Children, Schools and Families on reporting of “radicalization,” to various departments on agriculture and whaling activities, to government financial divisions to enable good investment decisions, to police agencies to track suspected “boiler room fraud,” and to law enforcement agencies to improve “civil and family justice.”

Previous reporting on the spy agency established its focus on what it regards as political radicalism. Beyond JTRIG’s targeting of Anonymous, other parts of GCHQ targeted political activists deemed to be “radical,” even monitoring the visits of people to the WikiLeaks website. GCHQ also stated in one internal memo that it studied and hacked popular software programs to “enable police operations” and gave two examples of cracking decryption software on behalf of the National Technical Assistance Centre, one “a high profile police case” and the other a child abuse investigation.

Bron: firstlook.org

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Popular Security Software Came Under Relentless NSA and GCHQ Attacks

The National Security Agency and its British counterpart, Government Communications Headquarters, have worked to subvert anti-virus and other security software in order to track users and infiltrate networks, according to documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The spy agencies have reverse engineered software products, sometimes under questionable legal authority, and monitored web and email traffic in order to discreetly thwart anti-virus software and obtain intelligence from companies about security software and users of such software. One security software maker repeatedly singled out in the documents is Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, which has a holding registered in the U.K., claims more than 270,000 corporate clients, and says it protects more than 400 million people with its products.

British spies aimed to thwart Kaspersky software in part through a technique known as software reverse engineering, or SRE, according to a top-secret warrant renewal request. The NSA has also studied Kaspersky Lab’s software for weaknesses, obtaining sensitive customer information by monitoring communications between the software and Kaspersky servers, according to a draft top-secret report. The U.S. spy agency also appears to have examined emails inbound to security software companies flagging new viruses and vulnerabilities.

The efforts to compromise security software were of particular importance because such software is relied upon to defend against an array of digital threats and is typically more trusted by the operating system than other applications, running with elevated privileges that allow more vectors for surveillance and attack. Spy agencies seem to be engaged in a digital game of cat and mouse with anti-virus software companies; the U.S. and U.K. have aggressively probed for weaknesses in software deployed by the companies, which have themselves exposed sophisticated state-sponsored malware.

Anti-virus software is an ideal target for a would-be attacker, according to Joxean Koret, a researcher with Coseinc, a Singapore-based information security consultancy. “If you write an exploit for an anti-virus product you’re likely going to get the highest privileges (root, system or even kernel) with just one shot,” Koret told The Intercept in an email. “Anti-virus products, with only a few exceptions, are years behind security-conscious client-side applications like browsers or document readers. It means that Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Word or Google Chrome are harder to exploit than 90 percent of the anti-virus products out there.”

(Disclosure: One of the authors of this report, Morgan Marquis-Boire, spoke at a Kaspersky Lab event in Puerto Rico in 2013 and at another in London in 2014. He was not paid for either event, but the cost of his travel and accommodation were covered by the company.)

Bron: firstlook.org

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Frankrijk roept ambassadeur VS op het matje om spionage



Frankrijk heeft de ambassadeur van de Verenigde Staten ontboden nadat gisteren bekend werd dat de NSA drie Franse presidenten heeft afgeluisterd. Dat melden Reuters en AFP op basis van Franse diplomatieke bronnen. President Hollande noemde de spionagepraktijken vandaag in een reactie “onacceptabel”.

Hollande had vanochtend zijn kabinet bijeengeroepen voor een spoedvergadering nadat documenten naar buiten kwamen op WikiLeaks waarin stond dat hijzelf en zijn voorgangers Sarkozy en Chirac tussen 2006 en 2012 door de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst waren afgeluisterd. “Frankrijk tolereert geen handelingen die de veiligheid van ons land of van de beveiliging van onze belangen in gevaar brengt”, zei Hollande na afloop.

De president maakte tevens bekend dat Amerikaanse spionage van Franse belangen al wel eerder bekend waren bij de Franse autoriteiten. Uit de documenten zou blijken dat het afluisteren een maand na Hollande’s aantreden is gestopt. Volgens de Franse krant Libération - die het nieuws gisteren als eerste bracht - staan er geen staatsgeheimen in de gelekte documenten.

De VS kwamen gisteren naar buiten met een verklaring dat ze “zich niet richten en ook niet zullen richten op de communicatie van president Hollande”.

Het is niet voor het eerst dat bekend wordt dat de VS bondgenoten afluistert of heeft afgeluisterd. Eerder kwam naar buiten dat het mobieltje van bondskanselier Merkel werd afgetapt. In totaal zouden 122 regeringsleiders over de hele wereld zijn afgeluisterd.

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Assange: Wikileaks heeft meer documenten over NSA-spionage



Klokkenluidersite Wikileaks heeft documenten in bezit die van groter politiek belang zijn dan de onthullingen, gisteren, over spionage van Franse presidenten door de Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA. De economische en politieke belangen van Frankrijk alsook zijn soevereiniteit staan op het spel, zo waarschuwde Wikileaks-oprichter Julian Assange vanavond in een interview met de Franse tv-zender TF1.

Assange roept de Franse regering op nu in te grijpen. De “tijd is gekomen” voor Frankrijk om een parlementaire enquête in te stellen om de spionagepraktijken te onderzoeken en de schuldigen te vervolgen, zei hij. Uit de documenten zou onder meer blijken dat er sprake is geweest van economische spionage.

Volgens de documenten die via Mediapart en Libération werden gepubliceerd, werden Jacques Chirac (1995-2007), Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) en François Hollande (2012-heden) gedurende zes jaar bespioneerd. Dit gebeurde tussen 2006 en mei 2012. Voor zover bekend stopte het afluisteren na de eerste maand dat Hollande als president was ingezworen. Welke informatie de NSA precies heeft verkregen is onduidelijk, maar het betrof in ieder geval geen staatsgeheimen.

Assange, die sinds 2012 schuilt in de Ecuadoraanse ambassade in Londen om uitlevering aan Zweden te vermijden, gaf zijn interview met TF1 vanuit de ambassade. Afgelopen vrijdag publiceerde Wikileaks al een reeks van tienduizenden vertrouwelijke Saoedische documenten. Daaruit bleek onder meer dat Nederland tevergeefs op het hoogste niveau heeft geprobeerd de immuniteit te laten opheffen van een Saoedische ex-ambassadeur die werd verdacht van mensenhandel.
Bron: NRC

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NSA mag gesprekken tijdelijk weer afluisteren

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De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA mag tijdelijk weer telefoongesprekken afluisteren. Het programma, onthuld door klokkenluider Edward Snowden, lag sinds 1 juni stil. Toen verliep de wet die het afluisteren mogelijk maakte. Een speciale spionagerechtbank heeft nu besloten dat de dienst zes maanden lang weer gegevens mag verzamelen.

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GCHQ spied on Amnesty International, tribunal tells group in email | UK news | The Guardian

Human rights group denounces revelation as outrageous as after Investigatory Powers Tribunal says its communications have been illegally retained

The government’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ spied illegally on Amnesty International, according to the tribunal responsible for handling complaints against the intelligence services.

Confirmation that surveillance took place emerged late on Wednesday, when the human rights group revealed that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) sent it an email correcting an earlier judgment.

The extraordinary revision of a key detail in the ruling given on 22 June may alarm many supporters of Amnesty, who will want to know why it has been targeted.

In the original judgment, the IPT said that communications by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and the South African non-profit Legal Resources Centre had been illegally retained and examined.

In the email sent on Wednesday, the tribunal made it clear that it was Amnesty and not the Egyptian organisation that had been spied on – as well as the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa.

The breach of surveillance powers, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, related to retaining databases for longer than was permitted. Amnesty had been one of the claimants in the case, but in the original judgment the IPT made “no determination” on the organisation’s complaint – implying that either their emails and phone calls were not intercepted or that they were intercepted but by legal means.

Responding to the revelation, Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s secretary general, said: “It’s outrageous that what has been often presented as being the domain of despotic rulers has been done on British soil, by the British government.

“How can we be expected to carry out our crucial work around the world if human rights defenders and victims of abuse can now credibly believe their confidential correspondence with us is likely to end up in the hands of governments?

“After 18 months of litigation and all the denials and subterfuge that entailed, we now have confirmation that we were in fact subjected to UK government mass surveillance. The revelation that the UK government has been spying on Amnesty International highlights the gross inadequacies in the UK’s surveillance legislation.

“If they hadn’t stored our communications for longer than they were allowed to, we would never even have known. What’s worse, this would have been considered perfectly lawful.”

The IPT email made no mention of when or why Amnesty International was spied on, or what was done with the information obtained. The organisation is calling for an independent inquiry into how and why a UK intelligence agency has been spying on human rights organisations.

Eric King, deputy director of Privacy International, which also took a similar case to the IPT, said: “Our system of oversight and remedy has fundamentally failed. The communications of one of the world’s leading human rights organisations – Amnesty International – were targeted by British spies, unlawfully, and our commissioners and courts failed to admit it, depriving individuals around the world of the validation and condemnation of, and redress for, unlawful government practices that is so desperately needed.

“Without Edward Snowden, without an 18-month legal battle, without an honest reckoning by whichever upstanding individual spotted and admitted this grave error, the unlawful conduct of the British intelligence agencies would never have been exposed by the very court charged with exposing it.

“Today’s farcical developments places into sharp relief the obvious problems with secret tribunals where only one side gets to see, and challenge, the evidence. Five experienced judges inspected the secret evidence, seemingly didn’t understand it, and wrote a judgement that turned out to be untrue. We need to know why and how this happened.

“Any confidence that our current oversight could keep GCHQ in check has evaporated. Only radical reforms will ensure this never happens again.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Duitse pers bespioneerd door Amerikaanse NSA | NU - Het laatste nieuws het eerst op NU.nl

Een journalist van het Duitse weekblad Der Spiegel is bespioneerd door de Amerikaanse NSA.

Dat heeft de Duitse veiligheidschef Günter Heiss gezegd tegen de parlementaire commissie die de activiteiten van de Amerikaanse veiligheidsdiensten in Duitsland onderzoekt, meldt Der Spiegel.

In 2011 waarschuwde de NSA Heiss dat een lid van zijn staf contacten onderhield met de journalist. Zij verdachten de plaatsvervanger van Heiss, Hans Josef Vorbeck, die later dat jaar werd overgeplaatst naar een andere functie.

Afluisteren

Der Spiegel was het eerste Duitse medium dat in 2013 berichtte over het afluisteren van de mobiele telefoon van bondskanselier Angela Merkel door de Amerikanen. Later werd bekend dat ook andere Duitse ministers werden afgeluisterd.

"Het voelt bitter dat de Amerikaanse geheime diensten journalisten in andere landen bespioneerden en hun bronnen verraadden aan de overheid", zei een Duitse journalist, die anoniem wenst te blijven, tegen CNN. "Dit is iets wat je kan verwachten in dictaturen zoals Rusland en China, maar niet in een democratie."

Der Spiegel heeft vrijdag aangifte gedaan wegens schending van de telecommunicatiegeheimhouding en vermoedens van spionageactiviteiten.

Bron: www.nu.nl

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Hacking Team responds to data breach, issues public threats and denials

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On Sunday evening, someone hijacked the Hacking Team account on Twitter and used it to announce that the company known for developing hacking tools was itself a victim of a devastating hack.

. Note: This story is a follow-up to the previous Hacking Team story. You should read both if you want to see things from the beginning. Also, a curated slideshow of contracts and other visuals is also available.

The hackers released a 400GB Torrent file with internal documents, source code, and email communications to the public at large. As researchers started to examine the leaked documents, the story developed and the public got its first real look into the inner workings of an exploit development firm.

Hacking Team is an Italian company that sells intrusion and surveillance tools to governments and law enforcement agencies. However, their business has earned them a black mark from privacy and human rights organizations, as the company has been accused of selling tools and services to nations known for violent oppression.

Reporters Without Borders has listed the company on its Enemies of the Internet index due largely to Hacking Teams' business practices and their primary surveillance tool Da Vinci.

Sunday evening, documents circulating online, and documents shared by @SynAckPwn with Salted Hash, have linked Hacking Team to Egypt, Lebanon, Ethiopia, and Sudan.

The link to Sudan is especially newsworthy as the company previously stated they've never done business with the nation. There is a UN arms embargo on the Sudan, which is covered by EU and UK law. If they were doing business with the Sudanese government, Hacking Team could be in hot water.

In 2014, a Citizen Lab report revealed evidence that Hacking Team's RCS (Remote Control System) was being used by the Sudanese government, something the Italian company flat-out denied.

However, on Sunday a contract with Sudan, valued at 480,000 Euro, and dated July 2, 2012, was published as part of the 400GB cache. In addition, a maintenance list named Sudan as a customer, but one that was "not officially supported." Interestingly, Russia has the same designation.



Along with Russia and Sudan, there were other customers exposed by the breach including:

Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Nigeria, Chile, Colombia

Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, United States

Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, South Korea

Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Australia, Cyprus, Czech Republic

Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxemburg, Poland, Spain

Switzerland, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE

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Italiaans hackingschandaal groeit met de dag

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Maar de Italianen werven ook klanten onder overheidsdiensten in Europa, de Verenigde Staten én in Nederland. Volgens journalist Brenno de Winter stond er voor afgelopen maandag een ontmoeting gepland met vertegenwoordigers van de Nationale Politie. Dat wil het bericht bevestigen noch ontkennen.

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Hacking Team maakte woensdag bekend dat zijn software in handen kan zijn gevallen van criminelen en terroristen, omdat het bedrijf 'niet langer kan beheren wie er van de technologie gebruik kan maken'. Het spreekt van een 'extreem gevaarlijke situatie'.

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Hacking Team Emails Expose Proposed Death Squad Deal, Secret U.K. Sales Push and Much More

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Late Sunday, hackers dumped online a massive trove of emails and other documents obtained from the systems of Italian surveillance firm Hacking Team. The company’s controversial technology is sold to governments around the world, enabling them to infect smartphones and computers with malware to covertly record conversations and steal data.

For years, Hacking Team has been the subject of scrutiny from journalists and activists due to its suspected sales to despotic regimes. But the company has successfully managed to hide most of its dealings behind a wall of secrecy – until now.

For the last few days, I have been reading through the hacked files, which give remarkable insight into Hacking Team, its blasé attitude toward human rights concerns, and the extent of its spyware sales to government agencies on every continent. Adding to the work of my colleagues to analyze the 400 gigabyte trove of hacked data, here’s a selection of the notable details I have found so far:

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NSA document: Israeli special forces assassinated top Syrian military official | World news | The Guardian

US intelligence describes how Brig Gen Mahmoud Suleiman, close adviser to Bashar al-Assad, was shot dead near Tartus in 2008 by ‘Israeli naval commandos’

US intelligence describes how Brig Gen Mahmoud Suleiman, close adviser to Bashar al-Assad, was shot dead near Tartus in 2008 by ‘Israeli naval commandos’

Evidence has emerged from leaked US signals intelligence intercepts that Israeli special forces were responsible for assassinating a senior Syrian military official who was a close adviser to President Bashar al-Assad.

Brig Gen Mahmoud Suleiman was shot dead on a beach near the northern Syrian port of Tartus in August 2008. The Guardian reported at the time that the seaside murder was perpetrated by a sniper firing from a yacht moored offshore.

Israel has never commented publicly on suspicions that it was involved. But newly revealed secret US intelligence documents state as a fact that Israeli special forces killed the general.

Related: Middle East: Top Assad aide assassinated at Syrian resort

The revelation comes from an internal National Security Agency document provided by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and cited by the Intercept, edited by Glenn Greenwald. It said that a top-secret entry in the NSA’s internal version of Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, described the assassination by “Israeli naval commandos” near Tartus as the “first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate (Syrian) government official”.

The details of the assassination were included in a “manhunting timeline” within the NSA’s intelligence repository, the Intercept said on Wednesday.

The US embassy in Damascus reported at the time that Israel was the most likely suspect, according to a secret cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010. Iranian media went public with that accusation from the start.

Suleiman was described by Syrian officials as dealing with defence and security issues in Assad’s private office in Damascus. Israeli and Syrian opposition sources claimed he worked as “liaison” with the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, Israel’s sworn enemy.

But a secret US government document several months earlier gave his precise job description: “Syrian special presidential adviser for arms procurement and strategic weapons.” It was also suggested that he was responsible for security at a Syrian nuclear facility bombed by Israel 11 months earlier.

The Intercept said that, according to three former US intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East, the document’s classification markings indicate that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance. The information in the document was labelled “SI,” which means the intelligence was collected by monitoring communications signals.

It added that knowledge within the NSA about surveillance of Israeli military units is especially sensitive because the NSA has Israeli intelligence officers working jointly with its officers at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Syria’s tightly controlled official media did not report on the killing at the time. But Syrian sources confirmed that Suleiman was shot by a silenced weapon in the head and neck on a beach at al-Rimal al-Zahabiyeh resort near Tartus, where, like other privileged Syrians, he owned a chalet.

In September 2007, Israeli planes attacked and destroyed a suspected nuclear site at al-Kibar on the Euphrates river, apparently one of the special projects Suleiman managed “which may have have been unknown to the broader Syrian military leadership”, as the US embassy put it.

The Israeli assassination of Suleiman came less than six months after a joint Mossad-CIA team assassinated a senior Hezbollah operative in the heart of Damascus. US and Israeli involvement in that attack, which targeted the Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh, was first reported in detail by the Washington Post. The CIA had long sought Mughniyeh for his role in terrorist attacks against Americans, including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen.

Neither the NSA nor a spokesperson for the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu responded to requests for comment, the Intercept said.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Pakistan tried to tap international web traffic via underwater cables, report says | World news | The Guardian

ISI spy agency sought access to data from ‘landing sites’ passing through Karachi, privacy group claims, in push to acquire digital espionage capacity to rival US

Pakistani intelligence sought to tap worldwide internet traffic via underwater cables that would have given the country a digital espionage capacity to rival the US, according to a report by Privacy International.

The report says the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency hired intermediary companies to acquire spying toolkits from western and Chinese firms for domestic surveillance.

It also claims the ISI sought access to tap data from three of the four “landing sites” that pass through the country’s port city of Karachi, effectively giving it access to internet traffic worldwide.

Pakistan was in talks with a European company in 2013 to acquire the technology, but it is not clear whether the deal went through – a fact the rights organisation said was troubling.

“These cables are going to route data through various countries and regions,” Matthew Rice, an advocacy officer for Privacy International, said.

“Some will go from Europe to Africa and all the way to south-east Asia. From my reading that’s an explicit attempt to look at what’s going on.”

Traffic from North America and regional rival India would also be routed via the cables, he said.

Related: Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data

The report, based on what it called previously unpublished confidential documents, said the data collection sought in the ISI’s proposal “would rival some of the world’s most powerful surveillance programmes” including those of the US and Britain.

A spokesman for Pakistan’s military said he was not able to comment on the issue at the present time.

Last month Pakistani rights campaigners and opposition lawmakers urged Islamabad to protect the privacy of its citizens after leaked top-secret documents appeared to show British intelligence had gained access to almost all of the country’s internet users.

Pakistan is in the process of debating its own cybercrime bill, which rights campaigners say threatens to curtail freedom of expression and privacy in its current form.

Rights groups also expressed concern over a provision that allows the government to share intelligence with foreign spy agencies, such as the American National Security Agency, and a plan to force service providers to retain telephone and email records for up to a year.
Bron: www.theguardian.com

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German government accuses news website of treason over leaks | World news | The Guardian

For the first time in more than 50 years journalists are facing treason charges, which is being denounced as an attack on the freedom of the press


Germany has opened a treason investigation into a news website a broadcaster said had reported on plans to increase state surveillance of online communications.

Related: Germany fights Facebook over real names policy

German media said it was the first time in more than 50 years journalists had faced treason charges, and some denounced the move as an attack on the freedom of the press.

“The federal prosecutor has started an investigation on suspicion of treason into the articles ... published on the internet blog Netzpolitik.org,” a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office said.

She added the move followed a criminal complaint by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), over articles about the BfV that appeared on the website on 25 February and 15 April. It said the articles had been based on leaked documents.

The public broadcaster ARD reported Netzpolitik.org had published an article on how the BfV was seeking extra funding to increase its online surveillance, and another about plans to set up a special unit to monitor social media, both based on leaked confidential documents.

The website specialises in internet politics, data protection, freedom of information and digital rights issues.

“This is an attack on the freedom of the press,” Netzpolitik.org journalist Andre Meister, targeted by the investigation along with editor-in-chief Markus Beckedahl, said in a statement. “We’re not going to be intimidated by this.”

Related: Germans greet influx of refugees with free food and firebombings

Michael Konken, head of the German press association, echoed the sentiment and called the probe “an unacceptable attempt to muzzle two critical journalists”.

In 1962 the defence minister, Franz Josef Strauss, was forced to resign after treason charges were brought against the news weekly Der Spiegel for a cover story alleging West Germany’s armed forces were unprepared to defend it against the communist threat in the cold war.

Beckedahl told the TV network N24: “I’m torn between feeling like this is an accolade and the thought that it could end up leading to jail.”

Bron: www.theguardian.com

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Duitse minister van Justitie ontslaat hoofd Federaal Openbaar Ministerie



De Duitse minister van Justitie Heiko Maas (SPD) heeft het hoofd van het Federaal Openbaar Ministerie Harald Range (67) ontslagen in een hoog oplopende politieke affaire over persvrijheid.

Range (67) raakte in opspraak omdat hij twee journalisten de nieuwssite Netzpolitik.org beschuldigd heeft van landverraad. De site verspreidde eerder dit jaar op basis van interne documenten van geheime diensten informatie over hoe het internet in toenemende mate zou worden gemonitord door de Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst. Eerder had ook de Süddeutsche Zeitung hierover bericht, in samenwerking met de publieke zenders NDR en WDR. Netzpolitik.org publiceerde echter ook de onderliggende stukken van de geheime dienst.

De veiligheidsdienst deed bij Range aangifte van landverraad en van het openbaar maken van staatsgeheimen. Op dat delict staat ten minste een jaar celstraf, maar in het ergste geval levenslang. Volgens minister Maas vallen de documenten echter niet onder de noemer ‘staatsgeheim’ en is de publicatie afgedekt door de persvrijheid die in de grondwet van de Bondsrepubliek is vastgelegd. Hij werd hierin gisteren bijgevallen door de minister van Binnenlandse Zaken en door bondskanselier Angela Merkel (CDU).

Range werd overladen met kritiek van parlementariërs van de sociaaldemocratische regeringspartij SPD, waartoe ook Maas behoort. De linkse oppositiepartij Die Linke eiste zijn aftreden. Verschillende parlementariërs van regeringspartij CDU/CSU daarentegen spraken hun steun uit voor Range en het handelen van het OM.

Range koos vanochtend voor een frontale aanval op Maas. Hij verweet de minister van Justitie politieke invloed uit te oefenen en de onafhankelijkheid van de rechtspraak in gevaar te brengen. De opvolger van Range, die sowieso binnen enkele maanden met pensioen zou gaan, is de Beierse procureur-generaal Justitie Peter Frank.

Met het vertrek van Range is de affaire waarschijnlijk nog niet ten einde. De Berlijnse politicoloog Hajo Funke zei in een reactie op de actualiteitenzender Phoenix dat er nog meer politieke verwikkelingen te verwachten zijn.

Bron: NRC

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AT&T's 'extraordinary, decades-long' relationship with NSA – report | US news | The Guardian

New York Times and ProPublica cite newly released NSA documents
Telecoms giant assisted with 'wiretapping United Nations headquarters'

The telecoms giant AT&T has had an “extraordinary, decades-long” relationship with the National Security Agency, it was reported on Saturday.

Citing newly disclosed NSA documents dating from 2003 to 2013, the New York Times said in a story published with ProPublica that AT&T was described as “highly collaborative” with an “extreme willingness to help” with government internet surveillance.

In June 2013, the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked thousands of documents to media outlets including the Guardian. The following April, the Guardian and the Washington Post were awarded a Pulitzer prize for reporting on the story.

The new documents show that AT&T gave the NSA access to “billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks”, the Times and ProPublica said. The reports also said AT&T provided “technical assistance” in “wiretapping all internet communications at the United Nations headquarters” in New York City.

The documents also show that the NSA’s budget for its relationship with AT&T was twice as large as that of the next-largest such programme, and that the company placed surveillance equipment in 17 of its US internet hubs.

Related: NSA collected Americans' email records in bulk for two years under Obama

The Times said the new documents did not name AT&T, but said analysis by its reporters and ProPublica revealed “a constellation of evidence” that pointed to the company.

The Times also pointed to the publication by the Guardian in June 2013 of a draft NSA inspector general report on email and internet data collection, under the codename Stellar Wind, which did not name AT&T or MCI, a company purchased by Verizon. The Times said the report “describes their market share in numbers that correspond to those two businesses, according to Federal Communications Commission reports”.

The Times quoted an AT&T spokesman, Brad Burns, as saying: “We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence.”
Bron: www.theguardian.com