Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
BREAKING NEWS: France wants to ‘temporarily suspend’ trade talks with US over NSA spying
End Of Days News
BREAKING NEWS: France wants to ‘temporarily suspend’ trade talks with US over NSA spying
BREAKING NEWS: France wants to delay the ‘biggest bilateral trade deal in history’ by 2 weeks after learning the USA was allegedly tracking economic communications of EU member states. “It would seem wise to… Read More →
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
President Obama's Tries To Limit EU Anger Over NSA Spying Claims
End Of Days News
President Obama's Tries To Limit EU Anger Over NSA Spying Claims
*Barack Obama Seeks To Limit EU Fallout Over US Spying Claims -- The Guardian* President says NSA will assess espionage allegations as France and Germany demand answers and warn of delay to trade talks. Barack Obama has sought to limit the damage from the growing transatlantic espionage row after Germany and France denounced the major snooping activities of US agencies and warned of a possible delay in the launch next week of ambitious free-trade talks between Europe and the US. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande, demanded quick explana... more »
Monday, June 10, 2013
This is for you that called me a conspiracy theorist!!!! Thanks Dan! NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' – video
End Of Days News
The source behind the Guardian's NSA files talks to Glenn Greenwald about his motives for the biggest intelligence leak in a generation
Friday, June 7, 2013
President Obama Speaks For First Time About The NSA's Surveillance Programs (Updated)
End Of Days News
President Obama Speaks For First Time About The NSA's Surveillance Programs (Updated)
*Obama Calls Surveillance Programs Legal and Limited -- New York Times* WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday offered a robust defense of the government surveillance programs revealed this week, and sought to reassure the public that his administration has not become a Big Brother with eyes and ears throughout the world of online communications. “Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” Mr. Obama said, delivering a 14-minute answer to two questions about the surveillance programs at an event that was initially supposed to be devoted to the health care law. “That’s not what... more »
NSA taps in to user data of Google, Skype and others, secret files reveal
End Of Days News
• Top secret PRISM program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Facebook and Apple
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
• Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.
The Guardian has verified the authenticity of the document, a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation – classified as top secret with no distribution to foreign allies – which was apparently used to train intelligence operatives on the capabilities of the program. The document claims "collection directly from the servers" of major US service providers.
Although the presentation claims the program is run with the assistance of the companies, all those who responded to a Guardian request for comment on Thursday denied knowledge of any such program.
In a statement, Google said: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."
Several senior tech executives insisted that they had no knowledge of PRISM or of any similar scheme. They said they would never have been involved in such a program. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," one said.
An Apple spokesman said it had "never heard" of PRISM.
Thursday, June 6, 2013
BREAKING NEWS: NSA Collects Phone Records Of Millions Of American Verizon Customers Daily
End Of Days News
BREAKING NEWS: NSA Collects Phone Records Of Millions Of American Verizon Customers Daily
*NSA Collecting Phone Records Of Millions Of Verizon Customers Daily -- The Guardian* Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama. The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in... more »
Friday, January 4, 2013
CONFIRMED: The NSA Is Developing A 'Perfect Citizen' Program To Protect The US Cyber Grid
Newly released documents confirm that the National Security Agency (NSA), America's top cyberespionage organization, is spearheading a cloaked and controversial program to develop technology that could protect the US power grid from cyberattack.
Existence of the program, dubbed Perfect Citizen, was revealed in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article. But intriguing new details are revealed in documents released by the NSA last month to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), an Internet privacy group that petitioned for them in 2010 under the Freedom of Information Act.
Of the 188 pages of documents released by the agency, roughly half were redacted to remove classified information. Even so, the documents show Perfect Citizen to be in the fourth year of a five-year program begun in 2009. Valued at up to $91 million, the Perfect Citizen technology is being developed by Raytheon, the Waltham, Mass., defense contractor that won it.
The released documents are the contract that the NSA drew up with Raytheon. A Raytheon spokesman referred all comments on the program to the NSA.
All along, the NSA has maintained that Perfect Citizen is "purely a vulnerabilities assessment and capabilities development contract" that "does not involve the monitoring of communications or the placement of sensors on utility company systems," according to an NSA statement released in 2010 – and now rereleased to the Monitor.
What the documents reveal is an apparently small but robust program authorized to hire 28 software engineers, program managers, and laboratory personnel. This includes a pair of "penetration testers" – essentially good-guy hackers who specialize in breaking into networks.
Their assignment as part of the team: discover vulnerabilities that lie in the electronic interface that connects the computer networks of utility companies. Then the team can come up with software and hardware plugs to patch those digital holes.
"Sensitive Control Systems (SCS) perform data collection and control of large-scale distributed utilities or provide automation of infrastructure processes," says the Perfect Citizen contract's "Statement of Work" document. "The protection of SCS is essential to mission operations and has become a significant point of interest in support of the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community."Further, the document says, "prevention of a loss due to a cyber or physical attack, or recovery of operational capability after such an event, is crucial to the continuity of the Department of Defense, the intelligence community, and the operation of [Signals Intelligence] systems."
While most might agree the program's national-security goal is laudable, the question of just how to go about protecting the power grid has been a controversial topic in Congress and among Internet privacy advocates leery of government control of the Internet. Of particular concern among such advocates is shielding privately owned corporate computer networks deemed to be "critical infrastructure" from potentially intrusive digital monitoring.
Citing unnamed sources, the original Wall Street Journal article said that the program did indeed involve placing sensors that can detect illegitimate cyberactivity. But the new documents don't clarify this point. Deploying such sensors would be especially sensitive since the NSA is an arm of the Pentagon charged with collecting and analyzing foreign communications and defending US government communications and computer networks – not domestic spying.
"This is a research and engineering effort. There is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor," the 2010 statement says.
Indeed, the NSA is not authorized to intercept the communications of US citizens unless specifically authorized to do so by a special court acting under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yet The New York Times reported in 2005 that the NSA had been involved in conducting wiretaps of calls made by US citizens to persons overseas without first getting a warrant from the court.
"Any suggestions that there are illegal or invasive domestic activities associated with this [Perfect Citizen] contracted effort are simply not true," says the NSA's 2010 statement. "We strictly adhere to both the spirit and the letter of US laws and regulations."
Still, privacy rights groups remain worried the program is focused on digital filtering or monitoring – and developing systems to do that. The Statement of Work document, for instance, requires development of "Computer Network Defense best practices/capabilities that defend against vulnerabilities identified in a SCS."
"Previously the agency had said it was just a research program," says Ginger McCall, director of the Open Government Program at EPIC, which won release of the documents. "But we see in these documents that they do intend to conduct testing, actual research, actual vulnerability testing and develop software tools that could be operational."
Other experts say the documents are suggestive, but do not ultimately clarify Perfect Citizen’s scope.
"It's hard to say if the project is only research, only operational, or a combination of both," says John Bumgarner, a research director for the US Cyber Consequences Unit, a nonprofit security think tank that advises government and industry. "The contract cost for the project seems way too low to be an operational program to, say, protect the entire US electric grid from cyberattack."
But EPIC's main concern is that Perfect Citizen could be already conducting, or planning to conduct, online digital monitoring of data without proper authorizations or having the program itself evaluated for privacy implications. When the Department of Homeland Security undertakes such projects, Ms. McCall notes, it is required to conduct privacy impact assessments. She questions what has happened in this case (which is not under the authority of DHS).
"It appears as though the NSA is trying to develop cybersecurity protective technology, but that as part of this contract, they're conducting testing already," she says. "This isn't merely research."
Others, however, applaud the project, saying such measures are needed.
"The project makes sense, as the government relies on industry for most of its requirements in the way of water, sewer, and power," says one cybersecurity expert who requested anonymity because his company does business with the government.
Threats to the grid seem to be rising. In recent months, he notes, DHS has issued reports about cyberattacks against utility companies whose business computer networks also have industrial networks connected to the grid.
Last month, DHS reported that federal cyberresponse teams recently provided on-site support "at a power generation facility where both common and sophisticated malware had been discovered in the industrial control system environment."
The DHS team also performed preliminary on-site analysis of those machines and "discovered signs of the sophisticated malware on two engineering workstations.” Both machines were "critical to the operation of the control environment."
President Obama is reported to be nearing announcement of an executive order that would expand federal protection to include the power grid and other critical infrastructure networks. Cybersecurity legislation failed in the last Congress. The White House has said that it prefers a comprehensive bill, but that the matter is too urgent to wait any longer.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Washington Post cited several US officials saying that Obama signed off on the secret cybersecurity order, believed to widely expand NSA’s spying authorities, in mid-October.
Order may allow military takeover of internet
As we reported last week, an article in the Washington Post, cited several US officials saying that Obama signed off on the secret cybersecurity order, believed to widely expand NSA’s spying authorities, in mid-October.
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