The night before Congress passed legislation to expand surveillance power, legislators attended a party with the chief lobbyists for the bill.
Source: Just Before Passing Surveillance Expansion, Lawmakers Partied With Pro-CISA Lobbyists
Tag: NSA
Recently Bought a Windows Computer? Microsoft Probably Has Your Encryption Key
New Windows devices have disk encryption turned on by default. But what happens to your recovery key?
Source: Recently Bought a Windows Computer? Microsoft Probably Has Your Encryption Key
NSA/GCHQ Exploits Against Juniper Networking Equipment – Schneier on Security
This doesn’t have much to do with the Juniper back door currently in the news, but the document does provide even more evidence that (despite what the government says) the NSA hoards vulnerabilities in commonly used software for attack purposes instead of improving security for everyone by disclosing it.
Source: NSA/GCHQ Exploits Against Juniper Networking Equipment – Schneier on Security
James Clapper has found another reason why he lied about NSA spying • The Register
Yep: he had actually forgotten about the storing of all Americans’ phonecalls
Source: James Clapper has found another reason why he lied about NSA spying • The Register
German Parliament Spy Oversight Board Sues German Government Over Data Sharing With NSA | Techdirt
The German Foreign Intelligence Services, supported by the government, tapped the German Internet Exchange Point Decix, the largest internet exchange point globally. While the G10 Commission had approved the blanket tapping, they were unaware that some of the tapped data were forwarded to the NSA, the US National Security Agency, based on a list of so-called “selectors” — names or numbers the NSA sent to their German colleagues.
Source: German Parliament Spy Oversight Board Sues German Government Over Data Sharing With NSA | Techdirt
NSA Collected Americans’ E-mails Even After it Stopped Collecting Americans’ E-mails – Schneier on Security
The NSA continually plays this shell game with Congressional overseers. Whenever an intelligence-community official testifies that something is not being done under this particular program, or this particular authority, you can be sure that it’s being done under some other program or some other authority. In particular, the NSA regularly uses rules that allow them to conduct bulk surveillance outside the US — rules that largely evade both Congressional and Judicial oversight — to conduct bulk surveillance on Americans. Effective oversight of the NSA is impossible in the face of this level of misdirection and deception.
Germany trades citizens’ metadata for NSA’s top spy software | Ars Technica
In order to obtain a copy of the NSA’s main XKeyscore software, whose existence was first revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency agreed to hand over metadata of German citizens it spies on. According to documents seen by the German newspaper Die Zeit, after 18 months of negotiations, the US and Germany signed an agreement in April 2013 that would allow the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamtes für Verfassungsschutz—BfV) to obtain a copy of the NSA’s most important program and to adopt it for the analysis of data gathered in Germany.
Source: Germany trades citizens’ metadata for NSA’s top spy software | Ars Technica
New Documents and Reports Confirm AT&T and NSA’s Longstanding Surveillance Partnership | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Reports today in the New York Times and ProPublica confirm what EFF’s Jewel v. NSA lawsuit has claimed since 2008—that the NSA and AT&T have collaborated to build a domestic surveillance infrastructure, resulting in unconstitutional seizure and search of of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of Americans’ Internet communications.
Global spy system ECHELON confirmed at last – by leaked Snowden files • The Register
Origins of automated surveillance
Source: Global spy system ECHELON confirmed at last – by leaked Snowden files • The Register
Israeli Special Forces Assassinated Senior Syrian Official
According to an internal National Security Agency document provided by Edward Snowden, the 2008 assassination of Muhammad Suleiman, a top General and aide to the Syrian president, was an Israeli military operation.
Source: Israeli Special Forces Assassinated Senior Syrian Official