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
The National Security Agency and its closest allies planned to hijack data links to Google and Samsung app stores to infect smartphones with spyware, a top-secret document reveals.
The surveillance project was launched by a joint electronic eavesdropping unit called the Network Tradecraft Advancement Team, which includes spies from each of the countries in the “Five Eyes” alliance — the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia.
The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept. The document outlines a series of tactics that the NSA and its counterparts in the Five Eyes were working on during workshops held in Australia and Canada between November 2011 and February 2012.
The main purpose of the workshops was to find new ways to exploit smartphone technology for surveillance. The agencies used the Internet spying system XKEYSCORE to identify smartphone traffic flowing across Internet cables and then to track down smartphone connections to app marketplace servers operated by Samsung and Google. (Google declined to comment for this story. Samsung said it would not be commenting “at this time.”)
As part of a pilot project codenamed IRRITANT HORN, the agencies were developing a method to hack and hijack phone users’ connections to app stores so that they would be able to send malicious “implants” to targeted devices. The implants could then be used to collect data from the phones without their users noticing.
Previous disclosures from the Snowden files have shown agencies in the Five Eyes alliance designed spyware for iPhones and Android smartphones, enabling them to infect targeted phones and grab emails, texts, web history, call records, videos, photos and other files stored on them. But methods used by the agencies to get the spyware onto phones in the first place have remained unclear.
The newly published document shows how the agencies wanted to “exploit” app store servers — using them to launch so-called “man-in-the-middle” attacks to infect phones with the implants. A man-in-the-middle attack is a technique in which hackers place themselves between computers as they are communicating with each other; it is a tactic sometimes used by criminal hackers to defraud people. In this instance, the method would have allowed the surveillance agencies to modify the content of data packets passing between targeted smartphones and the app servers while an app was being downloaded or updated, inserting spyware that would be covertly sent to the phones.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Monday used last week’s appellate court ruling that NSA bulk collection of call records is illegal to bash his Republican counterpart for wanting to keep it going through 2020.
“My friend, the Majority Leader, keeps talking about extending the program for five and a half years,” Reid said from the floor of the Senate, referencing Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “How can you reauthorize something that’s illegal?” Reid asked. “You can’t. You shouldn’t.”
“Extending an illegal program for five and a half years? That is not sensible,” he said. “What should happen is that we should move forward and do something that is needed here — and that is, do it all over again.”
On Sunday at a speech in Boston, McConnell called the bulk phone call metadata collection program “an important tool to prevent the next terrorist attack,” and said that the U.S. “is better off with an extension of the Patriot Act than not.” Three provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire on June 1, including one that the NSA has claimed justifies the program.
Reid offered an alternative Monday, saying that McConnell should seek to advance the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would end the bulk collection of metadata from domestic phone companies. He pointed out that a version of the bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee in April by a 25 – 2 vote, and predicted that the legislation would be advanced by a full House vote this week.
Reid also painted the bill as an escape hatch for McConnell — and said he would back a revolt that’s being openly planned, should the Senate Majority Leader attempt to move for a clean extension of the Patriot Act. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., have already threatened filibusters.
“This is the only bipartisan, bicameral solution we have today that will end the illegal bulk collection and reform and reauthorize key provisions of FISA,” Reid said.
“Otherwise … I’m not the only one, Mr. President,” he added. “I’m told, walking over here, that the junior senator from Kentucky is not going to let an extension … take place. So why don’t we just go ahead and get it done now.”
The NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone call records may be illegal, a US federal appeals court has ruled.
The US Second Circuit Court of Appeal unanimously ruled that the NSA’s bulk telephone metadata1program was not authorised by section 215 of the Patriot Act, voiding an earlier ruling by a lower court. The US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed a legal challenge to the NSA dragnet surveillance program. Judge Vernon S Broderick ruled that section 215 of the Patriot Act was a statutory scheme that precludes judicial review.
The decision by three judges on appeal overturns that decision and re-opens the case against the NSA that it acted contrary to either the Fourth or First Amendments to the US Constitution. Lawyers are still to argue on these points properly. Attorneys for the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) have however succeeded in re-instating the case and in deprecating the Patriot Act as a trump card in justifying surveillance, as the ruling by the judges explains.
Last November, we ran through the list of senior law enforcement officers on both sides of the Atlantic who all came out with suspiciously similar whines about how strong crypto was turning the internet into a “dark and ungoverned” place. Judging by this story in Reuters, others want to join the choir:
Some technology and communication firms are helping militants avoid detection by developing systems that are “friendly to terrorists”, Britain’s top anti-terrorism police officer said on Tuesday.
That remark comes from Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, who is the UK’s National Policing Lead for Counter-Terrorism, replacing Cressida Dick. Here’s the problem according to Rowley:
“Some of the acceleration of technology, whether it’s communications or other spheres, can be set up in different ways,” Rowley told a conference in London.
“It can be set up in a way which is friendly to terrorists and helps them … and creates challenges for law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Or it can be set up in a way which doesn’t do that.”
“Set up in a way which is friendly to terrorists and helps them” obviously means using strong crypto; “set up in a way which doesn’t do that” therefore means with compromised crypto. Like his colleagues, Rowley too blames the current mistrust between the intelligence agencies and computer companies on Edward Snowden:
“Snowden has created an environment where some technology companies are less comfortable working with law reinforcement and intelligence agencies and the bad guys are better informed,” Rowley told Reuters after his speech.
Well, no, actually. That “environment” has been created by the NSA and GCHQ working together to break into the main online services, and undermine key aspects of digital technology, with no thought for the collateral damage that ruining internet security might cause for the world. Rowley is also quoted as saying:
“We all love the benefit of the internet and all the rest of it, but we need [technology companies’] support in making sure that they’re doing everything possible to stop their technology being exploited by terrorists. I’m saying that needs to be front and centre of their thinking and for some it is and some it isn’t.”
The technology is not being “exploited” by terrorists, it’s being used by them, just as they use telephones or microwaves or washing machines. That’s what those devices are there for. The idea that trying to make broken internet technologies should be “front and center” of technology companies’ thinking bespeaks a complete contempt for their users.
This constant refrain about how awful strong crypto is, and how we must break it, is simply the intelligence services implicitly admitting that they find the idea of doing their job in a free society, where people are able to keep some messages private, too hard, so they would be really grateful if technology companies could just fall in line and make life easier by destroying privacy for everyone.
Germany’s BND spy agency spied on European politicians and enterprises at the behest of the NSA for over a decade.
Der Spiegel reports (in German) that for years the NSA sent its counterparts at the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst – Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service) thousands of so-called selectors – IP addresses, emails, and mobile phone numbers – it wanted targeted for online surveillance.
German cyberspies fed this data into their own surveillance systems. The reports generated were evaluated at BND headquarters before intelligence was passed back to the NSA.
In practical terms, it seems that the BND have been tapping the Internet Exchange Point DE-CIX in Frankfurt, since at least 2009.
Results from the bulk tap of this Internet exchange were then passed over, in part at least, to the Americans as part of a collaborative agreement involving intel agencies.
The selectors included referred to European politicians and European aerospace and defence firms, including the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) and Eurocopter.
BND workers picked up on this anomalous targeting – which had nothing to do with a bilateral US-Germany agreement signed in 2002 to pool efforts in combating global terrorism – and have been complaining about it since at least 2008.
Yet it was only when the Edward Snowden revelations began in 2013 that German spy bosses began questioning the practice, which fits more closely with the profile of economic espionage.
An estimated 800,000 selectors were passed from the NSA to the BND in total over the years. A post-Snowden internal probe concluded that at least 2,000 of these various spying requests were contrary to either German or wider EU interests.
The BND helped the NSA with spying on European ministers and enterprises, without anyone in the German parliament being aware of this.
BND bosses didn’t pass on their findings to the Chancellor’s Office instead acting only to ask the NSA not to filter out requests that potentially ran contrary to German and Western European political and economic interests.
New Zealand spies teamed with National Security Agency hackers to break into a data link in the country’s largest city, Auckland, as part of a secret plan to eavesdrop on Chinese diplomats, documents reveal.
The covert operation, reported Saturday by New Zealand’s Herald on Sunday in collaboration with The Intercept, highlights the contrast between New Zealand’s public and secret approaches to its relationship with China, its largest and most important trading partner.
The hacking project suggests that New Zealand’s electronic surveillance agency, Government Communications Security Bureau, or GCSB, may have violated international treaties that prohibit the interception of diplomatic communications.
New Zealand has signed both the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, international treaties that protect the “inviolability” of diplomatic correspondance. The country’s prime minister, John Key, said in a recent speech on security that New Zealand had an obligation to support the rule of law internationally, and was “known for its integrity, reliability and independence.”
Last year, Key said that New Zealand’s relationship with China, worth an estimated $15 billion in annual two-way trade, had “never been stronger.” The relationship was not just about “purely trading,” he said, “it is so much broader and much deeper than that.”
In 2013, Key described a meeting with top Chinese officials in Beijing as “extremely warm” and told of how he was viewed as a “real friend” by the country’s premier, Li Keqiang.
At the same time, as minister in charge of the GCSB, Key was overseeing spying against China – which included the top-secret planned operation in Auckland, aimed at the Chinese consulate.
The hacking project is outlined in documents obtained by The Intercept from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Who’s keeping watch of the National Security Agency? In Congress, the answer in more and more cases is that the job is going to former lobbyists for NSA contractors and other intelligence community insiders.
A wave of recent appointments has placed intelligence industry insiders into key Congressional roles overseeing intelligence gathering. The influx of insiders is particularly alarming because lawmakers in Washington are set to take up a series of sensitive surveillance and intelligence issues this year, from reform of the Patriot Act to far-reaching “information sharing” legislation.
After the first revelations of domestic surveillance by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, President Obama defended the spying programs by claiming they were “subject to congressional oversight and congressional reauthorization and congressional debate.” But as Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., and other members of Congress have pointed out, there is essentially a “two-tiered” system for oversight, with lawmakers and staff on specialized committees, such as the House and Senate committees on Intelligence and Homeland Security, controlling the flow of information and routinely excluding other Congress members, even those who have asked for specific information relating to pending legislation.
One of the big arguments trotted out repeatedly by surveillance state defenders concerning the NSA’s Section 215 program to collect records on all phone calls is that such a thing “would have prevented 9/11” if it had been in place at the time. Here’s former FBI boss Robert Mueller making just that argument right after the initial Snowden leaks. Here’s Dianne Feinstein making the argument that if we had that phone tracking program before September 11th, we could have stopped the attacks. And here’s former NSA top lawyer and still top NSA supporter Stewart Baker arguing that the program is necessary because the lack of such a program failed to stop 9/11.
Except, it turns out, the feds did have just such a program prior to 9/11 — run by the DEA. As you may recall, back in January it was revealed that the DEA had its own database of phone call metadata of nearly all calls from inside the US to foreign countries. Brad Heath at USA Today came out with a report yesterday that goes into much more detail on the program, showing that it dates back to at least 1992 — meaning that the feds almost certainly had the calls that Feinstein and Mueller pretended the government didn’t have prior to 9/11.