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
Elected MPs were deliberately misled by Brit spy agencies
Source: Big Brother is born. And we find out 15 years too late to stop him • The Register
Basically, it looks like secret agreements made in smoke-filled rooms, very discreet with no oversight or accountability. The fact that pretty much everyone in IT security has served in an offensive cybersecurity capacity for the Israeli army helps. As does the fact that the country is so small, making informal deal making managable. It doesn’t scale.
Why is this important?
…companies in Israel, a country comprising less than 0.11% of the world’s population, are estimated to have sold 10% ($6 billion out of $60 billion) of global encryption and cyber technologies for 2014.
Source: How Israel Regulates Encryption – Schneier on Security
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
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.
In a landmark ruling that will have far-reaching repercussions, Europe’s highest court has ruled that data sharing between the EU and US under the Safe Harbour framework is invalid.
Source: Safe Harbour ruled INVALID: Facebook ‘n’ pals’ data slurp at risk • The Register
Leaked docs show how out-of-control spy agency went full Stasi on innocent surfers
Source: KARMA POLICE: GCHQ spooks spied on every web user ever • The Register
Your secrets sold to advertisers
Source: AVG to flog your web browsing, search history from mid-October
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
It was a pretty good deal for defense contractors.
Source: Jeb Bush, Hosted By Defense Contractor-Backed Group, Calls Iraq War “A Pretty Good Deal”
