company:edward snowden

Très intéressant reportage #Infrarouge sur la #guerre_informatique
▻http://www.france2.fr/emissions/infrarouge/videos/cyberguerre_larme_fatale__22-09-2015_930459?origin=ftvsite_homepage

Espionner, défendre, attaquer avec des troupes, des chars, des avions, des armes nucléaires : jusqu’ici, les règles de la guerre semblaient connues. Mais tout est en train de basculer. Après l’air, la terre et la marine, le mot « #cyber » désigne désormais, dans le jargon des militaires, la quatrième armée. Depuis une vingtaine d’années, des milliers de hackers, programmateurs (sic) et mathématiciens ont appris à infiltrer, pirater, saboter et même détruire les ordinateurs du monde entier. Depuis son exil à Moscou et avec des documents secrets dérobés à l’agence américaine, Edward Snowden, l’ancien expert informatique de la #NSA, explique longuement les dilemmes que pose ce nouvel univers militaire.

Passage très intéressant à partir de la 45e minute consacré aux travaux de Eric Filiol, directeur à l’#ESIEA, couplant exploitation des données de masse ouverte et de la #géographie pour scénariser une attaque ciblée permettant de neutraliser pendant plusieurs jours le réseau électrique californien.

#cyberguerre #cybercriminalité #espionnage #renseignement #terrorisme #bigdata #données_de_masse #informatique #marché_de_la_peur #ROSO

Why Snowden hasn’t harmed Israel’s intelligence services
There was an expectation that the Snowden documents would yield details on Israel’s electronic surveillance capabilities, yet Glenn Greenwald has barely reported on Israel.
By Anshel Pfeffer | Aug. 6, 2014 |
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.609090

For over a year now, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) systems administrator who fled to Russia, has been distributing through the media part of the hundreds of thousands of classified documents he took with him. Many of these reports have seriously damaged the operations of American and British intelligence services. On Monday, Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who cooperated with Snowden and wrote most of the reports based on his documents, published on the Intercept website new details on the close cooperation between NSA and its Israeli counterpart - the IDF’s Unit 8200. This is only the second time in which the Snowden documents have referred to Israel.

Then report is fascinating and sheds new light on the way Israeli and American intelligence work together on joint targets in the region and elsewhere, in this case Egypt under the previous Muslim Brotherhood government. But it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know before. The two countries have a long history of intelligence-sharing which has continued to deepen despite the political pitfalls and lack of personal chemistry between the heads of state. The new details Greenwald adds on the direct line between headquarters, the joint projects against Iran (partly funded by the U.S.) and the use of each other’s installations are interesting but hardly surprising.

What is surprising is the paucity of mentions of Israel in the flow of Snowden documents. The two reports so far describe the contours of the US-Israel intelligence relationship but unlike the documents on the electronic intelligence-gathering by the U.S. and its ally, Britain, there have been no reports on actual details of Israel’s surveillance methods and its penetration of communication networks. The revelations of eavesdropping programs of the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ have caused immense damage to their countries ability to follow potential terror targets and gather information through phone and internet networks. They have lead to acrimonious debates in the west over the line between national security and intrusion on civilians’ privacy. The damage done to the intelligence services from the disclosure of their methods to keep tabs on terror organizations is assessed by the NSA at billions of dollars.

Due to the close NSA-Unit 8200 cooperation, there was an expectation that the Snowden documents would yield similar details on Israel’s electronic surveillance capabilities. But in the thirteen months since they started to appear, we’ve yet to read any operational details. The timing of this week’s report was meant to embarrass the Obama administration for working with Israel while the Gaza operation was ongoing but in a tense period for the diplomatic relations between Washington and Jerusalem, a reminder of the closeness between their intelligence services boosts Israel’s international standing.

Why hasn’t Greenwald published any damaging details on Israel’s eavesdropping techniques, as he has on the U.S. and Britain? There are four possible reasons.

So many documents, so little time - Snowden hoovered up as many as 1.7 million classified documents, according to some estimates. It’s unclear whether this figure is accurate and how many of them have been handed to Greenwald and other journalists, but in every interview, Greenwald promises there are many more revelations to come that will embarrass the NSA. His new and well-funded website was founded mainly upon that promise. It’s possible that the Israeli chapter is still to come. And yet, it seems unlikely that Greenwald, who has been a constant and coruscating critic of Israel in his columns over the years, would hold back if he had anything that could harm its intelligence services. Especially as there are other competing journalists with access to some of the documents and any report on Israel’s spying activities is guaranteed click-bait.

Special classification - In the months before he fled for Russia, Snowden accumulated as many documents as he could put his hands on. He used passwords of work colleagues to obtain those he had no access to. If he failed in purloining documents relating to joint operations with Israel, of the kind he found on the U.S. and Britain, it would indicate that Israel-related material is stored under a higher classification and different level of total compartmentalization from most NSA employees. This could be due to Israeli requirements or an American attempt to keep these operations separate from its core operations out of concern of Israeli spying. Snowden who showed great creativity in storing up his secret cache would be aware of the value of such material yet he seems to have failed to breach that particular wall of secrecy.

Under threat - There is no evidence but at least one European intelligence analyst has wondered over the last year whether Israel has found a way to pressure either Snowden or Greenwald not to publish damaging details on Israel’s capabilities. “It’s impossible to believe that Snowden discovered so much about American and British networks yet found so little on Israel,” says the analyst who has devoted months to studying Snowden’s intelligence heist. “The only explanation I can think of is that Israel found a creative way to get to Snowden or Greenwald and convince them not to use these documents.”

Russian interests – Snowden has lived in Moscow for the last year, since escaping there via Hong Kong. Western intelligence agencies are convinced that he and almost certainly his stolen documents are now controlled by the Kremlin’s spies, though they’re still unsure whether he was in their service (perhaps unwittingly) before he arrived in Russia. The Kremlin has a clear interest in damaging the American and British intelligence-gathering networks as the old Cold War rivalries swiftly reemerge in the wake of the Ukraine crisis. The embarrassment and anger caused in the west by Snowden’s revelations and the public suspicion of the governments’ intrusion into civilians’ privacy, have certainly served Russia, which intrudes on its own citizens to a much larger degree, well. Israel’s relationship with the Kremlin is much more opaque.

Despite the strategic relationship with the U.S., successive Israeli governments have steadfastly refrained from criticizing Russia for its arms shipments to Syria, its nuclear assistance of Iran and most recently the invasion and annexation of Crimea. Snowden serves Russian interests and the fact that he has so far not published any documents damaging Israel’s intelligence operations could be a result of the careful efforts by Jerusalem to build quite links with Moscow since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

La NSA a piraté Orange et un consortium basé en France | Mediapart
▻http://www.mediapart.fr/journal/international/291213/la-nsa-pirate-orange-et-un-consortium-base-en-france

Selon des documents fournis par Edward Snowden, une unité spéciale de hackers de l’agence américaine a introduit un virus dans le réseau informatique d’un consortium de seize sociétés – dont Orange –, gérant le câble sous-marin qui achemine les communications téléphoniques et internet depuis Marseille vers l’Afrique du Nord, les pays du Golfe et l’Asie.

#NSA #Snowden #espionnage #surveillance

Systematic Deceit from the NSA | Bea Edwards
▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bea-edwards/systematic-deceit-from-th_b_3708145.html

Le #lanceur_d'alerte doit alerter ses supérieurs, pour mieux se faire botter les fesses.

General Hayden disputed the fact that Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who disclosed the wholesale electronic surveillance of Americans, is a whistleblower. Because Snowden did not make his disclosures through internal channels at the NSA, Hayden strongly implied - without actually saying so - he is a traitor.

(...)

To be sure, Snowden did not go to his supervisors or to the Congress. He did not do this because four other NSA whistleblowers (only three of whom are public) had already done it, and they had been subjected to demotion, termination and FBI raids. One of them was indicted under the Espionage Act and investigated for four years before the charges imploded. The unfortunate Congressional staffer who supported their allegations was also raided at home by the FBI and is now suing the government for the return of her personal effects.

Snowden did not follow this same course because he was aware of what had happened. He has said as much.

Even more to the point, Hayden knew all about this, too. In fact, General Hayden was at the top of the internal channel that meted out such vicious reprisal against the previous NSA whistleblowers. William Binney, a heavyweight whistleblower at the NSA (and GAP client), spent the better part of a van ride back to the agency from downtown Washington, D.C. telling Hayden - then NSA Director - that the surveillance program Trailblazer was an unconstitutional, inoperative, overpriced boondoggle cobbled together by SAIC, and it should be stopped. Hayden did nothing , and when he found that Binney had taken his evidence to a Congressional Committee, he retaliated mercilessly. He had Binney demoted and he informed the staff at the NSA that no one was to tell Congress anything different from what he - Hayden - told them to say. In October 2001 Binney resigned from the NSA, disgusted at the way in which the agency’s ineptitude left the US vulnerable to the attacks of September 11.

Nonetheless, the General had no problem at all staring straight into the [Fox News] camera yesterday morning and deliberately misleading his audience about the effectiveness of internal channels for whistleblowers at the NSA. Note the care with which Hayden chose his words. He didn’t actually say that Snowden should have used internal channels. He only said there’s no evidence that he - Snowden - did so.

In contrast, we have mounting evidence that those who should inform us about the activities of the intelligence community cannot be trusted. Like Hayden’s Fox News interview yesterday, their statements are designed to mislead. James Clapper said exactly that when he admitted that he provided an open congressional hearing on March 12, 2013 the “least untruthful” account of the NSA’s surveillance operations possible. In other words, Clapper did not ’misspeak.’ He carefully elaborated a false answer and then gave it to a Senate committee under oath.

The problem is not just these misleading officials, either. There is a structure of deceit around the NSA programs. The intelligence agencies constructed a system intended to mimic Constitutional checks and balances: a secret court and closed legislative briefings with gagged lawmakers. Spokesmen like current NSA Director Keith Alexander then claim the programs were vetted by all three branches of government.

Michael Hayden, Keith Alexander, James Clapper and their ilk represent a political force intent upon strengthening and expanding the surveillance of citizens, for whatever reason . Maybe it builds their fiefdoms, or enriches their contractor cronies, or assuages their paranoia. We don’t know. What we do know is that they have a record of deceit in this regard. When they have to mislead the public or the Congress, they have done so, without even breaking the tell-tale Nixonian sweat.

They’ve been pretty successful. The budget of the NSA has doubled, at the very least, since 9/11 (it’s a secret budget, so it’s hard to tell), although the agency’s record is a disgrace. Trailblazer, which Binney denounced to Hayden, was abandoned in 2005 as a dead loss. Two disturbed teenagers from Dagestan, who bombed the Boston Marathon finish line, evaded the NSA, although Russian intelligence tipped US intelligence twice that the brothers were suspect.

There’s simply no accountability at the NSA - not for the crimes and not for the cover-up. Not for the deception, and not even for the poor performance. If anyone has betrayed the United States, it’s Hayden and Alexander, not Edward Snowden.

#surveillance #trahison #mensonges #mensonges_éhontés #manipulation #mafieux #nsa #whistleblower #snowden

Si la #NSA est la fièvre, #Internet est-il la maladie ?
▻http://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2013/08/01/if-the-nsa-is-the-fever-is-the-internet-the-disease

Confirmation came on July 31, 2013, of what many had feared, but which few had possessed the hard factual evidence to establish as more than a flight of paranoia. The proof came courtesy of more information that had been supplied by Edward Snowden to Glenn Greenwald (at the Guardian), and this revelation made the earlier articles about NSA actions look positively quaint. In short, by revealing the X-Keyscore program, users of the Internet now know that everything they do online is watched (or can be watched), as Greenwald wrote:

“Beyond emails, the XKeyscore system allows analysts to monitor a virtually unlimited array of other internet activities, including those within social media.”

(…)

Yet, the NSA has only gained its information foothold through our usage of the Internet. A system that we have no excuse for not recognizing as a tool that is as useful for watching us as it is useful in our daily lives.

So to restate the question: if the NSA is the fever, is the real illness the Internet? After all, without the illness…the fever would not be at nearly as high a temperature.

Surveillance without oversight a danger to society | Amnesty’s global human rights blog
▻http://livewire.amnesty.org/2013/06/20/surveillance-without-oversight-a-danger-to-society

We owe a lot to Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency computer technician who exposed large-scale surveillance efforts within the United States and worldwide.

He’s accomplished what the US Congress could not do and the federal courts have so far refused to do. Far from committing an act of treason, as several top US lawmakers have suggested, by all appearances he’s done a public service.

...

These disclosures reveal two trends in the United States’ approach to intelligence – starting with the Bush Administration and, we now know, continued and augmented on President Obama’s watch.