organization:national security agency

  • XKEYSCORE: #nsa's Google for the World’s Private Communications
    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/01/nsas-google-worlds-private-communications

    " One of the National Security Agency’s most powerful tools of mass #surveillance makes tracking someone’s Internet usage as easy as entering an email address, and provides no built-in technology to prevent abuse."(Permalink)

  • How Private Contractors Have Created a Shadow NSA | The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/article/208481/how-private-contractors-have-created-shadow-nsa

    About a year ago, I wangled a media invitation to a “leadership dinner” in northern 
Virginia sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. #INSA is a powerful but 
little-known coalition established in 2005 by companies working for the National Security Agency. In recent years, it has become the premier organization for the men and women who run the massive cyberintelligence-industrial complex that encircles Washington, DC.

    The keynote speaker was Matthew Olsen, who was then the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (#NCTC). He used his talk to bolster the morale of his colleagues, which had recently been stung by the public backlash against the NSA’s massive surveillance programs, the extent of which was still com-ing to light in the steady release of Edward Snowden’s huge trove of documents. “#NSA is a national treasure,” Olsen declared. “Our national security depends on NSA’s continued capacity to collect this kind of information.” There was loud, sustained applause.

    One of those clapping was a former Navy SEAL named Melchior Baltazar, the CEO of an up-and-coming company called SDL Government. Its niche, an eager young flack explained, is providing software that military agencies can use to translate hundreds of thousands of Twitter and Facebook postings into English and then search them rapidly for potential clues to terrorist plots or cybercrime.

    It sounded like the ideal tool for the NSA. Just a few months earlier, Snowden had leaked documents revealing a secret program called PRISM, which gave the NSA direct access to the servers of tech firms, including Facebook and Google. He had also revealed that the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, had special units focused on cracking encryption codes for social media globally.

    SDL’s software is perfectly designed for such a task. It might be useful, say, for a team of SEALs on a covert operation trying to make sure their cover wasn’t blown by somebody on social media—something that almost happened when an alert Twitter user in Pakistan picked up early signs of the secret US raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. And, of course, we don’t know the extent to which the NSA could deploy it.

    In any case, the software, SDL boasts, is “securely deployed on-premise, behind the firewall, at over 75 government organizations, including the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community.” No wonder Baltazar was at the INSA event, rubbing shoulders with the kings and queens of the intelligence-contracting industry.

    *This small company, and INSA itself, are vivid examples of the rise of a new class in America: the cyberintelligence ruling class.

    #silicon_army via @histhom

  • AP Exclusive : Before leak, NSA mulled ending phone program - The Washington Post
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal_government/ap-exclusive-before-leak-nsa-mulled-ending-phone-program/2015/03/29/8e038c6e-d60c-11e4-bf0b-f648b95a6488_story.html

    The National Security Agency considered abandoning its secret program to collect and store American calling records in the months before leaker Edward Snowden revealed the practice, current and former intelligence officials say, because some officials believed the costs outweighed the meager counterterrorism benefits.

    After the leak and the collective surprise around the world, NSA leaders strongly defended the phone records program to Congress and the public, but without disclosing the internal debate.

    Pour AP, si la surveillance de masse continue, c’est la faute à #Snowden. Ses révélations ont tué le débat interne.

    Bon, le paragraphe suivant dit bien que, de toutes façons, il aurait continué…

    The proposal to kill the program was circulating among top managers but had not yet reached the desk of Gen. Keith Alexander, then the NSA director, according to current and former intelligence officials who would not be quoted because the details are sensitive. Two former senior NSA officials say they doubt Alexander would have approved it.

    … mais au moins comme ça on aura montré qu’il y’a même des têtes pensantes à la #NSA qui s’étaient aperçues que ça marchait pas.

    The internal critics pointed out that the already high costs of vacuuming up and storing the “to and from” information from nearly every domestic landline call were rising, the system was not capturing most cellphone calls, and program was not central to unraveling terrorist plots, the officials said. They worried about public outrage if the program ever was revealed.

  • Stop Spying on #Wikipedia Users, by Jimmy Wales (NYTimes)
    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/opinion/stop-spying-on-wikipedia-users.html?_r=0

    TODAY, we’re filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (#NSA)

    (...) On our servers, run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, those volunteers discuss their work on everything from Tiananmen Square to gay rights in Uganda. Many of them prefer to work anonymously, especially those who work on controversial issues or who live in countries with repressive governments.

    These volunteers should be able to do their work without having to worry that the United States government is monitoring what they read and write.

    #surveillance #procès

  • The story of one of the Cold War’s greatest unsolved mysteries — and the new effort to solve it - The Washington Post
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/12/30/the-u-n-wants-a-new-investigation-into-one-of-the-cold-wars-greatest

    Frustrated by the U.N.’s inability to deal with the Belgian-backed forces, Congo’s first prime minister, the charismatic socialist and African nationalist Patrice #Lumumba, appealed to Moscow for aid. He was soon ousted by forces loyal to Congolese army chief Joseph #Mobutu, whom, it later emerged, was the beneficiary of what was then one of the CIA’s most lavishly funded support operations. Lumumba was murdered in 1961 while in the custody of Katangese troops.

    #Hammarskjold, who was no friend of Lumumba, still cared deeply about backing Africa’s newly decolonized states. This was a time when the West looked warily at the emerging “third world” of independent nations, many of which were once subservient colonies but now, at least in the Western imagination, risked becoming Soviet proxies. African countries still ruled by white-supremacist governments supported Katanga’s breakaway — seeing it as a bulwark against African nationalism — but Hammarskjold sought a unified #Congo.

    The flight he took to Ndola to meet with Katangese representatives left under the cover of darkness to avoid being tracked or intercepted by Katanga’s air force. As the report of the Hammarskjold Commission details, there are still many questions over what happened aboard the flight and during its attempted descent. The crash site was sealed off and likely tampered with by North Rhodesian authorities before its discovery was even announced. Some investigators who have examined the case in recent decades are now convinced that the plane was shot down by a second aircraft, piloted possibly by a Belgian mercenary.

    One of the most intriguing revelations discussed by the 2013 commission is the testimony of Charles Southall, an American official with the National Security Agency then stationed at a listening post in Cyprus. Southall, now retired, told the commission that a few hours before Hammarskjold’s death, he received a communique from a supervisor telling him “something interesting is going to happen.” Upon arriving at the U.S. facility, he heard over loudspeaker what seemed to be the voice of a mercenary announcing his attack on a transport plane.

    Southall told the Wall Street Journal that the intercept was overheard through CIA, not NSA, circuit. “The #CIA refused to confirm or deny the existence of any intercept following a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request by The Journal. The agency upheld its decision after The Journal appealed it,” the Journal reports.

    Following the General Assembly’s vote this week, though, the Obama administration may be obliged to declassify relevant documents.

    For the Congolese people, Hammarskjold’s death was a footnote to decades of war and misery. While #Katanga ended its secession in 1963 (and its leader served briefly as Congolese prime minister), pro-Lumumba forces launched a rebellion. To quash it, white mercenaries and Western-backed forces rushed in. As an article in Foreign Affairs details, the United States, mostly through the CIA, spent tens of millions of dollars backing pro-Western figures in the Congo. It paid off massive bribes to other factions and even supplied “an instant airforce,” piloted by Cuban exiles:

    Washington was joining a particularly bloody conflict. When they seized rebel-held areas, the white mercenaries and government forces indiscriminately slaughtered the rebels and civilians they found there. Although there was no systematic counting of the casualties, it is estimated that at least 100,000 Congolese perished during this phase of the war.

    By 1965, Mobutu, with American support, was in full control. He would go on to become one of the continent’s most heinous tyrants, an “African #Caligula.” The legacy of his rule, and decades of fractious politics and weak governance, has left Congo a mess of warring militias and a society traumatized by mass violence.

    Hammarskjold may not have prevented that, but a new investigation into his death will shine light on a very dark corner of the Cold War’s history.

    La #guerre_froide a bon dos quand même.

  • NSA releases 12 years of damaging oversight reports on Christmas Eve
    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/nsa-releases-12-years-surveillance-oversight-reports-christmas-eve

    The National Security Agency released documents on Christmas Eve revealing surveillance activities that “may have violated the law for U.S. policy over more than a decade,” reports David Lerman at Bloomberg.

    Compelled by an ACLU FOIA request, the agency published 12 years of quarterly reports that were created for the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board between 2001 and mid-2013.

    The reports are heavily redacted but include details of intentional and unintentional misuse of the NSA’s signals intelligence gathering systems.

    • Les rapports https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/IntelligenceOversightBoard.shtml

      En gros, chaque fois qu’il y a un truc pas correct, on gronde l’intéressé

      Analysts who performed these queries were counseled by their management.

      quand c’est plus grave, on le prive temporairement de son outil de travail

      The analyst’s database access was temporarily suspended.

      voire, on l’envoie en formation

      The analyst was instructed to retake intelligence oversight training.

      On remarquera que, ayant sans doute fini par se rendre compte que les gros pavés noirs faisaient mauvais genre, la NSA a décidé de changer de couleur de caviardage.

    • NSA Drops Christmas Eve Surprise - The Intercept
      https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/26/nsa-releases-report-internal-abuses-christmas-eve

      While the NSA has come under public pressure for openness since high-profile revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the release of the heavily redacted internal reports at 1:30PM on Christmas Eve demonstrates limits to the agency’s attempts to demonstrate transparency. Releasing bad news right before a holiday weekend, often called a “Christmas Eve surprise,” is a common tactic for trying to minimize press coverage.

      The reports, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the American Civil Liberties Union, offer few revelations, but contain accounts of internal behavior embarrassing to the agency. In one instance an NSA employee “searched her spouse’s personal telephone directory without his knowledge to obtain names and telephone numbers for targeting”, a practice which previous reports have indicated was common enough to warrant the name “LOVEINT”.

  • #Snowden film ’CitizenFour’ wins top documentary award
    http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/06/us-film-citizenfour-idUSKCN0JK05C20141206

    (Reuters) - “CitizenFour,” filmmaker Laura Poitras’s documentary about National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, was given the top award for best feature by the International Documentary Association on Friday.

    The IDA award for “CitizenFour” follows the film’s best documentary win at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards this week. It was also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award last month and is among 15 films advancing in the Oscars best documentary race.

    “CitizenFour” gives a fly-on-the-wall account of Snowden’s tense days in a Hong Kong hotel and encounters with journalists as newspapers published details of NSA programs that gathered data from the Internet activities and phone records of millions of Americans and dozens of world leaders.

  • Stuttgart Peace Prize 2014: Edward Snowden’s Speech | Die AnStifter
    http://www.die-anstifter.de/2014/11/stuttgarter-friedenspreis-2014-speech-of-edward-snowden

    Edward Snowden’s speech from November, 23. 2014 (transliterated from this video : http://www.die-anstifter.de/live

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quRvzdtQht0

    The first thing I would say is thank you very much.
    It’s an incredible honour to be recognized for what I think is an action that all of us should have an obligation to pursuit.
    Which is a capability of great powers within our societies.

    As citizens we rely on our government to provide us with truthful information about their policies and about their activities. Now that’s not to say that we need to know the names of every terrorist suspect and every police investigation that’s occurring but we need at least to understand the broad outlines of the programs and policies that our government are pursuing.

    The powers that they are planning and the manner that they are being used both in our name as a country, as a nation, as a society and against us at home in our communities with the people we love and with people who threaten us with harm.

    Now, what I saw when I worked at the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency, all across the American intelligence community were good people trying to do good work in difficult situations, but what was so extraordinarily dangerous was the fact that they all were concerned about the direction in which these programs were headed. But no one was willing to stand up and raise these concerns, because they feared retaliation, they feared that the government, that most senior officials would retaliate against them, would destroy their lives, would ruin their careers, would put them in jail.

    And we’ve seen in the United States these kinds of occurrences happen again and again based on Thomas Drake, who stood up to reveal extraordinary wiretapping and surveillance abuses in the United States. He was fired, he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, as if he was a spy, for providing information to journalists allegedly, in the same way as if he had been providing information about corporate agents overseas trying to infiltrate terrorist groups. They threatened him with life in prison, with decades and decades far away from his family, and yet he did it anyway. Even at knowing that there will be retaliation. And ultimately at the very end courts dropped the charges, the case collapsed, because the government realized that they had been in the wrong.

    What we saw that in some other cases, this was not the case. In the case of Chelsea Manning, we have a private who saw instances where US military forces had targeted journalists with weapons of war and openly then concealed this, their participation in these acts.

    Now, whoever you do account for whatever occurred, instead of the senior officials who were the directors of the policies, we saw low-level people punished. And again, any activity they’ve done, any statement that they’ve made vary. And these programs were not corrected.

    Now, I discussed this with everybody else in my community, and we all were concerned about these kinds of policies, and we said, what can we do? What we? And the answer that came back was no matter how bad the abuse is, no matter whether it is the degradation of our entire constitutional order, whether the laws of our republic were being violated both at home in the United States and then broadly under the context of international law.

    That people said, this was not our problem. They told me, specifically that I shouldn’t be saying this because the risk to myself personally would be too great. They told me to think about my family, they told me to think about my job, they told me to think about what would happen, if I’d spend the next 30 years in prison. And that’s actually surprisingly prophetic. Because when I provided this information back to the American people, when I provided this to the public, to which this information belonged, from which it had been unjustifiably concealed from, the government charged me as if I were a spy and threatened me with those same 30 years of prison. But ultimately even though I can’t go home, even though I am still overseas and I’m working day after day to continue raising awareness about these abuses, about the way of rights have been changed, about the fact the corporations and governments have come together to change the meaning of our rights, to change the boundaries of our liberties, to say the kind of things we can and cannot do, without being watched, without being analysed, without records of our private lives, be stored and analysed and shared without our awareness.

    I dont regret that decision at all, because this was information that we needed to know. As a result we see extraordinary changes across governments, across countries, and broadly we can see opinions change in the public. We see people discuss this programs, we discuss how the freedom to look at books online, to decide what you want to purchase changes the way you think. It changes the way you feel about freedom and liberty in each others lives.
    It is realized that companies, corporations and governments are tracking movements of our cellular phones, they are tracking the times that we call people, the numbers that we call, the association that could be drawn from these, what political party we’ve voted for. Who are our friends, who do we love. Are these people that are family members, or are these people that are suspected political radicals? If an individual is deed an political extremists, or radicalized by the United States government, we see programs created entirely in secret without an authorising law, that allow to surveill their pornography preference to try and discredit them, try to discredit their political beliefs on the basis of their personal private activities, and we deserve to ask the government:
    Is this truly necessary and proportionate to the threat that we are facing? Because there are times, there are extraordinary instances throughout the history and society where we decide that the level of privacy of the individual citizen and choice may change in this kind or that we consent to searches of our luggage at airports. When we exist in times of total war, world wars, we see increases in surveillance, we see greater scrutiny on the movements of individuals’ subsistence but we recognize that these are fundamental restrictions upon basic liberties, basic human rights. And these activities, these responses are restricted for limited periods of time. When they’re shown to be, at least the public believes them to be, absolutely necessary for the survival of the nation. Terrorism is not such threat. Terrorism is a real danger, but it is a law enforcement danger, it existed in the last hundred years. Long before anyone had ever heard of Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban or Al-Qaida. And yet, even though these actors, even though we see people in Syria, in Iraq committing terrible atrocities again and again, our societies continue, they persist, and that is not a result of the strength of our surveillance, that is the result of the strength of our values, the strength of us as a society, the strength of our commitment to stand up and work together every day to build a better world and not be afraid of distant threats and distant actors who may wish us harm. Because we recognize that if we burn down our society to prevent some danger, if we limit our rights and stand against the values that have made us strong, we have not saved the nation. We have acted against it, we have destroyed it.
    The way we protect ourselves, the way we protect the people around us, the way we protect the future, not just for us, but for those who come after us, is to stand beside our rights. And to say that these belong not to me, these belong not to you. They belong to us, they belong to the world. They belong to the human body.

    And if we are to live in a liberal society, we must stand and defend liberal values, and that means not just stand against frightened people far away, people who don’t look like us, people who don’t speak like us, but defending these rights, defending these values against even the most senior officials in our government and demanding that if they change our laws, demanding if they impose secret courts, demanding if they impose a secret program and they are contrary to our values, that these will one day became known to the public and we will hold them to account for the decisions that they are making.

    Without this we cannot exist, not just as a society, but as a community. Government and democracy are founded on each of us. And that’s going to require not just holders of …in public, but that’s going to require attitudes, that’s going to require instigators, that’s going to require activists around the world which stand up and say: I believe that this is wrong. And I am not just going to say this is wrong, I am just going to write a newspaper article about it, I am going to stand up against it and say that I’ll do whatever I can to enjoy the same rights that I myself inherited, that belong to my children and the society to which they belong.

    Thank you, thank you very much.

  • Délit d’"initié" à la tête de la NSA ?


    Why Was the NSA Chief Playing the Market?
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/10/22/keith_alexander_stock_trades_potash_aluminum_russia_china

    At the same time that he was running the United States’ biggest intelligence-gathering organization, former National Security Agency Director #Keith_Alexander owned and sold shares in commodities linked to China and Russia, two countries that the NSA was spying on heavily

    (remember the #NSA spies on EVERYTHING and EVERYONE)

  • These Are the #Emails #Snowden Sent to First Introduce His Epic NSA Leaks

    Six months before the world knew the National Security Agency’s most prolific leaker of secrets as Edward Joseph Snowden, Laura Poitras knew him as Citizenfour. For months, Poitras communicated with an unknown “senior government employee” under that pseudonym via encrypted emails, as he prepared her to receive an unprecedented leak of classified documents that he would ask her to expose to the world.


    http://www.wired.com/2014/10/snowdens-first-emails-to-poitras

  • Most of the people whose privacy the National Security Agency is violating are not the intended targets of surveillance.

    “In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are”
    Barton Gellman, Julie Tate, and Ashkan Soltani, The Washington Post, July 5, 2014
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html

  • The NSA Gives Birth To Start-Ups
    Kashmir Hill, Forbes, 10 septembre 2014
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/09/10/the-nsa-gives-birth-to-start-ups

    Former #NSA chief Keith Alexander has been sweating it out in the spotlight this summer for converting his spy cred into a lucrative security consulting business shortly after stepping down from the National Security Agency. The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf calls Alexander’s new IronNet Cybersecurity firm an “unethical get-rich quick plan” because it will charge hundreds of thousands of dollars a month for “ new” technologies the firm is patenting. “What could make [Alexander] so valuable, save the highly classified secrets in his head?” wrote Friedersdorf. But Alexander is far from the first to realize that the NSA’s area of expertise is in high demand in the commercial sector these days as more and more of our information is being digitized and concerns about security and privacy mount. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden may have immersed the agency in controversy but it hasn’t stopped it from becoming a fertile breeding ground for privacy and security entrepreneurs who are leaving the agency and quickly raking in millions from venture capitalists. Synack, Virtru, Area 1 Security and Morta Security are a few of the start-ups in recent years whose twenty- and thirty-something founders got their engineering training at the NSA.

    #startups #silicon_army via @laurent_checola

  • Des soldats israéliens refusent de participer à de nouveaux abus contre les Palestiniens
    http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2014/09/12/des-soldats-israeliens-refusent-de-participer-a-de-nouveaux-abus-contre-les-

    C’est une lettre envoyée par 43 officiers et soldats israéliens de réserve à leur premier ministre et à leur chef d’état-major. Ayant servi dans l’unité 8200, la plus prestigieuse unité de renseignement militaire israélien, ils ont décidé de ne plus servir, refusant de participer aux « abus » commis selon eux contre les Palestiniens.

    Cette lettre, dont des extraits sont parus dans le quotidien à grand tirage Yediot Aharonot, est l’une des plus importantes expressions d’#objection de conscience depuis longtemps en Israël. Les 43 signataires, hommes et femmes, ont servi dans cette unité, qui est souvent comparée à l’Agence nationale de sécurité américaine (National Security Agency, NSA). Réservistes, ils peuvent y être rappelés à tout moment.

    Dans leur lettre, ils évoquent leur rôle capital dans les opérations d’éliminations ciblées pratiquées par l’armée. Une femme parle de l’erreur d’identification qu’elle a commise et qui a conduit selon elle à la mort d’un enfant. D’autres s’émeuvent d’avoir à écouter les conversations les plus intimes de Palestiniens. « Nous appelons tous les soldats qui servent actuellement dans cette unité ou qui vont y servir, tous les citoyens d’Israël à faire entendre leurs voix contre ces abus et agir pour y mettre un terme », dit leur lettre. Les 43 objecteurs de conscience encourent des peines de prison.

    #armée #crimes

    • 43 soldats israéliens contre les injustices faites aux Palestiniens
      http://www.romandie.com/news/43-soldats-israeliens-contre-les-injustices-faites-aux-Palestiniens/516987.rom

      Il y est question de mise sous surveillance de millions de Palestiniens sans distinction, jusque dans leur vie privée.

      Ces refuzniks (Israéliens refusant de servir) dénoncent la « persécution politique » à laquelle contribue leur activité d’espionnage.

      Des tribunaux militaires rendent leurs jugements sans que les Palestiniens aient accès aux preuves rassemblées contre eux et certains agissements montent les Palestiniens les uns contre les autres.

      L’armée ignore
      Les signataires s’en prennent plus largement à la règle militaire sous laquelle des millions de Palestiniens vivent depuis plus de 47 ans, ainsi qu’à la colonisation et à l’hypocrisie d’une politique invoquant les nécessités de sécurité pour se justifier.

      L’armée a nié la réalité de ces accusations et a affirmé dans un communiqué ne « pas avoir d’informations selon lesquelles des violations spécifiques mentionnées dans cette lettre ont eu lieu ».

      (ats / 12.09.2014 16h45)

    • Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories
      http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-reservists-refuse-serve-palestinian-territories

      The signatories include officers, former instructors and senior NCOs from the country’s equivalent of America’s NSA or Britain’s GCHQ, known as Unit 8200 – or in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim.

      They allege that the “all-encompassing” intelligence the unit gathers on Palestinians – much of it concerning innocent people – is used for “political persecution” and to create divisions in Palestinian society.

      The largest intelligence unit in the Israeli military, Unit 8200 intercepts electronic communications including email, phone calls and social media in addition to targeting military and diplomatic traffic.

      The signatories say, however, that a large part of their work was unrelated to Israel’s security or defence, but appeared designed to perpetuate the occupation by “infiltrating” and “controlling” all aspects of Palestinian life.

      Written in uncompromising language the letter states: “We, veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories.”

      They add: “The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself. In many cases, intelligence prevents defendants from receiving a fair trial in military courts, as the evidence against them is not revealed.”

      “It’s important to say, the reason I decided to refuse – and I decided to refuse long before the recent [Gaza] operation. It was when I realised that what I was doing was the same job that the intelligence services of every undemocratic regime are doing.

    • Reservists from elite IDF intel unit refuse to serve over Palestinian ’persecution’
      Forty-three signatories, including a major and two captains, in a letter to the prime minister: ’Intelligence is an integral part of Israel’s military occupation over the territories.’
      By Gili Cohen | Sep. 12, 2014 | 2:50 PM
      http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.615498

      Forty-three former members of Israel Defense Forces intelligence Unit 8200, including some officers, wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and top military officials, saying they would refuse to do reserve service because of Israel’s `political persecution’ of the Palestinians.

      “We, veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories.” the soldiers said in the letter, which was also addressed to IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, the head of the Military Intelligence Directorate.

      Among the signatories are a major and two captains in the reserves. Also signing were other intelligence personnel, who include officers and non-commissioned officers who served in the unit in professional capacities.

      “It is commonly thought that the service in military intelligence is free of moral dilemmas and solely contributes to the reduction of violence and harm to innocent people" they said in the letter. “However, our military service has taught us that intelligence is an integral part of Israel’s military occupation over the territories.”

      The signatories claimed, among other things, that while surveillance of Israeli citizens is strictly limited, “the Palestinians are not afforded this protection.”

      The 43 unit members who signed the letter, some of whom serve in the reserves, say that the information that is gathered and stored in the army’s systems “harms innocent people. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself.”

      For this reason, the signatories say, their consciences do not allow them to continue serving that system and depriving millions of human beings of their rights.

      Daniel, a captain in the reserves who lives in Jerusalem and signed the letter, said that the process of getting signatures for the letter, which took about a year, started with a small group of people who knew each other from the unit.

      “There were fears of how people, and friends from the unit, might respond — if they knew that it was I and if they didn’t know,” Daniel says. But he adds that they felt a sense of responsibility and urgency, so they wrote the letter, Daniel told Haaretz on Thursday. According to the letter’s organizers, most of the people who signed it are reservists, but some of them have adopted a kind of “gray-market dodge” and were not summoned to perform reserve duty.

      “I don’t feel comfortable in my conscience continuing to serve, and instead of dealing with the dilemmas and the ramifications, I chose to take a more evasive route,” Daniel said, describing the “gray-market dodge” he has used for the past three years.

      “Now, later on, we feel that evasion is wrong, and that we have to take responsibility. In the end, I served there for seven years. I believed in what we did there — and for all those reasons, I must take responsibility for what I see as the perpetuation of the cycle of violence. We hope that people will think critically about these things.”

      An official of the IDF Spokesman’s Office said that “Unit 8200 has worked since the day it was established to gather intelligence that allows the army and security agencies to perform their tasks, and each day it helps protect the citizens of the State of Israel.

      "The unit uses varied methods and many fields while using methods and rules directed toward those who consume the information and for its own uses only. Those who serve in the unit are trained after a meticulous search process using training methods that have no parallel in the intelligence community in Israel or in the world. The content of their training places special emphasis upon the fields of ethics, morals and work procedures. These are put into practice during their service as soldiers and officers of the unit, and they are under the constant supervision of commanding officers of various ranks.

      “The concrete claims made in the report are unknown in the Intelligence Directorate. The fact that the alleged signatories of this letter contacted the media before bringing their complaints to their commanding officers or relevant agencies in the army is surprising and raises doubts regarding the sincerity of their claims.

      "Over the years, and particularly in recent years, the unit daily has received appreciation that often takes the form of citations, medals and national-security awards. As for the claims about harm done to innocent people, the process of gaining approval for targets in the army, which is long and meticulous, also takes the topic of uninvolved parties into account.”

      The spokesperson for the Palestinian Authority’s security services, Adnan Damiri, said the reservists made a moral move, and that the Palestinians salute humanitarian ideas of this sort, which come to the aid of an oppressed people, Israel Radio reported.

    • ‘Any Palestinian is exposed to monitoring by the Israeli Big Brother’
      http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israeli-intelligence-unit-testimonies

      Y compris du chantage contre les #homosexuels palestiniens et les personnes #malades qui ne peuvent obtenir le droit de se faire soigner en Israël qu’en acceptant de se transformer en #indics.

      Autant pour la #hasbara israélienne sur « nos #valeurs »...

      The period during which I collected information on people who were accused of attacking Israelis, trying to attack Israelis, the desire to harm Israelis, thinking of attacking Israelis, in addition to collecting information on completely innocent people, whose only crime was that they interested the Israeli defence establishment for various reasons. Reasons they have no way of knowing. If you’re homosexual and know someone who knows a wanted person – and we need to know about it – Israel will make your life miserable. If you need emergency medical treatment in Israel, the West Bank or abroad – we searched for you. The state of Israel will allow you to die before we let you leave for treatment without giving information on your wanted cousin.

      #pink_washing

  • Meet the shadowy tech brokers that deliver your data to the NSA | ZDNet
    http://www.zdnet.com/the-most-important-tech-companies-you-have-never-heard-of-7000032573

    These so-called “trusted third-parties” may be the most important tech companies you’ve never heard of. ZDNet reveals how these companies work as middlemen or “brokers” of customer data between ISPs and phone companies, and the U.S. government.
    ...
    when one Atlanta, Georgia-based Internet provider was served a top-secret data request, there wasn’t a suited-and-booted federal agent in sight.

    Why? Because the order was served on a so-called “trusted third-party,” which handles the request, served fresh from the secretive Washington D.C.-based Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court. With permission from their ISP customers, these third-parties discreetly wiretap their networks at the behest of law enforcement agencies, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and even intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA).

    By implementing these government data requests with precision and accuracy, trusted third-parties — like Neustar, Subsentio, and Yaana — can turn reasonable profits for their services.

    Little is known about these types of companies, which act as outsourced data brokers between small and major U.S. ISPs and phone companies, and the federal government.

    #USA #surveillance #NSA

  • ‘U.S. monopoly over Internet must go’ - The Hindu
    http://www.thehindu.com

    Most of Pouzin’s career has been devoted to the design and implementation of computer systems, most notably the CYCLADES computer network.

    Interview with Louis Pouzin, a pioneer of the Internet and recipient of the Chevalier of Légion d’Honneur, the highest civilian decoration of the French government

    Louis Pouzin is recognised for his contributions to the protocols that make up the fundamental architecture of the Internet. Most of his career has been devoted to the design and implementation of computer systems, most notably the CYCLADES computer network and its datagram-based packet-switching network, a model later adopted by the Internet as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP). Apart from the Chevalier of Légion d’Honneur, Mr. Pouzin, 83, was the lone Frenchman among American awardees of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, given to the inventors of Internet technology in its inaugural year, 2013.

    Ahead of the ninth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) from September 2-5 in Istanbul, Mr. Pouzin shared his concerns regarding the monopoly enjoyed by the U.S. government and American corporations over the Internet and the need for democratising what is essentially a global commons. Excerpts from an interview, over Skype, with Vidya Venkat.

    What are the key concerns you would be discussing at the IGF ?

    As of today, the Internet is controlled predominantly by the U.S. Their technological and military concerns heavily influence Internet governance policy. Unfortunately, the Brazil Netmundial convened in April, 2014, with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), following objections raised by [Brazilian] President Dilma Rousseff to the National Security Agency (NSA) spying on her government, only handed us a non-binding agreement on surveillance and privacy-related concerns. So the demand for an Internet bill of rights is growing loud. This will have to lay out what Internet can and cannot do. Key government actors must sign the agreement making it binding on them. The main issue pertaining to technological dominance and thereby control of the network itself has to be challenged and a bill of rights must aim to address these concerns.

    What is the way forward if the U.S. dominance has to be challenged?

    Today, China and Russia are capable of challenging U.S. dominance. Despite being a strong commercial power, China has not deployed Internet technology across the world. The Chinese have good infrastructure but they use U.S. Domain Naming System, which is a basic component of the functioning of the Internet. One good thing is because they use the Chinese language for domain registration, it limits access to outsiders in some way.

    India too is a big country. It helps that it is not an authoritarian country and has many languages. It should make the most of its regional languages, but with regard to technology itself, India has to tread more carefully in developing independent capabilities in this area.

    As far as European countries are concerned, they are mostly allies of the U.S. and may not have a strong inclination to develop independent capabilities in this area. Africa again has potential; it can establish its own independent Internet network which will be patronised by its burgeoning middle classes.

    So you are saying that countries should have their own independent Internet networks rather than be part of one mega global network ?

    Developing independent networks will take time, but to address the issue of dominance in the immediate future we must first address the monopoly enjoyed by ICANN, which functions more or less as a proxy of the U.S. government. The ICANN Domain Naming System (DNS) is operated by VeriSign, a U.S. government contractor. Thus, traffic is monitored by the NSA, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) can seize user sites or domains anywhere in the world if they are hosted by U.S. companies or subsidiaries.
    ICANN needs to have an independent oversight body. The process for creating a new body could be primed by a coalition of states and other organisations placing one or several calls for proposals. Evaluation, shortlist, and hopefully selection, would follow. If a selection for the independent body could be worked out by September 2015, it would be well in time for the contract termination of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) with the U.S. government.

    The most crucial question is should governments allow citizens to end up as guinea pigs for global internet corporations ?

    Breaking that monopoly does not require any agreement with the U.S. government, because it is certainly contrary to the World Trade Organization’s principles. In other words, multiple roots [DNS Top Level Domains (TLD)] are not only technically feasible; they have been introduced in the Internet back in 1995, even before ICANN was created. This avenue is open to entrepreneurs and institutions for innovative services tailored to user needs, specially those users unable to afford the extravagant fees raked in by ICANN. The deployment of independent roots creates competition and contributes to reining in devious practices in the domain name market.
    The U.S. government is adamant on controlling the ICANN DNS. Thus, copies (mirrors) should be made available in other countries out of reach from the FBI. A German organisation Open Root Server Network is, at present, operating such a service. To make use of it, users have to modify the DNS addresses in their Internet access device. That is all, usage is free.

    But would this process not result in the fragmentation of the Internet ?

    Fragmentation of the Internet is not such a bad thing as it is often made out to be. The bone of contention here is the DNS monopoly. On August 28, nearly 12 millions Internet users subscribing to Time Warner’s cable broadband lost connectivity due to a sudden outage in one day. In a world of fragmented Internet networks, such mass outages become potentially impossible. The need of the hour is to work out of the current trap to use a more interoperable system.
    In this context, a usual scarecrow brandished by the U.S. government is fragmentation, or Balkanisation, of the Internet. All monopolies resort to similar arguments whenever their turf is threatened by a looming competition. Furthermore, the proprietary naming and unstable service definitions specific to the likes of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and more, have already divided the Internet in as many closed and incompatible internets of captive users.

    Recently, the Indian External Affairs Minister had objected to U.S. spying on the Bharatiya Janata Party. Can governments like India use a forum like IGF to raise concerns relating to surveillance ?

    Even if governments do attend IGF, they do not come with a mandate. A major problem with the Internet governance space today is that they are under the dominance of corporate lobbies. So it is a bit hard to say what could be achieved by government participation in the IGF. This is a problem of the IGF : it has no budget or secretary general, it is designed to have no influence and to maintain the status quo. That is why you have a parallel Internet Ungovernance Forum which is not allying with the existing structure and putting forth all the issues they want to change. Indian citizens could participate in this forum to raise privacy and surveillance-related concerns.

    Do you feel Internet governance is still a very alien subject for most governments and people to engage with ?

    Unfortunately, the phrase “Internet governance” is too abstract for most people and governments to be interested in. The most crucial question is what kind of society do you want to live in? Should governments allow citizens to end up as guinea pigs for global Internet corporations? The revelations by NSA contractor Edward Snowden have proved beyond doubt that user data held by Internet companies today are subject to pervasive surveillance. Conducting these intrusive activities by controlling the core infrastructure of the Internet without obtaining the consent of citizen users is a big concern and should be debated in public. Therefore, debates about Internet governance are no longer alien; they involve all of us who are part of the network.❞

  • NATO Set to Ratify Pledge on Joint Defense in Case of Major Cyberattack
    NYT By DAVID E. SANGER AUG. 31, 2014
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/europe/nato-set-to-ratify-pledge-on-joint-defense-in-case-of-major-cyberattack.htm

    When President Obama meets with other NATO leaders later this week, they are expected to ratify what seems, at first glance, a far-reaching change in the organization’s mission of collective defense: For the first time, a cyberattack on any of the 28 NATO nations could be declared an attack on all of them, much like a ground invasion or an airborne bombing.

    The most obvious target of the new policy is Russia, which was believed behind computer attacks that disrupted financial and telecommunications systems in Estonia in 2007 and Georgia in 2008, and is believed to have used them in the early days of the Ukraine crisis as well.

    But in interviews, NATO officials concede that so far their cyberskills are limited at best.

    #OTAN sans stratégie en cas de #cyberguerre ; #sécurité_informatique #surveillance

    • In fact, NATO officials say they have never been briefed on the abilities of the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, or those of The Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, its British equivalent. Both countries have routinely placed sensors into computers, switching centers and undersea cables for years, as the documents released by Edward J. #Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, make clear.

    • NATO - Cyber defence
      http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_78170.htm?selectedLocale=fr

      Les projets de défense intelligente menés jusqu’à présent dans le domaine de la cyberdéfense sont le projet de plate-forme d’échange d’informations sur les logiciels malveillants (MISP), le projet de développement d’une capacité multinationale de cyberdéfense (MNCD2) et le projet multinational de coopération sur la formation et l’entraînement à la cyberdéfense (MN CD E&T).

  • The U.S. Government Can Brand You a Terrorist Based on a Facebook Post | Alternet
    http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/us-government-can-brand-you-terrorist-based-facebook-post?akid=12188.10880

    Civil Liberties
    The Guardian / By Arjun Sethi

    The US government’s web of surveillance is vast and interconnected. Now we know just how opaque, inefficient and discriminatory it can be.

    As we were reminded again just this week, you can be pulled into the National Security Agency’s database quietly and quickly, and the consequences can be long and enduring. Through ICREACH, a Google-style search engine created for the intelligence community, the NSA provides data on private communications to 23 government agencies. More than 1,000 analysts had access to that information.

    This kind of data sharing, however, isn’t limited to the latest from Edward Snowden’s NSA files. It was confirmed earlier this month that the FBI shares its master watchlist, the Terrorist Screening Database, with at least 22 foreign governments, countless federal agencies, state and local law enforcement, plus private contractors.

    The watchlist tracks “known” and “suspected” terrorists and includes both foreigners and Americans. It’s also based on loose standards and secret evidence, which ensnares innocent people. Indeed, the standards are so low that the US government’s guidelines specifically allow for a single, uncorroborated source of information – including a Facebook or Twitter post – to serve as the basis for placing you on its master watchlist.

    Of the 680,000 individuals on that FBI master list, roughly 40% have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”, according to the Intercept. These individuals don’t even have a connection – as the government loosely defines it – to a designated terrorist group, but they are still branded as suspected terrorists.

    The absurdities don’t end there. Take Dearborn, Michigan, a city with a population under 100,000 that is known for its large Arab American community – and has more watchlisted residents than any other city in America except New York.

  • 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.

  • Leaked classified memo reveals U.S.-Israeli intel cooperation on Egypt, Iran
    Top-secret memo, published by Glenn Greenwald, describes deep exchange of information between NSA and IDF Unit 8200; takes pride in ’success stories.’
    By Amir Oren | Aug. 5, 2014
    Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.608802

    After Mohammed Morsi became Egypt’s president in June 2012 with backing from the Muslim Brotherhood, the intelligence communities of the United States and Israel expanded their cooperation to keep an eye on what was happening in Egypt.

    With approval from U.S. National Intelligence Director Lt. Gen. (ret.) James R. Clapper, the National Security Agency’s signals intelligence agency gave the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence Unit 8200 the task of providing information about “select strategic issues, specifically terrorist elements in the Sinai.”

    This information is included in a highly classified NSA memo from April 2013 published Monday morning on The Intercept, the website run by Glenn Greenwald, a partner of Edward Snowden. Snowden had worked in the service of the NSA, during which he gathered American intelligence documents that he subsequently leaked.

    Since the memo was written during Morsi’s term in office, before the military coup that overthrew him and led to the presidency of Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi, it does not tell us whether the exchanges of information about the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and about which Israel’s intelligence-gathering capabilities have been restricted — still continue.

    When the document in question was written, General Keith Alexander was in charge of the NSA, and Brig. Gen. Nadav Zafrir was commander of Unit 8200.

    The memo was only distributed to the two countries that had signed it, and not to other members of the Anglo-Saxon Five Eyes alliance: Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It details the intelligence relationship between the NSA and Israel, and updates a previous version of a document that Snowden published last year.

    The depth of the bilateral cooperation is reflected, among other things, in a term used to describe Unit 8200’s task to carry out espionage in Egypt: “tasking” – meaning collection of vital information, as is usual among agencies belonging to the same intelligence community.

    According to the document, which describes significant, joint intelligence successes such as those involving the Iranian nuclear program, “NSA maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT National Unit [i.e., Unit 2800], sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and reporting. This SIGINT relationship has increasingly been the catalyst for a broader intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel. Significant changes in the way NSA and ISNU have traditionally approached SIGINT have prompted an expansion to include other Israeli and U.S. intelligence organizations such as CIA, Mossad, and Special Operation Division (SOD)" – the latter is evidently a reference to the Pentagon term for the special operations department of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate.

    Most of the bilateral intelligence cooperation, if not all of it, concentrates on “targets in the Middle East which constitute strategic threats to U.S. and Israeli interests. Building upon a robust analytic exchange, NSA and ISNU also have explored and executed unique opportunities to gain access to high priority targets. The mutually agreed upon geographic targets include the countries of North Africa, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Islamic republics of the Former Soviet Union," according to the memo.

    "Within that set of countries, cooperation covers the exploitation of internal government, military, civil, and diplomatic communications; and external security/intelligence organizations. Regional Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and ’Stateless’/International Terrorism comprise the exchanged transnational target set. A dedicated communications line between NSA and ISNU supports the exchange of raw material, as well as daily analytic and technical correspondence. Both NSA and ISNU have liaison officers, who conduct foreign relations functions, stationed at their respective embassies [Washington and Tel Aviv].”

    The memo continues: “The Israeli side enjoys the benefits of expanded geographic access to world-class NSA cryptanalytic and SIGINT engineering expertise, and also gains controlled access to advanced U.S. technology and equipment via accommodation buys and foreign military sales.

    “Benefits to the U.S. include expanded geographic access to high priority SIGINT targets, access to world-class Israeli cryptanalytic and SIGINT engineering expertise, and access to a large pool of highly qualified analysts.”

    The author of the memo — the country desk officer of the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Directorate — took pride in what he called “success stories.” First among them was “the Iranian nuclear development program, followed by Syrian nuclear efforts, Lebanese Hezbollah plans and intentions, Palestinian terrorism, and Global Jihad. Several recent and successful joint operations between NSA and ISNU have broadened both organizations’ ability to target and exploit Iranian nuclear efforts. In addition, a robust and dynamic crypanalytic relationship has enabled breakthroughs on high priority Iranian targets.

    “NSA and ISNU continue to initiate joint targeting of Syrian and Iranian leadership and nuclear development programs with CIA, ISNU, SOD and Mossad. This exchange has been particularly important as unrest in Syria continues, and both sides work together to identify threats to regional stability. NSA’s cyber partnerships expanded beyond ISNU to include Israeli Defense Intelligence’s SOD and Mossad, resulting in unprecedented access and collection breakthroughs that all sides acknowledge would not have been possible to achieve without the others.”

    In September 2011, NSA and Unit 8200 also signed a memo of understanding for cooperation in communications and cyber realms. In January 2012, one of Gen. Alexander’s deputies visited Tel Aviv and specified the NSA’s targets in those fields: cyber threats from Iran, Hezbollah and other elements in the region. In exchange, the NSA would provide Israel with “limited, focused support on specific Russian and Chinese cyber threats.” Additional talks “to further develop this partnership” were held in May and December 2012.

    Moreover, under the heads of NSA and Unit 8200, encrypted video communication was inaugurated between both intelligence communities “that allows both sides to broaden and accelerate the pace of collaboration against targets’ use of advanced telecommunications. Target sets include, but are not limited to, Iran nuclear, Syrian foreign fighter movements, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps activities.”

    According to the section of the memo entitled “Problems/Challenges:” “The three most common concerns raised by ISNU regarding the partnership with NSA is NSA’s reluctance to share on technology that is not directly related to a specific target, the ISNU’s perceived reduction in the amount and degree of cooperation in certain areas, and the length of time NSA takes to decide on ISNU proposals. Efforts in these three areas have been addressed with the partner and NSA continues to work to increase cooperation with ISNU, where appropriate and mindful of U.S. policy and equity concerns.”

  • In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-nsa-intercepted-data-those-not-targeted-far-outnumber-the-foreigners-who-are/2014/07/05/8139adf8-045a-11e4-8572-4b1b969b6322_story.html

    Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

    Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former #NSA contractor Edward #Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended #surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

    #vie_privée

  • A consortium of interested groups launched a giant #airship to fly over the #NSA's new snooping repository in Bluffdale, Utah. A 135 foot long thermal airship flew over the snoop headquarters last Friday with the message: “NSA Illegal Spying Below” with an arrow pointing downwards at the #panopticon.


    http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2014/06/29/EFF-NSA-Utah

    • Le site de Bluffdale avait déjà été mentionné ici il y a plus de 2 ans (mars 2012 par @Fil) http://seenthis.net/messages/63027 avec un compte-rendu de démêlés dus à des prises de photo.

      Il me semblait aussi l’avoir vu pour leurs soucis d’essuyages de plâtre, en fait des courts-circuits avec arc électrique (10 fois en 13 mois) qui empêchait un fonctionnement normal (oct. 2013).

      Meltdowns Hobble NSA Data Center - WSJ
      http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304441404579119490744478398?mod=wsj_nview_latest&mg=reno

      There have been 10 meltdowns in the past 13 months that have prevented the NSA from using computers at its new Utah data-storage center, slated to be the spy agency’s largest, according to project documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

      One project official described the electrical troubles—so-called arc fault failures—as “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box.” These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said.

      The causes remain under investigation, and there is disagreement whether proposed fixes will work, according to officials and project documents. One Utah project official said the NSA planned this week to turn on some of its computers there.
      (…)
      This summer [2013], the Army Corps of Engineers dispatched its Tiger Team, officials said. In an initial report, the team said the cause of the failures remained unknown in all but two instances.

      The team said the government has incomplete information about the design of the electrical system that could pose new problems if settings need to change on circuit breakers. The report concluded that efforts to “fast track” the Utah project bypassed regular quality controls in design and construction.

    • J’oubliais : puissance électrique consommée 65 MW…

      But without a reliable electrical system to run computers and keep them cool, the NSA’s global surveillance data systems can’t function. The NSA chose Bluffdale, Utah, to house the data center largely because of the abundance of cheap electricity. It continuously uses 65 megawatts, which could power a small city of at least 20,000, at a cost of more than $1 million a month, according to project officials and documents.

      Pour le refroidissement, malgré les appels libertariens à couper l’eau (novembre 2013)
      The Salt Lake Tribune
      http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/57120093-82/nsa-power-facility-utah.html.csp

      Op-Ed: Utahns should deny water to NSA center

      la municipalité a conclu un contrat d’approvisionnement à un tarif préférentiel (juillet 2014)

      Utah town gave NSA a deal on water | The Salt Lake Tribune
      http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/57181642-90/bluffdale-utah-center-nsa.html.csp

      Bluffdale agreed to sell water to the National Security Agency at a rate below its own guidelines and the Utah average in order to secure the contract and spur economic development in the town, according to records and interviews.

      The deal could mean savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the NSA and federal taxpayers, but is more of a gamble for Bluffdale, which had to issue a $3.5 million bond to help pay for new water lines. Bluffdale leaders consider that section of the city, now covered with sagebrush, ripe for new businesses.

      Without the influx of NSA revenue, it would have been 15 years before Bluffdale could have afforded to bring water to that area, said Bluffdale City Manager Mark Reid.

      pour des quantités astronomiques

      Bluffdale allowed the NSA to redact large portions of the correspondence, but the emails still demonstrate how Bluffdale persuaded the NSA to buy what eventually may be more than 1 million gallons of water a day from the city rather than from four other bidders.

      Mais à la suite des révélations de 2013 et de nouveaux appels à couper l’eau par des votes au niveau des états, la municipalité a fait savoir (mai 2014) qu’elle envisageait de recycler l’eau de refroidissement, dont pour l’instant, une petite partie sert à arroser la pelouse d’un parc et des terrains de football.

      Bluffdale to recycle millions of gallons of water used by NSA | FOX13Now.com
      http://fox13now.com/2014/05/12/bluffdale-to-recycle-some-nsa-water

      Timothy said at maximum capacity, the Utah Data Center could use as much as 1.2 million gallons of water a day. That water is purchased in shares from the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District. The NSA pays about $2 per 1,000 gallons.

      Bluffdale built a two million gallon tank to reuse water. Currently, it is being used to water a park outside city hall where soccer fields are set up for youth games. Timothy said the water reclamation will be expanded to include residential lawns and accommodate future growth in the south end of the city.

      “Eventually, as more water is returned to us, we’ll be able to add residents to the reuse project,” he said, adding it could reduce residents’ water bills.

      The NSA declined to comment on what is done with the water, or Bluffdale’s plans to reclaim it. The agency also would not answer questions about whether the facility is fully operational.

      Not even the mayor knows.

      “I have no idea,” he said. “We don’t ask that question because they wouldn’t even tell us.”

  • Palantir : Unlocking Secrets, if Not Its Own Value - NYTimes.com
    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/business/unlocking-secrets-if-not-its-own-value.html

    Founded in 2004, in part with $2 million from the Central Intelligence Agency’s (#CIA) venture capital arm (#IN-Q-Tel), #Palantir makes software that has illuminated terror networks and figured out safe driving routes through a war-torn Baghdad. It has also tracked car thieves, helped in disaster recovery and traced salmonella outbreaks. United States attorneys deployed its technology against the hedge fund SAC Capital, which was also an early investor in the company.

    (...) Its advisers include James Carville, the Democratic strategist; Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state; George J. Tenet, the former C.I.A. director; and Michael Ovitz, the former head of Disney Studios and Hollywood superagent.

    (...) difficile de faire plus #silicon_army que ça, mais ce sont quand même des « idéalistes » qui veulent « sauver le monde » :

    “When you are saving the world, fighting fraud and slave labor, you can do great things,” Mr. Karp said. Palantir does not charge for most humanitarian work, which is a source of internal pride. “What concerns me,” he said, “is working with commercial entities, and non-U.S. governments.”

    (...) Palantir has worked to recover from its own ethical lapses, but Mr. Karp acknowledges that it cannot control the ethics of its customers.

    (...) Palantir is not the first company dealing with big data that has been conflicted between ideals and commerce.

    Palantir began in the mind of Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor and PayPal founder

    sur l’affaire Anonymous :

    In 2011, the world got a taste of what could go wrong with Palantir’s confluence of commerce and surveillance. Along with two Beltway intelligence firms, a Palantir employee had pitched a Washington law firm on ways that it could expose the workings of WikiLeaks, the group that publishes secret government and private-sector information. The pitch included the idea of using disinformation and cyberattacks.

    The idea fizzled, but Anonymous, the loosely associated network of cyberactivists, posted both the pitch and emails indicating that Palantir also proposed creating misinformation about journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, who wrote in support of WikiLeaks and who recently shared a Pulitzer Prize for his articles on Edward J. Snowden’s leaking of National Security Agency spying documents.

    Mr. Karp publicly apologized to Mr. Greenwald. On the recommendation of an outside law firm, the employee was suspended for a while, but still works at Palantir.

    et encore, à propos des capacités de google :

    Courtney Bowman, a former Google employee, works at a Palantir as a “civil liberties engineer,” (...): “I was a quantitative analyst at Google, doing ad auction design and targeting,” he says. “I had access to ways of deriving personal identity information without breaking any laws. It was a constant anxiety to me.”

    #fichage #surveillance #privacy #data-mining et un article que @cryptome juge (à mon avis à juste titre) grotesque. En lien aussi avec Barrett Brown

  • #Glenn_Greenwald: NSA documents on Middle East to be disclosed
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/glenn-greenwald-nsa-documents-middle-east-be-disclosed

    Glenn Greenwald speaks at the Sixth & I Synagogue May 14, 2014 in Washington, DC. Greenwald spoke about his new book “No Place to Hide” and about working with his subject #Edward_Snowden who leaked documents about United States surveillance and intelligence programs. (Photo: AFP-Brendan Smialowski) Glenn Greenwald speaks at the Sixth & I Synagogue May 14, 2014 in Washington, DC. Greenwald spoke about his new book “No Place to Hide” and about working with his subject Edward Snowden who leaked documents about United States surveillance and intelligence programs. (Photo: AFP-Brendan Smialowski)

    Numerous documents focusing on partnerships and surveillance tactics between America’s #National_Security_Agency and regional security (...)

    #Articles #Brazil #France #Israel #Obama_Administration #US #Yemen

  • WikiLeaks statement on the mass recording of Afghan telephone calls by the NSA

    https://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-statement-on-the-mass.html

    The National Security Agency has been recording and storing nearly all the domestic (and international) phone calls from two or more target countries as of 2013 (...) Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how, WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan.

  • wikileaks_doj_05192014.pdf
    http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/wikileaks_doj_05192014.pdf

    19th May, 2014
    Plaintiff : Electronic Privacy Information Center EPIC
    Defendants : U.S. Department of Justice : the Federal Bureau of Investigation “FBI”, the Criminal Division “CRM” and the Nation Security Division “NSD

    Defendants conducted a reasonable search, processed records.

    Plaintiff continues to argue about documents that do not exist.

    As to the second group of events identified by plaintiff — revelations related to the National Security Agency’s practices — plaintiff has failed to explain its relevance.

    #wikileaks #EPIC #NSA