organization:u.s. national security agency

Israeli cyber firm negotiated advanced attack capabilities sale with Saudis, Haaretz reveals

Just months before crown prince launched a purge against his opponents, NSO offered Saudi intelligence officials a system to hack into cellular phones ■ NSO: We abide the law, our products are used to combat crime and terrorism

►https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-company-negotiated-to-sell-advanced-cybertech-to-the-saudi

The Israeli company NSO Group Technologies offered Saudi Arabia a system that hacks cellphones, a few months before Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman began his purge of regime opponents, according to a complaint to the Israel Police now under investigation.
But NSO, whose development headquarters is in Herzliya, says that it has acted according to the law and its products are used in the fight against crime and terror.
To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
Either way, a Haaretz investigation based on testimony and photos, as well as travel and legal documents, reveals the Saudis’ behind-the-scenes attempts to buy Israeli technology.
In June 2017, a diverse group gathered in a hotel room in Vienna, a city between East and West that for decades has been a center for espionage, defense-procurement contacts and unofficial diplomatic meetings.
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Arriving at the hotel were Abdullah al-Malihi, a close associate of Prince Turki al-Faisal – a former head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services – and another senior Saudi official, Nasser al-Qahtani, who presented himself as the deputy of the current intelligence chief. Their interlocutors were two Israeli businessmen, representatives of NSO, who presented to the Saudis highly advanced technology.

>> Israel’s cyber-spy industry helps world dictators hunt dissidents and gays | Revealed
In 2017, NSO was avidly promoting its new technology, its Pegasus 3 software, an espionage tool so sophisticated that it does not depend on the victim clicking on a link before the phone is breached.
During the June 2017 meeting, NSO officials showed a PowerPoint presentation of the system’s capabilities. To demonstrate it, they asked Qahtani to go to a nearby mall, buy an iPhone and give them its number. During that meeting they showed how this was enough to hack into the new phone and record and photograph the participants in the meeting.
The meeting in Vienna wasn’t the first one between the two sides. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has recently expressed pride in the tightening ties with Gulf states, with Israel’s strength its technology. The message is clear: Israel is willing to sell these countries security-related technologies, and they forge closer ties with Israel in the strategic battle against Iran.
>> $6 billion of Iranian money: Why Israeli firm Black Cube really went after Obama’s team
According to the complaint, the affair began with a phone call received by a man identified as a European businessman with connections in the Gulf states. On the line was W., an Israeli dealing in defense-related technologies and who operates through Cyprus-based companies. (Many defense-related companies do business in Cyprus because of its favorable tax laws.) W. asked his European interlocutor to help him do business in the Gulf.

FILE Photo: Two of the founders of NSO, Shalev Julio and Omri Lavi.
Among the European businessman’s acquaintances were the two senior Saudi officials, Malihi and Qahtani.
On February 1, 2017, W. and the businessman met for the first time. The main topic was the marketing of cyberattack software. Unlike ordinary weapons systems, the price depends only on a customer’s eagerness to buy the system.
The following month, the European businessman traveled to a weapons exhibition in the United Arab Emirates, where a friend introduced him to Malihi, the Saudi businessman.
In April 2017, a meeting was arranged in Vienna between Malihi, Qahtani and representatives of Israeli companies. Two more meetings subsequently took place with officials of Israeli companies in which other Israelis were present. These meetings took place at the Four Seasons Hotel in Limassol, Cyprus, where Israeli cybercompanies often meet with foreign clients.
>> Snowden: Israeli firm’s spyware was used to track Khashoggi
The meetings were attended by W. and his son. They were apparently friendly: In photographs documenting one of them, W. and Qahtani are shown after a hunting trip, with the Saudi aiming a rifle at a dead animal.
In the Vienna meeting of April 2017, the Saudis presented a list of 23 systems they sought to acquire. Their main interest was cybersystems. For a few dozens of millions of dollars, they would be able to hack into the phones of regime opponents in Saudi Arabia and around the world and collect classified information about them.
According to the European businessman, the Saudis, already at the first meeting, passed along to the representatives of one of the companies details of a Twitter account of a person who had tweeted against the regime. They wanted to know who was behind the account, but the Israeli company refused to say.

Offices of Israeli NSO Group company in Herzliya, Israel, Aug. 25, 2016Daniella Cheslow/AP
In the June 2017 meeting, the Saudis expressed interest in NSO’s technology.
According to the European businessman, in July 2017 another meeting was held between the parties, the first at W.’s home in Cyprus. W. proposed selling Pegasus 3 software to the Saudis for $208 million.
Malihi subsequently contacted W. and invited him to Riyadh to present the software to members of the royal family. The department that oversees defense exports in Israel’s Defense Ministry and the ministry’s department for defense assistance, responsible for encouraging exports, refused to approve W.’s trip.
Using the initials for the defense assistance department, W. reportedly said “screw the D.A.” and chartered a small plane, taking with him NSO’s founder, Shalev Hulio, to the meetings in the Gulf. According to the European businessman, the pair were there for three days, beginning on July 18, 2017.
At these meetings, the European businessman said, an agreement was made to sell the Pegasus 3 to the Saudis for $55 million.
According to the European businessman, the details of the deal became known to him only through his contacts in the defense assistance department. He said he had agreed orally with W. that his commission in the deal would be 5 percent – $2.75 million.
But W. and his son stopped answering the European businessman’s phone calls. Later, the businessman told the police, he received an email from W.’s lawyer that contained a fake contract in which the company would agree to pay only his expenses and to consider whether to pay him a bonus if the deal went through.
The European businessman, assisted by an Israeli lawyer, filed a complaint in April 2018. He was questioned by the police’s national fraud squad and was told that the affair had been transferred to another unit specializing in such matters. Since then he has been contacted by the income tax authorities, who are apparently checking whether there has been any unreported income from the deal.
The European businessman’s claims seem to be substantiated by correspondence Haaretz has obtained between Cem Koksal, a Turkish businessman living in the UAE, and W.’s lawyers in Israel. The European businessman said in his complaint that Koksal was involved in mediating the deal.
In a letter sent by Koksal’s lawyer in February of this year, he demanded his portion from W. In a response letter, sent in early March, W.’s attorney denied the existence of the deal. The deal had not been signed, the letter claimed, due to Koksal’s negligence, therefore he was due no commission or compensation of any kind.
These issues have a wider context. From the claims by the European businessman and Koksal’s letter, it emerges that the deal was signed in the summer of 2017, a few months before Crown Prince Mohammed began his purge of regime opponents. During that purge, the Saudi regime arrested and tortured members of the royal family and Saudi businessmen accused of corruption. The Saudis also held Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri for a few days in a Riyadh hotel.
In the following months the Saudis continued their hunt for regime opponents living abroad, which raised international attention only when the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul came to light in October.
It has recently been claimed that NSO helped the Saudi regime surveil its opponents. According to an article in Forbes magazine and reports from the Canadian cyber-related think tank Citizen Lab, among the surveillance targets were the satirist Ghanem Almasrir and human rights activist Yahya Asiri, who live in London, and Omar Abdulaziz, who lives in exile in Canada.
These three men were in contact with Khashoggi. Last month, Edward Snowden, who uncovered the classified surveillance program of the U.S. National Security Agency, claimed that Pegasus had been used by the Saudi authorities to surveil Khashoggi.
“They are the worst of the worst,” Snowden said of NSO, whose people he accused of aiding and abetting human rights violations.
NSO’s founders and chief executives are Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio. The company is registered in Cyprus but its development headquarters is in Herzliya. In 2014 the company was sold to private equity firm Francisco Partners based on a valuation of $250 million.
Francisco Partners did not respond to Haaretz’s request for comment.
In May, Verint Systems offered to buy NSO for $1 billion, but the offer was rejected. The company is awash in cash. Earlier this month all its employees went on vacation in Phuket, Thailand. Netta Barzilai, Lior Suchard, the Ma Kashur Trio and the band Infected Mushroom were also flown there to entertain them.
The Pegasus system developed by NSO was a “one-click system,” meaning that the victim had to press on a link sent to him through phishing. The new system no longer requires this. Only the number of the SIM card is needed to hack into the phone. It’s unknown how Pegasus does this.
Technology sources believe that the technology either exploits breaches in the cellphone’s modem, the part that receives messages from the antenna, or security breaches in the apps installed on a phone. As soon as a phone is hacked, the speaker and camera can be used for recording conversations. Even encoded apps such as WhatsApp can be monitored.
NSO’s operations are extremely profitable.
The company, which conceals its client list, has been linked to countries that violate human rights. NSO says its products are used in the fight against crime and terror, but in certain countries the authorities identify anti-regime activists and journalists as terrorists and subject them to surveillance.
In 2012, NSO sold an earlier version of Pegasus to Mexico to help it combat the drug cartel in that country. According to the company, all its contracts include a clause specifically permitting the use of its software only to “investigate and prevent crime or acts of terror.” But The New York Times reported in 2016 that the Mexican authorities also surveilled journalists and lawyers.
Following that report, Mexican victims of the surveillance filed a lawsuit in Israel against NSO last September. This year, The New York Times reported that the software had been sold to the UAE, where it helped the authorities track leaders of neighboring countries as well as a London newspaper editor.
In response to these reports, NSO said it “operated and operates solely in compliance with defense export laws and under the guidelines and close oversight of all elements of the defense establishment, including all matters relating to export policies and licenses.
“The information presented by Haaretz about the company and its products and their use is wrong, based on partial rumors and gossip. The presentation distorts reality.
“The company has an independent, external ethics committee such as no other company like it has. It includes experts in legal affairs and international relations. The committee examines every deal so that the use of the system will take place only according to permitted objectives of investigating and preventing terror and crime.
“The company’s products assist law enforcement agencies in protecting people around the world from terror attacks, drug cartels, child kidnappers for ransom, pedophiles, and other criminals and terrorists.
“In contrast to newspaper reports, the company does not sell its products or allow their use in many countries. Moreover, the company greatly limits the extent to which its customers use its products and is not involved in the operation of the systems by customers.”
A statement on W.’s behalf said: “This is a false and completely baseless complaint, leverage for an act of extortion by the complainants, knowing that there is no basis for their claims and that if they would turn to the relevant courts they would be immediately rejected.”

Saudis used Israeli spyware to track Khashoggi: Snowden - World News

▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/saudis-used-israeli-spyware-to-track-khashoggi-snowden-138669

Software made by an Israeli cyber security firm was used to track murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower claimed Nov. 7.

Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel via a video call from Russia, Edward Snowden said Pegasus spyware sold to governments by NSO Group Technologies was used to track opponents.

“The Saudis, of course, knew that Khashoggi was going to go to the consulate, as he got an appointment. But how did they know his intention and plans?”

Khashoggi, a Saudi national and columnist for The Washington Post, was killed on Oct. 2 after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

The Powerful Global Spy Alliance You Never Knew Existed
▻https://theintercept.com/2018/03/01/nsa-global-surveillance-sigint-seniors

It is one of the world’s most powerful alliances. And yet most people have probably never heard of it, because its existence is a closely guarded government secret. The “SIGINT Seniors” is a spy agency coalition that meets annually to collaborate on global security issues. It has two divisions, each focusing on different parts of the world : SIGINT Seniors Europe and SIGINT Seniors Pacific. Both are led by the U.S. National Security Agency, and together they include representatives from at (...)

#NSA #écoutes #surveillance #web #SIGINT

Whistleblower Snowden warns of looming mass #surveillance in Japan
▻https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2017/06/5db36d30fb00-exclusive-whistleblower-snowden-warns-of-looming-mas

https://img.kyodonews.net/english/public/images/posts/9d251cdd5cc12c81b79e2e6a8c15c147/image_l.png

“This is the beginning of a new wave of mass surveillance in Japan,” the 33-year-old American said in an exclusive interview with Kyodo News while in exile in Russia, referring to a so-called anti-conspiracy bill that has stirred controversy in and outside Japan as having the potential to undermine civil liberties.

The consequences could be even graver when combined with the use of a wide-reaching online data collection tool called XKEYSCORE, the former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency said. He also gave credence to the authenticity of new NSA papers exposed through The Intercept, a U.S. online media outlet, earlier this year that showed the agency’s surveillance tool has already been shared with Japan.

#Japon

G7 clueless on cyber attack culprits but pledges work on security | Reuters
▻http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-g7-ministers-italy-cyber-idUKKBN1890EA

Group of Seven financial chiefs said they had no idea who was behind the international cyber attack that affected almost 100 countries on Friday but they pledged to redouble their efforts to make cyberspace more secure.

The economy minister and central bank governor of Italy, which holds the G7 presidency, both replied negatively when asked at the end of a G7 meeting in Bari whether the group had any suspicions on the culprits of the attack.

“Frankly no, we discussed it but we don’t know anything,” Bank of Italy chief Ignazio Visco said.

However, the G7 promised to step up their work to try to prevent repetitions of the assault which leveraged hacking tools believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, infecting tens of thousands of computers.

 ? Énorme #CyberAttack #Ransomware #Wannacry en cours.
Les ordinateurs de plus de 70 pays bloqués (télécoms, hôpitaux, mais aussi des ministères...) avec une demande de rançon de 300 $ en Bitcoin

NYT : ▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/world/europe/international-cyberattack-ransomware.html?_r=0

Right Now Hospitals and other institutions across Europe, Asia and beyond were simultaneously struck on Friday by a cyberattack that locked their computer systems and demanded a ransom to restore access, leading to chaos in emergency rooms, in doctors’ offices and aboard ambulances.

More than 45,000 attacks in as many as 74 countries, including Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan, have recorded attacks on their systems, according to Kapersky Labs, a Russian cybersecurity firm.

Hackers appear to have exploited a flaw in Microsoft’s Windows operating system first discovered by the U.S. National Security Agency. The flaw, and a tool to exploit it with malicious software, were made public in April by a hacker collective known as Shadow Brokers.

+ carte en live : ▻https://intel.malwaretech.com/WannaCrypt.html

Vault 7 : CIA Hacking Tools Revealed
▻https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

NSA shuts down massive phone surveillance

The U.S. National Security Agency [will end] its daily vacuuming of millions of Americans’ phone records [Sunday 29/11/2015] and replace the practice with more tightly targeted surveillance methods, the Obama administration said on Friday.

[...]

It comes two and a half years after the controversial program was exposed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

[...]

Under the Freedom Act, the NSA and law enforcement agencies can no longer collect telephone calling records in bulk in an effort to sniff out suspicious activity. Such records, known as “metadata,” reveal which numbers Americans are calling and what time they place those calls, but not the content of the conversations.

#surveillance
#NSA

“A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN ENIGMA \ In August 2015 the U.S. National Security Agency (#NSA) released a major policy statement on the need for post-quantum #cryptography (PQC). This announcement will be a great stimulus to the development, standardization, and commercialization of new quantum-safe algorithms. However, certain peculiarities in the wording and timing of the statement have puzzled many people and given rise to much speculation concerning the NSA, #elliptic_curve_cryptography (#ECC), and quantum-safe cryptography. Our purpose is to attempt to evaluate some of the theories that have been proposed.”

▻https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1018.pdf

Spoiler: after reading the very interesting and detailed paper, we still don’t know :-(

#quantum_cryptography

Brazil-to-Portugal #Cable Shapes Up as Anti-#NSA Case Study - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-30/brazil-to-portugal-cable-shapes-up-as-anti-nsa-case-study.html

Brazil is planning a $185 million project to lay fiber-optic cable across the Atlantic Ocean, which could entail buying gear from multiple vendors. What it won’t need: U.S.-made technology.

The cable is being overseen by state-owned telecommunications company Telecomunicacoes Brasileiras SA (TELB4), known as Telebras. Even though Telebras’s suppliers include U.S. companies such as Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO), Telebras President Francisco Ziober Filho said in an interview that the cable project can be built without any U.S. companies.

The potential to exclude U.S. vendors illustrates the fallout that is starting to unfold from revelations last year that the U.S. National Security Agency spied on international leaders like Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff and Germany’s Angela Merkel to gather intelligence on terror suspects worldwide.

“The issue of data integrity and vulnerability is always a concern for any telecom company,” Ziober said. The NSA leaks last year from contractor Edward Snowden prompted Telebras to step up audits of all foreign-made equipment to check for security vulnerabilities and accelerated the country’s move toward technological self-reliance, he said.

http://www.bloomberg.com/image/irVuySp1r_PA.png

NSA Said to Have Used Heartbleed Bug, Exposing Consumers

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

The NSA’s decision to keep the bug secret in pursuit of national security interests threatens to renew the rancorous debate over the role of the government’s top computer experts.

Heartbleed appears to be one of the biggest glitches in the Internet’s history, a flaw in the basic security of as many as two-thirds of the world’s websites. Its discovery and the creation of a fix by researchers five days ago prompted consumers to change their passwords, the Canadian government to suspend electronic tax filing and computer companies including Cisco Systems Inc. to Juniper Networks Inc. to provide patches for their systems. ►http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-11/nsa-said-to-have-used-heartbleed-bug-exposing-consumers.html
#NSA

Samsung Push Into U.S. Government Sector Threatens BlackBerry
WSJ 12/02/14
▻http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304703804579378983351277684?cb=logged0.5835022258106619

Samsung Electronics Co. is revamping its push into the U.S. enterprise and government sector, adding further pressure to the new leadership at the company that once dominated that space, BlackBerry Ltd. BB.T -1.96%

Samsung recently won an order for roughly 7,000 smartphones from the U.S. Army and is close to an order for several thousand devices from the U.S. National Security Agency, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Army order is for the company’s Nett Warrior system, which outfits soldiers with a chest-mounted Samsung Note II smartphone to use while on the battlefield. While Samsung already had an initial contract to supply devices for the Nett Warrior system, the new order expands the number of Samsung devices in use there. The NSA order would be for the agency’s Fishbowl Project, an initiative it started several years ago to update the devices used by #NSA personnel. Both the Army and the NSA equip the devices with their own, secure software.

A spokesman for the Army didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the NSA declined to comment.

chaise musicales #silicon_army #tech_companies

#Samsung recently hired BlackBerry’s former chief information officer, Robin Bienfait, to work at its IT services subsidiary Samsung SDS, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Bienfait stepped down from her post at BlackBerry in late 2012, just before the launch of the company’s new line of phones.

Samsung also recently hired Carl Nerup, from Washington, D.C., contractor General Dynamics Corp. GD +2.35% , to lead sales of its enterprise software, according to a person close to the company.

A Samsung spokesman confirmed the new hires.

▻http://www.rcfp.org/sites/default/files/2013-12-02-Home_Affairs_Cmte_letter.pdf
December 2, 2013 OPEN LETTER TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE:
As news organizations, editors, and journalists who often report on government actions that officials seek to keep secret, we write to the Committee on the eve of the forthcoming appearance of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to express our grave concern over pointed calls by those in authority for censorship of The Guardian and criminal prosecution of its journalists in the name of national security. Such sanctions, and the chilling impact created by even the threat to impose them, undermine the independence and integrity of the press that are essential for democracy to function.
At the height of the Vietnam War in 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court refused the request of President Nixon to enjoin a newspaper from publishing a classified Defense Department report on the war that had been leaked to a reporter. In rejecting censorship of true, newsworthy information as fundamentally inconsistent with a free press and a free people, Justice Hugo Black cautioned that “[t]he word ‘security’ is a broad, vague generality” that should not be invoked to abrogate the right of the press to educate citizens. “The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.”
Recent disclosures concerning secret activities of GCHQ and the U.S. National Security Agency may have embarrassed or angered political leaders, but they have educated the public on critically important matters and sparked a valuable global debate over the proper exercise of the vast surveillance powers that now exist. It is the responsibility of journalists to provide the type of accurate and in-depth news reports published by The Guardian and others that have informed the public and framed important, unresolved issues concerning the balance between security and privacy. Vigorous news coverage and the debate it fosters advance the public interest.
It is thus unwise and counterproductive to react to the reporting on disclosures from Edward Snowden by reflexively invoking security concerns to silence the press or to accuse a news organization of aiding terrorists simply by providing citizens with information they need to know. Published reports in The Guardian on the Snowden disclosures have been prepared with the care and sensitivity to security concerns that editors have long demonstrated. We understand that both GCHQ and the NSA were provided an opportunity, in advance of publication, to comment and alert the journalists to particular security concerns. The reporting has been both responsible and, given the intense displeasure of those in power, courageous.
To the rest of the world, it appears that press freedom itself is under attack in Britain today. British politicians are publicly calling for the criminal prosecution of The Guardian for having published true, accurate, and newsworthy information. A Scotland Yard investigation has been launched. “D notices” have been threatened. And the Prime Minister has raised the prospect of seeking an injunction prohibiting The Guardian from publishing any further intelligence revelations. These aggressive actions intimidate journalists and their sources. They chill reporting on issues of national security and on the conduct of government more generally.
In our Internet-connected world, the impact of actions in Britain extends far beyond the United Kingdom. U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue rightly expressed alarm that these actions do more than damage Britain’s international reputation as a defender of press freedom; they “provide encouragement to non-democratic regimes to justify their own repressive actions.” They undermine globally the essential independence of the press.
We therefore urge the Committee to use the occasion of Mr. Rusbridger’s appearance to reaffirm Britain’s commitment to a vigorous, free, and independent press. It is important to acknowledge that the Snowden revelations, filtered to the public through responsible journalists, have served the public interest. And it is equally important to respect the autonomy of the newsroom. Damage to democracy and to the credibility of elected governments inevitably is inflicted when disapproval of truthful reporting causes officials to intrude into the internal editorial decisions of news organizations.
Respectfully,
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press American Society of News Editors
The Associated Press
The E.W. Scripps Company
The McClatchy Company
The New York Times Company
The New Yorker
Newspaper Association of America ProPublica
The Seattle Times Company
Society of Professional Journalists
The Washington Post
World Association of Newspapers and News
Publishers (WAN-IFRA)
#surveillance
#nasa
#snowmen

U.S., EU resume negotiations on free trade agreement - latimes.com
▻http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-us-eu-free-trade-agreement-20131111,0,6336260.story#axzz2ke4maNz0
▻http://www.trbimg.com/img-52812454/turbine/la-fg-wn-us-eu-free-trade-agreement-20131111-001/600

LONDON – European and U.S. officials resumed negotiations Monday on a #trans-Atlantic-free-trade-agreement despite angry protests in #Europe over #American-electronic-spying and threats to call off the talks.

The five-day discussion in #Brussels had already been postponed because of the U.S. government shutdown and faced added uncertainty amid outrage over reports that the U.S. National Security Agency tapped the phones of European leaders such as #German Chancellor #Angela-Merkel. Some European officials urged that this week’s talks be suspended.

But the potential payoff of a trade agreement outweighed those concerns. Between them, the U.S. and the 28-nation European Union already account for almost half of the world’s economic output. A tariff-busting pact would create the world’s largest free-trade area and, supporters say, could create millions of jobs.

Meeting for the second time, following a first round in July, the negotiating teams are expected to concentrate on services, investment, and energy and raw materials. They also will examine regulatory issues; officials on both sides ot the Atlantic say that cutting red tape and harmonizing some rules and regulations could do more to boost economic activity than easing tariffs, which are already relatively low.

Liberalizing trade across the Atlantic could bring in nearly $160 billion more a year to Europe, which has been struggling to recover from a damaging recession and the region’s lingering debt crisis. European officials are also eager to find ways to counter a looming demographic disadvantage compared to the U.S. and China as birthrates in Europe drop and workforces age.

U.S. officials too see benefits for American exporters and were worried that the flap over alleged spying on allies such as Germany and France would hurt or kill chances of a trade accord. Those two nations and Spain have all summoned the resident U.S. ambassadors to address revelations of mass electronic surveillance overseas by the NSA; commentators say that trust across the Atlantic has been seriously undermined.

On a swing through Europe last week, U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry appealed to his interlocutors not to let the spying controversy affect this week’s talks.

“This is a trade partnership. It has the ability to lift all of our countries,” Kerry said on a visit to Poland. The trade agreement “is really separate from any other issues that people may have on their minds.”

After this week’s talks, which were originally to take place last month, the negotiating teams are due to meet again in Washington shortly before Christmas. That would put the talks back on their previously announced schedule.

Exclusive: NSA delayed anti-leak software at base where Snowden worked -officials | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/18/us-usa-security-snowden-software-idUSBRE99H10620131018

The U.S. National Security Agency failed to install the most up-to-date anti-leak software at a site in Hawaii before contractor Edward Snowden went to work there and downloaded tens of thousands of highly classified documents, current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.

Well before Snowden joined Booz Allen Hamilton last spring and was assigned to the NSA site as a systems administrator, other U.S. government facilities had begun to install software designed to spot attempts by unauthorized people to access or download data.

The purpose of the software, which in the NSA’s case is made by a division of Raytheon Co, is to block so-called “insider threats” - a response to an order by President Barack Obama to tighten up access controls for classified information in the wake of the leak of hundreds of thousands of Pentagon and State Department documents by an Army private to WikiLeaks website in 2010.

U.S. citizens’ private data shared with Israeli intelligence, report says
By Haaretz and Anshel Pfeffer | Sep. 11, 2013
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.546459

The U.S. National Security Agency is routinely sharing American citizens’ private data with Israeli intelligence services, a secret document leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden shows, the Guardian reported on Wednesday.

According to the report, intelligence being passed by the U.S agency to Israel is likely to include American citizens’ phone calls and emails.

The five-page document which outlines the data-sharing agreement, struck between the two countries in March 2009, repeatedly mentions the need to upkeep American citizens’ constitutional rights to privacy. While stipulating that data passed to Israeli hands must be treated by the Israeli intelligence services in accordance with U.S. law, no legal obligations are attached, the document shows.

Israeli intelligence services are allowed “to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning U.S. persons derived from raw Sigint [signal intelligence] by NSA,” on the condition that it does so “in a manner that does not identify the U.S. person,” the document, which has been published in full at the Guardian’s website, says.

The revelations over the NSA’s programs have recently been the the focus of intense scrutiny over what is seen as widespread privacy violations.

The Israeli embassy in London responded to the Guardian report, saying “we don’t comment on leaked documents.”

In another top-secret document shared with the Guardian and dated 2008, a senior NSA official is quoted as saying that Israel aggressively spies on the U.S. According to the official, “On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems… A [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.”

U.S. bugged EU offices, computer networks: German magazine | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/29/us-usa-eu-spying-idUSBRE95S0AQ20130629

The United States bugged European Union offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks, according to secret documents cited in a German magazine on Saturday, the latest in a series of exposures of alleged U.S. spy programs.

Der Spiegel cited from a September 2010 “top secret” document of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) which it said fugitive former #NSA contractor Edward #Snowden had taken with him and which the weekly’s journalists had seen in part.

The document outlines how the #NSA bugged offices and spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the United Nations, not only listening to conversations and phone calls but also gaining access to documents and emails.

The document explicitly called the EU a “target”.

#union_européenne