TomDispatch NSA Did Its Own Spying on Telecom Service Providers | NewsFactor Business Report Documents provided by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden reveal that the agency has covertly monitored e-mail messages of people connected to the world's top cellphone network operators. The operation, codenamed Auroragold, was apparently aimed at gaining access to confidential company information so the NSA could more easily spy on mobile phone communications. The agency also reportedly used intercepted communications about cellphone network systems to identify security weaknesses for exploitation by NSA surveillance. These and other details were revealed Thursday in an article by Ryan Gallagher published on The Intercept, the First Look Media publication founded by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill. Looking for Vulnerabilities Auroragold aimed at collecting so-called IR.21 technical documents used by mobile network operators to share information about roaming capabilities. 'Five Eyes' Among Targets Skeptical in Seattle: Joe Detracktor:
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter Block Tool For Cops To Surveil You On Social Media On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of California announced that, after the organization obtained revealing documents through public records access requests, Facebook and Instagram have cut off data access to a company that sells surveillance products for law enforcement. Twitter has also curbed the surveillance product’s access. The product, called Geofeedia, is used by law enforcement to monitor social media on a large scale, and relies on social media sites’ APIs or other means of access. “Our location-based intelligence platform enables hundreds of organizations around the world to predict, analyze, and act based on real-time social media signals,” the company’s website reads. Geofeedia responded several hours after this article was published, with CEO Phil Harris providing an emailed statement saying the company’s tool was used by "law enforcement officials across the country” for "helping to ensure public safety.”
Crimes Against Humanity Having been conditioned your entire lives, the way we are all conditioned our entire lives, to receive sound-bite answers to questions we have never had the critical ability to form in our minds, forecloses our ability to interrogate reality and draw conclusions from it. That is the function of the media. That is the function of the educational system you understand. It's not to teach you to think critically, which is educational in value. It's to teach you what to think. That's a rather different thing, to be indoctrinated than to be educated. We've got an ignorant leadership. At Nuremberg it was said that there was a complicity on the part of the German citizenry. [You] do what's necessary. You are not going to morally persuade a criminal state structure, bent upon perpetrating genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, to do the right thing.
U.S. Spy Agency Reports Improper Surveillance of Americans - Bloomberg Business (Bloomberg) -- The National Security Agency today released reports on intelligence collection that may have violated the law or U.S. policy over more than a decade, including unauthorized surveillance of Americans’ overseas communications. The NSA, responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union, released a series of required quarterly and annual reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board that cover the period from the fourth quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2013. The heavily-redacted reports include examples of data on Americans being e-mailed to unauthorized recipients, stored in unsecured computers and retained after it was supposed to be destroyed, according to the documents. They were posted on the NSA’s website at around 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Other unauthorized cases were a matter of human error, not intentional misconduct. Unauthorized Surveillance No New Legislation No Oversight Masking Identities Report Violations
Edward Snowden Calls Police Spying on Quebec Journalists a ‘Threat to Democracy’ In a speech to 600 people at McGill University in Montreal on Wednesday night, Edward Snowden described police spying on Quebec journalists a “threat to the traditional model of our democracy.” Though it had been announced months ago, the timing of Snowden’s conference was strangely appropriate. The event took place just hours after La Presse revealed the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), which is the provincial police force, had put at least six prominent journalists under surveillance. Two days earlier, the same Montreal daily had broken the story that its own star columnist, Patrick Lagacé, had been spied on by the Montreal police force (SPVM). Appearing live from Russia, where he’s been living in exile since exposing top secret information about US intelligence and surveillance programs, Snowden did not mince words when discussing the behaviour of Quebec police. "You can find out anyone he met with, who did he call, how long he was on the phone"
WikiLeaks statement on the mass recording of Afghan telephone calls by the NSA (on 2014-05-23) 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. Both the Washington Post and The Intercept (based in the US and published by eBay chairman Pierre Omidyar) have censored the name of one of the victim states, which the latter publication refers to as country "X". Both the Washington Post and The Intercept stated that they had censored the name of the victim country at the request of the US government. We know from previous reporting that the National Security Agency’s mass interception system is a key component in the United States’ drone targeting program. Although, for reasons of source protection we cannot disclose how, WikiLeaks has confirmed that the identity of victim state is Afghanistan. We do not believe it is the place of media to "aid and abet" a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population. Send to Friend Print
Meet the machines that steal your phone’s data The National Security Agency’s spying tactics are being intensely scrutinized following the recent leaks of secret documents. However, the NSA isn't the only US government agency using controversial surveillance methods. Monitoring citizens' cell phones without their knowledge is a booming business. Earlier this year, a covert tool called the “Stingray” that can gather data from hundreds of phones over targeted areas attracted international attention. Details about the devices are not disclosed on the Harris website, and marketing materials come with a warning that anyone distributing them outside law enforcement agencies or telecom firms could be committing a crime punishable by up to five years in jail. These little-known cousins of the Stingray cannot only track movements—they can also perform denial-of-service attacks on phones and intercept conversations. “Stingray” First used: Trademark records show that a registration for the Stingray was first filed in August 2001. “Gossamer”
CameraV: Secure Verifiable Photo & Video Camera – Guardian Project CameraV is the easiest way to capture and share verifiable photos and video proof on a smartphone or tablet, all the while keeping it entirely secure and private. This is the official app from the InformaCam project, a partnership between the Guardian Project and WITNESS. CameraV is easy to learn and simple to use (and insanely secure & powerful under the covers…). All photos and videos you take are password-protected and 100% encrypted on your device. * READ THE USER GUIDE: CameraV is based on the InformaCam platform, and was developed for use by activists, journalists, advocates and others, working in very difficult and high-risk situations, to capture and gather visual evidence and proof of abuse and rights violations. * OPEN-SOURCE AND FREE: * JOIN THE COMMUNITY:
InformacamGuide InformaCam is a system that uses the built-in sensors in modern smartphones for tracking movement, light and other environmental inputs, along with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular network information to capture a snapshot of the environment around you, while you are taking a photo or video. This extra metadata (the data about the data!) helps verify and validate the date, time and location of capture, and provides an entirely new layer of context and meaning out of “invisible” energy for use in any way you choose. Currently, you can use InformaCam by installing the CameraV app for Android smartphones. Easy To Use CameraV is the easiest way to capture and share secure photos and videos on a smartphone or tablet. Sensor Smart CameraV turns sensor inputs like compass, light, temperature, location and more into “metadata for good”. Upload and share media captured from CameraV wherever you choose, and people can trust what their eyes see. Crypto-Power Open and Free Enable Sensors Sharing Options
TrackMeNot Public awareness of the vulnerability of searches to systematic surveillance and logging by search engine companies, was initially raised in the wake of a case, initiated August 2005, in which the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) issued a subpoena to Google for one week's worth of search query records (absent identifying information) and a random list of one million URLs from its Web index. This was cited as part of its defense of the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). When Google refused, the DOJ filed a motion in a Federal District Court to force compliance. Google argued that the request imposed a burden, would compromise trade secrets, undermine customers' trust in Google, and have a chilling effect on search activities. While viewed from the perspective of user privacy this seems a good outcome, yet it does bring to light several disquieting points. 從用戶隱私的角度來看，這似乎是一個不錯的結果，但它亦點出幾項令人不安之處。
FBI Can Activate Your Android Phone's Microphone The Wall Street Journal reports that based on court documents and interviews with people involved with federal agencies, law enforcement officials in the U.S. are resorting to tools typically used by hackers to gather information on suspects. Use of these tools under court order has grown as suspects look for new ways to communicate including various types of chat and encryption tools. Sources said that the FBI has been developing its own hacking tools for more than a decade, but also purchases them from the private sector. One such tool allows the agency to remotely activate microphones on Android-based devices to record conversations. This same tool can also remotely access the microphone of a laptop to record conversations unknowing by the device owner. The Making of Dell's XPS 13 2-in-1 It's the laptop that made Windows notebooks cool — and knocked the MacBook Air off its pedestal MORE: How Secure is Microsoft SkyDrive?
GSM mobile ... the insecure network - Security AffairsSecurity Affairs The latest discovered vulnerability in GSM ( Global System for Mobile) technology is worrying many telecom operators of several countries due to their impact on an audience of billions users. Some experts in the Security Research Labs in Berlin have shown how to get the remote control of mobile phones to send SMS and make calls. The bugs identified makes GSM technology vulnerable to tapping. The impact in terms of security is definitely noticeable and creates no little alarm among the telecom industry, concerns shared by the industry as producers in the same mobile device. The reality is that we are dealing with very old technology, backed by 20 years of operation and for which were not introduced significant improvement in terms of safety. GSM is the 2G standard (2 nd generation) for mobile phone an it is currently most widely used. Just last year I remember an interesting presentation made by the researcher Chris Paget during Defcon security conference in Las Vegas. Share On