background preloader

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries. The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19. The unlimited nature of the records being handed over to the NSA is extremely unusual. Related:  GOVT.SECRETS

Snowden reveals HAARP's Global Assassination Agenda Snowden speaking from a Custom Faraday Cage in Sheremetyevo Airport’s Hotel Novotel (Photo: The Internet Chronicle) MOSCOW, Russia – Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower and fugitive, released documents Tuesday to Internet Chronicle reporters proving that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, is definitively engaged in a program of assassination and mind control. EMERGENCY UPDATE: Snowden has revealed an oncoming global cataclysm. While the military prison industrial complex has routinely insisted that the Alaska-based HAARP is only meant to study natural phenomena in earth’s ionosphere, Snowden has managed to blow open a brutally massive charade. “The HAARP research station,” he said, “strategically based away from prying eyes near Gakona, Alaska, is actually used to terminate or manipulate would-be dissidents of global capitalism on the scale of millions of people.” Unbeknownst to victims or their loved ones, HAARP projects ultra-high-powered radio waves.

Wiretaps through Software Hacks to Get Legal Scrutiny Earlier this year a group of researchers published a controversial idea for giving law enforcement access to suspicious electronic communications. Instead of forcing tech companies like Facebook and Google to build backdoors into their software, the researchers suggested law enforcement simply exploit existing vulnerabilities in Web software to plant their digital wiretaps. This approach would turn security-compromising software bugs—a bane of software companies and their customers for the past couple of decades—into a tool for gathering evidence against criminals communicating via voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls, instant messaging, some video game systems and other Internet-based channels. The authors of this proposal are now working on a new paper examining the appropriate policy and legal framework for the approach they first described in the January/February issue of IEEE Security & Privacy.

Through a PRISM darkly: Tracking the ongoing NSA surveillance story It was a relatively quiet week for internet news until Guardian blogger Glenn Greenwald dropped a bombshell on Thursday, with a story that showed the National Security Agency was collecting data from Verizon thanks to a secret court order. But that was just the beginning: the Washington Post later revealed an even broader program of surveillance code-named PRISM, which involved data collection from the web’s largest players — including Google, Facebook and Apple — and then the Wall Street Journal said data is also being gathered from ISPs and credit-card companies. This story is moving so quickly that it is hard to keep a handle on all of the developments, not to mention trying to follow the denials and non-denials from those who are allegedly involved, and the threads that tie this particular story to the long and sordid history of the U.S. government’s surveillance of its own citizens. The Guardian leak The leak widens The Washington Post leak The ongoing fallout Zuckerberg denial

Global Information Grid The GIG Vision - Enabled by Information Assurance The Global Information Grid (GIG) vision implies a fundamental shift in information management, communication, and assurance. The GIG is the globally interconnected, end-to-end set of information capabilities for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information on demand to warfighters, policy makers, and support personnel. The GIG includes owned and leased communications and computing systems and services, software (including applications), data, security services, other associated services, and National Security Systems. The GIG will use commercial technologies augmented to meet the DoD's mission-critical user requirements. If your company provides an IA or IA-enabled product or service and you are interested in scheduling a capabilities presentation with NSA, please complete the Capabilities Presentation Questionnaire. Scope and Objectives IA Importance and Key Characteristics IA Defense-in-Depth Implementation

The Government Has No Right To Pry Into What Goes On In The Privacy Of Your Home I’ve been keeping up with the news recently, and as you’ve probably seen, this last week has been marked by several shocking revelations concerning the conduct of the National Security Agency and the federal government’s overall attitudes toward the privacy of the American people. It’s spawned a vigorous debate, but to me, the answer couldn’t be any clearer: No matter what pretexts the presidential administration might have about protecting the American people, the government simply does not have the right to poke their nose into what goes on in the privacy of your own home. Bottom line: Your home is your sanctuary. And in your home, you should be able to do whatever you want for how long you want without worrying about someone spying on you. The fact is, this country was built on a few fundamental principles, not least of which is the inalienable right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. Think about what that could mean for a second.

U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post. The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. London’s Guardian newspaper reported Friday that GCHQ, Britain’s equivalent of the NSA, also has been secretly gathering intelligence from the same internet companies through an operation set up by the NSA. PRISM was launched from the ashes of President George W. Sens.

eKouter.net Surveillance and the Corporate State With all of the fear mongering the subject has received in recent decades, Americans have in fact had remarkably little to fear directly from ‘terrorism.’ While actual attacks have been spectacular—they were designed to garner attention, they are both rare and far less dangerous than opportunistic politicians and the dim bureaucrats of the ‘security’ state care to communicate. As comedian Stephen Colbert (correctly) pointed out, including the attacks of September 11, 2001 and more recently in Boston, more Americans have died from furniture falling on them than from terrorist attacks. Depending on which statistics you choose, 10X – 20X more Americans die every year from (preventable) medical errors than have died in the entirety of U.S. history from terrorist attacks. In practical terms, terrorism is among the least probable threats Americans face. The George W. These facts are known to the Obama administration, the Pentagon, the NSA, the CIA and various and sundry spy agencies.

White House Defends Phone-Record Tracking as 'Critical Tool' WASHINGTON—The National Security Agency's monitoring of Americans includes customer records from the three major phone networks as well as emails and Web searches, and the agency also has cataloged credit-card transactions, said people familiar with the agency's activities. The disclosure this week of an order by a secret U.S. court for Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.35 % 's phone records set off the latest public discussion of the program. But people familiar with the NSA's operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc. T -0.45 % and Sprint Nextel Corp. S -3.62 % , records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers. The agency is using its secret access to the communications of millions of Americans to target possible terrorists, said people familiar with the effort. The NSA's efforts have become institutionalized—yet not so well known to the public—under laws passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Mon Blog Défense Data Mining for Terrorists In the post 9/11 world, there's much focus on connecting the dots. Many believe that data mining is the crystal ball that will enable us to uncover future terrorist plots. But even in the most wildly optimistic projections, data mining isn't tenable for that purpose. Most people first learned about data mining in November 2002, when news broke about a massive government data mining program called Total Information Awareness. But TIA didn't die. This shouldn't be a surprise. The promise of data mining is compelling, and convinces many. Security is always a trade-off, and for a system to be worthwhile, the advantages have to be greater than the disadvantages. Data mining works best when there's a well-defined profile you're searching for, a reasonable number of attacks per year, and a low cost of false alarms. Terrorist plots are different. All data mining systems fail in two different ways: false positives and false negatives. Data mining is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Related: