The SNOWDEN Saga continues...

[OGShaman]

I guess we haven't heard the last of Mr. Snowden. He just leaked about 160,000 e-mail and instant-message conversations intercepted by the NSA, as well as 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...cepted-messages-only-10-from-offical-targets/

 

[gaiusmarius]

seems that modern intelligence services like gchq are just a bunch of government propaganda spreading agents. they even manipulate online polls. this is another deal i read about ages ago but now we have it from Snowden, check it out.

Snowden files: Manipulating polls, netting from LinkedIn, YouTube in GCHQ bag of tricks


http://rt.com/news/172724-gchq-spying-internet-tools/

Published time: July 14, 2014 20:09
Edited time: July 15, 2014 06:06

The UK's spy agency has developed a number of crafty tools to monitor and comb the web, planting false information when necessary, Glenn Greenwald said while disclosing a fresh batch of Snowden's files.

The tools were created by the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) within the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), according to the leaked documents.

Previous files have already detailed JTRIG’s use of “fake victim blog posts” and “false flag operations,” as well as “honey traps” and various forms of psychological manipulation of online activists.

But the newly released GCHQ document, titled 'JTRIG Tools and Techniques,' gives a more comprehensive view of the scale of the operations, including how invasive they can be and how much online havoc can be caused.

Some of the tools use the same methods that the US and UK have prosecuted online activists for, including “distributed denial of service” attacks and “call bombing.”

As UK debates "emergency" bill to provide more surveillance powers, look at GCHQ's own description of what it does https://t.co/uJhSyDclIi

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 14, 2014

The tools give the Cheltenham spies the ability to actively monitor Skype calls and messaging in real time, raising the same old questions about the reliability of Skype’s encryption or whether Microsoft is in fact cooperating with spy agencies.

In its Wiki-styled guide notes, JTRIG says that most of its internet tools are “operational, tested and reliable,” and urges its GCHQ colleagues to think outside the box when it comes to internet deception.

“Don’t treat this like a catalogue. If you don’t see it here, it doesn’t mean we can’t build it,” JTRIG says.

Among the tools listed in the document is 'Gestator,' which provides the “amplification of a given message, normally video, on popular multimedia websites (Youtube).”

Meanwhile, 'Challenging' gives the GCHQ spooks the ability to spoof any email address and send a message under that identity.

'Angry Pirate' can permanently disable a target’s account on their computer.

'Underpass' can change the outcome of online polls, and 'Deer Stalker' gives the ability to aid geolocation of satellite phones and GMS phones by silently calling them.

NEW: Hacking online polls and other tactics GCHQ uses to manipulate the internet https://t.co/CONEjDSNF9

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 14, 2014

The JTRIG document appears in an archive used by GCHQ to discuss its online surveillance activities.

The latest bombshell of revelations comes as the UK parliament debates a fast-track bill to provide the government with greater justification for its spy agencies' sweeping surveillance powers, which Prime Minister David Cameron has said is necessary to “help keep us safe.”

GCHQ did not comment and issued its usual response, namely that it acts “in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework” and is subject to “vigorous oversight.”

But previous GCHQ memos leaked to the Guardian said that, “our main concern is that references to agency practices (i.e., the scale of interception and deletion) could lead to damaging public debate which might lead to legal challenges against the current regime.”

There is also the possibility that top ministers and officials in the UK government are not fully aware of what GCHQ is up to. Chris Huhne, a member of the National Security Council until 2012, said that minsters were in “utter ignorance” even about 'Tempora,' the spy agencies largest digital surveillance program.

Meanwhile the British watchdog Privacy International has filed legal action against GCHQ for using malware to spy on internet and mobile phone users.

 

[OGShaman]

I was kind of surprised I never saw a thread here about the Facebook mind control experiment, but then I remembered most growers are probably just like me, and don't have a Facebook account.

Or maybe people never heard about it.

For those that didn't, Facebook conducted an experiment (in cooperation with the department of defense) where they controlled and planted news stories into the news feeds of something like 600,000 Facebook users. After feeding them certain kinds of stories, Facebook then monitored and parsed the posts of the users to determine what kind of emotional effect the planted stories had on the users.

Essentially it was a study on how to change and control people's emotions, but a study that these users did not consent to participate in.

Really messed up stuff.

 

[OGShaman]

Here is a link to a talk by an iOS security expert specifically detailing how Apple ensures that Apple itself and the government has access to your data. A more detailed look at the link, but here is the summary for those don't want to read it:

NOTE: Every major mobile operating system in the world has similar security flaws (i.e. Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, etc.) this is just specifically a look at the problems with iOS.

http://www.zdziarski.com/blog/wp-co...ors_Attack_Points_Surveillance_Mechanisms.pdf

 

[gaiusmarius]

these companies are gonna loose a fortune in sales due to making products with back doors etc. both Russia and China are slowly changing all their servers and computers to non US brands. they have destroyed the trust of their customers.

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Did anyone catch the TSA's new policy on powering up devices so they can make sure that it's not actually a bomb disguised as a cell phone? This is the most ridiculous thing that I've ever heard, since someone with the know-how to put a bomb in a cell phone could also make this so-called i-bomb seem to power just like a legitimate phone.

So... if this additional "security" check cannot tell if a phone is a bomb or not, then why do it at all?

A phone with a dead battery can't be hijacked by our government, and have it's content analyzed. If it doesn't power on, it can't be remotely fondled by the TSA, and they can't see who you've been communicating with. People, it's just another ploy by our snooping corporate overlords to get their noses into our business. It has NOTHING to do with our "safety".

I was a TSA agent, and the new airport cellphone rules wouldn't stop an iBomb

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/08/tsa-agent-new-airport-security-cell-phone-rules

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance

Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/the-big-costs-of-nsa-surveillance-that-no-ones-talking-about/

(Wired)There is no doubt the integrity of our communications and the privacy of our online activities have been the biggest casualty of the NSA’s unfettered surveillance of our digital lives. But the ongoing revelations of government eavesdropping has had a profound impact on the economy, the security of the internet and the credibility of the U.S. government’s leadership when it comes to online governance.

These are among the many serious costs and consequences the NSA and those who sanctioned its activities—including the White House, the Justice Department and lawmakers like Sen. Dianne Feinstein—apparently have not considered, or acknowledged, according to a report by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

“Too often, we have discussed the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs through the distorting lens of a simplistic ‘security versus privacy’ narrative,” said Danielle Kehl, policy analyst at the Open Technology Institute and primary author of the report. “But if you look closer, the more accurate story is that in the name of security, we’re trading away not only privacy, but also the U.S. tech economy, internet openness, America’s foreign policy interests and cybersecurity.”

Over the last year, documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, have disclosed numerous NSA spy operations that have gone beyond what many considered acceptable surveillance activity. These included infecting the computers of network administrators working for a Belgian telecom in order to undermine the company’s routers and siphon mobile traffic; working with companies to install backdoors in their products or network infrastructure or to devise ways to undermine encryption; intercepting products that U.S. companies send to customers overseas to install spy equipment in them before they reach customers.

The Foundation’s report, released today, outlines some of the collateral damage of NSA surveillance in several areas, including:
Economic losses to US businesses due to lost sales and declining customer trust.
The deterioration of internet security as a result of the NSA stockpiling zero-day vulnerabilities, undermining encryption and installing backdoors in software and hardware products.
Undermining the government’s credibility and leadership on “internet freedom” and governance issues such as censorship.

Economic Costs to U.S. Business

The economic costs of NSA surveillance can be difficult to gauge, given that it can be hard to know when the erosion of a company’s business is due solely to anger over government spying. Sometimes, there is little more than anecdotal evidence to go on. But when the German government, for example, specifically cites NSA surveillance as the reason it canceled a lucrative network contract with Verizon, there is little doubt that U.S. spying policies are having a negative impact on business.

“[T]he ties revealed between foreign intelligence agencies and firms in the wake of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) affair show that the German government needs a very high level of security for its critical networks,” Germany’s Interior Ministry said in a statement over the canceled contract.

Could the German government simply be leveraging the surveillance revelations to get a better contract or to put the US on the defensive in foreign policy negotiations? Sure. That may also be part of the agenda behind data localization proposals in Germany and elsewhere that would force telecoms and internet service providers to route and store the data of their citizens locally, rather than let it pass through the U.S.

But, as the report points out, the Germans have not been alone in making business decisions based on NSA spying. Brazil reportedly scuttled a $4.5 billion fighter jet contract with Boeing and gave it to Saab instead. Sources told Bloomberg News “[t]he NSA problem ruined it” for the US defense contractor.

Governments aren’t the only ones shunning US businesses. American firms in the cloud computing sector are feeling the pressure as consumers and corporate clients reconsider using third-party storage companies in the U.S. for their data. Companies like Dropbox and Amazon Web Services reportedly have lost business to overseas competitors like Artmotion, a Swiss hosting provider. The CEO of the European firm reported that within a month after the first revelations of NSA spying went public, his company’s business jumped 45 percent. Similarly, 25 percent of respondents in a survey of 300 British and Canadian businesses earlier this year said they were moving their data outside the US as a result of NSA spying.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has estimated that repercussions from the spying could cost the U.S. cloud computing industry some $22 to $35 billion over the next few years in lost business.

Will the NSA spying revelations have long-term effects? Or will customers return to U.S. companies once the news fades into the background? It’s hard to tell.

But German chancellor Angela Merkel has suggested that Europe build a separate permanent internet to keep data local and prevent it from traversing networks the NSA can more easily monitor. Germany also has instituted new data rules that prohibit any company from obtaining a federal contract unless it can guarantee that it will protect data stored in Germany from foreign authorities. These kinds of policies and infrastructure changes tend to remain long after the circumstances that spawned them have passed.

Out of all the revelations to come to light in the past year, the most shocking may well be the NSA’s persistent campaign to undermine encryption, install backdoors in hardware and software and amass a stockpile of zero-day vulnerabilities and exploits.

“For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies,” according to a 2010 memo from Government Communications Headquarters, the NSA’s counterpart in the UK, leaked by Edward Snowden.

Furthermore, a story from Pro Publica noted, the NSA “actively engages the US and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products’ designs” to make them more amenable to the NSA’s data collection programs and more susceptible to exploitation by the spy agency.

The NSA, with help from the CIA and FBI, also has intercepted network routers from US manufacturers like Cisco to install spy tools before they’re shipped to overseas buyers, further undermining customer trust in US companies. Cisco senior vice president Mark Chandler wrote in a company blog post that his and other companies ought to be able to count on the government not interfering “with the lawful delivery of our products in the form in which we have manufactured them. To do otherwise, and to violate legitimate privacy rights of individuals and institutions around the world, undermines confidence in our industry.”

All of these activities are at direct odds with the Obama administration’s stated goal of securing the internet and critical infrastructure and undermine global trust in the internet and the safety of communications. The actions are particularly troubling because the insertion of backdoors and vulnerabilities in systems doesn’t just undermine them for exploitation by the NSA but makes them more susceptible for exploitation by other governments as well as by criminal hackers.

“The existence of these programs, in addition to undermining confidence in the internet industry, creates real security concerns,” the authors of the report note.

Undermining U.S. Support for Internet Freedom

Finally, the NSA’s spying activities have greatly undermined the government’s policies in support of internet freedom around the world and its work in advocating for freedom of expression and combating censorship and oppression.

“As the birthplace for so many of these technologies, including the internet itself, we have a responsibility to see them used for good,” then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a 2010 speech launching a campaign in support of internet freedom. But while “the US government promotes free expression abroad and aims to prevent repressive governments from monitoring and censoring their citizens,” the New American report notes, it is “simultaneously supporting domestic laws that authorize surveillance and bulk data collection.” The widespread collection of data, which has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, is precisely the kind of activity for which the U.S. condemns other countries.

This hypocrisy has opened a door for repressive regimes to question the US role in internet governance bodies and has allowed them to argue in favor of their own governments having greater control over the internet. At the UN Human Rights Council in September 2013, the report notes, a representative from Pakistan—speaking on behalf of Cuba, Iran, China and other countries—said the surveillance programs highlighted the need for their nations to have a greater role in governing the internet.

The report makes a number of recommendations to address the problems the NSA’s spying has created. These include strengthening privacy protections for Americans and non-Americans, developing clear policies about whether and under what legal standards it is permissible for the government to secretly install malware on a computer or network, and working to restore trust encryption systems and standards.

 

[Harry Gypsna]

CIA boss Brennan admits his pants have been on fire for month.s

CIA boss Brennan admits his pants have been on fire for month.s

Excerpt from the Guardian

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate intelligence committee on Thursday, conceding that the agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials.

Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, called RDINet, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture. The acknowledgement brings Brenan’s already rocky tenure at the head of the CIA under renewed question.

“Some CIA employees acted in a manner inconsistent with the common understanding reached between SSCI and the CIA in 2009 regarding access to the RDINet,” CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said in a statement to reporters, using the acronym for the Senate select committee on intelligence.



http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/31/cia-admits-spying-senate-staffers

 

[Stoner4Life]

 

[bentom187]

News
Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux 5 Aug 2014, 12:45 PM EDT

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

The classified documents were prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center, the lead agency for tracking individuals with suspected links to international terrorism. Stamped “SECRET” and “NOFORN” (indicating they are not to be shared with foreign governments), they offer the most complete numerical picture of the watchlisting system to date. Among the revelations:

• The second-highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by the government is in Dearborn, Mich.—a city of 96,000 that has the largest percentage of Arab-American residents in the country.

• The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.

• The CIA uses a previously unknown program, code-named Hydra, to secretly access databases maintained by foreign countries and extract data to add to the watchlists.

A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data. “The list has grown somewhat since that time, but is nowhere near the 1.5 million figure cited in recent news reports,” he said. He added that the statistics cited by the Associated Press do not just include nominations of individuals, but also bits of intelligence or biographical information obtained on watchlisted persons.

When U.S. officials refer to “the watchlist,” they typically mean the TSDB, an unclassified pool of information shared across the intelligence community and the military, as well as local law enforcement, foreign governments, and private contractors. According to the government’s watchlisting guidelines, published by The Intercept last month, officials don’t need “concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” to secretly place someone on the list—only a vague and elastic standard of “reasonable suspicion.”

“You need some fact-basis to say a guy is a terrorist, that you know to a probable-cause standard that he is a terrorist,” says Gomez, the former FBI agent. “Then I say, ‘Build as big a file as you can on him.’ But if you just suspect that somebody is a terrorist? Not so much.”

The National Counterterrorism Center did not respond to questions about its terrorist screening system. Instead, in a statement, it praised the watchlisting system as a “critical layer in our counterrorism defenses” and described it as superior to the pre-9/11 process for tracking threats, which relied on lists that were “typed or hand-written in card catalogues and ledgers.” The White House declined to comment.

A milestone

Most people placed on the government’s watchlist begin in a larger, classified system known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). The TIDE database actually allows for targeting people based on far less evidence than the already lax standards used for placing people on the watchlist. A more expansive—and invasive—database, TIDE’s information is shared across the U.S. intelligence community, as well as with commando units from the Special Operations Command and with domestic agencies such as the New York City Police Department.

In the summer of 2013, officials celebrated what one classified document prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center refers to as “a milestone”—boosting the number of people in the TIDE database to a total of one million, up from half a million four years earlier.

The document credits that historic achievement to the Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI), a secretive and virtually unknown U.S. counterterrorism unit responsible for maintaining TIDE. “This number is a testament to DTI’s hard work and dedication over the past 2.5 years,” the document declares.

The number is also a testament to the Obama administration’s intensified collection of personal information on individuals with suspected links to terrorism. In 2006, CBS News obtained a copy of the no fly list and reported that it included 44,000 names, including Bolivian President Evo Morales and the head of Lebanon’s parliament. Faced with a widespread public backlash, the government cut the list down to just 4,000 names by late 2009.

The next year, after the so-called “underwear bomber” tried to bring down a commercial airliner bound for Detroit, Obama loosened the criteria for adding people to the no fly list. The impact was immediate. Since 2010, the classified documents note, the National Counterterrorism Center has “created more than 430,000 terrorism-related person records” while deleting only 50,000 people “whose nexus to terrorism was refuted or did not meet current watchlisting criteria.” The documents reveal that more than 240 TIDE “nominations” are now processed each day.

“You might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that it works,” says former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “These agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the national security umbrella.”

Watchlisting by the numbers

In the documents, the government emphasizes that it seeks to add only as many people to the TIDE list “as are necessary for our nation’s counterterrorism mission.” With hundreds of new nominations coming in every day, the numbers provide only a momentary snapshot of a watchlist system that is in constant motion.

An August 2013 slide from the National Counterterrorism Center called “TIDE By The Numbers” lays out the scope of the Obama administration’s watchlisting system, and those it is targeting. According to the document, which notes that the numbers are “approximate,” 680,000 people have been watchlisted, with another 320,000 monitored in the larger TIDE database. As of August 2013, 5,000 Americans were on the watchlist while another 15,800 were targeted in TIDE.

Among the other revelations in the documents:

• 16,000 people, including 1,200 Americans, have been classified as “selectees” who are targeted for enhanced screenings at airports and border crossings.

• There are 611,000 men on the main terrorist watchlist and 39,000 women.

• The top five U.S. cities represented on the main watchlist for “known or suspected terrorists” are New York; Dearborn, Mich.; Houston; San Diego; and Chicago. At 96,000 residents, Dearborn is much smaller than the other cities in the top five, suggesting that its significant Muslim population—40 percent of its population is of Arab descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—has been disproportionately targeted for watchlisting.

• The top “nominating agencies” responsible for placing people on the government’s watchlists are: the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The documents also offer a glimpse into which groups the government is targeting in its counterterrorism mission. The groups with the largest number of targeted people on the main terrorism watchlist—aside from “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”—are al Qaeda in Iraq (73,189), the Taliban (62,794), and al Qaeda (50,446). Those are followed by Hamas (21,913) and Hezbollah (21,199).

Although the Obama administration has repeatedly asserted that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula poses the most significant external terrorist threat to the United States, the 8,211 people identified as being tied to the group actually represent the smallest category on the list of the top ten recognized terrorist organizations. AQAP is outnumbered by people suspected of ties to the Pakistan-based Haqqani Network (12,491), the Colombia-based FARC (11,275,) and the Somalia-based al-Shabab (11,547).

The documents also reveal that as of last year, the U.S. had designated 3,200 people as “known or suspected terrorists” associated with the war in Syria. Among them were 715 Europeans and Canadians, as well as 41 Americans. Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently claimed that there are more than 12,000 foreign fighters in Syria, including more than 1,000 Westerners and roughly 100 Americans.

Biometric data

According to the documents, the government does much more than simply stop watchlisted people at airports. It also covertly collects and analyzes a wide range of personal information about those individuals –including facial images, fingerprints, and iris scans.

In the aftermath of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing, the Directorate of Terrorist Identities began an aggressive program to collect biometric data and other information on all Americans on the TIDE list. “This project includes record by record research of each person in relevant Department of State and [intelligence community] databases, as well as bulk data requests for information,” the documents note.

The DTI also worked on the subsequent Chicago Marathon, performing “deep dives” for biometric and other data on people in the Midwest whose names were on the TIDE list. In the process, the directorate pulled the TIDE records of every person with an Illinois, Indiana, or Wisconsin driver license.

DTI’s efforts in Boston and Chicago are part of a broader push to obtain biometric information on the more than one million people targeted in its secret database. This includes hundreds of thousands of people who are not watchlisted. In 2013, the directorate’s Biometric Analysis Branch (BAB) launched an initiative to obtain biometric data from driver’s license records across the country. At least 15 states and the District of Columbia are working with the directorate to facilitate access to facial images from driver’s licenses. In fiscal year 2013, more than 2,400 such images were provided for inclusion in the secret TIDE database.

According to the documents, BAB offers its “unique skill of facial identification support” to a “broad customer base.” Last year its analysts produced more than 290 reports for other government entities, including the CIA, the New York City Police Department, and the military’s elite Special Operations Command.

All told, the classified documents show, the government compiles strikingly detailed dossiers of data on individuals who have been swept up in its databases. Though some of the documents obtained by The Intercept offer conflicting information on how much biometric data the government collects, the most detailed report shows that:

• In 2013, the main terrorism database included more than 860,000 biometric files on 144,000 people.

• The database contains more than a half a million facial images, nearly a quarter of a million fingerprints and 70,000 iris scans.

• The government maintains biometric data on people that it hasn’t identified–TIDE contains 1,800 “BUPs,” or “biometrics of unknown persons.”

• In a single year, the government expanded its collection of “non-traditional” biometric data, including dramatic increases in handwriting samples (32 percent), signatures (52 percent), scars, marks, and tattoos (70 percent), and DNA strands (90 percent).

“We’re getting into Minority Report territory when being friends with the wrong person can mean the government puts you in a database and adds DMV photos, iris scans, and face recognition technology to track you secretly and without your knowledge,” says Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project. “The fact that this information can be shared with agencies from the CIA to the NYPD, which are not known for protecting civil liberties, brings us closer to an invasive and rights-violating government surveillance society at home and abroad.”

The DTI also goes far beyond accessing information from state driver’s licenses. In managing the main terrorism database, the directorate coordinates with the CIA and the National Media Exploitation Center, a Pentagon wing responsible for analyzing and disseminating “paper documents, electronic media, videotapes, audiotapes, and electronic equipment” seized abroad in military or intelligence operations.

By sharing information with the military, the National Counterterrorism Center asserts, the DTI is able to “obtain additional data fusion points by accessing and exploiting NMEC data holdings.” In return, the directorate “provides NMEC with a classified biometric search capability against TIDE through automated and manual facial identification support.”

The DTI also harvests information from CIA sources, including a secret database called CINEMA— short for CIA Information Needs Management—and a classified CIA program called “Hydra,” which utilizes “clandestinely acquired foreign government information” to enhance the quality of “select populations” in TIDE.

In 2013, DTI and the CIA ran a “proof of concept” for Hydra, using Pakistan as a guinea pig. The DTI provided the CIA with a list of 555 Pakistanis in the TIDE database. After inputting the names into Hydra, the CIA “vetted these names against Pakistani Passports” and provided biographic and biometric identifiers to the DTI.

Pleased with its initial success, the government plans to expand its clandestine data-mining operation. “Future initiatives,” the documents note, “will include additional targeted countries.” The CIA declined to comment on the program.

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

I wonder why Facebook wasn't mentioned in the above article. FB has been sharing it's facial recognition image database with the NSA to fill in the gaps in this biometric database. I find it curious that the NSA wasn't mentioned at all, since the NSA and CIA are separate fingers on the same hand.

 

[gaiusmarius]

it seems there is a new leaker out there, this info abiut the watchlist being 40% innocent is dated after Snowden outed himself and fled.

 

[armedoldhippy]

it seems there is a new leaker out there, this info abiut the watchlist being 40% innocent is dated after Snowden outed himself and fled.

yeah, we need more watchers watching the watchers...don't these people have anything REAL to do? I, for one, will cheerfully give up a LOT of "protection" in order to know that some fucking spook/narc aint going through my e-mails/trash/etc. the more that Snowden releases, the more I like him. I knew the feds were invasive parasitic POS, but not to what degree that they had weaseled their way under our collective skins...

 

[gaiusmarius]

yeah, we need more watchers watching the watchers...don't these people have anything REAL to do? I, for one, will cheerfully give up a LOT of "protection" in order to know that some fucking spook/narc aint going through my e-mails/trash/etc. the more that Snowden releases, the more I like him. I knew the feds were invasive parasitic POS, but not to what degree that they had weaseled their way under our collective skins...

thats the thing, i do not think this information comes from Snowden, thats why i suspect there is another whistle-blower out there. the article mentions an un named source in the intelligence agencies.

problem with watching the watchers is who watches the watchers of the watchers?

they need to go back to the targeted watching. you'll never convince them to stop watching, but possibly we can convince them that only relevant people should be watched. that means only people directly related to terrorism or war crimes. veteran intelligence officer say that it was much easier to stop an attack before they switched from targeted watching to watching everything, now it's like finding a needle in a hay stack. what would be amazing is if we had some common sense based system, something that passes the sniff test. if you can not justify it to the public openly and honestly, then don't fucking do it.

 

[Harry Gypsna]

thats the thing, i do not think this information comes from Snowden, thats why i suspect there is another whistle-blower out there. the article mentions an un named source in the intelligence agencies.

Funny you should say that mate.

Excerpt from Reuters

(Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials were considering on Tuesday whether to ask the Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation into the suspected leak of a classified counter-terrorism document to a website, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

The intelligence officials were preparing a criminal referral over the publication on "The Intercept" website of a document that provides a statistical breakdown of the types of people whose names and personal information appear on two government data networks listing people with supposed connections to militants, the official said.

The document was published by The Intercept on Tuesday, but because it was dated August 2013, some U.S. media reports speculate that a second leaker besides former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden had begun to send classified documents from inside the U.S. intelligence community to the media.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/05/us-usa-security-leak-idUSKBN0G52GV20140805

 

[armedoldhippy]

thats the thing, i do not think this information comes from Snowden, thats why i suspect there is another whistle-blower out there. the article mentions an un named source in the intelligence agencies.

problem with watching the watchers is who watches the watchers of the watchers?

they need to go back to the targeted watching. you'll never convince them to stop watching, but possibly we can convince them that only relevant people should be watched. that means only people directly related to terrorism or war crimes. veteran intelligence officer say that it was much easier to stop an attack before they switched from targeted watching to watching everything, now it's like finding a needle in a hay stack. what would be amazing is if we had some common sense based system, something that passes the sniff test. if you can not justify it to the public openly and honestly, then don't fucking do it.

yeah, I was reading the Reuters article as I typed mine in. pretty obvious Snowden aint the leaker this time.

 

[armedoldhippy]

they can watch each other till hell freezes over, I just don't want them watching ordinary people/criminals & perverting the letter/spirit of the laws passed that enable them to do their jobs. I read a while back that over 98% of prosecutions resulting from the Patriot act were of every-day common criminals that had been noticed by the "people we trust to keep us safe" who illegally diverted info from intelligence agencies to regular LEO & hid their tracks with the "parallel constructions" the courts are up in arms over. (or were, anyway)

 

[CannaBunkerMan]

Stay safe Mr. Snowden.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/edward-snowden-permission-stay-in-russia-three-years

Edward Snowden given permission to stay in Russia for three more years

Edward Snowden has been granted permission to stay in Russia for three more years, his lawyer said on Thursday.

The NSA whistleblower was last year granted temporary asylum for one year, which ran out on 1 August.

His lawyer, Analtoly Kucherena, was quoted by Russian news agencies on Thursday as saying Snowden had been granted residency for three more years.

Snowden arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on a flight from Hong Kong on 23 June 2013 after identifying himself as the source of the Guardian's revelations on the US security agency's clandestine internet surveillance.

He spent five weeks in the transit area after the US cancelled his travel documents before being given asylum in Russia.

 

[OGShaman]

Here we have the former head of the NSA, who spent years overseeing the creation of technologies to hack the world. Since retirement he has filed 9 patents, and he is now looking to profit to the tune of 600,000 to even 1,000,000 dollars a month to tell companies how to protect themselves from the very shit that he built. When he says 'hackers' what he really means is him.

That is mind boggling for lack of a better word.

Keith Alexander, the recently retired director of the National Security Agency, left many in Washington slack-jawed when it was reported that he might charge companies up to $1 million a month to help them protect their computer networks from hackers. What insights or expertise about cybersecurity could possibly justify such a sky-high fee, some wondered, even for a man as well-connected in the military-industrial complex as the former head of the nation's largest intelligence agency?

The answer, Alexander said in an interview Monday, is a new technology, based on a patented and "unique" approach to detecting malicious hackers and cyber-intruders that the retired Army general said he has invented, along with his business partners at IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., the company he co-founded after leaving the government and retiring from military service in March. But the technology is also directly informed by the years of experience Alexander has had tracking hackers, and the insights he gained from classified operations as the director of the NSA, which give him a rare competitive advantage over the many firms competing for a share of the cybersecurity market.

Continued....

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl...he_NSA_goes_corporate_keith_alexander_patents

 

[gaiusmarius]

Here we have the former head of the NSA, who spent years overseeing the creation of technologies to hack the world. Since retirement he has filed 9 patents, and he is now looking to profit to the tune of 600,000 to even 1,000,000 dollars a month to tell companies how to protect themselves from the very shit that he built. When he says 'hackers' what he really means is him.

That is mind boggling for lack of a better word.



http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articl...he_NSA_goes_corporate_keith_alexander_patents

he was heckled when giving one of his security presentations recently. they asked him if he lied to congress and the people before when questioned about the mass surveillance of US citizens, then why should we believe anything he's saying now, lol. he didnt like that by the face, hehe.