More NSA Stories Coming This Week... Lots Of Great Links Here:

[WillyT]

NSA encryption story, Latin American fallout and US/UK attacks on press freedoms
The implications of the prior week's reporting of NSA stories continue to grow
Glenn Greenwald - theguardian.com
Saturday 7 September 2013 09.04 EDT

<snip>

I'm currently working on what I believe are several significant new NSA stories, to be published imminently here, as well as one very consequential story about NSA spying in Brazil that will first be broadcast Sunday night on the Brazilian television program Fantastico (because the report has worldwide implications, far beyond Brazil, it will be translated into English and then quickly published on the internet). Until then, I'm posting below the video of the 30-minute interview I did yesterday on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez about our NSA encryption story and ongoing US/UK attacks on press freedom (the transcript of that interview is here).

There has been some excellent commentary on the implications of the NSA/GCHQ encryption story we published this week. The LA Times' Jim Healey says the story is "the most frightening" yet, and explains why he thinks that. The Bloomberg technology columnist David Meyer's analysis of what this all means is worth reading in its entirety. In the Guardian, security expert Bruce Schneier, who has worked with us on a couple of soon-to-be-published stories, identifies 5 ways to maintain the privacy of your internet communications notwithstanding the efforts of the NSA and GCHQ to induce companies to build vulnerabilities into certain types of encryption.

As for Brazil, the fallout continues from our report last week on Fantastico revealing the NSA's very personal and specific surveillance targeting of Brazilian president Dilma Rouseff and then-leading-candidate (now Mexican president) Enrique Peña Nieto (the NSA documents we published about those activities are here). In an interview this week with The Hindu's Shobhan Saxena, Brazil's highly popular ex-president Lula vehemently condemned NSA spying abuses and said Obama should "personally apologize to the world". The New York Times' Simon Romero has a good article from yesterday on the thus-far-unsuccessful attempts by Obama to placate the anger in the region from this report. As for the new report coming Sunday night in Brazil, please take note of this adamant statement last week from the NSA, as reported by the Washington Post [asterisks in original]:

"US intelligence services are making routine use around the world of government-built malware that differs little in function from the 'advanced persistent threats' that US officials attribute to China. The principal difference, US officials told The Post, is that China steals US corporate secrets for financial gain.

"'The Department of Defense does engage' in computer network exploitation, according to an e-mailed statement from an NSA spokesman, whose agency is part of the Defense Department. 'The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.'"

In Europe this week, President Obama has been making similar claims when asked about NSA spying, repeatedly assuring people that NSA surveillance is overwhelmingly devoted to stopping terrorism threats.

One big problem the NSA and US government generally have...

<snip>

More: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/07/nsa-encryption-us-uk-press-freedoms

[Jackpine Radical]

1. "'The department does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including cyber.'"

Oh, fucken bullshit. Even if the Agency isn't doing that (maybe they really aren"t), what about Booz Allen & the rest of the private contractors? Ya really think they're passing up the chance to do a little industrial espionage or insider trading on the tips they're picking up?

The Tomlin Principle: "No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up."

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. "what about Booz Allen & the rest of the private contractors? "

Well, they are not "the Dept", so ...technically....

Remember that recent leaks reported Britain's spy people spied on us, and we spied on people in Britain,
so, technically, no one was spying on their own people
etc etc etc.

[cantbeserious]

2. Hope And Change Officially In Flames

eom

[DirkGently]

3. The sheer scale is far too large to be about "terrorism."

There simply aren't enough terrorists in the world to justify sucking in everyone's data, phone calls, and now, apparently financial data.

Whatever they're trying to say it's about -- whatever they're telling themselves it's about -- it hasn't been about stopping Al Quaeda or a handful of pissed off Yemenis for a long time now.

[Luminous Animal]

4. Laura Poitras: NSA hacks into smart phones

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/privacy-scandal-nsa-can-spy-on-smart-phone-data-a-920971.html

The United States' National Security Agency intelligence-gathering operation is capable of accessing user data from smart phones from all leading manufacturers. Top secret NSA documents that SPIEGEL has seen explicitly note that the NSA can tap into such information on Apple iPhones, BlackBerry devices and Google's Android mobile operating system.


The documents state that it is possible for the NSA to tap most sensitive data held on these smart phones, including contact lists, SMS traffic, notes and location information about where a user has been.
The documents also indicate that the NSA has set up specific working groups to deal with each operating system, with the goal of gaining secret access to the data held on the phones.

In the internal documents, experts boast about successful access to iPhone data in instances where the NSA is able to infiltrate the computer a person uses to sync their iPhone. Mini-programs, so-called "scripts," then enable additional access to at least 38 iPhone features.

The documents suggest the intelligence specialists have also had similar success in hacking into BlackBerrys. A 2009 NSA document states that it can "see and read SMS traffic." It also notes there was a period in 2009 when the NSA was temporarily unable to access BlackBerry devices. After the Canadian company acquired another firm the same year, it changed the way in compresses its data. But in March 2010, the department responsible at Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency declared in a top secret document it had regained access to BlackBerry data and celebrated with the word, "champagne!"

[Luminous Animal]

5. Tom Tomorrow way back in 1994 on the NSA

Last edited Sun Sep 8, 2013, 05:44 PM - Edit history (1)

via John Cusack on twitter...

[bananas]

11. Wow, I didn't realize John Cusack was so political

I just looked at John Cusack's recent tweets and found it.
The cartoon is from 1994, not 1984 - Ollie North is in the first panel, he hadn't been convicted yet in 1984.

https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/376811584875544577

John CusackVerified account ‏@johncusack

Was a straight shot ...“@tomtomorrow: @ggreenwald u might be amused by old cartoon from 1994 that a reader dug up. http://pic.twitter.com/72aZg7vHPH”

https://twitter.com/quister/status/376638511350161408/photo/1

erik winquist ‏@quister

Cleaning out old magazines, I came across this from @tomtomorrow in a 1994 issue of SPIN.. spooky in its prescience. http://pic.twitter.com/Ozmx4uBnXt

[Luminous Animal]

12. Thanks. I changed the date.

[davidn3600]

6. This government wants to know everything about everyone

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Keep the posts coming, Willy!

[WillyT]

13. Will Do !!!

[hootinholler]

8. But isn't he saving it all up for his book? n/t

[Luminous Animal]

10. Obama administration had restrictions on NSA reversed in 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-administration-had-restrictions-on-nsa-reversed-in-2011/2013/09/07/c26ef658-0fe5-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html

e Obama administration secretly won permission from a surveillance court in 2011 to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases, according to interviews with government officials and recently declassified material.

In addition, the court extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted U.S. communications from five years to six years — and more under special circumstances, according to the documents, which include a recently released 2011 opinion by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, then chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

What had not been previously acknowledged is that the court in 2008 imposed an explicit ban — at the government’s request — on those kinds of searches, that officials in 2011 got the court to lift the bar and that the search authority has been used.

Together the permission to search and to keep data longer expanded the NSA’s authority in significant ways without public debate or any specific authority from Congress. The administration’s assurances rely on legalistic definitions of the term “target” that can be at odds with ordinary English usage. The enlarged authority is part of a fundamental shift in the government’s approach to surveillance: collecting first, and protecting Americans’ privacy later.

[Mnemosyne]

14. K&R nt