Treasure Map: The NSA Breach of Telekom and Other German Firms

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/snowden-documents-indicate-nsa-has-breached-deutsche-telekom-a-991503.html



According to top-secret documents from the NSA and the British agency GCHQ, the intelligence agencies are seeking to map the entire Internet, including end-user devices. In pursuing that goal, they have broken into networks belonging to Deutsche Telekom.

Treasure Map: The NSA Breach of Telekom and Other German Firms
By Andy Müller-Maguhn, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Michael Sontheimer
September 14, 2014 – 12:13 PM

When it comes to choosing code names for their secret operations, American and British agents demonstrate a flare for creativity. Sometimes they borrow from Mother Nature, with monikers such as "Evil Olive" and "Egoistic Giraffe." Other times, they would seem to take their guidance from Hollywood. A program called Treasure Map even has its own logo, a skull superimposed onto a compass, the eye holes glowing in demonic red, reminiscent of a movie poster for the popular "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, starring Johnny Depp.

Treasure Map is anything but harmless entertainment. Rather, it is the mandate for a massive raid on the digital world. It aims to map the Internet, and not just the large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. It also seeks to identify the devices across which our data flows, so-called routers.

Furthermore, every single end device that is connected to the Internet somewhere in the world -- every smartphone, tablet and computer -- is to be made visible. Such a map doesn't just reveal one treasure. There are millions of them.

The breathtaking mission is described in a Treasure Map presentation from the documents of the former intelligence service employee Edward Snowden which SPIEGEL has seen. It instructs analysts to "map the entire Internet -- Any device, anywhere, all the time."

[Pholus]

1. Just another version of "metadata," right?

There is a world where you could say this capability would help us get the "bad guys."

We do not live in that world. Instead we live in a world where the NSA "redefines" words to extend their mandate.

Based on the documentation exposed over the last 18 months this is just another power grab by an out-of-control agency planning to control the population by knowing its secrets -- just like Cheney originally planned.