Category Archives: NSA Spying

New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany – SPIEGEL …

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Just before Christmas 2005, an unexpected event disrupted the work of American spies in the south-central German city of Wiesbaden. During the installation of a fiber-optic cable near the Rhine River, local workers encountered a suspicious metal object, possibly an undetonated World War II explosive. It was certainly possible: Adolf Hitler's military had once maintained a tank repair yard in the Wiesbaden neighborhood of Mainz-Kastel.

The Americans -- who maintained what was officially known as a "Storage Station" on Ludwig Wolker Street -- prepared an evacuation plan. And on Jan. 24, 2006, analysts with the National Security Agency (NSA) cleared out their offices, cutting off the intelligence agency's access to important European data streams for an entire day, a painfully long time. The all-clear only came that night: The potential ordinance turned out to be nothing more than a pile of junk.

Residents in Mainz-Kastel knew nothing of the incident.

Of course, everybody living there knows of the 20-hectare (49-acre) US army compound. A beige wall topped with barbed wire protects the site from the outside world; a sign outside warns, "Beware, Firearms in Use!"

Americans in uniform have been part of the cityscape in Wiesbaden for decades, and local businesses have learned to cater to their customers from abroad. Used-car dealerships post their prices in dollars and many Americans are regulars at the local brewery. "It is a peaceful coexistence," says Christa Gabriel, head of the Mainz-Kastel district council.

But until now, almost nobody in Wiesbaden knew that Building 4009 of the "Storage Station" houses one of the NSA's most important European data collection centers. Its official name is the European Technical Center (ETC), and, as documents from the archive of whistleblower Edward Snowden show, it has been expanded in recent years. From an American perspective, the program to improve the center -- which was known by the strange code name "GODLIKELESION" -- was badly needed. In early 2010, for example, the NSA branch office lost power 150 times within the space just a few months -- a serious handicap for a service that strives to monitor all of the world's data traffic.

NSA Sites in Germany

Wiesbaden

In the US Army's so-called Storage Station in the Wiesbaden district of Mainz-Kastel, the European Technical Center (ETC) can be found, a facility that is also used by the NSA. Only five kilometers away, in the Clay Kaserne located in the Erbenheim district of Wiesbaden, the Consolidated Intelligence Center is currently under construction, a site that will likely provide a new home to the signal intelligence specialists currently working in Mainz-Kastel. The new center is costing the Americans $124 million. Click here to access the documents.

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New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany - SPIEGEL ...

Hackers Build Spy Tools From Leaked NSA Designs

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Admiral Michael 'Mike' Rogers, director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, pauses during a Bloomberg Government cyber-security conference in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, June 3, 2014.

Image: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-06-20 20:53:05 UTC

The NSA doesn't just have powerful Internet surveillance technologies, it also has old-school spying tools like bugs and gadgets that give the spies a wide array of ways to hack into a target's computer or cellphone.

Some of these James Bond-like tools were revealed last year when Der Spiegel published a 48-page catalog, created in 2008 by the NSA and later obtained by the German newsmagazine. Now, a group of hackers is trying to build these NSA spying gadgets with open source hardware.

The group, who has named the project the 'NSA Playset', wants to show other hackers and makers how to build the spying tools and to protect against them.

"To someone who is not an expert in the field, the capabilities in the catalog might seem far-fetched or ultra high-tech," one of the hackers who's part of the project, Michael Ossmann, told Mashable. "What we want to show is that these capabilities are very much achievable and practical. And by pointing out how easy they are to achieve, we hope that we can raise awareness of security threats in our computer system."

The idea to work on this project came from security researcher Dean Pierce, who wanted to see how easy it would be to make the devices with Ossman and others joining the initiative shortly after. The hackers soon realized that most of the NSA tools in the catalog weren't that hard to reproduce.

"There's nothing really unique in what the NSA is doing, they just have the dollars to make more sophisticated equipment," Josh Datko, the founder of Cryptotronix, an open source hardware company, and also part of the NSA Playset project, told Mashable. "It's kind of surprisingly easy to recreate them."

Ossmann has been focusing on something called "retro reflector." An implant that when attached to a computer's VGA cable, for example, can capture and transmit what's being displayed on a screen and send it over-the-air to a nearby spy. Ossman explained that it's essentially a "bug."

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Hackers Build Spy Tools From Leaked NSA Designs

House votes 293-123 to cut funding for NSA spying on …

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In a surprising vote late Thursday night, a strong majority of the House of Representatives voted to cut funding to NSA operations that involve warrantless spying on Americans or involve putting hardware or software "backdoors" into various products. The amendmentto a defense appropriations bill, offeredby Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY), passed 293 to 123.

The amendment specifies that, with a few exceptions, none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by an officer or employee of the United States to query a collection of foreign intelligence information acquired under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1881a) using a United States person as an identifier.

In addition, none of the funds made available by this Act may be used by the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency to mandate or request that a person...alter its product or service to permit the electronic surveillance...of any user of said product or service for said agencies. Since Edward Snowden began leaking documents about the NSA's tactics in June of last year, security experts have worried about reports of intentional weaknessesleft in widely used cryptography specifications.

The amendment is acontrast to the USA Freedom Act passed last month. That bill was initially intended to reform the NSAbut, in its final form, still permitted the spy agency to access itsvast trove of phone call metadata. Becausethe item passed tonight was an amendment to an appropriations bill, it went to the floor without being scrutinized by the intelligence committee, which is "basically a proxy for the intelligence community, as Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute explained to Wired.

The amendment still has to beapproved by the Senate in order to take effect in 2015.

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House votes 293-123 to cut funding for NSA spying on ...

Microsoft: NSA security fallout ‘getting worse’ … ‘not blowing over’

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Maximizing your infrastructure through virtualization

Microsoft's top lawyer says the fallout of the NSA spying scandal is "getting worse," and carries grim implications for US tech companies.

In a speech at the GigaOm Structure conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith warned attendees that unless the US political establishment figures out how to rein in its spy agencies, there could be heavy repercussions for tech companies

"What we've seen since last June is a double-digit decline in people's trust in American tech companies in key places like Brussels and Berlin and Brasilia. This has put trust at risk," Smith said.

"The longer we wait or the less we do the worse the problem becomes," he explained. "We are seeing other governments consider new procurement rules procurement rules that could effectively freeze out US-based companies."

This could already be happening. China banned Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system from a recent public sector procurement contract. Two weeks later, a report by the Middle Kingdom's state-backed media quoted Chinese analysts and academics warning of the dangers of using Windows 8. "It's a big challenge for our cybersecurity," said one academic.

The Chinese government is also rumored to be considering a ban on IBM servers as well, due to security issues.

If the US government does not work to clear up the rules around how it intercepts data both at home and abroad, how deeply its spy agencies penetrate tech from its domestic companies, and how it accesses overseas data held by American companies, then there's a real danger that US companies could suffer, Smith implied.

"Last fall people in Washington, including at the White House and Congress, had a view that this was an issue that needed to be addressed but might blow over. ... it is not blowing over ... in June of 2014 it is clear it is getting worse not better," he said.

"I do believe if we don't have a world where governments respect each other's world we're instead going to have a world where governments are tempted to keep American providers out," he said. Since the NSA revelations occurred, networking giant Cisco has seen quarter-on-quarter declines in its business in China, for example.

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Microsoft: NSA security fallout 'getting worse' ... 'not blowing over'

New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany

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Is it possible that the German government really knew nothing about all of these NSA activities within Germany? Are they really -- as they claimed in August 2013 in response to a query from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) -- "unaware of the surveillance stations used by the NSA in Germany"?

That is difficult to believe, especially given that the NSA has been active in Germany for decades and has cooperated closely with the country's foreign intelligence agency, the BND, which is overseen by the Chancellery. A top-secret NSA paper from January 2013 notes: "NSA established a relationship with its SIGINT counterpart in Germany, the BND-TA, in 1962, which includes extensive analytical, operational, and technical exchanges."

When the cooperation with its junior partner from West Germany began, the NSA was just 10 years old and maintained stations in Augsburg and West Berlin in addition to its European headquarters in Stuttgart-Vaihingen.

American intelligence agencies, like those of the three other World War II victors, immediately began to monitor Germans within their zones of occupation, as confirmed by internal guidelines relating to the evaluation of reports stemming from the years 1946 to 1967.

In 1955, the British and French reduced their surveillance of Germans and focused on operations further to the east. The Americans, however, did not and continued to monitor telephone and other transmissions both within Germany and between the country and others in Western Europe. By the mid 1950s, US spies may have been listening in on some 5 million telephone conversations per year in Germany.

The easternmost NSA surveillance post in Europe during the Cold War was the Field Station Berlin, located on Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) in West Berlin. The hill is made from the rubble left over from World War II -- and the agents operating from its top were apparently extremely competent. They won the coveted Travis Trophy, awarded by the NSA each year to the best surveillance post worldwide, four times.

'A Perpetual State of Domination'

Josef Foschepoth, a German historian, refers to German-American relations as "a perpetual state of domination." He speaks of a "common law developed over the course of 60 years" allowing for uncontrolled US surveillance in Germany. Just how comprehensive this surveillance was -- and remains -- can be seen from the so-called SIGAD lists, which are part of the Snowden archive. SIGAD stands for "Signal Intelligence Activity Designator" and refers to intelligence sources that intercept radio or telephone signals. Every US monitoring facility carries a code name made up of letters and numbers.

Documents indicate that the Americans often opened new SIGAD facilities and closed old ones over the decades, with a total of around 150 prior to the fall of the Wall. The technology used for such surveillance operations has advanced tremendously since then, with modern fiber-optic cables largely supplanting satellite communications. Data has become digital, making the capture of large quantities of it far easier.

The Snowden documents include a 2007 list that goes all the way back to 1917 and includes the names of many former and still active US military installations as well as other US facilities that are indicated as sites of data collection. It notes that a number of the codes listed are no longer in operation, and a deactivation date is included for at least a dozen. In other instances, the document states that the closing date is either unknown or that the SIGADs in question are still in operation. These latter codes include sites in Frankfurt, Berlin, Bad Aibling and Stuttgart -- all places still known to have an active NSA presence.

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New Snowden Revelations on NSA Spying in Germany

No Wonder Impeachment Was “Off the Table”: Democrats Approved Mass Surveillance and Torture … and the Subsequent Cover …

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Pelosi Was Briefed On and Covered Up NSA Spying On Americans

When a teen asked Nancy Pelosi last week why she supports unconstitutional NSA spying, Pelosi responded that the NSA lied to Congress about what they were doing, and she didnt know:

But Pelosi was actually briefed on and approved illegal mass surveillance by the NSA.

Last November, high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney confirmed to Washingtons Blog that Pelosi was briefed on NSAs mass surveillance of Americans:

WASHINGTONS BLOG: Is CBS right that you tried to warn Congress 10 years ago?

BILL BINNEY: Yes, first to Diane Roark (House senior staff assigned to monitor NSA) in late 2001, then, to a House Intel Committee member. Diane also talked to Porter Goss [then-chair of the House Intelligence Committee] and Nancy Pelosi [ranking member on the Intelligence Committee at the time] about it in the same time frame. This to me was the obvious reason Nancy said (when she was speaker) that impeaching George W was off the table. Cause she was part of it from the beginning.

Last week, Diane Roark confirmed that this was true:

WASHINGTONS BLOG: Bill Binney explained in a recent interview that Pelosi refused to impeach Bush because she herself had signed off on mass NSA surveillance of Americans. Can you confirm Mr. Binneys statement from your experience?

DIANE ROARK: Yes, Nancy Pelosi was one of the gang of four because she was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2001 and for some time after that. So she gave the go-ahead to the Administration along with the others.

She now claims that the administration withheld information from her. However, I sent her numerous memos updating her as I learned more and giving background on the system. I did this through her staff director, who assured me he had given them to her. Her office claimed to the New Yorker in 2011, however, that she had not received the memos.

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No Wonder Impeachment Was “Off the Table”: Democrats Approved Mass Surveillance and Torture … and the Subsequent Cover ...