Category Archives: NSA Spying

Foreign firms win big from NSA spying

Posted on by

"Data is being courted by overseas cloud providers, so this is clearly hurting U.S. cloud providers," said Elad Yoran, chairman and CEO of Valutive, a cloud security solutions company. "Many places around the world are seeing this as an opportunity."

Another factor likely to accelerate the trend: Countries like Brazil and Germany are strengthening their data residency laws, which force companies to keep their data stored locally. In other words, if a company wants to store data in the cloud, it needs to do so on servers in the country in question.

A recent survey of 1,000 information and communications technology decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the U.S. revealed that many businesses are in fact aggressively changing the way they store their data.

According to the survey, which was carried out by NTT Communications, 90 percent of respondents had changed the way they use the cloud and 16 percent had delayed or canceled contracts with cloud service providers.

"This is a big deal. It's a terrible problem being foisted on companies. And it's the Achilles' heel of cloud computing. It forces them to replicate their infrastructure around the world in the countries that are implementing these laws," Yoran said.

"The U.S. had such a strong position which is being in effect weakened by the proliferation of these laws and creates an opening for global competitors to get into the cloud market at the expense of business that would have otherwise gone to the U.S."

By CNBC's Cadie Thompson. Follow her on Twitter @CadieThompson.

See more here:
Foreign firms win big from NSA spying

NSA spying gives big boost to non-US tech firms

Posted on by

"Data is being courted by overseas cloud providers, so this is clearly hurting U.S. cloud providers," said Elad Yoran, chairman and CEO of Valutive, a cloud security solutions company. "Many places around the world are seeing this as an opportunity."

Another factor likely to accelerate the trend: Countries like Brazil and Germany are strengthening their data residency laws, which force companies to keep their data stored locally. In other words, if a company wants to store data in the cloud, it needs to do so on servers in the country in question.

A recent survey of 1,000 information and communications technology decision-makers from France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and the U.S. revealed that many businesses are in fact aggressively changing the way they store their data.

According to the survey, which was carried out by NTT Communications, 90 percent of respondents had changed the way they use the cloud and 16 percent had delayed or canceled contracts with cloud service providers.

"This is a big deal. It's a terrible problem being foisted on companies. And it's the Achilles' heel of cloud computing. It forces them to replicate their infrastructure around the world in the countries that are implementing these laws," Yoran said.

"The U.S. had such a strong position which is being in effect weakened by the proliferation of these laws and creates an opening for global competitors to get into the cloud market at the expense of business that would have otherwise gone to the U.S."

By CNBC's Cadie Thompson. Follow her on Twitter @CadieThompson.

Read the original post:
NSA spying gives big boost to non-US tech firms

Over 100 World Leaders Targeted by NSA Spying

Posted on by

NSA headquarters at Fort Meade. (Photo: NSA / Wikimedia Creative Commons) Over 100 leaders of foreign states are secretly surveilled by the NSA, and Germany has been more heavily targeted by U.S. and U.K. spying than was previously known.

This is according to secret documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and exposed Saturday by Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark writing for Der Spiegel.

German chancellor Angela Merkel, along with 121 other foreign state leaders, is included in what Der Spiegel describes as a key NSA database "of government leaders who have been tasked as targets." Code-named Nymrod, the database is revealed in a classified 2009 presentation document from the NSA's Center for Content Extraction. Arranged in alphabetical order, only 11 names of world leaders targeted by NSA surveillance are shown on the released document, including Syrias Bashar al-Assad, Belaruss Alexander Lukashenko, and Colombias Alvaro Uribe. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA kept over 300 reports on Merkel alone in this database.

The Der Spiegel report also reveals that in March 2013 the NSA obtained a court order to spy on Germany.

The latest news follows revelations last fall that the NSA had spied on Merkel's mobile phone for up to a decade, causing a significant diplomatic row. While the revelations created a public diplomatic row, German intelligence agencies also closely cooperate with the NSA.

Furthermore, British intelligence agency GCHQ hacked into the servers of German cyber companies and spied on staff communications, Der Spiegel's report reveals. "Is it time for the country to open a formal espionage investigation?" ask the authors.

_____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

See original here:
Over 100 World Leaders Targeted by NSA Spying

Snowden: Obama’s Plan To Reform NSA Spying Is A Turning Point

Posted on by

The NSA whistleblower says the latest development marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights from the NSA.

The person who triggered the furor over the National Security Agency's spying activities has given a tentative thumb's up to plans to change some of the agency's controversial methods.

In a statement released Wednesday through the American Civil Liberties Union, Edward Snowden called plans to rein in the National Security Agency's bulk record collection a "turning point." The former NSA consultant who leaked a series of documents detailing the NSA's activities also said that the latest efforts by the White House and Congress mark "the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights from the NSA and restore the public's seat at the table of government."

In January, President Obama revealed a proposal under which the NSA would no longer house the phone record data and would require a court order to access it from a third-party.

Congress has been working on efforts to prohibit the NSA's bulk collection of e-mail and phone records of US citizens. Last October, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) sponsored a bill called the USA Freedom Act that would end the "eavesdropping, dragnet collection, and online monitoring" by the NSA and other government agencies.

The White House reportedly plans to announce a proposal this week that could leave customer phone records in the hands of the phone companies rather than putting them under the purview of the NSA. The agency would then need a court order to see specific records.

Snowden's full statement on the ACLU Web site appears as follows:

"I believed that if the NSA's unconstitutional mass surveillance of Americans was known, it would not survive the scrutiny of the courts, the Congress, and the people.

The very first open and adversarial court to ever judge these programs has now declared them 'Orwellian' and 'likely unconstitutional.' In the USA Freedom Act, Congress is considering historic, albeit incomplete reforms. And President Obama has now confirmed that these mass surveillance programs, kept secret from the public and defended out of reflex rather than reason, are in fact unnecessary and should be ended.

This is a turning point, and it marks the beginning of a new effort to reclaim our rights from the NSA and restore the public's seat at the table of government."

Read more here:
Snowden: Obama’s Plan To Reform NSA Spying Is A Turning Point

Diane Fienstien Expose Herself As Being Above The American People During NSA Spying Speech – Video

Posted on by


Diane Fienstien Expose Herself As Being Above The American People During NSA Spying Speech
Link to 1 Million Fathers fundraiser:http://igg.me/at/1MFathersattorneyfundraiser Sign the 1 Million Fathers petition:http://goo.gl/v7Hb2S Visit My Website:h...

By: TheAdviseShowTV

Read more here:
Diane Fienstien Expose Herself As Being Above The American People During NSA Spying Speech - Video

China demands explanation of NSA spying on Huawei

Posted on by

China has demanded a clear explanation from the US after reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) infiltrated the networks of Chinese telecoms firm, Huawei.

The NSA allegedly created back doors into the Huaweis networks, according to reports based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

US officials have long considered Huawei a security threat because of alleged back doors in its kit, but documents released to the New York Times and Der Spiegel show the NSA targeted Huawei.

According to the leaked documents, the NSA infiltrated servers in Huaweis headquarters to monitor communications of top executives at Huawei; and get information about the routers and digital switches that Huawei claims connect a third of the worlds population.

The NSA operation was aimed at finding links between Huawei and the Peoples Liberation Army; and exploiting Huaweis technology to conduct surveillance on customers, particularly in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya and Cuba.

Huawei said it would condemn the invasion of its networks if the reports in the New York Times and Der Spiegel were true.

The NSA has made no mention of the reports, but said it focused only on what it called valid foreign intelligence targets and denied stealing information to help US businesses, reports the BBC.

Chinese authorities have lodged a complaint with the US and demanded that Washington provide an explanation for the alleged espionage.

In 2011, a US House Intelligence Committee launched an investigation into the threat posed by Chinese-owned telecommunications companies in the US, and the governments response to that threat.

Huawei has struggled to make gains in the US market because of continual questions of links with the Chinese government.

The rest is here:
China demands explanation of NSA spying on Huawei

How Much Is NSA Spying Costing In Lost Productivity?

Posted on by

NSA spying is costing the U.S. tech industry tens of billions of dollars. And see this and this.

It also undermines trust in U.S. companies, fellow Americans and our government. Given that trust is the foundation for a prosperous economy, this is really bad for our economy.

But there might be another big cost to mass surveillance: loss of worker productivity.

Specifically, top computer and internet experts say that NSA spying breaks the functionality of our computers and of the Internet. It reduces functionality and reduces security by for example creating backdoors that malicious hackers can get through.

Remember, American and British spy agencies have intentionally weakened security for many decades. And its getting worse and worse. For example, they plan to use automated programs to infect millions of computers.

How much time and productivity have we lost in battling viruses let in because of the spies tinkering? How much have we lost because their computer programs conflict with our programs?

Indeed, Microsofts general counsellabels government snooping an advanced persistent threat, a term generally used to describe teams of hackers that coordinate cyberattacks for foreign governments. It is well-known among IT and security professionals that hacking decreases employee productivity. While theyre usually referring to hacking by private parties, the same is likely true for hacking by government agencies, as well.

And the spy agencies are already collecting millions of webcam images from our computers. THATS got to tie up our system resources so we cant get our work done as fast.

Moreover, the Snowden documents show that the American and British spy agencies launched attacks to disrupt the computer networks of hacktivists and others they dont like, and tracked supporters of groups such as Wikileaks.

Given that the spy agencies are spying on everyone, capturing millions of screenshots, intercepting laptop shipments, creating fake versions of popular websites to inject malware on peoples computers, launching offensive cyber-warfare operations against folks they dont like, and that they may view journalism, government criticism or even thinking for ones self as terrorism and tend to re-label dissidents as terrorists its not unreasonable to assume that all of us are being adversely effected to one degree or another by spy agency operations.

More here:
How Much Is NSA Spying Costing In Lost Productivity?