Category Archives: NSA Spying

Judge Jeanine Pirro – WH Under Fire For NSA Spying – Class Action Lawsuit Filed This Week – Video

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Judge Jeanine Pirro - WH Under Fire For NSA Spying - Class Action Lawsuit Filed This Week
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How NSA spying disclosures influence security strategies

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How has whistleblower Edward Snowdens exposs affected the ways organisations deal with internal and external security threats?

Edward Snowdens revelations about mass internet surveillance conducted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UKs GCHQ has caused consternation around the world, particularly in Europe.

While the revelations have generated much debate and given security suppliers a golden opportunity to say how they could have stopped the CIA contractor in his tracks, one question remains for security professionals.

Regardless of motives and objectives, how should Snowdens revelations influence businesses information security strategies?

While it is difficult to get a clear-cut, unqualified answer to this, most information security professionals feel Snowden did not really uncover anything new, and some are unequivocal in their response. "Organisations should not build their strategy around stopping the NSA or GCHQ monitoring: this is a very negative, reactive and ultimately pointless exercise," says Adrian Davis, principal research analyst at the Information Security Forum (ISF).

"At the ISF, we state that an organisations information security strategy should support the business strategy and allow the organisation to conduct and grow its business in a secure and robust manner, by protecting the organisations assets including information against a range of threats."

An important part of the strategy, he says, should be to create and implement processes to manage contractors; control access rights and stop accrual of such rights by employees and contractors; and to monitor and review critical system activity on a regular basis.

These were some of the flaws that allowed the leaks to occur, says Davis.

But, like many others in the security industry, he feels the revelations that certain technologies, especially encryption, have back doors should come as no surprise. "The key here is to determine whether the back doors pose an exploitable vulnerability and if the organisation has deployed or can deploy measures to mitigate the vulnerability," says Davis."This brings us to risk assessment, which should inform the choice about what software to use, decide whether to use open source software, or choose another control to apply."

In the wake of the Snowden revelations, the open source community has suggested that having software open to the scrutiny of all will eliminate back doors for spy agencies. "This seems counterintuitive," says Robert Newby, analyst and managing partner at KuppingerCole UK. "But, simply put, if everyone can see it, it tends to keep people honest and is that not what Snowden was trying to do in the first place?"

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How NSA spying disclosures influence security strategies

Irate Over Spying, EU Barks Up Wrong Regulatory Tree

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By Amir Mizroch and Frances Robinson

Neelie Kroescall for more globalization of the way the internet is run isnt the first attempt to use allegations about NSA spying to bolster Europes position and give new impetus to existing reform efforts.

Over the summer, European leadersexpressed outrage that they were spied on. This weeks fresh call to reform Icann, the U.S.-controlled agency that doles out domain names and Internet Protocol addresses came bundled with the EU bristling at the alleged NSA eavesdropping.

But experts say the two issues are being wrongly paired. Changing governance wont change the way the current plumbing of the Internet makes mass surveillance possible in the first place.

Much of the alleged NSA and U.K. intelligence listening involved physically tapping into things like fiber-optic cables. How would decentralizing U.S. control over where and how .com and .net addresses are issued help prevent that?

The EU similarly used the NSA allegations tobolster its case to pass commercial data-protection rules. Since those rules are to exempt any data dealing with national security issues, they would again be largely unrelated to the NSA allegations.

Nicholas Weaver, of the International Computer Science Institute at Berkeley, says an internet wiretap doesnt care who allocates IP addresses or domain names.

If the traffic is unencrypted, it sees all, whether the destination is to a .ru domain or .co.uk. And even if everything was encrypted, the wiretap doesnt care whos assigning the addresses, just that it can create a mapping between IP addresses and real world locations. The EU already has substantial privacy mandates, and if the EU was serious about countering the U.S. and UKs spying, they would extend these mandates to require all user-identifying websites and all email providers in Europe must encrypt all traffic, Weaver told the Journal by email.

The European Parliament also leapt on the revelations, even though its powers to act are limited. The youngest of the three Brussels-based European institutions, it is increasingly flexing is its muscles as it gradually gains power under new EU treaties, and has been keen to make itself out as the protector of the public in the wake of the spying scandals.

The directly-elected parliament held an inquiry into mass surveillance, which involved grilling senior managers from Belgacom SAthe Belgian telecoms company which was allegedly hacked by GCHQand academics, amongst others, about surveillance. However, it stopped short calling for the EU to grant protection to Edward Snowden.

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Irate Over Spying, EU Barks Up Wrong Regulatory Tree

Hyperbole in NYT report on Australia and NSA spying on Indonesia

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A New York Times story about how Australian intelligence might have passed information involving a US law firm and Indonesia is heavy on the drama.

James Risen and Laura Poitras at the New York Times have the latest scoop from the steady drip drip drip of National Security Agency files that former NSA contractor Edward Snowden stole and has been distributing to reporters since the middle of last year.

Staff writer

Dan Murphy is a staff writer for the Monitor's international desk, focused on the Middle East.Murphy, who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, and more than a dozen other countries, writes and edits Backchannels. The focus? War and international relations, leaning toward things Middle East.

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They report the news breathlessly, but there's far less there there than their presentation would lead a casual reader to believe. They write:

A top-secret document, obtained by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, shows that an American law firm was monitored while representing a foreign government in trade disputes with the United States. The disclosure offers a rare glimpse of a specific instance in which Americans were ensnared by the eavesdroppers, and is of particular interest because lawyers in the United States with clients overseas have expressed growing concern that their confidential communications could be compromised by such surveillance.

Scary, huh? No. Not at all. Here's my summary of the key assertions in the article, stripped of spin, drama, and adjectives:

"A 2013 memo leaked by Edward Snowden shows that Australia's version of the NSA, while engaged in electronic surveillance of an Indonesian trade delegation, came across communications between the Indonesian officials and a US law firm the country had hired for help with trade talks. Australia informed the NSA liaison office in Canberra that intelligence it was collecting and willing to share with the US might infringe on US attorney-client privilege laws. The liaison referred the matter to the NSA general counsel in the US and some sort of legal guidance was sent back. The memo does not say, nor has the Times been able to learn by other means, what that guidance was."

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Hyperbole in NYT report on Australia and NSA spying on Indonesia

Elected Leadership (Pelosi) Knew Extent of NSA Spying IMMEDIATELY after September 11 Attacks – Video

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Elected Leadership (Pelosi) Knew Extent of NSA Spying IMMEDIATELY after September 11 Attacks
During an interview yesterday on TheBlaze TV, Andrew Wilkow program, Pete Hoekstra, the former head of the House Intelligence Committee revealed that former ...

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Elected Leadership (Pelosi) Knew Extent of NSA Spying IMMEDIATELY after September 11 Attacks - Video

Exclusive: Rand Paul says NSA spying has gone ‘overboard …

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This is a rush transcript from "Hannity," February 12, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, HOST:Welcome back to "Hannity." After months of threatening legal action against the Obama administration, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul along with Freedom Works has filed a class action lawsuit over the National Security Agency's domestic spying law. The suit named President Obama, director of National Intelligence James Clapper, NSA Director Keith Alexander, and FBI Director James Comey.

Calling it one of the largest class action lawsuits in history, the senator alleges that the NSA surveillance program violates the Fourth Amendment which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Here to explain, the man himself, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. Senator, welcome back good to see you.

SEN. RAND PAUL, R - KY:Hey, Sean, thanks for having me.

HANNITY:The legal action is officially entitled "Rand Paul Versus Barack Obama." And from what I read you're kind of hitting the ground running you have over 350,000 plaintiffs. You expect millions of Americans will join this?

PAUL:Well, the interesting thing about this is the class could include anybody who has a cellphone or anybody who has a landline. So it is really virtually everyone in the United States. And I think that illustrates the problem, is that a single warrant should not apply to so many people.

The Fourth Amendment said that if you want a warrant to look at someone's records to invade their privacy, you have to name the person, the place and the items. You can't just say OK, we're going to search everybody's home in Washington D.C. or Bowling Green, Kentucky. You have to name the person. That was to protect our privacy. And so we really think the NSA program has gone way overboard, and we want a decision in an open court, in the Supreme Court where there is open debate. We think that is the only thing consistent with a constitutional republic.

HANNITY:I would support data-mining - and I have supported data-mining of terrorists, of suspects. The law specifically prohibits the spying against Americans. I have talked to the author of the bill - Jim Sensenbrenner -- numerous times. This is not what it was designed for, intended for, explicitly says you cannot do, doesn't it?

PAUL:The president when he talked about privacy recently, he said this was like the history of Paul Revere warning us. But Paul Revere was not saying the Americans are coming. He was saying the British were coming. It was about a foreign invasion.

So really I think he has it wrong. And the fact that he thinks he can look at all of our records without a cause, without probable cause or suspicion, see, that is what warrants are based on. You go to a judge and the police say to the judge we think this person robbed the store, we think this person is a murderer or we think this person is a terrorist. They present evidence because this protects us from them from going into everyone's home or invading everyone's papers. This is a big and very important and to me a momentous constitutional issue. And so far it has only been decided in secret. We have these courts called FISA courts which are national security courts. But this is a question of the Constitution, and it needs to lift the veil of secrecy and needs to be debated in public.

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Exclusive: Rand Paul says NSA spying has gone 'overboard ...