At the recent Joe Rogan podcast, Edward Snowden explained how carrier networks and tech companies collectively use smartphones to spy on us.

But this time, he is pointing fingers at Facebook. In a forthcoming interview on the Voxs Recode Decode podcast, Edward Snowden says its a mistake to think that tech companies are lesser of a threat to privacy than the NSA (National Security Agency).

Whistleblower Edward Snowden is a former NSA employee who is living the life of a political refugee in Russia for the last six years.

Back in 2013, Snowden leaked several classified government documents to international media, therefore, revealing the unethical mass surveillance activities conducted by the NSA.

Six years after the disclosure of NSA files, Snowden told Recodes Kara Swisher that the mass surveillance powers of tech companies such as Facebook and Google are equally worrisome as the powers of government agencies such as the NSA.

Facebooks internal purpose, whether they state it publicly or not, is to compile perfect records of private lives to the maximum extent of their capability, and then exploit that for their own corporate enrichment, said Edward Snowden on the podcast.

He also states that Facebook and Google collect an insane amount of data over the facade of Oh, were connecting people. and Oh, were organizing data.

On the other hand, Snowden showed believe that government agencies know more about users than tech companies because of their reach over different platforms.

In the conversation with Kara Swisher, Edward also talks about the bleak privacy laws that have no jurisdiction over the data collected from tech giants. He also mentions the current scenario where there is no accountability on the information stored.

Why Google should be able to read your email. There is no good reason why Google should know the messagesFacebook shouldnt be able to see what youre saying

Since the infamous Cambridge Analytica Scandal, government agencies have become more stringent on the data collection practices of Google and other tech giants. To this date, Mark Zuckerburg is being questioned about the mishaps that occurred on Facebook.

A few months ago, the state of California passed the Privacy bill to empower users over the data collected by tech giants. Meanwhile, other governments are also doing something or the other to curb data collection policies of tech companies.

However, the question is is it enough?

Read more:
Edward Snowden Says Facebook Equally Dangerous As The NSA - Fossbytes

Who Loves ICE is a column examining the companies profiting from their work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Booz Allen Hamilton portrays itself on its website as a company committed to changing the world for the better, driven by a high regard for its fellow humans.

We are a global firm of approximately 26,300 diverse, passionate, and exceptional people driven to excel, do right, and realize positive change in everything we do, the management and tech consulting firm states. We believe in corporate and individual citizenship that make our communities better places for all.

Evidently, the company believes one way to make communities better places for all is to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the law enforcement agency behind policies like family separation and the housing of immigrants in inhumane conditions.

Booz Allen Hamilton has made at least $32 million working with the agency in the 2019 fiscal year, according to USAspending.gov, a government spending tracker.

Most of that money has come from ICEs information technology division and detention compliance and removals office, which have paid Booz Allen Hamilton for immigration data modernization support services and law enforcement systems and analysis project management office support, according to the website USAspending.gov. ICEs detention compliance and removals office handles deportations, and the sanitary, safety, and health conditions within ICE detention facilities.

When VICE asked about the services the company provides to ICE and how working with the agency falls in line with the firms values, Booz Allen spokesperson Jessica Klenk noted the company does not have any involvement in detention operations or family separation.

For many years we have provided support to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Klenk said. Our work is predominately [sic] analytic in nature and related to combating human trafficking and other criminal behavior. We only perform work that is consistent with our values.

Last year, consulting firm McKinsey & Company ended its work with ICE after the New York Times reported that the company had received over $20 million working with the agency. That same year, a separate Booz Allen Hamilton spokesperson denied that the firms work with ICE involved the separation of children from adults in a New York Times interview.

Booz Allen Hamilton has not indicated it has any plans to end its contracts with ICE.

The company gained national attention for its work with the government in 2013, when Edward Snowden, a contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, decided to blow the whistle on the National Security Agencys mass surveillance system. Snowden only had access to the information he provided because of the agencys work with Booz Allen Hamilton.

Excerpt from:
Booz Allen Hamilton Is Making Millions Working with ICE - Vice News

Image Credit: Pixabay

New Delhi: As Indians break their heads over WhatsApp spygate where an Israeli bug infected select users smartphones to access their personal details, the mass surveillance technology has truly come of age and now the governments just need to make a missed call to install an "exploit link" into the device of a person they want to bug and listen in.

From the days when surveillance methods involved bugging the phone or cable wires to tap phones (remember Radia tapes!) to track a person's vehicle by installing a tracking device beneath the car, cyber criminals and hackers have devised modern and untraceable tools to hack into your systems.

The most popular mass surveillance programme is 'PRISM' - under which the US National Security Agency (NSA) collects user's personal communications from various US internet companies.

'PRISM' allegedly collects stored Internet communications based on demands made to internet companies.

The NSA can use PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get access to data.

Its existence was leaked by NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew.

US President Barack Obama, during a visit to Germany, stated that the NSA's data gathering practices constitute "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people".

According to Amnesty.org, NSA and UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are monitoring you with code names.

'Muscular' is one such project that "intercepts user data as it passes between Google servers". Yahoo! was also said to be affected.

Between December 2012 and January 2013, 'Muscular' collected 181 million records but "Google has now strengthened security between their servers since then.

Another tool called 'Optic Nerve' allowed secret access to Yahoo! webcam chats. In a six-month period, it spied on 1.8 million Yahoo! users and took one still image every five minutes of video per user.

"GCHQ targeted Belgacom, Belgium's largest telecommunications provider with spyware called Regin, a malicious piece of software designed to break into Belgaom's networks. The purpose of the GCHQ hack was to spy on phones and internet users using the Belgacom network".

Since then, the technology has evolved to such an extent that just a missed call is enough to snoop on anyone, anywhere.

Citizen Lab, a laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy of the University of Toronto, has identified over 100 cases of abusive targeting of human rights' defenders and journalists in at least 20 countries across the globe via the new piece of Israeli spyware called Pegasus.

Once Pegasus is installed, it begins contacting the operator's command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators' commands, and send back the target's private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps.

"The operator can even turn on the phone's camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone's vicinity, and use the GPS function to track a target's location and movements," said Citizen Lab.

The spyware can be placed on phones using multiple vectors, or means of infection. The WhatsApp exploit from May 2019 was one such vector.

In 2017, the wife of a murdered Mexican journalist was sent alarming text messages concerning her husband's murder, designed to trick her into clicking on a link and infecting her phone with the Pegasus spyware.

In 2018, a close confidant of Jamal Khashoggi was targeted in Canada with a fake package notification, resulting in the infection of his iPhone. Citizen Lab has tracked more than two dozen cases using similar techniques.

See more here:
Mass surveillance technology just needs a missed call to hack you - Gulf News