Category Archives: NSA

New Snowden Docs Reveal NSA Spy Tactic
It #39;s been a popular topic in recent years. Now, we #39;re starting to learn even more. Edward Snowden blew the lid off of the NSA and their secret spy programs when he leaked their documents...

By: NextNewsNetwork

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New Snowden Docs Reveal NSA Spy Tactic - Video

Rep Massie Speaks Against NDAA, Urges House to Keep NSA Amendment to Block Backdoor Spying
Rep Massie Urges House to Keep NSA Amendment to Block Backdoor Spying.

By: RepThomasMassie

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Rep Massie Speaks Against NDAA, Urges House to Keep NSA Amendment to Block Backdoor Spying - Video

House lawmakers are attempting to revive a popular bill that would limit the National Security Agency's ability to spy on Americans' communications data, a day after the measure was left out from ongoing government funding negotiations.

The measure, dubbed the Secure Data Act and spearheaded by Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, would block the NSA and other intelligence agencies from compelling tech companies to create so-called backdoor vulnerabilities into their devices or software. Sen. Ron Wyden, also a Democrat, introduced a similar version of the bill earlier Thursday.

A Lofgren aide said the bill is expected to be introduced later Thursday with Republican cosponsors.

A broader form of the legislation overwhelmingly passed the House in June with bipartisan support on a 293-123 vote, in the form of an amendment tacked on to a defense appropriations bill. That previous bill additionally would have prevented intelligence agencies from engaging in content surveillance of Americans' communications data without a warrant.

But the language was left out of ongoing negotiations between both chambers over a spending package that would fund most government agencies into next year. The House has additionally barred amendments to that omnibus measure, a common practice.

On Thursday, 30 civil-liberties groups of both liberal and conservative leanings wrote to House leadership to urge it to retain the proposal as part of its funding package.

"Failing to include this amendment in the forthcoming FY15 omnibus will send a clear message to Americans that Congress does not care if the NSA searches their stored communications or if the government pressures American technology companies to build vulnerabilities into their products that assist in NSA surveillance," read the letter, whose signatories include the Electronic Frontier Foundation and TechFreedom.

Despite the sudden push and the margin with which the bill passed this summer, it remains unlikely the bill will move forward in lame-duck session, given the closed amendment process on the funding proposals. Aides to both Lofgren and Wyden conceded the reintroduction was largely to set goalposts for negotiations next year.

Broader NSA reform efforts crumbled in the Senate last month, as the USA Freedom Act came up two votes short of advancing. The lack of NSA reform this year has many privacy advocates worried that their cause faces an uphill battle in 2015, as Republicans retake the Senate.

Key portions of the post-9/11 Patriot Act are due to expire in June of next year, however, including Section 215, which grants the government much of its bulk spying authority. Congress will have to reauthorize the provisions in some fashion or risk losing even greater surveillance authority.

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Lawmakers to Reintroduce Bill to Limit NSA Spying

President Obama has a Friday deadline to decide whether to halt his NSA phone-snooping program or to keep it going, and after Congress failed to stop it last month some lawmakers now say the White House should pull the plug on its own.

The Senate had a chance to kill the program outright last month, but Republican senators filibustered, giving the snooping a renewed lease on life.

Still, the administration must seek approval every 90 days from the secret court that oversees intelligence activities, and the current 90-day period expires on Friday, creating a decision for Mr. Obama.

The president can end the NSAs dragnet collection of Americans phone records once and for all by not seeking reauthorization of this program by the FISA Court, and once again, I urge him to do just that, said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Leahy was the chief sponsor of the bill that would have nixed the intelligence communitys bulk collection abilities under the Patriot Act, which is the authority the administration cites for the National Security Agency phone-snooping. Under that program, the NSA stores five years worth of records of Americans phone calls, including the numbers involved and the time and duration.

The data is supposed to only be checked when officials believe a number is associated with terrorism.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it will release information if it does request another extension of its authority.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence didnt immediately respond to a message seeking comment Fridaymorning on the administrations plans.

Mr. Obama has called for the phone-snooping program to be curtailed, and has taken steps to limit it, including lowering the number of hops, or connections, investigators can go from the initial number they are investigating. The president also asked that the Justice Department try to ask the secret court for permission before querying the data.

The White House wants phone companies to store the data, which would keep it out of government hands but still make it available when investigators needed to poke through it.

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Obama faces deadline on halting NSA snooping

NSA Hacking Your Private Home with Dr. Richard StallmanIlluminati 2014 End of th
NSA Hacking Your Private Home with Dr. Richard Stallman SUBSCRIBE : THE ULTIMATE YOU TUBE NETWORK FOR TRUTH EMPOWERMENT :...

By: gabriel herculeo

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NSA Hacking Your Private Home with Dr. Richard StallmanIlluminati 2014 End of th - Video

Why Privacy Matters What The NSA Capabilities Are. Featuring Jacob Appelbaum
Why Privacy Matters What The NSA Capabilities Are. Featuring Jacob Appelbaum. In the first part of the video we see a short animation explaining in plain English why privacy matters and...

By: cybersec101

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Why Privacy Matters & What The NSA Capabilities Are. Featuring Jacob Appelbaum - Video

Caller: I #39;m Opposed to Bodycams because of NSA...
If you liked this clip of The Thom Hartmann Program, please do us a big favor and share it with your friends... and hit that "like" button! http://www.thomha...

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Caller: I'm Opposed to Bodycams because of NSA... - Video

The allegations by the Intercept website are based on documents contained in material provided by Edward Snowden, above. Photograph: Pontus Lundahl/AFP/Getty Images

The National Security Agency has reportedly intercepted emails sent by employees of mobile operators in an attempt to find security weaknesses in their networks that it could exploit for surveillance purposes.

The US government body has spied on hundreds of companies and organisations, including those in allies such as Britain and Australia, as well as in nations America regards as hostile. It plans to insert flaws into communications systems so that they can be accessed by their operatives.

The allegations, reported by the Intercept, are based on documents provided to the website and contained in material provided to them by Edward Snowden, the whistleblower and former NSA subcontractor who is now living in Russia.

A covert operation called AURORAGOLD that started in 2010, if not earlier, has monitored the content of messages to and from 1,200 email accounts associated with mobile operators to intercept relevant documents, the article states.

By May 2012, the NSA had collected technical data on about 700 of the almost 1,000 mobile networks worldwide.

According to the article, the information collected has been shared with other US intelligence agencies as well as those in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Very few companies that have been targeted have been identified in the documents, but a map found in one indicated that the NSA had some degree of network coverage in countries on every continent, including Germany and France.

Another of the operations targets has been the GSM Association, the London-based trade body that sets standards for mobile networks around the world.

Its members represent the interests of 800 major mobile, software and internet companies from more than 200 countries and include the likes of Verizon, AT&T, Facebook, Intel, Samsung and Vodafone.

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NSA accused of intercepting emails sent by mobile phone firm employees

The sign outside the National Security Agency campus in Fort Meade, Md. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

For many years, the National Security Agency (NSA) was seen as the most secretive of agencies, beyond impenetrable. The joke was that NSA stood for No Such Agency.

Butlongbefore Edward Snowden blew the cover off the joint, the agency had been lightening up. Like other intelligence agencies, the State Department and the White House, NSA has for many decades hada protocol office to handle official events, visitors and such.

We came across a recent agency help-wanted ad for an NSA protocol officer, whose job would be to explain and apply codes and procedures of social behavior, etiquette and ceremony. Yes, you can bean events planner and virtual latter-day Emily Post.

Youll coordinate, plan and organize. . . visits, ceremonies, dinners and conferences. . . And when big-wigs come to the Fort Meade, youll make sure they can get into the building and have security, transportation and special diet.

You have to have the ability to plan/organize/coordinate and do multitasking, thead says, plus,be able to view computer screen continuously for two hours or more and be able to stand, walk, or kneel for long periods. (Kneel?)

If you can meet all those criteria, then pass a drug test, security background investigation and a polygraph,NSA will pay you between $42,631 and $67,787 a year.(Not much for someone with skills like those.)

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In the Loop: The NSA wants you to help them party with panache

Yet another top-secret National Security Agency (NSA) program has been unearthed by Glenn Greenwalds publication the Intercept. The report details a program called Auroragold, which according to the official documents leaked by Edward Snowden, specialized in spying on the email correspondence between carriers security experts to break into cellular networks and expose vulnerabilities. The unit would then exploit the flaws in the security system to listen in on the conversations and text messages carried by those cellular networks.

The program is described as the NSAs method of staying one step ahead of carriers encryption, so as to ensure that the agency has access to communications held over most cellular networks. If vulnerabilities did not already exist in the security systems, the NSA would create them, the report states. The Auroragold program has been active since 2012 and regularly monitors 1,200 email accounts that are associated with major cellular networks and carriers around the world.

The Intercept revealed that the NSA has already obtained the technical security information of 70 percent of the worlds networks.

Related: Brazil lays its own fiber optic cables to avoid the NSA

The NSA devoted special attention to monitoring communications among members of the U.K.-based GSM Association, which includes high-profile tech companies and carriers, such as AT&T, Cisco, Microsoft, Samsung, Vodafone, Facebook,Verizon, Sprint, Intel, Oracle, Sony, Nokia, and Ericsson. It is unclear how many of these high-profile companies security structures the NSA infiltrated.

The Intercept revealed that the NSA has already obtained the technical security information of 70 percent of the worlds networks. Although penetration into the U.S. carriers networks is surprisingly low, the NSA has access to nearly all the communications in North Africa, the Middle East, and China.

Claire Cranton, a spokeswoman for the GSM Association, said that the organization cannot respond to any of the details revealed by the Intercepts report until its lawyers have seen the documents. If there is something there that is illegal then they will take it up with the police, Cranton told the publication.

Related:NSA report shows innocent users caught in its web

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), a U.S. government agency that recommends cybersecurity measures, stated that it is unaware of any NSA surveillance of the GSM Association. However, NIST previously warned users of NSA interference with encryption standards.

In April, White House officials stated that Obama ordered the NSA alert the federal government of any security gaps it finds in cellular networks and other technology companies security systems. There is, however, a major loophole in the order, which allows the NSA to keep vulnerabilities to itself if it plans to use them for a clear national security or law enforcement purpose.

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NSAs Auroragold program spies on carriers to break into cell networks