Category Archives: NSA

From left to right: Ted Schlein, Lior Div, Jay Kaplan, Eran Barak, Oren Falkowitz, and Rob Seger

By Kashmir Hill and Thomas Fox-Brewster

Before Edward Snowden smashed its digital doors wide open, the National Security Agency was seen as the mysterious keeper of an arsenal of dark-voodoo hacking weapons. Now we know the truth: NSA employees are almost too good at what they doas are their counterparts at Israels elite military signal intelligence group, Unit 8200. Unlike people at most government agencies, NSAers and Unit 8200 alums include world experts in their craft, in this case hacking and defending networks and devices. With data breaches now a daily news item, a stint at either agency has become rsum gold for entrepreneurs. Some agency folks are leaving more out of a moral duty to restore some balance back to the private sector. In the last year ex-NSA founders have snagged $9 million for bug-bounty firm Synack, $2.5 million for attack-detection firm Area 1 Security and $10.3 million for e-mail encryption play Virtru. I think its a direct correlation to Snowden, says Ted Schlein, a veteran cybersecurity venture investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The path from spy to startup is also in full swing in Israel, where entrepreneurs envy the earlier success of 8200 alums such as Gil Shwed and Marius Nacht, the billionaire cofounders of Check Point Software, and Nir Zuk, founder of Palo Alto Networks (market value: $6.6 billion). Here are some of the more high-profile defectors and players in the spy-versus-spy game.

1. LEV KADYSHEVITCH, Head Of Research, Biocatch Its algorithms determine the identity of users based on how they interact with apps, exploiting research on human response to certain phenomena, such as the brief disappearance of a mouse cursor. The 8200-alum-packed firm has $14 million in funding.

2. GIORA ENGEL, Cofounder, LightCyber With his Unit 8200 buddy Michael Mumcuoglu he established LightCyber in 2011 to detect breaches using a network appliance that flags strange-looking traffic. It has raised $12 million to date from VCs and Check Points billionaire cofounder Marius Nacht.

3. TED SCHLEIN, Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Schlein did not belong to either spy agency but he recognizes their potential. Silicon Valleys top cybersecurity financier recently backed two NSAer firms: Synack and Area 1 Security. The portrayal of the NSA doing things that are bad is not making it the hot place to work inside the intelligence community. I think a lot of their creativity is being curtailed, says Schlein. As a VC, I think its wonderful. As a citizen of the U.S., Id make a different argument.

4. LIOR DIV, CEO, CybeReason The Unit 8200 alum moved his startup from Israel to Boston to tap talent and a bigger market. Its software infers the presence of an attack under way and displays the situation in an easy-to-grasp graphical interface. Div raised $4.6 million earlier this year from Charles River Ventures.

5. JAY KAPLAN and 10. MARK KUHR,Cofounders, Synack Kaplan and Mark Kuhr, both 28, spent four years in offensive security at NSAs counterterrorism division, hacking around for weak spots and finding plenty to exploit. They quit early last year and quickly raised $1.5 million to launch Synack, an army of several hundred freelancers who get paid if they find bugs in clients codesexcept this time the bugs get fixed. We dont work for the NSA anymore. We wouldnt leave a vulnerability or anything like that, says Kaplan. But we would turn away Chinas elite hacking force as a customer.

6. ERAN BARAK, CEO and cofounder, Hexadite Barak was a five-year veteran and officer at Unit 8200 before going into business earlier this year. Hexadite plans to bring automated incident response to the masses. It already has four customers in Israel and the U.S. YL Ventures backed Barak and his colleagues with $2.5 million.

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Meet The Ex-NSA And Ex-Unit 8200 Spies Cashing In On Security Fears

The case against the NSA metadata collection began yesterday

By: mikeroweRules12

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The case against the NSA metadata collection began yesterday - Video

PEPSI BROWN da Nubian don pon microphone// NSA SCANDAL VIDEO WATCHING OFFICIAL VIDEO
HERE COMES THE RUDEBOY EP 2014 the ongoing NSA AFFAIR and war on public privacy debate is the frame of this video // 1984-2014= 30 years of surveillance//---the video is a piece of art and...

By: jrPepsiBrown

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PEPSI BROWN da Nubian don pon microphone// NSA SCANDAL VIDEO WATCHING OFFICIAL VIDEO - Video

Tech industry organizations have written a letter to leaders in the U.S. Senate, to ask them to swiftly pass the USA Freedom Act, legislation that is expected to end the collection of bulk domestic phone data by the National Security Agency.

Disclosures about the U.S. governments surveillance programs since June 2013 have led to an erosion of public trust in the U.S. government and the U.S. technology sector, anti-software piracy group BSA, Computer and Communications Industry Association, Information Technology Industry Council, Reform Government Surveillance and the Software and Information Industry Association wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell on Monday.

Reforms contained in the USA Freedom Act will send a clear signal to the international community and to the American people that government surveillance programs are narrowly tailored, transparent, and subject to oversight, the industry groups added.

In June last year, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting phone metadata of Americans from Verizon, the first of a series of revelations about U.S. surveillance in the country and abroad.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed in May an amended version of the USA Freedom Act that would limit the collection of phone data to certain specific selection terms. But an expanded definition of the specific selection terms that can be used by the NSA to collect data from phone companies was criticized by civil rights groups and the industry, as it would continue to allow the NSA to target a large number of phone records.

The bill introduced in the Senate in July by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and others aims to tighten the collection of data by the NSA by closing loopholes. In a letter to Leahy last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper expressed support for the bill.

The transparency measures and reform of surveillance proposed in the Freedom Act are expected to send positive signals abroad where U.S. tech companies fear losing business, the tech industry groups said, echoing a concern already expressed by a number of tech companies.

Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, for example, wrote to U.S. President Barack Obama in May, asking for his intervention so that U.S. technology sales were not affected by a loss in trust.

As a result of the surveillance program revelations, U.S. technology companies have experienced negative economic implications in overseas markets, the tech groups wrote. In addition, other countries are considering proposals that would limit data flows between countries, which would have a negative impact on the efficiencies upon which the borderless Internet relies.

Congress returned from recess on Monday though there may be only a few days of legislative business ahead of campaigning for midterm elections.

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Tech industry groups ask US Senate to 'swiftly pass' NSA curbs

NSA Orlando/NAWCTSD Leadership Update Week of Sept. 2, 2014
Capt. Naylor discusses the benefits of collaborative workspaces and explains the mission of the Flamingo N.E.S.T this week #39;s leadership update.

By: NSA Orlando

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NSA Orlando/NAWCTSD Leadership Update Week of Sept. 2, 2014 - Video

NSA leak: We spy on everyone illegally with soft-kill weapons
Uploaded for pacsteam.org Subject of this upload: NSA leak: We spy on everyone illegally with soft-kill weapons Alex talks with NSA whistleblower William Binney who testified in an affidavit...

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NSA leak: We spy on everyone illegally with soft-kill weapons - Video

9/11 Investigation #6- NSA And More Warnings
ABC News Article- http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91651 Edward Snowden Video- http://youtu.be/zUoNC3QIcQo Thomas Drake Article- http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1513494.

By: TheRuthlessRanter

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9/11 Investigation #6- NSA And More Warnings - Video

Snowden-Affre (NSA, CIA, USA, NWO)- Freiheit vs. Sicherheit - (Peter Decker)

By: Assel Rudolf

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Snowden-Affre (NSA, CIA, USA, NWO)- Freiheit vs. Sicherheit - (Peter Decker) - Video

Simon Phipps | Sept. 8, 2014

Whether via Apple's iCloud, the DEA, or the NSA, data is leaking everywhere -- can anyone avoid exposure?

As you've heard many times by now, someone with no life or ethics appears to have hacked into numerous celebrity accounts on Apple's iCloud service and copied private photographs wholesale. At least a few of those photographs are intimate and revealing. As if that juvenile intrusion on adult privacy wasn't enough, they've then posted them in the Internet's frat houses for the world's sexually frustrated imbeciles to ogle.

This case raises questions about the very act of putting data online. There may be primary benefits for doing so, but as technology decision makers, we need to raise questions about secondary costs. Let's consider additional data points.

We also learned this week thatthe DEA has been using phone call data going back decades-- stored by AT&T for any call in which it participated, not just for its customers -- as a covert source in the agency's investigations. Unlike the NSA data, this is not merely material relating to foreigners -- this iseveryone'sdata, going back as far as 1987. It can be accessed by officials by filling out a form -- called an "administrative subpoena" but not involving any judicial review. As the New York Times says:

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.

Was this usage what the developers or executives had in mind a quarter of a century ago as they started logging the data? Or has it been stored "just in case" because it existed and seemed valuable and over time has found more and more users? There must be an enormous database -- the epitome of big data -- and it's probably used for multiple purposes.

As to that NSA data, a great deal of confusion about "surveillance" seems to be floating around. In the United Kingdom, questions are being asked about all the data-gathering by the British equivalent of the NSA, GCHQ. In response, Secretary of State Theresa Mayhas respondedthat "there is no programme of mass surveillance and there is no surveillance state" and labels claims that GCHQ engages in unlawful hacking as "nonsense." Yet clearly, a lot of data is being gathered.

GCHQ, the NSA, and probably every other intelligence agency worth the name is actively gathering data from the Internet. Everything on the Internet is transient, with different decay periods, so gathering information is a constant process. They believe everything that can be gathered without illegal action is fair game, so they gather anything and everything they can, storing it just in case.

They are without doubt capturing and recording all and any email, instant messages, Web pages, social media traffic, and so on. Recent disclosures reveal thatthe NSA collects"nearly everything a user does on the Internet," then offers analysts tools to search that data. The NSA has a variety of explanations why it's all legally gathered.

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Nude photos, phone records, NSA data offer essential lessons for admins

BEIJING: National Security Advisor Ajit Doval arrived here today to firm up Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to India expected to take place next week.

Doval will hold talks tomorrow with Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi and is expected to meet Xi after that.

Dates for the visit of Xi, also the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China, have not yet been officially announced by both sides.

Doval's visit is taking place in the immediate backdrop of the cancellation of Xi's visit to Islamabad planned as part of his first visit to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India.

Initially, Xi was to pay a three-day visit to New Delhi from September 17.

Speculation is rife that in view of the cancellation of the visit to Pakistan, Xi may arrive in India earlier and may visit Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state Gujarat before he lands in New Delhi.

Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who visited Beijing twice including early this month, has laid ground for Xi's visit by holding extensive talks with Chinese officials on the package of investments as well as measures to address India's concerns of trade deficit.

China-India are in discussions to modernise Indian railways.

China plans to invest in industrial parks, locations of which are expected to be announced by Xi.

Besides finalising the schedule, Doval's visit is expected to focus on the political aspects of Xi's tour, including issues related to the boundary dispute and new routes for Kailash and Manasarovar Yatra.

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NSA Ajit Doval arrives in China to finalise Xi Jinping's visit to India