Category Archives: NSA

THE National Sheep Association (NSA) is welcoming the United States lifting its ban on imports of British lamb, saying it will help maximise trade opportunities for UK sheep farmers.

With a ban on both British lamb and beef imports to the US in place since 1989, due to concerns around BSE, NSA believes the announcement will increase demand for British sheepmeat within the US.

NSA Chief Executive Phil Stocker comments: The sheep industry in the UK has clear potential to grow further but any expansion must be market and demand led. The announcement helps the supply and demand dynamics to support a strong market and potential further growth. The UK is the third largest exporter of sheepmeat globally, telling us that we are good at producing sheepmeat and that our supply chains are efficient and able to deliver.

This creates another opportunity for our industry to maximise trade opportunities and we have always seen the US as being a potentially important market. After the domestic market, which takes 60 65% of UK production, the EU is still our largest export market and is on our doorstep. However, access is more difficult than it was when we were part of the EU. Its essential to maintain EU access but is also important to work on any market that gives us future potential.

Mr Stocker notes the wider opportunities presented by the lifting of the ban: We shouldnt expect to see any sudden surge in volumes going to the US, but we do know there is strong demand for UK sheep genetics semen and embryos. Many British sheep breeds are in the US but are numerically too small to have a strong gene pool so the demand for our genetics is strong.

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NSA welcomes the lifting of a ban on British lamb imports by USA | News and Star - News & Star

Published On 22 September,202106:15 pm

Moeed Yusuf says India has become a threat to the entire region

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) National Security Advisor (NSA) Moeed Yusuf said on Wednesday that Pakistan has fought a successful war on terror but the policies of Indian government has exercising are in not in favor of this region.

Addressing a seminar, the national security adviser said that India has become a threat to the entire region due to its treatment of neighboring countries and as soon as the world opens its eyes, they will realize it.

Moeed Yusuf also maintained that the economic stability and national security are interlinked on a deeper level and expressed the need to maintain ties with Central Asian republics. We need to make better and enhance our relations with the Central Asian countries, he added.

The prime minister is resolute to transform Pakistan into a welfare state on the model of Medina, the NSA said. He added that the first stage of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is regional connectivity.

He said that all our leadership is talking about the transition of permanent Pakistani thinking from geo-political to geo-economic mantra which actually reflects the change in our thinking. We can use geopolitically as a geo-economic location with three pillars, the first of which is connectivity. From where we sit, we can connect ourselves to the South, the North, the West and the East, and then we can use this location.

The NSA also mentioned said that CPEC is also important and its goal is to connect China to our hot water for their global trade and Pakistan has become a transit area. There has been a lot of discussion regarding the CPEC, but its purpose is to build as much infrastructure as possible, get energy and transit from Pakistan.

The second important pillar is to establish partnerships with the world. For all this, we need to do a lot of work in the country as well, because wherever there is less resistance in the world, investors will come and we have to try to improve this aspect, Moeed Yusuf said.

He said the first two aspects could not be possible unless we work on the third pillar and that is internal and regional peace and security, which is why massive efforts are being made to establish a state writ.

Pakistans efforts to fight terrorism have been in the forefront since 2007 and Afghanistan is the best example regionally and even India is the best example because we tried to talk to them about who we are. We can make progress in the relationship, but what is happening in India and the path they are taking is very disappointing, he added.

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Policies of Indian govt not in favor of entire region: NSA - Dunya News

Companies establish Collective Defense Community to defend as a unified front

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- JUMP Global Technology Advisors (GTA), an information technology procurement services company, and IronNet, Inc., an innovative leader transforming cybersecurity through Collective Defense, are excited to announce a collaborative initiative to defend the entertainment industry from cyberattacks. Recognizing that defending this sector is just as important as protecting the nation's electric grid, the financial sector, and others the nation relies on to drive economic prosperity, Jump GTA and IronNet are bringing advanced threat detection and real-time sharing of attack intelligence to this integral industry.

JUMP GTA and IronNet founded by General (Ret.) Keith Alexander, former director of the National Security Agency, will work together to stand up a Collective Defense Community for the Entertainment Sector to enable stakeholders to share automated, anonymous attack intelligence and crowdsourced threat insights among community members for increased visibility and faster response to cyberattacks. The goal is to empower the entertainment industry to defend as a unified front to prevent harmful and difficult-to-detect threats from hackers, organized cybercriminal groups, and nation-state adversaries.

Walter Thurmond III, Managing Director at JUMP, said, "In light of rampant cyber campaigns hitting all industries, including ransomware attacks, there is an urgency to change the entertainment sector's defense playbook to ensure that companies can operate in a secure digital environment without costly disruptions and risk to intellectual property."

IronNet's Collective Defense Community applies AI-based network detection and response (NDR) through its IronDefense solution, along with an embedded expert system that rates and prioritizes alerts and integrated hunt services to detect new and unidentified cyberattack behaviors.

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"It does not make sense for the entertainment sector, or any industry, to wait for the next major attack when we have the tools to see unknown threats and a new way of defending together. I am pleased to be part of the JUMP GTA and IronNet initiative to deliver Collective Defense to this crucial sector," said Maj. General (Ret.) Brett Williams, Co-founder, IronNet.

Behind IronNet is a team of elite security analysts, threat hunters, and data scientists with unparalleled government experience with the National Security Agency, the US CYBER COMMAND, and DARPA. Also leveraging JUMP GTA's expertise in IT services, this joint initiative will help raise the cybersecurity posture of every company that joins the Collective Defense community.

JUMP Managing Partner & CEO Aric Ackerman added, "Our partnership with IronNet will allow us to ensure that no company has to continue defending alone, especially against attacks that threaten the entertainment sector as a whole."

The companies will host an invitation-only dinner symposium event with entertainment sector leaders on November 2nd.

ABOUT IRONNETFounded in 2014 by GEN (Ret.) Keith Alexander, IronNet Cybersecurity is a global cybersecurity leader that is transforming how organizations secure their networks by delivering the first-ever Collective Defense platform operating at scale. Employing a high number of former NSA cybersecurity operators with offensive and defensive cyber experience, IronNet integrates deep tradecraft knowledge into its industry-leading products to solve the most challenging cyber problems facing the world today. IronNet is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and trades under the ticker symbol IRNT.

ABOUT JUMP GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY ADVISORSJUMP Global Technology Advisors is an information technology procurement services company co-founded by long time Entertainment executive Aric Ackerman and retired Super Bowl Champion Walter Thurmond III. JUMP specializes in procuring, customizing and packaging premier digital and information technology solution services. JUMP services include cybersecurity, telecommunications, connectivity, cloud services and next-generation technology.

More Info:https://www.ironnet.com/ https://jumpgta.com/

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SOURCE JUMP Global Technology Advisors

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JUMP Global Technology Advisors And IronNet Launch Strategic Initiative To Protect The Entertainment Industry From Cyber Attacks - Yahoo Finance

For the past 19 years, theNational Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting data on every single U.S. citizen. Any phone call, email, text message any citizen has sent can be seized for use by the government without a warrant.

On June 9, 2013,Edward Snowdenannounced he had released theleaksfrom NSA data to the Guardian and the Washington Post that proved that the NSA had amassed huge databases of citizen phone calls. Snowden wasforced to fleeto Russia after his U.S. Passport was revoked for his whistleblowing.

One year ago this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuitruledthat the surveillance done by the NSA that was leaked by Snowden to be illegal. But the Justice Department canstill accesslogs of calls, emails, and texts with just a court order, and circuit court rulings are limited compared to the federal governments power.

Regardless of approval Snowden may or may not deserve for uncovering what is now known to be illegal; the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect U.S. citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures of their property, as well as from arbitrary arrests and surveillance.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

U.S. Bill of Rights, Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment is what makes it illegal for law enforcement to come into your house and collect your letters, your mail, any private papers of yours without probable cause. Why is that any different from email? How come because its digital, they suddenly deserve access to it, even though it serves the exact same purpose?

A persons conversations and documents, whether they be digital or physical, should belong to them. The only time those records should be able to be accessed is when there is a specific probable cause against that individual.

Now, some might argue that such searches keep us safe from crimes planned over the net. However, in the same case that found the surveillance uncovered by Snowden to be illegal, the Court of Appeals alsofoundthat only four people were thought to have been stopped by these policies by U.S. officials. In actuality, the court discovered that these were inconsistent court records, meaning all this spying might have literally been inconsequential in stopping crime in any way.

Some may also add that forcertain information, a warrant is still necessary, and while that is true, it simply does not negate the massive amount of data that can be obtained without one.

If this were happening in any other country, Americans would denounce it as Orwellian and totalitarian, straight out of 1984, but because its in the United States, people are willing to let it slide. You do have something to hide: your information is yours, and its yours to distribute at your discretion. The government must stop spying on citizens.

Originally posted here:
Opinion: You do have something to hide Scot Scoop News - Scot Scoop News

Former computer intelligence consultant, Edward Snowden recently reached out to the tech community after posting a Tweet against using ExpressVPN. The former NSA whistleblower released a statement against theVPN service providers after one of their executives was charged in connection with a government hacking ring. Project Raven was a code name given to this project that took place in the UAE to perform surveillance on high-influence American targets. After hearing this, Edward told his followers, If youre an ExpressVPN customer, you shouldnt be. Read more to know about Edward Snowden and ExpressVPN.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO) of ExpressVPN, Daniel Gericke recently was named to be one of the three former U.S. intelligence operatives who has now confirmed to not fight the charges of illegally helping UAE hack individuals' systems as part of Project Raven. The information was verified after a set of the Department of Justice's court documents confirmed that Daniel Gericke wasa member of theProject Raven team. The information from these documents also verified that the projects allowed hackers to carry out surveillance on American targets including the state heads, well-known personalities, and activists.

The information was also confirmed after an investigative journalist, Joseph Menn released a public Tweet about Daniel Gerickes involvement in Project Raven. ExpressVPN also released several Tweets about this incident and said, To be completely clear, as much as we value Daniels expertise & how it has helped us to protect customers, we do not condone Project Raven. The surveillance it represents is completely antithetical to our mission. Another Tweet from the VPN service providers read, We find it deeply regrettable that the news of the past few days regarding Daniel has created concerns among our users & given some cause to question our commitment to our core values. Here is the full statement released by ExpressVPN.

Edward Snowden is a former computer intelligence consultant who gained popularity after leaking some highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). During this time, Edward Snowden was working as a subcontractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) but had to quit his job for releasing the information to the public. After leaking NSA's classified information, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against him which included two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property. After struggling to get out of the country, Snowden was later rescued by Russia when he was granted the right of asylum with an initial visa and finally a permanent residency in 2020.

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Edward Snowden releases statement against using ExpressVPN on his Twitter: Here's Why - Republic World

WASHINGTON: On September 8 the National Security Agency (NSA), the US signals-intelligence organization, intercepted its first communications indicating a possible imminent terrorist attack, of what later turned out to be passenger jets blowing into the WTC, but they clearly failed to prevent that from happening, revealed Newsweek.

William M Arkin who authored the book On That Day: The Definitive Timeline of 9/11, contributed his investigations for the Newsweek. Writing for the news magazine, Arkin says between September 8th and 11th, the NSA intercepted telephone calls and other transmissions, but neither were translated into English nor disseminated. Going back as early as August 27, allied signals agencies had also intercepted other communications indicating the gathering storm.

On that day, an al Qaeda member in Madrid said over the telephone: In our lessons we have entered the field of aviation. Weve even cut the throat of the bird. The NSA would later determine that a more accurate translation of the last sentence is probably: We are even going to cut the eagles throat, which they take to be a reference to the impending attacks on America.

On September 10, the NSA reportedly intercepted two more communications between individuals monitored for terrorist connections. One says: The match is about to begin, and the other that Tomorrow is zero hour.

Referring to this intercept, former Senator Bob Graham later wrote in his book Intelligence Matters that the communication from Afghanistan had said that the big match was scheduled for the next day. The other referred to the next day as zero hour.

The NSA historian James Bamford writes, ... NSAs vacuum cleaner swept in two more messages culled from the days electronic haystack. The first contained the phrase The match begins tomorrow, and the second said Tomorrow is zero hour. But even though they came from suspected al Qaeda locations in Afghanistan, no one would translate them until September 12.

The intelligence community will later argue that the warnings did not provide any indication of where, when, or what activities might occur.

The lack of attention to known al Qaeda communications from Afghanistan is startling given that, between May and July, the NSA reported at least 33 separate communications suggesting a possibly imminent terrorist attack.

None of these intercepts provided specific information on the attack, but they were widely (and quickly) disseminated within the intelligence communications and drove the highest alerts of 2001, particularly around July 4.

In fact, on June 22, CIA director George Tenet is said to be nearly frantic over imminent threats based upon a recent intercept. All of which makes NSAs lackadaisical approach around September even more puzzling.

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WTC attacks: Tale of how NSA failed to act on intel communications - The News International

Published 10 September 2021

The National Security Adviser to the President, Retired Maj.-Gen. Babagana Monguno, says intelligence remains the most effective instrument in fighting insurgency and banditry.

Monguno stated this on Friday, in Abuja while speaking at the public presentation of a research report titled Terrorism and Banditry: The Nexus, conducted by the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation.

The NSA, who is one of the panellists at the event, said that evolvement witnessed globally in the 21st century had made tackling insecurity more difficult, hence the need for intelligence.

He said that while intelligence came in various ways including human intelligence, technical intelligence, cyber intelligence and others, human intelligence derived from the local community remained the most important.

For as long as an agent of government decides to franchise or eliminate the agent of community, then you are depriving yourself of the most important oxygen, which is intelligence from the local community, he said.

Monguno said that what Nigeria needed to do in tackling its current security challenge was to learn from the experience of developed countries.

Intelligence is the driver of operation.

No matter how much you spend on defence forces land, air, maritime or police, if you lack the relevant intelligence, you will just be like three blind men operating in a dark environment.

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You can imagine what that will amount to, he said.

According to him, while intelligence comes in various layers it must be fused together and acted upon timely, saying intelligence in itself has a very short shelf life.

From the moment you get intelligence if the operational elements do not respond with the speed required that intelligence becomes stale and it compounds the problems that will come later, he said.

Another member of the panellist, Crisis Groups Nigeria Senior Adviser, Nnamdi Obasi, stressed the need to scale up security presence in the country, especially the ungoverned areas.

Obasi also stressed the need to improve on humanitarian assistance to those affected by insecurity.

On his part, a former Director of the Department of State Services, Mike Ejiofor, stressed the need to improve the capacity of security agencies and deal with the issue of bad eggs among security agencies.

(NAN)

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Intelligence remains effective instrument in fighting insurgency NSA - Punch Newspapers

Within the last year, Congress and the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services have issued a bevy of new rules that aim to improve health care cost transparency and encourage consumer engagement. In October 2020, the Departments released final rules on the Transparency in Coverage requirements that apply to group health plans. Subsequently, in December 2020, Congress passed a variety of additional plan transparency requirements under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (CAA), some of which overlap with the Department's rules.

Many of these new requirements have already taken effect or will soon go into effect for the 2022 plan year. With the rollout of the No Surprises Act (NSA), new requirements for member ID cards and Advanced Explanation of Benefits (AEOB) communications have also been introduced.

For plan years beginning January 2022 or later, NSA now requires that member ID cards (both electronic and print) include the following:

To summarize: An ID card (paper or electronic) must be provided to plan participants with any deductible and out-of-pocket maximums applicable to their plan, as well as a phone number and website where they can seek consumer assistance information.

NSA has also introduced a requirement for AEOBs (applicable to all services, in- and out-of-network, by providers and facilities). AEOBs must be provided whenever an appointment is made for services and also whenever requested by the member, even without an appointment.

For every scheduled service and upon member request, the payer must provide the member with an AEOB that includes:

To summarize: Providers must ask patients whether they are enrolled in a group health plan and if so, provide an estimate of the expected charges to the patient's insurer. After receiving the estimate, plans must provide an advanced EOB to the plan participant that informs them whether the provider/facility is in-network, what the plan will pay, and any cost-sharing requirements.

Here at Zelis, we're adapting our ID card communications to deliver NSA-ready cards on behalf of clients by designing templates to each payer's compliance specifications and the required fields as detailed above.

Using client-provided data, we work with payers to create NSA-ready templates for AEOBs (in both print and digital format), while supporting increased EOB/AEOB volume and distinguishing between pre-service estimates and claims for received care.

Moreover, Zelis helps clients leverage AEOBs for strategic pre-service communication to members through:

The No Surprises Act impacts all healthcare organizations, from large health plans and systems to small medical offices and individual providers. As such, leaders across the healthcare industry must directly understand the details of the legislation prior to implementation or have a trusted advisor with legislative expertise who can guide them to appropriate solutions.

From the patient-facing Advanced Explanation of Benefits through to adjudication, arbitration, and settlement, alignment with the NSA requirements will require organizations to adapt internal capabilities or outsource solutions or find some combination of the two. Companies may have to alter their infrastructure and processes to administer all aspects of the law.

And according to proprietary research, providing accurate Advanced Explanation of Benefits (AEOBs) to member-patients and meeting the tight post-service timeline in which providers and insurers must complete adjudication, remediation, and arbitration will be the most challenging areas for organizations to tackle, particularly for substantial claims.

To further explore getting started with NSA compliance, reach out to your Zelis representative or contact us here.

For access to additional information, visit Zelis'No Surprises Act Information Hub.

Continued here:
The low-down on the latest NSA Member ID and Advanced EOB Requirements - Healthcare Dive

The Kanpur district administration has invoked the stringent National Security Act (NSA) against two aides of gangster Vikas Dubey who are facing conspiracy charges in connection with the ambush in Bikru village on July 3, 2020, officials said on Sunday. Eight policemen were gunned down by Dubey and his henchmen in the attack.

The two charged with the NSA are Jai Bajpai and Prashant Shukla, who are currently in the Kanpur Dehat jail. Bajpai was the financer of Vikas Dubey who was killed in an alleged police encounter a week after the ambush. Five of his associates were also gunned down in separate encounters. The police alleged Bajpai handled the logistics for the ambush. Shukla was a close associate of Dubey, and allegedly provided him logistical help.

The DM invoked NSA against Jai Bajpai and Prashant Shukla on the basis of the police report, said ADG (Kanpur zone) Bhanu Bhaskar. He added that the NSA had been invoked against seven accused in the case so far.

Bajpai was arrested on July 20 last year. According to the police, on July 4, a day after the attack, he was supposed to take Dubey and his associates to a safe place but could not.

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Bikru ambush: NSA invoked against two aides of gangster Vikas Dubey - The Indian Express

The twentieth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2021 are a good time to reflect on the world weve built since then. Those attacks caused incalculable heartbreak, anger and fear. But by now it is clear that far too many things that were put into place in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, especially in the areas of surveillance and government secrecy, are deeply problematic for our democracy, privacy and fairness. Its time to set things right.

The public centerpiece of our effort to increase government surveillance in response to the attacks was the passage of the Patriot Act, which will have its own 20th anniversary on October 26. But much more happened, and far too much of it was not revealed until years later. Our government developed a huge and expensive set of secret spying operations that eviscerated the line between domestic and foreign surveillance and swept up millions of non-suspect Americans' communications and records. With some small but critical exceptions, Congress almost completely abdicated its responsibility to check the power of the Executive. Later, the secret FISA court shifted from merely approving specific warrants to a quasi-agency charged with reviewing entire huge secret programs without either the knowledge or the authority to provide meaningful oversight. All of these are a critical part of the legacy of September 11.

Yet even after all of these years, theres no clear evidence that you can surveil yourself to safety.

Of course, we did not invent national security or domestic surveillance overreach 20 years ago. Since the creation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early twentieth century, and the creation of the National Security Agency in 1952, the federal government has been reprimanded and reformed for overreaching and violating constitutionally protected rights. Even before 9/11, the NSAs program FAIRVIEW forged agreements between the government agency and telecom companies in order to monitor phone calls going in and out of the country. But 9/11 gave the NSA the inciting incident it needed to take what it has long wanted: a shift to a collect-it-all strategy inside the U.S. to match, in many ways, the one it had already developed outside the U.S., and the secret governmental support to try to make it happen. As for those of us in the general public, we were told in the abstract that giving up our privacy would make us more secure even as we were kept in the dark about what that actually meant, especially for the Muslims and other Americans unfairly targeted.

The surveillance infrastructure forged or augmented in the post-war-on-terror world is largely still with us. In the case of the United States, in addition to the computer servers, giant analysis buildings, weak or wrong legal justifications, and the secret price tag, one of the lasting and more harmful effects has been on the public. Specifically, we are still too often beholden to the mentality that collecting and analyzing enough information can keep a nation safe. Yet even after all of these years, theres no clear evidence that you can surveil yourself to safety. This is true in general but its especially true for international terrorism threats, which have never been numerous or alike enough to be used to train machine learning models, much less make trustworthy predictions.

But there are copious amounts of evidence of ongoing surveillance metastasis: the intelligence fusion centers, the national security apparatus, the Department of Homeland Security, enhanced border and customs surveillance have been deputized to do things far afield from their original purpose of preventing another foreign terrorist attack. Even without serious transparency, we know that those powers and tools have been used for political policing, surveilling activists and immigrants, denying entry to people because of their political stances on social media, and putting entire border communities under surveillance.

The news in the past 20 years isnt all bad, though. We have seen the government end many of the specific methods developed and deployed by the NSA immediately after 9/11. This includes the infamous bulk call details record program (albeit replaced with an only slightly less problematic program). It also includes the NSAs metadata collection and the about searching done under the UPSTREAM program off of the Internet backbone. We also have cut back on the unlimited gag orders accompanying National Security Letters. Each of these was accomplished through different paths, but none of them exist today as they did immediately after 9/11. We even pushed through some modest reforms of the FISA court.

But the biggest good news is the growth of encryption across the digital world, from the encrypting of links between the servers of giants like Google, to the Lets Encrypt project encrypting web traffic, to the rise of end-to-end encrypted tools like Signal and WhatsApp that have given people around the world greater protections against surveillance even as the governments have become more voracious in their appetites for our data. Of course, the fights over encryption continue, but we should note and celebrate our victories when we can.

Other nefarious programs continue, including the Internet backbone surveillance that EFF has long sought to bring to the public courts in Jewel v. NSA. And in addition to federal surveillance, weve seen the filtering of the collect it all mentality manifest in our local police departments both through massive surveillance technology injections and in the slow enmeshing of local with federal surveillance. We still do not have a full public account of the types and scope of surveillance that has been deployed domestically, much less internationally, although EFF is trying to piece some of it together with our Atlas of Surveillance.

Twenty years is a good long time. We now know more of what our government did in the aftermath and we know how little safety most of these programs produced, along with the disproportionate impact it had on some of our most vulnerable communities. Its time to start applying the clear lessons from that time and continue to uncover, question, and dismantle both the mass surveillance and the unfettered secrecy that were ushered in when we were all afraid.

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The Other 20-Year Anniversary: Freedom and Surveillance Post-9/11 - EFF