Category Archives: NSA

Former National Security Agency senior executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake revealed himself this week as the source for a lawsuit alleging the NSA conducted blanket, indiscriminate surveillance of Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

In a declaration filed in discovery in the case in U.S. district court in Utah, Drake asserted the NSA, in coordination with the FBI, scooped up and stored the content of emails and text messages sent and received by anyone in the city and Olympic venues including American citizens.

The mantra was just take it all, said Drake, 60, in a Thursday evening phone interview. Drakes assertions contradict declarations filed in the case in March by former NSA director Michael Hayden and current NSA operations manager Wayne Murphy.

The NSA has never ... at any time conducted mass or blanket surveillance, interception, or analysis ... of e-mail, text message, telephone, or other telecommunications in Salt Lake City or the vicinity of the 2002 Winter Olympic venues, whether during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games or otherwise, Murphy stated.

Drake accused Murphy and Hayden of making statements that are if not literally false, substantially misleading. His declaration was first reported Friday by the Salt Lake Tribune.

[Read Thomas Drakes full declaration here]

The NSA and the Department of Justice declined to comment Friday on the case, which was filed in 2015 by former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson on behalf of six American citizens who alleged their private communications were monitored and likely stored by the NSA during the Winter Games, held in Salt Lake City in February 2002.

Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening. We need to let our elected officials know that we will resist in any way possible this rather sudden transformation of our country, not only to a surveillance state, but to a nation where the rule of law seems to mean very little.

Drake is a former Air Force and Navy veteran who worked at the NSA from 1989 until 2008, when his career ended amid a leak investigation. Drake had grown uncomfortable with the expansion of the NSAs surveillance operations, authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and leaked unclassified information to a reporter about waste and fraud in the agency.

In 2007, Drakes home was raided by the FBI, and, in 2010, federal prosecutors charged him with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act. The case against him ultimately collapsed Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2011 and his ordeal is seen by civil liberty advocates as emblematic of overaggressive targeting of whistleblowers by the federal government.

In early 2002, according to Drake, he started hearing rumors from alarmed colleagues at the NSA about the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op. Then he started seeing manifest documents, showing shipments of surveillance equipment headed to Utah.

The Winter Games that year were held on American soil just five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and according to Drakes declaration, the NSA saw the event which would bring thousands of people, including foreign leaders and international media, to a relatively confined geographic area as a golden opportunity to fine-tune a new scale of mass surveillance.

The mass surveillance program during the 2002 Olympics was first reported in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article that alleged, based on anonymous officials, that the FBI and the NSA made an arrangement with Qwest Communications International Inc. to monitor the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City region during the Winter Games.

Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications company, was acquired in 2011 by CenturyLink. Former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio has said he knew nothing about his company cooperating with the NSA during the 2002 Olympics, but that federal authorities could have worked with other executives without his knowledge.

In 2013, one of the secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists describes NSA discussions about an operation during the Olympics, but not to the extent of what Drake has alleged.

In early 2002, NSA personnel met with senior vice president of government systems and other employees from Company E, the document stated. Under authority of the Presidents Surveillance Program (PSP), NSA asked Company E to provide call records in support of security for the Olympics in Salt Lake City ... On 19 February 2002, Company E submitted a written proposal that discussed methods it could use to regularly replicate call record information stored in a Company E facility and potentially forward the same information to NSA.

The Snowden document makes no mention of capturing content, though, but rather seems to align with previous revelations of NSA operations capturing metadata: information about a phone call or text message, such as the phone numbers, geographical locations of the devices used, and the duration of a call or size of a message.

But Drake said the Salt Lake City operation captured far more than just metadata. Before the Olympics, he said, the NSA set up geofencing virtual geographic boundaries around Salt Lake City and nearby Olympic venues.

Virtually all electronic communication signals that went into or out of one of those designated areas were captured and stored by the NSA, including the contents of emails and text messages, according to Drakes declaration. The NSA stored the metadata, as well as text in emails and text messages. Only large attached images or video files to texts and emails would have been spared, Drake said, because of their size.

Anderson, the former Salt Lake City mayor, was in private practice as an attorney when he read the 2013 Wall Street Journal article. He connected with Drake through a mutual friend, and when Drake described the scope of the operation he believed had been conducted, Anderson decided to pursue litigation.

Andersons case was filed in 2015 on behalf of six people who lived or worked near Olympic venues in Salt Lake City in 2002, including a lawyer, an author and a college professor. Their lawsuit seeks damages, an order to compel the NSA to disclose what communications from the plaintiffs it still has in storage and then the deletion of that information.

Anderson has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and several other electronic freedom and individual rights organizations to take up the case, but all have declined. The Department of Justice has tried to get the case dismissed, but U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby allowed it to proceed with a ruling in January.

Drake expressed dismay Thursday evening that the case has been greatly overshadowed this year by the news, and tweets, coming from the White House.

If there was anything exceptional about America, it was our Constitution ... and yet, here I was, seeing it unravel, in secret, from within the government, Drake said. To me, this still really matters.

Michael E. Miller contributed to this report.

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Former NSA executive: Agency used 'blanket' surveillance during 2002 Olympics - Washington Post

Cybercriminals have taken the EternalBlue exploits and used them to build more effective Trojans.

A leaked NSA exploit which helped the WannaCry ransomware outbreak become so prolific is now being used to distribute Trojan malware.

A Windows security flaw known as EternalBlue was one of many allegedly known to US intelligence services and used to carry out surveillance before being leaked by the Shadow Brokers hacking group.

The exploit leverages a version of Windows' Server Message Block (SMB) networking protocol to spread itself across an infected network using wormlike capabilities.

But while, for the most part, the spread of WannaCry has been stopped, cybercriminals and hackers are still using the leaked EternalBlue exploit to carry out a much more discreet form of cyberattack, say researchers at FireEye.

This time, the SMB vulnerabilities are being used to distribute Backdoor.Nitol - a Trojan horse which opens a backdoor on the infected computer - and Gh0st RAT, a form of malware capable of taking full control of a machine in addition to conducting espionage and stealing data.

The latter is particularly dangerous and is repeatedly a thorn in the side of the aerospace and defence industries, as well as government agencies and even activists. Now those behind this new Gh0st RAT campaign are using EternalBlue exploits in an effort to compromise Singapore, while Nitol is attacking the wider South Asia region.

Researchers note that machines vulnerable to the SMB exploit are attacked by hackers using the EternalBlue exploit to gain shell access to the machine.

The initial exploit used at the SMB level is similar to what's been seen in WannaCry attacks, but this time, instead of being used to deploy ransomware, the attack opens a shell to write instructions into a VBScript file which is when executed to retrieve the payload from another server in order to create the required backdoor into the machine using Nitol or Gh0st RAT.

While neither attack is new - both have plagued victims for years - the addition EternalBlue adds additional potency to attacks, although nothing so far has suggested that it could spread so widely as quickly as WannaCry did.

And with the EternalBlue exploits now out in the open for any malicious actor to use, it's likely that we'll see it used again and again in new types of attacks.

"The addition of the EternalBlue exploit has made it easy for threat actors to exploit these vulnerabilities. In the coming weeks and months, we expect to see more attackers leveraging these vulnerabilities and to spread such infections with different payloads," said researchers at FireEye Dynamic Threat Intelligence.

"It is critical that Microsoft Windows users patch their machines and update to the latest software versions as soon as possible," they add.

While WannaCry exploited the vulnerability to infect networks across the globe, poor-coding behind the ransomware played a part in it not being as damaging as it could've been, resulting in those behind it not making much money, considering the scale of the campaign.

However, if something like Nitol or Gh0st RAT could simultaneously infected hundreds of thousands across the globe - and the nature of the Trojan attacks means they wouldn't be obvious about it - then future attacks could have much worse consequences.

Here is the original post:
Leaked NSA hacking exploit used in WannaCry ransomware is now powering Trojan malware - ZDNet

Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) senior executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake revealed himself this past week as the source for a lawsuit alleging the NSA conducted blanket, indiscriminate surveillance of Salt Lake City during the 2002 Winter Olympics.

In a declaration filed in discovery in the case in U.S. district court in Utah, Drake asserted the NSA, in coordination with the FBI, scooped up and stored the content of emails and text messages sent and received by anyone in the city and Olympic venues including American citizens.

The mantra was just take it all, Drake, 60, said in a Thursday evening phone interview.

Drakes assertions contradict declarations filed in the case in March by former NSA director Michael Hayden and current NSA operations manager Wayne Murphy.

The NSA has never ... at any time conducted mass or blanket surveillance, interception, or analysis ... of e-mail, text message, telephone, or other telecommunications in Salt Lake City or the vicinity of the 2002 Winter Olympic venues, whether during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games or otherwise, Murphy stated.

Drake accused Murphy and Hayden of making statements that are if not literally false, substantially misleading. His declaration was first reported Friday by the Salt Lake Tribune.

The NSA and the Department of Justice declined to comment Friday on the case, which was filed in 2015 by former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson on behalf of six American citizens who alleged their private communications were monitored and likely stored by the NSA during the Winter Games, held in Salt Lake City in February 2002.

Its incredibly important that the public be aware of what our governments doing, and all of us standing up against it, Anderson said in a telephone interview Thursday evening. We need to let our elected officials know that we will resist in any way possible this rather sudden transformation of our country, not only to a surveillance state, but to a nation where the rule of law seems to mean very little.

Drake is a former Air Force and Navy veteran who worked at the NSA from 1989 until 2008, when his career ended amid a leak investigation. Drake had grown uncomfortable with the expansion of the NSAs surveillance operations, authorized by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and leaked unclassified information to a reporter about waste and fraud in the agency.

In 2007, Drakes home was raided by the FBI, and, in 2010, federal prosecutors charged him with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act. The case against him ultimately collapsed Drake pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in 2011 and his ordeal is seen by civil liberty advocates as emblematic of over-aggressive targeting of whistleblowers by the federal government.

Golden opportunity

In early 2002, according to Drake, he started hearing rumors from alarmed colleagues at the NSA about the Salt Lake Olympics Field Op. Then he started seeing manifest documents, showing shipments of surveillance equipment headed to Utah.

The Winter Games that year were held on American soil just five months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and according to Drakes declaration, the NSA saw the event which would bring thousands of people, including foreign leaders and international media, to a relatively confined geographic area as a golden opportunity to fine-tune a new scale of mass surveillance.

The allegation of a mass surveillance program during the 2002 Olympics was first raised in a 2013 Wall Street Journal article that alleged, based on anonymous officials, the FBI and NSA made an arrangement with Qwest Communications International Inc. to monitor the content of all email and text communications in the Salt Lake City region during the Winter Games.

Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications company, was acquired in 2011 by CenturyLink. Former Qwest chief executive Joseph Nacchio has said he knew nothing about his company cooperating with the NSA during the 2002 Olympics, but that federal authorities could have worked with other executives without his knowledge.

In 2013, one of the secret documents former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked to journalists describes NSA discussions about an operation during the Olympics, but not to the extent of what Drake has alleged.

In early 2002, NSA personnel met with senior vice president of government systems and other employees from Company E, the document stated. Under authority of the Presidents Surveillance Program (PSP), NSA asked Company E to provide call records in support of security for the Olympics in Salt Lake City. ... On 19 February 2002, Company E submitted a written proposal that discussed methods it could use to regularly replicate call record information stored in a Company E facility and potentially forward the same information to NSA.

The Snowden document makes no mention of capturing content, though, but rather seems to align with previous revelations of NSA operations capturing metadata: information about a phone call or text message, such as the phone numbers, geographical locations of the devices used, and the duration of a call or size of a message.

But Drake said the Salt Lake City operation captured far more than just metadata. Before the Olympics, he said, the NSA set up geofencing virtual geographic boundaries around Salt Lake City and nearby Olympic venues.

Virtually all electronic communication signals that went into or out of one of those designated areas were captured and stored by the NSA, including the contents of emails and text messages, according to Drakes declaration.

The NSA stored the metadata, as well as text in emails and text messages. Only large, attached images or video files to texts and emails would have been spared, Drake said, because of their size.

Court case

Anderson, the former Salt Lake City mayor, was in private practice as an attorney when he read the 2013 Wall Street Journal article. He connected with Drake through a mutual friend, and when Drake described the scope of the operation he believed had been conducted, Anderson decided to pursue litigation.

Andersons case was filed in 2015 on behalf of six people who lived or worked near Olympic venues in Salt Lake City in 2002, including a lawyer, an author, and a college professor. Their lawsuit seeks damages, an order to compel the NSA to disclose what communications from the plaintiffs it still has in storage, and then the deletion of that information.

Anderson has asked the American Civil Liberties Union and several other electronic freedom and individual rights organizations to take up the case, but all have declined. The Department of Justice has tried to get the case dismissed, but a U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby allowed it to proceed with a ruling in January.

Drake expressed dismay Thursday evening that the case has been greatly overshadowed this year by the news, and tweets, coming from the White House.

If there was anything exceptional about America, it was our Constitution ... and yet, here I was, seeing it unravel, in secret, from within the government, Drake said. To me, this still really matters.

Read more from the original source:
Report: NSA used 'blanket' surveillance at 2002 Olympics - News ... - The News Herald

Atlantic magazine writer Steve Clemons said during a Saturday panel on MSNBCs The Point with Ari Melber that National Security Administration (NSA) Director Michael Rogers may have a bomb to drop on the Trump administration.

Rogers will testify Wednesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is currently investigating whether President Donald Trumps campaign colluded with Russian officials to sway the results of the 2016 election.

We now know for certain that Vladimir Putin waged political warfare against Americas democracy with the election last year, said Mother Jones magazines David Corn. While thats going on, Donald Trump is saying, No, its not happening. Its like a guy in front of a bank robbery saying, Nothing is going on here. He was helping.

He made it easier for Putin to pull this off, Corn said. That in itself should be a big scandal.

While a lot of people have focused on James Comey and thats obviously a huge anchor in this, Clemons said at the end of the segment, watch the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Wednesday. National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers may have a bomb to drop in this, as well as Dan Coates. I have been tipped off that Mike Rogers has a story to tell as well that goes right along the lines that our friend David Corn has shared.

Watch the video, embedded below:

Visit link:
NSA Director Mike Rogers poised to 'drop a bomb' on Trump admin ... - Raw Story

(TNS) -- A group of Silicon Valley tech giants are urging Congress to reform National Security Agency authority that empowers the agency to potentially spy on millions of Americans incidentally while surveilling foreign targets.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter are among the 30 tech companies, trade groups, and lobbyists asking Congress to reform Section 702 of the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act authority the agency uses to tap the physical infrastructure of the internet, such as undersea fiber cables, to surveil the content of foreigners emails, instant messages, and other communications as they exit and enter the U.S.

The law legalizes broad electronic surveillance programs like Prism, leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013. Privacy advocates say such incidental collection facilitates a loophole that lets NSA incidentally sweep up unrelated data belonging to Americans in the process, and likely amounts to millions of warrantless interceptions.

The legal authority underpinning such upstream surveillance expires in December, and lawmakers have already held hearings on the law a mixed bag of Republicans and Democrats support and oppose.

We are writing to express our support for reforms to Section 702 that would maintain its utility to the U.S. intelligence community while increasing the programs privacy protections and transparency, companies wrote to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte.

Instead of a blanket reauthorization companies asked lawmakers to require NSA to get court authorization before querying the contents of 702 material for the communications of U.S. persons (given that U.S. persons are not the target of 702).

Companies asked for legal permission to release more details about the requests for data they receive from the government, including the number and type of information requested and declassification of warrants granted in secret by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

They want Congress to curtail the definition of foreign intelligence information under FISA to reduce the likelihood of collecting data belonging to U.S. citizens not suspected of wrongdoing and codify a recent change to NSA policy ending so-called about collection.

In April, NSA ended the upstream practice of collecting Americans email and text messages exchanged with overseas users that simply mention search terms like an email address belonging to a target but isnt to or from a target.

Finally, there should be greater transparency around how the communications of U.S. persons that are incidentally collected under Section 702 are searched and used, including how often 702 databases are queried using identifiers that are tied to U.S. persons, the letter reads.

The law expires Dec. 31 and lawmakers still have not received an estimate from NSA on the number of Americans swept up in 702 surveillance. Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden has been asking NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the number since 2012, and recently renewed that request to Daniel Coats, President Donald Trumps director of national intelligence.

In a letter sent ahead of Coats nomination signed by Goodlatte, lawmakers asked for the number again, with Coats later pledging to do everything I can to work with Admiral Rogers in NSA to get you that number. In a later hearing after getting the job, Coats said quantifying the number was harder than he initially expected after meeting with Rogers, and asked for more time.

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at NYU Laws Brennan Center for Justice, says such incidental collection likely amounts to millions or tens of millions of warrantless interceptions.

While Goitein says she hasnt seen the authority abused (though Snowden disputes that), she and other advocates say they have seen the agencys mission creep, so that a law designed to protect against foreign threats to the United States has become a major source of warrantless access to Americans data and a tool for ordinary, domestic law enforcement.

Austin Carson, executive director of the center-right D.C. think tank TechFreedom says companies shouldnt have to fear their government is breaking that trust with their users.

These proposed reforms represent a good-faith compromise to one of the most significant issues Congress must resolve this year, Carson said of the letter. They would maintain important national security tools while minimizing the impact on Americans.

Carson said President Donald Trumps own concerns about his campaign coming under surveillance during the 2016 election and having campaign associates identities unmasked in intelligence community reports, along with the authoritys looming expiration, should fuel the argument for timely reform.

2017 InsideSources.com, Washington, D.C. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Facebook, Google Urge Congress to Reform NSA Surveillance - Government Technology

Russian President Vladimir Putinbelieves Edward Snowdens decisionto leaktop-secret information from the National Security Agency was wrong.

Yet speaking in an interview with Oliver Stone for a series called The Putin Interviews,which airs onShowtime on June 12, the Russian president also defended Snowden, a former NSA contractor who is currently living in exile in Moscow.

Related: Putin slams Trump-Russia probe

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As an ex-KGB agent, you must have hated what Snowden did with every fiber of your being? Stone asks Putin through a translator in a clip from the show.

"Snowden is not a traitor," Putin replies. "He didnt betray the interest of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people.

Still, the Russian president said he thought Snowden had other options.

I think he shouldnt have done it," Putin said.

If he didnt like anything at his work, he should have simply resigned. But he went further. Thats his right. But since you are asking me whether it's right or wrong, I think its wrong.

The four-part special from Stone will air a week after Putin's much publicized interview withNBC's Megyn Kelly and comes at a time when allegations continue to swirl that Russian intelligence meddled in the 2016 presidential election and possibly colluded with now-President Donald Trump.

Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to Oliver Stone for series called "The Putin Interviews." Dmitri Lovetsky/Pool/Reuters

During the interview with Stone, Putin also defended the actions of his own intelligence services.

"Our intelligence services always conform to the law," the Russian president said. "Thats the first thing. And secondly, trying to spy on your allies if you really consider them allies and not vassals is just indecent. Because it undermines trust. And it means that in the end it deals damage to your own national security."

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Vladimir Putin on Edward Snowden's NSA Leak: He Shouldn't Have Done It - Newsweek

National Security Agency analysts under the Obama administration improperly searched Americans' information, but the searches were conducted largely out of error, according to a review of publicly available intelligence documents reported on by Circa last week.

The website reported that Obama's NSA violated privacy protections by searching a subset of intelligence for Americans' information. The story draws in part from a partially declassified April 2017 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinion, which says that the NSA repeatedly and inappropriately queried, or searched, "U.S. person identifiers" within a swath of data. The data was collected under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, meaning that it targeted a foreigner, on foreign soil, for a foreign intelligence purpose.

The NSA at the time was not allowed to search a chunk of intelligence, known as "upstream," using U.S. person identifiers (like an American's email address)but it did, and "with much greater frequency than had previously been disclosed" to the FISC. Upstream data is obtained from "providers that control the telecommunications "backbone" over which telephone and Internet communications transit," according to an independent government oversight agency.

Of this, Circa wrote:

The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans.

Circa has reported that there was a three-fold increase in NSA data searches about Americans and a rise in the unmasking of U.S. person's identities in intelligence reports after Obama loosened the privacy rules in 2011.

Officials like former National Security Adviser Susan Rice have argued their activities were legal under the so-called minimization rule changes Obama made, and that the intelligence agencies were strictly monitored to avoid abuses.

The intelligence court and the NSA's own internal watchdog found that not to be true.

This sounds nefarious, especially against the backdrop of a months-long controversy over unmasking and leaks. But as Circa hints some paragraphs later, the incidents, which were self-reported by the NSA to Congress and the FISC, were in part the result of a system design quirk.

"The system automatically includes in a search all authorities an analyst's credentials permit the analyst to access," Adam Klein, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD. "That meant that analysts with access to upstream data had to opt out of querying upstream when setting their search criteria. That system design apparently resulted in non-compliant queries."

A January notice to the FISC also said that "human error was the primary factor" in a portion of these improper queries. The NSA in an announcement also claimed that the incidents were "not willful." And as Klein told TWS, "There have been no reported incidents of intentional misuse of Section 702 by the agencies responsible for implementing it."

The NSA inspector general report read:

For the queries into FAA 702 upstream data, SV concluded that analysts had not removed the FAA 702 upstream authority from their search criteria (that automatically defaulted on the basis of their credentials) or had not included the appropriate . . . limiters to prevent FAA 702 upstream data from being queried.

The NSA told the FISC about the incidents as the court conducted its annual review for 702 certifications. The non-compliance triggered a broader NSA review, and ultimately resulted in the agency declaring the end of "about" collectionor the gathering of communications that mention a target. "About" collection often scooped up entirely domestic communications, drawing the ire of civil liberties advocates. The NSA also announced that it would purge much of its upstream data, and the FISC gave the go-ahead for analysts to query upstream using U.S. person identifiers, now that "about" has ended.

The court's late March certification reflected that change. But the court was not pleased with the non-compliance. The FISC in October described it as "a very serious Fourth Amendment issue" and attributed the agency's delayed disclosure to "an institutional 'lack of candor.'"

Still, the incidentincluding the NSA's self-reporting and public announcementsexemplifies the extent of 702 oversight, Klein said.

"The program is subject to extensive oversight, including judicial supervision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The recent end of "about" collection in response to FISC oversight shows that it has real teeth," he said.

If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Jenna Lifhits at jlifhits@weeklystandard.com or The Weekly Standard at factcheck@weeklystandard.com.

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Fact Check: Why did the NSA breach privacy protections? - The Weekly Standard

"I have reviewed the declaration of Michael V. Hayden dated March 8, 2017," Drake's statement said. "As a result of personal knowledge I gained as a long-time contractor and then senior executive (1989-2008) of the NSA, I know the statements made by Hayden in that declaration are false or, if not literally false, substantially misleading."

Drake's statement was provided to the U.S. Department of Justice this week, as part of discovery, by attorney Rocky Anderson the Salt Lake City mayor at the time of the 2002 Olympics who represents plaintiffs Mary Josephine Valdez, Howard Stephenson, Deeda Seed, Will Bagley and Thomas Nelson Huckin.

In January, Judge Robert Shelby rejected an attempt by the Department of Justice to dismiss the case.

The NSA has the capability to seize and store electronic communications passing through U.S. intercept centers, according to a statement from Drake.

After Sept. 11, 2001, "the NSA's new approach was that the president had the authority to override the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Bill of Rights, and the NSA worked under the authority of the president," Drake said. "The new mantra to intercepting intelligence was 'just get it' regardless of the law."

Additional information on NSA's intelligence gathering came to light in 2013 when Edward Snowden revealed to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, the scope of U.S. and British global surveillance programs.

One of the documents Snowden purloined spoke to the 2002 operation, where the NSA sought detailed records without warrants from telecom communications systems in Utah, including Qwest Communications.

The document, labeled "Top Secret," has several entries, including this one: "In early 2002, NSA personnel met with senior vice president of government systems and other employees from Company E [later identified as Qwest]. Under authority of the President's Surveillance Program (PSP), NSA asked Company E to provide call records in support of security for the Olympics in Salt Lake City... On 19 February 2002, Company E submitted a written proposal that discussed methods it could use to regularly replicate call record information stored in a Company E facility and potentially froward the same information to NSA ... "

In 2011 the NSA completed the $1.2 billion digital storage faci`lity called the Utah Data Center in Bluffdale.

In a 2012 lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, two former highly-placed NSA employees said the agency was not filtering personal electronic data but was storing everything it collected.

"The capacity of NSA's infrastructure far exceeds the capacity necessary for the storage of discreet, targeted communications," said William Binney. "The capacity of NSA's infrastructure is consistent, as a mathematical matter, with seizing both the routing information and the contents of all communications."

In the same case, J. Kirk Wiebe, who worked as a senior analyst at the NSA from 1975 to 2001, concurred with Binney and Drake.

"I agree with Mr. Drake's assessment that everything changed at the NSA after the attacks of September 11. The prior approach focused on complying with the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA)," he stated. "The post-September 11 approach was that NSA could circumvent federal statutes and the Constitution as long as there was some visceral connection to looking for terrorists."

By contrast, in the Utah case, current NSA Director of Operations Wayne Murphy, like Hayden, rejected allegations of an NSA "blanket" surveillance program during the 2002 Winter Olympics. He noted, however, that NSA collection of communications did and does continue to exist but is "targeted at one-end foreign communications where a communicant was reasonably believed to be a member or agent of Al-Qaeda or another international terrorist organization."

Anderson called the NSA's surveillance programs "Orwellian."

Read more here:
NSA conducted blanket surveillance of Salt Lakers during 2002 Games, former official says - Salt Lake Tribune

Cybersecurity

How much would you pay for access to stolen hacking tools developed by some of the NSA's most elite computer scientists? The enigmatic entity calling itself TheShadowBrokers thinks that $23,000 is a fair price.

The mysterious group that first appeared in August 2016 claiming to have a trove of tools pilfered from the Equation Group, which has been identified as an NSA hacking operation, have been periodically releasing bits of that stash for free.

In April, TheShadowBrokers dumped tools and exploits that led to the WannaCry ransomware attack as well as other malware that has been used in recent attacks.

The group then issued a long blog post written in pigeon English, complaining that no one had offered to buy the stolen data and make them "go dark," and contemplating the launch of a "wine of month" style subscription service.

In a new blog post, TheShadowBrokers announced that interested subscribers can sign up during the month of June for a fee of 100 ZEC or Zcash cryptocurrency worth about $235 a share -- and then in the first two weeks of July patrons will receive the next dump of hacking tools.

TheShadowBrokers said they have not decided what will be in the next release, but said it will include "Something of value to someone."

"The time for 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours first' is being over," states the post. "Peoples is seeing what happenings when theshadowbrokers is showing theshadowbrokers' first. This is being wrong question. Question to be asking 'Can my organization afford not to be first to get access to theshadowbrokers dumps?'"

In the May 15 blog post, TheShadowBrokers stated that future releases of tools could include, "web browser, router, handset exploits and tools; select items from newer Ops Disks, including newer exploits for Windows 10; compromised network data from more SWIFT providers and Central banks; compromised network data from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or North Korean nukes and missile programs."

Cybersecurity experts continue to speculate over who is or are TheShadowBrokers and how they acquired the NSA data -- possibly from an insider such as former contractor Hal Martin, who has been charged under the Espionage Act with stealing classified data from the NSA and CIA.

About the Author

Sean Carberry is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence. Prior to joining FCW, he was Kabul Correspondent for NPR, and also served as an international producer for NPR covering the war in Libya and the Arab Spring. He has reported from more than two-dozen countries including Iraq, Yemen, DRC, and South Sudan. In addition to numerous public radio programs, he has reported for Reuters, PBS NewsHour, The Diplomat, and The Atlantic.

Carberry earned a Master of Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School, and has a B.A. in Urban Studies from Lehigh University.

The rest is here:
ShadowBrokers launch subscription service for stolen NSA tools - FCW.com

Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned Edward Snowden's 2013 release of confidential NSA documents as "wrong" but defended Snowden against accusations of treason in a new interview released Thursday. He said in a show airing this month on Showtime that Snowden "didnt betray the interest of his country."

Putin made the comments to interviewer Oliver Stone as part of "ThePutin Interviews,"which will air on Showtime on June 12.

Stone is best known as the director of "Wall Street,""Natural Born Killers" and "Snowden," in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Snowden.

Snowden currently lives in exile in Russia for leaking NSA documents that detailed international bulk surveillance operations.

In newly released clips from the interview, Putin reveals that he sees Snowden's actions as legal but not moral.

"I think he shouldnt have done it," Putin said of Snowden's actions. "If he didnt like anything at his work he should have simply resigned. But he went further. Thats his right. But since you are asking me whether it's right or wrong, I think its wrong."

Earlier in the interview, Putin said that Snowden had not taken any actions against the United States during or after the leaks.

"Snowden is not a traitor. He didnt betray the interest of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people." said Putin.

Putin, an ex-KGB agent, is known for his tight-gripped rule over Russia as well as an unrivaled intelligence operation against the United States.

During the interview, Putin said that Russian intelligence suffers from the problems he implied he saw with the NSA.

"Our intelligence services always conform to the law. Thats the first thing. And secondly, trying to spy on your allies if you really consider them allies and not vassals is just indecent. Because it undermines trust. And it means that in the end it deals damage to your own national security," he said.

See the article here:
Putin: What Snowden did to the NSA was 'wrong' - The Hill