NSA monitoring all Verizon users

[Thailandnotes]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-cyberwar/all/

[Thailandnotes]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blog...hronicler.html

[reggie]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

You are adding detail to my statement rather than refuting it. Its round. Its a basketball.

In the post I replied to, it said "The problem is no one is watching the watchers." What I'm alluding to is that it wouldn't matter if anyone was watching the watchers, because neither party seems to possess any historical understanding of the systems that they are watching, nor the motivations of the actor's who originally conceived the system, nor would the watchers even "see" what is relevant even if they were shown. This is the beauty of framing theory, which affects the vast majority of conventionally educated Americans.

Hence, we have surprise over this revelation, which is no revelation at all. Nor, is this "revelation" important to understanding the system goals. In short, these media reports do not even constitute "information" in the terms of Gregory Bateson (look him up), who defines information as differences that make a difference.

Hence, it's not a basketball, it is something else entirely. And this contined discussion about basketballs is a waste of energy. But since no one seems interested in reading anything other than current media outputs, I see no way the trajectory of this conversation will change.

What's comical in an extremely dissappointing sort of way is that this episode of SouthPark does a better job of revealing the system than any of these current discussions do...

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full...1e04-the-snuke

Bottom line, the NSA does NOT need to access any of online data to achieve its goals, publicly available data/media and the masses achieve this already. Further, anyone who is a "real" terrorist threat is owned, created, and managed by an alphabet soup agency with NSA knowledge, so there is no additional need to acquire external data to track these actors. The entire story falls down with the slightest of scrutiny.

[santafe2]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

I was just wondering if GRG would come to regret his open invitation for Americans to come on up... The way things are heading, he might be getting more than he bargained for.

I'm 1/4 Canadian which may explain more than I want to reveal but I still don't get hockey on television and I still don't know why a good Canadian didn't kill Gretzky for moving to LA. I'm sure it's generational gene delusion that leaves me so confused. If we just compare national anthems...Canada wins. But no great basketball. Until then, we just visit.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

yves smith on nyt greenwald piece. discussion is interesting with smith joining in.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/...ce-scoops.html

[GRG55]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

I'm 1/4 Canadian which may explain more than I want to reveal but I still don't get hockey on television and I still don't know why a good Canadian didn't kill Gretzky for moving to LA. I'm sure it's generational gene delusion that leaves me so confused. If we just compare national anthems...Canada wins. But no great basketball. Until then, we just visit.

1) Hockey on television is so everyone can watch the Canuckleheads and the Leafs choke when they play Boston, watch the instant replays of them doing it again and again, and all without having to spend our beer money on playoff tickets for the privilege;

2) Peter "Puck" Pocklington (then owner of the Edmonton Oilers) was responsible for that Canadian "Date That Will Live in Infamy", August 9, 1988. But the Oilers went on to win another Stanley Cup in 1990 without the Great One and we got over it. And unlike you Americans, when this sort of thing happens we believe the results of the investigation...Peter Puck acted alone. All of us Canadians know the real reason Gretzky was traded to the Kings was so the good citizens of Los Angeles could go to the Forum and watch a real sport...not have to keep suffering that sissy, dribble-ball stuff the Lakers used to play there.

3) We don't care if you folks don't know the words to our National Anthem (hell, we don't them either), but please don't hang the flag inverted while playing it, eh.

4) Basketball? It was a Canadian, James Naismith, who is credited with inventing the game of basketball. We gave it away to you folks 'cus it was cutting into our hockey time. A guy's gotta set some priorities ya know. And besides, it's a sissy, dribble-ball type of game.

[Slimprofits]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...table/2428809/

Q: What did you learn from the document — the Verizon warrant issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — that Snowden leaked?

Binney: What it is really saying is the NSA becomes a processing service for the FBI to use to interrogate information directly. ... The implications are that everybody's privacy is violated, and it can retroactively analyze the activity of anybody in the country back almost 12 years.

Now, the other point that is important about that is the serial number of the order: 13-dash-80. That means it's the 80th order of the court in 2013. ... Those orders are issued every quarter, and this is the second quarter, so you have to divide 80 by two and you get 40.

If you make the assumption that all those orders have to deal with companies and the turnover of material by those companies to the government, then there are at least 40 companies involved in that transfer of information. However, if Verizon, which is Order No. 80, and the first quarter got order No. 1 — then there can be as many as 79 companies involved.

So somewhere between 40 and 79 is the number of companies, Internet and telecom companies, that are participating in this data transfer in the NSA.

[Polish_Silver]

Miniscule glimmer of Hope

I got an email to day from Senator Tim Scott,
the third paragraph is excerpted below)

While I believe we should continue to utilize and support tools that help fight terrorism in a way that is consistent with the U.S. Constitution, I do not believe that collecting this type of data is in line with the 4th amendment. I share your concern about excessive overreach by the federal government that could potentially strip Americans of certain liberties. Reducing, and oftentimes eliminating, onerous and invasive government intrusion into our private lives is a priority of mine while in Washington. I will work towards balancing the need to protect our citizens from harm while also protecting each of our individual rights as a free people.

---Tim Scott

For those unfamiliar, he is the black, right wing, senator from South carolina, appointed by our governor to replace the white, right wing, senator de Mint who went to work for the Heritage Foundation.

I don't care what labels he has, as long as he votes correctly on key issues. Judging by the above, he's off to a good start.

[reggie]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...table/2428809/

Q: What did you learn from the document — the Verizon warrant issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — that Snowden leaked?

Binney: What it is really saying is the NSA becomes a processing service for the FBI to use to interrogate information directly. ... The implications are that everybody's privacy is violated, and it can retroactively analyze the activity of anybody in the country back almost 12 years.

Now, the other point that is important about that is the serial number of the order: 13-dash-80. That means it's the 80th order of the court in 2013. ... Those orders are issued every quarter, and this is the second quarter, so you have to divide 80 by two and you get 40.

If you make the assumption that all those orders have to deal with companies and the turnover of material by those companies to the government, then there are at least 40 companies involved in that transfer of information. However, if Verizon, which is Order No. 80, and the first quarter got order No. 1 — then there can be as many as 79 companies involved.

So somewhere between 40 and 79 is the number of companies, Internet and telecom companies, that are participating in this data transfer in the NSA.

If they're revealing that there are up to 79 companies, then how many do you think there really are?

Who are the people on the management teams of all of these tech companies? Who are their parents? What is their relationship to the military industrial establishment?

[Polish_Silver]

NSA vs VPN?

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

Would using a VPN do any good against this?

[c1ue]

Re: NSA vs VPN?

Would using a VPN do any good against this?

Depends on your point of view.

On the one hand, VPN probably makes it much more difficult to record and tap into emails, VOIP, and what not.

On the other hand, VPN marks you as the dandelion sticking out...

The NSA and others have more capabilities than mere backbone and Youtube/Google/Yahoo/Microsoft server access:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...=yes&page=full

This weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama sat down for a series of meetings with China's newly appointed leader, Xi Jinping. We know that the two leaders spoke at length about the topic du jour -- cyber-espionage -- a subject that has long frustrated officials in Washington and is now front and center with the revelations of sweeping U.S. data mining. The media has focused at length on China's aggressive attempts to electronically steal U.S. military and commercial secrets, but Xi pushed back at the "shirt-sleeves" summit, noting that China, too, was the recipient of cyber-espionage. But what Obama probably neglected to mention is that he has his own hacker army, and it has burrowed its way deep, deep into China's networks.

When the agenda for the meeting at the Sunnylands estate outside Palm Springs, California, was agreed to several months ago, both parties agreed that it would be a nice opportunity for President Xi, who assumed his post in March, to discuss a wide range of security and economic issues of concern to both countries. According to diplomatic sources, the issue of cybersecurity was not one of the key topics to be discussed at the summit. Sino-American economic relations, climate change, and the growing threat posed by North Korea were supposed to dominate the discussions.

Then, two weeks ago, White House officials leaked to the press that Obama intended to raise privately with Xi the highly contentious issue of China's widespread use of computer hacking to steal U.S. government, military, and commercial secrets. According to a Chinese diplomat in Washingtonwho spoke in confidence, Beijing was furious about the sudden elevation of cybersecurity and Chinese espionage on the meeting's agenda. According to a diplomatic source in Washington, the Chinese government was even angrier that the White House leaked the new agenda item to the press before Washington bothered to tell Beijing about it.

So the Chinese began to hit back. Senior Chinese officials have publicly accused the U.S. government of hypocrisy and have alleged that Washington is also actively engaged in cyber-espionage. When the latest allegation of Chinese cyber-espionage was leveled in late May in a front-page Washington Post article, which alleged that hackers employed by the Chinese military had stolen the blueprints of over three dozen American weapons systems, the Chinese government's top Internet official, Huang Chengqing, shot back that Beijing possessed "mountains of data" showing that the United States has engaged in widespread hacking designed to steal Chinese government secrets. This weekend's revelations about the National Security Agency's PRISM and Verizon metadata collection from a 29-year-old former CIA undercover operative named Edward J. Snowden, who is now living in Hong Kong, only add fuel to Beijing's position.

But Washington never publicly responded to Huang's allegation, and nobody in the U.S. media seems to have bothered to ask the White House if there is a modicum of truth to the Chinese charges.

It turns out that the Chinese government's allegations are essentially correct. According to a number of confidential sources, a highly secretive unit of the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. government's huge electronic eavesdropping organization, called the Office ofTailored Access Operations, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China.

Hidden away inside the massive NSA headquarters complex at Fort Meade, Maryland, in a large suite of offices segregated from the rest of the agency, TAO is a mystery to many NSA employees. Relatively few NSA officials have complete access to information about TAO because of the extraordinary sensitivity of its operations, and it requires a special security clearance to gain access to the unit's work spaces inside the NSA operations complex. The door leading to its ultramodern operations center is protected by armed guards, an imposing steel door that can only be entered by entering the correct six-digit code into a keypad, and a retinal scanner to ensure that only those individuals specially cleared for access get through the door.

According to former NSA officials interviewed for this article, TAO's mission is simple. It collects intelligence information on foreign targets by surreptitiously hacking into their computers and telecommunications systems, cracking passwords, compromising the computer security systems protecting the targeted computer, stealing the data stored on computer hard drives, and then copying all the messages and data traffic passing within the targeted email and text-messaging systems. The technical term of art used by NSA to describe these operations is computer network exploitation (CNE).

TAO is also responsible for developing the information that would allow the United States to destroy or damage foreign computer and telecommunications systems with a cyberattack if so directed by the president. The organization responsible for conducting such a cyberattack is U.S. Cyber Command (Cybercom), whose headquarters is located at Fort Meade and whose chief is the director of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander.

Commanded since April of this year by Robert Joyce, who formerly was the deputy director of the NSA's Information Assurance Directorate (responsible for protecting the U.S. government's communications and computer systems), TAO, sources say, is now the largest and arguably the most important component of the NSA's huge Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) Directorate, consisting of over 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers.

The sanctum sanctorumof TAO is its ultramodern operations center at Fort Meade called the Remote Operations Center (ROC), which is where the unit's 600 or so military and civilian computer hackers (they themselves CNE operators) work in rotating shifts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

These operators spend their days (or nights) searching the ether for computers systems and supporting telecommunications networks being utilized by, for example, foreign terrorists to pass messages to their members or sympathizers. Once these computers have been identified and located, the computer hackers working in the ROC break into the targeted computer systems electronically using special software designed by TAO's own corps of software designers and engineers specifically for this purpose, download the contents of the computers' hard drives, and place software implants or other devices called "buggies" inside the computers' operating systems, which allows TAO intercept operators at Fort Meade to continuously monitor the email and/or text-messaging traffic coming in and out of the computers or hand-held devices.

TAO's work would not be possible without the team of gifted computer scientists and software engineers belonging to the Data Network Technologies Branch, who develop the sophisticated computer software that allows the unit's operators to perform their intelligence collection mission. A separate unitwithin TAO called the Telecommunications Network Technologies Branch (TNT) develops the techniques that allow TAO's hackers to covertly gain access to targeted computer systems and telecommunications networks without being detected. Meanwhile, TAO's Mission Infrastructure Technologies Branch develops and builds the sensitive computer and telecommunications monitoring hardware and support infrastructure that keeps the effort up and running.

TAO even has its own small clandestine intelligence-gathering unit called the Access Technologies Operations Branch, which includes personnel seconded by the CIA and the FBI, who perform what are described as "off-net operations," which is a polite way of saying that they arrange for CIA agents to surreptitiously plant eavesdropping devices on computers and/or telecommunications systems overseas so that TAO's hackers can remotely access them from Fort Meade.

It is important to note that TAO is not supposed to work against domestic targets in the United States or its possessions. This is the responsibility of the FBI, which is the sole U.S. intelligence agency chartered for domestic telecommunications surveillance. But in light of information about wider NSA snooping, one has to prudently be concerned about whether TAO is able to perform its mission of collecting foreign intelligence without accessing communications originating in or transiting through the United States.

Since its creation in 1997, TAO has garnered a reputation for producing some of the best intelligence available to the U.S. intelligence community not only about China, but also on foreign terrorist groups, espionage activities being conducted against the United States by foreign governments, ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction developments around the globe, and the latest political, military, and economic developments around the globe.

According to a former NSA official, by 2007 TAO's 600 intercept operators were secretly tapping into thousands of foreign computer systems and accessing password-protected computer hard drives and emails of targets around the world. As detailed in my 2009 history of NSA, The Secret Sentry, this highly classified intercept program, known at the time as Stumpcursor, proved to be critically important during the U.S. Army's 2007 "surge" in Iraq, where it was credited with single-handedly identifying and locating over 100 Iraqi and al Qaeda insurgent cells in and around Baghdad. That same year, sources report that TAO was given an award for producing particularly important intelligence information about whether Iran was trying to build an atomic bomb.

By the time Obama became president of the United States in January 2009, TAO had become something akin to the wunderkind of the U.S. intelligence community. "It's become an industry unto itself," a former NSA official said of TAO at the time. "They go places and get things that nobody else in the IC [intelligence community] can."

Given the nature and extraordinary political sensitivity of its work, it will come as no surprise that TAO has always been, and remains, extraordinarily publicity shy. Everything about TAO is classified top secret codeword, even within the hypersecretive NSA. Its name has appeared in print only a few times over the past decade, and the handful of reporters who have dared inquire about it have been politely but very firmly warned by senior U.S. intelligence officials not to describe its work for fear that it might compromise its ongoing efforts. According to a senior U.S. defense official who is familiar with TAO's work, "The agency believes that the less people know about them [TAO] the better."

The word among NSA officials is that if you want to get promoted or recognized, get a transfer to TAO as soon as you can. The current head of the NSA's SIGINT Directorate, Teresa Shea, 54, got her current job in large part because of the work she did as chief of TAO in the years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when the unit earned plaudits for its ability to collect extremely hard-to-come-by information during the latter part of George W. Bush's administration. We do not know what the information was, but sources suggest that it must have been pretty important to propel Shea to her position today. But according to a recently retired NSA official, TAO "is the place to be right now."

There's no question that TAO has continued to grow in size and importance since Obama took office in 2009, which is indicative of its outsized role. In recent years, TAO's collection operations have expanded from Fort Meade to some of the agency's most important listening posts in the United States. There are now mini-TAO units operating at the huge NSA SIGINT intercept and processing centers at NSA Hawaii at Wahiawa on the island of Oahu; NSA Georgia at Fort Gordon, Georgia; and NSA Texas at the Medina Annex outside San Antonio, Texas; and within the huge NSA listening post at Buckley Air Force Base outside Denver.

The problem is that TAO has become so large and produces so much valuable intelligence information that it has become virtually impossible to hide it anymore. The Chinese government is certainly aware of TAO's activities. The "mountains of data" statement by China's top Internet official, Huang Chengqing, is clearly an implied threat by Beijing to release this data. Thus it is unlikely that President Obama pressed President Xi too hard at the Sunnydale summit on the question of China's cyber-espionage activities. As any high-stakes poker player knows, you can only press your luck so far when the guy on the other side of the table knows what cards you have in your hand.

Let me put this another way: If Stuxnet can be written to hack into essentially dumb microcontrollers - how difficult would it be to write viruses intended specifically to bug PCs of VPN users?

[reggie]

Re: NSA vs VPN?

sorry, dup post

[reggie]

Re: NSA vs VPN?

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.

We know that military industrial complex monies built Silicon Valley, MIT, Stanford, Caltech. We also know that the same resources and scientists under their funding designed and built the global network now in use. So, are we to believe that after decades of investment in time, money and intellect, this same military industrial complex allowed uncontrolled actors to build the private companies that would exploit these investments, and hopefully negotiate arrangements to share data and/or infrastructure?

Would using a VPN do any good against this?

Right, who cares how well the line is protected when the signals are embedded in a shadow system at its internal end point.

[santafe2]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

1) Hockey on television is so everyone can watch the Canuckleheads and the Leafs choke when they play Boston, watch the instant replays of them doing it again and again, and all without having to spend our beer money on playoff tickets for the privilege;

2) Peter "Puck" Pocklington (then owner of the Edmonton Oilers) was responsible for that Canadian "Date That Will Live in Infamy", August 9, 1988. But the Oilers went on to win another Stanley Cup in 1990 without the Great One and we got over it. And unlike you Americans, when this sort of thing happens we believe the results of the investigation...Peter Puck acted alone. All of us Canadians know the real reason Gretzky was traded to the Kings was so the good citizens of Los Angeles could go to the Forum and watch a real sport...not have to keep suffering that sissy, dribble-ball stuff the Lakers used to play there.

3) We don't care if you folks don't know the words to our National Anthem (hell, we don't them either), but please don't hang the flag inverted while playing it, eh.

4) Basketball? It was a Canadian, James Naismith, who is credited with inventing the game of basketball. We gave it away to you folks 'cus it was cutting into our hockey time. A guy's gotta set some priorities ya know. And besides, it's a sissy, dribble-ball type of game.

I just finished watching one of the greatest basketball finals I've ever seen and I understand we don't get each others sports. Some day I'll come to Canada to see a hockey game but I don't get why anyone cares. Maybe someday I'll grow up enough to get why people watch it. As for the anthem, you win hands down. It starts out O Canada...what could you possibly change? BTW, Naismith was a traitor, he gave away the greatest game ever. Now we're getting tar sands...could we have another basketball from you guys to make up for that?

[c1ue]

Re: NSA monitoring all Verizon users

We know that military industrial complex monies built Silicon Valley, MIT, Stanford, Caltech.

Uh, no.

Stanford was created as a giant tax boondoggle by Leland Stanford - a way to keep tax free a large chunk of land he managed to wiggle out from railroad related land grants.

Caltech in turn does very little military research - but all kinds of research in general.

We also know that the same resources and scientists under their funding designed and built the global network now in use.

Wrong. Completely, utterly, and stupidly wrong. The global network now in use has many contributors - most of them national telephone companies. The early Internet - say up to about the mid-90s - could arguably have been said to be government sponsored because it was the universities which put in the wave 2 nodes (wave 1 were the direct defense research establishments).

The whole point of the IP protocol is that there is no need for centrally organized expansion of the network. All that's necessary is to add capacity and routers following the correct protocols into the network.