Prism and Verizon surveillance discussion thread

[Cain]

What's interesting about this, is that it is targeting Verizon's business customers - not personal phone usage.

I've heard suggestions it may be linked to suspected Iranian hacking....but no-one seems to know anything.  I certainly don't think they're cracking down on insider trading, money laundering and fraud in the banking system, for example 

Iranian? Realizing this was posted in 2013, I'm sure the board has been made more aware of the Chinese inclination toward the suggested invasion of international privacy. *dunno*

Still Reading.

May 2013 saw a spate of Iranian hacking stories.  Also, there was various skullduggery regarding large banks trading with Iran around the same time (in breach of US sanctions), and the data requested from Verizon was business metadata, not individual phone call logs.

Also, state-sanctioned Chinese hacking is vastly overrated in scope and intensity.  While the Chinese government has set up dedicated hacking networks, the USA frequently uses the existence of these networks to justify its own "full spectrum dominance" of the Internet, and in actuality US hacking is the most pervasive advanced persistent threat to businesses and individuals on the web.  Of course, the US justifies these in defensive terms...but then again, the US justifies everything in defensive terms.

[Cain]

Also also, attribution on the internet is a bitch.  I know for a fact that at least three attacks attributed to the Chinese military in the press were in fact carried out by people associated with the Russian Business Network, who were operating with Chinese IPs at the time.

[UB]

Its like a global masquerade party where everyone can bare their assets but not their faces.

[Cain]

Pretty much.  And just to add to the fun, many of the actors are themselves non-state third party proxies.  I mean, Lulzsec, for example, was clearly being run by the FBI for part of their hacking career.  The RBN are mercenaries, though they tend to not work against Russian interests.  Chinese and Brazilian hackers might be working for the PLA or the SC-2/EMD...or they might be legitimately independent operators,

So it's like a masquerade which may have been gatecrashed...but no-one is really sure to what extent.

[Junkenstein]

Hahahaha
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-27887639
HAHAHAahahahaha

UK intelligence service GCHQ can legally snoop on British use of Google, Facebook and web-based email without specific warrants because the firms are based abroad, the government has said.

Classed as "external communications", such activity can be covered by a broad warrant and intercepted without extra clearance, Spy boss Charles Farr said.

The policy was revealed as part of a legal battle with campaign group Privacy International (PI).

PI labelled the policy "patronising".

It is the first time the UK has commented on how its legal framework allows the mass interception of communications, as outlined by US whistleblower Edward Snowden in his leaks about global government surveillance.

AHAHAHAHAHA

However, he said data collected in this way "cannot be read, looked at or listened to" except in strictly limited circumstances.

AHAHAHAIIIIIIEEEEE

To me, this is all but an admission that while they might not read it themselves anything of possible interest is just sent to the USA or elsewhere where they read it and tell you what's up. Guess how you return the favour? The best part is, technically, it's all nice and legal.

[Cain]

At least we now know what we've always suspected, but couldn't get proof of.

Getting the intelligence services to comment on anything* is like getting blood from a stone these days.  I mean, the legal framework which surrounds intelligence gathering in the UK is shrouded in absolute secrecy, when compared with the American framework (no matter how much it is ignored...or says "NSA rules lawl").

*well, anything except hyping scare stories about the perfidious Islamists in our midsts...while Republican dissidents shoot coppers and plant bombs on the streets of Northern Ireland

[UB]

It's so complex. Not like a labyrinth, more like the shifty safety net under a circus act. Really. Fascinating.

http://www.debka.com/article/24013/

Epic US-Iran military cooperation in Iraq coincides with Israel's war on Tehran's Palestinian ally, Hamas



Perhaps there is a grandfather clock, afterall?

[Junkenstein]

If anyone cares to clean up the shit in this thread, I won't object.

Seems related:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27949674

Complaints originating from social media make up "at least half" of a front-line police officer's work, a senior officer has told the BBC.

Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, said the number of crimes arising from social media represented "a real problem".

He said the police and public were still trying to understand when online insults became a crime.

Mr Marshall told BBC Radio 4's Law in Action: "As people have moved their shopping online and their communications online, they've also moved their insults, their abuse and their threats online, so I see that it won't be long before pretty much every investigation that the police conduct will have an online element to it.

And while anecdotal evidence from officers indicates that dealing with complaints arising from social media now absorbed a significant amount of their time, it is not yet borne out in the figures.

Potential for a social media to prison pipeline? Surely growing. Considering the various shit of late with dual construction and the general capabilities in accessing pretty much anything anyone does on the internet, I can only assume that the intention here is for the time spent/convictions made ratio to improve.

[Cain]

So, as you may be aware, the NSA's Keith Alexander has gone into the private sector security biz, where he is making a cool $600,000 a month.

You might be wondering "what justifies such an exorbinant fee, even in the admittedly crazy world of infosec consulting?"  Well, you're not the only one. 

Alan Grayson and Bruce Schneier strongly suspect that Keith Alexander is selling classified information to banking corporations.  It's the only possible thing that could justify such a large fee.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

Friendly reminder.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/is-it-the-bilderberg-conference--or-conspiracy-9449477.html

one of the participants at the heavily fortified, five-star Marriott Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, will be Keith Alexander, the former director of the National Security Agency

Of course, this is completely unrelated.

[Telarus]

Pretty sure we all saw this story coming.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140630/12101627734/fbi-cia-also-make-use-backdoor-searches-nsa-data-to-access-us-communications-without-warrant.shtml

The other shoe just dropped when it comes to how the federal government illegally spies on Americans. Last summer, the details of the NSA's "backdoor searches" were revealed. This involved big collections of content and metadata (so, no, not "just metadata" as meaningless as that phrase is) that were collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). This is part of the program that the infamous PRISM effort operates under, and which allows the NSA to collect all sorts of content, including communications to, from or about a "target" -- where a "target" can be incredibly loosely defined (i.e., it can include groups or machines or just about anything). The "backdoor searches" were a special loophole added in 2011 allowing the NSA to make use of "US person names and identifiers as query terms." In the past, it had been limited (as per the NSA's mandate) to only non-US persons.

This morning, James Clapper finally responded to a request from Senator Ron Wyden concerning the number of such backdoor searches using US identifiers that were done by various government agencies. And, surprisingly, it's redaction free. The big reveal is... that it's not just the NSA doing these searches, but the CIA and FBI as well. This is especially concerning with regards to the FBI. This means that the FBI, who does surveillance on Americans, is spying on Americans communications that were collected by the NSA and that they're doing so without anything resembling a warrant. Oh, and let's make this even worse: the FBI isn't even tracking how often it does this. It's just doing it willy nilly:

[The Johnny]

LOL oversight

[Telarus]

LOL oversight

Newsfeed.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Pretty sure we all saw this story coming.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140630/12101627734/fbi-cia-also-make-use-backdoor-searches-nsa-data-to-access-us-communications-without-warrant.shtml

The other shoe just dropped when it comes to how the federal government illegally spies on Americans. Last summer, the details of the NSA's "backdoor searches" were revealed. This involved big collections of content and metadata (so, no, not "just metadata" as meaningless as that phrase is) that were collected under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). This is part of the program that the infamous PRISM effort operates under, and which allows the NSA to collect all sorts of content, including communications to, from or about a "target" -- where a "target" can be incredibly loosely defined (i.e., it can include groups or machines or just about anything). The "backdoor searches" were a special loophole added in 2011 allowing the NSA to make use of "US person names and identifiers as query terms." In the past, it had been limited (as per the NSA's mandate) to only non-US persons.

This morning, James Clapper finally responded to a request from Senator Ron Wyden concerning the number of such backdoor searches using US identifiers that were done by various government agencies. And, surprisingly, it's redaction free. The big reveal is... that it's not just the NSA doing these searches, but the CIA and FBI as well. This is especially concerning with regards to the FBI. This means that the FBI, who does surveillance on Americans, is spying on Americans communications that were collected by the NSA and that they're doing so without anything resembling a warrant. Oh, and let's make this even worse: the FBI isn't even tracking how often it does this. It's just doing it willy nilly:

Yeah, Richard Nixon, what a villain, amirite? 

[Cain]

So, things are getting weird.  How weird?

The previously quite sensible Cryptome.org is warning that war is coming very soon, and only a full release of "crippling intel" by Snowden and/or citizens with access to his leaked data can avert it.

With an interview with Mint News:

Something transparency advocates are particularly excited about regarding the release of these documents is that the documents reportedly contain information that has been described as being powerful enough to prevent a war by creating public distrust toward government and their respective intelligence communities.

Cryptome‬ f‪o‬under J‪o‬hn Y‪o‬ung has said that the war that could potentially be stopped by the documents is related to the expansion of the war on terror, but there is no clear indication of how these documents would prevent such a war or which countries would be involved.

And there may be a second NSA leaker. 

Meanwhile, Greenwald has bottled it on the "grand finale" with the Snowden documents because they have to "investigate claims" by the US government before publishing, or something.