The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA.
“It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve had conversations with executives at tech companies about this precise thing. How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?”
Previous disclosures about the NSA’s corporate partnerships have focused largely on U.S. companies providing the agency with vast amounts of customer data, including phone records and email traffic. But documents published today by The Intercept suggest that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them, companies have also cooperated more broadly to undermine the physical infrastructure of the internet than has been previously confirmed.
In addition to so-called “close access” operations, the NSA’s “core secrets” include the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems; the fact that the NSA spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on technology to defeat commercial encryption; and the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to penetrate computer networks, possibly without the knowledge of the host countries. Many of the NSA’s core secrets concern its relationships to domestic and foreign corporations.
Some of the documents in this article appear in a new documentary, CITIZENFOUR, which tells the story of the Snowden disclosures and is directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras. The documents describe a panoply of programs classified with the rare designation of “Exceptionally Compartmented Information,” or ECI, which are only disclosed to a “very select” number of government officials.
Sentry Eagle
The agency’s core secrets are outlined in a 13-page “brief sheet” about Sentry Eagle, an umbrella term that the NSA used to encompass its most sensitive programs “to protect America’s cyberspace.”
“You are being indoctrinated on Sentry Eagle,” the 2004 document begins, before going on to list the most highly classified aspects of its various programs. It warns that the details of the Sentry Eagle programs are to be shared with only a “limited number” of people, and even then only with the approval of one of a handful of senior intelligence officials, including the NSA director.
“The facts contained in this program constitute a combination of the greatest number of highly sensitive facts related to NSA/CSS’s overall cryptologic mission,” the briefing document states. “Unauthorized disclosure…will cause exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The loss of this information could critically compromise highly sensitive cryptologic U.S. and foreign relationships, multi-year past and future NSA investments, and the ability to exploit foreign adversary cyberspace while protecting U.S. cyberspace.”
The document does not provide any details on the identity or number of government officials who were supposed to know about these highly classified programs. Nor is it clear what sort of congressional or judicial oversight, if any, was applied to them. The NSA refused to comment beyond a statement saying, “It should come as no surprise that NSA conducts targeted operations to counter increasingly agile adversaries.” The agency cited Presidential Policy Directive 28, which it claimed “requires signals intelligence policies and practices to take into account the globalization of trade, investment and information flows, and the commitment to an open, interoperable, and secure global Internet.” The NSA, the statement concluded, “values these principles and honors them in the performance of its mission.”
Sentry Eagle includes six programs: Sentry Hawk (for activities involving computer network exploitation, or spying), Sentry Falcon (computer network defense), Sentry Osprey (cooperation with the CIA and other intelligence agencies), Sentry Raven (breaking encryption systems), Sentry Condor (computer network operations and attacks), and Sentry Owl (collaborations with private companies). Though marked as a draft from 2004, it refers to the various programs in language indicating that they were ongoing at the time, and later documents in the Snowden archive confirm that some of the activities were going on as recently as 2012.
TAREX
One of the most interesting components of the “core secrets” involves an array of clandestine activities in the real world by NSA agents working with their colleagues at the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon. The NSA is generally thought of as a spying agency that conducts its espionage from afar—via remote commands, cable taps, and malware implants that are overseen by analysts working at computer terminals. But the agency also participates in a variety of “human intelligence” programs that are grouped under the codename Sentry Osprey. According to the briefing document’s description of Sentry Osprey, the NSA “employs its own HUMINT assets (Target Exploitation—TAREX) to support SIGINT operations.”
According to a 2012 classification guide describing the program, TAREX “conducts worldwide clandestine Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) close-access operations and overt and clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) operations.” The NSA directs and funds the operations and shares authority over them with the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command. The guide states that TAREX personnel are “integrated” into operations conducted by the CIA, FBI, and Defense Intelligence Agency. It adds that TAREX operations include “off net-enabling,” “supply chain-enabling,” and “hardware implant-enabling.”
According to another NSA document, off-net operations are “covert or clandestine field activities,” while supply-chain operations are “interdiction activities that focus on modifying equipment in a target’s supply chain.”
The NSA’s involvement in supply-chain interdiction was previously revealed in No Place to Hide, written by Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald. The book included a photograph of intercepted packages being opened by NSA agents, and an accompanying NSA document explained the packages were “redirected to a secret location” where the agents implanted surveillance beacons that secretly communicated with NSA computers. The document did not say how the packages were intercepted and did not suggest, as the new documents do, that interception and implants might be done by clandestine agents in the field.
The TAREX guide lists South Korea, Germany, and Beijing, China as sites where the NSA has deployed a “forward-based TAREX presence;” TAREX personnel also operate at domestic NSA centers in Hawaii, Texas, and Georgia. It also states that TAREX personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies and other “overseas locations,” but does not specify where. The document does not say what the “forward-based” personnel are doing, or how extensive TAREX operations are. But China, South Korea, and Germany are all home to large telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and China is known to be a key target of U.S. intelligence activities.
Although TAREX has existed for decades, until now there has been little information in the public domain about its current scope. A 2010 book by a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, described TAREX operations in Afghanistan as consisting of “small-unit, up-close, intelligence-gathering operatives. Usually two-to-three man units.”
“Under Cover” Agents
The most controversial revelation in Sentry Eagle might be a fleeting reference to the NSA infiltrating clandestine agents into “commercial entities.” The briefing document states that among Sentry Eagle’s most closely guarded components are “facts related to NSA personnel (under cover), operational meetings, specific operations, specific technology, specific locations and covert communications related to SIGINT enabling with specific commercial entities (A/B/C).”
It is not clear whether these “commercial entities” are American or foreign or both. Generally the placeholder “(A/B/C)” is used in the briefing document to refer to American companies, though on one occasion it refers to both American and foreign companies. Foreign companies are referred to with the placeholder “(M/N/O).” The NSA refused to provide any clarification to The Intercept.
The document makes no other reference to NSA agents working under cover. It is not clear whether they might be working as full-time employees at the “commercial entities,” or whether they are visiting commercial facilities under false pretenses. The CIA is known to use agents masquerading as businessmen, and it has used shell companies in the U.S. to disguise its activities.
There is a long history of overt NSA involvement with American companies, especially telecommunications and technology firms. Such firms often have employees with security clearances who openly communicate with intelligence agencies as part of their duties, so that the government receives information from the companies that it is legally entitled to receive, and so that the companies can be alerted to classified cyber threats. Often, such employees have previously worked at the NSA, FBI, or the military.
But the briefing document suggests another category of employees—ones who are secretly working for the NSA without anyone else being aware. This kind of double game, in which the NSA works with and against its corporate partners, already characterizes some of the agency’s work, in which information or concessions that it desires are surreptitiously acquired if corporations will not voluntarily comply. The reference to “under cover” agents jumped out at two security experts who reviewed the NSA documents for The Intercept.
“That one bullet point, it’s really strange,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University. “I don’t know how to interpret it.” He added that the cryptography community in America would be surprised and upset if it were the case that “people are inside [an American] company covertly communicating with NSA and they are not known to the company or to their fellow employees.”
The ACLU’s Soghoian said technology executives are already deeply concerned about the prospect of clandestine agents on the payroll to gain access to highly sensitive data, including encryption keys, that could make the NSA’s work “a lot easier.”
“As more and more communications become encrypted, the attraction for intelligence agencies of stealing an encryption key becomes irresistible,” he said. “It’s such a juicy target.”
Of course the NSA is just one intelligence agency that would stand to benefit from these operations. China’s intelligence establishment is believed to be just as interested in penetrating American companies as the NSA is believed to be interested in penetrating Chinese firms.
“The NSA is a risk [but] I worry a lot more about the Chinese,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare, a server company. “The insider threat is a huge challenge.” Prince thinks it is unlikely the NSA would place secret agents inside his or other American firms, due to political and legal issues. “I would be surprised if that were the case within any U.S. organization without at least a senior executive like the CEO knowing it was happening,” he said. But he assumes the NSA or CIA are doing precisely that in foreign companies. “I would be more surprised if they didn’t,” he said.
Corporate Partners
The briefing sheet’s description of Sentry Owl indicates the NSA has previously unknown relationships with foreign companies. According to the document, the agency “works with specific foreign partners (X/Y/Z) and foreign commercial industry entities” to make devices and products “exploitable for SIGINT”—a reference to signals intelligence, which is the heart of the NSA’s effort to collect digital communications, such as emails, texts, photos, chats, and phone records. This language clarifies a vague reference to foreign companies that appears in the secret 2013 budget for the intelligence community, key parts of which were published last year from the Snowden archive.
The document does not name any foreign companies or products, and gives no indication of the number or scale of the agency’s ties to them. Previous disclosures from the Snowden archive have exposed the agency’s close relationships with foreign intelligence agencies, but there has been relatively little revealed about the agency gaining the help of foreign companies.
The description of Sentry Hawk, which involves attacks on computer networks, also indicates close ties with foreign as well as American companies. The document states that the NSA “works with U.S. and foreign commercial entities…in the conduct of CNE [Computer Network Exploitation].” Although previous stories from the Snowden archive revealed a wide range of NSA attacks on computer networks, it has been unclear whether those attacks were conducted with the help of “commercial entities”—especially foreign ones. The document does not provide the names of any of these entities or the types of operations.
Green, the cryptography professor, said “it’s a big deal” if the NSA is working with foreign companies on a greater scale than currently understood. Until now, he noted, disclosures about the agency’s corporate relationships have focused on American companies. Those revelations have harmed their credibility, nudging customers to foreign alternatives that were thought to be untouched by the NSA. If foreign companies are also cooperating with the NSA and modifying their products, the options for purchasing truly secure telecommunications hardware are more limited than previously thought.
The briefing sheet does not say whether foreign governments are aware that the NSA may be working with their own companies. If they are not aware, says William Binney, a former NSA crypto-mathematician turned whistleblower, it would mean the NSA is cutting deals behind the backs of friendly and perhaps not-so-friendly governments.
“The idea of having foreign corporations involved without any hint of any foreign government involved is significant,” he said. “It will be an alert to all governments to go check with their companies. Bring them into parliament and put them under oath.”
The description of Sentry Raven, which focuses on encryption, provides additional confirmation that American companies have helped the NSA by secretly weakening encryption products to make them vulnerable to the agency. The briefing sheet states the NSA “works with specific U.S. commercial entities…to modify U.S manufactured encryption systems to make them exploitable for SIGINT.” It doesn’t name the commercial entities or the encryption tools they modified, but it appears to encompass a type of activity that Reuters revealed last year—that the NSA paid $10 million to the security firm RSA to use a weak random number generator in one of its encryption programs.
The avalanche of NSA disclosures since the Snowden leaks began in 2013 has shattered whatever confidence technologists once had about their networks. When asked for comment on the latest documents, Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, began his response by saying, “We’re hyper-paranoid about everything.”
Documents:
- Sentry Eagle Brief Sheet (13 pages)
- TAREX Classification Guide (7 pages)
- Exceptionally Controlled Information Listing (6 pages)
- ECI WHIPGENIE Classification Guide (7 pages)
- ECI Pawleys Classification Guide (4 pages)
- ECI Compartments (4 pages)
- CNO Core Secrets Slide Slices (10 pages)
- CNO Core Secrets Security Structure (3 pages)
- Computer Network Exploitation Classification Guide (8 pages)
- CNO Core Secrets (7 pages)
Fact checking by Alleen Brown. Research by Margot Williams.
Contact the author:
Laura Poitras✉laura.poitras@fieldofvision.org
I am a great supporter of this website, but articles like this are why your clicks and comments have been bombing hard for the past few months.
You need to write better, simply put. This article is bloated, repetitive, and just BORING. I am far more engaged than most with these issues, but I found myself completely overwhelmed by jargon, with no clear idea of why the things the article was telling me were important.
You set out in the first paragraph what exactly the documents reveal. Good. But then you need to go on to explain why this is worrying, what is wrong about it, how it differs from the standard NSA/CIA mission to spy on foreign countries. Because I gotta say, the headline “NSA spies on China, Germany” will have most people saying “well, good.”
Instead you launch into a lengthy disquisition of all the different code names and all the obfuscating, euphemistic language the NSA uses to describe its own activities. No one understands this except for total intelligence nerds who actually pore through all the Snowden documents.
You NEED to demonstrate why this information is important, or else people will go and read Kaplan’s article on Slate and agree with him that you’re just blowing hot air about perfectly normal NSA activities.
“You need to write better, simply put. This article is bloated, repetitive, and just BORING. I am far more engaged than most with these issues, but I found myself completely overwhelmed by jargon, with no clear idea of why the things the article was telling me were important.”
Yes, because clearly Wulfsten makes an excellent point here that the writers need not neglect. You needed to spice up the article and make it a little more sexy for the reader, who could easily lose interest in the midst of all of this information and technical data. Would it hurt to throw in a sex scandal by a hot Hollywood couple, or a shocking newsflash about trouble at home for a national treasure? It wouldn’t matter if you were telling the truth or engaging in slander, because this would all results in attracting more attention to the article and the Website itself. Excellent business model.
“Instead you launch into a lengthy disquisition of all the different code names and all the obfuscating, euphemistic language the NSA uses to describe its own activities. No one understands this except for total intelligence nerds who actually pore through all the Snowden documents.”
Yes, because the last thing that people would want after they click on the article would be accurate information relevant to the story itself. Point proven, Wulfsten; people that are interested in things of this sort obviously would not want to be told the truth. Because the last thing that the public wants to be is well informed. Take a little advice from Wulfsten here the next time you write an article.
Thank you Mr. Wulfsten. I too believe that The Intercept is offering essential service to the public. Yet these stories need to be populated by people affected by these totalitarian policies. Also, America’s spying and extrajudicial harassment against Americans ought to be emphasized since we are those with a Constitution guaranteeing the right to free press and privacy. When American lose these rights the world will suffer because there will be no standard to reach for.
Patriots torture with glee and impunity.
Everybody gets paid.
It’s a good business.
Active Denial System weapons is a subset of the Directed Energy Weapons systems whose operational core is a gyrotron that generates a coherent stream of 95GHz radiation. This radiation, when aimed at a target, broils the 1/64th layer of the skin by heating water molecules at this layer to close to boiling point. The pain is so intense it is virtually indescribable, yet blister formation does not occur due to specificities of the frequencies required to trigger the blister-formation process which are bypassed. The absence of blisters is often used by the torturers as a basis for declaring the targets that they torture, psychotic, in an incredible act of double injury and insult.
In 2010, the remote torture criminals broiled my head and upper torso with ADS for close to a year, 24/7. The official mechanism of escaping the heat which according to official documents, is to accomplished by fleeing from the beam’s path, was denied to me. Instead, the broiling heat followed me everywhere I went. I left my house and stayed in hotels and motels, where, for the first day or so, I would experience complete relief, until the torture logistics setup was ready to beam the hotel or motel room, typically a day or so later. By 2010, I must add, the technology could be airborne and more compact versions of it were available.
The torture tool has a built-in feature engineered to trigger off after a certain duration of exposure occurs. To quote Dr. Beason, a renowned and respected Air Force Physicist who conducted research on these types of weapons systems at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Labs: “Right now there are engineering controls to make sure that the operators of these types of systems cannot keep the beam on for more than a specified amount of time.” But the torture operator, simply let the weapon run a CYCLE where it would broil me for what seemed like an eternity and true to Beason, the heat would abate for a few seconds but would reset and resume as original power density levels of intense heat over again. This went on day in and day out.
At night, I had nowhere to run. I slept in Ziplock bags filled with ice all around my head, and a bed of more ice-filled Ziplock bags lined my back. More bags on the chest and left breast where the perverts occassionally targeted the heat. Another bag on the left eye. I shivered all night from the cold that the ice delivered while, in a bizarre paradox, broiling everywhere from the waist up from the ADS heat.
During the day, I hauled around a Ziplock bags filled with ice, while concurrently, nanoparticles ‘crawled’ all over the scalp in a diabolic implementation of sensory overload torture. The power density used by the torture ogre appeared to be a level just below fatal or injurious levels, proving that the intention was to torture with severe pain. When Dr Beason and others helped develop these DEW systems (lasers, HPMs and particle beams), I do not believe that they hoped for these horrors to occur.
I do not seek to convince the reader of our torture. Suffices for me to know that the torturers know that what I have written here, is indeed an accurate description of their proud work of torturing their fellow Americans.
For more, please read and send others to read this:
http://freedomfchs.lefora.com/topic/7442322/Nanodevices-in-Sensory-Overload-Mind-Control-Torture
And the worst part is that they have been torturing me just to below fatal levels since I have been posting here. Low grade suffocation with nanodevices; radiating tooth nerve roots; scrolling the scalp with maximal pressure (similar to pressures exerted on paper during writing) ;forcible ingestion of the nanofibres; sleep deprivation via remote-originating startling sounds; scrolling nanodevices all over the eyelids when I close my eyes at night where they feeld like a billion baby spiders darting back and forth, up and down and gnawing at the margins of the eyelids as if trying to penetrate the eye, while Delgado-like phrases try to over-write my memory.
I get the message.
Mr. Tice, thank you for your service to humankind. Future generations will owe you for your service, and we are all indebted to you.
Dr. Robert Duncan, who describes himself as a former CIA researcher, says that the electronic harassment program is called SATAN, an acronym for ‘silent assassination through adaptive neural networks.’ Can you confirm this information? Thank you.
In former CIA researcher Robert Duncan’s book, ‘How To Tame A Demon,’ a guide on coping with electronic harassment, he writes:
Q: Are they stealing my intellectual property?
A: “This is the spy game. Yes, they do this. …The handlers and spy agencies want to be in control of all new ideas and who brings them to market or warfare. It is impossible to prove but the capability is there, is happening, and is part of corporate espionage.”
These documents confirm Duncan’s claims.
From ‘How to Tame a Demon,’ a guidebook on surviving electronic harassment and mind control.
Q: “Are they stealing my intellectual property?”
A: “This is the spy game. Yes, they do this. Usually the targeted individual is told this to make them angry and stress them out more. The handlers and spy agencies want to be in control of all new ideas and who brings them to market or warfare. It is impossible to prove but the capability is there, is happening, and is part of corporate espionage.”
These documents are the proof he said was missing.
I think what bothers the NSA most is that now “their” secrets are begin revealed. It must be pretty humiliating for these folks who are used to lurking in the shadows, lying, cheating and stealing, lording it over everybody and treating the rest of the world like chumps and idiots. And now, bit by bit as each new story comes out, they are being slowly revealed as an infestation of leprous vermin. Every where they go, they spread their disease and corruption.
Going from “Unsung Heroes” to “Putrid Human Scum” has gotta hurt a little. Just ask Congress.
They have been revealed, true, but they don’t care. Doesn’t hurt a bit. And the spying will go on.
ET CONTACT NOW CONFIRMED BY NSA DOCUMENTS
These NSA documents don’t lie.
Governments can now stop the BS and media cover-up/blackout.
The cat is out of the bag.
Now we all need to know what else has the NSA been hiding from humanity.
SECRETS are the weapons of totalitarian enterprises used to control and manipulated the population.
EXAMPLE: The EBOLA HOAX is a cleaver-cover for an invasion of WEST AFRICA to steal their resources by the bankrupt corporate government of the USA. No one would believe the Red Cross, CDC and the WHO could ever help commit genocide on the world population. The global corporate media tells us they are our heroes. The TRUTH is coming out, just as with the ET revelation. The crooks are on the run.
BTW It is the vaccines that make you sick people.
Demented American disinfo trash like you does lie.
When does extrajudicial torture stop, Americans?
Laura, presumably someone has already told you this little fact…but fu*#K it at this point, I’ll tell you just in case. Do they have agents on the ground, probably…
But all these physicists and mathematicians that they hired 2003/2004 straight out of Columbia, John Hopkins etc…They were on 5 year contracts and then went to work for private industry. They built this system and left. I don’t know if NSA agents have to break in the door…I think they walk in the door with a resume. This is a question for Snowden. I really don’t know the answer.
When you join the CIA you sign away some of your constitutional rights. In theory, you are in for life. I’m not sure if it is the same type of situation with the NSA, where you actually still work for them. But I do know all of these people would have joined private industry in 2008/2009, following their tenure at the NSA.
OK ENOUGH IS ENOUGH, DO THESE SPY AGENCIES BELIEVE THAT THE WORLD BANK AND THE FINANCIAL SECTOR WILL TOLERATE THIS CRAP???
YOUR MESSING WITH NOT JUST CIVIL COMMUNICATIONS YOUR TAKING ON THE WHOLE BANKING SECTOR IN THAT SAME EFFORT OF WE’LL CONTROL IT ALL..
DO YOU REALLY THINK THE BANKS WILL STAND FOR IT? ARE YOU RETARDED, HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING CRACK?
AMERICAN EXPRESS, MASTERCARD & VISA WILL NOT BE A HAPPY BUNNY!
ET COMMUNICATIONS AND NSA
“This is how Sherman describes, in his 1998 book, the rational for hiding deep black alien related projects under the umbrella of a less classified program:
When someone is assigned to an alien project they are also assigned to the collateral black mission (cover mission). One of the reason for this is if someone were to reveal any alien information, by extension, they would most likely reveal something about the cover project and it would be on this basis that someone would be prosecuted for divulging classified information. (p. IX)”
http://exopolitics.org/nsa-document-supports-whistleblower-claim-of-alien-ufo-communication-program/
I advise all aliens to avoid this planet until we have calmed down.
ET COMMUNICATIONS AND THE NSA
“This is how Sherman describes, in his 1998 book, the rational for hiding deep black alien related projects under the umbrella of a less classified program:
When someone is assigned to an alien project they are also assigned to the collateral black mission (cover mission). One of the reason for this is if someone were to reveal any alien information, by extension, they would most likely reveal something about the cover project and it would be on this basis that someone would be prosecuted for divulging classified information. (p. IX)”
http://exopolitics.org/nsa-document-supports-whistleblower-claim-of-alien-ufo-communication-program/
Recently what made it’s way into my browser’s inbox was the new’s flash that the United States has gone off on some wierd and wonderful tennant about espionage on the digital frontier. Whereby there Cyber task-force has gone down some strange road of wanting to learn everything there is to know about other peoples personal and private live’s from trolling there online activity in tandem with a Major search giant. Those of us that can remember the stories of the past are not tempted to repeat ancient history. This is nothing new, it’s been tried before and no-doubt it’ll be tried again. Case in point Microsoft & IBM’s attempted monopoly with AT&T whereby they disolved the system being used for all of this economic suicide in the past, to only repeat the whole performance later on, once again in the future. Hilariously reading the comments of the attempted justification of robbing people of there privacy.
In that respect Governments invoke the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse (software pirates, organised crime, child pornographers, and terrorists) and say that unless they can decrypt bad guys’ hard drives and listen in on their conversations, law and order is a dead letter. On the other side of that arguement, virtually every security and cryptography expert tries patiently to explain that there’s no such thing as “a back door that only the good guys can walk through”
The “crypto wars” of the early 1990s were fuelled by this realisation – that computers were changing the global real politic’s in an historically unprecedented way. Computational crypto made keeping secrets exponentially easier than breaking secrets, meaning that, for the first time in human history, the ability for people without social or political power to keep their private lives truly private from governments, police, and corporations was in there grasp and has remained within the grasp of every other knowledgable security inclined programmer for the better part of over a decade.
However not to be out done, in a blatant attempt to shift the control out of the hands of the general public and into the hands of the industrialised military complex, they have broken into the commercial communications of potentially millions of innocent people, in there goal to weed needles out of the haystack, saddly they always over look the most basic fact. Hacker’s invented the security mechanisms they’re trying to subvert and hackers will always be another step ahead in that respect.
It’s always been easy for people to try and destroy mechanism’s they dont fully understand, just as it has always been just as easy for people to embrace newer mechanism’s that those in political power have never even heard of. Just as Major corperations seek to monopolize information, others will always attempt to keep it free. The proverbial revolution of the masses is as unstoppable as the very ocean itself and to attempt to stand in the way of progress is to risk being crushed by it.
It’s kind of hilariously simple from a programming perspective, most of the software in use today is unfortunately dare I say it, a huge pile of horse shit. It got that way, because of those people that are poor excuses for programming experts and from the persistant manipulation from those very same intrusive and insane Government departments that would go around trying to weaken protective standards designed to keep the very economy afloat. American big buisness has always had this very real and tangible problem, there vile and distastful desire to turn everything online into ‘Organizational and Analytical’ data.
People are not products, you can not buy and sell people, just as you can no longer buy and sell “slaves!”
There have been some great mathamatical studies made on this in the past and all people really need to do is look at the ‘Lorenz’ attractor in ‘Chaos theory’ applied maths to take a firm grasp of the scope of the problem. Chaos = When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.
Deterministic systems whose behavior can in principle be predicted. Chaotic systems are predictable for a while and then appear to become random. The amount of time for which the behavior of a chaotic system can be effectively predicted depends on three things: How much uncertainty we are willing to tolerate in the forecast; how accurately we are able to measure its current state; and a time scale depending on the dynamics of the afore mentioned system.
A consequence of sensitivity to initial conditions is that if we start with only a finite amount of information about the system (as is usually the case in practice especially when others class there system as some kind of ‘secret’), then beyond a certain time the system will no longer be viable nor will it be predictable.
Or in laymans terms, political numptie number one, will decide at present to determine the future for everybody, according to there approximation of the present by utilizing a deterministic system that they devise, whereby they believe the out-come will be predictable and un-avoidable. With little calculation for uncertainty in there forecast, very little accuracy on measuring the current state and with very little concept of having a confined time-scale. The result is unfortunate but totally predictable = ‘Chaos’
Those systems that are by there very nature ‘Chaotic’ with reports of ‘Random’ security breaches, compiled with a broken C++ Posix enabled tool-chain’s that came equiped with what other programmers would call the mind candy of ‘Sockets’ – ‘nCurses’ – ‘Ioctls’ – ‘Java’ have been found to be 96% completely broken in almost every single instance.
‘Organizational and Analytical’ data is actually a totally harmful concept, for example; can you predict the weather with 100% accuracy? Can you be assured you wont get struck by lightning, of how about falling down the stair’s, or crashing the car, or stubbing your big toe? Are all those out-comes well within the frame of being 100% predictable? The answer is of course not.
More recently some of the most alarming trends to date can be found in some of the most alarming levels of garbage to grace the masses. Ever heard of a start-up group called predictive future? There a new start-up recently purchased for the very sole purpose of predicting the future by examining current online trends…
Where do we as programmers and citizens draw the line of what we consider to be acceptable manipulation by greedy and manipulative global conglomerates?
And make no mistake you are being manipulated by a very small few that enjoy being able to hoard information, that is in there view relevant and secretive from public disclosure, because by hoarding such information for themselves they assure there guaranteed future when in retrospect some of them should be rotting in Jail.
Perhaps thats a question that will haunt those in Politic’s, those that can not program and those who would seek to divine the future through either direct or indirect interventive means for many years to come.
Nobody – can know it all, own it all and control it all, at least not in the sense they believe, because in order to do that, they would have to surrender there own liberties too and that would make them a ‘slave’ in the very real sense of that word, to there own economic devices and there own politically challenged madness.
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?’ – Who will guard the guards themselves? – or more aptly put – Who will watch the watchers?
Of course the arguement you will always hear from tyranical dictatorships & nest’s of thieves is that you should surrender the ‘Keys’ to your house and trust them not to do anything wrong, trust them not to open the door’s, trust them not to rifle through your personal belonging’s, etc, etc…
The only thing I would trust myself to do in such a situation would be to lock them completely out of any and all communications systems so devised, for the remainder of there natural lives, so that they would have ample time to reflect on there crude and childish mistake. The out-come is usually inevitable, when theyre informed in no uncertain terms that they can not have what they want, they’ll pout like a spoiled child that’s been sent off to it’s bedroom after having it’s toys taken away.
Another useless, lengthy diatribe from people deluded enough to believe that privacy is still worthy. Get with it, man! I mean, you start off with a vicious attack about our “Cyber task-force” that needs to “learn everything there is to know about other peoples personal and private live’s from trolling there online activity in tandem with a Major search giant”. Let me blow away your argument to smithereens with a concept you may not understand: the concept of innovation. Obviously, how else do you innovate original patentable streams of thought without raping all preceding and all future generations of their own ideas and contributions? This is how: you frame them by invoking your “Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse (software pirates, organised crime, child pornographers, and terrorists)”. Because we are the law, and a correct legal interpetation is that anyone who has or who has ever had access to the Internet is undeniably all four of those categories, for the simple fact that those types of phenomenon have existed outside and within the Internet before. It’s as obvious as pointing out that you are a genocidal dictator because you breathe the same air as that genocidal dictator has breathed or is breathing.
Next you go on to your baseless argument from people that we all are truly afraid of (and justifiably so): “every security and cryptography expert” who “tries patiently to explain that there’s no such thing as ‘a back door that only the good guys can walk through'”. Need I say more?
“It’s kind of hilariously simple from a programming perspective, most of the software in use today is unfortunately dare I say it, a huge pile of horse shit.”
You asshole. Say that to the face of all of the trustworthy Fortune 500 companies that have blessed us with online presences and interfaces.
“People are not products, you can not buy and sell people, just as you can no longer buy and sell “slaves!””
Corporations are people. Corporations are products. There goes your “people are not products” argument.
“More recently some of the most alarming trends to date can be found in some of the most alarming levels of garbage to grace the masses. Ever heard of a start-up group called predictive future? There a new start-up recently purchased for the very sole purpose of predicting the future by examining current online trends…”
You act like dissecting people’s souls is a bad idea. Do you have a better idea of boosting the profit margin?
“And make no mistake you are being manipulated by a very small few that enjoy being able to hoard information, that is in there view relevant and secretive from public disclosure, because by hoarding such information for themselves they assure there guaranteed future when in retrospect some of them should be rotting in Jail.”
This guy is ridiculous. Really? Is blackmail unethical? I didn’t think so.
You asked me to elaborate so I will, allow me to spell it out for some second rate programmer who’s worked for fortune 500 companies, who are Bell-Laboraories?
Do your research before you critises, Alcatel buys up Lucent technologies, becoming Alcatel Lucent – Alcatel Lucent lays 95% of the worlds underwater cables, not to forget to mention in passing that Lucent was the company that just signed a multimillion dollar deal with hauwei in China. Now which global company is it exactly that donated 7 million to the presidential campaign fund. Which company operates in both South Korea, Texas and Hawaii?? Which company was quoted as being the “Enduring Security Framework” by General Alexander. Next time your signed into Google Plus be sure to admire the little Mr Jingle’s logo of the Bell Corperation and there operating system with absolutely no holes in it called Plan9 from bell-labs. A grid computing platform capable of emulating Linux in a Chroot shell, a system which uses secure single sign-on with RSA security token’s aka: ‘keys’ in preferance to just a simplistic password. In use by nearly every major banking corperation around the world, including VISA. Not exploitable by either Heartbleed or Shellshock, immune to passive attackers on the network, transparent, invisible and probably the most fuck-tastic computer operating system in use today, although not that you would ever get to hear about it whilst your running that bastardisation of the Bash shell called the Ash shell – (Android)
My God! You are ridiculous. You’re acting like the clearly demonstrated fact that you have a vastly superior background and understanding of the history and implementation of networks and code makes your case and presentation somehow more relevant than mine. You’re acting like the fact that you know what you’re talking about makes all of this worthwhile. Get a clue.
I’m glad you dont mind blackmail, because every site you visited hosted by Google has inserted it’s ever-cookie tracking features into your browser, ever-cookie was cited as the main-way (pun) of tracking TOR – users around the globe. Need to see a little proof? Then perhaps you need to load the better privacy addon for firefox, go watch a youtube video and then examine exactly just how many immortal and immoral cookies have just been inserted into the Mozilla foundations supposedly private browser!
Yes, blackmail is the wave of the future. This goes back to my innovation argument. Unless we’re allowed to store insanely intrusive cookies onto an individual’s computer, we wouldn’t be able to track them at all times! How else are we going to make money while disguising ourselves as free services on the Web?
Since you feel that blackmail is ethical, then you wont mind the fact the it’s the bank that profiles you, American Express, Mastercard, Visa…
But of course it’s really Google that implants the immortal and immoral cookie, its not like you can download the 9P database and type: man map at the command line and read about how it gets it’s telematry data from the CIA archives.
Boosting the profit margin, yes, here’s one way, stop trying to manipulate the entire software industry for your own companies prolific gains whilst lying to the majority of the public at large exclaiming that no operating systems are really secure whilst hoarding the one that actually is.
That grid computer platform was never designed by it’s original inventors as a method to remotely access everything else for the sole goal of keeping the commercial banking sector afloat.
Haha! This guy is a moron. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that operating systems exist beyond the scope of Microsoft and Apple’s benevolent hands, and that there’s other implementations out there that could potentially be more secure! What’s next, Einstein? Are all systems vulnerable given enough effort from a dedicated and well trained individual? How could this possibly make me feel vulnerable on the Internet?
My other system is a p9 box, an google can blow that out of it’s ass!
Thank you for letting me speak with you, it’s been an honor.
Where can I buy one?
Look away, E. He appears to have forbidden knowledge of intricacies and inner workings of operating systems and networks. They seem to be calling these people “hackers” which is point blank outlawed in today’s day and age. Obviously a false prophet as well, probably thinks he’s Jesus. Next thing you know he’ll be quoting Matthew 10:34 and Matthew 19:24. Terrorist.
Your post, in a nutshell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obfuscation
While I read the original post with compassion, it appears you’ve decided that the original post is obfuscated and worthy only of a link to a Wikipedia article. While it may not have seemed like I was compassionate in the way I responded, I was impersonating the lack of compassion and authoritarian style as characterized by the hare-trigger judgments being cast on us all by entities that appear to be violating our rights as human beings. You could call what my response was as an attempt at caricature.
Targeted individuals will keep suffering horribly until the public and Congress are made aware that the DoD and other agencies actually use Radio frequency (radar/microwave) weapons on innocent Americans in a vicious attempt to intimidate! This is communist behavior in an attempt to silence whistleblowers or others whose politics some small faction of sadistic morons in these agencies don’t agree with – those that use “less than lethal” weapons on Americans in this manner should be prosecuted and thrown in prison! They are the worst kind of cowardly criminals. This activity is very wide spread and needs exposure to Congress and the American public so that we can get it stopped. Raytheon and many other companies make these weapons and have for a very long time. One of the latest abominations of domestic terrorism is the JLENS sytems that are spying-on and targeting/irradiating thousands of innocent Americans 24/7 with cancer causing levels of RF radar energy. This focused, very high power radar is also used to attempt to intimidate victims. Raytheon admitted that they were targeting unknowing civilians in an LA court case but claimed the details were secret! This is outrageous CRIMINAL behavior and it must be stopped!!!!!!
Another fake target, and not the only one posting here.
Stasi employees do not need Star Trek weapons to entertain themselves. There is an endless supply of unethical American citizens eager defend their country, and they have no qualms about applying torture. They enjoy it. Some of the stalkers and torturers I have met include doctors and nurses (my favorite!), insurance underwriters, janitors, blood relations, and upset military personnel. And most of these patriot-torturers used low tech tools, such as very detailed murder plans (with low-tech arms), hacked billing systems, common medical utensils, and in one case, a straight-razor. (A book is required to list them all.)
Journalists, please go talk to targets. Most will be impostors, which ought to tell anyone with journalistic instincts that a lot of effort and money is being put into keeping the dissident torture program secret.
So, you’re claiming that “radio frequencies” exist and that there are certain “types” called “radar” and “microwave” that can be used as “weapons”. Why in God’s green earth would you ever imagine that a company heavily involved in defense and military operations–which just so happen to be a monumental and incredibly profitable industry–would be interested in using ANYTHING AT ALL AS A WEAPON? You’re acting like they are heartless and devote all of their businesses to weapons that can be used against people! Did you ever think that they were doing it for the good of humanity and not for their own pocket books? Surely, these oppressed companies such as Raytheon would be devastated if anyone regarded them as developing weapons that could potentially be used against United States citizens. I mean, if these things that all of these lunatics keep mentioning (radar/microwave radio frequencies and radiation) actually existed, it would be an immaculate opportunity for someone to get away with the perfect crime! Because there would be no evidence that these “hidden sources of energy” were actually there. Take these honest people at their word that they aren’t heavily invested in methods of weaponry that could evade detection and accountability, because of how potentially dangerous this could be. Anyone who is claiming that “sources of energy” can be “developed” and that they are “invisible to the naked eye” is clearly insane and needs an immediate mental evaluation. No wonder the pharmaceutical is booming, everyone appears to be suffering from mental illness in this country!
My God, we are hysterically laughing over here at all of you nutcases! Next thing you’re going to tell me is that we breathe in an invisible thing called “air” and that those noises I hear are “sounds”. You idiots probably think that if you make a sound loud enough it could “hurt your ears” and “cause pain”. I think all of you morons better check into the local insane asylum. We’ll chalk that up to your feeble, inferior brains having a mental illness. This reminds me of the time that one moron acted like that was a thing called “science”. Lunatics.
And by the way, give us some insights into the twisted mind of a perp. What caused you to invest your allegiances with America’s enemies within that millions of honorable men and women take an oath to defend against, some dying honorably in the process? Does your ilk feel pride in knowing that your activities are shredding the very foundations of this country in ways that external enemies can only dream of?
Well aware that the United States has tortured people, you are preaching to the choir. I apologize for any misunderstanding
Because clearly, the most noble and compassionate thing to do for a victim of torture is have them explain the technical, scientific, psychological, mathematical and physics-related phenomena that created the torturer’s magical, cool weapon in the first place. I mean, how highly noble of torturers that they make their victims read highly scientific technical manuals while they are under assault and have them desperately cry for help on random Internet websites? Because what’s a better feeling for torturers to have than to know their victims are all desperately seeking attention and viable explanations for these unique phenomena that somehow created pain and suffering in their life? I’m sure that really helps them go to sleep at night.
If you didn’t notice I am being sarcastic.
Todd Bjorlo please read for starters, a primer on the next generation of weapons systems which harness electromagnetic energy as the core operational component. The book is “The E-Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change The Way Future Wars Will Be Fought”, by Dr. Doug Beason.
Read each sentence slowly as you project yourself by your comments here regarding this subject, to suffer from a severe form of cognitive deficit or some criminal levels of ignorance . Our suffering is not a joke.
Yeah Todd, and make sure to check regularly for grooves on your head. That’s proof positive that you’ve been targeted by the government, kidnapped, shanghaied off to Area 51 and implanted with electrodes in your brain so you can be tortured remotely. As long as you don’t have grooves on your head, you’re OK. More or less. Probably.
Yes, I am aware that suffering is not a joke. I am also aware that weapons have been developed which have been used in a “less than lethal” fashion on American citizens. I am also aware that the individual or group of individuals involved were not physically present in their bodily form while they were administering said pain on the individuals who happened to be the recipient of this pain. So, in another way, they were delivering this pain while not holding any accountability and were released from any legal consequences. I am aware that that would constitute torture under a strictly legal definition. Because as you they deliver this pain it ends up with horrific and catastrophic consequences for the individual who receives this pain. This could include damage, either temporary or permanent, to the physical body, and acting in ways the individual who received the pain would not normally act if they were not having this being inflicted on them which could easily be construed as a mental illness by someone unaware that it happened. Consequently, the individual who received this pain faces a completely different battle than what they were prepared for as everything they were used to dissolves into chaos. Which would logically lead one to conclude that the American government is not above torturing it’s own citizens provided that they face no legal consequence (as on the flip side proven to detainees at Guantanamo Bay who are not citizens of the USA) and that they have done so in the past. Judging by the fact that they would be allowed to get away with this torture and given that these instruments exist where they could not clearly be associated with the damage being done (either physical or mental) to the torture victim because they are “torturing from afar”, the only way that these techniques could be proven would be if someone who was witness to the actual torture technique broke their pledge to keep it a secret and revealed it to the public. Whereby the tortured individual could attempt to rectify what’s left of their life and be given legal redress.
As you say I was projecting myself by my comments regarding this subject to suffer from a severe form of cognitive deficit or some criminal forms of ignorance, that was pretty much the goal. The goal was to attempt to be funny by pointing out simple facts and universally acknowledged observations to show that these techniques are possible and in fact widely implemented. Well aware that your suffering is not a joke.
There is a Directed Energy Weapons Professional Society and they have a conference each year. Below is a link to call for papers to this conference:
https://protected.networkshosting.com/depsor/DEPSpages/graphics/CDEW14Call.pdf
The weapons are already being used on the battlefield and many military RFPs are for devices used to counteract the weapons. Everyone in the military know the weapons exist and CIA knows because they developed them. The only people who appear not to know are the paid military/NSA trolls and the general public, who has been kept completely in the dark. Saying these weapons don’t exist, is like saying guns don’t exist or nuclear weapons…
They had to officially stop the “testing” of the supposedly “non-lethal weapons” on human subjects many years ago, because the tests were so damaging to the human test subjects. But the weapons development continue…how? The current question is not weather these weapons exist and are being used. They are operational. The question is who is running around extra-judicially targeting U.S. citizens with these weapons and for what purpose? Are the weapons still in a development and testing phase and/or the weapons being used for purpose of control? And please don’t tell me it’s a ragtag group of criminals (although they are hired hands, along with every mafia). I’ve crossed multiple international borders and the harassment and targeting is seamless.
So much money is invested in the targeting of an individual that the only answer is that this activity has to be revenue generating, which leads back to the defense department contractors. And/or the targeting has a wider political goal…which leads back to some of the .01% criminally insane billionaires and their political accomplices.
I wish people would stopped distinguishing between the stalking/harassment and the Directed Energy military weapons targeting. It’s a continuum of the same program. If you are in stage 2 and haven’t experienced the agonizing pain and torture of these weapons first hand…count yourself very lucky, maybe the program will be exposed soon. Pray to God you never make it to stage 3, because it is horrific.
Thank you AG14. Sad to say, I reached that third level and it is mind-blowing and horrifying. I do think the contractors are involved; One of the people involved in my situation (but not the only) is a Northrop Grumman electrical engineer/project manager.But there are others involved too, and I’ve been told by NSA whistleblowers that the action appears like those driven by CIA/FBI/DOJ. These whistleblowers have been my saving grace because they believe me. Collectively, the reporters I’ve contacted are not coming off as the brightest bunch as they seem to be the most dismissive of the claims. (Egos, uh.) BTW, using the term Zersetsung bolsters credibility while OS/EH seems to undermine those reporting these incidents.
Just remember, it’s not against the law to impersonate a Federal Officer…if you are a Federal Officer. Meaning it can be one group (let’s just say DIA) in the government pretending to be and blaming another agency in the government and it’s not a crime. BTW, no such thing as CIA ID and they sure as hell don’t walk up to people in the U.S. and state or imply they are CIA. I’ve been through that little circus show.
DOJ and FBI are definitely guilty of one thing, letting these crimes go on far too long. I bet you everyone is turning down that AG job, now that the shit is about to hit the fan.
FYI, these are innocent civilians that these weapons are being used. I can tell you right now what you have read are just bluffs. They were all made up. Do you see how easily you guys make assumptions without any real evidence at all?
Actually, I have quite a bit of hard evidence. Not only tons of video evidence of the stalking, but pictures of 2 inch wires inserted into my breast (that no one has ever seen before), before and after MRIs, cell changes to tissue (that no one has ever seen before). Now if you want me to tell you exactly what weapons are being used on me, I can’t do that because I’m not a weapons expert. I can only describe their immediate effect on my body and the long term effect on my health.
Now their are loads of people, with very guilty consciences, who know that innocent people are being tortured to death. They know exactly how it is being done and for what purpose. Is there not a Snowden among them? Is there anyone willing to leak this story before more innocent lives are destroyed? I would think these extra-judicial heinous acts were wrong, if they were only targeting terrorists, but by all accounts the targets are single women, African Americans, the elderly, dissidents, writers, artists, whistleblowers…or just some unlucky soul who pissed the wrong person off. Do you want to live in this ugly world you are building? Do you want your children to live in a world, where they can randomly be tortured to death…and never even know why?
Let’s just say for non-libelous fun, that my torture odyssey began at one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, while working on their biggest account, a major computer/tech firm. And let’s imagine, that the person who programmed my Blackberry was ex-NSA, which struck me as odd at the time. And I only recently discovered that my former big account has major ties to the NSA and DARPA and their CEO moved on to head a private equity firm that owns military defense contractors. Just for fun, once again let’s imagine that one of my bosses whose husband was rumored to be “ex-mossad” and he states it on his resume, told me “I was dead”. As YOU can imagine, I thought she meant dead metaphorically. Dead as in the corporate world…career over, it certainly never occurred to me as “dead as a doornail”. Then I started having problems, like gas leaks, break-ins, ear ringing. My boss prior to that is now the Vice Chairman of the entire Global corporation. But from what I hear unless I’m murdered, the statute of limitations has run out…Anyway, you never know who put out the hit do you…it’s all just speculation.
Dear GG, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, Ryan Gallagher, Ryan Devereaux, Murzata Hussain, Dan Froomkin, Cora Currier, Andrew Jones, Peter Maaas, Lilian Segura, Ryan Tate, Jordan Smith, Margot Williams, Natasha Vargas-Cooper — the future of America is literally in your hands. The targeted individuals including myself are begging you to move beyond the documents and talk to people. Extrajudicial torture is going on throughout the country and police and politicians are complicit. Freedom is no longer the foundation of America; fascism is. America is the only country in the world based on U.S. Constitution — therefore when civil abuses occur here they are more abhorrent. They also weaken the foundation of freedom around the world because the U.S. can no longer be looked up to as a model of justice. Please, please, connect these documents to real life people, businesses and examples. You are our best hope right now.
Maybe Glenn can run for President and TI members can fill his cabinet!? Vice President Scahill, secretary of Defense Hussain, Secretary of State Snowden via teleconference, Attorney General Deveraux, Press Secretary Cook, and Presidential Dog-Walker Froomkin.
Nate, many people are certain the sort of people you have voted for are complete failures — dumbed-down psychopaths. And it shows.
The next batch you vote for will also be in way over their heads.
I wasn’t aware that “many people” knew who I voted for. Let me guess, the people you vote for are the real Americans?
I will vote when choices have been proven to exist, but I’m not holding my breath. And if you’re going to be so coy, Nate, I am going to take liberties and speak for many people twice in the same day.
If you are an American and you vote, I don’t think many people are going to lose money betting you voted for either a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, e.g., The Party.
I’d be casting my vote for president for Laura Poitras, who seems most focused on the work.
What does this have to do with domestic spying on American Citizens?
Has it occurred to you that the techniques being leveraged against foreign nations could just as easily be applied to your precious “citizens” – however little that label is worth these days?
Glad to see you commenting here, Tom. (I have frequently read your comments at Guardian.) The Intercept really needs voices like yours to weigh in against the sock puppets.
Yes, US’ spies steal for profit. The evidence is out. They also torture US dissidents with visible pleasure; I always see a puerile expression of joy on the torturer’s face when he or she is performing one of these peculiarly patriotic acts.
I would like to see smoking guns related to the ongoing extrajudicial torture programs.
I would like to know why I am being tortured. I can only speculate: (1) I ditched a belligerent family in Texas, and (2) I insulted the character of the American people because of their mindless fear and belligerence, and I teased Americans about losing dumb, offensive wars.
Torturers: I can only speculate. Only you know; tell me why. Do you torture me because of (1), or (2), or both? I want a direct answer to this simple question. (Of course, this can only be treated as a rhetorical question by you, since honesty is not your strong suit. I ask anyway.)
I have a suggestion for the The Intercept. What you’ve done has helped me indirectly, because I can now tell my story to trusted family and friends. But the torture continues, and the torturers’ desperation is showing (both the tortured and torturers are going through an unpredictable phase, due to their fear of being exposed). I suggest you fill in a huge gap in your story as soon as possible: report on what they do to people on the lists. For that, you simply have to talk to targets directly.
Disassociating from, and insulting belligerent Americans is not a crime; torture is a serious crime. Please help expose the recreational torture of US dissidents. (This is as close as I can get to begging.)
This document is the smoking gun. It clearly establishes that the US economic system is based on a lie. This clearly establishes that the US intelligence community redistributes stolen wealth. They steal stuff and distribute it to US Government (labs, research facilities, researchers), US Academia (CIA puppets), US Industry (state sponsored industry). The document clearly establishes that the US intelligence community determines who gets rich and who does not get rich. It’s not a matter of hard work. The free market is not the determinant as they have always claimed. It is ties and loyalties to the secret police that determine who gets rich and who does not get rich. The government and its intelligence community determine who is allowed to own their own property and who has their property taken from them and redistributed to government loyalists, tories, and secret police loyalists.
You are like a child, after having been violated by an adult who would prefer that knowledge to be kept secret, is given a gift by that very same adult. You are like a SPOILED CHILD ungrateful after being given the gift of still being allowed to live on this planet! My God, these people are ungrateful! They all have such pronounced senses of entitlement!
quote”You are like a child, after having been violated by an adult who would prefer that knowledge to be kept secret, is given a gift by that very same adult.”unquote
Said like a good little pedophile while peeping on his daughter.
Yes. http://m.hollywoodreporter.com/entry/view/id/713378
http://www.brandonsun.com/world/breaking-news/lawsuit-challenging-oprah-over-trail-access-on-her-colorado-property-dismissed-267653381.html?path=/world/breaking-news&id=267653381&sortBy=oldest&viewAllComments=y
When I was being FOLLOWED to appointments, one of the vehicles had a Northwestern University staff parking sticker on it.
The world economy is based on war. No matter what you do, the economy is running downhill. Gold reserve was once a check, but now you can simply generate wealth in the press. If left to itself all the systemic flaws will be apparent and will cause its ruin. So, to resurrect a fallen economy you need war. And we keep giving away Nobel Prizes for Economics as if all is well and thriving. It is not. The economists don’t have the guts to acknowledge the truth that even a soldier can see.
Yes. Here’s two recent examples in news.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/tyler-perry-escapes-lawsuit-studio-739229
http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20140718/entlife/140718707/
“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs – when he first appears he is a protector.” (Plato)
A truly rude and inconsiderate statement. Thank you for notifying the national security state, Plato is now a marked man — we have him down as a terrorist now. As an aside, just to show you how you spoiled ingrates need to be taught a lesson–I will tell you the great present we were about to give to the United States of America. Keep in mind that we have changed our mind and just want to torture you with what you could have had if you were more reverent and obedient. You see, here’s the new American flag: it just so happens to be the Facebook logo embroidered on top of the Wal-Mart smiley face. Hidden (to circumvent counterfeit flags) is a unique, custom Google logo printed and emblazoned repeatedly throughout the design. Congratulations, now you know what you could have had. And look at this, it appears to be a new Constitution! It just so happens to be Apple’s End User License Agreement. Thanks to you insensitive assholes, this information has been classified and marked Top Secret. You can keep imagining the old, shitty American flag and Constitution are actually signs and documents that are still relevant!
I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Plato is on the no-fly list and his Google searches are data-mined. Best warn Socrates!
quote”You can keep imagining the old, shitty American flag and Constitution are actually signs and documents that are still relevant!”unquote
Says one who’ll hide under the bed the day the ‘murkn stasi starts kicking in doors to confiscate weapons..vs those who will resist using their t god given right to self defense. Btw, don’t you ever get tired of being a naysaying cowardly schmuck?
If the goal of the CIA and other secret police organs of the secret police is not to determine ownership and control of the means of production is determined by the Regime and its secret police then why would they be stealing secrets and redistributing wealth and intellectual property to US government labs, US industry, and US Academia. Think about it these activities are occurring from the same people that claim that the market should be the determinant and property ownership should be determined by market forces in a market economy. Then we see that this is not what they truly believe or what they truly practice. We can clearly see the hypocrisy of the Washington Regime and its secret police from this chart in its bullet points.
It took me years to see this as I was publishing a blog. It eventually became clear that certain blogs were being allowed to grow and earn money, while others were not. Google owns the web, and if your blog is kicked off Adsense for whatever illegitimate reason they claim you will never succeed on the web. (I was even told directly by one advertising bundler that my blog was ‘blacklisted.’ I began to see that blogs that promoted the official state storylines grew. And even some that pretended to be anti-establishment gave high placement to government sock puppets through the use of coding on their comment pages. I also know a former Boeing sales person (now ‘contractor’) who has grown rich over last few years after being awarded Section 8 certification. A neighbor complicit in my own harassment used to have a ‘911 is an inside job on his bumper. Since befriending a government operator in my building he has since gone on to work in a holding facility for immigrants (it was all hush-hush though), and now works for an MRI lab not affiliated with any hospital. God only knows what’s going on there. Only those who cooperate with the fascists are financially rewarded.
Notice in the chart the purple section that lists bullets for information released to 1-US Government, 2-US Industry, 3-US Academia 4-Selected foreign governments.
The secret police in America claim they do not conduct economic espionage, economic warfare, industrial espionage and that they are not a personal spying agency for the rich and powerful. These several lines provide evidence that they redistribute stolen secrets to US government labs, US state sponsored industry, and to puppet scientists in their favored Universities. They steal other peoples research and intellectual work and redistribute it.
Everybody know the secret police in America are just an organized criminal enterprise. Not all the targets for industrial espionage, economic warfare, economic persecution, and economic espionage are foreign governments or foreign military’s. Some of the targets are American citizens that are not terrorists and that are targeted by the CIA and US Government and subjected to economic warfare, economic persecution, and political persecution by the fascist state security apparatus.
Thank you very much Max21c. Many of us have been bleating about this for months here on The Intercept. I am not persuasive enough or elegant enough of a writer to convince them to move beyond the academic reporting and connect the dots to real life individuals and stories. Can you please help push in that direction?
Suggestion:
Give yourself a shot and hide your data with tools that work and the algo is not “compromised” – http://www.privacyenvelope.com
You’re welcome…
This guy was right to reveal any illegal spying against US citizens, but he also greatly compromised spying against other countries. He gave away our playbook. Since this is the real world and spying has always gone on throughout history (the Chinese are doing it to us in spades right now and others undoubtedly are, too), all this guy has done is compromise any advantages we had and wasted billions of dollars.
He should be tried and, since he has most definitely released the very highest levels of top secret information the VAST majority of which DID NOT expose any Constitutionally prohibited activities, he should be found guilty of treason. I would then like to see him dangling at the end of a rope.
So you mean the Chinese were unaware of us spying on them till we told them? Man, that is very naive. If anything, the Chinese are far more advanced in spying than you credit them with. Look around you and I can bet that wherever in the world you may be you will find that seven of the first ten things you see are made in China. Of the seven, a couple of then can be easily rigged up to spy on you. So good luck!
Good, your scummy spies deserve all their operations blown. They became the enemy the moment they turned their attentions upon their own people.
When it comes down to it, nothing is secure period. Operate on the assumption that it will be uncovered.
Not surprising that this pyramid of power closely matches the wealth distribution in America. Knowlege is power, and the truth is what tyranny fears most. Thanks to Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras, Taibbi, Dickinson, Radack, Hedges, Goodman, Kennedy, Hastings among many others for their priceless sacrifices and contributions to Global Justice. You inspire us to spread the truth. Who will lead us in battle ?
Quite correct. The secret police in America are a pack of criminals that oppress people, target people for political persecution, and engage in the systematic robbery of individual American citizens selected as enemies by the state security apparatus. The secret police specifically target people with intellectual work, intellectual property, medical research, scientific research, etc and steal and redistribute whatever a person creates, produces, discovers, or invents. They are fascists that persecute and systematically rob people on the enemies list of the Washington Regime. Very little of their secret police powers have anything to do with terrorism.
Another way to think of the upcoming 2016 presidential election would be like preparing a dinner from food purchased at Wal-Mart. So, maybe you’re out of bread and you enjoy fish. So you purchase these two items (they haven’t expired yet and the seals haven’t been tampered with, you were conscious enough to check that before you put them in the cart). One thing that seems odd is that the products themselves aren’t transparent anymore and are concealed, almost like they’re hiding any flaws–yet they say they are doing it to keep the food safe and secure. That puzzles you for a moment, but then you realize that’s a lot like those trusted folks that are always worried about your national security, so you don’t invest that much thought in it. So you purchase the food, arrive back home and look into who’s going to change things around for you this time: will it be the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate? Thankfully, you have your most trustworthy, reliable source for this information in your hands: The Wall Street Journal. Which also happens to have been given it’s stamp of approval from Fortune 500 companies worldwide.
You finish reading the article, and attempt to determine who’s going to be the best option: Hillary Clinton, Democrat; or Jeb Bush, Republican. You’re kind of left confused after the whole thing, as your trusted paper almost seems like it could care less about who you vote for–that they’re both excellent candidates who vouch for economic opportunity and national security. So, you realize you have a few weeks until you make your final decision and come to the inevitable conclusion that it will really be up to you, based on superficial differences rather than anything substantial. They both seem to agree with each other about everything.
At that point, you return to your two purchased items from Wal-Mart. You open this fresh, unexpired loaf of bread and quickly realize that it’s moldy! How could that be possible! The only way that this could have been prevented would be if this great new “feature”–that happens to be preclude it from being inspected with your own naked eye and that they claim is for “the food’s safety”–were never there in the first place! What a waste of money!
So, you try to salvage that by looking into what was going to wind up being your dinner: the fish. As you open up the package (which just so happens to have the same new “security feature”, which at this point you may regard with some skepticism), you realize the fish is completely rotten and smells like garbage!
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” you yell, visibly upset at this all of this bullshit “innovation”.
[George W. Bush, speaking through a hidden surveillance system]: Don’t take my name in vain.
—-
Turns out, the Democratic and Republican candidates just so happen to be moldy bread and rotten fish–simply repackaged by Fortune 500 companies and presented as something new.
ROFL! How many people who read the WSJ shop at Wal-Mart? And vice-versa, how many people who shop at Wal-Mart read the WSJ?
Typical WSJ, Jeb isn’t even running! And Rand (“Senator Aqua Buddha”) Paul handily won the Iowa straw poll, so he has to be the front-runner right now.
It’s all in the family. Germans, French, Belgians, Swedes, Norwegians, Italians etc, you may cry the world a river and be NATO members but you are outsiders, no different from Russia or China and every other country in the world and just like the rest, will continue to be targets. The “Five Eyes” are the United States, Canada, Australia, England and New Zealand, four of which are ALL colonies of England, a former empire… Go figure.
Awesome article.
http://www.greatincomeathome.com
Yes, ok, our government has a fabulously convoluted totally unreliable highly manipulable system of secrets classification. Yeah–and that system intentionally includes includes both vague and arbitrary definitions of both secrets and the various entities with whom secrets are shared (excepting when a decision is made to feed a particular entity with mis- or dis-information as if they were a part of the inner-circle and being handed valid secretive info.). Plus cursory operational descriptions of ‘partner’ entities and their level of permissions in transmitting and receiving the various priority-level of secrets also quite naturally exists.
And, of course, all of the above are both followed and not followed depending on who is packaging what secrets and the weight of iron comprising that individual’s balls when giving or not giving a damn. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure–this must necessarily be SOP lo these last two and a half centuries. So, what, specifically, is the up-shot of this?
We screwed China and Germany? Let me ask, has there ever been a time when we weren’t screwing China and Germany? I mean, excepting our B2B relationships.
Many thanks for all your good work, Peter Maass and Laura Poitras. Eventually the whole, dirty tangle will unravel.
Do you ofomise? And if so, who will be left to prosecute? It seems every branch of law enforcement is involved.
True that every branch of law enforcement is involved in the criminal activities of the secret police. It’s also not just law enforcement as it involves a corrupt court system and judiciary and a corrupt legislative branch as well as a corrupt establishment and corrupt press organizations. Just like the Klu Klan Klan operated in the Old South with willing accomplices throughout all elements of the establishment per press and journalists, political officials, courts and judges, police etc.
“Prince thinks it is unlikely the NSA would place secret agents inside his or other American firms, due to political and legal issues.”
For some reason, I don’t trust the opinion of this Prince-guy.
I agree, Seedeevee, although I reckon CEO Prince’s statement is either deceitfully covering up what he knows damned well the NSA does in his own firm; or is shockingly naive.
Was it Clapper on 60 Minutes a week or so back, frightening the after-game TV watchers with the notion that China had infiltrated the economy of the USA so their cyber spies could “steal our secrets’ and then they would not have to design anything for themselves?
Sounds like that shoe could be on the other foot. Given the current state of their economy, spying and sabotage might be a necessity for the US.
That happened to be the new Director of the FBI, James Comey. The FBI happens to be an excellent partner for Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, they tend to swap notes with each other about security. Lets not point out that Facebook’s network was recently compromised and all of its sensitive data was laid bare thanks to that nasty bug known as Heartbleed. That would be damaging to national security. Consider it Top Secret.
I’m living this nightmare. tinyurl.com/ozc3gpg
This is an interesting article; but, it doesn’t follow the trail regarding undercover work at US Software Manufacturers. NSA undercover agent programmers with access to proprietary Software code can easily code hidden backdoor access to US produced software operating systems, databases, and security utilities that are in use worldwide. Proof can be found in the increasing success of freelance hackers gaining access to corporate informations systems and theft of data operating on and secured by US Software products. I wouldn’t be surprised if the NSA’s “secret” backdoors to civilian, military, scientific, and foreign government data are not as secret as NSA wants to believe.
Hello Peter Maass and Laura Poitras, In the “UnderCover” Agents Matthew Prince states “The NSA is a risk [but] I worry a lot more about the Chinese,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare, a server company. “The insider threat is a huge challenge.” Prince thinks it is unlikely the NSA would place secret agents inside his or other American firms, due to political and legal issues. “I would be surprised if that were the case within any U.S. organization without at least a senior executive like the CEO knowing it was happening,” he said. But he assumes the NSA or CIA are doing precisely that in foreign companies. “I would be more surprised if they didn’t,” he said. Yet at the end of “Corporate Partners” Matthew Prince then states When asked for comment on the latest documents, Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, began his response by saying, “We’re hyper-paranoid about everything.”. I would say that these statements indicate a wishful thinking on his part. The greater the paranoia of the system the sooner it will fail of its own accord as enough is never enough and given the resources thrown at the problem the sooner it will implode due to human stupidity.
It’s funny. These days you don’t know if you are being censored by a Website like The//Intercept or the NSA is committing a man-in-the-middle-attack.
If you censor a comment, log it to a Twitter feed and a post the actual comment as to an RSS feed.
Like this:
Twitter: Censored for “Profanity”
Censoring Agent: Automatic Filtering Agent
Agent GUID: {{Some Agent Tracking GUID}}
DateTime 10/11/2014 10:00 GMT
Censor tracking GUID={{Some GUID}}
Offending Comment dumped to {{Offensive Comments RSS Link Here}}
You may not be the only people censoring your site.
The site has been taking very long to load and it appears it is being hosted by Amazon, holder of $600million contract for CIA cloud services? Does anybody else find that ironic?
Yeah. They probably have mirror sites so you are not really accessing the actual site. Some kind of DARPA sponsored Artificial Intelligence program for social media manipulation. It is designed to “contain radical opinions.” Terrorists are not a threat to the status quo. People with different opinions and viewpoints are.
I think what bothers the NSA most is that now “their” secrets are begin revealed. It must be pretty humiliating for these folks who are used to lurking in the shadows, lying, cheating and stealing, lording it over everybody and treating the rest of the world like chumps and idiots. And now, bit by bit as each new story comes out, they are being slowly revealed as an infestation of leprous vermin. Every where they go, they spread their disease and corruption.
Going from “Unsung Heroes” to “Putrid Human Scum” has gotta hurt a little. Just ask Congress.
The Holder of Secrets
Laura Poitras’s closeup view of Edward Snowden.
By George Packer The New Yorker
Great article Kitt.
Operation Mimic Reason is proving quite effective. Keep up the good work, lads!
I did’nt check it out, but I want to pass along the most interesting and overdue bit of journalism I came across this morning.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/10/10/g-i-resistance-to-the-vietnam-war
I know some spies who would be very nervous about this story if they were allowed to read it.
In a free society, the people would have total knowledge of the government’s actions, rather than the opposite as we have today. Years ago the science fiction writer David Brin wrote about this in a non-fiction book The Transparent Society.
But today, everyone meekly accepts the discarding of all constitutional and human rights in defense of our “freedoms.” What freedoms do we have in a world where the rich and powerful can spy on our every move and kill us with impunity on a whim?
Once security has been compromised, others can also exploit these weaknesses. When “operatives” leave the NSA for the private sector they take knowledge and skills and probably software with them. Things like Stuxnet and other malware can be copied onto a thumb drive, taken to the private sector and used or sold or sold as a service.
Bottom line is that the NSA is making people less secure. Thank you so much,
Hello Peter Maass and Laura Poitras, Pirates had the best idea about keeping a secret. Regardless of the number of people who know a secret the secret will only be kept if only one is alive that knows the secret.
As long as we allow our governments to fight these secret wars individual liberty will continue to erode to nothingness.
Is it just me, or does the NSA act far worse than any other terrorist organization? If anyone is trying to take away my freedom it is the NSA.
Snowden is a hero. “Can you hear me NOW?” Thank you for the Truth. Keep on…
This is certainly a wake up call for US companies who probably assumed they were the preferred partners for the NSA. That may have once been true, but foreign companies have probably compensated by cooperating in every way possible, and by dint of sheer effort, made made strong inroads at the NSA. My recommendations for US companies would be:
1. Appoint an NSA compliance officer, whose role is to ensure that corporate goals are in alignment with those of the NSA.
2. Become more proactive – instead of waiting to be approached by the NSA, pepper them with ideas on how your customers’ information can find its way into government databases.
3. Promote a surveillance culture – by surveilling your own employees, you will create synergies in your work with the NSA. They may even provide you with tools to accomplish this task.
The more progressive US companies have probably already done this; there is no excuse for the rest not to follow suit.
“This is certainly a wake up call for US companies who probably assumed they were the preferred partners for the NSA.”
Yes, I agree. Google and Microsoft were undoubtedly asleep at the wheel until they finally discovered how profitable and useful information is. Surely, Facebook must have felt like fools when they realized that people’s private lives and souls that they were entrusted with happened to provide an opportunity for psychopaths to exploit their consumer base! I mean come on; Google, Microsoft and Facebook unwittingly became partners with Big Brother. It’s that mean old mirror image of the corporate state that they call the government that is the problem! If citizens just realized that the hard fought battles over centuries to ensure that humans would have human rights are USELESS NOW, then we’d be able to usher in the new, enlightened digital age. Surely, we need a man of charisma; a man of the people. George W. Bush is just the man of courage and conviction to take on that great responsibility. I mean, I hate to bother the guy — my God, he served us admirably for 8 years already! What more could we ask of him! But, if you don’t mind, sir, we need your help again. Maybe you could get your brother Jeb to run for president in 2016? It’s a long shot, but maybe the Bush family will serve us again, despite our ungratefulness.
To George W. Bush, if there’s one thing I need to say to you: it is this. Thank you for your service.
The Bush and Clinton dynasties, as well as the progressive companies you mention, all understand the value of cooperation. So the US is in good hands.
Yet there is a lesson to be learned from Alexander the Great. His empire grew very rapidly because he enlisted the cooperation of conquered peoples to help rule it. Yet for that very reason it was not cohesive and collapsed quickly after his death. There is the same temptation for the US to co-opt foreign multinationals into the governing world hierarchy. This allows goals to be achieved more rapidly, but I worry about the ultimate stability of such an arrangement. The US has slowly and steadily expanded its global empire, and I’d hate to see it fail because of overreach. So the NSA should definitely go easy on this cooperation with foreign companies – however eager those companies may be to comply to its dictates and join the ruling elite.
And as we are all sharing important history lessons with one another, lets just point out the obvious — the thing that we all feel in our hearts. George W. Bush is Jesus Christ reincarnated. While that benevolent leader Pontius Pilate petitioned the arrogant and haughty peasant Jews that were hell bent on crucifying Jesus Christ for their sins, Pilate (who we can now regard as the national security state) had one simple question for those haughty, peasant Jews (who we can now regard as ourselves: the ungrateful citizens of the United States of America): “Would you rather kill Jesus or Barabbas?” We can regard Barabbas as Snowden, Manning, Kiriakou, Drake, and Assange. The evil Jews had one response for that benevolent leader of Rome: “Release Barabbas and crucify Jesus!”
Let me petition you and humbly ask that you do not let history repeat itself. This is as stark a prophetic warning I can issue to you, if only the Lord would be willing to use me as a vessel for Him.
George, can we anoint you as The Chosen One? Or are you still denying yourself to be the Messiah? I know that’s one of the Top Secret facts that we have kept the public from knowing, or is it? We’ll leave a little mystery to add to the story of George W. Bush, the Resurrected Christ and Savior.
Amen.
Pontius Pilate was the only one who said what those haughty, arrogant Jews would continue to deny to the grave: “That truly was the Son of God.” The fact that we are literally torturing George W. Bush by accessing this website through our internet service providers, (by allowing this website to exist) — is brutal. Truly, we are no better than those Jews in 1st century Palestine. We should all be ashamed of ourselves. In fact, I am beginning to feel like Judas Iscariot. I sold out Jesus Christ by typing text and submitting it over my internet service provider. All for text, haha! I am such a dumb Judas. I am off to commit suicide for betraying George W. Bush, the Christ. To think, I snitched on our Lord and Savior to the greedy, crucifying Jews! All to submit comments on a petty, treasonous website.
I hate myself.
One way to detect signs of overreach: ask the empire’s rulers and subjects to identify its borders on a map.
Which I’m sure would have disappointed him greatly, had he lived to see it.
Progressive? … looks like the old pyramid scheme to me.
Catchup.
If there were ever cellular-induced panics resulting in human stampedes, I suspect a great many articles offered by The Intercept would be noticed on a much larger scale. Give some serious thought to how “the information wars” inevitably play themselves out. It will go beyond hurt feelings and identity theft.
http://agsaf.org
The Intercept would have more impact if it named the names if agents and targets. That would complicate things for Pierre legally, but it would also create the high tide needed to wipe out this corruption in order for change.
Is ‘E’ your first name or your last name? Or is it both?
What is your point?
My point is of obvious, E.
Actually it isn’t.
The Intercept has their reasons for not naming the names of targets and or agents. I don’t know what they are because I don’t have their information and I don’t know what they are up against. Perhaps you could consider asking them, rather than just telling them what they should do in order to live up to your expectations.
And … maybe E has his or her reasons for calling him or herself E (probably not his or her real name). That was and is the point. Seems obvious to me.
Yes, E is my real initial. And I can assure you that the reporters at The Intercept know who I am. (I have written to them ad nauseum for months.) I am sure they have their reasons for not naming targets, but they have not elucidated those reasons to their readers. I presume they are because of the legal imbroglios that would subsequently follow. But by not naming targets and connecting these stories to real life people (which is what the best journalists do), they contribute to the lack of outrage among the public about their stories. They are not going much beyond reporting what Snowden documents reveal, which is not reporting but stenography. They must push beyond these limitations. And yes I know my demands make me sound annoying, but please allow me to explain to you that I care very deeply about these issues, and that I am personally a target and personally need them to move beyond the academic stories for my life circumstances to improve. Is that wrong of me — or are only certain people allowed to push for justice? By suggesting that avid readers cannot criticize The Intercept borders on solipsism.
So why are you posting that to me?That’s is the precise opposite of what I “suggested.” There is nothing in what I’ve written where I’ve suggested that you “cannot criticize The Intercept. So lose the straw. Your statement that you directed at The Intercept was, in my opinion, a conclusion made completely without context and completely presumptuous as to what they should do, even though you’re ignorant about why they do or don’t do what they do or don’t do. Which is why I actually did suggest to you that you ask them specifically rather than just yelp about it.
Notice that you’ve now vaguely, and without any real explanation at all, stated your reasons for being E. That’s fine and all, but it doesn’t matter that you think The Intercept knows who you are. You’re still hiding or attempting to hide your identity from this forum and from the public, including the surveillance state. That’s your choice for your reasons, and completely understandable. I have no inclination to challenge your choice about that, which is what I meant by asking you to explain that—in the context of your demands of The Intercept.
Not sure your rationale for being troubled about my using ‘E’ holds up, but I am not interested in being distracted by irrelevant debate. The security state is also well aware of my identity — I told you I am a target and as such all of my communications are compromised. You should also know that I’ve been quite open about my identity and harassment on the web and in emails to The Intercept. And talk about straw arguments: you’re equating my revealing my identity with The Intercept revealing identities of targets? Talk about asymmetrical power. I’d be happy for The Intercept to identify me as a target; my self-identifying as one only stands to make me a target for people such as you.
Final reply: You jumble and confuse most everything I write in response to you so consequently there’s no point in wasting any more time with you. You don’t make sense. I couldn’t care less one way or the other if you call yourself E or EC. That wasn’t the issue.
“That’s your choice for your reasons, and completely understandable. ”
Yes it is understandable that I not identify myself, so what is your real reason for being here? To discredit me. I can do this all day long if you’d like. Except that you’ll be getting paid and I won’t be.
Welcome to the club!
Alice: But I don’t want to go among mad people.
The Cat: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.
Alice: How do you know I’m mad?
The Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn’t have come here.
-Alice in Wonderland
Yet another demonstration of NSA overreach. I’ve been a Linux fan for some time, but became concerned when I discovered – through a Linux course offered on edX – that the NSA was involved in developing the random number generator used in Linux encryption. What this means, folks, is that not only are the encryption programs used in conjunction with, say, e-mail programs, compromised, but so are the servers. Why should you care? Only because the vast majority of servers are Linux-based.
I suppose that a high degree of capability is required to exploit the communications of the so-called “bad guys”, but the capabilities described here go way beyond that. It appears that the US intelligence community is unaware as to the geographic concentration of terrorists, or perhaps has adopted the attitude that we are all terrorists until proven otherwise. How do we do that? Not possible.
You’re 100% right. Commercially, however, the first company that offers absolute privacy will win this market absolutely. Let’s see who has the balls to do that.
Companies that don’t “play ball” get put out of business. The NSA can give you info to your competitor to get their cooperation or simply give your company money for some research/project/product.
When you get a National Security Letter yo either cooperate or go out of business.
Well, then someone should fix it. Linux is not secret software. A random number generator should be an identifiable routine or set of routines that can be isolated. If not, then someone has been making things difficult, possibly on purpose. You cannot hide how anything works in any flavor of Linux from the NSA; they have too much money. All you can do is make it easy to replace critical routines. Why should a large company not write its own package of routines and install them on its servers? A small company? Small companies need to rely on a trusted 3rd party organization. All such things are open to infiltration, but once that is out in the open, there are ways of handling the problem. You can make it so the NSA has to work very hard to get just poor results.
It’s not as easy as you think.
Hey, let’s remove this bug where some crypto routines are using memory that’s hasn’t been initialized. What could possibly go wrong?
Random number generators are identifiable routines or sets of routines, that is very true. But they are not at all straightforward; I can tell you that because of the years I worked developing Monte Carlo simulations, which use random number generators extensively. The early generators – like the multiplicative congruential generator embedded in all the IBM mainframe code, were at first thought satisfactory, but analysis later showed that they could be very lousy. Donald Knuth, one of the great programming minds of all time, devotes an entire chapter (178 pages) to the topic in Volume 2 of The Art of Computer Programming. In it he starts with a thirteen step algorithm for generating random numbers, which was intended to be so complicated that a person reading it without explanatory comments wouldn’t know what the program was doing (Knuth’s words), an algorithm that was immediately demonstrated to be awful.
The purpose of this diatribe is to indicate that random number generators require very extensive testing and sophisticated analysis, both of which cost lots of time and money. An organization like the NSA, with its thousands of computer programmers and mathematicians, and acres of supercomputers, is able to do that testing and analysis, and is able to identify vulnerabilities, and probably also design such vulnerabilities in, that the rest of us are rarely able to discover.
When someone does discover an encryption vulnerability, experience shows it to most likely be a hacker, who immediately exploits it for commercial gain. In my opinion, at least part of the reason why we are seeing so many hacks into financial transactions and financial data bases (K-Mart; Home Depot; JP Morgan,. . .) is because of these weaknesses. The NSA should be held financially responsible for the damages caused by these hacks, and every effort should be made to inform the public of that responsibility. By their efforts to counter cyber crime, they have actually made life easier for the cyber criminals.
Perhaps I did not make myself clear. You do not waste your time trying to determine what someone else’s random number generator does. You throw it out and put in one that you trust. That is why you have to be able to identify these routines: so you can replace them. This means starting with with algorithms that are known to be good, and keeping a tight control on the implementation.
it is well known that early random generators were crap; that is completely irrelevant to the current situation. It is entirely feasible to make good ones; keeping them from corruption is the problem.
“The NSA should be held financially responsible for the damages caused by these hacks, and every effort should be made to inform the public of that responsibility.”
I’ve heard of the saying “With great power comes great responsibility.” Well, that’s been outmoded in this new, bright age: the new slogan is “You’re either with us or against us.” These were the words that the great, venerable George W. Bush uttered, having this slogan revealed to him directly by God to George after he climbed up the mountain known as the National Security. You would not deny God’s word spoken through his Messenger, George W. Bush, would you? So what if we are all vulnerable to criminals, thanks to far-sighted projections from brilliant mathematicians and computer programmers under the watchful eye and direction of the executive branch? We owe them a deep debt of gratitude. Instead, we choose to be haughty in our arrogance, thinking we deserve to be protected from crime.
An utter abomination. A sheer, calamitous shame of human reasoning perpetrated by so-called “experts in the field”. Shame on you, and shame on your kind. Terrorists.
How dare any of you question the integrity of those you entrusted sensitive and personal data to! They were hard at work counting their own profits, it’s not their fault that their lazily constructed networks were glaringly insecure and were left open to attack by black market criminals! JP Morgan, I’ve got your back on this one.
It’s your own damn fault that you were given one specific social security number! Go to hell if you think you deserve the right to modify or contest your credit history after trustworthy businesses like JP Morgan left open sloppy back doors! Welcome to being homeless, you ingrates!
What I am saying is, you’re all so arrogant and think you have “human rights”. Well, clearly privacy is now banned! That’s what you get for thinking you deserved dignity, respect, and a means of livelihood!
Is there any nation now in the post 9/11 era which is NOT interested in absolutely everything and is not paranoid against absolutely everything? Moreover, because this nation is the power center of the world why would one ever think that it would not be interested in absolutely everything. Snowden has managed to do in in one short moment that US intelligence could not do in decades and that is expose SO much secret information that compromises all of us. I surely call treason. If not treason what the hell else is it? He is sitting in that bastion of tyranny Russia giving him “sanctuary” what out of the goodness of Putin’s ever so soft heart? I suspect NOT. He is sitting there because the power in Russia knows they have found gold.
Still, I believe, with ALL of its faults the US remains the freest nation on earth. Try living in those countries that are not so and then tell me how evil the empire is. To quote a person I hate but will quote. Politics ESPECIALLY international politics ain’t bean bag! Yes, the US is paranoid about absolutely everything and 9/11 irrespective of its rationale has made us just so. Who could blame the US for being just that?
Let me start this off by saying there is a caveat.
Excellent post. You are a responsible guardian of YOUR 1st amendment right, these others — well soon enough they will learn that they have no rights whatsoever. Anything that invokes the national security state gods of terrorism, 9/11, and other fear-inducers will have their reward.
The caveat is, it appears to our corporate sponsors (internet service providers, search engines) that you happened upon a terrorist website. This terrorist haven happens to have a url of https://firstlook.org/theintercept/. They have promptly notified the national security state and you are now a terrorist.
Sincerely,
George W. Bush administration
It is amazing to me the amount of people, like yourself, that do not understand the situation. To summarize your point; the U.S. government is in DIRECT violation of the constitution, but to discuss that is treasonous. Do you not see how that is a logical fallacy? You may be willing to give up your rights that we as a nation have fought and died for based out of your fear of the outside world, but those of us true Americans would like to keep our rights.
How does the exposure of unconstitutional actions by the US government ‘compromise all of us’? How does the violation of this country’s founding principles by the government not seem as compromise of all our American freedoms?
Natalie, So instead of being upset with the NSA and all their stooges for illegally spying on everyone, you are upset with Snowden for telling you it happened? You can’t handle the truth? Please explain how he …”expose(d) SO much secret information that compromises all of us”. How did it compromise anyone except the out-of-control quasi-authoritarian state we are living in?
I guess you have not been following along very well. How are we exposed by Snowden? The NSA is exposed by Snowden. We are exposed by the NSA. Do you identify more with the NSA than with citizens and their rights as enumerated in constitution?
Did you know that Snowden was trapped in Russia by the U.S. and did not chose to stop there? Putin gets no information from Snowden. He did not bring any with him. Get it? Try to follow along. This is just great propaganda for Russia showing that they are not the only repressive super power. I think it is fucking hilarious.
I’m sorry you live in fear, but perhaps you should examine your fears. Facts will help. Stop watching corporate media… that would be a good start. Fear, paranoia, and lies are their bread, butter, and jam.
Snowy brought his entire collection with him on his laptop when he went through Russia. The laptop may have been encrypted, but the Russians would have easily got him to give up the data and It’s likely the Chinese got whatever they wanted before letting him go as he traveled through Hong Kong. Not only is Snowy “trapped” in Russia cuz he’s afraid to leave for fear of “facing the music” in America, but unlike the Chinese, the Russians may not want him to leave to keep America guessing as to exactly what he has ‘compromised’.
Haha, in your face Dopey Snowy! I smell another blockbuster propaganda film! Does “Zero Dark Thirty” have a sequel yet? This one could be even better, it features foreign words that please the national security state gods of fear and secrecy such as “China” and “Russia”. Lets not point out that China is a humongous trade partner of the United States and that Russia is essentially on the backburner of the stove in case we need to make people have to live through another Cold War. Haha, this eternal war is so profitable! Somewhere JP Morgan is smiling, radiating it’s eternal light through the corporate sun. Makes me feel all warm and tingly inside :) Clinton 2016!!!
You’re an idiot – worse still, an idiot who hasn’t read the news in the past 16 months. Ed gave the materials to Glenn and Laura before leaving Hong Kong. He did not have the materials with him when he entered Russia. Now go get a can opener and take your head out of your ***.
The data that is posted here at the Intercept? Sorry, your paranoid fear-mongering isn’t working. Please post proof of any damage to anything other than the gigantic egos of the NSA and there quest for total information.
That’s interesting, since all his laptops were decoys and held no information.
How has 9/11 made most nations paranoid? Most nations have experienced far greater trauma many times in the modern era. The US is one of few for whom the loss of 3000 lives on its own soil due to outside attack is something unique. Your post is nothing but your own paranoia projected onto the outside world.
“Still, I believe, with ALL of its faults the US remains the freest nation on earth.”
Except you’re not free – or, to put it another way, you have all the freedom money can buy. You have the freedom to select the drapes in a cage constructed from your own ignorance and obedience to a government of, by, and for corporations whose ultimate product the buying and selling of human beings.
Because that’s the freedom you’re defending so righteously,
So, either you’re an ignorant tool spouting platitudes and propaganda spoon-fed to you by your overseers, or you’re a troll from the NSA.
Which is it?
“US remains the freest nation on earth”
Um, no. You are blind to what is happening all around you. Secret Prisons, Secret Courts, Secret Laws, Torture. Every phone call, email and mouse click is recorded, every hotel room, bus ticket, train ticket and air plane ticket reported, All credit cards and bank account transactions monitored and reported. Traffic Cameras monitor all interstate traffic and city traffic, tracking license plates and drivers. All library books monitored. TSA checks at airports involving intrusive and abusive searches. No knock raids on private homes for trivial reasons. National Security Letters. Forfeiture laws. All major cities are monitored by Drones, Helicopters and Satellites. All major police departments are militarized and nationalized. Phone locations are tracked using meta data, Phones can be remotely activated to turn on the microphone and camera. Phones with GPS can track your location information down to a few feet Laptop and tablet cameras and microphones can be remotely activated.
Do you even know America?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hytkAaoF2k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3_dJE9tBRg
natalie.rosen@nsa.gov
Ha! +1
Hmm. Should I…shouldn’t I?
Nope.
Would be funny, though (if true.)
But remember ladies and gentlemen, President Obama is ‘strongly committed’ to an open internet. But sadly, there’s nothing the poor guy can do to influence the decision,
And anyone who believes that nonsense ‘strongly’ needs to BE committed.
I see this article as important. These Snowden revelations expose the very heart of the NSA-it’s core secrets in fact-and the scope of their activities is shown. It is very broad indeed. What effect this upon you and me is my concern. Do they actually target us not just foreign potential “enemies”. Does the realization that we may well be personally surveilled create a creepy insidious self-inflicted removal of our will to stand up to Government Agencies like Homeland Security, FBI, and Police when we see their wrong-doing. For fear we may face their wrath. I think it does.
Just to follow up my question as to whether the Governments ( I am talking about the 5 eyes) do indeed target us. In Canada CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) was found guilty by a Judge of circumventing the laws that prohibit them spying upon Canadians and any person in Canada. CSIS is now a convicted criminal group as well as being a Federal Government department. The method they used was to outsource the job of spying on us in Canada to another one of the 5 eyes-my best guess is either the NSA or GCHQ (British)- and then these groups sent their reports back to CSIS. By doing this CSIS could claim they were not themselves spying on Canadians. But the Judge would have none of it and found them guilty.
Welcome to my NSA Black World! And cyber is only one part of the Core. It is important that details of these programs, that are directed against out potential overseas enemies, remain in the ECI/ SAP Black World. But if they were used against US citizens and US entities, Congress and the courts must be forced by the American People to come down on them hard and toss the IC bastards that allowed it to happen into jail.
Russ Tice,
fmr Intelligence Analyst & Operations Officer for SAP/ ECI/ (Black World) Programs, Information Warfare Support Center, NSA.
But I have learnt, from this article and others published over the last months by The Intercept, that such surveillance of US citizens and entities is indeed taking place.
Computers are hacked, phones are hacked, e-mails are read and so on. Incidentally what is SAP/ECI?
SAP = Special Access Program. Such programs are said to be “compartmented”, meaning that a formalized kind of need to know is required to grant access. Say you have an ordinary Top Secret (TS) clearance. Then your employer or customer can grant you access to TS information necessary for you to do your job. But if the information is compartmented, your access is controlled by the agency, you are briefed, i.e., required to sign papers saying you will be a good boy or girl, that you will deny having access to the material, that you will deny the the agency is your customer, and so on, before being given access to the information.
All special access programs have a name, and a trigraph. Both the name and trigraph are classified, in my experience. The reason for the trigraph is to make marking documents easier, viz, at the top of every page of program FUBAR UNLIMITED BUDDY one merely types TS/FUB instead of TS/FUBAR UNLIMITED BUDDY. Saved a lot of time in the days of typewriters, I suppose.
Because the code names and trigraphs are classified, people often give the programs yet other, unclassified names, like, say, the Rose Program. So if your company or group was working on a number of SAP programs, you could talk generalities outside the SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) using those names. E.g., wow, the guy running the Rose program is clueless!. Yeah, but he is a star compared to the jerk running Posey.
Intelligence activities have gone far beyond surveillance. Extrajudicial torture via radio wave weapons, ‘heat weapons’ and the manipulation of electromagnetic fields are also being used in Zersetzung campaigns against citizens deemed ‘dissidents.’
“But if they were used against US citizens and US entities, Congress and the courts must be forced by the American People to come down on them hard and toss the IC bastards that allowed it to happen into jail.”
Russ Tice,
I’ve seen, firsthand, some of what’s transpiring on U.S. soil and it has to be stopped. Thanks for your comment and courage over the years — I’ve followed your “story”… Let there be many more whistleblowers. As Lon Snowden reminded us last night, “The truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.” (Said by Edward Snowden, I believe.) Again, thank you.
Nurse, can you please reveal or at least allude to what you are witnessing more directly? It is critical that the reporters here know what abuses they need to verify, and your identifying some of them notifies the public about what is going on. Thank you for considering.
Nurse, until you say it, these reporters will continue to believe reports such as yours are ‘conspiracy theory.’ Just spell it out — mic…….
Nurse, two of the individuals involved in targeting me work for alleged ‘health supply chain consulting’ companies.A third works for Northrop Grumman; the fourth, his wife, for Thompson Reuters. Ever since getting a flu shot a couple of years ago, I set off xray detectors at airports and buildings with security.
Have you discovered that you have grooves on your head?
Don’t let my grooves impale you on your way out the door, stooge.
Russ, if this is you, thank you for your comment. Peter Maass
Yes, Mr. Tice, if this really is you, thanks very much for the good work you’re doing.
Yes Peter it’s me, Russ.
I mentioned to Glenn how important it was to look for NSA ECI classification documents that pertain to STELLAR WIND that may have crossed over into the TS/SCI arena. NSA tapping, word fro word, e-mail and phones of Congress, Supreme & FISA Courts, top level military, Sate Dept, the press, NGOs, Law Firms, and others was hidden by NSA by placing it in the ECI control arena. Oh, and you have to understand the Title 10 vs. Title 50 issue with the core black stuff. CNE (Computer Network Exploitation) is learning everything you can about the cyber targets and is classified at the TS/SCI Code Word level (what Mr. Snowden had access to), CNA (Computer Network Attack) is the offensive black world (ECI /SAP level) of doing some very nasty things to the target networks and the people that are working them. CND (Defense) can be classified at the strait TS and eve S level. As I told Glenn, the smoking gun will be found at the ECI/ SAP level, and, yes, ECI/ SAP trinomes and binomes are classified at the TS/SCI level. A binome normally means an umbrella ECI or SAP that has several trinome programs under it. Send me an e-mail, Glenn has my e-mail address, or give me a call, John Coal has my phone number, if you have some issued you are confused on. Good Luck and thanks to y’all for getting the word out to the American public. NSA has turned into a monstrous Medusa that must be killed at all costs. Cheers, Russ
Mr. Tice, thank you for your service to humankind. Future generations will owe your service, and we are all indebted to you.
Dr. Robert Duncan, who describes himself as a former CIA researcher, says that the electronic harassment program is called SATAN, an acronym for ‘silent assassination through adaptive neural networks.’ Can you confirm this information? Thank you.
More than that, Mr Tice.
Create the commercial products that will stop them.
More than that, Mr. Tice.
Create the commercial products that will defeat them.
we know now a lot but nothing happen… syndicates, political parties, student organizations, all are infiltrated by secret service and that’s how they can control any unrest against government in Denmark. We can have all info and again, nothing. I don’t say the intercept should not give information, but you should also create network of sites that will spread your articles from time to time, and again, without protest, everything will stay just report. I think the same problem is with amnesty international, they can make 1000 reports and nothing. politicians are arrogant and they don’t care for reports, but they care if people massively protests. if intercept become powerful in the sense of making network for spreading this information, people will get idea to protest, at least in some south countries if not in DK.
and, that Sir, is a perfect reason to be targeted ;-)
such way of thinking is really dangerous for each government….
I can tell you that some of the spying is for political reasons. To prevent or prepare for embarrassing disclosures that could impact a political image. I believe there is collusion among the political parties to allow this and possibly the judiciary. I have been bumper locked related to my research into the financial crisis, that the government took the wrong course of actions and was incompetent costing trillions of dollars.
“I can tell you that some of the spying is for political reasons.” -cointelpro (@cointelpro1)
Yes and perhaps for other reasons as well, but I’ll not elaborate. It’s quite clear, however, that Cointelpros (plural in some of the old documents obtained under FOIA) are alive, well, and thriving.
Nurse, please elaborate. Experimentation?
I don’t get it. If the documents and information Snowden is releasing, such as the above, is so damaging to the US and sheds a bad light on us to our allies then why in the hell is our own media giants so eager to print it and share it with everyone? Is there no such thing as loyalty to the country you are citizen of? NSA isn’t doing things so they can share dirty laundry with the National Enquirer. They are screening information to protect our country, which includes you and your families. What’s happening to our national security when the media feels the need to share everything and anything regardless of the damage. We expect it of Russia and China and other countries that want to use Snowdens info to hurt our country. But our own media too?
What damage? Please be specific. The media you speak of should be the heart of accountability. Without media willing to expose the illegal and harmful acts of a government, you will end up with something other than “the home of the brave”… sort of like what we are becoming now. Please explain how Russia and China are using Snowden’s info to hurt our country. While you are at it, please tell us if you are a paid troll for the NSA.
The horse has already escaped the barn. The people ‘publishing’ this stuff think they are God’s gift to the worlld and are, except of course Snowy, not Americans…
“The people ‘publishing’ this stuff think they are God’s gift to the worlld…”
That’s what your post is about! Your own petty insecurity that Daddy pays more attention to the smart kids than his own poor little darling?
Honestly, get over yourself! You think the fascists whom you so ardently admire care anything about you? You’re nothing to them – a useful tool to be wound up and let loose for their own amusement.
C’mon, man, grow a pair!
So, no damage to report? Must be difficult to be so fearful and worried without any basis. You’ve got talent!
I actually think Edward Snowden is quite foolish–though probably for a different reason than you might think. The truth is he totally overestimates how much this matters to most people. Not that it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t matter, but because of how shamelessly arranged peoples’ priorities have become. It will always be that our democracy’s biggest flaw has been the freedom not to give a shit.
Nice try. I’ve been consistently impressed by how many people are quietly pissed off by this issue — irrespectively of whether they follow the news. Unaccountable surveillance of Americans by either corporate entities or the feds is not taken lightly by adults in the U.S.
At least, not those who have anything to lose. If you choose to pull a Tomfriedman, and hang around for 20′ with “recovering” alcoholics in a Des Moines laundromat to get your sense of the average guy’s take on things, you might come away convinced he doesn’t know/care.
If you talk with, say, mid-level managers at NREL + a couple of academics, on a trolley ride to convention you’re all attending………. you might come away with the sense that our educated middle class is not so fucking pleased about it all.
The puppets are working overtime on this story. Wonder how much if our tax money they’ll collect subverting the Constitution today.
No real need for puppets on Teh Intertubez. You underestimate the size of the English-literate population, and the extent of low grade mental illness within it.
The thing that most troubles me is how hard a time I have distinguishing crazed shut-ins from “productive, educated” citizens. There’s a fair bit more crazy among the nominally competent than most of us ever want to admit to. That’s why stringent institutional transparency and oversight are such damned good ideas at every level.
The Startrek-ness of Gen. Alexander and the madness of King George aren’t that far removed from the wandering diatribes that get posted here……… a few days after an article is up.
China has infiltrated two of the five eyes, and so they have quite good access to information. One five-eye spy chief was kicked out when he blurted out this fact, showing the kind of clout the Chinese have developed. Another five-eye had a Chinese as their top man. Under the circumstances, NSA is already at a disadvantage. There is a large Chinese population in USA, and lots of Chinese folks are working for NSA. Lord alone knows where their allegiance lie. I get this creepy feeling of being under the watch of slanted eyes all the time …
quote” I get this creepy feeling of being under the watch of slanted eyes all the time …”unquote
I get this creepy feeling you’re a scumbag Milprop agent.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/11/30/john-ivison-csis-right-to-worry-about-chinese-spies/
Nihao, Comrade. This may enlighten you further. The Chinese already have access to most of the stuff that our government is sharing with four-eyes.
This….. This made me laugh. May be some kernels of truth but the language completely obfuscates whatever they are… Roflmao
Ah, yes, you have to watch those orientals. Reading your post, I am reminded of the crime against humanity committed by the US government in World War 2 when we applied such useless generalities to Japanese Americans. Clearly many have failed to learn anything from that.
To say nothing of the glaring logical inconsistency in your (and I’ll be generous here) “argument” – namely, that if it’s wrong for China to spy on its own people or American corporations, then how exactly is it right for the American government to do the same? Care to explain.
that if it’s wrong for China to spy on its own people or American corporations
Who said that? I didn”t. But to sit and do nothing would be wrong if the Chinese are already at it. BTW, did you know that most flash drives have hardware codes that can send out information from our system on being pinged? Don’t use Chinese made flash drives, though good luck finding one that isn’t Chinese.
“But to sit and do nothing would be wrong if the Chinese are already at it.”
And naturally the only option is to perform the very same actions that we deem are wrong when the Chinese do them? Is that what you propose? Or perhaps you have something else in mind (which no one would know since the written word appears not to be your forte)?
But, by all means, keep trying!
Again
You are being judgmental about the actions that Chinese undertake for their own self-interest. I have no such pretensions. Yes, I do not like to be surveilled, but that does not by itself make it wrong or illegal. Unethical yes, but that”s about it.
So if they are spying on us we return them the compliments. We don’t complain and they don’t complain. Simple, plain-speak, savvy?
Right now we are lagging behind. Chinese know where Kim Jong Un is, but we don’t know what the Chinese know. It’s making CNN and its ilk crazy, so much so that they still haven’t caught up with the new Snowden information or his film.
As much as I can’t stand this NSA shill/sleazeball General Hercules, there is an element of truth to what he is saying. There are huge numbers of Chinese students in the country that are expected to report back to their intelligence services, in addition to all of the illegal immigrants smuggled in by the Chinese mafia, taht are little more than slaves. But I’ve seen used as foot soldiers in operations, coordinated by various mafias. And yes they can install back doors in products…whose fault is that when we sent all of our manufacturing overseas. These legitimate security concerns and legitimate targets of NSA surveillance should not be conflated or confused with the 1.2 million Americans citizens that are on a “suspects” list. NSA is not allowed to spy on 1 American, let alone 1.2 million. There has been a complete news blackout since this information was revealed. There has been absolutely no comment from anyone in the Administration, even to say it’s bullshit. What I can tell you is that the DEW torturers were out in force with the heaviest weapons to date on Saturday, October 11th in what appears to be an attempt to kill their targets. If these people were on that 1.2 million list…they would have been laying low on Saturday.
A/B/C = American Based Corporation
M/N/O = Multi National Corporation
?
Don’t think so. Countries are X/Y/Z.
I am not going to make myself very popular with what I have to say, but here goes. Edward snowden den is a thief to start with. If this were you or ii and we STOLE from a company we would be I. Deep doo doo. This man skipped out on his lease and his multi yrs girlfriend without a y explanation, goes to two countries with some of the worlds worst human and civil rights abuses and seems to be getting adequate monetary support. He could have gone the route many whistle blowers have and taken the heat like many have in a past world that did not offer the social networking support he could have worked with today. In his appearances he comes off as arrogant and belligerent in his opinion that he and greenwald are saving us from our monumental ignorance.
I am not stupid, am 71 yrs old and have lived much more frightening times when abused children and women were hidden and ignored, j Edgar Hoover was out of control, cold war spying was truly deadly, and race inequality was creating a powder keg. We in this country probably put more on Facebook in our narcissistic information glut than is ever gleaned from eavesdropping. We are wired to currents in the atmosphere, praise the convenience, and act shocked when our indiscimate use of all our gadgets may be a gateway to our lives. I will admit I love this electronic age. But this little snot snowmen has set himself up as a guru with stolen information. In closing I am a stalwart bra burning feminist with sting civil rights endeavors in my past, but I fail to care if someone watches my key strokes or listens to my boring phone conversations as I assume cons and hackers try this already. Maybe it is my age or the former abuse I did go thru, but I feel safe. I just hope that this twit does not get anyone killed
“The document does not provide any details on the identity or number of government officials who were supposed to know about these highly classified programs. Nor is it clear what sort of congressional or judicial oversight, if any, was applied to them.”
“The document does not say what the “forward-based” personnel are doing, or how extensive TAREX operations are.”
“It is not clear whether these “commercial entities” are American or foreign or both.”
“The document makes no other reference to NSA agents working under cover. It is not clear whether they might be working as full-time employees at the “commercial entities,” or whether they are visiting commercial facilities under false pretenses.”
“The document does not name any foreign companies or products, and gives no indication of the number or scale of the agency’s ties to them.”
“The document does not provide the names of any of these entities or the types of operations.”
“The briefing sheet does not say whether foreign governments are aware that the NSA may be working with their own companies.”
“But the briefing document SUGGESTS another category of employees…”
“But documents published today by The Intercept SUGGEST that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them…”
“The document did not say how the packages were intercepted and did not SUGGEST, as the new documents do, that interception and implants might be done by clandestine agents in the field.”
“‘That one bullet point, it’s really strange,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University. “I don’t know how to interpret…”
Wow, tough read. Speculation on top of uncertainties and unknowns. This article should have remained a work in progress until some of these questions could be answered.
Nate, Are you volunteer NSA like me, or you are paid NSA employee? You are doing good, brother, keep it up. But wtf did you use so many quotation marks? Made me think you are quoting when actually it is your own observation. Funny .. LOL … ROFL … ;-)
quote”You are doing good, brother, keep it up”unquote
Says the fascist authoritarian while worshiping at his alter of Totalitarian-R-Us.
Hercules:
i did quote the article. Ten seconds of research should have made that clear. Lazy, brother.
Also, criticism doesn’t = paid NSA shill. Elementary logic, brother.
Nate, my friend,
Good job, keep it up. I am only an amateur NSA fan, but you are quite professional and hard-working. Also, your colleague Craig is excellent. Squatting here 24×7 is not an easy job, and it gets very boring with monotonous cheerleaders like Mona.
I am going to send Mr Greenwald my emails and passwords. Have you already sent yours? We need to take him up on his empty boasts. What say?
Now if Snowden would just find out all that China and Russia have been up to as he did to the USA.
Why would anyone be surprised at what is “revealed” in this “leak”?
I find that the following is hilarious; “How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?” If anybody was operating under the misconception that the NSA or some other government agency wasn’t sending people into their data centers then they need a reality check. If you are in charge on your data center security you should automatically assume that the NSA (or some agency) has managed to place people in your center.
Try this email. The last bit of encryption stays with you, so unless we physically threaten you you should be safe. The Chinese have given up trying to break this.
https://protonmail.ch/login
Snowden has committed treason.
The NSA and its enablers have committed treason. Read the constitution… you clown.
Can you explain how exposing crimes committed by the US Government constitutes treason? Perhaps you’d like to demonstrate exactly how the US Constitution provides the grounds for the government to spy on its own citizens; to murder innocent civilians by the hundreds of thousands; selectively fail to prosecute overt acts of financial criminality; commit torture; destroy the Earth’s climate; and imprison individuals without due process of law?
Please, do tell.
“Can you explain how exposing crimes committed by the US Government constitutes treason?”
Exposing illegal activities of the NSA against US citizens is one thing. The surveillance of other countries, even allies, is NOT against anything in the Constitution and since this is the REAL WORLD, they would most certainly be spying on us if they could and probably are.
This has now become totally inexcusable in my opinion. It does nothing more than damage the US and accomplishes absolutely nothing to the benefit of me or any US citizen. Anyone involved should be imprisoned.
And you have committed libel.
I’m curious as to why the name(s) of the “control authorities” were redacted. Was that an editorial decision?
+1
We publish names of publicly-known NSA employees (so Theresa Shea’s name was not redacted in the docs, and we would not redact, for example, Keith Alexander’s name) but not other NSA employees.
Is it wrong to assume you mean names authorized for release by the NSA, as opposed to people publicly known as NSA employees?
They should explain their reasoning so that the public understands the legal ramifications and so that they don’t undermine their reputations.
“Prince thinks it is unlikely the NSA would place secret agents inside his or other American firms, due to political and legal issues.”
Of course the NSA HAS placed agents inside American firms! Just look at the political and legal ‘climate’. It’s raining Fascism on us!
American naifs, who think like this Prince child, are a huge part of the problem.
Sadly it seems multinational corporations are manipulating governments across the world, and not even (the lower ranks of) intelligence agencies are aware of its full extent, for they too are often unwitting parts of the deception.
Yes, the governments of these nations (including my own — the United States) appear to be hollowed out proxies for the corporate state. To put it another way, let’s call the Fortune 500 companies the “corporate sun.” Now, let’s call the government, military, and law enforcement agencies “the magnifying glass.” So, while the “corporate sun” radiates, “the magnifying glass” happens to be setting everyone underneath on fire (the citizens). It makes perfectly logical sense for this to happen, because what was once the government has just become a useful tool to destroy whatever happens to be interfering in the corporate government’s affairs. In another way, who wouldn’t want a magnifying glass when someone threatens the corporate sun? Excellent way to spot whatever happens to be underneath it in minute detail, that way it will be easier to point out apparent flaws (these apparent flaws are collected and stored in fail-safe archives by the corporate sun in case the citizens develop independent thought). Is it safe to say yet that the government (in it’s outmoded sense of representative of the citizenry) no longer exists and has been replaced by a corporate state backed by the military? “Welcome to Government 2.0″, hopefully Mark Zuckerberg will have that as the title of his first book. The subtitle should be “How to reduce and streamline the government to maximize it’s potential for the Web generation”. I’m sure it could include a foreword by George W. Bush and have praiseworthy reviews on the back by other Fortune 500 success stories. Eric Schmidt, Sheryl Sandberg, and Satya Nadella would be great people to do the honors.
So, is this going to be another time when Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft feign outrage and act like they are indignantly “throwing their arms in the air” for the sheer thought of anyone having the gall to exploit the consumers of their “products and services” behind their backs — or is it too obvious at this point that they are all working together? Because if they try that shit again I won’t be able to help myself from laughing at their con artistry this time around.
Its a very tangled web, those most at fault are the service providers, but the hardware/software people have to leave a back door open for the service providers. Corporations depend on your willful ignorance to turn profits so they don’t have to flip their own stocks. Its a new gold iPad — forget its the same color as a your dad’s fugly 2000 Camry and grab it! Marketing isn’t concerned with ethics, its concerned with making useful idiots. Apple is already marketing they shut one back door, they won’t tell you they opened another, of course.
Wish I could like your comment to infinity.People fear tha gubment bing their lives but willingly would give a corporation their first born for an i______. Consume and die is what want us all to do.