British and Canadian spy agencies accumulated sensitive data on smartphone users, including location, app preferences, and unique device identifiers, by piggybacking on ubiquitous software from advertising and analytics companies, according to a document obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The document, included in a trove of Snowden material released by Der Spiegel on January 17, outlines a secret program run by the intelligence agencies called BADASS. The German newsweekly did not write about the BADASS document, attaching it to a broader article on cyberwarfare. According to The Intercept‘s analysis of the document, intelligence agents applied BADASS software filters to streams of intercepted internet traffic, plucking from that traffic unencrypted uploads from smartphones to servers run by advertising and analytics companies.
Programmers frequently embed code from a handful of such companies into their smartphone apps because it helps them answer a variety of questions: How often does a particular user open the app, and at what time of day? Where does the user live? Where does the user work? Where is the user right now? What’s the phone’s unique identifier? What version of Android or iOS is the device running? What’s the user’s IP address? Answers to those questions guide app upgrades and help target advertisements, benefits that help explain why tracking users is not only routine in the tech industry but also considered a best practice.
For users, however, the smartphone data routinely provided to ad and analytics companies represents a major privacy threat. When combined together, the information fragments can be used to identify specific users, and when concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, they have proven to be irresistibly convenient targets for those engaged in mass surveillance. Although the BADASS presentation appears to be roughly four years old, at least one player in the mobile advertising and analytics space, Google, acknowledges that its servers still routinely receive unencrypted uploads from Google code embedded in apps.
For spy agencies, this smartphone monitoring data represented a new, convenient way of learning more about surveillance targets, including information about their physical movements and digital activities. It also would have made it possible to design more focused cyberattacks against those people, for example by exploiting a weakness in a particular app known to be used by a particular person. Such scenarios are strongly hinted at in a 2010 NSA presentation, provided by agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and published last year in The New York Times, Pro Publica, and The Guardian. That presentation stated that smartphone monitoring would be useful because it could lead to “additional exploitation” and the unearthing of “target knowledge/leads, location, [and] target technology.”
The 2010 presentation, along with additional documents from Britain’s intelligence service Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, showed that the intelligence agencies were aggressively ramping up their efforts to see into the world of mobile apps. But the specifics of how they might distill useful information from the torrent of internet packets to and from smartphones remained unclear.
The BADASS slides fill in some of these blanks. They appear to have been presented in 2011 at the highly secretive SIGDEV intelligence community conference. The presentation states that “analytics firm Flurry estimates that 250,000 Motorola Droid phones were sold in the United States during the phone’s first week in stores,” and asks, “how do they know that?”
The answer is that during the week in question, Flurry uploaded to its own servers analytics from Droid phones on behalf of app developers, one phone at a time, and stored the analytics in their own databases. Analytics includes any information that is available to the app and that can conceivably help improve it, including, in certain instances with Flurry, the user’s age and gender, physical location, how long they left the app open, and a unique identifier for the phone, according to Flurry materials included in the BADASS document.
By searching these databases, the company was able to get a count of Droid phones running Flurry-enabled apps and, by extrapolating, estimate the total number of Droids in circulation. The company can find similar information about any smartphone that their analytics product supports.
Not only was Flurry vacuuming sensitive data up to its servers, it was doing so insecurely. When a smartphone app collects data about the device it’s running on and sends it back to a tracking company, it generally uses the HTTP protocol, and Flurry-enabled apps were no exception. But HTTP is inherently insecure—eavesdroppers can easily spy on the entire digital conversation.
If the tracking data was always phoned home using the HTTPS protocol—the same as the HTTP protocol, except that the stream of traffic between the phone and the server is encrypted—then the ability for spy agencies to collect tracking data with programs like BADASS would be severely impeded.
Yahoo, which acquired the analytics firm Flurry in late 2014, says that since acquiring the company they have “implemented default encryption between Flurry-enabled applications and Flurry servers. The 2010 report in question does not apply to current versions of Flurry’s analytics product.” Given that Yahoo acquired Flurry so recently, it’s unclear how many apps still use Flurry’s older tracking code that sends unencrypted data back to Yahoo’s servers. (Yahoo declined to elaborate specifically on that topic.)
The BADASS slides also use Google’s advertisement network AdMob as an example of intercepted, unencrypted data. Free smartphone apps are often supported by ads, and if the app uses AdMob then it sends some identifying information to AdMob’s servers while loading the ad. Google currently supports the ability for app developers to turn on HTTPS for ad requests, however it’s clear that only some AdMob users actually do this.
When asked about HTTPS support for AdMob, a Google spokesperson said, “We continue our ongoing efforts to encrypt all Google products and services.”
In addition to Yahoo’s Flurry and Google’s AdMob, the BADASS presentation also shows that British and Canadian intelligence were targeting Mobclix, Mydas, Medialets, and MSN Mobile Advertising. But it’s clear that any mobile-related plaintext traffic from any company is a potential target. While the BADASS presentation focuses on traffic from analytics and ad companies, it also shows spying on Google Maps heartbeat traffic, and capturing “beacons” sent out when apps are first opened (listing Qriously, Com2Us, Fluentmobile, and Papayamobile as examples). The BADASS presentation also mentions capturing GPS coordinates that get leaked when opening BlackBerry’s app store.
In a boilerplate statement, GCHQ said, “It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters. Furthermore, all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.” Its Canadian counterpart, Communications Security Establishment Canada, or CSEC, responded with a statement that read, in part, “For reasons of national security, CSE cannot comment on its methods, techniques or capabilities. CSE conducts foreign intelligence and cyber defence activities in compliance with Canadian law.”
Julia Angwin, who has doggedly investigated online privacy issues as a journalist and author, most recently of the book “Dragnet Nation,” explains that “every type of unique identifier that passes [over the internet] unencrypted is giving away information about users to anyone who wants it,” and that “the evidence is clear that it’s very risky to be throwing unique identifiers out there in the clear. Anyone can grab them. This is more evidence that no one should be doing that.”
The BADASS program was created not merely to track advertising and analytic data but to solve a much bigger problem: There is an overwhelming amount of smartphone tracking data being collected by intelligence agencies, and it’s difficult to make sense of.
First there are the major platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and BlackBerry. On each platform, a range of hardware and platform versions are in use. Additionally, app stores are overflowing; new apps that track people get released every day. Old apps constantly get updated to track people in different ways, and people use different versions of apps for different platforms all at once. Adding to the diversity, there are several different ad and analytics companies that app developers use, and when those companies send tracking data back to their servers, they use a wide variety of formats.
With such an unwieldy haystack of data, GCHQ and CSEC, started the BADASS program, according to the presentation, to find the needles: information that can uniquely identify people and their devices, such as smartphone identifiers, tracking cookies, and other unique strings, as well as personally identifying information like GPS coordinates and email addresses.
BADASS is an an acryonym that stands for BEGAL Automated Deployment And Survey System. (It is not clear what “BEGAL” stands for, in turn.) The slideshow presentation is called “Mobile apps doubleheader: BADASS Angry Birds,” and promises “protocols exploitation in a rapidly changing world.”
Analysts are able to write BADASS “rules” that look for specific types of tracking information as it travels across the internet.
For example, when someone opens an app that loads an ad, their phone normally sends an unencrypted web request (called an HTTP request) to the ad network’s servers. If this request gets intercepted by spy agencies and fed into the BADASS program, it then gets filtered through each rule to see if one applies to the request. If it finds a match, BADASS can then automatically pull out the juicy information.
In the following slide, the information that is potentially available in a single HTTP request to load an ad includes which platform the ad is being loaded on (Android, iOS, etc.), the unique identifier of the device, the IMEI number which cell towers use to identify phones that try to connect to them, the name and version of the operating system that’s running, the model of the device, and latitude and longitude location data.
Similar information is sent across the internet in HTTP requests in several different formats depending on what company it’s being sent to, what device it’s running on, and what version of the ad or analytics software is being used. Because this is constantly changing, analysts can write their own BADASS rules to capture all of the permutations they can find.
The following slide shows part of the BADASS user interface, and a partial list of rules.
The slideshow includes a section called “Abusing BADASS for Fun and Profit” which goes into detail about the methodology analysts use to write new BADASS rules.
By looking at intercepted HTTP traffic and writing rules to parse it, analysts can quickly gather as much information as possibly from leaky smartphone apps. One slide states: “Creativity, iterative testing, domain knowledge, and the right tools can help us target multiple platforms in a very short time period.”
The slides also appear to mock the privacy promises of ad and analytics companies.
Companies that collect usage statistics about software often insist that the data is anonymous because they don’t include identifying information such as names, phone numbers, and email addresses of the users that they’re tracking. But in reality, sending unique device identifiers, IP addresses, IMEI numbers, and GPS coordinates of devices is far from anonymous.
In one slide, the phrase “anonymous usage statistics” appears in conspicuous quotation marks. The spies are well aware that despite not including specific types of information, the data they collect from leaky smartphone apps is enough for them to uniquely identify their targets.
The following slides show a chunk of Flurry’s privacy policy (at this point it has been replaced by Yahoo’s privacy policy), which states what information it collects from devices and how it believes this is anonymous.
The red box, which is present in the original slides, highlights this part: “None of this information can identify the individual. No names, phone numbers, email addresses, or anything else considered personally identifiable information is ever collected.”
Clearly the intelligence services disagree.
“Commercial surveillance often appears very benign,” Angwin says. “The reason Flurry exists is not to ‘spy on people’ but to help people learn who’s using their apps. But what we’ve also seen through Snowden revelations is that spy agencies seek to use that for their own purposes.”
While the BADASS program is specifically designed to target smartphone traffic, websites suffer from these exact same problems, and in many cases they’re even worse.
Websites routinely include bits of tracking code from several different companies for ads, analytics, and other behavioral tracking. This, combined with the lack of HTTPS, turns your web browser into a surveillance device that follows you around, even if you switch networks or use proxy servers.
In other words, while the BADASS presentation may be four years old, and while it’s been a year and a half since Snowden’s leaks began educating technology companies and users about the massive privacy threats they face, the big privacy holes exploited by BADASS remain a huge problem.
Photo, top: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Thank you for providing great article. I found an infographic which is clearly showing a deep analysis on NSA vs Spy Apps. http://theonespy.com/unzip-the-power-of-real-spying-nsa-vs-spy-apps/ .
Hey, when I told some of my ex-girlfriends and all their friends here in the Midwest some years ago that the secretive STASTI-like religious ideologic, illogical Corporations-run secretive Services have ALL the nudie pictures they all have sent around to their lovers over the past 10 years or so, they all laughed and called me a ” crazy Conspiracy theorist”. Combined with REGIN other System-near Backdoors and In-cloud File-saving, and you were saying again my-ladies?
Now. Keeping the common people ignorant of the oftentimes unbelievable conspired crimes against all of us committed under the guise of “National Security” world-wide, with the full secret support and technologies of too big to fail Corporations, is among the biggest crime of the U.S. Corporate mainstream media as well as of our mindless selfish rich crazy men-led ideologies-run societies.
P.S.: When it comes to so-called online “revenge porn”, you’d be extremely dumb to only suspect a former lover and not equivalently some bored, vicious, racist, sick Agents/ hackers possibly to be behind the release of and behind the infringements on your most intimate privacy. In deed, you’d be very dumb. Same thing, when you suddenly loose new innovations and unpublished Intellectual Properties to dubious – on NSA bulk collected data self-serving- neocon businesses, ultra religious mega business organizations, ponzi-scheming rightwing politicians and billionaires, and private too big to nail Corporate individuals associated to the Secret Services, you be very dumb to not suspect all the latter in uniform conspiracy led by grandiose organized greed and erring beliefs of their own supremacy thus.
The Internet, too big to fail tech Corporations and corporations-led global mass surveillance are run mainly by individual organized reckless thieves!
Now mind you with all these US Corporations involved cyber STAST-tech, it is us innovators and inventors around the world who are accused on ” Patent-Troll”, not the professional bulk Intellectual Property thieves/ and collectors of others Intellectual and private properties interestingly. Always the ‘god-given good exceptional Nature’s forces-like’ guys, no matter what crimes the Security guys run, I suppose?
I notice the breach being used with Mozilla 5.0, most web serverservers still use outdated platforms on browsers same as internet explorer 5 through msn. These are flaws that need updated or the will still use theses tricks to gain access into system. The years of 2000, or older show poo ages are being used by older outdated pages, as another access. Bad or copyed certifications is also a leak. So many security flaws based on administrators not keeping up to date or they are using other tactics to illegallyrics gain data from other users.
helloi am thinking June 2013 I started getting hundreds of thousands of emails in every email account. I remember badasses
Could this also of been a form of this intelligence program?
Because I had enough that I tossed my phone out the car window from what ever happened with my iPhone 4s
I still get a lot of spam emails kinda looking as these pics
It’s strange because someone or thing changed everything around plus in my contacts if I’d call AT&T a pic of a young dude shows with a Facebook address. Even when I call 1800 my apple has a different dude these are official phone numbers. Apple nor AT&T can get to the problem. This article just took me back to that hell
Micah, Was the BADASS slideshow part of the documents provided to the CBC as discussed in an interview with Glenn at CANADALAND?
http://canadalandshow.com/article/exclusive-cbc-stonewalled-snowden-story-says-greenwald
Except the Canadian edition of Huffington Post, who briefly had this report linked, no Canadian media establishment, including the CBC, has mentioned this story, even in passing. This almost complete absence from Canadian media, well more than 24 hours after your report and 10 days after disclosure by Der Spiegel is of great concern although I can’t say I’m surprised.
The data they’re collecting clearly violates the spirit if not exactly the letter of these companies’ privacy policies and the lack of encryption shows indifference bordering on negligence. Maybe there’s a basis for legal action here.
The Snowden revelations about the Five Eyes’ global jihad against individual privacy have shocked the world. The Brits’ and Canucks’ spy agencies state they’re legal. What gives with that?
Meanwhile, 800 gazillion dimwits around the planet anxiously await the latest and greatest Smartphone and every new app available. After all..they have nothing to hide, either in the Smartphone or their car. Until..
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/san-francisco-woman-pulled-out-car-gunpoint-because-license-plate-reader
She’s lucky these fucking morons didn’t murder her for one slight bad move. Living proof the only thing you need to become a cop is the ability to pull a gun and jello between your ears. Adding 2+2 not required.
Some of this currency may make its way to services for the underserved, so progressive California should keep the maximum state revenue stream on.
I keep clicking this website because of the great journalists, and also for Snowden/spy news. But sense TI seems not to have much interest in publishing anymore Snowden stories leaving that to Spiegel, the Guardian and even the smarmy NYT. Instead here is the place to find great journalists writing second tier and tangential stories with maybe a first rate story once a month or six weeks. my/our loss
I’m really curious about the views of many here. There really is a tiny number of people who comment here, though it is absolutely just an echo chamber for the most part w/a few trolls and a smaller few just trying to throw out different points of view, … devils advocate, which I believe is necessary if it’s not automatically discounted as ‘trolling’. Nor is accusing TI as being way too timid.. REDACTION’S… F-THAT! Why give war criminals who’ve declared war on half it’s citizens and the entire world by a bunch of wacko’s(I know some of the higher ranking scumbags in the so called IC) :-/
Love to share some facts(if those things are ok here??) but first I want to know how many of you support any type of gun control at all, any limits on the Second Amendment,(the most important by leaps and bounds, and the only really usefull one).
How many of you believe “non-violent means” can achieve anything? How many of you are willing to pick up that rifle you train with, and use it against the people who’ve declared war on you! Smoke pot? Well, a bunch of steroid freak, alcoholic, sadistic woman beaters who think they’re soldiers, hate you, don’t think you deserve to LIVE!(often repeated by the swine), they call it a war, so do you consider shooting a DEA agent or taking him prisoner(not hostage, POW— it’s an F’n war, right????) Thanks Nancy Regan, you’d have made Pol Pot a nice wife or Margaret Thatcher a nice lover. You’re all genocidal war criminals. So, will you fight these war criminals with anything other than fucking comments? Honest yet unorganized question.
Doesn’t this news make NSA the biggest so called “cyber criminals” in all of the world?
Experts unmask Regin Trojan as NSA tool
Thank you Mr. Lee for reporting the continuing abuse of privacy by Govt spy agencies. Being one who is not very software savy, I never would have known that this kind of bullshit would have been perpetrated on myself and countless others without your in-depth reporting and your explaning to the layman like myself.
To some others that have railed against TI for not reporting this or failing to report that -there are probably so many other spying topics to report on from the ‘Snowden archives’ , that I’ll bet TI has it’s hands full trying to get all the stories out.
Also, I have noticed that very few TI articles have appeared in the mainstream media.
Keep up the good work!
Thank you!
“British and Canadian spy agencies accumulated sensitive data”…It’s the same mega private global I.T. corporation that does the cyber spying & data collection for the American, British and Canadian spy agencies, & possibly for ALL Five Eyes…Why does the media never report this very important fact…
“At CGI, we’re in the business of satisfying clients. For more than 30 years, we’ve partnered with U.S. defense, civilian, and intelligence agencies”…
http://www.nhdf.org/7-national-symposium/exhibitors/whos-exhibiting/cgi
“CGI greatly values its continuing partnership with the Department of Homeland Security in support of its mission to protect the homeland, prevent terrorism…”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/CGI-selected-Technical-Acquisition-Business-Support-Services-DHS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmyssyYJ4po
“CGI is launching a Canadian defence, public safety and intelligence unit based on similar efforts in the United States.”…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/cgi-to-launch-defence-and-intelligence-unit-in-canada/article596014/
CGI’s $25 million dollar contract with Canada’s Department of National Defence, just one of many…
http://www.cgi-group.co.uk/uk-government-and-leading-defence-companies-launch-defence-cyber-protection-partnership
The evidence supports that CGI, a mega private global I.T. Corporation in partnership with the U.S. Government AND the 1% are being set up to be our “BIG BROTHER”, yet the corporate controlled & serving media are saying nothing to the public about this very important information seriously affecting us all.
“the smartphone data routinely provided to ad and analytics companies represents a major privacy threat. When combined together, the information fragments can be used to identify specific users, and when concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies, they have proven to be irresistibly convenient targets for those engaged in mass surveillance.”…
“The World Anti-Doping Agency launched a “whereabouts” mobile application for more than 25,000 athletes worldwide. Developed by CGI…The app meets stringent privacy and security requirements and is currently available in English and French. It is now available for athletes with Apple mobile devices via the iTunes App Store. An Android version will be released later in December.”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/World-Anti-Doping-Agency-launches-whereabouts-app
CGI collect & warehouse our personal & private information through their extensive government contracts, including national security contracts, as well as their contracts with the 1%, including banks & telecoms, etc., & then share it with foreign governments, AND also sell our personal information to the 1%, such as insurance companies…
“CGI and Interac Association ensure stability of three billion annual transactions”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/case-study/direct-payment-cash-dispensing-network-tcp-ip-oracle-interac-association
“CGI’s Initiative for Collaborative Government…Government today collaborates with the private sector in executing a broad range of mission and administrative functions…Specific examples of “collaborative government” include solution approaches such as service acquirer-provider relationships, public-private partnerships and cross-jurisdiction data exchanges, just to name a few. The Initiative is focused on helping federal government agencies capitalize on collaborative government models to enhance mission results.”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/cgi-and-george-mason-university-announce-initiative-collaborative-government
“Big data presents big opportunities, and the right way to capitalize on it is different for each organization. Data volumes for most organizations are growing rapidly, along with the variety of non-traditional data sources, such as social media…CGI’s Next Generation Information Warehouse offering is designed to bring that perspective, along with innovative solutions for improving your data management and leveraging big data to drive profitable growth”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/business-intelligence-services/next-generation-information-warehouse
“Commercial surveillance often appears very benign,” Angwin says. “The reason Flurry exists is not to ‘spy on people’ but to help people learn who’s using their apps. But what we’ve also seen through Snowden revelations is that spy agencies seek to use that for their own purposes.”…
“CGI counts among its clients 20 of the top 25 insurance carriers in the United States and 17 of the top 25 carriers in Canada”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/cgi-renews-outsourcing-contracts-leading-canadian-insurers-valued-over-cdn40-million
…including CGI using our personal & private information to fight against claims & litigation filed by the public against insurance companies…
http://www.cgi.com/en/insurance/loss-adjusting-claims-management
The evidence proves CGI use our personal & private information to make money for & from their 1% clients, & that CGI have abused their access to our private information, as this evidence supports…
“The RCMP Spent $1.6 Million to Run an Unconstitutional Spying Program – January 20, 2015…Canada’s federal police continued to snoop on Canadians’ cellphones and computers for at least a month after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, new documents prove.
…The Supreme Court ruled that practise illegal in its June 13, 2014, decision on R. v. Spencer, writing that police need judicial authorization before making those sorts of requests.
However, the records show Telus and Bell both continued to fork over Canadians’ information even after that decision was handed down.
…However, previous VICE investigations revealed that, thanks to the informal process and lack of oversight, police often used these powers to ask for, and obtain, users’ passwords, GPS location, and other other personal information.”…
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-rcmp-spent-16-million-to-run-an-unconstitutional-spying-program-239
Here is CGI’s $15 million dollar contract with the RCMP, just one of many…
http://www.rcmp.gc.ca/en/apps/contra/index.php?r-id=35139
“Canada’s top telecom providers, serving 23 million wireless subscribers, have chosen CGI for our IT services expertise…We’ve built long-term partnerships with Canadian clients, such as Bell Canada”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/canada/industry-expertise
CGI are key partners with the telecoms…giving them access to our phone records, Internet records & email, etc…
“Bell, Canada’s largest telecommunications provider, has refused to release any information on the matter.”…
“Bell Canada in 10-year $4.5 billion outsourcing contract with CGI”…
http://www.fasken.com/bell-canada-in-10-year-45-billion-outsourcing-contract-with-cgi/
“CGI wins $2-billion IT contract extension from Bell”…
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/11/11/cgi-wins-2-billion-it-contract-extension-from-bce/?__lsa=884f-b914
“CGI and Bell Canada announcing major strategic alliance.”…
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/CGI+and+Bell+Canada+announcing+major+strategic+alliance.-a017434584
“Bell Sympatico’s ‘monitoring’ announcement has privacy advocates worried”…
http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/bell-sympaticos-monitoring-announcement-has-privacy-advocates-worried/6162
“Hamilton man to get hearing with CSIS on ‘intimidation’ case
‘An attempt to chill the dissent in Canada’
Stone has long protested the expansion of the oil and gas sector in this country for its environmental impacts.
SIRC’s newest board member, security consultant and former Mountie Gene McLean, has been assigned to the case.
Stone says CSIS agents visited him in “an attempt to chill the dissent in Canada.”
“The outcome I would like to see is that SIRC reveals the policy to me under which they visited me and they have been visiting the homes and workplaces of thousands of political and social and environmental activists in the country under the guise of security investigations.”…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/news/hamilton-man-to-get-hearing-with-csis-on-intimidation-case-1.2929538
“Spotlight on CGI’s oil and gas offering in Canada”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzmKozwV4cI
“CGI partners with hundreds of oil and gas companies…”…
http://www.cgi.com/en/canada/oil-gas
http://www.cgi.com/en/us/oil-gas
http://www.thekellymarierichardcase.com/the-kelly-marie-richard-case
The evidence proves that CGI have gained access to literally ALL of our personal & important information, including our mail…
“CGI’s Document Management Services to provide print and mail services nationwide to Canada Post”…So CGI can monitor & track ALL our mail…
http://www.cgi.com/en/CGI-Document-Management-Services-print-mail-services-Canada-Post
“Our clientele in Europe includes PostNord, La Poste, Deutsche Post, Royal Mail and others. We also support global and North American organisations, such as Canada Post.”…
http://www.cgi-group.co.uk/transport-and-logistics/postal-and-logistics-services
What happens when one mega private global I.T. corporation has the power to control us all…
“The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.” – Tom Clancy
CGI, a mega private global I.T. corporation in partnership with the U.S. Government AND the 1% has been set up to become our real life “BIG BROTHER” & we, the citizens of the world, need to make this important evidence public, so that we all can fight against this serious violation of our rights & freedoms, before it’s too late!
I think you should try an app for your phone, it allows: track GPS location, spy on text messages, web history, images, calls logs and spy call recording, spy on Whatsapp, Viber, Facebook messages, Snapchat, Line, BBM messages and so on. It’s 1TopSpy, you’d try it :D
The only way to get the judges to rule against NSA’s grab all collection is to reveal their own personal communication. Unless that happens the judiciary is not going to rein in the spies. What Mr Snowden has done is good but not effective, unless his documents contain information that will force the judiciary to act. We saw how the Germans pretended indignation despite them being shown that they were being spied on right upto their top, but they took no action since no specifics were disclosed. So I am suggesting that Mr Greenwald publish anonymized and redacted specifics that judges can relate to and then they will vent their anger. Otherwise, Mr Omidyar is just wasting his money funding this website.
…me, again.
Just went to The Guardian and found this:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/26/wikileaks-threatens-legal-action-google-us-government
There must be somebody who has to answer for clubbing WikiLeaks as “terrorists” when they have not been declared as such by any Government.
Great and infuriating article, Micah. Why do we put up with corporations and analytics firms tacking us? And why are we letting a smirking NSA get away with stealing this data? Blackout is correct, we need a new paradigm.
For example, these loyalty cards – we “like” them because they can supposedly save us money, right? Well, I have a few, but I have passed on another – from a large drug chain, because I don’t want to be tracked any more thay is already done. And I almost signed up for one – until they asked my birthdate. for which they had no need.
Sigh.
I always lie on the birthday question. Usually I use a year ‘near’ mine and Jan 1st as the day.
// __ Bruce Schneier and Edward Snowden @ Harvard Data Privacy Symposium 1/23/15
~
youtube.com/watch?v=7Ui3tLbzIgQ
~
(39:55) “… it is interesting to see (if) very generally, all this government surveillance is fueled by corporations. It is not that the NSA woke up one morning and said we want to spy on the entire Internet, they woke up one morning and said: ‘corporations are spying on the Internet let’s get ourselves a copy’ …”
Satyagraha,
RCL
And to ensure that everybody can obtain services.
If the Intercept’s left could speak, they would tell you that Skynet is necessary for monitoring society to ensure that every constituent is contributing according to its ability.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/01/26/justice-department-working-on-national-car-tracking-database/?intcmp=latestnews
I can count on this not being reported in the Guardian or Salon.com, or NYT, or MSNBC or other progressive leftist media:
“The Justice Department has acknowledged constructing a database to track the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S. in real time.
“The program, whose existence was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, is primarily overseen by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to combat drug trafficking near the U.S.-Mexico border. However, government emails indicate that the agency has been working to expand the database throughout the United States over the past several years.”
As to MSDNC, it’s a party organ, not progressive. But if Romney were in office, it would be hot on the story and Fox would be ignoring or praising it.
We have Mona instructing readers that Rachel Maddow, and Ed Schultz (and Joan Walsh), and Ronan Farrow, and Steve Kornacki are not progressives.
We have Mona instructing readers……….. that the essentially centrist, uninspired politics of MSNBC is not on par with Lenin’s or Trotsky’s.
30 years ago even you gibbering nutjobs didn’t attempt to paint machine Democrats as “leftists”. It didn’t fly back then when we actually had the USSR’s Mirvs pointed at us. Too many regular people still knew what a real leftist sounded like.
Well, yes.
But your interlocutor, bonneville, often thunders that Hitler was a raging lefty. (And he was plagued by a sex kitten named Braun.)
Only when you keep reiterating on these pages, ad nauseum, that you don’t believe that a “German Workers Party,” and shortly thereafter a “Sozialisten” movement, is repulsive on its face to conservatives, but not to a progressive left.
Anymoreso than a Sozialist would care to ring the doorbell of the Tee-Partei.
You’re so dense that you can’t even see it happening again today, with a chastened left attempting to sway onlookers that the progressive, and unpopular, Obama isn’t one of them.
Same as it ever was.
Fritz called. He wants to know if you’re in on the next heist?
(This is one of bonneville’s primary authorities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Springmeier)
This is one of Mona’s:
http://www.nytimes.com
Last week you linked to Mark Passio in Glenn’s space. Mark is an extraordinary fellow, and has recently spoken on the theme: “Transforming the Satanic elements in Human consciousness”
http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2014/09/mark-passio-healing-the-satanic-consciousness-of-humanity.html
Then you might be surprised to see the lineup at the event he has organized in April:
http://freeyourmindconference.com/
And let us not forget bonneville’s favorite cleric, Brother Nathanael, whom you linked to again recently in Glenn’s space:
Jones’s comment once that BN lives in someone’s basement probably stung.
Did you happen to notice that there is an article ABL? It even has a title, followed by a whole bunch of words. The words, “foxnews” isn’t in the title or in the article. There’s even a number of pictures you can look at.
“bonneville” has been pretty well-behaved with the volume of teh madness, so Glenn has so far let this account stay. Can bonneville continue to control itself?
You’ve stopped taking up 8% of a given thread wherever I reappear–in a hopeful attempt to withdraw under the guise of appearing less ubiquitous than readers see you as.
Can’t be helped.
You know those mind-controlled, Illuminati sex kittens you are so concerned about? I’m one of them. And I’m under orders to keep you from spreading the word.
I watched Mark Passio discussion with Alfred Lambremont Webre about “Transforming the Satanic elements in Human consciousness”, and found it very instructive. When he speaks about the founding fathers and the independence of the USA, he comes to the same conclusion as Howard Zinn did during his lecture at Boston University in November 11, 2009 “Holy Wars”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV0HVT1xBAk&list=PLB29877B50556DF5B
The difference is that Zinn never mentioned the link between the founding fathers and the occult/dark magic. Is this link credible? The conclusion remains the same : finally the people have been screwed up by their leaders.
Accept my apologies for my approximative English, I am French and follows TI from the start, which I appreciate a lot.
To the attention of the journalists team : keep up the good work !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4Lh9Uof8G4
Katt Williams & Dave Chappelle on the illuminati
Karl and Dave tells us that if you talk about the illuminati the media will say you are insane.
That is the media Mona sides with to her shame.
I’m not the media, but you and bonnie are insane.
Don’t you have a Satanic bloodline to trace or something?
A moment of lucidity breaks out over at Pando, where a reporter approvingly cites and links to Micah Lee’s BADASS piece: http://pando.com/2015/01/26/badass-intelligence-program-shows-theres-no-distinction-between-for-profit-and-governmental-surveillance/
“all of GCHQ’s work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework, which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate, and that there is rigorous oversight.”
Of course!!!
“The government can search me all they want; I have nothing to hide.”
Famous last words from fools living under Democracy they did nothing to earn.
The 5 Eye spying agencies are engaged in an all out attack on the internet. At the same time, they are working hard to undermine any security measures (encryption, anti-hacking security) because these make their offensive operations more difficult.
Once others reach their level of sophistication, the internet, which was conceived based on efficiency of communication rather than robustness, with its security further weakened by the NSA (backdoors in operating systems and crippled encryption algorithms), will simply cease to function.
There are two options – one, the NSA rather short sightedly assumes no one would dare to attack the infrastructure of the USA – or, two, they are trying to kill the internet.
Assuming they are not totally stupid, we are left with the more interesting second option. Why kill the internet? The answer can perhaps be found in the paranoia exhibited about radicalization of Muslims who access Jihadi websites. This is only the tip of the iceberg – all sorts of Americans can be directly targeted by foreigners, living in places such as Brazil and seeking to plant anti-American ideas into their heads. In other words, the initial optimism about transmitting American ideas to the world has been replaced by pessimism about the world transmitting its ideas to America.
Reflecting on this, I can only conclude that they are right. The Internet was an interesting experiment but, sadly, must be pronounced a failed one.
Pro-Zionism sentiment in the U.S. cannot survive a reasonably free Internet. This is already being lamented in sites like the liberal Zionist Jewish Daily Forward which acknowledges that Israel lost the PR war to Twitter during the Gaza atrocity last summer. Social media also accounts for the #Blacklivesmatter movement taking up the BDS cause in solidarity with Palestinians.
Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Jewish community, Marshall Breger, recently wrote a piece wringing his hands over the Israel lobby’s assault on free speech, especially on campus. He claims:
No, it can’t.
Breger’s anti-speech fellow Zionists are quite right — the shaky edifice of lies and half-truths on which the Zionist narrative is built cannot survive scrutiny and open discussion.
So, what is to be done?
Great idea, Mr Mussolini. The human civilization existed for many millennia before the internet came about. Perhaps it will be better with no internet.
The public commons are under assault everywhere. The assault on the internet comes from both the private and public sectors. Expect to see the rise of strong encryption and VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) and the diminution of everything else.
A lot of this I knew. What I don’t know is the amounts of the monies involved. How profitable is this and why? Targeted advertising sounds good, but does it really work?
It’s the old saying. “I know half my advertising budget is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”
Privacy issues are the plague of our day. Its going to take many years to create the necessary computer, social and economic infrastructure to prevent these devices from being “big-brother”. There needs to be a new paradigm.
https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0
That’s a fun one, especially for Android users.
Hey Micah, care to share with us your hosts file?
Not enough people on the web understand that they are being monitored on a “voluntary” basis — if you want to opt-out of Google Analytics, all you need to do is put it in your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com http://www.google-analytics.com ssl.google-analytics.com
Hi Luda, adding lines like this to your hosts file is a great way to prevent your computer from talking to servers you don’t want it to talk to. At the moment I’m not blocking stuff in this way though. Instead I rely on Adblock Plus, Privacy Badger, and HTTPS Everywhere in my web browser. There’s also Adblock Plus for Android, which I haven’t tried but it worth looking at.
Hey, I like those extensions too, but the hosts file approach has certain advantages (and disadvantages). Its great that it is OS-level and therefore there is less of a need to do app-specific configuration/plugin tinkering. You can even make internet explorer safer! (still not recommended)
But it does have its drawbacks, mainly it can be worked around by clever trackers. So best to use hosts file tweaks in combination with active blocking at the app-level — never hurts to have redundant protection.
But sometimes you need something quick and dirty or you are not able to install plugins to your browsers or you want to give your friends or family members *some* privacy and you know they won’t do the right thing and keep all their apps up to date and secure.
(Note: there is an error in the line i posted above, remove the “http://” string, it was from a rogue copy-paste)
If you’re interested in blocking via your host file, check here: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ . It’s an often-updated host file configuration to block the crap that makes the internet suck.
HI Luda and Micah –
You may have a good idea there, but Luda – I don’t even know where my “hosts file” is. I will also have to look into some of the things Micha mentioned. Hey – how about covering stuff like this in an article, that we who are not big techhies can fathom? That kind of info could really help lots of us.
Try here: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
Re: Micah Lee
Thank you for continuing the reporting on the topic of the ubiquitous secret violations of the privacy of persons conducting of lawful communications, by both governments and private business interests. While it is widely understood by many, and has been authoritatively reported for many decades, that such private telecommunications has been secretly and intentionally compromised for various reasons, the vast majority of the public affected by these secret violations remains unaware, and therefore indifferent to, of the historical evolution of the unwarranted erosion of their privacy rights. The story of the historical process of circumventing the tenets of The Bill of Rights, in this regard, is a necessary prelude to any actual widespread public understanding of these current events; and of course, the intended purpose of the ubiquitous veil of secrecy is, from the onset, designed to prevent said ‘widespread public understanding’.
So, what say you, writers and editors of THE//INTERCEPT, how about researching and publishing a basic chronology-outline of the evolution of the degradation of the public’s right to be secure in the privacy of their personal papers and communications. Such a service to your current readership may not only improve a wider and informed understanding and dialog, it may help reassure newcomers to your site that it is not merely another watering hole for the disaffected and loud uninformed psycho-babblers frequenting cyber space.
“Work is love made visible.” KG
As Usual,
EA
This capability will be necessary for implementing the new BEGAL (Beta – Electronic Geographic Access Limitation) system. This proposed app will allow you to request permission to leave your designated home zone, receive authorization and automatically deduct the roaming fee from your bank account. This will help the environment (reduce gas consumption by people needlessly driving across town), promote public safety (prevent poor people from entering your neighborhood) and raise revenue.
Surveillance™ for a better world. :)
You’re suggesting the new BEGAL will provide a Leave, Environment, Accounting, Safety and Health companion app (LEASH) – for each of us?
How convenient…
This is a well written article which provides some further insight into the spy agencies.
I too, am glad to see stories related to or relying on the Snowden.
What I am curious about is why TI can’t seem to produce Snowden stories very frequently, as there have been quite recently a story in the Guardian, a big article in spiegel, and in typical smarmy fashion in the NYT.
Why are there so few Snowden stories? Especially from TI?
Really on this site we have been receiving mostly short opinion blurbs and inconsequential stories about pod casts and second tier peripheral background articles or characterize then as you will this is the first article in weeks with any substance at all.
It seems this website which employs such first rate journalists is less than the sum of its parts. The journalists are great but the site seem not to be supporting in depth stories and is attempting instead to gain visits with entertainment rather than rigorous journalism.
And still there is the question about the exposure of Snowden documents being presented properly and quickly which sure is not happening here. This site is just a back water on the internet where some famous journalists work and produce stories with only a tangential relationship to what I thought this sight would provide.
I am of the firm view that more should be published from the Snowden archive. It certainly effects my perception of TI in a negative way and calls into question the motivations involved.
Also, TI is owned by a status quo Neoliberal billionaire which makes it a main stream corporate outlet not some kind of rogue website standing up for truth justice and the American way against corporations and the oligarchs who own them.
Do you ever tire of writing the same thing over and over again? And so original too! “Truth justice and the American way.” “status quo Neoliberal billionaire”
All hail to the great and powerful (cliche enough for you?) at THE INTERCEPT. GG and the rest can do no wrong they are brilliant but they just can’t seem to publish a decent story more than once a month or so. I restate: TI is less than the sum of its parts. I find it hard to believe that with all that talent sitting there are so few decent articles. I doubt its the journalists themselves its about management decisions not to publish Snowden stories or work to get in depth stories about matters of grave importance published.
Some prefer faith and worship of certain journalists I prefer not to participate in misguided exaltation of someone or the corporation for which they work. What I do appreciate is articles like this one fewer “entertainment” journalism or reports of second tier “background” stories or stories which bear only a tangential relevance to the issues most important to me and society.
Just the other day Spieges publish an article siting a lot of Snowden docs. This apparently is beyond the capability or desire of this corporate news outlet.
I actually prefer proof from those who make accusations, over and over again, that Greenwald, Scahill, Poitras, Froomkin and any others involved with the Intercept are in any god damned way in hell doing what you say Omidyar is demanding that they do or do not do. Its’ fucking bullshit to always state your claim that anyone who disagrees with you has to be doing so because they “worship” or are “misguided” and all of the other cliches that you and others who make those same claims toss out as though they have some superior insider knowledge or insight, and so know what the hell they are talking about. Your “world-wise” claims are not impressive in the least without even a snatch of proof.
Thank you for returning to the Snowden Document coverage and for this detailed article.