AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data.
The company targeted by the intelligence agencies, Gemalto, is a multinational firm incorporated in the Netherlands that makes the chips used in mobile phones and next-generation credit cards. Among its clients are AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and some 450 wireless network providers around the world. The company operates in 85 countries and has more than 40 manufacturing facilities. One of its three global headquarters is in Austin, Texas and it has a large factory in Pennsylvania.
In all, Gemalto produces some 2 billion SIM cards a year. Its motto is “Security to be Free.”
With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider’s network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
As part of the covert operations against Gemalto, spies from GCHQ — with support from the NSA — mined the private communications of unwitting engineers and other company employees in multiple countries.
Gemalto was totally oblivious to the penetration of its systems — and the spying on its employees. “I’m disturbed, quite concerned that this has happened,” Paul Beverly, a Gemalto executive vice president, told The Intercept. “The most important thing for me is to understand exactly how this was done, so we can take every measure to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, and also to make sure that there’s no impact on the telecom operators that we have served in a very trusted manner for many years. What I want to understand is what sort of ramifications it has, or could have, on any of our customers.” He added that “the most important thing for us now is to understand the degree” of the breach.
Leading privacy advocates and security experts say that the theft of encryption keys from major wireless network providers is tantamount to a thief obtaining the master ring of a building superintendent who holds the keys to every apartment. “Once you have the keys, decrypting traffic is trivial,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The news of this key theft will send a shock wave through the security community.”
The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”
Beverly said that after being contacted by The Intercept, Gemalto’s internal security team began on Wednesday to investigate how their system was penetrated and could find no trace of the hacks. When asked if the NSA or GCHQ had ever requested access to Gemalto-manufactured encryption keys, Beverly said, “I am totally unaware. To the best of my knowledge, no.”
According to one secret GCHQ slide, the British intelligence agency penetrated Gemalto’s internal networks, planting malware on several computers, giving GCHQ secret access. We “believe we have their entire network,” the slide’s author boasted about the operation against Gemalto.
Additionally, the spy agency targeted unnamed cellular companies’ core networks, giving it access to “sales staff machines for customer information and network engineers machines for network maps.” GCHQ also claimed the ability to manipulate the billing servers of cell companies to “suppress” charges in an effort to conceal the spy agency’s secret actions against an individual’s phone. Most significantly, GCHQ also penetrated “authentication servers,” allowing it to decrypt data and voice communications between a targeted individual’s phone and his or her telecom provider’s network. A note accompanying the slide asserted that the spy agency was “very happy with the data so far and [was] working through the vast quantity of product.”
The Mobile Handset Exploitation Team (MHET), whose existence has never before been disclosed, was formed in April 2010 to target vulnerabilities in cellphones. One of its main missions was to covertly penetrate computer networks of corporations that manufacture SIM cards, as well as those of wireless network providers. The team included operatives from both GCHQ and the NSA.
While the FBI and other U.S. agencies can obtain court orders compelling U.S.-based telecom companies to allow them to wiretap or intercept the communications of their customers, on the international front this type of data collection is much more challenging. Unless a foreign telecom or foreign government grants access to their citizens’ data to a U.S. intelligence agency, the NSA or CIA would have to hack into the network or specifically target the user’s device for a more risky “active” form of surveillance that could be detected by sophisticated targets. Moreover, foreign intelligence agencies would not allow U.S. or U.K. spy agencies access to the mobile communications of their heads of state or other government officials.
“It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable,” said Gerard Schouw, a member of the Dutch Parliament, when told of the spy agencies’ actions. Schouw, the intelligence spokesperson for D66, the largest opposition party in the Netherlands, told The Intercept, “We don’t want to have the secret services from other countries doing things like this.” Schouw added that he and other lawmakers will ask the Dutch government to provide an official explanation and to clarify whether the country’s intelligence services were aware of the targeting of Gemalto, whose official headquarters is in Amsterdam.
Last November, the Dutch government proposed an amendment to its constitution to include explicit protection for the privacy of digital communications, including those made on mobile devices. “We have, in the Netherlands, a law on the [activities] of secret services. And hacking is not allowed,” Schouw said. Under Dutch law, the interior minister would have to sign off on such operations by foreign governments’ intelligence agencies. “I don’t believe that he has given his permission for these kind of actions.”
The U.S. and British intelligence agencies pulled off the encryption key heist in great stealth, giving them the ability to intercept and decrypt communications without alerting the wireless network provider, the foreign government or the individual user that they have been targeted. “Gaining access to a database of keys is pretty much game over for cellular encryption,” says Matthew Green, a cryptography specialist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute. The massive key theft is “bad news for phone security. Really bad news.”
AS CONSUMERS BEGAN to adopt cellular phones en masse in the mid-1990s, there were no effective privacy protections in place. Anyone could buy a cheap device from RadioShack capable of intercepting calls placed on mobile phones. The shift from analog to digital networks introduced basic encryption technology, though it was still crackable by tech savvy computer science graduate students, as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, using readily available equipment.
Today, second-generation (2G) phone technology, which relies on a deeply flawed encryption system, remains the dominant platform globally, though U.S. and European cellphone companies now use 3G, 4G and LTE technology in urban areas. These include more secure, though not invincible, methods of encryption, and wireless carriers throughout the world are upgrading their networks to use these newer technologies.
It is in the context of such growing technical challenges to data collection that intelligence agencies, such as the NSA, have become interested in acquiring cellular encryption keys. “With old-fashioned [2G], there are other ways to work around cellphone security without those keys,” says Green, the Johns Hopkins cryptographer. “With newer 3G, 4G and LTE protocols, however, the algorithms aren’t as vulnerable, so getting those keys would be essential.”
The privacy of all mobile communications — voice calls, text messages and Internet access — depends on an encrypted connection between the cellphone and the wireless carrier’s network, using keys stored on the SIM, a tiny chip smaller than a postage stamp, which is inserted into the phone. All mobile communications on the phone depend on the SIM, which stores and guards the encryption keys created by companies like Gemalto. SIM cards can be used to store contacts, text messages, and other important data, like one’s phone number. In some countries, SIM cards are used to transfer money. As The Intercept reported last year, having the wrong SIM card can make you the target of a drone strike.
SIM cards were not invented to protect individual communications — they were designed to do something much simpler: ensure proper billing and prevent fraud, which was pervasive in the early days of cellphones. Soghoian compares the use of encryption keys on SIM cards to the way Social Security numbers are used today. “Social security numbers were designed in the 1930s to track your contributions to your government pension,” he says. “Today they are used as a quasi national identity number, which was never their intended purpose.”
Because the SIM card wasn’t created with call confidentiality in mind, the manufacturers and wireless carriers don’t make a great effort to secure their supply chain. As a result, the SIM card is an extremely vulnerable component of a mobile phone. “I doubt anyone is treating those things very carefully,” says Green. “Cell companies probably don’t treat them as essential security tokens. They probably just care that nobody is defrauding their networks.” The ACLU’s Soghoian adds, “These keys are so valuable that it makes sense for intel agencies to go after them.”
As a general rule, phone companies do not manufacture SIM cards, nor program them with secret encryption keys. It is cheaper and more efficient for them to outsource this sensitive step in the SIM card production process. They purchase them in bulk with the keys pre-loaded by other corporations. Gemalto is the largest of these SIM “personalization” companies.
After a SIM card is manufactured, the encryption key, known as a “Ki,” is burned directly onto the chip. A copy of the key is also given to the cellular provider, allowing its network to recognize an individual’s phone. In order for the phone to be able to connect to the wireless carrier’s network, the phone — with the help of the SIM — authenticates itself using the Ki that has been programmed onto the SIM. The phone conducts a secret “handshake” that validates that the Ki on the SIM matches the Ki held by the mobile company. Once that happens, the communications between the phone and the network are encrypted. Even if GCHQ or the NSA were to intercept the phone signals as they are transmitted through the air, the intercepted data would be a garbled mess. Decrypting it can be challenging and time-consuming. Stealing the keys, on the other hand, is beautifully simple, from the intelligence agencies’ point of view, as the pipeline for producing and distributing SIM cards was never designed to thwart mass surveillance efforts.
One of the creators of the encryption protocol that is widely used today for securing emails, Adi Shamir, famously asserted: “Cryptography is typically bypassed, not penetrated.” In other words, it is much easier (and sneakier) to open a locked door when you have the key than it is to break down the door using brute force. While the NSA and GCHQ have substantial resources dedicated to breaking encryption, it is not the only way — and certainly not always the most efficient — to get at the data they want. “NSA has more mathematicians on its payroll than any other entity in the U.S.,” says the ACLU’s Soghoian. “But the NSA’s hackers are way busier than its mathematicians.”
GCHQ and the NSA could have taken any number of routes to steal SIM encryption keys and other data. They could have physically broken into a manufacturing plant. They could have broken into a wireless carrier’s office. They could have bribed, blackmailed or coerced an employee of the manufacturer or cellphone provider. But all of that comes with substantial risk of exposure. In the case of Gemalto, hackers working for GCHQ remotely penetrated the company’s computer network in order to steal the keys in bulk as they were en route to the wireless network providers.
SIM card “personalization” companies like Gemalto ship hundreds of thousands of SIM cards at a time to mobile phone operators across the world. International shipping records obtained by The Intercept show that in 2011, Gemalto shipped 450,000 smart cards from its plant in Mexico to Germany’s Deutsche Telekom in just one shipment.
In order for the cards to work and for the phones’ communications to be secure, Gemalto also needs to provide the mobile company with a file containing the encryption keys for each of the new SIM cards. These master key files could be shipped via FedEx, DHL, UPS or another snail mail provider. More commonly, they could be sent via email or through File Transfer Protocol, FTP, a method of sending files over the Internet.
The moment the master key set is generated by Gemalto or another personalization company, but before it is sent to the wireless carrier, is the most vulnerable moment for interception. “The value of getting them at the point of manufacture is you can presumably get a lot of keys in one go, since SIM chips get made in big batches,” says Green, the cryptographer. “SIM cards get made for lots of different carriers in one facility.” In Gemalto’s case, GCHQ hit the jackpot, as the company manufactures SIMs for hundreds of wireless network providers, including all of the leading U.S.— and many of the largest European — companies.
But obtaining the encryption keys while Gemalto still held them required finding a way into the company’s internal systems.
Diagram from a top-secret GCHQ slide.
TOP-SECRET GCHQ documents reveal that the intelligence agencies accessed the email and Facebook accounts of engineers and other employees of major telecom corporations and SIM card manufacturers in an effort to secretly obtain information that could give them access to millions of encryption keys. They did this by utilizing the NSA’s X-KEYSCORE program, which allowed them access to private emails hosted by the SIM card and mobile companies’ servers, as well as those of major tech corporations, including Yahoo and Google.
In effect, GCHQ clandestinely cyberstalked Gemalto employees, scouring their emails in an effort to find people who may have had access to the company’s core networks and Ki-generating systems. The intelligence agency’s goal was to find information that would aid in breaching Gemalto’s systems, making it possible to steal large quantities of encryption keys. The agency hoped to intercept the files containing the keys as they were transmitted between Gemalto and its wireless network provider customers.
GCHQ operatives identified key individuals and their positions within Gemalto and then dug into their emails. In one instance, GCHQ zeroed in on a Gemalto employee in Thailand who they observed sending PGP-encrypted files, noting that if GCHQ wanted to expand its Gemalto operations, “he would certainly be a good place to start.” They did not claim to have decrypted the employee’s communications, but noted that the use of PGP could mean the contents were potentially valuable.
The cyberstalking was not limited to Gemalto. GCHQ operatives wrote a script that allowed the agency to mine the private communications of employees of major telecommunications and SIM “personalization” companies for technical terms used in the assigning of secret keys to mobile phone customers. Employees for the SIM card manufacturers and wireless network providers were labeled as “known individuals and operators targeted” in a top-secret GCHQ document.
According to that April 2010 document, “PCS Harvesting at Scale,” hackers working for GCHQ focused on “harvesting” massive amounts of individual encryption keys “in transit between mobile network operators and SIM card personalisation centres” like Gemalto. The spies “developed a methodology for intercepting these keys as they are transferred between various network operators and SIM card providers.” By that time, GCHQ had developed “an automated technique with the aim of increasing the volume of keys that can be harvested.”
The PCS Harvesting document acknowledged that, in searching for information on encryption keys, GCHQ operatives would undoubtedly vacuum up “a large number of unrelated items” from the private communications of targeted employees. “[H]owever an analyst with good knowledge of the operators involved can perform this trawl regularly and spot the transfer of large batches of [keys].”
The document noted that many SIM card manufacturers transferred the encryption keys to wireless network providers “by email or FTP with simple encryption methods that can be broken … or occasionally with no encryption at all.” To get bulk access to encryption keys, all the NSA or GCHQ needed to do was intercept emails or file transfers as they were sent over the Internet — something both agencies already do millions of times per day. A footnote in the 2010 document observed that the use of “strong encryption products … is becoming increasingly common” in transferring the keys.
In its key harvesting “trial” operations in the first quarter of 2010, GCHQ successfully intercepted keys used by wireless network providers in Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, India, Serbia, Iceland and Tajikistan. But, the agency noted, its automated key harvesting system failed to produce results against Pakistani networks, denoted as “priority targets” in the document, despite the fact that GCHQ had a store of Kis from two providers in the country, Mobilink and Telenor. “[I]t is possible that these networks now use more secure methods to transfer Kis,” the document concluded.
From December 2009 through March 2010, a month before the Mobile Handset Exploitation Team was formed, GCHQ conducted a number of trials aimed at extracting encryption keys and other personalized data for individual phones. In one two-week period, they accessed the emails of 130 people associated with wireless network providers or SIM card manufacturing and personalization. This operation produced nearly 8,000 keys matched to specific phones in 10 countries. In another two-week period, by mining just six email addresses, they produced 85,000 keys. At one point in March 2010, GCHQ intercepted nearly 100,000 keys for mobile phone users in Somalia. By June, they’d compiled 300,000. “Somali providers are not on GCHQ’s list of interest,” the document noted. “[H]owever, this was usefully shared with NSA.”
The GCHQ documents only contain statistics for three months of encryption key theft in 2010. During this period, millions of keys were harvested. The documents stated explicitly that GCHQ had already created a constantly evolving automated process for bulk harvesting of keys. They describe active operations targeting Gemalto’s personalization centers across the globe, as well as other major SIM card manufacturers and the private communications of their employees.
A top-secret NSA document asserted that, as of 2009, the U.S. spy agency already had the capacity to process between 12 and 22 million keys per second for later use against surveillance targets. In the future, the agency predicted, it would be capable of processing more than 50 million per second. The document did not state how many keys were actually processed, just that the NSA had the technology to perform such swift, bulk operations. It is impossible to know how many keys have been stolen by the NSA and GCHQ to date, but, even using conservative math, the numbers are likely staggering.
GCHQ assigned “scores” to more than 150 individual email addresses based on how often the users mentioned certain technical terms, and then intensified the mining of those individuals’ accounts based on priority. The highest-scoring email address was that of an employee of Chinese tech giant Huawei, which the U.S. has repeatedly accused of collaborating with Chinese intelligence. In all, GCHQ harvested the emails of employees of hardware companies that manufacture phones, such as Ericsson and Nokia; operators of mobile networks, such as MTN Irancell and Belgacom; SIM card providers, such as Bluefish and Gemalto; and employees of targeted companies who used email providers, such as Yahoo and Google. During the three-month trial, the largest number of email addresses harvested were those belonging to Huawei employees, followed by MTN Irancell. The third largest class of emails harvested in the trial were private Gmail accounts, presumably belonging to employees at targeted companies.
“People were specifically hunted and targeted by intelligence agencies, not because they did anything wrong, but because they could be used.”
The GCHQ program targeting Gemalto was called DAPINO GAMMA. In 2011, GCHQ launched operation HIGHLAND FLING to mine the email accounts of Gemalto employees in France and Poland. A top-secret document on the operation stated that one of the aims was “getting into French HQ” of Gemalto “to get in to core data repositories.” France, home to one of Gemalto’s global headquarters, is the nerve center of the company’s worldwide operations. Another goal was to intercept private communications of employees in Poland that “could lead to penetration into one or more personalisation centers” — the factories where the encryption keys are burned onto SIM cards.
As part of these operations, GCHQ operatives acquired the usernames and passwords for Facebook accounts of Gemalto targets. An internal top-secret GCHQ wiki on the program from May 2011 indicated that GCHQ was in the process of “targeting” more than a dozen Gemalto facilities across the globe, including in Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden, Spain, Japan and Singapore.
The document also stated that GCHQ was preparing similar key theft operations against one of Gemalto’s competitors, Germany-based SIM card giant Giesecke and Devrient.
On January 17, 2014, President Barack Obama gave a major address on the NSA spying scandal. “The bottom line is that people around the world, regardless of their nationality, should know that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security and that we take their privacy concerns into account in our policies and procedures,” he said.
The monitoring of the lawful communications of employees of major international corporations shows that such statements by Obama, other U.S. officials and British leaders — that they only intercept and monitor the communications of known or suspected criminals or terrorists — were untrue. “The NSA and GCHQ view the private communications of people who work for these companies as fair game,” says the ACLU’s Soghoian. “These people were specifically hunted and targeted by intelligence agencies, not because they did anything wrong, but because they could be used as a means to an end.”
THERE ARE TWO basic types of electronic or digital surveillance: passive and active. All intelligence agencies engage in extensive passive surveillance, which means they collect bulk data by intercepting communications sent over fiber-optic cables, radio waves or wireless devices.
Intelligence agencies place high-power antennas, known as “spy nests,” on the top of their countries’ embassies and consulates, which are capable of vacuuming up data sent to or from mobile phones in the surrounding area. The joint NSA/CIA Special Collection Service is the lead entity that installs and mans these nests for the United States. An embassy situated near a parliament or government agency could easily intercept the phone calls and data transfers of the mobile phones used by foreign government officials. The U.S. embassy in Berlin, for instance, is located a stone’s throw from the Bundestag. But if the wireless carriers are using stronger encryption, which is built into modern 3G, 4G and LTE networks, then intercepted calls and other data would be more difficult to crack, particularly in bulk. If the intelligence agency wants to actually listen to or read what is being transmitted, they would need to decrypt the encrypted data.
Active surveillance is another option. This would require government agencies to “jam” a 3G or 4G network, forcing nearby phones onto 2G. Once forced down to the less secure 2G technology, the phone can be tricked into connecting to a fake cell tower operated by an intelligence agency. This method of surveillance, though effective, is risky, as it leaves a digital trace that counter-surveillance experts from foreign governments could detect.
Stealing the Kis solves all of these problems. This way, intelligence agencies can safely engage in passive, bulk surveillance without having to decrypt data and without leaving any trace whatsoever.
“Key theft enables the bulk, low-risk surveillance of encrypted communications,” the ACLU’s Soghoian says. “Agencies can collect all the communications and then look through them later. With the keys, they can decrypt whatever they want, whenever they want. It’s like a time machine, enabling the surveillance of communications that occurred before someone was even a target.”
Neither the NSA nor GCHQ would comment specifically on the key theft operations. In the past, they have argued more broadly that breaking encryption is a necessary part of tracking terrorists and other criminals. “It is longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters,” a GCHQ official stated in an email, adding that the agency’s work is conducted within a “strict legal and policy framework” that ensures its activities are “authorized, necessary and proportionate,” with proper oversight, which is the standard response the agency has provided for previous stories published by The Intercept. The agency also said, “[T]he UK’s interception regime is entirely compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.” The NSA declined to offer any comment.
It is unlikely that GCHQ’s pronouncement about the legality of its operations will be universally embraced in Europe. “It is governments massively engaging in illegal activities,” says Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. “If you are not a government and you are a student doing this, you will end up in jail for 30 years.” Veld, who chaired the European Parliament’s recent inquiry into mass surveillance exposed by Snowden, told The Intercept: “The secret services are just behaving like cowboys. Governments are behaving like cowboys and nobody is holding them to account.”
The Intercept’s Laura Poitras has previously reported that in 2013 Australia’s signals intelligence agency, a close partner of the NSA, stole some 1.8 million encryption keys from an Indonesian wireless carrier.
A few years ago, the FBI reportedly dismantled several transmitters set up by foreign intelligence agencies around the Washington, D.C. area, which could be used to intercept cellphone communications. Russia, China, Israel and other nations use similar technology as the NSA across the world. If those governments had the encryption keys for major U.S. cellphone companies’ customers, such as those manufactured by Gemalto, mass snooping would be simple. “It would mean that with a few antennas placed around Washington, D.C., the Chinese or Russian governments could sweep up and decrypt the communications of members of Congress, U.S. agency heads, reporters, lobbyists and everyone else involved in the policymaking process and decrypt their telephone conversations,” says Soghoian.
“Put a device in front of the U.N., record every bit you see going over the air. Steal some keys, you have all those conversations,” says Green, the Johns Hopkins cryptographer. And it’s not just spy agencies that would benefit from stealing encryption keys. “I can only imagine how much money you could make if you had access to the calls made around Wall Street,” he adds.
GCHQ slide.
THE BREACH OF Gemalto’s computer network by GCHQ has far-reaching global implications. The company, which brought in $2.7 billion in revenue in 2013, is a global leader in digital security, producing banking cards, mobile payment systems, two-factor authentication devices used for online security, hardware tokens used for securing buildings and offices, electronic passports and identification cards. It provides chips to Vodafone in Europe and France’s Orange, as well as EE, a joint venture in the U.K. between France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom. Royal KPN, the largest Dutch wireless network provider, also uses Gemalto technology.
In Asia, Gemalto’s chips are used by China Unicom, Japan’s NTT and Taiwan’s Chungwa Telecom, as well as scores of wireless network providers throughout Africa and the Middle East. The company’s security technology is used by more than 3,000 financial institutions and 80 government organizations. Among its clients are Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JP Morgan Chase and Barclays. It also provides chips for use in luxury cars, including those made by Audi and BMW.
In 2012, Gemalto won a sizable contract, worth $175 million, from the U.S. government to produce the covers for electronic U.S. passports, which contain chips and antennas that can be used to better authenticate travelers. As part of its contract, Gemalto provides the personalization and software for the microchips implanted in the passports. The U.S. represents Gemalto’s single largest market, accounting for some 15 percent of its total business. This raises the question of whether GCHQ, which was able to bypass encryption on mobile networks, has the ability to access private data protected by other Gemalto products created for banks and governments.
As smart phones become smarter, they are increasingly replacing credit cards and cash as a means of paying for goods and services. When Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile formed an alliance in 2010 to jointly build an electronic pay system to challenge Google Wallet and Apple Pay, they purchased Gemalto’s technology for their program, known as Softcard. (Until July 2014, it previously went by the unfortunate name of “ISIS Mobile Wallet.”) Whether data relating to that, and other Gemalto security products, has been compromised by GCHQ and the NSA is unclear. Both intelligence agencies declined to answer any specific questions for this story.
Signal, iMessage, WhatsApp, Silent Phone.
PRIVACY ADVOCATES and security experts say it would take billions of dollars, significant political pressure, and several years to fix the fundamental security flaws in the current mobile phone system that NSA, GCHQ and other intelligence agencies regularly exploit.
A current gaping hole in the protection of mobile communications is that cellphones and wireless network providers do not support the use of Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), a form of encryption designed to limit the damage caused by theft or disclosure of encryption keys. PFS, which is now built into modern web browsers and used by sites like Google and Twitter, works by generating unique encryption keys for each communication or message, which are then discarded. Rather than using the same encryption key to protect years’ worth of data, as the permanent Kis on SIM cards can, a new key might be generated each minute, hour or day, and then promptly destroyed. Because cellphone communications do not utilize PFS, if an intelligence agency has been “passively” intercepting someone’s communications for a year and later acquires the permanent encryption key, it can go back and decrypt all of those communications. If mobile phone networks were using PFS, that would not be possible — even if the permanent keys were later stolen.
The only effective way for individuals to protect themselves from Ki theft-enabled surveillance is to use secure communications software, rather than relying on SIM card-based security. Secure software includes email and other apps that use Transport Layer Security (TLS), the mechanism underlying the secure HTTPS web protocol. The email clients included with Android phones and iPhones support TLS, as do large email providers like Yahoo and Google.
Apps like TextSecure and Silent Text are secure alternatives to SMS messages, while Signal, RedPhone and Silent Phone encrypt voice calls. Governments still may be able to intercept communications, but reading or listening to them would require hacking a specific handset, obtaining internal data from an email provider, or installing a bug in a room to record the conversations.
“We need to stop assuming that the phone companies will provide us with a secure method of making calls or exchanging text messages,” says Soghoian.
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Documents published with this article:
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Additional reporting by Andrew Fishman and Ryan Gallagher. Sheelagh McNeill, Morgan Marquis-Boire, Alleen Brown, Margot Williams, Ryan Devereaux and Andrea Jones contributed to this story. Erin O’Rourke provided additional assistance.
Top photo: Shutterstock
Check out this, The Intercept, article:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/18/gchq-privacy-international-spying-campaign/
And then you can go to the following link to sign a petition protesting and seeking to find out if your private information was illegally shared with GCHQ by the NSA:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/illegalspying
Happy Standing Up Against All Of This Illegal Violation Of Privacy!
?“We need to stop assuming that the phone companies will provide us with a secure method of making calls or exchanging text messages.”
We need to securely authenticate the users instead of using simple passwords, we need to protect and authenticate the data in transit, and we need to build security in the applications, not just trust the network to handle it. ?And this is not difficult to implement. apptimate.io offer the necessary technology as a cloud service. A few lines of code and your data-in-transit from your app, service or thing is protected.
Mr. “Yes, we can” says so …
and we have done you the favor to classify as secret even their interpretations
Satyagraha,
RCL
There goes another Bruce Schneier, “how could that have happened” kind of guy …
I would like to see what they will actually do …
Their customers they said? Or their boss is it they care about?
Shock wave of mock outrage …
and what has the interior minister actually said? How could interior minister not have said anything?
Oops! Well, we go by patterns! Sorry!
and the WWW was invented by a bunch of Physicists (as silly, “objective” and well-minded as we are) as a platform for sharing information, not as an Orwellian “monitoring” and spying network
Welcome to reality!
Are they kidding us? When you ship a parcel via FedEx, DHL, UPS or another snail mail provider you are effectively shipping it to the NSA! They all have their NSA linked black chambers anyway.
Great! They are so smart! We should all start mentioning on the phone the names of base chemicals used to manufacture bombs. Actually, you don’t have to get that sophisticated, just mentioning quinoa (some sort of beans) will make them nervous
theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/01/new-york-police-terrorism-pressure-cooker
you should mention also U.S. based airlines and words such as “flypath” …
Perfect! So feed “data” to those “Intelligence” agencies …
Stop the temptation to do so because you will have to make sense of their stupidity. At this point every single thing the “Intelligent” U.S. government does is bound to be some major fiasko, use their stupidity and arrogance instead, but do collect that info to know after the fact who was related to what.
Guide your intelligence based on their actions and not on your illusions of being “Intelligent”
Satyagraha,
RCL
…and exactly how is the United States of America defined? By the filthy crimes committed in its name by fbi,cia.
http://m.seekingalpha.com/instablog/436163-geral-sosbee/1929821-public-notice-attributed-to-and-owned-by-the-fbi
Excerpt:
Public Notice, Attributed To And Owned By The Fbi – geral sosbee
Somos el burro Federal de Investigaciones (FBI), el Jackass de la nación, la más grande, ‘badest’, culo más malo del planeta. Heehaw!
In Denmark it has just been announced that bin laden had contact to a terrorcell in denmark, and that it was the navy seal back in 2011 who somehow obtained it, but first 4 years later it has found its way to the press and it doesnt even say how it got a hold of the information.
I mean it just seems so convenient: first of NSA and GCHQ hacked Gemalto for all sort of personal sim access and then a couple of days later a huge frontcover is out with bin laden having direct contact to somewhere in Denmark.
Here in Denmark we had a terrorist attack two weeks ago by a Young extremist who shot everything around him. Very sad. But then it was publish that nsa and GCHQ had hacked Gemalto and got all sort of personal access to our everyday technology and it kind of to
In Denmark its just been announced that bin laden had contact to a terrorcell in Denmark, and that the info was somehow obtained by the navy seals when they took out bin laden in 2011. Its not even announced how the paper themselves obtained the information.
It just seems so convient: it has just been blown out that Gemalto was hacked to gain a lot of personal access and suddenly a couple of days later a huge frontcover is out with bin laden having direct contact to someone in denmark. I mean its just seems so convenient.
This article from the NYT seems to say that the Gemalto hack was not nearly as effective as the NSA documents seem to indicate. Of course, we can always count on the NYT for obfuscation ad misdirection, however it’s important if in fact Gemalto is telling a different story from the documents. Protecting their reputation? Helping out their friends at GCHQ/NSA? Same old pattern of mutual protection by tech corporations and NSA which operate as a base pair.
woops here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/business/international/gemalto-says-nsa-tried-to-take-sim-encryption-codes.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Note the headline “Tried”
This is information we all need to act on to keep our communications secure.
Interesting.
Another thing that is interesting is that The Intercept is the one to break this story. I mean think about it.
The New York Times could have reported this…but didn’t.
The Washington Post could have reported this…but didn’t.
ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR and FOX News could have reported this…but didn’t.
Even Matt Drudge took a flier.
It was The Intercept that broke this story.
The Boys from Brazil win again.
Actually, that’s not true. The Intercept had the documents from Snowden with which to investigate, organize, communicate with others and write the article. It’s possible that the NY Times and the Washington Post had those documents as well. But ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, NPR and FOX almost certainly did not and does not have those documents. Matt Drudge, who is just a clown anyway, doesn’t have the documents either.
So our so-called news organizations don’t have the connections to put together a story like this?
They are too busy with “Quality Journalism” like this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/29/howard-stern-fart-wife_n_6573826.html
I’m with ya all the way on well deserved criticism of the corporate or main stream news media, but on this specific story and any and all others that they don’t have access to the actual documents, which gives the comprehensive proof and the ability to turn over stones, there is no way that they could do this story.
An informative article on the ubiquity of your personal information online, private industries abuse in “collecting it all” and the subsequent danger to all of us.
From the article:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/looking-up-symptoms-online-these-companies-are-collecting-your-data
lakecitysky [email protected] 17 Nov 2013
They are so sloppy monitoring my sms’ that all of them are charged as global. #PRISM #Echelon #muscular #NSA #COMMNET #VZW #Grrr.
This is interesting:
“Transcript: NSA Director Mike Rogers vs. Yahoo! on Encryption Back Doors
By John Reed
AS: Well, do you believe we should build backdoors for other countries?
MR: My position is — hey look, I think that we’re lying that this isn’t technically feasible. Now, it needs to be done within a framework. I’m the first to acknowledge that. You don’t want the FBI and you don’t want the NSA unilaterally deciding, so, what are we going to access and what are we not going to access? That shouldn’t be for us. I just believe that this is achievable. We’ll have to work our way through it. And I’m the first to acknowledge there are international implications. I think we can work our way through this.
AS: So you do believe then, that we should build those for other countries if they pass laws?
MR: I think we can work our way through this.
AS: I’m sure the Chinese and Russians are going to have the same opinion.
MR: I said I think we can work through this.
AS: Okay, nice to meet you. Thanks.”
http://justsecurity.org/20304/transcript-nsa-director-mike-rogers-vs-yahoo-encryption-doors/
Mike Rogers wants to collect it all. He will end up with a mountain of Zippo’s while stowaways gain access to the wheel wells
Do your job. Get probable cause then a warrant then target the evil doers with your BIOS and drive micro controller firmware exploits and stop keeping dossiers on the rest of us.
Well, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who are you? (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
‘Cause I really wanna know (Who are you? Who, who, who, who?)
http://www.alternet.org/books/access-govt-and-corporations-have-our-thoughts-beyond-orwells-wildest-dreams
THE INTERCEPT: Where is my other comment that I posted on the 22nd? Is this some kind of game to seek to get back at me for complaining about The Intercept’s apparent censorship at the time; and then, as you did in previous threads, you’ll suddenly, later on in the game, post all of the duplicate copies of my comments to try and make me look stupid? Here is my original comment that I posted at around the same time, or relatively close to it, as the one comment I made in reply to another poster:
Check out this, The Intercept, article:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/18/gchq-privacy-international-spying-campaign/
And then you can go to the following link to sign a petition protesting and seeking to find out if your private information was illegally shared with GCHQ by the NSA:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/illegalspying
Happy Standing Up Against All Of This Illegal Violation Of Privacy!
I found this article very interesting, especially since it has also taught me a lot about how the standard “encryption” of mobile traffic works. I am glad that I use encrypted messengers for my communications, so I don’t have to rely on this most probably compromised very mild form of security. My favorite app in this context is Threema, and end-to-end encrypted Messenger from Switzerland.
It’s interesting to see the media’s (non) coverage of the Gemalto Hack versus the nonstop coverage of the Sony Hack. Apparently its okay to hack telecoms and have access to phone calls of billions of people but it is the highest threat when our movie productions are compromised.
O/T:
*Senate Democrats Invite Benjamin Netanyahu To Closed-Door Meeting During Visit*
“Senators Richard Durbin and Dianne Feinstein extended the invitation ‘to maintain Israel’s dialog with both political parties in Congress,’ according to a letter to the Israeli leader obtained by Reuters.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/23/us-senate-democrats-inv_n_6739690.html
(I’m going to be not posting for a while, as I’ve got some travelling and self-assessment to do, plus I’m going back to working at a technology-free retreat on the main island. Best of luck to the true patriots and noble spirits here, and thanks to just about everyone for all the genuine, good faith discussions. I’ve learned a lot, and have become very fond of many of you.)
Congratulations to Laura Poitras on her well-deserved Oscar. Everyone should see not just this movie but also Scahill’s ‘Dirty Wars.’
Thanks for the notice and for the interesting general information about your reasons. You, along with your comments and replies, will be quite missed. Take care. See you here, I hope, when/if your choices draw you back and your situations, circumstances and so on permit.
Best wishes Cindy.
Best to you Cindy. What a beautiful world we would be living in if only a billionth of the population knew the value of self-assessment…
Peace, my friend, wherever your path leads. Your insight into the true nature of things seems a gift you’re destined to share, again.
Your contributions here will be missed. I definitely understand the need to step back and let other areas of life take the forefront but I hope that you will return eventually. You insights have been very valuable.
Be well, Cindy…
“…with the instincts of a street brawler, never happier than when engaged in moral or political fisticuffs.” – Salman Rushdie; speaking about his good friend, Christopher Hitchens
http://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged/2012/02/rushdie-on-hitchens-201202
Can someone pls tell me who the nekid guy with a zucchini-stuffed underwear at the Oscar was? And what he wos tryin’ to communcay wid dat otfit? I don’ hafa a TV …
Did Laura track down Samuel L. for a photo together last night, Jeremy, just to hold over your head forever? I mean, what are friends for?
;^)
Correct me if I’m wrong but is this not corporate espionage? I mean, if a private company got caught doing this to another private company someone would be going to jail. Who is going to be prosecuted for this or is this yet another example of where Obama tells us that we need to let bygones be bygones and our energies are better spent focusing on the future.
I’m astounded that we (and I include myself in that) are willing to let people rot in prison for a couple of ounces of pot but starting illegal wars, destabilizing the world economy, torture, assassinations, collecting meta data and stealing encryption keys are what, all par for the course?
One StingRay from Harris Corporation can make all of the encryption on any cellphone academic.
Gemalto responds:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/gemalto-our-sim-cards-are-secure-despite-nsa-hack-claim/
So Snowden is now a KGB info double agent eh? Good for him.
Barack Hussein the Marxist Communist Maggot President SHOULD cut off al Russian ships entering the US but you know the commie maggot won’t
“When Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile formed an alliance in 2010 to jointly build an electronic pay system to challenge Google Wallet and Apple Pay …”
Apple Pay didn’t exist in 2010. Get your timeline straight.
Congratulations to Laura Poitras, Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and everyone involved in CtizenFour, 2015 Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature.
Job well done all!
They did it!
So thrilled that “Citizen Four” won.
But I was NOT happy when Laura handed over the mic to Glenn and ABC cut to Neil Patrick Harris where he referred to “Citizen Four” as “Treason”.
Let’s get the clip of that up, eh?
What are they calling him now, Captain Underpants?
Are you kidding? Did he have his pants on?
*can’t find it on Utube … but I want to see the Host calling the winning doc film “treason”.
The host didn’t at one point, did a schtick in his underwear. Dumb jokes all evening, apparently. Nonetheless, Citizenfour did win, and that at least did matter.
Neil Patrick Harris’ comment was something like this after ABC cut the feed from Poitros just as it appeared Glenn Greenwald was about to say something and I doubt he was going to thank his partner or his dogs or his mother or father. I’m sure Glenn would have said something very profound to the world=wide audience.
(Hey Glenn! Please tell us what you were going to say?!)
When the feed cut to Neil Patrick Harris he said something close to this: “The subject of Citizen Four couldn’t make it here tonight for some TREASON.”
Just my opinion, but this HAD to be a “scripted” comment pre-approved by the producers and executives at ABC.
“Fair trial” for Snowden when ABC has already proclaimed him to have committed “treason”?
Edward Snowden’s official Oscars statement:
https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/edward-snowden-congratulates-laura-poitras-winning-best-documentary-oscar-cit
If it’s being celebrated on a massive network T.V. event, it’s not a threat to the US Government. Oh well.
Congratulations all around … but if Oscar had any balls they could have piped-in a word or two from cousin Ed.
Can’t say much for the distribution of the film. I have yet to see CitizenFour! *All the local theaters are showing American Sniper … i’m gonna try to catch it on HBO.
ps. I rarely, like never, watch the Oscars. The pomp is distracting (was that a Tux Glenn was wearing?) and all that glitter hurts my eyes. *I was wearing my plum silk bloomers by Oscar De LaWalmart over some snazzy Red slippers by T.J. Max.
Congrats.
I think it can be seen here:
http://thoughtmaybe.com/citizenfour/
“*I was wearing my plum silk bloomers by Oscar De LaWalmart over some snazzy Red slippers by T.J. Max.”
bah mi hummerbung hunnee taht sownd liek teh purfuct owtfit too ware too teh Purpool Kow (ef it wuz stil opun taht iz).
i thin Gelnn sed hiz tucks wuz frum Oskar teh Lowrenter oor sumwun liek taht.
This is so disappointing but not shocking at all. I’m an IT student and I’m quite familiar of the vulnerabilities in our mobile communication system.
Spy agencies can easily access them as they’ve all the tools; smart-ass nerds, uncountable money and the best technology.
I can bet on this that government institutions of countries to which NSA/CIA & GCHQ serve are also being spied on and they can’t be stopped. Because their focus & job is on stealing rather than protecting.
Mr. Obama said that they don’t spy on normal people but we all knew that it’s not true and this report has proved it. Rather than targeting millions of child fishes which require way more resources, it’s wise to target the parent fish and that’s what NSA & GCHQ have done here.
The disappointing part of this report is to know that telecom companies have been receiving keys online on FTP with little or no security at all. So, first of all they are the ones publicly answerable to their customers.
Also, they got hands on the keys of credit cards, passports and many other important pieces of our lives.
The surprising part is that GCHQ failed to get keys of Pakistan’s telecom companies in their early attempts. So, they probably have had better security than their intl. counterparts. But they would also have been penetrated at last by these agencies as drone attacks are usually based on SIMs.
We are taught in IT about security that ‘the chain is as strong as its weak link’. So to get nearly perfect or best security, we need to make all the links strong because a single vulnerability can take down the whole network.
Check out this, The Intercept, article:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/18/gchq-privacy-international-spying-campaign/
And then you can go to the following link to sign a petition protesting and seeking to find out of your private information was illegally shared with GCHQ by the NSA:
https://www.privacyinternational.org/illegalspying
Happy Standing Up Against All Of This Illegal Violation Of Privacy!
Another example of Americans not following their own advice; this one from the early 1970’s, foretelling what was obvious to some, yet ignored by too many:
The article from whence it came – a pretty good read:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/22/the-watergate-snowden-connection.html
Which was double-speak and disingenuous pandering to the public in order to keep them ignorant of what’s really going on. They want(ed) us to “stand naked before official power”, to have no secrets or privacy from the government, and for us all to be absolutely and completely subjugated and controlled. They’ve been systematically eradicating our liberties and freedoms, and are now in their endgame of criminalizing and outlawing those human rights (civil liberties are human rights, too), increasingly carrying out oppression and repression against all our exercise of same, and locking us all down under a corporate-fascist totalitarian militarized regime, first in all of the Western countries, and then in the rest of the world. In other words, they’ve been setting up an enslavement state, little by little, slowly but surely, for about one hundred years now, if not longer; and now they are putting the finishing touches on it.
They’re falsely and fraudulently portraying the Satanic, globalist world government as being the “salvation” of the world, and the only way to “save the planet”, or they soon will be. Or, let’s say they will be doing so as never before, selling most of the dumbed-down, indoctrinated, conditioned, programmed, brainwashed and willfully-ignorant masses on it and convincing them to blindly support it, as they’ve already been doing, whether they knew it or not, through capitulating to global government ever since the creation of the evil “United Nations”. The globalists don’t believe in nations, except one great big, all-encompassing “one-world nation” with no individual, separate, independent, sovereign nations states; but everyone all enslaved “equally”, worldwide. Sure, it is, or will be, presented as being the opposite of enslavement, and every other “positive” attribute under the sun; but, in reality, it will be nothing but enslavement.
Like in George Orwell’s book, “1984”, no one will have any True Liberty(ies) and Freedom(s) whatsoever anymore, except to be “good little slaves” who do nothing but what they’re told, no exceptions tolerated whatsoever; otherwise, the “Ministry of ‘Love'” will take them into custody, torture them and possibly if not likely murder them. This is what is coming true all around us right now in the Western “democracies”. We are being “democratized” into a global corporate-fascist totalitarian militarized police state, starting in those Western countries; then, as is already occurring, those nations’ sovereignty will be eradicated, and they will all be brought, and then the rest of the world, under global government enslavement. It’s almost, if not actually, like the globalist powers-that-be are following “1984” like a playbook or a blueprint, because they’re systematically bringing most if not all of the very state-control mechanisms described in it, into existence.
The following is what the “United Nations” is really all about:
http://www.wolfbritain.com/#UnitedNationsEnslavement
“Which was double-speak and disingenuous pandering to the public in order to keep them ignorant of what’s really going on.” – S. Wolf Britain
As someone mentioned on another thread, “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” and in this case, from my take in being around at the time and in witnessing the events since then, I think that in this case what you read is what they meant.
The takeaway from this is that some Americans have repeatedly seen misfortunes ahead of time and accurately voiced solutions in order to forestall more of the same, and yet because of a combination of poor governance, poor journalism and citizenry neglect the opportunities to address them have all gone mostly unanswered, or at least inadequately so, as the quote above indicates.
This site, the whistleblower(s) who spawned it, the voices behind it, and most commenters here are another instance of this warning system in effect. It remains to be seen how effective we will be in pushing back against the ever-present powers (and I would say much more prevalent and entrenched, in many cases) that seek to maintain the status quo for only a few of us, rather than for the most of us.
And of course, some (corporate and government interests, for the most part) will see these most recent warnings as yet another series of “the sky is falling” type of fear-mongering from the peons and the outlier press, who simply cannot fathom what is good for them; while others hold that it is (and that it always has been) the plan by these same interests to cunningly and systematically eliminate our freedoms in a well-orchestrated attempt at global domination.
My view is that the most accurate answers are somewhere in between and among these two, and that, for the most part, most societies have devolved in much this same way over time – not by design but by neglect – throughout our recorded history.
In the end, it’s “simply” up to us to do whatever we can about it. All I can say is that I’m thankful for the brave and talented folks who are helping us here and elsewhere, because for several decades now, I really didn’t think anyone would show up.
P.S. – Congratulations again to you all for the awards you have won for your efforts; they are truly well deserved!
That’s a lot of words just to blog whore.
One huge problem is that Americans are being kept in a childlike mode of thought, through (both flattering and fear-inducing) propaganda and also unnecessary prescription drugs.*
The question “does Obama love America?” is actually being seriously discussed, which is absurd. It’s like siblings bickering about who loves Mommy best, when in fact ALL the children are so self-centered as to not love anything but what they can loot from her. But the sheer immaturity of the question and its ensuing debate is astonishing. Other countries, even close allies like Britain and Canada, would laugh at the issue (“Does Harper love Canada? Does Cameron love Britain, including Scotland?”) simply because the sentimental pretentiousness of it is mindless, ludicrous.
The US populace is being kept down, manipulated into squabbling, childish dopes. The question is never whether someone loves their country, but whether their actions are productive for the nation and the world as a whole. Sentimentality shouldn’t even enter in to it. Question politicians’ motives, absolutely, but don’t reduce it to who loves Mommy best, reduce it to how corrupted they are by greed, corporatism, militarism and other sociopathic agendas.
This SIM heist article, for example, indicates what Obama loves, but a warped patriotism could easily be a ready ‘excuse’ for it, just as Cheney’s mouth could state his love for country made him do what he did. But the corruption of both characters is not illuminated even slightly by the discussion of their national pride.
* – John Oliver’s remarkable clip on Big Pharma. Starts off with the stunning fact that 70% of us are on prescription drugs.
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/02/big-pharma-ama-respond-john-oliver/
That’s an excellent observation and comment. And for many, this is all true: “The US populace is being kept down, manipulated into squabbling, childish dopes.” But there are a lot in the US populace who didn’t need to be kept down and manipulated into being dopes to be and or become dopes. Take a skim of, #Guliana on twitter right now. There are so many comments there that indicate that them who are making those comments have been dopes all of their lives, and will probably remain so no matter how much reasonable and serious commentary they are ever subjected to. It was after you posted your comment that I thought to search for, and then take a look at, that hash tag, which I knew had to exist. There is another one called #DoesObamaLoveAmerica. I didn’t look at that one because a person can handle only so much dope in one sitting.
Reading from both those hash tags proved depressing, but thanks for illustrating my point with the idiocy therein. It appears the propaganda and the drugs are having their effect, but as you note there is also way too much obvious willingness on behalf of dopes on both ‘sides’ to explain it all away with just establishment coercion.
How pathetic that we would rather fight theatrical caricatures of ideology rather than end the systemic bipartisan corruption destroying the nation.
Apologies if this sounds defeatist, but I’m starting to lose faith that we can turn this around. Even when I convince people of systemic corruption, you’d be surprised (maybe not) how fast they forget what we’ve discussed the next time they see me, and have already returned to their cartoonish “It’s the Democrats’ fault” or “It’s the Republicans’ fault” stance – as if all that matters is the ego-gratification of humiliating another group, rather than the restoration of real dignity to America’s political and global aspirations.
As for having faith that we can turn this around: yeah, it’s tough keeping the faith while being plummeted daily with so much discouragement.
Just discovered a word defined by someone on twitter that I hadn’t heard of before which well describes this screaming in the sandbox making ammunition mud pies distraction of ‘My Man Guliani Loves Our America and Your Obama Doesn’t.’
pribble, n A petty or pointless dispute, a squabble; trivial or nonsensical speech or writing; squabbling, quarrelling; idle chit-chat.
Get a grip. This useless vent of digital bullshit is a waste of time and energy. The living proof is what happened post Snowden. Buy a weapon and thank your lucky stars the Framers gave you that right, because, as sure as the sun sets in the west, the collectivists praying at the alter of Government’s monopoly of violence will do any thing in their power to kill you should you be caught up in their web of surveillance. Thank god.. some people persevere in the their relentless journey to prove to you that you only have one recourse. The god given right of self defense by virtue of the 2nd Amendment. Take it or leave it. However..if you don’t pay attention..your family may pay the price for your inability to grasp the significance of the Framers intent. Meanwhile..fuck you if you don’t get it…although..you may get it the day the SHTF..and it will.
http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2015/02/video-of-my-speech-which-begins-at-3.html
The living proof of what is what happened post Snowden? And what exactly is it that happened post Snowden that whatever “proof” it is that is “living” happened.
So you think that if it weren’t for the “Framers” giving people some magical “right” there would be no weapon available to buy?
Who or what are these “collectivists,” and how is it that they are going to kill me if I haven’t exercised my “right” to have bought my “Framer’s” issued weapon?
So … is it God or is it the “Framers” who gave me my “god given right” to purchase my weapon, which is the only thing that is going to save me and my, apparently defenseless without me, family?
Is everyone’s family sitting on their hands waiting for Daddy or Mommy or whomever the only one in the family is who “grasped the significance” that the Framers intended me to kill or be killed by the government?
All righty then, see you on the other side.
It’s nothing new. Since the man was elected into office, the question of whether he loves America or not has been expressed in a variety of ways. It all has to do with his name. Especially the ‘Hussein’ part. So, to those incapable of seeing farther than their noses, he has always been a Moslem, never mind all the hard facts to the contrary. And thus, cannot possibly love America. And he is deserving in their vitriol, of the same scorn that is heaped on ISIS and the rest of the Islamic world for that matter. And it does not help his case that he is black. Let’s just say it like it is.
As for how other nations view Americans on this, I am reminded of what a friend just told me not so long ago. She and her spouse were vacationing in Paris, soaking the sun outside a cosy cafe when they noticed a young couple in a heated disagreement. After a while of arguing, the guy then said, let’s seek someone else’s opinion on this. He then proceeded to explain the source of contention, and explain two ways to resolve it without naming whose way was whose. Then he asked: “Which way would you choose to resolve the matter?” My friend and her spouse said, unanimously, “Option 1″. Upon which he replied: ” Voila! Even the dumb Americans can figure this one out!” My friends felt quite insulted but laughed it off… So there…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/20/obama-said-everyone-wants-secure-mobile-communications-but-the-nsa-worked-to-undermine-that/
That would be a good question for the illustrious Congressional Intelligence Over-site committee to ask.
*i.e. whether Obama was aware of NSA/GCHQ undermining global encryption for phone service … not the straight face.
He doesn’t know how Obama “could say that with a straight face”?
lol
It’s pretty damn obvious Barack Obama is a professional and brilliant liar, or (more politely) ‘actor,’ who has a face for each deviously-thought out statement his puppet mouth pronounces.
It doesn’t bode well when otherwise intelligent people are still under the impression Obama is well-intentioned or naïve.
“I suspect the president was not fully briefed on the extent law enforcement and intelligence agencies develop, acquire and exploit vulnerabilities in the software we all use,”
The President – any President – is ALWAYS insulated by not all, but some closest to him who are strategically positioned there to protect the illegal activities that may be going on in the country, from all and any information that might remotely tip him that something amiss is going on.
Take the matter of remote torture. In 2011, FFCHS, a civil rights organization that provides support and information for thousands of Americans tortured with advanced electromagnetic weapons systems, initiated a petition to send to the President’s desk. It grew like fire, with many signing up in droves from all 50 states, despite the horrific electronic glitches that many encountered trying to sign up. People were so desperate that if they failed 5 times, they tried 10 more times until they succeeded.
When it became clear that the number required to put the matter on the President’s table would quickly be met, all of a sudden the required number of signatures for petitions to the President was increased tenfold, guaranteeing that it would fail to gather that many names in the matter of a two weeks ( the time left when this change was suddenly made ). So, once again, the human firewall around him whose task it is to let the illegalities occur below the radar, had won. He could never address what he is not officially aware of.
Be under no illusion: the President does not run the executive office. His advisors do.
In the hope that your response to this isn’t overly defensive:
Personally I do not believe anyone is being tortured with “advanced electromagnetic weapons systems,” and I would hazard a guess that the majority of those believing they are belong in the same category as those with psychosomatic symptoms due to persecution complexes. These symptoms always seem very real, and are verifiably inflammations and paralyses – but they are self-induced, in my opinion, and not products of government mischief.
Now, I am not the arbiter of this in any final sense, I just want to give my opinion. I have seen hypnotized patients produce blisters after being told (falsely) that they were burned, and I’ve seen mesmeric specialists with the use of drugs induce a profoundly suicidal state in an otherwise normal subject. The use of persuasion before, during and after trauma is also incredibly effective as a means to produce very tangible disturbances of both mind and body. So please know that while I don’t doubt your symptoms are real, the cause of them may be more in your mind than you are aware – even if you are indeed being targeted by the authorities for monitoring.
But I want to thank you for your last sentence particularly, as it is very astute.
Your response comes across as rational. And most importantly, honest. So, no, with sensible individuals I always opt to share the historical record about the subject of unethical human experimentation and brutal mind control activities, given that most of the information about these illegal activities is carefully guarded in order to evade public scrutiny.
But this is not to persuade you one way or the other – I’ve long been beyond that – but merely to offer the information to you in the event that you may not have been aware of it. Before my torture, the only case of unethical experimentation and mind control torture that I knew of was the Tuskeegee Experiment, which I only learned about through my psychology class. So it is not reasonable to assume that many others simply are not aware as well. To inform is a much sounder route for me than to get overly defensive.
The URL I am offering you is only a primer. A much longer list, with all the sordid details, is in my documents which I do not have handy right now.
And if you still feel the same way after reading the pointer content, then that is fine too. But I shall rest knowing that you now know… And here’s the url:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States
Thanks for giving me the opportunity.
I’m well aware of some of the reprehensible behavior listed there, but that is an unparalleled comprehensive overview of past abuses by trusted establishments.
What concerns me is that those very real invasive illegalities are being conflated with imaginary “rays” or “advanced electromagnetic weapons” that simply do not exist. I’m sure, now that I know how informed you are, that you appreciate that hysterical symptoms are not only possible but quite predictable given certain neuroses. And since imaginary assaults will only clutter up accountability for the grievances listed on that page, the idea that ANYONE thinking they are being invasively treated (beyond pharmaceutical and propagandistic manipulation) should call attention to it actually makes the project so amateur that it is going to be easily dismissed.
Thanks for your polite reply, however, and I’m extremely glad you apparently take no offense at my skepticism.
Correction : “So it is not reasonable…” was intended to be, “So it is not UNreasonable…”
Apologies…
” I’m well aware of some of the reprehensible behavior listed there, but that is an unparalleled comprehensive overview of past abuses by trusted establishments. ”
Cindy, sorry I ran out of “Reply” space…Re:your last post on this conversation and specifically regarding the quote above, you are correct, but your accurate statement omits an important element : the time factor. None of the reprehensible behaviours’ overview occurred at the time the abuses were actually being committed. And so in time – 25 years from now perhaps, the average lag time it takes for Americans to know what the government is doing behind closed doors – our ongoing abuse will finally be a ‘past’ abuse entry among those listed in that URL, acknowledged by all to have indeed occurred.
The victims of those past abuses received exactly the same public responses of neuroses but today, we know they were not neurotic. Unfortunately most if not all of yesteryear’s victims are too dead today to savor the vindication.
You make a point on neuroses that is worth revisiting. Neuroses are real conditions of aberrant brain function resulting from known or unknown etiological origins. No one can deny that and still expect to be credible. But it is precisely this slippery nature of neuroses that lends itself to manipulation by abusers.
A narrative constructed by the abusers has played the (false) neuroses card over and over. The intention behind that being to deter you – the innocent observer who in the absence of such a narrative, and in the state of information malnutrition that the citizenry in general is chronically being inflicted with, would be expected to be outraged at the activities – from ever believing the target.
Insulate the public from all information that is intrinsically harmful to a democracy seems to be the operational paradigm of the abusers, and it works like a charm. Every time. Well, almost every time.
I am happy that you explicitly stated that electromagnetic weapons do not exist. You have once more provided me with an opportunity to inform you otherwise.
For starters, allow me to refer you to a primer book by Dr. Doug Beason, Ph. D. (Physics), a highly decorated US Airforce research scientist who helped develop these very weapons systems at Los Alamos and other top-notch weapons research facilities in the country. The book is titled : ” The E- Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change The Way Future Wars Will Be Fought “. Your local library might have a copy also, but it is affordable if you like keeping good books for reference.
I have too many URLs to refer you to also but will start with this one, because it references Dr Beason’ s book.
http://m.space.com/1934-weapons-directed-energy-warfare-21st-century.html
These weapons systems are not only real but they effectively render the nuclear weapon ancient in terms of delivery speeds alone. And they are being fielded out on the heads of thousands of innocent Americans as we speak, and on untold numbers in Iraqis and beyond.
Lastly, a fascinating observation: many college- educated South African blacks know of the American-sponsored experiments and mind control torture than Americans know of their own history, and how that history is carefully managed. I cannot seem to figure that one out…
Again, thanks for the opportunity. And for being sharp and civil about the dialogue.
If you do indeed distinguish between real and imaginary abuse, and are coming up with proof of such weapons, I wish you all the best.
Thank you !
The pretext of terrorism, as a reason for blanket surveillance does not really hold that well.
If the threat is THAT real, and the foundations of democracy have to be ignored or overlooked to protect the organs of democracy, then the same criteria could be used to remove all suspect undesirable cultures from the country, as that would have a lesser effect overall.
In other words, importing cultures that are directly opposed to representational democracy and free speech is what has happened, but not recognised by the ruling elite, as that would make them look opposed to multiculturalism.
The deportation of those cultures,( in this case Islam), would be the solution in this case as the alternative is to tolerate more outrages: jihads. female incarceration, honour killings (not exclusive it Islam) , child brides, young girls forcibly married to old men, animal cruelty, female genital cutting, and so on.
If you think these thing are to be accepted, then there would be no need for deportation to those Islamic paradises, where these things are considered normal, and their gradual adoption in your culture will take place.
You do not need the network key to listen to the unencrypted voice from a cell phone, the phone-to-mast encryption is fairly simple and is commercially available to all phone companies. Locally, near enough to receive the phone signal, the voice can be collected encrypted or decrypted and recorded as a stream with the senders number. Blotting the 3G/4G out makes this even easier.
Pretty damned cool three minute video of Glenn, Laura and crew receiving award. “…Really brave whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg and Chelsea Manning and especially the stunningly courageous Edward Snowden deserve, not decades in prison but our collective gratitude. –Glenn Greenwald
Thanks, Kitt. That is a great three minutes…amazing to think of the hours and risks that culminated on that stage. Glenn nailed it with his distinction between privacy and democracy. Those who wish to continually minimize what is happening, dismiss the privacy element, often noting that it doesn’t affect them directly, but Glenn is exactly right. This is about the subversion of democracy itself, and that is a far more dangerous thing.
The last weeks have been filled with an almost cinematic brutality. With IS on the rampage (and those eager to exploit the work of a lunatic fringe for their own malign agenda,) beheadings, etc. it’s good to be reminded of the power represented on that stage…the creativity, courage and dedication it took to bring that story to life–to say nothing of the truth– are what we need.
Snowden will go down in history for being emphatically, clearly, and unambiguously on the right side of a divide that shouldn’t even be a divide.
Glenn and Laura look so happy, and I am so very happy for them. Imagine going from the stress of Tokyo all the way to the these award ceremonies.
That said, a central person was missing from that stage, at least physically — Edward Snowden. The second greatest value of “Citizenfour” winning an Oscar would be the pressure it builds to make sure his government lets Snowden return home without risking decades in prison.
The first value, of course, is that more people will watch a documentary blessed by the supreme Establishment honor.
So true, Mona. That Snowden remains a fugitive when he should be hailed as a hero remains a grim sign of how dangerously out-of-whack this nation is. These are dire times…
Glenn also gave recognition to Chelsea Manning and Daniel Ellsberg. Fitting. “Thus shall their names, familiar in our mouths as household words, be in our flowing cups freshly remembered.”
Did their limo come from Oscar de la Rentacar?
Great article! I can’t BELIEVE that a company who are security “experts” would use FTP.
Snowden is a modern day Robin Hood, stealing from robbers and thieves. Obama is the sheriff of Nothingham.
.
Given the information presented this article, I think that most people reading TI would want to join the campaign by ‘Privacy International’ as discussed by Mr. Gallagher in the linked to TI article entitled: ‘Thousands Join Legal Fight Against UK Surveillance — And You Can, Too’.
Many people here have complained about not having “standing” to learn if they were spied upon by NSA/GCHQ so this appears to be your chance to find out. Additionally, wouldn’t having thousands more than the 10,000 already signed up send a strong message to the spy agencies?
I would like to see more comments about Mr. Gallagher’s article — especially from the regular TI commenters — about the pros/cons of signing-on to the campaign.
{Quote:
“Because of our recent victory against the UK intelligence agency in court, now anyone in the world — yes, ANYONE, including you — can find out if GCHQ illegally received information about you from the NSA.”
End Quote}
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/18/gchq-privacy-international-spying-campaign/
.
I read it and I signed it. I can understand why some or most haven’t or won’t comment to the article, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t or won’t sign up. Everyone should at least read everything Privacy International wrote about it at the link, especially the FAQ’s.
Thank you Kitt.
There is a distinction between real-time monitoring of someone and the recording of what they do (for later review, if determined necessary).
The authorities, if bothered at all by this, can and probably will say “We’re not monitoring you,” meaning that currently you aren’t being watched in real-time. Meanwhile your behavior and information are indeed being stored, along with just about anything else they can get their hands on.
It isn’t feasible to watch everybody in an ongoing sense, but to create the impression that they can – and to cover all possible bases – the surveillance state records everything in its arrogant ‘collect it all’ obsessive-compulsive neurosis. My concern is that the establishment will simply (continue to) use clever language to dispel public suspicion.
No doubt that that is what they will try to do for as long as they can possibly get away with it, and probably then some. But there are those — Marcy Wheeler for example — who explain in fantastically interesting detail how it is that their clever language hiding the crimes of NSA/GCHQ and the lot can be deconstructed and shown to be mountains of lies upon lies; leaving them vulnerable to being eventually exposed beyond all repair. Or at least that is how it should turn out.
I take it you saw this, then (linked here for those who didn’t):
*Yes, Eric Holder Does Do the Intelligence Community’s Bidding in Leak Prosecutions*
https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/02/19/yes-eric-holder-does-do-the-intelligence-communitys-bidding-in-leak-prosecutions/
Yes, but possibly my favorite part about that whole post what what I read in the link about “Julia P” the hairdresser.
Marcy) She seemed unprepared for court testimony, dressed casually. But she was a welcome breath of fresh air from all the stern witnesses preaching national security we’ve seen in the trial so far.
“Hi!” she said in a high voice as she took the stand. She explained she’d been a hairdresser for 35 years (she looked far too young for that to be the case). Julia P then confirmed that she had read State of War.
“Yessir, every chapter.”
(SNIP)
Marcy) Judge Brinkema then interjected, “how did you obtain the book?” It might have been either Borders or Barnes & Noble, Julia P explained. When pressed, she said it was probably in Alexandria or Arlington.
But it might have been in Bowie, Maryland, because her boyfriend lives there.
As Julia P pointed out, there are Barnes & Nobles all over.
On cross-examination, the defense asked her to clarify this, whether she knew where she bought the book. “It was probably Virginia, but it might have been Bowie,” she repeated. “You don’t remember whether you bought the book in Virginia or Maryland?” the defense asked again to be sure.
When she was dismissed, Julia P responded with the same refreshing voice, “Thank you!”
>”The authorities, if bothered at all by this, can and probably will say “We’re not monitoring you,” meaning that currently you aren’t being watched in real-time. Meanwhile your behavior and information are indeed being stored, along with just about anything else they can get their hands on.” *Cindy loo
Actually, I believe the DNI (among other officials) have testified that ‘collection’ is not ‘monitoring’ … but only his hairdresser knows for sure.
How “omnipotent” hackers tied to NSA hid for 14 years—and were found at last
“Equation Group” ran the most advanced hacking operation ever uncovered.
http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/02/how-omnipotent-hackers-tied-to-the-nsa-hid-for-14-years-and-were-found-at-last/
PS for. Android. User:don’t forget to lock. Down guest with a password.
Which thursday did you publish it?
Well, well, well…The NSA and its British counterpart have their work cut out for them now.
With the hacking and snooping fires they just started, they better have enough snoopin’ manpower to effectively avoid being burnt by pissed-off China, India, Brazil, Russia, Germany (maybe) – that’s more than 3 billion folks already – when these nations blow the flames right back to the source in the years to come.
Now on your marks…get set…
Incredible story, great reporting. Just checked with friends. They have not heard anything about this story. I had to inform them and direct them to this website. They did take the time tonight over dinner tonight to warn me about ISIS…
I would like to address a comment from George related to U.S. propaganda films. Comments are now closed.
George 18 Feb 2015 at 11:35 am
“Filmmakers can always deflect criticism by saying ‘It’s a movie, not a documentary”
Actually the more pertinent criticism is : If you don’t like it? Make your own movie.
George – You are correct. I was in the process of MAKING MY OWN MOVIE, when a military surveillance team showed up on my block. I’m sure it had NOTHING to do with the fact that my father worked for the CIA, was a contractor for the NSA etc…I’m sure THAT and my previous films had nothing to do with me being blacklisted and the 24/7 surveillance…not to mention the non-lethal weapons they can use to take out targets.
George, you are either very stupid or you work for the government…or both.
No comment. Is that because you know whatever I say is 100% true and that all my communications are monitored. If it ALL goes sideways, it’s the federal penitentiary for you. I’m thinking Feds, Spooks, Police Officers…don’t like the idea that their kid, sister, wife, friend can be TARGETED if they do or say the wrong thing.
.0! percent think THEY got your back…think again. Maybe Blackwater/XE corp/Acedemi et all at $2000 a day. And there there are so many others. But do you really think every police officer, every Fed, every Spook and ex-militray has your back. I would think again. Because they targeted ME, which me they can target evryone they love.
As a point of general interest: Glenn Greenwald is attending the Oscars with the Laura Poitras contingent. “Citizenfour” is sweeping the 2014 documentary awards, and is favorited for the Academy Award as well. We shall see.
Can someone explain why Iceland was a target of these operations? I cant seem to remember the last time I read about an Icelandic terrorist.
I think to me it seems like terrorism is just an excuse. they want to know about EVERYTHING going on. they want to know about politicians and CEOs from all around the world. in this world information is very valuable.
Iceland has proven itself to be the most threatening kind of “terrorist” to those in power in modern history. Why? Because Iceland is the only democracy which removed and/or jailed its corrupt bankers and regained control of its government and the financial entities within its borders after the financial collapse that began in the middle of the last decade; a collapse which was caused by these bankers and corporations corruption and malfeasance. All other western nations rewarded and protected the bankers and corporations instead.
What the NSA and GCHQ are doing is nothing less than government sanctioned cyber-war.
What this shows us is that there’s nothing more frightening to the shadow governments of the NSA and GCHQ than a good example, and if that means hacking Iceland’s (and indeed, the worlds) cell phones, networks and government(s) to eliminate that threat, so be it.
And on that note, another example of the US ignoring it’s own advice in mitigating the real threats of our modern world:
“Private-sector preparedness is not a luxury; it is a cost of doing business in the post-9/11 world. It is ignored at a tremendous potential cost in lives, money and national security.” – The 9/11 Commission Report
Not only does the US and Britain ignore this advice, as shown by this article and others, they actively undermine everyone’s security.
Why is this just being released now? They’ve had these documents for a year and now we’re just finding out. This is irresponsible. Release everything you have and stop dragging this out for page hits.
I see several reasons why so much time has passed prior to this article being written/released. 1) it’s a complicated topic, any journalist worth their salt would need to thoroughly understand it prior to trying to explain it to the public. 2) As was promised to Edward Snowden the info needed to be understood to redact any info that could cause harm to any individual or to true National Security generally. 3) As Snowden said, if he had wanted he could have uploaded everything himself had he been willing to risk harm. 4) The documents have been released when they were ready & in a way that people wouldn’t be overwhelmed & lose interest.
For me, I’m glad that it was done exactly as it has happened. This group of journalists are extremely skilled & committed to bringing awareness to the greatest number people in the most responsible way. I applaud them.
“Page hits” don’t mean anything here. There are no advertisers or any other reason to go for “page hits” except for the purpose of informing as many people as possible. If you’re going to submit a complaint, at least get your reality in order and know the facts of which you are complaining about. Or, just spew ignorant junk, if you like.
Yeah way to jump on the most insignificant detail and dodge the real issue. Ever heard of Moore’s law? That is the real reason GG waited. Because by now all of this technology has changed and its too late to catch anyone in the act or do anything about it. This story is just follow up promotion behind the Oscar win. Which coincidentally overlapped perfectly with HBO premiering the doc last night. Such large scale synchronicity for a few vigilante journalists and an outcast whistleblower, don’t you think. But it certainly has nothing to do with web traffic. Its only a big,super huge, super random coincidence.
When will the GG psyop become obvious to you all. And how far reaching will your apologist denials get before that happens. You GG apologists all already make Obama apologists look like amateurs. All while missing the pattern of too-little-too-late releases, the rash of Russia propaganda, Snowdens CIA past, and GGs newfound celebrity,career success and charmed life. Snowden only serves to let the chess players control the dialogue that much better, since he gives them a captive audience they wouldn’t otherwise have. Remember the last US lawyers who snuck off to the UK then returned to the US as prominent ‘fighting for the little guy’ figures? Their names were Bill and Hillary Clinton. And they weren’t the obvious war hawk, Bilderberg product, total state authority, Bush’s-little-sister types we know them to be now either. Someday you’ll see that this the real GG too. It just so happens that some of us see it now. Because we’re actually thinking for ourselves and not just looking for a hero to worship. That why the CIA is counting on YOU!!!
I can hear President Obama now trying to quell the anger.
“Now folks, all we did here is listen in on a few folks’ phone calls, I mean we’ve tortured some folks, which is much worse, am I right? By the way folks, Mr. Brennan and I are wondering what you folks are so worried about if you have nothing to hide, so best mind your manners and quit *droning-on* about NSA/GCHQ, folks — just sayin'”
Give me 100 mathematicians, 100 computer scientists, 100 script writers, unlimited untraceable funding, and an experienced mobile security force to keep us alive long enough. And I will bring about the crisis needed to get effective change!
Utter rubbish from start to finish.
You do not know hoe the mobile network encryption is done – even though this is an open standard, and you do not know who the large “Cariers” with most subscribers are. It is not AT&T, Sprint and Verizon – try to name the top 10!
Who paid you publish this rubbish? Putin? I hope you get well paid, because all your remarks will be ignored from now on.
Knut H.
I agree.
It stretches credibility to believe that respectable government agencies such as the NSA or GCHQ would hack into the network of a private company, causing serious commercial damage. It may have happened in the case of Petrobras and Belgacom, but those were just aberrations, who had likely done something wrong in order to deserve the cyber attacks.
In fact, now that I think about it, none of the target companies, including Gemalto, were American or British. So of course they deserved to be hacked – not that I’m conceding they actually were hacked.
So in fact the story is 2x rubbish – Gemalto was not hacked and they deserved it.
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim. A link to a peer reviewed article supporting your claims would be helpful.
knut is knot a knut. Knothing kneeds to be known – move along from his babblings.
Who do you work for?
@articleauthor: you see these keys that the I.C. stole can only be used to clone a phone. Of course once cloned, you could listen in to the phone conversation when there’s an incoming call to the phone, since both phones will ring. For outgoing and calls and net traffic you pretty much stuck where first were. If the key database is really stolen, all (but a bit of a logistical exercise) the operators need to do is change the key in the sim and correspondingly at the Authentication Center in the operator core network.
On another point, reading these gov spying articles, I really don’t understand what people are worried about. You talking dirty to your partner certainly is not something to worry about and I’m sure the gov wouldn’t care either but if they filtering and flagging keywords, then I think it just might be a useful tool against terrorism.
This was a big old size 13 boot hittin’ the floor! I suspected cell phone owners were unwitting metaphorical agents for the matrix, and dumped mine years ago.
You can still call me at home or knock on my door, but unless required for work assignments I avoid carrying tracking devices for a snoopy government, or cameras / microphones they can power and use without my permission. Just a thing…
How Latest Snowden Leak Is Headache for White House
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/02/20/how-latest-snowden-leak-is-headache-for-white-house/
Snowdon has leaked that he has no knowledge of network transmission capacity.
These people has exposed that they do not understand how mobile networks works.
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim. A link to a peer reviewed article supporting your claims would be helpful.
Knut I must respectfully ask if it is your intent to come from a position of knowledge please exercise some control over your grammar and defend your point of view instead of making a blanket statement.
LOL…
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing…
or..in other words ..Evil exists because good men don’t kill the motherfucking government officials committing it.
I wonder what H. Arendt would say after a good, long look at these thugs and their fellow travelers… Maybe something about the ‘breeziness of evil’?
‘Citizenfour’ Will Receive The Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize
http://www.nationinstitute.org/blog/prizes/4376/%22citizenfour%22_will_receive_the_ridenhour_documentary_film_prize/
Jeremy and Josh-
Great article. But you need to get the President’s schedule. This should have come out the day before the President’s recent meeting with Silicon Valley.
I’m also surprised people didn’t meet him at the airport with signs saying, “Stop Trying To Get My Data.”
Finally, if you are reading this, and you work in any government where you see illegal spying, please, PLEASE, leak that data. You will help all of the rest of us – and your contribution will carry on, night and day for many years. Your leak will have a chilling effect on illegal spying everywhere. Thank you in advance!! Love, K.
Good on you, Laura Poitras.
Gemalto doesn’t only deal with SIM cards for cell phones. Their SIMs also go in CAC (Common Access Cards), or if you prefer, all military, contractor and PKI token cards provided to the Department of Defense. Scary shit.
Re: Bane2885 – 20 Feb 2015 at 3:49 pm
As impressive as your expansive description of CAC’s is from an informational point of view, it seems important, “or if you prefer”, the factually relevant really “Scary” Schitt, to understand that the NSA is a wholly controlled and administered subsidiary of the DOD. By design, the bureaucratic placement of the NSA under the cover of “national defense”, allows the government to circumvent the legal prohibitions against it conducting espionage against its own citizens, “or if you prefer”, criminal invasions of its citizens rights with “plausible deniability”. It is this intentionally convoluted bureaucratic design that allows government operatives, like NSA director General Alexander and DNI James Clapper, to lie with impunity, under oath, to Congress.
“Work is love made visible.” KG
As Usual,
EA
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… government recklessness is the main reason that identity thefts and security breaches are and will always remain a fact of life!
Why does everyone want an email to post? I feel threatened. Its time to secede.
That’s the National Security Agency for you: Married into the Gehlen Bureau and turned themselves into Nazi-Retreads. Just remember one thing Hero: The NAZIS lost WWII.
Our government is illegitimate and detrimental to freedom. It must be torn down and rebuilt in its original image. This means that any jews and their appeasers have to go. No showers, no ovens. Just a bullet and a hole in the ground.
You are vile. Go away.
“No showers, no ovens. Just a bullet and a hole in the ground.” – Stan Sikorski
This is actually a test post to see if I really do believe in the 1st Amendment.
Well, really, it’s just to confirm a new email.
Anyway, it’s appalling to see that Stan actually reconciles the idea that “Our government {being] illegitimate and detrimental to freedom” is thus adjudicated using the sociopathic mantra that the answer to this dilemma means “that any jews (sic) and their appeasers have to go. No showers, no ovens. Just a bullet and a hole in the ground.”
Quite the humanitarian and patriot, that Stan fellow.
Somehow, I think that Stan here relates more-so with this oft-quoted American personality than any of the more 3-dimensional variety which roam this planet:
“Damn you vile woman, you’ve impeded my work since the day I escaped your vile womb!”
– Stewie Griffin
Any lawyers out there know if there are sufficient grounds for a class-action lawsuit against the American and British governments by every person who owns a mobile phone in the world?
Every person in the world who owns a 3G or 4G phone may need to buy a new SIM card
See my discussion of class action law earlier in the thread. Beyond that, the plaintiffs would have to show causation, not to mention the harm they suffered and guess what? If past ODOJ litigation is any guide, the Feds will probably move to suppress any evidence on state-secrecy privilege. Even this Snowden revelation is probably still classified and they may claim it, too, is inadmissible. At some point, the plaintiffs have no admissible evidence and the ODOJ will move to dismiss while it’s still in evidentiary discovery and nowhere near a jury. No hits, no runs, no errors, no one left on, and the game is over in the first inning.
If anything like this occurred, the operator (US: “Carrier”) can just send a reset to the SIM, and initiate a new set of keys. Nobody needs to know that this happened.
It has happened in Russia, where they turned off PKI on the mobile network. Nobody noticed that it was turned back on except foreigners that suddenly got their phones to work in that realm.
Dear authors, can you give more information on what exactly “process” mean in this passage: “A top-secret NSA document asserted that, as of 2009, the U.S. spy agency already had the capacity to process between 12 and 22 million keys per second for later use against surveillance targets. In the future, the agency predicted, it would be capable of processing more than 50 million per second.”.
Most often by passively listening to the transmission it is not possible to find out identity – IMSI number – of the subjects. Without it the spook don’t know which Ki key to use. It might be that process is that automated systems try to find the right key for given encrypted conversation/data. This is just speculation and more information is needed in order to find out.
good question.
Well, where is the OUTRAGE? if this is done by any other country, e.g Russia/China/India/Brazil/Iran/Korea etc, there would be all kinds of call for “Sanctions”. There will be UNSC resolutions to condemn loudly and with fanfare. But when it’s done by the Exceptional and Indispensable nation, there is simply QUIET. I dont know if the other countries know it or not, but by refusing to make a fuss, they are effectively CONDONING such hacking activities by the NSA+GCHQ. May be they think they can get away doing the SAME thing, but guess what, they will be sorely mistaken – they will be condemned, sanctions will be imposed, etc etc
China’s foreign policy has always been not to meddle in other nation’s affairs. Highly nationalistic. But they are not stupid.
By lying low, they are buying time to build their arsenals at an unprecedented pace and when they are ready, you won’t need TheIntercept to tell you ( and I hope I’ll be dead by then ).
that’s pure speculation. I prefer facts….
Read each and everyone of China’s positions on the Security Council of which China is a permanent member, since that body’s founding. Secondly, read all technical and military documents about China’s weapons systems development in the last 30 yrs. Then come back and talk to me.
As for India and Brazil, there is not much that they can do individually, but as part of BRICS, of which China is a member, they can add a lot of weight to things.
I have a feeling that Iran may be a member of BRICS too in the future. The chips on the playing board are ashifting…
There is nothing that has been exposed, nothing to protest.
The article is utter rubbish, the authors do not know how mobile networks work, and a clue is that this is NOT internet technology. So no SSL – but “Transport level” – which belongs to the OSI way of communicating. So most is nonsense.
OK, so why would the GCHQ go to all that trouble to steal the encryption keys, then?
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim.
I’m afraid Knut is a little lost – forest from the trees issues – or simply obfuscating.
The claims of the article are generally correct. In fact, Gemalto has publicly expressed concern. There are technical details in terms of the kind of communication, transport level, stack, what can be intercepted, what can be remediated, … but this heist has broad privacy and security implications.
LOL…
You say, that they say, they got this information by hacking?
I disagree! I conclude that they got this information through torture and murder.
Your move now, traitor. PROVE YOU DIDN’T
A little sidebar. At the same time this phone hack was going on, the US Treasury was cutting off money transfers from expatriates to Somalia, much of which, we find, was via mobile phones. Worried about money transfers to alleged terrorists? Why not use this new security breach to trace them? No? Then just what the hell was the point of hacking these SIMs?
Addendum: the link on the money-transfers story.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/10/racist-cruelty-barack-obamas-government-somalia-humanitarian-crisis
One problem with classifying everything is the difficulty of determining a ‘need to know’.
The FBI was complaining bitterly a while back about new encryption on cell phones. Did they know the NSA had hacked all the keys?
Does the US Treasury know the NSA can track money transfers over cell phones? Some officials may, but can’t divulge this information to their colleagues, since they could be charged with disseminating classified information about intelligence capabilities to persons with insufficient security clearance.
The Intercept is serving a valuable public function by alerting various government agencies how much information the NSA can provide to them.
Transparency has some advantages; the left hand can know what the right hand is doing.
>The FBI was complaining bitterly a while back about new encryption on cell phones. Did they know the NSA had hacked all the keys?
But papa, this is a different type of encryption. The encryption which upset the FBI was disk encryption, which uses a key that is pseudorandomly generated on the device itself at the time of encryption
“Then just what the hell was the point of hacking these SIMs?” – coram nobis
What we seem to be seeing repeatedly over the course of whistleblower revelations is confirmation of Binney’s, Snowden’s, and others assertion that “collecting it all” to then search for the needles within the haystack is much less effective than good, old-fashioned investigative techniques.
The intelligence community has become little more than information hoarders; literally burying themselves in data, only to stumble over themselves repeatedly in their attempts to understand the world via the 1’s and 0’s they indiscriminately and illegally accumulate.
Nothing – the encryption on the SIM is set when the phone is initialised – first time on the net.
Off the top of my head, it is a French company that dominates the market here – and provides the set-up to all the different handsets.
That is also when encryption is initialised – when you give your PIN on a new handset / SIM – or when you have forgotten your code, and use the “PUK” code if this has been provided to you.
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim.
A situation is being created here that is very similar to the days of the mafia.
Back then, the mob would burn the barber shop on the corner down and then go around to all the other businesses in the neighborhood and tell them “you better give us what we want or bad things are going to happen”. This situation has become very similar.
I have a sinking feeling in my gut that when there is enough push back on these types of things; the “bad guys” are gonna get us. At that point a huge swath of people will hide behind the leg of their “big brother” and will condemn all those who did not fully support “The State” and it’s lust for power and control. They will call all of those who supported the preservation of America and the right to live as free men and women, traitors and enemy sympathizers, When it is they themselves who have supported the ultimate destruction of this country from within; just as we were warned of so many years ago.
We have fallen so far America. When will you finally speak up?
To those who keep blowing this off as it gets worse and worse or think it’s no big deal, I implore you to go open a history book. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened and it has never once ended well for MILLIONS of people each time.
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Good Comment.
To TIIT–For over a year or more, I have requested a ‘Recommend’ button or some other means to acknowledge good posts. The ‘votes’ — if protected from manipulation — can also serve as a rough indicator of how many readers visit a thread and actually read comments by taking the time to commend the effort that a good commenter makes.
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The NSA and its British counterpart, have been in the encryption business longer than anyone else, and to seek to defeat them at their own game may not be terribly smart, since they likely have teams dedicated to breaking and evading their own system better than the best out there.
There are seven billion people on the planet, some of whom are incredibly capable. It is time for totally new paradigms of securing digital information to emerge. Not one. Not two. Not three. But many.
This may mean redesigning the hardware itself in some cases, or components thereof. And using nanotechnologies that can morph on the fly for some components in ways that would be the equivalent of the Uncertainty Principle: by the time you catch up with the morphing, data may have CHANGED into something nowhere resembling the original.
To suggest that this is not doable is to limit the capacity of the human brain for innovation.
Meanwhile I am working to send some of the criminals torturing me so severely lately, to jail. I shall sew the orange jumpsuits myself.
Great article…
New paradigms as vastly different from one another as the genomes in the human genetic pool, should surely give legitimate businesses and government entities and individuals alike, a sense of genuine security.
And keep the NSA and its British counterpart, VERY, VERY BUSY.
Well, as long as nobody has been able to expose the encryption in GSM, lets use that.
First what they tell you in this article, they just exhibit gross ignorance – the mobile phone does not use the Internet, but they support the internet.
They have exhibited ignorance and willingness to spread fear to everyone. But nothing here is news, just rubbish.
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim.
The real question is why is The Intercept working with Russian spy Edward Snowden to the benefit of al Queda terrorists? It seems The Intercept is benefiting from illegal activity, espionage and theft of government property. I wonder why, perhaps because of their political sympathies? When you question the motives of others, then be prepared to have your motives questioned.
Do those anal orifices ever sleep?
If an individual or a hacker group infiltrates a company and steals this kind of data, it’s a felony with stiff penalties. When the government does it, it’s “national security”. They don’t need the encryption key to my SIM to know I F’ing hate them and hope for the overthrow of these radical, freedom endangering government agencies.
Everyone that approved or was involved with the NSA and these actions should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law just like any of us citizens would be. It’s time to see some legal actions against the NSA, Department of Justice, and the FBI for this horrible criminal offences.
This is straight up criminal activity. NSA proves time and time again they are above the law. And whoever is in the oval office is just their parrot. “NSA isn’t spying on citizens. Baaawk!” “NSA cares about your privacy! Baaaaawk!”
Really sad that pretty much all of American news outlets are ignoring this story. Yet have North Korea hack and steal a crappy movie from Sony and it’s on the news for a week. Really shows you whose in control of the news. Even Fox News who LEAPS a chances to ding the Obama administration is ignoring this.
Brimstone, I think your post above all others here nails the KEY POINT of this whole saga.
The “sheep” in the community (which comprises about 95% of it) is happy to read about “sony hacking”, Oprah’s latest diet, or where the Obama girls will attend college, but have their collective heads in the sand with earth shattering information such as this.
The only way to achieve change is to “mobilise the masses”, and the only way for that to happen is to get the mainstream media involved. But we all know that’s never going to happen while the “Murdochs” of this world control the government of the day in exchange for keeping their news agency mouths shut.
and the American public sits and stares at the catastrophic spectacle all around us like zombies, our version of the Danse Macabre before the face of death in Europe. The traitor in the white house has stripped us with the help of the socialists in Congress and the media. We watched. Here is his real Legacy: announcing military targets and dates for assault is aiding and abetting the enemy. It is Treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Forcing citizens to betray their moral tradition is treason. Put the traitor in white house in jail.Obamacare is taxation through fraud. It is treason. Put the traitor in the white house In jail. Allowing unions to use contracts to threaten the food source and economy is treason. Put the traitor in jail. Allowing Mexicans to cross our borders without documentation against our immigration laws is a deliberate failure to secure our borders. It is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Using the IRS as a weapon to punish political dissent is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Bringing a virile form of illness into the country without proof of protection for the general public is putting the welfare of our citizens in danger. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Failure to protect our allies and exposing them to destruction is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Misrepresenting data as a means of increasing the power of government is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Allow intimidation and fraud at the polling booth is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Refusing to identify our enemies is giving aid to our enemies. It is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Assaulting the constitution as a means of disarming the public is treason. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. Unreasonable searches of private citizens at home and during travel is unconstitutional. Put the traitor in the white house in jail. the socialist party of democrat liars has no god…..which means they are god. Your god….whether you want their version or not. and so they will continue to shovel filth, degradation and criminal behavior down your children’s throats while you get to sit down, shut up and watch…..it’s on you. Have a nice day.
This is outrageous. I’m just trying to go about my own personal business and now I have to worry about the USA hacking my phone, like I’m some kind of criminal. What do they want with me? And, I have to worry about these perverts looking through my daughter’s and wife’s phones? I have no words. When does this end? When do we, the right-minded, good, moral, people of the world stand up to these violations? When do we come together to bring the US the justice it deserves? Americans are nothing but vermin, like rats or cockroaches. All the injustices, evils and depravities of the last two centuries have arisen in america. It is the source of all that is filthy in the world. It’s depraved culture is spreading over the entire world. It is evil. Think about the millions of innocents it has burned alive at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Tokyo, Viet Cong, Fallujah and Yemen. Millions of innocents killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to fill their fat bellies with oil. Our climate has been basically destroyed by them. All so they don’t have get off their ample backsides when they want cakes from the bakery. Nothing but vermin. I’ve had enough!!
You sound like a government plant whose post aims to attract “radicals” and “terrorists” for spying
Thanks for the reply. Yes, my last post was a bit over the line. It was late had I had one glass to many of good Bobal. It’s just that these articles make me mad, and my only outlet is posting a response. I’ll sleep on it before posting next time if I’m angry.
No, we don’t care about nerds like you. We are hunting terrorists and criminals. Are you either of those? Note that following you around all day, or intercepting your communications, or your web browsing habits would be a waste of our time. We don’t care about your porn habits, unless it’s child porn. It’s not, right?
Thanks for the reply. I can’t tell if you are serious or not. Anyway, I have children of my own, and would never do anything to hurt them or others.
Sure, I may not be actively spied upon, but I’m sure all my conversations, pictures, etc. are being stored for later “analysis”. Who knows who is going through that data. It just makes me sick to think there is some fat NSA employee staying late so he can look through the pictures of my wife or daughters. I’m convinced this is happening, and I feel powerless to stop it.
Mijael, You’re OBVIOUSLY a HASBARA SELLING THE GLOBALIST CLIMATE LIES, BUT ALLOW ME TO DSTROY YOUR COMMENT. “THE AMERICANS” ARE THE FOUNDERS OF THE FREE REPUBLIC OF THE UNITED STATES, THE JEWISH ZIONIST FILTH THAT HAS USURPED OUR NATION AND WILL FACE OUR WRATH ARE THE PEOPLE YOU ARE (RIGHTFULLY) DECRYING AS THEY HAVE CAUSED SO MUCH DAMAGE TO HUMANITY AND OUR PLANET THAT NO MEASURE OF PUNISHMENT IS ENOUGH FOR THEM SHORT OF THIER COMPLETE REMOVAL. ALL THE ACTS OF WAR YOU ATTRIBUTE TO THE AVERAGE AMERICAN CITIZEN IS THE WORK OF THESE “STRAUSSIAN NEOCONS” AND THEIR ZIONIST VERMIN MASTERS-OR-“THE WALKING DEAD.”. YOU SAY-LAST TWO CENTURIES?? ARE YOU INCLUDING THIS ONE WE ARE JUST INTO? OTHERWISE YOUR REMARKS ARE NOT JUST INSANE BUT SERIOUSLY DELUSIONAL AS WELL. IN THE 1800’S, AMERICA WAS A BASTION OF HUMAN FREEDOM AND RIGHTS AND SINCE 1913, WE HAVE BEEN SLOWLY TORPEDOED BY JEWISH COLLECTIVIST FILTH. TAKE THESE WORDS NOT AS AN EXCUSE OR AS COMFORT, BUT AS THE COLD HARD TRUTH AND KNOW THAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY, THE USURPED AMERICAN GOVERNMENT BY ZIONIST TERRORISTS IS.
I think your caps is stuck on
You, we, have more to worry about than the US/UK intel getting into your phone. Now that the SIM cards have a known vulnerability — the master keys — criminals will certainly seek them. Getting them means access to phone/credit card financial activity, not to mention the sort of negotiable info that phone traffic (trade secrets, insider trading info) can yield.
It seems that in their eagerness to gather intel, the spooks have made us less all less secure. Once somebody jimmies your back window, any burglar can gain entry. It seems a very insecure and extravagant way to pursue national security.
Thanks for the reply. This is a very good point. Once the NSA cracks it, the criminals can pry it further. I hadn’t even considered that before.
what is even worse is not a single country is raising an issue. Basically they are silently proclaiming the obvious: Any country who hack another business or another country will be punished (e.g. N. Korea re-Sony, even if there is no evidence), but hacking by NSA and GCHQ is COMPLETELY OK!
Thanks for the reply. That is my thought exactly. The americans act with impunity and no one can stop them. No one even cares. It’s just taken as a fact that america will do what it wants and no one will do anything.
“Americans are nothing but vermin ….”. Hey! Please separate American Government/politics from American people. As an American, I am ashamed and disgusted with “my” government and what they do. But let’s stand together as “world citizens” to fight this evil empire. If I could denounce my citizenship as an American I would. I feel I am trapped in a prison here in the States. It’s hard being here, being an American with all the corruption and evil. And please, don’t say that we Americans choose our government… elections don’t work, the system is rigged.
Please, let’s stick together as people of the world to fight the evil American empire.
Thanks for the reply. I regret some of the same calling in my last post. Sorry if I offended you. I try to be as tolerant and inoffensive as possible. But my tolerance was down after reading the article.
I encourage you to leave america as soon as you can. You are in the belly of the beast, and it is hard for you to get a good idea of how bad it really is. Your post makes me think that you are somewhat aware, though. Once you leave, and get out of the constant propaganda and social pressure, your eyes will really be opened. Take my word for it. I lived in america (California) for almost 20 years. I met my wife there and had one of my children there. After 2003, I couldn’t stay any longer. I couldn’t pay my taxes to a government that makes aggressive war. Fortunately, my business had done well, and I was able to afford to move my family, my mother, my wife’s family and my sister back to our home city. I was naturalized, and I renounced. It was the best decision I ever made. It’s like a cloud lifted, and I could think clearly. My standard of living decreased a little, but it is a small price to pay for my freedom.
The fact of the matter is that you are responsible for your government. They act in your name.
Good on your naive and historically inaccurate world view. Worldwide greed is not limited to one country, unless we all take a share of the blame the terrible americans will continue to rape and pillage. Not only your country but just so you know most people in the usa are being raped and pillaged everyday by the goverment and their masters worldwide corporations that existed way before the usa was even a country.
The USA is responsible
for many injustices but to blame one country for worldwide corporate greed is naive and obviously historically incorrect. It is not just one nation or one culture that has led us to this moral low ground.?I live in this country and have not agreed with it’s politics and have been blacklisted for saying so . Should I and all the others that have been fighting to reveal the truth be wiped off the face of the ear t
Thanks for the comment and insightful thoughts. Just because the contagion has spread doesn’t mean it didn’t originate in one place.
Obama akkbar! Obama akkbar!
Let’s see what the reaction of the Dutch government is, will there be any consequences? How deep are they up the intestinal tract of the US?
I think I can make out the right ankle from the German government.
Great story, I didn’t know about the Intercept, but you guys are in the major news sites on 8 columns, great job.
This is probably going to shift the SIM industry forever to change manufacturing techniques to support Diffie Hellman with elyptic curve cryptography when your phone makes a call so that our conversations can be private.I hope Gemalto fixes this ASAP on their SIM chips.
Thank you. Great article. A key part of this story is that terrorists are not the biggest targets of US spying, techies are. It’s not quoting the Koran that gets you put on a watch list, it is quoting Kernighan & Ritchie.
The more you contribute to computing and communications, the more you are spied on.
Think about the ramifications of this.
So USA hacked in, good for us. I am happy it wasn’t Kim Jung Un or Putin, who probably have but they don’t have a Snowden leading dumb reporters by the nose, dribbling out little bits of exaggerated spy news. Does Snowden require you kiss his rear before spoon feeding you this garbage?
In the redacted memo on Yuaawaa, I am shocked to read the closing statement: “Hopefully some of this information will be useful in future efforts against Gemalto.” Against Gemalto. So Gemalto is the enemy now? In a ‘free and open’ society, how does NSA/GCHQ convince its employees of this? Do they live in a reality where everything is a game?
“Everyone’s a Target” goes an old Joe Jackson song, and ain’t it the truth as it turns out. The reference “against Gemalto” is so revealing. I had to do a double take to make certain I’d read that correctly. I guess you say things like that when you know (or think) that no one is listening or holding you accountable. It shouldn’t really be surprising that attitudes like this prevail in the culture of secrecy that is the spy industry.
1. Govt is spying on you, because you pay taxes so they can. Stop it, [email protected]
2. Only idiots use cell phones. They let you have one so they can track you with an animal ID tag, aka cell phone. They add music, video, and phone so you’ll carry your animal ID tag with you. Cell phone use is a side effect, sometimes called a carrot on a stick, so you’ll take it everywhere you go.
3. Obey the law and stop funding govt corruption with your taxes.
Search tax regs for “exempt income means”, ECFR dot gov …and read the legal definition of “Exempt income”. Since law is codified, there is only ONE definition. Be sure to read both 1.861-8T(d)(2)(ii) and (iii). When enough Americans know actual US income tax law, it will be obeyed, even by govt. Then ask your so-called “tax expert” why he/she never bothered to search for legal definition of “Exempt income”, or told you about it. Of course, U.S. govt already knows about Exempt income, but says you shouldn’t follow the law, because that particular section is frivolous.
More:
Computer scientist data mines tax code,
what is taxed DOT com
“Stealing the Kis solves all of these problems. This way, intelligence agencies can safely engage in passive, bulk surveillance without having to decrypt data.”
Sorry about writing like this, but if they steal the keys to decrypt the data, it is not passive surveillance. It is bulk active surveillance and they are decrypting the data, just not brute forcing it.
But it is a great article, thank you for the information.
and what sort of fines or prison sentenced would be handed out if a non-gov’t entity got caught hacking this info ??? yet gov’t’s get away with this unscathed …
Okay, here’s what gets to me: Gemalto are into all kinds of crypto solutions like banking, PKI, contactless. If NSA/GCHQ can come and go from what should be secure systems without anybody noticing why do we think their PKI keys are secure, why haven’t their trust anchors been revoked yet and why are we ignoring the dangerous part of this situation whereby those keys under threat could be used to to sign certs for MITM attacks on banking systems and others and (I haven’t looked at the priv keys yet) to potentially sign code and rootkit people’s systems? Their trust roots need revoking and searching questions about their security should be asked before they’re ever issued again: or put another way they should probably have gone out of business by now.
“All intelligence agencies engage in extensive passive surveillance”
All intelligence agencies from the five eyes. As far as we know, Brazil’s “intelligence agency” is not engaging in this unconstitutional and human rights violating practice. I’m sure there are other agencies that doesn’t do it. Be more careful when putting everyone on the same bag.
Wake up people, Democrats or Republicans,Tories or Labor. Liberals or Conservatives it’s two sides of the same evil coin it’s called Fascism. So the next time a politician asks for your vote, support or money just say no & vote for an independent candidate. Send a message they can’t ignore & will understand ! ! Both parties have been complicit in this criminal activity. Democrats & Republicans don’t decide elections Independent voters do so now is the time to elect independent candidate ! !
Money in politics equals corruption, reduce the money you reduce the corruption ! We don’t need the worst politicians money can buy, we need politicians that money can’t buy ! It’s time to remove the Corporate Congress from office & take back America !
The whole point is to expose this Election Shame for what it is . We need to divide & conquer Democrats & Republicans instead of them providing the American public with false choices, Its time to remove the Corporate Congress ! !
If you take away their power then you can take away their toys !
The Government will continue its PR & propaganda campaign using the following tactics as quoted by Joseph Goebbels during the 1930’s & 1940’s.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” AND
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
The following link is a must read ! This is not the Future. This is the here & NOW ! http://1933key.com/US-Empire/US-Patriot-Act-Compared-to-German-Enabling-Act
See also : http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/spying-meant-crush-dissent-terrorism.html
The supreme law of The USA is the Constitution, not the Patriot act the FISA act, or any other such acts that have unconstitutional provisions,are invalid & it matters not how many public officials say it’s legal, it’s NOT for the Constitutional Amendments say otherwise ! ! To say it is legal only shows the public their betrayal of the Constitution, their oath of office, and the American people.
No more lies, excuses rationalizations,or justifications, the public needs to hold these officials to account to the fullest extent of the law under Title 18 sec. 241 & 242 So any future traitors will know there will be consequences to such behavior. I hope the other five eyed nations have equivalent laws, but if not maybe it’s time to get some. Better late than never.
Don’t blame Snowden or the Press for the actions of NSA & GCHQ & our Governments, they are the ONLY ones responsible for the crimes they have committed ! ! ! See USC Title 18 Sec. 241 & 242 (Google it). So why no arrest warrants for high crimes, but only for misdemeanors ? ? ?
High crimes = NSA + GCHQ + PUBLIC OFFICALS OF THE UK & US ! ! !
Misdemeanors = Snowden, Manning, Assange, lAVABIT
REMEMBER: POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRATS AND DIAPERS SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON.
Some word of true Patriots are as follows, as opposed to the words of false flag patriotism of today.
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Benjamin Franklin
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin
Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those
entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by
the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but
the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
Patrick Henry
“We the People are the rightful masters of BOTH Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution”
Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
As a reminder Hermann Goering said at the Nuremberg Trials .
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
We should not forget the waring of President Eisenhower .
http://youtu.be/8y06NSBBR
The NSA is controlled & operated by the DOD & the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) Private Corporations.
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
April 27, 1961
As is said in the law, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. (“False in one thing, false in all things” is an instruction given to jurors: if they find that a witness lied about an important matter, they are entitled to ignore everything else that witness said.)
Time to start removing the corporate Congress from office & defunding the NSA to force them to comply with the law & impose jail time for non compliance under USC Title 18 Sec. 241 & 242 (Google it) .
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
Disclaimer: Be advised it is possible, that this communication is being monitored by theNational Security Agency or GCHQ. I neither condone or support any such policy, by any Government authority that does not comply, as stipulated by the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
If in fact the NSA & GCHQ hacked the billing servers of cell phone companies to suppress charges (even if just to cover their electronic burglary), then it seems that this is an offense against interstate commerce. That would make it an issue that MUST be investigated (and prosecuted) by the FBI.
If the FBI defers to go after another agency for illegal activity, then it means that the NSA & GCHQ truly are untouchable and above the law. It would also follow that there is no “justice for all” and the U.S. constitution is nothing but a meaningless blip on the road of an authoritarian country on its way to full dictatorship.
Hail to the Secret Police State of America!
“No man is above the law”. -Richard Nixon
“The U.S. Constitution is a meaningless blip on the road….” is true as far as the unlawful government and all of its institutions are concerned. They have one problem, The 2nd Amendment. The world’s largest army is the American People, many of whom are former military members. The Founders wrote the 2nd Amendment for two reasons, to defend the Constitution against an unlawful federal government, and to defend it against foreign enemies. Additionally, the military is tasked with one mission, “To defend the U.S. Constitution against all of its enemies, foreign and domestic”. It is time for us to stand up and eliminate DC and all of its treasonous followers. The Constitution is the Law of the United States, NOT the whims of the white house, congress, or the courts. They are nothing. The Constitution is everything!
Are there any leaders out there willing to stand up and march on DC? Anyone? Are there any military officers willing to stand? Governors? Anyone willing to lead us back to the Constitutional Republic we once were?
I spent 20 years in the US Air Force. Eight of those years were spent as a SIGINT collector for the Air Force and NSA. We had specific rules in place to destroy anything collected on a U.S Citizen or Business. When was this? The early 1980’s. Now, the NSA, CIA, and the other Intelligence gathering entities are the enemies of the Constitution and the American People.
I am sure I will be attacked by these enemies of truth. They can not allow anyone to call them out for their crimes. I don’t care if they come to murder me as long as we stand up and fight for the Constitution.
In 1980, I took the Oath to defend the Constitution. I still hold that Oath dear and close to my heart. I love the Constitution for its power, its unapologetic humanity, its scope, its promise. It is worth fighting for.
Sorry, the FBI does not investigate espionage directed against foreigners who are targets of the United States. I know you are a simpleton, but spying on ones enemies is not illegal. In fact, I bet the French intelligence were in on this as well. So, aside from being an al Queda sympathizer, what is your purpose in life?
To be clear, there are many felonies arising from this scheme alone. Obviously, they did not have a ‘warrant’ to “burglarize” and, in essence, sabotage the Gemalto network, much less steal all the data. Further, since the agencies can obtain search warrants and phone taps via court order, the only purpose in doing this to tap and control a billion phones without “troubling” the courts.
this is like asking the wolf to guard the henhouse. Why is there no uproar at the U.N. ?
Yes – they have been transmitting for years with the special “CIC” – “0000” – no country, no carrier.
This has accounted for about 15% of the total traffic, and been invoiced on your bill.
“CIC” is a field in the ISDN header, “CLEC Identity Code”. Wake up – and do not let ignorant twats rule!
Ken Dilanian’s “take” for the AOL masses:
The Associated Press
KEN DILANIAN Feb 20th 2015 6:50AM:
“A story about the documents posted Thursday on the website The Intercept offered no details on how the intelligence agencies employed the eavesdropping capability – providing no evidence, for example, that they misused it to spy on people who weren’t valid intelligence targets. ” continues…
Snowden leak: NSA helped British steal cell phone codes
http://www.aol.com/article/2015/02/19/snowden-leak-nsa-helped-british-steal-cell-phone-codes/21144663/
Simply because there is no eavesdropping – it is not possible.
They can intercept a connection, but they then have to make a fake BST. The BST has a GPS coordinates that can be interrogated by the handset. The handset can then measure signal strength of this and neighbouring BST and calculate where it is – and select the one in the direction you are heading with the best signal. So to get your phone to use a fake station, it has to report fake owner and carrier that is provided roaming, it also has to fake GPS coordinates – and then be the station with best signal strength. Well, if you are in an office and not moving this is fully possible but easy to detect – measure signal strength, and when strong signals are received from BST 20 miles away than from 1 mile away – the one 20 miles away is fake.
The Israeli has been plagued by doctors sending MMS from Gaza during their “campaigns”. We have all seen their photos, and we all know how dearly the Israeli would have wished those photos never emerged.
So the entire article is based on ignorance of mobile networks, it is not insecure as the Internet. It is made to NATO military standards.
Knut, you’ve mentioned several times that there is “nothing to see here, move along” but you’ve not explained fully why that’s the case. I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the article makes claims and backs them up with explanations that a layman like myself can understand, while you provide accusations that the authors don’t know what they are talking about, yet you provide no coherent explanation to back up that claim.
Mazingonet.com produces their own 2-number SIMs for use on the GSM Network and as the company is an international MVNO, the links to each country is over their own interconnecting IP backbone. The Mazingonet SIM and all communications are fully encrypted with multi-level encryption for total privacy of transmissions:- Voice, Video and Data..
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. [But the States can. Plural marriage was forbidden by States with regard to Mormonism. Freedom of speech is not allowed in the courts by State laws. And you need local permits to assemble.]
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. [This is the most misinterpreted Amendment. It meant that the States shall have the right to keep and bear arms—the People—not individual persons, and when was the last time anyone needed a militia regulated?]
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law. [What about in time of war?]
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. [The “Patriot Act” did away with that one.]
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. [If someone is placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold, which can turn into a 14 day hold or longer, they do not have the right to a lawyer or a judge; they can just be held; nor do they need to be mentally unstable. And if double jeopardy is unconstitutional, how is it that after the cops in the Rodney King case were found guilty in State court, the Feds retried them on the exact same thing?]
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. [One can have the right, but prosecutors virtually always threaten the accused with severe penalties if they do not give up their right to trial, if they do not plea bargain.]
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law. [Congress needs to put in an inflation clause in this one. $20 in 1789 is equivalent to about $760 today.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. [Define excessive. It is a very subjective term. Courts often impost no bail or staggering amounts.]
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. [No, the States and cities will take those away. Try driving without using a seat belt, and if seat belts are so important, why don’t school buses have them? Try getting away without not buying health insurance. If the law is in effect because “everyone needs health insurance” why doesn’t the law require everyone to take out burial or cremation insurance? Doesn’t everyone eventually die?]
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. [Please, for centuries there have been laws that have even forbidden the practice of oral sex. The catch phrase in this one is that if Congress doesn’t prohibit it, someone else can.]
The bottom line is that we only have what rights the government allows us to have. “Rights” are an illusion that is enjoyed by the masses, because the government simply doesn’t have time to control everyone at the same time.
As a former Gemalto employee, A few things are worth nothing. Both Gemplus and Schlumberger were French companies at the time that they started their smart cards business, which was later merged and headquartered in the Netherlands. So this is really more of a French company than it is a Dutch one. The SIM (or subscriber identification module) is a specialized smart card that authenticates a user on the mobile network. By placing the authentication in a removable card, the telephone handset can be made as a generic device that will operate on any GSM network.
I would argue that this instance is akin to committing industrial espionage in order to pursue national security ends. It is as if French intelligence had hacked into U.S. and U.K. financial institutions in an effort to locate people who were not in compliance with French tax legislation. I fear that this will make it virtually impossible for U.S. ad U.K. authorities to argue for any sort of protection from aggressive foreign intelligence incursions into the corporate interests in their country.
The amounts to the commandeering of private resources to achieve national security goals. The problem is that those private resources become seriously compromised and devalued as a result.
If the Intercept were truly interested in cybersecurity they would join with president Obama and help improve digital security:
-”On Feb. 13 in an appearance at Stanford University, the president signed an executive order asking the IT sector to join with the federal government and the military to renew their efforts to strengthen data security by sharing security information. “
http://www.eweek.com/security/slideshows/nine-takeaways-from-the-white-house-cyber-security-summit.html
And cybersecurity is no laughing matter. Only this month, Gemalto, “the world leader in digital security” released their BLI “Breach Level Index” showing that:
-”more than 1,500 data breaches led to one billion data records compromised worldwide during 2014. These numbers represent a 49% increase in data breaches and a 78% increase in data records that were either stolen or lost compared to 2013.”
A lot of those companies with stolen records represented in Gemalto’s report were probably sending data over unencrypted email, (how stupid is that!) Gemalto doesn’t say it but I wouldn’t be surprised if those companies got their pants sued off for negligent security!!!
The Intercept should take the lead from Gemalto and President Obama and join the effort to stop cybercrime!!!
Agreed.
Yes, trust the man that have locked up more whistle blowers than Bush. Trust a man that use drones on perceived terrorist in countries that is not at war with the US. You are more than welcome to go and help the war criminal in his fight against perceived enemies. I know who the real enemy is, thank you.
-”Yes, trust the man that have locked up more whistle blowers than Bush.”
I hope you are not referring to Obama. You’ve probably forgotten Obama’s commitment to transparency…
From his transition team website, changeDOTgov:
-“Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process. “
http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/
As you can see, Obama is a strong supporter of giving whistle blowers what they deserve, and as I stated above, it is in this spirit that Obama is asking for the “sharing” or security information. Obviously this includes SIM card codes. Duh!! Whatever the Intercept thinks they have, or haven’t uncovered must be seen in this light.
JLocke, it appears you have been infected with a light case of the Mussolinis. ;-}
Terminal case, not light at all…
As to any “commitment to transparency” on Obama’s part, he shot it, dropped it in aqua regia, coated it in white phosphorous, and flushed it before he ever came up with the verbiage. He has a commitment to power, mass murder, and plutocracy, and absolutely nothing else.
LOL, you must be delusional
The SIM codes are numbers that can be intercepted as much as they like.
They will be reset as needed, leaving NSA sitting in the dust. Bottom line: Those that wrote this does not understand mobile technology.
The NSA cannot tap in on anyone, Snowden or Bin Ladin or George Bush or Obama – all are safe.
This is not pre-election 2008, JLocke. I will admit as much as to say that the arshole fooled me back then as well, but clearly this isn’t 2008 anymore. We know better.
Wow, what are you smoking?
They have not tapped any phones. The exception may be a specific make that copies the SIM to memory allowing them to send the encryption keys to own servers, and publish to those who want to know on the Internet. But they cannot send this on the mobile network – so it is just to switch the data network OFF (or use another make of phones).
You are a statist pig. I would summarily execute you in a heartbeat. As well as any fed that tries to abrogate their Constitutional duty.
Keeping my Oath.
yes, first thing Obama would do is lock up Glenn Greenwald.
The only cyber crime that Obama is truly interested in stopping is anyone’s but his. The agencies involved can blow all they want about their actions being allowable under certain guidelines–some of which were set retroactively–but their behavior is so far out of the bounds of the spirit of existing laws that even a casual glance at the facts reveals that our government’s actions amount to massively criminal behavior. At least the Brits offered that justification. The U.S. didn’t even respond.
The other potential problem here, which I did not see mentioned in the article or comments, is that Gemalto also owns the largest manufacturer of HSMs (i.e. – Safenet) for providing companies with crypto boxes to encrypt/secure their data. Gemalto likely relies on these Safenet HSM devices to generate all the keys they issue for the SIM cards.
Technology changes so quickly these days, how long will those encryption keys be good for?
send the criminals to prison. I’ve seen people do a whole lot of time for a whole lot less.
Never thought I would live to witness the entirety of Western ‘civilization’ going FUBAR.
There should be no question that they are up to evil. We must take a stand now and we must be strong. People must go to jail and laws must be enacted to prevent this from happening in the future.
If we don’t freedom will be lost and the New World Order will controll us!
It’s clear the NSA has broken Dutch law. So I expect the Dutch legislators to promptly turn themselves into the International Criminal Court, conveniently located in The Hague, and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.
I don’t think the court should be lenient. The Dutch were well aware that their privacy laws were in conflict with NSA practices, yet they recklessly passed them anyway. It’s important to set an example – so that other countries will think twice before passing any such laws. Political pandering to the popularity of privacy should be seen to have real consequences.
so true
You’re blaming the Dutch for this?
You are a fine Italian, sir, and I salute you! But please, don’t bogart that joint!!
Love,
CA
>”… and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.” *benitoe
Thankfully, they won’t have to throw themselves far. I think they’re safe anyway …
Ahem:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law
You don’t suppose, Duce, by passing this law, Dutch legislators knew that a telecommunications breach like this would emerge in Holland? It suggests prior intent, or as the lyrics suggest, “Bring your tulips a little closer to the phone.”
yes, delusional wishful thinking, if that’s what you think will happen
They have not broken anything, and no Dutch law.
The article is just rubbish.
WTF is wrong with you? You obviously have no clue, claim to have knowledge of the mobile networks yet can’t even use the correct terms for the network elements. Are you one of the mind washing experiments? If you don’t like the article, go spread your crap somewhere else, you’re like a broken record.
A review of worldwide media shows the story front page… and US media, zip, nothing! Do WE want more?
our isi is the best intelligence agency:
ISI is the best Intelligence in the World
Just recently the German BSI (Federal Office for Information Security) published a warning not to use cellphones for any confidential communication. Coincidence oder did they know?
>The only effective way for individuals to protect themselves from Ki theft-enabled surveillance is to use secure communications software, rather than relying on SIM card-based security.
True.
>Secure software includes email and other apps that use Transport Layer Security (TLS), the mechanism underlying the secure HTTPS web protocol.
Lie. TLS is as vulnerable as is SIM card-based security. NSA has Gemalto’s keys -> NSA has Verisign’s keys, and Facebook’s keys. TLS isn’t helping you. Not even with PFS. The user HAS to be in control of encryption keys, both generation, and exclusive possession.
>The email clients included with Android phones and iPhones support TLS, as do large email providers like Yahoo and Google.
WHY are these recommended? Yahoo and Google are still part of the PRISM, the new encryption policies are not effective. Ephemeral key exchange of PFS is NOT end to end encryption since you’re relying on CAs. You need to verify the hash of signing keys to be safe. You can’t do that with Yahoo, Google etc, ergo you have NO expectation of privacy.
>Apps like TextSecure and Silent Text are secure alternatives to SMS messages, while Signal, RedPhone and Silent Phone encrypt voice communications.
Secure to limited extent. Like Snowden said, the intelligence community can ‘own’ any smartphone in seconds.
>Governments still may be able to intercept communications, but reading or listening to them would require hacking a specific handset, obtaining internal data from an email provider, or installing a bug in a room to record the conversations.
Cracking, not hacking. The Governments ARE cracking handsets. This type of ‘targeted’ stuff is automated so it’s not less in scale, just different in methodology (Appelbaum). Smartphones have bad endpoint security so you’ll want to use PGP/OTR/ZRTP with more secure endpoints such as Tails Linux or OpenBSD. The only tool you can’t steal encryption keys automatically are airgapped systems and those without bidirectional data flow such as Tinfoil Chat.
“The only effective way for individuals to protect themselves from Ki theft-enabled surveillance is to use secure communications software, rather than relying on SIM card-based security.”
Secure should be “secure”. The only truly secure way to send messages or talk over a cel phone is to not own one.
Its like the scene in Goodfellas with Jimmy talking to Henry Hill where he says(after Henry was busted bc the girl didn’t leave the house to make the call from a secure phone)” What did I tell you about talking on the phone” put it this way ALWAYS assume someone is listening to your call because eventually they will be
Nope. Encryption is not broken.
America’s National Anthem. Toilet Flushing sound.
The man in the middle.
Can just tap into a tightly encrypted stream.
Not even the NSA can with reasonable effort decrypt it.
Wake up people, Democrats or Republicans,Tories or Labor. Liberals or Conservatives it’s two sides of the same evil coin it’s called Fascism. So the next time a politician asks for your vote, support or money just say no & vote for an independent candidate. Send a message they can’t ignore & will understand ! ! Both parties have been complicit in this criminal activity. Democrats & Republicans don’t decide elections Independent voters do so now is the time to elect independent candidate ! !
Money in politics equals corruption, reduce the money you reduce the corruption ! We don’t need the worst politicians money can buy, we need politicians that money can’t buy ! It’s time to remove the Corporate Congress from office & take back America !
If you take away their power then you can take away their toys !
The Government will continue its PR & propaganda campaign using the following tactics as quoted by Joseph Goebbels during the 1930’s & 1940’s.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” AND
“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”
The following link is a must read ! This is not the Future. This is the here & NOW ! http://1933key.com/US-Empire/US-Patriot-Act-Compared-to-German-Enabling-Act
See also : http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/spying-meant-crush-dissent-terrorism.html
The supreme law of The USA is the Constitution, not the Patriot act the FISA act, or any other such acts that have unconstitutional provisions,are invalid & it matters not how many public officials say it’s legal, it’s NOT for the Constitutional Amendments say otherwise ! ! To say it is legal only shows the public their betrayal of the Constitution, their oath of office, and the American people.
No more lies, excuses rationalizations,or justifications, the public needs to hold these officials to account to the fullest extent of the law under Title 18 sec. 241 & 242 So any future traitors will know there will be consequences to such behavior. I hope the other five eyed nations have equivalent laws, but if not maybe it’s time to get some. Better late than never.
Don’t blame Snowden or the Press for the actions of NSA & GCHQ & our Governments, they are the ONLY ones responsible for the crimes they have committed ! ! ! See USC Title 18 Sec. 241 & 242 (Google it). So why no arrest warrants for high crimes, but only for misdemeanors ? ? ?
High crimes = NSA + GCHQ + PUBLIC OFFICALS OF THE UK & US ! ! !
Misdemeanors = Snowden, Manning, Assange, lAVABIT
REMEMBER: POLITICIANS, BUREAUCRATS AND DIAPERS SHOULD BE CHANGED OFTEN AND FOR THE SAME REASON.
Some word of true Patriots are as follows, as opposed to the words of false flag patriotism of today.
He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.
Benjamin Franklin
He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
Benjamin Franklin
Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those
entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by
the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but
the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
James Madison
Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.
James Madison
The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.
Patrick Henry
“We the People are the rightful masters of BOTH Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution”
Abraham Lincoln
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln
As a reminder Hermann Goering said at the Nuremberg Trials .
“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”
We should not forget the waring of President Eisenhower .
http://youtu.be/8y06NSBBR
The NSA is controlled & operated by the DOD & the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) Private Corporations.
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.”
President John F. Kennedy
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
April 27, 1961
As is said in the law, falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. (“False in one thing, false in all things” is an instruction given to jurors: if they find that a witness lied about an important matter, they are entitled to ignore everything else that witness said.)
Time to start removing the corporate Congress from office & defunding the NSA to force them to comply with the law & impose jail time for non compliance under USC Title 18 Sec. 241 & 242 (Google it) .
“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
Benito Mussolini
Disclaimer: Be advised it is possible, that this communication is being monitored by the
National Security Agency or GCHQ. I neither condone or support any such policy, by any Government authority that does not comply, as stipulated by the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Oh man this sucks. Just when I thought things couldn’t get anymore hopeless. I mean what can one person do to stop this? Voting doesn’t work, lawsuits don’t work, and complaining to your elected officials don’t work. Iv been following the Snowden revelations since the beginning, and things only seem to be getting worse. It’s starting to feel like all is lost.
Armed revolution. Bring back Madam le Guillotine. Know who lives in your neighborhood that work for the pigs.
Well, I love Glenn, but think his consistent and admirable optimism about change is not grounded in reality, with one caveat. When a tipping point of the population are sufficiently humiliated and robbed of their ability to live with dignity and a modicum of happiness, and they set fire to a few American cities …. we’ll see change. Until then, I don’t think so. That’s how change happens. Crisis. The elite thinks it can stop this by, what exactly? Arming the police with military weapons? I don’t think so. Wait until the next inevitable economic crash, due to the willful negligence of the elite. I think we’ll see the kind of thing that we saw in the 60s, but magnified … They have successfully stoppered the avenues of legal change in the US. Violence is on tap.
Why, unlike many things similar, do encryption algorithms not enjoy the protections usually afforded proprietary and/or copyrighted material?
Also, when do We The People start our multi-trillion dollar lawsuit against those responsible for the (Un)PATRIOT(ic) Act? Or should we just surrender to our good friends at the KGB-GESTAPO-NSA-CIA?
The biggest misconception is that GCHQ — with support from the NSA did it. Well, there is NO such thing as GCHQ or NSA. This are concepts, collective nouns, corporations if you wish. Would come a day pretty soon when the ba$stards behind this grand theft would claim immunity from hanging because they just followed orders. After Nuremberg that defense would not save their neck.
When will there be talk about sanctions against USA for continuous intrusion and cyber war on the rest of the world. First most of the storage is compromised, now telecomm. Enough is enough.
The air is free, anyone can intercept signals transmitted by radio waves, which is what cell phones do. If you want to keep a something private, don’t use the airwaves, period.
New method for transferring encryption keys: A guy moving them, in person, with the briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.
I’ve been reading a lot of Catherine Fitts of the Solari Report lately. She has an interesting take on “Control Files.”
http://solari.com/blog/control-files/
Note: this means no one can prove beyond reasonable doubts that a transaction made with your bank card and using your “private” PIN Code was actually made by you. You can sue the bank to give you back your money.
Gemalto should be able to sue whatever organization did this.
Great story–the Intercept seems to be running on all cylinders now.
a man robs a bank, he is a thief, and a criminal, and under the rule of law can be arrested. The US govt. stole my sim encryption key. If they are no longer abide by the law, either do I.
“Governments still may be able to intercept communications, but reading or listening to them would require hacking a specific handset, obtaining internal data from an email provider, or installing a bug in a room to record the conversations.”
I did research on SIM cards and can tell you that having the KI allows the attacker to install Java Sim Applets which can be used to turn your phone into a bug and compromise personal data like contacts, location data, call data.
Civil war is coming.
Thanks for this article. This is the kind of journalism that I come to The Intercept to read.
Hm… I posted two simple sentences of support for investigative journalism, but I forgot to hit “post” right away. I come back 15 minutes later and click it, then see that some digital graffiti got sprayed below my post during that time. That dulls my simple comment by making it appear as a response (which it wasn’t). Plus it implies a false choice between support for journalism and support for terrorism.
And then look at the line of responses below Sassan’s post! I understand the benefit of sharpening one’s teeth every now and then, but every internet comment section on political topics features these kinds of unproductive and effortlessly triggered digressions. And let’s face it, if you were on a bus full of people happily typing responses on their phones to all the junk in their spam folders, wouldn’t you be worried that you accidentally got on the wrong bus?
That gives me an idea for a spam-fighting captcha– in order to post a comment for an article, the user is presented with what look like two posts from a different article. One of those posts is an actual submission, and the other is the output of a political spam-generating python script. The user must choose the human-generated one. If they choose wrong, they must do it over with different posts. Over time, the results will show which comments can be consistently picked correctly.
Then– rather than censoring– it’s just a matter of showing the percentages next to the comments. I highly doubt anyone would respond to a post that 85% of the commenter community couldn’t differentiate from python script output, no matter how inflammatory it was. And I’d be willing to eat the cost of my two simple sentences being tagged as potential spam for the benefit of flame-spam no longer burning through so many commenter’s time and energy.
Thank them for RUBBISH?
Tell them to shut up and get lost for spreading lies and innuendo, and not the least fear.
Great article guys. Thanks for laying it out – pretty terrible stuff. One wonders what the fallout is upon exposing this spying to the world. The curtailment of our freedoms is happening, the curtailment of our privacy is happening, the curtailment of free human interactions is happening – psychologically speaking – we now have learned to self-manage our interactions with others. What kind of damage does that do to civilization, to human culture. It’s a painful reality isn’t it.
Perhaps focussing on potential solutions can help somewhat. Solutions already exist like you mentioned but bold solutions that are in your face – back at you – to the NSA and GCHQ – are really the answer in my opinion. Scrap the current sim system and do something else or adapt intelligently. There are always solutions.
Thanks for helping the terrorists. ISIS is very thankful for your help.
Had NSA and GCHQ not engaged in international criminal activity there would be no story to report, would there? It seems as though your gratitude may be misdirected.
Sassan are you the most gullible person on the planet?
Lighten up, Sassan.
AQ and ISIS have been well aware the NSA had access to their SIM cards for quite some time now. They didn’t need Snowden to tell them this.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/
Thanks for supporting the policies and policy makers that created IS… and the global backlash that harms our country more than IS ever could.
Thanks for supporting Big Brother, I’m sure he is very grateful for your help.
Didn’t you read the article? Gemalto changed the name of their program from “ISIS Mobile Wallet” to “Softcard”.
They seem to be struggling a bit with this marketing thing. “ISIS Mobile Wallet” may have sold well in Syria, but it really isn’t a very good global branding strategy. “Softcard” may be a good description of the toughness of their security system, but truth in marketing, as all politicians know, is often not the best strategy.
However, I hadn’t previously heard of Gemalto – so they are managing to publicize themselves with this story. Perhaps they know what they are doing after all.
They have not exposed anything except their own ignorance.
ISIS is the best current ally of the united states.
The US need them to justify their meddling in the middle east and their anti-liberty laws at home.
The more they meddle in the middle east the more ISIS can recruit and grow, the more they do, the more leverage the US governement has to f*** its own people.
It’s a never-ending loop where ISIS and the US both reinforce each other at the detriment of everyone else.
Everything is just utter rubbish – take it easy!
““We need to stop assuming that the phone companies will provide us with a secure method of making calls or exchanging text messages,” says Soghoian.”
Well, the SMS is sent as a stateless event on ss7, controlled by IN.
This will never ever appear on the Internet, and try to intercept a mil.spec. encrypted message – wish you lock Sogholan. Unfortunately, you do not have a clue about this, and should remain silent. Nothing has been uncovered, nothing has been exposed except gross ignorance.
Yup Sassan. Youareonthewrongsideofthefence.
NSA clearly believes that it is above the law and that the Constitution does not apply to it. Moreover, it will not reveal to Congress what it is doing, nor heed Congressional restrictions. The NSA can do what it wants, with zero accountability. (And even the FBI now feels free to ignore Presidential directives.) We are seeing the national security state divorce itself from our democratically elected government and its laws and Constitution. This will not end well.
And if caught breaking the law they have Congress retroactively legalize their activities. They have complete immunity from any consequences. There is no government for the people. That is clear to any reasonably intelligent observer.
And why would Congress comply with the NSA? Who do you suppose might have the goods on individual U.S. Congress members?
The neo-cons have been playing the game from behind the curtains for decades now. You just need to get like minded people to infiltrate the power structures (that military industrial side of things) and then you control it all. The “Federal Bank.” The International Monetary Fund. Replace the gold standard with the FIAT system. Control the buying and selling of oil, and from there on you just change the sock puppets every once in a while to keep the proletariat happy and under the illusion that they live in a democracy. What can go wrong? We just spy on the fuckers to control revolt.
Well – the above is utter rubbish, and nothing is exposed except their ignorance of mobile networks.
“This will not end well.”
It’d better not end well if democracy must prevail.
This is more damaging to www communication safety or security than any breach of any nature. One analogy in the article itself is like giving the master keys to a building away. It is worse! It is giving the fox full access to the hen house and the ability to silence the hens remotely
“Nixon’s old RadioShack phone-tap ain’t got sh– on me and my NSA…” Hussein Obama, 2015
Are you one of those clowns who sincerely believes Obama is a secret Muslim America hater?
I just love this front page of the July,1973 Newsweek publication. Such a classic.
http://www.authentichistory.com/1961-1974/6-nixon/3-watergate/timeline/19730730_Newsweek-The_Nixon_Tapes.jpg
For the life of me I don’t understand why this is only being published now.
Because they have massive amounts of data to peruse
Because its more effective overall to keep this information in the public eye over a long period of time than to release it all at once
Because there’s so much info people wouldn’t be able to read it all and assimilate it at one time
The US has been engaged in massive economic espionage, criminal blackmail and brinksmanship, criminal insider trading and industrial-scale counterfeiting for a very long time. Working for Wall Street is the prime job of the CIA and NSA. Protecting “national security” is not what Americans think it means in the sense which has been routinely espoused by their government. Protecting it offensively, not just defensively. They use the cover of “terrorism” and instilling fear in the public so they can continue to pull off these illegal crimes for Wall Street. The US government is guilty of state terrorism against its own citizens and other nations. There is an entirely covert system of illegal financing on a truly breathtaking scale being carried out by these gangster agencies, running in the hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars – and the NSA is the leading vanguard of this vast criminal enterprise.
FWIW, I just sent this.
– VC
19 February, 2015
Attn: Verizon Privacy Officer
1320 N. Courthouse Road, 9th Floor
Arlington, VA 22201
Email: [email protected]
To Whom This May Appear:
I am writing as a customer in good standing, who routinely uses my personal Verizon Wireless smart phone (xxx-xxx-xxxx) to conduct business in California and elsewhere around the world. Under the terms of our firm’s contracts with various businesses and governmental agencies, we are often required to accept standard confidentiality and security incident disclosure clauses that are intended to protect the interests of our clients.
We take these legal commitments very seriously.
Based on many stories that have appeared in the news media over the past two years, including the SIM card hacking revelations published today in The Intercept (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist), I have begun to seriously doubt whether I can continue to rely on Verizon to conduct confidential business communications as is required of me by my clients.
Therefore, I am writing to request your response to the following questions:
1. Can Verizon confirm that my personally identifiable information (i.e., content or non-content customer selectors associated with my account) was NOT delivered by Verizon to the US Government, pursuant to any Law Enforcement Demand, National Security Letter, or FISA-issued order, during the second half of 2014?
2. Can Verizon confirm that the encryption of my SIM card has NOT been compromised at some point in the supply chain (i.e., prior to my purchase of it), for example as in the manner described in the article cited above?
While I realize it may be burdensome to respond to such individual customer requests, please understand that Verizon’s failure to provide me with satisfactory confirmation will give me no choice but to conclude that it is no longer “commercially reasonable” to rely on Verizon Wireless for my confidential business communications.
Most Respectfully,
, Inc., a California corporation
the UK and US cannot disband and dismantle GCHQ and NSA: they’d lose track (and putative control) of their thousands of trained criminals, who would disappear into the wild with their capabilities still substantially intact.
excellent work Mr. Scahill and company. keep keeping it up!
this reader hopes that, after all the horrors detailed in Mr. Snowden’s trove of documentation have been taken out of the box and thoroughly aired, some intern at the Intercept will look into the cache one final time and, there, find hope.
Alan Turing would be so proud.
SIM cards have nothing to do with the encryption of voice and data streams, so getting hold of SIM encryption keys is pointless. The SIM card holds the ID that links the phone to the user’s account with the phone service provider, that’s all.
To decrypt voice calls, you need to get the encryption keys of the phone service provider. The article claims this has been done too, but its headline of “great SIM heist” shows that they don’t understand what they are talking about.
No doubt the US phone service providers would give up their keys to NSA if asked anyway. So it is only the keys of foreign (non-5-eyes) phone service providers that have to be hacked.
If you have anything important to say on the phone, you would employ another layer of encryption BEFORE the call leaves the phone, which can only be decrypted by the phone at the other end – end-to-end encryption. No doubt CIA agents in the field have been doing this since mobile phones began. Any half-decent programmer could write the software to do this, the only difficulty being getting the other phone to use the same system.
PGP encryption can be beefed up by making it look like it’s not PGP but QHQ (an easy example, but you get the point). So the entire story is a beat-up once you understand that mobile phones are secure until YOU do something about it.
The big question everyone should ask himself would be: Why do I still use compromised computers/phones/electronic devices etcpp ?
Do YOU really don’t care ? Do you really think YOU are of no interest ? Or do YOU just gave up your last piece of freedom ?
If there is (for example) a warning in the media, that a (legal) drug or your babys milk or any food is “compromised”/poisoned/or otherwise not healthy … its a big scandal and everyone stops using these products.
But in the case of devices/tech you give a shit ? Oh, right, its only your private conversations, your banking details, your “little secrets”… no problem…
So, actually, you are ALL a bunch of hypocrates and idiots… as the rights you don’t care about are no more your rights !
And if you really don’t care, then STOP complaining ! Just go on with your miserable slave-life, and don’t worry… as the people didn’t worry when Hitler took over ;-)
They also didn’t act,… they just went on and we know where this lead to…. so… don’t say neverfuckingever that noone told you so !
Stupid morons…. really !
Well, you wrote your comment using a computer connected to the internet, right?
I care. I have a landline; my mobile Tracfone is just for when I’m away. I’ve joined War Tax Resistors – I refuse to pay the US Government $ for war (I funnel this money to causes that support peace). I talk to people about issues, like this article (even though they label me as crazy). I’m learning to grow my own food. I’ve moved to beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico and live off the grid as much as I can. I care, and am trying to learn what I can do to change things, at the same time changing things within myself.
I care.
It is so out of control.
They’re going to tear the Democracy down.
Who is calling the shots?
No – all is under control – except ignorance.
The article is utter rubbish.
Is your ignorance of devices like Harris Corporation’s StingRay part of that ignorance?
Personally, I think it is rather ingenious to think of this way of spying.
The phone company and chip manufacturer need to be SUED! Also the agents who did this hack broke the law…hacking and theft. Yes its just easier stealing the keys to get leverage on politicians, businessmen, judges etc and it reminds me of electronic voting. Its a lot easier to hack into the vote tabulators that aggregate results from all the vote machines rather than hacking into each individual voting machine. These people are ruining our democracy. They are criminals actively targeting and hurting innocent people. Hell has a special place for them.
anyone who has done any detailed look at any state that has engaged in mass surveillance will immediate realize that spying is never about catching the guilty or finding plots, but simply finding blackmail material on any and all who would be useful to either the state or the opposition.
This is correct for individuals. Also, other reports have said that these grabs of data are then provided as business intelligence to US firms, so they get ahead of non-US firms. (So much for the FREE MARKET).
The NSA is like the proverbial kid in the candy store. But they should guard against being too greedy. It’s not clever to have your fingers in too many pies; it can lead to information paralysis.
There is something we can do to stop this and its simple. DONT buy products or services from the USA. I recently bought an Epson printer (Japan) not a HP (USA) which was cheaper.. There were cherries in my supermarket imported from the USA so I bought local grapes instead. I wouldn’t have been able to eat the cherries anyway thinking about the children their drones are killing or the disgusting torture of innocent people (not folks!) in their lack sites around the world.The only thing the US understands is money or the loss of it, Its behind every thing they do. They never grew up from the wild west and prohibition days not to mention the Mafia. Their very being is corrupt to the core. If we all stopped buying anything from the US they would be finished.
PLEASE CONTINUE TO KEEP US INFORMED.
THANKS,
ga
Guardian picked up the story with some added points.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/nsa-gchq-sim-card-billions-cellphones-hacking
Here is what I guess I am missing in all this.
Are there currently NO international laws or U.S. laws against this type of over the top spying?
Shouldn’t there be an international outcry at the U.N. against the NSA etc.
It seems the whole world is just goose-stepping right over the cliff in some type of mass “we don’t care about civil rights” psychosis.
I would like to see SOME heads roll! See SOMEONE of importance and stature cuffed and perp walked!
Set me straight here, please. Thank you.
The US constitution prohibits this activity, but no one is holding NSA accountable.
Now that the Guardian has picked up the story, they have the impression that Dutch law is violated. Beyond that — and this is all civil law, stuff of lawsuits — breaches of intellectual property, trade, trade secrets, and a lot of other stuff that would keep courts in several countries busy for some time. It’s a good bet that a number of commercial treaties have been insulted. Someone familiar with US criminal law might find something in 18 U.S. Code that might fit as well.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/19/nsa-gchq-sim-card-billions-cellphones-hacking
They need to do something, because the Europeans just put a lot of effort into credit card chips, and a lot of businesses making and providing (or using) 3G and 4G communications technology now have a lot of profits at risk, and that, at least, should bring the barristers running. The spooks, if this story is right, have just punched holes that crooks can certainly exploit. Can you imagine what someone could do with the kind of info that comes over Wall Street phones and e-traffic?
And to think that when Orwell wrote 1984 he was thinking about to communist countries… And not the “land of the free”.
There are several easier ways to get encryption keys rather than carry out covert operations:
;-) 1) pay off some employees for the keys
;-) 2) fund a young engineer and direct him to seek employment in the company, and once he is inside you have the keys
;-) 3) buy financial control of the company through shares and put your own man in there who then is the custodian of the keys
;-) 4) if the three steps don’t work then ruin the company financially so that their encryption is now meaningless
English and Russians use number 1, Chinese usually do number 2, and Americans do number 3 and 4. The rest make up tall tales about how this simple thing was achieved. There is little rocket science involved to get hold of information that some other people possess. The Europeans as such are obliging creatures, just look at how they all prostrated themselves in order to ground Morales’ presidential jet. And just see how they are treating Assange for the last three years for a cooked up misdemeanor just so that others will think a hundred times before leaking reports. If you are holding an European-made SIM card or any other European product and expect it to be working for your benefit entirely then God help you.
I won’t be surprised if we come across many more home appliances that have in-built circuitry that can spy on you. We really do not have any laws to punish people who indulge in spying, and who then have the guts to keep repeating that their activities are lawful and proportionate.
Criminals usually make the mistake of over-confidence. This sort of brazen and foolish invasiveness demonstrates the corrupt government agencies mentioned here are in all likelihood no different, and their arrogance will in due course be their undoing.
They appear to have jumped the shark years ago, and are now probably so enmeshed in their latest operations as to not realize (ironically) that many people (journalists/activists/informed citizens) far smarter than them are now increasingly watching them with a recorded scrutiny they ultimately cannot avoid.
My Question is…WHO RAISED THEIR CHILDREN TO GROW UP AND, WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, ACTUALLY DO THIS TO OTHER PEOPLE? SHAME ON YOU ALL! These agency employees don’t have one iota of moral character and personal integrity! How could any parent be proud of these now grown-up children? They are all just white collar criminals, PERIOD! I know one thing, if my child did this kind of thing to a friend or a neighbor, there would be Hell to pay for him! One thing is true however…Snowden’s parents did it right! What great roll models they were for one who has now become a true American hero! Thank you Edward!
NSA is preparing for this.
That’s just the next step in the plan to desensitive and normalize all of this so that the general public will submit meekly to whatever controls they choose to put in place.
Terrorism has always existed and there have always been people who plotted to do terrible things. Our legal system was, until fairly recently, deemed sufficient to deal with such things on both a domestic and international level. But it takes special effort to get the general public living in sufficient fear for a sufficiently long enough period of time so that they will voluntarily submit to the same militarized tactics at home that work so well for our government elsewhere. For those whose political preferences lean to the right, the boogeymen of choice were the Occupy, environmental and animal rights movements. Now those who lean left will have the right-wing sovereign citizen extremists to feel self-satisfied about.
That article is just another brick in the wall of propaganda being built around us to ensure our complacent acquiescence. Thanks for pointing it out General.
BTW – ALL of the “ways” you mentioned – could be considered … “covert”.
El General, just a heads up… Just this month Samsung announced that their “SMART TV”s have been recording their owners conversations and sending them back over the internet to who knows where.
Their response:
You can control your SmartTV, and use many of its features, with voice commands.
If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.
So General, if you are concerned about privacy when you turn on your TV, be very afraid.
No Mr President, I just use old TV, old car, old cell-phone and all other old gadgets. What’s the point being able to control gadgets when you can easily lose control over your audience?
If I was in charge of Gemalto I would issue a statement to the world press (especially to the UK and US media) that I was going to release to the public domain all SIM access codes for all US and UK government issued phones. My reasoning is that “since those governments stole your private access codes and can freely and anonymously monitor all your personal information and communications we are allowing the citizens to do the same to their government’s phones.” That should tighten a few buttholes in government, get a few government and intelligence heads put on the chopping block, and cause one hell of a furious stir in a lot of government meetings. But, it would be the free market telling governments that if you ever do something like this again the free market will return the favor with more drastic consequences. I don’t know how it would work technically, but I can’t imaging it would be too difficult to do that. And, what are the government going to do? Sue you for them stealing secrets and secure information from you and you later just giving it away for free to the public?
So, in the world of Scahill, its logical to keep chasing the horses after they’ve already busted out of the cyber-barn with loads of booty, because if some poor fool somehow gets ahold of a stolen SIM, he could get droned… maybe. Its like a Republican arguing against Obamacare without lifting an imaginary contemplating finger about a replacement plan.
There’s obviously a SH*TLOAD of information not being shared here, either because Scahill doesn’t know (but pretends to), or he doesn’t want you to know because it ruins the drama. For instance, if Scahill included information like in this article – http://www.livescience.com/10126-sim-card-crime-ring-arrested-phone-safe.html – , logic would override the hair on fire. Can’t have that. No way.
You people cry about the lack of integrity in today’s media, yet you are one of the top abusers, right up there with FOX. Congrats.
Do elaborate, because your logic isn’t readily apparent from your comment.
I’m curious, not being critical.
Yeah, I haven’t any idea what luvbrothel thinks he or she has said.
luvbrothel is one the top Obamabots on the net. He has posted on Huffington Post for years under the same moniker, and rushes to defend Obama from any criticism and perceived slight with the most aggressive, nonsensical, and intellectually vapid arguments, as see here.
Yeah, probably a mistake trying to insert logic into the kerosene campfire. After all, this is the place that adores hackers who frequently steal SIM cards.
…or something
Loafbrotha, y u wureed ahbut skayhulls SIMS? Yew haf oan SIMS don u no.
Yur poast iss dong to thi Lourd:
Yew haf dong onn yer feces loafbrotha
hi Myrtle hunnee. lon tiem know see!
i thin Myrna an mee gon haev too soo tihs Loafbroffel persum foor disparajmunt orr sumthin.
iz furry obvius taht wateffur broffel him frum luv haz nuffink too dew wiht it.
how yur laytest husbint doin hunnee? he stil abuv grownd?
Funny how you keep on trying to link Scahill and The Intercept to the Republicans and Fox News. Donald B. is likely right about you; your blind devotion to the Democratic Party and the “two party system” will only cause you grief in the end, once you finally realize what it is you’ve been supporting.
According to your link, SIM codes sell online for $40. So the 2 billion SIM codes the NSA stole from Gemalto last year have a value of $80B. I believe the NSA’s annual budget is on the order of $15B per year. So just from this one caper, they have a return on investment of over 400%.
Clearly this is one of the most successful government agencies ever – probably second only to the IRA – although they don’t seem to get a lot of credit for it.
That should obviously read IRS and not IRA. Now I’ll probably be put on a terrorist watch list and maybe even a kill list – all because of a stupid typo.
As you know, it only takes one slip, Benito. ;-}
quote” Now I’ll probably be put on a terrorist watch list and maybe even a kill list – all because of a stupid typo.”unquote
Well, I would agree, but it won’t be because of a stupid typo.
quote”I believe the NSA’s annual budget is on the order of $15B per year.”unqoute
While you are allowed to believe anything you want, given the NSA budget is classified, you’re magical numbers are nonsense. That is, unless, it’s a slip of the tongue produced by long shifts in your Mil-propaganda cubical.
It’s been widely reported that NSA employs on the order of 50k people including contractors. Using an annual cost including overhead of $200k per person (many contractors would be more expensive, but many support staff would be less expensive), that would be $10B. Tack on $5B annually for special programs and capital expenditures and you get $15B.
If I were put in charge, I would immediately seek to double this budget. But the NSA has to work with the management it has, not the management it would like to have.
Dear Luvbrothel!
You are a fine American and I salute you! Note the last sentence in the article you link to:
“”There is no accurate reporting on this problem in the U.S. as the phone companies face no requirements to report this type of breach as far as I know,” Sileo said.” It would seem Messrs. Scahill and Begley are attempting to provide reportage on the subject. If you find their reporting inaccurate, please provide links to document your information.
Love,
CA
Hate to pee in your swimming pool luvbrothel, but don’t act like the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare), is the savior of all of America’s ills.
ACA does in fact help the poor pay insurance company premiums for health insurance, but does not help them pay the deductible -which will in all likelyhood be the bulk of most doctor visits. Just like car insurance, it is mostly useless. The cost of nearly all accidents are under the deductible, and the consumer ends up paying most (if not all) of the costs. Only in the event of a catastrophic wreck is the insured ‘glad’ he has been gouged by the insurance company.
As for the Republicans in congress -I agree they are shitheads. Myself being an Independent Republican (not to be confused with “the Republican Party” of John Boehner, Mitch McConnel, or Peter King), I really think the Republican party has forgotten the meaning of the word “republican”. That being (with the help of wikipedia): An advocate of a republic, a form of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is generally associated with the rule of law. A republic is a form of government in which power resides in the people. The most common interpretation that I will quote (this is my opinion and I’m sticking to it) is for the minority to be protected from the whims of the majority -the opposite being the good of the individual is overuled by the ‘needs’ of the majority. The way I see that it applies to the Republicans in congress is that they are not looking out for the common man. They have forgot about protecting the very people that have voted and financed their very election. They have NOT respected the rule of law when it comes to domestic spying or the stealing of their SIM card keys. In a nutshell: They are traitors.
The ACA is just a law that was made to guarantee a huge (subsidized) profit for the insurance industry. The unintelligent public may have wanted low cost health insurance (that they were assuming somebody else would pay -that- which they could not) but never asked Barak Obama to appoint the IRS be the overseer of their health coverage.
They have forgot about protecting the very people that have voted and financed their very election.
Unfortunately, the voters lost to the financiers quite some time ago. Citizens United merely applied the SCOTUS Seal of Approval to an edifice long in the making. That both parties fiercely protect the latter, to the detriment of the former, is a dynamic that is no longer hidden and only remains unseen by those who are willfully ignorant.
Re: Luvbrothel – 19 Feb 2015 at 7:17 pm
The article you referenced was published September 28, 2010 genius! While it does report on the arrest of a criminal “crime ring”, unlike this reporting from THE//INTERCEPT, it contains no supporting documentation or any mention of any concurrent publicly funded government schemes to similarly engage in the theft of proprietary private property and information.
In your imbecilic attempt to denigrate the work THE//INTERCEPT is doing, it appears that you have inadvertently helped to establish that any such covert theft is indeed criminal activity; rather it is engaged in by individual criminals or governments.
Regarding your pretended allusion to “..the world of Scahill,..”, you obviously don’t have a fucking clue about “the world” Jeremy Scahill is a part of!
Re: Luvbrothel – 19 Feb 2015 at 10:58 pm
You seem to be becoming a little unhinged here Luvbrothel, maybe you should have tried inserting logic before you ignited your “kerosene campfire” metaphor, and flamed out.
As Usual,
EA
I use to work for Verizon, IDT and IBM
I could tell you stories, but I won’t.
There’s plenty of them on the internet and honestly, if this one infuriates you, then mine will as well.
Godspeed to all of you.
Very well… Very well. I presume that Paul Beverly didn’t have a clue and that you explain the how-do as precisely as you can. On the other hand, a short look at the management and the board of the company and their member’s networks could reveal that they are around – not to say close – to certain circles, which could have mass survaillance on their agendas. If one furtherly looks into the dates of some job appointments, those of public offerings and – last but not least – who probably bought some stakes there, one could see a quite different, quite larger picture. Probably maybe…
Pardon my potty mouth BUT — those dirty mother____ soulless maggots! It is time to dismantle the NSA! AMERICA! Get some gonads! Get off FB, stand up and DO SOMETHING!
Which part of the nation ? The ones in jail, or the ones already busy with collecting foodstamps ? or the people with the 3+ jobs to get through the month without starving ? or the minority who prosper from it (the thousands working in the “services”, or companies ? or the even more stupid soldiers who still think they fight a brave war on whatever their puppetmaster tells them ?
…
Its like asking the sheeps and cows to revolt against the farmer ;-)
Its like asking the sheeps and cows to revolt against the farmer
Farmers are smarter than our PTB. Farmers recognize the critical importance of the well-being of all elements of their farm, especially the sheep and cattle. Our ‘elite’, OTOH, have busily sought to undermine that truth ever since FDR shoved it down their greedy gullets years ago.
“Our ‘elite’…have busily sought to undermine that truth ever since FDR shoved it down their greedy gullets years ago. – Pedinska
That he did. We need another FDR. Sure, he had faults, as do we all, but not following through with what he said wasn’t one of them.
“Which part of the nation ?”
It really comes down to an effective full-time protest movement. And it has to get real smart and multiply its numbers by 100x. It must see the various social justice and environmental justice movements as essentially the same thing and work together accordingly. Had Occupy NYC, for example, put 100,000 on the ground vs the 1000 or so they actually organized, then the city’s law enforcement playbook would likely have been ineffective. Of course, it’s assumed that those numbers would not be a one-time event. We’re talking 100K at protest events in major cities and throughout the country on a sustained basis, and with the financial backing/infrastructure to take care of those who would be arrested, hurt physically and financially etc.
This excerpt is from the Verizon Privacy Policy:
“If you believe that your privacy rights have been violated, please contact us at [email protected] and we will work with you to address your concerns. If you believe that you have been aggrieved as a result of a violation of the Cable Act, you may enforce the limitations imposed by the Cable Act through a civil action in a United States district court seeking damages, attorney’s fees, and litigation costs. Other rights and remedies may also be available to you under federal or other applicable laws.”
It would appear that a massive class action is in order. Even if they are sheltered by immunity, these firms should be held accountable for falsely advertising that their services deliver “privacy”.
Partly it’s the question of defining the class that can sue as plaintiffs.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_23
However, it’s also the question of whom you sue. The firms themselves may have a case for suing in their own right as third parties, since they were breached. The agencies responsible may be the rightful defendants, but you may get into state-sovereignty and state-secrets defenses, and in the case of GCHQ, form non conveniens issues. But it’s a nice thought.
Big headline currently at top of http://www.huffingtonpost.com — They Can Hear You Now — linking directly here.
Meantime, I noticed this little story from a few days ago which may provide some irony. No, I don’t think it’s an “Onion” type satire.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/13/obama-cyber-security/
Of course, once they have the key, and bump into the message, it gets more interesting:
3d 46 41 90 b1 32 b1 d9 72 a5 b8 30 17 cd c9 9d
ef 16 49 ae 06 12 4a f6 7d a0 13 8a a6 d0 e4 ee
c8 bb 06 ee d1 7e 64 97 71 82 50 d3 0e f6 e1 f8
b0 7e 8c 40 31 f6 1a bd bf b8 c7 e3 bf bb 61 b9
8a 6a 12 f1 6d 55 15 30 5d d5 b7 0d cc b9 ec 4b
a7 b8 6a 7a c0 e4 df 71 05 26 64 d4 86 1b f9 39
45 72 8f 2b 16 df aa 78 84 b7 2f ec 17 ac be cd
83 8c ff fb 70 f5 5f 6a cb 50 4b 8b 04 c0 56 df
b5 85 78 7a 72 5a 51 26 2f 1f a3 a4 b6 04 46 14
b7 b6 99 91 08 16 1f e4 64 d2 9c c2 bb b6 fb 08
26 79 4b bc c0 fb b7 22 74 b5 e2 89 9e 80 af 80
02 f5 ef 3f cd c5 e8 7f e2 13 34 fd 7a f7 36 2c
6c ff 2f 76 68 89 1a bf 83 4f 39 42 9e 27 0c 94
b0 06 0d 82 24 49 c7 b0 38 c8 ef 08 e2 75 a5 f6
8a 49 71 54 f2 fe 9f ed 93 37 f3 01 31 c8 15 33
76 00 a9 2b 6d 2c 19 ae a6 fd 03 74 62 fd 5c 25
02 a5 0b 18 1a e2 53 6c 8a 33 7b 18 bd c2 02 39
21 ad 8c b6 52 93 45 98 ba cf 53 cf 56 e4 bf 19
79 aa 0d 22 ac 8a 86 04 6b c8 e9 2a e3 46 73 2e
d8 7e 1d 4b 74 12 20 35 7e 3d 75 ff 66 80 55 0a
4a 97 fd a2 1b 9b 35 72 dc 0f 21 37 d3 15 2b d3
8c 6b 4b 21 02 a9 7b 4f 76 39 c3 7a 26 47 b8 a2
92 a9 f8 18 6a 56 97 53 c5 5a 45 05 03 15 24 b3
41 62 6a 1e 39 da 77 36 f8 d5 3e 09 77 f9 7b ca
72 09 40 40 70 56 6f a4 c6 cb d6 61 f0 7a a1 88
I presume the worst about authoritarianism, including the West’s, but this and the latest Kaspersky revelation are beyond anything I imagined.
It’s all way more corrupt than I realized. If the (evidently terrified) establishment will do this, they have institutionalized not just paranoia but full-blown neurosis.
It’s become absolutely absurd, a whirling madness on board a runaway train.
It’s too late. Nothing can rip the control away from them. Even a massive reset global societal uprising coupled with a EMT would take the maggots out now.. It’s a cock roach infestation. Stamp a few out by passing a few new ‘laws’ (meaningless words on paper passed by corrupt politicians — to appease the masses) and they’ll just reproduce more and deeper so that you can’t see them.
.. but we have to try.
There’s more. It seems that a form of adware called Superfish, shipped with certain laptops, also has its own nasties.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/further-evidence-lenovo-breaking-https-security-its-laptops
As one of many who aren’t hiding anything I feel secure in the knowledge that NSa is protecting our citizens. We have more and more Americans joining these radical groups. How else can our government protect us from this threat from our own countrymen. I say thank you and go away mr snowden. Enjoy the Russians and all of the freedoms that you have there
This bit by bit leak by snowden is to keep him in the limelight, nothing more. I have
Not wanting to come across as being fatalistic, what chance is there of turning things around? What choice do we have though but to try? Speak up people.
Frankly there is no chance of stopping this. It will only get easier for the elites to spy on us as technology improves. What we can do however is increase transparency and pursue strategies to control HOW this information is used. See the following: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2015/02/privacy-will-not-go-away-but-it-will.html
It does look bleak. However, I’m hoping these revelations will produce a positive outcome: massive use of end-to-end encryption by regular people and businesses.
The recent hard drive firmware hacks might actually be worse, and more onerous to detect and work around.
What can be trusted anymore?
And supporters of the NSA and US government’s worldwide illegal spying efforts have the actual nerve to be outraged at Snowden’s theft and exposure of their precious CONSPIRACY?!? I think they will have to come up with a new word for hypocrisy, as this is clearly above and beyond.
Where does it say in the docs that they targeted US (or allied) encryption keys?
It mentions Iran, Tajikistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Not sure that I can bring myself to be outraged that NSA is spying on calls there.
Any politician who is not demanding the prosecution of NSA/GCHQ criminals is definitely suspicious.
Well, as it looks right now it is ALL of them!
They are all either wittingly or unwittingly complicit. I have been writing my own congressman about the government agent in the FannieMae possessed unit next door to me who burns me and tampers with my electricity. Mike Quigley is not particularly concerned that FannieMae is enabling the torture of uncharged citizens.
Good article. Stealing keys is the clearly much easier than attempting brute-force decryption – even with the capabilities of the NSA. It shows how good the basic encryption methods are.
“When asked if the NSA or GCHQ had ever requested access”
:eyeroll:
CEOs of large organizations know *jack* *shit* about the details of what goes on.
After all of the revelations concerning the NSA, one must assume that every transmission is compromised. Privacy is an illusion. The NSA has made the statement that they want to own the Internet, and they do. This is the world we live in now, and the digital age has only just begun. Do we just sit back and accept this, or do we fight back?
“Gemalto was totally oblivious to the penetration of its systems — and the spying on its employees. “I’m disturbed, quite concerned that this has happened,” Paul Beverly, a Gemalto executive vice president, told The Intercept. ”
Disturbed ? !! That’s it ? What an imbecilic statement.
There seems to be almost nothing these clowns haven’t touched – and stolen. As of now, the NSA and GCHQ should be referred to AND TREATED LIKE Stasi Version 2.
And the unseemly gloating that can be seen in the documents really compounds the, “these clowns” label you’ve applied to them. Get so sick of hearing and reading the lies from Obama and others guaranteeing how careful NSA/GCHQ are being in trying to “protect our privacy” as they “Keep us safe.”
Given the revelations about the Equation Group malware that can reprogram hard drive firmware to establish persistence even over hard drive reformatting, and given that the NSA has a history of subverting companies (either wittingly or unwittingly) to enable them to corrupt existing technologies to allow the NSA to spy more effectively, we have to ask this question:
How do we KNOW that every hard drive produced by every hard drive manufacturer does NOT have NSA firmware embedded in it to allow the NSA to access every PC and server in the world?
While it would seem unlikely – if for no other reason than much of what the NSA does would be superfluous if they did have this capability – the question has to be asked. It would be prudent for every manufacturer’s hard drives to be inspected by independent parties and the function of every bit in the firmware be conclusively identified. Methods for preventing access to every manufacturer’s firmware master copy for each model produced should be confirmed to be in place and methods for preventing post-sale access – probably using encryption – to that firmware should be developed and certified.
Until this is done, we cannot know that the NSA isn’t in the process of subverting, or already has accomplished the subversion of, every hard drive sold to the public. From what we know of the NSA, this is something they would definitely TRY to do if it were considered at all feasible. The world needs to be proactive from now on about taking these sorts of subversion into account when developing products and services.
I wish TI would ask for comment from the members of Congress on the intelligence committees.
It would be nice to know if they have been made aware of these activities in classified briefings, or if they are being kept in the dark as well.
Their responses could be illuminating… or possibly even spur them to ask questions, since their own communications are clearly now available for perusal.
The limited accountability and oversight may be even more limited than US law allows.
The article also briefly mentioned a Wall Street angle.
How do we know insiders (government or private) aren’t profiting off of this breach? If Snowden had access to the documents, how do we know access to these keys is being “appropriately” limited?
And how is it the massive frauds that threatened our economy and national security aren’t being discovered? The damage to America from Wall Street is clearly at a level al Qaida could only hope to accomplish.
I used to have a close friend who was a security specialist doing contract work for the NSA. He used to be very outgoing and friendly guy, but became quite paranoid and recluse. His view of the world, our nation, changed abruptly in a few short years. He described his job once, “protecting the ugly secrets of very powerful people” He never described his job as protecting national security or our nation. We live in a nation of haves and have nots, and most people have no idea that they are members of the ‘have nots’. They foolishly still believe we’re a nation of hope, choice, rights, and justice. We are not. The ‘haves’ are the ones who wield the power of secret organizations, puppet leaders, and control the valuation of our currency. They don’t represent “the people” they are strictly interested in controlling their cattle, the people who no longer have influence, freedom, hope, or prosperity. And the worst is yet to come, the infrastructure and technology has been being built for years now to make a MASSIVE change in policing. A massive change in distribution of resources, food, and where we can live.
This is pure outright theft. Laws are being broken and people are not going to jail. This is a very dangerous and slippery slope that could really go down some bad roads. It’s time to punish those in gov’t that are breaking the law before all out tyranny becomes the norm everywhere. Citizens should not be looked down like children that can be punished or spied upon because the gov’t wants to. Snowden is probably going down as one of the most important and pivotal figures in our century, if we can use this information to fix some very broken systems in this world.
Gemalto stock up 10% the past 2 days (before the article). Strange…10% in 2 days. I’m curious if for journalistic reasons (which would be ethical if so), The Intercept asked both governments and Gemalto questions before “The Intercept” published this piece. If so, is there any chance Intelligence Agencies assured Gemalto that they would support (buy) shares of Gemalto to prop-up its stock price before (and maybe during, once markets open tomorrow) the story came out….in exchange for some sort of consideration from Gemalto (mellow Gemalto’s public statements towards the agencies, anti-trust matters Gemalto may face in the future when they take over other large sim-card makers…other consideraions etc). ? Watch Gemalto’s sock…..
This is a great article, the sort of thing The Intercept is for, but … why is it coming out only now? Snowden has this one little trove of fossil documents. Is there somebody in the government who lets you know when you’re allowed to publish something like this, who gave Snowden or maybe you a call and said five years are up, you’re clear to go now? I wonder how much more stuff is sitting in storage for ten or twenty or fifty years, because it affects our privacy even more fundamentally?
Greenwald spent considerable time early on addressing these kinds of queries but hasn’t lately. Maybe this link will help:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/04/27/excerpt-battle-justice-palestine/#comment-29948
The big German Telco Deutsche Telekom recently demanded bulk-publishing of the Snowden documents. They just want finally to know about the extent of foreign mass surveillance and targeted surveilance in order to secure their systems. I think, they are perfectly right – the international security community needs these informations and they need them now.
Seriously?
I wouldn’t have even come here w/o a link from an actual news site (not a main headline, btw) and I used to read GG every day. But at a certain point, one can only be lead on for so long.
It feels like the whole thing was supposed to be a slap at Manning (not cool) and to prove to TPTB that this group is “serious.” Well, sorry, but TPTB don’t care at all. Ask every alt-news site ever. Pretty much threw that out the window when they left the MSM. As far as the suggestion that somehow this is all being serious journalists, super responsible, at the behest of Snowden, and whatnot (again, implied criticism of document dumps like the Pentagon Papers and Wikileaks,) I have only one response:
“No Place Left to Hide”
Yes, saving stuff for your book and movie deal strikes me as amazingly responsible and thoughtful. I’m sure Snowden insisted.
Also, not all of us take a powerpoint slide from a company meeting as proof of operation capacity (because some of us have actually been in meetings with powerpoints; just saying they aren’t exactly ironclad, frequently written by interns and not necessarily accurate or current.) Maybe a few more back up slides and documents would help? Maybe even the technical data (which programmers have been asking for since this began) so people can actually protect their own systems? Nah, gotta be responsible or something!
Sorry, the “Snowden insisted” line only held up for so long. As my husband pointed out when I first heard GG’s line, how in the world is it Snowden’s information? It’s absolutely not, certainly not since he handed it over to GG and all, and if he somehow thought that he should maintain control then he should have kept the information and leaked it accordingly. He did not. He handed over a trove of documents (a “dump” if you will) and then walked away, after first laying out crazy conditions to its release. Well, according to Snowden himself, he worked for the NSA and CIA, and so therefore engaged in criminal activity against the American public. He should have NO say in the subsequent disclosure. And GG trying to push the blame on to him at this point is just sad: it’s entirely his decision to move as slowly as he has been, just as he decided to stop publishing through “established media organizations” in violation of the claimed conditions.
Of course, all of my complaints could easily be assuaged……….. Lookin’ at you, Glenn: Wikileaks is still up, and no one would think any worse of you if you just admitted you weren’t up to “vetting” all this yourself……
Snowden hasn’t a thing. Gave it all to Greenwald. Who is piecing together the bits to make unsinkable reports like this.
Do you really think that being a dick by stating your so called “query,” as Pedinska so politely called it, in language such as what you see there is at all helpful, or does anything other than make you come off sounding like a dick?
Well, maybe I was being a dick, sure. The eloquent statement above sort of makes sense … but it requires me to accept that the honest news media of the world are backlogged by five years in processing a single batch of leaked NSA data. You understand that this implies that NSA is thousands of times bigger and smarter than the entire press of the world, no? So however well written it is, my mind rebels; like a nerd trying to carry a bag of road salt, it just can’t hold the idea for long. My thoughts get caught up just in thinking how long so many people were using “secure” phones that weren’t, while people both in the NSA and outside it knew. I start feeling like the culture of secrecy is so powerful that even its opponents have become part of it. Besides, I never claimed not to be a dick.
Guys, once again – thx ! its almost 2 years and its still just tip of the iceberg or we are getting closer to the “core” ?
I remember watching some interviews with Edward Snowden in 2014 and he was like: “definitely the most interesting leaks are still yet to come”..HA HA…so now I see it…something interesting every month…Thanks for your work once again, I know how much of it you have to put every time you report on such “geeky” documents….
And as for the article: crime-> criminals-> prison, thats where these guys should be.
Holy shit what an incredible article.
So many questions…
Is this industrial espionage by another name?
Does it mean Dick Cheney’s phone was bugged?
How many members of the criminal underworld have been caught ot by this operation?
Does this tactic produce any meaningful results in the war on terror, or organised crime?
Or is it only good for making a bigger stack of hay?
Now that we know it happens, can we obliges the NSA to use it in catching tax dodgers and corrupt bankers?
Get real ‘politikiwi’……
Who will will charge them….stop them ?
The governments who ordered them to do this.
As you know, that’s not gonna happen …… we are in deep sh_t….. it will take a worldwar, and start over again……..to get out of this :-(
The employees of the intelligence agencies who are doing this are breaking laws in foreign countries.
They should be named, and charged with crimes in the countries they are attacking.
It wouldn’t stop them, of course, but it will mean they – like many American politicians involved in the recent CIA torture report – are effectively prevented from ever leaving the United States. It’s not accountability, but it is a message.
And yet, Gemanto’s stock price keeps rising:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=GTO.PA
Edward Snowden is going to get a spanking
This is incredible.
There is no privacy.
On a different topic, but related – electronic voting.
Governments claim legitimacy through voting but only old fashioned methods like paper ballots are reliable.
And when the US allows private companies with proprietary software to process election data, the citizens don’t know what is happening.
Democracy is on life support and could completely crash when another incident like 9/11 happens.
Paper votes can too be compromised as was shown in Scotland with the Referendum Vote. Hard to have a democracy if not a true one nowadays.
Democracy will completely crash when in November of 2016 the American electorate will have the “choice” of Jeb or Hillary! to be our new president.
Secret proprietary software or not, the American people are truly headed for “no choice”.
It it comes to this I predict the lowest turnout in U.S. history. Because once the people realize that “no choice” equals dictatorship, why bother “voting”?
I read that Condi Rice is polling well in California right now for a possible senate seat replacing Boxer in 2016. Whether or not she is really testing the waters for a run is debatable, but that she would poll well is a terrible black mark on some percentage of the 9 hundred and something Californians who were polled.
Is there a minimum threshold in elections like a quorum? If not, there should be. There should be a trigger point where the government loses legitimacy if not enough people voted. Trying to elect the lesser of two evils is an insane waste of our votes. How ’bout a no confidence vote? The electoral college winner take all system is inherently undemocratic and should be scrapped in favor of proportional representation. In my state of FL there is one representative for over 700,000 people. We need more representatives per person but I’m afraid that would only slow down Congress even more than it is. Keep on fighting people.
If we are faced with a choice of Fascist #1 or Fascist #2 for President, then a campaign can easily be started nationally for everyone to request an absentee ballot.
We then fill out the ballots for President with “NO CONFIDENCE” and drop it off on Election Day.
If enough Americans made that choice it could be counted. We could Xerox our ballots and count them ourselves!
If there is no other choice that represents ending the surveillance state and the endless wars (personally I like Chris Hedges), then this is what we should do.
“If enough Americans made that choice it could be counted.” I am not sure why you think the Secy of State/Election Office of any state would do this. This sounds like the unsubstantiated assertion of someone who hasn’t been paying attention and still believes they live in a democratic country. I repeat why do you think such would be counted? (Photocopying ballots would not prove anything as people can make multiple copies of the same ballot.)
quote”If there is no other choice that represents ending the surveillance state and the endless wars…”unquote
ummm..there IS another choice. One that is so simple a cave man can do it. Unfortunately, the .Dumbest Fucking Country On The Planet can’t get past page one of TYING SHOES FOR DUMMIES let alone joining en-mass to stop it. But just for drill..I’ll offer a clue. It’s called RTPFI….ie..refusal to pay for it. ..or..as others call it.. a tax revolt. Simple. Effective. But it won’t happen. Cause America IS the DFCOTP. Period. The Framers would spit in their face.
Even a choice as bad as Jeb or Hillary is still worth voting about. Sure, the policies may be inches apart, but I’d rather vote for the first female president … even if she got there on her back … than vote for a hereditary line of spies and exceptional warmongers (even for the U.S.). Seriously, I think if Americans vote in Jeb Bush solely based on his blood, despite eminent lack of qualifications, they ought to go the whole hog and give him a royal crown, or better yet, recognize his right to trade shares of the U.S. on the stock market as his family’s private possession. (the old anarcho-capitalist utopia of the Congo Free State warmed over)
A female fascist is just as much a fascist, as a male fascist. Just as an “articulate” um-ah-um-uhhh black fascist president, engaging in executive murders, and extraordinary mass murders, as easily as games of golf, is just as much a fascist as an aphasic white one, run by a heartless warbot puppeteer. Hillary represents as hereditary a line of fascists and bloodthirsty warmongers as Bush. Her machinations brought about the cataclysm that is Libya, which now hosts US-spawned ISIS as well as a host of other nightmares. Slick Willy, with his gorgon Secretary of State murdered a million to a million and a half Iraqis, because ” they “thought it was worth it”. While going back further in the same “Democratic” lineage, the Kissinger protege, Brzezinski, and his appalling Dr. Strangelove doctrines are rearing their horrendous heads from the same ancestral Herman Kahn cesspool, in the current, stunningly dangerous, Obama/Clinton/Kerry/Nuland push for glory for the empire in WWIII in Ukraine, of which Hillary is a prime proponent.
Since the majority will vote for “nobody”, shouldn’t the office of President be left vacant until a suitable candidate is found?
Testimony from software engineer on rigged US elections and computer code:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S7R1_ixtlyc
You didn’t got the threat. Having the SIM’s credentials means you can reprogram the phone using s silent OTA message. You can force the SIM to install your module, or to use a different APN, by example.