The Surveillance State - A New Era

NSA able to Target Offline Computers using Radio-waves for Surveillance, Cyber-attacks
By Russia Today
Global Research, January 15, 2014

The National Security Agency has implanted software in about 100,000 computers around the world, allowing the United States to surveil those machines while creating a trail that can be used to launch cyber-attacks.

Though most of the software is installed by gaining access to computer networks, the NSA can also employ technology that enters computers and alters data without needing internet access.

The secret technology uses covert radio waves transmitted from small circuit boards and USB cards clandestinely inserted into targeted computers, The New York Times reported. The waves can then be sent to a briefcase-sized relay station intelligence agencies can set up just miles away, according to NSA documents, computer experts and US officials.

The radio frequency technology – which often needs to be physically inserted by a spy, manufacturer or unwitting user – has helped US spies access computers that global adversaries have gone to great lengths to protect from surveillance or cyber-attack.

The NSA calls use of the infiltration software and radio technology – all part of a program known as Quantum – “active defense” against cyber-attacks, though it has condemned use of similar software by Chinese attackers against American companies or government agencies.

“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” James Andrew Lewis, cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told The Times. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsa-able-to-target-offline-computers-using-radio-waves-for-surveillance-cyber-attacks/5364989

High-Tech Tyranny in the Gulf: Biometric Technology Mandatory for All Citizens in the UAE
By Timothy Alexander Guzman
Global Research, January 14, 2014
Silent Crow News 13 January 2014

As war continues to ravage many parts of the Middle East, Orwellian technology continues to make its presence more apparent. Israel uses biometric technology and now the Gulf States is following in the same direction. It was just announced that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will mandate its citizenry to participate in “biometric tests” to obtain visas if they were to visit Saudi Arabia or any other country.

In a report by www.emirates247.com called ‘Saudi visa fee to rise as UAE residents set to undergo biometric tests soon’ we learn that “All UAE residents going to Saudi Arabia for Hajj, Umrah or any other visit are expected to undergo biometrics tests very soon, an official said on Monday. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) has designated Dubai-based VFS TasHeel International to launch biometrics pilot project for visa purposes in the UAE and other countries.” The project is officially set to launch within a 3 to 6 month time period.

Raghu Athimoolam who is the Chief Operating Officer of VFS TasHeel International based in the UAE said that “We’re meeting with the MoFA officials every week and it’s progressing very well. 80% of the work is done. Once it’s officially launched in the UAE, it’ll be mandatory for all residents – both Emiratis and expatriates – to have biometrics before travelling to Saudi Arabia for Hajj, Umrah, business or any other purpose,” the report said.

As tyrannical as both Saudi Arabia and the UAE governments are towards their citizenry, this development is certainly troubling. VFS TasHeel has partnered with VFS Global which is based in London. “VFS TasHeel is a joint venture between global visa processing firm VFS Global and TasHeel of Saudi Arabia. It currently has three offices in UAE – Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah – where 127 employees cater around 700 applicants on average every day.” The report also stated that “VFS TasHeel International has been mandated by Saudi to offer visas for business and commercial visits, education, escort, family, government meetings, medical purpose, merchandise delivery, personal visit and transit.” It only means that for whatever reason you decide to visit Saudi Arabia you must be registered with the biometric system to enter the country. It was reported back on February 11th, 2013 that the UAE had the world’s largest biometric database.

The report was conducted by gulfnews.com as it stated what the UAE has accomplished as an Orwellian state: The UAE has built its national population register which is the world’s largest civil biometric database, a senior official said on Monday. “The UAE population register system, the world’s largest civil biometric database, was completed by the end of last year,” Dr Ali Al Khoury, director general of the Emirates Identity Authority, told the sixth ID World Abu Dhabi being held at the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research.

The two-day summit tackles the ICT challenges in modern society, bringing together high-level international government representatives and leading players in security, mobility and traceability.

Dr Al Khoury said on the sidelines of the World ID Summit that the UAE’s biometric database had a total of around 140 million fingerprints, palm and hand prints, facial prints and digital signatures which belonged to citizens and residents from more than 206 nationalities, but declined to disclose the population census figure or whether any other official assessment of the country’s population was accurate.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/high-tech-tyranny-in-the-gulf-biometric-technology-mandatory-for-all-citizens-in-the-uae/5364797

Smart Appliances Used In Cyber Attacks
Chris Carrington
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Activist Post

California security company Proofpoint has said that for the first time hackers have used smart appliances to launch a cyber attack.

The ‘botnet’ attack took place over a two-week period from December 23rd according to the company.

Hackers penetrated home-networking routers and connected to media centers, television and in once case a refrigerator to create a platform capable of delivering spam or phishing emails.

David Knight from Proofpoint told Sky News US: Botnets are already a major security concern and the emergence of thingbots may make the situation much worse. Many of these devices are poorly protected at best, and consumers have virtually no way to detect or fix infections when they do occur. Enterprises may find distributed attacks increasing as more and more of these devices come online and attackers find additional ways to exploit them.

CONTINUE: http://www.activistpost.com/2014/01/smart-appliances-used-in-cyber-attacks.html

NSA Spying and Search Engine “Tracking Technologies” - It’s not Okay if the NSA Spies on us, but it’s okay when Google does…
By Ming Chun Tang
January 19, 2014

One of the defining stories of 2013 was, without doubt, Edward Snowden’s revelations of the mass spying conducted by the NSA, GCHQ and various other government intelligence agencies from around the world.

Aside from justifiable outrage, the revelations very rightly sparked intense debate over the appropriate role of government in the lives of everyday citizens, certainly at least in the United States, if not to the same extent in Britain. A large part of the issue surrounded the interception of personal data held by internet companies such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook by the American NSA and British GCHQ agencies both overtly through PRISM and covertly from fibre-optic cables, and the logic behind the indiscriminate collection of personal data under the alibi of “national security” and “counter-terrorism” is flimsy at best. Yet the key question that we have failed to ask ourselves, and indeed that government spying itself has distracted us from, is how we handed over our own data to the internet companies whose services we use in the first place.

The search engine DuckDuckGo (which I use and strongly recommend) describes the process more succinctly than I could, but I’ll put it into words anyway: Google records your searches and sends your search term, browser and computer information to any site whose link you click on, allowing them to identify you and track you. This data is then used to build a profile of you for the purpose of targeted ads, which can also be used to charge you higher prices. That, in a nutshell, is what the NSA and GCHQ have been obtaining from Google. Facebook operates in a similar way and, incidentally, is facing a class action lawsuit as a result: it tracks the links you click on, the posts you “like” and even the contents of your private messages to profile you, before selling this data to data aggregators and advertisers.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/nsa-spying-and-search-engine-tracking-technologies/5365435

The NSA Is Spying On Everything, On All Your Digital Communications - “They’re Collecting Content Word for Word”
By Washington's Blog
January 30, 2014

The NSA’s spying on everyone’s metadata can tell them just about everything about us … and it violates our Constitutional right to freedom of association.

But people are getting distracted from the big picture by focusing on metadata.

As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote yesterday: What frustrates me about all of this — [the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board] report, the president’s speech, and so many other things — is that they focus on the bulk collection of cell phone call records. There’s so much more bulk collection going on — phone calls, e-mails, address books, buddy lists, text messages, cell phone location data, financial documents, calendars, [smartphone apps] etc. — and we really need legislation and court opinions on it all. But because cell phone call records were the first disclosure, they’re what gets the attention.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/forget-metadata-the-nsa-is-spying-on-everything-on-all-your-digital-communications/5366720

Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ

• 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone
• Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk
• Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy'
• Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images

Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy".

read on:   http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Love Always
mudra

Research shows how MacBook Webcams can spy on their users without warning

The woman was shocked when she received two nude photos of herself by e-mail. The photos had been taken over a period of several months — without her knowledge — by the built-in camera on her laptop.
Fortunately, the FBI was able to identify a suspect: her high school classmate, a man named Jared Abrahams. The FBI says it found software on Abrahams’s computer that allowed him to spy remotely on her and numerous other women.
Abrahams pleaded guilty to extortion in October. The woman, identified in court papers only as C.W., later identified herself on Twitter as Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf. While her case was instant fodder for celebrity gossip sites, it left a serious issue unresolved.
Most laptops with built-in cameras have an important privacy feature — a light that is supposed to turn on any time the camera is in use. But Wolf says she never saw the light on her laptop go on. As a result, she had no idea she was under surveillance.

That wasn’t supposed to be possible. While controlling a camera remotely has long been a source of concern to privacy advocates, conventional wisdom said there was at least no way to deactivate the warning light. New evidence indicates otherwise.
Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, said in a recent story in The Washington Post that the FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years.
Now research from Johns Hopkins University provides the first public confirmation that it’s possible to do just that, and demonstrates how. While the research focused on MacBook and iMac models released before 2008, the authors say similar techniques could work on more recent computers from a wide variety of vendors. In other words, if a laptop has a built-in camera, it’s possible someone — whether the federal government or a malicious 19 year old — could access it to spy on the user at any time.

read on:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/18/research-shows-how-macbook-webcams-can-spy-on-their-users-without-warning/

Love Always
mudra

That wasn’t supposed to be possible. While controlling a camera remotely has long been a source of concern to privacy advocates, conventional wisdom said there was at least no way to deactivate the warning light. New evidence indicates otherwise.
Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s Operational Technology Division in Quantico, said in a recent story in The Washington Post that the FBI has been able to covertly activate a computer’s camera — without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording — for several years.
Now research from Johns Hopkins University provides the first public confirmation that it’s possible to do just that, and demonstrates how. While the research focused on MacBook and iMac models released before 2008, the authors say similar techniques could work on more recent computers from a wide variety of vendors. In other words, if a laptop has a built-in camera, it’s possible someone — whether the federal government or a malicious 19 year old — could access it to spy on the user at any time.


__________________________________

I'll have to make sure I put on my lipstick each day  


  

In-Home Surveillance Using Smart Meters. Privacy, Data Mining and Health Impacts
By Josh del Sol
April 17, 2014

A look at what utility companies, PUCs, and the former CIA director have to say about the ‘smart’ meters, data-mining, and surveillance — sans propaganda.

It’s always a drag to find out when a friend is saying one thing to your face, and another to your back. As uncovered in our film Take Back Your Power, the way in which most utilities are now delivering the lies and propaganda — with your individual rights, security, and potentially health on the line — is elevating the trait of “two-faced” to a completely new level.

It’s important to note that the first 4 of these references have to do with the smart meters / grid infrastructure capabilities as of this time. According to the sum of my research over the past 3 years, the plan involves achieving a greater and greater level of granularity and extraction of in-home data over time — see #5 and #6 below as examples (as well as my article on Google’s Nest acquisition). So as far as privacy and surveillance go, according to utilities’ own documentation and writings, ‘smart’ meters are effectively a Trojan horse.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/in-home-surveillance-using-smart-meters-privacy-and-health-impacts/5378232

Secret Plan to Advance Global Internet Censorship. ISPs to Act as “Internet Police” To be Implemented under TPP Auspices
By Global Research News
April 23, 2014

This is urgent. An Internet censorship plan is being finalized in secret meetings right now. We need all hands on deck at this crucial moment.

Here’s the situation: President Obama himself is in secretive meetings with key political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s Internet censorship plan into place.

We know from leaked documents that this secretive plan will censor your use of the Internet and strip away your rights. [1] If finalized, this plan would force ISPs to act as “Internet Police” monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites. [2]

It will give media conglomerates centralized control over what you can watch and share online.

We urgently need your help to fight back. Add your voice right now and we’ll project a Stop the Secrecy message on key buildings in Washington D.C. to ensure Obama, the media, and everyone else knows this censorship plan must be stopped.

This is huge: covering 40% of the global economy, the TPP is being called a legal “blueprint” for the rest of the world.[3] Once key leaders finalize TPP Internet censorship plans, those plans will be used to globalize censorship. You will be affected and this may be our only chance to stop it.

Our attention-grabbing message will shine a light on their secret plan and will make clear to Washington lobbyists that the Internet community will never accept the TPP’s secrecy or censorship. The more who speak out, the larger our projection will become, and the more people we can reach.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/secret-plan-to-advance-global-internet-censorship-isps-to-act-as-internet-police/5378905

'SILENCED'
Tribeca Film Festival
April 2014

Whistleblower documentary SILENCED sheds light on government secrets and the legal war being waged to protect them.

From 9/11 on there has been a STASI-state of intelligence in the US, and we discuss it, along with the film with retired NSA executive Thomas Andrew Drake, former DOJ Ethics Advisor Jesselyn Raddack, and SILENCED director James Spione - including uncensored footage from the film.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78ZeqS49pkM

Meet AISight – The Artificial Intelligence Software Being Installed on CCTV Networks Globally
2014 04 24
By Michael Krieger |

If you thought that CCTV cameras tracking your every move in public was bad enough, you’re going to just love AISight (pronounced “eyesight” of course). The invention of a Houston, Texas based company called BRS Labs (which stands for Behavioral Recognition Systems) is headed by former secret service special agent John Frazzini, and this Orwellian surveillance platform brings artificial intelligence to all of those creepy cameras that have been installed everywhere around you.

Apparently, this system is currently being installed in Boston, and has already been implemented in Chicago and Washington. In the event you live in these cities, I bet you’ve never heard of AISight, and more importantly, I bet there’s been little to no public debate.

The most disturbing part about this platform is that this artificial intelligence defines what is “normal” behavior and anything that falls outside of that narrow band can be flagged for “pre crime” potential. Ultimately, if these things are allowed to proliferate, it will condition humans to behave like zombie automatons fearful that anything interesting or creative might be viewed as criminal.

read on:http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=29954

BRSLabs' AISight - The World's Only Behavioral Recognition System for Video Surveillance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9KJuzXD1-4


Love Always
mudra

I suggest that this movie was not so far fetched.

Same can be said for the series Person Of Interest.

Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, not Catch Terrorists - The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program
By Washington's Blog
May 15, 2014

While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on.

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes: The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.

The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.

The FBI’s domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of documents.

Files related to Cointelpro showed how the FBI had targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, black nationalist movements, socialist and communist organizations, anti-war protesters and various rightwing groups. The bureau had infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them.

Those revelations led to the creation of the Senate Church Committee, which concluded: “[Over the course of 15 years] the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilate operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/spying-is-meant-to-crush-citizens-dissent-not-catch-terrorists/5382374

Whistleblowers Beware: Apps Like Whisper and Secret Will Rat You Out
By Andy Greenberg
05.14.14

Anonymously spilling personal gossip and corporate secrets online is all fun and games – until someone gets a subpoena.

Startups like Secret and Whisper have defined a buzzy new category of social media, attracting millions of users and tens of millions of dollars in venture capital investments with the promise of allowing anyone to communicate with anonymity. But when it comes to actually revealing corporate and government secrets – a “whistleblowing” function that the two services either implicitly or explicitly condone – users should read the fine print.

For all their vaunted anonymity, both companies collect enough information to easily identify their secret-sharers, and both have exceptions written into their terms of service that allow them to rat out their private users at the first whiff of legal controversy.

Legal and security experts who reviewed those terms of service for WIRED say that broad exceptions in their anonymity protections make the companies’ services legal scandals waiting to happen at best. And at worst, they’re a trap for anyone who uses them to spill secrets that violate an NDA or a security clearance. “They say you can use this app to tell the world whatever you want to anonymously, but when you start reading the privacy policy, you realize it’s not all that anonymous,” says Runa Sandvik, staff technologist at the Center for Democracy and Technology and a former developer for the anonymity software Tor. “As soon as law enforcements asks, they’ll turn over information about who said what and when.”

The Big Caveat
In the second paragraph of the Whisper’s privacy policy, for instance, the company reserves the right to reveal everything it knows about a user in a range of situations that seem to include a law enforcement investigation, a subpoena in a civil lawsuit, or simply an accusation of “wrongdoing” on the service. “WhisperText may preserve any transmittal or communication by you through the Service, or any service offered through the Service, and may disclose that information if legally required to do so or if WhisperText determines that the disclosure is reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms or to protect any rights hereunder or to respond to claims of wrongdoing by others,” the policy says.

Secret offers a similar caveat in its privacy policy, warning that it will share information about its users “in response to a request for information if we believe disclosure is in accordance with any applicable law, regulation or legal process, or as otherwise required by any applicable law, rule or regulation.”

CONTINUE: http://www.wired.com/2014/05/whistleblowers-beware/

Can We Stop America’s Surveillance State?
By Danny Schechter
May 17, 2014

With the publication of Glenn Greenwald’s new book on Edward Snowden and the NSA, the state surveillance issue is back in full force as if it never went a way.

Purloined formerly top-secret NSA documents are now there for the downloading, even as the calls for truth and privacy buttressed by irrefutable information, has run up against the institutional armor of the surveillance state that has little respect for public opinion or calls for “reform.”

Every day, there are new stories showing duplicity in high places and revealing the existence of new tracking technologies and forced and voluntary collusion between the secret agency and its many “partners” in the private sector. PBS Frontline is out with one more expose.

Just as the publication of the Pentagon Papers in l971 did not end the Vietnam War, the leaks from a world of questionable ‘intelligence” has only made our Spymasters more determined.

There was four more years of carnage after Daniel Ellsberg dropped the hidden history of our intervention in Vietnam showing how officials knew the truth even as they fed the public a litany of lies to keep a profitable if murderous enterprise going.

The charade was finally ended by the Vietnamese liberation army 39 years ago this month, but the NSA and handsomely financed partners in the self-styled “Intelligence community” will go on and on until someone stops them, and their spying, and that someone is hard to identify given the way the agencies seem to have the goods on the government as well as the rest of us.

There is no American liberation army with the clout to shut them down.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/can-we-stop-americas-surveillance-state/5382616

Facecrook: NSA storing your facial web images, millions intercepted daily

The National Security Agency is collecting millions of images of people through its international surveillance network to be implemented in a number of other facial recognition programs, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

Read Snowden’s comments on 9/11 that NBC didn’t broadcast

Thanks to rapid advances being made in the field of facial recognition technology, the NSA is much better equipped to “exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, video conferences and other communications,” according to an article in the New York Times, co-written by Laura Poitras, who, together with Glen Greenwald, are the only two journalists to have received the leaked NSA documents.

The NSA has the capacity to intercept “millions of images per day,” as well as some 55,000 “facial recognition quality images.” This latest milestone in US intelligence gathering, which goes a long way to putting the final touches on the much-feared Orwellian nightmare, gives the US spy agency “tremendous untapped potential,” according to the 2011 documents.

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information” that can help “implement precision targeting,” noted a document dated 2010.

Such comments are bound to spark fears that the harvesting of facial images, much like the collection of oral and written communications, will snag innocent Americans in the vast intelligence net.

The latest revelations to be gleaned from Snowden’s stash of top-secret documents prove the NSA is not just interested in collecting the meta-data from global communications, but also the images that put a face on potential terrorists and other would-be adversaries of the American government.

The NSA is unique in its ability to match images with huge troves of private communications.

“We would not be doing our job if we didn’t seek ways to continuously improve the precision of signals intelligence activities — aiming to counteract the efforts of valid foreign intelligence targets to disguise themselves or conceal plans to harm the United States and its allies,” said Vanee M. Vines, the agency spokeswoman.

ID databases out of the game?
Since most people have a number of photographs taken of themselves for identification purposes, the question arises as to how much reach the NSA has in acquiring peoples’ facial images.

According to Vines, the NSA does not access driver’s licenses or passport photos of Americans, but refused to say whether the agency had access to the State Department’s photo archive of foreign visa applicants. She also declined to say whether the spy agency collected photographs of Americans from social media sources, like Facebook and Instagram, which would not be a difficult task considering that millions of people willingly post ‘selfies’ to the web.

Moreover, the report claimed that one of the agency’s most intense efforts to acquire facial images is through a program dubbed Wellspring, which “strips out images from emails and other communications, and displays those that might contain passport images.”

read on:   http://rt.com/usa/162868-nsa-snowden-social-facial/

Love Always
mudra

UK and US Intelligence Hack Web Encryption Technology

September 6, 2013

British and American intelligence agencies are able to break through the encryption technology used to protect internet users' emails, online banking, or medical details from being hacked and access reams of private information.

The latest cache of documents from US whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals that the National Security Agency in the US and the UK's GCHQ have developed a range of methods to circumvent encryption used by companies including Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

They include using supercomputers to break down the encryption codes, negotiating with authorities that set the standards for encryption programmers worldwide, the inclusion of inbuilt vulnerabilites to exploit, and entering top secret agreements with web companies to gain access to messages before they are encrypted.

Among the aims of the programme is to further the efforts to break the encryption for the new wave of 4G phones.

Codenamed Bullrun after the American Civil War battle, the programme cost the NSA an estimated $250m (£160m) this year, dwarfing the £20m per annum spent on the Prism web surveillance programme.

Its British counterpart is codenamed Edgehill after the first major engagement of the English Civil War.

A document outlines the aims of the project: "Project Bullrun deals with NSA's abilities to defeat the encryption used in specific network communication technologies. Bullrun involves multiple sources, all of which are extremely sensitive."

According to one memo, GCHQ officials were "gobsmacked" when they learnt of the extent of the programme's capabilities.

The latest trove of 50,000 documents were published jointly by the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica. Experts warned that the revelation risked undermining the trust on which internet use is built.

"Cryptography forms the basis for trust online," Bruce Schneier, an encryption specialist and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Centre for Internet and Society, told the Guardian.

"By deliberately undermining online security in a shortsighted effort to eavesdrop, the NSA is undermining the very fabric of the internet."

read on: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nsa-encryption-web-edward-snowden-504256

Love Always
mudra

Web of Deceit: Britain’s Stealth Internet Censorship Programme
By Matthew Butler
June 08, 2014
consciousreporter.com

As a curtain of censorship falls over the UK internet, this special investigation uncovers the deception and elite players behind the murky system of corporate web filters, which block far more than pornography.

The UK’s sweeping internet censorship plans are tamping up, with the country’s main internet service providers (ISPs), who service 95% of UK households, rolling out ‘default’ web filters to meet the government’s call for an internet clampdown.

State-sanctioned internet filtering on this scale, often condemned when carried out by authoritarian regimes, is unparalleled in “free” western countries and sets a dangerous precedent. The way this policy has been introduced, sold and now implemented has been misleading and deceptive all along. Last year, Prime Minister David Cameron led the public to believe this is all about blocking pornography to stop the “corruption of childhood”, but it’s apparent the well-worn “think of the children” argument was just Trojan horse propaganda to create a moral pretext for introducing extensive censorship infrastructure.

While proponents point out people can still ask their ISPs to turn the filters off, the problem is the filters block more than people are led to believe and operate without transparency. They already target much more than pornography, and their reach will likely creep as time goes on. This is already happening. And who ultimately decides what these unaccountable, shadowy corporate web filters block is shrouded in mystery.

There was a long, well-orchestrated campaign to put these filters in place. A moral panic about online pornography was carefully manufactured to pave the way years before this occurred. I hope to unravel how this happened, and who is involved. A look at the players and history leading up to the policy announcement reveals the influence of various elite powerbrokers in government, media, international business, and religious lobby groups.

I am concerned that behind these machinations is a hidden agenda that could see swathes of alternative websites blacked-out in a so-called free country, and that “alternative thought” is bound to be targeted. I am also concerned that the UK may just be the beginning. At this juncture it is important to reflect on how this policy arose, and where it is headed, to understand the serious ramifications for Britain and potentially the world.

So to get a full picture of what is going on here, let’s take a look at how this censorship system works, then we’ll examine the elite powerbrokers pushing these plans, and the far-reaching implications of their agenda.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/web-of-deceit-britains-stealth-internet-censorship-program/5386142

Police State America: Will the US Supreme Court Apply Cell Phone Privacy to NSA Metadata Collection?
By Marjorie Cohn
June 30, 2014

In one of the most significant Fourth Amendment rulings ever handed down by the Supreme Court, all nine justices agreed in an opinion involving two companion cases, Riley v. California [PDF] and United States v. Wurie, that police generally need a warrant before reading data on the cell phone of an arrestee. This decision may well presage how the court will rule on the constitutionality of the National Security Agency (NSA) metadata collection program when that issue inevitably comes before it.

Warrants Needed to Search Cell Phone Data
There has always been a preference for search warrants when the police conduct a Fourth Amendment search or seizure. But, over the years, the court has carved out certain exceptions to the warrant requirement, including the search incident to a lawful arrest. The 1969 case of Chimel v. California defined the parameters of this exception. Upon a lawful arrest, police can search the person of the arrestee and areas within his immediate control from which he could secure a weapon or destroy evidence. Four years later, in United States v. Robinson, the court confirmed that the search incident to a lawful arrest is a bright-line rule. These types of searches will not be analyzed on a case-by-case basis. If the arrest is lawful, a search incident to it needs no further justification. It does not matter whether the officer is concerned in a given case that the arrestee might be armed or destroy evidence.

In Riley/Wurie, the court declined to apply the search incident to a lawful arrest exception to searches of data contained on an arrestee’s cell phone. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court that the dual rationales for applying the exception to the search of physical objects — protecting officers and preventing destruction of evidence — do not apply to the digital content on cell phones: “There are no comparable risks when the search is of digital data.”

Moreover, “[m]odern cell phones, as a category,” Roberts noted, “implicate privacy concerns far beyond those implicated by the search of a cigarette pack, a wallet, or a purse.” Responding to the government’s assertion that a search of cell phone data is “materially indistinguishable” from searches of physical items, Roberts quipped, “That is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.” Indeed, Roberts observed, the search of a cell phone would typically provide the government with even more personal information than the search of a home, an area that has traditionally been given the strongest privacy protection. Modern cell phones, Roberts wrote, “are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy.” Roberts was referring to the ubiquitous presence of cell phones appended to our ears as we walk down the street.

But the court held that while a warrant is usually required to search data on an arrestee’s cell phone, officers could rely on the exigent circumstances exception in appropriate cases. For example, when a suspect is texting an accomplice who is preparing to detonate a bomb, or a child abductor may have information about the child’s location on his cell phone, or circumstances suggest the phone will be the target of an imminent attempt to erase the data on it, police may dispense with a search warrant.

CONTINUE: http://www.globalresearch.ca/police-state-america-will-the-us-supreme-court-apply-cell-phone-privacy-to-nsa-metadata-collection/5389211