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Showing posts with label Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) Britain. Show all posts

Saturday 2 November 2013

NSA secretly hacks, intercepts Google, Yahoo daily

The United States’ National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers worldwide. That’s according to documents released by former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, The Washington Post reports.

Video: NSA intercepts Google, Yahoo traffic overseas report | The National
 http://shar.es/IxZIJ



According to the documents, the agency and its British counterpart GCHQ, through a project called MUSCULAR, collected data stored on Google and Yahoo servers. That allowed both governments access to hundreds of millions of user accounts from individuals worldwide.

“From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants,” RT cites the Post’s Barton Gellman and Ashkan Soltani.

A January 9th document says that in the preceding 30 days, collectors had processed over 181 million pieces of information, including both metadata and the actual contents of communications.

The government can already request information from phone or data through the FISA Amendments Act but this data collection would ostensibly take place without Google and Yahoo even being aware of it.

When you send email or store files with an internet company, that data is regularly shared among servers around the world, in order to ensure quick access to your information from wherever you happen to be. Google and Yahoo run customized private networks to shuttle that information around, passing between and within countries, as the Post indicates in a graphic. To move that information, the companies use fiber optic connections, light-speed networks running over thin glass cables. According to the Post, it’s those connections that the NSA is able to monitor. None of Yahoo’s inter-server traffic is encrypted. Not all of Google’s is either.

The MUSCULAR program, according to Wednesday’s leak, involves a process in which the NSA and GCHQ intercept communications overseas, where lax restrictions and oversight allow the agencies access to intelligence with ease.

“NSA documents about the effort refer directly to ‘full take,’ ‘bulk access’ and ‘high volume’ operations on Yahoo and Google networks,” the Post reported. “Such large-scale collection of Internet content would be illegal in the United States, but the operations take place overseas, where the NSA is allowed to presume that anyone using a foreign data link is a foreigner”.

The Post points out that company staffers were surprised and angry to hear that their their networks had been compromised. Google said that it was “troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers”.

The report comes amid a storm of protest about NSA surveillance both at home and overseas of phone and Internet communications.

On Tuesday, US officials said reports that American spy agencies snooped on millions of Europeans were false.

Alexander told lawmakers that in many cases European spy agencies had turned over phone records and shared them with US intelligence.

Related posts:

1. USA Spying, the Super-Snooper ! 
2. Abusing intelligence is stupid
3. Upset over US cyber spying!
4.US Spy Snowden Says US Hacking China Since 2009 
5.US building new spy wing to focus on Asia 

Thursday 31 October 2013

USA Spying, the Super-Snooper !


The United States is running clandestine communications intelligence facilities at its embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Yangon.

The country is doing so by tapping telephones and monitoring communications networks from electronic surveillance facilities in US embassies and consulates across east and south-east Asia, according to information disclosed by intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden.A top secret map dated August 13, 2010 lists nearly a hundred surveillance facilities worldwide, the map however, shows no such facilities are located in Australia, New Zealand, Britain, Japan and Singapore – the US’s closest allies.

Snoopy the Snooper

According to the map published by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine today, a joint Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) – National Security Agency (NSA) group known as ” Special Collection Service” conducts the sweeping surveillance operation, as well as clandestine operations against specific intelligence targets.The map, which was initially published in full on Der Spiegel‘s website but subsequently replaced with a censored version, lists Special Collection Service facilities at 90 locations worldwide, including 74 manned facilities, 14 remotely operated facilities and two technical support centres.

The map confirms the global reach of US signals intelligence operations with special collection facilities located in most major capitals on every continent.Read the full story here


By Hanin Fadiyah@www.harakahdaily.com

Related posts:
1. Abusing intelligence is stupid
2. Upset over US cyber spying!
3.US Spy Snowden Says US Hacking China Since 2009 
4.US building new spy wing to focus on Asia 

Sunday 29 September 2013

Abusing intelligence is stupid


Governments that deliberately pervert their spy agencies are shooting themselves in the head.

ALL countries operate spy agencies, so some of their practices and experiences are universal.

Governments deem intelligence services to be useful, even necessary, in evaluating and anticipating events – so they are earnestly nurtured and cultivated. However, whether and how far these services actually contribute to policymaking depends on a multitude of variable factors.

The capacity of a “secret service” derives from the scale of its available resources – human, financial, technical, etc.

The richer a country the greater the means for developing its intelligence service, and the more powerful a country the greater its need or purpose for doing so.

Yet that need not mean that a richer or more powerful country would have a more competent intelligence service.

Unlike conventional institutions such as the armed forces, the critical criteria cannot be the strength of numbers or the expanse of field coverage.

Since the quality of information handled is key, spy agencies perform like a scalpel where other security institutions act like meat cleavers.

At the same time, all of them need to be coordinated and concerted through optimised complementarity.

Conceptually, the intelligence services are highly professional institutions performing specialised tasks in the national interest.

In discharging their duties, they must observe laws and conventions that guide and limit their clandestine activities.

In practice, however, they are often politicised in the perceived interests of specific administrations.

This compromises their credibility, debases their status and subverts their effectiveness.

Another universal experience, regardless of a country’s developed or developing status, is that the intelligence services are boosted in times of great national distress.

Trying times are also the best times to stretch and test their capacities.

Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), for example, originated in the Secret Service Bureau established in 1909.

This was a joint effort of the War Office and the Admiralty, with a focus on Imperial Germany.

The impetus for the service developed with the exigencies of two world wars.

In the United States, the demands of wartime intelligence in the early 1940s resulted in the creation of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) to coordinate information streams from the armed forces.

The OSS would later morph into the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), technically the first US spy agency.

The United States until then did not have a centralised intelligence agency, so the CIA emerged to fill the gap.

As it was with the SIS, the existence of the CIA was not officially acknowledged until decades later. But what began as a fledgling effort requiring British inputs soon ballooned into a US intelligence community comprising no less than 16 spy agencies.

Intelligence agencies tend to have a civilian (police) or military character depending on the needs of the state at the time. Nonetheless, their constant is the primary purpose of protecting the state.

The early Soviet Union felt it needed to guard against counter-revolution, and so established the Cheka secret police under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The Cheka then underwent several transformations to become the NKVD, which in turn experienced further transformations to become the KGB of Cold War lore, in the process picking up military elements in the world wars.

The Malayan Emergency (1948-60) was a domestic insurgency that exercised the resources of the police force.

The police department that focused on vital intelligence gathering was the Special Branch, evolving under British tutelage during the colonial period and developing further upon Malayan independence.

Currently, all national intelligence agencies combine human (Humint) and signals (Sigint, or telecommunications interceptions) intelligence.

The latter comprises communications between individuals (Comint) and electronic intelligence (electronic eavesdropping, or Elint) that favour countries with bigger budgets because of the costs incurred in technology and expertise.

However, while a common strength lies in surveillance or information-gathering, analysis and interpretation of the information so gathered often fail to keep pace.

Where analytical deficits occur, political interests often exploit these spaces to pervert the course of intelligence gathering.

At the same time, the quality of intelligence is sometimes patchy where official links are weak.

Britain’s SIS was thus handicapped in Germany during the First World War, just as US intelligence services are now hampered in Iran and Syria as they were in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

The problem is compounded when governments refuse to acknowledge their inadequacies and prefer to give their own dubious capacities the benefit of the doubt.

The mistake often lies in equating overwhelming military superiority with operational success requiring sound intelligence.

And so regime change in Iraq was described as a “cakewalk” and a “slam dunk”, with unanticipated difficulties emerging once the plan was operationalised.

A similar development almost occurred in Syria upon underestimating President Bashar al-Assad’s effective control.

Hyper-intelligence combines the prowess of two or more ally countries’ intelligence services, taking spying to a whole new level.

The US-British “special relationship” is one such example, only that it is more than bilateral collaboration.

What began as a post-war agreement between London and Washington in 1946 soon encompassed the other English-speaking countries of Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the UKUSA (United Kingdom – United States of America) Agreement.

Focusing on but not limited to Sigint, this “Five Eyes” pact formalises the sharing of intelligence on other countries that any of the five spies upon.

Earlier this month, a leak by former US intelligence operative Edward Snowden revealed that the UKUSA Agreement goes further than these five Western countries. It effectively and routinely includes Israel as well.

The National Security Agency (NSA) reputedly runs the most extensive intelligence gathering operation for the United States.

Its global reach is shared with the largest unit in the Israel Defense Force, the NSA-equivalent Unit 8200 (or ISNU, the Israeli Sigint National Unit), in unfiltered form.

That means anything and everything that the United States and/or the other “Five Eyes” countries knows about the rest of the world from spying are known by Israel as well.

It explains Washington’s determination to “get Snowden” – not only are the leaks embarrassing, they discourage other countries from engaging the United States in security cooperation.

The other problem is no less serious: politicisation, which corrupts and perverts otherwise professional and competent intelligence services.

This amounts to blowback, a CIA-originated term meaning self-inflicted policy injury.

It (in)famously occurred when the US-British axis that invaded Iraq built its rationale on the lie that Saddam had stockpiled “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs) – even when whatever little intelligence there was had indicated that Iraq had dismantled WMD facilities years before.

It happened again when Washington insisted that Assad was responsible for chemical weapons attacks in civilian areas.

Not only had Russian intelligence and UN inspectors found anti-Assad rebels culpable instead, but both German and Israeli intelligence had privately cleared Assad of those charges.

The inside information available to diplomats had cast such doubt on the US allegations that US-friendly countries such as Singapore refused to accept Washington’s version at the UN.

Politics had dictated that the United States stick with its allegations, just as politics had dissuaded Israeli policymakers from correcting misinterpretations of intelligence data wrongly blaming Assad.

Fiddling with intelligence for some passing gratification such as attacking an adversary may seem tempting, but dumbing down vital strategic data is a dangerous and costly exercise. It is also an act of singular and self-defeating stupidity.

Contributed by  Behind The Headlines: Bunn Nagara
> Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.
>The views expressed are entirely the writer's own.

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