Edward Snowden

The Most Evil and Disturbing NSA Spy Practices To-Date Have Just Been Revealed

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In some cases the NSA has masqueraded as a fake Facebook server, using the social media site as a launching pad to infect a target’s computer and exfiltrate files from a hard drive. In others, it has sent out spam emails laced with the malware, which can be tailored to covertly record audio from a computer’s microphone and take snapshots with its webcam. The hacking systems have also enabled the NSA to launch cyberattacks by corrupting and disrupting file downloads or denying access to websites.

The man-in-the-middle tactic can be used, for instance, to covertly change the content of a message as it is being sent between two people, without either knowing that any change has been made by a third party.

– From Glenn Greenwald’s latest article: How the NSA Plans to Infect Millions of Computers with Malware

The latest piece from Greenwald and company on the unconstitutional spy practices of the NSA may represent the most dangerous and disturbing revelations yet. It’s hard for shadiness at the NSA to surprise me these days, but there was only one word that kept repeating over and over in my head as I read this: EVIL.

As a quick aside, Greenwald points out in the quote above how spam emails are used by the NSA to bait you into clicking dangerous links. This is a timely revelation considering I received one such email yesterday from a friend of mine. The email was sent to a wide list of let’s say “liberty-minded people” and webmasters associated with very popular sites. The link seemed shady so I texted him to ask if he had sent it. He hadn’t.

Earlier this week, during a talk at SXSW, Edward Snowden pleaded with people to use encryption. While he admitted if the NSA targeted you individually they could almost certainly “own your computer,” he stated that if people use encryption on a massive scale it makes the NSA’s attempts to monitor everyone at the same time much more difficult.

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Yes the Government is Spying on You Through Your Webcam – Another “Conspiracy Theory” Proven True

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I still remember many years ago in response to becoming aware of the possibility that my computer webcam could be accessed remotely I decided to put a piece of duct tape over the camera. I also remember the look on some of my friends’ faces upon seeing this. They thought I was nuts. It wasn’t even a conversation I was comfortable having since the idea that the government or NSA could or would peep on innocent Americans through their webcams was beyond preposterous for the vast majority of people

This topic is not exactly new, and I addressed it last April in my piece: A Look into the Malware the FBI Uses to Spy Through Webcams.

Now, thanks to Edward Snowden, we know more. Much, much more.

From the Guardian:

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.

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U.S. Plunges to #46 in World Press Freedom Index, Below Romania and Just Above Haiti

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One of my most popular posts of 2013 highlighted the decline of America’s once large and enviable middle class. It was titled: How Does America’s Middle Class Rank Globally? #27, and it helped to dispel many myths Americans (particularly the mainstream propaganda media) continue to tell to themselves.

As you might expect, the economic decline of a nation into rule by a handful of corrupt oligarchs will have many other negative repercussions. One of these is a loss of civil rights and freedoms that many of us have taken for granted. Reporters Without Borders puts out their Press Freedom Index every year, and the 2014 ranking came out today. It was not a good showing for the USSA. Specifically, the U.S. registered one of the steepest falls of all nations, down 13 slots to the #46 position. As the screen shot shows, just above Haiti and just below Romania.

Screen Shot 2014-02-12 at 9.39.13 AM

More coverage from the AFP:

Paris (AFP) – Conflicts continued to weigh heavily on the media last year but press freedom was also under increasing threat from abuses by democracies like the United States, Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.

In its annual World Press Freedom Index, the Paris-based media rights watchdog warned of the “growing threat worldwide” from the “tendency to interpret national security needs in an overly broad and abusive manner”.

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How the NSA Paid Security Firm $10 Million to Promote Flawed Encryption

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Stories documenting the NSA’s intentional attempt to weaken encryption standards have been floating around for months now, but Reuters put out a story Friday that documents just how far the out of control agency has gone to weaken security for hundreds of millions of computer users.

RSA has been a leader in cryptography ever since it revolutionized the field after its genesis in the 1970s from three MIT professors. The company actually provided a lot of successful pushback against the NSA and the Clinton Administration’s push to introduce the Clipper Chip in the 1990’s, but has completely sold out in recent years as it became more corporatized and many of the technology leaders left. If it is true that the only received $10 million from the NSA, they sold out the American public very cheaply. RSA is now owned by EMC

From Reuters:

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a “back door” in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

The earlier disclosures of RSA’s entanglement with the NSA already had shocked some in the close-knit world of computer security experts. The company had a long history of championing privacy and security, and it played a leading role in blocking a 1990s effort by the NSA to require a special chip to enable spying on a wide range of computer and communications products.

Started by MIT professors in the 1970s and led for years by ex-Marine Jim Bidzos, RSA and its core algorithm were both named for the last initials of the three founders, who revolutionized cryptography. Little known to the public, RSA’s encryption tools have been licensed by most large technology companies, which in turn use them to protect computers used by hundreds of millions of people.

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CNN Claims “Americans Want Security Over Freedom”

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Wow, this is straight up insane propaganda at the highest level. He is not even trying to hide the message. CNN’s Jake Tapper just comes out and says it: I think the American people, honestly, want security over freedom. – Jake Tapper Compare that to let’s say, Benjamin Franklin: Any society that would give up a … Read more

Official at the NSA States: “I Have Some Reforms for the First Amendment”

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Here’s an article by Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University and a contributing editor to Foreign Policy. He recently spent a day at the NSA’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. As you might expect, some interesting tidbits came from the mouths of some of these control-freak statists. One truly unenlightened official seemed … Read more

Video of the Day: “The NSA is Coming to Town”

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Just in time for the holidays, this excellent video spoof of the NSA has emerged. At the end of the day, humor is always one of the most effective tools of resistance. Remember the wise and timeless words of John Lennon: When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s … Read more

Glenn Greenwald: “The Most Shocking Stories Have Not Been Published”…Is This Why He Left The Guardian?

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Just yesterday, I was taken aback by an article in Time magazine in which Glenn Greenwald was quoted as saying: The archives are so complex and so deep and so shocking, that I think the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish. The above statement … Read more

The Only Telecom CEO to Refuse NSA Spy Demands Has Been Released from Jail

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Here’s a really interesting story that many people may not be familiar with. By now, we all know that every single major telecom CEO bent over submissively the minute the NSA came calling for data. Except one. A forgotten man in the entire NSA spy scandal is Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest, who actually refused to participate in the NSA’s illegal activities when they first propositioned him in 2001. Several years later, he was convicted of insider trading.

Perhaps I’m just a conspiracy theorist, but I find it quite coincidental that a country which lets Jon Corzine off the hook, a country where not a single CEO or executive of a financial institution was indicted with regard to the 2008 crisis, a country where James Clapper lies to Congress about the NSA and face zero repercussions; that in such a country the only major corporate CEO to go to jail for financial crimes is the one that refused to play ball with the NSA.

Well it seems the man himself shares such sentiments, and he continues to express them. Mr Nacchio was released from his four and a half year sentence on September 20th. More from the Washington Post:

Just one major telecommunications company refused to participate in a legally dubious NSA surveillance program in 2001. A few years later, its CEO was indicted by federal prosecutors. He was convicted, served four and a half years of his sentence and was released this month.

Prosecutors claim Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was guilty of insider trading, and that his prosecution had nothing to do with his refusal to allow spying on his customers without the permission of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But to this day, Nacchio insists that his prosecution was retaliation for refusing to break the law on the NSA’s behalf.

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This is What Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia Thinks About Your Privacy Rights…

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Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spoke yesterday at the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s (NVTC) Titans breakfast gathering in McLean, Virginia. He discussed the fact that prior to a Supreme Court decision in 1967, there were no constitutional prohibitions on wiretaps because conversations were not explicitly granted privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment. He goes on to imply that he thinks it was better before such privacy rights existed. According to the AP:

Scalia said that before the court’s 1967 opinion on wiretapping, the high court held the view that there were no constitutional prohibitions on wiretaps because conversations were not explicitly granted privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against Americans against unreasonable search and seizure of “their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

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