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Author Topic: they know what you are doing  (Read 273820 times)

Offline ArMaP

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #270 on: August 21, 2013, 05:48:59 pm »
She meant THIS

would allow Deer Trail residents to  shoot down drones in exchange for a $100 cash reward.

 ::)
That's two weeks old news. :)

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #271 on: August 22, 2013, 05:42:07 am »

as i read this i can hear ozzie in my head singin
goin down the road in a crazy train...



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/21/nsa-lawsuit_n_3792485.html

Lawsuit Prompts Release Of Some NSA Surveillance Documents


By KIMBERLY DOZIER and STEPHEN BRAUN 08/22/13 03:12 AM ET EDT 



WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has given up more of its surveillance secrets, acknowledging that it was ordered to stop scooping up thousands of Internet communications from Americans with no connection to terrorism – a practice it says was an unintended consequence when it gathered bundles of Internet traffic connected to terror suspects.

One of the documents that intelligence officials released Wednesday came because a court ordered the National Security Agency to do so. But it's also part of the administration's response to the leaks by analyst-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden, who revealed that the NSA's spying programs went further and gathered millions more communications than most Americans realized.

The NSA declassified three secret court opinions showing how it revealed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that one of its surveillance programs may have collected and stored as many as 56,000 emails and other communications by ordinary Americans annually over three years. The court ruled the NSA actions unconstitutional and ordered the agency to fix the problem, which it did by creating new technology to filter out buckets of data most likely to contain U.S. emails, and then limit the access to that data.

The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, released the information Wednesday "in the interest of increased transparency," and as directed by President Barack Obama in June, according to a statement accompanying the online documents.

But it wasn't until the Electronic Freedom Foundation, an Internet civil liberties group that sued for the release of one of the documents, disclosed the court order that Obama administration officials also acknowledged that the release was prodded by the group's 2012 lawsuit.

The court opinions show that when the NSA reported its inadvertent gathering of American-based Internet traffic in September 2011, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered the agency to find ways to limit what it collects and how long it keeps the material.

In an 85-page declassified FISA court ruling from October 2011, U.S. District Judge James D. Bates rebuked government lawyers for repeatedly misrepresenting the operations of the NSA's surveillance programs.

Bates wrote that the NSA had advised the court that "the volume and nature of the information it had been collecting is fundamentally different than what the court had been led to believe," and went on to say the court must consider "whether targeting and minimization procedures comport with the Fourth Amendment" prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.

"This court is troubled that the government's revelations regarding NSA's acquisition of Internet transactions mark the third instance in less than three years in which the government has disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program," Bates added in a footnoted passage that had portions heavily blacked out.

Bates also complained that the government's submissions make clear that the NSA was gathering Internet data years before it was authorized by the USA Patriot Act's Section 702 in 2008.

The NSA had moved to revise its Internet surveillance in an effort to separate out domestic data from its foreign targeted metadata – which includes email addresses and subject lines. But in his October 2011 ruling, Bates said the government's "upstream" collection of data – taken from internal U.S. data sources – was unconstitutional.

Three senior U.S. intelligence officials said Wednesday that national security officials realized the extent of the NSA's inadvertent collection of Americans' data from fiber optic cables in September 2011. One of the officials said the problem became apparent during internal discussions between the NSA and Justice Department officials about the program's technical operation.

The problem, according to the officials, was that the top secret Internet-sweeping operation, which was targeting metadata contained in the emails of foreign users, was also amassing thousands of emails that were bundled up with the targeted materials. Because many web mail services use such bundled transmissions, the official said, it was impossible to collect the targeted materials without also sweeping up data from innocent domestic U.S. users.

Officials said that when they realized they had an American communication, the communication was destroyed. But it was not clear how they determined to whom an email belonged and whether any NSA analyst had actually read the content of the email. The officials said the bulk of the information was never accessed or analyzed.

As soon as the extent of the problem became clear, the officials said, the Obama administration provided classified briefings to both Senate and House intelligence committees within days. At the same time, officials also informed the FISA court, which later issued the three 2011 rulings released Wednesday – with sections blacked out – as part of the government's latest disclosure of documents.

The officials briefed reporters on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so by name.

The documents were declassified to help the Obama administration explain some of the most recent disclosures made by The Washington Post after it published classified documents provided by Snowden, the former NSA systems analyst.

But the FISA court's classified rulings have also been at issue in a year-old lawsuit filed against the government by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The release Wednesday of the FISA opinion, two other 2011 rulings and a secret "white paper" on the NSA's surveillance came less than two weeks after a federal judge in Washington gave government lawyers a time extension in order to decide which materials to declassify. The EFF had been pressing for a summary judgment that would have compelled the government to release the secret FISA rulings, and the government's most recent extension expired Wednesday, the day it released the once-secret FISA court rulings.

"This was all released in response to the court's orders," said Mark Rumold, an EFF attorney involved in the litigation.

A senior administration official acknowledged Wednesday that some of the documents released were in response to the lawsuit, while others were released voluntarily. The official insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the release with a reporter by name.

The documents were posted later in the day on a new website that went live Wednesday afternoon. The front page of the site said it was "created at the direction of the president of the United States (and) provides immediate, ongoing and direct access to factual information related to the lawful foreign surveillance activities carried out by the U.S. intelligence community."

These interceptions of innocent Americans' communications were happening when the NSA accessed Internet information "upstream," meaning off fiber optic cables or other channels where Internet traffic traverses the U.S. telecommunications system.

The NSA disclosed that it gathers some 250 million Internet communications each year, with some 9 percent from these "upstream" channels, amounting to 20 million to 25 million emails a year. The agency used statistical analysis to estimate that of those, possibly as many as 56,000 Internet communications collected were sent by Americans or people in the U.S. with no connection to terrorism.

Under court order, the NSA resolved the problem by creating new ways to detect when emails by people within the U.S. were being intercepted and separated those batches of communications. It also developed new ways to limit how that data could be accessed or used. The agency also agreed to only keep these bundled communications for possible later analysis for a two-year period, instead of the usual five-year retention period.

The agency also, under court order, destroyed all the bundled data gathered between 2008, when the FISA court first authorized the collection under Section 702 of the Patriot Act, and 2011, when the new procedures were put in place.

The court signed off on the new procedures.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the program is specifically to gather foreign intelligence, not spy on Americans.

"The reason that we're talking about it right now is because there are very strict compliance standards in place at the NSA that monitor for compliance issues, that tabulate them, that document them and that put in place measures to correct them when they occur," Earnest said.

___

Documents available at: http://icontherecord.tumblr.com



Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Josh Lederman, Richard Lardner and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.
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sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #272 on: August 22, 2013, 02:30:18 pm »


another country joins the list

http://rt.com/news/new-zealand-pass-spy-law-777/

'RIP privacy': New Zealand govt passes NSA-style snooping bill

Published time: August 21, 2013 07:49
Edited time: August 22, 2013 11:07

New Zealand has passed a hotly-disputed bill that radically expands the powers of its spying agency. The legislation was passed 61 votes to 59 in a move that was slammed by the opposition as a death knell for privacy rights in New Zealand.

The new amendment bill gives the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) – New Zealand’s version of the NSA – powers to support the New Zealand police, Defense Force and the Security Intelligence Service.

Opposition to the legislation has voiced concerns it will open the door to the NSA-style monitoring of New Zealand citizens in violation of their rights. A recent survey by Fairfax Media-Ipsos found that three quarters of New Zealand’s population is “concerned by the law.”

Megauploads founder Kim Dotcom, who has been a vocal critic of the bill, tweeted his condemnation after the legislation went through parliament.

However, Kiwi Prime Minister John Key argues otherwise. In an emphatic defense of the amendment in parliament on Wednesday Key argued it would not give the GCSB sweeping powers to spy.


He said he regretted the fact that the legislation had caused agitation and alarm among Kiwis and attributed it to “conspiracy” and “misinformation” propagated by the opposition. In addition, Key insisted the amendment was necessary because New Zealand is “vulnerable to cyber-threats.”

"There will be times where a serious cyber intrusion is detected against a New Zealander and the GCSB will then need to look at content - that's why the law allows that. But that should be the end point, not the starting point," he said.


Opposition to the bill called its passing through Parliament “a sad day” for New Zealand. Labor leader David Shearer said that nothing had been done to reassure New Zealanders that their rights would be protected.

"This is a sad day, we are passing legislation that is ad hoc, that is Mickey Mouse, that you have to have a third reading of to explain exactly what the Bill will do,” said Shearer.

The legislation has triggered mass debate in New Zealand with thousands rallying against it in a mass protest in July. Opposition to the amendment was headed by MegaUploads founder Kim Dotcom who was a victim of GCSB illegal spying.

"But the overreach, the lack of independent oversight, and the connection to the Five Eyes spy cloud which includes all communications of all New Zealanders are turning this new law into a serious threat to our basic human right to privacy," Mr. Dotcom said.

A New Zealand court ruled that the GCSB overstepped the mark when it spied on the internet tycoon in the run up to the illegal raid on his Auckland mansion in January 2012.





Offline zorgon

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #273 on: August 22, 2013, 03:41:26 pm »
Posted on Pegasus... some odd years ago :P

GCSB Waihopai Echelon Station
New Zealand
Code Name: Flintlock
-41° 34' 36.00", +173° 44' 20.00"



"Spy Valley" by Ian Brodie Google Earth community


New Zealand's Government Communications Security Bureau operates what it describes as a satellite communications monitoring facility in the Waihopai Valley. First announced in 1987, the facility has been identified by MP Keith Locke as part of ECHELON, the worldwide network of signals interception facilities run by the UKUSA consortium of intelligence agencies (which shares global electronic and signals intelligence among the Intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ).

http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/ECHELON_Waihopai_NZ.html

Offline zorgon

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #274 on: August 23, 2013, 12:11:50 pm »
Indian Springs Drone Control (Nellis Range near area 51)

Drone operators needed :D  There are not enough operators available for the current drone population...

This is a typicla drone control station



Capt. Catherine Platt...



Ever wonder just what they can see? Have you ever watched NCIS and seen the miracles they do pulling up satellite data instantly?

Well with the drones they will be storing the data indefinitely and can call it up days ago at a touch of a finger...

Here is a declassified video showing the capabilities taken over Quantico.... 

The guy talking about it seems way to zealous to record everything we do though....

[youtube]QGxNyaXfJsA[/youtube]

Offline stealthyaroura

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #275 on: August 23, 2013, 12:38:16 pm »


Capt. Catherine Platt...



That's one odd looking Kitchen?
LULZ :P
Nikola Tesla humanitarian / Genius.
never forget this great man who gave so much
& asked for nothing but to let electricity be free for all.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #276 on: August 25, 2013, 07:12:06 am »

you guys are so easily distracted.. ;D ;)


well if you’re going to be stealing info ...this seems to be the way to do it.. don’t leave any finger prints and they don’t know what you have taken till you reveal it...so there’s no proof that you took anything..what a concept




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/24/edward-snowden-electronic-tracks_n_3809491.html

Edward Snowden Covered Electronic Tracks, Government Officials Suspect
By ADAM GOLDMAN and KIMBERLY DOZIER 08/24/13 09:41 AM ET EDT 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials leaker Edward Snowden took from the National Security Agency have been frustrated by Snowden's sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail by deleting or bypassing electronic logs, government officials told The Associated Press. Such logs would have showed what information Snowden viewed or downloaded.

The government's forensic investigation is wrestling with Snowden's apparent ability to defeat safeguards established to monitor and deter people looking at information without proper permission, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive developments publicly.

The disclosure undermines the Obama administration's assurances to Congress and the public that the NSA surveillance programs can't be abused because its spying systems are so aggressively monitored and audited for oversight purposes: If Snowden could defeat the NSA's own tripwires and internal burglar alarms, how many other employees or contractors could do the same?

In July, nearly two months after Snowden's earliest disclosures, NSA Director Keith Alexander declined to say whether he had a good idea of what Snowden had downloaded or how many NSA files Snowden had taken with him, noting an ongoing criminal investigation.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the AP that Alexander "had a sense of what documents and information had been taken," but "he did not say the comprehensive investigation had been completed." Vines would not say whether Snowden had found a way to view and download the documents he took without the NSA knowing.

In defending the NSA surveillance programs that Snowden revealed, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told Congress last month that the administration effectively monitors the activities of employees using them.

"This program goes under careful audit," Cole said. "Everything that is done under it is documented and reviewed before the decision is made and reviewed again after these decisions are made to make sure that nobody has done the things that you're concerned about happening."

The disclosure of Snowden's hacking prowess inside the NSA also could dramatically increase the perceived value of his knowledge to foreign governments, which would presumably be eager to learn any counter-detection techniques that could be exploited against U.S. government networks.

It also helps explain the recent seizure in Britain of digital files belonging to David Miranda – the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald – in an effort to help quantify Snowden's leak of classified material to the Guardian newspaper. Authorities there stopped Miranda last weekend as he changed planes at Heathrow Airport while returning home to Brazil from Germany, where Miranda had met with Laura Poitras, a U.S. filmmaker who has worked with Greenwald on the NSA story.

Snowden, a former U.S. intelligence contractor, was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii before leaking classified documents to the Guardian and The Washington Post. As a system administrator, Snowden had the ability to move around data and had access to thumb drives that would have allowed him to transfer information to computers outside the NSA's secure system, Alexander has said.

In his job, Snowden purloined many files, including ones that detailed the U.S. government's programs to collect the metadata of phone calls of U.S. citizens and copy Internet traffic as it enters and leaves the U.S., then routes it to the NSA for analysis.

Officials have said Snowden had access to many documents but didn't know necessarily how the programs functioned. He dipped into compartmentalized files as systems administrator and took what he wanted. He managed to do so for months without getting caught. In May, he flew to Hong Kong and eventually made his way to Russia, where that government has granted him asylum.

NBC News reported Thursday that the NSA was "overwhelmed" in trying to figure what Snowden had stolen and didn't know everything he had downloaded.

Insider threats have troubled the administration and Congress, particularly in the wake of Bradley Manning, a young soldier who decided to leak hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents in late 2009 and early 2010.

Congress had wanted to address the insider threat problem in the 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act, but the White House asked for the language to be removed because of concerns about successfully meeting a deadline. In the 2013 version, Congress included language urging the creation of an automated, insider-threat detection program.

Offline stealthyaroura

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #277 on: August 25, 2013, 02:49:34 pm »
ARGUS-IS (waps) state of the art bwhahahah.....funny ;D
impressive BUT state of the art? don't think so.

yeah maybe 25 years ago.
you have to remember THIS is what were ALLOWED to see ::)
Imagine what they have that we HAVE YET to see :o
Nikola Tesla humanitarian / Genius.
never forget this great man who gave so much
& asked for nothing but to let electricity be free for all.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #278 on: August 26, 2013, 04:10:27 pm »


http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/26/20197183-how-snowden-did-it?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

How Snowden did it
By Richard Esposito and Matthew Cole
NBC News
 

When Edward Snowden stole the crown jewels of the National Security Agency, he didn’t need to use any sophisticated devices or software or go around any computer firewall.

All he needed, said multiple intelligence community sources, was a few thumb drives and the willingness to exploit a gaping hole in an antiquated security system to rummage at will through the NSA’s servers and take 20,000 documents without leaving a trace.

“It’s 2013 and the NSA is stuck in 2003 technology,” said an intelligence official.

Jason Healey, a former cyber-security official in the Bush Administration, said the Defense Department and the NSA have “frittered away years” trying to catch up to the security technology and practices used in private industry.  “The DoD and especially NSA are known for awesome cyber security, but this seems somewhat misplaced,” said Healey, now a cyber expert at the Atlantic Council. “They are great at some sophisticated tasks but oddly bad at many of the simplest.”

As a Honolulu-based employee of Booz Allen Hamilton doing contract work for the NSA, Snowden had access to the NSA servers via "thin client" computer. The outdated set-up meant that he had direct access to the NSA servers at headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., 5,000 miles away.

In a “thin client” system, each remote computer is essentially a glorified monitor, with most of the computing power in the central server. The individual computers tend to be assigned to specific individuals, and access for most users can be limited to specific types of files based on a user profile.

But Snowden was not most users. A typical NSA worker has a “top secret” security clearance, which gives access to most, but not all, classified information. Snowden also had the enhanced privileges of a “system administrator.” The NSA, which has as many as 40,000 employees, has 1,000 system administrators, most of them contractors.

As a system administrator, Snowden was allowed to look at any file he wanted, and his actions were largely unaudited. “At certain levels, you are the audit,” said an intelligence official.

He was also able to access NSAnet, the agency’s intranet, without leaving any signature, said a person briefed on the postmortem of Snowden’s theft. He was essentially a “ghost user,” said the source, making it difficult to trace when he signed on or what files he accessed.

If he wanted, he would even have been able to pose as any other user with access to NSAnet, said the source.

The “thin client” system and system administrator job description also provided Snowden with a possible cover for using thumb drives.

The system is intentionally closed off from the outside world, and most users are not allowed to remove information from the server and copy it onto any kind of storage device. This physical isolation – which creates a so-called “air gap" between the NSA intranet and the public internet -- is supposed to ensure that classified information is not taken off premises.

But a system administrator has the right to copy, to take information from one computer and move it to another. If his supervisor had caught him downloading files, Snowden could, for example, have claimed he was using a thumb drive to move information to correct a corrupted user profile.

“He was an authorized air gap,” said an intelligence official.

Finally, Snowden’s physical location worked to his advantage. In a contractor’s office 5,000 miles and six time zones from headquarters, he was free from prying eyes. Much of his workday occurred after the masses at Ft. Meade had already gone home for dinner. Had he been in Maryland, someone who couldn’t audit his activities electronically still might have noticed his use of thumb drives.

It’s not yet certain when Snowden began exploiting the gaps in NSA security. Snowden worked for Booz Allen Hamilton for less than three months, and says he took the job in order to have access to documents. But he may have begun taking documents many months before that, while working with the NSA via a different firm. According to Reuters, U.S. officials said he downloaded documents in April 2012, while working for Dell.

Snowden is thought to have made his initial attempt to offer documents to the media in late 2012, while at Dell.  According to published accounts, he tried to contact Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald in December and started talking to filmmaker Laura Poitras in January.

He began working for Booz Allen in March. In May, he told his supervisor he needed to take time off to deal with a health issue, and then flew to Hong Kong, where he met with Poitras and Greenwald, on May 20. He later told the Guardian that he was downloading documents on his last day at work. The revelations based on his documents started appearing in the Guardian and the Washington Post within weeks.

Snowden is currently living in Russia, where he’s been granted temporary asylum. The U.S. government has charged him with theft and violations of the Espionage Act.

U.S. intelligence officials said recently that they plan to significantly reduce the number of individuals with system administrator privileges.

“U.S. intelligence has invited so many people into the secret realm,” said an intelligence official. “There are potentially tons of Edward Snowdens. But most people aren’t willing to vacuum everything up and break the law.”

The NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Richard Esposito is the Senior Executive Producer for Investigations at NBC News. Matthew Cole is an investigative reporter at NBC News. He can be reached at matthew.cole@nbcuni.com.

Offline ArMaP

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #279 on: August 26, 2013, 04:46:41 pm »
If things are like that, I'm surprised there aren't more leaks (as far as we know). :)

Offline The Matrix Traveller

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #280 on: August 26, 2013, 04:55:30 pm »

Some naught activist punctured one of the Gov. balloons protecting a dish against weather conditions....  LOL.

It apparently cost a lot of $$$$ to repair...  or did it ?

Offline Amaterasu

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #281 on: August 26, 2013, 05:09:52 pm »
If things are like that, I'm surprised there aren't more leaks (as far as we know). :)

Snowden was a controlled "leak," in that He was presented as a leaker, but leaked nothing much new.  Psyop.

I did hear rumors of another leaker that was getting NO press.  Bet HIS stuff was FAR more interesting...
"If the universe is made of mostly Dark Energy...can We use it to run Our cars?"

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sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #282 on: August 29, 2013, 04:18:48 pm »
for someone who is not sharing any more secrets..hummmmmmmmm :P



vid at link

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/nsa-black-budget_n_3838563.html

NSA 'Black Budget' Provides New Details On Surveillance Agency

 By STEPHEN BRAUN 08/29/13 03:51 PM ET EDT 

WASHINGTON -- Secret intelligence budget files provided by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden show that the surveillance agency warned in 2012 that it planned to investigate up to 4,000 reports of possible internal security breaches, according to a new disclosure published Thursday.

The Washington Post, citing documents it said were provided by Snowden, said the NSA's concerns about insider threats were aimed at "anomalous behavior" of agency employees with access to top secret data. The account cited NSA concerns about "trusted insiders who seek to exploit their authorized access to sensitive information to harm U.S. interests."

The NSA concerns were outlined in top-secret documents provided to the Senate and House intelligence committees in February 2012, well before Snowden emerged this summer as the sole source of massive new disclosures about the agency's surveillance operations. The Post released only 17 pages of the entire 178-page budget document, citing conversations with Obama administration officials who voiced alarms about disclosures that could compromise intelligence sources and methods.

Shawn Turner, director of public affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who has taken the lead in responding to the Snowden disclosures, did not immediately respond to a request to discuss the budget figures.

It was not clear from the Post's reporting how many of the 4,000 potential insider threats were ultimately investigated or how many posed serious breaches of security. Steven Aftergood, head of a project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, questioned whether many of the reported 4,000 possible leaks were credible cases.

Referring to previous reports that the NSA's classified work force totals nearly 40,000, Aftergood said, "It would be hard to believe that one in every 10 NSA employees is a possible threat." He suggested that many cases might be caused by internal warnings arising from minor internal protocol errors or mistakenly accessed documents.

But aggressive high-profile Justice Department prosecutions in recent years of several former NSA staffers have shown the agency taking a toughened stance in cracking down on possible leaks. "In any case, a number that large is striking," Aftergood said.

The latest revelations also disclosed limited details about the highly classified 2013 intelligence "black budget," which previously only provided a topline of nearly $53 billion. The $52.6 billion intelligence budget described by the Post discloses that the NSA's portion was $10.5 billion in 2013 – outstripped only by the CIA's $14.7 billion.

Aftergood said the CIA's budget growth from $3 billion in the 1990s to nearly $15 billion likely reflects its post-9/11 push into drone warfare and paramilitary operations overseas.

 


.....................................................



 http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/to-hunt-osama-bin-laden-satellites-watched-over-abbottabad-pakistan-and-navy-seals/2013/08/29/8d32c1d6-10d5-11e3-b4cb-fd7ce041d814_story.html

To hunt Osama bin Laden, satellites watched over Abbottabad, Pakistan, and Navy SEALs

By Craig Whitlock and Barton Gellman, Thursday, August 29, 2:53 PME-mail the writer
The U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden was guided from space by a fleet of satellites, which aimed dozens of separate receivers over Pakistan to collect a torrent of electronic and signals intelligence as the mission unfolded, according to a top-secret U.S. intelligence document.

The National Security Agency was also able to penetrate guarded communications among al-Qaeda operatives by tracking calls from mobile phones identified by specific calling patterns, the document shows. Analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency pinpointed the geographic location of one of the phones and tied it to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where an accumulation of other evidence suggested bin Laden was hiding.

The new disclosures about the hunt for bin Laden are contained in classified documents that detail this year’s “black budget” for U.S. intelligence agencies, including the NSA and CIA. The documents, provided to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, make only brief references to the bin Laden operation. But the mission is portrayed as a singular example of counter-terrorism cooperation among the U.S. government’s numerous intelligence agencies.

Eight hours after the raid, according to the documents, a forensic intelligence laboratory run by the Defense Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan had analyzed DNA from bin Laden’s corpse and “provided a conclusive match” confirming his identity. The budget further reveals that satellites operated by the National Reconnaissance Office performed over 387 “collects” of high-resolution and infrared images of the Abbottabad compound in the month prior to the raid — intelligence that was “critical to prepare for the mission and contributed to the decision to approve execution.”

Also playing a role in the search for bin Laden was an arm of the NSA known as the Tailored Access Operations group. Among other functions, Tailored Access Operations specializes in surreptitiously installing spyware and tracking devices on targeted computers and mobile phone networks.

Although the budget does not provide detail, it reports that Tailored Access Operations “implants” enabled the NSA to collect intelligence from mobile phones that were used by al-Qaeda operatives and other “persons of interest” in the bin Laden hunt.

Separately, Tailored Access Operations were used in April 2011, the month before bin Laden was killed, when U.S. Forces in Afghanistan relied on signals intelligence from implants to capture 40 low- and mid-level Taliban fighters and other insurgents in that country, according to the documents.

The new details about the bin Laden raid fill out an already rich public account of how the U.S. government employed virtually every tool in its enormous surveillance apparatus to locate the elusive founder of al-Qaeda. For more than a decade, bin Laden stymied all efforts to find him by making certain he did not leave a direct electronic trail. He steadfastly avoided phones and e-mail, relying on face-to-face communications with a small number of couriers and middlemen.

In addition to the satellites, the government flew an advanced stealth drone, the RQ-170, over Pakistan to eavesdrop on electronic transmissions. The CIA also recruited a Pakistani doctor and other public health workers to try to obtain blood samples from people living in the Abbottabad compound as part of a vaccination program to determine if the residents might be related to bin Laden.

For all their technological prowess, U.S. spy agencies failed to identify its target with confidence inside the Abbottabad compound. By the time President Obama ordered a team of Navy SEALs to storm the site in May 2011, U.S. intelligence officials told the president that, according to their best guesses, the odds that bin Laden was present were between 40 and 60 percent.

Even after bin Laden’s death, however, the U.S. government kept up its relentless high-tech campaign to unlock his secrets.

Budget documents show that intelligence agencies scraped together $2.5 million in emergency funds in September 2011 to sift through a backlog of computer files and other evidence recovered from bin Laden’s hideout. The money went to buy 36 computer workstations and pay overtime to forensic examiners, linguists and “triage personnel” involved in the project




sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #283 on: August 30, 2013, 11:15:15 am »


http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/30/20200659-how-much-did-snowden-take-at-least-three-times-number-reported?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=1

How much did Snowden take? At least three times number reported

By Matthew Cole and Robert Windrem
NBC News
British authorities revealed Friday that NSA leaker Edward Snowden took at least three times as many highly sensitive documents as previously reported, and possibly far more.

At a court hearing in London the government told a judge that David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was carrying 58,000 documents related to British intelligence on electronic devices when he was stopped and searched at Heathrow airport on August 18. The government also said it believed the documents had been “stolen” from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British counterpart of the NSA.

Greenwald, who has been helping Snowden disseminate the documents he took from U.S. government computers, had previously said that Snowden had downloaded 20,000 documents. As previously reported by NBC News, the U.S. government has not yet been able to determine the scope of what Snowden took.

In a signed statement revealed at Friday’s hearing, a detective superintendent with the Counter-Terrorism  branch of the Metropolitan Police said that the material on an “external hard drive” seized from him “discloses approximately 58,000 UK documents of the highest level of classification.”

The government was able to decrypt some of the files using a code found on a piece of paper carried by Miranda, but is struggling to decrypt the rest.

“So far only 75 documents have been reconstructed” into a legible format, said the statement. “This represents only a tiny fraction of what was seized.”

The statement, dated Tuesday, said that the drive contains approximately 60 gigabytes of data, of which only 20 gigabytes have been so far been “accessed.”

“The remainder is encrypted,” said the statement, using a form of encryption known as True Crypt, “which renders the material extremely difficult to access. …
  • fficers are working with experts from other agencies to try and obtain access to that material.”


In a separate statement to the court, Oliver Robbins, Britain's deputy national security advisor for intelligence, chided Miranda for carrying a password on a piece of paper. "The fact that ... claimant was carrying on his person a handwritten piece of paper containing the password for one of the encrypted files," said Robbins, "is a sign of very poor information security practice."

Robbins also said that the information seized from Miranda was "highly likely to describe techniques which have been crucial in life-saving counter-terrorist operations, and other intelligence activities vital to UK national security."

A former U.S. official familiar with the case said "significant amounts" of intelligence documents from U.S. allies -- particularly the UK and Australia -- were taken by Snowden from the NSA.

Miranda had challenged the right of British authorities to retain the material seized from him, but at Friday’s hearing the judge agreed to let the government continue examining the files. Scotland Yard has launched a criminal investigation of Miranda.

Miranda’s lawyers said they considered it a partial victory that the judge said the government has seven days to establish there is a threat to national security.

British authorities detained Miranda when he stopped in Heathrow while traveling from Berlin back to Rio de Janeiro, where he and Greenwald live. Miranda had been in Berlin visiting filmmaker Laura Poitras, who has been working with Greenwald to publicize Snowden’s leaked documents. Miranda was delivering documents to Poitras and retrieving documents for Greenwald, according to Greenwald.

Miranda was detained and questioned for eight hours under Section 7 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act. British authorities seized multiple electronic devices from Miranda.



Alexander Smith contributing reporting to this story. Matthew Cole is an investigative reporter at NBC News. He can be reached at matthew.cole@nbcuni.com. Robert Windrem is an investigative reporter at NBC News. He can be reached at robert.windrem@nbcuni.com.

sky otter

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Re: they know what you are doing
« Reply #284 on: August 30, 2013, 04:50:34 pm »


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/uk-new-york-times-destroy-snowden_n_3844706.html

UK Asked New York Times To Destroy Edward Snowden Documents

Reuters  |  Posted: 08/30/2013 1:51 pm EDT  |  Updated: 08/30/2013 7:12 pm EDT 




By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON, Aug 30 (Reuters) - The British government has asked the New York Times to destroy copies of documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden related to the operations of the U.S. spy agency and its British partner, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), people familiar with the matter said.

The British request, made to Times executive editor Jill Abramson by a senior official at the British Embassy in Washington D.C., was greeted by Abramson with silence, according to the sources. British officials indicated they intended to follow up on their request later with the Times, but never did, one of the sources said.

On Friday, in a public statement, Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, said his newspaper, which had faced threats of possible legal action from British authorities, on July 20 had destroyed copies of leaked documents which it had received from Snowden.

Rusbridger said that two days later, on July 22, the Guardian informed British authorities that materials related to GCHQ had made their way to the New York Times and the independent investigative journalism group ProPublica.

Rusbridger said in his statement that it then took British authorities "more than three weeks before anyone from the British government contacted the New York Times.

"We understand the British Embassy in Washington met with the New York Times in mid-August - over three weeks after the Guardian's material was destroyed in London. To date, no-one has contacted ProPublica, and there has been two weeks of further silence towards the New York Times from the government," Rusbridger said.

Rusbridger added that, "This five week period in which nothing has happened tells a different story from the alarmist claims made" by the British government in a witness statement it submitted on Friday to a London court hearing regarding an investigation by British authorities into whether the handling of Snowden's leaks violated British anti-terrorism and official secrets laws.

A spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington told Reuters: "We are not going to get into the specifics about our efforts but it should come as no surprise if we approach a person who is in possession of some or all of this material."

The spokesman added: "We have presented a witness statement to the court in Britain which explains why we are trying to secure copies of over 58,000 stolen intelligence documents - to protect public safety and our national security."

A spokeswoman for the New York Times said the paper had no comment.

The British investigation was opened after authorities at London's Heathrow Airport earlier this month used an anti-terrorism law to detain David Miranda, the domestic partner of Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian writer who has met with Snowden and has played a lead role in writing about material the former NSA contractor leaked.

Miranda was held and questioned for nine hours before being allowed to resume his trip from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, where he and Greenwald live. Greenwald has said that Miranda had carried Snowden related material from him in Brazil to Laura Poitras in Berlin, an American film-maker who has also met with Snowden, and that Miranda was carrying Snowden-related materials which Poitras gave to him back to Greenwald.

In her witness statement submitted to the British court on Friday, Detective Superintendent Caroline Goode, who said she was in charge of Scotland Yard's Snowden-related investigation, said that among materials officials had seized from Miranda while detaining him was an "external hard drive" containing data encrypted by a system called "True Crypt," which Goode said "renders the material extremely difficult to access."

Goode said the hard drive contained around 60 gigabytes of data, "of which only 20 have been accessed to date." She said that she had been advised that the hard drive contains "approximately 58,000 UK documents which are highly classified in nature, to the highest level."

Goode said the process to decode the material was complex and that "so far only 75 documents have been reconstructed since the property was initially received."

Goode also said that its was "likely" that Scotland Yard "is investigating a conspiracy with a global dimension. It is necessary to ascertain if this stolen, classified material has been disseminated to others in order to prevent further disclosure which would prove valuable to terrorists, thereby preventing further offences and protecting public safety."

She also said that "Disclosure of any information contained within those documents would be gravely injurious to UK interests, would directly put lives at risk and would pose a risk to public safety and diminish the ability to counter terrorism."


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