Tag Archives: Electronic Spying

realizethelies 11:49 am on June 13, 2013
Tags: , , Electronic Spying,   

“Metadata” Can Tell the Government More About You Than the Content of Your Phonecalls

dataspy

Why Should You Care If the Government Spies On Your Metadata?

The government has sought to “reassure” us that it is only tracking “metadata” such as the time and place of the calls, and not the actual content of the calls.But technology experts say that “metadata” can be more revealing than the content of your actual phone calls.

For example, the ACLU notes:

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study a few years back found that reviewing people’s social networking contacts alone was sufficient to determine their sexual orientation. Consider, metadata from email communications was sufficient to identify the mistress of then-CIA Director David Petraeus and then drive him out of office.

The “who,” “when” and “how frequently” of communications are often more revealing than what is said or written. Calls between a reporter and a government whistleblower, for example, may reveal a relationship that can be incriminating all on its own.

Electronic Frontier Foundation points out:

What [government officials] are trying to say is that disclosure of metadata—the details about phone calls, without the actual voice—isn’t a big deal, not something for Americans to get upset about if the government knows. Metadata provides enough context to know some of the most intimate details of your lives. And the government has given no assurances that this data will never be correlated with other easily obtained data.

Indeed, the government’s spying on our metadata arguably violates our right to freedom of expression, guaranteed by numerous laws and charters including the U.S. Constitution, the European Convention on Human Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and international law. Spying on Americans’ metadata rolls back everything our freedom of association … and virtually everything the Founding Fathers fought for

Via Washingtons Blog

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realizethelies 11:35 am on June 13, 2013
Tags: Boundless Informant, , Electronic Spying, NSA Leaks   

Boundless Informant:NSA secret tool to track global surveillance data

boundless-informantglobal

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

Leaked documents show the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013.

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA “global heat map” seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97 billion pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

Original Story: Guardian UK

realizethelies 11:13 am on June 13, 2013
Tags: ECHELON, Electronic Spying, , ukusa agreement   

Flashback: Before PRISM there was ECHELON

EchelonSystem

Via Michael Rivero/ What Really Happened

Rumors have abounded for several years of a massive system designed to intercept virtually all email and fax traffic in the world and subject it to automated analysis, despite laws in many nations (including this one) barring such activity. The laws were circumvented by a mutual pact among five nations. It’s illegal for the United States to spy on it’s citizens. Likewise the same for Great Britain. But under the terms of the UKUSA agreement, Britain spies on Americans and America spies on British citizens and the two groups trade data.

The system is called ECHELON, and had been rumored to be in development since 1947, the result of the UKUSA treaty signed by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The purpose of the UKUSA agreement was to create a single vast global intelligence organization sharing common goals and a common agenda, spying on the world and sharing the data.

What is ECHELON used for?

In the days of the cold war, ECHELON’s primary purpose was to keep an eye on the U.S.S.R. In the wake of the fall of the U.S.S.R. ECHELON justifies it’s continued multi-billion dollar expense with the claim that it is being used to fight “terrorism”, the catch-all phrase used to justify any and all abuses of civil rights.

The cover blows off!

Even close allies do not like it when they are being spied on. Especially if the objective is not law enforcement but corporate shenanigans to make rich politicians just that much richer. So, the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament looked into ECHELON, and officially confirmed it’s existence and purpose.

London Telegraph.
Tuesday 16 December 1997
Spies like US

A European Commission report warns that the United States has developed
an extensive network spying on European citizens and we should all be
worried. Simon Davies reports

Cooking up a charter for snooping

A GLOBAL electronic spy network that can eavesdrop on every telephone,
email and telex communication around the world will be officially
acknowledged for the first time in a European Commission report to be
delivered this week.

The report – Assessing the Technologies of Political Control – was
commissioned last year by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European
Parliament. It contains details of a network of American-controlled
intelligence stations on British soil and around the world, that
“routinely and indiscriminately” monitor countless phone, fax and email
messages. The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive
ECHELON system.

“The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system (Cooking up a
charter for snooping) but unlike many of the electronic spy systems
developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for
non-military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in
virtually every country.

listeningpost
(Echelon interception station, Menwith Hill UK)

Full Article Here

realizethelies 4:13 pm on May 31, 2013
Tags: , Electronic Spying,   

Global Privacy Has Been Made Obsolete

NSAhal

A massive new NSA data centre in Utah will begin collecting electronic information from citizens all around the world, regardless of the country they reside in.

The facility, code name “Bumblehive”, is 1.5-million-square-ft, has cost almost $2-billion and can store 1 trillion terabytes of information, creating the largest spy centre known to man.

wired-nsa-facility

The NSA plans to collect electronic information, everything from emails to cellphone records and even purchasing receipts from all over the world. They will store the information to identify threatening patterns, they claim.

The data centre is able to capture all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Internet searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter”, though its precise purpose is secret.

In 2012 Wired reported that the data centre is:

In essence, like a cloud, a digital cloud, so that agency employees, analysts from around the country at NSA headquarters and their listening posts in different parts of the U.S.
The NSA is much different from the CIA. First of all, it’s about three times the size. It costs far more. It’s tremendously more secret than the CIA. And what it does is very different. It’s focused on eavesdropping, on tapping into major communications links, on listening to what people around the world and, to some degree, in the United States say on telephones, email, communications . . . And NSA is really the most powerful intelligence agency, not only in the U.S., but in the world today.

Original Story Here

realizethelies 11:05 am on December 31, 2012
Tags: , Electronic Spying, , , William binney   

Americans Are The Most Spied On People In World History

The US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.Indeed, the American government has more information on the average American than Stalin had on Russians, Hitler had on German citizens, or any other government has ever had on its people.

The American government is collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.

Some also claim that the government is also using facial recognition software and surveillance cameras to track where everyone is going. Moreover, cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And – given that your smartphone routinely sends your location information back to Apple or Google – it would be child’s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on virtually everything you do.

As the(former) top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency explained this week, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year. He says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.

As the top spy chief (William Binney) at the U.S. National Security Agency explained, the American government is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.[Binney] says that if anyone gets on the government’s “enemies list”, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn’t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him. The spying isn’t being done to keep us safe … but to crush dissent and to smear people who uncover unflattering things about the government … and to help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses.

Disinfo Story Here

Original Article

realizethelies 10:46 am on December 31, 2012
Tags: , Electronic Spying, , warrantless wiretapping   

Senate Approves Warrantless Electronic Spy Powers

The Senate on Friday reauthorized for five years broad electronic eavesdropping powers that legalized and expanded the President George W. Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The FISA Amendments Act, (.pdf) which was expiring Monday at midnight, allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is believed outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately blasted the vote.

“The Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretapping, once considered a radical threat to the Fourth Amendment, has become institutionalized for another five years,” said Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel.

The legislation does not require the government to identify the target or facility to be monitored. It can begin surveillance a week before making the request, and the surveillance can continue during the appeals process if, in a rare case, the secret FISA court rejects the surveillance application. The court’s rulings are not public.

Original Article Here