NSA Intercepted New Laptops to Install Spy Malware

[boutons_deux]

NSA Carves Pathway Into International Computers, New York Times Reports

Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency has put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The NSA has planted most of the software through getting access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the Internet, the Times said, citing U.S. officials, computer experts and do ents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The Times said the technology had been in use since at least 2008 and relied on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards secretly inserted in the computers.

"The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack," the newspaper said. "In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user."

Frequent targets of the program, code-named Quantum, have included units of the Chinese military, which Washington has accused of conducting digital attacks on U.S. military and industrial targets, the Times said.

The newspaper said the program had also succeeded in planting software in Russian military networks as well as systems used by Mexican police and drug cartels, European Union trade ins utions and allies such as Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.

The Times said there was no evidence the NSA had implanted software or used the radio technology inside the United States.

"NSA's activities are focused and specifically deployed against - and only against - valid foreign intelligence targets in response to intelligence requirements," the Times quoted an agency spokeswoman as saying.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_4599030.html

[Winehole23]

the electronic dragnet is a marginal and inefficient tool for stopping terrorism:

However, our review of the government’s claims about the role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading. An in-depth analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda or a like-minded group or inspired by al-Qaeda’s ideology, and charged in the United States with an act of terrorism since 9/11, demonstrates that traditional investigative methods, such as the use of informants, tips from local communities, and targeted intelligence operations, provided the initial impetus for investigations in the majority of cases, while the contribution of NSA’s bulk surveillance programs to these cases was minimal. Indeed, the controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in initiating, at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. NSA programs involving the surveillance of non-U.S. persons outside of the United States under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act played a role in 4.4 percent of the terrorism cases we examined, and NSA surveillance under an unidentified authority played a role in 1.3 percent of the cases we examined.

http://newamerica.net/publications/p...top_terrorists

[boutons_deux]

NSA is worried about "legality"? G M A F B

NSA Says Checking to See if They Spied on Bernie Sanders Is Illegal

In response to a letter from Senator Bernie Sanders asking if NSA spied on members of the U.S. Congress in the past, NSA chief, General Alexander claimed that the NSA does nothing unlawful but refuses to answer questions about any past abuses.

General Alexander's argument by which he concludes that even to check whether in the past Sanders was spied on in the sense of collecting meta-data from his phone calls would be illegal is the sort of thing that one might expect to come from the satirical site Onion. Any attempt to see if such meta-data were collected for any members of Congress violates the privacy rights of members of Congress:"Among those protections is the condition that NSA can query the metadata only based on phone numbers reasonably suspected to be associated with specific foreign terrorist groups, For that reason, NSA cannot lawfully search to determine if any records NSA has received under the program have included metadata of the phone calls of any member of Congress.."The entire letter from the NSA can be read here.

Sanders was not impressed by Alexander's response and said:“In my view, the information collected by the NSA has the potential to give an unscrupulous administration enormous power over elected officials,”

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/p...#ixzz2qYg4fH2s

[mouse]

they wont prevent if there is a beneficial gain to them....why arrest the clown if they can make millions from the taxpayer?

[boutons_deux]

Spy Agencies Probe Angry Birds and Other Apps for Personal Data

When a smartphone user opens Angry Birds, the popular game application, and starts slinging birds at chortling green pigs, spy agencies have plotted how to lurk in the background to snatch data revealing the player’s location, age, sex and other personal information, according to secret British intelligence do ents.

In their globe-spanning surveillance for terrorism suspects and other targets, the National Security Agency and its British counterpart have been trying to exploit a basic byproduct of modern telecommunications: With each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies can pick it up.

According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified do ents, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from users’ smartphone identification codes to where they have been that day.

The N.S.A. and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were working together on how to collect and store data from dozens of smartphone apps by 2007, according to the do ents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. Since then, the agencies have traded recipes for grabbing location and planning data when a target uses Google Maps, and for vacuuming up address books, buddy lists, phone logs and the geographic data embedded in photos when someone sends a post to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services.

The eavesdroppers’ pursuit of mobile networks has been outlined in earlier reports, but the secret do ents, shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica, offer far more details of their ambitions for smartphones and the apps that run on them. The efforts were part of an initiative called “the mobile surge,” according to a 2011 British do ent, an analogy to the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. One N.S.A. analyst’s enthusiasm was evident in the breathless le — “Golden Nugget!” — given to one slide for a top-secret 2010 talk describing iPhones and Android phones as rich resources, one do ent notes.

http://www.propublica.org/article/spy-agencies-probe-angry-birds-and-other-apps-for-personal-data?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=d ailynewsletter